USA > Pennsylvania > Lehigh County > History of the counties of Lehigh and Carbon, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Pt. 1 > Part 3
USA > Pennsylvania > Carbon County > History of the counties of Lehigh and Carbon, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Pt. 1 > Part 3
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Saucon was divided into Upper and Lower Saueon in 1743. On the erection of Northampton County in 1752 they both became a portion of its territory, and on the erection of Lehigh Upper Saucon was assigned to it.
The settlement of the Moravians at Bethlehem, in 1740, did much toward bringing farmers into the Saucon region. They doubtless felt a certain sense of scenrity in loeating themselves so near an organ- ized colony which they judged by its policy would always retain the regard of the Indians.
At what is now South Bethlehem, on the spot where the Union depot stands, was built in 1745 that place of entertainment which became celebrated as the Crown Inn. This was the first tavern on the river really deserving the name, and became a popular stopping-place for travelers, as well as a favored and familiar resort for the pioneer farmers in the sur- rounding country. It was managed by the Moravians.
The development of Hanover township from its wild condition to a well-settled and prosperous region was no doubt largely influenced by the Moravian colony. It had received a few pioneers in 1735 or soon after, and its population increased faster after the planting of Bethlehem. Still several thousand acres of land in Hanover remained unsold up to and after the time of the Revolution. A large portion of the township was considered poor soil during the last century, which in this, under scientific processes of farming, is equal to any in the county. To be called a " Dry- lander" implied reproach. There were other causes, however, than the supposed poverty of soil for the
comparatively slow settlement of Hanover. This township, containing the only territory of the county lying east of the Lehigh, was originally a portion of the extensive Allen township, which ineluded the Seoteh-Irish settlement. Hanover was separately organized in 1798, and when Lehigh County was ereeted it was divided into two townships, each of which, as they were separated by the county line, was allowed to retain the original name. The greater part of the original township of Hanover was ineluded ! in the traet called the " Dry-lands" or Manor of Fer- mon, originally laid out for the proprietaries, and when they were divested of their estates after the elose of the Revolutionary war it was not included, being their private property. But the settlers were dissatisfied and contested their rights in numerous suits, the basis being denial that the Penns conld retain title. These dragged on without settlement until as late as 1796, when all were discontinued, the settlers and the Penns each bearing an equal part of the costs, and the former receiving their lands on pay- ment of £65 10s. for every one hundred acres.
The territory of the two Macungies was settled contemporaneously with that of the Milfords and of Saucon, that is, beginning in or soon after 1730, and its pioneers were of the same elass-Germans, for the most part newly arrived and making their way . northward through what are now Bucks and Mont- gomery Counties to obtain cheap homes in an unin- habited or sparsely settled eountry. When petition was made for the establishment of the township in 1742, there were living in the region which it was proposed to include, Peter Trexler, Henry Sheath, Jeremiah Trexler, John Ecle, Frederick Rowey, Peter Walbert, Jr., Philip Simes, Joseph Albright, Jacob Wagner, Melchoir Smith, George Stininger, Jacob Mier, George Hayn (or Haines), Adam Cook, Caspar Mier, Kayde Crim (or Grim), John Clymer, and Adam Prous. These were the signers of the petition, and doubtless they were only a very small proportion of the male inhabitants.
That the people of Macungie were enterprising is shown from the fact that they took steps to secure what was the first road in the county as early as 1785. They petitioned for a road to lead " from Goshen- hoppen to Jeremiah Trexler's tavern," and return being made in 1786 the road was duly laid out. Gosh- enhoppen was in what is now Montgomery County, and the Trexler tavern, which was in Macungie, was in all probability the nucleus abont which Trexler- town was built. In 1745 another road was opened from the German settlements in Macungie in a north- easterly direction to the Lehigh, near Bethlehem. It was a mere bridle-path during the first fifteen or ; twenty years, or until the needs of the prople de- manded its being enlarged and improved to serve as a wagon-road.
There seems to have been little if any difference between the time Saucon and its northern neighbor,
1 Sec chapter upon the townships for a detailed history of this pioneer educational institution.
" The names appear na here spelled, in the record, but the orthography is incorrect in many instances. For the corrected spelling soo Sancon township.
6
HISTORY OF LEHIGH COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
Salisbury, were settled, though the latter did not re- eeive aecessions to its population so fast as the former, owing probably to the fact that its lands were largely patented in large tracts to men who were not im- patient to realize upon the property. In March, 1732, John, Thomas, and Richard Penn issued their war- rant for the survey of a traet of five thousand aeres of land for Thomas Penn, his heirs or assigns. Penn assigned the warrant to Joseph Turner, and Turner to William Allen, the last-named receiving it Sept. 10, 1736. A portion of the tract surveyed by virtue of the warrant lay in Salisbury, and a portion was upon the opposite side of the Lehigh. Other exten- sive tracts were surveyed along the river, one of them of three thousand aeres granted the same year to Allen, ineluding the site of Allentown, which was laid out in 1762. The region was principally settled by Germans. A few Moravians settled at what is now Emaus in 1747. Salisbury was not settled as a township until after Northampton County was organ- ized in 1752, but the distriet extending to Allentown in one direction, to Saucon in another, and to Ma- cungie in a third eame commonly to be ealled "Schmaltzgass," meaning, freely translated, "a fine or rich region."
Gradually the tide of immigration rolled on into Whitehall, and then into what is now Washington and the back territory.
Whitehall received quite a large influx of pioneers who were of a superior class between 1730 and 1735. Among the first was Adam Deshler. In 1733 came John Jacob Miekley (a Huguenot, whose name was originally spelled Miehelet). Then there came the Balliets, Troxells, Steckels, Burkhalters, Schreibers, Saegers, Sehaadts, Keons, Knapps, Guths, and many others, among them Lynford Lardner, who built about 1740 the house which gave name to the town- ship. It was visited by large parties of gentlemen, who came up from Philadelphia as the proprietor's guests to shoot game. It naturally was called " The Hall" by.those aristoeratie sportsmen, who imitated the English country nomenclature. A coat of white- wash gave reason for the rest of the name, and when the township was organized the name Whitehall was chosen to designate it.
The majority of the carly settlers of old Whitehall located in that fertile, well-wooded, and well-watered region drained by Coplay Creek, which because of its productiveness was called Egypta, or Egypt, a name also applied to the church that was organized here in the infancy of the settlement.
In antithesis to this name Egypt is that of Alle- mängel, meaning "all is wanting," applied to the west- ern part of Lehigh County and a part of Berks ad- joining. Many of the early German settlers passed over the fine lands in the southern portion of the county and along the river to the hilly region of Lynn township, and of Albany in Berks, because it more nearly resembled the land which had been their
home. They soon discovered their mistake, and in sorrow and disgust called the country Allemangel, --- " all wants,"-" there is no water, no riehness." The people like the soil beeame poor, and many of them went down into " Egypt" after corn.
After a seore of. years of peace and progress, the total population of the territory now comprising Lehigh County was in 1752, when it beeame a part of the newly-erected Northampton, about three thou- sand souls. These were distributed, according to the rude eensus then taken to ascertain the number of inhabitants of the new eounty, as follows :
Milford ...
700
Upper Sancon ....
650
Macungie. 650
Upper parts of Lehigh County, forming subsequently the townships of Lynn. Weisenberg, Heidelberg, Sal- isbury, Lowhill, the Whitehalls, Washington, etc ..... 800
Making in all 2800
To this number must be added two hundred as the approximate population of that part of Allen town- ship which is now Hanover, which makes a total of three thousand.1
The condition of the county in 1773, thirty odd years from the time it was first settled, was one ex- hibiting great improvement, and yet only a fourth part of the lands had been cleared, less than nine thousand acres was in grain, and the soil was tilled by less than nine hundred farmers .? The assessment lists for the year exhibit the following figures :
Cleared Land.
Acres in Grain.
Number of Farmers.
Upper Milford.
7096
12833
156
Macungie
6459
2002
Whitehall
GOTO
1:23
117
Upper Saucon
5792
1028
Lynn ...
3419
860
118
Heidelberg
2905
904
101
S.disbury
2400
572
48
Weisenberg.
2189
562
78
Lowhill.
1131
135
.1 4
Total
37,394
8869
CHAPTER IT.
THE INDIAN RAID OF 1763.
Its Canses-Murders in Whitehall-Action of the Government.
