USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 61
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The history of Durham township would be incomplete without an extended notice of its furnace, one of the earliest erected in the United States. The tract owned by the company was purchased direct from the Indians, several years before their title was extin- guished by the Proprietaries, and embraced, with subsequent pur- chases, eight thousand five hundred and eleven acres and one hundred perches. The title was not confirmed until the third of March, 1749, the deed being executed to Richard Peters, who con- veyed to Plumstead, et al. The purchase was acknowledged by some Indian chiefs at the Minisink, in a letter of Nicholas De Pui to Jeremiah Langhorne in 1740, and by Teedyuscung at the treaty made at Easton in 1758. On the 4th of March, 1727, the then owners of the tract, namely : Jeremiah Langhorne, of Bucks, An- thony Morris, James Logan, Charles Reed, Robert Ellis, George Fitzwater, Clement Plumstead, William Allen, Andrew Bradford, John Hopkins, Thomas Linsley, Joseph Turner, Griffith Owen, and Samuel Powell, of Philadelphia, formed themselves into a stock company for the purpose of making iron. The property was divided into sixteen equal shares, and conveyed, for fifty-one years, to Griffith Owen and Samuel Powell, in trust for the owners. The partners held as tenants in common. At the end of the term the property was to be sold for the benefit of the owners. The first election for officers was held March 25th, and the company pro- ceeded immediately to the erection of a furnace and other improve- ments. The first blast was begun the spring of 1728,6 but after running about one hundred tons of metal they were obliged to blow out. The second blast was begun late the following fall on a stock of five or six hundred tons. In November, 1728, James Logan shipped three tons of pig-iron to England as a specimen, but iron
5 Probably Francis Wilson, one of the petitioners for the township in 1775.
6 Letter of James Logan, November 6th, 1728.
DURHAM IRON
WORKS.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
was then very low. This was before a forge had been erected at Durham, and the company had their metal wrought up into bars elsewhere. The old datestone, bearing the figures 1727, has been preserved and walled in the new furnace. It was used for many years in Abraham Houpt's smith-shop to crack nuts npon, but was fortunately rescued and put to a better use. The first furnace, built about the middle of the tract where the hamlet of Durham and post- office are located, two miles from the river and near the ore beds, - was about thirty by forty feet, and twenty feet high. It was torn down in 1819, and Long's grist-mill now Bachman & Lerch's, was built on the site, and when digging the foundation for the mill several old cannon balls were found. When the old tunnel was opened, in 1849, after having been closed up a century, some of the woodwork was sound, and a crowbar and two axes were found. The stamping-mill was about where Bachman's store stands. There were three forges on the creek, the first about a third of the way to the river, the second a quarter of a mile from the mouth of the creek, and the third where the present barn stands. In 1770 there were two furnaces and two forges, the Durham furnace proper, and one forge on the Durham road, while the "Chosery" forge and a new furnace were on the creek about half way down to the river. Some of the old timbers can still be seen. The "Mansion house," as it was styled, probably the residence of the superintendent, stands at the corner of the Durham and Springtown roads, near Bachman's mill, where a tavern was kept from 1798 to 1871, and there the elections were held for many years after 1812. James Backhouse was the first landlord and Joseph Rensimer the last. The dam across Durham creek was a few hundred yards below the Spring- field line, on the farm of William Laubach. The company owned an oil-mill on Frey's run, near Laubach's saw-mill, which was torn down many years ago.
The company had great difficulty in getting laborers for the first few years, and the wages were necessarily high. These facts were set forth in a petition to the legislature in 1737, and permission asked to import negroes free of duty to labor at the iron-works. There is no evidence that consent was given, although negroes were employed at the furnace almost from its erection down to the close of the century. Twelve slaves were at work there in 1780, five of whom made their escape to the British at New York. In the early days of the furnace the company hired a school-teacher at a
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fixed salary, and William Satterthwaite, the eccentric poet, was thus employed many years. The product of the furnace was transported in wagons to the river, and there loaded into "Durham " boats and taken to Philadelphia. These boats carried the greater part of the freight between Philadelphia and the upper Delaware before the days of canals and railroads. Iron was sent to England from Dur- ham in 1731, and met with great favor there. The testimony of Abraham Houpt says the first Durham boat was built on the river bank near the mouth of the cave, by one Robert Durham, the manager and engineer of the furnace, and that the boat was made nearly in the shape of an Indian canoe, and the works were possibly named after the builder of the boat. This was before 1750. As early as 1758, Durham boats were used to transport flour from John Van Campen's mill, at Minisink, to Philadelphia. The Durhams were in this county as early as 1723, and on the 12th of June of that year E. N. Durham was one of the viewers of a road from Green swamp, Bristol township, to the borough of Bristol.
