USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Wilkes-Barre > A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania : from its first beginnings to the present time, including chapters of newly-discovered early Wyoming Valley history, together with many biographical sketches and much genealogical material. Volume I > Part 37
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"There were very few other people in the world that had such a strange domain as this, which might have been given by the fairies in- stead of by a king. For hundreds of miles it was a green ocean of tree tops as it rose and fell over the mountains and valleys of what we now call Pennsylvania, and touched the shores of Lake Erie, a great in- land sea. Still onward and westward it went, and soon open spaces and meadows appeared after 500 miles of tree tops, and the buffalo and elk fed in the sunshine and no longer in the shadows of the woods. Soon the meadows became larger, and presently the woods were gone and the vast prairies of Indiana and Illinois appeared with their knee-deep grass
* Bancroft's "History of the United States," V : 51-55.
+ Jonathan Trumbull.
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waving to the horizon. The Mississippi is crossed, the long grass is gone and the short, stunted buffalo-grass of the plains spreads to the brim of the sky and the land is drier and the millions of buffaloes raise the dust in clouds as they press towards the passes of the Rocky Moun- tains. But those mighty peaks and ranges with their endless snow and their countless herds of game were still Connecticut, which was pressing on and on across the sage-brush plains of Utah, through the Great Salt Lake and the brown deserts of Nevada up again into the peaks of the Sierras in California, until that Yankee empire ended at last as it had begun, by the breakers of the sea.
"What a wonderland Connecticut was! And as it forged its way through forest and mountain and prairie and plain and dusty desert into mountains again, a narrow band of 3,000 miles from sea to sea, how typical of the restless energies of the handful of English who began life upon its eastern extremity, outnumbered by the animals and the red men !"*
Such was the ignorance of the Europeans respecting the geography of America, says the Rev. Jedidiah Morse (mentioned on page 239) in his "American Geography"-edition of 1796-that their patents ex- tended they knew not where. Many of them were of doubtful construc- tion, and very often covered each other in part, and thus produced in- numerable disputes and mischiefs in the Colonies. "Almost every State upon the seaboard had had at the first a grant from the Crown which read as if it had been meant to set no boundaries at the west at all except the boundaries of the continent itself, * * and each [Colony] laid confident claim to its own long western strip of the continent."+
But, for nearly a century after the granting of the Charter of 1662, Connecticut neglected not only to claim but to explore those lands, sup- posed to form a part of her domain, which lay westward and southward of New York. Meanwhile, on the 4th day of March, 1681, the same "Charles II, by the Grace of God King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland," who, nineteen years previously, had set his hand and seal to the Connecticut Charter, granted a Charter to one WILLIAM PENN of London, England. This lengthy and important document contained the following paragraphs, among many others :
KNOW YEE, therefore, that wee, favouring the petition and good purpose of the said WILLIAM PENN, and haveing regard to the memorie and meritts of his late father, in divers services, and perticulerly to his conduct, courage and discretion under our dearest brother, James, Duke of Yorke, in that signall battell and victorie, fought and obteyned against the Dutch fleete * * in the yeare One thousand six hundred sixtie- five, * * Have Given and Granted, and by this our present Charter, for us, our heirs, and successors, Doe give and grant unto the said WILLIAM PENN, his heirs and assignes, all that tract or parte of land in America, with all the Islands therein conteyned, as the same is bounded on the East by Delaware River, from twelve miles distance Northwarde of New Castle Towne unto the three and fortieth degree of Northern latitude-if the said River doth extend soe farre Northwards ;
"But if the said River shall not extend so farre Northward, then by the said River soe farr as it doth extend, and from the head of the said River the Easterne bounds are to bee determined by a meridian line to bee drawn from the head of the said River unto the said three and fortieth degree, the said lands to extend Westwards, five degrees in longitude, to bee computed from the said Eastern Bounds, and the said lands to bee bounded on the North by the beginning of the three and fortieth degree of Northern lat- itude, and on the South by a circle drawn at twelve miles distance from New Castle Northwards, and Westwards unto the beginning of the fortieth degree of Northern Lati-
* From an address by Sydney G. Fisher before the Wyoming Commemorative Association, July 3, 1896.
+ Woodrow Wilson's "A History of the American People," III : 46.
Į See "Pennsylvania-Colonial and Federal," I : 223.
