Place:Lower Merion, Montgomery, Pennsylvania, United States

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source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Lower Merion Township is a township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania and part of the Philadelphia Main Line. The name Merion originates with the county of Merioneth in north Wales. Merioneth is an English-language transcription of the Welsh Meirionnydd.

Lower Merion is one of the major inner ring suburbs of Philadelphia, along with Upper Darby, Haverford, and Cheltenham. With a population of 63,633, Lower Merion Township is the ninth most populated city, town or borough in Pennsylvania as of the 2020 U.S. census.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Lower Merion Township was first settled in 1682 by Welsh Quakers who were granted a tract of land (the Welsh Tract) by William Penn. In 1713, Lower Merion was established as an independent Township with about 52 landholders and tenants. In 1900, the Township was incorporated as a Township of the First Class. Lower Merion is home to the oldest continuously used place of worship in the United States, the Merion Friends Meeting House, used continuously since 1695.

On April 4, 1991, U.S. Senator John Heinz died while as a passenger in a Piper Aerostar propeller aircraft when it collided with a Bell 412 helicopter over the Merion Elementary School in the Merion air disaster. The other four people in both aircraft also died, and the falling debris from the aircraft also caused the death of two elementary students and injured five others.

The Mill Creek Historic District, and Seville Theatre are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Green Hill Farms was added in 2011.

In 2010, the township received national media attention when a student filed a lawsuit — Robbins v. Lower Merion School District — after a school administrator used the webcam of a school-issued laptop to spy on the student while the student was in his home. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed an amicus brief in support of the student.

In 2012, the Federal Highway Administration modified the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices in a way that would have required the replacement of Lower Merion's historic street signs, some of which date back to the early 1910s. After some campaigning by local residents and by Senator Pat Toomey, the Lower Merion Board of Commissioners declared, via an ordinance, the entire Lower Merion as a historic district and received a waiver from Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood.

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