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 19

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Publisher: W. Taylor
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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 19
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 19

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Probably nowhere in the State are the colors of autumn brought out with more pleasing effeet than in the South Mountain region of the county of Cum- berland. A writer upon the subject has given the following fine description: "In the dry, burning summer month-a month in which it is hard to believe there are any nights-the leaf, panting, as it were, in the furnace, knows not any repose. It is a continual and rapid play of aspiration and respiration: a too- powerful sun excites it. In August, sometimes even in July, it begins to turn yellow. It will not wait for autumn. On the tops of the mountains yonder, where it works less rapidly, it travels more slowly toward its goal; but it will arrive there. When September has ended, and the nights lengthen, the wearied trees grow dreamy; the leaf sinks from fatigue. If the light did but succor it still! But the light itself has grown weaker. The dews fall abun- dantly, and in the morning the sun no longer cares to drink them up. It looks toward other horizons, and is already far away. The leaves blush a marvelous scarlet in their anger. The sun is, as it were, an evening sun. Its long, oblique rays are protruded through the black trunks, and create under the woods some luminous and still genial tracks of light. The landscape is illum- inated. The forests around and above, on the hills, on the flanks of the mountains, seem to be on fire. The light abandons us, and we are tempted to

HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY.

think that it wishes to rest in the leaf and to concentrate within it all its rays. Summer is comparatively monotonous; it wears always the same verdure. Autumn is a fairy spectacle. Where the trees huddle close together, every tone of color is intermingled-pale, golden tints with glowing or slightly bur- nished gold, scarlet, and crimson, and every hue of blushing carnation. Every leaf shows color. The vivacity of the maple contrasts sharply with the gloom of the pine; lower down this hill, the rusty hues of the oaks; lower still, and all around, the drooping and fallen brambles and wild vines blend their glow- ing reds with the wan yellow of the grasses. It is the festival of the foliage."

The valley in which Cumberland County is located is, with exceptional instances, slightly rolling, and in places nearly level. The lands along the Conodoguinet and other streams are more or less broken, and there is sufficient variety to make the landscape very attractive from almost any point of view.

The principal and largest stream in the county is the Conodoguinet Creek, which rises in Franklin County and flows through Cumberland in a winding course, which grows exceedingly tortuous as it approaches the Susquehanna River, into which it empties at West Fairview, near the center of the eastern boundary of the county. The Conodoguinet affords abundant water-power, which is utilized in various places for driving the machinery of mills. Next in size is the Yellow Breeches (called by the Indians Callapasscinker), forming in part of its course the boundary line between Cumberland and York Counties. Its head is in the mountains in the southwest portion of Cumberland County, and it is a clear and very rapid stream, fed by many springs and very rarely freezing over in winter. Considering the size of the stream the power it affords is wonderful; upon it and its various branches are mills, forges and furnaces.

Tributary to the Conodoguinet, Main's Run is the chief from the South. It rises at the foot of South Mountain, flows northward and forms the boundary line along its course (eight miles) between Cumberland and Franklin Coun- ties, passing through Shippensburg, and emptying into the Conodoguinet a few miles north of that place. Other streams of more or less importance in the county are Newburgh Run, Peebles Run, Hollow Run, Brandy Run, Whiskey Run, Back Run, Big Run, Lick Run, Stine's Run, Parker's Run, and others, all discharging into the Conodoguinet from the North; Milesburn's Run, Quartersman's Run, Big Spring, Green Spring, Letort Creek, and others from the South, besides Cedar Run, Log Run, Mountain Creek, Spruce Run, Clark's Run, aud many smaller ones. A number of the streams in the county have their sources in large springs, some of them furnishing excellent water- power, notably one which rises at Springfield, south of Newville, Letort's, Silver Spring, Big Spring, etc. At Mount Rock, seven miles west of Car- lisle, a stream issues from a large spring in the limestone, sinks into the earth after a short course, passes under a hill and reappears on the other side. Springs in various places are strongly impregnated with sulphur and other mineral substances. Carlisle Springs, in Middlesex Township, four miles northeast of Carlisle, was at one time a favorite summer resort, and a hotel was erected for the accommodation of guests; but the building was burned and the business of the Springs declined.

