How did Jacksonville, Pennsylvania get its name? This page provides a brief history about the naming of Jacksonville, Pennsylvania, the people who settled it, and the industry rising within it.
Village in northwestern Northampton Township on the road from Jamison to Richboro near the Warwick Township line. There is considerable confusion about the names of this village. General Davis1 says Jacksonville “was ushered into the world with the euphonious name of Tinkertown.” Gordon2 lists Tinkertown as “a small village on the line dividing Northampton and Warwick Townships.” As there is no village on that line, the presumption is that Gordon’s reference is to Jacksonville, near the line. From information furnished by Frank K. Swain, “Fonthill,” Doylestown, it is learned that “Sarah Kroeson’s will, 1857, disposes of property between Ivyland and Almshouse Road. She names Jacksonville Road and Coxville Road, which is confusing. This would mean that Coxville was an old name for Jacksonville Road.” It may be, however, that Jacksonville Road was a name for the part of the Almshouse Road between Jacksonville and Richboro, and that Coxville Road is the highway which crosses the Almshouse Road at Jacksonville. The annual statement of Bucks County finances for the year 1827 contains an item for “repairs at Coxville bridge,” and this must have been on Coxville Road. Mr. Swain further says, “I find the North Pennsylvania Railroad map of 1857 is marked Coxville for what we now know as Jacksonville,” which is correct. The A. W. Kennedy map of Bucks County, 1831, fixes Coxville at what is now Ivyland, but this seems to be an error as to location. General Davis also calls attention to a bridge of 1761 “in Northampton Township, called ‘Cuckoldstown’ bridge, to which a road was laid out that year from James Vansant’s, but we have not been able to fix the location of it or the stream. The old records speak of a tract of land called Cuckold’s Manor, but we are equally in the dark as to its exact situation.” In a footnote he adds, “Under date of June 15, 1794, was presented to the ‘worshipful Justice holding court of Quarter Sessions at Newtown’ the petition of Ebenezer Large, stating that ‘your petitioner has rented the old accustomed Inn at Cuckold’s Town,'” etc. It may be that Coxville and Cuckoldstown were the same village. It also seems probable that the early names Tinkertown and Coxville were used interchangeably. The present name of the village, so called for President Andrew Jackson, dates back possibly to 1850, although the name Coxville seems to have been used for some years after that date.