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 AXM ^ 
 
 HISTORICAL ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 ^W. ^W. H. DA-VIS, 
 
 AT 
 
 THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF DOYLESTOWN, PA., 
 
 ls/LJ^Ti.C!TJ: 1, 1878. 
 
 When the ships of AVilliam Penn entered the Capes 
 of Delaware, the vast domain west of that river lay a 
 virghi wilderness. The few Swedes, Hollanders and Fins 
 who had preceded the Quaker immigrants, and were the 
 very advanced pickets of civilization, hugged the river 
 bank and the lower waters of its tributaries, and had done 
 little, or nothing, to break the solitude of the forest. The 
 great founder brought with him a charter of government 
 thoroughly imbued with civil and religious liberty — the 
 very foundation stone of a free State — which, being driven 
 out of the old world, he came to plant in the new. 
 
 Bucks county was settled by four distinctly marked races 
 
 VxW^fi. 
 
"x:^^ 
 
 !> 
 
— making our population a piece of human mosaic — the 
 English, the German, the Welsh, and the Scotch-Irish , the 
 Irish Celt, a race so prolific of stout hearts and strong arms, 
 coming at a later period. One feature in the settlement of 
 our county adds greatly to its interest. The early immi- 
 grants came as religious colonists, more intent on securing 
 "freedom to worship God" than worldly gain. These 
 several races have clung to the faith of their fathers with 
 wondertul tenacity. The English Quaker is still guided 
 by George Fox's "Inner Light" ; the German Lutheran 
 and Reformed believe what Luther taught ; the Scotch- 
 Irish Presbyterian holds fast to Calvin, and the Welsh 
 Baptist, as of old, clings to his saving ordinance. 
 
 The settlement of new countries is governed by a law 
 as well defined as that of commerce or finance. From 
 the time the founders of the human race went abroad to 
 people the wilderness down to the present day, civiliza- 
 tion has invariably traveled up the valleys of rivers and 
 their tributaries, while wealth, developed bj labor and 
 capital, has as invariably flowed down these same valleys 
 to the sea. This law was observed by our Bucks county 
 ancestors. Landing upon the bank of the beautiful Dela- 
 ware, they gradually extended up its valley and the val- 
 leys of the Pennepack,the Poquessing, and the Neshaminy 
 into the interior. Turning their fa-jes to the west, they 
 plunged into the unbroken wilderness, as it' they had 
 early premonition that the march of emj)irc would be 
 toward the setting sun. Year after year this c(;lumn of 
 English Quakers advanced like an army with banners, 
 leveling the forest, pushing i)ack the Indian, building 
 cabins and meeting-houses, an 1 filling savage haunts with 
 
3 
 
 all the appliances of civilized life. By the close of the 
 century, Bristol, our only sea-port, was a chartered 
 borough ; Penn had pointed out the site for his new 
 town in the woods by Newtown creek, and the townstead 
 of Wrightstown was laid out and parcelled among the 
 settlers. Before a generation of years had rolled away 
 settlers were quite numerous in all the townships below 
 the present geographical centre of the county, and shortly 
 after the language, manners and customs of the Rhine 
 were transferred to the Upper Delaware, the Tohickon, 
 and the Lehigh. 
 
 But these English civilizers were not allowed to do 
 their great work alone, for other peoples claimed the right 
 to assist in planting free government and a free church 
 in this western wilderness. In the meantime, the Ger- 
 mans, the Welsh, and the Scotch-Irish had heard of the 
 fair commonwealth being established west of the Dela- 
 ware, and they swarmed across the Atlantic to enjoy its 
 blessings. The Germans followed closely upon the heels 
 of the English, who had hardly seated themselves upon 
 the Delaware, when the language of Luther was heard on 
 the Schuylkill. They began to come early in the last 
 century ; a steady stream setting up the valley of the 
 Perkiomen through Montgomery, then Philadelphia, 
 county, and in a few years it spread across the country to 
 the Delaware and the Lehigh. I'he Welsh Baptists fol- 
 lowed the same route a little later in the century, and 
 leaping across the county line, they took undisputed pos- 
 session of Hilltown and New Britain. These settlers 
 struck the English Quakers coming up from the Delaware 
 in the flank, about the line of Doylestown and Plumstead ; 
 
and stranga as it may seem, it is novertheless true, that 
 the English column halted in ita march when it came in 
 contact with tiie Germans and the Welsh, as if these rival 
 civilizations could not flourish on the same soil. A small 
 colony ofQuakers, coming up through Montgomery county, 
 settled in Richland and the western part of Springfield, 
 but the Germans confined them within narrow limits. The 
 Scotch-Irish settlers came into the county mainly in 
 family groups, settling in small numbers in several town- 
 ships, and were the founders of Presbyterianism both in 
 the state and county. In the early part of the last cen- 
 tury several families of Hollanders came to the county 
 from Long and Staten Islands, and settled in North and 
 Southampton, Warminster and Bensalem. Their de- 
 scendants now form a considerable portion of the popula- 
 tion of that section, and the men especially are noted 
 for their large size. 
 
