Monument Erected to Colonel Kelly, Revolutionary
War Hero, April 8, 1835
A monument to the memory of Colonel John Kelly was erected with impressive ceremonies April 8, 1835, in the Presbyterian burial-ground, in the borough of Lewisburg. A company of cavalry from Northumberland County, one from Union, and three infantry companies participated. General Abbott Green was grand marshal, with General Robert H. Hammond, General Michael Brobst, Colonel Philip Ruhl and Surgeon Major Dr. James S. Dougal as aids.
The parade was formed by the adjutant, Colonel Jackson McFadden, with the citizen militia on the right of line, followed by the veterans of the Revolutionary War and those of the War of 1812, and hundreds of citizens.
The most interesting feature of the large procession was a float which was drawn by four gray horses, upon which was placed the monument. Cavalry on either side acted as a guard of honor. In the carriages were the orator, General James Merrill, the clergy, and relatives of the old hero in whose honor the celebration was being held.
Upon its arrival at the ground, after the proper military manoeuver was performed, the monument was set by the architects, William Hubbard, F. Stoughton, Samuel Hursh and Charles Penny. The orator had a subject worthy of his best efforts, for such was Colonel John Kelly.
Colonel Kelly was born in Lancaster County, February, 1744. Almost immediately after the purchase from the Indians, November 5, 1768, he went to Buffalo Valley, in what is now Union County. There he endured hardships common to all the settlers who pushed out along the frontiers. He was in the prime of manhood, of a robust constitution, vigorous and muscular, 6 feet 2 inches in height, and almost insensible to fatigue, and so accustomed to dangers that bodily fear was foreign to his nature.
Colonel Kelly served in the Revolutionary War and distinguished himself in the battles of Trenton and Princeton. In the course of one of the retreats Colonel James Potter sent an order to Major Kelly to have a certain bridge cut down to prevent the advance of the British, who were then in sight. Kelly sent for an ax, but represented that the enterprise would be very hazardous. Still the British advance must be stopped and the order was not withdrawn. He said he could not order another to do what some would say he was afraid to do himself—he would cut down the bridge.
Before all the logs were cut away he was within range of the British fire, and many balls struck the logs. The last log fell sooner than he expected and he fell with it into the swollen stream. The American soldiers moved off, not believing it possible to assist him to make his escape. He, however, reached the shore and joined the troops and managed to capture an armed British scout on the way and took him into camp a prisoner of war.
History records the fact that our army was saved by the destruction of that bridge, but the manner in which it was done or the person who did it is not mentioned.
After his discharge Major Kelly returned to his farm and family, and during the three succeeding years the Indians were troublesome to the settlers on the West Branch. He became colonel of the regiment, and it was his duty to guard the valley against the incursions of the savages.
When the “Big Runaway” occurred following the Wyoming massacre, Colonel Kelly was among the first to return. For at least two harvests reapers took their rifles to the field, and some of the company watched while others wrought.
Colonel Kelly had the principal command of scouting parties in the valley, and very often he went in person. Many nights he laid on the branches of trees without a fire, because it would have indicated his position to the enemy. He was skilled in Indian mode of warfare and was a terror to their marauding bands.
So greatly was he feared by the savages that they determined on his destruction and, being too cowardly to attack him openly, sought his life by stealth. One night he apprehended they were near. He rose early next morning and, looking through the crevices of his log house, he ascertained that two at least, if not more, were lying with their arms so as to shoot him when he should open his door. He fixed his own rifle and took his position so that by a string he could open the door and watch the Indians. The moment he pulled the door open two balls came into the house and the Indians rose to advance. He fired and wounded one, when they both retreated. When safe to do so he followed them by the blood, but they escaped.
After the capture and destruction of Fort Freeland, Colonel Kelly with a company of men went to the scene of the battle and buried the dead.
For many years Colonel Kelly held the office of Justice of the Peace, and, in the administration of justice, he exhibited the same anxiety to do right, which had characterized him in his military service. He would at any time forego his own fees, and, if the parties were poor, pay the constable’s costs, to procure a compromise.
While he was a devout Presbyterian he entertained an intense hatred for an Indian. When the Presbytery of Northumberland called on Colonel Kelly for a contribution to be used to evangelize the savages, he refused to give one cent, but said he would cheerfully subscribe any sum required to buy ropes to hang them.
Toward the end of a long and active life, Colonel Kelly became by disease incapable of much motion; and seldom left his home. He died February 18, 1832, aged eighty-eight years. He was greatly respected by his neighbors and friends, and it is little wonder that a monument was unveiled to his memory three years later.
The spring of 1856 the monument, together with his remains, were removed to the new and beautiful cemetery on the western border of the Union County seat.
The old colonel was survived by his wife, seven sons and two daughters. One son, James, was the father of United States Senator James K. Kelly, of Oregon.
Captain John Armstrong Murdered in Jack’s
Narrows April 9, 1744
John Armstrong, a trader among the Indians, residing on the Susquehanna above Peter’s Mountain, on the east bank of the river, and two of his servants, James Smith and Woodward Arnold, were barbarously murdered April 9, 1744, by an Indian of the Delaware tribe named Musemeelin in Jack’s Narrows, now Huntingdon County.
The murderer was apprehended and delivered up by his own nation and imprisoned at Lancaster, whence he was removed to Philadelphia lest he should escape or his trial and execution, if found guilty, produce an unfavorable impression on the Indians. This was particularly important, as a large council was about to convene at Lancaster.
Governor George Thomas directed that the property of Armstrong be returned to his family. He also invited a deputation of the Delaware tribe to attend the trial of Musemeelin and to be present at his execution, if such was to take place.
Nine of Armstrong’s relatives and neighbors went in search of the remains of the murdered men and to gather such evidence as they could about the details of the crime. They signed a deposition before James Armstrong, one of His Majesty’s justices of the peace for Lancaster County, dated “Paxtang, 19th day of April, 1744.”
These deponents testified that when they learned of the murder they met at the house of Joseph Chambers, in Paxtang, and determined to go to Shamokin and consult with Shilkellamy, the vicegerent of the Six Nations, what they should do concerning the affair.
Shikellamy sent eight Indians to accompany the deponents. The entire party then went to the house of James Berry, on Mahantango Creek, which empties into the Susquehanna above the mouth of the Juniata.
On the way to Berry’s three of the Indians ran away, but on the morning after their arrival there, the deponents, with the five Indians, set out in quest of the bodies.
They proceeded to the last known sleeping place of John Armstrong and his men, and a short distance from this place James Berry picked up the shoulder bone of a human being. He showed his find to his companions, and the action of the Indians at this time proved to the whites that they knew more about the crime than they had made known.
The party proceeded along a path three miles, heading to the Juniata Narrows, to a point where they suspected the crime to have been committed. Here the white men directed the Indians to go farther down the creek, but they hung back, and actually followed the white men. Some eagles or vultures were noticed and then the Indians disappeared.
At this place a corpse was discovered, which they believed to be that of James Smith; three shots were heard at a short distance, and the deponents, believing the Indians had fired them to advise the finding of another corpse, rushed to the place, but the Indians had run away. A quarter of a mile farther down the creek the corpse of Woodward Arnold was found lying on a rock.
The deponents examined the bodies of Arnold and Smith and found them to have been most barbarously and inhumanely murdered by being gashed with deep cuts on their heads with tomahawks, and other parts of their bodies mutilated. The body of Armstrong was believed to have been eaten by the savages.
This deposition was signed by Alexander Armstrong, a brother of John, the murdered man, who lived at the mouth of Armstrong’s Creek, above the present town of Halifax, Dauphin County; Thomas McKee; John Foster, who also lived on the west side of the Susquehanna; William Baskins, James Berry, who lived on the east side, near the Juniata, and John Watts, James Armstrong and David Denny.
The atrocity of this outrage was so revolting that a Provincial Council was held to take the matter into consideration, and it was finally resolved that Conrad Weiser should be sent to Shamokin to make demands, in the name of the Governor, for those concerned in the crime.
Mr. Weiser arrived at Shamokin, May, 1744, and delivered Governor Thomas’ message to Allummapees, then the Delaware King, a large number of that tribe and in the presence of Shikellamy and a small number of the Six Nations.
Following the presentation of the affidavit, Allummapees replied, confessing the guilt of Musemeelin. Shikellamy then arose and entered into a full account of the unhappy affair.
He claimed that Musemeelin owed Armstrong some skins, and that Armstrong seized a horse and rifled gun belonging to the Indian in lieu of the skins. These were taken by Smith for Armstrong.
When Musemeelin met Armstrong near the Juniata, he paid all the account but twenty shillings and demanded his horse. Armstrong refused to give up the animal, and after a quarrel the Indian went away in great anger.
Some time later Armstrong and his two servants, on their way to the Ohio country, passed by the cabin of Musemeelin, and his wife demanded the horse of Armstrong, but by this time he had sold the beast to James Berry.
Upon his return from a hunting trip his wife told Musemeelin of her demand to Armstrong. This angered the Indian, who determined on revenge.
Musemeelin engaged two young Indians to go on a hunting trip, but he led them to the camp of Armstrong and his men. When they arrived at a fire James Smith was sitting there alone. Musemeelin told Smith he wanted to speak with him privately, and they went into the woods. Musemeelin soon came back laughing, as he had killed Smith and shot Arnold, whom he found coming back to the camp.
The young Indians were terrified, but too afraid of Musemeelin to leave him. They soon came across John Armstrong sitting on an old log. Musemeelin asked: “Where is my horse?” Armstrong replied: “He will come by and by.” “I want him now,” said Musemeelin. “You shall have him. Come to the fire and let us smoke and talk together,” said Armstrong. As they proceeded, Armstrong in the advance, Musemeelin shot him in the back, then tomahawked him.
Shikellamy further said that the three Indians buried John Armstrong and that the others were thrown into the river.
Jacks Narrows, where this crime was committed, takes it name from Captain John (Jack) Armstrong, the victim.
Musemeelin was not convicted of the crime, but returned to his wigwam and was looked upon by his savage people as a hero.
Tories of Sinking Valley Take Oath to King
April 10,1778
Among the tragedies during the Revolutionary war, none seem more melancholy than those connected with efforts of the disaffected to escape to the enemy. During the winter of 1777–78, British agents were busy along the western frontier and as far east as Cumberland County, seeking to corrupt the frontier settlers, insinuating sentiments of discontent, assuring them that the American cause was sure to fail and making glittering promises of reward for those who should join the cause of the King.
One of the agents visited the valleys of the Allegheny Mountains in what is now Blair County, but then was a part of Bedford. He was successful in deluding a considerable band of ignorant frontiersmen by the most despicable methods.
This rascal held out to these mountaineers a vision of wholesale plunder and carnage on the property of their patriot neighbors. His appeals were made only to the vicious, who were promised if they would organize and join a force of British and Indians coming down the Allegheny Valley in the spring they would be permitted to participate in a general onslaught on the settlements and would receive their share of the pillage and, in addition to this, they should each receive grants for the lands of the rebel neighbors to the extent of 300 acres each, wherever they should select.
One of the men who entered into this despicable plot afterward confessed that it was the design to slaughter the peaceable inhabitants without mercy—men, women and children—and seize their property and lands.
In the northern part of Blair County is a deep valley called Sinking Spring Valley. It is still a wild and romantic country, but 150 years ago was singularly desolate and lonely and seemed a fitting place for the meeting of such conspirators as had been enlisted in this cruel Tory plot.
In Sinking Spring Valley the tory band held its gatherings during February and March, 1778. Many of the plotters were from the frontier settlement of Frankstown, near what is now Hollidaysburg. The leader was John Weston, a bold, lawless man, half farmer, half hunter, half civilized, who lived with his wife and brother, Richard, in a crude mountain cabin.
The British agent, having thoroughly enlisted Weston in the murderous enterprise, returned up the Allegheny, promising to be at Kittanning about the middle of April, with 300 Indians and white men, there to meet his mountain friends and with them swoop down on the other settlements, and make all of his partisans weary under the burden of their rich plunder.
Weston furthered the propaganda and enlisted thirty of his neighbors in the adventure. Alarming intelligence of the Tory plans leaked out, reached the larger settlement of Standing Stone, now Huntingdon, where it was reported that a thousand Indians and Tories were about to fall on the frontier.
A stockade had been built at Standing Stone, but its garrison never consisted of more than a score of green militiamen, and there was a general flight of the terrified people from the upper valley of the Juniata toward Carlisle and York.
The band of plotters was joined, about April 1, by a man named McKee, of Carlisle. He had been in communication with a British officer, who was confined in Carlisle, with other prisoners of war. He gave McKee a letter addressed to all British officers, vouching for the loyalty of McKee and his associates. This letter was to be used in securing protection and a welcome for the Sinking Spring Valley Tories when they should meet with the British and Indians on their flight to the Allegheny.
At the appointed time word reached the valley that a large force of Indians had gathered at Kittanning. The last meeting of the plotters was held April 10, in the forest, and thirty-one took the oath of allegiance and pledged themselves to follow Weston.
On the following morning, at the break of day they began their march over the mountains. In the afternoon of the second day they had come within a few miles of their intended destination, when they encountered a band of about 100 Iroquois Indians. The savages burst suddenly out of the thicket in full war paint.
John Weston sprang forward, waving his hand and crying out, “Friends! Friends!” The Indians were not in the British conspiracy, but were bent on a plundering raid on their own account and regarded Weston and his armed companions as a hostile party.
The Indian chieftain fired at Weston, and the Tory leader fell dead. His startled and horrified followers halted in dread astonishment. Another of the savages sprang forward and, before the ignorant borderers could recover from their surprise, tore the scalp from Weston’s head.
At this point McKee rushed out, holding aloft in one hand a white handkerchief and in the other hand the letter from the British officer at Carlisle, and called out to the Indians: “Brothers! Brothers!” The savages did not respond. Almost as suddenly as they appeared they vanished into the undergrowth, leaving the bewildered mountaineers alone with their dead and scalped leader. Weston was buried where he fell.
The Tories feared to go forward and even more to return to their homes. They held a consultation, when some declared their intention to return to Bedford County, but others feared arrest and determined they would seek safety elsewhere.
Hard was the fate of this company. Some of them wandered in the forests and perished from hunger. Some of them made their way to the southward, and reached British posts after great suffering. Five of them returned to their homes in Sinking Spring Valley and were seized by the aroused frontiersmen and lodged in the log jail at Bedford.
Richard Weston, brother of the slain leader, was caught near his home by a party of settlers going to work in the lead mines there, and he was sent under guard to Carlisle. Weston confessed the whole plot, but claimed he had been misled by his older brother. He escaped from prison before his trial, so his taint of treason was hardly to be blamed on his brother.
The Supreme Executive Council ordered a special court to try the prisoners at Bedford. It held two sessions in the fall of 1778 and spring of 1779, with General John Armstrong, of Carlisle, as president. The court failed to convict any of the defendants on the charge of high treason. The leaders were either dead or out of the country, and the few men brought before the court seemed to be sufficiently punished by their imprisonment and the contempt of their neighbors.
Those who fled away were tainted with treason and their estates were declared forfeited.
Captain John Brady, Noted Hero, Killed by
Indians April 11, 1779
Captain John Brady was foremost in all the expeditions that went out from the West Branch of the Susquehanna settlements, and his untimely death, April 11, 1779, was the worst blow ever inflicted upon the distressed settlers.
John Brady, second son of Hugh and Hannah Brady was born in 1733, near Newark, Delaware. He came with his parents to Pennsylvania, married Mary Quigley, when he was twenty-two years old, and soon thereafter enlisted in the French and Indian War. On July 19, 1763, he was commissioned captain and assigned to the Second Battalion of the Pennsylvania Regiment, commanded by Governor John Penn and Lieutenant[Lieutenant] Colonels Turbutt Francis and Asher Clayton.
The following year his command was with Colonel Henry Bouquet on his expedition west of the Ohio, and was actively engaged against the Indians who made terrible slaughter in Bedford and Cumberland Counties.
Captain Brady was one of the officers who received land grants from the Proprietaries, and, in 1768, he removed his family to Standing Stone, now Huntingdon. The following year he changed his residence to a site opposite the present town of Lewisburg. He was a land surveyor and his note books furnish much valuable land data.
In 1776 Brady removed to Muncy Manor, where he built a semi-fortified log house, known later as Fort Brady. It was in what is now the borough of Muncy, and was a private affair but was classed among the provincial fortifications.
In December, 1775, when Colonel William Plunket made his famous expedition to the Wyoming Valley, Captain John Brady was one of his ablest assistants. When the Twelfth Regiment of the Continental Line was organized under command of Colonel William Cooke, September 28, 1776, Captain Brady was one of the original captains. Two of Captain Brady’s sons married daughters of Colonel Cooke.
At the Battle of Brandywine the Twelfth was engaged under General John Sullivan and was cut to pieces in the desperate fighting near the Birmingham Meeting House. Captain John Brady was among those seriously wounded, and his son, John, a lad of only fifteen, who had come like David of old, with supplies for the camp and had remained for the battle, was also wounded, and only saved from capture by the act of his colonel in throwing the boy upon a horse when the troops retreated. So fierce was the fighting that every officer in Captain Brady’s company was killed or wounded, together with most of his men.
