History of Bedford, Somerset, Fulton counties Pennsylvania, Part 3

Author: Waterman, Watkins & Co.
Publication date: 1884
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 967

USA > Pennsylvania > Bedford County > History of Bedford, Somerset, Fulton counties Pennsylvania > Part 3
USA > Pennsylvania > Fulton County > History of Bedford, Somerset, Fulton counties Pennsylvania > Part 3
USA > Pennsylvania > Somerset County > History of Bedford, Somerset, Fulton counties Pennsylvania > Part 3

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

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HISTORY OF BEDFORD, SOMERSET AND FULTON COUNTIES.

pay the king two beaver-skins annually, and these were to be duly delivered at Windsor Castle. He was also to pay the king one-fifth of the gold and silver that might be found.

Penn was empowered with the consent of the freemen to make all necessary laws, appoint magistrates and judges, and exercise the power of pardon, except for the crimes of murder and treason, though in this respect he had the power to reprieve. The king was to levy no taxes without the consent of parliament or the people. Penn was made a captain-general, with full powers on land and sea ; while, on the ap- plication of twenty inhabitants to the bishop of London, a " preacher " should be permitted to reside in the province. By a "preacher" was meant a clergyman of the Church of England. In the face of this provision, though, Gordon speaks of " the spirit of freedom which breathes through this charter," and we are assured that it was drafted by Penn himself, but Janney con- cedes that " the clause allowing ministers of the Church of England to reside in the province did not emanate from Penn."

The king made known by proclamation what had been done, and Penn wrote to the people of the province assuring them of his good will, the proclamation and letter being taken out by his cousin, William Markham, commissioned to act as his deputy. On the 1st of August, Markham purchased of the sachems an ancient royalty, and commenced the building of Pennsbury, which was founded more than a year before Philadelphia. Having, meanwhile, made all his arrangements, Penn embarked at Deal in the ship Welcome, August 30, 1682. He had made every provision for the comfort of the people during the voyage, but the smallpox broke out in midocean, and nearly every person on board was more or less sick. Of the one hundred passengers thirty died, and the voyage was ever after remembered with a shudder. The vessel arrived in the Delaware, before New Castle, October 27, and the following day Penn re- ceived possession of the town and county ad- joining by " the delivery of turf and twig and water, and soyle of the river Delaware." He was greeted enthusiastically by the people of the different nationalities assembled, and they listened with delight to the man who had come with feudal powers, yet promising a free gov- ernment and all its attendant advantages. He next went to Uplandt and changed the name of

the place to Chester. He then proceeded to lay out the metropolis which existed in his mind before he left England, the present city of Philadelphia. We are told that he purchased the land" of "three Swedes " by whom it was then occupied. He desired to form there a handsome and stately "greene country towne."

On the last day of November, 1682, a treaty of friendship was made with the Indian sachems under a large elm-tree at Shackamaxon, now Kensington, and before the close of the same year the boundaries of the three original coun- ties of the province, namely : Bucks, Chester and Philadelphia, were defined. At a time, however, when all was going well in the province, Penn's wife lay sick in England, while his enemies there were busy. Accordingly, he felt that he must at once return if he regarded the welfare and stability of his government. Therefore, summoning the Indian tribes to meet him at Pennsbury, he renewed the pledge of good faith separately with each tribe, gave them much wholesome advice, and left them sorrowing for his departure. While in the country he made treaties with no less than nineteen tribes. In England he then struggled for the greater por- tion of twelve years. At times he was accused of bad designs. He was also declared a "Pa- pist." He was brought to trial and barely es- caped imprisonment, and frequently to avoid the storm he remained in retirement. In April, 1693, William and Mary having succeeded King James, the former took away Penn's authority over Pennsylvania and attached the province for governmental purposes to that of New York under Fletcher. But Penn finally emerged from the cloud, and August 29, 1694, William ordered Sunderland "to strike the name of Pennsylvania out of the list of condemned prov- inces."

These struggles, however, do not properly fall within the scope of this article, therefore we hasten on to say that meanwhile the storm- center had shifted to Pennsylvania, where Colo- nel Markham, Penn's representative, had man- aged to create much ill-feeling. Accordingly, on September 9, 1699, Penn again embarked for America, accompanied by his second wife,

*According to Watson's paper in the " Memoirs of the Pennsyl- vania Historical Society " (Vol. III, Part II, p. 128), the land was purchased of the Indians, and not until July 30, 1685, Penn at that time having returned to England. Again, Chalmers, in his "Political Annals " (Ed. 1780, p. 644), says that Penn's policy of buying the land of the natives was urged by " the good bishop of London."

