History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 18

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.)
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1532

USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections > Part 18

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This reservation, or rather tract not ceded, is (bounding it easterly by the west line of Pennsylvania) 120 miles east and west, and one degree and two minutes wide north and south, containing several millions of acres. This was called New Connecticut, or the Western Reserve-a goodly part of northeastern Ohio.

Whatever the motive, Connecticut promptly acquiesced in this decision at Tren- ton. Not so, however, the claimants under her. They held their case as still undecided. They admitted the retrospective operation of the decree as to the pub- lic rights of the immediate parties, that is, the two States, but contended that "the principle of relations does not retrospect so as to affect third persons." They cited the long line of precedents as to settlements between colonies contending about the lines of jurisdiction; that the grants of colonies made to subjects had been held sacred, whether within the line as it was after settled or not. Such had been the case between Rhode Island and Connecticut, between Massachusetts and Connecti- cut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, between New York and Connecticut. That had been the case between Pennsylvania and Maryland, and between Penn- sylvania and Virginia. New York, indeed, attempted to infringe the rule in the case of New Hampshire grants in Vermont, but finally conformed to the justice of the general rule. And it is perfectly analogous to the doctrine respecting officers de facto, whose acts, so far as relates to the rights and interests of third persons, are effectual in law, notwithstanding the offices are found to belong of right to other persons.

The vote of a sitting member in a legislative assembly is legal, though it may afterward be decided that he was not elected. The decision in such cases never operates retrospectively.

By the former constitution of Pennsylvania, a year's residence was a requisite qualification to vote at elections. Within a year after the Trenton decree, twenty- four Wyoming settlers, who had lived a number of years on the contested land, attended in the county of Northumberland, and gave their votes for two members of the legislature and one of the executive council. The votes were received by the returning officer, and decided the election in all the three cases. But the elec- tions were contested, these votes set aside, and the elections declared in favor of the other candidates by the legislature and the council respectively, because the twenty-four persons had not resided a year in Pennsylvania, for that territory was Connecticut until the Trenton decree. This legislative and executive determina- tion proceeded upon the same great principle that the jurisdiction, decided by the

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

Trenton commissioners, does not go back and affect the preexisting rights or condi- tion of private persons.

In this view the settlers determined to acquiesce cheerfully in the decree, accept their citizenship in Pennsylvania, but to listen to no terme which involved "aban- donment of their possessions."

From this time on, matters are to be conducted under the government of Penn- sylvania, and we are to go through the "second Pennamite war," but the happy outcome is to be under Pennsylvania statutes, and the decisions of Pennsylvania courts.

The Confirming Act .- "The second Pennamite war." A bird's-eye view of Pennsylvania in 1783 will show: The Friends, possessed of a prosperous and thrifty metropolis, and rich fields in Philadelphia and the adjoining counties.

The German, profitably and industriously settled along the eastern base of the Kittochtinny, or "Blue hills," from the Delaware to the Susquehanna, holding that rich agricultural territory, as he holds it yet.

The Scotch-Irish, in the Cumberland Valley, and pushing up the Juniata, and winding around the spurs of the Alleghanies, into the then counties of Bedford and Westmoreland.

The Yankee, seated in the valleys of the North Branch of the Susquehanna.

The rest of the State, except some valleys of the West Branch, was an unbroken wilderness. The total population did not exceed 330,000.

Of the Yankee settlers, there were probably about 6,000. These were scattered, mainly, in seventeen townships in the county of Luzerne, then including the terri- tory of Wyoming, Susquehanna and Bradford. Their townships were five miles square, and extended, in blocks, from Berwick to Tioga Point, embracing the bot- tom lands along the river-Providence, the present site of Scranton, being on the Lackawanna. These townships were Huntington, Salem, Plymouth, Kingston, Newport, Hanover, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, Providence, Exeter, Bedford, North- moreland, Putnam, Braintrim, Springfield, Claverack and Ulster. They contain a present population of 180,000 people.

