Biles Island

Last updated October 01, 2019

Biles Island (Lenape: Minachkonk or Menahakonk) is an island in the Delaware River in Falls Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Unami is an Algonquian language spoken by the Lenape people in the late 17th century and the early 18th century, in what then was the southern two-thirds of New Jersey, southeastern Pennsylvania and the northern two-thirds of Delaware, but later in Ontario and Oklahoma. It is one of the two Delaware languages, the other being Munsee. The last fluent speaker in the United States, Edward Thompson, of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, died on August 31, 2002. His sister Nora Thompson Dean (1907–1984) provided valuable information about the language to linguists and other scholars.

Delaware River major river on the East coast of the United States of America

The Delaware River is a major river on the Atlantic coast of the United States. It drains an area of 14,119 square miles (36,570 km²) in five U.S. states: Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania. Rising in two branches in New York state's Catskill Mountains, the river flows 419 miles (674 km) into Delaware Bay where its waters enter the Atlantic Ocean near Cape May in New Jersey and Cape Henlopen in Delaware. Not including Delaware Bay, the river's length including its two branches is 388 miles (624 km). The Delaware River is one of nineteen "Great Waters" recognized by the America's Great Waters Coalition.

Falls Township is a Suburban Philadelphia township in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 34,300 at the 2010 census. Portions of Fairless Hills and Levittown, Pennsylvania, are located in the township. Portions of Falls Township are called Morrisville and Yardley, due to the location of the Morrisville Post Office outside the Borough of Morrisville in Falls Township.

Now owned by USX, the 567-acre Biles Island sits in the Delaware River a half mile south of Trenton, New Jersey. Since at least 1968 it has been a dumping site for silt dredged from the river.

Trenton is the capital city of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. It briefly served as the capital of the United States in 1784. The city's metropolitan area, consisting of Mercer County, is grouped with the New York Combined Statistical Area by the United States Census Bureau, but it directly borders the Philadelphia metropolitan area and was from 1990 until 2000 part of the Philadelphia Combined Statistical Area. As of the 2010 United States Census, Trenton had a population of 84,913, making it the state's tenth most populous municipality. The Census Bureau estimated that the city's population was 84,034 in 2014.

The island takes its name from William Biles, to whom it was conveyed in about 1680 "by four local Lenapes, Orecton, Nannacus, Nenemblahocking, and Patelana, for a total of ten pounds."^[1] The island was later known as Oreclan's Island.

William Biles 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.

Coordinates: 40°10′33″N74°44′57″W / 40.175943°N 74.74905°W / 40.175943; -74.74905

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.

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The Lenape, also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in Canada and the United States. Their historical territory included present-day New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania along the Delaware River watershed, New York City, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. Today, Lenape people belong to the Delaware Nation and Delaware Tribe of Indians in Oklahoma; the Stockbridge-Munsee Community in Wisconsin; and the Munsee-Delaware Nation, Moravian of the Thames First Nation, and Delaware of Six Nations in Ontario.

Province of Pennsylvania English, from 1707, British, possession in North America between 1681 and 1776

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Ramapo River river in the United States of America

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Buckingham Mountain is located in Buckingham Township in Central Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is the second most elevated land in all of Bucks County at 520 feet.

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Fort Wilhelmus was a factorij in the 17th-century colonial province of New Netherland, located on what had been named Hooghe Eyland on the Zuyd Rivier, now Burlington Island in the Delaware River in New Jersey. More a trading post than a military installation, it was built in 1625 by colonists from the Netherlands in the employ of the Dutch West India Company, with the intention of establishing a physical claim to the new territory and to engage in the fur trade with the indigenous population of Lenape and Minqua. The Walloon families had originally arrived at Noten Island across from Fort Amsterdam in the Upper New York Bay, They had been sent south in order to begin the population of the province of New Netherland. They were later recalled to New Amsterdam since the Dutch West India Company had decided to concentrate their settlement efforts along the North River, or Hudson River.

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Biles Creek is a tributary of the Delaware River in Falls Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Named for William Biles, who purchased the island later known as Biles Island, consisting of 309 acres (125 ha). Biles arrived in Bucks County on 12 June 1679, three years before the arrival of William Penn.

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References

↑ "Indian Place Names in Bucks County" (PDF). Lenape Nation - A Tribal Community. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-08-10. Retrieved 2012-09-27.

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[1] "Indian Place Names in Bucks County" (PDF). Lenape Nation - A Tribal Community. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-08-10. Retrieved 2012-09-27.