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.
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.
It’s a cool rainy evening here in Bucks County, the perfect kind of night to curl up with a good book. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of them. Edmund Schiddel’s The Devil in Bucks County is so bad that it’s basically unreadable. I browsed it trying to pull a quote and couldn’t find anything worth repeating.
“They came flocking into Bucks County like locusts,” the back cover states, referring to the artists and writers who moved to the area from New York. Too bad Schiddel was one of them. In 1959 he published The Devil in Bucks County, which takes place in a town that loosely resembles New Hope.
Some of the locals have old Bucks County names like Stackhouse, Hibbs, and Satterthwaite, but Schiddel’s portrayal of New Hope is about as out of touch as M. Night Shymalan’s portrayal of Newtown in Signs (remember the scene in which the owners of the bookstore tell the children, “We keep those books for the city folk!”).
While the text may be worth less than the 50 cents this second edition sold for in 1960, it’s kind of nice to have a 50’s pulp novel set in your hometown. I’ll admit that I bought it for the cover:
Oliver Paxson’s house is marked as #29 in this map from WWH Davis’ History of Bucks County
Oliver Paxson was a prominent member of the Religious Society of Friends, and was one of the first residents of New Hope. His home, known as Maple Grove, still stands in New Hope immediately to the east of the New Hope-Solebury school complex. He also operated a stable and a salt store, now Hearth restaurant around the corner from Farley’s Bookshop.
In this letter, published in the first volume of Friends Miscellany(1831), Paxson considers the issue of settling land that has been expropriated from the Indians by force. Paxson presents a surprisingly nuanced and empathetic perspective on the conflict between Indians an European settlers. He believes that Indians own the land they lived on, and that Europeans who want to rightfully occupy that land must purchase it from the Indians on mutually agreeable terms. This stands in sharp contrast to the view of many of his contemporaries, who believed that Indians didn’t actually own the lived on because they didn’t use it properly (“wasting” it as hunting grounds, etc.) and that Europeans farmers were therefore justified in appropriating it. Paxson also believes that capturing land in war or compelling Indians to sell their land through force of arms does not bestow a legitimate right of ownership. When the government has taken Indian land by force Quakers still have an ethical obligation fairly compensate the rightful owners. Otherwise, they’re complicit in the theft of native property.
To support his argument, Paxson cites instances in which Europeans appropriated native land by force resulted in violent reprisals and outright war, and compares that violent outcome to the peaceable outcome that occurred when Quakers made agreements with the Indians to purchase their land on fair terms. William Penn knew that his royal grant did not absolve him of purchasing the land from its true owners, and when a group of Quakers settled in Virginia on land that hadn’t been fairly purchased, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting raised money to compensate the Indians, “which had a good effect among the tribes.”
He then cites the biblical precedent in the story of Naboth. In that story, the Jews had a different theory of land ownership than the Baalist king. Naboth owned his farm by right of inheritance, and was required by Jewish law to pass it on to his own heirs in turn. Ahab demanded to purchase it as one would purchase an alienable commodity. Because Naboth couldn’t sell his land, Ahab murdered him and stole it, and the prophet Elijah brought God’s wrath upon his family. Quakers, Paxson implied, should not go the way of Ahab.
The letter probably dates to 1802.
TO JOHN SIMPSON OHIO.
New Hope, 5th of 4th mo.
DEAR FRIEND,
I have had a share of thy kind remembrance, with many other friends in the place of thy nativity, which I have no doubt has been gladly received by all the friends thou hast written to; and I thought I felt under some obligation to answer thee. But alas! what shall I say? When I think of writing a letter of social friendship, there is a subject that more or less, for fifty years, hath exercised my mind, and greatly so, of latter times:–that is, the situation of the Indians, unto whom this great and populous country once belonged.
