History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 31

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

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"C. J. A. Chapman was called upon and made some extempore remarks on the changes in the landmarks of justice, which he had witnessed in his life time-one, the incapacity of woman to possess property in her own right, the other, imprison- ment for debt, and his recollection, when a hoy, of seeing Rufus Bennett, the last survivor of the Wyoming massacre, in jail for a paltry debt of a few dollars. Mr. Chapman exhibited a drawing of the old public square, made by him twenty years ago from memory, and showing the buildings as they appeared about 1840. The picture excited general interest."

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

CHAPTER X.

ROADS.

BLAZED TRACKS-EXPRESS-MAILS-TURNPIKES-STAGE DRIVERS-GEORGE ROOT AND CON- RAD TETER-FIRST HIGHWAY-RIVER NAVIGATION-CANALS-RAFTING-RAILROADS- SHIP BUILDING-BRIDGES STORMS AND FLOODS-ETC.

A S early as 1777 an express was established between the Wyoming settlements and Hartford. In Miner's history is an account of the accidental finding of "an old smoke-dried, torn and mutilated document, which was the subscription paper signed by all the prominent men of the valley, and agreeing to pay a stated amount toward keeping up the express trips." On the paper were over fifty names, not all legible, and this was but a portion of the whole. The messenger went once a fortnight, and his main object, it seems, was to bring on the papers, and, of course, he carried the chance letters passing back and forth. Prince Bry- ant was a rider of the express, it seems, for more than nine months. He removed from here to near Wyalusing, and from there to Tioga Point (Athens), and became one of the early and prominent men in the northern part of what is now Bradford county. In the list of names (all were not recovered) are legible those of Elijah Shoemaker, Elias Church, George Dorrance, Nathan Kingsley, Elisha Blackman, Nathan Denison, Seth Marvin, Obadiah Gore, James Stark, Anderson Doud, Jere- miah Ross and Zebulon Butler. This express simply followed the blazed trees that had pointed the way of the immigrants to Wyoming from the older settlements in Connecticut.

Prior to the march of Sullivan's army up the Susquehanna river, through the county to Elmira, N. Y., there was nothing leading north and south more than the dim Indian trail. These trails were difficult for a man to pass along even on foot. Indians travel single file, and they had but one idea of a road-simply to get over it that time. Future travelers must look out for themselves. There was no trading among tribes, and infrequent communication, and they really had no imperative demand for good roads. The savage built neither house, bridge, nor road for future use.

Sullivan brought his army across the mountain from Easton, and then followed the river to Elmira and returned by the same route. He had both land and water transportation. The men on land had transportation wagons and live stock, the wagons sometimes carried on the boats, but at other times his small cannon and wagons traveled by land. But some idea of the way he forced a passage through the country may be gathered from the fact that at " Breakneck," a few miles above Towanda, some of the cattle fell from the difficult trail along the mountain ridge and were killed. And it was quite a time after the first settlement when men would have to drive their oxen along the river, the family in a boat, and had to unyoke the cattle in order that they could thread the narrow passages. A sober man's life was often in danger if he attempted to go a considerable distance. The heavy timber, the steep gorges, the narrow ledges high in the hard rock, were the difficulties in the way of early travel or making roads. The Indians used canoes, and the white men found this the easiest way to pass up and down the river. When canoes became insufficient, then rafts and "arks" were built, and every possible turn made to avoid land travel. But imperative necessity soon came, and wagon

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roads had to be made, not only along the river, but from settlement to settlement, as well as an outlet to markets.

Communication with Philadelphia was an early necessity. For some time people would go to Easton, and then by the Lehigh river, instead of the long, cir- cuitous route down the Susquehanna and up the bay, or down the river and across to the city from the nearest opposite point. Those woodsmen who first came were experts in traveling through the trackless forests, and could find their way over wide stretches of country with astonishing facility. Nimble of body and quick of brain, they gave small heed to what now would simply appall the average man.

