Throughout history new roads have been catalysts driving the economic and social development of towns and cities around the world.
So, when the original direction of Old York Road was changed, making New Hope (Wells Ferry) — and not Centre Bridge (Reading’s Landing) — the new midpoint of the journey from Philadelphia to New York, the small village along the Delaware River was changed forever.
John Wells, a carpenter from Lower Dublin Township (now part of Northeast Philadelphia), outwitted a clever, powerful politician and entrepreneur — Thomas Canby, of Solebury Township — in purchasing the Ferry Tract from Richard Heath’s heirs.
He obtained a license to operate a tavern — now the Logan Inn on West Ferry Street in New Hope — in 1727 and a ferry. Wells Ferry was born.
Most probably, Wells was influential in having the direction of Old York Road changed to favor his venue, but certainly the horses had a lot to do with it as well.
Route 263 (the original route) posed a severe challenge to those otherwise reliable animals purveying travelers and goods from New York and New Jersey as it climbed the steep hill from the flat road at Dilley’s Corner to Lahaska. Old York Road opened to New Hope in 1741.
Four years after the road opened, Benjamin Canby, one of Thomas’s 17 children, avenged his father’s failure to obtain the tavern and ferry rights, purchasing them from Wells’ heirs, and the town became known as Canby’s Ferry.
Much of the road followed an old Lenni-Lenape trail used for hunting and traveling between New Hope and Philadelphia.
Even after Old York Road opened, travel on foot or on horseback was the only way to go.
The first stagecoaches departed from Philadelphia for the two-day trip to New York in 1769. New Hope was the midpoint of that arduous journey.
Initially the coaches were merely farm wagons with boards attached for seating passengers. Eventually a covering was provided overhead to provide a modicum of protection from the elements.
Competition among stagecoach companies, the first being the Swift Sure, gradually improved the accommodations for weary travelers who obtained some relief as the coaches stopped in stages — hence the name, stagecoaches — roughly 10 miles apart to change horses, allowing passengers to stretch out their aching backs.
Old York Road, narrow and roughly cut, often washed out during rainstorms. Even George Washington was inconvenienced when marching from Valley Forge to New Hope (then Coryell’s Ferry) on his way to the Battle of Monmouth in 1778. Forced to stay overnight at Bogart’s Tavern in Buckingham on June 20 when a storm shut down the road, the peeved commander-in-chief wrote specific instructions to his men on how to fix the old road, and the next day he departed for his temporary headquarters at the Holcombe House in Lambertville, also known as Coryell’s Ferry at the time.
Although the Kings Highway presented a smoother ride to New York, and despite all the logistical problems confronting Old York Road, it remained the popular choice of travelers who preferred the road through bucolic Montgomery and Bucks counties for nearly two centuries, until the arrival of the railroads led to the demise of the stagecoach business.
Roy Ziegler is the New Hope Historical Society’s historian and a member of its board of directors.
“Heralding Our History” is a weekly feature. Each month, the Herald delves into the history of one of its towns.
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