USA > Pennsylvania > Montgomery County > A brief history of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, with an accompanying map; > Part 3
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41
1721 TO 1730
resulting in the presentation of rival road drafts. At times several sets of viewers were appointed in succes- sion for one road. Occasionally trouble grew out of the fact that road records had not been made properly or had been lost. Isaac Norris felt aggrieved because a road cut obliquely through his broad lands, but the oblique road is still in use. In one petition complaint is made of being "persecuted with lies and slanders by such that either do not understand or do not regard humanity or law." In one case a road was said to be kept up out of spite and not as a necessity. A Merion resident seems to have had little faith in his government, for he was unwilling to have a road cut until damages had been paid. Most of the roads confirmed were in the lower end and cross county. In the upper end, the Swamp road, the Sumney- town and Salfordville roads were laid out.
The only Indian trouble within the county, which was due to a clashing between a few workmen of the ironworks and Indians, flared up in this decade but died down without doing the harm that had been feared. More will be said of this later.
In this decade patents were issued for land 1731 to in Frederick, Limerick, Marlborough, Provi- dence, Salford, Springfield, Towamencin, 1740 Upper Dublin, Upper Hanover, Whitpain, and Worcester. In addition many warrants were issued for which patents were granted later. By the end of the period most of the land of the county had been taken up. A petition for the establishment of Upper Hanover mentions sixty families as being settled between the townships of Salford and New Hanover. Another peti- tion shows that there was a "great vacancy" or unsettled region between the Upper Hanover settlement and the western end of New Hanover. The settlement of Marl-
42
SETTLING THE COUNTY
borough began about 1733 when Joseph Groff and Gabriel Shuler had lands surveyed for mill properties. Thomas Maybury, who engaged in the iron industry, ac- quired on a warrant of 1737, 1920 acres in the neighbor- hood of Greenlane, lying in Marlborough and Frederick townships. Mills were erected in Frederick and Upper Hanover in this decade. Abington supplied the lime for the new State House, Philadelphia.
Among other signs of growth of population were: Schoolhouses and churches, which were becoming more numerous; blacksmith shops, which became known as landmarks; Swedesford, across the Schuylkill between the east and west sides, which was becoming quite noted ; the German element of the population, half of the people being German by 1734; the Hoppenville road laid out from Macungie in Lehigh county to Sumneytown, a road which attained national importance in the conveyance of food supplies to the troops at Valley Forge; the Schwenkfelder company of immigrants, numbering about 200 souls, who after trying to acquire a large tract of land and settle in a group, were compelled to buy small tracts separately because the available land was all cut up and held by private individuals.
The roads furnish interesting sidelights on the situ- ation. The George McCall manor had "roads so bad that it was difficult for a horse to pass without damage." Roads from Bucks and Chester counties had to be ex- tended wholly or partly through the county. The Morris road zigzagging through the country from Clement's mill (later Alderfer's) to Morris' mill (formerly Farmar's) was suggested in this decade, viewed and re- viewed and re-reviewed and was giving the courts trouble thirty years later on account of errors and jealousies. Merion petitions stated that "ancient settlers" were shut up through want of roads and that roads in use thirty
43
1731 TO 1740
years had been closed. The number of roads granted, viewed and reviewed shows a considerable new demand for accommodations.
The following townships were erected during the decade : Douglass, Franconia, Frederick, Upper Hanover, and Worcester.
1741 Patents were issued during this decade for land in Franconia, Frederick, Marlborough, Providence, New Hanover, Salford, Upper
to
1750
Hanover, and Worcester. Salford was cut up by the establishment of Upper Salford, Lower Sal- ford, Marlborough, and Hatfield townships.
New church buildings, schoolhouses and mills were going up in different parts of the county. Muhlenberg and Schlatter appeared in the field to organize the Luth- erans and Reformed into religious bodies. The Catholics established their first mission in rural Pennsylvania across the county line at Bally, Berks county, which be- came their missionary base for a very wide territory. Whitefield on his evangelistic tours had audiences of thousands in the German communities of Towamencin and Frederick. Muhlenberg gives a glimpse of the peo- ple settled in the county when he speaks of all phases of religious belief and unbelief and all nationalities being represented.
More roads of a distinctively local character were confirmed in this period. Some of the confirmations covered roads that wind around considerably, probably because a number of roads not necessarily in a direct line of travel were combined for purpose of confirmation.
