History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 12

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 12

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Of settlements made within the limits of the present connty of Fayette, the earliest which have been any- thing like definitely fixed and well authenticated were those which resulted from the operations of the Ohio Company, an organization or corporation to which reference has already been made in preceding chap- ters. The project of the formation of this com- pany was originated in the year 1748 by Thomas Lee, a member of the Royal Council in Virginia ; his object being to form an association of gentlemen for the purpose of promoting the settlement of the wild lands west of the Allegheny Mountains, within what was then supposed to be the territory of the colony of Virginia, and also to secure the Indian trade. For this purpose he associated with himself

Mr. Hanbury, a London merchant, Lawrence Wash- ington, and John Augustine Washington, of Virginia (brothers of Gen. George Washington), and ten other persons, residents of that eolony and Maryland, and in March, 1749, this association was chartered as the Ohio Company by George the Second of England.

The royal grant to the company embraced five hun- dred thousand acres of land on the Ohio, and between the Monongahela and Kanawha Rivers, this being given on the express condition that it should be improved and settled (to a certain specified extent) within ten years2 from the date of the charter.

"The object of the company," says Sparks, "was to settle the lands and to carry on the Indian trade upon a large scale. Hitherto the trade with the Western Indians had been mostly in the hands of the Pennsylvanians. The company conceived that they might derive an important advantage over their com- petitors in this trade from the water communication of the Potomac and the eastern branches of the Ohio [the Monongahela and Youghiogheny ], whose head- waters approximated each other. The lands were to be chiefly taken on the south side of the Ohio, be- tween the Monongahela and Kanawha Rivers, and west of the Alleghenies. The privilege was reserved, however, by the company of embracing a portion of the lands on the north side of the river, if it should be deemed expedient. Two hundred thousand acres were to be selected immediately, and to be held for ten years free from quit-rent or any tax to the king, on condition that the company should, at their own expense, seat one hundred families on the lands within seven years, and build a fort and maintain a garrison sufficient to protect the settlement.

"The first steps taken by the company were to order Mr. Hamburg, their agent in London, to send over for their use two cargoes of goods suited to the In- dian trade, amounting in the whole to four thousand pounds sterling, one eargo to arrive in November, 1749, the other in March following.3 They resolved

1 South of Uniontown, near the line between South Union and Georges townships, in the histories of which townships further mention of the Settlements of the Browns will be given.

2 Sparks, in his " Life and Writings of Washington," says of this com- pany that when it was first instituted Mr. Lee, its projector, was its principal organ and most efficient member. He died soon afterwards, and then the chief management fell on Lawrence Washington, who had engaged in the enterprise with an enthusiasm and energy preuliar to his character. His agency was short, however, as his rapidly declining health soon terminated in his death. Several of the company's shares changed hands, Governor Dinwiddie [of Virginia] and George Mason became proprietors. There were originally twenty shares, and the com- pany never consisted of more than that number of members."

3 The defrat of Washington and Braddock by the French in the years 1754 and 1755, as already narrated, and the consequent expulsion of the English from the country west of the Alleghenies, virtually closed the operations of the Ohio Company. Of this Sparks says, " The goods [de- signed for the company's prospective Indian trade on the Ohio] had copie over from England, but had never been taken farther into the interior than Wills' Creek [Cumberland], where they were sold to traders and Indians, who received them at that post. Some progress had been made in constructing a road to the Monongahela, but the temper of the Indians was such as to discourage any attempt to send the goods at the company's risk to a more remote point." This was the end of the company's oper- ations, at least as far as this region was concerned. About 1760 an at- tempt was made to revive the project, and Col. George Mercer was seut

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SETTLEMENT OF THE COUNTY.

also that such roads should be made and houses built as would facilitate the communication from the head of navigation on the Potomac River across the moun- tains to some point on the Monongahela. [This route would, almost of necessity, cross the territory of the present county of Fayette.] And as no attempt at establishing settlements could safely be made without some previous arrangements with the Indians, the company petitioned the government of Virginia to invite them to a treaty. As a preliminary to other proceedings, the company also sent out Mr. Chris- topher Gist, with instructions to explore the country, examine the quality of the lands, keep a journal of bis adventures, draw as accurate a plan of the country as his observations would permit, and report the same to the board."

