USA > Pennsylvania > Beaver County > History of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and its centennial celebration, Volume I > Part 22
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no ammunition, they had taken to their heels and ran off Brady was desirous of seeing the Indian he had shot, and the officer in com- mand of Fort McIntosh gave him some men in addition to his own, and he returned to search for the body. The place where he had fallen was discovered, but nothing more. They were about to quit the place, when the yell of a pet Indian that came with them from the fort, called them to a little glade, where the grave was discovered. The Indians had in- terred their dead brother, carefully replacing the sod in the neatest manner. They had also cut brushes and stuck them into the ground; but the brushes had withered, and instead of concealing the grave, they had led to the discovery. He was buried about two feet deep, with all
1 P. 105.
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his implements of war about him. All his savage jewelry, his arms and ammunition were taken from him, and the scalp from his head, and then they left him thus stripped in his grave.I
From Brodhead's letter above it would seem that this adven- ture took place somewhere near Kuskuskee, instead, as some have thought, on what is to-day known as Brady's Run. But it was at any rate within the former limits of Beaver County.
THE LAST INDIAN MURDER WITHIN THE LIMITS OF BEAVER COUNTY
In the closing part of March, 1790, Jacob Colvin and his wife Mary started in the morning from the house of Mrs. Colvin's father, Samuel Van Swearingen, to prepare for their home a house and garden on the farm which is now occupied by William Ramsey, and owned by John Morton, situated in Hanover town- ship. This couple had been married something over a year, and took with them their child. They had worked all the forenoon and were on their way back to the house, Mrs. Colvin riding be- hind her husband on the same horse, and carrying her little child, perhaps four months old, upon her lap. Without any warning, when about one half mile from her father's house, and on his farm, two sharp rifle-shots rang out upon the air and the balls passed through her body, and also through the arm and side of the husband. The husband and wife both fell from the horse.
Mr. Colvin got to his feet and endeavored to assist his wife, but, seeing that she was beyond help, and that the Indians were approaching, he managed to get on his horse and escaped to the house. The shooting attracted the attention of the neighbors, and within a couple of hours a rescuing party was formed and proceeded to the place of the murder. They found the body of Mrs. Colvin, who had been scalped, and that of her babe, which had been brained upon the side of a tree. Other neighbors soon arrived and a party was formed which followed the retreating savages to the bank of the river at the mouth of King's Creek in what is now Hancock County, W. Va. The pursuers did not dare to cross the river and that was the end of their search. Among the settlers who followed on this search were James Whitehill and William Langfitt, grandfather of Joseph A. Lang- fitt, President of the Federal National Bank of Pittsburg, Pa.
1 See also De Hass's account in History of Early Settlements, etc., p. 383.
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This murder was the last committed by the Indians within what is now Beaver County.
Samuel Van Swearingen, above named, had emigrated from Maryland, and settled in Hanover township a short time before this upon the farm that is now owned and occupied by James Van Swearingen, and where he lived until the time of his death. He was buried in the Swearingen burial-ground upon the old home farm. This old settler was an ancestor of Joseph M. Swear- ingen of the Pittsburg bar, and Rev. Harry Swearingen of the United Presbyterian Church of Pittsburg, Pa., and William, John, and Frank Swearingen, who now reside in the Mill Creek Valley.
Among the men of mental and moral force to early settle in Beaver County was Walter Clarke. Clarke was a native of what is now Dauphin County, and his parents were early members of the old Paxtang Presbyterian Church. Moving to what was then Dueerstown-now Lewisburg-in 1771, he became a leading public man, and was sent to represent Northumberland County in the Constitutional Convention of 1776, which followed close upon the Declaration of Independence, and over which Benjamin Franklin presided. The volumes of the Pennsylvania Archives contain many pages of his accounts as a member of the Com- mittee of Public Safety during the Revolutionary War.
Soon after the Depreciation lands were opened for settlement, Clarke came to what was later Beaver (now Lawrence) County, and settled on a tract of land in North Beaver township, con- tiguous to the old Westfield meeting-house, in whose churchyard he was buried in 1802. Later his son John became prothonotary of Beaver County, and in 1836 represented his district in the Constitutional Convention of that year,-thus filling a similar position to the one his father had held in a former convention, sixty years before. Walter Clarke's son-in-law, John Nesbit, became an associate judge of the Beaver County courts. His grandsons were also prominent in business and politics.
