USA > Pennsylvania > Columbia County > History of Columbia County, Pennsylvania. Sponsored by the Columbia County Historical Society and Commissioners of Columbia County. Volume One > Part 7
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Ch. IV
William Hughes
William Hughes at Catawissa laid out that town in 1787. We can be fairly sure that he spoke about the splendid water power available from the Catawissa Creek and how his town of Hughesburg had splendid advantages of a ferry in the river ad access to the valleys of Roaring Creek and Catawissa Creek.
Although Bloomsburg region was among the first, if not the very first, to be settled,it built up slowly. The swampy flats along the river may have been the cause. Ludwig Oyer , it is thought, was disturbed to see that his property was not building up as fast as Berwick and Catawissa. He thought he could sell his land faster if he laid it out. He laid out Bloomsburg in 1802.
Columbia County Towns leid out:
Date
Town Planner
Name first given
Present Name
1786
Evan Owen
Owensburg Berwick
1787 William Hughes
Hughesburg Catawissa
1794 Christian Kunchel & William
Mifflinsburg Mifflinville
Rittenhouse
1800
George Espy
Liberty,
Espytown Espy
1802
Ludwig Oyer
Bloomsburg7
Bloomsburg
1817 Philip Seidle
Williamsburg Light Street
1822 Clement Ricketts
Orangeville
Orangeville
1835
Elijah Price
Leestown,
New Media
Numidia
1855 Survey of Streets by
Centerville
Centralia
Other towns seem to have grown without any town plan, at least, at
first. The owners of land merely selling off building lots from time to time
Town Plans
Alexander Rea
Since towns were invariably planned at places of special advantage - junction points on travel routes, stoppages in river traffic, fords or ferrying places - these features almost always explain the basic street pattern that was to be followed to the present. Berwick's north and south route gives Market Street while the east and west route determined Front Street. Catawissa's main street leads back from the river until it comes to the three way "fork" where streets mark routes to Roaring Creek, Mainville, and Bloomsburg. Bloomsburg's main east and west street follows what must have once been the main river road, but well back from the river to avoid swampy land. It was the time of horses for travel. Thus many town plans provided for alleys so that easy access could be had for a horse stable placed on the rear, without an entrance necessary at the front of the lot. This is especially true of Catawissa and Bloomsburg. William Penn's plan of square blocks with streets at right angles is followed in most of our towns. His plan provided for alleys, and also a central square, as in Philadelphia. Bloomsburg, is the only town in the county to have a central square similar to that of Philadelphia, but much smaller, of course. Berwick does not have the system of alleys. This is probably because Even Owon provided
7A map, apparently the original map, uses the name Bloomsburg. Traditions give the name Eyerstaedtel and indicate this name following 1802 was used. All deeds after 1802 use the name Bloomsburg.
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a system of in-lots for residence, of 49.5' x 181', and out-lots of much larger size 247.5' x 412.5' where extensive gardening might be done, or small scale farming. It is probable that his plan was that horses would be kept there. It is interesting to note that both Bloomsburg and Catawissa have streets with the name "Ferry".
Craftsmen and Artisans
By bringing in various trades, the pioneers out on the clearings were benefited. Needed things could be made and bought in the growing neighbor- hood villages. The first settlers included many such skilled workers and tradesmen. Berwick is a good example because of a complete record there. At an early date, although we do not know exactly when, the following trades are listed: a tailor, a chairmaker, a tin smith, a tanner, carpenters8, a cooper, a blacksmith, a cloth dyer, a butcher (probably a dealer in fresh meat), a weaver, a cabinet maker, a saddler, a wheel-wright, a miller, a gun smith, and a silver smith.
