USA > Pennsylvania > Westmoreland County > History of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, Vol. I > Part 73
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·"Madam: In obedience to the resolution of the corporation and citizens of Greensburg, we beg leave respectfully to present to the family of General St. Clair their condolence at the melancholy event of his death. Desirous to express some small token of respect for the memory of a man whose name is conspic- uous on the pages of our history as one of the heroes who achieved our inde-
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pendence, we are directed to obtain permission from the family that the body of our lamented friend may be deposited near us.
"Mr. Drum will have all necessary arrangements made at Youngstown in unison with those which are preparing here, to do honor for the occasion.
"We are, Madam, respectfully, James Postleitwaite, A. W. Foster, John Reed, Simon Drum, Jr., John H. Wise, George Armstrong, Daniel Maclean, Richard Coulter."
"Mrs. Louisa Robb."
Mrs. Robb consented, and his remains were accordingly interred in Greens- burg. In 1832 an humble monument was erected over his grave by the Masonic fraternity, and its most appropriate inscription is self-explanatory :
"The earthly remains of Major-General Arthur St. Clair are deposited be- · neath this humble monument, which is erected to supply the place of a nobler one due from his country."
Interior of General St. Clair Home.
Phoebe Bayard, his wife, who was born in 1743, survived him nineteen days, and was then buried by his side. She was a true matron of the Revolution, and a woman of heroic mold. Though brought up in the best circles of Boston society, she willingly accepted her hard life on the rude frontier, and bore its privations and sufferings with great fortitude and without complaint. Both she and her illustrious husband contributed greatly to the welfare and prosperity of the pioneer days of Westmoreland, but the county has done nothing for them. Their names should be honored and their memory ever cherished by the people our county. Their heroic privations, self-sacrifices and deeds of noble dar- ing should be written on the scroll of the nation's history as a perpetual incen- tive to coming generations to preserve the rich heritage of freedom made pos- sible to us by such illustrious examples of true nobility.
In the chapters of this work relative to the formative period of the county, St. Clair's work in its interests was fully considered and therefore need not be 41
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repeated here. The reader will notice that the date given as that of his birth, April 3, 1736, is not the usually accepted one, (March 23, 1734). The error has been but recently discovered by a noted genealogist of the St. Clair fam- ily. The Kirk Session Book of Thurso, Scotland, notes that he was born March 23d, and baptized by Rev. Willliam Innes, March 24, 1736. But eleven days must be added to March 23, because of the new style calendar. This gives his real birthday as April 3, 1736. He was therefore eighty-two years, four months and twenty-eight days old when he died.
WILLIAM FINDLEY was, after Arthur St. Clair, the most prominent man of his day in Westmoreland county history. Those who are familiar with the Whisky Insurrection cannot fail to remember the faith our people had in him at that time, yet he lived more than a quarter of a century after that, and his hold upon the people increased constantly from year to year.
He was born in Ireland in 1741 or 1742, and came to Pennsylvania in 1762. He did not locate in Westmoreland county until the close of the Revolution, though it is said that he was ready to come here with Bouquet in 1763, but was deterred from doing so by the Indian troubles in this section. He was de- scended from old Scotch Covenanters. His ancestors had been driven from Scotland because of their religious belief during the reign of James the Second. He came to America, intending to locate in South Carolina, but changed his mind because of the extent of human slavery in the south. It is scarcely likely that he was opposed to slavery from principle, but rather that, intending to per- form manual labor himself, he came to a state where free labor was highly re- spected. Nevertheless, he could have owned slaves in Pennsylvania but never did.
When a youth at home he had access to more books than most young men of his day, and he acquired a taste for literature which remained with him throughout his entire life. When the Revolution began he entered the army as a private, and rose to the 'rank of captain, which was not a high rank for a man of his ability to attain. At the close of the war he purchased lands near Latrobe, or between that place, St. Vincent's Monastery and Beatty Station, on the Pennsylvania Railroad. The latter now passes over his farm. It was then practically uncleared land ; that which had been partly cleared had been neg- lected during the war, and was little else than a tangled mass of underbrush. To convert this into a productive form became his chief employment for some years. Then he built a log cabin in which he lived, and in which he also set up a loom, for he was a weaver by trade, and for some years plied the shuttle when not engaged in actual farming, with an industry which characterized his whole life. Many a web of cloth he wove for his surrounding neighbors, wove fabrics of flax and wool, and the linsey-woolsey mixture with which both he and his neighbors were clad from one year's end to another. When he afterwards built a better house the loom still remained in the log cabin, and did duty long after he was engaged in a wider field.
