USA > Pennsylvania > Beaver County > History of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and its centennial celebration, Volume I > Part 36
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times burned down, and the business was finally given up. In January, 1860, liens were filed against the property by the Dar- ragh Bros. of Bridgewater, Knapp & Rudd of Pittsburg, Robert McLane of Rochester, and others; and, September 12, 1860, it was sold at sheriff's sale to the lienholders. September 2Ist fol- lowing they sold to S. M. Kier of Pittsburg, who soon afterwards began to refine here petroleum. Kier was, perhaps, the first to engage in the refining of crude petroleum in Beaver County, and among the first in the country, and for several years there was carried on here a large business in this line. In 1857 there was built in Rochester by Charles Thum, where the Keystone Glass Works now stands, a plant for making cannel coal oil. Joseph Bentel,' from Phillipsburg (now Monaca), and other parties named Arbuckle were afterwards its owners, and turned it into a petroleum refinery. At this plant, about 1861, P. M.
1 This plant was burned down and Joseph Bentel was himself badly burned. He was a distant relation of John Bentel who was later fatally burned in the refinery at Freedom, Pa.
CAPITAL
SALARIED OF- FICIALS, CLERKS, ETC.
AVERAGE NUMBER OF WAGE-EARNERS AND TOTAL WAGES
MANUFACTURING AND ME- CHANICAL INDUSTRIES IN 1900 FROM CENSUS OF 1900
Num- ber of estab- lish- ments:
.
Total
Land
Buildings
Machinery, tools and imple- ments
Cash and sundries
Propri- etors and firm mem- bers
Num- ber
Salaries
Aver- age num- ber
Wages
The State ..
52,185
$1,551, 548,712
$148,768,571
$227,035,804
$392, 150,856
$783,593,481
58,836
47,439
$48,605,173
733,834 $332,072,670
Beaver County ..
359
15,262,391
1,009,302
4,659,903
416
489, 223 161,828
7,095 2,231
1,022,075
New Brighton ...
68
2,903,449
145,241
2,985,303 1, 300,458 422,929 474,676
1,778,327 1,218,592 436,422
6,607,883 2,949, 106 1,116,687 1, 146,220
385 IIO 77 59
90 40
119,447 56,685
1,433
589,516
AVERAGE NUMBER OF WAGE-EARNERS AND TOTAL WAGES-continued
MISCELLANEOUS EXPENSES
COST OF MATERIALS USED
Men, 16 years and over
Women, 16 years and over
Children, under 16 years
Total
Rent of works
Taxes, not in- cluding internal revenue
Rent of offices, interest etc.
Contract work
Total
Principal materials, including mill supplies and freight
Fuel and rent of power and heat
Aver- age num- ber
Wages
Aver- age num- ber
Wages
Aver- age num- ber
Wages
State ...
574,606
$293, 697, 372 126,093
$33,067,828
33,135 $5,307,470
$134,344,269
$10, 814, 621 $4,444, 216|$86, 207, 684
$32,877,748
$1,042,434,599 $995, 673, 525 $46, 761,074 $1, 834, 790, 860
B. Co. B. F .. New B. . . .. ..
....
5,622
2,803,474
812
246,356
661 106
93,5II 18,883
303,189
9,464
1,207
539,837
200
40,096
75
10,656
108,677
6, 137
Rochester ..
927
501,770
206
61,847
300
25,899
104,262
2,412
26,731 10,275 5,946 3,404
94,047 98,386
2,547
6,672,762 3,780,051 1,003,463 470,450
6,268,751 3,657,751 956,329 384,832
404,011 122,300
13,459,848 6, 245,50I
1,951
964,939
I74
38,253
736,516
23,39I
662,727 283,450
23,667
3,143,34I
Beaver Falls.
6, 367, 196
339,305
I34
1,482
590,589
Rochester. .
47
2, 228,337
171,019
.
Value of products including custom work and repairing
47,134 85,618
2, 195,552
1,440,507
Total
303
History of Beaver County
Wallover of Smith's Ferry carried on some refining, selling the oil for use in oiling wool. He bought a part of the machinery and removed it to Smith's Ferry, and, in 1861, there was started at that place the Wallover Oil Company, composed of P. M. Wallover, William Stewart, Milton Brown, and William Dawson, organized for the manufacture of lubricating oil from the pro- duction of the Smith's Ferry oil field. This plant has continued in successful operation ever since.
The history of the Freedom Oil Works Company, which fol- lowed the Kier & Painter concern, spoken of above, will be found in the chapter on Freedom borough.
