History of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, Part 40

Author: Smith, Robert Walter
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago : Waterman, Watkins
Number of Pages: 790

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There was a high flood in this stream in 1806 which reached eight to ten feet up the trees on the flat where Fair Mount now is, as related by Lewis Daubeurpeck, who saw the grass, sticks and other drift which the Indians told him were lodged in the forks of these trees when that flood subsided. There were twenty-one feet of water on the riffle at New Bethlehem October 8, 1847, which swept away bridges, Hass', Knapp's, and Robinson's mills and mill-dams. Another one, September 28-9, 1861, twenty-two feet high, did less damage than the preceding one.

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RED BANK TOWNSHIP.

" Fishbasket Hill," a mile and a half above New Bethlehem, and about twenty-five rods below the mouth of Town creek, where Lewis Doverspike settled in 1870, and a point a short distance below Troy, are two of the localities on this stream from which the Indians formerly obtained lead ore, pieces of which David Doverspike gave to L. W. Corbett, then at New Bethlehem, who melted it. There were probably places where they concealed the ore which had been transported thither from Sinking Valley, in this state, or from the west.

One thousand dollars was appropriated by the act of assembly "making appropriations for cer- tain internal improvements," approved March 24, 1817, for the purpose of improving this creek, and Levi Gibson and Samuel C. Orr were appointed commissioners to superintend the application of the money. By the act of April 4, 1826, " Sandy

Lick, or Red Bank creek," was declared a public highway only for the passage of boats, rafts, etc., descending it. That act also made it lawful for all persons owning lands adjoining this stream to erect milldams across it, and other water-works along it, to keep them in good repair, and draw off enough water to operate them on their own land, but required them "to make a slope from the top, descending fifteen feet for every foot the dam is high, and not less than forty feet in breadth," so as to afford a good navigation and not to infringe the rights and privileges of any owner of private property.

The first flatboat that descended this stream was piloted by Samuel Knapp, in full Indian costume, in 1832 or 1833-two boats loaded with sawed lumber, owned by Uriah Matson, which found a good market in Cincinnati, with the proceeds of which Matson purchased the goods with which he opened his store at Brookville.

By the act of assembly April 17, 1854, the Red Bank Navigation Company was incorporated, and authorized, among other things, to clean and clear the Red Bank, Sandy Lick and North Fork creeks of all rocks, bars and other obstructions; to bracket and regulate all the dams erected therein; to erect other dams and locks; to regulate the chutes of dams; to control the waters by brackets and other- wise for the purpose of navigation; to levy tolls on boards and other sawed stuff, square and other timber, and boats that might pass down these creeks, to be collected at the mouth of Red Bank, and to be liens on the property upon which they might be levied, in whosesoever hands it might be. Some of the members of this company who were engaged in the lumber trade commenced clearing these streams of obstructions before their charter

was granted, and expended before and since it was granted and the company organized about $8,000. In or about 1850 considerable blasting of rocks and of other work in clearing the Red Bank was done, under their direction, by Lewis W. Corbett, between New Bethlehem and the mouth, but principally at and for a distance of two and a half miles below Broken Rock.

A supplement to the foregoing act, passed March 28, 1860, provides that if persons shall, without the authority of the company, place any dam or other obstructions in the Red Bank, Sandy Liek or North Fork creek, the same shall be re- moved by the company at the cost of the persons placing them there; that the company may make such by-laws as may be necessary-such as do not conflict with the constitution and laws of the United States and this state-for the government of the company and the safe navigation of this stream, and to enforce them by fines, each not ex- ceeding $100. Another supplement, passed March 18, 1867, gives this company the power to increase their capital stock to $20,000; to inflict a penalty of $5 on any person who shall refuse to return to the proper officer of the company the name of the owner of any raft, boat, logs, or other craft which he may be navigating or assisting to navigate on these creeks, or return them in any false name or false amount; if any person shall injure or destroy any dam, bridge, bracket, or other property of the company, he shall be deemed guilty of a misde- meanor, and, on conviction in the proper court, shall be fined not exceeding $100, or be imprisoned in the county jail not exceeding sixty days, or . both or either; the company is authorized to charge tolls additional to those prescribed in the charter, but not exceeding double those, upon any raft, boat, logs, or other craft "that may be run on any bracket flood raised by order of said com- pany;" to require persons navigating these streams on freshet brackets to take out permits. and the penalty for neglecting or refusing to do so is $10 for each craft thus navigated, provided, that the company, before raising such bracket, shall give six days' notice thereof by a sufficient num- ber of handbills at the most public places in Sum- merville, Brookville, Port Barnett, Reynoldsville and Richardsville. This supplement also provides that the company shall not be liable for damages that may occur in the navigation of these creeks, and that it shall, annually, on or before the first Monday of January, publish in a newspaper in Jefferson county a statement of its receipts and expenditures for the preceding year, showing how and on what account moneys were received and

