USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 36
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1 It is a disputed point whether this mill or Dyer's mill, at Dyerstown, a mile above Doylestown, was the first in middle Bucks county. However this may be, these two were the earliest, and the only ones for a number of years.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Simon Mathew, who came with Butler, was probably the ancestor of all who bear the name in the county, mainly the descendants of Thomas and John, his eldest and youngest sons. He was probably married when he came to America, and John was born on the Lon- don tract, about 1713. The 18th of November, 1720, Simon Mathew purchased one hundred and forty-seven acres of James Steel, of Philadelphia, and in 1731 he bought one hundred and six- ty-seven acres more, of Jeremiah Langhorne, which had been part of the Society land. Thomas inherited the patrimonial estate, which remained in the family for five generations.2 The late Doctor Charles H. Mathews, of Doylestown, was the grandson of Thomas Mathew. The youngest son, John, married Diana Thomas, who was born in Wales about 1718, had ten children, died in 1782 at the age of sixty-nine, and his widow in 1800, upwards of eighty. Their eldest son, Benjamin, succeeded Simon Butler as justice of the peace at his death. The wife of the late Reverend Joseph Mathias was a daughter of Benjamin Mathew. The elder branches married into the families of Hough, Dungan, Mathias, McEvans, Meredith, Swartz, Drake, Bitting, Jones, Humphrey, James, Wallace, Thomas, etc., and the descendants are very numerons. Simon Mathew died about 1753 or 1754. Joseph Mathew, a descendant of Simon, died in 1842 at the age of ninety-five.
In 1744 John Mathew, son of old Simon, built the one-story stone house still standing on the upper side of the road from Doylestown to Whitehallville, and a short distance east of the latter place, and now in possession of Francis Shaffer. The first house took fire and burned down in September, that year, but was immediately re-built. It is the oldest dwelling in that section. In 1767 Benjamin Mathew, son of John, built a house on a one hundred and eleven-acre tract, bought of David Stephens, in 1760, which is still standing, in good condition. Stephens had previously built a house in 1732. This is the Mathew homestead, still in the family, owned by Mrs. Letitia Mathew, and the house stands a few hundred yards from the Ne- shaminy, a third of a mile south-west of New Britain station. The old hipped-roof house at the end of John W. Griffith's lane, on the road from Chalfont to Montgomeryville, is the oldest dwelling in that part of the township. It was owned in 1769 by Joseph Hubbs, who then kept store in it. The father of Mr. Griffith, who remem-
2 The farm lately owned by William Steckel, in Doylestown township, was part of this tract.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
bered it in 1775, said it was an old house then, but it is not known by whom it was built. The Griffith homestead is nearly an hundred years old.
Thomas Jones, born in Wales about 1708, came to this county at the age of eighteen, and settled in New Britain or Hilltown. He was twice married, the first time to Martha West, who died in 1759, and afterward to Jane Smith, and was the father of about twenty children. He acquired a large landed estate, and settled his sons around him. The mother of the Reverend Joseph Mathias was a daughter of Thomas Jones.
John Mathias, the progenitor of this large and respectable family in Bucks county, was born in Pembrokeshire, South Wales, near the close of the seventeenth, and came here with the Welsh immigrants the beginning of the eighteenth, century. He settled in Franconia township, Montgomery county, near the Bucks county line, a few miles north-west of Line Lexington, which locality was called " Welsh town" within the memory of persons living. He was twice married before leaving Wales, his second wife being a daughter of Thomas Morgan, and his third, Jane Simons, a widow. He died in 1747 or 1748. The late Reverend Joseph Mathias, his grandson by his second wife, was born May 8th, 1778, baptised September 29th, 1799, ordained July 22d, 1806, and died March 11th, 1851, in his seventy-third year. During his pastoral life he attended up- ward of seven hundred funerals and preached six thousand eight hundred and seventy-five sermons. The children of John Mathias intermarried with the families of Griffith, Jones, Thomas and Pugh. The Houghs, of New Britain, connected by marriage with the Ma- thiases, were descended from Richard, whose son Joseph married Elizabeth West. Her parents were early settlers in Warwick, and she was a sister of Joseph Mathias's grandmother on the maternal side. Joseph and Elizabeth Hongh had sons, Richard, Joseph and John, and seven daughters. The late Joseph Hough, of Point Pleasant, was a descendant of Joseph, the elder.
