USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania: From the Discovery of the Delaware to the Present Time (Volume 1 and 2) > Part 8
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10 This is said to have been Nutimus, whom Buck says lived at Nockamixon, 1734, near the Delaware Water Gap, 1740, and on the authority of Rev. David Zeisberger. the Movavian missionary, removed with his brother Isaac to Ohio a short time prior to 1750, and died on the Muskingum, 1780-testimony too strong to be easily set aside by tradition at this late day.
II The Narrows.
12 This is Wyker's Island. called Mclaughlin's Island, in 1786, from James Mc- Laughlin. A record of 1816 speaks of it as the "Island at Linn's," the falls near by being
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from Philadelphia and fifteen from Doylestown, the county seat, having daily connection with the latter by stage and the former by rail, via the Delaware- Belvidere railroad. Two miles distant is Haycock mountain, on the top of which the government, for many years, kept a signal station during the coast survey operations.
We have not seen any enumeration of the inhabitants of Nockamixon earlier than 1784, when the population was 629, with 116 dwellings. In the next twenty-five years it had almost doubled, for at the census of 1810 it con- tained 1,207 inhabitants; 1820, 1,650; 1830, 2,049 and 407 taxables; 1840, 2,055 : 1860, 1,630, Bridgeton district meanwhile, having been created and cut off, the population embraced in its limits being taken from the township. In 1870 the population of Nockamixon was 1,528, of which 110 were of foreign birth ; 1880, 1,554, and 1890, 1,420. By the census of r880 the population of Bridgeton was 1,058, and 846 in 1890. Nockamixon has become a German township, and the descendants of the English speaking settlers, have either been driven out by the aggressive Teutons, or absorbed by intermarriage with their German neighbor.
known as "Linn's Falls." In 1809 William Erwin made application for an island in the river Delaware called "Logrie's Island," situated in Nockamixon township, Bucks county, partly opposite the mouth of Galle's Run on the Pennsylvania shore, supposed to contain an acre. See Penn. Arch. Series III Vol. 3, page 497.
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CHAPTER V.
BEDMINSTER.
1742.
Bedminster included in Plumstead .- Location .- William Allen's tract .- John. Hough .- Ralph Ashton et al .- Scotch-Irish settlers .- Founding of Deep Run church .- Early tombstones .- Francis McHenry .- Charles McHenry at Paoli .- The Greirs .- Humphrey and John Orr and descendants .- James L. Orr .- The Darrahs .- William. D. Kelley .- William Armstrong and descendants .- Henry Stauffer .- Jacob Wismer, Samuel Ayres. F. A. Comly .- Township organized .- The Fretzes .- Names of peti- tioners .- German settlers .- Mennonite church founded .- The ministers and deacons. -- The old church .- Peter Mickley .- John Eckel .-- Tohickon church .- Keller's church. -The Keichlines .- George Piper .- The Sollidays .- Roads .- The Scheetzes .- The. Troughs .- Mills .- Old school-house .- Peaches .- Pigeons .- Villages .- Population .- Decease of aged persons .- Map of upper end.
Bedminster included in Plumstead from its first settlement down to the date of its organization as a township, lies wedged in between Plumstead, Hill- town. Rockhill, Haycock and Nockamixon, having the tortuous Tohickon for its north and north-east boundary. All the surrounding townships, except Hay- cock, were organized prior to Bedminster, and afterward this township was formed of part of Plumstead.
William Allen, Philadelphia, was one of the largest land-owners in this section of the county, and his possessions lay in several townships. When set- tlers began to enter Bedminster he and the Proprietaries owned all the land in it. His was called the "Deep Run tract." and contained six thousand six hun- dred and fifty-three acres, surveyed 1730. and as late as 1800 twenty-two hun- dred acres, divided into convenient-sized farms, were put up at public sale at the tavern-house of John Shaw. The Proprietaries opened their lands for settle- ment about 1725-30, and soon settlers began to come in and purchase. In 1734, John Hough purchased two hundred acres on Deep Run, and John Brittain one hundred and fifty on the same stream. August 6, 1741. one thousand and one acres were patented by Ralph Ashton for the use of Richard Hockley, and the survey was made by virtue of a warrant dated March 20, 1834. This tract lay "near Tohickon above Deep Run." Settlers came in quite rapidly, and in a few years there was considerable population along Deep Run, the name. of the settlement until the township was organized. These first-comers were from the. north of Ireland, and belonged to that sturdy race known as Scotch-Irish, which.
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played an important part in the settlement of both county and State. Although the township is now German, this race settled there at a subsequent period, and their descendants have gradually pushed out the English-speaking people and become dominant.
The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians had not been long seated on Deep Run before they organized a church, which took the name of the stream and bears it to this day. A log meeting-house was built near the creek in the south-west corner of the township, as early as 1732 and the first settled minister was there six. years later. It was the original place of worship of all the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of that region of country, and, although it has lost its importance since the organization of the Doylestown church, it remains the cradle of Presbyterianism north of Neshaminy. There must have been a small frontier congregation there as early as 1726, for when Mr. Tennent was called to Neshaminy in that year, he preached for them. At this time there is hardly a Presbyterian family in the bounds of the old congregation, and service is only held there at long intervals. In the old graveyard lie the remains of former generations, the inscriptions on the tomb-stones carrying us back nearly a cen- tury and three-quarters. We read on these mute memorials of the past, that Alexander Williams died January 22, 1747, Samuel Hart, Jr., 1750, Samuel Cochran, 1767, Thomas Thompson, 1765, James Greir, 1763, John Greir, 1768, and William Hart, who was killed at the capture of Moses Doane, at the age of forty, 1783. At a later day there were buried there, Robert Barnhill, Rob- ert McNeeley, Thomas Darrah, Robert Robinson, and others, fathers of the township.
The Reverend Francis McHenry settled in Bedminster, 1738, four years prior to its organization, and was pastor at Deep Run. His son Charles, a lieutenant in the Continental army, made a narrow escape at the massacre of Paoli, 1777. Hearing the alarm of the British attack, he rose from his bed and went to the door of his tent, where he was confronted by a dragoon who struck him over the head with his sabre. The blow glanced from his head and fell upon his collar-bone. He immediately run the Englishman through the body with his sword, who rolled off his horse which McHenry mounted. . He had accidentally put on his military cloak with the scarlet lining outside, by which he was mistaken for a British soldier, and, in the confusion, he man- aged to escape, pretty badly wounded. Among other articles found in the dragoon's portmanteau was a pair of horse-shoes with nails-one of the shoes being in the possession of the late William McHenry, of Pike county. It weighs about two pounds, has heavy heel-corks, but none at the toe, and was made without any fullering around it, but with a square counter-sink for each nail-head. The horse was a very fine one, which the captor sold in Philadel- phia, and is said to have drawn a ton of pig-iron on the ground with a chain.
The distinguished Orr family, of South Carolina, claims descent from Bucks county ancestry. The Orrs were in this county early. The first of the name was Humphrey Orr who took up two hundred acres on the Tohickon. then in Plumstead, now in Bedminster, at the point where the Durham road crosses that stream, and was known as "John Orr's ford" before a bridge was built.' What time Humphrey settled there is not known, but he was probably there as early as about 1730, perhaps earlier, and died about 1736, leaving a widow Elizabeth. On the 13th of June, 1737. John Orr, of county Donegal. Ireland,
1 Probably the first tavern licensed in Bedminster, was that of Thomas Orr, where the Durham road crosses the Tohickon. He was the son of John Orr, the immigrant.
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the only son of Humphrey, appointed his friend Andrew Henderson, mer- chant, his attorney to collect and receive all estate left him by his father, the said Humphrey, lately deceased "of Bucks county, Pennsylvania." Soon after, John Orr immigrated to America and settled on the farm he inherited from his father in Bedminster, where he lived to his death, 1762. His will is dated December 4, 1761, and probated June 16, the following year. In it he men- tions his wife, Jane, son Thomas, daughter Isabella Patterson, and grandchild Rebecca but no others. There was a John Orr in Bedminster, in 1846, and a Samuel Orr in Hilltown, in 1860, but we know of none of the name in the county at the present time. In the land-office, Harrisburg, there is a record of a warrant to John Orr for two hundred acres in Makefield township, now Upper Makefield, dated 19th of March, 1733. We also learn from the same source that in Streeper's tract of four thousand eight hundred and forty-one acres, situated between the Delaware and Tohickon creek, as divided in May, 1738, lot No. 4, containing one hundred and eighty acres, on that creek, is marked to John Orr. On the separate draft of this parcel it is stated it "was surveyed to John McCoy, who sold his improvement to John Orr who is now seated on the same." It was confirmed to Orr by patent dated the 12th of December, 1745.