It is now difficult to depict the original obstructions to travel that once con- fronted the pioneers at this place. For a long time, except by the rivers and conflu- ent streams, it was nearly impossible to go at all. For some time the mail, weekly, was carried on foot from Wilkes-Barre to Elmira (Newtown). Then the roads were worked in the early part of this century and it was quite a triumph to be able to carry the weekly post on ponies. The rider was justified in securing a tin horn to announce his approach to the postoffices on the route. We can readily understand that the pony mail's arrival was of far more public interest then than is now the arrival of a great palace-car train with the country's chief officials on board. Every- one would rush out to the road to see the horse and rider coming in triumph. In all that crowd there would not perhaps be more than one that was in reasonable expectation of getting a letter. There were no crowds around the office awaiting the opening of the mail. Rather, if a letter or paper came, the postmaster would put it in his hat and go out to look for some neighbor to send word there was a let- ter in the office. Postage was from 8 cents to 25 cents, according to distance and was prepaid at the option or ability of the sender-25 cents then, too, was wealth to many people. Commerce, in its limited way, was mostly trade and traffic. And a notice from the office of a letter, postage unpaid, double postage if more than one sheet of paper, was often a serious family affair. The postmaster's salary would hardly justify him in assuming the payment of or credit- ing out many letters. In the year 1800 the state felt called upon to assist the peo- ple in opening public highways, both on the land and on the streams. That year a. "state road " was surveyed from Wilkes-Barre to the state line north following the river. The state did but little more than make the survey, yet the road was estab- lished and it was made in a way passable for vehicles within the next decade.

In 1807 a company was incorporated to build a turnpike road from Berwick to Elmira, N. Y. Work was commenced at Berwick and pushed northward. A con- siderable portion of the south end of the road was along the top of a high ridge until it reached the south line of Bradford county.

The state had given about 400 acres of land to this enterprise, and the corpor- ators owned large bodies of land that the turnpike would be of great advantage to. It was not completed until about 1825 through to Elmira. But as early as 1810 it was the first good wagon road in this part of the state; it was passable and the large streams were bridged, and by rare chance you may yet meet an ancient stage driver, whose old eyes will again gleam and snap in recalling those halcyon days. "Yes, I druv stage over the old turnpike. Several times I was catched in the great snow storm on the mounting and it looked as though team and driver wuz about to be called to pass in checks, but we pulled through and wuz always ready to meet every foe the next day again. Oh, yes, them be glorious times; nawthin like it neow; things wuz defferent then and it nearly makes me sea-sick to think of getting into the kyars and lolling along over the country and see just no fun at all." There are but precious few-never were many -- of these rare old Sam Wellers now left. A genuine one, when the canal boat came, went out behind the barn and nearly laughed himself to death. He talked about the "mule river boat," the "hoss boat " a great deal to his horses and if his favorite only switched its tail, he took it

