USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 44
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Quakertown was incorporated in 1854 with forty-five freeholders. It has increased quite rapidly in population and material wealth since the opening of the North Pennsylvania railroad, in 1856. At that time it had sixty-two dwellings, and about one hundred and fifty have been erected since, making in all two hundred and twelve. The population in 1870 was 863. Among the places of business are twenty-four stores and shops, some twenty industrial establish- ments of various kinds, including six cigar factories, quite an
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
extensive foundry, a large grist-mill, an ax-handle and spoke and felloe factory, both run by steam, steam tannery, hay-press, etc., with a savings' bank, two hotels, three churches, Friends' meeting- house, and two school-houses. It has become quite an important point for the shipment of hard timber, sawed into boards and plank, ship timber, knees, etc. Quakertown has been fortunate in having good schools. Besides that already mentioned established at an early day by the Friends, Richard Moore1 and Thomas Lester opened a boarding-school there in the fall of 1818. It proved a success, but the principals soon went into other business, and the school was abandoned. In the spring of 1858 the Reverend A. R. Horne, now principal of the State Normal school at Kutztown, opened a normal and classical school here, his assistant being H. L. Baugher, now Greek professor at Pennsylvania college, Gettysburg. It opened with three scholars, but had forty by the end of the term. During the five years the school was continued, it was attended by about four hundred students, from half a dozen states, and from one-third of the counties of this state. One hundred and fourteen of the number were fitting for teachers, some of whom now occupy positions of honor, with good salaries. These ex-students are found in all walks of life. A pleasant re-union of the former pupils was held at Quakertown August 19th, 1873.2 When Mr. Horne left in 1863, the Reverend L. Cort became the principal, but in 1865 it was changed into a State soldiers' orphans' school, under Joseph Fell and A. H. Marple, and was continued until 1867, when the pupils were removed and the school abandoned. The first Teach- ers' institute of the county was held at Quakertown, December 12th, 1860, and was well attended. The post-office is now a distributing- office for most parts of the upper end of the county, by rail and otherwise. The oldest Horse company in the county was probably that organized at Quakertown.
1 Died April 30th, 1875.
1 Mr. Horne related the following reminiscence of the school, in the National Edu- cator, in 1874. He says: "When the rebellion broke out in 1861, we had charge of the Bucks county Normal and Classical school at Quakertown. A spirit of patriotism was aroused among the students, and they organized a company of "Minute men," who went through daily drills. The captain of the company was a tall, stalwart student, standing almost head and shoulders above the rest, the drummer boy was a " wcc bit" of a fellow. On Sunday week we met both of these men in their ministerial capacity. The captain is now Professor J. S. Stahr, of Franklin and Marshall college, and the drummer boy is now the Reverend C. J. Cooper, of South Bethlehem, also pastor of the Lower Saucon church, in Northampton county."
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Richland Centre, is a mile east of Quakertown, with which it is connected by a straight and broad street, partly built up on either side, turnpiked, and laid with board-walks. Here is a station of the North Pennsylvania railroad, and around it has sprung up, within a few years, quite a considerable village bearing the above name. The railroad was the dividing line between the two villages until 1874, when the court extended the corporate limits of Quakertown so as to include Richland Centre, and they are now both under the same municipal government. The latter contains some ninety dwellings, with a population of about 500, all but ten dwellings having been erected since the railroad was opened to travel. It has a post-office, established in 1867, with Ephraim L. Cope, postmaster, one hotel, ten stores and shops, three lumber-yards, and several in- dustrial establishments. The buildings about the railroad station were erected on the farms of Joel B. Roberts and John Strawn, which were laid out into building-lots and sold at public sale, which gave an impetus to improvement.
