NEWPORTVILLE PENNSYLVAVIA

NEWPORTVILLE
Just some thoughts while I can still remember them.
I’ll try to add thoughts as I remember them.
I will try to be as accurate as I can, if you spot something that is not accurate let me know.

When I lived in Newportville on Low Rd. I lived next to Mr. Ray Givens, in the evenings I would sit on his porch looking out at the Neshiminy Creek and he would tell me stories about Newportville as he remembered them. He had came to Newportville when he got out of the army after the First World War. He said that Potters house, the first house on the creek side going south was the barge landing where the lumber was loaded to send it down Philadelphia. The next house was Marvin’s house [ Marvin owned two houses there] the low one closest to the creek was originally a boat that someone had draged up on shore and built a house around it. There was a house up on the high road North of Fallsington Rd. that was a Sears Roebuck house that was bought out of the catalogue and shipped to the nearest rail head and brought there and assembled. I think it may have been Vaughn’s house. Mr. Givins me told our house was the West End Men’s Club and the person who owned it before us bought it at the tavern up at the end of the street for $1400.00 the bill of sale was written in a bar napkin. Between our house and the tavern was the old general store and hotel, there was a fire in it and the only person who lived there had burned to death in a chair and fallen through the floor to the floor below, which is the basement on street level, it had been made into 9 Apartments. The playground on the high road was the ground where the school house stood, kindergarten through eighth grade. The church behind his house was started by Missionary Alliance teachers who came up from Philadelphia once a month and held services in someone’s house. The church building that is there was built by the people of Newportville, it is deeded as a community church. It later became a Presbyterian church, the people of the church bought a piece of ground on Newportville Fallsington Rd., the Presbytery wanted to build a large church for the people of Levittown, the people of Newportville refused, the Presbyterian’s sold the ground to the fire dept. that is where the present fire house now stands.
Mr. Givins told me Newportville and Fergasonville as it is now was started as a summer bungalow community for the people of Philadelphia, there was a trolley that ran up Frankford Ave [Rt. 13] and then went on the high road through Hulmnville to Langhorne.
everyone would bring lumber and building supplies on the trolley and build their houses on the weekend.
During the depression they lost their jobs and their homes so they moved to their summer bungalows.
Some times they would ride the trolley from Newportville to Rt. 1 at Langhorne where they had dances on the weekends.