USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 39
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Morgan Hinchman, of Philadelphia. was the owner of, and resided on, a farm in Plumstead in 1847. There arose some family difficulty founded on his alleged insanity, and it was decided to have him arrested and locked up in an asylum. Accordingly it was so ar- ranged, and he was captured at the Red lion tavern, Philadelphia, while down with marketing, and taken out to the Frankford asylum for the insane, where he was confined and not allowed to communi- cate with his friends. After being shut up there for six months, he scaled the wall and made his escape. He now brought suit for damages against his captors, which was tried before Judge Burnside, in Philadelphia, in the spring of 1849. A number of able lawyers was employed on both sides, and Mr. Hinchman had the eloquent David Paul Brown, then in the zenith of his fame. After a patient hearing, the jury awarded him $10,000 damages. It was a noted case, and created great excitement in its day. The farm passed out
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
of the possession of Hinchman about the time of the trial, and is now owned by the Heacocks.
About the middle of the last century, Anthony Fretz built a mill on the Tohickon, in Plumstead, but we do not know who owns it now, or whether it is in existence as a mill. Isaac Fretz built a mill in Tinicum about the same period, but the former was built first.
Plumstead has three post-offices, at Danborough, but the time it was established is not known, Plumsteadville in 1840, with John L. Delp as postmaster, and at Gardenville in 1857, and John Shaffer first postmaster.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
CHAPTER XXV.
WARWICK.
1733.
First land seated .- James Clayton .- Bowden's tract .- The Snowdens .- Doctor John Rodman .- The Jamisons .- Middlebury .- Township petitioned for .- Called Warwick .- Area .- Quaint petition .- The Ramseys .- Robert Ramsey .- Andrew and Charles McMichen .- Provisions of a will .- The Carrs .- Neshaminy church. -Mr. Tennent .- Old tombstones .- Colonel William Hart .- Robert B. Belville. -James R. Wilson .- Change of hymn-books .- William Dean .- Andrew Long .- Accident .- Roads and bridges .- Well-watered .- Hamlets .- Post-offices .- Aged persons .- Population.
WHEN Warwick was organized all the townships immediately around it had already been formed except Warrington. The or- iginal limits included part of Doylestown, and the line between Warwick and New Britain ran along Court street. When the county was settled, and for many years afterward, this section was known as "The Forks of Neshaminy," because the greater part of its territory lay between the two branches of this stream, which unite in the south-east corner of the township.
Considerable land was seated in Warwick prior to 1684, but it is doubtful whether there were any actual settlers at that date. Among the original purchasers of land, before 1696, was James Clayton, probably the ancestor of the numerous family bearing this name in
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
eastern Pennsylvania, who came from Middlesex, England, in 1682 with his wife and children. He landed at Choptank, Maryland, in November, and came into the province the following month. We have no data to tell when he came into the county, but he took up an extensive tract west of the Neshaminy, extending from the North- ampton line, or thereabouts, to Jamison's corner ; also, John Gray, whose tract covered the Alms-house farm, Henry Bailey, about Hartsville, Benjamin Twily, in the vicinity of Jamison's corner, Nathaniel Stanbury, John Blayling, Dramell Giles, John Fettiplace, John Cows, Randall Blackshaw, George Willard, Thomas Potter and James Boyden. Boyden's tract was north of the Neshaminy, be- tween the Bristol and York roads, and lay along the road from the top of Carr's hill down to Neshaminy church. As these names are not afterward met with in the township, very few, if any, were prob- ably actual settlers. Jeremiah Langhorne and William Miller owned three hundred and thirty-four acres on the east side of the . Bristol road, which extended down it toward the meeting-house, from the top of Long's hill, and running back from the road.
