History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 107

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
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" Smo. 8. That the board of managers of said society shall have power to make by-laws for the regulation and well-being of the society not in- consistent with the laws of the Commonwealth, and shall keep minutes of their proceedings, which shall at all proper times be open to the in- spection of the stockholders; and at the annual meeting aforesaid they shall make a full report of their transactions, and the condition of the society ; and they shall also have power to declare dividends of so much of the net profits of the society as shall appear to them advisable, and at such times and payable when the by-laws may fx.

" Sso. 6. That every person who shall have subscribed and paid the cama of ten dollars or upwards to the association known as the Agricul- tural Society of Westmoreland County shall be entitled to one share of the capital stock of this corporation or society for each sum of five dol- lars so paid; and every person who shall have paid the sum of one dollar

to the nesse shall be entitled to one share of said stock upon payment to this society the sum of four dollars.

"Sso. 7. That the said board of managers shall have power to alter or change the location of any public road or highway which may pees through or over any land leased or purchased by them ; Provided, That they make and construct for the wee of the public as good and conveni- cat a road in every respect sẻ the roade do sitered and changed; And pro- vided further, That no such road shall be obstructed or interfered with until the said road shall have been examined by three disinterested view era, to be appointed by the Court of Quarter Sessions of said county, who chall make report thereof, and such report shall be approved by maid court, sad the costs and expenses of said view shall be paid by maid so- dety.

" JOHN CLARK,

" Spocher of the House of Representatives. " WILMER WORTHINGTON, " Speaker of the Benets.

" Approved the seventeenth day of April, Anno Domini one thousand eight hundred and sixty-mine.

"Jour W. GRABY."

CHAPTER LII.

NOMENCLATURE.

THE subject of the origin and derivation of the names common to the nomenclature of our country hereabout is not wholly, as we apprehend it, without some interest. The names of nearly all our streams, mountains, and villages may be traceable to either an English or an aboriginal origin.

The names first given by the British to localities and places which were named by them generally commemorated that of some prominent military officer or some civilian for the time being in favor. Thus Bouquet called the stockade fort which he erected at the Loyalhanna after Sir John Ligonier, an officer of distinction of French extraction, but in the service of England, with whom he had served in the Continental wars of Europe. This gave name to the village sub- sequently built near the old fort, and to the whole valley, a region of country which has always been regarded as a prominent, and indeed for certain occa- sions in early times, as a separate, if not an independ- ent, portion of the county, cut off from the rest by great natural barriers.

The names of the original townships are but echoes of European names, and they involuntarily recall one's attention back to localities of an older date and more ancient history. These names, it must be remem- bered, were designated for the chief part by the Scotch- Irish, who for that matter here had carte blanche. This one fact, rightly considered, evidences the domi- nation of that race. These names are mostly the rep- etition of the names of townships of the Scotch-Irish colonies in the eastern part of Pennsylvania and in the adjacent parts of Maryland. " Hempfield" was the name of a township in Lancaster County, Pa., and also the name of a township in Mercer County. " Mount Pleasant" is the name of a township in Adams (formerly York) County, and of a hundred in Cecil County, Md. This name was transferred to Washington County, and to other Pennsylvania

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Scotch-Irish settlements. "Huntingdon," an En- glish Cromwellian name, no doubt sacredly treasured by the descendants of the defenders of Londonderry and Enniskillen as the name of the manor-home of the Protector, was given to a township in Adams (formerly York) County. "Rostravor," " Rosstra- vor," or "Rostrevor," changed to "Rostraver," was a seaport town and watering-place in the County Down, Ireland. There is a monument erected there to the memory of Gen. Roes, who was killed at the battle of North Point, near Baltimore, September, .1814. "Menallen" and "Springhill," now two Fay- ette County townships, but first known as Westmore- land townships, were named, the former after a town- ship in Adams (formerly York) County, the latter by Col. George Wilson in commemoration of the lo- cality in West Augusta County, Va., whither he had removed.1

With probably the exception of Westmoreland, Fayette, and Greene Counties, there are no other counties in Western Pennsylvania the names of whose townships or boroughs would alone indicate whence their first settlers came.'