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In religion he was by birth a Covenanter, but, settling in a strong Presby- terian section, he connected himself with that church and remained with it through life. In church affairs, as in everything else, he was a leader. He was not as well educated as many of the prominent men of his day, but he had the confidence of all classes, both high and low, and in this he surpassed all men in our county. He was very early elected to the assembly of Pennsylvania and there met Hugh Henry Brackenridge, who then represented that part of our county, now embraced in Allegheny county. Brackenridge had been elected for the sole purpose of securing the formation of a new county, while Findley, as may be supposed, was anxious to have the county remain intact. They were therefore hostile to each other from the first. Findley was also one of the council of censors, and on the same board with him sat Gen. Arthur St. Clair. They were perhaps never hostile to each other, but were always on opposite sides, for St. Clair was a Federalist. Findley and William Todd were repre- sentatives in the constitutional convention of 1789 from Westmoreland county, the convention which formed the constitution of 1790. In this convention he introduced a measure which he tried to have incorporated in the organic law of the state, providing that in all parts of the state the children of poor parents should be taught at the state's expense. The people were not ready for such a measure. Nearly forty years afterwards, Thaddeus Stevens, by sheer force of his mighty intellect, put a similar provision on the statute books, in direct opposition to the expressed instruction of his constituents, and for this daring act has since been revered by every right thinking man, woman and child in Pennsylvania. Yet the level-headed old Westmoreland weaver more than a generation before, and when Stevens was yet unborn, advocated the same measure, and proved himself to be far in advance of his age.
In 1790 he was elected to the second Congress and took his seat in 1791. He was elected for four consecutive terms, remaining there till 1799. He was therefore in Congress during the Whisky Insurrection, and to this is due in part the confidence our people reposed in him at that time, for the country people always look up to and expect everything from their member of Congress. In 1802 he was again elected after an absence of four years, and kept there steadily as long as he would stand for the honor, for fourteen years. Had it not been for his age he could probably have remained many years longer.
His enemies in Congress said he was a demagogue. This may have been true, for it is noticed that he always came out in favor of the people and advo- cated what they wanted, which was not always what they should have had. It perhaps mattered little to him what they wanted; if they were largely of one mind, Findley favored it. A good public servant cannot always be bound by the will of those he represents, but, like Stevens, he must sometimes oppose the wishes of his best friends, and advocate theories because they are just and not because they are favored by the arbitrary caprice of his people. In the Whisky Insurrection he went with his people and went wrong.
He was a fluent talker in conversation, but made few if any public addresses.
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While he could not address a public meeting, he could organize one, shape its actions to suit himself, and get from it, in the end, all that he desired. He was, in other words, a natural born leader of the people, and his enemies may have been right in saying that he feared to try to lead them in any direction except the one in which they wanted to go. He electioneered among them and made them think he was indeed one of them. He attended house and barn raisings, and when in the strength of manhood, before age weakened him, he lifted as many logs as the best of them. He visited the farmer in his fields, and, taking the plow in his own hands, showed them how well he could turn a furrow. By all these means, which his enemies styled demagogic, he enlisted the support of the common people, who largely predominated in his day, and they remained loyal to him as long as he lived. In all these matters he differed widely from Brackenridge. Though both were great in their leadership, they led through entirely different methods. Brackenridge was a scholar, an orator, a philoso- pher, a lawyer, and a man of the highest culture. On one occasion he was called to account for opposing Findley because he had been a weaver, to which he wittily replied that he did not oppose him because he was a weaver, but because he was nothing else than a weaver. Findley was, however, much more than a weaver. He was perhaps stronger out of Congress than in it. The Scotch- Irish were always loyal to him to a man. Party lines were not so closely drawn then as now. Men voted for Findley because he was Findley whom they knew, and not because he was the representative of any party.
