USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 50
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7 Probably Trexler. This family gave name to Trexlertown, now in Upper Macun- gie, and there is hardly a doubt that the early tavern was the foundation of the village.
8 The name is corrupted from Machk-un-tchi, signifying " the feeding-place of bears." In Lehigh county, and was named after Salzbury, in South Austria.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
We have seen no reliable record of the names, and times of ar- rival, of the earliest settlers, but it is said they came soon after the Allen tract was open to settlement, in 1735. In 1747 a few Mo- ravians settled at what is now Emaus, a small village at the foot of the South mountain, five miles south-west of Allentown. Among the earliest arrivals were Sebastian Knauss, Jacob Arenhard, and Andrew Guehring. 10 The latter, who did not arrive until 1751, was married at Bethlehem in 1754. The land for the town-plot of Emaus was given by Knauss and Arenhard, while Guehring gave an equiva- lent in money. There were German settlers in that vicinity as early as about 1740, and a congregation was organized and a church built as early as 1742. In 1746 it was called Schmaltzgass, and at this time is known as Jerusalem church. Salisbury township was not organ- ized until after it became a part of Northampton in 1752.
WHITEHALL.11-Settlers pushed gradually up the Lehigh, and be- tween 1730 and 1735 we find Germans in what is now Whitehall township, One of the first to arrive was Adam Deshler, in 1730, whose son David was one of the earliest settlers at Allentown, and owned a mill on the Little Lehigh. He was an active patriot in the Revolution, and advanced money to the government when its coffers were empty, and was a commissary of supplies for the Continental army. Among the names of the carly comers to the wilderness of Whitehall we find those of Schreiber, Schaad, Kohler, Kern, Burg- halter, Mickley, Troxel, Steckel, Palliet, now written Balliet, Sæger, Knapp, Guth, and others, whose descendants live in that region. Some of these early settlers were Swiss, and in religion generally Reformed. Lawrence Guth located eight hundred acres, the Trox- els abont fifteen hundred, George Knapp one hundred acres, on which he built a grist-mill, and Peter Kohler one hundred and twenty acres, on which he likewise built a grist-mill. Balliet, Koh- ler, and Guth were tavernkeepers. They settled in a well-wooded and a well-watered district about Copley creek, which, because of its fertility, was called "Egypta."
About 1740 Lynford Gardner, of Philadelphia, built a house on a tract of land he owned near the Jordan and Cedar creeks. It was painted white, and because of its color was called "Whitehall," which afterward gave the name to the township.12 On Scull's map
10 He was born in 1729, at the town of Boll, in Wurtemberg.
11 In Lehigh county. There are three townships which bear this name, Whitehall, North Whitehall, and South Whitehall.
12 Mr. Henry.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
of 1770 it is called "Grouse-hall." Gentlemen used to come from Philadelphia to Mr. Gardener's in large parties to shoot grouse, then a favorite sport.
The Reformed church in this township, one of the oldest in Le- high county, was organized about 1733. Service was first held at the houses of George Kulp, Jacob Kern, and Peter Troxel by the Reverend John Henry Goetschius, of Zurich, Switzerland, and one of the oldest German missionaries in America. The date of the church organization is not known, but the baptismal record com- mences the 22d of March, 1733;13 the first baptistn entered is a son of Peter Troxel, the 26th of October of that year, with Nicholas Kern and Johannes and Margaret Egender for sponsors. The child was named Johannes. Mr. Gotschius, the first pastor, came to this country before 1730, which year he became pastor of the Reformed church at New Goshenhoppen, Montgomery county. He officiated at the Egypt church, in conjunction with that at Saucon, until 1736. The church was now without a pastor for several years but was supplied occasionally by John Philip Bæhnn, and the children were taken down to the Saucon church to be baptised by the Reverend P. H. Dorstius. The Reverend John Conrad Wuertz, was called in 1742, but in 1744 he removed to the Springfield church.
A small Reformed log church, with loose planks laid on blocks for seats, was erected in 1742. A Lutheran congregation was or- ganized in it in 1758, and since then the two congregations have continued to worship in the same building. After the resignation of Mr. Wuertz in 1744 there was a vacancy, with supplies, until 1752, when John Jacob Wissler, a native of Dillenberg, Nassau, was called to the charge. At this time the Reformed charge was com- posed of the congregations of Heidelburg, Egypt and Jordan. The church in Whitehall has been known as the Egypt church since 1752. The township was not laid out and organized until 1753, the year after it was cut off from Bucks, but probably the inhabitants had taken steps toward it before. HEIDELBURG township, to the north-west of Whitehall, was settled about the some period, but it was not organized until after 1752. Nathaniel Irish owned real estate there in 1749, and on the 24th of April he leased two hun- dred acres to Nicholas Snyder. WILLIAMS township, in the south- east corner of Northampton county, and bounded on two sides by
13 At this time it was called "the congregation at the Lehigh."
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
the Delaware and Lehigh rivers, was organized in 1750. At the time the county was divided it contained a population of two hun- dred. We possess none of the particulars of its settlement, nor have we been able to find the records of its organization. Nearly the whole surface is covered by the spurs and ridges of the South mountain, which abound in iron-ore of various kinds. It is now a rich and populous township.
lee
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
ROCKHILL.
1740.
Rockhill settled by Germans .- Abraham Wombold, Samuel Sellers, William Ma- bury .- Manor of Perkasie .- Jacob Stout, Abraham Stout, John Benner, John Shellenberger .- The Groffs .- Mennonites .- Township laid out .- Origin of name. -Area and population .- Derstein's mill .- Peter Shepherd .- Sellersville .- Thomas Sellers .- Reverend Peter S. Fisher .- General Frank Fisher .- Bridge- town .- Perkasie .- Telford .- Christian Dettra .- Valentine Nichola .- Indian- field church.
ROCKHILL was one of the objective points of the German immi- gration that came up the Perkiomen and set across into Bucks county from 1720 to 1730. Germans were among its very earliest settlers, and it has maintained its German status to the present day.
Our knowledge of the Rockhill pioneers is very limited, being of that class which rarely preserves recorded family history or tradition. One of the earliest settlers in the west end of the township, in the vicinity of where Sellersville stands, was Abraham Wombold, who purchased a tract on a branch of Perkiomen in 1738, on which he built a dwelling, grist-mill and tannery. Here he carried on milling and tanning for many years, and to him the farmers for many miles round brought their grain to be ground. He was followed by Sam- uel Sellers, who built a dwelling, and opened a tavern in it, on the
34
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
site of the Sellersville house. Around this old hostelry has grown up a flourishing village, named after its first denizen. Mr. Sellers lived to become a prominent and influential citizen, was member of the assembly and sheriff of the county, and died August 18th, 1817. William Mabury was an early settler, but the date of his arrival is not known. He became a large landed proprietor. At his death, in 1782, he owned seven hundred and forty-five acres in Rockhill which, the following year, were divided among his heirs.
The Proprietary's manor of Perkasie, containing ten thousand acres, partly in Rockhill township, was surveyed and laid out prior to 1708. A section of the township is still called Perkasie, and a flourishing village of this name has grown up within a few years on the upper part of the manor. The manor lands were opened to purchase and settlement about 1735. About this time Jacob Stout, a German immigrant, came into the township and purchased a tract of land in the manor, covering the site of the village of Perkasie. Abraham Stout, a member of the convention of 1790 that framed the state constitution of Pennsylvania, who was born on the premi- ses in 1740, remembered seeing the Indian boys of the neighbor- hood shoot birds with arrows. Jacob Stout, the first settler, died in 1771, and was buried at Stout's graveyard, on the south-west end of Perkasie. Abraham Stout, the son, died in 1812, and his re- mains were buried at the same place. Within a few years the large stone barn which Jacob Stout built about 1752 was turned into a sash-factory, but was burned down in the fall of 1875. Before the fire the walls were apparently as sound as when put up. Since then Mr. Kramer has erected a large brick building, suitable for carrying . on any kind of business. Among the purchasers of manor lands of Richard Penn, in 1776, was John Benner, one hundred and thirty- eight acres. The same year Benner conveyed to John Shellen- berger, of Hatfield, Montgomery county, which was probably the first coming of the family of this name into this county. In 1779 the property was again sold to Conrad Shellenberger of Rock- hill.
