Federal Party Is Broken Up in Closing Days
of November, 1823
It was during the administration of Governor John Andrew Shulze, of Lebanon County, that in 1823, President Monroe made his celebrated declaration in favor of the cause of liberty in the Western Hemisphere and the noninterference of European Powers in the political affairs of this continent.
The determined stand taken by President Monroe was warmly indorsed by the people of Pennsylvania, and the Legislature of the State at the subsequent session adopted resolutions to the effect that it afforded them “the highest gratification to observe the President of the United States, expressing the sentiments of millions of freemen, proclaiming to the world that any attempt on the part of the allied sovereigns of Europe to extend their political systems to any portion of the continent of America, or in any other manner to interfere in their internal concerns, would be considered as dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.”
Governor Shulze, in transmitting the resolutions to the President, expressed his hearty indorsement of the doctrines therein set forth.
Soon after the election of Shulze, in the closing days of November, 1823, the old parties were broken up, none after that calling themselves Federalists. Indeed, the term Federalist became odious; but from the ashes there sprang a party that became more powerful than any which before or since has borne sway in this country, the great Democratic Party.
Every Federal newspaper in Pennsylvania except three—the United States Gazette, of Philadelphia; The Village Record, of West Chester, and the Pittsburgh Gazette—joined in its support.
In the national election of 1824, parties being in a disorganized state, there was no choice for President by the people. Crawford, Adams, Clay, Calhoun and Jackson were supported. John Quincy Adams was elected to the House of Representatives. But in 1828 Jackson was chosen, receiving a majority of 50,000 in Pennsylvania. His brilliant victory at New Orleans, gained with scarcely a casualty on our side, created immense enthusiasm among the people in his favor.
In 1824 and 1825 the Nation’s early friend and benefactor, General Lafayette, revisited the scenes of his former trials and final triumphs. Governor Shulze had the satisfaction of welcoming the hero to the soil of Pennsylvania, which he did at Morrisville in a brief but eloquent and impressive speech.
This was Lafayette’s second visit to Pennsylvania and was an event which produced marked and spontaneous enthusiasm among the entire population. Next to the great Washington he was hailed as the deliverer of this country, and nowhere was he made more welcome than in Philadelphia, Harrisburg and other parts of Pennsylvania.
This was the era when stupendous plans for the internal improvement of the Commonwealth were adopted and put into execution. The Schuylkill navigation canal, which had been projected almost thirty years previously, although not commenced until 1815, was completed in 1825. The occasion was one of great rejoicing and the success of the enterprise gave an impetus to other improvements.
Shortly afterward the Union Canal was also finished, and the great Pennsylvania Canal was prosecuted with vigor. Governor Schulze hesitated somewhat at this stupendous plan of internal improvements by the State and opposed the loan of $1,000,000 authorized by the Legislature. He was obliged to yield, however, to the popular will, and before the close of his second term $6,000,000 had been borrowed.
At the session of the General Assembly in 1826 a Board of Commissioners for internal improvements was established. The Legislature authorized the Commissioners to contract for a canal from Middletown extending up the Susquehanna River as far as the mouth of the Juniata, and from Pittsburgh to the mouth of the Kiskiminitas, a navigable feeder of a canal from French Creek to the summit level of Conneaut Lake, and to survey a canal from there to Erie. These enterprises were started with the modest appropriation of $300,000, which was to be borrowed.
The board made two contracts, one for twenty-two and one-half miles along the Susquehanna and twenty-four miles along the Allegheny. At the following session the canals authorized were to be extended farther up the Susquehanna, the Juniata, and up the valley of the Kiskiminetas and the Conemaugh, another between Bristol and Easton and others of lesser importance.
In 1826 Governor Shulze was renominated and received within 1000 of all the votes cast for Governor. This was the nearest to a unanimous election ever known in Pennsylvania, and was an evidence of the confidence the people had in him, his fine character and intelligence.
Previous to 1827 the only railroads in America were a short wooden railroad constructed at Leiper’s stone quarry, in Delaware County, Pa., and a road three miles in length opened at the Quincy granite quarries in Massachusetts in 1826.
In May, 1827, a railroad nine miles in length was constructed from Mauch Chunk to the coal mines. This was, at the time, the longest and most important railroad in America.
In 1828 the State determined to engage in railroad building. The canal extending through the center of the State was to be connected by a railroad crossing the Allegheny Mountains, and with Philadelphia by a railroad extending to Columbia. Thus by railroad and canal a system of highway improved communication would extend from the Delaware to the Ohio.
The expenditures were now so rapid and enormous that the State began to suffer. Governor Shulze convened the Assembly in November, 1828, a month before retiring from office, and explained the tense situation. Funds had given out, the work was stopped and something must be done. But as he was soon to retire, he smoothed over the situation, leaving his successor to wrestle with the problem.
On December 15, 1829, George Wolf, of Northampton County, was inaugurated as Governor of Pennsylvania. He had defeated Joseph Ritner, who attempted to seek this high office on the rising wave of the anti-Masonic era, which at this time changed the political horizon of the State and Nation.
Governor Wolf stepped into office at the time the financial affairs were in a deplorable condition. His only remedy was to push the public works to rapid completion. This was done, and in a few years he, with others, had the proud satisfaction of beholding how far these needed improvements went toward developing the natural resources of Pennsylvania.
Major George Washington Meets French
Commander Joncaire at Logstown,
November 30, 1753
The contention between Great Britain and France for the possession of what is now Western Pennsylvania began about the middle of the eighteenth century. The Treaty of Aix la Chapelle, signed October 18, 1748, while it nominally closed the war between those two countries, failed to establish the boundaries between their respective colonies in America, and this failure, together with the hostile and conflicting attitude of the colonists in America, was the cause of another long and bloody war.
An association was formed in Virginia about 1748, called the Ohio Company, which was given a royal grant. The object of the company, according to its charter, was to trade with the Indians, but its actual purpose was to settle the region about the forks of the Ohio, now Pittsburgh, with English colonists from Virginia and Maryland.
All the vast territory from the Mississippi to the Alleghany Mountains, south of the Great Lakes, had been explored and partly occupied by the French. They had forts, trading posts and missions at various points and they made every endeavor to conciliate the Indians. It was apparent they intended to extend their occupancy to the extreme tributaries of the Ohio, which they claimed by virtue of prior discovery.
So it was but natural when the English sought to gain a permanent occupancy of the Ohio Valley that the French should begin actively to assert their claims to the same region.
The Governor-General of Canada, the Marquis de la Galissoniere, sent Captain Bienville de Celeron in 1749 down the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers to take possession in the name of the King of France. His command consisted of two hundred and fifteen French and Canadian soldiers and fifty-five Indians. The principal officers under him were Captain Contrecœur, who afterwards built Fort Duquesne, Coulon de Villiers, and Joncaire-Chabet.
They planted leaden plates, properly inscribed, at different points, beginning at the present town of Warren, and then along the Allegheny River, then along the Ohio, and up the Miami, and they reached Lake Erie, October 19, 1749.
The French affairs were actively pushed by Joncaire-Chabet, who occupied the house at the mouth of French Creek, or Venango, which had been built by John Frazer, a Pennsylvania trader, whom Celeron drove off when he found him there.
Early in January, 1753, a French expedition consisting of 300 men under command of Monsieur Babier set out from Quebec. Traveling over land and ice, they reached Fort Niagara in April, then pushed on to the southeastern shore of Lake Erie, at the mouth of Chautauqua Creek. In May Monsieur Morin arrived with an additional force of 500 men, and he assumed command.
It was intended to build a fort here, but the water was found to be too shallow and the expedition moved to a place which, from the peculiar formation of the lake shore, they named Presqu’ Isle, or the Peninsula. This is now the City of Erie.
Here the first fort was built and named Fort la Presqu’ Isle. It was constructed of square logs, was about 120 feet square and fifteen feet high. It was finished in June, 1753 and garrisoned by about 100 men under command of Captain Depontency.
The remainder of the forces cut a road southward about fifteen miles to Le Boeuf River, or French Creek. Here they built a second fort, which they called Fort Le Boeuf, similar to the first, but smaller. This is the site of the present Borough of Waterford, Erie County, Pa.
In 1752 a treaty had been entered into with the Indians which secured the right of occupancy, and twelve families, headed by Captain Christopher Gist, established themselves on the Monongahela, and subsequently commenced the erection of a fort where the City of Pittsburgh now stands.
The activity of the French alarmed these settlers, and soon all their proceedings were reported to Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia. He determined to send an official communication to the commander of the French, who had established his headquarters at Fort Le Boeuf, protesting against the forcible interference with their chartered rights, granted by the Crown of Britain, pointing to the late treaties of peace entered into between the English and French, whereby it was agreed that each should respect the colonial possessions of the other.
George Washington, then only twenty-three years old, was selected for this mission by Governor Dinwiddie. He performed his duty with the greatest tact and to the satisfaction of his Government.
With a party of seven besides himself, among whom was Christopher Gist, he set out November 15, 1753, from Wills Creek, the site of Fort Cumberland, in Maryland, which was the limit of the road that had been opened by the Ohio Company.
The first place of importance was Logstown, where they arrived on November 30. This important Indian village was on the right bank of the Ohio River, about fourteen miles below the present Pittsburgh. It was at Logstown where the Treaty of 1752 was made. Here Washington enlisted the services of the chief Indians and proceeded on his mission.
Washington writes in his journal that they set out from Logstown for Venango about 9 o’clock in the morning, with Tanacharison, the Half-King, Jeskakake, White Thunder and the Hunter, and arrived at Venango on December 4.
Soon as Captain Joncaire had finished his greetings wine was passed and after much drinking all restraint was banished, which gave license to their tongues and their true sentiments were revealed.
The French officers told young Washington that it was their absolute design to take possession of the Ohio, to which they had undoubted right from a discovery made by LaSalle sixty years since. They also told him they had raised an expedition to prevent the English from settling on the river.
Joncaire endeavored by every means to win the Half-King from the English, but the chief remained true to his mission, and accompanied Washington to Le Boeuf, to which place he was referred, as the commanding officer of the French had his headquarters there.
The party arrived at Fort Le Boeuf on December 11. Washington was received with courtesy by the commandant, Legardeur de Saint-Pierre.
In regard to the message of Governor Dinwiddie, Saint-Pierre[Saint-Pierre] replied that he would forward it to the Governor-General of Canada, but that in the meantime, his orders were to hold possession of the country, and this he would do to the best of his ability.
With this answer Washington retraced his steps, enduring many hardships and passing through many perils, until he presented his report to the Governor at Williamsburg, Va., January 16, 1754.
William Penn and Family Arrive in Province
on His Second Visit, December 1, 1699
Captain John Blackwell, an officer and one of the heroes under Cromwell, was commissioned Deputy Governor of the Province of Pennsylvania July 25, 1688, while he was in New England, but did not present himself before the Council until the following March. He and the Council never acted in harmony, and nothing of importance was accomplished during his short and stormy term, which ended the following December.
Thomas Lloyd again became the Chief Executive. During 1691 the six Councilors from the Lower Counties, without Lloyd’s knowledge, formed themselves into a separate Council, appointed Judges for those counties and made ordinances.
The President and Council of the Province immediately published a proclamation declaring all the acts of the six seceding members illegal. The latter made counter-proposals, but they were rejected.
Penn tried to restore better understanding between the two sections of his Province and gave them the choice of three modes of executive government, viz., by Joint Council, by five Commissioners or by a Lieutenant Governor.
The members from Pennsylvania preferred the last, but those of the Lower Counties declared for the Commissioners, but they could not agree upon any plan, so the counties of Pennsylvania elected Thomas Lloyd for their Governor and three lower counties rejected him.
Penn confirmed the appointment of Lloyd and sent William Markham, who had joined with the protesting members, as the head of the government in the Lower Counties. This was done against Penn’s judgment and had the consequences he predicted.
These dissensions served to furnish the Crown with a pretext to deprive Penn of his Province. William and Mary seized this opportunity to punish him for this attachment to the late King, and they commissioned Benjamin Fletcher, Governor General of New York, also to be the Governor of Pennsylvania and the territories. The Council of the Province was officially advised of his appointment April 19, 1693.
Governor Fletcher was empowered to summon the General Assembly, require its members to subscribe to the oaths and tests prescribed by acts of parliament, and to make laws in conjunction with the Assembly, he having a vote upon their acts, etc. No mention was made of William Penn, nor of the Provincial constitution, yet, on the arrival of Colonel Fletcher at Philadelphia, the Government was surrendered to him without objection, but most of the Quaker magistrates refused to accept from him the renewal of their commissions.
William Penn condemned this ready abandonment of his rights, and addressed a letter to Colonel Fletcher, warning him of the illegality of his appointment, which might have restrained the latter from exercising his authority had it been timely received, as he was attached to Penn by many personal favors.
Trouble arose when Fletcher attempted a new form of election contrary to the laws of the Province, and the rejection of eight of the old laws, chiefly penal. The Assembly insisted that their rights should first be redressed.
Fletcher claimed the right to alter laws without even the assent of Assembly, and to strengthen his position threatened to annex the Province to New York. The moderate party, rather than submit to this, preferred receiving the confirmation of their rights and liberties as a favor at the hands of the Governor.
Prior to his departure for New York, in 1694, Fletcher appointed William Markham, the Proprietary’s cousin, to be Lieutenant Governor. Governor Fletcher attended the second session of the Assembly and insisted upon further appropriations for public defense. The Assembly refused to comply with Fletcher’s demand and was dissolved.
The Proprietary was not wholly in accord with the resolute refusal of the Assembly, nor was he unmindful of the effects which such opposition to the wishes of the Crown might have upon his particular interests.
William Penn was now no longer under the cloud of suspicion. He had many friends among the nobles who surrounded the King, and his true character was at last made known.
He succeeded in obtaining a hearing before a Privy Council and was honorably acquitted and restored to his Proprietary rights by a patent dated August, 1694, in which the disorders in the Province were ascribed solely to his absence. Shortly before his reinstatement, William Penn’s wife, Gulielma Maria, died.
Penn appointed Markham his Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania and Territories September 24, 1694. The restoration of the former government was not happy, for Governor Fletcher had made himself unpopular, and it was not an easy matter for Markham to immediately gain their confidence, even though he had called the Assembly according to the forms prescribed by the charter.
The great bone of contention was the subsidy to be granted to the King. Finally a joint committee of the two branches of the Legislature was acceded to, when it was agreed to accept the new Constitution, and a new subsidy of £300 was granted for the support of the Royal Government and of the suffering Indians. This was raised by a tax of one penny on the pound on all assessed property.
The new Constitution was more democratic. The Council consisted of two from each county, elected biennially. The Assembly had four members from each county, elected annually. The latter was given the right to originate bills, to sit on its adjournments and to be indissoluble during the term for which it was elected.
This instrument was never formally sanctioned by the Proprietary and continued in force only until after his second arrival, when a new and more lasting one was substituted in its place. Under it the people were content.
William Penn, accompanied by his second wife and children, sailed from England in the ship Canterbury in September, 1699, and on account of adverse winds had a tedious voyage of more than three months, arriving in the Delaware, December 1, 1699. Penn was cordially welcomed, it being generally understood that he intended to spend the remainder of his life in the Province.
The Proprietary believed the time was ripe for an entirely new form of government and labored earnestly to obtain additional legislative restrictions upon intercourse with the Indians in order to protect them from the artifices of the whites. Penn conferred frequently with the several nations of the Province, visiting them familiarly in their forests, participating in their festivals and entertaining them with much hospitality and state at his mansion at Pennsbury.
He formed a new treaty with the tribes located on the Susquehanna and its tributaries and also with the Five Nations. This treaty was one of peace. In 1701, William Penn took a second trip into the interior of the Province.
Morgan Powell Cruelly Murdered by Mollie
Maguires, December 2, 1871
The bloody record of the Mollie Maguires began about the time the Civil War was brought to a close and continued until James McParlan, the able detective in the employ of the Pinkerton agency, ferreted out these criminals and brought the guilty to trials which resulted in their execution or long terms of imprisonment.
The anthracite coal regions were not free of this scourge until 1877.
The Mollies were unusually active and bloodthirsty in 1865. August 25 of that year, David Muir, colliery superintendent, was killed in Foster Township, shot to death on the public highway, in broad daylight, within two hundred yards of the office in which he was employed.
January 10, 1866, Henry H. Dunne, of Pottsville, superintendent of a colliery, was murdered on the turnpike, while riding to his home in his carriage.
October 17, 1868, occurred the tragic death of Alexander Rae, near Centralia, Columbia County.
The next important outrage of this character was the murder of William H. Littlehales, superintendent of the Glen Carbon Coal Mining Company, March 15, 1869. He was killed on the highway in Cass Township, Schuylkill County, while enroute to his home in Pottsville.
Then occurred the murders of F. W. S. Langdon, George K. Smith and Graham Powell, each of whom was a mining official.
But the crowning act of the Mollie Maguires, up to the time James McParlan was engaged by Mr. Allen Pinkerton to investigate the workings of this nefarious organization, and the one reaching the culmination of many previous and similar events, was the murder of Morgan Powell.
This event exasperated the good people of the anthracite region to the pitch where endurance ceases to be a virtue, and where only desperate methods to put a stop to these crimes can be put in operation.
This unprovoked murder occurred December 2, 1871. Morgan Powell was assistant superintendent of the Lehigh and Wilkes Barre Coal and Iron Company, at Summit Hill, Carbon County.
The murder was committed about seven o’clock in the evening, on the main street of the little town, not more than twenty feet from the store of Henry Williamson, which place Powell had but a few minutes earlier left to go to the office of Mr. Zehner, the general superintendent of the company.
It seems that one of three men, who had been seen by different parties waiting near the store, approached Mr. Powell from the rear, close beside a gate leading into the stables, and fired a pistol shot into the left breast of the victim. The assassin reached over the shoulder of Powell to accomplish his deadly purpose.
The bullet passed through Powell’s body, lodged in the back near the spinal column, producing immediate paralysis of the lower limbs, and resulting in death two days afterward.
The wounded man was carried back to the store by some of his friends and his son, Charles Powell, the latter then but fourteen years of age, and there remained all night. The next day he was removed to the residence of Morgan Price, where he died the following day.
Hardly had the smoke from the murderer’s pistol mingled with the clear air of that star-lit winter evening, when the assassins were discovered rapidly making their way from the scene of their savage deed toward the top of Plant No. 1.
They were met by the Reverend Allan John Morton and Lewis Richards, who were hurrying to the spot to learn what had caused the firing.
Mr. Morton asked, as they halted on the rigging-stand, what was the trouble, when one of the three strangers answered: “I guess a man has been shot!”
Descriptions of the three men were remembered by the Reverend Morgan and Mr. Richards, and the trio started forward in the direction in which Mr. Powell had pointed when asked which way the attacking party had gone.
“I'm shot to death! My lower limbs have no feeling in them!” exclaimed Mr. Powell, when Williamson first raised his head.
No one could tell who shot him. The three suspects were strangers.
Patrick Kildea, who was thought to resemble one of them, was arrested and tried, but finally acquitted, from lack of evidence to convict. This, for the time, was the end of the matter.
When McParlan, disguised as James McKenna, was working on the case of the murder of B. F. Yost, of Tamaqua, in 1875, he learned first-handed from John Donahue, alias “Yellow Jack,” that he was the murderer of Morgan Powell.
Donahue related the circumstances to his “friend” and named his two confederates. He bragged of the affair as being a clean job.
He said the escape was easy, as they did not go ten yards from the spot where Powell dropped, until the excitement cooled down, when, in the darkness, they quietly departed from the bushes, and reached their homes in safety.
The detective made mental notes of this disclosure, and his report subsequently transmitted to his superiors was the first light upon this crime, which had, for four years baffled the best efforts of the officers of justice.
The time was not ripe to press Donahue for more details, but as the detective was supposed to have recently assisted in a murder, Donahue talked freely with him about others who were soon to be victims of the Mollies.
In the fall of 1876, when the arrests of the Mollies were made, John Donahue, Thomas P. Fisher, Patrick McKenna, Alexander Campbell, Patrick O'Donnell, and John Malloy were taken in Carbon County, charged with the murder of Morgan Powell, at Summit Hill, December 2, 1871.
The defendants were tried at different terms of the Carbon County Court, at Mauch Chunk. James McParlan, the detective, now in his true character, frequently appeared as a witness and testified to the confessions of the Mollies.
They were found guilty as follows: Donahue of murder in the first degree, Fisher of murder in the first degree, McKenna of murder in the first degree, and O'Donnell as an accessory. McKenna served nine years and O'Donnell five years’ imprisonment.
Thus was the death of Morgan Powell avenged.
General Anthony Wayne Defeats Indians;
Congress Ratifies Treaty, December
3, 1795
Congress ratified the treaty made at Greenville by General Anthony Wayne, December 3, 1795. This is one of the few such treaties the provisions of which were respected.
Anthony Wayne was a member of the convention which met in Philadelphia and adopted a paper, drawn by John Dickinson, which recommended the Assembly to appoint delegates to a Congress of the Colonies. He was one of four members of that committee who became distinguished generals in the Revolution. His father had been an officer in the French and Indian War and Anthony studied surveying, but his attention was more centered on things military.
At the age of twenty he managed an expedition sent to Nova Scotia in the interest of Great Britain. On the very day that the battle of Lexington was fought he was made a member of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety.
He was made a colonel of one of the first regiments raised by Pennsylvania and soon was engaged in the perilous Canadian campaign.
Wayne then was given command of Fort Ticonderoga, which Ethan Allen had captured “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” During this tour of duty he was made a brigadier general and begged General Washington for more active service.
He was called to general headquarters at Morristown and given command of eight Pennsylvania regiments. These he taught to fight.
General Wayne fought bravely at Brandywine, and after Howe captured Philadelphia Washington posted him to watch the British and annoy them while the main army was being put in better condition to meet the enemy.
