How The Delaware River Helped Build New Hope

Journalist Elizabeth Fisher is writing a series of stories for the nation’s 250th anniversary on the impact the Delaware River has made on the region and country.

The Delaware River is a jewel that flows past the banks of cities and towns from the Catskills in New York to the Atlantic Ocean. Nature’s course channeled the river for 300 miles. Bucks County shares 60 miles of that, beginning in Riegelsville to the north and Bensalem to the south.

Formed by melting ice from the Arctic 2.5 million years ago, it has sustained both freshwater fish, and fish that can move from the ocean saltwater to freshwater, as well as plant life.

Its surface, however, has seen both daily life ranging from recreation to life-sustaining activities, such as fishing or trade. 

The river became a lifeline over the centuries to first, Indigenous people who lived on its banks, and later communities that were built up to transport crops and people down river, or across the river to New Jersey.

Several of the river towns were success stories just because of their advantage of being on the banks of the river. For instance, New Hope Borough began around 1700 when Quaker Edward Heath received a commission from William Penn for 8,000 acres of land. 

That area would have several names before a devastating fire of its flour mills in 1790 led to reconstruction and its owner Benjamin Parry renaming what was Wells Ferry and then Coryell’s Ferry to New Hope. 

But back to the beginning, shortly after the transfer of the small village, Quaker families began to settle in, drawn by its rich soil and industry.

Early on that included mills that produced flour from crops including wheat and corn. Later mills for bricks and lumber were added. 

In 1719 John Wells started a ferry business between the village named after himself, Wells Ferry, that served communities on both the Pennsylvania and the New Jersey side of the Delaware. John Wells only ran his business for three years before he gave it up, and the ferry business was eventually taken over by the Coryell family. The community then became Coryell’s Ferry. That changed after Benjamin Parry, known as the Father of New Hope, rebuilt the mills destroyed by fire, and named the community New Hope. 

The stage was set for an influx of business and it was a matter of time before progress would cut into the ferry business with the construction of a wooden covered bridge in 1814. That bridge was replaced in 1841 by a second covered bridge crossing the river. But the Delaware, so necessary for the communities on its banks, could rage and it destroyed the second covered bridge.

Ron Ziegler, former president and current board member of the Parry Museum, in New Hope, credits his passion for history  to a teacher who presented the past  as thought it was happening in real time. 

Talking with a visitor, he seems to be able to re-create that scenario.  

“That teacher made you feel as if you were walking through those times,” said Ziegler, who with a friend, conducts popular tours through various historical sites in New Hope.

The Parry Mansion was built in 1784 by New Hope businessman Benjamin Parry, and was in his family and used by them for the next five generations.

Today the mansion is the home of the New Hope Historical Society and is one of the most popular tour sites in town. The first floor of the mansion is built in the colonial style, the second floor in federal style, Ziegler said.

 “The mansion has five rooms downstairs and five rooms upstairs, and we created each room to reflect a certain time in the history of New Hope,” he said.

Among the thousands of visitors who go to New Hope or who live there, there are those who just would like to take in quiet scenery and for that there’s the Riverwalk.

Carl and Medora White, who own a house on the riverbank of the Delaware in Bristol Borough would drive to New Hope so often that they decided that a small house in the area would suit them also.

Two years ago, just before they married, Medora bought a small house in Centre Bridge, Solebury Township, just 3 miles out of New Hope.

Carl said, “We don’t go as much for the history as for the fine restaurants and the great people that we meet. But we also use the Riverwalk for exercise.”

Mayor Frank DeLuca takes pride in New Hope Borough today, but credits its success to the spirit of its early settlers.