USA > Pennsylvania > Westmoreland County > History of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, Vol. I > Part 13
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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY.
little churchyard near Cincinnati. Over his grave was erected a marble slab with the following inscription :
"In memory of Maidenfoot, an Indian Chief of the Eighteenth Century, who died a civilian and a christian."
Among the early settlers around Fort Ligonier was a farmer named Reed, whose family consisted of his wife and four children. His oldest child, a daughter named Rebecca, was a young woman in 1778, and his son George was a year or so her junior. Quite often it became the duty of the daughter to assist her father in outdoor labors, such as planting corn and harvesting crops. This gave to her physical system a strength and lithe- ness unusual to her sex. In her old age she had a very attractive face, and those who remembered her loved to tell of the beauty and personal at- tractions of her youth. She was the pride of her parents, and her lovely character made her easily the favorite of the valley settlement. The Reeds had a comfortable log house, and while at first they were almost alone in the wilderness, other families gathered around them, so that their com- munity was dotted all over with clearings, cabins and houses. Here lived then perhaps sixty families of fearless and happy people. During the winter they were not disturbed much by the Indians, but in the sum- mer they were frequently compelled to seek refuge in the fort. Winter was a poor season for the Indians to make long journeys on foot, for the reason that they always subsisted on the country through which they traveled. Further more, the snows of winter made it easy for the settlers or the soldiers of a garrison to track them.
In the summer of 1778 nearly all outdoor work was done in common, and they rarely ever worked without a certain number of them standing guard at the edge of the fields. The men went out from the fort almost daily, for they were compelled to look after their crops or face hunger in the following winter. The women were cooped up in the fort very closely during the dangerous period of the year. A favorite rural sport and exercise for the young men and women in the fort was foot racing be- tween the two extremes of the stockade. Among all the young women who entered the contest, Miss Reed was the fleetest of foot. Indeed, she could outrun most young men in the fort. A young man named Shannon, of noted athletic power, often contested in races with her, and it is said felt a special thrill of joy when, either through his gallantry or her fleetness, she came out victor. The summer of 1778 was a gloomy one in all parts of our county, for the Indians were lurking in almost every defile, and rumors of depredations came almost daily to the garrison. One afternoon Rebecca Reed and her brother George, in company with a young man named Means and his sister, Sarah, left the fort to gather berries on a clear- ing about two miles away, where they were reported to be most plentiful. Their way as they neared the clearing led them through a thick growth of
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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY.
underbrush which almost arched over the narrow road they were walking along. While passing through this narrow way they met Major McDowell returning on horseback from the farms beyond and unconcernedly carrying his rifle on his shoulder. Suddenly the little party was fired on by Indians who were lying in ambush near by. George Reed and young Means were in front. Reed was mortally wounded, but ran a short distance into the bushes. Another ball struck McDowell's rifle, shattered the stock, and forced splinters of it into his face and neck. The young man with Reed ran back towards the girls, perhaps to protect them, but was almost in- stantly surrounded by Indians who ran from the bushes, and made a cap- tive. The girls started to run towards the fort and the Indians pursued them. They soon caught Miss Means, who was holding to Miss Reed's arm, and when they caught her were so close to Miss Reed that an Indian grasped at her clothes, but failed to stop her. Now that she was freed from the other girl she bounded off like a deer. The savage who had grasped for her was determined to catch her, and a most novel race ensued. The Indian doubtless expected an easy victory, but was very soon mortified to find himself losing ground. This continued, and then he began a series of terrific yells so well known in Indian warfare and calculated to confuse or unnerve the girl. But instead of being inti- midated or overcome as he hoped, the fiendish yells had the opposite effect on the brave girl, as she often afterward related. She now put forth additional energy, and by straining every nerve accelerated her speed. She was clearly in the lead and by every step was in- creasing the distance between her and her pursurer. The Indian kept up the pursuit, doubtless with the hope that his great power of endurance would yet enable him to capture the rich prize flying before him, and thus preserve his good name among the tribe.
