USA > Pennsylvania > Progressive Pennsylvania; a record of the remarkable industrial development of the Keystone state, with some account of its early and its later transportation systems, its early settlers, and its prominent men > Part 11
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It is recorded that an immigrant from Alexandria, Vir- ginia, to the Monongahela valley soon after the Revolution paid $5.33 a hundredweight for hauling "women and goods " between the two localities over Braddock's Road.
In 1817 it still cost $100 to move a ton of freight from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The Pennsylvania Rail- road Company now performs the same service for a few dollars. About 1890 an old gentleman who had been a merchant wrote to George B. Roberts, then president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, as follows: " Before any canal was made I shipped 800 barrels of flour one winter from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia by wagon, the freight on which was $2,400, being $3 per barrel. That was called back loading, (Conestoga wagons, six horses, and bells.) My first load of goods, 60 years past, cost $4 per 100 pounds from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Hav- ing handled Uncle Sam's mail bags for over 61 years consecutively I have taken two bushels of oats, or four pounds of butter, or five dozen of eggs, or two bushels of potatoes, for a letter that came 400 or more miles." Those were the days when it was not required that post- age should be prepaid and when the rates were high.
After communication between Philadelphia and Pitts- burgh had been opened by way of roads and turnpikes, so that wagons and other vehicles could pass over them with reasonable speed, lines of stage coaches were estab- lished for the conveyance of passengers and for carrying the mails between the two cities and intermediate points. Ringwalt says : "For many years two great lines of coach- es were run between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Start- ing daily, the three hundred and fifty odd miles between the two cities were passed over in about three days, that is, if the roads were in very good condition, but more
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time was usually required. Every twelve miles a change of horses was made, and quickly. No time was lost and no rest was given the traveler. The fare on the coach from city to city varied somewhat, as did the condition the roads were in, or as the rival lines cut the closest on prices. A through-pass ticket from Pittsburgh to Phila- delphia was all the way from $14 to $20, which in those days meant more than the same sum does now. There were special rates to emigrants, but they were brought west in large covered wagons, and not on the regular coaches. For twenty-five years emigrant travel formed a big portion of the business along the turnpike. It was mostly from Baltimore, thousands of emigrants landing there, and engaging passage to the West through compa- nies engaged in that business alone." Egle says that in August, 1804, the first through line of coaches from Phila- delphia to Pittsburgh was established.
Ringwalt further says : " The stage coach feature of the old turnpike is something with such a dash and liveliness about the very thought of it that it awakens our interest. It was truly the life of the turnpike. Dashing along at a gallop the four horses attached to the coach formed quite a marked contrast to the slow-plodding teams drawing the big wagons. Then there was something of more than ordi- nary interest about the coach itself and the passengers as well." Another writer says : " The driver invariably carried a horn with a very highly pitched tone, which he winded at the brow of the last hill to signalize his approach."
After the National Road and the turnpikes had been built in Pennsylvania a large business was done for many years, and until about the middle of the last century, in driving cattle, horses, sheep, and hogs from the interior and western parts of Pennsylvania, and even from Ohio, to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other eastern markets. The clouds of dust raised by the drovers, the long lines of Conestoga wagons, and the less frequent but more showy stage coaches united to make the thoroughfares of that day real arteries of commerce, which should not be lightly considered in comparison with the more ex- peditious transportation facilities of the present day.
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William H. Speicher, a resident of Stoyestown, Som- erset county, writes of the old stage houses as follows : "Stoyestown had several of them. Here passengers se- cured a hasty meal while a change of horses was made, and the present generation can not realize the commotion that was caused by the arrival and departure of half a dozen stages of rival lines with horns blowing, streamers flying, and horses on the full run. Sometimes as many as thirty stages stopped at one of these hotels in a single day. Most of them were drawn by four horses, but in climbing the mountains six were frequently used. For the accom- modation of wagons and drovers the road houses, with large wagon yards, averaged one for every two miles along the road. These were built especially for the purpose and consisted principally of a large kitchen, dining-room, and very large bar-room, the latter also serving as a lodging room for the wagoners and drovers. Six and eight-horse teams were usually accompanied by two men, and all of them carried their own bedding, which was spread out on the bar-room floor before a huge log fire in the chimney place in the winter."