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expended, sworn to by the treasurer, "and filed among the records of the court of common pleas of each of said counties."

In the northwestern part of this township is the territory covered by the Piekering & Co. war- rant No. 439. In the sharp northern bend of the Red Bank, opposite the mouth of Town creek, was the site of the "Old Town," an Indian village, vestiges of which, such as stone and earthen monnds, kettles and other implements used by the Indians, were found by the early white settlers. Jacob Wells cut down a hiekory tree, abont eighty rods south of the Red Bank, on this tract, in 1875, in the trunk of which he found an ounce lead ball, between which and the bark were one hundred and five concentric rings or annual growths. Hence, it may be inferred that the "Old Town " was located here prior to 1770. The date of that war- rant is May 17, 1785, and that of the survey by George Woods, May 31, 1786. The patent to Pickering & Co., "including the Old Town," is dated March 25, and their conveyance to Yost Smith, August 17, 1820. He had probably settled on it in 1807, for he was assessed on the Red Bank list in 1808, with the land, and the next year with it and two horses, at $211.

The first bridge across Red Bank, at the north-

eastern part of this tract, was built in 1839, and , because by them they will probably be deprived of many its superstructure has since been twice rebuilt.

Cotemporaneous with Yost Smith was Peter Stone, who settled about the same time, higher up on the same side of the Red Bank, on the John Anderson tract, ealled " Anderson's Choice," war- rant No. 3837. The patent to Anderson is dated April 25, 1793. He conveyed parcels of this tract: one hundred acres to Timothy Jaynes, April 6, 1811, for $300, who conveyed the same to Cathe- * * But what is worse than all, I have heard that they love whisky to such an inordinate degree as to get sometimes beastly drunk, and even beat their wives and behave unseemly before their families, which certainly must have a most demoralizing tendency on the minds of the rising gen- eration." rine Evans, June 27, for $150 ; two hundred and twenty aeres to Peter Stone, May 1, 1815, for $240, who conveyed fifty acres thereof to John Evans' heirs, February 18, 1841, for $200, and probably another parcel to J. Mercer, as the old map shows his name on a subdivision above the Stone's house was a favorite resort for lumber- men in the rafting seasons on this creek. It is said they keenly appreciated dame Stone's excel- lent cookery as well as her husband's whisky. parcel retained by Stone. A ferry across the Red Bank, about half a mile above Millville, was kept by Stone for several years, and as late as 1825-7. He and his wife used to relate that in early times Above and adjoining Pickering & Co., No. 439, was "Henry Nulf's Improvement," two hundred acres, with which he was assessed in 1806 at $100. He did not reside here, but on one of the Joseph Thomas-Daniel Brodhead-tracts, on Town creek, in what is now Red Bank township, Clarion county, and was noted as a mighty hunter. six or eight Indians were accustomed to stop at their house and trade; one time they went about a mile from there up the southeastern side of the Red Bank, whence they returned with a considera- ble quantity of lead ore of good quality, which they carried to one or both of the Indian encamp- ments at Smith's and at Leatherwood. Two On November 19, 1818, he and Henry C. Barrett Indians, John and Bill, staid over night at Stone's, ; consummated their previous agreement to trade or

in the latter part of October or fore part of Novem- ber. Bill opened the door just before bedtime, snuffed the air, and remarked that there would be a fall of snow by the next morning. There was a considerable one during that night. Mrs. Stone related that a party of seven or eight Indians, in passing up and down the creek, annoyed her by their often-repeated begging. They were not otherwise troublesome. On one oceasion she no- ticed that quite an old Indian, who had previously accompanied them, was not then with them. She inquired where he was. One of them answered : " He fell asleep, and cannot walk any more." Her inference was, that, as he had become burdensome to them, they had killed him.

