Bucks County, Pennsylvania in the 1870s

Work

Farms first, shops close

The county economy begins with 315,833 cultivated acres¹ and the 1870 output of corn, oats, wheat, hay, butter, horses, and milch cows¹. Around that base are blacksmiths, millers, merchants, shoemakers, tailors, masons, wheelwrights, and cigar workers².

Money

Land was the wealth

Reported farm value reached $40,289,213¹, with farm products worth $6,571,626¹. Manufacturing mattered too, but its reported value, $4,732,118¹, was smaller than the value of farm products.

Roads & news

Post offices and papers

The 1871 gazetteer promised post-office addresses² for farmers and tradespeople, a sign that mail routes tied scattered townships to markets and kin. Local newspaper life included the Bucks County Intelligencer⁵, the Bucks County Mirror in Doylestown⁵, and the Bucks County Gazette at Bristol⁵.

Law & power

Doylestown held the courts

County business centered on Doylestown, the county seat since 1812⁴. Away from formal law, about fifty horse companies¹ formed a local answer to theft and insecurity.

Faith

Quaker and AME memory

Bucks still carried strong Quaker influence³ in its public memory. Buckingham also had Mount Gilead African Methodist Episcopal Church³, founded in 1834 and housed in an 1852 stone building.

In the air

Abolition still echoed

The county had organized an anti-slavery society in 1837³, and Underground Railroad memories remained tied to Quakers across all three sections of Bucks³. In the 1870s, those memories sat beside national arguments over Reconstruction and Black citizenship.

What people feared

Theft, machines, and illness

The existence of chartered horse companies for detecting horse thieves¹ shows that rural theft was a remembered danger. Mill work at textile and paper mills³ and cigar making in 470 manufactories³ also put ordinary workers near machinery, dust, tools, and fire risks.

Who lived here

County, not village

Because the location is known only at county level, this portrait cannot place a household among one neighborhood's people. The sources instead show a county of farmers, boatmen, tradesmen, merchants, manufacturers, and professional men² spread across boroughs and townships.

Year by year

1. 1870The Ninth U.S. Census counted Bucks County agriculture on a scale of hundreds of thousands of bushels of grain and millions of pounds of butter. here¹
2. 1871A Bucks County business directory and gazetteer listed farmers, manufacturers, professionals, merchants, and their post-office addresses. here²
3. 1872The Bucks County Mirror moved to Doylestown. here⁵
4. 1873The Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad line by way of Bristol passed to the Pennsylvania Railroad. here³
5. 1873The Bucks County Gazette began publication at Bristol in August. here⁵
6. 1873A national financial panic began, bringing bank failures, railroad trouble, unemployment, and hard times that would have been discussed in Bucks County markets and newspapers. the country
7. 1876The United States Centennial Exhibition opened in Philadelphia, close enough for Bucks County residents to read about or visit by rail or road. nearby
8. 1876William Hulme Grundy moved the Grundy Brothers and Campion woolen mill from Philadelphia to Bristol. here³
9. 1877The Great Railroad Strike spread through major Pennsylvania rail centers, including violent conflict at Pittsburgh, and would have been alarming news in a railroad-connected county. the country

What the sources say

• This description is county-wide because the map point is known only as Bucks County, not as a confirmed village, farm, or borough. from the sources²
• A Bucks County history published in the 1870s said 315,833 acres of the county were under cultivation. from the sources¹
• The 1870 census figures quoted in that county history gave Bucks County 525,740 bushels of wheat, 1,325,626 bushels of Indian corn, 1,208,717 bushels of oats, 118,014 tons of hay, 2,861,557 pounds of butter, 14,679 horses, and 28,572 milch cows. from the sources¹
• A contemporary county history closed with a rural description of Bucks as a place of fertile farms, large barns, neat fences, spring-houses, gardens, walnuts, quinces, pears, grapes, eggs, and fruit. from the sources¹
• The value of Bucks County farms was reported at $40,289,213, and the value of farm products at $6,571,626. from the sources¹
• The same account valued Bucks County manufactures at $4,732,118. from the sources¹
• An 1871 business directory for Bucks County indexed farmers, blacksmiths, boatmen, millers, merchants, shoemakers, tailors, masons, wheelwrights, lumber dealers, cigar makers, and sewing-machine agents. from the sources²
• The Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad ran between Philadelphia and Trenton by way of Bristol, and in 1873 it was acquired by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which also operated another east-west Bucks County line toward Trenton. from the sources³
• Along the Delaware River, Bucks County had mills producing textiles and paper, and Bristol mills used Pennsylvania coal after the Delaware Canal connected Lower Bucks with Easton in 1830. from the sources³
• Durham in northeastern Bucks County had an iron furnace dating from 1727, remembered for producing munitions in the Revolutionary era. from the sources³
• The 1870s county history said Bucks had little mineral wealth, though iron ore had been developed to some extent in Buckingham Valley, where valuable limestone deposits existed. from the sources¹
• Government records in 1871 reported 470 cigar manufactories in Bucks County and one snuff mill at Bristol. from the sources³
• The North Pennsylvania Railroad had opened through Quakertown in 1856 and helped cigar factories in Quakertown, Sellersville, and Perkasie reach suppliers and markets. from the sources³
• Bristol became the county's manufacturing center after William Hulme Grundy moved the Grundy Brothers and Campion woolen mill there in 1876. from the sources³
• Doylestown had been the county seat since 1812, after earlier seats at Bristol and Newtown. inferred⁴
• The 1871 gazetteer was advertised as containing the names, businesses, and post-office addresses of Bucks County merchants, manufacturers, professional men, and farmers. from the sources²
• The county history described about fifty chartered horse companies, voluntary associations for detecting horse thieves and other criminals, some nearly as old as the century. from the sources¹
• The Bucks County Intelligencer traced its title back through earlier Doylestown newspapers and was still part of a local newspaper world in the 1870s. from the sources⁵
• The Bucks County Mirror moved to Doylestown in 1872, and the Bucks County Gazette began at Bristol in August 1873. from the sources⁵
• Quaker influence remained a recognizable part of the county's history, and Mount Gilead African Methodist Episcopal Church in Buckingham, founded in 1834, occupied an 1852 stone building and had served as an Underground Railroad stop. from the sources³
• Bucks County abolitionists had organized the Bucks County Anti-Slavery Society in 1837, and Quakers in all three sections of the county had taken part in Underground Railroad work before the Civil War. from the sources³
• No online source opened here gives a county-wide table of ordinary 1870s wages or retail prices for Bucks County. not known
• No opened source gives a reliable 1870s description of the interiors of ordinary Bucks County houses by township. not known

Sources

1. The History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, from the Discovery of the Delaware to the Present Time. LDS Genealogy transcription, 1876
2. Business Directory and Gazetteer of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Jenkins & Atkinson, 1871
3. Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, 2016
4. Bucks County Resources. Bucks County Genealogical Society
5. Newspapers and Periodicals, 1880 Census Volume VIII, Chapter 7. U.S. Census Bureau, 1880

Bucks County in other decades

Nearby, about the same time