Extract of Lawrence H. Hale letter written to:

Jim Ceglia, P.E.
SITEWORKS
Greenhouse Office Plaza, Suite C
New Hope, PA 18938

Our neighbor and close friend Catharine Belville always claimed that the left side of her house was the Yardley Ferry House & Tavern. J. H. Battle in 1887 had broadly stated that "There was a tavern near the bank of the river, but the ferry was located some distance below what was now the central portion of the town…" but there were no details. The Belville claim was based mainly on the interior layout, the fact that the left third of the house was built years earlier than the rest, and the fact that the door of the original structure was on the left side facing down river. The Belville "Ferry House" viewed from River Road, has windows on the left side which are lower than those on the right side. This was mentioned by me in my talk on Linford R. Craven the "turn-of-the-century" Doylestown photographer, on March 13, 1995 to the Washington Crossing Post Card Club. The windows show up very well in a Craven photograph shown as Fig. 4 in the follow-up article published April 2, 1995, WC4 Dispatch #268. I later gave the same Craven photograph presentation to the Yardley Historical Association, adding at the end a short section about the Belville "Ferry House" and the 1763 road.

The purpose of this letter is mainly to record the field investigation techniques used in our search for the Yardley Ferry sites and roads. As I see it, the main problem with these early surveys can be divided into three main categories: 1) Accuracy of distance measurements and compass readings, 2) declination problems, and 3) copying errors. Of course there is also the underlying problem of trying to place these surveys onto the ground if just about all the references have disappeared. There is the additional unique problem of the very long straight runs to the river, and the fact that there is nothing further to line up on past the waters edge. Old surveying units of measure need to be converted.[1]

Some years back I was inspired by a conversation with retired land surveyor Lewis P. Booz, III, up in Perth Amboy and by his collection of antique surveying instruments. Since then I purchased antique surveying books including an 1818 Gibson and an 1883 Davies. Prior to the time you worked for me on the Middletown Borough job in Dauphin County during your college days, I had a few enjoyable years of land surveying (1969-1971)in Yardley and Bucks County and struggled with a few Civil War vintage deeds in Yardley. One survey for Mrs. Bristol of her lands up on Jericho Mountain involved measurements up the mountain to a "heap of stones" which was a thrill to find still there. Lewis Booz told me that these early surveyors knew about such things as declination but didn't bother with it. He said they used single poles to support their compasses and that they measured along the ground surface rather than on the horizontal. He suggested that one way to find out more about it would be to try using an old fashion chain. I did find an antique 300 foot engineer's steel tape at Lambertville which my grand daughter Sarah and I used on Oxford Road.

Practical Surveying by Robert Gibson, 1818
There is no indication of the date of the first edition of this book. It was revised by John D. Craig for the American Edition in 1816. The book is very scientific and well done. On page 278 it says, "The variation of the compass was first observed at London in the year 1580, to be one point of the compass easterly 11 degrees 15 minutes west after which time it became less ; for in the year 1622 it was 6 degrees 00 minutes east and so continued to decrease till the needle coincided with the true meridian, and then there was no variation ; after which the variation became westerly, and has ever since increased to the westward…" etc. By 1818 a survey crew's instruments might have included a "Circumferentor" described as "a brass circular box, about five or six inches in diameter within which is a brass ring, divided on the top; into 360 degrees… in the center is a fixed steel pin fine pointed, called a centre-pin on which is placed a needle touched with a load stone…" They were already using the Gunter's chain and knew about errors, i.e. "The surveyor should be careful to have his chain measured before he proceeds on business, for the rings are apt to be open by frequent using it, and its length is thereby increased." The main problem was staying on line. Note that in 1721 and 1763 the transit had not yet been invented and the compass was mounted on the single pole called a Jacob's staff. Tripods were not used. The book strongly recommends the determination of the true meridian and laments that "a true meridian line is seldom to be met with" on most surveyors work . The one thing missing from the book was any discussion of precision.

