Twentieth century history of Altoona and Blair County, Pennsylvania, and representative citizens, Part 9

Author: Sell, Jesse C 1872-
Publication date: 1911
Publisher: Chicago, Richmond-Arnold Publishing
Number of Pages: 1036

USA > Pennsylvania > Blair County > Altoona > Twentieth century history of Altoona and Blair County, Pennsylvania, and representative citizens > Part 9

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Their taxes are always paid promptly, notwithstanding some grumbling at times at the amount. They hate debt, and sel- dom buy what they cannot pay for. Many years ago they did not vote, but this rule of their church is gradually becoming obso-

lete. They are still averse to serving on juries, and I know of no instance in this county where they have accepted public of- fice, though in other portions of the state they have done so. They were from the be- ginning opposed to public schools. In 1857, when superintendent of schools I often visted them in their homes and conversed with them on the subject. Always hospit- able and kind, still I remember of no in- stance in which I succeeded in persuading the elder members of the faith to aid in promoting the cause of education. The fact is, their ancestors had been persecuted bitterly in Germany by both Catholics and Lutherans; in the hands of these religionists were the government and all institutions of learning; by tradition, they associated much learning with despotic power and persecution, and they abhorred it. But in the last thirty-five years this hostility has in a great part disappeared; the younger generation, more acute in its perceptions, is more favorable to education ; these citizens, before long, we may hope, will take their proper place in the government of a great commonwealth to whose material wealth they have so largely contributed. I yet ex- pect to see a Tunker sheriff, or at least a county commissioner ; my children, I doubt not, will see Tunker governors, judges and congressmen.

The other branch of German religionists, the Lutherans, had no such notions as the Tunkers. From their first coming into the colony, they took an active fighting part in affairs. In fact, when Muhlenberg, their great preacher, arrived among them in 1742, he called them a "rough set." He was a learned, able and pious man ; it was not long until his character was felt by his co-relig- ionists ; he organized them into congrega- tions and sought to impress upon them the wisdom as well as duty of becoming Ameri- canized; he opposed, with all his great abil- ity, that segregation so dear to the Tunker. He taught English himself, had his children educated in it by an English governess. His

HISTORY OF BLAIR COUNTY

son Peter was a prominent general in the ness consists in well tilled land, large and revolution. Many of these Lancaster and

well filled barns, the Tunker is superior. Berks German Lutherans found their way . But no free commonwealth was ever built into our valleys soon after the revolutionary war, and their names can be traced on the as- sessments from these counties. They were a far better class of citizens in one particular than the Tunkers; they took part in govern- ment, local, county and state ; always voted ; were always ready to take up arms in de- fense of their homes and country.

Professor Wickersham, in his "History of Education in Pennsylvania," says: "The Germans when they first came to Pennsyl- vania, were no more opposed to education than other races. But, whenever they re- fused to learn English, they deteriorated and became obstructionists of progress." I think this is applicable to Germans other than Tunkers; but the opposition of the lat- ter, I know personally, was often put upon the ground that education was hurtful. Con- fining themselves to German certainly tended to isolation and narrowness; they had not the Englishman's nor Irishman's instinct for politics and government, and, by self- isolation, their children did not acquire it. Comprising so large a part of the population of the commonwealth almost from its foul- dation, they have never taken that part in its government their numbers and wealth warranted. Whenever they abandoned their exclusiveness, and by education, busi- ness associations and inter-marriages, mixed with other races and their descendents, their natural capacity for science and affairs be- comes undeniable. Dr. Caspar Wistar, Dr. Gross and Dr. Leidy were of this German stock; Governors Snyder, Hiester, Shultz, Wolf, Ritner, Shunk and Hartranft were also. But all these eschewed German exclu- siveness and Tunker opposition to war and education; they were of the Mehlenberg party and ideas. Of the two classes of Ger- mans, the Tunkers and the Lutherans, with their allied sects, the Lutheran contributes most to the greatness of a state, and is there- fore the better citizen. In so far as great-

11p nor long continued free, whose citizens took no part in the government ; who would vote for no candidate, from the governor to the township supervisor. The very genius of our constitutions : state and national, de- mands that all citizens who value life, lib- erty and property, should take an active and intelligent part in politics.

