USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 40
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425
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
In 1742 Reverend William Dean, of county Antrim, Ireland, was sent to preach at Neshaminy and Forks of Delaware, but the length of his stay is not known. He was ordained pastor at Forks of Brandywine in 1746, and died there in 1748.
William Allen was a large owner of real estate in Warwick, and in 1756 he conveyed one hundred and thirty-four acres to Johnl Barnhill, bounded by lands of Margaret Grey, James Wier, and other lands of William Allen. In addition to the families already mentioned, we know that the Bairds, Crawfords, Walkers, Davises, Tompkins, and others, came into the township early, all probably in the first third of the last century. The name of Andrew Long is affixed to the petition for the township, but we believe he always lived on the south side of the Bristol road in Warrington, though we know he owned land in Warwick. The Mckinstrys probably came into the township later, at least they do not appear to have been inhabitants when it was organized. These names are still found in this and adjoining townships. A daughter of Henry Mc- Kinstry, Christiana, a young lady of twenty years, met her death, by accident, the 19th of April, 1809, under painful circumstances. She was returning from Philadelphia up the York road in a wagon with John Spencer. He got out at Jenkintown for a few min- utes, and meanwhile the horses started on a run. Her dead body was picked up on the road just below Abington, where the horses were stopped uninjured. It is supposed that she attempted to jump out of the wagon, but fell, when the wheels passed over her head. The event created great excitement in the neighborhood where she lived.
Warwick is well provided with roads, being cut by three main highways, the York, Bristol, and Alms-house roads, and a number of short lateral roads, that afford the inhabitants easy communication from one portion of the township to another. The road from the top of Carr's hill down to the Bristol road at Neshaminy church was laid out in 1756 between the lands of William Miller and James Boyden. In 1759 a road was opened from Henry Jamison's mill,1 on the south-west branch of Neshaminy, to the York road. A stone bridge, on the York road, over the Neshaminy, above Hartsville, was built in 1755. It was replaced by another stone bridge in 1789, which stood until within the last ten years, when it was destroyed by a freshet. The datestone had cut upon it a human heart. The
I Now known as Mearns' lower mill, and is owned by Lewis Ross.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
present bridge is an open wooden one. Warwick is one of the best watered townships in the county. Two branches of the Neshaminy form part of its east and northern boundary, which, with their tribu- taries, supply almost every part of it with abundance of good water. This condition is very favorable to the building of mills, and their erection was begun with the first settlement of the township. Be- fore 1760 there were four flour-mills in Warwick, Henry Jamison's, now Lewis Ross's, Mearns', Hugh Miller's, and Faries's. Twenty- five years ago the late Admiral Dalghren, then a lieutenant in the United States navy, owned and occupied the farm now in posses- sion of Mr. Ramsey, on the Warwick side of the Bristol road, half a mile below Hartsville. He lived there several years to recover his shattered health.
In Warwick there are no villages that deserve the name. All of Hartsville but the tavern and two dwellings are on the Warminster side of the Bristol road. Bridge Valley, at the crossing of the Ne- shaminy by the York road, is the seat of a post-office, with an un- licensed tavern and three or four dwellings, and Jamison's corner, at the intersection of the York and Alms-house roads, consists of a tavern, a store, and a few dwellings. Warwick's three taverns, when that at Bridge Valley was in commission, lay on the York road in the distance of four miles. Before canals and railroads were constructed they had an abundant patronage from the large teams that hauled goods from Philadelphia to the upper country. Harts- ville and Jamison's corner were so called as early as 1817, when Bridge Valley bore the name of Pettit's. The township has two post-offices, that at Hartsville, established in 1817, and Joseph Carr . appointed postmaster, and at Bridge Valley, in 1869, with William Harvey the first postmaster. The classical school of Reverend Rob- ert B. Belville was followed by schools of the same character, kept in turn by Messrs. Samuel, Charles and Mahlon Long, and for nearly a quarter of a century were quite celebrated. The first-named, Samuel Long, met a sad fate, being killed by a limb falling from a tree under which he was standing, giving directions to wood- choppers, in December, 1836. Some of the early settlers of War- wick lived to a green old age, viz: John Crawford, who died September 4th, 1806, aged eighty-eight, Mrs. Elizabeth Baird, widow of John Baird, November 9th, 1808, aged ninety-five years, John Hough, January 6th, 1818, aged eighty-eight years, and Charles McMicken, December 24th, 1822, aged eighty-two, who
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
was born, lived and died on the same farm. A later death shows greater longevity than the foregoing, that of Mrs. Phoebe Taylor, widow of Jacob Taylor, who died October 27th, 1867, at the age of ninety-nine years, five months and four days. She was a daughter of Jeremiah and Mary Northrop, of Lower Dublin, Philadelphia county. Among the local societies of the township is the Fellow- ship Horse company, organized in 1822.
