History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 12

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
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It was entenlated that about the year 1750 not less than from three to four hundred felons were annually sout into Maryland. These went Iy the general name of " I ish." The sinful part of the burden of the Whi - key Insurrection has been put Upon their shoulders, but with what Justice let the facts of history decide.

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HISTORY OF . WESTMORELAND COUNTY. PENNSYLVANIA.

considered by most Irishmen as the most signal de- feat Irishinen ever sustained. Neither has the patri- otism of the descendants of those warriors been re- garded as of any national honor. Not all the glamour and the love which attached to the name of Stuart could draw them when on a foreign soil to take sides with their hereditary king. The son of that heredi- tary king, remembering Derry and the Boyne, fixed his last hopes on the Highlanders of Scotland, and these with their wild battle-cries followed the Pre- tender down from Holyrood to Preston Pans. And this strange antipathy has extended and has followed them everywhere. The Scotch-Irish were not beloved in a broad national sense by either the thoroughbred Scot or the pure Irishman. There was as wide a barrier between an Arthur St. Clair and a William Findley as between a Duncan Ferguson and a Teague O'Regan.1 .

The Scotch-Irish before leaving Ireland stood in the peculiar relation of a people who had lost all national obligation. They had no national history and no national poetry. For them Burns did not sing, nor did any wild Irish ballad, learned from the lips of an Irish mother, and full of the incense of patriotism and glory, linger in their hearts and in their ears in foreign lands. They brought with them no baby songs redolent of the shamrock and of the dewy meadows, of the banshees and the fairy lore of Erin. They lived in Ireland as the Hebrews lived in Egypt, and as the English Puritans lived in Holland. To the pure Irish the traditions of their hearthstones and the stories of their childhood are never forgotten to their dying day, and a sympathy ever yearns towards the people of their ancestral isle. The Scotch, whether on the banks of the Susquehanna or at Lucknow, are moved to tears at the pibroch and the half-barbaric chant of "Bonnie Doon." But the Scotch-Irish lost all sense and idea of nationality, and remembered Ireland only as their abiding-place, and in the stead of a national reverence and love sucked in with their mothers' milk, they with stoical firmness made an ideal of English literature and the English ideas of civil and personal freedom. Hence has arisen to a prominence what is most noticeable and is indeed admirable in their character,-inde- pendence in personal action and a predominance of practical notions of life. These principles and actions pervaded their whole being, and were the motives to all their acts.

It would be no difficult matter to prepare a pane- gyric or a lampoon on the characteristics of the Scotch-Irish. Both have been skillfully done. Among themselves they have always had those who cunningi, and adroitly and with much show of reason have been apt and ready to laud their ances- tors to the highest heaven ; among their enemies

(and of these they have had full share) there have always been some to pointedly show forth their fail- ings and to hold them up to ridicule. They have been attacked from all sides, but in these attacks they have not suffered. They were, in one word, detested by the Puritans of New England, by the Quakers, and by the Virginians. They could not fraternize with the Quakers any better than they could with the Pennsylvania "Dutch," whom they regarded with abhorrence.'

There was always, in the early settlement of the Province, a bitter feeling existing between the more peacenble of the people of Pennsylvania and the Scotch-Irish settlers. The policy of the Quakers and the Germans was a peaceable one ; that of the others was aggressive. It was said with some evi- dence of truth that these new-comers were the means, from their treatment of the Indians, of much hostil- ity on their part, and of the shedding of much inno- cent blood. The murderers of the Moravian Christian Indians at the Tuscararus, in 1782, were of the same nationality as the murderers of the Conestoga Indians at Conestoga (by the Paxtang boys) in 1768. Both of these slaughters were wantonly committed in cold blood upon defenseless and inoffensive natives, and this without regard to age or sex, and in notorious violation of all the usages of Christian and civilized people. So, too, did those do who murdered Logan's family, which led to the rising of the tribes and the border war of 1774. The wickedness and the dis- honor of these things will never be forgotten, nor shall they ever cease to shame the pages of Penn- sylvania's history as long as annals are written and the acts of men remembered."

