History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 114

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 1314

USA > Pennsylvania > Fayette County > History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 114

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THE PARADISE CHURCH OF THE EVANGELICAL ASSOCIA- TION.

This small but inviting place of worship in the Stauffer neighborhood, in the Green Lick Valley, was built in the fall of 1876 on a lot of land given for that purpose by Jacob J. Stanffer. The trustees in charge were Henry S. Stauffer, David Glassburner, and Peter Rhodes, who yet constitute the board. The member- ship of the church is small, numbering but fifteen, 'and the appointment is a part of the Mount Pleasant Cirenit, the Rev. Woodhull being the preacher in charge.

In the northeastern part of the township, a small class of members of the Evangelical Association was formed about 1872, which has flourished, so that it now has its own honse of worship and about thirty members. The present class-leader is David L. Miller, and John Mull is the church steward.

THE MOUNT PISGAH CIIURCH

is the spiritual home of the above class. It is a plain frame house, twenty-eight by thirty-eight feet, and was consecrated to divine worship in December, 1877, by the Rev. W. M. Stanford, of Pittsburgh. The trustees in 1881 were David L. Miller, John Mull, and David Coffman. The members of the Mount Pisgah Church belong to the Indian Creek Circuit, and have had the same ministers as the Evangelical Churches of Salt Lick.

DUNBAR TOWNSHIP.

DUNBAR,1 lying on the Youghiogheny River, had in June, 1880, a population of 6327, including Dunbar village, East Liberty, and New Haven borough. It has the Youghiogheny on the north, separating it from Tyrone township, the townships of Wharton and Stewart on the south, the Youghiogheny on the east, separating it from the townships of Connellsville and Springfield, and the townships of Franklin and North Union on the west.

Dunbar is a township rich in not only agricultural but mineral resources, and it has become a proverb that it is the banner township in Fayette County. The total assessed value of Dunbar township subject to a county tax, as returned upon the assessment-roll for 1881, was $1,735,749.

The surface of the country is generally uneven, and on the southeast it is wild and mountainous. In that section iron ore is found in abundance. Numerous streams traverse the township, of which Dunbar Creek, a rapid water-course, is the most important. Two lines of railway, the Fayette County and the Southwest Pennsylvania, connecting Uniontown and Connellsville, run in parallel courses in Dunbar, sometimes scarcely fifty feet apart. The first is under lease to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The second, completed in 1876, is operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad. Both lines enjoy a very profitable traffic in the transportation of vast quantities of coke, iron, and coal. The coke-burning, coal-mining, and iron-making interests in Dunbar are extensive and lucrative, and give at this present time employment to fully two thou- sand five hundred people in the township. Business enterprises now under way and in progress will soon materially increase that number. Coal abounds everywhere in almost exhanstless quantities, and must for years to come prove a source of great revenue, as well as a promoter of busy industry in every quarter. Dunbar village, the centre of an important coke- making region and iron-making district, is a thriving town, whose growth has been steady, sure, and still increasing as rich business interests develop abont it.

EARLY SETTLEMENT OF THE TOWNSHIP.

The first settlements in the region now called Dunbar township were made upon and near the locality designated as Mount Braddock. Christopher

Gist was the first to lead the way hither in 1752. Be- fore Gist came the only settlers even vaguely supposed to have been in the county are said to have been the Browns.2 Gist must have had his family in and oc- cupied his cabin in the early fall of 1753, for Wash- ington recorded in the narrative of his embassy to the French posts that in November of that year he "passed Mr. Gist's new settlement." Gist's cabin ; was on that part of the Mount Braddock lands later known as the Jacob Murphy place. The farm on which he located belongs now to William Beeson. Gist lived in North Carolina and Virginia previons to 1753, and in 1750 was employed by the old Ohio Company as land agent. In pursuance of his duties he frequently visited the Ohio Indians. In 1751 he made a tour among the Indian tribes on the Mus- kingum, Scioto, and Miami. Upon his return from his explorations in the Ohio valley, he declared of that country that nothing but cultivation was needed to make it a delightful region. His missions were all on behalf of the Ohio Company, to conciliate the Indians and keep a lookout for good lands. In the latter part of 1753 he accompanied Washington as his guide from Wills' Creek (Cumberland) to the French posts on the Allegheny. He was again with him in his military expedition of 1754, and with Braddock in 1755. His expeditions in 1754 included also a journey with Capt. Trent for the purpose of assisting in what proved the fruitless effort of the Ohio Company to build a fort at the Forks of the Ohio. It has been asserted by authorities that "Gist induced eleven families to settle around him on lands presume I to be within the limits of the Ohio Com- pany's grant." Although nothing but this vagne tradition appears to have been preserved touching these families, there seems no reason for disputing the truth of the statement that families were settled about Gist as early as 1754 at least. In testimony to this it may be cited that the report of Monsieur de Villiers, the French commander of the expedition against Washington at Fort Necessity in 1754, set forth that upon his return he not only ordered the house at the intrenchment at Gist's to be burned down, but " de- tached an officer to burn the houses round about." 3

