USA > Maryland > Washington County > Hagerstown > A history of Washington County, Maryland from the earliest settlements to the present time, including a history of Hagerstown > Part 7
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One evening Col. Dunbar, the second in command expressed to Franklin his concern for the young officers under his command, who, he said, were generally not in affluence and could ill afford to supply themselves with suitable pro- visions for the march. This Franklin represented to the Pennsylvania Assembly and that body as a further measure for securing the good will of the British, dispatched to them at once twenty packages, each package containing, upon Frank- lin's suggestion, sugar, tea, butter, Maderia wine, coffee, chocolate, biscuit, pepper, vinegar, Jamaica spirits, mustard, hams, dried tongue, rice, raisins and cheese, all of the best qualities. All things having been arranged as nearly to General Brad-
dock's satisfaction as possible he set forth with his army on the route through the wilderness to Fort Duquesne. The General travelled in a coach drawn by six horses which he had purchased from Governor Sharpe before leaving Alexandria. The road of course was not suitable for the passage of vehicles and the fiery General "damned it heartily" as his cumbersome vehicle bounced over the outcropping limestone and through the inter- vening mud holes. The first day's marchi was ncarly over the line of the present turnpike road to South Mountain; the army camped at night near the foot of the mountain not far from the present site of the village of Middletown. The next day the army crossed the mountain through Turner's Gap since rendered famous as the scene of the battle of South Mountain. The next morn- ing the march was resumed and the route taken was over the "Devil's Back Bone" at Deleniere Mill, and along the present Williamsport and Boonsboro road.
Braddock had given orders to an officer who had gone in advance with a detachment "to go immediately to that part of the Antietam that lies on the road to Connogogee and press such Boats or Canocs as you shall meet with upon the river, agreeable to the orders you shall receive from Governor Sharpe. If you shall find any difficulty in the execution of this order, you are to send an express to me and you shall be immediately sup- plied with a party of men to enforce it, sending word when they shall join you, and you are to collect all the boats, &c., at that pass by the 28th of this month, (April). This is a striking exhi- bition of the amount of knowledge the British commander possessed of the character of the coun- try he was to traverse. The Antietam is but a shallow stream at this place, a few yards wide and there was not a boat anywhere upon it. At Conococheague a store of provisions was awaiting the army including the flour of fourteen thousand bushels of wheat. Braddock and his forces cross- ed the Potomac at Williamsport or Conococheague and thence by a circuitous and rugged route through the wilderness on toward Fort Duquesne which they never reached. Accompanying Brad- dock was a small force of the hardy settlers of our valley clad in Indian attire and armed with their rifles which constant practice in the woods had enabled them to use with unerring aim. This contingent His Excellency, the General viewed
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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
with great eontempt because they could not per- form the manual of arms and marehed with great irregularity.
During the fatal battle where Braddock lost his life Washington urged him to permit him with these provincial troops to take to the woods and fight the Indians in their own way, but this per- mission the hard headed General indignantly re- fused. Had that advice been followed some of the most bloody and horrible tragedies which have ever been transaeted might have been averted and many a defenceless woman and helpless child who perished and were sealped by the light of their burning homes, would have been preserved. Al- most the first news of the defeat of Braddock our valley settlements received, was the onslaught of the Indians. who kept up a warfare upon the set- tlements, scalping and burning and carrying into captivity, and being in their turn hunted like wild beasts, for a period of eleven years.
The war upon the defenseless settlers of this County was so ferocious that for a time scarcely a white person was left west of South Mountain. All had fled to the older settlements for safety and were pursued by parties of Indians within thirty miles of Baltimore. A panic seized upon the people of Annapolis and many a timid person would retire at night, almost expecting to be aroused by the war whoop of the savages before inorning.
Among the Marylanders who accompanied Braddock were Major William Baird, who escaped and was afterwards coroner of Washington Coun- ty from its formation to his death, in May 1792, and Col. Thomas Cressap, who was the commissary for the Maryland troops.