A considerable number of Indians must have returned and settled along the Red Bank as late as 1815-16. James White, of "Mexico," informed the writer that three hundred of them, about that time, settled along this stream below Brookville, partly in Armstrong county. Respecting their return to this section, Dr. M. A. Ward wrote to Eben Smith Kelly at Kittanning, from Pittsburgh, January 18, 1817 :

"I am not at all surprised that the sober, industrious, religious inhabitants of Red Bank should be highly in- censed at their late acccession of emigrants, not only fat bucks and delicious turkeys, to which, according to the strict interpretation of all our game laws, they have as good a right, if they have the fortune to find and the address to shoot them, as any 'dirty, nasty' Indians whatever, but because the presence and examples of such neighbors must have a very depraving influence upon the morals. Their insinuating influence will be apt to divert the minds of the farmers from the sober pur- suits of agriculture and inspire a propensity for the bar- barous pleasures of the chase. *

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RED BANK TOWNSILIP.

exchange properties. Nulf conveyed to Barnett one hundred and fifteen acres and eleven perches of one of the Thomas Brodhead tracts for $450, and Barrett conveyed to Nulf lots Nos. 3, 4, and half-lots Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, 37, 38, 46, 47, 48 in the town of Millville, situate on the Pickering & Co. tract 441, which they conveyed to Adam Mohney April 9, 1811, and he to Isaac Mohney October 28, 1816, and all his water-right of Red Bank creek, so far as he had the right to obstruct its navigation by law, for the use of the mill in that town, for $450, the two full lots being valued at $100, the one half of the nine at $200, and the water-right at $150.

Returning from this digression into Clarion county, Nulf obtained patents for the land con- tained in his " Improvement " on the southeastern side of Red Bank creek November 29, 1826, founded on a warrant to him March 14, 1823. He conveyed parts of those two tracts: two hundred and fifty acres to Jacob Shick August 10, 1827, for $687.50; one hundred and ninety-two acres and sixty-two perches to Henry Nulf, Jr., September 30, 1830, for $154; and an equal quantity to Jacob Miller December 22, 1832, for $200. The first and only schoolhouse within the present limits of this township, prior to the passage of the school law, was erected in 1828 on the parcel of the " Improve- ment " conveyed to Jacob Shick, and now owned by John Harmon. It was a primitive log structure about 15 by 15 feet.

Above and adjoining "Nulf's Improvement " lay the James Coulter tract, warrant No. 3836, two hundred and twenty acres, the patent for which was granted to Coulter January 17, 1817, which he conveyed to William Freas May 7, 1820, for $840, one hundred and thirteen acres and one hundred and twenty-one perches of which the latter con- veyed to Henry Freas September 3, 1823, for $420. They entered into a written agreement the same day, the purport of which is, that the tract they then lived on was bought in partnership from Conl- ter. It being understood that there was a mill-seat on it, they agreed to be equal owners of it, and of the water-right on Red Bank creek; the advantages arising therefrom to be cqually enjoyed by both of them; no mill-race to be cut so as to injure adjoin- ing land; the one acre of ground on which the mill was to be located was to be of the part of that tract taken by William Freas, and each was bound in the penal sum of $1,000 for the proper performance of his part of the contract. Henry Freas erected an oilmill on his part of this tract between 1825 and 1830, which he operated until 1834. William Freas was last assessed with his one hundred and ten

acres in 1824, and the widow Sarah Freas with the same quantity in 1825.

Coulter conveyed - acres and - perches to Sarah Smith October 4, 1827, for $ -- , which became vested in John Smith, who conveyed one hundred and twenty-nine acres and seven perches to Philip Houpt May 13, 1837, for $1,290.63.

It is on this part of this Coulter tract that the Emanuel church edifice, brick, 28 × 38 feet, is situated. It was crected in 1851 under the direc- tions of a building committee, which consisted of George Coleman, Philip Houpt, Jacob Shelley and Jacob Shick, and under a contract between that committee and Tobias Lanker. The church had been previously organized as an Evangelical Lu- theran one by Rev. J. G. Young, who was for sev- eral years afterward its pastor. Its present men- bership is 63.

