USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 25
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It is impossible to say who was the first settler in Buckingham, and the time of his arrival, but it could not have been more than a year or two after John Chapman had seated himself in the woods of Wrightstown. It is probable all the first settlers of this region made a halt in Falls, or the neighboring settlements, before they pushed their way back into the woods about the great mountain. They were mostly members of Falls meeting, and it is said that some of them walked all the way down there to attend meetings, before they had permission to hold them in Buckingham. These settlers were of a better class, many of them were intelligent and educated, and the energy required in the settlement of a new country developed their best mental and physical qualities. Surveys were made as early as 1687, and before 1702 nearly all the land was lo- cated. This was before the Indian title had been extinguished to an acre in the township.3 Until grain enough was raised to sup- port the pioneers of Buckingham and Solebury the supply was fetched from Falls and Middletown. At the time Buckingham was first settled there was no store north of Bristol, and grain was taken to Morris Gwin's mill, on the Pennypack, to be ground, down to 1707.
It is claimed that Amor Preston was the first white man who set- tled in Buckingham, but the time of his coming or whether he was
3 Among the original settlers were John and Thomas Bye, George Pownall, Edward Henry, Roger Hartley, James Streater, William Cooper, Richard Burgess, Jolm Scarborough, Henry Paxson, John and Richard Lundy, John Large, James Lenox, William Lacey, John Worstall, Jacob Holcomb, Joseph Linton, Joseph Fell, Matthew Hughes, Thomas Weston, Amor Preston, Joseph George, Lawrence Pearson, Rachel Parsons, Daniel Jackson and Joseph Gilbert. Some of these settlers did not come into the township until after 1700.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
actually the earliest settler, is not positively known. He is said to have followed his trade, that of a tailor, at Wiccaco, where his cabin was burned, whereupon the Indians who lived about the Buck- ingham mountain, invited him to move up to their village. His wife, the child of Swedish parents who lived on the Delaware above the mouth of Neshaminy, was brought up in the family of James Boyden, who had five hundred and forty one acres surveyed to him in Bristol township, in 1682. Their eldest son, Nathan, erroneously said to have been the first white child born in Buckingham, was born in 1711, married Mary Hough in 1737, died in 1778, and was buried at Plumstead. His widow died in 1782. The descendants of Amor Preston claim that he married his wife at Pennsbury, in the presence of William Penn ; but as they were not married until 1710 or 1711, several years after Penn had left the province, not to return, this claim is not well founded. His widow died in 1774, at the house of her grandson, Paul Preston, in Buckingham, aged upward of one hundred years.+ She used to relate that she saw William Penn land where Philadelphia stands.
This family produced an eccentric, aud to some extent, distin- guished, member in the person of Paul Preston. By close applica- tion he became a fine mathematician and linguist, studying in a small building he erected off from his dwelling. He lead an active life until upward of sixty, dressed in homespun clothes and leathern apron, ate off a wooden trencher, and died from a fall into a ditch, at the age of eighty-four. His widow, Hannah Fisher, whom he married in 1763, lived to her ninety-fourth year. He was county- surveyor, tax-collector, and translator of German for the courts. He was six feet six and three-quarters inches in height. Paul Preston was the friend and associate of Franklin, who esteemed him highly. It is related, that a friend of Franklin, about to go to court at Newtown, asked for a letter of introduction to Preston, but the doctor declined to give it, saying he would know him easy enough, as he will be the tallest man, the homeliest-looking man, and the most sensible man he would meet at Newtown. His son Samuel, born in 1756, and died in 1834, was the first associate-judge ot Wayne county, where his descendants reside.5 Samuel Preston used
