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Gc 974.8 C88b 1652557
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
IT ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01145 2445
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XX. THE BOUNDARY CONTROVERSY BE- TWEEN PENNSYLVANIA AND VIRGINIA ; 1748-1785. Etc.
XXI. MINUTE . BOOK OF THE VIRGINIA COURT HELD AT FORT DUNMORE (PITTS- BURGH) FOR THE DISTRICT OF WEST AUGUSTA, 1775-1776.
. BY
BOYD CRUMRINE, OF WASHINGTON, PA.
[ Reprinted from ANNALS OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM, Vol. I, pp. 505-568, 1902]
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SHOWING FRENCH OCCUPATION OF THE OHIO VALLEY : TAKEN FROM M.ROBERT'S ATLAS UNIVERSEL, PARIS 1755 BASED ON CHRISTOPHER GIST'S SURVEYS MADE 175J.
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1652557
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XX. THE BOUNDARY CONTROVERSY BETWEEN PENN- SYLVANIA AND VIRGINIA; 1748-1785.
A SKETCH,1 BY BOYD CRUMRINE, OF WASHINGTON, PA.
It is proposed to publish in the ANNALS of the Carnegie Museum, the original minute books of the old Virginia Courts held within the limits of southwestern Pennsylvania, during the period when Virginia claimed and exercised jurisdiction over what is now Washington, Greene, Fayette, Westmoreland, and Allegheny Counties, Pennsyl- vania, and it is fit that these minutes should be preceded with a sketch of the boundary controversy between the two states, beginning as early as 1748, and terminating only by the final establishment of the west- ern boundary line as it is to-day in 1785.
When this contest began our Western country was indeed a wilder- ness. Thomas Hutchins, an engineer with Bouquet's expedition in 1764, said of it in his "Topographical Description . of Vir- ginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland," published in London in 1778 : " The whole country abounds in Bears, Elks, Buffaloes, Deer, Tur- kies, etc., an unquestionable proof of the goodness of its Soil." In a foot-note, Hutchins quotes from Gordon, a still earlier explorer : " This country may, from a proper knowledge, be affirmed to be the most healthy, the most pleasant, the most commodious, and the most fertile spot of earth, known to European people." Francis Parkman, writing of the country west of the Alleghanies in 1760, says : "One vast and continuous forest shadowed the fertile soul, covering the lands as the grass covers a garden lawn, sweeping over hill and hol- low in endless undulation, burying mountains in verdure, and man- tling brooks and rivers from the light of day:" 2 Thus, more than a century ago, when our country was a wilderness, did it give promise of its future greatness.
I This sketch is founded upon an address delivered before the Western Penn- sylvania Historical Society, in Allegheny City, in the spring of 1894.
' Conspiracy of Pontiac, 147.
505 62
1
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ANNALS OF THE CARNEGIE, MUSEUM.
THE FRENCH OCCUPATION.
But, before proceeding to discuss the special subject of this sketch, it should be noticed that, as the custom of nations with reference to new discoveries by their peoples went, the country west of the Alle- ghanies, prior to its actual occupation and settlement by Englishmen, was in the occupation and jurisdiction more or less rightful of France, known as the French Occupation ; so that, had there not been a change of jurisdiction, we might have been a French people.
At one time in American history France claimed all the lands west of the Alleghanies by right of prior discovery ; and the establishment of her power on the coasts of North America was coeval with the first colonies from England. 3 In 1682, the year in which William Penn first came to his new colony on the Delaware, Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, having passed with his expedition from the lakes into the Mississippi, proceeded in April to the mouth of that river, and in the name of Louis XIV. took possession of all the lands watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries, and named the country Louisiana. 4 In the library of Washington & Jefferson College is a very rare and valuable atlas, entitled "Atlas Universel," etc., published at Paris in 1755. The ninety-eighth map of the series shows a part of North America, embracing the course of the Ohio River, New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Caro- lina. It represents the boundary line between Pennsylvania and Lou- isiana as being the most western ridge of the Alleghany mountains.
