Historical Collections Relating to Gwynedd

By Howard M. Jenkins

Second Edition

1897

Chapter 1. The Place: The Scope of its History

From Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, a line drawn west of north and extended eighteen miles will end in the Township of Gwynedd. Approaching the place on such a line, the surface of the country rises, and at last attains an elevation of four hundred feet above the sea, where it forms the water-shed that divides the drainage of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Upon the western slopes of this watershed the lands of the township chiefly lie, and the greater part of their rain-fall, feeding affluents of the Wissahickon, that rise in springs within the township, pass by them, or by the main stream, -- which traverses Gwynedd form north to south, having risen just over the line, in Montgomery, -- down to the Schuylkill. From the northwestern part of the township, however, the drainage goes west by north through the Towamensing and other tributaries of the Skippack, into the Perkiomen, and thus reaches the Schuylkill far above the Wissahickon; while the rain-fall upon a few hundred acres in the extreme eastern corner of the township passes south and east to the Neshaminy, and through it to the Delaware.

The township parallelogram, containing nearly seventeen square miles, and occupied by over three thousand people (note: The reference here is to the census of 1880, and covers only the two township, Upper and Lower Gwynedd, into which the old township was divided in 1891, but also the Gwynedd part of the population of the boroughs of Lansdale and Ambler, and whole of the borough of North Wales). Fairly to be called a hill country, if compared with levels beside the sea, or valleys along the great rivers, it yet is no more than a moderately elevated part of that remarkable agricultural region which, occupying all south-eastern Pennsylvania, reaches northward and westward to the Blue Mountains and the river Susquehanna. Covered with woods when the white settlers came, at the end of the seventeenth century, then cleared, and since continuously tilled, this is a township, simply, of farming land; its surface rolling, but not rough; its soil moderately fertile, but demanding patient and careful cultivation. Natural wealth except that of the soil, it has none; if minerals lie beneath the surface, they are at such a depth as would baffle the miner.

Such history as may be presented concerning this township and its people is necessarily limited in scope. Beginning less than two hundred years ago, when its occupancy by European settlers began, we resign to the mists of the unknown all the life it may have had in the ages preceding. And even within the period of our knowledge, its movements and experiences have been void of extraordinary features. During two hundred years, the upland farmers, leveling their woods, plowing, planting, harvesting, threshing, seeking the markets of the city with their surplus, have typified the rural industry of their country. Neither sea nor river was at hand to disturb their occupation of tillage; the great highways of travel lay upon other routes; the coal, the iron, the oil, that elsewhere have attracted new people, changed ownerships, built towns and cities, and altered alike the face of the country and composition of society, have been here unknown. The echoes of the Revolutionary cannon reached the place, but other than this all its knowledge of wars has been brought from far beyond its borders. No Indians molested the early settlers; wild beasts did not prey upon them; pestilence did not destroy, nor famine starve them.

What history, then, belongs to the place? Such only as a quiet community of plain people, sharing the general interests of their country, concerned for its welfare, agitated by its dangers, rejoiced by its successes, may have had; such as the condition of a simple and orderly existence may present; such as comes from those features of human experience which are common to man everywhere, -- his birth, his struggle for existence, his defeats and triumphs, despairs and rejoicing, sickness and health, death and burial; the character he presents in life, the name he leaves behind him. With such materials the present volume must be content chiefly to deal, making its pages justify themselves, if possible, by merits of sincerity and precision, -- contributing thus to the careful and trustworthy so far as it extends. To that historical method which begins by the patient accumulation of facts, and which draws no conclusion until the facts are faithfully studied, the highest respect is due, and it therefore is fair to suppose that the glimpse which we obtain of a people's life by the study of the experiences of a single community has a substantial value in history. To cut down through the strata at a single place may disclose the formation underlying a wide district.

Analyzing the township's history, it might be said that in a large way, and having reference partly to its exterior relations, it has had these five periods:

That of the Settlement: 1698-1720.
That of Growth: 1720-1775.
That of the Revolutionary War: 1775-1783.
That of the Changes, social, industrial, and political, which followed the Revolution: 1783-1820.
That of development and culture since 1820.

