History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 13

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.)
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago, S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1340

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The inhabitants at once set about meeting the adverse effects of the proceedings at Trenton. A petition was drawn to the Assembly of Pennsylvania, in which, after reciting at length the facts, they touch- ingly and pathetically close thus : "We have settled a country (in its original state), but of little value; but now cultivated by your mem- orialists, is to them of the greatest importance, being their all. We are yet alive, but the richest blood of our neighbors and friends, children, husband and fathers, has been spilt in the general cause of their country. * * We supplied the Continental army with many valuable officers and soldiers, and left ourselves weak and unguarded against the attack of the savages and others of a more savage nature. Our houses are desolate-many mothers childless- widows and orphans multiplied-our habitations destroyed, and many families reduced to beggary, which exhibits a scene most pitiful and deserving of mercy. * * We care not under what State we live. We will serve you-we will promote your interests-will fight your battles ; but in mercy, goodness, wisdom, justice, and every great and generous principle, leave us our possessions, the dearest pledge of our brothers, children, and fathers, which their hands have cultivated, and their blood, spilt in the cause of their country, has enriched. We further pray that a general act of oblivion and indemnity may be passed, *

* * and that all judicial proceedings of the common law courts held by and under the authority of the State of Connecticut be ratified and fully confirmed."

Acting on this petition, the Assembly, inter alia, "resolved that commissioners be appointed to make full inquiries into the cases, and report to the House; * that an act be passed for con-

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signing to oblivion all tumults and breaches of the peace which have arisen out of the controversy."

On March 13, 1783, an act was passed by the Assembly.

The garrison of Continental troops had been previously withdrawn. Their places were now supplied with two companies of State troops, under Capts. Robinson and Shrawder. The presence of these troops was a cause of great anxiety to the settlers.

On the 15th of April the commissioners arrived. In their first communication to the "Committee of Settlers," 19th April, 1783, they made the ominous declaration : " Although it can not be supposed that Pennsylvania will, nor can she, consistent with her Constitution, by any ex post facto law, deprive her citizens of any part of their property legal- ly obtained, yet," etc.

This was pretty fair notice of expulsion. Judge John Jenkins re- plied in behalf of the settlers, by a dignified but passionless recital of their rights and claims much more worthy of the sturdy settlers than the petition referred to. The "Committee of Pennsylvania Landhold- ers," Alexander Patterson, chairman, now came forward with their terms of what they called " the conditions of compromise." That the commissioners should have endorsed them is beyond belief. They were : "We propose to give leases with covenants of warranty for holding their possessions one year from the first day of April instant (22d April, 1783), at the end of which time they shall deliver up full possession of the whole, * * and if they have any oppor- tunities of disposing of their hutts, barns, or other buildings, they shall have liberty to do it. * * The widows of all those whose hus- bands were killed by the savages, to have a further indulgence of a year, after the first of April, 1784, for half their possessions."

Patterson was determined "to feed fat the ancient grudge he bore them."

Judge Jenkins replied the same day : " As we conceive that the pro- posals of the committee, which they offer as a compromise, will not tend to peace, as they are so far from what we deem reasonable, we can not comply with them without doing the greatest injustice to ourselves and our associates, to widows and fatherless children ; and, although we mean to pay due obedience to the constitutional laws of Pennsylvania, we do not mean to become abject slaves, as the Committee of Landholders sug- gest in their address to your honors."

The commissioners divided Wyoming into three townships, the new ones being named Stokes and Shawanese. Justices of the peace were elected by Patterson and his associates without notice to or participa- tion by the inhabitants, they not yet being freeholders and voters in Pennsylvania.

The commissioners reported to the Assembly which convened in August, 1783. They recommended to the families of those who had fallen in arms against the common enemy, reasonable compensation in land in western Pennsylvania, and to the other holders of Connecticut titles who "did actually reside on the land at the time of the decree at Trenton, provided they delivered possession by the 1st day of April following."

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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

Now, Pennsylvania began to vacillate in her policy. The Assembly approved all their suggestions. The division of Wyoming into three townships was also approved. The "act to prevent and stay suits" was repealed 9th September, 1783.