The map mentioned, purporting to have been based upon surveys made by Christopher Gist in 1751, is the oldest map of western Pennsylvania the writer has seen. On it is indicated " F. du Quesne," at the mouth of the " Monongahela ou Mohongalo." The river be- low Fort Duquesne is called the " Ohio ou Splawacipika " ; above the fort it is called " Ohio ou Allegany." Several Indian villages are des- ignated, and two English towns, or settlements, Kittanning and Ve- nango. Lake Chatauqua is indicated, but without a name. It was called in early historical writings, " Jadague."
But there was an older map extant ; for, at a meeting of the Pro- vincial Council on August 4, 1731, there was produced a " Map of Louisiana, as inserted in a Book called a New General Atlas, published at London in the year 1721," when it was first observed how "exor- 3 I. Bancroft, 17, 18. 4 IT. Bancroft, 338.
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bitant the French claims were on the Continent of America ; that by the description in said Map they claimed a great part of Carolina and Virginia, and laid down the Susquehanna as a Boundary of Pennsyl- vania." It was also noted that, by the information of Indian traders west of the Alleghanies, the French were endeavoring to " gain over " the Indians to their interests.
Pennsylvania was thus warned as early as 1731 that a powerful con- tinental nation, with which her parent kingdom was at peace, was threatening a foothold upon fertile lands within her own charter limits, undefined however until a later date. Disturbed for many years by a controversy with Lord Baltimore concerning her southern boundary, and also by disagreements between the proprietary Gover- nors and Provincial Assemblies, as well as by continuously embarrass- ing relations as to her Indian affairs in her undoubted possessions and settlements east of the mountains, for many years she made no effort to repel the French intrusion. Not until Virginia, in 1748 and 1749, had taken the initiative in the establishment of the Ohio Com- pany in the vicinity of the Pittsburgh of to-day, did Pennsylvania manifest an interest in the subject. Where her western boundary might lie she seemed to know little and care less. It was the Virginian occupation in the years mentioned, resulting in the French and Indian war, which brought to Pennsylvania a suggestion of watchfulness as to her western boundary.3
In 1748, Thomas Lee, of the King's Council in Virginia, formed the design of effecting settlements on the wild lands west of the Alle- ghanies, through the agency of a land corporation called the Ohio Company. Lawrence Washington and Augustine Washington, elder brothers of George Washington, were interested in the scheme. A grant was obtained from the. English king of five hundred thousand acres of land, to be taken chiefly on the south side of the Ohio, between the Monongahela and Kanawha rivers. Two hundred thousand acres were to be selected immediately, and to be held for ten years free from quit-rents and taxes, on condition that the company should seat one hundred families on the lands within seven years, and build a fort and maintain a garrison sufficient to protect the settlements.
In 1751, Christopher Gist was sent out from Virginia as the agent of the Ohio company to explore the lands, and it was then doubtless 5 Crumrine's History of Washington County, p. 140.
1
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ANNALS OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM.
that he made the surveys, which, being published, formed the basis of the French map of 1757. In 1752, with Joshua Fry and two other commissioners representing Virginia, Mr. Gist attended a treaty with the Indians, with whom the French were tampering. This treaty was held at Logstown, eighteen miles or so below Pittsburgh, on the Ohio. Some years ago there was quite a discussion in the newspapers as to the location of Logstown, whether it was on the north or on the south side of the river. In fact there were two Logstowns, opposite each other ; one on the north bank, occupied by white or half-breed traders, and the other on the south bank occupied by the Shawanese Indians.
It is manifest that one of the principal objects of the Ohio Company was to meet the French claim and occupation of lands upon the Ohio and Alleghany by actual settlements to be made by English colonists from Virginia. The headquarters of Leguardeur de St. Pierre, the French commandant, were at Venango ; and in 1753, Governor Din- widdie, then also one of the proprietors of the Ohio Company, sent George Washington, a youth of twenty-one years, to the French com- mandant, to ascertain the purpose of the threatened encroachment. It was on this journey that Washington stood on the " Point" at the confluence of our two rivers, which he reported in his Journal, as an eligible place for a fort.6 In 1754, the erection of a fort at the place indicated was begun by Capt. William Trent in command of a body of Virginia militia. After its commencement, Captain Trent returned to Will's Creek (now Cumberland ) leaving the construction of the fort to Ensign Edward Ward ; but on April 17, 1754, a hostile force of about seven hundred French and Indians came down the Alleghany under the command of Capt. Contrecour, to whom Ensign Ward with but thirty-three men, surrendered the unfinished fort. The fort was then completed by the French and named Fort DuQuesne, in honor of the Marquis DuQuesne, the French Governor General of Canada.