Thomas Cressap was born in Yorkshire, Eng- land. IIc came to Maryland and settled on a tract which he called "Long Meadows" nol far from Hagerstown and for which he received a grant from the Proprietory Government of Mary- land in 1739, one of the earliest grants west of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the State. In 1752 he was associated with Washington and others in the Ohio Company enterprise to head off which Fort Duquesne and other forts were built by the French. Ile took command of the pioneers who were engaged in the French and Indian war and distinguished himself by his intrepid bravery and excellent generalship. He was a personal friend of Governor Dunmore, who commissioned
him as eaptain of a Virginia Company, although he was a citizen of Maryland.
At the time of Braddoek's defeat the Conoeo- cheague settlement at the mouth of the ereek of that name, was the outpost of eivilization, but Cressap had left his home at Long Meadows near the present site of Hagerstown, and had pene- trated the wilderness and established a hunting lodge for himself on the Potomae river, several miles west of the mouth of the South Branch. He called the place Skipton after his home in England. It is now Old Town. Here for a time he maintained himself and fought the Indians, who infested the neighborhood, with the utmost ferocity. Ile had five ehildren, Daniel, Thomas and Michael, and two daughters. His son, Daniel, was killed by an Indian who was simultaneously killed by Cressap, on the mountain near Cumber- land still known as "Dan's Mountain." In an- other fray one of Colonel Cressap's negro servants was killed upon the mountain which was from that eircuinstance named "Negro Mountain." But even Fort Cumberland was abandoned and, Cressap. fighting as he went, retired to his home at Long Meadows about three miles from Hagers- town, where his son, Michael then lived. Here he established himself in a strong house or "Fort" as it was called, the stones of which were used in building the spring house now standing on the same spot. The farm was lately owned by Mr. Win. Young, of Baltimore, he having purchased it of Mr. George W. Harris. The farm was the birthplace of the wife of Henry Clay. The fort on the farm was a place of refuge to the surrounding settlers front unfriendly Indians. Families were frequently waked up at dead of night, and in those terrible times we may imagine that they slumbered but lightly. by the messenger from the Fort or from the Block House at Cono- cocheague, gently tapping on the window or door. This summons was quickly understood and in a few minutes the families would be fleeing in all haste, lighted on their way, it may be, by their burning homes. Sometimes the messenger was too late or the unfortunate people tarried too long and the tomahawk and scalping knife would do their terrible work before the place of safety was reached. In preparing for the flight the father would seize his gun and the mother her ehildren, sometimes waiting to dress them and sometimes flecing as they were taken from their beds. No one dared to make a light. The flight had to
Old Green Spring Furnace and Forge Used for Ore Reducer and for Gun Castings in pre-Revolutionary Times.
Fort Frederick-Sole Fort Left of the French and Indian Wars. It Sheltered Settlers for Many a Year After it was Built, in 1756.
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OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, MARYLAND.
be in the darkness and in deathlike silence. The whispered word "Indians" was sufficient to silence the youngest child with the silence of terror. In- deed these Block Houses or forts were frequent places of refuge during the years following Brad- dock's defeat which may well be called the reign of terror. They were simple affairs and only a large space or house surrounded by a stockade which was too high for the Indians to scale and too substantial to be penetrated by a rifle bullet. They were provided with apertures through which the refugees could shoot those who ventured within range of their deadly rifles. When danger threat- ened all the families in a neighborhood would gather into the nearest fort-frequently remaining in it all the summer, the men going out in partics to cultivate the fields and only returning to their homes late in the autumn when the Indians had left for winter quarters. Under such conditions the summer was a dreary season indeed and the advent of winter was looked forward to as a blessed releasc.
