THE HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA, CHAPTER II, ENGLISH IMMIGRANTS CONTINUE TO ARRIVE ON THE DELAWARE, 1679 TO 1681 from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time by W. W. H. Davis, A.M., Democrat Book and Job Office Print., Doylestown, PA, 1876. Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Donna Bluemink. dbluemink@cox.net Transcriber's note: Liberty has been taken with numbering footnotes so as to include all footnotes from both the 1876 and 1905 editions, plus any additional text and pictures in the 1905 edition. All 1905 material will be noted with an asterisk. USGENWEB NOTICE: Printing this file by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission from the submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. ___________________________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER II ENGLISH IMMIGRANTS CONTINUE TO ARRIVE ON THE DELAWARE. 1679 TO 1681 English settlers arrive. Samuel Bliss. Danker and Sluyter. Lyonel Britten. Samuel Clift. William Warner. Arrival of English ships direct. William Dungan. Liquor sold without license. William Biles. Settlement of east bank of Delaware. Fort Nassau. Division of New Jersey. Settlers arrive. London and Yorkshire companies. Settlement of Burlington. Chygoe's island. Arrival of the Shields. Benjamin Duffield. Thomas Budd. Mahlon Stacy. His account of the country. William Trent. Professor Kalm's account of Trenton. The west bank of the Delaware grew more and more into favor and notice, and immigrants came to it. There were several grants of land by Sir Edmund Andros in 1679, among which were two hundred acres to Thomas Fairman in Bensalem, below Neshaminy, and three hundred and nine to William Clark on the same stream. In the summer and fall of 1679 and spring of 1680 several English settlers took up land on the river bank, just below the falls; John Ackerman and son, three hundred and nine acres; Thomas Sebeley (1), one hundred and five; Robert Scoley, two hundred and six; Gilbert Wheeler, a fruiterer of London, who arrived with wife, children and servants in the Jacob and Mary, September 12th, two hundred and five, including an island in the river; William Biles, three hundred and nine acres, from Dorchester, in County Dorcet, arrived June 12th, with wife, seven children, and two servants, and died in 1710. He was a man of talent and influence, and a leader. Governor Evans sued him for slander for saying of him, "He is but a boy; he is not fit to be our governor; we'll kick him out; we'll kick him out," and recovered 300 pounds damages, but failed to collect them, although he caught Biles in Philadelphia, and imprisoned him a month. The governor said of him, "He very much influences that debauched county of Bucks, in which there is now scarce any one man of worth left;" Samuel Sycle, possibly Sickel of the present generation, two hundred and eighteen; Richard Ridgeway, two hundred and eighteen, frm Welford in the county of Bucks, who arrived in the Delaware April 27, 1680, with his wife and two children, and Robert Lucas, one hundred and forty-five acres, a farmer of Deverall, Loughbridge, county of Wilts, who came with his wife and eight children in September, 1680. John Wood, of Axerclif, county of York, farmer, the only known English settler in this county in 1678, arrived in the Shield, with five children, and took up four hundred and seventy-eight acres opposite the falls. These tracts generally joined each other and ran back from the river (2). At this date Samuel Bliss was the owner of a considerable tract in the angle formed by Mill creek and the Delaware, and covering the site of Bristol. There was a settler near the mouth of Scott's creek, in Falls - probably a squatter - and West Kickels was near the mouth of Scull's creek, north side. In the fall of 1679 a little real estate changed hands in Bucks county, James Sanderling and Lawrence Cock conveying four hundred and seventeen acres in Bensalem to Walter, John and James Forest, and Henry Hastings conveyed "Hastings' Hope" to the same parties. The Forests probably became residents of the county about this time, coming from near Upland. (1) Probably a misspelling. (2) Their names are given on the map of Danker's and Sluyter, 1680. Jasper Danker and Peter Sluyter, leading members of the Labadists of Holland, visited the Delaware in the fall of 1679, going down the river in a boat to New Castle, their horses following them by land on the west bank. At the falls they staid all night with Mahlon Stacy. They describe the houses of the English along the river as built of clapboards nailed on the outside of a frame, but "not usually laid so close together as to prevent you from sticking a finger between then." The best people plastered them with clay. They call the houses built by the Swedes "block houses, but from the way they were constructed, were only the log cabin found on the frontier at the present day. Some of the more careful people planked the ceiling, and had a glass window. The chimney was in the corner, and the doors low and wide. Our travelers breakfasted with the Friends at Burlington, whom they denominate "the most worldly of men in all their deportment and conversation." They went hence in a shallop to Upland, stopping