The drover was "the man on horseback" of his day. He was a person of consequence. But he has departed. And the old stage drivers and wagoners ! To-day they are scarcely to be found, "most of them having thrown down the reins and put up for the night."
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CHAPTER XI.
EARLY NAVIGATION IN PENNSYLVANIA.
IN the early history of Pennsylvania, as of other colo- nies, the streams played an important part in opening the wilderness to settlement and in promoting intercourse be- tween the pioneers. Afterwards when canals were intro- duced the rivers were often slackwatered as part of a ca- nal system. The Indians set the pioneers the example of utilizing the streams for transportation purposes, but the Indians did not build bridges or establish ferries. Long before there were roads of any kind in Pennsylvania the Indian paths were supplemented by the Indian canoe, the latter sometimes made of birch bark but more fre- quently hollowed out of the trunk of a pine tree. But, however made, the Indian canoe was everywhere in use in the navigation of rivers when the white people came to Pennsylvania. Ringwalt says that "the canoe was to nearly all the tribes what the horse was to the Arab." Some of the Indian canoes would carry freight weighing two and three tons. Even larger canoes were sometimes built. After the advent of the whites canoes were in fre- quent use by the Indians in carrying furs to a market, and by both whites and Indians in transporting the goods of the Indian traders. The settlers made free use of them.
The first settlers in time substituted skiffs for canoes, and when the streams were wide enough and deep enough and large quantities of agricultural products and other merchandise were to be moved they built rafts, flatboats, Durham boats, and keel boats. Durham boats were so called only in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, and keel boats are associated with the early history of navigation in the western part. These boats were of similar if not of identical construction. Durham boats as well as flat- boats were used on the Delaware, Schuylkill, and Susque- hanna rivers for many years. Keel boats were in use on the Ohio at Pittsburgh as early as 1792 and at Johnstown
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as early as 1816. Under the general term of flatboats we include barges and all forms of flat-bottomed boats that were in use in pioneer times. Boats of this class were wholly used in descending streams of considerable size, including the Ohio, and at the end of their journey were sold for the lumber that was in them. Hulbert says that "the flatboat was the important craft of the era of emi- gration, the friend of the pioneer. The flatboat of average size was a roofed craft about 40 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 8 feet deep. It was square and flat-bottomed and was managed by six oars." Keel boats were used in both ascending and descending the rivers. They had rounded sides and slightly rounded bottoms, the hull being sub- stantially like that of a canal boat. As they were an im- portant feature of early transportation on the Ohio river, and in the streams tributary to the Ohio itself, further mention of their construction and operation will not be out of place. We remember seeing many keel boats on the Allegheny river about 1840.
Hulbert says : " The keel boat heralded a new era in internal development, an era of internal communication never known before in the Central West. As a craft it is almost forgotten to-day. Our oldest citizens can barely remember the last years of its reign. It was a long, nar- row craft, pointed at both prow and stern. On each side were provided what were known as running boards, ex- tending from end to end. The space between, the body of the boat, was enclosed and roofed over with boards or shingles. A keel boat would carry from twenty to forty tons of freight, well protected from the weather; it re- quired from six to ten men, in addition to the captain, who was usually the steersman, to propel it up stream. Each man was provided with a pole to which was affixed a heavy socket. The crew, being divided equally on each side of the boat, 'set' their poles at the head of the boat ; then bringing the end of the pole to the shoulder, with bodies bent, they walked slowly along the running boards to the stern, returning quickly, at the command of the captain, to the head for a new 'set.' In ascending rapids the greatest effort of the whole crew was required, so that
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only one at a time could 'shift' his pole. This ascending of rapids was attended with great danger, especially if the channel was rocky."
