USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 34
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
cer, came from Virginia early in the last century and settled in the township, becoming the owner of several hundred acres of land, part of which is still in the family. We have not the time of his arrival, but it was probably shortly after 1730, as his first child was born in 1734. His wife was a Lewis, but whether he married before or after he settled in the township is not known. We know neither the date of his birth, death, nor the names of his children, except a son, Thomas, who married Mary Hollowell, of Sandy Run, Montgomery county. Their youngest son, Amos, married Ann Brown, daughter of Thomas Brown, who, with his wife, came to this country from Ireland about 1770. He was a fine classical scholar and an excel- lent penman. The descendants of William Spencer are still quite numerous in this county.
For nearly forty years after its settlement, what is now North- ampton township was known and called " the adjacents of South- ampton."4 When created it was formed out of territory not em- braced in the surrounding township, and was the last to be organized in this section of the county excepting Warwick, which joined it on the north-west. The 11th of December, 1722, a number of the in- habitants "settled between Southampton, Warminster and Ne- shaminy," petitioned the court to lay out this district of country into a township under the name of Northampton. The petitioners state that there are "forty settlements," probably meaning that number of families, were settled in the district. The petition was accompanied by a draft of the township with its present boundaries. We have not been able to find any record of the action the court took upon the subject, but no doubt the prayer of the petitioners was granted, and the township allowed and organized. It was probably named after Northampton, in England, the county seat of the county of the same name, sixty miles north-west of London. The names of those who petitioned for the organization of North- ampton township are, Clement Dungan, James Carrell, Thomas Dungan, Ralph Dunn, Jeremiah Bartholomew, Francis Kræsen, Cephas Childs, John Routlege, Christian Vanhorne, John Hay- hurst, Cuthbert Hayhurst, Robert Heaton, William Stockdale, Wil- liam Shepherd, James Shaw, John Shaw, James Heaton, Benjamin Jones, William Clukenberry, Jeremiah Dungan, and Johannes Van Boskirk. Among these names there is hardly one of the first settlers, who appear to have been supplanted by others.
+ On an old draft in the surveyor-general's office, of a survey of part of Northampton, it is styled : " A return of lands adjacent to Southampton."
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Prior to 1722 there were but few roads in the township, and none leading toward Bristol, the county seat, or elsewhere, in that direc- tion, or toward Philadelphia. The inhabitants traveled through the woods by bridle paths, and often had great difficulty in getting from one point to another. But as soon as the township was organized, they interested themselves in having roads opened. In September of this year they petitioned the court for two roads, one of them " to lead into the road from Southampton to Philadelphia." This was either an extension of the Middle road from about Springville, to which point it had already been opened, or a new road to meet what is now the Feasterville turnpike, then known as the King's road, which passed through Attleborough to the falls. The following year a road was petitioned for from Taylorsville to Newtown, and thence across Northampton to Addisville, to meet the Middle road. The road from the top of the hill below the Chain bridge in the Middle road, across Northampton to the Bristol road, and thence on the line. between Warminster and Southampton, to the county line, was laid out in 1761. Local lateral roads were opened through the town- ship as they were required.
Of the earliest settlers, William Dunn died in 1727, and Stephen Whitters in 1728. Of the second and third generations, Arthur Bennet died in 1818, aged ninety-two years, Garret Dungan in 1820, aged eighty, and Henry Wynkoop in 1816, in his eightieth year. There deceased in Northampton, in 1869, Mrs. Rachel Harding in her ninety-seventh year, said to have been the great- grandchild of the first white person born at Philadelphia. Five generations of descendants were present at her funeral. In 1728 Stephen Sanders-at what time he came into the township is not known-was fined twenty shillings by the court for refusing to work on the roads. Among the early mills in Northampton was Fletcher's, built before 1731, but how long is not known, and is sup- posed to have been on the Neshaminy.
One of the oldest houses standing in the township is the hip-roof dwelling on the Pineville and Richborough turnpike, below the Chain bridge, but at what time it was built is not known. It was owned by John Thompson, grandfather of William, of Doylestown, an hundred years ago, and its appearance indicates that it had con- siderable age on its shoulders at that early day. He bought the frame of the old Presbyterian church, Newtown, in 1769, and erected it for a hayhouse on this farm. The old Thompson mill on the
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Neshaminy, belonging to this property, was built about 1760. Dur- ing the troublous days of the Revolution the house was entered by burglars, who carried off silver spoons and money. Hearing them coming up the steps, Mr. Thompson jumped out of bed and got be- hind the door. As the burglars entered the room he struck one of them over the arm with an iron rod, which caused him to drop his pistol, and the other fired, but did no harm, when they both fled with their plunder. The Thompson house now belongs to Benjamin Fenton.
