History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania, Part 154

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 1438

USA > Pennsylvania > Monroe County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 154
USA > Pennsylvania > Pike County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 154
USA > Pennsylvania > Wayne County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 154

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Jacob Kimble, Jr.

Richard Beebe.

Walter Kimble.

John Brink.

Benjamin Kimble.

Jonathan Brink.

Eusebius Kincaid.

Thomas Brown.

Barzilla King.

Benjamin B. Brink.

James Logan.

Phineas Lester.

Andrew Lester.

David Cady. Jesse Cady.

Arch Murray.

John Malonia.

Simeon Chapman. William Chapman. Uriah Chapman. Jacob Cronkright.

Richard Nelson.

Stephen Parrish.

George Parkinson.

Roswell Chapman. Phineas Coleman. William Dayton. Elias Depui.

Conrad Pulis. Silas Purdy. William Purdy. Amos Purdy.

Aaron Duffey.

Charles Forseth.

Jacob Gooding.

William Purdy, Jr.

Reuben Purdy. Ephraim Purdy.

Robert Hartford. Elias Hartford. Samuel Hartford. William Hartford. James Hartford. Henry Husted.

Jacob Purdy. Nathaniel Purdy. Solomon Purdy. Samuel Porter.

Benjamin Hanes. William Holbert.

William Schoonhoven.

Jonathan Jennings.

Thomas Spangenburgh. Daniel Stroud.'

Samuel Smith. Enos Woodward.

Christopher Snyder.

Ebenezer Woodward.

Abisha Woodward.

Jedediah Wyllis. Solomon Wyllis. .

Nathan Williams.

WALLENPAUPACK SETTLEMENT. - Some time between 1750 and 1760 a family named Carter settled upon the Wallenpaupack Creek. This is supposed to have been the first white family who visited the neighborhood. The old Indian path from Cochecton to Wyoming crossed the Wallenpaupack about thirty rods below Carter's house. When the emigrants from Connecticut reached the Wallenpaupack, the chimney of the house and stone oven were still standing. Carter and his family had been killed and his house burned during the French and Indian War. When the first Wyoming emigrants from Connecticut reached the Wallen- paupack they halted and sent forward scouts to procure intelligence of the country along the Susquehanna. They took the old Indian trail across the Wallenpaupack, near the Marshall Purdy placc, thence through what is now Paupack and Salem townships, westward still through Cobb's Gap to the Lackawanna Valley, and thus on to the Susquehanna River. They encamped at Cobb Mountain, built a beacon- fire that could be readily seen by those wliom they had left behind on the Wallenpanpack, but their return is doubtful.

The names of the original Wallenpaupack colony were Urialı Chapman, Esq., Capt. Zebulon Parrish, Capt. Eliab Varnum, Na- thaniel Gates, Zadock Killam, Ephraim Killam, Jacob Kimble, Enos Woodward, Isaac Parrish, John Killam, Hezekiah Bingham, John Ansley, Elijah Witters, Jolın Pellet, Sr., John Pellet, Jr., Abel Kimble, Walter Kimble, Joshua Varnum, Amos Parks, Silas Parks, David Gates, Jonathan Haskell, William Pellet, Charles Forsyth, Roger Clark, James Dye, Nathaniel Washburn, James Hallett, Jasper Edwards, Renben Jones, a man named Strong (probably the same man that lived at Little Meadows and was killed there by the Indians) and Mr. Frey, who was the school-teacher for the settlement. Of these, the first seventeen returned after the close of the Revolutionary War. Of the last thirteen namned, but two or

1 It is stated opposite Daniel Stroud's name that the fac- tory-house is taken down.

Reuben Jones.

Jacob Kimble.

Denman Coc.

Moses Killam.

George Parkinson, Jr. Jolın Pillet, Jr.

Thomas Schoonhoven.

