The cemetery of Mount Moriah African Methodist Episcopal Church in New Hope, photographed in 2011.
I’ve been researching Mount Moriah African Methodist Episcopal Church for well over a decade, but have yet to write a proper history of the church and the surrounding community. I’ve included it in various talks and in the Underground Railroad bus tour that I developed for the New Hope and Solebury historical societies, so many people are now aware of its existence and I am often asked for information. When Heritage Conservancy contacted me because they were making Mount Moriah one of the three focal points for their Untold Stories project (an online project that they sadly seem to have removed from their website) I put this together for them. I’ve revised it a few times since, and will likely continue to do so. In the meantime I wanted to publish this for those who are interested. As they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Keep an eye on the revision date!
I would also like to acknowledge the prior researchers who have brought many sources to light, especially the late Jean B. Williams, the former pastor of the Bensalem AME Church, who donated her research collection to the Mercer Museum, which I cataloged. There are numerous sources that I culled from her research, and she was responsible for placing the cemetery on the county register of historic places in 1986. She also saved three books that were buried with the cornerstone of the 1869 church, fragments of which I’ve put on display for various educational programs at the museum. They are indeed holy relics.
Some sources also seem to have been initially identified by the former pastor of the United Methodist church in Solebury, Joseph DiPaolo. In particular, it is my impression that he provided the newspaper articles from The Lambertville Beacon that appear in Williams’ collection, although I could be wrong. With the correspondence back and forth it is hard to determine who first found what, and ultimately we’re all in this together, trying to tell the story of a forgotten community.
This virtual lecture was presented for the Mercer Museum on October 15th, 2020.
Synopsis
This presentation provides an overview of the archival resources available at the Mercer Museum Library, and shows how they can be used to research the African American history of Bucks County. It highlights interesting documents from the collection dating back to the 1680s, and demonstrates how challenging and often fragmentary evidence can be used to piece together the stories of people who have long been marginalized in the historical record.
Note: Some things have changed at the library since this presentation was recorded. Research appointments are no longer required, some of the contact info for research services has changed, and we have expanded our digitization services.
From the colonial era until the rise of the modern welfare state, the poor residents of Bucks County relied on a social safety net that was administered at the local level. Township officials called Overseers of the Poor were tasked with levying a poor tax and doling out financial support or in-kind relief to residents who were unable to provide for themselves. This system became more centralized following the opening of the county almshouse in 1810. Also known as the poorhouse, poor farm, and later the Bucks County Home, the almshouse took in people who faced financial hardship for a wide variety of reasons. This ranged from farm laborers who couldn’t find work in the winter to the elderly, sick, mentally disabled, and even pregnant women, who would come to the almshouse to give birth and then remain there during their postpartum “lying-in” period.
While the poor relief system was designed to save people from abject poverty, some of the methods employed would be considered inhumane by modern standards. Almshouse residents were considered inmates, and they frequently ran away. The psychiatric care was particularly problematic, and before the establishment of state-run psychiatric hospitals, individuals considered dangerously insane lived in chains at the county almshouse. Until the state’s anti-miscegenation law was abolished in 1780, the Overseers of the Poor were also tasked with binding out mixed-race children as indentured servants, another example of how a system that was established to help the most vulnerable members of society sometimes inflicted harm instead.
Selected Bibliography
Images
Craven, Linford R. Bucks County Almshouse and Bucks County Hospital. Albumen print, c.1900. Visual collection (SC-29-01, 09-H-002). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA. (Reproduced in W.W.H. Davis’ The History of Bucks County, vol. 2. available on Google Books)
View of Almshouse. Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches, c.1900. James A. Michener Art Museum. Doylestown, PA. (Via Google Arts & Culture)
Unpublished Works:
Bucks County Almshouse Records. Bucks County Archives (RG 4:3). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.
Bucks County Commissioners Records. Microfilm. Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.
Bucks County Daily Intelligencer Clippings Files (SC-39). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.
