USA > Pennsylvania > Wayne County > History of Wayne County [Pa.] > Part 2
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
ty-five per cent., while the traveler is put in jeopardy by the failure of bridges which the county wants the necessary funds to repair; and while with their best efforts and strictest economy, the commissioners are able but gradually to retrieve the credit of the county, they cannot consider that there are any existing cir- cumstances or advantages to the county which would result from forcing a fund for the purpose of erecting public buildings at Blooming Grove which would bear any comparative weight in counterbalancing the evils which would necessarily follow a pursuit of the meas- ure." And then followed a formal resolution not to tax the people for this purpose.
Regarded as resistance to an act of Assembly this was a bold step, but the poverty of the people pleaded so strongly in favor of the stand assumed by the com- missioners that all parties acquiesced in it, or at least no appeal was made to the courts to compel obedi- ence to the behests of the Legislature.
The names of the first county commissioners were Eliphalet Kellogg, Johannes Van Etten, and John Carson. John Brink was the first county treasurer. On the 26th of December, 1799, Jason Torrey and John H. Schenek presented to the court the first aud- itors' report of the finances of the county, in which they noticed and excused some irregularities on the part of the accounting officers, but, on the whole, com- mended their measures as reflecting credit upon them- selves and the county. On the 11th of December, 1800, Jason Torrey was reappointed auditor in connec- tion with James Eldred and Martin Overfield, but their report submitted at the February term of court, 1801, was less complimentary to the county commissioners and their clerk than that of the previous year. The commissioners were charged with selling bridges with- out prescribing the manner in which the work should
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WOODWARD'S COMMENCEMENT.
be done nor when they should be completed-with paying for them in full without examination and be- fore there was any pretence of their completion-with paying their clerk upwards of $200 for a year's service while there were persons in the county who would perform the duties for half the money-with allowing one of their number (Mr. Carson) to go to Philadel- phia and advertise in three daily papers for three months that he was there to receive taxes on unseated lands, and receiving a considerable amount without accounting for them to the auditors, and with various other irregularities. This report was not finally filed until the 14th of September, 1801, when Major Torrey appended to it a note partially exonerating Mr. Car- son and clerk Kellogg from the charges preferred in the text of the report.
The irregularities so justly censured by the auditors show that even in this infant county, of slender re- sources and small finances, official delinquencies and misdeeds had begun which in after times and in other counties, if not in Wayne, have grown into enormous abuses. Official infidelity to public trusts is a crying evil of our times. And it is not peculiar to any peri- od or place. It has come down to us in regular suc- cession from an antiquity much beyond the origin of our counties or even our State, and it grows apace, both in the State and nation. When and from whence is the corrective to come ? Only from a better moral education of the masses. When schools, the press, and the pulpit shall impress the rising generation with the sacredness of public trusts-and with the thought that office exists for the convenience of the people and not for the emolument of the possessor, and that wealth acquired from public office is prima-facie evi- dence of crime-we may hope to find men for public servants who will not steal.
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
During the following year the receipts from actual residents amounted to $605.87, and from unseated lands to $613.68, making a total of $1,219.55, while the expenditures of the year 1800 were $1,650.06. Each year the aggregate of taxes increased with the inereas- ing population, but expenditures increased also. The county treasury was unable to redeem the orders drawn upon it, and public accounts fell into confusion until 1807 and 1808, when an earnest effort was made to straighten public affairs. The records had been removed to the new offices in Bethany, and the first meeting of the county commissioners was held there early in 1807. A careful examination of the financial condition of the county disclosed the fact that there was no money in the treasury, while its liabilities in the shape of unpaid checks, refunded taxes, etc., amount-
ed to about $5,000. Upwards of $16,000 were due the county from owners of unseated lands, delinquent collectors, dilatory sheriffs, overpaid commissioners, and other officers, which, if collected, would, it was claimed, put the county out of debt, and leave a con- siderable balance in the treasury. As one of the re- sults of this investigation, in 1808, the sheriff, Abisha Woodward, was directed to sell such unseated lands as were in arrears for taxes, which he proceeded to do, and in 1809 the receipts from these sales amounted to be- tween $9,000 and $10,000. In 1811 the inconvenien- ces and losses to the county and to individuals which had resulted from the neglect of treasurers to furnish information to the commissioners with respect to the state of the treasury, led to the adoption of a series of resolutions requiring the treasurer to report, on the first day of every term, the exact condition of the finances, and declaring a failure to do so as well as the buying up of county orders at a discount with the pub- lic funds, to be a misdemeanor in office. The Com-
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WOODWARD'S COMMENCEMENT.
missioners might well treat such official misconduct as ground for removal, for they held then the appoint- ment of county treasurer, and were, in a very special sense, the exclusive fiscal agents of the county.
