USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania: From the Discovery of the Delaware to the Present Time (Volume 1 and 2) > Part 2
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
in good health, and retain their faculties to a remarkable degree. John S. Williams, of Solebury township, a grandson of Samuel, son of Benjamin, lives on his handsome farm near New Hope, his home for many years. He is near- ing the evening of his days, but is still active and enjoys the confidence and esteem of all who know him. Two of the sons of Jeremiah Williams, remained in Tinicum, while the others with two of the daughters went to Ohio many years ago, thence farther west, and their descendants are now to be found in several states.
We have met with the records of but few roads in Tinicum, the earliest. being that of 1741, when the road was laid out from the mouth of Tinicum creek, near Erwinna, then known as "London's ferry," to the mouth of Indian cabin run, where it crosses the Tohickon and meets the Durham road near Hinkletown, Plumstead. The Durham road was laid out through the town- ship, 1745. In June, 1747, John Watson surveyed a road from London's ferry, twelve miles and three hundred and sixty-seven and a half perches, until it met the Durham road probably a re-survey of the road that was laid out in 1741. About 1750 the inhabitants built, by subscription, a wooden bridge over In- dian creek near its mouth at the river. In 1768 the inhabitants of Tinicum, Nockamixon, Bedminster and Plumstead asked permission of the court to build a stone bridge at their own expense, in place of the wooden one, but it was not granted. Among the petitioners are the names of George Hillpot, William McIntyre, Michael Worman and Abraham Fretz, probably the ances- tors of the extensive families bearing these names in that section of the coun- ty. The bridge over the Tohickon, on the Durham road, was built in 1765, at an expense of £283. 16s. 101/2d., of which the inhabitants contributed fioI. 13s. 6d., and the balance was taken from the public funds. This crossing was called John Orr's ford, after the first settler at that place. The grand jury reported in favor of the bridge at the June term, 1763, but it was not to be built until the inhabitants raised as much money as they could toward the cost. At the same term it was reported that Tinicum, Bedminster and Plum- stead had raised £84 by subscription. In 1767 a road was laid out from Er- winna to John Wilson's tavern, about half-way to the Brick church, and, 1774, one from Abraham Johnson's blacksmith shop on the Durham road, to the Presbyterian burying-ground. In 1786 the River road was extended up the river from Kugler's mill, below Lumberville, to the mouth of Durham creek, where it met that already laid out from Erwinna down to that crossing. The road from Erwin's mills to the Durham road was opened in 1790.
Arthur Erwin was the largest land-owner in Tinicum at the close of the eighteenth century and for some time before. When the land of the London company was sold at public sale, about 1761, by trustees appointed by act of Parliament, it fell into the hands of various persons. Mr. Erwin purchased one thousand five hundred and sivty-eight acres and thirty-two perches, Robert Patterson three hundred and twenty-four, Andrew Patterson three hundred and twenty-two, and Robert Wilson one hundred and thirty-one acres. Mr. Erwin, of Scotch-Irish birth, became a resident of the township prior to the Revolution. He represented this county in the Assembly, 1785, and was as- sassinated at the house of Samuel McAfee, Luzerne county, the spring of 1791. At his death he owned two thousand acres in Tinicum, some in Durham, and twenty-five thousand acres in Steuben county, New York. His real estate was divided among his children, each one receiving over two thousand five hundred acres. He laid out the town of Erwinna, in this county, and a town called Erwin was laid out on his land in Steuben county. At that time the
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
family was the richest in the county, but it does not now own a foot of the ancestral acres. His son represented Bucks county in the Assembly. Colonel William Erwin, son of Arthur, died at Erwinna, June 16, 1836, aged about eighty. It was supposed his death was hastened by injuries received from a fall. He was called to several important stations, and represented the county in the Senate .*
One hundred years ago there was in Tinicum a valuable industrial estab- lishment, founded by Joseph Smith, an ingenious and intelligent mechanic, a descendant of Robert Smith, an early settler of Buckingham. He was the son of Timothy and Sarah Smith, and great-grandson of Thomas Canby, one of the earliest settlers in Solebury. Joseph Smith was married at Wrights- town meeting September 11, 1774, to Ann Smith, daughter of Samuel and Jane, of Buckingham, and was born November 11, 1754. Their two male progenitors, Robert and William Smith, settled side by side in Buckingham and Upper Makefield, with the township line between them, but this was no barrier to the young people falling in love and marrying. Some of the Smiths of Buckingham went to Tinicum as early as the spring of 1777. In May, 1783, Robert Smith, Joseph Smith, Uriah Hughes and Joseph Kinsey, all of Buckingham, entered into a co-partnership to erect an industrial establishment to be run by water. In 1784 Uriah Hughes was released at his own request, and his interest conveyed to Robert Smith. Joseph Smith, the moving spirit in this work, selected a forbidding spot on the bank of the Delaware, two and a half miles above Point Pleasant, where he caused to be erected four dwellings, grist and saw-mill, and smith and plow-shops, which gave employment to a number of men. The place took the name of Smithtown. The principal occu- pation was making plows and mould-boards. Joseph Smith was assisted by his sons, Mahlon, Jonas and Charles, and the father moved there in 1802. Joseph Smith made the first cast-iron mould-board in Pennsylvania. It was the inven- tion of his brother Robert, who took out a patent for it, 1800, but the idea had been in his mind for ten years, and Joseph had made them three years before the patent was obtained. In. 1803 they shipped seven hundred and fifty-eight mould-boards to their factors in Philadelphia.5
4 From one of the county papers we copy the following marriage notices relating to the family :
At Erwinna, Thursday evening, December 15, 1814, by the Rev. U. DuBois, Mr. John
1 .. Dick, of Doylestown, to Miss Julianna Erwin, daughter of William Erwin, Esq.
- At Erwinna, May 24, 1819, by the Rev. U. DuBois, Thomas G. Kennedy, Esq., of Newtown, to Mrs. Julianna Dick, daughter of William Erwin, of Erwinna.
At Erwinna, at the residence of his grandfather, William L. Erwin, August 2, 1834, John Dick Howell, aged nineteen years and three months.
Thomas G. Kennedy died at Erwinna, May 14, 1836, aged fifty-three. Mrs. Dick was the widow of John L. Dick, the first to die of typhus fever, at Doylestown, 1815.
5 The letters patent, on the Smith iron mould board plow, hangs in the room of the Bucks County Historical Society at Doylestown, and was, by odds, the best output of the Tinicum industrial works. The patent bears the date of May 19, 1800, is signed by President John Adams, and certified to by Charles Lee, Attorney-General, then "executing the office of secretary of state." The invention is styled "a new and useful improvement." In the frame holding the Letter Patent, are four letters from persons endorsing the mould-board, written 1803-4. While Joseph Smith was the inventor, for some unknown reason, the patent was issued in the name of his brother, Robert Smith. This inven- tion revolutionized farming.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Joseph Smith introduced the use of hard coal in blacksmith-shops in Bucks county, and taught others how to use it. In 1812 he sent his sons, Charles and Jonas, (the former dying near Pineville at the age of ninety), to Lehighton, for two wagon-loads of coal. One load was left at Smithtown to be used in the shops there, and the other was delivered to the three most noted blacksmiths in the county, Thomas Atkinson, Wrightstown, then doing iron- work for a chain bridge, Benjamin Wood, Solebury, who followed smithing at Ruckman's, and Edmund Kinsey, Milton, now Carversville. They were un- able to use the coal satisfactorily, and it took a good while to burn the load left at Smithtown. . To keep the coal from choking up the draft a nail rod was fixed to the roller of the bellows, so that at every stroke the rod would run out of the tube into the fire and loosen up the coal. In December of that year Charles Smith, of Wrightstown, a son of Joseph, hauled thirty bushels of hard coal from Smithtown to his shop. It burned well at first, but in ten min- utes the fire went out in spite of all he could do. That load of coal lasted three years and until his father had discovered, by experiment, how to burn the coal in smith-shops as it was burned at Wilkesbarre, but not until his son Jonas had invented a fixture that kept the coal ignited, with the iron heated to any degree of heat. Hard coal now came into general use in forges, and charcoal was supplanted. Charles Smith is said to have used it in his smith-shop, success- fully, as early as 1813. In the Pennsylvania Correspondent, of March, 1815, Joseph Smith, of Tinicum, publishes a card with directions how to construct a smith's fire to burn Lehigh coal, and states that his own workmen can lay one-third more share-moulds in the same time with Lehigh coal than with char- coal. Jacob B. Smith, New Hope, and Edmund Kinsey, Milton, certify to the truth of what he says, and Kinsey adds, "that twenty-two pounds of Lehigh coal will go as far as thirty-three pounds of Richmond, or soft coal." Lehigh coal then cost twenty-four dollars a ton, and its use was thought to be economy. Joseph Smith died, suddenly, at the house of a relative in Solebury on his re- turn home from a visit to his daughter, September 28, 1826, at the age of sev- enty-three and his widow died in 1854, aged one hundred years.
