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 IV > Part 15
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"Sitting on the porch of the 'Old Stage House' on a bright autumnal day the place seems invested with the halo of the pleasant memories of the past-pleasant memories of bye-gone days, and we can see the old coach with George Root on the box roll up to the door of the tavern. We can see old bow-legged Charlie Terwilleger, with his good-natured face, opening the coach door and helping his guests out, while the aroma of strong Rio and fragrant venison steaks filled the sur- rounding air and only increased th voracious appetites caused by the long ride over the mountains. "We can see the figures of familiar friends-long since passed over to 'the great beyond'- we can hear the merry laugh and note smiling faces at the breakfast table-we can see them dis- cussing the sumptuous m al after their early morning ride over the mountains, each one solicitous of the other's welfare; and again we can see them after finishing their mneal, don their wraps and enter the coach with old Philip Sigler or Andrew Buskirk on the box to drive them to John Smith's at Pocono for dinner. Happy, happy days were those, but they are gone, gone into the mouldy past and we
" 'Feel like one who treads alone Some banquet hall deserted, Where lights that shone, now dimmed and gone And all but ine departed.' "
From another source (Wright p. 274), comes the following description of winter life along the old turnpike:
"The principal crop in those days was wheat. Upon the sale of this, the farmer relied for all the money he received. The remaining products of the farm were used in barter and exchange. There was very little money; what there was came from Easton, on the Delaware, the market for the wheat of the whole valley. There were no banks. Easton bank bills made up the entire currency. Stoddartsville. 2 "When the winter set in, the & Two Dollars. first matter was the thrashing of the wheat. It was put away in bins, No. awaiting the fall of the first snow 1 for transportation. When this oc- curred, all was commotion. The moment the snow fell in sufficient The President and Managers of the EASTON and WILKESBARRE TURNPIKE COMPANY promise to pay the bearer, on demand, at the Office of their Treasurer. TWO in bills enrrent in Pennsylvania, TWO DOLLARS. quantity to warrant the journey, the teams were started. The dis- Wilkesbarre, March 1816 tance by the Easton and Wilkes- Treasurer President. Barré Turnpike, and then the only avenue of travel out of the valley EASTON AND WILKES-BARRE TURNPIKE COMPANY (Scrip). toward the east, was sixty miles. The round trip could be made in three days. The load was usually about thirty bushels.
"It was an exciting and pleasant excursion in early days, this Easton journey. I have hauled many a load, and I have counted on Pocono a hundred sleds in line. The jingling of bells, the mirth and laughter, and sometimes the sound of music, gave it a charm that made it very agreeable. Besides this, every tavern upon the roadside had its fiddler, and we generally had a dance for half the night, and then off in the morning, our horses, steaming in the snow flakes, and the merry songs and shouts made the summits of Pocono and the Blue Mountain ring with their echoes!"
A newspaper account, published in the Republican Farmer, September 25, 1839, describing a portion of the Poconos through which all highways to the eastern
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termini ran, then as now, may seem strangely familiar to ears of a generation nearly a century later. "As you advance," the account proceeds, "you are much surprised to see evidences of the selfishness of man. This vast mountain was once covered with the loftiest forests. Now it shows here and there a dead hem- lock standing solitary and alone, the remnant of a former gigantic generation, while scrub oak and small bushes occupy the place of that generation. The helter skelter, here and there generation who live, nobody knows how, have been here and cut off much timber, made it into shingles and drank it up. But the hunters, by kindling fires with which to surround the deer, have done much more mis- chief. These great fires have laid the glory of this great mountain in the dust."
While the turnpike days laid the foundations of permanent prosperity for Wilkes-Barré, Easton and many other communities in the eastern section of Pennsylvania, they proved merely an artificial stimulant to several points where extensive settlements were projected. Stoddartsville was one of these.
John Stoddart, a wealthy merchant of Philadelphia, believed he saw a great business opportunity. The falls of the Lehigh would furnish the power for a great milling industry and the grain of Luzerne County would no longer have to be hauled to Easton but would be ground at his mills and be conveyed to Philadelphia easily and cheaply by the navigation company's slackwater canal system then surveyed. He saw that he could save Luzerne County farmers the greater part of the sixty mile haul to Easton by buying their wheat at the Lehigh. The project was an ambitious one, but force of adverse circumstances were to strangle it in its infancy.
