Area History: Chapter 2 - Part IV Vol II - Watson's Annals of Philadelphia And Pennsylvania, 1857

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                                 ANNALS

                                   of

                     PHILADELPHIA  AND  PENNSYLVANIA,


                               VOL.  II
     
            ______________________________________________

Chapter 2.           PENNSYLVANIA  INLAND  -- Part IV


      HISTORICAL  NOTICES  of  LANCASTER,  and  LANCASTER COUNTY

  Lancaster was laid out as a town in 1728.
  In 1729 Lancaster county was erected out of part of Chester county.  The
German settlers, in consequence of the new county being formed, applied to
the proper authorities for leave to enjoy the rights and privileges of
British subjects, which was granted.  The law containing their names and
their petition is signed by Emmanuel Zimmerman (now Carpenter) in behalf of
others.  A large number of Irish emigrants settled at Pequea, also sundry Welsh.
  A court house and prison is begun at Postlewaite's, and £300 were lent by
the governor upon bills of credit to defray the same.  £300 additional were
afterwards lent to the same object.
  1730, Stephen Atkinson built a fulling mill at great expense upon the
Conestoga, but the inhabitants on the upper part of the creek assembled and
pulled down the dam, as it prevented them from rafting and fishing.  Mr.
Atkinson then altered his dam with 20 feet passage for boats and fish.
  In 1731 a great excitement was caused throughout the settlements, by the
shameful murder of three Indians, by the settlers on Swatara creek.  This
creek was called after a town in Ireland, by Mr. Patterson, one of the
original settlers.
  In 1732 a violent contest for a member of assembly took place between
Andrew Galbraith and John Wright.  On that occasion Mrs. Galbraith rode
throughout the town at the head of a numerous band of horsemen, friends of
her husband.  In consequence of her activity, her husband was elected.
  In 1734 an Episcopal church was built in Conestoga, fifteen miles from
Lancaster.  The same year a Lutheran church was built in Lancaster.
  The seat of Justice is removed from Postlewaite's to Lancaster, which last
place, Hamilton laid out at the request of the proprietaries.
  In 1739, at the request of the Scots Presbyterian ministers and people,
they were excused from "kissing the book" when giving their evidence on
oath; the practice being contrary to the doctrine and worship of the church
of Scotland.
  In 1742, a number of Germans stated that they had emigrated from Europe by
an invitation from the proprietaries, and being attached to the OMISH
doctrines, and that being conscientious as to oaths, they cannot procure
naturalization by the present laws.  Whereupon a law was made in conformity
with their request.  [These Omish people wear long beards like the Dunkards,
but have no places of worship save their own private houses, and always
retiring to a private and retired place, when inclined to pray.  They have
been excused from juries in criminal cases, from their known inclination to
acquit in cases of taking life.]
  In 1743, at an election to supply the vacancy of Thomas Linley, the Irish
compelled the sheriff to receive such tickets as they approved, and to make
a return accordingly.  The assembly cancelled or so altered the return as to
give the seat to Samuel Blunston.
   Note -- The proprietaries, in consequence of the frequent disturbances
between the governor and Irish settlers, after the organization of York and
Cumberland counties, gave orders to their agents to sell no lands in either
York or Lancaster counties to the Irish; and also to make advantageous
offers of removal to the Irish settlers on Paxton and Swatara, and Donegal
townships, to remove to Cumberland county, which offers being liberal, were
accepted by many.  "Du verfluchter Irischer" used to be a frequent
ejaculation of reproach in former days.
  In 1744, Murhancellin, an Indian chief, murdered John Armstrong and his
two men on Juniata, and was apprehended by Captain Jack's party, but
released after a confinement of several months in Lancaster prison.
  This year a treaty was made with the Indians, in Lancaster, by Conrad
Weiser, interpreter and agent, &c.
  John Musser complained to the governor that the Indians barked his walnut
trees, which stood in the town, designing the bark as covers to their
cabins; he asked £6 for damages, and was granted £3.
  In 1745, the Episcopal church was partly completed.
  In the year 1745, the German pastor of the Lutheran church (built in 1734)
united a portion of his congregation with the Moravians.  A great ferment
was excited among the Lutherans.  The Lutherans alleged that they were
compelled to hear a doctrine which they did not approve, or else to resign
their church.
  The "dark swamp" once in the centre of Lancaster, was attempted to be
cleared of wood, and a drain made to carry off the water.
  In 1749, James Webb complained to the general assembly of the undue
election and return of a member from Lancaster county, and stating it was
done by violence, and by many persons voting five to ten times severally,
making 2300 votes out of 1000 !  The election was confirmed, but the
managing officers were brought to the house and reprimanded.
  In 1751, at a large meeting held at Lancaster, it was resolved that a
house of employment should be erected specially for the use of settlers, who
had severely suffered from the hardships of new settlers and from the
hostilities of Indians.  A farm was procured and also implements for
manufacturing &c.  They made stockings there, which soon gave celebrity to
Lancaster in that article.
  In 1758, the freemen of the county, by reason of the badness of the roads
to Philadelphia in spring and fall, pray to be excused from attendance there
in the supreme court, and request a county court in lieu thereeof.
  In 1759, in consequence of the distracted state of the country by Indian
cruelties and French hostilities, a barrack was erected in Lancaster, to
contain 500 men, for the security of the country.
  A petition of 1763, by settlers along the Conestoga, complains of its
dams, as destroying the former fishery of shad, salmon and rock fish, which
were before in abundance, and the tributary streams had plenty of trout --
all now gone.
  In 1764 occurred the terrible massacre of the Indians in the prison of
Lancaster, where they were placed for security.  A company of fifty men from
Paxton, with blackened faces, armed and mounted, entered the town in full
gallop, went to the prison and effected their cruel purposes.  They had
before destroyed the town of Conestoga manor, murdered six Indians, and
burnt the place !
  The Ephrata institution near Lancaster has hitherto been little
understood; prejudice has served to distort facts in the case, so that, from
Carey's Museum -- in an article written by a British officer, down through
Hannah Adams' "View", &c., Buck's Theological Dictionary, and even the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, there has been a succession of
misconceptions and mistatements concerning the community.  They had
nevertheless traits of character, which might redound more to the credit of
the state and themselves than has been hitherto appreciated.  {Note :
redound = to have an effect for good or ill.} For many years the institution
was the seat of learning and the fine arts; and many families of
Philadelphia and Baltimore resorted thither to have their children educated;
and well the children loved the brotherhood.  It contained some of the most
learned men of the colony.  Peter Miller, the prior, was employed by the
government, and translated the Declaration of Independence into seven
different languages, to be sent to the courts of Europe.  They had one of
the first printing presses in the state; and for a period of twenty years,
did more book-printing than was done elsewhere in the whole province; and
more original works were written and printed at Ephrata, during the time it
flourished, than in any province of the union !  The first Sabbath school
too, on record, was established there; for as early as 1740, full forty
years earlier than Robert Raikes' much applauded system was known in
England, this one at Ephrata was begun by Ludwig Strecker and others, which
continued under good auspices, down to the year 1777.
  Music was much cultivated; BEISSEL was a first rate musician and composer.
In composing sacred music he took his style from the music of nature; and
the whole, comprising several large volumes, are founded on the tones of the
®olian harp -- the singing is the ®olian harp harmonized.  It is very
peculiar in its style and concords, and in its execution.  The tones issuing
from the choir imitate very soft instrumental music; conveying a softness
and devotion almost superhuman to the auditor.  Their music is set in two,
four, five, and seven parts.  All the parts, save the bass, are led and sung
exclusively by females, the men being confined to the bass, which is set in
two parts, the high and low bass -- the latter resembling the deep tones of
the organ, and the first, in combination with one of the female parts, is an
excellent imitation of the concert horn.  The whole is sung on the
"falsetto" voice, the singers scarcely opening their mouths, or moving their
lips, which throws the voice up to the ceiling, which is not high, and the
tones, which seem to be more than human, at least so far from common church
singing, appear to be entering from above, and hovering over the heads of
the assembly.  Their singing so charmed the commissioners who were sent to
visit the society by the English government, after the French war, that they
requested a copy to be sent to the Royal family in England; which was
cheerfully complied with, and which I understand is still preserved in the
National Library.  About twelve months afterwards a box was received of
three or four feet long, and two or two and an half wide, containing a
present in return.  What the present was is not now certainly known -- none
having seen it but FRIEDSAM and JABEZ, who was then prior, and into whose
care it was consigned.  It was buried secretly by him, with the advice of
BEISSEL.  It is supposed, by a hint given by JABEZ, that it was images of
the king and queen in full costume, or images of the Saviour on the cross,
and the Virgin Mary; supposing, as many in this country have erroneously
thought, that the people of Ephrata possess many of the Catholic principles
and feelings.  The king, at whose instance they were sent, was a German, and
we may presume that he considered that they retained the same views as the
monastic institutions of Europe.  They have nearly a thousand pieces of
music, a piece being composed for every hymn.  This music is lost entirely
now, at Ephrata -- not the music books, but the style of singing; they never
attempt it any more.  It is, however, still preserved and finely executed,
though in a faint degree, at Snowhill, near the Antietam creek, in Franklin
county of this state; where there is a branch of the society, and which is
now the principal settlement of the Seventh Day Baptists.  They greatly
outnumber the people of Ephrata, and are in a very flattering condition.
There they keep up the institution as originally established at Ephrata, and
are growing rapidly.  Their singing, which is weak in comparison with the
old Ephrata choir, and may be likened to the performance of an overture by a
musical box, with its execution by a full orchestra in the opera house, is
so peculiar and affecting, that when once heard, it can never be forgotten.
  The Pequea valley, besides having been the loved home of the Delaware, is
still the chosen and fruitful region of their successors, the prosperous
farmers of Lancaster county.  At the first settlement of the county, it was
selected as the preferred residence of sundry French families of the
persecuted Huguenots.  They bore the names of Dubois, Boileau, Larroux,
Lefevre; and some of their descendants remain there to the present day.  A
large quarto Bible, which Isaac Lefevre brought with him from France at that
time, is now in the possession of John C. Lefevre, Esq., and held as a
prized relic.  The aforesaid names were also united with those of Charles De
La Noe, a minister, and Andrew Dore, and some other Frenchmen, who had come
out under the influence of William Penn, to form vineyards, and to cultivate
grapes "up the Schuylkill".  They, however, not succeeding to their
expectation, felt prepared to avail themselves of a change to the Pequea
valley, which was produced by the arrival, in 1712-13 of Madame Mary Feree,
a widow lady, having with her three sons and three daughters, and coming to
this land to seek a peaceful asylum from the persecutions of religious
intolerance abroad.  She had just lost her husband, a gentleman of eminence
in France by such persecution; and reaching England for refuge, she found
friendship in William Penn and Queen Anne, by whom she was aided in her
embarkation for America.  She became possessed of four thousand acres of the
best land in Pequea, recommended by Penn's agent in this country, to their
special notice; two thousand acres of which came by grant, and the other two
thousand acres by purchase.  To this place all those French people went for
settlement, and were there heartily welcomed by the Indian king, Tanawa.
When he died, soon after, all the Huguenots attended his burial; and his
grave was marked with a pile of stones, which long remained to mark the
place -- on what is now called La Fayette hill, near Paradise.  The church
of All Saints now stands on what was the Indian burial ground.
  The name of Madame Feree is still remembered and venerated in the
neighbourhood of Paradise, where she settled, and gave by grant of deed to
trustees, the ground for general burial, as now used by the people there.
  Isaac Lefevre, before named, had lost both his parents by the massacre in
France, and he arrived at Philadelphia, a youth of seventeen in 1686;
afterwards he became the husband of Catharine, the daughter of Madame Feree,
and their son by this marriage, was the first born white child in Pequea.
Philip Feree married Leah, a daughter of Abraham Dubois.  One of the Ferees
became a Friend.  I have been indebted for sundry of these facts, to R.
Conyngham, Esq., who has made himself acquainted with them by his residence
in the town of Paradise.

