USA > Pennsylvania > Schuylkill County > Old Schuylkill tales, a history of interesting events, traditions and anecdotes of the early settlers of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania > Part 15
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Immediately after the riot the U. S. Government ordered a portion of the Marine Corps to be stationed at Christiana. The police scoured the county and arrested every person white or black who was suspected of being in the fight. Hanway and Lewis, the Quakers, who refused to assist the slaveholders in capturing their slaves were arrested for treason. They were con- fined in Moyamensing Prison 97 days and were then tried in the U. S. Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and found "Not Guilty."
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Norristown became a station in 1839 and it was after that, that refugees were sent to Reading and Pottsville.
On the 18th of September, 1850, Congress passed the law known as the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Zachary Taylor, then President, would not have signed it. After his death, Mil- lard Fillmore appended his signature and it became a law.
One of its provisions was that any person harboring a negro slave on his premises as a fugitive, was liable to a fine of $1,000 for each such negro.
Under this iniquitous law Thomas Garrett in a trial before Chief Justice Tancy, U. S. Court sitting in New Castle, Dela- ware, lost $8,000, all he had in the world. It is not to be won- dered at that
FRIEND GILLINGHAM OF POTTSVILLE
preserved a discreet silence in regard to the aid he was giving the runaways and that but few except those of the Society of Friends knew of his assistance and that his home was a station on the road to freedom. Friend Gillingham was not a rich man and the tax for even one of the slaves, $1,000, was more than he could have afforded.
Friend Samuel Gillingham lived in the brick residence northeast corner of Seventh and Mahantongo Streets which he built. and owned, his son Charles built the brick house north- west corner of Eighth and Mahantongo Streets, afterwards bought and occupied by Frederick Patterson now the home of Mrs. C. K. Wingert.
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Wm. Mardis, of town, says:
"I owned a farm at Germantown but lived at Indian Run
1 where friend Samuel Gillingham was interested in a saw mill. He had three sons, Charles, Samuel and William; and two daughters, Phoebe and Ann.
"Friend Samuel Gillingham went to Virginia where he engaged in the lumber and store business and where he died.
"His son Charles, who was also known as Friend Gilling- ham, and the daughters never either of them married but lived in the home property until his death and the death of the last one of the aged ladies about 1865. They were tenderly cared for by two nephews, Samuel and Charles and a niece Sallie who afterward married Edward Paxson."
Friend Samuel Gillingham is believed to have been a secret emissary of the Underground Railway System and that during his residence in Virginia he was active at the other end of the line in sending fugitive slaves North, and that through his direc- tion they found their way to the old home, where his son Charles cared for them.
On one occasion a party of six colored persons were sent to Pottsville from Reading. Dr. Smedley, of Lancaster, is the authority for the statement, that it became imperative that they be sent at once by rail to the farthest station. They came here disguised as Quakers, their black faces covered with veils their hands with gloves. In his description of them he narrates that the youngest of the runaways, a little girl had a scoop bonnet on and as a concession to her youth there was a bunch of bright red roses pinned on it. They were harbored by Friend Gilling- ham.
John R. Hoffman, P. & R. Coal and Iron Company En-
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gineer, who bought the Gillingham property and has handsomely improved it, invited the writer to inspect the original part of the dwelling and described how it looked before being occupied by his family.
The house was a plain two-story brick, with two rooms on the parlor floor, two large and one small bedroom on the second floor and an attic. In the basement there was a kitchen and dining room. In the front the space was divided into two parts, one for a cellar, the other presumably for a pantry. The latter is a good-sized room and was undoubtedly fitted up for the refugees, as it was known by the neighbors to contain a bed, chair, table and washstand, when women were of the party it is thought they slept in the attic.
AGED RESIDENT PRESERVES SECRET
Miss Elizabeth Whitney says :
"I lived with my brother, Wm. Whitney ( former President of the Miners Bank) in the house next the Gillinghams, on Ma- hantongo Street. Colored people were frequently seen about the Gillingham house. Sometimes they did chores for the family, emptying ashes, chopping wood, sweeping the yard as if they were hired for the day; but the most of them remained pretty close in hiding or within the yard which had a high board fence. Friend Charles Gillingham was then a gray-haired man.
