How Did Easton Get Its Name?

Seeing as how this is the Easton Patch, I may as well start with the eponymous city. Bethlehem, get over it. You get Musikfest, you will be fine.

Speaking of Bethlehem, many people believe that Easton got its name from being located to the east of the Christmas City. Not so!

I mean, yes, Easton is east of Bethlehem, but that's not how the city got its name. Its real origin is - depending on how you view it - either really adorable or really lame. Let's learn it and see what you think.

FAST FACTS:

Who named it?
Thomas Penn (1702-1775)

When was it created?
1752 (became a borough in 1789; became a city in 1887)

What is it named after?
A huge, awesome-looking English mansion

The whole story of Easton's founding is a tale I'll save for around Heritage Day, and it's a pretty interesting one. As this series focuses on names, though, I'll stick to Thomas Penn's reasons for naming it Easton.

And the reason?  

Love.

Or he was trying to impress his father-in-law. Whichever.

Thomas was one of those guys who waited a while to settle down. He was nearly 50 years old by the time he finally got married in 1751. We can't say for certain why he waited so long to get hitched. Maybe he was a bad flirt (I hear ya, buddy). Maybe he had a nearly-unbearable body odor. There was no TMZ in the eighteenth century, though, so we'll just have to speculate on the details.

What we do know is that he married to the  lady Juliana Fermor who was then barely in her 20s (go, Tom!). She was the daughter of Thomas Fermor, the extremely wealthy Earl of Pomfret back in England. The Fermors were very, very rich, understand. They were English high society and Thomas Penn was keen on not repeating his father's mistakes and ending up with insurmountable debt.

Thomas's father, William Penn sometimes made what were seen as financial errors, is what I'm saying. Marrying a Fermor, on the other hand, was not a financial error.

But hey, let's not judge Thomas too harshly. It may not have been about the money. It may just have been that Juliana was hot and half his age. (See: the portrait above, done a decade *after* her marriage.)

In any case, Thomas was, at the time of his marriage, plotting out a new county in Pennsylvania. Bucks County - for political reasons I'll come to in a later post - was to be divided, and the northern part renamed by Penn. And here's where Easton's name and Northampton County's name can be explained at the same time.

Thomas Penn's father-in-law, Lord Pomfret, lived in an incredible mansion with his family located in Northamptonshire, England.

Its name: the Easton Neston.

Yeah. We see what you did there, Tom.

Bonus: Some Street Names

Oh, but it doesn't stop there. Some streets in Easton were named after the family:

• 2nd Street used to be called Fermor Street.
• 3rd Street used to be Pomfret Street.
• 5th Street used to be Juliana Street.

By the way, 4th Street was named Hamilton Street and has nothing to do with the Fermor family. "1st Street" bordering the Delaware was never called by that name officially, but rather Front Street. At least until Larry Holmes came along and showed how unbelievably good at boxing he is. Now it's called Larry Holmes Drive. Hey! Win 48 professional boxing matches in a row and maybe the city will rename 2nd Street for you!

The names of the streets were changed after the American Revolution, because for some reason suddenly Americans didn't like things named after English nobility. Except, you know, Pennsylvania.

So did Juliana appreciate that her new husband named a town - the county seat, no less - after her house and a named street in it her actual name? Well, she liked it so much that she visited a total of zero times. So we took back the steets. You're welcome, Julie.

At least there's still the Pomfret Club.

Kyle M. Jones is a docent at Easton's history museum, the Sigal Museum. He is there most Saturdays, so stop by and feed his starving ego.