Thus were the French in the actual military occupation of the valley of the Ohio. Then followed the events of the so-called French and Indian war: the battle of Fort Necessity, at Great Meadows in what is now Fayette county, Washington's maiden engagement : and the surrender of the fort to the French on July 4, 1754; in the next year the battle of Braddock's Defeat, on July 9, 1755, resulting in the complete expulsion of the English from the waters of the Monon-
o The Olden Time, Vol. I., p. 12.
" Afterwards one of the Justices of the old Virginia Courts.
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gahela and Ohio. All this contest between the French and Indians on the one side, and the English on the other, was brought about without the agency of Pennsylvania.
There followed a state of quiesence on the part of the French, them- selves apparently satisfied with the fact of their possession ; but not so was the state of the Indians. Secretly incited by the French, doubt- less, the Indians carried their bloody incursions into the valleys east of the mountains, leaving desolation, death, and suffering on every side. But, in 1756, occurred the expedition of Col. James Armstrong from Fort Shirley, in what is now Huntingdon county, resulting in the de- struction of the Indian towns at Kittanning ; in 1758, Forbes's expedi- tion, with Grant's defeat on Grant's Hill, Pittsburgh, on September 14, followed by the capture or rather the abandonment of Fort Duquesne on November 25th, and the erection of Fort Pitt (though not in the same location as Fort Duquesne), in 1759, by a force under the com- mand of Gen. Stanwix.
It must be remembered that this expulsion of the French from the Ohio valley was not by the militia alone of either Pennsylvania or Virginia, but by royal forces sent over by the English government, aided by the militia from both colonies. And so the French occupa- tion was terminated by the definitive treaty of peace between Eng- land and France, signed on February 10, 1763, and then passed from France all her possessions in America east of the Mississippi, including Canada.
THE VIRGINIA OCCUPATION.
The erection of the fort at the Point by Capt. Trent, in 1754, a trespass by Virginia upon the lands in the valley of Ohio, brought about the French and Indian war, resulting beneficially, however, in the loss to France of most of her American possessions and their ac- quisition by the English, and bringing directly to Pennsylvania a sharpened sense of the necessity for looking after her political interests west of the Alleghanies.
Now, what was the origin of this Virginia usurpation, for usurpation it was? How did it happen that Virginia claimed any of her territory within our western border? How did she come to claim jurisdiction over the great Northwestern Territory, the mother of magnificent states of the Union? The answers to these queries arise out of the following facts :
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The charter granted by Charles II. to William Penn, for the prov- ince of Pennsylvania, was dated March 4, 1681. The grant was bounded on the east by the Delaware River, "unto the three and fortieth degree of Northern latitude, if the said river doth extend so far northward ; The said land to extend westward five degrees in longitude to be computed from the said eastern bounds ; and the said lands to be bounded on the north by the beginning of the three and fortieth degree of northern latitude, and on the south by a circle drawn at twelve miles distance from New Castle northward and westward, unto the beginning of the fortieth degree of northern latitude, and then by a staight line westward to the limits of longitude above mentioned."
It thus is made plain, that Pennsylvania was a province of three de- grees of latitude and five degrees of longitude, extending from the fortieth degree, i. e., line 39°, to the beginning of the forty-third de- gree, i. e., line 42° ; and in the absence of an interference with any prior grant, doubtless no other position would ever have been enter- tained. But in 1632, forty-nine years before Penn's charter, Charles I. had granted a province to Lord Baltimore, named Maryland, under the terms of which charter a very interesting controversy arose between Penn and Lord Baltimore, whether Penn's charter carried him to the parallel 39°, as he claimed it did, or only to parallel 40°, as claimed by Lord Baltimore. But it was destined that our southern border should be neither at parallel 39°, nor at parallel 40° ; although many were the contentions and strifes among settlers along the Maryland line, arising before this controversy was determined by the running of Mason and Dixon's line at 30°, 43', 26", in 1767, to a point two hundred and forty-four miles from the river Delaware, and within thirty-six miles of the whole distance to be run. This point was at the second crossing of Dunkard Creek, near the southern boundary of Greene county ; and by that point passed the Warrior Branch of the old Catawba or Cherokee trail, along which traveled the war parties of the northern and southern Indians. Across it the Indian escort of the surveying party would not allow even an imaginary line to be drawn. Thus, at the beginning of 1768 the southwest corner of Penn- sylvania had not been found and marked, and the western boundary, whether an irregular line or a meridian, was as yet unknown.
