USA > Pennsylvania > Susquehanna County > The centennial of Susquehanna County > Part 11
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
Dear banner county, trusted, tried, Come to the front with loyal pride ; As in the past, as to-day, In all things worthy lead the way. God make us like our fathers wise, That we, with their prophetic eyes, May see, through Him, our shield and sun, Our brighter glory just begun.
The Hon. Galusha A. Grow was then presented to the people by President Lusk as " a statesman and orator known and admired throughout the entire county, State, and nation. He was elected and re-elected for six terms as your Congressman. He was Speaker of the House of Representatives at the time the war for the Union was progressing, and made himself famous for his efforts in helping to put down the great rebellion. He is known and popularly known all over the continent as the " father of the homestead act."
110
MR. GROW'S ADDRESS.
One hundred and six years before Ozias Strong built his log cabin on the banks of the Susquehanna Charles II, King of Great Britain, granted by royal charter to William Penn and his successors 40,000 square miles of territory including the spot on which we stand, and he named the territory Pennsylvania.
The consideration recited in the grant was two beaver skins annu- ally-this may be one reason why the people of the State like Beaver- and a reservation of one-fifth of all gold and silver mined. This reser- vation has been retained ever since in all conveyances of land by the Commonwealth.
Penn wanted the King to change the name of the territory to New Wales. Had this been done we should all now be Welshmen, and to distinguish us from the Welsh of Great Britain we probably should be called New Welsh.
When the King refused to make this change Penn requested him to call the territory simply Sylvania, an anglacized Latin word signi- fying forest. Had this request been granted we should have been known as Sylvanians; that is, foresters. But the King declined to make any change, so we are all now and ever more Pennsylvanians ; that is Penn's Forester's, instead of New Welsh.
In his native land Penn had thrice been fined and imprisoned for preaching the religious doctrines of the Quakers.
In 1682, with one hundred others, he sailed on the ship " Wel- come " for the New World to found a State in deeds of peace and on the broadest principles of religious toleration. His practice in all things conformed to his uttered sentiment, " There can be no reason for persecuting any man in this world about anything that belongs to the next."
Almost his first act after selecting the site on the banks of the Delaware for the chief city of his new State was the purchase from the surrounding Indian tribes of part of the lands which they claimed and the ratification with them of a treaty of friendship and peace which while he lived was never broken by either party.
The city which he selected was destined. in the providence of God. to become the theater of two of the grandest events in the drama of history, one the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, the other the formation of the Constitution of the United States, September 17,1787.
The Quaker Association, of Philadelphia, was the first religious organization on the American continent to declare slave-holding in- compatible with membership in the Church of the living God ; and the General Assembly of Pennsylvania was the first of the colonies to prohibit slavery by law.
These were the first fruits of Penn's teachings of justice and uni- versal liberty. His was the first instance in the history of coloniza-
HON. GALUSHA A. GROW.
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY,
ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.
III
tion from the time the Israelites first drove the inhabitants out of the promised land that the native population had not been forcibly ex- pelled or slain by the invading and stronger race.
After the ratification of Penn's treaty under the elm of Shacka- maxon (now Kensington, Philadelphia ) a hundred years passed away before the first settlers penetrated the dense forest along this northern boundary of his territory.
North of us was the country of the Iroquois-the Six Nations- the most powerful Indian confederacy on the continent. Their Long House reached the Hudson on the east and Lake Erie on the west, with the Mohawk River through its center. They made use of the waters of the Susquehanna, the Tioga and Allegheny Rivers for canoe navigation in passing from one end of this Long House to the other. At Tioga Point, now Athens, the confluence of the Tioga and Susquehanna Rivers, and at the three apple trees here just on the other bank of the river, the warriors of this mighty confederacy were wont to meet and decide the grave questions of peace and war. A little way above the apple trees was the chosen burying-ground of their dead.
South of us was the country of the Leni Lenapes-Delawares-the next most powerful Indian confederacy. Along the boundary line of these two warring Indian powers the first settlers of Susquehanna County made their homes. A hundred years have passed away and their descendants must now go two thousand miles toward the setting sun to catch the first notes of Indian war-songs that then echoed along these hills and valleys.
While the pioneer settlers were building their rude cabins in these primeval forests the ships of commerce, uninterrupted by law, were transporting men. women and children from their native African homes, and cupidity was consigning them to cruel bondage on American soil. To-day the sun in his course across the continent no longer rises on a master or sets on a slave.
Then the world was without telegraph or railroad. To-day the lightnings of heaven bear men messages of business, of joy and of sorrow round the world in the twinkling of an eye, and trade belts the globe with its rail and steel bands, along which the locomotive, with almost lightning speed, hurls the commerce of nations.
In a new country the first and most important labor, as it is the most difficult to be performed, is to subdue the forest and convert the lair of the wild beast into a home for civilized man. This is the labor of the pioneer settler. His achievements, if not equally brilliant with those of the plumed warrior, are equally, if not more, lasting ; his life, if not at times exposed to so great hazard, is still one of equal danger and death. It is a life of toil and adventure spent upon one continued battle-field, unlike that, however, on which martial hosts contend, for there the struggle is short and ex-
I12
pected, and the victim strikes not alone, while the highest meed of ambition crowns the victor. Not so with the hardy pioneer. He is oft called upon to meet death in a struggle with fearful odds, while no herald will tell to the world of the unequaled combat. Startled at the midnight hour by the war-whoop, he wakes from his dreams to behold his cottage in flames ; the sharer of his joys and sorrows, with perhaps a tender infant hurled, with rude hands, to the distant council-fire. Still he presses on into the wilderness, snatching new areas from the wild beast, and bequeathing them a legacy to civilized man.
He falls leading the van of civilization along untrodden paths, and is buried in the dust of its advancing columns. No monument marks the scene of deadly strife; no stone his resting place ; the winds sighing through the branches of the forest alone sing his requiem. Yet such are the meritorious men of the Republic-the men who give it strength in war and glory in peace. The achieve- ments of our pioneer army from the day they first drove back the Indian tribes from the Atlantic seaboard to the present hour have been the achievements of science and civilization over the elements, the wilderness, and the savage.
Rigorously by his privationsand unyielding energy we have to-day a great empire of free States, the grandest monument ever reared to the political wisdom of man, and when he has covered this whole continent with abodes of civilized life, the genius of liberty and the spirit of free institutions, seizing the standard of the Republic, will bear it across the mighty deep to regenerate old dynasties and breathe new life into decayed empires.
Of Susquehanna County, its pioneers, settlers and their decend- ants it may be said, as it was said of the island of Ithaca, by Ulysses in his farewell to King Alcinous on his departure for his home at the end of his seven years wanderings after the fall of Troy.
Low lies our isle, yet bless'd in fruitful stores ; Strong are her sons, though rocky are her shores.
The three cheers for Mr. Grow, which President Lusk called for as the Ex-Speaker finished, made the welkin ring in a manner that proved how warm a place he has in the hearts of his fellow-citizens. Here it might be proper to state that it was upon the very spot where Mr. Grow had just spoken that he delivered his famous maiden speech forty-three years ago.
A selection by the grand choir, the " Gipsy Chorus," was finely given and President Lusk then introduced Governor Beaver, saying : "In thespring of 1861 a young man left Centre County, in this State, as a second lieutenant of a company of infantry. From the position first assigned him in the war for the Union he rose step by step until he
113
became General James A. Beaver. When in the army he not only won the star of a general, but he won a badge more sacred to this people, having lost a foot and a part of a leg in the line of duty. [ now introduce to you General Beaver as the Governor of the Com- monwealth of Pennsylvania, and ask for three rousing cheers for the patriot and statesman," which were given with such a burst of en- thusiasm as to be very flattering, even to the ruler of a great ('om- monwealth.
GOVERNOR BEAVER'S ADDRESS.