Charles Reed was the first of the original owners of the furnace to die, in 1739, when his interest was bought by Israel Pemberton, who transferred it to William Logan. During the existence of the co-partnership there were many changes in the share-owners by death, purchase and otherwise, so that at its termination there was not an original proprietor left. In 1763, Lawrence Growden bought a sixth of the whole, of William Logan, and subsequently Joseph Galloway became a share-holder in right of his wife, Grace Growden. Elizabeth Growden, who married Thomas Nickleson, of England, became likewise interested in the furnace. June 19th, 1772 Joseph Morris conveyed his interest to James Morgan for £375, and at the subsequent partition he was allotted plat number twenty-six, contain- ing one hundred and ninety-one acres and one hundred and twenty perches. His son, General Daniel Morgan, was born on plat num- ber thirty. The 25th of March, 1773, the share-holders voted to dissolve the co-partnership, probably in view of the approaching con- flict with the mother country, after continuing forty-six years with varying fortunes. The deed was executed December 24th, by Samuel Powell, son, and heir at law of Samuel Powell, who sur- vived Griffith Owen, trustee of the Durham company, Joseph Gal- loway and Grace, his wife, Abel James, John Thompson, Joseph Morris and Hannah, his wife, James Hamilton, Cornelia Smith, who was the daughter of Andrew Bradford, and James Morgan and
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Sarah, his wife. In the partition, Joseph Galloway was allotted tracts numbered one, two, three, four, seven and twenty-three, on both sides of Durham creek, which contained the iron works and other improvements, comprising about one thousand acres in all, the greater part of which is included in the present furnace property. It was divided into tracts of from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty acres each, and most of it was sold at public vendue.
In 1778 the legislature passed an act of attainder against Joseph Galloway, when his interest in the property was sold and was bought by Richard Backhouse, who carried on the works for several years. In 1782 Galloway's widow died in Philadelphia, leaving her interest in the furnace, which she inherited from her father, Lawrence Growden, to her daughter Elizabeth. At the close of the war the latter recovered the property of Backhouse, by which he was bank- rupted. He was probably not ousted from the premises before 1791, and was dead in 1793. In 1808 the legislature appropriated $415 to Backhouse's heirs to cover expenses incurred in defend- ing the suit against the Galloways. His widow, Mary Back- house, died in Plumstead in 1815, at the age of sixty-five, and his son John in Doylestown, February 20th, 1820, aged thirty-four years. The late Judge John Ross taught school at the furnace while Backhouse was the owner.
The old furnace appears to have fallen into disuse after Back- house was dispossessed, and was abandoned for a number of years, the land being rented by the English heirs. In 1848 the property was sold at public sale, and bought by Joseph Whittaker and son for $50,000, there being eight hundred and ninety-four acres of land, divided into seven farms. A new furnace was erected in 1849, on its present site, and since then the works have been in successful operation. In 1864 Whittaker and son sold the works to Edward Cooper and Abraham S. Hewitt, of New York, for $150,000, who in turn sold them to Lewis and Lewis C. Lillie, of Troy, New York, in 1865. They improved the works, and added to them the manufac- ture of safes, employing some five hundred men. Failing for want of capital, the property came again into the possession of Cooper and Hewitt, who now carry on the furnace. They make aunnally five or six hundred thousand dollars' worth of pig-iron and castings. During 1874 and 1875 the old works were torn down and entirely remodeled and re-built, and the accompanying engraving exhibits
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
them as they now appear. They are among the most complete in the country. There is an abundance of ore on the property, and considerable is likewise imported from Spain and Algiers.