 The Welsh Baptists and the English Quakers, the most 
 numerous branches of the Bucks county colonists, have 
 not held their own against the aggressive Germans. The 
 latter have seized upon all the upper end townships ; have 
 become numerous in the middle districts, and are now 
 gradually working their way down county, threatening to 
 overrun the lower end, us, their ancestors overran the fair 
 plains of Italy. They have been coming for over a cen- 
 tury at a slow but steady pace, and now their advanced 
 pickets are planted here and there in all the lower town- 
 ships down to the mouth of the Poquessing. When and 
 M'here this great Teutonic army will halt, those who cele- 
 brate the next Centennial of Doylestown may be able to 
 answer. It must not be forgotten, that when Bucks 
 
5 
 
 county was settled her boundaries embraced nearly all the 
 state west to the Susquehanna, and north to the present 
 New York line, and she is the honored parent of a numer- 
 ous family of prosperous counties. 
 
 Middle Bucks county was settled early. John Chap- 
 man, the first to penetrate the \vilderness north of 
 Newtown, was in Wrightstown in 1684, and after a hard 
 life in the woods died in 1694, and was buried in the old 
 graveyard near Penn's Park, whither his widow followed 
 him in 1699. Thomas Brown, from Essex, and John 
 Dyer, from Gloucestershire, were among the first white 
 men to disturb the beavers at their dams on Pine Run, in 
 lower Plurastead, settling there about 1712, and thirteen 
 years afterward the township was organized to include 
 Bedminster. Buckingham, Warwick and New Britain, 
 the parent of Doylestown, were organized between 1703 
 and 1734. 
 
 William Penn, the founder of our commonwealth, and 
 the father of Bucks county, is not understood. His appear- 
 ance has been ridiculed by the artist, and his character 
 slandered by the historian. "We are taught from child- 
 hood to contemplate his person through the medium of 
 West's frightful painting, which represents him on his 
 arrival as a fat and clumsy man, and dressed in a garb 
 then unknown. But he was altogether a difibrent person. 
 He was an accomplished and elegant gentleman ; convers- 
 ant with the usages of the most polished society of his 
 times, and Iiad been reared amid luxury and educated to 
 all the refinement of that })olished age. He wore his 
 sword like a true cavalier, and, unless history belies him, 
 knew how to use it. His portrait at t vventy-three presents 
 
6 
 
 r 
 
 him to us as a remarkably handsome young man, and when 
 he came to Pennsylvania, at thirty-eight — hardly in his 
 prime, he was tall and graceful in person, with a comely 
 face and polished manners. He delighted in the inno- 
 cent pleasures of life, and was in the best sense a christian 
 gentleman and enlightened law-giver, far in advance of 
 his day and generation. 
 
 In our rapid growth and increase in material wealth, 
 we forget the debt we owe our Quaker ancestry. They 
 were the first to establish christian worship west of the 
 Delaware, and the early settlers organized religious meet- 
 ings before they were comfortably housed. They were 
 the earliest pioneers in education and temperance ; and 
 long before the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers had 
 given up the traffic in men, the Quakers of Bucks county 
 placed their seal of disapprobation on human slavery. 
 Whether we admit it or not, their influence permeates the 
 w^hole frame-work of our society, from which source the 
 state gets her large measure of " Justice tempered with 
 Mercy" ; her broad charity that has no bounds ; her con- 
 servatism in politics, and her love of learning. 
 
 While this historical relation is germane to the occasion, 
 to listen to it is not just what brought us together. We 
 ' are assembled to celebrate our village centennial — to 
 round ofi" the first century of its existence with appropri- 
 ate ceremonies, and tlius discharge one of the duties we 
 owe to the town we live in. It is just one hundred 
 years to-day since our beautiful village was first called by 
 the name it bears, and with its present spelling, so far as 
 careful research can inform us. It may have been so 
 called and written at an earlier day, but the period fixed as 
 
'lie bir!l)-day carries our town back to its earliest infancy. 
 
 On the first day of March, 1778, John Lacey, a Quaker 
 Brigadier of Bucks county, who had served in Canada 
 and fought on the Schuylkill, issued the following " bri- 
 gade orders" from " camp :" 
 
 " Parole, iVc^iiJ York; countersign, Philadelphia; of- 
 ficer of the day to-morrow, Major Lilly. Adjutant from 
 Cumberland county. Detail the same as yesterday. 
 
 " The brigade to be under arms and ready to march 
 to-morrow morning at six o'clock ; the men to carry their 
 provisions, knapsacks, etc., on their backs. One wagon 
 belonging to each regiment to be loaded with axes and 
 camp kettles, to go with the brigade ; the rest to be or- 
 dered to go with the baggage to Doylestown : the men 
 not armed to go along with the baggage, and there stay 
 until they receive their arms ; they will receive further 
 orders from Major Cummings. One of the commissaries 
 to attend the brigade ; the other to go to Doylestown to 
 provide for the men sent there" Such is the charter that 
 gives Doylestown its name, not wrested like that at Run- 
 ny mede, from the hands of an unwilling giver, but issued 
 amid the shock of civil war. On the topographical map 
 of the country around Philadelphia, drawn by the engin- 
 eers of the British army during its occupancy of that city, 
 in 1777-78, the name is spelled " Doyltown," and some- 
 times General Lacey spelled it " Doyle Town," dividing 
 it into two words. 
 
