USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 15
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John Cutler, who made a re-survey of the county in 1702-3, was an early settler in Middletown. He and his brother Edmund came with William Wardle and James Mulineaux, servants, from Wood- house, in Yorkshire, in 1685, landing at Philadelphia the 31st of October. In 1703 John married Margery, daughter of Cuthbert Hayhurst, of Northampton, and had children, Elizabeth, Mary and Benjamin. He was county-surveyor in 1702 ; laid out Bristol bor- ough in 1715 ; was coroner in 1719, and died in 1720. Jane,6 the wife of his brother Edmund, died 4th month, 9th, 1715. Among the earliest settlers who came with children were: Nicholas and Jane Walne, three, Thomas and Agnes Croasdale, six, Robert and Elizabeth Hall, two, James and Ann Dilworth, one, William and Mary Paxson, one, James and Jane Paxson, two, Edmund and Isabel Cutler, three, James and Mary Radcliff, four, Jonathan and Anne Scaife, two, Robert and Alice Heaton, five, Martin and Ann Wildman, with six children. John Eastburn came from the parish of Bingley, county of York, with a certificate from Bradley meeting, dated July 31st, 1684. Johannes Searl was there before 1725, from whose house a road was laid out that year to the road
4 A further account of John Scarborough will be found in a previous chapter.
& He had one thousand and eighty-eight acres surveyed to him in Middletown.
6 Her name is given both as Jane and Isabel.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
leading to Bristol. Before 1700 Thomas Musgrove owned five hundred acres in the township, patented to Hannah Price, and after- ward came into the possession of Thomas Jenks.
We are enabled to trace the descent of several of the present families of long-standing, in Middletown, with greater minuteness than the foregoing. The Buntings were among the earliest settlers. In 1689 Job married Rachel Baker, and starting from this couple the descent is traced, in the male line, through Samuel, born 1692, married Priscilla Burgess, in 1716, Samuel second, born 1718, married in 1740, William born 1745, married Margery Woolston in 1771, William married Mary W. Blakey in 1824, parents of Blakey Bunting. Jonathan Bunting, from a collateral branch, is the sixth in descent from the first Job Bunting. In the maternal line they descend from John Sotcher and Mary Lofty, the maternal ancestor of the Taylors and Blakeys. Thomas Yardley, who mar- ried Susan Brown in 1785, had the Sotcher and Lofty blood from both lines, through the Kirkbrides and the Stacys in the paternal, and the Clarks, the Worrells and the Browns in the maternal.
The Croasdales are descended from Ezra and Ann, who married in 1687, through, Jeremiah, Robert, and Robert second, on the paternal side, and on the maternal from William, son of James and Jane Paxson ; born 1633, came to America in 1682, and married Mary Packingham. Robert M. Croasdale, deceased, in the female line, was descended through the Watsons, Richardsons, Prestons, etc.
The maternal ancestors of Isaiah Watson trace their descent back to William and Margaret Cooper. Blakey, the family name of the maternal side, first appears in William Blakey, about 1703; and about the same period the Watsons come upon the stage in the person of Thomas Watson the progenitor of those who bear that name in Middletown.
Thomas Janney is the sixth in descent from the first Thomas and his wife Margaret, who came from Cheshire, England, in 1683, through the families of Hough, Mitchell, Briggs, Penquite, Harding, Carr, Croasdale, and Buckman.
Simon Gillam is the great-grandson of Lucas Gillam, (who was a grandson of Anna Paxson, and descended from James and Jane Paxson,) who married Ann Dungan in 1748. On the maternal side the male line runs back through five generations of Woolstons, to John, who married Hannah Cooper in 1681. Jonathan Woolston married Sarah Pearson, of Burlington, New Jersey, in 1712, and is
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
thought to have been the first of the name who came to Middletown. Joshua Woolston, so well known in the lower and middle sections of the county, was the fifth in descent from John and Hannah. His mother, a Richardson, married Joshua Woolston, in 1786, who could trace his descent back to William and Mary Paxson, the common progenitors of many families of this county.7
In tracing the descent of families in the lower end of the county we find great commingling of blood. Several of them start from a common ancestor, on one side or the other, and sometimes both, and when one or two generations removed they commenced to in- termarry and continued it. Thus we find John and Mary Sotcher, and William and Margaret Cooper, the common ancestors of the families of Bunting, Blakey, Taylor, Yardley, Croasdale, Knowles, Swain, Buzby, Watson, Knight, Wills, Dennis, Burton, Warner, Stapler, Gillam, Kirkbride, Palmer, Jenks, Woolston, Griscom, Satterthwaite, Gummere, Paxson, and Deacon. These families have extensively intermarried.
