USA > Pennsylvania > Fayette County > Uniontown > A history of Uniontown : the county seat of Fayette County, Pennsylvania > Part 72
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She died first of a family of twelve children, March 26, 1832, within but a few days of her eighty-second birthday.
Their family consisted of: Ann, born September 7, 1776, married to John Ward, and settled at Steubenville, Ohio, where they became quite prominent; Joseph, born November 17, 1777, married to Nancy Salters; Elizabeth, born March 27, 1779, married to Thomas Hadden, Esq., the first resident at- torney of the Fayette county bar; William, born October 14, 1780, married to (first), Mary Burker, (second), Nancy Mc- Laughlin and (third), Libbie Finley; Alexander, born Sep- tember 17, 1782, never married, served in the war of 1812; Ephraim, born July 23, 1784, married to Tamzon Slack, kept tavern on the summit of Laurel Hill; Stephen, born September 23, 1786, married to Nancy McClean and lived at Lemont ; John,
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born February 28, 1788, married to Mary Wilson; Richard, born May 17, 1790, never married; Moses, born March 12, 1793, married to (first), Jane McClean, (second), Nancy Sullivan.
Colonel McClean died January 7, 1834, aged 88 years, 1 month and 17 days.
The minutes of the court have the following entry : "Jan- uary 8, 1834 .- At the meeting of the court this morning Mr. (John M.) Austin arose and informed the Court of the death of Colonel McClean, which took place last night. After a few remarks, in which Mr. Austin alluded in terms of deserved eulogy to the high character with which the deceased sustained as an officer and man, and in general in all the social relations, he moved the following resolution, viz. :
" That when the court adjourns, it adjourns to meet at 4 o'clock p. m., in order to give the Court and bar, grand and trav- erse jurors and others attending the court an opportunity of at- tending the funeral, which was adopted and ordered ac- cordingly."
The following is the inscription on the tombstone erected over the grave of Colonel McClean in the old Presbyterian burying ground east of the court house :
Col. Alexander McClean, Born Nov. 20, 1746, died Dec. 7, 1834, In the 88th year of his age.
" He was a soldier in the revolution. Was a representative from Westmoreland county in the Legislature of Pennsylvania at the time Fayette county was established. And was register and recorder of this county from its organization in 1783 until his death. In his departure he exemplified the virtues of his life, for he lived a patriot and died a Christian."
The discrepancy in the date of the death of Colonel McClean as noticed above can be accounted for from the fact that the date on the tombstone was doubtless recorded some years after his death while that of the minutes of the court was recorded at the time.
GENERAL EPHRAIM DOUGLASS.
One of the most prominent characters in the early history of Uniontown was General Ephraim Douglass. Of his nativity
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nothing is certainly known, but his early business associates and friends cluster around Carlisle in Cumberland county, Pennsylvania. His father was Adam Douglass, and he had a brother, Joseph, who was connected with him in business in Pittsburgh and also after locating in Uniontown.
It appears that he located at Pittsburgh as early as 1768, at which place he was joined later by his father, mother and brother; one sister married and remained in Cumberland county. But nineteen years of age, yet full of energy, and pos- sessing a fairly good English education, with steady habits and considerable diligence and skill, he engaged in several kinds of employments, and soon gained the acquaintance of the foremost Indian traders and early settlers around the old frontier post.
In 1771 he began to engage in the Indian trade, furnishing the Indians with powder, lead, tomahawks, beads and coarse articles of clothing in exchange for peltry of all sorts, then quite a lucrative business. These, when dried, were sent to Philadelphia on pack-horses and sold; the pack-horse trains bringing back goods for the traders.
He soon became associated with others in the business and opened trading posts at other localities in the Indian country. Indian troubles and the Revolutionary war put an end to their business, although Douglass, for business purposes, avoided participation in the troubles.