Northampton has four villages, Jacksonville, Addisville, Ricli- borough and Rocksville. We might enumerate Churchville as a fifth, on the Bristol road where crossed by the Richborough and Feasterville turnpike, and lies partly in Northampton and partly in Southampton. Jacksonville, almost a town without houses, with but three or four dwellings besides the ever present smithy, is in the west end of the township. It was ushered into the world with the euphonious name of "Tinkertown," which it bore for many years, and until it became necessary to give the great name of the hero of New Orleans to a new town. How it got its original cognomen is not known, but it is to be hoped it was not from any connection with that carly tinker, whose son Johnny, on one occasion, made way with a pig under very suspicious circumstances. It was many years the residence of John Hart, farmer and storekeeper, who trans- acted a large business and wielded a wide influence. Addisville and Richborough are properly one village, lying about half a mile along the turnpike, with twenty-five dwellings, two churches, Dutch Re- formed and Methodist, a school-house, store, mechanics, and two public inns. The former of these hamlets was named after Amnos Addis, its chiefest citizen, and was so called in 1817. In early days Richborough was called Bennet's and Leedomville, but it was hard for the public to give up the name, Black bear, which it was called for miles around, and yield to the modern name it now bears. The first tavern here was a little log building, said to have stood in a lot at the junction of the two roads. The White bear and the Black bear were famous trysting places for the lovers of fun of the generation now going off the stage. The two old taverns were popular head- quarters for country politicians, and many a slate has been made up and smashed within their walls. The author's first recollection of mimic war is connected with the blood-stained fields of Northampton lying around the two bears, where our doughty volunteers met, fall
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
and spring, to do their constitutional amount of drilling. But these days have long gone by, and most of the " warriors bold" have been called to the great drill-ground. The post-office for these united vil- lages is called Richborough. Rocksville, on the Neshaminy in the south-east part of the township, so named because of the rocky banks of the creek and hills, has a flour-mill, one store, a few dwel- lings, and a post-office, called Holland.
The Dutch Reformed church at Richborough is the child of the North and Southampton church. The mother church increasing largely in numbers, it was agreed in 1857 to erect a new church edifice at Addisville, and call an associate pastor. The new building was dedicated in April, 1859, and in January, 1860, the Reverend W. Knowlton was called to the charge. He left in the spring of 1864. In January of that year a friendly division of the church took place, the mother one retaining its corporate name, the new one assuming that of "The Reformed Dutch church at Addisville," and receiving one-half the parsonage and property at Churchville, valued at $5,350. The first consistory of the new church, chosen April 7th, 1864, consisted of the following persons : Henry S. Kræsen, senior, Gilliam Cornell, Jonathan Lefferts, and Theodore M. Vanartsdalen, elders, and Alfred Carver, Isaac Bennet, John Kræsen, and Thomas H. Hart, deacons. The first settled pas- tor was the Reverend G. De Witt Bodine, from the Classis of Geneva, New York, who was ordained and installed September 20th, 1864. He resigned in July, 1868, and was succeeded by the Reverend Jacob Ammerman that fall. The latter remained until April, 1871, when he was called to another field of labor. His suc- cessor, and present pastor, the Reverend J. Collier was installed the following November. This congregation is in a prosperous con- dition, and within a few years have erected a handsome stone chapel for Sunday school, prayer meetings, etc. The mother and daughter are among the wealthiest and most flourishing churches in the county.
July 4th, 1794, William Bennet, "late of Northampton township, Bucks county, blacksmith, but now of Long Island," executed an instrument under seal setting free his negro woman, Sarah, about twenty-seven years of age. It was acknowledged before Samuel Benezet, and witnessed by him and Isaac Hicks.
