AREA HISTORY:  Middletown Ferry, Newberry Township, York County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Kathy Francis

Copyright 2006.  All rights reserved.
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History of York County, Pennsylvania.  John Gibson, Historical Editor.
Chicago: F. A. Battey Publishing Co., 1886.
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THE MIDDLETOWN FERRY – Page 630

The Middletown Ferry was originally Hussey’s Ferry, opened in 1738.  Many of the 
early Quakers crossed the river at this place, which was an important crossing in 
colonial days.  Middletown was once the site of a Shawanese Indian village.  They 
also had an encampment near the site of Goldsboro.  Middletown is midway between 
Lancaster and Carlisle, and was laid out in 1755, about thirty years before 
Harrisburg.

Some of the English Quakers crossed the Susquehanna here as early as 1730.  Five 
years later a temporary road was opened on the York County side.  Thomas Hall, John 
McFesson, Joseph Bennett, John Heald, John Rankin and Ellis Lewis from Chester 
County, crossed the Susquehanna from the mouth of the Swatara, and selected lands on 
the west side of the river in the year 1732.  It has often been related of them, 
that when they arrived at the eastern bank of the river, and there being no other 
kinds of crafts than canoes to cross, they fastened two together, and placed their 
horses’ front feet in one canoe and the hind feet in another, then piloted the frail 
crafts, with their precious burden, across the stream by means of poles.  The ferry 
obtained its present name and was licensed in 1760.  At the mouth of the Swatara and 
along the Susquehanna, a body of soldiers were stationed in 1756, during the French 
and Indian war, to prevent the incursions of the then savage red men, who had 
championed the cause of the French, along the western frontier.  This occurred after 
the defeat of Braddorck’s army, near Pittsburgh.  During the Revolutionary war, in 
the fall of 1779, a commissary department was established at Middletown, and along 
the river on both sides of the stream the boats for Gen. Sullivan’s army were built, 
and this troops furnished with provisions and military stores for the famous 
expedition against the Six Nations of Indians, in Central New York, who had 
committed depredations in the settlements in the Mohawk and Wyoming Valleys the year 
before.  Until the opening of the Conewago Canal in 1776, Middletown Ferry was the 
southern terminus of navigation with the famous keel boats.  The ferry is still a 
prominent crossing place.  A steamboat is now used for conveying passengers and 
freight.  The ferry was owned many years by Henry Etter, whose house was blown down 
March 22, 1826, and a young lady killed.  About the year 1835 “Black Dan” Johnson, 
in a jealous fit, killed his comrade “Jim” Brown by cutting him in the abdomen with 
an ax.  Dan was tried and convicted of murder, but died while in prison at York, the 
night before he was to have been sentenced.