USA > Pennsylvania > Crawford County > Pioneer sketches : scenes and incidents of former days > Part 4
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THE MILITARY BAND.
The Military Band of this company consisted of a fife, tenor and bass drum, and its inspiring strains even at this distant day echoes through the recesses of my memory with painful distinctness, while Yankee Doodle has become an important factor in my now educated musical taste.
Many of our old citizens will remember little Jesse Baldwin, whose distinguished uniform was a scarlet coat, and who beat the tenor drum so skillfully while grim-visaged war was delineated on his every feature. Well do I re- member with what feelings of mingled awe and admiration I gazed upon him as he marched along in all the glory of his position, and how my boyish ambition coveted the at- tainment, in the distant future, of his fame, skill and uni- form. To reach such a point in military greatness seemed to me to be the consummation of human glory, and I deter- mined to attain it or perish in the attempt. But, alas, while ambition urged me on, ability lagged behind. and I never reached the goal.
DESCRIPTION OF VARIOUS COMPANIES.
The Cussawago wore a neat uniform, consisting of a green hunting frock, and leggings fringed with yellow, a light wool hat or cap with a short yellow plume and a black leather belt, in which was hung a tomahawk and scalping knife. Suspended by a strap from the shoulders was a
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powder horn, so thin and transparent that its contents could be distinctly seen. A bullet pouch and charger completed their equipment.
Each member of the company carried a long American rifle, the pride of its owner, with which their skill was such that they could hit a squirrel's head on the top of the highest forest tree. The members of this company were farmers, well skilled in the wood craft of those early days. and would have been formidable adversaries to the trained troops of France or England. It was such men as these that gave Lexington and Bunker Hill their renown, and wrested our forests from savagery and wild beasts. Every bullet forced by sturdy hands into those long, slender iron tubes was a death warrant, and every man who carried them was skilled in its execution.
The Sægertown company presented a neat and soldier- like appearance. Their uniform consisted of white pants. black swallow tailed coats and white belts sustaining car- tridge box and bayonet sheath, black fur plug hats on the side of which was fastened a white cockade, in the center of which was a ten cent piece. Well do I remember how my boyish avarice coveted the wealth thus publicly dis- played. They carried muskets, which were supplied to the troops from the government arsenal, situated where the North Ward school house now stands.
Next on the roll of fame, of the ancient military of Crawford County, was the Meadville Dragoons. Here my pen fails me in an attempt to accurately describe the gor- geous equipments of this celebrated body of warriors, or their martial appearance on days of parade. Their coats and pants were of steel gray, the former glittering with globular buttons of brass, their leather helmets surmounted
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with a crest of horse hair that hung down their backs to the crupper of the saddle, affording a complete protection against invidious sword cuts from an enemy in the rear; their ponderous swords of polished iron like that of Sir Hudebras --
With basket hilts that would hold broth, And serve for fight and dinner both; In which could be melted lead for bullets, To shoot at foes and, sometimes, pullets.
With holster pistols with flint locks and bores the size of small artillery, dangerous weapons to the troopers them- selves, what must they have been to an advancing foe? The horses were of all colors, size and sex, from the mus- tang to the plow horse, or the high-stepping, blooded charger to those that "were without pride of ancestry, or hope of posterity."
I well remember one June morning, a member of the company appeared on parade with a maternal dam and her playful offspring. The juvenile steed, somewhat uninter- ested with the military evolutions of the company, was promptly ordered under guard by the captain. The mother and son were accordingly led to the stable of the Crawford House, at that time the fashionable hotel of the place, the colt (against loud maternal protests) was confined in a vacant stall and the mother and rider took their place at the head of the column near the band, a "single bugler." The order, "forward, march! music "" was given, the column started across the public square, the band blew an inspiring blast, in which the disconsolate mother thought she recognized the plaintive appeals of her imprisoned off- spring and answered with an affectionate response that com- pletely drowned the bugler's cheering notes. A halt was
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called and the owner of the mother and colt was ordered out of the ranks, whereupon he refused to go in a style of language highly ornamental. For the balance of the day the deceptive notes continued to mislead the maternal mind and were affectionately answered by the bereaved mother. From that time the company was known as the "Meadville Stock Raising Dragoons."
