|
Bucks Township was originally included in Salem, from which
it was struck off and made a distinct township in 1825, and
the usual election for such cases provided ordered to be
held at the house of John Mizer. The village of
Rowville, situated in the northwest corner, owes its name
and laying out to Lewis Row, in 1848; subsequent
additions have been made. It has a steam grist- and
saw-mill, a Lutheran and a German Reformed church. It
presents the usual features of a country village, in stores,
groceries, and blacksmith-shop. The post-office is
known as the Buena Vista. To the southeast of the
township are two Lutheran churches, thus indicating the
religious faith of the people. Here rises Sugar Creek,
which flows northward through Auburn, Cedar Creek, and
Wayne. The roads have no regularity, and seem to have
been the work of men careless of shortest distances.
Many of the houses, according with a Pennsylvania custom,
are at a distance from the road, and are reached by lanes.
Years go by and Bucks knows few changes.
Political standing is shown by the vote for Secretary of
State in 1874, in which A. T. Wikoff received eight
votes, while William Bell, Jr., Democrat, had one
hundred and seventeen. The occupation of the
population is farming and raising life-stock, for which the
lands are well adapted. The present generation quietly
cultivate the fields and live with comfort on the lands
subdued by their fathers, who endured the hardships and
privations of a wilderness to win this heritage. The
pioneer families toiled many weary miles to reach their
Canaan, and when the way-worn travelers halted in the
forest, no waving fields of grain promised food, nor cleared
tract of land was ready for cultivation. One thing
they knew, the land was cheap and fertile, and conveniences
would come in time.
The old home seemed far distant, no railways sped the
traveler; few letters came, and those at wide intervals.
Cut off from former associations, they neighbored far and
near, and in their own wild-wood society found comfort.
The dance, the drive, the husking, were times of hearty
jollity, and not a few, in meetings held at cabin homes,
found opportunity to hold religious exercises.
Revs. Espach, Christian E. Werrich, William Knox, George G.
Miller, Abraham Snyder, and others, at times gave out
appointments and had preaching. The work of clearing
and choring kept the boys at home, and Dilworth's
"Spelling-Book" and English Readers were little used;
sugar-making, corn planting, and grubbing were a bar to the
attendance of the youth at school; the parents labored, and
they taught their children how to labor. Turnips,
walnuts, and hickory-nuts supplied the place of fruit;
pawpaws were good in their season. Long since fruit
has been abundant, and has seemed to lose its relish; but in
those early days an apple or a peach was thought a luscious
present.
|