But how the controversy with Virginia came about has not yet ap- peared. For this we must go back to the Virginia charter, which ante- dated both that of Maryland and that of Pennsylvania.
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The first charter or patent for the colony of Virginia was by Queen Elizabeth in 1583, and it had neither name nor bounds. The settlers under this patent, partly from misconduct and partly from the opposi- tion of the Indians, and other calamities, abandoned their efforts and the patent became extinct. But in 1602 James I. succeeded Elizabeth, and in 1606 he issued a new patent incorporating two companies, called the South Virginia Company, and the North Virginia Company, afterwards called respectively the London Company and the Plymouth Company. Each was to be limited to a square of one hundred miles backward from the sea. The London Company, with which we are concerned, settled at Cape Henry, and hence the square of one hun- dred miles granted by that patent could not have extended to the eastern base of the Blue Ridge. But in 1609, the London Company received a new patent, with the boundaries of their grant enlarged by the following terms :
" All those lands . .. lying and being in that part of America called Virginia, from the point of land called Cape or Point Comfort, all along the sea-coast to the northward two hundred miles ; and from the said Point or Cape Comfort all along the sea-coast to the south- ward two hundred miles ; and all that space and circuit of lands lying from the sea-coast of the precinct aforesaid up into the land throughout, from sea to sea, west and northwest."
Observe the ambiguities in the terms of this grant, the chief of which is in the words " up into the land throughout, from sea to sea, west and northwest," as containing directions for the northern and southern boundaries. Shall the due west line be drawn from a point on the sea-coast two hundred miles north of Point Comfort, and the northwest line be drawn from a point on the sea-coast two hundred miles south of Point Comfort? If so, then the London Company was limited to a triangle which extended to no territory in our western border. Or, shall the west line be drawn from a point on the sea- coast two hundred miles south of Point Comfort, and the northwest line from a point on the sea-coast two hundred miles north of Point Comfort ? This was the interpretation claimed by Virginia, and one will see that if it were correct, the northwest line would run through the heart of Pennsylvania, passing east out of Erie City ; while, the southern boundary line, running due west, the two would never meet, and Virginia would have owned the greater part of the entire continent. But, without discussing further the propriety of either interpretation,
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let it be said that Virginia always, while yet a colony and after she be- came a state, referred chiefly to this charter of 1609 as authorizing her jurisdiction. not only over the Monongahela and Ohio valleys, but also as giving her an ownership over the entire Northwestern Territory.
This jurisdiction over the territory northwest of the Ohio River, Virginia refused to cede to the Confederacy of the United States, though her refusal endangered the confederation, until in 1781, when, no longer able to resist the influence of the other states, especially that of Maryland, she finally gave way so far as to abandon her claims over lands north and west of the Ohio River, on condition, however, that the United States would guarantee her rights to the south and east of the Ohio. This guaranty the Congress of the United States refused, and in 1784 the condition was withdrawn and the cession made abso- lute. But it is interesting to note that no sister state or government, nor the Congress of the Confederation, ever at any time recognized the right of Virginia to such jurisdiction. Only for the sake of per- fecting the Union, such as it then was, was there any respect at all paid to her pretensions.
