History of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, Part 9

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

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Among the official notices is that issued by James McCullough, adjutant, for the Seventh bat-

talion of volunteers to meet at the house of Fred- erick Yockey, in Kittanning (now Valley) town- ship, at 10 o'clock A. M., on Wednesday, September 10, then next, completely armed and equipped for training. It also appears from that number or issue that the regular nominees of the "demo- cratic-republican " party that year were Samuel S. Harrison, of Kittanning, for Congress, and Meek Kelly, of Indiana, for State Senate. The volun- teer candidates were John Gilmore, of Butler, for Congress, and Joseph Buffington, of Kittanning, and Alexander McCalmont, of Franklin, Venango county, for State Senate. The regular nominees were elected. There were thirty causes on the trial list for the third week of September, that year.

Turning to the Kittanning Gazette, new series, Vol. III, No. 9-113, whole number 529, same size as the preceding, issued on Wednesday, January 20, 1836, the writer finds four of its columns filled with advertisements and official notices. Among the latter is a list of letters remaining in the post- office January 1, 1836, Alexander Reynolds, post- master, giving the names of sixty-seven persons, some of whom resided several miles distant.

The slavery question had then begun to be freely discussed in the columns of the Gazette. A contributor who had resided in one of the slave states fills more than a column of that number in showing the fallacy of the postulate assumed by McDuffie and other slaveholders : "That the Af- rican negro is destined by Providence to occupy this condition of servile dependence, is not less manifest. It is marked on the face, stamped on the skin, etc." He shows from the Bible that man-stealing and man-selling are crimes, whose penalty, prescribed therein, was death. As to the mark on the face and stamp on the skin, he asks how came they? And then argues, if all on whom they are found may be pressed into the ser- vice of the South as menial slaves, then some, at least, who were born with as pure blood as any son of liberty, may fall under this dreadful doom; for instances are not wanting in our own country, and one of a very remarkable character in the State of New Jersey, of a gentleman becoming as dark as an aboriginal African, in consequence of disease, and continued so for more than twenty years after the recovery of his health. This was the natural effect of a peculiar state and condition of the bile, and such an appearance from this cause is urged by Dr. Blumenbach as undoubtedly analogous with the natural color of the skin in the African race." He further argues that this "mark " is produced by natural causes, principally

POSTAL AND TRAVELING FACILITIES.

by the influence of climate, citing the physiolog- ical fact that the true skin or cutus in people of all the different grades of color is white, and the external or scarf-skin is the most perfectly trans- parent in those of the darkest color, and instanc- ing the graduation of color-the perfectly white, the less white, the olive, the tawny and the black -caused by the influence of the varying heat of the sun from the highest lat- itudes to the equator, so that with the ex- ceptions made by the operations of particular local causes, every parallel of latitude presents us with a different shade of complexion. He then pertinently asks: Where shall the line be drawn to designate those who are so manifestly marked out for slavery from those who have an un- doubted right to liberty?

Nearly two other columns of that number are filled with a portion of the debates on the slavery question, in the then recent synod of Virginia.

It is announced in another column of that num- ber of the Gazette that a copy of a printed protest of the American Anti-Slavery Society against the denunciations of the President of the United States in his message, signed by Arthur Tappan, William Jay, and others, had been sent to each member of congress, and the following reply from J. Speight, M. C. from North Carolina : "I here- with return you your protest, inclosing, as a testi- mony of my high regard for your necks, a piece of rope. You will no doubt appreciate my motives."

In another part of that issue are some of the proceedings in the "Investigation of Masonry" in the legislature of this state.

Such was some of the reading matter which agi- tated the minds and stirred the blood of the read- ers of the Gazette in Kittanning and elsewhere over twoscore years ago.

The writer has casually picked up the Kittan- ning Free Press, Vol. XII, No. 23, issued July 14, 1853, size 23×16 inches. Advertising had then considerably increased, for in that issue are nine and a half columns of business advertisements and legal and official notices. Among the latter is the statement of state appropriations to the common schools of this county for that year, showing that the amount then appropriated to the school in this borough was $159.12 ; also the list of letters re- maining in the Kittanning postoffice July 1, then instant, Simon Truby, postmaster, containing 266 names of individuals and firms.

POSTAL AND TRAVELING FACILITIES.

