History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 40

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
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USA > Pennsylvania > Westmoreland County > History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men > Part 40

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. HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

last century. Homer compares the life of the race of men in its fleetness to the swiftly-flying shuttle, and Virgil metaphorically says that the "alender thread of life was drawn out from the spindles of the Fates." Milton, in that mournfulest pastoral in English litera- ture, in which he embalms the memory of the shep- herd Lycidas, compares life to the finest and alea-

derest of threads ; for when hard-won fame thinks to , ness of the thread determined the quality of the

break out into sudden blaze, alas !

"Comes the blind Fury with the abborred cheers And olite the thin ngàn life."

The allusion to flax in some of the processes of its facture runs, in fact, all through our English world of letters; it is mixed with the dry nomenclature of the law, in the statutes and in the Institutes. Fal- staff's men at Coventry stole all the linen off the hedges; and who can forget the melody of Shake- speare in his happiest mood,-

" When shepherds pipe ou caten straws, And merry larks are plowmen's clocks, When turtles call, and reoka, and dawn, And maidens bleach their summer cmsocks."

Franklin preferred the sound of the spinning-wheel to any music he knew of; thousands call its droning sound from the "empty halls of memory," for in these things all are alike, the prince and the peasant.

" Verse sweetene toll, however rode the sound; All at ber work the village maiden dings, Nor ce che tarme the giddy wheel around, Revolves the cad vicissitude of things."1

Perhaps the organ sounds better outside the church than in it; at any rate, with us spinning is well-nigh a lost art, and the famous music of the wheel might grate on our ears like wretched scrannel pipes, "like

1 80 in "The Courtship of Miles Standish" we recollect of Priscilla, " the beautiful Puritan maiden," and John Alden, be holding the skein while she untangles it, and in to doing touches his hands, "sending electrical thrills through every nerve of his body."

80 also in "Evangeline" is it a frequent subject. One of the most beautiful pictures in that greatest of American poeme is that of the Acadian village in the summer ovenings,-

" There in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the wunest Lighted the village street and gilded the vanes on the chimneys, Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white cips and in kirties Scarlet and blue and green, with distans spinning the golden Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within doors Mingled their sound with the whirr of the wheels and the songs of the maidens."

Touching the antiquity of this subject it Is now established that it was cultivated before history was written. Dr. Oswald Heer, the emi- nent botanist, and one who has devoted much attention to the structure and history of fossil plants, has lately published an article upon flax and Its culture among the ancients, especially the prehistoric races of Europe. The substance of his memoir may be summarized as follows: First, flax was cultivated in Egypt and in Asia Minor at least five thou- sand years ago, and in Greece in the prehistoric period. Second, it is also met with in the oldest Swiss lacustrine villages, while at the same time no hemp nor fabrics manufactured from wool are there to be found. As the sheep was one of the oldest domestic animals, this is considered re- markable. Third, the lake-dwellers probably received their flax from Southern Europe. The original home of the cultivated flax was there- fore along the shores of the Mediterranean. The Egyptians probably cultivated it, and from them its use was doubtlees disseminated.

sweet bells jangled out of tune." But the grand- mothers of the best families of the Republic were tanght in their day to spin and weave, to knit and sew, as they were taught to bake and cook. You will remember of the mother and of the wife of Wash- ington.

But when the tow was span into threads, the fine- cloth. The cloth was woven on looms. Not every family possessed a loom, and it was not until the country was well settled, and till the wants increased, that weaving was followed as a regular business. 80 the banks of tow and the cuts of wool were carried by the good man to the neighbor who was prepared to work it. The weaver generally took his pay in toll, keeping a part for his labor. The cloth made from flax was more durable than that made from wool, but was not so warm, to remedy which a mixture of tow and wool was made for winter wear, from whence we have the odd name of linsey-woolsey. The manufac- turing of wool was of a simpler process, and with it we are perhaps more familiar. The producing of wool was carly attended to, although under great and many disadvantages. The chief trouble was to protect the sheep from wolves and bears, and the young lambs from foxes. But with all this they, persevering under untold difficulties, at last saw themselves more com- fortably fixed when, at the beginning of winter, they had a large bale of washed and combed wool stowed in a corner of the mystical cock-loft.

