Berks County's Windsor Castle

 

Recently, while driving though Berks County, the strange spell of warm weather we experienced after Christmas put me in the mood for exploring, and as I navigated the streets of the charming borough of Hamburg my attention was drawn to a road sign pointing to Windsor Castle. Windsor Castle? I'd passed though Hamburg dozens of times over the years, but had never heard of Windsor Castle (other than the Windsor Castle in England). Was it a practical joke? A new tourist attraction inspired by the British royal family? Or was there a place in Berks County actually named Windsor Castle? 

Naturally, I couldn't resist the urge to follow the road sign, which led me past Hamburg Middle School along a winding road (Windsor Castle Road, to be precise) flanked by picturesque farms and... well, not much else. Alas, there was no Medieval castle to be seen, nor gilded royal carriages being pulled by royal ponies. I didn't catch a glimpse of Prince William or Kate Middleton, and I did not even catch a peep of Pippa Middleton. What I did discover, however, was a tiny hamlet of about a dozen houses and rich history that dates back to the days of the Revolutionary War.

So what, then, is the story of how Windsor Castle came to be located off the beaten highway, tucked deep in the heart of Berks County? For this, we can thank an enterprising 19th century postmaster and tavern owner named Mahlon Sellers.

 

 

In Pennsylvania, just about every county contains a handful of townships sharing a name with a place in merry old England, and there are 19 townships in the United States that are named for the Royal Borough of Windsor in England's historic county of Berkshire. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the Pennsylvania county of Berks contains a township suitably named. Because of the long and complicated history of Berks County, the exact date of the establishment of  Windsor Township is unclear, though some historians fix the date at 1746. Berks County (named in honor of William Penn's birthplace of Berkshire) was created in 1752 from parts of Chester, Lancaster and Philadelphia counties. Prior to that, the provinces of Pennsylvania and Delaware were overseen by the same colonial governor.

It wasn't until 1787 that Pennsylvania officially became a state, and while many of the earliest records have been lost it is known that Windsor Township was well-populated with white settlers as early as 1740. By the time the county was organized in 1752, there were already hundreds of residents living in the township, the majority of whom, interestingly enough, were not of English origin, but German.

The Black Horse Inn

When the Hamburg and Allentown stagecoach route passed through present-day Windsor Castle, it passed an old hotel and tavern at the village crossroads known as the Black Horse Inn, which was originally the home of early settler Jeremiah Shappell. The Black Horse Inn, one of the oldest taverns in the county, operated for nearly 200 years before its closure in the 1930s, but it was very nearly the scene of a Revolutionary War skirmish.

During the war, a detachment of Continental Army soldiers erected a hickory "liberty pole" in front of the Black Horse Inn, as a show of local support during the fight for independence. According to legend, Hessian troops marching through town cut down the pole out of spite, but a second pole was quickly erected. When rumors spread that British troops were preparing to pass through the village on their way to Bethlehem, the men of Windsor Township armed themselves with muskets and assembled inside the inn, planning on ambushing the enemy. For one reason or another, the British never passed through Windsor Castle as anticipated.

During the colonial era the inn featured a simple wooden sign, devoid of lettering, depicting a black horse. Since most of the early settlers of the region had no formal education and didn't know how to read or write, the distinctive sign informed travelers that they had found the fabled Black Horse Inn, where liquor and lodging could easily be procured. During the early days of the inn, the simple sign also attracted Indians, who traded pelts at the tavern for "fire water". After the historic tavern was torn down, a garage was erected on the site by Paul Clauss in the 1930s.

The village of Windsor Castle may be well off the beaten track, but that didn't prevent this sleepy hamlet from having more than its share of excitement. In 1850, gold was discovered by local prospector E.D. Stiles on the farm of George Focht along Pigeon Creek. According to the May 15, 1850 edition of the Lancaster Examiner, an assay revealed a rich vein of gold and silver. Unfortunately, the vein wasn't large or rich enough to warrant further excavation.

 

Mahlon the Magnificent

Since the stage route was used to deliver mail, it was eventually decided that a post office should be housed inside the Black Horse Inn. Mahlon A. Sellers, who became the proprietor of the Black Horse Inn after purchasing it from Jacob Heinly in 1845, was appointed as postmaster and held that post for fifty years. At the time of his retirement, newspapers hailed Mahlon Sellers as the oldest and longest-serving postmaster in the country. 

Sellers, a printer from Montgomery County, arrived in Hamburg in 1841 to assume control of the borough's weekly German newspaper, the Hamburger Schnellpost. Multiple sources (such as Morton Luther Montgomery's 1886 History of Berks County in Pennsylvania) state that it was Sellers who chose the name for the post office, which later came to be applied to the tiny village surrounding it. Initially, mail was supplied to the village on a tri-weekly basis, with the first daily mail delivery beginning in July of 1885.

 

Allentown Leader, Oct. 9, 1895.

 

By this time, Windsor Castle had grown to a busy hamlet, thanks to the efforts of its leading citizen, Mahlon A. Sellers. The Windsor Castle Creamery was built in April of 1885 (with Sellers serving as secretary), and manufactured about 10,000 pounds of butter and 15,000 pounds of cheese annually.  Also serving the rural community was a blacksmith shop, a wheelwright shop, and another side project of Mahon Sellers-- the Windsor Society for the Detection of Horse Thieves. The purpose of this organization was to create a sixteen-person volunteer police force tasked with the job of preventing horse theft within a ten-mile radius of Windsor Castle. Whenever the theft of a horse was reported, the society would institute a search for the missing animal. If the thief could not be apprehended, the society provided an appraisal of the horse and the owner would be reimbursed 3/4 of the horse's value from the dues paid by its 100-plus members. Records show that the Windsor Society for the Detection of Horse Thieves was a very effective organization; of the twelve horses stolen from area residents, ten of them were recovered and the perpetrators brought to justice.

 

 

The success of the Windsor Society for the Detection of Horse Thieves inspired Mahlon Sellers to come up with his next project-- the Windsor Horse Life Insurance Company. Chartered on August 1, 1859, the Windsor Horse Life Insurance Company (perhaps the first insurance company of its kind in the nation) issued policies of up to $200 to horse owners throughout Berks County, and, in the case of a loss, the owner was compensated 80% of the policy's value within 30 days. Sellers was also instrumental in the founding of the Windsor Fire Insurance Company, and, during the Civil War, served as the recruiting agent for Windsor Township. Sellers, who died in 1901 at the age of 83, also served as the township's justice of the peace for forty years, but he spent his final years in Philadelphia, where he resided at the time of his death.

During his lifetime, Mahlon Sellers was a tireless one-man Chamber of Commerce for the tiny village, and so it is no surprise that after Sellers' death, Windsor Castle returned to its former life as a quiet forgotten place-- but a place worth discovering if you ever have the chance to explore the back roads of Berks County.