The South Carolina Orrs trace descent from Robert, probably a son of John, who went to North Carolina prior to the Revolution, where he lived dur- ing the war, and had five sons in it, John distinguishing himself as a captain of cavalry. Robert Orr had nine sons and one daughter, and, after the war, several of them removed to South Carolina. Among them were Benjamin and Samuel, Baptist ministers, who would not remain in that state on account of their hostility to negro slavery, but removed with their families to the terri- tory northwest of the Ohio. Their brother Christopher settled in the Indian territory of north Georgia, where he became rich in this world's goods, and in a family of nine children and died at a good old ago. John Orr's first wife was a Miss Green, of Pennsylvania, by whom he had four sons, double twins, and two daughters, and his second, Jane B. Chickscales, of South Carolina, by whom he had one son, Christopher. He married Martha McCann, and had five children, the late James L. Orr, of South Carolina, being the second son, born 12th of May, 1822, in Anderson district, and became the most distin- guished member of the family. After receiving a good preliminary education at the schools of the neighborhood, he entered the University of Virginia at the age of eighteen, graduated and was admitted to the bar at twenty-one. He married Miss Mary J. Marshall the following November. His political life commenced almost immediately. He was elected to the Legislature in 1844 and 1846, and, in 1848 defeated Honorable B. F. Perry, the leading man and statesman of upper Carolina, for Congress. Perry denominated young Orr "that stripling," and laughed at his "presumption" in being a candidate, but at the close of the campaign the laugh had changed sides. He continued in Con- gress from 1848 to 1859, and was elected speaker of the Thirty-fifth Congress. When secession began to make headway in South Carolina he opposed it- with all his might until he found the current too strong to stem, when he went with it. He commanded a regiment of rifles for a few months, and was then unan- imously elected to the Confederate Senate without his knowledge, and served in it to the end. He is noted as advocating President Lincoln's proposition for the South to lay down her arms and come back into the Union. He was par- doned soon after the war, and. in 1865, elected governor of South Carolina over Wade Hampton, and, while in office, took active steps to suppress law-
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lessness in the State. The reconstruction laws deprived him of office, in 1867, but, 1868, he was elected by the Legislature judge of the Eighth district, against his will, but accepted and served to December, 1872. His adminis- tration of the law gave universal satisfaction, and, when he left the bench, all old debts had been wiped out, and the district was in peace and the laws re- spected. In 1872 he was tendered the position of United States Minister to one of the South American republics, but declined and, in December, same year, he was appointed Minister to Russia. When he embarked at New York, where he contracted a heavy cold, in January, 1873, the thermometer was twenty degrees below zero, a change of sixty degrees since leaving his home in Carolina. At Paris his physicians recommended quiet, but he hurried for- ward, and, at Berlin, was two days in bed. By the time he reached St. Peters- burg, with the thermometer at twenty-three degrees below zero, he was hardly in a condition to attend to business. There, he grew rapidly worse, and died at his post May 5, 1873, a few days before reaching his fifty-first year.
James L. Orr left a family of five children, three sons and two daughters. The oldest, James L. Orr, jr., born in 1852, and educated at the University of Virginia, was Secretary of Legation while his father was. Minister to Russia. He was admitted to the bar, in 1873, and has since been a member of the South Carolina Legislature. Of the remaining children of Christopher Orr, Harvey J. is a physician of Mississippi, John A., commanded a Confederate regiment during the Civil war, was a member of the Confederate Congress, and subsequently appointed a circuit-judge of Mississippi. The sister Elvina married General Joel S. Miller, of Spartinsburg. South Carolina.
The Darrahs of this county, and other parts of the State and Union, are descended from a Scotch-Irish ancestor who settled at Deep Run. Thomas Darrah came from the north of Ireland about 1725, and settled in Horsham, now in Montgomery county. After living there a few years he sold his property and removed to Bedminster where he purchased about eight hundred acres of land. Who, and when, he married we know not, but at his death, in 1750. he left his estate to his five sons and three daughters, viz .: Robert. Thomas, Henry, William, James, Susannah, Agnes and Esther. The oldest son. Robert, mar- ried a Jacoby, whose descendants live in the lower part of the county : the sec- ond son, Thomas, had two sons, Thomas and Mark, and several daughters, and their descendants are numerous. Thomas married twice, his second wife being a daughter of Colonel Piper, of Bedminster, and had seven children. The wife of the late Charles Wigton, of Doylestown, was a daughter of Thomas Darrah, the third. The daughters of Thomas Darrah the second, married ino the families of Phair, Denny, Ferguson. Walker and Bryan. Henry, the third son of Thomas Darrah, married Ann Jamison and removed to New Britain. now in the upper end of Warrington, where Henry Weisel lived and died. He was captain of militia in the Revolution and served several terms of duty under General Lacey and others. He was probably in the Amboy expedition, 1776. and died. 1782, from a cold contracted in the service, and was buried at Deep Run, though no stone was erected at his grave. His children were James, William, John George. Ann, and Mary, probably the eldest daughter. James married Rachel Henderson, Warminster, where he died. The late Robert Darrah. Warminster, ensign in the war of 1812-15, was his eldest son, and James A. Darrah, his grandson. The Reverend D. K. Turner, Hartsville, mar- ried two granddaughters of Jamies Darrah, daughters of Robert. The de- scendants of Henry Darrah are numerous and much scattered in this State. and in the south and west. among them being the late Henry D. Livezey, of
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Doylestown. William, fourth son of Thomas Darrah, the elder, had seven children, sons Archibald and William and five daughters. Of the daughters one was the mother of the late Hon. William D. Kelley, a distinguished mem- ber of Congress, another of the late General Samuel A. Smith, of this county, and a third, mother of the late Commodore Shaw, U. S. N. James. the fifth son of Thomas Darrah, was an ensign in the French and Indian war and lived and died in the Shenandoah Valley, and William Darrah, the elder, served in Benjamin Franklin's regiment on the Lehigh Frontiers, 1756-57.
