USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 35
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88
-
372
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
the title of " Doctor," but his knowledge of the healing art was as limited as his practice. Moses Aaron, the ancestor of the Aaron family, settled near the New Britain line a mile east of Line Lex- ington, between 1725 and 1730, where he bought a farm, improved it, and raised a family of children.
The Morrises were English Friends, who arrived shortly after William Penn, and settled in Byberry. It is not known at what time they came into this county, but Thomas Morris was in Hilltown before 1722, and some of the family were in New Britain as early as 1735, and probably earlier. Morris Morris, a son of Cadwallader, and grandson of the first immigrant, married Gwently, daughter of the Reverend William Thomas, from which union come the Morrises of this county. They had nine children. Benjamin, the third son, became quite celebrated as a manufacturer of clocks, and occasion- ally one of the old-fashioned, two-story affairs of his make, with the letters "B. M." engraved on a brass plate on the face, is met with. He was the father of Enos Morris, who learned his father's trade, but afterward studied law with Judge Ross, at Easton, and was ad- mitted to the bar about 1800. He was a leading member of the Baptist church, and a man of great integrity of character. Benja- min Morris, sheriff of the county nearly half a century ago, was a brother of Enos. Enoch Morris, next younger than Benjamin, had a son James, who fell into the hands of the Algerines, and was one of those liberated by Commodore Decatur. He married a Miss Hebson, of Philadelphia, and settled at Cincinnati, and one of their sons graduated at West Point.
William Lunn, from England, was an early settler, whose son Joseph married Alice, the daughter of Lewis Evans. The latter was an unwilling immigrant. He was on ship-board bidding good- bye to friends about to embark for America, when the vessel sailed, and he was obliged to accompany her. William and Alice Lunn had nine children, who married into the families of Jones, Griffith, Brittain, Vastine, Thomas, and Mathew. Joseph, the third son, was killed in 1770, by being thrown from his wagon and run over in Germantown, on his return from market. William, the second son, joined the British army while it occupied Philadelphia, in 1778, and never returned home. William Bryan was a purchaser of real estate in Hilltown in 1743, probably the same who settled in Spring- field.
Hilltown was laid out and organized into a township in the fall of
373
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
1722. The inhabitants held several meetings on the subject, and there does not appear to have been entire unanimity among them. In the summer of that year a meeting "of several of the inhabitants of Perkasie" was called at the house of Evan Griffith to petition the court for a road to Richard Michael's2 mill. The question of a new township was evidently in their minds, for in a note at the bottom of the petition they say: "We agree that our township should be called ' Aberystruth,' unless it be any offense to our justis Lanorn."3 Twelve names are signed to the petition, embracing most of those already mentioned as among the earliest settlers. On the 3d of Au- gust the inhabitants of Perkasie held another meeting to consider the matter of being erected into a township. They drew up and signed a petition to the court, in which they state, that having heard the inhabitants of that section are to be organized into a township with the "Society4 and Muscamickan," they protest against it. They express a wish to be formed into a township by themselves, "to begin at the Long Eiland lind and run it along with the county line to Parkyowman."s They further state that they had lately fixed upon a place to "make a school-house" upon Perkasie, probably the first school-house in the township. The petition, signed by eleven of the inhabitants, was carried to Bristol by Evan Griffith, a long journey through the woods at that day.
We have no record of any further action being taken by the in- habitants in the matter of a township, nevertheless it was ordered and laid out that year. The only draft we have been able to get sight of, and which probably accompanied the return of the sur- veyor, gives it the shape of a parallelogram, except an offset of eighty perches, with the angles all right, and it contains the names of all the land-owners except Jeremiah Lewis. It has been thought the township was named after William Hill, who was mayor of Philadelphia in 1710, speaker of the assembly in 1715, and a judge of the supreme court in 1726. It was called "Hill township" in 1725.6 It is probable, however, that it was called "Hilltown" be-
2 Probably Mitchell.
3 Jeremiah Langhorne, then on the county beneh.
4 The settlements in New Britain were then called the "Society," because the land formerly belonged to the "Free Society of Traders." The locality of "Museamiekan" is not known.
5 Perkiomen ..
6 In old deeds for land in New Britain we find that township was ealled "Hillton" down to 1735, twelve years after it had been organized.
374
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
cause of the rolling and hilly nature of its surface.7 The present area is fourteen thousand five hundred and twenty acres. It is well- watered by the tributaries of the north-east branch of the Perki- omen, and some of the branches of Neshaminy. The soil is fertile, and agriculture the only interest that receives particular attention. In 1759 two thousand five hundred acres of the manor of Perkasie, lying in Rockhill and Hilltown, were given by the Proprietary to the University of Pennsylvania, on condition that it should never be alienated.
We have met with but little success in getting reliable accounts of the German families of Hilltown, which race now forms a large part of the population. About 1735 Jacob Appenzeller, an immi- grant from Switzerland, settled in the township. IIe married into the Oberholtzer family, and lived on the farm owned by the late Elias Hartzell, forty-five years, and died about 1780. He had two sons, Henry and Jacob. The former is supposed to have joined the British army in the Revolutionary war, as he was never after- ward heard of, while Jacob married into the Savacool family, and remained in Hilltown. He had two sons and one daughter, Henry, Jacob, and Elizabeth. Henry settled in Greene county, in this state, and Jacob married Elizabeth Ulp, had three children, and died in 1863, at the age of eighty-one. Gideon Appenzeller, of Hilltown, is the youngest son. Elizabeth, the daughter of Jacob, married George Miller, of Rockhill, where she now lives.
The Beringers of Hilltown are descended from Nicholas Beringer, a German immigrant, the date of whose arrival is not known. The 26th of June, 1777, he bought of John Penn one hundred and forty acres in the manor of Perkasie, marked No. 10 on the plat, for £350, charged with an annual rent of an ear of corn, to be paid on the 24th of June. It is probable he was in the township before this time. Nicholas Beringer was the great-grandfather of Amos Ber- inger, now a resident of Hilltown. Michael Snyder bought one hundred and thirty-six acres in the manor, plat No. 12 of the plan, June 19th, the same year, probably the first of the name who settled there.
In Hilltown are four churches, two Baptist, one union, Lutheran and Reformed, and one Mennonite. We have already spoken of one Baptist church, that built by the Reverend William Thomas,
7 As there are several townships and parishes in England called "Hillton," it is possible the name finds its origin there, with a slight change in spelling.
375
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
and known as the Lower meeting-house, where he leaned his rifle against the hollow log that served as pulpit, before he began to preach. The second of this denomination, called Hilltown Baptist church, was constituted in 1781 with fifty-four members, although service was held there several years before. It was the off-shoot of the Montgomery church, the parent of Baptist churches in this sec- tion of Montgomery and Bucks, and until regularly constituted the members went thither to take communion. The first pastor was John, the second son of Reverend William Thomas, born at Radnor in 1711, called to the ministry in 1749, ordained in 1751, and be- came pastor at Montgomery at the death of Benjamin Griffith. He had charge of both the Hilltown churches, and at the same time preached for a small congregation among the " Rocks," north of Tohickon. At the death of Mr. Thomas, in 1790, he was succeeded by Reverend James McLaughlin. The Reverend Joseph Mathias was chosen and ordained pastor in 1806, who officiated there until his death in 1851. His mother died in 1821, at the age of eighty- six. The present pastor is the Reverend Mr. Jones, a Welshman, who was ordained in the fall of 1875. The immediate organization of this church is due to the prevailing difference in political senti- ment during the Revolution. The inhabitants of Hilltown were much divided, the whigs probably predominating, but the tories were in strong force. Both sides were exceedingly bitter. The tories refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new government, but they were obliged to give their paroles not to leave the county. This was a great inconvenience to them, as they lived near the county line, across which they were accustomed to go on business, for pleasure, and to attend the Montgomery church, of which most of them were members. This situation afforded the whigs a good opportunity to annoy their less loyal neighbors, which they were not slow to avail themselves of. On one occasion while the tories were attending church, a vengeful neighbor had them arrested and taken before a justice of the peace, but the latter understanding the cause discharged them. This unpleasant condition of things hastened the formation of a new congregation, and the Hilltown church was constituted accordingly. Whigs and tories were united peaceably in the work. In the next two years there was an addition of forty members, making ninety-four in all. Of the constituent members thirteen were Thomases, six Brittains, and five Mathiases. The Hilltown church was torn down in April, 1875, preparatory to re-
376
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
building. In the corner-stone were found three pieces of silver coin, one ten and two five cent pieces, coined in 1802 and 1803. The documents, when exposed to the atmosphere, blew away like ashes. The old house was built in 1804.
Saint Peter's church, Lutheran and Reformed, on the Bethlehem road a mile and a half from Line Lexington, was erected in 1804-5, on a lot conveyed by the heirs of Abraham Cope, the 18th of June, 1803. At the corner-stone laying were present Reverends Messrs. Thomas, Pomp, and Senn, Reformed, and Messrs. Yager, George Roller, and Rewenack, Lutheran. The house was of stone, forty- five by thirty-eight feet, with galleries on three sides, and an ele- vated pulpit, and seats for about five hundred persons. When erected it was one of the handsomest places of worship in this sec- tion of the county. During the seventy years that it stood not over six hundred dollars were spent to keep it in repair. The Reformed congregation numbers about four hundred, and in the last fifteen years four new congregations have been built up from it. The Lutheran pastors, in succession, have been Messrs. Mench, Wyand, William B. Kemmerer, for thirty years, and F. Berkemeyer, who has been in charge for the last sixteen years. The pastors on the Reformed side served as follows : Reverends George Wack, 1805 to 1827. In 1821 J. W. Dechant supplied for Wack while he was a member of the legislature. Henry Gerhart, 1827 to 1834, H. S. Bassler, 1834 to 1839, I. W. Haugen, 1840 to 1842, A. Berky, 1843 to 1845, J. Naille, 1845 to 1852, A. L. Dechant, 1852 to 1858. Without pastor from 1858 to 1860. W. R. Yearick, the present pastor, commenced his pastorate in 1860. During the seventy years' existence of this congregation, the pastorates of Rev- crends Dechant and Yearick were the most prosperous. The con- gregation at present numbers two hundred and seventy-five members. The Reverend Abraham Berky subsequently joined the Dutch Re- formed church, and died in 1867, at the age of sixty-two. The Reverend Peter S. Fisher, who was pastor of this church, in con- nection with others, was struck with fatal illness while preaching there, May 22d, 1873. Some ten years ago an organ was bought for the church at a cost of $4,000. In 1870 the Hilltown cemetery association, a chartered company, laid out a burial-ground opposite the church across the turnpike, containing nine acres. Trees and evergreens have been planted, and the walks graveled. The church has shedding for two hundred horses. Down to March, 1875, there
377
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
had been very little alteration in the old building, but it was then torn down and a new house erected on its site. Saint Luke's church, Reformed and Lutheran, of Dublin, is a brick structure, built in 1870. The Reverend William R. Yearick was elected the Reformed pastor, and organized with fourteen members. It now has a mem- bership of ninety-three and a flourishing Sunday school. Reverend Mr. Fritz is pastor of the Lutheran congregation.
The German Lutherans, though numerous in Pennsylvania, had none to preach to them in their own tongue until John Peter Miller, a graduate of Heidelberg, arrived in Philadelphia, and was ordained by Tennent, Andrews and Boyd in 1730. In 1729 many Lutherans removed from New York to Berks county, among which was the well-known Conrad Weiser. The name German Reformed was changed to the Reformed church of the United States in 1869. It is derived from the Reformed church of Germany and Switzerland as distinguished from the Lutheran. The latter agrees with the Reformed church in holding the Heidelberg catechism as its Con- fession of Faith, but differs from it, in not requiring its members to subscribe to the Belgic Confession and the articles of the Synod of Dordrecht. It is the oldest of Protestant denominations which are generally known as "Reformed churches." It has been weakened in Europe by the union of portions of the Lutheran and Re- formed churches to form the "Evangelical church of Germany," but it still numbers some eight or ten millions of communicants. Scat- tered members of the Reformed church came to Pennsylvania soon after Penn settled the province. In a few years they began to arrive in large numbers, and the Reformed constituted the larger portion of the German immigration. In 1730 they numbered upward of fifteen thousand in this state. Subsequently Lutheran immigration became more numerous, and the Reformed have ever since con- tinued in the minority. The first German Reformed church in Penn- sylvania is said to have been erected at Skippack, Montgomery county, in 1726, but other churches claim the same honor. In the United States this denomination numbers about one thousand three hundred churches and one hundred and thirty thousand communi- cants. In this county the Dutch Reformed established churches several years before the German Reformed, and the pastors of the former churches co-operated cordially with their German brethren, preached for congregations that had no pastors of their own, and they were admitted members of the German Synod. The harmony
378
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
and Christian fraternity in which Lutheran and Reformed worship in the same church convey a lesson that should not be lost on other denominations. The Methodist church at Mount Pleasant, in Hill- town, built about 1842, grew out of a camp-meeting held in the neighborhood, the first in the upper end of the county.
The villages of Hilltown, or which she claims in part or in whole, are Line Lexington, Dublin and Leidytown, all small places. The first named, in the south-western corner of the township, lays along both sides of the county line between Bucks and Montgomery, and is in two counties and three townships. It contains about forty dwellings, with a population of 250, one tavern, two stores, three smiths and a coach-shop. The tavern is built on the line between New Britain and Hilltown, and while the landlord behind the bar stands in the latter township, the customer who takes a drink stands in the former. The landlord sleeps on the New Britain side of the house, and votes in Hilltown. An extension of the village has been laid out on the farm of Casper Wack, but there is no present pros- pect of much improvement. Hatfield township, Montgomery county, shares the honors of Line Lexington. At this point the Bethlehem turnpike, in its course from the Lehigh to Philadelphia, crosses the county line. Before the construction of the North Pennsylvania railroad Line Lexington was the great stopping-place for stages, from the Lehigh to Philadelphia, being half-way between these two places, horses and coaches were changed, and the passengers took dinner. Among the earliest settlers in and about the village were the families of Trewig, Harman, Snare, and Clemens. The post-office is in Montgomery county, but we do not know when it was established. Dublin is in the extrenie eastern section of the township, on the Swamp road, and lies partly in Bedminster, in which township it will be further noticed. Leidytown, a flourishing little village on the Old Bethlehem road, contains some twenty dwellings, and a Methodist church, built about 1846. Half a mile above, on the same road, is the hamlet of Mount Pleasant, consisting of half a dozen houses, the seat of Hilltown post-office, established in 1817, with Elisha Lunn for postmaster.
We have seen no record of roads in Hilltown earlier than 1730. In that year one was laid out from "Pleasant spring run by Ber- nard Young's land" to the county line near Græem park. This was an outlet for the settlers at the Great swamp, Rockhill and Hilltown, to the lower mills and Philadelphia. Four years afterward a road
379
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
was opened from Charles Morris's, by Perkasie school-house, to the Old Bethlehem road. About the same time a road was opened from Thomas Morris's to that from Sellersville to Whitehallville, which led via what is now Doylestown to Newtown, then the county scat. The road from the Swamp road to the Hilltown Baptist church was laid out in 1766. At that day the Swamp road was a much traveled highway to the lower part of the county. The two Bethlehem roads, known as the Old and the New, which run through Hilltown, were laid out at an early day. Books were opened for subscription to stock to turnpike the Bethlehem road, fiom Trewig's tavern via Sellersville, in June, 1806.
The first enumeration of inhabitants, in 1784, gives Hilltown 941 whites and 154 dwellings. In 1810 the population was 1,335; 1820, 1,501; 1830, 1,669, and 378 taxables ; 1840, 1,910; 1850, 2,290 whites and 11 blacks ; 1860, 2, 726, all whites, and in 1870, 2,869, of which 2,764 were whites, 5 blacks, and 129 were foreign- born.
The surface of Hilltown is rolling and hilly, and it is watered by the branches of Neshaminy and Perkiomen.
Hilltown was the birthplace of two members of the House of Representatives of the United States, John Pugh and Matthias Morris.
380
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
CHAPTER XXIII.
-
NEW BRITAIN.
1723.
Hudson's grant .- The Free Society of Traders .- Earliest settlers .- Welsh families .- Perkasie .- Settlers on West Branch .- Simon Butler .- Grist-mill built .- Simon Mathew .- Old houses .- Thomas Jones .- John Mathias .- Owen Rowland .- The Griffiths .- The James family .- John O. James .- Joseph Kirkbride .- Thomas Morgan .- The Riales .- Township organized .- Germans arrive .- Abraham Swartley .- John Haldeman .- Jacob Geil .- The Brinkers, Garners, Bachmans, and Shutts .- New Britain a Welsh settlement .- Settlers generally Baptists. -New Britain church .- Line Lexington church .- Some account of Mennonites. -Universalist congregation .- David Evans .- Roads .- Tammany .- Villages .- Chalfont .- Prospectville .- Morgan's ford .- Population. t.
THE formation of Hilltown in 1722, left a considerable tract of unorganized country lying to the south-east, and extending eastward to Plumstead and Buckingham. The following year a part of this territory was organized into New Britain, and a century later Doyles- town was carved out of it, with slices from Warwick and Bucking- ham. We learn from Holme's map, that the country north west of Buckingham, and embracing parts of the three townships named, had been granted to Thomas Hudson, "a gentleman of Sutton, England," Colonel Mildmay, of whom nothing is known, and to a corporation called the "Free Society of Traders," whose lands were sold to several purchasers some years later, and the corporation dissolved.
381
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Hudson's grant from Penn, dated April 23d, 1683, for five thou- sand acres, was among the very first land located by an individual in what is now New Britain. Its boundaries are hard to define, but it probably lay south-west of the Society lands on Pine run, and extended to the county line. It appears to have conflicted with the grant of Dennis Rotchford, and when the patent was issued it called for only four thousand acres. March 1st, 1689, Hudson sold to William Lawrence, Joseph and Samuel Thorn, John Tallman, and Benjamin Field, of Long Island, and in a few years the whole of the tract passed into the possession of several individual proprietors. The Society grant contained originally eight thousand six hundred and twelve acres. Subsequent to the patent, T. Stevenson made a sur- vey which cut off one thousand two hundred and thirty-two acres, probably the amount bought by himn. In 1706 another survey, 110 doubt a sale, cut off two thousand three hundred and ninety acres more, leaving about four thousand nine hundred and eighty-four acres in the hands of the corporation. This T. Stevenson was probably the Thomas Stevenson who, in 1719, purchased the Hudson tract of the five Long Island owners. The Society tract in this county ran one thousand one hundred and sixty-eight perches along the Buckingham and Plumstead line, and south-west of that line one thousand three hundred and sixteen perches after the Stevenson survey was cut off. These two tracts, so far as we know, furnished no settlers to the township until several years after 1700, although some of our local antiquarians tell us that Lewis Evans was in New Britain as early as 1695. This is just possible, although we have seen no confirmation of it. A Lewis Evan was an early settler in Hilltown, whose daughter, Elizabeth, was married to John James, the grandfather of Isaiah James, in 1740, and we learn from the books of the surveyor-general, that in 1735 Lewis Evan or Evans, purchased one hundred acres of the Proprietaries' land in " North Britain."
New Britain, like Hilltown, was peopled by immigrants who came up through Philadelphia, now Montgomery county, who were part of the flanking current that met the English from the lower Delaware. Between 1700 and 1715, a number of Welsh families settled in the upper part of Philadelphia about Gwynedd and North Wales, and naturally enough they soon found their way across the county line into the fertile territory of New Britain, and Hill- town, which then bore the nane of Perkasie, or Perquasy. Among
382
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
the early settlers on the west branch of Neshaminy and its affluents, were the families of Butler, Griffith, James, Lewis, Evans, Pugh, Williams, Owen, Davis, Meredith, Jenkins, Phillips, Mathews, Mor- ris, Thomas, Jones, Mathias, Rowland and others, whose descendants still inhabit this and neighboring townships in large numbers. This whole region was then traversed by bands of Indians, who lived in huts in the timber along the streams, and subsisted by hunting and fishing. They gradually removed except the few which re mained to die on the lands of their fathers. A few Germans came into the township soon after the Welsh; some bought land, while others leased of the Proprietaries, while others, still less enterprising, worked by the day or bound themselves for a term of years.
Of these early immigrants to New Britain, Simon Butler was probably the foremost man. He was one of a number which im- migrated from Wales about 1712, accompanied by his cousin Simon Mathew. Landing at Philadelphia, they settled for a time on the "London tract" in Chester county, whence they removed to New Britain between 1715 and 1720, and took up land at the confluence of Pine rnn and the north-west branch of Neshaminy, just east of Whitehallville. There they built a grist-mill on the site of Samuel Funk's saw-mill, the first in the township, and one of the earliest mills in middle Bucks county.1 In a few years Butler bought Mathew's interest in the tract, when he built a new grist-mill on the site of what is Shellenberger's. He became a large land-owner in the township. In 1745 he bought four hundred and sixty-five and a half acres of James, the son of Andrew Hamilton, to whom it had been granted in 1718. He was the only justice of the peace in this section of the county for several years. Simon Butler was a man of ability, and transacted a large amount of public business. He not only settled disputes between neighbors, but wrote their wills, sur- veyed their lands, settled their estates, assisted to lay out the public roads, etc. Such men are especially useful in a new community, and for several years he was the leading man in all this section. He was likewise an active Baptist, and promoted the erection of the New Britain Baptist church. His two sons, Simon and Benjamin, intermarried with the Jameses, and their descendants are numerous in the township. Simon Butler died in August, 1764.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.