History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 56

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 56

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Judgment was confessed upon the O'Harra bond in August, 1803, and the sheriff, Alexander Johnston, Esq., soon after, by the orders of O'Harra through

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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

Mr. Ross, his attorney, levied upon all the property, but no sales were made until June, 1808. The tract of land, upon which were the mansion house, grist- mill, and furnace, was sold for four thousand dollars, although at the time it was rented out at three thou- sand dollars per annum. The last tract was sold Oct. 15, 1810.

Previous to this a nameless, heartless wretch-a Shylock of a neighbor-had bought up all his due- bills, brought suit upon each one separately, and on them sold all his goods and chattels. They took everything from him they could get, and left him only one bed and bedding, a few books of his English and classical library (among which was his favorite Horace), and a bust of John Paul Jones, which had been sent to him by Jones himself from Paris, and which he prized highly.

In his days of adversity the Assembly of Pennsyl- vania pensioned him with a small amount, which in 1817, the year before his death, was increased to fifty dollars a month. Congress, the year of his death, passed au act anowing him sixty dollars a month, and dated it back one year. Of this he got not one cent, for greedy creditors were watching, and it was attached before it left the fingers of the treasurer. Had it not been for the little he got from the State of Pennsylvania, and what he received through charity, he would not have had enough to relieve the pangs of hunger.

INTERIOR OF ST. CLAIR'S HOUSE.

The last period of his life is a period not pleasing to contemplate. After he was turned out of house and home he removed to the summit of Chestnut Ridge, and there lived in a log house alongside the old State road. The cabin stood on a barren and rocky piece of land which his son Daniel, who had saved some little money, bought as an asylum for his old father and family. Here, to nurse life a little longer, to keep his family together, to care for his wife, now hurt in intellect, and to get coarse bread for his dependent flock of children and grandchildren,

he kept tavern for the entertainment of the traveling public.1 His hereditary disease (the gout) afflicted him greatly so that his declining days were as full of misery as of grief.

But the lack of bread was of all his ills the least.' Poverty of itself is no disgrace, and to men like him who had given all for others, and who found no one to give him anything, it is a crown of glory though of thorns, around which rests an aureola of never- ending radiance. There is a text in the Holy Scrip- tures which reads, " At two things my heart is grieved : a man of war fainting through poverty ; and a man of sense despised."" There were those who mocked and jeered at the Samson now shorn of his locks,- these were the asses who came and kicked their heels into the face of the dying lion,-mean, brainless, in- sulting men, who in their cups sang ditties within his hearing which charged him with the death of those who had fallen in battle, and still more worthless curs who charged him to his face with cowardice." . But no one who was capable of appreciating nobleness, and who could instinctively recognize true manhood, ever stepped beneath his lowly roof without recog- nizing himself to be in the presence of a gentleman, a scholar, a soldier, a statesman, a patriot.5 Nowhere

1 Arthur St. Clair was recommended for tavern licenses, Jan. 24, 1814.

We may say here, in passing, the Westmoreland court records show among other things that in 1793 (June 11th), St. Clair gave his recogni- zance for the appearance of some defendants in court. Aug. 30, 1793, his name is at the head of a petition for a road, which being granted the order was lifted in September, 1794, by " Gen. St. Clair." These show that he was in Westmoreland at those dates.

2 In his justly admired letter of thanks to the ladies of New York, who had sent him four hundred dollars, which letter is dated "Chestnut Ridge, 4th March, 1813," is this paragraph : "To soothe affliction is certainly a happy privilege, and it is the appropriate privilege of the fair sex, and nobly have the ladies of New York exercised it; and though I feel all I can feel for the relief brought to myself, their at- tention to my daughters touches me the most. Had I not met with distress I should not have, perhaps, known their worth. Though all their prospects in life (and they were once very flattering) have been blasted, not a sigh, not a murmur has been allowed to escape them in my presence, and all their pains have been directed to rendering my re- verses less affecting to me, and yet I can truly testify that it is entirely on their account that my situation ever gave me one moment's pain." 3 Ecclesiasticus, xxvi., 25, 26 .- Douay Edition.

