USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania: From the Discovery of the Delaware to the Present Time (Volume 1 and 2) > Part 34
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CHAPTER XIX.
ROADS.
Roman maxim .- Roads like the arteries and veins .- Our great highways .- Path from the falls down .- No roads before Penn .- Penn's system of roads .- North-west lines .- Road from Falls to Southampton and Philadelphia .- Ancestor of Bristol turnpike .- Poquessing to Neshaminy .- Durham road .- Begun, 1693 .- Extended to Tohickon and Easton .- The York road starts at Willow Grove .- Opened to the Delaware .- Easton road .- Opened to Point Pleasant .- The Street and Bristol roads .- County Line .- Old and New Bethlehem roads .- River road .- Middle road .- All lead to Philadelphia .- Post-roads .- Turnpikes .- Philadelphia and Trenton railroad .- When opened .- North Pennsylvania railroad .- Pennsylvania railroad .- Early stage-lines.
They, who settled the wilderness west of the Delaware, both understood and practiced the maxim of the Romans "that the first step in civilization is to make roads," for the opening of highways was one of their first concerns. The roads of a country, in their uses, are not unlike the arteries and veins of the human body, and a properly arranged system of the former is as necessary to a prosperous condition of society as the latter to the life and health of man. Through the one the blood courses to the common centre giving health and vigor to' the system, while along the roads the products of labor are carried to the marts of commerce and brings prosperity to the state.
If the palm of the hand be laid upon the site of Philadelphia, and the thumb and fingers extended, they will mark five of the great highways of the .county ; the Bristol turnpike, the Middle, or Oxford road. the York, Easton and Bethlehem roads. These are intersected by other highways, parts of the same system, the Durham, Bristol, Street and North Wales roads, and the Bucks and Montgomery county line, feeders to the former. These mostly connect objective points, and may properly be considered the great arterial highways of the county. The local roads that cross them and lead from point to point in the same, or adjoining, neighborhoods may be compared to the smaller veins of the human body but are, nevertheless, an indispensible part .of the system.
There was a traveled route from the falls down the west bank of the Dela- ware to the lower settlements many years before the English came, but was no more than a bridle-path through the woods. Prior to Penn's arrival, there was little use for roads, as the Dutch. Swedes and Finns lived on the river and creeks emptying into it, and went from place to place in boats, and there were no wheeled carriages to require opened roads. With the English came ve- hicles, and then arose a necessity for roads along which they could travel
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through the wilderness. The earliest mention of a public road in this county was, 1677, when the "King's path," or "highway," was laid out up the river to the falls through Bensalem, Bristol and Falls to Morrisville. It started at Upland, crossing the streams at the head of tide-water, and, through this coun- ty, had the general direction of the Bristol turnpike. It was repaired, 1682. In. 1678 the Upland court ordered roads laid out between plantations under a penalty of twelve guilders, and Duncan Williamson, Edmund Draufton, John Brown and Henry Hastings, of this county, were on the jury to open them. At the first court held at Philadelphia, 1683, the grand jury ordered the King's road, from the Schuylkill to Neshaminy, "be marked out and made passable for horses and carts where needful." This road was often changed and improved. but down to 1700 it must have been an indifferent highway, for, in August of that year, the council ordered it to be cleared of trees, logs and stumps so that it "may be made passable, commodious, safe and easie for man, horse, cart, wagons and teams."