The inhabitants at once set about meeting the adverse effects of the proceed- ings at Trenton. A petition was drawn to the assembly of Pennsylvania, in which, after reciting at length the facts, they touchingly and pathetically close thus: "We have settled a country (in its original state), but of little value; but now cultivated by your memorialists, is to them the greatest importance, being their all. We are yet alive, but the richest blood of our neighbors and friends, children, husbands and

fathers, has been spilt in the general cause of their country. * * * * We supplied the' continental army with many valuable officers and soldiers, and left ourselves weak and unguarded against the attack of the savages and others of a more savage nature. Our houses are desolate -many mothers childless-widows and orphans multiplied-our habitations destroyed, and many families reduced to

* beggary, which exhibits a scene most pitiful and deserving of mercy. * *

* We care not under what state we live. We will serve you-we will promote your interests-will fight your battles; but in mercy, goodness, wisdom, justice, and every great and generous principle, leave us our possessione, the dearest pledge of our brothers, children, and fathers, which their hands have cultivated, and their blood, spilt in the cause of their country, has enriched. We further pray that a general act of oblivion and indemnity may be passed, * * * and that all judical proceedings of the common law courts held by and under the authority of the state of Connecticut be ratified and fully confirmed."

Acting on this petition, the assembly, inter alia, "resolved that commissioners be appointed to make full inquiries into the case, and report to the house; * * that an act be passed for consigning to oblivion all tumults and breaches of the peace which have arisen out of the controversy."

On March 13, 1783, an act was passed by the assembly.

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

The garrison of continental troops had been previously withdrawn. Their places were now supplied with two companies of State troops, under Capts. Rubin- son and Shrawder. The presence of these troops was a cause of great anxiety to the settlers.

On April 15 the commissioners arrived. In their first communication to the "committee of settlers," April 19, 1783, they made the ominous declaration: "Although it can not be supposed that Pennsylvania will, nor can she, consistent with her constitution, by any ex post facto law, deprive her citizens of any part of their property legally obtained, yet," etc.

This was pretty fair notice of expulsion. Judge John Jenkins replied in behalf of the settlers, by a dignified but passionless recital of their rights and claims much more worthy of the sturdy settlers than the petition referred to. The " committee of Pennsylvania landholders," Alexander Patterson, chairman, now came forward with their terms of what they called " the conditions of compromise." That the commissioners should have endorsed them is beyond belief. They were: " We propose to give leases with convenants of warranty for holding their posses- sions one year from the first day of April instant (April 22, 1783), at the end of which time they shall deliver up full possession of the whole, * and if * they have any opportunities of disposing of their hutts, barns, or other buildings they shall have liberty to do it. * * The widows of all those whose husbands were killed by the savages, to have a further indulgence of a year, after the first of April, 1784, for half their possessions."

Patterson was determined " to feed fat the ancient grudge he bore them."

Judge Jenkins replied the same day: "As we conceive that the proposals of the committee, which they offer as a compromise, will not tend to peace, as they are so far from what we deem reasonable, we can not comply with them without doing the greatest injustice to ourselves and our associates, to widows and fatherless children; and, although we mean to pay due obedience to the constitutional laws of Pennsylvania, we do not mean to become abject slaves, as the committee of land- holders suggest in their address of your honors."

The commissioners divided Wyoming into three townships, the new ones being named Stokes and Shawanese. Justices of the peace were elected by Patterson and his associates without notice to or participation by the inhabitants, they not yet being freeholders and voters in Pennsylvania.

The commissioners reported to the assembly which convened in August, 1783. They recommended to the families of those who had fallen in arms against the com- mon enemy, reasonable compensation in land in western Pennsylvania, and to the other holders of Connecticut titles who did actually reside on the land at the time of the decree at Trenton, provided they delivered possession by April 1, following.

Now, Pennsylvania began to vacillate in her policy. The assembly approved all their suggestions. The division of Wyoming into three townships was also approved. The "act to prevent and stay suits " was repealed September 9, 1783.

Two full companies of soldiers, " who have served in the Pennsylvania line," were enlisted. Capt. Patterson, now a justice of the peace, returned full of zeal. He changed the name of Wilkes-Barre to Londonderry. For protesting against the lewdness and licentiousness of the soldiery, he arrested Col. Zebulon Butler, then just returned from service in the Revolutionary army. Him he sent to Sunbury, charged with high treason. In Plymouth he arrested many respectable citizens; feeble old men whose sons had fallen in the massacre-Prince Alden, Capt. Bidlack, Benjamin Harvey, Samuel Ransom, Capt. Bates and others-greatly beloved by their neighbors. They were kept in loathsome prisons, starved and insulted. They were dispossessed, and Patterson's tenants put into their places. The unhappy husbandman saw his cattle driven away, his barns on fire, and wife and daughters a prey to licentious soldiery.

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

The people, outraged, petitioned the assembly. It sent a committee to take testimony. Daniel Clymer, of Berks, one of the committee, rose in his place, and said, "there was evidence enough to show that Alexander Patterson ought to be removed."

Gen. Brown, another member of the committee, said he " was certain no member of the house could imagine him in the interests of the people of Wyoming, beyond the bounds of truth and the desire to do justice. He had visited Wyoming as one of the committee on the subject, and had heard all the evidence on both sides. The wrongs and sufferings of the people of Wyoming he was constrained to declare were intoler- able. If there ever was on earth a people deserving redress, it was those people." But Patterson was sustained by the assembly.

At the opening of 1784 matters reached a crisis. I quote Chapman, writing in 1818, a trustworthy chronicler: " The inhabitants finding, at length, that the burden of their calamities was too great to be horne, began to resist the illegal proceedings of their new masters, and refused to comply with the decisions of the mock tribunals which had been established. Their resistance enraged the magistrates, and on the 12th of May the soldiers of the garrison were sent to disarm them, and, under this pretence, 150 families were turned out of their dwellings, many of which were burned, and all ages and sexes reduced to the same destitute condition. After being plundered of their little remaining property, they were driven from the valley, and compelled to proceed on foot through the wilderness by way of the Lackawaxen to the Delaware, a distance of eighty miles. During the journey the unhappy fugitives suffered all the miseries which human nature seemed capable of enduring. Old men, whose children were slain in battle, widows with their infant children, and children without parents to protect them, were here companions in exile and sorrow, and wandering in a wilderness where famine and ravenous beasts continued daily to lessen the number of sufferers."

In March, of that year, a flood in the Susquehanna had swept the lowlands, car- rying houses and fences all away. Patterson seized the opportunity, with land lines thus obliterated, to dispossess the occupiers, restore the lines of Pennsylvania surveys, and thus bring about the cruel and pitiful exodus just referred to.

He shall tell his own story: "The settlements upon the river have suffered much by an inundation of ice, which has swept away the greatest part of the grain and stock of all kinds, so that the inhabitants are generally very poor. Upon my arrival at this place (Wyoming), the 15th instant (April, 1784), I found the people for the most part disposed to give up their pretensions to the land claimed under Con- necticut. Having a pretty general agency from the landholders of the behalf of my constituents, the chief part of all the lands occupied by the above claimants, numbers of them going up the river to settle, and filling up their vacancy with well- disposed Pennsylvanians, *

* yet I am not out of apprehension of trouble and danger arising from the ringleaders of the old offenders," etc. ( (By "ringleaders ". he means such men as Butler, Ross, Denison, Dorrance, Shoemaker, Jenkins, Franklin, Slocum, Harvey, etc. ) By the 1st of June he had made pretty clean work of it, and this without trial or verdict or other process of law.

Wherever news of this outrage reached, indignation was aroused, and nowhere more generally than in Pennsylvania. The troops were ordered to be dismissed, Sheriff Antis, of Northumberland county, which then included Wyoming, went to restore order. Messengers were dispatched to recall the fugitives. But they found Justice Patterson still flaming with wrath, and went into garrison near Forty fort. Two young men, Elisha Garrett and Chester Pierce, having been slain by Patter- son's men, while proceeding to gather the crops, the settlers rallied for serious hos- tilities. John Franklin organized what effective men he could find. He swept down the west side of the Susquehanna and up the east side, dispossessing every Pennsylvania family he found. He attacked the fort, to which they fled, was