In 1761 Northampton contained one hundred and thirteen tax- ables. In 1784 it liad seven hundred and twenty-two white in-
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
habitants, ninety-one blacks, and one hundred and eight dwellings. In 1810 the population was 1,176 ; 1820, 1,411; 1830, 1,521 in- habitants and 311 taxables ; 1840, 1,694 ; 1850, 1,843 ; 1860, 2,048; and 1870, 1,896, of which 111 were of foreign-birth. The area is fourteen thousand three hundred and eighty acres.
In 1761 there was a bridge in Northampton called "Cuckolds- town" bridge, to which a road was laid out that year from James Vansant's, but we have not been able to fix the location of it or the stream. The old records speak of a tract of land called Cuckold's " manor, but we are equally in the dark as to its exact situation.
A post-office was established at Richborough, and Richard L. Thomas appointed postmaster, in 1830. Northampton must have been noted for her fat cattle more than half a century ago, for we find that in 1815 Aaron Feaster, one of her citizens, sold an ox in Philadelphia that weighed alive two thousand four hundred and sixty-four pounds.
The soil of Northampton is rich and fertile, and the township is watered by the Neshaminy, which forms its eastern boundary, and its tributaries.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
CHAPTER XXII.
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HILLTOWN.
1722.
Line of English settlers .- Welsh and Germans appear .- Large land grants .- First organized north of Buckingham .- Israel Pemberton .- Reverend William Tho- mas .- He builds a church .- His will .- John Vastine .- Changes of name .- The Owens .- Land taken up .- Henry Lewis .- The Morrises .- William Lunn .- Township organized .- Meeting of inhabitants .- Origin of township name .- Jacob Appenzeller .- Hilltown Baptist church .- Saint Peter's church .- German Luther- ans .- Villages .- Line Lexington .- Roads .- Bethlehem roads .- Population .- Surface of township.
A LINE, drawn across the county at the point we have now reached in the organization of townships, will about make the limit of country settled by English Friends. On the Delaware side they reached a little higher up, and peopled the lower parts of Plumstead, while toward Montgomery they fell short of it in Warwick and Warring- ton. Thus far the tidal wave of colonization had rolled up steadily from the Delaware, and township after township was formed as re- quired by the wants of the population. But now we observe a dif- ferent mode, as it were, in peopling the wilderness of central Bucks county. The immigrants came in through Philadelphia, now Mont- gomery, county, and were generally Welsh Baptists and German Lutherans and Reformed. A few English settlers planted them-
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
selves in the extreme north-west and north-east corners of the county, and at a few other points, but the old current of immigration was ap- parently turned aside by the new movement that flanked it on the south-west. We have now to write about new races, with manners and customs and religious belief very different from the followers of William Penn. In the course of time the Germans spread them- selves across the country to the Delaware, and upward to the Le- high, while the Welsh, fewer in numbers and more conservative in action, confined their settlements to two or three townships on the - south-western border.
In this section of the county, we mean north of Buckingham, and extending nearly to the present northern limits of the county, were located three large land grants, that required subsequent legislation. These were the tract belonging to the " Free Society of Traders," and the manors of Richlands and Perkasie. The first, containing nearly nine thousand acres. extended north-west from Buckingham, and embraced portions of Doylestown, Warwick and New Britain townships. The conveyance was made to the company by Penn before he left England in 1682, and it was surveyed to them before 1700. The manor of Richlands, which contained ten thousand acres, a reservation to the Penn family, lay mostly in the present township of Richland, and was laid out in 1703, while that of Per- kasie contained the same number of acres, and embraced parts of Rockhill and Hilltown. According to Oldmixon, it was surveyed soon after 1700. A more extended account of these grants will be found in a subsequent chapter. With these exceptions, all the land of the region we are about to treat of was subject to private entry and purchase.
