{"id":17276,"date":"2016-11-10T17:40:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T22:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=17276"},"modified":"2022-06-06T06:42:37","modified_gmt":"2022-06-06T11:42:37","slug":"king-of-prussia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/king-of-prussia\/","title":{"rendered":"King of Prussia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve been fixated on the origins of unusual town names the last few days. First I unraveled the mystery of Snowflake<\/a>; now I took aim at King of Prussia. A bunch of questions came to mind. Most prominently, why would someone name a place King of Prussia? Did it refer to a specific king? Why not just name it after the guy instead of referring to him so generally?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Town<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"US<\/a>
Take me to the king<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I found King of Prussia in Pennsylvania; it’s an exurb of Philadelphia (map<\/a>). The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia<\/a> described a dynamic place,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Twenty miles northwest of downtown Philadelphia, where the Pennsylvania Turnpike converges with the Schuylkill Expressway, a sleepy rural town clustered around a colonial-era tavern expanded massively in the twentieth century to become the region\u2019s largest employment hub outside of Center City Philadelphia.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That could have described perhaps a thousand other places in the United States too. However, only one had this strange name. King of Prussia began as an inconsequential village only to be engulfed by the sprawl of a larger city, then transformed into an economic power in its own right. But that still didn’t explain its name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The King<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Friedrich<\/a>
Friedrich Zweite, the King of Prussia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It didn’t take long to track down the King of Prussia in question. It did refer to a specific Prussian king, Frederick II, often called Frederick the Great. Nobody seemed to know why he got the nod in Pennsylvania and various theories floated about the Intertubes. The area went by Reeseville when the original Quaker settlers moved there in the early 18th Century. The name flipped to King of Prussia sometime during or right after the Revolutionary War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many Americans thought highly of Frederick II because he supported the Revolution from its earliest days. Also, it may have been a gesture of thanks to General von Steuben of Prussia who trained the Continental Army at nearby Valley Forge. Either way, the name probably arose from patriotic sentiments of local residents as the United States fought for and gained its independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Inn<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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