Through the betrayal of his position by a Tory, Wayne’s command was surprised at Paoli, when more than sixty of his soldiers were stabbed to death by the British bayonets. It was due to no fault of General Wayne and he managed to march away most of his men in good order.
Two weeks later the Battle of Germantown was fought and Wayne’s troops had a chance to make a bayonet attack upon the same soldiers who had rushed into their camp at Paoli. “They took ample vengeance for that night’s work,” said Wayne. He was delighted to see his Pennsylvanians beat the British at their own style of fighting.
Wayne’s troops suffered through the long winter following at Valley Forge, and none worked harder to relieve their distress than did the popular general.
Washington dispatched Wayne on a foraging expedition through New Jersey for much-needed supplies, and in spite of several skirmishes with British troops on the same mission Wayne brought back the supplies.
When Howe evacuated Philadelphia and Washington followed him across New Jersey, it was Wayne who encouraged Washington to fight the enemy. The Battle of Monmouth resulted, and it was Wayne’s line which held back the British until Washington could move up the rest of his army.
In Washington’s report to Congress about this battle he mentioned only one general by name, General Anthony Wayne.
Wayne’s most daring exploit was the capture of Stony Point, on the Hudson. This was accomplished by 1300 men in a bayonet attack at night. Wayne was wounded and afterward was spoken of by envious officers as “Mad Anthony.”
He performed conspicuous service at Yorktown, and was afterward sent to Georgia, where he fought Indians as well as British. The State of Georgia gave Wayne a rice plantation in token of gratitude.
After Washington resigned the active command of the army, General Josiah Harmar, one of a family living along the Perkiomen, succeeded him. Harmar led an expedition against the Miami Indians in the Northwest in 1790, but was defeated.
General Arthur St. Clair, who had been a major general of the Pennsylvania Line and President of the Continental Congress, succeeded Harmar. St. Clair at the time was also Governor of the Northwestern Territory. He, too, suffered a humiliating defeat in a serious engagement November 4, 1791, by the Miami, led by their chiefs and aided by Simon Girty, the notorious Tory and renegade, another Pennsylvanian.
After his reverse Washington appointed Anthony Wayne a major general and put him in command of the Army of the United States. The Indians were aided by the British.
Within seven years they had killed 1500 people, and their object was to prevent the settlements beyond the Ohio River.
General Wayne organized an army of 2631 men at Pittsburgh. A large proportion of the soldiers were Pennsylvanians.
The war lasted more than two years. Wayne moved his army down the Ohio, thence to the site of Cincinnati, to the Miami River, 400 miles into the wilderness.
On August 20, 1794, at the Fallen Timbers he encountered a force of 2000 Indians and won the most important victory ever secured over the Indian foes. Almost all the dead warriors were found with British arms.
Wayne laid waste their country and by the middle of September moved up to the junction of the St. Mary’s and St. Joseph’s Rivers, near the present City of Fort Wayne, Ind., and built a strong fortification, which he named Fort Wayne. The little army wintered at Greenville, O. The barbarians realized their weakness and sued for peace.
Wayne returned to Philadelphia to report his operations. As he approached the city the cavalry troops met him as a guard of honor. When he crossed the ferry over the Schuylkill a salute of fifteen guns was fired, and the bells of the city pealed their acclaim. The people crowded the sidewalks to catch a glimpse of the victorious general. Congress voted him its thanks.
The following summer 1130 sachems and warriors, representing twelve tribes or nations, met at Greenville on August 3 and concluded a treaty the basis of which was that hostilities should permanently cease and all prisoners be restored. The boundary line between the United States and the lands of the several tribes was fixed. It made possible the settlement of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and the West.
When this treaty was successfully concluded Wayne embarked in a schooner at Detroit for his home in Chester County. He was taken ill with his old complaint, the gout, and landed at Presqu’ Isle in great physical distress. Before an army surgeon could reach him he died in the Block-House there, December 15, 1796.
Bury[Bury] me at the foot of the flagstaff, boys,” he ordered, and his command was obeyed. Thirteen years later his son, Colonel Isaac Wayne, removed his remains to Radnor churchyard, in Delaware County, over which the Pennsylvania State Society of Cincinnati erected an elegant white marble monument.
Anti-Masonic Period Terminates in Trouble on December 4, 1838
In the campaign of 1838 Governor Joseph Ritner was renominated by the Fusionist Whig-Anti-Masonic-Abolitionist Party for the office of Governor, and David R. Porter, of Huntingdon, was the nominee of the Democratic organization for the same office.
The campaign was one of vituperation and personal abuse of the candidates unparalleled in the history of politics.
When the news of the election became known it showed that Porter had been elected by a majority of 5540 votes.
Immediately thereafter Secretary of the Commonwealth Thomas H. Burrowes, who was also chairman of the Anti-Masonic State Committee, issued a circular to the “Friends of Governor Ritner,” calling upon them to “treat the election held on October 9 as if it had never taken place.” This circular had the desired effect and the defeated Anti-Masonic and weak candidates for the Legislature contested the seats of their successful Democratic competitors on the slightest pretext.
Thaddeus Stevens said at a public meeting in the Courthouse at Gettysburg that “the Anti-Masons would organize the House, and if Governor Porter were declared elected the Legislature would elect Canal Commissioners for three years and then adjourn before date fixed by the new Constitution for the inauguration, and that Porter would never be Governor.”
As the time approached for the meeting of the Legislature on December 4, trouble was anticipated and “Committees on Safety” were appointed in nearly all of the counties, while many persons, especially from the districts in which contests were expected, flocked to Harrisburg to witness the result of the struggle.
It may not be generally known, but there had been a secret meeting composed of Burrowes, Stevens and Fenn, none of whom was born in Pennsylvania, at which were suggested some strong revolutionary measures.
After the excitement was over the Legislature settled down to business, and Governor Porter having been inaugurated, it was seriously considered whether these men should not be tried for treason.
The House then consisted of 100 members, eight of whom were from Philadelphia, whose seats were contested, and of the remaining number forty-eight were Democrats and forty-four anti-Masonic Whigs. The majority of the Senate belonged to the latter party, and consequently promptly organized by the election of Charles B. Penrose as Speaker.
In the House the clerk read the names of the members as given him by the Secretary of the Commonwealth.
Upon reading the returns from Philadelphia County it was discovered that the legal returns had been withheld and fraudulent ones substituted. This had been anticipated, as the Secretary of the Commonwealth had determined to seat the minority members, thus compelling the majority to be contestants and to witness the organization of the House. The Democrats produced and read the true returns, as duly certified by the Prothonotary of Philadelphia. This seated both sets of contesting delegates and caused the wildest excitement.
At this moment Thaddeus Stevens moved that the House proceed to the election of the Speaker. The clerk then called the roll of the Whig and Anti-Masonic members and declared Thomas S. Cunningham, of Beaver County, elected. He was conducted to the Speaker’s chair and took his seat.
The Democrats paid very little attention to the movements of the opposition and elected William Hopkins, of Washington County, Speaker. Two members escorted Mr. Hopkins to the platform, where Mr. Cunningham had already been seated.
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives thus enjoyed a double-headed organization. The members of the House of each party were then sworn in by their respective officers—fifty-two members who had elected Mr. Cunningham and fifty-six members who elected Mr. Hopkins.
After some necessary routine the Governor and the Senate were informed the House was ready to proceed to business; then both bodies adjourned their respective organizations to meet next day at 10 o’clock.
The Cunningham party did not wait until its appointed time. In the afternoon they met again in the hall, and after being called to order by their Speaker, he called Mr. Spackman, of Philadelphia, to act as Speaker pro tem. Some Philadelphians who were in the lobby as spectators, feeling indignant at the proceedings of the Cunningham party, went up to the platform and carried Spackman[Spackman] off and sat him down in the aisle.
This interference from outsiders could not be resented by the rump House and it immediately adjourned amid great confusion. They afterwards met in Matthew Wilson’s Hall, until recently known as the Lochiel Hotel. During these exciting scenes large crowds gathered outside the Capitol and became boisterous. The aspect of affairs appeared alarming.
While the foregoing incidents were transpiring in the House, there were contests for seats in the Senate from several districts. Upon the floor were members of the House, among them Thaddeus Stevens and Secretary of the Commonwealth Burrowes, of Lancaster, who had gone there with minority returns. These two individuals, who controlled the Executive, were of the opinion that the first returns received were to have precedence.
A large crowd in the rear of the Senate Chamber was composed of excited and enraged citizens, especially toward those who were working to seat Hanna and Wagner, of Philadelphia, in place of those legally entitled to the seats. Threats of violence were heard.
The clerk had opened and read the returns, as far as Philadelphia. When those were reached, Charles Brown, who had been elected on the majority return, arose and presented to the Speaker what he said was a copy of the true return, alleging the other false. The Speaker attempted to stop him, but the crowd insisted that Brown be heard. Brown was allowed to proceed, and during his remarks the crowds in the lobby and gallery shouted, threatening violence to Penrose, Burrowes and Stevens.
The scene was now one of fearful confusion, disorder and terror, and at last Speaker Penrose, unable to stem the current any longer, abandoned his post, and with Stevens and Burrowes escaped through a window in the rear of the Senate Chamber. The Senate adjourned until next day.
On the night of the first day of the session a large public meeting was held in the Courthouse over which General Thomas Craig Miller, of Adams County, presided.
The Governor then issued a proclamation which stated that “a lawless, infuriated, armed mob, from the counties of Philadelphia, Lancaster, Adams and other places, have assembled at the seat of government with the avowed object of disturbing, interrupting and overawing the Legislature of this Commonwealth and of preventing its proper organization and the peaceful and free discharge of its duties. This mob had entered the Senate Chamber and threatened the lives of the members and it still remained in the city in force, etc.”
The Governor called upon the civil authorities, the military force of the Commonwealth and the citizens to hold themselves in readiness for instant duty.
Troops Called Out in “Buck Shot War” on
December 5, 1838
Amid all the excitement of the first day of the “Buckshot” War, December 4, 1837, at the moment Governor Joseph Ritner had issued his proclamation calling upon the people to disperse the lawless element and to add further excitement, the State Arsenal was seized by friends of the Governor, where large quantities of powder and cartridges were stored. The proclamation and call for troops and the seizure of the arsenal filled the city of Harrisburg with intense alarm.
William Cochran, Sheriff of Dauphin County, issued a proclamation in which he stated that at no time had there been any riotous proceedings, nor any disturbances which rendered necessary his interposition as a civil officer to preserve peace.
The following day, December 5, the Governor made a requisition on Major General Robert Patterson, commanding the First Division Pennsylvania Militia to furnish sufficient of his command to “quell this insurrection.”
General Patterson obtained from the Frankford Arsenal a supply of the regular ammunition for infantry, which was then buckshot. About a hundred of General Patterson’s command arrived in Harrisburg, on Saturday night, December 8, and the next afternoon 800 troops arrived. They were paraded through the streets to the public grounds in front of the State Arsenal.
The general and his staff reported to the Governor. The door was locked and barred, and the general could not gain admittance until the Governor learned from a second-story window who was seeking an entrance.
The Governor sent for his Cabinet, and five responded. They asked the General many questions, among others, if he would obey an order of the Speaker of the Senate, to which he replied in the negative. He said he had not come on a political mission, and anyway, would not sustain a party clearly in the wrong.
He was asked if he would obey an order from the Speaker of the House. He replied he would not, for two reasons: They had two Speakers, he did not know the right one, and he would not obey the regular Speaker anyway, as he had no right to give him an order. He said he would obey only the Governor, and then only when the Governor gave him an order he had a right to give.
General Patterson refused to help seat either Speaker. He said the House alone could do that. If ordered to fire, he would refuse to issue the order. Nor would he permit a single shot to be fired except in self-defense, if assailed by the rebels, or in the protection of public property. The conference ended abruptly.
The Governor had called upon Captain Sumner, then in command of the Carlisle Barracks, for troops, but he refused to send them to interfere in political troubles.
Governor Ritner also wrote to President Van Buren, laying before him a full account of the affair, requesting the President to take such measures as would protect the State against violence. The Governor named several Government officials who were active in the trouble.
The Governor’s party finding they could not get General Patterson to install them in power, his troops were ordered home and a requisition was made upon Major General Alexander, of the Eleventh Division of State Militia, a citizen of Carlisle, and an ultra-Whig in politics.
Out of three companies only sixty-seven men responded. The battalion, under the command of Colonel Willis Foulk, marched from Carlisle to Harrisburg, December 15, arriving on the following day.
There never had been occasion for soldiers and now as the Carlisle troops arrived the disturbance in the Legislature was nearing an end. The soldiers regarded the trip as a frolic.
On December 17 Messrs. Butler and Sturdevant, of Luzerne, and Montelius, of Union County, three legally elected Whig members, abandoned their Anti-Masonic associates and were sworn in as members of the “Hopkins House,” which gave it a legal quorum over and above the eight Democrats from Philadelphia whose rights the “Rump House” disputed.
Finally on December 27, Mr. Michler, of Northampton County, submitted a resolution which recognized that the House was now legally organized, and it was adopted, by the close vote of seventeen yeas to sixteen nays.
The committee called for in the resolution was named and waited on the Governor, informing him the Legislature was organized.
With this reconciliation the returns were opened and read; the amendment to the Constitution was declared carried and the election of David R. Porter as Governor of the Commonwealth promulgated. However, the animosity still existed, and resulted in the appointment by both Houses of select committees to inquire into the causes of the disturbances and other matters.
Mr. Stevens, the ring leader, refused at first to be reconciled, and absented himself several months from the sessions of the House. It was not until May 8 that his colleague in the House announced that Mr. Stevens was now in his seat and ready to take the requisite qualifications.
Objection was made, and a resolution offered declaring that Mr. Stevens had “forfeited that right by act in violation of the laws of the land, by contempt to the House, and by the virtual resignation of his character as a representative.” Action was postponed.
On the following day Mr. Stevens again appeared, and, through his colleague, demanded that the oath be administered. This was on motion postponed by a vote of forty-eight to thirty. Two days afterward Mr. Stevens appeared a third time, but by a vote of fifty-three to thirty-three the question was postponed, and a committee appointed to examine whether he had not forfeited his right to a seat as a member.
On the 20th this committee reported that he was “not entitled” to his seat.
The House, however, by declaring his seat vacant, caused an election, when Mr. Stevens was again returned and appearing, was duly qualified.
Mr. Penrose, the Speaker of the Senate, issued a manifesto “To the People of the State,” explaining his participation in the proceedings of December 4.
Subsequently a number of pamphlets appeared, chiefly of the facetious class, which attempted to make a farce of what might have resulted in a very serious affair. One of these severely criticized Secretary Burrowes for withholding the correct and legal returns; Speaker Penrose for the violation of his duty; the six Senators who were denounced as traitors and the last paragraph was:
“Finally, if the leaders of the party who claimed to be ‘all the decency,’ and were the first to cry out mob, had behaved themselves honorably and honestly there would have been no ‘Buckshot War,’ and perhaps they would not have so soon been compelled to witness the 'Last Kick of Anti-Masonry.'”
The piper was now to pay and it took many years to heal the political sores. The Anti-Masonic crusade had come to an end, and from that date Masonry and Odd Fellowship, those “twin sisters of iniquity,” as Thaddeus Stevens designated them, thrived more than ever. The term “Buckshot War,” was a thorn in the side of its leaders.
De Vries Finds Entire Dutch Colony Destroyed,
December 6, 1632
The Dutch were the first Europeans to pursue explorations in the New World, and as early as 1609, sent Henry Hudson on an expedition to America, where he arrived at the head of Delaware Bay, August 28 of that year. Hudson later sailed up the New Jersey Coast and anchored off Sandy Hook, September 3; nine days later entered New York Bay through the Narrows, and entered the great river that since has borne his name.
The Dutch East India Company received glowing reports from its navigator and immediately set in motion other expeditions to the New Netherlands.
Before 1614 a fleet of five vessels, under command of Captain Cornelius Jacobson Mey, arrived in Delaware Bay, and two years later Cornelius Hendrickson sailed up the Delaware and discovered the mouth of the Schuylkill, the present site of Philadelphia.
In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was chartered and in 1623 Captain Mey built Fort Nassau about five miles above Wilmington, Del., on the eastern shore. Another settlement of a few families was made farther north upon the same side of the river, but in 1631 no white man had made a settlement on the west bank of the Delaware River.
In that year there came to the southern cape, now Henlopen, a party of colonists from Holland, under David Pieterson De Vries, of Hoorn, “a bold and skillful seaman,” and the finest personage in the settlement of America.
On December 12, 1630, a ship and a yacht for the Zuydt Revier (South River) were sent from the Texel “with a number of people and a large stock of cattle,” the object being, said De Vries, “as well to carry on a whale fishery in that region, as to plant a colony for the cultivation of all sorts of grain, for which the country is well adapted, and of tobacco.”
These colonists made a settlement near the present town of Lewes and called it Swanendael, or the Valley of the Swans. They built a substantial house, surrounded it with palisades, and began their settlement. A few weeks later the Walrus sailed on its return to Holland with De Vries aboard, who left the colony in charge of Gilles Hosset, who had come out as “commissary.” This colony was destined to be the most unfortunate and of short duration.
Early in 1632 De Vries agreed with his associates in Holland to go out to Swanendael himself. He fitted out two vessels, and with them set sail from the Texel, May 24, 1632, to be in good time at his colony, for the winter fishery. The whales, he understood, “come in the winter, and remained until March.”
As he was leaving Holland the bad news reached him that Swanendael had been destroyed by the Indians. The expedition proceeded, however, and it was December 5 when they reached Cape Cornelius and found the melancholy report only too true.
On the 6th De Vries went ashore to view the desolate place. He says:
“I found lying here and there the skulls and bones of our people, and the heads of the horses and cows which they had brought with them.”
No Indians were visible, so he went aboard the boat and let the gunner fire a shot to see if he could find any trace of them. The next day some Indians appeared.
In the conferences which followed, De Vries obtained some explanation of the disaster. It seems to have been the result of a misunderstanding. An Indian, who was induced to remain on board all night December 8, rehearsed the story. Commissary Hosset set up a pole, upon which was fastened a piece of tin bearing the arms of The Netherlands, as an evidence of its claim and profession.
An Indian, seeing the glitter of the tin, ignorant of the object of this exhibition and unconscious of the right of exclusive property, appropriated to his own use this honored symbol “for the purpose of making tobacco pipes.”
The Dutch regarded the offense as an affair of state, not merely a larceny, and Hosset urged his complaints and demands for redress with so much vehemence that the perplexed tribe brought him the head of the offender. This was a punishment which Hosset neither wished nor had foreseen, and he dreaded its consequences.
In vain he reprehended the severity of the Indians, and told them had they brought the delinquent to him, he would have been dismissed with a reprimand. The love of vengeance, inseparable from the Indian character, sought a dire gratification; and, though the culprit was executed by his own tribe, still they beheld its cause in the exaction of the strangers.
Availing themselves of the season in which many of the Dutch were engaged in the cultivation of the fields, at a distance from their house, the Indians entered it, under the amicable pretense of trade, and murdered the unsuspicious Hosset, also a sentinel who attended him. They proceeded to the fields, fell upon the laborers and massacred every individual.
De Vries did not put the blame on Hosset, but the colony was ruined. Neither did he chastise the natives nor send out a punitive expedition against them; more bloodshed would not heal the wounds already made. With a view to future fishing, he exchanged some goods with the Indians, and made an engagement of peace.
On January 1, 1634, he proceeded up the river and on the 6th arrived at Fort Nassau. It was now deserted, except by Indians. He was suspicious of these, and traded with extreme caution. He remained in the vicinity of the fort for four days, ever on the alert. He nearly fell a victim here to the perfidy of the natives.
They directed him to haul his yacht into the narrow Timmer-Kill, which furnished a convenient place for an attack, but he was warned by a female of the tribe of their design, and told the English crew of a vessel which had been sent from Virginia to explore the river the September previous had been murdered. De Vries then hastened to Fort Nassau, which he found filled with savages.
On January 10 he drifted his yacht off on the ebbtide, anchored at noon “on the bar at Jacques Island” and on the 13th rejoined his ship at Swanendael.
Jacques Island has been identified as Little Tinicum, opposite the greater Tinicum which is now part of Delaware County. The kill in which he lay was therefore Ridley, or perhaps Chester Creek. In either case, it seems, De Vries was then within the State of Pennsylvania.
In April De Vries returned to Holland. Thus at the expiration of twenty-five years from the discovery of the Delaware by Hudson, not a single European remained upon its shores.
Fires of Early Days; First Fire Fighting
Company Organized December 7, 1736
The City of Philadelphia had not been laid out one year until it was visited by a fire, the sufferers being some recently arrived Germans and for whose relief a subscription was made.
From this time until 1696 no public precautions seem to have been taken against fire. In the latter year the Provincial Assembly passed a law for preventing accidents that might happen by fire in the towns of Philadelphia and New Castle, by which persons were forbidden to fire their chimneys to cleanse them, or suffer them to be so foul as to take fire, under a penalty of forty shillings, and each house owner was required to provide and keep ready a swab twelve or fourteen feet long, and a bucket or pail, under a penalty of ten shillings.
No person should presume to smoke tobacco in the streets, either by day or night, under a penalty of twelve pence. All such fines were to be used to buy leather buckets and other instruments or engines against fires for the public use.
An act was passed in 1700, applying to Philadelphia, Bristol, Germantown, Darby and Chester, which provided for two leather buckets, and forbade more than six pounds of powder to be kept in any house or shop, unless forty perches distant from any dwelling house, under the penalty of ten pounds. A year later the magistrates were directed to procure “six or eight good hooks for tearing down houses on fire.”
As the city grew, fires became more frequent, through faulty constructed chimneys and the general use of wood for fuel. Mayor Samuel Preston in 1711 recommended the purchase of buckets, hooks and an engine. In December, 1718, the City Council purchased of Abraham Bickley a fire engine he had imported from England for £50. This fire engine was then in Bethlehem. It was the first fire engine purchased by the city of Philadelphia.
The first “great fire” took place between 10 and 11 o’clock on the night of April 24, 1730. The fire started in a store along the wharf and burned several stores under one roof, two cooper shops and an immense quantity of staves on King Street, and two new tenement houses, all owned by Mr. Fishbourne; a new house of Mr. Plumstead’s; John Dickinson’s fine new house, and Captain Anthony’s house. Several other buildings were damaged and much property fell prey to thieves.
This disastrous fire made the whole population realize that new fire-fighting apparatus was needed. The City Council at once ordered three fire engines and 400 leather buckets to be purchased in England and provided twenty ladders and twenty-five hooks and axes.
A year elapsed, however, before two of the engines and 250 buckets were received, and Mayor Hassel directed one to be stationed in the yard of the Friends’ Meeting House, Second and Market Streets, and the other on the lot of Francis Jones, corner Second and Walnut Streets.
The old Bickley engine was stationed in the yard of the Baptist Church, on Second near Arch Street. As late as 1771 only six fire engines comprised the entire force of the city.
A third engine was built in Philadelphia by Anthony Nichols, in 1733, and other buckets were manufactured there. This is the first fire engine ever built in Pennsylvania.
At a fire in January, 1733, this engine threw a stream higher than any other engine had been able to do, but Nichols was not given another order because his price was too high, he had “used wood instead of brass and they feared it would not last long.”
In December, 1733, there appeared in Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette an article on fires and their origin, and the mode of putting them out. Another article suggested that public pumps should be built, and gave a plan for the organization of a club or society for putting out fires, after the manner of one in Boston.
Franklin was the author of both articles, and they caused such interest that a project of forming such a company was soon undertaken. Thirty joined the association, and every member was obliged to keep in order and fit for service a certain number of buckets. They were to meet monthly and discuss topics which might be useful in their conduct at fires.
The advantages of the association were so apparent they became so numerous as to include quite all the inhabitants who were men of property.
Out of this movement started by Benjamin Franklin was organized the Union Fire Company, December 7, 1736, this being the first fire company in Philadelphia. Among the early members were Franklin, Isaac Paschal, Philip Syng, William Rawle and Samuel Powell.
The second company was the Fellowship Fire Company, organized March 1, 1738; the third the Hand-in-Hand, organized March 1, 1742; the fourth the Heart-in-Hand, organized February 22, 1743; the fifth the Friendship, organized July 30, 1747; the sixth the Britannia, organized in 1750.
Richard Mason in 1768 manufactured engines which were operated by levers at the ends instead of the side of the engine. These were successful, and he continued to produce his engines until 1801.
Patrick Lyon, about 1794, became the greatest fire-engine builder, when he invented an engine which would throw more water and with greater force than the others. He built fire engines as late as 1824. The “Reliance” and “Old Diligent,” built by him, performed useful service until the introduction of steam fire engines in 1855.
The first truly great fire in Philadelphia occurred July 9, 1850, when 367 houses were destroyed on Delaware Avenue, near Vine Street.
On November 12, 1851, three lives were lost in a fire which destroyed Bruner’s cotton factory.
The borough of Somerset was almost totally destroyed in 1833, and again on May 9, 1872. In the latter conflagration 117 buildings were destroyed.
On April 10, 1845, the city of Pittsburgh was visited by its first great fire, which burned over a space of fifty-six acres of the business and residential section.
December 15, 1850, the greater portion of the borough of Carbondale was wiped out.
Chambersburg suffered first in Stuart’s rebel raid, October 10, 1862, and again when General McCausland destroyed the beautiful Franklin County seat, July 30, 1864.
Selinsgrove was visited by a terrible fire February 22, 1872, and another fire almost wiped out the town October 30, 1874.
Mifflintown suffered by a great fire in 1871, again on August 23, 1873, and the borough of Milton was almost destroyed May 14, 1880, when 644 houses and business blocks were burned from noon until 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
Washington’s Headquarters in Several Bucks
County Mansions Began December
8, 1776
During the Revolution General Washington established his headquarters in no less than three of the old-time dwellings of Bucks County.
When Washington crossed the Delaware into Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with the rear guard of his army, Sunday, December 8, 1776, he took up his quarters in the country house of Mrs. Berkley, while the troops were stationed opposite the crossing.
This dwelling was built in 1750, in the village of Morrisville. The house is still in a fine state of preservation, occupies a commanding situation, with a farm of one hundred and sixty-two acres belonging to it, and is within the site once selected by Congress for the capital of the United States.
In this house, George Clymer, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, lived and died. It was then owned by his son, Henry Clymer, afterwards it became the property of the Waddells.
Local tradition, seldom at fault in such cases, points this house out as Washington’s quarters immediately after he crossed the river, and mementos of the troops have been found in the adjacent fields.
After Washington had placed his troops in position to guard the fords of the Delaware and prevent the enemy crossing, the headquarters of the army, and the quarters of the commander-in-chief’s most trusted lieutenants, were fixed at farm houses in the same neighborhood in Upper Wakefield Township, where they were always within easy communication.
General Washington occupied the dwelling of William Keith, on the road from Brownsburg to the Eagle Tavern; General Green was at Robert Merrick’s, a few hundred yards away across the fields and meadows; General Sullivan was at John Hayhurst’s; and Generals Knox and Hamilton were at Doctor Chapman’s over Jericho Hill.
The troops belonging to the headquarters were encamped in sheltered places along the creeks, and not far removed from the river.
This position for headquarters was selected on account of its seclusion, its nearness to the river and because of its proximity to Jericho Mountain. From the top of this mountain in the winter, signals may be seen a long distance up and down the river.
Here, too, Washington was near the fords, at which the enemy would attempt to cross, if pursuit was intended, and he was also within a half hour’s ride of Newtown, the depot of supplies.
The three old mansions in which Washington, Greene and Knox quartered, are still standing.
The Keith mansion was a two-story, pointed-stone house, twenty-four by twenty-eight feet in size, built by William Keith in 1763.
The pine door, in two folds, set in a solid oaken frame, is garnished with a wooden lock, fourteen by eighteen inches, the same which locked out intruders when Washington occupied the house. The interior is finished in yellow pine. At the time Washington used the dwelling the yard was inclosed with a stone wall. The property, containing two hundred and forty acres, and purchased by William Keith, of the London Company, December 3, 1761, has never been out of the family.
The Merrick house, a quarter of a mile distant to the east, on the road from Newtown to Neely’s Mill, is a pointed-stone dwelling, twenty by twenty feet, and kitchen adjoining. It was bought by Samuel Merrick in 1773, and was for many years owned by Edward, a descendant.
When General Greene occupied the dwelling, the first floor was divided into three rooms, and the family lived in the log end on the west. As the house was not then finished, the General had the walls of the rooms on the ground floor painted in a tasteful manner, with a picture of the rising sun over the fireplace.
At that time Samuel Merrick had a family of half-grown children, who were deeply impressed with passing events, and many traditions have been handed down to the present generations.
General Greene purchased the confidence of Hannah, a young daughter, by the gift of a small tea canister, which was kept many years in the family. They told how the Rhode Island blacksmith lived on the fat of the land while quartered at the house of their ancestor, devouring his flock of turkeys, and monopolizing the only fresh milk cow, besides eating her calf.
At the last supper which General Washington took with General Greene at the Merrick house, at which the daughter Hannah waited upon the table, she kept the plate from which the commander-in-chief ate as a memento of the occasion.
The Hayhurst house, where Sullivan quartered, was on the adjoining farm to Keith’s, where this plain member of the Wrightstown meeting lived with his family of five small children.
The Chapman mansion, the quarters of General Knox, is on the north side of the Jericho Mountain, a mile from Brownsburg. It is still in excellent condition.
Knox occupied the first floor of the east end, then divided into two rooms. Alexander Hamilton, then a youthful captain of artillery, lay sick in the back room.
A considerable portion of the Continental army found shelter in this neighborhood immediately preceding the attack on Trenton, Christmas Day, 1776, and Washington had his headquarters at a quiet farm house in the shadow of Jericho Hill.
In August, 1777, the Continental Army tarried thirteen days on the Neshaminy Hills, Bucks County, on the York road from Coryell’s Ferry, now New Hope, until it received notice of the departure of the British fleet, which had recently sailed from New York, and which was destined for the capture of Philadelphia.
During this time Washington was quartered in the stone house not far from the north end of the bridge over the Neshaminy, and on the left side of the York road going south. It was long since known as the Bothwell home.
A whipping post was erected on the opposite side of the road.
While Washington was quartered in this house Lafayette reported to him for service in the Continental army; and in it was held the first council of war at which Lafayette had a seat.
The army marched hence August 22, through Philadelphia, and then engaged the enemy on the field of Brandywine.
Railroad Riots in Erie; Bridges Destroyed
December 9, 1853
One of the most interesting and irritating episodes that became interwoven with the administration of Governor James Pollock was what was then known as the Erie Riots.
Pollock was seriously handicapped at the outset of his administration by the only Know Nothing Legislature in the history of the State. Nothing constructive came out of this session, but a movement was begun which led to the sale of the Main Line of the public works. In this the Governor was a strong advocate, and two years later the Legislature passed the enabling acts by which the Pennsylvania Railroad Company became the purchaser.
The Erie and Northwestern Railroad Company had built a short line to connect with the New York Central at Buffalo, and with the Lake Shore Line at Erie, by which a continuous railway line was made to the West. The several railroads at that time did not have uniform gauge, and the road west of Erie was of a different gauge than those east of that city, which was the most important connecting point; and all passengers and traffic were required to be transferred at Erie.
The necessities of the growing commerce required that the causes of this detention in transfer should be removed, both on account of the delay and the cost of handling of the freight, and the annoyance to the passengers in changing cars, all of which was because there was a difference of one or two inches in the gauge of the rails of the two lines.
The railroads therefore changed the gauge. This action aroused the hostility of the people of the city of Erie, whose sympathies the railway company seemed to have generally alienated and the battle progressed little by little until the entire community became involved in one of the most[most] disgraceful local conflicts of the history of Pennsylvania.
On December 9, 1853, two railroad bridges and many crossings were destroyed by a mob of women, and a great parade of the rioters was held amid the shouts of their sympathizers and jeers of their opponents.
The people, however, were not all on one side. They were in fact, about equally divided.
The contending forces were popularly known as “Rippers” and “Shanghais.” The former term was applied to those who favored the break of the gauge, as they repeatedly ripped up the tracks of the road.
This contest continued for several years and so completely inflamed the entire community that the prominent citizens became divided on the issue and ceased all social intercourse. They even carried that feeling so far that they would not worship at the same church.
Erie was an important county, and although reliably Whig, all political ties were disregarded and only those could be elected to the Legislature who would work for the repeal of the charter of the Erie and Northwestern Road.
After a long and bitter conflict the bill transferring the custody of the road to the State was passed and approved by Governor Pollock. The charter powers passed to the Commonwealth and the road in consequence was operated by State authorities.
The Governor appointed ex-Congressman Joseph Casey as State superintendent to operate the road. After struggling for a few months in vain efforts to harmonize the people and to maintain an open line of communication between the East and West, he resigned in disgust.
Governor Pollock then appointed General William F. Small, of Philadelphia, a veteran of the Mexican War and an experienced member of the State Senate, in the expectation that he would be able to calm down the belligerents and operate the line. After a few weeks on the job he resigned. The Governor urged his close friend, Colonel Alexander K. McClure, of Philadelphia, but formerly of Chambersburg, to assume the uninviting task.
Colonel McClure was given full authority to handle the situation as he thought best. He went to Erie and soon won the confidence of leaders of both factions, with many of whom he already had personal acquaintance.
Lined up against the railroad were such men of importance as Judge James Thompson, afterward Chief Justice of the State; State Senator James Skinner, Mr. Morrow B. Lowrey, later a member of the State Senate, and a large number of men prominent in the business circles of the city.
On the other side were men of like distinction, such as John H. Walker, former State Senator and president of the last Constitutional Convention; Senator J. B. Johnson, who was also editor of the Constitution, one of the leading papers of the city; Milton C. Courtright, a principal stockholder of the railroad company, and many others.
Each faction entertained Colonel McClure. The city was in distress; even its population had dwindled to about 5000. Business was at a standstill. The only question discussed in the home, shop, store, church or on the street was the railroad issue.
Colonel McClure endeavored to hold conferences with the leaders, but when one faction was willing to attend the other rebelled and vice versa. Finally he worked out a plan by which it appeared the road could be operated without interference.
Colonel McClure started East on a vacation, but only two days later received a dispatch stating that rioting had again broken out afresh, that Senator Johnson’s printing office had been destroyed and the materials burned in a bonfire on the street.
McClure returned and immediately got into communication with the leaders. It was learned that the mob spirit was to blame; the leaders had endeavored to restrain them, but without avail.
Colonel McClure determined that no further efforts be made to harmonize the difficulty but that he would operate the road if it required a soldier upon every cross-tie to protect the property, whether the offenders wore trousers or petticoats.
Two leaders of each faction were invited to the Colonel’s room without either knowing the others were invited. Judge Thompson arrived on the hour, and soon ex-Senator Walker entered. Walker and Courtright on the one side and Thompson and Skinner on the other had had no social, business or personal intercourse for more than a year.
With unusual diplomacy Colonel McClure induced these leaders to shake hands and drink a friendly glass with him. Soon the others arrived and then before many moments the five were enjoying the genial hospitality of the colonel and the best supper that Brown’s Hotel could furnish. A game of cards was enjoyed until the sun appeared in the morning, when they all shook hands, each repaired to his own home and the Erie riots became only a bit of the history of Pennsylvania.
Count Zinzindorf, Moravian Church
Founder, Arrives December
10, 1741
Count Zinzindorf arrived in Philadelphia December 10, 1741. He was full of enthusiasm, eager to preach the gospel to all men. His idea was to unite all Protestant denominations into a Christian confederacy.
Nicholas Ludwig, Count von Zinzindorf, was born at Dresden, Germany, May 26, 1700. In August, 1727, on his estate at Herrnhut (“The Lord’s Keeping”), in Saxony, he organized some three hundred persons, emigrants from Moravia and Bohemia, into a religious organization known indiscriminately as “The Church of the Brethren” and “Herrnhutters”—the forerunner of the United Brethren, or Moravian Church in America.
In 1733 this society had become a distinct Church and in 1737, Zinzindorf was consecrated Bishop, and was the “Advocate” of the Church until his death.
He came to America to inspect the Moravian establishments in general here, and especially to acquaint himself with the fruits of the Brethren’s labors among the Indians. He certainly did not come to this country with a view of founding Moravian congregations.
The nobleman’s activity consisted chiefly in preaching in Philadelphia and the neighborhood, and holding seven synods or free meetings of all denominations, most of them at Germantown, each lasting two or three days. These meetings were without practical results, but they surely served to awaken a greater interest in religious matters.
December 31, 1741, he appeared for the first time in an American pulpit, preaching to a large congregation in the German Reformed Church at Germantown. A few months later the Hon. James Logan wrote to a friend concerning Zinzindorf as follows:
“He speaks Latin and French, is aged I suppose between forty and fifty years, wears his own hair and is in all other respects very plain as making the propagation of the gospel his whole purpose and business.”
Zinzindorf’s stay in this country was a period of varied and strenuous activity. Few men could have accomplished in the same time what he did.
Dr. Gill, in his “Life of Zinzindorf,” says the Count gave the Indians among whom he went on his several missionary tours “a practical insight into the religion he came to teach by simply leading a Christian life among them; and, when favorable impressions had thus been made and inquiry was excited, he preached the leading truths of the gospel, taking care not to put more things into their heads than their hearts could lay hold of. His mode of approaching them was carefully adapted to their distinctive peculiarities.”
Early in the spring of 1741 David Zeisberger and his son David, John Martin, Mack and some four or five more of the Moravian Brethren, who had already established several missions in this country, began a new missionary settlement near the “Forks” of the Delaware, on land derived from William Allen, Esq., of Philadelphia, and lying at the confluence of the Lehigh River and Monacasy Creek, in Buck’s (now Northampton) County.
On Christmas Eve of the same year this settlement received the name of “Bethlehem” from Count Zinzindorf, who had arrived there a few days previously. Ever since then Bethlehem has been the headquarters in this country of the Moravian Church, now known as the “Church of the United Brethren in the United States of America.”
From Bethlehem and other Moravian mission stations the Brethren went out among the Indians, making converts and establishing new missions. The Indian wars had hardened the hearts of the New England Puritans against the aborigines, and it was left to the Moravians to preach a gentler creed to the Indians.
In May, 1742, Zinzindorf was called by the Lutherans of Philadelphia to be their pastor, but he declined, as he intended to journey to the Indian country.
Reverend John C. Pyrlaeus, a minister of the Moravian Church, was called in his stead. There was a strong faction in the Lutheran Church hostile to the Moravians, and July 9, 1742, Pyrlaeus was forcibly ejected by a gang of ruffians from the church. Some of the congregation followed him, and this event led to the erection of the First Moravian Church in Philadelphia. Zinzindorf paid for its erection out of his own purse.
August 3, 1742, Count Zinzindorf visited Conrad Weiser at his home, on Tulpehocken, and there met the chief deputies of the Six Nations and some other Indians, who had been at the Philadelphia conference, and on their way home were paying Weiser a visit. Among them were Shikellamy and Canassatego.
With those chiefs the Count ratified a covenant of friendship in behalf of the Brethren, stipulating for permission for the latter to pass to and from and sojourn within the domains of the Iroquois Confederacy; not as strangers, but as friends and without suspicion, until such times as they should have “mutually learned each other’s peculiarities.”
In reply to the speech made by Zinzindorf, Canassatego said: “Brother, you have journeyed a long way from beyond the sea in order to preach to the white people and the Indians. You did not know we were here (at Tulpehocken). We had no knowledge of your coming. The Great Spirit has brought us together. Come to our people; you shall be welcome. Take this fathom of wampum; it is a token that our words are true.”
This “fathom” was composed of 186 white wampums, and was preserved by the Brethren for a long time, and was often used in conference with Indians.
September 24, 1742, Zinzindorf and Weiser set out on horseback for Shamokin and Wyoming. They were also accompanied by the Count’s daughter, Benigna, Anna Nitschmann, two Indians and John Martin Mack.
The Count kept a journal of his trip which is most interesting. The little company spent several days the guests of the great vicegerent, Shikellamy at Shamokin (now Sunbury), and then proceeded along the West Branch to what is now Montoursville, where they met the celebrated Madame Montour and her son, Andrew.
The Count and his companions remained with the Montours for four days, during which several religious services were held.
The party left October 9, under the guidance of Andrew Montour, and at the mouth of Warrior Run they took a southeasterly direction, striking the North Branch at what is now Bloomsburg, and thence traveled to Wyoming.
During his stay at this place they were several times seriously threatened by Indians, and Weiser finally persuaded the missionaries to depart, which they did on October 30. Zinzindorf returned to Bethlehem via Shamokin, arriving there November 8.
January 20, 1743, Count Zinzindorf set sail from New York for Dover, England, and never returned to this country. He died at Herrnhut May 9, 1760. He was the author of many sermons, hymns, catechisms and a number of controversial and devotional works. He published more than 100 works of prose and verse.
General Washington Praises Lydia Darrah
to Congress December 11, 1777
When the British army held possession of Philadelphia, September 26, 1777, to June 19, 1778, General Howe’s headquarters were in Second Street, the fourth door below Spruce, in a house which was before occupied by General John Cadwallader. Directly opposite resided William and Lydia Darrah, members of the Society of Friends.
A superior officer of the British Army, believed to be the adjutant general, fixed upon one of the chambers in the Darrah home, a back room, for holding private conferences, and two or more officers, frequently met there, by candle light, and remained long in consultation.
On December 2, 1777, the adjutant general told Lydia Darrah that they would be in the room at seven o’clock that evening; they would remain late, and that he wished the family to retire early to bed, adding that when they were going away they would call her to let them out and to extinguish their candles and fire.
She accordingly sent all the family to bed, but as the high officer had been so particular, her womanly curiosity was excited. She removed her shoes, and walked quietly to the door, when she placed her ear to the keyhole and listened to the conversation of the officers, which was held in subdued tones. She overheard the reading of an order which was to call out all the British troops on the evening of the 4th to attack General Washington’s army, then encamped at White Marsh.
On hearing this news she returned in her chamber and lay down. Soon after the officer knocked at the door, but she rose only at the third summons, having feigned herself asleep. Her mind was so much agitated that she could neither eat nor sleep, supposing it to be in her power to save the lives of thousands of her fellow-countrymen, but not knowing how she was to convey the information to General Washington, not even daring to communicate it to her husband.
The time left, however, was short. She must act promptly. She determined to make her way quickly as possible to the American outposts. In the early morning she informed her family that, as she was in need of flour, she would go to Frankford for some. Her husband insisted that she take her maid servant with her, but to his surprise she politely refused.
She got access to General Howe and solicited a pass through the British line, which was readily granted. Leaving her bag at the mill, she hastened toward the American lines and encountered on her way an American lieutenant colonel by the name of Craig, of the Light Horse, who, with some of his men, was on the lookout for information.
The officer recognized Mrs. Darrah as an acquaintance, and inquired where she was going. She answered, in quest of her son, an officer in the American Army, and prayed that the colonel might alight and walk with her. He did so, ordering his troops to keep in sight.
To Colonel Craig she disclosed her secret after having obtained from him a solemn promise never to betray her individually, as her life might be at stake with the British.
The colonel conducted her to a house near at hand, directed something be given her to eat, and he then hastened with all possible speed to headquarters, where he immediately acquainted General Washington with what he had heard.
Washington put in motion every possible preparation to baffle the meditated surprise.
Mrs. Darrah obtained her flour and returned home; sat up alone to watch the movement of the British troops, heard their footsteps as they silently marched away; but when they returned a few days after, she did not dare to ask a question, though solicitous to learn of the event.