In 1784 Warwick, which then embraced a portion of Doylestown township, contained 609 white inhabitants, 27 blacks, and 105 dwellings. In 1810 the population was 1,287 ; 1820, 1,215; 1830, 1,132, with 216 taxables; 1840, 1,259; 1850, 1,234; 1860, 881, and in 1870, 775, of which 19 were of foreign birth. We cannot account for this constant shrinkage of the population of Warwick on any other theory than the incompetency of those who took the cen- sus. It does not speak well for the growth of a township which has three hundred and fifty less population in 1870 than it had forty years before.
The surface of Warwick is not as level as the adjoining town- ships. In the vicinity of the Neshaminy it is considerably broken in places, with steep, abrupt banks, and rolling. The soil is thin on some of the hillsides. The Arctic drift, evidence of which is seen in Warrington township, extended into Warwick.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
CHAPTER XXVI.
WARRINGTON.
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1734.
Land-holders in 1684 .- Richard Ingolo .- Devise to William Penn, jr .- William Allen .- Division of his tract .- Joseph Kirkbride .- Old map .- Land-owners .- Township organized .- The Longs .- The Weisels .- Nicholas Larzelere and de- scendants .- Roads .- Township enlarged .- Craig's tavern .- Sir William Keith, and residence .- Easton road opened .- Pleasantville church .- Traces of glaciers. -Boulders found .- Mundocks .- Pine trees .- Valley of Neshaminy .- Post-offices. -Population .- Nathaniel Irwin.
WARRINGTON is the upper of the three rectaangular townships that border the Montgomery county line. When Holme's map was published, there were but four land-owners in the township, none of which lived there, Richard Ingolo, R. Sneed, Charles Jones, jr., and R. Vickers. At this time Warrington was an unbroken wilderness.
There must have been some authority for putting Richard Ingolo on Holme's map as a land-owner in Warrington, in 1684, although the records inform us that he did not become an owner of land in the township until the following year. The 22d of January, 1685, William Penn granted to Ingolo six hundred acres, which he located on the county line below the lower state road. In 1719, Ingolo conveyed it to Thomas Byam, of London, and in 1726, Byam con
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
veyed one hundred and fifty acres to Robert Rogers. The farms of James and Lewis Thompson are included in the Ingolo tract.
In the will of William Penn, ten thousand acres in the county were devised to his grandson, William Penn, jr., of which one thou- sand four hundred and seventeen acres lay in Warrington, extending across to the county line, and probably into Horsham, which was surveyed by Isaac Taylor, by virtue of an order from the trustees of young Penn, dated November 16th, 1727. On the 25th of August, 1728, the whole of the ten thousand acres was conveyed to William Allen, including the part that lay in Warrington, which made him a large land-owner in the township. The 31st of August, 1765, Allen conveyed three hundred and twenty-three acres to James Weir, who was already in possession of the land, and probably had been for some time. He owned other lands adjoining, as did his brother John. Weir and his heirs were charged with the payment of a rent of "two dung-hill fowles" to William Allen, on the 16th of November, yearly, forever. The three hundred and twenty-three acre tract lay in the neighborhood of Warrington, and a portion of the land is now owned by Benjamin Worthington. In 1736, Allen conveyed one hundred and five acres, near what is now Trades- ville, on the lower state road, to Richard Walker, and in 1738, one hundred and forty-eight acres additional adjoining the first purchase. They are now owned by several persons, among whom are Philip Brunner, eighty-eight acres, Jesse W. Shearer, Lewis Tomlinson and others. The quit-rent reserved by Allen on the first tract was a bushel of oats, with the right to distrain if in default for twenty days, and one and one-half bushels of good, merchantable oats on the second tract, to be paid annually at Philadelphia, the 16th of November. The first of these tracts ran along Thomas Hudson's grant the distance of one hundred and twenty perches. In addition to these lands, Allen owned five hundred acres he received through his wife, the daughter of Andrew Hamilton, in 1738. This he con- veyed to James Delaney and wife, also the daughter of Allen, in 1771. In 1793 Delaney and wife conveyed these five hundred acres to Samuel Hines, William Hines, Matthew Hines the younger, and William Simpson, the great-grand.ather of President Grant, for £1,500, each purchaser taking a separate deed. This land lay in the upper part of the township, and extended into the edge of Mont- gomery county. There was an old log dwelling on the tract, on the upper state road, half a mile over the county line, in which a school
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
was kept forty years ago. The road that runs from the Bristol road across to the Bethlehem turnpike at Gordon's hill, was the southern boundary of the Allen tract.
