USA > Pennsylvania > Wayne County > History of Wayne County [Pa.] > Part 3
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(If the preceding narrative of Indian matters should be deemed irrelevant to the history of Wayne county,
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
the following continuance thereof may be a sufficient apology for its presentation.)
In the month of August, 1762, about two hundred colonists from Connecticut commenced a settlement at Wyoming, on the Susquehanna river, claiming a right under the said named State, which founded her claim under the original charter granted in 1620 to the Ply- mouth Company by James I., which charter was con- firmed by Charles II., to Connecticut in 1663, and set- ting forth that the said charter should include: "All that part of our dominions in New England, in Ameri- ca, bounded on the east by Narragansett bay where the said river falleth into the sea, and on the north by the line of the Massachusetts Plantation, on the south by the sea and in longitude as the Massachusetts Colony running from east to west-that is to say, from the Narragansett bay on the east, to the South sea on the west part." This charter, it was claimed, included all the lands of sixty miles in width extending to the Pa- cific ocean, excepting the intervening part between Connecticut and Pennsylvania, which had been con- ceded to the province of New York, in consequence of a charter granted by Charles II. to his brother, the Duke of York and Albany. The charter to the col- ony of Connecticut was made eighteen years prior to that made to William Penn, by the same monarch. It has been presumed that said monarch knew little or nothing of the location or extent of the territories that he granted, and that his title to the same was little superior to his knowledge.
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THE INDIANS.
In the year 1753, a number of persons, mostly in- habitants of Connecticut, formed a company with the intent of purchasing the lands of the Indians on the Susquehanna, and establishing settlements at Wyo- ming. This association was called the "Susquehanna Company." The said two hundred settlers of 1762 were a part of them. The agents of said Company attended a council of the Six Nations held at Albany on the 11th of July, 1754, and made a purchase from the Indians of the Wyoming lands, the boundaries of which are thus given in their deeds: "Beginning from the one and fortieth degree of north latitude, ten miles east of the Susquehanna river, and from thence by a north line ten miles east of the river to the end of the forty-second degree of north latitude and so to extend west two degrees of longitude, one hundred and twenty miles, and from thence south to the beginning of the forty-second degree, and thence east to the beginning, which is ten miles east of the Susquehanna river." It has never been denied but that this purchase included the valley of the Wyoming and the country westward to the head waters of the Allegheny river. At the time the above-named purchase was made, the country east of the Susquehanna Company purchase was bought of the Indians by another association, called the "Delaware Company," under whose encourage- ment the first settlement of whites was made, at Co- checton, on the Delaware, in 1755. This was the first attempt made to hold lands under said Connecticut and Indian titles. The progress made by the last-nam-
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
ed colony will be noticed under the head of Damas- eus township. At the time the last-above-named pur- chases were made of the Indians, commissioners were present to act for the Proprietors, but there is no evi- dence that they then made any purchase of the Wyo- ming and Delaware lands, though they obtained a deed on the 6th of July, 1754, of a tract of land between the Blue mountain and the forks of the Susquehanna river. Gov. Morris, of Pennsylvania, on the return of his commissioners from Albany, having learned that the Susquehanna and Delaware Companies had effected a purchase of the Wyoming and other lands, wrote to Sir William Johnson, (so Chapman alleges,) on the 15th of November, 1754, requesting him to induce the Indians, if possible, to deny the contracts they had made, and, as a means of effecting it, to win over Hen- drick, a noted chief, to his interests, and persuade the chief to visit Philadelphia. The Connecticut settlers reprobated the condnet of Governor Morris, as dis- honorable and unworthy of a man occupying his po- sition. The settlers knew that the villainy which the whites taught the Indians, they were ready to practice. It is probable that the Indians would have sold the lands as often as they could get pay for them. They kept no record of their sales, and knew but little about the boundaries and extent of what they had sokl, and looked with contempt upon the titles which the kings in Europe pretended to have to lands in America. Indeed, as has been before stated, the Six Nations, at general council, held at Fort Stanwix, November 5th,
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THE INDIANS.
1768, conveyed to the Pennsylvania Proprietors, the same lands which they had sold to the Susquehanna and Delaware Companies in July, 1754.
