USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Families of the Wyoming Valley: biographical, genealogical and historical. Sketches of the bench and bar of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, vol. I > Part 13
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HENRY BLACKMAN PLUMB.
Henry Blackman Plumb was born in Hanover township, Luzerne county, Pa., November 13, 1829. His father, Charles Plumb, in company with the grandfather, Jacob Plumb, a native of Connecticut, removed from that State to New York, and thence to Pennsylvania, settling first at Mount Pleasant, Wayne county, thence in Luzerne county, and from thence to Prompton, Wayne county, where he died in 1853. His mother was Julia Anna, daughter of Elisha Blackman, Jr., a native of Lebanon, Conn., and who removed with his parents to Wyoming in 1772. When the alarms commenced in the early part of 1778 from the ex- pected incursion of the Indians, Mr. Blackman, although only eighteen years of age, was mustered into Captain Bidlack's com- pany, and continued on duty scouting and otherwise until the descent of the forces under Butler. On the 3d of July, he marched to the field with his company, was in the hardest of the fight, and was one of the eight who escaped out of Captain Bid- lack's company of thirty-two men that went into the battle. After the surrender of the forts, he with the rest of the settlers who escaped massacre left for the settlement below, and subse- quently returned with the company under Captain Spalding in the fall of the same year to bury the dead, save what was left of the property and crops of the valley, and renew the defenses. All the property of Mr. Blackman's family was destroyed, except two cows, which, by mere chance, were recovered. Mr. Black- man died December 5, 1845, aged eighty-five years, and lies buried in the old Hanover burying ground on Hanover Green. His wife was Annie, daughter of Deacon John Hurlbut, a native of Connecticut, and who represented Westmoreland in the Con-
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necticut Assembly in the years 1779, 1780, and 1781. The ceremony of laying the corner-stone of Wyoming monument, July 3, 1833, was performed by Mr. Blackman. The father of Mr. Blackman, Elisha Blackman, Sr., was the Lieutenant under Dr. William Hooker Smith, of the "Old Reformadoes," . as the aged men were called who associated to guard the fort at Wilkes-Barre. It stood between the present Court House and the Luzerne House, and embraced from a quarter to half an acre of land. It was square built by setting yellow pine logs upright in the earth close together, fifteen feet high, surrounded by a trench. The corners were so rounded as to flank all sides of the fort. The gate opened towards the river, and they had one double "four-pounder" for defense and as an alarm gun to the settlement. The Court House and jail of Westmoreland were within the limits of this fortification. Old Mr. Blackman would not leave the fort. He thought with Dr. Smith by remaining they might afford protection to the survivors. The story of the sufferings of his family is the common story of all. A part of the way during their escape they kept from famishing by gather- ing berries. When they came to the German settlement, in what is now Monroe county, Pennsylvania, they were treated with much kindness; were fed, spoken kindly to, and helped on their way. Weary, wayworn, and penniless, depending chiefly on charity, they reached, in a few weeks, their former homes in Con- necticut. Mr. Blackman, Sr., subsequently returned, and died September -, 1804, at Wilkes-Barre, aged eighty-seven years. His son-in-law, Darius Spofford, who had been married but two months, was killed in the massacre. The survivors of the mas- sacre, with the women and children, left by the usual path across the Wilkes-Barre mountain, but the two Blackmans went down the river, crossed the Nescopeck mountain, and thus reached the settlement below. They were the last to leave the fort at Wilkes-Barre.
Mr. Plumb married on the 28th of September, 1851, Emma, daughter of Ashbel Ruggles, a native of Hanover township, Luzerne county. Mr. Ruggles afterwards removed to Wisconsin, and from thence to Fillmore county, Minnesota, where he died. Mr. and Mrs. Plumb had but one child, George Henry Ruggles
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HARRY HAKES.
Plumb; a member of the Luzerne county bar. Mrs. Plumb died July 19, 1859, and Mr. Plumb has been a widower since.