4 The Preston homestead was the farm now owned and occupied by Benjamin Goss, near the east line of the township.
5 The Preston coat-of-arms is almost identical with that of the Preston family of England, and the motto nearly the same. The surname and arms of the family were
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to relate of his grandmother, that when a little girl tending cows in the swamp near the Neshaminy, she discovered the dead body of a white man in the water, a peddler who had been seen about the day before. She was sent to the nearest house, one Johnson's, to give the alarm, that as she entered a little girl said her father had killed a man the night before, and a woman was then wiping up the blood.6
James Streater, of Alsfre, England, and Richard Parsons each owned five hundred acres, which they located soon after 1683. The former bought the tract which Penn granted to George Jackson, of Wellow, in September, 1681, and by the latter to Streater in 1683, which Penn confirmed March 5th, 1700. He sold it to Edmund Kinsey, in 1714, and at his death it passed to his heirs. The meet- ing-house stands on this tract. It was a parallelogram in shape, and lay on both sides of the York road from the township line to about Greenville. In 1714 Streater styles himself, " practitioner in physic," but as he was a grocer in 1683, he must have studied the healing art between these dates. Perhaps he practiced without study, and exclaimed with Shakespeare, "Throw physic to the dogs." Parsons's tract lay above Streater's, and was granted in 1682. He conveyed it to Thomas Nicholas, of New Castle, in 1727, and at his death in 1746, three hundred and thirty-four acres were bought by Stephen Perry, of Philadelphia. The farm of Joseph Fell is part of it. In 1688, a tract of a thousand acres was confirmed to Richard Lundy. At the close of 1684, a warrant for several thousand acres was issued to Thomas Hudson. The land was located in Buckingham and elsewhere, but not being taken up regularly, it
assumed, by royal license, by Thomas Hutton, a descendant of the Prestons, who was created a baronet in 1815. The family seat is at Beeston, St. Lawrence, Norfolk. The name of Preston is one of great antiquity in North Britain.
6 We find it impossible to reconcile the conflicting statements concerning Mrs. Preston. If she were a " little girl" when she found the dead man, (who was killed in May, 1692,) she could not have been over an hundred years when she died, in 1774. If she were married at Pennsbury, while the manor house was building, and Penn at the wedding, it must have taken place at his second visit, 1699-1701, for she was too young at his first visit. The theory that her son Nathan was the first white child born in the township is spoiled by the fact that he was actually born in 1711, and as he was the eldest child of his parents we have the right to suppose that they were married within a year of that time. The Buckingham meeting records contain the date of birth of seven children of William and Jane Preston, of Bradley, Eng- land, all born between 1699 and 1713. If we are to credit some of the Preston family records, Nathan was the only son of Amor and Esther Preston who grew to manhood ; and as all the children of Nathan are said to have been daughters, the first progenitors could not have left descendants in the male line beyond their son Nathan.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
was finally covered with warrants to other persons. In 1722, two hundred and twelve acres lying on the Street road, were surveyed to Joseph Worth.
The 21st of June, 1687, nine hundred and eighty acres were sur- veyed to Edward West, and nine hundred and eighty-four to John Reynolds, on both sides of the mountain on the road from Pineville to Claytown, the two tracts joining each other.7 The original pur- chasers never appearing, the land was settled upon by others, at an early day, without any color of title, and the improvement rights sold, down to 1769. The Proprietaries took bonds from the tenants against waste. In 1742 they sold five hundred acres of the West tract. From 1752 to 1760 there were numerous suits for the pos- session of these lands, and litigation was continued down to within the present generation. At various times those in possession took out warrants to locate by actual survey. In 1781 the Reynolds tract was declared an escheat to the Proprietaries, and the claimants un- der the escheat were permitted to take out patents at the rate of £15 per hundred acres. Those claiming to be the heirs of the first purchaser filed caveats against issuing the patents, and about 1788 one Reynolds, from Ireland, brought an action of ejectment, but was non-suited. The caveat claimants afterward brought suit, but were defeated. In 1808 John Harrison Kaign made claim to the property for himself and others. The last suit about these lands was terminated within a few years, in which the late, Thomas Ross was engaged as counsel. The absence of Reynolds was accounted for by his alleged loss at sea, and the Revolution was given as the cause of delay in bringing suit. There are two traditions about Reynolds, one that he was lost at sea in returning to England, the other that he was lost coming to America to take possession of his tract which had been located by an agent. On the trial several old letters were produced, one purporting to be written by John Rey- nolds in England to his brother in Chester county, stating his intention to sail for Pennsylvania to take possession of the land. The absence of West was not accounted for.