Owen Rowland, with his first wife, Jane, four sons and one daughter, immigrated from Pembrokeshire, Wales, about 1725, set- tling first on the Welsh tract, in Delaware conuty. He removed to Bucks county in 1727 or 1728, and settled on the north branch of Neshaminy. The majority of his descendants removed to the west many years ago, a grandson being among the first settlers at Uniontown, Fayette county, Pennsylvania. His fourth son, Stephen,
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
from whom those bearing the name in this township are descended, lived, and died in New Britain at the age of ninety, in 1811. He was twice married, his first wife being Anna, daughter of Reverend William Thomas, and the second, Rebecca Davis, an English im- migrant. They had tive sons and two daughters, who married into the families of Brittain, Thomas, Morris, Norton, Evans, Mathias and Bitting.
The Griffiths of New Britain are descended from Benjamin Grif- fith, born in the county of Cardigan, Wales, October 16th, 1688, came to America in 1710, baptised in 1711, settled at Montgomery in 1720, called to the ministry in 1722, and ordained in 1725. He was pastor of the church at that place to his death, in 1768. The wife of Benjamin Griffith was a Miles, and they had several sons and daughters. By close application he became a fine scholar, and among other accomplishments, he was a remarkable penman. He was pastor, lawyer, and physician to his congregation, and preached in Welsh or English, to suit his hearers. His son Benjamin became a Baptist minister, and settled near the Brandywine, in Chester county.
The Jameses, a numerous and influential family in New Britain, belong to this same Welsh stock. In 1711 John James and his sons Josiah, Thomas, William, Isaac, and probably Aaron, came from Pembrokeshire and settled in the eastern edge of Montgomery county. When the Montgomery Baptist church was organized, in 1719, with but ten members, John James, with his wife and three elder sons constituted one-half of the membership. In 1720 John and his sons, Thomas and William, purchased a thousand acres, part of the Hudson tract, in New Britain, on Pine run and North branch, and probably came into the township to reside about the same time. Josiah, Isaac and Aaron, whose wife was a member at Montgomery, remained on the other side of the county line, where Isaac became the owner of a thousand acres. John James probably died about 1726, as we hear no more of him after that date. In 1731 Thomas purchased one hundred and seventy-six additional acres of Society lands from Joseph Kirkbride. In 1738 William James bought two hundred and seventy-seven acres of John Kirkbride, north of Pine run and east of the Alms-house road, extending over Iron hill nearly to North branch. This tract was part of two thousand eight hun- dred and fifty acres which John Sotcher, of Falls, sold to Joseph Kirkbride in 1721. Kirkbride, who died in 1736, left his real estate
25
.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
to his son John by will. William James divided his property be- tween his children before his death, John, probably the eldest son, getting the homestead where Thomas C. James lives. The two brothers were now large land-owners. Soon after the first purchase William James built a house near where the dwelling of Thomas C. James stands. Thomas lived to be a very old man, and died about the time of the Revolution on the farm now owned by Adam Gaul, on the south side of Pine run. He probably had but two sons, Samuel and James. The former went to the western part of the state, and at the close of the Revolution the latter sold the farms, now owned by Eugene James and James E. Hill, to Peter Eaton and migrated to North Carolina. The mother of Thomas C. James, of New Britain, was a Williams, likewise of a Welsh family, whose uncle, of that name, was educated for the ministry, and was settled at Providence, Rhode Island, where he died. His grandmother was a Maitland, member of a Scotch family of Wrightstown. Several of the Maitlands were in the French and Indian war, and six of the Jameses were in the Revolution. John O. James, of Philadelphia, is the youngest son of Abel H. James, great-grandson of John James, the first, and his mother was Catharine, eldest daughter of Owen Owen, of Hilltown. Abel James, the father, was a farmer of Hilltown, but engaged in exporting produce from Philadelphia, died at Dover, Delaware, while there on a visit, in the fall of 1769. His son, Abel H. James, was born at Newtown, January 1st, 1770, and died in Hilltown in 1839. He lived for a time in Maryland and Virginia, but returned to Bucks county, and married Catharine Owen in 1803. Isaiah James, of New Britain, married Caroline, a younger sister of Abel H. James. All the Jameses of New Britain are descended from Thomas and William James, most of them from the latter. Levi L. James, of Doylestown, is a descendant of Thomas, and Nathan C. of William. Previous to the Revolution the farm of Samuel Oakford belonged to John, the son of Thomas James, the elder. He left it at his death to his son Benjamin, who sold it to Doctor Hugh Meredith in 1789, on his removal to North Carolina. In 1792 it was bought by Moses Marshall, of Tinicum, son of him who made the Great Walk in 1737, who sold it in 1810, and re- moved to Buckingham. One of Marshall's sons married a daughter of Richard Walker, of Warrington.
We have already mentioned Hudson's tract, and how in 1698 it fell into the hands of five gentlemen.from Long Island. In 1719 they sold
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
it to Thomas Stephenson, when they found that it contained a thou- sand acres less than the grant called for. Stephenson died the same year, when his widow, Sarah, and Joseph Kirkbride, the executor, sold the property as follows : Two thousand eight hundred and fifty acres to John Sotcher, of Falls, one thousand to John, Thomas and William James, and the remaining one hundred and fifty to Alexander Rees and Thomas Edwards. The farm of Abiah R. James is part of the Sotcher purchase. In some old deeds the "Kennedy tract" is recited, lying along the North branch and be- tween the Hudson tract and Hilltown, but we know nothing more of it. Of the Society lands which Joseph Kirkbride purchased in 1729, he sold two hundred and twenty-seven acres to Daniel Steph- ens in 1731, probably the time this family came into the township.
Thomas Morgan, a Welshman, bought one hundred and fifty acres of Isaac James in 1731 ; in two years the tract in two parts fell into the possession of William Jones, and John Thomas, of which sixty-five and a half acres now belong to Abiah R. James. whose grandfather bought it of the Thomas family. He was the eldest son of Isaac and grandson of William, and was born in 1745. Remains of the old dwellings are still seen on this tract, probably the houses of the carly Thomases, and Morgans. Thomas Morgan was probably the father of David Morgan, who, in 1760, owned the land on both sides of the Neshaminy where it is crossed by the Street road, when the crossing was known as Morgan's ford. The Riales were among the earliest settlers in New Britain, but we have not the date of their arrival. The tombstone of John Riale, the progenitor of the family, is the oldest in the New Britain graveyard with a legible inscription, who died in 1748 at the age of sixty, which makes his time of birth 1688. He was the great- grandfather of the present David Riale, who married a daughter of David Evans, the Universalist. The name of Patrick Kelley, a Welsh settler, is found on the early deeds, but he could do no better than make his mark. The members of this family were noted for their intellectual activity. Hannah, a daughter of Benjamin Kelley, married Moses Aaron, whose son Samuel was one of the most bril- liant men our county ever produced. Samuel Aaron was born in the house where Adam Gaul lives, a mile north of New Britain.
The first movement to organize the township was in the summer of 1723. The 14th of June " the inhabitants of Bucks county, situated and settled upon branches of the Neshaminy, adjacent to
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Montgomery, in the county of Philadelphia, " petitioned " the Hon- orable Beanch" to lay off and erect a certain tract of country into a township. The petitioners suggested that the new township should be called " Britain," but some years before this the settlers had named all that region of country "New Britain," after the island from which they had immigrated. The petitioners ask that the prayer of "ye inhabitants settled on peckquisi hills". to be made into a township may be "duly considered." The petition is endorsed " petition from Forks of Neshaminy," and the following names were signed to it : David Evans, David Williams, Thomas Edwards, Daniel Hide, Thomas David, Samuel Davies, David John, John Humphreys, Rees Lewis, William James, David James, Griffith Evans, John James, John Evans, Benjamin Griffith, John David, John Edwards, Simon Butler, Thomas Edwards, Simon Mathew, Thomas Rees, and Josiah James. The boundary cannot be cor- rectly made out from the original record, but we know that it was a good deal larger than now, and that its southwest line reached to the county line. Although we have not any record to confirm it, we believe the township was laid out and organized in accord- ance with the prayer of the petitioners, and probably in the fall of that year, and with the name it now bears, yet it was called "North Britain " as late as 1735.
Germans began coming into New Britain quite early, although they cannot be classed as original settlers. There was a number of families there previous to the Revolution, not less than ten of which were land-owners, some of them owning land as early as 1744. Among the names we notice those of Souder, Godshalk, a Menno- nite, who owned the first riding-chair in the neighborhood, Rephert, Lapp, Rosenberger,3 and Haldeman, most of whom were in the township previous to 1776. The Haldemans, who settled there near the close of the last century, are descended from one of two brothers who immigrated from Switzerland many years before. One, or both, of the brothers settled in Salford township, Montgomery county, whence John came into Bucks county in 1762. He bought two hundred and seventy acres of Benjamin Austin, in Milford township, on which he settled, and in 1786 he bought one hundred and forty-three acres of Samuel Nixon, of Richland. In 1790 John Haldeman, probably one of the brothers who settled in Salford, and great-grandfather of the present John R. Haldeman, came into New
3 He owned the property that now belongs to Abraham Swartley.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Britain and settled on two hundred and twenty-three acres on the county line which he bought of William Roberts, part of three hun- dred and twenty acres that Joseph Kirkbride had granted to Lewis Roberts, of Abington. Five years before, Jacob Haldeman, no doubt member of the same family, bought thirty acres in New Britain of Jacob Geil. He was probably a son of John the first, and the advance-guard in the immigration southward. John Brunner, a blacksmith of Saucon, in Lehigh county, came to New Britain, and settled at Castle valley about 1790, and the late Thomas Brunner was a descendant. The Brinkers came from Saucon about the same time, and the Garners came from Towamencin, or Worcester, Montgomery county, to Warrington about the close of the last cen- tury. The Barndts came from near Tylersport, Montgomery county, less than half a century ago, and gave the first name to Whitehall- ville, now Chalfont. The Detweilers, numerous in New Britain and Bedminster, sprung from ancestors who immigrated from Germany about the middle of the last century and settled in Horsham and Whitpain. The Shutt family removed down from one of the upper townships of Montgomery about three-quarters of a century ago, and the Kepharts and Meyers came into the township about the same time. The Leidys are said to have descended from one of three brothers who immigrated from Germany, one settled in Mont- gomery county, a second in Lehigh, and a third in Bucks. The Godshalks are old residents, and were members of the Montgomery Baptist church as long ago as 1770.
The Bachmans of New Britain are descended from a German im- migrant, great-grandfather of Jacob Bachman, whose name and time of arrival are not known. He probably settled in this county, and possibly in Hilltown, where his grandson, John, the father of Jacob, was born about 1785. John had two children, Jacob and Mary. The latter is dead, but Jacob lives at Line Lexington, on the New Britain side of the line. Charles Eckert, the ancestor of the Eckert family, was born in 1742, and came to America in 1761, at the age of nineteen. He was sold for three years, to pay his pas- sage, to a man who lived at Oley, Berks county, who taught him the blacksmith trade. Eckert was smart and industrious, saved money, and married his employer's daughter. He was a captain in the American army in the Revolution. In 1797 he walked down from Berks county, and bought near three hundred acres in New Britain of "Quaker" Thomas Jones, north of Newville, the greater part of which Jones had bought of Abel James in 1768.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
New Britain was essentially a Welsh settlement, and for many years that race largely predominated in the population, and is yet strong in numbers and influence. Her early settlers were likewise Baptists, which explains the preponderance of that denomination in the township at the present day.
The Reverends William Thomas and Benjamin Grffith, the for- mer pastor at Hilltown and the latter at Montgomery, across the county line, extended their labors among the New Britain settle- ments and to the region north-west of Hilltown, beyond the To- hickon, and were the only ministers of the gospel throughout all that section for several years. The Welsh Baptists connected them- selves with the Montgomery church, and formed part of that con- gregation until the church at New Britain was constituted, about 1740. This church, in part, owes its origin to a quarrel between the Baptists settled at New Britain and Montgomery about the "son- ship of Christ." We are told that the first person buried in the Baptist graveyard was a woman, carried from a house that stood near the intersection of the railroad with the road leading to Lan- disville, and near the village of New Britain. At one time the house belonged to a man named Gray, and the lowland adjoining has al- ways been known as Gray's meadow. This lot, of fourteen acres, was reserved by David Stephens when he sold the surrounding property to John Mathew, in 1760, and was not conveyed to the lat- ter until 1764. The site of the house is pointed out by a depression in the ground, but when and by whom built is a mystery. This burial probably took place about 1740.