Of the first three townships formed after the orig- inal ones that of "Derry" is in its name purely North Irish. "Salem" and "Unity" probably took their designation from the respective settlements about the churches of those names, which were the most prom- inent settlements within their limits at the date of their formation. Both the latter names are old and strictly orthodox. The name of " Donegal," too, was a favorite one in Scotch-Irish settlements, and is trace- able to Ireland. It was the name of one of the con- gregations of the Old Redstone Presbytery, which has since been changed to that of Pleasant Grove. So, too, have the names of the earlier churches and con- gregations sometimes been perpetuated in those of set- tlements, of communities, of post-offices, and of vil- lages. Hence is there "Congruity," "Chartier," "Bethel," "Sardis," and "Mount Pleasant," the last as it is applicable to the name of the borough of Mount Pleasant. That the old Mount Pleasant Church, a most noted landmark, was called after the name of the village is an erroneous notion to entertain. The truth is that Mount Pleasant congregation was some- thing of an old congregation under the pastorate of Bev. Mr. Power when there certainly were not more than two or three cabins on the whole site of the present town. But the opposite to this, without any show of authority, has long obtained.

But the presence of that strange race of red men will never be effaced or forgotten among us so long as we retain the memorials of our written history or call our mountains and streams by the names they gave them.

" Yo may they all have passed away, That noble race and brave; That their light caboes have vanished From off the crested wave;

That 'mid the forests where they roamed There rings no hunter's shout; But their names are on your waters, Ye may not wash them out."

The names of most of our streams in Western Penn- sylvania are of Indian origin ; so, too, are the names of most of the more prominent mountains of the State. It has been remarked from a general observa- tion that the most important contribution made by the aborigines to our language has been in their bestow- ing the names upon natural objects,-upon mountains, lakes, and streams.

Most of these Indian names in the region of West- ern Pennsylvania are from the dialect of the Lenni Lenapes, or Delawares, whose pronunciation was less abrupt, and whose idioms were more sentimental than that of their conquerors, the Iroquois, or Mingoes, whose ideas and words, on the opposite, partook of a warful character.

The origin of the name of one of our local streams has been the subject of much contention. The name of the Loyalhanna Creek has been variously accounted for, and we are not familiar with any that has been so maltreated, one so replete, as a philologist would say, with homonyms.

Some with ignorance and stupidity trace it to an Eng- lish original, saying, for example, that it was named for Robert Hanna; others erroneously purport that the old Indian name signifies " Clear-running water ;" "while the legend," in the words of Dr. Frank Cowan, "which attributes the name to the faithful daughter of the last of the Indians who resided in. the gorge, a certain ' Loyal Hanna' (mirable dictu !), who supported her father in the extremity of age with her bow and arrow (after he had been abandoned by the rest of his tribe), is on a par with the popular origin of the word Ligonier, namely, that 'an early hunter, shooting at a deer while the animal was scratching its ear with its hind foot, by chance killed it, perforating at the same time the Leg an' ear.""

The name Loyalhanna, from the best authorities, which are now recognized as satisfactory, is derived from an Indian compound word, "La-el Han-neck," which means Middle Creek. The word "Hanneck" is evidently the generic name for stream, creek, or river, and is to be found in Susquehanna, Meshannon, Mahoning, and in other names of streams throughout the State. The Loyalhanna appears to have been known by that name before the arrival of Bouquet there in 1758, as is evidenced in many old records, and by the narrative of Capt. James Smith, and the

1 See Judge Vesch in Centenary Memorial, App. No. 4.

" A townabip in Fayette is called "German" because settled by the Germans.

" " Poems, etc." By Frank Cowan.

The "faithful daughter" story appeared on a placard inviting pleasure- seekers, in the interest of the Ligonier Valley Railroad, to go to Idle- wild. The leg-and-ear account was imparted to me in great confidence as an item of local information not nearly so generally known as its importance justified.

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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

narrative of John Mccullough. With Capt. Smith's narrative most readers are familiar; of Mccullough's not so much is popularly known.

John Mccullough was taken by the Indians in July, 1756, near Fort Louden, in York County. At that time he was quite young. He says' that the morning before they came to Fort Duquesne they came to Kee-ak-kshee-mannit-toos (Kiskiminetas), which signifies Cut Spirit,' an old town at the junction of La-el-han-neck, or Middle Creek, and Quin-nim- mough-koong, or Can-na-maugh (Conemaugh), or Otter Creek.'

Mccullough in his narrative divides the words into syllables, and labors to give the pronunciation as like as possible to that of the Indian. Thus wigwam he writes weik-a-waum, and tomahawk, tim-ma-keek- caD.