Elements of Surveying by Charles Davies, 1883
This book was first published in 1830, with the final revision by the author in 1870. This book seems quite modern , and not too different from what I used back at my college surveyor's camp in the summer of 1958. These early surveyors obviously knew about distance accuracy problems (Ex: "An excellent chain for accurate measurements is Grumman's patent "suspended chain," which is made of very light steel wire, is fitted with spring-balance, thermometer and spirit-level attachments, and is held above the surface…"). Surveyors were using the Gunter's chain, and the author recommends "drawing out the chain to it's full length, both chainmen now examine it to see that there are no inaccuracies in it, either from bent links or kinks in the rings joining the links." This book introduces the transit but includes very detailed information about compass surveys, and states the following: "The advantage of the compass over other instruments with which angles are measured, lies chiefly in this : that the Bearing of a course may be measured at any point on the line."

Over the centuries various ingenious instruments were developed and used, including various brass frames with graduated scales and movable pointers, and by the 17th century rudimentary compasses were used. Based on reading the above two books, I believe that by 1721 and 1763 surveyors could have been made as accurate as required. On the two Road Returns mentioned below, it seems to me they did quite well. For the most part the surveys followed known property lines which were already located. Even the use of oak saplings as references, although it seems humorous 250 years later, actually it made a lot of sense since these references could be expected to last 10 generations.

Searches by others of deeds, wills, maps, etc. have revealed that there was not enough of this type of information found to pin down these roads, ferries, and taverns inside the borough. The lack of information on the ferries in Yardley was explained in a very comprehensive study by Kathryn Ann Auerbach in her report dated 1987. She uncovered the 18th century road returns, properly identified both the 1721 road and the 1763 road as Langhorne Road and Oxford Valley Road in a well documented report including a nine page synopsis which presented the facts, with some conclusions at the end.[2]

As you know my expertise is at the ground surface… relating to drainage and Infiltration/Inflow (I/I) studies for a long string of municipalities (incl. Yardley '71, Lower Makefield '81, etc. and currently Upper Dublin Township). I'm using that experience here… while I'm doing the surveying work, Marie-Therese is making the searches and discoveries at the courthouse.

1721 Wagon Road
This road is identified in the original survey as Langhorne Road and the long straight run to Edgewood still exists on the ground. Most of the original road inside the borough no longer exists, and here the long straight runs means fewer check points along the way but it also means less opportunity for compass errors in the original surveyor's work. The description contained some useful references to "the mill race" and "the mill creek." This refers to an early mill and not the Grist Mill which replaced it in 1769. Except for the direct road between the ferry site and the mill, the main considerations in selecting the route for this road would be the steep hill up to Scammel's Corner, and the question of where to cross Brock Creek. Field work has included investigating the following land features:
1) cave-in at the river bank below the driveway to the funeral home.
2) path off the end of Ferry Street
3) storm culverts on Main Street, Afton Avenue, and River Road
4) location of large rocks in the river
5) gravel formation along river bank
6) Langhorne Road straightaway
7) location of electric poles
8) cemetery wall location and alignment
9) surface contours

For this road I essentially made two compass surveys, the first proceeding S.W. away from the river in the same direction as the 1721 survey and the second… coming back. Today's magnetic azimuths along the most likely route were recorded. The search was initiated below Ferry Road based on measurements on the overlay of the Road Return positioned over the 1950 USGS map with the Langhorne Road straightaway used as the base. In this vicinity there was a very noticeable cave-in at the river bank . I investigated this "cave-in" location including inspecting the gravel formation along the river and at the recent washout at a lower elevation near the medical center, and I tested the location in a boat using a pole to push across the river and back on the theory that the 1721 location was initially only the point of embarkation. With the river at fairly low stage, I found I arrived back on the west bank just below the upper end of Janney's Landing ---the upper end of Janney's Landing is below College Avenue near the lower Foster property line. During the draught I walked offshore and found the river bottom cleared of rocks, relatively deep, and ideal for boats all the way down river to [a point midway between the two brick apartment buildings--- Revised Jan 18, 2004].