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WAYNE, PIKE AND MONROE COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA.

three returned to the settlement, a few of them having returned to Connecticut. Joshua Var- num was killed during the war ; Dr. Amos Parks moved to Goshen, Orange County, N. Y .; Jonathan Haskell was killed at the battle of Minisink, in 1779; Jasper Edwards, Stephen Parrish and Reuben Jones were taken prisoners by the Indians. Reuben Jones was a powerful man and a good runner. He challenged the Indians to run a race one day, outstripped them, and thus made his eseape and settled in Pau- pack, Wayne County, where he died in 1812.

Between the years 1774 and 1778 the follow- ing persons were added to the settlement : Ephraim Kimble, Jeptha Killam, Stephen Par- rish (afterwards an Indian doctor), Urialı Chapman, Jr.,Silas Killam, Joseph Washburn, Stephen Kimble and Jesper Parrish. The several persons named, with their families, constituted the Wallenpaupaek settlement from 1774 to 1778. The settlers laid off two town- ships, the one in which they were all ineluded being named Lackaway, and the one farther up the Paupack, Bozrah. A warrant was issued from the proprietary office November 25, 1748, under which a traet of land upon the Walleu- paupaek Creek, containing twelve thousand one hundred and fifty aeres was surveyed, 14th of October, 1751, " for the use of the proprietaries of Pennsylvania," called " The Wallenpaupaek Manor." February 21, 1793, this manor was conveyed to Hon. James Wilson, who gave a mortgage to John Penn the elder and John Penn the younger, the vendors. In 1804 the mortgage was foreclosed, and Samuel Sitgreaves, of Easton, purchased the land in trust for the Penn heirs. All the Wallenpaupaek settle- ment was on this manor, and the first valid titles obtained by these settlers were from Sit- greaves. When the settlers first eame, in 1774, they surveyed the land and fixed the boundaries of each settler's portion by mutual agreement. These surveys were carefully made and the boundaries well defined and the lots numbered. These boundaries beeame fixed and are those by which the lots are known and described to this day. The Wallenpaupaek settlement seems to have been made very independently. They did not derive any title from Connecticut,

although it is probable the Connecticut clain led them to this country. They took no pains to obtain any titles from Pennsylvania and purchased no title from the Indians, but simply proceeded on the old theory that title is aequired by the first oeeupant. They found the beauti- ful Paupack flats, with a small Indian elearing, and here they located. Miner says: "The most perfcet equality existed throughout the settlement as to rights, privileges and property. The lands were disposed of, it is believed, by lot. The title of eachi man to his land was the consent, and the proof of this title was the memory of his neighbors. Until 1804, when land was purchased at sheriff's sale by Mr. Sit- greaves, no deed had been held by an oeeupant for a single aere." The Duteh settlers in the Minisink were assessed in Northampton County, but the Wallenpaupaek settlement at Cushu- tunk, on the Delaware, and the straggling set- tlements in what is now Wayne County, do not appear to have been assessed by any Pennsyl- vania authority until Wayne County was set off, in 1798. The Wallenpaupack settlers estab- lished their own civil, military and eeclesias- tical form of government. Silas Parks was chosen first justice of the peace. It is sup- posed he had a commission from Connectieut ; but it was discovered that he played cards, which intelligence was immediately forwarded to Conneetieut and he was superseded by Uriah Chapman. John Killam was elected constable by the settlers and Captain Zebulon Parrish made tithingman or tax-gatherer. Captain Eliab Varnum had command of the troops of the colony ; Jonathan Haskell was lieutenant and Elijah Witters ensign.

As soon as the settlers had determined to locate permanently, they built a fort. It was of hewed timber, thick enough to be proof against the bullets of the Indians. These tim- bers were placed upright in deep ditehes, well filled in and firmly seeured. The inelosure contained about one aere of land, on which was a never-failing spring of water, now led out to the road at the Calvin Pellet place, on the corner where the East and West or Salem road and the River or Sterling road cross. This noble spring will ever exist to identify the place.

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PIKE COUNTY.