We will close this brief survey of our county's industrial and economic development with a table taken from the last census, giving an exhibit of our manufacturing and mechanical indus- tries as they stood in the closing year of the nineteenth century, as follows: (See appended table.)
Satisfactory as the above showing is, we believe it is only a promise and a prophecy of greater things to be seen in the not distant future. With the completion of the Ohio River dams certain, and the building of the ship canal, giving ready and cheap access to the Great Lakes and the lower Mississippi valley possible, Beaver County, lying in the center of the largest coal and mineral basin in the United States, possessing inexhaustible internal resources, and gridironed with fully equipped railways, is well assured of continuous growth and prosperity.I
1 Marcus T. C. Gould was considered somewhat visionary in his day, but his was a pro- phetic soul. His predictions were not realized quite on time, but are now more than ful- filled. It will be interesting to our readers to see what he said as long ago as 1835, of the coming greatness of the Beaver valley. The following is from a letter written by him in December of that year to the editor of Atkinson's Casket (Philadelphia) :
" I now predict, through this epistle, that within ten years from this time, there will be a population of at least 20,000 about the Falls and mouth of the Beaver. Nor would we in the slightest degree insinuate that any future benefits which the Falls of the Beaver may derive, will detract from the growth or prosperity of Pittsburgh, but on the contrary, I am proud to consider the Falls of Beaver, as a suburb of that immense city, which is soon to be the wonder of the western world-a place to which this, and almost every other place within hundreds of miles, must in some respect pay tribute. We shall not be long behind any other town west of the Allegheny mountains, for the variety, quality and extent of our manufactures, (Pittsburgh excepted.) We shall not long hear the inquiry, where is Brighton? Where is Fallston? Where are the Falls of Beaver? Where is Beaver County, Pennsylvania ? "
CHAPTER IX LEGAL HISTORY-BENCH AND BAR
Previous Jurisdictions-Virginia Courts-Organization of Beaver County Courts-Judicial Districts-Character of First Officers-Sketches of President Judges-Associate Judges-First Attorneys-Prominent Early Attorneys-Attorneys of Later Date, Deceased-Simplicity of Early Suits-Fees-Celebrated Causes-Law Association-Roll of Attorneys.
Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage-the very least as feeling her care, the greatest as not exempted from her power .- HOOKER's Eccl. Pol.
THE machinery of the law was set up very slowly over the region which included the present territory of Beaver County. Cumberland County, the sixth in order of the counties estab- lished, was erected January 27, 1750, when the vanguard of emigration had just reached the valley of the Monongahela. Its seat of justice was at Carlisle, and the jurisdiction of its courts nominally extended over all the lands to the western borders of the province, but was scarcely felt in the remoter parts of the West. With the erection of Bedford County in 1771, the seat of jurisdiction was brought somewhat nearer. All west of the mountains was embraced in the new county. But it was yet uncertain whether the region lying between the Monongahela and the Ohio was in Pennsylvania or Virginia,' and for this reason the settlers therein did not have much to do with the Bedford County courts.
By the beginning of the year 1773 the numbers and strength of the settlers west of the mountains had increased so much that they felt themselves entitled to the organization of a county,
1 For boundary controversy between Pennsylvania and Virginia, see Chapter III.
304
1
A
Jesse Moore. President Judge, 1804-1806.
305
History of Beaver County
with the necessary legal machinery belonging to it, and peti- tions were addressed to the House of Representatives asking for the same. This was finally granted, and by an Act of Assem- bly, passed and approved by the Governor, February 26, 1773, Westmoreland County was erected. By the provisions of the Act the county-seat was established at Robert Hanna's settle- ment on the Forbes Road, thirty-five miles east of Pittsburg, and about three miles northeast of the present Greensburg. Here at Hannastown the first Pennsylvania court (perhaps the first court of English-speaking people,) ever held west of the Allegheny Mountains, was established.
At this date, 1773, and for several years thereafter, the number of settlers was, even in that portion of Beaver County which lay south of the Ohio River, very small; and for many years following there were, on the north side of that river, out- side of the garrison of Fort McIntosh, no inhabitants beyond a few venturesome men who had attempted to make settle- ments. But whatever population was there must have, in some measure, depended upon the courts of Westmoreland County for law and justice. As showing this we have a letter from General William Irvine to the men who, in 1783, were put in charge of the property of Fort McIntosh after its aban- donment, instructing them "that in case of lawless violence, or persons attempting to settle by force," etc., they were "to apply to Michael Hoofnagle, or some other justice of the peace for Westmoreland County." I
But in connection with what has just been said about the jurisdiction of Westmoreland County, it is necessary to remem- ber the fact, already several times referred to, that from 1774 until 1780 two governments were contending for the supremacy in this large section of western Pennsylvania, with two sets of laws and two sets of magistrates to enforce them. The provin- cial courts of Pennsylvania were sitting at Hannastown and the
1 Penna. Arch., vol. x., p. 109. Corroborative also is the following: "I am informed by an old citizen of Hanover township (Washington County) that he well recollects having been told in his youth, by those who were then old people, that his informants had attended court in Westmoreland County."-From an article by Boyd Crumrine, Esq., in The Washington County Centennial, page 27.