 Doylestown stands upon what was known in olden 
 times as the " Society Lands," part of the tract of twenty 
 tliousand acres which William Penn, in 1682, granted to 
 a company of gentlemen of London, who organized as the 
 
8 
 
 l*p^^^^ Society of Traders." Nearly nine tliuosand acres were 
 taken up in middle liucks county, lying principally in the 
 townships of New Britain, Doylestown and Warwick, the 
 northeast boundary being the old Swamp road. When 
 this land was sold by trustees in 1726, Jeremiah Lang- 
 horne, of Middletown, bought two thousand acres, seven 
 hundred of which lay in Warwick, east and south of Court 
 street, then the township line, and Josepli Kirkbride, of 
 Falls, purcliased a considerable tract north and west of 
 Court street. These two non-residents held the title to 
 the entire Doylestown site one hundred and fifty years 
 ago, and upon this land our town grew up. 
 
 This locality became an objective point — long before 
 the most ardent settler dreamed that a village would ever 
 spring up upon it — because it was at the crossing of two 
 great roads, one leading from the Delaware to the 
 Schuylkill, the other from Philadelphia to the Lehigh. 
 The Easton road, which had already been opened up to 
 the Willow Grove, then called Marsh Meadows, was ex- 
 tended to the county line in 1722, to enable Governor 
 William Keith to reach his country house at Graeme 
 Park, and in 1723 it was continued up to John Dyer's 
 mill, in the woods of Plumstead, at what is now Dyers- 
 town, and passing over the site of Doylestown. In 1730 
 a road was laid out and opened from the York road at 
 Gentreville to what is now Gordon's corner, on the Mont- 
 gomery line, thus affording a continuous highway from 
 the Delaware to the Schuylkill. These important roads 
 intersected at what is now State and Main streets, and 
 formed the earliest crossroads at Doylestown. The 
 future county seat remained thus, and nothing more, for 
 nearly a century. 
 
9 
 
 The breaking up of the great tract of Society land in- 
 vited settlers to this vicinity. The first person to occupy 
 the site of Doylestown is unknown, but no doubt he was a 
 squatter, with dog and gun, who came to look after the 
 game on the wooded hills and the beavers and fishes in 
 the streams, and built his cabin on some sunny slope. 
 We have the names of several who settled in this neigh- 
 borhood between 1725 and 1735. Among them were 
 Charles Stewart, a captain in the French and Indian war, 
 a young man of culture from Scotland, who came before 
 1730, and whose descendants of the fifth generation are 
 still living here ; Benjamin Snodgrass, an Irish immi- 
 grant, whose whole family perished on the voyage except 
 one daughter, who married again and left numerous de- 
 scendants ; James Meredith, from Chester county, who 
 was on the Neshaminy, about Castle Valley, as early as 
 1730, whose son Hugh was a practicing physician at 
 Doylestown in 1776, and to whom the distinguished Wil- 
 liam M. Meredith owed kinship ; Walter Sliewell, who 
 came from Gloucestershire in 1732, and settled two miles 
 west of Doylestown, where he built Painswick Hall, still 
 tlie family home — the Doyles and others. Edward Doyle 
 — then spelled Doyl — b )Ught one hundred and fifty acres 
 of Joseph Kirkbride the 30th of March, 1730, on the 
 New Britain side of Cjurt street. In five years he was 
 followed by William Doyle from the north of Ireland, 
 probably a cousin or brother, and both were living in the 
 neighborhood in 1775. Joseph Fell took up a large 
 tract extending to Pool's Corner, northeast of the town, 
 and Jonathan Mason was a considerable purchaser near 
 New Britain church. In 1745 we find the following ad- 
 
10 
 
 ditional names of residents: David Thomas, William 
 Wells, John Marks, Thomas Adams, Thomas Morris, 
 Hugh Edmund, Clement Doyle, William Beal, Joseph 
 Barges, Nathaniel West, William Dungan, Solomon ]\lc- 
 Lean and David Eaton. One hundred years ago Ed- 
 ward and William Doyle, Joseph Kirkbride, William 
 aiid Robert Scott and Joseph and Samuel Flack owned 
 all the land the town stands upon and that immediately 
 adjacent. At his death, in 1742, Jeremiah Langhorne 
 left a life estate in three hundred and ten acres to his 
 negroes, Joe and Cudjo, which included all that part ot 
 our borough south and east of Main street. 
 
 Doylestown, like most American towns, was born of a 
 roadside inn and a neighboring log house or two. An 
 
 o DO 
 
 inn to quench the thirst of the weary traveler was opened 
 liere by WiUiam Doyle as early as 1745, which March 
 he went down to Court at Newtown with a petition for 
 license, signed by fourteen of his neighbors, which stated 
 that there was no public house within five miles. The 
 license was renewed in 1746-48-54 and several times 
 afterward, and in all the thirty years that William Doyle 
 was the landlord of this pioneer hostelry the locality was 
 called "Doyle's tavern." He left the tavern between 
 1774 and 1776 and removed to Fhimstead, where he 
 died. Several localities have been assigned to this old 
 tavern — where the old brewery stands on West State 
 street, the site of R. F. Scheetz's dwelling on West 
 Court, but at that day out in the iields, on the ground oc- 
 cupied by this building, and on the opposite corner, the 
 site of Corson's hotel. But speculation is much at faulty 
 As Doyle lived in New Britain, the tavern, if opened in 
 
11 
 
 Ills own house, was north and west of Court street, but 
 ifhs built or rented a house for the inn, there can liardly 
 ba a doubt that it was at or near the cross roads, a neces- 
 sity to command the travel of both highways. What an 
 interesting chapter a history of the comings-in and go- 
 ings-out at this old inn a century and a quarter ago, with 
 a note of the conversations of the plain pioneer farmers, 
 as they warmed their shins at the bar-room fire, would 
 make! But it has all been swept down the tide of time. 
 The tavern torn down to erect tlie building in which we 
 are assembled was one of the oldest public houses in the 
 town. It was purchased by Samuel and Joseph Flack in 
 1773, and they kept it until 1791. The eastern end was 
 first built, and that next Main street was probably added 
 when license was granted. A child of Samuel Flack was 
 buried from the house the 1st of May, 1778, the day 
 Lacey's men fought the British at the Crooked Billet. 
 A few friends carried the corpse to Neshaminy graveyard 
 on liorseback, and while burying it could distinctly hear 
 the firing on the battlefield. The Fountain House is 
 '„ow the oldest inn^ in the town, and on that corner there 
 has been a tavern well nigh a century. It was kept by 
 Charles Stewart in 179|, and there the Bethlehem stages 
 stopped for dinner ; but it fell into the hands of Enoch 
 Harvey about 1800. Of our other public houses I have 
 but a word to say. The old Mansion House was first 
 licensed about 1813, and Clear Spring hotel was called 
 Bucks County Farmer in 1812, and three years after- 
 ward it was kept by Jacob Overholt. The Court Inn 
 has been a public house over half a century. The Ross 
 mansion was an hotel several years before the county seat 
 
12 
 
 was removed to Doylestown, and in 1812, when kept by 
 one Ilare, it was called the Indian Queen. 
 
 Tini'3 will not allow a very minute tracing of our bor- 
 ough's past, but I crave your indulgance while I picture 
 it as our fathers knew it. Its buildings at the close of 
 the last century can be counted on the fingers of the two 
 hands. "VVe start at the logscho )lhou8e, enveloped in tim- 
 ber, on Main street below Ashland i come up j\Iain to the 
 frame store house on the Lenape lot ; step across the 
 street to the frame on the site of Shade's tin-shop ; passing 
 the two taverns, that is if we are not thirsty, we come to 
 Dr. Hugh Meredith's, in Armstrong's old stone house, 
 with frame office attached ; then across to the dwelling of 
 Mr. Fell, the village blacksmith, now part of the Ross 
 mansion, and near by sto )d the log dwelling of George 
 Stewart, about the site of the Litelligencer office ; then 
 to the Ross stable, hoary with age ; the old frame, torn 
 down a few years ago by N. C. James, from which the 
 Backs County Intelligencer was first issued ; and now re- 
 tracing our steps into State street, we bid adieu to our 
 first generation of buildings in front of the old log on the 
 brewery lot, which claimed the honor of the first tavern, 
 but whether true or not, it comes down to us with the 
 odor of a bad reputation. At that time the town site 
 was well wooded — on both sides of Main from Broad to 
 the Cross Keys ; on tlie north side of Court out to the 
 borough line ; the southern part of Main below Ashland, 
 and the Riale and Armstrong farms were heavily tim- 
 bered. As meagre as the village was, it contained the 
 seed that grows American towns in all parts of our 
 country — two taverns, a store and a smith shop. Before 
 
13 
 
 the century closed a new-comer was added to the popu- 
 ation, in the person of Enoch Harvey, the father of 
 Joseph and George T., a descendant of Thomas, who 
 settled in Upper Makefield in 1750. As he had come to 
 stay, he found a wife in the daughter of Charles Stewart. 
 
 When the old century turned the corner into the new, 
 the sleepy hamlet wakened up a little. The timber was 
 cat from some of the wooded slopes, and an occasional 
 settler came in. In 1800 Daniel and Jonathan Mc- 
 intosh came here from Winchester, Va., and Isaac Hall, 
 the father of Samuel, from New Jersey, the father build- 
 ing the stone house on State street where the son now 
 lives. In 1808 Josiah Y. Shaw came down from Plum- 
 stead and built tlie Gunnagan house ; and the Harvey 
 and Nightingale dwellings were built in 1813, the Doyles- 
 town bank being opened in the latter in 1832. In this 
 period Elijah Russell built a log house on the knoll op- 
 posite the Clear Spring tavern, and one Musgrave, from 
 Canada, built a log on Main, and a shop near by for his 
 son, a wheelwright. Struck Titus built the old end of 
 the Lyman house, torn down in 1873, where he lived and 
 carried on harness making in a shop that stood in Dr. 
 James' yard opposite. Tiie stone house of Mrs. A. J. 
 LaRue, at Broad and Main, was built near the same time 
 by Septimus Evans, the father of the late Henry S. 
 Evans, of West Chester, and in which a tavern was kept 
 many years. Doylestown had a portrait painter as early 
 as 1805, one Daniel Farky, a versatile genius, who, to 
 the limner's art, added paper-hanging and glazing. 
 