In 1722 Joseph Kirkbride owned a tract of land in the south-west corner of New Britain, and when Warrington was enlarged, about thirty years ago, two hundred and fifty-eight acres of it fell into this township. In it are included the farms of Henry, Samuel, and Aaron Weisel, Joseph Selner, Charles Haldeman, Benjamin Larze- lere, and others. In 1735 the Proprietaries conveyed two hundred and thirteen acres, lying on the county line, to Charles Tenant, of Mill Creek hundred, in Delaware, and in 1740 Tenant sold it to William Walker, of Warrington. The deed of 1735, from the Pro- prietaries to Tenant, states that the land was reputed to be in " North Britain" township, but since the division of the township, it was found to be in Warrington. John Lester was the owner of one hundred and twenty-five acres in Warrington prior to 1753, which probably included the ninety-eight acres that Robert Rogers conveyed to him in 1746, and lay in the upper part of the township adjoining the Allen tract. The 12th of August, 1734, the Proprie- taries conveyed to Job Goodson, physician, of Philadelphia, one thousand acres in the lower part of the township, extending down to the Neshaminy, for part of its southern boundary, and across the Bristol road into Warwick. The 27th of May, 1735, Goodson con- veyed four hundred acres to Andrew Long, of Warwick, for £256. This was the lower end of the one thousand acres, and lay along the Neshaminy, and the farm of the present Andrew Long, on the south-west side of the Bristol road, is part of it.
From an old map of Southampton, Warminster, and Warrington, re-produced in this volume, this township appears to have had no definite north-west and south-east boundary at that time. It had already been organized, but in the absence of records to show the boundaries it is not known whether they had been determined. The names of land-owners given on the map are Andrew Long, J. Paul, - Lukens, - Jones, R. Miller, T. Pritchard, the London company, the Proprietaries, Charles Tenant, - Nailor, and William Allen. That these were not all the land owners in the township in 1737 can be seen by referring to the previous pages. Allen was still a considerable land-owner along the north-eastern line, coming down to about Warrington, and the Penns owned two tracts between the Street road and county line, above the Easton road. The land of
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Miller, Pritchard, and Jones lay about Warrington Square, the seat of Neshaminy post-office.
Our knowledge of the organization of the township is very limited, and the little that we know not very satisfactory. The records of our courts are almost silent on the subject. It is interesting to know the preliminary steps taken by a new community toward municipal government, and the trials they encounter before their wish is gratified. But in the case of Warrington we know nothing of the movement of her citizens to be clothed with township duties and responsibilities. At the October session, 1734, the following is en- tered of record: "Ordered that the land above and adjoining to Warminster township shall be a township, and shall be called War- rington." It was probably named after Warrington, in Lancashire, England, and the first constable was appointed the same year. We have not been able to find any data of population at that period, and are left to conjecture the number.
Of the old families of the township, the Longs still occupy their ancestral homestead, and we cannot call to mind another family which owns the spot where their fathers settled near a century and a half ago. Andrew Long came to Warwick between 1720 and 1730, but the year is not known nor the place where he first settled. He and his wife, Mary, were both immigrants from Ireland. After he had bought the four hundred acres in Warrington, part of the Goodson tract, he moved on it and built a log house, just south of the present Andrew Long's dwelling, on the Bristol road. He had three children, and died about 1760. His son Andrew, born about 1730, and died November 4th, 1812, married Mary Smith, born 1726, died 1821, about 1751, and had children, John, Isabel, Andrew, William, born March 26th, 1763, and died February 5th, 1851, grandfather of the present Andrew Long, Mary, Margaret and Letitia Esther. The two latter married brothers, William and Har- man Yerkes, of Warminster, and Margaret was the grandmother of Harman, of Doylestown. After the death of Andrew Long, senior, the brothers and sisters of Andrew Long, junior, re-leased to him, in 1765, their interest in two hundred and twenty acres in War- rington. This was part of the original four hundred acres bought in 1735. The present Long homestead on the Bristol road was built between 1760 and 1765. The north-west room was used as an hospital at one time during the Revolution, probably while Washington's army lay encamped on the Neshaminy hills, in 1777
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Andrew Long, the second, was a captain in Colonel Miles's regiment of the Revolutionary army. In 1755 Andrew Long bought fifty- eight acres, on the east side of the Bristol road, of Jeremiah Lang- horne and William Miller.