William Penn intended to have a liberal and uniform system of roads in Bucks county, and in the original survey, there was an allowance for them of six acres in every hundred. He projected a series of highways on north- west lines parallel to each other, running back from the Delaware into the interior, to be intersected by others as nearly at right angles as circumstances would permit. Before 1695, the county line, the Street and Bristol roads, the road from Addisville by way of Jamison's corner and alms-house to New Brit- tain, the road from Churchville to the Neshaminy at Wrightstown, and a num- ber of others were projected on this plan. But Penn's plans were interfered with. When the early settlers came to enclose their lands, before the roads were. laid out, they were encroached upon by the fences, and the system could not be carried out, and gradually the country become covered with a net-work of crooked roads. Down to 1700, the Provincial council and court exercised' concurrent jurisdiction in the laying out and opening of roads, but that year an act authorized and empowered the justices of each county to lay out and confirm all roads. "except the highway and public roads," which remained in force until repealed in 1802. Penn took great interest in the roads of Bucks county after his return to England from his first visit. In his instructions to. Lieutenant-Governor Blackwell. 1688, he desires that "care be taken of the- roads and highways of the county ; that they may be straight and commodious for travelers, for I understand they are turned about by the planters, which is. a mischief that must not be endured." A few of our roads were laid out straight as Penn desired, and have so remained. In 1689, in consequence of. the badness of the roads leading to Philadelphia, the farmers of this county were in the habit of taking their grain and other produce to Burlington. Prior to 1692 but two roads are on record, the King's highway, and a cart-road laid out in 1689, from Philadelphia on the petition of Robert Turner and Benjamin Chambers, possibly the beginning of the Oxford or Middle road. That from Philadelphia, via Bristol, to Morrisville, the ancestor of the present Bristol. turnpike, is the oldest road in the county laid out by law. At a meeting of councils, November 19, 1686, was taken into consideration, "ye unevenness of ve road from Philadelphia to ye falls of Delaware," and Robert Turner and: John Barnes, of Philadelphia, and Arthur Cook and Thomas Janney, of Bucks, with the county-surveyor were ordered to meet and lay out a more convenient road "from ye Broad street in Philadelphia to ye falls aforesaid." Probably the first road running up the river to and above Bristol was that laid out in 1697 from the Poquessing, crossing the Neshaminy at Bridgewater, where the
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ferry was kept by John Baldwin, and thence up to Joseph Chorley's ferry" over the Delaware below the falls. A bricige was ordered to be built over Poquessing by Bucks and Philadelphia. This road was turn-piked to Poques- sing, 1803-4, and finished to Morrisville, 1812, at a cost of two hundred and nine thousand three hundred dollars. The milestones were set up in 1763. by an insurance company at a cost of thirty-three pounds. The bed of this road was probably changed before it was piked.
In 1693 a road was laid out from the falls to Southampton, and, the same year, continued to Frankford and Philadelphia-no doubt the origin of the road from Morrisville, via Fallsington, Attleborough and Feasterville to Bustleton and Holmesburg to the city. This afforded an outlett to market for the farmers who lived in the upper part of Middletown, and the lower parts of North and Southampton. It was turnpiked, by authority of an act of Assembly of March 5, 1804, as far up as the Buck tavern. Southampton township. . Two years later a road was laid out from Richard Hough's plantation, near Taylorsville, via the falls and Cold Spring to the Bristol ferry marked by blazed trees through the woods. It may have followed the line of the back River road part of the distance, although that is not known definitely, and was opened, 1695, but had a jury on it in 1692. In the summer of 1696 a road was laid out from New- town township to Gilbert Wheeler's near the falls, by the way of "Old man's" or "Cow creek" and "Stony hill," no doubt the original road to the falls, via Summerville and Fallsington, striking the Bristol turnpike near Tyburn. The road laid out by the council, 1697, from the Poquessing to Neshaminy. and thence to Bristol, turned at right angles near Galloway's house, then crossed the creek, and, after passing Langhorne's mansion, turned to the left and went on through Attleborough and Oxford to the falls. At one time it was the stage- road from Philadelphia to New York, the stage being advertised to leave Philadelphia in the morning and breakfast at Four Lanes End. The eighteen- mile stone is on Galloway's hill, and the nineteen stone at the top of Lang- horne's hill. A road ran along by Langhorne's house and mill, meeting the Bristol road at the foot of the hill on the road from Attleborough to Newport- ville. The part of this road to Galloway's ford was vacated about 1839. and the Bensalem part about 1851 or 1852.2.
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The Durham road, in olden times, was one of the most important high- ways in the county. It was begun in 1693, when the court, at the June session, appointed a jury to lay out a road from Newtown to Bristol ferry. In 1696 the grand jury presented the necessity of a road from Wrightstown to Bristol, which was opened, 1697, by Phineas Pemberton and this became another link. From Attleborough it ran to Joseph Growden's where it branched, one branch running to Duncan Williamson's at Dunk's ferry. About 1703 the inhabitants of Buckingham and Solebury petitioned for a road from William Cooper's, Buckingham, to Bristol, and was opened about 1706. but the streams were not bridged. It was in tolerable order to the west end of Buckingham mountain. In 1721 it was opened up to Fenton's corner, being surveyed by John Chap- man, and in 1726 the bed of the road was somewhat changed up to Thomas Brown's plantation, Plumstead. These were all sections of the Durham road. opened as the wants of the people required. In 1732. on the petition of the owners of Durham furnace, the road was extended up to the ford on To- hickon, near John Orr's, Plumstead. It was laid out to the furnace, 1745, and. ten years after was extended to Easton. This gave a continuous highway from
I Probably Bordentown.
