History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 73

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

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"I think the first school I ever went to was up on the Middel road, near Lorenzo Ruggles', in some one's private house, across the creek from his house, and below it, southwest of it. I wasn't more than four or five years old then. We didn't call it but a mile from our house then, but now it is about two miles. Lydia Richards was the teacher. What makes me remember the school is, that she would put her switch or stick on the noses of the disobedient, to hold there without touch- ing it with their hands. There was three disobedient at one time, and they were made to hold up their faces so that the whip would lie across the noses of all at once, and not fall off, and then they yelled. I remember among the scholars Ruth Edgerton, Rachael Hoover and Phoebe Wright. I only remember these three. Ruth Edgerton married Anthony Wilkeson. Lydia Richards was a sister of Elijah Richards, of Wright township, afterward. The next school I attended was on the 'Green,' about two miles or more off. The teacher was a Scotchman. The scholars that I remember were myself, Elisha and Betsy Blackman and Maria Askam. Maria Askam afterward married Thomas Brown, and lived about forty years at what is now called Newtown, in Hanover, adjoining the Wilkes-Barre line on the back road. They removed to Iowa. I don't remember any others. At Behee's 30

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

mill pond, on the road to this school, there was a sawmill close to the dam, and they were sawing logs. We could go into the mill right off the dam. The dam was also the road there as it is now-across the creek, and the children would frequently go into the sawmill and sit on the log as it was being sawed. I sat on one once with Maria Askam. I think Ludwig Rummage owned Behee's mill when I went to school first on 'The Green,' but it may have been later a few years. Behee owned it when I was twelve years old anyway. The schoolhouse stood on the hill top at 'The Green,' and the unfinished church stood next to it. This was about 1811-2. They had meetings in the church sometimes though. Father said he used frequently to sit iu the upper story of that church, and look over here toward his own house to see if it took fire from the fires in the woods in the spring and fall. Nobody lived over back here then but he, or nearer than the Middle road, nearly a mile off, and the fires used to burn in the woods clear to the middle road at Askam's; but that must have been before 1806. Askam sometimes used to live in a little log house near South Wilkes-Barre on the Middle road to Solomon's creek. He was a tailor by trade, but he would rather do peddling than anything else, and so he wanted to live near town. In his peddling excursions he had been, he said, to Canada twenty-one times."

Julia Anna Blackman Plumb died on June 29 at the residence of her son, H. B. Plumb, Esq., in Plumbtown, at the advanced age of eighty-three years. She passed peacefully and painlessly away, in full possession of her faculties to the last. With the exception of a slight cold she was in her usual health, and death was due to the infirmities of advancing age. Interment in Hollenback cemetery.

She was probably the last survivor of the second generation of the pioneers who participated in the battle of Wyoming, July 3, 1778. About seven years ago she became blind, an affliction that was severely felt by her, she having been a great reader. She had also become deaf. Otherwise her declining years have been marked with a degree of health and vigor not common to such advanced age. She was possessed of those sterling traits of character which ennoble our human nature and which made her life a benediction to all with whom she was thrown in contact. Her religious faith was after the teachings of the Swedenborgian church. For many years she made her home with her son, who has ministered to her every want with the most tender and devoted solicitude.

Mrs. Plumb was in the sixth generation from John Blackman, who was in Dor- chester, Mass., now Boston, in 1640. He had eight children.

Second generation-Joseph Blackman, 1661, 1720. He had five children.

Third generation-Elisha, born 1700. He had four children.

Fourth generation-Elisha, 1727-1804. Had five children.

Fifth generation-Elisha, 1760-1845.

Had ten children.

Sixth generation-The subject of this sketch, who was the ninth child.

Seventh generation-H. B. Plumb, of Hanover township.

Eighth generation-George H. R. Plumb, Esq., now of Duluth.