The agricultural resources of the county are very great, "equal," says Dr. Egle, "to any other county of the same population in the State. The farms are highly cultivated and produce large crops of corn, wheat, oats, etc, while fruits, of most kinds grown in the latitude; are generally abundant. The min- eral belt of the county lies principally in the South Mountain region, where great quantities of iron ore exist. It has been the source of much wealth, and numerous furnaces and forges have turned out a vast product of pig metal and forged iron from the ores close at hand.

HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY.

Geological .- While not of great variety, the geological formations which appear in Cumberland County are very interesting, from the fact that they tell of an early period in the history of the earth as we now see it. Leaving the red sandstone of York and Adams Counties, with its soft, erumbling shales and beautiful conglomerates, a bed of primary rock is found in the long ridge of the South Mountain, and overlying it is a " hard, white, compact sandstone, almost purely silicions, and sometimes exhibiting evidence of the heating agency of the rocks beneath by its excessive hardness, its ringing sound when struek, its splintery fracture, and occasional discoloration."* Next above this sandstone, in regular order, and extending from the northern base of the South Mountain more than half way across the valley to the northward, is a belt of limestone, the presence of which gives to the soil of the region its agricul- tural value. It is easily traced in a continnons line from the Delaware River westward and southwestward into Maryland and Virginia. It has generally a bluish color, is very hard and sometimes is grayish or nearly black. It is largely used as ballast along the line of the Cumberland Valley Railroad, be- ing broken into fragments for the purpose, and forming a solid road-bed. For the most part it is quite pure, and when burned yields excellent lime; but in places it contains sand, clay and oxide of iron easily discernible. There are also, sometimes met with in this formation, bands and nodules of chert, or flint, usually of a dark color; and fossil shells and zoophytes peculiar to the era in which the rock was laid down are found plentifully in some localities. It is a well-known fact that upon a limestone soil the agriculturist meets with excellent reward for his labors, and such is the case here, some of the finest agricultural districts in Pennsylvania lying along this formation in the beauti- ful Cumberland Valley.

Above this limestone, however, in a district which in Cumberland County is included in a strip extending southward from the base of the North, or Kit- tatinny Mountain, is a black or bluish slate, sometimes varying in color to gray, olive or yellowish. The lands where this exists are colder and not so valuable for farming purposes as those lying upon the limestone. though in the latter it is often necessary to blast and quarry away outcropping ridges of the rock in order that the plans of cultivation may be more easily carried out. The slate lands are made fairly productive by the use of lime and other manures. A peculiar feature is a dyke or seam of trap rock, or greenstone, which extends entirely across the valley east of the center of the county, and which doubt- loss forms a continuation of the same ridge seen both to the south and north of this county, penetrating the mountains in both directions. It is of igneous origin, and was forced upward from the intensely heated interior, through the overlying formations, to the surface. The contiguous rocks were so dis- colored and hardened by the upheaval of the trap that in some places they bear little resemblance to the body of the rock of which they really form a part.

Along the border of the limestone district, or in the soil above it, are valn- able bods of iron ore, which in some localities have been and are being exten- sively worked. In Penn Township, Cumberland County, on Mountain Creek, a detached bed of limestone appears, surrounded by the white or mountain sandstone. Growing on the latter, in an extremely thin soil, is timber which affords fuel for the furnaces. Connected with this isolated limestone district is a deposit of brown argillaceous and hematite iron ore, which has been worked since a very early period in the history of the county. "Along the northern side of the South Mountain, near the contact of the white sandstone

*Trego's Geography of Pennsylvania, 1843.

HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY.

with the limestone, iron ore is abundant and is extensively mined for the sup- ply of furnaces. Further north and wholly within the limestone formation, pipe ore and other varieties of excellent quality may be obtained in many places."*

