HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
 

141
 

CHAPTER  X.
 

BENSALEM.
 

169S-
 

Bensalem the fourth township.—Origin of name.
 

salem."—Original land-owners.—" Tatham's House.''
 

Bacon's fiction.—" Manor of Ben-
Growden's tract.—Joseph
Growden.—Trevose.— Grace Growden.—Nathaniel Allen.—Samuel Allen.—The
Vandygrifts.—Old graveyard.—The Vanhornes, Yansants, et al.—The Tomlin-
sons.—The Rodmans.—Rodmanda.—Large tree.—Joseph Galloway.—Joined the
British army.—Confiscation of estate, etc.—Richard Gibbs.—James Benezet.—
The Willetts.—Richard Bache.—The Sickel iamily.—Nicholas Biddle.—Dunk's
ferry.—Slave Alice.—Township tax.—Presbyterian church.—Methodist church.
—Bridgewater.—Andalusia college.—Death of Doctor Chapman.—Roads,—Oldest
taverns.—Population.—Fisheries.
 

Bensalem, the fourth township of the group of 1692, and the lavSt
that bordered the Delaware, was to include " all the lands between
Neshaminah and Poquessin, and so to the upper side of Joseph
Growden's land." On three sides these boundaries have never been
disturbed, and the line with Southampton is doubtless the same as
when the township was erected.

The origin of the name this township bears has given rise to some
discussion, but like such questions generally, it remains unsettled.
Some profess to find the solution in Lord Bacon's ingenious fiction
of the New Atlantis, wherein he calls an imaginative island in the