History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 52

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
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ROUTE OF THE ARMY ON THEIR RETURN.

" The army will make a short movessent from Pittsburgh on Tuesday, the 18th. The line of march to be taken up the next day. The follow- ing are the stations allotted for each day's march :

Ist day's march to Hellman's, from Pittsburgh ............ 15

9d, to Dutobman's, two miles west of Greensburg .. 14

Sd, to Nine-Mile Run (Youngstown) ........................ 11

4th, two miles cast of Ligoaler ....

8th, Wells' r., foot Laurel Fi .......

6th, Biony Creek, two miles E.

7th, Ryan's ...

8th, Bedford.

9th, Crossings of the Raystown Branch of the Juniatt ...

10th, E. side of Bideling Hill

11th, Burd's, Fort Lyttleten.

12th, Stradeborg ..... ...

13th, Shippensburg.

14th, Carlisle ......

List of persons excepted from pardon by terms of Governor Lee's proclamation, 29th November, 1794:

Benjamin Parkinson.

Daniel Hamilton.

Jobn Holcroft.

William Miller.

Thomas Lapsley. Edward Wright.

Edward Cook. David Bradford.

Richard Holcroft.

Alexander Fulton.

John Mitchell. William Bradford.

Thomas Spier.

William HADDe.

George Parker.

Thomas Hughes.

Edward Magner, Jr.

Ebeneser Gallagher.

David Look.

John-Shields.

Peter Lyle.

William Mellhenny.

William Hay.

Stephenson Jeok.

Thomas Patton.

Patrick Jack.

Arthur Gardner.

Andrew Highlands.

Of the State of Pennsylvania.

William Sutherland.

William Mckinley.

Robert Stephenson. John Moore.

John McCormick.

Of Ohio County, in the State of Virgule.

" As the army returned through Westmoreland two arrests were made in the southern extremity of that country and one in the neighboring parts of Fayette; they were taken to Philadelphia. . . . One of the two prisoners from Westmoreland was found guilty of setting fre to the house of Wells, the collector, and condemned to be banged, but was afterwards reprieved and then pardoned by the President. He was a very ignorant man, said to be of an outrageous temper, and subject to occasional fits of insanity."-Brackenridge's History of the Insurrection.

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WILLIAM FINDLEY.

John Mitchell was the man who robbed the Pitts- burgh mail, and who was convicted and sentenced to be hanged. He was also reprieved and pardoned by the President.

It is a curious circumstance that the two persons who were regularly tried and sentenced to death, the one for arson and the other for robbing the mail and murder, should have both committed the crimes with- in the county of Westmoreland. It was right that they should be pardoned from their punishment when we consider the enormity of the offenses, their mag- nitude, and their number, which for a full season were perpetrated without punishment in the other · portions of the official survey, growing out of the same occasion.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. WILLIAM FINDLEY.

William Findley, the First Member of Congress from Westmoreland -- His Colleague in the Commission to the President of the United States at the Time of the Whiskey Insurrection, David Redick-His Account of his Early Life and his Motives in settling in Pennsylvania-His Set- tlement in the Octorara Settlement and his Efforts to remove the Obli- gations of the Scotch Covenanters in Matters Civil-His Early Advau- tages-His Opinions on Slavery-Elected Member of the Assembly, of the Council of Censors, Member of the Constitutional Convention of 1790, and Member of Congress-" Modern Chivalry" and Findley Caricatured-His Views on the Federal Constitution-His Answer to Rev. Samuel B. Wylie's Strictures on the American Constitutions- His Account of the Publication and Statements of his " History of the Insurrection"-Antagonism of Brackenridge and Findley-Their Po- litical Opposition and Personal Dislikes of each other-Findley's Con- tributions to the Register-His Shrewdness and Sagacity as a Poli- tician-Debasement of the Politics of that Day-Instances of Personal and Party Abuse-Other work of Findley-His Industry-His Best- dence-Its Location-His Death and Grave-His Appearance and Dress-His Neighbors-His Family-His identification with the Whis- key Insurrection, and the important part he acted in it.