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tude ; and then by a straight line Westwards to the limit of Longitude above mentioned. "Yeelding and paying therfore to us, our heirs and Successors, two Beaver Skins to bee delivered att our said Castle of Windsor, on the first day of January, in every yeare ; and also the fifth parte of all Gold and silver Oare which shall from time to time happen to be found within the Limitts aforesaid, cleare of all charges.
"And of our further grace, certaine knowledge and meere motion wee have thought fitt to Erect, and wee doe hereby Erect, the aforesaid Country and Islands into a province and Seigniorie, and doe call itt PENSILVANIA ; and soe from henceforth wee will have itt called."
It may be noted here that the granting of this Charter was opposed by the Privy Council, by the Council for Plantations, by the Proprietors of New York and the Proprietors of Maryland.
It will be noticed that the bounds of the "Pensilvania" grant not only overlapped the Connecticut grant but interfered with the claims of New York-the rights to which Province had been granted in 1664 by King Charles to his brother the Duke of York, who, in the same year, wrested the government of the Province from the hands of the Dutch .* The New York-Pennsylvania boundary-line remained undeter- mined and in dispute for many years, as may be perceived by a reference to "Pennsylvania Archives," II : 60; to the Map of New York on page 33, ante, and the Map of Pennsylvania in Chapter V, whereon the sup- posed boundary-line is shown, together with the information that "the Northern Boundary of Pensilvania is not yet Settled."
Having been invested by his Charter with "all the powers and pre- eminences necessary for government," William Penn issued a procla- mation to the people already settled upon a portion of his grant. It was, in part, as follows :
"I wish you all happiness here and hereafter. I hope you will not be troubled at your chainge and the King's choice ; for you are now fixt at the mercy of no Governour that comes to make his fortune. You shall be governed by laws of your own making, and live a free and, if you will, a sober and industrious People. I shall not usurp the rights of any or oppress his person. God has furnished me with a better resolution, and has given me His grace to keep it. In short, whatever sober and free men can reason- ably desire for the security and improvement of their own happiness, I shall heartily comply with." * * *
"Such," says Bancroft ("History of the United States," II : 364), "were the pledges of the Quaker Sovereign on assuming the govern- ment. It is the duty of history to state that, during his long reign, these pledges were redeemed. He never refused the free men of Penn- sylvania a reasonable desire."
Ever since Adam and Eve were forced to migrate from the Garden of Eden, inan has sought to better himself and improve upon his sur- roundings by migration and emigration. One of the most notable illus- trations of this fact, in the history of man's progress from the gate of Eden towards better and greater things, is to be found in the chapter relating to the settlement of the North American Continent by the Anglo Saxon race. Our Pilgrim and Puritan forefathers set forth for this New World beyond the sea with the hope that it would redress the wrongs of the Old. They were not guided in their choice of territory by thirst of gain. They wanted to found a Nation-to begin again (breaking with the traditions of the past) in a place where neither Eng-
* By the grant of the King to the Duke of York the tract of country called New York was bounded on the east by Connecticut River, thus conflicting with the express letter of the Massachusetts and Connec- ticut Charters, which extended those Colonies westward to the South Sea, or Pacific Ocean. As late as 1783 New York claimed as hers all the territory of the present Vermont, while Massachusetts claimed nearly all the territory within the present limits of New York lying, in one direction, between the 75° of west longitude and the south-eastern shore of Lake Erie, and in the other direction between the 42º of north latitude and the southern shore of Lake Ontario. (See Woodrow Wilson's "A History of the American People," III : 47-49.)
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lish law and government nor the English Church, as directed by Arch- bishop Laud and operated through the Star Chamber, could follow them.
The process of settlement in New England was slow, but it was sure ; and within only a little more than a century and a-third after the arrival of the Mayflower in Cape Cod Harbor we find that in the Colony of Connecticut alone there were about 127,000 white inhabitants *-
* "a stirring, hardy race, Keen, careful, daring, ready to embrace Peril for profit-in each form, or all The forms encountered by the Apostle Paul."
