USA > Pennsylvania > Jefferson County > Brookville > A pioneer history of Jefferson county, Pennsylvania and my first recollections of Brookville, Pennsylvania, 1840-1843, when my feet were bare and my cheeks were brown > Part 27
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The pioneer preaching in Brookville was by the Rev. Young. He preached in the homes of members and in the second story of the old stone jail. Rev. John Rengan, of Indiana, Pennsylvania, preached in the jail in 1844. No organization was effected. Rev. John Nuner came after Rengan, but in what year and for how long is unknown.
The pioneer Lutherans in Brookville were John and Catherine Eason, Daniel Coder and wife, Hannah Mckinley, Mary A. Yoemans, Jacob Burkett and wife, Jacob Steck and wife, John Boucher and wife, Maria Von Schroeder. Pioneer elder, Daniel Coder. Pioneer deacon, John Boucher.
Lutheran services were also held at Paradise, Grubes, Reynoldsville, Emerickville, Punxsutawney, and Ringgold, but no dates of service or records of organization can be found. I acknowledge valuable aid in this compilation to Mrs. Virginia Blood.
CHAPTER XV.
WHITE SLAVERY-ORIGIN-NATURE IN ROME, GREECE, AND EUROPE-AFRI- CAN SLAVERY IN PENNSYLVANIA-GEORGE BRYAN-PIONEER COLORED SETTLER IN JEFFERSON COUNTY-CENSUS, ETC .- DAYS OF BONDAGE IN THIS COUNTY.
WHITE slavery is older than history. Its origin is supposed to be from kidnapping, piracy, and in captives taken in war. Christians en- slaved all barbarians and barbarians enslaved Christians. Early history tells us that Rome and Greece were great markets for all kinds of slaves, slave-traders, slave-owners, etc. The white slaves of Europe were mostly obtained in Russia and Poland in times of peace. All fathers could sell children. The poor could be sold for debt. The poor could sell them- selves. But slavery did not exist in the poor and ignorant alone. The most learned in science, art, and mechanism were bought and sold at prices ranging in our money from one hundred to three hundred dollars. Once sold, whether kidnapped or not, there was no redress, except as to the will of the master. At one time in the history of Rome white slaves sold for sixty-two and a half cents apiece in our money. The state, the church, and individuals all owned slaves. Every wicked device that might and power could practise was used to enslave men and women
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PIONEER HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNA.
without regard to nationality or color. And when enslaved, no matter how well educated, the slaves possessed no right in law and were not deemed persons in law, and had no right in and to their children. Slavery as it existed among the Jews was a milder form than that which
Branding slaves.
existed in any other nation. The ancients regarded black slaves as luxuries, because there was but little traffic in them until about the year 1441, and it is at that date that the modern African slave-trade was commenced by the Portuguese. The pioneer English African slave- 267
PIONEER HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNA.
trader was Sir John Hawkins. Great companies were formed in London to carry on African traffic, of which Charles II. and James II. were mem- bers. It was money and the large profits in slavery, whether white or black, that gave it such a hold on church and state. The English were the most cruel African slave-traders. Genuine white slavery never ex- isted in what is now the United States. In the year A.D. 1620 the pio- neer African slaves were landed at Hampton Roads in Virginia, and nineteen slaves were sold. In 1790 there were six hundred and ninety- seven thousand six hundred and eighty-one African slaves in the Middle States.
Slavery was introduced in Pennsylvania in 1681, and was in full force until the act quoted below for its gradual abolition was enacted in 17So, by which, as you will see, adult slaves were liberated on July 4, 1827, and the children born before that date were to become free as they reached their majority. This made the last slave in the State become a free person about 1860.
In 1790 Pennsylvania had slaves
3737
In IS00
..
.6
66
1706
In ISIO
..
..
66
795
In IS20
. 6
.6
2II
In IS30
..
.6
403
In 1840
66
66
64
In IS60
66
(in Lancaster County) . I
On December 4, 1833, sixty persons met in Philadelphia, Pennsyl- vania, and organized the American Anti-Slavery Society.
NEGRO SLAVERY.
" He found his fellow guilty-of a skin not colored like his own ; for such a cause dooms him as his lawful prey."
Negro slaves were held in each of the thirteen original States.