We next have the Scotch and Scotch- Irish. They, as noticed, settled a large part of the most fertile part of the county. They were all Presbyterians. I never heard of a Scotch-Irishman in the first generation be- ing other than Presbyterian, until I became acquainted with Mr. Thomas Rooney, late of this town, a most excellent man, now gone to his rest. He was a most exemplary Lutheran, and came to this country from Ireland in his youth. The Scotch-Irish were not all Scotch, although all who came from the north of Ireland were so called. Many of them had emigrated to Ireland from Eng- land in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., and were co-religionists with those who emi- grated from Scotland. Many of these Scotch emigrants were Celts of the same race as the native Irish; the only difference was in religion. Large numbers of these Irish settlers, Scotch and English, left Ire- land in the reign of James II., and came to Pennsylvania ; this migration of the Scotch- Irish continued for years down to the com- mencement of the revolutionary war. It is generally supposed they were all driver from Ireland by Catholic persecution, but this is not the truth in all cases; many of them had taken long leases from the English government of Irish lands in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I., and these leases were expiring in those of Charles II. and James II .; the government would not renew them, or demanded such exhorbitant rents for the future that they preferred to emigrate. And this state of affairs contin- ued long after Protestant ascendancy on the

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English throne under Willian and Anne. As I always understood from the tradition in our family my paternal great-grandfather, Matthew Dean, came to Pennsylvania about the year 1760, because he preferred to own land here rather than lease it in Ireland. And I have no doubt this was the case with many others of that stock.

The Scotch-Irish were intense Presbyte- rians. A copy of the Confession of Faith, with the Larger and Shorter Catechism. ivas in every Presbyterian family in my boy- hood. The copy in our family was quite old; it bore a London publisher's imprint, and was said to have been brought from Ire- land by my mother's ancestors. I don't re- member that the doctrine was expressly taught-rather think it was not-but I got the impression somehow, from my drilling before I was twelve years old, that while those outside of the Presbyterian church might be saved, their case was an exceedingly doubtful one. I pitied my Methodist, Luth- eran and Catholic boy companions, because, not being Presbyterian boys, they were in peril of everlasting punishment. I can real- ize now, from my own teachings, which must have been greatly moderated in their tone by nearly a century of New World lib- erty, how intolerant, cruel and bigoted must have been-the attitude of the religious sects pf Europe in the previous century. No one who has read history doubts that, in the seventeenth and eighteenths centuries, relig- ious persecution was the rule, toleration a rare exception. Catholics killed Protestants, Protestants or dissenters from the Estab- lished Church killed Catholics; the Church of England killed both, and all because of a difference of creed as to the authority of the pope, the efficacy of the sacraments, or the interpretation of revelation.

And on their theory, logically, they were' right. They assumed their particular creed was undoubtedly orthodox; every one that differed from it was rank heresy ; whosoever believed in and practiced the heresy, would incur eternal damnation; if no one but the

then holder of the false religion should be- lieve in it the effect would be limited, but if the heretic should go on propagating the heresy and those imbibing it should so con- tinue, the result would be millions of souls would be destroyed. "It is my duty to God," they reasoned, "to exterminate this soul-destroying heresy and thereby save millions of souls." And they at once pro- ceeded to perform their duty by cutting off the heads of the heretics. And assuming their premises to be correct, they were right, whether Catholic or Protestant. It took a long time, almost a century and a half of religious civilization, before the large ma- jority of Christians of all creeds fully com- prehended that there was no divine author- ity committed to any man or body of men to determine that another man would certainly be damned because of his religious creed ; that the Great Judge had reserved that at- tribute of sovereignty to himself, and that the individual conscience was answerable to Him alone, for He alone can determine cer- tainly the wickedness of the offense and therefore can alone justly fix the punish- ment.