Among the employés at the Durham furnace in early times was George Taylor, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was the son of Nathaniel Taylor, born in Ireland in 1716, immi- grated to America, with his father, about 1730, and settled in Allen township, now Lehigh county, but then in Bucks, and removed to Easton in 1764. He held many places of public trust: was many years justice of the peace, five years in the assembly, was a mem- ber of the provincial assembly in 1774, of the Continental Congress in 1776, and as such signed the Declaration. He died at Easton, February 25th, 1781, and was buried in the Lutheran graveyard. His wife had previously died in 1768. He left two children. He was a man of ability and of refined tastes and habits. Young Tay- lor bound himself to Mr. Savage, who then managed the works, for a term of years, and was employed to throw coal into the furnace when in blast; but it being discovered he was fit for something bet- ter, he was made clerk, and was engaged there several years. At the death of Mr. Savage, Taylor married his widow, at the age of twenty-three, and rented the furnace from 1774 to 1779. Among others who were employed as clerk at the furnace was the late Thomas Mckean, of Easton, in 1789. The works were several times leased by various individuals. In 1768 a fire broke out which destroyed the bridge-house, casting-house, and bellows. During the war the furnace was engaged in the patriotic work of casting shot and shell for the Continental army, one of the latter being preserved as a memento. They were generally sent down the river in Durham boats, consigned to Colonel Isaac Sidman, Philadelphia. Among others, Adam Frankenfield receipts for a load of shot and shell to be delivered at Philadelphia. From August 12th to 17th, 1782, the furnace shipped to Philadelphia twelve thousand three hundred and fifty-seven solid shot. ranging from one ounce to nine pounds in weight, and we find that in 1780-81 David and Daniel Stover, John Lerch, and Joseph Frey hauled four, six, and nine- pounder balls from the furnace to Philadelphia. The great chain stretched across the Hudson at West Point in the Revolution was made at Durham. The links weighed two hundred and fifty pounds each, and the maker's name was Atkinson. Hazzard's Register contains an account of the opening of a grave at Durham fur-
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nace in which was found a skeleton covered with cannon balls. In 1779 a collier was paid one hundred and twenty pounds per monthı, Continental money, when corn sold for four shillings per bushel, turnips nine pence, and onions four pence, and in 1785 the furnace paid Philip Fenstermaker four hundred Continental dollars, in part payment for eighty bushels of rye. In 1763 there were shipped from Philadelphia to England, of the product of the furnace, two thousand five hundred and ninety-two tons of bar-iron and four - thousand six hundred and twenty-four tons of pig. James Morgan was superintendent in 1780. At one time the works were leased to a Captain Flowers.
In 1873 the furnace buildings comprised fifty-eight dwellings, to accommodate one hundred and twenty-five families, two dwellings for superintendents, one stone house, one large stone barn, three smaller barns, foundry building, one hundred and sixty by sixty feet, machine shop, three hundred by fifty feet, run by water from Dur- ham creek, giving one hundred horse-power at the dryest time, two anthracite iron furnaces, with the necessary engines and machinery, pattern-shop, case-maker's shop, smith, wheelwright, and saddler's- shops, stock-houses, cart-houses, one store, post-office, and Catholic church. The superintendent and officers are ten in number, with two hundred and fifty hands.
The following persons have been the owners of the furnace prop- erty since the partition in 1773, namely : Joseph Galloway and wife, 1773 to 1778, Richard Backhouse, 1779 to 1793, Elizabeth Roberts and Ann Grace Burton, 1793 to 1837, Adolphus William Desert Burton, 1837 to 1848, Whittaker and son, 1848 to 1864, Cooper and Hewitt, 1864 to 1865, Lillie and son, 1865 to 1870, and Cooper and Hewitt, 1870.
