USA > Pennsylvania > Cambria County > Cambria County pioneers; a collection of brief biographical and other sketches relating to the early history of Cambria County, Pennsylvania > Part 2
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My connection with the Tribune terminated finally on the last day of December, 1869. Beginning with the summer of 1856 the paper ex- perienced several changes in management, but in 1864 its sole ownership and control reverted to my hands, in which they continued until the December day above mentioned. My entire connection with the Tribune covered a period of about eleven years.
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PETER GOUGHNOUR'S REMINISCENCES.
PETER GOUGHNOUR'S REMINISCENCES.
EDITORIAL IN THE JOHNSTOWN TRIBUNE OF SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1856.
PETER GOUGHNOUR, who was born in Maryland in 1773 and died in Conemaugh township, Cambria county, during the past year, 1855, left a statement of his early recollec- tions of what was in old times called "the Conemaugh country," which statement is now before us. It is much to be regretted that there is not in existence an authentic history of the early settlers and settlements of the Cone- maugh country, and with a view to filling a portion of this blank in our annals we will compile from Mr. Goughnour's statement such facts as we think worthy of preservation.
Mr. Goughnour says that the first white settlers in the Conemaugh country were two brothers, Samuel and Solo- mon Adams. At the time of their settlement, about 1785, the Indians who hunted and fished on the banks and in the waters of the Conemaugh and Stony creek were quite numerous. Samuel Adams lived on Sam's run, about two miles south of the confluence of these two streams, and from him it derived its name. Solomon's cabin was located about midway between the junction of the Conemaugh and Stony creek and his brother's cabin. Solomon's run took its name from him. Samuel Adams and an Indian warrior killed each other with their knives while fighting around a white-oak tree on Sandy run, about five miles east of the junction of the Conemaugh and Stony creek. Their bodies were buried in one grave under the tree.
Mr. Goughnour settled in what is now Conemaugh town- ship in 1798. Cambria county was then a wilderness and not known to geographers. At the date of Mr. Goughnour's settlement the Indians had departed from their Conemaugh hunting grounds, but he says that he had found heaps of stones erected over Indian graves, flint arrows, elk horns,
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CAMBRIA COUNTY PIONEERS.
and other relics of their presence. A few of these stone heaps are still standing on the banks of the Stony creek above Johnstown.
Jacob Stutzman, who died in 1816, occupied in 1794 the Conemaugh bottom, now the site of Johnstown, and to which had been given the name of Oldtown. Mr. Stutz- man was the first white man who ever occupied the bottom. A son of his was killed by an ox-team which had been scared by a rattlesnake. The body of the boy was buried on the left bank of the Stony creek, where Water street in Kernville is now located.
Joseph Johns, or Schantz, a member of the Amish com- munion and an industrious and honest man, laid out Cone- maugh bottom into town lots in 1800. Those who assisted him to lay out the town, and who became its first citizens, were Peter Goughnour, Joseph Francis, Ludwig Wissinger, and a few others. They named it Conemaugh-town, but it was generally called Johnstown. Mr. Johns died at an ad- vanced age in Conemaugh township, Somerset county.
Dr. Anderson and William Hartley opened the first store in the new town and Isaac Proctor opened the second. The necessaries of life at that time rated very high. Coffee was 50 cents per pound ; pepper, allspice, and ginger, 50 cents per pound ; shad, 50 cents each ; salt, $5 per bushel ; wheat, $2 per bushel. All other articles rated accordingly. Wages were from 40 to 50 cents per day.
There were at that time no roads through the wilderness to older settlements and nothing but canoes for navigating the streams. Domestic animals were rare but wild beasts of the forest were quite numerous. Panthers, wolves, bears, etc., prowled at night around the cabins of the pioneers. Nevertheless the first settlers, in Mr. Goughnour's language, had fine times hunting and fishing, as the forest was alive with game and the clear streams were filled with fish. Deer were numerous.
The bottoms in the vicinity of Conemaugh-town were covered with luxuriant verdure and presented a wild and picturesque appearance. The hills also were grand beyond description, with their glorious old forests in which the woodman's axe had never rung. Pea vines, wild sunflowers,
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PETER GOUGHNOUR'S REMINISCENCES.
grapevines, and other native representatives of the vegeta- ble world twined around and waved between the giant oaks, and spruce, and hickories. What a paradise was that Cone- maugh country to its first settlers some fifty years ago !