 With the new century catne increased mental activity, 
 and our " rude forefathers " besran to look above and be- 
 
t» / 
 
14 
 
 yond mere material culture. The first newspaper ever 
 published in Bucks county was issued from the "Centre 
 House, Doylestown," by Isaac Ralston, July 25th, 1800 
 — The farmers' IJ'eeHi/ Gazette. Although sustained by 
 that sublime political doctrine, " Open to all parties, but . , 
 influenced by none," it soon took its departure for that VuLOCS' 
 \ftM?Wdtkite<i «kkA<Vjt'\ provided for defunct news- 
 papers. It was followed in 1804 by The Pennsylvania 
 Correspondent and Farmers^ Advertiser — a long name for 
 a small newspaper — the parent of the Backs County In- 
 telligencer. It was established by Asher Miner, a young 
 Connecticut Yankee, who had learned his trade at 
 Wilkesbarre, where he married Polly Wright, whose 
 father had run away with the daughter of Josiah Dyer, 
 of Plumstead, a third of a century before. The new ven- 
 tu-e in journalism met a better fate than the old. The 
 story is told that when young Miner came to Doylestown, 
 he drove down to Warrington to see the Rev. Nathaniel 
 Irwin, the pastor at Neshaminy, and the recognized head 
 of the Democratic party, and asked his support for the 
 paper. The good parson declined, on the ground that he 
 did not like Mr. M.'s politics, but the latter said he would 
 })ublit5h an independent paper, to whicli ^Ir. Irwin le- 
 plied : " Tes, you say so, but then you look toward Buck- 
 ingliam." This settled the quesiion. The Democrat was 
 started twelve years afterward, 181G. Three years of 
 journalistic tribulation culminated in a division of the 
 Demociatic i)arty, and the establishment of a rival paper, 
 the Bucks County Messenger^ known to history as the 
 " Yellow Fever Paper." In the hope of uniting the rival 
 interests and bringing peace within the political borders, 
 
15 
 
 the Messenger passed into otlier hands, and ex-Senator 
 Siinon Cameron, tlien a young jour just out of his time, 
 was invited to take charge of it. He came up in the 
 stage the last of December, 1820, a fellow passenger with 
 Mifflin, the proprietor of The Democrat^ between wliom 
 and the other passengers the poHtical situation was fully 
 and freely discussed, including Cameron's anticipated 
 coming, the future prospects of the rival papers, «fec. Mr. 
 Cameron had the prudence to keep silent, and when, ou 
 the arrival of the stage at Doylestown, he was known and 
 announced as the " new printer," there was some little 
 dismay in the ranks of the opposition. Mr. Cameron 
 issued his first number January 2d, 1821, stating in his 
 address to his subscribers that his paper would be "purel}' 
 Democrat." Shortly afterward the two papers were con- 
 solidated under Cameron and Mifflin, and within a year 
 the establishment passed into the hands of the late Gen- 
 eral W. T. Rogers. 
 
 The Union Academy was built in 1804, from funds 
 raised partly by subscription and partly by lottery. It 
 was first occupied in July, and the trustees invited the 
 Rev. Uriah DuBois, the pastor at Deep Run and a de- 
 scendant of the Huguenot Louis DuBois, who settled on 
 the Hudson in 1660, to take charge of it. The Rev- 
 erend Uriah was the immediate ancestor of our towns- 
 people who bear the name. As an inducement for par- 
 ents to send their children to the school in the Academy, 
 it was announced that "the Bethlehem and Easton mail 
 stages pass through the town twice a week ;" and, as win- 
 ter approached, the patrons were invited to meet and con- 
 sult on a "proper and certain" plan for furnishing the 
 
16 
 
 school with wood. Boarding school was kept in the 
 academy for many 3'cars, and several able men had charge 
 of it. A room in the building was set apart for religions 
 raeetinirs of all denominations, and in it was gathered the 
 nenclens of the Doylestown Presbyterian church, the first 
 church building being erected in 1813-15. Doylestown 
 remained a simple cross-roads, with a few dwellings and 
 other buildings along the two highways, until 1807, w'hen 
 Court street was opened on the line of New Britain and 
 Warwick, from Main street east. Broad street was laid 
 out in 1811, and in 1818 Court street was extended west 
 to State. There were no additional streets laid out until 
 after the borough was incorporated in 1838, and the 
 modern streets and avenues were opened as improvements 
 required, from 1865 to 1872. 
 
 The removal of the county-seat from Newtown to 
 Doylestown, in 1813, assured the future growth and pros- 
 perity of the town. At that time the population was 
 hardly two hundred, and we are told that eight years 
 afterward there were but twenty-nine dwellings in the 
 town, including the Academy, in which a family lived. 
 The removal was only made after a stubborn fight, and 
 the engendering of bitter feelings that required years to 
 assuage. As in all other movements of the day, Parson 
 Irwin was very active in this, and we are told that his 
 influence was mainly instrumental in robbing Newtown 
 of the county capital. He was made the subject of a char- 
 coal cartoon on the walls of the old court house, which 
 represented him in his shirt sleeves, with a rope around 
 the building and his body, and pulling with all his might 
 in the direction of Doylestown. The new court house 
 
17 
 
 was erected on a lot, now in the heart of the village, the 
 gift of Nathaniel Shewell, and court was first held in it 
 the 12th of May, 1813. At that time there was but one 
 or two buildings on both sides of Court street from the 
 Ross dwelling out to the borough limit. The growtli of 
 the town was still very gradual, and eighteen years 
 after it was made the county-seat there was but one build- 
 ing, and that a log, on the east side of Court street from 
 Main to the Academy. 
 