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A LEAF FROM EARLY PROVINCIAL HISTORY.

Hannah Callowhill, his first wife having died several years before. Upon his arrival at Phila- delphia, now grown to a flourishing town, he was received with great enthusiasm. He soon afterward purchased the Indian royalty known as Pennsbury of the natives, and there built a fine mansion, which was appointed and furnished in keeping with his position as the owner and governor of a great province. Pennsbury was situated on the Delaware above Philadelphia, and the estate originally comprised three thou- sand four hundred and thirty-one acres. The house cost £7,000. It was of brick, two stories in hight, with a frontage of sixty feet facing the river. This mansion was torn down about the period of the Revolutionary war. Penn also occupied what was known as the slate-roof house on Second street, Philadelphia, as his city residence. In the latter was born John Penn (son of Richard and grandson of William Penn), the only member of the family born in America. Concerning the difficulties that he had to con- tend with in his province, they were largely due to acts of maladministration in his absence ; though the question of raising money for the fortifications, so unpalatable to the Quakers, and the condition of the blacks and Indians weighed upon his mind.

A new constitution for the province was adopted in November, 1700, and April 23, 1701, a genuine treaty was made with the representa- tives of the Five Nations at Philadelphia. In August following, the money for the fortifica- tions asked for by the king was refused. Soon news came that a plan was on foot in parlia- ment for the reduction of all proprietary govern- ments; and the members of the Penn family, weary of the novel life in the wilds of America, were anxious to return to England. Penn formed his resolution, and sailed for the mother country October 28, 1702. One of his later official acts was to create Philadelphia a city, by a charter signed October 25, 1701. Anne was now queen, but under her reign misfortune pursued him, and in 1712 he mortgaged his province for £12,- 000. His health was now broken, yet he sur- vived until July 30, 1718, when he expired at his home in Rushcombe, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. His remains were buried in the little rustic graveyard of the old Quaker meeting-house at Jordon's, near the village of Chalfont St. Giles, in Buckinghamshire, distant twenty-four miles from London.

Says a late writer, in speaking of his habits and characteristics : " Penn is often thought of as a very staid, solemn personage, incapable of bending or taking off his hat ; yet the contrary is the truth. He was of a most lively disposi- tion, and from his youth fond of athletic sports. Hence, when he came into the American forests, from taste as well as policy, he entered into the games of the red men with zest, and would run and jump with them in their matches ; which he could not have done if he had been the original of the stout individual seen in the treaty picture by West. Of such a person, essaying the role of an athlete, the Indian queens would have been obliged to say, as the Queen of Denmark said of her son Hamlet, 'he's fat and scant of breath,' though he gen- erally appears upon the stage an attenuated individual with slim legs. The character of William Penn, as popularly conceived, is, in the main, just, though most persons are inclined to identify him too closely in appearance and man- ners and mode of life with the modern members of the Society of Friends. Yet, whatever may have been his principles, Penn was, to a great extent, at least for a large part of his life, a courtier and man of the world, the latter phrase being used in its best sense. Indeed, he enter- tained broad and grand ideas apart from the principles of religious liberty and the needs of his province. His Philadelphia was to be no pent-up Utica, while a boundless continent en- gaged his thought, as we know from his propo- sition, made in 1697, to bring all the colonies under one central control, thus forecasting the American confederation."

Of the Penn family we will have but little more to say in this volume, for, although the beirs of William Penn continued as owners of the province until its transformation into a free and independent commonwealth during the war of the revolution, yet the subject is one which can only be treated properly in a work covering a much greater expanse of country than the counties in which we are now in- terested. We make haste, therefore, to speak of some of the most important civic events which transpired in the province prior to the forma- tion of the county of Bedford, but which had an intimate bearing or relationship thereto.

Always conceding that the Indians were the original proprietors of Pennsylvania, the Penns and their agents made various purchases of land

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HISTORY OF BEDFORD, SOMERSET AND FULTON COUNTIES.

of the chiefs of the Five Nations, afterward termed the Six Nations, and some years before the beginning of the revolutionary war the In- dians had ceded to the proprietaries about two- thirds of the present commonwealth. Thus on September 17, 1718, a treaty was made whereby previous purchases were relinquished to the In- dians, the latter then ceding territory now embracing Bucks, Philadelphia, Delaware, Ches- ter, Montgomery, Lancaster, and parts of Lebanon, Berks and Lehigh counties. Follow- ing this came the organization of the fourth county of the province, Lancaster, which was formed from Chester, May 10, 1729, but the treaty of September, 1718, was not confirmed until October 27, 1736. The council-fires at this meeting were kept burning from October 11 to October 26, 1736, and .before its close the Indians also ceded lands forming the present counties of York, Adams and Cumberland, and the major portion of Franklin, Dauphin, Leba- non, Berks, Lehigh and Northampton. The fifth county, York, was formed from Lancaster, August 19, 1749, and October 22 of the same year a narrow strip of territory extending from the Delaware to the Susquehanna, and lying north of the cession of 1718 (confirmed in 1736) was relinquished by the Indians to meet the demands of constantly encroaching white settlements. Cumberland, the sixth county of the province, was created from Lancaster, Jan- uary 27, 1750, and about two years later, or March 11, 1752, Berks from Philadelphia, Chester and Lancaster, and Northampton from Bucks, were organized as the seventh and eighth counties.

By the terms of a treaty held July 6, 1754, and confirmed October 23, 1758, territory stretch- ing from the Susquehanna westward to the crest of the Alleghenies, and now embraced by the counties of Bedford, Fulton, Huntingdon, Blair, Perry, Juniata, Mifflin, and parts of Franklin, Snyder, Union, Centre and Somerset counties, was ceded by the Indians. Meanwhile, events had transpired which led to the terrible "French and Indian war " then in progress, and as within the original limits of Bedford county the contending armies marched and alter- nately suffered in defeat or rejoiced in victory, it is deemed pertinent to notice briefly in chap- ters immediately succeeding this the operations of the British and Americans under Washing- ton, Braddock, Armstrong, Forbes and Boquet as opposed to the French and Indians.

CHAPTER III. CONFLICTING CLAIMS- WASHINGTON AS AN ENVOY IN 1753.

The French and English Claim the Region West of the Alle- ghenies - The Ohio Company - Instructed by Gov. Dinwid- die, of Virginia, George Washington Visits the French Com- mander - Account of the Journey - Various Extracts from Washington's Journal.

A BOUTthe middle of the eighteenth century both France and England were asserting their respective claims to the dominion of the wil- derness region west of the Allegheny Mountains, especially of that west of Laurel Hill, and it was in the conflict which resulted from the attempts of each of these rivals to expel the other and to enforce their own alleged rights by the fact of actual possession, that the events occurred that are here to be narrated, and which mark the beginning of the history of southwestern Pennsylvania.

France made claim to the ownership of the western part of the province by reason of La Salle having descended the Mississippi river in 1682, and at its mouth on April 9, of that year, taking formal possession, in the name of the French sovereign, of all the valley of the mighty stream, and of all the regions discovered and to be discovered contiguous to it or to any and all of its tributaries. Sixty-seven years later (1749), Capt. Celeron, an officer in the service of the king of France, and having under his command a force of about 300 men, penetrated southward from Lake Erie to the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, where he took and confirmed the French posses- sion of the valleys of these tributaries, by burying metallic plates duly inscribed with a record of the event, as evidences of actual occupation.

England, on the other hand, claimed the country by virtue of a treaty made with the chiefs of the Six Nations at Lancaster, Penn- sylvania, in June, 1744, when the Indians ceded to the British king an immense scope of terri- tory west of the royal grant to Penn,* co-ex- tensive with the western limits of Virginia, which at that time were of indefinite extent. At a subsequent treaty, however, held (in 1752) at Logstown, on the Ohio, below Pittsburgh, one of the Iroquois chiefs, who had also taken part in the Lancaster treaty, declared that it had not been the intention of his people to

. It was thought at that time that Penn's western boundary would not fall to the westward of Laurel Hill.

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CONFLICTING CLAIMS-WASHINGTON AS AN ENVOY IN 1753.

convey to the English any lands west of the Alleghenies, but that they would not oppose the white man's definition of the boundaries.