Catawissa, Bloomsburg, and to some degree the crossroads villages at other places must have resembled Berwick in these early days: little country settlements with shops near the humble houses, log cabins for the most part at first. The shops were mostly one-man affairs. The owner cultivated his land when he did not have jobs to keep him busy at his trade. Some of these trades have disappeared. Others have been transferred to large factories, here or elsewhere. Inns and hotels were needed established very early at the smaller villages as well as the larger towns. A record of Catawissa, also fairly typical indicates that it had forty- five houses mostly log, but one of stone. Berwick was probably no larger, but other towns were not to achieve this size for years. Let us look more closely at certain examples of the work in these villages. The Cooper and Cooperage
Containers were needed by the pioneer - spoons, cups, dishes, pots, kettles, caldrons, kegs, barrels, measures. A few would have been brought. As they were lost, broken, worn out, how were others provided? How were they to get additional ones needed? Wood was used for buckets, kegs, and barrels. Here is where the work of the cooper was very important on the frontier. Wooden pieces, staves, were accurately beveled and steam-bent to proper size and shape, grooved on the inside to take ends, a bottom if a bucket, both ends, headings, if to be a keg or barrel. The cooper needed to be a skillful worker in wood. His products were in the greatest demand. He could also be sure of a ready market if he shipped his headings and staves in "knocked down" form for use in the distant cities. Large numbers of barrels were needed for flour, whiskey, and grain, which soon were shipped in great quantities to the cities.
Leather A century and more ago, rubber and other plastics were unavailable. Leather, still a preferred item for certain articles such as shoes and gloves, was at that time put to many other uses also: coats, leggings, boots, belts, belting for machinery. Harness for horses and oxen required heavy leather of the finest sort.
ÖThe first settlers, the Browns, were carpenters.
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The Tanner and Leather
After the first season, the pioneer farmers begin to accumulate hides from game animals and from livestock butchered for meat. A solution of lye was used to loosen the hair after any of the flesh adhering had been scraped off. For the actual tanning, tannic acid was needed. This was to be secured from the ground-up bark of oak and hemlock trees, especially hemlock. A series of soakings in stronger and stronger solutions of tannic acid then followed. Fine leather resulted when the process was carried out by experienced and skilled craftsmen. All the ingredients were found on the frontier.
Harness makers and shoemakers were able early to make a living. At first they might go from farm to farm. At each stop they would use the leather of the owner. The owner might have tanned it himself, or he might have had it tanned at the early tannery in the neighborhood, paying for it by leaving a portion of his raw hides or pelts. Now the traveling crafts- men, if harness maker, repaired the harness or made a new set or sets as might be needed. If a shoemaker, he made and fitted shoes to the family feet as needed and repaired others. His pay in part would be "putting him up" for the time he was there. He might also take leather in part pay. The rest would have to come from money. This was hard to come by, but supplies were gradually increasing as the pioneers were able to sell more and more of their products.
Is it any wonder that the whole family might go barefoot much of the time in mild weather? We also learn that, by common frontier practice, maidens on their way to church, walked barefoot until they came in sight of the church, when they put their shoes on. After church, the practice was reversed. We don't learn about the swains, maybe they did the same! Tanneries also produced leather that could be sold if shipped to the cities. Harness makers might also produce goods for sale at a distance. Shoes were sold directly from maker to user.
Certain examples reflect vividly frontier conditions. Actual Experiences of Early Tradesmen
John Snyder completed an apprenticeship as a saddler in Allentown. After following his trade briefly in several cities, he settled in Berwick in 1808, and later became prominent in the life of Berwick. He served in the War of 1812, reaching the rank of major.
Daniel Snyder, no relative of John just noted, became dissatisfied with farm life in Northampton County after he and his older brother had taken up the family farm on the early death of their father. He took up work in a tannery in order to learn the trade. In 1810, at the age of twenty-seven, he came to Bloomsburg and bought twenty-six acres east of Catherine and North Streets, then just beyond the town limits. He paid 550 English pounds, equivalent to $2,673. A day laborer might be paid 30 to 50 cents for a day's work. A skilled worker might get 75 cents a day. These figures suggest the burden of such an investment for a young man trying to get a start in his trade. He returned to his former home for his eighteen year old bride, when rumors had it that the brook running through his newly bought property occasionally would run dry. This meant disaster for his tanning project. Squire Hutchison passing through with a load of wheat for Easton, assured Snyder that the stream was a never-failing
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one. With this assurance, Snyder arranged with the Squire to haul him, his young bride, and their possessions back to Bloomsburg. According to later incidents, a young heifer must have been led also, the bride's dowery. Arriving at Nescopeck after dark, it was deemed best to make the crossing that night. When the young woman saw the swollen condition of the river the next morning, she vowed that she would never have risked the cow if she had known how dangerous it was. The heifer was forced to swin behind the ferry.
The Snyders took up residence in a log cabin at the corner of what was later East and Second Streets. But their troubles were not over. After the tannery had been erected, Snyder had only a hundred dollars left. The leather he had bought he could only sell on trust, but to secure hides for his business he was required to pay money. His industry and pluck inspired confidence and money was lent him with which he established him- self as a fine business man and community leader. We shall hear more about him. His wife was a loyal and industrious helper. She made several rolls of butter each week from the milk supplied by the heifer. The butter was sold or bartered. One of the items bartered was the shovel with which Snyder dug his tan vats.
Sometime in 1816 a stranger, by the name of James Wells, "put up" for the night at a Bloomsburg hotel. He said that he was a Yankee wagon maker. On suggestion, he stayed to make a wagon for the landlord. But Wells had difficulty in borrowing tools because there was still animosity for New Englanders on account of the Connecticut troubles of fifteen or twenty years previous. William Sloan lent him tools and work bench. Seasoned wood was secured from old fences on Sloan's farm. When completed it was the town's first one-horse vehicle, and the first to have been constructed here. It is stated further that the wagon industry of Sloan and Hendershott resulted.
Towns also early had merchants. But even before merchants, there were the peddlers. They made their appearance at an early day and were part of the farm scene for many years, even into the twentieth century. In fact, certain kinds of "merchandising" in door to door canvassing are still to be found. At first the peddler may have come by canoe, later by pack horse. At one time he may have carried his meagre stock of goods on his back. When roads developed he would have a peddler's wagon with an ever-widening stock in trade. Included were articles of necessity: woven cloth, tin or iron cooking utensils, needles, tools. Trinkets would also tempt the lonely pioneer wife. Always he carried with him a stock distributed free, the latest news and savory gossip to lighten the loneliness of the "back woods." He had to be willing to take frontier goods in trade, especially pelts, rags saved up for the paper maker, and other articles, for money was scarce. Paul Thomson, an early Berwick maker cf pottery, sold his products of crocks, jugs, and other course utensils, from his flat boat along the river. The stores came very early. There was possibly one at Catawissa before the Revolution.' Merchants, for example, are mentioned in Berwick shortly after 1786 and at Bloomsburg, before 1810. In 1791 John Funston in modern
Chapter II, page 14, "children had been sent to Catawissa for supplies."
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Madison Township, sent his son to Reading with grain for sale. The son bought six wool hats and sold them so quickly on his return that the older Funston began to supply the neighbors with goods. This was the start of the Funston store. Around it grew up the town of Jerseytown on the Bloomsburg-Muncy road.
While the settlers were trying to produce articles for sale or trade and while they were working to improve the means of transportation, they also learned that they could exchange each other's labor, that is they could join in sharing work.
Sharing in Work
In clearing land, numerous logs resulted too large to be piled by one man, or by man and wife. As soon as there were neighbors within convenient distance, they would be told that on such and such a day there would be a log rolling. On the appointed day all families within reach of the call gathered together at the designated farm. The men chose two captains, and these men alternately chose their sides. When the teams were completed, both went to work with a will to see which team could pile up the most. There was much coarse fun spiced with the danger of handling big logs with heavy log hooks.
Meanwhile the women were having equally jolly times, preparing the food partly brought and partly supplied. Older children helped or took care of the younger ones. After a day of jolly companionship and hard work, the owner saw his fields well cleared with piles of logs that he could burn at his convenience. The Germans called such jolly work parties froehlich, meaning happiness or jollity. We have the similar word, "frolic". English speaking people noted how busy like bees everybody was. Their name of ten given to such neighborly work parties was "bee".
Cabins, Houses, and Barns
The next frolic or bee would probably be the raising of a house or barn. Building the second shelter, better than the first required help. The logs used were longer and heavier. On the house raising day teams would be chosen, some were to notch the logs so that a four square house could be built. Willing hands and strong made the walls rise. At the gable ends, stout wooden sticks or pins kept these logs in place. A ridge-pole supported the roof timbers on which bark was laid and weighted with stones or other timbers. Or home split shingles might be used later. Windows and doorway were cut and a door was hung with wooden hinges. No known cabins of round logs as they came from the trees are known to the writer to be in existence in our County. Usually the second shelter was a log house, rather than a cabin of crude round logs. For the house, the logs were squared with broad ax and adze, both operations requiring strong, skilled men. Such squared logs, notched one-quarter of the thickness at each end would fit together to make a solid building with a minimum of chinking necessary. There are at least three splendid examples of this better type of construction existing in our county: the Quaker Meeting Houses in Catawissa and on the hill road from Slabtown to Newlin in Locust Township. The barn on the Howard Esler property in Montour Township, a short distance north of the old Route Il, is an especially fine example of such construction.
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The first log cabin probably became a live stock shelter when the better house had been built. Still another type of building required the help of a bee or a frolic. For this type, the owner, or his carpenter, had put together with careful joints well braced the heavy squared beams for each side and end of the building, laying them on the ground, next to their place-to-be in the completed building. Such a set of timbers could only be raised into place by the combined help of the neighborhood in a frolic or a bee. If the carpentry was good, these sides would fit exactly into the joints prepared previously, holes would be bored, and stout wooden pins inserted which would hold the whole heavy framework together. There are still many old houses and barns around the county that must have been con- structed in this way.10
There were also corn-husking bees, bees or frolics for butchering, and possibly other types of work. The women often got together to share the essentially women's work: quilting, spinning and weaving, and possibly others.
By 1830 or 1840 the older sections of the county had been fairly well settled. Some settlers could look back to fifty or sixty years of develop- ment, especially in the bigger river towns, at Millville, Light Street, and the more open valleys. Neighbors were fairly close by in the country as well as in the villages. Loneliness was largely overcome. The dangers of Indians were no more. Wild animals were no serious menace, at least in the settled sections. The settler had an improved house and livestock, especially horses and oxen. Various crafts and trades were established in the nearby towns. Transportation was still hard and dangerous and undependable, but still it was greatly improved over the first days. Life was still hard for farmer, housewife and craftsman, because a great deal of work still had to be done by manual labor. But conditions were much improved.
In the more distant and out-of-the-way places, the life of the pioneer still confronted the new settler, but even for them towns and villages, and neighbors were not at such great distances. They did not have the loneliness, danger, and hardship of the first pioneer.
10This skill will be referred to when we tell about early bridges.
TO FIND OUT HOW EFFECTIVELY YOU HAVE READ
1. What three words describe pioneer life at first?
2. How did the pioneers secure food? Tell some of the ways their food differed from ours. Especially recall differences in food secured from the wilds.
3. Tell about the different kinds of shelters and how they were made.
4. What were the articles or commodities which the pioneer had to secure from others?
5. If a day laborer was paid 35¢ a day, what could be said about the prices paid for various commodities mentioned in this chapter. Or, putting it another way, how many hours or days of work were necessary to buy one or another of such items?
6. What were articles which the pioneer could secure or make; articles which they could trade or barter?
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Ch. IV
7. What were the first kinds of mills that were constructed? Can you explain
why? Where were they located? Why important? At what kind of site? 8. What did these mills produce or make? How were products disposed of? 9. Consult the encyclopedia for pictures of river craft, rafts, arks, Durham boats.
10. What important roads and stage routes were established in these early years? Trace them on an outline map or road map.
11. Tell about the settlers who arrived in these years and where they settled. 12. Tell important facts about the Town planners, who they were and what were the towns they planned.
13. Using time line on page 1 as model, make a larger one showing items and details that had to be omitted on this small one, both our state and national history above the line and our local history below. This might be a committee project.