The spirit of emigration-that restless, roving spirit inherited from European ancestors in whom the migratory instinct was most power- fully developed-that same Anglo Saxon temperament which brought our ancestors into New England, and which constantly pushes forward to the trial of unknown fortune-began its manifestations in Connecti- cut about the middle of the eighteenth century, and sought its gratifica- tion first in what is now Vermont, and then here in Pennsylvania. "It is true," says Edward Everett Hale,t "that the passion for emigration is in the blood of the people of all the different Colonies. Perhaps the students of heredity will yet prove to us that this desire to make a new home is one of the desires which most often transmits itself to men's posterity."
"Nothing," says Bancroft,} "could restrain the Americans from peopling the wilderness. To be a freeholder was the ruling passion of the New England man. Marriages were early and fruitful. The sons, as they grew up, skilled in the use of the ax and the rifle, would, one after another, move from the old homestead, and, with a wife, a yoke of oxen, a cow and a few husbandry tools, build a small hut in some new plantation ; and, by tasking every faculty of the mind and body, win for themselves plenty and independence. Such were they who began to dwell among the untenanted forests that rose between the Penobscot and the Sainte Croix, or in the New Hampshire grants on each side of the Green Mountains, or in the exquisitely beautiful valley of Wyoming, where, on the banks of the Susquehanna, the wide and rich meadows, shut in by walls of wooded mountains, attracted emigrants from Con- necticut, though their claim of right under the Charter of their native Colony was in conflict with the territorial jurisdiction of the Proprie- taries of Pennsylvania."
"A passion for occupying new territories and forming new settle- ments rose to an amazing height in New Hampshire and in every other quarter of New England; and the gratification of this taste fostered a
* In 1749 it was computed that there were 70,000 whites and 1,000 negroes within the bounds of Connec- ticut. No estimate of the number of Indians was made. It was in 1756, however, that the first formal census was taken, with the following showing :
Counties-HARTFORD. NEW HAVEN. NEW LONDON. 17,955 22,015
FAIRFIELD.
WINDHAM. 19,670
LITCHFIELD. Totals.
Whites, 35,714
11,773
126,976
Negroes, 854
226
829
711
345
54
3,019
Indians,
617
617
Aggregate,
130,612
The principal towns, or townships, of Windham County, with their respective populations, were : Windham (2,406 whites and 40 negroes), Plainfield (1,751 whites and 49 negroes), Canterbury (1,240 whites and 20 negroes) and Voluntown (1,029 whites and 19 negroes). In the town of Lyme, New London County, there were 2,762 whites, 100 negroes and 94 Indians. Governor Fitch of Connecticut, in a report to the Board of Trade, London (under date of July 6, 1756), based on the census then recently completed, stated : "By the best computation our inhabitants have doubled in twenty-four years, which we attribute to an industrious, temperate life and early marriage. * * * Near one-half of the Indians dwell in English families, and the other half in many small clans in various parts of the Colony, and are most of them peaceably inclined." (See "Colonial Records of Connecticut," X : 622.)
" In "Domestic and Social Life of the Colonists." (1892.)
Į In "History of the United States," V : 165.
19,849
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stubborn resolution and habits of daring and hardy enterprise congenial to the prevalent sentiments of independence, and propitious to the efforts which these sentiments portended. *
* * Among other new settle- ments created by the exuberant vigor of New England, at this period, was one whose primitive manners and happiness, as well as the miser- able desolation which it subsequently underwent in the Revolutionary War, have been rescued from neglect and oblivion by the genius of a poet of Scotland *- the settlement of Wyoming on the banks of the river Susquehanna."}
To many of the inhabitants of rocky and unfertile eastern Connec- ticut, about the year 1750, the marvellous richness and beauty of this valley of Wyoming had become known through the enthusiastic reports carried back from here, from time to time, by a few adventurous traders and explorers. On the rocky hill-sides of Connecticut, where farming was the chief occupation, the population, which had doubled in less than a generation-as reported by Governor Fitch-"was beginning to seem redundant, and was already looking for some outlet. Connecti- cut, it was thought, had about reached the limit of its self-supporting capacity. The farming lands were all taken up, and there was no longer the same chance for the young men who were poor to achieve prosperity, as there had been for their fathers. The time had evidently arrived to begin the settlement of that vast tract beyond the Delaware River which belonged to the Colony by its Charter. * *
"It was a land flowing with milk and honey, waiting to be occupied by the chosen people. True, the savage Canaanite inhabited the land -the Indian tribes who, under French influence, in case of war might be objectionable neighbors. There were suspicions, too, that the heirs of William Penn, Proprietors on the southern border of the tract, * * might be unfavorable to its occupation as a part of Connecticut. But these considerations were easily disposed of. As to the Indians, the land would be purchased from them in a fair trade.} Still less was serious trouble to be expected from the peace-loving, non-resistant in- habitants of the 'City of Brotherly Love.' Were they not all mild and harmless Quakers-too fair-minded to question the indisputable title of
* THOMAS CAMPBELL. See page 64.
+ From Graham's "History of the United States," IV : 128.
į Prior to May 9, 1717, it was legal for any freeman of Connecticut to purchase of the Indians their title to unlocated lands within the Colony ; and this was a sufficient title. But this method of proceeding being attended with difficulty, it was enacted by the General Assembly of the Colony-after premising that difficulties arose "by reason of so many purchases of lands made of the Indians without the preced- ing allowance or subsequent approbation of the General Assembly"-that "all lands in this Government are holden of the King of Great Britain as Lord of the fee; and that no title to any lands in this Colony can accrue, by any purchase made of the Indians on pretense of their being native proprietors thereof, without the allowance or approbation of this Assembly."
At that day the Colony did not pretend to sell its lands, but portioned them out among its citizens by suffering them, under the discretion and control of the Government, to become purchasers of the Indians. Whenever the Assembly judged that the public good required an extension of settlements, they permitted individuals or companies to acquire lands of the natives for that purpose. A previous permission or sub- sequent approbation was all that was necessary to render the transaction valid. Settlement and popu- lation, rather than speculation and gain, were the objects of this policy.
The Rev. Dr. Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), in his "Travels in New England and New York," states : "The annals of the world cannot furnish a single instance in which a nation or any other body politic has treated its allies or its subjects either with more justice or more humanity than the New England colonists treated these people [the Indians]. Exclusively of the country of the Pequots, the inhabitants of Connecticut bought of its native proprietors-unless I am deceived-every inch of ground contained in that Colony. The people of Rhode Island, Plymouth, Massachusetts and New Hampshire proceeded wholly in this equitable manner. Until Philip's War, in 1675, not a single foot of ground in New England was claimed or occupied by the colonists on any other score but that of fair purchase."
"Land grabbing," wrote Joel Eno in The Connecticut Magazine (VII : Numbers 3 and 4) in 1902, "has never been practised in Connecticut ; neither wasit in any of the other early New England Colonies. State what you will about the austerity and sternness of the Puritanic character, it was at least just in its treatment of its predecessors. The Norwich tract, which included the present towns of Norwich, Bozrah, Franklin and Lisbon, was purchased of Uncas in 1659 for supplies which enabled him to raise the siege of the Narragansetts, and £70 in money. Plainfield, with Canterbury, was purchased from the Quinebaug Indians in 1659, and about 400 of them continued to live amicably with the new owners. Windham * *
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Connecticut and too peaceable to make trouble for inoffensive neigh- bors who minded their own business and kept within their rights ?"*
In 1753-and for many years thereafter-the legislative power of Connecticut was vested by its "Constitution," or royal Charter, in a General Assembly, which was composed "of the Governor of the Colony (or in his absence the Deputy Governor) and twelve Assistants (called the Upper House), and Representatives not exceeding two from each town, f chosen by the freemen of the respective towns they represent (called the Lower House)."} This Assembly was in session at Hart- ford from May 10th to June 2d in 1753, and at some time during this period the following memorial§ was presented to it and read :
"TO THE HONORABLE ASSEMBLY to be holden at Hartford, second Thursday of May next, the memorial of the subscribers, inhabitants of Farmington, Windham, Canter- bury, Plainfield, Voluntown, and in several other towns, all of Connecticut Colony, humbly showeth: THAT, WHEREAS, there is a large quantity of land lying upon a river called Susquehanna, and also at a place called Quiwaumuck"; and that there is no Eng- lish inhabitant that lives on said land, nor near thereunto ; and the same lies about seventy miles west of Dielewey [Delaware] River, and, as we suppose, within the charter of the Colony of Connecticut ; and that there is a number of Indians that live on or near the piece of land aforesaid, who lay claim to the same. And we, the subscribers, to the number of one hundred persons ** , are very desirous to go and inhabit the aforesaid land, and at the place aforesaid (provided that we can obtain a quiet or quit-claim of the Hon- orable Assembly, of a tract of land lying at the place aforesaid, and to contain a quantity sixteen miles square, to lie 011 both sides Susquehanna River); and as the Indians lay claim to the same we propose to purchase of them their right, so as to be at peace with them.