There were many great statesmen of that day who feared that the then un- tried constitution of the United States was not strong enough ; that the people were granted too many liberties, and that, in a short time, we would have a reign of anarchy. We were so closely connected with the monarchies of the old world that they had but little faith in our people governing themselves. Find- ley was opposed to many of the prominent measures of Washington's first ad- ministration, as was common among the anti-Federalists of that day ; yet he wrote a book to defend the constitution, and in it showed considerable research and ability. His book is now out of print. In it he took the ground that church and state were and should be always separate institutions. Bred, as he and most of our people were, under the dominion of the English government, when the established church was one of its main features, this was indeed advanced ground, though now it is a proposition which needs no argument. His work was widely read in its day, and may have done great gcod. He also wrote a "History of the Insurrection," which has been quoted as authority by such men as Hildreth. Fisher Ames called the book "a history of Findley's own insur- rection, not the Whisky Insurrection." It is not a great work, and seems to be written by him rather to apologize for his own actions in the unfortunate trouble than to give a true account of it. There are errors in it which have never been attributed to a willful desire to misstate facts, but rather to the misinformation of the author. It has been the most lasting and is probably the best of his works, mainly because it dealt with a national subject. Brackenridge, no less than
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Findley, sought to apologize for his part in the Insurrection. But Bracken- ridge was an educated lawyer whose every instinct should have warned him against participating with those whose object was to subvert the majesty of the law.
The Farmers' Register, now the Greensburg Democrat, was the only paper published in Westmoreland county during most, if not all, of Findley's life in Congress. To its columns he was a frequent contributor under the nom de plume of "Sidney." This he admits in an article published on November 8, 1808. To contribute to newspapers was a common means in those days, to which public men resorted to reach the people. As a newspaper writer he was direct and forceful, and his articles were doubtless very potent with the un- lettered constituency whom he represented.
He also published a work called "Observations," and still another, called a "Review of the Funding System," taking sides with Jefferson and Gallatin as against Washington and Hamilton. Neither of these works would attract at- tention now, but they had no mean circulation.
When Jay's Treaty was brought up before the house he perhaps did not want to vote either way, so he left the house. The sergeant-at-arms was sent for him and brought him in and he was compelled to vote. This was great material for his enemies, who did not fail to use it against him.
He must have been a very hard worker all his life, for his books and con- tributions to newspapers alone are almost a life's work. He never missed a session of Congress. He never forget that he had been a farmer.
William Findley was a large man, with light complexion, clean shaven face, and was very tasty in his dress. He always, when away from home, wore knee-breeches, a shad-bellied coat, and long waistcoat. These, with silk stock- ings and a cue, completed his make-up. These were changed to home-spun gar- ments and white felt hat when about his home and busied with the many duties of his farm.
Going to Philadelphia, and after 1800 to Washington to attend Congress, he always went on horseback, for which purpose he kept a special horse, and for several weeks before he started his horse was allowed to a season of rest. Weeks before the journey began, the Findley household was busy preparing his clothes, the linens, and little personal possessions he was to take with him. He went away in time for the first session in December, and did not return till its close, sometimes in July or August. So his departure was a matter of some import to his community. All the neighbors came to his house on the day of his departure to wish him well and to bid him good-bye. There were George Smith, William Todd and John Proctor, all men of note in our coun- ty's history ; the Sloans, the Craigs and the Lochrys, names not by any means unfamiliar to the reader.
His connection with the Whisky Insurrection has always been considered against him. It cannot but be admitted that he did wrong in its inception, and probably the example of so eminent and just a man led many weaker men astray. But, at all events, he did no worse than Gallatin and Brackenridge. Of
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all these he came first to a true realization of the situation, and after that did all he could to rectify the errors he had committed. The frankness with which he admitted his error, and his untiring efforts to repair the wrong done, have more than half redeemed him from his faults. But more than all this is the fact that he retained through all the troubles, the highest respect and confidence of Washington, who never knowingly countenanced nor confided in a real enemy of the Republic.
He died at his home, on April 5, 1821, in the eightieth year of his age, and was buried in Unity cemetery, near his home, and near the present town of Latrobe.
