George Peck's WYOMING, 1858 - Pennsylvania - Chapter 21 Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Judy Banja jbanja@comcast.net USGENWEB ARCHIVES (tm) NOTICE All documents placed in the USGenWeb Archives remain the property of the contributors, who retain publication rights in accordance with US Copyright Laws and Regulations. In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, these documents may be used by anyone for their personal research. They may be used by non-commercial entities, when written permission is obtained from the contributor, so long as all notices and submitter information are included. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit. Any other use, including copying files to other sites, requires permission from the contributors PRIOR to uploading to the other sites. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/pafiles.htm ________________________________________________ HTML with illustrations: http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/1pa/1picts/peckwyo/peck-wyo.htm WYOMING; ITS HISTORY, STIRRING INCIDENTS AND ROMANTIC ADVENTURES. By GEORGE PECK, D.D. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE, 1858 JOURNAL OF CHRISTOPHER HURLBUT. 405 XXI. ORIGINAL JOURNAL OF CHRISTOPHER HURLBUT. THE following brief record of the events of the wars in Wyoming was kindly furnished us by Samuel Hoyt, Esq., of Kingston, and it is published, not so much for its incidents, as for the confirmation which it affords of the leading facts to which reference has been made in the preceding pages. It is the testimony of a witness and an actor in the scene. Mr. Hurlbut was a man for the times, of more than usual education - a good mathematician, and a practical surveyor. His plots of large tracts of lands surveyed by him in the county of Luzerne are acknowledged data. His field-books, plots, bearings and distances, are all executed with great skill and accuracy. "Blood hath been, shed, ere now, i' th' olden time, Ere human statute purged the gentle weale Aye, and since too, murthers have been performed Too terrible for the eare." - SHAKSPEARE - Macbeth. "REMEMBRANCE OF WYOMING WARS. "First, of the Indian War. - In the year 1777, the Indians and Tories up the river went with the British army to besiege Fort Stanwix, and, failing in their object, they returned home in the fall of the year. Late in the fall, Colonel Denison went up the river with a considerable body of men, and took several Tories, and wounded an Indian that attempted to run away from them. The same fall the Indians took York and Kingsley prisoners from Wyallusing, and carried them to Canada. 446 WYOMING. "Early in the spring, Colonel Denison, with about one hundred and fifty men, went up to Wyalusing to assist a number of families in removing from the place. I was in the company. We made rafts of old houses, and took on the people, with their effects, and went down the river. This spring a company was raised to garrison Forty Fort and to scout. Some time this spring three Indians came to Forty Fort, doubtless as spies. They were put in prison. The last of June I went out to Lackawaxen to meet my father's family, who were moving into the country, and was there until the result of the battle was known. "On Tuesday, the last day of June, the Indian army was discovered. On Wednesday the settlers collected the men and went up to Sutton's Mills, where they found that the people had been killed and the houses burned.* It appeared that the Indian army had gone into the woods, and proceeded over the mountain to Kingston, and by that means the two armies did not meet there. On the same day the Indian army took Jenkins's and Wintermoot's Forts.** - The alarm was given, and the men assembled at Forty Fort. "The next morning - the 3d of July - and toward night, they joined battle with the Indians, and were _____ * This was the place where the Hardings were killed, and Gardner made a prisoner. ** According to Mr. Gardner, Jenkins's Fort could not have been taken on that day. He says it was the day after the battle that the fort in which he was - the one opposite Pittston, which was Fort Jenkins - was entered by the Indians. Mr. Hurlbut was not on the ground, and might be mistaken. Mr. Gardner was in the fort, and must know whether it was surrendered before the battle or afterward. The theory which we have adopted elsewhere is, that the agreement to surrender the fort was entered into two days before it was actually entered by the enemy; but this was not on the last day of June, but on the 2d of July. JOURNAL OF CHRISTOPHER HURLBUT. 407 entirely defeated; only sixty escaped out of the battle. The next day was spent in negotiating a capitulation, and on Sabbath the fort was surrendered, when an indiscriminate plunder took place, and nearly all the buildings in the settlement were burned. The people escaped, none being killed excepting two, Mrs. Leech and St. John. "The beginning of August, Colonel Butler, with Spaulding's company of the Wyoming soldiers, and a few of the settlers, returned and took possession of the place, and built a fort at Wilkesbarre, driving off what few Indians were there. Shortly after the Indians killed John Abbott, and some others, above Wilkesbarre. "In September, 1778, Colonel Hartley went, with two or three hundred men, by the West Branch, over to Towanda and to Sheshequin, and collected a considerable number of cattle, and drove them down the river. When he had got below Black Walnut Bottom, he was fired upon by the Indians, and at Tuscarora Creek a considerable action took place: some few were killed on both sides. The next day after they arrived at Wilkesbarre, the Indians killed two or three of his soldiers at the lower end of Kingston Flats. "In the fall the Indians took Swetland and Blanchard at the Nanticoke mill, and burned the mill. Early in November the Indians killed Jackson, Lester, and