Two full companies of soldiers, " who have served in the Pennsyl- vania line," were enlisted. Capt. Patterson, now a justice of the peace, returned full of zeal. He changed the name of Wilkes-Barre to Londonderry. For protesting against the lewdness and licentiousness of the soldiery, he arrested Col. Zebulon Butler, then just returned from service in the Revolutionary army. Him he sent to Sunbury, charged with high treason. In Plymouth he arrested many respecta- ble citizens; feeble old men whose sons had fallen in the massacre -- Prince Alden, Capt. Bidlack, Benjamin Harvey, Samuel Ransom, Capt. Bates and others-greatly beloved by their neighbors. They were kept in loathsome prisons, starved and insulted. They were dispos- sessed, and Patterson's tenants put into their places. The unhappy husbandman saw his cattle driven away, his barns on fire, and his wife and daughters a prey to licentious soldiery.

The people, outraged, petitioned the Assembly. It sent a commit- tee to take testimony. Daniel Clymer, of Berks, one of the committee, rose in his place, and said, "there was evidence enough to show that Alexander Patterson ought to be removed."

Gen. Brown, another member of the committee, said he " was certain no member of the House could imagine him in the interests of the people of Wyoming, beyond the bounds of truth and the desire to do justice. He had visited Wyoming as one of the committee on the subject, and had heard all the evidence on both sides. The wrongs and sufferings of the people of Wyoming he was constrained to declare were intolerable. If there ever was on earth a people deserving redress, it was those people." But Patterson was sustained by the Assembly.

At the opening of 1784, matters reached a crisis. I quote Chapman, writing in 1818, a trustworthy chronicler: "The inhabitants finding, at length, that the burden of their calamities was too great to be borne, began to resist the illegal proceedings of their new masters, and refused to comply with the decisions of the mock tribunals which had been established. Their resistance enraged the magistrates, and on the 12th of May, the soldiers of the garrison were sent to disarın them, and, under this pretense, one hundred and fifty families were turned out of their dwellings, many of which were burned, and all ages and sexes reduced to the same destitute condition. After being plundered of their little remaining property, they were driven from the valley, and compelled to proceed on foot through the wilderness by way of the Lackawaxen to the Delaware, a distance of eighty miles. During the journey the unhappy fugitives suffered all the miseries which human nature seemed capable of enduring. Old men, whose children were slain in battle, widows with their infant children, and children without parents to protect them, were here companions in exile and sorrow, and wandering in a wilderness where famine and ravenous beasts con- tinued daily to lessen the number of sufferers."

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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

In March, of that year, a flood in the Susquehanna had swept the lowlands, carrying houses and fences all away. Patterson seized the opportunity, with land lines thus obliterated, to dispossess the occu- piers, restore the lines of Pennsylvania surveys, and thus bring about the cruel and pitiful exodus just referred to.

He shall tell his own story : "The settlements upon the river have suffered much by an inundation of ice, which has swept away the greatest part of the grain and stock of all kinds, so that the inhabit- ants are generally very poor. Upon my arrival at this place (Wyom- ing), the 15th instant (April, 1784), I found the people for the most part disposed to give up their pretentions to the land claimed under Connecticut. Having a pretty general agency from the landholders of Pennsylvania, I have availed myself of this period, and have possessed, in behalf of my constituents, the chief part of all the lands occupied by the above claimants, numbers of them going up the river to settle, and filling up their vacancy with well-disposed Pennsylvanians, *

* yet I am not out of apprehension of trouble and danger arising from the ringleaders of the old offenders," etc. (By " ringleaders " he means such men as Butler, Ross, Dennison, Dorrance, Shoemaker, Jen- kins, Franklin, Slocum, Harvey, etc). By the 1st of June, he had made pretty clean work of it, and this without trial or verdict or other process of law.

Wherever news of this outrage reached, indignation was aroused, and nowhere more generally than in Pennsylvania. The troops were ordered to be dismissed. Sheriff Antis, of Northumberland county, which then included Wyoming, went to restore order. Messengers

were dispatched to recall the fugitives. But they found Justice Patterson still flaming with wrath, and went into garrison near Forty Fort. Two young men, Elisha Garrett and Chester Pierce, having been slain by Patterson's men, while proceeding to gather the crops, the settlers rallied for serious hostilites. John Franklin organized what effective men he could find. He swept down the west side of the Susquehanna and up the east side, dispossessing every Pennsylvania family he found. He attacked the fort to which they fled, was repulsed with loss of several lives on each side, and returned to the Kingston fort. Civil war now openly prevailed. ( Forty of the Penn- sylvania party were indicted at Sunbury, and subsequently convicted for their participation in expelling the inhabitants). Other magistrates, Hewitt, Mead and Martin, had been sent to open negotiations. They demanded a surrender of arms from both sides. In their report to the president and members of the Supreme Council, under date of August 6, 1784, they say : "In obedience to instructions of council of the 24th of July, we repaired to this place (Wyoming), and found the Pennsylvania and Connecticut parties in actual hostilities, and yester- day made a demand of the Connecticut party of a surrender of their arms, and submission to the laws of the State, which they complied with. We also made a demand of the same nature of the party in the garri- son, but have received no direct, but an evasive, answer. * * As to the pretended titles of the Connecticut party we have nothing to fear, and are convinced that had it not been through the cruel and irregular

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conduct of our people, the peace might have been established long since, and the dignity of the Government supported."

Again, under date of August 7: "We have dispersed the Con- necticut people, but our own people we cannot."

The "party in the garrison " consisted of Patterson and such troops as had enlisted under him in the interests of the Landholders, without any warrant of law. When Patterson refused to surrender, the Connecticut people were permitted to resume their arms. At this stage, Cols. Armstrong and Boyd appeared with a force of four hundred militia from Northampton county. By a piece of the most absolute treachery, he procured the surrender of the Yankees, and marched them, sixty-six in all, bound with cords, and under circum- stances of great cruelty, to jail at Easton and Sunbury. The con- quest was complete. "The only difficulty that remained was how to get rid of the wives and children of those in jail, and of the widows and orphans whose husbands and fathers slept beneath the sod."

Col. Armstrong was now confronted, to his surprise, by the censure of the State authorities. The "council of censors" looked into the case, and took action. Frederick A. Muhlenberg was presi- dent. This body had just been chosen under the Constitution of 1776, and it was their duty " to inquire whether the Constitution has been preserved inviolate in every part, and whether the legislative and executive branches of the Government have performed their duty as guardians of the people, or assumed to themselves, or exercised, other or greater powers than they are entitled to by the Constitution."

In September, 1784, they delivered a decision which was a solemn denunciation of the measures pursued against the Wyoming settlers.

The Executive Council paid no heed to the censure nor to the advice of President Dickinson. A fresh levy of troops was ordered. The militia of Bucks, Berks and Northampton, refused to march. Arm- strong hastened to Wyoming with less than a hundred men, in Octo- ber. He promptly attacked the settlers in their fort, at Kingston, without success. William Jackson, a Yankee, had been wounded. Capt. John Franklin seized Jackson's rifle, bloody from his wound, and swore a solemn oath "that he would never lay down his arms until death should arrest his hand, or Patterson and Armstrong be expelled from Wyoming, and the people be restored to their rights of possession, and a legal trial guaranteed to every citizen by the Consti- tution, by justice and by law."

Gen. Armstrong went on to dispossess the families who had returned to their several farms. All these proceedings led up to the passage of the Act of Assembly of September 15, 1784, entitled "An Act for the more speedy restoring the possession of certain messages, lands, and tenements in Northumberland county, to the persons who lately held the same," under which the settlers were once more let into some assurance.

Armstrong and Patterson were recalled. "Thus ended the last expedition fitted out by the government of Pennsylvania to operate against her own peaceful citizens," and "the second Pennamite war."

The few real Pennsylvania improvers had a sufficiently unhappy

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life of it. They were subjected to great hardships, and, if you please, outrages, not forgetting the unfortunate encounter in Plymouth, in July-the lamentable affair at Locust Hill, with Maj. Moore's com- mand, in August -- the indignity offered to Col. Boyd, a Pennsylvania commissioner, in September-nor the attack on 26th September on the commissioners (disclaimed by Franklin and his party)-nor the final attack on "the garrison," in which Henderson and Reed were shot.

By the 1st October, 1784, the condition of affairs was deplorable, but "the thing was settled," and the agony over.

"Two years have now elapsed since the transfer of jurisdiction by the Trenton decree. Peace, which waved its cheering olive over every other part of the Union, healing the wounds inflicted by ruthless war, soothing the sorrows of innumerable children of affliction and kindling the lamp of hope in the dark chamber of despair, came not to the broken hearted people of Wyoming. " The veteran soldier returned, but found no resting place. Instead of a joyous welcome to his hearth and home, he found his cottage in ruins or in possession of a stranger, and his wife and little ones shelterless in the open fields or in the caves of the mountains ; like the sea-tossed mariner approaching the wished- for harbor, driven by adverse winds far, far from shore, to buffet again the billows and the storm. It is true, and honorable to those who effected it, that the New England people were repossessed of their farms, but a summer of exile and war had left them no harvest to reap and they returned to their empty granaries and desolate homes' crushed by the miseries of the Indian invasion ; mourners over fields of more recent slaughter, destitute of food, with scarce clothing to cover them through the rigors of a northern winter, while clouds and dark- ness shrouded all the future. Assuredly, the people of Wyoming were objects of deepest commiseration, and the heart must be harder and colder than marble that could look upon these sufferings and not drop a tear of tenderest pity."-[ Miner.]

We have had occasion to notice the failure of the claimants under the Susquehanna Company to get a new tribunal appointed by Con- gress to try their case under the Articles of Confederation. Col. Franklin had been active and untiring in his efforts to that end. Upon their failure he went to Connecticut to see his old friends and to stir them to some new and dangerous enterprise. He pointed out the richness and beauty of the valley of Wyoming; the wrongs of her people ; the failure of Pennsylvania, with all her machinery, to oust a handful of settlers. "A chord was struck that vibrated through all New England. Franklin, in the spirit of his oath, infused his own soul, glowing with resentment and ambition, into the people with whom he conversed ; and had not his schemes been counteracted by a timely and prudent change of policy on the part of her authorities, Pennsylvania had lost her fair northern possessions, or, by a new civil war, extinguished the Connecticut claim in blood."

Mischief was in the wind. Justice David Meade was about the last Pennsylvania claimant left in possession, although he was one of the earliest Connecticut settlers. He was one of Patterson's justices, looked upon as a traitor from the Yankee ranks, and a spy on the

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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

people. Rising one morning, he found a dozen men mowing his meadows.

Said one : "Squire Meade, it is you or us. Pennamites and Yankees can't live together in Wyoming. Our lines don't agree. We give you fair notice to quit, and that shortly." It illustrated the situation. He was the last Pennsylvania claimant, on the Wyoming lands.

The Susquehanna Company was re-convened at Hartford, on July 13, 1785. Its proceedings were significant, and embraced a substan- tial declaration of war. Pennsylvania had been a vigilant observer of events. On December 24, 1785, she passed " An Act for quieting disturbances at Wyoming, for pardoning certain offenders, and for other purposes therein mentioned."

A general pardon and indemnity was offered for offences committed in the counties of Northumberland and Northampton, in consequence of the controversies between the Connecticut claimants and other citizens of the State, before the 1st of November, 1785, provided the persons having so offended surrendered themselves before 15th April, 1786, and entered into bonds to keep the peace. It also repealed the act confirming the division of the townships of Shawanese, Stokes, and Wyoming into two districts for the election of justices of the peace, and annulled the commissions granted.

No great number of these settlers were in any humor thus to sue for pardon, and the law fell-a dead letter.

The Susquehanna Company met again in May, 1786. This time it rather chivalrously resolved to " effectually justify and support the settlers." In fact, the latter, while nominally under the laws of Penn- sylvania, governed themselves. Sheriff Antis, of Northumberland county, had wisely "pocketed " most of the writs he held against them, unexecuted.

On the 25th of September, 1786, the county of Luzerne was erected. It embraced the lands settled by the New England emigrants. It gave them representation in the Council and the Assembly, and proved to be a wise measure. But, step by step, as Pennsylvania moved to close up the trouble, the Susquehanna Company went for- ward with its scheme of revolution.