Captain Brady was given a leave of absence while the army was in winter quarters at Valley Forge, and during this time was at his home at Fort Brady. When the Indians became so troublesome between the North and West Branch Valleys, he removed his family to Sunbury, and September 1, 1778 returned to the army. He served for a time with Colonel Daniel Brodhead’s regiment at Fort Pitt.
James Brady, Captain John’s second son, who was himself a militia captain, was mortally wounded August 8, 1778, while he was working in the field near Fort Muncy. Young Brady survived his frightful wound for five days and died at Sunbury in the arms of his mother, an heroic pioneer woman.
Captain John Brady had taken such an active part in the efforts of the settlers to subdue the Indian atrocities[atrocities], and his daring and repeated endeavors had so intensified their hatred, that they determined his capture above all other efforts.
April 11, 1779, Captain Brady went up the river some distance to procure supplies for those in the fort, and he took with him a wagon, team and guard, and was in charge of the party. They secured the supplies and were returning in the afternoon, Captain Brady astride a fine mare. Within a short distance of the fort, where the road forked, he was riding a little distance in the rear of the team and guard, and engaged in conversation with Peter Smith, who was walking. He determined that they would not follow the team, but would take another and shorter road to the fort. They rode and walked along together until they reached a small run where the same roads again joined. Brady observed, “This would be a good place for Indians to secrete themselves.” Smith replied “yes.” That instant three rifles cracked and Brady fell.
The mare ran toward Smith, who grabbed her and threw himself upon her back and in a few moments reached the fort.
The people in the fort heard the rifle shots and, seeing Smith on the mare coming at full speed, all rushed out to learn the fate of Captain Brady. Mrs. Brady led those of the party in reaching Smith’s side. Smith told them, “Brady is in heaven or hell or on his way to Tioga,” meaning that he was either killed or taken prisoner. Those in the fort ran to the spot and soon found the captain lying on the ground, his scalp and rifle gone; but the Indians had been in too much haste to take his watch or shot-pouch.
Samuel, known as “Old Sam,” Brady happened to be at the fort when Captain John Brady was killed, and it was he who rushed out, followed by some of the garrison, and bore his brother’s body into the fort.
Thus perished one of the most skilled and daring Indians fighters, on whose sterling qualities and sound judgment the pioneers so much depended.
His remains are interred in the old graveyard near Halls, where a heavy granite marker was erected bearing the inscription:
Captain John Brady
Fell in defense of our forefathers
at Wolf Run, April 11, 1779.
Aged 46 years.
One hundred years after his death funds for a monument were raised by public subscription and $1600 secured, and on October 15, 1879, the shaft was unveiled in Muncy cemetery. The oration was delivered by the Hon. John Blair Linn, in the presence of an immense concourse made up of military and patriotic organizations and thousands of citizens, including several hundred of the Brady family.
General Abner Lacock, United States Senator
and Distinguished Citizen, Died in
Beaver County, April 12, 1837
In the Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States published in 1876, appears the following brief notice of a once prominent citizen of Pennsylvania:
“Abner Lacock, born in Virginia, in 1770. Without the advantage of much early education, he raised himself by his talents to eminence as a legislator, statesman and civilian. He filled various public stations for a period of nearly forty years; was a Representative in Congress from Pennsylvania from 1811 to 1813, and United States Senator from 1813 to 1819. He died in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, April 12, 1837.”
A search for further information concerning one of whom so little is known by the public, but who was honored with the highest offices in the gift of his neighbors and of the whole people of our State, reveals many interesting details and important events in the life of this man.
Abner Lacock was popularly known as General Lacock. He was born in Cobs Run, near Alexandria, Virginia, July 9, 1770. His father was a native of England, and his mother a native of France. The father emigrated to Washington County, Pennsylvania, while Abner was quite young, and settled on a farm.
In 1796 Abner removed to the town of Beaver, then in Allegheny County, and was one of the first settlers in that neighborhood.
His public career commenced almost immediately after his settlement at Beaver. On September 19, 1796, he was commissioned by Governor Thomas Mifflin a justice of the peace for Pitt Township, Allegheny County. This appointment made him the first public official within the present limits of Beaver County, which was formed out of parts of Allegheny and Washington Counties, March 12, 1800.
In his first office Lacock evinced such a natural strength of mind and sound intelligence that he was elected in 1801, the first Representative to the State Legislature from Beaver County, which post he filled until 1803, when he was commissioned the first associate judge for the new county, but he resigned at the end of the year to again enter the Legislature. The first session of court was held in Abner Lacock’s house, February 6, 1804.
After serving four successive terms in the House, in 1808, he was elected to the Senate, representing Allegheny, Beaver and Butler Counties in the upper body of the Pennsylvania Legislature with marked ability.
The War of 1812 with the agitation which preceded it brought him into the larger field of national politics. In 1810 he was elected by the people of his district as the “War Candidate” to Congress, when he showed such qualities of leadership that in 1813 the Legislature of his State with great unanimity elected him a Senator of the United States. He served in the House during the Twelfth Congress and in the Senate in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Congresses.
General Lacock was a warm friend of Madison and Monroe, and a bitter enemy of Andrew Jackson. In his later years he was an Adams and Henry Clay Whig.
On December 18, 1818, a select committee of five members was appointed in the Senate of the United States, to investigate the conduct of General Andrew Jackson in connection with the Seminole War. Of this committee Senator Lacock was chairman, and author of the report made February 24, 1819, which severely arraigned Jackson with the violation of the Constitution and International Laws.
This action of the committee made Jackson and his friends furious, he threatening members of the committee with personal violence. Lacock was unafraid and wrote frequently about Jackson’s boasting only in public, and that he should never avoid him a single inch.
The clash never came, and they left the capital on the same day, and in the same public conveyance.
General Lacock was one of the most active promoters of internal improvements in the State of Pennsylvania. Soon after his term in the United States Senate had ceased, he entered heartily[heartily] into the scheme for uniting the waters of the Delaware and the Ohio by a State line of Canals and railroads. On April 11, 1825, he was appointed one of five commissioners to make a complete survey of the route for the contemplated improvements[improvements].
On February 25, 1826, the Legislature authorized the commencement of the work on the canal. General Lacock was chosen to supervise the construction of the Western division of the canal from Pittsburgh to Johnstown.
The first canal boat built or run west of the Allegheny Mountains was named the “General Abner Lacock.” It was built at Apollo by Philip Dally.
Later General Lacock repeatedly served Beaver County in the State Legislature, and in 1836 was appointed to survey and construct the Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal, known as the “cross-cut canal,” connecting the Erie division of the Pennsylvania Canal with the Portsmouth and Ohio Canal, contracting in its service in that year his last illness.
Besides those named, General Lacock held, or was offered many other positions of high public trust, both in this and other states.
Abner Lacock obtained the title of General in the early part of his public career while serving as an officer of the Pennsylvania militia. As early as 1807 he was a brigadier general, commanding a brigade in the counties of Beaver and Butler.
General Lacock was the friend and earnest champion of the common school system, which when first proposed was very unpopular in Pennsylvania. His library was one of the largest in Western Pennsylvania, and was partially destroyed by a flood in the Ohio River in 1832.
General Lacock was of medium height and well proportioned. He was strong and athletic. He was the father of a large family, but there are no living male descendants of this distinguished citizen.
He died at his residence, near Freedom, on Wednesday morning, April 12, 1837, after a long and painful illness.
Family of Richard Bard Captured by Indians
April 13, 1758
During the French and Indian War of 1755–58, the barrier of the South Mountain shielded the settlers of York County, from the savage incursions that desolated the Cumberland Valley and other parts of the frontier of Pennsylvania. Yet occasionally a party more daring than the rest would push across the mountain and murder or carry defenseless families into captivity.
An affecting instance of this kind was the captivity of Richard Bard, which is narrated in detail by his son, the late Archibald Bard, of Franklin County.
Richard Bard owned and resided near a mill, which was later known as Marshall’s Mill, on the Carroll tract, in now Adams County.
On the morning of April 13, 1758, his house was invested by a party of nineteen Delaware Indians, who were discovered by a little girl named Hannah McBride. She was at the door and when they approached she screamed and ran into the house, where were Richard Bard and his wife, a child six months old, a bound boy, and a relative of the Bards, Lieutenant Thomas Potter, a brother of General James Potter.
The Indians rushed into the house, and one of them, with a large cutlass in his grasp, made a blow at Potter, who wrested it from the savage. Mr. Bard laid hold of a pistol that hung on the wall and snapped it at the breast of one of the Indians, but there being tow in the pan it did not fire, but the Indians ran out of the house.
The savages were numerous and there was no ammunition in the Bard home, and fearing a slaughter or being burned alive, those inside surrendered, as the Indians promised no harm would befall them. The Indians went to a field and made prisoners of Samuel Hunter, Daniel McManimy, and a lad named William White, who was coming to the mill.
Having secured the prisoners the Indians plundered the house and set fire to the mill. About seventy rods from the house, contrary to their promises, they put to death Thomas Potter; and having proceeded on the mountain three or four miles, one of the Indians sunk the spear of his tomahawk into the breast of the small child, and after repeated blows scalped it.
The prisoners were taken over the mountain past McCord’s fort, into the Path Valley, where they encamped for the night. The second day the Indians discovered a party of white men in pursuit, on which they hastened the pace of their prisoners, under threat of being tomahawked.
When they reached the top of the Tuscarora Mountain, they sat down to rest, when an Indian, without any previous warning, sunk a tomahawk into the forehead of Samuel Hunter, who was seated next to Richard Bard, killed and scalped him.
Passing over Sideling Hill, and the Allegheny Mountains, by Blair’s Gap, they encamped beyond Stony Creek. Here Bard’s head had been painted red on one side only, denoting that a council has been held, and an equal number were for killing him, and for saving his life, and that his fate would be determined at the next council.
While Mr. and Mrs. Bard were engaged together in plucking a turkey, the former told his wife of his design to escape. Some of the Indians were asleep, and one was amusing the others by dressing himself in Mrs. Bard’s gown. Bard was sent to the spring for water and contrived to escape, while his wife kept the Indians amused with the gown.
The Indians made an unsuccessful search for Bard, and proceeded to Fort Duquesne, then twenty miles down the Ohio River to Kuskusky, in what is now Butler County.
Here Mrs. Bard and two boys and girls were compelled to run the gauntlet, and were beaten in an unmerciful manner. It was at this place that Daniel McManimy was put to death. The Indians formed themselves into a circle round the prisoner, and beat him with sticks and tomahawks, then tied him to a post, and after more torturing he was scalped alive, a gun barrel was heated and passed over his body, and he was pierced in the body until he was relieved from further torture by death.
Mrs. Bard was taken from the other prisoners and led from place to place, until she was finally adopted into the tribe by two Indian men, to take the place of a deceased sister.
She was next taken to the headwaters of the Susquehanna, and during this journey she suffered much from fatigue and illness. She lay two months in this doleful situation, with none to comfort or sympathize with her, a blanket her only covering, and boiled corn her only food.
She met with a woman who had been in captivity several years and was married to an Indian. She told Mrs. Bard that soon as she could speak the Delaware tongue she would be obliged to marry one of the Indians or be put to death. She then resolved not to learn the language. She was kept in captivity two years and five months, during which time she was treated with much kindness by her adopted relations.
Richard Bard suffered extreme hardships in effecting his escape and return to his home, traveling over mountains thick with laurel and briers and covered with snow. His feet were sore, his clothes wet and frozen and he was often exhausted and ready to lie down and perish for want of food. His food during a journey of nine days was a few buds and four snakes, when he reached Fort Littleton, in now Bedford County.
After this he did but little else than wander from place to place in quest of information respecting his wife. He made several perilous journeys to Fort Duquesne, in which he narrowly escaped capture several times. He at length learned she was at Fort Augusta, at Shamokin, and redeemed her.
Before the Bards departed from Shamokin, Richard Bard requested the Indian, who was the adopted brother of his wife, to visit them at their home. Accordingly, some time afterwards the Indian paid them a visit, when the Bards were living about ten miles from Chambersburg.
The Indian remained there for some time and one day went to McCormack’s tavern and became intoxicated, when he fell into a brawl with a rough named Newgen, who stabbed the Indian in the neck. Newgen escaped the wrath of the settlers by fleeing the neighborhood. The Indian was attended by a physician and recovered, being nursed back to health by his adopted sister, Mrs. Richard Bard.
When he returned to his own people he was put to death on the pretext of having, as they said, joined the white people.
Bounties for Scalps of Indians Proclaimed
April 14, 1756
After Braddock’s defeat, the protection of the frontiers of Pennsylvania being left to the inhabitants themselves, they rapidly formed companies, designated their own officers and received commissions from Lieutenant Governor Morris.
It was thought that the Indians would do no mischief in Pennsylvania until they could draw all the others out of the province and away from the Susquehanna. But the Delaware and Shawnee had been ravaging in the neighborhood of Fort Cumberland on both sides of the Potomac. In the middle of October, 1755, occurred the terrible massacres of John Penn’s Creek, at the mouth of Mahanoy Creek, and when the Great and Little Coves were destroyed. Shortly after occurred the massacres at Tulpehocken and other places.
When any Indians of the Delaware or Shawnee Nations were discovered they were found in their war paint. These were under the command of Chief Shingass.
These incursions aroused the Quakers, and November 7, 1775, an address signed by Anthony Morris and twenty-two other Quakers was presented to the Assembly, expressing willingness to contribute toward the exigencies of government. But the Assembly and the Executive still fought over the tax bill.
At this juncture Scarouady went to Philadelphia and demanded to know if the people of Pennsylvania intended to fight, yes or no. The Governor explained to the chieftain how the Assembly and he could not agree.
Scarouady, who had suffered defeat with Braddock and remained a firm friend of the English, with many other Indians went to Shamokin to live, or at least hunt, during the ensuing season.
Governor Morris sent Scarouady to the Six Nations to report the conduct of the Delawares. While he was on this mission the Delaware destroyed Gnadenhutten, in Northampton County, and the farm houses between that place and Nazareth were burned January 1, 1756.
Benjamin Franklin, as Commissioner, then marched with several companies and built Fort Allen.
The Delaware, forcing even John Shikellamy to go against the English, sent representatives to the Six Nations to justify their conduct, but were condemned and ordered to desist.
When Lieutenant Governor Morris heard this chastisement given the Delaware, and seeing that it so far had not deterred the enemy, he determined to meet barbarity with barbarity, and gave a hatchet to Scarouady, as a declaration of war against the Delaware, and obtained an offer in writing from Commissioners Fox, Hamilton, Morgan, Mifflin and Hughes to pay rewards for Indian prisoners.
Governor Morris issued a proclamation April 14, 1756, offering such bounties that he hoped would incite not only the soldiers and more venturesome of the inhabitants, but which would also alarm those Indians who still remained friendly to the English.
The proclamation contains the following provisions:
“For every male Indian enemy above twelve years old, who shall be taken prisoner and delivered at any fort, garrisoned by the troops in pay of this Province, or at any of the county towns to the keepers of the common jail there, the sum of 150 Spanish dollars or pieces of eight; for the scalp of every male enemy above the age of twelve years, produced to evidence of their being killed the sum of 130 pieces of eight; for every female Indian taken prisoner and brought in as aforesaid, and for every male Indian prisoner under the age of twelve years, taken and brought in as aforesaid, 130 pieces of eight; for the scalp of every Indian woman, produced as evidence of their being killed, the sum of fifty pieces of eight, and for every English subject that has been killed and carried from this Province into captivity that shall be recovered and brought in and delivered at the City of Philadelphia, to the Governor of this Province, the sum of 130 pieces of eight, but nothing for their scalps; and that there shall be paid to every officer or soldier as are or shall be in the pay of the Province who shall redeem and deliver any English subject carried into captivity as aforesaid, or shall take, bring in and produce any enemy prisoner, or scalp as aforesaid, one-half of the said several and respective premiums and bounties.”
This proclamation gave great offense to the Assembly, but not to the population, especially those who lived in the counties distant from Philadelphia. The times were perilous, and the bounties were absolutely necessary to secure better protection of the borders. To the credit of the hardy and brave frontier pioneers of Pennsylvania be it said no Indian was wantonly killed for the sake of the reward.
Robert Morris resigned the office of Lieutenant Governor he had held during these stirring years, and on August 20, 1756, William Denny arrived from England, and superseded him. Governor Denny was well educated and held in high favor at Court. His advent here was hailed with joy by the Assembly, who flattered themselves that with a change of the executives at this time there would come a change of such measures as had caused their enmity with his predecessors. Upon his assumption of the office and making known the Proprietary instructions, to which he stated he was compelled to adhere, all friendly feeling was at an end, and there was a renewal of the old discord.
Before Governor Morris resigned as Lieutenant Governor he had concerted with Colonel John Armstrong an expedition against the strong Indian town of Kittanning, on the Allegheny River.
Theatrical Performances Begun in State
April 15, 1754
The amusements of the young people were for many years of the simplest and most innocent kind. Riding, swimming and skating afforded pleasant outdoor sport.
Yearly Meeting, in 1716, advised Friends against “going to or being in any way concerned in plays, games, lotteries, music and dancing.” In 1719 advice was given “that such be dealt with as run races, either on horseback or on foot, laying wagers, or use any gaming or needless and vain sport and pastimes, for our time passeth swiftly away, and our pleasure and delight ought to be in the law of the Lord.”
Various early laws of the Province prohibited stage plays and amusements, not only bull-baiting, bear-baiting and cock-fighting, but such as were neither immoral nor cruel, as bowls, billiards and quoits.
Macauley said of the Puritans that they opposed bear-baiting “not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”
Quaker legislation as to games was, indeed, scarcely stricter than Henry VIII’s, but Quakerism discountenanced excitement.
In 1723 a wandering showman arrived in Philadelphia and set up a stage just below South Street, where he was outside the jurisdiction of the City Corporation. At the desire of the Quaker Assemblymen, the Speaker, Joseph Growdon, on March 30, asked Lieutenant Governor Keith to prohibit any performance. This he declined to do, but promised that good order should be kept.
So the actor issued his playbills and gave what is supposed to have been the first entertainment in Pennsylvania that might be called theatrical.
As the man who entertained by his “Comical Humour” in April, 1724, called himself the audience’s “Old friend Pickle Herring,” he may be presumed to have been the owner of both shows. In 1724, he introduced the “Roap-Dancing” as “newly arrived.” The rope-walkers were a lad of seven years and a woman. There was also a woman who would spin around rapidly for a quarter of an hour with seven or eight swords pointed at her eyes, mouth and breast. Governor Keith himself attended one or more of these performances.
Small shows now, from time to time, made their appearance. In 1727, “The Lion, King of Beasts,” was advertised to be exhibited on Water Street.
The Quakers and rigid Presbyterians, who in the early days frowned down dancing and other “frivolous amusements,” could not be expected to countenance the introduction of the drama in Philadelphia. So when Murray and Kean’s company of Thespians made their appearance in 1749 they were not permitted to make a long stay, but were ordered off as soon as the worthy rulers of the city’s morals realized the fact that their entertainments possessed irresistible attractions. So Murray and Kean went to New York and for five years the Philadelphians did not see a play.
In August, 1749, mention is made of the tragedy of Cato being acted; but January 8, 1750, attention being called to some persons having lately taken upon themselves to act plays, and intending “to make a frequent practice thereof,” the City Council asked the magistrates to suppress the same.
In the year 1753 Lewis Hallam’s English company, after traveling a year in the Southern colonies and performing in various places in Virginia and Maryland, went to New York, where they opened their theatre in the month of September. The report of the great success of their talented actors awakened a desire among the more liberal-minded Philadelphians that Hallam should visit the Quaker City.
On April 15, 1754, they gave their first performance in the large brick warehouse of William Plumstead, situated in King or Water Street, between Pine and Lombard Streets. This house remained standing until 1849, when it was pulled down.
The opening piece was the tragedy of “The Fair Penitent,” followed by the farce “Miss in Her Teens.”
Mr. Rigby spoke a prologue and Mrs. Hallam an epilogue written for the occasion, in which, after defending the stage from the accusation of sinfulness and alluding to the effect produced by the tragedy upon the audience, she asked:
“If then the soul in Virtue’s cause we move
Why should the friends of Virtue disapprove?”
This temporary theatre was neatly fitted up and opened to a full house. The license was for twenty-four nights but this number was extended to thirty, and the theatre closed June 24 after having had a brilliant and profitable season. One of the performances was given for the benefit of the charity school.
Hallam’s company came back to Philadelphia in 1759 to occupy a permanent theatre erected for them in Southwark, at the corner of Cedar (or South) and Vernon Streets, on Society Hill.
This theatre was opened June 25, 1759, but either because the house was too small and not well equipped or because of discouraging opposition the company only played in it one season. They remained away five years.
On their return a new house, much larger than the first one, was built at the corner of South and Apollo Streets. This new theatre was opened November 12, 1766.
It was in this theatre and by “The American Company” that the first play by an American author performed on any regular stage was given April 24, 1767. This was “The Prince of Porthia,” by Thomas Godfrey, Jr., of Philadelphia.
The American Company played at this theatre several seasons. The theatre remained closed from the beginning of the Revolutionary War until it was opened by the British officers during their occupancy of the city, 1777–78.
These amateur performers gave regular plays, the proceeds going to widows and orphan children of the soldiers. The ill-fated Major Andre and Captain Delancy painted the scenes and other decorations. The curtain, representing a waterfall scene, the work of young Andre, remained in use until the theatre was destroyed by fire May 9, 1823.
After the return of the Continental Congress the Legislature of Pennsylvania legislated against theatrical performances. No plays were given until 1789, when a petition signed by 1900 citizens, asking the repeal of the prohibiting provision relating to theatres, was presented to the Legislature. The religious community presented a petition signed by more than 1000 citizens as a remonstrance against the repeal.
The restrictive portion of the act was repealed and Hallam and Henry opened the Southwark Theatre January 6, 1790, with “The Rivals” and “The Critic.”
The season was unusually brilliant, and the theatre in Philadelphia and elsewhere throughout Pennsylvania has since been popular.
Tedyuskung, Indian Chieftain, Burns to
Death in Cabin, April 16, 1763
Tedyuskung was made king of the Delaware nation in the spring of 1756, and from that date until his untimely death this great Indian chieftain exerted a most powerful influence throughout the entire Province of Pennsylvania.
The name is of Munsee dialect, and signifies “the healer,” or “one who cures wounds, bruises, etc.”
He was one of the most famous and crafty of the Delaware chiefs during the period of discussion of the Indian claims, following the sale of the lands along the Delaware and Susquehanna to the Proprietors of Pennsylvania by the Iroquois.
Tedyuskung was born at the present site of Trenton, N.J., about 1705, and died April 16, 1763. Nothing is known of his life before the time he first appears as an historic character, prior to which he was known as “Honest John.”
When about fifty years old he was chosen chief of the Delaware on the Susquehanna, and from that time wielded a potent influence, although he occupied a peculiar position.
Sir William Johnson, of New York, was a zealous friend of the Iroquois, while Conrad Weiser and George Croghan, of Pennsylvania, were strongly prejudiced against the Delaware and Shawnee. The problem which the Provincial Government of Pennsylvania had to solve was how to keep peace with the Iroquois and at the same time prevent the Delaware and the Shawnee who were then becoming independent of the Iroquois, from going over to the French.
The Delaware were conscious they had been unjustly deprived of their lands by the Pennsylvania authorities, aided by the Iroquois. They had been driven from the Delaware to the Susquehanna, and many had been forced even as far west as the Ohio, and now that France and England had commenced to struggle for the possession of that region the Delaware felt they were to be again driven from their home. They were revolting not only against the English, but against their masters, the Iroquois.
At this critical time, when the border settlements in Western Pennsylvania were being ravaged by hostile bands of Delaware and Shawnee, and when the English were making preparations for an expedition to take Fort Duquesne, Tedyuskung took his stand as a friend of the English.
Christian Frederic Post had been sent on a mission to the Ohio Indians, and Conrad Weiser and others were working to retain the friendship of these Indians. The many squatters along the Juniata River and the illegal sale of land at Wyoming made by the Mohawk to the Connecticut settlers complicated the situation and made the work of these emissaries much more difficult and trying. Then the Indians who had been in conference at Albany in 1754, found when they returned home that lands had been sold to the Proprietors which they did not comprehend.
Washington suffered defeat at Fort Necessity and this was followed by the terrible Braddock disaster; which with the evil effects of the rum traffic among the Indians and the almost total neglect by the Province of Pennsylvania had almost entirely alienated them from the English cause.
Then began the several attempts to win them back, but the passage of the Scalp Act and the declaration of war against the Delaware caused this tribe to rise in rebellion against the Province and also against their hated title of “women,” given them by the Iroquois.
Such was the situation when the great council was called at Easton, July, 1756, at which Tedyuskung appeared as the champion of the Delaware. Governor Morris opened the council with a speech, in which he warmly welcomed the chief. Tedyuskung replied: “The Delaware are no longer the slaves of the Six Nations. I, Tedyuskung, have been appointed King over the Five United Nations. What I do here will be approved by all. This is a good day. I wish the same good that possessed the good old man, William Penn, who was a friend of the Indian, may inspire the people of the Province at this time.”
The first session was followed by a grand feast and reception, during which King Tedyuskung and Chief Newcastle were sent to give the “big peace halloo” to the Indians and invite them to a larger conference, which was held at a later time.
Tedyuskung left Easton, but loitered about Fort Allen, where he became drunk and disorderly, and so incensed Lieutenant Miller that the whole outcome of the peace conference was, for a time, endangered.
During this drunken spree Tedyuskung was blamed for having dealings with the French, but no evidence was produced to prove the charges; yet Governor Morris dispatched Chief Newcastle to Sir William Johnson to learn if the Iroquois had deputized Tedyuskung to act for them. This they denied.
Then followed endless discussions in Provincial Council. Governor Morris had been succeeded by Governor Denny, who went to the council at Easton, July, 1757, under a heavy guard. Tedyuskung, in his opening speech, said: “I am sorry for what our people have done. I have gone among our people pleading for peace. If it cost me my life I would do it.”
Tedyuskung demanded a clerk at this Easton Council on threat of leaving, and he was assigned such official. While Tedyuskung was drunk each night, he appeared at council each morning with a clear head and was the equal of any in debate.
This second Easton council determined upon a general peace and Tedyuskung promised to see that their white prisoners were all returned. He then went to Fort Allen, where he and his warriors had a drunken frolic. Conrad Weiser says of him at this time: “Though he is a drunkard and a very irregular man, yet he is a man that can think well, and I believe him to be sincere in what he said.”
A fourth council was held at Easton in October, 1758, when Post had returned from his Western mission. Land disputes again became a principal topic, and Tedyuskung was discredited by the Iroquois, who attempted to destroy his influence with the Provincial Government. They even left the council when he spoke, but the old King won out and the council finally ended in a treaty of peace.
In 1762 the Governor offered Tedyuskung £400 as a present if he would withdraw his charges of fraud in the “Walking Purchase,” and he accepted the bribe.
After all the dealing with the Governors and councils of Pennsylvania, and his personal controversies with the enemy tribes, this last of the chiefs of the eastern Delaware traveled from Philadelphia to his home at Wyoming, and on the night of April 16, 1763, his house was set on fire while he lay on his couch in a drunken debauch and he was burned to death in the flames. The perpetrators of this crime were either Seneca or Mohawk.
He was the most virile chief of the Delaware nation during the years of their subjugation to the Iroquois. His efforts for peace did much to win the Ohio region from the French.
A monument to Tedyuskung has been erected in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia.
Lottery for Union Canal for $400,000 Authorized
by Legislature, April 17, 1795
By the act of April 17, 1795, the president and managers of the Schuykill and Susquehanna Navigation, and the president and managers of the Delaware and Schuykill Canal Navigation, were authorized to raise by means of a lottery, a sum of $400,000 for the purpose of completing the works cited in their acts of incorporation, under a prohibition that neither of them should form the same into capital stock, upon which to declare a dividend of profits.
An Act Passed March 4, 1807, authorized the said companies to raise their respective sums separately, subject to the prohibition as to dividends.
The two companies were consolidated by act of April 2, 1811 into a corporation known as the Union Canal Company of Pennsylvania. The new company was authorized to raise money by loan to complete the canal and to use the proceeds of the lotteries already authorized, and by the twenty-eighth section of the act authority was given to raise the residue of the original sum equal to $340,000 by a lottery.
By the act of March 29, 1819 the proceeds of the above lottery were pledged as a fund for the payment of an annual interest of 6 per cent upon the stock of the company.
By these and subsequent acts it appears that the lottery grants were given in the first instance, to the two companies, and afterwards continued to the Union Canal Company to aid and encourage the construction and completion of a canal and lock navigation uniting the waters of the Susquehanna and Schuylkill.
In consequence of these lottery grants, individuals were induced to invest their funds in the furtherance of the work, and loans to the amount of $830,400 were made upon the credit of the capital stock and the profits of the lotteries.
The Union Canal Company entered into contracts for the conduct of these lotteries, the last one, October 6, 1824, for five years, which expired December 31, 1829.
There was much sentiment against these lotteries and as there were laws in force for suppressing and preventing lotteries, there was objection made when the extension of this lottery was brought to the General Assembly. The Committee on Ways and Means, February 9, 1828, reported that it was inexpedient to resume the lottery grants to the Union Canal Company at this time and further resolved, “that the committee be instructed to bring in a bill to regulate lottery brokers, and to restrain the sale of lottery tickets within this Commonwealth.”
For more than half a century after the founding of the Province, Pennsylvania was dominated by the Quakers, who were constantly opposed to all games of chance. At the very first meeting of the Assembly, at Chester, in 1682, an act was passed against cards, dice, lotteries, etc. This and similar acts were annulled by the English Government.
Although lotteries were not legally prohibited only one lottery appears to have been drawn during the next several decades. In 1720 a Mr. Reed by means of a lottery of 350 tickets, which were sold for twenty shillings each, disposed of a new brick house and several lots in Philadelphia.
In 1730 lotteries were prohibited under a penalty of £100, half of which was to go to the Governor, and half to the party bringing suit.
It seems probable that the Provincial Assembly authorized lotteries by special legislation for at least two lotteries had the official sanction of the Philadelphia Council; one in 1747, for the fortification of the City, the other a year later for street paving. From this time until the passage of the anti-lottery act of 1762, lotteries increased in number.
During this period lotteries were drawn for the college, academy and charitable school of Philadelphia, to complete the Episcopal Church, etc.
The act of 1762 proved to be effective in limiting the number and purposes for which lotteries might be established. Between 1762 and 1796, there were only twenty-three lotteries in Pennsylvania. Of these six were private, eight were for public use and nine for the erection of church buildings, in which twenty-one churches were concerned.
With the establishment of the Federal Government the financial condition of the country rapidly improved. With the gradual growth of population, and rapid development of business, came increased demands for new churches, schools, public buildings and improved transportation. To meet these public needs the regular revenue was insufficient and to avoid an abnormal increase in taxation, petitions were presented to the Legislature for the privilege of establishing public or semi-public lotteries.
The Legislature rejected all requests for lotteries, except when some important purpose was to be served. Only one lottery was authorized in 1790, for the erection of a Jewish synagogue; none then until 1795, when one was granted the Aaronsburg Town Lottery, in now Center County, and the other was to aid in opening the canal navigation between the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Rivers.
From 1796 to 1808 inclusive seventy-eight different lotteries were authorized.
The lottery of 1782 for the improvement of roads west of Philadelphia was managed as a state lottery. Others were county, city, borough and township schemes. Some were for erection of bridges, ferries and even improving creeks. One was for a garden and public bath in Philadelphia, one for the pay of soldiers in the French and Indian War; hospitals were also included, as were schools.
Many churches were built by means of lotteries and the newspapers of that period carried many advertisements, both from those authorized by the Pennsylvania Legislature and those of other States. It is estimated that at least fifty lotteries chartered by other States had agencies in Pennsylvania.
From 1747 to 1883 there were 176 separate lotteries. One single lottery, Union Canal lottery, awarded in prizes more than $33,000,000 between 1811 and December 31, 1833.
The State became flooded with local and foreign lottery tickets, and many memorials were presented to the Legislature against all form of lotteries, but they continued to thrive until December 31, 1833, when they were abolished by law, Pennsylvania taking the lead of all States in banishing lotteries.
Governor George Wolf said in a message to the General Assembly: “A more pernicious, ruinous and demoralizing evil can scarcely be imagined.”
First Northern Camp in Civil War
Established April 18, 1861
On April 18, 1861, Camp Curtin was regularly and formally established in the northwestern suburbs of Harrisburg. It was the first regular camp formed north of the Susquehanna in the loyal States, and before the end of the month twenty-five regiments were sent to the front from the counties of Pennsylvania.
The willing and prompt response to the call of President Lincoln and the appeal of Governor Curtin created immediately the necessity for a great rendezvous for the State’s troops. Harrisburg was the logical place for such a camp, for it had the advantage of being the seat of government and railroad lines extending in all directions.
The troops began to pour into Harrisburg so suddenly that temporary shelter was erected on all public grounds, within three days after the President’s call for volunteers.
Governor Curtin acted promptly in procuring accommodations[accommodations] for the troops, and on April 18 requested Captain E. C. Williams to take charge of the grounds controlled by the Dauphin County Agricultural Society, near the tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company on the east and less than a quarter of a mile from the Susquehanna on the west.
It was the original intention to call this rendezvous “Camp Union,” but Captain E. C. Williams, Captain J. P. Knipe and others very appropriately changed the name in honor of the patriotic and beloved Governor of Pennsylvania.
When the war broke out in all its suddenness, and Washington was cut off from the loyal States of the North by the riotous proceedings at Baltimore, there was an utter lack of military organization in Pennsylvania. The military system of the State had decayed and aside from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, there were very few military companies in the State fully armed and equipped. Of these only a few contained the minimum number of thirty-two men. But, as the appeal for men was disseminated through the towns and villages of the interior counties, the officers of such military companies as did exist very promptly rallied their men and tendered their services to the Governor.
Ringgold Light Artillery, Captain McKnight, of Reading; the Logan Guards, Captain Selheimer, of Lewistown; the Washington Artillery, Captain Wren, and the National Light Infantry, Captain McDonald, both of Pottsville, and the Allen Rifles, Captain Yeager, of Allentown, were the first to offer their services in an armed and disciplined condition for immediate action. When the Ringgold Light Artillery, numbering one hundred and two men, reached Harrisburg and word was sent to the Secretary of War of the presence of so strong a company at the State Capital, he at once telegraphed for its immediate presence in Washington, but for prudence the order was suppressed.
On the morning of the 18th, the day Camp Curtin was established, a detachment of Company H, Fourth United States Artillery, numbering fifty, arrived from the West, in command of Lieutenant Pemberton.
The five volunteer companies, first to report at Camp Curtin, were promptly mustered into the United States service by Captain, afterwards Colonel Seneca G. Simmons, of the Seventh United States Infantry, and the regulars, mentioned above, and these volunteers departed on the same train for Fort McHenry, to assist in the defense of Washington.
The volunteers marched through Baltimore, then filled with Southern sympathizers, ready and eager to obstruct their passage through the city. On leaving the cars at Bolton station to march to the Camden station, a battalion was formed. As the march began the Baltimore police appeared in large force, headed by Marshall Kane, followed by a mob, who at once attacked the volunteers and were countenanced by the police sent to give safe conduct through the city. The troops were ordered to maintain their discipline.
When in the center of the city, the regulars under Lieutenant Pemberton marched off toward Fort McHenry leaving the volunteers to pursue their march to Camden station. This seemed to be a signal to the mob, and at once the air was filled with flying missiles, while every species of oath and imprecation were flung at the volunteers as they marched forward. Not a man made a reply, but steadily, sternly, and undauntedly the five companies of Pennsylvanians moved over the cobble-stoned streets of the city. At every step the mob increased, but with unblanched faces and martial step the brave men never for one moment wavered, marching like veterans as the mob gave way before and around them as they forced their passage to the depot.
The mob believed that a portion of the Logan Guards carried loaded guns, because their half-cocked pieces displayed percussion caps, but in reality there was not a load of powder and ball in the entire five companies. Nevertheless, the feint of displaying the caps, which was done partly as a jest on leaving the cars at Bolton Station, saved the men from the bloody attack which was hurled the next day at the force of Massachusetts troops passing through the city. As it was, when the troops were boarding the cars at Camden station, the infuriated rabble who had dogged their steps, hurled bricks, stones, clubs and mud into their disorganized ranks, without, fortunately, injuring a single volunteer.
Attempts were made to throw the cars from the track, to detach the locomotive, and even to break the driving mechanism of the engine, all of which failed, and the train pulled out of the station amid the demoniac yells of the disappointed ruffians whose thirst for blood was now aroused to a savage fury.
The solicitude of Governor Curtin for the safe transportation of these troops through Baltimore was intense. He remained at the telegraph office in Harrisburg receiving dispatches which depicted the stirring scenes in the streets of Baltimore. When it was finally announced that the trains had passed out of reach of their assailants with the men safely aboard, he emphatically declared that not another Pennsylvania soldier should march through Baltimore unarmed, but fully prepared to defend himself.
At 7 o’clock in the evening of the eighteenth, the five Pennsylvania companies reached Washington, the first troops which arrived from any State to defend the National Capital. On July 22 Congress adopted a resolution commending these Pennsylvania volunteers for the gallantry displayed in passing through the Baltimore mob and reaching Washington so promptly. It is of interest to note that our own Pennsylvanian, Galusha A. Grow, was then Speaker of the House of Representatives and signed this resolution.
Training of Troops Began at Camp Curtin,
April 19, 1861
When the First Defenders departed from Camp Curtin and were the first troops which arrived at Washington from any State to defend the National Capital, the real activities of this famous training camp began.
Beginning on the morning of April 19 every inbound train brought troops to Harrisburg, and soon Camp Curtin was a hive of activity.
Eli Seifer, Secretary of the Commonwealth, assumed the discharge of certain military functions, such as replying to telegraphic offer of troops, etc., but beginning April 19, Captain G. A. C. Seiler, the commandant, assumed the responsibilities, and displayed great energy. His administration was characterized by earnestness and activity, until by exposure and over-work, he contracted a disease from which he died. He was succeeded July 31 by Colonel John H. Taggart, of Philadelphia.
Colonel Taggart was the editor of the Sunday Times, in Philadelphia, and when the news of hostilities reached there, he raised a company of volunteers called “The Wayne Guards” and marched them from Philadelphia to Harrisburg. They arrived at Camp Curtin June 7.
Governor Curtin was not over sanguine that the war was likely to be concluded at the first contest so when the responses to the first call for volunteers brought enough to make twenty-five regiments instead of only the eight asked for, the Governor did not disband them, but directed that they preserve their organizations, and immediately applied to the Legislature for authority to form a corps of thirteen regiments of infantry, one of cavalry, and one of artillery, to be organized and equipped by the State, to be subject to the call of the National Government if needed, and at all times to be in readiness for immediate service.
On May 15, the Legislature passed an act authorizing the organization of the “Reserve Volunteer Corps of the Commonwealth,” and Governor Curtin issued his call for men to compose the corps, and apportioned the number that would be received from each county, in order that each section of the State and every class of its people should be duly represented in it.
Four camps of instruction were established; one at Easton, under command of Colonel William B. Mann, of Philadelphia; one at West Chester, under Captain Henry M. McIntire, of West Chester; one at Pittsburgh, under Colonel John W. McLean; and one at Camp Curtin, Harrisburg, under Colonel G. A. C. Seiler, of Harrisburg.
George A. McCall, a graduate of the West Point Military Academy, of the class of 1822, a distinguished soldier in the war with Mexico, was appointed a Major General to command the corps. General McCall immediately organized his staff by appointing Henry J. Biddle, Assistant Adjutant General, and Henry Sheets and Eldrige McConkey, Aids-de-Camp. Subsequently, Professor Henry Coppee was attached to the staff as Inspector General.
On June 22 two of the regiments were ordered to Cumberland, Md., and soon afterward rendered excellent service at New Creek and Piedmont, in West Virginia until ordered to the lower Potomac regions.
On July 22, the day after the disaster at Bull Run, a requisition was made on the State for its Reserve Corps, and as quickly as the means of transportation could be provided, eleven thousand of these troops, fully armed and equipped, were sent to the defenses of Washington, and a few days later the regiments were mustered into the United States service for three years, or during the war.
This was the beginning of the Pennsylvania Reserves, an organization, which, during the later years of the war, won fame on many battlefields, and many of whose members sleep beneath the sod in Southern States. Their skill was everywhere recognized, and no others were more renowned for bravery.
Reverend A. S. Williams who gave the historical address on the occasion of the dedication of the statue to Governor Curtin on the site of Camp Curtin, among other interesting facts said: “When General McDowell’s soldiers were defeated at Bull’s Run, the trained Pennsylvania Reserve Regiment from Camp Curtin, steadied the Government at Washington. When General Lee attempted to invade the North in 1862, Governor Curtin called for fifty thousand volunteers, and a strong reserve was maintained at Camp Curtin ready to march at a moment’s notice.
“During the early months of the war, on one occasion trucks were pushed on the tracks of the railroad to the east of the Camp and a Brigade of Soldiers stepped on them and was carried by way of Huntingdon over the Broad Top Railroad to Hopewell; from here they marched through Bedford to Cumberland, Md. For two months these soldiers protected this community from the harrassing enemy.
“In June 1863 when the people of the State became apprehensive lest Harrisburg and Philadelphia fall into the hands of General Lee, again the troops from Camp Curtin met the enemy but a few miles from Harrisburg along the Carlisle Pike.”
Camp Curtin was available and often used as an Army hospital.
Among the commanders at Camp Curtin besides those above mentioned were Colonel Thomas Welsh, of Lancaster; Colonel Charles J. Biddle, of Philadelphia; and Colonel James A. Beaver, afterwards General and later Governor of Pennsylvania.
Governor Curtin, after all, was the leading spirit in this greatest of Army Camps and it is appropriate that the words on a bronze tablet on his statue should read: “His administration of the Gubernatorial office during the dark days of the Republic made an imperishable name for his family, and added historic grandeur to the annals of the Commonwealth.”
Colonel Brodhead Destroyed Indian Town
of Coshocton, April 20, 1781
Colonel Daniel Brodhead, the commandant at Fort Pitt, had not been able to execute his design to lead a force against the Wyandot and Shawnee Indian towns in Ohio. He had expected to obtain the help of the Delaware warriors at Coshocton for this expedition, but in the spring of 1781, a change in the situation impelled him to strike at the Delaware.
Until December, 1780, the Delaware took no part, as a nation, in the warfare against the frontiers of Pennsylvania, and the alliance with the United States, made by their three principal chiefs in the autumn of 1778, was outwardly observed for more than two years. The death of their noted chief, White Eyes, which occurred from an attack of smallpox, at Pittsburgh, November, 1778, was followed by the election of Killbuck, or Gelelemand, the celebrated sachem, who proved himself to be an unswerving friend of the Americans. Chief Killbuck found himself the leader of the minority of his nation, but his influence was sufficient to delay the union of the Delaware with the other hostile Indian nations.
The Americans gave no presents to the Indians and had little else of value to offer them, while the British, especially those at the Detroit post, gave them not only alluring promises but showered many valuable presents upon them. It was then only a matter of time until the Shawnee, Seneca, Miami, Wyandot and other Indians hostile to the Americans could persuade the Delaware to join with them in war against the Colonists. Captain Pipe was the principal Delaware chief who had long led the war party and finally controlled their determination to take up the hatchet.
In February, 1781, a council was held at Coshocton, at which Killbuck was not present, being then on an important mission to Fort Pitt, and the Delaware yielded to the pressure and voted to join in warfare against the borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Killbuck was afraid to return to Coshocton, as he learned of threats against his life, so he made his home with the Moravians and their converted Indians at Salem, on the western branch of the Tuscarawas River, fourteen miles below New Philadelphia. Here he professed Christianity and was baptized and received the Christian name William Henry, in honor of a distinguished citizen of Lancaster, Pa. He was afterward commissioned by the United States Congress and was proud to call himself “Colonel Henry.” When he removed his family to Salem he took also with him the family of White Eyes and other Delaware Indians, including the aged warriors Big Cat and Nonowland.
Killbuck wrote a long letter to Colonel Brodhead informing him of the hostile action of the council at Coshocton. The missionary, the Reverend John Heckewelder, who penned this letter, also sent another by the same messenger, John Montour, in which he suggested an expedition against Coshocton.
Colonel Brodhead at once determined to attack the place and punish the Delaware for their perfidy. The Pennsylvania Government gave him much assistance and a supply of provisions, but his force of regular troops at Fort Pitt had been reduced, from various causes, to about 200 men. He made a call for assistance to the officers of the border counties, but no troops were furnished by them. Colonel David Shepherd, county lieutenant of Ohio County, Virginia (now Green County, Pa.) however, sent him a body of excellent volunteers consisting of 134 Virginia militiamen, arranged in four companies, under Captains John Ogle, Benjamin Royce, Jacob Leffler and William Crawford. These men were hardy young farmers from the settlements in Washington County; most of them rode their own horses, and cheerfully responded to Colonel Shepherd’s call.
These troops rendezvoused[rendezvoused] at Fort Henry, the stockade at Wheeling, where Colonel Brodhead and his command joined them. On Tuesday, April 19, the little army of 300 was ferried over the Ohio River and marched over the Indian trail for Muskingum River. John Montour, Nonowland and Delaware braves joined the Americans to fight their own treacherous tribesmen.
The purpose was to march rapidly and take the village of Coshocton by surprise; yet it required ten days to reach that place on account of severe weather and unusually heavy rains. A short pause was made at Salem, where Colonel Brodhead held a conference with the Reverend John Heckewelder.
He learned there were no Christian Indians at Coshocton. The Moravians were to prepare corn and cattle for the soldiers against the return march. The missionary then hastened back to Gnadenhuetten and Salem to carry the news that the Americans were in the country and Killbuck and his warriors again donned the war paint to join the Continentals against other savages.
Although it required ten days to reach the Muskingum, the Delaware were taken by surprise. They had no expectation that the Americans would act so promptly and, on account of stormy weather, they were careless and kept out no scouts. Then some of the principal chiefs were at Detroit, in attendance at a big council with De Peyster, the British governor.
On Friday morning, April 20, during a heavy downpour, the advance guard came upon three Indians in the woods, not more than a mile distant from Coshocton. One of the savages was captured, but the two others escaped to the town and gave the alarm. The captured Indian said there were not many warriors at home, that a band of forty had just returned from a border raid, with scalps and prisoners, but had crossed to the farther side of the river, a few miles above the town, to enjoy a drunken revel.
Brodhead hurried forward and dashed into the Indian capital, finding but fifteen warriors there, who made a brave resistance, but every one was either killed by rifle ball or tomahawked by an American soldier. The mounted men were first in the town and they would not accept surrender or suffer the wounded to linger long in agony. No harm was done to any of the old men, women or children, of whom more than a score were captured. These were removed and every building in Coshocton set on fire. A great quantity of peltry and other stores was taken and forty head of cattle furnished good food for the hungry soldiers.
As a result of the Coshocton campaign the hostile Delaware migrated to the headwaters of the Sandusky and other places farther westward, while the adherents of Chief Killbuck and those friendly to the Americans moved to Pittsburgh and erected their rude wigwams on Smoky Island, sometimes called Killbuck Island, at the northern side of the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers.
Cornerstones Laid for Germantown
Academy, April 21, 1760
By the year 1760, the French and Indian War had narrowed its area and was confined chiefly to Canada. This was then a period of development in and about Philadelphia.
The Germantown Academy was organized January 1, 1760, and four cornerstones were laid with appropriate ceremonies, April 21, 1760.
This ancient and honorable institution was originated in a meeting held December 6, 1759, at the house of Daniel Mackinet, when it was resolved to start a subscription for erecting a large and commodious building near the center of the town for the use of an English and High Dutch School, with suitable dwelling houses for the teachers. Christopher Meng, Christopher Sower, Baltus Reser, Daniel Machinet, John Jones, and Charles Bensell were appointed to solicit and receive subscriptions.
At the organization meeting held by the contributors, January 1, 1760, Richard Johnson was appointed treasurer, and Christopher Sower, Thomas Rosse, John Jones, Daniel Mackinet, Jacob Rizer, John Bowman, Thomas Livezey, David Dreshler, George Absentz, Joseph Galloway, Charles Bensell, Jacob Naglee and Benjamin Engle were chosen trustees.
The trustees purchased a lot from George Bringhurst in Bensell’s Lane, subsequently called Schoolhouse Lane. The institution was named Germantown Union High School House.
It was also decided that the school should be free to persons of all religious denominations.
The buildings were completed by the following year, when the school was opened in September.
The schoolhouse was eighty feet long and forty feet wide, two stories high, and six schoolrooms, and wings supplying two dwelling houses for the use of the masters.
The Academy is a long-fronted building of rough gray stone topped by a quaint little belfry tower, and with small stone houses on either side, which balance the pleasing effect. There is a worn stone sill, which doubtless is the same upon which Washington stepped when he visited the institution.
Hilarius Becker made his appearance as the German teacher, with seventy pupils, and David James Dove as the English teacher, with sixty-one pupils and Thomas Pratt was the English usher.
Although the mass of people used the German language, these numbers show that those of the English-speaking tongue were rapidly creeping on them.
David James Dove was one of the most famous characters in old Philadelphia. He had formerly taught grammar sixteen years at Chichester, England. He was an excellent master and his scholars made surprising progress. He was the first English teacher in Franklin’s Academy, and then conducted a school of his own in Vidells Alley before he became the first English teacher in the new academy at Germantown.
He became rather overbearing and also divided too much of his time with private scholars, and in 1763 the trustees tried to remove him, but he refused to be removed, even though Pelatiah Webster had already been appointed as his successor. Dove held possession of the schoolhouse and declared he would not retire. Finally Joseph Galloway and Thomas Wharton were charged with the duty of dealing with Dove.
Of course, Dove made way after a time for his successor, but for many years he continued to teach a private school in Germantown.
Dove’s method of reclaiming truants was to send a committee of five or six boys in search of them with a lighted lantern and a bell and in an odd equipage in broad daylight. The bell was always tinkling as they went about the town, and soon they would bring the culprits back filled with shame.
The progress of the academy was most satisfactory, for in 1764 Greek, Latin and the higher mathematics were taught. In the early seventies additional ground in the rear of the lot was obtained.
The rudiments of good manners were taught along with those of learning, but it was expressly enjoined that youths of Quaker parentage should not be required to take off their hats in saluting the teachers.
In March, 1761, a lottery scheme was put forth to raise £1125 for the use of this school. Another lottery the same year was for the Germantown Public School. The academy lottery consisted of 6667 tickets at $3 to raise $3000.
As the Revolution approached, and, at last, swept over them, the school experienced troubled times; it was difficult even to get a quorum of the trustees.
In July, 1777, a new teacher was appointed because Thomas Dungan, the master of the English school, had joined the American army.
After the Battle of Germantown the academy was used by the British as a hospital. Some twenty feet to the east of the back part of the grounds six British soldiers, who died of their wounds, were buried in what was Dreshler’s lot.
After the war the revival was slow. In 1784 a charter was obtained incorporating it as the “Public School at Germantown,” which was amended in 1786. The school was poor, the State could not furnish much assistance and contributions were solicited. These and the increase in the enrollment kept the Academy forging ahead. In 1808 another lottery was held which yielded about $500, but John Bowman, the treasurer, refused to receive the money.
In the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 the Legislature of Pennsylvania and the Congress of the United States made proposals for an occupation. It was given to Congress, on the rather easy terms of the restoration of “104 panes of glass, two window shutters, two door linings, three door locks, the steps front and back both of new wood, the hearths to be laid with new bricks, sundry patchings and white washing for which repairs and no others, the sum of $60 will be allowed out of the rent, which is to be $300 for one session.”
In the yellow fever of 1798 the use of the lower floor and cellar was granted to the Banks of North America and Pennsylvania, they agreeing as compensation to paint the building and to renew its roof.
The centennial anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone was celebrated with great enthusiasm April 21, 1860, by ringing the bell, parade, 100 guns, and in the evening an address by John S. Littell and an oration by Sidney George Foster.
These are only incidents in the career of more than 160 years, and the Academy has long been one of the most celebrated in the country.
Eccentric John Mason’s Leaning Tower on
Blue Hill Destroyed April 22, 1864
Travelers up and down both branches of the Susquehanna River years ago will well remember the leaning tower high up on Blue Hill, opposite Northumberland. This peculiar building hung over a precipice and viewed from the river level, looked as if a breath of air would topple it to the rocks below. It was built by John Mason, who owned a farm of ninety acres of land on the hill, and who, from his eccentricities, came to be known as the “Hermit of Blue Hill.”
The tower, which was built as an observatory, was about sixteen by eighteen feet, two stories in height and of octagonal shape. It leaned at an angle of about twenty-two degrees and for safety was clamped to the rock upon which it was built with strong iron rods. The roof was flat, and there was a railing around it for protection of those who had courage to go upon it and look down the frightful precipice.
The view from the roof of “John Mason’s Leaning Tower,” as it was called, was one of superlative grandeur. Both the North and West Branches of the Susquehanna, as well as the main stream below their confluence, the majestic hills and pretty towns of Northumberland and Sunbury could all be taken in one panoramic view. Blue Hill at this point is 301 feet in height, as determined by the engineers who laid out the railroad in after years.
The leaning tower was built very near the spot one now sees, in seeking the profile of old “Shikellamy,” which would be located about where the top of the forehead would be seen. The tower was almost destroyed by visitors who cut their initials upon everything of wood, until it was entirely covered by these characters.
John Mason built this odd-looking house in 1839. William Henry did the carpenter work. It stood there until the spring of 1864—a period of twenty-five years—when, on a Sunday afternoon, April 22, it was destroyed by a party of railroad men in a spirit of deviltry. They loosened its moorings and the curious tower rolled down the rocky precipice with a tremendous crash and landed on a raft of logs passing down stream.
Its destruction removed one of the oddest, as well as one of the most conspicuous, landmarks along the Susquehanna River.
There are several stories related of John Mason’s eccentricities and the motives which induced him to erect this leaning tower.
About the time the vandals destroyed the tower a most interesting novel was written entitled “Eros and Antiros,” which story was woven about this scene and its unusual builder. In fact, John Mason was the hero of the story. The author, being a personal acquaintance, may have written from a knowledge of the facts.
In the story John Mason had been disappointed in a love affair and sought this manner to remove himself from the busier world and to live and die in seclusion.
Another version of the eccentric John Mason’s leaning tower is that it was his eyrie, where he gathered together a rare collection of queer old English books—they sold at 75 cents the bushel-basketful at his sale—and here he slung his hammock and here he read his books.
That story says John Mason’s father was a Quaker, living in Philadelphia, an old acquaintance of James Jenkins, Jr., at Turtle Creek, opposite the town of Northumberland, at the base of Blue Hill, who said to him one day, speaking of his son John, that he was a restless fellow and wanted to go to sea, and that it would be the death of his mother. “Can’t thee take him out with thee?” Jenkins replied that it was a wild place and not likely to suit the taste of one who wanted to go sea-faring.
But John Mason did go up into the wilderness, engaged in the mercantile business for a time at Northumberland, then moved his stock of merchandise to the western side of the river and opened a store at Turtle Creek.
John Mason never recognized or became intimate with women. One evening at the Jenkins home, Mason came in as was his custom from the store, about 9 o’clock, and seated himself by the ample fireplace to read a book. There was a number of young people in the room, who were playing pawns and forfeits. One pretty girl was condemned in a whisper, to kiss John Mason. He was apparently paying no attention to the others, but, as she slyly approached within reaching distance, he raised the tongs between them, saying, “Not one step nearer.”
Jenkins and he went alternately to Philadelphia to buy goods. Mason always walked there and back. He lived to an extreme age and was buried on his hill-top.
So much for that story. It is generally accepted that John Mason was of English origin, born in Philadelphia, December 7, 1768, and died on the farm of Colonel Meens above the present city of Williamsport, April 25, 1849.
During his life at the Blue Hill home, it is told of him that he was a sterling athlete, and could skate to Harrisburg in half a day; that he often walked to Williamsport, always carrying an old umbrella. His eccentricities were much talked about in his day.
During the winter following his death his remains were removed by friends, on a sled and carried to the scene of his hermit life, and buried under the wide spreading branches of a chestnut tree a few yards in the rear of his leaning tower. A neat marble tombstone, properly inscribed, was erected to mark the place of his burial.
This grave has long since been so trampled upon by curious visitors, that it was entirely obliterated[obliterated] many years ago. Relic hunters so defaced the stone that it was removed to a neighboring farm house for preservation. This is all that remains by which to remember John Mason, “The Hermit of Blue Hill,” the builder of the “Leaning Tower.”
James Buchanan, Pennsylvania’s Only President,
Born April 23, 1791
James Buchanan, Pennsylvania’s only President of the United States, was born in a little settlement which bore the odd name of Stony Batter, near Mercersburg, Franklin County, Pa., April 23, 1791.
Among the Scotch-Irish, whose enterprise brought them to America, was James Buchanan, a native of Donegal, Ireland. He settled in Franklin County in 1783, where he set up a store, married Elizabeth Speer, daughter of a farmer of Adams County, a woman of remarkable native intellect, and distinguished for her good sense and rare literary taste.
Many a man has owed his success to his mother. James Buchanan said: “My mother was a remarkable woman. The daughter of a country farmer, engaged in household employment from early life until after my father’s death, she yet found time to read much and to reflect on it. What she read once she remembered forever. For her sons she was a delightful and instructive companion. I attribute any distinction which I may have gained to the blessing which God conferred upon me in granting me such a mother.”
After he was grown a man, James might often be found sitting in the kitchen to talk with his mother while she worked.
In 1798 James Buchanan, the elder, removed to Mercersburg, where his son received his academical education and made such progress that his parents determined to give him the benefit of a collegiate course.
He entered Dickinson College at Carlisle at the age of fourteen. Here he found that many of the students did very much as they pleased. “To be a sober, industrious, plodding youth,” said Buchanan afterwards, “was to incur the ridicule of the mass of students.” He imitated the majority and soon learned that he was not longer desired as a student. Knowing his father would not help him out of his plight, he turned to the pastor of his church, and by his aid James received another chance and made good use of it. He graduated in June, 1809.
In December, following, he commenced to study law with James Hopkins, of Lancaster. He applied himself, “determined” said he, “that if severe application would make me a good lawyer, I should not fail. I studied law and nothing but law.” He was admitted to practice November 17, 1812, and at once took the first rank in his profession. So successful was he, that when but forty years old he had acquired means that enabled him to retire from the profession.
When the British burned the Capitol at Washington and threatened Baltimore, James Buchanan displayed his patriotism by enlisting as a private in the company commanded by Captain Henry Shipman, which marched from Lancaster to the defense of Baltimore and with which he served until honorably discharged.
In October, 1814, he was selected a representative in the Legislature, and re-elected. His intention, however, was to return to the practice of law and stay out of political office. A sad event changed the current of Buchanan’s life.
A young woman, to whom Buchanan was engaged in early manhood, a daughter of the wealthiest family in the county, wrote him a letter of dismissal under the spell of jealousy which had been aroused by gossips. Pride on both sides kept the two apart until their separation was made irrevocable by her sudden death. In grief and horror, the young lover wrote to the father of the dead girl, begging the privilege of looking upon her remains and of following them to the grave. But the letter was returned to him unopened.
Four and forty years passed, and Buchanan went to his grave without ever having taken any other woman to his heart.
To help him forget his grief, Buchanan accepted the nomination for Congress. He did not expect to win but did, and his career thenceforward became political. He served five terms and at the end of his service the Democrats of Pennsylvania brought forward his name for the vice presidency. Then President Jackson appointed him Minister to Russia. In this position he concluded the first commercial treaty between the United States and Russia, securing to our seamen important privileges in the Baltic and Black Seas.
In 1833, on his return to the United States, he was elected United States Senator, taking his seat December 15, 1834.
President Van Buren offered Buchanan the place of Attorney General, but it was declined. When Polk became President, the post of Secretary of State was offered and accepted. The most pressing question Buchanan had before him was the northern boundary of the Oregon Territory. Buchanan closed this transaction with Great Britain in 1846, and completed our boundary line to the Pacific.
At the close of Polk’s Administration, Buchanan retired to private life at his country home, called Wheatland, just outside of Lancaster. A niece and nephew were taken into his home and raised as his own children.
When Pierce became President, on March 4, 1853, Buchanan was sent as United States Minister to England. On his return from this mission he was nominated and elected to the presidency, and inaugurated March 4, 1857.
Buchanan clung to the idea that freedom rather than slavery was to blame for all the trouble. He believed that since this Government had permitted slavery when the Union was formed, the Nation had no right to interfere with it in States already in the Union.
When South Carolina seceded he was within ten weeks of the end of his term, with a hostile Congress in front of him and behind him a country as resolute as himself.
Buchanan lived quietly at Wheatland and saw the Rebellion begin and triumphantly end.
Whatever the writers of history may say concerning the wisdom of Buchanan’s political ideas, no one can deny the honesty of his character. No President could have been more careful to set a good example to others. He considered that his time belonged to the Nation. When presented with gifts of any value, he at once returned them to the sender.
In his travels he paid his own fare, and never used a pass even when out of office. “When I cannot afford to pay my way,” he declared, “I will stay at home.”
His niece, Harriet Lane, while “Mistress of the White House,” took a trip to West Point on a Government vessel which had been named after her. Her uncle wrote to her that national vessels should not be employed on pleasure excursions, and that he would put a stop to the practice.
James Buchanan died at Wheatland, June 1, 1868.
News of Revolution Reached Philadelphia by
Messenger, April 24, 1775
At 5 o’clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, April 24, 1775, an express rider came galloping into Philadelphia from Trenton, with the greatest possible haste, excitement in his looks and on his lips. The rider hurried up to the City Tavern, where the people crowded in eagerness to learn of his mission. Members of the Committee of Correspondence were in the crowd and to these the rider delivered his dispatch. It was a brief and hurried message, but it had come a long route and it was big with the fate of a nation.
It was a dispatch from Watertown, dated April 19, announcing that General Gage’s men had marched out of Boston the night before, crossed to Cambridge, fired on and killed the militia at Lexington, destroyed a store at Concord, were now on the retreat and hotly pursued. Many were killed on both sides and the country was rising.
The message had come by way of Worchester, where it was vised by the town clerk. It then went to Brookline, Thursday, 20th, and was forwarded at 4 o’clock in the afternoon from Norwich; at 7 that evening it was expressed from New London.
The committee at Lynn received, copied and started the rider with it at 1 o’clock Friday morning. It came to Saybrook before sun-up. At breakfast time another messenger took it up to Killingworth. At 8 o’clock it was at East Guilford; at 10 in Guilford, and at noon in Brandford. It was sent from New Haven with further details on Saturday, and dispatched from the New York committee rooms 4 o’clock Sunday afternoon. It reached New Brunswick at 2 o’clock Monday morning, Princeton at 6 o’clock in the evening and Trenton at 9 o’clock Tuesday morning. It was indorsed: “Rec’d the above p. express and forwarded the same to the Committee of Philadelphia.”
Thus was the news of the actual opening battle of the Revolution carried by express riders from Watertown to Philadelphia, which had been selected as the seat of Government for the Thirteen Colonies.
Two days later another express came into Philadelphia bringing fuller particulars of “the Battle of Lexington,” as that memorable fight has since been called.
The news of Lexington arrived too late in the day to spread at once over the city. But next morning every man, woman and child knew it, and, borne by intense patriotic feeling the people assembled in public meeting, as if by common consent at the State House.
There were 8000 persons present, and all seemed to be actuated with but a single purpose. The Committee of Correspondence took charge of the meeting and its authority was recognized and accepted.
Only one resolution was proposed and adopted, to “associate together, to defend with arms their property, liberty and lives against all attempts to deprive them of it,” and then, with impatience and eagerness, to action. The time for words was passed. The time for organization, arming, drilling and marching had come.
The enrollment began at this meeting. The committee besought all who had arms to let them know, so that they might be purchased and secured. The associates availed themselves of their existing organization to turn themselves forthwith into military companies.
It was agreed that two troops of light horse, two companies of riflemen and two companies of artillery, with brass and iron field pieces, should be formed immediately.
Drilling was started at once, and the progress was so marked that the companies were ready to parade by May 10, when they turned out to receive Continental[receive Continental] Congress, and also to honor John Hancock.
The foot company and riflemen turned out to meet the Southern delegates to Congress at Gray’s Ferry. The officers of all the companies mounted, went out to meet the Eastern delegates and Hancock.
The associators’ organization was officered as follows: First Battalion, John Dickinson, colonel; John Chevalier, lieutenant colonel; Jacob Morgan and William Coates, majors. Second Battalion, Daniel Roderdeau, colonel; Joseph Reed, lieutenant colonel; John Cox and John Bayard, majors. Third Battalion, John Cadwallader, colonel; John Nixon, lieutenant colonel; Thomas Mifflin and Samuel Merideth, majors.
Peter Markoe was captain of the light horse, Joseph Cowperthwait of the Quaker Blues, James Biddle, Benjamin Loxley, Thomas Proctor and Joseph Moulder, were officers of the artillery, and Richard Peters, Tench Francis, William Bradford and Lambert Cadwallader were in command of the Greens. John Shee, John Wilcocks, Thomas Willing, Francis Gurney and others were of the staff.
The battalions, mustering 1500 men, all uniformed and equipped, and 500 artillerymen and troops of horse, gave a drill early in June in the presence of the “honorable members of the Continental Congress and several thousand spectators.”
The troops were reviewed by General Washington on June 20 and next day he set out for Boston escorted across New Jersey by the cavalry troop.
On June 23, the associators listened to an eloquent sermon by the Reverend Dr. William Smith.
They petitioned the Assembly, setting forth a full and detailed account of their organization into companies, etc., and asked that they be put into service at once. Neither the Governor nor the Council had the power or funds to comply, and even the Congress had no direct authority as yet to raise an army.
Franklin had returned from England May 5, and the next morning he was elected to Congress. But his work on the Committee of Safety is really the history of the defense of Philadelphia during the first year of the war.
It was late in June before the Committee of Safety was given power to employ the associators, and the city and counties were called upon to provide arms and equipment, the House agreeing to pay for the service of the troops.
A committee was named whose duty it was to call troops into the service as necessity demanded and to provide for the defense of this Province against insurrections and invasion.
The Committee of Safety met July 3. Franklin was unanimously chosen president, and William Govett, clerk. It proceeded to business with energy and dispatch.
Frame of Government Written by William
Penn, April 25, 1682
Penn’s remarkable frame of Government, dated April 25, 1682, was so far in advance of the age that, as Bancroft says, “its essential principles remain to this day without change.” Another competent critic has said that in it was “the germ if not the development of every valuable improvement in Government or legislation which has been introduced into the political systems of more modern epochs.”
The government was to consist of the Governor, a Provincial Council, and a General Assembly. These bodies, which were to make laws, create courts, choose officers and transact public affairs, were to be elected by the freemen by ballot. By freemen, were meant not only handholders, but “every inhabitant, artificer, or other resident that pays scot or lot to the Government.” Penn believed that “any government is free to the people under it, whatever be the frame, where the laws rule and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy or confusion.”
The “Frame of Government” and the “Laws Agreed Upon in England” were the final products of all Penn’s best thinking and conferences, and were brought with him to the Colony. Though changed in form many times, they shaped all future Constitutions of Pennsylvania, of other States and even the Federal Union.
This frame was published by Penn, together with certain laws agreed on between himself and the purchasers under him, entitled “The Frame of the Government of the Province of Pennsylvania, in America; together with certain laws, agreed upon in England by the Governor and divers of the Free Men of the aforesaid Province. To be further Explained and Confirmed there, by the First Provincial Council and General Assembly that shall be held, if they seem meet.”
James Claypoole called it in one of his letters, “the fundamentals for government.” In effect it was the first Constitution of Pennsylvania. It was the work of William Penn and reflects precisely some of the brightest and some of the much less bright traits of his genius and character.
The “preface” or preamble to this Constitution is curious, for it is written as if Penn felt that the eyes of the court were upon him. The first two paragraphs form a simple excursus upon the doctrine of the law and the transgressor as expounded in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under the sin,” etc. From this Penn derives “the divine right of government,” the object of government being two-fold, to terrify evildoers and to cherish those who do well “which gives government a life beyond corruption (i. e., divine right), and makes it as durable in the world as good men should be.” Hence Penn thought that government seemed like a part of religion itself, a thing sacred in its institution and end.
“They weakly err,” continues Penn, “that think there is no other use of government than correction; which is the coarsest part of it. * * * Men side with their passions against their reason, and their sinister interests have so strong a bias upon their minds that they lean to them against the good of the things they know.”
The form, he concludes, does not matter much after all, “Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the laws rule and the people are a party to these laws.” Good men are to be preferred even above good laws. The frame of laws now published, Penn adds, “has been carefully contrived to secure the people from abuse of power.”
In the Constitution which follows the preamble, Penn begins by confirming to the freemen of the province all the liberties, franchises and properties secured to them by the patent of King Charles II.
After stating how the government was to be organized, he directed that the council of seventy-two members, was to be elected at once, one-third of the members to go out, and their successors elected each year, and after the first seven years those going out each year shall not be returned within a year. Two-thirds of the members constituted a quorum on all important matters, but twenty-four would suffice on minor questions.
The Governor was to preside and to have three votes. All bills should be prepared and proposed by the Council for presentation to the General Assembly, which body, on the ninth day should pass or defeat such measures as presented.
To be sure the Provincial Council also was an elective body, but the difference was in the fact that it was meant to consist of the Governor’s friends; it was an aristocratic body, and therefore not entirely representative.
Aside from this fatal defect there is much to praise in Penn’s Constitution and something to wonder at, as being so far in advance of his age.
Besides carefully defining and limiting the executive functions of the Governor and Council a wholesome and liberal provision was made for education, public schools, inventions and useful scientific discoveries.
The Constitution could not be altered without the consent of the Governor and six-sevenths of the Council and the General Assembly, which rule, if enforced, would have perpetuated any Constitution, however bad.
On May 15, 1682, Penn’s code of laws, passed in England, to be altered or amended in Pennsylvania, was promulgated. It consisted of forty statutes, the first of which declared the character or Constitution, which has just been analyzed to be “fundamental in the Government itself.”
Regulations as to taxes, trials, prisons and marriage were clearly set forth in the code. It was also arranged that every child of twelve should be taught some useful trade. Members of the Council and General Assembly, as well as Judges, were to be professing Christians. Every one was to be allowed to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience and this not as a mere matter of toleration, but because it was an inherent right.
The penalty of death was to be inflicted sparingly; some 200 offenses which were named as capital by English law were to be punished in a lighter manner.
During Penn’s absence there was clashing, dissension and tumult. If he could have kept his hand in person on the Government for a generation there would have been a wonderful difference in the results attained.
Indians Captured James McKnight, Assemblyman,
April 26, 1779
In the spring of 1779 conditions along the frontier became more serious than in any time past. The Indians were more active and destroyed growing crops and burned the homes and outbuildings of the settlers, whom they murdered or took away in captivity.
The condition was so alarming it was reported to the Supreme Executive Council. One such letter, dated “Fort Augusta 27th April, 1779” written by Colonel Samuel Hunter, was in part: “I am really sorry to inform you of our present Disturbances; not a day, but there is some of the Enemy makes their appearances on our Frontiers. On Sunday last, there was a party of Savages attact’d the inhabitants that lived near Fort Jenkins, and had taken two or three familys[familys] prisoners, but the Garrison being appris’d of it, about thirty men turned out of the Fort and Rescued the Prisoners; the Indians collecting Themselves in a body drove our men under Cover of the Fort, with the loss of three men kill’d & four Badly Wounded; they burned several houses near the Fort, kill’d cattle, & drove off a number of Horses.
“Yesterday there was another party of Indians, about thirty or forty, kill’d and took seven of our militia, that was stationed at a little Fort near Muncy Hill, call’d Fort Freeland; there was two or three of the inhabitants taken prisoners; among the latter is James McKnight, Esqr., one of our Assemblymen; the same day a party of thirteen of the inhabitants that went to hunt their Horses, about four or five miles from Fort Muncy was fired upon by a large party of Indians, and all taken or kill’d except one man. Captain Walker, of the Continental Troops, who commands at that post turned out with thirty-four men to the place he heard the firing, and found four men kill’d and scalped and supposes they Captured ye Remaind’r.
“This is the way our Frontiers is harrassed by a cruel Savage Enemy, so that they cannot get any Spring crops in to induce them to stay in the County. I am afraid in a very short time we shall have no inhabitants above this place unless when General Hand arrives here he may order some of the Troops at Wyoming down on our Frontiers, all Col. Hartley’s Regiment, our two month’s men, and what militia we can turn out, is very inadequate to guard our Country.
“I am certain everything is doing for our relief but afraid it will be too late for this County, as its impossible to prevail on the inhabitants to make a stand, upon account of their Women and Childer.
“Our case is Really deplorable and alarming, and our County on ye Eve of breaking up, as I am informed at the time I am writing this by two or three expresses that there is nothing to be seen but Desolation, fire & smoke, as the inhabitants is collected at particular places, the Enemy burns all their Houses that they have evacuated.” The bearer of this important letter was James Hepburn.
It is a matter of interest that the James McKnight captured at Fort Freeland had secured 300 acres of land, April 3, 1769, in what is now Union County, where he brought his family. In 1774 they purchased three tracts of land “contiguous to and bounded on each other,” on Limestone Run, in Turbut Township, Northumberland County.
In 1776 William McKnight was chosen a member of the Committee of Safety, and was a most zealous and active patriot.
Both he and his wife perished at the hands of the Indians, when they attempted to make a trip from Fort Freeland, where they had sought refuge from the savages. Their only son, James, carried their bodies from Fort Freeland to the graveyard now known as Chillisquaque, and there buried them himself.
James McKnight had three sisters. He married Elizabeth Gillen, and was regarded as a man of great courage and rectitude. In 1778 he was elected to the General Assembly, but did not long survive to enjoy the honor.
The McKnight family had frequent and terrible experiences with the Indians. In the autumn of 1778 Mrs. James McKnight and Mrs. Margaret Wilson Durham, each with an infant in her arms, started on horseback from Fort Freeland to go to Northumberland. Near the mouth of Warrior Run, about two miles from the fort, they were fired upon by a band of Indians, lying in ambush. Mrs. Durham’s child was killed in her arms, and she fell from her horse. An Indian rushed out of the bushes, scalped her and fled.
Alexander Guffy and two companions named Peter and Ellis Williams rushed to the scene of the shooting and when they approached Mrs. Durham, whom they supposed dead, they were greatly surprised to see her rise up and piteously call for water. With the loss of her scalp she presented a horrible appearance. Guffy ran to the river and brought water in his hat. They then bound up her head, as best they could, and placed her in a canoe and hastily paddled down stream fifteen miles to Sunbury, where Colonel William Plunket, also a distinguished physician, dressed her wounded head, and she recovered. She died in 1829, aged seventy-four years.
Mrs. McKnight escaped unhurt from the surprise attack. The shots frightened the horse she was riding, it turned and ran back to the fort. Mrs. McKnight came near losing her child, when the horse wheeled and the child fell from her arms, but she caught it by the foot and held to it until the fort was reached.
Two sons of Mrs. McKnight, who were accompanying the party on foot, attempted to escape by hiding under the bank of the river, but were taken by the Indians.
James Durham, husband of Margaret, was taken at the same time. The three prisoners survived their captivity in Canada, and returned to their homes at the close of the Revolution in 1783.
On the eventful day that the little stockade was next attacked, April 26, 1779, Hon. James McKnight, was captured by the Indians.
William McKnight and his wife and James and his wife are interred in the old Chillisquaque burying ground.
Steam Boat Susquehanna, in Effort to
Navigate River, Starts Fatal Trip,
April 27, 1826
Even before the advent of canals or railroads the enterprising merchants of Baltimore sensed the importance of facilitating the commerce along the great Susquehanna River.
They believed it would materially enhance their volume of business, especially in lumber, iron, grain, and whiskey, if the river would be freed of such obstructions as impeded or hindered navigation.
Large sums of money were expended in removing rocky channels in the river below Columbia, so as to admit the passage of arks and rafts down stream, on their way to tide water. A canal had been constructed from Port Deposit, northward, in order that the returning craft might avoid the shoals and dangerous reefs along the first ten miles above tide water.
Yet in spite of all these improvements no satisfactory way had been found which would return to the producers of the Susquehanna Valley such articles of commerce and merchandise as they would naturally require in return for the raw products of the forest, field and mine.
The authorities of Pennsylvania were also awake to the situation, as were the citizens. Several attempts had been made to have complete surveys of the river and estimates of the cost of the work required to make the great river navigable.
To Baltimore, more than to Pennsylvania, belongs the credit of an actual attempt to establish steamboat navigation.
In 1825 a small steamboat, named the Susquehanna, was built in Baltimore and, when launched, was towed up to Port Deposit.
The Harrisburg Chronicle said:
“The Susquehanna was expected at Columbia on Sunday night, Tuesday’s reports were, that she had not got to Columbia. Eye-witnesses to her progress put the matter to rest on Wednesday; they had seen her a short distance above the head of the Maryland Canal, with a posse of men tugging at the ropes, and when they had tugged nine miles gave up the job. So ended all the romance about the Susquehanna. She drew too much water (22 inches) for the purpose and started at the wrong point. Watermen say that the crookedness of the channel, with the rapidity of the current, makes it utterly impossible for a steamboat to ascend the falls between the head of the canal and Columbia.”
The Chronicle article says further: “We have a report that Mr. Winchester, of Baltimore, has contracted for the building of a steamboat at York Haven. We also learn that the York Company are making great progress with the sheet-iron steamboat, and that she will be launched about the 4th of July.”
This sheetiron boat was called the Codorus, and early in April of the next year ascended the river as far as Binghamton, after which she returned to York Haven. Her captain, a Mr. Elger, reported that navigation of the Susquehanna by steam was impracticable.
Either the original Susquehanna renamed or another steamboat built by the Baltimore[Baltimore] promoters, and named Susquehanna and Baltimore was put on the river and operation above Conewago Falls by Captain Cornwell, an experienced river pilot.
She was accompanied on her trial trip on this portion of the river by a board of Commissioners of the State of Maryland, Messrs. Patterson, Ellicott and Morris, three distinguished citizens of Baltimore. Capt. Cornwell had already in March made several successful trips as far up as Northumberland and Danville on the North Branch and to Milton on the West Branch, returning to York Haven without accident.
April 17, 1826, the boat started from York Haven, having in tow a large keel boat capable of carrying a thousand bushels of wheat, and proceeded on her fatal trip, arriving at the Nescopeck Falls at 4 o’clock on May 3. At these falls there was an outer and an artificial inner channel of shallow water for the accommodation of rafts and arks. Capt. Cornwell decided after consulting with other river men on board, to try first the main, or deep water channel, and the captain argued that if the boat would not stem it, that he could then drop back and try the other one. The boat made a halt in a small eddy below the falls on the east side of the river and some of the passengers went ashore; this was the case with the Maryland Commissioners.
The boat was directed into the main channel, and had proceeded perhaps two-thirds of the distance through the falls, when she ceased to make further progress, the engine was stopped and she was permitted to drift back to the foot of the rapid, where she struck upon a wall dividing the artificial from the main channel, and at that instant one of her boilers exploded.
The scene was as awful as the imagination can picture. Two of the passengers on board, named John Turk and Heber Whitmarsh, raftmen from Chenango, N.Y., were instantly killed; William Camp, a merchant from Owego, was fatally scalded by escaping steam. Dave Rose, of Chenango, N. Y., was fatally injured. Quincy Maynard, the engineer, as stated in the account published in the Danville Watchman, one week after the occurrence, was not expected to recover. Christian Brobst, of Catawissa and Jeremiah Miller, of Juniata, were seriously injured. Messrs. Woodside, Colt and Underwood, of Danville, were more or less injured, as were Messrs. Barton, Hurley, Foster and Colonel Paxton, of Catawissa, and Benjamin Edwards, of Braintrim, Luzerne County.
It was said by somebody on board that at the time of the explosion, a passenger was holding down the lever of the safety valve, but why this should be done after the boat had ceased her efforts to pull through is difficult to conjecture. Thus ended the second attempt to navigate the Susquehanna by steam power.
Shawnee Indians Murder Conestoga Tribesmen
April 28, 1728
Two Shawnee Indians cruelly murdered a man and a woman of the Conestoga tribe, April 28, 1728. John Wright, of Hempfield, wrote from Lancaster, May 2, advising James Logan of this murder, and that the Conestoga have demanded of the Shawnee the surrender of the murderers. He further wrote that some Shawnee had brought the Shawnee murderers as far as Peter Chartier’s house, but there the party engaged in a drinking bout and through the connivance of Chartier the two murderers escaped.
Chartier was an Indian trader among the Shawnee and was himself a half-blood Shawnee. He had traded for a time on the Pequea Creek and at Paxtang. Later he settled at the Shawnee town on the west side of the Susquehanna, at the mouth of the Yellow Breeches Creek, the present site of New Cumberland. He later removed on the Conemaugh, then to the Allegheny, about 1734.
The action upon the part of Chartier incensed the Conestoga so much that they threatened to wipe out the whole section of the Shawnee.
John Wright further states in his letter, “Yesterday there came seventeen or eighteen of the young men, commanded by Tilehausey, all Conestoga Indians, painted for war, all armed. We inquired which way they were going. They would not tell us, but said they or some of them were going to war, and that there were some Canoy to go along with them. But we hearing the above report, are apt to think that they are going against the Shawnee.”
Almost contemporary with this murder, the whites along the Schuylkill had their safety threatened from another quarter. Kakowwatchy, head of the Shawnee at Pechoquealon, claimed to have heard that the Flatheads, or Catawba from Carolina, had entered Pennsylvania to strike the Indians along the Susquehanna. He sent eleven warriors to ascertain the truth of this incursion of the Southern Indians, and as they approached the neighborhood of the Durham Iron Works, at Manatawny, their provisions failing, forced the inhabitants to give them victuals and drink.
The people did not know these Indians and believing the chief of the band to be a Spanish Indian, caused great alarm.
Families left their plantations, and the women and children were in great danger from exposure, as the weather was cold. About twenty white men took arms, approached the band, and soon a battle was in progress. The whites said that the Indians refused a parley and fired first, wounding several of the inhabitants. The red men made off into the woods and were not seen again. Their leader was wounded, but escaped.
The identity of this band was not known until ten days later, May 20, when the Lieutenant Governor Patrick Gordon was waited upon by John Smith and Nicholas Schonhoven, two Indian traders from Pechoquealon, who delivered to him a verbal message from Kakowwatchy, which was an explanation of the unfortunate affair, and for which the chief sent his regrets, and asked the Governor for a return of the gun which the wounded leader had lost.
The Lieutenant Governor, accompanied by many other citizens of Philadelphia went to the troubled district, and personally pleaded with those who had fled from their plantations to return. So excited were the whites that they seemed ready to kill any red man or woman.
On May 20, an Indian man, two women and two girls, appeared at John Roberts, at Cucussea, then in Chester County. Their neighbors fearing danger, rallied to their defense, and shot the man and one of the women, beat out the brains of the other woman, and wounded the girls. Their excuse was that the Indian had put an arrow into his bow.
The Provincial authorities were fearful that revenge upon the people might be attempted, so the two neighbors who committed the atrocity were arrested and sent to Chester for trial, and notice of the affair was sent to Sassoonan, Opekasset, and Manawhyhickon, with a request that they bring their people to a treaty, arranged to be held at Conestoga with Chief Civility and the Indians there.
The Pennsylvania Government did not leave all to diplomacy[diplomacy]. John Pawling, Marcus Hulings and Mordecai Lincoln (a relative of President Abraham Lincoln) were commissioned to gather the inhabitants and to put them in a posture to defend themselves.
Having forwarded to Kakowwatchy the watchcoats, belts and tomahawks dropped by the eleven warriors, and having sent a present, together with a request that he warn his Indians to be more cautious in the future, Governor Gordon expressed a wish to see Kakowwatchy at Durham, then went to Conestoga, and met Civility, Tawenne and other Conestoga, some Delaware and three Shawnee chiefs.
Gordon began by reminding the Indians of the links in the chain of friendship and that neither the Indians nor Christians would believe ill reports of each other without investigation of the facts. The Governor then made them presents of watchcoats, duffels, blankets, shirts, gunpowder, lead, flints and knives.
The Governor then told them of the recent murders, and of the intention to punish those who killed the Indians, if found guilty. The chiefs, in turn, declared that they had no cause of complaint.
Sassoonan, or Allummapees, the head of the Delaware, and his nephew, Opekasset, and some other chiefs, including the great Shikellamy, vicegerent of the Six Nations, met with Governor Gordon at Molatton, and from there went to Philadelphia, where a great council was held June 4, 1728, which was concluded most satisfactorily for all concerned.
Christian Post, Moravian Missionary and
Messenger, Died April 29, 1785
Christian Frederic Post, who has been denominated “the great Moravian peace-maker,” was a simple uneducated missionary of the Moravian Church. He was born in Polish Prussia, in 1710, and at an early age came under the influence of the Moravians. He emigrated to this country as a member of the “Sea Congregation,” which arrived on the Catherine, at New London, Conn., May 30, 1742. Post, with the other members, joined the congregation at Bethlehem, Pa., three weeks later.
From that time until his death, at Germantown, April 29, 1785, he performed many hazardous missions for his church and the Provincial Government of Pennsylvania, and many times was in imminent peril. The first several years of his residence in Pennsylvania he was employed as a Moravian missionary, but afterwards was almost constantly performing important services for the Province in its Indian dealings.
Some of the journals of Post, which appear in the Archives of Pennsylvania, and have been republished elsewhere, are valuable for the intimate history of the peoples and the country through which he traveled. One of the editors who republished his journals, wrote as follows concerning the missionary and mediator: “Antiquarians and historians have alike admired the sublime courage of the man and the heroic patriotism which made him capable of advancing into the heart of a hostile territory, into the very hands of a cruel and treacherous foe. But aside from Post’s supreme religious faith, he had a shrewd knowledge of Indian customs, and knew that in the character of an ambassador requested by the Western tribes his mission would be a source of protection. Therefore, even under the very walls of Fort Dusquesne, he trusted not in vain to Indian good faith.”
When Conrad Weiser visited Shikellamy at Shamokin, May, 1743, he wrote: “As I saw their old men seated on rude benches and on the ground listening with decorous gravity and rapt attention to Post, I fancied I saw before me a congregation of primitive Christians.”
In 1743 Post was married to a converted Indian woman, and endeared himself to all the Indians. But all was not smooth, for the Brethren were persecuted and humbled before their converts. Post, who had been on a journey to the Iroquois country, in March, 1745, was arrested at Canajoharie and sent to New York, where he was imprisoned for weeks, on a trumped-up charge of abetting Indian raids. He was released April 10.
In 1758 it became a matter of importance with Governor Denny and Sir William Johnson, that a treaty of peace be secured with the Western Indians. Post was selected to convey to them the white belt of peace and reconciliation. Tedyuskung, the Delaware king, protested against his going, declaring he would never return alive, but the bold and confident Christian said it was a mission of peace, that God would protect him, and that he must go.
On July 15, 1758, Post departed from Philadelphia with five Indian guides. He carried with him copies of the treaties made with Tedyuskung, belts of wampum and messages from the Governor. He made his trip by way of Bethlehem, Shamokin, Great Island, Chinclamoose, etc.
It was a perilous journey. Twice he got lost in the woods, and one of his guides strayed away and could not be found. Without food and drenched with rain, night after night he slept on the cold, wet ground. He was frequently very near the French. Finally he arrived at King Beaver’s, who ruled over the Delaware in the West. These Indians remembered him when he preached the gospel at Wyoming, and were glad to see him. They gave him a public dinner, to which they invited the surrounding[surrounding] tribes.
The French sent spies to watch him and to induce him to go to Fort Duquesne. Post refused to be trapped, but instead succeeded in making arrangements for kindling a great council-fire at Easton in October following.
Post now set out on his return and had not proceeded far when he heard the thunder of nineteen cannon discharged at the fort. Under the very mouths of these guns he had, singly and alone, with the full knowledge of the French, laid a plan which rent asunder the alliance between them and their Indian allies.
Post succeeded in his mission, and the French at the fort, finding themselves abandoned by their allies, fired it and fled, as the invalid general, John Forbes, and his army made their appearance.
Frank Cowan, poet of Southwestern Pennsylvania, tells the story in one of his songs, of which the following is a verse:
“The Head of Iron from his couch,
Gave courage and command,
Which Washington, Bouquet and Grant
Repeated to the band;
Till Hark! the Highlanders began
With their chieftain’s word to swell,
‘Tonight, I shall sup and drain my cup
In Fort Du Quense—or Hell!’
But the Man of Prayer, and not of boast,
Had spoken first, in Frederic Post.”
Again, in 1761, he proceeded to the Muskingum and built the first white man’s house within the present State of Ohio. He had made previous trips into this country, and always succeeded in persuading the Shawnee and Delaware to “bury the hatchet” and desert the French. He did this with a heavy reward upon his scalp, and while his every footstep was surrounded with danger.
In 1762 the Reverend John G. B. Heckewelder, the Moravian missionary and writer, especially among the Delaware, was an assistant to Post.
Toward the close of his eventful life Post retired from the Moravian sect and entered the Protestant Episcopal Church. He died at Germantown on April 29, 1785, and on May 1 his remains were interred in the “Lower graveyard of that place, the Reverend William White, then rector of Christ Church,” conducting the funeral service.
Veterans of French and Indian Wars
Organize April 30, 1765
As early as 1764 officers of the First and Second Battalions of Pennsylvania who had served under Colonel Henry Bouquet during the French and Indian War tarried at Bedford on their way home and formed an association. The purpose of this organization was that they be awarded the land to which they were entitled for service rendered.
This association held another and more important meeting at Carlisle, April 30, 1765, when they elected officers and renewed their application to the proprietaries and asked for 24,000 acres of land along the West Branch of the Susquehanna.
In this formal application they stated their object was “to embody themselves on some good land at some distance from the inhabited part of the Province, where by their industry they might procure a comfortable subsistance for themselves and by their arms, union and increase become a powerful barrier to the Province.”
These officers knew that the Proprietaries had not that much land to award them and that they had not yet purchased the West Branch lands from the Indians, but at this meeting they adopted a strong resolution calling upon them to make such a purchase.
Following the French and Indian War the lawless white men had been encroaching upon Indian lands, provoked hostilities and murdered many innocent Indians. The situation became so acute that General Gage offered troops to assist Governor Penn in removing and punishing these intruders.
Governor Penn appealed to the Assembly for help. In the discussion of this important matter it was learned from George Croghan, Sir William Johnson and others that the Indians designed a northern confederacy, and were determined to avenge this intrusion and the murder of the Conestoga Indians at Lancaster.
The Assembly agreed to pass a boundary bill. They also sent a message to the Indians promising to punish those responsible for the Conestoga massacre, and urged a conference at which a boundary line could be established. They also appropriated £3000 as a present to appease the Indians.
During the following spring several conferences were held, the largest being at Fort Pitt, where many chiefs and warriors of the Six Nations were present; in all 1103 men, women and children. The explanations were satisfactory and the presents and cash joyously received.
But it is quite probable that another savage war was averted by the intervention of Sir William Johnson, who, at this critical period, suggested a great council be held at Fort Stanwix, where this vital question could be definitely decided. This council was held in October, 1768, with Governor Penn present in person, as well as the principal chiefs of the tribes which had grievances to air.
The council, in the treaty of November 5, 1768, settled the boundary dispute and the Indians sold to the Proprietaries of Pennsylvania most of the central and western end of the State, excepting a small strip along Lake Erie. The consideration was $10,000.
Now that the Proprietaries had purchased the land desired by the association, on February 3, 1769, it was ordered by the Board of Property “that Colonel Francis and the officers of the First and Second Battalions of the Pennsylvania Regiment be allowed to take up 24,000 acres, to be divided among them in district surveys on the waters of the West Branch of the Susquehanna, to be seated with a family for each 300 acres, within two years from the time of the survey, paying £5 per hundred and one penny sterling per acre.”
Near the close of February many of the officers met at Fort Augusta and agreed to take the land proposed by the Proprietaries, and that one of the tracts should be surveyed on the West Branch, adjoining Andrew Montour’s place at Chillisquaque Creek, and one in Buffalo Valley. It was also agreed that Captains Plunket, Brady, Piper and Lieutenant Askey should accompany William Scull to the eastern side of the river as they made the surveys.
These surveys were promptly made and another meeting was held at Fort Augusta, when it was determined that the third tract of 8000 acres should be surveyed on Bald Eagle Creek. Captains Hunter, Brady and Piper were appointed to accompany Charles Lukens as he made the survey.
May 16, 1769, the officers met at Harris Ferry, where Messrs. Maclay, Scull and Lukens laid before them the drafts of their respective surveys. They agreed that Colonel Turbutt Francis should receive his share, 2075 acres, surveyed to him in one tract. Accordingly he selected land upon which the town of Milton is now the center.
Lots were then drawn by the other officers for the choice of lands. Captain William Hendricks, Captain William Plunket, Captain John Brady, Captain John Kern, Lieutenant Dr. Thomas Wiggins, Captain Conrad Bucher, Captain William Irvine and Lieutenants Askey, Stewart and McAllister took land in Buffalo Valley.
Ensign A. Stein, Lieutenant Daniel Hunsicker, Captain William Piper, Lieutenant James Hayes, Captain Samuel Hunter, Captain Nicholas Hausegger took lands above Chillisquaque Creek. Major John Philip de Haas was the principal officer to be awarded land on the Bald Eagle, and near him were Lieutenant James Hays and Thomas Wiggans, Ensign William McMeen, Lieutenant Hunsicker, Captain Timothy Green, Captain John Brady, Captain James Irvine and Captain William Plunket.
Colonel Francis acquired by purchase land from Chillisquaque Creek to and including the present town of Northumberland, and then owned a continuous strip from the North Branch to a point near Watsontown, a distance of eighteen miles along the West Branch. This made him one of the most extensive land owners of that time.
By these awards the West Branch Valley was permanently settled by these distinguished officers or their kin, and many of the families resident there today are descendants of these sturdy patriots.
British Foragers Massacre Americans at
Crooked Billet, May 1, 1778
With the exception of occasional depredations committed by the British foraging parties during the winter of 1777–78, all was quiet on the Delaware. The vigilance of Generals James Potter and John Lacey greatly restrained these forays. In the meantime General Washington, with the aid of Baron von Steuben and other foreign officers in the Continental army, transformed the band of American patriots into a well-disciplined, well-drilled and confident army.
General Wayne’s command was encamped during the whole winter and spring at Mount Joy, in Montgomery[Montgomery] County, and materially assisted in securing supplies of provisions for the army at Valley Forge.
When Washington withdrew from Whitemarsh, he was anxious that the upper part of the Delaware-Schuylkill peninsula should be well guarded. A thousand Pennsylvania militia were placed under command of General John Lacey, January 9, 1778. Lacey established his headquarters at the Crooked Billet Tavern, Bucks County, now called Hatboro, about twenty-five miles north of Philadelphia.
The country nearer Philadelphia, where the British were encamped, was thus open to the Queen’s Rangers and James’ and Hovenden’s Loyalists, who foraged and ravaged as they pleased. There was intense hatred between these Tories and the Continentals.
The British continually employed troops to forage and plunder, and while Lacey was himself in Bucks County, he could do nothing to save it from their ravages. But his energy and enterprise, even with his small forces, enabled him to reduce the supplies of Philadelphia so materially that the attempt was made to destroy his command, and an expedition was sent against him.
The party was under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Abercrombie, comprising light infantry, cavalry and Simcoe’s Rangers, and started on May 1, 1778. Simcoe was to get in Lacey’s rear and a party was to be placed in ambush, while the mounted infantry and cavalry advanced along the road.
Lacey’s officers and patrols were negligent, and his force was completely surprised and surrounded on all sides. They retreated fighting, but without their baggage, and finally got away with a loss of twenty-six killed, eight or ten wounded, and fifty-eight missing.
The British, as at Paoli, bayoneted many of the American troops after they were so seriously wounded they could be of no further effect against them; others of the wounded were thrown in among some buckwheat straw, which was then set on fire, and they were roasted to death. The bodies of many of the killed among the Americans were then thrown into the burning straw. The famous scoundrels who committed these atrocities were the Tory soldiers of Simcoe’s Rangers. The British loss was nominal.
Among the American slain in this massacre was Captain John Downey, who had been a schoolmaster in Philadelphia and a gallant volunteer at Trenton and Princeton. He had surveyed the Delaware River for the Committee of Safety, and was acting as commissary to General Lacey’s brigade. He was bayoneted and mutilated while lying wounded and a prisoner at the Crooked Billet.
A monument was erected in December, 1861, to the victims of Lacey’s command in this fight, on the battlefield at Hatboro. The surprise was a legitimate act of war, but the massacre after surrender was a barbarous atrocity.
The Supreme Executive Council of the State, and the Assembly in session at Lancaster, and the Continental Congress at York had been principally engaged in legislating for the interests of the army, preparing for the ensuing campaign. The Assembly passed the “act for the attainder of divers traitors,” among whom were specially mentioned Joseph Galloway, Andrew Allen, Reverend Jacob Duche, John Biddle, John Allen, William Allen, James Rankin, of York County, Gilbert Hicks, of Bucks County, Samuel Shoemaker, late of Penn’s Council, John Potts, Nathaniel Vernon, ex-Sheriff of Chester County, Christian Fouts, formerly lieutenant-colonel in Lancaster militia, Reynold Keen and John Biddle, latter two of Berks County. Reverend Duche had made the prayer at the opening of the first Continental Congress and since had been chaplain to Congress, but had prayed for the King.
Joseph Galloway’s estate was worth in excess of £40,000 sterling, and his handsome home on the southeast corner of Sixth and High Streets in Philadelphia, was appropriated by the State of Pennsylvania as a residence for the President of the Supreme Executive[Executive] Council, who was the chief executive officer of the State. This house was afterwards sold to Robert Morris.
Through the influence and negotiations of Benjamin Franklin Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, Commissioners sent to Paris by Congress, France had now openly espoused the American cause. The joyful news reached Congress sitting at York, May 2, 1778.
On May 7, Lord Howe was superseded by Sir Henry Clinton. Previous to the British commander’s departure, a magnificent fete called the “Mischianza,” was held May 18 in his honor.
On the following day, Lafayette with 2500 men and eight cannon crossed the Schuylkill to Barren Hill. Howe, with 5700 under Clinton and Knyphausen, supported by Grant in his rear, with 5,300 troops, marched to overwhelm this important post of the American army. Lafayette escaped by Matson’s Ford. Four days later, May 24, Howe embarked for England.
The same day a council of war was held under Sir Henry Clinton, and it was resolved to evacuate the city, which event occurred on June 19. This movement had been delayed owing to the arrival on June 6, of three British Commissioners to negotiate peace and a reconciliation. It was too late.
Among other intrigues, it is stated, the Commissioners secretly offered to General Joseph Reed, then delegate to Congress, and afterwards President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, £10,000 sterling, with the best office in the Colonies to promote their plans. General Reed promptly replied: “I am not worth purchasing, but such as I am, the King of Great Britain is not rich enough to do it.”
Upon occupation of Philadelphia, General Benedict Arnold was ordered by General Washington to take command of the city, and “prevent the disorders which were expected upon the evacuation of the place and return of the Whigs after being so long kept out of their property.”
General Edward Hand Relieved of Command
Following Squaw Campaign
May 2, 1778
For some time General Washington had believed that the permanent safety of the western section of Pennsylvania could only be secured by carrying on a successful war, in an aggressive manner, against the enemy in their own country. That determination was strengthened by the Commissioners of Congress, who met in Pittsburgh late in 1777, and learned first handed of the barbarous warfare carried on against the western frontier by the British under Henry Hamilton, then Governor of Detroit, with the assistance of their Indian allies.
During October and November, 1777, while General Edward Hand, then commandant at Fort Pitt, was trying to recruit his army for the invasion of the Indian country, many raids were made in Westmoreland County. Eleven men were killed and scalped near Palmer’s Fort, in Ligonier Valley, and a few days later four children were killed within sight of the fort. Three men were killed and a woman captured within a few miles of Ligonier. A band of Indians, led by a Canadian, made a fierce attack on Fort Wallace, near Blairsville, but the Canadian was killed and the savages repulsed. These maurauders[maurauders] were pursued by a party of rangers led by Captain James Smith and overtaken near Kittanning, where five redskins were killed and scalped. The snows of winter prevented other ravages.
During the Christmas holidays General Hand learned that the British had built a magazine where Cleveland now stands and had stored arms, ammunition, clothing and provisions in it for the use of the Indians in the spring. He immediately planned an expedition for the destruction of the magazine. His call for troops required each man to be mounted and provided with food for a short campaign. He promised to provide the arms and ammunition.
The general proposed, as a special inducement to enlist, that all plunder would be sold and the cash proceeds divided among the force. February 15, about 500 horsemen were at Pittsburgh ready for the adventure, and this considerable force caused General Hand to be sanguine for its success.
The expedition followed the old Indian trail which descended the Ohio River to the Beaver and then ascended that stream and the Mahoning toward the Cuyahoga. The snow on the ground was soon melted by heavy rains and the marching was made difficult.
By the time the Mahoning was reached that stream was almost impassable, even some of the level lands were covered with water for wide stretches. The horsemen grumbled and Hand too was so discouraged that he was about to give up the expedition and return, when the foot-prints of some Indians were discovered on the high ground.
