The Fair Play Settlers: Demographic Factors
James Logan, president of the Proprietary Council of Pennsylvania, 1736-1738, once declared that "if the Scotch-Irish continue to come they will make themselves masters of the Province."[1] His prediction, which was to be generally proven in the Province during the French and Indian War, was to be demonstrated particularly in the West Branch Valley during the Revolutionary period. The Scotch-Irish were the dominant national or ethnic group in the Fair Play territory from 1769 to 1784. This dominance is demonstrated in Chart 1, which indicates the national origins of eighty families in the Fair Play territory.
Chart 1
National Origins of Fair Play Settlers[2]
Expressed in Numbers and Percentages
| Total | Scotch-Irish | English | German | Scots | Irish | Welsh | French |
| 80 | 39 | 16 | 12 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| % | 48.75 | 20 | 15 | 6.25 | 5 | 2.5 | 2.5 |
Not only were the Scotch-Irish the most numerous national stock among the Fair Play settlers of the West Branch Valley, but they also represented a plurality and almost a majority of the entire population. The significance of this finding in terms of the "style of life" of the Fair Play settlers cannot be over-emphasized. It influenced the politics, the religion, the family patterns, and thus the values of this frontier society.
Several other important conclusions can be drawn from this chart. In contrast to the population of Pennsylvania in general and the assumptions regarding frontier areas in particular, the English, rather than the Germans, were the second most numerous national stock group. The Germans, however, made up the third-largest segment of the West Branch Valley population. The Scots, Welsh, Irish, and a few French inhabitants formed the remaining sixteen per cent of the population. Obviously, this was a dominantly Anglo-Saxon Protestant area of settlement.
The impact of this Scotch-Irish hegemony upon the religion, politics, family life, and social values in general will be dealt with in a later chapter. However, it can be noted at this juncture that the strong-willed individualism which characterized these sturdy people was as much influenced by their national origin as by their experience on the American frontier. Furthermore, Presbyterianism influenced and was influenced by a developing democratic political system, which paralleled the American Presbyterian system of popular rather than hierarchical church government.[3] A prominent immigration historian has pointed out that "the theory of Presbyterian republicanism, as a matter of church policy, could easily be reconciled with demands of the more radical democrats of 1776."[4] Finally, the social life and customs and, hence, the values of this frontier society were governed for the most part by this majority group. Thus, dogmatic faith, political equality, social and economic independence, respect for education, and a tightly-knit pattern of family relationships express appropriately the institutional patterns by which the Scotch-Irish of the West Branch operated.
It is interesting to contrast the national stock groupings of this Susquehanna frontier with the results of a study of national origins of the American population made by the American Council of Learned Societies and published in 1932:[5]
Chart 2
Classification of the White Population into Its National Stocks
in the Continental United States and Pennsylvania: 1790; and
in the Fair Play Territory: 1784 (Expressed in Percentages).
| Scotch-Irish | English | German | Scots | Irish | Welsh | French | Other | |
| Continental United States | 5.9 | 60.1 | 8.6 | 8.1 | 3.6 | 0 | 2.3 | 10.6 |
| Pennsylvania | 11.0 | 35.3 | 33.3 | 8.6 | 3.5 | 0 | 1.8 | 6.5 |
| Fair Play Territory | 48.75 | 20 | 15 | 6.25 | 5 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 0 |
From this comparison it can readily be seen that the national origins of the Fair Play settlers in no way conform to either the national pattern or the State pattern of just a few years later. Although this limited frontier area can be recognized as having its own individual ratio of component stocks, it is representative rather than unique in its culture and values. The reaction of those of other national stocks to the frontier experience buttresses the conclusion that their values were influenced more by the frontier than by national origin. It is this common reaction to the problems of the frontier which gives rise to the conclusion that this West Branch Valley environment was characterized by and that its inhabitants held values which Turner evaluated as democratic. The nature of those democratic values is, however, dealt with in greater detail in subsequent chapters.
The American sources of emigration form the next question to be considered in examining the origins of the Fair Play settlers. Lacking adequate statistical data for a complete picture of migration in terms of percentages, the following chart indicates only the probable origins of the three most numerous national stock groupings in the Fair Play territory:
Chart 3
American Sources of Emigration[6]
| National Stock | Percentage of Population | American Source of Emigration |
| Scotch-Irish | 48.75 | Chester, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster counties |
| English | 20 | New Jersey, New York, southeastern Pennsylvania (Philadelphia and Bucks counties) |
| German | 15 | Chester, Lancaster, Philadelphia, and York counties |
| Total | 83.75 | |
Obviously, the primary sources for the West Branch settlements were the lower Susquehanna Valley and southeastern Pennsylvania. However, an appreciable number of English settlers appear to have come originally from New Jersey to settle in what they called "Jersey Shore," immediately east of the mouth of Pine Creek. One explanation for the migration of the dominant stock, the Scotch-Irish, is probably the fact that the Provincial government refused to sell more lands in Lancaster and York counties to the Scotch-Irish. In effect, they were driven to use squatter tactics in the Fair Play territory.[7]
The internal origins of sixteen of these settlers can be verified in either Meginness or Linn. Four came from Chester County, three each from the Juniata Valley and Lancaster County, two each from Cumberland County and New Jersey, and one each from Dauphin County and from Orange County in New York. Nine of these settlers, incidentally, were Scotch-Irish. Although these data are insufficient for any valid generalization, they do conform to the characteristic migratory trends indicated in Chart 3.
In analyzing the migration of settlers into the West Branch Valley beyond the line of the "New Purchase," it becomes apparent that the Scotch-Irish came from the fringe areas of settlement, whereas the English and Germans tended to migrate from more settled areas. Furthermore, the English migrants often came from outside the Province of Pennsylvania, either from New Jersey or New York. In fact, if one were to construct a pattern of concentric zones, with the core in the southeastern corner of the Province and the lines radiating in a north-westerly direction, the English would be found at the core, the Germans in the next zone, and the Scotch-Irish in the outlying area. This zoning offers no real contradiction of the usual pattern of Pennsylvania migrations. However, when one combines the data of internal movements with those of external origins, certain contradictions do appear. The most noteworthy of these is, of course, the prominence of English settlers on this Fair Play frontier vis-à-vis the Germans.
Since the Pennsylvania frontiersmen of the Wyoming Valley were of English stock, and immigrated from New England, it might have been assumed that some of these Connecticut settlers came into the West Branch Valley. Here, however, all evidence points to the fact that Connecticut settlers did not migrate west of Muncy, which is located at the juncture of Muncy Creek and the West Branch of the Susquehanna River (where the bend in the river turns into a directly western pattern). Thus the Connecticut boundary dispute of 1769-1775, which erupted into the Pennamite Wars, did not involve the Fair Play settlers.[8] Nevertheless, at least one Fair Play settler looked forward to the possibility of an advance of the Connecticut settlement along the West Branch.[9]
The impact of events upon the settlement of the Fair Play territory is particularly apparent when one examines the periods of immigration to and emigration from the region. Three events seemed to have had the greatest influence upon the immigration: the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, which extended the Provincial limits to Lycoming Creek in this region, and the resultant opening of the Land Office for claims in the "New Purchase" on April 3, 1769;[10] the almost complete evacuation of the territory in the "Great Runaway" of the summer of 1778, which was prompted by Indian attacks and the fear of a great massacre comparable to the "Wyoming Valley Massacre" of that same year;[11] and finally, the Stanwix Treaty of 1784, which brought the Fair Play area within the limits of the Province.[12]
The first Stanwix Treaty, made by Sir William Johnson with the Six Nations in November of 1768, extended the legitimate line of English colonial settlement from the line established by the Proclamation of 1763 to a point on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River at the mouth of Lycoming Creek (the Tiadaghton, as it was so ambiguously labeled).[13] This extension, ostensibly for the purpose of providing lands for the colonial veterans of the French and Indian War, became a boon to speculators and an inducement to the Scotch-Irish squatters who took lands beyond the limits of this "New Purchase" in what was to become the Fair Play territory.
In the summer of 1778 the war whoop once again caused the settlers of the West Branch Valley to flee from their homes for fear of a repetition of the Wyoming Massacre. The peril of the moment is vividly described in this communication to the Executive Council in Philadelphia from Colonel Samuel Hunter, commander of Fort Augusta:
The Carnage at Wioming, the devastations and murders upon the West branch of Susquehanna, On Bald Eagle Creek, and in short throughout the whole County to within a few miles of these Towns (the recital of which must be shocking) I suppose must have before now have reached your ears, if not you may figure yourselves men, women, and children, Butchered and scalped, many of them after being promised quarters, and some scalped alive, of which we have miserable Instances amongst us.... I have only to add that A few Hundreds of men well armed and immediately sent to our relief would prevent much bloodshed, confusion and devastation ... as the appearance of being supported would call back many of our fugitives to save their Harvest for their subsistence, rather than suffer the inconveniences which reason tells me they do down the Country and their with their families return must ease the people below of a heavy and unprofitable Burthen.[14]
Robert Covenhoven, who lived at the mouth of the Loyalsock Creek and who fled to Sunbury (Fort Augusta) also, described the flight:
Such a sight I never saw in my life. Boats, canoes, hog-troughs, rafts hastily made of dry sticks, every sort of floating article, had been put in requisition, and were crowded with women, children, and plunder. There were several hundred people in all.... The whole convoy arrived safely at Sunbury, leaving the entire range of farms along the West Branch to the ravages of the Indians.[15]
In this eighteenth-century Dunkirk, the West Branch Valley was practically cleared of settlers.
The Indians, it is true, proved troublesome to the entire advancing American frontier; but unlike the French, whose menacing forts had been removed in the recent wars, the Indians were unable to halt the westward penetration. An expedition under the leadership of Colonel Thomas Hartley was sent out expressly for the purpose of boosting morale in the West Branch Valley following the Wyoming Massacre and the Great Runaway. Colonel Hartley's letter to Thomas McKean, chief justice of Pennsylvania and a member of the Continental Congress, gives bitter testimony to the conditions which he observed in September of 1778:
You heard of the Distresses of these Frontiers they are truly great—The People which we found were Difident and timid The Panick had not yet left them—many a wealthy Family reduced to Poverty & without a home, some had lost their Husbands their children or Friends—all was gloomy.... the Barbarians do now and then attack an unarmed man a Helpless Mother or Infant....
The colonel indicated, however, that strong militia support and some offensive action would restore confidence and cause the people to return to the valley. His interpretation of the significance of his mission is quite clearly stated in the conclusion of his letter: "We shall not have it in our Power to gain Honour or Laurels on these Frontiers but we have the Satisfaction to think we save our Country...." Hartley's solution to the Indian problem, which had driven off the settlers, was to expel them "beyond the Lakes" excepting only the more civilized Tuscaroras and Oneidas.[16]
Despite the danger from the Indians, the Fair Play settlers began trickling back to their homes, or what was left of them, toward the end of the Revolutionary War. Once the war was ended and the Fair Play territory was annexed by subsequent purchase, the mass movement of settlers to the West Branch Valley resumed.
Incidentally, Dr. Wallace in his Conrad Weiser assesses one John Henry Lydius with the major responsibility for the Indian massacres in central and northeastern Pennsylvania. Wallace notes that Lydius' Connecticut purchase from the Indians in 1754 caused "war between Pennsylvania and Connecticut and ... [precipitated] the Massacre of Wyoming in 1778." This massacre, as West Branch historians know, had its subsequent impact on the West Branch Valley in the Great Runaway, although the Winters Massacre of June 10, 1778, which prompted the evacuation of the valley, actually preceded the Wyoming affair.[17]
Finally, the purchase of the remaining Indian lands in Pennsylvania (except for the small corner of the Erie Triangle) was made on October 3, 1784, in a second Stanwix Treaty. This accession ended the Pennsylvania boundary dispute with the Six Nations; and it also ended the need for any extra-legal system of government in the West Branch Valley, for this new treaty encompassed the Fair Play territory.[18] However, this treaty raised the troublesome Tiadaghton question once again, a question only partly resolved by the Legislature's designation of Lycoming Creek as the Tiadaghton and the recognition of the squatters' right of pre-emption to their settlements along the West Branch of the Susquehanna.[19] The land office was opened for the sale of this purchase July 1, 1785; by 1786 fifty heads of families were listed for State taxes in Northumberland County.[20] Approximately fifty per cent of these taxables had been in the area earlier.
Perhaps the only significant nationality trend to be noted in this important sequence of events is the tenacity of the Scotch-Irish and the subsequent increase of English and German settlers following this last "New Purchase."[21] Over half of the taxables in Pine Creek Township, the new designation for much of the Fair Play territory after it became an official part of the Province, were Scotch-Irish. As a result, these Scots from the north of Ireland continued to maintain their position of leadership even after the area was included in the Commonwealth.
The reasons for migrating to the West Branch Valley in this fifteen-year period from 1769 to 1784 were varied and numerous. For the most part, the various nationality groups which emigrated from Europe came for economic opportunity and because of religious and political persecutions. Their movement to the frontier regions was prompted by similar problems. In fact, much the same as the earlier settlers of Jamestown and Plymouth, the squatters of the West Branch Valley came for gain and for God. Furthermore, the promise of Penn's "Holy Experiment," in which men of diverse backgrounds could live together peacefully in religious freedom and political equality, encouraged them to come to Pennsylvania. However, once the dominant group of the Fair Play frontier, the Scotch-Irish, arrived in Pennsylvania, they found themselves unsuited to the settled areas. The natural enemy of the English, who had oppressed them at home, these settlers soon found themselves repeating the Old World conflicts. In addition, the German Pietists caused them further embarrassment in their new homes. Their Calvinism, fierce political independence, and earnest desire for land and opportunity soon made them personae non gratae in the established areas. Hence, they migrated to the frontier areas and even beyond the limits of Provincial interference and control.[22]
The paucity of population data makes impossible any extensive analysis of the stability and mobility of the Fair Play settlers. However, the tax lists, both in the published archives and in the files of the county commissioners in Northumberland County, offer limited evidence for the early years, though they provide ample data for the years after 1773. Prior to the Great Runaway in 1778, tax lists are available for the entire county of Northumberland; the lists simply indicate the taxable's township, acreage, and tax. Records in the Northumberland County courthouse give the assessments for 1773, 1774, 1776, and 1778.
Due to the fact that the Fair Play territory was outside the Provincial limits until after the purchase of Fort Stanwix in 1784, the assessment lists give only those persons residing within Northumberland County. As a result, there were only six to twelve settlers who associated with the Fair Play men who were included in the lists for 1773-1778. Chart 4 indicates the names, national origins, and years listed for those settlers.
Chart 4
Fair Play Settlers on the Tax Rolls 1773-1778.[23]
| Name | National Origin | 1773 | 1774 | 1776 | 1778 |
| James Alexander | Scotch-Irish | x | x | ||
| George Calhoune | Scotch-Irish | x | x | x | x |
| Cleary Campbell | Scotch-Irish | x | |||
| William Campbell, Jr. | Scotch-Irish | x | x | x | x |
| William Campbell, Jr. | Scotch-Irish | x | x | ||
| John Clark | English | x | |||
| Thomas Forster | English | x | x | x | x |
| James Irwin | Scotch-Irish | x | x | x | x |
| John Jamison | English | x | |||
| Isaiah Jones | Welsh | x | |||
| Robert King | German | x | x | x | |
| John Price | Welsh | x | x | ||
| Totals | 6 | 8 | 7 | 7 | |
From these limited data one obviously concludes that the Scotch-Irish were not only the most numerous but also the most persistent of these frontiersmen. Also, nine of these men, that is all except Clark, Jones, and King, appear on the tax lists for Northumberland County for the year 1785.[24] Interestingly enough, six of these nine were Scotch-Irish; and although our sample is limited, it is readily apparent that the stalwart Scots had a way of "hanging on." It would be presumptuous to conclude that seventy-five per cent of the residents before 1778 returned by 1785; but it is fact that some forty families had made improvements in the area by 1773 when William Cooke was sent out by the Land Office to "Warn the People of[f] the unpurchased Land."[25] Furthermore, as indicated earlier, some fifty families appear on the assessments for 1786, more than half of whom had been in the region before.
Any effort to analyze the population in terms of stability and mobility runs head-on into the creation of new townships in the 1780's, the inability to establish death rates for this frontier, and the inadequacy of probate records. The result is that the data are intuitively rather than statistically sound. Chart 5 offers a comparison of tax lists over a period of nine years as the basis for some conclusions regarding the stability and mobility of the Fair Play settlers.
Chart 5
Population Stability and Mobility
Based Upon a Comparison of Tax Lists
For the Period From 1778 to 1787.[26]
| 1778-80 | 1781 | 1783-84 | 1786 | 1787 | |
| Number of residents assessed | 27 | 29 | 34 | 40 | 68 |
| Number appearing on previous assessments | 6 | 19 | 21 | 14 | 33 |
Except for the 1783-84 figures, all of the tax data are for State taxes. The exception is the listing for the federal supply tax in 1783-84. The steady growth rate of the area is easily recognizable both in raw figures and in percentages. Beginning with an increase of a little more than seven per cent between the first two listings, we find a seventy per cent increase in the final figures. The tremendous increase in the last two assessments may be due to the purchase of 1784 and the subsequent legitimizing of claims through the establishment of pre-emption rights.
The stability of the population is particularly noted in the consistently high percentage of residents with some tenure in the valley. Furthermore, the apparent contradiction of this statement by the decline to fourteen residents in the 1786 listing who had once left and then returned is offset when one examines the neighboring township assessments for that same year. Here fourteen additional names of former Fair Play settlers are to be found which would sustain the characteristic pattern of tenure. The statistical problem is complicated by the creation of new townships following the purchase of 1784. Pine Creek and Lycoming were the new designations for the former Fair Play territory, Pine Creek running from the creek of that same name west, and Lycoming extending from Pine Creek east to Lycoming Creek.
Petitions from the area in 1778, 1781, and 1784 give a similar picture. Almost half of the names which are found on the tax lists appear on two or more of these appeals. These include a distress petition in June of 1778, and petitions asking recognition of pre-emption rights in 1781 and 1784.[27] The signatures on the petitions range in number from thirty-nine to fifty-one, and at least twenty-four of these settlers signed two or more of these documents. The very nature of these petitions, particularly the later ones, indicates the tremendous desire on the part of these sturdy pioneers to remain in or return to their homes in the West Branch Valley. Here too, however, this tenacity of purpose is not strictly confined to the Scotch-Irish.
What conclusions can be drawn from this analysis of the demographic factors in the Fair Play settlement? Particularly evident is the dominance of the Scotch-Irish, who numerically composed the greatest national stock group in the population. This dominance, as we have already noted, greatly influenced the political and social institutions of the area. Secondly, one might consider the numbers of English settlers, as compared with the number of Germans, surprising. As a matter of fact, if one adds the numbers of Scots and Welsh inhabitants to the English and Scotch-Irish, the result is an "English" percentage of seventy-seven and one half for the entire population. Thus it is quite logical to assume that English customs and language would prevail, and they did. Incidentally, it should be added that the "English" nature of the population, combined with the Scotch-Irish plurality, meant that the Scotch-Irish were more representative of this frontier than they were innovators of its customs and values.
If a majority of the Fair Play settlers came from the British Isles, from where did they emigrate in America? Here it is quite clear that these frontiersmen were predominantly from the lower Susquehanna Valley and southeastern Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was to them a land of liberty and opportunity;[28] and when they failed to find these privileges in the settled areas, they moved out on the frontier where they could make their own rules, that is to say, establish their own familiar institutions. The result was the Fair Play system.
Although the Fair Play settlers came to America and central Pennsylvania for the usual political, economic, and social reasons, the two Stanwix treaties and the Indian raids of 1778 had the most influence on population fluctuations. The pioneers came into the territory over-reaching the limits of the "New Purchase" of 1768. They were driven out, almost to a man, in the Great Runaway of 1778. And finally, they returned after the second "New Purchase" in 1784, which resulted in the recognition of their pre-emption claims for their earlier illegal settlements. It is interesting to note that pre-emption claims were recognized in the West Branch Valley some forty-five years prior to federal legislation to that effect.[29]
Despite fluctuations in the population, the Scotch-Irish were able to maintain their hold over the valley and thus influence the pattern of development for this frontier outpost. Horace Walpole, addressing the English Parliament during the American Revolution, said, "There is no use crying about it. Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson, and that is the end of it."[30] The Scotch-Irish with their Presbyterianism had run off with the West Branch Valley as well; and their independent spirit would see them in the foreground of the "noblest rupture in the history of mankind." That independent spirit and leadership is particularly noted in the political system which they established along the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. Their "Fair Play system" is the primary concern of the next chapter.