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NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES 3 3433 08191756 3
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THE CENTENNIAL
OI
INNA C
SUS
NIAL.
OZIAS STRONG'S 1 ALOG CABIN 87 1887
SUSQUEHANNA COUNTY,
WRITTEN AND COMPILED BY
JAMES T. DU BOIS AND WM. J. PIKE
NEW YOR
PUBLIC
WASHINGTON, D. C .: GRAY & CLARKSON, PRINTERS. 1885.
THENEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 170680 ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS 1900
PI JBLIO LIB
Y
FORD COLLECTION
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
The compiling of this little volume has been a pleasant yet difficult task. Had the authors known, before the programme was executed, that the work of writing it would devolve upon them careful and correct notes would have been taken of every detail associated with the celebration. But it was not decided to book the proceedings of the Centennial until immediately after the great event had transpired, so that it became necessary to rely largely upon what records had been preserved by the press, the secretary of the Executive Committee, the members of various committees, and the tablets of memory.
We have faithfully endeavored to compile everything of importance connected with the Centennial from its inception to its brilliant and triumphant close ; and in this work we have received kindly assistance from the different newspapers of the country, various committeemen, and especially from Mrs. G. W. Capwell, the efficient secretary of the Relic Committee, who has enabled us to publish a fairly correct list of the vast array of antique treasures which were on exhibition at the rink. To these persons and to all others who have in any way aided us we extend our sincere thanks, hoping that the contents of this booklet may interest them and all of its readers and prove itself entertaining and of value to those of posterity who may celebrate the the bi-centennial of our county in 1987.
The reader, by perusing the reports of the different meetings and the work of the various committees contained in this publication, will see what an army of patriotic citizens toiled for the jubilee unto a triumphant issue. Their names will not be lost to posterity, and their bright examples will be emulated by their descendants when another hundred years have rolled away and the spot of the Relic Hall, the Banquet Tent, the Centennial Elm, the Old Well, and the Log Cabin will have become doubly sacred to our children's children and to their children.
It would be impossible to mention all of those in detail who ren- dered effective service in the good cause, but there is one man whom we must single out and salute with words of commendation.
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When the chairmanship of the Centennial Executive Committee was offered to Capt. H. F. Beardsley he comprehended at once the magnitude of the work connected with it and modestly shrank from the responsibility, but, at the urgent request of his fellow-citizens, he reluctantly accepted the place.
To plan and carry out a celebration worthy of the event : to or- ganize and complete a scheme by which the relics of the county were to be secured, classified. and placed on exhibition ; to originate, arrange, and carry to a brilliant finale the grandest parade that ever marched within the bounds of the county; to gather together nearly three hundred of our oldest inhabitants and banquet them ; to attend to the minute details of the greatest demonstration the northern tier has ever seen, and to raise, by subscription, the necessary funds to exe- cute the splendid programme required a generous zeal and untiring en- ergy possessed by a very few men, and, fortunately for the county, Captain Beardsley can be listed with that limited band.
In the execution of his plans he was strangely fortunate. There were selected as his assistants an executive and managing committee of gentlemen, the latter under the lead of the Hon. George A. Post ; a ladies' auxiliary committee, presided over by Mrs. Henry Warner ; a relic committee, in charge of Mrs. S. B. Chase, and a staff of assistant marshals, who were quick to perceive and prompt to execute his plans. It very seldom happens that a leader is supported so loyally through every step of an undertaking by a body of men and women combining so many qualities especially adapted to the service in which they were engaged. No antagonisms were produced by conflicting opinions : no hostilities engendered by unfortunate jeal- ousies : no claims were raised or bitter assaults made, and no damp- ening spirit of indifference was displayed in any quarter. The com- mittee, coming from all parts of the county, were shown the duty goal, and every man and woman went toward it with zeal and deter- mination.
The admirable work of the newspapers of the county our citi- Tens must ever hold in cordial remembrance. They gave to the patriotic enterprise their helpful and potent influence, and to their constant assistance much of the brilliant success of the Centennial is unquestionably due.
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And now that the battle is over, and the fifty-three thousand peo- sons who watched its course know who were in the thickest of the fight, and know how well they struggled for the great Centennial vic- tory, they must harbor for the valiant workers, one and all, a senti- ment of profound gratitude.
THE AUTHORS.
PREFACE.
The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth days of October, in the year of our Lord 1887, were fraught with undying memories for the citizens of Susquehanna County. They were the red-letter days of our ex- istence as a community ; but the true glory of them belongs to our forefathers, and their title to it all time cannot efface.
The splendid mountains, the silent flowing river, the site of the first log hut, the broad reach of valley, the dust of our fathers were still here to animate us; but the sturdy pioneers were gone and scarcely a vestige remained of their early habitations. Yet the voices of our hallowed dead spoke to us in no uncertain measures, and the lofty influence of their noble lives, we felt, lived with us still, and would live on and on forever. The fruits of their early labors, the re- sults of civil and religious liberty, to enjoy which they braved disease, famine, and the solitude of wilderness, now spread a mantle of light over their sacred resting-places and embalm their memory with a savor more grateful to their descendants than though they were en- shrined in the death temples of the royal dead.
During that trio of memorable days we stood upon a point of time with our faces turned toward the past, and, grasping the meaning of the hundred years of our existence as a community, we found ourselves cheerfully weaving new garlands to the never-fading chap- lets of those who faced everything most terrible to civilized man in order to lay the broad and deep foundations of free communities ; but in the wondrous changes of the century that is gone we see, after all, only the budding of a few seminal principles-in truth not even the beginning of the end.
Standing upon this point of time we find ourselves and our period simple links in the chain of transmission which shall extend the blessings of increased civilization to countless multitudes of our future countrymen. Peering into coming time, far as human eye can reach, not one among us can foretell or even foreshadow the mighty result. What science can calculate it ! What poetry describe !
And yet the future destiny of the whole country depends in some
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measure upon every man, woman, and child now living beneath the shadow of our flag. Every rain-drop swells the brooklet; every brooklet rushes to the river ; every river flows onward to the sea. The broad ocean of our country's glory can only be maintained by each successive generation leaving behind them enduring monuments of their lofty purposes to lift up and help mankind.
May it be the happy lot of those who strove so successfully to give the three October days of 1887 a lasting place in the temple of our local history, ever to cherish the holy fire and substance of the prin- ciples of our ancestors, ever to be filled with a love of country that knows no sectional demarkation, ever to be actuated by a feeling of liberality and charity as wide and as deep as the ocean, and always moved by the spirit of that bond of connection which makes us all as one !
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1787-Susquehanna County-1887.
A visitor writing from Mount Vernon in the autumn of 1787 said : " Washington is in perfect health and is watching with profound in- terest the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention now in session at Philadelphia."
Comparison of historical events are often interesting. About the time this visitor to Mount Vernon was penning these words con- cerning the hero of the Revolution three stalwart men, Ozias, Benajah, and Horatio Strong came to the Great Bend of the Susquehanna River, directly from Athens, Greene County, New York. They were well fitted for the burdens of pioneer life. Ozias was fifty-three years old and of powerful physique. His wife, who accompanied him, was the daughter of Pelatiah West, the first settler of Lee, Massachusetts. They had twelve children, one of whom, Pelatiah, Jr., was drowned in the Susquehanna River. Ozias died at Homer, N. Y., November 21, 1807. Horatio, or Orasha, was the son of Ozias, born just nine months and seven days after the marriage of Ozias to Susan West, and was twenty-nine years old when he came to the Great Bend of the Susquehanna, where he was hunter, farmer, and inn-keeper for ten years, after which time he followed the course of empire west to Ohio, dying near Salem in that State in the year 1831.
Captain Benajah Strong, a cousin of Ozias, when he came to the valley of the Susquehanna was forty-seven years old ; he was six feet. two inches in height, had been a captain in the Revolution, and although entitled to, he refused, a pension ; saw Danbury, Conn .. burned ; and was married to Jane Cochrane, of Woodbury, Conn., who accompanied him first to Greene County, New York, and then to the valley of the Susquehanna. After three years' residence at the Great Bend of the river he went to Ithaca, and from there to Lan- sing, where he bought 2,000 acres of land at $1 an acre, which could not now be purchased for $100 per acre. His wife died in 1816, and two years thereafter he married the widow Powers, of Stillwater,
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N. Y., who was the mother of the first wife of President Fillmore. Benajah died in 1836 at the ripe age of six and ninety. His second wife died in 1850, eighty years old. His son, Benajah, Jr., died at Lansing in 1851.
