USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania: From the Discovery of the Delaware to the Present Time (Volume 1 and 2) > Part 27
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New Hope was incorporated April 26, 1837. The first burgess was John Parry: constable. Jonathan Johnson ; and councilmen. Joseph D. Murray. D. K. Reeder, Mordecai Thomas, Isaac M. Carty and Sands Olcott. In May, just after the financial crash, the council authorized the treasurer of the borough to issue $1,000 in "shinplasters" of the denominations of $1. 50c, 25c, ros and 5c.
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which were put in circulation, and redeemed, 1841-42. The present New Hope Academy was built about sixty years ago, but there was an institution there before 1831 bearing the same name, of which William H. Hough was principal. Three-quarters of a century ago New Hope was the lumber mart of Bucks and Montgomery counties, and the center of base-ball playing for many miles around, but a different game from the present. Although New Hope of the present day is not an active, thriving place, considerable business is transacted there. In addition to the usual stores and mechanical trades, it contains a flour mill with modern machinery, a cotton factory for spinning yarn from the raw material, a factory that makes twine from flax and hemp, an agricultural imple- ment factory, and a mill to make chemicals used in coloring calicoes, a paper mill. paper bag factory, silk mill, sausage and scrapel factory, the manufacture of harness, saddlery furnishings and tin goods; lumber and coal yards, a weekly newspaper, etc., with two hotels. There are two Methodist churches, white and colored, the former built, 1875; and Roman Catholic, the latter, formerly a mission of St. Mary's, Doylestown, which grew into a parish during the pastorate of Rev. Henry Stommel, and dedicated, 1885. The Methodist congregation was organized seventy-five years ago, occupied an. old building standing at the lower end of the village on the private property of the late Lewis S. Coryell. The Presbyterians have a small congregation which! worships in a chapel. and the Friends until recently held their services in the old! Lyceum building near the Delaware bridge. The borough has a steam fire engine and a well organized company, and a hook and ladder company for protection against fire. A postoffice was established here, 1805, bearing its present name,. with Charles Ross, postmaster. The first census, 1840, gave a population of 820 ;: 1850, 1, 134; 1860, 1, 141 : 1870, 1,225, of which 179 were foreign and 75 colored ;: 1880, 1,152; 1890, 1,142, and 1,218 in 1900. The borough is on the right bank: of the Delaware a mile above Wells' falls. The Delaware Division canal, run- ning through it, affords easy and cheap transportation to tidewater, while the. Aquetong creek furnishes fine water power for manufacturing purposes. The. site slopes down to the river bank, while the elevated ground, back of the village, gives an unobstructed view of the stream and valley for some distance up and! down, of the flourishing little city of Lambertville on the opposite bank and the. hills that hem it in.
New Hope and vicinity are rich in Revolutionary lore. At the old ferry the Continental army. with Washington at its head, twice crossed the Delaware, once in 1777. and again. 1778. Here in the trying days of December, 1776, Lord Sterling. with the left wing of the army, kept watch and ward against the anticipated attempt of the British to cross; occupying the hillsides just east and south of the present Yellow school house, and on the river's bank at the termination of the York road in Pennsylvania, both being located upon. property subsequently a part of the old "Parry Mansion estate." This was shortly prior to the battle of Trenton. In "Washington and His Generals," Vol. I, page 175, Lord Stirling is mentioned as having "again signalized himself by his successful defense of Coryell's Ferry." His headquarters was in the old hip-roof house, directly opposite the long avenue leading into the Paxson estate and near and west of the Presbyterian chapel, the new hip-roof house, owned and occupied by Phineas Slack, standing upon the old site and on part of its foundation. The collection of the boats to be used at the crossing was entrusted to Daniel Bray. a young captain in the Continental army, of Hunterdon county. New Jersey, who concealed them behind Malta Island, then densely wooded. at the Union mills, just below New Hope. More boats were collected here than
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at any other point. The story is told of the British capturing Captain George Coryell, and, placing him in the bow of one of their boats, and rowing over to this side of the river reconnoitering. At that day a famous chestnut tree stood on the Paxson estate a few yards north of the York road. It was known as the "Washington Tree," and was cut down in 1893 to make way for improvements. It stood a silent sentinel, on the river bank, for one hundred and fifty years, and, when measured, was found to be twenty-two feet in circumference. If blessed with the gift of speech what tales it could have rehearsed-of "the times that tried men's souls." Twice the Continental army had passed in review before it, on its way to meet the enemy at Brandywine and Germantown, and after Valley Forge, and on the neighboring hills were erected the stockades and entrench- ments and batteries to prevent the enemy crossing. Revolutionary annals show that General Benedict Arnold was at Coryell's Ferry June 16, 1777, and Alex- ander Hamilton, July 29. On that night the Continental army reached the ferry, one brigade crossing before morning, and the army was put in march down the York road early on the 30th.7
7 The author in indebted to Mr. Richard Randolph Parry for many of the Revolu- tionary incidents mentioned here, and was the recipient of one of the canes manu- factured from the butt of the chestnut tree, presented by Mr. George A. Hicks, Phila- delphia.
