There is an excellent 1986 book on “The First One Hundred Years … Township of Marple.” It is in our library, and you can find copies for sale online. The book looks at Marple in the period from 1684-1784. As an amateur historian, I can tell when I pick up a history that is written by a professional. It is always well organized, it has a theme, and it is put together as carefully as an old home, brick by brick. There are always references to primary documents – which should be the foundation of thoughtful history. All of this was immediately apparent when I picked up this book. I went looking for the author, and found her in Minnesota – but with Marple roots.
Lucille Bricker Lewis was born in Norristown in 1926, but by 1930 the family was living on Sproul Road in Marple. Her Lewis family had ties to the Lewis families that settled Marple and Newtown in the 17th and 18th centuries, and her father, Andrew Lewis Jr., had gone through the Marple school system. During the Depression, 
the family (the parents along with sister Floy and brother Drew – later the US Secretary of Transportation) was forced to move to Norristown, but Lucy remembered her roots. She attended Bryn Mawr College, was married the next year to Jim Simler, moved off with him to St. Paul Minnesota in 1951, and spent the rest of her life there. She received a Master’s Degree from the College of St. Thomas in Minnesota, and then embarked on her career as a socio-economic historian. Her focus? The market economics of colonial Pennsylvania.
She was a regular researcher at the archives of the Pennsylvania Historical Society and the Chester County Historical Society, and in the days before remote access, she would come for extended stays to delve into the topics that interested her. She spent her summers in the 1980s and 90s at Chester County, where she helped organize their archives, and assisted in getting grants for their preservation. She wrote three books, and extensive scholarly articles on local history topics. A colleague at the Center for Early Modern History in Minnesota, which she co-founded, said of her, “How extraordinary it was for her to carve out a career as a private scholar. She didn’t have an academic appointment. She created her own intellectual agenda.”
If you are interested in Marple history, I recommend her book.
For more on the history of Marple, visit the Marple Historical Society website and Facebook page, and join the Society to keep up to date on coming events: www.MarpleHistoricalSociety.org.
