History of Cumberland and Adams counties, Pennsylvania. Containing history of the counties, their townships, towns, villages, schools, churches, industries, etc.; portraits of early settlers and prominent men; biographies; history of Pennsylvania, statistical and miscellaneous matter, etc., etc, Part 112

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USA > Pennsylvania > Adams County > History of Cumberland and Adams counties, Pennsylvania. Containing history of the counties, their townships, towns, villages, schools, churches, industries, etc.; portraits of early settlers and prominent men; biographies; history of Pennsylvania, statistical and miscellaneous matter, etc., etc > Part 112
USA > Pennsylvania > Cumberland County > History of Cumberland and Adams counties, Pennsylvania. Containing history of the counties, their townships, towns, villages, schools, churches, industries, etc.; portraits of early settlers and prominent men; biographies; history of Pennsylvania, statistical and miscellaneous matter, etc., etc > Part 112

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In a list of officers published in the Province, say in 1756, with date of com- missions, we find the following in the Second Battalion: "Capt. Hance Hamilton, commission dated January 16, 1756, Lieut. James Hays, commission, May 22, 1756, ensign John Prentice, commission, May 22, 1756."

CHAPTER III.

THE MASON AND DIXON LINE-GERMAN, SCOTCH-IRISH AND JESUIT IMMIGRATION IN 1734-LORD BALTIMORE AND WILLIAM PENN-BORDER TROUBLES-TEM- PORARY DIVIDING LINE-MASON AND DIXON-THEIR SURVEY-THOMAS CRESAP-" DIGGES' CHOICE"-ZACHARY BUTCHER.

A S stated elsewhere the proprietary of the province was compelled to send settlers west of the Susquehanna, at an earlier period than was intended, in order to head off the encroachments that began to be made by those claim- ing from Lord Baltimore. The Germans came into what is now Adams County, in 1734, led by Andrew Shriver. The Scotch-Irish came about the same time under the lead of Hance Hamilton. The Catholics (Jesuits) simul- taneously (possibly before) came into the southern portion of the country from Maryland. They were (that is their priests, when traveling over the country of south Pennsylvania and portions of Virginia and Maryland, over a century and a-half ago) subjected to many persecutions and often outrageous assaults, more than once mobbed and beaten, and the writer has an account of one who, pursued by a mob, mounted his horse and swam the river as the bullets were flying thick about him. Two hundred years ago it seems nearly all men were illiberal in their religion, and believed in ghosts and witches. They would persecute all of opposing sects, and then persecute themselves with the fantastic antics of imaginary witches. They had active imaginations. They wrangled, argued, discussed and fought savagely about the wildest and silliest mysticisms. The most of them had been driven to the wilderness, by the cruelest persecutions, to a land of liberty- to enforce with an iron hand their own incomprehensible dogmas.

Fortunately, beyond all else, Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, and William Penn, a Quaker, became the proprietors of the adjoining provinces of Maryland and Pennsylvania. In the history of many centuries of the world, here were two of the finest types of great and humanitarian statesmen-two men of peace, guided in their religious and temporal affairs by the lofty conceptions of that higher religion of the common brotherhood of man that is so incompar- ably superior to those impassable lines of divisions of sects into mere names and church formulas.

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

Under the control of the average ruler or statesman of that day, the dis- pute in regard to the true line dividing the two provinces would have rushed swiftly to a bloody issue. So indefinite were the grants to Penn and Calvert from the English king that each was honest in claiming ground that the other be- lioved to be his own. Then on each side of the line of contention were peoples of different religious denominations, and the difference was the serious and highly inflammable one of Catholic and Protestant, each of which could point to their martyrs, horrid persecutions. long, implacable and bloody wars of faith against faith. Here was every element, overy circumstance to lead to a terri- ble calamity to the people of the two young provinces, to the country and to mankind. Sectional lines and hates first arose among the people in reference to the dividing line between Pennsylvania and Maryland. Long before States were formed, long before our Union was dreamed of, here was the little cloud no larger than your hand that was the true type of sectional contention that eventually culminated in the bloodiest civil war of history.

The border troubles commenced in 1683 and raged with stubborn obstinacy for nearly a century the Catholics of Maryland with the battle cry "Hey for Ste. Marie!" and the Puritan shouting as he fought, "In the name of God. fall on!''

In 1739 Thomas and Richard Penn, grandsons of William Penn, and Fred- erick, Lord Baltimore (great-grandson of Cecelius Calvert), jointly organized the first commission to run a temporary dividing line between the provinces. The commission never completed its labors. Consultations and negotiations between the proprietaries continued at intervals. Partial surveys would be made, but these were unsatisfactory to each party, and then steps would be ta- ken for an additional survey.

