Extract of Lawrence H. Hale letter written to:

Annamae Bakun, President
Yardley Historical Association

The writings[1] I gave you last summer, particularly the chronology, are research results which are not in final form and I hope to do more with them. In the meantime, references are cited for the many maps, deeds, and documents Marie-Therese found. Recently, I took a little time to assemble a system of colored map overlays. I laid them out on two 4' x 10' pieces of thin plywood, hoping the next time to permanently affix them into some sort of portable arrangement. The base map is the Topographic Survey Map of Lower Makefield, 2-foot contour aerial photos which includes topography right up to the edge of the Borough. This gives us a very accurate 500 foot grid. Yardley Borough except for the grid, is blank, but we have an extremely accurate outline of the Borough. For the blank area inside the Borough I downloaded aerial photos from the internet so that I now have a strip of aerial photo maps following the 1721 road right into Yardley and to the river. I brought everything to the same scale as the 1924 Sanborn Fire Maps. The colored overlay I'm having the most fun with is the 1752 survey of lands being conveyed from Thomas Yardley to his son Thomas Yardley Jr.

I provided Ralph N. Thompson (the M.I.T. engineer) with copies of these writings and he reviewed and signed-off on my location for the 1763 road. All the various information fits, and there are no significant remaining unanswered questions regarding the 1763 Ferry Road location inside Yardley Borough.

In my opinion the location of the "Yardley Ferry House" (the starting point of the 1763 survey) is now proved to be at the Belville site and is undoubtedly the left side of the "Belville Home." I refer to it as the "Belville Ferry House" until such time as a better date is established for the original structure on the left side, so we're sure it was indeed built by Yardley and not by Brock. As the centerpiece of my Linford R. Craven postcard presentation I'm sticking with the Belville name. In relatively recent times the overall structure has been named Lanrick Manor. There is no doubt in my mind that the left side of Belville is both the Ferry House and the Tavern which existed in 1763. Linford Craven's circa 1905 photograph is shown below. Catharine Belville would have you note the lower windows on the original left side of the building which Craven photographed:

It took 5-years searching on the ground to find the 1763 Ferry Road. The easiest clue was finding the Belmondo fence at the same distance from the "Belville Ferry House" as the length of the first leg of the original survey (which had a beginning point somewhere in the vicinity of the "Yardley Ferry House"). But I guessed wrong when I assumed the next leg was parallel to Belmondo, and had to search a long time to find the "side of the hill" described as the second corner of the 1763 Road Return. The search on the ground and difficulties encountered have already been described. It's amazing how easy all this now seems, after it has been solved.

When I started looking for the 1721 Ferry Road on the Afton Avenue side of the Borough, I naïvely assumed that I was dealing with only two roads: 1) the existing 1995 road, and 2) the 1721 road. Needless to say it turned out to be vastly more complicated. I had no idea that Ferry Road for most of it's history had always been located somewhere over near the Weidel sign ---on the opposite side of the Contental Inn rather than at the traffic light---, or that perhaps a dozen road relocations had occurred between 1721 and 1995.In view of these difficulties, you will understand the necessity of having a large size accurate mapping system with everything at the same scale. It is by this means I have been able to verify most of the findings. This recent map assemblage definitely confirms the location of the Ferry Road between the lake and the river during the years 1794 to 1829.

The precise location where the 1721 Ferry Road crossed Main Street has been difficult to pin down, but I believe I am within plus or minus 50 feet. One corner of the 1752 survey (the corner at or near Main Street) was said to be located "where two roads meet." If the 1721 Ferry Road connected to Main Street at this same point, this would place it about at the culvert which drains the lake, which is where I have it. Even some surveyors working on Main Street in the 1800's did not know the precise location of 1794 Ferry Road and left open the distance.

The 1794 Ferry Road location and subsequent relocations have now been resolved. The road always passed behind the Hyatt Drug Store site. Prior to 1807 it went straight toward the Grist Mill. The 1807 cut-off relocated it to a straight line passing between the Grist Mill and the Saw Mill. In other words it was shifted clockwise. It then followed a line under today's canal toward the rear of the Insurance Building and out to East Afton Avenue. It then turned sharply to the river on a line probably parallel to and some feet to the northwest side of said East Afton. Near the river it tied-in at a corner to the 1794 Morrisville Road.