The reader will now readily understand that the contention which so long existed between the people of Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and which caused so much suffering, spoliation, and bloodshed, origina- ted in an interference of the territorial claims of the contending parties. The charter of Connecticut ante- dated that of William Penn eighteen years. The pur- chases of the Susquehanna and Delaware Companies, it was claimed, antedated that of the Proprietors four- teen years. The Susquehanna Company, honestly be- lieving that their title was paramount, commenced their settlement at Wyoming in all good faith. They located themselves so as not to interfere with the In- dians, and built a log-house and several huts at the mouth of a small stream, now called Mill creek. Not having sufficient provisions to keep them through the winter, they hid their few tools and went back to their native homes in Connecticut.
Early in the spring of 1763, these settlers returned to Wyoming, attended by their families and a number of new settlers. They brought with them cattle, and swine, and provisions for immediate use. Their build- ings had not been disturbed. The chiefs of the Six Nations had never forgiven Teedyuscung for his bold- ness and independence displayed at the great council held at Easton in 1758; and their emissaries, in the autumn of 1763, murdered him or burned him in his
4
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
cabin, and then made the Delawares believe it was done by the Yankees. They had thus far been peace- able, but at once sought revenge. They surprised the whites while at work in their fields, killed upwards of twenty of them, took some prisoners, and, after the remainder had fled, set fire to the buildings, and drove away the cattle. Chapman says, "Those who escaped hastened to their dwellings, gave the alarm to the families of those who were killed, and the remainder of the colonists, men, women, and children, fled to the mountains. They took no provisions with them except what they had hastily seized in their flight, and must pass through a wilderness sixty miles in ex- tent, before they could reach the Delaware river." They had no means of defense, had not sufficient raiment, and, with such cheerless prospects, com- menced a journey of two hundred and fifty miles on foot. Some of the whites reached the settlement on the Delaware, at Cochecton. The Susquehanna Company, still persisting in their determination to es- tablish a settlement in Wyoming, early in 1769, sent forty men thither to look after their former improve- ments, and found that they had been taken possession of by agents of the Proprietary Government. Noth- ing daunted, they selected another piece of land and built temporary huts, and were soon joined by two hundred additional emigrants, who, anticipating that they would be annoyed by the Pennsylvania party, built a fort near the bank of the river, and near it erected about twenty log-houses, with loop-holes through which to fire, in case of an attack.
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THE INDIANS.
It would exceed the intended limits of this work to give, in detail, the subsequent history of the heroic set- tlers of Wyoming. The reader that wishes to know what outrages, imprisonments, and murders were in- flicted upon the settlers, under the tyrannical domina- tion of the land-holding Proprietors and their unscru- pulous agents, and of the horrors of the Wyoming massacre, is referred to the histories by Chapman, Mi- ner, Stone, Hollister, and Pierce for full information.
The settlers at Cochecton, Paupack, and Wyoming took a deep interest in one another's welfare and, though widely separated, warned one another in season, of the approach of an Indian.
To settle the long-contested question between Penn- sylvania and Connecticut, as to which state the juris- diction of the disputed lands belonged, the Continen- tal Congress appointed a board of commissioners to hear the question, who met at Trenton, N. J., and, after a deliberation of five weeks, on the 30th of De- cember, 1782, pronounced their opinion as follows : "We are of the opinion that the State of Con- necticut has no right to the land in controversy," etc.
The justice and impartiality of the decision were questioned and have not as yet been conceded. The State of Connecticut still claimed lands west of Penn- sylvania, but in 1786 made a cession of the same to the United States, with a reserve of about a half of a million acres. The lands thus reserved were called "New Connecticut," or the " Western Reserve," by the sale of which, Connecticut realized a fund of $1,900,-
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
000 for the support of her common schools. If the title of Connecticut to the Reserve lands was valid, why was not a like title good in Pennsylvania ? The inhabitants at Wyoming were willing to submit to the laws and jurisdiction of Pennsylvania, but contended that as the State of Connecticut had conveyed her in- terest in the soil to the Susquehanna Company, from which they derived their right, that the decision did not deprive them of their title to the lands upon which they had settled. The subsequent measures used by the land-holding government of Pennsylvania, were attended by acts of violence, suffering, and bloodshed, in dispossessing this brave and long-suffering people. They did not, however, tamely nor suddenly submit to the exactions of their oppressors. Even as late as 1799, Judge Post, an emigrant from Long Island, took up land under the Pennsylvania claimants, near Montrose, for which he was mobbed, burnt in effigy, and insulted by the Yankees, who could not bear that any one should acknowledge the validity of the Penn- sylvania title. Finally, after years of turmoil, more just and reasonable laws were enacted, under the oper- ation of which, the New England people, in all the settlements, became quiet and valuable citizens.