On the 4th day of Angust, 1763. the Penns and Lord Baltimore employed. in England, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two eminent mathematicians and surveyors, to take charge of the work. They arrived in Philadelphia and received their instructions in December, 1763. Early in 1764 they commenced their labors, and the work in the field was completed in 1767, and finally marked in 1768.

In the autumn of 1764 they had completed the preliminary surveys neces sary to get their proper point, and ran the parallel of latitude lino west to the Susquehanna, thus commencing the famous line which bears their name and which is now the dividing line between Pennsylvania and Maryland.

The actual work of Mason & Dixon extended 244 miles from the Delaware, and within thirty-six miles of the whole distance to be run. At this point, in the bottom of a valley marked on their map "Dunkard's Creek," they came to an Indian war-path, and here their Indian escort informed them that the Six Nations said they must stop. The remainder of the line was run by other surveyors in 1782, and marked in 1784.

A stone, marked on one side with the arms of the Penns and on the other side with those of Baltimore, was set every five miles. The stones had all been prepared and sent from England. The amount paid by the Penns alone under these proceedings, from 1760 to 1768, was £34,200, Pennsylvania currency.

The border troubles at first were solely between the peoples of the Penns and Baltimore. The noted champion of Maryland was the famous Capt. Thomas Cresap, a squatter at Wright's Ferry, on the west bank of the Susque- hanna. A serious fight of himself and son (afterward Capt. Michael Cresap, the slayer of Logan. the Mingo chief) with the Pennsylvanians in 1739, in which Thomas Cresap was captured and led, a fettered but defiant captive, in triumphal procession to Lancaster, where he was held a prisoner, and indicted

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

and threatened with trial for murder, and this finally led to a settlement be- tween the provinces and arbitration of all questions in dispute, and the release of Capt. Cresap. The troubles among the people changed about this somewhat in form. Cresap had told the Dutch not to pay taxes to the Penns, and Maryland felt too doubtful of her title to be very exact in collecting her taxes. In time there became a fixed belief among the people that they occupied a neu- tral and independent strip of land, and they began to feel that they owed alle- giance to no one. They trespassed on "Digges' Choice," who held his grant from Baltimore, and they resisted Penn's authority on the Manor of Maske.

In 1757, at a place on "Digges' Choice" near what is now Jacob Ballinger's Mills, in Conowago Township, in a dispute about the land titles, in which there were warlike demonstrations on both sides, Dudley Digges was fatally wounded by Martin Kitzmiller. Fortunately for Kitzmiller the Pennsylvania authorities first secured possession of him as prisoner, and the Maryland authorities were thwarted in their afforts to secure him as their prisoner, and he was taken to York and tried. He was acquitted, as it was claimed by the prisoner and be- lieved by the jury, that the killing was accidental. Such were the sectional prejudices a century and a half ago, that Kitzmiller's friends would have been loth to have trusted his fate to a Maryland jury.

In 1741 Zachary Butcher, deputy surveyor of Conowago, was ordered by the governor to do some surveying on the " Manor of Maske." This "manor" had been established by Penn in 1740. The land title disputes are well por- trayed by a quaint letter to the governor from the surveyor, from which the following extracts show the temper of the people: * *

* "the Inhabi- tants are got into such Terms, That it is as much as a man's Life is worth to go amongst them, for they gathered together in Conferences, and go in Arms every Time they Expect I am anywhere near there about, with full resolution to kill or cripple me, or any other person, who shall attempt to Lay out a Mannor there."

The settlers threatened personal violence to Penn's surveyors, and would break the surveyor's chain and drive him off. These manor disputes were all settled by compromises in 1765, the boundaries of the different manors marked off, and the names of the settlers on these tracts of land designated, and the long continued border troubles were happily ended.

CILAPTER IV.

FIRST SETTLER, ANDREW SHRIVER-EXTRACTS FROM HON. ABRAIAM SHRI- VER'S MEMOIR-EARLY SETTLERS-FRENCH HUGUENOTS-THEIR SETTLE- MENT IN PENNSYLVANIA.

ITHE border troubles about the dividing line between Penn and Lord Bal- timore were the real cause of the first adventurous pioneers coming into what is now Adams County. Lord Baltimore, as he construed his grant from the crown, extended his possessions several miles north of what is now the dividing line between the two States, and Penn claimed that his grant extended to the south, and covered eveu a fraction more territory than is now within the State limits to the south. This rivalry of contention was the real stimulating cause of the first settlers coming at the time they did. The particulars of these proprietary grants are given in detail in preceding chapters, and in this

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

chapter we will only inquire as to who it was that first opened the way here to his fellow white men.