Bucks County Directors of the Poor Minute Book, 1807-1853. Bound Manuscript Collection (BM-A-057). Mercer Museum Library, Doylestown, PA.
Documents Relating to the Poor in Bucks County (MSC 163, fol. 98). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.
Indenture of John Clauson to Aaron Paxson, 1771. Aaron and John K. Paxson Collection (MSC 105, fol. 1). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.
Records of the Proceedings of Middletown Township Relating to the Poor, Strays & Settlements of Supervisors Accounts, 1791. Bound Manuscript Collection (BM-B-462). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.
Report of Cholera at the Almshouse, 1849 (MSC 163, fol. 98). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA.
Solebury Township Overseers of the Poor Records, 1792-1809. John Ruckman Papers (MSC 162, fol. 10-12). Mercer Museum Library, Doylestown, PA.
Warminster Poor Book, 1757-1810. Bound Manuscript Collection (BM-B-038). Mercer Museum Library. Doylestown, PA
Bucks County Court of Quarter Sessions and Common Pleas. Records of the Courts of Quarter Sessions and Common Pleas of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1684-1700. Meadville, PA: The Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, 1943. (Available on Archive.org)
Forbes, W. S. “History of the Anatomy Act of Pennsylvania.” Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Medical Publishing Company, 1898. (Available from Thomas Jefferson University)
Frankel, Emil. Poor Relief in Pennsylvania. Bulletin 20. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Welfare, 1925. (Available on Archive.org)
Heffner, William Clinton. History of Poor Relief Legislation in Pennsylvania, 1682-1913. Cleona, PA: Holzapfel Publishing Company, 1913. (Available on Google Books)
Hitchcock, Tim, Adam Crymble, and Louise Falcini. “Loose, Idle and Disorderly: Vagrant Removal in Eighteenth-Century Middlesex.” Lecture, British History in the Long 18th Century from the University of London School of Advanced Study, London, United Kingdom, May 29, 2013. (Available as a podcast)
Innes, Joanna. “Pitt and the Poor Laws: Government and the Politics of Social Policy in the 1790s.” Lecture, British History in the Long 18th Century from the University of London School of Advanced Study, London, United Kingdom, January 19, 2011. (Available as a podcast)
Pagan, John Ruston. Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Salinger, Sharon V. To Serve Well and Faithfully: Labor and Indentured Servants in Pennsylvania, 1682-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Siegfried, Simeon, ed. Minutes of the Alms-House Visitation: Containing the Charges Against the Directors and Steward of the Institution, As Laid Before the Visitors Appointed by the Court. And the Testimony of the Several Witnesses Examined In the Course of the Investigation. Doylestown, PA: Simeon Siegfried, 1819. (Available at the Mercer Museum Library, SC-14.1390)
Tadmore, Naomi. “Cultures of Settlement, 1660-1780.” Lecture, British History in the Long 18th Century from the University of London School of Advanced Study, London, United Kingdom, February 3, 2016. (Available as a podcast)
Wrightson, Keith. English Society, 1580-1680. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982.
In 1816, the Northern Hemisphere experienced a summer so cold that lakes and waterways were frozen in parts of Pennsylvania in July and August and frost was reported as far south as Virginia. Crops were destroyed by frost at the peak of the growing season, leading to widespread food shortages. In Ireland, the famine was compounded by an outbreak of epidemic typhus, a lice-borne illness that is more prevalent in colder weather because lice can hide more easily within multiple layers of clothing. Scientists now believe the world was experiencing a volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, the largest eruption in 1,300 years. This disastrous year was called the Year Without A Summer.