2 Doctor Buckman.
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Bristol, up through the best settled portions of the county to the Lehigh. But it was far from being a good road, and jury after jury was summoned to re- view straighten and widen it. Round the western base of Buckingham moun- tain there were two roads, for a time, the people refusing to travel the one the court laid out. In 1797 a jury resurveyed and changed that portion from Newtown to Bristol. and. 1798. the bed of the old road. between Newtown and the line of Plumstead and Buckingham, was somewhat changed and re- commended to be opened forty feet wide. That portion of the road from the
Plumstead and Buckingham line, to the line of Northampton county, was re- viewed, 1807. In 1733 a road was laid out from the Durham road. in the upper part of Buckingham, down through Greenville and across the mountain, fall- ing into the Durham road again at Pineville. It met a violent opposition from the inhabitants of the township, but it was asked for by the proprietors of Durham furnace to give them a more convenient way down to Wrightstown.
The York and Easton roads, which branch from a common trunk at Wil- low Grove, were opened to connect the upper Delaware with Philadelphia and give the inhabitants a more direct route to the city. Like our other great roads, they were opened in sections. That part from Cheltenham to Philadel- · phia, up to Peter Chamberlain's, about the county line, was granted and con- firmed by council, August, 1693, but we do not know how soon after it was opened. The 27th of January, 1710, the inhabitants of Buckingham and Sole- bury petitioned the council for a convenient road, "to begin at the Delaware opposite John Reading's" landing ; from thence the most direct and convenient course to Buckingham meeting-house ; and then through the lands of Thomas Watson, by the house of Stephen Jenkins, and Richard Wells, and so forward the most direct and convenient course to Philadelphia." The jury, composed of Thomas Watson, John Scarborough, Jacob Holcomb, Nathaniel Bye, Matt- hew Hughes, Joseph Fell, Samuel Cart, Stephen Jenkins. Thomas Hallowell, Griffith Miles, Job Goodson, and Isaac Norris, were to lay out the road and return their report to the secretary in six months. It was twice reviewed in the next two years and some alterations made. Sarah Eaton, Abington, pro- tested against the road because it "mangled" her plantation. The whole dis- tance was set down at thirty-one miles. Down to 1740. five miles of the road next the Delaware were not in a condition for travel, and the court refused to put it in order. The road from New Hope, then Wells' ferry, to Buckingham meeting-house was opened a few years afterward. After the York road was laid out and opened, it was several times reviewed for the purpose of chang- ing the bed, widening and straightening. Juries were on it, 1752, 1756, 1790. 1811, and 1820.ª1/2 Before this road was opened the people of Solebury and Buckingham went to Philadelphia down the Durham road and crossed the Neshaminy at Galloway's ford a mile above Hulmeville.
The Easton road begins at the Willow Grove. In 1721, Sir William
3 Reading's landing was on the New Jersey side of the river opposite Centre Bridge, and now the flourishing village of Stockton.
312 The York road was relaid in 1790, from Samuel Johnson's corner at the foot of Buckingham Meeting House hill to low water mark at Coryell's ferry, and confirmed by the court 50 feet wide. In the past 50 years the York road has been turnpiked the whole distance in four sections, and by that many companies; Willow Grove to the Street road. 1848, Street road to Centreville, 1856, Centreville to Lahaska, and Lahaska to New Hope. 1853. Two miles of the Centreville-Lahaska pike runs over the roadbed of the Bucking- ham and Doylestown, chartered, 1843.
