The early history [†] of the township set the foundation for present-day development patterns. Although understanding this early history plays a lesser role in setting future planning policies, this history is incorporated into the master plan because of its interest to residents. The history and development of the township's early villages should be understood because of their role in determining development patterns and the stated township desire to preserve the character of its oldest crossroads village. The history of the development of its adjacent farm tracts reflects the agrarian origin of many current residential subdivisions.
Many of the names of the earliest settlers, their families or occupations, have been perpetuated in the names of places, creeks, roads, developments, and well-known buildings. Tradition states that the name “Makefield” was chosen by Richard Hough, a provincial councilor, and may have been a corruption of Macclesfield, his English home in Cheshire.
Much history predated the founding of the township. Recent archaeology for the rebuilding of the Scudder Falls Bridge has revealed human habitation in the area that was older than the pyramids at 8000+ BCE. The legacy of the indigenous people of this region by the riverfront was covered by centuries of inundation. We know very little about the indigenous people of the area that followed these early groups, but by the time of European contact they were called the Lenape, a tributary tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy. Most of them left the area as Europeans arrived.
Henry Hudson, sailing for the Dutch, discovered the Delaware River in 1609. Dutch settlers established a trading post in 1625, and their alliance with Sweden created Swedish and Finnish settlements along the rivers and creeks as early as 1638. The British conquered the Dutch in 1664, seized their American colonies, and “restored” King Charles II to the throne of England. He granted his brother James, the Duke of York, all land from the St. Croix River to the Delaware River. English settlers arrived along the Delaware as early as 1677, taking title from James' seat of government in New York, East and West Jersey. Some early deeds in Makefield referred to these land grants.
William Penn, son of Admiral Sir William Penn of the Royal Navy, became a Quaker while he managed his father's estates in Ireland. The Quakers were one religion among many persecuted in England, and young Penn spent time in prison contemplating how he would organize a province should he get the chance. When Penn’s father died, the British King personally owed the Admiral's estate and his son more than £16,000. In 1680, Penn petitioned King Charles II for land in America in lieu of the money and on March 4, 1681, he received letters patent to the land that was to become Pennsylvania, as a refuge for Quakers. Penn appointed his cousin, William Markham, Deputy Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Province, and Thomas Holme his land surveyor.
Markham proceeded to America to carry out Penn’s instructions to select a city site and get counties organized. Penn’s constitution provided for a Provincial Council and Assembly to be elected by the freemen of the province, while each of his three counties: Chester, Philadelphia, and Buckinghamshire (shortened to Bucks), was to be run by three commissioners and administered by a sheriff. He offered generous terms for land purchasers, usually giving them a city lot, as well as more than 500 acres of land in one of the counties. Extra land was added for bringing over indentured servants.
Penn’s own country estate was located in Bucks at Pennsbury. Quakers were rarely members of the aristocracy in Great Britain, but rather the entrepreneurial tradesmen and rising middle class, or conversely, poor farmers. Those who settled in Makefield were tradesmen and farmers, mostly from Cheshire and Herefordshire in northwest England, or servants of wealthier city merchants. Their presence on the county acreage ensured the designated owner could hold the land through the long land patent process.
In September 1682, William Penn sailed for Pennsylvania in the ship Welcome, arriving in Newcastle on October 27. Many local settlers were on that ship with Penn, or arrived shortly afterwards. During 1682, 23 ships arrived, followed by more than 50 ships the next year. Immigration steadily expanded because Penn welcomed and tolerated all, religiously persecuted or not. Anyone who wished to pay the price could buy land. During the first decade not only English Quakers arrived, but also Dutch and Welsh Quakers, German and Scandinavian Lutherans, Pietists and Catholics, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, some French Huguenots, and Italian and Polish settlers.
Thomas Holme began his survey of the lands on the west bank of the Delaware in 1681, and his map of the region was published in London in 1687. Not all the people named on the area of the map covering Lower Makefield actually settled here. Those who settled in Lower Makefield were: William Yardley, George Pownall, George Stone, John Clowes, John Brock, Samual Overton, Thomas Janney, Richard Hough, Joshua Hoops, John Palmer, Andrew Elliot, William Beakes, Samuel Dark, William Venables, and John Luffe. All were Quakers and many came with several indentured servants. Some of them managed to become land owners in the area within one or two generations.