In the fort the noise of the shooting and the yells of the Indian were distinctly heard. Knowing that a party of four had gone out in that direc- tion, a relief party sprang for their rifles and hurried to the rescue. 'Shan- non headed the party, and the fact that Miss Reed was among those in danger was sufficient to call forth his best energies, if, indeed, a loyal frontiersman needed any stimulant when pursuing Indians. But at all events he soon left the rescue party in the rear by the fleetness of his movements. When he had gone about a half mile from the fort he saw Miss Reed flying along the path towards him at a greater speed than she ever ran before, and the Indian several rods behind her. But the quick eye of the Indian caught sight of Shannon perhaps before Miss Reed saw him. Notic- ing also the rifle in his hands, the Indian stopped at once and turned into the bushes. A few steps brought Miss Reed to Shannon, who assisted her to the fort, while the rest of the rescuing party ran to the locality hurriedly pointed out by Miss Reed. She was very nearly exhausted, and it was doubtful whether, without the interposition of Shannon and his trusty
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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY.
rifle, she could have held out in her terrific speed long enough to gain the fort. The rescuing party found the lifeless body of Reed, but he was not scalped. Perhaps that was left for the Indian who pursued Miss Reed to attend to on his return, but he did not return that way. They found the body of Miss Means, who had been tomahawked and scalped. The In- dians made good their retreat with young Means, as a prisoner. Shannon and Miss Reed were married shortly after the Indian troubles ceased, and lived most happily on a farm in Ligonier Valley until both were bowed with the weight of more than four-score years. But a vastly different fate awaited the Indian who was defeated in the race with Miss Reed. Three years later, when the captive Means returned home, it was learned that the Indian was disgraced forever among his people because he had been fairly distanced in a race with a "white squaw." He was a splen- did specimen of his race, and had been the accepted suitor of a chieftain's daughter, the belle of the forest. But ever after this, to him, unfortunate episode, she treated him only with feelings of scorn and contempt. For three years at least, that is, while the prisoner Means remained with the tribe, he was little more than a slave to the other Indians, performing only the meanest drudgery encumbent on these natives of the forest.
There is a version of this story which says that Miss Reed was carried to the fort on the horse behind McDowell, and that with his assistance she sprung to the horse's back while at full gallop. This is unlikely, and moreover is not true. The circumstances exactly as above detailed were gotten by the writer from one who had them directly from Mr. and Mrs. Shannon in their old age.
Jacob Nicely was one of the last boys captured by the Indians in West- moreland county. This took place in 1790, or perhaps a year later. The circumstances surrounding it are all well authenticated. He was the son and perhaps the youngest son of Adam Nicely, who lived on the Four Mile Run, about two miles from its junction with the Loyalhanna.
One bright morning the Nicely children were out in the meadow pick- ing berries, when the little boy Jacob started to the house. The mother was baking, and giving the child a warm cake, told it to rejoin the other chil- dren. But the child came back, saying the cake was too hot, and the other poured some cold water on it and again the child went away. These little journeys were closely watched by a party of Seneca Indians con- cealed near by. They captured the boy on his way back to the meadow. His capture, his struggles to free himself, and his cries, were seen and heard by the other children, who ran home and reported it to their parents. The father raised a company of willing neighbors who pursued the Indians with all possible speed. They traced them to the Kiskiminetas river, but in the wilderness beyond their track was soon lost. The father and his neighbors then returned to the heartbroken mother.
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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY.
The captured boy was about five years old, and was at once adopted into the Seneca tribe. He rapidly forgot almost all he knew about his home and people in the lonely valley of the Loyalhanna. He readily ac- quired the habits and customs of the Indians, and was to all intents and purposes a member of the Seneca tribe. He learned to speak a new lan- guage, and forgot the few words taught him in childhood by his mother. He even forgot his own name, and could not pronounce it when he heard it. He spoke the Seneca language as though born in the wilderess, and spoke nis mother tongue haltingly as did his Indian associates.