The Eighth Regiment of The Pennsylvania Line was raised in July of 1776, for the defense of the western frontiers, to gar- rison the posts of Presque Isle, Le Boeuf and Kittanning, to consist of seven companies from Westmoreland and one from Bedford county, under the command of Colonel Aeneas Mackay, of which Ephraim Douglass was appointed Quartermaster September 12, 1776. On the 23rd of November the regiment was ordered to march to Brunswick, New Jersey, or to join Washington wherever he might be found. Soon after joining the main army near New York he became aide-de-camp to Major General Lincoln and was serving in that capacity with a body of 500 troops under that general's command at Bond Brook when Lord Cornwallis, in command of 2,000 British, made an ascent from Brunswick. General Lincoln retreated with a loss of sixty men and sundry prisoners, among the latter was Major Douglass. He was carried to New York, then held by the
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enemy, where he was subjected to many privations until ex- changed.
General Washington wrote to General Lincoln on the 25th of October, 1777, that he would try to get Douglass exchanged for some of the captives of Burgoyne's army, as soon as his turn came. But the odds, especially in officers, being greatly against the Americans, the British having five prisoners to the Americans one of theirs, and the difference in the treatment of prisoners, postponed the release of the major for a considerable time. During his long captivity his health gave way, and con- tracting a cutaneous disease, he resorted to mercury and bathing which well nigh cost him his life. He was exchanged in No- vember, 1780, and soon after rejoined his regiment which had been ordered to Pittsburgh for the defense of the western frontier.
The Supreme Executive Council, in 1780, passed an act to reimburse the officers and enlisted men of the Pennsylvania Line engaged in the Revolutionary war, estimating in specie all sums of continental money, and certificates were issued to that effect.
In pursuance of the above act, the lands lying between the Allegheny river and the western boundary of the state, and from the Ohio river to the mouth of Mahoning creek, embracing an area of 720,000 acres, and comprising what is now parts of the wealthy and populous counties of Allegheny, Butler, Beaver and Lawrence, was to be laid off into lots and be sold, the pro- ceeds thereof to be applied for the redemption of such certifi- cates as might be unsatisfied at the end of the sales.
This tract, known as the Depreciation Lands, was divided into five districts and surveyors appointed for each. A part of tract number three, three miles in width and over thirty miles in length, was assigned to General Douglass, in 1785, and was surveyed by Robert Stevenson.
In August of 1781, Major Douglass was again settled at. Pittsburgh, and, at the close of which year the government solicited his services on a special secret mission among the In- dian tribes of the Northwest. A letter from his friend, General Irvine states: " I have heard of your magnanimous enterprise in penetrating the Indian country-that you have been absent and not heard from for some months-that the time fixed for
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your return was lapsed, and that your friends about Pittsburgh had given you up as lost. He returned in May, 1782.
From the first of September, 1782 to the last of April, 1783, he served as Intendant of British prisoners at Philadelphia. On the first of May, 1783, congress resolved upon another embassy . to the Indian tribes of the Northwest to inform them that peace had been agreed upon, and that hostilities had ceased between the American colonies and Great Britain, and that the forts now held by the British troops would soon be evacuated-that the United States wished to enter into friendly treaties with them, and that unless they acceded to friendly offers and ceased their hostilities, congress would take measures to compel them thereto.
The secretary of war immediately selected Major Douglass for this important and dangerous mission. He set out from Fort Pitt on the 7th of June, with horses and attendants, pass- ing through the hostile wilderness of the Northwest to San- dusky, where he was detained several days; thence to Detroit, Niagara and Oswego; all of which posts were held by British garrisons. The British commandants would not permit him to make the Indians a public exposition of his mission, although treated with great civility and respect by both British and In- dians. While at Detroit, there was held a grand council of eleven Indian tribes, who seemed glad to hear that peace had been de- clared, and gave evidence of satisfaction at having him among them. He could assume the rôle of a chief so completely as to deceive the Indians themselves.
He returned from this mission in August and immediately repaired to Princeton and reported the results of his mission to congress. For this service, congress voted him five hundred dollars.