It was to turn this tide of murder and out- rage that Fort Frederick, whose massive walls are still standing on a bluff overlooking the Potomae in the western part of Washington County, was constructed. When Washington returned from the disastrous campaign against Fort Duquesne, he iminediately set about building a Fort at Win- chester, purchasing the land and superintending the work in person and bringing up one of his slaves from Mount Vernon to do the blacksmith work. About the same time the Maryland As- sembly appropriated £6,000 to build Fort Freder- ick, Fort Cumberland being too remote to be of any protection whatever to the settlements. This work was done with remarkable celerity under the direction of Governor Sharp and at the close of 1755 a few months after it was begun it con- tained a garrison of two hundred men. This old Fort which is now remaining in a fair state of preservation and is almost the only military mon- ument of the ante-revolutionary times left to us in this State, is situated on a bluff or spur of North Mountain, a hundred feet above the Potomac river and about a quarter of a mile from it, overlooking the river and the "Big Pool," a beautiful sheet of water. Early in the century a writer gives us this description of it: "It is still standing on the Maryland side of the Cohongoruton. Its walls are entirely of stone, four and a half feet thick at the base, and three at the top. They are at
least twenty feet high, and have undergone but little dilapidation. Its location is not more than about twelve miles from Martinsburg, Va., . and about the same distance from Williamsport, in Maryland. It encloses an area of about one and a half acres exclusive of the bastions or redoubts." Mr. John V. L. McMahon described it as in a like state of good preservation when he examined it in 1828. It was constructed of most durable mater- ials in the most approved manner. Its exterior lines were each one hundred and twenty feet in length, its shape being quadrangular, its curtains and bastions were faced with a thick stone wall; and it contained barracks sufficient for the ae- commodation of three hundred men. Governor Sharpe purchased a hundred and fifty acres of land upon which to build the Fort In the Legis- lature of 1892 a joint resolution was adopted look- ing towards the recovery of the fort by the State for the purpose of a permanent camping ground for the State militia, it being accessible by the Western Maryland railroad, which passes near the fort. Nothing was done under this resolution and in 1904 the Legislature appointed a com- mission to make a report on the subject. A por- tion of the walls of the Fort have been taken down to give place to a barn. One of the hinges of the huge door which was preserved until recently, weighed forty-two pounds. During the war of the Revolution, British prisoners were kept in the Fort and during the late war in 1861 the place was occupied for a short time by a Maryland Fed- eral regiment under General Kenly, who knocked a hole in the wall through which to point a can- non. The fort was sold by the Legislature in 1790. The following is an extract from an address of the House of Delegates on the 15th of December 1757: "Though Fort Cumberland may be constructed, for anything we know, near a place proper for the stationing of a garrison at, for his Majesty's ser- vice in general, yet being as we have been inform- ed, between eighty and ninety miles from the settlements of the westernmost inhabitants of this Province, and in the truth of this information are confirmed by your excellency's message of the 11th of this instant, wherein you say the distance from Fort Frederick to Fort Cumberland, by the wagon road, is 75 miles, and consequently the car- riage of provisions thither very expensive, we humbly conceive it cannot be reasonably desired, that the people of this Province should be bur- thened with the great expense of garrisoning that
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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
Fort, which, if it contributes immediately to the security of any of his Majesty's frontier subjects, it must be those of Virginia or Pennsylvania, who do not at present contribute anything towards the support of it that we know of. We understand, the most common track of the Indians in making their incursions into Virginia (which have been lately very frequent) is through the wild desert county lying between Fort Cumberland and Fort Frederick and yet we cannot learn that the forces at Fort ('umberland (though the most of these that are in our' pay the summer past, have been stationed there, contrary, we humbly conceive, to the law that raised them) have very rarely, if ever molested these savages in those their incur- sions ; from whence we would willingly presume their passage is below the Ranges which troops stationed at Fort Cumberland, can with safety to that fort extend themselves to ; and consequent- ly, that any security arising from those troops, even to Virginians who are most in the way of being protected by them, must be very remote, and to us much more so.
"When, from the incursions and horrid depre- dations of the savage enemy in the neighboring colonies, an opinion prevailed, that a fort was necessary for the defence and security of the western frontier of this province, it was thought most likely to be conducive to those ends, to have it placed somewhere near the place Fort Frederick is now constructed; because from thence the troops that might be judged proper to be kept on foot for the security of the frontier inhabitants, might have it in their power to range constantly in such a manner as to protect them against small parties ; and in case any considerable body of the enemy should appear or the Fort should be attacked, the troops might, at a short warning be assisted by the inhabitants.
"Near the sum of £6,000 has been expended in purchasing ground belonging to, and construct- ing Fort Frederick, and though we may not have any exact information what sum may still be wanting to complete it (if ever it should be thought proper to be done) yet we are afraid the sum requisite for that purpose must be consider- able, and we arc apprehensive that fort is so large that in case of attack it cannot be defended with- out a number of men, larger than the province can support, purely to maintain a fortification."
The contention between the Legislature and the Governor about this Fort, and the criticisins
of the formier upon the Governor for the expense he incurred in erecting it, so absorbed the govern- ment at Annapolis that for a considerable time the settlers were left to the tender mereies of the tomahawk and the scalping knife. Brave Col. Cres- sap threatened that if more speedy measures were not taken for the protection of their settlers he would march his company of riflemen to Annap olis. Fort Cumberland was finally abandoned and the garrison, under Col. Dagworthy, removed to Ft. Frederick. In 1757 a regiment under the com- mand of Col. Josepli Chapline, founder of Sharps- burg, occupied this fort. In 1756 a party of about fifty Indians under the command of a French captain crossed the mountains from the west with written instructions to proceed to Fort Frederick and there meet another party of fifty and with them to capture the Fort and blow up the magazine. After reaching the settlements on the Virginia side of the river. the path of this party was marked by the burning homes and the mutilated bodies of the defenseless settlers. But a party of frontiersmen under the command of a captain, Jeremiah Smith, mnet and defeated this party on the Capon river and killed the French captain. Upon his person was found the com- mission to attack the Fort. The party remaining after the defeat seemed to have divided. One party of them, fourteen in number, captured a Mr. Neff, who escaped and took refuge in a small fort. From thence a party of settlers pursued the Indians and were anibushed and defeated by them. The other party of fifty Indians who were to have met the French Captain at Fort Frederick were encountered on the Capon river by a party of settlers under Captain Joshua Lewis who de- feated them. The intention of attacking the Fort was then abandoned. One of the gangs attacked a fort on the Opequon creek, near the southwestern border of this county and massacred or carried into captivity all who were in it. On their way back to the West they captured two children whose remarkable history was given by the late C. J. Faulkner in an address at the University of West Virginia in 1815 as follows:
"It was about daylight, on the 17th of Sep- tember, 1:56, that a roving band of Indians sur- prised that little fort and murdered and scalped all they found in it. On their return from this bloody work they pasesd the house of Win. Stoek- ton, cast of the North Mountain, who, about one hour before their arrival, unconscious of danger,
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OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, MARYLAND.
had gone with his wife about two miles distant to perform the last duties to a dying neighbor, leaving their children at home. The Indians seiz- ed two of these children, George, a boy of four- teen years, and Isabella, a girl then ten years of age, and carried them off as captives to the north, George, who was a youth of remarkable energy and spirit, after a captivity of three years, made his escape and returned to his home in Berkeley County, with his feelings deeply embittered against the Indians and their allies, the French. Isabella Stockton, after being with them something up- wards of a month, was sold by them to a wealthy Canadian trader, who took her to his home near Montreal, and being touched by the artless manners and prepossessing qualities of the child, bestowed, with his wife, every care on her education and training which the condition of the country then permitted. At sixteen years of age she had devel- oped into a girl of extraordinary beauty and at- traetions. At this time there arrived from France a nephew of the trader of the name of Jean Bap- tiste Plata, a young man highly edueated and of the noblest and most chivalrie traits of character. Living in the same house with Isabella, a mutual attachment soon sprang up between them, and in about one year he made known to his uncle his purpose to ask her hand in marriage. The unele approved of his purpose, and the young man opened the subject to Isabella. She told him that she could not disguise from him her deep attaeh- ment to him, but she felt compelled to disclose to him what she had never before breathed to any human being-something of her early history. When but ten years of age she had been torn as a captive from her parents by the Indians, and had been sold to his uncle. The images of her dear father and mother had been continually pres- ent to her mind from that day to this. Her dreams had kept their faces and features as fresh and vivid in her memory as if she had seen them every day, and she did not feel that she eould, with satisfaction to herself, elange her relations in life until she had once more revisited her home in Virginia, and if her parents were still alive, to ask their consent to the proposed marriage. The young Frenehman promptly offered to take her to her parents, not for a moment doubting that they would cordially ratify his union with their daugli- ter. He accordingly procured the necessary horses from his uncle, and they started on their long and perilous journey. They arrived safely in the