Joseph Smith was a man of great activity and intelligence, strong mind and liberal views, a philanthropist in the best sense of the word and deserves to be remembered among the benefactors of his race. He learned the mechani- cal trade of his father, and was the first man to make a plow in Bucks county, and probably in the United States, that was worth anything. His improve- ments in this valuable implement of husbandry secured him the confidence of Thomas Jefferson, and entitles him to the thanks of the agricultural commun- ity. Among his good deeds may be mentioned the introduction of clover-seed into Bucks county, and the use of plaster of Paris as a fertilizer, which have proved a source of great wealth. He left fifty-nine living grandchildren at his death. His consistency as a Friend brought him into trouble during the stormy period of the Revolution ; he was arrested on two occasions, once being con- fined a prisoner in the American camp and once in the Newtown jail. While in jail his wife visited him twice a week, regularly, with provisions, traveling the distance sixteen miles there and back, on horseback, alone.
After Joseph Smith's death, the plow-works were carried on by his sons, Mahlon, Jonas and Charles, until 1840; and by Mahlon at that and other places until 1870, who died in Tinicum, upward of ninety years of age. He made an improvement in the mould-board after the patent was taken out, and the new pattern was followed for years, but never patented. The mills and most of the workshops were destroyed by digging the Delaware canal, and Smithtown,
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
except in name, has ceased to exist. The west bank of the Delaware in Tini- cum might have been the seat of the Du Pont powder works, subsequently es- tablished on the Brandywine, had proper effort been made. Under date of September 10, 1801, Joseph Erwin, in a letter to George Wall, says that Mr. De Noilles, accompanied by Mr. Du Pon (Du Pont), who was formerly French consul at Charleston, South Carolina, paid a visit to Mr. Prevost, founder of Frenchtown, New Jersey. Du Pont was then looking for a place to establish powder works in this country. Mr. Erwin states he was not then fully acquainted with his object, or he would have offered him his location at Erwinna. Mr. Prevost, however, promised to write to Mr. Du Pont, but it is believed he did not.
Of the islands in the Delaware opposite this township, the joint commis- sioners of Pennsylvania and New Jersey confirmed three to Tinicum, 1786, and one of New Jersey. Of them we know but little. Cutbush, or Cutbitch, as it is called by some, and Gondola islands, near Point Pleasant, and containing about seventy acres, belonged to John N. Solliday. They were once owned by John Praul and also by the state. In 1769 Jonathan Quinby sold Cutbush to Adam Hall, Amwell, New Jersey, for £55. The third, opposite the mouth of Tinicum creek, called Marshall's island, containing one hundred and twenty acres, was owned by Isaac and Jacob Stover in recent years. The fourth, known as Ridge's island, belongs to New Jersey." There was considerable con- troversy about the islands belonging to Tinicum a century ago. Jonathan Quinby claimed the two lower, but it was alleged he sold the upper to one Rittenhouse for two or three ears of corn, and that George Wall had purchased Rittenhouse's right for a few bushels of buckwheat. John Praul quieted Quinby's claim by purchasing his right. The grant is supposed to have been made by Penn to one Mills, Mills to Marshall, part of Marshall's heirs to Quinby, who claimed that he obtained a warrant for his right, and laid it on the two islands granted to Adam Hall.
The rifle, which Edward Marshall carried for many years of his life, is now owned by a member of the Ridge family, Tinicum, a descendant in the fe- male line, but is in possession of the Bucks County Historical Society. The Ridge homestead is on the River road, three miles above Point Pleasant, to which we made a visit many years ago to inspect the famous weapon. We found it a long, heavy, flint-lock gun, with wooden rammer and brass mountings, and car-
6 In the summer of 1896, Dr. Howard Pursell, of Bristol, wrote the author that himself and Marshall Pursell had visited the island opposite the canal lock below Erwinna, now called Ridge's island, prospecting for Indian relics, a cache of arrow heads having been found there by Dr. Abbott a year or two before. The island's surface is almost entirely of loam and sand, and the use of a probe was easy. On the easterly side the probe struck stone, and within six inches of the surface they found a considerable accumulation of stone chips and a few broken arrows. The chips radiated three or four feet from the center and were three or four inches in depth, mixed with earth more or less. Just at the center, for a space of more than a foot in diameter, there were no chips. The inference is there had been an Indian workshop for making arrows heads there, and perhaps other stone implements; the central spot being the site of the anvil and the surrounding pieces had been hammered off or rejected. No other places were found where there were any stones or pieces, except on the west side of the island, where there was an accumulation of round boulders, such as are common at the shore and bottom of the river. The spot was about one hundred yards north-east of where the cache was found.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
