USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 26
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
married his second wife, Elizabeth Doyle, of Irish and New Eng- land parentage, but born in this county, with whom he lived the rest of his life. He was the father of eleven children, and left thirty-five grandchildren, his children marrying into the families of Scarborough, Kinsey, Watson, Haines, Kirk, Church and Heston. He was the ancestor of Joseph Fell, of Buckingham.
Jesse Fell, the son of Thomas and Jane, and a descendant of Joseph Fell, the elder, born in Buckingham April 16th, 1751, was the first person to make a successful experiment of burning anthracite coal in a grate. About 1790 he removed to Wilkes- Barre, Luzerne county, where he became a respected citizen, held several county offices, CREST OF THE FELLS. including associate-judge, and died August 11th, 1830. He had burnt hard coal in a nailery, and was satisfied it would burn in a grate if it were properly constructed. He and his nephew, Edward Fell, made an iron grate, which was set in the fire-place of his bar-room, the afternoon of February 11th, 1808. His attempts had attracted considerable attention, and created no little merriment among his neighbors. He invited several of them to come and wit- ness the experiment, but only two came, from fear of being hoaxed. Among others he invited the Honorable Thomas Cooper, then president-judge of the courts, and afterward president of South Carolina college, to stop at his tavern on his way home. He did so and saw a nice coal-fire burning in the grate. Judge Cooper be- came very angry to find that he had been superceded in the discov- ery, and he walked the floor, muttering to himself, that it was strange an illiterate man like Fell should discover what he had tried in vain to find out. Mr. Fell made a memorandum of the successful experi- ment on the fly-leaf of "The Mason's Monitor," which he signed with his name and date.
The Carvers, of Buckingham, who came into the township early, are probably descended from William, the second of three brothers who came over in 1682, and settled in Byberry, Philadelphia county. John, the eldest brother, took up six hundred and ninety acres on Poquessing creek, in the north-east part of the township. The homestead remained in the family for six generations and until 1864. It is claimed that his eldest daughter, Mary, was born in a cave on the site of Philadelphia, the first white child born of English parents
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
in the province. John Carver planted two pear trees, which he brought with him from England, which are said to be still standing. Several of John Carver's descendants married into Bucks county families, his grandson John to Rachel Naylor, of Southampton, one great-grandson, John, to Mary Buckman, of Wrightstown, and an- other, Mahlon, to Amy Pickering, of Solebury. The latter was born in 1754, and kept the Anchor tavern at one time. William Carver traded his farm in Byberry to Silas Walmsly for land in Bucking- ham, near Bushington. His eldest son, William, married a daughter of Henry Walmsly, and removed to Buckingham, but we do not know whether the father did. The latter's wife dying in 1692, he married again and had four children. Either the father or son is supposed to have built the Green Tree tavern, at Bushington. Among the descendants of William Carver and Elizabeth Walmsly is Elias Carver, of Doylestown. Thomas Parsons took up five hundred acres, which were surveyed to him April 6th, 1700. George Claypole owned eleven hundred acres, mostly in Bucking- ham, which formerly belonged to one Mary Crap. This tract probably extended into the eastern edge of Doylestown township.
In 1700 the quarterly meeting granted leave to the Buckingham Friends to hold a meeting for worship, which was first held at the house of William Cooper, alternating at John Gillingham's, James Streater's, and Nathaniel Bye's. In 1705 Streater conveyed ten acres, in trust, to build a meeting-house on, and for a burying ground, with the privilege of roads to get to it. This was the lot where the meeting-house now stands. On the west side of the road that wound up the hill, and near the lower side of the graveyard, a small log meeting-house was soon afterward built. 13 On the establishment of a monthly meeting, in 1721, a new frame house was built a little further up the slope of the hill. In 1731 a stone house, with a stone addition one story high, for the use of the women, was built still higher up the hill. Some wanted to build where the present house stands, but prejudice for the old spot was too strong. In this house, in 1732, Buckingham Friends held their first monthly meeting. It caught fire April 8th, 1768, from a stove, during meeting, and was
13 In June, 1705, Buckingham Friends notified Falls meeting that they intended to build a meeting-house, and asked their advice, when Stephen Wilson and John Wat- son were appointed to collect money among Friends for Buckingham. The house was commenced that year, but it was not finished by September, 1708, when Falls meeting appointed Thomas Streater and Thomas Watson, "to get done with speed."
