USA > Pennsylvania > Crawford County > Our country and its people. A historical and memorial record of Crawford County, Pennsylvania. > Part 16
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he recommended that the five degrees of longitude be determined by astro- nomical observation, as being the most accurate, though Mason and Dixon had measured actual distance and reduced to horizontal distance. This, if it had been continued, would have resulted the same. Governor Jefferson proposed that a temporary line be run, and Mr. McLean for Pennsylvania and the surveyor-general of Yohogania County for Virginia. But now a new difficulty arose. Some of the settlers were opposed to having any line run at all, preferring to remain under Virginia government. Mr. McLean writes to Governor Moore of Pennsylvania : "We proceeded to the mouth of Dunkard Creek, where our stores were laid in on the roth day of June, and were pre- paring to cross the river that night, when a party of about thirty horsemen, armed, on the opposite side of the river, appeared, damning us to come over." Not being provided with the implements of carnal warfare they were obliged to withdraw.
Finally John Dickinson, having become Governor of Pennsylvania, issued his proclamation forbidding any interference with the duly appointed surveyors for completing the Mason and Dixon line. To strengthen his hands, on the IIth of September, 1783, John Ewing, David Rittenhouse. John Lukens and Thomas Hutchins, for Pennsylvania, and on August 31 James Madison, Robert Andrews, John Page and Andrew Ellicott, for Virginia, were duly designated to make a final settlement of the bounds. At the Wilmington observatory the commissioners commenced their observa- tions at the beginning of July and continued observing the eclipses of Ju- piter's satelites till the 20th of September. At the other extremity of the line the observations were commenced about the middle of July, and between forty and fifty notes of the eclipses of Jupiter's satelites, besides innumer- able observations of the sun and stars, were made, and thereby the soutli- west corner of the State, five degrees from the point assumed on the Dela- ware, was determined beyond the shadow of a doubt.
But the western boundary was still unmarked, though this, being a simple meridian line, was not difficult of adjustment. Accordingly, a com- mission, consisting of David Rittenhouse and Andrew Porter, in behalf of Pennsylvania, Andrew Ellicott of Maryland and Joseph Neville of Virginia was.constituted for this purpose, and on the 23d of August, 1785, made their report: "We have carried on a meridian line from the southwest corner of
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Pennsylvania northward to the river Ohio, and we have likewise placed stones duly marked on most of the principal hills. From the Ohio River northward the line was surveyed by Alexander McLean and Andrew Porter. Rittenhouse and Ellicott were put upon the northern line, between New York and Pennsylvania, who made their report on the 4th of October, 1786. Thus was finally settled amicably the question of boundary, which, for the full space of a hundred years, had vexed the inhabitants of the border and the governments of three of the original colonies, and which had repeatedly been carried up to the place of last resort, the King in council.
CHAPTER XIII.
APPEAL TO CONTINENTAL CONGRESS FOR JUSTICE.
T HE authorities of Pennsylvania scarcely had the subject of contention with Lord Baltimore settled before another arose which threatened to be more troublesome and dangerous than the first. Aside from the great impediments to settlement encountered in the rugged and moun- tainous country which had to be passed in reaching the western section of the State, and its great distance from the abodes of civilization, the emi- grants had to meet the counter-claims of the English and the French to this whole Mississippi Valley, which were fought out on this ground; then the hostility of the Indians in asserting their claims to this territory, which resulted in the conspiracy of Pontiac, likewise contended for with great bit- terness on this western ground, and finally settled by victories gained here.
Scarcely had the Revolutionary war been fought out, and the inhab- itants of Pennsylvania knew that they had a country and felt the thrill of patriotism warming their bosoms, than they were confronted in all this western section by the problem whether they owed allegiance to Pennsyl- vania or to Virginia, whether they should secure the patents to their lands and pay for them at the capital on the Delaware or on the James. It may seem strange to the present generation, when the well-defined limits of our good old Commonwealth are examined, as shown by any well-drawn map of the State, how any such controversy could have arisen. And it will seem even more wonderful when the precise and explicit words of King Charles' charter to William Penn are carefully read. But such a controversy did actually occur, which threatened at one time the pacific and friendly rela- tions of the two great Commonwealths.