Richlandtown, two miles and a half north-east of Quakertown, is a village of twenty-five houses. Among the earliest settlers at this point were John Smith, a soldier of the Revolution, John Berger, Philip Gruver, and Daniel Walp. Walp built the first house, a frame, in 1804, but the oldest dwelling now standing was built by Abraham Oberholtzer more than half a century ago, and now owned by William Freed. This place was first called " Three Lanes Ends," and then, in succession, Ducktown, Frogtown, Flatland, and the name it now bears. It has one church, Saint John's Evangelical Lutheran and Reformed, organized in 1806-7. The lot was the gift of John Smith, and the building was finished in 1808 and re-built in 1860. A school-house stood on the lot before the church was built, and there was a burying-ground half a mile north-east, where several of the earliest settlers were buried, but the graves are now plowed over. The first Lutheran pastor of Saint John's church was Reverend George Keller, who served about ten years, then Frederick Waage, four years, William B. Kemmerer, thirty-eight years, and died in August, 1860, E. T. M. Sell, two years, L. Groh, four years, P. B. Kistler, four years, and Reverend Joseph Hillpot installed in 1871, and is still the pastor. The Reverend Samuel Stahr was the first Reformed pastor, who served until his death, in 1826, then Mr Berke, two years, Samuel Hess, forty years, who resigned on account of old age, and the Reverend Henry Hess, the present pastor, who
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
succeeded him in 1868. The post-office at Richlandtown was es- tablished in 1839, and Christian A. Snyder appointed postmaster. Bunker Hill is situated on the New Bethlehem road, on the line between Richland and Rockhill, and contains a store and about a dozen dwellings. A tavern was licensed there many years, but it has been closed a long time. Within a few years a small hamlet called California has sprung up on the railroad, about two miles above Quakertown, which contains a tavern, store, mill, and half a dozen dwellings.
Along the border of the Quakertown basin, near California, there are two old log houses, inhabited by the Green family at a very early day, which are probably the oldest houses in the township. A mile east of Richlandtown, on the road to Doylestown and near the cross-roads at Loux's smith-shop, in Haycock, is an old graveyard, where was once a log Methodist church, but which has been taken down a quarter of a century. On a ruined gravestone can be read the initials "J. M.," the latter letter being supposed to stand for Mof- ley, an inhabitant of the neighborhood.
This section of the county has been noted for its healthfulness and . the longevity of many of its citizens. A few years ago the Provident Life and Trust company of Philadelphia instituted an inquiry into the age to which people lived in various parts of the county. An examination of Richland meeting records proved that a larger number of its members died at a greater age than of any other meeting. The oldest inhabitant of that section, at this writing, is John Heller, near Quakertown, who was one hundred years old the 25th of January, 1875, and as we have not heard of his death, we presume him to be still alive. He was born in Rockhill in 1775, and lived sixty years in Milford township. He has met with many mishaps during his time, among others falling a distance of thirty- one feet from the wall of a mill, at the age of seventy-one, which lamed him for life. He has led an industrious life, and in his old age enjoys good health. There were several lots of land in Richland, containing in all four hundred and thirteen acres and twenty perches, included in the tract known as "Lottery lands." They were or- iginally surveyed by John Watson, and re-surveyed in 1773 by Samuel Foulke. A century and a quarter ago Robert Penrose was the most extensive farmer in Richland.
We have met with no record of roads earlier than 1729, when the inhabitants petitioned to have a road laid out "from the upper part
WRIGHTSTOWN.
N.W. 411. P.
MAP OF MANOR OF HIGHLANDS.
N.F 334.P.
JOHN CLARK & WY SMITH.
N.W. 476.P.
KIRLE THOMAS
VACANT
N.W. 356 P.
N.BLACKFAN
JOHN BYD
N.E. 279. P.
RICHARD HOUGH'S LAND IN MAKEFIELD WEST I DEG SOUTH 1116 PERCHES
LONDON COMPANY
JEFFERY BURGE
THOMAS ROSS
NE.J72.P.
GREAT SPRING'S
S.B.100
SAMY HOWAY YOU BAKER BAKER
J.H.44-
552A
440W212P
DELAWARE RIVER
GILBERT WHEELER
5051 JOHN PIDCOCK
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PART OF MANUROF HIGHLANDS.
E. 524.P.
ROBERT HEATH
SOLEBURY
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
471
CHAPTER XXIX.
UPPER MAKEFIELD.
1737.
Last township below Bedminster to be organized .- Manor of Highlands surveyed .- Original purchasers .- Henry Baker and Richard Hough .- The London com- pany .- Windy bush .- Thomas Ross .- Township petitioned for .- Effort to attach part to Wrightstown .- Township enlarged .- The Tregos .- Charles Reeder .- Samuel McNair .- William Keith .- The Magills .- McConkeys .- Doctor David Fell .- First-day meeting .- Meeting-house built .- Oliver H. Smith .- Thomas Langley .- Bowman's hill .- Doctor John Bowman .- Lurgan and its scholars .- Old shafts .- Indian burying-ground .- William H. Ellis .- Dolington .- Taylors- ville .- Brownsburg .- Jericho .- Aged persons .- Taxables and population .- Lo- cation and surface of Upper Makefield .- Continental army.