Within the fort was a block-house, on the top of which was a bullet-proof sentry box. A guard-house was also built just outside the in- closure. When trouble was anticipated with the Indians, the people with their families spent their nights in the fort. The men went in gangs to plant, hoe and cultivate each other's fields, with their guns slung over their backs. The settlers built cabins, made clearings and lived peaceably among themselves and with their neighbors, the Indians, for two years. "The population was generally composed of Presbyterians.1 On the Sabbath the whole settlement was collected together, when a ser- mon was rcad. The observance of the Lord's day was rigidly enforced, and the morality and decorum of the settlers carefully insisted upon."

There was a saw-mill on Kimble Brook, about one and one-half miles from the fort. This mill was built very early (between 1774 and 1779), probably by Jacob Kimble, Sr., or liis son Abel. The old mill was burned by the Indians in 1779, and one hundred years after- wards Joseph Atkinson had a saw-mill burned on the same site, not far from Marcus Killam's residence. After the settlers returned they built a saw-mill and a little tub grist-mill, which was the oldest mill in the settlement and the first grist-mill in the vicinity, with the excep- tion of the mill at Wilsonville. It had one run of native stone, procured from a ledge up the Paupack, on the Wayne County side, in Dreher, according to Ephraim Killam ; but old Thomas Bartleson claimed he helped Abel Kimble get the stone on Cobb Mountain. Both may be correct, having reference to differ- ent times. Abel Kimble died January 6, 1832, aged seventy-seven, and his wife Sybil, who was a daughter of Uriah Chapman, May 21, 1827, aged ninety. During the years 1777 and 1778, the settlers upon the Wallenpaupack were harassed by Indians and Tories, who had their headquarters at Cochecton. Brant had given orders to the Indians under his control

not to molest the Wallenpaupack settlement. In 1777 Mary Gates, a daughter of Nathaniel Gates, discovered a body of men lurking in the swamp near the Wallenpaupack River, as she was looking for the cows. She notified Lieu- tenant Haskell, who collected the force of the settlement and succeeded in capturing the whole body of Tories, who had deserted from the American army. He conducted his eightcen prisoners to Hartford, Conn., where they were confined.

On the 3d of July, 1778, the battle of Wyoming occurred, and either Hammond or Stanton notified the settlers on the Wallenpau- pack. All was consternation in the settlement and preparations were hastily made for imme- diate flight. Before sunset on the 4th of July, 1778, the Wallenpaupack settlers were on their way to the Delaware River.2

Captain Zebulon Parrish, his son Jasper and Stephen Kimble were captured by some Tories and Indians, who took them to the State of New York and kept them prisoners until the close of the Revolutionary War. Kimble died while imprisoned, and the elder Parrish returned to his family. Jasper Parrish married an In- dian wife and was employed by the government as an interpreter among the Indians near Can- andaigua, where he lived. Stephen Parrish, Jr., who was captured with Jones and Edwards, learned the mysteries of the Indian " Medicine Man," and on his return to the settlement prac- ticed their healing art, and was known as " Doc- tor " Parrish. He left the settlement in 1818, and died near Canandaigua.

Many of the young men had enlisted in the American army. Ephraim Killam, son of Za- dock Killam, and Abel Kimble, son of Jacob Kimble, Sr., were in the battle that led to the retreat of General Washington from Long Island.

" In August, 1778, four young men-John Rellet, Jr., Walter Kimble, Charles Forsythe and Urialı Chapman, Jr .- returned to the Wallenpaupack for the purpose of cutting hay. They commeneed on the upper end of the settlement and had cut all the hay execpt that on the farm of Uriah Chapman, whose place was the lowest down the creek. One afternoon

1 In this account we have followed Miner, but the early Connecticut settlers were Congregationalists, although they were the founders of the Presbyterian Churches in North- eastern Pennsylvania.

" Sce Chapter VII. of the General History.