The side of Beaver County south of the Ohio River was, as we have said, the first to be settled; the north side being until a late period known as the "Indian side," or the "Indian country," and avoided by all but the most daring and adven- turous. Even after the Indian claims had been quieted by the treaties of 1784 and 1785, the Indians themselves were not
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quieted, and any who attempted to settle north of the Ohio took their lives in their hands in so doing. The Indian rights were also, previous to those treaties, strictly guarded by the Govern- ment.1 It was not until after Wayne's victory over the Miami Con- federacy in 1794, and the treaty of Greenville in the following year, that settlements on that side could be safely undertaken. Nevertheless, prior to that, several attempts at settlement were made within the present bounds of Beaver County on the west side of Beaver Creek. William Foulkes is thought to have made one in 1792 in what is now Ohio township, between Salem church and the Little Beaver. But it is certain that Nicholas Dawson, a brother of Benoni Dawson of Georgetown, and Neal Mclaughlin started settlements on the north side about four miles back from the river and west of the Big Beaver, in April, 1792. This ap- pears from the record of the suit between these two parties in the Allegheny County court, October, 1800, for the possession of the property. Mclaughlin, the plaintiff, won the suit, on the ground that he had more nearly fulfilled the conditions of the law defining the acts necessary to constitute actual settlement, although Dawson, the defendant, was one day ahead of him in entering upon the land.2 Benoni Dawson also, as shown in the
1 The following letter from Brodhead to Washington will show how anxious the au- thorities were to prevent premature settlement in the Indian country:
"PITTSBURGH, Oct. 26, 1779.
'DEAR GEN'L :- "Immediately after I had closed my last (of the 9th of this instant,) I rec'd a letter from Col. Shepherd Lieut. of Ohio County, informing me that a certain Decker, Cox & Comp'y with others had crossed the Ohio River, and committed trespasses on the Indians' lands wherefore I ordered sixty Rank and File to be equipped, & Capt. Clarke of the 8th Pen' Reg't proceeded with this party to Wheeling, with orders to cross the River at that part, & to apprehend some of the principal Trespassers, and destroy the Hutts-He returned without finding any of the Trespassers, but destroyed some Hutts. He writes me the inhabitants have made small improvements all the way from the Muskingum River to Fort McIntosh & thirty miles up some of the Branches. I sent a runner to the Delaware Council at Coochocking [Coshocton, O.] to inform them of the trespass, & assure them it was com- mitted by some foolish people, & requested them to rely on my doing them justice & punish- ing the offenders, but as yet have not received an answer."-(Penna. Arch., vol. xii., p. 176.)
To the same effect is the following order of General Irvine:
"ORDER, FORT PITT, February 25, 1783.
"Any person who shall presume to ferry either men or women over the Ohio or Alle- gheny rivers or shall be found crossing over into what is generally called the Indian country between the Kittanning and Fort McIntosh without a written permit from the commanding officer at Fort Pitt, or orders for that purpose-until further orders shall be treated and prosecuted for holding or aiding others to correspond with and give intelligence to, the enemy. This order to be in force until civil government thinks proper to direct otherwise." -(Wash .- Irvine Cor., p. 261.)
2 For Mclaughlin vs. Dawson, see Smith's Laws of Pennsylvania, 1781-'90, p. 209.
We give copies of the following warrants from the Warrant Book of Beaver County for their intrinsic interest, and we surmise that the second is the warrant for the land for which the above-named suit was brought:
"1793, July 15, Benoni Dawson, Jr., Enters a warrant for 300 acres of land on the west [northwest] of the Ohio and east of little Beaver creek, two or three miles up said creek near
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note below, began improvements north of the Ohio in April, 1792, and in November of that year William Williams made a settle- ment on "Buck Run," now Walnut Bottom Run, and was there in 1796.
It is not known who was the first permanent settler north of the Ohio and east of the Beaver Creek. So far as we can learn there are not even any persons named as entitled to the honor of having been the first to enter that portion of the county.
One of the first to improve the land at the falls of the Beaver was John McKee, of what is now Mckeesport. This improve- ment is described in the chapter of this work on Fallston borough, to which the reader is referred.1
LIFE OF THE PIONEERS
We need a good deal of what is called the "historic imagina- tion " to enable us rightly to conceive the life of our forefathers in these western wilds. We too often throw the glamour of romance over it, and fail to realize how stern and hard was the actual existence of the pioneer settlers.
There were few families in those days that had not had good reason in the loss of dear ones to dread the coming of the savages, and the fear of their attacks was ever present with them. Their daily labors had to be carried on in constant preparation against surprise. While at work in field or forest their trusty rifles had to be within easy reach; sometimes they even laid them across the plough-handles that not a moment might be lost in case of need. Helpless women and children and the sick had often to be left alone in the house, when the settler, on his return, would not know if he should find them still alive or see their mutilated corpses lying amid the charred timbers of a ruined homestead. The rumor of an Indian attack sent the scattered settlers flying to central points of refuge and defense. These were the so-called "forts" and "blockhouses." Crumrine's History of Washington County says (p. 73) :
the western Boundary of the State. Including his improvements begun the 30th day of April, 1792, and dated the 22d Feb., 1793."
"1793, August 23d, Neal Mclaughlin Enters a warrant dated May 16, 1793, for 400 acres of land on the northwest side of the Ohio river-between the Big and little Beaver creeks, on the north fork of Dry Run, adjoining lands of Hugh Graham on the north and John Little on the east to include a settlement made in the year 1792 in Pittsburgh [Pitt?] township, Allegheny County."
1 There will be found in Appendix No. V. a very large number of names of other early settlers in the various portions of the county in the lists of taxables which we have copied for this work from the tax duplicates preserved in the proper office in Beaver.
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The " settlers' forts " and block-houses, of which there were many in the territory that is now Washington County were erected by the associated efforts of settlers in particular neighborhoods upon the land of some one, whose name was thereupon given to the fort, as Vance's fort, Beelor's fort, etc. They consisted of a greater or less space of land, in- closed on all sides by high log parapets or stockades, with cabins adapted to the abode of families. The only external openings were a large pun- cheon gate and small port-holes among the logs, through which the rifle of the settler could be pointed against the assailants. Some times, as at Lindley's, and many of the other forts in the adjacent country west of the Monongahela, additional cabins were erected outside of the fort for temporary abode in times of danger, from which the sojourners could in case of attack retreat within the fort.
Doddridge, in his Notes on the Early Settlements and Indian Wars, describes them as follows:
The fort consisted of cabins, block-houses and stockades. A range of cabins commonly formed one side at least of the fort. Divisions or par- titions of logs separated the cabins from each other. The walls on the outside were ten or twelve feet high, the slope of the roof being turned wholly inward. A very few of these cabins had puncheon floors, the greater part were earthen. The block-houses were built at the angles of the fort. They projected about two feet beyond the outer walls of the cabins and stockades. Their upper stories were about eighteen inches every way larger in dimension than the under one, leaving an opening at the commencement of the second story to prevent an enemy making a lodgement under the walls. In some forts the angles of the fort were furnished with bastions instead of block-houses. A large folding gate, made of thick slabs, nearest the spring, closed the fort. The stockades, bastions, cabins and block-house walls were furnished with port-holes at proper heights and distances. The whole of the outside was made com- pletely bullet-proof. It may be truly said that necessity is the mother of invention, for the whole of this work was made without the aid of a single nail or spike of iron, and for the reason that such things were not to be had. In some places less exposed a single block-house, with a cabin or two, constituted the whole fort. Such places of refuge may appear very trifling to those who have been in the habit of seeing the formidable mili- tary garrisons of Europe and America, but they answered the purpose, as the Indians had no artillery. They seldom attacked, and scarcely ever took one of them.
We do not think that the forts which were constructed in the region that is now Beaver County were ever so formidable as those described above. We believe that they were in fact nothing more than the dwellings of the settlers strongly constructed of logs, built for the double purpose of affording abodes and places
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of defense. Some of these houses, on account of their superior strength or advantage of situation, came to be chosen points of refuge, in which all the families of a given neighborhood would assemble in case of an Indian invasion or threat of one. Thus the tradition of these places of assemblage has always represented them as being genuine strongholds, or forts. Levi Dungan's house was one of these "forts." I Five miles east of his house, in Hanover township, Washington County, was Thomas Dil- low's place, spoken of above. Baker's house on Raccoon Creek has been mentioned previously. Michael Chrisler, who has de- scendants still living in the county, built his house as early as 1790 about four miles from the mouth of Raccoon. This was also known as a fort. In 1786 Benoni Dawson built a "fort" on the site of Georgetown, and his son, Thomas Dawson, one on the other side of the river some years later. These were doubt- less, as we have said, strong log cabins. Other such places of which the tradition remains are John Wolf's on Sewickley bot- tom, one near the present Monaca, and one built by Colonel John Gibson on Logstown bottom, opposite the old Indian Logstown.
But the dangers which arose from the proximity of their savage foes were not the only sources of trial to our brave pro- genitors. In other respects they endured hardships such as the present generation can scarcely appreciate. They knew little of the luxuries of life and were often hardly able to obtain its necessities.2 In matters of dress both men and women were sometimes at a loss to know how to hide their nakedness. There were then no Miss Flora McFlimseys, who with trunks full of dresses had still "nothing to wear." In the pioneer times
1 What we have said above as to the character of the forts in this immediate region is confirmed by what is said in a letter from the Hon. Warren S. Dungan, a grandson of Levi Dungan. He writes:
"That all these 'block-houses' or 'forts' were the ordinary dwelling houses, built for the double purpose of residence and defense you may rely upon. I received this statement from my father many a time."
2 The "staff of life" was sometimes wanting, and its lack seems to have been felt as a great hardship. Doddridge says:
"The Indian meal which my father brought over the mountain was expended six weeks too soon, so for that length of time we had to live without bread. The lean venison and the breast of wild turkeys we were taught to call bread. The flesh of the bear was denomi- nated meat. This artifice did not succeed very well. After living in this way for some time we became sickly, the stomach seemed to be always empty, and tormented with a sense of hunger. I remember how narrowly the children watched the growth of the potato tops, pumpkin and squash vines, hoping from day to day to get something to answer in the place of bread. How delicious was the taste of the young potatoes when we got them! What a jubilee when we were permitted to pull the young corn for roasting ears! Still more so when it had acquired sufficient hardness to be made into johnny cakes by the aid of a tin grater. We then became healthy, vigorous, and contented with our situation, poor as it was."
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flaxen cloth and linsey-woolsey were used for the garments of the women and the shirts of the men, and buckskin was a staple article for dress and footwear. There was sometimes a scarcity of these even. Hon. Samuel Wilkeson, in his "Early Recollections of the West," I says:
So great was the destitution of comfortable clothing, that when the first Court of Common Pleas was held at Catfish, now Washington, Pa., a highly respectable citizen whose presence was required as a magistrate, could not attend court without first borrowing a pair of leather breeches from an equally respectable neighbor who was summoned on the grand jury. The latter lent them, and having no other had to stay at home.
The same writer says that among the men who attended public worship in the winter, ten were obliged to substitute a blanket or coverlet for an overcoat, where one enjoyed the luxury of that article. This was, of course, in the very earliest period, when the scanty stock of clothing which they had brought with them to the West had worn out, and they had not yet had time to grow a crop of flax and make it into cloth. But we have read of how at a much later date the same blue cloth coat was worn by as many as nineteen bridegrooms, the only dress coat in as many wedding parties, which by fair sale or by loan was made to do duty in the neighborhood for several years.2
There were no roads, no stores, and but a few mills. Salt, iron, and other necessary articles had all to be brought across the mountains on pack-horses, and the main problem was how to get the money to pay for these things and for the taxes, low as the latter then were. Corn and wheat could be raised, but they were hard to market. That is the reason the Washington County and Westmoreland County people took to making whisky out of their grain. Having no market for it they were compelled to reduce its bulk by converting it into whisky and to send the latter to the East for sale; a horse could carry two kegs of eight gallons each, worth about fifty cents per gallon on this side of the mountains, and one dollar on the other side.3
1 American Pioneer, vol. ii., p. 159.
2 Centenary Memorial of Presbyterianism, p. 24.
3. "For these reasons we have found it absolutely necessary to introduce a number of small distilleries into our settlements, and in every circle of twenty or thirty neighbors one of these is generally erected, merely for the accomodation of such neighborhood, and without any commercial views whatever."- Petition of inhabitants of Westmoreland Co., 1790, Penna. Arch., vol. xi., p. 671.
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Distilling thus became a part of every farmer's business, and the "Whisky Insurrection" was caused by what the people of some of the western counties of Pennsylvania considered unjust measures in taxation of this branch of their industry.1 Flax also could be woven into linen which could be sold to the oc- casional traders visiting the country, or carried beyond the Alleghenies and exchanged for the needed merchandise. So every farm had its flax field and every house its spinning-wheel and loom. As late as after the War of 1812, Robert Hood, on the south side of Beaver County, and perhaps others, continued to pack goods from the East. Salt, until after 1804, was $7 a bushel, and a bushel of salt was the hire of a horse for the trip. Four bushels made a load. After the Kanawha salt began to be brought up the Ohio in keel boats the price was reduced to $4 a bushel. Fresh meats were occasionally obtained as animals were slaughtered and divided among the people of a neighbor- hood, but the principal "stand-by" of diet was "hog and hominy," and each family had a hominy-block cut from the cross-section of a large tree. Owing to the scarcity of iron, wooden nails were generally used, and horses went for the most part unshod.2 The difficulty of getting iron and the value it had in the eyes of the settlers may be seen from an instance that is on record of one who gave his settler's right to two hundred acres of land for a set of plough-irons.3
The rude cabins were almost entirely devoid of comforts. Their floors were either the earth itself, or else rough puncheons. The tables were made of clapboards, supported by wooden legs set in auger holes. Some three-legged stools were made in the same way. Tableware consisted of a few pewter dishes, plates, and spoons, or more commonly of wooden bowls, trenchers, and noggins, or even gourds and hard-shelled squashes. The few iron or copper pots and kettles found in a neighborhood did service in many families, being almost indispensable for
1 Hist. of the Western Insurrection, Brackenridge, p. 17.
2 When Governor Spottswood of Virginia led the expedition in 1710 from Williamsburg, to discover a pass through the Alleghenies, the horses used by the explorers were shod for the first time. They found a practicable pass, and on their return the governor, as a memorial of the event, established the "Transmontane Order, or Knights of the Golden Horse Shoe." In allusion to the horseshoes they used, he gave as the badge of the Order a golden horseshoe, inscribed with the motto, "Sic jurat iranscendere montes."-Western Annals, p. 95.
3 History of Allegheny County, 1889, p. 130.
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butchering times, when the hogs had to be scalded, and for other uses.I
Beds were constructed by setting forked sticks in the floor, from which poles were extended to cracks in the walls, and then laying boards across the poles, the boards forming the bottom of the bed on which skins or blankets could be spread. The furniture of the cabin was completed by a few pegs fastened around the walls, on which such clothing as was not on the backs of the owners could be hung, and by a wooden rack for the trusty rifle, when not in use. The wealth or poverty of the family was announced to the visitor by the number and quality of the articles of clothing which were displayed upon these wall pegs. There was generally a "house-warming," or an all-night dance, before the family assumed the occupancy of a new cabin.
In trying to avoid the error of overlooking the sterner side of
1 The list of prices which follows has historic value as showing what our great-grand- fathers paid for some of the articles they bought. It was obtained by the late Hon. Agnew Duff, of New Brighton, from an old ledger kept by Richard Shurer, a farmer and merchant of early days in what was afterwards North Beaver township, Beaver County, now Lawrence County. The room in which Mr. Shurer kept his store was in the second story of his spring house, which was built of logs and is still standing. The ledger shows the dates to run from 1796 to 1800, and the accounts were kept altogether in pounds, shillings, and pence. The prices here given are copied just as entered in the ledger, except that they were reduced by Mr. Duff to dollars and cents:
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