USA > Pennsylvania > Greene County > History of Greene County, Pa. : containing an outline of the state from 1682, until the formation of Washington County in 1781. History during 15 years of union. The Virginia and new state controversy--running of Mason's and Dixon's line--whiskey insurrection--history of churches, families, judges, senators, assembly-men, etc., etc. > Part 9
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gaged in? He was quietly purchasing a large lot of seed ·backwheat, which was sent throughout the entire county, es- pecially the upper end, where it was placed in the care of re- liable parties, with instructions to give no man more than one bushel, no matter how much money he might have, and every man a bushel whether he had money or not. While this was. by many, regarded as an act of disinterested benevolence, it nevertheless was found to be a profitable and popular specu- lation, as the seed was sold at a large advance on the original cost, and scarcely a dollar was lost of that portion sold ou credit. This buckwheat was sown on almost every farm, as well as seed procured from other sources, almost all yielded a most luxuriant crop, in different places yielding one hundred fol l. giving abundant evidence of the goodness of God, that while He permitted the unseasonable frost of June 5th, He made such ample amends by restraining the frosts in autumn until this great crop of buckwheat was harvested, and until much of the corn, which in many instances was not replanted until the 15th and even the 25th of June, was fully matured. And what a revelation did this seeming calamity make of the small amount of faith that was found to exist even among professed- ly pions people. A prophet in old times said "Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall there be fruit in the vines, the labor of the olive tree shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat, the flocks shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." Hab. 3: 17. 18. In view of this exhibition may we not ask the question that is asked in Luke 18:8: "Nevertheless when the Son of man com- eth shall he find faith on the earth ?" I hope he will, but if he had come in 1859, I think that grace would surely have been no larger than "a grain of mustard seed."
Of the old inhabitants I have but very little personal knowl-
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edge. I have seen Samuel Cleavenger, Henry Pennock, Mat- thew Dill, Ephraim Sayers, etc.
There seems to have been no Indian depredations committed in the immediate vicinity of Waynesburg, vet the settler in this neighborhood was terribly frightened in 1774 and 1775, when the Indian chief, Logan, (who had so justly deserved the name of "the white man's friend)" made his murderous raid of retaliation. Among the first victims that in part satisfied the revenge of Logan for the slaughter of his friends, were Wmn. Spicer and family at the head of Deep Run. The act was en- tirely unexpected. The wildest panic immediately prevailed. The nearest place of refuge seems to have been Garard's Fort. When the savages were driven away the settlers seem to have determined that they would have a nearer place of refuge, and almost immediately constructed Fort Jackson, near the sight of the present borough. Soon after this the murder of Matthew Gray took place. He was killed by the Indians under about the following circumstances : An Indian raid had occurred in Richhill township. Most of the settlers had taken refuge in Fort Jackson; among them the family of the Grays. In a day or two all was quiet again, and Matthew, anxious to know how their cabins, farms and stock had fared, started out of the fort to reconoiter. He had only proceeded to a point about mid- way between the present residence of Wm. Reese, immedi- ately west of the covered bridge on the State Road, near the residence of J. A. J. Buchanan, Esq., and Hill's school house, when he was shot by an Indian in ambush. When the time for his return had gone by, his brother David (who afterward became Judge), went in search and found the body stiff in death ; he stood it up against a tree and mounted his three year old colt on which he carried the body to the fort and burried it.
Among the earliest instructors in Waynesburg College was Rev. Joshua Loughran, who had previously been connected with
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Greene Academy at, Carmichaels. This man was a son of Rev. Cornelius Loughran, formerly pastor of Upper Tenmile Church in Washington county. Soon after the founding of this insti- tution Rev. J. P. Wethee was elected President, who had for- merly been connected with Madison College at Uniontown. This man's scholarship was never called in question. His abil- ity to govern and control was also of a high order; yet he was in possession of some exceedingly singular opinions. Promi- nent among these was his notion of the materiality of the soui which he seems to have supposed could not exist without the body, and that consequently when the body died the soul be- came torpid and dormant until the resurrection of the body from the grave, when a re-union would take place, which would be eternal. There was also the belief of the pre-millennial coming of Christ, when the righteous that were alive on the earth should be "caught up to meet the Lord in the air." This opinion was said to be held by him, and in view of its proba- bility it is affirmed by him that he even provided himself with a robe in which he expected to leave this mundane sphere, and bodily ascend to Paradise. It is even told of him that he ar- rayed himself in this robe and sat up all night waiting for the coming of the Lord at a specified date.
