USA > Pennsylvania > Northampton County > History of Northampton County [Pennsylvania] and the grand valley of the Lehigh, Volume I > Part 15
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Easton is the centre of a great network of interurban trolleys. One set, controlled by the Easton Transit Company, has a splendid suburban system reaching all local points and interurban lines out to Alpha, New Jersey, where large cement works are located, and to Bethlehem, South Bethlehem and Nazareth. These lines make direct connections with all points in the
AT BROTZMAN AND HESTER MILL-HOME OF THE MILLER OLD FOOT BRIDGE-ABOUT 1800
LAWRENCE MERKLE'S HOUSE, 1740; FERRY HOUSE, 1752; LAFAYETTE COLLEGE, 1832 (Photo 1911)
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TRAVEL-ROAD-WATER-RAIL
Lehigh Valley and at Allentown for Philadelphia. Another system, the Philadelphia and Easton, extends from Easton to Philadelphia, via Doyles- town and Willow Grove, traversing the right bank of the Delaware river for fifteen or eighteen miles and affording scenery unsurpassed by any trolley road in the United States. Two other roads, the Northampton Traction Company and the Northampton, Easton and Washingon Traction (familiarly known as the Hay Lines), extend both in Pennsylvania and New Jersey from Easton. The first-named extends from Easton to Nazareth, the centre of the cement belt of the United States, and to Bangor, the centre of the slate producing region of this country, thence to the Delaware Water Gap and Stroudsburg, reaching the very heart of the Pocono Mountains, the famous mountain resort of the Eastern States. The Jersey road, called the Northampton-Easton and Washington, extends from Phillipsburg due east through the Musconetcong valley almost to Hackettstown, through the important points, New Village and Washington. It is intended in the near future to connect this line with Lake Hopatcong.
WHORROGOTT GAP, LEHIGH VALLEY
CHAPTER XI
THE PENNAMITE WAR
The scene of this conflict between the Pennsylvania and Connecticut authorities, though not within the present limits of Northampton county, was, at the time of its occurrence, in the confines of the newly organized county. The contestants were descended from Connecticut Puritanism. There had been engrafted upon Puritanism in America a new idea and source of power progressiveness. Connecticut was its first exemplar, and led the new advance. There was a great westward pressure in creating new settlements in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and as early as 1680 Connecticut had sent offshots of population into New Jersey and lower Pennsylvania, as well as into some continguous territory.
Connecticut's charter had been granted by Charles II in 1662, and like all of the earlier charters of that day was ambiguous in regard to boundary lines. It clearly conveyed to that colony, besides the present state boun- daries, all of the land west of it to the extent of is breadth, from sea to sea, or "to the South Sea." This would have brought Connecticut's western extension nearly quite down to the 4Ist degree of north latitude, or almost to the Delaware Water Gap.
The charter granted to Pennsylvania by the same sovereign nineteen years afterwards extended through the 42d degree of north latitude, or to the beginning of the 43d degree of north latitude, thus overlapping by one degree the grant made to Connecticut. The attorney of the Crown, Sir William Jones, in reporting to Charles II on the patent desired by William Penn, stated that it seemed to be undisposed lands except the imaginary lines of New England patents, which, on their westwardly boundaries to the main ocean, gave them a real though impracticable right to all of those vast terri- tories. Thus the seed of strife of the Pennamite war was sown far away in the mother country. The peace-loving Quaker colony's territorial boun- daries had been assaulted on all sides. Maryland and Virginia had endeavored to despoil her on the south, and New York and even New Jersey had sought to secure a fraction of her dominion; however, their efforts were all brief, bloodless and without results. Thus there was nothing new in Con- . necticut's purpose regarding the invasion of Pennsylvania. It was merely a manifestation of an old-time tendency turned in a new direction, and was more carefully planned and very much more pertinaciously prosecuted. In her early dreams of territorial expansion, Connecticut was obliged by certain conditions in her charter to pass over the lovely valley of the Hudson and other New York territory which, no doubt, caused her acquisitive people a sharp pang of regret; but, curiously enough, she did not let this interruption of her claim bar her from seizure of the lands still farther west.
It was on February 8, 1754, that William Parsons notified Governor Hamilton that he had been informed on undisputed authority that three gentlemen-like men had visited the Wyoming valley and viewed the lands
NORTH .- 1-8.