                             HARRISBURG

  This place, now the seat of government, was originally located and settled
by John Harris, and the place was founded, in 1762, by his son, John Harris,
Jun'r.  The son of the latter, Robert Harris, now alive at the age of
seventy years, has informed me of many facts connected with his family and
the original settlement.  I herein relate them, much in the manner I
received them from himself, "viva voce" in the year 1835, when visiting the
place.  Considering how recently it was but an Indian wild, and now so
populous and richly settled as the growing seat of government, it cannot but
prove interesting to the reader, as being in itself a proof of the varied
enlargement and advancement of our prosperous country, to wit :
  John Harris the first, and his wife Esther, the first settlers here, sat
down as Indian traders on the frontier while the Indians were still settled
in their town close by, at the mouth of the Paxton creek.  Many of their
graves were in Harris' orchard.  They were both born in Yorkshire, England,
and came out to Philadelphia as first emigrants with William Penn.  He died
in advanced age, in 1749.  His wife survived him ten years, having married
again to William Chesney, a resident on the other side of the river.
  Robert has heard his grandfather and grandmother Reed, in Hanover,
fourteen miles off (where they had a stockade defence) tell of the Indian
alarms, and of the people running in for protection; they had seen some
tomahawked.
  The first lots in town were valued by commissioners at from 10 to £60.
  From the market house back to the hills, and up to and over the state
house hill, was in woods when he was a boy.
  He, Robert Harris, was born in the present stone house in 1768.  The other
old house stood six or seven years afterwards, as a kind of store-house.
Two hundred people at a time came there to stop to find boats, &c., to go on
with.  He has seen three different houses there, one hundred and fifty feet
long, filled with skins.
  The fields cultivated were cleared before he was born, and were back of
this house, and from the river to beyond the market house.
  He thinks that John Harris saw William Penn here, or at Conois creek; he
always heard that he (William Penn) visited him on the Susquehanna; and that
he did much business for Penn's interest, and even talked of buying lands of
him, over on the other side, down to the Yellow Breeches creek.
  The wild turkeys and the deer were plenty in the revolution.  They used to
have as many of the former as they chose to shoot.  He and his father have
killed as many as twenty bears seen crossing the river.
  The Paxton boys assembled here; they came from Cumberland and Hanover, and
even as far as Franklin.  John Harris, the second, tried to prevent them.
Col. Smith was their principal man, and Col. Wilson Smith, of Waterford in
Erie county, of the legislature, is his son.
  Esther Harris, up near Juniata, must have been John Harris' wife; she was
resolute, masculine, capable of writing, and was the best trader of the two.
Would box Indian chiefs' ears if they got drunk and unruly.
  She carried her son John, born in 1726, to Christ church in Philadelphia,
to be baptized; he died in 1791, aged sixty-five.  He was the first born
white child hereabout, and the father of the present Robert Harris.
  He had not his title confirmed by Shippen until 1733, but bought long
before; it was about £5 per hundred acres, at first at 50s.
  There was an Indian town opposite to Harris' ferry, just where are heaps
of muscle {mussel} shells -- they ate them much; another town was at the
mouth of Canodoquinet creek, two miles above; and there was one below, about
two miles, at the mouth of Yellow Breeches, or Haldeman's bridge, which was
once James Chartier's landing, Indian agent.
  He has heard that they could assemble here seven hundred people by firing
a gun -- all came over then to this side.
  They had a battle at Mokonoy, six miles this side of Shamokin -- John
Harris, the second, was along; one hundred went up from here to inquire,
they surprised the party on the return, and killed sixteen to twenty men.
John Harris the second, in crossing the river had the man behind him, a
doctor, shot off.
  At the old church at Paxton, under Parson Elder, three miles from
Harrisburg on the road to Reading, they used to take guns and stack them
while in the church.  A party of Indians came and hid themselves for a week,
to attack them; they lost two as prisoners, who told the fact.  They shot at
some on their return, killed and wounded some.  They broke Major Burnett's
arm -- he died five years ago only.
  Robert Harris has seen five hundred pack-horses at a time in Carlisle,
going thence to Shippenburg, &c.
  The road from Robert Harris' on the Susquehanna, in or near Paxton,
towards Philadelphia by way of Lancaster and Chester counties, was procured
in 1736 by petitions of sundry inhabitants in said counties.
  John Harris, the first, is buried at the mulberry tree before his house,
and close to the block-house on the river bank.  He had seven children.
This Robert Harris saw the remains of the blockhouse and stockade which were
old when he was young.
  The large stone house where he dwells was built in 1766, by his father,
John Harris, the second.
  His grandfather, John Harris, had a stockade round his old house (in front
of the present one).  There an Indian came in with his gun and fired upon
the British officer therein; his gun flashed.  His grandmother, then there,
blew out the candle for concealment.  This was in the log-house before the
present residence.
  John Harris, the first, and his wife, who came from Yorkshire, were at
first livers at Philadelphia.  He often assisted at clearing lands in and
about Philadelphia.  He moved to Chester county; then to a place above
Lancaster, at the mouth of Canoy creek -- the same place where Haldeman's
mills now are, three miles above Columbia.  Then moved up to his place about
a quarter of a mile below here; then moved here for the sake of being nearer
the ferry.  It was a ford in summer time, and chosen because of the better
landing on the other side.
  There were troops at the block-house, and furnished guards to travellers.
Several travellers were occasionally wounded; some killed.  Robert has seen
one man that was scalped above Sunbury, and one here afterwards.
  The Indians came to John Harris'  trading store to get rum and ammunition;
a party got angry and tied him to the tree to burn him for refusing more
rum.  Another party came and released him.  He valued the tree, and
requested to be buried there; also two of his children are there.  His
faithful old black man was not buried there, (as some say) but where the new
Methodist church is built near by.
  He got money of Mrs. Logan's mother, at Chester, and called to pay
interest once a year.
  John Harris procured his patent of Shippen in 1733.  But the land was
purchased much earlier.
  John Harris owned all the town ground, eight to nine hundred acres; it was
laid out in 1785, and sold off in fee simple.  Lots in town sold first at 10
to £15, but now some would bring 2500 dollars to 5000 dollars !  Robert
Harris sold his family mansion and ground in 1835, to Elder for 5000
dollars, built in 1766.
  The first old log-house was gone before Robert Harris was born.  He saw
the orchard there, all killed since, one old cherry tree only is standing.
  There are several present log-houses still in the town, but now
weather-boarded.  Houses here are generally brick of two stories; several of
white frame.  The bridge across to M'Clay's island, in two divisions done
1816 -- began three years before.  This is the only stone house, save that
of M'Clay at the other end, in the town.  It is very large, and fronts the
river at the lower end.
  His grandmother rode once on urgency to Philadelphia, the same horse, in
one day !  At one time, when at Big Island on trade and hearing of her
husband's illness, she came down in a day and a night in a bark canoe !
  His grandfather farmed fields; he was the first who used a plough along
the Susquehanna.  He was a brewer in England.
  The Indians went away to Shamokin and Seeling's Grove, and Muncey, and
there lived, while John Harris, the first, lived down here.  He traded for
furs.  Robert Harris often saw many families in bark canoes come down here
to trade, and go down to Lancaster.  Harrisburg built up very fast, even in
the first year; five to six hundred people in three years.  Government came
here in 1809-10.
  Esther Harris laid the foundation of the brick house, now Carson's, five
miles up the Susquehanna.  When the Indians made an invasion they shunned to
attack it, because the scaffold holes in the walls scared them off, as
supposing they were loop holes for guns !
  One of the Harrises was a wild devil, of great agility and strength, who
liked to encounter five or six Indians at once at grip and wrestle.  He
could beat them too, at their play at foot ball.
  Once Esther Harris showed her courage and management, when on an occasion
of sending her maid up stairs, she put her lightened candle into a powder
cask as a stand upon a sudden call down stairs, thinking it was flaxseed !
Mrs. Harris ran up and took it out carefully with her own hands.
  June 19th, 1733, Shekallamy, a chief, by Conrad Weiser, as interpreter,
said that he had before, together with Sassoonar, sent a letter to John
Harris, to desire him to desist from making a plantation at the mouth of
Choniata, (Juniata) where Harris had only built that house for carrying on
his trade, that his plantation, on which he has houses, barns, &c., at
Paxton, is his place of dwelling, and that he has no warrant for any
settlement at Choniata, and might have only intended to clear some land to
raise corn for his horses, but that they should give the necessary orders in
it.  Shekallamy, acting for the Six Nations, then said, he had no ill will
to John Harris, but that he is afraid that the warriors of the Six Nations,
in passing there, will see it and take it ill.
  Mrs. Esther Harris, was an excellent swimmer, and could use fire arms like
a hunter.  Even her grandaughter, Mrs. Mary Hana, the widow of Gen. Hana,
who is now alive aged about sixty-eight, and has learned several girls of
her day to swim, as seen by Mr. Fahnestock.
  The Indians were all great friends to John Harris, and afterwards became
as friendly to his wife.
  A letter from the justices of the peace in Berks county, of the 23d July
1755, sent express to Governor Morris, signed by Conrad Weiser and five
others, says, "as all our Protestant inhabitants are very uneasy at the
behaviour of the Roman Catholics, who are very numerous in this county, some
of whom show great joy at the bad news lately come from the army, we have
thought it our duty to inform your honour, and to ask that they may be
disarmed.  We have reason to believe that those who live in Cussahoppen,
[believed to be now present Summany town], where they have a very
magnificient chapel, and have had large processions, have bad designs, and
besides it is reported and believed generally, that in that neighbourhood
there are thirty Indians lurking for prey and well armed".  [This is another
reason, perhaps, why the people of Paxton, &c., all Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians, believed that their own Indians were misled and made hostile,
as expecting great support from distant Indians in the French and papal pay
and interest.]
  A letter from the Rev. John Elder of Paxton, to the secretary, R. Peters.

                                        Paxton, 9th November, 1755.
  I have just now received an express, informing me that out of a small
party on guard last night in Tullyhoe's gap of the mountain, five were
killed and two wounded.  Such shocking accounts we frequently receive, and
though we are careful to transmit hem to Philadelphia, and remonstrate and
petition from time to time, yet to no purpose, so that we seem to be given
up into the hands of a merciless enemy.
  There are within this few weeks upwards of forty of his majesty's subjects
massacred on the frontiers of this and Cumberland counties, besides a great
many carried into captivity, and yet nothing but unseasonable debates
between the two parties of our legislature, instead of uniting on some
probable scheme for the protection of the province.  What may be the end of
these things, God only knows; but I really fear that unless vigorous methods
are speedily used, we in these back settlements will unavoidably fall a
sacrifice, and this part of the province be lost.
  If I have expressed my sentiments with too much warmth, you will be kind
enough to pardon me, as it proceeds from a hearty regard to the public good.
                                            Sir, your obedient servant,
                                                         JOHN ELDER
      [The subscriber was the first minister of the Presbyterian church.]
      [Note -- He had also a colonel's commission -- was born in Ireland and
was sixty years minister of the Presbyterian church.]

                    "The flying rumours gather's as they roll'd,
                     Scarce any tale was sooner heard then told;
                     And all who told it, adding something new,
                     And all who heard it, made enlargement too !"

  Letter from Edward Biddle, at Reading, to his father, James Biddle, in
Philadelphia.
  "I am in so much horror and confusion, I scarce know what I am writing,
[at Sunday, one o'clock.]  The drum is beating to arms, and the bells
ringing, and all the people under arms.  This moment express has arrived from
Michael Reiss, at Tulpehoccan, eighteen miles off, who left about thirty of
their people engaged with an equal number of Indians at said Reiss'.  This
night we expect an attack.  truly alarming is our situation.  The people
exclaim against the Quakers, and are scarce restrained from burning the
houses of those who are in this town.  Oh my country !  My bleeding country
!-- My love to sister and Jemmy.
                        Your affectionate son,
                                  E. BIDDLE.

