USA > Pennsylvania > Beaver County > History of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and Its Centennial Celebration, Volume II > Part 50
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Among the old settlers who occupied seats on the rostrum were:
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Thomas M. Courtney, of Poland Ohio, formerly of Darling- ton, eighty-one years old.
Joseph Pugh of New Brighton, ninety-two years old, hale and hearty then but since deceased.
Miss Harriet Lyon of Washington, D. C., youngest daughter of the late James Lyon of Beaver.
Mrs. Dr. George Allison of Beaver.
Mattison Darragh of Bridgewater.
Socrates Small of Beaver Falls.
John Reeves of Beaver Falls.
Mrs. Edward R. Sullivan of Pittsburg.
De Witt C. Champlin of New Brighton, eighty-five years old. William Laughlin of Greene township, eighty-four years old.
Hon. Henry Edwards of Lawrence County, eighty-eight years old.
Benjamin McFarland of South Beaver township, eighty years old
Rev. Father A. A. Lambing, LL.D., pastor of St. James's Roman Catholic Church of Wilkinsburg, Pa., and President of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, was then intro- duced and spoke on "The Influence of Early Catholic Missions; or, The First Echoes of Divine Providence on the Upper Waters of the Ohio."
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:
When we address ourselves to the study of the early history of America, we stand, as the early chroniclers of the countries of the Old World did, on the border-line between the mythical and the real, between fable and fact. But we have the additional disadvantage of not being able to conjure up the capricious gods and goddesses of the classic ages of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. While there may be little satisfaction in peering into the mists of pre-historic times, there is yet, it cannot be denied, a certain charm about it; and besides, it is inevitable in our researches into the beginnings of peoples and nations. Even to the matter-of-fact American mind it is not without its attractions. And while it is inseparable from the history of the various branches of the human family, it is also in- separable from the records of their religious beliefs. But laying mythical traditions aside as unsatisfactory to the mind, though pleasing to the imagination, we shall venture into the somewhat uncertain ground of the outposts of authentic religious history.
The history of the human race proves to us that there is an intuition of the Supreme Being in the minds of all primitive peoples, however differently their natural, social, or climatic conditions may cause them to embody it in sculpture or express it in words. And the aborigines of
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America were no exception, as our earliest records amply prove. But it does not fall to my lot to deal with this feature of the subject; I have to treat of the introduction of the religion of Christ into this beautiful valley.
By what messenger of the Redeemer of man were the first rays of divine truth made to shine on the barbarous and savage denizens of the forests of the Western World? The early Christian missionaries who first penetrated into Mexico and Central America believed that they met with such evidences of Christian teaching and practice among the peoples whom they visited as to justify them in concluding that St. Thomas, one of the twelve Apostles, had penetrated those regions; and . there are not wanting persons in our own day who adhere to the same opinion. Authentic tradition had been handed down through the ages that he had preached the gospel in India; and as Columbus and his immediate followers believed that they had penetrated to India, their theory did not appear to them at all improbable. Be all this as it may, it will hardly be maintained that the red men of the headwaters of the Ohio a century and a half ago were affected one way or the other by what may or may not have occurred in countries so far distant and so long before the dawn of authentic history.
Next we have the claim put forward by some of the admirers of the Irish monk, St. Brendan, who was superior of a monastery in County Kerry, on the west coast of Ireland, and who died in 578. That his mis- sionary zeal made him a very remarkable navigator, according to the standard of those primitive times, there can be no question; but the accounts of his adventures that have come down to us are so indefinite and mingle the real so much with the mythical, that it is impossible to separate the one from the other. But, though some of his most ardent admirers will have it not only that he crossed the ocean to America, but that he actually crossed the Alleghenies and penetrated to the head- waters of the Ohio, this is not to be entertained for a moment.
