Jefferson County, Pennsylvania : her pioneers and people, 1800-1915, Volume I, Part 30

Author: McKnight, W. J. (William James), 1836-1918
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Chicago : J.H. Beers
Number of Pages: 650

USA > Pennsylvania > Jefferson County > Jefferson County, Pennsylvania : her pioneers and people, 1800-1915, Volume I > Part 30

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In the United States Constitutional conven- tion of 1787 the Carolinas, Georgia and New York wanted the slave trade continued and more slave property. To the credit of all the other Colonies, they wanted the foreign slave traffic stopped. After much wrangling and discussion a compromise. was effected, by which no enactment was to restrain the slave trade before the year 1808. By this com- promise the slave trade was to continue twenty- one years. On March 2, 1807. Congress passed an act to prohibit the importation of any more slaves after the close of that year. But the profits from slave trading were enormous, and the foreign traffic continued in spite of all law. It was found that if one ship out of every three was captured, the profits still would be large. Out of every ten negroes stolen in Africa, seven died before they reached this market. \ negro cost in Africa twenty dollars in gunpowder, old clothes, etc .. and readily brought five hundred dollars in the United States. Everything connected with the trade was brutal. The daily ration of a captive on a vessel was a pint of water and a half pint of rice. Sick negroes were simply thrown over- board. This traffic "for revolting. heartless atrocity would make the devil wonder." The profits were so large that no slaveholder was ever convicted in this country until Nov. 12, 1861. when Nathaniel Gordon, of the slaver "Erie," was convicted in New York City and executed. It is estimated that from thirty to sixty thousand slaves were carried to the Southern States every year by New York ves- sels alone. A wicked practice was carried on between the slave and free States in this way. A complete description of a free colored man or woman would be sent from a free State to parties living in a slave State. This description would then be published in handbills, etc., as that of a runaway slave. These bills would be widely circulated. In a short time the person so described would be arrested, kidnapped in

the night, overpowered, manacled, carried away, and sold. He had no legal right, no friends, and was only a "nigger." Free colored men on the borders of Pennsylvania have left home to visit a neighbor and been kidnapped in broad daylight, and never heard of after. A negro man or woman would sell for from one to two thousand dollars, and this was more profitable than horse stealing or highway rob- bery, and attended with but little danger. . 1 report in this or any other neighborhood that kidnappers were around struck terror to the heart of every free colored man and woman. Negroes of my acquaintance in Brookville have left their shanty homes to sleep in the stables of friends when such rumors were afloat.

The average value of a negro slave in 1800 was six hundred dollars ; in 1861, twelve hun- dred dollars.

There were many curious old wood prints of the slaves and slave brokers. When the slaves were placed on sale at auction, accord- ing to these prints, they were garbed in full dress suits, standing collars and high silk hats. This regalia was lent to them just during the formalities of the sale.

One of the famous slave pits was in the west end of Alexandria, Va., and was known as Bruin & Hill's jail. The proprietors of this establishment were repeatedly charged with being "fences"-a sort of clearing house for stolen slaves. And the practice of stealing slaves was a very popular and profitable pastime.

Negroes were sold at sheriff sales and auction in Pennsylvania up to 1823.

William Penn owned slaves. George Wash- ington owned slaves, both white and black. On June 4. 1786, he purchased two white men for sixty dollars each, one a shoemaker and the other a tailor.

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN PENNSYLVANIA AND JEFFERSON COUNTY

In an estimate based on figures for forty years, there escaped annually from the slave States fifteen hundred slaves, but still the slave population doubled in these States every twenty years. Fugitives traveled North usually in twos, but in two or three instances they went over our wilderness route in a small army, as an early paper of Brookville says. editorially : "Twenty-five fugitive slaves passed through Brookville Monday morning on their way to Canada." Again: "On Mon- day morning, October 14, 1850, forty armed

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JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

fugitive slaves passed through Brookville to Canada."

My ear is pained,

My soul is sick with every day's report,

Of wrong and outrage with which this earth is filled.