Patents were issued for land in Franconia, 1751 Frederick, Marlborough, Providence, the to Salfords, Springfield, Towamencin, and Up- 1760 per Hanover. The Providence patents were a result of letting farmers have in their own right por-
44
SETTLING THE COUNTY
tions of the Manor of Gilbert, still held by the Penns, which they had been cultivating on long leases.
Roads were laid out in every part of the county, showing that new sections were continually developing that needed avenues of communication with the older communities.
During this period the northwest boundary of the county was fixed by the establishment of Berks county, the line running along the northwest boundary line of McCall Manor, and extending to the Bucks county line.
In educational lines an advance step was shown by the establishment of the Boys' Boarding School in the Heebner-Antes mill of Frederick township and the Charity Schools; the latter were soon abandoned, the former became the Nazareth Military Academy. That there must have been at least some educated Germans in the colony is shown by the fact that Sauer issued a German Bible in 1743 and Franklin issued in this decade more than fifty books in German. The latter had more love for the money of the Germans than their companion- ship.
This was the time of the French and Indian war, of which more will be said in another connection. A few incidents may be mentioned. A Montgomery county farmer had bought a farm in Berks county at the foot of the Blue mountains. His two daughters were mas- sacred in harvest time. At the call of the authorities the farmers supplied horses, wagons, and men to haul mili- tary supplies to Bedford. Montgomery county citizens attended the Indian treaties at Easton, Pa. A militia law for the colony was adopted during this period.
In 1751 Martin Zendler, of New Hanover, died at an advanced age. He had been one of the pioneers and served as a kind of milestone between the primitive and later periods. He used to relate that in his young
45
1751 TO 1760
days men had to struggle in the forest for a bare living. The people were poor but they were also helpful, faith- ful, earnest, humble, and industrious. Then Indians strolled among them and profited by the milk, bread, and other gifts the whites chose to give them. The popula- tion grew on all sides; the raising of cattle was intro- duced; the cleared and cultivated fields began to yield more bountiful crops. Instead of gratitude, however, vices sprang up, drunkenness, luxurious living, and the mere pleasures of sense. Communities came to be known as dens of drunkards and murderers ("Sauf und Mord- grube").
1761 The gradual passing of the soil of the county to from proprietors to private ownership is 1770 shown by the few patents granted for small tracts in Frederick, Hatfield, Limerick, Marlborough, Providence, the Salfords, and Upper Han- over. For most of these, warrants had been issued thirty and more years ago. In Hatfield a tract of 1020 acres, which had been held intact by the Penns almost one hun- dred years, was cut up into ten parts and conveyed to individual owners.
At this time there were within Philadelphia county : 83 gristmills, 40 sawmills, 6 papermills, 1 oilmill, 12 full- ingmills, 1 horsemill, 1 windmill, and 6 forges.
In 1767 the exports of Philadelphia were: 367,500 bushels of wheat, 198,516 barrels of flour, 34,736 barrels of bread, 60,206 bushels of corn, 6,645 barrels of pork, 609 barrels of beef, 882 tons of bar iron, 813 tons of pig iron, 12,094 hogsheads of flaxseed, and 1,288 barrels of beer. Montgomery county probably supplied a great part of this business.
Among the roads laid out or resurveyed were the Egypt road to Phoenixville, the Port Kennedy road in
46
SETTLING THE COUNTY
Upper Merion, the Ridge road across Marlborough, Frederick, and New Hanover by way of Fagleysvile to the Schuylkill river. Complaints were made that the Ridge road from Lower Providence to Whitemarsh was narrow, seldom repaired, and that there was no record of courses or breadth of road. Various other roads were laid out, as a study of the map shows.
Philadelphia had reason to fear a wood famine by this time. It was using 300,000 cords of wood annually for fuel purposes alone. This with the building needs created a problem. Commissioners were appointed by the Assembly to take charge of cleaning, scouring, and making navigable the Schuylkill river from the Blue mountains to the Delaware for boats, flats, rafts, and other small vessels. The pioneer problem of getting rid of trees to raise crops had been changed to one of provid- ing what the farms could no longer supply.