She was the daughter of Elisha Blackman and Anna Hurlbut, of Hanover town- ship, and was born on the same farm where she passed her entire life April 25, 1806. She was married to Charles Plumb December 21, 1828, he dying three years later. The only child was Henry Blackman Plumb, the local historian and member of the Luzerne bar, who survives her. Her father was deeply attached to her, she being the youngest daughter, and she never left the parental roof. Upon her mother's death she assumed the entire care of her father's household, a duty far more arduous than falls to women nowadays. Her father was an extensive farmer, and nearly everything with the exception of tea, coffee and sugar was raised upon the home lands. The round of exacting duty embraced spinning, weaving, dairying butter and cheese, wool-raising, bee-culture, flax-raising, the care of harvest hands, and numerous other domestic duties quite unknown to the generation now growing up. Her father died December 5, 1845, at the age of eighty-six, her mother January 26, 1828, at the age of sixty-five.

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

Her father was Elisha Blackman, born April 4, 1760, in Lebanon, Conn. He came with his father, Elisha Blackman, in 1772, and participated in the battle of July 3, 1778, he being one of the fortunate few who escaped. He was a member of Capt. Bidlack's company, from Lower Wilkes-Barre, out of whose thirty-two men only eight escaped. After the repulse he succeeded in making his way to the Susquehanna river, which he attempted to swim. His efforts were noticed by a savage along the bank who fired a flintlock musket at him, but fortunately without effect. He succeeded in reaching the Monoconock island, where he secreted himself in the bushes. He was an eye witness to the killing of Philip Weeks, who had also sought to escape to the river, but was induced by a savage to return to the shore on a promise that his life should be spared. It is needless to say that the promise was shamefully and instantly violated and Weeks was killed and scalped. The Blackman boy, for he was only a boy of eighteen, lay concealed until darkness had covered the earth for several hours, when about midnight he took advantage of the dead silence and returned to the west side of the river and made his way to Forty Fort, in which such of the frightened settlers as had not fled toward Con- necticut had taken refuge. About the same time another refugee came to the fort, Daniel McMullen, who was entirely naked, he having thrown aside his clothing when he took to the river. The next morning (July 4, 1778), these two men objected to the proposed capitulation of the fort, and rather than fall into the hands of the British and Indians as prisoners they took advantage of the opening of the gates to admit some cattle and fled, reaching Wilkes-Barre fort in safety. This fort was already abandoned, Dr. William Hooker Smith and the aged men composing the local military company-the Reformadoes-having gone to the Five Mile mountain as an escort for the women and children who were fleeing toward the Pocono on their way to their old homes in Connecticut. The only man in Wilkes-Barre fort was young Blackman's father. The family home was in South Wilkes-Barre near where the late Judge Dana's residence stands. Hastily con- cealing such family valuables as could be buried they got the cattle together and drove them toward the lower end of the valley, away from the Indians, where the oxen were found in safety several months later. They fled down the river, then up Nescopeck creek, and succeeded in crossing the Nescopeck mountain to Stroudsburg, where they overtook the main body of the fugitives who had gone by the way of the "Shades of Death " and Pocono mountain. When Capt. Spald- ing's company returned to the desolated valley in August to bury the dead, young Blackman accompanied and assisted in that melancholy duty. He then gathered such of his father's crops as had escaped the malignity of the tories and Indians. His father returned in November, and the crops harvested by the son found ready purchasers in the troops who were stationed in the valley. Father and son then returned to Connecticut, winter now drawing on, and the son enlisted in the Revolutionary army. He served a year in the New York lake region, and then returned to Lebanon, Conn. In 1786 he returned to Wilkes-Barre with his two brothers, Ichabod and Eleazer. In 1787 his father came, and took the oath of allegiance to Pennsylvania before Timothy Pickering.

The son married, in January, 1788, Anna Hurlbut, daughter of Deacon John Hurlbut, of Hanover, and in 1791 removed to Hanover and settled on the land where the family have ever since lived. He cleared up a tract of land, built a house and planted an orchard. This was between the middle and the back road. It was probably the only clearing on the southeast side from Newport to Wilkes-Barre. Rufus Bennett came about the same time

"Old Hanover Green," now the Hanover cemetery, was for many years the military training ground. A noted meeting place and the chronicler says that there was on noted occasions as much as a whole regiment of men at the place. It is now the "silent city." Commenting on this Mr. Plumb says: "The militia organiza- tions gradually fell into disrepute, as they took men's time from their labor and sober

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

work and seemed to be useless. They were never called upon for any other service than that of two days each year of poor drilling and marching about a little-together with considerable drunkenness. The act enforcing it was repealed in 1848, though a relic of it remained for some twenty years afterward in a military tax of 50 cents a year on each person of the proper age."

Samuel Holland bought lands in Hanover in 1838 for coal mining purposes- the John B. Garrison, the Sterling and Andrew Shoemaker properties, paying at about the rate of $25 per acre-the first land ever sold or bought in Hanover for such purposes.

In 1840 the assessment had decreased $10,000, owing to the rush of emigrants to the West. The total number of taxables was 262; this too in the face of the fact that this was the time of building railroads and opening mines.

The census of 1840 showed a population of 1,938; 206 were agriculturists, 53 mining, 5 commerce, 77 manufacturing, 3 professional and 1 pensioner.

In 1850 the population had decreased to 1,506. There were still thirty-nine log houses, but all of them showed to be getting old, and were rotting down.

In 1850-60 coal lands had gone up in the markets to an average of about $50 per acre, and the farmers were mostly rejoiced to sell these poor and worn-out lands at such good prices and hie themselves west for good, cheap farms, and the large coal operators now began to work in earnest. Mr. Plumb says, with much plausible reason, that those worn-out farms would have been excellent for sheep raising, but their neighbors persisted in keeping so many worthless sheep-killing dogs that this industry was totally destroyed. He says that he personally knew of a single dog that killed 117 sheep before he was killed. A result of the financial panic of 1857 was stopping coal operations and the bankruptcy of many of the investors.

The dam of Behee's old mill is the road crossing etill on the creek and forms the pond above. The streams that once supplied this creek from the mountain long since ceased to flow, and often the pond is dried up. Petty's mill, built in 1840, was the only one that survived to the present.

The ancient powder mill on the " Middle road," run by water power on Solomon's creek, ceased to manufacture about thirty years ago. The present brewery stands a few rods further up the creek.

Henry Blackman Plumb, in his admirable. History of Hanover Township and Wyoming Valley, published in 1885, speaks thoughtfully of the more important subject of the effects of the rapid, remarkable advancement of the county in the development of the coal industry since 1860. The increase in population and the far greater increase in wealth in the coal districts in the county are carefully noted by him. When he has gone over the ground conscientiously he bravely approaches the far more important question of the effects that are flowing out to the people from this panoramic change.

""Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand, Between a splendid and a happy land."

He is, in his comments, considering Hanover township, but his words are equally pertinent when applied to every mining district in the county:

"The township and the boroughs within it continued to prosper from 1870 till 1873, when stagnation overtook them, and no progress was made in business, in property or in the condition of affairs until 1880. The "strike" of 1877 put the finishing touch to the want and distress of the inhabitants. The strike lasted six months, and for the next two years many families had to live on 'mush and molas- ses.' No building was done unless where it was absolutely necessary. No new mines were opened; no extension of old ones was made. After 1880 affairs grew slowly better, and in 1882 many new houses were built and old ones repaired and occupied, because rents could be got sufficient to justify the outlay. New mines were opened and old ones enlarged. House-building flourished in 1883 and the

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

railroads were crowded with passengers as never before, and all the appearances of prosperity had come again.

" In 1878 there were nine breakers in Hanover, Sugar Notch, Ashley and Nanti- coke, within the old township lines, and only four of them in operation, and when at work it was only about half time or less. One of the breakers, the 'Hanover,' was struck by lightning and burned down. In 1883 there were ten breakers, and eight of them at work, sometimes full time and sometimes half time, but wages were high again, compared with what they had been, and half time part of the year produced no want among the workmen for the necessaries of life.

" Lands about the mines and their neighborhood for a distance of half a mile or more are generally uncultivated and thrown open to commons, on account of the difficulty of securing any crops from them, even if the crops grew. Unruly boys and men, and goats, cattle and hogs that run at large make it quite impossible to live by the cultivation of the soil in the neighborhood, and so the land lies open and vacant that once produced good crops. Nearly every family about the mines keeps a dog, some two, three, or even four large ones, making it entirely impossible for any one to raise sheep within many miles of the mine. Dogs have been known to go many miles away from home to kill sheep. * * There have been no sheep raised in Hanover since 1858.