Many years after, a trader, perhaps a fur dealer, who lived near the Nicely family on the Four Mile Run, chanced to be among the Senecas and saw this captive, now grown to manhood. The traveler was so im- pressed by the resemblance of the man to the Nicely family, whom he knew well in Ligonier Valley, that he made inquiry, and learned that the man had been captured when a child in Westmoreland county. The traveler came home and reported this to the Nicelys in 1828, nearly forty years after the cap- ture. The father of the boy had long since died and his mother had passed her three-score years and ten. A brother of the captured boy decided at once to visit the Indian tribe and see the long lost captive. Neighbors spoke dissuadingly of the project, but he was determined, and after a short prepa- ration mounted a horse and rode away to the northern tribe. He made the journey in safety and found his brother. There was no doubt of the identity in the minds of either of them. The captured brother had been married to a squaw, and had around him a family of Indian children. He was prosperous for his surroundings, and had about him plenty of land, horses and cattle, and was well supplied with hunting and fishing imple- ments. When his brother was in his house he sent out to procure a white woman as cook, for the Indian manner of preparing meals was not sup- posed to be palatable to white people. There is a tradition in the family that the captured brother had visited Westmoreland prior to this, trying to locate his people and his home, and that, mispronouncing his name, he could not find them. At all events, Jacob arranged with his brother to visit his mother and relatives the following year. He also accompanied his brother part of the way home, made him a present of a rifle, etc. But the captive son and 'brother did not come as he promised. Perhaps he died before the following year, which was the time set for his visit. At all events, he was never heard from again. When the aged mother spoke of him, which was very often as the years advanced, she always called him her "Jakey," and with her eyes filled with tears. After a while the family ceased to look for him, but his mother never gave up the idea that he would return to her. Her hair grew gray in fruitless longing for a sight of her long lost child, and this yearning only ceased when her whitened head was pillowed in its last and sweetest sleep.
At the outbreak of the French and Indian war a Scotch-Irish settle-
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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY.
ment had been made in what is now Fulton county, Pennsylvania, at a place known as the Big Cove. The Quaker government of Pennsylvania had refused to give these people land except within the area that was then open to settlement, and they had therefore gone farther west and taken up land on their own account. The state authorities, fearing that this movement would exasperate the Indians of the west, tried to prevent this settlement, but failed to do so, as the settlers promptly returned to their lands when the officers who had been sent to eject them, left. Among these pioneers was John Martin, the ancestor of the Martin family of Western Pennsylvania. Following the disastrous defeat of General Braddock on the Monongahela in the summer of 1755, the Indians carried the war east- ward across the Alleghenies, and on the first of November of that year a band of them suddenly fell upon the settlers at the Big Cove. Among the homes destroyed was that of John Martin, who at the time of the raid was absent on a trip to Philadelphia, having taken his horses with him. His oldest son, Hugh Martin, afterwards one of the most prominent men in the formative period of Westmoreland history, was then seventeen years of age, and hearing of the impending attack, started to warn his neighbor and arrange for the escape of the two families to a blockhouse somewhere in the settlement. He found his neighbor's cabin in flames, and, returning, saw the Indians sacking his own home, his mother, two brothers and three sisters, being prisoners. As he was unable to render assistance to the family he kept hidden from view until the Indians left, and then started eastward for help, traveling under cover as best he could. He met a body of armed men on the second day, and returned with them to the Cove, but the Indians had gone, taking their prisoners with them to their village on the Allegheny River, at or near the present site of Kittanning. The set- tlers dared not follow, being too few in number. John Martin returned from the east, and with his son Hugh rebuilt the home.
The Martin prisoners consisted of Mrs. Martin; Mary, aged nineteen ; Martha, aged twelve ; James and William, aged ten and eight respectively ; and Janet, aged two years. Mary, upon her refusal to adopt the Indian life, was beaten to death by the squaws, and within a short time the mother was torn away from her children and carried to Quebec by the French. She worked as a domestic, and in time was able to secure her freedom. A French merchant of Quebec who was trading with the Indians along the Allegheny River, secured the little girl Janet and took her to his home. The mother had the good fortune to meet her child there, and, proving her claim, was allowed to redeem her. After a considerable period of time Mrs. Martin was able to take passage on a ship to Liverpool, and from there she sailed to Philadelphia, finally reaching her home at the Cove with her young daughter after several years of trials. Martha, James and Will- iam Martin were held in captivity by the Indians for about nine years.