Still those pioneers had their troubles and those forests and bottoms had their drawbacks. Growing among the tall grass was a noxious weed, resembling garlic in taste and appearance, and called ramps by the settlers, which, when eaten by the cows, was sure to sicken them and put a stop to the supply of milk and butter. The grass, from some cause not stated, did not make good hay, and as the culti- vation of corn, oats, rye, etc., was exceedingly limited the result was that in the winter the cattle often fared badly. The settlers, in order to prevent their cattle from starving, were forced to cut down trees so that they could browse on the. buds and young branches. The women were re- quired to clear land and do rough farmwork, such as har- rowing, harvesting, hoeing corn, etc. They were also ac- customed to other phases of hard pioneer life.
Large quantities of maple sugar and molasses were in a. few years manufactured by the settlers of the Conemaugh country and packed to neighboring settlements. Venison also became an article of traffic. In exchange for these commodities the Conemaugh settlers received the necessaries which they could not produce themselves. Bedford was their principal market.
In the course of time the population of Conemaugh-town. increased as well as the number of farms in its vicinity. A log inn for the entertainment of travelers was built. A road was opened through the wilderness to Frankstown, below Hollidaysburg, upon which bar iron was hauled to Conemaugh-town and shipped in the spring of the year in flat-bottomed boats to Pittsburgh. Conemaugh-town now became a place of some business, and it was found neces- sary to build another inn.
In 1808 the town was overflowed by a sudden rise in the Conemaugh and Stony creek and the inhabitants were compelled to fly to the hills for safety. The town was again submerged in 1816. This event was termed "the punkin flood," owing to the fact that it swept away the
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whole pumpkin crop of that year. Much damage was done by this flood. Fences were swept away, saw-logs and lum- ber disappeared, and many horses and cattle were drowned. The settlers suffered severely by this flood.
About 1812 the town boasted a grist mill and also a small iron forge on Stony creek. In 1816 the first keel boat was built by Isaac Proctor on the right bank of the Stony creek, near where the Union graveyard is located. Flatboats were also constructed at the same place. While laborers were digging the race for another forge on the Conemaugh old fire-brands, pieces of blankets, an earthen smoke-pipe, and other Indian relics were discovered at a depth of twelve feet below the surface of the earth.
Notwithstanding the improvements mentioned the town was still small when, about 1829, the Commonwealth com- menced the construction of the Canal and Portage Railroad. Since that time it has steadily prospered and gradually be- come a place of some note and business importance.
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REVELATIONS OF AN OLD LEDGER.
REVELATIONS OF AN OLD LEDGER.
FROM THE BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN IRON AND STEEL ASSOCIATION FOR JUNE 1, 1896.
JOHNSTOWN has had three periods of transportation de- velopment-the first embracing the flatboat era from about 1800 to 1830; the second beginning with the completion of the Pennsylvania Canal to Johnstown in 1830 and extend- ing to the completion of the Pennsylvania Railroad to Pitts- burgh in 1852; and the third beginning with the comple- tion of the Pennsylvania Railroad and extending to the present time. The iron industry of Johnstown has also had three periods of development-the first embracing Cam- bria forge at Johnstown and Shade furnace, Shade forge, and Mary Ann forge in Somerset county near Johnstown, all of which were built between 1808 and 1820; the sec- ond, a ten-year period, embracing Cambria, Ben's Creek, Mill Creek, Mount Vernon, and Somerset furnaces, built from 1842 to 1846-Mount Vernon in Johnstown and the other furnaces only a few miles away; and the third be- ginning with the organization of the Cambria Iron Com- pany in 1852 and coming down to the present time.
Johnstown owes its start as an industrial and commer- cial centre to the fact that its location at the head of flat- boat navigation on the Conemaugh furnished an outlet for the iron of the Juniata valley at the beginning of the nineteenth century. There was more water in the . Cone- maugh and its tributaries in those years than there is now. Johnstown was an iron town before Pittsburgh had made a pound of iron. The following details deal exclusively with the period of flatboat transportation and with the first period of the iron industry of Johnstown.
For the facts that we shall present we are in part in- debted to an old ledger which has recently come into our possession and which escaped the destruction of the Johns-
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town flood in 1889. The ledger contains accounts of sales made and of credits entered by Isaac Proctor, a merchant of Johnstown in the early years of the nineteenth century, and a record of other business transactions by Mr. Proctor. His store was located on Main street, immediately opposite the site of the First Presbyterian church.