Hilltown was the first township formed north of Buckingham. Settlers were here early in the last century, but it is impossible to tell when, and by whom, the wilderness was first penetrated. As was the case elsewhere, the first purchasers generally took up large tracts, and were not settlers. Among these we find Israel Pember- ton, an original land-owner in Hilltown. The commissioners of property conveyed to him two thousand acres on the 1st of October, 1716, in two contiguous tracts, which he sold to James Logan, Sep- tember 26th, 1723, and two days afterward Logan conveyed three hundred acres, in the central part of the township, to Reverend William Thomas, for £90. Mr. Thomas was one of the fathers of Hilltown, and one of the most reputable men who settled it. He
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
was born in Wales in 167S, and came to America between 1702 and 1712. Missing the vessel in which he had taken passage, he lost all his goods, and was landed at Philadelphia with his wife and one son, penniless. He first went to Radnor township, Delaware county, where he followed his trade, a cooper, and preached for a few years, when he removed to Hilltown, where he probably settled before 1720. He became a conspicuous character, and influential, ac- quired a large landed estate, and settled each of his five sons and two daughters on a fine farm as they married. In 1737 he built what is known as the Lower meeting-house, on a lot of four acres given by himself, where he preached to his death, in 1757. The pulpit was a large hollow poplar tree, raised on a platform, and in time of danger from the Indians he carried his gun and ammunition to church with him, and deposited them at the foot of the pulpit before he ascended to preach. In his will Mr. Thomas left the meeting- house, and the grounds belonging, to the inhabitants of Hilltown. This sturdy sectarian excluded "Papists," " Hereticks," and " Mo- ravians" from all rights in the meeting-house and grounds, and " no tolerated minister," Baptist, Presbyterian, or other, was allowed to preach there who shall not believe in the Nicene creed, or the West- minster Confession of Faith, or " who will not swear allegiance to a Protestant king." His children married into the families of Bates, Williams, James, Evans, Days and Morris. Rebecca, the daughter of John, the second son of William Thomas, was the grandmother of John B. Pugh, of Doylestown. The blood of William Thomas flows in the veins of several thousand persons in this and adjoining states. The following inscription was placed on the tombstone of William Thomas in the old Hilltown church :
" In yonder meeting-house I spent my breath, Now silent mouldering, here I lie in death ; These silent lips shall wake, and you declare, A dread Amen, to truths I published there."
Richard Thomas, in no wise related or connected with the Rever- end William, was among the early settlers in Hilltown. His sons turned out badly. Two of them entered the British army during the Revolution, William known as "Captain Bill Thomas," and Evan the second son. The latter accepted a commission and raised a troop of horse. He made several incursions into the county, with which he was well acquainted, and was with the British at the Crooked Billet May 1st, 1778, where he is charged with assisting
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
to burn our wounded in buckwheat straw. He went to Nova Scotia at the close of the war, but subsequently returned to Hilltown and took his family to his new home. There was a black sheep, in a political sense, in the Jones family. Edward Jones, a man of capacity and enterprise, served first in the American army, but dis- couraged by defeat and disaster, he raised a troop of cavalry among his tory friends and neighbors and joined the British at Philadelphia. His farm near Leidytown was confiscated. In 1744, Thomas Jones purchased three hundred and twenty-seven and one-half acres of Lawrence Growden's executor for £327. 10s. which he settled and improved.
John Vastine, by which name he is known, a descendant of Dutch ancestors, arrived about the time of William Thomas. Before 1690, Abraham Van de Woestyne immigrated from Holland to New York, with his three children, John, Catharine and Hannah. In 1693 we find them at Germantown, where they owned real estate, and the two daughters joined the Society of Friends. About 1720 John sold his land at Germantown and removed to Hilltown, where he bought a considerable tract of Jeremiah Langhorne. His quaint: dwelling, long since torn down, with gable to the road, stood on the Bethlehem pike, about two miles north-west of Line Lexington and four from Sellersville. His name is found on nearly all the original petitions for opening roads in Hilltown, and on that addressed to the court at Bristol, dated March 8th, 1724, from the inhabitants of "Perchichi," asking that the draft of Hilltown may be recorded, where his name is spelled Van de Woestyne. He died in 1738. The names of three of his children are known, Abraham, Jeremiah and Benjamin. The latter joined the Friends, and in 1730 applied to the Gwynedd monthly meeting for permission to hold meetings in his house. Abigail Vastine, granddaughter of John, the founder of the family, and a woman of great personal beauty, which she in- herited from her Holland ancestors, married Andrew Armstrong. John Vastine has numerous descendants in Chester, Northumber- land, and other counties in this state, and in Kentucky and some of the Western states.