 The county-seat brought with it several new families 
 to the town, officers of the courts, members of the bar, 
 and others, whose descendants are now among the oldest 
 of our citizens. Among these were the Chapmans, the 
 Rosses, the Foxes, the Pughs, the Morrises, et al. Of 
 the Chapman ancestry I have already spoken, whose de- 
 scendant, i\.braham Chapman, long the father of our bar, 
 has been gathered to his fathers. The Rosses are de- 
 scended from Thomas, who came from Ireland in 1728 
 and settled in Upper Makefield, who, after a useful life, 
 returned to England on a visit, in 1786, and died at the 
 house of Lindley Murray, near York. This sturdy Qua- 
 ker, who loved his country better tlian his meeting in the 
 Revolutionary day, and who, when called before the 
 Wrightstown elders to be disciplined, quietly detied their 
 authority, saiil among his last words : "I see no cloud in 
 my way ; I die in peace with all men." The late Judge 
 Fox, the first of the family in the county, wa^ the son of 
 Edward Fox, who came from England or Ireland before 
 the Revolution, and was Auditor General of the State in 
 1783, when Joseph Reed was its President. The Pughs 
 were Welsh, Hugh Pugh, the ancestor, settling in Ches- 
 
18 
 
 ter county about 1725, and coming to Hilltown in Bucks 
 about 1750. His oldest son, John, who died in 1842, 
 served several sessions in the Legislature, was twice 
 elected to Congress, and held county offices. The Mor- 
 rises were English Friends, and settled in Byberry, but 
 were in Hilltown before 1722, where they became Bap- 
 tists ; and Matthias, who was a member of our bar, and 
 served in the Senate and in Congress, died in Doyles- 
 town at the early age of fifty-two. There are other 
 families which date their residence here from the period 
 of the removal of the county-seat, among which may be 
 mentioned the Magills, the Wigtons, the Brocks, et al. 
 The residence of the Vanluvanees is as old as the century. 
 Two years after Doylestown became the county-seat 
 the town was ravaged by typhus fever, one of the earlest 
 victims being John L. Dick, whose remains were the first to 
 be interred in the Presbyterian graveyard. A young 
 member of the bar, his intimate friend, who was with 
 him in his last moments, thus speaks of his death in a 
 letter written the same day: "My friend, John L. Dick, 
 died to-day at two p. m. of the typhus fever. How frail 
 is man ! Ten days aujo he was in the vigor fo health. 
 Alas, how visionary our hopes of earthly happiness ! But 
 two months since he married Miss Erwin, the daughter 
 of the richest man in the county. How soon their fond- 
 est anticipations of future bliss were destroyed !" Shortly 
 afterward the writer of the letter followed his friend to 
 the grave, with three other members of his family, all 
 dying in the same house within a few days. Neverthe- 
 less, He v;ho "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," has 
 vouchsafed our town remarkable exemption from disease, 
 and its normal condition is health. 
 
19 
 
 Doylestovvn has never been without schools where the 
 liiglier branches of learning are taught. For many years 
 the seliool in the Academy, under tlie Rev. Uriah Dn- 
 Bois, monopolized the educational interest of the town 
 and neighborhood. About the time Mr. DuBois died, 
 George Murray, a Scotchman, and a graduate of Aber- 
 deen, w^ho had taught in New Jersey and at several points 
 in this State, came to Doylestown to fill the place left 
 vacant. He taught in the Academy until 1829, when he 
 opened a boarding school in his own house, on State street, 
 ■where Mr. Barber lives, and kept it until 1842. lie died 
 two years ago at the age of ninety-five. He was a fine 
 classical scholar, and so far as his government of a school 
 was concerned, he was a firm believer "in the old Con- 
 stitution," and it is not known that he ever spoiled a 
 child by sparing the rod. He is still remembered with 
 pain. The Ingham Female Seminary was incorpor- 
 ated in 1838, but it was not maintained as a boarding 
 school after 1843. 
 
 After Doylestown became the county-seat its growth 
 was slow for several years — in 1820 the population being 
 but three hundred and sixty, and only five hundred nine 
 years afterward. In one decade, from '40 to 'oO, the in- 
 crease was but ninety-four. The actual population at this 
 time is about two thousand, which includes an hundred or 
 two immediately contiguous to, but outside, the borough 
 limits. A visible improvement began about 1830, when 
 the first brick house was erected ; and in the next ten 
 years a number of good dwellings were built, including 
 some on the square opposite the court house. The in- 
 corporation of the town into a borough in 1838 gave it a 
 
20 
 
 new impetus. The town now had "borough fathers" to 
 look after its interests. The streets were graded, the 
 sidewalks paved, and other improvements made. Sev- 
 eral things combined to arouse the county-seat from the 
 Rip Van Winkle sleep into which it had fallen. One of 
 the most important events in the last forty years was the 
 opening of the Branch ot the North Penna. railroad in 
 1856, which gave the inhabitants an easy and rapid con- 
 nection with the outside world, and brought to the town 
 a new class of travelers. The first electric wire was run 
 through the town, and an office opened, in the fall of 1845 
 in Mr. Shade's building. 
 
 Doylestown has made her greatest strides since the 
 close of the civil war. In the last thirteen years there 
 have been many dwellings erected in the eastern and 
 western parts of the borough, where building lots have 
 been sold and streets opened. Tlie Doylestown Seminary 
 was built in 1866 and enlarged in 1869, and the Linden 
 Seminary was built in 1871. The building of the Agri- 
 cultural and Mechanics' Institute was erected in 1866 ; 
 water was introduced in 1869; the gas-works enlarged in 
 1873 ; and the handsome building in which we are as- 
 sembled, and which would do credit to any town, was 
 built in 1874. The beautiful monument to the memory 
 of the dead of the regiment Bucks county fecnt to the field 
 in the civil war, and which adorns the centre of the town, 
 was erected in the spring of 1868. Witliin the last ten 
 years three new churches have been erected, one at an 
 expense of $25,000. A number of new dwellings have 
 been built in the older portions of the town, and improve- 
 ments and adornments are being made on every hand ; 
 
21 
 
 while many of the farms in the immediate vicinity have 
 been cut up and pleasant villas erected thereon. 
 
 Thus we have pictured the birth, infancy, childhood 
 and early manhood of onr beautiful village, and we now 
 come to its maturer years. New Doylestown loses noth- 
 ing by comparison with the old. It has an intelligent 
 and virtuous population ; the streets are well shaded and 
 lighted ; has an abundant supply of pure, fresh water ; 
 the dwellings make up in solid comfort and convenience 
 what they lack in elegance and costly adornment; 
 churches, where men and women of every faith go up to 
 worship, "with none to molest or make them afraid." 
 We have skillful physicians ever ready to "heal the 
 ills that flesh is heir to;" well-kept hotels, and banks 
 where everybody well-endorsed, can borrow money, but 
 notes will come due, in spite of all things, and that 
 too often when there is not " a red " on hand to pay 
 with. Then we have schools, benevolent institutions, and 
 industrial establishments ; a public library, newspapers, 
 the electric wire, and other appliances ol civilized life. 
 Add to these a most delightful town site, on a plateau 
 which falls off on every side but one to winding streams 
 and smiling valleys at its base, with cultivated and wooded 
 slopes beyond, and we have a picture of the best type of 
 a Pennsylvania village. 
 
 The location of Dovlestown, on tlie great road from the 
 Forks of Delaware to Philadelphia, made it a stopping 
 place for stages from their earliest running. John Nich- 
 olaus put a line on this route in Apiil, 1792, making 
 weekly trips at two dollars a passenger. In 1794, Law- 
 rence Erb, of Easton, put on another line, at the same 
 
22 
 
 fare, running down on Monday and returning on Thurs- 
 day. A semi-weekly stage, between Bethlehem and 
 Philadelphia, ran through Doylestown in 1800, and the 
 first daily line was put on in 1828. When James Ree- 
 side succeeded Nicholaus in 1822, he put Troy coaches on 
 the road, the first used in this part of the country, which 
 continued to run down to the opening of the Delaware- 
 Belvidere railroad, in 1854. In the meantime a number 
 of stages were run between Doylestown and Philadelphia, 
 both semi-weekly and daily — the first local line that we 
 have knowledge of being the "Doylestown Coachee" 
 in 1813. There are some in the audience who remember 
 our later passenger coaches, which only ceased running 
 when the Branch of the North Penn. road was opened in 
 1856. Benny Clark's " High-grass" line has passed into 
 history, "and his soul is with the just, we trust." He 
 was succeeded by John Service, both famous whips in their 
 day. Some of my hearers cannot have forgotten how 
 Service was in the habit of comforting his passengers 
 when there was an appearance of danger in going down 
 hill, by saying to his horses: "Now run away and kill 
 another driver, won't you I" Unfortunately railroads 
 iiave destroyed the romance of stage-coaching, and almost 
 put an end to the occupation of Dick Turpin's suc- 
 cessors. 
 
 While Doylestown was removed from the shock of 
 contending; armies in the 8tru";"rle between the colonies 
 and Mother {;ountry, it is not unknown to Revolutionary 
 annals. During the trying winter of 1777-78, it was for a 
 time the headquarters of General Lacey, who held the 
 difficult command embraced between the Delaware and 
 
