OLD NEWTOWN SQUARE
A Story of Three Hundred Years
In 1681, a great man, WILLIAM PENN,
Who forever deserves a high place among men,
Envisioned a fair land with green virgin sod
Where people were free to relate to their God.
For a debt owed his father, he received from the King
His land in the new world, where "Friends" he could bring
On the sturdy ship, "Welcome", with their worldly goods
For his father, he named his new country, "Penn's Woods."
His policy was to be honest and fair
With the settlers he found to be already there
All religions were free and he purchased the deeds
To land held by Indians and land held by Swedes.
To bring peace and harmony and love were his ends
The ideals of his "Quakers", the Society of Friends.
But ere sailing his first plans, all others above
Were to lay out his City of Brotherly Love
And then, thirteen miles inland, a plan to lay down
For his second conception, a "greene countrie towne"
Where those who bought farmland would gain a free share,
Thirteen acres or more of his New Town Square.
His first Newtown land sale, when drafting was done
Was in England, January 18, 1681
Robert Dunton - or Dutton (names were often misspelt),
Purchased five hundred acres, but on it ne'er dwelt.
And many invested but never left home
To a wilderness life they were fearful to come.
Daniel Williamson was our first brave pioneer
When he purchased the land he was already here
From Stretton in England, a new life he had sought
And he settled the same land which later he bought.
His first small stone house, it is said as a fact,
Is still there, on today's Garrett-Williamson tract
As part of the lovely, white farmhouse he planned
Which his children enjoyed and were pleased to expand.
The farm later was sold, then repurchased in part
By Elizabeth Williamson, a kin of great heart,
Who dearly revered it, her ancestral home
And her Will was that poor, working women could come
To experience a farm, and to rest there and play
And that's why its beauty is preserved to this day.
After Daniel, many Welsh Quakers came and abode
And built their "Friends' Meeting" on "Newtown Street Road."
That first road was built in 1683
After which, in four years, Goshen Road came to be.
In 1715, four years after Friends' Meeting,
Welsh converts had built, and for service were greeting
Their worshipers in a wee church in the glen
"Old St. David's," its charm hailed by Longfellow's pen.
And the boxwood-hedged churchyard its hush is still keeping
While the babes and the old through the ages are sleeping.
In the '76 war the small church was invaded
By both sides and, for bullets, the leaded panes raided
And sixteen brave soldiers who died in that war
In their common grave huddle up close to the door
While America's hero, "Mad Anthony Wayne,"
Lies in state 'neath his monument, close to the lane.
But his mother, and other kin, 'tis sad but true,
Lie interred under present day "252"
Where the Seventh Day Baptists, who split from the Quakers,
Had their graveyard, on part of the Thomas farm acres.
(In 1834 other Baptists built there
After eighty-six years they moved to the new Square).
And many more brave pioneers can be found
In the graves in the Newtown Friends' burying ground.
To nourish the whole child, both spirit and mind,
The churches built log schools, historians find.
The Friends are traditional leaders in teaching
While they never have held with the practice'of preaching.
Their next school was eight-sided, both sturdy and plain
(Like the one that still stands at the Dunwoody Lane.)
A large, two-story boarding school finally replaced it
Which at present stands empty, diminished and wasted.
The public schools' act of 1848
Decreed learning for all children, as of that date
The Board leased a Friends' school that was already there
Twelve years, on West Chester Road, west of the Square.
To the traveler old Newtown was friendly and kind
With three Inns where refreshment and lodging they'd find
First was the "Fox Chase" on the West Chester Road
And the stagecoach made stops there to load and unload.
For the Underground Railroad a tunnel was there
Where slaves fleeing to freedom were hidden with care.
The next was "The Square", where young Benjamin West
Learned to paint, while his father was host to each guest.
(When famed for his art and a friend of the Crown
Did Ben sometimes, with fondness, remember Newtown?)
The third Inn, where the Pike and North Newtown Road crossed
Was the last to be built and the last to be lost.
When rebuilt back in 1903, so they say,
The bar carried on, never missing a day.