Franklin, and wounded Hagaman; they took prisoners Pell and Lester's wife and daughter - a little girl - from Nanticoke, in December. Tripp, Slocum, and Kingsley's son were killed in Wilkesbarre, not far from the fort, and a little girl carried off prisoner in February, 1779. Buck, Williams, and Pettibone were killed, and Follett scalped on Kingston Flats, and an Indian was killed in an attack on the block-house. On 408 WYOMING. the 20th of March Bidlack was taken, the block-house attacked, and all the cattle and horses on that side of the river driven off by a large party of British, Indians, and Tories. On the 22d Wilkesbarre was attacked, as also Stewart's house, and all the cattle that were out on that side driven off; and all the remaining buildings on both sides of the river that were not near the fort, or Stewart's house or block-house, were burned. "Shortly after the attack on Wilkesbarre, a considerable body of troops - the advance of General Sullivan's army - arrived at Wilkesbarre, and early in April another detachment coming in, two officers and five soldiers, that were in advance of the main body, were killed at or near Laurel Run, in the mountain. Some time that summer, Sherwood, at Huntington, was wounded by the Indians while hunting, but escaped. "Sullivan's army penetrated the Indian country as far as Genesee River, and in October returned to Wilkesbarre, and so back to join the main army, leaving a garrison in Wilkesbarre. "After Sullivan's expedition my father's family moved into the country, and went on to his farm in Hanover. The settlers were now getting on to their farms, in expectation of not being farther troubled by the Indians. "The last of March, Hammond, Bennet, and son went to plow on Kingston Flats, above Forty Fort, and were taken by the Indians. Near the same time, Upson was killed and Jonah Rogers taken prisoner below Nanticoke Falls. Another party of Indians took Van Campen, Pence, and a boy, and killed several on Fishing Creek. On Harvey's Creek they took Pike, but dismissed his wife. The same week Ham- JOURNAL OF CHRISTOPHER HURLBUT. 409 mond and Bennet rose on the Indians, and escaped and came in. Three or four days after Van Campen and company came in, having killed the Indians who took them prisoners. "After this no Indians appeared about Wyoming until December, when twenty British soldiers and five Indians came into Plymouth in the evening, and took all the families which were there prisoners. Selecting some men, that they carried off, they dismissed the women and children. The last of March, 1781, a number of families had begun to build houses, intending also to build a fort on Shawnee Flats, where they were attacked in the night by the Indians. Ransom was wounded; one Indian was killed, and the rest fled. In September the Indians took Franklin's boys, with five horses, and burned all the grain - perhaps twelve hundred bushels of wheat and rye - on Nanticoke Flats. "In 1782 some men began a saw-mill in Hanover. They raised the mill on Saturday, in April. The next morning Franklin's family were taken prisoners, and his house burned. Baldwin, with nine others, went up the river and got ahead of the Indians, and on the Frenchtown Mountain they had a severe engagement of six or seven hours. Bennet was wounded, also Baldwin himself, but none were killed. They retook three of the family, the woman and a small child being killed. In July Jamison and Chapman were killed in the road in Hanover, near where the meeting-house was afterward built. Peace took place the winter following. The next spring, in 1783, Baldwin and Garnsey were carried off by the Indians from near Black Walnut Bottom, but no other mischief was done by the Indians, as they were sent to take a prisoner 410 WYOMING. by whom they might ascertain whether peace was really made, as they had only heard a rumor of it at Niagara. They were dismissed soon after their arrival." THE PENNAMITE WAR. "In December, 1782, the Decree of Trenton was passed, adjudging the right of jurisdiction and preemption to Pennsylvania. The next spring peace took place between England and the United States, and the garrison was removed from Wilkesbarre, and a company of Pennsylvania state troops took possession of the fort. What pretense there was for continuing the garrison after peace, I know not. All was peace that summer, and numbers of people moved in from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, mostly persons of no property or respectability. Toward fall it appeared that a number of Pennsylvanians met secretly in the settlement and proceeded to elect justices of the peace; and in September the Assembly of Pennsylvania passed a law authorizing the President and Council to commission those persons so unlawfully elected; and they soon began to execute the laws by suing every Yankee that they could by any means bring a charge against, and very soon the most violent proceedings took place. Men were imprisoned by the aid of the military, and sundry persons whipped with gun-rods, and otherwise most shamefully abused. A number of respectable men were confined in an old house without a floor, and mud shoe deep. In cold weather in the winter they were obliged to lie down in the mud on pain of being shot. If three Yankees were seen together, they were sure to be imprisoned and otherwise abused. JOURNAL OF CHRISTOPHER HURLBUT. 411 "At last, as our situation was no longer to be borne, a number of us determined to draw up a petition to the Legislature, then in session, stating our usage, and begging for protection. As not more than two of us dare be seen together, the difficulty was to confer together. Our object was effected by going around and notifying a meeting in the evening; and, in order to prevent suspicion, the meeting was appointed within forty rods of the fort, where a number got together and darkened the windows, and then drew and signed a petition, and engaged a man to carry it to Philadelphia. Upon the receipt of this petition; the Assembly appointed a committee to repair to Wyoming and inquire into the cause of the complaint. The committee came to Wilkesbarre, and by testimony we established all that we set forth in our petition, and much more. The committee returned and reported, but nothing was done to afford us redress. "In March was 'the great ice-flood,' which nearly ruined the people, drowning their cattle and horses, and sweeping away their houses, as they were nearly all built on the flats for safety against the Indians. Most of their breadstuffs was also destroyed. In May, after the ice had melted away, and the people begun to put up their fences, the Pennamites, with the soldiers, went through the settlement in considerable bodies, and took all the good guns, and the locks from others, from every Yankee who had one, and directly after this they turned all Yankee families into the street, taking them under guard. A few only were able to flee up or down the river; all the rest were forced to go out east by the Lackawaxen. Thus the Pennamites got full possession of the country. Shortly after this the soldiers were discharged, but many of 412 WYOMING. them continued in the country, and the Pennamites kept up a garrison in the fort. "The last of June the Yankees began to assemble in the woods, in order, if possible, to regain their possessions. It should be remembered that all along, from the first beginning of the outrages, applications had been made to the legislative, executive, and judicial authorities of the state for protection and redress, but none was obtained. Also let it be understood that those pretended justices before referred to as having been unlawfully appointed, headed by Alexander Patterson, a man of considerable abilities, but bold, daring, and completely unprincipled; aided by D - M -, insinuating, plausible, and flattering, covering his enmity by pretended friendship - a most designing enemy to the Yankees; and J - S -, with just information enough to act out the villain without disguise, had no idea of doing justice to the Yankees, but their object was to compel them to leave the country. "About the 15th of July, a party of Pennamites and another of Yankees, both armed, met in a piece of woods in Plymouth unexpectedly to both parties. They fired on each other; two were killed, and several wounded; the Pennamites fled, and were pursued to the fort; the fort was immediately invested, and hostilities were continued for several days. When information was received that a party of men was coming in to relieve the besieged Pennamites, twenty-seven Yankees went out and met the party at Locust Hill. They fired upon them, and they retreated to a house, and, as they appeared sufficiently frightened, the Yankees left them and returned. The party then left the house and fled back. They had one killed and several wounded. Of the Yankees, only one slightly wounded. JOURNAL OF CHRISTOPHER HURLBUT. 41 "In the mean time, several justices and the sheriff of Northumberland County came to Wilkesbarre to try to put a stop to the fighting. After considerable negotiation, both parties agreed to stop. The Pennamites remained in the fort, and the Yankees returned to their deserted homes. In two or three days a body of two or three hundred men came in, headed by the famous John Armstrong and a Mr. Boyd, two members of the Senate of Pennsylvania. The Pennamites, in part, pretended to surrender, when they called on the Yankees to surrender, as they said they were determined to disarm both parties, so that there should be no farther resort to violence, but an acknowledgment of the supremacy of the laws. When the Yankees laid down their arms they were made close prisoners, and Pennamite sentinels set to guard them. Those who were at Locust Hill were sent, under a strong guard, being first ironed, to Easton jail, the others to Sunbury; those who went to Sunbury were speedily admitted to bail, and returned home; those at Easton were kept close prisoners five or six weeks, when they broke jail, and about half of them escaped; the remainder were kept until October, when the Supreme Court was held at Easton; then the grand jury found no bill against them for murder, and they were discharged, after paying jail fees and other expenses to the amount of twenty-five dollars each. "In the mean time, those who bad escaped, with a few others - about twenty - headed by John Franklin, had obtained arms, and kept together until about the 18th of October, when a body of men came into the settlement and proceeded to make prisoners of such as they chose. They had taken seventeen and confined them in a corn-house, which they kept well guarded 414 WYOMING. but they failed to take Franklin and his party, who continually gained in numbers until after the company returned home. After this the Yankees attacked the fort in the night, and killed two officers. Shortly after the fort was evacuated, and all the Pennamites who had been fighting the Yankees were obliged to leave the settlement. "When they got out into the country they made a loud outcry about the cruelty of the Yankees, and as to how they were plundered of all they possessed, and by this means prevailed with a number of the inhabitants of Northumberland County to petition the Legislature in their behalf. The Legislature then appointed three of their number to go to Wyoming and endeavor to put a stop to farther disorders. In the beginning of May they came in, and, after conferring with the Yankees, returned. Nothing was done effectually until the fall of 1786, when a law was passed erecting the disputed territory into a county, which was called Luzerne. A time was appointed for holding an election for county officers, with justices of the peace. The election was held in July, 1787, and from that time law reigned and peace was fully restored."