From the Archives

From the July-August-September 20205 Newsletter

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A little bit of Hulmeville History – Hulmeville during the American Revolution

Happy 249th Birthday USA! As our nation prepares to celebrate its semiquincentennial (half of 500) anniversary in 2026, it seems like a good time to review what was happening in Hulmeville during the American Revolution. The American Revolution started twenty years before John Hulme moved to this location which was known as Milford Mills before the Hulmes came here. In 1776, most of the land that is known as Hulmeville was owned by three families who were descendants of early Dutch settlers. The Vansants owned the northern end of town, the Prauls had been living on the farm at the top of the hill for fifty years and owned most of what became the center of Hulmeville, and the Rue family had a large farm at the southern end of town. Milford Mills and these farms were all part of Middletown Township. The community got its name because of the mills that were situated where there was a ford across the Neshaminy Creek. These mills were part of a narrow property that included land on both sides of the creek that stretched from the dam to just below where the Fricke mill now stands. This property was purchased by Hugh Hartshorne and Ebenezer Large from the estate of Stephen Williams just before the revolution started. Information gleaned from advertisements at the time show these men to be entrepreneurs with numerous businesses including a store next to Christ Church in Philadelphia. At the time, flaxseed oil seemed to be the main product of the mills, but the mills also had been set up to process grain, wool and wood.

This busy property with all of its business activity may have become a target for soldiers looking for supplies from both sides during the revolution but there is no record of this taking place. We do know that Captain John Harrison from just across the creek in Bensalem was a veteran of the war and is buried in Beechwood cemetery. It has also been recorded that John Praul was a “prominent patriot” during the war and was rewarded with a position as a state judge after the war. Following the war John Blundin, another Revolutionary War veteran settled in the village. Blundin was from Massachusetts and was one of the original Minutemen from the start of the war in 1775. He became a member of the cavalry in an elite unit called the Commander-in-Chief’s Guard that served Washington. After the war, Blundin settled in Hulmeville so maybe he traveled through here as he served.

Despite the veterans who lived here after the war, there isn’t much Revolutionary War history to be told about Milford Mills (Hulmeville). However, the Pennsylvania state archives from 1778 contain one interesting story that provides some insight into how the war was affecting the daily lives of people in this community. According to legal depositions of local residents Garret and John Vansant, British officers from NJ came here to steal supplies from the Vansants who supported the American cause. The depositions were taken by the Pennsylvania government to use later in an attempt to have NJ capture the thieves.

The Vansant family-owned hundreds of acres at the northern end of town. One of the family houses is now known as Spring Valley Farm and is situated at 800 Walnut Street. It is owned by Middletown Township as open space and the house is rented out. This property is at a place where today, the communities of Hulmeville, Niddletown and Penndel meet. The house was built by the Vansants with some records indicating that it was first constructed in 1706. In 1778, it was owned by Garret Vansant. According to his deposition, on June 8th, Garret’s son, Garret Jr., who was 15 years old, was visiting a widow in Bristol Township when three British officers came to her door. He left through the back door and went home to Spring Valley farm. When he arrived, he found the British officers had arrived there first. They made him let them in the house, feed their horses, light a fire and give them all of the meat and cheese and some other valuables that the Vansants had. The British then planned to take the horses and a wagon but the horses were gone so they had Garret hitch their horses to the Vansant’s wagon. Next the British tied Garret Jr. up, put him in the wagon and drove towards Bristol. As they approached Bristol, they untied him and let him go but fired a shot at him as he fled.

Garret’s brother John’s deposition reveals why there were no horses for the British to steal. He said he was at home when the British officers first arrived at the house. He saw they were armed with guns and swords and so he jumped out of a window of the house, took a horse from the stable and drove their other horses from their pasture. John was an Ensign in the American military. He rode to alert militia members in the area of the British presence and then returned home. With his brother missing and the wagon gone, he went looking for Garett and the stolen wagon and supplies. Eventually with the help of the American Army the wagon was recovered in Trenton. On June 10th, John and Garret went to retrieve their things and after crossing to PA on a ferry they were attacked again, robbed and beaten. In his deposition John said he went and got some local militia members, and they found some of the attackers, reclaimed some of their possessions and charged the men with robbery.

So, while Hulmeville does not have any stories of dramatic battles taking place here during the Revolution, the story of the Vansant brothers shows that the tensions of the war were present right here. Because the old Vansant house is still here, if you take a stroll down quiet Walnut Avenue you can imagine John Vansant jumping out one of the windows there at Spring Valley farm fleeing the British officers and for a moment, the excitement the American Revolution can come back to life.

From the April-May-June 20205 Newsletter

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A little bit of Hulmeville History – Hulmeville and Baseball

Spring is in the air and it’s time for another year of baseball. Hulmeville had a long love affair with baseball in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Baseball was taking off across the United States in the second half of the nineteenth entury. In the summer of 1874, the Hulmeville Beacon reported on this phenomenon coming to Lower Bucks County. “Base Ball – This athletic pleasure of our young men is quite the rage at the present time. The clubs bear the names of ‘Schenck’s’ of Schenck’s Station (Croydon), ‘Keystone’ of Hulmeville, ‘Resolutes’ of Attleboro (Langhorne) and ’Goldsmith‘ of Bristol. On Friday last the second game between the ’Schencks‘ and ’Keystones‘ was played. The game was a very exciting one and was won by the ’Schencks’ by 13 runs— _the score standing at 35—22. The game was drawn on account of a violent storm which passed over the section when the above score was reached.” Imagine how many runs would have been scored if not for the storm. The Philadelphia Quakers formed in 1883 and changed their name to the Phillies in 1890.

By the 1890s local players were travelling to away games by using the trolley that came through town. According to a story in the Hulmeville Borough Centennial booklet, “… for an afternoon game the men would board the trolley in the morning, get off at the next tavern, spend a little time, board the next trolley to the next tavern and so on. These boys must have been pretty wild by game time.” Despite this, the Hulmeville teams were very successful.

In 1927, the Hulmeville team had a record of 38-6 and won the league championship. The team played at a field that was created on Reetz avenue behind the wallpaper mill that was at Reetz and Main. Newspaper accounts reported that hundreds of fans regularly showed up at these games in the twenties and thirties with one game having 2,000 people in attendance. In 1933, the Boston Black Sox of the National Negro League came to Reetz Avenue to play the Hulmeville A.A. team.

Some stars of the team from the 20s and 30s were Charles “Dutch” Afflerbach, Leon “Bing” Comly, George Bilger, and pitcher Howard Black. Black even went on to play professional baseball in the minor league for a short time. At the end of the 1936 season, The Bristol Courier announced that Bing Comly and Dutch Afflerbach were retiring after twenty-five years on the Hulmeville team: “‘Bing’ Comly and ‘Dutch’ Afflerbach, stalwarts on the Hulmeville baseball team for 25 years, have finally come to the conclusion that they can’t go on like Tennyson’s brook, forever… These two chaps have done much for baseball in the lower end of this county having played on many of Hulmeville’s championship teams for more years than any other player with the possible exception of Howard Black… We salute you Bing and Dutch.”

From the January-February-March 20205 Newsletter

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A little bit of Hulmeville History – An 1884 Hulmeville School Sleigh Ride and so much more

In 2023, someone dropped a box of artifacts on the porch of former Hulmeville Historical Society President, Marce Heald. The box included photos and a very old cross stitch sampler as well as the diary of Sarah Emma Townsend who was a young woman when she wrote it between 1884 and 1888. Ms. Townsend was born in 1866 and went by the name of Emma. In addition to the original diary, there was a copy of a transcribed version which was handwritten by Margaret MacQueen of Norristown. It must have been a descendent of Mrs. MacQueen who left the box with Marce.

Emma was the daughter of Lewis and Martha Townsend, and they had another daughter named Mary Jane. Emma mentions at the start of the diary that her grandmother Anna Eliza Van Horn who lived with her had a birthday and had turned 84 in 1884. Anna is the person who created the cross-stitch sampler that was in the box Marce received. Lewis Townsend like his father was a carpenter and the undertaker in the town. The Townsend and VanHorn family had been in Bucks County since colonial times. The Townsends lived on the creek in the house that is now 404 Main Street. They had many relatives in town, including the Prauls who owned the large farm on the hill. Emma’s diary also indicates that her mother and she were both often ill although it’s not clear what the health problems were.

Emma provides many unique insights into life in Hulmeville. She was attending school at the Hulmeville School in 1884 and was quite fond of the Miss Clara who was the schoolteacher. Emma sometimes helped with teaching some of the younger students but still was taking classes herself. She writes about attending Sons of Temperance meetings at Johnson’s Hall as well as visits with Pastor Gilbert from the Methodist Church. During one of these visits Emma and Mary Jane had a snowball fight with the pastor.

There is so much of interest in the diary but one thing that can’t escape the reader’s attention is her descriptions of the very cold, snowy winters in Hulmeville in the 1880s. Emma regularly reported on the weather throughout the diary. In fact, the entries from 1886 to 1888 are almost exclusively about the weather and include temperatures and barometer readings. She often describes the frozen creek, ice skating and wrote about riding a sled down Trenton Road from Praul’s (Black’s) driveway all the way to the printing shop at the corner of Trenton and Bellevue. She went into detail about one wintery adventure in January of 1884. The month started out with rain and the creek flooding, but it began to snow on the 11th and continued snowing through the week. On the 18th, Emma wrote, “It is splendid weather to-day, all the scholars are in a splutter for we expect to go sleighing this afternoon. If we can get sleighs. We hurried though our classes. After dinner we put on more clothing and our caps. Miss Clara called school, and we got ready. We had 2 cart bodies, Mr. Websters meat sleigh and two 2-seater sleighs. We were packed there was about 80 scholars. We went to Newportville School first thense to Flushing, it was a splendid ride. After that we rode through Edington and past Hermitage School and come home the Milford Road by burnt tavern, when we got home it was after 4 and my feet were nearly frozen. We sang most of the way there and back. The first time our school ever went sleighing.”

