Bucks County

Almost a year to the day after Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, a majority of Bucks County voters cast their ballots for his opponent in the 1864 presidential election, Democrat George S. McClellan. Lincoln won Pennsylvania by 52 percent but was outpolled in Bucks County, 7,235 to 6,197 - indicating that many there favored ending the war, according to Cory Amsler, vice president for collections at the Mercer Museum in Doylestown. The history of Bucks County during the Civil War, Amsler surmised, "is not all neat and tidy.

The campus of a Bucks County alternative-education program being investigated by Pennsylvania authorities has been put on the real estate market. The firm that owns the building housing Delaware Valley High School in Warminster is offering the facilities and grounds at 299 Jacksonville Rd. for sale or lease. The move comes as the state Department of Education continues to review operations of Delaware Valley's Bucks program, which serves students with academic and disciplinary problems from districts in Bucks and Montgomery Counties.

A SHOTGUN-WIELDING man fatally shot a mother and injured her daughter in Feasterville on Thursday before he fled and was later killed in a shootout with police. The women were sitting in their car on Bustleton Pike near Franklin Avenue in Lower Southampton when a man knocked on their window and fired three shotgun blasts into the vehicle, authorities said. The unidentified man took off but was corralled in his car by police in Northampton, where he was shot during an exchange of gunfire, PhillyBurbs.com.

Massachusetts state police will bring criminal charges against a Philadelphia bus driver who crashed a coach full of Bucks County students into an overhang on a Boston road in February. The crash injured dozens, including Matt Cruz, 17, a Neshaminy High School sophomore, who remains paralyzed from the chest down and is continuing to recover from spinal injuries at Magee Rehabilitation Center, according to his lawyer, James Ronca. Samuel J. Jackson, 67, of West Philadelphia, will be charged with criminal negligence as well as civil charges of failing to obey signs and driving a bus on an unauthorized road, according to police.

Massachusetts state police will bring criminal charges against a Philadelphia bus driver who crashed a coach full of Bucks County students into an overhang on a Boston road in February. The crash injured dozens, including Matt Cruz, 17, a Neshaminy High School sophomore, who remains paralyzed from the chest down and is continuing to recover from spinal injuries at Magee Rehabilitation Center, according to his lawyer, James Ronca. Samuel J. Jackson, 67, of West Philadelphia, will be charged with criminal negligence as well as civil charges of failing to obey signs and driving a bus on an unauthorized road, according to police.

The three members of the Black Flag Family gang - including a former volunteer firefighter - knew exactly what they were doing when they allegedly tried to burn down a 237-year-old piece of Bucks County history, police said Tuesday. Fortunately, they didn't succeed. While the interior of the unique Croydon Lodge - once home to a Revolutionary War-era British officer - is damaged, the outside of the structure is still sound, said Bob Pritz, president of Holland Enterprises, a developer.

  A state Supreme Court decision overturning a 2011 law that permitted counties to abolish the post of jury commissioner, an elected position that oversees jury selection, has sown confusion ahead of the fall elections. The problem: Counties that had planned to abolish the posts after the current commissioners' terms expired this year found they had no candidates filed to run for the suddenly available positions. With many counties now relying heavily on computers to manage jury selection, the legislature two years ago gave local jurisdictions the option of doing away with the position.

The 2013 annual nationwide count of homeless people, taken on the night of Jan. 30 and 31, found fewer individuals in Chester County and more in Bucks County than were tallied in January 2012. Comparable figures for the nation, as well as for Philadelphia and for Delaware and Montgomery Counties, are not yet available, officials there said this week. The 625 people counted in Chester County this year compared with 666 found there in 2012. But the 476 recorded in Bucks County on the same January night this year were more than the 422 in the 2012 survey, due to a change in how information is gathered.

A Montgomery County lawyer who was convicted of killing a man whom he said he mistook for a deer pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to possessing 19 guns that he was barred from owning because of a prior conviction. A June sentencing hearing was scheduled for David Manilla, 51, of Worcester Township. In November 2010, Manilla shot and killed Barry Groh, 52, of Quakertown, who was hunting on the border of Manilla's property in Richland Township, Bucks County. Manilla told police that he mistook Groh, who was about 90 yards away, for a deer.