Another evidence of the development of things in general was the springing up of stage lines. Communica- tion was provided by these with Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, Nazareth, Wilkes-Barre, as well as points to the northwest and southwest. A good deal of this traffic must have been conveyed over the roads radiating from Philadelphia through the county. Notwithstanding all this traffic there were but few bridges. The following extract relating to Main street, Norristown, pictures a general condition of the county roads and fords-"A very public road crosses Stoney Creek near the River Schuyl- kill in the township of Norriton just below Norris's Mill Dam and where there is very considerable declivity or fall in the channel of the said Creek, the ford being also a rocky and uneven Bottom ;- These circumstances ever concurring renders it a fearful and dangerous Ford in Freshets; and inasmuch as a bridge is the only ex- pedient that can be thought of to render the passage safe
47
1761 TO 1770
and agreeable to travelers which might we conceive be erected for a small sum as one arch would be sufficient and the material might be had very convenient." What fording streams meant in summer time with loaded wagons and in winter time with loaded sleighs en- dangered by raging floods or treacherous ice it is hard to conceive for those accustomed to modern macadam roads and concrete bridges.
The county's fame was made international when one of her farmer boys, David Rittenhouse, the self-made scientist, observed the transit of Venus from his own ob- servatory in Norriton township. The Schwenkfelders who had come into the county, beneficiaries of charitable Mennonites, had accumulated enough means to raise an endowment fund for the maintenance of schools in their midst. The Lutherans of New Hanover were old enough as a congregation to erect their fourth place of worship, a stately building still in use. On Bethel Hill the Meth- odists erected a place of worship made famous later by the preaching of Jemima Wilkinson, an 18th century re- vivalist who drew Yankees and Pennsylvanians, includ- ing some influential county families, to found Penn-Yan in New York.
Patents were issued for land in Frederick,
1771 Marlborough, the Salfords, and Upper Han-
to 1784 over. Most of these were reissues based on warrants issued many years previously. A patent was issued in 1883 for a tract in Marlborough on warrant granted in 1756.
Among the few road confirmations of the period was one of a road from the Egypt road in Norriton to Swedes Ford road in Upper Merion across the river channel and Barbadoes island. The erection of the dam in the river caused the roadbed to be overflowed. The inhabitants of
48
SETTLING THE COUNTY
Marlborough, Upper Salford, Upper Hanover, and other districts petitioned court for a bridge over Swamp creek at Sumneytown. The grand jury to whom the matter was referred favored the bridge-"Yet they think as the ex- penses of carrying on the war and the taxes are so very high; they are unanimously of opinion it had better be postponed till a future day." The court concurred and the bridge was not built at that time. The first bridge over the Schuylkill within the county was Sullivan bridge at Valley Forge erected as a war measure.
This period covers the Revolutionary War, the estab- lishment of the United States of America, for the study of which the pupil is referred to histories of the state and nation. The part Montgomery county played in the great change will be considered in another connection.
The county had become a compact rural community, considerably developed agriculturally and industrially. Its period of settlement, pioneer days, and beginnings was in the past. Gristmills, sawmills, fullingmills, churches, schoolhouses, stately mansions, massive barns, roads, fruitful fields, grazing cattle, marked the land- scape, but there were no printing presses, no news- papers, no towns, no canals, only a few bridges, no turn- pikes, no postoffices, no county seat, no prison, only one public library, two stage lines, thirty-five churches-none of the conveniences and luxuries that make modern life so comfortable and enjoyable. But Montgomery, hitherto a part of a nationally important county, stood at the threshold of becoming a self-existent, independent com- munity. How the problem was solved and how the county grew will be considered in Chapter V.
CHAPTER IV EARLY LIFE AND ACTIVITIES
Locating the One of the first steps in building a house is to find the place where to build. The pioneers in Home doing this soon learned that some land could either not be bought at all or only at an ad- vanced price because it was reserved for the proprietary family or had been grabbed by land speculators. Some, planning soon to move to other quarters, would squat at an attractive point and, avoiding the laying out of money
A PIONEER'S HUT
or the making of permanent improvements, would snatch what crops they could and await the order to pay up or move on. James Logan, agent of the Penn Family, 1725, wrote that immigrants came as bold, indigent strangers who seized the best vacant land without any legal war-
50
EARLY LIFE AND ACTIVITIES
rant, rarely proposing to purchase, alleging that they came in response to appeals for colonists and offer of superabundance of land. Many of these made out well, paid for their land and became influential citizens. In deciding the question of location careful consideration was given to good drinking water, to nature of soil and ease of making clearings, to nearness of markets, to place of residence of kin, acquaintances, and those using the same language.