Mr. Plumb was educated in the common schools and at the Wilkes-Barre Academy, and studied law with the late Volney L. Maxwell, and was admitted to practice November 21, 1859. He served as Corporal in Company K, Thirtieth Pennsylvania Regi- ment Volunteers, during the late war. He is not a member of any religious denomination, but is a Unitarian in belief. He is a resident of Plumbton, in the suburbs of the borough of Sugar Notch, and has served as a member of the Council, also as a School Director and Borough Auditor.
Mr. Plumb retired from practice many years ago, but not until he had shown himself the possessor of traits that, by proper development, would have given him a leading position in his chosen profession. He is a gentleman of excellent habits, respected and looked up to by his neighbors, and among whom he takes an active part in all matters appertaining to their com- mon weal.
HARRY HAKES.
A man being successful as a lawyer and a doctor must needs . be a mentally strong man. A man who has achieved a more than ordinarily fair standing in both professions is the subject of our present sketch. The Hakes family is of English extraction and of the earliest Puritan stock. The Hon. Harry Hakes was born June 10, 1825, at Harpersfield, Delaware county, N. Y. His father, Lyman Hakes, Sr., first saw light as far back as 1788, at Watertown, Litchfield county, Conn., which county furnished a large part of the early settlers of this valley. The grandfather of Harry Hakes was Lewis Hakes, who married Hannah Church, of the family of Captain Church, about 1778, in Massachusetts. Lyman Hakes, Sr., moved to Harpersfield, N. Y., where he died in 1873. He married Nancy Dayton, of Watertown, Litchfield county, Conn., September 23, 1813. Her father, Lyman Dayton,
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HARRY HAKES.
was a soldier in the Revolutionary war. The mother of Mr. Dayton was Abiah, daughter of Stephen and Rebecca Matthews, of Watertown, Conn. Stephen Matthews was the son of Thomas Matthews, also of Watertown. He was a soldier in the Revolu- tionary war, and was at the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga. Thomas Matthews was the son of William Matthews, who emi- grated from Wales, England, to Connecticut in 1671. He was born in Watertown in 1699, and died in 1798, aged ninety-nine years. At the age of forty Thomas Matthews was appointed a Magistrate of Watertown, and held the office for forty years, being appointed yearly, and at the age of eighty declined further appointment. Mr. Hakes served in the war of 1812, and was a Judge of the county in which he lived. Mrs. Hannah Carr, nee Hakes, sister of Lyman Hakes, Sr., was the grandmother of Hon. C. E. Rice, President Judge of Luzerne county. His family consisted of eight children, four sons and four daughters. Of the sons, Harry was the youngest, and Lyman, Jr., for many years a resident and leading member of the bar of this county, the oldest. He was for more than thirty years previous to his death, in 1873, an active practitioner at the Luzerne bar, and very much at the bars of surrounding counties and in the Supreme Court. As was. said by the late Judge Ketcham at the bar meeting held on the occasion of his death, "whether making demonstrations from some intricate and involved legal proposition before the highest tribunal in the State, or struggling for the life of a prisoner in the Oyer and Terminer, or unlocking the mysteries of Fearne on Remainders, and threading the gossamer speculations of the scintilla juris, or exulting over the triumph of genius in the loco- motive, or strolling, wrapt in the dream of the picture gallery, or participating in the rustic amusement of the fair ground, he was a remarkable man; and for his ability and honor as a lawyer, and for his genius and liberal tastes and benevolence as a man, Lyman Hakes will be long remembered by the bar and by the people." Homer, another of the sons, died in 1854. Another son of this breeder of big men, Hon. Harlo Hakes, resides at Hornellsville, N. Y. Two of the sisters are still living, one the mother of Lyman H. Bennett, a member of the Luzerne bar, and residing in Wilkes-Barre.