  Peter Spycker, writing from Tulpehoccan, says that "the people, hearing a
firing, and running there, found the Indians (four) sitting on children
scalping them : three of them are dead and two alive without scalps.  Thence
went to the watch-house of Derrick Sixth, and found six dead bodies, four
being scalped.  They have burned four plantations."
  In council, 25th August, 1757 -- A petition was received from the
inhabitants of the township of Paxton, setting forth that the evacuating of
fort Hunter is of great disadvantage to them, that fort Halifax is not
necessary to secure the communication with fort Augusta, and is not so
proper a station for the batteaux parties as fort Hunter, praying that the
governor would please to fix a sufficient number of men at Hunter;s, under
the command of an active officer, with strict orders to range the frontiers
daily.  It is said at same time that fort Halifax was built by Colonel
Clapham without the orders of Governor Morris, and is in a bad situation,
where none could be protected by it in batteau parties, it having no command
of the channel.  Although the fort or block-house at Hunter's (mills) was
not tenable, being hastily erected and not finished, yet it was the best
situation upon the river for every service, as well as for the protection of
the frontiers.
  In September 1755, Conrad Weiser, in his letter to the governor, states
that on the 7th inst., he went by orders to meet the Indians at John Harris'
ferry.  He found several had gone up the river to settle about Shamokin.  He
found there, however, "the Belt" and Seneca George, and five or six other
elderly men, and fifty or sixty others.  The Belt said the Six Nations were
now resolved to revenge the death of Braddock, and drive away the French,
"which the great general could not do because of pride and obstinacy, and
for which the most High had thus punished him".
  Harris' ferry, the 8th January 1756.  The governor, R. H. Morris, held a
treaty here, having Conrad Weiser as interpreter, and James Hamilton,
Richard Peters and Joseph Fox, commissioners, present; the Belt of Wampum
and the Broken Thigh, with their families, the former a Seneca, the other a
Mohock, which was adjourned to Carlisle, because of only one house at
Harris'  to accomodate them.  At Carlisle, they were also joined by John
Hamilton and William Logan, and by Mr. George Croghan, from his residence at
Aucquick, [also Awkwick.]
  Mr. Hamilton informed the council, that in November 1755, he was at John
Harris', and finding the people collected there in the utmost confusion, and
in continual fear of being fallen upon by a large body of French and
Indians, who were said to have passed the Allegheny hills in their march
towards this province, he was induced to offer a great reward to Aroas,
(Silver Heels) to go up the east side of Susquehanna as far as Shamokin, to
ascertain the facts in the case, and he being since returned and now
present, was asked to relate the facts of his journey.  He had gone as far
as Nescopecka, where he found one hundred and forty warriors in their dance,
and who expressed much anger against the English, and an intention to fall
upon them to the eastward.
  Abraham Horn, of Northampton, and Peter Frailey, of Orwickburgh, (now
dead) were the leading and influential persons, who most caused the removal
of the seat of government from Philadelphia to Lancaster, by a resolution of
March 1799.  They were supported by the members from Bucks county and all
along the Delaware (so says secretary Trimball.)
  The subject had been before agitated several times, and it would have been
carried on one occasion, but for the casting vote of John Channon, of
Huntingdon, in the senate.
  The sale of the state lands was procured by the influence of banqueting
parties and good suppers, by "the committee of vigilance", so called, and
since called borers, so first named after 1812, at Harrisburg.  This measure
gave great offence to many back members.
  The most offensive case, and most prominent as a final and leading measure
of removal, was the case of the removal of the court of justice in Wayne
county to Bethany.  This was procured by old Samuel Preston, (died in 1836)
a surveyor and postmaster, who acted in Wayne county as agent for Henry
Drinker's lands.  The last was a Philadelphian.
  When they went to Lancaster, it was called a temporary object, for ten
years only.  They continued there until 1812.
  The Paxton boys, being memorable in their day, and being often spoken of
in these pages, we here add some special facts concerning them, to wit :
Thomas Elder, a gentleman of the bar at Harrisburg, now about seventy-five
years of age, tells me that his father, the Rev. Mr. Elder, rode after the
Paxton boys, and got at their head to turn them back, and they declared they
would shoot him down.  They were generally from Hanover, fourteen miles off.
They took sacrament at the Paxton church, before going.
  Elder's father was a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian minister, the first for
Paxton church.  He came from Ireland to it, about the year 1732; lived to be
eighty -- died in 1792, and had been the minister there sixty years.  The
Indians came twice to destroy his congregation in time of worship; one time
they laid about, seeking their chance for a week; but having come on Monday
and laying about so long, they had to go away; in doing so they killed and
wounded some whom they met.  Major Burnett was wounded in his arm.  Two
prisoners who escaped told these things.  At another time, they saw all the
congregation bring their arms and stack them at the door.  One of their
prisoners escaped and gave the alarm, and they were repulsed with some blood
on both sides.  Mr. Elder remembers several Indian families still near here
in his early days.
  Mr. Fahnestock, aged sixty-six, remembers to have seen several of the
leaders of the Paxton boys; he named Stewart, Colhoun, Smith and Dickey.
This last was the grandfather of the present Robert Dickey, who is
doorkeeper to the senate.  They lived to be aged men, in and about Harrisburg.
  The Love rock, near M'Clay's house was a place of Indian resort and
council -- part of it has been blown off.

  A letter from Harris, to Conrad Weiser, dated June 30 1755, at Paxton, to
wit :
  "I am sorry that I have occasion to inform you of such melancholy news.
On Monday, the 22d inst., was killed and scalped three persons by Indians,
near our fort, at Wills' creek.  [Wills' creek was near Chambersburg.]  And
within three days after, upwards of twenty of our inhabitants have been
killed or taken near Fort Cumberland.  William Chesney is come home, who saw
a little boy in our fort who was scalped last week, and likely to live.  In
short there seems to be nothing but desolation on the Potowmac.  There was
not scarce an hour since the army marched, but news of alarm comes down the
road, that it will probably be stopped by the enemy; one soldier was found
upon it killed.  Our own Indians are strongly suspected for several reasons;
first their deserting our army, all except about six men, and also, by
English goods or arms found on one Indian killed last week by one Williams,
which articles were delivered but lately out of our fort to Indians then
there.  I think it advisable that you should use endeavours to find out if
our own Indians are concerned, so that we might with the least delay, lay
some schemes for revenge, before they can find time to use us as they have
done our fellow subjects and acquaintances.  We need men to be directly
raised for our defence, and to guard provisions, &c., to our camp and army".
[The foregoing letter shows perhaps the grounds of the massacre of the
Conestoga Indians by the Paxton boys.  They believed too, that the two or
three persons killed at Quitepahilla, not far from Harris' ferry, eighteen
miles towards Reading, were destroyed by their own Indians, just before they
went off.  John Harris above was son of the first John Harris, an original
settler.]
  A letter from John Harris, at Paxton, October 29 1755, to Edward Shippen,
Esq., Lancaster, says :
  "We expect the enemy upon us every day, and the inhabitants are abandoning
their plantations, being greatly discouraged at the approach of such a
number of cruel savages, and no present sign of assistance.  I had a certain
account of fifteen hundred French and Indians being on their march against
us and Virginia, and now close upon our borders; their scouts scalping our
families on our frontiers daily.  Andrew Montour and others at Shamokin,
desired me to take care, that there was a party of forty Indians out many
days, and intended to burn my house and destroy myself and family.  I have
this day cut loop holes in my house, and am determined to hold out to the
last extremity if I can get some men to stand by me.  But few can be had at
present, as every one is in fear of their own families being cut off every
hour.  Great part of the Susquehanna Indians are no doubt actually in the
French interest, and I am informed that a French officer is expected at
Shamokin this week with a party of Delawares and Shawnees, no doubt to take
possession of our river.  We should raise men immediately to build a fort up
the river to take possession, and to induce some Indians to join us.  We
ought also to insist on the Indians to declare for or against us, and as
soon as we are prepared for them, we should bid up the scalps, and keep our
woods full of our people upon the scout, else they will ruin our province,
for they are a dreadful enemy !  I have sent out two Indian spies to
Shamokin; they are Mohawks."  [John Harris went up with a party of forty men
to make discoveries, and to fight as far as Shamokin, they there saw strange
Indians painted and dancing, and received advice from Andrew Montour to
hasten back, and by the longest route on the eastern side, but they chose
the western, and were attacked, and lost half a dozen of their men, &c.
  Paxton was the earliest name; it at first embraced several townships now
nearest to it.  The present Thomas Elder, Esq., remembers when there was but
one German family in all the country.  The first settlers were all
Scotch-Irish.  Their minister, Mr. Elder, was also a colonel at the same
time -- thus showing what a fighting race they must have all been against
the heathen.
  I visited Paxton church, built of lime-stone, quite old.  The graveyard
near is surrounded by a good stone wall, and has many head-stones.  The
tombstones of marble, were of James and John Harris, Wiliam M'Clay, William
Wallace, Hugh Wilson, Gen. Simpson, Thomas Forster, Krauch, Kelso.  The Rev.
John Elder had a double width of marble.  There are headstones of Duncans,
Stephens, Acols, Fulton -- this last, perhaps, of steam memory !  Older
stones were of red slate stone, and the inscriptions illegible and rude.  I
thought many of these may have been of persons killed in Indian wars.
  In this church there have been several cases of public confession, before
the congregation, of fornication, saying, after the covenanters'  way, "for
my own game, have done this shame, pray restore me to my lands again, "&c.
The present Thomas Elder has seen these things of both sexes !  Mr. Walters
also saw it done up the Juniata, Mifflin county.  The church is near to the
woods, behind and aside of it; and its front opens to a beautiful cultivated
country, lying below it.  It is three miles from Harrisburg, near the
turnpike to Lebanon.
  The tombstone of Gen. Simpson says that his family settled in Paxton in
1720.  It must have been earlier than any lands were sold on patent.
  In continuation with Harrisburg, we may pertinently mention that even
Carlisle, a few miles off, though settled so late as 1750, was so far a
frontier then, as often to be subjected to Indian alarms in the vicinage,
and to have had many characteristics of a FRONTIER TOWN.  It was a place
originally noted for its "beaver dams" probably formed our of the Le Tort
creek; a name it received from James Le Tort, once a noted French trader and
interpreter, as early as 1712.  This was once his frontier and home.  When
this town was begun, it was then the Shawnee home, they dwelling until then
round and about the "beaver pond".  They moved off, leaving only one of
their families behind, in the wigwam of "Doctor John".  Doctor John and his
family were all killed in 1768, by some of his neighbours, and it excited
much indignation among the better portion of the white settlers.
  Many aged persons, still alive in Carlisle, remembered very well when all
the carriage of goods and stores westward from Carlisle was done wholly on
pack horses, coming and going in whole companies.  Only as long as twelve
years ago, there were not more than three wagons in all Shearman valley --
all was drawn on sleds, in summer as well as winter.
  A Mrs. Murphy, who died in that valley in 1830, aged nearly one hundred
years -- having lived a long life there among the Indians.  She remembered
seeing the first wagon arrive at Carlisle, and the indignation it excited
among the packers, as likely to ruin their trade !  The pack-horses used to
carry bars of iron on their backs, crooked over and around their bodies --
barrels were hung on them, one on each side.  She remembered that the first
Indian tract to go westward, was to cross at Simpson's, four miles below
John Harris' (Harrisburg);  then across Shearman's creek at Gibson's; then
by Dick's gap; then by Shearman's valley by Concord to the Burnt Cabins;
then to the  waters of the Allegheny, and down the river.
  Shearman's valley was named after an Indian trader, who lost his life in
fording it with his horse and furs.  In this valley I saw a real "leather
stocking" in the person of a Mr. Stewart -- twenty-five years ago he had
killed as many as sixty-three deer in a season; he goes out in snow time in
preference, and lays out all night.  It was in this valley that I heard of
Wm. Penn's iron spur, left on his visit to Susquehanna, near Columbia, and
now in the possession of Lewis Pennock, in London grove, Chester county.