Mr. Stoddart accordingly laid out a town at the falls, in 1815, and it bears his name to-day, although he projected a city instead of the hamlet that it has since become. He built an extensive grist mill and a busy little mountain village opened up. Had the original plans of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Com- pany been carried out, Mr. Stoddart's venture might have been successful. According to the charter of this company, Stoddartsville was to have been the head of navigation, but a subsequent decision made White Haven the head of its canal system. This unforseen action left Stoddartsville isolated in huge pine forests, a dozen miles away from that great commercial highway of the navi- gation company, which was to float the flour of Luzerne County to Philadelphia. Mr. Stoddart bravely undertook to fight against fate by hauling his flour to Easton by wagon, but it took only two or three years of this kind of business to wreck his enterprise completely .*
In 1836, Dundaff was another community of promise. Today it is largely a memory. A description of it, penned in 1896, follows:
"Dundaff is situated in the south-east corner of Susquehanna County, near the line of Lackawanna County, on the old Milford and Owego turnpike. The stage coach and four horses used to rein up to the hotel, with nine passengers inside and three with the driver, and the boot and top of coach loaded with trunks. On its arrival the porch would be filled with spectators with more curiosity than there is now on the arrival of a train of railroad cars. A stage driver was equal to a conductor on a passenger train. It was the height of a boy's ambition to be a stage driver. A two-horse coach was run 60 years ago from Wilkes-Barre to Dundaff by the Searle family of Pittston.
"Dundaff was a very lively town at that time, the only business town of any consequence north of Wilkes-Barre. There were two churches, two hotels, three stores, a millinery store, two blacksmith shops, two wagon shops, two shoe shops, two tailor shops, a printing office, the Northern Bank of Pennsylvania, a jewelry store, a tannery, a glass factory, a fulling mill, an ax fac- tory, hat factory, tin and cabinet shops, two law offices, two physicians, carpenters and builders, etc.
*The abandoned mill stood practically intact until 1913, when a fire of unknown origin destroyed the well preserved structure. The house near the western entrance to the bridge at present crossing the Lehigh, at Stoddardsville and known as "Stull's." was built as a mansion house for Mr. Stoddard's son at the time of the erection of his mill.
4
VIEW OF WILKES-BARRE FROM PROSPECT ROCK, 1838.
1883
Wilkes-Barré, it has been stated, looked forward with confidence to the future, in the year 1830. A stray item in the Susquehanna Democrat, of Novem- ber 25, 1825, spoke with becoming modesty of the fact that "there has been erected during the last year, no less than fifteen or twenty buildings, several of which are but little inferior to the best buildings in the borough." The same publi- cation, in its issue of November 19, 1830, continues in optimistic strain as follows:
"We were struck the other day with an impression of a gentleman who had been absent a few years from the Borough.
"'How astonishingly' said he 'the place has improved since I left it.' The remark was a trife one. Within two or three years the appearance of the Borough has changed materially. "Improvement has gone steadily forward -not as in some places to reeede as quickly. It did not receive its start from a phantom that soon vanishes or from some sudden speculation scheme. The bowels of our neighboring hills, and our fine farms, produce therewith to sustain improvement in its onward march. We should not so long have been in the background, but that we were al- most shut up. As soon as a reasonable prospect was seen of an outlet to market the aspect of things changed. Houses have been and are going up rapidly-business has increased, and is increasing, and with it the population.
"Business men have come, and are settling from abroad. Sales have been made of coal lands, and farms, and building lots in the Borough, which has made money inove plenty, and helped the mechanic and the laborer. The surrounding country is also improving.
"At this time it would be impossible to rent a dwelling house in the Borough of Wilkes-Barre. All are full. Several wealthy gentlemen in Philadelphia have recently made purchases here, and are preparing houses for the reception of their families. New buildings are going up in various directions, and business of every kind is increasing.