Gist performed his journey of exploration for the company in the summer and fall of the year 1750. In this trip he ascended the Juniata River, erossed the mountain, and went down the Kiskiminetas to the Allegheny, crossed that river, and proceeded down the Ohio to the Great Falls at Louisville, Ky. On this journey he did not enter the Monongahela Val- ley, but in November of the next year (1751) he tra- versed this region, coming up from Wills' Creek, crossing the Youghiogheny, descending the valley of that stream and the Monongahela, and passing down on the south and east side of the Ohio to the Great Ka- nawha, making a thorough inspection of the country, in which the principal part of the company's lands were to be located, and spending the whole of the winter of 1751-52 on the trip, and returning east by a more southern route.

In 1752 a treaty council (invited by the government of Virginia at the request of the Ohio Company, as before alluded to) was held with the Six Nations at Logstown, on the Ohio, a few miles below the conflu- ence of the Allegheny and Monongahela; the object being to obtain the consent of the Indians to the locating of white settlements on the lands which the company.should select,-the Six Nations being recog- nized as the aboriginal owners of this region, and the company ignoring all proprietorship by Penn in the lands west of the Laurel Hill range.

At this treaty there were present on the part of Virginia three commissioners, viz. : Col. Joshua Fry, Lunsford Lomax, and James Patton, and the com- pany was represented by its agent, Christopher Gist. Every possible effort had been made by the French Governor of Canada to excite the hostility of the Six Nations towards the objects of the company, and the same had also been done by the Pennsylvania traders, who were alarmed at the prospect of compe-

ont as an agent to England for this purpose. At times it seemed ns if his efforts would be successful, but obstacles interposed, years of delay succeeded, and finally the breaking ont of the Revolution caused all hopes of resuscitating the Ohio Company lo be abandoned, and closed its existence.

tition in their lucrative trade with the natives. These efforts had had some effect in ereating dissatisfaction and distrust among the savages, but this feeling was to a great extent removed by the arguments and per- suasions of the commissioners and the company's agent, and the treaty resulted in a rather reluctant promise from the chiefs of the Six Nations not to molest any settlements which might be made under the auspices of the company in the region southeast of the Ohio and west of Laurel Ilill.

Immediately after the conclusion of the treaty at Logstown, Mr. Gist was appointed surveyor for the Ohio Company, and was instructed to lay off a town and fort at Chartiers Creek, " a little below the present site of Pittsburgh, on the east side of the Ohio." The sum of £400 was set apart by the company for this purpose. For some cause which is not clear the site was not located according to these instructions, but in the forks of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, and there in February, 1754, Capt. Trent with his company of men commenced the erection of a fort for the Ohio Company, which fort was captured by the French in the following April, and became the famed Fort du Quesne, as has already been men- tioned.

The grant of lands to the Ohio Company, even vaguely described as those lands were, could not be said to embrace any of the territory which is now Fayette County ; but the company assumed the right to make their own interpretation, and as they ignored all the rights of the Penns in this region, and, moreover, as they had no doubt that it was wholly to the westward of the western limits of Pennsylvania, they professed to regard this territory as within their scope, and made grants from it to various persons on condition of settlement. These grants from the company gave to those who received them no title (except the claim conferred by actual occupation, temporary as it proved), but they had the effect to bring immigrants here, and to locate upon the lands of this county the . first settlements which were made in Pennsylvania west of the mountains.

Early in the period of their brief operations the company made propositions to the East Pennsylvania Dutch people to come here and settle, and this offer was accepted to the amount of fifty thousand acres, to be taken by about two hundred families, on the condition that they be exempted from paying taxes to support English religious worship, which very few of them could understand and none wished to attend. The company were willing enough to accede to this, but it required the sanetion of government, to obtain which was a slow process, and before it could be ac- complished the proposed settlers became indifferent or averse to the project, which thus finally fell through and was abandoned.

The first person who actually located a settlement on lands presumed to be of the Ohio Company was

HISTORY OF FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

their agent, Christopher Gist,1 whose name frequently oceurs in all accounts of the military and other operations in this region during the decade succeed- ing the year 1750. He had doubtless selected his location here when going out on the trip down the Ohio, on which he was engaged from the fall of 1751 to the spring of 1752. He took possession in the lat- ter year, but probably did not make any improve- ments till the spring of 1753. He had certainly done so prior to November in that year, when Washington passed his "plantation" on his way to Le Bœuf, and said of it in his journal, " According to the best ob- servation I could make, Mr. Gist's new settlement ( which we passed by) bears almost west northwest seventy miles from Wills' Creek."

The place where Christopher Gist made his settle- ment, and which is so frequently mentioned in ae- counts of Washington's and Braddock's campaigns as "Gist's plantation," was the same which has been known for more than a century as "Mount Brad- dock," almost exactly in the territorial centre of Fayette County, the site of his pioneer residence

1 Christopher Gist was of English descent. His grandfather was Chris- topher Gist, who died in Baltimore County in 1691. His grandmother was Edith Cromwell, who died in 1694. They had one child, Richard, who was surveyor of the Western Shore, and was one of the comm.s. sioners, in 1729, for laying off the town of Baltimore, and presiding magistrate in 1736. In 1705 he married Zipporah Murray, and Christo- pher was one of the three sons. He was a resident of North Carolina before he came to Western Pennsylvania for the Ohio Company. Ile married Sarah Howard : his brother Nathaniel married Mary Howard; and Thomas, the third brother, married Violetta Howard, aunts of Gen. John Eager Howard. From either Nathaniel or Thomas descended General Gist, who was killed at the battle of Franklin, Tenn., near the close of the late civil war. Christopher bad three sons-Nathaniel, Richard, and Thomas-and two daughters,-Anne and Violette. None of the sons except Nathaniel were married. Violette married William Cromwell. Because of his knowledge of the country on the Ohio, und his skill in dealing with the Indians, Christopher Gist was chosen to accompany Washington on his mission in 1753, and it was from his journal that Sparks and Irving derived their account of that expedition. With his sons, Nathaniel and Thomas, he was with Braddock on the fatal fiehl of Monongahela, and for his services received a grant of . twelve thousand acres of land from the king of England. After Brad- duck's defent he raised a company of scouts in Virginia and Maryland, and did service on the frontier, being then known as Captain Gist. In 1756 he went to the Carolinas to enh-t Cherokee Indians in the English service, and was successful in accomplishing his purpose. For a time he served as Indian agent in the South. Finally he removed from the Monongahela country back to North Carolina and died there.

Richard Gist was killed in the battle of King's Mountain. Thomas lived on the plantation, and was a man of note till his death about 1786. Anne lived with him until his death, when she joined her brother Nathaniel, and removed with him to the grant in Kentucky about the beginning of this century, Nathaniel Gist, the grandfather of Hon. Montgomery Blair, of Maryland, married Judith Carey Bell, of Buck- ingham County, Va., a grandniece of Archibald Carey, the mover of the Bill of Rights in the House of Burgesses. Nathaniel was a colonel in the Virginia line during the Revolutionary war, and afterwards removed to Kentucky, where he died carly in the present century at an old nge. lle left two sons,-Henry Carey and Thomas Cecil. His eldest daughter, Sarah Howard, married the Hon, Jesse Bledsoe, United States senator from Kentucky and a distinguished jurist; his grandson, B. Gratz Brown, was the Democratic candidate for Vice-President in 1872. The second daughter of Col. Gist, Ane, married Col. Nathaniel Hart, a brother of Mrs. Henry Clay. The third daughter marred Dr. Boswell, of Lexington, Ky. The fourth daughter married Finneis I'. Blair, and they were the parents of Hon. Montgomery Blair and Francis P'. Blair, Jr. The fifth daughter married Benjamin Gratz, of Lexington, Ky.

being within the present township of Dunbar, but very near the line of the northeast extremity of North Union. His location was called by him " Mononga- hela," though many miles from that river. Wash- ington, in the journal of his return fromn Le Bœuf, mentions it by this name, as follows: "Tuesday, the Ist of January, we left Mr. Frazier's house, and ar- rived at Mr. Gist's, at Monongahela, on the 2d ;" and a letter written by Gist to Washington about eight weeks later is dated "Monongohella, February 23d, 1754."