Then, on the other hand, one writer says that " the descendants of these first Irish and Scotch, in what- ever district they may have cast their lot and fixed their stakes, are amongst the most prominent, virtu- ous, religious, active, useful, industrious, and enter- prising of the country."

The popular prejudice developed against these im- migrants, of which we have spoken, found popular expression. Even the deputies of the proprietarics became alarmed at the prospect of affairs touching this matter. To those in authority who had closely watched the changes making in the civil and domestic relations of certain portions of the Commonwealth it was the cause of remark and of comment. The provincial secretary, writing to the proprietaries, said

1 Two caricatures in " Modern Chivalry," one a pure Irishman, the other a pure Scotchman.

" Rupp, " Ilst. Cumberland County."

" Among those who along with the Quakers virnlently attacked these " lawless people" for the terrible act of the murder of the Conestoga Indians was Benjamin Franklin. In a pamphlet which he wrote and bad published, a dialogue therein between " Andrew Trueman" and " Thomas Zeulot" speaks of "Saunders Kent, an elder these thirty years, that gued to duty" (family worship) " just before the massacre, and while he " was mying grace ton pint of whisky a wild lad ran his gully [knife] through the wanie of a heathen man." . . . This pamphlet caused Franklin's defeat for the Assembly, in which he had held a seat for fourteen years.

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CUSTOMS, MORALS, AND MANNERS PRIOR TO THE ERECTION OF THE COUNTY. 47

it "looked as if all Ireland is to send all her inhabit- ants, for last week no less than six ships arrived, and every day two or three arrive also. The common fear is that they thus crowd where they are not wanted."

In some parts of the older-settled portion of the Province, particularly in the Cumberland Valley, then in York County, the Germans and the Irish came in contact with each other, and difficulties and dis- turbances rose among them. These feuds had as- sumed such a serious aspect in 1749 that the proprie- taries instructed their agents not to sell any more lands in York County to the Irish, but to offer induce- ments for them to settle in the north, or Kittatinny Valley. Many of these Irish left these settlements for others farther west before the Revolution, and after the Revolution many others followed.

What they wanted was land. They did not ask, as the sequel shows, who owned or claimed to own the land, whether Penn, or Dunmore, or Shingass. They never paid any regard to the claim of the Indians in the soil. If they did not at first actually keep the border in turmoil, which is hard to prove, they had the best motives and incentives for keeping it in an unsettled condition.

A characteristic of these Irish is demonstrated in their public political acts. These people cherished the teachings of civil and religious liberty more in these woods than did their brethren in Ireland, in Scotland, or in England. They were the first to take active measures in resisting the acts of the kingly viceroy of Virginia, and among the first to protest against the forced military tyranny of the British ministry. And as they were quick to speak and act against their mother-government, so when they had transferred their allegiance to the republic they did not venerate it above what they erroneously thought to be their inherent rights. For evidence, in short, to prove their overruling influence in the affairs of our part of the State up to the close of the last cen- tury one single instance is sufficient; for the Whiskey Insurrection of 1794 was attributed almost wholly to the " Irish" of Pittsburgh and the surrounding region in which that sedition arose. The Federalists of New England said they did not in the least envy such a community ; and the outspoken Oliver Walcott pointed to this civil commotion to further his oppo- sition to foreign immigration.1

1 The observations shaped In the text have been gathered from many sources. Of the many authorities which we have gone over, and which is not tainted with prejudice, is "The First Century of the Republic," by Hon. F. A. Walker.

CHAPTER IX.

CUSTOMS, MORALS, AND MANNERS PRIOR TO THE ERECTION OF THE COUNTY.

The German Settlers-Whence they Emigrated-In what they Differed from the Scotch-Irish-Their Manners, Habits, etc .- Their Belief in the Supernatural-The Mennoniats-Peculiarities of their Religious Be- lief-Relation of these First Settlers to the Civil Law and Procedure in Courts-The Customs and Laws which they Formulated-Effect of their Religions Belief on their Civil Society-Peculiarity of their Morais blended with their Manners-Southern Portion of the County being rapidly filled up compared with the Northern Portion-Ternis of Virginia Titles and terms of Penn's Titles-First Settlements north of the Conemaugh-Early Pittsburgh-Fort Pitt abandoned-Early Efforts of the Settlers to erect a New County after opening of the Pennsylvania Land Office-Bedford County erected.

IN point of numbers, next to the Scotch-Irish were the Germans; but in no place, with the exception of their settlement in Hempfield and in Huntingdon townships, had these collected so thickly as the former. This particular settlement, however, has retained the distinctive traits of its German origin even to our own day. The Germans lived more iso- lated than the Scotch-Irish, and they were found scattered all over the county, where effective traces of their presence are still to be discerned. If we compare the names of those of an undoubted German origin who signed the petitions to Governor Jchn Penn in 1774, we find that the German element in some districts, especially in the one to which we have alluded, predominated over the Irish element. And although these were always a strong body' in our county, yet, owing to their detached locations and their characteristics in not meddling in public affairs to the detriment or disparagement of their private interests, the whole controlling of affairs in the first years of our history was monopolized by the Scotch- Irish and the Americans of English descent. By and by these two elements began to coalesce, and towards the end of the Revolution there were at the head of county affairs, along with Cook and Jack, Huffnagle and Truby.

The German settlers of Westmoreland were not all of them emigrants from Germany. The major part of them were descendants of settlers in the eastern portion of the Province. These were the Pennsylva- nia Dutch, a people formed by the admixture of the Germans and the Dutch of the Netherlands with Americans and with other foreigners. These spoke a language which differed as much from pure German as the German language differs from the English. Their characteristics were sobriety, economy, plainness, and honesty. They hastened to progress slowly. They devoted themselves chiefly to agriculture, while the Irish was the first to open taverns, erect mills, manu- facture whiskey, and speculate in land. It is notice- able how passive the German settlers were during the times of the troubles arising out of the claims of the two States, of which we shall hereafter speak. This passivity may, however, he reconciled when we re- call the friendly terms On which the Virginians and

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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

the Germans were from the time the Ohio Company extended the benefits of their privileges to them.

We have spoken of some of the characteristics of the Irish, but to the presence of these Germans do we owe most of those pleasing delusions which make childhood to many so regrettable. The stories of ghosts and goblins, of haunted spots, and of Kriss- Kingles are now all but dispelled,-the shrill whistle of the locomotive has scared them off; " the interest- ing race has emigrated,"-but their descendants in some remote parts vet, from generation to generation, treasure them, and the father transmits to the son the legends that held his boyhood.

The opposition to innovation which was noticed by Tacitus in their ancestors in the woods of old Ger- many may yet be seen in their offspring. In that age-we mean the early Westmoreland age-many houses had horseshoes nailed to the lintels of the doors to protect the inmates from the power of witches. Brimstone was burnt to keep them from the hen-coop, and the breastbone of a chicken put in a little bag and hung round the necks of the chil- dren to ward off the whooping-cough. Horse-nails were carried for good luck, and beaux hunted for four-leaved clovers to get their sweethearts to look upon them favorably. A broth made from dried fox- lungs was given to patients suffering with a consump- tion, and carrying the rattles of a rattlesnake which had been killed without biting itself would cure the headache and protect from sunstroke. Old women were even blamed for riding the unbroken colts at night, and more than one person incurred displeasure because his neighbor's rye was worse blasted than his own. Many years after the Indians were beyond the Ohio the belated countryman heard faintly the dis- tant war-whoop, the sound of drums and fifes came through the stormy nights from the old block-houses, and many believed that treasure of English coin and battle implements were hidden along the scarcely discernible track made before the Revolution.

These Germans were among the first in our county to establish schools for the instruction and catechisa- tion of the young. Some of their first teachers were from Germany, and it was owing to the instruction which these children received in their schools that the use of the German language has been so long re- tained as a vehicle of religious instruction, and until a time when the intrinsic utility of it in our county was questionable.