"Those of the neighbors who were aware of their presence
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preserved a discreet silence, knowing well what it might mean to the Gillinghams if the matter was made public, for there were Southern slave-holding sympathizers even in Pottsville as well as elsewhere.
"One morning I was at the window of our home and from the second story watched a large, black negro man in the ad- joining yard. He saw me and seemed to become very much frightened and repaired at once to the inside of the house.
"In a few moments Phoebe Gillingham came over, her usual calm manner somewhat ruffled and she said to me:
"Friend Elizabeth! Thee saw something a few moments ago in our yard. Thee knows what it means. Thee will keep silent about it for our sakes, will thee not ? The man is being pursued and dreads capture."
"I assured her it should be the same as if I had not seen anything and we never spoke of what transpired around their dwelling, either before or afterward. The black people came and went through the gate on Seventh Street or the rear gate at the foot of the yard.
"I kept my promise, but Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves almost a half century ago and the principal actors in the Underground Railway Station in Pottsville and those that knew of it have long ago gone to their reward. I tell it now believing that it should form part of the history on record of Pottsville in its early days."
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THE EARLY STAGE COACHES
There is no definite record of the year the first stage ran over the State road from Philadelphia to Sunbury. The Light- foot survey was made in 1759. It was the forerunner of the "Great Road" from the Falls of the Schuylkill to Fort Au- gusta, which was constructed in 1770. The road was built to command the Indian trade of the district included, which was already recognized as one of great wealth. It was not entirely completed until 1785, although opened in 1777, and was made to connect the Schuylkill with the Susquehanna river. Ellis Hughes, who lived at Catawissa and owned a saw mill at Schuylkill Haven, where the local branch started from, was one of the promoters, if not the instigator, of this part of the highway. Construction was commenced on the Centre turn- pike in 1808; it was completed in 1812 and with it doubtless came the first stage.
It was not until 1828 that a daily mail began running be- tween Philadelphia and Pottsville. In 1830 three lines of stages between this place and the Quaker city were competing for the patronage. The passage took 18 hours. The lines were called the "Coleman," "Reside" and the "Clover" lines. One of these was owned and run by Michael Mortimer.
William W. Mortimer, Custodian of Union Hall, says : "Of the original Mortimer family there were three brothers; Wil- liam, Andrew and John Mortimer. Andrew Mortimer, who was the father of Borough Treasurer Samuel Mortimer and Nelson A. Mortimer, was postmaster in 1849. The postoffice was held in the building on Centre Street, afterward occupied
17
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as a store room by James Focht and now owned by Lieberman, the dry goods merchant.
"William Mortimer, father of William Mortimer, whose sons are W. Horace, G. Wesley, Frank P. and Charles W., was my grandfather. His sons were William, G. Washington, Mor- gan, and Michael, my father.
William Mortimer, Sr. kept the old hotel known as the Mt. Carbon Hotel and afterwards, when it was rebuilt and owned by my father, Michael Mortimer, it was called the Mortimer House. My Uncle Washington was a partner with my father for a time. The Feathers, of Reading, were proprietors of the hotel after we went out.
"My father ran a stage line to Philadelphia and made money with it and the hotel. I was born in 1840. When I was a young man he was determined to give me a good education. Disliking the association of the hotel for a growing boy of my age he sent me to Prof. Elias Schneider's Arcadian Institute, at Orwigsburg, where I remained four years as a boarding- school pupil.
"Of the early local stages, there was one running to St. Clair, one to Minersville and Tremont, another ran from Tus- carora to Tamaqua. The Philadelphia lines stopped at our house, too, but these were discontinued with the advent of the Reading Railroad in 1849. The others ran until 1872, when the People's Railway was built to Minersville and the Schuylkill Valley branch of the Pennsylvania Railway was opened to St. Clair. Michael Weaver, hotel keeper, of Minersville was an early stage driver as was also his brother, Jos. Weaver, of Potts- ville.
"A singular coincidence connected with the three drivers
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of these stages was that they were all lame men and cripples. The first, whose name was John Krouse, was the worst afflicted. John Gager was the most accommodating of men. He would take care of his drunken charges as if they were children, nurse the babies of his women patrons until they attended to business about town and would stop anywhere on his route to Minersville for passengers or bundles.