With regard to the Indians but little can be said. There was some diversity of color among them. Gen- erally their skin was of a reddish, copper color. They were symmetrical in form, tall in stature, with deep-set eyes, high cheek-bones, often with aquiline noses, and long, straight hair. The squaws were short, with broad,
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THE INDIANS.
homely faces. The senses of the Indians were intense- ly acute. They could follow the footsteps of man or beast over plains or mountains, where the white man could not discern the slightest vestige. When not engaged in war the chief employments of the men were hunting and fishing. The squaws did all the work, built all the cabins, planted all the corn, tended it, and prepared it for food by roasting, parch- ing, or pounding it in a stone mortar. The ancient weapons of the Indians were the bow, and arrows pointed with flint, the stone hatchet, and the scalping knife. It is said that some of the western tribes had hatchets and kettles made of copper. If so they had advanced one step nearer to civilization than the Lenni Lenape tribes of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Horace Hollister, of Providence, Pa., has made a full and curious collection of all the warlike weapons and culinary and domestic utensils, used and employed by the Indians that once lived in Pennsylvania. The collection is made up largely of warlike implements, while the scarcity of domestic utensils attests the slight elevation that our Indians had attained above the "Stone Age." The dress of the Indians, before their commerce with Europeans, was mostly, if not wholly, made of skins. Their wigwams were differently con- structed by different tribes. The rudest were made of poles resting against each other at the top, and cov- ered with bark and skins, with an aperture at the top for the escape of smoke. How the poor creatures con- trived to live through the cold winters of the northern
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
climate is a problem unsolvable. The practice of tor- turing and burning their prisoners was most abhorrent and revolting. When we think of them as gloating over the agonies of their victims, we are consoled with the reflection that they have been exterminated. It must be admitted, however, that white men, though boastful of the humanizing influences of civilization and religion, have with pleasure indulged in the same devilish enormities. That the Indians resorted to de- ceit and treachery, to ernelties and diabolism, in their contests with the whites, cannot be denied. When they commenced selling lands to the whites, they had no just conceptions of their overpowering numbers. Said Red Jacket, "My forefathers sold one tree to a white man, who came with ten more men, who each cut down a tree, and then there came ten more to each tree." When they found that they had been deluded and cheated, they fought with the desperation of de- spair. What merey should we show to an invading enemy as much superior to us in deadly weapons of war as we were to the Indians, if such invaders were intent upon dispossessing us of our lands and homes ? What compensation did the Pennsylvania Indians receive for the 16,000,000 of acres in this State ? Had the lands been sold at five mills per acre, they would have brought $80,000. Have we any evidence that they were paid even that amount ?
The Indians worshiped no idols. From the earth and firmament, "that elder scripture writ by God's own hand," they inferred the existence of an overruling
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THE INDIANS.
Intelligence which they called the Great Spirit. They had a firm and abiding belief in a future state of ex- istence. They have been spoken of in the past tense. They belong to the past. In the early discovery of the country, it is supposed that there were 200,000 In- dians east of the Mississippi river. They are now ex- tinct. Disease, war, and intemperance have destroyed them. In the early part of this century, occasionally a few straggling Indians with their squaws and a pap- poose or two would visit Beaver Meadows and some other places in the county, stealing warily and fearful- ly through the tangled woods, perhaps to visit, in want and anguish, the graves of their fathers, who once owned and governed this wide domain. A few tribes, destined to be duped and cheated by governmental agents or hunted down by military bands and destroy- ed like wild beasts, are still left in our Territories. Why does not our Government imitate the just policy of the English Canadian Government, which has had no trouble with their Indians for the past seventy years ? Finally, had the whites dealt justly with the Indians, after the manner of William Penn, thousands of lives would have been saved. Had not the Pennsyl- vania claimants resorted to wrong and violence to dis- possess the Connecticut people, the massacre at Wyo- ming might have been averted, the settlers at Cochec- ton and Paupack would not have been murdered or driven from their homes, and no battle would have been fought at the mouth of the Lackawaxen.
