Villages

 

 

Nockamixon a Nice Place to Live

HISTORY

Became a township in 1742. Nockamixon lost a third of its territory when Bridgeton Township was detached in 1890.  The petition for the division Nockamixon signed by many citizens, was presented to the Court of Quarter Sessions at Doylestown in 1889. 1.

The name Nockamixon is first met with as early as September 8, 1717, when a patent was issued, to Jeremiah Langhorne and John Chapman, for several tracts of land, one of them in this township.  Davis History of Bucks County II, page 38

On the organization of Tinicum, 1738, a large tract of country, immediately north of it, was left without local government.  The Durham iron works had been established since 1727, and although there was no organized township north of Tinicum, settlers had taken up land and built cabins here and there in the woods as high up as Forks of Delaware.  They were generally found on the river side of the county.  The Durham road had been a travelled highway several years prior to this date and no doubt its opening invited emigrants to push their way up into the woods of Nockamixon, settling on, or near the road.  As the names and date of the coming of the first settlers can not now be told, we are unable to tell our readers when the pioneers penetrated that wilderness country.

We have reason to believe settlers located in Nockamixon as early as in Durham still higher up the river, and that before 1730 the pioneer was felling the trees in her woods.  In 1737 Bartholomew Longstreth purchased two hundred and fifty acres of the Proprietaries, on or near Gallows hill run, (The Indian name of Gallow Run was "Perelefako"@ creek.  and occurs on the original deed of the Durham tract.)  which tradition says, took its name from a suicidal traveller found suspended from the limb of a tree on its bank.  by 1742 it contained quite a respectable population for a frontier district, the following names of settlers, or land-owners, having come down to us as living there at the time;

bullet Richard Thatcher
bullet Joseph Warford
bullet Christian Weaver
bullet John Henry Hite
bullet William Morris
bullet John Harwick
bullet Uriah Humble
bullet David Buckherd
bullet Bartholomew Longstreth
bullet Samuel Cruchler
bullet Jacob Richards
bullet Thomas Blair
bullet William Ware
bullet John Anderson
bullet Edmund Bleney
bullet John Doran
bullet John Wilson
bullet George Ledley
bullet William Dickson
bullet James Johnson
bullet Richard London
bullet John Colvan
bullet Ralph Wilson
bullet Jacob Trimbo
bullet Thomas Ramsey

These names prove the original settlers of Nockamixon were english-speaking people and, as was the case in Tinicum, and, in other parts of the county, the Germans overran the township subsequently.

 
As of the census2 of 2000, there were 3,517 people, 1,337 households, and 989 families residing in the township