The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time, Part 5

Author: Davis, W.W.H. (William Watts Hart), 1820-1910
Publication date: 1876
Publisher: Doylestown, Pa. : Democrat Book and Job Office Print
Number of Pages: 976

USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 5

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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.

Markham repaired thither to enter upon his duties, bearing with him Penn's letter to the inhabitants, which assured them that they should be governed by laws of their own making, and would receive the most ample protection to person and property. Markham was authorized to call a council of nine, which met and organized the 3d of August, from which time we may date the establishment of a civil government for Pennsylvania. There was very little inter- ference in the established order of things, and the people found a mild ruler in the deputy governor. The seat of government was fixed at Upland, the present Chester. The old court closed its session the 13th of September, and the new court opened the next day. Among the business transacted was the appointment of Wil- liam Biles and Robert Lucas, who lived at the falls, justices of the peace, and pounds, shillings and pence were declared to be the currency of the country. But it was difficult to get rid of the guil- ders after they had been so long in circulation. On the 20th of November the deputy governor sat upon the bench and administered justice for the first time. It does not appear that any immigrants accompanied him to Pennsylvania.

Markham was instructed by William Penn to select a site, and build for him a dwelling, and it was probably he who chose the spot whereon Pennsbury house was erected, in Falls township. We can imagine him prospecting along the west bank of the Delaware for a suitable location for the home of the Proprietary that afterward be- came historical. We have no doubt that he came overland from New York, and possibly, as he traveled along the western bank of the Delaware, or sailed down its broad bosom from the falls, he was struck with the extensive and fertile tract still known as "the manor," then covered with a growth of giant timber, and returned thither to fix the site of Pennsbury house. To hasten the work on his arrival, he brought the frame with him and mechanics to pat it together.

The 30th of September William Penn appointed William Crispin, John Berzar and Christopher Allen, commissioners, to go to Penn- sylvania with power to purchase land of the Indians, and to select a site for, and lay out, a great city. About the same time he appointed James Harrison his "lawful agent," to sell for him any parcel of land in Pennsylvania of not less than two hundred and fifty acres. Penn, in a letter of September 4th, 1681, gives the conditions upon which land is to be sold, and the quantity, to cach

HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.

purchaser. Settlers were to receive fifty acres for each servant they took out, and fifty for each child. Those too poor to buy could take up land at a rent of one pence an acre, two hundred acres to each head of a family, and fifty acres to each servant at the same rent. The rent of poor servants was afterward reduced to one and a half pence per acre. Penn agreed to buy the passage of those too poor to pay their own, but they must pay double rent. He pledged himself that this rent should never be raised. Silas Crispin was appointed surveyor-general, and sailed with the commissioners but, dying on the voyage, Captain Thomas Holme was appointed and commissioned his successor the 18th of April, 1682. He was a native of Waterford, Ireland, and is said to have served in the fleet under Admiral Penn in the West Indies when a young man. He sailed from the Downs April 23d, accompanied by two sons and two daughters, Silas Crispin, the son of his predecessor in office, and John, the eldest son of James Claypole. Thomas Holme made his home in Philadelphia, and owned land in Bristol township, but it is not known that he ever lived there. His two sons died in his life- time. His daughter, Esther, married Silas Crispin who came to America with him, and their daughter, Eleanor, was the ancestress of the Harts, of Warminster, in the female line. The mother of Silas Crispin, the elder, was a sister of Margaret Jasper, the mother of William Penn, which made him the first cousin of the founder.

Among the earliest acts of Markham and the commissioners was the selection of a site for a great city, which resulted in the found- ing of Philadelphia. They were instructed by Penn to make careful soundings along the west side of the Delaware, of the river and creeks, to ascertain "where most ships may best ride, of deepest draft of water." It is not known how far up the Delaware was ex- amined, but there is a tradition that Pennsbury was at one time selected as the site for the capital city, but it was finally fixed where it stands, between the Delaware and Schuylkill. We are told that within a few months Philadelphia contained eighty houses and cot- tages, and more than three hundred farms were laid out and partly cleared. In the summer of 1684 the city contained three hundred and fifty-seven houses, many of them large and well-built, with cellars. In 1685 the houses had increased to six hundred. Within little more than two years from its settlement ninety ships had arrived, bringing seven thousand two hundred passengers. Old-

HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.

mixon says that in 1684 Philadelphia contained two thousand five hundred inhabitants.1

Before Penn left England a great many persons had purchased land in Pennsylvania, to whom deeds were given, the surveys to be made after their arrival. Markham and the commissioners issued a number of warrants for the survey of land, which may be found by consulting the records. The oldest deeds on record in Bucks county are those of Penn to Thomas Woolrich, of Shalford, county of Stafford, for one thousand acres, dated April 1st, 1681; and from Penn to James Hill, of Beckington, county of Somerset, shoemaker, dated July 27th, 1681, for five hundred acres. In each case it is mentioned that the quit-rent is one shilling per one hundred acres. It is not known that either of these purchasers settled in this county.

