Berks County, Pennsylvania, USA  Berks County, Pennsylvania, USA

Outside Philadelphia, northwest of Chester and Lancaster counties. The county seat is Reading. Easily confused with nearby Bucks County, which is immediate north of Philadelphia.

History

Berks County undoubtedly profited from the overall attractiveness of the Commonwealth, for it is noteworthy that William Penn found it attractive for settlement. In 1683, he observed the "Schuylkill being 100 miles boatable above the Falls (i.e. entirely through Berks) and its Course Northwest to the Fountain of Susquehanna is like to be a great Part of the Settlement of Age." Apart from the Schuylkill itself, more than a dozen of its direct and indirect tributaries furnished abundant water and power, and it is only natural that their banks and valleys became the sites of the earliest settlements.

The first European settlement in the County was made in 1701 by the Swedes near the mouth of the Manatawny Creek. This was soon followed, further upstream and into the rich Oley Valley, by the French Hugenots after 1704, the Germans in 1712, and the English after 1720. The English also settled throughout the Maidencreek Valley, and, after 1730, along the Allegheny and Hay Creeks, south of the Schuylkill.