1 So named for Col. Thomas Dunbar, commanding His Majesty's 48th Regiment of Foot in Braddock's campaign of 1755.

2 A doubtful tradition at hest.

3 Washington in his journal writes, " We reached Mr. Gi-t's new set- tlement at Monongahela Jan. 2, 1754, where I bought a horse and sad- dle." Washington was at Gist's with his command June 29, 1754, and began to throw up intrenchments at that point with a view of making

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HISTORY OF FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

Gist, by the very nature of his business as land agent and land explorer, was likely to note the most desira- ble localities for settlements, and being himself evi- dently bent upon making a new home for himself and family wherever he could find in the Monongahela country a place that suited him, he was naturally on the lookout for a, more than usually inviting spot. This spot he found at Mount Braddock, as is evidenced by the fact of making his new home there. The Vir- ginia commissioners' certificate for that land, issued to Thomas Gist in 1780, recited that Christopher Gist settled upon it in 1753.

Christopher Gist's agency for the Ohio Company appears to have ended in 1755. In the fall of that year he raised a company of scouts on the Maryland and Virginia frontiers, and thereafter was known as Capt. Gist. In 1756 he was sent Southwest to enlist a body of Cherokee Indians into the English service. In 1757 he was appointed Deputy Indian agent in the South. Washington indorsed the appointment in the remarks, "I know of no person so well qualified for the task. He has had extensive dealings with the In- dians, is in great esteem among them, well acquainted with their manners and customs, indefatigable and patient, and as to his honesty, capacity, and zeal I dare venture to engage."

With the defeat of Braddock in 1755 ended for a time at least the efforts of English settlers to find permanent homes west of the mountains, and Gist, like others who had hoped to stop where they had gathered their families, hastened to change his habita- tion to more peaceful regions. From 1755 to 1758, while the French held possession of the country along the Monongahela and Youghiogheny, no attempts at settlements were made. The savages and wild beasts were the ouly inhabitants of the territory now called Fayette County. After the expulsion of the French, in 1758, many of the old settlers returned, and among them came Gist. Although he himself came in 1759 and resumed actual possession of his lands on Mount Braddock, he did not effeet a permanent settlement with his family until 1765, for it was not until that year that Indian troubles in this section were even tempo- rarily disposed of. For some reason, however, he de- cided to end his days in his old Southern home, and so after a while, transferring his Mount Braddock lands to his son Thomas, he returned to either Virginia or North Carolina and there died. Left behind in Fay- ette was Thomas Gist and William Cromwell, the latter a son-in-law of Christopher Gist. This Wil-

a stand against M. Conlon de Villiers, who was approaching to give attack with a force of French and Indians. Before the intrenchments were completed Washington called a council, and as a result the stand at Gist's was at once abandoned for the locmion upon which Fort Ne- cessity was constructed. The lines of the old fortifi ations at G.st's were obliterated a long time ago, but the position was ascertained beyond doubt by the frequent plowing up in later years of numerous relics. The spot was near Gist's cabin, about thirty rods east of where Jacob Murphy built a barn, and within fifty tods of the centre of Fayette County.

liam Cromwell subsequently set up a claim under the Ohio Company to a part of the Gist lands "in the forks of the roads to Fort Pitt and Redstone," includ- ing Isaac Wood's farm, asserting a gift of it to his wife from her father, and a settlement thereof in 1753. Cromwell sold his land claim to Samuel Lyon, between whom and Thomas Gist a long controversy was waged for possession, which fell ultimately to Gist.

Christopher Gist had three sons-Nathaniel, Thomas, and Richard-and two daughters. Of the latter, Anne never married; Violet married William Campbell. All the sons received lands on Mount Braddock from their father, but their rights were eventually united in Thomas. He died in 1786, and was buried ou his Mount Braddock farm. Soon after his death the Gists left the township for Kentucky, after disposing of their landed interests to Col. Isaac Meason. Thomas Gist was a man of some note, and is said to have once entertained Washington at his house.

George Paull, a Virginian, became a resident of the Gist neighborhood in 1768. The place of his lo- cation was known as Deer Park. His son James, known as Col. Paull, became a man of considerable note, and owned large landed interests in various por- tions of the county. At the age of eighteen he en- tered upon a military career as a member of a company guarding Continental stores at Fort Burd (Browns- ville). This was in August, 1778. In May, 1781, he was commissioned first lieutenant by Thomas Jeffer- son, Governor of Virginia, and set out to take part in a proposed campaign against Detroit. In April, 1782, he was drafted for a month's frontier duty near Pitts- burgh, and in May, 1782, he joined Crawford's expe- dition to Sandusky as a private. After a harrowing experience he escaped from the troubles of that cam- paign only to resume his warlike experience in 1784. In 1790 he served with distinction as a major of the Pennsylvania militia in Harmar's campaign against the Indians. Later in life he became a colonel of militia. After 1790 he devoted himself to the peaceful pursuits of home life, and for a time was engaged as an iron-manufacturer at Laurel Furnace, in Dunbar town- ship. From 1793 to 1796 he was sheriff of the county, and during that time was not only busy with opera- tions against the " Whisky Boys," but was called upon to hang John McFall, who was sentenced to death for the murder of John Chadwick, Nov. 10, 1794. Col. Paull's sons nuntbered seven,-James, George (a colonel in the war of 1812), John, Archi- bald, Thomas, William, and Joseph. His daughter Martha married William Walker.

Col. Isaac Meason was an important figure in the early history of Fayette County. He was a Virginian by birth, and as early as the year 1770 came to South- west Pennsylvania. He bought land on Jacob's Creek, and built upon it the Mount Vernon Furnace. Not long afterwards he bought the Gist property on Mount Braddock, in Dunbar township, and soon acquiring

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DUNBAR TOWNSHIP.

additional lands took rank as one of the largest land- holders in that neighborhood. In 1799 he owned upwards of six thousand acres. In 1790 he built the Union Furnace on Dunbar Creek, and set up two forges and a furnace on Dunbar Creek from Union Furnace down to the mouth of the creek. At Union Furnace he built a stone grist-mill, and for years conducted extensive business enterprises that made him widely known. He owned, also, the lands originally possessed by Col. William Crawford, and in 1796 laid out the village of New Haven, on the Youghiogheny opposite Connellsville. He died in 1819, and was buried on the Mount Braddock estate. His sons were Isaac, George, and Thomas. George lived with his uncle, Daniel Rogers, of Connellsville. Thomas became a resident of Uniontown. Isaac, the best known of the sons, and known as Col. Mea- son, after his father's death succeeded to his father's business, and lived for many years at New Haven. His children were nine in number, of whom the sons were William, Isaac, Jr., and Richard. The only ones of the nine children now living are three daughters. Two reside in Uniontown, and one in Kansas. Col. Isaac Meason, the younger, was educated for the bar, and practiced in Pittsburgh before making his home at New Haven. His mother died in Uniontown in 1877, aged ninety-four.

Thomas Rogers and his five brothers are said to have, come from Maryland to Mount Braddock, ac- companied by their widowed mother. They took up lands under what was commonly styled " tomahawk claims," but becoming dissatisfied soon disposed of their interests to Samuel Work. The Rogers families moved to Washington County, and in the Indian ag- gressions that befell that region three of the brothers lost their lives. The others removed then to the mouth of the Beaver, but shortly returned to Dunbar township, and located in what is now known as the Cross Keys School District. One of the brothers opened a blacksmith-shop on the Uniontown road, and soon built a tavern near by. It is said that he set a pair of cross keys over his shop as a token that he was a locksmith as well as blacksmith, and when he opened his house he conceived the notion of call- ing it the Cross Keys Tavern, by which name it was long known. There is a vague tradition that the Rogers brothers founded a Masonic lodge in that neighborhood, and that for a while the mysterious meetings of the brotherhood in the Cross Keys school- house periodically excited the awe and wondering curiosity of the people of that vicinity, who were ac- customed to gather regularly on lodge nights and exert themselves to a painful extent in their fruitless efforts to penetrate into the awful secrets and amazing performances which they were convinced were hidden within the school-house.

Daniel Rogers, whose daughter is Mrs. Banning, of New Haven, was born in the Cross Keys District, mar- ried a daughter of Col. Isaac Meason, and for many

years was a prominent citizen of Connellsville and New Haven. In Connellsville he kept a store as early as 1798. During the later years of his life he resided at New Haven, where he died in 1873, at the age of ninety-five.