"Andy Irwin was a natural born poct or rhymster. He rhymed on everything he said and was a most comical character.
" 'Here comes Andy, he loves his brandy,' (he was a sober man) or when upon taking up his lines, he shouted, 'St. Clair, we'll soon be there,' are well remembered by the patrons of the line to that village."
REMINISCENCES OF OLD SETTLERS
Daniel De Frehn, aged 80 years says :
"I was born in Orwigsburg in 1825 and came to Pottsville in 1846, bought a lot, the site of my present residence, next the corner of Fourth and West Arch Streets. Col. James Nagle, afterward commander of the 48th Regt. in the Civil War, owned the corner lot and together we erected our dwellings which have both been occupied by our families, continuously, for almost a half century. I had previously built and lived in the house now occupied by Water Company Supt. Wm. Pollard, on Ma- hantongo Street above Eighth.
"There was nothing but a dreary waste and a marsh on
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West Arch Street then; and trouble constantly arose over the course of the creek which ran along there and turned the corner toward the tannery. After every heavy rain our cellars were flooded and the Borough would do nothing to relieve the situa- tion.
"The miners who worked at the Pott and Bannan mines all lived on Guinea Hill, in little mining cabins like those built at North America, where I worked at the erection of the houses for the 'Patch ' belonging to the Centreville collieries, on the Lewis and Spohn veins. The timber was not cut off Bare Field and wild beasts roved around on the hill above Brown's Hol- low.
"There were lively times in those days on Fourth of July. Daniel Klapp, a butcher who kept a stand in the old market house, in later days, was appointed a special police officer to keep order. He was a man six feet in height and weighed about 300 pounds. His appearance alone impressed evil doers with the power and majesty of the law, as he walked about in his best black snit, huge star on the lapel of his coat, and heavy club in his hand, the silk hat on his head adding to his height and importanee.
"On one occasion the Mc's, the O's and the Dutch were more than usually obstreperous and one after another were run into the town lock-up through his exertions. The Borough "jug" was in the rear part of the fire house, corner of Centre and West Race, where the Grammar school now stands. The lock-up had been filled full with a struggling mass of men fight- ing and eursing, all the worse for liquor, when Officer Klapp arrived with another customer. On opening the door he found the coop empty, the birds had flown. The rear wall was not
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very strong. The prisoners had united their strength and burst out the back wall of the structure. There were no more incar- cerations on that day ; there was no place to confine the prisoners.
"Those were the days when snow in winter was often two feet deep on our streets. On one particular St. Patrick's Day men went out on horseback to break the roads in order that the Ancient Order of Hibernians could parade.
"There were Indians about Pottsville as late as 1830 but they were of the harmless sort. The corner stone of the Henry Clay monument was laid July 26, 1852. There was a great parade. The firemen turned out. There were speeches and music and great crowds."
THE NORWEGIAN CREEK
The west branch of the creek which ran over parts of the upper end of West Market Street and along the base of Guinea Hill, proved very troublesome to the early settlers, who desired to build along the streets then layed out as far as Sixth Street. John Wagner, the oldest resident now living and aged 95 years, has this to say :
"I was born in the Lykens Valley, near Fredericksburg, Lebanon County, in 1811, and came to Pottsville 62 years ago. James Lick, the great California millionaire and capitalist worked at learning his trade of cabinet making in the same place, then called Stumpstown. I knew him well as a boy. In
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after years he had the cemetery laid out there and made other improvements. The late Peter W. Sheafer, of Pottsville, the second wealthiest man in Schuylkill County, was born and raised near that place. I learned the trade of tanning and worked at it for Wm. Wolff and his son Wallace as long as the tannery was in operation. The plant was an extensive one and occupied the present site of the new Methodist Episcopal Church, corner of Market and Fourth Streets.