Mr. Gist brought with him to his new settlement his sons, Richard and Thomas, and his son-in-law, William Cromwell. Soon after his arrival with his family there came eleven other families from across the mountains, under the anspices of the Ohio Com- pany, and settled on lands in his vicinity, but the sites of their locations as well as their names are now unknown. Washington, when on his way from Gist's back to Virginia, in January, 1754, wrote in his journal, under date of the 6th of that month, "We met seventeen horses, loaded with materials and stores for a fort at the fork of the Ohio, and the day after some families going out to settle." And it is altogether probable that these were the families who settled in Gist's neighborhood. Sparks says, "In the mean time [that is, between the appointment of Gist as the company's agent and the building of the fort by Trent] Mr. Gist had fixed his residence on the other side of the Alleghenies, in the valley of the Monongahela, and induced eleven families to settle around him, on lands which it was presumed would be on the Ohio Company's grant."

Judge Vecch expresses some doubt as to the settle- ment of the eleven families near Gist. He says, "We have seen it stated somewhere that Gist in- dueed eleven families to settle around him, on lands presumed to be within the Ohio Company's grant. This may be so. But the late Col. James Paull, whose father, George Paull, was an early settler in that vicinity, and intimately acquainted with the Gists, said he never heard of these settlers." But iu addition to the reasons already given for believing that the families did settle there, as stated, is this other, that the French commander, De Villiers, men- tions in his journal that when returning to the Mon- ongahela after his capture of Fort Necessity, on the 5th of July, 1754 (the day after the surrender), he arrived at Gist's, "and after having detached MI. de la Chauvignerie to burn the houses round about, I continued my route and eneamped three leagues from thenee," which indicates that there was then a considerable settlement at that time in the vicinity of Gist's. In regard to the fact that Col. James Paull never heard of the settlement, there need only be said that as he was born about six years after those people had been burned out and driven away by the French, and as even his father, Capt. George Paull, did not come to this country before the fall of 1759,

SETTLEMENT OF THE COUNTY.

it is by no means strange that the former should have known nothing about their settlement.

Another settler who came at about the same time with Gist was William Stewart, said to be the same Stewart who was employed by Washington in some capacity in his expedition to the French forts on the Allegheny in 1753. He made his settlement on the west shore of the Youghiogheny, near where is the present borough of New Haven. From the fact of his location there the place became known as "Stew- art's Crossings," and retained the name for many years. That Stewart came here early in 1753 is shown by an affidavit made by his son many years afterwards, of which the following is a copy :

" FAYETTE COUNTY, AN.

" Before the subscriber, one of the commonwealth's justices of the peace for said county, personally appeared William Stew- art, who being of Iawful age and duly sworn on the Holy Evangelists of Almighty God, saith, That he was living in this county, nenr Stewart's Crossings, in the year 1753, and part of the year 1754, until ho was obliged to remove hence on account of the French taking possession of this country ; that he was well nequainted with Cuptain Christopher Gist and family, und also with Mr. William Cromwell, Capt. Gist's son-in- law. Hle further saith that the land where Jonathan ltill now lives nudl the land where John Murphy now lives was settled by William Cromwell, as this deponent believes and always understood, ns tenant to the said Christopher Gist. Tho said Cromwell claimed a place called the . Beaver Dam,' which is the place now owned by Philip Shute, and where he now lives; and this deponent further suith that he always understood that the reason of said Cromwell's not settling on his own land (the Benver Dum ) was that the Indians in this country nt that time'. were very plenty, and the said Cromwell's wife was afraid or did not choose to live so fur from her father and mother, there being at that time but a very few families of white people set- tled in this country. . . . When this deponent's father, himself, and brothers first enme into this country, in the beginning of the year 1753, they attempted to take possession of the snid Benver Dam, and were warned off by some of said Christopher Gist's family, who informed them that the same belonged to William Cromwell, tho said Gist's son-in-law. And further deponent saith not.

" WILLIAM STEWART.