The experience of one Bucks County resident serves as a microcosm of this global disaster. In 1879, Charles Kirk (1800-1890) of Warminster composed a series of autobiographical reflections, beginning with his childhood in Abington. One of the first stories he recounts is that of his family’s struggle during the Year Without A Summer. Frost struck throughout the summer months, and like so many other farmers they were left without a harvest. In October his family suffered an outbreak of typhus, which claimed the life of his mother Rebecca and his sister Ruth and afflicted all of the other children besides Charles. His father was already physically disabled due to prior injuries, so at the age of fifteen Charles was forced to assume a heavy burden for his family. He recalls:
The year 1816 was a very eventful year to our family for it was the coldest summer ever in the County, frost in every month. I remember well of seeing in the Sixth Month, of the leaves on the hickory trees dead and crisp by the effects of it. Crops very light indeed. Scarcely any corn came to maturity, enough for to be fit for seed. For several years before and after this time owing to the poverty of the farm we were nearly always out of hay before the grass was cut to turn out a pasture, and out of grain before the next crop came to maturity. These things used to nick me to the very quick, for I was so ashamed to be seen hauling hay in the spring of the year to feed our stock that I disliked to meet anyone for it seemed to manifest to my mind a want of industry and management, but I have lived to see that even this kind of schooling, hard as it was to bear, has had its good effects on my mind.
I now come to the most sorrowful period of my life. In the latter part of the summer of this year my dear Mother was taken sick with what was then called typhus fever, and after about nine days suffering her trials, hardships and her anxieties came to a close in this world and I fully believe she entered into a state of happiness in the next. But here I must pause, for I have no words to convey the feelings of my mind on that occasion, for although more than sixty-two years has passed since that event, still the remembrance of it is clear and strong, so much so that I scarcely refrain from shedding tears whilst writing these lines. There was ten children of us at the time, the youngest about five years of age.
The time of my Mother’s sickness was an anxious one to all the family for she was indeed the head of it in every sense of the word. The fever at that time was thought to be contagious so us children were not allowed to go in the room where she was, but there was a crack in the board partition in the garret stairway that I used to go and peer through to see her. These are the last sights I ever had of her in this life. One day during her illness when out in the field reflecting on the prospect of things the impression on my mind was that if she should die there would be no pleasure left for me in this world, but I had not then learned to look to a higher Power for peace and happiness, the great fountain and source of all good, the sure foundation to build upon in this life.
It was indeed a house of affliction. Sister Ruth took the fever and was dangerously ill for a long time so much so that we were called in more than once to see her die, but after a long and tedious time she recovered. Sister Elizabeth, a girl about twelve years old, sickened and died with it in the 18th of 10th Month, 1816. The rest of the children all took the fever, eight of them sick in bed at one time. I was the only one that escaped and I well remember feeling so thankful for the favor. The neighbors became alarmed, some were afraid to come amongst it but still there were some who rendered every assistance in their power. As I was the only one able to go, there was much that fell to my lot to do at that time. The doctors depended almost entirely on stimulants, wine and brandy was used in large quantities, and I had also to go round and to solicit persons to come and set up with the sick, and even this was a lesson of instruction to me and I have endeavored to profit by it. Never when any of the neighbors were sick not to be sent for but to go and see if I could be of any use.
Source: Charles Kirk’s Journal (handwritten copy), Bound Manuscript Collection, BM-B-243, Mercer Museum Library, Doylestown, PA.
Although the Kirk family continued to face financial difficulty in the years that followed, Charles eventually became a successful farmer. In about 1841 he purchased a 118-acre farm in Warminster Township, and the 1870 US Census values his combined real estate and personal estate at $18,500. He became a respected elder in the Society of Friends, and he participated in the Underground Railroad, sheltering a fugitive from Virginia named Sarah Lewis for more than a decade after slave hunters captured the rest of her family in Philadelphia. Although little trace of his farm remains, having been purchased by the US Navy as part of the Johnsville Naval Air Development Center in 1994, Kirk Road still bears his name. A house that was once part of Kirk’s farm is still standing, currently the home of Gilda’s Club Delaware Valley, a cancer support group. According to the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission, the structure dates to 1817, so it very well may have been the house where Charles Kirk composed his memoires.
