Dillerville or Dillersville is an extinct hamlet in
Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, United States.
Dillerville was established between the Harrisburg and Manheim pikes, at the intersection of the Lancaster and Reading railroads.
It is sometimes called Dillerville, and sometimes called Dillersville. The USPS database uses the singular spelling for Dillerville Road, as does Mapquest's database. Searching on Google shows the singular spelling to be about six times as popular.
The Dillerville name lives on in the Conrail maintenance yard in Lancaster, a wetlands known as the Dillerville swamp, and in Dillerville Road.
According to an 1855 publication, the
Pennsylvania Railroad, double-tracked, runs east from Dillerville to
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
and west to
Columbia; at Dillerville, there is a junction with the ''Harrisburg, Portsmouth, Mount Joy and Lancaster Railroad'', which extends to
Harrisburg
Harrisburg is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 50,135 as of the 2021 census, Harrisburg is the 9th largest city and 15th largest municipality in Pe ...
.
An 1864 atlas of Lancaster County shows six property owners in Dillerville: Benjamin Herr, Henry Huber, Hy Holl, Patrick McLaughlin, Samuel Ruth, and Emil Shober. Lue E. Huber, age 42, died in Dillerville on April 16, 1893 and Viola Keith, age 1 year, on Mar 1, 1888 according to inscriptions on their headstones.
In the Lancaster County Historical Society Vol. 53, No. 3, p. 87 a list of teachers for the one-room schoolhouse is given as:
* In 1851-52 James Benson was teaching a group of 44 including the names Ruth Hall, McGrann, Schreiner, Huber, Smith, McGlaughlan, Blizzard, hackman, Swails, Graft and Getz. The school was referred to as No. 5 and was located "on the west side of Dillerville Lane opposite the lane that led to the Brennan Farm".
* About 1895, Harry R. Bassler
* about 1900, Miss Anna Eby
* 1903, Miss Ada Burkholder (Shuman)
* 1904, Mr. Evans
* 1905, Dr. J.G. Hess
* 1906, C. H. Martin (Treasurer of the historical society) with fifty-five pupils in eight grades
* 1907, John Matter
* Later, and for twenty years, it was occupied as a dwelling by Frank Heisler.
In 1999, students from the Lancaster Academy planted more than 500 wetland plants, including buttonbush, soft-stem bullrush, water iris and silky dogwood in an wetland near Red Rose Commons, known as the Dillerville Swamp.
Geography
Dillersville is located at (40.057222,-76.321667), and is above mean sea level.
References
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Unincorporated communities in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Unincorporated communities in Pennsylvania