"Sworn and subscribed before me this 20th of April, 1786. " JAMES FINLEY."

The victory of the French and their Indian allies over Washington at Fort Necessity in 1754 effected the expulsion of every English-speaking settler from this section of the country. There is nothing to show that at that time there were any others located in what is now Fayette County than Christopher Gist, his fam- ily, William Cromwell, the eleven unnamed families living near them, Stewart and family at the " Cross- ings," the Browns, Dunlap,1 the trader on Dunlap's Creek, and possibly Hugh Crawford, though it is not likely that he was then here as a settler, and if he

was his location at that time is unknown. There were some settlements then on the Monongahela, as is shown by De Villiers' journal of his march back from Fort Necessity to Fort du Quesne. An entry, dated July 6, 1754, reads, " I burned down the Han- guard. We then embarked (on the Monongahela) ; passing along, we burnt down all the settlements we found, and about four o'clock I delivered my detach- ment to ME. de Contrecœur." But there is nothing to show that any of the settlements so destroyed by him were within the limits of the present county of Fayette.

After the French had been driven from the head of the Ohio by Forbes, and the English forts, Pitt and Burd, had been erected in 1759, the country be- came comparatively safe for settlers, but some time elapsed before the fugitives of 1754 began to return. A few "military permits" were issued by the com- mandant at Fort Pitt, and under this authority two or three (and perhaps more) temporary settlers were clustered in the vicinity of Fort Burd within about three years after its erection. One of these was William Colvin, who located near the fort in 1761, and received a settlement permit not long afterwards. William Jacobs settled at the mouth of Redstone Creek in 1761. He was driven away by fear of the Indians about two years later, but afterwards returned, and received a warrant for his claim soon after the opening of the Land Offiee.

Upon the conclusion of peace between France and England, by the treaty of Paris (Feb. 10, 1763), the king of Great Britain, desiring to appear to have the well-being of the Indians much at heart, issued a proclamation (in October of that year) declaring that they must not, and should not, be molested in their hunting-grounds by the encroachments of settlers, and forbidding any Governor of a colony or any military commander to issue any patents, warrants of survey, or settlement permits for lands to the west- ward of the head-streams of rivers flowing into the Atlantie,-this, of course, being an interdiction of all settlements west of the Alleghenies. But the effect was bad, for while the prohibition was disregarded by settlers and by the colonial authorities ( particularly of Virginia), it caused the savages to be still more jealous of their rights, and to regard incoming settlers with increased distrust and dislike. This state of af- fairs was rendered still more alarming by the Indian troubles in the West, known as the Pontiac war, which occurred in that year, and by which the pas- sions of the savages (partienlarly those west of the Alleghenies) were inflamed to such a degree that the few settlers in the valleys of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny Rivers, as well as those in other parts of the trans-Allegheny region, became terrified at the prospeet and fled from the country.

But the thorough and decisive chastisement admin- istered to the savages by Gen. Bouquet on the Mus- kingum in the fall of 1764 brought them to their

1 Dunlap had certainly been located here before 1759, as his place is mentioned in Burd's journal in that year. And it is hardly likely that he would linve come beronfter 1754 and before 1750, as the French were then in undisputed possession of the country, and used it wholly for Ibeir own purposes.

HISTORY OF FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

senses, and made the country once more safe, so that the years 1765 and 1766 not only saw the return of the people who had fled from the country between the Monongahela and Youghiogheny Rivers, but a very considerable increase of settlements in the same territory by fresh arrivals of immigrants from the frontiers of Maryland and Virginia, to which latter province this region was then supposed to belong. A letter dated Winchester, Va., April 30, 1765, said, " The frontier inhabitants of this colony and Mary- land are removing fast over the Allegheny Mountains in order to settle and live there." The immigrants who came here in that and several succeeding years settled chiefly in the valley of the Redstone (which included also Dunlap's Creek in usual mention), at Turkey Foot, and some other points below on the Youghiogheny, in the valley of the Cheat, and in Gist's neighborhood. In the settlements at these places, with that at Pittsburgh, were embraced nearly all the white inhabitants of Pennsylvania west of the Alleghenies1 until about the year 1770.

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History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 12

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