USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > History of Bucks county, Pennsylvania, from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time, Vol. I > Part 49
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14 He lived some years in Chester county, and is mentioned in Futhey & Cope's his- tory, and Africa's History of Blair County.
15 The engraving that accompanies the sketch of the Wigton family was the home of Samuel Wigton on Iron Hill, New Britain, and is supposed to have been built about 1791, soon after coming into possession of the land. The original drawing was made by Elizabeth Wigton, daughter of Samuel, 1807, and remained in her possession until her death, 1875. The copy, from which the engraving was made, was drawn by F. Wigton Brown.
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was a young married man with wife and children. Their residence, the first eighteen years, is not definitely known, but probably' in New Britain or Hill- town. In 1771 Christian Atherholt bought one hundred and fifty-one acres in the western corner of New Britain, of Christian Krawll, a portion of the village of Line Lexington being built on the tract. It was owned in more recent years by the Ruth and Clymer families. Ile made his will 1806 and died 1812, leaving five children : Frederick, deccased ; Christian, Wilhelmina, Lavina and Catharine. To Christian, the oldest son living, was given the homestead, while to the daughters, including Frederick's widow and her eleven children, were bequeathed money.
Frederick Atherholt, eldest son of the immigrant, is supposed to have .been born between 1740 and 1748, and married Esther Bibighouse about 1768. He was a tanner by trade and died suddenly, October, 1789, just in his prime. He had purchased a farm of forty acres, the previous March, in "Bedminster and tradition says he was found dead in his bed, in the morning. at Line Lexington, whither he had gone to take charge of a tannery, on the premises now owned by Oliver Morris, at the junction of the County Line and the Bethlehem pike. He left eleven children, born betwen 1769 and 1787: Daniel, Mary, Abraham, Christian, Frederick, David, Joseph, Esther, Samnel and Gabriel. The second Christian Atherholt remained in possession until his death, 1838, his will being executed April 21st. He married Margaret King, and they had a family of ten children: Catharine, wife of John Ruth; Christian : Mary, wife of Levi Swartly : Elizabeth, wife of Daniel Ruth : Anna, wife of Samnel Detweiler ; Sarah, wife of John Lightcap; Rebecca, wife of Peter Loux, father of the late Jolin A. Loux, justice of the peace, and promi- nent man in Bedminster ; Samuel, who married Rebecca Fry, and John. The executors sold the real estate that had been in the family sixty-eight years.
The Atherholts have a record of patriotism from the Revolution to the Civil war. Christian was a member of Capt. Henry Darrah's Company of Associators, 1776-7: Frederick, his elder brother, was a member of Captain Charles McHenry's Company, and for which he recruited from March 11 to May 20, 1778; in the Civil war, Wilson D. Atherholt, a native of Ilay- cock, Bucks county, served in the 5th Wisconsin, and lost his life in the Campaign on the Peninsula ; David Atherholt, of Bucks county, was a soldier in the Union army, and others of the name saw service in the same, from Luzerne and Mercer counties and Philadelphia. The descendants of the immi- grant of 1753, are found in almost every walk in life, one Thomas C. Ather- holt, the fifth in descent from Frederick, and a native of Bucks, is a whole- sale dealer in china, glass and queensware, Philadelphia. He was a participant in the exciting scenes in Kansas almost half a century ago.
Among the interesting homesteads in New Britain, is that recently in the tenure of the Donaldson family, and owned by them for one hundred and thirty years, situated on the northwest side of what is known as the Doyles- town road where it crosses the county line. The house is a large stone structure, surrounded by a farm of one hundred and sixty-seven acres with a lasting spring of water nearby, and was originally part of the James Steel tract bought 1718. For the next fifty years the two hundred and twelve acres which Abel Morgan, a Baptist minister. bought of the Steel tract, was held by David Evans, 1722, to 1738, when it was sold to Jonathan Drake; then to Thomas Drake, 1756, and to Joseph Endicot. 1770. The next purchaser was Edward Milnor, an ancestor of the Donaldbons on the maternal side. A part of the present stone structure was built when Milor bought the property, and the
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renruinder subsequently. Milnor was a delegate to the Provincial Convention, 1775, and died 1803. In the list of taxables in New Britain, 1779, Edward Minor was taxed for one hundred acres and four negro slaves. In 1777, Sarah Milnor, daughter of Edward Milnor, married John Donaldson, son of Ilugh. The Donaldsons were Scotch-Irish. Hugh, the immigrant, born, 1721, coming to Philadelphia about 1750, engaged in the manufacture of sea biscuit, and married Mary Wormly at the age of twenty-one. He was an ardent friend of the Colonies in the Revolution, and one of the signers of the Non Importation Act, 1705 ; dying, 1772, while on a visit to Ireland. John Donald- son was a young man when the Revolution broke out, and entering the cavalry served at Trenton, Brandywine, Germantown and elsewhere. In 1794 he served in the force that quelled the Whiskey Insurrection in western Penn- sylvania, and in civil life filled the office of Warden of the Port of Philadel- phia. Ile was born at Philadelphia, 1754, and died there 1831, at seventy- seven, and only lived transiently on the New Britain farm. John Donaldson had five sons and four daughters, the former bearing the names of Edward, John, Hugh, George and Richard. The latter, born 1787, and died 1872 at eighty-five, and inherited the farm and married Harriet Curry, New Britain. He was known as Captain Donaldson, having followed the sea many years and gained that title.