In this vicinity there lived, in 1791, a man named Willian, Rhodes, who has a very checkered and diversified history. He was born in the State of Rhode Island, about 1759. He went out as a sailor when he was only sixteen years old. He was taken prisoner by the French in 1778, and kept such for two years. After his release he was again captured on a voyage from London, but was liberated through the influence of Americans, as an American citizen. In October, 1780, he ac- companied a large fleet of trading vessels to the Barbadoes. from which voyage he seems to have returned safely. But the next year he was again captured by the French. After his re-
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lease he was captured by the British during the Revolution, and kept a prisoner in New York for five months, at the end of which time he was exchanged. In 1784 he was wrecked off Cape Cod. Seeming to be thus unfortunate on the seas, he de- termined to try his fortune on dry land. Hearing the great stories that were then being told of the marvelous fertility of the soil in this region, he began his journey to "Redstone," in the latter part of the year 1787. On the 18th of January, 1788, he arrived at the spot where Brownsville now stands in Fayette county. His first employment seems to have been peddling dry goods and notions around the country on his back. He then opened a small store at Jackson's Fort, now Greene county. Here, in 1791, he bought a plantation, (where his son, the late James R. Rhodes, recently resided), got mar- ried, and settled down for life at the humble but honorable avocation of farming. He seems to have been something of a natural artist, and has left behind him several pictures of men, women, ships, animals, etc.
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WHISKY INSURRECTION.
CHAPTER III.
At this period of time, 1791, the entire inhabitants of the district of territory lying between the Allegheny mountains and the Ohio river, were convulsed as by the upheaval of an earthquake, in consequence of an act of Congress, imposing a four-pence tax on every gallon of whisky. This act was inter- preted as a direct personal insult to the inhabitants of South- western Pennsylvania, from several considerations : 1st, it was an "excise," which kind of acts the Congress of 1774 had de- clared to be "the horror of all free States." 2d, it forcibly re- minded them of the old "stamp act," to resist which, their fathers had fought, bled, and many of them died. 3d, the de- tails of the law were so exceedingly exasperating in conse- quence of introducing a system of espionage through the agency of the "Inspectors" who came prying around not only the log cabin distilleries, but also the cabin dwellings of the settlers, in a way that seemed to them totally incompatible with the liberties of "a free people." 4th, the law seemed to them to mock their very poverty. Many of them in the east had been the owners of a few acres of land, for the products of which they could receive cash; but now, although possessed of hun- dreds and even thousands of acres, their lands were yet an un- subdued forest, yielding no income except the small pittance of the coarsest kind of food on which the primitive families lived. 5th, the manufacture of whisky was the business of the west- ern counties, and the only business by which they could obtain the small pittance of money that was absolutely necessary to procure their salt, iron, Dutch ovens, skillets and lids ; also
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their wool cards, and the few yards of chintz calico that were thought to be absolutely necessary for making "short gowns" for their wives and daughters to enable them to make a respec- table appearance at "metin'." 6th, by this means also, to a great extent, their lands were cleared and made ready for the plow. Two or three little farmers whose lands lay adjoining, find- ing themselves in possession of a surplus of several bushels of rye, would confer together and agree to start a distillery at the largest and best spring either of them possessed. When this was erected they were ready to manufacture not only their own surplus but that of their neighbors. There were also numer- pus single men who had taken tracts of land, but having no 'better half" to cook their "hog and homony" for them, they avere glad to get the chance to chop wood all winter for the "still house," feeling that they were abundantly compensated by getting their "boarding and bitters" without being left in debt in the spring. The residmum of ashes was sometimes run off into lye and then boiled into potash, which would bear ransportation. But the main dependence was on the whisky, which was generally reduced to "fourth proof ;" then placed in kegs holding from six to ten and even twenty gallons each. The kegs were then put into a wallet, and placed across the back of a "pack horse," which had previously been surmounted by a "pack saddle, that the farmers made themselves, by ob taining two short crooks or forks of (generally) dogwood. To these they riveted two pieces of wood about two and a half feet long, eight inches wide and one and a half inches thick; on the inside of these, next the horse, they nailed buckskin, leav. ing space for stuffing, which was usually composed of horse hair, sometimes of wool. When some twenty or thirty of these pack horses were thus fitted out the caravan was ready to start. From this section they generally went to "Redstone Old Fort," (Brownsville.) Thence to Gist's Plantation ; thence by "Brad-
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dock's Road" to Cumberland, where they began to diverge in different directions in order to obtain supplies. In 1788 the territory which now constitutes Greene county had within its boundaries seventy registered distilleries, and most likely many that were not registered. This "whisky insurrection," as it is generally termed, has often been dished up as a burning re- proach against Western Pennsylvania, her enemies asserting that the original settlers were a whisky-loving, brandy-guz- zling set of drunkards. I presume no one acquainted with me will expect me to palliate or screen the use of ardent spirits as they are used at the present day. But the truth of history de- enands that a line of demarkation should be drawn between the use of intoxicating drinks of to-day and one hundred years ago. Then whisky was the pure essence of rye, which was not re- garked as fit for use until it was from one to ten years old. It did not seem possessed of those Satanic qualities chat are now looked for as the immediate results of indulging in the so-called whisky of the present day, which is little else than a filthy compound of water and poisonous drugs, producing in almost all instances blasphemy, profanity and vulgarity. Not so in those good old days ; men often became eloquent in their quotations of Scripture, and sometimes would engage in sing- ing with great veneration some of those immortal Psalmns of the old 'varshion' by Rouse. They could then do what men: are often heard to say they can do now, viz: "Either drink or let it alone." But now it seems if a man contracts the habit of drinking he cannot let it alone. One of my own earliest recol- lections was of a wedding where two young men were singled out to "run for the bottle." Soon one of them who was mounted on a better horse than his competitor, returned, swinging aloft a well-filled bottle, and presented it to the old preacher, who was waiting to perform the marriage ceremony, very politely asking him to "take the bead off this liquor." And sure enough
HISTORY OF GREENE COUNTY. 113'
the preacher did it with a hearty good-will. There was also a poetry in drinking in those days that seemed to rob it of those offensive features that are now so disgusting. Two of these came under my own observation more than fifty years ago. They were as follows: First, a man came into a tavern where I was standing. No one knew him ; no one offered him a seat ; .lid not even make room for him by the fire. Yet he knew how to be popular in that age of universal drinking. Hence ne exclaimed, "Well, gentlemen, what will you all drink ? With one accord they gathered round the bir, while smiles lit up their countenances. When the glasses were all filled the stran ger lifted his and exclaimed, by way of grace :
Oh ! good grog you are my darling ; Some times you make me friends, And some times foes. Some times you make me wear old clothes ; But now since you are so near my nose, Up, good grog, and down she goes.
It is useless to say that he was at once a hero, and as he handed over his old Spanish dollar for the drinks, he received the land- lord's blandest smile. Every man there was ready to do the stranger any favor that lay in his power, bought by that three :ent dram." On another occasion one of those jolley drinkers entered a tavern under circumstances differing but slightly from those described above. As he held up his little tin nog- gin that held only a gill, he exclaimed :
Here is health to those who have old clothes, And have no wives to mend them ; Ilere is sorrow to those who have half joes, And have no heart to spend them.