Again, we have the adventures of the Norsemen; and little need be said of their daring spirit. That they crossed the Atlantic and ex- plored the northern coast of America, there is not the shadow of a doubt. Indeed there is extant evidence that they planted the seeds of religion so successfully that a bishopric was established somewhere on the shores of New England before the beginning of the eleventh century, and existed for a long time, but just how long it would now be difficult if not impossible to determine. And as it is of the very essence of the Chris- tian religion to diffuse itself, and make others partakers of the blessings which it imparts, it would be something unusual indeed if this missionary spirit did not manifest itself here as everywhere else. But in all my reading of the aboriginal history of this region of the Western World, I have found but one single reference to the existence of a tradition that would point to any previous preaching of the gospel to the natives of that part of our continent; and that tradition was so indefinite as to be of no practical value. It is certain, however, that no missionary penetrated to the headwaters of our noble stream.
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Approaching the dawn of authentic history, we learn that Lucas de Ayllon sailed north from Florida to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in June, 1526, and "entering the capes he ascended a river, and began the establishment of his colony at Guandpe, giving it the name of St. Michael, the spot being by the testimony of Ecija, the pilot-in-chief of Florida, that where the English subsequently founded Jamestown. Houses were erected and the Holy Sacrifice was offered in a temporary chapel by the zealous priests. The Dominican Fathers Anthony de Montesinos and Anthony de Cervantes, with Brother Peter de Astrada, accompanied the colonists. Sickness soon showed itself; Ayllon sinking "under a pestilential fever died in the arms of the Dominican priests on St. Luke's day, October 18, 1526. . . . Francis Gomess, who succeeded to the command, could not control the people. . It was at last resolved to abandon the country." (Dr. John G. Shea's History of the Catholic Church in the United States, vol. i., pp. 106-7.) But none of these missionaries crossed the mountains.
The minister of religion to whom beyond all doubt is due the honor of having first appeared in the valley of the Ohio and the Allegheny and Ohio were then known by the common name Ohio-was Rev. Joseph Peter Bonnecamps, a member of the Society of Jesus, who accompanied Celeron's expedition down this stream as chaplain, astronomer, and hydrographer in the summer of 1749. The expedition stopped for the night of the 5th and 6th of August at the mouth of Mahoning Creek, fifty-five miles above Pittsburg, and there on the morning of the 6th before the expedition set out, he celebrated Mass, which is the first public religious ceremony ever performed in western Pennsylvania. The ex- pedition arrived at Logstown, which the French called Chiningue, which is evidently the same as Shenango, eighteen miles below Pittsburg on the north side of the Ohio on the evening of August 7th. Here were heard the first echoes of the divine voice in the immediate vicinity of Beaver. But it was only a passing act of praise, a momentary hymn to the Most High. Four more years were to elapse before an altar would be again raised to call upon the name of the Lord. Father Bonnecamps was born at Vannes, France, September 5, 1707; entered the Society of Jesus, November 3, 1727; arrived in Canada in 1741-another account has it July 21, 1742- taught higher mathematics and hydrography in the Jesuit college at Quebec-for he does not appear to have been engaged in missionary work-returned to France in April, 1759, and died at Chateau of Tron- joly, parish of Gourin, Morbihan, May 28, 1790. Who will erect a monument to his memory on the shore of the Beautiful River?
During the period of the French occupation of the valley of the Ohio, that is, from April, 1754, to November, 1758, a chaplain, a member of the order of Recollects, which is a branch of the Franciscan order, Rev. Denys Baron, was stationed at Fort Duquesne, and was occasionally assisted by certain of his clerical brethren. A chaplain generally accom- panied every excursion or raid into the enemy's country of any import- ance, and in this way religious services were performed in several parts of the country, but just when or where, it would be impossible to say. But
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inasmuch as the valley of the Beaver was one of the routes by which they sometimes passed up to their posts on Lake Erie, it is not improbable that services were held along its course at times. About this time another at- tempt was made to establish a missionary post among the Indians at the mouth of the Beaver, and certainly not far from the very spot we now occupy. An account of this episode in our early religious history will be especially interesting. It will be remembered that a few years ago a petrified cross was found near the neighboring town of Rochester, which certain persons attempted to connect with some early and forgotten mis- sionary's labors in that region; but geologists, upon a careful study of it, pronounced it no more than a freak of nature. But what field of specula- tion would it not have opened for some lively imagination had the facts which I am now to relate concerning an early missionary who visited that region been known at that time. They are these: The Jesuit Father Claude Francis Virot, who had labored in the Abenaki missions in the present State of Maine, was sent by his superiors to found a mission among the Delaware Indians who had settled on and near the banks of the Ohio below Fort Duquesne. He planted his mission cross at Sawkunk, as the Indians styled the mouth of the Beaver; and here he persevered in his good work till Pakanke, chief of the Wolf branch of the tribe, drove him off. Referring to his undertaking another member of the Society, Rev. Peter Joseph Antoine Rouband, states in a letter, dated October 21, 1757: "I set out on the 12th of July from St. Francis-the principal village of the Abenaki mission-to go to Montreal, the purpose of my journey was simply to bring to Monsieur the Marquis de Vaudreuil, then governor- general of New France, a deputation of twenty Abenakis appointed to accompany Father Virot, who has gone to try to found a mission among the Loups (Wolves) of the Oyo, or the Beautiful River." It is not known how long the zealous missionary labored in his unsuccessful attempt on the Ohio; but it is probable that it was not very long, owing to the hatred which Pakanke had for Christian missionaries. Rev. Claude F. Virot was born in France, February 16, 1721, entered the Society of Jesus in the Province of Toulouse, October 10, 1738, and was sent to Canada in 1750; after his Delaware mission he acted as chaplain to Aubrey's force, and was killed in the attempt to relieve Fort Niagara, in July, 1759.
I need not dwell on the attempts of the Moravian missionaries to Christianize the Indians of this region, which were commenced about the year 1770; I take it for granted they are sufficiently well-known to most of you. And the same may be said of the work of the Harmony Society, early in the nineteenth century. After the expulsion of the French the English and colonial forces occupying Fort Pitt and protecting the frontier or waging war against the Indians were attended to a greater or less extent by ministers of the several denominations of which they were composed, which were for the most part either Presbyterian or Episcopal. The first settlements that sprang up in this region were almost exclusively Presbyterian. But I shall not stop to treat of these; the task has been assigned to other and abler hands.
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No Catholic missionaries were located in this immediate region after the withdrawal of the French till near the close of the eighteenth century, when priests from Sportsman's Hall, now St. Vincent's Abbey. near Latrobe, visited the scattered families at distant and irregular inter- vals; or the Rev. Patrick Lonergan from Waynesburg appeared occa- sionally among them for a few years about the same time. At length a resident priest was appointed for Pittsburg, in 1808, who had under his pastoral care all the members of his faith in the entire south-western part of the State, including, of course, the spot we now occupy. But it was not until the year 1834 that a sufficient number was found in Beaver and its immediate vicinity to justify the undertaking of a church. The resources of the little flock were naturally very limited, but they had the good will and to some extent the substantial support of their fellow- citizens, and to still further encourage them, a gentleman not of their faith, a Mr. James W. Hemphill, donated a veryeligible lot of ground as the site of the new house of worship. The building, though small and un- pretentious, was not dedicated till 1837, the ceremony being performed by Bishop Francis P. Kenrick, of Philadelphia, to which diocese this part of the State belonged till the erection of the diocese of Pittsburg, in 1843. For the next ten years the church was attended from Pittsburg, but in 1847, it was placed under the pastoral care of Rev. James Reid, who while residing in Beaver attended the entire Beaver valley for many years. He is well and favorably remembered by many of the older among you; and the history of religion since his day is within the recollection of so many that it is unnecessary for me to pursue this subject further. The im- posing and elegant church buildings, whose tapering steeples point to heaven on all sides of us, bear unmistakable evidence that the first echoes of the divine voice have not been permitted to die away; that the mustard seed planted by our zealous and indefatigable predecessors, in the sweat of their brow, has indeed grown to a great tree. I shall then close: thanking you, ladies and gentlemen, for the kind attention with which you have listened to my remarks.
After Father Lambing's address the chairman announced that a series of talks by the descendants of the early pioneers would be given. These speeches were limited to ten minutes each, and were very entertaining.
W. H. S. Thomson, Esq., a prominent Pittsburg attorney, and a former member of the bar of Beaver County, was the first speaker. His subject was "The Pioneer."
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:
Old Settler's Day is suggestive of the Pioneer. The word originally meant the foot-soldiers who were detailed to make roads and build bridges for the advance of an army. This word was naturally soon applied to those brave men who led the race into new lands,-who dis- covered rivers flowing through shrouded forests, from an unknown
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source; mountains without a name, looming up from the depths of a profound silence; cataracts which for ages had sung their sweet song to nature alone; deserts with pale faces turned pleading to the sky; valleys with accumulated riches, quietly awaiting the coming of man; forests, deep and dark and pathless. The Pioneer crossed those rivers, climbed those mountains, traversed those deserts, ascended those valleys, and trod those silent forest depths alone. He was a brave soul. His was a mission demanding the highest courage. Nature and wild beasts and savage man, all arrayed against him: he must conquer them all. For the faint hearted, there was no room in the cabin of the Pioneer. Without comprehending the fact, he was highly commissioned-he was the repre- sentative in the wilderness of the coming peoples. Had he not gone be- fore, they would not have followed after. While apparently only obeying the promptings of an adventurous spirit, he really bore the banner of civilization with orders to plant it on the outer wall.
With the idea of reaching India by a shorter way, and finding immense treasures hidden there, as well as of carrying the gospel to the heathen of unknown lands, Columbus sailed blindly westward. The continent he discovered near the mouth of the Orinoco, he believed to be an island, near the coast of Asia, and he died in ignorance of the grandeur of his dis- coveries. Though he was returned from his third voyage to his country in chains, and was allowed to die in obscurity and neglect, yet he added luster to the Spanish name, and a hemisphere to the Spanish Realm.
Ferdinand De Soto, the bold adventurer, had gained wealth and military honors with Pizarro in Peru. But not content with these, he determined to penetrate the American wilderness, in search of a fancied land of gold. Landing in 1539 on the shores of Tampa Bay with six hundred followers, he made his way among hostile savages, the Cherokees, the Chickasaws, the fierce Mobilian tribes. After painful wanderings of more than 2000 miles, his troops decimated by disease and battle, he dis- covered the Mississippi River only a little later to die upon its banks and be buried in its bosom. Seeking a land of gold, he found a land on which an empire might be built. Vainly seeking fancied treasures, he found a mighty river, a splendid highway for a nation's coming commerce.
The wife and daughters of Daniel Boone were the first white women to set foot in the valleys west of the Alleghenies. Boone planted the first settlement in Kentucky, battled with Indians, was imprisoned and escaped, shared every privation, braved every danger of the forest. Active in all matters pertaining to the settlement of Kentucky until it became an independent State, he was the father of that Commonwealth; and yet under her laws, he was doomed to be disinherited of every foot of land he had redeemed from the wilderness, and at the age of eighty we find him trapping beaver for a living, on the Little Osage River, west of the Mississippi. These are but examples. The story of this country is rich with the names and deeds and sacrifices of its pioneers. Davy Crockett, with his rifle on his shoulder in the wilds of the Tennessee, is a striking historic figure. Not less so than when in the struggle for Texan inde- pendence, he fell with a dozen bullets through his breast, the hero of the
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Alamo. The name of Kit Carson is indissolubly linked with the peaks and passes of the Rocky Mountains, and that of Buffalo Bill with the wild Western Plains. The pioneers are the heroes of every settlement, of every county, of every State, in all this land. Go where you will, sit down by the fireside of the native and ask him of the early days. He will tell you the same story of danger and hardship and sacrifice and heroic courage. These men made history. They were the vanguard of the coming millions. They lighted the torch of civilization in every valley, and lifted her banners on every hilltop, from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande, and from Cape Hatteras to the Golden Gate. They laid in the forests and on the plains the foundations for a greater struc- ture. They made the Republic possible. They made possible our nation of to-day,-the nation with its myriad homes, its boundless fields of grain, the nation with its wondrous cities, its vast and varied indus- tries, its throbbing marts of trade, the nation with its rushing commerce, its netted iron highways, coupling Lakes to Gulf, and inland cities to the seas. These followed the pathway of the Pioneer. These cities are but an enlargement of his cabin, these grain fields but an extension of his little patch of ground. The transcontinental railways kept closely to the trapper's trail.
It is highly fitting that on this occasion, celebrating the one hundredth year of the county's existence, you should set apart a day in special honor of her early settlers. They earned this simple tribute well. Dun- gan and Baker and Foulkes and McIntosh and Brady and the Poes, these and other names are not only sacred here, but are treasured in the na- tion's thrilling story. Longer than the county shall exist, these names shall live. History will preserve them. But should that eventually fail, I imagine that tradition would still whisper to the children on the banks of the Raccoon and the Ohio, the shadowy legend of Poe and Big Foot.
Mr. Thomson was followed by Rev. Albert Dilworth of Darlington, who spoke on "An Instructive Yesterday."
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:
Man is naturally prone to look forward to the future. There are, however, occasions that render it both interesting and profitable to look backward to the past. The present is such an occasion; and it quite naturally would lead us to a contemplation of the beginnings of civilized life in this western part of the State of Pennsylvania; to take a survey of the conditions of life, as life was lived by the first settlers in this region.
Most of us know something of those conditions. Our knowledge of them has come to us through tradition and history. It is well for us on such an occasion as this to turn backward and dwell upon the experiences of the pioneers who made the first homes in this beautiful part of our country. It would be almost impossible to conceive of a greater con- trast in civilized life than is presented to us, when we compare life as it is to-day with the mode of life of those who settled this region over one
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hundred years ago. The beginnings of civilized life, almost anywhere on the earth, imply hardship and peril, and this is especially true when the incoming of a civilized people implies the supplanting of a savage race, as was the case in this country.
In the whole history of the world it has been rare indeed that a people, in taking possession of a part of the earth's surface, has had a more formidable foe to contend against than was the North American Indian. Civilization was planted in that great island or continent of Australia by the same race that planted it here in North America, but the native blacks of Australia were almost no impediment in the way.
The history of the State of Pennsylvania, up to the date of Wayne's victory over the Confederated Indian tribes on the Maumee River, is, taken as a whole, a harrowing tale. That part of the State of Pennsyl- vania east of the Susquehanna River was settled principally by German emigrants from the Palatinate, driven out of Europe by the desolating wars that raged there in the first half of the eighteenth century. Then came the indomitable Scotch-Irish from the North of Ireland, who, striking out into the wilderness, passed on to, and over the Alleghenies, in the face of as pitiless and relentless a foe as ever stemmed the tide of advancing civilization, and on to the western boundary of the State.
A single fact connected with that marvelous expedition of Col. Bou- quet against the Indians, in what is now the State of Ohio, will furnish some conception of what it cost in blood, and tears, and anguish to estab- lish civilized life in this State of Pennsylvania. Col. Bouquet and his force, in both going and returning, passed near to where we are to-day assembled, and the fact referred to is, that on his return, he brought with him over three hundred white captives, whom his consummate tact, in dealing with Indian character, had compelled the reluctant savages to deliver up to him. When we remember Indian modes of warfare we are authorized to conclude that these more than three hundred captives rescued implied that at least an equal number had fallen under the deadly tomahawk or rifle, or had been put to death by slow torture.
Now it is true that as the greater part of Beaver. County was not settled until after Wayne's victory over the Indians, that constant dread of the lurking savage, which threw a dark shadow over the lives of the settlers in other parts of the State, was not a condition of life in this county, excepting that part of it which lies south of the Ohio River, but without this, there were enough elements of hardness to render life anything but a summer day-dream.
It would require a volume to depict in detail the privation and hard- ship implied in going out into the wilderness and making a home one hundred years ago, even under most favorable conditions then, judged from the standpoint of to-day. The log cabin of a century ago with its few and simple, even rude appointments, in the character that was molded within its walls, demonstrated, to a certainty, one thing; viz :- That a high type of manhood and womanhood and a high order of relig- ious devotion may be attained without either brussels carpet, the piano, or silver spoons. One thing that sometimes proved a very difficult
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