Thou hast often heard and read of the wars in New England and Virginia, in conquests over them, and taking their lands. Not so, when William Penn came to Pennsylvania:–a man who had learned his Master’s lesson, “to do unto all men as he would they should do unto him.” This made his name honourable among the Indians, and it remains so to the present time. But after some time one of his successors, not keeping strictly to this rule, overreached them in a purchase in an extraordinary (or shall I say extravagant) day’s walk, and they revenged it many years afterward, when an opportunity offered, by killing and taking into captivity, many of the white inhabitants. Thou and I can remember these things. How our very ears were made to tingle!
Well, time passed on, till the revolutionary war began. The poor Indians hardly knew what part to take, fearing they should lose all their country in the quarrel between nations of white people; especially if it should turn in favour of the United States (as it finally did) and some of the Seneca Chiefs addressed General Washington near the close of the war, made their submission, and remain peaceably on their reservations in the State of New York.
What comes next to be considered is the state of the country thou livest in. About this time, the white people near the Ohio river went over and made settlements on their lands. They complained of their land and game being taken from them, and found no redress. At length they took up the hatchet, and skirmishing on both sides of the river ensued. The President by this time, thought it his duty to endeavour to put a stop to it, and appointed commissioners to treat of peace, and purchase their land. They met, divers Friends attending, viz. John Parrish, Joseph Moore, Jacob Lindley, and some others. The Indians appeared in a hostile, angry mood, and told the commissioners, they would sell them no land;–but required them to remove the white people that were already settled over the river. The treaty broke up, without doing any thing, and hostilities continued: in consequence of which, the President ordered an armed force to defend the frontiers, and bring the Indians to terms. Sinclair their general. About this time the Meeting for Sufferings was sitting, and a heavy exercise came over the meeting on this account, and a committee was appointed to wait on the President, to intreat him to stay the sword:–which they did in a solemn manner, but all in vain. The expedition was pursued. Sinclair defeated, and many fell in battle. But it did not stop here. A greater force was raised, and a general appointed, more skilful in fighting the Indians, and effectually subdued them; and many of the rightful owners of the country, fell down slain in battle, in defending their just rights:–terms of peace were offered, which they declare, they were forced to accept, it being a price very inadequate to its value.
I do not mean by this, to arraign the government. The United States is a warlike nation;–and conquests made by the sword, are commonly applied to the account of the conquerors. So that in this view of things, it may be considered as an act of generosity in the government to pay the Indians twenty thousand dollars, for a country worth an hundred times that sum. But this wont do for thee nor me, who profess to be redeemed from the spirit of war, so as not even to buy a coat, if we know it to be a prize article. Thou may remember the concern brought on our Yearly Meeting by a few families of Friends in Virginia, who were settled on land not fairly bought of the Indians, and a sum of money was finally raised by Friends in Philadelphia, as a compensation, which had a good effect among the tribes.
I must close this singular epistle, by just observing, that when thou wast concerned some years ago, to publish the glad tidings of the Gospel of peace and salvation to the inhabitants of Ohio, my heart went with thee. And had that been thy sole concern when thou went last, I could again have said Amen. But when I took a view of thy wife and children, going with thee to settle in the country, to buy and sell, and get gain, I was not able to go thy pace. My heart is, nevertheless, filled with tender affection and sympathy for thee, thy dear wife, and her children; and I am persuaded, thou hast not seen the thing in the light I view it, or thou would hardly have taken so much pains to induce Friends to settle, in such numbers, in a land obtained in the manner I have mentioned. Naboth must die, because he refused to sell his inheritance to Ahab; though Ahab offered to give him the worth of it in money, or give him a better for it; yet he would not sell it.1 Mark the sequel. If the Province of Pennsylvania must be visited with the horrors of an Indian War,–many of its inhabitants slain, and many carried into captivity–for one man’s offence, in overreaching the Indians in the purchase of land from them;–what may we then expect in the instance before us? The Indians did refuse to sell their inheritance, till many of them were slain, and they were compelled to it. And would it be a strange thing, if an opportunity should offer for the Indians to revenge their wrongs–if the earth, that hath opened its mouth to receive the blood of the rightful owners of the soil, should again open its mouth to receive the blood of white inhabitants? Which judgment may be averted by acts of righteousness, is the sincere desire of my soul. From thy friend,
OLIVER PAXSON.
1In the Old Testament, Naboth owned a small vineyard next to the palace of King Ahab, who wanted to buy the land. Naboth was forbidden from selling the land by Jewish law. After his offer was rebuffed, Ahab had Naboth killed in order to seize his land. As a result, the prophet Elijah prophesies Ahab’s destruction as punishment for murdering Naboth and stealing his land. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naboth)
Another interesting find in the 1880 New Hope census:
Relationship Status: Mistress
Elias Wood was a 55-year-old black laborer born in Maryland. Hannah Peterson was a 29-year-old mulatto woman born in New Jersey. They were both illiterate. There is little question of the children’s parentage, as the census indicates their father was born in Maryland and their mother in New Jersey (click on the image for an expanded view).
Given that their eldest daughter is 13 years old, it appears that their relationship began at least thirteen years and nine months earlier in the autumn of 1866, when Elias was a lecherous old bachelor in his forties and Hannah was a young girl of 15 or 16. Perhaps these circumstances explain why they never married.
Interestingly, Hannah is listed as a “House Keeper.” Women who work in their own home are listed as “Keeping House” in the census, while women working as servants in other peoples homes are sometimes listed as “House Keeper.”
As a further insult, the census enumerator John Pidcock listed their relationship status as “single” to drive home the point that the government does NOT recognize their relationship. John may have had some inside information since he lived down Mechanics Street from them:
Mr. Pidcock the Nosey Enumerator
Fifty-nine years old and boarding in another guy’s house? Unemployed for a third of the year? Maybe John should have refrained from name-calling.
Note: The possibly illegitimate children living in a boarding house in my previous post share the surname Wood, but beyond their name I’ve found no connection.
For the last couple weeks I’ve been wading through New Hope census records conducting demographic research. Today I found this gem in the 1880 New Hope census:
It appears to be a boarding house on Main Street in New Hope with an interesting list of tenants.
Eliza Kitchen, 74, incapacitated by apoplexy and attended to by her unmarried 38-year-old daughter Mary Ann.
Ana Maria Peaker, 42, a black domestic servant with her five daughters. Her children have the surname Wood and her relationship status is not filled out. Are the illegitimate?
Charles B. Knowles, 76, a retired merchant boarding with his wife Margarett, 75, listed as insane due to “Softening of the Brain.”
Today while poring over J.D. Scott’s Combination Atlas Map of Bucks County (1876), I discovered this detail in the map of New Hope Borough. The row of houses on Stoney Hill Road above Joshua Whiteley’s cotton mill (now the Inn at the Ruins) is labelled Darkey Town.
At different times the larger hamlet was known as Springdale, Huffnagle, and Rosenthal, but none of the sources I’ve checked make any mention of Darkey Town. MacReynolds’ Place Names in Bucks County provides some details about the development of the hamlet. Robert Heath built Solebury’s first grist mill here in 1707, and the William Maris moved here in 1812 and built the cotton mill (owned by Whiteley on this map) and the mansion known as Springdale. When the railroad line was put in, Springdale became first stop southwest of New Hope. Maris sold the property to the Huffnagle family (Dr. John Huffnagle appears on this map). The hamlet was then called Huffnagle until it was renamed for artist Albert Rosenthal who purchased the ruined mansion in 1928 and set up a studio. The houses on Mechanics St. and Stoney Hill probably belonged to the skilled and unskilled laborers that worked at the mills.
I hate to jump to conclusions, but of course I’m wondering if the name Darkey Town is being used in the pejorative sense to label a section of New Hope Borough where black families resided. There are two bits of evidence that reinforce this idea. First off, one of the residents is listed only as “Old Bob.” Every other resident I’ve found in this atlas is listed by surname or at very least by first and last initial (compare this to J. Huffnagle, M.D. a few houses to the west). Why was Old Bob not afforded the same respect and formality given to every other resident and landowner? More importantly, the building labelled “M.E. Ch.” may be a Methodist Episcopalian Church. This might be related to the Mount Gilead African Methodist Episcopalian Church, founded by former slaves on Buckingham Mountain in 1835.
Of course, this hypothesis is discordant with the standard narrative of race relations in Bucks County. You always read that the area was remarkably tolerant thanks to the salutary influence of the Quakers. It’s conceivable that some less educated mill workers in this industrial valley had a different stance on race relations than the Quaker farmers.
My biggest question is why this name doesn’t appear elsewhere. George MacReynolds was the librarian of the Bucks County Historical Society, so he must have seen this atlas. Did he omit this place name on purpose? This map was published in 1876, when minstrel shows were a popular source of entertainment and played a significant role in exporting the stereotypes of Southern racism to the rest of the country. A quick Google search reveals that the term “Darkey Town” was used in the South to describe black neighborhoods, such as this one on the outskirts of Lebanon, Virginia. By the time MacReynolds published Place Names in 1942 the name would have been downright offensive. Likewise, MacReynolds may have purposefully omitted it because the Darkey Town label was a spurious editorial flourish by the mapmaker rather than a name that locals actually used to describe that area.
The next time I’m at the Spruance Library I’ll see what else I can find.
For a modern view:
If you enter Google Street View there are a few images of the ruins.
After a trip to the Spruance Library, we have identified our first unknown grave in Strangers Row. With Rayna’s help, I found two articles about our stranger listed only as “man found in woods” (d. 7/21/1913).
He was a man about 60 years old named Cunningham, a pauper from the Almshouse who left on April 1st and probably died shortly thereafter. He was found wearing two shirts and two pairs of pants, with $4.62 in cash and a $1 watch.
From The Newhope Weekly, Friday, July 25th 1913:
Skeleton of Man Found Near Newhope
Indications Point to Death of Unknown Three Months Ago
Edward Vorhees, of Newhope, while walking through the woods on the farm of John Huffnagle, near Newhope, at noon on Monday, stumbled over the corpse of a man. He notified the authorities at Newhope and they in turn called Coroner Howard P. White, who made an investigation in the afternoon. The man was unknown in that section a[n]d from the appearance of his hair it is [s]upposed that he was about sixty years of age.
There was nothing on his person or clothes to identify who he was. He had almost white hair and wore two shirts, two pairs of pants and a blue coat. He was about five feet and six inches in height and had an Ingersoll watch and $4.62 in cash in his pockets.
The condition of the body was such as to indicate that the man had been dead for at least three months, as nothing was left of him but a frame of bones. Near a tree was found an empty bottle and a cup, but what it had previously contained could not be learned. Near him was found a local newspaper, dated March 27, 1913, which was probably about the date of his heath. No one in the vicinity could give any testimony as to having seen the man, and the supposition is that he laid [sic] down to sleep where he was found and died.
Coroner White gave a certificate of death from exposure and the body was turned to Undertaker Worthington, of Wycombe, for interment.
The supposition is that the dead man was an inmate from the County Home who left that institution a few days before April 1, but there is no proof to sustain this theory.
From The Newhope Weekly– Friday, August 1, 1913:
It has been announced by Coroner White, of the c[o]unty, that he has every reason to believe the body of the man found in Huffnagle’s woods on Monday, July 21, was that of a man named Cunningham, who was an inmate of the Bucks County Home until the first of April this year. In the dead man’s clothes was found a key which they think must belong to a trunk he left at the Almshouse. The trousers, coat and the clothing corresponded to that he wore while there and the agate drinking cup was like the ones with which inmates are supplied.