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CHAPTER XV.
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DOYLESTOWN BOROUGH.
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1838.
Location of Borough .- Crossing of early roads .- Edward Doyles .- Negro Joe .- Wil- liam Doyle petitions for license .- Probable location of tavern .- Richard Swanwick. -Old Brandt tavern .- First mention of Doylestown .- Its size in 1790 .- Town-site well wooded .- Charles Stewart .- Septimus Evans .- The academy .- Uriah DuBois. -Presbyterian church .- John L. Dick .- Court street opened .- George Murray .- Removal of county seat .- First newspaper .- Fourth of July, 1806 .- Captain William Magill .- Village incorporated .- Governor Hiester .- The Medarys .- First telegraph office opened .- The Stewarts .- Chapmans .- Foxes .- Rosses .- Pughs .- Mathias Mor- ris, et al .- New Doylestown .- Churches .- Public institutions .- Beek's exhibition .- Water works .- Schools .- Lenape building .- Monument .- Centennial of Doylestown. -Academy torn down .- Public school building erected .- Stages, etc .- Population.
Doylestown, the seat of justice of Bucks, is within a mile of the geo- graphical centre of the county. As already stated, the town is built on land that belonged to the "Free Society of Traders." It was a point of importance when the surrounding country was almost a wilderness years before a village was dreamed of, for the site was at the intersection of two great roads. One the Easton road, opened from Willow Grove to the county line in 1722, to enable Governor Keith to reach his plantation of Græme Park; extended to Dyerstown the following year, passing through Doylestown and subsequently to Easton, forming a continuous highway from Philadelphia to the Forks of Delaware. In 1730 a road was opened from New Hope, then Wells' ferry, across the country to the fords on the Schuylkill, leaving the York road at Centreville, these two highways intersecting at what is now Main and State streets, the earliest cross-roads at Doylestown. The future county-seat re- mained thus, and nothing more, for three-quarters of a century.
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The Doyles,1 after whom the town was named, were early residents of the neighborhood, and owners of part of the land it is built on. Edward Doyle, on the New Britain side of the township line, 1730, purchased one hundred and fifty acres of Joseph Kirkbride on the northwest side of the town. In 1737 he bought forty-two acres additional, a narrow strip of twenty-one perches front on west Court street and running a mile to the northwest, on an annual quit-
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- I For earlier mention of the Doyle family see chapter entitled "Doylestown town- ·ship."
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rent of ten bushels and two pecks of wheat. The Methodist church stands on this tract. On the ist of May, 1752, William Doyle, who was a son of Edward, purchased nineteen acres and twenty-eight perches of Isabella Crawford, part of the one hundred and fifty-five acres she had bought of Jeremiah Lang- horne's executors, embracing what is now the heart of the town, between Court and State streets, extending from about the line of Hamilton to Church street. Negro Joe's land joined it on the east. Doyle likewise became the owner of the long and narrow forty-two-acre tract, and of an hundred addi- tional acres purchased of Kirkbride. At one time Langhorne and Kirkbride owned the whole town site.
Doylestown began its village life as a roadside inn for the accommodation of travelers with a neighboring log house or two. So far as we are informed, a public house was the first human habitation erected at the cross roads. A tavern was opened here as early as 1745. At the March term of Court Will- iam .Doyle, living near by, went down to Newtown, the then county seat, with a petition for a license to keep a public house on the site of Doylestown, recom- mended by fourteen of his neighbors and friends; David Thomas, William Wells, Thomas Adams, Thomas Morris, John Marks, Hugh Edmunds, Clement Doyle. William Beal, Joseph Burges, Nathaniel West, William Dungan, Solo- mon McLean, David Eaton and Edward Doyle. The petition stated there was no public house within five miles of where he lived, "between two great roads, ' one leading from Durham to Philadelphia, the other from Wells' Ferry to- ward the Potomack." The license was granted and the hostelry set up. It was renewed in 1746, 1748, 1754, and Doyle continued its landlord for many years. From that day to this, the site of Doylestown has never been without one or more public inns, and now there are five.