14. How did the village dwellers help the pioncer farmers? In turn, how did these farmers help the village dwellers?
15. Why were the cooper's and the tanner's trados especially important? 16. How do the experiences of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Snyder, of James Wells, of John Funston reveal pioneer conditions and experiences in our region?
17. Describe frolic or a bee (work bee) and why were such gatherings important? 18. What is the difference between a log cabin and a log house?
INTERESTING THINGS TO DO
1. The basic reference books, which your toccher knows about, probably contain additional interesting details about the particular borough, town, or township, in which you live. Read about your own district. You may find interesting points to report to the class on the topics of this chapter, and on the topics of later chapters.
2. An excursion to a grist mill, or saw mill. A visit to one with early machinery would be especially interesting.
3. Interview a miller and bring to class an account of early milling and modern milling.
4. Prepare an exhibit of early articles and utensils: of the housekeeper, farmer, perhaps craftsmen's tools. Even one or two lent to your class would prove interesting.
5. Try to bring pictures for class exhibit of life, activities, utensils of the times.
6. Write lettor to County Historical Society telling about any interesting items or pictures.
7. Some such items may be seen at the Columbia County Historical Society, arrange a trip to the Society's museum.
8. We are not sure our list of towns as they were laid out is correct. letters telling us of errors or omissions are requested.
9. Letters calling our attention to any items for correction are requested.
Check your vocabulary:
ingenuity, forage, spawn, barter, mead, pollution, conservation, alkaline, solution, porridge, buhr stone, a stream's head, to bushwhack, ingredients
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Chapter V
CANALS, RAILROADS, AND INDUSTRIES
Christian Brobst, a Community Leader
Christian Brobst of Catawissa was an important leader in bringing improved transportation to the North Branch of the Susquehanna. Born in Berks county, he settled at Catawissa in 1795, at the age of twenty-eight. He had accepted continental money as his share of inheritance from his father. Like all continental paper money, this became worthless.
Brobst early showed his enterprise and energy. The owner of the first grist mill seems to have been unobliging, apparently thinking that he had a monopoly. As Brobst expressed it, he became " .. too sassy." He borrowed a large sum of money and built a second mill in 1801. This mill was a substantial building and equipped to produce flour, feed, and plaster. Transportation Needs
In the three or four years becinning about 1800 Catawissa sent more than 13,600 barrels of flour to Reading. More would have been sent if the roads had been better. There seems to have been some form of boat transportation on the Susquehanna at this time for communities in the region and on the West Branch, but none to the distant communities. Transportation overland by horses and wagons was slow and expensive. A ton, possibly a ton and third, might make up a wagon load. The river traffic was practically all down stream, and then only at freshet times, two or occasionally three times a year.
Why not use Steamboats on the Susquehanna?
Steamboats had been operating on the Hudson river since 1807 and on the Ohio since 1811. Several attempts were made to establish steamboat transpor- tation on the Susquehanna, but all in vain. It was at Berwick that it was finally proved to be impracticable. A steamboat, "The Susquehanna" was built at Baltimore. After trips to Danville and Milton in 1826, Berwick was approached on a trip planned for the upper reaches of the North Branch. A number of prominent men, including Christian Brobst, were on board. A full head of steam had been built up by means of pine logs as the Berwick rapids were approached. The boat's progress was stopped by the current. It turned, striking a rock. Then the boiler exploded. It is thought that someone had held down the safety valve. Col. Joseph Paxton of Rupert, one of the passengers, has left this description: "I stood on the forward deck with a long pole in my hand, and was in the act of placing it in the water hoping to steady her, when the explosion took place. Two young men standing near were blown high in the air, and I was hurled several yards into the water. I thought a cannon had been fired, and shot my head off." Two persons were killed outright, and others burned by escaping steam. Brobst and Paxton were not seriously injured.
This disaster turned attention away from steam navigation in the river, except for local navigation on shorter stretches of quiet or slack water, as in the vicinity of Sunbury and Northumberland.
18/20
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1945
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1848
18.54
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war
Harck Furnace
Foundry-> --
ville
No. F.r.
jun
Catavissa R.R.
1865
Construct a similar chart adding the many omitted items.
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