The name Loyalhanna is variously spelled by dif- ferent authors and in old papers, as there was no uni- form method of spelling proper names, and in the absence of any standard authority the writer made an effort to conform to the sound of the word.

Forbes in his letters and reports writes "Loyalhan- non." In Washington's correspondence in Sparks' it is written "Loyal Hanna." Smith in the narrative has " Loyal Hannah." Smollet in his continuation of Hume's "History of England" calls it the stream "which was called by the aborigines' the "Lyel An- ning." Some old warrants and surveys have " Lyel- anna" and "Lyel-anning." In Frederick Post's Second Journal (1758) it is "Loyal Hanning." In so late a publication as the "St. Clair Papers" its ancient name is reproduced as "Lyal henning."

Kiskiminetas, as we now have it, was an old Indian name. The stream is called by Conrad Weiser (1748) " Kis-ke-min-e-toes." He was good authority, for he was Indian interpreter for the colonial government. "Kickena-pawling Old Town," called by Post (1758) "Keck-kek-ne-pol-in," was the site of an Indian set- tlement at the junction of Stony Creek with the Conemaugh. On this site is now the city of Johns- town, Cambria Co., which got its name from Joseph Jahns, a hardy German, who settled there near a hun- dred years ago, and gave his name to the place, which the Welsh changed from Jahnstown to Johnstown. "Kis-ke-men-e-co" is also mentioned by Post (1758), as well as .by Mccullough, as an old Indian town, opposite the site of Saltsburg, but then lying waste.' These were Shawanese names and settlements. Among its many forms it has assumed these . " Kiskiminites," "Kiskimintes," "Kiskiomeanity," "Kiskaminetas."

1 See narrative in " Border Life."

" We confess ignorance of any such tutelary divinity among the abo- rigines, unless it was Indian for "Old Scratch."

" If there was anything in the phonetics of a language by which one could establish the motive of those people in naming places and objects, one might suspect that this region of the Conemaugh and Kiskimine- tas indiosted " the place of large and small bull-frogs."

" Rev. W. W. Woodend, D.D., a local historian and a scholar, in his centennial speech, delivered at Saltsburg, Indiana Co., 1876, says, " Even

Not less various, however, have been the forms in which Monongahela has appeared. In Washington's letter to Governor Hunter, 27th April, 1754, it is " Monongialo." In Scarroyady's address to the Pro- vincial Council (1755) it is " Minongelo." In Albach's "Annals of the West" there are two spellings,- "Monongiala" and " Mohongely." It was also some- times written " Mongolia," and many of the common people of Virginia corrupted it into " Monigehale," as they called Conococheague "Connikegig." The versatile Brackenridge has furnished the translation of several of the Indian names of the Western streams, sometimes with accuracy, and sometimes with a liberal poetic license. He says that Monongahela means falling-in banks or mouldering banks. Rather different, however, is the interpretation which is given by some other writers.

Writing of the derivation and the signification of these river names, Brackenridge says the word "Ohio" in some of the Indian languages means bloody, and, literally interpreted, the " River of Blood." As well established as is the fact that the name which the French gave it, " La Belle Rivière," has no affinity with the Indian name " Ohio," yet many persist in associating the meaning of the one name with the other. The Indian word "Ohio," whatever it orig- inally may have meant, certainly was not their word used for beautiful.' The word, in the language of, the Senecas, was " O-hee-yuh."

When Mccullough was taken prisoner by the In- dians, he narrates that when they came to the Alle- gheny River the Indian who claimed and adopted him took him by the hand and led him down to wash his white blood out in the water of the " Al-lee-ge- con-ning," as he writes it, and which he says signifies "the impression made by the foot of a human being ; for the reason, said they, that the land is so rich about it that a person cannot travel without leaving the mark of his feet."" According to Loskiel, the Alle- gheny was called by the Delawares, who inhabited the region about it, " Alligewisipo;" but the Iroquois, or Mingoes, regarding it as a continuation of the larger stream, called it the Ohio. Most authorities trace the name Allegheny to a designation of the mountains, previously known to that of the river. Some writers and geographers, yet observing a dis- tinction without a difference, write the last two syl- lables of the word which they use to designate the mountains "gha-ny," and the last two when they

the untutored aborigines of the country were not slow to discover the natural beauties and advantages of the place, and planted here amid the native forests one of their towns. Like its builders, every vestige of this ancient village has disappeared, and even its very name has been for- gotten."