"Goats are kept in large numbers, and make it almost impossible to have any shade or fruit trees, vines or shrubs about the houses, or flowers or even gardens. They are animals pretty well calculated for barbarians, but not at all for civilized communities. The destructiveness of these animals is one among the great reasons why everything appears so desolate and uncomfortable generally about miners' houses. Another reason is the desire to have all animals run at large for the bene- fit of the 'poor man.' I leave for others to decide whether it is really to the ben- * efit of the poor man to have these animals run at large. * *

" There are now five postoffices within the boundaries of Hanover, viz .: Sugar Notch, Ashley, Askam, Peely and Nanticoke. No business is carried on in the town- ship and boroughs but the coal business and railroading, and such mercantile busi- ness and mechanical trades as are necessary on account of them, and the wants and needs of a mining population. Farming has fallen to a very low condition and but little is done. Garden products of every description are raised, mostly on the flats, and these have to be watched, frequently with arms in hand, night and day, to keep off thieves, and the arms sometimes have to be used. The mines, the railroads, the repair shops and machine shops are the business of the people now. In the whole township and the three boroughs, with a population of more than 12,000 in 1884, it is doubtful whether there are more than four blacksmith shops, not connected with the mines or railroads; while in the early times it took one blacksmith to every 100 people, old and young. Things that were formerly made here have ceased to be manufactured and some are no longer made nor used here or elsewhere. There are no tanneries now, no tool makers, no plow makers, no makers of scythes, sickles, cradles, knives, axes, hoes, harness, saddles, carts, wagons, carriages, brooms, cloth, cheese, soap-no weaving, no wool, no flax, no honey, no beeswax, no bees, no cider, no tobacco, no millwrights, no gunsmiths, no wheelwrights, no makers of wooden ware. Indeed, there is almost nothing made here now and nothing produced except coal. *

But of coal the production is very large and overshadows everything else." *

* It seems as if when one enjoys one great and good thing he must forego all others. *

* * The business of Hanover was at one time entirely agri- cultural, now it is entirely mining. Her future history, while the coal lasts, will be merely statistical-the amount of coal she produces, number of men employed, wages, persons injured or killed in the mines, or the capital invested. Her popula- tion will not be the owners- * * Her owners will not be a part of the popu- lation. * * *

"The taxes are very high

the reason for it is that assessments are

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

made by assessors not elected by the owners of the property, or by their friends and neighbors, but persons in general, not owners of anything and not responsible. The local taxes are also levied, collected and expended by the same class of per- sons. It may therefore be surmised that the taxes will be put, as they are where these people rule, to the highest point the law allows, and frequently higher, and that this condition of things is growing more and more oppressive every year. If this only fell upon the companies alone they could easily get it all back out of their workmen, but where a man with his family owns and occupies his house of five rooms and a loft 50x100 feet, worth altogether $1,200 or $1,300, and has to pay taxes amounting to from 50 cents to 75 cents per month for his own dwelling, it seems pretty heavy. The owners of property are now pretty much all non-resi- dent. No farmer can now own the back land and make a living on it and pay the taxes, insurance and repairs.

"There are but few Americans here now, whether natives of the township or new-comers. They are not liked by the foreigners. The foreigners are about the same in nationalities as in 1870; being English, Irish, Welsh, German, Swede, Swiss, French, Polanders, Hungarians, Canadians and Scotch."

HAZLE TOWNSHIP.

The genealogy of this township is as follows: Hazle was carved out of Sugar- loaf township in 1839. Sugarloaf was taken from Nescopeck township. The latter was formed in 1792. A part was taken from Butler township, November 6, 1856, and added to Hazle. Grandmother Nescopeck, mother Sugarloaf, and then the blooming, fashionable daughter, Miss Hazle-pretty in name and lovely in form and features. Though yet one of the "sweet girl undergraduates," she wears the jewel of the second city in the county of Luzerne. The south line of the township is the county lines of Carbon and Schuylkill counties, and, as well, is the south line of this county. The old Indian trail crossing Buck's mountain passed through the town- ship near where is Hazleton, and on toward Nescopeck, through Conyngham village. So far as the records can inform us, the first whites that passed through here were Capt. Klader's company, on their way to the fatal ambush near Conyngham, in 1780. Then came and returned the burial party, and then Balliet, wife and two children, the latter swung across the horse in their beegums. In 1804 came the white man with his surveyor's instruments, surveying the turnpike that is now Broad street, Hazleton, and the well-traveled highway that passes on through Conyngham, Sey- bertsville, etc., on to the river. The first settlement made in Hazel probably was in 1804-a camp for the surveyors and then for the laborers in constructing the turn- pike. The first settlement was where the town of Hazleton now stands, and for particulars thereof the reader is referred to that part of the history.