at Takany (Tacony), a village of Swedes and Fins, where they drank good beer. On Tinicum island they saw a "Quaker prophetess who traveled the country over in order to quake." On their return up the river they stopped overnight on Alricks' island, then in charge of Barent, a Dutchman, who had for housekeeper the Indian wife of an Englishman of Virginia. One of her children was sick with the small-pox, prevalent on the river this year, and now mentioned for the first time. The Dutchman consented to pilot them next day to the falls for thirty guilders. Landing them from his canoe where Bristol stands, he conducted them by a footpath through the woods and across the manor, striking the river at William Biles's plantation, where they rested and were refreshed. In the afternoon he rowed them across the river, landing on the site of Bordentown, and thence through the woods to Mahlon Stacy's and on across New Jersey to Manhattan. Of the arrivals in the Delaware in 1680 several made their homes in Bucks county, among whom were Lyonel Britton, Samuel and William Darke and George Brown (3). Britton, a Friend and blacksmith, from Almy, in Bucks, England, the first to arrive, settled on two hundred and three acres in the bend of the river at the upper corner of the manor, which Penn patented to him in 1684. A daughter died on the way up the river, and was buried at Burlington. Another daughter, Mary, born June 13, 1680, was, so far as is known, the first child of English parents born in Bucks county, or probably in the state (4). His name is found on the panel of the first grand jury drawn in Bucks county, June 10, 1685. He probably left this county and removed to Philadelphia in 1688, which year he conveyed his real estate in Falls to Stephen Beakes, for 100 pounds (one thousand dollars *). He is noted, in our early annals, as the first convert to Catholicism in the state. He assisted in reading public mass in Philadelphia in 1708, and was a church warden the same year. He died in 1721 and his widow in 1741 (5). Samuel Darke, a calendrer , of London, arrived in the ship Content in October with his wife, Ann, who died October 13, 1683, and two servants, James and Mary Crafts. He remarried two years afterward (Ann Knight, 4, 7, 1683, who died 8,13, 1683, and then married Martha Worrell, 12, 16, 1685 *). William Darke, probably a brother of Samuel, was a grocer from Chiping, in the county of Chester, was fifty-eight years old, and his wife, Alice, sixty-three. He arrived in the Content in June 1680 and his wife in August 1684, with a son seventeen years old. He settled in the neighborhood of Fallsington. [George Brown was the ancestor of the Browns of the lower end of this county, and among his descendants was Jacob Brown, late commanding general of the United States army.] (6) (3) It is possible that Brown arrived in 1679, for he was residing about the falls in 1680, and was a justice of the peace. (4) The record of Mary Britton's birth is in the Register's office, Doylestown, in the handwriting of Phineas Pemberton. (5) Lionel Britton was the owner of considerable land in Delaware county, as we learn from the records. Deed Book O, page 160, New Castle County, contains a deed of March 28, 1753: Philip Bready to Mathew Lowber, with the following recital: "William Penn, proprietor, etc., to Robert Betts and John King, 1686, about 600 acres"; they in 1704 to Lionel Britton, he with Thomas England, who claimed a right therein, to Philipi Kearney and Michael Kearney, "sons-in-law of said Lionel Britton," 1718. Philip Kearney, son and heir of Michael, conveyed the same to Absalom Morris, 1746, and Absalom Morris to Philip Bready. * (6) Text in brackets only in 1876 edition. In 1680 Sir Edmund Andros conveyed to Samuel Clift, a Friend living at Burlington, a tract of two hundred and sixty-two acres, covering the site of Bristol, (7) who probably then, or soon afterward, became a resident of the county. It was bounded by Mill, then Bliss's, creek, the Delaware and Griffith Jones's land. When the latter came into the county is not known. It was surveyed by Philip Pocock, at the purchase; but again under a warrant in 1683, when it was found to contain two hundred and seventy-four acres. Clift could not write his name, but made his mark, thus: [Facsimile of Samuel Clift's mark, appears here.] On the first of June Richard Noble, surveyor of Upland county, laid out five hundred and fifty-two acres to Ephraim Herman and Lawrence Cock, at a place called Hataorockon, "lying on the west side of the Delaware, and on the sound side of a creek of the same name." On the 8th of the next March twenty-five acres of marsh land were granted to each of these parties, and to one Peter Van Brug, or Van Bray, at "Taorackon," "lying in ye Mill creek, opposite Burlington, and toward ye head thereof." This places the grant about Pigeon swamp and to the north of Bristol. There has been a question as to the location of this grant, which some place below Bristol, probably because the marsh land is on Mill creek. We think there is no doubt that the main grant was in Penn's manor, or what is now Scott's creek. There is no creek between Mill creek and the Neshaminy, nor is one laid down on any of the ancient maps. On Lindstrom, the region afterward Penn's manor, called "Hackazockan," and "Hataorockon," or "Taorackon," is only a corruption of the Indian name. The course of the creek Hataorackon, its southwest boundary, is nearly identical with that of Scott's creek. This tract was probably never seated, and the authority of the Duke of York coming to an end soon afterward, no further mention is made of it. October 28, 1680, Erick Cock was appointed an additional constable between the Schuylkill and Neshaminy for one year, and John Cock and Lassa Dalbo overseers and viewers of fences and highways. (7) What became of Samuel Bliss's title which covered part of Clift's grant is not known. At this time the deputy-sheriff of Upland county was William Warner, with a jurisdiction to the falls. He was probably the ancestor of the large and respectable family of the name in this county. The time of his arrival, and whence he came, are not definitely known. Watson, the analyst (8) says he was one of the earliest pioneers on the Delaware; that he was a "captain under Cromwell, and was obliged to leave England at his death, in 1658; that he came from Blockley, in Worcestershire, and gave this name to the township in which he lived in Philadelphia county." He is known to have been here in 1677, in which year he bought two hundred acres of land in Blockley, and about the same time he and William Orion bought sixteen hundred acres of the Indians for three hundred and thirty-five guilders. In the explanations to Reed's map of 1774, he is denominated "old Renter," a term applied to those who were here before Penn bought the province. He died in 1706. Thomas Warner, of Wrightstown, says that the William Warner from which he is descended, immigrated with his brother Isaac from Draycott, in Blockley, where the ancestral homestead is still in the possession of a Warner. Hazard does not give credit to the arrival of William Warner at the time specified, on the ground that he is not mentioned by contemporaneous statements, and because of the jealousy of the Dutch and Swedes. He may have left England at the time mentioned, but not come to the Delaware until after it fell into the hands of the English, 1664. After that period there was no occasion "to shield his movements from observation." He was a man of note in his day; a member of the first assembly in Pennsylvania; justice of the peace; deputy-sheriff, etc. When he was deputy sheriff it was the custom of the court to defray the charge for "meat and drink" for the justices, probably their only pay, and to raise the necessary funds Warner was ordered to collect 2s. 6d. on every judgment. (8) Watson says he got his information from "Widow Warner," who died at the age of eighty, 1843, and who claimed to be a descendant of William Warner. She lived on the Lancaster turnpike, a mile west of Market street bridge. The first immigrants who sailed direct for Pennsylvania left England in August 1681 in the ships John and Sarah, Captain Henry Smith; the Amity, Captain Richard Dimon, and the Bristol Factor, Captain Robert Drew. The John and Sarah was the first to arrive, and her passengers were called the "first landers" by those who came after them. Among them we find the following who, with their families, came into Bucks county, Nathaniel Allen (9), who settled in Bensalem, above the mouth of the Neshaminy; John Otter, near the head of Newtown creek, where he took up two hundred acres, and Edmund Lovett, in Falls. In the same ship came several servants of William Penn. The Amity was blown off the coast, and did not land her passengers until the next spring; while the Factor arrived opposite Chester December 11, 1681, was frozen up that night, and her passengers wintered there. All these brought immigrants for Bucks county, but it is impossible to give their names. The same year arrived Gideon Gambell, from county Wilts, slater, and William Clark; and about the same time came Edward Bennett, who took up three hundred and twenty-one acres in Northampton township; John Bennett, fifty acres, and William Standard, two hundred and seventy-four acres. All of these settlers purchased land of Sir Edmund Andros, at the quit-rent of a bushel of wheat the hundred acres. Their lands were re-surveyed and confirmed to them by a general warrant of the Proprietary, June 14, 1683. About this time William Dungan, probably from Rhode Island, and of the family of Reverend Thomas Dungan, the Baptist minister at Cold spring, settled in Bristol township. His warrant was dated August 4, 1682, nearly two months before Penn's arrival, and the patent July 26, 1684. In the summer or early fall of 1682, the Upland court appointed William "Boyles," William Biles, who lived below Morrisville, surveyor and overseer of highways from the falls to the Poquessing creek, the boundary between Bucks and Philadelphia counties. He appears to have been constable at the same time, and informed the court against Gilbert Wheeler, for selling liquor to the Indians without license, who was fined four pounds. This appointment is said to have been the last official act of the judges under the Duke of York, and immediately before the territory was turned over to the agents of William Penn. (9) One of Penn's commissioners. The history of Bucks county would be