Soon after his return from his mission among the Indians the movement for the formation of a new county out of a part of Westmoreland was about to be accomplished, and General Douglass forwarded the following memorial to the Supreme Executive Council :
" To the Honorable the Supreme Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania :
"The memorial of Ephraim Douglass humbly showeth that having, true to his principles, made an early sacrifice of his interest, he entered into and continued in the service of his
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country until the loss of health, conspiring with other mis- fortunes, obliged him to return at a time when his return to civil life offered him no prospect of a retire to his former pur- suits in it. That he has since earned a precarious subsistence by the accidental services he has been occasionally employed to perform; but being now altogether without business, and strongly desirous of obtaining some permanent independent employment, he looks up to your honorable body for the ac- complishment of that desire with all the confidence which a knowledge of your justice and readiness in rewarding your faithful servants can inspire.
" That your memorialist having heard of a new county being created from a part of Westmoreland, begs leave humbly to offer himself a candidate for the office of prothonotary in the county of Fayette, and prays your acceptance of his services.
" Your memorialist, as in duty bound, will ever pray."
" Ephraim Douglass."
His application was successful, and on the sixth day of October, 1783, he was appointed prothonotary and clerk of the courts of Fayette county, and entered upon the duties of his new offices, being here at the first court, held on the first Tues- day in December following: Offices which he held uninter- ruptedly until December, 1808, when he resigned.
General Douglass' description of the first courts held in the new county, as written to John Dickinson, Esq., President of Supreme Executive Council, February 2, 1784, is as follows :
" Sir :
" The courts were opened for this county on 23rd of De- cember, last. The gathering of the people was pretty numerous, and I was not alone in fearing that we should have frequent proofs of that turbulence of spirit with which they have been so generally, and perhaps too justly, stigmatized. But I now feel great satisfaction in doing them the justice to say that they behaved, to a man, with decency and good order. Our grand jury was really respectable-equal at least to many I have seen in courts of long standing. Little was done other than dividing the county into townships."
GENERAL DOUGLASS' DESCRIPTION OF UNIONTOWN.
General Douglass in writing to his friend General Irvine soon after locating in Uniontown described the place as follows :
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" This Uniontown is the most obscure spot on the face of the globe. I have been here seven or eight weeks without one op- portunity of writing to the land of the living, and, though con- siderably south of you, so cold that a person not knowing the latitude would conclude we were placed near one of the poles. Pray, have you had a severe winter below? We have been frozen up here for a month past, but a great many of us having been bred in another state, the eating of hominy is as natural to us as the drinking of whisky in the morning.
" The town and its appurtenances consist of our president and a lovely little family, a court house and school house in one, a mill and consequently a miller, four taverns, three smith shops, five retail shops, two tan yards, one of them only occupied, one saddler's shop, two hatters' shops, one mason, one cake woman (we had two, but one of them having committed a petit larceny, is upon banishment), two widows and some reputed maids, to which may be added a distillery. The upper part of this edifice is the habitation at will of your humble servant, who, besides the smoke of his own chimney, which is intolerable enough, is fumigated by that of two stills below, exclusive of the other effluvia that arises from the dirty vessels in which they pre- pare the materials for the stills. The upper floor of my parlor, which is also my chamber and office, is laid with loose clap- boards or puncheons, and both the gable ends are entirely open ; and yet this is the best place in my power to procure till the weather will permit me to build, and even this I am subject to be turned out of the moment the owner, who is at Kentucky, and hourly expected, returns.
"I can say little of the country in general but that it is very poor in everything but its soil, which is excellent, and that part contiguous to the town is really beautiful, being level and prettily situate, accommodated with good water and excellent meadow-ground. But money we have not, nor any practicable way of making it; how taxes will be collected, debts paid, or fees discharged I know not; and yet the good people appear willing enough to run in debt and go to law. I shall be able to give you a better account of this hereafter.
"Col. McClean received me with a degree of generous friendship that does honor to the goodness of his heart, and continues to show every mark of satisfaction at my appoint- ment. He is determined to act under the commission sent him
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by Council-that of register and recorder-and though the fees would, had he declined it, have been a considerable addition to my profits, I cannot say I regret his keeping them. He has a numerous small family, and though of an ample fortune in lands, has not cash at command.
" The general curse of the country, disunion, rages in this little mudhole, with as if they had each pursuits of the utmost importance, and the most opposed to each other, when in truth they have no pursuits at all that deserve the name, except that of obtaining food and whisky, for rainment they scarcely use any.
" The commissioners-trustees, I should say-have fixed on a spot in one end of the town for the public buildings, which was by far the most proper in every point of view, exclusive of the saving expense; the other end took the alarm and charged them with partiality, and have been ever since uttering their complaints. And at the late election for justices, two having been carried in this end of the town and none in the other, has made them quite outrageous. This trash is not worth troubling you with, therefore I beg your pardon, and am, with unfeigned esteem, dear general,
" Your humble servant, " Ephraim Douglass."
By an act of assembly incorporating Uniontown into a borough, April 4, 1796, General Douglass was made chief burgess until the election to be held the first Monday in May, 1797.
General Douglass purchased lot No. 7 in the original plot of the town, February 28, 1792, paying therefor the third of five pounds. On this lot, in a log house, he made his home until he erected a two-story brick residence immediately east of the log. In this new brick he made his residence until he removed to his farm two miles north of town about 1824.
General Douglass was appointed treasurer of the county in 1789, which office he filled with signal ability until January, 1800. During these years the duties of this office were ex- ceedingly onerous and responsible. Besides the county levies during this period, a state tax of greater amount, yearly until 1790, was to be collected and remitted, to meet the State's quotas to support the Federal Government and pay the war debt. For until the new Federal Constitution of 1789 became
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effective, Congress assessed certain sums of revenue to be fur- nished by each State, and the State apportioned the sum among its counties. This had to be paid in gold or silver, or in certain government certificates. And the great scarcity of money in this part of the country made the burden of its payment very grievous, and its collection exceedingly difficult and unpleasant. Nevertheless Fayette county was prompt to pay her quota, as the following letter from the Comptroller General's office to General Douglass will testify :
" Sir :
'The honorable situation in which the county of Fayette is placed by the punctual discharge of her taxes, reflects high credit upon the officers employed in the laying, collecting and paying the same, as well as upon the county at large. May you long continue, and I hope you will long continue in the same laudable situation. Your example will have a good influence upon others, so that you not only do your duty yourselves, but in some degree procure the same to be done by others. The bearer is riding the state for money, but from you we ask none. You have anticipated our demand, and I know will continue to send it down as fast as you receive it.
" I am, with respect, Sir, " Your most humble servant, " John Nicholson."
Some idea of the difficulty of collecting the taxes at the early formation of the county is obtained from a letter written by General Douglass to the Secretary of State, in which he says: "The county commissioners are so counteracted by the rabble of this county, that it appears hardly probable the taxes will ever be collected in the present mode. In the township of Menallen in particular, the terror of undertaking the duty of collector has determined several to refuse it, under the severe penalty annexed. Two only have accepted, and these have been robbed by some ruffians unknown, and in the night, of their duplicates. The inhabitants of other townships have not gone to such lengths, but complain so much of the hardship and the want of money that I fear very little is to be hoped from them."
It appears that General Douglass has experienced con- siderable trouble in securing his pay for the time he was held
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a prisoner by the British, and the following letter written to John Nicholson, Comptroller General, dated Uniontown, 16th April, 1784, is most emphatic.
" Sir :
"And now, Sir, I will for the last time, trouble you with the mention of an affair which has already created some trouble to us both. My opinion, when founded on principle, I can never sacrifice to any other gentleman, but I am less wedded to my interest. The efforts I have already made to accommodate the dispute between us have convinced me that you are not less tenacious of yours. I have neither leisure, opportunity nor in- clination to undergo the drudgery and expense of a tedious lawsuit, whereby this matter might be settled in time; nor am I of that importunacy of disposition to trouble the legislature, after having once troubled the Supreme Executive power of the State, with an application on this subject; though I should not doubt of a determination in my favor. To avoid, therefore, both the one and the other, and to satisfy you, I have sent you my certificate, in the confidence that I shall now be allowed the satisfaction I shall derive from the recollection of having served and suffered, forfeited my interest and ruined my constitution, without any reward ; for rather than accept of less than I believe myself entitled to, I would wish to have nothing.
" I have the honor to be, etc. " Ephraim Douglass."
In April, 1793, General Douglass was commissioned Brig- adier General for the county of Fayette, and was in command of the 1st Brigade, 4th Division of Militia and at the annual parades of the militia he was a conspicuous figure on horseback. He was a man of high stature and most imposing appearance, remarkably neat and exact in gait and dress, with long queue and powdered hair, and in his prime was of great athletic vigor and perfectly fearless. It is related of him, that having been taken prisoner by the Indians that he enticed his keepers to the river to try their skill on the ice, and after floundering for a while he was off like a flash and soon outstripped his pursuers. He was a peer among the great and highminded judges and attorneys of his day and enjoyed their society and confidence. His temper was very irritable, and he was subject to impetuous
-
..
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rage. He was conscious of these frailties, and assigned them as a reason why he never married. The extent to which he gave rein to his passion may be judged by the facts that at one time he chopped a horse's head off with an ax because he refused to pull a load, and at another he burned his hay crop because it had gotten wet two or three times before he could have it hauled to the barn or put in stack.
He was the first by several years to use a landau or car- riage in the town, the top of which could be thrown open. His love of display was conspicuous when being driven out in his landau by having a servant boy running before to throw the loose stones out of the way; as also when on military parade, mounted on a prancing charger, he won the admiration of all. His fine physical form and dignified military bearing amply justified the highest encomiums. He always kept a number of servants to do his bidding, and woe be to the one who failed to obey his commands.
During the Whisky Insurrection of 1794, when incendiary letters, signed by "Tom the Tinker," were being sent to all who were disposed to comply with the excise law, a company of about one hundred and fifty men came to town and erected a liberty pole in defiance of the excise law, and also one on the Colonel Gaddis farm, two miles south of town, and General Douglass cut them both down in defense of the law and in de- fiance of "Tom the Tinker."
On October 21, 1786, Thomas Freeman as agent and at- torney-in-fact for his Excellency, General George Washington, conveyed to Ephraim Douglass, Esq., three negroes, viz .: One boy named Joe, one girl named Alice, both slaves for life, and one girl named Dorcas, born within the United States and is to serve until she arrives at the age of twenty-one years; for the sum of one hundred and sixty-five pounds, ten shillings.
Signed, Thomas Freeman,
Agent and attorney-in-fact for His Excellency.
General Douglass was appointed as agent for the state in looking after lands forefeited to the government by those who adhered to and advocated the cause of England in the struggle of the American colonists for their independence.
In the discharge of these duties General Douglass seized upon a tract of 2951/4 acres and allowance of land situated on
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Dunlap's creek that had been warranted to Anthony Yeldell in 1772. This tract is known as the Mendenhall Dam tract, and as Yeldell was attainted as a tory in 1779, the tract was seized upon and sold by General Douglass to James McDonald, and the proceeds accrued to the state.
General Douglass spent the latter part of his eventful life on his farm of about one hundred acres, two miles north of town, and was buried in the orchard a short distance in the rear of his residence. A neat sandstone monument marked the grave and bore the following inscription :
" Gratitude.
The children of Daniel and Sarah Keller, as a tribute of gratitude and respect, erect this monument to the memory of their grandfather,
Major General Ephraim Douglass,
who died July 17, 1833, in the 84th year of his age."
A neat iron fence enclosed the lot.
WILL OF GENERAL EPHRAIM DOUGLASS.
In the name of God, Amen ; I, Ephraim Douglass of Union township, Fayette county, Pennsylvania, believing that I must shortly bid adieu to time, do make the following disposition of my real and personal estate wherein I have been favored by the providence of the eternal God to whom I commit my im- moral spirit, confident that whatsoever He may destine it He will do right, and to His will I entirely and cheerfully submit.
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