Near the close of the eighteenth century a new settler moved across the Montgomery line into New Britain, and was one of the most prominent men in the township for thirty years. This was Jacob Reed, son of Philip and Feronica Reed, immigrants from Mannheim, in the Palatinate, Germany, and landed at Philadelphia, October 15. 1727. They settled in Marlborough township, then in Philadelphia county, a few miles from Bucks border, where the son was born June 28, 1730. He was brought up on his father's farm, received a good education for the time and in 1755 married Magdalena Leidy, youngest daughter of Jacob Leidy. Franconia township. They setttled in West Hatfield adjoining the farm of the brother, Jacob Leidy, Jr.
At the breaking out of the Revolution, Jacob Reed took an active part in the cause of the Colonies, soon becoming one of the most conspicuous young men in that section. He served in the militia during the war, reaching the rank of lieutenant-colonel. His command was made up of the troops of Upper and Lower Salford, Towamencin, Hatfield, Perkiomen and Skippack, and took the field on several occasions. He is said to have been present at Trenton, and participated in the campaign of 1777 in Pennsylvania, his knowl- edge of the field of operations making his services more valuable. The activity of Colonel Reed made him a mark for the ill will of the tories. On one occa- sion when visiting his family. he was shot in the leg and captured, tied to a tree and tarred and feathered, and his friends rescued him while the enemy was digging the grave to bury him. These parties were compelled to flee the country and their property was subsequently confiscated. One day, while riding along the public road. he was fired at from a fence corner by a Hessian, and while the British held Philadelphia, he was captured by a raiding party, and his life saved by an officer's wife interceding for him.
In ITS3, at the close of the war, Colonel Reed purchased ninety acres. in New Britain, of John Garner. on the county line a mile west of Colmar, the Neshaminy running through it. He removed to this farm, 1703. on selling his Hatfield tract, and living there until his death. November 2, 1820. He was buried in Leidy's graveyard. Francomia township. His death was much re- gretted. He was active in all good work and filled a number of public trusts.
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' Colonel Reed's oldest son, Philip, married Elizabeth Solliday, only daughter of Frederick Solliday, Bedminster, and to him was deeded a portion of the New Britain plantation. On it he subsequently erected a saw and grist mill, among the earliest in the township, a short distance below the covered bridge that spans the Neshaminy on the county line. The mills have long since dis- appeared.
Mennonites were almost the first religious sect on the banks of the Dela- ware. About 1662 some of the followers of Menno Simon came from Holland and settled at Whorekill, where the Dutch made them a grant free from all impost and taxation for twenty years. When the Delaware fell into the hands of the English, two years later, these unoffending people were severe sufferers. The conquerors robbed them of their goods, and many of them were sold as slaves to Virginia. They were among the early German immigrants to the banks of the Schuylkill. They purchased a lot at Germantown, 1703, and five years after, erected a frame meeting-house. The church was organized May 23, 1708, and they worshiped in the old building until 1770, when the frame was replaced by a substantial stone structure, whose centennial was celebrated in 1870. This modest frame was the parent church of this denomination in America. John Sensen is said to have been the first Mennonite who came to Philadelphia and Germantown. Just when this sect came into Bucks county is not known, but they were among the earliest German immigrants who pone- trated the wilderness of the upper townships in the first thirty years of the eighteenth century, and now constitute a considerable portion of our rural Ger- man population. They are almost universally farmers, and in point of morals, integrity and industry, are second to no class of the inhabitants of our county. They are plain in dress, frugal in living, and poverty among them is almost unknown, leading a simple life and mingling little with the great outside world. They agree with the Friends in their opposition to war.
The Mennonites of Bucks county being without a written history. we find it difficult to trace their churches and congregations. They have churches in New Britain, Rockhill. Milford, Springfield, Bedminster. Doylestown, and probably elsewhere. New Britain was one of the first townships they settled in, and the Line Lexington congregation is one of the oldest in the county. The Reverend John Geil, son of Jacob Geil who immigrated from Alsace. or a neighboring province on the Rhine, at the age of eight years and settled in Springfield, was one of their ablest ministers. Jacob, the son, was born there in April. 1778. The father, who married a sister of Valentine Clymer. of New Britain, removed to Chester county and, soon after to Virginia. Jacob was apprenticed to learn the tanning-trade, but, liking neither the trade nor the master, ran away and returned to Bucks county in his eighteenth or twen- tieth year. He married Elizabeth Fretz, of New Britain, April 22, 1802, and had nine children, of whom Samuel Geil, Doylestown, was one. He probably joined the Doylestown church, and, in ISto or 1811 was called to the ministry at Line Lexington, where he preached until 1852. His wife died November 5, 1849. in her sixty-ninth year. and he the 6th of January, 1866, in his eighty- eighth year. in Plumstead township. He was a man of strong mind. extensive reading, and had a remarkably retentive memory. John Holds- man. a member of the church for thirty-eight years, and probably one of the pastors at Line Lexington, died in New Britain February o, 1815, aged seventy- eight. Among other ministers at this church in the past eighty years, can be men- tioned Henry Hunsberger, Isaac Hunsicker, Isaac Oberholtzer, George Landis Henry Moyer, and Abraham Moyer. Henry Hunsberger became a bishop and
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presided over the three churches of Perkasie, Deep Run and Doylestown, ad- ministering the ordinance of baptism and the Lord's supper. The oldest tomb- stone in the burial-ground attached to this church was erected to the memory of Abigail Shive, who died in 1783.
Captain John Robbarts, a later settler in New Britain, and long a resident in the township, was an Englishman by birth. There is some romance as well as mystery, connected with his life, which the public knew not of while lie lived among them. It was supposed that Robbarts was not his true name, that he followed the sea from his boyhood, had been an officer of the English Navy, and deserted it for our service. At what time he came to this country is not known with any degree of certainty, but probably prior to the war of 1812-15 with England, for, in 1813. he was commanding the private armed ship "Jacob Jones," of sixteen guns and seventy-four men, sailing out of Boston, and a number of valuable prizes fell into his hands. We next hear of him in command of one of Stephen Girard's merchant ships, where he won the reputation of a trusty sea captain, but, how long we do not know. On January II, 1820, John Brunner, Administrator of John Moyer, of New Britain, de- ccased, conveyed to John Robbarts, of Philadelphia, a message and tract of moderate size, in that township, on which he probably shortly settled and where he died. He soon became active and prominent in the affairs of his neighborhood. At this period the volunteer militia were nearly at their heiglit
in the county, and in them he took an interest. It was mainly through his efforts that the Union Troop, one of the most famous cavalry companies in the state, was recruited and organized. The first meeting, held for the purpose, was on the evening of July 20, 1822, at the Indian Queen tavern, Doylestown, Jater the "Ross Mansion," and Robbarts was elected captain. He resigned in 1831, and was succeeded by George H. Pawling who was elected May 7, 1832. Captain Robbarts' residence was known as the "Prospect Hill Farm." where he died on December 20, 1844, leaving a widow, Christian, but no chil- dren. She released the right to administer on the estate to Samuel Darrah. and Stephen Brock and Kirk J. Price, of Doylestown, appraised the personal property at $4,002.85. The settlement of the estate showed $5.083.08 per- sonalty and $7.380.So arising from the sale of real estate. The balance, in the hands of the administrator after the payment of debts was invested in state securities for the benefit of the widow.