Under the sharp animadversions of the county audi- tors, and with increasing experience in the conduct of public affairs, the financial condition of the county im- proved with the increase of population. The frame court-house and the log jail at Bethany were complet- ed; courts were held regularly there; farms were cleared, roads were built, and the winters were improv- ed to get out logs and squared timber from the forests of pine, hemlock, and oak, to be rafted down the Lack- awaxen and Delaware to Easton, Trenton, and Phila- delphia, when the spring freshets came. The supplies of store goods, of iron, salt, leather, cloths and grocer- ies, purchased with the proceeds of the lumber, were transported to the scattered settlements with great dif- ficulty. The "Durham Boat" on the Delaware was the prime, and for a long time, the only ascending nav- igation. This craft which has disappeared from these waters within the last quarter of a century, was a long, trim boat, which, though laden with several tons, drew so little water that it could pass up the rifts and shoals of the streams, propelled by a poleman on each side, and guided by a steersman at the rudder. Another mode of getting goods into Wayne county was to car- ry them up the Hudson river to Newburg, and thence cart them by way of Cochecton to Bethany and other points. After the north and south turnpike was built through Sterling, Salem, and Canaan townships, a con- siderable trade was established with Easton.
But although the industries of Wayne were in proc- ess of gradual though healthful development, great discontent continued to be manifested by the people along the Delaware below Milford, on account of the
2
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
location of the county seat at Bethany, and, in 1814, the Legislature, with the general consent of the people, set off the lower end into a new county, to be called Pike, with the seat of justice at Milford where it has remained ever since. The division line was run by John K. Woodward, conformably to the act of Sep- tember, 1814, beginning at the lower end of Big Eddy on the Delaware, thence to a point on the Lackawaxen opposite the Wallenpaupack, thence up the Wallenpau- pack and the South branch thereof to the old north and south State road, and thence west seven miles and ninety two perches to the Lehigh creek. Thus was Pike county set off with an area of 772 square miles, and with a population, which, according to the census of 1820, amounted to 2,894. The area left to Wayne was 720 square miles, and the population in 1820 was 4,127.
I have compiled, from various sources, the lead- ing events that attended the formation of the two counties of Wayne and Pike. The people were gen- erally poor. Most of the old men had been soldiers in the Revolutionary war, and others were descendants of families who had suffered in various ways in that struggle and from frequent incursions of Indians. The settlements were sparse and widely separated. The soil and climate were rigorous. The land which was worth clearing for agricultural purposes was heavily timbered with beech, maple, and hemlock, though much of the mountain range that runs through Pike county was and still is "The Barrens," and utterly insuscep- tible of cultivation. Except along the river-bottoms the arable land was stony, requiring much labor to re- move them and lay them into walls for fences of the fields. Much of the soil was wet and needed ditching to make it productive. Yet with all these disadvan- tages, the hardy and industrious people who settled
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WOODWARD'S COMMENCEMENT.
the hills and valleys of these counties, persevered in lumbering and farming until they established large and prosperous communities, built towns and turnpikes, improved their farms, established schools and churches, so that these counties have become influential in the Commonwealth.
The foregoing is all that Judge G. W. Woodward wrote of the History of Wayne County.
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
CHAPTER II.
THE INDIANS.
PR PROBABLY a history of Wayne would be considered imperfect that did not embrace a description of the Indian tribes that once claimed and occupied the ter- ritory as their favorite hunting grounds. Having be- come extinct in consequence of their conflicts with the whites, who had the superior means of sharpening the scythe of death, and who, in encroaching and overpow- ering numbers, dispossessed them of their lands and homes, none of them are left to rehearse, in truth and sadness, how they were wronged and abused by their invaders. From the scanty traditions preserved by the carly explorers and settlers, it appears that a tribe called the Monseys, who held their head-quarters or council fire at a place on the Delaware, called "Mini- sink," (a part of which tribe settled at Wyoming) held jurisdiction over the lands now embraced in Wayne, Pike, and Susquehanna counties. This tribe claimed to hold their territory independent of the Delawares from whom William Penn purchased his lands. A tribe, or remnant of a tribe, lived on the Delaware, scattered between Shehawken and the mouth of the Lackawaxen, most of them about Cochecton, and were known as the Mohicans or Cushetunks. But there
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THE INDIANS.
was a powerful confederacy southward of the Great Lakes, known as the Six Nations, consisting of the Onondagas, Senecas, Cayugas, Mohawks, Oneidas, and Tuscaroras .* These claimed to hold the Monseys, Delawares, and Shawnees in subjection, and denied that they had any right to sell lands to the whites. These six nations, by an early alliance with the Dutch, who first settled on the Hudson, obtained fire-arms by the use of which they were able to check the encroach- ments of the French and to reduce to submission many bordering tribes. From these they exacted an ac- knowledgment of fealty, permitting them under such humiliation to occupy their former hunting grounds. To this dependent condition the Iroquois asserted that they had, by conquest, reduced the Lenni Lenape.
Charles the II., King of England, in 1681, granted a charter to William Penn of a large province of land in the New World, as it was then called, the extent of which was to be three degrees of latitude in breadth by five degrees of longitude in length; the Delaware river was to be the eastern boundary, and the northern boundary was to begin on the commencement of the three and fortieth degree of north latitude, which pro- vince was by royal order called Pennsylvania. The amount of land embraced in said charter comprised twenty-six millions of acres. In 1682, Win. Penn came over from England to found a colony upon the broad principles of Christian charity, free toleration, and con- stitutional freedom. Although he had obtained a char-
*Called by the French, Iroquois.
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
ter from the king of England empowering him to take possession of the lands therein embraced, yet he hon- estly admitted that the Indians were the only true owners of the lands. Acting under that conviction he had not been long in the country before he took measures to bring together the Indians from various parts of his province, to form with them a treaty of peace and friendship. Such a treaty was made and, unlike most Indian treaties, was never broken. Not a drop of Quaker blood was ever shed by an Indian. The colony was peaceful and prosperous for seventy years. It is remarkable that no original written rec- ord can be discovered of Penn's memorable treaty with the Indians, though traditional evidence is abun- dant regarding its occurrence. The heirs of William Penn, who were called the Proprietaries, were the governing element in the province until near the days of the Revolution, but took no measures to fix and de- termine the boundaries of the lands which their great progenitor or his agents, in his life-time, purchased of the Indians, until 1733. The northern boundary of one important purchase was to be determined by a man's walk of a day and a-half. Beginning on the bank of the Delaware, near Wrightstown, in Bucks county, (the boundary of a former purchase), the walk was to be done by three white men and a like number of Indians. The men having been selected, the whites walked with all their might, and arrived at the north side of Blue mountain, the first day, which was as far as the whole walk would extend, according to the ex-
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THE INDIANS.
