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Woodward & Hageman, History of Burlington and Mercer Counties. 1883 Previous to and at the time the first white settlers set foot upon the soil now known as Southampton, the Coaxen (or Quakeson) tribe of Indians occupied the land, or so much of it as Indians usually occupy. Their little town or village, as they called it was situate about one and a half miles southwest from what is now Vincentown, on a beautiful plateau along the Coaxen Creek, a small streamlet emptying into the Bear Swamp stream below Eayrestown. Here the tribe lived in the simplicity of their then honest natures. Here it was that the then celebrated Indian Missionary David Brainard found the Coaxens. While the devoted Brainard was preaching the gospel in these then forest wilds there were men of sufficient acuteness of judgment to know that all this meant civilization, – safety in the location, purchase, and settlement of land; that building churches for the Indians could result in nothing less than exchanging the scalping-knife and tomahawk for the pruning-hook and peaceful plow. Hence the purchase (as it was called) of these lands from the ignorant Indian. In 1758 a part of this territory, owned at that time by John Burr, was sold to James, Philo, and Vincent Leeds; Vincent taking the land from the mouth of Stop the Jade Creek along up the right bank of the Rancocas Creek, upon which now stands the town of Vincentown.
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