Common Creek in Pennsylvania

How did Common Creek in Pennsylvania get it’s name? This page provides a brief history about Common Creek in Pennsylvania, the people who settled on it, and the industry rising around it.

One branch of Common Creek rises in Lower Makefield Township southwest of Morrisville. Another branch rises in Falls Township west of Fallsington. The branches unite southeast of Fallsington and the stream then flows through Tullytown and empties into Delaware River at Tullytown Wharf, near the boundary line between Bristol and Falls Townships.¹ Indians who paddled their canoes up and down tributaries of the Delaware had a name for each stream, and that for Common Creek was Hackaczockan,² the meaning of which is obscure. Perhaps it was William Penn himself, as he rode in his coach and four between his city and Pennsbury homes, balked at pronouncing this Indian name, and, believing as he did in plain language, went to the opposite extreme and called the creek Common.

Source: MacReynolds, George. Place Names in Bucks County Pennsylvania, 2nd Edition. Doylestown, PA: The Bucks County Historical Society, 1955.

1. Description from a copy of the scarce Atlas of the Properties near the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad, Published by G. M. Hopkins, C. E., 1885, in possession of Chester P. Cook, Merlon, Pa. [↩]
2. Dr. Amandus Johnson in Geographia Americae, p. 156. [↩]