Bucks County - Its History From 1681 to 1690

Its Settlement and Development - The Labors of the First Pioneers - Their Efforts to Cultivate a Wild Region - The Old Records of the County - How Marriages Were Made in the Day of Penn - The Successes and Misfortunes of the Settlers

Taken From The Bucks County Gazette (Bristol, Pennsylvania) , August 28 1873
Transcribed by Nancy Piper for Genealogy Trails

The published annals of the first occupation of Pennsylvania by the English Quakers refer principally to the county of Philadelphia, while the settlement of Bucks county has received but little attention. While there were few stirring events to record, there were few persons who took the time from the work of settlement to sketch what did occur. How our fathers lived in the then remote region of Bucks county, of what their wealth was composed, what they wrangled over, are topics upon which history consents to shed but a partial light. Nearly two hundred years have filled the gap between the arrival of Penn and his Quaker colony and the richly prosperous present. During the first century of this interval no literary remains of any importance touching the social life of the colonists are extant. Nothing reliable save a few legal records, dust - begrimed and almost illegible are left to tell who were the men who felled the trees and turned the soil in 1682. Their simple habits and pacific designs are not the elements out of which history is usually composed. There was no Quaker Standish, whose fame reviving with every year might grow through all time, because there were no foes to combat and no intrigues to check. The settlement of a new domain concentrated to the development of Penn's ideal government of peace and good will, and the annexation of territory by regular purchase and sale, were interesting events in political ethics, but contain no inspiration for the rhapsodists who flourish best in ward and confusions. We know of no sudden influx of Europeans nor the formation of any great center of population in the early history of that portion of Pennsylvania to which this paper particularly refers. The region now known as Bucks county contained some Europeans before the arrival of the Quakers, but there are no records extant in the country which throw any light on the number and character of these pioneers. At the time the grant was made from the Duke of York o Penn the territory contained a population of only two thousand souls, exclusive of Indians. These persons were principally Swedes. There is no record of any settlement north of the Falls of the Delaware at that time. Therefore all that splendid area, no constituting the wealthiest counties in Pennsylvania, north of the present city of Trenton, was, at the period to which these memorials relate, a wilderness as unknown and inaccessible as the remotest point on our continent.

The Delaware river was visited as early as 1623 by some enterprising subjects of old Peter Stuyvesant, under the leadership of Captain Cornelius Jacobus May, but neither that nor any subsequent expedition from Manhattan penetrated the county of Bucks from the north or the east. All the visits of the ambitious Dutchmen of New York were made down to the time of the Quaker occupation, from the sea up the "South river." Nor is any Dutch expedition known to have penetrated the country north of the Falls of the Delaware. Although the northern half of the county is now populated by the people familiarly known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, they bear no relation whatever to the early inhabitants of Manhattan. They are spring from a much more recent emigration than that which peopled new Amsterdam, and who visited "South river" fifty years before Penn's advent.

It is said that there were not three hundred Germans in the entire province of Pennsylvania before the year 1700. But in the year 1727 fifty thousand Germans peacefully overran the wilderness of Lancaster, Montgomery and Berks counties. Some of these found their way as far east as Bucks, and their descendants now form a part of our population, than which there are none more upright and industrious in the Union.

The old records of the county, from 1682 until the first decade, make no mention whatever of any arrivals in the county, except such as came from Great Britain. Therefore, while the settlement of New York was conducted almost exclusively by the Dutch, that of Pennsylvania was carried on by English Quakers. The former built up an active commercial community, while the latter reared an empire principally devoted to the cultivation of the soil. The records extant in Bucks county are such as purely agricultural people would leave behind. There is no mention of any acts, save those which sprung out of the simple relation of tiller of the soil. But there is sufficient material in existence in the vaults of the county offices in Doylestown from which we can derive a fair knowledge of the transactions of the men of 1682 - how much they were worth in worldly goods, and what the nature of their property was.

