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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
GEN
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01203 8243
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Toll Gate, Mill Hollo7.
A.R. Anith
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yoin Valley.
OHe
WYOMING
ALLEY
Pennsylvania
IN 1892
111
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L
anuel
BY S. R. SMITH,
- WILKES-BARRE, PA.
THE SCRANTON REPUBLICAN PRINT
1892
L
-
Goodspeed- $15.00
rolegomena.
E WYOMIN
7528
1149150
HAS scarcely a rival in scenery, mineral wealth, and historical interest. Nature, weary of repetition, created it to embody her high- est conception of beauty and made it the repository of unlimited wealth, and for unrecorded ages was satis- fied to gaze alone upon the loveliness of her own creation. It has an unwritten history and a forgotten literature which can only be guessed at by what we know of the past.
The valley as seen from the mountain top will never lose its charm; but below the poetry is marred, the enchanting spell is - broken and the dreaming spirit broods no longer over this inland Eden.
Of its past history we have only a few conflicting fragments, but these fragments have made this spot famous and have awakened the interest and sympathy of mankind.
Its future history will be found in the statistical reports of its industries and the record of its material wealth.
Neither in a literal nor Pickwickian sense would we refer irrever- ently to ancestor worship among us. Nor would we make mention of John Barleycorn and our forefathers at the same time, or doubt any of our traditions.
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SCRANTON 150 78639 PUBLIC LIBRARY
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PROLEGOMENA.
We have dispossessed the Indian of this "beautiful oasis in the wilderness" and have refused to recognize his manhood; and be- cause, he, forsooth, poor worm, turned upon the "Forty Thieves," we call him a blood-thirsty savage and concede to him no more rights than to the wild beast, and deny him the God-given right of self-protection; but even our partial history discloses that the hand that murdered and applied the torch was oftener white than red.
The Indian of this region was an admirable specimen of a noble race of men, whose intelligence, temperance and manliness com- mand our admiration and are worthy of our imitation. We call him picturesque, stoical and unique, but he was also a philosopher, a poet, and one who worshiped God and lived in harmony with nature. His real character stands revealed in the matchless mu- sical poetry of the names he gave to the mountains, streams and plains of this valley, and which will be his glory and his only monument.
Our future greatness is the dream of the present day, but even a fair apprehension of the reality is beyond the highest prophetic instinct of this generation. Our increasing prosperity, our inex- haustible resources and our natural advantages promise that the Wyoming Valley is yet destined to contain the largest inland city of the East.
We believe that in this compilation we have planted immor- telles and forget-me-nots upon the graves of the dead, and have made a record of the present that the future will read with interest.
S. R. SMITH.
Kingston, Pa., March, 1892.
A Brief History of Wyoming Valley
BY FREDERIC CORSS.
LAND TENURE.
A MONG our Indian predecessors the condition of land-holding appears to have been the ability to hold it. This law has prevailed among primitive people during historic time. Thus the career of the men of Jericho came to a sudden end and thus the Moabites perished miserably. The Kelts drove the Euskarians into the Cymric mountains, the Saxons dispossessed the earlier Kelts, and Wil- liam the Norman divided their land into some sixty thousand Knights' Fees (1066). This may be a cruel law, but it is a law of nature-a struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. In terms of the same denomination, the Connecticut settlers held against the Pennamites. In advanc- ing civilization the struggle is for governmental control without dispossessing the occupants. Thus Rome lost universal sway and England lost France and American colonies. Thus the Caucasians have ousted earlier Americans.
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A BRIEF HISTORY.
INDIAN TENANTS.
E do not know who were the first Indian occupants of the valley. . The Delawares claimed that they had dispossessed the Aquanuschioni, who had themselves wrested the territory from the Susquehannocks, but the military mounds mentioned by Stone in proof of the high power of those earlier tribes, are natural mounds or kames formed during the flooded river epoch.
The Delawares or Lenni-Lenape were an agricultural tribe indisposed to war, and had been despoiled of their part of their communal farm by the federated tribes of the Iroquois. Thus the white incursion found the valley nominally owned by the Mohawks, Senecas, Onondagoes, Oneidas and Cayugas, who were joined by the Tuscaroras in 1712, forming the Six Nations.
WHITE TENANTS.