4 The ballad of St. Clair's defeat was in the early part of this century very popular in Western Pennsylvania. I have heard from old persons that there were some drunken, abandoned creatures who took especial delight in singing at it when St. Clair was in Youngstown or in Ligo- nier. One verse was this :

"'Twas on the fourth day of November in the year of ninety-one, We had a sore engagement near to Fort Jefferson ;

St. Clair was our commander, which may well remembered be, For we lost nine hundred men in the Western Ter-ri-to-ree."

Several versions of this ballad s'ill exist, and there are two preserved in Dr. Frank Cowan's " Poems and Ballads," etc.

" The biographer of Gen. Lewis Case, quoted in " Life and Public Ser- vices," etc., p. 252, refers to Cass' acquaintance with St. Clair, and thus describes him : " Gen. St. Clair was a most interesting relic of the Revo- lutionary period; tall, erect, though advanced in years, well educated, gentlemanly, thoroughly acquainted with the world, and abounding in anecdotes descriptive of the men and scenes he bad encountered in his eventful career. Lewis Cass saw him for the last time some years before his death in a rude cabin, supporting himself by selling supplies to the

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ARTHUR ST. CLAIR."

and at no time and under no circumstance did the superior manhood of the man appear to better ad- vantage. Here he forgot that the country had taken from him the best years of his life, and after having taken and appropriated his services and his money when it was needy and helpless, refused to recom- pense him now that it was able and strong. He even forgot himself, and of all those whose names were subscribed to the institution of the Order of the Cincinnati, of which he was president for the State of Pennsylvania, none could so appropriate the motto which encircled the medallion on the breast of the eagle of their decoration, " Omnia relinguit servare rempublicam."

At length this life, of which want, neglect, con- tumely, ingratitude and injustice, domestic inquietude and disease so largely made a part, drew to a close. On the 30th of August, 1818, as he was coming down the road from his home to Youngstown, at the foot of the ridge, driving his pony in a rough, jolting wagon, by some means he fell or was thrown out on the ground. The road was rough and very abrupt, and as the turn- pike had lately been opened this road was suffered to fall into neglect. When he was found he was insen- sible. His pony had moved no great distance. He was taken home and cared for ; but he never gained consciousness, and on the next day the great soul, overladen with unutterable woe and misery, was at rest for evermore.1

From a copy of the Register which contains the

wagoners who traveled the road, one of the most striking instances of the mutations which chequer life."

The following reminiscence is taken from the celebrated letter of Hon. Elisha Whittlesey to Hon. Richard Brodhead, chairman of the Committee of Claims United States Senate. Mr. Whittlesey, by the way, was the first representative of the Ashtabula District in Ohio in Con- grees, the Garfield district. Until Mr. Garfield ceased to represent that district it had but three representatives, Mr. Whittlesey, Mr. Joshua Gid- dinga, and Mr. Garfield.

He says, "In 1815 three persons and myself performed a journey from Ohio to Connecticut on horseback in the month of May. Having under- derstood that Gen. St. Clair kept a small tavern on Chestnut Ridge, eight miles east of Greensburg, or the distance may have been greater, I proposed that we stop at his house and spend the night. He had no grain for our horses, and after spending an hour with him in the most agrecable and interesting conversation respecting his early knowledge of the Northwestern Territory, we took our leave of him with deep regret.

"I never was in the presence of a man that caused me to feel the same degree of veneration and esteem. He wore a citizen's dress of black of the Revolution; his hair clubbed and powdered. When we entered he arose with dignity and received us most courteously. His dwelling was a common double log house of the western country, that · neighborhood would roll up in an afternoon. Chestnut Ridge was bleak and barren. There lived the friend and confidant of Washington, the ex-Governor of the fairest portion of creation. It was in the neigh- borbood, if not in the view, of a large estate at Ligonier that he owned at the commencement of the Revolution, and which, as I have at times understood, was sacrificed to promote the success of the Revolution. Poverty did not cause him to lose self-respect ; and were he now living his personal appearance would command universal admiration." This reminiscence was written May 16, 1856.