"The Baltimore Company have got an immense quantity of coal, and much of it has already reached the Baltimore market. It is a lamentable fact that the only means of transportation is by the channel of the Susquehanna and if the coal business is profitable, notwithstanding the difficulties and losses attending the river navigation, what will it be ere long, when the canal is extended?"
While we might expect to find that views of the local newspaper overlooked shortcomings in affairs of the growing borough, we could scarcely expect to escape mention of these shortcomings in the unbiased opinion of an observer sent here about that time by the Philadelphia Album, a weekly publication then widely read in eastern districts of the state. In its edition of September 25, 1830, the Album carried the comments of this observer, which are valuable in forming an estimate of local conditions, at a turning point in the history of the community :
"In descending the mountain on the Philadelphia road, there is a large rock jutting from its side, called Prospect Rock. From this is presented a perfect bird's eye view of the valley. I have frequently enjoyed the expressions of rapturous admiration which break from travellers, as this landscape, from a turn in the road, suddenly bursts on their view. At the foot lies Wilkes- barre, 'loveliest village of the plain', with its neat spires and comely white houses; while further off, the eye wanders over one of the most calm and beautiful landscapes in the world. The Sus- quehanna, which meanders slowly through the valley, embraces in its course several lovely islands : and the gentle declivity from the mountain to its bank is clothed with the richest fertility. Indeed, in several places on the Kingston or western side of the river the farins climb up the sides of the surrounding eminence, and in some instances, wreathe the stern brow of the mountain with the verdure of the vale.
"Yet I cannot boast that the natural beauties of the plain are properly appreciated or im- proved. The Yankee (and we are mostly from 'up east') has but little taste, or seldom con- descends to use it. The necessity of adorning and improving his place never occurs to him. Our farm-houses, therefore, display little of the neatness and beauty of which farmers in your neigh- borhood are so justly proud. No honey-suckles twine around the cottage door, nor does the beau- tiful garden and ample green which surround the house betoken the neatness and industry of the thrifty house-wife. The style of building is various as the caprice of the inhabitants, and pre- sents as many different models of architecture as from the whimsical ingenuity of New England character could be expected. On account of the scarcity of lime, houses are generally framed. In digging cellars the earth is thrown carelessly around the excavation, and on this unsightly heap the building is generally creeted. It has been said, and I think truly, by a modern author, a close observer of rural manners, that a bird-cage at the door or a flower at window of a cottage generally indicates a happy moral family. The comforts of a country life are almost wholly made up of these trivial and neglected particulars; and until our farmers learn to regard their own plan- tations as the source of their pleasures and the sphere of their enterprise, our population will remain needy and discontented. Our system of farming is slight and lazy in the extreme. The soil, which is naturally good, is soon worn out by a stingy course of cultivation. Our farmers, impatient of the return of their labour, urge the ground to exhaustion. They destroy the goose for the golden egg, unmindful that eventual affluence is only consequent on a slow, prudent, and
1884
preserving cultivation. The farms are generally but illy stocked; the race of horses and cattle being small and unprofitable. But in this, as in other respects, the influx of a number of sub- stantial Dutch farmers begins to work a reformation; and in a few years we may reasonably anticipate the introduction of a more generous and profitable mode of agriculture.
"Wilkesbarre, the county town, is elegantly situated on the eastern bank of the river. It is laid out in the style which, in regard to boroughs, prevails all through this country-with streets crossing at right angles, and a circular space in the centre for the Court House and other public buildings. The town is old; but the houses being mostly frame, and kept neatly painted white, its appearance betrays no mark of age or decay. Wilkesbarre had not for some years past increased, but the present year has witnessed many beautiful additions; and the work of improve- ments is now going busily on in every quarter of the town. Among the new buildings, a very extensive hotel raised by Mr. Hollenback, a wealthy and enterprising citizen of Wilkesbarre, may be mentioned. Society here is refined and elegant to an extent that would surprise the exclusive conceitedness of cockney. The bar is celebrated for its legal acumen and general ability. It numbers among its members Garrick Mallery, the distinguished chairman of the committee of ways and means at the last session of the legislature, and his talented and eccentric colleague, Mr. Denison.