The Fackenthalls, spelled originally Farenthal, and Longs are among the oldest of the present Durham families. The former is descended from Philip Fackenthall, who immigrated from Rotter- dam to America, in 1742, landing at Philadelphia September 24th. He settled in Springfield township where he bought land, passed his life, and was buried in the graveyard of the old Springfield church. His son Michael, born May 23d, 1756, settled in Durham, where he died Jannary 21st, 1846. In 1776 he was a sergeant in Captain Valentine Opp's company, and the 17th of November he assisted to capture a body of Hessians at Richmond, on Staten Island. In 1781 he performed a tour of military duty as second
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
lieutenant of Captain Christopher Wagner's company of militia, and was discharged at camp below Trenton. He left three sons, John, Peter, and Michael, and three daughters, all deceased. John was a member of assembly, and held the office of register of wills of the county, and they were prominent in local politics. The Longs have been in the township an hundred years. Thomas Long, the ancestor, born in Ireland in 1740, immigrated to this province and settled in Williams township, Northampton county ; thence he re- moved to the Jacob Uhler farm above Rieglesville, and about 1775 or 1776 to what is known as the Long homestead, in the middle of the township, and still owned by his descendants. About 1766 he mar- ried Rachel Morgan; who was born in England in 1748. He was the grandfather of William S. Long, of Durham, and his son, William Long, was appointed associate-judge of the county in 1824.
The most distinguished native of Durham of the present gener- ation was the late John Pringle Jones, who was born at the furnace in 1812. At what time the family came into the township we do not know. He was an only child. At his father's death his mother removed to Philadelphia, and he afterward lived with an aunt at Newtown. The mother was a Pringle, member of an English family of great respectability of Philadelphia in colonial times. Young Jones received part of his education at Captain Partridge's celebrated-military school at Middletown, Connecticut, graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1831, studied law with Charles Chauncey, and was admitted to the Philadelphia bar in 1834. He held several positions of honor in his profession, but never a political office. He was district-attorney of Berks from 1839 to 1847, and president-judge of the district of Berks, Lehigh and Northampton, afterwards of the Berks, and then of the North- ampton and Lehigh, districts. He was a man of great legal learn- ing, and of many accomplishments and extensive reading. He was handsome in person, of courtly address, of fine social qualities, public spirited, and warm in his friendships. He was twice married, his first wife being a daughter of Doctor Isaac Hiester, of Reading, and his second a granddaughter of Governor Joseph Hiester, and he died in London, England, March 16th, 1874.
Durham claims Daniel Morgan, the distinguished American Rev- olutionary general, as native to her soil. He was the son of James and Sarah Morgan, and was born near the iron-works in 1736. His parents were Welsh, and his father was engaged many years at the
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
furnace. Daniel ran away from home at seventeen, and two years afterward we find him driving a baggage-wagon in the disastrous expe- dition of General Braddock to Fort DuQuesne, now Pittsburg, in 1755. His career in the Revolution is too well-known to be repeated. He died at Winchester, Virginia, July 6th, 1802, in his sixty-seventh year. There were several Morgans in Durham. In 1783 Abel Morgan was taxed for five hundred and thirty acres, valued at £795. The same year Mordecai Morgan was taxed as a single man, as was Enoch, in 1793. They may have been nephews of the great cap- tain. James Morgan and his wife were alive in 1773.
The birthplace of General Morgan has been involved in mystery, but we believe the testimony we produce settles the question. His biographer fixes his place of birth at the little town of Finesville, on the New Jersey side of the Delaware, some five miles east of Dur- ham, and states that his father was a charcoal-burner. This is an error, and his place of nativity should have been fixed on the west bank of the Delaware near the furnace. Our most important wit- ness to prove our case is the late Michael Fackenthall, who died thirty years ago. He served in the Revolutionary army several times as soldier, officer, and the driver of a baggage-wagon. He often related his meeting with General Morgan, and that on one occasion Morgan told him he was born in Durham township, and de- scribed the house as standing in the corner of the field where the road from Easton crosses Durham creek, and where a small stream empties into said creek. The spot designated is about a mile from the Delaware, on the farm of Anthony Laubach, on the east side of the Easton road. The house that stood there is remembered by John Dixon, and a large flat stone, that may have been the hearth- stone, found on the site was recently broken to pieces. The house stood near the creek. Michael Fackenthall, jr., son of the above Michael, and a man of the highest respectability, related to our in- formant, Samuel H. Lanbach, just before his death in 1871, the following, which he said was often told him by his father : That on one occasion while he was serving in the army with Morgan, they were encamped near a well, which, getting low, none but officers were allowed to get water at, that Morgan said to Fackenthall, " Michael, you need not go to the creek to drink, you can drink at the well." Fackenthall replied that none but officers were allowed to drink at the well, whereupon the general handed him his own sword to put on, after which he was not interrupted when he went
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to the well to get water. This statement is much more reliable than tradition, and we have faith in its truthfulness. The Facken- thalls, father and son, were both men of unimpeached veracity. The Reverend Richard Webster, in his "History of the Presbyterian church in America," says that Durham township is the birthplace of General Morgan, and a writer in the Bucks county Putriot, of January, 1827, claims General Morgan as a native of Durham, and the son of a charcoal-burner.
