FOOTNOTES:
[1] See [Chart 1] in Chapter Two.
[2] Smith, Laws, II, 195.
[3] Pennsylvania Archives, Third Series, XIX, 557-805.
[4] For example, in the County Assessments for 1781, Pennsylvania Archives, Third Series, XIX, 468, 484, the individual holdings of resident property owners range from 50 to 1,500 acres, whereas non-residents' range from 200 to 13,000. Only six of thirty residents showed property in excess of 325 acres and four of these had 550 acres or less. The two large landowners were peripheral Fair Play residents. Subsequent tax lists indicate that non-residents eventually sold their property in sections.
[5] Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 262.
[6] Fithian: Journal (1775) and Journal of William Colbert (1792-1794). These journals of the first regularly assigned itinerant pastors, Presbyterian and Methodist, to the West Branch Valley, contain numerous references concerning the personal character and morality of the settlers. In the Hamilton Papers of the Wagner Collection of Revolutionary War pension claimants, p. 11, Mrs. Hamilton writes to the Honorable George C. Whiting, Commissioner of Pensions, on Dec. 16, 1858: "I believe they were people of clear sound mind, just, upright, morrall, religious, and friendly to all. I should say they came nearest to keeping the commandment, love your nabour as yourself, then any people I ever lived among."
[7] Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 269.
[8] Helen Herritt Russell, "The Documented Story of the Fair Play Men and Their Government," The Northumberland County Historical Society Proceedings and Addresses, XXII (1958), 16-43. Mrs. Russell, whose genealogical studies were the basis of Chart 1 in Chapter Two, notes 24 marriages among the 80 names, 9 of which were intermarriages of different national stocks. Of the 24 marriages, 9 were between Scotch-Irish couples. Intermarriages produced 5 English-Scotch-Irish couples, 2 German-Scotch-Irish, 1 Welsh-Scotch-Irish, and 1 German-English. The intermarriages appear to follow the national stock percentages in the population. This would suggest that the intermarriages were a matter of choice rather than of necessity.
[9] Dunaway, The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania, p. 198.
[10] Journal of William Colbert (1792-1794). This entry for Thursday, Sept. 5, 1793, is from a typescript belonging to Dr. Charles F. Berkheimer, of Williamsport. The original is in Chicago at the Garrett Biblical Seminary.
[11] Here again, Fithian, Colbert, and Mr. Davy all mention the friendly reception which was theirs on this frontier. Davy, in an entry for Oct. 10, 1794, p. 265, says, "In the Winter Sleighs are in general use on the Rivers & on Land & it is time of Visiting & Jollity throughout the Country."
[12] Journal of William Colbert, Tuesday, Aug. 21, 1792. Here the Reverend Colbert refers to the existence of a class in religion among the group of Presbyterians, although the prospects appear none too favorable. In fact, he says, "I had no desire to meet the class, so disordered are they, therefore omitted it." Quarterly meetings of Methodists were also held in the West Branch Valley, as Colbert notes in his journal for Saturday, Sept. 15, 1792, and Saturday, Sept. 7, 1793. In 1792, Colbert remarks that "Our Quarterly Meeting began at Joshua White's today." The following year he wrote that "brother Paynter and I have to hold a Quarterly meeting at Ammariah Sutton's at Lycommon." Each of these instances indicates the presence of some sort of voluntary religious association. However, it must be recalled that Fithian mentioned no such classes or meetings extant during his visit in July of 1775.
[13] Fithian: Journal, pp. 80-81.
[14] Journal of William Colbert, Thursday, Oct. 17, 1793, and Saturday, Aug. 18, 1792.
[15] Ibid., Tuesday, Oct. 15, 1793.
[16] Smith, Laws, II, 195.
[17] Muncy Historical Society, Wagner Collection, Hamilton Papers, p. 10.
[18] Ibid.
[19] See the Appearance Dockets Commencing in 1772 for Northumberland County and 1795 for Lycoming County.
[20] Journal of William Colbert, Monday, June 18, 1792.
[21] Ibid., Saturday, Aug. 4, 1792: "Calvinist must certainly be the most damnable doctrine upon the face of the globe." Sunday, July 29, 1792: "Here for telling the people they must live without sin, I so offended a Presbyterian, that he got up, called his wife and away he went." Sunday July 22, 1792: "... in the afternoon for the first time heard a Presbyterian at Pine Creek.... He is an able speaker but could not, but, Calvinistic like speak against sinless perfection." Monday, Aug. 20, 1792: "... rode to John Hamilton's in the afternoon. Here the unhappy souls [Presbyterian Fair Play settlers] that were joined together in society, I fear are going to ruin." Thursday, Oct. 17, 1793: "I went to John Hamilton's on the Bald Eagle Creek spoke a few words to a few people: I do not think that is worth the preachers while to stop here."