The location for the 1721 ferry ramp at the cave-in, which is just below the driveway to the funeral home, puts it several hundred feet below the "Old Ferry Road" and we now have a partial legal description and other documentation showing it to be the same as the driveway and boat ramp which existed well into the 20th century. It was just opposite the storm culvert at the lower end of the Rescue Squad property which was formerly owned by the bridge company. Meanwhile, the earlier 1721 location is now verified to terminate inside Tax Parcel #9 as suggested by Auerbach. I'm working with only the first three legs of the survey which otherwise goes all the way to Langhorne. The third leg of the 1721 Road Return has to conform to the Langhorne Road straightaway which extends beyond Scammel's Corner. I took compass readings back and forth on Langhorne Road between Yardley and Edgewood and established a 1998 magnetic bearing of S 59 W by shooting various straight sections of the road. Today's road is straight much of the way until just before it arrives at Palmer's Tavern and I got a fairly solid fix on it's alignment by using the Edgewood cross roads supplemented by a compass reading on the front wall of Tomlinson's Store. The fact that the straight road turned at a point near Brock's Creek provides a fixed point distance wise from the river to further help position the 1721 Road Return onto the USGS map.

In addition to being able to fix the 1721 Langhorne Road by it's alignment and by the bend at Brock's Creek, I used the left cemetery wall at Saint Andrews Church ---you can see it in Craven's photograph showing the trolley shed (rev. 5-18-01)--- as a check point, on the assumption that it is located somewhere near the right-of-way of the 1721 road. The center point of the left section of the cemetery wall does indeed appear to be near the 1721 original road, but I later found the wall may be twisted 2 degrees clockwise coming back to the river. Taking all this into account, i.e. Tomlinson's Store, the crossroads, and the cemetery wall, it is not likely that any possible angular error on my part or that the 2 degrees which points even further down river, would account for the several hundred foot difference between the "Old Ferry Road" mentioned above and it's earlier location which the 1721 Road Return indicates.[3] In other words the road was moved and there are definitely two different road locations at different points in time.

From the cave-in at the river bank, the most probable route for the road would be near the end of Ferry Street through the open abandoned and overgrown area presently used as a "foot path and shortcut" from the end of Ferry Street out to Afton Avenue. The ridge line coming from the left along Bell drops off fairly sharply behind the rear property lines of houses located on the very top of the ridge and facing the river on Bell, but flattens out when it reaches the end of Ferry Street and to the right. And the dead-end of Ferry Street almost intersects a straight line drawn on paper along the ridge between the Belville "Ferry House" and the Mill. Although the road along the edge of the river (Delaware Avenue) had not been opened through to Morrisville at that time, there obviously had to be local roads connecting the Belville "Ferry House" to the mill. River Road drops down approaching the mouth of the former creek on our property near the common line with the Metz red brick apartments which is a low spot and would have required a significant bridge had they followed too close to the river. My guess is that this ancient road or path followed the ridge line diagonally from the rear of the Belville "Ferry House" and generally followed Longshore and Bell on a direct line to the mill. This would be more oriented toward the river than would be the case if it ran along Main Street which may not have even existed at that time.

The selected route for the   1721 road   passes to the right of the electric pole at the dead-end of Ferry Street, crossing the front yard of House #54 just to the left of Diane Breen's home on Ferry Street. Coming back toward the river I was perhaps 35 feet to the left of the same electric pole and passing through the right end of the Khalsa Clinic. Taking into account various compensating errors… I believe the cave-in below the funeral home driveway is the exact location of the 1721 road. I recently confirmed this by running a third compass survey all the way from the "cave-in" to the cemetery wall, this time staying on open roads, and in effect completing a traverse.    It's precise location at the end of Ferry Street    and at Main Street depends on the starting point for the survey which unfortunately for us was a Spanish Oak Sapling on the bank of the river. Continuing in the forward direction, the 1721 road on this line would then cross the canal near Leedom's Lumber possibly at the location where the tree roots grow straight down (instead of sideways like elsewhere along the canal) or somewhat to the right, and crossed Main Street at the location of the entrance driveway on the left side of the Continental Tavern, let's say with the cartway of the 1721 road just touching the Weidel sign. It's possible that at some point in time a cutoff was constructed running from the rear wall of Khalsa Clinic (the wall away from the parking lot) straight to the river passing behind Gloria del Vecchio's old stone house and crossing the storm inlet opposite the actual ferry ramp. This would explain the peculiar jogs in the road which appear on some old maps. I don't believe the site was ever directly at the end of modern Afton Avenue, but rather that the bridge was constructed alongside the ferry.

With the advantage of hind sight and having studied a similar site at Lake Hopatcong it's easy to spot the abandoned looking area behind Hibbs as the hub of the ferry operation. It still has those characteristics… obviously not yet recognized for it's historic importance. This ferry does not appear to have been in business at this location during the Revolution. Howell's Ferry (formerly Heath's Ferry) so frequently mentioned during the Revolution was definitely at Lower Ferry Road and not any higher up the river, because it has now been proved by others that Heath's Plantation did not extend upriver beyond Lower Ferry Road. There is indication on one New Jersey map of a possible ferry easement roughly midway between the 1721 road and the 1763 road. Somewhere around the revolution the Yardley Ferry was moved to the final location, probably as a "straight-across" operation using either a rope like some other ferries or maybe a cable starting around 1779 when they were generally available. The ferry ramp remained for about a hundred years after the bridge was built and early in the 20th century there was a boat house on the corner at Ferry Street.

There is a Ferry House shown prominently although at very small plan scale on a 1775 survey of the Langhorne Road. The drawing shows the Ferry House to be located below the 1775 road, and at a distance which is not scaled but looks to be nearby. [Revised Jan 18, 2004--- At one time I thought the Ferry House might be the nearby solitary structure shown on the circa 1851 Wall Map, but this solitary structure remains unidentified.

The wall map is owned by Mr. & Mrs. Shimp and for Yardley may be the same as the 1831 Kennedy Map of Bucks County. Xerox copies of the Yardley section of this large canvass map, including nearby villages, is available at the Library of Congress.

Further back-up for the existence of the 1721 Ferry Road a substantial distance down river from the "just below Afton Avenue" site relates to declination. It is well known that the earth's magnetic poles are not the same as true north. Declination is the angle between magnetic north and true north. It was discovered at least by 1580 that magnetic declination varies from year to year. A magnetic azimuth reading was taken on the railroad tracks along the new Yardley Station platform looking east and compared to a protractor reading on the 100 scale map you provided. Using this rough method, the 1999 declination appears to be about 11 degrees 30 minutes west. For colonial deeds it's useful to have some idea of declination.[5] Based on this information, if while maintaining the same bearings we were to transpose the 1721 road from the "cave-in" location up to the "storm-culvert" location it would push the entire road much too far to the right. This also shows up if you attempt to lay out the 1721 survey onto the 1924 Fire Maps Published by Sanborn Map Company. These are also available at the Library of Congress for various villages in Bucks County. They are excellent maps.

Returning to our 1721 survey… from the vicinity of the Weidel sign the original survey crew had to make a slight adjustment to reach the best location for the bridge while staying well to the left of the mill stream (race).

"The Race" (from White's Creek)
The hydraulics works associated with the Yardley Grist Mill are impressive. I first learned about the race from White's Lake (Silver Lake) in about 1970 when I surveyed the new hardware store property in Yardley. Joe Moculak explained how the water supply to the mill was not adequate during dry periods and was augmented by the construction of a race along the side of the hill behind his property.

Our Random House Unabridged gives the following definition of a race as… "an artificial channel leading water to or from a place where it's energy is utilized."

