Bedminster Townships History
Bedminster is a scenic, rural township located in the central part of upper Bucks County. The gently rolling hills, divided by streams such as Deep Run, Mink Run, Deer Run, and Cabin Run likely attracted the earliest settlers. Although William Penn had become proprietor of this area as early as 1681, the earliest settlers were Scotch-Irish and German immigrants in the early 1700’s. The heavily wooded areas, where small game abounded, were helpful in building homes, barns, and churches.
Almost a third of Bedminster was conveyed by the Penn family to a William Allen of Philadelphia in 1730, a prosperous and prominent businessman of his time. William Allen was a Tory and in 1776, while war clouds gathered over Philadelphia, he took his family to England. Much of his property was confiscated in 1778 by the Pennsylvania Assembly. His estate managed to re-obtain his land holdings in the early 1800’s and proceeded to auction off any unsold land at the John Shaw’s Tavern in Dublin, now the Dublin Inn. By 1815 most of the undeveloped land in Bedminster had been sold.