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HARRY HAKES. 1
The boyhood of Harry Hakes combined the usual experience of farmers' sons-work upon the farm during the summer, and attendance upon the district school during the brief school term in winter. He had even at that age a habit of study and taste for general reading which made him, as nearly as possible for a boy, a proficient in all the branches taught, and gave him a fairly good English education.
Leaving the following of the plow, he entered the Castleton Medical College, in Vermont, from which institution he grad- uated, in 1846, an M. D., with all the honor that title conveys, and opened an office at Davenport Center, N. Y., which soon became the center of attraction for a large population needing medical help, and in which he remained for three years with gratifying financial success to himself, and more than equally gratifying good to his patients.
In June, 1849, when he was but twenty-four years of age, he married Maria E. Dana, eldest daughter of Anderson Dana, Jr., of Wilkes-Barre, who was the uncle of ex-Judge Edmund L. Dana, of this city. She died in the December following, unfor- tunately, and the bereaved husband devoted the year 1850 to attendance and faithful and effective work in the schools and hospitals of New York City. Then he removed to the at that time rapidly growing village of Nanticoke, in this county, where he continued the practice of his profession for three years. In 1854 he visited the old country, and spent another year of study in the medical institutions of London and Paris. Returning, he married Harriet L. Lape, the daughter of Adam and Elizabeth Lape, both natives of this county, August 29, 1855. He then resumed his practice as a man of medicine, and, interspersing it with the care and culture of his fine farm in the vicinity of Nan- ticoke, did good work for himself and his country until the spring of 1857. He has no children living, having lost two in their infancy.
Dr. Hakes had succeeded in the cure of the physical ailments of man, but, probably by hereditary transmission, he had an apti- tude for the law. His father, as has before been stated, was a law-giver of no little distinction. His brother was a lawyer of acknowledged repute practicing at our own bar. Another brother
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HARRY HAKES.
is one of the leading lawyers in the Empire State; has been District Attorney of his county, member of the Legislature, and Register in Bankruptcy. Harry began, urged by these influ- ences, the study of the law, in the office of his elder brother, Lyman, in 1857, passed the usual examination, and was admitted to practice January 25, 1860.
In 1864 he was elected a member of the Legislature on the Democratic ticket, representing Luzerne county. During that term, and the succeeding one to which he was re-elected, he secured an appropriation of $2,500 each year for the Home for . Friendless Children. He served on the Judiciary Local, Judiciary General, Ways and Means, Banks, Corporations, Federal Rela- tions, and Estates and Escheats Committees. He drafted the bill to prevent persons carrying concealed deadly weapons, the bill for the extension of the Lehigh Valley Railroad from Wilkes- Barre to Waverly, N. Y., and the bill for the collection of debts against townships, all of which passed.
Although he still keeps up his relations with his brethren of the "healing art," and takes an active part in business and dis- cussions as a member of the Luzerne County Medical Society, his attention and time are chiefly given to the law, with an occa- sional digression, at the proper season, with the rod and creel along some mountain stream, or an excursion with dog and gun into the haunts of the quail, the pheasant, and other denizens of the woods.
The Dr. is a life-long, earnest Democrat, and is always ready, both in public and private, to give a reason for the faith that is in him. He is a member of the American Medical Association, and is often a delegate from the Luzerne County Medical Society. He is frequently called upon to make speeches on medical, agri- cultural, and scientific subjects. He is not a member of any christian church, but is a Methodist in religious belief.
Dr. Hakes is a genial friend, a kind neighbor, and a public spirited citizen. Over six feet in height, he unites with a large frame a large heart, and a grasp, a vigor, and an independence of mind which renders empiricism and the small art and details of professional life distasteful, but especially qualifies him to subject every question, whether in medicine, law, or theology, to the
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GEORGE BRUBAKER KULP.
rigid test of principle, and to that measure and amount of proof of which it is reasonably susceptible.
[Contributed by C. BEN JOHNSON, Esq.] -
GEORGE BRUBAKER KULP.
Henry Kolb, or Kulp, as the name is now spelled, the ancestor of George Brubaker Kulp, the subject of our present sketch, came to Pennsylvania as early as 1707, perhaps earlier. He was a native of Wolfsheim, in the Palatinate, and was one of the earliest of the Mennonite preachers in this country. He and his brothers, Martin and Jacob, were trustees of the venerable Mennonite church, on the Skippack, the oldest Mennonite church in America but one. Matthias Van Bebber conveyed one hundred acres of land to the organization on June 18, 1717, and upon that ground a building for worship was erected about 1725. Henry Kolb's name appears first on the list of elders and ministers in this country whose signatures are attached to "the leading articles of the Christian faith of the churches of the United Flemish, Fries- land, and other Mennonites, and those in America, adopted in 1632," published at Philadelphia in 1727. His grandfather, on the maternal side, was Peter Schumacher, an early Quaker convert from the Mennonite church. He came to Pennsylvania October 12, 1685, in the "Francis and Dorothy," with his son, Peter, his daughters, Mary, Frances, and Gertrude, and his cousin, Sarah, and remained in Germantown until the time of his death, in 1707, aged eighty-five. The mother of Henry died in 1705, and was buried at Wolfsheim. At the time of her death she was in the fifty-third year of her age. The father died eight years later, aged sixty-four. He was buried at Manheim. The Kolbs were early and conspicuous in the minis- try of the Mennonite church. They were devout followers of the teachings of " Menno Simons, who was born at the village of Witmarsum, in Friesland, in the year 1492, and was educated for the priesthood, upon whose duties early in life he entered. The beheading of Sicke Snyder for rebaptism in the year 1531 in his near neighborhood called his attention to the subject of infant
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GEORGE BRUBAKER KULP.
baptisni, and after a careful examination of the bible and the writings of Luther and Swinglius, he came to the conclusion there was no foundation for it in the scriptures. At the request of a little community near him holding like views, he began to preach to them, and in 1536 finally severed his connection with the Church of Rome. From him the sect assumed the name of Mennonites. His first book was a dissertation against the errors of John of Leyden, whose followers became entangled in the politics of the time, and ran into the wildest excesses. They preached to the peasantry of Europe, trodden beneath the despotic heels of Church and State, that the kingdom of Christ upon earth was at hand, that all human authority ought to be resisted and overthrown, and all property be divided. After fighting many battles, and causing untold commotion, they took possession of the city of Munster, and made John of Leyden a king. The pseudo-kingdom endured for more than a year of siege and riot, and then was crushed by the power of the State, and John of Leyden was torn to pieces with red hot pincers, and his bones set aloft in an iron cage for a warning. After a con- vention held at Buckhold, in Westphalia, in 1538, the influence of the fanatical Anabaptists seems to have waned. Menno's entire works, published at Amsterdam, in 1681, make a folio volume of six hundred and forty-two pages. Luther and Calvin stayed their hands at a point where power and influence would have been lost, but the Dutch reformer, Menno, far in advance of his time, taught the complete severance of Church and State, and the principles of religious liberty which have been embodied in our own federal constitution were first worked out in Holland. The Mennonites believed that no baptism was efficacious unless accompanied by repentance, and that the ceremony administered to infants was vain. They took not the sword, and were entirely non-resistant. They swore not at all. They practiced the wash- ing of the feet of the brethren, and made use of the ban or the avoidance of those who were pertinaciously derelict. In dress and speech they were plain, and in manners simple. Their ecclesiastical enemies, even while burning them for their heresies, bore testimony to the purity of their lives, their thrift, frugality, and homely virtues. The shadow of John of Leyden, however,
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GEORGE BRUBAKER KULP.