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WAYNE, PIKE AND MONROE COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA.

young Chapman went to a neighboring spring for water. Stopping for a moment on the way, he sat whistling on the fence, when an Indian rose and fired at him. He sprang toward a sled near him, where the young men had left their guns, and on attempting to raise a gun, discovered that he was wounded. The gun dropped from his hand, when he ran for the fort, which was still standing, reaching it toward night. The ball had passed through his right arm into his shoulder, and fifty-one years afterward, on his death, it was found lodged against his spine. The Indians immediately seized the guns, and the other young men, who had heard the firing, ran to the fort. They were not attacked that night, and the next day left the settlement."

In the spring of 1779 five young men went back to the settlement to make maple sugar. Their names were Ephraim Killam, Jeptha Kil- lanı, Silas Killam, Eplirain Kimble and Walter Kimble. They stopped in one of the log houses about one-half mile southwest of the fort, whichi had been burned. The place is still marked by a mound made by the stones of the old chimney. They tapped the maple-trees and fitted up the house for temporary use. One evening Silas Kil- lam and Walter Kimble were out of the house. As young Killam was procceding leisurely along with two buckets of sap strung on a neck-yoke, a party of Indians, who lay in ambush, sprang across his path, with the evident intention of capturing him. He dropped his buckets of sap and started for the log house. The Indians gave chase, but young Killam outdistanced them. As his brother Ephraim opened the door to receive him into the house an Indian fired at him. The ball struck the head of a nail in the door-post. Some of the pieces wounded Ephraim in the arm. Walter Kimble, another young man, who was shooting ducks, seeing the Indians had cut off all hope of reaching the house in safety, started for the Delaware River. He was a tall, athletic man, and outran his pursuers, who followed him for some dis- tance. He wore a pair of loose shoes, which he cast off, took a pair of Indian leggins and bound them around his feet, and in this way traveled all night in the snow, which melted as it fell. The next morning, about breakfast-time, he ar- rived at the house of his brother Abel, at a place called Vantyne Kill, a mile above Milford, in a pitiable plight. He had not eaten a morsel for

more than twenty-four hours, and exclaimed as he entered the house, with tears in his eyes, "The boys are all dead !" The boys were not dead, however. Immediately after the Indians had driven Killam into the house, they built a fire near the barn and settled down for a regu- lar siegc. One of the Indians exposed himself while gathering wood and was wounded in the hip by Ephraim Kimble. It is said that the Indian afterwards died of this wound. When all was still and the Indians were quiet these four young men slipped out of the house and started for the Delaware River, which they crossed the next morning at Carpenter's Point. Ephraim Kimble afterwards located at what is now Kimble Station, Lackawaxen township, and his brother Walter died in Ohio. Moses Kim- ble, Sr., was in the battle of Lackawaxen, or Minisink, July 22, 1779. He blamed the offi- cers for forcing the men into the unequal con- test, as Brant's forces consisted of four or five hundred Indians and Tories ; but he expressed tlic opinion that had the stone breast-works been thrown up earlier, the fortunes of the day might have been different. The Wallenpaupack set- tlers made no more attempts to return to the settlement until after the War of the Revolution had closed.

The following letter from Captain James Bonnel to Captain Westfall shows the condition of affairs in 1782, just before the settlers re- turned to the settlement :

" MINISINK, 31 August, 1782.

" Dear Sir :-

"I am exceeding happy to inform you that my scouts, which returned last evening and this morning from Sheholah, Bluminggrove and Laqueway, have made no discoveries of any savages or other Enemies. They inform me, that there is fourteen Houses Stand- ing at Laqueway,1 and that the grass and weeds have grown through the cracks of the Flour, and that they are confident from the appearance of things that there has not been any Enemy there this Summer. Pray let me know if you have heard anything from Colo. Wisenfelts or if you have made any late discoveries of the Enemy.

"I am Sir "your most obedient "Humble Servant "JAMES BONNEL."

" CAPT. WESTFALL.

1 Laqueway or Lackaway was the Wallenpaupack set- tlement.

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PIKE COUNTY.

Such, then, was the condition of things when seventeen of the original settlers returned to the Wallenpanpack in 1783. Fourteen log honses were standing with the grass and weeds growing through the cracks in the floors, and the mea- dows were growing with scrub oak and pine. What a forlorn and dismal look the old settle- ment must have presented to the hardy pioneers as they returned to their desolate heartlistones to begin anew life's battle for existence.

They were a stalwart race of men and women, however, and with stout hearts commenced the work of improvement again. With less of danger to encounter than attended their first residence, they suffered many more hardships. The year of their return the corn crop failed, generally, and the little raised was pounded into a shape fit for use in mortars constructed of pieces of wood. The flour used in the set- tlement was carried on the backs of the in- habitants from Milford. The winter of 1783-84, was a severe one ; the snow was very deep dur- ing most of the winter, and the only mode of getting to and from Milford was upon snow- shoes. From this time forward the Wallen- paupaek settlement was prosperous.

The Wallenpaupack Manor extends from near Wilsonville to within one-quarter of a mile of Ledgedale, the larger portion of which lies in Pike County. During a number of ycars the occupation of the people was farming. The beautiful flat land along the Wallenpau- pack produced grain and luxuriant grass for cattle, and in a few years there was a demand for pine lumber along the Delaware, from Easton to Philadelphia. There was good pine along the Wallenpaupack and Lackawaxen Rivers. The settlers manufactured this into lumber and floated it down the Lackawaxen and Delaware Rivers to market in some cases; in others they ran the logs to the mills be- low. In this way the Wallenpaupaek settlers became comparatively wealthy. They were generous, hospitable and honest, but a change came over the settlement. On their arrival they were Congregationalists of the old Puritan school, and striet in their adherence to relig- ious worship and Sabbath observance; but the demoralization of war for eight years during

the Revolution must have been great, especially among the young men.

This was not the only difficulty in this set- tlement. The people became divided in relig- ious matters. Gideon Draper and some other Methodist preachers passed through in 1807, and made it their principal object to proselyte Abner Chapman, Esq., from the Congrega- tionalists in Wallenpaupack, as it had been their principal object to prosclyte Major Woodbridge from the same church in Salem ; and from the manner in which Gideon Draper gloated over these conquests years afterward, as preserved in Peck's "History of Early Methodism," one would suppose it more important to proselyte one member from a sister church than to turn ten sinners from the error of their ways to re- pentance. He succeeded in organizing a small Methodist class. Hezekiah Bingham, Sr., Hezekiah Bingham, Jr., and Nancy Pellet helped organize the Salem and Palmyra Con- gregational Church in 1808. Rev. Mr. Purdy, a Baptist, of Purdy settlement, occasionally preached in Paupack. Last of all, an infidel moved into the place and circulated skeptical books among the settlers. The result of it all is that there is no church edifice in Palmyra township to this day, and but few church mem- bers. The Methodists have an appointment once in two weeks at a school-house in the old settlement. Rev. Benjamin Killam is said to have been an excellent man, and at one time the Methodists had a well-organized class in thic place. Mr. Kincaid was one of the old school- teachers and Ralph Waldo another.

There are now five schools in the township. The old school-house in which P. G. Good- rich taught was near Guerdon Pellet's house. He also taught in Paupack a number of years and formed a very high opinion of the people. He says, in his " History of Wayne County," " In doing justice to the memory of those old settlers we could write scores of pages. They and their children have passed over the river, and we, standing on its brink, aged seventy-six years (he is now nearly eighty-two years), can- not but look back with admiration of that noble people."

Urialı Chapman settled at Blooming Grove

950

WAYNE, PIKE AND MONROE COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA.

and kept a tavern. He had a numerous family, all of whom are gone.

Ephraim Killam married a daughter of John Ansley. His family were men and women of intelligence. He had but one son, Ira, who married a daughter of Roswell Chapman. Ephraim Killam was a well-informed man and scouted the idea of civilizing the Indians. " Why," he used to say, "an Indian is just as much a wild man as a wolf is a wild dog ; you cannot tame him."

Moses Kellam, or Killam, son of Zadock Killam, married and settled in Paupack settle- ment, Palmyra township, about threc-fourths of a mile south of the fort. He was justice of the peace for many years ; built a saw-mill on Kimble Brook at an carly date, a grist-mill about 1825 and put in the first burr-stone in this place. His children were Rev. Benjamin T. Killam and Moses Killam, Jr. Benjamin T. Killam, who preached in the settlement and adjacent, was an active Christian and an excellent man. He married Elizabeth, a daughter of Elijah Witter (often miscalled Winter), and settled on the Paupack, at the mouth of Gifford's Creek, at what is now Beemerville. He was a farmer, lumberman and local preacher and lived to be about seventy-five years of age. His children were Anna (wife of Thomas Bortree, who died recently in Michigan at an advanced age), Lewis, Emeline, Alfred, Elijah, Moses, Lucy, Marcus N. B. and Polly (wife of James Van Camp, who lives in Salem). All of the family moved to Michigan with the exception of Anna, Mar- cus, Moses and Polly.

Marcus N. B. Killam stayed on the old place, purchased tlic Abel Kimble property in 1870 and built a saw-mill in 1871. He sold thirty- four hundred acres of wild or timbered land to Farnham, Collingwood & Co., and now has about five hundred acres, of which two hundred and fifty are Paupack flats. Mr. Kil- lam lives on his large farm in a very comfort- able manner and entertains his friends with the old-time hospitality for which Panpack scttle- ment has ever been celebrated. Marcus N. B. Killam, without doubt, is the most successful living hunter in Northeastern Pennsylvania. He killed his first deer when eleven years old

and did not miss a year without killing one or more from that time until recently. Some years he killed a dozen and one year secured forty, killing three in one day. He at three different times killed three bears in one day. He killed nine bears a year for three successive years. He has probably killed four or five hundred deer, more than one hundred bears and many wild- cats as well as smaller game. His success was owing to the fact that he lived near the edge of that thick spruce and pine swamp in and about " Promised Land," and was an almost unerring shot. The largest deer he killed weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, and the skin forty pounds. He has the antlers, which spread twenty inches apart.

Moses Killam, Jr., succeeded his father as justice of the peace, lived on the homestead and ran the grist-mill until other mills were built in the vicinity and the saw-mill was in opera- tion. Joseph Atkinson afterward bought the place. He was a leading man in the place in his day and held the office of justice of the peace until so old that his son Ephraim did the writing and finally succeeded to the same office. He was seventy-cight at his death. He married Lucy, daughter of Ephraim Kimble, Sr., his children being Dan, Benjamin, Rush, Ephraim and George, sons, who all, with the exception of Rush, settled in the vicinity. The daughters were Irene, wife of Amzi L. Wood- ward ; Esther, wife of William Conkling, of Hawley ; Christine, wife of James Gibson, of Illinois ; Milcenna, wife of Arthur Kimble, of Hawley ; Eunice, wife of Mr. McComb; Au- gusta, unmarried. Silas Killam married Sarah, a daughter of Uriah Chapman, and settled northwest of the fort, on the road to Salem. Hc was a farmer, his sons being Ambrose, Isaac, Harvey, Silas and William. They all moved away but Isaac and William.

Asher Killam lives on the Calvin Pellet place and has the post-office. Ephraim Killam is a surveyor and justice of the pcace in Haw- ley. He has given considerable attention to the history of the early settlers in the old Wallen- paupack settlement and contributed materially to this history of Palmyra township. Elizabeth Witter, wife of Benjamin T. Killam, was born

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History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania, Part 154

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co. Number of Pages: 1438

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 1438