Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People (Volume 1), Part 7

Author: Babcock, Charles A.
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages:

USA > Pennsylvania > Venango County > Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People (Volume 1) > Part 7

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In 1788 Andrew Ellicott suggested to the Executive Council that certain tracts especially desirable for future development should be surveyed. In the following year that body authorized the survey of reservations at Fort Venango and at the mouth of the Conawango on the Allegheny river, at Fort Le Boeuf, at the head of navigation on French creek, and at Erie. It was stipulated that none of these reservations should exceed three thousand acres in extent. These surveys were made by John Adlum, and reported to the Council in September, 1789. This practically withdrew these lands from the market. It was not till April 18, 1795, that the uses to which these tracts were to be put were declared. The legis- lature then enacted that, "In order to facilitate and promote the progress of settlements within the Commonwealth and to afford additional se- curity to the frontiers thereof by the establish- ment of towns upon the lands heretofore re- served for public uses," the governor should appoint two commissioners to lay out towns at these points. The act as it relates to Franklin is as follows: "The said commission shall also survey or cause to be surveyed 300 acres for town lots, and 700 acres adjoining thereto for outlots, at the most eligible place within the tract heretofore reserved for public use at the mouth of French creek; and the lands so 2

surveyed shall be respectively laid out into town lots and outlots in such manner, and with such streets, lanes, alleys and reservations for public use, as the said commissioners shall di- rect : but no town lot shall contain more than one-third of an acre; no outlot shall contain more than five acres, nor shall the reservations for public uses exceed in the whole ten acres ; and all the streets, lanes and alleys thereof, and of the outlots adjoining thereto, shall be and remain forever common highways." The com- missioners were required to complete and file a report of the survey "with all convenient dis- patch with the Secretary of the Common- wealth." This was done within the same year, 1795. No ancient name, "Ganayarhhare," "Weningo," "Wenango" and "The old Indian town at Venango," appears as the appellation of the bright new map with "streets and alleys and reservations for public uses." The little place, great already in the history springing from its many names, is christened, -"and the town shall be called Franklin." The proceeds of the sale of the Franklin lands were prin- cipally devoted to the building of the first county courthouse, and the academy. North of French creek, for many years, a tract of several hundred acres was unsold. It was known as the Academy Reserve. A tract of a little more than three hundred acres, situated at the mouth of Oil creek, was surveyed by Alexander McDowell. It comprised the greater part of the present site of Oil City. It was pat- ented to Cornplanter March 16, 1796, and re- mained in the possession of this chief till 1818.

The next step taken by the legislature, now that its benevolent intention had been realized to the extent of its power, was to promote the settlement of the northwestern part of its terri- tory. There remained many thousands of acres not applied to the redemption of depreciation certificates, or likely to be drawn as donation lands. The settlements near the west and in the western interior were subject to Indian raids, had in fact been terrorized by the In- dians. To strengthen the settlements in the west and northwestern parts of the State, and also to provide a revenue for the increasing demands upon the government, it was decided to offer for settlement or for sale all the lands remaining of the purchases of 1768 and 1784. By an act passed on the 3d of April, 1792, that part of the purchase of 1784 lying south and east of the Allegheny river was offered for sale at five pounds per hundred acres ; northwest of the Ohio and Allegheny rivers the price was seven pounds, ten shillings per hundred acres. The latter was offered only to persons "who

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will cultivate, improve and settle the same, or cause the same to be cultivated, improved or settled." There was no condition of settlement attaching to lands east and south of the Alle- gheny.