But the stalwart old Inn and its sturdy bar sank
And twelve years ago was replaced by a bank.
In the mid-1800's the woolen mills flourished
In the township's north end by the Darby Creek nourished.
There were paper mills too, and where workers abode
Will be Newtown's museum, on Paper Mill Road.
From the Harrison family, a gift of good will
They had kept it intact since the days of the mill.
One mill-owner's name it is hard to forget
Elizabeth Williamson's Casper Garrett
A man of undoubted great kindness and charm
For her he repurchased her family farm.
But the mills on the creek very slowly declined
Due to steam power and the Civil War combined.
The large hospital Benjamin Franklin began
For it's mental patients had worked out a plan
To buy a large farm where the air would be great
So it came here and stayed till 1948.
(When developed, its six hundred acres became
St. Alban's - for the quaint, nearby church of that name.)
And at century's turn also came the gentleman farmers
Bringing wealth and excitement, they really were charmers
They acquired many acres and kept Newtown green
And some of them stayed and are still on the scene.
A telephone station was built at the Square
(And first radio broadcasts were relayed through there.)
But two years before came the trolley and train
Iron rails stretching out from the city's domain.
The train brought the wealthy back home before dark
But the trolley came out to the Castle Rock Park.
And the working men came and decided how jolly
To breathe the clean air and to ride on the Trolley
And a small country summer house would be a lark,
That was the beginning of Florida Park.
And the summer house passion continued from there
Down the Pike to the area they called Larchmont Square.
The first planned development, that changed Newtown's way,
Was named Valley View Acres by the builder, Mullray.
The livery stable took flame one dark night
And the blaze lit the sky, a spectacular sight
And it melted long distance lines strung by the Bell
Causing men of the town to meet at the hotel.
They decided that certainly what must be done
Was to organize Newtown Square Fire Company One.
Hotel owner, Davis, gave ground he could spare
And in 1916 the fire hall was built there.
Philanthropist, William Dunwoody, was grand
To honor his father and mother, he planned
That his boyhood home would be a haven to bless
The sick who were needy and who must convalesce.
Construction was held up due to the Great War
Dunwoody Home opened in 1924.
A Philadelphia man, Charles E. Ellis, endowed
For fatherless girls, a school they'd be proud
To attend; and to visit, their mothers must ride
So he willed that a trolley line must be beside.
The school came to Newtown in 1922
And stayed fifty-five years and then it was through.
The land then was purchased by ARCO, and they
Have restored "The Square Inn", where Ben West used to play.
Prohibition came in and the law ruled a sin
The dispensing of liquor - no whiskey! no gin!
A two-hundred-year habit is not easily broken
And of this law, observance was merely a token
The Fox Chase was a "speakeasy" where patrons danced
And drank, if they knocked and the password advanced
And "Fox Trail" was the Bar X Dude Ranch, and also
A night club for patrons with plenty of "dough".
Which came after a roadhouse-speakeasy, they say,
( For the nightclub, Prohibition repeal paved the way).
And under the counter at a certain small store
There was "hootch" to be bought - and some say there were more
In fact, many more places where "booze" you could buy
(There were many good folk who did not even try.)
Development came as the automobile
Made living away from the city ideal
And they widened the Pike so commuters could wend
Quickly home to the suburbs at working day's end
And the farmers grew old and the farmland was sold
And the houses and churches sprang up manifold.
So here we all live with our laughter and tears
Just as people have lived these past three hundred years.
Now the good Friends are nearly all gone from Newtown
But the Meeting still stands on the hill, looking down
So look up as you pass on "Street Road" now and then
And think of the debt owed the great WILLIAM PENN.
Erma Shaver April 24, 1981.
(Revised December, 2002)
Erma Shaver, a Newtown resident, is a co-author of the book,
HISTORIC NEWTOWN TOWNSHIP, in which this poem is included.
She dedicates it to her children, Robin, Alexander and Christopher,
and her nine grandchildren.
The background is a modified image of John McCauley and Alice Grim at the unveiling of the Hood Octagonal School sign, May 1971. (Original photo by Carl Lindborg)
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