Note: The portion of Charles Kirk’s diary excerpted above has been edited for readability. Punctuation has been added for clarity, capitalization has been normalized, and minor spelling errors and slips of the pen have been corrected.
The version of Kirk’s narrative found in the Mercer Museum Library’s manuscript is apparently a transcription of the original text. The book was first used as a record book for public vendues held in Newportville, Bristol Township, in 1841. It was repurposed by a later owner to record genealogical information about the Kirk family and to transcribe the journal of Charles Kirk. This later section is composed in two unique hands, indicating that one person began transcribing Kirk’s journal and a second person completed it. The section excerpted above includes the work of both authors.
From Joseph C. Martindale’s 1867 history of Byberry and Moreland townships:
Samuel Scott was an old Friend who had a very remarkable way of whistling through his nose. On one occasion Jeremy Hibbs clothed himself in a skin, with horns projecting from his head, and placed himself in the bushes by a path where he expected Samuel Ross to pass. After Samuel had gone a few yards, Jeremy came out and hailed him. Samuel gave a whistle through his nose, and exclaimed, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” and walked on as unconcernedly as if nothing had happened.
Samuel Scott died in 1761, so this anecdote likely dates to the first half of the 18th century.
Just southwest of the Middletown Friends meetinghouse lies a small burial ground purchased for the interment of African Americans 225 years ago, at a time when almost a third of the county’s black population remained enslaved. There are no headstones or any other visual indicators to distinguish this plot from the rest of the meeting’s shaded lawn, and like other Quaker meetings in the area, Middletown did not begin keeping burial records until after the Civil War. It is therefore unsurprising that this burial ground has been forgotten in the intervening centuries. The current overseer of the cemetery was unaware of its existence, and while a “Negro burying ground” is referred to in the meeting’s property records, I was not able to identify it’s specific location until I discovered the original deed for the land in the archive of the Friends Historical Library.
Throughout the colonial era, burial grounds were places of great social importance to enslaved Africans. For example, in Philadelphia the section of the Strangers’ Burial Ground (now Washington Square Park) that was set aside for blacks drew large crowds on Sundays, holidays, and fair days. During these gatherings the burial ground became an autonomous African cultural space where participants came together to perform African dances and to speak and sing in their native languages. This was not the case in rural Bucks County, where the small scale of slaveholding meant that the enslaved had few opportunities to interact with other Africans. Slaves were permitted to attend the fairs that were held twice each year Bristol, but only on the last day.
Records indicate that early Quaker settlers initially permitted the burial of Africans in their burial ground, but this was quickly curtailed. Middletown Monthly Meeting, located on the western border of Langhorne Borough, set aside a portion of their burial ground for blacks in the early 18th century, but the meeting vacillated with regard to their treatment of the African dead. Middletown Meeting segregated their burial ground in 1703, noting in their minutes, “There having been formerly some Negros Buryed in friends Burying Yard which they are not well satisfied with therefore Robert Heaton & Thomas Stackhouse are ordered to fence off that corner with as much more as they may see convenient, that friends burying place may be of itself from all others.” After the construction of a wall around the burial ground in 1734 the Friends reaffirmed their opposition to sharing their burial ground with African Americans, ultimately declaring in 1739, “this meeting having had the Matter under Consideration it is unanimously agreed that hereafter no Deceased Negros be Buried Within the walls of the graveyard Belonging to this meeting, & Adam Parker, Jonathan Woolston & Joseph Richardson are appointed to keep the keys of the Said Graveyard & take Care that none be Buried therein but such as they in the Meetings Behalf shall allow of.” The black residents of Bucks County would not have a dedicated burial ground again until the Society of Friends changed its stance on slavery in the late 18th century.