                       WYOMING  AND  ITS  MASSACRE

  Among the claims set up by the state of Connecticut was the following --
that by their charter they owned all lands lying between those parallels of
latitude forming the northern and southern boundary of their state, and
extending west to the Pacific ocean.  This claim, it will readily be
perceived, would cover a large portion of the southern part of New York, and
of the northern parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio.  In prosecution of this
claim, a colony from Windham, in Connecticut, obtained a state grant for a
large tract of land, lying along the Susquehanna, in the state of
Pennsylvania, whither they removed.  The valley they occupied was called
Wyoming, said to mean "field of blood" so called on account of a bloody
battle fought in the neighbourhood of the settlement by the Indians, at a
period anterior to the removal of the whites.
  The following account of the battle and massacre is taken from an
interesting history of Wyoming, written by Isaac Chapman, Esq., late of
Wilkesbarre.  Judge Chapman lived upon the spot, and could hardly have
failed to collect accurate materials, and to give a correct narrative of the
events which transpired there during the revolutionary war.  The inhabitants
had collected in Forty fort -- the principal fort in the valley.  The number
of men in the fort was three hundred and sixty-eight.
  On the morning of the 3d of July, 1778, the officers of the garrison at
Forty fort held a council to determine on the propriety of marching from the
fort, and attacking the enemy wherever found.  The debates in this council
of war are said to have been conducted with much warmth and animation.  The
ultimate determination was one on which depended the lives of the garrison
and safety of the settlement.  On one side it was contended that their
enemies were daily increasing in numbers; that they would plunder the
settlement of all kinds of property, and would accumulate the means of
carrying on the war, while they themselves would become weaker; that the
harvest would soon be ripe, and would be gathered or destroyed by their
enemies, and all their means of sustenance during the succeeding winter
would fail; that probably all their messengers were killed, and as there had
been more than sufficient time, and no assistance arrived, they would
probably receive none, and consequently now was the proper time to make the
attack.  On the other side it was argued, that probably some or all the
messengers may have arrived at head quarters, but that the absence of the
commander-in-chief may have produced delay; that one or two weeks more may
bring the desired assistance, and that to attack the enemy, superior as they
were in number, out of the limits of their own fort, would produce almost
certain destruction to the settlement and themselves, and captivity, and
slavery, perhaps torture, to their wives and children.  While these debates
were progressing, five men belonging to Wyoming, but who at that time held
commissions in the continental  army, arrived at the fort; they had received
information that a force from Niagara had marched to destroy the settlements
on the Susquehanna, and being unable to bring with them any reinforcement,
they resigned their appointments, and hastened immediately to the protection
of their families; they had heard nothing of the messengers, neither could
they give any certain information as to the probability of relief.
  The prospect of receiving assistance became now extremely uncertain.  The
advocates for the attack prevailed in the council, and at dawn of day, on
the morning of the 3d of July, the garrison left the fort, and began their
march up the river, under the command of Colonel Zebulon Butler.  Having
proceeded about two miles, the troops halted for the purpose of detaching a
reconnoitring party, to ascertain the situation of the enemy.
  The scout found the enemy in possession of fort Wintermoot, and occupying
huts immediately around it, carousing in supposed security; but on their
return to the advancing column, they met two strolling Indians, by whom they
were fired upon, and upon whom they immediately returned the fire without
effect.  The settlers hastened their march for the attack, but the Indians
had given the alarm, and the advancing troops found the enemy already formed
in order of battle, a small distance from their fort, with their right flank
covered by a swamp, and their left resting upon the bank of a river.  The
settlers immediately displayed their column and formed in corresponding
order; but as the enemy was much superior in numbers, their line was much
more extensive.  Pine woods and bushes covered the battle ground, in
consequence of which, the movements of the troops could not be so quickly
discovered, not so well ascertained.  Colonel Zebulon Butler had command of
the right, and was opposed by Colonel John Butler, at the head of the
British troops, on the left; Colonel Nathan Denison commanded the left,
opposed by Brant at the head of his Indians on the enemy's right.  The
battle commenced at about forty rods distant, and continued about fifteen
minutes, through the woods and brush, without much execution.  At this time
Brant with his Indians having penetrated the swamp, turned the left flank of
the settlers' line, and with a terrible warwhoop and savage yell, made a
desperate charge upon the troops composing that wing, which fell very fast,
and were immediately cut to pieces with the tomahawk.  Colonel Denison
having ascertained that the savages were gaining the rear of the left, gave
orders for that wing to fall back.  At the same time Colonel John Butler,
finding that the line of the settlers did not extend as far toward the river
as his own, doubled that end of his line which was protected by a thick
growth of brushwood, and having brought a party of his British regulars to
act in column upon that wing, threw Colonel Zebulon Butler's troops into
some confusion. The orders of Colonel Denison for his troops to fall back,
having been understood by many men to mean a retreat, the troops began to
retire in much disorder.  The savages considered this a flight, and
commencing a most hideous yell, rushed forward with their rifles and
tomahawks, and cut the retiring line to pieces.  In this situation it was
found impossible to rally and form the troops, and the rout became general
throughout the line.  The settlers fled in every direction, and were
instantly followed by the savages, who killed or took prisoners whoever came
within their reach.  Some succeeded in reaching the river, and escaped by
swimming across, others fled to the mountains, and the savages, too much
occupied with plunder, gave up the pursuit.  When the first intelligence was
received in the village of Wilkes-barre that the battle was lost, the women
fled with their children to the mountains, on their way to the settlements
on the Delaware, where  many of them at length arrived, after suffering
extreme  hardships.  Many of the men who escaped the battle, together with
their women and children who were unable to travel on foot, took refuge in
Wyoming fort, and on the following day (July the 4th) Butler and Brant, at
the head of their combined forces, appeared before the fort, and demanded
its surrender.  The garrison being without any efficient means of defence,
surrendered the fort on articles of capitulation, by which the settlers, upon
giving up the fortifications, prisoners, and military stores, were to remain
in the country unmolested, provided they did not again take up arms.
  In this battle about three hundred of the settlers were killed or missing,
and from a great part of whom no intelligence was ever afterward received.
  The conditions of the capitulation were entirely disregarded by the
British and savage forces, and after the fort was delivered up, all kinds of
barbarities were committed by them.  The village of Wilkesbarre, consisting
of twenty-three houses, was burnt; men and their wives were separated from
each other, and carried into captivity; their property was plundered, and
the settlement laid waste.  The remainder of the inhabitants were driven
from the valley, and compelled to proceed on foot sixty miles through the
great swamp, almost without food or clothing.  A number perished in the
journey, principally women and children; some died of their wounds; others
wandered from the path in search of food, and were lost, and those who
survived called the wilderness through which they passed "THE SHADES OF
DEATH", an appellation which it has since retained.
  Catrine Montour, who might well be termed a fury, acted a conspicuous part
in this tragedy.  She followed in the train of the victorious army;
ransacking the heaps of the slain, and with her arms covered with gore,
barbarously murdering the wounded, who in vain supplicated for their lives.
She lived and died in New York state.
  Halleck, in allusion to the massacre of Wyoming, has the following
interesting lines :
          "There is a woman, widow'd, gray and old,
           Who tells you where the foot of battle stept
           Upon their day of massacre.   She told
           Its tale, and pointed to the spot, and wept,
           Whereon her father and five brothers slept
           Shroudless, the bright dream'd slumbers of the brave,
           When all the land a funeral mourning kept,
           And there, wild laurels planted on the grave
           By nature's hand, in air their pale red blossoms wave."

  We find, in a Connecticut paper of 1831, an account of the recent decease
of Mrs. Esther Skinner of Torringford, in the one hundredth year of her age.
Mrs. S. lost a husband, a brother, and two sons, in the war of the American
revolution.  She, with her family, was a resident of Wyoming, at the
massacre of its inhabitants by the British, and the Indians and the tories.
Her two sons fell beneath the tomahawk, but the mother, almost by miracle,
escaped with six of her children.  Her son-in-law was the only man that
escaped out of twenty, who threw themselves in the river, and attempted to
hide themselves beneath the foliage that overhung the banks.  All the others
were successively massacred as they hung by the branches in the river.  He
alone was undiscovered.  The mother travelled back to Torringford, where she
has led a useful life ever since -- often cheerful, though the cloud of
pensiveness, brought on by her sorrows, was never entirely dissipated.  But
one of her children survives her.
  It would seem that Campbell, the poet, did not deem himself justified by
the facts in the case, to picture so severely as he did, the doings of the
chieftain Brant in the tragic massacre.  In January, 1822, he addressed a
letter to John Brant, Esq., of the Grand river, son of the Indian chief,
wherein he makes his apologies for sundry severities upon the memory of the
father; upon the ground, that he had been misinformed in following the usual
printed stories of the fight; and conceding to the son, that he, the son,
had convinced him of sundry misrepresentations.  The truth is, that Brant
the chief, was extremely desirous of retaining the character of a humane
man, and inculcated the avowal in his family, that he never did any thing
savage and cruel personally; and also restrained and checked his adherents,
when he could.  The son declares that his father was not present at the
scene of the massacre at all; but was in the rear at some distance.
  When Brant was in England after the peace of 1783, the most distinguished
individuals of all parties and professions treated him with the utmost
kindness and attention.  In Canada the memorials of his moral character
represent him as naturally ingenuous and generous; and from the premises,
Campbell concludes with the assurance, that "he deems them sufficient to
induce him to believe that he often strove to mitigate the cruelty of Indian
warfare, and that therefore, his opinion about him is changed".
  Brant was a full-blooded Mohawk, born on the Mohawk river, and educated at
an Indian school in New England.
  John Butler, also, often endeavoured to exculpate himself individually
from the imputation of barbarity, and it was admitted by those who knew him
before the war, in Sir John Johnson's neighbourhood, that he bore the
character of a gentle man, and that his son, an officer under him, who was
killed at the crossing of Wood creek, was far more cruel than his father.
  The Delaware chief, Tedyuscung, was settled at Wyoming in 1758, at the
public expense, intending thereby to place him and his people as a frontier
defence.  They sent on a force of fifty men, as carpenters, masons and
labourers, who erected ten or twelve houses, of fourteen by twenty feet, and
one for himself, of sixteen by twenty-four feet.  He was an artful, wily
chief, of more than common selfishness and intrigue for an Indian, and
withal was intemperate and aspiring.
  As early as 1742, Count Zinzendorf visited the Shawnee, then settled at
Wyoming, with a missionary's wife as his interpreter.  He remained among
them twenty days, and while there sitting by a fire, and writing in his
temporary hut, his leg was crossed by a rattlesnake, seeking to warm itself
by the fire.
  Wyoming, the name given by the Delaware Indians, expressed the `Large
plains', and is a corruption of the original name of Maughwau-wame.  The Six
Nations called it Sgahontowano, the large flats, `wano' meaning a large
ground without trees.  It came to be called Wanwaumia, Wiomic, and then
Wyoming.  The Susquehanna, on which it rests, was so called to express muddy
or riley river, the word `hanna' meaning a stream of water.
  The last survivor of those who were in the action of the Wyoming massacre,
was Major Roswell Franklin, who after having become the first settler of
Aurora, New York, in 1787, died there in 1843.  He had fought at that battle
along side of his father, and had seen his mother and sister butchered near
him, and then himself and his other sister were taken off prisoners, himself
for a service of three years, and his sister for eleven years.



                         PITTSBURG  and  BRADDOCK

  In the olden time, Fort du Quesne and Fort Pitt, and the thousand tales of
"Braddock's defeat" were the talk of all the land, and formed the tales of
all the nurseries, scaring the hearers as oft as the tales were told.

                     "The mind, impressible and soft, with ease
                       Imbibes and treasures what she hears and sees --
                                  The tale, at first but half received,
                       Till others have the fearful facts believed !"

  Such facts and relations as we have occasionally gathered, and not to be
found in the ordinary histories, we propose now to give in a desultory
manner, in the following pages :
  Previous to the year 1753, the country west of the Allegheny mountains,
and particularly the point which Pittsburg now occupies, was the subject of
controversy between Great Britain and France -- In the early part of that
year, a party of Frenchman from Presque Isle, now Erie, seized three traders
at Loggstown, and carried them back with them as prisoners.  In the fall of
that year, Robert Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, despatched George
Washington, then in the 22nd year of his age, to the French commander on La
Boeuf, to demand that he should desist from further aggression.  In
performance of his duty, Washington arrived at "the Forks" on the 23d of
November, 1753.  While here he examined the site immediately at the junction
of the rivers, and recommended it as a suitable position for a fort.  On the
next day he proceeded from this place, and called on King Shingass, near
M'Kee's rocks, who accompanied him on his way to Loggstown, where they met
Monakatoocha, and other Indian chiefs, and held several councils with them.
  While at Loggstown, it became a question which road he should take on his
way to the French commandant at Le Boeuf, and Shingass advised him not to
take the road by Beaver, because it was low and swampy.  Proceeding on his
journey, he arrived at Le Boeuf and learned from the French commandant that
they were determined to take possession of the Forks in the spring.  With
this answer he left the French commandant, in company with Gist, his guide,
on foot, and arrived at the Allegheny river, below the mouth of Pine creek,
on the 28th of December.  The next day they spent in making a raft with
tomahawks, and towards evening embarked, and attempted to cross the river;
but the ice driving very thick, they made very little progress, and were
finally compelled to take refuge upon Herr's or Wainwright's island, where
they were nearly frozen.
  During the night it froze so hard, that they crossed on the ice in the
morning.  This circumstance affords a pretty strong inference that it must
have been Wainwright's island; it lying close to the eastern shore, the
narrow passage between it and the shore would be more likely to freeze in
one night, than the wide space opposite Herr's island.  Having crossed the
river they proceeded without delay to Frazier's, at the mouth of Turtle
creek.  On the 31st of December, while Gist and the other men were out
hunting the horses, Washington walked up to the residence of Queen
Allequippa, where M'Keesport now stands.  She expressed much regret that he
had not called on her as he went out.  He made her a present of a
watch-coat, and a flask of rum, and in his journal he states that the latter
present was much the more acceptable.
  We here give a poetic description of the first scenes at Pittsburg, viz. :

How changed the scene since here the savage trod,
     To set his otter-trap, or take wild honey,
Where now so many humble printers plod,
     And faithful carriers hunt a little money !

How things have alter'd in this misty plain,
     Since Allequippa hunted and caught fish,
Where Mrs. Oliver and her gentle train
     Now read of Indians in the Wish-ton-Wish !

How short the time, but how the scenes have shifted,
     Since Washington explored this western wild-land,
And with his raft, and Gist, his pilot, drifted
     Upon the upper end of Wainwright's island !

`Tis seventy years ago, since that bold knight,
     With blanket, cap, and leggings, then the tippey,
Attended by his `squire, the aforesaid wight,
     Paid his respects to good Queen Allequippa.

Her warlike majesty was quite unhappy,
     To think our courtier had not sooner come :
He soothed her feelings with a blanket capo,
     And touch'd her fancy with a flask of rum.

What changes, since from yonder point he scann'd
     The meeting streams with his unerring eye,
And `mid primeval woods, prophetic scann'd
     This great position and its destiny !

Since royal Shingass dwelt upon the cliff,
     Which overlooks the foot of Brunot's isle,
And angled in his little barken skiff,
     Where now for wood a steamer stops awhile.

When Shingass gave him his advice about
     The best and nearest route to Fort Venango,
And then decided for the higher route,
     Against the route by Beaver and Shenango.

But good king Shingass, it is very clear,
     Was but a royal archer after all,
And not by any means an engineer,
     And never heard or dreamt of a canal.

Monakatoocha, and the Delaware band,
     Then held their council fires of war and peace,
Where Rapp now cultivates the peaceful land,
     And sheers his sheep, and wins the golden fleece.

How changed the scene, since merry Jean Baptiste,
     Paddled his pereogue on the Belle Riviere,
And from its banks some lone Loyola priest
     Echo'd the night hymn of the voyageur !

Since Ensign Ward saw coming down yon stream,
     Where all was peace and solitude before,
A thousand paddles in the sunshine gleam,
     And countless pereogues that stretch from shore to shore.

The lily flag waved o'er the foremost boat,
     And old St. Pierre the motly host commanded
Then here the flag of France was first afloat,
     And here the Gallic cannon first were landed.

Then here that fatal war, which cost
     The lily banner many a bloody stain;
In which a wide empire was won and lost,
     And Wolf and Montcalm fell on Abraham's plain.

Since a subaltern in old Fort Du Quesne
     Begg'd of his chief, ere yet he quit the post,
To give him but a handful of his men
     To venture out and meet the British host :

When his red allies hail'd him with a shout,
     Who led them on with Indian enterprise,
When Braddock's confidence was put to rout
     And all, but wary Washington, surprised.