county of Berkeley, and he delivered her into the embrace of her astonished and delighted parents. For a few days all was gladness and joy. But as soon as it was communieated to them that the young Frenchinan was engaged to and desired their daughter in marriage, then all the animosity of the persecuted settler sprang up in their bosoms. A Frenchman at that day was more hateful to a West Virginia back-woodsman than even a Shaw- nee Indian, for they regarded them as the instiga- tors and fomenters of all the cold-blooded murders and barbarities which had drenehed their settle- ments in blood. His proposal of marriage was rejected ; he was even ordered to leave the house, but he lingered long enough in the neighborhood to mature an arrangement with Isabella by which he might effeet her escape and both return to Canada. Availing himself of the opportunity when the father and George were absent on a hunt across the North Mountain, the two lovers started upon their journey northward. The day after their departure the father and son returned, when the enraged father, discovering the flight, gave his orders to the fiery and impetuous George to go immediately in pursuit and "to bring Isabella back, dead or alive. for he would rather see her a corpse than hear of her marriage with a Frenchman." Meanwhile the fugitives had crossed the Potomac ; they had forded the Juniata, and they had reach- ed the west bank of the Susquehanna, in the eounty, now called Lycoming, in Pennsylvania where they were detained by a sudden risc in the waters of that river. Here the furious and mad- dened George, whose temper had not been improved by a three year's servitude among the Indians, overtook the astonished lovers. The seene that followed was as brief as it was bloody. He de- manded the return of his sister. She refused to go baek. Her lover interposed, and in two minutes the brave and chivalrous Frenchman lay a bleeding corpse in the arms of the agonized Isabella. His- tory does not inform us what disposition was made of the dead body of Jean Baptiste Plata, but the lovely Isabella, crushed in all her earthly affee- tions, was brought almost a raving maniac to her father's house. Ten years elapsed before her mind recovered its accustomed tone and vigor, when she married a gentleman of the name of Wm. McClcery, and they removed from Berkelcy to Morgantown."
In order to convey an idea of the cruelties praetieed by the Indians upon the settlers of the
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County it is only necessary to give the following narrative which was published, along with many similar ones, in a pamphlet, about the year 1800. Incidents of this kind could be multiplied but this sample is enough as the details are sufficiently horrible.
The narrative is by Peter Williamson, a pros- perous Scotchman who settled near the forks of the Delaware in Pennsylvania. He tells not only of his own sufferings in captivity but of the horri- ble barbarities which were practiced before his eyes upon some prisoners, who were taken from Conococheague. After recounting the burning of his house, and the work of the Indians among the settlers as he accompanied them carrying their plunder for them, he continues: "Going from thence along the Susquehanna, for the space of six miles, loaded as I was before, we arrived at a spot near the Appalachian Mountains, or Blue- hills, where they hid their plunder under logs of wood. From thence they proceeded to a neigh- boring house. occupied by one Jacob Snider, and his unhappy family, consisting of his wife, five children and a young man, his servant. They soon got admittance into the unfortunate man's house, where they immediately, without the least remorse, scalped both parents and children; nor could the tears, the shrieks or eries of poor innocent child- ren, prevent their horrid massacre. Having thus scalped them. and plundered the house of every- thing that was movable, they set fire to it, and left the distressed victims amidst the flames.
"Thinking the young man belonging to this unhappy family would be of service to them in carrying part of their plunder, they spared his life. and loaded him and myself with what they had here got, and again marched to the Blue-hills where they stored their goods as hefore. My fellow sufferer could not support the cruel treatment which we were obliged to suffer and complaining bitterly to me of his being unable to proceed any farther, I endeavored to animate him, but all in vain, for he still continued his moans and tears, which one of the savages perceiving, as we trav- eled along, came up to us. and with his tomahawk, gave him a blow on the head. which felled the unhappy youth to the ground, whom they immedi- ately scalped and left. The suddenness of this murder shocked me to that degree that I was in a manner motionless, expecting my fate would be the same. However, recovering distracted thoughts, I dissembled my anguish as well as I
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