LOWER MAKEFIELD had been an organized township forty-five years before Upper Makefield was separated from it, and it was the last of the original townships below Bedminster to be organized. The cause of this may be found in the fact that the greater part of the land was retained by the Penns as a manor, and the influx of settlers was not encouraged. The same was the case when a portion of the manor fell into the possession of the London company. When Lower Makefield was organized, in 1692, what is now Upper Make- field was a wilderness. Probably a few adventurous pioneers had pushed their way thither, but there was hardly a permanent settler there.
This book belongs to William W. Stapler,
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Wilmington DEL
About 1695 Thomas Holme laid off a tract of seven thousand five hundred acres for William Penn, immediately north of Lower Makefield, which was given the name of "Manor of Highlands." It lay principally within this township, but extended into the edge of Wrightstown and Solebury, the road from Taylorsville to the Eagle being laid on the southern boundary. Among the original purchasers we have the names of Edmund Luff, Henry Sidwell, Thomas Hudson, whose large tract lay about Dolington and extended to the Delaware, Joseph Milnor, and his brother Daniel, who settled near Taylorsville. Part or all of the Hudson tract was probably sold to John Clark, who owned eight hundred acres in the neigh- borhood of Dolington, which he sold to John Estaugh in 1716, and he to Richard B. Sumley, or Lumley, in 1728. Part of this tract is now owned by the Tregos. In 1743 Samuel Brown bought four hundred and twenty-seven acres of it in right of his wife, and on behalf of her sisters, the daughters of John Clark. In 1700 Wil- liam Penn granted one thousand acres in the manor to Thomas Story, but when he applied to have the land laid out, it was found to have been already granted to another. In 1703 Thomas and Reuben Ashton, ancestors of the present family of this name, pur- chased each an hundred acres. According to Holme's map, Henry Baker and Richard Hough took up land on Baker's creek, which empties into the Delaware just below Taylorsville. Subsequently it was called Musgrave's creek, from a man of that name who occu- pied a house on its banks, near the river, then Hough's creek, after Richard Hough, which name it now bears.
The "London company" became extensive land-owners in U ?- per Makefield many years before it was organized into a township. This was composed of Tobias Collet, Daniel Quere and Henry Gold- ney, of London, who, before 1700, purchased five thousand acres of the manor lands, which were surveyed to them August 6th, 1709. When the company's land was broken up, years afterward, it was sold to various purchasers, and among them five hundred and fifty- two acres to Samuel Baker, of Makefield, in 1722, lying on the south line of the manor and running to the river, two hundred of which he sold to Philip Warder, jr., in 1724, which came into the possession of the widow of John Knowles in 1730. As late as April 6th, 1762, William Cox, of Philadelphia, purchased one hun- dred and eighteen acres and ninety-five perches of the company's land in Upper Makefield. When the company's land was surveyed,
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
in 1709, Thomas Kirle, John Pidcock and Gilbert Wheeler were land-owners in the manor, on the north side of that tract. In Au- gust, 1705, James Logan wrote to William Penn that the London company must have five thousand acres more laid off to them in the manor of Highlands, but we do not know that it was done. That spring Penn wrote to Logan complaining that a great part of the manor was taken up by "encroachers." In 1738 Thomas Penn owned twenty-five hundred acres in the township, probably the re- mainder of the seventy-five hundred of the manor lands not pur- chased by the London company, and which he valued at £80 the one hundred acres.
William Smith, son of William Smith who settled in Wrights- town in 1684, purchased two hundred and one acres in Upper Makefield in 1708. The surveyor was instructed to lay out the land "at a place called Windy bush in Penn's manor of Highlands, near Wrightstown." The deed was executed April 28th, 1709, and the purchase money, £50 Pennsylvania currency, paid. His son Thomas lived several years in a cave in the woods, and when he moved into a new log house the Indians occupied the cave. Josiah B. Smithi, of Newtown, is the sixth in descent from Upper Make- field William, and is still the owner of part of the ancestral acres. Among others who were settlers on the manor lands outside the London company's, were Thomas Ross, ancestor of the family of this name in the county, Jeffrey Burge, R. Norton, John Pidcock and N. Blackfan.