The rocks of the NorthMountain are coarse gray and reddish sandstone, val- uable neither for building nor mineral purposes. Like the South Mountain they are covered with a dense growth of the varieties of timber which flourish in the region. Of the ores which occur in the limestone formations of the val- ley, a valued writer speaks as follows: "Beneath the surface are inexhaustible deposits of magnetic iron, conveniently near to valuable beds of hematite, which lie either in fissures, between the rocky strata, or over them in a highly ferruginous loam. This hematite is of every possible variety, and in immense quantities. When it has a columnar stalactite structure, it is known under the name of pipe ore, and it is found abundantly along the slopes of the valley of the Yellow Beeches. It usually yields a superior iron, and at the same time is easily and profitably smelted. It generally produces at least 50 per cent of metallic iron. The beds are frequently of extraordinary extent, and the actual depth to which they reach has not been determined. Over a space of ten acres a number of holes have been opened, from sixteen to forty-two feet in depth, without going through the vein. Together with the magnetic ore these hematite beds, many of which remain untouched, are sufficient for sup- plying a large part of the manufacture of the United States. But in the val- ley there are traces, also, of sulphuret of copper (the blue vitriol of commerce), red and yellow ochre and chrome ores, alum earth, copperas ores, porcelain earth, and clay for stone-ware, common glazed ware and fire bricks; also epsom salts, shell lime, marl, manganese, and valuable marbles. In every part of the limestone region tho earth resounds under the tread of the traveler, and numerous sink-holes communicate with caverns or running streams beneath them. These constitute a natural drainage, which is amply sufficient for all the ordinary demands of the highest culture. Two or three caves have been discovered and entered, which have been esteemed as curiosities. The most wonderful of these is on the bank of the Conodoguinet, about a mile north from Carlisle. It is under a small limestone cliff, not more than thirty feet high above the surface of the creek; but through a semi-circular arched entrance, from seven to ten feet high and ten in width, it descends gradually to an ante- chamber of considerable size. From this a vaulted passage large enough to allow one to walk erect extends 270 feet, to a point where it branches off in three directions. One on the right is somewhat difficult on account of the water which percolates through the rocks on every side, but leads to a large chamber of great length. The central one is narrow and crooked, and has never been completely explored on account of a deep perpendicular precipice which prevents all progress beyond about thirty feet. The other passage is smaller and has but little interest. In different parts are pools of water, sup- posed by some to be springs, but as they have no outflow they are more prob- ably formed from drippings from the surrounding rocks. Human bones have been found in it. and no doubt it has been used as a place of refuge or tempo- rary lodgment by the Indians. No such articles as are usually deposited with their dead have yet been discovered."+

Another cave has been discovered on the bank of the Conodoguinet, in the township of West Pennsborough, about one and a half miles north of Greason. The opening is about 10 feet wide and 6 feet high, extending back about 10

*Trego.

+Rev. C. P. Wing in "History of Cumberland County," 1879.

HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY.

feet; then 3 feet wide and 16 feet high for a distance of 38 feet. Then another room is reached 10x10 feet, and 15 feet high, from which a pas- sage leads to a similar room not so large, but with a high ceiling; thence a long narrow passage opens into a room 40 feet in circumference and the same height as the others, and from this another small passage leads to near the place of entrance. This cave abounds in stalactites and many curious shapes.

It is said that the white men who first came to the valley wore greatly im- pressed with its beauty and the natural productions of the soil. The grass was rich and luxuriant, wild fruits were abundant, and there was a great vari- ety of trees in places, including numerous species of oak, black and white walnut (butternut), hickory, white, red and sugar maple, cherry, locust, sassa- fras, chestnut, ash, elm, linden, beech, white pine and scrub pine. There was also a shrub growth of laurel, plum, juniper, persimmon, hazel, wild cur- rant, gooseberry, blackberry, raspberry, spice-bush and sumach, while in the open country the strawberry, dewberry and wintergreen made a luscious car- peting and furnished to the Indians in their season a tempting and welcome partial supply of food.

CHAPTER II.

PIONEERS-" LOUTHER MANOR," ETC .- TAXES PAID FROM 1736 TO 1749-EARLIEST LIST OF TAXABLES IN CUMBERLAND COUNTY-FIRST SETTLERS IN THE NORTH VALLEY-TAXABLES IN THE COUNTY IN 1762-EARLY SETTLERS-WILD ANI- MALS AND FISH-CUSTOMS AND HABITS-FORMATION OF TOWNSHIPS AND BOR- OUGHIS-LANDS.