Pierson Mitchell comes of the blood of the Piersons, the Stack- houses, the Walnes, and the Hestons, and is the fifth in descent from Henry Mitchell.
William Huddleston was an early settler where Attleborough stands, his land extending north of the village. He was a shoe- maker by trade and lived in a log house back from the road, on the lot now owned by Absalom Mitchener. The house was on the side of a hill, near a spring. In moderate weather he worked with the south door open to give him light, as he had no glass in the win- dows, but bits of parchment instead. Doctor Huddleston, of Nor- ristown, was his descendant, but the family has run out in this county.8
Abraham and Christian Vanhorne, Hollanders, took up land on the south side of the Buck road, parts of it within the limits of Attleborough, but the time is not known, who lived in a small log house in the middle of their tract. It is told of one of the brothers, that on one occasion, while he was gone to mill, his family went to bed leaving a candle burning upon the bureau, and that on his re-
7 Among them are the families of Jenks, Croasdale, Palmer, Briggs, Knight, Wills, Stackliouse, and Carr, besides those already mentioned. Mahlon Staey, the pioneer miller of West Jersey, was ancestor to the Bucks county families of Taylor, Yardley, Croasdale, Stapler, Eastburn, and Warner.
8 Possibly he was the William Huddleston who married a daughter of William Cooper, of Buckingham, before 1709.
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turn he found his dwelling in flames, which was destroyed, and with difficulty he rescued his wife and children. Gilbert Hicks came from Long Island, bought forty acres of land at Four Lanes Ends, and built the house, now owned by James Flowers, at the south-east corner of the cross-roads, in 1763. He was a "loyalist" in the Revolution, and fled to the British army.9
Joseph Richardson, the great-grandfather of the late Joshua Rich- ardson, settled at Attleborough as early as 1730, and about six years afterwards he bought the land of the Vanhornes. At his death he paid quit-rent to Penn's agent for over twelve hundred acres in Middletown, and North and Southampton, only two hundred of which remained in the family at the death of Joshua, the homestead tract at Attleborough. He married a daughter of William Paxson in 1732, and had six children ; Joshua, born November 22d, 1733; Mary, July 25th, 1735; William, October 3d, 1737 ; Rachel; May 29th, 1739 ; Rebecca, March 27th, 1742, and Ruth, October 31st, 1748.
AT The Jenkses are Welsh, and the genealogy of the family can be traced from the year AUDAY 900 down -to 1669, when it becomes some- what obscure. The arms, which have long been in possession of the family at Wolver- ton, England, descendants of Sir George, to whom they were confirmed by Queen Eliza- beth, in 1582, are supposed to have been granted soon after the time of William the Conqueror, for bravery on the field of battle.10 MODO DOMINU The first progenitor of the family in America was Thomas, son of Thomas Jenks, born in DS JENKS Wales in December or January, 1699. When JENKS' COAT-OF-ARMS. a child he came to Pennsylvania, with his mother, Susan Jenks, who settled in Wrightstown, and married Benjamin Wiggins,11 of Buckingham, by whom she had a son, born in 1709. She died while he was young, and was buried at Wrights- town meeting. Thomas Jenks was brought up a farmer, joined the
9 A further account of Gilbert Hicks will be found elsewhere.
10 The confirmation in the patent describes them as " Argent, three Boars Heades Coupee, and Cheefe indented sables, with this crest or cognizance, a Lione rampant, with a Boar's Heade in his pames," as copied from the records in the college of arms, London, in 1832.
11 The Wigginses came from New England.
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Friends in 1723, married Mercy Wildman, of Middletown, in 1731, and afterwards removed to that township, where he spent his life. He bought six hundred acres south-east of Newtown, on which he erected his homestead, which he called Jenks' hall, and built a ful- ling-mill on Core creek that runs through the premises, several years before 1742. He led an active business life, lived respected, and died the 4th of May, 1797, at the good old age of ninety-seven. He was small in stature, but sprightly, temperate in his habits, and of great physical vigor. At the age of ninety he walked fifty miles in a week, and at ninety-two his eye-sight and hearing were both re- markably good. He had lived to see the wilderness and haunts of wild beasts become the seats of polished life.