The fun-loving landlord was so well pleased on this occasion that he treated all hands "free gratis for nothing." Still on an- other occasion, while standing in a bar one very cold morning, a man came in with a wagon whip under his arm, exclaiming, "Landlord, I want to get a whip cracker." Soon the door of the old fashioned bar was unlocked, and instead of the skein of
8
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silk that I supposed would be handed out, the bottle was set on the counter and from it this man took a "whip cracker.' In a short time in came another man, asking if he could be ac- commodated with a little "Hardware." The same bottle, to all appearances, was set out, and from it this man took a little "hardware." As I boarded at this house, and as there was fire nowhere else but in the bar-room and kitchen, I still re- mained a while longer, when in came a regular old "soap stick," and in a subdued tone of voice called for some "red-eye." "Boneface" hesitated this time. The customer saw it, and after some considerable fumbling in his well-worn, thread-bare pock- ets, he produced three old copperhead cents, at sight of which ont came the same bottle and from it a hearty draught of "red- eye" was extracted.
I have detailed these apparently little stories for the purpose of showing what a fascinating charm was thrown like a halo all around the practice of making and drinking ardent spirits. It was esteemed not only a luxury, but an indispensable neces- sity. The good old Scotch Irish must have whisky at their raisings, their log-rollings, corn-huskings, wood-choppings and in harvest. They must have it at their weddings and funerals, last but not least, they must have it when the minister and el- der come to visit them and catechise the children. They scarce cver became intoxicated, yet the force of habit had become so strong that they regarded the excise tax as a strike at their "idol," and they were ready to resent it. There were also demagogues in those days who saw the means of success, po- žitically, by espousing the cause of the people who thought themselves aggrieved, and consequently listened with eager ear- nestness to the harrangues of unprincipled aspirants who were ever ready to fan the flame of opposition to the government. There were also fears to be contended with, which had great influence in causing many to quietly submit and go with the +
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masses, although their consciences told them better. I do not know whether there were any buildings burned in the bounds of Greene county, but there were several barns, houses and gfrain stacks burned in the western half of what was then all Washington county. A certain incognito demon who signed 1 his name "Tom the Tinker," was almost always notifying some one that his "ladle was hot," and that if they dared to comply 1 with the requirements of law, vengeance would be meeted out to them with the utmost severity ; and to show these were no idle threats, the mid-night skies were often lit up by the lurid flames of the burning buildings of those who had submitted to th ;; uutthority of the government. Then without a single effort to prove our ancestors right, but admitting all the time that they were wrong, we will be able to see, by examining these various circumstances, how many extenuations might be pleaded in their behalf, which the enemies of Western Pennsylvania cith- er deny or at least try to keep out of sight. The majority of the excesses were along the waters of Peters Creek, Mingo and Pigeon Creeks : until finally these lesser outbreaks culminated in the burning of the splendid buildings of the Inspector Nevil, on Chartiers Creek, near Bower Hill Station, on the valley railroad. During this attack McFarlin, the leader of the insurgents, was killed. At his funeral on the following Sabbath day several men came prominently to the front, some to fan the flame, others to try to restrain and control it. Conspicuous among these were Bradford and Breckenridge. In many respects this man Bradford might be considered the head and front of the rebellion. It was at his persistent request that the grand dem- onstration came off at Braddock's Fields, where it might be truthfully said the rebellion "went up like a rocket and came down like a stick."
Our readers will pardon us if our history is somewhat dissultry, as we do not propose to make it like any other
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history. Consequently will insert any facts that may be met with at any time and any place; hence I call atten- tion to the following additional history of the town of Jeffer- son, which I find in the county atlas ; "That part of the town west of Pine street was laid out in 1814, by Col. Heaton, and was called Hamilton. The part of the town east of said street was laid out the same year by Thomas Hughes and called Jef- ferson. The two places were incorporated under the name of Jefferson by act of the Legislature in 1827. It has a popula- tion of about 600 inhabitants. Nothing could be more sugges- tive than the two names that were given by the original pro- prietor. Those two great statesmen were justly considered the founders of the two great political parties that were at that time just rising into existence, and have ever since divided the suffrages of this great nation. Yet what an incongruity did it seem to name the two opposite sides of the same street for two men whose political principles were so diametrically opposed to each other. It would seem an augury of continuous couten. tions, and yet nothing is farther from the fact, for I know cf no place where there is more political toleration than in the town of Jefferson. There is also a very broad religious toler- ation, from the fact that although the town contains four churches, viz : Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist and Cumber- land Presbyterian, I have never seen or deard of any con- troversy arise between these different branches of the Church of Christ.