One of the natural features of interest in Durham was a cave on the north side of Durham creek, near its mouth, but now destroyed by blasting away the limestone. rock. It was about one hundred and fifty feet long, averaging twelve in height, and from four to forty in breadth. The floor descended as you entered. A few stalactites hung from its sides, and a fine spring partly covered the floor with water. The main entrance was crossed by a narrow lateral cavern half its length that terminated somewhat in the shape of the letter T. The general direction of the main gallery was southwest. A passage about the middle of the cave led off to the right, to a room, about eight by twelve feet, that was called, in olden times, Queen Esther's drawing room after an Indian woman. The cave was parallel to the creek.
Toward the close of the last century an attempt was made to have Durham and Springfield townships annexed to Northampton county. Among those who favored the movement, and was probably at the head of it, was Richard Backhouse, proprietor of the furnace. He had secured the services of Anthony Lerch, jr., of Lower Saucon, ancestor of the Lerchs of Durham, who was member of the assembly for Northampton county, who introduced a resolution to this effect in the house, but it failed to pass. Lerch writes to Backhouse, that the measure failed because the petition for annexation had but one hundred and twenty names to it, while the remonstrances against it contained two hundred, and that if he is in earnest he must go to more trouble and get more names, remarking by way of suggestion, "A man from Westmoreland cannote no a boy's name from a man's name. You know well enough what I mean, if not come to my house and I will tell you the hole story. If you can send two hundred signers I can get them annexed to Northampton." Political morals of that day were nothing to brag of-hardly better than now!
On the farm of Abraham Boyer, near Rieglesville, is a natural
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sink-hole that is quite a curiosity. A considerable stream, formed by several springs, after a course of half a mile entirely disappears and is not seen again. The hole varies in size from a half-peck to a half-buslıcl.
Durham is principally watered by a fine stream that bears its name, and its tributaries, formed by two main branches in Spring- field, both from springs. One rises just west of Springtown and by some is called Funk's creek, and the other in the southern part - of the township and is called Cook's creek. This name was for- merly applied to the stream down to its mouth at the Delaware, but is now given to its south-west and main tributary. The earliest name given it was "Schook's creek," and " Cook's" may be a cor- ruption of it, as the origin of the latter cannot be traced. . We are told that " Schook" is a " Pennsylvania Dutch" word that sig- nifies " of a sudden," or " by fits and starts," which fitly expresses the sudden rise and fall in the stream. It flows through one of the finest valleys in the county extending into the western part of Springfield, which is rich and fertile. The geological theory is, that this valley was the bed of a river before the glacial period, and the Delaware had burst through the mountains at the Water Gap. The continuation of the valley can be traced across New Jersey to the Raritan, at Bound Brook, which may have afforded an outlet to the sea, or possibly part of New Jersey was then submerged, and this river found its mouth nearer to Pennsylvania's shore. The valley presents considerable testimony to support this theory.
Durham has three villages, Monroe and Rieglesville on the Dela- ware, and Durham abont the middle of the township, on the site of the first furnace. Thomas Purcel was probably the first settler at Monroe, where he built a log house before 1780, and afterward saw and grist-mills, smith-shop, and established a ferry. A tavern was subsequently opened by Adam Roney, in Purcel's house, now owned by Matthias Lehnen. Mr. Purcel was instrumental in having the River road opened down to Kintnerville, and out to the Durham road. In 1872 the village contained eleven taxables and fourteen dwellings, with saw and grist-mill, tavern and store. In early days the ferry was much used by people from New Jersey going to Philadelphia. Rieglesville is a mile above Monroe. Three brothers, named Shank, probably before 1800, occupied log houses on the site of the village. Benjamin Riegle came there in 1806 or 1807, built a stone house in 1820, and in 1832 a brick dwelling and store
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