Thomas Jenks left three sons and three daughters : Mary, Eliza- beth, Ann, John, Thomas and Joseph, who married into the families of Wier, Richardson, Pierson, Twining, and Watson. His son Thomas, a man of ability and commanding person, became prominent. He had a taste for politics, was a member of the con- stitutional convention of 1790, and was afterwards elected to the senate, of which he was a member at his death. The descendants of Thomas Jenks, the elder, are very numerous and found in vari- ous parts, in and out of the state, although few of the name are now in Bucks county. We have not the space nor time to trace thein, for their name is almost legion. Among the families of the present and past generations, with which they have allied themselves by. marriage, in addition to those already named, can be mentioned, Kennedy, of New York, Story, Carlisle, Fell, Dixson, Watson, Trimble, Murray, Snyder (governor of Pennsylvania), Gillingham, Hutchinson, Justice, Collins, of New York, Kirkbride, Stockton, of New Jersey, Canby, Brown, Elsegood, Davis, Yardley, Newbold, Morris, Earl, Handy, Robbins, Ramsey (governor of Minnesota), Martin, Randolph, etc. Doctor Phineas Jenks, and Michael H. Jenks, of Newtown, deceased, were descendants of Thomas, the elder.
The story of "Lady Jenks," as written in Watson's Annals, has been too closely associated with the family of that name in Middle- town to be passed in silence. The allegation of Watson is, that when Thomas Penn came to this country he was accompanied by "a person of show and display called Lady Jenks," who passed her time in the then wilds of Bucks county ; that her beauty and accom- plishments gave her notoriety ; that she rode with him at fox-hunting
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
and at the famous "Indian walk," and that it was well understood she was the mother of Thomas Jenks, of Middletown. Watson gives "old Samuel Preston" as authority for this story, but adds that it was afterwards confirmed by others. This piece of Watson's gossip and scandal must stand upon its own merits, if it stands at all. Let the voice of History be heard in the case. Susan Jenks, a widow, came to America with her young son, Thomas, (born in 1700,) mar- ried Benjamin Wiggins, of Buckingham, in 1708 or 1709, died a few years afterward, and was buried at Wrightstown. Thomas Penn was born in 1703 or 1704, about the time Susan Jenks came to this country, which would make him three or four years younger than his reputed son. As Penn did not come to America until 1732, several years after Susan Jenks was dead, he could not have brought her with him ; and as he was not at the "Indian walk" in 1737, she could not have accompanied him, living or dead. These simple facts, which are susceptible of proof from family and church records, are sufficient to disprove the romantic story of Watson. A story so idle is not worthy of investigation. "Lady Jenks" may be set down as an historic myth, made out of the whole cloth. The only foun- dation for a story of this kind is the alleged liaison of William Penn, jr., with a young lady of Bucks county, when here in 1703. Of this James Logan writes : ""Tis a pity his wife came not with him, for her presence would have confined him within bounds he was not too regular in observing."
The Carters trace their descent to William Carter, who settled in Philadelphia, but located six hundred acres in this county, east of the Neshaminy, near Hulmeville, on a deed given to him by Penn before he left England. Carter was an alderman of the city, and was elected mayor in 1711. On the expiration of his term of office he removed to his tract in Middletown, where he spent the remain- der of his days. He has numerous descendants in this county, and in Byberry. The family is in possession of an old clock that has belonged to it since 1711.
The Middletown meeting, next to Falls, is the oldest in the county. Meetings for worship were first held at the houses of Nicholas Walne, John Otter and Robert Hall, 1682. The first monthly meeting was held at Walne's December 1st, 1684, and the next at Hall's, where Friends were to bring the dates of their births and marriages. They met sometimes at widow Hayhurst's, who lived across the Neshaminy in Northampton. Nicholas Walne and
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Thomas Atkinson were the first delegates from Middletown to the yearly meeting, September 2d, 1684. The meeting was called Ne- shaminy until 1706. The first meeting-house was built by Thomas Stackhouse in 1690, at a cost of £26. 19s. 5d., and £10 additional for a stable. One light of glass was put in each lower window in 1698, muslin or oiled paper being probably used in the others. Martin Wildman was appointed to clean the house and make fires at an annual salary of twenty shillings for the first year, and six shillings additional for the next. The first marriage recorded is that of Henry Paxson, whose wife died at sea, to Margery Plumley, March 8th, 1684. There were only forty-seven marriages from 1684 to 1700, less than three a year,12 evidence that the battle of life was too hard to allow much indulgence in matrimony. In the first fifty years there were three hundred and fifty-nine births in the bounds of the meeting, the earliest a son of James and Jane Paxson, born July, 1683, and thirty deaths to 1731. The sixth person bur- ied at Middletown was Susannah, daughter of John and Jane Naylor, who died September 27th, 1699. The quarterly meetings at Falls and Middletown were the only ones in the county, and they were held alternately at each place, until 1722 when a third was held at Wrightstown. The Friends at Middletown brought certificates from the monthly meetings of Settle, Coleshill, in Bucks, Lancaster, Westminster, Brighouse, in York, etc., etc.