Mr. John A. Renshaw, of Pittsburgh, in a communication to the Star and Sentinel, dated March, 1876, makes the claim upon what seems to be docu- mentary testimony, which, so far, bears the best evidence yet found on this question, that Andrew Shriver (ancient spelling, Schreiber), was the first actual settler in the county. Mr. Renshaw says:

"The memoir from which these facts are gathered was prepared by Hon. Abraham Shriver, now deceased, for many years resident judge of the County Court of Frederick City, Md., being the result of his researches from various sources within his reach, and covers a period from the year 1673 to the year 1829, the latter being the date of the original manuscript."

The memoir states that Andrew Schreiber (Schriver or Shriver) and fam- ily were natives of Alstenbarn in the Electorate Palatine, Germany, and immi- grated to this country in the year 1721, landing at Philadelphia, afterward removed into the country in the neighborhood of Gashehoppen, near the Trappe, on the Schuylkill, where they made their home for some years.

The father, Andrew Schreiber, died here, and one of his sons, "Andrew, then learned the trades of tanner and shoe-maker, and, having completed his ap- prenticeship in the year 1732, continued to work at his trade for one year, in which time he earned EIS. In the spring of 1733, being then twenty-one years of age, he married Ann Maria Keiser, and the following spring (1734) moved with his wife to Conowago, then in Lancaster, now Adams County, where, after paying for sundry articles wherewith to begin the world, he had ten shillings left.

"In moving to Conewago, Andrew Schreiber's step-brother, David Jung (Young), came with him and helped to clear three acres of land which they planted in corn, and Young then returned home. During this clearing (about three weeks), they lived under Young's wagon cover, after which Andrew Shriver pealed elm bark, and made a temporary hut to keep off the weather, and by fall prepared a cabin. The wagon that brought him to this place passed through what is now called Will's bottom, and in the grass, which was as high as the wagon. left marks of its passage which were visible for several years. There was no opportunity of obtaining supplies for the first year short of Steamer's mill, near the town of Lancaster."

He purchased 100 acres of land, where he stopped, of John Digges, and the agreed price for this land was "one hundred pairs of negro shoes." And this debt was paid according to contract to Digges, and afterward Shriver bought more land of the same party and paid the money therefor. The nearest neighbor at the time he settled here was a family of the name of Far- ney, living where the town of Hanover now stands. The public road coming from the south was made and passed by Shriver's improvement.

The memoir says: " At the time of his settlement here the Indians lived near him in every direction." And then follows this historical item: "At this period (1734-35), and for several years thereafter, the Delawares and Ca- tawha tribes were at war, and each spring many warriors passed by, when they would display in triumph the scalps hooped, painted and suspended from a pole, which they had been able to obtain from their enemy, and they would require the accommodation of free quarters, to which, as there could be no ro- sistance, of course none was attempted. The consequence was they were very social, and smoked around the pipe of peace and friendship, without any at- tempt at wanton injury."

The land first occupied by Andrew Shriver became the homestead of George

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

Basehoar. It lies about three miles east of Littlestown, and five miles north- west of Hanover, near Christ Reformed Church. In the ancient grave-yard of this old church rests the dust of many of the early pioneers of this county.

Unfortunately the paper does not give the dates of the coming of those who followed Andrew Shriver. The first to come were Ludwig Shriver, a brother, David Young, mentioned above, Middlekauf, Wills and a few others that, in the words of the memoir, "followed in a few years," and made settlements near him.

Among the early settlers in this region, who followed the Shrivers, and with whose families they intermarried, were the Ferrees and Le Fevres, of the Hu- guenots, who had been driven from the towers of Linden, France, in the year 1685, by the cruel persecutions of Louis XIV, and took refuge in Germany, when hearing of the province of Pennsylvania, then under the great and good William Penn, they made their way to London, and there embarked for Amer- ica and settled in Pequea, Lancaster County, and afterwards came to Conowago. where their descendants still occupy some of the farms in this rich valley.

