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;