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for granted that the animal agreed with him about the " one-hoss " affair through and through. It is one of the nicest points in our ancient history to determine of the three which was the greatest man-the stage driver, writing master or sing- ing-school teacher. This question should never have been raised, or if it had to come, it should have been when the stage-driver was here in all his glory. In the minds of all well-made boys of fifty and sixty years ago the man who drove the four- horse stage coach was the greatest man on earth. Before nor since nature has made no effort to parallel his splendors. Horace Greeley was flattered up with the idea that he was quite a somebody until he fell into the hands of overland stage driver "Hank." The real stage driver not only knew everything, but loved his horses and was awfully loved by the cooks at every stage-stand on his route. Slow and oracular of speech, stumpy in build; in summer with a broad-brimmed hat, leather belt for suspenders, and his cheek bulged with his cud of tobacco, joking familiarly with the great or noted men of the land, this was the man off duty. But on the stage box, his tin horn and long whip, and, as he enters the village where obsequious hostlers change his team, when he disdainfully throws them the lines as he dashes up to the tavern door-the observed of all-then indeed it was he was not only a great man, but a great institution. This hero of the whip and horn went down only before the railroad. Nothing short of fire and steam could conquer here, and, little as the modern boy may think it, nevertheless it is true he has missed wholly one. of the great things of this world by the silent passage from earth of the old stage-coach days. Of all the creations of Dickens' teeming brain the one that will linger in your recollection longest, that will bide with you closest, is Sam Weller-the old stage driver. The little old jaded two-horse bob-wagons that now carry the mails and truck to back townships are but a sad burlesque on the great old four-horse Concord coaches. Those we now have are not even starved shadows of the original. To see one of these present forlorn concerns come limping and reeling into town along a back alley, a well-grown boy with a frayed hickory withe pounding the poor, long- haired jaded horses, would surely produce a serious case of mania a potu on any old-time Sam Weller were he compelled to look upon the whole decrepit fossil. The biggest of us are but grown up children. A monotonous plethora of even the most desira- ble things of life soon pall upon our senses and even worry us. Instead of rushing now down to see the great railroad train arrive; instead of everyone's heart bounding with delight as the scream of the whistle announces its approach, as once our fathers did at the sound of the stage horn, men build away from the depot, fleeing from the clang and roar of busy commerce, and village councils are pass- ing ordinances against blowing steam whistles in their limits. A boy now at the age of fifteen, the average at one time of the first pair of trousers, is actually blase -wearied with all life's shows and pageants and its butterfly existence, as the little girl of to-day with her twenty-dollar doll knows nothing of the exquisite joys of childhood of her grandmother with a stick and a rag for a doll. A splendid, imported, hand-painted set of toy dishes awakes no semblance of matronly joy and delight known and felt by little girls of the old time who had gathered up the broken remains of the old blue flowered potter's ware and with rioting imaginations prepared the covers for a royal feed under the blooming apple trees on the rare occasion of a visit from a distant cousin and her mother to spend the day. These were a hearty, healthy people, who had never heard of the fashionable " call," lolling in a carriage and sending in a card by a footman. The boy then dreamed dreams of when he could ride a pony and by himself some day go to town. " Wait till the turnpike is finished-then I can find the way." I insist that of the two, the poverty of means of pleasure is preferable to the excess of the same. The child that barely has enough to eat is more apt to have healthy food aud a sound constitution than one born to the other extreme. It is the condition our whole nature is in that con- stitutes the most exquisite enjoyment of life in gaining simple and harmless desires, and generally, if not always, the added enjoyment comes of the rarity itself.

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

Sam Weller is the immortal English stage driver. This dear old stub-and-twist, whose experience gave birth to the eleventh commandment, " Beware of the vidders, Sammy," was in no way more deserving of everlasting fame than were George Root or Conrad Teter, the noted cracks of the whip of Wilkes-Barre. Then there was Philip Abbott, who drove Robinson & Arndt's coach in 1806. Root was on the box forty years and upward-the king of his trade many years. Conrad Teter was a heavy fat man and as jolly a soul as ever lived. He drove his own stage. He loved nothing better than getting a good subject on the box with him and entertain him all the way by pointing out the finest improvements on the roadside and explaining that was his and when he made all the improvements and how much they cost him. His innocent victims would conclude, and some of them wrote back to England that they had ridden with a great " duke in disguise," called Conrad Teter.

The customs and habits of these people in the old roadless days were severely simple. Often they suffered for actual necessities, and we are apt to shudder when we are told the details. We forget that they too had their compensations, for

Such are the dispensations of heaven, That in the end make all things even.

The very first arrivals brought no wagons with them and they hardly needed a blazed way to follow. The emigrants of 1762-3 had crossed the Hudson near New- berg and pushed westward across the Delaware near its junction with Shohola creek, following the Indian path along Roaring brook to the Lackawana river and then by another trail to the place of destination. But the next wave of pioneers (1769) that followed the same route brought their carts, drawn by oxen, and they were com- pelled to cut a way, and this may be called the first wagon road in northern Penn- sylvania. In October, 1772, a common roadway that could be traveled had become important enough to cause a meeting of the people to be held, where a committee was appointed to collect funds to improve the road. At this meeting were Messrs. Jenkins, Goss, Carey, Gore and Stewart, who were the committee mentioned. Funds were raised and work performed the following November, and by 1774 they were proud to know the good work was completed, that is, a cart could pass.

The road through Kingston, along the river, six rods wide, was laid out in 1770, Another road was laid out through Kingston flats, crossing the Susquehanna at the head of Fish island, below Wilkes-Barre, which joined the road to the latter place near Gen. E. W. Sturdevant's residence. Another road was laid out from Wilkes- Barre to Pittston on the east side of the river. Sullivan's army in the march from Easton to Wilkesbarre, in 1779, opened the road to the Delaware. The people afterward for a long time used this old army road, and when Luzerne county was formed in 1786, appropriations were made to further improve this route, and it became the great highway to and from Philadelphia.

