Brecknock Township
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- Brecknock township by Klein
Excerpt from the History of Lancaster County by Dr. Frederick Klein, 1924
BRECKNOCK TOWNSHIP
Brecknock township does not come into the original records of Lancaster county; and, strange as it may seem, there is no record of subsequent action of court to form the township. The name comes into the assessment lists of the county commissioners in 1740 for the first time, the total levy of taxes for Brecknock then being only two guineas, approximately eleven dollars. Leonard Prideston (or Pridenstow) was the collector. In 1752, when Berks counts was erected, the northern part of Brecknack township was taken from Lancaster county; since that time, however, Brecknock boundaries have remained unchanged. The township is now bounded by Berks county on the northeast Brecknock township does not come into the original records of Lancaster county; and, strange as it may seem, there is no record of subsequent action of court to form the township. The name comes into the assessment lists of the county commissioners in 1740 for the first time, the total levy of taxes for Brecknock then being only two guineas, approximately eleven dollars. Leonard Prideston (or Pridenstow) was the collector. In 1752, when Berks county was erected, the northern part of Brecknock township was taken from Lancaster county; since that time, however, Brecknock boundaries have remained unchanged. The township is now bounded by Berks county on the northeast by Caernarvon, East Earl and Earl townships on the south; by Ephrata on the west; and by East Cocalico township on the northwest. The principal village is Bowmansville. The township is hilly and rugged.
The first settlements were along the banks of Black Muddy creek. The first warrant issued by the Land Office bears date of January 9, 1737. The warrant was obtained by Robert Warburton for 177 acres extending across Black Muddy creek into Earl township; title was vested in William Morris in 1768. Another warrant, dated Decernber 21, 1737, resulted in the surveying of 232 acres of adjoining land on May 13, 1738, and in the patenting to the said William Morris on October 12, 1742. William Morris, a Welshman, thus became the first land owner in Brecknock township. At about the same time certain Mennonite emigrants came into the township and settled near where Bowmansville now is. They were Jacob and Christian Good (or Guth), brothers, and John Musselman (or Moseman), their brother-in-law. The were from the Palatinate, but seem to have come into Brecknock from Earl township. A deed was issued to Jacob Good in 1738 for 628 acres. Half a mile higher up, on the south fork of that branch of Muddy creek, Christian Good settled, and there erected the first grist mill established in Brecknock township. Later a stone grist mill and separate stone dwelling houses were built; in one of the latter religious services were held. Christian Good raised a family of seventeen children, six sons and eleven daughters. His will, dated August 11, 1757, appointed his eldest son Jacob as one of the executors. Him he exhorted "to be a proper example" to his younger brothers and sisters, and they in turn were admonished "to be obedient and subject to him."
John Musselman settled about a mile north of Christian Good's mill. About a mile north of Musselman's farm, Francis Diller, a Swiss, erected the first distillery in Brecknock. South of the Goods, Francis Eckert settled; east of the Goods lived Hermann Deis. Eckert's land eventually passed to the Messners, and the Deis tract to the Kern family. Casper Messner (or Mason) had a warrant issued in 1748, but prior to this he may have lived there and built the two-story stone house which still stands. Jacob Schneder purchased part of the William Morris tract, and died on his homestead near Centre Church on July 9, 1829, at the age of ninety-four years. For his son he purchased the Messner home referred to above. just before the Revolution, John Boehm began to erect another large two-story stone mansion. It could not be completed until after the war. It stands in good condition about one mile south of Bowmansville. Another very large stone mansion was built in the valley of the Black Muddy creek in 1795 by Christian Schneder. Another even larger was erected by Peter Boehm in x8og. These houses are landmarks.
A list of principal landowners in Brecknock township at the close of the Revolutionary War indicates that it was then peopled almost wholly by Ger- mans, or Swiss. Six mills are shown on the list. Hans Good owned a grist will, Peter Good a saw and hemp mill, Rudy Frey a sawmill, Jacob Foneida (Von Neida) a grist and saw mill, and Dr. Samuel Martin, a grist and saw mill. The Von Neida mill was erected by Peter Sharp on the township line, near Adamstown; he died in 1764. In 1780 the mill passed to John Shaup, and Jacob Von Neida became owner in 1785; it remained in that family for almost a century, passing eventually to Andrew Emmett. About two miles lower down the same stream is the Martin Frey grist and saw mill; it passed to the Shober family in 1830. On Muddy creek also was Dr. Samuel Martin's mill: it was later at different periods known as Lupold's, Overholzer's, Sensenig's mill. Another Muddy creek mill stod near the Dry Tavern. It was a saw mill only until after the death of Abraham Bixler, in 1847. George Martin acquired the propeety and added the grist, both later passing to Peter B. Good. The hemp mill of the latter was for preparing the fibre of hemp for spinning. "A large stone, in the shape of the frustrum of a cone was made to roll by machinery propelled by waterpower on the hemp spread out on a circular floor pre- pared for the purpose."
