USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania: From the Discovery of the Delaware to the Present Time (Volume 1 and 2) > Part 29
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
nine children, six sons and three daughters : Anna Amelia, born November 15, 1815, and died, unmarried, October 17, 1832; Louis B., the eldest son, and Mary Ross, the youngest child, born September 17, 1836. The children were all born in Doylestown. The family removed to Philadelphia about 1840, where the oldest son, Louis, was a shipping merchant, and died in recent years.
Dr. William S. Hendrie, thirty-five years a resident of the borough, was born in Sussex county, New Jersey, 1798. His father was a Scotchman and a graduate of the University of Edinburg, but came in early life to America. He read medicine with Dr. Wilson, Buckingham, and, after practicing at Spring- town and Hilltown a few years came to Doylestown in 1840 and spent his life here. In 1849 he was appointed Associate Judge, serving two years. He was one of the captors of the murderer Mina when he escaped from jail just previous to the time fixed for his execution. Dr. Hendrie had a family of sons and daugh- ters, two of the sons. James and Dr. Scott, serving on the Union side in the Civil war, the former as regimental quartermaster and the latter assistant surgeon. Both are deceased.
New Doylestown, as the county capital of Bucks may now be called, is a beautiful town of over three thousand inhabitants, with well paved, shaded and lighted streets. The situation is delightful and healthy, on a plateau six hundred feet above tide water. the ground descending on three sides, giving the streets a natural drainage. At the base of the plateau are charming valleys and silvery streams, with gentle hills beyond dotted with well cultivated farms, woodland and comfortable dwellings, and South Mountain can be seen in the distance. No county in the State excels Bucks in her public buildings, nor better suited for their purposes. The court house, on an eligible site about the center of the borough, and erected, 1877-78,almost on the spot where that of 1812 stood, is a model of comfort and convenience. The style is pleasing, the space allotted to the court and the officials all that could be desired in arrangement, and a stately spire crowns the whole, from whose top the eye sweeps the highly cultivated country that surrounds it for miles. The jail, built a few years later, and occupy- ing an equally eligible situation looking to the southwest, is unique in its con- struction, in that the cells are but one story high, and every door of the fifty- two cells can be seen from a single point in the central corridor. The school building, in keeping with the other public improvements, occupies part of the lot on which the academy was erected. 1804, and is esteemed one of the hand- somest in the State. The school is graded, the curriculum being adapted to ad- vanced scholars. One of the handsomest buildings erected in the borough, in the recent past, is that for the accommodation of the Doylestown National Bank, 1896-7, at an expense of $40,000. It occupies the site of the Ross man- sion, an historic dwelling, and facing Monument Place at the crossing of Main and Court streets. The most recent improvement is the Hart block, on the former Harvey property, southwest side of North Main street, extending to the corner of Court. There are two buildings, erected at different times, but the architectural designs are so well blended and carried out in the finish, as to look like a single building. It is three stories high, the floor space being mainly devoted to offices with a handsome drug and other store room, on the ground floor.
Doylestown is supplied with churches of the various religious denomina -. tions : Presbyterian, Friends, Methodist, Protestant Episcopal, Baptist, Roman Catholic, Reformed. Lutheran and African. Of the Presbyterian we have already spoken, the oldest in organization by many years. Next is the Friends meeting, 1834, by permission of the Buckingham Quarterly : the Methodist Epis-
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Doylestown Friends Meeting House.
WI. H. Honderdine
copal, 1838, twice improved, and in the sixty-one years of its life has had forty pastors ; the Protestant Episcopal church, Saint Paul's, was organized, 1846. the first service held in the church building. April 23, 1848, and twice remodeled at an expense of $7.200. Saint Mary's, Catholic, grew from a missionary station opened in 1850, and the first church dedicated the same year, is now a strong organization, with a parochial school in charge of the Sisters of St. Frances. The Baptist church took root from seed sown by the Rev. Samuel Nightingale in 1846; the congregation was started anew, twenty years later. and a church building erected. 1860, at an expense of $18,000. The Reformed church had its beginning as a missionary station, 1858, congregation organized, 1861, first church built and dedicated, 1865. and a new building erected. 1896-7. The Lutheran congregation, organized 1877, has grown to be a flourishing body with a comfortable church building.