"There is an extensive and very lucrative inland trade carried on in this place. I have been credibly informed that the net proceeds of one of our stores is $30,000 per annum. Their goods are generally brought from Philadelphia; though it is said to be less profitable than dealing with New York, and the added facilities of transportation from that city may be likely to invite a larger proportion of the business. Your citizens should look to this. There is a large quantity of wheat raised in this valley; and until recently it crossed the mountain to Easton, but now the public operations in the neighborhood afford a market at home.
"Coal is the prominent object of attention here. It is almost incredible to what a height the excitement with regard to this subject has risen. It is expected instantly to raise the price of land and labour; to pour the wealth of the whole state into the lap of the valley, and to accom- plish-God knows what. Those who now swing and sweat over their plough will leave it for the carriage; and, from Dan to Beersheba, plenty and pleasure are to bear unmeasured sway. It is the coming of the canal that is to work these wonders; and we have been for years most devotedly wishing and waiting for this consummation-our mouths open for the dropping of the manna. But it has not yet come; and when it does, it will be with the inseparable follower of such expec- tations, disappointment. The presence of coal has no doubt its advantages; but they are advantages in which the whole state will share. The coal of Wyoming Valley is pronounced by Professor Silliman to be, in the farthest sense of the word, inexhaustible. It overspreads the whole country. It is impossible to walk a quarter of a mile in any direction without discovering the unequivocal demonstration of its presence. Its extent is not ascertained, and cannot be computed. From the abundance of coal it must be obvious, that the value of the mineral here cannot be much greater than the expense of mining it.
"The most sanguine cannot anticipate a permanent and unglutted market for the immense quantity of coal which is now. from every quarter, pouring into Philadelphia. The works at Mauch Chunk, in consequence of their recent improvement, are or will be greatly extended; the Potts- ville mines, even supposing them, as alleged, eventually exhaustible, will for a long time continue to furnish a large quantity. It is impossible that the market can sustain the addition of the Wyoming coal, without a reduction of the demand; and, however great may be the facilities of navigation, it will be found impracticable to send it to so remote a market at a price much lower than the present. "Still it has its advantages. It will, for a while at least, afford a handsome profit on its transportation, and furnish a ready market for our produce. It will, if permanently pursued, crowd our valley with a dense population; but one which will not elevate its character, though, by enhancing the value of land, it must increase its prosperity.
"We boast another source of wealth, iron. The extent of it is not ascertained, but from my own observation, I know it to be great. The advantages presented for iron works, from the abundance of coal, wood, and water, render this an object worthy the attention of the wealthy and adventurous. The streams of this country afford many valuable millseats. Among these the Lackawanna is the first. It pours down from the mountains a copious and constant torrent, and presents situations for mills unequalled."
Notwithstanding the fact that the Wyoming Valley and particularly Wilkes-Barré were reaping a full commercial advantage of the turnpike age, influences were at work, wholly beyond local control, which were to prove a greater impetus to its permanent growth than anything that had gone before.
The struggle for transportation supremacy was the ruling impulse of this stimulus. The Cumberland road, while a national institution, gave Philadelphia a particular advantage in reaching western waters in that its course led mainly through Pennsylvania.
New York early sensed this advantage of its rivals. In 1808, its legislature appropriated six hundred dollars for the preliminary survey of a canal system from tide water to Buffalo, and the aid of Congress was invoked in the project.
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The national government, however, failed to respond to any inducements for it to enter the canal construction field, then or subsequently. The Erie canal became, therefore, a state enterprise in contra-distinction to the national highway.
All activities in canal plans were held up during the war of 1812, but the year 1817 witnessed a revival of interest. On April 14th of that year, the con- struction of the Erie canal was authorized by act of the New York legislature.
On July 4, 1817, work was formally inaugurated at Rome, New York, with simple ceremonies. Thus the year 1817 was marked by three great under- takings: the navigation of the Mississippi River upstream and down by steam- boats, the opening of the National Road across the Allegheny Mountains, and the beginning of the Erie Canal. No single year in the early history of the United States ever witnessed three such important contributions to the material prog- ress of the country.