incomplete without a notice of the settlement of the east bank of the Delaware, which was peopled by the same race, and under similar circumstances as the west bank. Their interests were so closely connected in the early days, that it is impossible to treat of one and not of the other. The first colony on the east bank was planted at or near Gloucester Point, where fort Nassau was built, about 1623. The fort was destroyed by the Indians, but repaired and again occupied by the Dutch in 1639. In 1643 the Swedes erected fort Elsinborg, four miles below Salem creek. An English colony from New Haven, sixty strong, settled near Salem in 1641, but they were driven away by the Swedes and Dutch, and this race made no further attempt to colonize the east bank of the river until New Jersey fell in the possession of the Duke of York. It was subsequently conveyed to Lord Berkely and Sir George Carteret, and the interest of Berkely passed into the hands of the assignees of Edward Byllinge. It was divided into East and West New Jersey the following year, by a line drawn across the country from Little Egg Harbor to about the mouth of the Lehigh river. The first settlers for West New Jersey arrived in the ship Griffith, of London, in 1675, after a long passage, and landed near Salem. Among the passengers were John Fenwick, his two daughters and several servants; Edward Champness, Edward Wade, Samuel Wade, John Smith and wife, Samuel Nicholas, Richard Guy, Richard Noble, who subsequently settled in this county; Richard Hancock, John Pledger, Hipolite Luperer, John Matlock, and other with their families. Among those who purchased land on the river were two companies of Friends, one from London and the other from Yorkshire. In the summer of 1677 these purchasers sent out John Kinsey, John Pemford, Joseph Helmsley, Robert Stacy, Benjamin Scott, Richard Guy, and Thomas Foulke joint commissioners to satisfy the claims of the Indians. They came in the Kent with two hundred and thirty immigrants, and landed at New Castle August 16th. The settlers found temporary shelter at Raccoon creek in huts erected by the Swedes; while the commissioners proceeded to the site of Burlington, and purchased of the Indians all the land between the Assanpink and Oldman's creek, for a few guns, petticoats, hoes, etc. The Yorkshire commissioners made choice of the upper, and the London of the lower, half of the tract, but they joined in settling what is now Burlington, for mutual defense. In laying out the town, the main street running back from the river was made the dividing line between the companies, the Yorkshire men being on the east and the Londoners on the west. But one other street was laid out, that along the river front, and a market house was located in the middle of the main street. The town plot was surveyed by Richard Noble. The head lines of the river lots were originally run in 1687, when their courses respectively were west and northwest. They were again examined and run by John Watson, Jr., of this county, February 5, 1756, who found the course then west, three degrees northerly, being a variation of three degrees in sixty-nine years, or one degree in twenty-three years exactly. To begin the settlement ten lots of nine acres each were laid out on the east side of the main street, and in October some of the Kent's passengers came up and settled there. Among the heads of families who came in the Kent, and settled at Burlington, were Thomas Olive, Daniel Wills, William Peachy, William Clayton, John Crips, Thomas Eves, Thomas Harding, Thomas Nositer, Thomas Fairnsworth, Morgan Drewet, William Penton, Henry Jennings, William Hibes, Samuel Lovett, John Woolston, William Woodmancy, Christopher Saunders and Robert Powell. Among them was a carpenter, named Marshall, who was very useful in building shelter. At first they lived in wigwams and had mainly to rely on the Indians for food, who supplied them with corn and venison. The first house built was a frame by John Woolston, and Friends' meeting was held under a sail-cloth tent. The town was first called New Beverly, then Bridlington, and afterward changed to its present name. Although this is the accepted history of the names Burlington has borne, we doubt its correctness. The original draught, as laid out in 1678, bears the name of Burlington, and on the map of Danker's and Sluyter, of 1679, it is called "Borlingtowne." This was a year after it was laid out, and the misspelling is not to be wondered at in a foreigner. The Martha, of Hull, arrived October 15th, in which came a number of passengers with their families, who settled on the Yorkshire purchase. Among them were Thomas Wright, William Goforth, John Lyman, Edward Season, William Black, Richard Dungworth, George Miles, William Wood, Thomas Schooley, Richard Harrison, Thomas Hooten, Samuel Taylor, Marmaduke Horsman, William Oxley, William Ley and Nathaniel Luke. In the same ship came the families of Robert Stacy and Samuel Odds, and Thomas Ellis and John Batts, servants. The Willing Maid arrived in November, and several of her passengers settled at Burlington and others at Salem, among the latter being James Nevel, Henry Salter, and George Deacon. The following spring the settlers at Burlington began to cultivate and provide