SLOWLY receding before the incoming white race, there were but few Indians remaining on the lower Lehigh after 1740. They had passed away beyond the Blue Ridge as a nation, and only here and there an individual or family remained in tent or lodge at some chosen spot in the aneient hunting-grounds. Thus the Chief Kolapechka, called by the whites Cop- lay, resided for a long time after the first settlement near the head-waters of the stream to which his name has been given. He was on very friendly terms with
1 Northampton Conbly was supposed lo have in 1752 a total of six thousand population,
2 These statements and the table which follows them do not include the township of Hanover.
--
7
THE INDIAN RAID OF 1763.
the whites, and was frequently employed by the pro- vineial officers to carry messages and to act as interpre- ter. It is also related that an Indian family occupied a wigwam on the farm of Jaeob Kohler, remaining there until as late as 1742, when the last of the Dela- wares were compelled to remove from this region to the valley of the Wyoming.
Still it was a common eustom for Indians from the north to pass down the valley, and to wander very much as they chose through the country when the races were at peace. They brought game and peltries into the larger towns, and purchased the few articles they needed for their forest-life. But after the second pronounced outbreak of atrocities they came no more.
The seattered inhabitants in what is now Lehigh County happily escaped the Indians' wrath in 1755, when its weapons, the tomahawk and torch, fell so murderously and mercilessly upon the settlements in Northampton and Carbon Counties, resulting in the massacre of the Moravians1 in the limits of the latter, and many murders elsewhere. As to the causes wlfich led to these hostilities, the dissatisfaction arising from the " Walking Purchase" treaty of 1737, which we have briefly described, has by the majority of historians been ascribed the greatest influence, but it seems also as if the victory of the Indians over Braddock a short time previous must have operated powerfully as a stimulus to arouse race hatred and incite murderous desire.
The establishment of peace by the treaty of Oct. 26, 1758, gave a sense of security to the white settlers throughout the country, which deepened as time elapsed, and no evil deeds were committed until five years later, when it was dispelled with a shock. The conspiracy of the great and powerful Pontiac, who had emissaries among all of the tribes, craftily awaking and exeiting their slumbering anger and savage desire for blood, perhaps had something to do with the outbreak here in Lehigh County in 1763. The local offense of the whites does not appear to have been sufficient in itself to have brought the hatchet down as it fell here. Indeed, the Germans who were massacred in White- hall, and whose houses were burned, seem to have been entirely innocent, and to have treated the Indians always with the utmost kindness. The im- mediate cause of the butchery was a small sin com- mitted by persons with whom the Whitehall settlers had no connection, though there were not wanting others, outrageous in character, which may be re- garded as indirect eanses of the bloody work.
Concerning these general provocations and the murders which followed we have quite minute and unquestionably correet information from several sources,2 from which we deduce our narrative.
1 See chapter of Indian history in the Carbon County department of this work.
2 The principal ones are the printed account by Joseph .. Mickley, rend on the anniversary of tho massacre nt n family gathering, and un article by Rev. Dr. J. H. Dubhs, published in the Guardian.
Heckewelder (in an account which he states in a foot-note "is authentie") says that some friendly Indians, who had come to Bethlehem in the summer of 1763 to dispose of their peltry, upon returning to their distant home stopped at John Stenton's tavern,3 eight miles above Bethlehem, where they were very shabbily treated, and upon leaving which in the morning they found themselves robbed of some of the most valuable articles they had purchased. They returned to Bethlehem, and lodging their complaint with a magistrate, were given a letter to present to the landlord, in which he strongly urged that the Indians' property.should be restored. But when they delivered the letter, they were told to leave the house, if they set any value on their lives. This they did, knowing that they had no other alternative. At Neseopeck, on the Susquehanna, they fell in with some other Delaware Indians, who had been similarly treated, one of them having had his riffe stolen from him. The two parties agreed to take revenge in their own way for those insults and robberies for which they eould obtain no redress, "and this they deter- mined to do as soon as war should be again declared by their nation against the English."
So much for the incident which seems to have been the immediate eanse of the Whitehall murders. But it appears that there was another occurrence soon after this which exercised a more marked influence on the events of the future. Of this Loskiel gives the following account :
" In August, 1763, Zachary and his wife, who had left the congregation in Wechquetank,4 eame on a visit and did all in their power to disquiet the minds of the brethren respecting the intentions of the white people.5 A woman called Zippora was persuaded to follow them. On their return they stayed at the Buchkabuchka" over night, where Capt. Wetterholt lay with a company of soldiers, and went nnconcerned to sleep in a hay-loft. But in the night they were surprised by the soldiers. Zippora was thrown down upon the threshing-floor and killed ; Zachary escaped out of the house, but was pursued, and with his wife and little child put to the sword, although the mother begged for their lives upon her knees."
