USA > Pennsylvania > Westmoreland County > Old Westmoreland : a history of western Pennsylvania during the Revolution > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16
4 Doddridge's Notes of the Settlements, etc.
5 The Writings of George Washington, P. L. Ford, New York, 1889, vol. il., p. 290.
6 A Journal of Two Visits, etc., New York, 1865. See also the Diary of David McClure, New York, 1899, for an accurate account of social conditions at Pittsburg in 1772 and 1773.
IO
OLD WESTMORELAND.
The one man of most influence in this community was the fat old trader and Indian agent, Colonel George Crog- han, who lived on a pretentious plantation about four miles up the Allegheny river. He was an Irishman by birth and an Episcopalian by religion, when he permitted religion to trouble him. He had long been a resident of Pennsylvania, but his landed interests attached him to Virginia. His nephew, Captain Connolly, who was the official representa- tive of the Virginia government and a petty despot on the frontier, was under Croghan's guidance. Other leaders of the Virginia party on the border were John Campbell, a trader and land owner at Pittsburg ; Dorsey Pentecost, who dwelt on a large estate called "Greenway" in the Forks of the Youghiogheny, and William Crawford, surveyor, land owner and agent for George Washington, living at Stewart's Crossing (now New Haven), on the Youghio- gheny. Pentecost and Crawford were Virginians who had once held commissions as Pennsylvania magistrates but had later become violent partisans of the Virginia claims.
In 1775 the most prominent representative of the Penn- sylvania interest in old Westmoreland was Captain Arthur St. Clair, at Ligonier; while others who took active parts were John Proctor and Archibald Lochry, living near the Forbes road west of Chestnut ridge; Robert Hanna and Michael Huffnagle, at Hannastown; James Cavet and Christopher Hays, of the Sewickley settlement ; Jolin Orms- by, Devereux Smith and Aeneas Mackay, traders and store- keepers at Pittsburg; Edward Cook, living in the Forks of the Youghiogheny a short distance below Redstone, and George Wilson, whose plantation was on the Mononga- hela at the mouth of George's creek, in the very heart of Virginianism.
II
THE OUTBREAK OF REVOLUTION.
CHAPTER II.
THE OUTBREAK OF REVOLUTION.
During 1774 the pioneers of Westmoreland were so oc- cupied by their labor in clearing the forest, by the civil con- tention with Virginia and by the war between Virginia and the Shawnee Indians, that most of them heard little and thought little of the eastern agitation against the oppres- sions of the British Parliament. Yet scraps of news con- cerning the struggle going on in Boston occasionally reached the frontier and a few of the pioneers who had per- sonal and official connection with Philadelphia kept in touch with the momentous contest then beginning with the moth- . er country.
In May, 1774, on an appeal from Boston, a committee of correspondence was formed in Philadelphia. Under the date of June 12, a circular letter was addressed by this com- mittee to certain of the principal inhabitants of the other counties in the Province, advising the formation of a similar committee in each county ; and on June 28 the Philadelphia committee called a meeting of delegates from the several county committees. In response to this call, a "very re- spectable body of people"1 met at Hannastown on Monday, July II, and chose Robert Hanna and James Cavet to repre- sent Westmoreland in the delegate convention. On July 15 this convention met in Philadelphia and its minutes show
1 St. Clair Papers, vol. i., p. 325; Ameriean Archives, Fourth Series, vol. i., p. 549.
12
OLD WESTMORELAND.
the presence of Hanna and Cavet. They could not have reached the provincial capital within four days after their election, but were doubtless in attendance before the meet- ing adjourned on July 21.2
This convention was not revolutionary. It 'expressly declared allegiance to King George, but denounced recent acts of the British Parliament, especially those for the clos- ing of the port of Boston and the annulment of the Massa- chusetts charter, as unconstitutional. It approved a pro- posal for a colonial congress and pledged the readiness of the people of Pennsylvania to cease all commercial inter- course with Great Britain if necessary to secure a repeal of the obnoxious laws.
A fair inference from these proceedings is that a com- mittee of correspondence was organized in Westmoreland in the early summer of 1774 and continued its existence until succeeded, a year later, by the revolutionary associa- tion. No records of this committee have been found. They were probably destroyed when the Indians burned Han- nastown.