There were two methods of acquiring title. A warrant could be paid for at the land office for a tract of land to be surveyed, and the title completed by settlement and improvement within the two years; or the settlement and improvement could be made first and the payment made later. But settlements were made very slowly. The colonies, after gaining their independence by an exhausting war, were left in a poor state. The foreign business of the country had decreased rapidly during the Revolution and it had practically disappeared during the next six years of the Confedera- tion. The several colonies were jealous of one another, and many of them even legislated against the trade of the others. In the com- bat against a common foe, the colonies had united, but when the danger was passed they were separate governments again. The Con- gress of the United Colonies had no credit abroad, nor could it make needed improve- ments at home. It could assess the colonies amounts needed for necessary expenses, but it could not collect them. The trouble with the Congress of the Confederation was that it could not reach directly the individual citizens of the country. It made recommendations to the colonies. Their assemblies considered, recommended, delayed, then watched the other assemblies. It was like calling spirits from the vasty deep. To complicate matters each colony had a paper currency of its own; all greatly depreciated and each one differing in rate of depreciation from all the others. There was a multiplicity of denominations in use ; and coins of the same name did not have the same value throughout the country, even at par. It would take a smart business man a month to learn the names and values of the different kinds of money used in the colonies. No won- der the trade between colonies decreased. There was little manufacturing, no great de- mand for labor or opportunity to dispose of its products. Life at this time, outside the few considerable cities, seemed turning back again to primitive conditions. One had to catch or dig up, or make with his own hands pretty nearly everything he used or occasionally bar- tered. This was the time when a likely widow with a large number of children was a most attractive institution; as a self supporting, growing concern, it was generally considered that a co-partnership in it made life on the

frontier an assured success. More rarely a widower with both hands full of sons and daughters joined fortunes with the same kind of widow. Therefore, some of our great grand pioneers have left many great-great-grand- children. In certain of our largest eastern cities there are forty to sixty pages of the di- rectory filled with the same family name. Per- haps not yet in Venango, but wait a hundred years. In the meantime, fine the old bachelors and the widowers.

In all those ancient homes, whether small or large, most things to eat, drink, or wear, and many to exchange . were made. Everyone worked; and cheerful work for the common good is still the blessed way out of a common ill.

In 1792, when Pennsylvania was trying for settlers, "we, the people in order to form a more perfect union," had adopted our Consti- tution, and the United States had made some progress, during the three years of our first president, George Washington. The debts of the colonies had been assumed by the general government, a national currency had been adopted, the public credit was strengthened, and our vanished foreign commerce was re- appearing. But the people were poor. Very few had money to buy land outright. To clear away the trees and to dig from the soil and find in the forest enough to live upon, and to finish the required improvements within the two years, and then find the means to pay for the land, was a momentous undertaking. At this time there was only one settler in Frank- lin under the shadow of the Fort; and even he had scarcely settled down yet and completed his stock of goods to begin trade with the In- dians and with the garrison. It was three or more years before the settlers began to arrive freely; and they might not have come there then except for the encouragement of the land companies.

These companies were formed by taking advantage of the right, inherent in the act of 1792, of buying large tracts of public lands from the State for investment or for settle- ment. The Holland Land Company was prob- ably the largest of the companies operating in this State and was as good as the best of them. It was composed chiefly of Dutch cap- italists who had advanced money to Robert Morris, the financial providence of the Revolu- tion in its darkest days, and who had received lands in payment of their claims, in New York and later in Pennsylvania. The first lands se- cured here were a number of one-thousand- acre tracts east of the Allegheny in Pinegrove

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township, while many others were located in the part of the county now belonging to Forest. A very large transaction in land titles was the purchase of nearly half a million acres nego- tiated by its New York agents, Herman LeRoy and William Bayard, from James Wilson of Philadelphia, a judge of the United States Supreme Court. The land consisted of nine hundred and twelve tracts of four hundred and thirty acres each, situated between French creek and the Allegheny river, which John Adlum had agreed to secure for Judge Wilson by a contract, dated April 26, 1793; and two hundred and fifty tracts of four hundred and thirty acres each, to be taken from lands entered for Judge Wilson by James Chapman, the Holland Company reserving the privilege of substituting other lands east of French creek if not satisfied with the latter tracts-the whole amounting to 499,660 acres, not including al- lowance of six per cent. for roads. The con- sideration was thirty-four thousand, eight hun- dred sixty pounds, of which the company re- tained an amount sufficient to pay all fees, and interest on the purchase money from the date of application. A large portion of the lands in Venango county north of French creek and the Allegheny river, and particularly that part east of Oil creek, is included in this purchase, which was completed Aug. 21, 1793. The local agent of this company, for the counties of Erie, Crawford, Warren and Venango, had his head- quarters at Meadville. The last agent of the company there was H. J. Huidekoper, who con- tinued in that capacity till Dec. 31, 1836, when he bought the remaining interests of which he had charge, with lesser interests in Otsego and Chenango counties, N. Y., and Berkshire county, Mass., for $198,400.