Several immigrants arrived in 1682, previous to William Penn, and settled in Bucks county. Among these were Richard Amor, of Buckelbury, Berkshire ; Henry Paxson, of Bycot house, parish of Slow, in the county of Oxford. He embarked with his family, but his wife, son, and brother Thomas died at sea, and his daughter Elizabeth only survived to reach her father's new home on the Delaware. He settled in Middletown, and married Margaret Plum- ley August 13th, 1684; Luke Brinsley, of Leek, in the county of Stafford, mason, arrived September 28th, and settled in Falls. He was probably a servant of William Penn, for he was in his employ as "ranger ;" John Clows, jr., of Gosworth, in the county of Chester, with his brother Joseph, sister Sarah, who married John Bainbridge, in 1685, and servant Henry Lingart, and settled in Lower Makefield. Clows died in 1683, and Lingart soon after his arrival. Another immigrant named Clows arrived about this time

1 The following, on the subject of the location of Philadelphia, is from Watson's Annals: "Samuel Preston says of his grandmother, that she said Phineas Pember- ton surveyed and laid out a town intended to have been Philadelphia up at Pennsbury, and that the people who went there were dissatisfied with the change. On my ex- pressing doubts of this, thinking she might have confused the case of Chester removal, Mr. Preston then further declared, that having nearly forty years ago (about 1786) oeeasion to hunt through the trunks of surveys of John Lukens, surveyor-general of Pennsylvania, he and Lukens then saw a ground plat for the city of Philadelphia, signed Phineas Pemberton, surveyor-general, that fully appeared to have been in Pennsbury manor ; also another for the present town of Bristol, called Buckingham." The theory of Samuel Preston is easily overturned by the two facts, that Pemberton did not reach Pennsylvania until after Philadelphia was laid out, and that he was never "surveyor-general."

HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.

bringing three children, Margery, Rebecca and William, and ser- vants Joseph Chorley, Daniel Hough and John Richardson. Clows married Mary Ackerman August 2d, 1686 ; John Brock, or Brock- man, of Stockport, in the county of Chester, with two servants, one named Eliza Eaton, and followed by a third in another vessel, and settled in Lower Makefield. He was possibly the ancestor of the Brocks of Doylestown. One authority says he came from Bramall . in Chester. He had two grants of land, one for one thousand acres, dated March, 1681, and another March 3d, 1681, the acres not mentioned ; William Venables, of Chathill, county of Stafford, came with his wife Elizabeth, and children Joyce and Francis, set- tled in Falls, and died in December, 1683; George Pownall and Eleanor, his wife, of Laycock, in the county of Chester, farmer, with five children and three servants John Breasly, Robert Saylor and Martha Worral. He was killed by the fall of a tree, the first acci- dental death known in the county, one month and two days after his arrival, and a son George was born twelve days afterward ; William Yardley and Jane, his wife, of Bansclough, near Leek, in Staffordshire, yeoman, with children Enoch, Thomas and William, and servant Andrew Heath, arrived at the falls September 28th, 1682, and settled in Lower Makefield, taking up a large tract cover- ing the site of Yardleyville. He was born in 1632, was a minister among Friends in his twenty-fifth year, and was several times im- prisoned. He was a member from Bucks of the first assembly, and also in the council, dying in 1693. Thomas Janney wrote of him about the time of his death : "He was a man of sound mind and

good understanding." He was an uncle of Phineas Pemberton.2 From him have descended all the Yardleys of this county, and many elsewhere, with unnumbered descendants in the female line. These immigrants came in the ships Samuel, and Friends' Adventure. The servants who accompanied them were indentured to serve four years, and at the end of the time each one was to receive his freedom and fifty acres of land-the condition of all indentured servants brought from England at that period.