Monongahela College is located at this town just outside the corporate limits, on a magnificient plat of land containing about fourteen acres where majestic ornamental pine trees were placed, not by the* skill of man, but as part of the handiwork of nature's God. This institution was chartered during the winter of 1868 and 1869. Rev. Joseph Smith, A. M., was its first President. After his retirement, J. B Solomon, A. M.,
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filled the Presidential chair. He in turn was succeeded by Rev. H. K. Craig. Among its Professors I find the names of T. W. Grier, W. P. Kendall, J. W. Phillips, J. W. Scott, D. D. M:s. Jennie Smith was elected Principal of the female depart- ment and was succeeded by Mrs. J. B. Solomon. Miss Nannic l'ollock was elected assistant teacher in the female department, and she was afterwards Principal. This college has an English department-a department embracing a full course in mathe- matics-and also a Normal department. The curriculum em- braces both a classical and scientific course. It claims to be equal to that of American Colleges generally. It is the design of those having it in charge, that it shall meet the demands of those desiring a thorough mental training, to fit them for the active dutics of life. While it is under the direction of the Baptist denomination, it claims to be in no sense sectarian. All students are required to go to church every Sabbath day ; yet the church they go to is left to their own discretion, or that of their parents. No doubt great good has been accomplished by this institution, yet it is unfortunate that the two colleges should be located so near each other, as this institution and the Waynesburg College at the county seat, are only eight miles apart. This thing has been effectually tried in the case of Jefferson College, located at Cannonsburg, and Washington: College at the county seat, being about the same distance from each other that these Greene county institutions are. Rivalry seems to be the natural result of close proximity, which will lead to financial leanness resulting from divided patronage and reduced terms of tuition, tending to force a kind of classical sinattering into the dumb skulls of those whom nature and na- ture's God never intended to fill positions in any of the learned professions. Let us hope for the best, but if the community around Washington and Cannonsburg could not sustain two rivał institutions, and were compelled (after three quarters of a
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century of persistent effort) to unite, we may well rejoice with trembling in view of the probable fate of these younger insti- tutions, either of which, if they had the patronage of the entire community, would almost certainly be a success. This borough of Jefferson is located in a township of the same name, which is bounded on the east by the Monongahela river, on the north, by the Washington county line, north-west by Morgan town- ship, west by Franklin township, south by Greene township and south-east by Cumberland township. One of the earliest settlers in this township was Thomas Hughes, who came in company with Jesse Vanmeter and John Swan from the State of Maryland, in 1767. They were among the very first set- tlers on Muddy creek where they at least made their tomahawk claims before the treaty of Stanwix, while the land still be- longed to the Aborginal inhabitants. In a few years Thomas Hughes removed from the present site of Carmichaels, and purchased the land on which the town of Jefferson now stands. Ile erected the stone house still standing which was long occu- pied by the Stephens family. He was a Justice of the Peace for many years, and was at one time County Commissioner. He married Elizabeth Swan and raised a family of ten chil- dren-four sons and six daughters. This man's descendants are extensively connected with such families as Swan, Neel, Hiller, Roseberry and Lindsey. Two miles east of Jefferson in Jefferson township, still resides or did lately, Isaac F. Ran- dolph, who was born July 2d, 1797, on the farm where he has had his home all his life. His father was born in the "Jerseys" in 1731, and emigrated to this locality in 1795. Isaac F. Ran- dolph is the youngest of a family of sixteen children, fifteen of whom have already gone the way of all the earth. He was married on the 4th of September, 1827, to Miss Sarah A. Ad- amson, by whom he has had eight children, all of whom are yet living. He has twenty-seven grand-children, and two great
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