Joseph Torrance, who came to Fayette County with George Paull, married one of Paull's daughters, and settled upon a place in Dunbar known as "Peace." The tract is now occupied by the works of the Con- nellsville Coke and Iron Company.

John Christy left Ireland about the year 1800 for America, and drifted in a short time to Fayette County, and worked for Col. Meason. He entered the United States service in the war of 1812, and died in the army. At the time of his enlistment he was living in a sugar-bush that occupied the present site of the Henderson Coke-Works. Among others who are remembered to have lived near Union Fur- nace before the year 1800, were Daniel Cole, John Weaston, Samuel Downey, and Timothy Grover. The latter is said to have been one hundred and two years old when he died. Nearly all of his children and grandchildren died of consumption.

John Hamilton, who married Susanna Allen, of Franklin township, in 1792, bought of a Mr. Ray that year about four hundred acres of land in Dunbar township. A portion of the land is now occupied by his grandson, J. H. Byers. Ray had got up a log cabin and cleared a few acres when he sold out to Hamilton. The cabin Mr. Hamilton replaced in 1808 with the house Mr. Byers now lives in. About Mr. Hamilton's settlement there were the Rogers, Work, Paull, Lytle, Barkelow, Ross, Strickler, Curry, Parkhill, and Graham families. One of the Currys is said to have lived to be over a hundred years old. There was a distillery near the Graham place about 1790, where excellent apple whisky was made. At least such was the testimony of D. A. C. Sherrard, who has frequently been heard to say that he was raised on apple toddy made at that still, and that the beverage was not only wholesome but delightful to the taste.

The first school-house in the Hamilton or Cross Keys District was probably a log affair, built in 1806 upon the ground occupied by the present house, the third one upon that site. Before 1806 the children of that neighborhood attended school in a slab shanty that stood near the present site of Dunbar village.

There were but few people in Dunbar when Joshua Dickinson became a settler here. Just when he came hither cannot be determined with certainty, but tra- dition places the time at not far from 1770. Certain it is that when he traveled westward over the moun- tains, alone and on foot, looking for a land location, the country was a wilderness and swarming with wild beasts. Upon the high bluff that overlooks the Youg- hiogheny just above East Liberty he made his camp under an oak-trec, and when he came to examine at leisure the region about him he was not slow to de-

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HISTORY OF FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

termine that he had found the location he had been looking for. As far as he could judge, there was no white settler anywhere near him, and if he had taken the trouble or time to reflect upon the circumstance, it would have doubtless occurred to him that he was in not only a lonesome but a rather dangerous locality. Ile had, however, no inclination to dwell on such matters at first, for he was fired with an ambition to get a start as a settler, and so he, working carly and late to get up a habitation and make a small clearing, found no time to do anything else. He had not been long on the ground, so the story goes, when he real- ized very forcibly the dangers of his situation at all events. Looking from the river bluff one day he saw the spectacle of a company of ugly-looking savages wading across the stream, as if they had detected the smoke of the white man's eamp-fire and were bent upon mischief. That seems at least to have been the view taken of the case by Dickinson, for, understanding that the redskins might murder him, he lost no time in paeking up a few trifling effects and striking off for the far East. He made his way to his old home, and concluded to stay there until there should be promise of a peaceful life in Southwestern Pennsyl- vania. Within about a year he thought from what he heard that the danger of Indians was past, and once more he set out for the Western wilds, this time taking with him his wife and infant son, Thomas, for, to use his own language, "he proposed to stay." They came to the spot he first occupied, and there he built a cabin. One authority declares that another man with his family accompanied the Diekinsons west- ward and located near them. Who they were is not ascertainable, but it is altogether likely, since Dick- inson returned eastward for supplies in a short time, and that he was scarcely likely to have done had he been compelled to leave his wife and child unpro- tected. When he had made a clearing he began to till the soil, and just then he began to get glimpses of savages and to fear much for his safety. He was not molested, but he never went out into his field without taking his wife with him, who while he worked would stand watch with gun in hand, and duty. Naturally enough they could not avoid be- lieving that the Indians were likely to butcher them at any time. Eternal vigilance was for them the con- stant watchword. Despite their fears they never eame to any harm through the Indians. Mr. Dick- inson was eminently a pioneer, and for years battled almost single-handed among the wilds of Fayette County, apart from other settlers, and met at every turn such privations, trials, and toils as would have cheeked his progress and sent him back to the haunts of civilization had he not possessed a heart of oak and a courageous, stont-souled helpmeet, who bore like a heroine her full share of the burden.