The system to aid runaway slaves in these United States had its origin in Columbia. Lancaster Co., Pa. In 1787 Samuel Wright laid out that town, and he set apart the north- eastern portion for colored people, to many of whom he presented lots. Under these cir- cumstances that section was settled rapidly by colored people. Hundreds of manumitted slaves from Maryland and Virginia emigrated there and built homes. The term "under- ground railroad" originated there, and in this way: At Columbia the runaway slave would be so thoroughly and completely lost to the pursuer that the slave hunter, in perfect astonishment, would frequently exclaim, "There must be an underground railroad some- where." There was at this place an organized system by white abolitionists to assist, clothe. feed and conduct fugitive slaves to Canada. This system consisted in changing the clothing, secreting and hiding the fugitive in daytime, and then carrying or directing him how to travel in the nighttime to the next abolition station, where he would be similarly cared for. These stations existed from the Mary- land line clear through to Canada. In those days the North was as a whole for slavery, and to be an abolitionist was to be reviled and persecuted, even by churches of nearly all denominations. Abolition meetings were broken up by mobs, the speakers rotten-egged and murdered; indeed, but few preachers would read from their pulpit a notice for an antislavery meeting. Space will not permit me to depiet the degrading state of public morals at that time, or the low ebb of true Christianity in that day, excepting, of course, that exhibited by a small handful of abolition- ists in the land. I can only say, that to clothe, feed, secrete and to convey in the darkness of night poor, wretched human beings fleeing for liberty, to suffer social ostracism, and to run the risk of the heavy penalties prescribed by unholy laws for so doing, required the highest type of Christian men and women-men and women of sagacity, coolness, firmness, cour- age and benevolence; rocks of adamant, to whom the downtrodden could flock for relief and refuge. Smedley's "Underground Rail- road" says: "Heroes have had their deeds of bravery upon battlefields emblazoned in his-

tory, and their countrymen have delighted to (lo them honor ; statesmen have been renowned, and their names have been engraved upon the enduring tablets of fame ; philanthropists have had their acts of benevolence and charity pro- claimed to an appreciating world; ministers, pure and sincere in their gospel labors, have had their teachings collected in religious books that generations might profit by the reading ; but these moral heroes, out of the fulness of their hearts, with neither expectations of re- ward nor hope of remembrance, have, within the privacy of their own homes, at an hour when the outside world was locked in slumber, clothed, fed and in the darkness of night. whether in calm or in storm, assisted poor, degraded, hunted human beings on their way to liberty. .

"When, too, newspapers refused to publish antislavery speeches, but poured forth such denunciations as 'The people will hereafter consider abolitionists as out of the pale of legal and conventional protection which society affords its honest and well meaning members.' that 'they will be treated as robbers and pirates and as the enemies of mankind'; when North- ern merchants extensively engaged in Southern trade told abolitionists that, as their pecuniary interests were largely connected with those of the South, they could not afford to allow them to succeed in their efforts to overthrow slavery. that millions upon millions of dollars were due them from Southern merchants, the payment of which would be jeopardized, and that they would put them down by fair means, if they could, by foul means, if they must, we must concede that it required the manhood of a man and the unflinching fortitude of a woman, up- held by a full and firm Christian faith, to be an abolitionist in those days, and especially an underground railroad' agent.'

A great aid to the ignorant fugitive was that every slave knew the "north star." and. further, that if he followed it he would even- tually reach the land of freedom. This knowledge enabled thousands to reach Canada. All slaveholders despised this "star."

To William Wright, of Columbia, Pa., is due the credit of putting into practice the first "underground railroad" for the freedom of slaves. There was no State organization effected until abont 1838, when, in Philadel- phia. Robert Purvis was made president, and Jacob C. White, secretary. Then the system grew, and before the war of the Rebellion our whole State became interlaced with roads. We had a route, too, in this wilderness. It was not as prominent as the routes in the more

BLACKSNAKE WHIP

CHARLES BROWN HANDCUFFED AND SHACKLED IN BROOKVILLE, 1834

BRANDING SLAVES

ERK

LIL

ARY

I.DA LINS

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JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

populous counties of the State. I am sorry that I am unable to write a complete history of the pure, lofty, generous men and women of the northwest and in our county who worked these roads. They were Quakers and Meth- odists, and the only ones that I can now recall in Jefferson county were Elijah Heath and wife, Arad Pearsall and wife, James Stead- man and wife, and Rev. Christopher Fogle and his first and second wives, of Brookville (Rev. Mr. Fogle was an agent and conductor in Troy) ; Isaac P. Carmalt and his wife, of near Clayville ; James A. Minish, of Punxsutawney, and William Coon and his wife, in Clarington (now Forest county). Others, no doubt, were connected with the work, but the history is lost. Jefferson's route started from Baltimore, Md., and extended via Bellefonte, Grampian Hills, Punxsutawney, Brookville, Clarington and Warren, to Lake Erie and Canada. A branch road came from Indiana, Pa., to Clay- ville. At Indiana, Pa., Dr. Mitchell, James Moorhead, James Hamilton, William Banks and a few others were agents in the cause.