The settlement of new countries is governed by a law as well- defined as that of commerce or finance. From the time the human family first went abroad to found colonies down to the present day, civilization has traveled up the valleys of rivers and their tributaries,

2 Dr. Buckman is of the opinion that William Yardley's house was on the Dolington road a mile from Yardleyville.

HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.

while the wealth, developed by labor and capital, has as invariably flowed down these same valleys to the sea. This law was observed by our ancestors. Planting themselves upon the Delaware, they gradually extended up its valley and the valleys of the Poquessing, Pennypack and Neshaminy, and penetrated the interior. At the end of the second year after Penn's arrival we find settlers scattered here and there through the wilderness as high up as Wrightstown, Warrington and Upper Makefield.

Bucks county was settled by three distinctly-marked races, whose peculiarities are seen in their descendants-the English, the Ger- man, and the Scotch-Irish. A fourth race, the Welsh, followed the other three, and settled some portions of the middle and upper sections of the county, but their descendants are not so distinctly marked. They were generally Baptists, and while they did not introduce that worship into the county, they added largely to its communion and strength. This mixture of peoples gives our popu- lation a very composite character. The first to arrive were the English, mostly Friends, who immediately preceded, came with, or followed William Penn, and settled in the lower parts of Chester, Philadelphia and Bucks. They were the fathers and founders of the commonwealth, and have left their lasting impress upon our society and laws. They were followed by the Germans, who trans- ferred the language and customs of the Rhine to the Schuylkill, the upper Delaware and the Lehigh. They were of several denomina- tions, the Lutherans, Reformed and Mennonites predominating. The Germans came close upon the heels of the English Friends, who had hardly seated themselves on the banks of the Delaware when the language of Luther was heard on the Schuylkill. As early as 1682 and 1683 a few settled where Germantown stands, and to which they gave the name. They were followed by a number of German Friends, from Gersheim, near Worms, in 1686, having been convinced by William Ames. They came in considerable numbers soon after 1700. In the fall of 1705 two German agents came to view the land, and went pretty generally through the country, but returned without buying. In the winter of 1704-5 Penn writes to James Logan that he has an hundred German families preparing to go to Pennsylvania, which will buy thirty or forty thousand acres of land. In the summer of 1709 Penn announces to Logan the coming of the Palatines (Germans), and charges liim to use them "with tenderness and care;" says they are "a sober people, divers Mennonites, and

HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.

will neither swear nor fight"-a great recommendation with the founder. Tender and considerate William Penn !- he wants these strangers treated with tenderness and care when they come to their new homes in the wilderness! Between 1708 and 1720 thousands of Germans arrived from the Palatinate. About 1711 several thou- sand, who had immigrated to New York, left that province and came to Pennsylvania because they were badly treated. After this no Germans would settle there. In 1717 James Logan deprecates the great number of Germans that are coming, which he says " gives the country some uneasiness." He writes, in 1714, that Sir William Keith, the governor, while at Albany, two years before, invited the New York Germans to come to Pennsylvania to increase his politi- cal influence; fears they may be willing to usurp the country to themselves ; and four years later he is glad the influx of strangers will attract the attention of Parliament. There may have been genuine fear on the part of the authorities, which complained that the Germans were bold and indigent, and seized upon the best vacant tracts of land without paying for it. To discourage their coming thither, the provincial assembly laid a tax of 20s. a head on each newly arrived servant. The government had become so jealous of the Germans and other immigrants, not English, by this time, that all attempts at naturalization failed until 1724, under the ad- ministration of Governor Keith.

The third race to arrive was the Scotch-Irish, as they are generally called, but properly Scotch, and not the offspring of the marriage of Gaelic and Celt. They were almost exclusively Presbyterians, the immigration of the Catholic-Irish setting in at a later period. The Scotch-Irish began to arrive about 1716-18. Timid James Logan had the same fear of these immigrants that he had of the Germans. They came in such numbers about 1729, that he said it looked as if "Ireland is to send all her inhabitants to this province," and feared they would make themselves masters of it. He charged them of possessing themselves of the Conestoga manor "in an au- dacious and disorderly manner," in 1730. The 20s. head-tax laid the year before had no effect to restrain them, and the stream flowed on, in spite of unfriendly legislation. No wonder-it was an exodus from a land of oppression to one of civil and religious liberty !

