page_title: Mont Clare, Pennsylvania
section_title: Village names
hierarchical_section_title: Mont Clare, Pennsylvania / History / Village names
caption_attribution_description: English: Section of 1906 USGS 15 minute series topographic map, Phoenixville Quadrangle, showing Mont Clare, Pennsylvania. Image has been cropped and iPhoto's general enhancement applied.
context_page_description: Mont Clare is a village in Upper Providence Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. The village is located on the left bank of the Schuylkill River, opposite Phoenixville and Chester County. Mont Clare is at the site of the former Jacobs' ford. Mont Clare hosts the only functional lock and one of only two remaining watered stretches of the Schuylkill Canal. Mont Clare was the birthplace of the infamous outlaw Sundance Kid.
  The village was originally named Quincyville. The village name has also been spelled Quinzyville, Mont Clair and Montclare.
context_section_description: The village gradually changed its name from Quincyville to Mont Clare in the latter half of the 19th century, adopting the name of the estate of one of its most prominent residents.  An early recognition was the naming of the reopened village Post Office as "Mont Clare" in 1861.  In 1871  and 1872 atlases, the village is still labeled Quincyville, but Samuel W. Pennypacker refers to only Mont Clare in his 1872 Annals of Phoenixville and Its Vicinity.  An 1873 map shows it as Mont Clare.  In an 1877 atlas, it is shown as "Mt. Clare", but that atlas' included history of Upper Providence refers to it as "Quincyville or Mont Clare" and "Quincyville, perhaps better known as Mont Clare".  There is a story that the railroad dubbing the local station Montclair after Whitaker's estate was the source of the name change.  However the railroad and its Mont Clare station were constructed in the 1880s, well after the name appeared beyond the estate.  Some references show both names simultaneously. The county map in Bean's 1884 history shows Mont Clare on the river and Quincyville as an adjacent village, inland.  Harley's 1881 history refers to both names individually in a list of Upper Providence villages.  So while there is some possibility there were once two villages, the 1871 and 1877 atlases are the most detailed and both have insets detailing the property ownership of the same village on the river, but with the name changed.  The 1895 atlas has no mention of Quincyville.
  The spellings of the village's names are the subject of some historical debate.  There are several 1850s references to Quinzyville, including legislation and Post Office lists.  [Note: A version of Bean's History on the web names it Quineyville, but this is a transcription error.]  An 1895 Philadelphia Inquirer article claims that Bayard Taylor spelled the estate's name Mont Clair 48 years previously and notes the railroad company's using the spelling Mont Clare might be due to a "blind guess" that would be "near enough to pass".  Yet Pennypacker, who grew up in his grandfather's Mont Clare estate, consistently spells the name Mont Clare in his Annals of Phoenixville and attributes the estate's name to Bayard with that spelling.  But Phoebe H. Gilkyson, a Whitaker great-granddaughter and later resident of the estate, refers to the house as Montclair in her papers.  In any event, Mont Clare is the modern spelling listed by both the USPS and GNIS, although the latter lists Montclare as a variant, as used on the map below.  In 2012, GNIS added Quincyville, Quinzyville, and Mont Clair as additional variant names for Mont Clare, based on this article and its references.
caption: 1906 Topographic Map of Mont Clare, the larger Phoenixville is to the west
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