The face of the township is rugged hills once crowned with the dark old forests, chiefly yellow pine. There is very little agricultural land in it; rocky hills and the red shale, when denuded of its timber growth, is but little else than a barren waste. It was a great field for lumbering, many years, but now, except a sawmill of the Lehigh Valley railroad on the turnpike near Black creek, that is completing the work of cut- ting up the remaining lumber, when this once great industry will have passed entirely away. The settlements that constitute the present population were drawn hither by the opening of coal mines that commenced in 1836, a detailed account appearing elsewhere. We learn from Stewart Pearce's Annals that the earliest settlers in Hazle township were Anthony Fisher, Joseph Fisher, Casper Thomas, Conrad Horn, Adam Winters, at what now is "Horntown," on the turnpike just beyond West Hazleton. The first internal improvement of note was, as a matter of course, a sawmill on High creek, now within the city limits, erected in 1810.

It is made the second in importance in the county by its coal deposits, which are still being developed rapidly, and the great "breakers" rear their dark faces on nearly every hillside, and the gulches are being filled with the mountainous culm

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

piles that are the chips of the workmen down in the bowels of the earth digging for the precious black diamonds.

The old Lehigh & Susquehanna turnpike road, from Mauch Chunk to Berwick, formed the backbone of the early settlements through this portion of the county. The first toll-house in the county was in this township, now in the city, and the old building may yet be pointed out to the curious. David Travis and Conrad Horn were the two most legal-minded men at that time here. They were the first justices in 1840; succeeded by William Kisner and David Martz, and they by George Fens- termacher.

The many different collieries in the township constitute the abiding places of the population.

Jeansville, situated two miles south of Hazleton, is simply a part of Hazle town- ship, though around the Spring Mountain collieries that are the cause of the exist- ence of the place, are about 1,500 people. It was named for Joseph Jeans, of Philadelphia. Everything here belongs to the Lehigh Valley railroad, that cor- poration having purchased of the Spring Mountain Coal company. Coal operations were commenced here in 1845 by William Millans, who opened the slope and com- menced in a small way shipping coal by first transporting overland to Beaver Meadow, where was the only point to reach a railroad. Jeansville is a neat and well-built hamlet, with two churches-Methodist and Baptist. The Presbyterian church was burned and never rebuilt; two schoolhouses. The first schoolhouse here was built about 1850. The two buildings they now have were built in the eighties. A very neat and well-kept cemetery was provided about 1877. The place exists by virtue of its coal, and the attention of the outside world was attracted hither by Ario Pardee, the father of the coal industry in the Hazleton district. Mr. J. C. Haydon, who, as a pioneer operator in this section, is junior only to A. Pardee, is in charge of Jeansville and its collieries. He came to the place to take charge in 1865; leased the Spring Mountain Coal company's property and carried on operations, building the two present breakers, until the property was sold to the railroad, and at this time mines and markets the coal for the owners. One of the old breakers was burned in 1881 and both have been rebuilt. The output, mostly from the Mammoth, Wharton and Buck mountain views, is at this time about 300,000 tons annually. The Beaver Meadow railroad extended their road from Wetherly to this point in 1845. The importance of the operations carried on here may be inferred somewhat when we state that their machine shops employ on the average 125 hands. This important part of the place commenced in a small way, doing simply this needed company's repairing in 1853, and has grown with a steady growth, now manufactur- ing steam pumps that are given the markets throughout the continent. With the shops is a large foundry where much work in that line is carried on.

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History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 73

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