History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 5

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

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No monuments, mausoleums, tall shafts, halls or great art buildings have ever yet been reared to the memory of the original pioneers of America. The most of them sleep in long-forgotten graves; in the deep woods, on the mountain-side, by the bubbling spring, at the outer edge of the ancient " clearin'," anywhere that was most conven- ient, were buried these men as they fell with their faces toward the com- mon enemy of civilization, scalped so often by the savage, and left to the wild animals, and their scattered bones carried to the dens of ravening beasts. These heroes were standing picket-guards for the oncoming civilization, for us, and the comforts and luxuries we now enjoy. In the ceaseless struggle that was going on, there was not even time to stop and mourn over the fallen brave, but as one would go down there in time were two to take his place. How far nobler were the aim and end of these humble men's lives than was that of Napoleon! His was to conquer, enslave and destroy by fire and sword. Theirs was to reclaim, to make us homes, to lift up our civilization, and bring peace and permanent happiness; to supplant savagery with gentle intelli- gence, and build the empire of thought over the ruins of brute force.

Here are the results of the unwritten, obscurest of men's lives placed side by side with the world's great military hero, the subject

HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

somewhat stripped of this unreasoning adoration of the world's aver- age fetich. It is the contrast of the truly noble by the side of the admired and ignoble. It is the attempt, however feeble it may be, to direct the thoughts of men into higher and better channels. It is one of the true lessons of real history. It is worth imprinting on the minds of the young, and should be blazoned on the walls of the school-rooms, and hung in the halls and porches of the great institutions of learning.

To produce such a grand race of men required a long course of preliminary preparation. Their love of freedom and their hatred of tyranny, their stubborn and resolute natures, to rising above that feel- ing of helpless dependence upon assumed superiors ; that peculiar frame of mind that dared anywhere and upon every emergency to rely upon itself and its own inherent resources, where no aid could come from others, where there were none of the arts or helps of civilization to call upon in sickness, in hunger, in death or birth ; no church, school, physician, blacksmith, mills, no nothing, save the implacable foes that fairly rose up out of the earth in legions to oppose his coming. The swarms of parasite and venomous insects, the rattling, hissing reptiles spotted with deadly beauty ; the bowls of the hungry wolves, the pierc- ing screams of the panthers, and the savage war-whoops that oft woke the sleep of the cradle, were some of the things against which were raised the bare hands of the white man. Had these men stopped to count the odds against them, they surely would never have come-flying from present ills to those we know not of, and they did not stop, but, fearless and unconquerable, they moved ever to the front, shoulder to shoulder, silent and resistless.

Mostly it is to the severe religious persecutions that three centuries ago overran Europe that we owe the people that came and the con- quering of the New World. This severe and bloody era was much of the preparatory school that bred the virile races of men destined to conquer and possess the wilderness, and cause it to bloom in peace- ful civilization. They were in the hunt of homes and the free temples of God, to worship and adore the Heavenly Master with none to molest or make afraid. Here are now some of the results of these long and cruel persecutions. They were the fiery ordeals that brought forth the men and women, equipped for the great work that lay before them.

The Old World was sadly and cruelly governed, and of all these the bloodiest was that of Great Britain. Here were the peculiar, strong people, made to oppress, and to resist. On the one side full of the spirit of revolt, on the other simply savage and pitiless in repres- sion. Wild and unreasoning in their adoration and fealty to the crowned head, yet those rugged, wild, carousing old barons would lay down their lives for the king as readily to-day as they would chop off his head to morrow. Among no other people in the world's history would the nasal-twanged fanatic, Cromwell, and his terrible following have been possible. He was the noblest fetich smasher, particularly that ancient and deep delusion of "the divinity of kings," that has appeared since creation began. He enjoyed beheading kings and princelets, shooting lords and confiscating their landed estates, and he

HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

picked up tinkers, hostlers, scavengers, anybody, the lower in the old order of society the better, in the hunt for men, real men without the tinsel trappings, and made them premiers, judges, chancellors and high state officers, and his psalm-singing, praying army was a flaming sword and the fiery blast. Think of the man as you may, yet who can withhold some meed of praise and admiration for the sovereign contempt with which he kicked over the nation's idols, the assumed human divinities, bowed to by the nation as fetiches? Cromwell's school was the seed of America, its possession and independence.

Back in the Old World, its travails, its persecutions and its bloody schools were laid the preparations and making possible North Amer- ica, and to-day, here as everywhere and in all time, are effects follow- ing causes.

The Saxon and the Gaul, impelled by the same motives, came in parallel lines, crossed and re-crossed each other's paths in the wilder- ness. The immigrants to the New World were at first lured into the deeper forests by the fur trade, and the glittering wealth from this source was the incentive that bore along that wave of humanity that has covered finally the continent from shore to shore. The French about Quebec were originally the most successful in getting the fur trade. Among them grew up a remarkable class of men known to history as the coureurs des bois-translated-"travelers of the woods." The peculiar times as well as people were necessary to produce this distinct class of men. They were land sailors, and something of their remains may now be seen among the western cow-boys of the plains. They were young Frenchmen who had come to or had grown up in this country, who upon the slightest taste of nomadic life in the wilderness were enchanted by it, and they threw off the stern morals of the churchmen who were in control of Canada, and repelled by austerity at home and allured by absolute freedom toward the wild wood, they practically abandoned civilized life and adopted that of the wild man.

They traveled, did these brave pioneers, among the Indians, learned their ways of capturing game and living, and these brave and hardy young men soon became much as naked barbarians. Their long light bark canoes shot around the bends of the rivers, floated along the cur- rents of the smaller streams, or were carried over the portage here and there ; they struck into the dark old woods, scaled the steepest hills and passed over the tallest mountains, and to every tribe and Indian village they traveled and were welcomed for the bright trinkets and fire water that they exchanged for pelts and furs. Sailor-like, these voyagers in the woods married squaws with great impartiality in nearly every tribe and village after the Indian fashion. The Indian law required the purchase of wives for an agreed time, and these rollicking young out- laws no doubt often for a single colored glass bead completed the wed- ding trade for as many days as they would remain trading at that particular place. They in time could equal. if not excel, the Indian in making the light canoe, and then in handling it on the water. They were expert hunters and marksmen with the long old-style match-lock guns, and they could make and use the bow and arrow. They spoke the Indian language, and in meeting a new tribe with a new language

HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

they could readily by signs make their wants understood by the strangers. They learned the streams and the country well, and were familiar with the Susquehanna and its branches for nearly a century before the pioneer settlers followed them to possess and hold it. While the authorities at Quebec were greatly scandalized by the immoral and reckless lives of these men, and enacted severe laws against them, yet they increased in numbers and were the builders of the fur trade that came to be the chief concern of the contending English and French at one time. These voyagers built up an impor- tant trade, as well as being the first to visit nearly every part of the unknown land. They would load their canoes with the little provision necessary, and the trinkets to trade and go out on their fifteen months' expedition, and return laden with valuable furs. These they would sell to the merchants, and then in a few days' drunken debauch spend the entire proceeds, often selling the last rag of new clothes they had purchased on their arrival, and when everything was gone go to the trader and on credit get their meager supplies and outfit, and start on another fifteen months' expedition. Their commissary supplies were hominy and bear's grease-a bushel of lye hominy and two pounds of grease was a month's subsistence. To this meager fare they added but little of such as they could readily get, and on it fared abundantly. When the adjustments of war came, these coureurs were the nucleus of armies that could successfully contend with the cunning and scattered savages in the forests and the swamps.

CHAPTER V. EARLY SETTLERS.

To THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE REVOLUTION-DURING THE WAR THE COUNTRY ABANDONED BY THE WHITES-MARAUDING INDIANS- FOX AND SHUFELT, THE FIRST SETTLERS-LIST OF THOSE FOLLOW- ING THEM - FIRST OF THE SUSQUEHANNA COMPANY-THE FIRST DISCOVERERS UNKNOWN-APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY - A BOY AND LEATHER BREECHES-ETC.

A MONG the early immigrants to America, a strong and marked race of people were the Dutch; these were among the first on the south line of the State - the oldest settled portions outside of the city of Philadelphia. Bradford county, being in the extreme northern portion of the commonwealth, was not settled for nearly one hundred years after the Dutch and Scotch-Irish had reduced to possession the bay and the mouth of the Susquehanna river. And here came the German Palatines, a people that were denounced in the father-land as religious outlaws, and had been driven out and turned their faces toward the New World, and landing in New York had located their

HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

colony in Schoharie county. It is said the British settlers had placed these Palatines between them and the Indians as a protecting shield against the incursion of the barbarians - the strong and warlike Mohawks. Many of these people were not pleased with their treatment at the hands of the English of New York, and cast about for a new location. They heard of Penn's Woods, and many of them came in scattering bands to this province as early as 1727, and as they came from the North down, the Delaware and then again from the Mohawk, the short portage to the Susquehanna, and once upon the latter stream they would naturally float down and the moment the current brought them to what is now Bradford county, they beheld the beautiful land and coveted it. It is not known how early the first of these daring explorers discovered the northern part of the Susquehanna river; nor is it more than conjecture whether the hunters and trappers were here before them or not. The reasonable supposition is that for at least a hundred years before the Palatines had migrated from the Old World, all this region of country along the Susquehanna was known to the whites. Who were they ? And when did the white-faced discoverer come ? These are questions that echo only can give any answer to. The Palatines came in 1710 to New York; how soon after this they were here is not now knowable. The best that is known is that in 1737, when the Moravian interpreter, Conrad Weiser, came up the river on his way from Philadelphia to the Six Nations, in the Genesee country, he found some of these Germans at Wyoming trying to buy lands of the Indians.

Rudolph Fox .- In the month of May, 1770, came two of those German relatives-Rudolph Fox and Peter Shuefelt [in time spelled " Shoefelt "]. Fox stopped at the mouth of Towanda creek, immedi- ately south of the borough, Towanda and Shoefelt continued on to where is Frenchtown. These were the first white families who under- took the work of making permanent homes in what is Bradford county, whoever may have been here as mere travelers or hunters and trappers before them. The Penns had sent surveyors up the river, as high as Wyalusing, for the purpose of making surveys and allotting lands in that vicinity as early as 1769-a year before Fox and Shoefelt came. Then, too, at or about the same time as these men, came the Connecticut people ; they had not only long been fully acquainted with the beautiful country on the upper Susquehanna, but were ready to come and lay claim to it in the name of "The Susquehanna Com- pany." And the meager first arrivals from Connecticut were about the same time, or soon after, of Fox and Shoefelt. Some idea of the sociability of the first to arrive is seen in the fact that Fox settled at the month of Towanda creek, while Shoefelt continued on down to Frenchtown-these men were of the kind that wanted breathing room evidently-they had come from the Old World, crowded and cramped with wrong and oppression ; where liberty was scourged and coffined, and the very air was laden with taxation and tyranny ; where rulers were many and great, and where the people were worse than mere chattles ; where ignorance and vileness were worshiped as "the King who can do no wrong," and equally the masses could do " no

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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

right ;" where whatever ruled was a sacred fetich-the self-assumed vicegerents of God, born to waste in worse than drunken debauchery the hard and never-ending toil and bread of life of the people; where the ruling powers were rich aristocrats, who taxed and exacted the very heart's blood of all men; where the governments were paternal in all powers over the people; where men were educated into ignorance far below the dull ox on the hill sides; where men's beliefs, from in- heritance and wrong education through generations, were simply stolid and absurd. The most venomous idea in this world is the long-drawn- out beliefs that man, in his aggregate, must have a supreme ruling head, born so, and whether a scrofulons infant, full-grown idiot, mad- man or a two-legged impotent animal in the prime of life, utterly base, low and vile, ignorant or brutal, yet always the "good king" with supreme power to tax, to oppress and destroy. They are all rulers, sacred heads of the society or government, the most of whom have been worshiped because they have been utterly vile. Some barbaric peo- ples have worshiped toads, lizards, snakes, alligators and man-eating tigers, and other peoples who worship kings and princelings for their national fetiches speak of and regard with contempt the snake wor- shipers; but would not a modicum of sense reverse all this and justify the wild barbarian's contempt for this boasted better civilization ? No man-eating tiger god was ever half so evil as the average royal rulers the world over. The worship of the toad is a harmless lunacy com- pared to that of any of the " divine rulers," that can " do no wrong," the average "infallible head " or ruler, whether king, junta, head and supreme war-makers and governors-the whole race of born paternalists from Alpha to Omega. The bee-hives have their queen and their drones and innumerable workers. The queen is born in her regal cell, and is fed on queen food. The workers sting the drones to death at the end of the season and cast out their dead bodies; all but one of the queens are destroyed, and that one, while she does not go to the field with the workers to gather stores of honey, yet she has her duties and lays all the eggs for the colony that in time is to go out and make new hives. She is a real queen, a good queen, but never yet has she tried to tax all her workers and take from them all the honey they had gathered during the long summer. And these little insects have ages and ages ago reached a perfection of good sense and social organization that compared to the best that man has been able to do, is an ideal government; a high water-mark of intelligence that poor dumb man it seems can never hope to attain. The most astounding thing of all in human nature is the unshakable tenacity with which men cling to ancient, disgusting practices. Suppose that you could put a million of men, the wisest the greatest and best men in all the world, chosen from every quarter of the globe, on some new world to themselves, and surround them with everything that goes to make them great, happy and contented; they would not be in their new place ten days before there would be a convention called to select an all-wise, paternal ruler,-a taxer, who could fix at will the amount of tribute the others should pay him for fine houses, palaces, servants and standing armies,-his chief business would be to build harems and

HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

call about him his favorites to help spend in waste, extravagance and debauches the hard-earned substance of the people, and, as a rule, the more intolerably infernal he would become the more wildly worshiped he would be. Well, every forty years or less an entire new generation of the fourteen hundred million people on the earth is born. This entire new race find things just about as their fore- fathers found them, and that settles it; the man who dares to ask "Why" ? is in immediate danger of losing not only his reputation but his life. Possibly this is the divine order; that we are so constituted that we can in no other way be happy than by being completely miserable, so we balance the books by striking the balance sheet between opti- mists and pessimists.

The very dreams of the wildest theorists build their Utopias on the old plan, invariably; they can and have worked out some beautiful con- ditions and theoretical lofty surroundings, but the foundations, the fundamental ideas are those simply of the good old cannibal king of pre-historic times,-a "divine" taxer, and lest poor man might escape government paternalism somewhere in the great futurity, there are watchful gatekeepers to the high walls on his every pathway. In this respect, the wildest barbarians, yet too wild and crude to form tribal relations, without fire and naked, fighting for life on the outer borders of brute creation, at least are not taxed, are not blessed or cursed with a paternal ruler.

The first arrivals of the Susquehanna Company came to Bradford connty in 1774-four years after the arrival of Fox and Shoefelt. They had built their little bark huts, much after the Indian fashion, and enlarged the " deadenings " about them, and were now raising a little corn and a few vegetables, and had ponies and cows, and from the streams and the woods all the meat they wanted. When the ground was cleared enough for the sun's rays to play freely upon it, the rudest cultivation yielded the greatest returns. These first arrivals surveyed for themselves the long east and west townships, Wyalusing and Standing Stone. Among these settlers were James Welles and Robert Carr, at Wyalusing; Edward Hicks, at Sugar Run; Benjamin Budd, at Terrytown; Anthony Rummerfield, at Rummerfield; the Van- Valkenbergs, at Misiscum; Lemuel Fitch, at Standing Stone, and John Lord, at Sheshequin.

St. John de Creve Coeur, a Frenchman, passed up the Susquehanna river, with Indian guides, in 1774. A report of his exploration was published some time after in France. He was an educated man and a close observer ; he says : "On the fifth day we arrived at Wyalusing, situated ninety miles from Wilkesbury. It is a plain of considerable extent and of great fertility. I observed that the blue grass had been replaced by white clover with which the pastures were covered. There were as yet only a few families living along the river. Their cattle were

of great beauty. * * * Passing up the river they showed me the remains of the ancient villages of the Senecas -- Sissusing (Sheshequin) Teoga, Shamond (Chemung), etc. After three days' navigation, always against the current, we landed at Anaquaga, one hundred and eighty miles from Wilkesbury."

HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

By the next year, 1775, the Proprictories had made grants and set off and surveyed them to the grantees. Among others was that of Casper Hoover, nearly opposite the Dodge farm, at the upper end of Terrytown.

Henry Pawling, of Providence, in 1775, purchased of Job Chillo- way, the Indian, the valley of Wyalusing and four rights in the Sus- quehanna Company, adjoining, and that year, with his three sons, Benjamin, Jesse and William, settled on their land. With this family came Isaac Hancock, as tenant and housekeeper, and, as laborers, they brought Richard Berry and a man named Page. The three Pauldings were young men who afterward were known as among the wealthy, influential people of the county. The Pawlings for years lived on the site of the old Moravian Indian town. Isaiah Pasco lived just north or above them on a lot owned by Elihu Williams, and still further on was James Welles and family, near where the old Foley house stood ; Nathan Kingsley was a few rods above the depot ; Amos York on the John Hollenback farm, and near him his nephew, Miner Robbins. Capt. Robert Carr was on the north of Wyalusing creek ; he sold to James Forsythe, and he in turn to Abraham Bowman.

In 1777, settlements were made near where is Camptown in Wyalu- sing, and also along the river at Asylum, Standing Stone, Macedonia, Wysauking, Towanda, Lower Sheshequin and at Sugar creek, Philip Painter and Leonard Lott were in Wilmot, on the Gamble place.

Benjamin Budd and his three sons, John, Joseph and Asa, and also Parker Wilson were located at Terrytown.

Peter Shoefelt, companion in the coming of Rudolph Fox, was at Frenchtown, where were also James Forsythe, Samuel Ketchum (his place afterward was the Willian Storr's place) and Samuel Cole and family ; Jacob Bruner and Stephen Sara were at Macedonia.

Anthony Rummerfield was the first settler on Rummerfield creek, and that stream bears his name; and at Standing Stone was Simon Spalding, Lemuel Fitch, fourof the VanAlstynes, Henry Birney, Charles Anger, John Pencil and Adam Simmons; these were mostly just below the York narrows.

The Van Valkenbergs and Stropes were near the mouth of Wysox creek ; William Nelson, on the Lanning place; Isaac Larraway, senior and junior, and Samuel Showers were on the flats nearly opposite Towanda.

Jacob Bowman was one of the first close neighbors of Rudolph Fox and Capt. John Bortles had made his "pitch" up the Towanda creek toward Monroeton ; John Neeley was at Green wood.

John Lord had settled in Sheshequin, on the Gore place, and he soon sold to William Stewart.

At Tioga point was John Secord, family and two grown sons, James and Cyrus. A full account of the settlers at this point will be found in the chapter, " Athens Township."

These constituted the beginnings of the "Happy Valley," at all events would have been, not only the happy, but as well the magically growing valley, had not cruel circumstances-in one sense like fate itself-come upon the people. There were the fewest of people, and

HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

only the wide-scattered, rudest of huts with their bark coverings- without schools, churches, courts, officials, police, culprits, palaces, paupers, penitentiaries, or preachers, these people were laying the foundations of peace, happiness, wealth and a great empire ; they were a law unto themselves-industrious, frugal, honest and intelligent- the world's fairest models of self-government; living examples of how very little men need governing when really left by rulers to govern themselves. A healthy, robust public opinion was the strong, supreme law of the land, before which the most hardened outlaw slunk away from the sight of men as do the ferocious wild beasts and the venom- ous vipers. A blue-coated policeman with his brass buttons and tin star would have been to these simple-minded pioneers as veritable a show as the elephant and his keeper pulling himself up by his tusks and poking his head in the animal's wide-extended mouth. Think of a police court every morning consigning the poor over-night drunks to the rock-pile in those primitive days! About the only officer of the government they ever knew was the tax-collector, and he was not seriously dreaded, for, even though the nation was young, as all sup- posed, hopelessly in debt, all her great institutions to build, yet the tax was then but a fraction of a cent to where it is now dollars. Money was very scarce, but so were paupers and millionaires. The modern reader need not shudder in pity over these "simple annals of the poor"-they were the contented poor, with little or none of that sordid greed that has been the fruitful source of so much of man's inhumanity to man. With none of the glittering and costly trappings of state, hardly able to realize they had a tax-gatherer, they had set about the noble life-work before them, and the rainbow of promise spanned their eastern sky. But in a moment through their "sweetest of the plains " went driving the plowshare of war-the people rose up against their horrid King fetich, whose cruelties had driven the iron into their very souls, and finally on the altars of liberty they staked their fortunes and sacred honor. Driven to rebellion they were rebels, outlaws, with a price set upon their heads, and for seven long, dreary, cruel years the cloud of war hung over the land, the invading enemy on one hand, open and secret foes and spies in their own midst, and the prowling, pitiless red savages in the rear, marking the trail of his marauds by the smoldering ruins of pioneer cabins and the bloodiest of massa- cres. Did these men and women, think you, realize that all this infliction had come upon them because they and their ancestors had held to the implicit faith of the "divinity of kings," the right of taxing at will the people? They were not in a condition possibly to know that the only "divine" thing in this world is every human being's right to "liberty and the pursuit of happiness," absolute and unrestricted.

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History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 5

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