William Biles (1644 – 19 May 1710) was an American judge, attorney, legislator, sheriff, land speculator and merchant. Born in England and educated in law, Biles brought his family to America in 1679 and settled in what would become Falls Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, before the charter of William Penn. The Biles family had been persecuted for their religious dissension in England, and William became a prominent Quaker minister. "After the withdrawal of the Declaration of Indulgence dissenters were more often punished for being absent from their parish churches... Quakers were always fair game and in the following spring (1674) two of them, William Biles and Thomas Strong, were presented at the Assizes." Presumably punishment for being absent from their parish church and attending Quaker ceremonies.
Biles was a Justice of the first Provincial (Supreme) Court which was convened as early as 1681, a member of the Pennsylvania Provincial Council from 1683 to 1700 and of the Legislature from 1686 to 1708. He owned large tracts of land in Pennsylvania and New Jersey (including more than 50,000 acres in what is now Salem County, New Jersey) and was qualified as a proprietor of West New Jersey. He traveled back to England for Quaker interests in 1701 and 1702, and returned to Pennsylvania where he died in 1710.
Early life and education William Biles was born in 1644 at Dorchester, Dorsetshire, England, the son of Alexander and Dorothy (Strong) Biles. His maternal grandfather, the Rev. William Strong, was a respected preacher at Westminster Abbey who wrote a number of religious tracts and was a supporter of the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War. The Biles (Byles) family had lived at All Saints Parish, Dorchester, for generations. When Biles was seven, in 1651, his paternal grandfather, Alexander Biles, was summoned for criticizing Parson Benn and subsequently stripped of property and title and imprisoned; this undoubtedly influenced William's religious conviction and political attitude. Biles was educated in law: he entered Exeter College, Oxford on 26 October 1660 when he was 16, received his B.A. in 1664, and his M.A. in 1669. (Listed as "William Byle")
First marriage Biles married Joanna Hellard on 6 May 1669. They were Anglican until about 1672, after which time they joined the Society of Friends. They are not found in the minutes of Dorchester monthly meeting (MM) prior to that, but their first five children, three sons and two daughters, were recorded there.
Emigration to and settlement in America An old history book of Burlington, New Jersey (located at the Burlington Township Public Library) claimed that William Biles arrived there in 1677, inferring that he arrived on the ship Kent. However, no ship list for the Kent is known. While it is possible that Biles made an initial trip to America, he would have had to travel back to England, as he is known to have arrived with his family in 1679. It seems likely that their ship, the Elizabeth and Sarah, weighed anchor at New Castle, Delaware, and from there the Biles family made their way to Burlington.
From Phineas Pemberton's List of Arrivals: "William Biles, vile monger, and Johannah, his wife, arrived in Delaware River in the Elizabeth and Sarah of Weymouth, the 4th month [June], 4th day, 1679. Besides his wife and five children, he brought with him two young servants: Edward Hancock to serve eight years and Elizabeth Petty to serve seven years, afterward each to receive 40 acres. They came to America from All Saints Parish, Dorchester, Dorset Co., England." Charles Biles, brother of William, also accompanied the family. Charles was a partner in some real estate purchased in Pennsylvania.
A 'vile monger' was a seller of glass products. Small glass containers or viles were used as containers and drinking vessels, to hold and preserve perfumes, oils, medicines and a myriad of other products. Glassmaking became important in England during the 1500s. By 1575, English glassmakers were producing Venetian-style glass. In 1674, an English glassmaker named George Ravenscroft patented a new type of glass in which he had changed the usual ingredients. This glass, called lead glass, contains a large amount of lead oxide. Lead glass, which is especially suitable for optical instruments, caused English glassmaking to prosper.
Biles and his family perhaps resided at Burlington for a few months before they removed to what would become Bucks County and the colony of Pennsylvania. As the west bank of the Delaware grew more and more into favor and notice, and immigrants came to it, there were several grants of land by Sir Edmund Andros in 1679, among which were two hundred acres to Thomas Fairman in Bensalem, below Neshaminy, and three hundred and nine to William Clark on the same stream. Several English settlers took up land on the west river bank just below the falls by 1679, including Biles.
Two years before William Penn was granted a charter for his colony, Biles purchased land in present-day Falls Township (at that time called "Crewcorne", "Crookhorn", or "Creekhorne") from Sir Edmund Andros, representing the Duke of York. This land consisted of a 300-acre island in the Delaware River (thereafter known as "Biles Island") from Indians named Orecton, Mannacus, Menemblahoking and Patelana. The island appears early on the 1652 Lindstrom map (charted for the King of Sweden) as "Menahanonck", a Lenape Indian name meaning "the island formed by a creek" —now known as "Biles Creek". The island was named "Orecton" on the William Penn Deed a couple years after Biles took possession. Chief Orecton, Chief Lapowinso and other Indian chiefs confirmed the early purchase of Biles Island in a 1727 deed to William Biles, Jr. A 1690 map by Thomas Holme (depicting land owners on the Delaware prior to Penn's Charter of 1681) shows William Biles with two tracts of land that fronted the river and another that he and his brother, Charles, owned jointly.All maps mentioned are located at the Pennsylvania Historical Society on Locust Street in Philadelphia.
That same year (1679), Jasper Danckaerts (who met Biles at that time) charted a map of the Delaware River Valley from Burlington Township to Trenton, New Jersey; the map shows William Biles with 309 acres on the west side of the river. The fact that Biles had established his plantation and built a house on the west side of the Delaware River by late 1679 is corroborated by Dankaerts' journal, extracted and transcribed as follows:
Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter, leading members of the Labadist sect of the Netherlands, visited the Delaware in late 1679, going down the river in a boat to New Castle, Delaware. At the falls they stayed overnight with Mahlon Stacy who had erected a mill there. They described the houses of the English along the river as being built mainly of clapboards nailed on the outside of a frame, but "not usually laid so close together as to prevent you from sticking a finger between then." The best people, Danckaerts wrote, plastered them with clay. He called the houses built by the Swedes "block houses," but from the way they were constructed, actually closely resembled the log cabin found on the western frontier at a later date. Some of the more careful people planked the ceilings, and even had glass windows. The chimney was typically in the corner, and the doors were low and wide. Our travelers breakfasted with the Friends at Burlington, whom they denominated as being "the most worldly of men in all their deportment and conversation." Although, elsewhere his descriptions and the relations of the Indians' impressions of the Quakers are not so flattering. They went hence in a shallop to Upland, stopping at Takany (Tacony), a village of Swedes and Finns, where they drank good beer. On Tinicum island they saw a "Quaker prophetess who traveled the country over in order to quake." On their return up the river they stopped overnight on "Alricks' Island" (where the plantation of Peter Aldrichs was situated, on the west side of the river, opposite Matinnaconk Island and Burlington), then in charge of Barent, a Dutchman, who had for housekeeper the Indian wife of an Englishman of Virginia. One of her children was sick with the smallpox, prevalent on the river this year, and mentioned for the first time. Barent consented to pilot them up the river as far as the falls the next day for thirty guilders in zeewant. This was on Friday, 29 December 1679. Landing the canoe on the west side of the Delaware (at or near where Bristol, Pennsylvania, stands), he conducted them by a footpath through the woods in a north-northeast direction until they "came to a plantation, newly begun by a Quaker, where we rested and refreshed ourselves. We agreed with this man, who came into the house while we were there, that he should put us over the river for three guilders in zeewant." They crossed the river about 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and commenced north on a footpath which led to a cart road and took them to the falls where Mahlon Stacy's mill stood. From there they crossed eastward to the Hudson and on to Manhattan.
Although not named by Danckaerts, knowing the few settlers in the area, and from the course they took and the map Danckaerts drew, the Quaker that they met on December 29 at the "plantation just begun" would have been William Biles, and he was the same who ferried Danckaerts and Sluyter across the river for three guilders.
William and Joanna's daughter, Rebeckah, was born on 29 December 1680 in present-day Falls Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the first of the Biles family born in America. Biles began his correspondence with the Society of Friends in England in 1680. Shortly after William Penn opened his grant for settlement in 1681, other Friends began joined the Biles family, settling west of the Delaware River. His house stood for more than two centuries. On Biles' plantation, near Penn's Manor, a large brick dwelling had been represented by tradition and from the initials inscribed upon it as the homestead of William Biles, who is said to have built it of bricks he brought from England.
Public life William Biles would play a large part in the political, legal, and religious affairs of early Pennsylvania. He held office before Penn's arrival as a member of the "Creekhorne Court" by 1680. The first session of the Pennsylvania Provincial Court (essentially the Supreme Court of the Province) was held at "Upland", where, no doubt, Governor Markham had fixed his residence. The record for the Province of Pennsylvania, at the Court at Upland, September 13, 1681, indicates that "Mr. William Byles" was one of the nine Justices, along with William Clayton and seven others. Biles was also noted as one of the Justices of the Provincial (Supreme) Court, along with Edward Shippen and Cornelius Empsom, held at Chester on the 18th day, 2nd month (April), 1699.
The first known meeting of the Religious Society of Friends west of the Delaware River was held at the home of William Biles below the Falls of Neshaminy. The first entry in Falls MM minutes reads: "At a meeting at William Biles's house, the second day of the third month [May], 1683, then held to wait upon the Lord for his wisdom, to hear what should be offered, in order to inspect into the affairs of the Church, helpful in the work of God; and we, whose names are as follows, being then present, thought it fit and necessary that a Monthly Meeting should be set up, both men and women, for that purpose; and that this meeting to be the first of the men's meetings after our arrival into these parts. The Friends present, —William Yardley, James Harrison, Phineas Pemberton, William Biles, William Dark, Lyonell Brittanie, William Beakes." The home of William Biles was the meeting place for Falls MM until 1690 when Falls Meeting House was built at Fallsington.