1 When I was quite a boy I often spoke with the old lady who found him on the roadside. She, with another woman, were going out for berries when they came upon him. Her name was Susan Steinbarger.

proceedings of the meetings at Greensburg we obtain the following:

" When, therefore, the news of the death of the general reached Greensburg, the inhabitants of the town, who held his services and his character in high regard, met in a public meeting at the court-house; James Brady, Esq., was called to preside, and Richard Coulter, Esq., was selected as secretary. At the meeting the following resolutions were unanimously adopted :

"'Resolved, That the wishes of the corporation and citizens of Greene- burg that the remains of the late Maj .- Gen. Arthur Saint Clair may be interred in the burying-ground in said place be respectfully commani- cated to the family of the deceased.

" Resolved, That the following gentlemen be a committee of arraugt- ment to superintend the funeral, if the family of the deceased consent to the removal of the remains, Dr. James Postlewaithe, A. W. Foster, John Reed, Simon Drum, Jr., John H. Wise, George Armstrong, Daniel Maclean, and Richard Coulter.

"JAMES BRADY, Chairman.

" RICHARD COULTER, Sec."

The following letter was sent to Mrs. Louisa Robb, the eldest daughter of the general :

" GREENSBURG, August Slet, 1818.

" MADAM :

" In obedience to the resolution of the corporation and citizens of Greensburg, we beg leave respectfully to present to the family of Gen. St. Clair their condolence at the melancholy event of his death. Deal- rous to express some small token of respect for the memory of a man whose name is conspicuous on the page of our history as one of the heroes who achieved our independence, we are directed to obtain per- mission from the family that the body of our lamented friend may be deposited near us.

" Mr. Drum will have all necessary arrangements made at Youngstown, in unison with those which are preparing here, to do bonor for the occe- sion.

" We are, Madam, respectfully (digmed by the Committee of Arrangement).

" Mas. Louza Bom."

In addition to the prompt action taken by the citi- zens of the borough, arrangements had also been made both at Ligonier and at Unity burying-ground, with the expectation that the remains would be laid at one or the other of these places,' but the consent of the family was finally obtained to have them rest in the graveyard of the Presbyterian congregation at Greensburg.

The committee went to the home of the deceased and accompanied the remains. The funeral was re- ceived about a mile from town by the Greensburg Volunteers, commanded by Col. Ely Coulter, and the Masonic lodge joined the procession on the road about half a mile out. The procession halted in the

" The article, in addition to this, gives a biographical sketch of St. Clair, which, we may remark, has furnished the substantial material for every sketch which we have yet met with. That part of it was copied entire und submitted as an original contribution to Morris & Willis' Now York Mirror, under the heading of "American Biography," and from thence copied extensively into other periodicals. Although the article is scholarly and elegant, yet in some essentials it is defective, and in some statements, as later research has shown, not exact.

" Hamlet. "It is not very strange, for my uncle is King of Denmark, and those that would make mouths at him while my father lived give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little. 'Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out."-Hamlet, Act III. 8. 2.

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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

square in the middle of the town, where the family were assisted out of their conveyances, and from here all on foot walked to the grave in the following order : military, by the left, with arms and its colors reversed and drums muffled; citizens generally ; committee of arrangement; judges; clergy ; coffin containing the remains, with six pall-bearers on each side; relations; officers of the Revolutionary army ; corporation of the borough. The body was interred with the rites of the Masonic brotherhood. The monument over

.... ...

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MONUMENT OF ARTHUR ST. CLAIR.

his grave was erected some years later by the same fraternity, and the inscription upon it is perhaps the most appropriate one ever yet carved upon granite over any servant of the republic.1

1 The inscription on the north side :

" THIS STONE is erected over the bones of their DEPARTED BROTHER, by members of the MASONIC SOCIETY, resident in this vicinity."