The American cause was, at the same time, arousing the sympathy of the leaders among the Virginia settlers in Southwestern Pennsylvania, although they were actively engaged in an Indian war. On October 1, 1774, while serv- ing in Dunmore's army against the Shawnees, Valentine Crawford, brother of William Crawford, wrote from Wheel- ing to George Washington that the frontiersmen all hoped for an carly peace with the savages, "in order that we may be able to assist you in relieving the poor distressed Bos- tonians. If the report here is true that General Gage has bombarded the city of Boston, this is a most alarming cir- cumstance and calls on every friend of the liberty of his country to exert himself at this time in its cause.""
After the Shawnees had been forced to make peace in the valley of the Scioto river, the officers of Lord Dun-
2 American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. 1., p. 555.
3 The Washington-Crawford Letters, Butterfield, Cincinnati, 1877, p. 99.
I3
THE OUTBREAK OF REVOLUTION.
more's army, on the homeward march, held a meeting at the mouth of the Hocking river, on November 5, 1774, and unanimously declared their intention, as soldiers, to exert "every power within us for the defense of American liberty and for the support of our just rights and privileges.""
When it began to appear probable, early in 1775, that an armed conflict would occur between the colonies and the home government, Captain Connolly undertook to organize the chief men in Pittsburg and its neighborhood in the in- terest of Great Britain. He was of Irish-English blood, a member of the Church of England and a devout follower of the Earl of Dunmore. He wholly misapprehended the spirit of the Presbyterian Scots with whom he had been associated in the Virginia boundary contest. His efforts to seduce the pioneers from the American cause were al- most entirely unavailing. They had stood by him in oppo- sition to the territorial claims of the Penns, but when he sought to enlist them in opposition to the general colonial cause, they and he parted company.
The news of Lexington and Concord reached Pitts- burg during the first week in May, 1775. To the liberty loving Scots and Irish of the frontier it was a signal to forget, for the time, their local jealousies and quarrels and to unite and organize in defense of their mutual rights as Americans. Pennsylvanians and Virginians joined hands to resist the hard enactments of the British Parliament. The committees of correspondence, one in eastern West- moreland and the other in West Augusta, as the Virginians called the portion of the border which they controlled, at once called meetings of the settlers to declare their minds on the sudden crisis.
The Pittsburg meeting was held on Tuesday, May 16, being the day for the opening of the Virginia court in that village, and the attendance was large. The assembly chose a committee of 28 men, nearly all of whom are more or less famous in the border annals. Colonel George Croghan, who was afterward suspected of being lukewarm in the
4 American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. i., p. 962.
14
OLD WESTMORELAND.
American cause, was chairman, and other committeemen were Edward Ward, who surrendered the site of Fort Pitt to Contrecoeur in 1754; John Canon, the founder of Can- onsburg; John McCulloch, a daring frontiersman; John Gibson, the interpreter of the celebrated speech of Logan the Mingo; Edward Cook, the founder of Cookstown, now Fayette City; William Crawford, the surveyor and land agent of Washington, and David Rodgers, a partisan leader who fell in combat with the Indians on the site of New- port, Ky. Of the 28 members of the body, at least five were Pennsylvania partisans in the territorial dispute. This com- mittee adopted unanimously a resolution approving the acts of the New Englanders in resisting "the invaders of Ameri- can rights and privileges to the utmost extreme," and form- ulated plans for the organization of military companies to be ready for the country's call.5
These proceedings gave great offense to Connolly and were a stinging personal rebuke to his royalist schemings. His uncle, Croghan, and his father-in-law, Samuel Semple, were members of the committee. Two days after the meet- ing Connolly sat for the last time as a member of the West Augusta court at Pittsburg, but for two months he re- mained in the settlement, endeavoring perseveringly to in- fluence his acquaintances to support the royalist cause and plotting with Indian chiefs to make war on the colonists in the event of an actual revolution.
On the day succeeding the meeting at Pittsburg, "a general meeting of the inhabitants of Westmoreland" was held in the log cabin settlement at Hannastown. Here also the action taken was distinctly revolutionary, for while the assembled borderers declared their allegiance to King George, they voted it to be the duty of every true American, "by every means which God has put in his power," to resist the oppression of the British Parliament and ministry, and they proceeded to form a military organization called the
5 Craig's History of Pittsburg, p. 128.
6 Connolly's Narrative, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and BI- ography, vol. xii., pp. 314-321.
15
THE OUTBREAK OF REVOLUTION.