In 1995 while walking past the lake looking for traces of the 1721 road, it occurred to me that the [other race, the one alongside the 1721 road ---Rev:Dec 2003] may have been under the lake…. set-up like Thompson-Neely Grist Mill where the system is limited to a dam constructed on a creek and race built from the dam to the mill. This realization regarding the race was the main key to finding the 1721 road on the ground… The road having been shifted from it's original position sometime after 1721, thereby accounting for the bend in the modern road in the vicinity of the church. The initial 1721 road was definitely straight all the way between Main Street to the other side of Mill Creek (Brock Creek), but by 1794 had two or more bends as it passed around the lake. The present Afton Avenue configuration all the way to the river is believed to have existed by 1794. When they shifted the road around the lake they left an abandoned small piece of land on which the library was built. The only landmark remaining along the road is the cemetery wall in front of the "old graveyard" to the left of the church property, probably on the edge of the 1721 road although as I found later, not necessarily aligned with it.

The Trolley
One of the difficulties in tracing the 1721 road on the ground was that construction of the Newtown trolley line partially destroyed the 1721 road. The width of the shoulder of the modern road can be used to find the route of the trolley. On this basis, it's apparent that the trolley started up the hill on the left side of the road to Langhorne, but crossed over to the right side about midway. This appears to be the reason why 10 feet or more was removed from the top of the hill on the right side starting at the road named Sandy Run 11, which is where the trolley crossed over and followed the same route that the original road turning right at the top of the hill on the right side of the road to Newtown.

The compass survey back into town started with a long sight using both binoculars and compass from a distant point on the Langhorne straightaway. This sighting puts the old road left of the modern highway, along the line of the electric poles, and indeed the latest construction for the new traffic light even veers somewhat to the right. In searching down the line of poles looking for a clear line of sight toward Village Square I came across something that looked like a farmer's gate built perpendicular to the main road. Looking through the "gate" along a line inside the rear of the fence of the properties on University Drive (possibly behind House #1121), there is what surely looks like a road bed… covered with lawn grass. Possibly an access had been maintained for the farmer's field after the 1721 road was abandoned. Abandonment obviously occurred prior to 1903 when the trolley to Newtown was opened. It should be pointed out that the 1721 road attacked the hill on a gradual steady grade, whereas the modern road has a varying grade and a very steep grade and a deep cut part of the way.

It was difficult to fix the turning point of the 1721 road survey at Brock's Creek near the Village Square parking lot. Based on the alignment there obviously was a crossing somewhere below the modern bridge. It was likely a wooden bridge. [Looking at the terrain on the south side of the modern highway, I now realize that the creek was undoubtedly shifted toward the hill when the present highway was constructed, and that the original wooden bridge was located near the outer edge of the paved Village Square parking area, and this location also more closely corresponds to the original surveyed measured distance from the Delaware River ---Revision dated December 2003]. The brush and briars on the other side is thick and complicated by excavations and the still visible now abandoned road leading into Nicholson's Quarry. But I was able to generally confirm the overall survey by means of compass readings on the front wall of Tomlinson's Store in Edgewood which are the same as the building across the street, and which was projected from the Langhorne straightaway down the hill to Brock's Creek and then sighting back from the cemetery wall at St. Andrews Church.

Coming back through Yardley toward the river this line ending up 40 feet (17 paces x 2.29 feet/pace) above the location at the caved-in river bank but this is high ground and does not have the appearance of a ferry site. The hand compass I'm using is the type we used during training in the U.S. Army combat engineers in 1953, and is manufactured by Stocker & Yale, Inc., Salem, NH.