Doylestown possesses what is probably the tallest flag-staff in the United States, presented to the borough in the spring of 1808 by Dr. Frank Swartz- lander. It stands 164 feet out of ground, and is buried eleven feet in cement. The mainmast is a single stick of Oregon pine 106 feet long: 34 inches in diame- ter at the base, and 18 inches at the top. The top mast is Norway pine from. Michigan. The main mast came round Cape Horn and lay in the Delaware at Camden, New Jersey, seven years. It stands on the northeast corner of the court house grounds. The gift was accompanied with a large garrison flag that is raised on public occasions.
Among the institutions, industrial establishments and business carried on in the town may be mentioned the following: A national bank, which began its existence as a state bank in 1832 : two trust companies, a Masonic hall, in which the Doylestown lodge. No. 245, holds its regular meetings; the Benevolent lodge, chartered. 1819, the first in the town, but dissolved during the anti- Masonic .times : four weekly papers and three dailies, in English, and one in German ; board and coal yards ; planing mill : sash and door factory, a full complement of mechanical trades: two lodges and one encampment of Odd Fellows : a German Aid society : lodges of American Mechanics and Patrons of Husbandry : a village library containing a well-selected collection of books: two drug stores : several for the sale of dry goods, groceries, hardware and fancy articles : several physicians, etc. The dwellings are neat and handsome, if not elegant and expensive, and nearly every house has a well-kept front yard. In May, 1820, the "Bucks County Academy of Natural Sciences" was organized
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in a room of the academy, and was kept up until 1838. During its existence quite a taste was fostered for scientific investigation and a number of lectures delivered and essays read.
In 1855 William Beek, a resident of Doylestown, projected an exhibition and erected a handsome building on the western edge of the borough. It drew an immense crowd of visitors at the fair in August, at which Horace Greeley delivered an address, but, unfortunately for the permanent success of the enter- prise, the building blew down in the fall. In 1866 a company chartered as the "Doylestown Agricultural and Mechanics' Institute," purchased the old grounds and erected thereon a large and convenient brick building for exhibition pur- poses, in which an annual fair was held in October, embracing a display of farm produce, implements and domestic articles of all kinds, and horses and cattle. On the ground was a half-mile track, whereon fast horses were put to their speed. The fair attracted thousands, and cash premiums gave rise to active competition.
Doylestown is fortunate in the possession of water-works supplying the town with pure water in abundance. The enterprise was put on foot, 1850, when a mill property, on the eastern edge of the borough, was purchased and a. reservoir partly erected in the cemetery, but a change taking place in the council the work was stopped and nothing more done for many years. Things being again favorable, 1869, work was resumed and completed by the borough under authority of an act of Assembly, at a cost of $32,000. Water was collected, at first, from several springs on the mill property and raised by steam 157 feet in the distance of 3,200 feet into a basin in the cemetery, whence it is dis- tributed through iron pipes over the town. In recent years the supply has been increased by sinking three artesian wells. The fire plugs are six hundred feet apart. The enterprise has been a financial success, the water rents more than paying the interest on the cost of construction and running expenses.
DOYLESTOWN NATIONAL BANK. 1897.
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In the years following the close of the Civil war the educational facilities of Doylestown were much improved. In 1866 a building was erected for an English and classical seminary in a beautiful grove at the southwest edge of the borough. It was enlarged, 1869, for the education of both sexes, with accom- modations for one hundred and fifty pupils, boarders and day scholars. In 1871 a large building was erected at the eastern edge of the borough for a female boarding and day school, with an accommodation for seventy-five scholars. The situation was a beautiful one overlooking the country for miles to the southwest. It was known as "Linden Seminary, and met with a reasonable patronage for a few years, but soon ran its course, when the building was put to other uses. This was caused, in part, by the im- proved condition of the public schools of the borough. In 1856 Philadelphia parties erected gas works in Doylestown, which were rebuilt and enlarged, 1873, but in recent years were largely supplanted by electricity for lighting purposes, and is used exclusively in the streets and public buildings. The hand- somest building erected in Doylestown, down to that time by private enterprise, is that known as "Lenape Building." It was built by a stock company at an expense, lot and furnishings included, of over $50,000. Its features were a market house and six stores on the first story ; a convenient hall, seating eight hundred persons, with stage, drop curtain and scenery, dressing rooms and offices on the second, and a lodge room on the third. It is built of brick, with stone trimmings, and is surpassed by few buildings of the kind in the State. The market feature of the building was abandoned several years ago, and that por- tion of ground floor was used for postoffice and other purposes. The old "potter's field," where several persons were buried, including one Blundin, of Bensalem, hanged for murder about 1838, at the corner of Court and East streets, was sold several years ago by authority of an act of Assembly, and now belongs to a private owner. The first telegraph office in Doylestown was in what is known as the "Shades building," corner of Main and State streets, in the room on the latter street now occupied by Keller's bakery and restaurant, formerly part of the Mansion House. This was in the winter of 1845-46, and belonged to a line from New York to the south or west. In the fall of 1848 a line from Philadelphia to Wilkesbarre was constructed through Doylestown. with an office in the second story of Harvey's brick building opposite the Fountain House.