The Weisels, of Warrington, members of a large and influential German family, are the descendants of Michael Weisel, who immi- grated from Alsace, then part of France, but now belongs to Ger- many, and settled in this county about 1740. He brought with him three sons, Michael, Jacob and Frederick, who were sold for a term of years, from on shipboard, to pay the passage of the family, which was customary at that day. In what township the father or sons settled, we are not informed. About 1750 Michael, the oldest of the three sons, married Mary Trach, and bought land in Bedminster, on the Old Bethlehem road, near Hagersville, which is now owned by his grandson, Samuel. Michael Weisel the second, had four sons and three daughters, Henry, John, Michael, George, Anna Maria and Susan. Henry married Eve Shellenberger, and settled on the homestead in Bedminster, and his children and his children's children intermarried with the Fulmers, Harpels, Detweilers, Leidys, Flucks, Louxes, Sollidays and Seips, and settled principally in the townships of Bedminster, Hilltown and Rockhill. From them has sprung numerous descendants. Some have removed to other counties in this state, and few to other states, but the great majority of them are living in Bucks county, the home of their ancestors. Nearly all the Weisels in the county are descendants of Michael, Henry Weisel, of Warrington, being a great-grandson. Jacob, the second son of Michael the elder, married about 1755, but to whom is not known. He had five sons, George, Jacob, Peter, John and Joseph, and all settled in Rockhill, Richland and Milford townships. George, Peter, Jacob and John afterward removed to Bedford county. Joseph had three sons who married and settled in Milford township. What became of Frederick, third son of Michael Weisel, the elder, is not known. Michael Weisel, jr., and his son Henry, served as soldiers in the Revolutionary army. The Weisels of New Britain and Plumstead are of this family. The family of Henry Weisel, of Warrington, has in its possession a stove plate with a number of unintelligible letters upon it, and the date, 1674. Richard Walker, a contemporary of Simon Butler, a justice of the peace, and a prominent man in his day, lived on land now owned by the Weisels.
433
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Benjamin Larzelere, although but a quarter of a century in the township. comes of an old Huguenot family, nearly a century and a half resident of the county. Toward the close of the seventeenth century, Nicholas and John Larzelere immigrated from France to Long Island. Nicholas subsequently removed to Staten Island, where he married and raised a family of four children, two sons, Nicholas and John, and two daughters. In 1741 Nicholas, the elder, removed with his family to Bucks county and settled in Lower Makefield. He had eight children, Nicholas, John, Abraham, Han- nah, Annie, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Esther, died at the age of eighty-four, and was buried in the Episcopal graveyard at Bristol. The eldest son, Nicholas, born on Staten Island about 1734, mar- ried Hannah Britton, of Bristol township, and moved into Bensalem, where he owned a large estate, and raised a family of ten children. Benjamin, one of his sons, is living in Philadelphia, at the age of eighty-six. The father fought in the Revolution, and died at the age of eighty-four. Nearly the whole of this large family lived and died in this county, and left descendants. Benjamin, the eldest son, married Sarah Brown, of Bristol, moved into that township, had eight children, and died at eighty-four. Part of Bristol is built on his farm. John, the second son, married in the county, where he lived and died, and a few of his descendants are living in Philadel- phia, Abraham, the third, married Martha VanKirk, of Bensalem, removed into New Jersey, and raised a family of eight children, and where he has numerous descendants, Nicholas, the fourth, married Martha Mitchel, the eldest daughter of Austin Mitchel, of Attle- borough, had two sons and three daughters, and lived and died in Bristol. One of his sons, Nicholas, settled in Maryland, and raised a family of nine children, of which Mrs. Thomas P. Miller, of Doylestown, is one, and Alfred, another son, removed to Kansas some years ago, where he still resides. Britton, the youngest son of the third Nicholas, fought in the second war for independence, and lives in Philadelphia at the age of eighty-six. Of the daughters of the third Nicholas, Mary was married to Nicholas Vansant, of Bensalem, and had three sons and five daughters, Elizabeth to Asa Sutter, of Tullytown, and had five children, Sarah to Andrew Gil- kyson, of Lower Makefield, and had five children, Hannah to Thomas Rue, who removed to Dayton, Ohio, Nancy to John Thompson, of Bensalem, who removed to Indiana, Catharine to
28
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Aaron Knight, of Southampton, had five children, and died at the age of eighty-four. Margaret never married.