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Keith, Governor of the Province, purchased eight hundred acres on the county line, in Horsham and Warrington, where he built a country house, still known as Græme Park and a mill. In March, 1722, he asked the council to open a road through the woods from his settleinent to Horsham, and from there down to the bridge at Round Meadow run, now Willow Grove, and was laid out April 23, confirmed the 28th of May, and surveyed by Nicholas Scull. In 1723 a road was laid out from Dyer's mill, now Dyerstown, two miles above Doyles- town, down to Governor Keith's plantation, making the second link in the Easton road." An effort was made. 1736, to have the course of the road changed between Neshaminy and Alms-house hill, because it ran through the middle of John Bewley's farm but it was not successful. In 1738 the Dyer's mill road was extended through Plumstead, commencing at Danborough to which place it had already been laid out, to the Delaware at Enoch Pearson's landing, now Point Pleasant, to meet a road coming to the river on the New' Jersey side. The road to Point Pleasant was afterward extended westward to Whitehallville to meet the Butler road and is known as the Ferry road. It was surveyed by John Chapman. The Easton road was called the Dyer's mill road for many years, and was only changed to Easton road when it was extended to the Lehigh. It was turnpiked from Doylestown to Willow Grove, 1839-1840, and some years subsequently the turnpike was continued up to Plumsteadville under a new charter. After the York and Easton roads were opened, the want of a road from the Delaware across the county toward the Schuylkill was felt. This was met, 1730, by opening one from what is now Centreville, although it is said to have commenced at Buckingham meeting-house, to the Montgomery line at Ross Gordon's corner, to which point a road had already been opened from the Schuylkill. When the State road was opened from New Hope to Norristown, 1830, it was laid on the bed of the old road as far as it extended, and is now known as the Upper State road.
The Street road, through Southampton, Warminster and Warrington, was to start at Bensalem and run on a northwest line, and land was reserved for it; nevertheless it was commenced at the Delaware, and the first section laid out, 1696, from Dunk's ferry landing up to the Bristol turnpike, less than a mile long and sixty feet wide. This was opened at the request of Governor Andrew Hamilton, New Jersey, postmaster-general, in order that the mail might be able to get from the ferry to the King's highway. The justices of the peace of the county were directed to have the road opened, and it was probably the post route from New York to Philadelphia at that time. For convenience, a ferry was established on the Jersey side of the river, and the mails, pas- sengers and goods here crossed the river for Philadelphia and then followed the king's great road. The 10th of June, 1697, the council directed William Biles and Phineas Pemberton to "discourse" the people of New Jersey about laying out a post-road from that side of the river for New York. Like other roads this was laid out in sections and at various times. The lower part, as far as Feasterville and probably higher up. was opened early. In April, 1737, a jury laid it out from the Buck road nearly its entire length, although portions of it had been laid out before, as between Johnsville and York road, 1731. The jury of 1737 deflected the road to the left to Neshaminy after it crossed the Easton road, up which it was laid until it crossed the county line. This part has been vacated many years. The names of the land-owners, on the line of the road in Southampton and Warminster, 1737, were, Jones, Jackman,
4 In 1753 there were beaver dams along the Dyer's mill road.
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Duffield, Vandike, Leedom, Banes, Morris, Watts, Longstreth, Scout, Craven, Rush, Dungan, Todd, William Tennent, Cadwallader, Inyard, R. Gilbert, S. Gilbert and J. Comly, who owned three-quarters of the land in the two town- ships. As the road was not originally laid out on the land reserved, a jury was appointed, 1793, to review it but their action is not known. In 1807 the portion from Feasterville down to Dunk's ferry was reviewed and confirmed. The Street road was projected four poles wide, but was laid out two poles, the road crossing the line at Davisville. In 1794 it was resurveyed and confirmed thirty-three feet wide from Warrington to the Bensalem line.
The Bristol road, the line between Southampton, Warminster and War- rington, and Northampton, Warwick and Doylestown, is another northwest line road. It, too, was laid out at various times and in sections. The first jury on it was April, 1724, on petition to have the road continued from Robert Heaton's mill in the lower corner of Southampton, probably on Nesahminy, up "to ye upper inhabitants." It was viewed and laid out to the Warrington line, and in May, 1737, another jury continued it to the upper part of Hilltown, but if opened it was not on the northwest line. There were several subsequent juries on it before it was made straight from end to end as we now see it, in 1766, from the Philadelphia and Attleborough road to Hartsville, and in 1772, from Warrington to the Butler road which straightened and confirmed it thirty-three feet wide.