The Six Nations in council had also decided that, notwithstanding their friendship for the English, they would remain neutral in the con- test which they saw was imminent between that pation and the French, both of whom were now using every effort to strengthen themselves in the occupation of the territory bordering on the headwaters of the Ohio.

During the year 1750, the "Ohio Company," acting under an English charter and royal grant, sent its agent, Christopher Gist, to the Ohio river to explore the country along that stream, with a view to its occupation and settle- ment. Under these instructions he viewed the country along the west bank from the mouth of the Allegheny to the Falls of the Ohio, opposite the present city of Louisville, Kentucky, and in the following year he explored the other side of the stream down to the mouth of the Great Kanawha. These and other movements on the part of those acting under authority of the Brit- inh king caused the French to bestir them- selves, and move more energetically toward the occupation of the region west of the Alle- ghenies.

Early in 1753 they began to move southward from the Great Lakes, and on May 21, in that year, intelligence was received that a party of 150 French and Indians " had arrived at a camping- place leading from the Niagara to the head of the Ohio." Again, on August 7, a report was received " of the passage of a large number of canoes with French troops by Oswego on their way to the Ohio." Hence, in consequence of these aggressive movements on the part of the French, the English home government at once adopted more vigorous measures than had here- tofore been employed to meet and resist the French advance into the valley of the Ohio, and among the official communications addressed by the Earl of Holderness, secretary of state, to the governors of the several American provinces, was one to Gov. Dinwiddie, of Virginia, con- taining directions concerning the French en- croachments. The letter of the secretary reached Dinwiddie in October, 1753, and in pursuance of the instructions contained therein the latter at once appointed and commissioned GEORGE WASHINGTON, then a youth of only twenty-one years, but " one of the adjutants-general of the

troops and forces in the colony of Virginia," as a bearer of dispatches to the commanding officer of the French on the Ohio. Following is a copy of Washington's letter of instructions :

" Whereas, I have received information of a body of French forces being assembled in a hostile manner on the river Ohio, intending by force of arms to erect certain forts on the said river within this territory, and contrary to the dignity and peace of our sovereign the King of Great Britain.

"These are therefore to require and direct you, the said George Washington, forthwith to re- pair to Logstown, on the said river Ohio, and, having there informed yourself where the said French forces have posted themselves, thereupon to proceed to such place, and, being there ar- rived, to present your credentials, together with my letter, to the chief commanding officer, and in the name of his Britannic Majesty to demand an answer thereto.

"On your arrival at Logstown you are to address yourself to the Half-King, to Monacatoo- cha, and the other sachems of the Six Nations, acquainting them with your orders to visit and deliver my letter to the French commanding officer, and desiring the said chiefs to appoint you a sufficient number of their warriors to be your safeguard as near the French as you may desire, and to wait your further di- rection.

" You are diligently to inquire into the num- bers and force of the French on the Ohio and the adjoining country ; how they are likely to be assisted from Canada; and what are the difficulties and conveniences of that communi- cation, and the time required for it.

" You are to take care to be truly informed what forts the French have erected, and where ; how they are garrisoned and appointed, and what is their distance from each other and from Logstown ; and from the best intelligence you can procure, you are to learn what gave occasion to this expedition of the French ; how they are likely to be supported, and what their preten- sions are.

" When the French commandant has given you the required and necessary dispatches, you are to desire of him a proper guard to protect you as far on your return as you may judge for your safety, against any straggling Indians or hunters that may be ignorant of your character and molest you. Wishing you good success in

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HISTORY OF BEDFORD, SOMERSET AND FULTON COUNTIES.

your negotiation, and safe and speedy return, I am, etc., ROBERT DINWIDDIE.

" WILLIAMSBURG, October 30, 1753."

Washington left Williamsburg on the day of his appointment, and on the 31st reached Fred- ericksburg, Virginia, where he employed Jacob Van Braam as a French interpreter. The two then went to Alexandria, where some articles necessary for their journey were procured. Thence they proceeded to Winchester, where pack-horses were purchased ; after which they rode to Will's Creek (Cumberland, Maryland), arriving there on November 14. "Here," said Washington in his journal of the expedition, "I engaged Mr. Gist* to pilot us out, and also hired four others as servitors-Barnaby Currin and John McGuire, Indian traders, Henry Steward, and William Jenkins; and in company with these persons left the inhabitants the next day."