There can be no question but that the southern portion of this whole western half of Pennsylvania was originally largely settled by emigrants from Virginia and Maryland. Nor can there be any doubt but that the
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authorities of Virginia entertained the belief that this country was em- braced in the limits of that colony. When, in 1749, the "Ohio Company" was chartered and authorized to take up a half million acres of choice land it was in the western section of Pennsylvania that these lands were located. Hence the original settlers could have had no question but their true alle- giance was due to Virginia, from whose constituted authorities they re- ceived their conveyances and paid their fees.
But by what right did Virginia claim this territory? As we have al- ready seen, Queen Elizabeth in 1583, a hundred years before the time of Penn, granted to Sir Walter Raleigh an indefinite stretch of country in America which practically embraced the whole boundless continent. to ,which he gave the name of Virginia, in honor of the Virgin Queen, that portion to the south of the mouth of the Chesapeake receiving the title of South Virginia and that to the north of it North Virginia. Raleigh spent a vast fortune and impoverished himself in attempts to colonize the county, but all in vain, and the title lapsed. In 1606 James I., who had succeeded Elizabeth, granted charters to the Plymouth Company, who were to have the territory to the north, and the Virginia or London Company to the south; but the boundaries seem to have been drawn indefinitely, the two grants overlapping each other by three degrees of latitude. In 1609 the London Company secured from the King a new grant in this most remark- able language, probably never before nor since equaled for indefiniteness: "All those lands, countries and territories situate, lying and being in that part of America called Virginia, from the point of land called Cape or Point of Comfort all along the sea coast northward two hundred miles, and from the same Point or Cape Comfort all along the sea coast to the southward two hundred miles; and all that space and circuit of lands lying from the sea coast of the precinct aforesaid up into the land throughout from sea to sea west and northwest; and also the islands lying within one hundred miles along the coast of both seas of the precinct aforesaid."
On this wonderful piece of scrivener work, which no doubt taxed the best legal acumen of all England in its composition, the authorities of Vir- ginia hung all their claims to western Pennsylvania and the entire North- west territory-on that fatal expression, "all that space and circuit of lands lying from the sea coast of the precinct aforesaid up into the land through- out from sea to sea, west and northwest." It does not say due west from
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the extremities of the four hundred line coast, which would have been in- telligible, though preposterous, but it was to be "from sea to sea, west and northwest." This word northwest could not have meant to apply to the two extremities of the coast line, for in that case it would have formed a parallelogram having the coast line fixed on the Atlantic and an equal coast line somewhere in Alaska on the Pacific and the frozen ocean. If it meant that the southern boundary should be a due west line from the southern ex- tremity, and the northern boundary should be a line drawn due northwest from the northern extremity of the Atlantic coast line, then the limits of Virginia would have embraced all but a moiety of all the North American continent, as the coast line of four hundred miles would have embraced more than six degrees of latitude, from the 34° to the 40°, reaching from some point in South Carolina to the central part of the shore of New Jersey, and the due northwest line would have swallowed Philadelphia, two-thirds of Pennsylvania, a part of New York, all the great lakes except Ontario, and would have emerged somewhere in the North Pacific or the Arctic Ocean. It may seem strange that the sober-minded men who held the reins of government in Virginia should have set up so preposterous a claim. But if this claim was good for any- thing, and there seems to be no other authority upon which it was based, save the above recited grant of 1609, why were not Maryland, Delaware, the half of New Jersey and nearly the whole of Pennsylvania claimed at once? For this grant of 1609 antedated that of Maryland and was made before the foot of a white man had ever pressed Pennsylvania soil. This extravagant claim was not vindicated when the colonies to the north of it had become seated. But now, after it had been pushed down on the seashore from more than two-thirds of its northern claim-having left scarcely fifty miles above Point Comfort instead of two hundred-by the grants to Maryland and Pennsylvania, and been limited to the right bank of the Potomac, it now proposes to commence that northwest line at the headwaters of the Potomac instead of at the coast line.