In the oldest record, entitled "A registry of all the people in the county of Bucks, in the province of Pennsylvania, that have come to settle the county," commenced in the year 1684 by Pheneas Pemberton, the first register of the county, are the names of seventy heads of families. Here are recorded the names of their children and servants or slaves, with the time when their term of service would expire. It also contains the name of the place in England from which they came, the name of the ship in which they came over, together with the name of the master of the vessel. The earliest arrival was that of John Gaylord, who came from Dublin, Ireland, in the ship Phoenix, in Aug. 1677. Gaylord brought no wife, children, nor servants with him. The name, so far as can be ascertained, has, at present, no representatives in our midst. The list is headed with the names of George and Eleanor Pownall. They came from England in the ship "Friends' Adventure" commanded by Thomas Wall Irenall, on the 28th day of August 1682. They were accompanied by five children, Reuben, Elizabeth, Sarah, Rachel and Abigail, and three servants, John Breadey, Thomas Logler and Mathew Worrall. This family met with a sad misfortune in the death of the father soon after their arrival in the new country. In an old record of 1684 called "A registry of all the births and deaths of all which are in the county of Bucks, in the province of Pennsylvania," it is noted that George Pownall was killed by the fall of a tree October 30, 1682, thus leaving the first widow in the settlement. The earliest recorded birth was that of Mary, daughter of Lyonell and Elizabeth Brittain, December 13, 1680. Penn himself came to this province in the ship Welcome, on the 28th of tenth month (October), 1682. A few persons who accompanied Penn from England are mentioned in the Bucks county registry. John Rowland and his wife, Priscilla; Thomas Rowland, from Suffolk, and Thomas Fitzwater, of Hanworth, in the county of Middlesex, near Hampton Court, arrived in that vessel on the day named. The registry contains this short paragraph after the mention of Fitzwater's name: "Mary, his wife, and Josiah and Mary, his children, died at sea, coming over." Thus the first voyage of Penn to Pennsylvania is known to have been saddened by three deaths in the family of one of his companions. In the "Colonial Records of Pennsylvania" early mention is made of Fitzwater, who, with James Harrison, constituted the first delegation from Bucks county in the Provincial Council of 1682.

It would be inconvenient to crowd in a single paper all the information furnished in the registry. We will simply insert the names of the persons mentioned there, omitting all details, it contains the names of many persons still represented in the county of Bucks and in the city of Philadelphia, for whom the simple record may have more than a passing interest: George and Eleanor Pownall, William and Jane Yardley, John Brunley; John, Joseph and Sarah Clows; John Brockware Stockport; Ann Milrom, William and Eliza Venables, John Heycock, Henry Marjorum, William Boakes, Andrew Elliott and Ann Aselor, John Woods, John Gaylord, John Rowland and Priscilla Rowland, Thomas Rowland, Joshua Boare and Margaret Boare, William Burekman, Gideon Gambell, William and Johanna Biles, Charles Biles; Thomas and Margery Jamey; John Clows and Margery Clows; George Stone, Richard Hough; Gilbert Wheeler and Martha, his wife; John Chapman and Jane his wife; Ulion Pearson, Henry Paxson; Richard and Elizabeth Ridgeway; Samuel Dark, Ann Knight, John Palmer; Joshua Hoops and Elizabeth Hoops; William Bonnell and Rebecca, his wife; Lyonell and Elizabeth Brittain; Thomas Fitzwater; Robert and Elizabeth Lucas; Daniel Brinson, John Hough, William and Alice Dark; Randolph and Alice Blackshaw; James Harrison and Ann Harrison.

Harrison is frequently mentioned in the Colonial Records in connection with the Provincial Council, of which he was a prominent member. He was a shoemaker by occupation. The registry states that he "sailed from Liverpool in the ship Submission, of Liverpool, and arrived at Choptanke, in Maryland, the 2d 9mo following, being brought thither through the dishonesty of the Mr., and arrived at Aquoquimond, in this province the 15th 11 mo. Following." At the same time came Agnes Harrison, aged eighty-one years, mother of James. Phineas Pemberton, the first clerk of court in 1682, came from Bolton, in the county of Lancaster, with Phoebe his wife. He was a grocer, and came in the same vessel with Harrison. The list continues as follows: Robert Bond, Ellis James, Lydia Wharmly, James Clayton and Jane Clayton, Jacob and Mary Hall, Sarah Charlesworth, Richard Lundry, Elizabeth Bennett, Edmund Cutler, David Davis, Richard Amor, James Dilworth. Peter Worrell and George Hamlon complete the list.

In the registry of marriages of 1684, kept by Pemberton, and still extant, we find the first nuptials celebrated in the colony were those of Richard and Margery Hough, married in 1683. The certificate of this marriage, although upon record, has become illegible. The certificate of the marriage of Samuel Dark and Ann Knight, who were joined shortly after the marriage of Hough is still decipherable. We present it in full as a specimen of the Quaker marriage ceremony two hundred years ago:

"The certificate of Samuel Dark's marriage the 4th month, the 17th day, 1683. These are to certify whom it doth or may concern, that Samuel Dark and Ann Knight did in the presence of us whose names are written, the day above written, take each other and declare themselves to be man and wife, the said Samuel, taking the said Ann by the hand, said in the presence of God and of you who are here met together "I do take his my loving friend, Ann Knight, to be my wife, and I do promise to be unto her a faithful and loving husband until death shall us separate; the said Ann, taking the said Samuel by the hand, said in like manner as is before specified." There are nineteen names appended to the certificate as witnessed of the ceremony. A son, Thomas, sprang from this union.