hung over them, the name of Anabaptists clung to them, and no sect, not even the early Christians, was ever more bitterly or per- sistently persecuted. In the year 1569 there were put to death for this cause, at Rotterdam, 7 persons; Haarlem, 10; the Hague, 13; Cortrijk, 20; Brugge, 23; Amsterdam, 26; Ghent, 103; Antwerp, 229; and in the last named city there were 37 in 1571, and the same number in 1574, the last by fire. It was usual to burn the men and drown the women. Occasionally some were buried alive, and the rack and like preliminary tortures were used to extort confessions and get information concerning others of the sect. Their meetings were held in secret places, often in the middle of the night, and in order to prevent possible exposure under the pressure of pain they purposely avoided knowing the names of the brethren whom they met and the preachers who baptized them. A reward of one hundred gold guilders was offered for Menno, malefactors were promised pardon if they should capture him, Tjaert Ryndertz was put on the wheel in 1539 for having given him shelter, and a house in which his wife and children had rested unknown to its owner was confiscated. The natural result of this persecution was much dispersion. The prosperous communities at Hamburg and Altona were founded by refugees; the first Mennonites in Prussia fled there from the Netherlands, and others found their way up the Rhine. From the Mennonites sprang the general Baptist churches of England, the first of them having an ecclesiastical connection with the parent societies in Holland, and their organizers being English- men, who, as has been discovered, were actual members of the Mennonite church at Amsterdam. Says Barclay, in his valuable work, Religious Societies, 'it was from association with these early Baptist teachers that George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, imbibed his views. We are compelled to view him as the unconscious exponent of the doctrine, practice, and discipline of the ancient and stricter party of the Dutch Mennonites.' If this be correct, to the spread of Mennonite teachings we owe the origin of the Quakers and the settlement of Pennsylvania."
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Peter Kolb, a brother of Henry, was, like him, a Mennonite preacher, at Griesheim, in the Palatinate, attending to this appoint- ment until God called him, in 1728. He was a very active assist-
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GEORGE BRUBAKER KULP.
ant of Mennonite emigration to Pennsylvania. Martin Kolb, another brother of Henry, was likewise a dispenser of the gospel according to the doctrine of the Mennonites, and one of the most active of his day. He came to Pennsylvania, in 1707, with his brothers, Jacob and John, and Henry, as has heretofore been stated. Count Zinzendorf, in his journal, says: "January 22, 1742. Rode as far as Skippack. January 24. At Martin Kulp's house had an interview with heads of the Mennonites, and discussed with them their doctrine and practice." This was some months before Count Zinzendorf visited the Wyoming Valley. Martin Kolb married May 19, 1709, Magdalena, daughter of Isaac Van Sintern, great- great-granddaughter of Jan de Voos, a burgomaster, at Hand- schooten, in Flanders, about 1550 a genealogy of whose descend- ants, including many American Mennonites, was prepared in Holland over a hundred years ago. He married in Amsterdam Cornelia Classen, and came to Pennsylvania with four daughters after 1687. Jacob Kolb, another brother of Henry, married May 21, 1710, Sarah, another daughter of Isaac Van Sintern. An obituary notice of him says: "On the 4th instant (October, 1739) Jacob Kolb, of Skippack, as he was pressing cyder, the beam of the press fell on one side of his head and shoulder, and wounded him so that he languished about half an hour, and then dyed, to the exceeding grief of his relatives and family, who are numer- ous, and concern of his friends and neighbors, among whom he lived many years in great esteem." Dielman, or Thielman (as the name is sometimes spelled), Kolb, another brother of Henry, came to Pennsylvania somewhat later than his other brothers. He was at Manheim, where he attended as a preacher to the Mennonite congregation, "making himself most valuable by receiving and lodging his fellow believers fled from Switzerland," as appears from a letter dated August 27, 1710. He subsequently emigrated to Pennsylvania, where he in connection with Henry Funk supervised the translation of Van Braght's Martyrs' Mirror from the Dutch to the German, and certified to its correctness.
"This book is the great historical work of the Mennonites, and the most durable monument of that sect. It traces the history of those Christians who from the time of the Apostles were op- posed to the baptism of infants and to warfare, including the
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Lyonists, Petrobusians, and Waldenses; details the persecutions of the Mennonites by the Spaniards in the Netherlands and the Calvinists in Switzerland, together with the individual sufferings of many hundreds who were burned, drowned, beheaded, or other- wise maltreated; and contains the confessions of faith adopted by the different communities.
"Many copies of the book were brought to America, but they were in Dutch. No German translation existed, and much the larger proportion of those here who were interested in it could read only that language. It was not long before a desire for a German edition was manifested, and the declaration of a war be- tween England and France in 1744, which in the nature of things must involve sooner or later their colonies in America, made the Mennonites fearful that their principles of non-resistance would be again put to the test, and anxious that all of the members, especially the young, should be braced for the struggle by read- ing of the steadfastness of their forefathers amid sufferings abroad. Their unsalaried preachers were, however, like the members of the flock, farmers who earned their bread by tilling the soil, and were ill fitted both by circumstances and education for so great a literary labor. Where could a trustworthy translator be found? Where was the printer, in the forests of Pennsylvania, who could undertake the expense of a publication of such magnitude? Naturally, they had recourse to the older and wealthier churches in Europe, and on the 19th of October, 1745, Jacob Godschalck, of Germantown, Dielman Kolb, of Salford, Michael Zeigler, Yilles Kassel, and Martin Kolb, of Skippack, and Heinrich Funck, of Indian Creek, the author of two religious works published in Pennsylvania, wrote, under instructions from the various com- munities, a letter to Amsterdam on the subject. They say: 'Since according to appearances the flames of war are mounting higher, and it cannot be known whether the cross and persecution may not come upon the defenseless Christians, it becomes us to strengthen ourselves for such circumstances with patience and endurance, and to make every preparation for steadfast constancy in our faith. It was, therefore, unanimously considered good in this community, if it could be done, to have the Bloedig Toneel of Dielman Jans Van Braght translated into the German language,
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especially since in our communities in this country there has been a great increase of young men who have grown up. In this book posterity can see the traces of those faithful witnesses who have walked in the way of truth and given up their lives for it.'
"At Ephrata, in Lancaster county, had been established some years before, and still exists, a community of mystical Dunkers, who practiced celibacy, and held their lands and goods in com- mon. About 1745 they secured a hand printing press, now in possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, on which they printed over fifty books, which are among the scarcest and most sought after of American imprints. The chronicle of the Cloister says: 'Shortly before the time that the mill was burned down the Mennonites in Pennsylvania united together to have their great martyr book, which was in the Dutch language, translated and printed in German. For this work there was nobody in the whole country considered better fitted than the brotherhood in Ephrata, since they had a new printing office and paper mill, and moreover could place hands enough upon the work. After the building of the mill was completed, the printing of the martyr book was taken in hand, for which important work fifteen brethren were selected, of whom nine had their task in the printing office, viz., a corrector, who was also translator, four compositors, and four pressmen. The others worked in the paper mill. Three. years were spent upon this book, but the work was not continu- ous because often the supply of paper was deficient. And, since. in the meantime there was very little other business on hand, the brethren got deeply into debt, but through the great demand for the book this was soon liquidated. It was printed in large folio, using sixteen quires of paper, and making an edition of thirteen hundred copies. In a council held with the Mennonites, the price for a single copy was fixed at twenty shillings, from which it can be seen that the reasons for printing it were very different from a hope of profit. That this martyr book was a cause of many trials to the recluses, and added not a little to their spiritual martyrdom, is still in fresh remembrance. The Vorsteher who had put the work in motion had other reasons for it than gain. The spiritual welfare of those who were entrusted to him lay deep in his heart, and he neglected no opportunity to provide for
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