Richlandtown Borough was incorporated in 1890, Richland Township was settled about 1710. The first settlement grew from the Richland Friend's Meeting House and was incorporated as Quakertown Borough in 1855.
The original name was Mattsville for the postmaster John Matts.
RICHLANDTOWN BOROUGH, BUCKS COUNTY, PA est. 1890
www.richlandtownborough.org/
125 S. MAIN STREET, PO BOX 455, RICHLANDTOWN, PA 18955 | (215) 538-9290 | info@richlandtownborough.org
Richlandtown-Pennsylvania Wikipedia.org
Richlandtown, two miles and a half north -east of Quakertown, is a village of twenty -five houses. Among the earliest settlers at this point were John Smith, a soldier of the Revolution , John Berger, Philip Gruver, and Daniel Walp. Walp built the first house, a frame, in 1804, but the oldest dwelling now standing was built by Abraham Oberholtzer more than half a century ago, and now owned by William Freed . This place was first called " Three Lanes Ends, " and then, in succession , Ducktown, Frogtown , Flatland, and the name it now bears. It has one church , Saint John's Evangelical Lutheran and Reformed , organized in 1806-7 . The lot was the gift of John Smith , and the building was finished in 1808 and re -built in 1860. A school-house stood on the lot before the church was built, and there was a burying - ground half a mile north-east, where several of the earliest settlers were buried , but the graves are now plowed over. The first Lutheran pastor of Saint John's church was Reverend George Keller, who served about ten years, then Frederick Waage, four years, William B. Kemmerer, thirty -eight years, and died in August, 1860 , E. T. M. Sell , two years , L. Groh , four years, P. B. Kistler, four years, and Reverend Joseph Hillpot installed in 1871 , and is still the pastor. The Reverend Samuel Stahr was the first Reformed pastor, who served until his death , in 1826, then Mr Berke, two years, Samuel Hess, forty years, who resigned on account of old age, and the Reverend Henry . Hess, the present pastor, who succeeded him in 1868.
The post-office at Richlandtown was es tablished in 1839, and Christian A. Snyder appointed postmaster. Bunker Hill is situated on the New Bethlehem road , on the line between Richland and Rockhill, and contains a store and about a dozen dwellings. A tavern was licensed there many years, but it has been closed a long time. Within a few years a small hamlet called California has sprung up on the railroad , about two miles above Quakertown , which contains a tavern , store, mill , and half a dozen dwellings. Along the border of the Quakertown basin, near California, there are two old log houses, inhabited by the Green family at a very early day, which are probably the oldest houses in the township. A mile east of Richlaudtown, on the road to Doylestown and near the cross-roads at Lonx's smith -shop, in Haycock , is an old graveyard, where was once a log Methodist church , but which has been taken down a quarter of a century. On a ruined gravestone can be read the initials “ J. M.,” the latter letter being supposed to stand for Mof ley, an inhabitant of the neighborhood .
This section of the county has been noted for its healthfulness and the longevity of many of its citizens. A few years ago the Provident Life and Trust company of Philadelphia instituted an inquiry into the age to which people lived in various parts of the county. An examination of Richland meeting records proved that a larger number of its members died at a greater age than of any other ineeting. The oldest inhabitant of that section , at this writing, is John Heller, near Quakertown, who was one hundred years old the 25th of January, 1875, and as we have not heard of his death , we presume him to be still alive. He was born in Rockhill in 1775 , and lived sixty years in Milford township. He has met with many mishaps during his time, among others falling a distance of thirty one feet from the wall of a mill , at the age of seventy -one, which lamed him for life. He has led an industrious life, and in his old age enjoys good health . There were several lots of land in Richland, containing in all four hundred and thirteen acres and twenty perches, included in the tract known as “ Lottery lands. " They were or iginally surveyed by John Watson, and re-surveyed in 1773 by Samuel Foulke. A century and a quarter ago Robert Penrose was the most extensive farmer in Richland .
We have met with no record of roads earlier than 1729, when the inhabitants petitioned to have a road laid out “from the upper part
History of Bucks County – W.W. H. Davis, A.M. 1876
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1864) 2nd Inaugural
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