The only congregation of Universalists ever in the county was in New Britain. The pastor, David Evans, was an eccentric character and a good classical scholar, but of a quarrelsome and contentious disposition. He lived on Pine run. He was a member at New Britain many years, but changing his views tried to divide the congregation and take part of it with him. He was prohibited preaching in the church and then dismissed, when he organized a congregation about 1785. On January 30, 1790, the members. all told. were. David Evans, Daniel Evans, Joseph Barton, Thomas Morris, Isaac Thomas, Daniel Thomas, John Riale, Gilbert Belcher, Isaac Morris and James Evans, who signed a document approving the proposal for a Universalist con- vention in the following May. In 1703 they report that they have been able to maintain weekly meetings most of the year. The report for 1802 says: "We have a little meeting-house, built in a convenient place. by the side of a public road, and finished in November last ( 1801). Since then we have had meet- ings for religious worship therein every first day of the week. . But a few only incline to meet statedly." The church sent delegates to the conventions in Philadelphia from 1790 to 1800, when the last was hekl. Thomas Morris
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was clerk during this period. The house they met in was built on Mr. Evans's own farm, some years ago in the possession of his grandson, J. Judson Evans. on the road leading to New Britain half a mile west of Sandy Ridge school- house in Doylestown township. It was subsequently used for a school-house. but has long since been torn down. Mr. Evans preached for the congre- gation to his death, in 1824, in his eighty-sixth year, when the little flock scattered. He was at the head of Universalism in his day, and was present at every convention from 1790 to 1824. He was buried in the Mennonite graveyard above Doylestown. Ile did a large amount of public neighborhood business, and attended to considerable in the courts before the seat of justice was removed to Doylestown. He was noted for his penmanship. Two of his pamphlets on religious subjects were printed at Doylestown : one a sermon on "Absolute Predestination," preached at the opening of the Universalist convention, at Philadelphia, May 17, 1806, the other, a lecture in the Univer- salist church. Philadelphia, in June, 1809. entitled "Remarks on the Baptist Association Letter." On the title-page of the latter he is styled: "Minister of the Universalian church, at New Britain." At his death his manuscripts were scattered and lost.
The record of the opening of original roads in New Britain is brief. but none of them are as old as the township. In 1730 the inhabitants peti- tioned for a road from the county line via Whitehallville, now Chalfont, New Britain and Doylestown to Buckingham meeting. It was probably not granted at that time, but shortly after. It followed substantially the track of the present road between the same points which meet the York road at Centreville. It was asked for "as an outlet from the Jerseys to North Wales and the Schuyl- kill." and soon became a thoroughfare of travel. The Almshouse road was laid out and opened about 1745. by the "New meeting-house" to the north- east line road in Warwick. One of the earliest roads in the township is that for many years called "The Butler" road. and I believe is still so called by some because Simon Butler had it opened. It starts from the store-house west of the bridge, at Chaliont, and runs to Louisville, a hamlet on the Bethle- hem road and was turnpiked in recent years. . It crosses the county line at Pleasantville, and joins the Bethlehem road at what was Rutter's, more recently Foust's, tanyard and opened to give the New Britain settlers an outlet to Philadelphia.
There is a tradition that the great Indian chief, Tamany, died and was buried near a spring at the foot of Prospect hill, three and one-half miles west of Doylestown. It is handed down in the Shewell family that a great chief, whoever he was, was taken sick while going to attend a treaty, and was left in charge of his daughter in a wigwam; that, chagrined at being left behind, he took his own life, and was buried near the spring. at the foot of a big poplar, by Walter, grandfather of Nathaniel Shewell. The most accurate computation of time fixes the date about 1749, but there is no. evidence that the chieftain alluded to was Tamany.16
This celebrated Indian first appears in history in his treaty of June 23, 1683, with William Penn, by which he granted him all the lands "lying
16 At a meeting of the Bucks County Historical Society, measures were taken to mark the grave spoken of, the committee believing the facts warrant the assumption that a great chief was buried near the spring; while no one vouches it was Tamany, but his death and burial have always been connected with it by tradition. Mr. Buck holds that Tamany could not have been buried at New Britain.
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between Pennapecka and Nessaninechs creek, and all along Nessaninechs creek." in consideration of as much wampum and goods as Penn might please to give him. Tamany, or Tamanend. appears in other treaties for lands in this county. But little is known of him. Gabriel Thomas, in his account of the province, published in 1698, mentions him as a great Delaware chief. but he leaves the inference that he was deceased. Heckewelder says: "All we know of him is that he was an ancient Delaware chief that never had his equal. He was in the highest degree endowed with wisdom, virtue, prudence, charity, affability, meekness, hospitality, in short with every good and noble qualification that a human possesses." The tradition that Tamany died and was buried near Prospect hill is not received without contradiction. Mahlon S. Kirkbride alleges that he died in a cabin in Buckingham township, and that a white neighbor buried his remains. He was a firm friend to William Penn and sometimes sat in Friends' meeting. If Tamany died about 1749. it is singular that none of his English contemporaries mention it.
New Britain has three villages, the one named after the township at the crossing of the old North Wales and Alms-house roads, Chalfont. on the North Wales road. a mile west of New Britain, and New Galena, three miles northwest of Doylestown.