B' EFORE any attempts at permanent settlement were made in the valley the region was known to and explored by traders among the Indians, who had posts in various places on the frontier. Some of these traders were in reality emissaries of the French Government, sent among the Indians for the purpose of seducing them from their allegiance to the English, and the proprietary gov- ernment regarded them with watchful jealousy. On the 22d of July, 1707, Gov. Evans laid before the council at Philadelphia an account of his journey among the Susquehanna Indians, in which he mentions Martines Chartieres as being located at Pequehan (now Pequea), at the mouth of the creek of the same name in Lancaster County, where was an Indian town also bearing the name. Nicole Godin was a trader near Peixtan, and he was decoyed and captured dur- ing the journey, put on a horse with his legs tied under the animal's belly, and taken to Philadelphia and imprisoned. Peter Bezallion, who had a license, re- sided near the mouth of Peixtan or Paxton Creek, and James Le Tort was also a trader in the region. Bezallion and Le Tort were both in prison in 1709 for sundry offenses. Chartieres was known as "Martin Chartieres, the French glover of Philadelphia."* Other traders were in the neighborhood. The post of Chartieres, or as it is more commonly given, Chartier, was on the east bank of the Susquehanna, about three miles below Columbia, Lancaster County, and the l'enns gave him a large tract of land on Turkey Hill, in that county. He died, in April, 1718, much esteemed. His son, Peter Chartier,

·Notes on Lancaster County in Day's Hist. Coll., p. 391.

HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY.

after living a few years at his father's place, moved to the neighborhood of New Cumberland, in the southeast corner of Cumberland County, where he established a trading post. He subsequently removed to a point on the Ohio River below Pittsburgh, where a creek now bears his name. He was all his life an Indian trader, and finally becoming a resident among the Indians, took sides with them against the English .* Peter Chartier was not, however, one of the first actual settlers in this county, for it was not until 1740 that he pur- chased 600 acres of land lying in the southeast corner of what is now Lower Allen Township, bounded east by the Susquehanna, and south by the Yellow Breeches.

James Le Tort (now written Letort) was a French-Swiss, who acted as an Indian interpreter and messenger to the government. He was also a trader, and very early built a cabin at the spring at the head of the run which now bears his name. His first cabin is said to have been burnt by the Indians. It was built as early as 1720. So far as known, he was the first white man to have an abode, even temporarily, in what is now Cumberland County. His location was near Carlisle, at a place since known as Beaver Pond. Letort was a man of excellent reputation. He received £12 annually from the government for his services.

Before the Indian title to the lands west of the Susquehanna had been extinguished, the Government authorized Samuel Blunston, of Lancaster County, to issue to the settlers licenses allowing them to go and improve the land, a title to which should be granted as soon as the land office should be opened. These documents were known as "Blunston's licenses," and many of the earlier settlers held them previous to 1736.

Andrew Ralston. - Authentic information points to the fact that this per- son settled at the "Big Spring," either in Newton or West Pennsborough Township, in 1728. Ralston was a native of County Armagh, Ireland, and upon applying at the land office for a warrant, soon after it was opened, he stated that he had occupied the land " ye past eight years." The following is a verbatim copy of the license directed to be issued to him at that time. t LANCASTER COUNTY, SS.

By Order of the Proprietary:

These are to license and allow Andrew Ralston to Continue to Improve and Dwell on a Tract of Two Hundred acres of land ou the Great Spring, a branch of Conedogwainet, Joyning to the Upper Side of a Tract Granted to Randel Chambers for the use of his son, James Chambers; To be hereafter surveyed to the s'd Ralston on the Comon Terms Other Lands in those parts are sold, provided the same has not been already Granted to any other person, and So much can be had without Prejudice to other Tracts before Granted. Given under my hand this third day of January, Ano: Dom: 1736-7. SA: BLUNSTON. PENSILVANIA, SS.

Indorsed: License to Andrew Ralston, 200 acres.

The land was subsequently surveyed to him by Samuel Blunston, surveyor of Lancaster County, of which it was then a part. Mr. Ralston had two daughters, who married a Hayes and a Dickey, and a son, David, who remained at Big Spring for many years, but finally removed to Westmoreland County, and died about 1810.

Tobias Hendricks located in the valley before Andrew Ralston, possibly previous to 1725. He was a son of Tobias Hendricks, of Donegal. It is posi- tively certain he was west of the Susquehanna in 1727, for in a letter to John Harris, dated May 13 that year, he speaks of his father "at Donegal," and requests Mr. Harris to forward a letter to him. He also alludes to "a trader" at the Potomac of whom he purchased skins, and also of the "grate numbers

*Samuel Evans, in Notes and Queries, Part I. p. 17.

+Notes and Queries, Part I, p. 19,-Dr. H. W. Egle.

HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY.

coming this side of yo Sasquahannah." The Scotch-Irish emigration had then begun and the valley was being rapidly settled .* Whether Hendricks became n permanent settler is not stated.