Thus much of the public life and services of this distinguished citizen. It has been truly said that the afflicting spectacle of his last days melts the heart with sorrow. Perhaps there was not a prominent character of the Revolutionary period, with the ex- ception of Morris, that gave so much of his life and service and means to the cause of America as did St. Clair, and there was none, with that exception, who was so poorly and so meanly recompensed. It is true that he died poor, but in such poverty there was no shame. "It is true, it is a pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true." A man with a superior education and the in- stinets of a gentleman, a companion and associate of Lafayette, of Steuben, of Hamilton, and of Washing- ton, and a sharer of their glory, a general-in-chief of the army and a president of Congress, closing his life in neglected solitude! The commencement of the Revolution found him in affluent circumstances, in the vigor of manhood, rising with the destiny of the young Commonwealth, and when his race was run, his course finished, he found himself old and poor, an outcast, at the mercy of men more heartless than wolves, on the summit of the ridge as cold and as desolating as the gratitude of his country, within sight of his former home,-his home ?- his home no more, for it too was sold over his head to pay the debt incurred for the liberty of the States. He spoke know- ingly who, seeing him as he passed by, was reminded of the Roman exile's reply, "Tell the citizens of Rome that you saw Caius Marius sitting among the ruins of Carthage."

In his social life, before it was saddened, he is said to have felt the tender sympathies of our nature to the fullest extent. His conversation was instructive and interesting, enlivened by wit and embellished with science. His manners never underwent a change, and although age had its power over his body, it could not disturb the, high breeding or change the habit of his manners. On meeting a person, as old ones remember, he would bow low in his saddle, and always raise his hat on passing a woman. In his lat- ter days he was given to reflection, to which his exile and loneliness were in a measure conducive. He was often seen walking with his hands behind his back, a posture natural to the great Napoleon when at St. Helena, and to Themistocles when at Argos. He

The inscription on the south side :

" THE

Earthly Remains of Major-General ARTHUR ST. CLAIR are deposited

beneath this humble monument, which is Erected to supply the place of a nobler one due from his country. He died August 31st, 1818, in the 84th year of his age."

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ARTHUR ST. CLAIR.

would sit for hours together at the table of the back room of the village tavern, absent in thought, appar- ently lost to the present, and seeing only the past or into the future. He came down almost daily to the village, which was but 'a few miles from his house. Here he frequently met Findley, the member of Congress from our district, and the most popular pol- itician of his day, and these would talk together, having a time over their glass of punch in the low bar-room of Skyle's tavern. He usually rode upon a small gray horse, but sometimes in a heavy, low- wheeled, wooden-axled carriage. He is described by persons who recollect him as being a tall man, square shouldered, cleanly shaved, his cheek-bones very prominent, and with a certain dignity of carriage and address. He was no longer erect, but there was no mistaking the military bearing of the man.

As an officer he must have been fine-looking and commanding. As ensign he is described as tall, graceful, dignified, with chesnut hair, handsome blue eyes, and blond complexion, master of all the accom- plishments of the drawing-room, including the art of entertaining conversation. His portrait in oil, taken at a late date, in the Continental uniform, may now be seen in Independence Hall, Philadelphia.

In considering the character of St. Clair there are two incidents which recur to us and illustrate a phase of his character better perhaps than an array of words. When Robert Hanna was using his influ- ence to have his settlement made the abiding-place of justice for the new county, he stopped on his way to the East at St. Clair's house. St. Clair, then the agent of the Penns, taking the opportunity offered to send a communication to the Council, wrote a letter to President Shippen, wherein he stated that it was owing to Hanna's influence and personal interests that he controlled the other trustees to fix on his set- tlement as the county-seat. "I beg you will excuse inaccuracies," so he writes, "as I write in the greatest hurry, Mr. Hanna holding his horse while I write."

The next incident occurred long after. St. Clair and Findley met together once when the former was well-nigh shelterless and the latter one of the most prominent men of his day. Findley inadvertently, and perhaps through sympathy, said, "I pity your case, general, and heartily sympathize with you;" whereupon the old warrior straightening himself up, with his eyes flashing the fire they were wont to when the bugles blared and the men fell into line, replied, "I am sorry, sir, that I cannot appreciate your sym- pathy."

The death of St. Clair, surrounded as it was by so many circumstances of neglect, was a fit occasion for writers of the old school to dwell on the romanticism of solitude and exile, and to write essays on the pro- verbial aphorism respecting the ingratitude of repub- lics. He has been described as the recluse of the Al- leghenies, as a hermit, as a philosopher in exile, as a sage in rags. One romancist, who wrote to satisfy

the taste of the metropolis, describes his death as oc- curring in a miserable hut on the mountain top, in the midnight of winter, during such a storm as howls through the Alps, or as that which swept over Eng- land and carried off the soul of the great Oliver Crom- well. But there was no romance in his latter end. It is true that the tourist can at this day, standing near his old home, look out upon as fair and romantic a scene as he will see anywhere in America. Perhaps nowhere else could the shade of the dead see a land- scape so nearly resembling those which he himself saw when a boy in his own Scotland. On the one side you may take in view the broad Ligonier Valley, with the long-lapping hills losing themselves in the horizon in the far distance. On the other side you shall see the valley which lies between the western slope of the Ridge and the Whortleberry Hills. To the right, within a half-amphitheatre, " green-walled by the hills," is the brisk town of Latrobe, the Ligo- nier Valley Railroad winding along the basin of the Loyalhanna, which, breaking through the Ridge after devious windings through marshes and around shelv- ing banks, loses itself behind the knolls to the north. You can trace the Pennsylvania Railroad by its bur- nished rails where it crosses the valley. Down be- neath you, you will see the roofs and the long, single street of the old-time village of Youngstown, and trace the gray turnpike as it crawls over the hills eight miles beyond. On an upland, against a background of woods, are the college and cloisters of the Benedic- tine Monastery of St. Vincent's; to the left the slated roofs, the bay-windows, and red chapel of the Con- vent of St. Xavier's ; innumerable tasty farm-hongos and orchards, white barns, square school-houses, and broad expanses of meadow all along alternate as far as you can see, while the abruptness of the broken hills ceases, and their blue tops vanish in an unde- finable line into the south, as do the sloping lands which extend far on into the rich heart of the west. It was all different when he stood there. He might have seen when he came there a few poorly-built houses, forming a hamlet on one side, and the same on the other. Here and there the smoke rising above the trees from the cabins of the first settlers, and an almost unbroken forest on all sides, and known & people struggling for a living,-a people who to him were neither kind, nor with sympathy such as he needed, and even without respect. A little cleared patch with its stony soil and deadened trees that stood like giants to sentinel enchanted land, was about his door. The wild animals might yet be heard at night, and the lonesome birds of evil croaked in broad day around the edge of the clearing. Even the mossy rocks covered with ferns and rhododen- drons as they sheltered venomous snakes, could not appear to him as they appear to those drawn thither through pleasure or by curiosity. To a place of such surroundings as these it was that the old man, broken with the storms of state, had come to lay his weary

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bones among us. With him it is all over : he sleeps his last sleep, he has fought his last battle; no sound can awake him to glory again,-

" He now is in his grave; After life's fitful fever he sleeps well ; Treason has done bis worst : por steel, por poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing Can touch bim further."1

1 Memorandum of lande taken by St. Clair in Western Pennsylvania: The within is taken from the records of the land-office, and can be relied on as correct.

The lands are divided into three kinds, application, warrant, and done- tion lands, according to the designation of the original title.

By application dated 23d Nov., 1767, St. Clair got 317 acres, situate one- half mile below the Frankstown road, Bedford County. They were pat- ented Sept. 6, 1785, to Bartholomew Boucher, on the Frankstown road, inclusive of Yellow Springs.

By application dated 3d April, 1709, he got 412 acres, 57 perches, ditu- ste four miles above Ligonier, at the great bend of the Loyalbanna. This is now Donegal township, Westmoreland.

By application in right of Joba Grant, dated 7th April, 1709, he got 270 acres, 80 perches, also in Donegal township. They were patented Oct. 17, 1788. Three hundred and seventy-two perches along Loyalhanna were patented to Daniel St. Clair.

By application dated 23d June, 1769, he got 339 acres. They were pat- ented Oct. 17, 1788. Ninety-two perches along the Loyalhanna Creek were patented to Daniel St. Clair.

By warrant dated 23d Nov., 1773, he obtained 592 acres, situato in Ligonier township, Westmoreland County, being an octagon survey of diferent dates. It says that he was commandant at the post of Fort Ligonier in April, 1769.

By warrant dated 24th Sept., 1783, he obtained 6219 acres and 35 perches, situated on Chestnut Ridge and Loyalhanna Creek. The tract Was patented 22d July, 1794, and got by resolution of the General As- sembly.

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History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 56

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

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