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Full text of "History of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania"

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GENEALOGY 
974.801 
W52B 
V.l 



HISTO RY 

OF 

WESTMORELAND 
COUNTY 

PENNSYLVANIA 

BY 
JOHN N. BOUCHER 



ILLUSTRATED 



VOL. I. 



NEW YORK CHICAGO 

THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 

moG 



PREFACE 

1136270 



The purpose of the first vohimc of this work is to present a history of 
Westmoreland County from its first settlement down to the present time. 
The publishers feel confident that the author, Mr. John X. Boucher, has not 
only laid before the reader in a pleasing manner the salient facts of the long 
and interesting story, but that he has included much of that purely anti(|uarian 
lore which is to many the most instructive and delightful feature of local 
history. 

This volume covers a century and a half of the history of Westmoreland 
County. Its settlement began properly in 1755, with the lamentable expedition 
of the English army under General Etlward iSraddock, to capture Fort 
Duquesne. The next step in developing this territory was the opening up of 
a road directly across the county by General John Forbes' army in 1758, in 
his more successful expedition against the French fort. Immediately follow- 
ing these events came the early pioneers, and then began the great battle with 
the wilderness which he must tame, and with a savage race which opposed 
him at every step. For a third of a century the history of the county is 
mainly made up by a strange mingling of tragedy and romance on the one 
hand, and of the privations and exertions of the pioneer on the other. 

Formed as the county of Westmoreland was before the Revolutionary 
War, the story of its patriotism in that great struggle is and must ever remain 
one of its brightest pages. Coming down through all these years, the author 
has chronologically told of its formation, its first courts, the building of its 
roads and turnpikes, its canals, railroads and public buildings. He has told 
of its participation in the Whisky Insurrection and in five wars, and has 
dwelt at length on its industries and its modern cities and towns. Inter- 
spersed with these narrations are chapters devoted to the social customs, 
manners, industries, homes and home life of the early settlers. 

The reader who is interested in transportation may follow the subject by 
complete descriptions of the pack-horse trains, the slow moving Conestoga 
wagons, the romantic stage coach, and the canal boat, down to the present 
complete system of railroads which has so greatly developed Westmoreland 
that it has taken a first rank among the rural counties of the United States. 
So likewise mav he trace the great industries from their most primitive stages 
in the county to their present gigantic proportions. He may also learn of the 
Bench and Bar, the Press and its editors, the Church and its ministry, the 
Medical profession, and School history, for each in turn is treated exhaustively 
from its beginning to the present day. 



V PREI'A CE 

This volume relates entirely to the history of the county and to its promi- 
nent men of the past. Throughout the entire volume the reader will find 
biographical sketches of men who contributed to the county's history in war, 
and to its development in peace. 

Mr. Boucher wishes us to state that he has been untrammeled in the prepa- 
ration of the work, freely treating all subjects and men as he thought they 
deserved. If he has given too great a prominence to any event, or has with- 
held from some true hero an encomivmi justly due him, it is a mistake in the 
judgment of the author, and is not due to any obligation to eulogize or cen- 
sure any person or event treated in these pages. 

In view of the foregoing, the publishers with great confidence submit this 
History of Westmoreland County to her intelligent and public spirited people, 
asking, in return, a careful consideration of the work. 

THE PUBLISHERS. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 
The French and English Struggle for Supremacy. — Braddock's Expedition. — Forhes' 
Expedition.— George Washington.— Pontiac's War.— Battle of Bushy Run.— Henry 
Bouquet I 

CHAPTER n. 
The Grant to William Penn. — Disputed Boundaries. — Mason and Dixon's Line. — Indian 
Purchases. — Military Permits. — Titles, etc 33 

CHAPTER HI. 
Formation of County. — First Courts. — Elections 42 

CHAPTER IV. 
Selection of a County Seat. — Old Hannastown. — Erection of a Jail. — Sentences of the 
Court.— Slavery ^g 

CHAPTER V. 

The P.oundary hetvveen Virginia and Pennsylvania. — Dunmore's War 60 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Indians of Early Westmoreland 67 

CHAPTER VII. 
Early Indian Troubles. — Places of Refuge. — Forts. — Stockades, — Blockhouses. — Cabins. — 

Indian Stories 79 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Scotch.— Irish.— Germans 116 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Beginning of the Revolution. — Early Movements towards Freedom. — Westmore- 
land Patriots' Resolutions. — The Rattlesnake Flag 12.3 

CHAPTER X. 
Westmoreland in the Revolution 132 

CHAPTER XI. 
The Closing Years of the Revolution. — Indians. — Hard Times. — Lochry's and Craw- 
ford's Ill-fated Expeditions 145 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Hannastown War. — Burning of the County Seat. — Destruction of Miller's Block- 
house 171 

CHAPTER XHI. 
The Removal of the County Seat to Greensburg 186 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Whisky Insurrection ,"*... 194 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XV. 
Old Customs. — Crops. — Industries. — Clothes, — Wild Animals, etc 20[5 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Indian Trails .Across Westmoreland. — Braddock's Road. — Forbes' Road. — State Road.— 
Felgar Road.— Post Road.— The Main Turnpike from Pittsburgh to the East... 234 

CHAPTER XVII. 
The Westmoreland Soldiers in the War of 1812 , 242 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Taverns. — Turnpikes. — Wagons. — Stage Coaches '. 253 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Canals 265 

CHAPTER XX. 
Mexican War 271 

CHAPTER XXI. 
Railroads '. 279 

CHAPTER XXII. 
Church History 285 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Bench and Bar 320 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
History of the Medical Profession 376 

CHAPTER XXV. 
Westmoreland Press 39S 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
Common Schools , 40S 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

The Civil War 426 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
The Court Houses. — County Home 437 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

-Agriculture 442 

CHAPTER XXX. 