The early settlement of German Mennonites in New Britain led to the organization of a church of this denomination. In 1752 a lot of about one acre was bought of James McColister in the north-west corner of the township, near the Hilltown line, on which a log meet- ing-house was erected. The lot was afterward enlarged to between three and four acres. The first deed was made in trust to one Roar and Christian Swartz, of New Britain, and Henry Shooter and John Rosenberger, of Hatfield. When the log house was found too small to accommodate the growing congregation, it was torn down and a stone one erected in its place. This was enlarged to double the capacity in 1808, and in 1868 this house was taken down and a new stone church, forty-five by sixty feet, built on the site. This organization is sometimes called the Line Lexington church, and at others the Perkasie church.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Mennonites were almost the first religious sect on the banks of the Delaware. About 1662 some of the followers of Menno Simon came from Holland and settled at Whorekill, where the Dutch made them a grant free from all impost and taxation for twenty years. When the Delaware fell into the hands of the English, two years afterward, these unoffending people were severe sufferers. The con- querors robbed them of their goods, and many of them were sold as slaves to Virginia. They were among the early German immigrants. to the banks of the Schuylkill. They purchased a lot at German- town in 1703, and five years afterward erected thereon a frame meeting-house. The church was organized May 23d, 1708, and they worshiped in the old building until 1770, when the frame was replaced by a substantial stone structure, whose centennial was celebrated in 1870. This modest frame was the parent church of this denomination in America. John Sensen is said to have been the first Mennonite who came to Philadelphia and Ger- mantown. Just when this sect came into Bucks county is not known, but they were among the earliest German immigrants who penetrated the wilderness of the upper townships in the first thirty years of the last century, and now constitute a considerable portion of our rural German population. They are almost universally farm- ers, and in point of morals, integrity and industry, are second to no class of the inhabitants of our county. They are plain in dress, frugal in living, and poverty among them is almost unknown, leading a simple life, and mingle but little with the great outside world. They agree with the Friends in their opposition to war.
The Mennonites of Bucks county being without a written history, we find it difficult to trace their churches and congregations. They have churches in New Britain, Rockhill, Milford, Springfield, Bed- minster, Doylestown, and probably elsewhere. New Britain was one of the first townships they settled in, and the Line Lexington congregation is one of the oldest in the county. The Reverend John Geil, son of Jacob Geil who immigrated from Alsace, or a neighboring province on the Rhine, at the age of eight years and settled in Plumstead, was one of their ablest ministers. Jacob, the son, was born there in April, 1778. The father, who married a sister of Valentine Clymer, of New Britain, removed to Chester county, and soon afterward to Virginia. Jacob was apprenticed to learn the tanning-trade, but liking neither the trade nor the master, he ran away and returned to Bucks county in his eighteenth or
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
twentieth year. He married Elizabeth Fretz, of New Jersey, April 22d, 1802, and had nine children, of whom Samuel Geil, of Doyles- town, is one. He probably joined the Doylestown church, and in 1810 or 1811 he was called to the ministry, at Line Lexington, where he preached until 1852. His wife died November 5th, 1849, in her sixty-ninth year, and he the 6th of January, 1866, in his eighty-eighth year, in Plumstead township, the place of his birth. He was a man of strong mind, extensive reading, and had a remark- ably retentive memory. John Holdman, a member in the church for thirty-eight years, and probably one of the pastors at Line Lex- ington, died in New Britain February 9th, 1815, aged seventy-eight years. Among other ministers at this church in the past sixty years, can be mentioned Hunsberger, Isaac Hunsicker, Isaac Oberholtzer, George Landis, Henry Moyer, and Abraham Moyer. Henry Huns- berger became a bishop and presided over the three churches of Perkasie, Deep Run and Doylestown, administering the ordinance of baptism and the Lord's Supper. The oldest tombstone in the burial-ground attached to this church was erected to the memory of Abigail Shive, who died in 1783.
The only congregation of Universalists ever in the county was in New Britain. The pastor, David Evans, was an eccentric character and a good classical scholar, but of a quarrelsome and contentious disposition, who lived on Pine run. He was a member at New Britain many years, but changing his views tried to divide the con- gregation and take part of it with him. He was prohibited preaching in the church and then dismissed, when he organized a congregation about 1785, now ninety-one years ago. On the 30th of January, 1790, the members, all told, were, David Evans, Daniel Evans, Joseph Barton, Thomas Morris, Isaac Thomas, Daniel Thomas, John Riale, Gilbert Belcher, Isaac Morris and James Evans, who signed a document approving the proposal for a Universalist con- vention in the following May. In 1793 they report that they have been able to maintain weekly meetings most of the year. The re- port for 1802 says: "We have a little meeting-house, built in a convenient place, by the side of a public road, and finished in No- vember last, (1801.) Since then we have had meetings for religious worship therein every first day of the week. But a few only incline to meet statedly." The church sent delegates to the conventions in Philadelphia from 1790 to 1809, when the last was held. Thomas Morris was clerk during this period. The house they met in was
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