The history of the Strong family states that these members of it and their families came to the Great Bend of the Susquehanna " not many miles east of Binghamton" in 1787, but there is no positive proof of their having purchased land at that time. Both Benajal and Ozias bought tracts in the summer of 1790. Benajah secured 601 acres on the south side of the river, which were a part of tracts of land originally warranted to Paul and Roger Harper in 1785. which is shown in the following copy of the original survey plat, and was donated to this work by Surveyor Hiram S. Hanna, of Hallstead.
Old Indian
Town.
Log Cabin CJ
Roger Harper.
S. 66°W. 216. Banquet Tent
GIMME9'N
Post
AISpring Form.
N. 29° W. 190.
Jonathan Harper.
...
Post.
N.37º 30 E. 100.
Post.
N. 75° 30' E. 202.
Vacant.
---
Vacant.
S. 19° E. 240.
Paul, Harper. 399 Acres.
II
The following concerning the above plot of survey was taken from the records at Harrisburg :
A draft of a tract of land situated on the southerly side of the northeast branch of the Susquehanna, opposite to an old Tuscarora town, including the mouth of Salt Lick Creek, in Stoke Township, Northumberland County, surveyed on the 25th day of April, 1785, for Paul Harper, by virtue of his warrant, dated the 4th day of April, 1785, containing three hundred and ninety-nine acres, and allow- ance of six per cent. for roads, &c.
By WM. GRAY, D. S.
To JOHN LUKENS, Esq., Surveyor-General.
Two days before Benajah received a title to his land Ozias pur- chased 453 acres on the north side of the river, which was a part of the land originally warranted to Joseph Rambo. Ozias must have also owned a part of the Paul Harper tract on the south side of the river, because old documents exist showing that he owned lands adjoining the Elisha Lenard property, which included the mouth of Wiley Creek.
All the land above mentioned was deeded by the warrantees to Tench Francis, who transferred it to the Strongs in the summer of 1790. The next spring Mina Du Bois arrived from Philadelphia as the agent of his brother Abraham, and he bought of Benajah Strong the 601-acre tract on the south side of the river. A large portion of this tract has ever since remained in the family, and is now the property of James T. Du Bois, and on that part adjoining the village of Hallstead is where the Centennial ceremonies took place. (See map of survey.)
What were the Strongs doing between 1787 and 1790? The gen- ealogy of the family proves that the pioneer triune located at the Big Bend of the Susquehanna in 1787. They probably came from Athens, Greene County, New York, for up to that time Benajah owned a ferry-boat plying between Athens and Hudson. They may have crossed Greene County, and, reaching the eastern branch of the Delaware River, passed down it some distance, and then, cross- ing over to the Susquehanna, followed that stream down to the high bluff on the south side of the river where Hallstead is now situated, and where they erected the first log cabin ever built within the bor- ders of our county. For the first three years they were probably
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squatters, spending their time in hunting, trapping, and prospecting. Or, if they did purchase land, the record of the transaction must have been destroyed when the records of Luzerne were burned.
Theirs must have been at first a rude existence. A log house on the. picturesque bluff, a single room, which was parlor, kitchen, bed- room and all to the Strongs ; scant furniture, oiled paper for window-glass, a pail of water for a mirror, pine knots for candles : the trencher and the wooden bowl for china, pewter for silverware,. perhaps milk and warm water for tea, burnt crust for coffee, black- bread for cake. Such was probably their forest fireside and such its interior arrangement. But all around them nature spoke in tones of captivating eloquence, for nowhere, in all the broad domain, was her hand more generous or her smile more winsome than over the region which greeted the eye from the place whereon they had founded their home. It was a wilderness, to be sure, but it was one of nature's most favored wilds. The great ampitheater into which they had roamed was peerless throughout all the country over which they had wandered. It was, in fact, the most picturesque spot from Otsego to the sea. Rings around stood a chain of silent sentinels mantled with towering pine and hemlock, whose Hogarth-line of beauty against a golden autumn sky must have awakened, in their sunset splendors, the admiration of the sturdy pioneers; and the broad reach of river, moving noiselessly beneath the shade of the primeval forest, completed a picture unsurpassed amidst the myriad natural beauties of our wonderland.
No ax of woodman had touched a forest tree except their own. The river was large with fish. The valleys abounded in game, and the recesses of the mountains echoed the footfall of the swift deer and the mournful cry of the panther. The spot now known as "The Rocks" was a den of bears, and across the river from their isolated home were the famous " Three Apple Trees," where the red men were wont to talk for peace or war before Sullivan swept them from the valley. Toward every point of the compass stretched out mighty reaches of woodland, whose dim aisles remained as yet undisturbed by the presence of the pale face. A large portion of the 792 square miles which now make up the area of the county, and on which nearly 50,000 white men dwell, was then known as Stoke Township. and the only habitation existing within its borders was the old Tus-
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carora Indian village, just opposite the spot where Salt Lick Creek is lost in the bosom of the Susquehanna. But these tepees were deserted and the Strongs were alone.
From their primitive hut on the bluff to the historic stone set by Dave Rittenhouse on the Upper Delaware before the Revolution, all was solitude. Running along the line now marking the northern confines of the county to Apalacon Creek, not a single impress of white civilization could be seen. Passing thence south to where the old Indian trail crosses the border, no settlement could be found. "Thence going westward to the place where Forest City now stands, all was a tenantless wilderness ; while the region to the northward, even beyond the Starrucca, had but just caught the sounds of ap- proaching pioneers in the persons of the Comstocks and Bucks; and William Conrad, the Hessian veteran, was then still pushing his way toward the wild valley of the Hopbottom, where he was to have the honor of becoming the progenitor of the first white child born within the present limits of the county. Within this vast area not an acre had been cleared, and, so far as authentic history has recorded, not a blow had been struck for civilization when the Strongs first looked upon the beautiful valley of the Susquehanna at the big bend of the river and called it their home.
Could the clear vision of these brave couriers of civilization have penetrated the vista of the future until it rested upon the dying days of a century a picture would have been unfolded to their view the wondrous truth of which their expanding hearts could not have com - prehended. Clio herself would have fallen dumb at a revelation which so far transcended her loftiest conceptions, and the eyes of Cheery Hope would have been dazed by its marvelous revealment.
Instead of a wild waste they would have discovered a great, intelli- gent, and progressive community. They would have found twenty- seven prosperous and well-populated townships, furnished with ex cellent school facilities. They would have found manufacturing industries representing two and one-half millions of dollars of capital and paying nearly half a million annually to those employed. They would have found an assessed valuation of real and personal property amounting to over five millions of dollars and farm investments run- ning into the enormous sum of eighteen millions. They would have seen two great railroads intersecting the county and rolling over their
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belted ways the products of every nation. They would have found almost every mind awakened with a consciousness of its powers and putting them steadily forth in acquisition of the high purposes for which they were bestowed. They would have found a county of nearly a half hundred thousand souls alert and passing rapidly into harmony with the intellectual enterprise and social progress of the age. with no worm-eaten institutions to palsy their energies, no privileged classes to eat the bread they earned, no blind attachment to old forms, and no prejudices covered with the dust of ages But instead they would have found a heritage of rational liberty ; a gov- ernment based upon popular interests and sustained by popular will : a wilderness vanished and an Eden created, whose inhabitants, by the aid of enlightened commerce, taste the luxuries of every clime. In truth, a spot where the sun of no single day leaves the hilltops and valleys in the same condition as when it rose; every hour fraught with advancement ; every day a wonderful development. And, in all of this startling revelation, they could have traced the unmistak- able footsteps of the God of nations and the supreme master of the destinies of men.
THE CENTENNIAL GERM.
In the spring of 1887 Ramanthus M. Stocker, editor of the " Cen- tennial History of Susquehanna County," claimed that, from all the documentary evidence which he could secure, Ozias and Benajah Strong built on the big bend of the river in 1787 the first white home ever erected within the borders of this county. and suggested that, as the Centennial year of that event had arrived, it ought to be duly celebrated. Ex-Congressman George A. Post became deeply inter- ested in this suggestion, and to him the honor is due of having first appealed to the people of the county to celebrate the event. In an able and interesting editorial published by him in the Montrose Dem- ocrat the Ist day of July, 1887, he expressed his views in part as follows :
It was one hundred years ago this coming fall that the first white man settled permanently within the territory of what now comprises Susquehanna County, and it would seem entirely proper, and, indeed. desirable, that our county's Centennial should be appropriately cele- brated. It is our opinion that such a celebration would be heartily enjoyed by our people, and could be made an occasion of rare inter-
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est and productive of good results. One hundred years ago the ter- ritory embraced in the county of Susquehanna was a part of old Lu- zerne County, without an inhabitant, save Ozias Strong, who settled at Great Bend, now Hallstead, in the fall of 1787, and became the first resident purchaser of land under Pennsylvania title within the county. That same year, 1787, settlements were made in Harmony, Oakland, and Brooklyn. In Harmony by Moses Comstock, a native of Rhode Island, who located on the flat between the Starrucca and Can- awacta Creeks near where they enter the Susquehanna. Here he and his sons, Asa and Abner, made improvements for a number of years. but were finally ousted by Colonel Timothy Pickering, the represent- ative of the Pennsylvania claimants. The case of Comstock is not an isolated instance. Many of the hardy pioneers after paying for their lands to Connecticut claimants and making improvements were compelled to pay for their homes again or be dispossessed under the operation of the Pennsylvania intrusion laws.
The first settlement of Brooklyn was made by Philadelphians, un- der inducements of John Nicholson, a large landholder in that sec- tion ; but these people were not fitted for pioneer life, and, becoming discouraged, began to sell their improvements in 1798 to Connecticut settlers. William Conrad, a Hessian, who had been brought over here by the British to fight the Americans, against his will, like many of his brethren, never returned home, but became a settler in Penn- sylvania. He settled in Brooklyn in 1787, and his daughter Kate, born that year, was doubtless the first white child born in the county ; and Enoch Bishop Merriam, who was born at Great Bend that same year, was the first white child born on the Susquehanna River within this county. Adam Miller, a Protestant Irishman, was also in Brooklyn in 1787. Thus the three nationalities, English, Irish, and German, were here contemporaneously. Prior to 1787 what is now Susquehanna County was a waste, a howling wilderness, covered with a defense forest of maple, beech, birch, chestnut, and ash, inter- spersed with hemlock, while the valleys and ravines were covered with a thick growth of hemlock and pine, with an undergrowth of laurel. The only occupants of these solitudes were wild animals and savage, roaming bands of Indians.
As the first settlement was made in Hallstead, that of course would be the proper place to hold the Centennial celebration; and if the citizens of that vicinity will move in the matter and manifest a desire to aid the movement we have no doubt that the citizens of all sec- tions of the county would join in furthering the enterpise. We make the suggestion, and if it shall be received with favor we will do all in our power to help along the celebration. The question is, Shall we celebrate?
This appeal was responded to promptly by all of the newspapers of the county, extracts from which are given herewith :
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New Milford Advertiser :
The proposition to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the settlement of Susquehanna County seems to have been favorably re- ceived by the people. The project to be successfully carried out de- mands the hearty co-operation of our best people. A few enterprising, active men in each town in the county, with the assistance of every individual citizen, can make it an assured success. The news- papers of the county should take an active interest in the scheme and every citizen talk and boom the project. Let the good peo- ple of Hallstead make a move in the matter.
Independent Republican :
A meeting of the citizens of Great Bend and Hallstead has been called to take action for the proper celebration of the Centennial of the first settlement of Susquehanna County. Let the good work of preparation go on. A hearty acquiescence and a generous support can be counted on from every part of the county. Everybody will want to have a hand in celebrating Susquehanna County's Centen- niał. It is proper, it is right ; our citizens would be derelict in duty should they let the occasion pass without a demonstration commem- orating the event-no small affair, but one equaling in magnitude the prosperity, growth, wealth, and intelligence of her people during the period named.
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