In 1818 there was only one postoffice between Kittanning and Indiana, and only a weekly mail,

which was carried on horseback .. In 1820, people living several miles above Red Bank creek received at least some of their mail matter from the Kit- tanning office. The mail route in 1818 was from Indiana via Absalom Woodward's and the Blanket Hill battle-field to Kittanning and Butler; and thence via Freeport, Kittanning, the Peter Thom- as' (afterward Robert Woodward's) mills, on Plum creek, back to Indiana. In 1819 the route was more circuitous, extending from Indiana via Greensburgh, Freeport, Roseburgh (now in Clarion county), Lawrenceburgh (now Parker City), to Butler, and thence vic Kittanning back to Indiana. The mail-carrier over these routes was Josiah Cop- ley, then an apprentice to James McCahan, the proprietor and publisher of the American, a weekly newspaper published at Indiana. McCa- han had the contract for carrying the mails over these and other routes, and his contract with his apprentice was that the latter should spend one- half of the first three years of his apprenticeship in carrying the mail on horseback. Thus the con- tractor got his mail-carriers without cost, and dis- tributed his paper, carried in open saddle-bags, to many of his subscribers along these and other routes.

The number of postoffices has been so increased from year to year since then that there are now fifty-one, distributed at convenient distances over this county, at several of which daily mails are received.

At the early settlement of this county there were not any well-made roads. From 1805 till 1810 the court of quarter-sessions granted orders for open- ing twenty-five public roads in various sections within the present limits of this county. Yet those who traversed the county as late as 1821 say that most of the roads then afforded very poor facilities for travel and transportation of goods. ' Most of the traveling was done on foot and horse- back, and for lack of bridges the fording of streams was often hazardous. Some of the turn- pikes began to be made about 1815. Prior to 1810, before the manufacture of iron was begun on the Connemaugh, and salt on the Kiskiminetas, those articles were transported, viz .: iron from Win- chester, Virginia, and salt from Hagerstown, Maryland, as well as other goods from the east, on pack-horses, over the Allegheny mountains. After the commencement of the manufacture of salt and iron west of the Allegheny mountains, they were transported to Pittsburgh, in flatboats, down the Connemaugh, Kiskiminetas and Allegheny rivers. After the completion of the turnpike from Pitts- burgh to Philadelphia, goods purchased in the lat-

HISTORY OF ARMSTRONG COUNTY.

ter for this region were left at Blairsville, and dis- tributed thence to their various places of destina- tion. They were generally hauled by six-horse teams in large covered Conestoga wagons, bells be- ing a part of the horses' trappings. One of the writer's informants says that he had seen as many as twenty of these teams stop at a country tavern over night. The drivers, each having his own hammock, would lie in every direction in the bar- room. Each prided himself on having the best team and hauling the heaviest load. When in- toxicated, they would get into broils and scuffles in making good their respective claims to those merits, from which blackened eyes were occasional results, which were then deemed but trivial circum- stances. It behooved travelers stopping at those wagon taverns, in those days, not to cast any dis- respect upon any of the teamster fraternity, for if they did, especially such as happened to be well dressed, they soon " got into hot water."

The commercial traffic between the upper coun- try and Pittsburgh was chiefly carried on by means of canoes and keelboats, which were propelled by manual power. Large numbers of rafts of sawed lumber, many of them from Olean, N. Y., de- scended the Allegheny river in those days, and on which it was common for emigrants to migrate westward. Josiah Copley informed the writer that he had seen fully a hundred men, women and children on a single raft. While he was standing on the shore one evening, at Freeport, he saw a large Olean raft swinging to the landing to lie over night. While some of the men were manag- ing the raft, he saw one grooming and feeding a span of horses, a girl milking a cow, another mak- ing mush in a shanty, an old lady sitting at her wheel spinning flax, and all seeming to be quite at home. Thus they were quietly floating toward their new homes which they were seeking in Ohio and Indiana.

Twenty years afterward, from 1835-40 and later, the lumber floated down the river exceeded 50,000,- 000 feet of boards and plank, which, with various kinds of timber, exceeded in value $1,000,000.

According to the " Western Navigator," a vol- ume published in Pittsburgh in 1811, the quantity of boards and lumber floated down the Allegheny annually was 3,000,000 of feet, at $9 per 1,000, amounting to $27,000, and from 12,000 to 16,000 barrels of Onondaga salt had the year before arrived by keelboats down that stream at Pittsburgh, averaging $8 a barrel, amounting to about $104,000. The keelboats returned with cargoes of whisky, iron, castings, cider, apples, bacon, other articles of home production, and foreign goods.

