Stone farmhouses, bank barns, and church steeples across central and upper Bucks County trace back to German-speaking settlers, whose everyday speech grew into a distinctly American language now known as Pennsylvania German, or Pennsylvania Dutch.
Bucks County history often begins with William Penn and the English Quakers, but German-speaking immigrants were just as fundamental to the story.
Starting in the early 1700s, German and Scots-Irish newcomers pushed into less-developed areas such as Bedminster, Plumstead, Hilltown, Tinicum, Nockamixon, Rockhill, and Durham…