In March, 1780, Pennsylvania enacted her gradual abolition law. Massachusetts, by constitutional enactment in 1780, abolished slavery. Rhode Island and Connecticut were made free States in 1784, New Jersey in 1804, New York in 1817, and New Hampshire about ISOS or 1810. The remaining States of the thirteen-viz., Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia-each retained their human chattels until the close of the Civil War. In one hundred years, from 1676 until 1776, it is estimated that three million people were im- ported and sold as slaves in the United States.
As late as 1860 there was still one slave in Pennsylvania ; his name was Lawson Lee Taylor, and he belonged to James Clark, of Donegal township, Lancaster County.
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PIONEER HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNA.
The first man who died in the Revolution was a colored man, and Peter Salem, a negro, decided the battle of Bunker Hill ; clinging to the Stars and Stripes, he cried, " I'll bring back the colors or answer to God the reason why !" His example fired the hearts of the soldiers to greater valor, and the great battle was won by our men.
" It was on the soil of Pennsylvania in 1682 that the English penalty of death on over two hundred crimes was negatived by statute law, and the penalty of death retained on only one crime, -viz., wilful murder. It was in the province of Pennsylvania that the law of primogeniture was abolished. It was on the soil of Pennsylvania that the first mint to coin money in the United States was established. It was on the soil of Penn- sylvania in 1829, and between Honesdale and Carbondale, that the pio- neer railroad train, propelled by a locomotive, was run in the New World. It was on the soil of Pennsylvania that the first Continental Congress met. It was on the soil of Pennsylvania that the great Magna Charta of our liberties was written, signed, sealed, and delivered to the world. It was on the soil of Pennsylvania that the fathers declared 'that all men are born free and equal, and are alike entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' It was on the soil of Pennsylvania that the grand old Republican party was organized, and the declarations of our fathers reaffirmed and proclaimed anew to the world. It was on the soil of Pennsylvania that Congress created our national emblem, the Stars and Stripes ; and it was upon the soil of Pennsylvania that fair women made that flag in accordance with the resolution of Congress. It was upon the soil of Pennsylvania that our flag was first unfurled to the breeze, and from that day to this that grand old flag has never been dis- graced nor defeated. It was upon the Delaware River of Pennsylvania that the first steamer was launched. It was in Philadelphia that the first national bank opened its vaults to commerce. It was upon the soil of Pennsylvania that Colonel Drake first drilled into the bowels of the earth and obtained the oil that now makes the ' bright light' of every fireside ' from Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand.' It was on the soil of Pennsylvania that the first Christian Bible Society in the New World was organized. It was on the soil of Pennsylvania that the first school for the education and maintenance of soldiers' orphans was erected. It was on the soil of Pennsylvania that the first medical col- lege for the New World was established.
"And now, Mr. President, I say to you that it was permitted to Pennsylvania intelligence, to Pennsylvania charity, to Pennsylvania peo- ple, to erect on Pennsylvania soil, with Pennsylvania money, the first insane institution, aided and encouraged by a State, in the history of the world."
The above is an extract from a speech made by me when Senator in the Senate of Pennsylvania in 1881. I reproduce it here only to reassert it and
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PIONEER HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNA.
crown it with the fact that Pennsylvania was the first of the united colonies to acknowledge before God and the nations of the earth, by legal enact- ment, the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Pennsylva- nia was the first State or nation in the New World to enact a law for the abolition of human slavery. This act of justice was passed, too, when the struggle for independence was still undetermined. The British were pressing us on the east, and the savages on the west were torturing and killing the patriot fathers and mothers of the Revolution.
George Bryan originated, prepared, offered, and carried this measure successfully through the Legislature. I quote from his remarks on this measure : " Honored will that State be in the annals of mankind which shall first abolish this violation of the rights of mankind; and the memories of those will be held in grateful and everlasting remembrance who shall pass the law to restore and establish the rights of human nature in Pennsylvania." George Bryan did this. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1732, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1791. To ex- hibit the advanced sentiment of George Bryan, I republish his touching and beautiful preamble to his law, and a section or two of the law which will explain its work.
"AN ACT FOR THE GRADUAL ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.