Here then was the first little fringe of civilization planted deep in the dark old forests of Adams County, sheltered under the wagon cover of Shriver's and Young's wagon, the avant couriers of the increasing sweep of that grand race of men who created the greatest empire in the tide of time; fertilizing its seed with the spirit of independence and liberty that was to leven the human race all over the world and yield the rich blessings of mental and physical freedom that we now enjoy. Shriver was a typical representative of the American pioneer, the most admirable, the greatest race of men and women that have appeared upon the earth in nineteen hundred years. The just judgment of the great men of the world is the full measure of the results that flow out from their actions. This is the sole criterion by which the last final and irrevocable judgments are to be made, and, by this standard, there is nothing to raise a question when intelli- gent men come to hunt out their real heroes- their truly great-in awarding the world's meed of praise to the pioneer. These lowly, silent, obscure men of the wilderness and the solitudes-full of gloomy religion, quaking with supersti- tious fears, stern, inflexible and often grotesque in their ideas of moral tenets, illiterate generally, illiberal, nearly always, reading only their old family Bibles, and laboriously spelling out from this good book, precepts upon precepts, that to them and their families were literally "the law and the gospel," that were administered upon those in their care and themselves with rods of iron; rude in dress and manners, crude in thought and practice, with coarse, scanty fare, generally wretchedly served in brush and pole tents and cabins on dirt floors, unwashed, unkempt, without books, without papers, without a polite literature, without information and without culture mostly; they had been long yet will- ing sufferers of cruel persecutions for conscience sake; they had been beaten with many stripes, imprisoned, starved, branded with hot irons-naked fugi- tives from their native land, in sorest poverty, seeking a refuge in the unknown world, among the red savages and the wild beasts of the forests.

What a school ! What a grand race of men it bred ! Men of iron and action. No braver men ever lived. They were brave physically and morally. They absolutely knew no fear of anything mortal. Their hard school had su- perbly developed their minds and bodies for the great work they had sought out to do. They were men of large bone and muscle and brain, and knew nothing of the enervating influences of wealth and idleness. The spirit of re- ligious persecutions pervaded the old world, and no class of men in civilized or semi-civilized people are so pitilessly cruel as the religious fanatic and bigot; and their scourged and banished victims were the seed of that civiliza- tion that has overthrown the bloody tyrants and liberated a long suffering world.

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

Behold the magnitude of the results, and the paucity of means. In the world's history of great social or political movements, there is nothing at all comparable to that of the fruits and labor of the pioneers as we have the results to-day. Their only school was the world's saddest travail, and, in their direst suffering, no murmur escaped their tongues, in the darkest hour of their long gloomy night, no cry for succor found breath in their lips. They walked with God. They know no anger, because they knew no fear.

CHAPTER V.

SECOND ARRIVALS-PENN'S PURCHASE-" MANOR OF MASKE"-SURVEY-OB- STRUCTIONS-COMPROMISE-" CARROLL'S DELIGHT "-LIST OF EARLY SETTLERS ON THE MANOR, AND WARRANTEES-"OLD HILL" CHURCH-PRESBYTERIAN CONGREGATION IN CUMBERLAND TOWNSHIP.

N the year 1736 William Penn purchased all the region lying west of the - Lower Susquehanna from the Indians. There is strong evidence that as soon as the purchase became known to the borderers cast of the river, they began to move across to these rich and beautiful lands. Prior to that time, doubtless, some of them had, in friendly visits to the Indians here in their hunting and trapping expeditions, looked from many of those elevations about us over the enchanting sweep of valleys, the gently rolling hills, and drank of the cool crystal waters that went rippling down nearly every hill side. They had described what they saw to their friends and a few of the most adventurous came across.

There is no record or tradition now to tell exactly who they were or when they first came.

In 1739-40, as the Dutch then were rapidly coming. Penn laid ont, in what is now Adams county, a reservation for himself and family, and called it the " Manor of Masque," after the title of an old English estate belonging to some of his distant relatives. Ho had laid out "manors " before this in the eastern part of the State.

* He. Penn, sent surveyors to run out the "Manor of Masque" and the order for the survey, bearing date June 18, 1741, is as follows:

PENNSYLVANIA S.

SE BY THE PROPRIETARIES.

These are to authorize and require thee to survey or cause to be surveyed a tract of land on the Branches of Marsh Creek on the West side of the River Susquehannah in the County of Lancaster containing about thirty thousand acres for our own proper use and Behoof and the same to return under the name and style of our Manor of Maske in the County of Lancaster aforesaid into our Secretary'soffice, and for so doing this shall be thy sufficient warrant. Given under my hand and the seal of our Land office at Philadelphia this eighteenth day of June in the year of our Lord one Thousand Seven Hundred and Forty-one.

TO BENJ. A. EASTBURN, Surve yor-General. THOS. PENN.