In January or February, 1852, that edifice was crowded by an assemblage of people of this region to consider the practicability of affording aid for the construction of a branch railroad from the Alle- gheny river along the Red Bank to Brookville. A very active member of that meeting was the late Thomas Mccullough, who in a speech of an hour and a half adduced numerous facts, statistics and arguments by which to persuade the people that they would be greatly benefited by whatever contributions they might make for that purpose, and succeeded in favorably impressing his hearers with his views. They were ready to subscribe lib- eral amounts. But there were some opponents of that measure in that mecting, and I. W. Powell was requested to present the other side of the question. He did so, and he, too, succeeded in persuading his bearers not to contribute to that project, which lay dormant for more than a decade. The benefits re- sulting from the subsequent construction of the low grade or Bennett's branch of the Allegheny Valley railroad are yearly becoming more and more evident.

Adjoining the Coulter tract and " Anderson's choice," on the southeast, were the Joshua and Robert Anderson tracts, contiguous to each other, covered by warrants Nos. 3834, 3835, the patents for both of which were granted to Joshua Ander- son, the latter February 24, 1801, which having be- come vested in James Anderson, his administrator de bonis non, John Galbraith conveyed two hun- dred and twenty acres to Jacob Mohny ( of John) September 22, 1834, for $440, whose administrators conveyed the same quantity to John Mohney March 16, 1854, and he, the same day, to Adam Mohney, to whose estate it belongs, for $525.

There is on this Adam Mohny land a vein of

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HISTORY OF ARMSTRONG COUNTY.

what is commonly called flint, but is what geolo- gists term quartzite, i.e., granular quartz. Quartz is pure silex, an essential constituent of granite, often occurring in pellucid glassy crystals and in masses of various colors more or less transparent to opaque. In the specimen from this vein which is before the writer at this writing there is a con- glomeration of variously-colored material which is very hard. The color of some of it is almost white ; of other portions blue, light and dark green, verging to slate, being the same color of the material of many Indian arrow-heads. In some of the cavities are small sparkling crystals. Boys in the vicinity of this vein, as the writer is in- formed, have struck fire from pieces of it with their knife-blades. The vein appears to be about eighteen inches thick and several rods long, and just above it is a spring of very good water. The present appearance of this vein indicates that large quantities of it have been excavated. From the quantity of the fragments of its material about two hundred rods distant from it, it is inferred that the Indians used it in manufacturing large num- bers of their spear and arrow-heads.

About thirty-one years ago Enoch Buffington, who settled on the Big Mudlick about a mile northeasterly from New Salem, in 1836, found an iron tomahawk in his orchard, which appeared to be a place where the Indians made their spear and arrow heads. Another place of the same kind, where rings and tomahawks have been made, is about three hundred rods south, on Philip Dover- spike's place.

Granted that spear and arrow heads were made here, the reader may be curious to know how the Indians made them, especially before iron and steel implements were introduced among them. From Jones' Antiquities of the Southern Indians, the writer has gleaned most of the following facts.

They had a limited variety of copper imple- ments, which were of rare occurrence, and which were too soft to be of use in working so hard a material as flint or quartzite. Hence is is believed that they fashioned their spear and arrow heads with other implements than those of iron or steel. They must have acquired, by their observation and numerous experiments, a thorough and practical knowledge of cleavage, that is, "the tendency to split in certain directions, which is characteristic of most of the crystallizable minerals." Capt. John Smith, speaking of the Virginia Indians in his sixth voyage, says : "His arrow-head he quickly maketh with a little bone, which he ever weareth at his bracelet, of a splint of a stone or glasse, in the form of a heart, and these they glew to the