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on the Susquehanna river, and had given out that the lands were within the boundaries of the charter of Connecticut, and they intended the following spring to settle a considerable number of families on the tract, and invited the present settlers to accept titles under the government of Connecticut for part of these lands. Previous to this, however, as early as the summer of 1750, spies had been sent out by Connecticut parties to view the virginal valley of Wyoming. Three years later the Susquehanna Company was formed, consisting of 840 persons, afterwards augmented to 1,200, and it proposed to occupy the coveted lands. The first step to this end was to send agents to Albany in 1754 to purchase from the Six Nations the land in the Wyoming valley. The Pennsylvanians immediately became alert to the danger that was menacing the province; their protests were unavailing, and the Susquehanna Company, on the payment of two thousand dollars, became possessed of the Indian title to the land, which they regarded as completing the legal title received from their colony. Governor Hamilton remonstrated to Governor Oliver Wolcott of Connecticut, writing him against the proposed settlement. The diplomatic governor of Connecticut answered him in a non-committal but persuasive way, and touched the keynote of the "Pennamite War." He ignored any response to the request to restrain the invaders, but urged that those who became settlers should be made free- holders, arguing they would be of inestimable value in case of French aggression, as they would have something to fight for-their own possessions. This was, however, in direct contradiction to the heirs of William Penn, who owned the lands of the province in fee simple, and their policy was to settle the best of them under leases. This was a feature of feudalism, and the vital question underlying the Wyoming controversy was whether those who cultivated the acres they dwelt upon should become serfs or freeholders. The Connecticut settlers received sympathy from a considerable element of the Pennsylvania people, who were opposed to this element of feudalism. The proprietors did not want them for settlers, as they were certain that they would not prove submissive or tractable to ideas which governed the landed aristocracy. This was the secret of the motive for the constant resort to official and military demonstrations by which the Penns sought the forcible expulsion of the settlers rather than the employment of diplomacy to obtain a peaceful settlement.
Indian wars intervening, the Susquehanna Company effected no settle- ment between its organization and 1762. The Delaware Company, another Connecticut organization, had begun in June, 1757, in the valley of the upper Delaware, a settlement which they called Cushutunk. Here, in a tiny niche on the western bank of the river near the north line of Pennsylvania, a cluster of rude log cabins was erected. It was only a minute dot that the Connecticut Yankees placed in the present county of Wayne in Penn's dominion; it had but thirty families, but it involved most momentous issues. It was the first pioneer settlement of the Connecticut people within the boundaries of Penn's province, the first overt act of intercolonial intrusion.
Governor Hamilton on September 16, 1761, issued his second proclama- tion as follows: "Whereas divers persons, the natural born Subjects of his Majesty belonging to some of our neighboring colonies, have lately come into
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THE PENNAMITE WAR
this Province and without any license or Grant from the Honourable pro- prietaries, or Authority from the Government, have presumed in a Body to possess themselves of and settle upon a large Tract of land in this province not yet purchased from the Indians near Cushietunck on the River Delaware in the upper part of Northampton County and endeavoring to persuade and inveigle many of the Inhabitants of this land and neighboring Provinces to confederate and join them in their illegal and dangerous designs ; and to assist in settling and holding the said Lands by strong hand. And Whereas, The Delaware Chief Teedyuscung hath made a very earnest and formal Complaint and Remonstrance to me against the said practices, insisting that the settlers should be immediately removed by the Government to which they belonged or by me; and declared if this was not done, the Indians would come and remove them by force, and do themselves Justice; with which he desired they might be made acquainted beforehand, that they might not pretend Ignorance; which has been accordingly done by my Order. And Whereas since the making of the above complaint by Teedyuscung, the chiefs of the Six Nations, who were present at the Treaty held at Easton in the month of August last, did in the most earnest manner renew the said Complaint & remonstrance, and insist that this Government should afford them its aid in obliging the said Intruders to remove; affirming 'That the said Lands had never yet been sold, or were intended to be sold by them, to any person or persons, whatsoever, notwithstanding what the said Intruders have said, or may continue to say to the contrary ; and if any Indian or Indians have taken upon them to sell or dispose of the said Lands, they had done it unknown to the Six Nations, and had stolen them, with a view to fill their pockets with the Money.' Wherefore, as well to assert the just Rights of the Pro- prietaries of this Province to the said Land, & to preserve the peace and Friendship which is so happily restored & subsisting between us and the Indians, & to prevent the terrible Consequences that must ncessarily arise by their carrying into Execution their Threats of removing by Force, the Intruders on the said Lands, as also, to warn and prevent any of the Inhabi- tants of this Province from being unwarily drawn into to join said Intruders,. in their intended design of making Settlements in the said Indian Country, I have judged it proper, by and with ye advice of ye council, to issue this, my second Proclamation, hereby strictly requiring & enjoining in his Majes- ty's Name, all and every person and persons already settled, or residing on the said Lands, immediately to depart & move away from same; And do hereby forbid all his Majestie's Subjects of this & any other Province, or Colony, on any pretense whatsoever, to intrude upon, settle, or possess any of the said Lands, or any other, the Lands within the Limits of this Province, not yet purchased of the Indians, as they will answer the contrary at their peril, and on pain of being prosecuted with utmost Rigour of the Law. And I do hereby, also, strictly charge, enjoin, and require all Sheriffs, Magistrates, Peace Officers, and all other, his Majesty's Liege People within this Prov- ince, to exert themselves, and use their utmost endeavors to prosecute, and bring to Justice and condign punishment, all offenders in the Premises."
