In 1724, John Wright, an English Quaker, traveled to the area (then a part of Chester County) to explore the land and proselytize to a Native American tribe, the Shawnee, who had established a settlement along a creek known as Shawnee Creek, which is still called that today.
Robert Barber constructed a saw mill in 1727 and years later built a home near the river, on the Washington Boro Pike, along what is now Route 441.