This is ornate, but not correct. The name of the Shawanese Indian town still lives in the name of their river.

" We are inclined to believe that "Ohio," in some form, is part of " Youghiogheny."

" Quere. If this was the case, must not the Allegheny Mountains have been named after the stream and taken their name from it?

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NOMENCLATURE.

designate the river " ghe-ny." The spelling of the word varies now, and some good authorities write " Allegany," some "Allagany," and the same name for a county in New York is spelled differently in Pennsylvania. In the earlier documents it appears in sundry grotesque forms. We recall " Allegaening" in the "Message taken down by Edmund Cartlidge for Governor Thomas, April, 1780." 1

In some examples these earliest forms of the abo- riginal names are probably the most correct, for the reason they were written thus with the special pur- pose of retaining their Indian designations. . Thus it is asserted that Kittochtinny, the name of a famous landmark, a mountain, in one of the first purchases is more correct than Kittatiny, the name by which it was known on the deed to the whites; and that the Indians could not recognize it by the name which Penn's officers gave it. It is likely that "Cat-tan- yan," the name of the Indian village on the Alle- gheny River, as Smith in the narrative has it, ap- proaches the original more nearly than "Kittanning."

No name, however, appears to have so misled our predecessors, and those who had occasion to use the word in writing, as the spelling of the river " Youghio- gheny."

In the diary of a soldier who was in Braddock's army in the expedition in 1755, which diary is vol. 212 of the King's Library, London, it is spelled "Yoshio Geni.".

On Governor Pownell's map of the British Middle Colonies prior to the American Revolution it is spelled "Yochio Geni," and it would seem to have so designated a tribe of Indians about the lower por- tion of the stream, for when the river itself, or the creek, as he denominates it, is marked, as it is above Confluence or Turkey Foot, it is " Yaw-yaw-ganey," an orthography which savors faintly of a Teutonic original.' On this map Stewart's Crossings is called Stewart's Rift.

On a map in Ponchot's "Memoirs of the Late War in America," called Carte des Frontières Françoises, etc., it is spelled "Oxiogany."

In many of the earlier letters to and from the pro- vincial authorities, and particularly in George Cro- gan's letters to Governor Morris, 1755, it is spelled and written " Yohiogain." In Crogan's Journal, 1751, it is " Yogh-yo-gaine."

In a deed between some Indians and others and Capt. Henry Monton, H.M.S. (His Majesty's ser- vice), recorded in Bedford County, 10th September, 1772, it is spelled ".Yaughyagain."

A letter from Samuel Sackett (settled in Union- town, 1781, in 1778 removed to Georges Creek, Fay- ette Co., Pa.) published in the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, Oct. 26, 1880, is dated ".Shirtee (Chartier) Settlement, 'Yougang' County."

1 Bee Igle's " History of Pennsylvania," 319.

" Although this was in Socserset County it was before the Revolution.

Hildreth, in his "History of the United States," spells it " Youghiogeny."

Among the petitions to the earlier courts are the following various renderings: "Youghiagana," "You- gagany," "Youghiogeny." In the description of the first townships it is " Youghiogena."

A localism once obtained, which had its origin in convenience, if not in necessity. This was the naming of streams, which were at certain distances in partic- ular directions from prominent points. The streams which flowed into the Loyalhanna were designated as Two-Mile Run, Four-Mile Run, Nine-Mile Run, Twelve-Mile Run, Fourteen-Mile Run, and so on, because they were nearly those distances respectively from Fort Ligonier, and that either at where they flowed into the Loyalhanna or where they were crossed by the main road. A person who resided near one of these streams was then addressed on letter by the name of the stream, and he dated his letter under the same name. Thus St. Clair sometimes writes from Loyalhanna, William Proctor and Archibald Lochry from the Twelve-Mile Run. So, too, was this method of naming streams followed by the settlers along the Monongahela and the Youghiogheny.

It will probably be admitted without dissension that the aboriginal names of these streams, both in . sound and sense, are superior and preferable to the majority of the names of those designated by the practical first settlers. Of these we have Brush Creek, Bushy Run, Turtle Creek, Crooked, French, Mill, Tub, Pine, Stony, Redstone, Redbank, Crab, Goose, to which may be added the beautiful and ornate names of Whiskey, Tinker, Barren, Bloody, Roaring, Possum, Wild-Cat, and Hypocrite Runs.

