Century history of the city of Washington and Washington County, Pennsylvania and representative citizens, 20th, Vol. I, Part 5

Author: McFarland, Joseph Fulton; Richmond-Arnold Publishing Co. (Chicago) pbl
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago, Richmond-Arnold Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 584

USA > Pennsylvania > Washington County > Washington > Century history of the city of Washington and Washington County, Pennsylvania and representative citizens, 20th, Vol. I > Part 5

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Petitions were also sent in to Irvine at Fort Pitt from many parts of Washington and Westmoreland Coun- ties, setting forth the distress of the inhabitants, and ro- questing him to furnish men to protect them during harvest time and at their mills.

It is doubtful whether any help was sent to Washing- ton County from Fort Pitt at that time, for the troops there oul great difficulty in obtaining supplies and " ent a truly deplorable and at the same time despicable figure. " " It is difficult to determine whether they were white men." They were in such a state of insubordina- tion that more than one was court martialed aud sentenced for execution, and at least one was executed.

September 28, 1782, the Council directed the lieutenant of Washington County to call out no more milit'a after the expiration of the time of those now in service; his Excellency, George Washington, having received intelli- gence that the British have callod in all the savages, and that no more parties are to be permitted to be sent out against the frontiers. The Council, taking into considera- tion the proclamation of the 22d day of April, 1780, offering a reward for Indian scalps, and the reasons upon which the same was found no longer continuing, resolved March 21, 1783, that the same be made null and void, and ordered that notice of the rerocation of this Indian scalp bounty be sent to the lieutenant of the County of Washington.

Revoking the scalp bounty, and "calling in," or call- ing off, the savages by the British, did not put a stop to the massacres, for mary more heart-rending scenes are described in the histories and traditions of this region. Dr. John W. Dinsmore, in his "Scotch. Irish in America " (pago 39), writes:

"Even after they had been driven across the Ohio, the Indians made frequent forays, burning cabins, laying waste the settlements, and massacring the people.

I have heard my grandfather tell of such an invasion as late as 1874, when within a few miles of the present city of Pittsburg, the whole county was devastated by a sudden incursion of savages. He was a little fellow of five, and, with his two elder sisters and three little cousins, was playing in the edgo of the clearing, while tho parents were scutching flax across the ravine. The Indians broke from the woods, barbarously tomahawked

* Flints were pieces of flinty rock which wer > fastened In the hammer of the guns to produce sparks when struck against iron close to the powder-pan in the gun. They had no other known way of firing the powder.

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY

two of his little cousins, and took their eister, a girl of fifteen, prisoner, while he and his sisters by swift flight escaped. "'

A man was killed, in 1783, within a mile of the new county seat (Washington), on Chartiers Creek, and a dozen persons captured. Two of these, Mrs. Walker and a boy, regained their liberty, but the othere were carried to the Shawnee towns on Big Miami River. (2 Penna. Archives, Vol. 10, p. 167. Old Westmoreland, by E. W. Hassler, p. 189; 1900.)

These are a few of the very many things which happened suddenly, aud are mentioned here in order to impress on the reader the dreadful insecurity among these lovely hills at the time when the court was erected for the purpose of bringing order out of confusion. They are best expressed by Dr. Doddridge, as quoted by Blaine Ewing, Esq., at the Canonsburg Centennial. (See Canonsburg Centennial, by Blaine Ewing, Esq., pp. 129, 130; 1902.)