But out of these religious wars, persecu- tions and cruelties, came the Scotch-Irish- man into the beautiful valleys of our county. They wanted a fertile soil, and they got it; they wanted to own it; in that their desire was accomplished. The first settlers had to war with the Indians. There were no "Got- tes wille sei Gethan"with them, as with their Tunker co-settlers. Their idea was, "The Lord hath given to His saints the heathen for an inheritance." They had not a spark of doubt who were the saints, nor who were the heathen. Their only season of respite from war in the early years was in the win- ter; the Indians seldom made a winter cam- paign; but in sowing and reaping, their fields were guarded by the boys as sentinels. Many of them were killed by the cunning and cruel foe. Not a half mile from where we are now assembled, part of the Holliday family was massacred ; in Dell Delight, one

HISTORY OF BLAIR COUNTY

of the Moores; in Catharine township, half of my great-grandfather's family was killed and scalped, and his house burned. Permit me to show how closely tradition connects events ; the massacre of the Dean family oc- curred in the autumn of 1780, almost 116 years ago ; my great-grandmother and four of her children were in the house, her hus- band and three children in the corn field; while they were in the corn field the Indians killed and scalped all in the house, and set it on fire, without discovering those in the corn field. One of the girls in the corn field was Polly, who married Hugh Means, a farmer in the lower end of Sinking Valley. I visited her more than once in 1844 to 1848, about which time she died, I being then IO to 12 years of age and she probably 80; more than once she narrated to me all the sickening details of the massacre, as far as she or any one knew them. So that tradi- tion in this instance, through but two per- sons, runs back 116 years to a terrible event in a family. I now tell it to my children, and they pass it on, so that three or four lives will possibly reach 250 years. Some of the details of the story may be lost, some possibly added, but the substance will re- main correct. I have frequently, of late years, thought of this, when I have heard scientists hoot at the value of tradition as testimony to historical facts, arguing that written evidence alone can be relied on. Tradition, in the larger number of instances, has the kernel of truth. But this is a digres- sion.

To hear the orators of the Scotch-Irish at times one would be led to think they were the embodiment of all the virtues; that but for them there would have been no Pennsylvania, and possibly no nation. In these claims there is much pardonable exaggeration.

In their domestic lives the Scotch-Irish were probably more considerate of the comfort of the women of the household than the Tunkers; they were always more liberal in expenditure; they generally ate the best of the product of their farms and sold the poorest; whisky dis-

tilled on the farm, or very near it, was used without stint; they favored education. The schoolmaster was installed as soon as possible after a settlement was made, and there were but few of the second generation who could not read, write and cipher. They had one most erroneous idea brought with them from the old country; that is, that the girls could marry and needed no estate; so in their wills in the early part of the century you will find they generally gave about nine-tenths of their estate to the sons and divided the remaining tenth among the daughters. I can even show you two or three wills of this kind probated after Scotch-Irishmen's decease subsequent to the organization of this county.

Sargent, in his "Introductory Memoir to the Journal of Braddock's Expedition," says, "They were a hardy, brave, hot-headed race, excitable in temper, unrestrainable in passion, invincible in prejudice. Their hand opened as impetuously to a friend as it clinched against an enemy. If often rude and lawless, it was partly the fault of their position. They hated the Indian while they despised him, and it does not seem, in their dealings with this race, as though there were any sentiments of honor or magnanimity in their bosoms that could hold way against their passionate, blind resent- ment. Impatient of restraint, rebellious against everything that in their eyes bore the semblance of injustice, we find these men readiest among the ready on the battlefields of the Revolution. If they had faults, a lack of patriotism or of courage was not among the number."

Scotch-Irishmen, as a rule, protest against this picture as one that does them gross in- justice. It is perhaps over-drawn against them, but it comes nearer a presentation of their true character than the indiscriminate laudation of their own orators. I feel war- ranted in thus speaking, because of my own blood, being Scotch-Irish on both paternal and maternal sides of my ancestry. While all the first settlers had passed away before my years of recollection, I saw and knew some of their immediate children, and many of their grand-

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children. My uncle, Samuel Dean, who lived to an advanced age, was born in the year 1800. James M. Bell, my preceptor in the law, in the year 1799. My father, 1808. Tobias Fore- man, late of Huntingdon county, lived with and was reared by my grandfather; James Clark, grandfather of John Clark of Williams- burg, an old Revolutionary soldier, an uncle of my father, was often at our house; he was vivacious, and a great narrator of past events ; these all knew and mingled with the original settlers of Sinking Valley, Canoe Valley and Frankstown township. I have heard them tell of their domestic life, of their political dif- ferences, local feuds and church disputes. Sar- gent's description, from my own opinion of mature years, approaches accuracy.