The tracks led to a small village, where a sudden attack was made, but the place contained only one old man, some squaws and children. The warriors were away on a hunt. The startled savages scattered and all escaped except the old man and one woman, who were shot and a woman taken prisoner.
This affair took place about where Edenburg is, in Lawrence County. The Indian told her captors that ten Wolf, or Munsee, Indians were making salt ten miles farther up the Mahoning. Hand dispatched a detachment after these savages and he went into camp under uncomfortable conditions.
The reported Munsee proved to be four squaws and a boy. The soldiers killed three of the squaws and the boy, the other squaw was taken prisoner. One of the soldiers was wounded here and another drowned during the march.
The weather conditions made further campaigns impossible and General Hand led his dispirited and hungry men back to Fort Pitt. The trophies were two Indian women. His formidable force had slain one old man, four women and a boy. On his arrival at Fort Pitt his work was generally derided by the frontiersmen and his expedition was dubbed the Squaw Campaign.
This finished General Hand as an Indian fighter. He asked General Washington to relieve him and May 2, 1778, Congress voted his recall and commissioned General Lachlan McIntosh to succeed him.
General Edward Hand won distinction in other directions. He was born at Elzduffs, Kings County, Ireland, December 31, 1744.
In 1767 he was appointed by George III surgeon of the 18th Royal Irish Regiment of foot, and sailed with the regiment from Cork on May 20 of the same year, arriving in Philadelphia July 11.
He served with this regiment at Fort Pitt and returning to Philadelphia in 1774, resigned his commission, receiving a regular discharge from the British service. In the same year he went to Lancaster and began the practice of his profession.
He joined the First Battalion of Pennsylvania Riflemen as lieutenant-colonel at the outbreak of the Revolution and served in the siege of Boston. He was promoted to colonel in 1776, and led his regiment in the Battle of Long Island, and also at Trenton. In April, 1777, he was appointed brigadier-general; and in this capacity served in command of the Western Department until relieved May 2, 1778; in October following he succeeded General Stark in command at Albany.
In the successful expedition against the Six Nations Indians in 1779, led by General John Sullivan, General Hand was an active participant.
Near the close of 1780, General Hand succeeded General Scammel as adjutant-general. He was an intimate friend of General Washington and had his full confidence during the entire struggle of the colonies. He was one of the original members of the Order of the Cincinnati.
In 1785 General Hand was elected to the Assembly; then he was a member of Congress and assisted in the formation of the Constitution of Pennsylvania in 1789, when the second Constitution of the State was written, and adopted the following year.
General Hand died at Rockford, Lancaster County, September 3, 1802.
Evangelist Whitefield Bought Site for Negro
School at Nazareth May 3, 1740
The Reverend George Whitefield was an exceeding earnest worker for the good of souls. He came to America and spent much of his time in Georgia, where he preached effectively and established an orphan house and school near Savannah, laying the first brick himself for the building, March 25, 1740. He named it “Bethesda”—a house of mercy. It afterward became eminently useful.
Whitefield undertook to found a school for Negroes in Pennsylvania, and with it a settlement for persons converted in England by his preaching and subjected to annoyance on that account.
An agreement for a site was made with William Allen, May 3, 1740, when 5000 acres of land were purchased, situated at the Forks of the Delaware, the consideration being £2200. The title was made to Whitefield and then assigned to his friend William Seward, who was a man of considerable wealth, as security for Seward’s advancing the purchase money.
Two days afterward Whitefield preached in the morning at the German settlement on the Skippack Creek to about 5000 persons, and in the evening, after riding twelve miles to Henry Antes’, he preached to about 3000. The Moravian Boehler followed with an address in German.
During this same day Whitefield offered to hire as builders the Moravians who had arrived from Savannah on the sloop with him.
Whitefield and the Moravians then visited the ground, when the latter, by the cast of the lot, according to their custom, felt directed to engage in the enterprise.
Seward, several days after the purchase of the site was made, sailed from Philadelphia for England, partly to convert some securities into cash and also to solicit further contributions. He was accidentally hit on the head while at Caerleon, Wales, from the effect of which blow he died a few days later, October 22, 1740.
The Moravians arrived in that part of Northampton County, which is now within the limits of Upper and Lower Nazareth and Bethlehem Townships, and there commenced to erect a large stone house which Whitefield proposed to use as the school for Negroes. This tract its proprietor named Nazareth.
Here the Moravians worked for the remainder of the year and by their efforts had built two houses. But at this time there arose a dispute between Whitefield and those employed on the buildings. It is believed Whitefield disapproved of Boehler’s doctrinal opinions and, unable in an argument conducted in Latin to convince him, discharged the workmen.
The Moravians were allowed to stay on the property for some time by Allen’s agent, but the whole project failed, largely through Seward’s death. Whitefield again secured the title and cheerfully assigned it to the Moravians.
The Moravian workmen were compelled to seek a new home. This they found when their Bishop, David Nitcshmann, secured a tract of 5000 acres at the confluence of the Monocacy Creek and the Delaware River, on which, in March, 1741, they began to build Bethlehem. This eventually became the principal settlement of the Moravians in the province.
George Whitefield was born in Gloucester, England, December 16, 1714, and entered Oxford in 1732. He was a religious enthusiast in very early life, fasting twice a week for thirty-six hours and while an undergraduate became a member of the “Holy Club,” in which the denomination of Methodists took its rise.
Whitefield became intimately associated in religious matters with John and Charles Wesley. He was made deacon by the Bishop of Gloucester on Sunday, June 20, 1736, two weeks before his graduation, and attracted attention even by his first sermon; he drew such crowds in London and Bristol that people hung upon the rails of the organ loft and climbed in the windows.
The Wesleys accompanied Oglethorpe to Georgia in 1736 and the following year John Wesley invited Whitefield to join him in his work in America. He came in May, 1738, and after laboring for months as a missionary in the colony of Georgia he returned to England and was ordained priest at Oxford, Sunday, January 14, 1739. On his way a second time to Georgia he first visited Pennsylvania.
Whitefield and his friend, William Seward, arrived in Philadelphia in the evening of Friday, November 2, 1739, on horseback from Lewes, where they had disembarked.
He read prayers and assisted at Christ Church in the services of the following Sunday, and preached there in the afternoon and every day for the rest of the week with increasing congregations. He dined at Thomas Penn’s, and was visited by the ministers of the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches and by many Quakers. He preached twice to more than three thousand persons.
He made a trip to New York, and on his return preached from the yard of the Reverend William Tennent’s church on the Neshaminy to about three thousand, and from the porch window of the Presbyterian Church at Abington, and again several times at Christ Church.
When Whitefield was to preach his farewell sermon in the afternoon of November 28, the church not being large enough for those expected he adjourned to the fields, and preached to 10,000. Twenty gentlemen on horseback accompanied him out of town. At Chester he spoke from a balcony to 5000, of whom one-fifth had come from Philadelphia.
He was energetically philanthropic. His main purpose in going back to Georgia was to carry on his work among the poor orphans.
On Boston Common he preached to 20,000 at one time, and was distinctly heard.
Although he was active in the establishment of the Methodist denomination, he disagreed with Wesley on points of doctrine, and was finally an evangelist without the discipline of any denomination.
Whitefield crossed the ocean many times, and made tours from Georgia to New Hampshire. In September, 1769, he started on his seventh tour there, and the day before his death he preached two hours at Exeter, N. H., and the same evening preached in the open air at Newburyport, Mass. He died of asthma the next day, September 30, 1770, and was buried under the pulpit of the Federal Street Church in that town.
Trial of Five Mollie Maguires for Murder
of B. F. Yost Begun at Pottsville
May 4, 1876
On May 4, 1876, James Carroll, Thomas Duffy, James Roarty, Hugh McGehan, and James Boyle, were placed on trial in Schuylkill County Court at Pottsville, for the murder of Benjamin F. Yost, of Tamaqua.
The details of this revolting crime and the apprehension of the Mollie Maguires are of interest as they reveal the terrible horrors experienced in the anthracite coal fields during the reign of this lawless organization.
James McParlan, the Pinkerton detective, who joined the Mollies under the alias of James McKenna, and successfully brought their leaders to the gallows, was working on the Gomer James murder outrage, when he learned that the next victim was to be an excellent and competent policeman of Tamaqua, of the name of Benjamin F. Yost.
McParlan had been unable to learn sufficient of their designs to get a warning to Yost, as he had so frequently done in other cases.
Yost had experienced considerable trouble with the Mollies, especially as he had several times arrested James Kerrigan, their local leader, for drunkenness. Barney McCarron, the other member of the Tamaqua police force, had also come in for his share of their ill-will, but, from his German parentage, Yost was the more intensely hated. Yost had been threatened several times but was a fearless man, a veteran of the Civil War, where he displayed conspicuous valor on many battlefields, and a policeman who served his community with fidelity.
About midnight of July 5, 1875, the two policemen in passing Carroll’s saloon, noted that the place was still open, went inside and saw Kerrigan and another man drinking.
The policemen proceeded with their duties, and extinguished the street lamps on their route. They arrived at Yost’s residence about two o’clock and partook of a lunch, preparatory to finishing up the night’s work.
The two officers parted at Yost’s front gate, and Mrs. Yost, looking out of her bedroom window, saw her husband place a small ladder against a lamp post a short distance from their home, and step upon the rungs, but he never reached the light.
The woman saw two flashes from a pistol; heard the two loud reports and saw her husband fall from the ladder. She ran down the stairs and into the street, and met the wounded man, staggering and weak with loss of blood, clinging to the fence, looking toward his once happy home.
Yost lived long enough to say that his murderers were two Irishmen who had been in Carroll’s saloon that evening. He exonerated Kerrigan of the crime, saying one was larger and the other smaller than he. He did not see Kerrigan.
Yost died at nine o’clock that morning; he was then thirty-three years of age.
McParlan was soon on the trail of the Mollies who committed this cruel murder, and Captain Linden, another Pinkerton operative, was also active on the case.
McParlan was at this time under suspicion by the Mollies of being a detective and his work was the most dangerous any man was ever called upon to perform, but he was a hero.
He now affected the role of a drunken man and while sleeping off his debauch listened to a conversation which gave him a clue; he then fell in with Carroll, engaged his wife in conversation and soon learned much of importance.
The next day he learned the names of two of the men who had killed Yost, Hugh McGehan and James Boyle, both of Summit Hill.
The following day he went to Coaldale and visited James Roarty, head of the Mollie branch there, ostensibly to see another person. Here they had a drinking bout, and Roarty told too much, and he was Mollie number three.
Two days later McParlan was back in Tamaqua and lounging about Carroll’s saloon where he got more information from Roarty and Carroll. He then learned that Thomas Duffy was an actor in the crime.
Sunday, July 26, McParlan and Carroll spent some time together, when the latter related the conversation he had had with some detectives (which McParlan had sent there), and boasted about loaning his pistol to the man who did the job. This made Carroll number four.
Soon afterwards Duffy bragged to McParlan of the part he had taken and the fifth Mollie was trapped.
All that was then needed was to gather his evidence so that it could be used against these criminals, and for this purpose Captain Linden was most valuable.
Kerrigan took McParlan to the scene of the murder and enacted the crime for his friend’s benefit, and soon after this incident the detective learned that McGehan fired the two shots which killed Yost.
This is the same James Kerrigan who turned State’s evidence in the great trial of Mollies at Mauch Chunk, January 18, 1876, which resulted in the conviction of Kerrigan, Michael J. Doyle, and Edward Kelly for the murder of John P. Jones. Kerrigan’s evidence was the most stunning blow the Mollies had thus far received, but they knew not the heavier blows which were to fall on their villainous heads.
The great trial of Thomas Munley and Charles McAllister for the murder of Thomas Sanger and William Uren, which was held at Pottsville, June, 1876, brought the great Franklin B. Gowen into the case, and the testimony of McParlan, the Pinkerton detective. Conviction followed.
Then May 4, when the five Mollies were placed on trial at Pottsville for the murder of Yost. Judges C. L. Pershing, D. B. Green and T. H. Walker presided.
A juror was taken sick and died, and the second trial was begun July 6, each of the Mollies was found guilty of murder in the first degree, and each was hanged in the Pottsville jail yard, the warrants being signed by Governor Hartranft, May 21, 1877, the executions being held June 21, the day eight Mollies expiated their crimes.
French and Indian Wars—Lieutenant
Governor Thomas Resigned
May 5, 1747
Coincident with the announcement in the Assembly of the death of John Penn, one of the Proprietors, was the resignation of Lieutenant Governor Sir George Thomas, May 5, 1747, on account of ill-health.
On the departure of Governor Thomas, the executive functions again devolved on the Provincial Council, of which Anthony Palmer was president; he served until the arrival of James Hamilton, son of Andrew Hamilton, former Speaker of the Assembly, as Lieutenant Governor, November 23, 1749.
The harvests of the years 1750 to 1752 were so abundant that an extract of the time is interesting: “The years 1751 and 1752 have been so fruitful in wheat and other grain that men in wanton carelessness sought to waste the supply: for the precious wheat which might have supported many poor, they used to fatten hogs, which afterward they consumed in their sumptuousness. Besides, distilleries were erected everywhere, and thus this great blessing was turned into strong drink, which gave rise to much disorder.
These years of plenty were followed by three years of scarcity, 1753–1755, and on the heels of it came the terrible Indian hostilities.
The progress of the white population toward the West alarmed and irritated the Indians. The new settlers did not suffer the delays of the land office, nor did they pay for their lands, but in search for richer soils sought homes in regions where the Indian title had not been extinguished. Some of these settlements were commenced prior to 1740, and rapidly increased, despite the complaints of the Indians, the laws of the Province or the several proclamations of the Governor.
An alarming crisis was now at hand. The French in the neighborhood of the Great Lakes were sedulously applying themselves to seduce the Indians from their allegiance to the English. The Shawnee had already joined the French cause; the Delaware only waited for an opportunity to avenge their wrongs; and of the Six Nations, the Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca were wavering and listening to overtures from the agents of both the English and French.
To keep the Indians in favor of the province required much cunning diplomacy[diplomacy] and many expensive presents. In the midst of this alarming condition the old flame of civil dissension burst out with increased fury. The presents so frequently procured for the Indians, the erection of a chain of forts along the frontier and the maintenance of a military force drew too heavily upon the provincial purse, which never was burdened with any great surplus.
The Assembly urged that the Proprietary estates be taxed, as well as those of humble individuals. The Proprietaries, as would be expected, refused to be taxed and pleaded prerogative, charter and law; the Assembly in turn pleaded equity, common danger, common benefit and at common expense.
The Proprietaries offered bounties in lands not yet acquired from the Indians by treaty or purchase, and in addition proposed the issuing of more paper money. The Assembly was not satisfied; they wanted something more tangible. They passed laws laying taxes and granting supplies, but the Proprietaries opposed the conditions. They were willing to aid the Assembly in taxing the people, but not the Proprietaries. Here were sown the germs of the Revolution, though not fully matured until twenty years later.
During those frivolous disputes in the Assembly the frontiers were left fully exposed. The pacific principles, too, of the Quakers, Dunkards, Mennonites and Schwenckfelders came in to complicate the strife, but as the danger increased they prudently kept aloof from public office, leaving the management of the war to sects less scrupulous. The pulpit and the press were deeply involved, and the inhabitants divided into opposing factions upon this question.
The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was scarcely regarded more seriously than a truce by the French in America. In their eagerness to extend their territories and connect their northern possessions with Louisiana, they projected a line of forts and military posts from one to the other along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. They explored and occupied the land upon the latter stream, buried in many places leaden plates, by which they claimed possession of those lands.
The French established themselves at Presqu’ Isle and extended themselves southward; they erected a fort at Au Boeuf and another at the mouth of French Creek, which they called Fort Machault.
Virginia was much interested in this foothold gained by the French along the Ohio, for they claimed the territory of Pennsylvania west of the Allegheny Mountains as part of their dominion.
The English Government having learned that the French claimed right to the Ohio River country by virtue of the discovery of La Salle, made sixty years previous, remonstrated with the Court of Versailles, but without avail, and resolved to oppose force with force.
The first move made by the English was to present a solid front by combining the efforts of all the colonies. To this end a conference was called at Albany in July, 1754, to which the Six Nations were invited. Governor Hamilton could not attend this conference, and John Penn and Richard Peters, of the Council, and Isaac Norris and Benjamin Franklin, of the Assembly, were commissioned to represent the Province of Pennsylvania. They carried with them £500 as the provincial present to the Indians.
The results of this confederated council were not satisfactory, but the Pennsylvania Commissioners obtained a great part of the land in the province, to which the Indian title was not extinct, comprising the lands lying southwest of a line beginning one mile above the mouth of Penns Creek, in what is now Snyder County, and running northwest by west “to the western boundary of the State.”
The Shawnee, Delaware and Munsee Indians, on the Susquehanna, Juniata, Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, thus found their lands “sold from under their feet,” which the Six Nations had guaranteed to them on their removal from the Eastern waters. This proved of great dissatisfaction to these Indians and had not a little part in causing their alienation from the English interest.