"Dr. Doddridge tells us that in his lifetime he had noticed marked changes in climate. When he first ven- tured into this section the snow lay long and deep amid the unbroken forests, and the summers were short and hot. With the first breath of epring, the season that brings such joy to the hearts of all in this day, the fathers and mothers of that day looked with a kind of terror on the trees, as they clothed themselves in verdure, and deepened the gathering shadows of pathless woods. Then it was that the Indian chose his season of warfare and rapine. Then was the eeason of their scanty har- vests, planted in fear, and worked in parties large enough to afford a respectable fighting force, while the families huddled together in the stockades and forts, watched and waited for the return of the men. Not a single time did they open the gates of their forts in the morning, without the fear that the savages were lying in anbush. Then the adventurous pioneer, who refused to listen to warnings, boasted that his crop of corn was better worked than that of hie more circumspect neighbor, who retired within the fort at the first call of spring. If the savages had been seen in the neighborhood, runners were sent out in all directions. At night he came stealthily to the window or door, and gently rapped to awaken tho sleepers. Constant fear taught our fore- fathers to elecp lightly. A few whispered words ex- changed, and he disappeared in the forest to warn the next cabin. All was then quick and silent preparation. No light dare be struck, not even to stir the fire, but dressing the children as quickly as possible, and praying that the baby would continue to sleep,-for hie cry might mean destruction,- they caught up a few articles in the dark, and taking the rifle from the peg, feared every shadow, while they stole off to the fort. The

older children were so imbued with fear, that the name Indian, whiepered in their ears, made them mute."

In May, 1784, three years after the county was organ- ized, a letter written from Uniontown, says:

"The Banditti have established themselves in some part of this country, not certainly known, but thought to be the deserted part of Washington County, whence they make frequent incursions into the eettlements, under cover of night, terrifying the inhabitants, sometimes beat them unmercifully, and always rob them of such property as they think proper, and then retire to their lurking places.'

On June 28, 1784, the county commissioner of Waeh- iugton County wrote to his Excellency President Dickin- son, of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, stating, that,

"This county, as well as Fayette, has for some time past been greatly affected by a troop of robbers from the lower parts of the state, namely the Doanes and others, who by frequent burglaries and robberies, under the protection and countenance of divers evil disposed persons amongst ourselves, have reduced us to the necessity of calling out parties of the militia and making general search for the burglars and their accomplices, whereupon the said burglars, with numbers of horses, negroes and other valuable property, of which they had robbed the inhabitants (in the most daring and insoleut manner), set off for Detroit. After one hun- dred miles of pursuit, Abraham Doane, one who called himself Thomas Richason, and two women who professed to be wives to some of the party, were captured, and the greatest part of the property recovered, but the others escaped. ""

These and several others, held as accomplices, were confined in the jail, although it was by the county com- missioners declared to be insufficient, and this same Abraham Doane had been rescued from it once before by an armed party. A strong armed guard was kept constantly over them, and the commissioners were at a loss to know what to do with them.

The commissioners apparently forgot that they had a three-year-old court just at hand which could dispose of them, and which did afterward dispose of such as could not escape, as is shown by the record and conviction of Thomas Richardson, for burglary, and his execution on Gallows Hill, near the present residence of Mr. Joseph C. Baird, in the Thornycroft plan of lots, on October 2, 1784.

The year 1781 stands very promineut in history. Pennsylvania was ou the verge of a war with the colouy of Virginia over the state line, and the right of goveru- ment and authouty in Washington County, and also iu Pittsburg. No landowner knew whether his holdings of land wero in Virginia or in Peunsylvania. So great was the opposition to the control of this region by Penn- sylvania, that a number of prominent men endeavored to prevent the first judges of our courts from obtaining

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY

their commissious. Virginia was pursuing, among others, some of the very persons who had recently been elected justices under the act organizing this county, seeking to arrest them, and many persons were refusing to aid the military commanders in their effort to protect this eounty from the Indian marauders. The war between England nnd her thirteen colonies, eovering from 1776 to 1783, had already been exhausting the people for five years, and she had the savage tribes for her allies, with but a few exceptions. The froutiers were left largely to themselves, without much aid from the colonial government, to aet as buffers against the Indian.

The very month Washington County had its birth, the Artieles of Federation between the colonies, "to be forever free and independent,"' were adopted by all the states. After this, and before our first court convened, the Rev. Thaddeus Dodd, having been two years at Ten

Mile Church, wrote upon his church book that communion services could not be held prior to that time "because of the ineursions of the savages." For tho same reason Redstone Presbytery failed to met in September, as had been appointed. The very month when the Wash- ington County Court first met, Lord Cornwallis sur- rendered his British troops at Yorktown, which virtually elosed the war. One little ray of light begins to glimmer in this gloom. Thaddeus Dood and his neighbors that year built a cabin near his house, and here began "the first elassical and mathematical school or academy west of tho mountains," the beginning of Washington Col- lege, now the far-famed. Washington and Jefferson College.

In the midst of all these "fightings within and wars without,"' Washington County was set upon its feet, and largely left to shape its own destiny.

CHAPTER II

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT.

Early Explorations-Early Claims of England and France-Washington County Included in Both-Conflicting Grants -George Washington the Envoy-His First Sight of This County-His First Battle-His First Entry on Washington County Soil is with Foreign Troops-Braddock's Defeat-Effect Upon Pennsylvania and Vir- ginia-Extends to South Carolina-Fort Pitt Established-Success and Peace of Paris.

No one can understand the history of Washington County without going far hack of its origin; therefore, it is necessary to take a brief review of the early his- tory of Virginia and of the Colony and State of Penn- sylvania. Redstone Old Fort, Fort Bird, hoth now known as Brownsville; Pittshurg, called Fort Duquesne by the French, Fort Pitt by the English and Pennsylvan- ians and Fort Dunmore by the Virginians, Logans- town, (Logstown), on the Ohio River, 171% miles and 57 perches from Fort Pitt (Bausman's Hist. of Beaver County, pp. 972, 976) ; Beaver, formerly Fort McIntosh ; Mingo Bottom, 21/2 miles below Steubenville; Fort Henry, now Wheeling-all have a history linked very closely with Washington County. They were just across the river from Washington County, and the wars and dis- putes between the French and English, the Penn- sylvanians and Virginians, the Indians and the indi- viduals and governments of intruders, the farmer dis- tiller and exciseman, which affected the one, affected the other just as seriously.

Who were the Indians? How did they come to give up their possession and right of possession? Why was this region not settled hy the Scandinavians, the Spanish, or French-speaking peoples, instead of by the English ? Why was the settlement not made by the "Virginian gentlemen,"' as they were pleased to call themselves, or by relcased convicts, as was attempted by the French near Montreal a few hundred miles north of us, instead of being made by the sturdy Scotch-Irish, Quakers, and Germans?

People differing very much from those who were in Washington County when our county government was established, were the first to discover the ocean shores east of us, and to make settlements there which would give them claims to all lands extending back westward. The Scandinavians from the north found our coasts several times just before and just after the year 1000, made some weak settlements, and explored along the

Atlantic Coast perhaps as far south as eastern Virginia. They called this coast line Vinland, a name suggested no doubt hy the sight and taste of wild fruit. Although the land was pleasing and heautiful to their eyes, and they had as good a title to it as either the English or French obtained 400 years afterward, yet they abandoned it. During three centuries the Norsemen visited this Vin- land, if traditions are correct, and from the same kind of authority came news of a visit from Prince Madoc of Wales in 1170. (Official Reference Library of U. S., p. 37; 1901.)

John Cabot, a Venetian by birth but with his home in England, seeking for the northwest passage to the East Indies, discovered North America by reaching the cold and uninviting coast of Labrador in the year 1497, and planting the flag of England, took possession in the name of King Henry the Eighth, who had sent him. This was fifteen years before the aged Ponce de Leon, while sceking for the fountain of perpetual youth, the first Spaniard to see North America, planted the Spanish banner in Florida, and two years before Amerigo Vespucci saw America. The following year his son, Sebastian Cabot, returned and sailed from Labrador along the coast through more than twenty degrees of latitude, until he had passed the entrance to the Chesa- peake Bay, below the site of our national capital.

It was in this manner that the right of England to the better part of North America was first declared, and this included Washington County, which lies 220 miles back from the Atlantic Coast. The "right" in question may he strongly criticised by posterity, as it rested wholly upon the fact of first view by a company of English sailors looking shoreward from their vessels, in the summer of 1498. But this first view was called discovery, and the Christian nations of Europe had agreed among themselves that discovery should hold, that it should constitute a right which they would mutually respect and defend. This right of coast line discovery

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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY

carried with it the right, or at least, the claim to all land extending back from the coast discovered.

In this compact not the slightest attention was paid to the rights of possession and occupancy enjoyed for unknown generations by the native peoples of the new lauds. All the claims of the original races were brushed aside as of not the slightest consequence or validity.

It took more than 100 years for the English to effect any permanent settlement, although during this period they had found courage to sail directly across the ocean instead of by the islands of the south, or Labrador in the north, and had fallen in love with the sunny country arouud Roanoke, which has ever since been called Vir- ginia, in honor of the virgin queen Elizabeth. During this delay the Frenchi had, in the year 1524, traveled along the coast line, from what is now New Jersey, northward, to Newfoundland; and the king called this discovery New France. They had given name to the town Montreal, destined to be a strategic fort and base of French operations, and in 1603 had granted the sovereignty of the land from the latitude of Philadelphia to one degree north of Montreal (in Canada), to the French count, Gaust or de Mont, with the right to monopolize the trade in furs.

Three years after France assumed to grant ownership to this vast area, England's king, James I, issued two great patents to men of his kingdom, authorizing them to possess and colonize that portion of America lying between the 34th and 45th parallels of latitude. Geo- graphically, the great territory thus granted extended from Wilmington, north Carolina, to northward of Ban- gor, Maine, and westward to the Pacific Ocean.

The reader will notice that the French and English grants of title overlapped, thus interfering with each other as well as with the Indian possessions, and that the lands of Washington County were included in both the French and English claims of discovery, and close to the latitude of Philadelphia. The French claimed all the land drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries, because one from their nation, La Salle, had explored it and discovered its mouth. This claim also included Washington County, because it was drained by the Ohio, a tributary of the Mississippi.

The discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi was in 1681, the same year in which William Penn obtained a charter for his possessions, now known as Pennsylvania, and just one hundred years before the organization of Washington County. A Virginian, Colonel Wood, is alleged to have explored several branches of the Mescha- ceba (Mississippi) from 1654 to 1664. (Western Annals, p. 94.)

The result of these claims was war between France and Great Britain, extending from the year 1753 to the year 1760, for the control of the upper Ohio River region, the

forks of the Ohio River, with the little unnamed fort then being erected by Ensign Ward, as the first point for contest. This was known as the French and Indian War, a general "mixup" between the French and their Indian allies on the one side, and the British and their Indian allies on the other. The question fought out was, who should possess this region where the Ohio gathers its waters.

The English people who came early to America came for homes or for peace and liberty, and were not so much inclined to roving as the French, who had settle- ments at Montreal, Canada, Detroit, and other cold regions not so well adapted to early agriculture.

The former were held together in self-centered settle- ments because of some religious or selfish principle, for which they had left the Mother Country, while the latter moved about and explored more readily, inter- mingled more easily with the Indians and intermarried with them. If it had not been that the Iriquois Indians, known as the Six Nations, had their headquarters in central New York, between the English and the French, and if the Iriquois had not harbored an ancient grudge against the latter, the French might have held the headwaters of the Ohio, embracing the whole of Wash- ington County. An intimation of conditions, differing from what we now enjoy, is hinted at in the language of a recent writer, when he says: "The intermarrying policy of the Latin nations had in the main been pro- ductive of peace, while the civilizing policy of the European settlers has led to many difficulties, but the civilizing policy has saved the white race from a serious degradation."

This war is here very briefly reviewed because the first messenger between the two races was our hero and name- sake, and because the little cannon at the little unnamed fort may have been heard and the smoke from the fire at the same place when Fort Duquesne was abandoned, may have been seen afar off by our oldest inhabitant, Catfish, here in his camp, twenty-five miles away.

George Washington, one of the adjutants-general of troops in Virginia Colony, hurried along the Indian paths, in the late of fall of 1753, through "heavy rains and vast quantities of snow," in search of the French, to deliver them a letter from his colonial governor, Din- widdie, demanding of them in the name of his Britannic Majesty, what they meant by building forts up along the Allegheny River, at Venango and elsewhere, in dis- regard of the rights and claims of England

The young traveler, 21 years of age, following around the big streams Monogahela and Ohio, from the mouths of Turtle Creek to Logstown (from above Homestead nearly to Beaver), little thought that all the wooded land, across the river to his left, would soon proudly bear his name. (The land he saw became Washington County

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY

but is now part of Allegheny.) His wildest dreams could not have imagined the great cities which now cover his trail nor the great free bridges across the river where he swam his horses and in which he floundered a few days later. He called upon Shingiss, the Dela- ware Indian sachem, or chief, then living at the mouth of Chartiers Creek, who safely guided him to his superior, Tanacharison, kuown also as Half-King, the Iroquois sachem, whose home was then at Logstown. From him he took counsel, guidauce and safe escort for the 150 miles yet to go before facing the French. Governor Dinwiddie had sent Captain Trent on the same errand six months before, and in a letter says: "He went no farther than Logstown on the Ohio. He reports the French were then 150 miles farther up the river, and I believe was afraid to go to them." (Washington's Journal. By the Ohio he meant the Allegheny River. Early travelers thought the Monongahela was only a branch of the Ohio, and the Allegheny was the continua- tion of the Ohio.)

The Indians were pleased to know that the young pale face and his Virginia backers were taking up the hatchet, because Tanacharison and others had gone up to the French at different times, remonstrating against the building of the same forts in the Indian's country, and had been called "old women" by the French, and so insulted, threatened and intimidated, that they were not only frightened on their own account, but for the life of their friends, the English traders, who for years had been trading trinkets for their beaver, deer, bear, wolf, and other furs, perhaps including that of the buffalo.

But the wily and fluent Frenchmen had assumed their most pleasing manners and set out their best drinks, in hopes of separating the Indians from their traveling companion; which separation took place on their return trip, at old Venango, which, as the young messenger noted down, "was an old Indian town situate at the mouth of French Creek on Ohio, and lies near north about sixty miles from Logstown, but more than seventy miles the way we were obliged to go." The energetic youth was too impatient to delay with the worn down horses in the heavy snows and freezing roads or foot- paths, so with gun in hand and a pack on his back con- taining his papers and provisions, he struck out to tramp it entirely alone, except for one companion, Christopher Gist. After some hairbreadth escapes and chilling ex- periences in walking from near the center of the present County of Beaver to Gist's cabin near the center of Fayette County, where he bought a horse and saddle, he reported to Governor Dinwiddie at Williamsburg, Va.

Two months and a half after reporting, or on April 2, 1754, he was starting on his way back from Alex-

andria, Va., commissioned as a lieutenant-colonel, chief in command of about 150 men, to aid in establishing a fort at the Forks, and to help repel the French.

He was not quite soon enough, for the little fort at the mouth of the Monongahela was surrendered before it had been completed, and he was met by Ensign Ward hurrying back to tell the governor how it had happened, how that the Captain Trent, who last summer seemed to be afraid to carry the Governor's letter to the French, and who had been sent recently in command of soldiers and builders to erect this fort, had sent General Washington word that he was hourly expecting a body of about 800 French, had quietly left for old Virginia; and Lieutenant Frazier had gone home to Turtle Creck just before a body of 1,000 French and Indians had silently dropped down the Allegheny and suddenly called for surrender. He would report that the faithful Iroquois sachem Tanacharison, was with him as his only counsellor and that no words of delay suited the polite Frenchmen. Therefore Ward, with his three or four dozen men, vacated the Forks on April 17, 1754.

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Century history of the city of Washington and Washington County, Pennsylvania and representative citizens, 20th, Vol. I, Part 5

Author: McFarland, Joseph Fulton; Richmond-Arnold Publishing Co. (Chicago) pbl Publication date: 1910 Publisher: Chicago, Richmond-Arnold Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 584

Author: McFarland, Joseph Fulton; Richmond-Arnold Publishing Co. (Chicago) pbl
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago, Richmond-Arnold Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 584