OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY WITHIN THE SCHUYLKILL VALLEY: CONTAINING Sketches of all the Townships, Boroughs and Villages, in said limits, from the earliest period to the present time; PREPARED CHIEFLY FROM ORIGINAL MATERIALS: BY WILLIAM J. BUCK, Author of the "History of Bucks County," I History of Mooreland," &c., &c., Member of the IIistorical Society NORRISTOWN: PRINTED BY E. L. ACKER. Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by WILLIAM J. BUCK, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PREFACE. For the last fifteen years, the author has been diligently engaged in collecting materials for the histories of Bucks and Montgomery counties. The various articles that he has already written, relating more or less to those counties, and published either in books, magazines, or newspapers, if collected, would amount to several volumes; but these have been but a portion of what he has still on hand, besides what further research may secure. Thus however long he has been engaged as a collector, he still owes an apology to his readers for the imperfections of this work. These arise, chiefly, from the hasty manner in which he was necessitated to prepare it for the press. The life of the writer has not been one of leisure; and the work as it now appears, was written under great disadvantages it can be said, amidst many interruptions which necessarily arise from one's business, independent of those of an official character. It had been the intention of the author to delay the publication of this work for several years, but owing to the encouragement offered by Dr. E. L. Acker, the editor and proprietor of the Norristown Register, he was induced to prepare it for that paper, to be afterwards issued in a volume. It was this unexpected offer and its acceptance that has occasioned its early appearance. Immediately after this arrangement, in the last two weeks of August, 1858, the writer set out on a pedestrian tour of the entire Schuylkill Valley, as embraced within the limits of Montgomery county, and visited, personally, every township, borough, village, and other objects of interest herein described. The distance traveled for this purpose was about two hundred and eighty miles, and to be more accurate, all the notes taken were made on the spot. Just previous to setting out, all the requisite preparations were made to add to the success of this undertaking, in regard to procuring the information that was still wanting and unsupplied in our materials: for this purpose maps of all the townships and boroughs were taken along to assist in our visits, besides numerous queries made up from our collections on which additional information was desirable. In procuring the matter embodied in this work we were quite successful, even beyond our most sanguine expectations. There was no necessity with us to be diffuse, that too common fault of authors; on the contrary; we have tried to condense our matter as much as was practicable with the general plan of the work. For its size, we are pursuaded few works on American history contain more information derived from unpublished sources. It was this motive that prompted us in the undertakingnamely, of contributing something additional to our country's annals-even if it should be a mite of local history. The reader must bear in mind, however imperfect this work may be in its present edition, that the result has not been achieved without great personal labor and expense; and had no higher motives than those to be derived from mere pecuniary profit actuated the author, the work would never have been undertaken; though if this had been the reality, no doubt, the field would have been occupied long ago by the reapers for the harvest it would bring. But, in our opinion, money cannot wholly make up the many hours spent in the solitude of the closet in concentrated study, away from society and the beautiful face of nature, but not absent from the midnight lamp, in digesting a mass of often crude and conflicting materials. Partly in illustration of the foregoing assertions, we will give our readers a few extracts from the writings of distinguished literary persons. Mr. Griswold, in his Prose Writers of America, remarks that "There are few if any kinds of composition requiring a higher order of genius or more profound acquirements than History; and it might be supposed, therefore, that it would be amongst the last of the fields in which the authors of a new nation would be successful." Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, in her biography of Agnes Strickland, quite philosophically remarks: "We know nothing among the aims of literature more difficult than to write history well: learning conscientiousness, the patient spirit of research, time and opportunities for such research, unflagging Industry, penetration into character, a philosophic power of observation and reflection, are some of the requisites for an historian." Of late years there has been an increasing taste for local literature, aided, as it has been, by a more general diffusion of knowledge amongst the people by our common school system. This we can say is known to us from experience. On this matter, S. G. Goodrich, in his" Recollections," published in 1857, remarks: "The last ten years have been noted for the production of local, state, town, and city histories. Many of these are of great interest, going back to the lights and shadows of colonial periods. Here are the future resources of historic poetry and romance, of painting and sculpture." From this it will be seen that this kind of composition will have a tendency to Americanize, not only our literature, but our arts. This is what is wanting in us-more nationality in our thoughts and feelings-the future basis of originality. It may be necessary to state why this work was not made a complete history of Montgomery County, instead of that part of it lying in the Schuylkill valley. There are several reasons for this present design. To have prepared a work on the same scale on the entire county, would have made it entirely too large and expensive to have met with any degree of success as a local work. In the present undertaking are contained ten townships and four boroughs, which, in 1810, contained 12,252 inhabitants, and which now must be near 50,000; which alone is three times greater than the entire population of the county at the time of its forma tion in 1784. The aforesaid fourteen townships and boroughs in 1856 contained 8,838 taxables. There are in the entire county, thirty townships and four boroughs, leaving therefore undescribed in this work twenty townships, which, were they to receive the same space, would make a volume of nearly twice the present size. However, it may be well enough to state that the author contemplates, at a future time, to write a history of the county, when he expects to be better prepared than he now otherwise could he, both as regards time and materials. Within the limits of Montgomery County, the Schuylkill valley is rich in historical associations. Here have lived, at various times, the Indians, Swedes, Dutch, Welsh, English and Germans. In the lapse of two centuries the Indians have passed away, and the numerous descendants of the others remain. The struggles of the Whitemarsh and Valley Forge, the philosophical observations of David Rittenhouse, and the great and magnificent undertaking of John James Audubon, on American birds, are not without interest. In these limits, too, was born a Major-General of the American Revolution, a Speaker of the first Congress of 1789, and two Governors of Pennsylvania. We cannot pass up or down the valley of the Schuylkill, without feeling emotions for the great events that have transpired there in the past, and the present astonishes us for the enterprise it exhibits on every hand, and the future puzzles us to judge what will happen in the next two centuries. Of course, the principal object of this work has been to collect together and preserve much valuable and interesting matter relating to our history which otherwise might have been lost. In its compilation, care has been taken to give whatever information could be derived from authentic documents the preference; the authorities are given for that which has been obtained through traditionary sources. In all instances attention has been given to dates, which possess a particular impor-navigators and shoremen, the Revolutionary events of tance and may well be called the mile-stones of time: without them, it would be difficult to show what progress is made. It will be extremely difficult, where information has been derived from a thousand sources, to be entirely correct, but we have followed that which we believed to be the most reliable. Independent of our own collections and researches made in the records of Philadelphia, Bucks, and Montgomery counties, and in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Historical Society and Hatborough libraries, we are indebted for some information, and which merit an acknowledgement, to Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution, Ferris's Original Settlements on the Delaware, the Journal of the Rev. Henry M. Muhlenberg, the Rev. J. W. Richard's Centennial Sermon at the Trappe, Rev. J. C. Clay's Annals of the Swedes, Hazard's Annals of Pennsylvania, Gordon's Gazateer, and Day's Historical Collections. We are also indebted for favors to Dr. G. W. Holstein, of Bridgeport, Abel Rambo, A. M., of Trappe, Rev. Edmund Leaf, of Douglasville, and Dr. E. L. Acker, of Norristown. To Henry Woodman, formerly of Upper Merion, we are quite grateful for a loan of his manuscript History of Valley Forge. It will be observed in this work that, though every article is complete in itself, there is a connection in the manner they are placed, from the beginning to the end, each being introductory to the other. As the plan is our own, it perplexed us at first what to do with the various biographies now placed in the appendix. At first we had concluded to place them in the townships or boroughs where they originally belonged, but on consideration, from their length and want of connection with the other local matter, this arrangement was thought best. At the present termination of our |