This Capt. Johann Nicholaus Wetterholt, who came to this country in 1754, had been commissioned a captain in the French and Indian war. He resided in 1762 in Heidelberg township, Lehigh Co., and his name was on the tax-list again in 1764. His presence at the Gap with a company of soldiers in August, 1763,
8 In Allen township, Northampton County.
4 Wechquelank was a place settled by the Moravians in Lizard Creek Valley, Carbon Co.
6 This is one of the several small facts on which we base the theory that the Indian murders on the Lehigh were attributable lo lhe in- flummed condition of the Indian mind in consequence of Pontiac's con- spiracy.
" The name given by the Delawares lo the Lehigh Gap. The word implies, according to Heckewelder, " mountains butting opposite each other."
8
HISTORY OF LEHIGH COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
can only be accounted for on the ground that he was on his way to or from Fort Allen, in Carbon County, where a small force of men had been retained since the close of the Indian war.
The outrageous act of the soldiers at the Gap was very likely brought about by one of Capt. Wetter- holt's lieutenants, Jonathan Dodge, a most bitter hater of the Indians and as bloody a scoundrel as the country contained, a man who seemed to be possessed of a diabolical love of murder, and happiest when he could make it most hideous. He was not only hated by the Indians, but ultimately exeerated by his sol- dier associates,' If not responsible for the atrocious murders at the Gap he was for many others, and his conduet greatly exasperated the usually peaceable Delawares,
Dodge's despicable nets, which made him trouble- some to the soldiers and obnoxious to the people, are fully proved by testimony from himself and others. Concerning a most dastardly attack upon some friendly Indians who were on their way from Shamokin to Bethlehem, Dodge himself wrote to Timothy Hors- field (Aug. 4, 1763) as follows : " Yesterday there were four Indians came to Eusign Kerns.2 . . . I took four rifles and fourteen deerskins from them, weighed them, and there was thirty-one pounds." And then he continues that after they left " I took twenty men and followed them, . . . then I ordered my men to fire, upon which I fired a volley on them. . . . Could find none dead or alive." One might judge from the frank tone of this letter that Horsfield, the commander of the Northampton County military, approved of that truly soldhierly kind of warfare. Jacob Warner, a soblier in Capt. Nicholaus Wetter- holt's company, stated that when he and Dodge were searching for a lost gun, about two miles above Fort Allen, they saw three Indians painted black. Dodge fired upon them and killed one. Warner also fired, and thought that he wounded another. The Indians had not fired at them. The scalp of the dead ludian was taken and sent to Philadelphia.
Dodge was charged on the 4th of October with striking Peter Franz, a soldier, with a gun and seri- ously disabling him, and also with ordering his men to lay down their arms if the captain blamed him for taking the Indian's scalp. Capt. Wetterholt wrote to Horsfield : " If he (Dodge) is to remain in the com- pany not one man will remain. I never had so much trouble and uneasiness as I have had these few weeks, and if he continues in the service any longer I don't . purpose to stay any longer." On the 5th of October
Capt. Jacob Wetterholt and his detachment on their way to Fort Allen on October 7th.
This party under Capt. Jacob Wetterholt (who was a brother of Nicholaus, and a resident of Lynn town- ship) arrived and stopped on the night of October 7th at the tavern of John Stenton, in the Irish Settle- ment, about a mile north of Howertown, in Allen town- ship, Northampton Co. Capt. Wetterholt was a good and brave soldier. His courage could perhaps be accounted for by his belief that he possessed the power of making himself invulnerable (kugelfest),- that is, that he could not be killed by a gunshot or any blow in battle. He was well aware that the In- dians intended when they had opportunity to revenge themselves for the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the whites, and he was fully cognizant that they had a burning feeling of hatred against this tavern and its occupants on account of bad treatment received there, and still he selected it as his lodging- place for the night, and committed the unsoldierly blunder of posting no sentinel. Perhaps his super- stitious confidenee led to this fatal mistake. .
The night deepened, and as the hours passed stealthy foes, as ferocious as wild beasts, as cunning and noise- less as serpents, gathered about the fated house. Had the Indians prowling in the forests needed any other provocation than the memory of the wrongs they had received here for falling upon the people of that house, it would have been afforded by the knowledge that it sheltered the hated Lieut. Dodge. But he and Sten- ton and all the inmates of the tavern shunbered ou undisturbed by any intimation of peril.