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
CHAPTER III.
WAYNE COUNTY.
AYNE County was named in honor of Anthony Wayne, a major-general in the Revolutionary war, who was born in Chester county, Pennsylvania, in 1745, and died at Presque Isle, in 1796. In de- votion to the cause of liberty, and in heroic, dashing exploits, he was second to no officer in that war. The Legislature of 1879 made an appropriation for the erection of a monument at Chester, Pa., commemora- tive of his great services to his country.
In point of population, Wayne county is by no means inconsiderable. There are in the sixty-seven counties in the State, abont thirty in number that have each a less amount of population and taxables than Wayne.
Geologically considered, the whole county is of a secondary formation, excepting the alluvions along the streams, and is destitute of basalt, gypsum, mica, and limestone. No fossil remains of animals have been found. The rocks are generally a compound of sand and clay, with the exception of red shale, which is composed of fine grains of sand cemented by the oxide of iron. The rocks are mostly arranged in hor- izontal strata, whatever may be the contour of the
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WAYNE COUNTY.
ground. The surface is diversified with many inequal- ities, but they are not of such extent or abruptness as to render much of it worthless. The general average elevation of the upland is estimated at 1,400 feet above tide water, and parts of the Moosic mountain are 600 feet above the upland.
The southern extremity of that mountain is in Lackawanna county. In Canaan the county line cross- es the mountain, thence running westward of it, leav- ing Ararat and Sugar Loaf in Wayne. On and about this mountain are quartz rocks of intense hardness from which the first millers in the county fashioned their mill-stones. The glass-factories obtain from the same source, the stone of which they make the pots in which the glass is melted. The hill-sides along the various streams, sometimes steep and precipitous, have the greatest part of the rocky, stony, uncultivatable land. The soil is an admixture of clay and sand, which, in its primitive state, was covered with a leafy mould. The main streams in the southern part are the Paupack and Middle creek, with their branches; in the middle are the West branch and Dyberry, which, uniting at Honesdale, form the Lackawaxen; in the north is the Starrucca; and in the northern and eastern part, as tributaries of the Delaware river, are Shrawder's creek, Shehawken*, Equinunk, Little Equi- nunk, Hollister's creek, Cash's creek, and Calkins' creek. These streams afford abundant water-power for the propulsion of mills and factories.
*Among the oldest records the name "Shehawken " is thus written.
5
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
CLIMATE.
The elevation of the county above tide-water will account in part for the rigor of our winters. But that elevation insures a pure air and an assured immunity against the plague and Asiatic cholera. The extremes between the heat of our summers and the cold of our winters are very great, and appear to be increasing. The removal of our forests exposes the country to the cold winds in winter, thereby decreasing the tempera- ture, while the exposure of the soil in summer to the direct rays of the sun increases the temperature. Sixty years ago, on account of the coolness and hu- midity of the summers, Indian corn was an uncertain crop; at the same time such was the mildness of the winters that the peach trees were not injured by the severity of the cold, and bore fruit from year to year. Now the thermometer in summer rises to ninety-six degrees, Fahrenheit, and, in the winter, falls to twenty degrees below zero. Some meteorologists entertain the theory that winters of extreme cold, and sum- mers of intense heat have their appointed cycles. From some cause unknown, the winters of 1819, 1836, and 1843 were very cold and the summers of 1816 and 1836, short, cold, and frosty, while the summers of 1838 and 1845 were remarkable for long-continued heat.
FORESTS.
