THE HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA, CHAPTER VIII, MAKEFIELD, 1692. 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 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. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 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. Note: Where names differ, the 1905 edition spelling is applied. ___________________________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER VIII MAKEFIELD 1692 First named in report. -Origin of name. -Macclesfield. -Falls of Delaware objective point. -Order of settlers on river. -William Yardley's tract. -Richard Hough. -Old marriage certificate. -Briggs family; Stockton; Mead. -Friends' meeting. -Old graveyard. -Henry Marjorum. -Two Makefields one. -Daniel Clark. -Livezey family. - The Briggses. -Three brothers Slack. -Reverend Elijah and General James Slack. -The Janneys. -Edgewood. -Dolington. -Yardleyville. -First store-house. -Wheat Sheaf. - First lock-tender. -Negro killed. -Yardley of today. -Stone quarries. -Oak Grove school- house. -Area of township. -Taxes and population. Makefield is the first township named in the report of the jury that subdivided the county in 1692. We give it the second place in our work because Falls is justly entitled to the first. It was the uppermost of the four river townships, and not only embraced what is now Lower Makefield, but extended to the uttermost bounds of civilization. All beyond was then an "undiscovered country," whose exploration and settlement were left to adventurous pioneers. Lower Makefield is bounded, on the land side, by Falls, Newtown and Upper Makefield, and has a frontage of five miles on the Delaware. [Map of Manor of Highlands, appears here.] There has been some discussion as to the origin of the name "Makefield" which the jury gave to this township, and which it bore until Upper Makefield was organized many years afterward. There is no name like it in England of town, parish, or hundred. When John Fothergill, minister among Friends, of London, visited the township in 1721, he wrote the name "Macclesfield" in his journal. It is just possible that Makefield is a corruption of Macclesfield, or that the latter was pronounced Makefield by the early English settlers, and the spelling made to accord with the pronunciation. In the will of Henry Marjorum, and early settler, the name of the township is written "Maxfield," but one remove from Macclesfield (1). But all this is mere conjecture, in face of the fact that the jury, which laid off the township, spelled the work, plain enough, Makefield. (1) In the manuscript book of arrivals, library Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Macclesfield is written "Maxfield," and all historians of Cheshire state this fact. Tysons says: "The chapelry of Macclesfield" is frequently called in ancient records "Maxfield," p. 734. Richard Hough came from "Maxfield" and being one of the principal men appointed to lay out the township, it is possible it was called Macclesfield, out of deference to him. At Macclesfield, England, is a quaint old church, the oldest part dating back to the 13th century, and contains some curious tombs of the Savage family. The curfew is still rung at 8 p.m. * The "falls of Delaware" was an objective point to Penn's first immigrants, for a little colony of English settlers had gathered there several years before, whither many directed their footsteps upon landing, and whence they spread out into the wilderness beyond. Several settlers pushed their way into the woods of Makefield as early as 1682. Richard Hough, in his will made in 1704, gives the following as the order of the land- owners along the river from the falls up: John Palmer, Richard Hough, Thomas Janney, Richard Vickers, Samuel Overton, John Brock, one thousand acres; John Clows, one thousand acres; William Yardley, five hundred acres; Eleanor Pownall, Thomas Bond, James Harrison, Thomas Hudson, Daniel Milnor, two hundred and fifty acres; Joseph Milnor, two hundred and fifty acres; Henry Bond and Richard Hough, five hundred acres, warrant dated September 20, 1685, patent July 30, 1687. [Harrison owned in all five thousand acres here and elsewhere, and Bond was a considerable proprietor. The usual quantity held by settlers was from two hundred and fifty to one thousand acres (2). The parties named held nearly all the land in the township in 1704. The tract of William Yardley covered the site of Yardleyville, and after his death his son Thomas established a ferry there, called "Yardley's ferry," which the assembly confirmed to him in 1722. This soon after became an important point, and later in the century, when the three great roads leading to Philadelphia via the Falls, Four Lanes end, now Langhorne, and Newtown terminated there, the ferry became a thoroughfare of traffic and travel for a large section of East Jersey. *] (2) The following were the land-owners in Makefield in 1684: Richard Hough, Henry Baker, Joseph Milnor, Daniel Milnor, Thomas Hudson, James Harrison, Thomas Bond, Henry Sidwell, Edward Luffe, Eleanor Pownall, William Pownall, John Clows, John Brock, Samuel Overton, Thomas Janney, Richard Vickers. Part of the original purchase remained in the Yardley family down to 1854, one hundred and seventy-two years. In a previous chapter is a brief notice of William, the ancestor of the Yardleys, but I have not been able to trace the descent of the family. Among the earliest of the name is William, son of Thomas and Ann, born 1716; married two wives, Anne and Sarah, and was the father of twelve children. The late John Yardley was a direct descendant of William, who came here in 1682. The warrant to William Yardley was dated October 6, 1682. The warrant to William Yardley was dated October 6, 1682, and the patent January 23, 1687. [Richard Hough, from Macclesfield, county Chester, England, arrived in the ship Endeavor, of London, 7th mo. 29th, 1683, with four servants, or dependants. He settled on the river front, Bucks county, taking up two tracts of land, one two miles below the site of Yardley, the other joining Penn's manor of Highlands; the upper having a width of half a mile on the river, and running back a mile and three-quarters, the lower extending inland nearly three miles with a width of a quarter of a mile.*] Richard Hough was married to Margery, daughter of John Clows, the 1st month, 17th, 1684, in the presence of many Friends. This was among the earliest marriages among the English settlers after their arrival, and William Yardley and Thomas Janney were appointed to see that it was "orderly done and performed." Five children were born of this marriage, Mary, Sarah, Richard, John and Joseph, who intermarried with the families of Bainbridge, Shallcross, Brown, Gumbly, Taylor and West. They have a numerous progeny. John Hough, from Chester, England, who arrived in 1683, with his wife, Hannah, was probably a brother of Richard, or at least a cousin. Doctor Silas Hough, son of Isaac Hough and Edith Hart, was a great-grandson of Richard [Hough the immigrant and his wife, a descendant of John Hart, a minister among Friends from Witney, Oxfordshire, England, who settled in Byberry, Philadelphia county, 1682.*] Among the old marriage certificates that have fallen into our hands is that of "Robert Smith, of Makefield township, carpenter," and Phoebe, a daughter of Thomas Canby, of Solebury, married at Buckingham meeting, September 30, 1719. It is formally drawn on parchment, and the signatures well executed. It bears the names of Bye, Pearson, Canby, Eastburn, Fell, Paxson, and many others whose descendants still worship at the meeting. [Richard Hough early became prominent in the new colony in political, social and religious affairs. He was a leading member in Falls meeting, and before the meeting was built, 1690, his house was one of the meeting places of the Bucks county quarterly meeting. He was one of the jury that laid out the original townships of the county, 1692; represented the county in the Provincial Assembly of 1684, 1688, 1690, 1697, 1699, 1700, 1703, 1704, and was a member of the Provincial Council, 1693, and 1700. He was active in both bodies, and left his impress on the early legislation of the Province. He held other public offices, including that of justice of the county, and 1700, William Penn appointed Richard Hough, Phineas Pemberton and William Biles, a court of inquiry to investibate the state of his (Penn's) affairs in the Province. While in the meridian of his usefulness, Richard Hough met an untimely death, being drowned in the Delaware, March 25, 1705, on his way from his home to Philadelphia. His will is dated May 1, 1704. *] [The Yardley are supposed to have come into England with William the Conqueror, but the name is not met with until 1215, when William Yardley appears as a witness at the signing of Magna Charta. From that date all trace of the name is lost until 1400, and after that, the trace is complete. The first immigrant of the name to come to America was William Yardley, of Lansclough, Staffordshire, who, with wife Jane, sons Enoch, William and Thomas, and servant Andrew Heath (3), arrived at the Falls, Bucks county, September 28, 1682. He located 500 acres on the west bank of the Delaware covering the site of Yardley, Lower Makefield township. The homestead was called "Prospect Farm," a name it still retains, and is in possession of a member of the family (4). The warrant was dated October 6, 1682, and the patent January 23, 1687. William Yardley, born, 1632, and a minister among Friends at twenty-five, was several times imprisoned. From the first he took a prominent part in the affairs of the infant colony. He signed the Great Charter, represented Bucks county in the first Assembly, and was a member of the Executive Council. He was an uncle of Phineas Pemberton, one of Penn's most trusted friends and counselors, but in the midst of his usefulness, William Yardley wrote to him, about the time of his death: "He was a man of sound mind and good understanding." William Yardley and his family being dead, his property in America reverted to his heirs in England, his brother Thomas and nephews, Thomas and Samuel, sons of Thomas. In 1694, Thomas, the younger son, came over with power of attorney to settle the estate. "Prospect Farm" became his property by purchase, and he settled in Lower Makefield, spending his life here, 12 month, 1706. Thomas Yardley married Ann, daughter of William Biles, the wedding taking place at Pennsbury, and they has issue ten children: Mary, Jane, Rebecca, Sarah, Joyce, William, Hannah, Thomas, Samuel, and Samuel second. Thus Thomas Yardley became the ancestor of all that bear the name in Bucks county and many in other parts of the country, with a numerous posterity in the female line. There is another Yardley family in Bucks descended from a Richard Yardley of Solebury township, supposed to be of the same ancestry as the Lower Makefield Yardleys, but it has not yet been established. Samuel Yardley, Doylestown, who married Mary Hough, belonged to the Solebury family.*] (3) They came in the ship "Friend's Adventure," and Andrew Heath married the widow of William Venables. * (4) Dr. Buckman gives it as his opinion that the original house of William Yardley was on the Dolington road, a mile from the village of Yardley. * Of the old Makefield families the Briggses can trace their descent, on the paternal side, nearly two centuries back through the Briggses, Croasdales, Storys, Cutlers, and Hardings, to Ezra Croasdale, who married Ann Peacock in 1687. On the maternal side the line runs back through the Taylors, Yardleys, etc., to John Town, who married Deborah Booth in 1691. Barclay Knight's male line, on the paternal side, in so far as the Makefield family is concerned, runs back three generations to Jonathan Knight, who married Grace Croasdale in 1748; while his mother's ancestry, on the paternal side, runs back to Job Bunting, who married Mary, daughter of Henry Baker, in 1689, and on the maternal to William and Margaret Cooper, through the Idens, Walnes, the Stogdales and Woolstons. The Stocktons, more recent in the township, are a collateral branch of the Princeton family. The first in this county was John Stockton, born June 15, 1768, who was the son of John, a New Jersey judge, a nephew of Richard Stockton, the Signer. The latter descended from Richard, a Friend, who came to America between 1660 and 1670, first settled on Long Island, and afterward purchased a large tract of land near Princeton. John's father and brothers, owning large landed estates, remained loyal to the crown in the Revolutionary struggle, and lost their lives in the war and their property by confiscation. John Stockton settled near Yardleyville, in Lower Makefield, and married Mary Vansant in 1794, who died August 19, 1844. They had ten children, Ann, Joseph, Sarah, Eliza, Mary Ann, John B., Charity, Isaiah and Eleanor, who intermarried with the Hibbses, Leedoms, Derbyshires, Browns, Palmers and Houghs. The descendants are numerous in the lower end of the county, and among them is Doctor John Stockton Hough, of Philadelphia. He was a son of Eleanor, who married William Aspy Hough, of Ewing, New Jersey. The Meads were in Makefield as early as 1744, when Andrew Ellet conveyed to William Mead 220 acres on the Delaware adjoining Richard Hough. He sold his land to Hezekiah Anderson in 1747, and left the township. Ellet was also an early settler, and his patent is dated September 26, 1701. Makefield had been settled near three-quarters of a century before the Friends had a meeting-house to worship in - in all those long years going down to Falls. In 1719 the "upper parts" of Makefield asked permission of Falls to have a meeting on first-days, for the winter season, at Samuel Baker's, John Baldwin's, and Thomas Atkinson's, which was allowed. In 1750, the Falls monthly gave leave to the Makefield Friends to hold a meeting for worship, every other Sunday, at the houses of Benjamin Taylor and Benjamin Gilbert, because of the difficulty of going down there. A meeting-house was built in 1752, twenty-five by thirty-five feet, one story high, which was enlarged in 1764, by extending the north end twenty-five feet, at a cost of 120 pounds. The township presents us a relic, of her early days, in an ancient burial place, called the "old stone graveyard," half a mile below Yardleyville (5). The ground was given, June 4, 1690, to the Falls Monthly Meeting, by Thomas Janney, before his return to England, where he died. There is but one stone standing, or was a few years ago, to mark the last resting place of one of the "rude forefathers" of the township, a brown sandstone, twenty-seven inches high, eighteen wide and six thick, the part out of the ground being dressed. On the face, near the top, are the