BUCKWAMPUN ASSOCIATION

The Intelligencer 1900-06-11

Doylestown, PA. Monday June 11, 1900

 Thirteenth Annual Meeting

      Held at Pullen

The Historical Literary and Musical Program of Exercises Attract a Large Audience-Excelient Papers Presented and an Address by Harvey S. Kiser,Esq.

The thirteenth annual meeting of the Buckwampun Historical and Literary Association was held Saturday afternoon at  Pullen, on the Quakertown and Eastern Railroad, four miles from Quaker- town, the little station house standing at  the converging lines of three townships- Haycock, Richland and Springfield.  The  meeting was held in the woods of William Heft, in Springfield township, a couple of hundred yards from the township line, and a few miles north were the  beautiful hills of the Rocky Valley, just inside of the Bucks and Northampton county line.  This valley was formerly an inland sea, and Charles Laubach of  Riegelsville, the noted geologist of Bucks county, says of the geology of this section:  We notice some of the fields as well as the woods strewn with boulders of trap-solid trap in place is rather rare right here-what we do see is merely trap rubbish, boulders and yellowish and reddish gray loam of fluffy decomposed trap which is always accompanied by blocks of trappean rocks the size of a small hay stack, as well as smaller ones. The larger solid trap exposures in the New Red (Trias) are at Stony Garden, Ringing Rocks and Pottstown following  everywhere one geological horizon.   To the south and west from here, a large expanse of country was in earliest times of a wet swampy nature, and in  the spring of the year is yet extensively so.  Most of the boulders and trap rubbish seen here belongs to overflow sheets  and came to the surface through long trough-like dikes, rather than through circular volcanic craters, like Haycock,  Ringing Rocks and other localities  It may be noted that the trap here is in the axis of an extensive anticlinal, and  was supplied by the wide spread bed  that occurs to the northwest a short distance from here.  All the trap here occurs in  the form of an overflow sheet, the covering of shale having been removed by  erosion, but during the forming of the shale in these parts, igneous activity  was also in progress, but the overflow of the molten mass occurred some time after the shales had been partly baked, as  in many instances the later shale deposits above the trap remain unaffected.  Al- though some of the trap rock here differs somewhat in appearance, its structure and composition are very similar. Its structure throughout approximates granular, or imperfectly crystallised pyroxene consisting of hornblende titanic iron feldspar and augite, all, however, being genetically connected, but divided into four different species distinguished as follows: Diabase, dolerite, gabbro and epidiorite,  Diabase is a rock cinsisting of augite, feldspar and titanic iron, and all the evidence points to the fact that most of the trappean rocks have been derived from this and the doierite rocks. Diabase is well represented at Ringing Rocks, at Bridgeton, Bucks county, Pa., and other places.

  Dolerite resembles diabase but contains more titanic iron and augite also some magnetite and sphene.  Most of the rocks lying about belong to gabbro variety, which very much in color according to the size of the grain-the fine grained rocks being dark gray to nearly black while the coarse grained are light gray. The gabbro variety is well represented at Rockhill and Shelly station; also at  Stony Garden, Haycock.

  Epidiorite on account of the large percentage of hornblende, is of a greenish color. and more tough than grbbro and not easily worked into paving rocks, the base of the trappean rocks near, Coopersburg are of the gabbro variety.  The great diversity in the direction of the axes of the rock folds in this section, is owing to the prominence and firmness of the earlier rock ridges and the shore line on the northern borders of the ancient Triassic sea. The axes of the folds of rock beds in any given region, are a guide to the history and conditions of an earlier period in the world's evolution, and in a general way are parallel to the older ridges that could resist and bound the movements of the more recent deposits.  The precise order of the changes we cannot trace yet, their general character and tendency we are at no loss to discover; but we do know that the pent- up fires within would seek vent, the volcanoes would disgorge their contents, and the earthquake would shake and dislocate the land and the sea.

  Pullen station is named after Samuel Pullen, who resides within a hundred feet of the station, and to him the Intelligencer is indebted for courtesies shown its representative on Saturday. On the other side of the railroad lies the farm of William Heft, upon whose land the meeting was held, and near by still stands one of the oldest log houses in upper Bucks county.  It was occupied at the beginning of the century by a man named Klotx, who drove six-horse freight teams on Bethlehem pike from Allentown and Bethlehem to Philadelphia.  It is a picturesque old building and was occupied up to about a dozen years ago, but it is now falling into de- cay, yet there are still numbers of old fashioned flowers found blooming in the door yard in an uncultivated state.  Mr. Heft has a copy of the Doylestown Ex- press, published January 7, 1846, by M. H. Schneider, a German paper, which was the predecessor, probably, of the DerMorganstern, now also defunct.   The meeting was attended by about four hundred persons many of whom drove long distances to attend the annual event which means much to those interested in the history of the upper end of Bucks county.  Owing to the inability of the president, Hon. C. E. Hindenach, of Durham, to be present, Ryan Rapp, of  Riegelsville, presided and delivered a brief address at the opening of the exercises,  The program was enjoyably interspersed with excellent music by a number of the members of the Quaker- town Band.  All the papers read, which will appear in full in subsequent issues of the Intelligencer, evidenced keen re- search into historical facts and legendary lore, with which that section is replete, and were well presented.

  The first paper was by Miss Myra Brodt, of Springtown, on the Franklin School, situated at the forks of the road leading from Springtown to Bursonville and Pleasant Valley, nearly opposite the Bursonville creamery.  It was formally known as the "Eight Square" but after- wards changed to "Barrons" school.   Rev. O. H. Melchor of Springtown, presented another interesting instalment, of a series of papers on "The Pioneer Preachers," his subject being Muhlen- berg and his work in Bucks county.   "Old Time Grist Mills" was  the subject  of an excellent paper by Miss Carrie S. Kulp. Miss Kulp dealt with the history of the seven old grist mills which line Cook's creek, from the source in Spring- field township to the point where it enters Durham.

  Harvey S. Kiser, of Doylestown, de- livered an address on "The Individual in History."  He spoke in a commandatory way of the work and influence of the association, and expressed the hope that it would live long and grow in influence and usefullness. He urged the necessity of studying some prominent characters in order to get the best good and to arouse the most interest in the study of history, national as well as local.  A few examples were given of persons prominent as "history makers" and how thru study of their lives created fresh interest in that branch of history which is a result of their labours.   Other papers read were by Miss Clara R. Laubach, of Riegelsville, on "Morgan- town," Miss Katie Knecht "A Sketch of Pullen," and Rev. A. P. Horne, of Hellertown, "Several of the Old Spring- field Pastors."

  The indefatigable secretary of the association, Charles Laubach, has in preparation an article on the typography of the country through which the Quaker- town and Eastern railroad runs, and the geology of the valley, which has been  filled up, it is sain 16,00 feet since the  ages when it was an inland sea.