The sheriff of Northampton county in a report to the governor of his failure to remove the intruders, October 15, 1760, states that the settlers had
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NORTHAMPTON COUNTY
selected a committee to manage and transact all business, that they had laid out and surveyed the lands and erected three townships, ten miles in length and eight miles in breadth, and had built on the lowlands three loghouses, thirty cabins, a sawmill and a gristmill. There were about twenty men in the settlement besides women and children, and about twenty men had returned to Connecticut for supplies, and they were expecting one hundred families the following spring. The land sold for eight to ten dollars for two hundred acres, twelve acres of which were to be cleared and improved, with a house built thereon in three years, or the land was forfeited. Among the committee and proprietors was - - Fitch, a son of the then governor of Connecticut; Isaac Tracey, who owned the sawmill; Gebish Fitch; John Curtuis ; Elisha Tracey ; Benejah Park ; Peebody, a surveyor ; Moses Thomas; Benejah Geers; Hezekiah Huntingdon, a late governor of Connecti- cut ; Stephen Kenney, Robert Kinsman ; John Burchard. Among the settlers were Stanton ; Trim; Daniel Skinner, Aaron Thomas; Simon Corking, who had been a justice and lieutenant in Connecticut, a busy fellow and a ringleader ; Holly ; John Smith; John Corkins; Jediah Welles; Jediah Welles, Jr .; James Adams; Benjamin Ashley; Nathan Chap- man; Doctor Payne, Kellick.
Such was the situation in the spring of 1762. The Pennsylvanians based their claim that in 1736 the Six Nations granted to them the right of pre- emption to all lands within the bounds of their charter ; therefore the sachems were not authorized to sell to anyone else. This is controverted that the Indians understood at that time that the claim of William Penn did not extend beyond the Blue Mountains in the direction of Wyoming. They also declined to treat with the Penn Proprietaries because the latter ignored their assertion that they had subdued the Delawares and made compact with their subjects as an independent people. There were strenuous efforts made by the proprietaries of Pennsylvania to prove the invalidity of the Indians' sale to the Connecticut companies. Teedyuscung, at the Treaty of Easton in 1757, demanded the lands at Wyoming and adjacent parts for the Delawares for their habitation, which was consented to by the proprietaries through their deputy, Mr. Croghan, and with the representatives of the Six Nations present. Houses had been built for them on the tract and the Indians resented their dispossession. There is no dispute that both by the Charter of Connecticut and their purchase from the Aborigines the priority in time is to be awarded to the Connecticut companies.
As the spring of 1762 advanced, a party of immigrants came from Con- necticut to the valley of the Wyoming. and settled under the auspices of the Susquehanna Company. The settlement was about a mile above the present site of Wilkes-Barre. Governor Hamilton, seeming to be at the end of his resources, on February 20, 1762, issued a proclamation asserting the rights of the Pennsylvania government against the claims of the Connecticut set- tlers, and also wrote the governor of that province, making strong remon- strances, as they were again occupying the disputed territory. He also wrote Sir William Johnson, expressing a fear of a renewal of Indian warfare from the revival of the Connecticut claims, stating that he feared this flagrant piece of injustice might cause the estrangement of the Indians' friendship,
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THE PENNAMITE WAR
and that they might again become enemies, and assuring him on his part to vindicate them and the proprietaries' rights from this mischievous set of Yankee intruders.
The governor of Connecticut replied that the government had no concern in the affair, and had no inclination to interest itself in the dispute about the lands; that although the purchasers may live in Connecticut, they acted. as private citizens, and were outside of the jurisdiction of Connecticut gov- ernment. He also took further pains to correspond with General Jeffrey Amherst, then commanding the English forces in North America, informing him that the Connecticut government was in no way interested or concerned with the settlers at Wyoming and Cushutunk.
The Delaware Indians meanwhile demanded of the governor of Penn- sylvania the immediate expulsion of the Yankee settlers, but nothing was done, and tranquility reigned for two seasons. The great Delaware chief, Teedyuscung, was mysteriously burned to death in his cabin by his enemies among the Six Nations, but suspicion was cast on the Yankee settlers at Wyoming. The Delawares brooded for months over this murder; their repeated demands that the settlers should be driven from the country were ignored, and at last on the night of October 15, 1763, they fell in fury, with- out any warning, on the little village and murdered twenty of its people. The rest fled-some to the lower Pennsylvania settlements, others to Con- necticut-and the first massacre at Wyoming, though not an incident of the Pennamite War, for a time stopped any progress of any further settlement.
There were still strenuous efforts made by the proprietaries of Pennsyl- vania for a long period of time to win from the Six Nations their consent that the former sale of the Wyoming tract was invalid. After thirteen years their efforts were crowned with success; in 1768 the sachems of the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix, New York, agreed upon a treaty with the Penn- sylvania authorities, by which the latter should have the same territory that had been surrendered before to the men from Connecticut. The Penns, after the Six Nations' repudiation of the sale to the Susquehanna Company, founded a settlement in Wyoming. The Susquehanna Company in 1768 established five townships in the disputed territory. These townships were five miles square, and allotments were made to each family of five hundred acres on condition they would take up their residence there and defend their rights against all intruders. The five townships were in the heart of the Wyoming Valley, and were named Wilkes-Barre, Kingston, Plymouth, Han- over and Pittston. Subsequently three other townships on the west bank of the Susquehanna river were allotted to forty settlers in each township. The Connecticut Yankees had deserted the wilderness for six years, but in 1769 they were again anxious to possess themselves of the valley. In the following February a body of forty determined men was sent out by the Susquehanna Company to occupy the country and defend it at all hazards against the Pennsylvanians. They were to be reinforced by two hundred more, and were given land and money liberally for their services.
The Penns had founded a settlement in the Wyoming Valley and placed it under the command of Captain Amos Ogden, an Indian trader from New Jersey. The commander of the Connecticut settlers was Colonel Zebulon
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Butler, a resolute soldier, and a veteran of the French and Indian Wars. The latter and his men built "Forty-Fort," so called from their number, a mere blockhouse, but destined to be famous. Ogden opened the war by the :arrest of the Yankee leaders, marching them through the woods to the Easton jail; but the arrested prisoners regained their liberty by escaping. Then 'Ogden arrested the whole forty Yankee settlers, and the little jail at Easton was glutted with prisoners; again they were bailed out and returned to Wyoming triumphant. The next summer the settlements contained over three hundred men, and more were constantly coming. Another fort was erected and named "Fort Durkee." Ogden again appeared on the scene with two hundred men, captured Captain Durkee by strategy and sent him to Philadelphia in irons. The rest of the settlers surrendered, awed by a little four-pound cannon which Ogden had unlimbered before the fort. The poor settlers were again put on the road for a return trip to Connecticut. The victorious Ogden immediately returned to Philadelphia to receive congratula- tions from the proprietaries, but news was soon received that the Yankees "had summarily ejected his little garrison and were again in possession. The secret of this success was that the aggressors were Pennsylvanians of the class sympathizing with the Connecticut people. They were under the com- mand of Captain Lazarus Stewart, who had been stimulated by the presenta- "tion of a township of land from the Susquehanna Company. This was the ยท secret of the long continuance of the Pennamite wars. The Pennsylvanians 'had no particular love for the intruders, and none whatever for the Penns. " These conditions made it well-nigh impossible for the proprietaries to check the rising tide of immigration. It was Thomas Penn who was opposing the invasion, not the province of Pennsylvania. If it had been colony against colony, Pennsylvania would doubtless have prevailed over the intruders in . one grand decisive action and thus ended the strife.
The first blood flowed soon after Stewart's appearance, when the restored settlers of Wyoming were attacked by Ogden's force and one of the Con- necticut men was killed and several wounded. This led to future clashings of the two parties, an increased ardor, and hence there were many sanguinary "conflicts in this miniature war. Ogden, after a lengthy besiegement, sur- rendered; a period of five months of peace then ensued; Colonel Butler returned; recruits came in a rush, and there was new life and activity in the valley. The Penns again sent Captain Ogden to break up the settlement; a battle ensued in September, 1770, several of the Connecticut men were killed, many prisoners taken, and all who were able made their way to their . old"New England homes. The next spring Colonel Butler, with a new force, :appeared in the valley ; hostilities reopened; Ogden was summarily defeated with the loss of nine men, and an interval of peace ensued, which lasted four years.
During this period of peace other changes were being made; Northum- berland county was organized March 21, 1772; the territory of the Wyoming Valley came under its jurisdiction. In January, 1774, Connecticut, which as a colony had taken no part in the Wyoming controversy, organized the terri- tory embraced in the claims of its subjects-the Delawares and Susquehanna companies-into a county, naming it Westmoreland; elections were held and
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THE PENNAMITE WAR
representatives were sent to the Connecticut legislature. The settlers at Cushutunk, besides other settlements on the Delaware, were included within the confines of the new county. There had been six thousand people from Connecticut, all told, that had come into Yankee Pennsylvania. The history of the bloody Indian massacre during the Revolutionary war and the final adjustment of the controversy between the States of Connecticut and Penn- sylvania by a commission at Trenton, New Jersey, are matters of national history and do not come in the compass of this work; the intention of this narrative is only to deal with the historic facts during the period that the Wyoming Valley was within the boundaries and under the jurisdiction of Northampton county.
CHAPTER XII THE INDIAN MASSACRE OF 1763
For five years succeeding the treaty of 1758 the people of Northampton county enjoyed a time of comparative peace and safety against Indian out- rages. There were from time to time during that period acts of violence committed by the savages, the murder of isolated settlers, burning of build- ings, and other acts of rapine. These depredations usually seemed to be made by small and unorganized bands, and did not cause such general dismay and abandonment of property by the inhabitants as followed the massacres of 1755. However, in 1763 the people of Northampton county were again devastated by a terrible outbreak when the powerful Chief Pontiac conceived and came near executing his vast plan for the extermination of the whites.
On October 8, 1763, Allen and Whitehall townships were the scene of a brutal Indian massacre. The following quotation (by Rev. Heckwelder, for many years a missionary to the Indians) clearly shows that the savages were provoked to this murderous deed by the inhuman treatment afforded them by some of the settlers. But as it often happens, innocent parties had to pay dearly for the folly of a few:
In the summer of the year 1763, some friendly Indians from a distant place came to Bethlehem to dispose of their peltry for manufactured goods and necessary implements of husbandry. Returning home well satisfied, they put up the first night at a tavern, eight miles distant from Bethlehem. The landlord not being at home, his wife took the libery of encouraging the people who frequented her house for the sake of drinking, to abuse those Indians, adding, "that she would freely given a gallon of rum to any one of them that would kill one of these black devils." Other white people from the neighborhood came in during the night, who also drank freely, made a great deal of noise, and increased the fears of those poor Indians, who,-for the greatest part understood English,-could not but suspect something bad was intended against their persons. They were, however, not otherwise disturbed; but in the morning, when, after a restless night, they were pre- paring to set off, they found themselves robbed of some of the most valuable articles they had purchased, and on mentioning this to a man who appeared to be the bar-keeper, they were ordered to leave the house. Not being willing to lose so much property, they retired to some distance into the woods, when, some of them remaining with what was left them, the others returned to Bethlehem and lodged their complaint with a justice of the peace. The mag- istrate gave them a letter to the landlord, pressing him without delay to restore to the Indians the goods that had been taken from them. But, be- hold ! when they delivered that letter to the people of the inn, they were told in answer, that if they set any value on their lives they must make off with themselves immediately. They well understood that they had no other alternative and prudently departed without having received back any of their goods. Arriving at Nescopeck, on the Susquehanna, they fell in with other Nescopeck Indians, who had been treated much in the same manner, one of them having his rifle stolen from him. Here the two parties agreed to take revenge in their own way for those insults and robberies for which they could obtain no redress, and this they determined to do as soon as war should be again declared by their nation against the English.
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