In the spring, 1868, a handsome monument, of American white marble, was erected in the centre of the town, by their late colonel, to the memory of the dead of the One-hundred-and-fourth Pennsylvania regiment at .a cost of three thousand one hundred dollars. One-half the amount was appropriated from the regimental fund, and the balance raised by individual subscriptions and the accumulation of interest. It is a beautiful and appropriate ornament to the town. The height of the monument is thirty-two feet with base of Ver- mont granite. The shaft is an exact pattern of Cleopatra's needle, and on its face are cut the names of the battles it participated in, running round it from top to bottom.
The most interesting borough event of recent years was the celebration of Doylestown's centennial, March 1. 1878. This date was used as the village birthday because on that day, 1778, General John Lacey wrote an official order at "Doyle , Town," the first time the village name is known to have been so spelled ; hence there was propriety in fixing upon this day and year as its birth, and from it computing its age. The occasion was everything that could be desired. The day was warm and clear, more like May than March, and attend-
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ance large, the number of distinguished persons considerable, including Hon. Simon Cameron, Harrisburg ; George W. Childs, John O. James, Count Dassi, Philadelphia ; General John Davis, Davisville; Judge Henry P. Ross, Norris- town; Hon. I. Newton Evans, Hatboro; Attorney General Lear, Doylestown, and many others. The private houses and places of business were handsomely decorated, and all work suspended. In the forenoon the streets were paraded by a procession representing the trades and occupations of the borough, with some quaintness to relieve the sober side of the picture. In the afternoon Lenape Hall was filled with an appreciative audience to listen to appropriate
BUCKS COUNTY TRUST COMPANY'S BUILDING.
literary exercises, Attorney General Lear presiding. The programme consisted of the following: An ode, Caleb E. Wright, Esq .; a poem, Miss Carrie Loeb ; historical address, General W. W. H. Davis, and an oration by Judge Richard Watson, accompanied by vocal and instrumental music and religious exercises. The celebration was rounded out in the evening by a dramatic entertainment, the program embracing the "Maid of Croissey, or Theresa's Vow," a military drama in two acts, followed by the laughable burlesque tragic opera of "Bom- bastes Furioso." Brock's orchestra furnished the music. The affair was a success and a pointer for the Doylestown of 1978.
The old academy was torn down in 1889-90, and a handsome public school building erected on part of the same lot, at a cost of $30,000, in which a graded school is kept, with all the modern appliances of education. Prior to its demoli- tion a number of its friends, including former teachers and pupils, assembled in the large room on the first floor the afternoon of May 3, 1889, to pay a
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tribute to its memory and relegate it to history. The exercises, opened with a prayer by the Rev. William A. Patton, consisted of an historical address by W. W. H. Davis, and short addresses by Rev. Levi C. Sheip, John L. DuBois, Elias Carver and William J. Buck, followed by the audience singing "Nearer My God to Thee," and the doxology, and the Rev. D. Levin Coleman pronounc- ing a benediction. A respectable audience was in attendance and the exercises were interesting.