pectations of the Indians; and when they found the walk was to proceed half a day further, they were angry, said they were cheated, and would go no fur- ther. The whites started again next morning; two of them gave out; but one, Edward Marshall, went on alone and arrived at noon on a spur of Pocono moun- tain, sixty-five miles from the starting point. Sher- man Day, the historian, says : "If the walk had ter- minated at the Kittatinny, the line from the end of the walk to intersect the Delaware, if drawn at right angles, would have intersected the Delaware at the Water Gap, and would not have included the Mini- sink lands, a prominent object of the speculators. The line as actually drawn by Mr. Eastburn, the surveyor- general, intersected the Delaware near Shohola creek, in Pike county. Overreaching, both in its literal and figurative sense, is the term most applicable to the whole transaction." The Indians remonstrated against the great wrong done them by the said walk, and de- clared their intention to hold the disputed lands by force of arms. The Proprietary Government, know- ing that the Six Nations held the Delawares under a sort of fear and vassalage, prevailed upon them by presents to interpose their authority, in the expulsion of the refractory Delawares. Accordingly, in 1742, a delegation of two hundred and thirty of the Six Na- tions met in Philadelphia, and being made to believe that the Delawares had actually sold the disputed lands, Canassatoga, on the part of the deputation, roundly berated the Delawares for selling the lands at all, call-
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
ing them vassals and women, thereby adding insult to injury, and ending by bidding them instantly to remove from the lands, They dared not disregard this peremptory command. Some of them, it is said, went to Wyoming and Shamokin, others to Ohio. Even at this council the deputies complained that the whites were settling on unbought lands and spoiling their hunting, and demanded the removal of the set- tlers upon and along the Juniata, who, they said, were doing great damage to their cousins, the Delawares. In March, 1744, war was declared between France and Great Britain. The dark clouds of savage war- fare gathered over the western frontiers, and many murders were committed by the Indians. The French, hovering around the Great Lakes, spared no pains to seduce the savages from their allegiance to the Eng- lish. The Shawnees at once joined the French, the Delawares only waited for a chance to revenge their wrongs, and the Six Nations were wavering; massa- eres ensued, and no age or sex was spared. A treaty was made between France and Great Britain, in 1748, but it tended very little to abate the violence of savage warfare. The Proprietors, anxious to secure all the lands of the Indians, in July, 1754, purchased of the Six Nations all the lands within the province not be- fore obtained, lying south-west of a line, "Beginning one mile above the mouth of Penn's creek, thence run- ning north-west by west to the western boundary of the province." The line instead of striking the west- ern line of the State, as the Indians supposed it would,
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THE INDIANS.
struck the northern boundary thereof, west of Cone- wango creek. The Shawnees, Delawares, Monseys, and other tribes soon found out that their lands on the Susquehanna, Juniata, Allegheny, and Ohio rivers, which the Six Nations had guaranteed to them, had been sold from under their feet. The Indians on the Allegheny at once went over to the French. After Braddock's defeat, in 1753, the whole frontier, from the Delaware to the Potomac, was desolated by the Indians, who, having been joined by other tribes, laid waste all the settlements beyond the Kittatinny moun- tains, burning the hamlets and scalping the settlers. The Proprietors became alarmed and, in November, 1756, held another grand council, at Easton, between Teedyuscung, a noted Delaware chief, and some other chiefs, on the one part, and Governor Denny, on the part of the Proprietors. The conference lasted nine days. The discontents of the Indians with regard to the great walk and the purchase of lands made by the Proprietors, in 1754, were heard and inquired into, and a treaty of peace was patched up with the Dela- wares. But the complaints of the Indians that the whites were encroaching upon their lands continued and became boisterous. It was found that something must be done. Another great council was summoned to meet at Easton, in the fall of 1758. Easton was a noted place for holding councils between the whites and Indians. It was, as now, the county seat of North- ampton county, which county was established and sep- arated from Bucks county, in 1752, and, at the time
3
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
of its establishment, included Wayne, Pike, Monroe, Lehigh, and Carbon counties. The said council was the most important and imposing one ever held in the prov- ince. It was attended by chiefs both of the Six Nations and Delawares, and by the agents of the governments of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. About five hundred Indians were present, representing all the Six Nations, most of the Delawares, the Shawnees, the Miamis, the Mohicans, Monseys, Nanticokes, and Conoys. Many
Quakers, who were anxious that peace and justice might prevail, were present as the friends of the In- dians. Teedyuscung spoke for several of the tribes. He was a noted Delaware chief. He rehearsed the wrongs of the Pennsylvania tribes, and accused the Proprietors of being very profuse of promises, and neglectful in keeping them; and he accused the Six Nations of dealing and deciding unfairly with the Pennsylvania tribes, and that they had been, from time to time, perverted from doing their duty by the rich and abundant presents made to them by the agents of the Proprietary Government. The Six Nations were offended at the boldness of Teedyuseung, and sought to counteract his influence; but he bore himself with dignity and firmness, and although he was well-plied with liquor, he refused to yield to the Six Nations, and resisted all the wiles of the intriguing whites. The council lasted eighteen days, and all matters which had caused discontent among the Indians were freely discussed. All lands claimed as having been purchas- ed of them, beyond the Allegheny mountains, were
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THE INDIANS.