In 1690, the Provincial Council authorized magistrates in the counties to appoint grand juries for the purpose of dividing the counties into townships. Bucks County acted in September 1692, when the court appointed a jury. Upon the recommendations of this jury, five townships were established: Makefield, Falls, Middletown, Bristol and Bensalem. The village of Bridlington, later renamed Bristol, was the county seat until it moved to Newtown in 1726, and then Doylestown in 1813. Based on a 1693 tax list, Lower Makefield had a population estimated at about 100 persons.
Several of the early settlers left an imprint on the area. William Yardley belonged to an ancient landed family of Staffordshire. He settled on a tract of more than 600 acres of land located on what is now Dolington Road. He and many in his family were stricken with smallpox and died by 1702. His nephew, Thomas Yardley, came to settle the estate and decided to stay. He was the ancestor of most of the Yardleys living here today. Within 3 decades Thomas Yardley acquired all the riverfront land from Dolington Road through the borough, south to the present Macclesfield Park. This became the foundation of the family’s success. He and his sons built mansion houses such as Lakeside, set up mills, taverns, distilleries, leased farms, and established the inn and ferry across the Delaware. His daughters and grand-daughters intermarried into most of the important other local families, creating kinship ties throughout the region. The present borough bears the family name.
John Brock came from Bramhall in Cheshire and settled along the creek that bears his name. He built a gristmill and a sawmill and the mill pond known as Lake Afton. His son, Ralph Brock, sold out to John Lambert in 1713 and his son, Thomas Lambert, sold to Thomas Yardley in 1732. The present mill building was built by Thomas Yardley, Jr. in 1769.
Thomas Janney, a local surveyor and provincial councillor, had a large grant of land extending from the Delaware River into present-day Newtown Township. Today we see his mill pond filled by Core Creek where it crosses Route 332. He gave the first section of the Slate Hill Cemetery to the Falls Friends Meeting in 1690 and his son, Abel Janney, gave the second section in 1721. The cemetery was deeded to the township in 1990.
Richard Hough, who is said to have named the Township of Makefield, served in both the Provincial Council and Assembly. His stone house, although altered and enlarged, stands on Moyer Road and was in the Hough family until about 1850.
John Palmer arrived before Penn from Yorkshire and settled in the west-central part of the township. His descendants acquired more than 500 acres on both sides of Stony Hill Road and still owned some of this property in the early twentieth century. There are several old family houses on this tract and one may be the original Palmer house built in 1682.
Throughout the 18th century, Makefield was essentially devoted to farming. Forty-five years after its founding, the upper portion of the township was split off in 1737 to form Upper Makefield, and the original township, with part of Falls, became known as Lower Makefield. A census taken in 1784 showed the township had a population of 748 persons with 101 dwellings; and at the time of the U.S. House tax collection in 1798, there were 137 dwellings. By 1810, the population had grown to 1,089 persons, representing about a thousand percent growth since 1693.
Many of these new residents were no longer Quakers. Some Quakers, including many Yardleys, returned to the Anglican faith, while an influx of Dutch settlers from Long Island around 1710 brought Dutch Presbyterians to Lower Makefield. This was particularly evident among the Slacks, Beans, Van Hornes, and Vansants in the northern and central region of the township. Quakers from the southern region went to meeting in Fallsington, while after 1755 those from the northern end formed a meeting at Dolington Village with Quakers from Upper Makefield.
In 1774, the first public school in Bucks County was built by public subscription. It was situated in the southwestern part of the township on Oxford Valley Road and was intended to serve pupils from Falls, Middletown, and Lower Makefield. The building was the first octagonal school house in America and was one story with 480 square feet of floor space. The ruins of the building still remain. During the American Revolution, the area saw much military activity in 1776. Older Quakers tried to maintain their neutrality, but most young Quaker men joined the “Association” to defend the township from a British invasion. The Presbyterians and those of other religious persuasions or ethnicities had no interest in the British government and also supported the Continental Army. The discovery of artifacts such as musket balls and cannon balls around many of our old houses and barns indicate the presence of troops during the critical encampment before the Battle of Trenton. Stories of spies and counterspies, foraging parties, and tory robberies by the infamous Doan Outlaws demonstrate how this war divided our local population. After the battles moved southward, Quaker meetings “pardoned” those who were shunned for military service on both sides, or not, but most families healed the breaches and went back to work. At the beginning of the 19th century, two villages sprang up in the township. In 1807, a plan was drawn up for Yardleyville, the site of the grist and saw mills and the ferry to New Jersey. From Yardleyville, the Great Road to Philadelphia, now the Langhorne Road, ran southwest through the township. The “Flying Machine” stage coach line stopped near the crossing where the Great Road intersected the Newtown-Fallsington Road, now Stony Hill Road. The second village developed around the taverns and inn near this crossroads.
The tavern/house on the northwest corner built in 1800 by Jesse Palmer was known as Biles Corner for its first owner, Dr. Thomas K. Biles. On the northeast corner, the blacksmith, Thomas Stradling, kept his forge and built a new house. A blacksmith had operated there since the 1730s, and the foundation of the original shop is under the recently restored Berell's store building. The stone house still standing on the southwest corner was built by James Gilkyson about 1810. The vacant lot on the southeast corner was originally the site of a house built in 1798 by Jesse Palmer for Phineas Thackery, a Revolutionary War veteran. At the point formed by Langhorne and Edgewood roads, a small stone house was built around 1790 by James Doughty, a tailor. Its occupant, as cited on the 1798 Federal Direct Tax List, was a free black, Ishmael, also a tailor.
This village was originally called Stradlington and later Summerville, or Woodside. By 1858, the same year it acquired a post office, it was called Edgewood Village, as it is to this day. Most of the other houses in the village were built for artisans and workers during the middle of the 19th century. Just to the northeast, along the Langhorne Road, was the stage stop, inn, and tavern built by Daniel Palmer, Jr. in 1765, The oldest house in the area, it was enlarged by subsequent owners, and is known as Edgewood.
During the 19th century, Lower Makefield remained largely agricultural, with the exception of the village of Yardleyville, which developed as a town and a commercial center of the township. Yardleyville obtained a post office in 1828. In 1831, the Delaware Canal was completed and the village became a transfer point for tons of materials being barged along the canal. The following year, the ferry was moved to the foot of Afton Avenue, and the White Swan Tavern, now the Yardley Inn, was opened. The ferry was replaced by a covered wooden bridge in 1835. This was swept away by the great flood of 1841, but was soon rebuilt. After the flood of 1955 it was not rebuilt. During the Civil War, the gristmill produced thousands of tons of flour for the Union Army, and a magnet manufactory and bleachery went into production after that time.
The Reading Railroad's main steam freight and passenger line, four tracks wide, came to Lower Makefield in 1876 with stops at Stony Hill Road for Edgewood and Reading Road for Yardleyville. Its bridge over the Delaware River was an engineering marvel, but succumbed to the flood of 1904. It was re-built in spectacular fashion, both higher and wider by 1912. It is one of the only bridges on the National Register, and highlights the beauty of Makefield's riverfront scenery.
Tourism became a major local economic boom after the arrival of the railroad. Areas of Yardley Borough encouraged developers who constructed summer cottages for tourists, while larger residences spread along the township's river banks. Mark Palmer, who lived just north of the Edgewood railroad stop, added an entire floor to his old stone manor house to create a hotel for summer visitors, and those who wished to enjoy the country air during the 1876 Centennial Fair in Philadelphia. He also provided a boardwalk from the railroad stop to his 12-room inn, which was advertised in the Reading RR Centennial brochure, and still stands on Stony Hill Road. Many other local houses and farms opened their doors then and to summer boarders in the early days of the 20th century. Rumor has it that a dance hall for vacationers and local youth operated on the upper floor of Berell’s Store in Edgewood Village on summer evenings.
Yardleyville seceded from Lower Makefield in 1895 and became Yardley Borough. Prohibition during WWI ended the sale of alcohol in the township, but stories are told of hidden stills and speakeasies in many areas of the township. Lower Makefield continued largely agricultural until after World War II. In 1940, the township’s population was 1,841 persons, a modest increase from 1,089 persons in 1810. All changed after World War II, when the opening of the Fairless Steel Works, the development of Levittown, and the construction of major highways bisected the township's farmland, creating opportunities for suburban development. While largely built out today, the township has been transformed from essentially agricultural to a suburban community of residential homeowners, covering 18 square miles.
† Adapted from: 2019 Township of Lower Makefield, Comprehensive Plan, www.buckscounty.gov; Early History of the Township prepared by Ralph Thompson, March 1991, edited and updated by Helen Heinz, Ph.D., November 2013.