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repulsed with a loss of several lives on each side, and returned to the Kingston fort. Civil war now openly prevailed. (Forty of the Pennsylvania party were indicted at Sunbury, and subsequently convicted for their participation in expelling the inhab- itants. ) Other magistrates, Hewitt, Mead and Martin, had been sent to open nego- tiations. They demanded a surrender of arms from both sides. In their report to the president and members of the supreme council, under date of August 6. 1784, they say: "In obedience to instructions of council of July 24, we repaired to this place (Wyoming), and found the Pennsylvania and Connecticut parties in actual hostilities, and yesterday made a demand of the Connecticut party of a surrender of their arms, and submission to the laws of the state, which they complied with. We also made a demand of the same nature of the party in the garrison, but have received no direct, but an evasive answer. *

* As to the pretended titles of the Connecticut party we have nothing to fear, and are convinced that had it not been through the cruel and irregular conduct of our people, the peace might have been established long since, and the dignity of the government supported.

Again; under date of August 7: " We have dispersed the Connecticut people, but our own people we can not."

The "party in the garrison " consisted of Patterson and such troops as had enlisted under him in the interests of the landholders, without any warrant of law. When Patterson refused to surrender, the Connecticut people were permitted to resume their arms. At this stage Cols. Armstrong and Boyd appeared with a force of 400 militia from Northampton county. By a piece of the most absolute treachery he procured the surrender of the Yankees, and marched them, sixty-six in all, bound with cords, and under circumstances of great cruelty, to jail at Easton and Sun- bury. The conquest was complete. "The only difficulty that remained was how to get rid of the wives and children of those in jail and of the widows and orphan's® whose husbands and fathers slept beneath the sod."

Col. Armstrong was now confronted, to his surprise, by the censure of the State authorities. The "council of censors" looked into the case and took action. Fred- erick A. Muhlenberg was president. This body had just been chosen under the constitution of 1776, and it was their duty "to inquire whether the constitution has been preserved inviolate in every part, and whether the legislative and executive branches of the government have performed their duty as guardians of the people, or assumed to themselves or exercised other or greater powers than they are entitled to by the constitution."

· In September, 1784, they delivered a decision which was a solemn denunciation of the measures pursued against the Wyoming settlers.

The executive council paid no heed to the censure nor to the advice of President Dickinson. A fresh levy of troops was ordered. The militia of Bucks, Berks and Northampton refused to march. Armstrong hastened to Wyoming with less than 100 men, in October. He promptly attacked the settlers in their fort at Kingston, without success. William Jackson, a Yankee, had been wounded. Capt. John Franklin seized Jackson's rifle, bloody from his wound, and swore a solemn oath "that he would never lay down his arms until death should arrest his hand, or Pat- terson and Armstrong be expelled from Wyoming and the people be restored to their rights of possession and a legal trial guaranteed to every citizen by the constitution, by justice and by law."

Gen. Armstrong went on to dispossess the families who had returned to their several farms. All these proceedings led up to the passage of the act of assembly of September 15, 1784, entitled " An act for the more speedy restoring the possession of certain messuages, lands and tenements in Northumberland county to the persons who lately held the same," under which the settlers were once more let into some assurance.

Armstrong and Patterson were recalled. "Thus ended the last expedition fitted

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out by the government of Pennsylvania to operate against her own peaceful citi- zens," and "the second Pennamite war."

The few real Pennsylvania improvers had a sufficiently unhappy life of it. They were subjected to great hardships, and, if you please, outrages, not forgetting the unfortunate encounter in Plymouth, in July; the lamentable affair at Locust Hill with Maj. Moore's command, in August; the indignity offered to Col. Boyd, a Pennsylvania commissioner, in September; nor the attack, on September 26, on the commissioners (disclaimed by Franklin and his party), nor the final attack on "the garrison," in which Henderson and Reed were shot.

By October 1, 1784, the condition of affairs was deplorable, but "the thing was settled," and the agony over.