It would be interesting to know the exact spot where this pioneer tavern stood, but that cannot be told at this day for there is some uncertainty about it. That it was within the present borough limits we think there is no question, for the "two great roads" mentioned in the petition are now Main and State streets. Doyle lived in New Britain, and if he opened the tavern at his own house, it must have been north and west of Court street, for that was the di- viding line between New Britain and Warwick; but, if a new house were crected for the purpose, it was probably located at one of the corners where the "two great roads" crossed, and this would bring it "betwixt" them. It it reasonable to suppose the tavern was near the crossing of the roads to com- mand the travel on both. If it were not at the cross-roads, from the first, it was probably opened there within a few years, for, in 1752, William Doyle bought nineteen acres and some perches of Isabella Crawford on what is now the east corner of State and Main streets.2 Doyle left the tavern between . 1774 and 1776, removing to Plumstead and, in October of that year sold two acres at the corner of State and Main to Daniel Hough, innkeeper of War- wick. Hough also bought the long, narrow forty-two acre lot for $575, and three weeks later sold them both to Richard Swanwick, Chester county, an officer of customs, at Philadelphia, who joined the British in the Revolution when his real estate was confiscated.3 During all the time only William Doyle
2 Site of Lenape building.
3 Later investigation shows that William Doyle's tavern was on the north-west corner of State and Main streets, the site of the present Fountain House, but whether he kept there from the first, it is not so clear. The nineteen acres Doyle purchased of Isabella Crawford. 1752, extended south-west along State to about where Hamilton
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kept the tavern, near thirty years, the locality was a cross-roads, known as "Doyle's tavern." It is possible the old tavern on the southeast corner of State and Main was built by Samuel and Joseph Flack after their purchase of the lot, 1773, and that Doyle's tavern was not on that corner. There is a claim that the first tavern stood on the lot" on Court just west of Main, and near which, at John Hart's corner, were an old well and horse-block, both of which may have belonged to the earliest inn at Doylestown. This location would place the inn too far from the cross-road and from either road. The old Barndt tavern, torn down 1874, to make room for Lenape building, was at that time probably the oldest in the borough, having been kept as an inn for about one hundred years. In removing it, it was found the part farthest from Main street was built first. The west end wall showed the pointing in good condi- tion, and proves the addition was built up against it and the wall plastered over. In all probability it was not built for a tavern, but for a dwelling, and the west end added when license was granted. The cellar of the old part was lathed and plastered to deaden the sound of whatever was going on in the room above. Samuel and Joseph Flack owned this property for eighteen years, or until 1791. On May 1, 1778, a child of Samuel was buried from this house, the body being taken to Neshaminy graveyard. It was the day the battle was fought at the Crooked Billett, between the British and General Lacey's troops. There was so much fear of the British but four persons accompanied the corpse, two young men and two young women, one of the latter being Miss Mary Doyle, afterward Mrs. Mitchel, and mother of the late Mrs. Nathaniel Cornell," Doylestown. They were mounted on fleet horses, the young men being armed, one of them carrying the coffin. When they reached the ground the men dis- mounted and buried the body, while the women remained on horseback to be ready to flee at the first alarm. After the burial they hurried home as fast as possible. Our information was obtained many years ago, from a descendant of one of the party that rode to the graveyard, who said Samuel Flack at that time kept tavern at Doylestown. We think there is no doubt of it, as he was part owner of the premises and fixes the age of the house at one hundred and three years when taken down and one hundred and twenty-two years since that humble funeral started from the village inn.