given up. An additional compensation for lands al- ready purchased was to be given. In short, another peace was conchided, and at the close of the treaty- to the shame of the whites be it said-stores of rum were given to the Indians, who soon exhibited its ef- fect in frightful orgies or stupid insensibility. The English having taken Quebec from the French, in 1759, and captured all their forts and military depots on the north-west and western frontiers, peace was con- cluded between Great Britain, France and Spain, in 1762, and Pennsylvania was, for a short time, relieved of the horrors of war. But the short calm was fol- lowed by a terrific storm. The Indians about the Great Lakes and on the Ohio, without complaint, had permitted the French to erect and maintain a chain of forts from Presque Isle (Erie) to the Monongahela, so long as they proved a barrier to the encroachments of the English, but when they saw Canada and these forts in the hands of the English, and reflected that the lands upon which said forts stood were never purchas- ed of the native owners, their hatred of the intrusive whites became intense and wide-spread. A great In- dian chief, named Pontiac, of the Ottawas, (a western tribe), formed the plan of uniting all the Indian tribes and of precipitating them at once upon the whole fron- tier. The utter extermination of the whites was his object. With the suddenness and violence of a tor- nado, the attack was made. The English traders among the Indians were killed first. Out of one hun- dred and twenty only three escaped. Scalping parties
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
overran the frontier settlements among the mountains, marking their way with blood and carnage. The forts of Presque Isle, Venango, St. Joseph, and Mackinaw were taken, and their garrisons slaughtered. Other forts were saved with great difficulty. The dismayed settlers on the Juniata and Susquehanna, with their families and flocks, sought refuge at Carlisle, Lancas- ter, and Reading. The peaceful Moravian Indians fled to Philadelphia which was their only place of safety. This was the most destructive and fiercely-contested war ever waged between the whites and Indians in Pennsylvania. The cruelties and barbarities perpetra- ted in this war on both sides are too shocking to relate. In October, 1763, John Penn, grandson of William Penn, came over from England as lieutenant-gover- nor, and, having ignored the peaceful non-resistant pol- icy of the Quakers, by proclamation offered bounties for the capture, death, or scalps of Indians, viz: "For every male above the age of ten years captured, $150; scalped, being killed, $134; for every male or female Indian enemy above the age of ten years captured, $130; for every female above the age of ten years be- ing scalped or killed, $50." Effective measures were at once taken by the Proprietary Government to repel the assaults of the savages by carrying the war into their own country. Volunteers from Cumberland and Bedford counties, under Col. Armstrong, went up and defeated several parties of Indians on the West branch. General Amherst dispatched Col. Boquet, with a large quantity of provisions, under a strong
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THE INDIANS.
force, to the relief of Fort Pitt. From thence, in the autumn of 1764, he extended his expedition to the Muskingum in Ohio. The Indians were alarmed and sued for peace. The Delawares, Shawnees, Senecas, and other tribes agreed to cease hostilities, and they gave up a large number of prisoners that in former wars they had carried into captivity.
Though peace was restored, yet the complaints of the Indians were continued and not causelessly; for lawless white men continued to settle upon the Indian lands and to incite hostilities by the unprovoked murder of the peaceable natives. Another savage war was threatened, which, happily, was prevented by the tact and wise intervention of Sir William Johnson, a British officer, at whose instance, a great council was held at Fort Stanwix, in New York, at which all grievances were adjusted, and a treaty made Novem- ber 5th, 1768, with the Six Nations, who then sold and conveyed to the Proprietors, "All the land within a boundary extending from the New York line on the Susquehanna, past Towanda and Pine creek, up the West branch over to Kittanning and thence down the Ohio." This was called the "New Purchase," and in- cluded the lands in Wayne and Susquehanna counties, most of Luzerne and part of Pike county. This was the last purchase made by the Proprietors. The State afterwards bought of the Indians all the lands which remained unsold within its chartered limits.
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