horses. Salt was one of the greatest and scarcest of luxuries, as well as a necessity, and that it was carefully husbanded when got may be well believed. Bullets were articles of value. So careful was Dick- inson of his small hoard that when he shot small game he made sure to shoot in range with some tree, so that if he missed he could secure the bullets for further use. Just before he left for his first trip to the East in quest of provisions he found himself the possessor of just two bullets. With one of them he killed a bear, whose careass supplied his family with meat while he was absent; and with the other he killed game for his own sustenance during the journey over the mountains. Mr. Dickinson lived to see the country blossom and teem with civilized life. He became a large landholder in Dunbar upon the river, and died upon the homestead farm near East Liberty, Oct. 10, 1827, in his eighty-eighth year. Ile built a grist-mill upon the site of the mill now owned by Oglevee Brothers about the year 1780. He had six sons, named Thomas, William, John, Joshua, Levi, and Eli, all of whom removed at an early day to Ohio. Mr. Dickinson was a stanch Methodist, and for some years maintained preaching at his house, where a class was organized in 1820. In 1823 he gave material assistance in the erection of a Meth- odist Episcopal house of worship, and there until 1861 the organization flourished. At that time the question of politics entered in some shape into the church, and proved a rock upon which the organiza- tion soon became a wreck. The building then used as a church is now the residence of Mr. Dunham. The lot for the church and churchyard was donated by Mr. Dickinson, and within the latter still lie the mortal remains of himself and his wife.

Tradition says that upon the bluff overlooking the Fort Hill Coke-Works there was once an Indian fort and an Indian graveyard, both upon the A. J. Hill farm. Mr. Hill relates that bones and various imple- ments of Indian manufacture have frequently been plowed up there, and that one of his men unearthed some time ago a curious-looking iron instrument, con- sisting of an iron ring about the size of a man's neck. after a time would take the hoe while he did sentinel ' From that ring projected short chains, at the end of each of which was fastened a small ring. It was re- garded as a curious relie, and by some it was deter- mined to have served either in confining criminals or fastening victims to the stake. These theories had, however, bui a vague foundation to rest upon, while the generally accepted theory that Indians in those days used no iron instruments appears to render it doubtinl whether the relie was of Indian origin or use. Whatever it had been or was, it certainly awakened much curious interest among antiquarians, and eventually found its way to the cabinet of a col- lector of curiosities. Since that time it has not been seen or heard of in these parts. The hill upon which the Indian fort was located bears to this day the name

In the fall Dickinson made a trip to the East for salt and other supplies, and packed them westward on his ' of Fort Hill.

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DUNBAR TOWNSHIP.

Thomas Jones was one of the very earliest settlers in Joshua Dickinson's neighborhood. His home was the farm now owned by William and James Collins, whose father, James, came to Dunbar from Maryland in 1822 and bought out Thomas Jones, who thereupon moved to Ohio, and died there at the age of ninety- eight. James Collins the elder died in 1855, aged seventy-seven.

Jacob Leet was an early settler near Dickinson, upon the place now owned by Alexander Work, on which his grave may now be seen. His son Christo- pher, now an old man of ninety-four, lives in Illinois. Mr. Leet was regarded as an old-fashioned but rigidly honest man, and a most excellent neighbor. When Christian Stofer returned to Dunbar after a brief ab- sence, and found Leet's grave instead of the living Leet, he is said to have remarked with a show of deep feeling, "There lies the body of an honest Dutchman." Christian Stofer himself came from Westmoreland County to Dunbar in 1815, but returned in 1819 to the former place. In 1819, Christian Stoner, his son- in-law, bought Stofer's Dunbar farm, and occupied it as a permanent settler. The Morelands, Galleys, Spratts, and Wilkies were residents thereabout at an early day. James Wilkie was a famous school-teacher, and taught in those parts more than twenty years. One Clare was also an early school-teacher in that vicinity. William McBurney says that in 1814 he took his first day's schooling under pedagogue Clare. Some maliciously disposed lads reported young Mc- Burney to the teacher for swearing, and upon the com- plaint the boy was compelled to get down upon his knee before the school and sue for pardon. The fol- lowing day he was similarly reported, and that time most unmercifully whipped by Clare. As soon as he could, the bruised victim made for the school-room door and ran home. There he told his mother that he was afraid to go to school again, for he knew old Clare would eventually murder him. And he did not venture into that or any other school again for three years.

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History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 114

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885 Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 1314

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 1314