Slaymakertown and the Lafayette Visit

Before the Lancaster to Philadelphia Turnpike was even finished, a man named Amos Slaymaker is said to have platted a village here, confident the road would bring traffic and commerce past his door. The settlement, originally called Salisburyville, was later renamed Slaymakertown in his honor. A few of the original buildings still stand, including the house known as White Chimneys, said to have been begun in the early seventeen hundreds, which has been enlarged and altered across the generations.

The most celebrated moment in this village's history came in the summer of eighteen twenty-five, when the Marquis de Lafayette stopped here during his famous farewell tour of the United States. Lafayette was then sixty-seven years old, revisiting the country he had helped win independence, and crowds turned out along every road to see him. White Chimneys is said to have hosted him that day, connecting this small Lancaster County crossroads to the full sweep of the American Revolution.