USA > Pennsylvania > Huntingdon County > History of Huntingdon County, in the state of Pennsylvania : from the earliest times to the centennial anniversary of American independence, July 4, 1876 > Part 2
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nation had regarded the stone, as they are said to have done, with " superstitious veneration," and had believed that if it should be taken away from them they would be dispersed, they certainly would not have gone to a distant country leaving it behind them. By surmising that only a portion of them went to New York, one or more of their tribes re- maining here, we but add to the uncertainty and by no means reconcile the conjectures on the one hand with the well-at- tested facts on the other.
Of the white men who first came within the limits of the county, we know almost as little as we do of the Indians. They were probably traders whose avocation led them to make journeys between the East and the Ohio river. That persons engaged in that business did make such journeys before the earliest record we have of them, is evinced by many circumstances. In a letter written by George Croghan, who resided on the Susquehanna river, about five miles west of Harris' Ferry, now Harrisburg, he mentions a trader who had just arrived from the Ohio, and gives other intelligence from which it may be inferred that the making of such trips was not then an uncommon occurrence. In fact, Croghan himself is mentioned as "a considerable trader," as early as June, 1747. He was well acquainted with the Indian coun- try, and with the best roads to the Ohio, and was selected to convoy the expedition which we shall presently describe as of especial interest in the history of the county.
The traders did not belong to that class of persons who reduce to writing the events of their daily lives. It does not appear that anything transpired with them which they deemed worthy of remembrance. They did not penetrate the new country in the spirit of explorers, seeking discove- ries of value to the world and benefit to themselves. Even a passage of hundreds of miles through an unbroken forest made no impression on their unappreciative senses. Intent upon traffic, they transported their wares on pack-horses from one end of the province to the other, with a view to profitable commerce with the Indians, whose innocence of mercantile transactions, at that early day, rendered them an
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HISTORY OF HUNTINGDON COUNTY.
easy prey to cupidity and avarice. In later years, when, with the utmost vigilance, it was impossible to prevent the French on the Ohio from obtaining information which the interests of the English required they should not possess, it was said of these traders by Governeur Morris, that they were "mostly a low sort of people, generally too ignorant to be employed as spies, but not at all too virtuous." He was speaking of George Croghan when he made this remark, but rather excepted him from the sweeping assertion. As we become more familiar with the life and character of the lat- ter, as developed in his connection with the affairs of this county, from the time of which we write until 1756, we will be better able to judge wherein he differed from his fellow- traders. It is not strange that men of the qualities ascribed to them by Governeur Morris, should have perpetuated so little concerning themselves and should be so soon for- gotten.
The route taken by these commercial travelers of the olden time, was along the old Indian war-path, coming from the eastward through the Tuscarora Valley, Shade Gap, Black Log, Aughwick, Woodcock Valley, Hartslog Valley, Water Street, Frankstown, Hollidaysburg, and crossing the Allegheny mountains at or near Kittanning Point. It was this trail that gave Huntingdon county its early importance. It was the great highway between the east and the west, and continued to be so for many years. The traders, the agents of the government, and the pioneers, as they moved westward, followed it. In 1754, when there was a pressing necessity for military operations against the French on the Ohio, and the ways and means of moving troops and con- veying supplies were under consideration, there was no other road to the Ohio than this path, which Governeur Mor- ris described as " only a horseway through the woods and over mountains, not passable with any carriage." Travel was not diverted from this route until 1755, when the road was made to enable Braddock and his army to march against Fort DuQuesne.
CHAPTER II.
CONRAD WEISER-HIS JOURNEY TO THE OHIO-WILLIAM FRANKLIN-GEORGE CROGHAN-ANDREW MONTOUR-BLACK LOG-THE STANDING STONE-JOIIN HARRIS'S STATEMENT-ITS LOCATION-MEANING OF INSCRIPTIONS UPON IT -SECOND STONE ERECTED BY THE WHITES.
Conrad Weiser, the first white visitor to the soil of Hun- tingdon county from whom any account has come down to us, was, during the last thirty years of his life, associated with many of the leading events in the history of the province. He was born in Germany in 1696, and came to America in 1710. At the age of fourteen he went among the Mohawk Indians, one of the Six Nations, for the purpose of learning their language, and was afterwards engaged as an interpre- ter between the Germans and Indians in the neighborhood of his home in New York. In 1729 he came to Pennsyl- vania. His profound knowledge of the Indian character and intimate acquaintance with their language secured for him the appointment of Indian interpreter, in which capa- city he entered the service of the government, making his residence at Heidelberg, in Lancaster, now Berks, county. He seems to have spent but little of his time at home, his publie duties requiring him almost constantly elsewhere. They called him frequently to the most distant parts of the province and sometimes out of it, to the frontiers on the Susquehanna and Juniata, to conferences with the Six Na- tions at Onondaga, in New York, and wherever business was to be transacted between the provincial authorities and the natives. "He was highly esteemed by both English and Indians as a person of integrity, skill and ability in divers important trusts which had been committed to him by both parties for a long series of years."
Weiser's journey to the Ohio was projected in March, 1748. The instructions by which he was to be governed in the mission upon which he was sent, were drawn up in that month, but when on the point of departure he was sum-
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moned before the Provincial Council at Philadelphia on busi- ness connected with Indian affairs, and the delivery of his instructions was delayed until the following July. George Croghan had been in readiness in the former month to ac- company him with about twenty horses, and carry goods to the Indians. On learning of Weiser's detention, he set out himself, made the trip, and returned in time to join the lat- ter and his party in their journey later in the summer.
After various other delays, occuring from March until July, Weiser started from Heidelberg on the 11th of Au- gust, 1748. He regarded the expedition as perilous, and un- dertook it with reluctance; and had not the business with which he was entrusted been highly important, he would have declined going. His fears were expressed in a letter to Richard Peters, dated at " Tuscarora Path, August 15th, 1748," in which he says, "I may be obliged to pay the debt of human nature before I get home." But he escaped the dangers of the wilderness and the savage, both in going and returning, and lived afterwards, in honor and usefulness, until 1760.
In 1758, the rivalry which for years had existed between the English and the French to secure the friendship and al- liance of the Indians, was becoming more intense. It con- tinued to increase until its ultimate and inevitable result was reached-a war, in which a conspicuous part was played in Huntingdon county. Weiser was directed to proceed to the Ohio for the purpose of distributing valuable presents to the Indians, and to remind them of the liberality of the government in providing for their necessities on many for- mer occasions. He was to ascertain their number, situation, disposition, strength and influence, and to obtain from them intelligence as to the designs and operations of the French. The English were in constant dread of incurring the enmity of the Indians, and yet it could be avoided only by frequent and expensive presents, amounting to little less than pur- chases of their friendship. They accepted bribes without any hesitancy, being proud to receive them and regarding them as concessions to their own importance.
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As to the number and names of the persons who were with him, he gives us no information, excepting that contained in his letter to Secretary Peters, to which there was a post- script, saying that "Mr. Franklin's son is very well, as is all the rest of my companions." This was Benjamin Franklin's son William. He had delivered to Weiser his instructions from the government and also a proclamation, the nature of which will soon be explained. At a subsequent period he made himself useful in assisting to obtain transportation for Braddock's army. Had he possessed the qualities which rendered his father so distinguished, he would have left a full account of his trip through the wilds of Pennsylvania, more in detail than Weiser's, and would thus have perpetuated his name among the people of Huntingdon county, at least.
But we are not without the means of ascertaining some of the other persons composing the party. George Croghan, a man of somewhat erratic temperament and varied fortunes, of whom we have already heard, was one of them. As his life and character will occupy a considerable part of suc- ceeding chapters, I desire now to more fully introduce him to the reader. He was an Irishman by birth, and came to Pennsylvania about the year 1742. Assuming the occupa- tion of a trader and learning the language of the Shawnees and Delawares, if not of other Indian nations, he manifested a willingness, in addition to his business pursuits, to perform services for and to make himself useful to the government. In 1749 he was licensed as an Indian trader, but he had pro- bably been previously engaged in that vocation without a license, or under a former one.
Another of the party was Andrew Montour, an interpreter, who had resided "between the branches of the Ohio and Lake Erie." He was recommended to the Council by Weiser as " faithful, knowing and prudent," and was financially re- warded for bringing information concerning the Indians in the Northwest.
There were also white men in charge of the train of pack horses, but of them we hear only incidentally. That there were Indians along is highly probable. The journey was
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not new to them. They had a well-worn path over which the dusky warriors, for centuries, perhaps, had traveled to and fro, before civilization began its encroachments. And a few days before Weiser started, there were Indians from the Ohio, at Lancaster, who, we have reason to believe, re- turned with him.
From Weiser's journal, in which he noted briefly the places between which they traveled each day, and the dis- tances, we find that on the 15th and 16th they remained at Tuscarora Path, on "account of the men coming back sick, and some other affairs hindering" them. There seems to be a contradiction in the statements of his letter and journal in regard to the health of those who were with him, but this is easily explained by the fact that the entry in the latter was not made until the 16th, and the former was written on the 15th, before the men came back.
After leaving Tuscarora Path, we are entirely dependent upon Weiser's journal for their movements. On the 17th they "crossed the Tuscarora Hill and came to the sleeping place called Black Log, twenty miles." This was their en- trance into Huntingdon county. But white men had been here before. That inference is irresistible. They were not traveling through an entirely unknown country. The places where they stopped at night had names, and names, too, that had been given them by the Anglo-Saxon race. No one will ever tell how long Black Log had been a "sleeping place."
On the 18th they deviated from the Indian war-path and "came within two miles of the Standing Stone, twenty-four miles." Whether they came to it the next day does not ap- pear, but there is published in the Pennsylvania Archives an extract from Weiser's journal, in which the distance from Black Log to Standing Stone is stated to be twenty-six miles, and from this entry we may conclude that they traveled be- tween the two places.
The distance traveled on the 19th was twelve miles. They were obliged to dry their clothing that afternoon on account of a great rain the previous day. We cannot tell
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HISTORY OF HUNTINGDON COUNTY.
where this occurred, but it was in the direction of Franks- town, where they arrived on the 20th. As they were then beyond the present limits of the county, I will pursue them no further.
Evidently Conrad Weiser did not write for posterity. He had no anticipation that his records would outlive the tem- porary purpose for which he made them, nor did he foresee that they would be of any interest to others than himself and those to whom it was his duty, on his return, to render a report of the manner in which he had obeyed their commands. His life was spent among savages, among men whose knowledge of the past was entirely traditionary, who looked forward to no condition for their descendants different from their own, and who, when they passed from earth, left scarcely a trace of their existence. He did not realize that as a race they were rapidly approaching disso- lution, that they were to disappear before intelligence and civilization, that their forests were to be felled, their hunt- ing grounds turned into smiling pastures and fields of waving grain, and that populous towns were to occupy the sites of their villages of wigwams. On that summer day in 1748, as he stood at the confluence of Standing Stone creek and the Juniata river, could he have scanned with the eye of prophecy the one hundred and twenty-eight years that have since elapsed, he would have attached more importance to things as they were then, not because they were worth preserving, or because that which was to take their place was not supe- rior, but for the reason that even he, we may believe, would not have been willing that the affairs of tribes and nations should perish from the earth.
He did not tell us who were the inhabitants of Standing Stone, nor, indeed, whether there were any inhabitants here at all. He gave no explanation of the name or description of the stone. That was reserved for subsequent visitors, but none of them have done so as fully as we could desire. We find a statement of the dimensions of the stone in an "ac- count of the road to Log's Town, on the Allegheny river, taken by John Harris in 1754." As he mentions other
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places in the county, lying principally along the old Indian path, I will extract a portion of his account, beginning at " Tuscaroraw :"
" To the Cove Spring," 10 miles.
" To the Shadow of Death," S miles.
" To the Black Log," 3 miles.
At the last named place the road forked towards Rays- town and Frankstown, and continuing on the road to the former, he gives first the distances to "Allegheny" and Logstown by that route.
"Now beginning at the Black Log, Franks Town Road, to Aughwhick, 6 miles.
" To Jack Armstrong's Narrows, so called from his being there murdered, 8 miles.
" To the Standing Stone (about 14 f. high 6 inches square,) 10 miles.
" At each of these places we cross the Juniata.
" To the next and last crossing of the Juniata, S miles.
"To Water Street (branch of Juniata,) 10 miles.
" To the Big Lick, 10 miles.
" To Frank's (Stephen's) Town, 5 miles."
John Harris barely saved the existence of the stone from being doubted ; but that it stood here, fourteen feet in height and six inches square being established, we may accept the statements of others as to its exact location. There is a dif- ference in these statements, however, some placing it on the right bank of Stone Creek, near its mouth, and others fur- ther west, on the banks of the Juniata, near the foot of Second street in the borough of Huntingdon. The most reliable information now available, in regard to its position, was obtained by J. Simpson Africa, esq., from some of the earliest residents of the place, who have since passed away. Jacob Miller, who came here in 1791, James Simpson, who had a personal knowledge of nearly all of the old citizens of the county, and who came in 1793, and Daniel Africa, who was born here in 1794, all located it west of Second street, near the river. Since it stood there the surroundings have been completely changed, buildings
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HISTORY OF HUNTINGDON COUNTY.
having been erected, and a macadamized road, a canal, and a railroad, made upon the ground, or in its immediate vicin- ity, giving it entirely new features.
The Indians had engraved on this stone, in hieroglyphics, some records or ideas they desired to preserve. We do not know the shapes of these characters, whether they were fig- ures of men, of animals, or of inanimate things, and perhaps their meaning was never known to the whites. There is no foundation for the belief that they were cabalistic, as they were no doubt well understood by the Indians themselves. They may have been the chronicles of the tribe, "of its mighty deeds, its prowess in battle, and its skill in the chase ; " or a code of laws, of morals, or of religion ; or re- presentations of natural phenomena, of the movements of the sun, moon and stars; or the creations of their superstitions and fears. The Indians fancied the stone to possess great virtues, that if taken away from them they would be dis- persed, and that while it remained among them their pros- perity was secure. When they fled before the aggressive white man in 1754 or '55, it was destroyed or taken away with them. The dwellings of the intruders were erected near the deserted Indian village, a fort was built, and the settle- ment took the name of Standing Stone.
The whites, after the departure of the Indians, placed another stone on the site of the old one. This was done, we would suppose, more through a spirit of imitation than for any useful purpose. How nearly the second stone, at the time of its erection, was similar to the original, cannot now be ascertained. In 1776 it was about eight feet high, and had upon it the names of Surveyor General John Lu- kens, with the date of 1768, of Charles Lukens, assistant to the surveyor general, and of Thomas Smith, brother of the founder of the town of Huntingdon, and afterwads deputy surveyor general and supreme judge. It was removed from its former position and placed in front of the old court house, in the centre of Third street, at the South line of Penn. After standing there many years it was wantonly destroyed, but several pieces of it have been preserved, one
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of them having been built into the foundation of the dwel- ling house at the northeast corner of Third and Penn streets, and another being in the possession of one of the citizens of the town.
CHAPTER III.
A POPULAR ERROR-THIE STORY OF CAPTAIN JACK-ITS UNRELIABILITY- JACK'S NARROWS-ORIGIN OF THE NAME-MURDER OF ARMSTRONG, SMITH AND ARNOLD-SHICKALAMY'S STATEMENT-THE SEARCH FOR AND FIND- ING OF THE BODIES -- MONUMENT TO JACK ARMSTRONG.
John Harris, from whom I have quoted the distances from place to place through Huntingdon county, deserves to be inscribed on the list of those who have written history with- out knowing it. In addition to his statement concerning the Standing Stone, he has given us another fact of perhaps not less importance, and one which has been almost ob- scured by the traditions of more than a century. It is not always a pleasant task to dispel the illusions that underlie the romances of a people, and which, to them, have passed beyond the confines of uncertainty and entered into their most sanguine and unquestioned beliefs. But the simple truth recorded by John Harris will not permit us to rear any other historical structure than that which rests upon it as a corner stone.
'There has long been a popular error in regard to the ori- gin of the name of those narrows through which the Juniata passes immediately below Mapleton. What is the story that has been repeated at many firesides during the last two or three generations, of the redoubtable, or, rather, doubt- able, hero of that place, the very picturesqueness of which is sufficient to invest with an air of probability any fable that may be told the credulous ? It is said that about one hundred and twenty-five years ago, and subsequently, there flourished in that neighborhood a mysterious individual of swarthy complexion and herculean proportions, whose name and history were known to none but himself; that he was supposed by some to be a half-breed and by others a quad- roon, but that he was probably a white man; that he built a cabin near a spring, and sought there a solitude and a re- pose, unbroken except by the society of his family ; that he
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was a harmless man, raising his hand against none but the beasts and fishes over which dominion had been given him, and engaging in no other pursuit than hunting and fishing.
But, if we are to believe the story, the place he had se- lected was an unsafe retreat for one of his peaceful disposi- tion and habits. After a short absence from his cabin, on a certain occasion, he returned to find it burned and his fam- ily murdered. At once he became a changed man, taking a solemn vow to devote the rest of his life to the destruction of the savages. So relentlessly did he carry out his pur- pose, that he made himself a terror to the race that had in- curred his enmity, and gained the expressive names of "Black Rifle," "Black Hunter," "Wild Hunter of the Juni- ata," and others, which might have served as the titles of the most improbable tales of adventure. But he is best known in the traditions of the locality as Captain Jack.
His bitter and unceasing warfare against the Indians, we are told, was beneficial to the white settlers in affording them protection. The latter formed a company of scouts or rangers, and placed themselves under his command, styl- ing themselves "Captain Jack's Hunters," and fighting the Indians in their own way and with their own weapons. Their commander's exploits, if they could be correctly de- scribed, would perhaps be a proper subject for history, but so much has been written concerning them that is purely fictitious, that it is impossible to separate the false from the true.
The error to which I have alluded as existing in the pub- lic mind, that Captain Jack impressed his name upon the narrows I have mentioned, and the surrounding works of nature, has found expression in the writings of an anthor from whom I will quote: "The present generation, how- ever, knows little about the wild hunter. Still, though he sleeps the sleep that knows no waking, and no human being who ever saw him is above the sod now, the towering mountain, a hundred miles in length, bearing his name, will stand as an indestructible monument to his memory until time shall be no more." It is because so little is known
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about him, because his name and color are matters of doubt, that we must receive everything that has been said of him as unreliable.
And there is still better evidence to throw doubt around him. According to John Harris, who was cotemporary with Captain Jack, the narrows took their name from an en- tirely different person. He mentions them as "Jack Arm- strong's narrows, so called from his being there murdered." As Armstrong was oftener called Jack than anything else, it is not strange that the name of the place where he met his death should also be abbreviated, and that it should afterwards be extended to the mountain through which the river has forced its passage, and to the spring which bursts from the mountain side. Harris's memorandum serves, too, to locate the scene of the massacre of Armstrong and his party. He fixes it at eight miles from Aughwick and ten miles from Standing Stone.
It was one of the earliest events that occurred within what is now Huntingdon county. Besides Armstrong, his two servant men, James Smith and Woodward Arnold were murdered. An account of the occurrence was given by Shickalamy, a converted chief and a steadfast friend of the whites, from which I make the following extract :
" That Musemeelin owing some skins to John Armstrong' the said Armstrong seized a horse of the said Musemeelin and a rifle-gun; the gun was taken by James Smith, de- ceased. Sometime last winter Musemeelin met Armstrong on the river Juniata, and paid all but twenty shillings, for which he offered a neck-belt in pawn to Armstrong, and de- manded his horse, and Armstrong refused it, and would not deliver up the horse, but enlarged the debt, as his usual custom was; and after some quarrel the Indian went away in great anger, without his horse, to his hunting cabin. Sometime after this, Armstrong, with his two companions, on their way to Ohio, passed by the said Musemeelîn's hunt- ing cabin, his wife only being at home. She demanded the horse of Armstrong, because he was her proper goods, but did not get him. Armstrong had by this time sold or lent
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