Wool-cards were at one time so scarce, especially during the heat of the war, that they were furnished in some localities at the expense of the State. But later the wool was sent to the carding-machine to be converted into rolls. The rolls were spun, colored, and woven into lye-colored or blue and red cross- bars for the women's wear, or into white or colored cloths for blankets and men's wear.' The fulling- mills were cheap, rude affairs set on some stream. Here the blankets were scoured and made soft, and the cloth was fulled and colored. Dyeing cloth was afterwards a trade by itself." The first machines for converting wool into rolls were about Greensburg, and at as early a date there was one at Jones' Mill. In 1807 there were two of these improved machines at the county town, and the importance of the manu- facture was made apparent, and the superior advan- tages of machine-carding set forth in a series of stand- ing advertisements in the Farmer's Register of that date. The price for carding wool into rolls was ton cents per pound; for mixing different colors, twelve and one-half; for breaking, five cents. About the same time a mill was erected in North Huntingdon township on Robinson's Creek. Whilst almost every

" A cheap dye-stuff was made of new-mowa bay and of onion-peels, or of walnut-hulls.

" There was a conspicuous advertisement in the old papers by which the dyers announced their business, vis. : " All trades must live, and some must dye."

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farmer's house had a spinning-wheel and reel, every third or fourth house had a loom.

Modern machinery has done away with the primi- tive method of working up the wool and flax. In- stead of the lonely matron plying her endless task by the flickering tallow-dip throughout the misty winter nights, now a thousand hooks and fingers grasp the flying threads and weave them in endless sheets of handsome textile fabrics. The combing, the carding, the fulling, the dyeing are all done by silent, dumb hands. While the manufacture of flax has been revolutionized, the manufacture of wool has been developed and perfected.

There is a short saying sprung from the days of homespun clothing, which saying yet obtains among quite a number of the common people of Chestnut Ridge and through the Valley, and which indeed has not been confined to only this locality, but has ex- tended out and found its way into the slang vocabu- lary of polite society and even into print. Although the idea had existed in different shape, and now exists in different shape, yet the origin of this expression has been so definitely fixed, and it is so plainly trace- able to a particular occasion, and on such good au- thority that we cannot forbear mentioning of it here. Then, in the days when spinsters were truly spinsters, when those virgins that lived in single blessedness to good old age, and beguiled their leisure, not like "Mariana in the 'moated grange," but rather like vir- tuous Queen Catherine at the wheel, there lived at the foot of Laurel Hill, in Ligonier Valley, one Betsy Geiger, who did the spinning and weaving, as far as she was able, for the whole-neighborhood. Among her customers was a man named McGinnis, who brought to her his quota of wool and flax with orders to have the stripes of the cloth diversified in a pattern peculiar to a fancy of his own. The cloth was duly made in alternate checkers of copperas-colored wool and "snow-white under-linen," after the commonly received pattern and fashion. When McGinnis called for the stuff and saw it he would not take it. He ex- pected, no doubt, as it was supposed, on some such frivolous excuse to get it at a loss to the spinster. But an action was forthwith instituted before a justice of the peace to recover justice for the piece, and that the complainant might have peace. Brought face to face before the squire, the magistrate demanded of the defendant, "What is your reason for not taking this stuff off the hands of this honest woman, the plaintiff?" His reply, addressed to the plaintiff,-we may presume with some Dogberry in it,-was ready and quick, "It isn't the right stripe, Betty, it isn't the right stripe." The word, taken up and carried from mouth to mouth, is now used chiefly to describe the character of such a man as he who involuntarily brought it into use.

The dress and costumes of the early settlers were an admixture of a civilized and a half-civilized de- scription. The Indians approached the whites, and