The policy of the company was liberal. A large store established in Meadville had made disbursements exceeding five thousand dollars by 1795. Supply depots of implements and provisions were established in the following year; settlers were invited to locate on the lands, and funds were liberally loaned to them for that purpose. Settlement and improvement, according to the law of 1792, entitled the settler to one hundred acres free with the privilege of purchasing the remainder of the four hundred acres at $1.50 per acre. This gratuity was con- tinued till 1805. In 1796, twenty-two thousand dollars were expended and sixty thousand dollars in 1797, on roads and in assisting settlers in various ways. In 1798 mills were erected, one of which was situated quite near the county line and is mentioned in a description of the boundaries of Allegheny

township in 1800. In that year thirty thousand dollars were expended, and in 1799 forty thou- sand dollars were expended upon roads, mills, and in encouraging settlement. Purchasers were given long terms of credit, usually eight years, frequently extended to sixteen or twenty years. The expenditures were summarized by Judge Yeates :

The Holland Land Company have paid to the State the consideration money of one thousand, one hundred and sixty-two warrants, and the surveying fees of one thousand and forty-eight tracts of land (generally of four hundred acres. each), besides making very considerable expenditures by their exertions, honorable to themselves and useful to the community, in order to effect settlements. Com- puting the sums advanced, the lost tracts by prior improvements and interferences, and the quantity of one hundred acres granted to each individual for making an actual settlement on their lands, it is said that the average expended by the company is between two hundred and thirty and two hundred and forty dollars on each tract.

There were other land companies operating in this county. Their policies have not differed widely from that pursued by the Holland Land Company. Their commerce with the settlers began, however, at a later period than that of the former company, and it has not been neces- sary for them to expend so much to assist set- tlements upon their lands. Many land com- panies operating in this country have given the lawyers occasion to investigate many inter- esting and profitable questions. Such occasions have probably been as rare in our county as in any other section of the country. Land com- panies have sometimes been held in low esteem by numbers of people. At times legislatures have been hostile to them; while the courts have quite generally sustained them. These conditions have arisen principally in the later years of the companies.

During and after the Indian wars in the northwestern territory, much confusion arose regarding land titles. Many settlers were driven from their holdings by Indian raids be- fore they could comply with the law requiring improvement. Other settlers coming in either during the war or just after it closed, before the first occupants of the claims had returned, asserted that they were entitled to remain, com- plete the improvements and receive the patent. The Supreme Court in 1800 held "That under the law the settler was bound to continually persevere in his efforts to make a settlement"; and as the Holland Company through their settlers had not done so, their titles were for- feited, and the application of the company for a mandamus was refused. This decision led

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to much litigation and confusion. In 1802, a otherwise. Time to fulfill legal requirements special law permitted the Supreme court to was not so often lost by Indian raids, and life itself was safer. Some of the early settlers exhausted their capital by just arriving. They may have started payments with a dollar. But they persisted. From then the forests drew back. The wild beasts and the savages fled. Tangled undergrowths and unwholesome swamps disappeared. The soil, warmed by the sun, sustained the plants and the animals of an older cooperation. The results of time across the seas were tried and adapted to new conditions. Through the stress of hard work. the early troubles passed to better things ; and the settlers themselves became higher types of humanity, with broader outlook and keener insight to face the future. hear an agreed case, supposed to cover all points. The decision was different, but the same in result. "That though the prevention by the enemies of the United States sus- pended, it did not dispense with, the conditions of settlement," and therefore such settler to perfect a title was bound to renew his endeavor to maintain a settlement on his land as soon as the danger was removed. If so, his warrant was good; if not, it was forfeited. Finally the cause celebre of "The Holland Land Company" was decided in the Supreme court of the United States in 1805. Chief Jus- tice Marshall decided that under the law of 1792 the settler was excused, by reason of the war, from making an actual settlement before It would seem that the land companies, as conducted here, were a natural evolution needed to assist and to hasten the founding of homes in our county, in early times before the Indians had gone out and while the white men were coming in. Jan. 1, 1796, and if he then persisted in making his settlement he was entitled to his patent, according to law. This decision did as much to quiet contests as any power could have effected except death. It was worthy of the jurist who has been considered by great judges during the last seventy-five years, among others, by the SETTLEMENT present lord chief justice of England, as the greatest interpreter of fundamental law that has yet appeared. What a swarm of stinging contentions this decision, like a queen bee, has quieted ! Its force has prevailed throughout this country, and the English-speaking world, wherever settlement was halted in war-troubled regions.

The work of the land companies has been thought by some not essential to the develop- ment of a new country. To settle a wilderness is labor which requires capital as well as any other can, to prevent loss of time and of effort. It is difficult to see how the State, impoverished by a succession of wars, could get a fund from its wild lands at just the time it was needed for internal improvements, benefiting most of all the settlers upon new territory. The com- panies paid into the treasury the cost of sur- veys and assumed the burden of making im- provements, in addition to the State's own price for the land to which they purposed to lead the settlers.

Again, the land was remote. Blank space was the enemy of the solitary, the remoteness of his kind, the rarity of mutual helpfulness. The wilderness might become suddenly terrible with death creeping unseen among the trees. The company offered inducements to men to go together, near enough to aid one another in work or defense, with supply depot and mill within reach, and roads. The settlement places increased in number faster than seems possible

In 1790 the State was the possessor of all former claims of the natives to territory within her borders. This result had been reached by a succession of treaties with the Indians, be- ginning at the time of Penn. At first the red man's idea of land title as understood by the white man was entirely indefinite. In his racial experience, there had been nothing like it. His claim to the land was like that to rivers and lakes, and to the common air. He might be willing to move aside for a while, and breathe, fish and hunt elsewhere, or to share these privileges with newcomers as exchange of favors. But the ownership in fee of the white man, that exclusive clutch of mother- earth from the depths below to the sky above, persisting through time, was as far from his thought as the psychology of the indeterminate. He soon began to learn the "Walking Pur- chase" by which the sons of Penn obtained thousands of acres unfairly, it was claimed, and the entry of settlers in the southeast who used rifles and hunting knives, but did not purchase, aroused the Indians to revolt. They were forced to submit and move to other sec- tions, by their masters, the Six Nations. The progress of the settlers westward through the State continued. The forests fell along the advancing frontier, and in the cleared spaces new life developed in which the Indians could not share. Finally, in 1754, came the treaty at Albany, which seemed to place all remain-

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GY-ANT. WA-KA John Abeel The Complanter

Cornplanter

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VENANGO COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

ing lands in possession of the Proprietaries. The next year every tribe in Pennsylvania succumbed to the blandishments of the French, and by their defeat of Braddock, exposed the frontiers to the frightfulness of Indian massacres for many years. The Six Nations at this time did not interfere, though most of them were on the other side, at home, dur- ing the French war. Pennsylvania suffered for thirty years with most of the others. New York, comparatively safe at first, was most ter- ribly scourged by its red and white Indians during the Revolution.

Did any great chief, as he met the oncoming lines of settlers, catch a glimpse of their des- tiny? Was it revealed to some wise warrior in a flash of wizard insight, that the widening front of mingled races, always moving west- ward, should become broad as the sunrise and plant empires of civilization in place of the desert ? It seems so. Pontiac saw it and schemed to belie his vision. Later it touched the sight of Cornplanter, and he was not "un- mindful." He sought "the council of the thirteen fires," and there ever after remained.

CORNPLANTER

Of those coming into prominence after the Revolution, Cornplanter is the noblest Indian of them all. The only reason he can not be so called, is that he was half white. His father was a Dutch trader, named John Abeel. His mother was a princess, the daughter of a Sen- eca sachem. This is proved by her three sons being known as Seneca chiefs, namely-her celebrated son, Gy-ant-wa-chi-a or Cornplan- ter, and her younger sons Ga-ne-o-di-yo or Handsome Lake, and Ta-wan-ne-ars or Black- snake. Among all the natives, so far as is known, the children were of the mother's blood ; she was the head, the line of descent was from her. The mothers cultivated the land, owned it and its products, were the guardians of the family stores and of the public treasuries ; and they intervened quite often to prevent the sale of lands planned by the chiefs. They knew when it was best to leave their dwellings, their fields and their orchards.

Cornplanter was born in 1732 at Conewan- gus, an important Seneca town, situated on the Genesee river. He received the care and train- ing of all Seneca boys. In an interesting ad- dress to the Governor of Pennsylvania he tells how as a child he "played with butterfly, the grasshopper and the frog." As a boy, he ate his victuals out of bark-dishes as his playmates did, and he learned from the other boys that

his skin was whiter than theirs. Had he pos- sessed bright red hair or projecting ears, or other unusual features, they also would have told him about that. Indian boys are not so different ! As a young warrior, he fought on the French side till the close of the French and Indian war. At this time, being thirty-one years of age, he took unto himself a wife. He visited his father at Albany, hoping to get from him a brass kettle and a rifle for the better supply and service of his new establishment. Across New York and back seems a long jour- ney in a bark canoe for these things. They were indeed distant in any other direction, from his cabin. But there was another matter of greater value than these, and farther from his grasp, shut in as he was, by his Iroquois speech. This was the opinion of a well-informed white man whom he could trust, upon the trend of the times. Therefore he sought his father. He says in effect : "When I left my father he gave me no food to eat on my return, no kettle or rifle, and did not tell me of the trouble even then arising between the colonies and the King." Here we have the real object of his visit.

He took pains a few years after this, at the close of a battle of the Revolution, to capture his father, travelling some distance to effect his purpose. He called him father, assured him of safety, mentioned his former usage, noting especially his withholding the information asked for. Then, he offered to take him home and supply all his future needs, or to furnish a safe escort back. The latter was chosen by the father.

Cornplanter did not think the Iroquois should take part in the Revolution; but as the Six Nations voted otherwise, he went with them. At the close of this war, he espoused the cause of the white settlers. After this he acted with wisdom. Most of the Indians were still violently opposed to the westward exten- sion of the settlements. Cornplanter, by a fine but very effective diplomacy, influenced them to agree quietly to a number of treaties, which saved this part of the State from contention and probable bloodshed. His influence was potent in the treaty which secured the "Tri- angle" to this State; and again in a treaty by which the Ohio Company secured title to lands from the tribes of the northwest. Some of the Indian representatives, when blamed for their acquiescence, replied that Cornplanter, the greatest Seneca chief, was in favor of their ac- tion. He participated in many conferences, always acting like the wise statesman, desiring to preserve peace between the white and the

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red men, willing to yield whatever share of his territory might be necessary. This was doubt- less the course he decided upon from the very moment when he foresaw the ultimate triumph of the United Colonies. This movement was the culmination of his genius, when the isolated savage, hemmed in by memories of barbarous experiences, suddenly saw the truth as if it were illumined by lightning in the dusk. He hoped that thousands of his descendants and of his mother's race would lead better lives, where now only a few eked out a miserable existence. He expressed this in part in next to his last interview with Washington, as he asked in a pitiful way for land to be secured to them, that his race may live as the whites do, learn how to till the soil, and learn their reading and writing. ' He was never a resident of this county, yet he was an important factor of its early settlement. He had friends here. Among these was George Power, who spoke his lan- guage fluently and sometimes acted as his inter- preter. Colonel McDowell and Colonel Dale were also among his friends. These he some- times consulted, as well as the commandant at Fort Franklin. His extended services to the settlers when treaties were made excited the jealousy of some of the leaders of the Six Nations, Red Jacket, of his own nation, and the notorious Brant, both encouraged by some of the British officers, until after Wayne's victory. They asserted that he interfered too much in civil affairs. He was a warrior, not a councilor. This was true; and the criticism indicates the extent of their political develop- ment. He withdrew from the public life of his people, and retired to spend his old age in his town upon the reservation granted to him by the State. His town was called Jenesadaga, situated on the Allegheny, north of Warren. Here he lived in peace and prosperity, trying to induce habits of thrift among his many chil- dren, grandchildren, and retainers, impatient at times with the vis inertia of some, ever exhorting them to temperance, industry and providence. He came from his retirement in 1812 to offer himself and two hundred young warriors to Colonel Dale at Franklin, as an addition to a regiment which was forming in Crawford and Venango counties to go to the defense of Erie. He was anxious to go. It was too bad that he could not. He dispensed a dignified hospitality, graced by his personal service of his guests, even when he was very old. He served dinners to many of his dis- tinguished visitors, consisting of jerked venison and hominy served in Indian style, each one having a pan of hot water which he could

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Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People (Volume 1), Part 7

Author: Babcock, Charles A. Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: Babcock, Charles A.
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages: