USA > Indiana > Biographical and historical cyclopedia of Indiana and Armstrong counties, Pennsylvania > Part 3
USA > Pennsylvania > Armstrong County > Biographical and historical cyclopedia of Indiana and Armstrong counties, Pennsylvania > Part 3
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as military affairs. Sober, economic, plain, honest, religious and firm in discharge of duty, they were reliable soldiers and scouts and indns- trious and moral citizens. Their progress was slow but sure, and they devoted themselves to agriculture with the best of results.
The Scotch were few in numbers, but were a hardy, moral and fearless people, who preserved amid the Alleghenies the lofty spirit of inde- pendence which they inherited from their fore- fathers in the highlands of Scotland. They were strong-willed, and self-reliant, and were distinguished for intelligence, morality, pru- dence, patient industry and honest thrift. Brave on the battle-field, sagacious on the march and wise in council, they were a valuable element of the frontier population.
The English were principally of Cavalier strain, and, in addition to the resolute will and great determination of their race, were noted for a high sense of honor and a lofty spirit of inde- pendence, such as was possessed by their ances- tors at Runnymede when they wrested from King John the immortal Magna Charta. They fought bravely and furnished many leaders.
The Welsh were principally from Virginia, and were the smallest element in numbers, but were always foremost in hours of danger, and the race which gave Morgan and Jefferson to American history can never be disparaged for bravery or intelligence.
Scotch-Irish Element .- It was the largest and most important element of the Allegheny Back- woodsmen. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the Scotch-Irish from the north of Ire- land commenced to come to the Colonies, and by 1730 they were fairly swarming across the ocean in two streams ; the larger landing at Philadel- phia and pushing west of the Susquehanna river, and the smaller landing at Charleston and seeking the Carolina back-country from which they pushed up along the Alleghenies till they met the downward stream from western Penn- sylvania, their great breeding-ground and nur-
-
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF
sery. They stretched a broad belt from north to sonth, a shield of sinewy men thrust in be- tween the people of the sea-board and the red warriors of the wilderness.
The Scotch-Irish as a race has been ably de- scribed by Dr. J. S. MacIntosh, in the follow- ing language : " John Knox, under God, made the Scotch and Scotch-Irish and their character- istics-unyielding grit, granite hardness, close- monthed self-repression, clear, firm speech when the truth is to be told, God-fearing honesty, loy- alty to friendship, defiant of death, conscience and knee-bending only to God. Before Knox wrought and enstamped himself, our race had abilities. After him, we have achievements. Before him we have powers ; now performances. Before him strugglings; now success. In long years of close historic reading and interested study of national departures and racial trends, I have found many a marked and self-impressing leader who, for some time, has made a nation wax and molded it at will ; but then new fires came and a new stamp. But I have not found one single leader has so deeply, pervasively and permanently enstamped himself on a people who, of all folks, stand foremost among the self-asserting races."
Andrew Jackson was of Scotch-Irish descent, and under his lead many of his race served with distinction in the Creek war and the acquisition of west Florida, while numbers of them immor- talized themselves at New Orleans, where, clad in hunting shirt and leggings, they fought in the ranks of the frontier companies.
Another Scoth-Irish leader was Houston, who won Texan independence from Mexico and was largely instrumental in urging and securing the annexation of the "Lone Star State " to the American Union.
These frontiersmen in a single generation were welded together into one people-a free- dom-loving and bold, defiant race. They dif- fered from the world in dress, in customs and
in mode of life. As a class they neither built towns nor loved to dwell in them.
In the conquest of the west the back woods axe, shapely, well-poised, with long and light head, and the long, small-bore, flintlock, fron- tier rifle, were the national weapons of the American Backwoodsmen, who have never been excelled in their use. "The Backwoodsman was always clad in the fringed hunting-shirt, of home-span or buckskin, the most picturesque and distinctively national dress ever worn in America. It was a loose smock or tunic, reaching nearly to the knees, and held in at the waist by a broad belt, from which hung the tomahawk and scalping-knife."
In 1748 Conrad Weiser crossed the Alle- ghenies as a messenger from the governor of Pennsylvania to the Indians at Logstown. Two years later Christopher Gist, the explorer of the Ohio land company, with his own and several other families made the first settlement west of the Alleghenies. This settlement was destroyed by the French in 1754 and the French and Indian war stopped Backwoodsmen from further settlement until the fall of Ft. Duquesne in 1758. By 1769 the American Backwoodsmen had increased in numbers in the valleys along the Alleghenies, so that they were ready to flood the continent beyond. From 1769 to 1774 they poured in a steady stream into western Pennsylvania and northwestern Virginia de- spite the king of England's proclamation pro- hibiting settlement west of the Alleghenies.
In the south during the above named period they pushed across the mountains into Kentucky under the lead of Boone and into Tennessee, where Robertson and Sevier founded the " Watanga Commonwealth." They plunged into a great forest region, where between their scattered settlements intervened miles on miles of shadowy, wolf-haunted woodland, in whose tangled depths lurked the hawk-eyed and wolf-hearted Indian.
The Indian was a terrible and crnel foe. On
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INDIANA AND ARMSTRONG COUNTIES.
their own ground in the woods they were far more formidable than the best European troops. Although inferior in numbers, they defeated Braddock's grenadiers and Grant's highlanders. The finest drilled veteran troops of the world failed when led against the dark tribesmen of the forest. When on his own ground and any ways near equal in numbers the Indians were never defeated by any enemy except the Back- woodsmen of the Alleghenies, who won their most notable victory over the Indians at the battle of Point Pleasant, or the Great Kanawha in 1774.
Before the Revolution commenced, in 1774, the British Parliament had by the Quebec Act declared the country between the Great Lakes and the Ohio to be part of Canada and had not the Backwoodsmen under Boone and Clarke and other frontier Icaders been successful in conquering it we would be cooped up to-day between the sea and the Allegheny mountains, while the Dominion of Canada would now in- clude the greater part of the Mississippi Valley. This act has been entirely overlooked by most American historians, while ignored by others ; yet it was intended to have a decided bearing on Colonial affairs, and but for the Revolution- ary struggle for Independence it would have been an important event in the history of this country as a part of the Empire of Great Britain. The founding of this great Republic was on the Atlantic shore by the Puritan, the Cavalier, the Patroon, the Catholic, the Quaker and the Huguenot ; but its wonderful growth and great increase of territory is due to the Backwoodsmen of the Alleghenies, who passed off the stage of actiou without ever realizing the importance or magnitude of the work which they accomplished in the building of the United States.
" During the Revolutionary war the men of the west for the most part took no share in the actual campaigning against the British and Hessians. Their duty was to conquer and hold
the wooded wilderness that stretched westward to the Mississippi ; and to lay therein the foun- dation of many future commonwealths. Yet at a crisis in the great struggle for liberty, at one of the darkest hours for the patriotic cause, it was given to a band of western inen to come to the relief of their brethren of the sea-board and to strike a telling and decisive blow for all America. When the three southern provinces lay crushed and helpless at the feet of Corn- wallis, the Holston backwoodsmen suddenly gathered to assail the triumphant conquerer. Crossing the mountains that divided them from the beaten and despairing people of the tide- water region, they killed the ablest ยท lieutenant of the British commander, and at- a single stroke undid all that he had done."
The Backwoodsmen, under Campbell, Wil-". liams and Shelby, used Indian tactics in captur- ing the British forces at King's Mountain, and the next year auother backwoods leader, in the person of Morgan the " Wagoner General," de- feated the daring and dashing Tarleton at the ever memorable battle of the Cowpens.
" The Backwoodsmen were above all things characteristically American ; and it is fitting that the two greatest and most typical of all Americans should have been respectively a sharer and an outcome of their work. Wash- ington himself passed the most important years of his youth heading the westward movement of his people ; clad in the traditional dress of the backwoodsmen, in tasseled hunting-shirt and fringed leggiugs, he led them to battle against the French and Indians, and helped to clear the way for the American advance. The only other man who in the American roll of honor stands by the side of Washington, was born when the distinctive work of the pioneers had ended ; and yet he was bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh ; for from the loins of this gaunt frontier folk sprang mighty Abraliam Lin- coln."
Another peculiarly distinctive and eminently
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF
great Backwoods leader and politician was Andrew Jackson, who was born of Scotch-Irish parents. In 1796 Albert Gallatin describes him as follows ; " A tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with locks of hair hanging over his face and a cue down his back, tied with an eel skin : his dress singular, his manners and de- portinent those of a rough backwoodsman."
The famous victory of January 8, 1815, crowned Jackson's fame as a soldier, and made him the typical American hero of the nine- teenth century. In 1823 Jackson was elected to the United States Senate, and nominated by the Tennessee Legislature for the presidency. This candidacy, though a matter of surprise, and even merriment, speedily became popular, and in 1828 he was triumphantly elected president over Adams after a campaign of unparalleled bitterness.
During his closing years he was a professed Christian and a member of the Presbyterian church. No American of this century has been the subject of such opposite judgments. He was loved and hated with equal vehemence during his life, but at the present distance of time from his career, while opinions still vary as to the merits of his public acts, few of his countrymen will question that he was a warm-hearted, brave, patriotic, honest and sincere man. If his distinguishing qualities were not such as consti- tute statesmanship, in the highest sense, he at least never pretended to other merit than such as were written to his credit on the page of American history, not attempting to disguise the demerits which were equally legible. The majority of his countrymen accepted and honored him, in spite of all that calumny as well as truth could allege against him. His faults may therefore be truly said to have been those of his time; his magnificent virtues may also, with the same justice, be considered as typical of a state of society which has nearly passed away.
PENNSYLVANIA.
BEFORE proceeding to speak of the history of these counties a word in regard to the State of which they are political divisions might not be out of place.
Pennsylvania is situated between 39 deg. 43 min. and 42 sec. north latitude, and 2 deg. 17 min. east, and 3 deg. 31 min. west longitude, from Washington. Its mean length is 280.39 miles ; mean breadth, 158.05 miles ; its greatest length, 302 13-40 miles, and greatest breadth 175 miles and 192 perches.
The latitude of Greenwich is 51 deg. 27 min. 39 sec. north, and the latitude of Washington 38 deg. 53.3 min. The longitude of Philadel- phia from Greenwich is 75 deg. 18 min. west, and the longitude of Greenwich from Washing- ton is 77 deg. 00.6 min. east.
Topographically Pennsylvania is divided into three parts-a southeastern or sea-board district of scattered hills, a middle belt of mountains, and a great western table land or bituminous coal district, which is everywhere deeply seamed by numerous tributaries of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Susquehanna rivers. In the first district is the garden portion of the State. In the Appalachian belt is the great anthracite coal field of the United states while the western district is rich with treasures of oil, iron ore and bituminous coal and the Connellsville coking region, which produces the typical coke of the world. The third district embraces one half of the area of Pennsylvania, being bounded on three sides by State lines and on the east by the last westward ridge of the Alleghenies.
The Allegheny mountains also divide the State into two nearly equal parts which are en- tirely different in geological formation and sur- face relief. The western one of these parts, or western Pennsylvania, lics in the Mississippi Valley ; while the eastern part, or eastern Pennsylvania is embraced within the area of the Atlantic sea-board.
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INDIANA AND ARMSTRONG COUNTIES.
Western Pennsylvania is almost an unbroken bituminous coal-field whichi originally united with the eastern anthracite coal-bed when both extended over the whole State. Western Pennsylvania is divided by the rock-wave of Chestnut ridge (150 miles long) into two sec- tions-the eastern highlands or Allegheny mountain region and the western hill country extending westward from the mountains to the Ohio State line. The Pittsburgh coal bed once extended all over western Pennsylvania, but has been so swept away during the countless ages of the past that it is now limited in area to Wash- ington and Green and to parts of Westmorland, Allegheny, Indiana and Somerset counties. The . bituminous coal measures of western Pennsyl- vania are divided by rock-waves into six grand basins whose combined coal-beds can furnish fuel for the United States for many centuries to come.
The geological structure of Pennsylvania is complicated of form, and various of quality and age. The Laurentian or oldest system of geol- ogy is slightly represented in some of the eastern counties, while its successor in age, the Huronian System, has never been recognized in the State. But the Paleozoic or Older Sec- ondary System - beginning with No. 1, the Potsdam sandstone, and terminating with No. XIII., the coal measures of Carboniferous for- mation, is grandly developed in every section of the State.
The subterranean floor of Pennsylvania is formed of granite, gneiss, mica, slate and marble, lies beneath the present surface at from a thou- sand to twenty thousand feet and rests upon the same rocks which form the hill country of Lake Superior and contain vast deposits of iron ore, but at inaccessible depths beneath every county of the State. The rocks composing this great floor were originally sandstone and lime- stone, but were converted into granite, slate, gneiss, mica and marble, by pressure, heat and chemical action.
On this floor was deposited formation after formation of the Paleozoic System until its ter- minal coal measures were formed just at sea- level, when the second great change in the rela- tive level of sea and land occurred in the sur- face of Pennsylvania. The land rose into the air in the central and western part, erosion com- menced and drainage was established. A third principal change in land and sea-level followed when the eastern borders of the continent arose and carried up in its swell the surface of the eastern part of the State, which had been mostly in the bed of a long salt-water bay. Frost and rain then commenced their work of destruction on these elevated surfaces and drainage carried the soil and rock thus loosened on the east to build up New Jersey, Delaware and the tide water region of Maryland and Virginia, while on the west it bore the eroded earth to form Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
The Paleozoic System has been divided into thirteen formations, of which in Indiana and Armstrong counties, numbers I, IV, VII, IX, X and XII are massive sand-rocks ; III, V, VIII, XI, are slate formations, II and VI, are principally limestone strata and the XIIIth includes the coal measures.
The coal measures are the highest series of number XII or the Carboniferous formation, which is three thousand feet in thickness. They are divided into three parts ; the first or lower coal series carries coal beds A, B, C or Kittan- ning (3 feet), D or Lower Freeport (3 feet) E or Upper Freeport (6 feet) and F or Elk Lick (1 foot) ; the second or Barren Measures with coal bed G (1 foot) and the third or upper coal series, with coal beds H or Pittsburgh Bed (6 to 12 feet), I or Limestone coal (2 feet), K (3 feet), - and L or Brownsville (6 feet).
By the waters of the calm-flowing Delaware, in 1634, Gustavus Adolphus, "the greatest benefactor of mankind in the line of Swedish kings," sought to establish a mighty empire in which religious thought should be free and
f
30
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF
linman servitude should never exist. But to other hands was left the founding of this grand ideal State and upon the weak and feeble New Sweden of the warrior King of Sweden was planted the strong and prosperous Quaker province of William Penn, which is now the powerful and populous Keystone State of the American Union. Prior to Gustavus Adolphus' idea of founding a State on the Delaware, the Dutch West India company and the English of Connecticut had made ineffectual attempts at colonization on the "South River." The first permanent settlement in Pennsylvania was made at Upsal (now Chester) in 1638, by Swedes and Finns and was under the direction of Oxen- stiern. These settlers came from Gottenburg, on two vessels named the ." Key of Calmar " and the "Griffin." They were sent out by a Swedish West India company which was founded by William Usselinex, who had been instrumental in forming the Dutch West India company. Their first governor was Peter Minuet, a former governor of the New Netherlands. In 1655 New Sweden was captured by the Dutch and was New Netherlands until 1664, when it was wrested from the Dutch by the English. In 1673 a Dutch squadron recaptured the country, but one year later gave it up to the English by the treaty of Westminster.
In 1681 the province of Pennsylvania was granted to William Penn in liquidation of a debt of 16,000 pounds which the British gov- ernment owed to his distinguished father, Ad- miral Sir William Penn.
The following from Dr. Egle's History of Pennsylvania will throw light upon the naming of the State: "The King affixed his signature on March 4, 1681, naming the province Penn- sylvania, for the reasons explained in the sub- joined extract from a letter of William Penn to his friend Robert Turner, dated 5th of 1st month, 1681 : 'This day my country was con- firmed to me under the great seal of England, with large powers and privileges, by the name
of Pennsylvania; a name the King would give it in honor of my father. I chose New Wales, being, as this, a pretty hilly country, but Penn being Welsh for a head, as Penmaumoire in Wales, and Penrith in Cumberland, and Penn in Buckinghamshire, the highest land in Eng- land, called this Pennsylvania, which is, the high or head woodlands, for I proposed, when the Secretary, a Welshman, refused to have it called New Wales, Sylvania, and they added Penn to it, and though I much opposed it, and went to the King to have it struck out and altered, he said it was past, and would take it upon him ; nor could twenty guineas move the under-secretary to vary the name, for I fear lest it be looked on as vanity in me, and not as a respect in the King, as it truly was, to my father, whom he often mentioned with praise.'"
William Penn landed in his province in 1682. He founded the city of Philadelphia which afterward became the metropolis of the thirteen colonies and the birthplace of American inde- pendence. He established his colony upon the broad principles of Christian charity and con- stitutional freedom. Penn was proprietor of Pennsylvania until 1693, when the crown as- sumed the government which it did not restore to him for two years. He then continued as proprietor until his death in 1718, and was suc- ceeded by his sons John, Richard, and Thomas, who were successively proprietors until 1776.
The first governor of Pennsylvania was elected in 1790, and since then Pennsylvania has had a regular succession of governors under the constitutions of 1790, 1838 and 1873.
At the opening of the Revolutionary war the settlers between the Susquehanna and the Hudson owned larger farms than the people of New England, although their farms were less than the plantations of the south. There was a greater diversity of nationalities in Pennsyl- vania than in any other colony. From the southeast and north and westward were the following elements of population : "First
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INDIANA AND ARMSTRONG COUNTIES.
Swedes, next English, then Germans, and lastly New Englanders ; while the whole front of this mass, from the west branch of the Susquehanna south ward, was Irish, Welsh, Scotch and Scotch- Irish." The spirit of liberty in Pennsylvania was stubborn but not fierce.
During the Revolution Pennsylvania bore her part in achieving independence, and since its close the State has increased rapidly in popu- lation and wealth until the present time.
The Indian title to the State was liquidated by six successive purchases, made respectively in 1682, 1736, 1749, 1758, 1768, and 1784.
The Whiskey Insurrection occurred in 1794, in the western counties, where frontier and In- dian history will be given under a succeeding topic.
In 1798 the Fries Insurrection occurred in eastern Pennsylvania, and the next year the State capital was removed from Philadelphia to Lancaster, where it remained until 1822, when it was established at Harrisburg.
As early as 1825 Pennsylvania inaugurated a vast and important system of internal im- provements in a great canal uniting the eastern and western parts of the State. This canal was the successor of extensive turnpikes, and be- came the predecessor of her present magnificent system of railways.
In 1834 the State established one of the most progressive and successful free-school systems that has ever been put into successful operation, and to increase its efficiency, in 1854, created the office of county superintendent.
The bloodless " Buckshot War " occurred in 1839, and seven years later Pennsylvania sol- diers served in the Mexican War with the same unflinching courage which distinguished them in the War of 1812.
In 1861 Pennsylvania responded nobly to the call of President Lincoln for troops, and Pennsylvania soldiers were the first to reach the National capital. During the war Penn- sylvania sent to the Union army 270 regi-
ments, numbering 287,284 men, which included 25,000 militia, which were in service in Sep- tember, 1862. The decisive battle of the late civil war was the great struggle at Gettys- burg, on the soil of Pennsylvania, where Lee's veteran legions suffered their first great defeat. The State suffered three Confederate invasions, in one of which the town of Chambersburg was burned.
In 1865 the Legislature passed the act estab- lishing the Soldier's Orphan Schools of Penn- sylvania, and under its provisions the State has done handsomely by the orphans of her soldiers who fell during the late civil war. Governor Geary said : "These children (soldiers') are not mere objects of charity or pensioners upon our bounty, but the wards of the Commonwealth, and have just claims, earned by the blood of their fathers, upon its (the State's) support and guardianship."
In 1871 there were some labor troubles at Williamsport, and five years later the First Centennial of American Independence was ap- propriately celebrated in Philadelphia, where for six months the centennial exposition build- ings were filled by an immense throng from all parts of the world. The next year was noted for the labor riots of Pittsburgh, and on May 31, 1889, occurred the Johnstown Flood, which filled the whole land with a thrill of horror over the loss of the thousands who were swept down to death by the raging waters of the bro- ken South Fork dam.
Pennsylvania ranks first among the "Iron States " of the Union, and produces more of this metal, and articles manufactured from it, than all the other states and territories together. The State was chiefly agricultural till 1790, when Nicho Allen discovered coal on Broad Mountains. The next year Philip Ginter found coal near Mauch Chunk, and from that time on Pennsylvania has been prominent as a mining and manufacturing Commonwealth. No State has better facilities than ours in its abund-
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