As you take a walk down Main Street this winter, near the school, imagine Emma and 80 scholars returning from their sleigh ride. If you listen closely, you may even here them singing. Emma Townsend’s diary offers so many opportunities for us to get a better understanding of life in Hulmeville in the 19th century. We plan to share more with you in future newsletters. We’re so grateful to Mrs. MacQueen and her descendants for donating their family artifacts to us. If you have any artifacts that relate to Hulmeville history and would like to donate them to the Hulmeville Historical Society rchives, please contact Joe Coleman at jcole1052019@gmail.com

From the July/August/September 2024 Newsletter

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A little bit of Hulmeville History – Hulmeville and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School

(Note: This is an excerpt taken from Hulmeville Borough - A History at 150)

For over thirty years Hulmeville farmers brought Native Americans from the Carlisle Indian School to live and work in Hulmeville as part of the school’s “outing program.” In the late nineteenth century, the United States government promoted a policy of assimilation for Native Americans in which they were forced to abandon their own culture. Native American children were removed from their families and sent to live at distant boarding schools where they were stripped of their family heritage and culture and forced to adopt the culture of American society.

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was the best known of these schools. There was a practice at the school called the “Outing” process in which young men were sent to rural communities to work on farms. This was usually done in the summer but occasionally also took place during the winter. The young men were paid a salary and when possible, received education. Several of them attended the public school in Hulmeville at times. Many Bucks County towns hosted students from the Carlisle School. A 1904 newspaper article reported that on one spring day over one hundred students from Carlisle arrived in Bucks County by train.

Native American students came to Hulmeville as part of the outing program as early as 1887 and continued to come until 1918 when the Carlisle School closed. Newspaper articles from the 1890s show that Hulmeville resident William Noon often visited the school. An 1898 article in the Bristol Courier refers to Hulmeville and states, “The people of this vicinity have for several years showed a good deal of interest in the Indian boys from Carlisle School. Invitations have been received to attend commencement this week, and although the invitations may not have been generally accepted, Hulmeville is ably represented by the ‘Indians’ Friend’ W.W. Noon.” Also, the Carlisle School had a newspaper called the Indian Helper, and a brief note in an 1898 edition states, “Mr. Noon of the Hulmeville Advance Bucks County was among the visitors on Friday. Mr. Noon is well known among our boys and always receives a warm welcome.” Noon seems likely to have played a key role in bringing the boys to Hulmeville. Other years, both Jesse Webster and Joseph Canby visited the school. The Hulmeville Borough Centennial booklet states that the young men from the school worked on the farms of Jesse Webster, Joe Canby, James Hibbs, and John Praul. Jesse Webster was likely the most frequent host as he took two young men on “Outing” each summer and two others during the winter months. Records from the Carlisle School show that he completed report cards for them and paid them eighteen dollars per month. The students attended the Hulmeville School when they stayed in town.

The 1972 Hulmeville Borough Centennial booklet also includes recollections of Hulmeville residents who played football and baseball with the students, who in turn taught them how to ride horses. The book states approximately twelve to fifteen boys would come to town each year. Since this process went on for nearly thirty years. There were usually different students sent for summer and winter outings, so there were hundreds of Native Americans who lived in Hulmeville at one time or another at the turn of the last century. These young men came from many different tribes including Cherokee, Sioux, Kickapoo, Chippewa, Navajo, Hopi, and Pawnee. John Wolf, Nick Bradley, George Collins, Johnson Owl, Thomas Irons, and Henry Jones were among them.

Dickinson College hosts a website, with a searchable database, called the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center, where more information about the young men who came from Carlisle can be found, https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu.

From the Jan/Feb/March 2024 Newsletter

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A little bit of Hulmeville History – Slavery in Hulmeville

Some may be surprised to learn that the institution of slavery was practiced in Hulmeville but in fact, enslaved people lived, worked, had children, were sold, and attempted escaped throughout the 1700s and into early 1800s in Milford Mills which was the name of the village that became Hulmeville. The numbers were small, but the presence of slavery was consistent throughout this era. There were two well documented instances of residents who held enslaved people. Stephen Williams and John Praul and his son both claimed ownership of enslaved people. Williams and Praul were two of the wealthiest men in Middletown Township in the 18 th century and the houses where they lived and kept these enslaved people still stand in Hulmeville today.