[22] F. B. Everett, "Early Presbyterianism along the West Branch of the Susquehanna River," Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society, XII (1927), 481. According to the Reverend Mr. Everett, whose article also appeared in the Montgomery Mirror for Oct. 27, 1926, the Scotch-Irish, with the Anglicans, were the dogmatists of Pennsylvania. The Quakers and Pietistic German sects were anti-dogmatic. Dogmatically adhering to his catechisms, the Scotch-Irishman "resented the aspersions cast upon dogma and creed." The frontier gave him freedom from the Quakers who still considered Presbyterians as those "who had burnt a Quaker in New England from the cart's tail, and had murdered other Quakers."
[23] "Mr. Davy's Diary," p. 259.
[24] Thomas J. Wertenbaker, The First Americans, 1607-1690 (New York, 1927). Wertenbaker's first chapter, "A New World Makes New Men," develops this thesis generally for the American colonial experience, and, as Turner said, those first colonies were the first frontier.
[25] Clark, "Pioneer Life in the New Purchase," pp. 28, 63. Clark notes that indentured servitude appeared in Muncy, where Samuel Wallis' great holdings made such service feasible. He also mentions Wallis' ownership of slaves, verified by the Quarter Session Docket of 1778. Wallis freed two Negro slaves, Zell and Chloe, posting a £30 bond that they would not become a charge on the township.
[26] Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 262. See also Dunaway, The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania, pp. 180-200.
[27] These "fringe area" participants in Fair Play society actually resided, for the most part, in Provincial territory and hence enjoyed greater stability and more land.
[28] Calhoun, A Social History of the American Family, I, 207.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 271. Leyburn points out that since the Scotch-Irish were never a "minority," in the sense that their values differed radically from the norms of their areas of settlement, they never suffered the normlessness which Durkheim calls anomie—the absence of clear standards to follow. As Leyburn states it,
Anomie was an experience unknown to the Scotch-Irishman, for he moved immediately upon arrival to a region where there was neither a settlement nor an established culture. He held land, knew independence, had manifold responsibilities from the very outset. He spoke the language of his neighbors to the East through whose communities he had passed on his way to the frontier. Their institutions and standards differed at only minor points from his own. The Scotch-Irish were not, in short, a "minority group" and needed no Immigrant Aid society to tide them over a period of maladjustment so that they might become assimilated in the American melting pot.
This, however, is not to suggest that minorities are necessarily anomic. The Jews, for example, were always a cultural minority in Europe, yet they adhered intensely to their own cultural norms.
[31] Muncy Historical Society, Wagner Collection, Hamilton Papers, p. 10.
[32] J. E. Wright and Doris S. Corbett, Pioneer Life in Western Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh, 1940), p. 142.
[33] Ibid. The existence of these "praying societies" is further substantiated in Colbert's Journal. During these services, lay persons gave exhortations or assisted Colbert in some fashion.
[34] Fithian: Journal, p. 76.
[35] Robert S. Cocks, One Hundred and Fifty Years of Evangelism, The History of Northumberland Presbytery 1811-1961 (n. p., 1961), p. 2.
[36] Fithian: Journal, pp. 80-81.
[37] Joseph Stevens, History of the Presbytery of Northumberland, from Its Organization, in 1811, to May 1888 (Williamsport, 1888), p. 38.
[38] Ibid., p. 18.
[39] Cocks, One Hundred and Fifty Years of Evangelism, p. 2.
[40] Guy S. Klett, "Scotch-Irish Presbyterian Pioneering Along the Susquehanna River," Pennsylvania History, XX (1953), p. 173.
[41] Ibid., p. 174.
[42] Linn, History of Centre and Clinton Counties, p. 520.
[43] Klett, "Scotch-Irish Presbyterian Pioneering," p. 175.
[44] Journal of William Colbert, Monday, June 18, 1792; and Robert Berger, "The Story of Baptist Beginnings in Lycoming County," Now and Then, XII (1960), 274-280. According to the Reverend Robert Berger, of Hughesville, a few Baptist settlers came into Lycoming County from New Jersey, but were soon driven out by the Indians. Apparently, the Philadelphia Baptist Association sent missionaries to the area in 1775 and 1778. However, not until the association commissioned Elders Patton, Clingan, and Vaughn in 1792 did any extensive Baptist preaching take place in this region. They were sent out for three months on the Juniata and the West Branch. The Loyalsock Baptist Church, established in 1822, is the first church.
[45] Dietmar Rothermund, The Layman's Progress: Religious and Political Experience in Colonial Pennsylvania 1740-1770 (Philadelphia, 1961), p. 142. As Rothermund describes it, "The Pilgrim's progress had turned into the layman's emancipation, and finally into the citizen's revolution" (p. 137). He calls "the political maturity which followed the era of religious emancipation ... America's real revolutionary heritage" (p. 138).
[46] Ibid., p. 137. It must first be recognized that American Presbyterianism differed from that of Scotland particularly with regard to local autonomy. The Presbyterian Church, like the United States under the Constitution of 1787, was federal in its governmental structure, and the autonomy of the local religious institutions was later carried into politics. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 313, emphasizes the fact that the Scotch-Irishman's church had accustomed him to belief in government by the consent of the governed, in representative and republican institutions. The relationship between the church covenant and the social compact is quite direct. If men can bind themselves together to form a church, then it seems quite logical that they can bind themselves together to form a government. Fair Play democracy was simply political Presbyterianism. Its impact has been noted by a number of historians. Dunaway, The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania, p. 135, claims that "The actual means by which Pennsylvania was transformed from a proprietary province into an American commonwealth was the new political organization developed by the Scotch-Irish in alliance with the eastern radical leaders of the continental Revolutionary movement. This extra-legal organization, consisting of the committee of safety, the provincial and county committees of correspondence, and the provincial conventions, supplanted the regular provincial government by absorbing its functions." Becker, Beginning of the American People, p. 180, calls the Scotch-Irish a people "whose religion confirmed them in a democratic habit of mind."
[47] Lycoming County Courthouse, Will Book #1, George Quigley's Will, p. 69.
[48] Maynard, Historical View of Clinton County, p. 208.
[49] Carrie A. Hall and Rose G. Kretsinger, The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America (New York, 1935), p. 27.
[50] Journal of William Colbert, Thursday, Sept. 5, 1793.
[51] Lycoming County Courthouse, Will Book #1, William Chatham's Will, p. 177. Chatham's bequest is "To Robert Devling My Fidel."
[52] Dunaway, The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania, p. 196.
[53] Rev. John Cuthbertson's Diary (1716-1791), microfilm transcript, 2 rolls, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg. An example, found on p. 252, is this "famous American Receipt for the Rheumatism. Take of garlic two cloves, of gum ammoniac, one drachm; blend them by bruising together. Make them into two or three bolus's with fair water and swallow one at night and the other in the morning. Drink strong sassafras tea while using these. It banishes also contractions of the joints. 100 pounds been given for this."
[54] Rebecca F. Gross, "Postscript to the Week," Lock Haven Express, Aug. 3, 1963, p. 4.
[55] Eugene P. Bertin, "Primary Streams of Lycoming County," Now and Then, VIII (1947), 257-258.
[56] Dunaway, The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania, p. 193.
[57] Ibid., p. 197.
[58] "Eleanor Coldren's Deposition," pp. 220-222. Mrs. Coldren refers to a tavern, just west of Chatham's Run, in the spring of 1775. The first church appeared in 1792.
[59] "Diary of the Unknown Traveler," Now and Then, X (1954), 307. The diarist tells of a tavernkeeper who refused a man a pint of wine because "he had had enough" (Thursday, July 24, 1794).
[60] Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, pp. 148-150. Leyburn suggests, and the Fair Play settlers demonstrate, that Ulster and America were similar experiences. He says (p. 148) that the Scotch-Irish "lived on land in both regions often forcibly taken from the natives. The confiscation itself was declared legal by the authorities, and the actual settlement was made in the conviction that the land was now rightfully theirs. Might makes right—at least in the matter of life and land ownership."
[61] Fithian: Journal, the Journal of William Colbert, and "Mr. Davy's Diary" all refer to the hospitality of the people of this frontier. For example, Fithian speaks of his hosts as "sociable, kind"; while Colbert constantly mentions the "liberty" which he enjoyed in the various homes which he visited.
[62] Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, pp. 146-147. Leyburn suggests that belief in the superiority of the Presbyterian church to any king justifies revolt; if one may, others may, leading to anarchy. Thus freedom of worship for a minority allied itself in America with liberty of worship for all. The right of revolution, as it was acted upon in America, was also implied.
[63] Loyalists in the West Branch Valley suffered the usual privations as this excerpt from the "Diary of the Unknown Traveler," p. 310, indicates: "Thursday, July 24, 1794.... Mr. Witteker and his family are of the people called Quakers but was turned out of the society during the time of war for paing the money called substitute [relief from the draft]* money to the Congress agents. M[r]. W's case is really hard. He suffered as above by his friends for aiding Congress and his estate was conviscated [sic] by the state for being a loyalist." [*Phrase bracketed in quotation.]
[64] Dunaway, The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania, pp. 197-198.
[65] Ibid., p. 198. An example of this attitude is found in this entry in the "Diary of the Unknown Traveler," p. 310: "This afternoon 24 July [1794] a person with two horses, one he rode, the other lead, called at Wittekers for a pint of wine, but on account of him being intoxicated before Mr. W. told him he had had enough & would not let him have any. Where could we find so disinterested a tavernkeeper in England? In England they never refuse as long as they pay, but here the man had the money ready if they would let him have the wine."
[66] This conclusion was reached after the reading of some three hundred wills in the probate records of Northumberland and Lycoming counties. This particular reference is from James Caldwell's will, Nov. 20, 1815, located in Will Book #1, p. 108, Lycoming County Courthouse.
[67] Clark, "Pioneer Life in the New Purchase," p. 22. Beds and feather beds seem to have been status symbols of a sort often willed to the wife or included as a dowry.