Between 1740 and 1750 three brothers and a sister, named Groff, immigrated from Germany to Pennsylvania. Jacob was engaged to a young girl, who came over in the same ship, and they were mar- ried on their arrival. Soon afterward he purchased a tract of land in Rockhill, where they settled down and spent their lives. He be- came the owner of several hundred acres, and Sellersville is built on
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
a portion of his tract. He was the father of four sons, John, Peter, Jacob, and Henry. John bought a farm adjoining his father's, which partly remains in the family, Peter went to Lancaster county; where his descendants are living, John moved down toward the central part of the county, and was, no doubt, the immediate an- cestor of the Groff's of New Britain, and Henry, the youngest son, born about 1758, took part of the homestead farm where he lived and died, and at his death left the acres to his children. Part of it remains in the family. Henry was the immediate ancestor of David Groff, of Sellersville. In 1755 a tract of sixty-six and ihree-quar- ter acres was surveyed to Samuel Iden, on the Tohickon, by virtue of a warrant.
The south-western section of the township was settled early in the last century by Mennonite families from Germany. They estab- lished the congregation that worshiped in what is now known as Gehman's meeting-house, at that time called Bechtel's, two miles south of Sellersville, near the North Pennsylvania railroad, on the road to Telford. Jacob Derstein, senior, while assisting to build a fence around the graveyard, remarked that he would like to know who would be first buried in it, and it happened, in the Providence of God, that his own remains were the first to be interred in the new burial-ground. The old log meeting-house was torn down in 1838, and a convenient stone house erected on its site, which still affords accommodation to the large congregation that worships in it.
When Richland was laid out and organized, in 1734, considerable territory between this township and Hilltown was left without mu- nicipal government. Its organization, therefore, into a township was probably a matter of necessity to give local protection to the inhabitants. In the petition for roads this territory was called "Rockhill," several years before it was organized, and the name was probably given to it because of its rocky and uneven surface. The records give us no information as to the time when the first move- ment was made toward a township, and we only know that it was surveyed and laid out by Nicholas Scull in 1740, with metes and bounds that differ materially from its present boundaries, but when the form of the township was changed we know not. In the original draft the name of the township is left blank, as it had not yet been agreed upon. The following are the boundaries of Nicho- las Scull's survey, with draft attached, of 1740 :
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
" Beginning at a white oak standing on Tohickon bank on the west side of a road laid out from Saucon creek, leading to Philadel- phia ; thence by the said road south two degrees east, three hundred and sixty perches; thence by the same south seventeen degrees east, two hundred and fifty-two perches to a corner of Hilltown town- ship ; thence by the same south-west, two thousand one hundred and ten perches to the county line; thence along the same north- west, one thousand six hundred and three perches; thence north-east, four hundred and thirty perches by Milford township; thence by the same north twenty-two degrees east, one hundred and fifty perches ; thence by the said Milford township and the township of Richland east, one thousand four hundred and twenty-eight perches; thence north-east, eight hundred and seventy perches to Tohickon creek ; thence down the same to the beginning." The present area of the township is 14,343 acres, but we do not know what it was when first organized. Rockhill is a populous and wealthy township, and in this regard she keeps pace with her sisters. In 1784 the population was 969, with 158 dwelling houses; in 1810, 1,508 ; 1820, 1,567; 1830, 2,012, and 424 taxables; 1840, 2,182; 1850, 2,447 ; 1860, 3,107 white and colored, and in 1870 3,342 white and 21 colored, of which 191 were foreign-born. In 1870 Rockhill was the most populous township in the county.
Derstein's mill, one and a half miles south of Sellersville, on the North Pennsylvania railroad, is one of the oldest mills in the upper end of the county. It is thought to have been the first one erected between Whitemarsh and Centre Valley. The first mill was built by the ancestor of the Derstein family prior to 1742, and in the rudest manner. Tradition says that four saplings were planted in the ground and covered with a straw-roof, and the mill works con- structed underneath were of the simplest description, but sufficient to turn a pair of chopping stones. A second mill was erected by Abraham and Michael Derstein in 1742, with all the improvements known at that day. A culvert built across the road over the tail race remains to this day, and is as sound as when the masons finished the work. In 1873 William and David Derstein erected a third mill on the site of the old one, which is complete in all its appointments. William Shavers built a mill on the Tohickon before 1746, in which year a road was opened from it to the Beth- lehem road, but the location of the mill is not now known. Peter Shepherd owned a grist-mill in the township in 1760, and one
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
Hunsbury in 1765. William Heacock owned a saw-mill in Rockhill in 1785.
The three villages that lay entirely in Rockhill township, are Sellersville, Bridgetown, and Perkasie, the first and last named being on the North Pennsylvania railroad. As we have already related, Sellersville grew up around what was for many years known as Sellers' Tavern, which name the post-office bore down to 1866, when it took that of the village. The office was first estab- lished there in 1820, and Thomas Sellers appointed the first post- master. It has grown into a flourishing village, its improvements being much accelerated by the opening of the railroad, in 1856. It has a population of about six hundred, seventy-five dwellings, four stores, two hotels, two flour-mills, one of them steam, an extensive tannery, a steam planing-mill, lumber and coal-yard, two hay- presses, three extensive cigar-manufactories, two churches, and two school-houses. The surrounding country is thickly settled and well cultivated. The Bethlehem turnpike, in early days a general trav- eled route from the Lehigh to Philadelphia, made it a place of much resort. Sellersville was erected into a borough in 1874.
Of the two churches at Sellersville, one is a union Reformed and Lutheran, and the other a small brick Catholic church, built about 1869 or 1870. The former is new, and the congregation is of quite recent organization. The corner-stone was laid in the spring of 1870, and that year the basement was finished. The building was completed in the spring of 1874, and dedicated the second of May by interesting religious exercises. The church is stone, seventy by forty-two feet, with a tall steeple that can be seen from a consider- able distance, and cost $20,000. It is finished in the best manner, and neatly furnished, and is known as the Evangelical Lutheran and Saint Michael's Reformed church. The officiating clergymen are Reverend Mr. Ziegenfuss, Lutheran, and Reverend Mr. Dengler, Reformed. There is a well laid-out cemetery belonging to the church.
The Reverend Peter S. Fisher was the first Reformed minister of this congregation, and was active in organizing and building the church, but did not live to see it completed. He was attacked by a fatal illness the 22d of May, 1873, while preaching in Leidy's church, Hilltown, and died within a few hours. Mr. Fisher was born at Reading, Pennsylvania, October 11, 1804, was licensed to preach in 1825; and ordained in 1826. He came to this county in
534
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
1857 to supply the churches made vacant by the death of Reverend J. A. Strassburger, at Tohickon, Indianfield, and Charlestown. He preached at numerous other points, and organized three new con- gregations. During his ministry of almost half a century, it is estimated that he preached ten thousand sermons, including two thousand five hundred funeral discourses, baptised three thousand, confirmed one thousand five hundred, and married two thousand couples. He was much esteemed, and in his funeral procession walked forty-two Reformed ministers. He was the father of Gen- eral Frank Fisher, late chief of the signal corps, United States army, who studied law in Doylestown and was admitted to the bar before the breaking out of the civil war, and is now a practicing attorney in Philadelphia.
.Bridgetown, situated on the road from Sellersville to Hagersville, two miles from the former, is a prosperous village of twenty-five houses, with two churches, hotel and store. Saint Andrew's church, Lutheran and Reformed, was built in 1867, and has a membership. of about eighty, with the Reverend F. Berkemeyer as Lutheran pas- tor. It was named for Reverend Andrew Strassberger, near whose former residence it stands. The Methodist church has the Reverend Mr. Trumbore for pastor.
Perkasie, named after the old manor that once included within its bounds ten thousand of the acres of that region, and situated on the North Pennsylvania railroad, one-fourth of a inile south of the tun- nel, is a new town. We have already mentioned that the first pur- chaser of the land on which it is built was Jacob Stout, about 1735. The first improvements were made by Samuel M. Hager, in. 1861- 62, when he erected a store-house and three dwellings, and laid a switch. Nothing more was done until 1868, when James A. Hen- dricks built a dwelling and bought the store property. In the fall of 1870 he bought the Nace farm and cut it up into building-lots, from which time the village has grown and prospered. It now con- tains about sixty dwellings, all well-built and commodious. The places of business are, one coal, lumber, and lime-yard, flour and feed, a store for general merchandise, kept by Mr. Hendricks, a good hotel, coach-shop, cigar-factory, a shoe-store, the usual me- chanics, and a physician. The population is about two hundred and fifty souls. There is a good school-house, which is occasionally used for church purposes. The village began life as Comleysville, but when a passenger station was opened it was changed to Per-
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
kasie, thus preserving one of our historical names. A convenient depot was built in 1875. From several points on the railroad, both north and south of Perkasie, one catches charming views of the well- cultivated country lying to the south.