" When we contemplate our abhorrence of that condition to which the arms and tyranny of Great Britain were exerted to reduce us, when we look back on the variety of dangers to which we have been exposed, and how miraculously our wants in many instances have been supplied, and our de- liverances wrought, when even hope and human fortitude have become un- equal to the conflict, we are unavoidably led to a serious and grateful sense of the manifold blessings which we have undeservedly received from the hand of that Being from whom every good and perfect gift cometh. Im- pressed with these ideas, we conceive that it is our duty, and we rejoice that it is in our power, to extend a portion of that freedom to others which hath been extended to us, and release from that state of thraldom to which we ourselves were tyrannically doomed, and from which we have now every prospect of being delivered. It is not for us to inquire why, in the creation of mankind, the inhabitants of the several parts of the earth were distinguished by a difference in feature or complexion. It is suffi- cient to know that all are the work of an Almighty hand. We find, in the distribution of the human species, that the most fertile as well as the most barren parts of the earth are inhabited by men of complexions dif- ferent from ours, and from each other ; from whence we may reasonably, as well as religiously, infer that He who placed them in their various situations hath extended equally His care and protection to all, and that it becometh not us to counteract His mercies. We esteem it a peculiar blessing granted to us that we are enabled this day to add one more step
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PIONEER HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNA.
to universal civilization, by removing, as much as possible, the sorrows of those who have lived in undeserved bondage, and from which, by the assumed authority of the kings of Great Britain, no effectual legal relief could be obtained. Weaned, by a long course of experience, from those narrow prejudices and partialities we had imbibed, we find our hearts enlarged with kindness and benevolence towards men of all conditions and nations ; and we conceive ourselves at this particular period extraor- dinarily called upon, by the blessings which we have received, to mani- fest the sincerity of our profession and to give a substantial proof of our gratitude.
" II. And whereas the condition of those persons, who have hereto- fore been denominated Negro and Mulatto slaves, has been attended with circumstances which not only deprived them of the common bless- ings that they were by nature entitled to, but has cast them into the deepest afflictions, by an unnatural separation and sale of husband and wife from each other and from their children, an injury the greatness of which can only be conceived by supposing that we were in the same un- happy case. In justice, therefore, to persons so unhappily circumstanced, and who, having no prospect before them whereon they may rest their sorrows and their hopes, have no reasonable inducement to render their service to society, which they otherwise might, and also in grateful commemoration of our own happy deliverance from that state of un- conditional submission to which we were doomed by the tyranny of Britain.
"III. Be it enacted, and it is hereby enacted, That all persons, as well Negroes and Mulattoes as others, who shall be born within this State from and after the passage of this act, shall not be deemed and con- sidered as servants for life, or slaves ; and that all servitude for life, or slavery of children, in consequence of the slavery of their mothers, in the case of all children born within this State from and after the passing of this act as aforesaid, shall be, and hereby is, utterly taken away, ex- tinguished, and forever abolished.
" IV. Provided always, and be it further enacted, That every Negro and Mulatto child born within this State after the passing of this act as aforesaid (who would, in case this act had not been made, have been born a servant for years, or life, or a slave) shall be deemed to be, and shall be, by virtue of this act, the servant of such person, or his or her assigns, who would in such case have been entitled to the service of such child, until such child shall attain unto the age of twenty-eight years, in the manner and on the conditions whereon servants bound by indenture for four years are or may be retained and holden ; and shall be liable to like correction and punishment, and entitled to like relief, in case he or she be evilly treated by his or her master or mistress, and to like freedom, dues, and other privileges, as servants bound by indenture for four years
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PIONEER HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNA.
are or may be entitled, unless the person to whom the service of such child shall belong, shall abandon his or her claim to the same; in which case the overseers of the poor of the city, township, or district, respec- tively, where such child shall be so abandoned, shall by indenture bind out every child so abandoned as an apprentice, for a time not exceeding the age herein before limited for the service of such children." Passed March 1, 1780.
PIONEER COLORED SETTLER.