figures "1692," and the following inscription below: "Here lies the body of Joseph Sharp, the son of Christopher Sharp." For upward of a half century the two Makefields were included in one township organization, and known by the name of Makefield. They were still one in 1742, but for the convenience of municipal purposes they were divided into two divisions, and called "upper" and "lower" division. (5) One account says the deed was executed 1 mo. 7, 1687, to William Yardley and others, in trust. It was then called "Slate Pit Hill." Down to 1800 it was the principal burying ground for Friends in the township. Adam Hoops, of Falls, owned 320 acres along the river in Lower Makefield. He probably died in 1771, as his will is dated the 7th of June of that year. His daughter Jane married Daniel Clark, the uncle of Daniel Clark, Jr., first husband of Mrs. Gaines (6). The heirs of Adam Hoops sold the plantation to Clark, who disposed of it by sale in 1774, when he probably left the county. [David V. Feaster, a captain in the Third Pennsylvania Reserves, Civil War, 1861-65, spend the latter years of his life on this farm, LOWER Makefield, dying there December 6, 1894. *] (6) On the authority of Gilbert Cope, Mrs. Gaines is thought to have been the daughter of Daniel Clark, Jr., and that her first husband was W. W. Whitney, New York. * The Livezey family, of Lower Makefield and Solebury, of which Doctor Abraham Livezey, of Yardleyville, is a member, came to Bucks county at an early day. Jonathan, the immigrant, settled in Solebury soon after Penn's second visit, where he took up a tract of land that included the old Stephen Townsend farm - on which was built a one-story stone house in 1732, and torn down in 1848 - and the farms of Armitage, Paxson, and William Kitchen. He married Esther Eastburn, and had children Jonathan, Nathan, Benjamin and Joseph, and was the great-great-grandfather of Robert Livezey, father of the present generation. The great-grandfather married a Friend, named Thomas; the grandfather, Daniel Livezey, married Margery Croasdale, whose eldest son, Robert, born February 22, 1780, married Sarah Paxson, who died at the age of ninety-three. Robert Livezey lived with one wife the whole of his married life of sixty years on the old Stephen Townsend farm. His children are Cyrus, Elizabeth, Ann, Albert, Allen, Elias and Abraham, living, and Samuel, who died in 1863. Previous to the death of Samuel this family exhibited the remarkable fact that both parents, at the ages of eighty-three and eighty-four, and the entire family of eight children, living, and the youngest being aged forty. Robert Livezey died in 1864, at the age of eighty-four. He was a Friend, and many years filled the office of justice of the peace. [Henry Marjorum (present form Margerum) and wife Elizabeth, county Wilt, England, arrived in the Delaware, 1 mo. 2, 1682, and settled on a 350-acre tract two miles below Yardley. He then bought 281, acres in Falls. They had two children, Sarah born 7, 17, 1685, and Henry born 12, 7, 1683. On the death of his wife, 8, 2, 1693, he married Jane Riggs, a widow, the first marriage in Burlington outside the meeting; we do not know when he died, but his will was recorded 1727. The name of Henry Marjorum appears as the owner of cattle, 1684, and the ear mark given; and one of the same name, son or grandson, was one of the first directors of the Newtown Library, 1760. The same year, he, or another Henry, went on a "voiage" to South Carolina with a certificate from Falls Monthly Meeting; but there being no monthly meeting near where he was he "could not deliver his certificate nor get an endorsement of his behavior." In 1765 John Margerum "was much overtaken and disordered with strong drink in a public manner;" and 1766, a committee was appointed to treat with Henry Margerum, who was accused of "unlawful conversation" with a young woman. Both were dismissed from meeting because they were in "an indifferent and unconcerned" frame of mind. They needed disciplining and got it. The homestead was occupied by William Margerum, who died there October 9, 1830. His wife's name was Elizabeth, and their son, Enos, born June 30, 1782, married Rachel Vansant, whose brother John was an Ensign in the Pennsylvania Line of the Revolution. The latter had three sons. Reading, a second son, born February 18, 1811, died December 20, 1897, and Garret, born January 22, 1813, went south in his youth, led an active business life and was killed at Memphis, Tennessee, 1891. The Rev. William Allibone Margerum, Ocean Grove, N. J., a prominent Methodist Episcopal minister, is a descendant of the pioneer, and his youngest son, Winfield L., born 1861, is engaged in business in Philadelphia. Several members of the family served on the side of the colonies in the Revolution. Joseph and William in Capt. Stillwell's company, Colonel Keller's regiment, Bucks county militia. The names of Benjamin and Jonathan Margerum were on the rolls at different periods.