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
burned down. The present house was erected the same season, at a cost of £736. 14s. 12d., a fine old-fashioned stone edifice, forty by seventy feet, two stories high, with a panel partition to separate the women from the men.14 Until the new house was built and ready to occupy, First-day meetings were held at the house of Benjamin Williamson, near by.15
The meeting-house was used as an hospital a portion of the time during the Revolutionary war, and several soldiers were buried about where the turnpike crosses the hill, some of whose remains were uncovered when the pike was made. On meeting days the soldiers put one-half the house in order for Friends, and many of them attended service. The only monthly meeting held out of the house during the war was February 1st, 1777, in Thomas Ellicott's blacksmith shop. Buckingham Friends were among the earliest to see the evil effects from the use of whiskey at vendues, and the monthly meeting of April, 1724, reported against the practice. In 1756 the meeting bore testimony against war, by advising all Friends "not to be concerned in a military match, by attending in person or paying toward it." Two years afterward John Love was "dealt with" for enlisting as a soldier in the king's service. The two old horse blocks remaining, one at each end of the meeting-house, were built at the time the house was, in 1768. Then the young people of both sexes went to meeting on horseback, the general way of traveling from home.
The record of births, deaths and marriages go back to 1720. From 1725 to 1734 Buckingham and Wrightstown had a joint meeting, at the house of the former, where the marriages of the two meetings were celebrated. The first was that of Thomas Lancaster to Phobe Wardell, both of Wrightstown, October 19th, 1725, and the second, Zebulon Heston, uncle of General Lacey, to Elizabeth Buckman, of Newtown. During these ten years there were fifty- five marriages, and among the parties are the familiar names of Large, Paxson, Fell, Chapman, Preston, Janney, etc., etc. Among the members of this meeting who were active in the ministry in for- mer times may be mentioned John Scarborough, born in Bucking-
14 The mason-work and plastering were done by Mathias Hutchinson, of Solebury, and the carpenter-work by Edward Good, of Plumstead, father of Nathan Good.
15 The farm now belongs to Robert Ash, and an hundred years ago to Benjamin Kinsey, as part of the Parsons tract. It is related that a wild deer, one day, walked into the old meeting-house, looked round at the people, and walked out again.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
ham about 1713, and died in 1769, John Simpson, born in Falls 1739, removed to Buckingham when an infant, and died in 1811, on his return from a ministerial visit to Ohio, Samuel Eastburn, Benja- min Fell, Elizabeth Fell, Phoebe Ely and Ann Schofield. Ann Moore, a native of Bucks county, but we do not know that Buck- ingham was her birthplace, living in Byberry about 1750, was one of the most celebrated preachers of the day. She was brought up without much education, and married unfortunately, but she over- came all difficulty in the way, and became a powerful preacher. Doctor John Watson said of her that the "truths of the gospel flowed from her tongue in language, accents and periods somewhat resembling the style of the poems of Ossian." She and her husband moved to Byberry in 1750, where they resided four years, when they removed to Maryland.
While the yellow fever prevailed in Philadelphia in 1793, Jesse Blackfan and Benjamin Ely, merchants of that city, brought their goods up to the Buckingham school-house, still standing on the meeting-house lot, in the second story of which they opened and kept store until it was safe to return to the city. The meeting to form the first agricultural society organized in the county was held in this school-house.