These in their primitive glory consisted of white, and yellow pine; hemlock ; white, and red beech ; hard maple, called also rock, or sugar-maple; white, or
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THE FORESTS.
red flowering maple ; white, and black ash; poplar, or tulip-tree; black cherry ; black, and yellow birch; but- ton-wood; basswood, or linn; white, and slippery elm; hemlock spruce, and dwarf spruce; pepperidge ; tamarack, or larch; balsam fir; white, black, and red oak; chestnut; butternut; shagbark walnut; hickory ; and many smaller trees and shrubs, viz: ironwood, fire cherry, aspen or quiver-leaf, mountain ash, june- berry, black maple or buckhorn, mountain and swamp dog-wood, water beech, green osier, sassafras, white dwarf maple, choke-cherry, yellow plum, tag alder, swamp apple, spotted alder, crooked alnus, prickly ash, bilberry, crab-apple tree, willow, bachelor tea, swamp whortleberry, hardhack, leather-wood, mountain and dwarf laurel, spice-bush, hazel-nut, poison sumac, tanners' sumac, pigeon bush, witch-hazel, dwarf juni- per, hemlock bearing red berries, (a very rare tree,) and, perhaps, a few others.
The forests standing at the present time have little of the value of those that adorned the country a cen- tury ago. The lofty pines, which then lined the streams and crowned the hills, have been removed; the hemlock, once considered a nuisance, having be- come valuable, is fast disappearing. It is a tree of very slow growth, and if the ground were now cover- ed with a second growth, generations would pass away before the timber would be large enough to be valua- ble. Hemlocks, which were cut into ninety years ago, have only added a growth of four or five inches to their semi-diameters. An enormous one grew on the
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
north side of Middle creek, about a mile below Rob- inson's tannery. The grain, or growths of the wood, showed that it was one thousand years old when it died. It must have been a large tree, when Chris- topher Columbus discovered America, in 1492. The late Mrs. H. G. Otis, of Boston, who often came to Bethany, greatly admired the hemlock. She said she had seen all the noted evergreen trees of Europe, but that in fineness, delicacy, and compactness of foliage, coolness and neatness, the hemlock surpasses them all.
The poplar, which is a straight, tall tree, from two to three feet in diameter, was once quite com- mon, especially in the lower part of the county, but the wood, which was light and easily removed, being valuable, was at an early day all sent to market. It was all used up forty years ago. White ash was once so abundant as to be split into rails, and was often used for fire-wood. It has been valuable for many years as the quantity is constantly decreasing. It is, how- ever, a tree of rapid growth and may be saved and propagated.
The black cherry, now so valuable for cabinet-work. was once to be found on almost every hill, it often being three feet in diameter. Abraham J. Stryker told me, many years ago, that it was so abundant in Cherry Ridge that the first settlers split it into rails and stakes, used it for barn frames, and burnt some of it up. What now remains of that timber is costly and of poor quality. Where it is not shaded by other timber it grows very fast.
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THE FORESTS.
The basswood, found in every part of the county, has long been used for siding in lieu of pine. Large quantities of this lumber have been yearly sent to market. It is a beautiful tree and is growing scarce; but as its growth is very rapid, there is some hope that it will not all be destroyed.
The black birch is a heavy, substantial wood. It is being substituted for black cherry. Both the black and yellow birch make excellent fire-wood.
The chestnut was plentiful in Scott township and in Salem, and not scarce in other townships. In Salem, it was, on some ridges, the chief timber, and some of the trees were very large. The largest tree that I ever saw in Wayne county was a chestnut-tree standing on the old road between Jonestown and Cherry Ridge. It was, I think, larger than the big elm in Damascus. They were both unusually large. It was rare sport
to gather chestnuts in those old forests. There were enough of them for the boys, bears, raccoons, and squirrels. Those chestnut-trees were all cut down, split into rails, or stakes, or burnt up. But few, if any, of them were ever sent to market. About the same fate befell that which grew in the upper part of the county. Being of sudden growth the tree may survive.
The beech is the most abundant tree in our for- ests, and will probably continue to be, so long as we shall have any forests. It is the only tree that the lightning seems to respect. Is there not a ligneous acid in the tree which repels the electric fluid? The wood is valuable for many purposes. The white beech
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY.
when standing alone assumes a pyramidal form of exceeding beauty. About the Red school-house in Dyberry, a mile east of Bethany, are some of the love- liest specimens of the beauty and symmetry of the iso- lated white beech.
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