John Fitch Monument Moved to Craven Hall

Regular Warminster travelers may have noticed something missing the past few days from the corner of Street and York roads.

At the request of the Craven Hall Historical Society, the stone monument honoring the work of local inventor John Fitch and his achievement of creating the first commercial steamboat has been removed from the grounds of the Hatboro Federal Savings bank and transferred down the street to Craven Hall.

Workers from the Warminster Public Works department began working on the new site early Tuesday morning and had the large slab firmly in the ground before noon. The equipment and labor was donated by the township.

"We are extremely grateful to the township administration and the municipal workers for helping us bring the monument to where we believe it belongs," said Craven Hall Historical Society President Erik Fleischer.

It is what Fleischer hopes is the end of a century-long journey for the monument. According to Fleischer, the stone monument was donated by Edward Longstreth to the Bucks County Historical Society in 1902 and installed on the southwest corner of Street and York roads.

Fleischer does not know exactly when, but it moved to the Newtown Road lawn of Craven Hall at least by the late 1940s, as Fleischer remembers seeing it when he went to school there.  When the school board abandoned Craven Hall in the 1970s, it was moved to its home by the Hatboro Federal Savings clock tower.

The idea to move the monument back to Craven Hall came up at the of the John Fitch Museum last year, said Fleischer. An historical marker produced by the state explaining the importance of Fitch's invention will also be installed on the site.

Fitch came up with the idea for a steam engine while walking home from the  in 1785. He began working on protoypes in a workshop belonging to a friend in Warminster and testing them in a stream behind the General Davis Inn in Upper Southampton.

After several attempts, his most successful version launched on the Delaware in 1790 and became the first steamboat used for commercial purposes. The 60-foot watercraft traveled nearly 3,000 miles in the summer of 1790, offering thee round trips a week between Philadelphia, Trenton and Bristol.

An exciting week for the John Fitch Museum continues this weekend when the Craven Hall Historical Society gathers at Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. to of the John Fitch steamboat in one of the park's ponds. The public is invited to watch the working model created by Fred Rosse in action.