Hulbert continues : " The narrowness of the keel boat, it will be noted, permitted it to ply far up the larger trib- utaries of the Ohio and a considerable way up its smaller tributaries-territory which the barge and flatboat could never reach. It is probable, therefore, that the keel boat brought much territory into touch with the world that otherwise was never reached save by the heavy freighter and the pack-saddle ; indeed it is probable that this was the greatest service of the keel boat-to reach the rich interior settlements and carry their imports and exports. . Take, for instance, the salt industry, which in the day of the keel boat was one of the most important in- dustries, if not the most important, in the Central West. Salt springs and licks were found at some distance from the main artery of travel, the Ohio, and it was the keel boat, more enduring than the canoe, and of lighter weight and draught and of lesser width than the barge, which did the greater part of the salt distribution, return- ing usually with loads of flour. . The keel boat was the only craft of burden that could ascend many of our streams to the carrying-place. The keel boat may be considered, therefore, the first up-stream boat of bur- den which plied the Ohio and its tributaries."
Mention of the salt industry suggests the great num- ber of salt works which lined the banks of the lower Cone- maugh and the Kiskiminitas rivers in the first half of the last century and for some years afterwards. There were also a few salt works on the Allegheny below the mouth of the Kiskiminitas. Before the completion of the Penn- sylvania Canal from Pittsburgh to Blairsville in 1829 the salt from these works was taken in barrels to Pittsburgh in keel boats for local consumption or for shipment down the Ohio. Sometimes the keel boats themselves were taken to points near Pittsburgh and poled or floated back.
The building of all kinds of flat-bottomed boats and of keel boats was an important industry of Western Penn- sylvania and elsewhere in the Ohio valley in early days.
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The Navigator, of Pittsburgh, said in 1806 that " flat and keel boats may be procured at New Geneva, Brownsville, Williamsport, Elizabethtown, and Mckeesport on the Mo- nongahela, and perhaps at several places on the Youghio- gheny." As early as 1788 the boatyards at most of the places above mentioned were in active operation. Pitts- burgh did not build boats of any kind until about 1800.
Boats were certainly built on the Youghiogheny at Connellsville and Robbstown, now West Newton, as early as 1788. In 1793 Zachariah Connell laid out the town of Connellsville, " because it was here that emigrants and travelers to the West, of whom there were already great numbers in transit, coming over the road from Bedford by way of Turkey Foot, reached a boatable point on the Youghiogheny river. Here, for several years, boats had been built by emigrants and others to take their mer- chandise and other movables down by water carriage." In his charter of the town Mr. Connell stipulated that "the space left opposite the ferry and fronting on said river shall be and continue free for the use of the inhabit- ants of said town and for travelers who may erect thereon temporary boatyards, or may from time to time occupy the same or any part thereof for making any vessel or other conveniences for the purpose of conveying their property to or from said town." One use of "the space left opposite the ferry" was the parking in it of the wag- ons of emigrants while their boats were being built.
The early settlers of Western Pennsylvania who had agricultural produce or other products to dispose of were for many years badly in need of near-by markets. Grain and flour, bacon and some other products, would not bear transportation to the East ; hence rye was converted into whisky, and the excise tax on whisky, a most unwise and unjust tax, led to the Whisky Insurrection of 1794. Furs could be taken to Chambersburg and Winchester in ex- change for salt and iron. Ginseng, maple sugar, and beeswax were other local products that would bear trans- portation to eastern markets. With the increase of popu- lation west of the Alleghenies after the Revolution, in- cluding settlements on the Ohio below Pittsburgh and
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Wheeling, a market for the surplus products of Western Pennsylvania was gradually opened, and use was found for keel boats and flat-bottomed boats. The Spaniards were at this time in possession of the Lower Mississippi valley, including the city of New Orleans, and as they were not generally engaged in productive industries they needed the agricultural products of Western Pennsylvania.
In Collins's History of Kentucky it is stated that Cap- tain Jacob Yoder took the first flatboat down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans in 1782. Collins says : " The late Capt. Jos. Pierce, of Cincinnati, Ohio, had erected over the remains of his old friend Capt. Jacob Yoder an iron tablet (the first cast west of the Alleghe- nies) thus inscribed : 'Jacob Yoder was born at Reading, Pennsylvania, August 11, 1758, and was a soldier of the Revolutionary army in 1777 and 1778. He emigrated to the West in 1780, and in May, 1782, from Fort Redstone, on the Monongahela river, in the first flatboat that ever descended the Mississippi river, he landed in New Orleans with a cargoe of produce. He died April 7, 1832, at his farm in Spencer county, Kentucky, and lies here interred beneath this tablet.'"' Fort Redstone is the name that was first given to Brownsville.