But an outline, less general, and more distinctly drawn from the place may be presented. The township's own experiences, it may be said, have been these:

That of the first settlement, its conditions new and strange to the Welsh husbandmen; the marked characteristics of the little colony; its distinctly Welsh features; the unity of nearly every member in a single family, by ties of blood or marriage, the friendly habit of mutual help; the simplicity of manners, the fervor of religious expression. In this time the Quaker element was predominant, the headship of Penn commanded an almost filial respect, and the movement of the community was centered in the Friends' meeting, whose spiritual and temporal affairs were the great objects of attention.
Following this there came a time of removals and changes. Of the original company some were dead. There were departures to Richland, to Perkiomen, to Providence, to the Oley settlement on the upper Schuylkill. Thomas Evans, remarried in his old age, removed to Goshen, and Cadwallader Foulke, quitting farm life for city life, went to Philadelphia. Later the tide of migration to Virginia and the Carolinas, which took the Boones, Hanks, Lincolns, and others, from Berks county, shook the settlement of Gwynedd and Montgomery, in which the departing pioneers had many kinsmen. But in this period, too, there were new comers. The German element began to appear. The Schwenkfelders came in a body. The Welsh homogeneity began to break up, and the township became, as the Pennsylvania colony did, and as the State today is, one of varied population and characteristics.
To this succeeded the time when in this community, as in every one from Boston to Savannah, the earlier colonial influences declined, and the new springs of energy, which in the wider field were to manifest themselves in the effort for Independence, began to show themselves. There were some changes in agriculture. The earlier methods had to be improved. Pasture and hay lands spread from the meadows into the upland fields, by the sowing of timothy-seed, and later by the sowing of clover-seed, and the use of land plaster. Grazing therefore increased, and a rotation of crops began to be followed; hedges were planted, tillage became more thorough, and presently the plow with the iron mould-board appeared. This period included the time of the Revolution, but from that great convulsion there sprang new conditions that must be separately mentioned.
The struggle for Independence, its successful result, and the formation of the national constitution, profoundly agitating the country at large, stirred to the depths the life of each community, however remote and rural. These events brought hot political contention. Parties arose, and their lines were sharply drawn. The simple social conditions of the earlier time were modified, and while there were complaints of a decline in religious warmth, it was said, too, that morals were more lax, and intemperance more common. But there appeared then a development of a material nature. Turnpikes began to be made, the almost universal habit of riding on horseback was modified by the appearance of "pleasure carriages", the streams were bridged, common roads increased and received more care in their construction. At the same time, stimulated by the party excitements, county newspapers began to be established, and the rise of a taste for reading caused the formation of the small, but yet useful, local libraries. To this period may be assigned all the years from the close of the Revolution up to and including the War of 1812-1815.
From the close of the second war with Great Britain, a period of twenty-five years, ending in 1840, was marked by many new and interesting features. The financial depression of 1817, following the collapse of the depreciated paper money of the war, and of the industries which had sprung up during non-intercourse with England, tended strongly to develop and increase the removals to the Western country, --chiefly Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, -- which was then continued for many years. Between 1820 and 1840 was the period of the State's "internal improvements", the multiplication of turnpikes, the digging of canals, the beginning of railroads. This, it is true, had but a reflected influence in Gwynedd, yet it, like every other part of the State, felt the stimulus of the general activity and enterprise. In this period the public-school system was definitely established in the township, and the general tendency toward more education and culture was strongly shown. The county newspapers had reached a position of enlarged importance, and political discussion, though it was now partially relieved of the bitterness and heat which had accompanied earlier party contests, ws conducted earnestly and vigorously during the campaign in which John Quincy Adams once, and then General Jackson twice, won the Presidency. The political activity of the people, and their movement by local leadership, --indicating the wider distribution of intelligence and political interest, -- is quite observable during this time. In it, too, the postal service was increased, the mails were more frequently carried, and new post-offices were established; and it is notable that the influence of the proximity and growth of Philadelphia began to be more felt.
Since 1840, one general and two special conditions have marked the life of the township. The one is that unexampled and wonderful advance toward grater luxury and culture which has been everywhere the experience of the American people, and in which this community shared. The others have been the revolution in agricultural operations effected by the invention of better implements and machines; and the changes in the township's population, order of life, occupation, and interests, which followed the construction of the railroad. All these were part of a large movement; they occurred within the same period; and it is not entirely practicable to distinguish the precise influences which each exerted; yet they may be to some degree separately described. The change in agriculture had already given some signs of its presence in 1840, but it has chiefly been effected since. The flail gave way to the thresher, the sickle to the cradle, and it to the reaping machine, the scythe to the mower, the rude "fans" or "windmills" to improved and elaborate cleaners. The horse-rake has been two or three times developed, the hay-tedder and manure-spreader have come into occasional use, and while the grain-drill has almost completely superceded the picturesque marching man who scattered his seeds broadcast, the self-binding machine has partly taken the place of the "hands" who entered the harvest field to rake and bind. In fine, the whole system of farming is changed; in the busiest season one man does at least the work of three, and operations that were once necessarily tedious and small of proportion have risen to extensive methods and great possibilities.