Thomas Langhorne, a minister among Friends, came from West- moreland, England, with a certificate from the Kendall monthly meeting, and settled in Middletown in 1684. He took up a large tract below Attleborough running to Neshaminy. He died in 1687. His son Jeremiah became chief-justice of the province, was a man of mark and note, and died October 11th, 1742. He was a large land-owner. His homestead tract, on the Durham road below Attleborough, con- tained eight hundred acres and was known as Langhorne park. He owned two thousand acres in Warwick and New Britain town- ships, purchased of the Free Society of Traders, two thousand acres
12 Among the earliest marriages in Middletown were : Henry Baker to Mary Rad- cliff, 1st month, 7th, 1692 ; Edmund Bennett to Elizabeth Potts, 1st month, 8th, 1685 ; Walter Bridgman to Blanch Constable, 1 st month, 5th, 1686 ; John Otter to Mary Blinston, 2d month, 7th, 1686; Abraham Wharley to Damarias Walley, 6th month, 8th, 1687 ; Thomas Stackhouse to Grace Heaton, 5th month, 5th, 1688 ; William Croasdale to Elizabeth Hayhurst, 6th month, 12th, 1689.
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at Perkasie, and a large tract on the Monockasy, now in Lehigh, but then in Bucks county. In his will, dated May 16th, 1742, he made liberal provision for his negroes, of whom he owned a number. Those twenty-four years of age were manumitted, and others were to be set free on arriving at that age. A few received especial marks of his favor. Joe, Cudjo, and London were to live at the park until his nephew, Thomas Biles, to whom it was left, came of age, with the use of the necessary stock, at a rent of £30 per annum, and they were to support all the women and children on the place. Joe and Cudjo were given life estates in certain lands in Warwick township after they left the park. Langhorne directed houses to be built for some of his negroes, with fifty acres and stock allotted to each, during their lives. He was careful to specify that thie negroes should work for their support.
MANSION OF JEREMIAH LANGHORNE.
The Langhorne mansion stood on the site of the dwelling of Charles Osborn, two miles above Hulmeville. The old road from Philadelphia to Trenton, crossing the Neshaminy just above Hulmeville, made a sweep around by the Langhorne house, and thence on to Trenton via Attleborough. The part of the road from Neshaminy to Attleborough was probably vacated wlien the Durham road was opened down to Bristol. The park embraced the farms of Charles Osmond, George Ambler, and Caleb N. Taylor, and probably others. The mansion was built with two wings. The furniture in the parlor in the west end, in the cham- ber overhead, and in the closet adjoining, was not to be removed,
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
but to pass with the estate as an heir-loom. In 1794 four hundred and fifty-two and a half acres of the park were sold to Henry Drinker, Samuel Smith, and Thomas Fisher. The part unsold, two hundred and eighty-five acres, was called "Guinea." About one hundred and fifty acres in the south-west corner of the tract were enclosed by a stone wall, but it has long been removed to build stone fence. On the top the stones were set on edge. Fiddler Bill, the last of the Langhorne slaves, lived some time among the ruins of an old house on the premises, but was finally taken to the alms-house, where he died.
The villages of Middletown are Attleborough, Hulmeville and Oxford Valley, all post villages. Attleborough, the oldest and larg- est of the three, is situated at the intersection of the Durham and Philadelphia and Trenton roads, four miles south-east of Newtown, and seven from Bristol. The latter road branches just south of the village, one leading to the city via Feasterville, while the other crosses the Neshaminy at Oregon, and runs via the Trap tavern to meet the Bustleton pike. A third important road, that from Yard- leyville, falling into the Durham road at the upper end of the village, afforded the earliest outlet for the inhabitants of Lower Makefield to Philadelphia.13 Attleborough, built at the crossing and intersec- tion of these roads, was an important point in the lower section of the county at an early day. It was called Four Lanes Ends for many years, and within the present generation, and no doubt so named because of several roads meeting there. When the present name, Attleborough, was given to it is not known. In all old docu- ments, where the name is met with, it is written " Attlebury," which we believe to be the correct spelling. The village is built upon a broad plateau, from which there is a fine view on all sides, and is approached on the north and south up a considerable rise, on the two other sides the ground falling off more gradually. It contains a number of handsome dwellings, two Friends' meeting-houses, a Methodist church, and a tavern. The books of the library, one of the earliest in the lower end of the county, were sold a few years ago because it failed to receive the proper public support. The Philadelphia and Bound Brook railroad runs at the foot of Lang- horne's hill, less than a mile south of the village. At the foot of the hill to the north of the village is a public drinking-fountain dedicated to "Faith, Hope, and Charity."