IN Governor Hoyt's Syllabus we read: "In 1768, at Hartford, the Susquehanna Company resolved that five townships, five miles squares, should be surveyed and granted, each to forty settlers, being proprietors, on condition that those settlers should remain upon the ground; man their rights; and defend themselves, and each other from the intrusion of all rival claimants. Five town- ships were assigned to these first adventurers: Wilkes-Barre, Han- over, Kingston, Plymouth and Pittston. Kingston, the first town- ship occupied, was allotted to "forty" settlers. The lands were divided into rights of four hundred acres each, reserving and appor- tioning three whole rights, or shares, in each township for the public use of a gospel ministry and schools in each of said towns. A stock- ade was erected on the river bank in Kingston, called "Forty Fort." But the colonists of the Susquehanna Company were not the first upon the ground. "The Penns had leased to Stewart, Ogden and Jen- nings, one hundred acres for seven years on condition of defending the lands against the Connecticut claimants. They arrived upon the
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THE WYOMING VALLEY.
ground in January, 1769, and occupied the block-house and huts at Mill Creek which had been left by the massacred settlers of 1763.'" Let us briefly examine each of these rival claims:
CONNECTICUT TITLE.
WILKES-BARRE is situated in latitude north 41º 14' 40.4", and east longitude from Washington 1° 10' 46".
I. The English claimed by right of discovery all the land from latitude 34° to 48°, from the Atlantic Coast to the South Sea (Pacific).
2. King James I issued a patent to the Council of Plymouth, November 3, 1620, for all the land from 40° to 48° across the continent.
3. The President of the Plymouth Council, March 19, 1631, deeded to Lord Say and Seal et al., land from the Narragansett river to the southwest forty leagues to keep the breadth to the South Sea. This deed conferred right to soil but not powers of govern- ment. Lord Say and Seal et al. appointed John Winthrop their agent.
4. John Winthrop and others were granted a Charter as the Connecticut Colony by Charles II, April 20, 1662, confirming the deed of March 19, 1631, and conferring the right to govern, which the Plymouth Colony had resigned in 1635.
5. In 1753, about six hundred of the inhabitants of the Colony of Connecticut voluntarily associated themselves under the name of the Susquehanna Company, for the purpose of planting a colony within the bounds of the mother colony.
6. The Susquehanna Company to perfect their title, bought of certain chiefs of the Five Nations (sic) for ten thousand dollars lands including the valley, July 11, 1754.
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A BRIEF HISTORY.
PENNSYLVANIA TITLE.
F IRST. Charles II granted a Charter to William Penn, March 4, 1681, for lands bounded east by the Delaware river from twelve miles north of New Castle to north latitude 43°, thence westward 5° of longitude.
* 2. Twenty-three chiefs of the Six Nations, October 11, 1736, deeded to the Penns lands on both sides of the River Susquehanna, &c., &c. This deed was supplemented by explanatory deeds, &c., on October 25, 1736; July 6, 1754; July 9, 1754, and November 5, 1765.
FIRST PENNAMITE WAR.
IT thus appears that the Connecticut settlers derived their title from Charles II by Charter dated 1662, and the Pennamites their title from the same monarch in 1681. The Indian deed to the Penns was dated 1736, and to the Yankees 1754.
Here begins the First Pennamite War. Ogden, Jennings and Stewart, in January, 1769, occupied the land leased from the Penns. In the following month the first party of Yankees came upon the ground and proceeded to besiege the Pennamite block-house at Mill Creek. Three of their number entered the fort for a confer- ence, when they were arrested in the name of Pennsylvania and carried to jail at Easton. They were released on bail and returned to their comrades, when Ogden with a Northampton county posse came upon the field, captured their fort and carried them all to Easton. They were released on bail and all came back.
In April they were joined by two hundred more Connecticut settlers, and proceeded to erect Fort Durkee on the river bank at the foot of South street. The town had been laid out by Major Durkee, and named after two members of Parliament-Wilkes and Barre.
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THE WYOMING VALLEY.
The same Ogden with his posse, fortified by a four pound cannon, captured Fort Durkee and drove off the Yankees in September, remaining in possession until the next assault.