The following evening the adjutant general came to the house and requested Mrs. Darrah to walk up to his room, as he wished to put some questions to her.
She followed him in terror; and when he locked the door and begged her, with an air of mystery, to be seated, she was sure that she was either suspected or betrayed.
He inquired earnestly whether any of her family was up the last night when he and the other officers met. She assured him that they all retired at 8 o’clock. He then observed:
“I know you were asleep, for I knocked at your chamber door three times before you heard me. I am entirely at a loss to imagine who gave General Washington information of our intended attack, unless the walls of the house could speak. When we arrived near White Marsh we found all their cannon mounted and the troops prepared to receive us, and we have marched back like a parcel of fools.”
Among the published correspondence of General Washington is a letter written by him, addressed Headquarters, Whitemarsh, 10 December, 1777, which is as follows:
“Sir—I have the honor to inform you that in the course of last week, from a variety of intelligence, I had reason to expect that General Howe was preparing to give us a general action. Accordingly, on Thursday night he moved from the city with all his force, except a very inconsiderable part left in his lines and redoubts, and appeared the next morning on Chestnut Hill, in front of, and about three miles distant from, our right wing.
“As soon as our position was discovered, the Pennsylvania militia were ordered from our right, to skirmish with their light advanced parties; and I am sorry to mention, that Brigadier General Irvine, who led them on, had the misfortune to be wounded and to be taken prisoner. Nothing more occurred on that day.
“On Friday night the enemy changed their ground, and moved to our left within a mile of our line, where they remained quiet and advantageously posted the whole of the next day.
“On Sunday they inclined still further to our left; and, from every appearance there was reason to apprehend they were determined on an action. In this movement their advanced and flanking parties were warmly attacked by Colonel Morgan and his corps and also by the Maryland militia under Colonel Gist. Their loss I cannot ascertain; but I am informed it was considerable.
“On Monday afternoon they began to move again, and instead of advancing, filed off from their right; and the first certain account that I could obtain of their intentions was, that they were in full march toward Philadelphia.
“The enemy’s loss, as I have observed, I cannot ascertain. One account from the city is that 500 wounded had been sent in; another is that eighty-two wagons had gone in with men in this situation. These, I fear, are both exaggerated, and not to be depended upon. We lost twenty-seven men in Morgan’s corps, killed and wounded, besides Major Morris, a brave and gallant officer, who is among the latter.”
In a second letter to Congress, dated Headquarters near the Guelph, 11, December, 1777, General Washington referred to the bravery of a Pennsylvanian as being the means of saving the army. There is hardly a doubt but that he had in mind the brave action of Lydia Darrah, one of the heroines of our country.
Federal Constitution Adopted by Pennsylvania
December 12, 1787
The establishment of a free nation resulted through the close of the war of independence, yet it also brought anxious solicitude to every patriot’s mind, and this state of apprehension increased with each succeeding year.
The State debts operated severely on all classes, to meet the payment of which was impossible. This and kindred troubles, financial and governmental, impressed the people with the gloomy conviction that the great work of independence was only half done. It was felt that above all things a definite and organic form of government—reflecting the will of the people—should be fixed upon, to give energy to national power and success to individual and public enterprise.
So portentous a crisis as this formed another epoch for the display of the intellectual and political attainments of American statesmen, and the ordeal was one through which they passed with the highest honor and with ever-enduring fame at home and abroad.
A change was now to be wrought. The same hall which had resounded with words of patriotic defiance that shook the throne of King George III and proclaimed to an astonished world the Declaration of Independence, that same hall in which the Congress had continued to sit during the greater part of that war, the State House in Philadelphia, was soon to witness the assembling of such a body of men as in point of intellectual talent, personal integrity and lofty purpose had perhaps never before been brought together.
On the proposition of uniting the water of the Ohio and Potomac Rivers deputies from five States met at Annapolis in September, 1786. Their powers were too limited, and nothing was accomplished. This meeting was not, however, without its beneficial effect, for there were assembled men who deeply felt the depressed and distracted condition of the country, and put their sentiments into action.
They drew up a report and an address to all the States strongly representing the inefficiency of the present Federal Government, and earnestly urging them to send delegates to meet in Philadelphia in May, 1787. Congress responded to this proceeding in February by adopting resolutions recommending the proposed measure.
On the day appointed for the meeting, May 14, 1787, only a small number of delegates had arrived in Philadelphia. The deliberations did not commence, therefore, until May 25, when there were present twenty-nine members representing nine States. Others soon arrived, until there were fifty-five to respond to their names. Never, perhaps, had any body of men combined for so great a purpose, to form a constitution which was to rule a great people for many generations.
Washington was the outstanding figure, and then the idol of the whole people. And there was Rufus King, Gerry and Strong, of Massachusetts; Langdon, of New Hampshire; Ellsworth and Sherman, of Connecticut; Hamilton, of New York; Livingston and Dickinson, of New Jersey; Randolph, Wythe and Madison, of Virginia; Martin, of Maryland; Davies, of North Carolina; Rutledge and Pickens, of South Carolina.
From our own great Commonwealth were Franklin, one of the profoundest philosophers in the world, and, though nearly fourscore years of age, was able to grasp and throw light upon the complex problems relating to the science of government; Robert Morris, the great financier, of whom it has been truthfully said, that “Americans owed, and still owe, as much acknowledgment to the financial operations of Robert Morris, as to the negotiations of Benjamin Franklin, or even to the arms of George Washington.” Gouverneur Morris conspicuous for his accomplishments in learning, his fluent conversation, and sterling abilities in debate; George Clymer, distinguished among Pennsylvanians as one of the first to raise a defiant voice against the aribitrary acts of the mother country; Thomas Mifflin, ardent almost beyond discretion, in zeal for his country’s rights and liberties; James Wilson, the most distinguished lawyer in that body, and Jared Ingersoll, another of the great lawyers of that day.
When the convention proceeded to organize, Robert Morris nominated General Washington to preside, and he was unanimously elected. Standing rules were adopted, one of which was that nothing spoken during the deliberations be printed or otherwise published or made known in any manner without special permission.
The delegates to the convention had been appointed merely with a view to the revision or improvement of the old Articles of Confederation, which still held the States together as a Nation.
Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, in opening the great discussion, laid bare the defects of the Articles of Confederation, and then submitted a series of resolutions embodying the substance of a plan of government, similar to that suggested in letters of Washington, Madison and Jefferson a few months previous.
The plan in question proposed the formation of a general government, constituted as follows: The national legislature to consist of two branches, the members of the first branch to be elected by the people of the several States, and the members of the second branch to be elected by the first branch; a national chief executive to be chosen by the national legislature; and a national judiciary. Provision also was made for the admission of new states into the Union.
Mr. Randolph’s plan had many supporters, but other projects were brought forward, which occasioned angry debates for some days, and but for the timely and healing wisdom of Dr. Franklin, the mentor of the Constitution, might have broken up the body.
The debate closed September 17, and the result of the convention’s labors was the formation of a constitution establishing a national government on the principles that the affairs of the people of the United States were thenceforth to be administered not by a confederacy or mere league of friendship between the Sovereign States, but by a government, distributed into three great departments—legislative, judicial and executive.
The final draft of the Constitution was signed by all members present except Randolph and Mason, of Virginia and Gerry, of Massachusetts. Washington signed first, and as he stood, pen in hand, said: “Should the States reject this excellent Constitution, the probability is that an opportunity will never again be offered to cancel another in peace—the next will be drawn in blood.” The other members solemnly signed the historic document.
The convention, however, was not clothed with legislative power, nor was the Continental Congress, competent to accept or reject it. It was referred to the several States to be the law of the Nation when ratified by nine of the States.
It was not until the summer of 1788 that ratification of the nine States was obtained, beginning with Delaware, December 7, 1787, closely followed by Pennsylvania, five days later, December 12, 1787, some by large and some by very small majorities.
In New York the opposition resulted in serious riots. Of the thirteen original states, Rhode Island was the last to accept the Constitution, which she did in May, 1790.
Attempt to Impeach Justices Yeates, Shippen
and Smith Fails, December 13, 1803
Thomas McKean became Governor of Pennsylvania December 17, 1799.
With the election of McKean there was at once a lively commotion concerning the disposition of offices, and for the first time in the history of the State the Governor found himself confronted with this new and perplexing problem.
There never had been any radical change in the offices during the long period of the Provincial Government, while the party of the Revolution, after the war, with the single exception of Dickinson’s term, had been in power until this time. But now the political ax was to be swung. McKean knew how to swing it and the work suited his strong nature. His course was sharply criticized, and party feeling during his entire administration was exceedingly warm and bitter.
The Federalists in the Legislature made an attack upon the Governor for holding the principles he enunciated, and the address of the Senate was one of accusation instead of congratulation.
Governor McKean made a long reply, declaring that the objectionable expressions were uttered before he assumed office, and that as regards the removals from office he relied upon his right to make such changes as he deemed proper, without accountability to any person or party.
In the address of the Democratic nominee for 1803 is used the following language: “As Pennsylvania is the keystone of the Democratic arch, every engine will be used to sever it from its place”—being probably the first instance in which the comparison of the Commonwealth to the keystone of an arch was used, and the origin of a figure of speech since very common.
During the session of the Legislature, December 13, 1803, a memorial was presented from Thomas Passmore, of Philadelphia, charging Justices Jasper Yeates, Edward Shippen and Thomas Smith of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, with oppression and false imprisonment, the complainant having been committed for contempt of court.
The matter was considered in General Assembly and the House recommended that the court be impeached for high misdemeanors. Articles of complaint were prepared and the impeachment sent to the Senate. It was not until the subsequent session that proceedings were had when upon the final vote in the Senate, 13 voted guilty and 11 not guilty. The constitutional majority of two-thirds not being obtained the accused were acquitted.
In this proceeding the chief point in connection was the extent to which the common law of England was applicable or in force in Pennsylvania; whether the justices had exceeded their authority in construing its provisions and harmonizing them with the statutes then in force, and also with peculiar exigencies of the case out of which the impeachment had grown.
As an element of State history the affair of the impeachment of the justices was of minor importance. In its relation to the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth, it was a subject of great moment, and was discussed and commented upon in all the populous States of the country, as the beginning of a movement to set aside the strict teachings of English common law and to establish precedents applicable to our own necessities without especial regard to those which originally had been imported from the Mother Country.
The time had come when an independent judicial system in this State was made necessary, and this was one of the beginnings.
It can hardly be questioned but that partisan politics played some part in the impeachment proceedings, as Justices Yeates, Shippen and Smith belonged to the Federalist Party, and their impeachment would have made three fine places for their opponents. It was ever thus.
A movement was started in 1805 by a faction of the Democratic Party for revision of the Constitution. It grew out of the impeachment proceedings, and the advocates of the measure proposed to make the election of Senators annual, to reduce the patronage of the Governor and to limit the tenure of the judiciary.
This new party assumed the name of “Constitutionalists,” while those opposed styled themselves “Friends of the People.” The controversy for some reason was carried on with much bitterness.
Governor McKean strongly opposed another constitutional convention, and in a message expressed his views as follows:
“The organization of the judicial power of Pennsylvania has been long and fairly condemned. But there is not a defect suggested from any quarter which the Legislature is not competent to remedy. The authority of the Judges may be restricted or enlarged. The law they dispense, whether statute law or common law, may be annulled or modified. The delay of justice may be obviated by increasing the number of judges in proportion to the obvious increase of judicial business or by instituting local tribunals, where local cases demand a more constant exercise of jurisdiction.”
Although the constitutional convention was not held, the proposition found many supporters in all parties. Under the changed conditions McKean’s friends knew that Editor Duane’s influence would seek to defeat his renomination for Governor if possible. The nomination for Governor was then made by a legislative caucus.
The legislative nominating caucus at Lancaster dissolved in confusion. Some were for McKean, while others equally enthusiastic were for Simon Snyder, the speaker of the House. The “Freeman’s Journal” characterized Snyder as a “Pennsylvania Dutchman” and intimated that even Duane in the “Aurora” did not give him a very hearty support. The campaign was spirited. Numerous societies were formed and addresses in German broadcast.
Governor McKean was elected by 5601 majority and once more found himself supported by those from whom he had broken away only a few years before. The Constitutionalists soon disappeared from the political stage.
The re-election of the Governor was not without its losses, however, for soon afterward he became involved in libel suits with Duane, Dr. Leib and others, while they in the spirit of retaliation presented the Governor for impeachment on charges of abuse of the executive power.
The impeachment proceedings were hardly more than a revival of the old political troubles in which envy and jealousy played the leading roles. The committee of the House investigated the charges and reported to the House, when a vote was taken which resulted in a tie. The division was strictly on party lines, and the matter was therefore indefinitely postponed. The Governor’s reputation was in no wise injured in the unfortunate action.
The Governor, in a message to the General Assembly, reminded the members that “libeling had become the crying sin of the Nation and the times.” He strongly denounced a condition which permitted the prostitution of the liberty of the press, the overwhelming torrent of political dissension, the indiscriminate demolition of public characters, and the barbarous inroads upon the peace and happiness of individuals, etc.
John Binns and Samuel Stewart Fight Last
Duel in Pennsylvania December
14, 1805
Dueling was prohibited by an act of Assembly in Pennsylvania March 31, 1806, and it is a fact that the passage of this prohibitory measure was due wholly, or in a great degree, to a duel which had occurred between John Binns and Samuel Stewart December 14, 1805.
The prominence of the antagonists had much to do with the public feeling which followed this affair.
Binns was the owner and editor of the Republican Argus, of Northumberland, the most influential newspaper published at that time in the State save the Aurora, of Philadelphia, and Binns was the agency which, a few years later, drove that paper out of publication.
Samuel Stewart was a resident of Williamsport, where he enjoyed a wide political influence, which made him the object of attack in the opposition newspapers.
John Binns in his autobiography says: “On Saturday, November 2, 1805, while I was in the public ball alley, in Sunbury, with a yellow pine bat in my right hand, tossing a ball against a wall, waiting for Major Charles Maclay to play a game, a very tall, stout stranger came to me and said:
“‘My name is Sam Stewart, of Lycoming County; your name, I understand, is John Binns, and that you are the editor of the Republican Argus.’ I answered: ‘You have been correctly informed,’ ‘I wish,’ said he, ‘to know who is the author of the letters published in that paper signed “One of the People.”' ‘For what purpose?’ said I. ‘Because,’ said he, ‘there are some remarks in one of them which reflect upon my character, and I must know the author.’
“With this demand I declined to reply, but said: ‘If there be anything in them untrue it shall be corrected.’ Stewart, who was standing at my right side, instantly threw his left arm across my breast and with it held both my arms tight above the elbows and at the same time threw his right arm across the back of my head, violently pushing the end of his forefinger into the corner of my right eye, evidently with intent to tear it out of my head.
“Upon the instant I struck him, with all the strength I could command, over the shin with the edge of the yellow pine bat, which I fortunately had in my right hand. This severe blow made Stewart instantly snatch his finger from my eye, and seizing me around the waist with both arms lifted me from the ground and endeavored to throw me down.
“This attack and struggle took place in the ball alley of Henry Schaffer, into whose hotel I went and wrote a note, which was handed to Mr. Stewart forthwith by Major Maclay, Sunbury, November 2, 1805. ‘After threatening me like a bravo, you have attacked me like a ruffian. Some satisfaction ought to be rendered for such conduct. If you have the spirit and the courage to meet me as a gentleman, and will appoint time and place and meet me with pistols, accompanied by a friend, what has passed shall be overlooked by John Binns.’
“To this note Mr. Stewart returned a verbal answer, by Major Maclay, that he was going to the city, but would be back in two or three weeks, when he would acquaint Mr. Binns of his arrival and give him time to send to Buffalo (Union County) for Major Maclay, who, he presumed, would attend Mr. Binns as his friend on the occasion.
“On the day of its date I received a note, of which the following is a copy, from Andrew Kennedy, the printer of the Northumberland Gazette, who informed me Mr. Stewart was at his house, and requested that any answer I thought proper to send should be sent there.
“‘Northumberland, Dec. 13, 1805.
“‘When I received your challenge I was at that time on my way to the city, and had it not in my power to meet you, but now I am here, ready to see you. You will therefore, mention the time and place, and you will have it in your power to try my spirits that you so much doubted; it must be immediately; let me hear from you.'
“To this note I forthwith returned the following answer:
“‘Yours I have just received. You are aware that my friend Major Maclay is to attend me; so soon as he arrives, I shall be ready; I shall send for him immediately, and expect he will lose no time in coming to Northumberland, in which case I presume every necessary arrangement can be made between him and your friend this evening and we can meet tomorrow morning.’
“Immediately after writing the above note, I wrapped a pair of pistols in my great-coat pocket and walked about half a mile to the house of William Bonham, where I had directed that my horse, and any answer sent to my note, should be forwarded. While waiting at Bonham’s, Major Maclay arrived. I made him a statement of all that had passed between Stewart and myself, put him in full possession of my opinion and wishes, and he went to Northumberland to settle the time and place.
“On Maclay’s return, he informed me that the meeting was to be at 7 o’clock the next morning behind Lawshe’s house, opposite Derrstown, where we agreed to sleep that night.
“We were on the ground at 7 o’clock just at the gray of the morning. In a few minutes, we saw Stewart and Kennedy coming down the lane. After mutual salutations, Maclay and Kennedy then retired and after some conversation,[conversation,] stepped eight paces and placed Stewart and myself at the extreme ends of the line. Maclay then said: ‘Gentlemen, it is agreed between Kennedy and myself, that if either of the parties shall leave his ground until the affair is finally settled, such party shall be regarded as disgraced.’
“The seconds then tossed up to determine which of whom should give the word. Maclay won. The pistols were presented and discharged so simultaneously that but one report was heard. Neither of the balls took effect. Maclay then addressed Kennedy and said, ‘You had better consult your principal, and I will do the same.’ Maclay’s first words to Binns were, ‘Kennedy is a scoundrel. He is determined, if he can, to have you shot.’ Binns said, ‘Very well, you know the terms agreed upon and we will carry them out.’
“Mr. Maclay came between the antagonists and said, 'Gentlemen, I think this business has gone far enough and may be amicably and honorably adjusted. To effect this I propose that Mr. Stewart shall apologize for the attack he made upon Mr. Binns, and then Mr. Binns declare that the publication which gave offense to Mr. Stewart was not made from any wish to wound the feelings or injuriously affect the character of Mr. Stewart, but because Mr. Binns believed it to be true and that it was a matter proper for public publication.’”
After a pause Mr. Stewart made the required apology and Binns made the declaration which his friend proposed.
The matter being thus satisfactorily arranged, the parties shook hands and at a tavern in the neighborhood they and their friends breakfasted together. Stewart and Binns continued friends.
Stewart was elected to the Assembly from Lycoming County by the Federal Party and every year voted for John Binns, then editor of the Democratic Press, of Philadelphia, as a director of the Pennsylvania Bank.
Pennsylvania Troops Mustered for Mexican
War, December 15, 1846
During the second year of Governor Francis R. Shunk’s administration the war with Mexico was begun. Pennsylvania was authorized to furnish six regiments of infantry. Two were mustered into the service, the first on December 15, 1846, at Pittsburgh, under command of Colonel Wynkoop, the second on January 5, 1847, also at Pittsburgh, under command of Colonel Roberts, who was succeeded by Colonel Geary.
The gallant services of the troops on the fields of Mexico at Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Chepultepec and the City of Mexico, their bravery and valor, secured the highest commendation of their venerated chieftain.
During Governor Shunk’s administration the economic condition of the State was greatly improved. The financial storm was passed and men were recovering from their reverses. Banks were clamoring for charters, but the Governor limited the number and refused to sponsor the establishment of a system of free banking, such as was in operation in several States.
It was during Governor Shunk’s term that the Legislature enacted the first law extending to women the rights of property. There also was a change made in the law relating to the separation of married persons.
In 1847, Governor Shunk was re-elected for a second term. Early in the year 1848 he was attacked with a pulmonary trouble which soon assumed a serious character. Just as the remnants of our brave and heroic troops were returning from the battlefields of Mexico with their laurels, Governor Shunk suffered a severe hemorrhage of the lungs, on the morning of July 9. On that day, feeling that his days were numbered, the Governor wrote a letter of resignation to the people of Pennsylvania and a few days later, July 20, 1848, died. His body was laid to rest in the old Lutheran burying ground at the Trappe.
Governor Shunk was succeeded by William Freame Johnston, the Speaker of the Senate, according to the provisions of the Constitution, the vacancy occurring three months before the general election. The Acting Governor issued the necessary writs for the election of a Chief Magistrate, which resulted in the election of Senator Johnston. The new Governor was a native of Greensburg, Westmoreland County.
The attention of the Legislature having been called to the neglected and suffering condition of the insane poor of the State, in 1844, there was provision made for the establishment of an asylum to be located within ten miles of the seat of Government. The citizens of Harrisburg, with the aid of a liberal appropriation by Dauphin County, purchased a farm adjoining that city, and in 1848, the commissioners appointed by the State began the construction of the first building erected by the Commonwealth for the reception and care of the indigent insane.
The Fugitive Slave Law was passed by Congress during Governor Johnston’s administration, and the excitement incident to the return of fugitives under it, soon became a subject of heated discussion. In 1851 a serious riot occurred at Christiana, Lancaster County, and in other localities the arrest of fugitive slaves led to bloodshed.
Under the administration of Governor Johnston, the records of the Provincial and State Government, which had remained in single manuscript copy in a very confused condition, were preserved.
In compliance with the Governor’s recommendation, an act was passed authorizing the appointment of a suitable agent to select and superintend their publication. Samuel Hazard, of Philadelphia, was delegated, and under his supervision twenty-eight volumes of colonial records and Pennsylvania archives, containing a vast amount of original papers of incalculable value and interest were published.
They form almost complete details of the transactions of Government from 1682 to 1790, invaluable in their importance to a full comprehension of the early history of Pennsylvania. The work has been continued and only recently the seventh series of the Archives appeared.
In 1849 considerable excitement existed in Pittsburgh and in the western part of the State, occasioned by the erection of a bridge over the Ohio River at Wheeling, W. Va., which obstructed the river to navigation in time of high water. Appeals for relief were made to the Legislature, and to Congress, and finally to the Supreme Court of the United States. Measures, however, were adopted which removed all objections.
Governor Johnston was renominated for a second term. His Democratic opponent was William Bigler, of Clearfield. The campaign was unusually spirited and was carried on vigorously from midsummer until the day of the election in October. State questions were forgotten, the Fugitive Slave law and slavery in the Territories now demanded universal attention. Bigler was elected by a good majority, and was inaugurated January 20, 1852.
By a remarkable coincidence his own election as Governor of Pennsylvania was simultaneous with the election of his elder brother, John, also a native of Pennsylvania, to the same dignity in the new State of California.
Governor Bigler’s Administration is marked with stronger features than any one of his immediate predecessors. Several very important measures were adopted by the Legislature, the principle of which were the establishing of the office of the County Superintendent of Common Schools and the founding of the Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-Minded Children.
The completion of the Pennsylvania Railroad from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh in February, 1854, added a powerful impulse to the development of the resources of the State.
The County of Philadelphia was merged with the city February 2, 1854, a measure of great importance, as it enlarged the sphere of municipal action.
Governor Bigler urged the payment of the public debt, and used his great influence in behalf of the public schools with beneficent results.
In March, 1854, Bigler was unanimously nominated for a second term and immediately entered upon another hard campaign for re-election. Opposed to him was James Pollock, of Milton, a man of rare culture and ability. In the midst of the campaign Governor Bigler was stricken down with sickness, and he lay ill at his home in Clearfield during most of the canvass, thus being unable to stir up his followers by his personal presence and earnestness. Pollock’s campaign was allied with the Native American or Know-Nothing Party. He also was an active leader in the Free Soil movement. Bigler had violently opposed the Know-Nothing Party from its first organization, and his attitude toward the Kansas-Nebraska Bill cost him many votes. As a result Pollock was elected Governor by a large majority.
General U. S. Grant Leaves Philadelphia on
Trip Around World, Arriving There on
Return December 16, 1879
There were several incidents in life of General Ulysses Simpson Grant which are of especial interest to Pennsylvanians.
On June 10, 1865, he was tendered a formal reception at the Union League Club house in Philadelphia, at which he was received with such enthusiasm, the general was engaged more than three hours in shaking hands with his visitors.
When the great fair was held at the Academy of Music, commencing October 23, 1865, to aid the Soldiers and Sailors’ Home, the inauguration ceremonies were conducted by Lieutenant-General Grant, Major General Meade, and Admiral Farragut, and an executive committee, including the most distinguished officers and civilians.
As these three most distinguished officers appeared together, the entire audience rose and saluted them with long continued applause. They each made short addresses.
August 14, 1866, General Grant accompanied President Johnson and other distinguished citizens to Philadelphia, where they were received by a great procession of militia and firemen.
The burial of General George G. Meade at Laurel Hill, Philadelphia, November 11, 1872, was the occasion of much mourning.
General Meade was the one conspicuous Philadelphian who stood out above all other Pennsylvanians in the Civil War, and in the years after the Rebellion he was an object of admiration to all the people. His death was regarded as a genuine public loss, and his funeral was attended with most impressive ceremonies.
The procession contained many of the greatest soldiers and civilians in the country, chiefest among whom was General Grant, President of the United States.
On December 18, 1875, President Grant, members of his cabinet and a large number of senators and representatives in Congress made a trip to Philadelphia to inspect the Centennial buildings, then nearly completed. They were entertained at a sumptuous banquet in Horticultural Hall, at which President Grant delivered the principal address.
President Grant was the guest of honor at the opening of the great exhibition, May 10, 1876, when simple but appropriate exercises were held. Four thousand soldiers escorted the President to the grounds. One hundred and fifty thousand people acclaimed the President and the Centennial Exposition.
On May 15, 1877, ex-President Grant started on his memorable trip around the world.
He sailed from the port of Philadelphia in the ship “Indiana.” His departure attracted much attention, and on the day previous he had held a public reception in Independence Hall.
He was accompanied down the Delaware River on the steamboat “Twilight” by a crowd of distinguished citizens, among whom were General Sherman, Senator Zachariah Chandler, Senator Simon Cameron, and others prominent in State and Nation.
He was accompanied by his wife and one son, and they made a tour of the whole civilized world, visiting especially the great countries of Europe and Asia, and receiving, as a soldier and civilian and the first citizen of the United States, all the honor which rulers and people could bestow. As the unofficial representative of his country, his bearing was such as to win universal admiration and respect.
When he arrived in the Mersey River, England, the ships of all nations gathered there displayed their flags to greet him.
In England a grand reception was accorded him in every city he visited. He was received by Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales in London, and later visited the Queen in Windsor Castle.
After visiting the other countries of Europe and being entertained by all the crowned heads, the United States man-of-war “Vandalia” was placed at his service and on board her he made a cruise of the Mediterranean Sea.
He then visited Bombay and Calcutta in India, Hong Kong, Canton and Peking in China, and finally Japan.
On September 20, 1879, he arrived at San Francisco, where a magnificent demonstration was made in his honor, and during his route East, across the United States, he was given public receptions and greeted with every mark of honor wherever he stopped.
His circuit around the world was accomplished in two years and seven months, and when he arrived back in Philadelphia, December 16, 1879, on the Pennsylvania Railroad, a great procession awaited him. All business was suspended by general consent.
The decorations along the route of the parade were unprecedented in number, variety and costliness.
The procession under the marshalship of Colonel A. Loudon Snowden, took nearly half the day in passing a given point, and it is supposed that hardly less than 40,000 men were in line.
For several days and nights the ex-President and great general had hardly any time that he could call his own; receptions, entertainments, banquets, and other methods of welcome and hospitality being kept up in rapid succession.
He was placed on the retired list of the army by a special act of Congress, March, 1884, with the rank and pay of General.
During the last few months of his life he wrote his “Memoirs,” which was published soon after his death, which occurred on Mount McGregor, near Saratoga, N. Y., July 23, 1885.
His body found its final resting place in a magnificent mausoleum in Riverside Park, New York City, overlooking the Hudson River.
Shikellamy, Vicegerent of Six Nations, Died
in Shamokin, December 17, 1748
Shikellamy is the most picturesque and historic Indian character who ever lived in Pennsylvania. His early life is shrouded in mystery.
It has been claimed that he was a Susquehannock by birth, but others claim his father was a Frenchman. John Bartram, who accompanied Conrad Weiser and Lewis Evans to Onondaga in 1743, wrote of Shikellamy in his journal: “July 10, 1743—He was of the Six Nations, or rather a Frenchman born at Montreal, and adopted by the Oneidoes after being taken a prisoner, but his son told me that he (the son) was of the Cayuga Nations.”
Dr. Crantz, in the “History of the Brethren,” 1768, writes of Shikellamy:
“When he was spoken to concerning baptism, he said he had been baptized in infancy. We were informed afterward that he was born of European parents in French Canada, taken prisoner when a child two years old and brought up among the Indians. He was so much altered in his way of life that he was hardly distinguished from other savages.”
His name, according to Dr. George P. Donehoo, State Librarian and an eminent authority on the Indians of Pennsylvania, is a much corrupted form of the Oneida chieftain title, Ongwaternohiat-he, meaning, “It has caused the sky to be light for us.” The other name, Swataney, is a corrupt form of Onkhiswathe-tani, “He causes it to be light for us.”
The official spelling of the name is Skikellamy.
He was early trained in war, and for his valor was rewarded by adoption into the Oneida tribe, of which he eventually became the chief, an exceptional distinction for one not a member of the tribe and possibly not a full-blooded Indian by birth. It is not probable that he was appointed vicegerent before 1728. He was not present at the treaty with the Five Nations in Philadelphia in July of the preceding year, and James Le Tort does not mention him among the Indians of consequence whom he met “on the upper parts of the River Susquehanna” in the winter of 1727–28.
The first conference that he attended in Philadelphia was that of July 4–5, 1728, but it does not appear that he took any part in the proceedings. He was present on a similar occasion in the following October, when, after the close of the conference, the Council considered “what present might be proper to be made to Shikellamy, of the Five Nations, appointed to reside among the Shawnese, whose services had been and may yet further be of great advantage to this Government.”
At the close of a conference several years later, the Governor having represented that Shikellamy was “a trusty good man and a great lover of the English,” commissioned him as a bearer of a present to the Six Nations and a message inviting them to visit Philadelphia. This they accordingly accepted, arriving August 18, 1732.
Shikellamy was present on this occasion and he and Conrad Weiser were employed to transact business between the Indians and the Provincial Government. He was a great friend of James Logan, and named one of his sons after this popular provincial officer.
In August, 1740, he went to Philadelphia to inquire against whom the British were making preparations for war, rumors of which had reached the great council at Onondaga. He was also present at the conference in Philadelphia July, 1742, at the treaty in Lancaster in June and July, 1744, and at Philadelphia conference in the following August. On April, 1748, accompanied by his son and Conrad Weiser, he visited Philadelphia for the last time, but no business of a public nature was transacted.
One of the chief facts of his life as vicegerent of the Iroquois confederation was his great friendliness to the cause of the Moravian missionaries among the Indians. All the prominent leaders of the Moravian Church who came to the Susquehanna region, visited him at his home at Shamokin, and were kindly received. Count Zinzindorf was among these and none was more favorably impressed with the old Oneida diplomat. His journal for September 22, 1742, reads:
“He was truly an excellent and good man, possessed of many noble qualities of mind, that would do honor to many white men, laying claims to refinement and intelligence. He was possessed of great dignity, sobriety and prudence, and was particularly noted for his extreme kindness to the inhabitants with whom he came in contact.”
Loskiel, who knew him well, thus speaks of him: “Being the first magistrate, and head chief of all the Iroquois Indians living on the banks of the Susquehanna, as far as Onondaga, he thought it incumbent upon him to be very circumspect in his dealings with the white people. He assisted the missionaries in building, and defended them against the insults of the drunken Indians; being himself never addicted to drinking, because, as he expressed it, he never wished to become a fool.”
He had built his house upon pillars, for safety, in which he always shut himself up when any drunken frolic was going on in the village.
He had been taken ill on a trip to Philadelphia, but so far recovered that he had visited Conrad Weiser at Tulpehocken, April, 1748, and completed the trip to Philadelphia.
He was again taken ill upon his return to Shamokin, and, in June, Council was advised he was so ill that he might lose his eyesight, but he recovered sufficiently to make a trip to Bethlehem early in December. On his return he became so ill that he only reached his home by the assistance of Bishop Zeisberger.
His death occurred December 17, 1748, and was extremely pathetic. His daughter and the Reverend David Zeisberger were with him during his last illness and death.
Bishop Zeisberger and Henry Fry made him a coffin, and the Indians painted the body in their gayest colors, bedecked it with his choicest ornaments, and placed with him his weapons, according to Indian custom. Then after Christian rites conducted by the good Bishop, he was buried in the Indian burying ground of his people, near the site of old Fort Augusta, in the present Sunbury.
Shikellamy left to mourn him three sons and a daughter. Another son, Unhappy Jake, was killed in the war with the Catawba in 1743. The three sons who survived were Taghneghdoarus, also known as John Shikellamy, who succeeded his distinguished father in authority, but never gained the confidence in which he was held by Indians or whites; Tahgahjute or Sayughtowa, better known as James Logan, the most celebrated of the children of Shikellamy, and John Petty. His daughter was the widow of Cajadies, the “best hunter among all the Indians,” who died in November, 1747.
After the death of Shikellamy, Shamokin declined as a center of Indian affairs. His death was the beginning of evil days. His son Taghneghdoarus was made chief, but was unable to restrain his people.
Barbara Frietchie, Native of Pennsylvania,
Died December 18, 1862
Where is the person who has not been thrilled with the reading or recitation of John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem, “Barbara Frietchie?”
It is even doubtful if the Massachusetts Quaker poet realized how famous he was going to make the venerable Barbara, and himself, when he penned his immortal poem. But there are few persons of the present generation who know anything about the personal side of Barbara Frietchie.
This patriot was born in Lancaster County, Pa., December 3, 1766, when George Washington was a young man of thirty-four. She was the third daughter of John Niclaus Hauer and Catherine Zeiler Hauer, who were both born in Germany. In 1753 they emigrated to America.
When Barbara was two years old her parents moved to Frederick, Md., then a long distance away. The trip was made in old-fashioned ox carts.
This noted woman was born during patriotic times. The hated Stamp Act had just been repealed. In fact, Frederick County, in 1765, was the first to officially protest against it.
It is said of Barbara that she met many of the patriots of that day, and when she was twenty-five years old she had the pleasure of conversing with George Washington.
This event occurred one afternoon in 1791 at Kimball’s Tavern, now the City Hall of Frederick.
A number of ladies were participating in a quilting bee, when a messenger leaped from his horse in front of the hotel and announced that President Washington would soon arrive and intended to pass the night at the tavern.
This unusual news broke up the party, and the ladies turned in to assist in preparing for the reception to the great Washington.
The tavern did not possess a suitable coffee urn, and Barbara Hauer hurried to her home and returned with her choice Liverpool coffee pot, a precious heirloom in the family.
Barbara was the one who was specially assigned to look after the personal comfort of the President, and her pretty face, pleasant manners and vivacious spirit greatly pleased the first President of the United States.
After supper he gave Barbara a beautiful china bowl, which he was carrying to Mount Vernon in his traveling bag. Nothing that she possessed in after life did she prize so highly as this precious gift.
The beginning of the one romance of her life happened in an unusually strange manner. When she was fourteen years old, Barbara accompanied her mother to a quilting party, where all sorts of things and events of that period were discussed, from parson to pig butchering, petticoats, pumpkin pies, sickness, deaths and births. One old maiden lady coyly announced that Mr. and Mrs. Casper Frietchie had that day been presented with a fine baby boy. None present ventured the prediction that some day little Barbara would become the bride of this little John Casper Frietchie, but nevertheless, twenty-six years later, May 6, 1806, that is just what happened.
Despite the somewhat unusual difference in their ages, they lived happily throughout their married life. It is claimed their home was one of the most popular in Frederick.
Young Frietchie was the proud[proud] proprietor of a prosperous glove factory and he enjoyed a fair income.
Besides taking much pride in her housekeeping Barbara Frietchie was a great reader and kept herself well informed upon subjects of that period.
The Frietchies had no children of their own, but adopted Catharine Stover, a niece of Mrs. Frietchie, who lived with them until she was married in 1825.
Mr. Frietchie died after a very short illness in 1849. Mrs. Frietchie continued to reside in their old home, where she devoted her time to her flowers, garden and the entertainment of her young relatives.
At the breaking out of the Civil War, Barbara Frietchie was one of Abraham Lincoln’s most loyal supporters.
The story of the flag-waving incident which resulted in Whittier’s poem is heard in different ways, but it is a fact that the geographical location of Frederick caused it to figure conspicuously in the movements of both armies.
Sentiment was naturally divided, there being a strong feeling both for and against the Union. It was a trying time, but the real bitterness of the war came toward the close of the summer of 1862.
The Confederate forces had crossed the Potomac and entered Maryland on September 5. The main body encamped at Frederick Junction, three miles south of Frederick, but a large portion of the army marched through the city on September 6 and went into camp.
The next morning (Sunday), while his troops lay resting General “Stonewall” Jackson took advantage of the opportunity to attend divine worship.
Early on the morning of the 10th the army broke camp and moved westward, going out West Patrick street, passing the home of Barbara Frietchie. It was at this time the flag incident occurred.
The venerable patriot hearing the troops were approaching, took her silk flag from between the leaves of the old family Bible, and stepped out on her front porch, thinking they were Union soldiers. Immediately an officer rode up, saying: “Granny, give me your flag.” “You can’t have it,” she said, and then she noticed the gray uniforms, but she continued to wave the flag.
The officer spoke to his men, and they turned facing her. She thought they intended to fire on her, but, instead, the officer rode off a short distance to Mill Alley, and returned in a moment with another officer and some soldiers.
This officer said to her: “Give me your flag, Granny, and I'll stick it in my horse’s head.” “No, you can’t have it,” she said. One of the men then called out, “Shoot her damned head off.”
The officer turned angrily upon him, saying: “If you harm a hair of her head, I'll shoot you down like a dog.” Then turning to the trembling old lady, he said: “Go on, Granny, wave your flag as much as you please.”
This version of the affair was related by Barbara Frietchie to her niece who was visiting her, some time after the incident. It is also said that this account has been certified by Confederate soldiers, who also stated that the episode was talked about by the troops all through the lines.
McClellan’s army followed closely and none gave them a more joyous welcome than dame Barbara, who, with her silk flag in hand, stood at her front window. She attracted much attention, many soldiers going from the ranks to speak to her.
Mrs. Frietchie did not live to see the victorious end of the Civil War. Shortly after the celebration of her ninety-sixth birthday, on December 3, 1862, she was stricken with pneumonia and died December 18, 1862. Her body was tenderly carried to the churchyard and placed by the side of her husband.
May 30, 1913, the bodies of Barbara and her husband were reinterred in Mount Olivet Cemetery at Frederick. On September 9, 1914, an artistic monument in honor of the famous woman was unveiled upon which is a large tablet bearing the words of Whittier’s poem, “Barbara Frietchie.”
Thaddeus Stevens Inquiry of Masonry and
Odd Fellowship Began December
19, 1835
At the gubernatorial election in October, 1835, owing to an unfortunate defection in the Democratic ranks whereby there were two nominees for that office, Governor George Wolf and Henry A. Muhlenberg, Joseph Ritner was elected to the highest office of the State by a minority vote.
In possession of both the executive and legislative branches of the State Government, the Anti-Masons were determined to carry out various measures with a high hand.
No sooner did the session of the Legislature open in December following than did Thaddeus Stevens, bring in a bill entitled: “An act to suppress secret societies, bound together by secret and unlawful oaths,” while both houses were deluged with petitions “praying God an investigation into the evils of Freemasonry.”
On December 15, the oath of office was administered to Governor Ritner, after which he addressed the members of both House and Senate. In this inaugural he used the following:
“The supremacy of the laws, and the equal rights of the people, whether threatened or assailed by individuals or by secret sworn associations, I shall, so far as may be compatible with the constitutional powers of the executive, endeavor to maintain, as well in compliance with the known will of the people, as from obligations of duty to the Commonwealth.
“In these endeavors I shall entertain no doubt of zealous cooperation by the enlightened and patriotic Legislature of the State. The people have willed the destruction of all secret bodies, and that will cannot be disregarded.”
Four days later, December 19, on motion of Mr. Stevens himself, all the petitions were referred to a committee consisting of “Messrs. Stevens, Cox, Huston (of Fayette) Spackman and Frew, with power to send for persons and papers.”
On the same day this committee organized and prepared a series of eleven questions which were to be put to each person brought before the committee. The questions were intended to establish the fact of membership in Free Masonry or Odd Fellowship and whether or not such witness could repeat the several oaths of the society to which he belonged.
This “Inquisition” held its first meeting December 23, 1835. To this star chamber they obtained the evidence of a man named Shed, who had been imported for the purpose from the State of Ohio. He seems to have resided in several States, and to have arrived at Fort Niagara about the time of Captain Morgan’s abduction, learned all about it, and was acquainted with the scoundrel Giddings, who, if his story was true, as well as Shed’s, ought to have been hanged with him. If not true, they were perjured villains. But the High Court of Inquisition was not after martyrs, it was wire-pulling in other directions.
A large number of prominent Masons, and citizens, were brought before the committee, among them being ex-Governor Wolf, Francis R. Shunk, George M. Dallas, Chief Justice Gibson, Josiah Randall, Samuel H. Perkins, Joseph R. Chandler, and the Reverend William T. Sproul. They invariably declined being qualified, or answering any questions propounded by Mr. Stevens, and for their refusal to so testify, several of the gentlemen were brought to the bar of the House, but nothing more was done to any of them.
Mr. Stevens was obliged to depend for witnesses upon seceding Masons, imported from Massachusetts, New York and Northern Pennsylvania. Their evidence, however, was only a rehash of Morgan and his successor, Bernard, in their so-called “Revelations of the Doings of Freemasonry and Odd Fellowship.”
Mr. Stevens, unfortunately, could not control his temper, and in the case of Rev. Mr. Sproul, when that gentleman, in reading his protest, came to the expression, “Gentlemen, if you are willing to convert yourselves into a modern Juggernaut, then roll on,” “Stop,” thundered the chairman of the “inquisition,” white with wrath and further reading was dispensed with.
Governor Wolf, in his letter to the committee, wrote:
“The Constitution is explicit and declaratory of the personal security of the people, and is the precious repository of the privileges of the freemen of this Commonwealth which never shall have a wound inflicted upon its sacred reservations, through any person, without a solemn asseveration of its principles.
“What article of the Constitution clothes the House with power to institute such an investigation? What article of the venerated instrument forbids the people from associating together in pursuit of their own happiness? If the association is criminal, or in violation of any principle of the Constitution or laws, the mode and manner of suppressing the unlawful combination must be in accordance with the Constitution and laws.
“I have yet to learn that an inquisition at whose shrine the rights and liberties of the citizens are to be invaded, is authorized by the principles of our institutions; or that any power exists by which a citizen can be coerced to give testimony before any tribunal, or for any object other than the investigation of matters at issue, affecting the rights of persons or of things.”
An incident occurred about this period which fully exemplified to what length the enemies of Freemasonry would go. All sorts of crimes or collusions with crimes were imputed to the craft. Everything that was vile was blamed upon the fraternity.
A murder was committed between Middletown and Hummelstown. Female apparel was found which was recognized as belonging to Sophia Garman, who was missing from her home. Search was made, and some one discovered where the earth had been recently disturbed in the center of which was a branch of a spruce or cedar tree. An investigation resulted in finding the body of the murdered girl.
