June 27, 2008 Recent new neighbors (2nd house down) on River Road gave a house warming party, where I had a conversation with Bob Leegard (3rd house down) about the "Belville Home" as shown in the 1908 Linford R. Craven photograph. Somewhere in the conversation Bob mentioned with some satisfaction that they were only the 5th owners of the house. This statement startled me until I realized he was not taking the 1763 Ferry Road "road return" into account.

July 5, 2008 In a follow-up I explained, although Auerbach had found the 1763 road return by 1987, it wasn't until 1999 that we proved it definitely ran directly to the site of Thomas Yardley's ferry house at the "Belville site." The road return clearly identified the survey as "Beginning near Thomas Yeardley's ferry house..." and if you started counting from that date there would have been at least 8 owners (Yardley, Stapler, Leedom, Vansant, Green, Hough, Longshore, Belville), not counting the Margerum legatees of which two were represented by their guardian William Longshore. There was no further follow-up.

There were Two Studies Made Prior to 1995:

• Comprehensive study titled "Lanrick Manor [the old "Belville Home"] (including a Historical Synopsis for the Yardley Ferry)" with 15+ pages of exhaustive research of documents, said report dated January 1987, prepared by Kathryn Ann Auerbach, the well known Architecture and Preservation, Consultant.
  
  
• Detailed architectural history of Lanrick Manor contained in the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) possibly dating from 1989.

Auerbach Study of Lanrick Manor:

Kathryn Ann Auerbach carried out the first ever comprehensive analysis and report on the Yardley Ferry, and was the first to uncover the 1763 road return. That road which existed only from 1763 to 1796 seems to have completely escaped notice of most mapmakers, especially those who made maps during the Revolutionary War while working strictly on the New Jersey side of the river, but also including mapmakers after the ferry boat era ended, who used (for example) an 1830s map as their base map and/or background onto which they drew their new maps purporting to show the ferry road network of the 1700s.

At least some parts of the 1763 road return located outside Yardley Borough resembled Oxford Valley Road, but the "metes and bounds" in the description wouldn't fit onto the terrain in such a way that it terminated inside the Lanrick Manor lot. But you will see below in the paragraph titled "Civil Engineer Walking for Exercise" - the methods we employed were able to overcome various ambiguities in the 18th century "road returns." Another factor was not finding architectural evidence (see subsequent paragraph items 5 and 6 from Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) report).

HABS Report: The following extract speaks for itself:

"LANRICK MANOR HABS NO. MD-5495 (page 3)
1982 Deed 2476:576, 20 September 1982"

"5. Original plans and construction: Although it has been suggested that the kitchen wing of the house was built prior to the main block, architectural evidence, according to historian, Kathryn Auerbach, seems to suggest that it was in fact built at the same time. As evidence Auerbach points out that structural system of the basement indicates that the kitchen was built contemporaneous with the main block; and that moldings, such as the window trim, in both sections match. There does appear, however, to be a seam in the second story of the kitchen wing, suggesting that it was originally a single story. In fact, it was not uncommon for service wings to be set-off from the formal section of a structure by its scale and proportions as seen here at Lanrick Manor."

"6. Alterations, additions: A number of alternations have been made in the kitchen section. A seam in the stone facade indicates that the second story of the kitchen wing was added later/ and the window moldings suggest a date ca. 1835-1850. Later, the roof was raised to a saltbox gable, aligning it with the roof of the main block while also adding an attic space. A stairway from the first story kitchen to the rooms above has been removed."
[On Google type: Lanrick Manor HABS]

Civil Engineer Walking for Exercise

We had never heard of either the Auerbach study (until Vince Profy gave us a copy in 1995), or the HABS report (until sometime after we got our FIOS hookup a few years ago). My objective was walking for exercise after my 1993 bypass. Over the previous years I had built up a collection of antique photographs (real photograph postcards) showing various early 1900s views of Yardley. To make walking more interesting I set out on foot looking for various buildings, etc. A centerpiece of my collection was a photograph of the old Belville home with the "Belville Home" Yardley, Pa caption written by Craven himself. The left part of the house was said by some to be the Thomas Yardley ferry house. I asked Vince Profy if he had any information on the ferry, and he gave us a copy of the Auerbach report.

Finding the ferry roads involved searching for traces of the actual road on the surface of the ground. As various clues and other information were uncovered, I worked back and forth along the suspect road locations using an engineer's hand compass, hand level, and calibrated pacing methods (recounted in letter dated April 12, 1999 to Jim Ceglia, P.E., licensed surveyor PA and NJ.), plotting the results along with deed and "road return" descriptions at 1"=100' scale on clear plastic overlays, while Marie-Therese Hale (M-Th) exclusively did the document search for specific locations I identified.