Doylestown has outlet to the great outside world by a branch of the North Pennsylvania railroad, uniting with the main line at Lansdale, which was opened to travel in 1856, and several lines of stages, and three trolley roads, one connecting with Philadelphia, another with Newtown and Bristol, another to Easton, and others are projected between other points. The first stage through Doylestown was that from Easton to Philadelphia, which John Nicholaus com- menced running April 29, 1792, making weekly trips down on Monday and up on Thursday, fare two dollars. Nicholaus was succeeded by his son Samuel, who moved down to Danborough to take charge of the stages. In 1822 he was suc- ceeded by James Reeside, the great "land admiral," who formed a partnership with Jacob Peters, and subsequently with Samuel and James Shouse, Easton. He placed new Troy coaches on the road, the first in this section of country. This line was continued down to the completion of the Belvidere-Delaware railroad, in 1854. In the spring of 1794 Lawrence Erb, of Easton, advertised that he would run a stage between there and Philadelphia. It was to start every Mon- day morning at five o'clock, from the sign of the Black Horse, near the court- house, Easton, and to return on Thursday, starting from the sign of the Penn- sylvania arms, in Third street between Vine and Callowhill, stopping over night at John Moore's, Jenkintown, going down, and at Adam Driesback's, now Stony Point, returning. The fare was two dollars for each passenger, with ten pounds of baggage. The charge for one hundred and fifty pounds of baggage was the same as a passenger. The stage ran through Doylestown and stopped at Thomas Craig's tavern, Newville, four miles below. It was hardly an oppo- sition to Nicholaus, as the fare was the same. As early as 1800 a semi-weekly stage ran from Philadelphia to Bethlehem, through Doylestown, fare for pas- senger two dollars and seventy-five cents. A line of daily stages was running from Philadelphia through Doylestown to Easton, Bethlehem and Allentown, 1828. During these seventy years of staging, a number of stages were run between Doylestown and Philadelphia. In October, 1813, the "Doylestown coachee" was advertised to carry passengers between these points for seventy- five cents a week, starting from Hare's tavern,10 making two trips a week. The same year Israel Michener and Alexander McCalla put on a daily stage, called "Doylestown Pilot," which started from the Indian Queen. In 1815 the "coachee" made trips to and from Philadelphia every other day, fare, one dollar and twenty-five cents. Smith & Kirk, coachmakers, Doylestown, ran a coach to Philadelphia several years, commencing about 1820. Stages from Doylestown to Philadelphia continued to run down to the opening of the branch of the North Pennsylvania railroad, 1856. Our older citizens will call to mind Benny Clark's "Highgrass line," which was afterward driven by John Servis, who used to
10 In April. 1815, Hare moved to the Ross mansion, which he kept as a hotel under the name of "Indian Queen tavern." Stephen Brock succeeded him in 1816, and Williant McHenry in 1818. About 1812 the Clear spring in "Germany" was called "Bucks County Farmer." and in 1815 it was occupied by Jacob Overholt, and owned by John L. Dick.
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assure timid passengers by calling out to his horses, "Now run away and kill another driver, won't you?"
In 1820 the population of Doylestown was but 360, and about 400 in 1829. One account tells us the population was 800 in 1830, when the first two brick houses were built, of bricks from a kiln burnt by Dr. Charles Meredith. Accord- ing to the census of 1840 the population was 906; 1850, 974 white and 32 col- ored .; 1860, 1,416, and 1,601 in 1870, of which 139 were of foreign birth ; 1880, 2,070 ; 1890, 2,519; 1900, 3,034.
Among the industrial and artistic enterprises of the county, there is one which deserves more than passing notice. It is the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works at .Doylestown, established and conducted by Henry C. Mercer, Esq. The circumstances which led to the development of this industry are quite inter- esting and involve a brief sketch of the proprietor of the pottery.
Mr. Mercer, a grandson of the eminent jurist to whose memory this volume is dedicated, is a graduate of Harvard College. His taste in youth inclining to scientific and archaeological research, he abandoned his original intention to · practice law, after having been admitted to the Philadelphia Bar, and pursued his scientific work with such success that he became, while a very young man, curator of the museum of the University of Pennsylvania. While engaged in archaeological research he conducted the Corwith Expedition to Yucatan. Upon his return from that country he employed a period of leisure in making the valuable collection known as the Tools of the Nation Maker, now in posses- sion of the Bucks County Historical Society. It was during this period that he found and became especially interested in the old German stove plates made at Durham Furnace. He conceived the notion of preserving and reproducing, in the form of tiles, the quaint decorations found upon the plates. This led to an exhaustive study of the potter's art, and so fascinating did it prove to the archaeologist that large kilns soon supplanted the experimental devices erected in his studio.