Dr. Joseph Smith, in his history of Old Redstone, (1854,) gives us the following account of the trade with New Orleans in the early days : "New Orleans furnished a good market for all the flour, bacon, and whisky which the upper country could furnish. The trade to New Or- leans, like every other enterprise of the day, was attended with great hardship and hazard. The right bank of the Ohio, for hundreds of miles, was alive with hostile Indians. The voyage was performed in flatboats and occupied from four to six months. Several neighbors united their means in building the boat and in getting up the voyage, some giving their labor and others furnishing materials. Each put on board his own produce at his own risk, and one of the owners always accompanied the boat as captain and supercargo. A boat of ordinary size required about six hands, each of whom generally received about $60 a trip on his arrival at New Orleans. They returned either
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EARLY NAVIGATION IN PENNSYLVANIA.
by sea to Baltimore, when they would be within 300 miles of home, or more generally through the wilderness, a dis- tance of 2,000 miles. A large number of these boatmen were brought together in New Orleans. Their journey home could not be made in small parties, as they carried large quantities of specie, and the road was infested by robbers. The boatmen who preferred returning through the wilderness organized and selected their officers. These companies sometimes numbered several hundred, and a great proportion of them were armed. They were provided with mules to carry the specie and provisions, and some spare ones for the sick. Those who were able purchased mules or Indian ponies for their use, but few could afford to ride."
While the trade in flatboats with New Orleans was hazardous it was important and valuable. It continued for many years after the advent of the steamboat on the Ohio in 1811. Before that year the shipments of produce from Western Pennsylvania farms to the settlements in the western part of Virginia and in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, and of other merchandise, some of which had been brought over the Alleghenies on pack-horses, had steadily increased. Then, too, the current of emigration to "the West" itself created a demand for keel boats and the various forms of flat-bottomed boats. In the spring of 1788 the New England colonists who founded Marietta, Ohio, after passing laboriously over the bad roads of Penn- sylvania, came to Robbstown, now West Newton, on the Youghiogheny, and built a number of boats on which they completed their journey to the mouth of the Mus- kingum, where the new town was to be located. On April 3, 1788, the first of these boats, the May Flower, arrived at Pittsburgh, and on April 7 it reached the site of the fu- ture Marietta. Other emigrants at that period took pas- sage on boats built on the Youghiogheny, but Brownsville, on the Monongahela, was the principal point of departure for "the West," and here the most boats were built.
In a later chapter some mention will be made of the shipments to the western markets of bar iron and iron castings from the pioneer iron works of Western Penn-
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PROGRESSIVE PENNSYLVANIA.
Wheeling, a market for the surplus products of Western Pennsylvania was gradually opened, and use was found for keel boats and flat-bottomed boats. The Spaniards were at this time in possession of the Lower Mississippi valley, including the city of New Orleans, and as they were not generally engaged in productive industries they needed the agricultural products of Western Pennsylvania.
In Collins's History of Kentucky it is stated that Cap- tain Jacob Yoder took the first flatboat down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans in 1782. Collins says : " The late Capt. Jos. Pierce, of Cincinnati, Ohio, had erected over the remains of his old friend Capt. Jacob Yoder an iron tablet (the first cast west of the Alleghe- nies) thus inscribed : 'Jacob Yoder was born at Reading, Pennsylvania, August 11, 1758, and was a soldier of the Revolutionary army in 1777 and 1778. He emigrated to the West in 1780, and in May, 1782, from Fort Redstone, on the Monongahela river, in the first flatboat that ever descended the Mississippi river, he landed in New Orleans with a cargoe of produce. He died April 7, 1832, at his farm in Spencer county, Kentucky, and lies here interred beneath this tablet.'" Fort Redstone is the name that was first given to Brownsville.