Isaac Proctor was a native of Bedford county, Pennsyl- vania. He settled at Johnstown, " at the forks of the Cone- maugh," when it was a mere hamlet of log houses, soon after 1800, in which year the town was "laid out " by Joseph Johns, a Swiss Mennonite, into streets and alleys, building lots, public squares, and other reservations. But the name that was then officially given to the new town was Conemaugh and not Johnstown, the latter name being substituted for the former in 1834. We have before us a letter dated at Conemaugh on April 27, 1832. Settlements had been made at Johnstown before 1800 by German and Swiss farmers. For a number of years after 1800 the town was almost entirely inhabited by people of German and Swiss origin.
Isaac Proctor was not only a country merchant but he was also the owner of a warehouse on the north bank of Stony creek, below Franklin street, in Johnstown, which was maintained for the express purpose of receiving and storing bar iron from the forges of the Juniata valley, which bar iron was hauled to Johnstown over the Franks- town Road and thence shipped in flatboats to Pittsburgh by way of the Conemaugh, Kiskiminitas, and Allegheny rivers. There were other warehouses near that of Isaac Proctor which were maintained for precisely the same purpose. The flatboats were built at Johnstown or at points farther up the Stony creek and as far south as the mouth of Ben's creek, three miles away. A large business was done far into the nineteenth century in the shipment of Juniata iron by flatboats from Johnstown. At first and for many years these shipments embraced only bar iron, but subsequently and down to the opening of the Pennsylvania Canal to Johnstown late in 1830 they embraced also blooms and pig iron, all made with charcoal. As the navigation of the streams mentioned was as yet wholly unimproved ship-
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REVELATIONS OF AN OLD LEDGER.
ments could only be made during high water, and even then experienced pilots were needed to prevent the boats from going to pieces on the rocks and riffles in which the Conemaugh river particularly abounded. Occasionally a boat was wrecked. In one disaster at Richards' Falls two lives were lost. Much of the hauling over the Frankstown Road was done on sleds in the winter, and February and March, when the spring break-up took place, were favor- ite months for sending the flatboats to Pittsburgh, one hundred miles away. The boats were sold at Pittsburgh and the crews walked home.
Keel boats were also used on the Conemaugh and Kiski- minitas rivers, but they were used chiefly in the salt trade, the Conemaugh salt works beginning about forty miles west of Johnstown. The first salt works on the Conemaugh date from about 1814. In A. J. Hite's Hand Book of Johnstown, printed in 1856, it is stated that the first keel boat built at Johnstown was built by Isaac Proctor in 1816. Keel boats, which passed from the Conemaugh and Kiskiminitas into the Allegheny, brought return cargoes from Pittsburgh.
The merchandise accounts in Mr. Proctor's ledger are chiefly for the years 1808 and 1809, occasional entries com- ing down as late as 1810, 1811, and 1812. The warehouse accounts are for the years 1816, 1817, and 1818. As is usual in ledger accounts the prices of merchandise are not often given. It is, however, very remarkable that all the mer- chandise accounts are kept in pounds, shillings, and pence. The pound character (£) is used. Dollars and cents are no- where mentioned, although our Federal coinage was author- ized in 1792 and silver dollars were coined as early as 1794. The dollar mark ($) does not appear in any of the mer- chandise accounts. That business should have been trans- acted in British or colonial currency in an interior town in Pennsylvania as late as 1812 is a discovery for which we were not prepared. We can not understand why the Brit- ish system of computing values was continued in that inte- rior town so long, nor is any light thrown upon the value of a pound in dollars and cents at Johnstown in 1812, or upon the forms of currency that were used when payments were made in " cash." John Holliday closed his account
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with Mr. Proctor in June, 1811, when he is credited with a payment of £32 16s. 4d. in " cash ;" in January, 1811, Patrick Dempsey closed his account by giving his note for £6 10s. 3d .; in 1812 William Fulford closed his account by giving his note for £2 6s. 1d .; and in the same year John Grosenickle closed his account by giving his note for £1 1s. 2d. In 1808 John Grosenickle is credited with £1 11s. 9d. for hauling a load of maple sugar to Bedford. There are other entries in the same denominations.
Another revelation of this old ledger is just as remark- able as the use of pounds, shillings, and pence until 1812. The warehouse accounts of bar iron received and shipped in 1816, 1817, and 1818 are kept in tons, hundredweights, quarters, and pounds, the ton representing 2,240 pounds, the hundredweight 112 pounds, and the quarter 28 pounds. The teamsters who hauled bar iron over the Frankstown Road are credited in tons, hundredweights, quarters, and pounds, and shipments to Pittsburgh are entered in the same terms. In ordinary commercial transactions neither iron nor any other commodity has been weighed by hun- dredweights and quarters forming fractions of a gross ton at any time within our recollection, the usage being to weigh only by tons and pounds, and it is really very sur- prising that the English custom should have prevailed at Johnstown at so late a day as we have mentioned. Char- ges for storage in 1816, 1817, and 1818 appear, however, to have been paid in dollars and cents, as we find several charges in 1818 in these denominations. We have also found within the leaves of the ledger a bill against Isaac Proctor which reads as follows : "Juniata Forge, 16th De- cember, 1818. Mr. Isaac Proctor Bot of Peter Shoenberger 2 qrs. 1 1b. Bar Iron, @ $0.08c-$4.56." Juniata forge was located at Petersburg, in Huntingdon county, and it was built about 1804. In 1814 or 1815 it passed into the hands of Dr. Peter Shoenberger.
The numerous entries in Mr. Proctor's ledger make clear the fact that large quantities of bar iron were shipped at Johnstown by flatboats in 1816, 1817, and 1818. He did a large warehousing business and other owners of warehouses were probably active competitors. The aggregate tonnage
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REVELATIONS OF AN OLD LEDGER.
shipped by Mr. Proctor, which was chiefly on account of Dr. Shoenberger, amounted to several hundred tons annu- ally. Some of Mr. Proctor's shipments amounted to 16 and 19 tons. Some of these shipments were made " in my own boat," which was doubtless a keel boat. Pittsburgh anti- quarians may be interested in learning that the consignees of bar iron at Pittsburgh in those days were Richard Bowen & Co., Robert Alexander, Allen & Grant, Charles McGee, J. Whiting, Robinson, McNickel & Wilds, Irwin & George, and Thomas Jackson.
The chief interest of this old ledger consists in its reve- lation of the fact that large quantities of Juniata bar iron were shipped to Pittsburgh from Johnstown as early as 1816. Earlier shipments were made by water from Johns- town to the same destination, probably as early as 1800, but the ledger of Isaac Proctor shows conclusively that these shipments had attained large proportions in 1816, 1817, and 1818, in which years bar iron had not yet been made at Pittsburgh. Next in importance among the facts disclosed by Mr. Proctor's ledger is the survival at Johnstown down to 1812 of the British system of computing values, and the survival down to 1818 of the now long disused hundred- weights and quarters.
From other sources than the old ledger we add some other facts which show the prominence of Johnstown as an iron centre early in the nineteenth century.
John Holliday built a forge at Johnstown, on the right bank of the Stony creek, about 1809, for the manufacture of bar iron from Juniata blooms and pig iron, but we find no mention in Mr. Proctor's ledger of any shipments from this forge. The dam of this forge was washed away about 1811, and subsequently the forge was removed to the north bank of the Conemaugh, in the Millville addition to Johnstown, where it was operated down to about 1822, Rahm & Bean, of Pittsburgh, being the lessees at this time. In 1817 Thomas Burrell, the proprietor at that time, offered wood- cutters "fifty cents per cord for chopping two thousand cords of wood at Cambria forge, Johnstown." The forge would appear to have been in operation from 1809 to 1822.
In 1807 or 1808 Shade furnace was built on Shade
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creek, in Somerset county, about fifteen miles southeast of Johnstown, and in 1820 Shade forge was built near the furnace. As early as 1820 bar iron was shipped to Pitts- burgh from Shade forge. Much of the iron from this forge was hauled to Johnstown and thence shipped to Pittsburgh, but some of it was shipped in flatboats directly from the forge. Pig iron was also hauled to Johnstown from Shade furnace for shipment to Pittsburgh. But there was another early forge, which was still nearer to Johnstown, on the Stony creek, about half a mile below the mouth of Shade creek, known as Mary Ann forge, which shipped bar iron to Pittsburgh at a still earlier day, and perhaps as early as 1811. Richard Geary, the father of Governor John W. Geary, was the manager of the forge for about one year, and was supercargo of a load of bar iron which was ship- ped from the forge down the Stony creek, the Conemaugh, and other streams to Pittsburgh. Garret Ream lived at the mouth of Ben's creek and built boats which were loaded at Johnstown, but he also shipped iron direct from Ben's creek, and it is probable that some of this iron came from Mary Ann forge, Shade furnace, and Shade forge.
About 200 pounds of nails, valued at $30, were made at Johnstown by one establishment in the census year 1810. About this time an enterprise was established at Johnstown by Robert Pierson, by whom nails were cut from strips of so-called "nail iron " with a machine worked by a treadle, but without heads, which were added by hand in a vise. The " nail iron" was obtained at the small rolling mills in Huntingdon county and hauled in wagons or sleds to Johnstown over the Frankstown Road.
