Ralph Stover (January 10, 1760 – November 7, 1811), son of the immigrant Henry Stauffer, was an American Justice of the Peace and politician in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

. He was a member of the

Pennsylvania House of Representatives The Pennsylvania House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Pennsylvania General Assembly, the legislature of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. There are 203 members, elected for two-year terms from single member districts. It ...

, 1793–99.Members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Harold Cox: Wilkes University
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History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania

We quote from W. W. H. Davis ''The History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania'' published in 1876 (2nd edition 1905). For a more complete quote see the article on his father Henry Stauffer.

History of Ralph Stover State Park

Tohickon Creek was named by the

Lenape The Lenape (, , ; ), also called the Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. The Lenape's historica ...

some of the first inhabitants of the area. "To-Hick-Hanne" means "Deer-Bone-Creek". Ralph Stover State Park was the site of an 18th-century

gristmill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that h ...

that was built on

Tohickon Creek Tohickon Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the Delaware River. Located entirely in Bucks County, in southeastern Pennsylvania, it r ...

by the park's namesake, Ralph Stover. Remnants of the mill and

mill race A mill race, millrace or millrun, mill lade (Scotland) or mill leat (Southwest England) is the current of water that turns a water wheel, or the channel ( sluice) conducting water to or from a water wheel. Compared with the broad waters of a m ...

can still be seen near Tohickon Creek, Pennsylvania. The Stover family gave their land to the

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Maryland to its south, West ...

in 1931. The recreational facilities were built during the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

by the Federal

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

created by U.S. President

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

to provide work for the unemployed. Author

James A. Michener James Albert Michener ( or ; February 3, 1907 – October 16, 1997) was an American writer. He wrote more than 40 books, most of which were long, fictional family sagas covering the lives of many generations, set in particular geographic locales ...

donated the High Rocks area to the park in 1956. Although " High Rocks State Park" is listed in the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...

Geographic Names Information System The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and location information about more than two million physical and cultural features, encompassing the United States and its territories; the Compact of Free Association, asso ...

and the coordinates given in USGS GNIS are located here, it was never an official name according to the

Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), established in 1995, is the agency in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania responsible for maintaining and preserving the state's 124 state parks and 20 state forests; providin ...

or a separate park.

Literature

* Fretz, A. J. ''A Genealogical Record of the Descendants of Henry Stauffer''. Milton, NJ, 1899.

References

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20061209081458/http://www.csm.uwe.ac.uk/~rstephen/livingeaston/local_history/Penn/Penn_family_Index.html - Penn Family History {{DEFAULTSORT:Stover, Ralph 1760 births 1811 deaths Members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Politicians from Bucks County, Pennsylvania 18th-century members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly