USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Nanticoke > History of Hanover Township : including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke boroughs : and also a history of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania > Part 23
USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Ashley > History of Hanover Township : including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke boroughs : and also a history of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania > Part 23
USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Sugar Notch > History of Hanover Township : including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke boroughs : and also a history of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania > Part 23
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40
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258
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
Saw-mills now began to grow numerous, and the very choicest lumber could be got. The houses were now floored with the best of yellow pine. Rag carpets covered the floors of the best rooms. The big blazing wood fires made everything look cheerful about these houses in the long winter evenings. Bed-time for children was at eight o'clock, and at nine the whole family retired, and the stranger within their gates. Generally every family had a clock, especially after the Yankee wooden clock came into use. Until bed-time all were employed, the women carding wool or spinning tow or flax, or some other occupation-none were idle. The men and boys would be shelling corn, or making splint baskets or chairs, or twisting tobacco to press into plug, or making rakes or flails, or some useful thing. All were employed-they never lacked employment.
On Sundays they went to "meeting." The New England Puritan Congregationalists held their religious meetings in the earlier times in barns, school-houses, and in private houses, until a short time previous to 1800 they tried to build a church on the "Green," but after 1800 so many of them were selling out and mov- ing away that this church was as failure. They could not complete the edifice even.
The Scotch-irish Pennsylvanians were Presbyterians, and they had built a frame church on the Green as early as 1774 or 1775,* said to have been the first church built in the county. Here the "Paxton boys" worshiped. This had now gone to decay and the Puritans and Presbyterians still remaining undertook to build a church, but as emigration to the west did not cease, this church was never completed, though it was used occasionally for services till 1.820. It stood six to eight rods to the west of the present church, and some part of it was standing in 1834. The Methodists had come here, and as their form or method of worship pleased many they became the leading and nearly the only English speak- ing religious body, and the school-houses were brought into thorough use for religious purposes by them-and continued to be so used till about 1860.
The Pennsylvania Dutch and others had a German Reformed congregation established in Hanover about 1791. In 1825 they
*Stewart Pierce.
· 259
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
built a frame church on the Green. That church still stands and is in a pretty good state of preservation, but there have not been a sufficient number of the Pennsylvania Dutch in Hanover since 1860 to keep up a church organization.
There were school-houses enough for all the children without having more than thirty or forty in one school. The school- houses had not the conveniences of those of the present day. The desks for the scholars to write on were arranged around the room against the walls on the side. The desk was a wide board or ". plank, sloped from a narrow board fastened against the wall, level, for the inkstands and other things to stand and lie on, and the wide desk plank sloped down from the edge of this. The pupil had to face the wall in using the desk. These desk planks were connected . end to end all around the room, except at the teacher's desk, and long benches reached around the room the same as the desks. To use the desk, the pupils, males and females, had to climb over the seat and sit with their backs towards the teacher. This was the "big" bench. Little benches were placed around inside the big ones for the smaller children or those that did not write. There were no backs to any of these benches. In the early times, or before 1808, wood was used for fuel in the school-houses, but when . coal began to be used a stove was substituted for the big stone chimney of former times, and placed in the middle of the school room.
There were no steel pens in those days and part of a teacher's qualifications for the place was the ability to make quill pens for the pupils, and he had also to write the "copies." The pupil furnished the quill, the teacher-master he was called then-made the pen. Specimens of the writing of those times attest the fact that the art of writing was pretty thoroughly taught. People prided themselves on their writing and their thorough knowledge of arithmetic.
The school-houses were, like every other kind of building in the earlier years of the settlements, built of logs, but as they rotted down frame houses were generally built in their places. The second set of school-houses were built of logs in some places. One of this kind, the second or third built there, was standing at Scrabbletown-now Ashley-as late as 1848, believed to have
260
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
.
been the last log school-house in Hanover township. There were two of frame on the River Road, one on the "Green " and one at Nanticoke, two on the Middle Road, one on the hill near the Downing farm, and one on the end of "Hogback" hill near the Bennett Creek, the site of the present Askam postoffice, opposite the old Nagle tannery. This last was of logs. The one on the "Green " has been rebuilt a number of times, the one on the Middle Road near Downing's was abandoned in 1839 for a new one on Hoover Hill, a half mile farther west. This one was rebuilt in 1872. The one of logs at Hogback-now Askam-ceased to be used about 1837, and as a new one had been built at Keithline's, nearly two miles further down the road to the west, this one was · never renewed. All these, except the one on Hogback, were frame.
