American Revolution Land

Bucks County is just north of the Philadelphia area and is full of "gentleman" 5 acre farms and Revolutionary era villages. The homes on these farms are huge and beautiful; everything is so picturesque.  I really enjoyed driving the country roads and being a looky-loo. I don’t get a sense that this is a touristy area, it is more of a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia. Bucks County is one of the wealthiest counties in the state. It is the scene of several important events in the American Revolution Days and we had fun exploring the area.

I have a branch of my family with history in Bucks County in the 1700s.  Doylestown is the county seat and I hit a jackpot when I visited the Bucks County Historical Society’s headquarters in the Mercer Museum.  I found several books that chronicled the family line back to the early 1700s, much further back than I have in my current tree.  Found a family member that fought in the American Revolution; this opens more resources that are online.  So exciting! So far, we have six 4^th and 5^th great grandfathers who fought in the war, five of them on the colonists' side. I am just starting the collection of information on their service.

We spent a warm overcast Sunday taking a covered bridge tour through the county.  It was a great way to get an exposure to what the county consists of. The bridges have all been restored and some are open for vehicles. It was a great way to see the countryside even though the bridges started to look much alike. Some were completely rebuilt with little to no original materials, others were over 80 percent original materials.

We stayed for several days in this county and have lots of photos, so I am breaking this visit into three blog entries.  The next two will cover our tour of the Fonthill Castle and Doylestown and visits to Valley Forge and Washington’s crossing of the Delaware.

The woods in the area are so lush and beautiful. I know they are not part of the ancient forest that originally covered the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, but they do give me a sense of how dense the woods were and how difficult it must have been to push a way through them to settle the interior.

The campground we stayed at in Williamsport had a whole petting zoo, with cute little jumping goats, donkeys and miniature horses, along with some funky looking chickens.  They had quite a fancy home with slides and all sorts of things to climb and jump off of. 

This miniature horse is quite old and has been with the campground since it was a baby.  Quite a life!

These bird condos are everywhere and are very elaborate.  I was tempted to buy one, but the birds in our area won't fancy them. These are purple martin houses and the birds have become dependent upon them while they are  nesting in North America.

What a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon with your grandchildren! This pond was in a small county park next to one of the covered bridges we found.

You can drive through several of the covered bridges, usually one car at a time.  Pennsylvania currently has over 200 of the one-time 5,000 covered bridges open to the public. I can understand why Pennsylvania had so many bridges what with all the rivers and streams that cover the landscape.

The interiors of these bridges are a real study in building structures that can withstand the elements for over 200 years.

By the fourth bridge, I got the message that they all look pretty much alike. Still nice to tour the countryside.

Russ was having fun finding new ways to photograph the bridges.

Turns out this bridge was very close to our campground.  The original bridge was built in 1873 and rebuilt in 1997 after being burned down.  It is 170 feet long and the longest existing covered bridge in Bucks County. It is not open for cars.

The truss work on these bridges is fascinating.  I think of how many trees it took to construct one of these and all the milling that was needed. Quite a commitment of time and energy.  

There's a lot of folklore about the role that the bridges played in the local dating scene.  Back in the day, when a young man was courting his girl, an acceptable method of dating was taking her for a ride in his courting buggy.  The covered bridges provided a bit of privacy for the couple as they traveled the local roads.

We spent a pleasant afternoon at a quaint shopping village which had beautifully landscaped gardens. Unfortunately, this is B&W because we had just come from the Mercer Museum doing genealogy work and I forgot to change the camera mode. This fellow reminded me of Mr. T, a red slider turtle we had for several years.