The Scotch-Irish have a history full of interest. In the sixteenth century the province of Ulster, in Ireland, which had nearly been depopulated during the Irish rebellions in the reign of Elizabeth,

HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.

was peopled by immigrants from Scotland. The offer of land, and other inducements, soon drew a large population, distinguished for thrift and industry, across the narrow strait that separates the two countries. They were Presbyterians, and built their first church in the county of Antrim, in 1613. The population was largely increased the next fifty years under the persecutions of Charles II. and James II., in their effort to establish the church of England over Scotland. There has been but little intermarriage between the Irish and these Scotch-Saxons, and the race is nearly as distinct as the day it settled in Ireland. In the course of time persecution followed these Scotch- Irish into the land of their exile, and after bearing it as long as it became men of spirit to bear, they resolved to seek new homes in America, where they hoped to find a free and open field for their industry and skill, and where there would be no interference with their religious belief.

Their immigration commenced the first quarter of the last century. Six thousand arrived in 1729; and it is stated that for several years, prior to the middle of the century, twelve thousand came annually. A thousand families sailed from Belfast in 1736, and it is estimated that twenty-five thousand arrived between 1771 and 1773. Nearly the whole of them were Presbyterians, and they settled in Pennsyl- vania. Many of them came into Bucks county in quest of homes, and in a few years we find them scattered over several sections, from the Neshaminy to the mountains north of the Lehigh. They were the founders of all the old Presbyterian churches in the county. We had no class of immigrants that excelled them in energy, enterprise and intelligence.

A considerable number of Hollanders settled in the lower section of the county in the first quarter of the last century, principally on the Neshaminy and its branches, but their descendants have quite lost their characteristics of race, in the hotch-potch of many peoples. These several races came to the wilds of Pennsylvania for a two-fold object, to better their wordly condition, and for freedom to worship God. Religious persecution in Europe drove to the new world the best immigrants that peopled this county. The Catholic Irish, now found in considerable numbers in the county, began their migration at a much later period, although from the earliest time an occasional Irishman made his home in Penn's new province.

Before the arrival of Europeans Bucks county was occupied, and the soil owned, by Indians known as the Lenni Lenape, or original

HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.

people, who dwelt on both banks of the Delaware from the mouth to its source, and reaching to the Susquehanna in the interior. They were divided into a number of minor tribes, speaking as many dialects of the same common language. The English called them the Delaware Indians because they lived upon that river. The greater portion of those who lived within the present limits of the county were known as Neshaminies, probably from the name of one of our largest and most beautiful streams. The Lenni Lenapes originally came from the valley of the Mississippi, whence they were driven by more powerful neighbors, and sought a quiet home on the banks of the Delaware. The Europeans found them a mild, amiable and kindly-disposed people, and on their first arrival the Indians assisted to feed them, and in some instances the early settlers would propably have starved without the friendly help of their red neigh- bors. Gabriel Thomas, in his early account of Pennsylvania, says of the Indians :-

"The children are washed in cold water as soon as born, and to harden them they are plunged into the river. They walk at about nine months. The boys fish until about fifteen when they hunt, and if they have given good proof of their manhood by a large return of skins, they are allowed to marry, usually at about seventeen or eighteen. The girls stay with their mothers and help to hoe the ground, plant corn and bear burdens. They marry at about thirteen or fourteen. Their houses are made of mats or the bark of trees set upon poles not higher than a man, with grass or reeds spread on the ground to lie upon. They live chiefly on maize or Indian corn roasted in the ashes, sometimes beaten and boiled with water, called hominy. They also eat beans and peas. The woods and the river furnish the greater part of their provisions. They ate but two meals a day, morning and evening. They mourn a whole year, but it is no other than blacking their faces." Proud says : "The Indians along the Delaware and the adjacent parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, so far as appears by the best accounts of the early settlement of the provinces, when clear of the effects of the per- nicious poison of strong liquor, and before they had much imbibed, and, to their unnatural depravity, added such European vices as be- fore they were strangers to, were naturally, and in general, faithful and hospitable." Before the settlements along the Delaware fell into the hands of the English, the Dutch authorities prohibited the selling of powder, shot, and strong liquors to the Indians, under pain

HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.

of death. Isaac Stills was a celebrated Indian, of good education, and the leader of the last remnant of the Delaware tribe adjacent to Philadelphia. His only son Joshua was educated at Germantown. In 1771 Isaac Still moved up into Buckingham where he collected the scattered remains of his tribe, and in 1775 he, with forty per- sons, started off to the Wabash. These were mostly females, the men having gone before. Still is described as a fine-looking man,+ wearing a hat ornamented with feathers. The women marched off in regular order, bareheaded, each with a large pack on her back fastened with large straps across the forehead.

