History

No diaries, journals or letters from our initial settlers survive and it may be safely assumed at this late date that none exist.  Until the availability of documents of the first industrialization of the iron industry, beginning in 1716 to 1720, the only other statements that are available to us are from church records.

Colebrookdale is best known among museums of the county and among historians today for its early heating stoves designed by the German pioneers who settled Colebrookdale lands as quickly as timberland began disappearing in the making of charcoal.  A petition of "sundry inhabitants of Colebrookdale" had been presented to the court of quarter sessions at Philadelphia on September 7, 1741, asking that the district be set up as a second class township.  This was granted in December of the same year.  The Borough of Boyertown was carved out of Colebrookdale in 1866.  Washington Township was formed out of Colebrookdale and Hereford in 1839.  The census of 1800 listed 671 persons in Colebrookdale, yet by 1908 there were only 520 taxables.  Despite this low concentration of people in the face of industrialization, A Colebrookdale post office was opened on February 4, 1828, ten days prior to the establishment of a Boyertown office, and the 13th established in all of Berks County.

In 1964, the Pennsylvania State University completed a study on the advisability of merging the Borough of Boyertown and Colebrookdale Township.  After hearing much public criticism from both Boyertown and Colebrookdale residents, the merger never took place.  In November of 1965, the residents of Colebrookdale Township voted to have the Township become a First Class Township, therefore stopping the Borough of Boyertown from annexing additional lands.  On January 3, 1966, the first meeting of the Board of Commissioners of Colebrookdale Township, as a First Class Township was held at the Liberty Fire Company's Socoal Room.