The pioneer colored settler in this wilderness was Fudge Van Camp. He was jet-black, fine-featured, and thin-lipped. Fudge Van Camp was born a slave, but purchased his freedom after he grew to manhood. He came to Port Barnett from Easton, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, in the winter of 1801, and travelled this distance on foot. The last thirty- three miles were travelled without food, in a heavy snow-storm and in a two-foot fall of snow. Van Camp was a large and powerful man, but gave out and had to work his way for the last mile or two on his hands and knees to Port Barnett. He arrived there at midnight exhausted and almost frozen. He came over what was then called the Military or Milesburg and Le Bœuf State road. Being pleased with the country, he returned to Easton only to migrate here with his four children, bringing his effects on two horses, and settled on what is now the John Clark farm. He brought apple-seeds with him and planted them on this farm, this being the first effort to raise fruit in this wilderness. Some of the trees are still living. Fudge Van Camp married a white woman. She died in Easton. His family consisted of two sons and two daughters,-viz., Richard and Enos, Susan and Sarah. Susan mar- ried Charles Sutherland, and Sarah married William Douglass. Douglass was a hunter. Richard married Ruth Stiles, a white woman, and left the county.
Fudge Van Camp was the only colored person living in the county as late as 1810. He was a fiddler and a great fighter, and was the orchestra for all the early frolics.
In 1824 I find James Parks is assessed in Pine Creek township (but lived then where Christ's brewery is now) with one negro man, "Sam," valuation fifty dollars. " Sam" was a miller. In 1826 he is assessed at one hundred dollars. Transferred to Rose township in 1829 and as- sessed at one hundred dollars. In 1830 Parks's log-mill is assessed at fifty dollars and "Sam" at one hundred dollars. Now " Sam" disap- pears. According to the census of 1830, the county contained twenty-two colored people,-one of these a slave. This slave was James Parks's man Sam. Master and slave lived in Brookville. I find one negro slave in Brookville in 1833. William Jack is assessed among other property with " one boy of color," valuation forty dollars. Jack lived at that time in
272
PIONEER HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNA.
the Darr residence, north of the court-house. This slave boy fled to Canada and secured his liberty. In 1836, Jesse Smith, a Presbyterian minister living one mile north of where Corsica now is, on the Olean road, and then in Rose township, is assessed with one mulatto, valuation fifty dollars. It appears from this that slavery existed in Jefferson County from 1824 until 1836,-twelve years.
Thank God this cruel slavery, which existed once in Jefferson County, is forever wiped out in these United States ! There is now no master's call, no driver's lash, no auction-block on which to sell, and no blood- hounds to hunt men and women fugitives not from justice, but fugitives for justice. Thank God for John Brown, and may " his soul go march- ing on !"
Van Camp's real name was Enos Fudge. His owner's name was Van Camp. Fudge was hired by his master to the patriot army of the Revo- lution to drive team, and by playing the violin to the soldiers and in other ways he accumulated five hundred dollars, which he presented to his master, who in consideration of this gave him his freedom. Two white men, Stephen Roll and August Shultz, came with Van Camp into this wilderness. Van Camp died about the year 1835, and is buried in the old graveyard in Brookville.
THE " UNDERGROUND RAILROAD" IN JEFFERSON COUNTY.
" My ear is pained, My soul is sick with every day's report Of wrong and outrage with which this earth is filled."
The origin of the system to aid runaway slaves in these United States was in Columbia, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In 1787, Samuel Wright laid out that town, and he set apart the northeastern portion for colored people, and to many of whom he presented lots. Under these circumstances this section was settled rapidly by colored people. Hun- dreds of manumitted slaves from Maryland and Virginia migrated there and built homes. This soon created a little city of colored people, and in due time formed a good hiding-place for escaped slaves. The term " underground railroad" originated there, and in this way : At Columbia the runaway slave would be so thoroughly and completely lost to the pur- suer, that the slave hunter, in perfect astonishment, would frequently ex- claim, " There must be an underground railroad somewhere." Of course, there was no railroad. There was only at this place an organized sys- tem by white abolitionists to assist, clothe, feed, and conduct fugitive slaves to Canada. This system consisted in changing the clothing, se- creting and hiding the fugitive in daytime, and then carrying or direct- ing him how to travel in the night-time to the next abolition station, where he would be cared for. These stations existed from the Maryland
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PIONEER HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNA.
line clear through to Canada. In those days the North was as a whole for slavery, and to be an abolitionist was to be reviled and persecuted, even by churches of nearly all denominations. Abolition meetings were broken up by mobs, the speakers rotten-egged and murdered ; indeed, but few preachers would read from their pulpit a notice for an anti- slavery meeting. Space will not permit me to depict the degraded state
Charles Brown handcuffed and shackled in Brookville jail, IS34.
" The shackles never again shall bind this arm, which now is free."