William Armstrong, an early settler in Bedminster, was of Scotch-Irish descent and his line can be traced back to John Armstrong, chief of the border class of that name treacherously murdered by James V. of Scotland. His father was an officer at the seige of Derry, and William, with his wife, Mary, and three sons immigrated from Fermagh, Ireland, to America, 1736. Him- self and wife, members of the Presbyterian church, brought with them a cer- tificate signed by twenty of their neighbors and friends, testifying to their good character. He probably settled in Bedminster soon after their arrival, and erected a dwelling there, 1740, known for many years as the "Armstrong house" and he was one of the petitioners for the township. 1741. On Decem- ber 30, 1747, he received from Thomas and Richard Penn. a patent for 300 acres on the south bank of Tohickon, and, 1745, bought one hundred and four acres additional, probably having possession several years before receiving the patents. William Armstrong is represented as a man of education and in- telligence, of great physical strength and an excellent swordsman. He died about 1785. He had five sons, Andrew, John, Thomas, James and Samuel. Of these Andrew and James married Van de Woestynes, of Hilltown, John, the sister and Thomas the daughter of Reverend Francis McHenry, then pastor at Deep Run, and Samuel a daughter of Robert Gibson. Thomas and Samuel served in the Revolutionary army, the former a lieutenant. The late Jesse Armstrong, of Doylestown, was a descendant of William Armstrong.
Jacob Wismer, who died at Deep Run, February 4,2 1787, in his one hun- dred and third year, was an early settler in the county, but we can not tell at what time he came into Bedminster. He was born in Germany, and, before 1720, immigrated to North Carolina, where he lived ten years, and then re- moved to this county, where he married his third wife, with whom he lived sixty-seven years. This would bring him into Bucks county as early as 1720. Jacob "Weismore." who signed the petition for the township, 1741, was, no doubt, meant for Jacob Wismer. He had one hundred and seventy children and grandchildren, and his widow was eighty-four at his death. He retained his senses until within about two months, and could walk out and dress and undress himself until within about two weeks of his death. In 1744 Adam Resher bought fifty-six acres on the Tohickon, and in 1749 Adam Peyzer pur- chased land along the same stream.
Samuel Ayres, an immigrant from county Antrim, Ireland, settled at Deep Run about 1746, and died the following year. His son William removed to the vicinity of Huntingdon Valley, Montgomery county, where his descen- (lants are now living. having intermarried, among others, with the families of Yerkes. McNiell, and Comly. The mother of the late F. A. Comley, presi- dent of the North Pennsylvania railroad, was Eliza Ayres, great-granddaugh- ter of Samuel, of Deep Run, and granddaughter of William Ayres, who settled at Huntingdon Valley. Robert McNeely was an early settler in Bedminster,
2 Columbian Magazine.
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but we do not know at what time. He was a leading man in the Presbyterian church, and died, 1796. His wife's name was Rebecca, and his children, John, Robert, Andrew, william, Joseph and Margaret. Dilman Kolp, probably Kolb, was living in the township before 1740, and his land abutted on the Mennonite farm.