23 
 
 the Scliuylkill. Ilerc he had his depot of stores, and 
 liere were assembled his courts-martifil to try oifenders. 
 When the Continental army broke up its cantonment at 
 Valley Forge, in Jane, 1778, and marched to meet the 
 enemy at Monmouth, it passed through Doylestown. 
 As soon as it was known that the enemy had evacuated 
 Philadelphia, and was pushing for New York, Washing- 
 ton sent General Lee, with six brigades, in advance, on 
 the 18th, pa^^sing through our borough, and crossing the 
 Delaware at New Hope the night of the 20th. The same 
 day, the 18th, at six o'clock, p. m., Washington wrote to 
 Congress : " I shall move with the main body of the 
 army at five in the morning to-morrow." On the 20tli, 
 at four, p. m., he again wrote to Congress, and to Gen- 
 eral Gates, that he was within ten miles of Coryell's ferry, 
 now New Hope, and that he would " halt to refresh the 
 troops and for the night, as the weather is very rainy. 
 General Lee, with the six brigades, mentioned in my for- 
 mer letter, will reach the ferry this evening." At that 
 time Washington and his army — that body of soldiers 
 which carried the destiny of the struggling colonies on 
 the points of their bayonets — lay at Doylestown in a furious 
 rainstorm. Here the army remained until the next after- 
 noon, occupying three encampments — on the south side 
 of State street, west of Main ; on the ridge east of the 
 Presbyterian church, and along the New Hope pike, east 
 of tlie' borough mill. Washington pitched his tent near 
 the dwelling of Jonathan Fell, now John G. Mann's farm- 
 house, and General Lafayette quartered at the house 
 of Thomas Jones. It is related of Mrs. Jones that the 
 patriotic lady was so delighted with having the gallant 
 
34 
 
 young Frenchman for her guest that she put him to sleep 
 in her best bed, an honor we hope the General duly ap- 
 preciated. When lie got up the next morning, she wel- 
 comed him with a smiling face, and asked him how he 
 had slept over night, to which he replied, in his broken 
 English : "Very well, Madam, but your bed was a little 
 too short." The army marched from Doylestown the 
 afternoon of the 21st of June, and crossed the river the 
 next day, when Washington again wrote Congress: "I 
 am now in Jersey, and the troops are passing the river at 
 Corj'ell's, and are mostly ever." 
 
 Our town has never been deaf to the calls of patriot- 
 ism, and a number of her sons have met their death on 
 tlie battlefield. When court met on Monday, August 
 28th, 1814, the late Judge Fox, then a young man and 
 deputy Attorney-General, arose and announced that the 
 capital of the country was in the hands of the enemy, and 
 Baltimore ard Philadelphia threatened, and moved that 
 the court do adjourn. Upon its refusal, Mr. Fox took up 
 his hat and left the room, followed by the late Samuel 
 Hart, then associate judge, and most of the people. A 
 meeting was organized outside, which Mr. Fox addressed 
 in a spirited speech, when he returned to Newtown and 
 assisted to raise a company of volunteers. In a few days 
 William Magill, of Doylestown, recruited a company of 
 riflemen in the neighborhood, whose uniforms were made 
 up in the court house, the day before they marched, by 
 the young ladies of the village. I need not speak of the 
 way Doylestown discharged her duty in the late civil war, 
 for that is of too recent date to be forgotten ; but if wit- 
 nesses were wanting, we have them in the widow and 
 
:ii> 
 
 fatherless cliildren, and yon silent iiiomiment which bears 
 tcs!;iinon3' to the deeds of our honored dead. 
 
 If time woiikl [)crinit, it would be a pleasant duty to 
 call up the foims of those who in otlier days were a living 
 presence in onr streets, and whose culture and character 
 were a power in our village life. Doylestown has not 
 been without her notable characters, and, upon a broader 
 plain, some of them would have achieved great distinc- 
 tion. Onr bar has produced a number of men our vil- 
 lage annals should delight to honor. Our lawyers of the 
 past have sat in the council chamber and upon the bench, 
 and of the }>resent several wear the ermine with credit to 
 themselves and the profession, two occupying seats in the 
 highest judicial tribunals of the State and nation. Of 
 those who have gone to that "undiscovered country" the 
 poet writes about, many present remember the venerable 
 Chapman, the able Fox, the learned Ross, the genial 
 DuBois, the eloquent McDowell, and the young and 
 gallant Croasdale, w^ho met his death in the shock of 
 battle by the rolling Potomac. In all the otlier walks of 
 life,]our townsmen have borne equally well their part. 
 The Christian minister comforts the sick and the afflicted, 
 and leads the erring up to a better life beyond the stars ; 
 while the humane physician, the co-worker of the man of 
 God, in deeds of charity, spends day and night in binding 
 up the wounded body. We boast our skilled mechanic, 
 whose handiwork adorns our town on every side, and the 
 virtuous laborer, whose honest toil sweetens his daily 
 bread, and yields the wealth of the universe. 
 
 While celebrating their centennial year, the people o 
 Doylestown should not forget the blessings that are theirs, 
 
26 
 
 nor fail to return tlianks to the Giver. Their lives have 
 fallen in wonderfully pleasant places. They live in a 
 beautiful town, surrounded by a most charming country, 
 and far removed from the demoralizing influence of great 
 centres. The atmosphere is healthful and invigorating, 
 and our people have been preserved in a remarkable de- 
 gree from contagious diseases. Health is the normal 
 condition of all within our borders, and peace and con- 
 entment spread their angel wings over all. Satisfied 
 vrith the pleasing picture of the present, I refrain from 
 speaking of the future, whose story will be told by him 
 who fills my place an hundred years to come. 
 

 
 
 
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