"Two years have now elapsed since the transfer of jurisdiction by the Trenton decree. Peace, which waved its cheering olive over every other part of the Union, healing the wounds inflicted by ruthless war, soothing the sorrows of innumerable children of affliction and kindling the lamp of hope in the dark chamber of despair, came not to the broken-hearted people of Wyoming. The veteran soldier returned, but found no resting place. Instead of a joyous welcome to his hearth and home, he found his cottage in ruins or in the possession of a stranger, and his wife and little ones shelterless in the open fields or in the caves of the mountains; like the sea-tossed mariner approaching the wished-for harbor, driven by adverse winds far, far from shore, to buffet again the billows and the storm. It is true, and honorable to those who affected it, that the New England people were repossessed of their farms, but a summer of exile and war had left them no harvest to reap and they returned to their empty granaries and desolate homes, crushed by the miseries of the Indian invasion; mourners over fields of more recent slaughter, destitute of food, with scarce clothing to cover them through the rigors of a northern winter, while clouds and darkness shrouded all the future. Assuredly, the people of Wyoming were objects of deepest commiseration, and the heart must be harder and colder than marble that could look upon these sufferings and not drop a tear of tenderest pity." -- [Miner.]

We have had occasion to notice the failure of the claimants and the Susquehanna company to get a new tribunal appointed by congress to try their case under the articles of confederation. Col. Franklin had been active and untiring in his efforts to that end. Upon their failure he went to Connecticut to see his old friends and to stir them to some new and dangerous enterprise. He pointed out the richness and beauty of the valley of Wyoming; the wrongs of her people; the failure of Pennsyl- vania, with all her machinery, to oust a handful of settlers. "A chord was struck that vibrated through all New England. Franklin, in the spirit of his oath, infused his own soul, glowing with resentment and ambition, into the people with whom he conversed; and had not his schemes been counteracted by a timely and prudent change of policy on the part of her authorities, Pennsylvania had lost her fair northern possessions, or, by a new civil war, extinguished the Connectiout claim in blood."

Mischief was in the wind. Justice David Meade was about the last Pennsyl- vania claimant left in possession, although he was one of the earliest Connecticut settlers. He was one of Patterson's justices, looked upon as a traitor from the Yankee ranks, and a spy on the people. Rising one morning, he found a dozen men mowing his meadows.

Said one: "Squire Meade, it is you or us. Pennamites and Yankees can't live together in Wyoming. Our lines don't agree. We give you fair notice to quit, and that shortly." It illustrated the situation. He was the last Pennsylvania claimant on the Wyoming lands.

The Susquehanna company was re-convened at Hartford on July 13, 1785. Its proceedings were significant, and embraced a substantial declaration of war.

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

Pennsylvania had been a vigilant observer of events. On December 24, 1785, she passed "An act for quieting disturbances at Wyoming, for pardoning certain offenders, and for other purposes therein mentioned."

A general pardon and indemnity was offered for offences committed in the counties of Northumberland and Northampton, in consequence of the controversies between the Connecticut claimants and other citizens of the State, before November 1, 1785, provided the persons having so offended surrendered themselves before April 15, 1786, and entered into bonds to keep the peace. It also repealed the act confirming the division of the townships of Shawanese, Stokes, and Wyoming into two districts for the election of justices of the peace, and annulled the com- missions granted.

No great number of these settlers were in any humor thus to sue for pardon, and the law fell-a dead letter.

The Susquehanna company met again in May, 1786. This time it rather chivalrously resolved to "effectually justify and support the settlers." In fact, the latter, while nominally under the laws of Pennsylvania, governed themselves. Sheriff Antis, of Northumberland county, had wisely " pocketed " most of the writs he held against them, unexecuted.

On September 25, 1786, the county of Luzerne was erected. It embraced the lands settled by the New England emigrants. It gave them representation in the council and the assembly, and proved to be a wise measure. But step by step, as Pennsylvania moved to close up the trouble, the Susquehanna company went for- ward with its scheme of revolution.

On December 26, 1786, at its meeting in Hartford, it appointed the following ominous list of "commissioners:" Maj. Judd, Samuel Gray, Joel Barlow, Oliver Wolcott, Jr., Al. Wolcott, Jr., Gad Stanley, Joseph Hamilton, Timothy Hosmore, Zebulon Butler, Nathan Denison, Obadiah Gore, John Franklin, Zerah Beach, Simon Spalding, John Jenkins, Paul Schott, Abel Pierce, John Bartle, Peter Loop, Jr., John Bay, and Ebenezer Gray. These were well-known names, and it was quite certain that what they responsibly undertook, would be done.

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History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 18

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.) Publication date: 1893 Publisher: Chicago : S. B. Nelson Number of Pages: 1532

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.)
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago : S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1532