Chapter II.
New to the Neighborhood.
Easy communication with Philadelphia, by water, had made it so practicable for the settlers of the back country, as the valley of Crosswicks Creek was then called, to procure such household articles and farm utensils as were needed, that so early as 1695 only grist-mills had as yet been established, and these were few and far between. The Indian mortars were still in common use, and he was the thriftiest settler who was the best mechanic and could most easily depend upon himself. The ordinary divisions of labor outside the village of Philadelphia were practically wanting, and so it was a decided novelty, and hailed as evidence of better days when perhaps a village would centre about some convenient point, when John Bishop and William Blake built a wheelwright-shop and smithy at a sharp bend of the winding
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