Those primitive modes of transporting goods from the east were obviated by the completion of the Pennsylvania canal, skirting the southern border of this county, in or about 1828. Freeport thereafter became an entrepôt for merchandise and other freight from the east, and of considerable quantities from Pittsburgh for the region drained by the Allegheny river.

By act of March 9, 1771, the Kiskiminetas, and by act of March 21, 1798, the Allegheny river and the Sandy Lick or Red Bank creek were declared public highways, the Allegheny to the northern boundary of the state and the Red Bank from its mouth to the second great forks.

An order was issued by the county commissioners, June 22, 1819, to Saml. C. Orr, for $77.68, for his services as a commissioner, appointed by act of assembly to superintend the expenditure of $1,000 appropriated for the improvement of Red Bank, and $200 for the improvement of Toby's creek. On the same day an order was issued to Alexander Wilson for $16, and on September 22 to David Lawson for $12, for their services for examining the improvement of the navigation of those two creeks.

From and after 1828, passengers, goods and other freight were transported up and down the Alle- gheny river in steamboats and barges towed by them during such portions of the year as there was a sufficient stage of water. The increase of vari- ous branches of business, resulting from the rapid increase of population along and east and west of that river, and the multiplicity of furnaces for the manufacture of pig iron, caused a vast deal of transportation by steamboats. The last trip of a steamboat for passengers was made by the Ida Reese, Capt. Reese Reese, in April, 1868, and the last trip of a keelboat from Pittsburgh to Warren was by the Yorktown, the next month thereafter.

As early as 1825 there was a mail-stage line from Ebensburgh, Cambria county, Pa., via Indiana, Elderton and Kittanning, to Butler, leaving Ebens- burgh at 3 o'clock P. M. on Thursday and reaching Butler at 10 o'clock A. M. on the following Saturday. That was considered a very important line, be- cause it opened up a direct communication between the eastern and most western counties of this state, and a cheap and expeditious mode of conveyance. The fare from Ebensburgh to Butler was $3.75, 6 cents a mile for way passengers, and the time be- tween those two points was forty-three hours.

Either before or shortly after 1825 lines of stages were established extending from Freeport via Slate Lick, Worthington, Brady's Bend and Catfish, with a branch from Slate Lick via Kittanning, to

POSTAL AND TRAVELING FACILITIES.

Clarion, and another branch from the mouth of Mahoning to Brookville, which were withdrawn after the completion of the Allegheny Valley rail- road and its branches.

There were for awhile two opposition lines of stages running north from Freeport, and so brisk was the competition that passengers were carried for almost nothing, and in some instances furnished with meals and grog gratis.

While the canal was closed through the winter, and the river was too low for steamboats, stages were the public conveyances for passengers from this region to and from Pittsburgh. While the canal was open they were conveyed by packet- boats from Pittsburgh to Freeport, thence by stage-some of the time by a packet-boat towed by horses, to Kittanning and other points, and by canal packets also to Leechburgh, Apollo, and other points along the canal, and thence to their respective destinations by private conveyances.

Those who traveled those routes know the rate of speed with which trips used to be made. But for the information of those who will succeed us a century hence, it may be appropriate to state, in this connection, that it required about eighteen hours to make a trip by stage and canal from Kit- tanning to Pittsburgh. To us who used to be all night and half a day thus traveling forty-five miles, it is not as apparent as the sun at noon- day that travelers now-a-days have good reason to complain, as they sometimes do, in the accommo- dation trains on the Allegheny Valley railroad, which convey them very safely and comfortably the same distance in three hours.

By act of April 4, 1837, when the late Wmn. Th. Johnston, represented this county in the lower house of our state legislature, a charter was granted for constructing the Pittsburgh, Kittan- ning & Warren railroad. Varions supplements were afterward passed, by one of which the name was changed, as suggested by Josiah Copley, to the Allegheny Valley railroad. Nothing was done toward making the road until about fifteen years after the granting of the original charter, when Mr. Johnston, the first president of the board of managers, and other earnest and ener- getic friends of the project, began to utilize the power and privileges conferred by that charter, and succeeded in raising a sufficient amount of stock to build it as far as Kittanning, to which point it was completed in January, 1856, which was its northern terminus for about nine years, when the late William Phillips became the lead- ing energetic spirit in prosecuting its extension to Brady's Bend, and thence to Oil City, and in leas-