OF the Westmorelanders who were identified with the insurrection, William Findley is the most con- spicuous. He was at that time the member of Con- gress from this district, and his influence and stand- ing are evident from the fact that he with Redick was sent after the meeting at Parkinson's to explain to the President the state of affairs in the western counties, and to arrange a plan by which, if possible, there could be a mutual understanding without the intervention of the army. David Redick, the col- league of Findley, was a native of Ireland, and was by profession a lawyer. He was admitted to the Washington County bar in 1782. In 1786 he was elected a member of the Supreme Executive Council, and in 1788 was chosen vice-president of Pennsyl- vania. He held other offices of trust, and at the time of the insurrection took an active and prominent part in defense of law, order, and the constitution.

William Findley was born in the north of Ireland in 1741 or 1742, and came to Pennsylvania in 1763. He was a descendant of one of the old signers of the Solemn League and Covenant in Scotland, and another

of his ancestors bore a prominent part in the memor- able siege of Derry in Ireland. The family was thus Scotch-Irish, and sprang from among those whom the persecutions in Scotland under James the Second impelled to seek shelter elsewhere. It was his first intention to go to Carolina, whither many of his father's countrymen had gone, but he changed his mind, and coming to Pennsylvania a mere lad, made one of that famous Octorara settlement, whose his- tory appears to be the pride of all those who in any way are connected with it. He here early brought himself to notice among these "new American cove- nanters." He says that the motives which impelled him to come to Pennsylvania in preference to going to Carolina were those which arose out of the ques- tion of slavery. He had some scruples of the con- science about this matter, and even at that young age considered both the moral and political effects of slavery on the country. He therefore chose to hold his own plow and reap his own grain here rather than raise a family where slavery prevailed. He deter- mined to have no slaves, and never had any ; but he protests that he ever once thought of consigning to perdition, on moral or political grounds, those patri- archs and patriots who held slaves. He defended the course the government of the United States took with regard to the evil, and was apprehensive, as late as 1812, that total abolition in this country would lead to the same results which manumission had led to in Santo Domingo.1 In this religious community he

1 Findley's views on slavery appear to be paradoxical, but they may be reconciled. In his remarkable essay, "Observations, etc.," he mays, " Before I had a house of my own, I resided in some families, and very pious families too, who held a number of slaves, and was very intimate in others; and I was myself then opposed to slavery, as I have been ever dince; but I did not, like the author [Dr. Wylie], oppose it with slander and declamation, but with such views as I had of expediency, and of the moral law and the gospel. I was, however, powerfully combatted with the judicial law, the examples of the patriarchs, and of the ancient civil- ized nations; nor was the curse on Cain forgotten" (p. 236). This whole chapter from which we have taken the above extract is an apology for the institution of slavery as it existed in Pennsylvania. One other ex- tract is pertinent : "But the author [Dr. Wylie] mentions a certain 'portion of them [slaves] being doomed to hopeless bondage' I deny the charge; at least, as far as it relates to Pennsylvania, it is an infamous slander. No law of the State has doomed any man or class of men to hopeless bondage. There were, indeed, slaves in Pennsylvania under the English government. Those being already by law the property of their owners, the Legislature could not interfere more than they could do with real estates. Such interference would have been an ex post facto law,-a law made after the act was done. The principle is abhorrent both to the laws of God and man."

Mr. Findley's notions, however, would seem to have undergone a change if the record is any evidence thereof:

" August Sessions, 1817.

"ANN FINDLEY .- On the petition of Matthew Jack, of the County of Westmoreland, stating that by Indenture duly executed and bearing date the 9th day of March, A.D. 1799, Ann Findley, a female negro, was in due form bound as a servant to William Findley, Esquire, to serve the said William Findley, his oxecutors, or assigns from the date of the said Indenture for and during the term of nineteen years then next en- suing. And the said William Findloy by assignment executed the 2nd day of April, A.D. 1816, did assign and transfer all his right, title, and claim to the said Ann Findley unto the petitioner agreeably to the said Indenture. That the said Ann Findley being a single woman during the time of her servitude did commit fornication, and was pregnant

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advanced more liberal ideas than had been advanced or even entertained before, and he refused to answer in public, questions of a secular and temporal nature which were interspersed with questions of a religious or spiritual nature, and which he, as a lay officer of the church, was necessitated to answer and to propound. He helped by this and other reasonable innovations to break the traditional obligations which some wanted to make as binding in America as in Scotland.

While he was under his father's roof, he had the advantage of a larger library of books on church his- tory and divinity than was possessed by most of his neighbors. He says that he had also been taught to ' read the Bible, and that he had inclined to some books on ancient history.1 The evidence of his application and taste is seen in his subsequent productions, be- cause it was not possible for him, for a length of time after he came to America, to devote himself studiously to literary pursuita.

. When the' Revolution commenced he took sides with his adopted country and served in the army. He rose to the rank of captain, and he is so desig- nated in some of the old records. About the close of the war, 1782, he came into Westmoreland, and bought the farm upon which he resided until his death. He could not pay for his farm at once, but he was strong-armed, young, and willing to work. His farm, now a beautiful and valuable tract between Latrobe and St. Vincent's, through which the Penn- sylvania Railroad passes, had then been just opened out, and more than four-fifths of it was covered with bushes, briers, and swamp-growth. He was a weaver by trade, and he set up his loom in one of the low rooms of his first log cabin, and it remained there till the house was demolished. The community around him was, in religious preference, Presbyterian, and in no long time he was one of the chief members of the church body, a prominent layman, and for many years an elder. Nor was he less prominent in politi- cal affairs. He was a born leader, and had from the first not only the confidence of the most substantial citizens of his district, but obtained and held an as- cendency over the common people which was relaxed only with his death. He was, before he had been here any length of time, elected to the Assembly, and was a colleague of Brackenridge there. He was one of the Council of Censors during all the sittings of the board. In this body he voted invariably against

with and delivered of three bastard children within the time of her cald servitude, one of whom within the period of her servitude with the said petitioner. By reason whereof he has sustained great loes and damage, and praying the Court to order and direct that the maid Ann Findley serve the said petitioner such further time beyond the term in the afore- said Indenture mentioned as the Court might think fit and sufficient to compensate the petitioner for the loss and damage which he sustained as aforesaid. The Court upon due proof and consideration of the premises do adjudge and order that the said Ann Findley do serve the said peti- tioner, Matthew Jack, for the term of eighteen months from and after the expiration of the term of nineteen years in the said petition men- tioned."

1 " Observationa, etc.," p. 284.

the party which professed Federalism, and his vote at all times is found upon the opposite list from 8t. Clair's, who sat as a censor from Philadelphia. This board sat from November the 10th, 1788, until the Constitution of 1790 was adopted. Findley, with William Todd as his colleague, represented West- moreland in the Constitutional Convention of 1789-90. In the Convention he introduced a resolution, which he hoped to become a law under the Constitution, to educate the poor gratis.

In 1791 he was elected to Congress from the West- moreland district, and he sat in the House antil 1799, and then, after an interval of two terms, from 1808 to 1817. Some of his old friends say that be would have been returned to this time had he lived. In Congress his political enemies said he was inconsistent, but such was his tact that his constituents never forsook him. He always managed to come out on the side of the people, not only in the matter of his opposition to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, but in the far more serious matter to him and to them of the Whiskey Insurrection, and in the handling of the causes which brought about the war of 1812. He was something of a fluent talker, but not much of a public speaker ; his strength lay in the power with which he controlled the people, by going to them while they were at work in the field, treating them to a glam of grog, and giving a push at a house-raising. He sel- dom, indeed, spoke at public meetings, but none could plan a public meeting or control the ends of one better than he, whence Brackenridge fails not to call him a demagogue, one who temporized with the pop- ulace, and who would descend to anything for the sake of the " sweet voices of. the people." Party lines were not drawn so finely then as they were somewhat later, and although after the adoption of the Consti- tution he and Brackenridge were of the same political cast in all essentials, yet neither of them was of the material to follow the other; each of them must be a leader. We can' coolly appreciate the feeling with which a man of the temperament, the learning, and the aspiration of Brackenridge, who lately adorned the Supreme Bench with his legal acumen and his phi- losophy, could look upon a man like Findley, who was self-educated, and used all' his life to associate with the commonest kind of common people. In the volu- bility of his language and the keennees of his wit Brackenridge had the advantage. He has told us in "Modern Chivalry" the kind of popularity Findley longed for and sought after. The character of " Mr. Traddle" at the cross-roads, where the people were collected to fill an occasional vacancy, is intended for Findley. He has a sling at him all through the book. Among the reasons which Capt. Farrago gives for not voting for Traddle, the popular candidate, is this, that he does not object to him " because he is a weaver, but because he is nothing else but a weaver.""

" As a curiosity in literature, and lest no other opportunity should offer to give an extract from this rare book," Modern Chivalry," to con-

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WILLIAM FINDLEY.

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The use of the word demagogue is in our day used interchangeably with the word politician. . It is thus that it is sometimes hard to discriminate, and admit- ting the distinction we cannot sometimes see the dif- ference. ' Findley was a consummate politician, and something more than a mere puller of threads and a disentangler of skeins. He helped to shape political opinion here as much possibly as any other man in Western Pennsylvania in his day, and as a politician was more effective out of Congress than in it. He had a large personal acquaintance, and his manners were such as to make him a favorite in a democracy. Besides this, he had the sympathy and the influence of the strongest church organization in the country at that day. The Scotch-Irish swore by Findley.

The parties of Federal and anti-Federal, strictly speaking, ended with the adoption of the Federal Constitution, although the name itself which distin- guished them was used long after there was any necessity for the distinction which brought it into use, and when in truth the distinction was on account of different causes altogether from those which gave rise to that party appellation. The original elements

vey an idea of the satire therein to those'to whom it is not accessible, we give the following, which is near the close of the book, the char- acter of "Traddle" itself being introduced very early therein:

"On the third day, renewing their journey, the conversation between the captain and his servant turned on the character and history of the present revenue officer, the late Teague O'Reagan. The captain gave Duncan a relation of what had happened in the case of the attempt to draw him off to the Philosophical Society, to induce him to preach, and even to take a seat in the Legislature of the United States; that had it not been for a certain Traddle, s weaver, whom they had been fortunate enough to substitute for him, the people would most undoubtedly have elected Teague and sent him to Congress.

""Guld deliver usl' said Duncan; 'do they make Parliament men o' weavers i' this kintra ? In Scotland it maun be a duke or a laird that can hao a seat there.'

"" This is a republic, Duncan,' said the captain, 'and the rights of man are understood and exercised by the people.'

"' And if he could be i' the Congress, why did you let him be a ganger ?' said Duncan.

""This is all the prejudice of education, Duncan,' said the captain. 'An appointment in the revenue, or any other under the executive of the United States, ought not to have disgrace attached to it in the pop- ular opinion, not even in the case of the hangman, for it is a necessary, and ought to be held a sacred, duty.'

""I dinos ken how it is,' said Duncan, 'but I see they hae everything tail foremost in this kintra to what they hae in Scotland,-a gauger a gentleman, weavers in the Legislature, and even the bangman re- spectit.'

"Just at this instant was heard by the wayside the gingling of a loom in a small calin with a window towards the road. It entered the head of Duncan rather indiscreetly to expostulate with the weaver, and to know why it was that he also did not attain a seat in some public body. Advancing to the orifice, as it might be called, he applied his mouth and bespoke him es he sat upon the loom thus: 'Traddle,' said he, giving him the same name that the captain had given the other, 'why is it that ye sit here, treading these twa stecks, and playing wi' your elbows as you throw the thread, when there is one o' your occupation not far off that is now a member of the house o' lords, or commons, in America, and is gane to the Congress o' the United States? Canna you get yoursel elected? or is it because ye dinna offer that ye are left behind in this manner? Ye should be striving, man, while guid posts are garing, and no be sitting there wi' your hurdies on a beam. Dinna your neighbours gie ye a vote? Ye should get a chapin o' whiskey, man, and drink till them, and gar them vote, or, Je should gae out and talk politics and mak speeches.'"

of these parties became commingled after having been disturbed, and some of the most violent opponents of the Constitution before it was adopted took their stand in support of it when it was adopted, while such as Madison and Brackenridge united with Gal- latin and Findley in condemning some of the most prominent measures of the first administration. The feelings which actuated this opposition (which ap- pears to have been the strongest from those who were born outside of America), was the fear that that in- strument was too republican in its nature; that the people would have so much liberty that in a little time through anarchy they would have none, and that a constitution less democratic, and modeled closer after that of England, would be more durable and less liable to be broken. Findley even published a work in which he vindicated the American consti- tutions. This work, called "Observations on the Two Sons of Oil," was an answer to the illiberal strictures of the Rev. Samuel B. Wylie, who, in his holy zeal in a work under that title, took occasion to propagate the false doctrine that the written consti- tutions of these States did not prohibit the viola- tion of the laws of God, and who asserted that be- cause the Church and the State were not united the people were[not answerable to the moral law, and that the nation was a nation of infidels, in which, in short, he grossly misrepresented the government of the State and of the United States, while professing his " slippery titled" book to be a commentary on the symbolical vision of the prophecy of Zechariah. Findley, being a prominent churchman, was picked upon as the person to answer the charges of the rev- erend gentleman. He applied himself laboriously to the task, and brought to bear all his polemical as well as his political knowledge. He took the position that the Church and the State were separate institutions; the one divine and the other human. His answer swelled out to a volume of nearly four hundred pages. He is somewhat prolix, and at times a little stupid, but he goes through a wide range, and supports his assertions and statements by numerous quotations from, and references to, the writers of church history, both modern and patristic, and by texts from the Scriptures.

Findley's "History of the Insurrection" has been quoted by nearly every general and local historian who has written. upon that subject. But his treatise, on the whole, was written but to give a partial view of the matter, and as an apology for his own share in it, as was Brackenridge's account, who thought it worth while to recount the affair at large to illustrate and explain his own peculiar course. Findley's ac- count was not in all particulars correct, so his con- temporaries said, and he himself afterwards acknowl- edged that in some matters he had been misinformed, and in others he had relied on vague reports. In writing"that history he delayed the work for a year after he had commenced it, in order, as he says, to

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obtain correct information, and having in the mesa time consulted Addison, Hamilton, Redick, Irvine, and others, yet after it was published he found that it was in detail not correct as he intended it should be. A new editor was proposed for a new and corrected edition. Hamilton Rowan, a respectable Irish refu- gee, while in this country proposed to have it printed in Ireland, where it could be done cheaper at that time than in this country.' The author, in revising it, found that his informers had been mistaken or misinformed in some things, and that he must make considerable alteration respecting the conduct of par- ticular persons, such as Addison and Roes. The cor- rections were sent with the copy, but the ship was taken at sea and both lost, and he himself lost the notes of revision. There was only one edition of the "History" printed, and copies are now scarce, the few extant being in the possession of various historical societies, of bibliopolists, or in the State library.

: This work is undoubtedly the most substantial and important one he wrote, and treating as it did of a political subject, and giving the views of one of the most active participants in that great civil disturb- ance, it could not but be a work to which the atten- tion of many should be directed. It has been quoted and drawn upon by eminent legal and historical writers, such as Wharton and Hildreth ; while, on the other hand, it has been assailed with virulence by the political opponents of the author, and ridiculed by the New England Federalists. "Shall we match Joel Barlow," exclaimed Fisher Ames, indignantly, "against Homer and Hesiod? Can Thomas Paine contend against Plato? or could Findley's history of his own (Whiskey) insurrection vie with Sallust's narrative of Catiline ?"

Touching the criticisms and the attacks his book received, all of his adversaries are free to admit that in the statement of facts he would not knowingly deviate from truth, but they assert that his prejudices were strong, and that his personal enmity biased his judgment.'

Findley and Brackenridge were very bitterly op- posed to each other. In the matter of substantial gain. and advantage, Findley probably had the best of Brackenridge; but now that they and their gen-

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History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 52

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

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