Barree Township was one of the five townships formed out of the Albany Purchase within Cumberland County in 1767. Two years after the erection of Bedford County, in October 1773, the township of Hopewell was formed out of a portion of Barree Township.
Hopewell Township encompassed, in 1773, the territory that would become Carbon, Cass, Hopewell, Lincoln, Penn, Todd, Union and Wood townships within Huntingdon County when it was erected out of Bedford in 1787. Remaining within Bedford County, Hopewell Township encompassed the region that would become Broad Top, Hopewell and Liberty Townships.
On 16 April 1838, the township of Broad Top was formed out of Hopewell.
Liberty Township was formed out the northern half of the remaining region of Hopewell Township in 1845. The Bedford County Court of General Quarter Sessions received a petition from some inhabitants of Hopewell Township during the November 1844 session for the division. According to their petition, the inhabitants requested that the township of Hopewell "be divided by a line commencing at or near Riddlesburg on Raystown branch of Juniata thence a straight line to the top of Tusseys Mountain." The remaining portion of the original township of Hopewell encompassed the region to the south of the new boundary line.
In what would appear to be an answer based in nostalgia and wistfulness, it has been suggested that the name of the township came from families left behind telling those moving westward that they 'hoped them well'. An answer based more in facts would note that there was a village in Derbyshire, England of the same name (Hopwell, a hamlet in Wilne Parish). That village's name had been derived from the Old English words hop and wella, the former meaning 'valley' and the latter 'spring'. Immigrants from the English shire of Derby first settled in New Jersey, where they established the village of Hopewell. Families moved westward from that settlement, including that of Mark Bird, who established the Hopewell Furnace in present-day Elverson, Berks County, Pennsylvania in the year 1771. That was just two years before Hopewell Township was formed in Bedford County.
