dSO
 

HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY,
 

CHAPTER  XXIII.
 

NEW   BRITAIN.
 

ITSS.
 

Hudson's grant.—Tlie Free Society of Traders.—Earliest settlers.—Welsh families.—
Perkasie.—Settlers on West Branch.—Simon Butler.—Grist-mill built.—Simon
Mathew.—Old houses.—Thomas Jones.—Jolm Mathias.—Owen Rowland.—The
Griffiths.—The James family.—John O. James.—Joseph Kirkbride.—Thomas
Morgan.—The Riales.—Township organized.—Germans arrive.—Abraham
Swartley.—John Tlalderaan.—Jacob Geil.—The Brinkers, Garners, Bachmans,
and Shutts.—New Britain a Welsh settlement.—Settlers generally Baptists.
—NcAY Britain church.—Line Lexington church.—Some account of Mennonites.
—Universalist congregation.—David Evans.—Beads.—Tammany.—Villages.—
Chalfont.—Prospectville.—Morgan's ford.—Population,
 

The formation of Hilltown in 1722, left a considerable tract of
unorganized country lying to the south-east, and extending eastward
to Plumstead and Buckingham. The following year a part of this
territory was organized into New Britain, and a century later Doyles¬
town was carved out of it, with slices from Warwick and Bucldng¬
ham. We learn from Holme's map, that the country north west of
Buckingham, and embracing parts of the three townships named, had
been granted to Thomas Hudson, '* a gentleman of Sutton, England,"
Colonel Mildmay, of whom nothing is known, and to a corporation
called the '' Free Society of Traders," whose lands were sold to
several purchasers some years later, and the corporation dissolved.