USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume I > Part 28
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much too independent to please the Iroquois, who took care not to let their subordinates slip the leash too far; and they had a further grudge against him for killing an Iroquois chief. On April 19, 1763, their emissaries induced him and a number of others to take part in a grand carouse; during his drunken sleep of the night they set fire to his cabin and twenty others, burning the inmates to death. The New Eng- landers had come into the valley shortly before, and the Iro- quois laid the murders to them. Whether the Delawares be- lieved it or not, it suited them and was safest to pretend so; and they prepared to revenge it Indian wise, after due wait- ing. On Oct. 15 they burst on the settlement and butchered some twenty men; the rest, men, women, and children, fled to the mountains and in helpless misery retraced the path to Connecticut, or settled in the lower towns of Pennsylvania. By a happy chance, the Pennsylvania militia were at hand, and destroyed the settlers' stores; which they had provi- dently forecast, a fortnight before the massacre, might be "left" by them. This Indian "reoccupation" turned the valley into wilderness again for half a dozen years.
In 1768 the struggle was renewed on a greater scale, be- ginning the intermittent "Pennamite Wars" of several years' duration. The Susquehanna Company granted five town- ships, each five miles square,-Wilkesbarre, Hanover, Kings- ton, Plymouth, and Pittstown,-to forty settlers each, or four hundred acres apiece, on condition of their remaining on the ground to "man their rights." Forty were to set out at once, the remainder the next spring. Later, three other townships were granted, on the west branch of the Susquehanna. The leader of the expedition (though he did not go thither for a couple of years) was one of Connecticut's noblest sons,- Captain Zebulon Butler of Lyme, some thirty-eight years old.
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Ten years before, he had commanded a company at Ticon- deroga and Crown Point; and in 1762 he had distinguished himself at the capture of Havana. His military talents and vigilance secured high respect,and his courteous and generous nature inspired enthusiastic affection.
·· Two other veterans of the French and Indian War, Cap- tains Durkee and Ransom, were in the company; and the em- igration as a whole was of unusual ability and character. The proprietary met it not with counter-settlement, but mere vio- lence. Indeed, historically the Connecticut effort is largely justified on this ground alone: the entire colony rose up to send occupants to the lands, as an urgent public need; while the Penns took possession of them only to keep them out of other white men's hands, and even then sent no effective col- onization. In 1768 (Nov. 5) they made a fresh treaty at Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois, who cheerfully sold them the same Wyoming Valley which they had previously sold to the Connecticut company, and still previously promised to sell only to Pennsylvania. The new title was as good as the old, and neither was worth anything at the bar of law or his- tory. This done, the proprietors executed a seven-years' lease of a hundred acres in the valley to three men,-Charles Stewart, a surveyor and militia officer, afterwards aide to Washington; Captain Amos Ogden, a capital soldier, with not too delicate a sense of honor; and John Jennings, high sheriff of Northampton County,-on condition of establish- ing a trading-house and defending the valley from encroach- ment, acting as Chief Executive Directory at Wyoming. Forty or fifty men were induced to purchase lands on the same condition as the Connecticut forties, "manning their rights"; and the Pennsylvania bands included several excel- lent officers: The relations between the two parties, however,
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were much like those between the English and French in the war of 1755-60 : it was a contest of bona fide colonists against mere political outworks.
The three Directors with seven other men were on the ground first, in January 1769; occupied the deserted block- house of the Connecticut settlers and some of their huts, where Mill Creek joins the Susquehanna in northern Wilkes- barre; laid off two great manors for themselves as joint les- sees, one on each side of the river; and waited. On Feb. 8 the Connecticut pioneers came on the scene, and finding Og- den's force in the blockhouse, invested it closely and de- manded its surrender. Ogden, overmatched and sure to be starved out, invited a deputation to come into the fort and discuss the matter; three of the chief men did so, when the sheriff claimed them all as prisoners and deported them to Easton jail, sixty miles off, the other thirty-seven following. But the Connecticut settlers had active partisans and helpers all through Pennsylvania, even in Philadelphia. The dog- in-the-manger policy of the proprietors was mainly in their personal interest, they having surveyed off the richest up-river lands and reserved them to themselves; they did not wish freehold settlement, but huge manors with tenants paying them rent. White settlements would increase land values and trade for the Pennsylvanians, and they disliked the pro- prietary monopoly : hence the paralysis of the Pennsylvania government, and its almost grotesque inability to prevent the Connecticut occupation of its neighbor lands. It would be a very distorted idea to suppose that this was a contest either of government against government, or of the people of Con- necticut against the people of Pennsylvania : the Connecticut government cautiously abstained from giving it any official countenance, and the Pennsylvania people stolidly refused
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to be worked up over it. The real fight was between the people of Connecticut and the government of Pennsylvania.
These friends, who were especially numerous along the Delaware, where the Connecticut flood would enrich the old settlers most, were sought out by the uncaptured band, and went bail for the prisoners; and the whole forty at once returned to Wyoming. Enraged at the fruitlessness of his stratagem, Jennings secured a warrant for the arrest of the entire party, called out the posse of Northampton Coun- ty, took several other magistrates with him, marched to the settlers' rough fort, and assaulted it. Overmatched in turn and unwilling to defy a legal process, about thirty surren- dered, and were again taken to Easton and lodged in jail; again liberated on bail by their Pennsylvania friends, they re- turned to the valley. It was now March: in less than two months the pioneers, besides their original travels, had walked two hundred and forty miles to and from jail, in the depths of winter and through the forest. But they were not of the metal to be discouraged by the first opposition of the Pennsylvanians; and within a month they were joined by overwhelming reinforcements, under Captain Durkee. The one hundred and sixty grantees of 1768, with seventy or eighty shareholders not included in the last assignment, made up nearly three hundred in all. But the best lands were far below Mill Creek; a settlement was fixed in the southern part of the present Wilkesbarre, and Fort Durkee built to defend it. On May 20 Ogden and Jennings, having raised a larger force, appeared in the vicinity once more; but the place was too strong to attack and they withdrew to Easton, Jennings reporting to the governor that there was not force enough in Northampton County to dislodge them. Thereupon Gover- nor John Penn sent a military company from Philadelphia
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under Col. Turbot Francis to expel the intruders; arriving about June 20, he found the fort too formidable, and retired to await reinforcements.
Connecticut people were not only resolute to hold their rich western possession, but excited by the stories of the new Eden; and fresh pioneers were continually setting out for the valley. To give the settlement time to accumulate fighting strength, the Susquehanna Company sent commissioners to treat with Pennsylvania; they had no government cre- dentials, and the Pennsylvania government was not likely to negotiate with the agents of a private land company, but it might delay a fresh conflict. As a matter of fact, their proposal to submit the question to trial or arbitration was re- ceived, but promptly refused, and a fresh expedition hurried on to oust the settlers once for all. Jennings was made the head, to give it the aspect of an ejection by law; Ogden was the real commander; and it set out early in September with some two hundred men, and a four-pound cannon brought from Fort Augusta (now Sunbury) by Captain Alexander Patterson, Ogden's best officer. Ogden went ahead with fifty soldiers, and by a surprise captured Cap- tain Durkee, who was sent under irons not to Easton but to Philadelphia, and lodged in prison. Jennings and the posse then appeared before the fort and summoned it to surrender. The cannon made victory certain, and terms of capitulation were agreed on. Three or four Connecticut leaders were kept as hostages, seventeen men were allowed to remain and gather the harvest, the rest of the settlers were to leave the valley peremptorily. The private property was to be re- spected; but Ogden according to his nature broke the pledge at once, and sold all the property to Pennsylvanians. Three
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times expelled in one year, the Connecticut settlers made their way home.
Confident that their task was accomplished for a finality, Ogden left ten men in the fort to maintain possession and warn off intruders, and he and Jennings returned to Phila- delphia to an easily imaginable ovation. During the fall and part of the winter, all remained quiet; but by Feb- ruary all was again lost to the Penns, this time from foes in their own household. A group of forty settlers from Han- over, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, had bought a town- ship from the Susquehanna Company, to be named from their own town; and with Captain Lazarus Stewart at their head, started for the battle-ground of the valley. Accom- panied by one of the bands of Connecticut settlers who were quietly slipping back, ten or a dozen at a time, to avoid at- tracting notice, he surprised Fort Durkee, ousted Ogden's garrison, regained the cannon from the old blockhouse at Mill Creek, and armed Fort Durkee with it. Durkee him- self escaped from his Philadelphia jail by aid of the Connec- ticut partisans, and took command of the settlers. At the news, Ogden hurried back to the valley with fifty men, and reoccupied the Mill Creek fort, renaming it Fort Ogden; by strategy he decoyed a band of ten or a dozen Connecticut settlers inside, and retained them all as prisoners. By ap- pearance of ostentatious weakness, he also inveigled Durkee into an attack, when the deputy sheriff attempted to arrest Durkee's entire force; a battle ensued in which one of the Connecticut men was killed, the first blood shed in the Pennamite wars. Retreating, the Yankee forces trained the cannon on the fort from a hill, but were unable to hit it; they then invested it, and captured and burnt the connected storehouse with nearly all the Pennsylvanians' goods and
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ammunition. Meantime Ogden had sent to Governor Penn for reinforcements; the latter had his hands full, and ap- plied in turn to General Gage, the British commander at Boston, to suppress the Connecticut invasion of Pennsylvania territory; Gage replied sensibly that it was a quarrel over property, in which "it would be highly improper for the King's troops to interfere." Left without help, Ogden was forced to capitulate, on condition of retiring from the val- ley, only leaving six men behind in one of the houses to take care of his property, which was to be respected. The Yankee prisoners were found and released, after a month's confine- ment so close that the besiegers had not known of their cap- ture. Not much to his credit, Durkee retaliated Ogden's breach of faith the fall before by breaking his own, turned the six caretakers outdoors, and appropriated the property to the use of his forces. Thinking it senseless to leave the fort as a point of vantage to the Pennsylvanians, who if again in possession might be invincible, the Connecticut troops then burnt it and the surrounding cabins, entirely obliterating the settlement of 1762.
All the summer new bands kept arriving from Connecti- cut, one headed by Captain Butler in person. New settle- ments were started; Wilkesbarre was surveyed, and named after a worthless scamp and a high-minded orator, oddly linked as protagonists of liberty; and old Forty Fort, fa- mous in the Revolution, was begun. The lost ground of the previous years was more than made up. The proprietors were in despair. Penn issued a proclamation denouncing the conduct of the Connecticut men, and offering a reward for the apprehension of the leaders, for whose arrest the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued writs; Lazarus Stew- art was apprehended, but found the usual Pennsylvania
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friends, who beat the officer and allowed him to escape. Fresh proclamations forbade any one settling in the valley except under license from the proprietors or their lessees; and Ogden with a new sheriff was sent once more to oust the Yankees. So apathetic were the Pennsylvanians over their supposed wrongs that it took two months to raise a sufficient force; and it was late in September before Ogden arrived at the valley, with 140 men. Traveling by an un- usual path, he took it by surprise, and dividing his force into small bands, had each one seize a number of the labor- ers in the fields. A large part of the settlers were captured and sent to Easton jail; the rest took refuge in Fort Durkee. Ogden shortly carried it by assault, several men being killed and Butler severely wounded; most of the captives were sent to Easton jail, the leaders to Philadelphia. The place was thoroughly plundered, and twenty men left in possession to hold it till the lessees came in spring to start their Indian trading post.
Satisfied that the enemy were gone for good, Ogden re- tired, and the garrison thought it unnecessary even to post a sentinel. On the night of the 18th of December, Captain Lazarus Stewart and thirty men suddenly burst into and re- occupied the fort in the name of Connecticut. Six of the garrison escaped to the mountains in their scant sleeping- gear, the rest were hustled out; and Ogden was informed that after four expulsions, the Connecticut settlers held pos- session of the valley once more.
The proprietary government gathered itself together for a fifth effort. Stewart was now the worst hated man (by the government) within the charter limits, as a renegade; and a still heavier reward was offered for his capture. Ogden, osten- sibly under the direction of a new sheriff, and accompanied
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by his brother, was given the command of a new expedition of over a hundred men, which reached the valley by the middle of January. The Mill Creek fort being gone, Ogden began a new one which he called Fort Wyoming, only sixty rods above Fort Durkee; and the sheriff summoned Stewart's force to surrender. Stewart declined, and on Jan. 20 Og- den assailed the fort. Four of his men were shot down at the first volley, including his brother mortally wounded; and he withdrew to his own fortification. But Stewart was too far overmatched to hold out, and under the legal ban against him, capture was too heavy a risk; and with the worst com- promised of his party he fled in the night (having first hid- den the cannon). The government, on hearing of the en- gagement and young Ogden's death, increased the reward for Stewart to £300. Ogden occupied the fort next day, and as usual, sent the remaining garrison to jail with the sheriff; but himself this time remained, fortifying Fort Wyoming strongly. Early in April Stewart returned under Zebulon Butler (again out of jail), who with 150 men and the resurrected cannon laid siege to Fort Wyoming. The in- vestment was so close that no one could escape to carry word to Philadelphia for reinforcements ; but Ogden, by an amaz- ing feat of skill and daring, swam down the river under wa- ter towing his clothes after him, they drawing the enemy's fire, and was in Philadelphia within three days. Butler soon discovered the escape, and knew that a company with sup- plies would soon follow; ambushed it, and with great skill contrived to let the company take refuge in the fort as a further drain on its provision, while he captured the pack- horses and their lading. Another company was slowly re- cruited by the government, only their immediate dependents having much interest in securing victory for them; but the
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Connecticut men, who had been trying to starve out the gar- rison, were apprehensive of its relief, and began a regular assault. Ogden was wounded, a lieutenant was killed, and several others were hurt; and the fort was compelled to sur- render, under articles of capitulation which this time were observed. The proprietary government, with regard to the lands almost at its doors, was vanquished by the Connecticut emigration; vanquished because its selfishness had left it without popular loyalty, and its subjects were not concerned for its pockets. The last reinforcements it had ordered to the valley were recalled, and the Susquehanna Company left the undisturbed possessors of the Wyoming Valley. Thus ended the First Pennamite War, extending from January 1769 to September 1771.
Relieved from fear and wars, settlement now sprang up apace. Within two years the Connecticut district, now spread far beyond the valley, numbered two thousand souls. Fort Ogden at Mill Creek was raised from its ashes, and other forts built, becoming the nuclei of villages; Wilkes- barre, surveyed in 1770, was laid out in 1773; Hanover, Plymouth, Pittston, Exeter, Providence, Lackaway, etc., be- came flourishing townships; the entire space between the Delaware and the Susquehanna, under its two companies, was rapidly laid off into townships and taken up in farms. Churches of course followed at once; taxes were laid to sup- port free schools; mills were built. New Connecticut was justifying the hopes of its founders, and was quite as use- ful to Pennsylvania as the wilderness had been.
As before noted, all these acts had been under the pri- vate auspieces of the companies. The members of the Con- necticut government were all members of the companies also, or active sympathizers with them; but could aid them much
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better unofficially than officially, and so saved embarrassing complications. When the president of the Pennsylvania Council wrote to Governor Trumbull of Connecticut, just after the "war," to know whether his government counte- nanced or authorized "these violent and hostile measures," the latter replied that it would "never countenance any vio- lent, much less hostile measures, in vindicating the right which the Susquehanna Company suppose they have to the lands in that part of the country within the limits of the Char- ter of this colony." As late as June 1773, since the new col- ony must have a government and Connecticut was not ready to show its hand, the Susquehanna Company at Hartford adopted an instrument of government for "certain lands purchased of the original natives, by and with the assent of the colony of Connecticut," also "claimed to be within the jurisdiction of the Province of Pennsylvania"; and because Connecticut had applied to learned counsel in Eng- land for advice, but had not yet received it, this govern- ment was to continue till Connecticut should annex them to one of its counties, or make them a new county, or the King of England should give them a more permanent government.
But at the October Session, the settlements having grown strong enough to defend themselves against any probable Pennsylvania force, and the latter government apparently having given up its claim in despair, Connecticut decided to assert its full rights and open negotiations with Pennsyl- vania; and a resolution to that effect was adopted. The method was skillfully chosen to put the Pennsylvania govern- ment in the wrong. First it was proposed to appoint mu- tual commissioners to run boundary lines and ascertain the extent of conflicting claims: this was rejected, it being de- nied that Connecticut had any right west of New York. The
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next proposition was to join application to the Crown to ap- point such commissioners : rejected, but it was suggested that Connecticut might make separate application to the Crown. Lastly, it was proposed that Pennsylvania continue as then to hold authority over the West Branch, while Connecticut extended her jurisdiction over all her settlements "not under the laws of Pennsylvania" till the dispute was compromised or a decision had from the King in Council: rejected per- emptorily. The Pennsylvania Assembly urged the proprie- tors to hasten the royal decision as above. But Connecticut had gained its point, and promptly passed an act (January 1774) erecting all the territory "within its charter limits," from the Delaware to fifteen miles west of the Susquehanna, into the town of Westmoreland, as a part of Litchfield County. The Governor issued a proclamation forbidding all settlement there except under the authority of Connecticut; thus for the first time opposing the shield of legal right against the fulminations, warrants, and arrests of Pennsyl- vania authority. The Penn government of course retorted with another prohibiting settlement except under its own. The Connecticut government lost no time, however, in an- choring its abstract right by concrete action : justices of the peace were commissioned (Zebulon Butler being one), a town meeting called, and town officers chosen; the Susque- hanna Company's settlements were divided into seven dis- tricts, the Delaware Company's were made another. A full complement of town officers was chosen; a pound, stocks, and a whipping post set up; representatives were sent to the Connecticut General Assembly; and a probate court was established.
In 1774 the Pennsylvanians began a clever game to un- dermine the Connecticut authorities. They would buy town
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lots or farm rights under the Connecticut title, and then openly scout it as worthless, claiming their real one to be a previous Pennsylvania title bought from the proprietors' lessees. Pennsylvania surveyors plotted out tracts in West- moreland, and made preparations to sow discord in the Con- necticut household. Connecticut men were not likely to en- dure this : a town meeting was held, and a committee of nine appointed with power to expel any one taking lands under the Pennsylvania title. They did so, against the vociferous protest of Pennsylvania; some of the expelled were men of ability, one of them the founder of Meadville. Pennsylvania retaliated by renewing the Pennamite wars. As early as 1771, the Susquehanna Company had bought and surveyed a tract on the West Branch of the river, at Muncy, twenty or thirty miles west of "Westmoreland"; and planted two set- tlements or townships there, Charleston and Judea. Just at this time the Revolutionary War was in full blast; and the Westmoreland people held a town meeting (Aug. I, 1775) in which it was resolved to "make any accommoda- tions with the Pennsylvania party that shall conduce to the best good of the whole, and come in common cause of liberty in the defense of America." The Pennsyl- vanians paid no manner of attention to it. In September 1775 Col. Plunket with several hundred Northumberland County militia invaded them, killed one man and wounded several, burnt the buildings and confiscated the movables and stock, sent the men to Sunbury jail and the women and chil- dren to Wyoming. This ended all Connecticut attempts to settle west of Westmoreland. Connecticut on news of the imminent assault petitioned the new Continental Congress to prevent it; Congress resolved that the colonial assemblies should try to avert hostilities, and the Pennsylvania Assem-
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bly inquired what led Congress to suppose any hostilities were likely.
Flushed with this easy victory, Pennsylvania, now its own mistress and inheritrix of the Penn feud against the Yankees, determined to raise an overwhelming force and expel the Westmoreland settlers in a body; although this extermina- tion of a white settlement now numbering several thousand people would have been as monstrous as the Acadian depor- tation. Such a force was given to Plunket as Ogden, a much superior officer, never dreamed of: seven hundred, a field piece, and a train of boats with ammunition and supplies. As before, a sheriff-of Northumberland County-accompanied him with a stock of writs. Wyoming trading boats down the river were confiscated, and Plunket began his march early in December. Westmoreland could muster only three hun- dred, including old men and boys; and a small number of these were the treacherous Pennsylvania settlers. There were not muskets enough to arm even this band. But the town collected its forces, and meantime sent appeals to Congress to interfere. The latter ordered hostilities suspended till it could adjudicate on the question; but Plunket had already made his way through the gathering ice on the river and ap- peared at the head of the valley. Butler, in command, was anxious not to shed blood, and would not intrench himself in the advanced mountain passes, being determined only to act in strict defense of the settlement; but he constructed so for- midable a rampart with logs and a naturally strong position, that Plunkett's troops assaulted it in vain. The breastwork could not be carried; his flanking parties were discovered and foiled : and after having several men killed, on Christmas day he retreated down the river. Thus ended the Second Pennamite War. Militia seem to have been lukewarm, be-
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