*] The Slack family of Makefield are descendants of John and Abraham Slack, grandsons of Hendrick Cornelisse Slecht, who emigrated from Holland in 1652 and settled on Long Island. Abraham, born 1722, settled in Lower Makefield. He first occupied the farm in the northeast corner of the township, on the Delaware, lately owned by William Pfaff, deceased, but afterward moved to the farm immediately north and adjoining, now owned by a Smith. He lived there many years, and died in 1802. Slack's island, in the Delaware, was named after him. He probably married soon after his arrival, and his children were Abraham, Cornelius, James and Sarah, all of whom married and left descendants. Abraham, the elder son, left but three children, who are deceased, and their descendants live in Philadelphia. The second son, Cornelius, died in 1828, leaving a number of children, some of whom are yet living, and among them are Mrs. James Larue, of Lower Makefield, Mrs. Charles Young, of Edgewood, and Mrs. Balderston, of Newtown. James, the third son, born in 1756, died on his farm in 1832, at the age of seventy-six, leaving one daughter, Alice, and three sons, Abraham, Elijah and James. Sarah, the daughter of Abraham the elder, married a Moses Kelley, whose descendants are to be found in Newtown, Fallsington and Philadelphia. Mrs. Jane Harvey, wife of Joseph Harvey, of Newtown, and Doctor Lippincott, of Philadelphia, husband of Grace Greenwood, are two of her descendants. Abraham, the elder son of James, died in 1835, leaving a large family of children, several of whom reside in Bucks county. Among them are Samuel M. Slack, of Upper Makefield, John Slack Keith, of Newtown, and Elijah T. Slack, of Philadelphia. Abraham's descendants married into the families of Rich, Stevens, Torbert, Emery, McNair, etc. Elijah Slack, the second son of James, graduated at Princeton, studied divinity, was licensed as a Presbyterian clergyman, and removed to Cincinnati in 1817, where he died in 1868, leaving a large family of children, most of whom live in the southern states. The daughter Alice married David McNair, of Newtown township, and died in 1830, leaving six children, a number of whose descendants live in the county. James, the youngest son of Abraham, the second, familiarly known in the lower end of the county as Captain Slack, resided on the farm where his father died until 1837, when he immigrated to Indiana, and settled on White river, in Delaware county, where his wife died in 1845, and he in 1847. He left six sons and three daughters, of whom but three survive: Doctor George W. Slack, Delaware county, Indiana, Anthony T. Slack, of Independence, Missouri, and James R. Slack, of Indiana. The latter went to Huntingdon, Indiana, in 1840, with his license as an attorney in his pocket, and began his life in the wilderness. In turn he was schoolmaster, clerk in the county-clerk's office, county-auditor, and State Senator. On the breaking out of the Civil War, he espoused the cause of the Union, and raised the forty-seventh Indiana regiment, of which he was appointed Colonel. He participated in most of the campaigns and battles in the West, from Island No. 10, in March, 1862, to the surrender of Mobile, in April, 1865. He was appointed a brigadier-general, in 1864, and a brevet major-general, in March, 1865, for gallantry in the field. In October 1873 he was elected judge of the Twenty-eighth Judicial district by 800 majority, in a district in which the Republican candidate for President has 1200 majority, in 1872 (7). (7) General Slack died at Chicago, suddenly, July 28, 1881, from a stroke of paralysis. He was buried at Huntingdon, his home, the following Sunday, July 31, followed to the grve by a very large concourse of mourning relatives and friends. Distinguished men were present from all parts of the state and the sermon and eulogies pronounced over his remains bespeak the high esteem in which General Slack was held. * The Janneys, Bucks county and elsewhere, are descended from Thomas Janney, and Elizabeth his wife, Cheshire, England, where he was born, 1633, and died 12 mo., 17, 1677. His son Thomas joined the Society of Friends shortly after it was organized, and was frequently punished for attending meeting. He became a minister about 1654. In 9th mo., 24, 1660, Thomas Janney was married to Margery Heath, of Horton, at the home of James Harrison, his brother-in-law. They came to Pennsylvania in the Endeavor, with four children, landing at Philadelphia 7 mo., 29, 1683. Jacob Thomas, Abel and Joseph settled in Lower Makefield on the river below Yardley. He located a five hundred acre patent here, and another of one thousand acres near the Newtown line. He was a member of the Provincial Council and returning to England, 1695, died there, 1696, at the age of sixty-one. He has numerous descendants in this county. Stephen T. Janney, who died in Newtown township, November 