Mr. Sydney George Fisher, in his most val- uable book, "The Making of Pennsylvania," says: "There is no doubt the Scotch-Irish were rough, but roughness is not always a serious vice, and there are various degrees of it. They had the lands of the Irish rebels given to them ; they had entered on them with a strong hand, and they had grown accustomed to maintain- ing themselves among a hostile population from whom they expected but little considera- tion. They were not much addicted to polite- ness or asking leave for what they took, and they entered Pennsylvania in a manner that was rather irritating to the proprietors. Large numbers of them marched to the York Bar- rens, in what was then Lancaster county, near the Maryland boundary line, without first of- fering to buy the land from Penn. When spoken to on the subject, they replied that Penn had solicited colonists and they had come ac- cordingly. A more serious offense was their settling without purchase on the lands of the Indians, an intrusion which is generally be- lieved to have caused several massacres."

In the merry-makings they were rude; a rough and tumble fight with fists was not un- usual; whisky was among them a beverage partaken of on all ocacsions, whether feast, wedding or funeral; when a boy, within a radius of two miles of where I went to school, there were five distilleries, owned by Scotch- church. There was, when I was a boy, a small

Irish Presbyterians and Pennsylvania Ger- mans. The Washingtonian temperance reform in 1843 and 1844 closed all but one of these. But without this, it is probable they would have closed. New means of transportation enabled them to ship their rye to market in bulk, instead of concentrating it into a small package of whisky.

As noticed, the Tunkers would not vote or hold office. No one ever said that of a Scotch- Irishman; I have never known of his refusal to vote at least once, and he was willing to hold as many offices as he was eligible to. The records of this county since its organization will, I think, bear me out in this statement. Although many of them deny it, the Tunkers excelled them as farmers. As a rule, the Scotch-Irish farmers, after three generations, are giving way, and their places are being taken by others.

The Catholic Irish settled what is now Blair township, about the close of the Revolutionary war; the borough of Newry is, next to Franks- town, the oldest village in the county. I have heard the late James M. Hewit say that when a boy he went to Newry to see a circus; Hol- lidaysburg was then too insignificant to war- rant the showmen in stopping; Newry was the larger town. This Irish settlement for a time throve and was prosperous, but the loca- tion of the canal and the Portage road north of it, with their junction at Hollidaysburg, ar- rested its growth and Hollidaysburg forged ahead, just as the location of the main line of the Pennsylvania railroad six miles north of Hollidaysburg created Altoona, leaving Holli- daysburg standing still. But the Catholic Irish settlement at Newry, and Blair township, for many years, was a very important part of Huntingdon county. The old settlers were progressive and exemplary citizens, none bet- ter ; the Cassidays, McIntoshes, Conrads, Mc- Graws, Malones and others, were all active in the formation of our new county. Besides these Catholics, as I have already said, there were others scattered all over the county, but for many years Newry had the only Catholic

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Catholic graveyard in Williamsburg, how old I do not know; but here, every now and then, some devout member of the church was laid to rest in consecrated ground. A neat church has been erected there within thirty years.