provisions for their own support, and build better habitations. In one of these vessels came John Kinsey, a youth, son of John Kinsey, one of the London commissioners. His father dying on his arrival, the care of the family devolved on the son, who not only discharge the duty, but reached several positions of distinction. His son became Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. Burlington was built upon an island, which is now joined to the main-land, and two centuries ago bore the name of Chygoe (10). How early it was settled by Europeans we cannot tell, but before 1666 three Dutchmen, Cornelius Jorrissen, Julian Marcelis and Jan Claessen had purchased all or part of it, and built a house or two upon it. They sold to Peter Jegou, who owned seventeen hundred acres in all. In a note, appended to the permit Governor Lovelace gave to Jegou, in 1668, it is stated that certain Dutchmen settled there long before the country fell into the hands of the English. Jegou bought part of his land of the Indians. He gave the name to the island, "Chygoe" being only a corruption of his own, and not that of an Indian chief, as stated by some author ities. In all our research no name approaching it has been found. In 1670 Jegou was driven from his land by Indians, and remained away several years. When the Friends settled at Burlington, two of them, Thomas Wright and Godfrey Hancock, entered upon Jegou's land and occupied it. They refused to vacate when notified, and suit was brought in the Upland court to recover it; which was tried in December 1679 with a verdict for Jegou (11). He sold out to Thomas Bowman; Bowman to Edward Hunloke, of Burlington, and Hunloke to John Joosten and John Hammell. The latter sale was confirmed by the town council of Burlington. In November 1678 Jegou was a deputy from the Delaware river portion of New Jersey to the assembly at Elizabethtown. (10) It was called by the Indians T'Schichopacki, signifying the oldest planted ground. The Delawares stated that their first settlement far east was on this island. (11) The jurisdiction of the courts west of the Delaware was extended into West Jersey, on the ground that the sovereignty of that country did not pass to Carteret and Berkley, when they purchased the soil of the Duke of York. The point of land made by Assiscunk creek and the Delaware on the Burlington side was called Leasy's point, at the period of which we write. It was a noted place on the Delaware. In 1668 Governor Carteret granted permission to Peter Jegou to take up land there on condition that he would settle and erect a house of entertainment for travelers. This he agreed to do, and at the point he opened the first tavern on the river, a famous hostelry in its day. When Governor Lovelace visited the Delaware in 1672, it will be remembered that Captain Garland was sent forward to Jegou's house to make arrangements for his accommodations, and persons were appointed to meet him there. The governor crossed the river at this point. George Fox, who visited the Delaware the same year, likewise crossed at Leasy's point into Pennsylvania and thence continued on to the lower settlements. The house was subsequently called Point house, to which Governor Burnett opened one of his vistas from Burlington island. There is some evidence in favor of Leasy point being on the east side of the creek, but the weight of testimony places it on the west. Here the land is firm down to the water's edge, while on the east side there is a marsh which prevents access to the point. Some antiquarians have fallen into error by locating it on the west side of the Delaware, in the neighborhood of Bristol, but there is not a particle of evidence to sustain it. The favorable accounts written home by the first settlers in West Jersey stimulated immigration and soon there was an accession to the population. The Shield, of Hull, Captain Towes, arrived November 10, 1678, the first English vessel that ascended as high up as Burlington. A fresh gale brought her up the river, and during the night she was blown in to shore where she made fast to a tree. It came on cold and the next morning the passengers walked ashore on the ice. As the Shield passed the place where Philadelphia stands, the passengers remarked what a fine place for a town. Among the passengers were Mahlon Stacy (12), his wife, seven daughters, several servants, his cousin Thomas Revel, and William Emley (13), with his wife, two children, and four servants. The passengers by the Shield, and other ships that followed the same year, settled at Burlington, Salem, and other points on the river. A few found their way into Bucks county. Among those who came with the West Jersey settlers in 1678 was Benjamin Duffield, the ancestor of the Pennsylvania family of that name. By the end of 1678 it is estimated that William Penn had been the means of sending some eight hundred settlers to this country, mostly Friends (14). (12) Mahlon Stacy, - son of John of Ballifield and Cinder Green, Yorkshire, and Mary, daughter of John and Mary Garland, Fulwood, his wife, - married Rebecca Ely, of Mansfield, 29th, 5th mon., 1668. Whether Mahlon Stacy was a Friend is not definitely known, but it is supposed he was, from the fact that his marriage was entered of record in