ends of the arrows. With the sinews of the deer and the tops of deers' horns boiled to a jelly, they make a glue which will not dissolve in cold water." Schoolcraft says: "The skill displayed in this art, as it is exhibited by the tribes of the entire continent, has excited admiration. The material employed is generally some form of horn-stone, sometimes passing into flint. No specimens have, however, been observed where the substance is gun- flint. The horn-stone is less hard than common quartz and can be readily broken by contact with the latter." Catlin, in his "Last Ramble Among the Indians," says : "Every tribe has its factory in which these arrow-heads are made, and in these only certain adepts are able or allowed to make them for the use of the tribe. Erratic bowlders of flint are collected and sometimes brought an im- mense distance, and broken with a sort of sledge- hammer, made of a rounded pebble of horn-stone, set in a twisted withe holding the stone and form- ing a handle. The flint at the indiscriminate blows of the sledge, is broken into a hundred pieces, and such flakes selected as from the angles of their fracture and thickness will answer as the basis of an arrow-head. The master workman, seated on the ground, lays one of these flakes on the palm of his hand, holding it firmly down with two or more fingers of the same hand, and with his right hand, between the thumb and two fore- fingers, places his chisel or punch on the point that is to be broken off, and a co-operator-a striker- in front of him, with a mallet of very hard wood, strikes the chisel or punch on the upper end, flaking the flint off on the under side below each project- ing point that is struck. The flint is then turned and chipped in the same manner from the opposite side, and that is chipped until the required shape and dimensions are obtained, all the fractures being made on the palm of the hand. In selecting the flake for the arrow-head, a nice judgment must be used, or the attempt will fail ; a flake with two opposite parallel, or nearly parallel, planes of cleav- age is found, and of the thickness required for the center of the arrow point. The first chipping reaches nearly to the center of these planes, but without quite breaking it away, and each clipping is shorter and shorter, until the shape and edge of the arrow-head is formed. The yielding elasticity of the palm of the hand enables the chip to come off without breaking the body of the flint, which would be the case if they were broken on a hard substance. These people have no metallic instruments to work with, and the punch which they use, I was told, was a piece of bone, but on examining it, I found it to be of a substance much

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harder, made of the tooth-incisor-of the sperm whale, which cetaceans are often stranded on the coast of the Pacific."

In 1854, Lieutenant Beckwith saw a Pah-Utah Indian, seated on the ground, make from a frag- ment of quartz, with a piece of round bone, one end of which was semi-spherical, with a small crease in it, as if it were a thread, the sixteenth of an inch deep, an arrow-head which was very sharp and piercing, and in all respects similar to those in general use among the Indians of that region. He says: "The skill and rapidity with which it was made, without a blow, but by simply breaking the sharp edges with the creased bone, by the strength of his hands-for the crease merely served to prevent the instrument from slipping, affording no leverage-were remarkable."

In 1860, Caleb Lyon communicated to the Amer- ican Ethnological Society the mode of the manu- facture of arrow-heads of flint, glass, obsidian and other materials by the Shasta Indians of California: "The Shasta Indian seated himself on the floor, and placing the stone anvil, which was of compact talcose slate, upon his thigh, with one blow of his agate chisel he separated the obsidian pebble into two parts; then giving another blow to the frac- tured side, he split off a slab a fourth of an inch in thickness. Holding the piece against the anvil with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, he commenced a series of continuous blows, every one of which chipped off fragments of the brittle sub- stance. It gradually acquired shape. After fin- ishing the base of the arrow-head, the whole being only a little over an inch in length, he began strik- ing gentler blows, every one of which, I expected, would break it into pieces. Yet such was his adroit application, his skill and dexterity, that in little over an hour he produced a perfect obsidian arrow-head. I then requested him to carve me one from the remains of a broken bottle, which, after two failures, he succeeded in doing. He gave me, as a reason for his ill success, he did not under- stand the grain of the glass. No sculptor ever handled a chisel with greater precision, or more carefully measured the weight and effect of every blow, than this ingenious Indian; for even among them arrow making is a distinct trade or pro- fession, which many attempt, but in which few attain excellence."

Jones says : "It is fair to presume that the method adopted by the modern Indians in the manufacture of their common flint arrow and spear heads was but the perpetuation of a mode which existed among the red men prior to historic times."

Taking into account that vein of quartzite, the quantity excavated from it and the quantity of the chippings of that material in its vicinity, it seems quite probable that the Indians in the olden time had one of their open-air workshops " for the manu- facture of flint implements" where the peculiar knowledge of cleavage, skill and experience neces- sary to make them were brought into practical use right here on this Anderson-Mohney tract.

Adjoining the Robert Anderson tract on the northwest was a small, triangular vacant parcel on was formerly a tannery which was first assessed to Daniel Hough, in 1842, to Abraham Shirey in 1847, and to George Gruber in 1859.

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History of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, Part 40

Author: Smith, Robert Walter Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Chicago : Waterman, Watkins Number of Pages: 790

Author: Smith, Robert Walter
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago : Waterman, Watkins
Number of Pages: 790