Newspaper authority says Doylestown, 1778, contained but two or three log dwellings, one on the site of Scheetz's brick, another where the old Mansion House stands, on the southwest corner of State and Main streets. The earliest mention of its present name, that we have seen, is on a map of twenty-five miles around Philadelphia, drawn by the engineers of the British army, 1777. when it occupied that city. It was then spelled "Doyltown." When General John Lacey occupied the village, 1778, with a small body of troops, he addressed a letter to General Washington from "Doyle Town." Even at that early day the village had its physician, Doctor Hugh Meredith, on Armstrong's corner, where he lived many years, and died there. In the Farmer's Weekly Gasette,
street cuts it, and included the Fountain House lot. Doyle left the tavern in 1774, rent- ing it to Daniel Hough, who got license at the June term same year, bought it of Doyle in 1776, the deed bearing date October Ist. Doyle probably removed his tavern to the site of the Fountain House, 1752, where he made the purchase of Isabella Crawford, either erecting a new building or opening in one already on the lot, for Hough says in his petition for license, 1774, that he, Doyle, "had kept tavern there this many years past."
4 Formerly Reuben F. Sheetz's, now owned by Wynne James.
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printed here in 1800, the name is spelled "Doyltown." About 1790 Doyles- town contained some half dozen dwellings, besides a tavern or two, a store and smithshop-evidence of a prosperous cross-roads.5 One of these was part of the late Ross dwelling, the site of the new National Bank building, corner of Court and Monument place, where Joseph Fell blacksmithed. George Stewart lived in a log house about where the Intelligencer office stands, afterward known as Barton Stewart's shop. Doctor Meredith was still at Armstrong's corner, in a stone dwelling, with a frame office attached. Going down Main street we find a small stone tavern on the site of the Lenape building, probably kept by Christian Wertz, who bought the property, 1791, with a little frame store-house adjoin- ing on State street, kept, we believe, by Nathaniel Shewell. Nearly opposite on the west side of Main street, on the site of Keller's bakery, was a small frame. A log house stood on the west side of State, on the ground afterward occupied by the old brewery. No one lived in it at that time but it was occu- pied soon afterward by one Joseph Pool, who kept a groggery. This was the extent and condition of Doylestown one hundred and nine years ago, but, mean as it was, it possessed the seed everywhere planted in this country where it is necessary to have a town-a tavern, store and smith-shop. In 1798 Charles Stewart kept a tavern where the Fountain House stands, and "where the Bethlehem mail-stage stopped for dinner." Jacob Thomas was saddler, cap, holster and harnessmaker "near the printing office," and Joseph Stewart carried on the same business "on the Swede's ford road, the first house below Doyltown."
At this period the site of Doylestown was well-wooded. Timber extended from the corner of Broad on the west side, up Main street to the Dublin road and reaching back some distance. There was likewise considerable timber along the east side of Main street, between the same points, on the north side of Court street out to the borough limits, and the Riale and Armstrong farms were heavily timbered. Robert Kirkbride owned all the land on both sides of Main street from Broad to Cross Keys, and on the north side of Dutch lane. One of the first houses built, after those already named, was a log, on the knoll opposite the Clear Spring tavern, by Elijah Russell, and is still standing. Soon after a Canadian, named Musgrave, built a log house on the lot formerly owned by John Ott, on Main above Broad, and also a shop about where the Cuffel dwelling stands, in which his son carried on wheelwrighting. The father was. a clock and watchmaker, the first in Doylestown. He got indignant because he was not allowed to vote before he was naturalized, sold out and. returned to Canada. The end of the Lyman's stone house next to Broad street, torn down, 1873, was built by Seruch Titus, who carried on saddle and harnessmaking in a shop that stood in Mrs. James' yard opposite. At a later day, about 1810, Septimus Evans built the dwelling on the northeast corner of Broad and Main where he carried on watchmaking, now the property of Mr. Grim, who has. improved it. It was kept as a tavern many years. Evans was the father of the late Henry S. Evans, many years proprietor and editor of the Village Record, West Chester, twice elected State Senator, and otherwise prominent. He was born in Doylestown, probably in this house. The older portion of the present Fountain House is supposed to have been built by Enoch Harvey, who kept it for many years, and as early' as 1804. A little later other new houses
5 Samuel Fell is said to have been a store-keeper at Doylestown about 1791-92, and probably a member of the Fell family that owned and lived on the Mann farm on the New Hope pike.