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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY.
They were carried along by roving bands of the Delaware and Tuscar- ora tribes over Western Pennsylvania and as far west as the Scioto Valley, in Ohio. They spent some time in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, the encampment being on Big Sewickley creek, near the present site of Bell's Mills in Sewickley township. The Martin boys were attached to this spot, and after their release they returned in 1769 and took patent to two tracts of land there, where they continued to live during most of their lives. While there was no communication between the prisoners and their family at Big Cove, the latter had learned in some way that their lives had been spared, for John Martin had come as far as Fort Ligonier at one time to treat with the Indians for their ransom. He was not successful, however, and nearly lost his life in this attempt. After the notable defeat of the Indians by Col. Boquet at Bushy Run in 1763, the Indians agreed to give up their prisoners, and the Martins, along with others, were brought to Fort Pitt and surrendered to their friends.
The habits of life acquired by their long contact with the Indians never forsook the two Martin boys. Though they made permanent homes on land of their own, they had no inclination to labor or to improve, but spent their days in hunting or idleness. Their elder brother, Hugh Mar- tin, while a young man, also came to Westmoreland county, and, as indi- cated above, became prominent in its early history. Later their youngest sister, Janet, captured as a child when two years old, came as the wife of John Jamison and settled on a tract of land on Dry Ridge, three miles southeast of Greensburg. She lived there many years until her death in 1839, and was the mother of a large family. She was the grandmother of the late Robert S. Jamison of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and of Margaret J. Jamison, to the latter of whom the author is indebted for this sketch.
CHAPTER VIII
Scotch .- Irish .- German.
Westmoreland county as it now exists in territory was settled largely by Scotch-Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch. The Scotch-Irish was a sturdy race of people in all colonies wherever found. They came from Ireland, but their ancestors had originally been the bone and sinew of Scotland be- fore they had removed to the Emerald Isle. They were scattered over Western Pennsylvania, and were the first to cluster around the forts and blockhouses, where they made money by trading in lands, furs, and skins and other products, rather than by agricultural pursuits. They lived by thrift, rather than by hard labor, yet they did not attempt to live on the unpaid labor of others. They were an extremely aggressive and indepen- dent people who made splendid pioneers in a new country.
There were also a good many descendants of French Huguenots who, by the Edict of Nantes, were driven from their vine-clad houses in France because of their religious belief. Many of them had lived so long among the European nations surrounding France that they by intermarriage and association had lost not only their original tongues but their names, though they still retained their distinctive nationalities. Therefore they not infrequently came to America with French names and German, English or Swiss tongues. Probably three-fourths of all the settlers who came to Westmoreland, however, had for their mother tongue the English language. Of the other fourth the German tongue predominated. Our early set- tlers were in their make-up not unlike the people in other parts of the state, that is, extremely heterogeneous. This was due to the fact that the policy of the Province had been, even from the days of William Penn, its founder, that men of all shades of political and religious belief in Europe or else- where, should find a welcome home among our hills.
The Scotch-Irish very soon obtained control of our public affairs in Westmoreland county, as, indeed, they did of almost every colony or prov- ince in which they settled. They designated their coming here as a "set- tlement among the Broadrims," a term applied to Pennsylvanians because
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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY.
of the shape of their hats. More of them came to Pennsylvania than to any other section of America. About the time our country was opening up to settlers, they fled from a series of domestic troubles in Ireland. Promi- nent among these were high rents and peculiarly oppressive actions on the part of the land owners. The landed estates in Ireland, it will be re- membered, were almost entirely owned by lords, dukes and nobles, who lived in London, and this metropolis was then the center of a most profligate and spendthrift age and race, to keep up with which high rents and oppresive measures seemed to be necessary. Here in Western Pennsylvania land was cheap and plenty, and here they came in untold numbers. With them came many from Philadelphia, Chester, Lancaster, Berks, Bucks, York and Cum- berland counties, these latter actuated mainly by that progressive west- ward moving spirit so common in America, and which has since filled the western states with a thrifty and intelligent population.