In 1787 a road was laid out from Nescopeck falls to the Lehigh river, by author- ity of the commonwealth; completed in 1789, forming the third line of communica- tion between the Delaware and Susquehanna.

In 1788 the court of Luzerne appointed Benjamin Carpenter, Abel Pierce, Lawrence Myers, James Sutton, Benjamin Smith and John Dorrance to lay out ad- ditional roads in Kingston township. It appointed as viewers for Hanover township, Christopher Hurlbut, Shubal Bidlack, Richard Inman, Conrad Lyon, John Hurlbut, Elisha Decker and Nathan Wartrop; for Plymouth township, Samuel Allen, Rufus Lawrence, William Reynolds, Luke Swetland, Hezekiah Roberts and Cornelius Atherton; for Salem township, Nathan Beach, George R. Taylor, George Smithers, Amos Park, Jacob Shower and Giles Parman. In 1789 John Jenkins, Stephen Harding, Peter Harris, David Smith, S. Dailey and J. Phillips were appointed to view and lay out additional roads in Exeter township. For Wilkes-Barre township,

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the viewers were Zebulon Butler, J. P. Schott, John Hollenback, Nathan Waller, Abraham Westbrook and John Carey.

In 1790 John Phillips, John Davidson, J. Blanchard, Caleb Bates, David Brown and J. Rosin were appointed viewers for Pittston township. In 1791 the viewers appointed for Providence township were Daniel Taylor, John Grifford, Gabriel Leggett, Isaac Tripp, James Abbott and Constant Searl. In 1792 William Jack- son, John Fairchild, Mason F. Alden, M. Smith, Daniel McMullin and A. Smith were appointed to view and lay out roads in Newport township. The surveyors who accompanied the committees and laid out the work were John Jenkins, Christo- pher Hurlbut and Luke Swetland.

Turnpikes .- As the population, productions and wealth of the county increased, there was an urgent demand for better roads and easier communication between distant points. In 1802 a charter was procured for the Easton & Wilkes-Barre turnpike. It occupied a large portion of the old road, and it was chiefly through the exertions of Arnold Colt that the first twenty-nine miles, reckoning from Wilkes-Barre, were completed in 1806. Soon after, the whole distance from Wilkes- Barre to the Wind gap, forty-six miles, was finished at a cost of $75,000.

During the embargo, in 1812 and 1813, the farmers of Northampton county were unable to procure plaster from the seaboard, and were compelled to use New York plaster, which was conveyed down the Susquehanna in arks to Wilkes-Barre, and thence in sleds and wagons over the turnpike. A turnpike mania now seized the people. The old Nescopeck & Lehigh road was made a turnpike under the name of the Susquehanna & Lehigh turnpike.

The Susquehanna & Tioga Turnpike company was organized to build a road from Berwick, through Fairmount and Huntington townships, in this county, to Elmira, N. Y. At that time this was the most expensive improvement undertaken in this portion of the State. The State gave some aid in land, but the expense to the stockholders was great. It never paid the investors, but was a great improvement for the people, and in a few years it was abandoned as a toll road and opened to the public.

The Wilkes-Barre & Bridgewater turnpike was built about this time, running north through Tunkhannock and Montrose.

The Wilkes-Barre & Providence Plank-road company was chartered in 1851, and the first section to Pittston built, but never went further. The common roads were now much improved in keeping with the spirit of the times.

Remembering that our government assumed control of our postal system in 1775, with Benjamin Franklin as first postmaster-general; that the system was a very small beginning, it could hardly be expected that it would amount to much to this frontier during the remaining years of the past century. Hence in 1777, all the mail facilities in Wyoming were private affairs and paid for by subscriptions. We have seen that the first post route here was a two weeks' pony rider from here to Hartford, ridden by Prince Bryant. During the land troubles all letters and com- munications were by private hands. Mrs. Abigail Jamison, wife of Lieut. John Jamison, daughter of Maj. Pierce Alden, on one occasion left Wyoming for Easton, where her father and twenty others were prisoners in jail, to carry letters and news from home and hold important communication with the prisoners. She hid the letters in her hair, and when discovered, as she passed along in the night near Bear creek, by Col. Patterson's men, who arrested her, but could find nothing wrong about her and she passed on in safety, and delivered her messages.

