![\"\"](\"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Hammond-BullsIsland2.jpg\" "\\"Hammond-BullsIsland2\\"")
<\/a>Hammond\u2019s map shows the Bull & Ladd tract, and also the property that was sold to Joseph Reading in 1773. That was the land originally allotted to Richard Bull in 1721. It was probably acquired by John Reading Jr. who bequeathed it to son Joseph. Sadly, Hammond did not include Isaiah Quinby to the east of Joseph Reading. The dotted line indicates the course of the dividing line between Kingwood and Amwell townships. Hammond shows Raven Rock on the property of Peter Fretwell, when in fact it belongs in the unidentified tract that was purchased by Quinby, just west of Fretwell\u2019s land.<\/p>\n
Isaiah Quinby<\/h3>\n
Isaiah Quinby (1716-1807) was the youngest of the eleven children of Josiah Quinby and Mary Mullineaux of New York. In 1743, at the age of 27, he married Rachel Warford (1725-1777)\u00a0 of Kingwood township, a few months before his purchase of the Ladd property. Rachel was the daughter of John Warford and Elizabeth Stout who came from Monmouth County to Hunterdon County in 1729. Since I have no record of an earlier land purchase for Quinby, I must assume that at the time of his marriage, he was a tenant, or perhaps he was working for John Warford, or maybe even his older brother Ephraim Quinby (1700-1767), who purchased land in Amwell Township, as early as 1727.<\/p>\n
Records for 18th century residents of the Delaware Township portion of Amwell Township are woefully scarce. It is not possible to say what use was made of the area around Bull\u2019s Island without far more intensive research than I can do. What I can say is that Isaiah Quinby was a prosperous farmer who likely took advantage of the seasonal fishing opportunities that the island provided, as well as the chance to ship produce and timber down river to Trenton and Philadelphia, and perhaps even to set up a mill on one of the creeks flowing into the river in that area. But I have no real documentation for this.<\/p>\n
What I do know is that two years after buying Ladd\u2019s 300 acres, Quinby bought a ten-acre lot from his neighbor, Marmaduke Leet for \u00a39.1<\/a><\/sup> This land was part of the 650 acres owned by Peter Fretwell in 1711, located between the Mount Amwell tract of John Reading and the tract surveyed to John Ladd and Richard Bull (as shown in the Hammond map, above). Why Quinby wanted this funny triangle of land is something of a mystery. Perhaps it was because it contained the lower part of today\u2019s Quarry Road. The lot did not go far enough to include the quarry itself.<\/p>\n Marmaduke Leet (what a wonderful name) acquired his property from his father, Daniel Leet, who wrote his will in 1727, leaving his home farm of 650 acres, which he acquired from the heirs of Peter Fretwell, to sons Marmaduke and Isaac. The account of his estate included a debt owed to Marmaduke Horseman. Perhaps this was someone that Daniel Leet admired enough to name his son after. Incidentally, Marmaduke\u2019s brother Isaac witnessed the will of John Warford in 1761.<\/p>\n I also know very little about what was happening at Bull\u2019s Island and Raven Rock during the Revolution. When Washington took his army across the Delaware in 1776, he no doubt made use of boats that were borrowed from Bull\u2019s Island, but whether Daniel Bray and his men made use of the island for concealing the boats is not known.<\/p>\n In 1777, Isaiah Quinby\u2019s wife Rachel died, age 51, after raising 13 children (5 sons and 8 daughters). Only one of them died in childhood\u2014the first one, Samuel. The youngest child was Job, born in 1768. Isaiah married again only a year after Rachel died. His second wife, Hannah Kinsey, was also a Quaker; they married at Buckingham Friends Meeting.<\/p>\n Surprisingly, there is no evidence that the sons of Isaiah and Rachel Quinby served in the local militia or the Continental Army. They all married women from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which can be explained by the fact that this was a Quaker family who worshipped at the Buckingham Friends Meeting House, and as Quakers, they would have abstained from participating in any military actions.<\/p>\n Aaron and Moses Quinby both married in 1782. Aaron, born 1757, married Lydia Balderston and took up residence in Bucks County. Moses (1759-1824), married a Bucks County woman, Jane Fell, daughter of John Fell of Warwick, PA, and after Jane died in 1799, married Hannah Good, also of Bucks County, in 1801.<\/p>\n Isaiah and Rachel Quinby\u2019s son James, born in 1765, married Margaret Good (sister of Hannah) in 1803, and was too young to fight in the Revolution, as was son Job born 1768, who married Martha Cadwallader. Evidence of the Quaker affiliation can be found in the compilation of Quaker records by William Hinshaw where I discovered that Moses Quinby and his family were granted a certificate to move from the Buckingham Meeting to the Falls Twp. Meeting in 1813. A \u201cCommemorative Poem\u201d written by Watson Kenderdine in 1891, and dedicated to Isaiah Quinby, goes on at length about the simple Quaker faith of the Quinby family, but this was primarily an act of the imagination.<\/p>\n At the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, Reading (\u201cRedding\u201d) Howell prepared a map of the Delaware River area for the new governments of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It was dated December 3, 1785, and was intended to assist the states in setting their boundary along the river. On the Pennsylvania side, opposite Bull\u2019s Island, was \u201cThe Hon. G. Wall\u2019s Saw Mill & Plantation.\u201d Across the river in New Jersey, was \u201cQuimby\u201d at the tavern site\u2014just the name. There was no indication that a tavern or a mill existed there.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n The location of the \u201cQuimby\u201d name next to Bull\u2019s Creek\u00a0 is interesting because that was not where Isaiah Quinby had set up his household. His homestead was up the hill, accessible today by Federal Twist Road. So why did the mapmaker show a separate habitation for \u201cQuimby\u201d by the river? Could a tavern have been there at such an early date? B. A. Sorby was convinced that a tavern was there as early as 1782, but he gave no source for that opinion, and I have not found anything for such an early date. And Reading Howell\u2019s Map only tells us that a Quimby\/Quinby was living at Bull\u2019s Creek in 1785. Perhaps the date of 1782 was used by Sorby because that was the year that Moses Quinby got married and set up housekeeping. The Quinby Genealogy recites that after marrying Hannah Good in 1801, Moses Quinby took his new wife \u201cto live in the little house at the bottom of the hill called \u2018under the rocks\u2019.\u201d Sorby may have thought that the \u2018little house\u2019 was also home to Moses\u2019s first wife. If so, it\u2019s a terribly thin reed on which to hang so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" John Ladd John Ladd was one of the Quaker immigrants who came to West New Jersey in 1678. He was also on hand when William Penn was designing the layout of his new town of Philadelphia. Family tradition says that Penn offered him a choice of one of the best squares in the city or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[233,5,251,256,124,257],"tags":[33,125,21,16,82,28],"class_list":["post-1679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amwell-township","category-delaware-township","category-howell-families","category-quinby-families","category-raven-rock","category-reading-families","tag-bucks-county","tag-bulls-island","tag-early-settlers","tag-land-titles","tag-taverns","tag-the-revolution","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1679"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8731,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions\/8731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>During the Revolution<\/h3>\n
The Map of 1785<\/h3>\n