The earliest boundary of Buckingham that we have seen is that entered of record the 15th of September, 1722, and is substantially as at present. How long the township had been laid out with this boundary is not known. The only change noticed is on the south- west side by the formation of Doylestown, and the taking in of some lands across Little Neshaminy. The following is the boundary given : "It shall begin at a corner by a street which lies between the said Buckingham township and Solebury township, and to run from thence S. W. by line of marked trees, 1,493 perches to a cor- ner by Claypole's land; thence N. W. by the said Claypole's 430 perches to a corner ; thence S. W. 210 perches to a corner ; thence N. W. by John Rodman's land 1,060 perches to a corner by the Society land ; thence N. E. by the said Society's land 390 perches to a corner ; thence N. W., by the same, 547 perches to another corner ; thence N. E. by Richard Hill's and Christopher Day's land 953 perches to another corner; thence N. W. 80 perches to a cor- ner by Thomas Brown's land ; thence N. E. 390 perches to another corner; thence by the said street 2,184 perches to the first-men- tioned corner, the place of beginning." We met with an old map
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
of Buckingham, dated 1726, which embraced the whole of the town- ship from the Solebury line to the west end of the mountain. On it is marked the York road, "falsely so called," the Durham road to "Ephraim Fenton's land," above Centreville, and a few other things of no special interest. All but a single tract of land is marked with the owners' name, twenty in all.16 Another old map, drawn a few years later by John Watson, the surveyor, of the Israel Pemberton tract, embraces the territory from about Bushington to the Warwick line. The only two enclosed portions are those of A. Mckinstry, three hundred and twenty-seven acres and twenty-eight perches, and Mr. Watson's, four hundred and seventeen acres and one hundred and thirty-four perches. The tract is now divided into twelve or fifteen farms. Doctor John Rodman bounds it on the Warwick side, and William Corbet and Ely Welding in Wrights- town. The quality of the soil is marked in several places, and the map has on it "a branch of Hickory Hill run," and Roberts', now Robin, run. Like all of Mr. Watson's work, the map is elegantly drawn. The Street road, which separates Buckingham from Sole- bury, was projected about the time the lands on the line of the two townships were surveyed, and was probably run by Phineas Pem- berton, county-surveyor, in 1700.
The Idens had been in the county many years before they made their appearance in Buckingham. Randall Iden, the first of the name we meet with, was probably married as early as 1690. In 1710 his daughter Dorothy married William Stogdale, an ancestor of the Buntings on the female side, and on the 16th of June, 1724, a Randall Iden of Bristol township, probably the son of the former, married Margaret Greenfield of " Middle township."17 Randall Iden, the grandfather of James C., of Buckingham, and son of Jacob, of Rockhill, married Eleanor, daughter of Samuel Foulke, of Richland, the 9th of March, 1772. Their marriage certificate contains the names of twelve Foulkes and thirteen Robertses. The great-grand- father of James C. Iden, on the maternal side, was John Chapman, of Wrightstown.
Doctor John Wilson, one of Buckingham's most distinguished
16 Names of land-owners : Ephraim Fenton, Samuel Hough, John Preston, George Howard, Joseph Fell, T. Worral, Isaac Pennington, Mercy Phillips, John Harford, Jacob Holcomb, Thomas Gilbert, Thomas Parsons, John Fell, Joseph Large, Ed- mund Kinsey, Matthew Howe, James Lenix, Richard Lundy and Nathaniel Bye. 17 Middletown.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
citizens, half a century ago, was the son of Thomas and Rachel Wilson, of Southampton, where he was born in 1768. After leav- ing the ordinary country school, he went to Philadelphia, then taught, and afterward a attended classical school kept by Jesse Moore, subsequently a judge in Pennsylvania, and where Judge John Ross and Doctor Charles Meredith were pupils. Here he was a close student, studying eighteen hours out of twenty-four. He next taught the classics in a school where the late Samuel D. Ingham was a pupil, where a friendship was contracted that lasted through life. He graduated at Dickerson college in 1792. He commenced read- ing medicine with Doctor Jonathan Ingham, and after his death by yellow fever in 1793, he entered himself a student with Doctor Cas- per Wistar of Philadelphia, and attended lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1796, being one of the first medical graduates from Bucks county. He worked his own way through college, and his medical studies by teaching and surveying, his father, being averse to his studying medicine, refused to assist him. After graduating he married Margaret Mitchel, daughter of Richard Mitchel, of Middletown, and settled at the place known as " Walton's mill," just below Ingham's paper-mill. Within a year he purchased of the late Samuel Johnson, the place known as Elin grove, in Buckingham, now owned and occupied by George G. Maris, where he resided until his death in October, 1835. His first wife died in 1821. In 1824 he married Mary Fell, the widow of William Fell, and daughter of Joseph and Phoebe Gilling- ham. By these two marriages he left four children. Richard and Sarah were children of his first wife. Richard studied medicine and settled in St. Jago de Cuba, where he acquired a large estate, and died in Philadelphia during a visit in 1854. Sarah married Elias Ely, of New Hope, and died of cholera in 1850. By his second wife Doctor Wilson had two sons, Elias and Henry. The firstis supposed to have been murdered on the 24th of December, 1868, at the head of the Red sea, while making a visit to the " Fountain of Moses, " in Arabia. Henry is living.
Doctor Wilson possessed a rare combination of desirable qualities. In stature he was tall and straight, light but vigorous, and with an excellent physique. In all out-door exercises of which he was very fond, he had few superiors. He was a fine horseman, as rider, driver, and judge of the animal, and in his youth was celebrated as a skater and swimmer. He had great quickness of perception, of an intrepid
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
spirit, and was equal to any emergency in his profession or ont of it. He was a fine surgeon, and performed capital operations with great success. But few men equalled him in the best combination of learning, practical skill and common sense. The late Lewis S. Coryell, a shrewd observer of human nature, and an extensive ac- quaintance with prominent men of his day, once remarked of him : "Doctor Wilson knew more, from a potato-hill up, than any other man I ever knew." He was handsome and courtly, his wives ele- gant and graceful women ; and for many years his home at Elm grove was the seat of a refined and generous hospitality.
Buckingham has been fortunate in the quality of her schools, some of which were well endowed before the common school system was adopted. In 1755, Adam Harker, a citizen of the township, left £40 by will toward settling and maintaining a free school in Buckingham, under the care of the monthly meeting. In 1789 Thomas Smith conveyed to the township a lot of land for a school house, on the north-west side of Hyrl's run, for a terin of thirty years at an annual rent of a pepper corn. This was on condition that the township build a house, twenty-two by twenty feet, on the lot before the expiration of the year, the school to be governed by a com- mittee of four. This was known as the " Red school house," which stood on the Street road, one hundred yards north-west of the creek. A new house was erected on the north-east side of the road many years ago, and is now used as a dwelling. Toward the close of the last century, the Buckingham meeting raised a school fund of $2,072, by subscription, the interest to be applied to educating children of members of monthly meeting in the first place, then to the children of those in straightened circumstances, and afterward all other chil- dren of members of the meeting. The heaviest subscribers were Andrew Ellicott and Oliver Paxson, twenty-five dollars each. When the society divided, the money was loaned in small sums, to the two divisions. A school is still supported by the fund. About 1808, the school fund of Buckingham and Solebury amounted to £758. 10s, near $3,000, but we are not informed of its present amount and con- dition. In 1790, several of the inhabitants of the township sub- scribed £99. 18s. 3}d. for building and furnishing a school house erected on the cross road just above Greenville, on a lot given by David Gilbert in trust. It was governed by three trustees elected by the contributors. A constitution for the government of the school was adopted May 16, 1792. It was given the name of Tyro hall,
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
and was at one time in a flourishing condition. The building is still standing, but the school has long since been discontinued. The last board of trustees was Jesse Haney, John C. Shepherd, and Joseph Beans, in 1854. Some good scholars were graduated at Tyro hall. Among those who taught there were, William H. Johnson, Joseph Price, Albert Smith, afterward a member of the bar, and died about 1833, and Joseph Fell.
Amos Austin Hughes, at his death, in 1811, left, by his will, the plantation on which he resided in Buckingham, and the remainder of his personal estate, amounting to $4,000, and $2,000 more, at the death of his sister, to create a fund for the erection and maintaining a school, to be called " Hughesian free school." It was to educate the poor children of the township, and such others as stood in need, for ever, and when necessary they were to be boarded and clothed. A charter was obtained in 1812, and a building erected soon after- ward, in which a school is maintained, governed by a board of trustees. The amount of funds held in trust is $21,450. Mr. Hughes, who died at the early age of forty-four was an invalid from his youth. He was a quiet and patient sufferer, was confined to his room for many years, and spent his time chiefly in reading and meditation. He contributed freely to the relief of the poor and afflicted during his life, while his generous bequests are evidence he did not forget them at his death.
Although Justice Cox came into the township at a recent date, he can trace his ancestry back among the earliest in the state. He is a descendant of that Peter Cock who settled between the Delaware and the Schuylkill in 1660, who was commissioner on the Delaware in 1662, a counsellor in 1667, and in 1669 Governor Lovelace con- firmed to him the patent for Tinicum island. In the course of centuries the name has been changed from Cock to Cox.
Doctor Arthur D. Cernea, a prominent practitioner of medicine, as well as a leading citizen of Buckingham, has been a resident of the township over forty years. His history is an exceeding romantic and interesting one, sufficiently so, we think, to warrant the sketch of his life and adventures found in the note below.18 Thomas Cer-
18 Doctor Cernea was born in Philadelphia, of French parentage, about 1806. His father, an officer of the French army, came to the United States near the close of the last century with his wife. She was likewise of a French family, which had lost a large portion of their estates in the West Indies during the Revolution which commenced in 1791. Contemplating a visit to France, from which they intended to return in a short time, they placed their eldest son, Arthur, a lad nine years of age at
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
nea, a son of the Doctor, is one of the most skilled architects of Philadelphia, and has planned a number of handsome buildings.
The Buckingham library was organized October 31 st, 1795. The by-laws were revised in 1820. For a number of years it was a flourishing institution, and was the means of disseminating intelli- gence throughout the neighborhood, but interest in it gradually de- creased until 1853, when the corporation was dissolved and the books sold at public sale. In this connection we must mention the "Buck- ingham lyceum," a literary society of some local note forty years ago, and which enabled many a fledgling in literature to get his productions before the public.
In 1806 Moses Bradshaw had a nail factory near Pool's corner, a mile from Doylestown, but in 1807 it was removed to Thomas Fell's smith-shop, on the road, between what was then Rodrock's and Vanhorne's tavern, now Centreville. In 1817 a peace associ- ation was formed in Buckingham, with William HI. Johnson as president, and John Parry, secretary. In June, 1819, the farmers held a meeting at Buckingham school-house to fix wages for hay and harvesting. Samuel Hanin, a distinguished, self-taught mathema- tician, died in 1820, at the age of seventy-six. Of the roads in the township, not already mentioned, that from the Tohickon, through
the Moravian school at Nazareth. To the present time no tidings of them have been received, except information obtained from the records of a lodge of French Masons lately discovered in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It is there stated that his father arrived in Philadelphia about 1793; the time of his depar- ture on his visit to France, a few years later, his mother's name before marriage, parentage, etc., etc. The anxiety felt by the over-absence of the parents was kept from the son, until discovered by the failure to receive his regular stipend of spending money. It was the opinion of those to whom young Cernea had been entrusted that the vessel had been lost at sea, or some other unknown calamity had befallen them. It was supposed that he would remain at the school until cared for, but the spirited boy, sensitive that a portion of his dues remained unpaid, left the school unknown to the faculty, with a small sum of money in his pocket realized from the sale of a box of paints. Thus alone in the world he started on foot for Philadelphia in search of his parents, stopping for the night at the inn at Jenkintown. Here he met one who proved a kind friend, Eleazer Shaw, of Plumstead, on his way to market, with whom he rode to the city, and to whom he related his story. After a fruitless search for his parents his kind friend persuaded him to go home with him, which he did. At this time young Cernea was about thirteen years old, having been more than four years at Nazareth. There he had acquired a taste for study, and he now devoted his leisure to self-improvement, encouraged by those with whom he had found a home. By his own exertions he qualified himself to instruct others, and at eighteen he commenced teaching at the "eight square " school-house in Plumstead, which, from its quaint appearance, was a landmark among the places of instruction in the olden time. He
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Greenville, over the mountain, was laid out in 1732, and from Wil- kinson's ford, on the Neshaminy, to Durham road in 1771.
Not the least important resident of Buckingham thirty years ago was a giant black man, known the county over as "Big Ben." He was a slave of William Anderson, of Baltimore county, Maryland, from whom he escaped when young, and settled in this township. He was arrested by his master in 1844 on John Kitchen's farm, in Solebury, after a hard fight, and sent back to slavery, but the citizens of Buckingham raised money to purchase his freedom, when he re- turned. His arrest caused great excitement in the county. Ben spent the last years of his life in the Bucks county alms-house, where he died in 1875, aged over seventy. He was a man of immense strength and great size, and his foot measured sixteen inches from heel to toe.
Buckingham was the birthplace of General John Lacey, a dis- tinguished officer in the Revolutionary struggle. He was the great- grandson of William Lacey, an immigrant from the Isle of Wight, and one of the earliest settlers of Wrightstown. His father, John Lacey, married Jane Chapman in 1746, and he was born December 4th, 1752. He was a captain in the expedition to Canada in 1776, and afterward served in the field as brigadier-general of Pennsyl- vania militia. While the British held Philadelphia General Lacey
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