The people who had been reading everything anti-Masonic at once jumped to the conclusion that this was the work of one who was a Mason. An individual who was last seen with the unfortunate girl was arrested and it was broadcasted that he was a member of Perseverance Lodge, No. 21, Free and Accepted Masons, of Harrisburg. His name was Tom McHenry.
In the course of events, there not being the least evidence upon which to convict him, the accused was declared not guilty.
The outside conclusion then was that the jury must have been composed of Masons and the result could not be otherwise.
The fact is that McHenry was not a Mason nor was a single member of the jury which tried him.
The Stevens investigation continued for nearly a month and ended in nothing.
The men whom the committee tried to impanel would not testify; those who did were pretended renouncers of Masonry. Concerning the real motive of Stevens public opinion was divided.
Stevens would have resorted to strong measures to compel witnesses to testify if he had not seen that the tide of public opinion was turning against the inquiry. To preserve appearances a lengthy report was submitted and adopted.
Storm Stops French Refugees in Settlement
Work December 20, 1793
Frenchtown, or Asylum, was the name of a settlement founded in Northumberland County (now Bradford) in 1793, by French refugees as the residence of the doomed Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. But the Terrorists prevented her ever seeing America.
During the French Revolution, when many of the Frenchmen fled from their homes, not a few sought refuge in San Domingo, and those jumped from the frying pan into the fire. The Negro slaves soon heard of the success of the Revolution in France and revolted against their masters. That bloody conflict was termed the “Horrors of San Domingo.” Many of the French exiles came to America and took up their residence in Philadelphia, where they were cordially welcomed.
So great was the number of refugees it was deemed necessary that some provision should be made for their settlement as a colony.
The two most active and influential promoters of the colony scheme were Viscount Louis Marie de Noailles and the Marquis Antoine Omer Talon. The former was a distinguished military officer under Rochambeau in the siege of Yorktown, Va., where he commanded a regiment. He was one of the Commissioners to arrange the articles of capitulation for the surrender of Cornwallis. He was a brother-in-law of Lafayette.
Marquis Talon belonged to one of the most illustrious families of the French magistracy. He was Advocate General when the Revolution broke out. In 1790 he was compromised in the flight of the King, Louis XVII, and was arrested and imprisoned for a time. He fled to Marseilles, where a wine merchant, Bartholomew Laporte, placed him in a large wine cask and carried him aboard a vessel sailing for America.
Laporte sailed with Talon and they became citizens of the United States. The borough of Laporte takes its name from Judge John Laporte, son of the early immigrant.
The refugees organized a company, and M. Charles Felix Beu Boulogne, and Adam Hoopes were delegated to select a site. They proceeded to Wilkes-Barre, where they arrived August 27, 1793. Judge Matthais Hollenback accepted their letter of credit from Robert Morris.
They examined several localities, and finally selected the Schufeldt Flats, now called Frenchtown, in the Township of Asylum, nearly opposite Rummerfield station, in Bradford County.
About the middle of November, M. de Noailles, who continued to reside in Philadelphia, visited the place which took the name of Asylum, or “Azilum,” as the French pronounced it. The plan of settlement was determined, and the town surveyed into lots.
The tract consists of 2400 acres and, in addition, the Asylum Company had secured title to a number of tracts of “wild land,” as it was termed, in the present Counties of Bradford, Sullivan, Lycoming and Luzerne, which were sold on liberal terms to actual settlers. The town, as laid out, contained, besides an open square and fine wide streets, 413 house lots of an acre each.
M. Boulogne bent every energy to get the houses ready for the colonists in the early spring, and was favored with mild weather until five days before Christmas, when the weather became stormy. The work, which was suspended December 20, was resumed in the spring. The emigrants then began to arrive. They traveled by land to Catawissa, thence in boats up the river.
The houses were built of hewn logs two stories high, roofed with pine shingles, and all houses had a good cellar. To the native Americans these houses looked like palaces.
The house built by M. Talon was the most pretentious, and is said to be the largest log house ever built in America. It was known as “La Grande Maison,” or the great house. This house stood until 1846, when it was torn down.
M. Talon, who was general manager, planned improvements on a large scale. He built a horsepower grist mill, several stores, a tavern, for which a license was granted in August, 1794, to Mr. Lefevre. A small Catholic chapel was erected, and later a theatre was built. They set up a bakery and built a brewery. A post was established with Philadelphia.
Most of the emigrants had been wealthy, and some of them members of the royal household, entirely ignorant of farming and unused to manual labor, found great difficulty in adapting themselves to their new conditions. Yet they endured their privations with great fortitude.
The continuance of the Asylum settlement was less than ten years, but the Frenchmen set their Pennsylvania neighbors the example of better houses and roads, better gardens and orchards and courteous manners.
Robespierre issued a decree commanding all emigrants to return to France under penalty of having their estates confiscated. When the strong hand of Napoleon assumed power, all Frenchmen were invited to return. This was joyous news at Asylum, and they returned to their beloved France as soon as they could dispose of their property, until only two remained.
In 1796 Asylum consisted of about fifty log houses occupied by about forty families. Among the most noted, besides those already mentioned, were M. De Blacons, a member of the French Constituent Assembly from Dauphine; M. Le Montule, a captain of a troop of horse; M. Beaulieu, a captain of infantry in the French service, who served in the Revolution in this country under Potosky; Dr. Buzzard a planter from San Domingo, and M. Dandelot, an officer in the French Infantry.
But perhaps the best known of all, at least in this country, was M. Dupretit-Thouars, or as he was generally called by the Americans, the Admiral. Wrecked while on a voyage in search of La Perouse, he reached Asylum destitute of everything but an unfaltering courage, a genial temper and the chivalrous pride of a Frenchman.
Disdaining to be a pensioner on the bounty of his countrymen he obtained a grant of four hundred acres in the dense wilderness of what is now Sullivan County, and went out literally single-handed, having lost an arm in the French naval service, commenced a clearing, built himself a house, returning to Asylum once a week for necessary food and change of apparel.
He returned to his native country, obtained a position in the navy, saying he had yet another arm to give to France. He was placed in command of the ship Le Tonnant and was killed in the battle of the Nile.
The borough of Dushore, which includes the clearings of this indomitable Frenchman, was named in honor of him this being nearly the Anglicised pronunciation of his name.
During the continuance of the settlement, it was visited by many very distinguished personages who since obtained a world-wide reputation.
Louis Philippe, a future King of France, spent several weeks at Asylum enjoying the hospitality of M. Antoine Talon. In 1795 Talleyrand spent some time there and Count de la Rochefoucauld de Laincourt was several days at Asylum while on his journey through the States in 1795–6. Another notable visitor was Mrs. Blennerhassett the charming woman who figured in Aaron Burr’s conspiracy.
General Thomas Mifflin Inaugurated First
Governor of Pennsylvania December
21, 1790
The inauguration of the first Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania took place December 21, 1790, when Hon. Thomas Mifflin was inducted into office amid all the splendor of that now distant day.
The transfer of the present State of Pennsylvania from a feudal province to a sovereign State was effected by the promulgation on September 28, 1776, of the first Constitution. This was so thoroughly revolutionary that it was never fully approved of by the people of the State.
The Council of Censors, to which was delegated important duties, met for its only meeting, November 10, 1783. This body discussed various amendments and strong differences of opinion were manifested. They sat eight months and then recommended a continuance of the present form of government.
They said: “Give it a fair and honest trial, and if after all, at the end of another seven years (the time when this Council of Censors would again meet), it shall be found necessary or proper to cause any changes they may then be brought in and established upon a full conviction of their usefulness, with harmony and good temper, without noise, tumult or violence.”
Nevertheless the Constitution of 1776 proved inadequate for the requirements of a useful and an effective government, and its revision was imperatively demanded. The newspapers, from the close of the Revolution for a period of six years are filled with elaborate communications in favor of, and opposed to, any change. The adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1787, however, and its successful working, impressed the people that some revisions should be made in the Constitution of the State.
The resolutions of the Assembly were adopted by the electorate and the convention called, and organized with General Thomas Mifflin as president. After a long session, the new instrument was adopted September 2, 1790, and then by the people.
The personnel of the Constitutional Convention of 1790 was one of unusual ability. Thomas Mifflin, soon to be elected the first Governor under its provisions; James Wilson and William Lewis, two of the most noted lawyers of that time; Thomas McKean, the second; Simon Snyder, of Northumberland County; William Findlay, of Westmoreland County, and Joseph Heister, of Berks County, each of whom filled in their turn the gubernatorial office, were members of this body. General William Irvine, of Carlisle; General John Gibson, of Allegheny County, and Colonel Jacob Cook, of Lancaster, all of Revolutionary fame, and Robert Whitehill, of Dauphin County. Charles Smith, author of “Smith’s Laws,” was Simon Snyder’s colleague from Northumberland County.
Of the seventy-one persons who composed this illustrious body there was not one who had not taken a prominent part in public affairs during the struggle for liberty. It was a body of intellectual men, such as any Commonwealth could be justly proud.
At the election in October, 1790, General Thomas Mifflin and General Arthur St. Clair were the opposing candidates for Governor. The vote in the State for Mifflin was 27,118, and for St. Clair 2819. Under the Constitution the General Assembly met on the first Tuesday in December, when the Senate and House promptly organized and a committee of conference was appointed by both houses to consider and report a time, place and manner in which the election of Governor should be published, notified and proclaimed, and the oath prescribed by the Constitution administered to the Governor.
On Friday, December 17, the House of Representatives attended in the Senate chamber, where Richard Peters, Speaker of the House, was seated on the right of William Bingham, Speaker of the Senate. The returns of the election for Governor were opened, when Thomas Mifflin was declared duly chosen Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
On the morning of December 21, 1790, after the members of the Senate and House had assembled in the Senate chamber, the Speaker of the Senate informed both houses that according to their order the certificate of the election of the Governor was recorded in the rolls office of this Commonwealth, whereupon the committee of both houses of the Legislature, three representing the Senate and three representing the House of Representatives, waited upon the Governor-elect and at the hour of 12:30 introduced Thomas Mifflin into the Senate chamber and he was seated in front of the Speakers.
The Chief Justice, the Hon. Thomas McKean, in solemn form administered to Mr. Mifflin the oath required by the Constitution of the Commonwealth and also the oath required by the Constitution of the United States, which said oaths the Governor-elect took, and subscribed in the Senate chamber, and Speaker and members of the House of Representatives and the Governor then withdrew from the Senate chamber in order to proceed to the court house on High Street, agreeably to the following order of procession:
Constables with their staffs; sub-sheriffs with their wands; High Sheriff and Coroner with their wands; Judges of the Supreme Court and Judge of the High Court of Errors and Appeals; Attorney General and Prothonotary of the Supreme Court; wardens of the Port of Philadelphia; Treasurer, Comptroller and Register General; Secretary of the Land Office; Receiver General and Surveyor General; justices of the peace; Prothonotary of the Court of Common Pleas and clerk of the Court of Quarter Sessions; clerk of the Mayor’s court and the corporation; Mayor, Recorder and aldermen; Common Council, two and two; Master of the Rolls and Register of Wills; Register of German Passengers and Collector of Excise in the City and County of Philadelphia; assistant secretary of Council, members of Council, two and two; the Governor-elect; sergeant-at-arms of the Senate; clerk of the Senate; Speaker of the Senate; members of the Senate, two and two; doorkeeper of the Senate; sergeant-at-arms of the House of Representatives; assistant clerk; clerk; members, two and two; doorkeeper; provost and faculty of the University, two and two; officers of the militia; citizens.
Arriving at the court house, the certificate of the election of the Governor was read by the clerk of the Senate, when the official proclamation was thrice made by the clerk of the court declaring Thomas Mifflin Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and commander-in-chief of the army and navy thereof. This being done, the procession reformed, returning to the Senate chamber. The Governor then delivered his inaugural address.
On the days following various bodies of tradesmen and society organizations waited upon the Governor and tendered their congratulations, and upon the first day of January following, City Councils, with the Mayor and Recorder, waited upon his Excellency and formally congratulated him on his accession to his high office.
First Newspaper in Pennsylvania Published
December 22, 1719
The first newspaper published in Pennsylvania was entitled the American Weekly Mercury, and was established by Andrew Bradford, at Philadelphia, and sold by John Copsom. The initial number appeared December 22, 1719.
The Mercury was published weekly, generally on Tuesday, but the day of publication varied.
Andrew Bradford died November 23, 1742; and the next number of the Mercury, dated December 2, appeared in mourning.
The widow, Cornelia Bradford, took into partnership Isaiah Warner in March, 1742, and they continued to publish the Mercury until October 18, 1744, when Cornelia Bradford resumed the publication alone, and until the end of 1746, when it was discontinued.
The second newspaper established in the Province was the Universal Instructor in All Arts and Science; and Pennsylvania Gazette, which continued in publication for many years, becoming the oldest newspaper in the United States a half century after its establishment.
This newspaper first appeared December 24, 1728, and was edited by Samuel Keimer, and printed on a small sheet, pot size folio, 15½ by 12½ inches.
Benjamin Franklin soon after he began business formed the design of publishing a newspaper, but was prevented by the sudden appearance of this Gazette, and was so greatly disappointed that he used his endeavors to bring it into contempt. In this he was successful, and Keimer was soon obliged to relinquish it, for a trifling consideration, and Franklin purchased the good will and fixtures.
At this time Franklin was in partnership with Hugh Meredith. The first part of the title was soon dropped and the paper was called the Pennsylvania Gazette. It soon gained reputation, and when Franklin became postmaster the Gazette enjoyed a wide circulation and liberal advertising patronage.
The partnership was dissolved in 1732, and Franklin in 1748 took into partnership David Hall.
On May 9, 1754, the device of a snake divided into parts, with the motto—“Join or Die,” appeared in this paper. It accompanied an account of the French and Indians having killed and scalped many inhabitants along the frontiers. The account was published with this device, with a view to rouse the British Colonies and cause them to unite in effectual measures for their defense and security against common enemy.
The snake was divided into eight parts to represent first New England; second, New York; third, New Jersey; fourth, Pennsylvania; fifth, Maryland; sixth, Virginia; seventh, North Carolina, and eighth, South Carolina.
The Gazette put on mourning October 31, 1765, on account of the Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament, which was to take effect the next day. From that time until November 21 following the publication of it was suspended.
In the interim, large handbills, as substitutes, were published. When revived, it was published without an imprint until February 6, 1766, when it then appeared with the name of David Hall, only, who now became the proprietor and the printer of it.
In May, 1766, it was published by Hall and Sellers, who continued it until 1777; but on the approach of the British Army, the publishers retired from Philadelphia and the publication was suspended while the British possessed the city.
On the evacuation of Philadelphia, the Gazette was again revived, and published once a week until the death of Sellers in 1804. After this event, it was printed by William and David Hall, then later by Hall and Pierre. When the Gazette observed its centennial of publication, a grandson of David and son of William Hall was the publisher.
The next newspaper to be established in Pennsylvania was the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, which made its initial bow to the public, Tuesday, December 2, 1742. Its publisher was William Bradford.
In 1776, William and Thomas Bradford were the publishers and, like the Gazette, suspended publication during the British occupancy of Philadelphia, but it was revived soon afterward.
A newspaper in the German language was published in Philadelphia as early as May, 1743, by Joseph Crellius. It was called the “High Dutch Pennsylvania Journal.”
In September, 1751, the “Dutch and English Gazette” was published in the two languages “at the German Printing Office,” in Arch Street, by Gotthan Armbruster.
Der Wochentliche Philadelphische Staatsbote was first printed in the German language in January, 1762, by Henry Miller. This was a successful newspaper. It continued until 1779.
Two papers printed in German were published in Germantown, one by Christopher Sower, in 1739, called the Pennsylvania German Recorder of Events. This was discontinued in 1744, when Christopher Sower, Jr., began the publication of the Germantown Zeitung, and continued until the Revolutionary War.
The Pennsylvania Chronicle and Universal Advertiser made its appearance Monday, January 6, 1767. It was published by William Goddard.
This was the fourth paper in the English language established in Philadelphia and the first one with four columns to the page, printed in all the colonies. Joseph Galloway and Thomas Wharton were silent partners of Goddard. The Chronicle was published until February, 1773, when it was removed to Baltimore.
The Pennsylvania Packet, or the General Advertiser, was first published in November, 1771, by John Dunlap. During the British occupancy Dunlap continued the publication of the Packet at Lancaster, and in July, 1778, he published at Philadelphia, and made it a semi-weekly, and then a tri-weekly.
In 1783, Dunlap sold his paper to D. C. Claypoole, who had previously been a partner, and a year later the Packet was published daily. This then became the first daily newspaper in the United States.
The Pennsylvania Ledger, or the Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey Weekly Advertiser, was first published in Philadelphia, January 28, 1775, by James Humphreys, Jr. Humphreys was deemed a Tory and his paper denounced as being under corrupt influence. Humphreys was obliged in November, 1776, to discontinue the Ledger, and leave the city.
He returned when the British occupied Philadelphia and revived the publication as a semi-weekly. The last number was published May 23, 1778, a month before the British evacuated the city. He was in possession of advance information, as are some editors of today.
The Pennsylvania Evening Post by Benjamin Towne, as a tri-weekly, was first published January 24, 1775, and it was the third newspaper in the colonies which was published as an evening paper. This paper continued publication in Philadelphia during the British occupancy.
Towne was proscribed by a law of Pennsylvania. He did not, however, leave the State, and continued to publish the Post until 1782, when it died a natural death.
Story and Humphrey’s Pennsylvania Mercury and Universal Advertiser first came before the public in April, 1775. This was the last newspaper to be established in Pennsylvania prior to the Revolution. The Mercury was short lived. The printing house, with all its contents, was destroyed by fire in December, 1775, and in consequence of the event, the paper was discontinued.
John F. Watson, Annalist, Historian, Antiquarian
and Collector of Historical Objects,
Died December 23, 1860
John Fanning Watson died December 23, 1860, at the age of eighty-two years, and left behind him a monument to his mental powers in his “Annals of Philadelphia.”
Mr. Watson was a native of Burlington County, N. J., where he was born June 13, 1779. His parents were of English[English] origin; his grandfather, Thomas Watson, came to America in 1667, settling at Salem, where William Watson, father of John F. was born.
Among his ancestors were some of the earliest settlers of our country. All were devoted patriots, with the exception of one, a distinguished Tory, General Edmund Fanning, a graduate of Yale, in 1757, of whom The Gentleman’s Magazine, for 1818, says, “the world contained no better man.”
After completing the usual course of education to qualify himself for mercantile pursuits, John Fanning Watson entered the counting-house of James Vanuxem, an eminent merchant of Philadelphia, with whom he remained but a short time, having offended the French interests of that firm by becoming a member of the Macpherson Blues, of which body of volunteer militiamen, he was one of last six surviving members at the time of his decease.
He was now nineteen years of age, and a clerkship in the War Department at Washington was offered him, which he accepted, and held until 1804, when he engaged himself in business with General James O'Hara, formerly Quartermaster-General to General Anthony Wayne’s Indian Army, and chief founder of the City of Pittsburgh.
During this business connection Watson resided at New Orleans, holding the responsible position of Commissary of Provisions for the United States Army at all the posts in Louisiana.
At this period there was no Protestant worship in that city, and to remedy this, together with Edward Livingston, he became the prime. mover in establishing the Protestant Episcopal Church by giving a call to the Reverend Mr. Chase, since the venerable Bishop of Ohio and Illinois.
After a residence of two years at New Orleans sudden domestic affliction caused his return to Philadelphia to the support of his widowed mother, and to this event the public are profoundly indebted for his invaluable services as a local historian of the olden time. As such his works will ever be enduring monuments of his wonderful assiduity and laborious research.
Following his return to Philadelphia he made his first essay as a bookseller and publisher, establishing a business on Chestnut Street.
Among the various works he published were Dr. Adam Clark’s Commentary on the Old and New Testament, the Select Reviews of Literature, etc.
He contributed frequently to the columns of various literary, scientific, historical, and ecclesiastical serials.
Besides historical works, he left some unpublished manuscript volumes on theology, which show great originality of thought and deep research. He also devoted some pages to the vindication of Cromwell. To his marriage with a lineal descendant of the Lord Protector may be attributed some of the interest he evinced on this subject.
In 1814, Mr. Watson was elected cashier of the Bank of Germantown, which position he held till 1847, when he was chosen treasurer and secretary of the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad Company.
During his connection with the Bank of Germantown he resided in the stone bank building of which the celebrated annalist himself says, “The house in which I now reside was once honoured with the presence of Generals Washington, Knox and Greene, shortly after the battle of Germantown. They slept in it one or two nights.”
In 1859, being at that time eighty years of age, he retired from all active business.
In 1820, he began to collect antiquarian material, the first being history and legends of Germantown, though none of them were printed until about 1828, when some extracts from his manuscript books were printed in Hazard’s “Register of Pennsylvania.”
In 1830 the first edition of the “Annals of Philadelphia,[Philadelphia,]” was issued, the same “being a Collection of Memoirs, Anecdotes, and Incidents of the City and its Inhabitants from the days of the Pilgrim Fathers; also Olden Time Researches and Reminiscences of New York City in 1828.” It was in one volume of eight hundred pages, and illustrated by lithographs.
In 1842 the work was republished in two volumes, revised and enlarged, and again, in 1856, he made a full and final revision, adding an appendix to the second volume. The editions subsequent to the first did not contain the matter relative to New York.
A noteworthy characteristic of Watson was his reverence for the graves of great and good men, who had been useful in their generation, as illustrated in the removal of the remains of Thomas Godfrey, the inventor of the quadrant, and family from a neglected spot on his old farm to Laurel Hill, where a suitable monument was erected by subscription to his memory.
In 1832, he published “Historic Tales of Olden Time” of New York City, which was followed the next year by “Historic Tales of Olden Time, concerning the Early Settlement and Progress of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.”