Association of Westmoreland County, whose purpose was declared to be forcible resistance to the power of Great Britain.™
Captain St. Clair, who evidently took part in this meet- ing, was not in full sympathy with its radicalism. On May 18 he wrote to Joseph Shippen, Jr., the provincial secretary : "Yesterday we had a county meeting and have come to resolutions to arm and discipline, and have formed an as- sociation, which I suppose you will soon see in the papers. God grant an end may be speedily put to any necessity of such proceedings. I doubt their utility and am almost as much afraid of success in this contest as of being van- quished."$
In accordance with the Hannastown resolutions, meet- ings were held in every township one week later, on Wednesday, May 24, to form military companies. St. Clair wrote to Governor Penn on May 25: "We have nothing but musters and committees all over the country and every- things seems to be running into the wildest confusion. If some conciliating plan is not adopted by the congress, America has seen her golden days: they may return, but will be preceded by scenes of horror."
His forecast was correct. It was because the prospect of civil war appalled him that St. Clair doubted and held \ back at the outset. But he did not hesitate long. When he realized that the crisis could not be avoided, he earnestly devoted his life and his fortune to the patriot cause.
The yeomen of Westmoreland formed themselves into companies, elected their company officers and were arranged in two battalions. Of the first battalion the officers were : colonel, John Proctor, the first sheriff of the county ; lieu- tenant colonel, Archibald Lochry ; major, John Shields. The officers of the second battalion were : colonel, John Carna- ghan, then sheriff ; lieutenant colonel, Providence Mountz ; major, James Smith, a famous character on the frontier, whose narrative of captivity among the Indians is one of
7 American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. ii., p. 615.
8 St. Clair Papers, vol. i., p. 353.
16
OLD WESTMORELAND.
the interesting stories of the border.º It was Colonel Proc- tor's battalion which adopted as its banner the celebrated rattlesnake flag. It is of crimson silk, having, in the cor- ner, on a blue field, the red and white crosses of St. George and St. Andrew. The emblems are worked in gold. Above a rattlesnake, coiled to strike, are the characters, "I. B. W. C. P.," meaning, First Battalion, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and below the serpent is the motto, "Don't Tread on Me." Near the flag's upper margin is a mono- gram of J. P., the initials of John Proctor.
This flag was never carried into battle, but it was, doubtless, borne to Philadelphia when the battalion was called to the succor of that city at the beginning of 1777. The standard bearer was Lieutenant Samuel Craig, of the Derry settlement, and the silken relic is still carefully kept by his descendants in Westmoreland.
The tory conduct of Captain Connolly at Pittsburg be- came so bold and obnoxious that in June, 1775, lie was seized by twenty men, under the orders of Captain St. Clair, and carried to Ligonier, with the intention of delivering him to the revolutionary government in Philadelphia. His arrest was misunderstood by many of the Virginia settlers, who thought it a blow at their territorial claims, and they made such violent demonstration that Captain St. Clair con- sidered it advisable to let the prisoner go.1º Soon after his release, Connolly fled from Pittsburg by night and made his way to Portsmouth, Va., where he joined Lord Dun- more on a man-of-war. From that refuge he continued his efforts, by correspondence, to influence border leaders in the king's cause and to stir up the Ohio tribes against the colonists.11
Some knowledge of Connolly's machinations and a fear of an Indian uprising persuaded the Virginia conven- tion, in August, to direct Captain John Neville, a militia officer and a member of the patriot committee at Pittsburg,
9 Pennsylvania Archives, Second Series, vol. xiv., p. 675.
10 Connolly's Narrative, Pa. Mag. of Hist. and Blog., vol. xii., pp. 317-320; Washington-Crawford Letters, p. 102.
11 American Archives, Fourth Serles, vol. iii., p. 72.
17
THE OUTBREAK OF REVOLUTION.
to occupy Fort Pitt with his company from the Shenan- doah Valley. With about one hundred men, Captain Neville marched from Winchester and took possession of the fort on September 11.12 He continued in command there until June 1, 1777, when he transferred the post to General Ed- ward Hand, the representative of the United States of Amer- ica. For a year and a half after the Revolution began the civil government of Western Pennsylvania was under the control of the two committees, one meeting at Hannas- town and the other at Pittsburg, acting in conjunction with the justices of the peace who espoused the patriot cause ; and this loose system of government continued until the autumn of 1776, when both Pennsylvania and Virginia had adopted state constitutions.
12 American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. iii., pp. 370, 376 and 717.
18
OLD WESTMORELAND.
CHAPTER III.
WILLIAM WILSON'S INDIAN TOUR.
The men of the border did not feel themselves in danger from the British armies landed on the Atlantic coast, but from the beginning of the Revolution their homes and fam- ilies were menaced by a more dreaded foe-the savage tribes of the wilderness. The quickly revealed plottings of Connolly at Ft. Pitt, to incite the Indians against the set- tlements, were believed to be a sample of what the British government would attempt on a general scale.
As early as July, 1775, the second Colonial Congress initiated measures to secure the friendship of the savages. The frontier was divided into three Indian departments, of which the middle department included the tribes west of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and three members of Con- gress, Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson, of Pennsyl- vania, and Patrick Henry, of Virginia, were appointed to hold a treaty with the Indians at Ft. Pitt.1 This treaty was held in October, with a few chiefs of the Senecas, Dela- wares, Shawnees and Wyandots. Guyasuta was the prin- cipal Seneca chief in attendance, representing the Iroquois dwelling in the Allegheny valley and in the Ohio country. As an Iroquois, he assumed to speak for the western tribes, and thereby aroused White Eyes, the Delaware orator, to declare the absolute independence of the Delawares. The council was not harmonious, but the chiefs protested their
1 American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. Ii., pp. 1879, 1883.
19
WILLIAM WILSON'S INDIAN TOUR.
intentions to remain neutral, and Guyasuta promised to use his influence with the great council of the Iroquois in New York, to obtain a decision in favor of peace .?
The Indians remained quiet during 1775 and the fol- lowing winter, but it was not long until the agents of the British government outbid the colonists for a savage alli- ance. The British were able to give the greater bribes and to impress the savages with the greater display of military force. Sir Guy Johnson and Colonel John Butler held a great council with the Iroquois at Ft. Niagara, in May, 1776, when an overwhelming majority of the Iroquois voted to accept the war hatchet and to fight for the king.3 That was the beginning of the mischief on the border. The in- fluence of the Six Nations soon made itself manifest among the western tribes.
The Westmoreland settlers apprehended the storm long before it broke. They observed an alteration in the man- ner of the Indians with whom they came in frequent con- tact. In February, 1776, settlers near Pittsburg sent a me- morial to Congress, complaining that Indian hunters were encroaching on the lands of the white people.4 Van Swear- ingen, a pioneer of the Monongahela valley and one of the Pennsylvania magistrates, although a Virginian, raised a company of young riflemen and established a patrol along the Allegheny river.5
The Indian commissioners, at the treaty in October, 1775, selected John Gibson as Indian agent for the Ohio tribes. Gibson had intimate relations with the savages and was peculiarly adapted to the work, but had not sufficient influence at Philadelphia to retain his office. After a short term, he was succeeded by Richard Butler, another Pitts- burg trader. In the spring of 1776 Congress took direct
2 Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. x., p. 266; American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. v., p. 815; Albach's Annals of the West, Pittsburg, 1856, p. 241; McKnight's Our Western Border, 1875, pp. 389, 390.
3 American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. vi., p. 764; Fifth Series, vol. i., p. 867.
4 American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. v., p. 1654.
5 American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. vi., pp. 858-859.
20
OLD WESTMORELAND.
control of the Indian agencies, and for the important post at Pittsburg chose George Morgan, a man of education, high family connections and considerable wealth. Morgan's home was at Princeton, N. J., his mercantile interests were in Philadelphia, and as agent of his own trading house he had traveled extensively in the Indian country, from the Allegheny to the Illinois. He arrived at Pittsburg about the first of May, 1776, and at once began to arrange for a more satisfactory treaty with the tribes. He sent agents. with pacific messages, into the Indian country, employing in this service William Wilson, Peter Long, Simon Girty and Joseph Nicholson.®
The mission of Wilson was the most important. He was an Indian trader and acquainted with the tribes between the Ohio river and Detroit. It was his duty to invite the Delaware, Shawnee and Wyandot chiefs to a council at Pittsburg some time in August or September. Early in June, he left Pittsburg, accompanied by Nicholson, and went on horseback to the Delaware towns on the Mus- kingum river. There his reception was hospitable and the chiefs of the Delawares accepted his invitation. He jour- neyed thence to the seats of the Shawnees on the Scioto, where he discovered many of the young warriors to be in a doubtful humor. The chief sachem, the Hardman, and the war chief, the Cornstalk, were inclined to peace and promised to attend the treaty, if possible ; but they had re- ceived an invitation to take part in a great council with the British governor at Detroit, and must go there first. While Wilson was at the Shawnee towns, Morgan himself arrived there and endeavored to arrange a definite date for the treaty. The Shawnees, however, referred him to the Wyandots or Hurons, from whom the Shawnees had re- ceived permission to dwell in the Ohio country.