12, 1898, at the age of eighty-one, was the son of Jacob and Francenia Janney, and the fifth in descent from the immigrant. His father had ten children and there was no death among them for the period of fifty years. In 1842 Stephen T. Janney married Harriet P. Johnson, daughter of William H. and Mary (Paxson) Johnson, and is survived by five children. This branch of the family made their home in Newtown township, and the homestead farm is still in their possession. There are but two villages in Lower Makefield, Edgewood, on the road from Yardleyville to Attleborough, consisting of a store, postoffice, established in 1858, and Samuel Tomlinson appointed postmaster, and two or three dwellings; and Yardleyville on the Delaware, at the site of Thomas Yardley's ferry, of ye olden time. Dolington, on the line between Lower and Upper Makefield, will be noticed in our account of the latter township. Yardleyville began to develop into what Americans call a village about 1807. An old map of the place of that date shows a number of building lots, and streets laid out above the mouth of the creek, and running b ack from the river, and on the south side were several lots at the intersection of the Newtown and Upper River roads. The only buildings there were the old tavern near the river bank, and the dwellings of Brown, Pidcock, Eastburn and Depue. At this time the ferry was half-a-mile below the bridge, and boats landed opposite the farm house of Jolly Longshore. One Howell kept the ferry on the New Jersey side, and it was as often called Howell's, as Yardley's, ferry. The first store house in the place was built by the widow of Thomas Yardley. An old tavern stood at this side of the ferry kept by John Jones, and subsequently by Benjamin Flemming. When the ferry was moved up to the site of the bridge, a tavern, now the "Swan," was built there, and first kept by one Grear. [The house was refused license, 1892, and since then has been kept as a summer boarding house, and a "Cyclers" roadhouse.*] Neill Vansant bought the old Yardley mansion, with mills and some 200 acres of land, which then included about the whole of the village. The mansion and mills were subsequently owned by Richard Mitchell, Atlee and Mahlon Dungan. The latter sold the property to William Yardley, whose heirs will own it. Among the earliest houses in the place were the small frame tenement on John Blackfan's land near the creek, the three-story stone house called the "Wheat Sheaf," because there was a sheaf of wheat cast in the iron railing in front of the second story, and a small frame and stone house east of the canal, above Bridge street. Charles Shoemaker was the first lock-tender on the canal at Yardleyville, appointed in 1831. In 1893, a county bridge was built across the canal at the foot of College avenue. The third store, was kept by Aaron LaRue, in the "Canal store- house." He joined church, and emptied his liquor into the canal, and set it on fire. His son, James G. LaRue, killed a negro in this storehouse for abusing his mother, and the grand jury ignored the bill. [A general store was once kept in this house by the late Josiah B. Smith of Newtown, but was burned down in 1891.*] The great freshet of 1841 carried the bridge away. The Yardleyville of today is a much more pretentious village than its ancestor of seventy-five years ago and the word "ville" has been knocked off it name by the age of improvement. (In 1876 it contained) a population of about 1,000, with several industrial establishments, consisting of a steam spoke and handle factory, steam saw, slate and plaster mills, steam felloe works, and two merchant flour mills, several dry goods and grocery stores, coal and lumber yards, four public houses, a graded school, Episcopal, Methodist and Advent churches, a Friends' meeting-house, and a Catholic congregation worshiping in the Odd Fellows Hall. The new railroad [Bound Brook*] from Philadelphia to New York crosses the Delaware just below the village. The postoffice was first established at Yardleyville in 1828, and Mahlon Dungan was appointed postmaster. In the immediate vicinity of Yardleyville are two valuable stone quarries, from which many fine building stones are quarried and shipped to various parts of the country. In a letter James Logan wrote to Phineas Pemberton, about 1700, he mentions that William Penn "had ordered a memorandum to be entered in the office that ye great quarry in R. Hough's and Abel Janney's lands be reserved when they come to be confirmed, being for ye public good of the county." What about "ye great quarry," and who knows about it now? Does it refer to the quarries at Yardleyville? In the same letter Logan asks Pemberton where he can get "three or four hundred acres of good land and proportionable meadow in your innocent county." In olden times the children from the vicinity of Yardleyville went to school at the Oxford school house. But in course of time an eccentric