MY FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS : I gratefully appreciate the invitation, which is given me to join in the interesting exercises of this Centennial occasion. Important official engagements prevented my taking part in the exercises of yesterday, which to me promised to be the most interesting of the series of public services which mark this event in your local history. I desire to come here as a learner and not as a teacher. The historical address which has already been de- livered by your worthy administrator of public justice (Judge Mc- Collum) would have given me, as it gave to you, much of the informa- tion which I desired to have in regard to the first settlement of this interesting portion of our great Commonwealth. We are such a prac- tical people that we fail to make the proper use and learn the proper lessons from such events as you celebrate and perpetuate in these ex- ercises. [At this point a band near the bridge commenced playing, and some one suggesting that the band be notified to stop, the Governor said, " You can't stop a brass band. I've tried that lots of times." Soon the playing ceased and the Governor remarked, " Now we got through that better than I expected," and then continued his ad- dress. ]
The first settlement on the banks of the Susquehanna within the limits of what is now Susquehanna County was an important event for the entire region. Coming as it did at the close of our great struggle for independence, when our nationality was secured, and when the ability of the nation to maintain itself as a power among the nations of the earth was the experiment on trial, it not only tended to enlarge the boundaries of civilization, but it was itself a challenge as well to the rude forces and formidable obstacles of nat- ure as to the native Indians who still frequented the region. The battles of our Revolutionary fathers had been fought and won. The great battle of civilization against the untoward forces which opposed its progress was to be fought out upon this outpost as well as upon the longer skirmish line which bounded at that time the western borders of our great country. All experience shows that each and every gen- eration must fight its own battles. It may be a war for independ- ence : it may be a war for mere physical existence ; it may be a war
8
11.4
against the forests of the frontiers or the wild forces of untamed nature ; it may be a war for mere territorial aggrandizement or it may be a war in defense of the inalienable rights of the citizen, or one in which the integrity of the Constitution and the maintenance of the laws are at stake. All of these different kinds of warfare have been waged by the American people, and in the main waged success- fully. Each generation has had its share of such warfare, and the generation which is just now passing away will be long remembered for the great struggle in which it was engaged. And yet, notwith- standing all these conflicts fought to successful issues in the past, we are to-day facing new questions and challenged to wage a great bat- tle in defense of our established and well-loved institutions. The great conflicts of the world have not all been conflicts of armed men set in battle array against each other. The story of liberty, written in so many different chapters, tells as much of the conflict of ideas as of that of arms. And so, my friends, looking to the future, although we need scarcely apprehend the setting of squadrons in the field to settle the battles of this generation, they will be none the less real, none the less earnest, none the less necessary, and none the less vital than those of the generation which is just now regarded as being num- bered, to a great extent, with the past.
The forces which war against our social institutions, which would uproot the very theories upon which the first settlement was made on yonder river side. and which Ozias Strong and his family brought with him when he struck his ax into the first tree and turned the first furrow with his rude plow, are all involved in the struggle. Under which flag is still the great question ? The past conflict to which I have referred was a question of the supremacy of the Stars and Stripes or of the Stars and Bars. The question in the coming struggle is as to the supremacy of " Old Glory," which you have so liberally given to the breeze in all your decorations, or of the red flag which is car- ried in our great cities as the emblem of the cause in which all the enemies of social order and of existing institutions in the United States are marshaled. The issue involves our peace, our prosperity, and the perpetuation of our Government itself. It is whether or not the America of the fathers is to be the America of their sons. Whether the institutions established by the new-comers of the May- flower and the Welcome shall continue to prevail, or whether the communistic and socialistic influences of other new-comers of later (late shall take their place. The Christian Sabbath, with all its at- tendant helps and blessings, the family circle, with all its hallowed associations and comforts, the common school, with its mighty up- lifting in intelligence and training, the integrity of the corner-stone of the Republic, based upon life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- ness-which involves the idea of property to be earned and held and enjoyed by him who is ready to wage with success the battle of life-all these are involved.
115
There is no question as to the feeling which you and all communi- ties like yours have upon this subject. You stand by the old tradi- tions ; you want no change in these established institutions ; and yet there may be a question as to whether or not you feel so profoundly upon the subject as to move to the assistance of our great centers of population, whose vital interests are threatened by the influences which are sloughed off from other countries and which find their nat- ural home in our populous cities. A community which boasts, as yours does, such a multitude of those whom you are pleased to call " first settlers," who in order to entitle themselves to the honor of such an appellation must be at least seventy years old and have lived within the limits of Susquehanna County for forty years, who have been honored as these venerable men and women have been honored to-day by the sweet and hospitable attentions of the beautiful young ladies who administered to their comfort in the adjoining tent ; a community which is blessed by the counsels of such men and women, and which bows down with reverence before the hoary head, is not likely to be carried away by the false and pernicious views of life which are just now agitating other portions of our country. You may not be in immediate danger from influences of this sort ; and yet if the experience of the past teaches us anything worth remem- bering it is that no member of the body-politic can suffer without every member suffering with it. It therefore behooves us to be alive to the great questions which present themselves for our consideration, whether they affect us directly and immediately or not. It behooves us in this great battle of ideas and of principles to range ourselves upon the side of right, of truth, of purity, and of justice, so that that influence may be felt in every possible way for the promotion of the general welfare of the entire country.
I have no fears as to your attitude on the great social questions which confront us ; and what is here said is not in the way of argu- ment to convince you as to your duty, but simply in the way of ad- monition, so that our attitude may be understood and our influence exerted in every proper way.
In the prayer with which our devotions were led at the beginning of these public exercises to-day there was an allusion made to the worship of God "with none to molest." Are you sure that there are not to-day in this country organized bodies of men whose main bond of union is the desire to break down the American idea of the Sabbath, and thus to molest and to overturn, if possible, the worship of the God whose presence and blessing have been invoked upon us in this service? The fact of such organization is well known, and the mere statement of the fact is all that is necessary to range the law-abiding citizens of Susquehanna County upon the side of right.
One who addressed a recent soldiers' encampment greatly regretted that he was not old enough to take part in the defense of our country
116
in the late war. But he and such as he are old enough now to take an earnest and intelligent part in maintaining and promoting the principles which that war and all other similar wars, whether of bul- lets or ballots, successfully waged in the past have established and maintained. There is another consideration which prompts us to the vigorous assertion of our attitude upon this and all other great moral questions. When wrong is met at the outset by the vigorous. and determined opposition of those who are banded together for the right, there is little danger of its assuming such proportions as will require the suppressing and coercive measures of the strong-mailed hand.
It is not my purpose, nor is it perhaps proper that I should enter into the discussion of such questions as these at greater length. They are of vital interest, and you have shown by your attitude and ear - nest attention that you are interested in them ; and in discussing and dealing with them I feel assured that the good county of Susque- hanna and its liberty-loving, law-abiding people will be found in the front rank battling for the right.
You have by the remarks of your chairman, and in various other ways very agreeable to me, expressed your pleasure in my presence here to-day. I certainly have as much pleasure in being present. I expected mutual enjoyment, and if you have had as much as I it has truly been a very pleasant day to us all.
The Long Meter Doxology was then sung by the grand choir, and as the vast multitude joined in the singing the scene became inspiring. The exercises of the day at the grand stand were concluded by the Rev. Reuben N. Ives, of Binghamton, offering a benediction.
THE PLANTING OF THE CENTENNIAL TREE.
The Governor never seeming to weary in his efforts to please the people and meet the demands of the Reception Committee then re- paired to the spot where the Centennial Tree was to be planted, which was about twenty feet west of the Log Cabin. A sturdy young elm had been carefully selected from an adjoining mountain by Dr. F. D. Lamb, and as he had prepared a place for its planting, all was in readiness when the Governor arrived. As soon as it was known what was transpiring, an immense throng of people collected in Susque- hanna avenue to witness the ceremonies When the Governor ap- proached the tree he threw away his crutches, quietly pulled up his coat-sleeves, and took a firm hold of the young elm, examining it carefully, saying : " That is a fine tree, and it ought to flourish in
117
this generous soil." After pulling some dirt and rich sods around the roots, down he went upon his knees and commenced pressing the soil carefully and firmly about the rootlets. " Planting trees is one of my pet hobbies," said he, " and perhaps I can teach some of you how it ought to be done." It was evident by this time that the Gov- ernor intended to plant the Centennial Elm himself. "He works like a beaver," said an enthusiastic bystander. "That's the man for these United States," shouted a patriotic Hibernian. "Governor, you are getting your cuffs covered with mud," interposed another. '. Oh, they'll wash," replied the General, good-naturedly.
When he had finished packing the soil about the roots Judge Jessup handed a hoe to a small boy, saying : " Pull some dirt around this tree, my lad, and tell your grand and great grandchildren that you helped Governor Beaver plant it, and charge them to protect it until the second centennial." " That's good," said the Governor, enthu- siastically, and added : "Plant more elms here, so that when the bi-centennial of your splendid county comes the people can gather under their generous shade "
When the tree was planted, the Governor turned to Justice C. M. Simmons, the burgess of Hallstead, and to Charles Simpson, the president of the town council, and said : " Gentlemen, I hope you will see that this Centennial Tree is properly cared for and pro- tected," and they assured him that his request would be complied with.
During the planting of the tree the enthusiasm of the people be- came boundless, so that when General Beaver left the spot he received one continuous hand-shaking ovation until he reached the Mitchell House, and hundreds swarmed into the reception parlors and were kindly greeted there.
The happy suggestion of planting the Centennial Tree was made by Mrs. James T. Du Bois, and it is hoped that it may grow to be- come a landmark of Hallstead and the mecca of the good citizens of the county in centennial days to come.
At 7 o'clock in the evening Governor Beaver and the Hon. Galusha .1. Grow were driven by S. S. Wright to Spring Farm, where they witnessed the fireworks, the illumination of the mountain and spent the night, leaving the next morning at 8 o'clock for Montrose, ac- companied by Judge Jessup, to attend the annual meeting of the State Board of Agriculture.
IIS
We take the liberty here of introducing an amusing incident which ; occurred at Spring Farm during the Governor's and Mr. Grow's sojourn there. As the Governor crossed the threshold of the Spring Farm home he was greeted by Henry, the little two-and-a-half-year- old son of the owner of the place, who seeing a one-legged man for the first time, cried out in German, which he has been taught to speak, " Herr, wo ist dein andreen Bein?" (Mister, where is your other leg ?) The Governor seemed puzzled at first, and the little fellow seeing that he had not been understood said, "Mister, where is your other leg?" The Governor laughed heartily, and putting aside his crutches, seated himself by the blazing old-fashioned fire-place, and taking the small boy on his knee, said, " My little friend. I will tell you where my other leg is. A long time ago there was a very cruel war in which men shot at and often killed each other. One day a man must have shot toward me, for a ball came crushing into my leg, breaking the bones and making and ugly wound. It hurt me- very much, and some kind friends sent for a surgeon, who came with a big knife and cut my poor leg off. Then some men took it out. into the field, dug a deep hole in the ground, and, putting the leg into it, covered it up, and there I suppose it has remained unto this. very day." As no expression of sympathy came from the little fel- low, his father asked him if he were not sorry for the Governor, to which he answered " Nein " (no). .. Why not?" inquired the father. And the small boy coolly replied . .. Weil er gut genug auf einem Bein geht" (Because he goes well enough on one leg). The Governor. laughing, said, "That is the best compliment paid me to-day."
THE CLOSING SCENES OF A GREAT DAY.
As night fell upon the place her sable robes were illumined by the- brilliant lights which flashed from swinging lamps and flaming torches and bright windows everywhere.
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.