ries an ounce ball. As Mr. Marshall could not get a rifle in this country to suit him, he caused a barrel and lock to be purchased in Germany and had it mounted here. On the top of the barrel are the following letters, faintly seen: I. A. D. ROTHENBERG. The rifle was in per- fect order, and the hair trigger as sensitive to the touch as when the original owner set it to shoot Indians. In the flint-box is the identical rammer- screw that Marshall used to clean out the piece an hundred and fifty years ago, before he started on a hunt for human game. It is doubtful whether any firearm in existence has shed so much human blood as this old rifle. The house was apparently as old as the rifle, but the situation is one of the most delightful along the river. The great hunter, walker and deer-killer was buried in what is known as Marshall's graveyard, a mile northeast of Head- Quarters.7
There are four churches in the township, Presbyterian, Lutheran and Re- formed, Christian and Baptist. That known as the Tinicum Presbyterian church is the oldest of that denomination north of Deep Run, and probably as old as that. At what time it was organized we do not know, but in the summer of 1739 the Reverend James Campbell preached there and at New- town. In the fall he received a call to this church, then called "Tohickon," through Francis Williamson and John Orr, but he continued to supply his two congregations, occasionally going up to the Forks until 1744, when he was installed at Tohickon, May 24. A few years after it was decided to build a new church, and a controversy arose whether it should be built on the site of the old one, or at Red Hill. It was fixed at the latter place, on account of which Mr. Campbell resigned, May, 1749. He afterward went to North Caro- lina, and died after 1780. The records of the church are missing down to 1762, and we know nothing of its history during the intervening period. The 16th of February of that year the London company conveyed thirteen acres and four perches to William Wear, of Springfield, and John Heaney and James Patterson, of Tinicum, for the use of the church. In 1767 the latter conveyed it to Robert Kennedy and James Blair, of Springfield, James McKee, Robert Smith, James McGlauchlin, and James Bailey, of Tinicum, and Nicho- las Patterson and Alexander McCannon, of Nockamixon in trust for the Protestant congregation of Tinicum and adjoining townships.
The records are again silent until 1785, when their pastor, Alexander Mitchel, left them. By consent of the Presbytery, the congregations of Deep Run and Tinicum were united in one charge, in 1785, under the Reverend James Grier, who served to near the close of 1787. The meeting-house and
7 The Marshall graveyard is on a hill facing south-east, a mile and a half from where Tinicum creek empties into the Delaware. Tradition says, that about 1760, two young girls, while out on a walk, stopped on this hill, and, while viewing the beautiful prospect from its top, one of them remarked, "When I die I wish to be buried here;" that she shortly died and was buried there under a cedar tree. Here Edward Marshall was subsequently buried, and, on the marble slab covering his grave is a suitable in- scription, thought to have been written by his son Thomas. It was erected by his rela- tives, 1829. The deed for the lot was executed March 22, 1822, and recorded May 2, 1894. The walls around it was erected by Rebecca Kean, a daughter, 1851, and repaired by Dr. A. M. Cooper, 1892. The ground originally belonged to the Streeper tract. A number of other persons besides the Marshalls and their family connection have been buried there, including the McIntyres, Watsons, McDougals, Otts, Myers, Woods and others.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
burial-ground were enclosed, 1786, and, the same year, £46. 2s. were subscribed to pay Mr. Grier, and £44, 16s, IId. in 1787, to be paid in specie. The church was incorporated March 28, 1787. Among the supplies for 1788 we find the names of Blair, Hannah, Peppard and Nathaniel Irwin. In 1792 the church gave a call to the Rev. Nathaniel Snowden, and, 1798, after he was installed at Deep Run, the Rev. Uriah DuBois was invited to give Tini- cum one-third of his time. In 1820 the Reverend Alexander Boyd, Newtown, was invited to supply Tinicum one-fourth of his time for one year, for f105, but he continued the supply until 1826. From this time the congregation ap- pears to have relied on supplies, for we find no further record of regular pastors. In 1827 it was agreed to pay $6 a Sunday for a supply by a neighbor- ing clergyman, $7 when from the city, and $8 to administer the Lord's Supper. In 1835 a stone wall was built around the graveyard, superintended by Daniel Boileau and Stephen Bennet, at sixty-two and a half cents a day, including board. In 1843 the trustee conveyed the one undivided half of the church and lot to the German Reformed and Lutherans, the English congregation re- taining the privilege of occupying the church one-half the time. The quaint- looking old stone building with the stairway to the gallery on the outside, and erected in 1766, was re-built, 1843. It has a gallery on three sides and a high pulpit, with winding steps up to the seat." The worshipers of the three congre- gations do not number over an hundred. The oldest gravestone in the yard, with an inscription upon it, is that of James Blair, who died, in 1749, aged eighty-three. He must have been well-advanced in life when he settled in Tinicum. We were told, that in early days the church owned three hundred acres, but we can find no record of it. It now owns the lot the building stands upon, a portion having been leased to the school-directors of Tinicum for ninety-nine years, upon which a neat school-house has been erected. The fathers of the church were English-speaking people, and in the graveyard we read the names of Blair, Thompson, Bennet, Wilson, Summers, Carrell, Smith, et al.