The Montgomery county line road, also on a north-west line, was opened by piecemeal between 1722 and 1752. From the Easton road to four miles above it was opened, 1722, apparently to accommodate Governor Keith. It was laid out to Jacob Chamberlain, at the York road, 1731, and above that to the extent of the two counties, 1752. The opening was objected to because it was not needed, as there was a road on either side about a mile distant. It was im- proved by subsequent juries. That part of it from the Byberry and Wrights- town road, up to the Middle road was probably not opened until 1773, and the stretch from Craven's corner to the York road in 1774.
The Old Bethlehem road, another of the arteries of travel and traffic, was for years the great highway from the Lehigh to Philadelphia, and into which numerous roads led on either side. It was gradually extended northward as settlements reached up the country, and, 1738, terminated at Nathaniel Irish's stone quarry in the Hellertown road at Iron hill, Saucon township. It was continued to Bethlehem and Nazareth, in the summer of 1745, and be- yond the latter point it had connection by bridle-paths with DePui's settlement at the Minisink. The road crossed the Lehigh a short distance below Bethle- hem at the head of the island now owned by the Bethlehem iron company.5 From the Minisink the bridle-paths tapped the Mine road to Esopus on the Hudson. The Bethlehem road was turnpiked, the second in the county, 1805-6, and the books were opened for stock at the taverns of George Weaver and William Strawn, at Strawntown, the 11th and 12th of June of that year. The first settlers on the Lehigh traveled the well-trodden Indian paths that led northward from Philadelphia, crossing the river a mile below Bethlehem, the route of the Minsi Indians in returning from below to
5 Among the roads opened at this period, north of the Lehigh, then in Bucks. county, now in Northampton. was one from the "Forks of Delaware" to the settlement of the Moravian brethren in the township of Bethlehem," now the road from Easton to Bethlehem. The road was applied for by D. Martin in the fall of 1744; the jury appointed Dec. 12. road viewed and return made out March 12, 1745-6. See Ch. VIII, Vol. II.
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their homes beyond the Blue mountains. When Daniel Nitchman led his com -- pany of one hundred Moravians to Bethlehem, 1742, they traveled this path on foot with pack-horses carrying the necessary implements to commence the new settlement. This mode of travel was retained some years after public- roads were laid out. The Old and New Bethlehem roads unite at Line Lex- ington, the former via Hellertown, Pleasant Hill, and Applebachsville, and the latter via Coopersburg, Quakertown, and Sellersville. The New Bethle- hem road leaves the county line at Reiff's store, and the trunk road below Line Lexington to Philadelphia is the bed of the Old Bethlehem road. An old road ran through the upper part of the county, from North Wales to Allentown, via Trumbauersville and Milford Square, and is called the Old Allentown road. It was the "King's highway," but all trace of the royal road has disappeared.
The road along the river bank above the falls at Trenton, and known as the River road, had its origin in the order of court at April term, 1703, when, by order of council to the justices, a jury was appointed "to lay out a road lead- ing from the King's road ending at the falls of Delaware, to the upper planta- tions situate higher up and near the said river." Under this order the upper River road, as it is called, was probably laid out, for the road on the river bank from Trenton ferry was not laid out up to Yardleyville until 1794. It was met by a road from New Hope many years later, while the upper River road between the same points, was laid out, 1773. From New Hope up to Mit- chel's ferry it was laid out, 1803, and from Williams's through the Narrows to Pursell's ferry, 1792.
The road from Philadelphia to Oxford, the first link in the Middle, or Oxford road was granted about 1693. Some years after it was extended to the Delaware at Yardleyville, via Newtown. It was next opened up to the Anchor from Addisville, to intersect the Durham road, and give those who traveled down it a nearer and more direct route to Philadelphia. In 1803 it was re- surveyed from Newtown to the Montgomery county line, eight and one half miles. It was called the Middle road, because it lay about midway between the road that led to the Trenton ferry and the York road to Wells' ferry, now New Hope.
No road in the county has led to so much controversy as the Street road between Solebury and Buckingham, and it was not permanently laid until 1825, after a century and a quarter of dispute. This is one of the northwest line roads, and was projected at the time the lands along it in the two town- ships were first surveyed. The Surveyor-General marked off, on the return of surveys, a strip of land four poles wide for the road, and, on the return of Cutler's resurvey, 1703, a road was located between the two townships. The land along this road was surveyed as early as 1700 by Phineas Pemberton, and it was all taken up by 1702. The road has been surveyed and reviewed a number of times.
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