The building of the railroad gave the township a new life. Enlarged knowledge of and communication with the outer world, the enormous increase of actual locomotion, the influx of new people, the rise in the price of lands, the building of villages and ultimately of considerable towns at the railroad stations, the creation of a new market system, the changes in the form of produce sent to the city for sales, were in part the results of the new influence. But besides these, there came from the city many more visitors and boarders, many more purchasers of land. The social structure as it had existed was first dissolved and then made over, and it became less homogeneous and unified. When the railway trains began to run, the old life of the township ended, and a new age was reached.

The general changes that have taken place in the country, and which are to be seen in Gwynedd, included, as I have already said, those which came directly from the railroad, and if it had not been constructed at all they would still have occurred, much the same in character, though, not so marked in their extent. With the schools established, the county newspapers increased in influence, the little libraries slowly increasing, and all the great outer world thundering so near by, the township cannot fail to rouse and stir. Mails that had come once or twice a week now came on every working day, and daily newspapers from the great cities were found a necessity to those who would keep abreast with the course of affairs. The movement in all ways became more quick. The pressure of occupation upon time became more urgent. Before this period the fast horse had been a runner to be ridden; now he became a trotter to be driven. From the interest in Lady Suffolk and Tacony and Flora Temple came their swift successors whose speed made "two-forty" seem slow. The old "gigs" and "chairs" with their round springs, disappeared, and the family driving to church or meeting, or setting out on some distant visit, called for a comfortable carriage instead of the old and plain "dearborn" wagon. The harness began to have silver mountings, the driver covered his knees, not with a quit or "coverlid" from the housewife's stock, but with a robe of buffalo-skin. The young man going out on errands of gallantry had his "falling-top", the successor of the "tilbury", and no longer was content to own a horse and saddle. Dress grew more costly and elegant, the country tailors were crowded outside by the influx of "ready-made" clothing from the cities, and the country sotres that had been able to satisfy their female customers with calico or delaine, saw them go to the great city bazaars for more costly and elegant fabrics. Organs and even pianos found their places in the farmer's homes, --an innovation and a step in luxury that a decade or two before would have been thought monstrous, --while the young women, as they glanced at their music-books, the farmer as he read his newspaper, or footed up his market account, the wife as she sewed, mended, or darned, had the aid, not of the old candle, nor even of the later "camphene" and "fluid", but of "coal oil", warranted to stand the "fire test", and equaling in the quality of its light the best which could be commanded by luxurious dwellers in cities.

Altogether, these and many other changes by which they were accompanied, amounted to a revolution of social conditions. The extent of the progress had been wonderful, but in no particular more so than by comparison. If we shall divide the history of Gwynedd since its settlement into one period of a century and a half, and another of less than half a century, and compare the changes of the two, we shall see the former appear a monotonous and stagnant level, while in the later and briefer one, Enterprise, Ingenuity, and Culture have gone forward by leaps rather than steps.

Chronological Sketch

1698, March, the Township purchased for the Welsh Company

1698, April, the Welsh Company sail from Liverpool

1698, July, they reach Philadelphia

1698, November (?), the settlers occupy their lands

1700, The first Meeting-House built

1700-01 (?), William Penn visits Gwynedd

1701-02, Re-surveys and Commissioners' patents for the lands.

1712, The second Meeting-House built

1714, the Friends' Monthly Meeting established.

1718, Death of William Penn

1719, Montgomery Baptist Church organized.

1731, Baptist Church of Stone, at Montgomery.

1734, Arrival of the Schwenkfelders.

1740, Boehm's Church (Germand Reformed, Whitpain), built

1745, Malignant and fatal epidemic.

1769, St. Peter's Lutheran and Reformed Church established.

1775, Outbreak of the Revolution

1776, Declaration of Independence

1777, October, The American troops in the township; march to and retreat from Germantown.

1777, November, movement of the troops to Whitemarsh.

1777, December, their movement to Valley Forge.

1778, June, Movement of the army from Valley Forge to New Jersey.

1783, Independence acknowledged by Great Britain

1784, Montgomery County erected.

1796, The Library at Montgomery Square established.

1799, Sower's newspaper begun at Norristown.

1800, Wilson's (later Winnard's) newspaper begun at Norristown.

1804, Ahser Miner's newspaper begun at Doylestown.

1804-05, Chestnut Hill and Spring House turnpike built.

1812-15, War with Great Britain

1813, Bethlehem turnpike begun.

1823, Third (present) Friends' Meeting-House built.

1830, State Road laid out.

1840, Public School system adopted by the Township.

1847-48, Spring House and Sumneytown turnpike built.

1856, North Pennsylvania Railroad completed to Gwynedd.

1857, North Pennsylvania Railroad opened to the Lehigh river.

1869, Borough of North Wales incorporated.

1872, Borough of Lansdale incorporated.

1874, Stony Creek Railroad completed.

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