The Chambers Brothers. - Four brothers, James, Robert, Joseph and Benjamin Chambers, from County Antrim, Ireland, were among the very first to cross the Susquehanna and settle upon lands in the North Valley. They landed at Philadelphia in 1726, and pushing westward located at the mouth of Fishing Creek, on the east bank of the Susquehanna, a few miles above Har- ris' ferry, where they built a mill which was a great convenience for the · settlers over a large tract of country. Benjamin, the youngest, was but eight- een years of age when the brothers came to this country, and'ho died Febru- ary 17, 1755, aged eighty years. Not long after their settlement at Fishing Creek the brothers became attracted by the prospect for procuring fine farms west of the river, and in or before 1730 crossed over and settled at different places: "James at the head of Green Spring. noar Newville; Robert at the hend of Middle Spring, near Shippensburg; and Joseph and Benjamin near the confluence of Falling Spring and the Conococheagne, where Chambers- burg now stands." Joseph soon returned to Fishing Creek; the others remained where they had settled and became prominent and influential citizens in many respects.

It would appear that the land included in the Louther Manor, in the east. ern part of the county, was very early the home of white settlers. That tract, being first Inid out as a hunting ground for the Delawares and Shawnces, three men were appointed to visit the Indians whither they had gone upon the branches of the Ohio, and induce them to return. They had left this region partly on account of the encroachments of white settlers upon their lands, and partly through the efforts of emmissaries of the French in the guise of traders. The three persons mentioned indited a document as follows:

PESIITANK, + Nov. ye 19th, 1731.

Ffriend Peter Chartier. This is to Acquaint Thee that By the Comisioners' and the Governour's order We are now Going over Susquehanna, To Lay out a Tract of Land be- tween Conegogwainet & The Shaawna; C'reeks five or six miles back from the River, in or- der to accomodate the Shaawna Indians or such others as may see fit to Settle there. To Defend them from Incroachments, And we have also orders to Disposess all Persons Set. tled on that side of the River. That Those woods may Remain free to ye Indians for Plant- ing & Hunting. And We Desire thee to Comunicate this to the Indians who Live About Allegening. We conclude

Thy Assured Ff'ds,

JOHN WRIGHT, TOBIAS HENDRICKS. SAM'L BLUNSTON. S

As seen elsewhere the Indians did not return: the above simply shows that white persons had settled in the eastern part of the county as early as 1731, and probably carlier. Peter Chartier had been appointed a trader by the court at Lancaster, and he married a Shawanese squaw. His subsequent de- sertion to the French has been noted.

"The intlux of immigrants into North or Kittatinny Valley," says Mr. Rupp. "increased fast after 1734. In 1748 the number of taxables was about 800, and the population rising to 3,000. As early as 1735 a road was laid out from Harris' Ferry toward the Potomac river. November 4, 1735, the court at Lancaster appointed Randle Chambers, Jacob Peat, James Silvers, Thomas Eastland. John Lawrence and Abram Endless, to lay out said road. These

· Notes and Qurles, Part I, p. 18.

tl'eshtank, Peixtan or Paxton, was the original name of the manor.

*Yellow Breeches, or ( allapasskinker, or C'allapasseink-Indian name of stream, Delaware language.

¿ From article on Louther Manor, by Dr. J. A. Murray, of { arlisle, in Carlisle Herald, 1885.

HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY.

gentlemen made a report February 3, 1736, of their views of the road, which was opposed 'by a considerable number of the inhabitants on the west side of the Susquehanna in those parts,' and praying for a review. The court then or- dered that William Rennick, Richard Hough, James Armstrong, Thomas Mayes, Samuel Montgomery and Benjamin Chambers view the road, and to make such alterations in it as to them may seem necessary for the public good, and report their proceedings to next court. They made the following report, May 4, 1736: ' That they had reviewed the eastern most part of the said road, and find it very crooked and hurtful to the inhabitants, etc., and therefore have altered the said road and marked it in the manner following, to-wit : From the said ferry, near to a southwest course about two miles; thence a westerly course to James Silvers', then westward to John Hogg's meadow; then west- ward to a fording place on Le Tort's spring, a little to the northward of John Davison's; thence west northerly to the first marked road in a certain hollow; thence about southwest a little to the south of Robert Duning's, to the former marked road; thence along the same to the Great Spring head, being as far as any review or alteration to them appeared necessary,' which so altered as above said, and altered from the return to go by James Silvers' house, was al- lowed to be recorded."

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

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