There was a sect of people who settled early in Westmoreland County, but not in such numbers as to be of influence till rather later than the time of which we are writing. This sect has ever stood pecu- liar to itself. It cannot be said that those who be- longed to it were distinct from the Dutch as regards

nationality and language, but they were distinct from the rest in the matter of their religious views. They were, strictly speaking, a religious society, amen- able to the civil statutes, but governed by laws of their own. There were the Mennonists. Although the Mennonists are not identical with the Omish or the Dunkards, they are usually regarded as the same. Touching their religious views, the Mennonists are a Baptist rect, taking their name from Menno Simonis (born 1495). They reject infant baptism, refuse to take oaths, decline military service, and practice feet. washing. Their polity being congregational, they settle in communities. They originated in Holland, and some of them came into Pennsylvania in the year that Penn made his first settlement. They kept pro- pressing towards the West, and in 1735 there were some five hundred families in Lancaster County. The Omish take their name by corruption from Jacob Amen. They describe themselves rigid Mennonists, but adhere to the decrees of the Council of Dort, which did not sit till fifty-seven years after the death of Menne. Dunkards take their name from the Ger- than name tanken, " to dip." These hold Saturday as their Sabbath. They are all Baptist sects. They are opposed to war upon any pretext. The strongest community of the Mennonists was on Jacobs Creek, and in the southern part of the county,? while the Dunkards were in number the strongest between the Chestnut Ridge and Laurel Hill, in the southern part of Ligonier Valley. Dunkard Creek takes its name from these people. Some of the earliest of these who ventured into Western Virginia and Fayette County fell victims to the savages. Among the traditional annals preserved by descendants of the earliest set- tlers was one where, at a Dunkard meeting, the In- dians made an onslaught. The men received the blows of the tomahawk upon their heads without re- sistance, praying upon their knees, -a figure, if not of such historical authenticity, yet as grand as that of the Romay senators, who, with their white beards and ivory staves, sitting in their curule chairs in the Forum, accepted death from the barbarian Gauls iu the time of Camillus.

Although some Mennonists came out quite carly, especially in Fayette, next the line of Westmoreland, there was no community till some time after. But as they were early settlers, and as their descendants have left most prominent marks of their thrift, their energy, their economy, and their citizenship within our county, we cannot well pass over without alluding to them here.

The remark would now be apt that these settlers at first were, in their nationalities, a mixture of mongrels. In the same sense the ancestors of the English, of the Romans, of the Greeks were mongrels.

1 " Die alten Fabelwessen, sind nicht mehr, Das reizende Geschlecht ist ausgewandert."

- Wallenstein.

: East Huntingdon township is at present the sent of the only com- munity of Mennonists in the county which has a church and a pastor. The Rect is on the decl.ne. See history of East Huntingdon town- ship, i / a.

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CUSTOMS, MORALS, AND MANNERS PRIOR TO THE ERECTION OF THE COUNTY. 49

As regards their relation to the civil authority and with each other, the situation of these all was rather peculiar. As it was impossible for them to go so far east as Cumberland, where the courts were held until the establishing of Bedford, in 1771, and as they were cut off' to a great extent from the effective control of the laws, they, in consequence, shaped a law to them- selves, which answered, to all ordinary intents, if not so well, yet quite as effective as the civil statutes. These customs extended to embrace the very title to land, for it was not possible that the land of any settler could be laid out in such metes and bounds or pro- tected by such fences as would not allow of infringe- ment or trespass on the part of his neighbor. Rules were thus established unknown to the rules by which lands are holden in any other part. But chiefly did these customs embrace the system by which society is held together. They were, in truth, at this time with- out any law in this premises, only the law of which they were the makers. And of these customs which ob- tained there is nothing more apparent than that they were founded upon a strict moral and conscientious code, and were but the preservation and the perpetu- ation, under unfavorable circumstances, of the laws of civil society which had grown up under a long series of legal enactments and in immemorial usage. It is true that in ordinary instances of trespass the aggrieved party took the law into his own hands, and, without any refining casuistry, we incidentally allude to the fact that it was part of the lex unscripta for every man to take care of himself. In taking the law for a redress of grievances into their own hands, we are apt to look for a vivid demonstration of the law of retaliation,-" an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." But the world well knows that the inhabitants of these northern, sterile, and chilly climates are not, in their fierce passions, to be compared with the inhabitants of the South. Their temperament did not partake of assassination, torture, and murder. Now and then a vindictive and savage nature was found, but if an act was perpetrated by such a retribution was sure. A robber, a slanderer, a villifier was condignly and per- emptorily punished; not, indeed, in the way he might reasonably expect, by a hidden shot, by waylaying, by a dagger-thrust in the dark, but he always found it expedient to leave the country or to hide himself from the face of other men as one attainted and shunned. There are well-attested instances where men who, in the heat of passion, having done what they should have been sorry for, left, in utter abhorrence, the very fields their labor had cleared, and never after returned. This methol of ostracism was commoner than we at this day are apt to suppose. And it was natural that a course of common law and usage should obtain where there was no regular method of pro- cedure from the want of courts. The standing of these early settlers was in this respect peculiar, as was the status of all modern colonies, and is of those colonies who leave a highly enlightened state. They