The Snowdens and McCallas were early settlers in Warwick, in the neighborhood of Neshaminy church. Both names have disappeared from the township, although we believe the descendants remain in the female line. John Snowden, the ancestor of James Ross Snowden, late prothonotary of the supreme court of Pennsylvania, was early in the Forks of Neshaminy, probably about 1700. He is said to have come to what is now Delaware county, then Chester, in 1685. He was appointed associate-judge of this county in 1704, justice of the peace in 1715, and was the first elder ordained in the old Market street Presbyterian church, Philadelphia. His son, Jedediah, was an early trustee of the Second Presbyterian church. The Reverend Daniel McCalla, probably the most eminent man Warwick ever produced, was born in 1748, graduated at Princeton, in 1766, with extraordinary attainments as a scholar, was licensed to preach in 1772, and ordained over the congregations of New Providence and Charlestown, Pennsylvania, in 1774. He was chaplain in the Con- tinental army, and made prisoner in Canada. When exchanged he established an academy in Hanover county, Virginia, was afterward called to take charge of the congregation made vacant by the resigna- tion of Reverend Samuel Davies, and died in May, 1809. He had a wide reputation as a preacher, and was distinguished for his clas- sical attainments.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
As early as 1712, Doctor John Rodman and Thomas Richardson owned large tracts of land in this township. Less than a century ago William and John Rodman still owned twenty-five hundred acres here, the former fourteen hundred and fifty-three and one-half acres, and the latter one thousand and fifty-seven and one half, on both sides of the Neshaminy, extending from below Bridge Valley to half a mile above Bridge Point. This tract included the Alms- house farm, where Gilbert Rodman resided and which he sold to the county. The Rodman tract, on the north-east, at some points, was bounded by the road leading from Doylestown to Wood's cor- ner, on the York road just above Bridge Valley. It has long since passed out of the family.
The Jamisons were in Warwick several years before the township was formed, and the names of three of them are attached to the petition asking for its organization. The family, of Scotch origin and Presbyterian in faith, was among those who immigrated from Scotland to Ulster in Ireland, and was part of the great flood of Scotch-Irish which peopled this state the last century. Henry Jamison, the head of the house, came to America with his family about 1720 or 1722, and probably settled shortly afterward in this county. He bought one thousand acres in various tracts, in Warwick and North- ampton, but lived in the latter township. The deeds show thesc purchases were partly made of Jeremiah Langhorne, who conveyed five hundred acres to Jamison the 27th of February, 1724. This was part of the five thousand acres which Penn's commissioners of property conveyed to Benjamin Hurley, September 13th, 1703. subject to quit-rent from 1684. John Henry Sprogel bought one thousand acres of it, and in 1709 he conveyed the same to Thomas Tresse, and from Tresse to Joseph Kirkbride and Jeremialı Lang- horne, March 23d, 1714. In 1734 Henry Jamison conveyed two hundred and fifty acres of this land, lying in Warwick, to Robert Jamison, and the remainder to his other children. It is related that Jean Jamison, afterward the wife of Robert Jamison, was ship- wrecked in coming to America, on the island of Bermuda, and was left in a destitute condition ere she could get a passage to Philadel- phia. The father returned to Ireland, but whether he died there we are not informed. Two hundred acres of the Jamison estate still remain in the family, the same which the progenitor bought of Langhorne in 1728. Robert Jamison, born in 1698, son of Henry, was the father of John Jamison, a captain in the Continental army,
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
who married Martha, sister of the Reverend James Grier, of Deep Run, of Robert, who was a soldier in the Revolution, and long an elder in the Neshaminy church, and also of Henry Jamison, who kept the tavern at Centreville, called Jamison's in 1767, and the father of the first wife of the Reverend Nathaniel Irwin. Henry, a son of Captain John Jamison, drew a $50,000 prize in a lottery. At his death, in 1816, at the age of thirty-five, he left $500 to the Neshaminy church, and with the remainder enriched his relatives. James Jamison, of Buckingham, who was killed by an explosion in his lime-quarry, in 1837, at the age of fifty-eight, was a son of dea- con Robert. Members of this family have immigrated to other parts, and the name is now found in various sections of this state and country. Henry Jamison went to Florida, as early as 1765, where he died.
The unorganized territory lying between Warminster, what was erected into Warrington in 1734, Northampton, Buckingham, and New Britain, was called "Middlebury" for several years, and as such elected overseers of the poor and of roads. The 13th of Feb- ruary, 1733, twenty of the inhabitants of this region, namely : Robert Jamison, Benjamin Walton, William Ramsey, Alexander Breckenridge, Thomas Howell, Hugh Houston, Samuel Martin, William Miller, jr., Valentine Santee, James Polk, Robert Sibbett, John McCollock, Arthur Bleakley, Alexander Jamison, Henry Ja- mison, Andrew Long, Joseph Walton, and Joseph Roberts, peti- tioned the court of quarter sessions to organize it into a township to be called Warwick, " to extend no further in breadth than from ye north-west line, or Bristol road, to Buckingham, and in length from Northampton to New Britain." The draft which accompanied the petition makes Middlebury, or Warwick, of the same size and shape as Warminster and Warrington. The petition was al- lowed the next day after it was received, and there can be no doubt that the township was organized under it. As to what time the name Middlebury was dropped, and the township took that it now bears, with the boundaries that covered the unorganized terri tory, the records are silent. It was called Warwick in 1736. The Dyer's mill road, now Doylestown and Willow Grove turnpike, was opened in 1733 by Robert Jamison, " overseer of the roads of Middlebury." The same year Benjamin Walton was appointed constable for Middlebury, and Robert Jamison supervisor of high- ways. At the October sessions, 1727, William Miller was appointed
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
overseer of the York road between the two branches of the Nesha- miny, from the bridge above Hartsville to Bridge Valley. The petitioners for the organization of the township belonged to the first generation of actual settlers, or their immediate descendants, and the names remain in this and neighboring townships. The popula- tion at that time cannot be given, but at the first enumeration of taxables that we have seen, made in 1759, when the township em- braced a much larger area than at present, they numbered 138. Before it lost any of its territory it contained eleven thousand eight hundred and eighty-three acres. Its present area is ten thousand seven hundred and thirty-one acres. Since Doylestown township was organized there has been one or two immaterial changes in its . territorial limits.
Shortly after the organization of the township those who were dis- satisfied with its boundaries addressed the following petition to the court asking a redress of their grievances. It is a literal transcript of the original document :
"To the Honorable court held at Newtown the thirteenth day of December, 1733.
"The Humbel petition of the inhabetance of Middlebury, Humbly shew :
"That by a warant from Thomas Canby, esq., Deriected to Rob- ert Jamison, Overseer of the Rodes of the said township, requiaring your petitioners to open a Rode formly Led out from Dyer's mill to the County Line which is the breth of tow townships to wit, North- ampton and Warminster as they appear by ye underneath Travfts ; Now your petitioners repaired York Rode and oppen the sd Rode from New Britten to ye Northwest Line whis is Bristol Rode and Divids apart of the sd township from Warminster, and is in Bredth near four miles and in length six miles or ther abouts ; now there is a considerable number of families Leving on ajasent Lands Laying betwixt ye Northwest Line and ye County Line Equale in Breath with Warminster as the sd township is equeall in Breath with North- ampton.
"May it therefor please the Honnorable court to consider the primises and Grant your petitioners Relive by ordering the sd town- ships to extend as furder in Breth than from ye sd Northwest Line or Bristol Rode to Buckingham, and in Length from Northampton to New Britain, or outher ways as the Honnorable court shall see meett, and your petitioners in duty bound will pray. May it please the court that sd township's name may be Warwick."
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
The Warwick Ramseys are descended from William Ramsey, a staunch Scotch-Irish Presbyterian, who was born in Ireland in 1698, and came to America in 1741. He purchased the undivided third part of six hundred and thirty-eight acres in the south corner of the township, of Richard Ashfield, on which he settled, and afterward bought one hundred acres adjoining, on the Bristol road, in War- minster. The Warwick tract comprised the farms now owned by George Small, C. Carr, Joseph Carrell, Andrew Scott, J. M. Yerkes and Hugh Thompson. The Bairds and Bradys, relatives of Ramsey, came into the township about the same time, and to whom he sold part of his land. William Ramsey married Jane Brady, probably . one of his Scotch-Irish cousins, and by her had a family of seven children, Patrick, Hugh, John, William, Jennet, Jean and Robert, and died in 1787, at the age of eighty-nine. His wife died in 1761, aged fifty-eight years. Patrick, Hugh and Jennet died without issue. John, born March, 1731, married Eleanor Henderson, had five children, William, John, Jane, Elizabeth and Robert, was an elder in the Neshaminy church, and died in 1813, at the age of eighty- two; William was twice married, and died in 1814, at seventy-nine, without children, leaving his real estate to his nephews ; Jean mar- ried John Blair, had children, Nancy, Jane, and William R., and died in 1825, at eighty-two ; Robert moved with his family to west- ern Pennsylvania. John, the son of John and Eleanor Ramsey, born 1769, married Mary Santman, and died on his farm in War- minster, where his son John lives, in 1849, at the age of eighty. Robert Ramsey, the son of John and Eleanor Ramsey, and grand- son of William, the first progenitor, was born February 15th, 1780, married Mary Blair, and had children, Eleanor, John P., Jane, Ann, George, Charles, Robert Henderson, William, and another that died in infancy. Four of these children are living. Robert Ramsey lived on the farm in Warwick inherited from his father, where he died in 1849, at the age of sixty-nine. He was a man of consider- able influence and note in his day, and prominent in politics, was five times elected to the assembly, and was four years a member of the House of Representatives of the United States.
The McMicken family was in Warwick at an early day, but probably not prior to 1740. It, too, was Scotch-Irish. We find that on the 7th of October, 1763, William Rodman and wife conveyed to Andrew and Charles McMicken, jr., of Warwick, one hundred and forty acres of land in the township, lying along Ne-
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
shaminy, on both sides of the York road, for the consideration of £817. This was part of the two thousand five hundred acres that William and John Stephenson conveyed to John Rodman and Thomas Richardson in 1703, and in 1726 Richardson conveyed his interest to Rodman. The late Charles McMicken, of Cincinnati, was a member of this family, and was born in Warwick in 1782. He was probably a son of Andrew. His early advantages of educa- tion were few, but he was trained to habits of industry and self- reliance. At the age of twenty-one he left his father's house and arrived at Cincinnati, then an inconsiderable frontier village, in 1803, his entire fortune consisting of his horse, saddle and bridle. There he made his future home. He engaged in trade on the Ohio, and by economy, integrity and close attention to business, amassed a fortune of a million, and died March 30th, 1855, at the age of seventy-five. He never married. He was a philanthropist in the broadest sense of the word. After providing moderately for his rela- tives in his will, he left his entire fortune to found two colleges, one for males and the other for females. In his will he says :
"Having long cherished the desire to found an institution where white boys and girls might be taught, not only the knowledge of their duties to their Creator and their fellow men, but also receive the benefit of a sound, thorough, and practical English education, such as might fit them for the active duties of life, as well as instruc- tors in all the higher branches of knowledge, except denominational theology, to the extent that the same are now, or may hereafter, be taught in any of the secular colleges or universities of the highest grade in the country, I feel gratified to God that through his kind Providence I have been sufficiently favored to gratify the wish of my heart." Among his charities during his lifetime were a gift of $5,000 to the American Colonization Society, and another of $10,000 to endow a professorship of agricultural chemistry in the Farmers' college of Ohio.
Joseph Carr, ancestor of the family bearing this name in Bucks county, an immigrant from the north of Ireland, settled in War- wick in 1743. He bought one hundred acres for £175, having pre- viously rented it at one shilling the acre, part of the twelve hundred acre tract that William Penn granted to Henry Bailey, of York- shire, in 1685. Joseph Carr died in 1768, aged about sixty years, leaving four children. The real estate was re-leased to the eldest son, John, who died in 1812, at the age of sixty-six, who was the
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
father of James, Joseph and William Carr. James graduated as a physician, and died young, and Joseph in 1839. William, the youngest son, was well-known in the county twenty years ago, where he was clerk of the orphans' court and deputy in other county offi- ces, and was a man of intelligence and eccentricities. He took great interest in Masonry, in which order he stood high. He died in 1872, at Allentown, aged eighty-three, where he spent the last years of his life. The Carr family left no descendants in the male line.
The Neshaminy church of Warwick, on the north bank of that stream, half a mile from Hartsville, is one of the oldest Presbyterian churches in the county. Just when the congregation was organized is not known, but it dates back to the first quarter of the last cen- tury. The first known pastor was the Reverend William Tennent, who was called from Bensalem in 1726, and was the founder of the Log college. The original church stood in the graveyard, and the site of the present building is said to have been an Indian burying- ground. On the north-west end is a marble stone with the inscrip- tion : "Founded 1710, erected 1743, enlarged 1775, repaired 1842." The date of its foundation is an error, which arose from the early chroniclers confounding its history with that of the Dutch Reformed church of North and Southampton, which, at its founding in 1710, and many years afterward, was called "Neshaminy church." The Warwick church never had the Reverend Paulus Van Vleck for pastor, who officiated at the Bensalem and North and Southampton churches, and who was in no wise connected with the former. There is not the least evidence that the Warwick church was in being when Van Vleck preached in the county, and moreover, he was Dutch Reformed, while this church is, and always has been, Presbyterian. On a stone in the wall of the graveyard are the let- ters and figures :