Benjamin Larzelere, of Warrington, is a grandson of Benjamin, the eldest son of the third Nicholas. His father was Nicholas and his mother a daughter of Colonel Jeremiah Berrell, of Abington, Montgomery county. He was one of twelve children. The Rev erend Jacob Larzelere, so long pastor of the North and Southamp- ton Dutch Reformed church, was a descendant of John, brother of the first Nicholas.
Warrington is surrounded by roads, except the elbow running into Doylestown, and several others cross it. Elsewhere will be found a history of the Bristol, Street road, county line, and the Easton road which crosses it diagonally through its lower end. Of the lateral roads, that which leaves the Bristol road at the Warrington school- house and runs via Mill creek school-house to the Butler road, was opened before 1722. It afforded the settlers in the upper end an outlet toward Bristol and Philadelphia before the Bristol road was opened the length of the township. In 1737 a road, called Bare- foot alley, was opened from the Street road terminus, above Ne- shaminy, across to the county line, in a zigzag course. It is more in the nature of a private lane than a public road.
About 1849 the north-west boundary of Warrington was extended to the upper state road, cutting off from New Britain territory about a mile in length, and adding some twelve or fifteen hundred acres to this township. This addition was made because the township was a small one. At Warrington the township line leaves the Bristol road and forms an elbow up into Doylestown.
The tavern at what is now Warrington, but still known and called by many Newville, is much the oldest public house in the township, an l for many years was the only one. It was probably opened by Jo'ın Craig, at least he is the first landlord we have note of, who kept the house as early as 1759, but how much earlier is not known. He was there in 1764, and the same year was one of the peti- tioners for a bridge across the Neshaminy, "on the road from Wil- liam Doyle's to John Craig's." It was under this petition the first bridge was built at Bridge Point. It was still called "Craig's tav- ern" in 1806, although the cross-roads was known as Newville as early as 1805. The original name probably fell into disuse after Craig ceased to keep the house. It was owned and kept by John Wright in 1813. Afterward the tavern was kept for many years by
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Francis Gurney Lukens. During his administration it was a great stopping place for the heavy teams that passed up and down the road, and as many as thirty wagons have been known to be there over night. It is told of one of the leading teamsters from the upper end who was stopping there, that after making a square meal on meat, bread and butter, coffee, etc., he pulled up a preserve dish and ate its contents with his fork, remarking: "Well, dat is as good apple-butter as ever I tasted." There are two other taverns in the township, one on the Willow Grove turnpike, south of the Nesham- iny, at a place known as Frogtown, and the other on the county line, near Pleasantville, the seat of Eureka post-office.
On the edge of Montgomery county, near where the Doylestown and Willow Grove turnpike crosses the county line, and on the very confines of Warrington, stands the baronial country home of Sir William Keith while lieutenant-governor under the Proprietaries. The demesne originally contained some twelve hundred acres, and was probably in both counties. The greater part of it was main- tained as a hunting park, roads were opened through the woods in every direction from the dwelling, the wood cleared of underbrush, and the whole surrounded by a ditch with the bank planted with privet hedge, something after the manner of the parks of England. It was stocked with deer and other game.
Governor Keith arrived at Philadelphia the 31st of May, 1717, with William Penn's commission as lieutenant-governor, and the oath of office was administered to him the next day. He was ac- companied by his wife, who had been the widow of Robert Driggs, of England, his stepdaughter, Ann Driggs, and Doctor Thomas Græme. The Keiths were knighted in 1663, and Sir William was probably the last of the family to bear the title. He probably suc- ceeded to it after he became lieutenant-governor, on the death of his father, about 1721. He was a man of popular manners, and, notwithstanding his eccentricities of character, made one of the best governors under the Penns.
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