But, assuming that Virginia's interpretation of her charter provisions was the correct one, there was another fact which wholly ousted her claim to any lands which might eventually be found to fall within the boundaries of Penn's charter. In 1624, prior to the grant of Mary- land to Lord Baltimore, as well as prior to the grant of Pennsylvania to William Penn, the charter to the London Company was dissolved in the English courts by a writ of quo warranto ; and from a proprie- tary colony somewhat like that of Pennsylvania, Virginia from that time on was a Crown colony. The distinction between a colony and a province, such as was Pennsylvania, is well known. Whatever rights are secured to the proprietor of a province cannot be infringed or altered by the Crown, without the consent of the proprietor, nor abrogated unless by judgment of law founded upon some act of com- mission or omission working a forfeiture or dissolution. But a royal or crown colony is a mere creature of the royal will ; its boundaries, all its machinery of government, may be modified, altered, or annulled at the royal pleasure and discretion. For this reason alone, therefore, Virginia having become a crown colony prior to the passing of Penn's charter, she could thereafter make no claim to any lands within the limits of Penn's charter, whatever interpretation was to be put upon the terms of her own charter provisions.
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To explain the origin of Virginia's usurpation of territory upon the Monongahela and Ohio, the writer digressed from the building of Fort Pitt, near the mouth of the Monongahela, in 1759, followed by the ces- sion of the French claims by the treaty of 1763. Soon after that treaty occurred what is known as the Conspiracy of Pontiac, in the summer of 1763. This was an effort set on foot in 1762, at Detroit, by that great chieftain Pontiac, who organized all the Indian tribes under a common purpose to drive the hated English entirely out of the country. It is said that, to raise means to supply his forces in their incursions eastward he issued promissory notes on birch bark, signed with the figure of an otter, and that, moreover, they were all subsequently re- deemed by him. In the spring of 1763 Pontiac appeared with his savage forces in the neighborhood of Fort Pitt, moved across the mountains, and almost desolated the settlements on the east, even through the valley of the Susquehanna. During this Indian war, ter- minated by Bouquet's expedition, and the desperate battle of Bushy Run, on Turtle Creek, in Westmoreland county, on August 5, 1763, and the relief of Fort Pitt thereby, there was no opportunity for an imme- diate conflict of civil jurisdiction west of the Alleghanies. From 1764 to 1774, however, there was peace with the tribes, the pioneers being disturbed only at times by the occasional depredations of savages intent upon plunder rather than moved by the havoc of war. And George Washington, then a colonel, turned his attention to the acquisition of lands west of the mountains. In 1770, on October 17th, with Dr. Craik, who had been his companion in arms at the battle of Great Meadows and in Braddock's defeat, he arrived at Fort Pitt, and in his journal " he mentions his meeting at Semple's tavern, where he stopped, Dr. John Connolly, " nephew to Col. Croghan, a very sensible and intelligent man, who had traveled over a good deal of this western country, both by land and water." This Dr. John Connolly, thus introduced to us by no less a personage than Col. George Wash- ington, was soon to play an important part in the civil history of the country west of the mountains; for he became the leader of the Virginia adherents in the contest to establish the Virginia jurisdiction along our rivers, and, as will be seen, a justice of one of her courts.
In 1772, John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore, one of the Peers of Scotland, became Governor of Virginia ; and early in 1773 he made a visit to Fort Pitt, where he met Dr. John Connolly, hereto- $ Olden Time, Vol. I., p. 416.
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fore introduced to us by Col. Washington, who had dined with him at Semple's. Most probably Lord Dunmore, who was an intense loy- alist, had early information of transactions presaging the rupture of the colonies from the mother country, and in the controversy instituted over the boundary question, as well as in his management of the Indian war of 1774, known as Dunmore's war, he was impelled in both to put the two colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia in antagonism to each other. And it must be remembered that on February 26, 1773, West- moreland county had been erected, covering all the territory of south- western Pennsylvania, and the seat of justice was placed at Hanna's Town, about four miles from the present Greensburg. The establish- ment of government and courts of justice over this territory neces- sitated increased taxation upon the lands of the pioneers; and, as the greater number of them had come over the mountains from Maryland and Virginia, by way of Braddock's road, it was not a mat- ter of very great difficulty to equal the number of patriotic Pennsylva- nians by the number of Virginian partisans from our own settlers. It may be noted that Capt. William Crawford, he who was burned at the stake by the Indians at Sandusky in July, 1782, was a Pennsylvanian, being one of the justices of the peace, and justices of the county of Bed- ford, when first organized in 1771; but he afterwards espoused the cause of Virginia in the boundary controversy, and in 1775, when pre- siding judge of the Westmoreland county court, his judicial office was taken from him, as he had then accepted the appointment of justice under Lord Dunmore.
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