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went up in this embryo county capital : the old Bryan stone on the west side of South Main street, corner of Centre, the stone house on the opposite corner built 1808, northeast corner of Main and York, lately owned by Phillip Keller, a one story stone on the Magill property, Main and State, long since taken down, the old McDowell residence, east side of north Main below Court, and the Ross house, Monument Place, the site now occupied by the new bank build- ing. The Ross house was occupied as a tavern for several years, and among the landlords were Frederick Nicholas, William Watts, William McHenry, Stephen Brock and Abraham Black, and was a public house when the county seat was removed here 1813. At a later period, we have, among the old dwell- ings, the stone house late Jonathan McIntosh's, now owned by Mrs. Henry T. Darlington, the old end of the Samuel Hall stone house, in which father and son both died, north side of East State street, built by the father soon after coming in 1800 from New Jersey, the Nightingale stone on State, next door to the corner of Pine, where the Doylestown bank was opened, 1832, and the Har- vey dwelling built 1813, corner of North Main and West Court, now the prop- erty of John Hart, recently taken down and a handsome modern building erected on the site. The Mansion House was first licensed about 1812 where Henry Magill, uncle to William, previously kept store. A few years ago the late Thomas Brunner, Bridge Point, told the author that himself and the late Samuel Keichline counted the dwellings in Doylestown, 1821. when they numbered twenty-nine, including the Academy, in which a family lived. The Ross stable was probably the oldest building in the borough when torn down a few years ago. It stood on the west side of North Main, just above the Monument house.
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The Doylestown Academy was erected, 1804, partly by subscription and partly by lottery. For lack of funds to finish the building, the Legislature. by act of February, 1805, authorized three thousand dollars to be raised by lottery, the commissioners being Andrew Dunlap, Christian Clemens. John Hough, Thomas Stewart, Hugh Meredith, Nathaniel Shewell and Josiah Y. Shaw, and there was a drawing in 'May, 1806. The advertised scheme announced sixteen thousand tickets at two dollars and fifty cents each, of which four thousand six hundred and thirty-five were to be prizes, and eleven thousand three hundred and sixty-five blanks, the prizes to be paid within thirty days of the drawing, all not called for within a year were to be forfeited. The prizes ranged from $3,000 to $4. How much was realized is not known, probably not a great deal, for in 1809 the friends of the academy asked the Legislature for an appropriation, and got it. The building was first occupied, July, 1804. When ready for occupancy the trustees invited the Rev. Uriah DuBois, pastor at Deep Run, to become the principal, which he accepted and the same year removed from Dublin down to Doylestown to take charge of the school. He continued principal of the academy, having especial charge of the classical de- partment, until his death, 1821. In the first announcement of the academy being open for pupils, it is stated, as an inducement for parents to send their children, that "the Bethlehem and Easton mail-stages run through the town twice a week." A notice in the Pennsylvania Correspondent invites those, who intend continuing their children at the academy to meet there on Tuesday, October 28, 1806, to "consult on a proper and certain plan of furnishing the school with wood." It was both a boarding and day-school, the boarders liv- ing in the family of the principal. At that early day there was the usual annual exhibition by the students, consisting of orations, dialogues, and other exer- cises. From its foundation the Academy was occupied for educational pur-
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poses, and, at times a boarding school of considerable celebrity kept in it. Among the principals of these schools may be mentioned the Reverends Sam- uel Aaron, Robert P. DuBois and Silas M. Andrews, LL. D. In its latter years the Academy was occupied by the public schools of the borough, and until it was taken down in 1889 and a new school building erected on the lot. The Reverend Uriah DuBois, its first principal, something of a politician, was twice appointed clerk of the orphan's court. The first Sabbath-school in the county was organized in the academy, 1815, and a congregational library, 1816. Mr. DuBois commenced preaching in a room of the building, soon after taking charge, and a congregation gradually collected the nucleus of the Doylestown Presbyterian church. Uriah DuBois was the son of Peter and Ann DuBois, and a descendant of Louis DuBois, a Huguenot immigrant to America about 1660, and settled at Kingston on the Hudson. Louis DuBois had another de- scendant in this county, Jonathan, his grandson, called to the Dutch Reformed church of North and Southampton about 1750, married Eleanor Wynkoop, and died, 1772. A son of Jonathan, and a second cousin of Uriah, was a cap- tain of cavalry in the Continental army. A grand reunion of the family took place at New Paltz, New York, August 25, 1875, to celebrate the two hun- dredth anniversary of the settlement of Louis DuBois at that place, and sev- eral hundred of his descendants were present. After the death of Uriah Du- Bois, Ebenezer Smith, Connecticut, a graduate of Yale, had charge of the classical department for several years. He removed to a farm in Warwick, 1828, where he died January 1, 1829.
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