Twenty dwellings, smith shop, two stores, and a Baptist church, which stands over the line in Doylestown township, and a small frame railroad station comprise New Britain village. On May 1, 1753. Thomas and Jane James conveyed a small lot to one Rebecca Humphrey, widow, near where the store stands. She afterward married William Thomas who probably built a log house on the lot before 1700, the first at the cross-roads. Be- tween 1740 and 1750 Jonathan Mason purchased twenty acres of Daniel Steph- ens west of the Alms-house road, about opposite the railroad station, and on which and near the house of Peter Landis, miller, he built a dwelling and a fulling-mill that was run by Cook's creek. The dwelling was repaired. 1830, and the old mill demolished. 1850. The seventy-five acre farm, just east of New Britain village, lately the property of Mrs. Keeley, and owned several years by David Evans, was somewhat noted in Colonial times. It was then owned by Aaron James, who sold it. 1764, to Samuel Mason, this family owning it for two generations. In 1839 it came into the possession of David Evans, and was sold, 1856, after his death. Since Evans purchased it. 1839, to its sale by the Keeley family, over half a century. it was only occupied by three families, those of Evans, Ilamilton and Keeley. Mr. Evans was an active Baptist ; his nearness to the church brought him a multitude of guests. and it was said, well nigh ate him out. This was during the pastorate of the Rev. Heman Lincoln, in the jo's, who boarded with him. A school house was erected near the graveyard and in it Mr. Lincoln taught a classical school for a few years. David Riddle at eighty-seven, told the author, that the first and only house at New Britain village at the close of the eighteenth Century. was owned and occupied by Alice Gray. On the corner opposite James E. Hill's, a building was erected for a pottery, 1807. by Ephraim Thomas, but subsequently changed into a dwelling. The postoffice was es- tablished. 1820, the first in the township, and Isaac W. James appointed post- master. his commission bearing date December 28th.
Chalfont, named after Chalfont St. Giles,1 a parish of Bucks, England.
17 During the plague in London, 1665. Milton made this parish his residence, and here he finished his great poem "Paradise Lost."
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where William Penn was buried in the Friends' yard, is situated at the forks of Neshaminy, formed by the main stream and north branch. Its earliest name as Barndtville, after John Barndt, the tavern keeper, then Whitehallville. but when the railroad was built, the postoffice and station were called "Chal- font." Simon Mathew was the first owner of property about the station, and his brother Edward owned a tract on the northside. One of these brothers, and several others of the name, removed to Virginia, and Mathews county, on the western shore of the Chesapeake, was named after them. The first building erected at what grew to be Chalfont, and occupied as a public house, was built by Henry Lewis, an early settler in Hilltown, who owned one hundred acres in the neighborhood and was kept by George Kungle, his son-in-law. It was built several years before the Revolution, and was lately standing near the present tavern. Kungle removed to Chester county during the war, whereupon James Thomas became the landlord and owned it at the close of century. It is said to have been a noted place for cock- fighting during the war. James Lewis, a teamster and soldier of the Revolu- tion. said that Morgan's riflemen, at one time, staid a week at Chalfont and amused themselves and the inhabitants, by shooting at shingles held by each other. When Thomas kept the tavern, the village had three houses, one opposite where Haldeman kept store, another owned by Thomas Mathews, and a third across the bridge. At present the village consists of a Lutheran church, two taverus, two stores, a steam mill, several mechanics and about fifty dwellings. Since the railroad was opened it has become quite a busi- ness center, and large quantities of farm produce are shipped to the Phila- delphia market. A postoffice was established at Whitehallville as early as 1843 and William Stephens appointed postmaster. The tavern at Chalfont was kept about sixty years by the Barndt family. The Hartzell mill was built, 1793. and the Butler mill, at the junction of Pine Run and North Branch, 1720-25. At that time there were no mills nearer than the Wissa- hickon and Perkiomen. The Butler mill was burnt down shortly after the Civil war and not rebuilt. Chaliont was incorporated into a borough in 1902. New Galena, a hamlet of a dozen houses, situated on the slope of the hills, ris- ing from the North Branch valley, was the seat of quite extensive mining opera- tion in the past. It is thought $60,000 were invested in the purchase of land, supposed to be rich in lead ore, in 1863, and much spent in developing it, but the enterprise was a failure. Louis Evans, a Welshman, was the first land owner in that section, but lived elsewhere. His holding was four hundred acres. Hle came carly, about 1710-15, an involuntary immigrant, the ship sail- ing while on shipboard bidding goodbye to friends about starting for Penn's Colony. The Rowlands, mentioned elsewhere, owned lands on the slopes of these hills the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and the Godshalks, of Ilolland origin, settled in this part of the township, 1765, coming down from Hilltown.
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