Among the prominent Indians, natives of the county, were Cap- tain Harrison, born in Buckingham, and intended for the Delaware chieftain, and Teedyuscung, a man of superior natural abilities, spoke English and could read and write. The bones of the great Tamany, the afable, are said to repose in the valley of the beauti- ful Neshaminy. Captain Harrison refused to leave his aged mother when she was seized with the small-pox, and he fell a victim to it, and was buried on the Indian tract. In 1690 there were several settlements of Indians in Buckingham and Solebury, on the Fell, Pownal, and Streaper tracts. They were peaceably inclined and sometimes supplied the settlers with meats and vegetables. Their children and those of the whites played together. On the farm of Henry Beans, Buckingham, is a spring that still bears the name of Indian spring, from the fact that Indians encamped about it many years after the country was well settled. Peg Tuckemony, who lived on the Street road above Sands's corner, and employed herself making baskets, is said to have been the last of her race in Buckingham. She is remembered by the present generation, and she made a school basket for Simon Meredith, now of Doylestown, when he was a school-boy. Isaiah, her husband, died about 1830.

3 In 1679 the following Indian chiefs were living along the Delaware from Cold spring up to about Taylorsville: Mamerakickan, Anrichtan, Sackoquewano, and Nanneckos.

4 Samuel Preston.

HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.

CHAPTER IV.

WILLIAM PENN SAILS FOR PENNSYLVANIA.

1682.

Penn sails for Pennsylvania .- Arrival at New Castle .- Meets the inhabitants .- Visits Philadelphia .- First assembly .- He goes to New York .- Welcome passengers .- John Rowland, Thomas Fitzwater, William Buckman, Nicholas Waln, John Gilbert, Joseph Kirkbride .- Condition of country .- First purchase from the Indians .- Penn buys additional land .- Treaty of 1686 .- Walking purchase .- Tamany .- Lands granted .- Great Law .- Population on Penn's arrival .- Assem- bly of 1683 .- Seal of county .- House of correction .- County court .- Sumptuary laws .- Marking cattle .- Ear marks .- Owners of cattle in Bucks county in 1684.

WILLIAM PENN sailed for Pennsylvania, in the ship Welcome, of 300 tons, Captain Robert Greenway, about September 1st, 1682, accompanied by one hundred immigrants, mostly Friends. They had a long and tedious passage, and their sufferings were aggravated by the small-pox breaking out on board, of which thirty died. Penn was assiduous in his attentions to the sick, and greatly endeared himself to all on board. The vessel entered the capes of Delaware the 24th of October, and arrived before New Castle, the 27th, of which he received possession and the submission of the inhabitants. He was at Upland on the 29th, from which place he notified some of the leading inhabitants to meet him at New Castle, the 2d of November, to settle the question of jurisdiction and other matters. At this meeting he took occasion to address the people, explaining

HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.

the nature of his grant, etc. He desired them to bring, at the next court, their patents, surveys, grants and claims, to have them ad- justed and confirmed. On the 9th of November Penn visited Philadelphia with a number of Friends, to attend quarterly meeting. Tradition tells us that he came up the river in a boat and landed at the mouth of Dock creek, near a building then being erected, and afterward known as the " Blue Anchor Tavern." Penn convened an assembly at Upland, the 4th of December, at which were present, from Bucks county, Christopher Taylor, Griffith Jones and William Yardley. It continued in session four days, and passed about one hundred acts of pressing importance, including the act of Union which united the territories of New Castle and Kent to Pennsylvania. An election was ordered for the 20th of February, 1682,1 for members of council and assembly, to be holden at Philadelphia the 10tli of March following. In the proclamation, addressed to "Richard Noble? high sheriff of the county of Bucks," he was required to "summon all the freeholders of thy bailwick to meet at the falls upon Delaware river ;"3 when William Bills, Christopher Taylor, and James Harrison were elected to the council, and William Yard- ley, Samuel Darke, Robert Lucas, Nicholas Walne, John Wood, John Clows, Thomas Fitzwater, Robert Hall, and James Boyden, to the assembly, and whose names are signed to the great charter.

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The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time, Part 5

Author: Davis, W.W.H. (William Watts Hart), 1820-1910 Publication date: 1876 Publisher: Doylestown, Pa. : Democrat Book and Job Office Print Number of Pages: 976

Author: Davis, W.W.H. (William Watts Hart), 1820-1910
Publication date: 1876
Publisher: Doylestown, Pa. : Democrat Book and Job Office Print
Number of Pages: 976