But jealousy suppress'd the Frenchman's fame,
     And when his chief sent home his base report,
He cast a stigma on his rival's name,
     And got the credit to himself at court.

How changed the scene, from all that Grant did see,
     When from his bivouac on yonder height,
He waked the French with his proud reveille,
     And challenged them to sally forth and fight.

Our Highland officer that bloody day,
     Retreated up the Allegheny's side,
Wounded and faint, he miss'd his tangled way,
     And near some water laid him down and died.

`Twas in a furrow of a sandy swell
     Which overlooks that clear and pebbled wave,
Shrouded in leaves, none found him where he fell,
     And mouldering nature gave the youth a grave

Last year a plough pass'd o'er the quiet spot,
     And brought to light frail vestiges of him
Whose unknown fate perhaps is not forgot,
     And fills with horror yet a sister's dream.

His plaited button, stamp'd with proofs of rank,
     His pocket gold, which still untouch'd remains,
Do show, at least, no savage captor drank
     As gentle blood as flow'd in Scotish veins.

I think I see him from his sleep arise,
     And gaze on yonder tower with admiration !
Lo ! on its battlements a banner flies,
     An unknown flag of some unheard-of nation !

Of all the features of the scene around,
     The neighbouring stream alone he recognizes;
Another such can no where else be found;
     The sun upon no river like it rises.

Does he retrace what was a blood-stain'd route;
     Through thickets of the thorny crab and sloe,
He lists again to hear the savage shout,
     Where every trace is lost of fort and foe.

But still a shorter time has pass'd away,
     Since on the Allegheny's western beach,
The lurking Shawanee in ambush lay,
     In hopes some white would cross within his reach.

Thence to the lake no white had settled yet,
     And Indian tribes still held their ancient station
When the first carrier of the old Gazette
     Took round that little humble publication.

The Muse, when she another year is older,
     May give a present picture of this place,
Which from the canvass will but rise the bolder
     That now its fading back-ground we retrace.

  On the 17th of April, 1754, the French commander, Contrecoeur, with three
hundred and sixty canoes, one thousand men and eighteen pieces of cannon,
arrived at the "Forks", where Pittsburg now stands, and compelled Ensign
Ward to surrender.  This invasion is very properly called, in the poetry,
the commencement of the war, which terminated in the loss by France of all
her possessions in America, east of the Mississippi.
  Some incidents in relation to the subaltern who commanded the French and
Indians at Braddock's defeat were derived from La Fayette, during his late
visit to this country.
  The account of the remains of a deceased officer which were ploughed up
during the last summer, near the arsenal, are in part founded on fact.  It
is true that such remains were discovered, and that money and marks of
military rank were found with them.
  There were still some remains of the old Fort du Quesne to be found in
1834.  Its site was in part occupied by a brew-house erected upwards of
thirty years ago, by General O'Hara, the first brew-house in "the great
west".  The rest of the site is now filled with dwellings.  It was on the
point formed by the two rivers.  Forty years ago the walls were still
entire.  A part of the brew-house premises fills the place which was a
bastion; at a little distance from it is still there, a small brick
five-sided edifice, called the guard-house, erected by the British after the
capture from the French.  It has two ranges of loop holes through sticks of
timber, let into the walls, which are a foot thick.  In one of its sides,
near the top, is a relic, a tablet of stone of two feet by fourteen inches,
on which is inscribed "A.D. 1764, Col. Boquet".  Adjoining to this
guard-house are now two small brick houses, which were built from the bricks
taken from the walls of Fort Pitt.  I saw these things in 1804.  Then the
area of the fort, excepting the said brew-house premises, of Shiras, was all
a nearly levelled grass field, from General O'Hara's residence, where I
dwelt, down to the point.  In 1833, when they were excavating the ground for
the foundation of the building above mentioned, which occupies the site of
the bastion, they dug up several ends of the oak palisadoes, which were once
a part of the defence on the Allegheny river side.  They were of course
seventy years of age or more, and yet were perfectly sound !
  Braddock's battle field is seven miles from Pittsburg, on the right bank
of the Monongahela.  None who read of it ever think of it as being a place
near a river, or as so near to the end of the intended expedition !

    "How chang'd the scene, since Indian men and manners reign'd!"

  The late Morgan Neville, Esq., whose acquaintance I had formed in our
youth, was pleased to write some very pleasant recollections of his native
place, and especially of some individuals and incidents, which it will be
gratifying to preserve in these pages, to wit :

  It was about the year 1796, that the Duke of Orleans, now Louis Philippe,
king of France, accompanied by his two brothers, Montpensier and Beaujolais,
came to the western country.  On arriving in Pittsburg, then a small
village, they found one or two emigres, who had formerly filled prominent
stations under the `ancienne regime', but who were now earning a scanty
subsistence in carrying on some little business of merchandise.  One of
them, the Chevalier du B-----c, one of the worthiest of men, and an
admirable philosopher, kept a little shop, then denominated, `par
excellence'-- a confectionery.  The articles, and the only ones, by the way,
entitling the chevalier's establishment to this attractive name, were the
kernels of hazelnuts, walnuts, and peach stones, enclosed in an envelope of
burnt maple sugar, fabricated by the skilful hands of the chevalier himself.
Du B----c was the most popular citizen of the village; he had a monkey of
admirable qualities, and his pointer (Sultan) could, like the dog in the
Arabian Nights, tell counterfeit money from good; at least, the honest folks
who supplied our little market with chickens and butter thought so, and that
was the same thing.  It was amusing to hear the master of the shop calling
his two familiars to aid him in selecting the good from the bad "
`leven-penny-bits".  "Allons Sultan, tell dese good ladie de good money from
de counterfeit".  Then followed the important consultation between the dog
and the monkey; pug grinned and scratched his sides; Sultan smelled, and in
due time scraped the money into the drawer.  As there was no counterfeit "
`leven-pences". Sultan seldom failed.  "Madame," would my friend say, to the
blowzy country lass, "Sultan is like de pope, he is infallible".  Sultan and
Bijou laid the foundations of this excellent man's fortune.  They brought
crowds of custom to the shop, and in two or three years he was enabled to
convert his little business into a handsome fancy store.  An attraction was
then added to the establishment that diverted a portion of the public
admiration from Sultan and the monkey. This was a Dutch clock, with a goodly
portion of gilding, and two or three white and red figures in front --
before striking it played a waltz.  It was inestimable, this music had never
before been heard in the west, and those who have been brought up amidst the
everlasting grinding of our present museums, can have no conception of the
excitement caused by our chevalier's clock.  In those days every unique
piece of furniture, or rare toy, was believed to have formed a part of the
`spolia optima' of the French revolution, and most generally they were set
down as the property of the queen of France.  It was soon insinuated abroad,
that the chevalier's clock formed one of the rare ornaments of the boudoir
of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette.  When he was asked how much it cost, he
evaded the question with admirable casuistry.  {Note : casuistry =
rationalization}  "Ah, mon ami," he would say with sincere tristesse, "the
French revolution produce some terrible effect; it was great sacrifice, it
is worth fifteen hundred franche guiney".  That, and the dog and the monkey
were worth, to the chevalier, 15,000 dollars, for he realized this sum in a
few years, from a foundation of a few pounds of sugar, and a peck of hazelnuts.
  Such was the Chevalier du B----c in his magazine; and he was a perfect
illustration of the French character of that day; it would accommodate
itself to any situation in life, it enabled the minister of marine to
become, like Bedredden, a pastry cook, and young Egalitˇ, the present king
of France, a schoolmaster in Canada.  But this is only one side of the
picture; Du B----c, when he closed his shop and entered into society, was
the delight of his auditory.  He was an accomplished scholar, possessed the
most polished manners and habits of "la vieille cour".  He was a younger
son, or as the French people call it, he was the "cadet" of a noble family.
He had travelled much, and observed profoundly.  He had been to the `Holy
Land'  not exactly as a palmer, but being `attachˇ a la lˇgation Fran¨aise'
at Constantinople, of which his relation, Sauf Boeuf, was the head. {Note :
palmer = a person wearing two crossed palm leaves as a sign of a pilgrimage
made to the Holy Land.}  He took the opportunity of traveling through as
much of Asia as was usually examined by European travellers.  Such was my
early friend Du B----c, to whose instructions and fine belles-lettres
acquirements, I am indebted for some of the most unalloyed enjoyments of my
life, by opening to me some of the richest treasures of French literature;
and such was the man whom the sons of Orleans found in a frontier American
village.  I do not remember the definite destination of the interesting
strangers; but certain it is, that the Chevalier du B----c induced them to
while away a much longer period in Pittsburg than could have been their
original intention.  He proposed to General N----, whose house was always
the temple of hospitality, where he was in the habit of dining every Sunday,
and at whose table and fireside the unfortunate emigre was sure to find a
hearty welcome, to introduce the travellers.  The general at first received
the proposition with coldness.  He said he had been a soldier of the
revolution, the intimate of Rochambeau and La Fayette, and of course
entertained a feeling of the deepest respect for the memory of the
unfortunate Louis, not as a monarch, but as a most amiable and virtuous man.
-- He insisted that no good could spring from the infamous exciter of the
jacobins, the profligate Egalitˇ.  "Mais, mon Gˇnˇral, (said the chevalier,
with a shrug of the shoulders, and most melancholy contortion of his
wrinkled features,) ils sont dans les plus grande misˇre, et ils ont ˇtˇ
chassˇ, comme nous autres, par ces vilains sans culottes".  The chevalier
knew his man, and the `bon hommie' of the General prevailed.  "Eh, bien !
chevalier, allez, rendre nos devoirs aux voyageurs, et qu'ils dinent chez
nous demain".  The strangers accepted the courtesy and became intimate with
and attached to the family of the kind hearted American : the charms of the
conversation of the Duke of Orleans, and his various literary attainments,
soon obliterated for the moment the horrible career of his father, from the
minds of his hearers.  If my boyish recollection is faithful, he was rather
taciturn, and melancholy; he would be perfectly abstrated from conversation,
sometimes for half an hour, looking steadfastly at the coal fire that blazed
in the grate, and when roused from his reverie, he would apologize for the
breach of `biensˇance', and call one of the children who were learning
French to read to him.  On these occasions I have read to him many passages
selected by him from Tˇlˇmaque : The beautiful manner in which he read the
description of Calypso's Grotto is still fresh in my memory.  He seldom
adverted to the scenes of the revolution, but he criticized the battles of
that period, particularly that of Jemmapes, with such discrimination, as to
convince the military men of Pittsburg, of whom there were several, that he
was peculiarly fitted, to shine in the profession of arms.
  Montpensier, the second brother, has left no mark on the tablet of memory
by which I can recall him; but Beaujolais, the young and interesting
Beaujolais, is still before "my mind's eye".  There was something romantic
in his character, and Madame de Genlis' romance, the "Knights of the Swan",
in which that charming writer so beautifully apostrophizes her young ward,
had just prepared every youthful bosom to lean towards this accomplished boy.
He was tall and graceful, and playful as a child.  He was a universal
favourite.  He was a few years older than myself, but when together we
appeared to be of the same age.  A transient cloud of melancholy would
occasionally pass over his fine features in the midst of his gayest
amusements; but it disappeared quickly, like the white cloud of summer.  We
then ascribed it to a boyish recollection of the luxuries and splendours of
the Palais Royal, in which he had passed his early life, which he might be
contrasting with the simple domestic scene which was passing before him.  It
was, however, probably in some measure imputable to the first sensation of
that disease, which, in a few short years afterwards, carried him to the grave.
  One little circumstance made a singular impression on me.  I was standing
one day with this group of Frenchmen on the bank of the Monongahela, when a
countryman of theirs, employed in the quarter master's department as a
labourer in taking care of the flat boats, passed by.  Pierre Cabot, or as
he was familiarly called, French Peter, was dressed in a blanket capot, with
a hood in place of a hat, in the manner of the Canadian boatmen, and in
moccasins.  Du B----c called after him, and introduced him to the French
princes.  The scene presented a subject for moralizing, even for a boy; on
the banks of Ohio, and in exile, the representative of the first family of a
nation who held rank of higher importance than any other nation in Europe,
took by the hand in a friendly and familiar conversation his countryman,
whose lot was cast among the dregs of the people, and who would not have
aspired to the honour of letting down the steps of the carriage of the man
with whom he here stood on a level.
  Peter was no jacobin --- he had emigrated from France before the
philosophic Robespierre and his colleagues had enlightened their fellow
citizens, and opened their eyes to the propriety of vulgar brutality and
ferocity.  Honest Cabot, therefore, felt all the love and veneration for the
princes, which Frenchmen under the old regime never failed to cherish for
members of the "grand monarque".  I was a great favourite with old Peter --
The next time I met him, he took me in his arms, and exclaimed with tears in
his eyes -- `Savez-vous, mon enfant, ce qui m'est arrivˇ j'ai en l'honneur
de causer avec monseigneur, in pleine rue.  Ah ! bon Dieu, quelle chose
affreuse que la revolution".  {Note : jacobin = a member of a group
advocating egalitarian democracy and engaging in terrorist activities during
the French Revolution of 1789.}
  The brothers, on quitting Pittsburg, left a most favourable impression on
the minds of the little circle in which they were received so kindly.  The
recollection of the amiable Beaujolais was particularly cherished; and when
the news of his death in Sicily, a few years after, reached the west, the
family circle of General N------- expressed the sincerest sorrow.
  The Chevalier du B----c, after realizing a snug fortune by industry and
economy, removed to Philadelphia, to have the opportunity of mingling more
with his countrymen.  On the restoration of the Bourbons, his friends
induced him to return to France, to resume the former rank of the family. --
But it was too  late; the philosophical emigrant had lived too long in
American seclusion to relish the society of Paris, or habits had changed
there too much to be recognized by him.  The following is a translation of a
paragraph from one of his letters to his old friend, the late General N----,
soon after his arrival in Paris.
  "I must bear witness to the improvement and advancement of my country
since the revolution; as a man, however, I cannot but mourn; the storm has
not left a single shrub of my once numerous family; the guillotine has drunk
the blood of all my race; and I now stand on the verge of the grave, the
dust of a name whose pride it once was to trace its history through all the
distinguished scenes of French history, for centuries back.  With the
eloquent savage, Logan, whose speech you have so often read to me, I can
say, that `not a drop of my blood runs in the veins of any living creature'.
I must return to America, and breathe my last on that soil, where my most
contented days were passed."
  The chevalier never returned however; he lingered away his time in the
different seaports of France, and he died at last in the city of Bordeaux.
  We had a peculiarity and honour in 1804, to go from Pittsburg in charge of
the first sea vessel built at that place.  It was then a wonder to many,
that such an enterprise should be undertaken.  We thought still less then of
seeing a day arrive when steam vessels should navigate those waters.  They
did not even then think of running stages from Philadelphia, and far less of
ever seeing steam cars and canals passing the mountains.
  It was something in itself, to have made the voyage to New Orleans in such
a period.  It took forty-five days from the starting before reaching that
city -- then so different from its present character and estimation.  My MS.
notitia, while there and on the way, might make a book even now, if I was so
minded.  What I saw and observed in the descent of the river is expressed
much to my mind and feelings in the words of another explorer, the
celebrated AUDUBON.  He says : "When I think of those times, and call back
to my mind the grandeur and beauty of those then almost uninhabited shores;
the dense and lofty forests, then unmolested by the axe of the settler; when
I think of the blood spilt by many a worthy Virginian to purchase the free
use of the noble rivers; when I see that no longer are to be found there any
of the aborigines, and that the herds of elk, deer and buffaloes, which
once pastured on those hills and valleys -- making for themselves great
roads to the salt springs, have ceased to exist; now all is covered with
towns, villages, and farms, where the din of hammers and machinery is
constantly heard; now hundreds of steamboats glide to and fro, forcing
commerce to take root and prosper in every spot; when I consider that these
extraordinary changes have all taken place so recently, I pause, wonder, and
can scarcely believe its reality !  It is strange -- passing strange, indeed !"
  Note, the first flat boat that ever descended the Mississippi, went from
Redstone on the Monongahela river, in May 1782.  It was owned and conducted
by Jacob Yoder, of Reading, Pennsylvania, who died at his farm, in Kentucky,
in April 1822, aged sixty-four years !
  Pittsburg will for ever be associated with the event and circumstances of
Braddock's defeat, and therefore whatever relates to him will be regarded
with interest.
  The Walpole Letters speak of Gen. Braddock, and say he had been governor
of Gibraltar -- speak of him as poor and prodigal, and brutal, "a very
Iroquois in disposition".  His sister "had gamed her little fortune away at
Bath, and then hung herself -- after the same savage sort of temper !
Braddock had had a duel with Col. Gumley, and an amour with Mrs. Upton.  The
ministry in England were much chagrined at Braddock's slow progress to the
west, as incommoded by a needless train of artillery and road-making".  So
said Walpole.
  In Franklin's Memoirs, there is considerable mention by him of Gen.
Braddock -- of his conversation with him in Virginia, before the expedition
started.  He speaks of advising him as to Indian warfare, and that Braddock
treated it as no obstacle; talked confidently of making of it a short work,
by taking fort Du Quesne in a day; thence going quickly to Erie, and thence
along the Canada line, &c.  They agreed very well; and it was afterwards
found by Franklin, when in London, that Braddock's letters home to the
government had spoken favourably of Franklin -- [A gazette story].
  The place of conflict has since been called Braddock's field, and is
situate on the north branch of the Monongahela, seven miles above Pittsburg,
where the crumbling bones of men and horses long remained to mark the fatal
spot.
  A letter from Winchester, Va., of 3d February 1755, (published in the New
York Mercury) says, that Sir John St. Clair and Governor Sharpe had been at
Wills' creek, (i.e. Fort Cumberland) where a camp was forming of one thousand
men; that a train of artillery was to have arrived in Virginia from England,
that transports had gone to Cork for the two regiments there, to go to
America with Gen. Braddock.
  February 18, Gen. Braddock and three men of war arrived at Hampton, with
sixteen transports, having one thousand men. All marched off for Alexandria;
but the officers went to Annapolis first, on the 3d April.  At Alexandria,
on the 13th April, Braddock and several of the governors met and consulted,
before his going to Will's creek, then fortified as Fort Cumberland.
  May 22d 1755, Gen. Braddock and all his forces, are announced as already
arrived at Wills' creek.  On the 21st June, Gen. Braddock and his army were
at Bear camp, near the Great meadows.  [This Wills' creek runs into the
Potomac at Cumberland, in Maryland, as about six miles from the Pennsylvania
line, and the march appears to have been very much along the line of the
present "national road" to Uniontown -- near to which is Braddock's grave,
and the Meadows.
  A letter from the camp at Great meadows, of July 1st 1755, says, on the
7th ult., Sir John St. Clair marched in advance with six hundred men from
Wills' creek, and two days after, the whole army followed -- THROUGH THE
WORST ROADS IN THE WORLD.  Ten days after, they arrived at the Little
meadows, where the whole camp was encircled by abatis, and halted three
days; from thence they marched for this place.  Col. Dunbar was placed in
the rear with provisions and ordnance stores, and eighty wagons. {Note :
abatis = a defensive obstacle formed by felled trees with sharpened branches
facing the enemy.}
  The minutes of council of the 24th of July 1755, state that an express
arrived, bringing a letter from Captain Robert Orme to Governor Morris,
dated at Fort Cumberland, July 18 1755, from which I give these extracts, to
wit:  "I am so ill by the wound, that I have employed Captain Dobson to
write the present letter for me.  I write now, because every superior
officer, whose business it was to have written concerning disaster, was
either killed or wounded." [He was himself an aid-de-camp to Gen. Braddock]
  "On the 9th instant, we passed and repassed the Monongahela, by advancing
first a party of three hundred men; then a second party of two hundred men;
the general, with the column of artillery and the main body, passed the
river the last time about one o'clock.  As soon as the whole (twelve hundred
men) had got on the fort side, (seven miles distant) we heard a very heavy
and quick fire in our front; we immediately advanced to sustain them; but
the aforesaid advance of five hundred men gave way and fell back upon us,
causing much confusion, and struck so great a panic among our men that no
military expedient could avail to recover them.  The men were so extremely
deaf to the exhortations of the general, and the officers, that they fired
away, in the most irregular manner, all their ammunition, and then ran off.
[This is a different version from the common idea, for here they took their
own way of firing, but in panic; and besides, what else could they do when
they had no more ammunition left ?]  Leaving to the enemy the artillery,
ammunition, provision, and baggage; nor could they be persuaded to stop
until they got as far as Guest's plantation, and there, only in part; many
of them proceeding as far as Col. Dunbar's party, which lay six miles this
side.  The officers were absolutely sacrificed by their unparalled good
behaviour; advancing sometimes in bodies, and sometimes separately, hoping
by such example to engage the soldiers to follow them, but to not purpose.
The general had five horses killed under him, and at last received a wound
through his right arm into his lungs, of which he died, the 13th instant.
Mr. Washington had two horses shot under him, and his clothes shot through
in several places, behaving the whole time with the greatest courage and
resolution.  Gen. Braddock, having found it impracticable to advance with
the whole convoy from the Little meadows, therefore, went forward with the
above twelve hundred men; leaving Colonel Dunbar with the main body behind,
with orders to join him as soon as possible.  Happy it was that this
disposal of them was made, else we have starved, or fallen by the enemy --
as numbers would not have been useful."