"WHEREUPON WE HUMBLY PRAY, that the Honorable Assembly would grant to us a quit-claim of the aforesaid tract, or so much as the Honorable Assembly shall think best, upon such terms as your Honors shall think reasonable, and in such a way and manner that in case we cannot hold and enjoy the same by virtue of said grant, yet, not- withstanding, the same not to be hurtful or prejudicial on any account to this Colony; and in case we can hold and possess said land, then to be always under the government and subject to the laws and discipline of this Colony-and provided that we, the said subscribers, shall within three years next coming lay the same out in equal proportion,
was bequeathed by the will of a son of Uncas to his friends, John Mason and others, in 1675. * * Had- dam, with East Haddam, was secured from the Indians by the payment of thirty coats worth $100. Say- brook [including Lyme], with Old Saybrook, Essex and Chester, was granted by treaty with the Indians in 1636. * * The interesting records are replete with such entries. * * It is clearly evident that the charges of purloining Indian property are without foundation. * * While Connecticut was not the entire country at that time, it was a large portion of it and wielded a strong influence. * * The Puritan, however narrow and rigid, was sympathetic and humane, with the keenest sense of honor and justice. Even in his religious ardor lie was no more the bigot than is our present political enthusiast."
* From "Wyoming ; or Connecticut's East India Company." By Henry T. Blake of New Haven, Con- necticut. (Fairfield County Historical Society-Reports and Papers, 1897.)
+ According to the Connecticut system, which has prevailed for many years, a "town" is a municipal district equivalent in many respects to what is known as a township in Pennsylvania and many other States. Within the bounds of the Connecticut "town" there may be, and usually are, several hamlets, post-villages or cities, all, of course, bearing different names. As for instance : The town of Lyme, in New London County, contained about seven or eight miles square of territory, or more, seventy years ago, and within its limits were the hamlets and villages of Lyme (sometimes called "Lyme Street," and again "Old Lyme"), North Lyme, South Lyme, East Lyme, Black Hall and Hamburg ; while the town of Wind- ham, in Windham County, now contains within its limits the post-villages of Windham, North Wind- ham and South Windham (and perhaps others) and the city of Willimantic.
Į "Colonial Records of Connecticut," X : 624.
¿ In reprinting this document neither the spelling (except in two or three instances) nor the punctua- tion in the body of the original has been adhered to. The spelling of the names of the memorialists has been followed, however; but for the sake of convenience the names have been arranged alphabetically.
| Wyoming. See pages 59 and 60.
{ As to the beliefs of some others, about this time, relative to the bounds of Connecticut, it may be noted : (1) In 1730 Governor Talcott of Connecticut, in an official communication in answer to certain queries by the Board of Trade, London, concerning the Province, stated that its "reputed and known boundaries" were Massachusetts on the north, Rhode Island Colony on the east, Long Island on the south and New York Province on the west. (2) In July, 1756, and again in 1761, Governor Fitch of Connecti- cut, in reply to queries of a like character from the same source, made a statement similar to the fore- going-except that he bounded the Province "southerly on the sea or sound." (3) In May, 1774, the Rev. Richard Peters, at Philadelphia, wrote to the Proprietaries' solicitor in London, as follows ( see "Pennsyl- vania Colonial Records," X : 177): "In the year 1741 the Proprietary Thomas Penn went from here for England, and from that time to this I have been well acquainted with all sorts of Indian negotiations. and have had a great share in the management of them-either as the Proprietary's Secretary, or as a Member of Council, or as Provincial Secretary, so that I can speak from the best grounds of every matter relating to Indians for above thirty years ; and I can with truth declare that before the year 1753 I never, that I can remember, heard of any claim set up by the Government or any of the inhabitants of the Colony of Connecticut to any lands within this Province."
** There are ninety-two names appended to this memorial.
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and settle upon the same, as also purchase the right of the natives as aforesaid. Or, in some other way, grant us the land aforesaid, as your Honors shall think best-and we, in duty bound, shall ever pray, &c. March 29, 1753.
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