Then followed other volumes of both New York annals and works other than history.
Mr. Watson’s first publisher and most active co-worker was Samuel Hazard, and to them is due the awakening of that spirit of antiquarianism and historical research from which sprung the great Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Watson was an ardent collector of all objects of historic interest, many of which are now deposited in the Philadelphia Library and with the Historical Society.
Colonel Plunket Begins Action in Second
Pennamite War on December 24, 1775
The first armed conflict between the Proprietary Government and the Connecticut settlers in the Wyoming Valley occurred when the Yankees came down into the region in 1769 and seated themselves under the Government of Connecticut. The conflict lasted, with more or less intensity, until 1771, when the Penns were compelled to surrender and leave the intruders in questioned possession of that territory. This series of attacks, assaults and real battles has since been known as the first Pennamite War.
For four years the Yankees lived in tranquillity, and were not even seriously disturbed by the Indians.
On September 28, 1775, Colonel William Plunket, the Provincial commandant at Fort Augusta, at the head of a large body of troops, defeated the Yankees at Squire John Vincent’s in Judea Township on the West Branch, and marched all the men as prisoners to Sunbury.
The old colonel was more elated than wisdom seems to have justified. He became the man of the hour and, supported by a resolution of the Provincial Assembly, October 27, 1775, which justified the attack on the Yankees, he set about to muster troops for an expedition against the Connecticut settlers at Wyoming, in spite of the fact that the weather was becoming very severe. Snow had fallen early in November.
The Council of Safety of Connecticut learned of the determination to send a large armed force against their settlement at Wyoming, and Governor Trumbull wrote to the President of Congress, November 11, 1775, complaining of this invasion.
Congress adopted a resolution requesting both States to prevent hostilities. But the Assembly did not welcome this interference, especially as they had received a letter from Colonel Samuel Hunter, lieutenant for Northumberland County, dated Sunbury, November 20, 1775, acquainting the House that two of the Magistrates and Sheriff William Cooke had an interview with Colonel Zebulon Butler and some of the principal men among the Connecticut settlers at Wyoming. They read the late Resolves of the Pennsylvania Assembly to them, and inquired whether they would peaceably submit themselves to the laws of Pennsylvania. They answered that they despised the laws of that Province and never would submit unless compelled by force.
Two days later, November 25, Governor John Penn wrote to Judge Plunket and his associate Justices as follows:
“I have just now received a message from the Assembly, founded on a letter addressed to them from the county of Northumberland, respecting the Connecticut settlers at Wyoming, requesting me to give orders for a due execution of the laws of this Province in the counties of Northumberland and Northampton. In consequence thereof, I do most cheerfully order you to use your utmost diligence and activity in putting the laws of this Province in execution throughout the County of Northumberland; and you may depend on the faith of the House, and my concurrence with them, that every proper and necessary expense that may be incurred on the occasion will be defrayed.”
After the failure of the expedition to Squire Vincent’s the New Englanders in Wyoming managed, by the aid of spies, and in other ways, to keep themselves informed as to the movements of the Pennamites.
There are letters extant which reveal the activities in and about Sunbury which were written there and sent to Colonel Butler and others in authority at Wyoming. One such letter advised Colonel Butler that the Pennamites were surely going to march against Wyoming, and would not be stopped even by Congress.
It was the purpose of Colonel Plunket to recruit all the troops which could be raised along the West Branch settlements at Fort Augusta, and then form a junction with the troops which were to be raised in Northampton County, at Fishing Creek, about a mile and a half above the present borough of Bloomsburg.
The Connecticut delegates in Congress presented a memorial in that body on December 18, 1775, in which they complained bitterly of the threatened invasion, and advised Congress that the troops had begun to march December 11. This was accompanied by depositions from inhabitants, tending to strengthen their statements about the number of the invading forces and their intentions.
During the continuance of the first Pennamite War from 1769 to 1771, every expedition against Wyoming was of a civil character. There were no direct military maneuvers. The Sheriff of Northampton County, of which county Wyoming was then a part, was the chief officer on duty, merely supported by the military commanders, with their several companies; the burnished musket, the glittering bayonet, the four-pounder, the whole martial array being simply an appurtenant to a peace officer while he should serve a civil process.
The same policy was again pursued. Colonel Plunket and his large force and fine equipment, were the mere accompaniments of the Sheriff, whose business to Wyoming was to arrest two or three individuals on civil writs.
The old colonel had mustered 600 well-armed and well-equipped men and the march was taken up at Fort Augusta, December 15, 1775.
In order that the proposed expedition might be considered of a civil rather than a military character, this small army was denominated the “posse comitatus of Northumberland.” Moreover it was to be accompanied on its march by William Scull, the newly elected Sheriff of Northumberland County, within whose jurisdiction the Wyoming lands lay, if to be considered a part of the Province of Pennsylvania.
He was provided with a train of boats, with two small field-pieces, one of which was mounted on the largest and leading boat, ready for action on board or to be landed if necessary. There was a second field-piece mounted on one of the other boats, a large supply of ammunition for cannon, rifles and muskets, supplies and stores.
About the time Colonel Plunket began active preparations for his expedition Benjamin Harvey, Jr., and another Yankee settler and trader of Wyoming Valley, who were returning from Harris Ferry in bateaux laden with supplies, and laboriously and slowly pulling their boats up the Susquehanna toward home, were seized by the Pennsylvanians as they reached Sunbury, thrown into jail, and their boats and cargoes confiscated.
When Plunket was ready to proceed up the river he placed Harvey in the leading boat, with orders to pilot the flotilla of the expedition to its destination.
Pennamites Humiliatingly Defeated by
Yankees, December 25, 1775
On December 20, the very day on which Congress adopted resolutions calling on Pennsylvania and Connecticut to cease armed conflict during the period of the Revolution, it was learned by the Yankee scouts that Colonel William Plunket and the Pennamites had pushed their flotilla up the North Branch of the Susquehanna River as far as the mouth of Nescopeck Creek, about nineteen miles below Nanticoke Falls, but that they were advancing slowly on account of the snow, which was then falling, and the ice which was gathering on the river.
Colonel Zebulon Butler quickly mustered his available force, which numbered about 400 men and boys, on Saturday, December 23, and marched to the left bank of Harvey’s Creek, where he encamped for the night on a level stretch of land near the river.
The vanguard of Colonel Plunket’s expedition arrived at “Harvey’s Landing” shortly after the Yankees had gone into camp above Harvey’s Creek.
Major John Garrett was dispatched under a flag of truce to Colonel Plunket to ascertain the meaning of his approach with armed militia. The answer returned to Colonel Butler was that he came peaceably as an attendant to Sheriff Scull, who was authorized to arrest several persons at Wyoming for violating the laws of Pennsylvania, and he trusted there would be no opposition to a measure so reasonable and pacific. Major Garrett reported to Colonel Butler and advised him of the strength of the enemy.
Colonel Butler early Sunday morning (December 24) dispatched Ensign Mason F. Alden with a detail of eighteen men to remain on guard at Harvey’s Creek. Captain Lazarus Stewart, with twenty men, was detached to the east side of the river, above Nanticoke Falls, with orders to lie in ambush and prevent the landing on that shore of any boat’s crew.
Colonel Butler, with the remainder of his force, then retired up the river about a mile to a point of natural defense on the plantation of Benjamin Harvey, Sr., where a precipitous ledge of rocks extends from the Shawanese Mountains in a southerly direction almost to the bank of the river, a distance of nearly half a mile. The Yankees took up their position in this rocky rampart, and wherever it was defective for their defense they erected breastworks of logs and stones.
Later in the morning of Sunday about 11 o’clock, Ensign Alden, being apprised at the mouth of Harvey’s Creek of the approach of the Plunket expedition, retired with his men up the river and joined Colonel Butler.
Deploying his column on the flat just abandoned by the Yankees, Plunket directed a spirited advance in pursuit of Alden, not doubting but that the main force of the settlers was near and that the hour of conflict had arrived. In less than thirty minutes the advancing line was halted by Colonel Plunket, who exclaimed, “My God! What a breastwork!”
Scarcely had those words been uttered when there came a discharge of musketry, crackling from end to end of the long-extended rampart, and giving no uncertain notice that the unlooked-for barricade was garrisoned.
One of Plunket’s men, Hugh McWilliams, was killed and three others wounded, while the whole body of Pennamites was thrown into great confusion and without returning the fire of the Yankees immediately retreated to Harvey’s Creek.
They then brought two of their boats from Harvey’s Landing past Nanticoke Falls by land and made preparations to cross the river in detachments, in order to march by way of the eastern shore against the village of Wyoming, the objective point of the expedition.
After nightfall the boats, well filled with soldiers, started across the river some distance above the falls. In the bow of the first boat sat Benjamin Harvey, still held a prisoner by the Pennamites, and acting as pilot under compulsion, while Colonel Plunket himself occupied a place in the second boat.
When the boats nearly reached the opposite shore they were, without warning, fired upon by Captain Lazarus Stewart and his men, who were concealed in the thick brush on the river’s bank.
Two or three men in the first boat were wounded, one of whom, Jesse Lukens, subsequently died. All the occupants of the boat would have been killed, probably, had not Harvey made his presence known to the Yankees. The boats were hurriedly backed astern, whereby they safely shot through the rifles and into the pool at Harvey’s Landing. Thus ended the occurrences of Sunday.
Early in the morning of Monday, which was Christmas, the Pennamites were astir. Colonel Plunket formed his men and marched them into two divisions toward the breastworks held by the Yankees. While one division stormed the works, the other ascended the mountain on their left in an attempt to turn the right flank of Colonel Butler’s defenders.
The conflict lasted, with frequent cessations, during the greater part of the day, and on the part of the Yankees three or four men were killed and three times as many more wounded. Toward the close of the day Colonel Plunket realized that the position of the Yankees was too strong to be carried by assault and he ordered a retreat down the west side of the river.
In this movement he was closely pursued by Captain Stewart and his party on the east side of the river, who determined, if possible, to capture at least one of the boats of the Pennamites. But Harvey, who was still a prisoner, called to them not to fire. So the expedition was permitted to float peaceably downstream toward Fort Augusta.
Colonel Zebulon Butler reported the battle to the Connecticut authorities under date of December 27, 1775, and stated the losses among the Plunket forces to have been fifty or sixty dead and wounded and that two were killed and three wounded of his own party and that one had since died.
The Pennamites reported the affair quite differently. William Scull, the Sheriff; Samuel Harris, Coroner; William Plunket, Samuel Hunter, Michael Troy and John Weitzel, Justices, wrote to Governor Penn under date Sunbury, December 30, 1775, in which they related the expedition as one to serve legal processes. They blamed the Yankees for firing upon the Sheriff’s posse without warning, and even with firing on the wounded as they retreated down the river.
The Governor transmitted this letter to the Provincial Assembly and asked them to pay the bills.
Four days after the battle the inhabitants of Westmoreland assembled in town meeting, elected officers and appointed a committee to repair to Philadelphia to “lay before the Honorable Continental Congress an account of the late invasion made by the Tory Party of the Pennsylvania people.” It was also voted to collect funds for three women whose husbands were killed in the battle.
Jesse Lukens, who lost his life in this ill-fated expedition, was a young man of much promise, the son of John Lukens, who was the Surveyor General of Pennsylvania from 1769 till his death in 1789. Jesse was born August 8, 1748, and had only recently arrived at Sunbury on a vacation and joined the Plunket expedition as a lark.
Pennsylvania Militia in Battle of Trenton,
December 26, 1776
Early in the Revolution Pennsylvania began to suffer severe losses. Each of the battalions organized at the request of Congress had been sent immediately to the front, some to Canada, some to the defense of the Hudson, and the balance with the main army.
During the summer of 1776 the necessities of the Continental service were such that the Council of Safety of Pennsylvania placed the State battalions under Colonels Samuel Miles, Samuel J. Atlee and Daniel Brodhead at the disposal of Congress. These were marched to Long Island, where, with the Continental Regiments of the Pennsylvania Line, viz: Colonel Shee’s, Magaw’s and Lambert Cadwalader’s, they were engaged in battle August 27, which resulted in the defeat of the American forces and the evacuation of Long Island. The Pennsylvanians sustained severe loss. Lieutenant Colonel Caleb Perry and other officers were killed. Colonel Miles, Colonel Atlee and Lieutenant Colonel James Piper were among the many taken prisoners.
Fort Washington was reduced November 16 and again Pennsylvania lost heavily and the battalions of Morgan, Cadwalader, Atlee, Swope, Watts and Montgomery were taken prisoners, and, in addition to those losses, Howe was menacing Philadelphia.
Congress made a precipitate adjournment in Philadelphia and removed to Baltimore. General Washington dispatched Major General Israel Putnam to Philadelphia to direct the defense of that place. He arrived December 12, and assumed military command of the city. The fort at Billingsport was of little consequence, and works were commenced at Red Bank, N. J.
General Howe returned for winter quarters in New York, leaving British troops at Trenton and Burlington, which threatened Philadelphia from the east side of the Delaware. The Americans had brigades under Lord Stirling and Generals Mercer, Stephen and De Fermoy, at the several ferries from Coryells (New Hope) to Yardleys. General Ewing was farther south with the Pennsylvania Flying Camp. Philemon Dickinson’s troops were opposite Bordentown, Cadwalader’s were near Bristol, and Colonel Nixon’s Third Pennsylvania Battalion was at Dunks Ferry.
On December 25 Colonel John Cadwalader and Colonel Samuel Miles, who was then a prisoner of war, were appointed by Pennsylvania to be brigadier generals.
General Washington, with his army, was on the west bank of the Delaware, encamped near Taylorsville, then McConkeys Ferry, eight miles above Trenton.
When Washington matured his plans to cross the Delaware River above the falls at Trenton with his main army, the two smaller divisions, under Generals Ewing and Cadwalader were ordered to cross at the same time at points lower down the shore. Cadwalader could not pass through the ice, but finally got across on the 27th from Bristol and remained on the Jersey side, the troops from Burlington having retreated. Ewing’s command crossed on the 28th and 29th and took possession at Bordentown.
General Washington made the crossing on Christmas night, and the morning of the 26th took Trenton with more than 900 prisoners: General Rall, who commanded the Hessians, was mortally wounded in the engagement.
General Washington thought it best to get back to the Pennsylvania side and before night had crossed with his forces, prisoners and other trophies of victory. But in several days he crossed again and joined the divisions of Cadwalader and Ewing. Mifflin brought to Bordentown 1800 recruits from Pennsylvania.
The British were alarmed by the blow at Trenton and broke up their encampments along the Delaware, and retired to Princeton. Washington thereupon reoccupied Trenton, where he was speedily joined by Pennsylvania Militia.
On January 3, 1777, Washington made an attack on Princeton. This battle was sharp and decisive. Mercer’s forces were furiously attacked with the deadly bayonet, and they fled in disorder. The enemy pursued until, on the brow of a hill, they discovered the American regulars and Pennsylvania Militia, under Washington, marching to the support of Mercer, who, in trying to rally his men, had his horse disabled under him, and was finally knocked down by a clubbed musket and mortally wounded.
Washington checked the flight and intercepted the British who were in pursuit. In this action the Pennsylvania militia bore the brunt of the attack, and but for the personal leadership of General Washington and the timely arrival of reinforcements, would have been compelled to yield the field.
In this short but sharp battle the British lost in killed, wounded and prisoners about 430 men. The American loss was about 100, including Colonels Haslet and James Potter, Major Morris and Captains Shippen, Fleming and Neal. General Hugh Mercer died nine days after the battle.
Here General Cadwalader distinguished himself as an able and brave officer.
Washington in his report to the president of Congress alluded to General Cadwalader as “a man of ability, a good disciplinarian and a man of good principle and of intrepid bravery.”
Chief Justice John Marshall, who was at that time an officer in the army, in a letter speaks of General Cadwalader’s[Cadwalader’s] “activity, talents and zeal.”
General Joseph Reed in a letter to the President of Pennsylvania, dated Morristown, January 24, 1777, said: “General Cadwalader has conducted his command with great honor to himself and the province; all the field officers supported their character; their example was followed by the inferior officers and men; so they have returned with the thanks of every general officer of the army.”
It was also in the Battle of Princeton that the Philadelphia City Troop, under command of Captain Samuel Morris, and the company of marines under Captain William Brown, belonging to the Pennsylvania ship Montgomery, distinguished themselves by their bravery.
Cornwallis was about to sail for England when the Battle of Trenton took place, and Howe detained him and rushed him to take command of the troops at Princeton. When he arrived there Washington and his little army and prisoners were far on their way in pursuit of two British regiments.
On account of the fatigue of his soldiers, Washington gave up this chase and moved into winter quarters at Morristown, N. J.
It is said that Frederick the Great of Prussia declared that the achievements of Washington and his little band of patriots between December 25, 1776, and January 4, 1777, were the most brilliant of any recorded in military history.
Paxtang Boys Wipe Out Conestoga Indians
on December 27, 1763
It was during the Pontiac War that Governor James Hamilton, in reply to earnest appeals for help and protection, said he could give the frontiersmen no aid whatever. Neither the Governor nor the Assembly showed the proper spirit. It was a time when the tomahawk, the scalping knife and the torch were desolating the frontiers of the Province.
The Indians set fire to houses, barns, corn, hay, in short, to everything that was combustible, so that the whole frontier seemed to be one general blaze. Great numbers of back inhabitants were murdered in the most shocking manner and their dead bodies inhumanly mangled.
Paxtang, near what is now Harrisburg, became truly the frontier, for west of the Susquehanna so great was the terror that scarcely an inhabitant was left. At this juncture the Reverend John Elder, the revered pastor of the Paxton Presbyterian Church, at Paxtang, organized his rangers under authority of the Provincial Government. They were mostly members of his own and the Hanover congregations.
These brave men were ever on the alert, watching with eagle eye the Indian marauders. The Paxtang rangers were truly the terror of the red men, swift on foot, excellent horsemen, good shots, skillful in pursuit or in escape, dexterous as scouts, and expert in maneuvering.
In August, 1763, Colonel John Armstrong, the “hero of Kittanning,” with 200 Paxtang and Hanover rangers and some soldiers from Cumberland County, marched to the Indian town at Great Island (now Lock Haven). Several skirmishes were fought, and some killed in the Muncy Hills. These volunteers returned home enraged at learning that the Conestoga Indians had sent messengers to inform their friends of the expedition.
Subsequently, on September 9, 1763, the rangers who were scouting in Berks County, were apprised by their out-scouts of the approach of Indians. The savages intended to take the rangers by surprise, and during a short engagement, it was discovered these Indians were from the Moravian settlement in Northampton County. The “Paxtang Boys” were determined to ascertain the treacherous.
In October occurred the murder of the Stinson family and others; the Paxtang men solicited their colonel to make an excursion against the enemy. The first massacre at Wyoming occurred October 15. Two companies in command of Captain Lazarus Stewart and Captain Asher Clayton were sent by Colonel Elder to Wyoming. Upon their arrival they learned first handed of the awful outrages committed by the bloodthirsty savages under “Captain Bull.”
Indians had been traced by these scouts to the wigwams at Conestoga, and some to those of the Moravian Indians at Nain and Wichetunk. The rangers insisted on captivating the murderers but the merciful colonel dissuaded them. It was then that Colonel Elder advised Governor Hamilton to remove the Indians from Conestoga.
Colonel Timothy Green wrote to the Governor: “We live in daily fear of our lives. At the Indian town the incarnate devils are secreted, and the people here demand that those Indians be removed from among us.”
John Harris wrote: “I hope Your Honor will be pleased to cause these Indians to be removed to some other place, as I don’t like their company.”
Governor Penn replied: “The Indians of Conestoga have been misrepresented as innocent, helpless and dependent on this Government for support. The faith of this Government is pledged for their protection. I cannot remove them without adequate cause.”
The rangers resolved on taking the law into their own hands. The destruction of the Conestoga Indians was not then projected. That was the result. Colonel Elder approved the capture of the most notorious Indians.
The “Paxtang Boys” reached the Indian settlement about daybreak, when the barking of a dog made their approach known. The Indians rushed from their wigwams, brandishing their tomahawks. This show of resistance was sufficient excuse for the rangers to make use of their guns.
In a few minutes every Indian fell before the unerring fire of the brave frontiersmen. Unfortunately a number of Indians were absent from Conestoga, prowling about the neighboring settlement.
Soon as this attack was known some Indians were placed in the Lancaster workhouse and several, well known to Parson Elder’s scouts, were hurried to Philadelphia, where they were secreted among the Moravian Indians protected in that city.
Governor Penn did not act with dispatch in removing the Indians from Lancaster, nor did he seem to care for them.
The “Paxtang Boys” realized their work was only half done. Captain Stewart proposed they capture the principal Indian outlaw, in the Lancaster workhouse, and take him to Carlisle jail, where he could be held for trial. This plan was heartily approved and fifty of the “Paxtang Boys” proceeded to Lancaster on December 27, broke into the workhouse, and but for the show of resistance would have effected their purpose.
But the rangers were so enraged at the defiance of the Indians that before they could be repressed the last of the so-called Conestoga Indians had yielded up his life. In a few minutes the daring rangers were safe from pursuit.
The excitement throughout the Province was great. No language could describe the outcry which arose from the Quakers in Philadelphia, or the excitement along the frontiers.
Fears were entertained for the safety of the Moravian Indian converts, and they were removed to Philadelphia and lodged in the city barracks.
This open and avowed protection of the Indians exasperated the frontiersmen, and they started for Philadelphia with the avowed purpose of killing the Indians and punishing the Quakers.
The city was greatly alarmed. Military companies were organized. Even the staid, reverent, peaceful Quakers shouldered guns and drilled. The wildest rumors were current as to the numbers and anger of the Scotch-Irish.
But the “Paxtang Boys” when they learned the effective measures for protection taken in the city, halted their march at Germantown. A delegation of leading men composed of Benjamin Franklin, Israel Pemberton and Joseph Galloway was sent by Governor Penn to meet the insurgents and hear their grievances.