But this whole extravagant claim was settled before either Lord Balti- more or Penn had received their charters. On the Ioth of November, 1623, a writ of quo warranto was begun against the treasurer of the London Company. The grounds for this action were the irregularities in the gov- ernment of the colony, which had invited the hostility of the Indians, re-
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sulting in massacres and burnings, which came near the utter destruction of the settlement, whereby the stockholders of the Company in London saw their investments being annihilated. The party of Virginia made de- fense; but upon the report of a committee sent out by the King to make examination of the Company's affairs the King's resolution was taken, and at the Trinity term of 1624. June, "judgment was given against the Com- pany and the patents were canceled." "Before the end of the same term," says the record, "a judgment was declared by the Lord Chief Justice Ley, against the Company and their charter, only upon a failure or a mistake in pleading." The decree may not have been just, as disturbing vested rights, yet it was nevertheless law, and the Company was obliged to bow. The matter was brought before Parliament; but public sentiment was against the Company, and the application came to nothing. Henceforward the Virginia settlement became a royal colony, subject to the will of the monarch.
Soon after the conclusion of the war with France, by which that nation was dispossessed of the Mississippi Valley and of Canada, the King issued his royal proclamation, in which, after making some restrictions regarding the newly acquired territories of Quebec and East and West Florida, he says: "We do, therefore, with the advice of our privy council, declare it to be our royal will and pleasure that no governor nor commander in chief of our colonies or plantations in America do presume, for the present and until our further pleasure be known, to grant warrants of survey or pass patents for any lands beyond the heads or sources of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or northwest, or upon any land what- soever which, not having been ceded to or purchased by us, as aforesaid, are reserved unto the said Indians, or any of them."
But it may be said that this order would have applied to Pennsylvania as well as Virginia, and would then have confined the former to the eastern slopes of the Alleghanies. But there was this difference: Virginia, being now only a royal colony, was subject to the absolute will of the monarch, while Pennsylvania, having been purchased for a price and confirmed under Proprietary government, was placed beyond the King's power to alter or annul. It will be observed that by the cutting off of West Virginia, which occurred during the war of the Rebellion, Virginia is now substantially confined to limits fixed by this royal proclamation.
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But the authorities of Virginia seem not to have been disposed to give heed to this royal decree, and continued to send out settlers to occupy the rich lands on the headwaters of the Ohio. Thomas Lee, who was the first president of the Ohio Company, who seems to have been a fair-minded man, entertained doubts of the rights of his company to lands as far north as Fort Du Quesne, where his company was preparing to build a fort, wrote to Governor Hamilton of Pennsylvania touching the boundaries of his province. The Governor answered under date of Jan. 2, 1749, proposing to run the State line. . After the death, which occurred not long afterward, of Mr. Lee, Lawrence Washington, the elder brother of George, was elected president, and the Washingtons became largely interested in the lands of this company. When Governor Hamilton learned that it was the intention of the Ohio Company to erect a fort at the forks of the Ohio for protection against the Indians he again wrote, but now to Lieutenant Gov- ernor Dinwiddie, declaring that he had received instructions from the pro- prietaries to join in the work of surveying and establishing the line of sepa- ration of the two States "only taking your acknowledgment that the settle- ment shall not prejudice their right to that country."
Without alluding to the matter of boundary, Dinwiddie wrote that he had already dispatched a person of distinction, none other than young George Washington, to the commander of the French to know upon what grounds he was invading the lands of the English, and that he had sent working parties to erect a fort at the forks of the Ohio. When at Logs- town, as agent of Virginia, securing a treaty with the Indians, Colonel Joshua Fry, who was accounted a good mathematician and geographer, had taken an observation by which it was found that the Indian village. which is nine miles below Pittsburg, was in latitude 40° 29', which showed that this was far to the north of the southern line of Pennsylvania. From calculations made it was evident to the mind of Governor Hamilton that the forks of the Ohio, as well as the French fort at Venango (Franklin), were far within the boundaries of Pennsylvania, and this conclusion he communicated to the Pennsylvania assembly and also to Governor Din- widdie. The latter subsequently responded: "I am much misled by our surveyors if the forks of the Mohongiale be within the limits of your pro- prietary's grant. I have for some time wrote home to have the line run, to have the boundaries properly known, that I may be able to keep magis-
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trates if in this government and I presume there will be commis- sioners appointed for that service. But surely from all hands as- sured that Logstown is far to the west of Mr. Penn's grant."