13 Opened in 1721.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
As we have already remarked, Christian and Abraham Vanhorne and William Huddleston were among the earliest settlers in the township about where Attleborough stands. About 1730-35 Joseph Richardson opened a store in the west end of the building now the tavern, then a small hipped-roof brick and stone house, where he kept until 1738. He then erected the stone house on the south- west corner, where the late Joshua Richardson lived and died, where he opened a store in the south-east room. The goods were brought by boat to Bristol, and then hauled up the Durham road to Attle- borough. This store commanded a large country trade. The new dwelling was a costly and fine house in its day. It is related that when partly finished Mr. R. took a friend to look at it. As he was about to go away without saying anything, Mr. R. ventured to re- mark : "Thee does not say what thee thinks about it ;" to which the friend replied, "all I have to say is, take care thee does not get to the bottom of thy purse, before thee gets to the top of thy house." Mr. Richardson died in 1772, the owner of a large landed estate. The brick house, on the south-east corner, was built by Gilbert Hicks in 1763. After his flight it was sold, with the forty acres of land attached, to William Goforth. During the Revolution 14 the house was used as an hospital, and about an hundred and fifty dead bodies were buried in the lot opposite Joseph Stackhouse's, then a common. The ground was frozen so hard that the graves could not be digged of proper depth, and when spring opened the stench was so great the lot had to be filled up. In 1783 a tract on the east side of the village was laid off in building lots, one hundred in all, and streets projected through it. It was called " Washington square," and lots were donated to the three denominations of Baptist, Epis- copalian, and Presbyterian. Among the streets were Lamb, Mont- gomery, Macpherson, MacDougall and Willett, with a few alleys. The hopes of the projectors were never realized, and "Washington square" is now principally occupied by negroes.
Attleborough is the seat of an high school, established over forty years ago, and is now in successful operation under the name of Bellevue Institute. The movement that originated this institution was known as the "Middletown boarding-school association," and the first recorded meeting was held July 10th, 1834, when steps were taken toward the erection of a suitable building. Lots were bought in August of Henry Atherton, Walter M. Bateman, and C. N.
P robably in the winter of 1776-77.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Richardson, which cost $450. The carpenter work was done by Thomas Baker and Thomas Blakey, of Attleborough, the mason work by Evan Groom and Hazel Scott, of Southampton, for sixty-two cents a perch, and the brick work by Gillingham and Small, of Bris- tol, for three dollars per thousand. The dimensions of the building are seventy by fifty feet, and three stories high. The view from the top is very fine, over a beautifully variegated and richly cultivated country. The school was incorporated by the legislature in 1835. In 1837 an effort was made to get an appropriation of $2,000 from the state to the "trustees of the Middletown school association," but it failed, because in former years the Newtown academy had received $4,000. Before 1862 the school was known as the Attleborough academy, although called "Minerva seminary" on the books. The property was sold by the sheriff in 1846, and bought by four of the shareholders, who had claims against it for $3,000. They sold it to Israel J. Graham in 1862, who re-established the school, and called it Bellevue Institute, the name it now bears. It was bought in 1867 by William T. Seal, the present owner. Among the pupils taught at this institution in former times were, John Price Weth- erill, Doctor Samuel Wetherill, and Samuel J. Randall. The high- school building was erected mainly through the exertions and in- fluence of Mr. Myers, an intelligent gentleman who settled in the township a few years before. A post-office was established there in 1805, and Robert Croasdale appointed the first postmaster. The population of Attleborough is less than five hundred.
Hulmeville is built on the left bank of the Neshaminy, where the road from Trenton to Philadelphia interects that from Newtown to Bristol. The principal part of the village is situated on high ground, a little removed from the creek. It takes its name from John Hulme, who settled there in 1795, and purchased the site of the vil- lage and a large tract adjoining, with water-power. There was then but one dwelling, but in the next fifteen years it had grown to be a place of thirty dwellings, besides stores, work-shops, and mills, and a stone bridge across the Neshaminy. Mr. Hulme brought up his sons to practical and mechanical pursuits, and had them settled around him. For several years he would not allow a public house to be opened in the village, but entertained travelers at his own residence. When the growth of the town forced him to change his policy, he built a tavern, but prohibited the opening of a bar. In the autumn of 1809, Josiah Quincy, of Boston, with his family, on
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