The names given to streams and places by the first whites who named them were often done for conven- iency. Thus names of camping-places and of passes, of mountains and springs, had for the most part to be coined by the officers and soldiers who came out in the first expeditions, and most of those who kept jour- nals of their progresses, or diaries, or wrote letters while on their march, have, in the absence of certain authority, given different and original appellations to designate such places. In a journal of a soldier in Braddock's army, in the King's Library, before quoted, a small stream in their route is called "Thickety Run." Turkey Foot, sometimes called Crow Foot, as in Braddock's letter to: Governor Mor- ris, July 6, 1755, was an appropriate designation of the three streams which form the Youghiogheny, in Somerset County, and it was thus long known to the first settlers thereabout, and has been fixed in en- .during annals. It was thus named from a fancied resemblance. It is now known as Confluence. Cat- fish was the ancient name of Washington Town, and was derived from the name of a Delaware chief who had his home there. That whole settlement was known as the Catfish settlement. The creek which flows past the town is called Catfish Creek.

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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

Jacobs Creek, in Westmoreland County, is called for Capt. Jacobs, a noted Indian chief, who had his lodges and pappooses betimes near it. Jacobs Swamp was the designation of a large body of land in East Huntingdon township, about Rufisdale, and is the name by which a portion of the land was patented. This stream in Governor Pownell's map of the colonies, 1776, is called Salt-Lick Creek. This Capt. Jacobs is the same gentleman whose name was such a dreadful one to the frontier settlers after Brad- dock's defeat, who headed more than one marauding excursion, and who figured in the capture of Kittan- ning by Col. Armstrong in 1756.'

The names by which some of the older landmarks and settlements were known to the first settlers have been in later times changed and altered. This has been done sometimes by corrupting them in an invol- untary manner, sometimes by the common consent of those of the vicinage, and sometimes by legislative enactment. And in some instances it does not appear to have been done for the better, neither in the inter- est of good taste nor with a spirit of veneration, which, if it is apparent in a people at all, is apparent in a pride in and an attachment to old names for the asso- ciation of ideas, and which must necessarily belong to the names of old places.

In some instances the beautiful and appropriate names given by the Indians have been abandoned, and in their stead have been substituted the names of cities, of mountains, and of divinities of the heathen mythology. And these we now use to designate rail- road stations, post-offices, ferries, and cross-road vil- lages. What shameless taste, partaking of effrontery, did it evidence to substitute Logan's Ferry to desig- nate the crossing of the Allegheny River for the In- dian name Pucketo, and to call a thrifty businces town, noted chiefly for its trade in lumber, after that mountain in Greece sacred to one of the Muses, Par- nassus. So, too, we now have Apollo for Johnson's, which was itself a bad name for Kiskimineto. Then we have Bethany, which was long used for the name of a village whose chief claim to notoriety was in the whiskey distillery then in operation within its sacred precincta, and Lycippus, the name of a celebrated sculptor of antiquity, for a post-office on a spur of the Chestnut Ridge, a name wholly inappropriate to the locality, and which has suffered beyond endurance at the hands, or rather .mouths, of an unappreciative populace, who by a concatenation between words and ideas are forever associating it with a certain scorbutic disease, calling it Erysipelas, and, more horrid still, Lycippius. Neither is there any congruity in calling

1 This heroic personage might have been to the Indians a "great chist," but as a "captain" he was one of Doll Tearsheet's kind. The body of the Indian killed there was identified by a pair of long military boots which he hed on, and which had belonged to Lieut. Alexander. He could not escape with them on, and was siain in trying to get them of. At that time he was not in " good standing." He was a small man. There was, however, another Capt. Jacobs, probably bis son.

one suburb of Greensburg Mudtown, and another Paradise; one suburb.of Mount Pleasant, Texas, and another, Bunker Hill.

It was a custom of the Land Office to designate tracts of land in the patents from the State by certain and several names. If this subject should be followed up it would be a diversion enjoyable. Thus a tract of land near the Ridge Church, in Mount Pleasant town- ship, upon which Mr. Isaac Smail has been boring for oil, is called "Shakespeare." The lands of the Bene- dictine monastery of St. Vincent, wherein are the cloisters of the celibates, was patented under the name of "Sportsman's Hall."

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History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 107

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor Publication date: Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
Publication date:
Publisher:
Number of Pages: