552 



HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY. 



Buckingham. He was for many years an 

 overseer of the meeting. 



Edward R. Kirk was born and reared 

 on the Buckingliam farm, and acquired 

 his elementary education at the public 

 schools. He later became a student at 

 Doylestown Seminary, where he also 

 took a course in surveying and civil en- 

 gineering. He took his first prac- 

 tical lessons in surveying under Charles F. 

 Meyers, of Doylestown, and has since 

 done considerable work in that line in 

 middle and lower Bucks. He served as 

 county surveyor from 1895 to 1901. In 

 1896 he was appointed and commis- 

 sioned a justice of the peace and has 

 served in that position ever since. In 

 connection with his profession and of- 

 ficial duties he took up conveyancing and 

 a real estate and general business agency, 

 and, these duties absorbing his entire 

 time, he abandoned farming five years 

 ago and devoted himself entirely to pro- 

 fessional and official duties, though still 

 residing on the farm. In politics he is a 

 Republican, and has taken an active in- 

 terest in his party's councils. He is a 

 director in the Doylestown National 

 Bank, and in the Wrightstown and New- 

 town Turnpike Company, and president 

 of the Pineville Protective Association. 

 He married, January 22, 1891, Anna 

 Holcombe, daughter of Oliver H. and 

 Cynthia (Scarborough) Holcombe, of 

 Wrightstown, and they are the parents 

 of three children, Amos, Harold and 

 Hannah. 



DR. HOWARD A. HELLYER, of 

 Penns Park, was born in Wrightstown 

 township, Bucks county, Pennsylvania. 

 October 22, 1845, and is a son of William 

 and Lydia D. (Twining) Hellyer. Tradi- 

 tion takes the ancestry of the Hellyer 

 family back to Sir William Hellyer, an 

 English baronet, whose sons William and 

 Bernard came to America in the early part 

 of the eighteenth century, the former set- 

 tling in Pennsylvania and the latter in New 

 Jersey. Bernard Hellyer, above referred to, 

 was the. great-grandfather of Dr. Hellyer. 

 He was a farmer and spent most of his life 

 in central Bucks county. He was twice 

 married, and had a large number of chil- 

 dren. The name of his first wife and the 

 ancestress of Dr. Hellyer is unknown. He 

 married a second time, on December 24, 

 1795. Sarah Walton. William Hellyer, son 

 of Bernard, was the grandfather of the sub- 

 ject of this sketch. He was a farmer in 

 Upper Makefield township, where he died 

 in 1833. He was the father of seven chil- 

 dren — Phineas, Hester, Hannah, Alice, 

 Elizabeth. William and Frances. 



William Hellyer, father of Dr. Hellyer. 

 was born in Upper Makefield, in 1812, and 

 died in Newtown township in 1885, at the 

 age of seventy-three years, three months; 

 eighteen days. He was a farmer first in 

 Upper Wrightstown and later in Upper 



Makefield. He filled the position of school 

 director in the latter township, and occu- 

 pied many other positions of trust. In re- 

 ligion he was a member of the Society of 

 Friends, and in politics was a Republican. 

 He married Lydia D. Twining, daughter 

 of Jacob and Phoebe (Tucker) Twining, 

 of Wrightstown, the former a lineal de- 

 scendant of William Twining, a native of. 

 England who came to America about 1640 

 and settled in Massachusetts, from whence 

 he removed to Newtown, Bucks county, in 

 1695, with his son Stephen ; the latter being 

 the ancestor of the Twinings of Bucks 

 county. Phoebe (Tucker) Twining was a 

 daughter of John and Phoebe (Beal) 

 Tucker, of Buckingham, and a grand- 

 daughter of Nicholas Tucker, one of the 

 earliest settlers in Buckingham. John 

 Tucker, the father of Mrs. Twining, was a 

 tax coJlector during the revolution, and. it 

 becoming known to the Doan outlaws that 

 he had a considerable sum of money in his 

 possession, they entered his house, near 

 Buckingham Station, and demanded the 

 money. While Mr. Tucker was parleying 

 with them in the lower story, Mrs. Tucker 

 tossed the bags of coin out an upper story 

 window into the garden. After a fruitless 

 search, and the torturing and abuse of their 

 victim, the robbers departed, and the money 

 was eventually recovered intact. 



Lydia D. (Twining) Hellyer was born in 

 Wrightstown in 1814, and died May 26, 

 1856. She was the mother of five chil- 

 dren, of whom but two survive — the sub- 

 ject of this sketch, and Hannah, wife of 

 David K. Harvey, of Middletown. Bucks 

 county. Another son, Harrison, enlisted in 

 Company E, Twentieth Regiment Pennsyl- 

 vania Volunteers, equipped in Philadelphia, 

 during the Civil war, and died from typhoid 

 fever contracted in the service. 



Dr. Hellyer was born in Wrightstown, 

 in the same house where his mother was 

 born, his father at that tiirie being engaged 

 in farming his father-in-law's farm. He 

 was reared on the farm and obtained his 

 elementary education in the public schools, 

 later taking a course in the Excelsior 

 Normal Institute at Carversville. Bucks 

 county. He began the study of medicine 

 in 1866 with Dr. Benjamin Collins, of Penns 

 Park, and in the autumn of the same year 

 entered the medical department of the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania, graduating from 

 that institution in 1868 in the class known 

 as "the Centennial Class." After his gradu- 

 ation he located at Forest Grove. Buck- 

 ingham township. Bucks county, where he 

 practiced his profession for two years. In 

 the spring of 1870 he succeeded to the 

 practice of his old preceptor, Dr. Collins, 

 who removed to Virginia, and located in 

 Penns Park, where he has since practiced, 

 building up a large and lucrative practice. 

 He is a member of the Bucks County and 

 Pennsylvania Medical Societies and takes 

 an active interest in their proceedings. In 

 politics Dr. Hellyer is a Rcpulilicau. but has 

 never sought or held other than local office. 