In February, 1770, Captain Stewart arrived with a company from Hanover, Lancaster county, and captured the fort and garrison left by Ogden, who forthwith came on from Philadelphia with fifty men and gained possession of the Mill Creek block-house. In a subsequent "engagement" the Connecticut people lost one man killed, the first fatal casualty in the war. Stewart was finally suc- cessful and forced Ogden to retire in April. "However, with a new force Ogden appeared in September, and, by stratagem, most of the inhabitants being in their fields without arms, once more captured the fort, dispersed the settlers and destroyed their crops. For the fourth time he retired to Philadelphia in the full belief that the contest was at an end. On the 18th of December, Captain Lazarus Stewart. with thirty men again swooped down upon Ogden's gar- rison, and the year closed with the valley in possession of the Yankees."
In 1771 hostilities were renewed by Ogden, who "abandoned his fortress of Mill Creek and defiantly erected a new one, Fort Wyo- ming, within sixty rods of his adversary." Ogden demanded of Captain Stewart the surrender of Fort Durkee, which was refused, when he made an assault, in which several were killed, but failed; and being in turn besieged, escaped himself by a stratagem and his garrison surrendered in April, 1771.
"On July 3-7, 1772, Colonel Plunkett, of Northumberland county, under orders of the Government, destroyed the settlements of Charleston and Judea (Milton), on the West Branch, which had been made under the auspices of the Susquehanna Company, in which affair several lives were lost. With about five hundred armed men, in December, 1775, Colonel Plunkett, with his train of boats and stores of ammunition, moved up the North Branch to drive off the Connecticut settlers from the Wyoming country.
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A BRIEF HISTORY.
About three hundred of these settlers met him at Nanticoke, and repulsed him with some loss of life on both sides; and thus ended the First Pennamite War.
THE DECREE OF TRENTON.
T HE Connecticut people had thus shown that they were de facto owners of the valley. The National Congress (the United States came later), existing under the articles of confedera- tion, now interposed with a resolution that the "contending parties immediately cease all hostilities, and avoid any appearance of force until the dispute can be legally settled." Many of the settlers entered the Revolutionary army, many were slain in the massacre of 1778, and a remnant remained in peaceable possession for several years. On August 28, 1782, upon petition of Pennsylvania, Con- gress, overruling the objection of Connecticut, who wished for delay, appointed Commissioners "to constitute a Court for hearing and determining the matter in question, to meet at Trenton, in the State of New Jersey, on Tuesday, the 12th day of November next, to hear and finally determine the controversy between the State of Pennsylvania and the State of Connecticut, so always as a major part of said Commissioners, who shall hear the cause, shall agree in the determination."
The decree of the Court was pronounced on December 30, 1782, as follows: "We are unanimously of the opinion that the State of Connecticut has no right to the lands in controversy.
"We are also unanimously of the opinion that the jurisdiction and pre-emption of all the territory lying within the charter boundary of Pennsylvania, and now claimed by the State of Connecticut, do of right belong to the State of Pennsylvania."
This decree had reference only to the governmental jurisdiction of the States concerned, and was not held to affect the private owner-
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THE WYOMING VALLEY.
ship of the soil. The Commissioners privately stated that the right of soil, as derived from Connecticut, should be held sacred.
THE SECOND PENNAMITE WAR.
T HE authorities of Pennsylvania proceeded to act upon the theory that the Connecticut people had no right to the soil. "Of the Yankee settlers there were probably six thousand. These were scat- tered mainly in seventeen townships in the county of Luzerne, then including the territory of Wyoming, Susquehanna, and Bradford. These townships were five miles square, and extended in blocks from Berwick to Tioga Point, embracing the bottom lands along the river, Providence, the present site of Scranton, being on the Lackawanna. These townships were Huntington, Salem, Plymouth, Kingston, Newport, Hanover, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, Providence, Exeter, Bed- ford, Northmoreland, Putnam, Braintrim, Springfield, Claverack, and Ulster."
Upon petition of these people for redress of grievances, the Assem- bly of Pennsylvania resolved that Commissioners be appointed to make inquiries and report to the House. Pending their action the Assembly passed the Act of March 13, 1783, staying all writs and processes to dispossess the inhabitants until the end of the following session. Meanwhile the Commissioners arrived and proceeded to make it interesting for the settlers. They proposed to lease to them the lands for one year and no more, but to allow the war widows an additional year after the first of April, 1784. The report of the Commissioners to the Assembly in August, 1783, was in effect the same as the proposal to the settlers, and received the ratification of the Assembly, with a shadowy offer of compensation for lands surren- dered in land in Western Pennsylvania.