Pioneer The location of the future plantation and Dwelling home having been determined, the providing Places of a place to eat and sleep, of shelter from heat and cold, from rain and snow and ani- mals that might endanger life received first considera- tion. Occasionally unmarried men toiled alone in sum- mer on their future farms, putting up buildings and raising crops and in winter time hiring out in older settlements to earn cash and get experience. In some- what thickly settled sections neighbors could afford a temporary home while the primitive shelter was being provided. The first lodging place, crude and simple, might be a tent, an overhanging rock, or a widespread- ing tree, a campfire by night protecting the sleepers. Unassisted the lonely backwoodsman could with a few tools, perhaps brought from the homeland, dig a cave or cellar by the hillside, roof it over with branches of trees, leaves, grasses and well-tamped ground.
Building a hut required more time, skill, and labor. It meant the planting in the ground of two upright forked poles, the placing of a ridgepole in the forks, the slanting of slabs or young trees against the ridge- pole on three sides, the making of a roof of ground, the hanging of a blanket or a few hides across the fourth side. Log dwelling houses by the hearty co-operation
·
51
PIONEER DWELLING PLACES
of friendly neighbors could be put up in a few days. To build and furnish a house in some measure approaching our modern dwellings, called for the cutting, sawing and seasoning of the lumber, the burning of the lime, the manufacture by hand of doors, sashes, mouldings, etc., perhaps the making and burning of bricks, the fashioning of furniture with crude and primitive tools and appli- ances. The increase of the conveniences of society, the
EARLY LOG HOUSES
specialization and centralization of labor made the erec- tion of buildings easier and simpler but also more ex- pensive. The buying of a house by catalogue number, like a pound of sugar, a piece of calico, or a toy for a child, was many years in the future.
As circumstances permitted or necessitated buildings to protect farm animals and implements and to provide a storage place for grain and fodder were erected.
52
EARLY LIFE AND ACTIVITIES
Clothing the The dress of pioneer backwoodsmen was nat- urally plain and simple. Necessity often com- Body pelled them to make use of the untanned skins of the animals they trapped or shot with which to make clothing and shoes. It cannot have been a very pleasant experience in winter time to step from a warm bed, temperature at zero, and slip into clothes of skins frozen stiff, which had to be thawed out by the heat of the body. The making of homespun clothing, by no means a simple or easy task, soon followed. To clear and plow virgin soil, to raise the flax, to pull the plants, to remove the tiny seeds from the boll, to ret and brake the woody part of the stalks, to scutch and hatchel the glossy fibres, to spin and weave the slender threads, to full and color the woven fabric, to cut and sew the cloth into garments, however ill-fitting, all by members of the same family, called for great skill, training and knowl- edge, even though the workers were uneducated. This era of homemade clothes reached far beyond the forma- tion of the county in 1784. Linsey-woolsey, woolen, and cotton goods gradually came into use and the com- munity shoemaker and tailor with tools, goods and oft- told jokes softened the primitive hardships.
The Daily In preparing her daily meals the pioneer housewife could have recourse to the fish in Bread the streams and to the game of the forest, both much more plentiful than now. Wild pigeons flew in flocks so large that they obscured the sky for hours and so low that they could be hit with sticks. Trout teemed in brooks that have long since run dry. Shad made their annual trips up the smaller streams be- fore the dams and poisons of civilization interfered. Mills being at first but few, crude and far between, flour either could not be had at all or only of very inferior quality.
53
THE DAILY BREAD
Homemade devices for crushing or grinding the grain had to be resorted to. Cooking and baking were done on the open hearth. Modern kitchen conveniences, kitchen- ettes and kitchen cabinets were not thought of.
Means The available means of mental improvement of prior to the establishment of the county were the few books brought by immigrants from the
Education fatherland, elementary schools, a few libra- ries, an occasional debating club, community singing schools, ornamental illuminated pen work, primitive and
MANUSCRIPT VOLUMES, TRANSCRIBED AND BOUND IN MONT- GOMERY COUNTY
diminutive newspapers, books published in the colony. Among the obstacles to a good education were : the neces- sary struggle for a living, the sparseness of population, the scarcity of good teachers and text-books, the absence of a system of general public education, the low valuation
54
EARLY LIFE AND ACTIVITIES
placed on education, the quenching of zeal for higher things in general by the lower. In most cases church- building and schoolhouse grew up side by side, the latter in many cases even antedating the former. The school- houses, many octagonal in shape, had homemade desks ranged along the walls; high backless benches from which dangled the legs of the rising generation; a large wood- stove centrally placed, roasting those close by and letting others shiver; pens carved from quills; ink made of soot or pokeberries; the Bible as the great text-book; neither slates nor supervisors. Those financially able paid the tuition of their own children, the township that of the poor families. In some cases children, insufficiently fed or clothed, came from humble hovels, four, five miles through pathless woods or drifted snow to learn their A, B, C's side by side with men old enough to be their fathers. Some of the teachers knew little more than the pupils; others were the local ministers, university-bred men. What it meant to be a teacher then in at least some cases is shown by what was expected in 1750 of the teacher of the Trappe school. He was to be examined in reading, writing, arithmetic, organ playing, English, Christian doctrine, and conduct, and was to enter the names of the children in the church records. He was to receive annually per child one dollar and half a bushel of grain, in addition also two annual church collections, and to enjoy free dwelling in the schoolhouse and the use of a piece of land.
Early
Indus-
The trite saying, the farmer feeds the world, forever true, is forcibly illustrated in the lives of all early backwoodsmen whose primary
tries life purpose had to be to provide food and clothing for themselves and their families. Farming was then and there the great fundamental industry.
55
EARLY INDUSTRIES
All the learning of the professor who regretted that he had not spent his life in studying the dative case would not have saved him from hunger and nakedness. Before the growth of population made specialization of work possible the saying, "root, hog, or die," held true. To raise food crops in virgin soil without plow, harrow or wagon was a problem many had to solve. Plows with wooden mouldboards, harrows with wooden teeth, wag- ons with wheels of three-inch plank sawed from the end of a log, harness made mainly of straw and raw- hide, thrashing and winnowing floors of well-packed soil, storage bins on the garret of log-built dwelling houses, taking a bag of grain for flour to the mill five or ten or fifteen miles away, the many necessary pro- cesses to transform the flax or wool into clothing, bed- ding or grain bags were familiar sights all over the county in early days. Some of these processes lingered long into the nineteenth century. To trace the infancy, growth, decay and disappearance of industries would require volumes. That they did spring up early is shown by the following list of articles exported from the port of Philadelphia fifty years after its founding, many of which must have been products of the county : Wheat, Indian corn, flour, tobacco, hemp, flax, oats, rye, linseed, buckwheat, rice, oil, beef, pork, bacon, fish, butter, sugar, molasses, wine, rum, salt, cheese, cider, lard, tallow, soap, candles, indigo, ginger, beeswax, starch, beer, pig iron, staves, hoops, headings, shingles, tar, pitch, turpentine, copper ore, skins and furs, potash, leather, bricks, marble, old iron, cedar, oak, and walnut timber. These in turn implied machinery, utensils, ap- pliances and operations.
In addition other trades and industries flourished. Potters were making pots, plates, dishes, jugs, basins,
56
EARLY LIFE AND ACTIVITIES
HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS
57
EARLY INDUSTRIES
toys, what not-the tulip ware that brings fancy prices nowadays. Ministers even operated stills, sold whisky, and employed slaves to increase their riches. As an in- dustrial accompaniment, the holding of negroes and Indians in slavery, sanctioned and even enforced by the British government, early gained foothold in the county. Governor Keith at death owned seventeen slaves. Slaves toiled at the Greenlane Iron Works from its be- ginning to about 1775. At the same time members of Plymouth Meeting held seventeen slaves. Rev. George Michael Weiss held a slave negro family of ten, ranging in age from 44 to 4 years, valued by appraisers at £280 or about $750, the price of a cheap auto. There were in the county 108 slaves in 1785, 114 in 1790, 33 in 1800, 3 in 1810, 1 in 1830.
Roads and Montgomery county has always had its road question, the improvement of roads, shadow- Inns like, following without overtaking industrial development. To open roads at one time meant to cut and clear Indian trails of trees, blackberry and hazel bushes, scruboak, weeds and thorns, to remove stumps and rocks in order that carts and wagons instead of pack horses might pass along. Some roads were used many years "upon sufferance" or without due legal pro- ceedings, to be closed by fences perchance without any no- tice from the landowner to the great disgust and incon- venience of the traveling public. Roads were often laid out along boundary lines between adjoining farms, each farm giving a part of the six per cent allowance for roads in the land patent granted. Opening of roads un- der direct court supervision occasionally led to contro- versy and ill-feeling among neighbors. Prior to the turn- pike era parts of even the leading roads were often in an almost impassable condition because of streams, stones,
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