Many of the deeds for lands in Beaver County at this period, north as well as south of the Ohio, describe the lands in question as being in Westmoreland County. The western bounds of that county up to 1781, when Washington County was erected, were of course those of the province.
VOL. I .- 20
306
History of Beaver County
Virginia courts at Fort Dunmore (Pittsburg), both seeking to assert exclusive jurisdiction over the same region. By the strong hand one triumphed to-day, the other to-morrow, and only the approach of the War of the Revolution, in which both sides had mutual interests and dangers, healed the strife.
THE VIRGINIA COURTS
In 1774, at the beginning of this "Boundary Controversy," as it is known in history, the whole of the territory between the Monongahela and Ohio rivers was, by the Virginia claim, in Augusta County, Virginia, with its county-seat at Staunton, in the valley of the Shenandoah. In December of that year the Earl of Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, adjourned the courts of Augusta County to Fort Dunmore (Pittsburg), where they were held regularly in what came to be known as the District of West Augusta.
These Virginia courts were held for a few terms at Augusta Town, near the present Washington, Pa., and the last court of of the district was held at Pittsburg, November 20, 1776. In that year the convention of the representatives of the Virginia people in session at Richmond passed an act dividing the Dis- trict of West Augusta into three new counties, namely, Ohio, Monongalia, and Yohogania, the jurisdiction of the last named extending, as has been said more than once in other places in this work, over what is now the south side of Beaver County. 1
1 One or two items from the Yohogania court records may be worth quoting, e. g .:
"April 29, 1778 .- A pair of stocks, whipping post, and pillory ordered to be built in the C. H. yard.
"June 25, 1777 .- James Johnson fined twenty shillings for two profane oaths and two profane curses. Same day, same amount for three oaths and one curse; and same day same sum for four oaths.
"August 26, 1777 .- Robert Hamilton, a prisoner in the Sheriff's custody came into court, and in the grocest and most imperlite manner insulted the Court, and Richard Yates, Gentleman, in particular. Ordered, that the Sheriff confine the feet of the said Robert in the lower rails of the fence for the space of five minutes."
The following of December 22, 1777, shows what travelers had to pay for the accommo- dation of "man and beast " at the inns of the day:
"The ordinary keepers within this County are allowed to sell at the following rates:
One half pint whiskey. IS.
The same made into Tody. Is. 6d.
A larger or lesser quantity in the same proportion.
IS.
Beer per Quart.
For a hot breakfast. Is. 6d.
For a cold breakfast. IS. For a dinner .. 2S.
Lodging with Clean Sheets pr. Night. 6d.
Stablidge for one horse for 24 hours with good hay or fodder. 2S.
Pasturage for one horse for 24 hours. IS. Oats or Corn per Quart .. 6d.
Supper
Is. 6d."
Samuel Roberts. President Judge, 1806-1820.
-
307
History of Beaver County
Its courts continued to be held until August 28, 1780, when, the boundary controversy having reached a settlement, Yohogania passed out of existence, and no court of justice under Virginia jurisdiction was ever again held in the region to which Beaver County now belongs. Washington County was formed the next year, 1781,' and Allegheny County in 1788,2 and thereafter until the close of the eighteenth century the few inhabitants settled here had to do with the courts of those counties. But by this time the country north and west of the Ohio and Allegheny rivers was rapidly filling up, and, considering the needs of the settlers and the vast extent of Allegheny County, making it a hardship and inconvenience for many of them to reach the seat of justice at Pittsburg, it became evident to the Legislature that measures of relief were imperative. Accordingly, as we have seen, there was passed March 12, 1800,3 an Act which provided for the erection in this, and contiguous territory, of eight new counties. These were Beaver, Butler, Mercer, Crawford, Erie, Venango, Warren, and Armstrong. In most of these new counties courts were not provided for until 1803.
JUDICIAL DISTRICTS
By Act of April 2, 1803,4 Beaver County for judicial pur- poses was made part of the Sixth Judicial District.
By the Act of February 24, 1806,5 revising the judicial dis- tricts of the whole State, the Fifth District was composed of Beaver, Allegheny, Washington, Fayette, and Greene counties. In 1818,6 the Fifth was re-formed of Beaver, Butler, and Alle- gheny. Beaver continued in the Fifth until 1831,7 when Beaver, Butler, and Mercer were united to form the new Seventeenth Judicial District.
When the county of Lawrence was created in 18498 it be- came a part of the Seventeenth District, and the four counties continued together until the Act of April 9, 1853 was passed,9 when the county of Mercer was withdrawn and added to the Eighteenth District. In 1866 Beaver was withdrawn from the district and united with Washington to form the new Twenty-
1 See P. L., 1781, 400; I Dallas's L., 874; 2 Carey & Bioren, 282.
3 3 Carey & Bioren, 277; 2 Smith's L., 448.
3 6 Carey & Bioren, 215; 3 Smith's L., 421.
6 P. L., 236. 7 P. L., 340. 8 P. L., 551.
4 P. L., 637.
5 P. L., 334.
9 P. L., 355.
308
History of Beaver County
seventh District; and finally, by Act of April 9, 1874,1 Beaver was separated from Washington and made a judicial district by itself, the Thirty-sixth.
A high average obtained among the men who composed the early court and bar of Beaver County, and there is in their number more than one clarum et venerabile nomen. As an indi- cation of the character and ability of the men composing the first court ever held in Beaver County, we call attention to the fact that they furnished from their number in after years:
One member of the United States Supreme Court-Henry Baldwin.
Two United States Senators-Abner Lacock and William Wilkins.
One Minister Plenipotentiary-William Wilkins (to Russia).
One Secretary of War-William Wilkins.
One District Court Judge-William Wilkins.
One Chief Justice of Pennsylvania-John Bannister Gibson.
Five members of Congress-Abner Lacock, Robert Moore, William Wilkins, James Allison, Jr., and Henry Baldwin.
Two President Judges-Alexander Addison and William Wilkins.
Two State Senators-Abner Lacock and William Wilkins.
Two Assemblymen-Abner Lacock and Robert Moore.
One member State Constitutional Convention - William Ayers.
Hon. Jesse Moore,2 who presided over the first Beaver County court, was born in Montgomery County, Pa., in 1765. While practising law at Sunbury, Pa., he was appointed by Governor Thomas Mckean president judge of the Sixth Judicial District, his commission dating April 5, 1803. Judge Moore removed at once to Meadville, within his district, from which Beaver County was cut off by the revision of the judicial districts of the State
1 P. L., 323.
? It is with peculiar satisfaction that we record here the fact, that we have succeeded in what was pronounced, and seemed at first to be, indeed, an impossible undertaking, viz., the procuring of portraits of all the judges, learned in the law, who have ever presided over the courts of our county. In addition we have also obtained portraits of a number of the associate judges and of many of the early and distinguished members of the bar. We sub- mit all these, together with others of a more recent date, in reproductions by the art of the photographer and the engraver, with the assurance that an added interest will be given to the text of our history when the reader is enabled to look upon the "counterfeit presentment " of the men with the story of whose lives it deals.
1
William Wilkins. President Judge, 1820-1824.
309
History of Beaver County
in 1806, referred to above, and continued president judge of the new Sixth District until his death, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, December 21, 1824. His connection with the courts of Beaver County thus lasted, as will appear from a comparison of dates, two years. Judge Moore is said to have been a man of imposing appearance, retaining the dress and manners of the colonial period and of the old-school gentleman, wearing small clothes, with shoe- and knee-buckles, and his long hair done up in a queue, plentifully besprinkled with white powder.' He is also reputed to have met the requirements of his position as a judge "learned in the law," and to have been upright and im- partial in his decisions.
Hon. Samuel Roberts, who succeeded Jesse Moore as presi- dent judge of Beaver County, was born in Philadelphia, Septem- ber 8, 1763. He received his early education and read law with Hon. William Lewis in the same city, being there admitted to the bar in 1793. The same year he married, at York, Pa., Miss Harriet Heath. In the practice of his profession he removed to Lancaster and thence to Sunbury, Pa .; and while at Sunbury he was commissioned by Governor Mckean, on June 2, 1803, as president judge of the Fifth District to succeed Judge Addison, after his shameful impeachment by the Legislature of the State; and when, by the Act of February 24, 1806, Beaver County was added to the Fifth District, he became president judge of this county. In that year he removed to Pittsburg, Pa. Judge Roberts continued to sit as president judge of the Fifth District until his death in Pittsburg, on December 13, 1820. Judge Roberts was an able lawyer and a man of the strictest probity. He has a distinguished name, not only as a jurist of the first order, but also as an author, his Digest of British Statutes in Force in Pennsylvania being a work highly esteemed by the profession.
Hon. William Wilkins was the next president judge of Beaver County. He was born in Carlisle, Pa., December 20, 1779. He was educated at Dickinson College, and read law with Judge David Watts at Carlisle. His father moved to Pittsburg, Pa., in 1786. There William Wilkins was admitted to the bar in 1801. December 18, 1820, he was appointed
1 Egle's History of Penna., p. 932. Judge Moore is here described by one who knew him.
310
History of Beaver County
president judge of the Fifth District by Governor William Find- lay to succeed Judge Roberts. He resigned May 25, 1824, on his appointment to be Judge of the District Court of the United States for western Pennsylvania. In 1828, while holding this position, he was elected a member of Congress, but before taking his seat resigned, giving as a reason that his financial condition would not permit him to accept. In 1831 he was elected to the Senate of the United States for the full term of six years, and resigned the judgeship. In 1834 he was appointed Minister to Russia, and remained one year at the court of St. Petersburg.
The township of Wilkins, Allegheny County, Pa., is named from Judge Wilkins, and likewise the borough of Wilkinsburg in that township. Near there, at Homewood, was his resi- dence, where he exercised a generous hospitality. Being a large property holder in that growing region, Judge Wilkins profited by the rise in real estate values and became very wealthy.
In 1806 Judge Wilkins became concerned in a duel, and he has so often been unjustly blamed for driving it to a bloody termination that we feel impelled to give from authentic and contemporaneous sources a correct account of the affair. This affair grew out of a feud between two factions of the party then known as the Republican, or Anti-Federalist party (now the Democratic). Ephraim Pentland, the editor of the Common- wealth, an Anti-Federal paper, published in that journal on the 25th of December, 1805, a bitter attack on Tarleton Bates,' the prothonotary of Allegheny County. On the 2d of January fol- lowing, Bates, being in company with Henry Baldwin (after- wards a judge of the United States Supreme Court) and Steele Semple, Esqs., attacked and cowhided Pentland on Market Street, Pittsburg. The latter next day notified Bates by letter that he had appealed to the civil authorities for protection, but a day or two afterwards sent Thomas Stewart, a young Irishman just starting in business in the city as a merchant, to Bates with a challenge, which Bates refused to accept on the ground that Pentland, by submitting to a cowhiding.and then appealing to the law, could not be recognized as a gentleman, according to the code. In a letter in the Tree of Liberty (then edited by Walter Forward), he defended his refusal at length, and seemed to cast aspersions also on Stewart, the bearer of the challenge. Stew-
1 Edward Bates, Lincoln's Attorney-General, was a brother of Tarleton Bates.
Charles Shaler. President Judge, 1824-1831.
3II
History of Beaver County
art then challenged Bates, and the challenge was accepted. The duel took place on the morning of the 8th of January, 1806, in a ravine which debouches on the Monongahela River, three miles from the city. Bates fell on the second fire, shot in the breast, and died within an hour. The seconds were William Wilkins in behalf of Stewart, and Morgan Neville for Bates. That Wilkins did not press the duel to a fatal conclusion, as has been frequently charged, would appear from the words which we have italicized in a letter that was published in the Gazette and Tree of Liberty and copied in the Commonwealth of January 15, 1806, supposed to have been prepared by the seconds them- selves, and reading as follows:
PITTSBURG, January 11, 1806.
MR. SCULL: A friend of the gentlemen who were seconds to Mr. Bates and Mr. Stewart in the duel which lately occurred, to prevent improper representations of that affair, requests you to insert the following state- ment, which he believes will be approved by them both.
A duel took place on Wednesday, the 8th inst, between Tarleton Bates, Esq., and Mr. Thomas Stewart, merchant, both of this place. The latter thought proper to require of Mr. Bates an apology for what he considered improper expressions respecting him in a publication made by Mr. Bates which appeared the day before in the Tree of Liberty. No apology having been made, or agreed to, the parties, each attended by a friend met near the Monongahela river, three miles from town. Previous to their positions being taken on the ground, the friend of Mr. Stewart men- tioned an apology which would be accepted-but as it was the same in sub- stance as had been proposed before, and as it had been perfectly well understood before the parties went to the ground that no apology would be made by Mr. Bates, he rejected it. The distance (ten steps) was then measured, and the pistols loaded by the seconds in the presence of each other. They each fired twice. In the interval between the first and second fire, no proposition of adjustment was made. The second fire proved fatal to Mr. Bates, who received the ball of his antagonist's pistol in the upper part of his breast and expired in an hour.
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