The consequence was the era of Captain Patterson. He had been the chairman of a committee of Pennsylvania land holders, and was now a Justice of the Peace. He changed the name of Wilkes-Barre
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A BRIEF HISTORY.
to Londonderry. For protection against the rudeness and licentious- ness of the soldiers, he arrested Colonel Zebulon Butler, then just returned from service in the Revolutionary Army. Him he sent to Sunbury, charged with high treason. In Plymouth he arrested many respectable citizens, feeble old men, whose sons had fallen in the massacre, Prince Alden, Captain Bidlack, Benjamin Harvey, Samuel Ransom, Captain Bates, and others greatly beloved by their neighbors. They were kept in loathsome prisons, starved, and in- sulted. They were disposssessed, and Patterson's tenants put into their places. Having been petitioned by the people, the Assembly sent a committee of investigation, who reported that the wrongs of the people were intolerable. But the Assembly failed to remove the obnoxious Captain.
"The inhabitants finding, at length, that the burden of their calamities was. too great to be borne, began to resist the illegal proceedings of their new masters. and refused to comply with the decisions of the mock tribunals which had been established. Their resistance enraged the magistrates. and on the 12th of May, the soldiers of the garrison were sent to disarm them, and, under this pretense, one hundred and fifty families were turned out of their dwellings, many of which were burned ; and all ages and sexes reduced to the same destitute condition. After being plundered of their little remaining property, they were driven from the valley, and compelled to proceed on foot through the wilderness by way of the Lackawaxen to the Delaware, a distance of eighty miles. During the journey the unhappy fugitives suffered all the miseries which human nature seemed capable of enduring. Old men, whose children were slain in battle, widows. with their infant children, and children without parents to protect them, were here companions in exile and sorrow, and wandering in a wilderness where famine and ravenous beasts continued daily to lessen the number of sufferers."
Patterson himself said : "The settlements upon the river have suffered much by an inundation of ice, which has swept away the greatest part of the grain and stock of all kinds, so that the inhabitants are generally very poor. Upon my arrival at this place (Wyoming), the 15th instant, (April, 1784,) I found the people for the most part disposed to give up their pretensions to the land claimed under Connecticut. Having a pretty general agency from the landholders of Pennsylvania, I have availed myself of this period and have possessed, in behalf of my constituents. the chief part of all the lands occupied by the above claimants,
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THE WYOMING VALLEY.
numbers of them going up the river to settle, and filling up their vacancy with well disposed Pennsylvanians, * * * yet I am not out of apprehension of trouble and danger arising from the ringleaders of the old offenders," &c.
Wherever news of this outrage reached, indignation was aroused, and nowhere more generously than in Pennsylvania. The troops were ordered to be dis- missed. Sheriff Antis, of Northumberland county, which then included Wyo- ming, went to restore order. Messengers were dispatched to recall the fugitives. But they found Justice Patterson still flaming with wrath, and went into garrison near Forty Fort. Two young men, Elisha Garrett and Chester Pierce, having been slain by Patterson's men while proceeding to gather crops, the settlers rallied for serious hostilities. John Franklin organized what effective men he could find. He swept down the west side of the Susquehanna and up the east side, dispossessing every Pennsylvania family he found. He attacked the fort to which they fled, was repulsed with the loss of several lives on each side, and returned to the Kingston fort. Civil war now openly prevailed. (Forty of the Pennsylvania party were indicted at Sunbury, and subsequenly convicted for their participation in expelling the inhabitants.) Other magistrates, Hewitt, Mead and Martin, had been sent to open negotiations. They demanded a sur- render of arms from both sides. In their report to the President and members. of the Supreme Council, under date of August 6, 1784, they say : "In obedi- ence to the instructions of Council of the 24th of July, we repaired to this place, (Wyoming,) and found the Pennsylvania and Connecticut parties in actual hostilities, and yesterday made a demand of the Connecticut party for a surren- der of their arms, and submission to the laws of the State, which they complied with. We also made a demand of the same nature of the party in the garrison, but have received no direct, but an evasive answer.
* As to the pretended titles of the Conecticut party we have nothing to fear, and are convinced that had it not been through the cruel and irreguiar conduct of our people, the peace might have been established long since, and the dignity of the government supported."
Again, under date of August 7th : "We have dispersed the Connecticut people, but our own people we cannot."
