Chinquapin, Canada Hill and Bulltown: The wonderful world of place names in Bucks County
The backroads of Bucks County offer a treasure trove of unique place names with hidden histories. Take Chinquapin Road in Northampton Township. The first time I drove its hairpin turns near the village of Holland, I thought of Toll House Grade in my native California. There, a narrow highway leading to our Huntingdon Lake campground in the Sierra Nevada Mountains winds up 12,000-foot-high Sanger Peak. Inevitably we’d encounter a logging truck loaded with massive Sequoia redwoods coming the other way around a blind curve. It required Dad to back down and squeeze our 8-cylinder Buick towing a ski boat to the very edge of the cliff for the truck to pass. From the backseat, my sisters and I suppressed sheer terror.
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Chinquapin Road’s fear factor isn’t close to that. But it does have extremely tight turns where vehicles rounding forested curves can startle you. The highway’s name struck me as unusual. It describes dwarf chestnut trees indigenous to the Southeast and named by the Powhatan people of eastern Virginia. Here, Chinqaupin Road derives from an ersatz Johnny Appleseed settler who planted an orchard of the shrub-like trees to produce an edible nut and hardwood for fence posts.
Oddly, I never heard any mention of Chinquapin trees in my many years in Florida and hiking long stretches of the Appalachian Trail on the East Coast. Then I moved here and became curious about the winding road in Holland.
Canada Hill
You can’t miss Canada Hill driving north on Route 202 about a mile above Lahaska’s Peddler’s Village shopping district. The knob is distinguished by a stone church on the summit. There are no totem poles, no red-coated Royal Mounties, dog-team sleds, nor maple trees to signify any hint of Canada. Rather the church has become a richly overstuffed art and antique store founded by David Mancuso in the 1970s.
He doesn’t know why the hill is called Canada. “The only history I can tell you about is the story of Langhorn, the former church caretaker before the Civil War who was black. He married a German woman, both buried in the church graveyard.” Reaching into a desk drawer, David drew out “Langhorn and Mary”, a biography of the two by descendant Priscilla Stone Sharp. The book with a locale on the hill doesn’t reveal how it came to be called Canada. All we know is it identified a small settlement around the church built in 1844 by Lambertville evangelists. They paid landowner Isaac Scarborough $70 for the hill on which to build Solebury Baptist Church. Services lapsed in the mid-20th century. Historians theorize Canada Hill most likely derived from a mispronunciation of the Kanady family who lived in the area.
Bulltown
A former village in Northampton had the curious name of “Bulltown”. According to Bucks historian George MacReynolds, it was on Second Street Pike at its intersection with Billet Road in Richboro. There blacksmith Harper Harding operated a wheelwright shop near a schoolhouse.
I could find no mention of Billet Road anywhere in Northampton. I reached out to township historian Clarence King for help. “Nope, no Billet Road here,” he said after checking maps from 1850 and 1876 and various local history books. One map designated Second Street Pike at Bustleton Pike as Richboro. The intersection included a wheelwright shop, a schoolhouse, and cluster of homes. Clarence’s best guess is it’s the right locale though Billet Road no longer exists.
What makes Bulltown of interest is how MacReynolds says it got its name. Near the village was a militia training field. Exasperated at the men’s inability to understand the difference between left and right, a sergeant known as a “bull” came up with a solution. He ordered the rookies to tie a bunch of hay on their left foot and straw on the right. The bull then barked, “Forward! March! Hay foot, straw foot.! Hay foot, straw foot!”
Sources include “Place Names in Bucks County Pennsylvania” by George MacReynolds published by the Bucks County Historical Society in 1942. “Bucks County Adventures for Kids” by Carl and his grandson Dashiell has just been published and is available at bookstores in Lahaska, Doylestown and Newtown.
Carl LaVO can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Chinquapin, Canada Hill and Bulltown: Strange names in Bucks County