The manufacture of the stove plate tiles led to more general and detailed study of the subject, and ere long the Moravian Pottery was producing duplicates of the best examples of tiles found in the ruined churches and abbeys of England and the Continent, together with those obtained from the choice collections of the museums and private collectors of Europe. But the crowning triumph of Mr. Mercer's efforts was a discovery or invention of his own, known as the clay mosaic. We quote the following concise description of this process pub- lished in his catalogue :
"The Mosaics, made and set together by a novel process, patented in 1903, are adapted for the embellishment of pavements or walls on a much larger scale than the tiles. Patterns ranging from one foot to twenty feet in diameter, or even where the figures of men or animals might equal life size, consist of pieces of clay burned in many colors superficially or throughout the body, and either glazed or unglazed. The tessera, not rectangular as in Roman or Byzantine mosaics, but cut in multiform shapes to suit the potter's process, and whose contours themselves help to delineate the design, are set in cement at the Pot- tery. After the manner of the leaded glass designs of the earlier stained windows, these novel weather and time proof clay pictures, burned in brown, grey, white, red, black, green, yellow and blue clay, and strongly outlined in their pointing of cement, serve to decorate a floor or wall in the richest and most lasting manner."
The modest reference quoted from the catalogue does not do justice to the subject. Here was a process altogether original, unique and beautiful, affording
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the widest latitude for the execution of artistic conception and, moreover, in a medium practically indestructible, and suited for either interior or exterior decoration, something even ancient cunning had never conceived of and yet, withal, perfectly simple and feasibie.
The products of the Moravian Pottery have already been employed by America's foremost architects and artists in costly private dwellings and public buildings, but the prediction may be safely made that the mosaics invented and made at Doylestown will be judged by posterity as an achievement of great im- portance in the domain of industrial art.
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CHAPTER. XVI.
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BRIDGETON.
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1890.
The youngest township .- When organized .- The-first step .- Petition presented .- Names of petitioners .- Reason for new . township, boundary suggested .- Names of com- missioners .- Reports submitted with name .- Action of court .- Submitted to vote .- First settlers not known .- The. Pursells, et al .- Only village .- Oldest house .- River freshets .- Ringing Rocks .- Bridge over the Delaware .- Population .- Rafinesque, celebrated Swedish botanist.
Bridgeton, the youngest township in the county, the child of Nockamixon, was organized, 1890, one hundred and forty-eight years after the parent town- ship was laid out and given municipal government, in so much as such power is conferred on any county subdivision. The first step toward the mutilation of Nockamixon was taken at the November term of the Quarter Sessions court in 1889, when a petition was presented asking that the parent township be divided into two. The following names were signed to the petition : G. W. Grim, H. H. Younken, Nicholas Younken, Oliver Kimmerer, Clinton Scheetz, Mathias Hier, Enos F. Deihl, J. H. Rupe, John H. Nickel, George D. Fox, H. C. Ott. Josiah Wolfinger, William Rupe, Llewellyn K. Anders, Wilson Kiser, D. R. Pinkerton, B. S. Kohl, Preston Rufe, F. H. Grim, Israel Metzger, L. M. Alt- house, Levi Deemer, John Gutekunst, C. F. Schabinger, William Kohl, Ed- mund Goddard, W. S. Gwinner and William Williamson, all of Nockamixon.
The reasons given for the mutilation of this old township, were the "safety of the public peace, the conditions of the public highways, and the proper admin- istration of affairs of justice." The petitioners asked that the division be made on the line, separating the two election districts of Nockamixon, by virtue of an act of Assembly, passed April 27, 1855; "commencing at the mouth of the creek emptying into the Delaware Division Pennsylvania Canal, at, or near, the Narrowsville hotel in said township, following the several courses of said creek to Boatman's Hill, along the eastern edge of the same to Beaver Creek : thence along the several courses of said creek to where the public road crosses said creek on the property formerly owned by Philip Nice; thence following the said public road to the line dividing said Township from Tinicum township at or near Daniel Rimer's." The court appointed Daniel Gotwals, Jacob Hag- erty and William Shepherd commissioners, or reviewers.
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