Dr. Joseph Smith, in his history of Old Redstone, (1854,) gives us the following account of the trade with New Orleans in the early days : "New Orleans furnished a good market for all the flour, bacon, and whisky which the upper country could furnish. The trade to New Or- leans, like every other enterprise of the day, was attended with great hardship and hazard. The right bank of the Ohio, for hundreds of miles, was alive with hostile Indians. The voyage was performed in flatboats and occupied from four to six months. Several neighbors united their means in building the boat and in getting up the voyage, some giving their labor and others furnishing materials. Each put on board his own produce at his own risk, and one of the owners always accompanied the boat as captain and supercargo. A boat of ordinary size required about six hands, each of whom generally received about $60 a trip on his arrival at New Orleans. They returned either
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EARLY NAVIGATION IN PENNSYLVANIA.
by sea to Baltimore, when they would be within 300 miles of home, or more generally through the wilderness, a dis- tance of 2,000 miles. A large number of these boatmen were brought together in New Orleans. Their journey home could not be made in small parties, as they carried large quantities of specie, and the road was infested by robbers. The boatmen who preferred returning through the wilderness organized and selected their officers. These companies sometimes numbered several hundred, and a great proportion of them were armed. They were provided with mules to carry the specie and provisions, and some spare ones for the sick. Those who were able purchased mules or Indian ponies for their use, but few could afford to ride."
While the trade in flatboats with New Orleans was hazardous it was important and valuable. It continued for many years after the advent of the steamboat on the Ohio in 1811. Before that year the shipments of produce from Western Pennsylvania farms to the settlements in the western part of Virginia and in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, and of other merchandise, some of which had been brought over the Alleghenies on pack-horses, had steadily increased. Then, too, the current of emigration to "the West" itself created a demand for keel boats and the various forms of flat-bottomed boats. In the spring of 1788 the New England colonists who founded Marietta, Ohio, after passing laboriously over the bad roads of Penn- sylvania, came to Robbstown, now West Newton, on the Youghiogheny, and built a number of boats on which they completed their journey to the mouth of the Mus- kingum, where the new town was to be located. On April 3, 1788, the first of these boats, the May Flower, arrived at Pittsburgh, and on April 7 it reached the site of the fu- ture Marietta. Other emigrants at that period took pas- sage on boats built on the Youghiogheny, but Brownsville, on the Monongahela, was the principal point of departure for "the West," and here the most boats were built.
In a later chapter some mention will be made of the shipments to the western markets of bar iron and iron castings from the pioneer iron works of Western Penn-
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sylvania. All the trade in these articles . was carried on in keel boats and flatboats. This trade began before the end of the eighteenth century. Early in the next century there developed a market for Pittsburgh coal in the towns down the Ohio, and here again was created a demand for flatboats which increased from year to year. Boats with flat bottoms are in use to-day for carrying coal down the Ohio. Harris's Directory of Pittsburgh for 1837 says that " the first shipment of coal from Pittsburgh appears to have been made in 1803 by a French company of merchants under the firm name of John Tarascon Bros. and James Burthoud, who during that year built the ship Louisiana, of 350 tons' burden, and 'sent her out ballast- ed with stone coal, which was sold at Philadelphia for 373 cents per bushel.'" The first shipment of coal from the Upper Monongahela valley down the Ohio appears to have taken place about 1817. It was made in flatboats.
The presence of bituminous coal in the hills surround- ing Pittsburgh and at other points in Western Pennsyl-
vania was known to the pioneers. Perhaps the earliest mention of its existence was by Colonel James Burd, a British officer on duty in what is now Fayette county. On September 22, 1759, he wrote in his journal : " The camp moved two miles to Coal run. This run is entirely paved in the bottom with fine stone coal, and the hill on the south of it is a rock of the finest coal I ever saw. I burned about a bushel of it on my fire." The Coal run referred to was apparently about two miles distant from the present town of Brownsville. On October 4, 1770, Washington, while in Fayette county on his way to that part of Virginia which fronts on the Ohio, wrote in his journal : "At Captain Crawford's all day. We went to see a coal mine not far from his house, on the banks of the river. The coal seemed to be of the very best kind, burn- ing freely, and abundance of it." The place named as " Captain Crawford's" occupied the site of the present town of New Haven, opposite Connellsville, and was then known as Stewart's Crossing. Coal had been discovered at Pittsburgh probably about 1758, when Fort Du Quesne fell into the hands of General Forbes. J. S. Wall, of Mo-
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