  [They had along "a detachment of sailors" from the fleet !  The fight
"lasted three hours" -- so said many witnesses.  The wagoners and pack-horse
men made a quick retreat, especially from Dunbar's regiment.  I saw a list
of a dozen deserters from Braddock's army before the defeat, and the list
declared, that some of them exposed his fewness of the advance number, and
also his bad appointments; thereby intending to encourage the assault of the
French and Indians.  Their names were given.]
  A letter from Col. James Burd, employed by the province to direct the
opening of the military road for Braddock's army, dated 25th July 1755,
says, "We received an express from Governor Jones, from Fort Cumberland,
giving us an account of Gen. Braddock's defeat and death &c.  Whereupon I
went on there to confer with Col. Dunbar, and to take his orders, &c.  He
told me, at dinner, the facts in the case of the battle, &c., so that  I
might communicate them to your honour, to wit :  A small body of French and
Indians, say five hundred, and no more was ever on the ground, discovered on
the 9th instant by the guides at a small run called Frazier's run, seven
miles this side of Fort du Quesne, being on the side of a hill on the
Monongahela.  Information was immediately given, when the general marched
the troops and formed them.  The battle began at noon day, and lasted three
hours.  The enemy kept behind trees and logs of wood, and cut down our
troops as fast as they could advance.  The soldiers then insisted much to be
allowed to take to the trees, which the general denied, and stormed much,
calling them cowards, and even went so far as to strike them with his own
sword for attempting the trees.  Our flankers, and many of our soldiers that
took to the trees, were cut off from (by) the fire of our own line, as they
fired their platoons wherever they saw a smoke or fire.  The one half of the
army engaged never saw the enemy; particularly Captain Waggoner, of the
Virginia forces, who marched eighty men up to take possession of a hill; on
the top of the hill there lay a large tree of five feet diameter, which he
intended to make a bulwark of.  He marched up to the log with the loss only
of three men killed, and all the time, his soldiers carried their firelocks
shouldered; when they came to the log they began to fire upon the enemy; but
as soon as their fire was discovered by our line, they fired from our line
upon him, so that he was obliged to retreat down the hill, and brought off
with him only thirty of his men out of eighty.  And in this manner were our
troops chiefly destroyed !  The general had five horses killed under him,
and was at last shot through the belly, and is buried across the road.  His
papers, and £75,000 in money are all fallen into the hands of the enemy.
The loss in killed and wounded is seven hundred and about forty officers.
Col. Dunbar retreated with fifteen hundred effective men.  He destroyed
fifty thousand pounds of powder, all his provisions, and buried his mortars
and shells, &c.  He had no horses with which to bring off any thing."
  Another account from Winchester, Virginia, says the Virginia officers and
troops behaved like men, and died like soldiers.  Out of three companies
scarcely thirty men came out of the field !  Captain Peyronay, and all his
officers, were killed !  Captain Polson was killed, and his company nearly
all shared the same fate -- for only one escaped !  Captain Stewart, and his
light-horse, behaved gallantly, having twenty-five of his twenty-nine men
killed !
  A list of killed and wounded says, 456 killed, 421 wounded, 583 safe,
total 1460 "in action at Frazer's plantation, the 9th July."  What seems
remarkable is, that all the wagoners from Lancaster and York counties
returned home but two !  Col. Dunbar got safe to Philadelphia, and encamped
at Society hill, (i.e. Southwark) on the 1st of September, 1755.
  September 5th, 1755, it is published that the Virginia troops are to be
increased to one thousand men, "under Col. Washington".
  Old William Butler, of Philadelphia, whom I saw in May 1833, in his
hundred and fourth year, and who had been in the Braddock expedition, told
me he was twenty-four years of age at the time he joined the Pennsylvania
Greens, (faced with buff) in Philadelphia. They were joined by the Jersey
Blues, faced with red.  The whole combined force was encamped in the woods
then along Fifth street from Race street southward.  The whole expedition of
twenty-five hundred men passed through Germantown, and arrived the third
day, at the present Reading, where they divided and took different routes;
while there at night, could see the light of the Indian fires on the
mountains near them.  They crossed the Schuylkill four times before getting
to the mouth of the little Schuylkill.  From thence they cut their way
through the "Pine swamp", so called, and made corduroy roads for the wagons.
While there could hear wolves and bears; went thence to fort Augusta and
Shamokin.  That must have been one  of the routes of that day, because C. F.
Post, in his journal, says he went by that route to Fort du Quesne in 1758.
They had Indian guides and followed their leadings toward Fort du Quesne.
   At the time of the action, he was just off duty, near to Washington's
tent.  Near there, he saw Generals Braddock, Forbes and Grant talking, and
Braddock calling out to Captain Green, to clear the bushes ahead, by opening
a range with his artillery.  Then Washington came out, put his two thumbs up
into the arm pits of his vest, made a little circle, and came into their
presence, and said, "General, be assured , if you even cut away the bushes,
your enemy can make enough of them artificially to answer their purposes of
shelter and concealment; it will not answer".  Braddock upon hearing this,
turning to his officers, said, sneeringly, "What think you of this from a
young hand -- from a beardless boy !" -- then but twenty-two years of age.
I did not pursue this conversation any further on this point.  He did not
know of Braddock's having a white handkerchief tied over his hat.  He was a
great user of snuff, loose in a pocket !  a man of middle stature and thick set.
  On 23d December 1833, I again saw William Butler, quite well still, and
gleaned the following additional facts.  Generals Forbes and Grant did
arrive at Philadelphia, but Colonel Dunbar, a Scotchman, arrived at
Baltimore.  Washington had the charge of four hundred riflemen.  The columns
of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey lines, went in a more northern road, than
the British division of regulars, after they divided at Reading.  I noticed
that he did not now seem to remember Colonel Grum, of the Virginia troops,
as being colonel over Major Washington -- said Washington was tall, slim and
beardless -- his uniform was blue and cocked hat.  I questioned when they
joined again.  It was but two days before the battle.  The lines were never
in same track -- were a day's march off -- cut their own roads and made
bridges; but chiefly went by Indian guides and Indian tracks.  I asked him
particularly who killed Braddock, and he answered promptly one Fawcett,
brother of one whom Braddock had just killed in a passion; this last, the
one who killed Braddock, was in the ranks as a non-commissioned officer; the
former was a brave major or colonel, and by birth an Irishman.  The soldier
shot Braddock in the back, and this man, he said, he saw again in 1830, at
or near Carlisle, where he was for three months at the sickness and death of
his daughter.  His family confirmed this fact.  His wife was by, aged
eighty-three years -- married sixty years.  I see, too, that I have
preserved a Millerstown Gazette notice in 1830, of the above meeting, and
the name of Fawcett is there given also -- a strong coincidence.
Millerstown is near Carlisle.
  The Millerstown Gazette of 1830, speaks of the aforenamed Butler being
there and being in Braddock's defeat, and that these two old soldiers
concurred in saying that Braddock was shot by Fawcett.
  A writer in the Christian Advocate -- a minister, writing from the place,
says "the old man died at the age of one hundred and fourteen years in 1828,
who killed Braddock" and at the same time, he confirms the other fact, of
his brother being killed by Braddock.  He lived at Laurel hill.
  It is said that when the officers of Braddock's broken army got to
Philadelphia, and rested there for a season, they were cruelly severe to
their men, giving vent to their spleen and chagrin by beating the soldiers
daily.  It was a daily sight to see a dozen a day tied up and whipped; and
even in the ranks the officers caned their men.
  But in addition to the preceding, I may add the information I received
from Billy Brown, a black man, whom I saw at Frankford, Philadelphia county,
about the year 1826, in the ninety-third year of his age -- possessed of an
observing mind and good memory.  He was present in that memorable fight as
servant to Colonel Brown, of the Irish regiment, and was most of the time
near the person of General Braddock. He said his character was obstinate and
profane.  He confirmed the idea, that he was shot by an American, because he
had killed his brother.  He said that none seemed to care for it : on the
contrary, they thought Braddock had some sinister design, for no balls were
aimed at him !  He kept on foot, and had all the time his hat bound across
the top and under his chin with his white handkerchief.  They suspected that
the white emblem was a token of his understanding with the French.  He told
me that Washington came up to him in the fight, and fell on his knees, to
beseech him to allow him to use three hundred of his men in tree-fighting,
and that the general cursed him and said "I've a mind to run you through the
body", and swearing out -- "We'll sup to-day in Fort du Quesne, or else in
hell !"  I have full confidence in the words of Billy as far as they went,
because he seemed incapable of intentional fraud, and was beside a religious
man, of the Methodist profession; but above all, he had been in after life
seven years a servant with General Washington, and that circumstance must
have more deeply impressed the facts as they were at their first seeing
them.  Braddock was shot, he said, through the shoulder into the breast, and
lived some two or three days.  The only words he ever uttered after his fall
were : "Is it possible;" -- "all is over !"
   A letter of Isaac Norris, speaker of assembly, of the date of November
1755, to R. Charles, agent of the province in London says one of the Indian
chiefs, afterwards in Philadelphia, before the governor and council, said,
"We must let you know it was the pride and ignorance of that great general.
He is now dead, but he was a bad man when alive.  He looked on us as dogs,
and would never hearken to our advice, even when we wished to tell him the
danger he was in with his soldiers.  For that reason many of our warriors
left him, and would not be under his command".
  In connexion with the above, I may add, that I saw the memorandum of a
letter which "Major Washington" had written to the governor of Virginia,
saying that the Virginians behaved bravely, but have suffered dreadfully.
Many of his officers were wounded, and himself had four bullet holes in his
clothes, and two horses shot under him !  At a later period an Indian chief
declared, that the Great Spirit must have reserved Washington for something
important in after life, because he had aimed several shots at him without
visible effect.
  Braddock, after his wound, was carried forty miles and buried in the
centre of the road, seven miles east of the present town of Union, and close
to the northern side of the National road.  The road was chosen, and the
carriages and horses made to make their tracks over the grave, to prevent
its discovery by the enemy.  Since that day, it has never found a friend to
give it a more distinguished sepulchre.  The truth is, he was not
sufficiently popular.  He gave his chief offence to his men by not suffering
them to fire as they saw opportunity, or even when aimed at, but required
all firing to be done in platoons, as has been said.
  The Newburyport Herald, of 1842, declares its acquaintance with Daniel
Adams, an old soldier of that place, aged 82, who confirms the shooting of
Braddock by his own followers.  He learned the fact from Capt. ILLSEY of
Newbury, who told him that he became acquainted with one of Braddock's
soldiers soon afterwards, (under Sir William Johnston) who was present at
the circumstance.  He stated that the principal officers had previously
advised a retreat, which the General pertinaciously refused; that after
nearly all the principal officers had been shot down, he was approached by a
Captain to renew the advice, whom he forthwith shot down.  Upon seeing this,
a lieutenant, brother of the Captain, immediately shot Braddock.  Several of
the soldiers saw the act, but said nothing.  Braddock wore a coat of mail in
front, which turned balls fired in front; but he was shot in the back, and
the ball was found stopped in front by the coat of mail !  The editor
pledged himself for the truthfulness of the man who told the facts.
  Col. James Smith, of Bourbon, Kentucky, once an Indian captive, had been
in his early days employed as a province man from Pennsylvania, to cut a
wagon road (in a party of three hundred men) from Fort Loudon, to unite with
Braddock's road near the Turkey foot, or three forks of Yohagana.  He and
his companion being alone, near Bedford, were fired at; his friend was
killed, and himself taken prisoner.  The Indians were from Fort du Quesne,
and set out to return thither.  When near it, they gave the Indian shout,
which was answered by the firelocks of all the Indians and French.  He had
there to run the Indian gauntlet -- suffered terribly thereby, and fell and
fainted.  When he recovered he found himself in the Fort, attended by a
surgeon.  They then exacted of him what they could gather of Braddock's
position, force, &c.  He was then befriended by an Indian who adopted him,
