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 119

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Publisher: W. Taylor
Number of Pages: 1280

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 119
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 119

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HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

of Moses McClean's children was William, who was born in York (Adams) County in 1777, in Carroll's Traet, and died December 23, 1846, aged sixty- nine years. His first-born was Moses, born in 1804, on his father's farm in Car- roll's Tract. He died September 30, 1870. William's first-born was Moses, the father of Hon. William McClean, the present (1886) president judge of the court in this district. The last above mentioned Moses McClean was born in this county in 1801; died in Gettysburg September 30, 1870. He was a mem- ber of Congress in the twenty-ninth session -- 1845-47. In 1855, the time of the Know-nothing party excitement, he was induced by the conservative element to become a candidate and serve a term in the State Legislature. He was a member of Congress when war was declared against Mexico.

Ensign Jacob Barnitz, of Col. Swope's regiment in the Revolution, married Miss McClean, a sister of Archibald and Moses McClean. Barnitz and Moses McClean were prisoners, and suffered greatly at the hands of the British. Bar- nitz was severely wounded and lost a leg. The old hero, Moses McClean, re- moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, where he gained new honors and the trust and love of the people, and here he died September 10, 1810.

The McPhersons is another of the early and distinguished families which were here among the first, and for more than 150 years they have an unbroken line of leading and important citizens, each succeeding generation adding lus- ter to the original. (For full particulars of the family genealogy see Hon. Edward McPherson's biography.)

Gen. William Reed was an officer in the Third Battalion of York County Militia during the Revolution. He was chosen a member of the convention which framed the second constitution of Pennsylvania in 1790; became brigade inspector of York County Militia, April 25, 1800, and member of the State Senate from 1800 to 1804; appointed adjutant-general of the State of Pennsyl- vania August 4, 1811; took sick and suddenly died June 15, 1813, at New Alexandria, Westmoreland Co., Penn., while organizing the State militia during the war of 1812-15. His remains were interred near Millerstown (now Fairfield), Adams County.

Hon. William Crawford, M. D., was born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1760, received a classical education, studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and received his degree in 1791; emigrated to York County (now Adams County), and located near the present site of Gettysburg, purchased a farm on Marsh Creek in 1795, and spent the remainder of his life there practicing medicine among his friends, with the exception of intervals in which he was elected to office. He was an associate judge, and was elected to represent York district in the Eleventh Congress, in 1808, as a Democrat or Republican, as the name was then generally termed. He was re-elected to the Twelfth Congress to represent York District and to the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Con- gresses to represent a new district formed, of which Adams County was a part, serving continuously from 1809 to 1817, after which he resumed the practice of medicine. He died in 1823. Mrs. Edward McPherson is a grand- daughter of Dr. Crawford.

Col. Henry Slagle (original spelling of this name was Schlegel) was born in Lancaster County, in 1735, a son of Christopher Slagle of Saxony, who came to this county in 1713, and put up a mill, one of the first, on Con- estoga Creek. He was a soldier of the Revolution, commanding a battalion of Associators in 1779; a member of the Provincial Conference and of the Con- vention of July, 1776; was appointed to take subscriptions for the Continental loan; was a member of the Assemby 1777-79; a member of the Constitutional Convention 1789-90, and associate judge in 1791. He represented Adams

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

County in the Legislature of 1801-02. An ardent patriot, faithful officer and an upright citizen.

Col. David Grier was born in Mount Pleasant, Adams (York) County, in 1742. Studied law and became a lawyer in 1771. Become a captain in Col. William Irvine s regiment for the war of independence. His commission dated January 9, 1776, and he was promoted major October 25, 1776. He then was made lieutenant-colonel of the Seventh Pennsylvania, and commanded the regiment after Col. Irvine became a prisoner.

Victor King had nine children: Jean, born November 16, 1746; Hugh, born January 19, 1750; James, born September 22, 1753; Agnes, born March 10, 1756; Victor, born July 30, 1758. The dates of the births of Martha, Susana, William and Louisa Moffet King are illegible. The brothers of Victor King, Sr., were James King, died in 1799, aged eighty-five; William King, died in 1794, aged eighty-two years. The three brothers, Victor, James and William, were the first settlers on the upper Great Conowago, tradition fixing the date of their coming as 1735. Hugh King married Miss Vorhees in 1780. This family brought the first foot-stove that was ever in the county. The Kings, Bells and Vorhees families intermarried, and their representatives have been pionoers, treading closely upon the heels of the savages to the Mississippi, and their descendants are found among the most prominent people of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The settlement of the Kings was called Tyrone and here were the early strong and characteristic men of the county found-Hance Hamilton, the MeGrews, McIlhennys, Rosses and others.

Judge Jeremiah S. Black's ancestors were Scotch-Irish and German. The Blacks settled in what is now the southwestern part of Adams County, where James Black was married to Jane McDonough. The brothers, Mat thew, James and John Black, came from the north of Ireland about 1730, and landed in Philadelphia, where Matthew remained, but James and John pushed wost across the Susquehanna to Marsh Creek, now in Adams County, James be- came a prosperous farmer, and from him Black's Gap took its name. John did not succeed financially as well as James. One of his sons was named James, after his uncle. This James was the grandfather of Jeremiah S. Black. He had the common education of the farmer's boy of that day. About the year 1770, he became engaged to Jane MeDonough, and shortly afterward concluded to "'go West" into the then dangerous wilderness of the Alleghenies. He set- tled between what was afterward Stony Creek and Somerset, and cleared the land, and with the hard labor of his own hands prepared a home ready for Jane McDonough. He then returned and married her, and the young couple went to their new home. His wife soon persuaded him he had made a poor selection of ground and they moved to the farm called Stony Creek. Here James Black prospered and had a tannery, several farms and, in time, a tavern. He was a justice of the peace, and was himself indicted twice during his term of office: once for tearing up a paper which he had been deceived into sign- ing his name to, and once for heading a riot which cleared away some workmen who were building a bridge and not giring satisfaction to the community.

A son of this James Black, Henry, was the father of Jeremiah S. Black. And James' wife, Jane MeDonough, was a sister of the bachelor million- aire McDonough, who died in New Orleans and gave so largely to New Or- leans and Baltimore. The Blacks and MeDonoughs were each large families. Robert Black now resides at Black's Gap in Franklin County. A. B. Black is living at Table Rock in this county.

It is greatly to be regretted that we cannot gather a complete genealogy of Judge Black's ancestors and family, because we hold that no proper biogra-

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

phy of a man can be written, more especially that of a man whose make-up presents such bold and striking characteristics of mind as are found in him, without first having a pretty full knowledge of the line of ancestors from whom he sprung. This is true of the individual as it is of communities and nations. A great people or a great man is the gradual development of the preceding centuries- the strongest lines perhaps transmitted by heredity, modified, changed and directed by climate, soil, and a dry or humid atmosphere. To these fundamental factors are the innumerable others of lesser force of times and circumstances.

In Jeremiah S. Black we have the finest type of the perfected outgrowth in America of the mingling of the strains of Scotch and German pioneers who founded this nation and reared the enduring structure of our Government. The Dutch, stubborn tenacity and sluggish blood-the shrewd and rugged Scotch, traced with the impulsive and fiery Irish and all the descendants of re- ligious heroes and martyrs-Protestants in their very blood and bones-the only one thing in its entirety they held in common. From sire to son for gen- erations had passed the strongest religious vein, producing Christian warriors, severe of conscience, disputatious and eager for disciples, who, in order that no sin might escape, punished the most innocent pleasures.

Physically as rugged and strong as they were mentally, they were a long- lived race of men, whose literature, whose investigations of the sciences, were squared rigidly to their interpretations of the Bible. When we know some- thing of these remarkable ancestors of Judge Black we have the key to many of the otherwise wonderful marks of the man himself. From the humblest walks of backwoods farmers' life he rose by his own inherent powers to be- come, and so he will go into history, as the best type of the great American descended from our Revolutionary fathers.

Judge Black was a sincere, eager churchman, who read his Bible daily, and regularly betook himself to the closet of prayer. His every nature drew him toward the strong, argumentative, combative and eloquent Alexander Campbell, and he was therefore a member of the Christian Church. He was the great layman to the Protestant Church, and when he set his lance and low- ered his visor in the tilt at the infidel Ingersoll, he best described his position in the church as the "church's policeman," who was ready to receive orders from his superiors in command, but eager to fight the devil himself single- handed in a combat where no quarters were to be asked. He took up the glove of the infidel, and unhorsed the "plumed knight," and was the first man in two centuries to tell the learned theologians of the world how to defend the faith in an age where reason and not the dungeon and burning stake are the implements of church war. The "policeman" was the great captain, in fact, to the church militant; esteeming himself the humblest, he was the cen- tral and pre-eminent figure. Let the churches of America inscribe upon his monument his dying prayer-nothing so full of trusting piety, so eloquent and touching has come back to us from the border land of that other world.

A lawyer, judge, politician, statesman and orator, writer and scholar, he adorned all alike. The greatest advocate in his day, his decisions upon the bench became the fundamental law of the land; his speeches are models of great thoughts in the most vigorous English to be found in our language.

His biography should be fully written. The world cannot afford to lose the lesson it will teach. The story will interest, instruct and benefit all, and it will be the just tribute to the forefathers. the pioneers-Scotch-Irish and Dutch and Germans who were the immigrants to this portion of our country.

If Adams County is pictured to the mind as a dining table, then wherever

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

Hon. Thaddeus Stevens sat was the head of the table. The son of a Vermont shoo-maker, born April 4, 1792, commenced life as a school teacher in York, came to Gettysburg immediately after he had been admitted to practice law in Maryland in 1816, and opened an office in the east end of the McClellan House, now occupied by Col. John H. MeClellan. He at once be- came a leader at the bar, was several years a town councilman, a member of the Legislature, where he became the father of the Pennsylvania free schools. He removed to Lancaster in 1841. He entered Congress in 1849 and served two terms, then remained in private life and again entered Congress in 1859, where he remained until his death, August 11, 1868. He was the chairman of the ways and means committee in Congress at the commencement of the war, and was the one man great enough to rule Congress, the Senate and the Presi- dent, and who comprehended the full import of the civil war at its commence- ment. He proved himself the greatest parliamentary leader this country has had, not even excepting Henry Clay. Indeed, Thaddeus Stevens was a woll- derful man, whose history is a part of the history of our country during its most turbulent and trying times-such times only develop such men as was Stevens, where he won the distinguishing sobriquet of the Great Commoner. Mentally and physically a strange compound of opposites, if they were not con - tradictions. Physically, defective in one of his feet; intellectually a trained athlete: a knight errant riding the whirlwind of the dark passions of mankind and delivering the blasting thunderbolts of his matchless invective against the oppressor of his fellow-man; his nature deeply charitable, lifting up the lowly, aiding the worthy, spending his last dollar when on his way to Baltimore with his carefully garnered gains to buy his first law library and he saw a slave parent and child being sold to be separated; he spent all he had and purchased the slaves and returned to Gettysburg with these instead of his promised books, and at the same time implacable against that portion of his fellow countrymen born to the ownership of slaves. He loved children tenderly, and the highest praise that can be said of him is the love and respect his name ever conjures in the hearts of the men and women of Gettysburg who were children when this was his home.

A diligent student of men and books he was a lover of field sports and games; of Puritan birth probably, he was of the broadest and most liberal in faith and practice. An extreme Federalist in the larger sense of the term, a Democrat by nature, a political revolutionist, who was intensely patriotic in his love of his government. A criminal lawyer with few equals and no superiors, as a constitutional lawyer he was blinded by seething political passions. His broad charity that carried a purse that had no strings, and his deep seated rad - icalism that would "organize a hell " for treason, were the strong lines in his nature. Charitable and combative his mastery of men made him a party destroyer and a party leader. Here he was born to fight and command. When he had carried the old Federal party long enough he crushed it and reared the Anti-Masonic party; tossing this aside when it had subserved his purposes, he became quiet politically for a time, until upon the ruins of old parties rose the Republican party, and here again was Stevens the master architect,

We know nothing of his ancestors and have no antecedent facts upon which we can see why he was the strange, strong and extraordinary compound he was. We only know he rescued his name from deepest obscurity and wrote it in bright letters across the seroll of fame. When his flaming sword fell from his nerveless grasp it passed to no lineal descendant's hand. He was the first and last of his name and race known to history.

Among the earliest settlers in what is now known as Adams County

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

was Patrick McSherry, who was the progenitor of a long line of families of that name, where noble and honored sires were followed by worthy and illustrious sons. Patrick McSherry was the father of James McSherry, the latter born July 29, 1776, near Littlestown, and died in the immediate neighborhood of where he was born, Febuary 3, 1849, in the seventy-third year of his age. James McSherry was the father of James McSherry, Jr., of Frederick City, Md., the historian who wrote the history of that State-a writer of great abil- ity. and his literary productions rank among the best of American histories, and also father of Hon. William McSherry, of the vicinity of Littlestown, and the grandfather of William McSherry, attorney of Gettysburg. Patrick Mc- Sherry's name is perpetuated in the town of McSherrystown. It was laid out as early as 1765 by him.

His son James was the most successful political leader the county ever produced. If the reader will turn to the chapter, giving the county officials, he will find the name of James McSherry of more frequent occurrence than that of any other man; commencing almost immediately after the formation of the county as a member of the Legislature to which he was elected for so many succeeding terms, and he always ran ahead of any other candidate on the ticket. From the lower house, he went to the State Senate, and from the Senate to the Congress of the United States-in the XVII Congress, 1821 to 1823. He has been described to us as a man above the average in stature, quiet, dignified and of commanding presence, who never possessed the arts of the demagogue, who never intrigued for his own nomination, in fact hardly ever attended a convention in his life, and who when nominated, maintained his seif respect. All that was necessary to the voters who had known him all his life was for them to know that he was a candidate, and bitter as were the poli- tics of that day, no party shackles could restrain great numbers of the opposite party from voting for him. He understood his constituents, and devoted his political life to their true interests. Without being noisy, he had the courage of his convictions; without bluster, he was brave and resolute for the right. His integrity was never questioned, and to his old neighbors and friends, re- gardless of party lines, the envenomed shafts of political malice, fell harmless at his feet. His long political life is a demonstration that an office holder may live a clean, upright and entirely honorable life.

The well known name of Col. Hance Hamilton is inseparably con- nected with the early history of York and Adams Counties. He was the Napo- leon of the immigrants who settled the country immediately west of the Susque- hanna. He was a born leader of men, with that genius that founds empires, organizes States, and wields boundless control over great communities. He was born in 1721, and died February 2, 1772, aged fifty-one years. The executors of his will were John Hamilton, Robert McPherson and Samuel Edie. His re- mains were first interred in Black's grave-yard, on Upper Marsh Creek, where they reposed for eighty years, and were disinterred and placed in Evergreen Cemetery, Gettysburg. The quaint lettered stone slab that was placed over his first burial lies prone upon the ground, and soon it will have faded away. The county owes to its self-respect to put this grave in order and place over the ashes of the illustrious dead a suitable monument. He was the first sheriff, elected in 1749, of York County. As this officer was then elected annually, in the 1750 election a riot ensued between the supporters of Hance Hamilton and those of Richard McAllister-the former the Scotch-Irish and the latter the Dutch candidate for sheriff. There was then but one poll in the county, at York, and in McAllister Hamilton had an able rival. Thus from the far backwoods of the outskirts of the county, came these two men as the

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

strong men of York County. MeAllister could rally the most votes, but Ham- ilton eould out-general him and was always triumphant. In 1751 Hamilton was again elected sheriff. At the end of this term he was appointed Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of the county. In 1756 he was captain of Pro- vincial troops in the French and Indian war. Was at Fort Littleton (Ful- ton County) from where he described in a letter the capture by the Indians of MeCord's Fort. He was at this fort again in 1757; was in Armstrong's ex- pedition against Kittanning, where a bloody and important victory was won over the Indians. May 31, 1758, he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel, First Battalion Pennsylvania Regiment of foot soldiers of the Province. His will bore the date of January 27, 1772. four days before his death. His estate amounted to over £3,000.

Nothing is now definitely known of his children. The children mentioned in his will are Thomas, Edward, Harriett, Sarah (married Alexander McKean), Mary (married Hugh MeKean), Hanee Garvin, George, John William and James. None of his descendants are now living in this part of the country.

Hance Hamilton was a typical frontiersman, of great abilities and force of character. He was but twenty-eight years old when first chosen sheriff, and died suddenly when only fifty-one years old. Thus in twenty-three years he impressed his name upon the history of the country. He was of pure Seoteh blood. Among the roll of "the forty-nine officers of Scotland in 1649" was Sir Hance Hamilton, who obtained adjudicated lands in the Province to the amount of 1,000 acres.