"Irving Gallagher, tanner, came here at the same time. We built homes in the woods at Yorkville. I sold my house, now oceupied by J. H. Williams, to the late Thomas Bannan, Esq., and removed nearer to my work. A man named Kline operated the tannery afterward owned by D. B. Seidle, at the corner of Eighth and Market Streets. These tanneries used the water of the creek which ran along there to fill their vats. We used the black oak bark which eame principally to us in wagons from the vicinity of Freidensburg and Pinegrove. Wm. Wolff ereeted a large new dry house and increased and improved the plant at different times. He was very successful in his business and died leaving an estate worth several hundred thousand dollars, all of which was lost or swallowed up in a short tinie by his heirs and the business was elosed.
"The west branch of the creek which ran through the tan yard and across Market Street, through a eulvert, frequently overflowed and made no end of trouble. At such times Galla- gher and I took torches and entered it and cleaned out the bed.
"We entered the culvert at the tan yard and went under where now stands A. W. Schalek's residence, down to the Trin- ity Reformed Church, where it turned over and ran under Dr. A. H. Halberstadt's house.
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"There was always trouble at the archway at that turn of the creck, the dirt and offal collecting there and stopping it up. Gallagher and I came out near the Rosengarten prop- erty, corner of Third and Market Streets. We wore gum boots, trousers tucked in, but were always wet through. There was little said in those days about sewer gas, but it was a dangerous thing to do.
"There was a brick yard on the site of G. W. Mortimer's house, corner of Third and West Norwegian Streets. Fisher and Depley made bricks where the silk mill now stands. The old blacksmith shops were the great news centres of town in the early days. Men congregated around them and in the shoe shops as they do now about the cigar stores, to gossip and learn what was going on among their neighbors.
"There was a blacksmith shop at the corner of Second and Market Streets, near the Archbald building site. One near the Post Office building, another on the northeast corner of Sixth and Market Streets and one next to the English Lutheran Church. Gabe Fisher, who was a noted town character, re- moved to different places as the lots were bought up and finally died at his shop in the rear of the P. & R. Coal and Iron Shops, W. Norwegian Street.
"No! There were no ghosts or witches about Pottsville that I ever heard of. In the Lykens Valley, when I was a young man, there were great disputes over fences. Wherever these feuds existed the witches were said to come together at night and dance on the disputed lines and at the nearest cross roads. I went to a party one night and had to pass Koppen- haver's where the witches were said to be. It was very dark and late when I came home. As I neared the place I saw some-
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thing white eoming toward me. I did not run, I could not. When it came elose I found it was a white calf."
FOUGHT THE READING COMPANY
"To keep the telephone people from planting their poles on your property by sitting on the spot is nothing new. When the Sehuylkill and Susquehanna branch of the Reading Rail- road was first surveyed and laid out from Reading to Harris- burg, a woman did something greater. She prevented a great railway company from building their new line over a point on their farm, where her father lay buried. She was a widow with two children. The farm from which we had considerable black oak bark for the tannery, lay beyond the Summit near Auchey's.
"The engineers surveyed direetly over her father's grave and told her to remove the remains, the company would pay the damages and the route of way over the farm would be as- sessed and she would be awarded its market value. The woman refused. The grave should not be disturbed, the road could not pass over that spot. For two weeks, night and day, she eamped beside it, the ehildren bringing her such necessaries as she needed from the house and attending to her wants. At her side was a heavily loaded rifle and she threatened to shoot the first man that attempted to eome near the enelosure.
"In vain the surveyors and officials tried to parley with her. The gun was loaded for bear and no man's life was safe.
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At the end of that time the route was changed and the road ran farther down the declivity. The lonely grave on the knoll may still be seen from the car window as the train passes by the spot.
"Fourth of July was a great holiday in the early days. The main streets were trimmed with spruce and evergreens and the houses were decorated with red, white and blue bunt- ing. There was a parade of the military in the morning. The fire department turned out. A hay wagon trimmed and filled with little girls and a goddess of liberty in the centre repre- sented the States. Stands selling root beer, cakes and mead, peanuts and candy, were strung along the curbstones. The Declaration of Independence was usually read. In the after- noon, when many had taken something stronger, free fights were frequent and a fire at night often finished the day."