The thriving village of Telford is situated on the line between Bucks and Montgomery, and stands partly in three townships, Rock- hill and Hilltown in Bucks, and Franconia in Montgomery, with the North Pennsylvania railroad passing through it, and was named after a Mr. Telford, a celebrated English engineer. The ground on which it is built was purchased by Christian Dettra of James Hamilton in 1737. He sold it to Abraham Gerhart in 1785, and it thence passed to his son John in 1810, and through various hands to the present owners. Isaac G. Gerhart built the first house in 1857, and occupied it for a dwelling, and the same year Thomas B. Woodward erected the steam-mills, and a large inn, now known as the County line hotel, which was opened by Jacob Souder, January 1st, 1858. Mr. Gerhart opened the first store April 1st of the same year. The mills were destroyed by fire in 1861. In 1865 the population was 73; 1866, 83; 1867, 105 ; and in 1875, 421, with 87 dwellings. Telford has the complement of mechanics, sev- eral stores, lumber, coal, and lime-yards, three public halls and a post-office. The village is regularly laid out, the streets broad and straight, and the surrounding country is populous and charming.
Among the aged people deceased in Rockhill the present century, whose lives run back to the infancy of the country, and beyond the birth of the township, are Valentine Nichola, who died October 1, 1807, aged ninety-six years, five months and five days, and Ann Haycock, (probably Heacock), who died February 16th, the same year, at the age of eighty-nine.
On the Ridge road leading to Tylersport, a mile from Sellersville, is a Lutheran and Reformed church, built in 1826, of which Rev- erend William B. Kemmerer was pastor for about thirty years. He was succeeded by Mr. Berkemeyer, the present Lutheran pastor. The congregation was re-organized in 1867, and there is now a mem- bership of about one hundred and twenty-five. The location of this church is known as Schlichter's Store, the scat of a post-office. It used to be called Indianfield church, and probably goes by this name yet, and is the oldest in the township, possibly antedating the Mennonite. It was built before 1746, in October of which year it was visited by the Reverend Mr. Schlatter.
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536
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
The surface of Rockhill is much broken. A broad, rocky ridge runs entirely across the township, from north-east to south-west, curving to the south toward Sellersville. The broken surface impedes cultivation, but in many sections fine farms abound, and good crops are raised. It is well-watered by branches of the Per- kiomen and the Tohickon and its tributaries, which afford numerous mill sites.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
537
CHAPTER XXXIV.
NOCKAMIXON.
1742.
First settlers .- Population in 1742 .- Names of settlers and land-owners .- Settled by English .- Township formed .- Old couplet .- McCarty brothers .- Abraham Goodwin, John Praul, Casper Kolb .- The Stovers .- John Purcel .- Kintners .- Nicholas Buck .- Nockamixon church and ministers .- Charles Fortman and music .- Campbell graveyard .- The Narrows .- Rich Flora .- Ringing rocks .- Roads .- Streams .- Villages .- Population.
ON the organization of Tinicum, in 1738, a large tract of country immediately north of it was left without local government. The Durham iron-works had been established since 1727, and although there was no organized township north of Tinicum, settlers had taken up land and built cabins here and there in the woods as high up as the Forks of Delaware. They were generally found on the river side of the county. The Durham road became a traveled highway several years before this date, and its opening, no doubt, invited immigrants to push their way up into the woods of Nocka- mixon, settling near or on the road. The names, and dates, of the original settlers can not now be told; nevertheless it would be interesting to know who had the courage to first penetrate that wilderness of country.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
We have reason to believe that settlers located in Nockamixon as early as in Durham still higher up the river, and that before 1730 the pioneer was felling the trees in her woods. In 1737 Bartholo- mew Longstreth purchased two hundred and fifty acres of the Proprietaries, on or near Gallows hill run, which tradition says took its name from a suicidal traveler found suspended from the limb of a tree on its bank. By 1742 it contained quite a respectable popu- lation for a frontier district, and the following names of settlers, or land-owners, have come down to us as living there at that time, viz. : Richard Thatcher, Joseph Warford, Christian Weaver, John Henry Hite, William Morris, John Harwick, Uriah Kemble, David Buck- herd, Bartholomew Longstreth, Samuel Cruchler, Jacob Richards, Thomas Blair, William Ware, John Anderson, Edmund Bleney, John Doran, John Wilson, George Ledley, William Dickson, James Johnson, Richard Loudon, John Colvan, Ralph Wilson, Jacob Trimbo, and Thomas Ramsey. These names prove to us that the original settlers of Nockamixon were English-speaking people and, as was the case in Tinicum, and in other parts of the county, the Germans overran the township subsequently.
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