The “Paxtang Boys” presented their side, and left a committee consisting of Captain Matthew Smith, afterward vice president of the State, and James Gibson, to accompany the Provincial Commissioners to Philadelphia, where they met the Governor and the Assembly, to whom they presented their grievances in the form of a declaration. The remaining members of the party returned to their homes, and the inhabitants of the city to their peaceful avocations. And thus ended the “Paxtang Boys’ Insurrection.”
Benjamin Franklin Presents Treaty Plan to
King of France, December 28, 1776
So soon as the idea of independence had taken the practical shape of a resolution and declaration adopted by the Continental Congress, the Americans began to contemplate the necessity of foreign aid, material and moral. Congress appointed a Secret Committee of Correspondence for the purpose and sent Silas Deane, of Connecticut, upon a half-commercial, half-diplomatic mission to France.
Franklin was at first opposed to seeking foreign alliances. “A virgin state,” he said, “should preserve the virgin character, and not go about suitoring for alliance, but wait with decent dignity for the application of others.”
But Franklin soon became chief suitor in Europe.
Later in the autumn of 1776 Dr. Franklin was sent by the Continental Congress as a diplomatic agent to France. He sailed in the ship Reprisal. The passage occupied thirty days during which that vessel had been chased by British cruisers and had taken two British brigantines as prizes.
Franklin landed at Nantes, December 7. Europe was not prepared for his arrival, having had no advance notice of his coming and the event was in consequence one of great surprise. By this time Franklin’s fame was world-wide.
The courts were filled with conjectures, and in England the story was current that Dr. Franklin was a fugitive for his own personal safety. Burke said, “I never will believe that he is going to conclude a long life, which has brightened every hour it has continued, with so foul and dishonorable a flight.”
On the Continent it was concluded that he was in Europe on a most important mission. To the French he spoke frankly, saying that twenty successful campaigns could not subdue the Americans, that their decision for independence was irrevocable and that they would be forever independent states.
On the morning of December 28, Franklin, with the other commissioners—Silas Deane, of Connecticut, and Arthur Lee, of Virginia—waited upon Vergennes, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, when he presented the plan as suggested by the Continental Congress for a treaty, by which it was hoped the states might obtain their independence.
The Commissioners were instructed to press for an immediate declaration of the French Government in favor of the Americans. Knowing the desire of the French to widen the breach and cause a dismemberment of the British Empire, the Commissioners were to intimate that a reunion of the Colonies with Great Britain might be the consequence of delay.
Vergennes spoke of the attachment of the French nation to the American cause and requested a paper from Dr. Franklin upon the condition of America and that in the future intercourse with the sage might be in secret, without the intervention of a third person. Personal friendship between these two distinguished men became strong and abiding.
The French Minister told Franklin that as Spain and France were in perfect accord, he might communicate freely with the Spanish Minister, the Count de Aranda.
With him Franklin, Deane and Lee held secret but barren interviews, for Spain was quite indifferent. Aranda would only promise the freedom of Spanish ports to American vessels.
As for France, she was at that time unwilling to incur the risk of war with Great Britain, but when the defeat and surrender of Burgoyne was made known at Versailles late in 1777, and assured thereby that the American Colonies could help themselves, the French Court was ready to listen to Franklin. To him was chiefly due the successful negotiation of the treaty of alliance which meant so much to the American cause at that critical period in the War for Independence.
The presence of an agent of the British Ministry in Paris, on social terms with the American Commissioners, hastened the negotiations, and February, 1778, two treaties were secretly signed at Paris by the American Commissioners and the Count de Vergennes on the part of France. One was a commercial agreement, the other an alliance contingent on the breaking out of hostilities between France and Great Britain.
It was stipulated in the treaty of alliance that peace should not be made until the mercantile and political independence of the United States should be secured.
Franklin continued to represent the States in France until 1785, when he returned home. He took an important part in the negotiations for peace. In 1786 he was elected Governor of Pennsylvania; and, in 1787 he was the leading member in the convention which framed the National Constitution.
Dr. Franklin had deserved confidence in his ability and honesty. To Silas Deane was intrusted the receipt and expenditure of money by the Commissioners to France. The jealous, querulous Arthur Lee, who was the third Commissioner, soon made trouble.
Lee wrote letters to his brother in Congress (Richard Henry Lee), in which he made many insinuations against both his colleagues. Ralph Izard, of South Carolina, Commissioner to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who felt offended because he was not consulted about the treaty with France, when he also was in Paris, sent home similar letters to those of Lee.
William Carmichael, of Maryland, a secretary of the Commissioners, who had returned to Philadelphia, insinuated in Congress that Deane had appropriated the public money to his own use. Deane was recalled.
Out of this incident sprang two violent parties. Robert Morris, of Philadelphia, and other members of Congress, who were commercial experts, took the side of Deane, and Richard Henry Lee, then chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, opposed him.
Deane published in the Philadelphia Gazette an “Address to the People of the United States,” in which he referred to the brothers Lee with much severity and claiming for himself the credit of obtaining supplies from France through Beaumarchais. Thomas Paine replied to Deane, making use of public documents in his charge.
The statement called out loud complaints from the French Minister and Paine’s indiscretion cost him his place as secretary of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
This discussion among diplomatic agents soon led to the recall of all of them except Franklin, who remained sole Minister at the French Court.
Franklin testified to Deane’s strict honesty and private worth, but Arthur Lee had the ear of Congress, and Deane had to suffer. He died in obscurity and poverty at Deal, England, August 23, 1789. He has since been vindicated and all unjust suspicions have been removed, thus confirming the judgment of the wise Franklin.
From Franklin’s advent in the French Court, December 28, 1776, until he sailed for his home in Philadelphia, in 1785, he was held in the high esteem which his talents, experience and personality entitled him.
Franklin Begins Building Chain of Forts on
December 29, 1755
Governor Robert Hunter Morris summoned the Provincial Assembly for November 3, 1755, when he laid before them an account of the depredations committed by the enemy, and demanded money and a militia law.
Petitions began to pour in from all parts of the Province; from the frontier counties praying for arms and munitions; from the middle counties, deprecating further resistance to the views of the Governor, and urging, if necessary, a sacrifice of property for the better defense of their lives. All wished that the religious scruples of the members of the Assembly might no longer prevent the better defense of the Province.
By the middle of November, and while the Assembly was receiving these petitions, the Indians entered the passes of the Blue Mountains and broke into the Counties of Lancaster, Berks and Northampton, committing murder, devastation and every other kind of horrid mischief, and yet the Assembly debated and debated the measures for defense.
The Governor, wearied with this delay, sent a message requesting the Assembly to strengthen his hands and afford assistance to the back inhabitants, but this time they made the excuse that in so doing they might alienate the affections of the Indians, and to a large degree refused to grant the means necessary for the protection of the frontiers. This was truly an unfortunate position.
But at this time the alarming news of Braddock’s defeat reached the proprietaries in England, and they came forward with a donation of £5000 for defense, to be collected from arrears in quit-rents; but they refused to grant it on any other ground than as a free gift. The Assembly waived their rights for a time, in consideration of the distressed state of the Province, and passed a bill to strike £30,000 in bills of credit, based upon the excise. This bill was approved by Governor Morris.
The population of the Province was not yet satisfied with the cold indifference of the Assembly at such a crisis and throughout all the counties there were indignant protests. Public meetings were held throughout Lancaster and the frontier counties, at which it was resolved that the people should “repair to Philadelphia and compel the provincial authorities to pass proper laws to defend the country and oppose the enemy.”
In addition, the dead bodies of some of the murdered and mangled were sent to Philadelphia and hauled about the streets with placards announcing that they were victims of the Quaker policy of nonresistance.
A large and threatening mob surrounded the House of Assembly, placed the dead bodies of their neighbors in the doorway and demanded immediate relief for the people of the frontiers. Such indeed were the desperate measures resorted to in their effort to obtain better defense.
One of the results of these demonstrative measures and the protests of the people was the erection of a chain of forts and block-houses. These were designed to guard against the Indian incursions and were erected by the Province, at a cost of £85,000.
This chain extended from along the Kittatinny Hills, near where Stroudsburg now stands, southeasterly through the Province, to the Maryland line. They were constructed at the important passes of the mountains and at important places, almost equi-distant, so that they would the better serve as havens of refuge when attacked suddenly.
These forts were garrisoned by troops in the pay of the Province, twenty to seventy-five men always under the command of a commissioned officer. Even the Moravians at Bethlehem cheerfully fortified their town and took up arms in self-defense.
Benjamin Franklin and James Hamilton were selected to repair to the forks of the Delaware and raise troops for the execution of the plan. They arrived at Easton, December 29, and appointed William Parsons to be major of the troops to be raised in Northampton County.
In the meantime Captain Hays, with his company from the Irish Settlement, in that county, had been ordered to New Gnadenhutten, which had recently been the scene of an Indian raid, in which they applied the torch, many being burned to death and others escaped to Bethlehem in their nightclothes in the cold winter air.
The troops erected a temporary stockade and a garrison was placed there to guard the Brethren’s mills, which were filled with grain, and to protect the few settlers who had the hardihood to return and again settle there.
Captain Hay’s detachment was attacked on New Year’s Day, 1756, while some of the troops were amusing themselves skating on the ice of the river, near the stockade. They noticed some Indians in the distance and thinking it an easy matter to capture or kill them the soldiers gave chase, and rapidly gained on these Indians, who proved to be decoys skilfully maneuvering to draw the untrained Indian fighters into an ambuscade.
After the troops had gone some distance a party of Indians rushed out behind them, cut off their retreat and, falling upon them with great fury, as well as with the advantage of surprise and superior numbers, quickly dispatched them. Some of the soldiers, remaining in the stockade, filled with terror by the murder of their comrades, deserted, and the few remaining thinking themselves incapable of defending the place, withdrew.
The savages then seized upon such property as they could use and set fire to the stockade, the Indians’ houses and the Brethren’s mills. Seven farm houses between Gnadenhutten and Nazareth were burned by those same Indians, who also murdered such of the people as they discovered.
This incursion was the inception of Fort Allen. It seems that “it was the intention to build a fort at New Gnadenhutten, and Colonel Franklin started to Bethlehem to carry that plan into operation.”[operation.”] But the situation required him to change his plans and he marched to what is now Weissport, in Carbon County, and there erected Fort Allen. The site of this provincial fort is now occupied by Fort Allen Hotel. The old well is still in existence.
The Assembly requested Franklin’s appearance and when he responded to this call he turned his command over to Colonel William Clapham.
It is interesting to note that the chain of forts began with Fort Dupui, built on the property of Samuel Dupui, a Huguenot settler, in the present town of Shawnee, on the Delaware River, five and one-half miles from the present town of Stroudsburg. Then Fort Hamilton was built on the present site of Stroudsburg, where Fort Penn was also in the eastern part of the town. These forts were in the heart of the territory which the Minsink, or Munsee, Indians occupied.
Fort Norris came next in the chain and was near Greensweig’s, Monroe County, and fifteen miles west was Fort Allen, and then Fort Franklin, in Albany Township, Berks County, and nineteen miles west was Fort Lebanon, also known as Fort William, about a mile and a half from the present town of Auburn, a short distance from Port Clinton. The next in the chain was the small fort at Deitrick Six’s, then Fort Henry; then Fort Swatara, both described in former stories, and then Fort Hunter, six miles above Harrisburg, and Fort Halifax, both on the Susquehanna River.
Crossing the river was Fort Patterson, in the Tuscarora Valley, opposite Mexico, Juniata County; Fort Granville, near Lewistown; Fort Shirley, near Aughwick Creek; Fort Lyttleton, at Sugar Cabins, and Fort McDowell, in Franklin County, the last of the line in the Province of Pennsylvania.
Mason and Dixon Determined Starting Point
for Boundary Survey, December 30, 1763
The dispute over the boundary of the province on the south began with the acquisition of the charter and continued through the life of William Penn and his descendants, until almost the end of Proprietary Government in Pennsylvania.
Charles Calvert, the fifth Lord Baltimore, drew an agreement, defining the boundaries between Maryland and Delaware and Maryland and Pennsylvania. On May 10, 1732, John and Thomas Penn agreed to this and signed the instrument. John Penn and Lord Baltimore then came to America, and, Baltimore changed his mind and caused every possible delay in having a survey made of this disputed line.
Commissioners had been appointed by both governments and they did nothing but wrangle for the eighteen months allowed in the agreement, and Baltimore believed this made it of no effect.
The Penn family won in court and the conduct of Baltimore was censured.
Frederick, the sixth Lord Baltimore, declined to be bound by any act of his predecessors, and again many years were wasted.
In 1760 a new agreement was made which was practically identical with the one of 1732. Commissioners on the part of Pennsylvania were the Governor, James Hamilton, Richard Peters, Reverend Dr. Ewing, William Allen, William Coleman, Thomas Willing, Benjamin Clew, and Edward Shippen, Jr., a selection which assured good and faithful performance.
The first three years were spent by the surveyors employed in marking the lines of Delaware. The circle around New Castle was drawn by David Rittenhouse, and added much to his reputation.
This work proceeded too slowly and on August 4, 1763, Thomas and Richard Penn, and Frederick, Lord Baltimore, then being together in London, agreed with Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two well known English astronomers, “to mark, run out, settle, fix, and determine all such parts of the circle, marks, lines, and boundaries, as were mentioned in the several articles or commissions, and were not yet completed.”
Mason and Dixon arrived in Philadelphia, November 15, 1763, and forthwith engaged in work.
They began their survey by ascertaining the latitude[latitude] of the southernmost part of the City of Philadelphia, which they agreed was the north wall of the house then occupied by Thomas Plumstead and Joseph Huddle, on the south side of Cedar Street. They determined it was 39° 56' 37.4”. This was ascertained December 30, 1763, and the actual survey of the boundary line properly began on this date.
During January and February, 1764, they measured thirty-one miles westward of the city to the forks of the Brandywine, where they planted a quartzose stone, six miles west of the meridian of the court house in West Chester.
With this stone as a fixed point they determined the point from which they should start to run the horizontal line of five degrees longitude to fix the southern boundary. This was of course the northeast corner of the State of Maryland.
From this point they extended the line 230 miles, eighteen chains, and twenty-one links, or 244 miles, thirty-eight chains, and thirty-six links, from the Delaware River. This was done during 1766 and 1767.
The Indians could not understand the object of an exploring expedition that spent every clear night gazing at the stars through big guns, and they soon stopped their progress. The Penns used their influence with the Indians and the work proceeded.
The western extremity of Maryland was reached and passed, and the astronomers were encamped on the banks of the Monongahela, when the Indians again interposed. Their attitude was so threatening that many of the servants and workmen of the expedition deserted. But the great delight and satisfaction of running an astronomical line through primeval forests raised Mason and Dixon above all fears, and they pressed on to the Warrior Branch of the great Catawba Indian trail.
This was on the borders of a stream called Dunkard Creek, about the middle point on the southern boundary line of the present Green County. Here the Indians took such a menacing stand that Mason and Dixon were obliged to return, and their Dunkard Creek trail, or Warrior trail, remained the terminus of their line for many years.
This Mason and Dixon’s line was a great achievement in that day, and a new thing in science. These two modest but skillful men had made themselves immortal. Their line was not marked by river, creek or even mountain range, it was an imaginary one. At every fifth mile a stone was set up marked on the northern side with the arms of the Penns and on the southern side with the arms of Baltimore, each intermediate mile was marked with stones having P. on the one side and M. on the opposite side.
This line, fixed after nearly a hundred years of conflict, is more unalterable than if nature had originally made it. It became the boundary line between the great sides of the slavery question, and divided the armies of the North and South in the great Civil War.
The interference of the Indians having arrested further work, Messrs. Mason and Dixon returned to Philadelphia, where they reported to the commissioner, and on December 26, 1767, received an honorable discharge.
There were many minor disturbances occasioned by this line, and the actions of the rough border population were slow to become satisfied. A surveyor’s transit or astronomy was not enough to determine the limits of their civil pride. These people had grown accustomed to the temporary lines which had been run about 1740, which was about one-quarter of a mile above the true one, and they became as much excited over that narrow strip as they had been when they hoped to penetrate miles into Pennsylvania.
The government of Pennsylvania determined to acquire its rightful jurisdiction and in 1774, a proclamation was issued, which has generally been considered the final act in the boundary controversy.
The residue of the southern boundary, a little less than twenty-two miles, was run in 1782 by Robert Andrews, Andrew Ellicott, John Ewing, David Rittenhouse, and John Hutchins, and completed and permanently marked in 1784.
First Bank in America Chartered in
Philadelphia, December 31, 1781
Congress again assembled in Philadelphia on July 2, 1778, and on the 9th the “Articles of Confederation,” engrossed on parchment, were signed by the delegates of eight States.
Pennsylvania was one of those states which immediately acceded to the Confederation. The delegation from this State consisted of Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, Daniel Roderdeau, Jonathan Bayard Smith, James Smith, of Yorktown; William Clingan and Joseph Reed.
The “Articles of Confederation” were submitted to the several State Legislatures. Slowly the States ratified them, some of them pointing out serious defects, and all taking time to discuss them. The first State to ratify, in addition to the eight which immediately signed, was North Carolina, July 21, but Maryland steadily refused until March 1, 1781, when the League of States was perfected.
It was soon perceived that under this new Government the Congress had no power, independent of the several States, to enforce taxation.
Robert Morris, then Superintendent of Finance (Secretary of the Treasury), proposed the establishment of a bank in Philadelphia, to supply the Government with money, with a capital of $400,000.
The promissory notes of the bank were to be a legal tender of currency, to be received in payment of all taxes, duties and debts due the United States.
But before Congress could act the patriotic citizens of Philadelphia moved for the establishment of a bank by which means the soldiers in the Continental Army could be supplied with provisions.
A plan for this bank was prepared in Philadelphia which set forth the entire scheme of subscription and operation, down to the minutest detail, even stating that the factor (cashier) “shall provide his store with rum, sugar, coffee, salt and other goods at the cheapest price to those who supply him with provisions, that he may gain a preference of what comes to market.” The provisions were to be purchased for the army in the field.
This plan named the original board of inspectors, Robert Morris, J. M. Nesbitt, Blair M'Clenachan, Samuel Miles and Cadwallader Morris. The two directors were John Nixon and George Clymer and the factor was Tench Francis.
The subscription list was headed:
“Whereas, in the present situation of public affairs in the United States, the greatest and most vigorous exertions are required for the successful management of the just and necessary war in which they are engaged with Great Britain; We, the subscribers, deeply impressed with the sentiments that on such an occasion should govern us, in the prosecution of a war, in the event of which, our own freedom and that of our posterity and the freedom and independence of the United States are all involved, hereby severally pledge our property and credit for the several sums specified and mentioned after our names, in order to support the credit of a bank to be established for furnishing a supply of provisions for the armies of the United States; and we do hereby severally promise and engage to execute to the directors of the said bank bonds of the form hereunto annexed.
“Witness our hands the 17th day of June, in the year of our Lord, 1780.”
There were ninety-two original patriot subscribers, the total pledges of whom amounted to £300,000 Pennsylvania currency, payable in gold or silver.
Robert Morris and Blair McClenachan each subscribed £10,000; Bunner, Murray & Co., £6000; Tench Francis, £5500; James Wilson, George Clymer, William Bingham, J. M. Nesbitt & Co., Richard Peters, Samuel Meredith, James Mease, Thomas Barclay, Samuel Morris, Jr., John Cox, Robert L. Hooper, Jr., Hugh Shiell, Samuel Eyre, Matthew Irwin, Thomas Irwin, John Philip De Haas, Philip Moore, John Nixon, Robert Bridges, John Benezet, Henry Hill, John Morgan, Samuel Mifflin, Thomas Mifflin, Thomas Willing and Samuel Powell, each subscribed £5000.
None of the subscribers pledged less than £1000, and it is a question if ever a more liberal list of patriots could be found anywhere than this one.
This bank opened its doors on July 17, 1780, in Front Street, Philadelphia, two doors above Walnut.
To show the mode of doing business an old advertisement says: “All persons who have already lent money are desired to apply for bank notes; and the directors request the favor of those who may hereafter lodge their cash in the bank, that they would tie it up in bundles of bills of one denomination, with labels, and their names indorsed, as the business will thereby be done with less trouble and much greater dispatch.”
The bank continued in operation till the establishment of the Bank of North America, December 31, 1781, and was the first banking institution in America.
The plan for the bank for the Government was approved by the Continental Congress, May 26, 1781, and this financial agent of the Government was chartered by the Congress December 31, 1781. The capital stock was divided into shares of $400 each, in money of gold and silver, to be procured by subscriptions.
Twelve directors were appointed to manage the affairs of the bank, which was entitled by the Congress “The President, Directors and Company of the Bank of North America.”
Alexander Hamilton, observing the prosperity and usefulness to the commercial community and the financial operations of the Government of the Bank of North America, in Philadelphia, and of the Bank of New York, and the Bank of Massachusetts, which were afterward established, and which three banks held the entire banking capital of the country before 1791, recommended the establishment of a Government bank in his famous report on the finances (1790), as Secretary of the Treasury.
Hamilton’s suggestion was speedily acted upon, and an act for the purpose was adopted February 8, 1791.
President Washington asked the written opinion of his Cabinet concerning its constitutionality. They were equally divided. The President, believing it legal, signed the bill.
The bank was named “The United States Bank” and its charter limited to twenty years.
This bank was soon established, with a capital of $10,000,000, of which amount the Government subscribed $2,000,000 in specie and $6,000,000 in stocks of the United States.
The measure was very popular. The shares of the bank rose to 25 and 45 per cent premium, and it paid an average dividend of 8½ per cent on its capital. The shares were $400 each, same as the Bank of North America.
The United States Bank was chartered February 25, 1791, and established at Philadelphia, with branches at different points. Its charter expired without renewal March 4, 1811.