History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 8

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

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HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

as a severe religion. If he found a cow blasphemous enough to enter the church- yard then his temper rose to white heat; he generally had to chase them several times around the building, as the brutes knew they were trespassers, and the man, finally out of breath, would follow them with blackest frowns as they galloped away and swearing in broken Swiss until the air was blue about him. The narrator told of a time when a lad he rode bareback and wanting a switch rode up under a willow in front of the church. This brought him on the sidewalk, and with both hands reaching up getting what he wanted. The keen eye of the sexton saw him, and while he had both hands above his head the sexton struck his horse behind with his cane. The astonished horse madly sprang forward, the worse astonished boy came near having his head broken, and when he righted up and looked back he saw the sexton standing there with a mere splinter of his cane left which he had ruined in the blow. The wicked boy added to the man's wrath by heartily laughing at the ruin of his cane. As he held up the splintered cane, the boy says, he actually outdid himself in broken swearing even over the worst old trespassing cow in the town. Fifty years after this incident the man said: "I was wrong for laughing at him, and am sorry now I did." He stood with that sympathetic manner peculiar to him by the side of every newly opened grave, so quiet, so full of real sympathy, as he dropped the dirt upon the coffin at the words "dust to dust," as was the custom, the bystanders would throw in the dirt until old Michael would say: "Dis will do, shentlemens," after which the people would depart and he would remain to complete the work.

Nearly a half century of the history of the times is in the story of Old Michael here, with his many offices, cares and responsibilities. The man always lived alone, having a room fitted up in the store house of E. P. Darling. His death came of a fall down the stairs which reached his bedroom; his body laid away in the old bury- ing ground on Market street and the bell which he had tolled so often for others now mournfully pealed the knell for him. In conclusion the gentleman said: "I do not remember that any stone marked his resting place, and I have often wondered whether anyone now living could tell where his remains rest." He at another time expressed a desire to contribute something to the erection of a suita- ble stone over the dust of " Old Michael."

The publication of these reminiscences brought by return mail a letter from a gentleman of Wyalusing, signed "G. H. W." who heartily endorsed the idea of a suitable memorial stone over "Old Michael " and said he was desirous to con- tribute thereto. He then relates one of his recollections: "About 1832 there lived in Wilkes-Barre poor 'Jim Gridley,' whom the boys used to delight in teasing when on his sprees. I was attracted to the intersection of Market and Franklin streets on one of these occasions in which I participated as an outsider and onlooker. I was perhaps not as much on my guard as the more active ones, and Old Michael caught and dosed me with a prescription, 'when taken to be well shaken' and the medicine was effective. I never assisted even theoretically in another 'mill ' of a drunkard."

This brief outline tells more of the times and customs of the people really than it does of "Old Michael." How this quaint character lived and moved, the dread and admiration of mischievous children; so severe in his whims that grown people never crossed them-the dear old sexton, who in addition to taking care of the whole town, the boys, the pigs and cows, the church and bell, his various official duties and a constant watch upon all and over everything, also found time from his housekeeping to cultivate his garden down on the river's bank and raise a great variety of flowers where marriages and funerals were furnished free of costs. The larger portion of this man's labors were gratuitous; his earnings came mostly in dimes and pennies, and outside of his garden the simplicity of his living required but small outlay and he therefore gave away the major part of his wealth, being happy

HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

in making the children happy-in doing always something to make everyone more comfortable. The difference in the people then and now is expressed in the fact that " Old Michael" would be an impossible character to-day; he was a natural product then, when people took time to live, while now they are in such a strain to die of dyspepsia or get a permit to go to the madhouse, grab the earth or burn the candle at both ends, that we miss much of real life and fun. The log rollings, apple pear- ings, house raisings and in a great frolic harvesting some sick neighbor's or widow's crops were here before these "sports" of the prize ring, base-ball and foot-ball matches; the good old country singing school before the modern opera; young men preparing to go a courting used perhaps more bear's oil then than now; the young ladies used more thorns for pins than diamonds, and the most aristocratic made music on the spinning wheels, the distaffs and the looms, and but rarely indulged in sea-side visits, but rather repaired with the soiled clothes on their heads to the spring or stream and with strong, red arms paddled the life out of the dirt, with the aid of old-fashioned soft soap. The beaux would esteem it the rarest favor to be allowed to help here and wring out the heavy garments or quilts, and while the work went on, there was many a bargain made for a long and happy future life. They worked and laughed and danced their hearty, innocent young lives away and took their places as the "old folks," whose privilege it was to eat at the first table. All worked hard and none read the daily papers. There were no daily papers and heaven knows there was before those people an appalling amount of work. These great forests were to be cut and carried away to the factory; the impassable wilderness to be reclaimed and made gardens and fields; bridges, roads, canals, steamboats, railroads, telegraphs, houses, farms, school- houses, churches, public buildings, barns, fences, everything now here in place of the solitude and savagery were awaiting the magic touch of frugal industry. We, their favored posterity, were demanding all this of their labors and it was given and never a murmur of disquiet escaped them. They had no time to be fashionable, but all time to be laborious and earnest. Fate cast their lot an unhappy, or at least a hard one, we now may well conclude. But altogether it was not wretched. They had their amusements and pastimes. Great hunts were then great events. A wide region of country would be surrounded and at a signal all moved toward the center, and the climax would be an exhilaration that we can not now understand. Along the smaller streams, some of them, were numerous rattlesnakes, and many were the hunting parties, the crowd divided, with captains, and at night they were counted and the victors had earned the spoils. A log rolling had its accompani- ment of a quilting-the men all day in the timber, the women at the house quilt- ing; at night the supper table cleared away and "Oh sister Phoebe, how happy were we," or a dance after the one eyed fiddler, who kept time by patting his foot .. Terpsichore! what dancing-the real walk-talk-ginger-blue, the hoe-down, juba; girls and boys racing over the puncheon floor, or better on the bare ground, all hearts full of innocent mirth and all the next day their legs equally full of soreness and pain. All people went to church then of a Sunday at least. The young men mounted on burry colts; the original "dude " had store trousers, strapped under his high-heeled boots, a belt instead of suspenders, his hair greased and curled under behind, and then, if possible, a quilted saddle and he was sublime, receiving most of the sly glances of giggling girls-a very Beau Brummell. Prob- ably he worked for some farmer at the gold-blinding rate of $7 per month, but he disdained anything but "bouten " tobacco. The young man in time became the noted possessor of a four-bladed store knife, that had a German silver heart on the handle. He showed it to the girl he was courting, loaned it to her to keep a week for him, and when he went for it, she said " yes" without any further hesita- tion. They were happily married and the erstwhile "dude " was soon equally happy in playing " Jumbo " for the grandchildren on the green as formerly he had been as master of ceremonies at the old-time hoedown.

HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

They originally built their churches with no provisions for warming. There was a prevalent idea that sound religion did not accord with comfort. In the severest weather the grandmothers (ofteu going many miles in the cart), would have their foot stoves. But the men and younger people disdained any such superfluities. The preacher was great and good measured by his endurance and powers of lungs. Preaching commenced rather early in the day-a short nooning, and at it again till nearly sundown. The text was read and re-read and every youngster was expected to be able ever after to repeat it, and the most of them could, months after, give the heads of the sermon-discourses that had dragged through hours and hours. A preacher was before the synod on trial for doctrines preached eight months before in a certain sermon. Numbers of men who had heard the sermon were wit- nesses and the exactness with which, after all that time, they could repeat the heads of the discourse, running way into the " seventeenthly " was one of the most remarkable feats of memory the writer can recall.

When they had neither church, preacher nor school, the whole people were far more intensely religious than anything we have now. There was but little wealth and no paupers; no asylums and no insane; no penitentiaries, and it was some time before the earliest law-breakers came, who were known as counterfeiters. The only rich men were those who had bought at nominal prices large tracts of wild lands, and these were mostly land poor. There was one feature of strange contrast of then and now. Those people were beginning at the bottom round to climb the long, steep ladder. They had all to build or make farms, houses, roads, bridges, schools, churches, public buildings, everything. The entire possessions were meager and values very low and cash almost none. They created and built everything, and the curious history is that the rate of taxes from that time to the present hour have reg- ularly gone higher and higher. And it is not a true explanation of this to say that we must have more now than they had to have then, and hence the increased tax. While we need more revenue, yet these needs have not grown with the marvelous increase of wealth. If the rate of taxes is greater with all public improvements made and paid for, and the increase of wealth is only in even proportion to the increase of needs for public use, then there is the fact that with all to make, such was their superior justice and economy that they could manage public affairs better than we can. The proportions have not been preserved, and whether this is all for the better or worse each one must determine for himself.

Another very marked feature between then and now is the different environment of the young men, or the average business men. The young man now would hear of the great-grandfather when starting in life shouldering his axe, and, with a mea- ger supply of food, start for the forests to chop out the foundation of his future fortune, with much commiseration for that old-time young man, and a corresponding self-felicitation on his better lot and more fortunate time. But the fact remains that. the proportion of young men of the old time who were successful in the race for wealth was then far greater than now. Any bright, resolute young man could then engage in business successfully without much capital and strong backers. Some of the greatest merchants of the past generation commenced with a meager pedlar's pack. A western cattle king commenced by investing his first $4 in a calf. Commodore Vanderbilt made his first money by ferrying a man across the river in a skiff-50 cents. A hundred dollars would at one time start a country store that. in a few years would be the leading mercantile establishment of the county. Intel- ligence, energy and economy were the capital then required-the whole world lay before all, equally inviting. Now we have the conflict of large capital and small capital-a war unto destruction, and the penniless young man, instead of starting in business on his own account, must accept employment, enter a field already becoming crowded, and it is the exception, daily growing rarer, where he can reverse, and become employer instead of employe. We older men can not realize how rap-

HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

idly this change has come. The elderly rich man of to-day will scornfully preach his sermon to the young man who wants aid, and again tell over the story of how he commenced life with his bare hands as his only fortune. He imagines the identical conditions obtain now. Twenty years have marked an era in financial affairs at least. Capital is being gathered into vast aggregations, and its almost limitless power is used to crush out small operatives. This tends to destroy competition, and the con- flict of large capital against small extends its baleful influence until the entire com- munity becomes involved. People naturally welcome the company or man of large capital, and every door of welcome is thrown wide open to him. Each can see that, in one sense, his coming will better their affairs, and general improvements, proba- bly. The young man who comes into the village seeking employment is generally met with a polite request for a reference as to board bill. Cities pass a fire-limit ordinance, and the beginner without capital must then rent of the man able to build brick houses. The great merchant, one whose annual business is counted by the millions, can crush the small dealers, and has driven them out of trade in our cities, and you will find the former small trader now clerking in the great stores. Often the best brains in the community are hired-in fact, intellect is cheaper than gold. There is much competition among men of small capital; there is none where the man or company has one hundred millions behind as backing. Thus, in one view, the community is helped by vast aggregations of capital; in other respects, in the long run, there may come corresponding evils. "All is not gold that glitters."

The resettlement of Luzerne county, after the Revolution, while it brought back many of the first settlers, brought many more new ones. The new country, with blessed peace after nearly a quarter of a century of war, massacres, alarms and sav- age marauds, was an inviting field to the immigrant, and, like the rural justice's parties to the suit, as he noted in his transcript, they came "on foot and on horse- back." Some scattered ashes marked the spot where many rebuilt and commenced the wilderness life anew, and the old woods began to melt away before the swinging axes of these brave and hardy men. The supreme quality of the roughest of these men was a strong love of liberty and plenty of " sea room," and then boldly face the storm. The nearest neighbors often lived fifteen or twenty miles away; bears and panthers were far more numerous than people. The men learned to hunt, and the old match-lock guns were their family meat-providers. Before flax and wool the thistle and the hides of animals were their resources for clothing. Had this been a tropical climate apparent necessity would have adopted the scant suits of the Sand- wich Islanders. A severe climate and the heavy growths covering the laud fixed conditions here calling forth man's superb energies to the full; in turn, these were developing robust and the hardiest of men; stirred their energies and whetted their senses to keenest edge. All of which simply demonstrates the philosophy that man is ever seeking the easiest avenues in which to gratify his desires. If food and clothing of the best grew upon the trees the direct rays of the sun would warm and dry out the rain-soaked man; then men's energies would cease to act and physical degeneracy and mental pstrifaction would soon follow. The pitiless storms, the pangs of hunger and the pinch of cold that moves the lazy animal, man, and he rises up, the all-conquering hero. The horrid severities man often subjects himself to (developing, also,) are the gloomiest of stories. An old church record "on the Susquehanna" bears these entries, copied verbatim : "At a meeting Brother exhibited his confession that he did passionately strike three of his neighbors," and in grievous repentance he was " disciplined." Then follows: "Sister - was

put on her trial for the sins of prevarication, falsehood and other unchristian con- duct." It was proved that she had spitefully said another sister had "painted with poke berries." Another sister had exhibited in open meeting her confession: "I believe the Sabbath to be holy, and do confess that I traveled on that holy day, under peculiar circumstances." On another page is the following, that tells its own

HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

story: "On the first Sabbath in February the sacrament * was adminis- tered to Sister Experience at her own house, on account of her being sick, after which the members present individually took her by the hand and bid her an affec- tionate farewell, not expecting to meet her in this world again, but hoping to meet her in another, to serve God without alloy." The proceedings after the return to the church conclude as follows: "After some conversation in experimental religion, and confessions of stupidity and indifference, asked each other's forgiveness."

Away back in the days when on every farm was a distillery a preacher was brought before the synod, charged with being, on a certain occasion "very drunk." According to the evidence he had drank the jug nearly empty while bringing it from the distillery, and the weather was very cold. All the witnesses agreed that he acted, looked and smelt like a man very drunk. The verdict of the court was: "There being nothing in the evidence to show that it might have been caused by going suddenly from the cold outside to the fire inside that caused the liquor to thus affect the man, therefore, not guilty." The next year the same man was again before the synod, charged with "irreverently whistling on the holy Sabbath." After a long, patient and fair trial, he was found guilty and silenced. These are literal cases from the records. They were an earnest, religious and severe people, inviting, each upon himself, the penalties that he would administer to others. While these old pioneer fathers were rigid and strong in every article of political faith, they were equally if not more severe in matters of religion. In politics they quarreled fiercely about war measuers, the proper defence of the flag, the building of domestic manufactories and like propositions, but in matters of religion they were unanimous in the deepest-seated faith, the very savagery of dogmas and the pitiless extirpation of heresy, they were agreed, however radically they might differ on points of doxy. Sternly, and even severely religious were these American pioneers; the representatives of the church militant, glorying in self-inflicted pen- ances, and with the sword of Gideon smiting sin hip and thigh; rare bundles of inconsistency, full of fight and religion; shoulder to shoulder, battling with an invading army; two souls as one in hating England or fighting Satan and his imps, yet always ready in the fiercest of the struggle even to turn and rend each other on the flimsiest questions of polemics. So full of the spirit of dissent were they that the laymen were ever ready to quarrel with the shepherds, and, without a qualm of conscience, they split, divided and subdivided their church organizations.

Sermons were their literature, their daily papers and mental pabulum. They were long and to us would be dreary, but they came to them, no doubt, as thoughts that breathe and words that burn. The following is some of the peroration of an old-time sermon by one of the great men of his time:

"How long, O inhabitants of the earth! will you suffer yourselves to be deceived by false teachers, delusive spirits and doctrines of devils?" Then follows a number of "How longs," concluding with, "How long will you catch at perishable things, outward ordinances or water baptism ? when you are commanded not to touch, taste or handle those things that perish with the using, after the doctrines and command- ments of men! * *

* Why follow phantoms that can not save you at the hour of death ?- take nothing with you that you can not carry into the gates of heaven: Can you carry water there? No! my friends."

There is food for reflection in this ancient sermon. It was the earnest words of a very earnest man, addressed to a people in active accord with the speaker. It is a marked characteristic of the times and the people, and yet how can we reconcile the fact that only a few years before this preacher preached, Goldsmith had evolved from his brain that lovable character, the immortal " Vicar of Wakefield "- the ideal of a preacher and his family and their simple daily home-life, as drawn from the fancy of the strolling musician, who played his flute through Europe, to the servant girls and the stable boys, for a chance crust of bread. The demands of mankind called

HISTORY OF LUZERNE COUNTY.

forth the sermon of the living preacher; the divine genius of Goldsmith impulsively warbled as the birds of the wilderness carol to the skies. To-day this good man and his sermon on baptism would, in one of our very fashionable city churches, be laughed at; but you must not imagine that therefore Goldsmith would, on the other hand, be lifted up and lionized by all people. On Broadway, he would be much the poor, wretched outcast he was one hundred years ago in the streets of London- just as likely to freeze and starve in a garret to-day as he did then; but the preacher and his great sermon would be haughtily directed by the bishop's butler to apply at the " little church around the corner."

With the close of the eighteenth century there were permanent settlers here, and they had reached a time when men began to draw away from that intense age of religious fanaticism, that wild craze on the subject that had whelmed the civilized world in the five hundred years of the Dark Ages, and were inclined to mix in their thoughts and purposes some of the more practical affairs of life. They were rapidly extending the view of life, and the beliefs in supernatural powers in the most trivial affairs among men were loosening their long clutch of men's minds. The representatives of the church, while they had lost none of men's devotional respect for the cloth, for the sacred office they exercised, yet their power in the family circle and in the State, and in the material concerns of the individual were slowly waning. The influence of the churchmen was thereby signally bettered. A century preceding, the church had ruled the State and unfortunately wielded the gleaming sword, and interminable religious wars had blasted the bloom of earth, and the most horrid persecutions had filled the air with the wails of the dying, inno- cent victims. From these cruel ages the world was slowly emerging, but resist- lessly, because slowly, like the rise of the continents from the great ocean's depths, men were tasting the right of self-government; feeling the power and the good of regulating their own private and social affairs, and happily the sunshine and sweet- ness of advancing civilization was vexing the earth with its multitudinous sprouting. The unhappy spirit of persecution for opinion's sake was slowly fading away, and peace and blessed liberty began to streak the eastern sky; the jocund day kissing the mountain tops, foretelling the noontide flooding the deep valleys with efful- gence.

Adjusting the prophecies was in the early part of this century the serious work of many of the world's holy seers; these cabalistic interpreters were a very impor- tant feature of the times, and they burned the midnight oil, and the press teemed with their books for all men to read. For many years these things raged with the utmost activity, like everything of the kind in answer to a popular demand. The obscure parts of the books of Daniel and the Revelations of John were the fruitful sources of supply for the remarkable output of the press of that day. These ranged in all degrees, from the most learned and solemn to the seriocomic, but all intended to show that the great oracles of the church were still abroad in the land; their erudition was astounding, their secular flavoring overpowering, and their demonstrations startling, ludicrous and, at times, whimsical.

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History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 8

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