The Brick church, known as Christ church, is on the road from Point Pleasant to Dark Hollow. The records carry us back to 1747, but the congre- gation was probably organized at an earlier date. The first church, built of logs, stood on the hill at the graveyard a few hundred yards from the road. The present building, the third, erected, 1861, at an expense of $11,000, of brick, is large and imposing with basement and audience-room in second story, is handsomely frescoed, and has a large organ. The spire towers above all surrounding objects. The audience-room seats a thousand persons. The first recorded marriage took place in 1759, Adam Hellebart (now Hillpot) to Maria Phillippina Schnæntherin (now Snyder), born in 1740. The oldest gravestone in the yard is that of William Jiser, who died in 1759, aged thirty- two years. Among the pastors, in olden times, we find the names of but three, Johannes Wolf Bizel, 1760, Frederick Miller, 1774, and Nicholas Mensch, 1807. The joint congregation, Reformed and Lutheran, number about seven hundred. The present Lutheran pastor is the Rev. W. S. Emery.
A small congregation of Christians have a church, called a Christian chapel, on the road from Red Hill to Erwinna, where there is occasional preaching by other denominations.
The Baptist church, situated at Point Pleasant, on the Tinicum side of To- hickon, had its origin in the labors of the Reverend Joseph Mathias, pastor at Hilltown, who prosecuted missionary work in that section of the county, over half a century ago. His preaching in barns, school-houses, and groves awak-
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HISTORY , OF BUCKS COUNTY.
ened quite a religious interest in that section, the dwelling of Mrs. Hamilton being the centre of operations. The church was constituted September 1, 1849, with thirty-two members, but the building was not erected until 1852, mainly through the efforts of the late Reverend John C. Hyde, its first settled pastor. His labors were greatly blessed, and during his pastorate he was obliged to enlarge. the church. Mr. Hyde was subsequently called to the Baptist church at Bristol where he died. Since Mr. Hyde left the Point Pleas- ant church, that pulpit has been filled, in turn, by the Reverends Messrs. W. B. Swope, E. S. Widemer, H. C. Putnam, D. Spencer, J. H. Appleton, D. Meni- gee, Joseph Hammit, George Young and others. The church is in a flour- ishing condition, with a membership of nearly two hundred.
Joseph Buehrle, a resident of Tinicum, died in the winter of 1877, at an advanced age. He was a native of Baden, Germany, where he served six years in the army, held a local revenue office and was well off in the world, but taking part in the Revolution of 1848, was obliged to flee his native land. He arrived in America almost without means, first settling at Mauch Chunk, but soon came to Bucks county, where he lived to his death. His son William lives at Quakertown.
The villages and hamlets of Tinicum are Point Pleasant, Erwinna, Head- Quarters and Ottsville. The first-named, the most considerable, lies on both sides of Tohickon, near its mouth on the Delaware. Isaac Swartz was one of the first owners of real estate on the south side of the creek, including Lower Black's Eddy, and on this land all the houses are built from the Eddy up' the creek. About 1812 the property passed into the possession of Daniel Solliday, . father of John N. On this side of the creek are two taverns, a store and about seventy-five families. John Van Fossen was the first settler on the north side, and his land extended some distance over into Plumstead. He built the first tavern, where the present one stands, and established the fishery. His property passed to Michael Weisel early in the century; and the tavern was burnt down about 1812, and rebuilt. Here there are some twenty-five families, with a store, coal-yard, lime-kilns, grist and saw-mill, the former one of the oldest on the creek, two lumber yards and a postoffice. A postoffice was granted, 1821, on the south bank of the creek and called Lower Black Eddy, but when the office was removed to the north side of the creek and Joseph Hough appointed postmaster, 1828, the name was changed to Point Pleas- ant, and has retained it.8 Seventy-five years ago there were less than half a dozen houses at the "Point," as it was called; an old house on the mill prop- erty, of Ralph Stover; a tavern where the present hotel stands, owned by Michael Swartz, and the Black Eddy tavern, owned by Daniel Solliday, on the Point Pleasant side of the creek. A covered wooden bridge crossed the Dela- ware for several years, but, on being blown down in recent years, was replaced
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