the whites met them half-way. The Indians gained all, and the whites lost a part. The hunting-shirt of the men, the most universal dress for a long time, was a frockish coat which fitted tightly about the waist and shoulders, while the skirt was allowed to reach to the knees. The sleeves were large and roomy, and the lappels on the front were allowed to extend almost the distance of a foot on either side, and were made to button. A heavy cape hung down the back, and all the borders were decorated with a fringe of ravellings of different colors. The material was linsey-wool- sey, a name which the early people gave, as we have said, to an admixture of stuff whose component parts were tow or flax and wool; that is, linen-woolen. Often, however, this hunting-shirt was of doeskin, which, if well tanned, would last almost a lifetime. In the bosom of the coat were carried bread, jerk, or tow. The tomahawk or hatchet was fastened to the belt on the right side, and the knife in a sheath to the left. Breeches were the universal dress for the legs, and these mostly were made of buckskin. Yellow (or the natural color) and black were the favorite colors, and these were worn by ministers, attorneys, militia colonels, such indeed as assumed to the quality class. These wore shoes with buckles in the summer, and in the winter high-topped boots, sometimes of raw-hide, and sometimes faced with high-colored cloth. The common people had nothing but moccasins, which were made of a single piece of leather or untanned deerskin. The seam was along the top, and they reached above the ankle.

- When at length it became fashionable for men to dress in cloth, the people being poor many inconven- iences were suffered. It might be called pride, but we do not know whether it exactly is pride. This, however, is a fact of history : When the first court opened at Catfish,-that is, Washington,-in 1781, a citizen, who as a magistrate was compelled to attend, had to borrow a pair of leather breeches from a re- spectable neighbor, who himself had been summoned as a grand juror, but who from this interposition had to stay at home.1 As many as nineteen grooms are known to have been married in the same blue coat with brass buttons; and this for hire, or generous loan.' Such an addition was a striking feature, and on the same principle a very old gentleman, in de- scribing the appearance of Col. Christopher Truby, said that he had "red-topped boots, and wore his hair in a black silk bag."

We have the description of the dress of the gentle- man of a later period from a fortunate circumstance. It is old, but we trust it will bear repetition. here. President Dunlap, of Cannonsburg Academy, had a son called Joe, who was on intimate terms with old "Cardinal" McMillan. The doctor, meeting the young scapegrace, said, " Joe, can you tell me the dif- ference between you and the devil ?" Joe answered,

1 Old Redstone.

* Centenary Memorial.

---

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in reply, that the devil wears a cocked hat, a low flapped doublet, a coat of Continental cut, breeches and shoes with knee- and shoe-buckles, and I wear pantaloons and clothing of modern style: he de- scribed the doctor. The old gentleman was loth to change in anything, in even his drees, and he wore his cocked hat and shoe-buckles long after others had laid theirs away. Innovations were harsh to him. He insulted Colonel Morgan because his family rode to church in a kind of cariole, and seeing a woman who first used the convenience of an umbrella during = rain, asked what that woman was doing with her pet- ticoat on a stick. He, however, was not alone in his ignorance of the use of, to us, such an indispensable article, for when Alexander Craig was one day car- rying an umbrella, which had been presented to his mother by a gentleman of Philadelphia, to meeting at Congruity Church, a good old elder, after vainly sur- mising what the queer thing could be, accosted Craig with, " Es that the thing ye survey the lan' wi'?"

The head-drees of the men was usually a besver or wool hat. These were made by hand, and were so lasting that the heir was never out of the hope of a small share, at least, of his father's personal estate.

We presume that no fashion-writer in a lady's mag- azine would attempt to describe the attire of a lady under, say two pages octavo, nonpareil, while perhaps twenty lines would be sufficient in which to describe the dress of a gentleman. We shall be compelled, from our dearth of words and sparsity of ideas, to re- verse the order without apology.

The universal dress of the women of our early times was a short gown and a petticoat; the material was linsey-woolsey in summer and all wool in winter. Their head-dress was, especially when they traveled or went to town, the same as the men's, that is, a beaver or wool hat. Sometimes a colored handker- chief was curiously tied over the head. A smaller home-made linen handkerchief, tied so that the one point came down from the neck between the shoul- ders, was a quite common extravagance of vanity at parties or at church. Perhaps the majority of the ancient matrons went barefoot in summer; in win- ter they wore moccasins, overshoes, or shoe-packs. The better-off sort, who brought their goods with them or had them sent from the East, sometimes wore silk stockings. Among the articles stolen by the Indians from one of the houses at Hannastown at the time of its destruction was a silk dress.1 Forty years after the first settlements of the county, silk, among the ladies of the gentry, was the dress. Dimity was highly in favor with those who were able, and of it were made gowns, aprons, and caps. The fashionable ladies of the town of Greensburg between 1800 and 1812, when they danced in the ball-rooms of the public-houses or helped to make the audience before the graduating class of the academy, wore silk gowns fitted tightly

to the body and arms, the sleeves buttoned to the el- bows, had high-heeled shoes, had their hair powdered, and their faces stuck over with black square bits of court-plaster.