Today, E. Afton starts to slope upward several hundred feet before it reaches the bridge abutment. In 1794 it probably sloped down starting the same distance away. Fleming's Tavern circa 1790 was at the corner. The Morrisville Road alignment at that time was almost under the present location of the monument. Fleming's in those days would have seemed to be on high ground relative the to Ferry Road whereas there is now higher "made" land leading up to the bridge abutment and in the vicinity. The land shelf opposite the Rescue Squad -you can observe it at the bottom of the steps- is about 5 feet below the ground level of the Rescue Squad, may well be the original elevation of River Road at the point where it intersected with Ferry Road, with a steep ferry ramp extending from there down to the river.

The fact that the 1794 Morrisville Road did not have to veer away from the river at Steaks & Things indicates that there was no main ferry ramp at Steaks & Things in 1794. So the Ferry Road mentioned in an early deed (said road being located directly in front of the storm inlet between Steaks & Things and the Rescue Squad) was probably built just prior to starting the original bridge construction. This "new" ferry ramp remained into modern times and was referred to as Ferry Road. The Ferry Road created by the 1893 Longshore subdivision is further to the south on the other side of "Steaks & Things" and obviously takes it's name from the actual road in front of the storm inlet.

I still could be surprised in some way regarding the location of the 1721 Ferry Road. Almost all my detective work so far shows the 1721 Road passing under or to the rear of the land upon which the library was built, and continuing in a straight line under the modern lake. I am aware that modern West Afton points directly toward the known landing site just below College Avenue and we don't want to lose sight of this very early landing site. But the length of the first leg of the 1721 survey between the river bank and Main Street almost dictates a location further upriver much closer to Afton. Meanwhile the route that I have selected takes into account most of the topography, as well as fitting more tightly with the mill location and the 1794 road network.

The effort to confirm the precise location of the 1721 Ferry Road is ongoing. I managed to take one final compass reading across the Leedom site before the recent building on that corner, and I'll take another look at the problem in the spring. Previously, I inspected the berm along the Friend's Meeting House side of the lake. Based on the terrain considerations, I suspect that the present berm is at the same location of the original berm. The fact that the 1721 survey proceeded "up the mill race" and not up a mill pond also helps narrow it down. It's unlikely that the mill race was located on the Afton Avenue side of the lake. In view of all this, I propose a scenario in which the race ran along the location just inside the present berm which defines the Meeting House side of the lake, thereby allowing enough room for the road location under the lake. There is also an abandoned and buried headwall indicating a waterway located very near the Lakeside Mansion fence line (the new wooden fence).

By 1752 a second race from White's Lake had been constructed. It crossed West Afton at the location of the storm culvert, and entered the lake at the point where the land juts out as shown on the Fire Maps. It appears that the initial pond may have been built only as far back as needed to accommodate this 2nd race. This early small pond would have required the relocation of the 1721 road.

The 1721 Ferry Road was probably shifted toward West Afton by 1752 because the survey on that date appears to encompass the mill pond. This would mean that the part of the 1721 road between the cemetery and the river was only used for about thirty years. Although I've found plenty of clues on the ground, these were not by themselves conclusive. So after I identified the most likely location of the 1721 on the ground, I attempted to confirm the selected route, first, by working forward and backward through the maze of relocations occurring up to 1829, and second to see if I could account for the modern road network and figure out how it tied back to the 1721 road. I succeeded in the first but we have not to date found a legal link on paper between the 1721 road and the road as it existed possibly by 1752 and definitely by 1794.

I cannot end this letter about the Yardley Ferry without recalling once again the ground breaking work by Auerbach. Each contributor plays an important role. For example, I was surprised and perhaps almost piqued, by the prominence assigned to the name Green on the Ralph Thompson maps. After all our village was known as Yardley's Ferry and Yardleyville, not Green's Ferry and Greenville. But when we checked into it we found that when it came to ferries the Greens were second to none, and we immediately started studying the Green family! But that story will be for another day.

Larry Hale