The acknowledgement by the Society of Friends that participation in the slave system violated their religious teachings also sparked a broader concern about the economic and spiritual well-being of African Americans. After Philadelphia Yearly Meeting banned slave ownership in 1776, they also added the treatment of free blacks to the list of religious queries that their constituent meetings were expected to address. Bucks County Quakers responded by appointing committees to meet with black families, holding meetings for worship for blacks, and eventually purchasing a small plot of land adjacent to Middletown Meeting as a “Negro burying ground” in 1791. This parcel measured sixteen and a half feet wide by 136 feet long, large enough for perhaps a few dozen burials. While the section allocated for blacks in 1703 was almost certainly meant to be used for the burial of slaves owned by members of the meeting, this small lot was purchased for the use of the free black community.
The meeting did not record the burials in this lot and few details about its use remain. The only documented burial that has been identified at present is that of Cato Adams, a free black man who resided in Middletown for a number of years before moving to Bristol. The will that Adams drafted in 1810 demonstrates the burial ground’s importance to the local black community. Although Adams had a number of children and grandchildren to consider when writing his will, he set aside five pounds “for the purpose of keeping in repair the Burying ground appropriated for the interment of black people near to the meeting.” He also left his “first day clothes” to his son. The use of the Quaker term “first day” rather than “Sunday” indicates that he may have attended meeting for worship at Middletown Meeting, although like most African Americans who worshipped with Quakers in this period he was not a member of the Society and does not appear in the meeting’s records. When Adams died in 1812, Orphans’ Court records related to the settlement of his estate show that his executors paid Isaac Gray, a founding member of the independent black Methodist group the Society of Colored Methodists, to dig his grave. The small lot purchased in 1791 was apparently approaching full capacity by 1816, when Middletown Meeting bought an additional lot for the burial of African Americans at the northeast corner of their property along what is now Green Street. This parcel constitutes the northern half of Mt. Olive Cemetery, which was used by Langhorne’s black community into the 20th century. Before the establishment of Bethlehem African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1817 these burial grounds were the only public spaces in Bucks County to which African Americans could claim a collective right.
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Although evidence is scarce, at least two other African-American burial grounds were created by Quaker meetings in the region. The first was Byberry Preparative Meeting, which established a small African-American burial ground in 1780. This burial ground is now part of Benjamin Rush State Park near the border between Northeast Philadelphia and Bensalem Township, only about four and a half miles away from Middletown Meeting. Joseph C. Martindale provides a brief account of this burial ground in his book A History of the Townships of Byberry and Moreland in Philadelphia (1876):
Previous to this time the colored people who died in the townships were generally buried in the orchards belonging to their masters or in the woods; but forty or fifty had been interred in a kind of cemetery for them, on the lands lately owned by Charles Walmsley. It was located in the field fronting the mansion house, not far from Watson Comly’s line. All traces of it have long since been destroyed, and hundreds have since passed over the spot not knowing that they were treading upon the graves of the long since dead. Another of these graveyards was on the farm lately owned by Mary Hillborn, where several slaves were buried. The exact spot is not now known. Many persons by this time had had their attention drawn to the matter, and efforts were made to secure a proper place for the burial of such people. Accordingly, in this year [1780], we find that Byberry Meeting purchased a lot of Thomas Townsend for a burying place for the blacks, and the practice of burying on private grounds was discontinued. The record says that the first person buried there was “Jim,” a negro belonging to Daniel Walton.
Later, after discussing the local potter’s field where white indigents were interred, he writes:
The graveyard for colored persons… is still kept for that purpose. Some years since a portion of this yard was plowed up, and most of the “little mounds” were leveled with the earth around, so that the exact spot where many of this race were buried can no longer be seen. What a pity that man should ever be willing to disturb the resting-places of the dead in order to add to his coffers! Of late years more care has been taken of this place, and it is now kept in good order by Byberry Meeting.
The only historical map that I’ve been able to locate that shows the Byberry African Burial Ground is the “Atlas of Greater Northeast Philadelphia” in Franklin’s Proposed Real Estate Atlases of Philadelphia, Vol. 7 (1953). The small lot is not identified as a burial ground, but the property boundaries are visible:
More detailed maps, photographs, and other documentation are provided in Byberry Librarian Helen File’s paper on the burial ground and an archaeological study of the site performed by the US General Services Administration in 1993.
The second Quaker meeting in the area to establish an African-American burial ground was Buckingham Friends Meeting, which laid out a small section of their existing graveyard for that purpose in 1807. They report in their minutes:
We have laid out a small portion of Ground within the large Grave Yard at Buckingham to Bury Black People in, Beginning at a stone standing at the North Corner of the Old enclosure, thence N 50 [degrees] E two Perches to a Stone, thence N 40 [degrees] W to a Stone standing at the back Wall of the Yard And to be comprehended by these two lines, the Back Wall, and the Foundation of the Old Wall. The Meeting Uniting therewith, directs Burying in rows beginning at the North End…
Unfortunately the exact location of this plot is unclear, but it is probably located in the northwest section of the current burial ground. Further examination of the meeting’s property records may yield a more exact location. While the author of the Buckingham Meeting’s National Register of Historic Places nomination claims that “The African American burials here were made unnecessary within a few years” after Mount Gilead African Methodist Episcopal Church was constructed nearby in 1837, a recent archaeological survey of the site conducted by Meagan Ratini suggests that the burials may not have taken place there until the 1860s. If that is the case, the African-American burial ground at Buckingham Meeting may have been in use for half a century.
The Carversville Christian Orphanage once stood on the western side of Wismer Road on the hill overlooking the town. It occupied the building previously used by the Excelsior Normal Institute, a private school.
While cataloging bound manuscripts for the Bucks County Historical Society I came across this story in a scrapbook from the Lahaska area dating to the 1890s. It contained the following newspaper clipping, in which Martha Kenderdine “Mattie” Reeder recounts stories from her grandmother’s childhood:
Reminiscences of “When Grandma Was Young.”
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A Paper Read Before the Farmers’ Institute at Lansdale by Miss Mattie Reeder, of New Hope, on Wednesday, March 10th, 1897.
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It was a dreary day in early November. The scudding clouds had fought a triumphant battle with the wintry sunshine. Now the first snow was falling. The old, stone farm house, safe sheltered from the north winds by the surrounding hills and forest, was never known to close its door upon the tired traveler. To-night there seemed an extra bustle within its walls. A little stranger had that day arrived. “The baby is a girl,” the radiant nurse announces. “Another little girl, and I have so many little girls,” sighed the pale mother. And this was grandma’s welcome to the world. It was not a very warm one and at first grandma debated long the question, should she stay? Perhaps it was the beauty of the dancing flames in the great fireplace, or the tender mother love which cherished her, or maybe the awkward caresses of her blue-eyed brother that at length determined her. So the sickly baby grew into a rosy, toddling girl, whose life was as joyous and free as the song birds about her. And it is fragments from this girl[‘s] life of long ago that I will try to tell.
It was a large family that dwelt in the spacious farm house. The first-born, a son, was looked upon with awe by all the youngsters. He was treated with almost the respect they showed to father. Then came a list of daughters who went by the name of “the girls.” And lastly grandma and her darling scapegrace* brother, who were known until both married as “the children.” This brother and sister, “the children,” the love that bound them so closely together, makes it impossible to tell the story of one life without also telling that of the other.
Grandma’s one great trial of her childhood’s days was that she could not be a prim and quiet little maid like her sisters. She would run and romp, climb the tallest trees and whistle. Her little feet from spring to fall were innocent of shoes and stockings, except on First-days when it was her turn to go to meeting. Then, in a household of so many daughters there could not be a different dress and bonnet for each one. One costume did for many. So poor little grandma would find herself in a gown, either too long or too short and with shoes that clumped or else cruelly pinched her feet. But not withstanding this her day to go to meeting was always longed for and when over remembered fondly.
It was ever wonderment to her grandchildren that grandma showed an unconquerable aversion to a yellow cat. One day the secret transpired. At the farm house, it appears, pet cats and kittens were tabooed. But one yellow kitten proved so engaging that the little fluffy thing crept right into the hearts of the children. When their secret was discovered the mandate was issued, the kitten must die and they must kill it. It did seem cruel but to disobey father or mother was never thought of. Grandmother and her brother held a sorrowful consultation. At last he had a brilliant inspiration. The kitten should be Arnold, the traitor, and be hung. Arnold deserved the fate and they, he argued, (not withstanding their friendly up bringing) would be doing a worthy act. Grandma gave a dubious sigh of assent and followed her leader. Arnold was taken to the woods with a tow string fixed firmly around his neck. The limb was chosen, the deed all but done, when “you wicked children!” screamed a shrill voice behind them. Turning they saw flying toward them an old woman, whose gray hair flew out behind her. She had thrown her bundle of sticks aside and shook her crutch in a menacing manner as she swooped upon them. “The Witch of the Woods,” they gasped in terror and fled. This old woman had long been known to them by fame. She lived alone in her wretched hut and how she existed none knew. But because she was old and poor and lonely she was called a witch and the name clung to her and helped make her shunned. She knew she was feared and her temper was sound, but she saved that kitten.
Sometime after this grandma chanced to be alone in the forest when she again encountered the witch, gathering her daily bundle of faggots. With scant ceremony the old woman bade the little girl help her carry wood. Afraid to obey, afraid to disobey, grandma stood. A second command, sharper than the first, made her hasten to assist. Arrived at the witch’s hut she found her reward in a seed cake. There were no black cats to be seen, not black bag to hide little girls in and no superfluous broom-sticks. It was only the home of a poor, lame, old woman, and when a little kindness was shown her she proved not ungrateful. Perhaps it was pity or maybe it was the seed cake that made grandma from that time a visitor to the old Witch of the Woods.
It was considered a misfortune by the children (and it was a misfortune) that they had no grandma. Other little people had and boasted to them and put on superior airs. Their pride was touched. Grandma pondered long on this perplexing problem; then it was solved. We would adopt a grandma, and no less a person was selected than the Witch of the Woods. This solution was rejected by her brother. He even teased her, calling her “The Little Witch of the Woods,” but she was not to be deterred.
One of the older sisters had been sent to boarding school. With the knowledge there acquired she was expected to teach the children and she did so with credit. A summer school was held in a room over the wagon house and to her little people come from far and near. In the winter the big boys come and then it was an unwritten law that no girl should attend. Grandma was quick at her studies and was loath to leave. She timidly petitioned to be allowed to attend the winter session. But her father’s stern “What does thee want among a parcel of big boys” effectually silenced her. Nevertheless, her brother went and grandma secretly pored over his books and kept pace with him.
One time when the father and mother attended yearly meeting her brother was taken with them. It was their first separation, and grandma felt it keenly. But the joy of the return! She learned then she had not been forgotten. With his scanty, hard-earned pennies her brother had bought her a china mug. And enclosed by a wreath of flowers were the words “For My Favorite.” As long as she lived this mug had a place among grandma’s greatest treasures. But all this time grandma was growing. She was no longer “The Little Witch of the Woods.” She was learning the art of spinning, of churning golden butter, and the mystery of cooking was no mystery to her. In all household affairs the careful mother trained her daughter. And she was such an old, old fashioned mother that she taught her to look forward to the time when she should be married, and helped form her so that she would perform the duties of a wife nobly and well. There was already a goodly store of linen, spun by grandma’s girlish fingers and laid carefully away for her “outset.” And as she sat by her wheel, spinning, spinning, many must have been the gorgeous day dreams of the coming of the prince. All the older girls were married, and her father jokingly had told her she must not ask for her outset for those three years. Then grandma was only dreaming, but at the end of those three years her father was seriously reminded of his joke.
Grandma’s brother had grown into a tall young man. He was something of a dandy and went to see the girls. Often his gay companions came to the old farm house. Neither their coming or their going troubled grandma.
She had not yet asked herself the question, “Am I a child or woman?” One day seeing her brother’s team drive in the door-yard, she left her work and ran to meet him. Too late, a strange young man, she saw, was with him. [And she] stood spell-bound for she looked upon her prince. Then she realized in one brief instant that her home-spun dress was old and faded. That her curly hair was dreadfully tumbled and oh, what should she do! She had on neither shoes nor stockings. At this crisis, without a word and with cheeks of crimson grandma turned and fled. But the prince had only seen her face.
This I think proves quite plainly nature had been very kind to grandma, since it took so little to make her charming. Still, great was the disgust of her brother. “What had made her behave so simple?” Alas! she did not know. “What would his friend think of the sister he had been so highly praising?” Grandma was silent, but she only wished she knew.
Meanwhile the father and the mother saw their daughter bud into a woman and they gave her the outfit suitable for a young woman of her day. To transform this merry girl into a stately lady they bought her one silk gown, a cotton print, a pair of long silk mit[t]s, a shawl and bonnet. And grandma over this modest wardrobe had just as many raptures as girls of to-day.
When she stood arrayed in her gown of silvery gray her thoughts wandered to the prince and she could not help sighing, “Oh! If he could only see me now.” But the prince did not forget her. He began to come quite often to see her brother. At least the brother thought so, and took upon himself all the entertainment, while the poor prince suffered torments. Demure grandma saw it all, but would not help him. But at last grandpa (Oh! the prince) by means of schemes the darkest and efforts mighty succeeded in escaping from this now tiresome brother. But when this poor deluded brother saw his friend walking with his sister he was blind no longer.
Then came grandma’s courting days. But of the long rides, the walks, the talks grandma and grandpa had together grandma would never tell me. She was growing old, she said, and it was all so long ago she could not remember. And that was the first and only time that I could not quite believe her.
*Scapegrace: a mischievous or wayward person; a rascal.
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The grandmother in question is Letitia Blackfan Betts. Her father Stephen Betts settled in Solebury in the late 1700s, and the Betts homestead remained in their family for more than a century. Letitia was born on November 11th, 1801, and grew up on her family’s farm on Stoney Hill Road. Her younger brother John, with whom she was so close, was born in 1804. Letitia married her suitor Joseph Eastburn Reeder at Buckingham Friends Meeting on April 11th, 1824. The farmhouse, which still stands today, was located between Stoney Hill and Aquetong Road.
Tonight marks the 176th anniversary of the burning of Pennsylvania Hall, which was razed by anti-black rioters a mere three days after it opened in May of 1838. The building was erected in Philadelphia by the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, and at the time of the riot they were hosting the Requited Labor Convention, which brought together various regional anti-slavery societies. A number of Bucks County abolitionists were in attendance when the hall was destroyed. The convention minutes list delegates from the Bucks County Anti-Slavery Society as well as the Buckingham Female Anti-Slavery Society. The delegates include people who were very active in the Underground Railroad in Bucks County, including William H. and Mary Johnson of Buckingham and Jonathan P. and Mary W. Magill of Solebury. After the convention was reconvened in September, William H. Johnson was elected as one of the convention’s vice-presidents. The Magills’ son Edward H. Magill would later write the most complete history of the Underground Railroad in Bucks County, “When Men Were Sold: Reminiscences of the Underground Railroad in Bucks County,” published in the second volume of A Collection of Papers Read Before the Bucks County Historical Society.
These photos were taken in November, 1982 by Georges Duval, who was also responsible for saving the collection of 18th and 19th century Quaker documents that I recently deposited at the Friends Historical Library. These photos were included in that donation.