On the 26th December, 1786, at its meeting in Hartford, it appointed the following ominous list of "Commissioners :" Maj. Judd, Samuel Gray, Joel Barlow, Oliver Wolcott, Jr., Al. Wolcott, Jr., Gad Stanley, Joseph Hamilton, Timothy Hosmore, Zebulon Butler, Nathan Dennison, Obadiah Gore, John Franklin, Zerah Beach, Simon Spalding, John Jenkins, Paul Schott, Abel Pierce, John Bartle, Peter Loop, Jr., John Bay, and Ebenezer Gray. These were well known names, and it was quite certain that what they responsibly undertook, would be done. They or any five of said commissioners "shall be a court with power, etc., * * this power to determine whenever a form of internal government shall be established in that country."

Gen. Ethan Allen was in the scheme, and actually appeared at Wyoming, in regimentals and cocked-hat, with the Green Mountain boys, fresh from their victory over New York, in reserve, and in his honor was laid off Allensburg township, along the upper Wyalusing

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creek. This was a large grant to Ethan Allen. The purpose was to erect the Connecticut claim in Pennsylvania into a new State, and the action was as public and as bold as that of the Declaration of Indepen- dence, by brave and desperate men who stood at bay.

They issued " half-share" rights in great numbers, and new faces- strangers to the "old settlers "-began swarming into the valley. The old-time residents had no sympathy with all this. They knew it pro- longed the unhappy situation, and deprecated its effects. Asa witness in Vanhorne vs. Dorrance expressed it : "The half-share men and the old settlers were a distinct people, and as much opposed to each other as to Pennsylvanians." On the 27th of December, 1786, an act was passed providing for the election of representatives, justices of the peace, etc., in Luzerne county. Timothy Pickering, Zebulon Butler and John Franklin were appointed in the act to notify the electors, take oaths of allegiance, etc. Franklin, as we have seen, had other views, and refused to act. Pickering had come as the special representative of the government of Pennsylvania. He was politic, and held to his definite purpose, wisely. Col. Butler wished repose for his neigh- bors and himself. Col. Pickering, as the result of a previous visit ((unofficial ) to this region, had reported to the State authorities " that the inhabitants expressed a willingness to submit to the govern- ment of Pennsylvania, provided they could have their lands confirmed to them."

He then consulted eminent legal authority as to the right of the State to cede the lands to the Connecticut people, and, thereupon, " he undertook the laborious, the difficult, and, in the minds of many, the hopeless task of conciliating the minds of the Wyoming people. With his utmost efforts, during a whole month's diligent application, he barely succeeded, and solely by the expectations he persuaded them to entertain that they would be confirmed in their possessions."

With these assurances, the great majority of the people were for submission. Three classes were opposed. A few, thoroughly imbued with the absolute rights of their case-filled with the glowing tradi- tions of their struggles-wanted their possessions confirmed first, and submission afterward. Pennsylvania claimants, of course, resisted : such of the Susquehanna Company's grantees as were outside the lines of "the seventeen township," and the new influx of "half-share men."

Says Miner : " And now, for the first time, was presented the spec- tacle, equally gratifying to foes and painful to friends, of open and decided hostility among the Wyoming people. Whatever difference of opinion may exist in respect to the justice of their claims, no liberal mind could have traced their arduous course through toil and priva- tion, through suffering and oppression, through civil and foreign war, and observed the fortitude, fellowship and harmony among them- selves that had prevailed, without a feeling of admiration for rare and generous virtues so signally displayed. In an equal degree was the mortification at the spectacle now presented. It was no longer 'Pen- nymite and Yankee, ' but the ' old settlers' against ' the wild Yankees or 'half-share men.'"

Very Jey Manuel

HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY. 137

The election went forward. John Franklin was chosen the mem- ber of Assembly; Nathan Dennison, member of the supreme executive council, and Lord Butler, high sheriff. Thus the county of Luzerne was fully organized.

Forthwith, a long petition was sent to the Legislature then in ses- sion, setting forth that "seventeen townships, five miles square, had been located by the Connecticut settlers before the decree of Trenton," etc., and praying that " they might be confirmed in them."

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History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 13

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.) Publication date: 1891 Publisher: Chicago, S. B. Nelson Number of Pages: 1340

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.)
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago, S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1340