River Access Ramp (1763 Ferry Road)
Notable sources of information used to identify the location of the 1763 River Access Ramp, included: 1) 1763 road return, 2) 1796 document vacating the 1763 road, said road "beginning near the Yardley ferry house," 3) 1794 road return showing Fleming's, 4) 1764 newspaper ad reference to location of Howell's ferry (found by others), 5) 1779 survey by Erskine with detailed sketch of ferry crossing, 6) June 3, 1999 Analysis by Ralph Thompson, Massachusettes Institute of Technology, Class of 1940.

Fischer's Maps
Pulitzer Prize winning book titled "Washington's Crossing" by David Hackett Fischer, 2005. The book contains 19 interesting maps, which make the text very easy to follow. Sixteen (16) of these were drawn by Jeffrey L. Wood © 2004, including two (2) on pages 213 and 229 showing the Yardley road network on December 25, 1776. But each of these two maps shows the Yardley road network different from what is shown on the other. The way this is presented is a way of showing that the precise location of those roads is unknown.

Robert Erskine Map
A new report prepared for Mercer County, titled "Bear Tavern Road, Archeological Study" by John Milner Associates, Inc., Philadelphia, included a copy of the top part of a Robert Erskine map made in 1779 ---the exact same map, the bottom part of which contained the detailed sketch of the Howell's ferry crossing found by Bill O'Neal.

Ralph Thompson's Maps
Following was copied from: CartoBibliography of Pennsylvania Maps Prior to 1800

Part 1: Maps in the Library of Congress - by John W. Docktor

"19_T7
Ralph N. Thompson, [1680s onward]
Lower Makefield Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, map of original grantees / the ... grantee map has been prepared by Ralph N. Thompson, Director of Research, Lower Makefield Historical Society
Size: 44x55 cm. Scale of 1: 19,200 G3824.L79G465 .T4
"The grantee map in dark ink overlays a modern street map ..." and was made by Ralph N, Thompson in 1987. It shows land grants with grantees' names, town of origin, and acreage around the borough of Yardley.

"298T7
Ralph N. Thompson, 1798
Lower Makefield Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, historical map 1798 / the historical map has been prepared by Ralph N. Thompson, Director of Research, Lower Makefield Historical Society
Size: 44x55 cm. Scale of 1: 19,200 G3824.L79G46 1798 .T4
"This map of Lower Makefield Township has been reconstructed from the United States House Tax List of 1798 and contemporary deeds and surveys" by Ralph N. Thompson in 1988. It shows land tracts and the owners' names. The town of Yardley is included."

Ralph Thompson's analysis of 1798 tax list and Yardley deed to Richard Green's sons Joseph & George Green:

1. There were only two dwelling units on 111-acre tract shown on Thompson map
2. One of those dwellings had high valuation of $800
3. One of those dwellings had low valuation of $150
4. Richard Green was living in the $800 dwelling owned by T. Yardley, Jr.
5. Enoch Green was living in the $150 house owned by Green
6. The 1800 deed revealed late Richard Green had lived in Ferry House for several years

The 1794 road survey (found by M-Th) had identified a building named Fleming's near the foot of Afton Avenue. This confirmed the location derived from the 1922 Scattergood deposition. Only two dwellings are listed on the 1798 tax assessment list. There are no other dwellings with windows in the 111-acre tract, and in fact there were only a handful of houses said to be just starting to form a village in 1807 and this was outside the 111-acre tract down along the river. With regard to the $150 assessment for Dwelling #2 on the tax list, there may be a paradox here. If the Yardley ferry house had a limited number of very small windows, its real market value could have been much higher depending of course what other criteria was used. It would be a case where the very tax document that revealed the fact that that Dwelling #2 existed and provide name of the owner and the occupant, simultaneously concealed its true value.

The main part of Lanrick Manor was built shortly after 1805. If the Yardley ferry house is believed to have been removed without a trace sometime between December 1795 and 1798, then we are left still searching for Dwelling #2 shown on the 1798 tax list.

Other than by revisiting the findings of the Lanrick Manor HABS report of 1989 either by Auerbach and/or others specialized in that field, we might try working backwards toward the 1798 date looking for buildings which existed later and which could have conceivably been there in 1798. And this would be the "only" remaining course of action in the event that it was somehow confirmed that the Yardley ferry house did indeed exist past 1798 and that somehow it was not included in the 1798 tax list.

[Revision Dtd. 5-29-2011]
"Hemp Cable" "Reaction Ferry" References

Copies (Original Letter): Profy, White, Leegard, Schillinger
Bill O'Neal, Jr., Friends of the William Green Farmhouse, Ewing Township, NJ