The earliest official record I can find of Jefferson's underground road is in the Jeffersonian of September 15, 1834.

Christopher Fogle was born in Baden, Germany, in 1800. His father came to Phila- delphia, Pa., in 1817, and Christopher learned the tanning trade in Germantown. On June 26, 1826, he was married. About this time he joined the Methodist Church. In 1835 he emigrated to Heathville, Jefferson Co., Pa., and built a tannery. In 1843 he moved to Troy, where he had a tannery. This he after- wards sold out to Hulett Smith, when he moved to Brookville and purchased from Elijah Heath and A. Colwell what was called the David Henry tannery. Rev. Mr. Fogle was in the underground railroad business in Heathville, and he continued in that business until the war for the Union. The points in and around Brookville where he lived and secreted fugitives were, first, the old tannery ; second, the farm on the Troy road ; third, the little yellow house where Benscoter's residence now is; and fourth, the old house formerly owned by John J. Thompson, opposite the United Presbyterian Church. Officers fre- quently were close after these fugitives, and sometimes were in Brookville while the agents had the colored people hidden in the woods. The next station on this road to Canada was at the house of William Coon, in Clarington, Pa. Coon would ferry the slaves over the Clarion, feed, refresh, and start them through the wilderness for Warren, Pa., and when

Canada was finally reached, the poor fugitive could sing, with a broken heart at times, think- ing of his wife and children yet in bonds,

No more master's call for me, No more, no more. No more driver's lash for me, No more, no more. No more auction-block for me, No more, no more. No more bloodhounds hunt for me, No more, no more. I'm free, I'm free at last; at last, Thank God, I'm free!

The first man who died in the Revolution was a colored man, and Peter Salem, a negro, decided the battle of Bunker Hill ; clinging to the Stars and Stripes, he cried, "I'll bring back the colors or answer to God the reason why !"

On December 4, 1833, sixty persons met in Philadelphia, Pa., and organized the American Anti-Slavery Society.

(See also Chapter XXI, Borough of Brook- ville, under "Slavery.")

INDENTURED APPRENTICES, REDEMPTIONERS AND WHITE "SLAVERY"

Colored people were not the only class held in servitude by Pennsylvanians. Genuine white slavery never survived in what is now the United States, but another form of slavery was carried on by speculators called New- landers. These traders in "white people" were protected by custom and legal statutes. They ran vessels regularly to European seaports and induced people to emigrate to Pennsylvania. By delay and expensive formalities these emigrants were systematically robbed during the trip of any money they might have, and upon their arrival at Philadelphia would be in a strange country, without money or friends to pay their passage or to lift their goods from the villainous captains and owners of the vessels which brought them to the wharves of Philadelphia. Imagine the destitute condition of these emigrants. Under the law of im- prisonment for debt the captain or merchant either sold these people or imprisoned them.

The Newlander managed it so that the emigrant would be in his debt, and then the poor foreigners had to be sold for debt. The merchants advertised the cargo, the place of sale on the ship. The purchasers had to enter the ship, make the contract, take their purchase to the merchant and pay the price, and then legally bind the transaction before a mag- istrate. Unmarried people and young people. of course, were most readily sold, and brought

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JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

better prices. Aged and decrepit persons were poor sale, but if they had healthy children, these children were sold at good prices for the combined debt and to different masters in different States, perhaps never to see each other again in this world. The parents then were turned loose to beg. The time of sale was from two to seven years for about fifty dollars of our money. The poor people on board the ship were prisoners, and could neither go ashore themselves nor send their baggage until they paid what they did not owe. These captains made more money out of such passengers as died than they did from the living, as this gave them a chance to rob chests and sell children. This was a cruel, murder- ing trade. Every cruel device was resorted to in order to gain gold through the misfortune of these poor people.

These deluded people were so cruelly treated on shipboard that two thousand in less than one year were thrown overboard. This was monopoly.

Under this debasing system of indentured apprentices, the legal existence of African slavery, and the legalized sale of white emi- grants in our State, is it any wonder that among the people intemperance in preachers, illiteracy, lottery schemes

for churches, gambling and profanity were the rule, or that to the poor, the weak and the wretched the prisons were the only homes or hospitals, and that the "driver's lash" fell alike on the back of the old and young, black and white, school- master and layman ?