In the registry of inventories kept in 1684 may be found the value and nature of the property possessed by the settlers. The value of many of the articles enumerated presents some curious contrasts to that of similar property in the locality in 1871. Thus in the inventory of the property of Francis Andrews, one hundred acres of land are valued at five pounds. An inventory of the property of Cuthbert Hayhures of "Neshaminah Creek," taken in 1683, contains the following items: Imprimis, 500 acres of land, fifteen pounds; one horse and one mare, ten pounds, four beds, twenty shillings; linen, four shillings; quishing, fifteen shillings, pewter and brass, five pounds; iron geer, six pounds; apparel, eight pounds.

The largest estate inventoried in the county during the first six years of the proprietary government was that of William Beaks, taken in 1687, which fixes his wealth at one thousand pounds. James Harrison was worth two hundred and eighty-six pounds.

In the inventory of the Beaks estate, three hundred and sixty-eight bushels of wheat are valued at four pounds eight shillings. Nearly all the articles contained in the inventories of the period are of the most practical character, and such as were necessary in the first settlement of a country. There are few references to books or other articles which are the usual incidents of the wealth of the present day. Beak owned one thousand acres of land, while his money on hand and apparel amounted to fifty-seven pounds. His servant man and maid were valued at ten pounds. The only silver he possessed was a "tankard valued at seven pound."

Among the curious articles named are a "periwig," valued at two shillings, and "two pairs of Indian stocking," valued at three shillings and sixpence. The most literary man in the county during the first decade, so far as the inventory solves the matter, appears to have been one Robert Zelts. He possessed "two books of martyres, one bible, one dicksonary, 23 small books". This person's name does not appear in the registry of arrivals and he probably was not a member of the Society of Friends. If he was, he does not seem to have adhered to his Quaker principles, for we notice among his effects "2 guns, 2 pistolls, 2 old swords and carbine." The inventory was taken in 1688.

An interesting feature of these old relics is the frequent appearance of marks to represent the names of persons who were unable to write. It was customary in that day for each person who was ignorant of the art of writing, to appropriate a peculiar symbol by which his identity was established. We find quite a variety of fantastic marks used for this purpose. A few used the simple sign of the cross as at the present day. Others used a circle. From these tow elements a number of quaint characters were formed, more readily represented by cents than by any description which could be given. Most of the persons who figure in the old records were, however, able to write their own names.

Although the settlers in Bucks seemed to have lived under the same gentle sway that Penn established in the neighboring county of Philadelphia, there seems to have been some litigation quite early in the history of the county. Nor was the Quaker community exempt from law breakers. We find in the minutes of the county court held the fourth of Fourth month, 1685, that one Joseph Lumn was tried and convicted of the crime of "swearing three oaths." The court sentenced Joseph to pay a fine of "fifteen shillings for each oath, and to suffer an imprisonment in the house of correction at hard labor, and to be fed on bread and water." This seems to have been the first trial on record. At a court of quarter sessions, the ninth of Tenth month, 1685., Jacob Hall was tried from the crime of "selling rum to an Indian." The minute sets out that "complaint being made against Jacob Hall for selling rum to the Indians, the said Jacob Hall was called in court, and the witnesses examined. Andrew Heath, aged about twenty years, being attested and examined, said that about three weeks before Michealmas last he saw Jacob Hall sell two single pints of rum to an Indian, which he tasted, and at another time, near the time aforesaid, he saw an Indian carry away three bottles of rum, which contained one gallon and a pint, out of the said Jacob Hall's house." Hall was fined five pounds for his indiscretion. At this time the seal of the county was a "vine and a tree." The sheriff in office first was Richard Noble, who served in 1682.

We have presented a few features connected with the founding of the second State in the Union. There is little sentiment or inspiration in the formal revelations of legal records. But their disclosures are truthful, and their value will be enhanced by the flight of time. They are a part of our national antiquities, relating to a period fast being forgotten.

"The minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, from the organization to the termination of the Proprietary Government" were not rescued from destruction until the year 1838, when the Legislature, at the earnest recommendation of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, ordered them to be printed and preserved for all time. But there are many records hidden away in the vaults of the county offices of Philadelphia, Chester and Bucks, which demand the kind offices of the historian and antiquary. No item of information which may aid posterity in arriving at just conclusions, concerning the early beginnings of the great Republic should be suffered to escape.

Henry C. Michener

Doylestown, Bucks Co Pa., July 26, 1871

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