The "party in the garrison" consisted of Patterson and such troops as had enlisted under him in the interest of the Landholders, without any warrant of law. When Patterson refused to surrender, the Connecticut people were per- mitted to resume their arms. At this stage, Colonels Armstrong and Boyd appeared with a force of four hundred militia from Northampton county. By a piece of the most absolute treachery he (Armstrong) procured the surrender of
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A BRIEF HISTORY.
the Yankees, and marched them, sixty-six in all, bound with cords, and under circumstances of great cruelty, to jail at Easton and Sunbury. The conquest was complete. "The only difficulty that remained was how to get rid of the wives and children of those in jail, and of the widows and orphans whose hus- bands and fathers slept beneath the sod."
Colonel Armstrong was now confronted, to his surprise, by the censure of the State authorities. The "council of censors" looked into the case, and took action. Frederick A. Muhlenberg was President. This body had just been chosen under the Constitution of 1776, and it was their duty " to inquire whether the Constitution has been preserved inviolate in every part, and whether the legislative and executive branches of the government have performed their duty as guardians of the people, or assumed to themselves, or exercised other or greater powers than they are entitled to under the Constitution."
In September, 1784, they delivered a solemn denunciation of the measures pursued against the Wyoming settlers.
The Executive Council paid no heed to the censure nor to the advice of Presi- dent Dickinson. A fresh levy of troops was ordered. The militia of Bucks, Berks and Northampton refused to march. Armstrong hastened to Wyoming with less than a hundred men in October. He promptly attacked the settlers in their fort, at Kingston, without success. William Jackson, a Yankee, had been wounded. Captain John Franklin seized Jackson's rifle, bloody from his wound, and swore a solemn oath "that he would never lay down his arms until death should arrest his hand, or Patterson and Armstrong be expelled from Wyoming, and the people restored to their rights of possession, and a legal trial guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution, by justice, and by law."
General Armstrong went on to dispossess the families who had returned to their farms. All these proceedings led up to the passage of the Act of Assembly of September 15, 1784, entitled "An Act for the more speedy restoring the posses- sion of certain messuages, lands, and tenements in Northumberland county, to the persons who held the same," under which the settlers were once more led into some assurance.
Armstrong and Patterson were recalled. "Thus ended the last expedition fitted out by the government of Pennsylvania to operate against her own peace- ful citizens," and "the Second Pennamite War."
THE CONTEST IN THE COURTS AND LEGISLATURE.
T HE Connecticut settlers had became distrustful of all Pennsyl- vania measures. Commissioners appointed by the Susquehanna
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THE WYOMING VALLEY.
Company attempted the expedient of seceding from the State and forming a new body politic out of the townships claimed by the Sus- quehanna Company. "General Ethan Allen was in the scheme, and actually appeared at Wyoming in regimentals and cocked hat with the Green Mountain boys fresh from their victories over New York in reserve. They issued "half-share" rights in great numbers, and new faces, strangers to the old settlers, began swarming into the val- ley. So the old settlers were confronted with a new danger, which finally led to the passage of the Confirming Act of March 27, 1787, namely: "An Act for ascertaining and confirming to certain persons called Connecticut claimants the lands by them claimed in the county of Luzerne." It included a scheme for "granting a just compensation to the Pennsylvania claimants."
This was suspended in 1778, March 29, and was finally repealed April 1, 1790. While this act was in force occurred the Ethan Allen episode, which ended in the arrest of John Franklin for treason. At last, on April 4, 1799, the Legislature passed an act which virtually established the Yankee titles, granting certificates under certain restrictions.
The foregoing account has been compiled from "Brief of Title in the Seventeen Townships," by Governor Henry M. Hoyt. The his- tory illustrates the primitive system of holding land vi et armis, followed by the legal struggles indicating an increasing regard for law and its restraints. The principle finally prevailed that in a newly occupied region the first actual settlers and improvers of the soil have a right to its possession.
INDIAN MASSACRES.
T HE First Massacre of whites by Indians in the valley oc- curred in 1763. In the previous year a number of proprietors had made a clearing near the Susquehanna at Mill Creek. On the approach of winter they left their farming implements in the woods
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A BRIEF HISTORY.
and returned to their homes. The next year, to the number of two hundred, they established themselves on the Wilkes-Barre flats. They sowed crops and intended to make a permanent settlement, but were totally exterminated by the Indians in October. The Paxtang Rangers sent by Pennsylvania for their protection, reached the scene two days after the massacre, and buried the dead.
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