It seems that about a hundred years ago some parties of Menonites left Brecknock for western parts; others went north into Canada, and were very much worried that in their first year in Canada (1816) they had frost in every month. But they were relieved when they heard that in Lancaster county Pennsylvania, a similar state of frigidity prevailed in that abnormal year. However, Brecknock township was looked upon as "worn out" at about that time. It was not until some years later, when limestone could be brought in from the neighboring townships of Earl and Cocalico, that the impoverished soil was improved. The early settlers had been improvident in their tilling.
Politics did not reach far into this secluded township. Farming was the main pursuit, and public affairs were left to others. The first Brecknock citizen who held county or State office was, it is said, Philip Von Neida, who was elected to the Legislature in 1838. German was almost the universal tongue and all local journals were in that language. The common school system, came into effect in 1834, but that being optional, the voters of Brecknock township continued to "vote down" all public school measures until 1848, whet the common school system became compulsory throughout Pennsylvania. There was considerable strife, even armed conflict, between the progressive citizens, headed by Daniel Sensenig, and those who opposed these "Zwing- schulen" (forced schools) and who seemed to believe that their children were bettered only by education from Holy Writ. Not for some years after, indeed was it possible to enforce the school tax in Brecknock township. But it was the "law of the land," and the stubborn farmers had to give way, eventually The school situation in 1850 was that there were five or six
school houses, for a population of 1,366. "These buildings were mostly log cabins, rudely con- structed, without furniture and without ventilation," and situated at crossroads in the woods, or "at out-of-the-way places along the wayside." The best school was at Bowmansville. Improvement came slowly, but in 1850 Brecknock township had seven school houses, and the school levy was $1,452.95. During the next twenty years all the school houses were replaced by substantial structures of sandstone. And the benefits that follow good schools became so obvious during that generation that no strenuous opposition has arisen to any reasonable school proposition put before the voters.
Bowmansville was founded by Samuel Bowman, who was born at Bowman's Mill, Berks county, Pennsylvania, in 1789. He was a descendant ot Wendall Bowman, a Swiss Mennonite who came to America in 1707, was in Germantown for some time, and later settled in Lancaster county. Samuel was educated in Churchtown Academy. He studied surveying, did scrivening, and from 1815 to 1820 was a school teacher. The remainder of his life is well stated in a paper entitled "Samuel Bowman and the Village he Founded," read before the Lancaster County Historical Society in 1896, by A. G. Seyfert. The paper reads in part as follows:
In 1820 Mr. Bowman built a house on the southeast corner where the road leading from Reamstown to the Plow Tavern crossed the State road. The house was arranged for keeping a country store. Here he commenced the mercantile business immediately after the building was finished, and was succeeded by his son-in-law, Jonas Musselman, and he in turn by his son, J. B. Musselman, who does a flourishing business at the old stand to-day. 'rhis was the first house of the now thriving village and from whence the name of the place was derived. Martin Bowman erected the second house, Daniel Bowman the third, and John B. Good and Peter B. Good followed with substantial stone buildings. The latter built upon the northwest corner of the cross roads and opened a hotel, the only public house the place ever had. Now the village contains over a hundred houses, many of beautiful, modern design, four churches-two Mennonite, a Lutheran and Reformed, an Evangelical Methodist, and a handsome, substantial two-story school house. In 1840, just twenty years after the first house was erected, a post office was established at Bowman's store and named Bowmansville. Mr. Bowman was appointed postmaster, the only office outside of justice of the peace he would accept, the latter only for the convenience of acknowledging his official papers. The establishing of a post office and naming it after the founder, with the attachment of ville to it, was a fortunate occurrence, for by it the place received its baptism by the authority of the Department at Washington, or else more than likely the village would be known to-day by the inelegant title of Buckstown.
About a mile southeast of the then hamlet lived an old bachelor, Samuel Good. He was an eccentric old hermit, whose chief delight was in a flock of sheep, but he had a singular hatred for any sheep which was so unfortunate as to have black wool. In other words, he had more contempt for a black sheep than for his satanic majesty. This the villagers knew, and one morning as Good viewed his flock he was amazed to find a black buck among them. He accused certain ones from the town of having perpetrated the joke, and from that morning on he called it Buckstown, or, in Pennsylvania German, Buckstettle. The name stuck to it like wax and is now and then heard yet when one wants to refer to the place in a contemptuous way.