In 1840 a school-house was built on the Back Road about two miles below Scrabbletown-Ashley-at a place now called Sugar Notch. It was a small frame. In the early days, and up to about 1850, a term of school was three months in the winter, and in that age of vigorous mind and body our ancestors did not think two miles were too far to send their children to school, and they all went, from six years to twenty-one years of age. Any school taught . in the summer was a "pay school," and then many went farther than two miles to reach it, and yet in those times there was nobody . who could not read and write-at least the writer, a native, never heard of one of sound mind born in the township, and who lived to grow up there, that could not read and write.
These school-houses were used by different denominations for church meetings. Church meetings were also held in private houses on Sundays and on week-days. The women and girls that attended these on week-days took their work along with them and ·%) worked there during the sermon. Such work was done there as knitting, sewing, embroidering, carding wool, and many other things. Something was always found to do at such meetings by the persons that came to them, while the owner of the house and his family could find many things at home that he could not take to the meeting at his neighbor's to do. The writer thinks it may safely be said that these people were industrious. There was no sniveling about workingmen's hardships by workingmen's pre-
261
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
tended friends. One would think that those must have been an entirely different race of people from these of the present day.
Amusements were pretty much the same as they had been in the preceding period. The Pennsylvania Dutch had introduced some new ones for Christmas, New Years and Easter, otherwise all was as of old.
What person of sixty or seventy years of age does not re- member with pleasure, and with a laugh, the sleigh-ridings of their young days? How everybody kept open house, as it were, even into the night, when sleigh-bells were heard in the crisp, cold winter air of the afternoon or evening? How they would stop where any young folk lived; how there would be a rush of girls and boys with red noses and cheeks into the house; how the metheglin, and mince pies, and doughnuts, and apples, and nuts were brought out and eaten and drank; and how they rushed off with shouts and laughter and tumbled into the sleigh or "sled" among quilts and comforters and coverlets and straw and sped away laughing and singing and full of joyous noise to the next house? Well, one almost grows young again thinking of it! There was no danger then of meeting tramps, or ruffians, or thieves on the road to do one harm, or finding their whips or quilts or wraps stolen while they were enjoying themselves in their neigh- bor's house.
Canned fruit was not known at this early time, so in order to have something of the fruit kind out of the season for fresh fruits, every family took care to pick berries and dry them for winter use, such as huckleberries, blackberries, raspberries, and large quantities of apples, peaches, pears, plums, cherries and other fruits. Many kinds of fruits were preserved by cooking them up with an excess of honey. Sugar was used for this purpose after sugar became cheap; that was soon after the canal was completed. Apples of the winter variety were kept in large quantities in the cellars, and large heaps were buried in the garden for winter and spring use. Cranberries and a peculiar kind of wild crab apple were also pre- served. Peaches were raised in great abundance and of fine quality.
Nuts were not by any means forgotten. Chestnuts were the most valuable and were gathered in bushels, some sold or traded .
262
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
off, but were mostly kept for home use. They were sometimes used as a substitute for coffee, being dried and roasted and ground the same as coffee. Hickory nuts; black walnuts, butternuts, and hazelnuts were laid up in sufficient quantity to last till nuts came again the next year, and some to keep over in case of a failure. On the flats black walnut trees were left standing in sufficient num- bers to supply the owner's family and furnish many bushels more for sale. Persons who had none of their own were frequently per- mitted to gather and "shuck" these for half. Walnuts were rather larger on the flats than on the uplands, but the farmers planted trees and raised their own walnuts if possible on all the back lands; and some of these trees are still standing and producing yearly their crop of nuts. Butternut trees were found growing in the woods almost anywhere, it seemed, except on the tops of the mountains. Every farmer tried to have at least one shell-bark hickory on his farm. These were the tallest trees that grew, ex- cept possibly the white pine. Chestnuts were found everywhere in the woods, and, of course, in clearing up their farms the farmers left plenty of chestnut trees standing in their fields. Hazelnut bushes grew along the roadside fences after the land was cleared, and were found in all brushy places. They were frequently allowed to grow along fences for the sake of the nuts they bore.
So many of the Yankees of the younger generation were now leaving for Ohio-the "West"-and their places being taken by the Pennsylvania Dutch, that they were getting to be in the minority. Their church on the Green, first Presbyterian, then - Congregationalist, went to decay.
Peace and plenty reigned now. All the necessaries of life were produced in abundance to the diligent and industrious tiller of the soil, but luxuries in those times were scarce. There was no com- munication with the outside world except by Durham boat on the river or by team-horses and wagons-over very poor roads for fifty to sixty miles through a region that seemed incapable of culti- vation, and that was only inhabited by hunters and an occasional lumberman near or on a stream that, in the spring freshets, could float his lumber to market. Luxuries carted through such a country for such a distance by team were luxuries indeed, and
. 1
263 1 .
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
those by boat were no cheaper, and very few of these people were able to indulge in them. In such things they were very poor.
Durham boats, propelled up the river by setting poles-down the river they would float themselves-"were the only means of transportation of merchandise until the making of the Easton and Wilkes-Barre turnpike. This thoroughfare was completed about the year 1807. Thence down to the time of the canal navigation in 1830, the merchants of the entire valley received all their goods, either by 'Durham boats' on the river or by wagons on the turn- pike. The turnpike was chartered in 1802, and the road was constructed at a cost of $75,000. This road was regarded as a very important matter by the early settlers of the valley, and indeed .. such was the fact, as it gave a much shorter outlet to the seaboard. The corporation was a joint stock company, and it required the contribution of nearly every landholder in the valley to accomplish the construction of this important link of intercommunication.
"The old 'Conestaga wagon,' drawn by four horses, was the vehicle of transportation on the turnpike. It has disappeared, but it was a goodly sight to see one of those huge wagons drawn along by four strong, sleek, and well-fed horses, with bear-skin housings and 'winkers tipped with red.' A wagon would carry three, four, and sometimes five tons. The bodies were long, projecting over front and rear, ribbed with oak, covered with canvas, and generally painted blue."-Wright.
But now comes a notable period, viz: the discovery of a means of burning our stone coal for domestic purposes. From the first settlement (1769) coal had been used by the blacksmiths. But it was not known till now that this coal could be burned without a blast of air forced under and through the fire. A citizen of Wilkes-Barre, Jesse Fell, a blacksmith, discovered in 1808, that this coal could be made to burn by starting it on a good strong wood fire in a grate elevated some five or six inches above the hearth in the old wood-burning fire-place. . Within a year these grates were erected in houses all over this part of the country, and coal began to be used in dwellings in the winter .* This was a very
*James Ross, of Dallas township, in an interview with a newspaper reporter in 1884 :- Is nearly 90, lived in Hanover from 1802 till the spring of 1810, saw the Red Tavern built in 1805, saw the first stone coal burnt in the Red Tavern. In 1809, Crisman, the owner of the Red Tavern, opened a door and said to him, " See, little boy, how 'nice the stone coal burns."
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HISTORY OF HANOVER.
great comfort to the inhabitants in the winter time, as they could keep a good fire all night with very little trouble.
. 1809. No assessor's list of the taxables of Hanover for 1810 can be found, but we can come as near as 1809:
Total valuation for that year . $68,841
number of names of taxable persons 125
dwelling-houses
90
«
horses
148
66
oxen (probably yokes)
44
COWS
grist-mills 4
Not much increase in the past ten years. The valuation has decreased over two hundred dollars. There were ten new houses built-equal to 12 per cent., but the inhabitants had increased only . twenty-two persons in ten years according to the census, while the taxable persons had increased 18 per cent., showing that many persons had sold their property to non-residents.
The U. S. census for the year 1810 gives Hanover a population of six hundred and thirty five. This census was taken in the same manner as the preceding one, but there was an attempt to show something more than mere number of persons.
THE CENSUS OF 1810.
The total number of inhabitants, male and female, free, colored
and slave was .
635
No. of pairs of cards
114
" wheels
" looms 176
23
" " horses 145
" horned cattle 480
" sheep 522
The number of houses according to the last year's assessment being 90, there would be an average then of seven persons to each house. It will be noticed that hand cards were used for carding wool. The first carding machine built in the United States, was built by Jacob Plumb in Massachusetts in 1801. The above num- ber of spinning-wheels probably includes both the big wheels for wool and the little wheels for spinning flax. Many families had spinning-wheels but did not have looms. Many also had harness and reeds but no looms. They would rent'a loom and weave their own cloth. A loom could be rented for two dollars a year. Horned
182
---
-
265
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
cattle included oxen and cows, old and young cattle. It will be seen that the whole number of sheep, old and young, did not equal the number of inhabitants. Many men in the country, not in town, still wore leather clothing.
Now in this period of ten years, 1810 to 1820, the war of 1812 came and some of the young men of Hanover went into the army. The war lasted only about two years, but in that short time, and small as the war was, it made a great difference in the prices of certain farm produce here. Values raised in land as well as pro- duce, and the people thought these high prices were to last-and they did till 1818-and many persons bought land and other property on credit and the result to them was generally disastrous. Some struggled along and paid the interest and kept the sheriff off by the closest industry, economy and saving for more than thirty years, and having grown old in clearing their property finally from debt, they died, leaving, perhaps, a fine estate for their heirs. No list of volunteers or drafted men from Hanover for the war of 1812 is known to exist. The writer has gathered up as far as he could the names of Honover men that were at any time in the U. S. service as soldiers in the war of 1812 and gives them here:
Wm. Hendershot, John Garrison, Henry Backman,
Harry Blackman, John Sims, Nathan Whipple.
The war ended in January, 1815.
The rise in prices will be shown in the following :-
Wheat had always fluctuated between 75 cents and $1.00.
In 1816 it was, per bushel $2.00
" 1817 “ 66 2.00
" 1818 "
1.50
" 1819 "
1.50
" 1815-16 Rye per bushel was
75
" 1817 1.25
“ 1818
$1.00-90, 80, 75
75
" 1813 Labor-Mowing per day
" 1814 « 66 66
80
" 1817 66
1.00
" 1819
75
'1820
66
50
Fresh beef 5, 6 and 7 cents per pound.
17.
66
50
67
" 1819 " 66 16
" 1820 66 66 6
266
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
There was one charge in these old account-books that seemed difficult at first to understand-(in 1817)-29 cents in bills. But it illustrates the fact that private persons and corporations had issued small notes of their own that passed as currency. The war with England had ended in 1815, and there was no reason on that ac- count to put out these "shin-plasters." They needed moneyhere badly, but there was nothing to make it come here nor keep it here if it did come. It is said that all these little notes were faithfully redeemed. It seems rather strange that any of them should be in existence two years after the war ended. The same thing was done in the early years of the late southern rebellion. Perhaps also be- cause such paper currency was held in contempt it was called "shin- plaster." As the writer remembers it, that was the name given to such paper, and also to some bank paper in 1837, during the financial panic and business depression that commenced that year. During the late one of 1873, it is worthy of notice that our entire paper currency was good and no one lost anything by it. From the war of 1812 and until 1818 legal papers had to have a stamp on them to make them evidence.
Now let us describe a house and its furniture at this time. The houses were still mostly built of logs. The logs were hewed and the ends were sawed off at the corners to make the corners square. They were generally one and a half stories in height, and generally had but one large room on the ground floor.
There was a large chimney and a grate for coal fires. The floor was kept scrupulously clean, and was frequently found carpeted in the winter time with rag carpet. The room was large, and one and sometimes two beds were in it, and sometimes even three. The bed- steads were made of square posts and rails, unpainted, held together by a strong bed-cord for the mattress to lie on. The first mattress was of straw, then a good feather one made of fine geese feathers -often of down-thick and full, on the straw one, covered with home-made woolen blankets, and linen sheets, and fancy home- made coverlets, the whole covered and surrounded by curtains close and tight, hung from a frame put up on the bedstead or made separate and standing on the floor. Two or four large soft pillows were at the head of each bed.
267
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
The table was unpainted, generally made of wild cherry. It was sometimes hung against the side of the room, and in that case had a jointed leg, and was lifted up and fastened against the wall out of the way when not in use. This kind was used when the family was not too large, because they could sit at only three sides of it.
The chairs were made of hickory turned in a lathe, and bot- tomed with hickory or black ash splints, all unpainted, but numerous. Sometimes they were bottomed with rushes.
Many now had china-ware dishes, but many used pewter. Glassware was not entirely unknown.
Large coal fires were kept in their grates all night in the winter and a large degree of comfort was enjoyed.
The up-stairs room, loft or attic, was open clear up to the rafters, and was the place for the big boys and men to sleep. There was a good tight floor to the chamber, and the heat from the big fire below coming up against the under side of the floor gave some degree of warmth to the room above. This room had beds enough for the rest of the family-and this was the way they lived. And they were, to say the least, as good, as strong, and as virtuous and moral as people are now with their many roomed houses.
In the lower room there was a cupboard, the upper part with open shelves upon which were displayed their store of china-ware or pewter dishes, nicely cleaned, or scoured, and set up edgewise. Fine china was considered something to be shown off. It was an ornament to the house.
The bed curtains were frequently colored, and fringed, and tas- seled, and embroidered, and made ornamental.
The Pennsylvania Dutch slept under feathers as well as on them. They had a feather tick of very fine geese feathers, made expressly for sleeping under-for a covering in bed.
The above is all intended to describe things as they were after 1808 and until 1830, or even as late as 1840. This describes them in general, some houses were better and some worse. Perhaps there were as many with two rooms on the lower floor as with only one, and some had three rooms below with the chimney so ar- ranged so as to have a fire in each.
268
HISTORY OF HANOVER.
The people were in general poor. They still wore leather clothing. Persons still alive (1884) who came here from neighbor- ing counties, mention the great apparent poverty of the people. The writer does not know whether or not people in other parts of the State wore leather clothing at this time, but it would seem to indicate poverty wherever worn. But why should they not be poor? Let us see.
From the first settlement in 1769 there were three full years of trouble with the Pennamites, during which they were totally ex- pelled three times and their houses, furniture, fences, implements of husbandry, horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, poultry and everything else was entirely destroyed or carried away. Then from 1773 to 1778 they had peace and prosperity for five years, except only the Plunket invasion. Then came the Revolutionary war, the battle and massacre of Wyoming, and the entire destruction of their property again, together with the slaughter of a majority of the full grown and nearly full grown male inhabitants. Then four years of Indian border warfare with its murders of the inhabitants and burnings of their houses and property from 1778 till 1782. Then for three years-after the end of the Revolutionary war-they were harassed, murdered, or imprisoned, thrown out of their houses and their houses burned, and their crops gathered and consumed and destroyed, together with their animals and loose property, by Pennsylvania soldiers, till 1784-5. Then for fourteen to sixteen years longer they were left with uncertain titles to their lands, not knowing whether they should not have to fight and suffer still more for their homes, such as they were, till 1802, when commissioners appointed by the State of Pennsylvania surveyed their lands and certified the lots to the possessors. And then and finally they were permitted or compelled to pay the State over three times as much per acre for their lands as any other citizens of the State paid for the same quality of land.
Here are full 26 years out of 33, that these people had suffered from war, oppression and wrong, such as probably no other people has suffered in modern times among any civilized people. Now, how could they help being poor for sixteen or eighteen years after such treatment?
269
HANOVER TOWNSHIP.
And now, a little further-Connecticut had been given a large tract of land in Ohio called the Western Reserve, in compensation for the loss of Wyoming or Westmoreland. She sold it and gave compensation to her citizens in Connecticut who had had property destroyed by the enemy during the Revolutionary war. None of this money was ever given to the Connecticut inhabitants of Wyoming to compensate them for the destruction of their property by the enemy during the same war, although these very people had furnished towards Connecticut's quotas of soldiers for the Revolutionary war more than ten* soldiers to one of the other parts of Connecticut that served in the war! During this period and for more than twenty years, these same Yankees had been emigrating from here to that "Western Reserve."
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