ALEXANDER JOHNSTON. Among the makers of Westmoreland county of the last century was Alexander Johnston, who lived and died at Kingston House, on the Loyalhanna, about three miles from Latrobe. He was born July 10, 1773, in county Tyrone, Ireland, and died July 16, 1872, having lived ninety-nine years and six days.
ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.
An incident concerning his leaving Ireland is well worthy of mention. Col. John McFarland, of Ligonier, frequently related that in 1844 he and Alex- ander Johnston had driven to Harrisburg together in a buggy, and on the way the latter told him that when he was a very young man he lived in the south of Ireland and had fallen in love and become the accepted suitor of a young woman of the neighborhood. Upon going to the father of the girl to ask his consent and to contract for the marriage, the old gentleman became very much enraged, and told him that he was too wild and unpromising to marry his daughter. Harsher words from each followed, whereupon Johnston struck his desired father-in-law and knocked him down. This he said, caused such an
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uproar in the community, the old gentleman being of a very prominent family, that warrants were taken out for his arrest, and he was compelled to leave the country or suffer the consequences, which might have been very serious. So with the assistance of friends he secured a passage and sailed at once for America. He arrived in 1797 and remained for a short time in Philadelphia, after which he journeyed to Carlisle, where his relative, Gen. William Irvine, who as the reader has seen, was quite familiar with western Pennsylvania, ad- vised him to settle in this part of the state. The young man accordingly crossed the Allegheny mountains and located first in Butler county. Becoming dissat- isfied there, he removed to Westmoreland, where he met William Freame, an- other Irishman, whose daughter Elizabeth he afterwards married. William Freame had come to America with the renowned army of General James Wolfe to engage in the French and Indian war. At its close, with many other British soldiers, he remained in the colonies. When the Revolutionary war was de- clared he attached himself to the British army. After a short service he set- tled in Lancaster county, where he was married to Elizabeth Johnston, who had come from Ireland with her father in 1792. This branch of the Johnston family is in no way related to the Westmoreland branch, the former having settled mostly in Kentucky and North Carolina.
Alexander Johnston and Elizabeth Freame had a family of eight sons and two daughters, and these, with their father, became one of the most noted fam- ilies in Westmoreland county. Two of the oldest sons were educated at West Point, and served many years in the regular army as commissioned officers. Of the youngest son, Richard, we have spoken, he being a private in the Mexican war, killed at the storming of Molino del Rey. Another son, Edward Johnston, read law and became noted in his profession in Iowa. Still another son, William F. Johnston, became governor of Pennsylvania, and we shall speak of him again. Another, Col. John W. Johnston, was captain of the West- moreland company in the Mexican war, and afterwards was colonel of a regi- ment in the Civil war. The physical stature of these sons was remarkable. None of them was less than six feet, one or two were six feet six inches in heiglit, and all were built in proportion. Their father, Alexander Johnston, was for many years a resident of Greensburg, he having served several terms in county offices of Westmoreland county. Later he purchased a large tract of land at the base of the Chestnut Ridge, in Unity, Derry and Ligonier townships. Upon this he erected a forge, rolling mill, etc., and became one of the early iron- masters of western Pennsylvania. These works were called the Kingston Works, this being the name of the tract of land upon which they were located. Nearby he built the stone house called Kingston House, which is yet well preserved, and is one of the landmarks of the past. It was built in 1815, as a tablet on its front wall indicates. His adventure in the production of iron was not successful, perhaps from the inferiority of the ore. Kingston iron never sold at a high price, and the business, instead of making him a fortune, involved him in pecuniary trouble. His house, Kingston House, near the pike,
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afterwards constructed, was converted into a public inn. After some years he removed to Greensburg, and was appointed register and recorder by Governor Wolf, for he had in the meantime taken an active part in the early politics of the county. He was a Federalist, and remained with that party until its final dissolution. He became a Jackson Democrat in 1824, and voted with that party as against the Anti-Mason and National Republican parties. He held several offices by election, namely sheriff, justice of the peace, and treasurer, and was, as we have seen, register and recorder by appointment. The dates of his commissions were as follows: Sheriff, November 4, 1807; justice of the peace, October 24, 1822; treasurer, December 27, 1826; register and recorder, January 21, 1830. In the latter position he served six years,' and then re- turned to his home, Kingston House, a most beautiful place in an early day, and remained there until his death. At the time of his death he was said to be the oldest living Freemason in the United States, having joined the fraternity in Ireland, and having participated first in a Masonic demonstration as early as 1795. By special authority he organized the grand lodge of Pennsylvania and the Masonic lodge in Greensburg, and was also authorized to organize the lodge in Somerset. He was a leader among men naturally, and always enjoyed the highest confidence of his neighbors. One of his most remarkable traits was his polished manners. It mattered not whether he met the rich or the poor, the high or the low, he greeted them in a most polished and dignified way; nor did he relax his courteous manners with advancing years, though in one sense of the word he never grew old. He took great pleasure in conversing with the young people around him, which is always an evidence of a young and vigorous mind. His memory was stored with interesting anecdotes and historical reminiscences, and nothing seemed to delight him more than to gather around him a company of young men and women and entertain them with his recollections of the past. He had been all his life a reader of books and a close observer of the events through which he passed, and moreover had a retentive memory. These qualities united in making him one of the most interesting and entertaining men of his day. He remembered the ringing of the bells in Ireland and the cry of the watchman at night when the news reached them that Cornwallis in America had been compelled to surrender his sword to Washington at Yorktown. The Irish, he said, seemed to take great pleasure in the downfall of the English armies in the new world. The latter years of his life were all that any one could wish for. He had full possession of his mental powers, and even the physical decline, which always comes with advancing years, came slowly to him, and only when he was nearing his hun- dredth year.
WILLIAM FREAME JOHNSTON, son of Alexander and Elizabeth Freame Johnston, was born in Greensburg, while his father was sheriff of the county, on November 29. 1808. In his youth he perhaps showed a more vig- orous intellect than his brothers, all of whom were noted for their precocity. In this way and by industry he acquired a vast fund of information which
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served him well instead of a college training. He read law with Maj. John B. Alexander, the noted lawyer of Greensburg of that day, and was admitted to the Westmoreland bar in May, 1829, when he had just attained his majority. He did not practice law regularly in Greensburg, but all his life was frequently called here in the trial of cases and in the conduct of the legal business of the day. He began practicing law in Kittanning, Armstrong county, and very shortly after he went there was appointed district attorney of the county by Attorney General Samuel Douglass, and afterwards by Attorney General Lewis. After attaining a considerahle degree of standing as a lawyer in Arm- strong county he was elected to the lower house of the legislature, and in 1847 was elected a member of the state senate, representing Armstrong, Indiana, Cambria and Clearfield counties. It will be remembered that during the pres- idency of Martin Van Buren came the financial panic of 1837. Mr. Johnston came forward with a proposition that the state should issue what was called "relief notes" for the payment or refunding of such bills as the state was obliged to pay. This proposition he advocated with great ability, and though a large majority of the legislature was politically hostile to him, he forced his measure to adoption and it gave almost instant relief. It was, of course, designed only as a temporary expedient and as such was entirely successful. To plan and put through the legislature a scheme of this kind gave him a reputation as a financier throughout the commonwealth, and accordingly in 1847 he was elected president of the senate of Pennsylvania. Under our old constitution we did not have a lieutenant-governor, but the president of the senate became governor upon the death or resignation of that officer. Francis R. Shunk was then governor of Pennsylvania, and was performing his duties under greatly impaired health. So weak was he, indeed, from an incurable disease, that he resigned the governorship, and Mr. Johnston, president of the senate, at once assumed the duties of the office. The question then arose as to whether he should hold the office the remainder of the term, or only until his, successor should be elected. Governor Shunk had resigned his office on the last day possible according to the constitution, to allow a new man to be elected at the ensuing fall election. Many eminent lawyers held the belief that Johnston had a right under the constitution to hold the office for the remainder of the term for which Shunk had been elected, but not wishing to hold this office a day longer than he was legally entitled to, he ordered an immediate election of his successor. He was a candidate himself for the office, was nominated by his party, and elected for the full term of three years.
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