Horsham is one of the original townships laid out, but not named, on the first published map of William Penn’s settlement in Pennsylvania. This map, commonly known as Holme’s map, was printed during the year 1687 by Penn’s London land office, from reports submitted before the end of the previous year by his Land Commissioners, resident in Philadelphia, and by Thomas Holme, his Surveyor General for the Colony. 

Holme used a simple method of blocking out land in the east end of Montgomery and Bucks Counties. He ran parallel lines northwestward from the Delaware River at intervals of one and one-half miles; each alternate line established a division line between townships. The intervening lines formed median or base lines within the townships, from which individual grants of land were measured.

Horsham, therefore, forms a somewhat irregular parallel-o-gram, with an average width of slightly more than three miles. The average length is somewhat more than five and one-half miles, and the total area is about 10,750 acres, or a little less than 17 square miles.

Through highways were projected along each of the parallel lines on Holmes map. When actually laid out, these highways occasionally deviated from the straight lines of the survey, due to irregularities of terrain. In a general way, most of the southeast-northwest roads in the eastern end of Montgomery County and the adjacent section of Bucks County follow the old survey lines laid down more than 250 years ago. Township Line Road or Cottman Avenue, Susquehanna Road, Welsh Road, Horsham Road, County Line Road, Street Road, and Bristol Road all follow closely the base lines found on Holme’s map.

As is usual when new lands are opened to settlement, relatively few of the first land buyers intended to settle on their purchases. They were speculators, depending on a rapid influx of bona fide settlers to make their investments profitable. Almost all the available land within 30 or 40 miles of Philadelphia passed into private ownership before the end of the year 1686, and so was plotted on Holme’s map. The district which later became known as Horsham Township had been allotted to four individuals; George Palmer, Joseph Fisher, Samuel Carpenter, and Mary Blunston. A member of the family later settled on the Palmer tract; the other three purchasers lived elsewhere, and sold off their land to others as rapidly as opportunity offered.

Courtesy of, and in memory of, Maury Craven