How did Buckmanville, Pennsylvania get it’s name? This page provides a brief history about the naming of Buckmanville, Pennsylvania, the people who settled it, and the industry rising within it.
Small village on Street Road between Windy Bush Road (Route 659) and Jericho Mountain in Upper Makefield Township. The post office was established July 14, 1862, with Barclay J. Smith as the first postmaster. It was discontinued about 1933 after the store in which it was kept was destroyed by fire. Mail is now delivered by New Hope rural delivery. This once thriving village owes its name to George Buckman, an enterprising and ingenious mechanic, who built a blacksmith shop in 1843 and soon thereafter a house. In 1847 Benjamin Wiggins perfected a new plow and entered into an agreement with Buckman to manufacture the implements in his shop. Buckman enlarged the shop into a plow factory. As the plow was very popular, the factory soon became a busy place. The new Wiggins pattern was an improvement over the old Smith iron mould board, having a light draft and turning a furrow that completely covered the sod. Josiah B. Smith1 says Wiggins made his pattern on strictly scientific principles, every curve of the mould board being determined by mathematical calculation. It was never patented. In a trial of plows of various makes at Pineville, the Wiggins product from the Buckman factory beat them all in lightness of draft and equaled them in all other respects. Within a few years Buckman moved his plant to what he considered a better location on the Durham Road near Anchor Tavern. In 1845 Josiah B. Smith built a wheelwright shop for John B. DuBree, who, after establishing a paying business, removed to Ohio. With the departure of Buckman and DuBree, the village’s business activity declined and today only five dwelling houses remain. The Morris Map of Bucks County (1850) shows the store of “S. Atkinson,” no doubt the property of Samuel Atkinson, Esq., who also owned a productive farm above the village on Windy Bush Road. Martha Smith, who lived in the neighborhood from 1830 to 1917, remembered the village’s first store, which, she said, was built in the edge of a large tract of heavy timber. A “copper mine,” marked on the Morris map as near the village, is an error. This mine was just northwest of Bowmans Hill. Buckmanville School was established by the Upper Makefield School Board in 1850.
Source: MacReynolds, George. Place Names in Bucks County Pennsylvania, 2nd Edition. Doylestown, PA: The Bucks County Historical Society, 1955.
- Manuscript Journal, No. 1, of Josiah B. Smith, now in the Library of The Bucks County Historical Society. [↩]