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REV. SHADRACH HOWELL TERRY.
REV. SHADRACH HOWELL TERRY.
FIRST PASTOR OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF JOHNSTOWN. WRITTEN IN 1898 .*
I HAVE been requested to prepare a sketch of the life of Rev. S. H. Terry, the first pastor of the First Presby- terian church of Johnstown. Unaided I could not comply with this request, but with the assistance of Hon. Cyrus L. Pershing, Rev. Dr. B. L. Agnew, and others I present the following summary of all the facts that are accessible con- cerning the life of this early Johnstown preacher of the Gospel, whose remains now rest in Grand View cemetery, which overlooks the scene of his last and most successful labors. It is a beautiful spot for a city of the dead.
" Around this lovely valley rise The purple hills of Paradise."
The full name of Mr. Terry was Shadrach Howell Terry. He always wrote it S. H. Terry in a cramped, nerv- ous hand. Mr. Terry was born on Long Island in 1795. He graduated at Yale College in 1819, under that prince of edu- cators in his time, Jeremiah Day. His theological training was received at Princeton. This information I have received from Judge Pershing, who also advises me that Mr. Terry's father was for a time a member of the New York Legis- lature. Judge Pershing also says that Mr. Terry showed to him more than once a volume which had been pre- sented to him by Dr. Day, the president of Yale College, for excelling in oratory. It will be seen that Mr. Terry's educational advantages were excellent and fully in keeping with the traditions of the Presbyterian Church. He proba- bly entered the Presbyterian ministry soon after 1820, and
* This sketch, which I prepared by request, was read by the pastor, Rev. C. C. Hays, D.D., to a large congregation gathered in the First Pres- byterian church of Johnstown on Sunday evening, March 6, 1898. I have added some information about other early Johnstown churches.
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as his wife was a native of Delaware he probably preached for a time in that State before coming to Pennsylvania. It is not known at what time he came to Pennsylvania, but it is certain that he was in 1830 the pastor of the Presbyterian congregations of Somerset and Jenner, in Somerset county, within the bounds of the Presbytery of Redstone. Mrs. Mary A. Parks, of the fifth ward of Johns- town, remembers very well when Mr. Terry resided and preached in Somerset. He did not reside at Somerset lon- ger than a year or two, removing from there to Jenner, now Jennerstown, which was then a place of more promise than it is now, and at which place he continued to reside until his removal to Johnstown, in the meantime serving the congregations of both Jenner and Somerset.
We must now go back a few years. About 1820 the Protestant citizens of Johnstown, which then embraced a population of only a few hundred persons, united in build- ing a one-story frame house on a lot of ground near the foot of Market street, which was donated for school pur- poses by Joseph Johns in 1800, and which lot has come to be known as the Union school lot and the building and its successors as the Union school-house. In this building the children of the first settlers of Johnstown were taught in subscription schools the rudiments of an English educa- tion, the common-school system not then having been es- tablished in Pennsylvania, and in this building were also held religious services, the few Protestants of the town using it alternately or together. This arrangement did not always give satisfaction, and as early as 1829, as I learn from Mr. Wesley J. Rose, the Methodists fitted up a warehouse that had been used for the storage of iron, and which stood where the United Brethren church now stands on Vine street, and worshiped in it until 1838, when they occupied their new church on the site of the present Methodist church at the corner of Franklin and Locust streets. The warehouse and the lot of ground on which it stood were donated by Peter Levergood, himself a Lutheran.
In his "History of the Churches in Blairsville Presby- tery " Rev. Dr. Alexander Donaldson says that "Johnstown, where an independent church had a brief previous existence,
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REV. SHADRACH HOWELL TERRY.
was first supplied with Presbyterian preaching on October 31, 1830, by Rev. Shadrach Howell Terry, of Redstone Pres- bytery." This sermon was preached in the Union school- house .* The Presbytery of Blairsville was formed in 1830 from the Presbytery of Redstone and held its first meeting on November 16 of that year. It will be remembered that it was in this year that Mr. Terry was engaged as pastor at Somerset. When Dr. Donaldson referred to " an inde- pendent church " at Johnstown he had in mind, as I learn from Dr. Agnew, the Congregational, or Independent, church which had been organized by Rev. George Roberts, of Ebensburg, with five members, all women. This was the first organized church in Johnstown. It existed until 1825, when the pastor, Mr. Timothy C. Davies, was dismissed and soon afterwards the organization disbanded. Mrs. Jane Mc- Kee was a member of this church and was also one of the fifteen original members of the Presbyterian church of Johnstown which was subsequently organized.
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