nearly all had been brought up under the English law, either in the old country or under the colonial system. They therefore had not to grope their way from' a state of rude civilization to a state in which law is established by the force of precedent. These men knew their inherent rights as well as any men living. Having been bred under law and order, they brought with them enough of their system to meet the wants of such a rude state. And the very want of courts, which was at first experienced, helped as much as other causes to give a high moral tone to all actions arising in their personal relation. The obliga- tion of law, in truth, rested upon all, and this when, to a great extent, there was no law. This is a strongly marked peculiarity of the civilization brought into these wilds. In this respect the woods of America were sacred to republican institutions; there were no lordlings and no serfs. The consideration of this sub- ject may be far carried, but it may safely be asserted that the authority of the people, as a people, was transcended and firmly grounded into custom long before the fathers of the republic ventured to pro- claim to the world the establishment of a democratic form of government.

This manner of life had, in time, an effect upon the morals of the people, as the morals of the people had an effect upon their manner of life. Shut out, as many of them were for years, from connection with any visible church, they did not become less godly. A singular combination of Christian (or meligious) and philosophical (or worldly ) morality was the result. Touching this subject these facts are observable, that although they, as a general thing, in their religious observances conformed specially to a veneration of the Sabbath day, they did not pay much attention to the rites and ceremonies of established religion as these are usually regarded by those people who pro- fess a strict Christianity. Their graveyards were little lots hedged in in one corner of a field or nook of the woods. Many died without the consolations of religion. Many were suffered to grow to manhood and to die in their beds without baptism. This, of course, has reference to the earliest settlers, and those who, in the more troublous time after, lived detached from the rest. For it is a matter of interest, in con- templating the advance of these people, to notice how sedulous they were to have a Christian teacher among them, and how, under many difficulties, they labored for the instruction of their children. Without en- tering at all on any polemical observations, and re- garding them from an independent stand-point, we may say that there was never so philosophical a Christianity taught or enforced, and followed, as by these men. Locke's theory was here made practical. With their Calvinistic ideas of predestination, election, and free will, these faced death with less dismay than many whose lives had been devoted to the practice of all the Christian duties. The Cromwellian spirit was predominant; and it was not an uncommon thing to

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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

see a red-faced, sandy-haired hunter, under the influ- ence of spirits, quote Scripture, and be ready the next minute to defend his argument with his fista, or, as we would conventionally say, " put a head upon" his neighbor. Such a one would, when later the mis- sionary supplies came round, once or twice in the year, take up his position under a tree in the woods, and sit for three hours without moving a muscle, lis- tening to long prayers, prosy psalms, and endless ser- mons. In these remarks we do not, we are sure, paint highly, but rather with a sparing hand show faintly what we believe the truth, with due regard to them, to our neighbor, and to ourselves. Such were the great majority of the early settlers of our county, such their characteristics, and such is a shadowy out- line of the moral and social standing in the time im- inediately preceding and embracing the formation of our county.

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History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 12

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

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