The party, now numbering seven persons, moved from Will's Creek in a northwesterly direction, crossed the southwestern corner of what is now Somerset county, and proceeded by way of Gist's settlement to Frazier's on the Monongahela river, some ten miles above its junction with the Allegheny. . They had found the traveling through the wilderness so difficult that the journey to this point from Will's Creek occupied a week. Referring to this part of the route, the journal says : "The excessive rains and vast quantities of snow which had fallen pre- vented our reaching Mr. Frazier's, an Indian trader, at the mouth of Turtle creek, on Mo- nongahela river, till Thursday, the 22d. We were informed here that expresses had been sent a few days before to the traders down the river, to acquaint them with the French general's death, and the return of the major part of the French army into winter quarters. The waters were quite impassable without swimming our horses, which obliged us to get the loan of a canoe from Frazier, and to send Barnaby Currin and Henry Steward down the Monongahela with our baggage to meet us at the forks of the Ohio."

On crossing the Allegheny Washington found Shingas, the Delaware king, who accompanied the party to Logstown, which place they reached in twenty-five days from Williamsburg, Virginia. They found there the Indian Monacatoocha, but

the Half-King was absent hunting. Wash- ington told the former through the Indian in- terpreter, John Davidson, that he had come as a messenger to the French general, and was or- dered to call and inform the sachems of the Six Nations of the fact. The Half-King" was sent for by runners, and at about three o'clock in the afternoon of the 25th he came in and visited Washington in his tent, where through the in- terpreter, Davidson, he told him that it was a long way to the headquarters of the French commandant on the Allegheny. "He told me," says the journal, " that the nearest and levelest way was now impassable by reason of many large miry savannahs ; that we must be obliged to go by Venango, and should not get to the near fort in less than five or six nights' sleep, good traveling." He told Washington that he must wait until a proper guard of Indians could be furnished him. "The people whom I have ordered in," said he, "are not yet come, and cannot until the third night from this ; until which time, brother, I must beg you to stay. I intend to send a guard of Mingoes, Shannoahs and Delawares, that our brothers may see the love and loyalty we bear them."

Although anxious to reach bis destination at the earliest possible time, Washington, in def- erence to the wishes of the friendly Tanachari- son, remained at Logstown until November 30, when, as it is recorded in the journal, " we set out about nine o'clock with the Half-King, Jeskakake, White Thunder and the Hunter, and traveled on the road to Venango, where we arrived the 4th of December, without any- thing remarkable happening but a continued series of bad weather. This is an old Indian town, situated at the mouth of French creek, on the Ohio, and lies near north about sixty miles from Logstown, but more than seventy the way we were obliged to go.

From Venango the party set out on the 7th for the French fort and reached it on the 11th, having been greatly impeded " by excessive rains, snows and bad traveling through many mires and swamps." On the 12th Wash- ington waited on the commander, acquainted him with the business on which he came, ex- hibited his commission, and delivered the letter from Gov. Dinwiddie. While it was

* Christopher Gist, agent of the " Ohio Company," who, a few months previously-in 1753-had located and built a cabin near the center of the territory now known as Fayette county, a point now termed Mount Braddock. Said Washington in his journal : " Mr. Gist's new settlement (which we passed by) bears about west-northwest, seventy miles from Will's Creek."

* Tanacharison, the Half-King, always continued to be a firm friend of the English, but he lived less than a year after meeting Washington at Logstown. He died at Harris' Ferry (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) in October, 1754.

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CONFLICTING CLAIMS-WASHINGTON AS AN ENVOY IN 1753.

being translated he employed his time in view- ing the dimensions of the fort and making other observations with which he was charged. During the evening of the 14th he received the answer of the commandant to the gov- ernor ; but although he was now ready to set out on his return, he could not get away un- til the second day after that, as the French, al- though treating him with the greatest outward show of politeness, were using every artifice with his Indians to seduce them from their al- legiance and friendship to the English, and were constantly plying them with brandy, which made the Indians loth to leave the place. Wash- ington could not well go without them, and even if he could have done so, he was very un- willing to leave them behind him, subject to the dangerous influence of the French officers and the French brandy.

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History of Bedford, Somerset, Fulton counties Pennsylvania, Part 3

Author: Waterman, Watkins & Co. Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Number of Pages: 967

Author: Waterman, Watkins & Co.
Publication date: 1884
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 967