Stephen Williams owned the mills along the creek and the house that is now 2 Water Street from the early 1750s through the 1770s. He placed numerous advertisements in Philadelphia newspapers related to enslaved people. Most of the ads reference one man named Plymouth. Plymouth ran away from Williams in 1753 and 1756. From the advertisements he seems to have worked as a miller. He also played the fiddle very well. Plymouth must have been captured and returned because he is advertised for sale in 1758. That same year for some reason he and four other people broke out of the jail in Newtown. It’s possible that’s where he was being held after he had been recaptured. In 1760 Williams didn’t used his name but advertised that he was selling two negro men, one of whom was a miller. In addition to Plymouth, Williams mentions a number of other people that he is selling. The largest number he advertised at one time was in 1758 when he offered a total of six people for sale. The ad (shown above) said he had three negro men, a negro woman and “a negro boy or two.”

While Williams held enslaved people on the banks of the Neshaminy, the Praul family enslaved people on the top of the hill in Hulmeville. The Praul’s owned hundreds of acres of land, mostly in the area that is now the center of Hulmeville. They lived in the house known as Bunting’s Farm or Black’s Farm. John Praul purchased this land and moved onto the property in the 1720s and it stayed in his family for 200 years until the Buntings purchased it in the 1920s. It’s not clear how many enslaved people he had living there with him but as show in his 1771 will depicted above, he left a portion of the house and an enslaved woman name Hager to his wife Jane “to hold to her… forever.” Additionally, his son Peter, who inherited a farm in Southampton, was left an enslaved man named Cato. John Praul’s oldest son who was also named John inherited the farm and house in Hulmeville. He also owned enslaved people. In 1780 Pennsylvania passed a gradual abolition law which required slave owners to register their slaves and to eventually free any children born to enslaved women after 1780. The registration records show that John Praul owned seven enslaved people when he completed his registration. They were Cato (38 yrs.), Jack (35 yrs.), Nan (32 yrs.), Luce (8 yrs.), Jud (6 yrs.) Sam (3 yrs.) and Suk (3 mos.). This John Praul was very wealthy and also a judge on the PA court of common pleas. However, he also had two hundred acres around his home that was farmed, and it is likely that these enslaved people helped with that farm work once they were old enough. It was common for enslaved people to live in a section of the owner’s home and so it’s quite possible that these people lived in the Praul’s house. Another common practice was for them to be buried on the edge of the property in unmarked graves, but we do not know for certain if that was the case on the Praul farm. In the 1790 census John Praul registered only three enslaved people living with him. Documents show that in 1798 John Praul Jr. freed both Luce at the age of twenty-one and Jud, who was eighteen in accordance with the gradual abolition law, but it is unclear what happened with the other five people.

From the July/August/September 2021 Newsletter

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Impressions of Summers in the 1970s. Submitted by Kurt Ludwig

Fishing – Anywhere on the Neshaminy Creek was fair game, but the dam behind the Old Colonial Inn on Beaver St. was a prime spot. We would hunt for crayfsh to use as bait in the old Mill Race along Water St. which still had flowing water in it then. At night, we would fsh for catfish, eels & carp with a cornmeal ball and a weight.

Walking through the field to feed the horses on the Black Farm a carrot or an apple Somehow, they always knew when you would be at the fence with a treat for them.

Bikes – Your bike meant the freedom to go anywhere in town, fast. Penndel could be part of your daily patrols. We developed an intimate familiarity with every bumpy manhole cover on the sidewalks before that knowledge was relevant to serving on the Municipal Authority. We would ride on the jeep track that ran through the field on the Black Farm, over the trickle of a creek into the woods. There a network of trails ran crisscross, taking you behind Herbert Hoover Elementary School, or exiting onto the Pennsylvania Ave. extension. If you were feeling adventurous, the off road paradise of the quarry at the terminus of Reetz Ave. promised excitement and danger! A town wide skirmish of Capture the Flag might enlist dozens of Hulmeville kids, with the boundaries of the Borough as the battlefield.

Sports – Basketball on the court behind the Hulmeville School (now Borough Hall), or maybe street hockey. There were always two hoops, but not always two nets... What is now the soccer field we used for basically everything except for soccer. A pickup game of baseball only required a few balls, a couple of bats and a big enough pile of gloves to field one team at a time. There were two homeplate back stops at opposite ends of the field, so the outfield could be dicey if there were two games going at once. Football was also an option, as was frisbee. Where there are now houses on Reetz Ave. was another field, across from what is now Preston’s Garage, but then the old brick Textiles Mill. This could be utilized for overflow sporting activities, if needed.

From the April/May/June 2021 Newsletter

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From the November/December 2020 Newsletter

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