MONROE COUNTY HISTORIC PHOTO ALBUM
Heritage
Monroe County’s landscape,
like its history, is sprinkled liberally with names like
Stroud, Brodhead, Kresge and Depui. Some helped reate a new
country while creating new settlements here. Jacob Stroud,
for example, was an office in the Revolutionary Army and
founded Stroudsburg. Nicholas Depui and Manuel Gonsalez,
from Smithfield Township, were members of the Communities
of Observation that supervised the boycott of British
goods.
Kresgeville is named for the Kresge family, whose members
over the years have included chain store magnate S.S.
Kresge, who donated $25,000 in 1928 to the school district.
Daniel Brodhead was an early settler of what is now East
Stroudsburg, and his name lives on in local geography
through the Brodhead Creek, Dansbury Park and more.
Dutch and German settlers were first in the area. They and
other early settlers came from cultures in which the
Protestant Christian Church was important, and they brought
their beliefs here, as evidenced in the variety of churches
– German Reformed, Lutheran Reformed, Methodist,
Prebyterian, German Evangelical and more. One of the first
churches was erected in 1735 in Shawnee and, over the
years, was led by Dutch Reformed, Lutheran and Presbyterian
pastors. Its foundations were used for the present Shawnee
Presbyterian Chruch. The Great Awakening, which was
sweeping American religious life, is seen in camp meetings
that were popular in Monroe County during the 1840s and
1850s.
Along Highways 940 and 611, you’ll see historical markers
for the Sullivan Trail, which is the path used by Gen. John
Sullivan and his troops on their northward march against
the Iroquois Indians in 1779. Others from the area who have
achieved national attention include A. Mitchell Palmer, a
Quaker who served as United States attorney general under
President Woodrow Wilson and later ran unsuccesfully for
president, and John Summerfield Staples, a Stroudsburg
native who was President Abraham Lincoln’s representative
recruit in the federal army during the Civil
War.