Upper Ferry Road (New Jersey Side of the River)
The layout of the 1721 road to the Yardley Ferry site together with the 1763 road (Yardley Ferry House to Stony Hill Road near the railroad), looks partly like the arrangement on the other side of the Delaware River which has an Upper Ferry Road and a Lower Ferry Road. J. H. Battle says, "Upon his death in 1693 <<<referring to William Yardley who immigrated in 1682>>> Thomas Yardley his son, <<<not his nephew Thomas Yardley who immigrated in 1704>>> established a ferry…" Nearby, Baker's Ferry is suppose to have already been in operation since 1684. It seems likely that Prospect Farm must have had at least a landing and possibly a ferry at a very early date. [The road between Prospect Farm and the Landing may have been in the vicinity of the raised road bed which still exists today across the flood plain. This road served the stone quarry but also connected through the quarry in the general direction of Prospect Farm, as shown on 1875 Yardleyville Map. But the road was more likely on a straight line from Prospect Farm more toward the lower William Yardley property line as suggested by the 1875 Lower Makefield Township Map. This map is distorted but conveys the general idea. Out on the ground, it's obvious that the road between the two quarries (now used as a footpath) must be the original road which existed at the time the canal was constructed, and that this road originally extended in a straight line toward the present day man-made ramp in front of the fifth house up from the Borough Line. The old foundation ruins near the bridge is twisted away from the canal, and is parallel to the surmised location of the road. We guess that William Yardley's 1693 Landing might well have been at the lower end of his river frontage, but we don't have enough information to guess at the location of the 1693 road ---Revised Oct 20,2001]. A search by the librarian at the Library of Congress did not produce any separate publications on how to design ferry sites. She said this information probably exists, but is buried in a publication under some other title.

1763 Stage Coach Road
The 1763 Road Return is definitely without question the Oxford Valley Road. This statement can be made based on the unique geometry of the road involving bends in today's road between Stony Hill Road and Edgewood Road and how closely this geometry matches the 1763 Road Return. Many of the survey lines between Stony Hill Road and Edgewood Road are longer than the true distance, and I needed to continually shift the overlay on the USGS in order to start fresh at each bend in the road. The situation between Edgewood Road and the Delaware River is much more complicated but it turned out that the difficulties encountered were not critical to the overall objective of identifying the ferry sites at the river. If each leg of the survey and it's counterpart on the ground is looked at individually, it will be found that they match, and there was no evidence on the ground to the contrary. Oxford Road may have both a distance error and a compass reading error associated with it, but provides the key to the survey between Edgewood and the river.

My initial compass survey for the 1763 road was S.W. away from the river, in the same direction as the Road Return. I started on Longshore with a parallelogram off-set from the Belville "Ferry House" and arrived at the Belmondo fence offset. My starting assumption that the road turned right and ran through the offset (referring to the offset in the fence and township line) eventually turned out to be true. But my assumption that it was either the Belmondo line or parallel to it turned out to be false. There were several possible traces of another perhaps earlier road running straight back from the white house through the Turner property which tied me up for a long time. There are some real indications on the ground based on studying the gravel bank along the canal during the recent canal project, and based on the alignment of the Turner fences and the Turner side lot next to the church, which really has the appearance and width of a road bed. The owners of House # 47 on Letchworth pointed out settlement in their rear yard, which could indicate that too much impervious clay was stripped away from the underlying glacial gravel perhaps by grading. Once surface water gains access to this underlying gravel, there is no way of stopping it short of replacing the clay, if that is the problem.

The survey coming back toward the river was conducted independently of the Belville "Ferry House." Going both ways, I was misled for quite a while at Oxford Road by a mix-up in the copy of the description, which had led me to put the brook crossing on an angle and below Oxford Road instead of on Oxford Road itself. Resolving this problem had the effect of putting the road across the flood plain on more of an angle than I originally believed, but it still ended up leading directly to my location for the ferry ramp and to the Belville "Ferry House."

A significant clue was the way River Road dips a very noticeable amount where possible consolidation might have taken place at a ferry ramp for the 1763 Ferry. Experience with road contractors during my Whitemarsh Township days taught me that once a dip develops in a road for any reason, the contractor who bids on the basis of inches thickness of blacktop, can never be expected to remove that dip. This dip is just down from the front of the white farm house, which is in turn located in the center of the white apartment complex. There is a lot of settlement in the front yard of the white house and a peculiar large mound of earth nearby in the grassed area near the borough line.

What constitutes the side of a hill?
On this road I had a lot of trouble finding "the side of a hill" where they drove their stake at the end of the 2,112 foot run. No matter what I tried, I found myself consistently either on a flat top of a hill, or on the steep upward incline, or on the gentle downward slope. Initially I had the road located to the rear of and through the open space behind Blackwell's Plumbing Shop and through the Welch backyard. Mr. Blackwell said another plumber previously had a shop in that same building and had used many horse drawn teams, and this was the reason for the manure bin which is a real landmark and the only I've seen in Yardley. I tried moving the 1763 [Rev: December 2003] road further up Harper to the right of a "Civil War" tree, to what appears to be a road access to the golf course but was advised by Barbara Hughes (owner of the tree) that this was constructed in fairly recent times. Previously I had examined further left at the railroad but hadn't realized that fill had been stored over the original contours on much of the Yardley Station building site.

It's logical that these early roads wherever possible used the existing surface of the ground to avoid cut and fill. They skirted around hills, avoided ravines, and definitely stayed away from swamps. Since Yardley Road enters the south side of town along the top of a descending ridgeline, the ideal location for a road going inland from the river would be to pass around the ridge as far to the right as possible and at the low end. The turning point should be somewhere near the top of the ridge. Much of the ridge line checks out distance wise from the river. The main objective was to stay away from the creek, crossing it as far upstream as possible. It therefore appears, that in this case "the side of a hill" means the top of a sloping ridge line. Curiously this same survey does not mention crossing the road leading from the Falls to Yardley's Mill. Nevertheless, I eventually spotted the drop-off behind the Auto Service Station and put the "side-of-the-hill" near the station and probably under the railroad embankment.

Oxford Road was a problem. It turns out that the present day Oxford Road is 2 degrees out of alignment with Reading Avenue in front of the Country Club even though both are suppose to be on the township line. A 1763 declination determination of 5 degrees 30 minutes based on the railroad would match a 91 degree azimuth today, and this taken with finding together with the Auto Service Station rear "drop-off" finally led us to "Old Oxford Road" which ran diagonally behind the "Oak Grove School." Today's Oxford Road was a real confusion factor having been changed 3 or 4 times including being 1)shifted away from the direction of the underpass diagonally out to Yardley Road when the railroad was built in 1875, 2)relocated straight out to Yardley Road in a straight line with today's Oxford Road, and 3)eventually abandoned out to Yardley Road entirely (the vacated road is still visible on your topographic map). These findings together with other documentation finally firmly established that the 1763 road had in fact been built and did indeed lead directly to both the Yardley boat site on the river opposite and somewhat above Howell's Ferry, originally Heath's Ferry on the other side, and thence directly to the Yardley Ferry House.

We very much appreciated the Lower Makefield contour maps which show 100 feet into Yardley Borough. The gridlines on these maps permitted me to make a mosaic outline of Yardley for control purposes and I was able recently to conduct additional compass surveys on this basis. I find that it's amazingly easy to plot these up using a protractor and drawing each segment of the survey on a long roll of brown wrapping paper. By drawing each line well past the end of the surveyed line, it's a simple matter to rapidly use the protractor to move from point to point. I thought you would find this humorous, but doubt that my making the statement will cause you to abandon your present state-of-the-art electronic and computerized methods. I have been able to use these larger and more accurate maps to confirm our major findings.

As my exercise program has unfolded, I talked to people along the route of the two ferry roads and they have provided very interesting information. For example, I learned how when houses were constructed along the west side of the lower and more recent part of White's Lake, a large iron pipe was uncovered. This information helped me understand the scene in my early photograph of   White's Lake    also shown in the Craven talk referred to earlier. The photograph shows one thin and very tall man perhaps holding a rake to clear the intake and the other medium height man having white work gloves standing next to what we now know is the control mechanism and valve, and that these are two railroad workers operating the water intake for the iron pipe which supplies water under pressure (presumably to a storage equalization tank) for the use of the steam locomotives. See Craven photograph shown as Fig. 2 in the April 2, 1995, WC4 Dispatch #268 write-up previously mentioned.

Recently, I talked to retired Dr. Michael Larkin who lives next to the old "Oak Grove School" which played an important role in our work. He asked the final purpose of what I was doing… I couldn't really answer, nor do I believe he thinks there has to be an answer.

Larry Hale
Yardley Pennsylvania 4-12-99