and who soon informed Mr. Smith that they had daily knowledge of the
particulars of the advance of Braddock.  While at the Fort he saw the
Indians and French go off to meet him -- they seemed to be about four
hundred men in all, as if enough to encounter the three hundred men before
named.  After some time, a rumor arrived to say that Braddock would be
entirely cut off -- that they had surrounded his force, and were themselves
completely concealed behind trees and gullies, keeping up a constant fire;
that they were falling in heaps, and if they did not take the river which
was the only gap, and so make their escape, there would not be a man left
alive at sundown !  By-and-by, Indians and French were seen coming in with
spoils -- such as caps, canteens, bayonets, and bloody scalps.  Towards
sundown a party came in having a dozen prisoners stripped naked; these they
soon after burned to death on the river bank opposite to the fort.  From the
best information he could gain, there were only seven Indians and four
French killed, while five hundred British lay dead on the field, besides
what were killed in the river on their retreat.  The day after the battle
the artillery was brought to the fort -- several of the Indians were seen
moving about decked off in the dress of the British officers and men, most
grotesquely proud.
  A private letter to Governor Morris from Sir William  Shirley, the
secretary of General  Braddock, conveyed by Sergeant Peters from the
frontiers, before the battle, speaks of the general as "most judiciously
chosen for being disqualified for his service, in almost every respect".
"He may be brave and honest, but I am greatly disgusted at seeing an
expedition so ill concerted originally in England, so ill appointed, and so
improperly conducted since in America".
  Colonel Dunbar, in a letter, says that Braddock had three horses killed
under him, and was at last shot through the belly.  He also said, that "by
some mismanagement we had not an Indian with us, and that General Braddock
could not get above eight or nine to attend him; from which circumstance he
laboured under many inconveniences".
  Scarooyady, an Indian chief who had been engaged to assist in the
expedition, said by his interpeter, C. Weiser, to Governor Morris, that "it
was the pride and ignorance of that great general that caused the defeat.
He looked upon us as dogs, and would not hear anything that was said to him
by us.  We often endeavoured to advise him, but he never appeared pleased
with us, and that was the reason that many of our warriors left him, and
would not be under his command.  They were unfit to fight in the woods".
  The province however, left to itself, soon showed what it could do by its
own people -- as was evinced in sending out Colonel John Armstrong in 1756,
with only four companies, viz.:  Captains Hamilton, Mercer, Ward and Potter
-- these, with some frontier volunteers, made out to reach Kittaning, or
Shingass town, only twenty miles above Du Quesne, (the former aim of
Braddock) and there surprised and destroyed the whole settlement, and
rescued many prisoners.  It was a glorious contrast to the other inglorious
failure.
  In 1758, there occurred another joyous occasion under General Forbes, the
British general who made his way out to Fort Du Quesne with twelve hundred
men, without mishap or molestation, for it so happened, that by the friendly
treaties before made at Easton and otherwise, the Indians had become so
detached from the French interest, as to leave them at the Fort to their own
resources.  When Forbes appeared, on the 24th of November, they blew up the
place, and went off to their forts and settlements down the Mississippi.
Under a sense of this great event, a day of public thanksgiving was
appointed on the 28th of December 1758.  It was indeed a time of most hearty
gratulation and cheering.
  We may judge of the surprise of this unexpected good news, by the fact,
that when General Forbes had advanced as far as Raystown camp, just one
month preceding his triumph, he writes to the Governor as if he was then at
the length of his means, and wanted, as he said, a supply of twelve hundred
men to be disposed in necessary frontier garrisons -- to be placed in forts,
such as at Loyal Hanna, Cumberland, Raystown, Juniata, Littleton, Loudon,
Frederick, Shippensburg and Carlisle -- "as without these (says he) he could
not secure the frontiers".  But before he could be heard of again, and in
the absence of all hostile Indians, behold, he gets to Pittsburg and finds
the fort abandoned !  Truly a lucky general, and a still more lucky
province, to thus find also his calls for intermediate forts unnecessary !
It was a joyful and happy result for a greatly disturbed and apprehensive
people.
  About the year 1770, the first settlers began to settle about Redstone Old
Fort, on the Monongahela; where Capt. Michael Cressup made the first house
of logs.  The first emigration was principally from Maryland and Virginia;
they supposed themselves at the time, as within the bounds of Virginia, and
not of Pennsylvania, as has since been determined.  In 1785, the town of
Brownsville was laid out at this place, and great was the quantity of boats
built there for the descent of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
  Soon stores and houses began to be built, and then came the want of
merchandise, all of which, including salt, was brought out on pack horses.
These were generally led in divisions of twelve or fifteen horses, carrying
about two hundred weight each, all going single file, and being managed by
two men, one going before as the leader, and the other at the tail, to see
after the safety of the packs, &c.  These horses were all furnished with
bells, which were kept from ringing during the day drive, but were set loose
at night, when the horses were set free and permitted to feed and browse.
The bells were intended as guides to direct to their "whereabout" in the
morning.  These western carriers were at first a great affair to their
owners, as a money making concern; they starting, principally, from
Hagerstown and Winchester.  When wagons were first introduced, great was
their hostility to them as an invasion of their rights.  The first wagon
load of goods which went west, went by that southern route (so called) that
lay much along the tract of the present National road.  It was the
enterprise of Jacob Bowman, in the year 1789, a merchant who settled at
Brownsville two years before -- it was drawn by four horses, and drew about
two thousand weight; the travel, going and coming, occupied about a month,
and was done at an expense to the merchants of three dollars per hundred
weight.  Six horses since draw seven to eight thousand pounds, and go in a
week, at one dollar per hundred weight.
  Iron, being a matter of great importance, was first made by Isaac Meadson
& Co., at Dunbar creek, fifteen miles from Brownsville.
  In 1814, the Enterprise steamer was started, she being the first which
descended and ascended the rivers to and from New Orleans.
  In 1759, Col. Burd, with a command of two hundred men, was the first to
open and cut a road from Braddock's road to the Monongahela river, where he
erected a fort called Fort Burd.  He passed his road along the base of
Laurel hill, thence by the way of Coal run to Redstone creek, under the
present Middletown.
  The Indian name of Pittsburg was "Mˇnachkink", a name given by them to it
after it became a fort.  It means (with them) an enclosed, confined spot of
ground, such as a fort would make it.
  Westward ho !  Among those who have contributed their recollections of
westward emigration, we may mention the facts recollected by the Hon. Judge
S. Wilkeson, of Buffalo, on the Ohio.  He, when young, started with his
father's family from Carlisle, Pa., in the spring of 1784, to settle near
the Ohio, in company with other families; and the incidents of his travel
may be regarded as the picture of others, in general.  His family consisted
of his father, mother and three young children, with a bound boy of fourteen
years of age.  The road to be travelled in crossing the mountains, was
scarcely practible for wagons.  Pack horses afforded almost the sole means
used for transportation then, and for years after.  They were provided with
three horses; on one rode the mother, carrying her infant, with all the
table furniture and cooking utensils; on another was packed the store of
provisions, plough irons, and agricultural tools.  [Even the irons for
constructing mills were carried on horseback.]  The third horse bore a pack
saddle and two large creels, made of hickory withes in the manner of a
crate, one over each side of the horse in which were stowed the beds and
bedding, and the wearing apparel.  In the centre of these creels there was
left a vacancy, just sufficient to admit a child in each, laced in, with
their heads peeping out therefrom.  Along with this company were one or more
cows, which furnished them milk morning and evening.  When arrived at the
great mountains, the roads became extremely difficult of passage, being
often along precipices, with a narrow path, where, if the horse stumbled or
lost his balance, himself and burthen might be rolled down some hundreds of
feet.  Such paths were often crossed by many streams raised by melting snow
and spring rains, and running in rapid current, in deep ravines.  To these
there were no bridges : great exposures and happy escapes were often
occurring !  When arrived, eventually, at their destination, and located in
their log cabin and hastily made small clearing, they had to encounter the
alarms and perils of Indian aggressions.  Their men were occasionally shot,
their horses stolen, and their children, if captured, were borne off and
sold at Detroit, or in other cases, adopted.
  Although pack horses have thus been named as the most in use, there were
instances of horses and oxen being taken over these mountains drawing
wagons.  The people who went from New England in 1788, to settle at and near
Muskingum, used in several cases such modes of conveyance.  The "American
Pioneer" an excellent work published at Cinncinnati, gives several examples
of such cases.  Horses, four to a wagon, would progress about twenty-five
miles a day; and six oxen yoked two and two, would make a journey of twenty
miles.  The roads on the mountain sides were often cut into deep gullies on
one side by rains, while the other was filled with blocks of sandstone.  The
descents were abrupt, and often not unlike the breaks in a flight of stone
stairs.  Some few wagons were provide with lock-chains for the wheels, but
in most cases, the downward force was to be checked by heavy logs tied to
the wagon, and trailing on the ground.  On other occasions the road was so
sideling, that it required the service of all the men, by the use of side
stay ropes attached to the wagons, to keep them from turning over and
falling down the mountain side.  When they at last attained the Ohio, they
were then to  procure flat-boats in which to place their wagons and stores,
and to lead their horses and oxen onward by land; going at the same time in
continual watch and fear of hostile Indian surprises from the Ohio side of
the river.  When finally arrived, they had to depend for their safety upon
log fort defences, into which they might run in cases of alarm.
  In making such journeys to the west of seven or eight weeks, they took as
few articles of beds, bedding, and cooking utensils as they could possibly
do with.  Their clothing and other goods were packed in wooden boxes fitted
to the wagon -- the women, girls and children, would be placed inside and
ride, except when they came to bad roads and mountains -- sometimes they
would get scattered and create anxieties -- sometimes the horses, and
sometimes the people were borne down with the current of water.  None now
can imagine with what dread such a long and arduous journey was then
attempted from New England, and few now can have a just conception of how
much they feared the ravages of wolves upon their few sheep, then held
necessary for producing their clothing.  The skins of the deer were often
used for the wear of the men.  These were arduous times for the women : they
had every morning to find their cows, by the tinkling of their bells, and to
get them home for milking for the subsistence of the family.  In the mean
time, the men had often to be off in considerable journeys after their
straying horses, which continually showed a propensity to leave the wild
country, and to find their way back from whence they came !  This was a
curious fact, but it was so.  It might be mentioned, as a part of the scenes
of western travel, that it was a common incident to meet, or to be overtaken
by long strings of pack horses; those from the west bearing peltry and
ginseng -- the others going west, with kegs of spirits, salt, and packs of
dry goods.  This carrying salt, without which white people would have deemed
any place uninhabitable, was an affair of great expense and concern, and
which they have since overcome by their own inventions of making salt,
nearer their own home.
  All these references to things past, and so fast receding from the
contemplation and the view, are matters to be treasured up and kept before
the people, for the same reasons that Virgil has inscribed the incidents in
the voyage of ®neas from Troy to Italy -- they were the founders of a new
state !  We must contemplate their hardihood and hardships with admiration
and applause.  They were a race of most daring energy and character and of
fortitude -- a race in every respect different from those who now occupy the
same regions in opulence, ease, and spendour.  Now, instead of the log house
and wigwam, fine mansions exist -- instead of the bark canoe, the tomahawk
and scalping knife, steamboats and all the implements of comfort and
convenience abound.  Instead of the savage yell, the literary lecture, and
the songs of Zion echo through the land.  We have dwelt in a wonderful era,
and have beheld amazing changes for good.  Was ever people so blessed whose
God is Lord ?