plain language, and his brother Thomas and sister were converted to Friends' belief by George Fox's preaching. The wife of Mahlon Stacy was a sister of Joshua Ely, ancestor of the Ely family of Bucks, who died at Trenton, 1702. * (13) Probably Mahlon Stacy's brother-in-law. - Cope * (14) Clarkson Of the English settlers who came into the Delaware in 1677, under the auspices of the trustees of West New Jersey, we know of but three who settled in this county: Daniel Brinson, of Membury, county of Devon, England, who arrived September 28th, in the Willing Mind. He married Frances Greenland of East Jersey on October 8, 1681. John Pursloir, from Ireland, a farmer, arrived in the Phoenix, Captain Mathew Shaw, in August; Joshua Bore, or Boar, of Brainfield, Derbyshire, farmer, arrived in the Martha, in September. His wife, Elizabeth, of Horton Bavent, in Wiltshire, came in the Elizabeth and Sarah, May 29, 1678. A son was born to them June 29, 1681, and a daughter August 31, 1685. Bore owned land in Falls and Middletown, but we are unable to say in which township he lived. Penn confirmed his patent May 9, 1684. At the close of 1678 Governor Andros appointed Peter Pocock surveyor on the Delaware, who surveyed considerable land in Bucks county for the immigrants who arrived in 1679. Among those who arrived and settled at Burlington, in 1678, was Thomas Budd, who became a leading man in the province. He was thrice elected to the assembly, and was one of the chief promoters of the erection of the meeting house, and in 1683 he and Francis Collins were each awarded one thousand acres "about the falls," on the New Jersey side of the river, for building a market and court-house at Burlington. Budd removed to Philadelphia in 1685, where he died in 1698. He traveled extensively in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and in 1685 he published, in London, "A true account of the country." Among his descendants were Attorney General Bradly and Lord Ashburton. Mahlon Stacy, said to have descended from Stacy de Bellefield, a French officer who accompanied William the Conqueror to England, in 1066, a tanner from Yorkshire, became interested in West Jersey in 1676, and with four others purchased a tenth of the province. He took up eight hundred acres (13) on the Delaware, covering the site of Trenton, where he built a log dwelling at South Trenton, and a log grist-mill in 1680 on the south bank of the Assanpink (14). About the same time Thomas Oliver built a mill on the Rancocas, and for several years these were the only grain-mills in New Jersey. Stacy's mill, the first along the Delaware, ground the grain of the early settlers of this county, carried across the river in canoes. He sold his mill to William Trent, the founder of Trenton, in 1690, who erected a two-story stone mill. This was undermined by the flood of 1843, and about half of it carried away. Mahlon Stacy made his mark on the Delaware and acquired large wealth. He was member of assembly, justice of the peace, and an active minister among Friends. On meeting days he paddled his canoe across the river, walked to Fallsington and united with Friends in worship, which he continued to his death, in 1704. He left one son, and five daughters - one of which married Joseph Kirkbride, of Falls, and his granddaughter, Rebecca Atkinson, was the ancestress of the Budds, of Burlington, in the female line. From the testimony of two early travelers (15) on the Delaware, Stacy's dwelling was neither comfortable nor spacious. They state in their journal that they staid overnight at his house, and that although too tired to eat they were obliged to sit up all night, because there was not room enough to lie down. The house was so wretchedly constructed that unless they were close enough to the fire to burn, they could not keep warm, for the wind blew through it everywhere. (13) The eight hundred acre tract was on both sides of the Assanpink, and embraced the territory between Green street and the Delaware, and State and Ferry streets, extending into what is now Hamilton township, south of the Assanpink. (14) The mill had the gable to the street, and stood where Mr. McCall's paper-mill stands. (15) Dankers and Sluyter, 1679. In 1680 Mr. Stacy wrote a letter to his brother Revel Stacy of England in vindication of the country on the Delaware. He gave a glowing account, but no doubt a true picture, of the fertility of the soil, healthfulness of the climate, and of the various productions of the land and water. At that early day there were apple orchards laden with fruit; peaches, of the finest flavor, hung on the trees "almost like onions tied on ropes;" forty bushels of wheat were harvested for one sown; "great store" of wild fruits and berries; cherries, strawberries, etc.; the river swarmed with fish, and the woods were alive with game. There appears to have been nearly everything the heart of man could crave (16). (16) The following is the text of Mahlon Stacy's letter: "As to the strange reports you hear of us and our country, I affirm they are not true, but fear they are spoken in envy. It is a country that produces all things for the sustenance of man in a plentiful manner, or I should be ashamed of what I have heretofore written; but having truth on my side, I