The first movement toward the organization of a township was made in March, 1741, when "thirty-five inhabitants of Deep Run" petitioned the Quarter Sessions to form the territory into a township, with the following. boundaries : "Beginning upon Plumstead corner, coming along that line to Hilltown corner, and from that line to Rockhill corner, and down Tohickon till it closes at Plumstead corner, where it begins. The names attached to this petition give us some information as to the men who peopled the woods north of Plumstead, namely: James Hughes, Robert Smith, Abraham Black. Will- iam Armstrong, John Graham, John Ree, George McFerrin, Adam Thomp- son, Mr. Miller, Thomas Darroch, Mark Overhold, Martin Overhold, Nicho- las Ogeny, Jacob Leatherman, Jacob Weismore, John Fretts, William Graham, Joseph Townsend, Henry Groud, Michael Lott, David Kulp, Daniel Norcauk, John Bois, Joseph Armstrong, John Riffle, Ralph Trough, Fetter Ryner, Mat- thew Ree, Andrew Sloan, Tillman Kulp, Christian Stover, George Lynard,. John Clymer Nicholas Kean, and Frederick Croft. We have given the spell- ing of these names as we find them on the records, although some of them are evidently erroneous. The prayer of the petitioners was granted at the March term, 1742, and the court appointed, as jurors, John Kelley, William James, Griffith Davis, and Lewis Evins, with John Chapman, surveyor. The township. was surveyed and laid out sometime during the year, and the boundaries re- turned were about the same as at present. On the report of the jury is en- dorsed the following: "Confirmed with the name of Bedminster."" In the report Tohickon is spelled "Tohickney," and they give "Socunk" as the name of a place, whose locality is now entirely unknown." The area of Bedminster is sixteen thousand and fifty-eight acres.
The Fretzes are descended from John and Christian Fretz, immigrants from Manheim in the Duchy of Baden, Germany, 1720. The family had been settled there for centuries, and probably of Roman origin. The immigrants and their. immediate descendants, were Mennonites, and the elder branches were buried at Deep Run.
Christian Fretz, the elder of the two immigrants, settled at what is known as Heany's Mill, Tinicum, where the stone house is still standing his son. Christian built over one hundred and twenty-five years ago. He died there, 1784, and in his will, names his six children, Daniel, Abraham, Christian, Mark, Barbara and Esther, and his son-in-law, Jacob Yoder. There is no mention of his wife. Daniel, the eldest son, born about 1738, married Mary -, had six children, and with his family, removed to Westmoreland county, 1800, except Daniel and Eve who remained in Bucks county. Abra- ham Fretz, second son of Christian the elder, born about 1745, married Doro- thea Kulp and had seven children. In July, 1775, he purchased two hundred and twenty-four acres in Bedminster and passed his life there. This tract is now divided into four farms, and Anthony R. and Quincy A. Fretz own. or lately owned, the homestead portion. Christian Fretz, who married Judith
3 Probably named after the parish of Bedminster. County of Somerset, England.
4 In the petition for the organization of Tinicum, 1738. Bedminster is mentioned as a "township." but it was not constituted one by law until 1742.
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Kulp, lived and died on the homestead, a miller and a farmer, and was the father of four children. Mark Fretz married Gertrude Kulp and had six chi !- dren, the youngest by a second wife, and lived and died on a two hundred acre farm in Tinicum near the Durham road. The oldest son was known as "Lame Anthony." The farm was later owned by Jacob Steely, Levi Yost and / "Reuben Heaney."
John Fretz, one of the immigrants, and brother of Christian, probably first settled in Upper Salford, Montgomery county, where he married Bar- bara Meyer, whose father was a recent arrival and 1737-38 purchased two hun- dred and thirty acres in Bedminster, where his great-great-great-grandson, Mahlon M. Fretz, now resides. This is considered the homestead farm. By his first wife he had five children, and three by his second. John, Jacob, Chris- tian, Abraham and Elizabeth and Mark, Henry and Barbara. John Fretz, Jr., born 1730, married Mary Kulp, and had ten children. He lived for a time in Tinicum and was a weaver by trade. In 1772 he was a miller in Haycock, and 1800, when seventy years old, removed with his family, except his daugh- ter, Barbara, to Lincoln county, Canada, where a number of Bucks county Mennonites had already settled, and died there, 1826, at the age of ninety-six. His descendants are numerous in Canada, and the western States. Jacob Fretz, second son of John, the twin immigrant of Christian, born 1732, mar- ried Magdalena Nash, daughter of William Nash," lived first near Erwinna, Tinicum, later removed to Bedminster on the farm where his son, known as "Big Joe" lived, now owned by Aaron Yerger. He and his wife died there and were buried at Deep Run. They were the parents of ten children. Chris- tian Fretz, born 1734, married Barbara Nash, sister of Magdalena Nash, and died, 1803. She was born 1737 and died 1823. They were the parents of twelve children, and had one hundred and nine grand children, and one hun- dred and three great-grandchildren, their descendants living and dead, being es- timated at three thousand. He lived and died on the Fretz homestead, Fretz Valley, Bedniinster township. Abraham Fretz, fourth son of John, born. 1736, married, was the father of four daughters and one son, the daughters all marying husbands of the name of Landis.
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