I pity the mother, careworn and weary,

As she thinks of her children about to be sold : You may picture the bounds of the rock-girdled ocean,

But the grief of that mother can never be told.

This traffic in white people in Pennsylvania continued until about 1831, when public senti- ment caused its discontinuance. In law this system was known as an apprenticeship, or service entered into by a free person, volun- tarily, by contract for a term of years on wages advanced before the service was entered. The servants, by performing the service, were redeeming themselves, and therefore called "Redemptioners." In practice, however, with a certain class of people. this system was as revoltingly brutal and degenerating as the negro slavery (abolished in our own time) in its worst aspects.

It was conceived and had its beginning in the harmless and in some respects benevolent

idea to help a poor person in Europe who wished to emigrate to America and had not the money to pay for his passage across the ocean, by giving him credit for his passage money, on condition that he should work for it after his arrival here, by hiring as a servant for a term of years to a person who would advance him his wages by paying his passage money to the owner or master of the vessel.

There are instances on record where school teachers, and even ministers of the gospel, were in this manner bought by congregations to render their services in their respective offices. Laws were passed for the protection of the masters and of the servants. Whilst this is the bright side of the Redemptioner's life, it had also a very dark side. The Re- demptioners on their arrival here were not allowed to choose their masters or the kind of service most suitable for them. They were often separated from their families, the wife from the husband and children from their parents ; were disposed of for the term of years, often at public sale, to masters living far apart, and always to the greatest advantage of the shipper. I have read many reports of the barbarous treatment they received, how they were literally worked to death, receiving insufficient food, scanty clothing and poor lodging. Cruel punishments were inflicted on them for slight offenses when they were at the mercy of a hard and brutal master. The black slave was often treated better, for he was a slave for life, and it was in the interest of the master to treat him well to preserve him, whilst the poor Redemptioner was a slave for a number of years only, and all his vital force was worked out of him during the years of his service.

Up to 1850 all boys had to learn a trade- be indentured.

IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT UNDER ACT OF 1705

Up to 1842 this law of Pennsylvania author- ized the imprisonment of men for debt, and to be fed on bread and water. In the year 1820 seventy thousand persons were im- prisoned for debt in Pennsylvania. The act of July 12, 1842, abolished such imprisonment. Quite a number of men were committed to the old jail in Brookville because of their inability to pay debts. Sometimes friends paid the debt for them, and sometimes they came out under the insolvent debtor's law. We reproduce an old execution issned against one James Green. The indorsement on the back reads: "Execu- tion, Fuller & Riddle, 892, vs. James Green.

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JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

Debt

$4.69

Int.

.041/2

Inst. Cost

.42

Const. do.

.1.4

Ex. & Return ..

.201/2

$5.50

Const. Cost

.18

Service, 5 Miles.

.30

$5.98

to hard labor in the gaol of said county for six months, and I am also to dispose of said brooms when made as the said commissioners may direct, and account to them for the pro- ceeds thereof, as the law direets. Received also one shaving horse, one handsaw, one drawing knife and one jack knife to enable him to work the above brooms, which I am to return to the said commissioners at the expira-

JEFFERSON COUNTY SS.

"/" Clarke CONSTABLE. GREETING

The Commonwealth of pennsylvania, to WHEREAS judgment against ances. Green for the sum of Your dollars which

stimme cents debt and fifty

certy

costs, was had the 230 day of Defull. 1833

before me at the suit of Tuller "Middle,

These are therefore, in the name of the

said Commonwealth, to command you to levy distress on the goods and chattles of the said Javed Green

and make sale thereof according to law, to the amount of said debt and costs, and what may acerue thereon, and make return to me in twenty days from the date hereof. and for want of goodsand chattles whereon, to levy you are to convey the body of the said

James Green to the jail of said

county, the jailor whereof is hereby commanded to receive the same and in safe custody to keep. until the said debt and costs are paid or otherwise discharged by due course of law.

Given under my hand and seal, the 15th the

day of

nov.

183 3

Early convicts were sentenced to hard labor in the county jail and were fed on bread and water. They had to make split brooms from hickory wood, as will be seen from this agree- ment between the commissioners and the jailer :

"Received. Brookville, September 29th, 1834, of the commissioners of Jefferson county, thirty-seven broomsticks, which I am to have made into brooms by Butler B. Amos, lately convicted in the Court of Quarter Ses- sions of said county for larceny, and sentenced

tion of said term of servitude of the said Butler B. Amos, with reasonable wear and tear.