man, named Brelsford, a famous deer hunter of that section, built an eight- square on the site of the present Oak Grove school house, on a lot left by Thomas Yardley for school purposes. [In 1897, the "Oak Grove Improvement Company" was organized for the purpose of planting ornamental shade trees on the school lot, about $100 being raised and expended by a few persons, resulting in a well-shaded, cool and convenient park of three acres, and frequently used for religious, political and other public meetings. Other desirable improvements are a public road along the Bound Brook railroad just south of the borough, and the formation of "Hampton Lake" covering ten acres, by damming a small creek and using the water for the engines of the trains stopping at Yardley station. It is convenient for boating, fishing and getting ice. Besides the improvements mentioned, others have been made at Yardley in recent years, no less important. In 1876 a new Episcopal church, St. Andrews, was erected on the site of the old one built 1837 and used as a free church. The following year the Rev. John W. Stephenson, colored, collected funds and built an African Methodist Episcopal church, the corner stone being laid September 9, and dedicated November 4. In 1889-90 the Yardley National Bank was organized and built; and opened for business with a capital of $50,000, January 20, of the latter year. The comptroller's certificate was dated January 13, 1890. The bank building is a tasteful structure in the center of the village. Buckmanville, a hamlet of a few dwellings, a store and post office, is on the road from Pineville to Dolington. The population of Yardley was 820 by the census of 1880, but at the present time (1905) is about a thousand. *] [Yardleyville's name was changed to Yardley about the time of its incorporation as a borough, 1895, but we do not know the date. The same year the public lighting of its streets was introduced, first by naphtha lamps, which were replaced the following year by an electric light plant, which supplies Morrisville with a four mile current. The borough is connected with Doylestown, Newtown, Bristol, Trenton and other points by trolley. In 1897 the Yardley Delaware Bridge was repaired and strengthened, and the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad filled up the great tressel of the Bound Brook railroad across the Delaware from the canal to the river, on the Pennsylvania sied, requiring 122, 362,000 cubic feet of earth. The gap to be filled was 22,035 feet long, 55 feet high, 30 feet wide at the top and 300 at the bottom. The late George Yardley of the William and Thomas branch, had a handsome place called "Linden" below the village in the long past, but its remains are overthrown and ruined by the embankment of the Reading railroad approach. *] The surface of Lower Makefield is gently rolling, with scarce a hill that deserves the name. The eastern end of Edge Hill, reaching from the Schuylkill to the Delaware, runs along the southern line of the township, and marks the northern limit of the primary formation. Here the surface is somewhat broken. It is not so well watered as most of the townships, and has but few creeks. The largest is Brock's creek, named after John Brock, an original settler, whose land lay along it, which empties into the Delaware at Yardleyville. Core creek rises in the northwest corner of the township, but soon enters Newtown, and thence flows through Middletown to Neshaminy. Rock run, which flows through Falls, and empties into the Delaware below Pennsbury, rises in the southern part. The township is traversed by numerous local roads, which render all points accessible to the inhabitants. The soil is fertile and well cultivated, and the population is almost exclusively employed in agriculture. The area is 9,947 acres, with but little waste land. In 1693, the next year after the township was organized, the assessed taxes of Makefield amounted to 11 pounds, 14s. 3d. In 1742, sixty years after its settlement, it had seventy-six taxable inhabitants, among whom were eleven single men. The next year there were by fifty-seven, but had increased to ninety-four, in 1764. In 1742 the poor-rate was three pence per pound, and nine shillings on single men. Thomas Yardley, the heaviest tax-payer, was assessed at 100 pounds. In 1784 the population was 748, of which twenty-six were blacks, and one hundred and one dwellings; 1,089 in 1810; 1,204 in 1820; 1,340 in 1830, with 264 taxables; 1,550 in 1840; 1,741 in 1850; 1,958 in 1860, and 2,066, of which 227 were foreign-born, in 1870. In 1786 the joint commissioners of Pennsylvania and New Jersey confirmed to Lower Makefield Dunn's, Harvey's lower, and Slack's, three islands in the Delaware. The first loss by fire in the township, of which we have any record, was in 1736, when John Schofield had his dwelling burned. Collections, to cover the loss, were taken up in the monthly meetings. End of Chapter VIII.