ing other roads above, until the company now con- trols the lines through to Brocton, N. Y., and Irvineton, on the Philadelphia & Erie railroad, in Warren county, Pa. Within the past few years the Bennett's Branch, or Low Grade Division, and several less branches, have been completed from the mouth of Red Bank Creek to Driftwood. Thus vast regions of country which were theretofore dependent on freshets in the Allegheny and its tributaries, and had country roads as means of travel and transportation, are now subserved by rapid transit on well-constructed and well-managed railroads, which enable the various classes of pro- ducers to throw their products into market when- ever they can command the highest prices there- for. In this connection the following incident is illustrative, and which is related substantially as the writer heard it : A farmer of this county, who was a stockholder in the Allegheny Valley rail- road, remarked on a certain occasion after the opening of the road to Kittanning, that he would be a gainer, even if he should not receive any div- idend on his shares of stock, because having on hand a considerable quantity of rye, in the winter when navigation was closed, he was enabled by the railroad to throw it into market so as to reap the benefit of the sudden advance in the price of his product, which soon after declined, so that by that one operation he cleared enough to com- pensate him for the money which he had invested in railroad stock.

Four daily passenger trains going north and the same number south traverse that part of this county lying along the Allegheny river, between the mouth of Kiskiminetas and the mouth of Red Bank, a distance of about thirty-five miles. The River Division on the Clarion side of the Alle- gheny river, and the Bennett's Branch or Low Grade Division, on the Clarion side of the Red Bank Creek, subserve the wants of the people of those portions of this county adjacent to those streams above their junction. The freight trains are numerous.

Two narrow-gauge railroads intersect the Alle- gheny Valley railroad, respectively, at Pine Creek and Parker stations.

The number of stations on the Allegheny Valley railroad in this county is thirteen. A telegraph line, belonging to the road, extends along the entire routes of the river division and the main branches, with several offices at proper distances between the Kiskiminetas and Red Bank.

The Allegheny valley is diversified with a pleas- ing variety of grand, beautiful and picturesque scenery, abounds in varied and valuable natural

HISTORY OF ARMSTRONG COUNTY.

resources, many of which have not yet been devel- oped, and is pervaded by a salubrious atmosphere, which is free from the miasma caused by sluggish streams and stagnant water. As its comely as well as rugged features, its hidden stores of wealth and its salubrity become more generally known, it must become more and more attractive to settlers, tourists and artists. Views of some of the finest and most varied scenery in the world can be enjoyed from the rear windows of the rear cars of trains passing up and down the Allegheny Valley railroad, to say nothing of the comfort and gratification and sense of security resulting from able and skillful manage- ment and the courtesy of obliging employes.

Bayard Taylor, in some of his correspondence several years ago, expressed his high appreciation of Alleghany Valley scenery, and especially that from the lower part of the Manor to the bend above Kittanning. The latter, he said, is not surpassed in beauty by any that he had seen in Italy or else- where.

On Friday night, May 5, 1876, Dom Pedro II, the present emperor of Brazil, passed through the Allegheny valley, from Pittsburgh to Oil City, on a special train of the Allegheny Valley railroad, and returned next day, reaching Kittanning about 1 P. M., from which point the train reached the union depot, Pittsburgh, in fifty-seven minutes. His majesty must have been very favorably im- pressed with what he saw between Oil City and Pittsburgh, for he remarked, in the presence of the conductor, Richard Reynolds, that "this (the Alle- gheny) is one of the finest valleys I have ever passed through." He said that his transit over the Allegheny Valley railroad had been more rapid than over any other railroad in the United States. That was after his return from California.

There is, verily, scope and verge enough of fine scenery along the Allegheny valley to attract to it the skill, genius and pencil of the best of artists.

The telegraph line was first extended into this county in the fall of 1863. There were for awhile two competing lines, the Western Union and the Atlantic & Pacific. The latter was discontinued in the course of a year or two after it was estab- lished, so that the former and the one belonging to the Allegheny Valley railroad are the only ones now in operation along the Allegheny valley.

MERCANTILE AND COMMERCIAL.

For several years after the organization of this county, the stores were few, and all, or nearly all, of them were located in the county town. Goods must have been sold sixty years ago at a reasonably large profit, for a Kittanning merchant of the olden

times having been asked, while making one of his purchases in Philadelphia, what percentage of profit he charged on his goods, replied that he didn't know anything about percentage, but if he bought an article for $1, and sold it for $2, he reckoned he didn't lose anything.