After the war, and the organization of Luzerne county, a weekly mail was for- warded between Wilkes-Barre and Easton. In 1797 Clark Behe, the post-rider, informed the public, through the Wilkes-Barre Gazette, that as he carried the mail once a week to Easton, he would also carry passengers, "when the sleighing is good," at $2.50 each. During the same year the mail was carried on horseback,

Markle

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once a week, from Wilkes-Barre via Nanticoke, Newport, and Nescopeck to Berwick, returning via Huntington and Plymouth. The only authorized postoffice in the county was at Wilkes-Barre, and all letters and papers for Nescopeck, Huntington, and other places in Luzerne, were left at certain private houses designated by the Wilkes-Barre postmaster.

In 1798 a mail was run once in two weeks between Wilkes-Barre and Great Bend, and in the following year a weekly route was opened between Wilkes-Barre and Owego, in New York. These routes were sustained chiefly, if not altogether, by private subscription, like those of the early settlers; the subscribers to newspapers paying as high as 50 cents per quarter to the mail carrier.

Jonathan Hancock rode post from Wilkes-Barre to Berwick in the year 1800; and in 1803 Charles Mowery and a man named Peck carried the mail on foot, once in two weeks from Wilkes-Barre to Tioga (Athens).

In 1806 Messrs. Robinson & Arndt commenced running a two-horse stage, once a week between Wilkes-Barre and Easton, through in a day and a half. The stages from Easton to Philadelphia ran through in one day.

In 1810 Conrad Teter contracted with the government to carry the mail, once a week, in stages, from Sunbury to Painted Post, by the way of Wilkes-Barre and Athens. He, however, sold his interest in the route from Sunbury to Wilkes-Barre to Miller Horton, but ran the other portion himself until 1816. In that year Miller, Jesse and Lewis Horton opened a new era in stage-coach traveling, and in carrying the mails in northern Pennsylvania. These enterprising brothers contracted in 1824 to carry the mails in four-horse coaches from Baltimore to Owego by way of Harrisburg, Sunbury, Wilkes-Barre and Montrose, and from Philadelphia to Wilkes- Barre, via Easton. They also contracted to carry the mails from New York city to Montrose, by way of Newark and Morristown, in New Jersey, and Milford in Penn- sylvania. Postoffices were established at Plymouth, Kingston, Pittston, Tunkhan- nock, Providence, and other places in the county; and comfortable and substantial four-horse coaches rolled daily and rapidly over the highways.

River Navigation .- We, as is the nature of all mankind, adjust ourselves to sur- roundings. The people, while pushing forward facilities for overland travel were not indifferent to the temptations presented them by the Susquehanna river, winding its way from the richest valley in New York down to the bay and the ocean. In the first decade of the nineteenth century was born the idea of navigation by steam, and the people of the valley were abreast with even the foremost of mankind on the subject, made so by their surroundings.

The attempts to navigate by steamboats the Susquehanna was a failure and almost a continuous tragedy. Fulton invented and launched his first steamboat on the Hudson river in 1809, and the wonderful story of propelling a boat against the stream by steam spread over the civilized world, and mankind, that had been toiling and pushing the old keel and Durham boats so painfully up all their long journeys, was now rejoiced. People went down to the banks of the clear and swift flowing Susquehanna and looked upon the steam with wholly new sensations; a providence of God truly, and the old-time slow and horrid work of carrying on the travel and commerce of the country would soon change-the steamboat was coming-the great factor and hand-maiden of civilization. Why not "sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea?" The good time coming is here; man's ingenuity has overcome the appalling difficulties, and the age of fire and steam has arrived.

First it was canoes, flatboats or rafts, then rudely constructed "arks," and finally the "Durham" boats-so named because they were first built at Durham on the Delaware. The latter were about sixty feet long and shaped something like a canal boat, with a " running board " on each side the entire length, manned usually by five men-two on each side "setting poles " and one steering. The best would carry about fifteen tons. With good luck they would ascend the stream at the rate of two miles an hour.

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History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 31

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