STAGE COACH DAYS
Mrs. Annetta Brobst, wife of Daniel Yeager and daughter of Christian Brobst, who died several years ago, at the age of 83 years, had a remarkable memory. She related many inter- esting incidents of the early days :
"My father, Christian Brobst, of Orwigsburg, built the stone house corner of Centre and West Norwegian Streets, afterward owned by Wm. Mortimer, who kept a general store there, and now occupied by his sons F. P. and Horace Mortimer as dry goods and jewelry stores. My father was a harness
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maker and did a large business employing one man alone to work on ladies' saddles. He had as high as fourteen men at work in his shop at one time.
"He invested in coal lands and owned tracts afterward deeded to the Ridgways, Samuel Sillyman and John Bannan. There was trouble after his death. I never knew or understood exactly what it was but the lawyers came again and again to examine the papers we held and to investigate what claims we had to the titles. There was treachery somewhere among the Brobst heirs, some of whom must have sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. The Brobst lawsuits have proven at least that much. My grandfather was William Zoll, the first settler of Pottsville after the Neimans.
"I remember coming to Pottsville in the stage before we moved here and also taking the trip to Philadelphia from Orwigsburg in the stage; which was a great thing for a young girl. My father took me to Philadelphia. We were two days going and the same time returning. Part of Centre Street was a corduroy road over the swampy and marshy ground. The stage stopped at a small stone tavern, afterward bought and enlarged by Wm. Mortimer, Sr., and known as the Mortimer House. There was a plank on stilts from the block where the stage stopped to walk across to the tavern, the gutter and street being nothing but a pond or mud hole in wet weather.
"I recollect when my father, at one time, had a sick spell and I waited upon him. He was feverish and asked at night very frequently for cold water. There was a town pump at Hannah Gough's, near the site of the Reading Railway depot, and another on the corner of Centre and Market Streets, where the L. C. Thompson hardware store now is. I went out at
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night to the latter to get him a pitcher of fresh water but he insisted that the water at Hannah Gough's was so much fresher. I went down there but was very much afraid, owing to the roughness of the locality, most of the places from Centre to the Railroad being saloons. No one harmed me and father recovered again. There was much malaria owing to the swamps. Centre Street was raised a number of times and the early settlers built as high as they could.
"My father, Christian Brobst, built the three first houses on that corner, the two adjoining our own and afterward owned by the Jeannes heirs and subsequently by Jacob Miehle. My brother, Perry Brobst, and husband, Daniel Yeager, were both saddlers and followed the business in Pottsville. There was a brick yard on the site of the Pennsylvania depot and afterward a carriage factory. The road about the Reading depot at Hannah Gough's was corduroy to the canal and mill. The creek from Market Street ran over from Third Street and under the White Horse tavern, corner Centre and Mahantongo Streets. Its course was changed where the Borough built the culverts and it ran under Centre Street. The Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company also changed the course of the main branch of the creek when they built the branch road on Railroad Street. The coal on this road from the Delaware and other mines was run down by gravity and mules took back the empty cars."
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THE MORTIMERS AMONG EARLIEST SETTLERS
Borough Treasurer Samuel M. Mortimer has many recol- lections of the early days and remembers much that was handed down to the present generation, from hearsay. He says:
"My father, Andrew Mortimer, brother of William Morti- mer, Sr., built this house (near corner of Twelfth and Market Streets), in what was then a dense woods. I was born here and have lived in the same house almost continuously for seventy odd years. John Wesley Mortimer, Jack Temple, Pott & Ban- nan and a man named Miller operated the coal mines on Guinea Hill. I remember often to have walked into the old drift from West Arch Street, a gangway having been left open in the vicinity of Seventh Street, as late as in the 'Sixties. A man- way, too, existed in the rear of the old brick school house, corner of Fifth and West Norwegian Streets, where I went to school. The boys often crawled down it to recover their balls and in the earlier days the miners entered the mine from that point if they were working at this end. I remember to have seen them with their lamps on their heads.
"George II. Potts and Job Rich worked the York farm veins. The Minersville Street School House was built on the site of an old colliery and the veins worked by Charles Lawton, undermined the very heart of Pottsville. The gangways com- ing from the Salem colliery at Young's Landing were still ex- posed in the rear of the P. and R. Coal and Iron Shops ; when im- provements were made to extend the shops, they ran under Greenwood Hill; the Potts, McKechner and others worked these
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