"ARAD PEARSALL, Gaoler."

Amos had been arrested for theft, as per the following advertisement in the Jeffersonian of the annexed date :

"Commonwealth vs. Butler B. Amos. De- fendant committed to September term, 1834. Charge of larceny. And whereas the Act of General Assembly . requires that notice be

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JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

given, I therefore hereby give notice that the following is an inventory of articles found in the possession of the said Butler B. Amos and supposed to have been stolen, viz .: 1 canal shovel, 1 grubbing hoe, 2 handsaws, 2 bake kettles, I curry comb, 2 wolf traps, I iron- bound bucket, I frow, 3 log chains, 1 piece of log chain, 2 drawing chains, 1 piece of draw- ing chain, I set of breast chains, I hand axe, etc. The above mentioned articles are now in

possession of the subscriber, where those inter- ested can see and examine for themselves.

"ALEX. MCKNIGHT, J. P.

"Brookville, August, 25th, 1834."

.A few years after this sentence was com- plied with Amos left Brookville on a flatboat for Kentucky, where he was dirked in a row and killed. Although Amos was a thief, he had a "warm heart" in him.

CHAPTER X

WARS OF THE UNITED STATES-MILITARY MATTERS

TIIE REVOLUTION-WAR WITH FRANCE-WAR WITH TRIPOLI-WAR OF 1812-MEXICAN WAR- CIVIL WAR-ROSTER OF JEFFERSON COUNTY SOLDIERS IN THE CIVIL WAR - JEFFERSON COUNTY'S HONOR ROLL-A LINCOLN STORY-DUTIES OF A SOLDIER-SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR-RELIEF FUND OF JEFFERSON COUNTY-PENSIONS-PAY OF SOLDIERS-PIONEER MILI- TIA LEGISLATION

War has cost the United States about ten billions of dollars, and over six hundred and eighty thousand lives, to say nothing of thirty thousand lives lost in Colonial wars before the Revolution. The Indian wars cost forty- nine thousand lives and a billion dollars in money.

THE REVOLUTION

The United States, as such, has had seven wars, and has been successful in every one, on land or sea. The first fought under the Stars and Stripes was the war of the Revolution. which lasted from April 19, 1775, to April 11, 1783. The total of American troops employed, regulars, volunteers and militia, was 395,858: maximum number of Americans in field at any one time, 35,000; navy vessels, four ; cost of the war in specie, $185,193,380. British troops employed: In 1776, 20,121; in 1781. 42,075. The land forces fought about fifty battles, the seaforces more than two hundred battles. The latter brought safely into port more than twenty million dollars in hard cash or solid specie values, and made prisoners of more than twenty-six thousand English sailors. Burgoyne surrendered about six thousand men after Saratoga, and Cornwallis fewer than eight thousand at Yorktown. America ob- tained loans from France aggregating eight million dollars, from Holland one million dollars, and a smaller sum from Spain (very

little of which reached the United States either in cash or purchased articles). There is no accurate record showing the casualties sus- tained. It is stated by Strait that the Ameri- can troops lost in killed and wounded 9.138: British troops, killed and wounded, 26,877. Nearly all transportation by the Americans was done by oxen. Even the American artil- lery was placed and moved on the field of battle by oxen.

The Revolution was mainly a defensive war, against what was then one of the strongest nations on earth, and while we gained some surprising victories by aggressive action, yet our defense was quite brilliant, and succeeded in wearing out the British attempts to re- conquer the country. The capture of York- town was a brilliant strategic conception by Washington, to whom the highest credit should be given. After he had shut up Cornwallis in Yorktown, the fate of the British was certain, and the fighting was only continued until Corn- wallis saw that his case was hopeless.

The six great Americans of the Revolution- ary period were: First, George Washington : second, Benjamin Franklin, the scientist ; third, Patrick Henry, the orator; fourth, Tom Paine, whose tongue was as pointed as a stiletto and as forcible as an army ; fifth, John Paul Jones, the greatest naval hero in the world; sixth. General Hamilton, the financier.

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Jefferson County, Pennsylvania : her pioneers and people, 1800-1915, Volume I, Part 30

Author: McKnight, W. J. (William James), 1836-1918 Publication date: 1917 Publisher: Chicago : J.H. Beers Number of Pages: 650

Author: McKnight, W. J. (William James), 1836-1918
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Chicago : J.H. Beers
Number of Pages: 650