An act of 1823-4 required the county treasurers to publish annually, in November, a list of the names of all persons returned to them as retailers of foreign merchandise, designating those who had and those who had not taken out licenses in their respective counties. In pursuance of that require- ment the lists of such retailers, dated November 16, 1824, were published by James Pinks, the then treasurer of Armstrong county, in the Columbian of November 30, 1825, as follows :

"Lists of Retailers of Foreign Merchandise in Armstrong County who have taken out Licenses : Samuel Houston, Philip Mechling & Co., Alex- ander Colwell & Co., Jonathan H. Sloan, Richard Reynold & Co., Robert Robinson, Henry S. Weaver, David Stoner, William D. Barclay, John Elliott, Jr., Joseph Marshall, James Fitzgerald."

List of such as had not taken out Licenses : " Michael McCullough, John Fullerton, James Adams, Bear Creek Furnace, William P. Sterrett, Thomas Johnston (of Ind.), Andrew Hickenlooper, Andrew Sterrett."

Thus it appears that then the total number of stores in this county, which then extended up to the Clarion river, was twenty. The number of stores of all kinds in 1840 was seventy-nine.

The mercantile appraiser's list for 1876 presents 358 wholesale and retail dealers, rated thus : In the 14th class, or those selling less than $5,000 worth of goods a year, 278 ;* 13th class, selling from $5,000 to $10,000 worth a year, 45; 12th class, selling from $10,000 to $15,000 worth a year, 21; 11th elass, selling from $15,000 to $20,000 worth a year, 9; 10th class, selling from $20,000 to $30,000 worth a year, 2; 9th class, selling from. $30,000 to $40,000 worth a year, 2; 4th class, sell- ing from $50,000 to $100,000 worth a year, 1.

DISTILLERIES.

The number of distilleries in 1840 was twenty- five, and they produced 20,633 gallons of distilled spirits, or nearly a gallon to each man, woman and child in the county. There is now only one distil- lery, which annually produces about 50,000 gallons of whisky, or a little less than a gallon to each

* Twelve of those appraised in this class were exonerated from paying mercantile license, because they proved that they were not engaged in the mercantile business at all. So that the real number of wholesale and retail dealers in all classes is 346 instead of 358, and the number in the 14th class is 266 instead of 278.

AGRICULTURAL.

man, woman and child, if it were sold in this county. Heretofore there was but one brewery, now there are two.

IRON FURNACES.

Three furnaces for making iron were in blast in this county in 1830, one of which was then the largest in the United States, yielding forty tons per week, and the other two respectively fifteen and fourteen tons. All of them went out of blast or ceased to be operated many years since. Of the eleven others which followed them only three are now in blast.

The four rolling-mills heretofore operated are at present idle.

Some other industrial interests will be noticed in the more local sketches.

SALT WELLS.

The number of salt wells in this county in. 1830 was twenty-four, which produced annually 65,500 barrels of salt, each containing five bushels, which sold at $2.12 per barrel. Those wells were chiefly along the Allegheny and Kiskiminetas rivers. They were from 500 to 650 feet deep, three inches in diameter for the first 200 feet, and two inches in diameter below that depth.

To aid in perpetuating a knowledge of the cost of boring salt wells, and the art of making salt, a few facts in relation thereto are here inserted. The boring or drilling of a salt well then cost $2 a foot for the first 500 feet, and $3 a foot below that depth. To prevent the fresh from mingling with the salt water, copper tubes with bags of flax-seed tied around them were inserted into the wells to just above the point where the salt water is reached. The swelling of the flax-seed filled the hole around the tube, and thus prevented the fresh from reach- ing the salt water below. The brine, after having been pumped through those tubes by steam power into large reservoirs, flowed thence into the boiling pans, whence, after boiling the requisite length of time, it was turned into a cooling vat, where the sediments settled and was passed thence into the graining pan, where, after evaporation, the salt remained in the bottom. Those pans were eight feet wide, twenty feet long, and placed over furnaces in which the requisite heat was main- tained. Each establishment consumed daily from 175 to 200 bushels of bituminous coal. The cost of boring such a well in 1840 was about $3,500. The annual yield of salt from a single well was from 1,000 to 5,000 barrels.

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History of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, Part 9

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