Okehocking Historic District

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Okehocking Historic District is a national historic district in Willistown Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. It was listed on the National Register in 1993. The district covers about 1,400 acres near Media and includes many 18th- and 19th-century farmhouses and outbuildings, most built before 1845. It sits on part of a 500-acre Indian land grant from William Penn to the Okehocking Lenape group, established in 1703.

Key features and landmarks:
- Willistown Friends Meetinghouse (1798) and its burial ground
- Willistown School No. 6
- Rising Sun Tavern (a former inn)
- Smedley Mill and three other mill sites: Garrett Mill, Duckett Mill, and George Matlack’s sawmill
- A 1924 Pennsylvania state historical marker on a boulder marks the site of the former Okehocking Indian Town, noting it as the only Indian Reservation established by William Penn

Archaeologists have found little evidence of a permanent Lenape village here, suggesting the Lenape were nomadic and left few traces.

The Willistown Friends Meeting is at Goshen Road and Warren Avenue in the district’s northeast. Early European settlers were Quakers who worshiped at Goshen or Middletown. In 1753, Francis and Ann Smedley donated land on Plumsock Road for a school, which was torn down in 1873. After Francis’s death, Ann donated land for a burial ground and the meeting house. The meeting sits on about 25 acres to preserve its rural character. Membership declined to about five families in the 1950s, then grew to about 99 families by 1998.