can stand before the face of all the evil spies. I have traveled through most of the settled places, and some that are not, and find the country very apt to answer the expectations of the diligent. I have seen orchards laden with fruit to admiration, planted by the Swedes, their very limbs torn to pieces with the weight and most delicious to the taste, and lovely to behold. I have seen an apple tree from a pippin kernel yield a barrel of curious cider, and peaches in such plenty that some people took their carts a peach-gathering. I could not but smile at the sight of it. They are a very delicate fruit, and hang almost like our onions that are tied on ropes. I have seen and known this summer forty bushels of bold wheat harvested from one sown. We have from the time called May to Michaelmas, great stores of very good wild fruits, as strawberries, cranberries and huckleberries, which are much like cherries for color and bigness, which may be kept until fruit comes in again; an excellent sauce is made of them for venison, turkey and great fowl; they are better to make tarts than either cherries or gooseberries; the Indians bring them to our houses in great plenty. My brother Robert has as many cherries this year as would have loaded several carts. From what I observed, it is my judgment that fruit trees in this country destroy themselves by the very weight of their fruit. As for venison and fowls we have great plenty; we have brought home to our houses by the Indians seven or eight fat bucks of a day, and sometimes put by as many, having no occasion for them. My cousin Revel and I, with some of my men, went last Third-month (5th-month, N.S.) Into the river to catch herrings, for at that time they came in great shoals into the shallows. We had no net, but after the Indian fashion, made a round pinfold about two yards over and a foot high, but left a gap for the fish to go in at, and made a bush to lay in the gap to keep the fish in. When that was done, we took two long birches and tied their tops together, and went about a stone's cast above our said pinfold. Then hauling these birch boughs down the stream, we drove thousands before us, and as many got into our traps as it would hold. Then we began to throw them on shore as fast as three or four of us could by two or three at a time. After this manner in half an hour we could have filled a three bushel sack with as fine herring as ever I saw." After getting through with his fishing party, Mr. Stacy goes on to say: "As to beef and pork there is a great plenty of it and cheap; also good sheep. The common grass of the country feeds beef very fat. I have seen last fall in Burlington, killed, eight or nine fat oxen and cows on a market day, all very fat." Referring to the fish in the Delaware again, he says: "Though I have spoken only of herring (lest any should think we have little other sorts), we have great plenty of most sorts of fish that ever I saw in England, besides several other sorts that are not known there, as rock, cat-fish, shad, sheeps-head and sturgeon; and fowls as plenty, ducks geese, turkey, pheasants, partridges, and many other sorts. Indeed, the country, take it as a wilderness, is a brave country, though no place will please all. There is some barren land, and more wood than some would have upon their land, neither will the country produce corn without labor, nor is cattle got without something to buy them, nor bread with idleness, else it would be a brave country indeed; I question not, but all then would give it a good word. For my part I like it so well I never had the least thought of returning to England except on account of trade." Under the same date he wrote to William Cook, of Sheffield, and others of his friends at home: "This is a most brave place, whatever envious and evil spies may say of it; I could wish you all here. We have wanted nothing since we came hither but the company of our good friends and acquaintances. All our people are very well, and in a hopeful way to live much better than ever they did, and not only so, but to provide well for their posterity. I know not one among the people that desires to be in England again, since settled. I wonder at our Yorkshire people that they had rather live in servitude, work hard all the year and not be three pence the better at the year's end, than to stir out of the chimney-corner and transport themselves to a place where, with the like pains, in two or three years they might know better things. I live as well to my content and in as great plenty as ever I did, and in a far more likely way to get an estate. (Signed,) "Mahlon Stacy" "From the falls of the Delaware in West New Jersey, the 26th of the 4th-month, 1680." William Trent, the founder of Trenton, a successful merchant of Philadelphia, settled on the east bank of the Delaware opposite the falls. He purchased, of Mahlon Stacy, the younger, his tract of eight hundred acres, inherited from his father, lying on both sides of the Assanpink, in 1714. He removed thither soon afterward and laid out a town, which increased rapidly and became the seat of the supreme court in 1724. Before the town was called after its founder it was known as "Little Worth." William Trent died December 29, 1724. His first wife, who was a sister of Colonel Coxe, died in the slate-roof house, Philadelphia. The first Presbyterian meeting house was erected in Trenton in 1712, and the county of Hunterdon was laid out in 1714, reaching from the Assanpink to the northern extremity of the state. In 1694 the Assanpink was made the northern boundary of Burlington county. Trenton was constituted a borough in 1746, but a post-office was established there as early as 1734. The paper-mill on Green street, built in 1741, on the site of Mahlon Stacy's log mill of 1680, and rebuilt by William Trent, of stone, in 1690 and converted in a cotton mill about sixty years ago, was torn down about 1874. The Assanpink will now flow unobstructed to the Delaware. The old mill and its surroundings are classic ground, for it was immediately in front of it that the tide in Revolutionary affairs took a turn that led to victory. Professor Kalm describes Trenton, in 1748, as "a long, narrow town, situate some distance from the river Delaware on a sandy plain." It had two churches, one Episcopal and the other Presbyterian; the houses were partly built of stone, though most of them were of wood or planks, two stories high, with cellar underneath, and "a kitchen under ground close to the cellar." The houses stood apart with gardens in the rear. The landlord with whom Kalm stopped told him that when he first settled there twenty-two years before there was "hardly more than one house," but at this time there were about one hundred houses. Their chief gain consisted in the arrival of numerous passengers passing between Philadelphia and New York. At that time this was the great thoroughfare for goods between these two points, which were transported to Trenton on the river by water, and thence across New Jersey by land carriage. The price of passengers between Philadelphia and Trenton, by water, was a shilling and six-pence Pennsylvania currency, and extra for baggage, and passengers provided their own meat and drink. From Trenton to New Brunswick the price was two shillings and six-pence, and the baggage extra. Trenton, now a handsome and thriving city of thirty thousand inhabitants, is the capital of the state. While there is no question that Mahlon Stacy's was the first grist-mill on the east bank of the Delaware, it is impossible to locate the first mill west of the river, in this county. Its building could not have been long after the arrival of William Penn, for mills were a prime necessity. It is less difficult to fix the first mill built in the state. This was erected by the Swedes in 1643 or 1644 on Cobb's creek, near the Blue Bell tavern, Delaware county, but it is not known on which side of the stream it stood. It is said to have been a "fine mill, which ground both fine and coarse flour, and was going late and early." It has long since passed away, but the spot about where it stood is well known. To it all the settlers, who did not care to pound their grain into flour, took their grists to be ground. In that early day there was a path through the woods from up the Delaware, north of Neshaminy, down to the mill, along which the settlers traveled back and forth. The court at Upland, in 1678, decided to have another mill built, which one Hans Moenses put up shortly afterward on Mill creek, near the present site of Marylandville. In 1683 Richard Townsend and others erected a corn-mill on the site of the Chester Mills, on Chester creek, above Upland. He was one of a company, formed in England, of which William Penn was a member, in 1682. The mill was erected under the care of Caleb Pusey, and the materials brought from England. A mill to grind flour was built at Holmesburg in 1679, and we believe it is still standing and in pretty good condition. When the British occupied Philadelphia they used it as a barrack. After the British evacuation it was again used as a mill and has been ever since. The walls are thick and strong, and it shows very little signs of decay. In 1658 permission was given to Joost, Andriansen & company to build a saw and grist mill below the "Turtle falls," the site for which they obtained from the Dutch commissary, but we have no evidence that these mills were ever built. The toll to be taken by the corn mills was regulated by law in 1675. In 1683 Richard Townsend erected a grist-mill on what is now Church lane, Germantown, for which he brought the machinery and most of the wood work from England. For several years this mill ground the grists of the settlers for many miles round. They carried the grain to the mill on their back, except one lucky Bucks countian who made use of a tame bull for this purpose. The mill changed hands many times, the last owner being a son of Hugh Roberts, who bought it in 1835. The Frankford mill, late Duffield's, was used by the Swedes as a mill before Penn's arrival. Ferris, in a note to his "Original Settlements on the Delaware," says: "There is an account preserved by some of the families descended from Isaac Marriott, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, that when Friends' yearly meeting was held at Burlington, New Jersey, about the year 1684, the family wanting some fine flour, Isaac took wheat on horseback to be ground at a mill, which was twenty-six miles from his residence." (End of chapter II)