William Yardley and the Falls of the Delaware
A Quaker minister, indentured servants, and the settlement that became Yardleyville — from Davis's immigrant rolls.
Dim the room and read in the nook. Tap the lamp inside for ambient music — your header playlist keeps playing separately.
William Yardley and Jane, his wife, of Ransclough, near Leek, in Staffordshire, yeoman, with children Enoch, Thomas and William, and servant Andrew Heath, arrived at the falls September 28th, 1682, and settled in Lower Makefield, taking up a large tract covering the site of Yardleyville.
He was born in 1632, was a minister among Friends in his twenty-fifth year, and was several times imprisoned. He was a member from Bucks of the first assembly, and also in the council, dying in 1693.
Thomas Janney wrote of him about the time of his death: He was a man of sound mind and good understanding. He was an uncle of Phineas Pemberton. From him have descended all the Yardleys of this county, and many elsewhere, with unnumbered descendants in the female line.
The servants who accompanied these immigrants were indentured to serve four years, and at the end of the time each one was to receive his freedom and fifty acres of land — the condition of all indentured servants brought from England at that period.
Public domain. W.W.H. Davis, History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania (1876). Digitized by Internet Archive.