The Scotch-Irish adhered to the Calvinistic religion, and they had a personality strong enough to very largely impress it upon their new neigh- bors. They were, indeed, an intellectual and steadfast people. They were not only independent, but were shrewd, industrious and ambitious. They very readily became Americanized, perhaps more so than any other set- tlers. They had no strict nationality to forget, nor sympathetic national feelings to unlearn. There was no pure Celtic blood in their veins. They had no nation which bound them as purely their own. The songs of Rob- ert Burns, which made the Scotchman forever loyal to his native heather, had no special music for them, nor did the memory of any song learned in childhood from the lips of an Irish mother fill them with patriotism and glory, or draw them from the New back to the Old World. The Sham- rock, to which the true sons of Erin are universally loyal, had no tender memoried mystic cord interest to them. They were no more attached to Ireland than the Hebrews were to Egypt by their long sojourn there, or than the Puritans were to Holland, from whence they came to America in 1620. The pure Irish are loyal to the mystic traditions of their hearthstones in whatever nation they may be found. The pure Scotch weep as readily on the banks of the Mississippi as in Scotland over the chant of "Bonnie Doon." But the Scotch-Irish remembered Ireland only as a place of a severe and temporary tenantry. These characteristics made them ex- cessively independent, if not arrogant, in the New Word, and gave them power to impress their identity on, if not to govern, any community in which they settled. They and their deeds of heroism in America have received the highest measure of praise by their friends, while their enemies have ap- parently, with equal reason, held them up to bitterest ridicule. They al- ways looked down on the Puritans and Quakers who, in turn, despised them. They abhorred the Pennsylvania Dutch, and yet from the beginning to the end they ruled Quaker, Puritan and Dutchman with a rod of iron.
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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY.
This aggressive spirit led to many difficulties between the Indian and the white inen in our country. The English and Dutch had both, as far as practicable, adopted Penn's peace-loving policy in dealing with the Indians. They had endured many hardships and wrongs on the part of the Indian, for the sake of a hoped-for future peace. But not so with the ag- gressive spirit which characterized the Scotch-Irish. They wanted land, caring little whether it came from the Indians or the Proprietary govern- ment ; whether it destroyed the Indians' hunting ground or encrcached on the squatter-rights of the Quakers, English or Dutch, and, when they once procured a title to it, woe be unto the one who interfered with their possessions. No ignorant brutal race of red men should encroach on the rights of a people who had for centuries stood up against and held their own with the oppressive hand of the Irish landholder. But, when the Indian came to retaliate, he made no distinction between the pacific Dutch, Quaker or English, and the high-minded if not warlike Scotch-Irish. All were alike white men to him, and upon the white race, without distinction, fell the severity of the incursions, which he doubtless thought were a just punishment for wrongs received at the hands of the white man in general.
The Germans in Western Pennsylvania did not generally come from Germany, but rather from Berks, Lancaster, Cumberland, Philadelphia, and other eastern counties. Their ancestors, however, had come from the banks of the Rhine, from Alsace and Loraine, from the Netherlands, or Holland. They were called Pennsylvania Dutch, and spoke a language that was a mixture of German and English, with now and then a word or an expression engrafted from other European tongues. It very greatly re- sembled pure German, so much so that a German scholar can converse readily with a Pennsylvania Dutchman, while the latter has even today no trouble whatever in making himself understood in Germany. This lan- guage was even in its best days, almost entirely a colloquial dialect, and consequently has declined very rapidly in the last fifty years.
There were Pennsylvania Dutch scattered all over Westmoreland county, but they settled mostly in Hempfield and Huntingdon townships. There were also a great many on the Chestnut Ridge bordering Somerset county, where they were very numerous. They lived isolated lives com- pared with the Scotch-Irish, and the township of Hempfield and Hunting- don as well, have in a great measure retained their Dutch characteristics even to our day. They never went abroad to seek public preferment or office. They were almost exclusively farmers, and they were good farmers, too, with apparently little ambition to engage in other industries. They were sober, industrious, economical, unprogressive and honest. The early settlers of this race believed in ghosts, haunted houses, signs, etc., more than their neighbors of other extraction did. Many of them even yet plant their crops, kill their live stock, cut their grass, roof their houses, build fences,
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