Historical Sketches Chiefly Relating To The Early Settlement Of Friends At Falls In Bucks County Pennsylvania Primary Source Edition PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 edition. Excerpt: ... chap. vi. We cannot easily ascertain at this day, the precise period when the first settlements were made in the south-eastern part of Bucks County. In the year 1672, in the progress of a religious visit to America, George Fox, in travelling through the wilderness from Shrewsbury to Chester, passed along the borders of the Delaware from the neighborhood of the Falls, southward, but saw no white inhabitants. He found two deserted log cabins on the site of Burlington, in one of which he lodged. These habitations, it is said, were erected by some Dutchmen, who deserted them in fear of the Indians. It is recorded that Lyonel Brittain was settled at Falls two or three years previous to the second month, 1683, and it is probable that his friends, William Biles, William Darke and William Beaks, were settlers at the same time. West Jersey was purchased by Friends about the year 1676; and in the year 1677, it is stated by Phineas Pemberton, that "clivers proprietors and adventurers came over to these parts, and settled themselves and families."' It is probable that a large proportion of this immigration were Friends, and that some of them, at a little later period, found their way to the Falls Country, and established themselves and families there. After members of the Society of Friends became interested in West Jersey, their increase in those parts was rapid; meetings were soon established; first, at Salem, and shortly after at Burlington, of which monthly meeting Falls Friends were, for a time, members. The primitive settlers of these favored sections of our country, of course, experienced the painful pressure of pioneer life, but as time progressed, the wilderness and heretofore uncultivated soil presented quite a different aspect; much of it...