It would seem from this letter that the Governor of Virginia was con- templating the establishment of local government in this portion of Penn- sylvania. It would appear also that after the organization of Bedford County, which was made to extend over all the western part of the State, and immediately after the purchase of these grounds from the Indians by the treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, the settlers were called upon to pay taxes for the support of the Bedford County court. Bedford being a hundred miles away, they did not relish paying of taxes for the support of a court which afforded them so little convenience. Besides, being natives of Vir- ginia and having originally been led to suppose that this was a part of Vir- ginia, they petitioned that colony for the organization of county govern- ments.
Early in this controversy over jurisdiction Col. George Wilson, a jus- tice of the peace of Bedford County, wrote a letter to Arthur St. Claire, of Bedford, in which he says: "I no sooner returned home from court than I found papers containing resolves, as they call them, were handing fast about amongst the people, in which, amongst the rest, was one that they were resolved to oppose every of Penn's laws, as they called them, except felonious actions, at the risque of life, and under the penalty of fifty pounds, to be recovered off the estates of the failure. The first of them I found hardy enough, to offer it in public, I immediately ordered into custody, on which a large number were assembled, as was supposed, to rescue the pris- oner. I endeavored by all the reason I was capable of to convince them of the ill consequences that would attend such a rebellion, and happily gained on the people to consent to relinquish their resolves and to burn the paper they signed. When their foreman saw that the arms of his country, that as he said he had thrown himself into, would not rescue him by force, he catched up his gun, which was well loaded, jumped out of doors, and swore if any man came nigh him he would put what was in his gun through him. The person that had him in custody called for assistance in ye King's name, and in particular commanded myself. I told him I was a subject, and was not fit to command, if not willing to obey, on which I watched his eye and held him, so as he could not shoot me, until more help got into my
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assistance, on which I disarmed him, and broke his rifle to pieces. I r ceived a sore bruise on one of my arms by a punch of the gun in the strug gle. Then I put him under strong guard and told them the laws of the country were stronger than the hardest rifle among them." After convin ing the discontented party of their error and inducing them to burn the r solves they had signed, the prisoner was discharged on his good behavio Wilson closes his letter in these words: "I understand great threats a made against me in particular, if possible to intimidate me with fear, an also against the sheriffs and constables and all ministers of justice. But hope the laws, the bulwarks of our nation, will be supported in spite of tho: low-lived, trifling rascals."
From this letter we can gather the spirit which actuated the parties the controversy and see the beginning of a bitter contention which vexed tl people of this section for many years. The idea that Pennsylvania did n extend west of the Alleghany Mountains was studiously circulated. Micha Cressap and George Croghan, who were interested in land speculations her were suspected of being privy to these rumors. A petition signed by ov two hundred citizens was presented to the court at Bedford under date the 18th of July, 1772, charging the government and officers with great i justice and oppression, and praying that directions might be given to tl sheriffs to serve no more processes in that country, as they apprehend it was not in Pennsylvania." Mr. Wilson answered the allegations of tl petition before the court, and showed by documentary evidence that tl grounds on which petition rested were unstable, which had a very quietir effect upon the settlers and induced the court to reject the petition.
Fort Pitt, which had been garrisoned by a detachment of British so diers from the time of its erection in 1759 by General Stanwix, was, by ord of General Gage, in October, 1772, evacuated and "all the pickets, brick stones, timber and iron which are now in the building or walls of the sa fort" were sold for the sum of fifty pounds. At about this time, upon t death of Lord Bottetourt, Governor of Virginia, a new Governor was a pointed in the person of the Earl of Dunmore, a man of meddlesome disp sition and disposed to exercise the functions of his office with a high han In 1773, the year following the erection of Westmoreland County, wi capital at Hannastown, Dunmore made a visit to Fort Pitt, where he n Dr. John Connolly, a nephew of Colonel Croghan. It appears that the n
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Governor was determined to act upon the assumption, whatever may have been his motive therefor, that all west of the Alleghanies and the whole boundless northwest belonged to Virginia. In Connolly he found a willing tool for asserting his claims: for, soon after the departure of the Governor, Connolly issued a high-sounding proclamation assuming command under the appointment of Dunmore as Captain and Commandant of the militia of Pittsburg, proposing to move the House of Burgesses of Virginia for the necessity of erecting a Virginia County embracing Pittsburg and all this western country.