           FRONTIER TOWNS --- LANCASTER, BETHLEHEM, &c.

   These now conspicuous and large inland towns, were long regarded in the
early days of the province, as far remote in the Indian ranges and hunting
grounds.  The first inhabitants, who made "clearings and settlements" in
those regions, were generally tolerated squatters, living rent free, for the
purpose of forming a cordon, or defensive barrier, against any Indian surprise.
  The earliest settlement in Lancaster, as a town, was induced by the
expected advantages of the iron works near by.  The first establishment of
them commenced in 1726, under the enterprise of Mr. Kurtz.  In 1728, the
family of Grubbs, as iron-masters, began their career; but the most
extensive and successful of all was the late Robert Coleman, who amassed a
great fortune thereby.  The place was for many years pre-eminent for making
and furnishing rifles for the western settlers and Indians.  They also made
and furnished pack-saddles for the carriers westward.
  Where Lancaster now stands was once an Indian wigwam town; a hickory tree
stood in its centre, not far from a spring; under this tree the councils
met, and from one of these councils a deputation was once sent to confer
with William Penn at Philadelphia.  The Indian nation was called "Hickory",
as well as their town.  When the whites began to build there, they still
called it by the same name; and Gibson, at his inn about the year 1722, had
a hickory tree painted upon his sign.  It was situated near where
Slaymaker's hotel is now built, and the spring was in its cellar.  The town,
under the name of Lancaster, was not laid out until 1730; and the courts
were not taken to it from Postlewaite, until the year 1734.  In excavating
the canal at the north side of the town, they came across the bones of the
Indians massacred at the prisons, by the Paxton boys.
  An Indian town once stood on a flat of land north-east of Hardwiche, the
seat of William Coleman, Esq.  A poplar tree was the emblem of the tribe,
from whence their name was derived.  Its location, and that of the town, was
near the bank of the Conestoga.  The Conestoga Indians were once numerous
and influential.  As early as 1701, we read of an embassy from Philadelphia
"round about through the woods" to the "palace of the king", "where they
were cordially received and well entertained at a considerable town".  In
the year 1721, Sir W. Keith, and his council and thirty gentlemen, went to
Conestoga, to hold there a treaty with the heads of the Five Nations.  An
original deed from Wiggoneeheenah, of 1725, to Edmund Cartlidge, grants "in
behalf of the Delaware Indians concerned" the tract of land formerly his
plantation, "lying in a turn of Conestoga creek, called Indian Point".
Those Indians, under the general name of Conestogas, continued to dwell
along the Conestoga creek, until the year 1764, when fourteen of their
number having been maliciously killed by the Irish settlers, the rest took
shelter in Lancaster, and for their better security were placed under the
bolts and bars of the prison; where, however, they were afterwards assailed
and massacred -- men, women and children -- at midday, by an armed band of
lawless ruffians, calling themselves the "Paxton boys !"  The Roman
Catholics, under the Jesuits, were the first who opened religious worship
among the people.
  In the year 1754, Lancaster had so much increased as to have then
contained five hundred houses and two thousand inhabitants.  A great
proportion of them, then, were of German origin.  The best lands of
Lancaster county, and deemed in general the finest farms in the state, are
those possessed by the German families.

  READING is of much later origin, and had, when it began, a very rapid
progress -- having, for instance, but one house there in 1749 and in 1752 it
contained one hundred and thirty dwellings !  It was raised into alluring
repute by the agents of the Penn family, calling for settlers in it, as "a
new town of great natural advantages of location, and destined to be a
prosperous place".
  The first hotel there was that of Conrad Weiser, seen in 1833, as the
little white store of General Keim, on the corner of Callowhill and Penn
streets, and since replaced by a great new house of fashion.  It was at that
place that Conrad Weiser, as Indian agent, used to deliver the Indian
presents -- there the war-song of the savage was sung, the war dance wound
down, and the calamet {calumet}of peace was smoked.  The house was built
earlier than the town.  Lively and business like, as is the present
POTTSVILLE, a man is now living there (in 1842) John Boyer by name, an old
revolutionary soldier, now in his eighty-seventh year -- born and reared at
the present Schuylkill Haven, in which neighbourhood, he had often been
engaged in resisting the predatory invasions of the Indians.  The country
around him was long in wilderness, and was often the scene of bloody
massacres, much of which he had seen with his own eyes.
  An old Indian war-path leading from the tribes north of the Susquehanna,
crossed the mountains at Pottsville, and the few settlers who had braved all
danger, and had pitched their cabins in the midst of such perils, were
forced to struggle desperately at times, to save the scalps of their
families from the knife.  Fort Henry once stood at the head of the Swatara,
at the foot of Kittatinny.

  BETHLEHEM and EASTON, formed the frontier towns on the north. The former
was begun in 1743, under Count Zinzendorf, by forming there his Moravian
town.  As late as the year 1755, the inhabitants of the neighbouring country
were driven in from their farms to the towns of Bethlehem and Easton, filled
with panic and dread from marauding Indians !  It was near to Lehighton,
that there then stood Fort Allen, fronting on the Lehigh opposite to the
mouth of Mahony creek, where the garrison was surprised and massacred by
Indians.  About the same time, Captain Wetherhold, who commanded a scouting
party and who used to make Allentown and Bethlehem his places of rendezvous,
was surprised about six miles from the latter place, and he and his whole
party were shot and scalped.  On the same day a party, with one Henry Jenks,
was also surprised and cut off.  There was a fort there, made of logs -- in
command of Colonel Burd, who built his house opposite to it -- the same now
held by Peter Newhard, Esq., member of congress.  The main street, on which
it stands, now runs over the site of that fort.  About the year 1765, there
used to be several skirmishes thereabout with the Indians.  Mr. Newhard's
father had told P.N. of these things.  As late as the year 1755, the year of
Braddock's defeat and alarm, there was a block-house at Harris' ferry, the
present Harrisburg, and hostile Indians prowled about Shearman's valley, not
far off, committing sundry depredations.  Since the war of the revolution,
such is the march of improvement, that Harrisburg is made the seat of
government, other towns are erected in every direction, and distant places
are made nigh to us in effect, by numerous turnpikes, rail-roads, and canals !
  It strongly marks the rapid progress of inland improvements, to say, that
several members of a family of the name of Gilbert are now living, who dwelt
near the Lehigh, on this side of the present celebrated Mauch Chunk coal
mines, who were captured in open day by a band of hostile Indians, in the
year 1778, and borne off unmolested to the Niagara frontier.  One of the
females so captured, I have seen and conversed with only a few months before
the present writing.  She is a Friend, dwelling in Byberry.  They then
travelled through a wilderness country, unperceived by any white
inhabitants, five hundred miles in twenty-six days.  Now splendid
stage-coaches roll over graded turnpikes, and pass through numerous
prosperous towns and villeages, through all the intermediate space !
  A MS. journal, which I have seen, of C.F. Post, an Indian interpreter and
agent, who died at Germantown in 1785, and who made an excursion from that
place in 1758 to the Susquehanna river with sundry Indians, shows
incidentally how very wild and Indian-like the intermediate country must
then have been.  His first stage of one day from Bethlehem was to Hay's; the
next day to Fort Allen, where he met Indians from Wyoming; thence he went to
Fort Augusta on the Susquehanna, where he met sundry Indians from Diehogo,
now called Tioga, at the head of the same river, and saw also some Indians
from Shamokin.  Coursing along the river, he came to Wekeeponall, and at
night rested at Queenashawakee.  The next day they crossed the river at the
Big island, above Williamsport.  In the region on the opposite side,
westward, they came to several places where they saw two poles, painted red,
set up as pillars, to which the Indians tied their prisoners for the night.
Now how different are all those regions, brought about in a term of sixty
years ?  Persons were lately alive in Tulpehocken, near Womelsdorf, who saw
in that country the dreadful Indian massacre in 1755. I saw myself some that
had been captured then.
  Further facts in Appendix, p.528

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