W. M. W. G. 1727.
the year the first wall was built. It was re-built some years ago, and on the gate-post is cut the date, 1852. A number of dis- tinguished clergymen have been pastors at Neshaminy, the Reverends Messrs. Tennent, Blair, Irwin, Belville, Wilson, etc., whose promi- nence in the church has given it and them an historical importance. Whitefield preached in the graveyard, where the church then stood, while in America a century and a third ago.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
A walk in the old graveyard exhibits to the visitor the resting- places of four generations of the congregation, but there are no tombstones with inscriptions earlier than 1731. The following are the oldest : Cornelius McCawney, who died November 29th, 1731, aged forty years, Isabel Davis, August 30th, 1737, aged seventy- eight years, William Walker, October, 1738, aged sixty-six years, Andrew Long, November 16th, 1738, aged forty-seven years, prob- ably the first settler of the name in that vicinity, John Davis, August 6th, 1748, aged sixty-three years, and John Baird, February ye 2d, 1748, aged seventy-three years. Among others is a stone to the memory of the "Reverend and learned Mr. Alexander Gellatley, minister of the gospel in Middle Octoraro, who came from Perth, in Scotland, to Pennsylvania in 1753, and departed this life March 12th, 1761, in his forty-second year." It is not probable any of these early inhabitants of Neshaminy graveyard were born in the county, and the birth of some was years before the English settlers landed on the Delaware. Among the stones is one to the memory of Colonel William Hart, one of the captors of the Doanes, and after whom Hartsville was named, who died June 2d, 1831, aged eighty-four years. On the tomb of Mr. Tennent is the following : " Here Lyeth the Body of the Revd. William Tennent, senr., who departed this Life, May the 6th, Anno Dom. 1746, annos natns 73."
Among the pastors of the Neshaminy church, during the present century, the Reverend Robert B. Belville was one of the most dis- tinguished, who officiated for the congregation for twenty-six years. He was the descendant of Huguenot ancestors, who came to America soon after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and was a relative of Nicholas Belville, the famous French physician who came to this country with Count Pulaski, and settled at Trenton, New Jersey. Mr. Belville was born at New Castle, Delaware, in 1790, educated at Pennsylvania University, studied divinity with Doctor Smith at Princeton, was called to Neshaminy in 1812, and remained until 1838. When he took charge of the church it had but thirty-three members, but he left it at his resignation with three hundred. Dnr- ing his pastorate the church experienced two memorable revivals, in 1822 and in 1832, the latter adding to it one hundred and forty communicants. He married soon after his settlement at Neshaminy. In 1816 Mr. Belville opened a classical school in a small building on his own premises, which he kept for nine years. From this grew the other schools which were of incalculable value to that region
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
for many years. He removed from Neshaminy in the spring of 1839, lived four years in Lancaster, and in 1843 purchased a farm in Delaware, his native state. He died at Dayton, Ohio, in 1845, while on a visit to his brothers and sisters, and was buried in the cemetery there. Mr. Belville was an able minister, and his work proves him to have been a successful pastor. One who understood his character well says of him : "He had the courage of a lion, and the tenderness of a babe ; he was quick as lightning, and true as the sun, and all who knew him either loved him well, or at least tho- roughly respected him." He was the father of the Reverend Jacob Belville, of Pottsville.
Another able minister of this church the present generation was Reverend Henry Rowan Wilson, the son of a Revolutionary officer, and born near Gettysburg the 7th of August, 1780. He was educated at Dickinson college, and licensed to preach in 1801. After labor- ing some months in Virginia, he removed to Bellefonte, in this state, where he organized a church, and also one at Lick run, twelve miles distant, and was installed their pastor in 1801. In 1806 he was appointed professor of languages in Dickinson college, where he con- tinned until 1816. He was subsequently in charge of the Presby- terian church at Shippensburg, and general-agent of the Board of Publication, and was called to Neshaminy church in 1842, where he officiated until 1848, when he resigned because of age and dis- ability. He was made doctor of divinity in 1845 by Lafayette college, and died at Philadelphia, March 22d, 1849.
The Reverend Nathaniel Irwin, both eccentric and able, officiated many years at Neshaminy previous to his death in 1812. It is related of him, that during his pastorate, he made an effort to intro- duce Watts's hymns in the place of Rouse's version of the Psalms of David. Sometimes he would give out from one book, and then from another. On one occasion he opened with a Rouse and closed with a Watts, which so greatly displeased a hearer, named Walker, that he took up his hat and walked out of the house when the Watts was given out. He went straightway up to Craig's tavern, now Warrington where he found several topers around the fire nursing their cups. On being asked why he was not at church, he replied they were "doing nothing but singing Yankee Doodle songs and play-house tunes, down at Neshaminy," and to cool his anger and assuage disgust, he cried out to the landlord, "Gee us a gill o' rum."
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