Robert Smith, the first of his family in Buckingham, was the sec- ond son of his father, who died on his passage from England. He arrived before 1699, and in his minority. His mother married a
7 The two tracts were re-surveyed by Cutler in 1703 by virtue of a warrant dated 11th month, 5th, 1702, and found to contain two thousand four hundred and fifty acres.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
second time, and on arriving at age he left the maternal home bare- footed. He took up five hundred acres of land. He made his way well in life, married in 1719, and died in 1745, possessed of seven hundred acres in Buckingham, Makefield and Wrightstown. He had six sons, and John Watson, the surveyor, said they were the six best penmen he had ever met in one family. He was the grand- father of Robert Smith, surveyor and conveyancer half a century ago, and the ancestor of Carey Smith, of Spring Valley. About the time of Robert Smith's purchase, came William Smith, with his son Thomas, and purchased five hundred acres adjoining Robert. When the township lines were run the latter's land fell into Upper Make- field, and was known as the "Windy bush" tract. These two families were not related. Joseph Smith, who introduced the use of anthracite coal into this county, and. Charles Smith, of Pineville, the first to burn lime with hard coal, were both descendants of Rob- ert Smith, the elder. Robert Smith, but from which of the original Smiths descended we do not know, was one of the pioneers in burn- ing lime, having burnt a kiln as early as 1785. It is uncertain when the first kiln was burnt in this county, but probably as early as 1761. The account book of Samuel Smith, grandfather of Josiah B., of Newtown, who lived on the Windy bush farm, shows that he paid John Long and David Stogdale for "digging limestone" in June, 1761. This work was probably done in Buckingham. In 1774 he charged Timothy Smith fifteen shillings "for hauling five loads of lime," and about the same date with one hundred and eighty bushels of lime at eight pence a bushel. January 2d, 1819, the lime-burners of Buckingham and Solebury met at Newtown to petition the legislature for an act to establish a bushel measure for lime. Buyers and sellers of lime were invited to attend. Thomas Smith, the elder, of Buckingham, planted the seed that grew the tree that bore the first Cider apples raised in America, on the farm where the first Robert Smith settled. This now excellent apple be- gan its career as natural fruit. The name, Cider apple, was given to it by an Irishman who lived at Timothy Smith's. Mahlon Smith says he remembers the tree perfectly well, and that it was a very large one. At one time there were ten Robert Smiths in the same neighborhood in Buckingham. Samuel Smith, a soldier and officer of the Revolution, was a member of this family. He was born Feb- ruary 1st, 1749, and died September 17th, 1835. He entered the Continental army in 1776, and served to the end of the war. He
18
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rose to the rank of captain, and was in some of the severest battles. He was an officer in Lafayette's brigade. After the war he married a daughter of John Wilkinson, and settled down as a farmer. In the war of 1812-14 he commanded a brigade of militia at Marcus Hook. He was the father of General Andrew J. Smith, of the United States army, who distinguished himself in the late civil war.
Thomas Canby, son of Benjamin, of Thorn, Yorkshire, England, born about 1667, came to Pennsylvania in 1683 as an indentured apprentice of Henry Baker, and was in Buckingham before, or by, 1690. He bought part of the Lundy tract, near Centreville, and married Sarah Garis in 1693. He was married three times, and was the father of seventeen children. Selling the Lundy property to Samuel Baker, he purchased part of the Scarborough tract in Solebnry, including the Stavely farm, which he sold to his two sons, Thomas and Benjamin, and afterward bought Heath's mills on the Great Spring creek, near New Hope, where he died in 1742. His descendants are nearly numerous enough to people a state. Among the families who have descended, in part, from this ancestry are the Laceys, Hamptons, Smiths, Elys, Fells, Staplers, Gillinghams, Paxsons, Wilsons, Eastburns, Johnsons, Watsons, Pickerings, Par- rys, Newbolds, Magills, Duers, Prices, Tysons, etc., etc.
William Cooper,s one of the earliest settlers of Buckingham, was descended from an ancestor of the same name, of Nether, some- times called Low Ellington, a hamlet on the river Vre, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England. He was born August 16th, 1649, and in the registry of his marriage at Mashamn the name is written, Cowper. He immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1699, and prob- ably came first to Falls, but settled in Buckingham the same year. His first wife's name was Thomasine, whom he married about 1672, three years before he joined the Friends, by whom he had three children, and one by Elizabeth, his second wife, all of whom came to America with him. He purchased five hundred acres from Chris- topher Atkinson, who died before the deed was made, but, under the will, the title was confirmed by his widow Margaret, "of Belmont, of Bensalem." In this conveyance the name is written Cowper, as it is in the parish record in England. Friends' meeting, in Buck- ingham, was first held at his house. This early settler died in 1709. His children married into the families of Buckman, Huddleston,
8 In "Bessies' Sufferings," vol. 2, p. 171, we read that in 1690 William Cooper, of Yorkshire, was fined 2s. 6d. This was our Buckingham William.
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Hibbs, Pearson and Bond. The family here recorded is not identi- cal with that of Cooper, the novelist. His ancestor, James Cooper, settled in Philadelphia in 1683, and theu owned the lot on which the deeds office now stands on Chestnut street, opposite the custom- house. He was probably a brother of William Cooper, of Coles- hill, Hertfordshire, England (born 1632, died 1710), who settled at Pine point, now Camden, New Jersey, in 1679, with his wife Eliza- beth and five children. Some of his descendants and relatives mar- ried into Bucks county familiies, his daughter Hannah to John Wool- ston, in 1681, and his nephew, William Cooper, to Mary Groom, of Southampton. Their son James married Hannah Hibbs in 1750, and another of their sons, Thomas, married Phoebe Hibbs, and lived many years in Solebury, where he died at the close of last century. Hannah Hibbs was the grandmother of James Fenimore Cooper, who thus descends of a Bucks county family in the maternal line. In 1723, and for some years following, his ancestor owned one hun- dred and fifty acres of land near Quakertown. James Cooper, the grandfather of Fenimore, took by bequest, under the will of his uncle, Samuel, in 1750, "ye plantation att Buckingham that Nathan Preston did claire out of ye woods;" and his brother Thomas took by the same will "the plantation that William Preston did claire out of ye woods." These were grandsons of James Cooper, who died in 1732, having lived fifty years after his arrival in America, and descendants of two Bucks county mothers. The first wife of James Cooper, of Philadelphia, was Sarah Dunning, of Southamp- ton. More recent inquiry proves that the ancestor of the novelist was probably born in 1645, at Bolton, in Lancashire. 9
The Byes were in the township before the close of the century. In 1699 Thomas Bye bought some six hundred acres of Edward Crews, Nathaniel Park, and others, which was laid out by John Cutler,
9 The Oswego (New York) Times, of May 3d, 1849, contains the following obituary notice of a Bucks county Cooper : "James Cooper died at eight o'clock last evening at the residence of his son, C. C. Cooper, esquire, of this city, after a short illness, in the ninety-seventh year of his age, having been born in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, on the 6th of March, 1753. He was a brother of the late Judge William Cooper, and uncle of James Fenimore Cooper. Till within a few days Mr. Cooper retained in a remarkable degree the powers and faculties of an athletic frame and strong intellect. He emphatically belonged to the iron race of the Revolution, to an age gone by, and was the friend and intimate acquaintance of Washington. At the commencement of the Revolution he served in the navy of Pennsylvania, and subsequently in the mili- tia of his native state, and participated in the hard fought battles of Monmouth and Germantown."
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
October 6th, 1701. It ran down to the mountain. The land Crews and Park conveyed to Bye was granted to them in 1681, but they were probably never residents of the township. He received two hundred and fifty acres from each of them, and one hundred acres from Samuel Martin, part of three hundred acres that Park conveyed to him. The Bye tract was bounded by lands of Richard Lundy, James Streater, John Scarborough, and vacant lands. The 5th of March, 1702, Nathaniel Bye, the son of Thomas, bought two hun- dred and fifty acres of Edward Simpkins, of Southwark, England, for £9, lying in Buckingham, and in 1706 Thomas conveyed the six hundred acre tract to his son Nathaniel, but it was not to be sold during the lifetime of the grantor and his wife. The grandson of the first Thomas Bye, also Thomas, died in Buckingham December 27th, 1727, in his eighty-eighth year. We believe there is not a descendant of the first Thomas Bye, bearing the family name, now living in the township. Charity Bye, daughter of Hezekiah and Sarah Bye, born in 1780, was the mother of Governor William F. Johnston.
The 3d of May, 1702, three hundred acres were laid off in Buck- ingham to Edward Hartly, by virtue of a warrant dated December 31st, 1701. This was part of a twenty-five hundred acre tract that Penn conveyed to John Rowland, who dying intestate, his brother took the land and conveyed to Hartly. Before 1702 Paul Wolf, Stephen Beck and John Scarborough were landholders in the town- ship. A thousand acres were surveyed to Isaac Duow, 10 as early as 1688, which bounded Richard Lundy's land on the eastern line at its upper corner, and in 1689 three hundred acres were surveyed to Henry Paulin, under a warrant dated May 3d, 1686.
The Paxson family came into Buckingham from Solebury, where the ancestor, Henry, 11 settled in 1704. His father, William Paxson, from Buckinghamshire, settled in Middletown in 1682, whence the son removed. Thomas Paxson, of Buckingham, is the fifth in de- scent from Henry who settled in Solebury, through Jacob, his fourth son, and his second wife, Sarah Shaw, of Plumstead, whom he married in 1777. But two of Jacob Paxson's large family of children became residents of Bucks county, Thomas, who married Ann, a granddaughter of William Johnson, and is the father of Judge Edward M. Paxson of the supreme court, and Mary, who
10 Probably a misnomer. Surveyed by Christopher Taylor.
11 Was in the assembly in 1705-1707.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
married William H. Johnson, and deceased in 1862. William Johnson was born in Ireland, and received a good education. He came to Pennsylvania after his majority, bringing with him an ex- tensive library for the times, settled in Bucks county, married Ann Potts, and removed to South Carolina, where he died at the age of thirty-five. His sons were all cultivated men, and Thomas became an eminent lawyer, and died at New Hope in 1838. Samuel, the youngest son, spent his life in Buckingham, married Martha Hutch- inson, and died in 1843. He was a poet of considerable distinction.
The Watsons came into the township the beginning of the last century. Thomas Watson, the first of the name, a malster from Cumberland, England, settled near Bristol, at a place called " Honey hill," about 1701, with his wife, and sons Thomas and John. He brought a certificate from Friends' meeting at Pardsay Cragg, dated 7th month, 23d, 1701. He married Eleanor Pearson, of Robank, in Yorkshire. In 1704 he removed to Buckingham, on four hun- dred and fifty acres bought of Rosill, bounded on the north-west by the York road,12 Being a man of intelligence he turned his atten- tion to medicine, and there being no physician within several miles he grew into a large practice before his death, in 1731 or 1732. He was interested in the education of the Indians, and it is said kept a school for them, but lost his most promising pupils by small-pox. Of his sons, John, a man of strong and well-cultivated intellect, and of greater medical knowledge, took his father's place, was a success- ful practitioner, and died in 1760. He was sixteen years a member of assembly. Thomas, the eldest son, died before his father. His son John, born about 1720, finished his education at Jacob Taylor's academy, Philadelphia, and became one of the most eminent men in the province. He was a distinguished mathematician and surveyor, and assisted to run the line between Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. He was noted for his elegant penmanship. He died in 1761, in his forty-second year, at William Blackfan's, and was buried at Buckingham. The newspapers of the day expressed great regret at his death. John Watson was secretary for Governor Morris at the Indian treaty at Easton, 1756. Franklin had promised to find the governor a good penman, and mentioned Mr. Watson. When the governor's party passed up the York road, Mr. Watson was out mending fence, barefooted, but on invitation to accompany them he threw down his ax and walked to Easton without preparation for
12 He refused to survey the tract on Penn's warrant without consent of the Indians.
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the journey. He engrossed the treaty on parchment, and his pen- manship elicited great admiration. Franklin says that after the treaty was engrossed the governor took off his hat to Watson and said to him . "Since I first saw you I have been trying to make out what you are. I now have it. You are the greatest hypocrite in the world." He was a large, heavy man, with a forbidding ap- pearance. He was both a scholar and a poet, and spoke good extempore verse. It is stated that on one occasion an Irishman, in- dicted for stealing a halter, asked Mr. Watson to defend him, who consented. The testimony was positive, but he addressed the jury in fine extempore poetry, beginning :
"Indulgent Nature generously bestows All creatures knowledge of their mortal foes," etc.,
and the fellow was acquitted. A memorandum of John Watson states that he grafted two apple trees with the "New York syder apple" in February, 1757, on his farm in Buckingham. Thomas Penn wanted him to accept the office of surveyor-general in 1760, which he declined.
Among those who came into the township about the time of Thomas Watson were Matthew Hughes, Joseph Fell, the Lintons, John Hill, Ephraim Fenton, Isaac Pennington and William Pick- ering. Matthew Hughes was in the assembly for several years, was a member in 1725, and commissioned a justice in 1738. Although he made a cross instead of writing his name, he was a man of ability and great integrity of character, and much esteemed.
Joseph Fell, the ancestor of the Fells of this county, son of John and Margaret Fell, was born at Longlands, in the parish of Rock- dale, county of Cumberland, England, October 19th, 1668. His father died when he was two years old. He learned the trade of carpenter and joiner with John Bond, of Wheelbarrow hill, near Carlisle, and worked at it as long as he remained in England. He married Elizabeth Wilson, of Cumberland, at the age of thirty, and in 1705 immigrated to America with his wife and two children. They sailed in the Cumberland, and made the capes of Virginia in twenty-nine days from Belfast. Landing at the mouth of the Poto- inac, they made their way by land and water via Choptank, French- town and New Castle, where they took boat for Bristol in this county. He lived in Upper Makefield a few months, and then re- moved to Buckingham in 1706, where he died. About 1709 he
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