One of the "eyesores" to many of the village people was the Mennonite meeting house that stood on the square for many years. From 1870 to 1880 the village enjoyed quite a building boom and the real estate became too valuable for hitching posts and was sold, the old stone building or meeting house removed and a new one erected by members of the Mennonite Church near Von Neida's mill, about a mile south of the village. In one end of the old church lived for many years an old woman, whose name I have forgotten. She was the sexton of the meeting house and a terror to the boys who played upon the village green. In this quaint old house of worship preached for many years, every fourth Sounday, Jacob Moseman, a learned Prussian Lutheran, who foresook that church and joined the Mennonites, and was undoubtedly the ablest minister that church ever had in the eastern end of the county. The hitching posts and the old shed upon the village green were never sufficient to accommodate all the teams when Moseman's turn came to preach. In 1854 a new Mennonite meeting house was erected several hundred yards south of the village on the edge of a grove of magnificent pines. But three partly decayed trees remain, standing as sentinels of the many giants that stood there half a century ago. The new church has had but few members since its organization forty-five years ago. It was originally supplied by ministers from Montgomery and Bucks counties, but in 1860 Rev. Solomon Ott was ordained and has proclaimed the gospel for thirty-six years in the little church beside the pine grove. On the same road north of the town stood the little stone school house, now the site of the hand- some school building of the town. Here Brecknock's fight for the free school system was repeated. What occurred in every other of the little temples of learning, the story of which when told is as interesting as Eggleston's "Hoosier Schoolmaster." From 1820, when Bowman built the first house, up to 1860, a period of forty years, the village made but very little improvement. Bowman's store and dwelling, the hotel, the residence erected by John B. Good on the northeast corner of the cross roads and now occupied by 'Squire Stover, a brick dwelling a little north of Good's house and then occupied by Joseph Musselman, another brick house west of the hotel erected by Jonas Musselman and occupied by his son, Israel, the dwelling, shoemaker shop and tin shop that stood on the edge of the hitching post ground of the Mennonite Church, and occupied by Benjamin Lausch, the village shoemaker, and his son, Reuben, the tinsmith of the hamlet, the farm buildings of Daniel Bowman, another most substantial and large dwelling house then occupied by Jacob Hoover and now by Michael Witmer, and a brick dwelling now owned by G. L. Bowman, of Reading, and occupied by John M. Weaver, were all the houses the village contained when the civil war broke out in 1861. Reuben Lausch, who hammered tin in the second story of his father's house and later in a commodious shop erected near his residence, was a man of far more than ordinary ability. He not only illuminated the homes of the neighborhood with the first coal oil lamps, but his genial, well-informed mind was a source of delight to the young men who gathered in his shop to listen to his interesting talks. In 1861 the war excitement created a stir in the village that was not surpassed by any other in the county. An immense pole was erected and a large flag flung to the breeze. This suggested the idea to some one that the village ought to have a large bell. A tall pole with a frame was put up on the corner of the tin shop, a bell hung in the frame, and for many years the shoemaker or the tinsmith rang the bell morning, noon and night, and also at the death of any one in the entire neighborhood. At the tolling of the bell for some one's funeral it broke; the second was bought but when put in place; the third was purchased and put upon a new frame erected in the rear of the old Bowman store stand, where the custom of.ringing the meal time hour three times a day to all the inhabitants for miles around is still observed. This quaint observance is part of the daily life of the village, to which everyone has become so used that to do without it would be like omitting an event of the day. No township in the county witnessed such exciting times as Brecknock did during the war. The district was strongly slavery, and contained many outspoken disloyal men who would defiantly at any public gathering yell for the Confederacy. Many of them were densely illiterate and had no more conception of the principle at stake than they bad of the French revolution. The inhabitants of the capital of Brecknock, to their lasting honor and credit, were all loyal and stood by the flag that floated from the village flag staff. The Silver Hill rebels, as they were called by the villagers, were a terror to all law-abiding people. Philip Huber, the Berks county chief and organizer of the Knights of the Golden Circle, or Enemies in the Rear, came to Bowrnansvillwand held a public meeting at the hotel then kept by Samuel Eshleman. The Saturday afternoon was a memorable event for the loyal people of the town. Huber, surrounded by several hundred of disloyal, cowardly Enemies in the Rear, many of whom came across the line from Berks county, was in his glory, and made the most treasonable speech that was ever publicly delivered in Lancaster county. The excitement was intense.
Bowmansville still has as residents members of the Bowman family. Its present population is about 400, and it is a well-balanced self-contined town, though not a banking town. It has a number of small industries, cigar, shirt and broom factories, and the usual retail service establishments. Brecknock township, however, must be put into the decadent class, for its population is dwindling. In 1920 it had scarcely more inhabitants than in 1850. In 1920 the census showed only 1,559 persons as then resident in Brecknock township.
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