In the early morning of the memorable 8th of October, during the gray dawn that precedes the full light of day, the door was opened by the servant of Capt. Wetterholt. A rifle flashed and the man fell dead in the doorway. Capt. Wetterholt and Sergi. McGuire were also fired upon and dangerously wounded, while John Stenton was shot dead.
Lieut. Dodge made a terrified appeal for help to Timothy Horsfield, sending the following letter (which we copy verbatim ) :
Glous Srestovs, Oct. the S, 1768
" MMR. HosFirep, Sir, Pray send me help for all my men are killed But one and Captn. Welterholt js most Dead, he is shot through the Body, for god sako send me hetp
" These from me to serve my country and king so long as j live.
" Send me help or I am a dead man
" this from Lyst Dodge
" Surgt meguire is shot through the body-
" Pray send np the Doctor for god sake"
The news of the disaster reached Bethlehem while . Dodge was put under arrest and sent in charge of ! it was yet early day, and the messenger creating a Capt. Jacob Wetterholt to Timothy Horsfield, at Bethlehem, but it is probable that he escaped with nothing more than a reprimand, for he was with
panie as he went, many people flocked to that town as the nearest place of safety. As the news spread others came in terror-stricken from all the country between Bethlehem and the seone of the murders, and also from the Saucon region.
A few soldiers who were at Bethlehem were sent ont immediately to bury the dead and bring in the
1 Dodge had been sent from Philadelphia by Richard Hockley to Lient .- Col. Timothy Horsfield, with a letter dated Inly 14, 1763, recom- mending him as " very necessary for the service,"
" Where Worthington now is.
1
1
9
MURDERS IN WHITEHALL.
wounded.1 Among the latter was Capt. Wetterholt, who died the next morning at the "Crown Inn."? Timothy Horsfield, on receiving the news, informed Lieut. Hunsicker at Lower Smithfield, and urged him to the utmost vigilance in defending the frontiers.
Five days after the attack at Stenton's the following account of it was printed in the Pennsylvania Ga- sette, a paper published by Benjamin Franklin, who probably wrote this relation from details sent to the Governor by Horsfield :
"On Sunday night last an express arrived from Northampton County with the following melancholy account,-viz., that on Saturday morning, the 8th inst., the bouse of John Stenton, about eight miles from Bethlehem, was attacked by Indians, as follows : Capt. Wetterholt, with a party belonging to Fort Allen, being at that honse, and intending to set ont early for the fort, ordered a servant to get his horse ready, who was immediately shot down by the enemy, upon which the captain, going to the door, was also fired at and mortally wounded ; that then a sergeant attempted to pull in the captain and shut the door, but he was likewise dangerously wounded; that the lieutenant next advaneed, when an Indian jumped upon the bodies of the two others and presented a pis- tol to his breast, which he put a little aside, and it went off over his shoulder, whereby he got the Indian out of the house and shut the door ; that the Indians after this went round to a window, and as Stenton was getting out of bed shot him, but not dead, and he, breaking out of the house, ran about a mile, when he dropped and died; that his wife and two children ran down into the cellar, where they were shot at three times, but eseaped ; that Capt. Wetterholt, find- ing himself growing very weak, crawled to a window and shot an Indian dead, it was thought, as he was in the aet of setting fire to the house with a match, and that upon this the other Indians carried him. away with thein and went off. Capt. Wetterholt died soon after."
When the Indians had glutted their vengeance as far as lay prudently within their power at Stenton's, they attacked the inmates of a unbiber of other houses, and the hatchet and toreb did terrible work. Turn- ing toward the Lehigh, the first house they came to was that of James Allen. This they plundered of everything that they coveted, and then destroyed all that they could not conveniently carry away. Pro- eeeding onward toward the river, they next came to Andrew Hazlett's, not half a mile from Allen's. powder was poor, and his gun would not go off. He was shot down by a number of the band, his wife seeing him fall and die. She fled with her two children,
but was quickly overtaken by a couple of the fleet- footed Indians, who sank their tomahawks in her head. Her children were treated in a similarly barbarons manner, and they were left for dead. The woman lived, however, for four days, and one of her children completely recovered. Another man beside Hazlett was in the house, and he too was killed. Then the house was fired, and as the logs crackled the murder- ous band went whooping and velling on toward the next house, that of Philip Kratzer, where they found no vietims for gun or knife or axe, the family doubt- less having heard the shots at Hazlett's and fled. The torch was applied to the humble home, and they then passed on to the Lehigh, which they crossed at a place still called " the Indian Fall," just above Siegfreid's Bridge.
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