The engineers of the Cumberland Road, now nearing the Ohio River, had enjoyed the advantage of many precedents and examples; but the Commis- sioners of the Erie Canal had been able to study only such crude examples of canal building as America then afforded. Never on any continent had such an in- accessible region been pierced by such a highway. The total length of the whole network of canals in Great Britain did not equal that of the waterway which the New Yorkers now undertook to build. The lack of roads, materials, vehicles, methods of drilling and efficient business systems was overcome by sheer pa- tience and perseverance in experiment. The frozen winter roads saved the day by making it possible to accumulate a proper supply of provisions and materials. As tools of construction, the plough and scraper with their greater capacity for work soon supplanted the shovel and the wheelbarrow, which had been the chief implements for such construction in Europe. Strange new machinery born of necessity was now heard groaning in the swamps of New York. These giants, worked by means of a cable, wheel, and endless screw, were made to hoist green stumps bodily from the ground and, without the use of axe, to lay trees prostrate, root and branch. A new plough was fashioned with which a yoke of oxen could cut roots two inches in thickness well beneath the surface of the ground.
Handicaps of various sorts wore the patience of commissioners, engineers. and contractors. Lack of snow during one winter all but stopped the work by cutting off the source of supplies. Pioneer ailments, such as fever and agne, reaped great harvests, incapacitated more than a thousand workmen at one time and for a brief while stopped work completely.
For the most part, however, work was carried on simultaneously on all the three great links or sections into which the enterprise was divided. Local contractors were given preference by the commissioners, and three-fourths of the work was done by natives of the State. Forward up the Mohawk by Schen- ectady and Utica to Rome, thence bending southward to Syracuse, and from there by way of Clyde, Lyons, and Palmyra. the canal made its way to the giant viaduct over the Genesee River at Rochester. Keeping close to the summit level on the dividing ridge between Lake Ontario streams and the Valley of the Tonawanda, the line ran to Lockport, where a series of locks placed the canal on the Lake Erie level, three hundred and sixty-five miles from and five hundred and sixty-four feet above Albany. By June, 1823, the canal was completed from Rochester to Schenectady; in October boats passed into the tidewaters of the Hudson at Albany; and in the autumn of 1825, the canal was formally opened by
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the passage of a triumpliant fleet from Lake Erie to New York Bay. Here two kegs of lake water were emptied into the Atlantic, while the Governor of the State of New York added:
"This solemnity, at this place, on the first arrival of vessels from Lake Erie, is intended to indicate and commemorate the navigable communication, which has been accomplished between our Mediterranean Seas and the Atlantic Ocean, in about eight years, to the extent of more than four hundred and twenty-five
OPENING OF ERIE CANAL.
miles, by the wisdom, public spirit, and energy of the people of the State of New York; and may the God of the Heavens and the Earth smile most propitiously on this work, and render it subservient to the best interests of the human race."
Thus did the canal challenge the highway. The challenge was promptly met. To rival canal with canal became Pennsylvania's avowed intention.
The Juniata was chosen as a natural artery toward the West from Harris- burg. While the fall of this stream from mouth to source was considerably greater than the whole of the Erie canal, and while a barrier of mountains, some 3,000 feet in height, confronted its engineers in the Altoona region, nothing seemed to daunt the Commonwealthı. Having overcome the lowlands by main strength and the mountains by strategy, Pennsylvania's parent canal was opened for through traffic within nine years of the completion of the Erie waterway. Con- quest of the mountain ridges from Hollidaysburg to Johnstown was accomplished by building five inclined planes on each slope, each plane averaging about twenty- three hundred feet in length and gaining two hundred feet in elevation. Giant cars and cradles, upon which the canal boat rested, were hauled or lowered on these planes, first by horse power and later by steam. The eastern division of the Pennsylvania canal was completed in 1827, from Reading on the Schuylkill, to Middletown on the Susquehanna. The Juniata section was then driven on
1887
to Hollidaysburg. Beyond the Allegheny ranges, the valleys of the Conemaugh, the Kiskiminitas and the Allegheny were followed to Pittsburg.
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