North Wales: Penn's Welsh Corner

North Wales stands on ground that Welsh Quakers settled in the sixteen nineties, naming their new home for Gwynedd, the region of northwestern Wales they had left. In sixteen ninety-seven, William John and Thomas Evans acquired nearly eight thousand acres in the vicinity for Welsh families fleeing religious persecution and seeking to preserve their language and customs in a community of their own. Gwynedd Township was established in seventeen oh-two, the Welsh name itself meaning North Wales.

North Wales was incorporated as a borough in eighteen sixty-nine, the oldest of the North Penn boroughs. The borough sits astride the old Philadelphia Road, and its Welsh Quaker identity shaped the region's landscape of meeting houses and family farms for generations.