While this war was confined to the western border of Virginia, the inhabitants of Westmoreland County organized, under command of St. Clair, assisted by Colonels Proctor and Lochrey and Captain James Smith, and put the frontier in a state of defense.
On February 7, 1775, by order of a Virginia magistrate, a man named Benjamin Harrison with an armed party broke open the jail at Hannastown and set free the prisoners. Robert Hanna, who was a magistrate, read to them the riot act, but Harrison said he did not regard that act, or those who read it, or those who made it. Two weeks later Hanna and another magistrate, James Cavett, were arrested and confined in Fort Dunmore, where they remained for months.
The controversy got into Congress, but the Revolution brought about a more amicable feeling, and by 1779 the Virginians and Pennsylvanians agreed to a settlement.
A commission surveyed the boundary by extending the Mason and Dixon’s line to its western limit of five degrees. There a meridian was drawn as far north as the Ohio.
Ceding her western lands, north of the Ohio to Congress in 1784, Virginia had no further interest in the boundary and the next year Pennsylvania alone extended the meridian to Lake Erie.
After the Revolution, affairs in Western Pennsylvania were generally peaceful.
First Members of Susquehanna Company
Settle in Wyoming, February 8, 1769
The Proprietaries of Pennsylvania, determined to hold possession of lands in the Wyoming Valley, which were claimed by the Connecticut settlers, sent Captain Amos Ogden, John Anderson, Charles Stewart, Alexander Patterson, John Jennings and several other Pennsylvanians and New Jerseymen into that section with the intention of becoming lessees or purchasers of the proprietary lands at Wyoming.