Of all the volunteer companies of those early days none were more patriotic than the Meadville Dragoons. Afterwards, in 1845, when the war cry "54-40 or fight," resounded over our land, I was orderly sergeant of the company, very young in years but aged in military ambi- tion. Well I remember how the ery fired the hearts of the Dragoons. Our swords almost leaped from their seab- bards with patriotic zeal. Our pistols rattled in their holsters with an ominous, warlike sound, while every horse hair on the erest of our helmets "bristled on end like the quills of a fretful porcupine." We all regretted when the white hand of peace smoothed war's frowning face and corrugated brow, and continued to regret until the news came that war had been declared against Mexico, when the Meadville Dragoons suddenly disbanded. "Sie transit, gloria nomdi."
There were several fragmentary portions of other uni- formed companies at that time that seemed to be fossilifor- ous remains of past ages. Their uniforms were diversitied and unique, but were generally composed of the ordinary holiday suits of the farmers ornamented with white belts and colored scarfs. I remember the fragment of a com- pany called the "Washington Guards." The only distinet- ive feature that remains in my recollection was a large shield of painted tin in front of their hats. They were
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kept in place by red cords passing through holes in the top and bottom of the shields and around the hat crown, where they were tied in a bow with pendant tassels. The front of the shields were ornamented with the letters W. G. in yellow. There was also a company called the Green- wood Rifles, with a uniform similar to the Cussawago Rifles. A company called the Liberty Guards, from Blooming Val- ley, mustered in numbers. Their members were expert with their rifles, their uniform hunting frocks and leggings well suited to the times and forest warfare.
The Meadville Artillery, commanded by Capt. Samuel Doud, was a formidable array of twenty-five or more vet- erans, uniformed in gray coats and white pants. Their gun was a brass six-pound cannon, with a "vent" almost as capacious as the muzzle, rendering the feat of spiking it one of great difficulty, unless a cannon ball was used. The company was very popular with young pioneer America of that day.
But, oli ! the gathering of the militia. or "flood wood" as they were sometimes called. The " Diamond" was the parade ground, and all that time it was a sea of dust, whose surface was as restless under the summer's wind as the ocean's waters in a storm. Promptly at 10 o'clock a. m. the citizen soldiers were called to arms. These arms usually consisted of old shot-guns, dilapidated muskets, rifles and bean poles. The line was formed three deep, and extended from end to end of the Public Square. After a short prac- tice in the manual of arms the soldiers were put through a system of evolutions that must have been copied from a western cyclone. This continued an hour or two, when the line was again formed and the inspection of arms took place. While the brigade inspector passed along in front
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of the men, numerous bottles of liquid refreshments were surrepticiously passed from hand to hand in the rear, and when the final order, "Break ranks, dismissed," was given, a more happy and "inspirited" army of men never rallied under the flag of any nation. It was a day long to be remembered. And what citizen of our county who has almost reached the allotted period of human life does not recollect the relish with which we boys feasted on "general training days" on a quarter section of good old Jacob Fleury's ginger bread, washed down with that "nectar" fit for the gods-a bottle of small beer-and how anxiously we longed from month to month, from week to week, and finally from day to day, for a return of those, the happiest days of our boyish life, and how we sorrowed when a cruel, malicious Legislature, by one fell swoop, repealed the militia law and made us miserable forever.
"Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes, And fondly broods with miser's care; Time but the impression deeper makes, As streams their channels deeper wear."
Yes, general training days are no more. Long, long years ago those bright green oasis in the desert of life were covered with the drifting sands of passing ovents. Most of the men who then answered their country's call "to arms" are no more, and it matters not how fantastic were the uniforms they wore, for
"The clothes are but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the goud for a that."
They were truc soldiers in the best sense of the word, inured to hardship, brave, independent and patriotic. They were ever to be relied upon when danger threatened either their neighbors or the country. Kindly to each other and
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hospitable to strangers, they were honest and truthful, always to be trusted as friends and to be feared as foes. They were in fact the germs of a great people sown in the virgin forests of a new world, and from which has been propagated a great nation, whose institutions will eventually mould and model the future governments of the earth.
A nobler race of men than the early pioneer soldiery of America never lived. Alone with the Creator in the sub- lime forest temple, they were naturally reverential and re- ligious. The evening prayer daily ascended from many a rude cabin in the wilderness, while the family Bible was read at every fireside. They prayed on the eve of battle, yet took good care to keep their powder dry. Theirs was faith with works, and the result is a nation of freemen, Christian people who acknowledge no supremacy on earth, and no sovereign but Him whose throne is on high .- Notes, A. B. Richmond.
ALFRED SARGENT.
CHAPTER XII.
PIONEER SKETCH OF ALFRED SARGENT.
[ Delivered on the S6th anniversary of Alfred Sargent, at Ashtabula, Ohio, by M. P Sargent, March 13th, 1589.]
HE SUBJECT of this occasion calls for something during a long period of time, running back in generations to the primitive days of the Pioneer of this country, and would admit of ex- tended and appropriate remarks, but for that you will have to look to some one more capable than I. A brief statement with some incidents is all I shall attempt.
Our paternal ancestor, Alfred Sargent, was born at Cincinnatus, Cortland County, N. Y., A. D. 1804. At the age of 14, A. D. 1818, he, with his parents and the rest of the family, emigrated to the Western Reserve, then called the Far West, and finally settled near the Conneaut Creek, on what is now called the Elijah Thomas place. Soon thereafter he and the family removed onto lands of the Huidekoper-Holland patent in Spring township, Crawford County, Pa., at which place, and in the immediate vicinity, he has since lived, except the last fourteen years.
Alfred Sargent was married A. D. 1831 to Maria Phelps, with whom he lived forty-two years. She died at the age of sixty-four after a very busy and industrious life. She was the noble mother, housekeeper and seamstress,
5
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plying the needle, with the use of the midnight oil, to make garments for the family, and to cut and make coats, vests and pants for hired men. It was wonderful how that mother worked to help along to raise her family and to aid in paying for and to clean up the lands.
Too great a tribute we cannot pay to the Pioneer mothers of this country-
She is gone, let her calmly repose
From her hard labors herself best knows.
Our paternal ancestors also had to prepare for the fray ; To fell and to clear the trees away.
To take, as it were, the bull right by the horn,
That they might raise a few pecks of eight-rowed corn.
The uplifted axe down through the roots into the ground, To cut away, that mother earth might there be found. To propagate the seed, did the Pioneer Invincibles Live and work, upon first principles.
To this union seven children were born; three of them. Martin, Electa and Adelaide, are present; Cornelia, Elizabeth, Edwin and Leononia, got through the trials of this life at quite an early age, and have gone where no traveler returns.
Yet onward marches the ever rolling tide, Its eternal mandates we must abide; Nor stop to gaze upon the moving throng, As we to the Golden Gates are marching on.
Of this family there are represented here to-day two lines of three generations and one line of four generations, viz., Alfred Sargent, Electa and Frank, Paul, Addie, Willie and Ina Cheeseman, and Alfred Sargent, Martin, James, Dayton and Fred W. Sargent.
Two brothers, Charles and Anson, and three sisters, Nancy, Polly and Betsy, accompanied him to this new
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land, who in the course of nature, have passed from earth. Betsy, the youngest, died of lung fever soon after settling in this new country. Smallpox having come into the fam- ily, her mother knowing she had not been vaccinated for smallpox, took up her abode in a log cabin on the Fleming lot, over a mile away in the woods, for six weeks, with no one to bear her company except the I. . deous nightly howl- ing of the wolves. A messenger, however, was daily sent within hallowing distance to exchange a quarantine health report. This plueky veteran lady of the log cabin in the woods, Mary Sargent, was born at Oxford, Massachusetts, A. D. 1763, and lived to the age of 85 years. Captain Phineas Sargent, husband and father, than whom no stronger man, physically, in the country, was born at Worcester, Mass., A. D. 1765, and lived to the age of 86 years. The other sisters and brothers, except Anson, lived to old age, from 75 to 83 years.
To this new El Dorado others began to settle in: John and Oliver Woodard, Daniel Sturtevant and Harry Wells, later Wm. MeCoy, Eri and Elijah Thomas, Porter Skeels, David, Albert and Isaac Hurd, Chris. Cross, Samuel Brain- erd, Daniel Waters, John Curtis, Win. Cornell, Chester Morley, George and Harry Nicholson, John Gillette, Obed Wells, John Vaughn, Wm. Tucker, Jesse Church, Watkin, Howell and David Powel!, Thomas and Elisha Bowman, Luman and Elund Sturtevant, and others. The work of clearing up commenced in earnest. The hands of these sturdy pioneers made the primeval forest yield to the light of day, and a fair independence to be derived from future cultivated fields.
"The music of the woodman's axe resounded through the land, But to make that music took muscle and a willing hand."
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PIONEER SKETCHES.
Out of all that number of Pioneers you now can see Remaining on earth only three. Alfred Sargent, the youngest, is eighty-five,
Few at that age are found vigorous and alive. The next is John Woodward-ninety-two;
People living at that age are very few.
Isaae Hurd has scored the wondrous ninety-five,
From all that number the oldest man alive;
As these veterans pencil on the seroll of time, 'Tis a long mark, beautiful, grand, sublime.
The privations of the pioneer were numerous, notwith- standing all stages of life have their enjoyments and quaint incidents.
Geo. Nicholson, a quaint old soul, had a small debt against Wm. Tucker, and accordingly he one day called on Mr. T. to collect the same. Grinning while he turned around, Mr. Tucker discovered a piece of white muslin protruding from the seat of George's trousers and he exclaimed, "Mr. Nicholson, you have got a letter in the post office." "I know that," said George, "and if you will pay me what you owe me I can take it out."
It took 25 cents to pay postage on a letter in those days and people had to resort to novel means to raise the neces- sary amount to pay postage on a single letter.
Oliver Woodard saw no way out of the dilemma except to tackle a five-foot chestnut tree which took him all day to fell and gather three pecks of chestnuts to sell to pay postage on a letter. The sale of three pecks of chestnuts to-day would buy postage stamps to write him down the ages.
Timber was cut and rolled into log heaps and burned into ashes and manufactured into black salts and hauled 20 miles over corduroy roads to Conneaut, Ohio, to get a few dollars to pay taxes and make payments on land purchase.
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PIONEER SKETCHES.
The rapacious wolf was rather an expensive luxury to the pioneer. Alfred and Anson Sargent had a flock of sheep, and on one cool, crisp night, the wolves with sharp- ened teeth and thirsty stomachs, came down upon them and sucked the life blood from the throats of 28 of the flock, which lay near the road on the little hillside near Porter Skeel's line.
The people had to go on foot through the woods four to six miles to a salt well on the Crossingville Road, where salt was manufactured, and carry home on their backs half a bushel or more of the precious article. Daniel Sturte- vant, while doing this, got belated one night. The wolves overtook him and he had to climb a tree. The wolves howled and gnawed away at the tree until near morning, when his neighbors rescued him from his cool and lofty perch. Daniel said could he have got a handfull of his salt he would have sprinkled it on their tails and got them into a more friendly submission.
Such and other like scenes tried men's souls, their lamb chops and their staying qualities. But the woodman's axe and the click of the trap and the hunter's rifle in time swept the wolf from the land, except that wolf in sheep's clothing, who still lingers in the land, a living curse to generations yet unborn.
The flax brake at the barn and the hum of the spinning wheel at the house were everywhere heard in the land.
The earliest pioneer of this county had to go to Pitts- burg to get his corn ground. Later, I have started many a time at 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning on horseback with a grist of corn or wheat to get in first at the old Jenks mill on Conneaut Creek, to get my grist ground. On sev-
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eral occasions have had to wait all day. True, the nether mill stone would turn round, but so slow you could count each kernel of corn as into it dropped.
At length the day of internal improvements began. The Erie & Pittsburg Canal was built, which brought joy and a home market to the people for many of the products of the country.
The Lake Shore Railroad was built and astonished the later day inhabitants with awe and wonder.
George Terrill, who had never seen a railroad, thought he would test its wonderful velocity, and accordingly he and his wife Nancy started one morning early from Springtown and went to North Springfield station, and there waited for the cars to take them on a visit to York State. After waiting long and growing impatient, he paced up and down the platform, with hands folded across his back under his swallow-tail coat, and exclaimed "Mr. Railroad Agent, how long before will the railroad start?" "When the cars come, in about two hours," the agent replied.
Next came the Telegraph, awakening a great sensation among the people, and the invincible old lady appeared on the scene, who exclaimed, "I'm so glad the telegraph has come; I'll go down to Vermont to see my sister now, who I haint seen for forty years."
A new era in most kinds of improvements throughout all the land sprung like magic into existence. Improve- ments most marvelous have been witnessed from centre to circumference all over the globe during the last half of a century.
The power of steam, of skill and science,
Stands to-day America's proud defiance.
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Our paternal ancestor has lived to see the creation of all these scenes and improvements through a longer period of time than will perhaps any of us present. He has lived to cast a vote for John Quincy Adams, and at every Presi- dential election down to Benjamin Harrison. His political creed was that of a Henry Clay Whig and an Abraham Lincoln Republican.
Unflinchingly he has firmly stood in those ranks,
From the heat of the great Whig and Democratic
Chaldrons, on the Missouri Compromise to date,
Down to the boom of Harrison's thunder in 1888. We'll keep Old England on her side of the ditch, And teach her how to twist her British lion's tail, And how to get up a more appropriate sail,
For spoils and for low wages,
Off into the dark ages,
Of central Africa or farther India.
In taking a retrospect of the political history of this country from 1798 to 1828, '30, '32, '40, '54 and 1860, he ean congratulate himself with a feeling of loyalty and American patriotism, that he never voted for the men or measures who several times have sought for the dissolution and the destruction of this great country.
Eighty-five years, a long period of time-over four score And you appear to be good for several years more. A grander sight to look upon we never can
Than a well-preserved, aged woman or a man.
CHAPTER XIII.
ERIE CITY.
RIE IS situated on the south bank of the beau- tiful bay of Presque Isle and was first settled or occupied by the Indians in centuries past. Of their origin we have but a meager record. But it is a characteristic of the Indian to settle upon the most favorable spots of the earth, on the shores of a bay or lake, or in some prolific valley on the bank of a river. And so it was here, on this beau- tiful site where Erie now stands, that Seth Reed, one of the Pioneers of Erie, so successfully and profitably treated the Indians to fire water, which was his first cargo (one bar- rel of whisky.) He hauled it from Buffalo, over the ice on Lake Erie, on a hand sled. It was his capital in trade, and with it he laid the foundation to his collossal fortune.
At this date Erie was sparsely settled by the white man. Among its first white settlers were Seth Reed, P. S. V. Hammot, French, Judah Colt and others. In the course of a few years emigration from the eastern states to this point, (called the Far West) briskly set in and the shores along Lake Erie were soon dotted by the cabins of the white set- tlers. The primeval forest was hewn down, the majestic and the valnable oak, the chestnut, the poplar and the ash, the walnut and the cherry, all alike went into the pioneer log roller's common pile to feed the thousand fires at night, only to illuminate the country and to make black salts from
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its ashes. Yet this valuable timber was considered a nuisance and must be cleared out of the way.
This was taking the bull by the horn,
That they might raise a few pecks of eight-rowed corn.
In many places to-day these valuable trees would be worth five times as much as the ground on which they stood. The first thing essential however, with the pioneer settler, was to raise his bread, and when the timber was cleared off he soon found himself in possession of an aere- age of grain and grass fields, enabling him to raise horses and cattle.
At that day Philadelphia was the market. The saga- cious Seth Reed, who by this time had accumulated consid- erable wealth in his fire water, fur, real estate and other commercial pursuits, was prepared to buy cattle, which were cheap. On one occasion his son Charles was sent with a drove of cattle to the Philadelphia market and when over the Alleghenies he was informed by a drover that the cattle market in Philadelphia was flat. Young Reed returned with his drove to Erie and reported he heard there was no market. His father turned him back with the enjoinder not to stop short of Philadelphia, which was done and he found a good market for the sale of his drove.
Supplies of all sorts were mostly freighted in wagons from Pittsburg and Philadelphia. Years later the Erie Canal was built, which opened up a commerce between New York City and Buffalo, and the great chain of lakes, and numerous vessels, particularly the white winged mes- sengers, soon dotted our lakes, and were followed by steam boats, which gave a new impulse and a lively business to Presque Isle Bay, also Conneaut, Ashtabula, Fairport, Cleveland and to all the harbors along the chain of the
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