It was not, relatively, until a late period that calico became a common or every-day drees for women. For many years after the date which corresponds with our first settlements calico was regarded as an expensive fabric. The manufacture of calico by a system of hand-spinning had originated in England not more than a hundred years before that, and there, during our Revolution, the only place it was manu- factured, it was so heavily taxed that it was out of the reach of the poor. At the close of the century in Europe it was neither cheap nor common. It was not till some time after the invention of the spinning- jenny by Arkwright that it came into use at all among the common people. In our county at one time after the war of Eighteen-Twelve calico was one dollar a yard, then, about 1826, it fell to thirty and forty centa, and later rose to fifty. When it took fifty pounds of butter and two barrels of eggs to get a chintz-pattern wrapper, it was nothing to hide away, and we can pardon the vanity which bung such articles of apparel up to public inspection at the head of the bed, not far from the horse-gears.

CHAPTER XXXII. BEARS, DEER, WOLVES, ETC.

Fruits and Berries-Game-Maple-Bager and Molasses-Depredations of the Bears-How they were trapped and killed-Mitchell shoots & Bear on . Ganday-Wolves, and Adventures with them-Moorhead and Kelly-Christian Shockey attacked at Night by Wolves, climbs a Tree sod awaits till Morning-Premium for Wolf-Bowipe-Deer-Hunting- Venison used instead of Beef-Squirrele-Birds and Wild Fowl-Peste of the Farmer-Game Laws, and Premiums ofered by Law at Different Times for destroying Animals and Birde-Farming the Chief Depend- ence and Occupation of the People-How Farming in General wes carried on.

THE woods at that time produced many fruits which are now known to us but as luxuries. Besides blackberries and whortleberries, which attained to double the size we now see them and of a correspond- ing lusciousness, there grew wild plums and baws in such quantities that the ground in places lay covered with them. The peach, sheltered from the frost by the protecting forests, found a kindly soil, and on the new land produced regularly a good crop, in like manner the cherry and the hardier species of apple, while of fox-grapes and chicken-grapes a large quan- tity was allowed to waste yearly for want of using. The sugar-tree, a species of maple indigenous to our soil, grew thickly on the eastern slopes of the hills and in the valleys. To secure the sap of the tree and render it into sugar and syrup was an easy matter, for the Indians themselves, knowing the saccharine quali- ties of this fluid, could, with the use of pails to carry it, and of kettles to boil it, manufacture their sugary

1 See notes to chapter on the Destruction of Hannastown.

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molasses, into which they dipped their pieces of bear- meat and venison.

In the early spring when the sap was beginning to ascend from the roots, the tree was tapped by chop- ping into its trunk with a hatchet or by boring a hole into it with an auger. Under the vents were fixed long and hollow reeds, through which, as the sun warmed the bark of the tree, the sap dropped, trick- ling to the bark troughs or hollow vessels beneath. When the vessels were filled they were carried to the kettles, which during the sugar-making season were kept boiling day and night. The sugar-water boiled to a certain consistence was the syrup ; boiled till it lost all fluid properties and dried it was the sugar. In after-years, within our.recollection, it has become an article of commerce, and at this day, in some dis- tricts, its manufacture is pursued as one of the most remunerative branches of husbandry, and as a com- modity in the trade of a great commercial and manu- facturing people, has proved a profitable one for labor and invested capital. But until the facilities of transportation were enlarged it was known only as a necessary article of food and not as a delicacy:

It was not only on the scanty product of the fields that the settler depended for subsistence and support. It was nothing unusual for him to be out of corn or rye-bread for days together. Simple and as neces- sary as meal bread is in civilization to both the rich and poor, to the merchant and the mechanic, yet bread has a very different standard in enlightened and far- advanced societies than it has in a sparsely-settled community, in a new country abounding in game and prolific in the spontaneous production of the woods. It is therefore true that bread might not be absolutely needful to grown-up men and rugged boys used to many hardships, and these could do without it, to let the little they had, in trying times, go as far as it would for the younger children and for more delicate women in a watchful state. If the little stock of meal had dwindled down before the snow fell, blockading all the paths to the settlement, the rest was cherished and used more as a precious medicine than as a great staple necessary for the nourishment of the body.

But at times the chief source of dependence for the family was in the trusty rifle of the father. Every man was presumed to know how to use a gun. Every boy looked forward to the time when he would be the owner of a brand-new one. The rifle was to the am- bitious young man of the early settlements what the fast scrub was to his grandsons. To the father it was that which above all things helped to supplement the labor of his hands. The country was overrun with game. This to the Indians had not been a kindly hunting-ground. They could, in passing through it, get enough wild meat to subsist on, and by going more to the northward secure sufficient to do them well through the winter; but the great and prolific fields where elk, bear, and buffalo abounded, and where

deer came in droves to the salt-licks, were farther to- wards the setting sun. The game common to the western parts and native to the clime was therefore allowed to increase undisturbed till the forests re- maining became filled. Of these animals the black and brown bear were common, and especially so along the chain of ridges in the southern part of Westmoreland and in the valley and hills betwixt Somerset and Fayette. These were indeed so numer- ous, and that within the recollection of persons still living, that in the severity of the winter season they would approach the cabin, and from the pens and stables drag off the sheep and calves. Charles Mit- chell, who had located upon the right bank of the Loyalhanna, eight miles from Ligonier, saw, in the early time, a bear of enormous size seize a well-grown hog in the field near his house, carry it off, swim the creek with it, and deposit it behind a rock, over which he scraped leaves. The bear was not killed because that it was the Sabbath-day, a day which he, follow- ing the teaching of his church, held sacred from things of a secular nature. All the settlements till the close of the century suffered from depredations such as this. Stray bears coming into Ligonier Val- ley, drawn down by hunger, were killed as late as 1837. Up to 1820 and 1825, in the mountain ranges next to Fayette, many small farmers subsisted through the winter on bear-meat, allowed to be preferable to venison. It is said to be jucier, and many considered it better than beef. It is certain that bear-meat was, with deer-meat, one of the necessaries. The bears were usually hunted with dogs. On being closely pursued they climbed a tree, from which they were shot. Sometimes they were caught in steel traps, and sometimes secured in pens made of stout logs and closed by a dead-fall. But so great is their restless- ness under confinement that it is averred they often regained their liberty before the hunter got around by gnawing their paws loose from the jaws of the steel trap. It was not unusual to tame the cubs and rear them about the house.

Besides this it was no trouble at any time to kill deer. These animals were so plentiful that to know their regular paths and the country over which they crossed was enough knowledge of hunting for a good marksman to get at least a few during the season. But deer-meat was not prepared for winter use as bear-meat was, for bear-meat, when salt could be pro- cured, was mostly put up like pork in pickle, but deer- meat was first frozen by exposure in the air and then dried, whence, after undergoing this process or its equivalent, being dried over a slow fire, it was called "jerk," that is, dried meat.

As to smaller animals used for food, there were rac- coons, ground-hogs, rabbits, and squirrels in abun- dance. Seldom, unless for a change, were these hunted; and if ammunition was scarce they were looked upon as unprofitable. Squirrels especially were so numerous they were a pest to the farmer, and a stand -.

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ing bounty was set upon their scalps to encourage their destruction. All these were more usually caught in traps by the boys, or hunted with dogs. The num- ber of squirrels killed in earlier times was amazing. When hunts were gotten up with the intention of bag- ging these there were often above a hundred killed in a single day by one good marksman. The shooting of them in great numbers was therefore more as a trial of skill than as a profitable day's work. The hunter, after securing a favorable place, waited for the squir- rels to pass along, and without removing he generally shot as many as he wished. Rifles were used, and the game was either shot in the head or barked, as they called it, which was when the ball passed between the squirrel and the bark of the limb upon which it was lying. Wild turkeys of large size fed in droves, and pheasants (or grouse), partridges, and wild pigeons that came in, innumerable flocks from the warm South, might all have been designated as domestic fowl.

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History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 40

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

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