But the matter must have been determined upon at an earlier date than the issue of the order, for in the archives of Pennsylvania is a letter dated June 17, 1741, from Zachary Butcher, a deputy surveyor, in which he alludes to his effort, two weeks prior to that, to make the survey. The whole letter has

*Extracts from notes by Hon. Edward McPherson, who has a collection of old records and family papers which is now largely the only insight into the history of the early settlers, extant.

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

interest for the descendants and the successors of the " unreasonable Creatures " who then inhabited this region, and it is as follows:

SIR :- I was designed about two weeks ago to have Laid out the Mannor at Marsh Creek, but the Inhabitants are got into such Terms, That it is as much as man's Life is worth to go amongst them, for they gathered together in Conferences, and go in Arms every Time they Expect I am anywhere near there about, with full resolution to kill or cripple me, or any other person, who shall attempt to Lay out a Mannor there.

Yet, if the Honble Proprietor shall think fit to order such assistance as shall with- stand such unreasonable Creatures, I shall be ready and willing to prosecute the same with my utmost Endeavor, as soon as I come back from Virginia. I am going there on an urgent occasion.

CONEWAGO, June 17, 1741.

I am yours to serve, ZACH. BUTCHER, Dpt.

Below is a list, as printed at the time, of the settlers on Marsh Creek, who obstructed the survey, 1743:

1 Wm. McLelan,

Jos. Farris, Hugh MeCain,

John Eddy, 8 John Eddy, Jr., 9 Edw'd llall,

2 Matw. Black,

10 Wm. Eddy,

3 Jam. McMichill,

11 James Wilson,

4 Robt. McFarson,

12 James Agnew,

Wm. Black, John Fletcher, Jr.,

John Steen, John Johnson,

- 5 Jas. Agnew (cooper),

llenry MeDonath,

John Alexander,

6 Moses Jenkins,

" Rich'd Hall,

Richard Fossett,

Adam Hall,

Declares yt if ye chain be spread again he would stop it, and then took ye Compass from ye Surveyor-Gen.

" The first thing which strikes me," says Mr. McPherson, "is the number of persons in this list of 'settlers,' whose names do not appear on the only authentic records yet found of the settlement. Of the twenty-nine persons named, nearly one-third represent families of whose settlement there is now no trace; and there are some mistakes in names. 'MeLelan ' stands for McClel- lan; ' McCain ' for MeKean; 'McFarson' for MePherson; 'Swainey' for Sweeney; 'Hooswiek ' for Hosack; 'Eddy' for Eddie."

No further steps were taken in the direction of a survey of the manor until 1765. A compromise was effected early in that year through the agency of James Agnew and Robert McPherson, who acted as a committee for the settlers, and who secured the concession that the lands taken up prior to 1741 should be subject to the "common terms," and that the others should be liberally treated. The boundaries of the manor were thereupon marked in 1766, and were made to include 43,500 acres instead of 30,000 as originally ordered.

A list of names of the first settlers, with the date of their settlement, was returned to the land office, to prove the incipiency of their title. After the resistance of 1741 and 1743 no warrants whatever for land in the manor were granted by Penn's agents. But in April, 1765, thirty-seven were granted; in May, nine; in June, three, and in other months of that year twelve, making seventy-one warrants in all.

The manor is separated by a narrow strip from Carroll's tract, or "Carroll's Delight," as it was named. This was surveyed under Maryland April 3, 1732, and patented Angust 8, 1735, to Charles, Mary and Elinor Carroll. It was sold to some extent and warrants given by Carroll's agents, they supposing it lay in Frederick County, Maryland, and to be a part of Lord Baltimore's grant from the King. The Carroll tract contained about 5,000 acres.

John Hamilton,

13 Ilugh Logan,

John Me Wharten (says he shall move soon), Hugh Swainey, Titus Darby, Thomas Hooswick.

Дандвичей

THESTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

The early settlers upon the Manor of Maske located on Marsh Creek. A paper published in the Compiler, January 16, 1876, gives an interesting account of an old record paper found in the possession of the county surveyor. It is a report to Penn's agent of a list of settlers on the manor who had filed their claims upon lands, and included those who had taken out warrants as well as those who had not. To this valuable list of early settlers are added the names of those who took ont warrants between 1765 and 1775, as appears on the records of the Department of Internal Affairs at Harrisburg.

Agnew, James and Thomas Douglas, in Ferguson, James, September, 1741.

trust for Presbyterian meeting-house in forks of Plum Run, 5 acres, April 17, 1765.

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Author: Publication date: Publisher: W. Taylor Number of Pages: 1280

Author:
Publication date:
Publisher: W. Taylor
Number of Pages: 1280