It is but a century ago that the two races, hostile in religion, and hating each other in Ireland, again met. In Ireland they had been implacable foes, but when they reached this New World of religious liberty, where every one had a right to pursue his own happiness, their resentments seem to have disappeared, and they labored together for the common good. Up until 1854 I never heard of relig- ious proscription, or religious antagonism in politics. I know I have seen my father, at an early day, in consultation with the Catholic McKiernans and Harbisons relative to the pro- motion of education in the common schools, and other public measures affecting the town- ship. But in 1854 a wave of intolerance, bigotry and proscription passed over the state. The Catholic was persecuted, just as far as our constitution permitted; he was not im- prisoned, not killed on account of his religion, but he was voted out of every office he could possibly aspire to from state to township. It was a shameful persecution, and lasted about three years; in less than five years thereafter those most active in the movement were busy denying they had any connection with it. In less than ten years came the war for the pres- ervation of the union. Our Catholic fellow citizens all around us, then, by their patriotism at home in promoting enlistments, their cour- age on many a bloody battlefield, gave the lie to all accusations made against them in the know nothing crusade. Good citizenship is not determined by creed; conscience and ca- pacity for public service are not measured by doctrine or dogma. All religious proscription is utterly at war with the fundamental prin- ciples of our constitution. And whether our remote ancestors cut each other's heads off in Ireland two hundred years ago, because one did not acknowledge the spiritual authority of the pope, and the other refused to acknowl- edge the spiritual authority of a presbytery, or

their descendants figuratively at this day cut each other's political heads off at the polls, the principle is precisely the same, religious bigotry and proscription. I speak now as a citizen of this growing county and this grand old commonwealth in which I was born and bred. No one doubts my religious creed ; of a Scotch- Irish Presbyterian ancestry, religious training and education, I could not be other and do not wish to be other than Presbyterian. At the same time, with all my years of study, ex- perience and thought, I cannot but tremble when I see the least sign of a revival of that intolerant religious spirit which for centuries bathed Europe in blood. Lincoln said of slavery, "A house divided against itself can- not stand." I do not believe a house divided against itself on a religious question can stand. Once religious belief is made a political issue ; once you determine a man's fitness for office by his opinion on the doctrine of the "real presence,"-intercession of the saints, of the Virgin Mary, the very foundation of our free institutions disappears. Take away that foun- dation stone, laid in all its breadth and beauty by Penn, and on which the great and glorious edifice of this free commonwealth has been builded, grand as is the superstructure, it may fall; if it does not fall, it will cease to grow ; there will be no further additions, wherein may be sheltered and made happy the sons of men.

Our Bill of Rights declares: "All men have a natural and indefeasible right to wor- ship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences.

"No person who acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and pun- ishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified for any office or place of trust or profit under this common- wealth."

Under this benificent declaration, or the sub- stance of it, declared by the wise founder of our state, the whole commonwealth has grown and prospered. Any departure from it must be a step backward into a dark age of persecu- tion and bloodshed, when ignorance undertook

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to fashion men's consciences by cruelty and barbarity.

"Lord," said the woman of Sichem, "our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." Jesus replied, "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall worship neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem, but when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth."

It is almost nineteen centuries since the great Founder of Christianity proclaimed this sum of all religion at Jacob's Well, yet, during all those centuries, it is only an occasional glimpse we get of it in practice. The Tunkers, Luth- erans, Scotch-Irish and Catholic Irish of this county lived up to it for almost seventy-five years, or until 1854. May we not hope, that since the miserable failure then to adopt a re- ligious test in politics, none other will ever be attempted.

Such were the men, such their religion, such the race of the hardy people who originally set- tled the territory which now forms our county. When the county was organized in 1846 many of the descendants of the original Germans and Scotch-Irish had become Methodists, and some of them Baptists. The Methodist was a missionary church; its circuit riders had pene- trated into all corners of the county by that time; their congregations were organized in almost every school district ; they were specially effective at the iron works; two large settled congregations with comfortable churches ex- isted at Hollidaysburg and Williamsburg; but while strong in numbers, they were generally of limited means; their influence and wealth are mainly the growth of the last fifty years, and the same may be said of the Baptists. Many other religious sects have also in that period grown in numbers and importance. What I have sought specially to point out is the kind and character of the people who, by more than seventy years of struggle, made our county what it was in 1846, brought it to the point where its people had a right to demand a separate county organization and the legisla- ture was warranted in creating it.

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Twentieth century history of Altoona and Blair County, Pennsylvania, and representative citizens, Part 9

Author: Sell, Jesse C 1872- Publication date: 1911 Publisher: Chicago, Richmond-Arnold Publishing Number of Pages: 1036

Author: Sell, Jesse C 1872-
Publication date: 1911
Publisher: Chicago, Richmond-Arnold Publishing
Number of Pages: 1036