A copy of this high-handed proceeding was immediately communi- cated to the court at Hannastown and to Governor Penn at Philadelphia. Before receiving instructions from the Governor. Arthur St. Clair, in his capacity as a justice under Pennsylvania authority, deeming that he was authorized by his commission to put a stop to such a procedure as was in- dicated in this proclamation, issued a warrant for the arrest of Connolly. who was apprehended and placed in confinement. Governor Penn wrote immediately to Lord Dummore, informing him of his advices. quoted lan- guage of the charter which gave five full degrees of longitude for the east and west extent of the State, which would carry the western limit far beyond Pittsburg, and expressed the belief that the Governor could not have au- thorized the proclamation of Connolly.
Connolly had been released from jail on his promise to return and de- liver himself up at the time set for his trial. But instead of observing in good faith the terms of his parole, he returned to Pittsburg and called out the militia and proceeded to drill them and put arms in their hands, and on the day of his trial appeared with 180 of his followers, fully armed and equipped. daring the court to proceed against him. He had returned as he agreed, but not to put himself in the power of the court. Arrests and counter-arrests followed in rapid succession and prisoners were hurried away for trial at Staunton, Va., and to local courts. In the meantime a war of proclamations between Dunmore and Penn was hurled forth with all the forceful epithets of which language is capable.
Seeing that the difficulties were thickening, and that a resort to arms was likely to follow, Penn sent judicious representatives, James Tilghman and Andrew Allen, members of the Council, to confer with Dunmore, in the hope of seeuring a temporary adjustment until agents of the Crown
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could be secured to make a final settlement. They were cordially received by Lord Dunmore, who agreed to unite in a petition to the King for the appointment of a commission to establish the boundaries, but would not agree that Virginia should bear half the expense. The commissioners then proposed that a temporary line be fixed at five degrees of longitude from the Delaware and that the western line of Pennsylvania should follow the meanderings of that stream. Dunmore would not agree to that, but contended that the charter of Penn authorized five degrees to be computed from a point on the 42" parallel where the Delaware River cuts it, he believ- ing that the Delaware ran from northeast to southwest, which would carry the western boundary as far east as the Alleghany Mountains, much to the advantage of Virginia claims. The commissioners promptly rejected this interpretation, but in the interest of peace they offered that a temporary boundary might be settled to follow the Monongahela River down to its mouth. This would have left all west of that stream to Virginia. Dun- more now became arbitrary in his manner, charging the commissioners with unwillingness to make any concessions, and ended by declaring his unal- terable purpose to hold jurisdiction over Pittsburg and surrounding terri- tory until His Majesty should otherwise order.
Until competent authority should establish the boundaries of the two colonies there was no hope of temporary agreement, as Lord Dunmore was dietatorial. Governor Penn saw but too plainly that civil strife in the dis- puted district would unavoidably lead to a trial of force for the mastery Dunmore was destined in a short time to quarrel with the Legislature of Virginia, and for safety betook himself to a British man-of-war. Desiring to avoid a conflict over a dispute which charter stipulations would eventually settle, Governor Penn decided to bide his time, and accordingly wrote to William Crawford, the presiding justice of Westmoreland County, as fol- lows: "The present alarming situation of our affairs in Westmoreland County, occasioned by the very unaccountable conduct of the government of Virginia, requires the utmost attention of this government, and there- fore I intend, with all possible expedition, to send commissioners to expostu late with my Lord Dunmore upon the behavior of those he has thought proper to invest with such power as hath greatly disturbed the peace of that county. As the government of Virginia hath the power of raising militia and there is not any such in this province, it will be in vain to contend with
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