Our many Hispanic neighbors

Chester County has more than 44,000 people who are Hispanic and/or Latino (about 7.6% of the County population). But they are not randomly distributed. About half of them are concentrated in a few municipalities along Route 1, between Kendal and the Maryland border about 20 miles to our west.

It is well known that many Hispanics work in the local mushroom industry, but I have seen large numbers of apparently Hispanic people in outdoor jobs such as landscaping and construction, and I am sure they also take care of a large proportion of indoor services in our area.

In this blog post, I use “Hispanic” as the umbrella term for those who classify themselves as either “Hispanic” or “Latino”. A discussion of those highly-overlapping groups would require a blog post of its own.

The Census tells us that there are 10 municipalities (either “townships” or “boroughs” in Pennsylvania nomenclature) in our Route 1 corridor that have a Hispanic population exceeding 10%.

The table below shows them in order by percent Hispanic. Avondale, at 63.5%, is the only Chester County municipality with a Hispanic majority. Note that our own municipality, Kennett Township, is second only to Avondale in Hispanic percentage.

Municipality	Type	Total population	Hispanic or Latino	% Hispanic or Latino
Avondale	Boro.	1,286	816	63.5%
Kennett	Twp.	6,096	2,577	42.3%
Oxford	Boro.	5,763	2,227	38.6%
West Grove	Boro.	2,791	934	33.5%
Upper Oxford	Twp.	2,547	714	28.0%
New Garden	Twp.	11,423	2,819	24.7%
East Nottingham	Twp.	9,022	1,978	21.9%
Londonderry	Twp.	8,884	1415	15.9%
Lower Oxford	Twp.	5,570	726	13.0%
London Britain	Twp.	3,200	411	12.8%

Apart from our Route 1 corridor, the only other significant Hispanic concentration in Chester County is in the city of Coatesville. About a third of Coatesville’s 13,323 residents are Hispanic.

In Pennsylvania as a whole, 7.6% of residents are Hispanic (the same percentage as Chester County). Lehigh County has the highest percentage (25.4%).

Are you interested in showing your support for our Hispanic neighbors? Consider showing up for the weekly Forward Together meetings (Fridays at 3:30 in the All Purpose Room), where opportunities for supporting Hispanic neighbors are often discussed. Hispanics are feeling increasingly threatened by the anti-immigrant policies of the federal government. We need to do what we can to ensure their rights are upheld and to work toward a world where they are able to go about their lives without fear.

Update 8-11-25: Two readers expressed surprise that Kennett Square Borough (a separate municipality from Kennett Township) is not listed in the table above. It does have a significant Hispanic population (547 people) but that is just 6.2% of the Borough’s population of 8,763 (in the 2024 estimate). The table only includes municipalities with at least 10% Hispanic population.