The two Makefields were under one municipal jurisdiction for many years. As the settlers increased in the manor of Highlands the constables and assessors of Makefield were given jurisdiction over it, which was continued to 1737, when the population had become so numerous as to make it inconvenient for the officers to discharge their duties. A division of the township was asked for now, which led to the organization of Upper Makefield.
At the March term, 1737, a petition, signed by twenty of the in- habitants, viz : John Palmer, Daniel Palmer, William Russell Alexander Richey, William Lee, Eleazer Doane, Richard Hough Edward Bailey, Thomas Smith, Richard Parsons, John Atkinson, John Osmond, John Trego, Joseph Tomlinson, Charles Reeder James Tomlinson, John Brown, John Wall, John Gaill and John Whiteacre, was presented to the court of quarter sessions. The petitioners represented themselves as living on that part of the
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
manor of Highlands called "Goldney's and company's land," i. e. the London company, that the township is so large, containing twenty- two thousand acres, and the lands referred to have become so thickly settled that the township officers cannot discharge their duties toward all the inhabitants, that the constable does not know the bounds of the township, and frequently returns the names of persons taxed with the inhabitants of Wrightstown. For these reasons the petitioners ask to have the said company's lands attached to Wrightstown, or to be erected into a township by itself. This appears to have been the earliest action toward the organization of what is now Upper Makefield, and that it led to that result, although we have not been able to find the record of it. In 1753 John Beaumont, William Keith, Benjamin Taylor, and others, living on the London com- pany's tract, petitioned the court to be either erected into a town- ship by themselves or added to Upper Makefield. This latter re- quest was complied with, and it was ordered that "the upper line of John Duer's tract be the partition between the two townships." This line no doubt is the present southern boundary. The part or- ganized into Upper Makefield contains an area of eleven thousand six hundred and twenty-eight acres, and the boundaries have under- gone but little, if any, change from 1753 to the present time.
Among those who settled in Upper Makefield early in the last century were the families of Trego, Reeder, McNair, Keith, Fell, Magill, Stewart, and others. The Tregos are descended from French Huguenot ancestry. In 1688 three brothers immigrated to England, and two years afterward Peter came to America and set- tled in Middletown, then Chester, now Delaware, county, where he lived until 1722. Our Bucks county Tregos are descended from his eldest son, Jacob, who married Mary Cartledge, of Darby, in 1709, and died in 1720, leaving two children, John and Rachel. His widow married John Laycock, of Wrightstown, in 1722, where she and her two children came to reside. The son, John, married Hannah Lester, of Richland, and in 1736 bought a tract of land in the western part of Upper Makefield, where he erected buildings and lived, and died about 1792, at the age of sixty-six. They had two sons, William and Jacob, and several daughters. Jacob died unmarried, William married Rebecca Hibbs, of Byberry, in 1768, and died in 1827, from whose six sons and three daughters have descended a numerous posterity, living in many sections of the Union.
475
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
The Reeders were early settlers in the township, but we do not know the time they came in. In 1746 Charles Reeder bought two hundred acres of Samuel Carey ; his will was executed June 16th, 1800, and admitted to probate September 8th, 1804. This plan- tation was sold by his executor to John Chapman in 1806. He had ten children, of whom the late Merrick Reeder was the eldest son. There were Merricks in Middletown, where John M. bought a farm in 1759, and died in 1765, leaving six children, but Charles, of Up- per Makefield, was not one of them.
The McNairs are Scotch-Irish. Samuel, the son of James, who was driven from Scotland to Ireland, was born in county Donegal, in 1699. He married Anna Murdock, and with his family and father-in-law, then eighty years of age, came to America in 1732, landing at Bristol in this county. They passed the first winter in an old school-house, around which the wolves howled at night, and the next spring settled in Upper Makefield, where the family lived for five generations. They were members of the Newtown Presby- terian church, and there their remains lie, Samuel the progenitor, dying in 1761. They had five children, James, born February 6th, 1733, Samuel, September 25th, 1739, Solomon in 1744, Rebecca in 1747, and one other. The eldest son, James, purchased a farm in Upper Makefield in 1763, which was the homestead for three genera- tions, and only passed out of the family in 1873. He married Martha Keith, had nine children, and died in 1807. From this couple descend our Bucks county McNairs, and their children married into the well- known families of Torbert, McMaster, Wynkoop, Vanhorne, Bennet, Slack, and Robinson, and left numerous descendants. The late James M. McNair, clerk of orphans' court, justice of the peace, officer of volunteers, and church elder, was a grandson of James the elder. From Samuel, who married Mary Mann, of Horsham, and had seven children, have descended the Montgomery county McNairs, and his children married into the families of Mann, Craven, Vanarts- dalen, Long, and Kirk. The late John McNair, member of Congress from Montgomery county, was a grandson of Samuel, and son of John, of Southampton. Solomon McNair, son of Samuel the elder, married and had three children, was a merchant of Philadelphia, where he died May 15th, 1812, at the age of sixty-eight. The descendants of James and Samuel are found in many parts of the Union, the eldest member of the family living being Samuel Mc- Nair, of Dansville, New York. They are found in the various
476
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
walks of life, several are ministers of the gospel, a few members of the other learned professions, but the great majority follow the occu- pation of their first ancestor in America, husbandry. They have retained most of the characteristics of the races from which they sprung, have generally intermarried into families of a common origin, and cling with tenacity to the Scotch Presbyterian faith.
William Keith was in the township prior to 1750, and we believe he came about the time of the other Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. We find that Mr. Keith bought two hundred and thirty acres of the London company, the 3d of December, 1761. His wife, Mary, died in 1772, at the age of fifty-one, and he in 1781, aged sixty- seven, and both were buried in the Presbyterian yard at Newtown. A Samuel Keith, probably a relative of William, died in 1741, at the age of twenty-seven. Isaac Stockton Keith, a son of William and Mary, became a distinguished divine. He was born in Upper Makefield, January 20th, 1755, graduated at Princeton in 1775, taught a Latin school at Elizabeth, New Jersey, then studied divinity and was licensed to preach by the Philadelphia Presbytery, in 1778. In 1780 he was called to the Presbyterian church at Alexandria, Virginia, and to the church at Donegal in 1788, with a salary of two hundred guineas. He shortly afterward married a daughter of Doctor Sproat, of Philadelphia. He became the pastor of the In- dependent or Congregational church at Charleston, South Carolina, the 16th of September, 1788. The honor of LL.D. was conferred upon Mr. Keith, but we do not know when or by what institution. Charles Stewart, the father-in-law of John Harris, of Newtown, spent his life in Upper Makefield, where he died in 1794. Through his daughter, the wife of Harris, he became the ancestor of some of the most distinguished families of Kentucky. At his death Mr. Stewart owned land "in the country called Kantuckee, in the State of Virginia." The Magills of this township, and numbers elsewhere, are descended from an Irish Quaker ancestor, who immigrated from the north of Ireland about 1730, and settled on a farm half a mile from where Watson P. Magill lives in Upper Makefield. The original homestead now lies within the limits of the borough of New Hope. Edward H. Magill, president of Swarthmore college, is a native of Upper Makefield, and a descendant of the Irish Quaker ancestor. The McConkeys, after whom the ferry at Taylorsville was named, were in the township early, also Scotch-Irish Presby- terians. We find that Charity McConkey died September 2d, 1771,
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
at the age of fifty-three years, and was buried in the old yard at Newtown. The main support of that church probably came from Upper Makefield.
Joseph Fell, the first of the name in Bucks county, at his death left a farm in Upper Makefield to his son Joseph, who settled there. He was great-grandson of Joseph Fell, who came from England in 1704. Here his son, who became Doctor David Fell, and the father of Joseph Fell, of Buckingham, was born the 1st of September, 1774. His mother was Rachel, granddaughter of Thomas Canby, the father of eighteen children. In his youth there were few facilities for farmers' sons to acquire a good education, but instead the labors of the field, fishing, swimming, and fox-hunting with horse and hound, gave them robust health. In these David Fell was a proficient. He studied mathematics with Doctor John Chapman, of Upper Makefield, and Latin with the Reverend Alexander Boyd, at New- town. He entered his name as student of medicine with Doctor Isaac Chapman, of Wrightstown, having Doctor Phineas Jenks as fellow-student. Completing his studies at the University of Penn- sylvania he married Phobe Schofield, of Solebury, and settled in practice in his native township, near the foot of Bowman's hill, on the River-side road. On leaving the university Doctor Fell carried with him the following certificate from Doctor Rush, the great founder of the medical school, and signer of the Declaration of In- dependence :
" I do hereby certify that Mr. David Fell hath attended a course of my lectures upon the Institutes and Practice of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania, with diligence and punctuality.
(Signed) "BENJAMIN RUSH.
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