Extract of Letter to Susan Taylor, President
Yardley Historical Association, Yardley, Bucks County, Pennsylvania:

There have been some interesting developments supporting our findings about the ferry crossing near the railroad. You may recall at the end of my 1995 talk I showed a series of photographs on slides taken one after the next as I walked toward the river along the possible route of ferry road. It wasn't until 1999 that we finally pinned down the precise location of the 1763 ferry road ---most of our work was documented on our Craven's Yardley Site back in 2001. Starting with this letter on August 30, 2010 I am adding supplemental information about the   Howell's Ferry  served by Lower River Road on the New Jersey side.

The new information is in the form of an Archeological Study titled "Bear Tavern Road Over Jacobs Creek, Hopewell Township, Mercer County, New Jersey." This study employs the type of methods we used on this side of the river, including ground level studies of road returns, etc. Of special interest, on page 15 this new report cites the excellent reputation of the mapmaker Robert Erskine. The Erskine map they are using is the same identical map we used... they're working at the top of the sheet and we at the bottom. The reported accuracy of Erskine maps is what motivates me to offer supplemental information at this time.

I found out about the Erskine map from Bill O'Neal email dated Dec 4, 2000. I responded by email dated Dec. 7, 2000, containing information about river depths. Back in the 90s when I did the trial crossings from the earlier 1721 location using a pole instead of oars, I also floated down the center of the river and took depth readings. As you get closer to the bridge, the bottom of the river rises several feet, and the velocity of flow increases. A table based on (Bill O'Neal's) "Basin Commission Fishing Maps" shows the following depths starting just below Afton Ave and proceeding down the center of the river: 7-ft (Afton), 6-ft (Funeral Home), 5-ft (College Ave), 4-ft (Letchworth Ave), 5-ft, 6-ft (Railroad Bridge), 4-ft, 3-ft, 2-ft, 0-ft (Rotary Island). "The book, "A View of the River" by Leopold, 1994, Harvard Univ. Press on pgs. 21 to 29 (titled Riffles and Bars) indicates that a river bottom can be expected to drop down at relatively fixed intervals every 5- 7 widths." The rest of my letter attempted to describe the ferry operation based on Erskine's sketch.

I now realize the decreasing depths approaching Rotary Island would preclude a crossing too close to the island. Maybe Erskine observed this and handled it by showing the leading edge of the island under the worst possible low water conditions. We might also speculate that the two dotted lines forming a triangle are showing a pole ferry, and that the straight across perpendicular dotted line represents a (hemp)[1-18-11] cable ferry under the new ownership.

We have already confirmed the location of Howell's Ferry by the 3-mi and 4-mi distance references on an advertisement for a property on Pennington Road. The new information that Erskine did accurate work, led me to measure and calculate the distances on the [1882] Ewing Township Map versus the same road segments on the Erskine c.1778 (1779?) map. The distances from the creek to the ferry crossing is a small fraction of the distances up to either Wilburtha or Upper River Roads. I'll try to show the arithmetic later. And finally...

Erskine identifies the crossing near the railroad as Howell's [and does not survey Upper Ferry Road over to the river or provide a sketch of a ferry at that location - LHH 9-4-2010].

---Larry Hale, August 30, 2010


Yardley' Ferry Road Network Information

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