Before Morgan departed for Pittsburg, he gave to Wilson a large peace belt of wampum and a written mes- sage to deliver to the Wyandot chiefs. Wilson, Nicholson
G Nicholson was the interpreter who accompanied Washington on his voyage down the Ohio to the Kanawha, in the fall of 1770. During his youth he had been a prisoner among the Delawares.
21
WILLIAM WILSON'S INDIAN TOUR.
and the Cornstalk set out in company for the Wyandot towns on the Sandusky river, but advanced only as far as Pluggystown, on the upper Scioto. This place was inhabited by renegade Indians from various tribes, princi- pally Iroquois. The chief, Pluggy, was a Mohawk, and his followers, called Mingoes, were horse thieves and murder- ers. Wilson learned that a band of these rascals had al- ready been on a raid into Kentucky and had taken some prisoners. Pluggy's warriors formed a plot to seize Wilson and Nicholson and carry them to the British fort at Detroit. This was revealed by Cornstalk, who advised the white men to flee to the Delaware town of Coshocton. They were able to escape by night and placed themselves under the protection of old King Newcomer. That venerable sachem, believing it to be unsafe for Wilson to proceed to Sandusky, lest the Mingoes should waylay the trail, sent Killbuck, a noted war captain, to bear the American message to the Wyandot chiefs. In eleven days Killbuck returned, with word from the Wyandots that they wished to see Wilson himself, as an evidence of his good intentions, but that they could not give an answer to his invitation until they had consulted their great council beyond the lake. The chief seat of the Wyandot nation was in Canada, near Detroit, and the portion of the tribe dwelling south of Lake Erie was under the rule of a deputy chief, Dunquat, called the Half-King.
Wilson then determined to go to Sandusky and the Delaware council appointed Killbuck and two young war- riors to escort him. The journey had barely begun when Killbuck fell ill and his place was taken by the celebrated White Eyes. Nicholson was no longer of the party, having gone to Pittsburg to carry a message to Morgan; but at a Delaware town on the Walhonding, Wilson was joined by John Montour, grandson of the famous Catherine Mon- tour or Queen Esther. John was an Iroquois with an admix- ture of French blood, spoke English well, was master of several Indian languages and served Wilson faithfully.7
7 John Montour was the owner of Montour's Island, now called Neville's, in the Ohio river below Pittsburg, and his name is preserved by Montour Run, in Allegheny County, Pa.
22
OLD WESTMORELAND.
Before reaching Sandusky Wilson learned that the chief there had gone to the Detroit council, and he there- upon made up his mind to venture into the immediate neighborhood of the British post, in order that he might deliver his message to the chiefs of the Wyandot nation. It was the decision of a bold man. He found the Wyandots assembled on the eastern side of the Detroit river, on the site of Windsor. By most of the chiefs he was received with apparent friendliness, and on September 2 addressed them in council, presenting his peace belt and message from Morgan, and invited them to attend at Pittsburg in 25 days from that time. The delays to which he had been subjected had forced him to postpone the date for the intended treaty. Wilson's speech was supplemented by one from White Eyes. The Wyandots, in their reply, avowed their desire for peace, but did not commit themselves on the invitation. They promised a more definite answer in two days.
On the next morning the Wyandots betrayed Wilson's presence to the British lieutenant-governor in Detroit, Col. Henry Hamilton. They returned the belt to Wilson and advised him to explain his errand to the British commander. Wilson, White Eyes and Montour were compelled to go with the Wyandot chiefs to the great council house in De- troit, where they found themselves in the presence of Colonel Hamilton and an imposing assemblage of Indian sachems. Wilson frankly announced his purpose in com- ing to Detroit, and, in the presence of the lieutenant-gov- ernor, again presented the peace wampum and the written message to the Wyandot chief sachem. That personage passed the articles to Colonel Hamilton.
The British commander thus addressed the Indians : "Those people from whom you receive this message are enemies and traitors to my king, and before I would take one of them by the hand I would suffer my right hand to be cut off. When the great king is pleased to make peace with his rebellious children in this big island, I will then give my assistance in making peace between them and the Indians, and not before."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.