" My world is dead, A new world rises, and new manners reign."
of public morals at that time, or the low ebb of true Christianity in that day, excepting, of course, that exhibited by a small handful of abolition- ists in the land. I can only say, that to clothe, feed, secrete, and to con- vey in the darkness of night, poor, wretched, hunted human beings flee- ing for liberty, to suffer social ostracism, and to run the risk of the heavy penalties prescribed by unholy laws for so doing, required the highest type of Christian men and women,-men and women of sagacity, cool- ness, firmness, courage, and benevolence ; rocks of adamant, to whom the down-trodden could flock for relief and refuge. A great aid to the ignorant fugitive was that every slave knew the " north star," and, fur- ther, that if he followed it he would eventually reach the land of free- dom. This knowledge enabled thousands to reach Canada. All slave- holders despised this " star."
To William Wright, of Columbia, Pennsylvania, is due the credit of putting into practice the first " underground railroad" for the freedom of slaves. There was no State organization effected until about 1838,
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PIONEER HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNA.
when, in Philadelphia, Robert Purvis was made president and Jacob C. White secretary. Then the system grew, and before the war of the Re- bellion our whole State became interlaced with roads. We had a route, too, in this wilderness. It was not as prominent as the routes in the more populated portions of the State. I am sorry that I am unable to write a complete history of the pure, lofty, generous men and women in our county who worked this road. They were Quakers and Methodists, and the only ones that I can now recall were Elijah Heath and wife, Arad Pearsall and wife, James Steadman and wife, and the Rev. Chris- topher Fogle and his first and second wife, of Brookville (Rev. Fogle was an agent and conductor in Troy), Isaac P. Carmalt and his wife, of near Clayville, James A. Minish, of Punxsutawney, and William Coon and his wife, in Clarington, now Forest County. Others, no doubt, were connected, but the history is lost. Our route started from Baltimore, Maryland, and extended, via Bellefonte, Grampian Hills, Punxsutawney, Brookville, Clarington, and Warren, to Lake Erie and Canada. A branch road came from Indiana, Pennsylvania, to Clayville. At Indiana, Penn- sylvania, Dr. Mitchell, James Moorhead, James Hamilton, William Banks, and a few others were agents in the cause.
In an estimate based on forty years, there escaped annually from the slave States fifteen hundred slaves ; but still the slave population doubled in these States every twenty years. Fugitives travelled north usually in twos, but in two or three instances they went over this wilderness route in a small army, as an early paper of Brookville says, editorially, " Twenty-five fugitive slaves passed through Brookville Monday morn- ing on their way to Canada." Again: "On Monday morning, Oc- tober 14, 1850, forty armed fugitive slaves passed through Brookville to Canada."
Smedley's "Underground Railroad" says, " Heroes have had their deeds of bravery upon battle fields emblazoned in history, and their countrymen have delighted to do them honor ; statesmen have been re- nowned, and their names have been engraved upon the enduring tablets of fame ; philanthropists have had their acts of benevolence and charity proclaimed to an appreciating world ; ministers, pure and sincere in their gospel labors, have had their teachings collected in religious books that generations might profit by the reading ; but these moral heroes, out of the fulness of their hearts, with neither expectations of reward nor hope of remembrance, have, within the privacy of their own homes, at an hour when the outside world was locked in slumber, clothed, fed, and in the darkness of night, whether in calm or in storms, assisted poor degraded, hunted human beings on their way to liberty.
-x- * X- X
" When, too, newspapers refused to publish antisiavery speeches, but poured forth such denunciations as, ' The people will hereafter consider
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PIONEER HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNA.
abolitionists as out of the pale of legal and conventional protection which society affords its honest and well-meaning members,' that ' they will be treated as robbers and pirates, and as the enemies of man- kind ;' when Northern merchants extensively engaged in Southern trade told abolitionists that, as their pecuniary interests were largely connected with those of the South, they could not afford to allow them to succeed in their efforts to overthrow slavery, that millions upon millions of dol- lars were due them from Southern merchants, the payment of which would be jeopardized, and that they would put them down by fair means if they could, by foul means if they must, we must concede that it re- quired the manhood of a man and the unflinching fortitude of a woman, upheld by a full and firm Christian faith, to be an abolitionist in those days, and especially an ' underground railroad' agent."
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