There is, perhaps, no more curious circumstance connected with the history of names in this state than that relating to this family. The original name was Van de Woestyne, which, in the course of time, by a gradual change in the orthography, became Wostyne,"
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Voshne, Vashtine, and Vastine, as now spelled. The original set- tler was oftener called "Wilderness" than by any other name, which many supposed was given him because he had pushed his way among the first into the woods. At that day the Dutch and Germans were somewhat in the habit of translating their patronymics into English, and accordingly " Van de Woestyne" became "of the wilderness." After this the orthography was not much improved, for we find it written Wilderness, Van de Wilderness, etc., etc. Gradually the original name was abandoned altogether, and Vastine adopted in its stead.
The Owen family, Welsh, were among the earliest immigrants to this state and county, and some members of it became prominent in colonial days. Griffith Owen was a member of the colonial council from 1685 to 1707, John Owen was sheriff of Chester county in 1729-30-31, Owen Owen was coroner of Philadelphia in 1730, and sheriff of that city and county in 1728. Our Bucks county Griffith Owen is believed to have come from Wales in 1721, with a letter to the Montgomery church, and bought from four to six hundred acres in Hilltown, just west of Leidytown, where the old dwelling was re- cently torn down. He was in the assembly for eleven years, first appearing in 1749. As he followed the business of surveying and was a good clerk, he must have been a man of more than ordinary cultivation for the period. He married Margaret Morgan, probably of New Britain, and had four children, Owen, Ebenezer, Levi and Rachel. Owen married Catharine Jones, and had four sons and four daughters, Abel, Griffith, Edward, Owen, Margaret, Sarah, Mary and Elizabeth. The eldest son, Owen Owen, jr., was a man of active, vigorous mind, of influence in his day, and lived to the age of ninety. He married Jane Hughes, daughter of Christopher Hughes, of Bedminster, and had eight daughters, Catharine, Eliza- beth, Ann, Jane, Mary, Margaret, Zillah and Hannah. John O. James, of Philadelphia, is the son of Catharine Owen, the eldest daughter, who married Abel H. James. Between William Thomas's three hundred acres, bought of James Logan, and Griffith Owen, a settler named Buskirk took up a large tract, and the Shannon family took up land west of Owen.
The land in Hilltown was mostly taken up by 1720, and was chiefly owned by James Logan, Jeremiah Langhorne, Henry Pax- son, probably of Solebury, William Thomas, James Lewis, who died in 1729, John Johnson, Evan Evans, Thomas Morris, Evan Griffith,
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Lewis Lewis, Bernard Young, John Kelley, Lewis Thomas and Margaret Jones, who died in 1727. A Margaret Jones died in Hill- town in 1807, at the age of ninety-five, probably her daughter, leaving one hundred and fifteen living descendants, of whom sixty were in the third and eleven in the fourth generation. These land- owners were probably all residents of the township except Logan, Langhorne and Paxson. The manor of Perkasie occupied from a half to one-third of Hilltown. This section of country was better known by the name of Perkasie than by any other down to the time it was organized into townships, and was designated Upper and Lower Perkasie, the former referring to what is now Rockhill. The major part of the settlers were Welsh Baptists, and co-workers with William Thomas.
Henry Lewis, a Welshman, was settled in Hilltown, probably as carly as 1730. He is said to have been a political offender against the British government, and "left his country for his country's good." He bought about three hundred acres lying on either side of the Bethlehem turnpike, a mile from Line Lexington, also an hundred acres a mile west of Doylestown, near Vauxtown, and the same quantity at Whitehallville, which covered the site of the tavern property and extended up the west branch of the Neshaminy. He married Margaret, daughter of William James. His son Isaac Lewis, born in 1743, a soldier of the Revolution, was shot through the leg on Long Island while setting fire to some wheat- stacks that had fallen into possession of the British, and his comrades rescued him with great difficulty. He was with the army at Valley Forge, and from there was sent to Reading, probably as an invalid, whence he was brought home by his parents. Jefferson Lewis, the grandson of Henry, an intelligent old gentleman, a school-teacher for many years, lives on the ancestral property. He has in his posses- sion the veritable old Welsh Bible, that was brought over by his ancestor, in which is written " Henry Lewis, 1729," and a record of his children. Several families of Lewises settled in Hilltown, but were not all related to each other. Jeremiah purchased land in the northern part of the township. James Lewis was there early, but removed with his family to Virginia before the Revolution. The Lewises living in this township and adjoining parts of Mont- gomery are principally the descendants of Henry. In the early days of these Welsh settlements Edward Eaton, probably a step-son of Jeremiah Lewis, was the only man among them honored with
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