Culp, a name found in our ancient records, written in German and called then Kalb, but now goes into history as a part of the immortal story of the battle of Gettysburg-Culp's Hill being one of the first points after Cemetery Hill for the tourist to look for. The head of this family in this country was Christophel Culp, the father of Peter Culp, who was the father of Henry Culp, after whom Culp's Hill is named. The first Culp named above eame to this country in 1787. He had four sons: Christophel, Mathias, Peter and Christian. The first died without issue. To the others are born large families.

William MeClellan (third) was the father of our present John H. Mcclellan, and was born June 21, 1763: married Magdalen Spangler, January, 1788, and died July 27, 1831. He was the son of William MeClellan (second), born in Coleraine, Ireland, in 1735, and brought to Marsh Creek in 1739. His second wife (Mary Reynolds) died in 1796. William (third) had twelve children, of whom Col. John H. is now the only survivor. He was sheriff of York County, elected and re-elected at a time when men of personal foree contested earnestly for this office. For 150 years the family name of Mcclellan has been a familiar one to the people of this part of Pennsylvania, and as widely re- spected and honored.

Capt. Nicholas Bittinger died in Adams County in 1804, aged seventy- eight. He was one of the first who took up arms in the war of the Revolution. He was taken prisoner at the head of his column at Fort Washington. He en- dured a long and hard captivity, which induced the disease that terminated his life. He was a son of Adam Bittinger (Bedinger or Beedinger, as the name was at first spelled) who came to this country in 1736. The father and son were members of the Committee of Safety for York County in 1775. The Bit- tingers resided on Great Conowago, Menallen Township.

Hon. James Cooper was born near Emmittsburg, Md., Angust, 1809, re- ceived a collegiate education and entered tho law office as a student of Thad- deus Stevens, in Gettysburg, in April, 1832, and was licensed a lawyer April 28, 1834, and at once opened an office in Gettysburg.

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

He served a number of terms in the Legislature and was speaker of that body; was attorney-general of the State; two terms in Congress, and six years a United States Senator. He was an active and earnest Whig in politics. In 1857 he re- moved to Frederick City, where he renewed the practice of law successfully until 1861, when he was commissioned a brigadier-general in the United States Vol- unteers and went into the active service in command of a brigade; but not being in robust health, from the exposures and fatigues of army life, he con- tracted a severe attack of pneumonia and died at Columbus, Ohio, in March, 1863, aged fifty-two years.

Mr. Cooper was a man of pleasing manners, about six feet two inches in height, a fine Grecian face, a fluent speaker and a brilliant and successful politician. In 1837 he married Jane Miller, of Carlisle, who is still living. They had two sons and one daughter. One of the sons died in the army, the other, Mathew, is living in West Virginia. The daughter is the wife of Dr. Page, deputy surgeon in the United States Army at Fort Leavenworth.

CHAPTER XIV.

WAR OF 1812-ADAMS COUNTY REGIMENTS-THE FEDERALISTS AND DEMOCRATS -" FRIENDS OF PEACE" MEETINGS-TOASTS-CLOSE OF WAR.

TN the early part of the year 1811 war rumors, vague and indefinite at first, began to pass around among the people of Adams County. Men talked and thought about the matter as long as these rumors were but indefinite, much as they were Federalists or Democratic Republicans. The Federalists said the Democratic administration would not fight; that there was a "diminutive crea- ture, even as contemptible as had been President Jefferson, at the helm of State," and our Nation would crawl in humiliation and swallow all the possi- ble insults that the ""effete and rotten" despotisms could heap upon us. They, good souls, felt gloomy, and hated Jefferson, Tom Paine and James Madison most cordially. The Democratic Republicans had no organ, and largely their mouthpiece was Dr. William Crawford, who published long addresses to his constituents, wrote private letters home from Washington, and, upon occasions, made flowery speeches, when he could find suitable opportunities. to his old neighbors and admirers. His own faith in Jeffersonian Democracy was earn- est and sincere, but he always failed to infuse his own enthusiasm into a large majority of the voters of the county.

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

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