Iron 445 

CHAPTER XXXI. 
Coal 458 

CHAPTER XXXII. 
The Coke Industry 4<36 



CONTENTS vii 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 
Manufacturing Industries 471 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 
The Spanisli-Amcrican War ^75 

CHAPTER XXXV. 
County Officers ^7g 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 
Greensburg 4S7 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 
Hemplield Township.— Jeannette, "the Glass City."— Mt. Pleasant Township 502 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
Nortli Huntingiliin Triwnship. — Irwin Borough 515 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 
RostravcT Township. — North Belle Vernon. — Monesien. — Fairlield Township. — Bolivar 
Borough 519 

CHAPTER XL. 
Donegal Township. — Derry Township. — Livennore Borough. — Franklin Township. — ■ 
iMurryville. — Washington Township 534 

CHAPTER XLI. 
Unity Township. — Latrobe Borough. — New Alexandria 554 

CHAPTER XLII. 
Salem Township. — New Salem. — South Huntingdon Township. — West Newton. — East 
Huntingdon Township. — Scottdale 561 

CHAPTER XLIII. 
Allegheny Township. — Vandergrift. — Vandergrift Heights. — Ligonier Township. — Ligon- 
ier Borough 579 

CHAPTER XLIV. 
Sewickley Township. — Suterville. — Loyalhanna Township. — Burrell Township. — 
Parnassus. — New Kensington. — Cook Township. — Bell Township. — Penn Town- 
ship. — Manor. — Penn Borough. — St. Clair Township. — New Florence 598 

CHAPTER XLV. 
Miscellaneous. — New Court House. — The Evans Execution. — The Year of the Frost.— 
Visit of Lafayette 615 

CHAPTER XLVI. 

Special Biographies. — Maj. Gen. Arthur St Clair. — William Findley. — ^Alexander 

Johnston. — Willianr F. Johnston. — Josipli Alaikk-.— William Larimer, Jr.— Gen. 

James Keenan.— John W. Geary.— Richard C. Drum— John Covode.— Dr. Alexander 

M. Alilligan 624 



CHAPTER I. 



The French and English Struggle for Supremacy.— Braddock's Expedition. — Forbes Ex- 
pedition.— George Washington.— Pontiac's War.— The Battle of Bushy Run.— Henry 
Bouquet. 

Both the French and the English were anxious to acquire and hold 
dominion over Western Pennsylvania. In view of this scheme the French 
had prior to 1752 erected and projected a line of fortifications reaching all 
the way from their strongholds in Canada to the mouth of the Mississippi 
river. They erected Presque Isle, on Lake Erie, near the present city of 
Erie; Fort Le Boeuf (now Waterford) in Crawford county; Fort Venango, 
where Franklin, Pennsylvania, is built; and one on French creek, in Ven- 
ango county. They were about to erect Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburgh. 

These apparently aggressive movements aroused the lethargic spirit 
of the English in Virginia, who claimed the whole of this territory to Lake 
Erie under their Royal Charter. Shortly before this the Ohio Land Com- 
pany had been chartered by the governor at the request of the King. It 
had a grant of five hundred thousand acres on the headwaters of the 
Ohio river. The purpose of this company was to hold the territory for 
Virginia, and to secure for her people the Indian trade of that region. 
The Governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie, was a member of the com- 
[lany, and therefore, of course, lent an attentive ear to any story of en- 
croachment on the part of the French. He promptly sent an agent with 
authority both from himself and the company, to inquire of the com- 
manders of these forts the reason for these hostile demonstrations. This 
agent was then an unknown surveyor about twenty-one years old, of whom 
the English afterward learned a great deal, for his name was George Wash- 
ington. His journey is fraught with particular interest to the student of 
Westmoreland history. Aside from being the beginning of his public life, 
he was on this trip one of the first white men to cross the unbroken wilder- 
ness now known as Westmoreland county. He came by the way of Will's 
Creek, now Cumberland, Maryland, where Christopher Gist, as the agent 
of the Ohio Company, had the previous year established a small settle- 



2 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

ment. Thence he crossed the Allegheny Mountains, traveled down the 
Monongahela River, crossing Westmoreland count)-, and on November 23, 
1752, his report shows he reached the mouth of Turtle Creek. The young 
surveyor had the eye of a soldier, and he learned a great deal about the 
French forts and their requirements. At Venango he ascertained froiji 
the French commander that it was the unconcealed design of the French 




GEX, WASIIINGTUN AT AGE OF in. 

to hold the territory by their line of forts against all comers, and that they 
claimed it by right of discovery on the part of La Salle, the French explorer, 
who nearly a century before had sailed down the Mississippi river and 
laid claim for his country to all land drained by the Father of Waters and 
its tributaries. 

When the intrepid agent returned and made his report, the Ohio Com- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAXD COUXTY 



pany did not by any means abandon the field. They built a blockliouse at 
Redstone, now Brownsville, Fayette county, (1753) and early in the 
spring of 1754 proposed to erect a fort at the junction of the Monongahela 
and Allegheny rivers, for, be it remembered, that in his report Wash- 
ington had particularly recommended the importance of erecting a fort at 
this place. Trent, Ward and Gist and other frontiersmen arrived at Red- 
stone in February, and later arrivals swelled their number to about seventy- 
five. In order to descend the river to its junction they began to con- 
struct a redoubt, for they meant to at once build the fort advised by Wash- 
ington. Before they had made much headway the noted French officer, 
Contrecoeur, with an army of nearly a thousand French and Indians, 
thoroughly armed, arrived from Fort Venango. Gist, Ward and Trent 
and their little company were compelled to surrender. This was the first 
step, the beginning of the French and Indian War, which for nine years 
desolated our western border, and which in the end resulted so favorably 
to the English — this war which so shaped the .destines of our colonies that 
in a few years they surpassed in dominion and power the empire of Louis, 
and compelled the representative of King George to surrender his sword 
to Washington at Yorktown. 

The French immediately built a fort at the point recommended by 
Washington, and named it Fort Duquesne, in honor of ]\Iarqnis Duquesne, 
the governor of Canada, then called New France. For its day, even, it 
was not a strong fortification, and we doubt whether it could have long 
withstood an attack of the English army. M. Dumas, its commander, 
-said it was only fit to dishonor the officer who was intrusted with its de- 
fence. But the French greatly added to its real strength by forming an 
alliance with the Indians. This they accomplished in part by giving them 
presents. Bright colored blankets and beads, so common in France, were 
quite potent with the Indians, much more so than the plainer objects of 
utility with which the English were supplied. Then, it must be remem- 
bered, that the Indians affiliated much more readily with the French than 
with the English. One great reason for this was that the English were 
largely farmer colonists, who, of necessity, cut away the forests and spoiled 
the hunting grounds of the Indians, while the French in America then dealt 
largely in furs and skins, paying little attention to house building or agri- 
culture. A French and Indian alliance was therefore most suitable to both 
races, while an alliance between the English and the Indians would have 
been equally detrimental to the interests of both. 

But the Virginia authorities and the Ohio Company, still anxious about 
the fort at the head o.f the Ohio, sent out two companies in 1754. These 
were under the command of Colonel Fry and George Washington. They 
were met at "Great Meadows," now in Fayette county, at dawn of day on 
May 28, by the French and Indian army^ The little English army was so 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



successful that though Colonel Fry died . May 31, and left Washing- 
ton in command, they were not otherwise severely crippled. Learn- 
ing of great reinforcements at Fort Duquesne, Washington saw that it 
would be impossible for him to secure the desired ground. He therefore 
returned to his fort, called Fort Necessity, a most appropriate name, for 
here they were attacked by fifteen hundred French and Indians. All day 
long, in the dense shade of the forest, the battle raged. So ably defended 
was the fort that the two companies were in the end allowed to march 
homeward with their baggage and with the honors of war. 

But these skirmishes helped to make more enmity between England and 
France, if, indeed, they were not already deadly enemies. Three expedi- 
tions were now organized in England for America; one, under General 
Shirley, governor of Massachusetts, against Fort Niagara and Fort 

Frontenac ; another, under General 
(afterward Sir William) Johnson, 
against Crown Point. The third, 
which more deeply concerns us, 
was under General Edward Brad- 
dock, and the objective point was 
the capture of Fort Duquesne. 

There is perhaps no incident in 
American history which is fraught 
with so much interest to western 
Pennsylvania people, if not to all 
American readers, as Braddock's 
campaign. So much has been writ- 
ten about it that we would be par- 
doned for passing it were it not so 
closely connected with Westmore- 
land county's early history. Its bear- 
ing on humanity has given it a na- 
tional, if not, indeed, a world-wide 
interest. In this campaign Wash- 
mgton for the first time came in contact with the trained English soldiers. 
It was, furthermore, the first campaign of drilled troops and modern artil- 
lery in the New World. 

Braddock had by bravery and ability won very high honors in the 
English army. He was sixty years old when he arrived in America, Jan- 
uary 14, 1755. He sailed from Cork, Ireland, with two regiments of 
Royal troops, each numbering about five hundred men. The Forty-fourth 
was under Colonel Dunbar, and the Forty-eighth was under Sir Peter 
Halket. They reached Virginia, disembarking at Alexandria on February 
20th. Two months later, April 20, the army left Alexander for Fort Du- 




GEN. EDWARD BRADDOCK. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 5 

quesne by way of Frederickstown, Winchester and Fort Cumberland. The 
entire campaign was badly planned. The army had no adequate base of 
supplies, and the country through' which it was to march could neither sup- 
ply an army nor furnish transportation. The lack of transportation was 
largely supplied by Benjamin Franklin, then postmaster-general, who in- 
duced Pennsylvania farmers to turn out with their private teams and 
wagons and transport the supplies and baggage of the army. Franklin 
pledged his private fortune to repay them. This pledge he made good, and 
it was many years before he was finally reimbursed. Otherwise than 
this, Pennsylvania did very little for the expedition. She had but few 
soldiers in Braddock's army, for they were nearly all with General Shirley 
in the north. 

Braddock appointed Washington an aide-de-camp. In addition to the 
English troops he had with him about twelve hundred provincial troops, 
mostly from New York and Maryland. Then he had about one hundred 
and fifty backwoodsmen and Indians from Pennsylvania. The backwoods- 
men were dressed like Indians, and fought after the Indian fashion. Brad- 
dock took but little stock in the rough-coated backwoodsmen. Before he 
reached western Pennsylvania they had nearly all left him, and he was 
undoubtedly glad of it. He reviewed the army at Cumberland, where they 
arrived May 10. He expressed great confidence and pride in the scarlet 
coats, bright buttons, polished muskets, and, most of all, in the Red Cross 
of St. George, and in the sound of the bugle which echoed through the 
forest. Braddock was unable to divest. himself of the habits of luxury ac- 
quired in a lifetime of warfare on the beaten battlefields of Europe. He 
journeyed part of the way in a chariot, his bodyguard of light-horse gal- 
loping on each side, and his stafif accompanied him with the drums beat- 
ing the Grenadiers' March. He held a levee in his tent every morning 
from ten to eleven o'clock. He forbade theft and drunkenness, which he 
punished with great severity. He was, indeed, a martinet in discipline. 
He spurned the backwoods tactics of the Virginia Rangers, and, with a con- 
fidence born of conceit and bravery, said to Benjamin Franklin : "These 
savages may indeed be formidable to an enemy of raw American militia, 
but upon the King's regulars and disciplined soldiers. Sir, it is impossible 
they should make any impression." The great philosopher smiled and 
wished him well. 

The reader must not forget that it was indeed a very difficult march. 
The distance from Alexandria was about two hundred and eighty miles, 
and much of this distance a road had to be cut through a dense forest and 
across the Alleghenv mountains. The train with its wagons and supplies 
was about four miles long. The slowness of the march could not be 
understood in England. Horace Walpole, with his characteristic wit, 
wrote that Braddock was "creeping westward towards Fort Duquesne 



6 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

with a slowness which indicated that he was not in a hurry to be scalped." 
When the army reached Little Meadows, at the foot of the western 
slope of the Allegheny Mountains, Braddock held a council of war. In 
this he advised with Washington, whom he called "Young Buckskin," 
because of his dress, and not entirely, at all events, in derision. Young 
Buckskin's advice was followed, and the result was that the army was 
divided. The heavy wagons and main supplies were left behind, and the 
main army, a little more than half of the entire forces, with pack horses 
and a few wagons carrying only necessary supplies, with a few pieces of 
artillery and the ablest of the soldiers, the very flower of the English army, 
was to push rapidly on toward the fort. This had been advised by Wash- 
ington at Cumberland, but its importance was not then apparent to Brad- 
dock. Twelve hundred well trained soldiers under Braddock himself thus 
pushed on rapidly, while the remairmg stores, ammunition, heavy wagons, 
etc., were left with Dunbar to follow by slower marches. 

On June 30th Braddock's division crossed the Youghiogheny River,, 
about one mile below the present town of Connellsville. After this the 
crooked road they cut across Westmoreland county can be accounted for 
only on the theory that they had entirely lost their bearings. It is true 
that Washington had been twice over the way, and, more than any other,. 
guided the expedition. Indeed, his special knowledge of the topography 
of the country mainly induced Braddock to give him the appointment. 
But, be it remembered, that at Little Meadows Washington was taken sick 
with a fever, and much to his chagrin was compelled to remain in Dun- 
bar's camp. Washington only joined the army again on the day before the 
battle, and was therefore not with them when they were wildly wandering 
across Westmoreland. After the crossing at Connellsville the direct route 
was of course down the river and then down the Monongahela. But they 
left the river at Connellsville and came across the country to Jacob's Creek, 
in East Huntingdon township, Westmoreland county, crossing Jacob's 
Creek about a mile from Mount Pleasant, the ford being later designated 
as Tinsman's Mills. The route then crossed the present Mount Pleasant 
and West Newton turnpike, below Mt. Pleasant, leaving that town on the 
right. From there the route turned off more to the west and crossed the 
Big Sewickley near Painter's salt works, between Painterville and Ruffs- 
dale stations, on the South-West Pennsylvania Railroad. From there they 
journeyed nearly north, leaving Greensburg, Irwin and Jacksonville on the 
north, and finally reaching Brush Creek, a branch of Turtle Creek. About 
this time, July 7th, the army seemed to doubt the correctness of its route. 
They therefore turned to the south, passed down the Long Run valley and 
reached Crooked Run about two miles from the Monongahela Ri^•er. 
While they camped quietly at night their camp was watched by spies of 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. j 

the enemy, as, indeed, their every movement had been more or less for 
several days. The following morning, July 9th, they went down the val- 
ley and forded the Monongahela River where McKeesport now stands. 
The advance was led by Lieutenant-Colonel Gage. The army marched 
between the bordering hills and the river, down the river about four miles, 
where the river was again crossed. This crossing of the river seemed 
necessary to avoid high hills and defiles, yet visible on the right bank 
of the stream as one passes down from JMcKeesport to Braddock, the object 
being to keep on high ground and thus avoid Indian attacks while 
hemmed in by high hills. They were not expecting the enemy until they 
reached the fort, yet the General maintained most rigid discipline. The 
splendidly equipped army, with bright colors shining in the morning sun, 
marching along the river bottom, the high wooded hills on their left and 
the tranquil river on their right, was, said Washington long years after- 
wards, one of the grandest sights he ever saw. About ten o'clock, accord- 
ing to Washington, the rear of the army crossed the second crossing. They 
were less than ten miles from the long looked for fort, and buoyant feelings 
tilled every soldier's breast. The bank was high and had to be leveled so 
that the heavier wagons and artillery in the rear could ascend, this caus- 
ing an hour's delay. After the crossing the ground rose slowly to the 
hills beyond, and deep ravines extended from these hills to the river. They 
had crossed between two ravines, and these came together, or nearly so, 
at the top of the hills,' and formed something like the letter V, with the 
apex pointed away from the river. These ravines, the hills beyond and be- 
tween, were covered with a thick growth of underbrush and large trees. 
The rear of the army had scarcely emerged from the river before the fight 
began. In the forest on both sides of the advancing army, and behind al- 
most every rock, large tree or clump of bushes, was concealed the enemy, 
watching every movement, and ready at the appointed time to make the 
attack. Thomas Gage with his division, was in front. Both this and 
another smaller division under Sir Peter Halket were between the ravines 
forming the letter V. Suddenly, "seemingly from out the earth," came a 
terrible roar of musketry and a fiendish Indian yell. No enemy could be 
seen, and yet volley after volley was poured in the face of the leading army. 
Almost instantly following came a similar leaden hail on their right front. 
Braddock hurried forward, halted the advancing division, and sent Colonel 
Burton forward with the vanguard to assist the front rank. About eight 
hundred men were now in front, and about four hundred were left behind 
to guard the baggage. The fire was returned by those in position, with 
but little or no effect, for no enemy could be seen. Yet there was a mom- 
ent's cessation of the firing on the part of tlie enemy after the first fire 
from the English. The English soldiers could see nothing to fire at, yet 



8 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

men were falling in every direction. Confusion and excitement was the 
result, and the entire advance guard with its support fell back. When 
the dauntless Braddock rushed forward to cheer them on, he was met by 
bleeding and disordered ranks, fleeing from an invisible but most deadly 
enemy. In less time than we can conceive, so terrible was the onslaught 
and so complete the rout, that the pioneers, infantry, artillery and baggage, 
were a tangled mass, with the enemy almost surrounding them, yet still 
invisible. In the meantime the force left to guard the baggage was at- 
tacked, and this was in the more open plain towards the river. IMany 
wagoners were shot down, while others, seeing this, cut their horses from 
their wagons, mounted them, and liurried back across the river in wild 
confusion. The English soldiers who could do so, some of them, at 
all events, did the same. The artillery was almost useless, for still no 
enemy was in view, nor were they seen by the British and Americans till 
the retreat began. The only open space, if it could be so called, was the 
road cut by the advancing army, while almost every place of concealment 
was previously occupied by the enemy. Every attempt to turn the tide of 
afifairs, on the part of Braddock, who was a total stranger to fear, seemed 
to result only in confusion. Mingled with the cries of anguish on the part 
of the wounded were the shouts of the officers, the rattle of the musketry 
and the roar of the cannon, while above all was the frenzied war whoop 
and yell of the infuriated Indian. Survivors for long years afterwards 
were not able to drive this horrible picture from their- memory. 

The battle lasted nearly three hours, the British much of the time hud- 
dled together like sheep, and even trampled under foot by dashing runaway 
horses. It is not to be wondered at that in this stat" of affairs many were 
killed by their own men. Captain Was'Sfoner, of Virginia, attempted to 
secure a spot of rising ground where, partly concealed by a large fallen tree, 
he hoped to mend the condition of the army, or perhaps change its for- 
tunes. With about eighty Virginians who were accustomed to backwoods 
warfare, he reached the objective point and for a brief space did splendid 
work against a body of Indians concealed from the panic-stricken soldiers, 
but in full view from his position. But very soon, in the whirl of con- 
fusion, the British mistook the smoke of his guns for that of the enemy, 
and made against him one of the most effective fires of the day on their 
part. The little company soon fell back, leaving fifty of Captain Waggoner's 
eighty soldiers dead and wounded on the ground. 

When at length Braddock found it impossible to oppose the enemy far- 
ther, he tried to have them retreat in good order, and even in this he suc- 
ceeded but moderately. Many of them were so wild and bewildered that 
they were firing in the air. By this time half of the army was killed or 
wounded, with most of the best officers among the slain. General Brad- 
dock had five horses shot under him and received his death wound. 



- HISTORY OF IVESTMORELAXD COUNTY. 9 

It will never be known whether he was shot by friend or foe. Quite likely 
it was an accidental shot from one of his own soldiers. In a letter from 
^\'ashington to Governor Dinwiddie, (See Sparks' "Letters of Washing- 
tion." vol. 2, p. 88) he avers that two-thirds of the killed and wounded in 
the battle received their shots from the cowardly and panic-stricken royal- 
ists. Washington had several bullet holes in his clothes, two horses 
wounded and one killed under him, but was unhurt. 

Braddock was shot through the arm and lung. He was carried from 
the field and transported to Dunbar's camp, thirty-si.x miles away, in a lit- 
ter. The Indians even fired on the retreating army as they were crossing 
the river, and some were thus killed in the water. All the dead and 
wounded, with the baggage and cannon, were left on the field. The road 
to Dunbar's camp was strewn with the abandoned accoutrements of war. 
Indeed, the Indians only ceased the figfhting to hastily gather the rich har- 
vest of scalps, and divide among themselves the baggage and provisions 
of the English. 

Washington, in describing the battle forty years afterward, has writ- 
ten these words concerning Braddock: "At an encampment near Great 
Meadows the brave but unfortunate General Braddock breathed his last. 
He was interred with the honors of war, and it was left to me to see this 
performed and to mark out the spot for the receotion of his remains. To 
guard aeainst a savage triumph if the place should be discovered, they were 
deposited in the road over which the army wagons passed, to hide every 
trace by which the entombment could be discovered. Thus died a man 
whose good and bad qualities were intimately blended. He was brave even 
to a fault. His attachments were warm, his enmities were strong, and 
there was no disguise about him." (See Scribner's Magazine, May, 1894). 
Braddock died on Sunday night, July 13, four days after the battle. In 
America, at least, his dauntless courage has gone far to recompense his 
faults and redeem his fame ; still his memory will always be clouded by 
disaster, and his name forever inseparably associated with defeat. 

The most contemptible spirit in the army was certainly Colonel Dun- 
bar. It will be remembered that nearly half of the entire army remained 
with liim to follow Braddock by slower marches. When the remnant of 
the advance army returned to him, though his army then numbered at least 
fifteen hundred, he showed no desire to reform it and march again against 
the enemy. A little fortitude on his part, a tithe of the Braddock bravery, 
and he could have stormed the fort and taken the field. But, instead, he 
and his soldiers, joined in the excitement of the hour, buried their heavy 
artillery in the ground, destroyed what stores and ammunition they could 
not transport, and hurriedly if not cowardly skulked away to Philadelphia. 

The enemy so successful in this battle were sent out from Fort Duquesne, 
and were composed of French Canadians and Indians under com- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



mand of Captain Beaujeu. It was originally their intention to remain in 
the fort and await the attack of the English, but Beaujeu insisted on the 
surprise which resulted so successfully. His force was about six hun- 
dred Indians and two hundred French and Canadians. It was his inten- 
tion to attack the English as they crossed the river, but, having nine miles 
to march, they arrived too late, and so made the attack on perhaps more 
advantageous grounds, for the ground close to the river was partly cleared. 
Beaujeu was killed with the first regular fire. His followers dropped back, 
and there was a lull in the fighting which was noticed and remembered 
even by the frightened English. Then the enemy contemplated a retreat. 
Had the proper spirit been shown at the right time the field coidd have 
been won by Braddock's forces. With that opportunity gone, the field 
--. was lost. Dumas, a cool brave French- 

man, took Beaujeu's place and won 
the victcTv. The loss to the enemy 
can onh' be known b)- their own re- 
ports which have always been 
doubted. They reported a loss of only 
thirty, and most of these killed from 
falling timbers cut ofif by wildly di- 
rected cannon balls. The British lost 
sixty-three out of eighty-six officers, 
and one-half of the private, that is,, 
nearly seven hundred killed and 
wounded. Every mounted officer save 
Washington was carried oi¥ the field. 
It was at best a most terrible slaughter. 
This victory was due mainly to the 
Indians. Of these the Wyandots and 
Ottawas, the latter it is supposed, 
CAPT. BEAUJEU. Under Pontiac, a warrior who after- 

wards became so conspicuous in Indian raids, outnumbered all the rest. 
The impartial reader cannot but attribute this ignominious defeat almost 
entirely to obstinacy on the part of General Braddock. He was long 
schooled in warfare, and his vaunted courage led the Americans to look 
up to him and to expect great things from him and his soldiers. 
Yet, instead of setting an example of bravery to the undrilled American 
troops, the English were the first to disobey orders, desert their comrades, and 
flee from the field in cowardly disorder. They were commanded, too, by 
brave and able men, many of whom lived in after years to show to the 
world the highest order of military skill. Braddock's bravery has been 
admitted by friend and foe alike ; indeed, it has become proverbial. Wash- 




HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. n, 

ington, either in victon- or in defeat, was never aught but great, but he 
was particularly strong in the emergency of saving a waning army froni' 
destruction. Gage commanded the British army at Boston during the 
siege at the commencement of the Revolutionary war. Then there was 
Horatio Gates, who afterwards arose to distinction and was a major-gen- 
eral in the American army in the Revolution. There too was ColoneL 
Daniel Morgan, still renowned throughout America as the hero of Cowpens. 
Then there were Lewises of Virginia, a name which will always be noted 
in the war annals of America. 

Hitherto the world had been taught that the Englishman was invincible- 
in arms. Perhaps no people in all the world revered and honored the 
English army as highly as did the American colonies. The defeat of 
Braddock most thoroughly demonstrated the fallacy of this opinion.. 
Henceforth, in the mind of the average American colonist, the royal Eng- 
lish soldier was measured by his actions on the banks of the Monongahela. 
And, when we remember that in less than twenty years these same colonies- 
had so changed their ideas of the superiority of the English army that they 
were induced to engage in the Revolutionary war, we cannot doubt but 
that in one sense, at least, the defeat of Braddock was a benefit to the 
American people. 

The defeat of Braddock was a sad blow to the settlers of western Penn- 
sylvania. The Indians, spurred on by the temporary victory, became at 
once more hostile than ever, and more determined that the English should 
never obtain a foothold in this section. So far as it was possible our set- 
tlers were at peace with the Indians, for they had adopted Penn's pacific 
l)rinciples very largely in dealing with them. But when the French and 
Indian war began, the entire frontier, being unprotected, was subjected to 
the ravages of this brutal race. Many isolated settlers were driven back 
to their eastern homes. They left their hard earned harvests ungathered ;. 
they saw their log cabin homes in ashes, and their families murdered or 
taken as prisoners to Canada. Nothing short of a line of forts along the 
entire frontier could have protected these pioneers. 

The most western English forts then were immediately west of the 
Susquehanna, viz. : Fort Louther, at Carlisle ; Fort Franklin, at Shippens- 
burg ; Fort Shirley, near the Juniata ; and Fort Littleton and Fort Loudon, 
within the limits of the present Franklin county. These forts were very 
poorly garrisoned, the provincial military being weak. There were how- 
ever, a few blockhouses, and to these the settlers could flee in times of 
Indian raids, and thus united could in some degree protect themselves. 

From month to month these Indian depredations grew more and more 
severe. Two chiefs, Shingass (or Shingast), and Captain Jacobs were 
considered the instigators of these depredations. Each had a following: 



12 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

of a large band of warriors, and their general habitation was in what is 
now Westmoreland and Armstrong counties, with their principal town at 
Kittanning. 

On the death of Braddock, General Shirley was made commander-in- 
chief of all the British forces in America. But General Montcalm, the 
French commander, who afterwards died so heroically when opposing Gen- 
eral James Wolfe at Quebec, was then invading northern New York, and 
Shirley and his army were scarcely adequate to the defence of even that sec- 
tion. This left the French and Indian marauders of Western Pennsylvania 
but little opposition in 1755-56. In August of the latter year Colonel 
John Armstrong, a militia officer of Pennsylvania, but a most daring one, 
made preparation to surprise and if possible exterminate these tribes of 
Indians. He took with him what was known as the Second Battalion, 
which consisted of eight companies stationed on the west side of the 
Susquehanna. He left Fort Shirley on August 30th, with about three 
hundred men, and marched up the Juniata and stealthily down the Kis- 
"kiminetas, marching a great deal by night. His objective point was the 
Indian stronghold at Kittanning town. The last night he marched thirty 
■miles, and reached the town before daylight. At break of day he began 
the attack. Captain Jacobs discovered the presence of the soldiers and 
gave out a few war cries to arouse the Indians, and then the fight began. 
The squaws and children were sent to the woods, and not one of them was 
fired on by Armstrong's men. The Indians kept in their houses, and killed 
and wounded a good many soldiers in the early morning by firing through 
the cracks and portholes. Against this the soldier's shots were almost 
futile, and at considerable loss of life Armstrong ordered these houses 
to be set on fire. In firing a hut Armstrong himself was severely wounded 
in the shoulder. The fire spread rapidly to the entire collection of houses 
and wigwams, and drove the Indians from their shelter. Just as they 
emerged from the burning buildings they were shot down, the soldiers 
being so placed that they commanded every retreat. Jacobs, the leader, 
was reported killed, but Armstrong doubted it. The stronghold was 
destroyed, and the Indian inhabitants were either killed or compelled to 
flee from the community. It was a most effectual blow to them. The en- 
tire secrecy of the march and the attack made it all the more so, for there- 
after they were afraid to join in large numbers to commit depredations, 
lest they might at any time be attacked and cut down as they were at 
Kittanning. This has been known as Armstrong's Expedition. In its 
immediate results and in its salutary effects upon the peace and good 
order of our western border, it has justly been rated as one of the most 
effectual expeditions of our pioneer history. The reader will probably 
smile in this modern age of large armies, at three hundred men being called 
the Second Battalion. It is, however, the language of the colonies at that 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. ij 

time, and, with their limited capacity, it was doubtless a pretty large army 
to them. 

Still the French and Indian power over the British in America very 
largely predominated. This state of affairs dissatisfied England. She 
believed this deplorable situation was due to bad management on the part 
of its home government. A change was demanded, and in June, 1757, 
William Pitt, the Great Commoner, a name which should be revered by 
every American, was made premier. From the beginning he favored the 
colonies, and in return the colonies were loyal to him. Pennsylvania voted 
a large sum of money to their defense, and showed many other signs of 
loyalty. 

In the early part of 1758 Admiral Boscawan reached America with 
twelve thousand soldiers. Very soon the colonists began to enlist, and 
these, with the British soldiers here, swelled the number to more than. 
fifty thousand men, all in the service of the colonies. Again three distinct 
e.xpeditions were projected, viz.: against Louisburg, in the St. Lawrence; 
against Ticonderoga, in northern New York ; and against Fort Duquesne. 
The latter expedition is, of course, the one of special interest to us in West- 
moreland. It was under the command of a Scotchman, Brigadier General 
John P^orbes. He started from Philadelphia. The first question which pre- 
sented itself to him was as to the route he should take. The Pennsylvanians 
wanted him to go directly through the province, presumably to open 
up a new road and new territory. But Virginia had the same claim, and 
she, too, was furnishing many munitions of war. The old road was of 
course Braddock's route by the way of Cumberland, and the proposed new 
one was by way of Bedford. So much had been said about the slowness of 
Braddock's march that his defenders had probably magnified its difficul- 
ties. Washington favored the Braddock route, which, in the light of after 
discoveries, was undoubtedly the better one to take. Colonel Henry Bou- 
quet, second commander to F"orbes, seems to have decided the matter in 
favor of the new route. It was fifty miles shorter than the other, and 
was taken with the further hope of avoiding the difficulties which retarded 
Braddock's westward march. 

Forbes' army was nearly three times as large as Braddock's had been, 
which means that he had about seven thousand men with him. There 
were twenty-seven hundred Pennsylvanians, si.xteen hundred Virginians, 
twelve hundred Highlanders who came with Forbes from England, three 
hundred and fifty regular soldiers called Royal Americans, and one thous- 
and from Delaware, Maryland and North Carolina. There were also 
about one thousand wagoners, axe men, &c., which, if counted would 
swell his army to nearly eight thousand. 

The Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland troops were brought to- 
gether at Winchester and placed in command of Colonel George Wash- 



54 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

ino-ton. The Pennsylvania forces were assembled at Raystown (Bedford), 
Pennsylvania, under Bouquet. Forbes was long detained in Philadelphia 
by sickness and various arrangements incident to a military campaign. He 
did not reach Bedford until September, by which time Colonel James 
Burd, by direction of Colonel Bouquet, had, with twenty-five hundred 
■soldiers and axe men, cut a road across the Allegheny Mountains and across 
Laurel Hill, a distance of fifty miles, and had encamped on the banks of 
the Lovalhanna, in Ligonier valley. Here he awaited the main army, 
and in the meantime by order of Bouquet, an expedition was sent out un- 
der Major Grant to learn something of the strength of the enemy. This 
expedition was composed of thirty-seven officers and eight hundred and 
thirteen privates. Grant was supported by Major Lewis, of Virginia, 
'Captain Bullet and others. He was instructed by the wary Bouquet not to 
bring on a battle but to approach as near to the fort as safety would permit, 
and to collect all possible information concerning the enemy. The com- 
mand left Lovalhanna camp on September nth. They made very rapid 
-marches, for they were but slightly encumbered with baggage. The first 
-day's march they passed over or through Chestnut Ridge. The route they 
took is not definitely known, but they most likely passed down the gap 
cut by the Lovalhanna. Doubtless the path which they took did not vary 
much otherwise from the route which Forbes afterwards took. Passing 
over the southeastern part of Derry township he crossed the Loyalhanna 
about half a mile below the Shelving Rocks. For the night they camped 
near the mouth of the Nine Mile Run, so named from its flowing into the 
Lovalhanna, about nine miles from the encampment they had left, now 
Ligonier. It is a plateau, then covered with heavy timber. On the east 
was the run, with a steep bank twenty feet high which formed a natural 
fortification. He threw up earthworks facing the west and north. They 
are all gone now, but are remembered by the oldest citizens, and the place 
is even yet known as Breastworks Hill. The second day he marched twen- 
'ty-five miles westward, and was then within less than fifteen miles of the 
famous Fort Duquesne. 

The Indians and French in the fort had spies out, mainly Indians, who 
kept a close watch on the main army, but they undoubtedly overlooked 
'Grant, who passed under the very shadow of the fort without being seen. 
About two miles east of the fort he left his horses and baggage under 
-Captain Bullet, with about fifty men. About nine o'clock at night two 
■officers with a company of fifty men crept up to the fort and found not 
■even a single picket. They set fire to a store house, but, this being dis- 
covered by the inmates of the fort, was extinguished, they regarding the 
fire as an accident. A heavy fog hung over the entire community and in 
part prevented Grant from correctly ascertaining the situation. The fol- 
lowing morning, misled by these appearances, he became overly anxious 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 15 

to win the great honor of taking the fortress over which two mighty 
nations had been for years contending. He overstepped and even disobeyed 
his orders. He sent Alajor Lewis with two hundred men back along 
the road a short distance so that he might claim the victory entirely for him- 
self, it is said. His main army he posted on a low ridge and sent about fifty 
men to beat drums and play the Scotch bagpipes, hoping thus to draw the 
enemy from the fort. So stealthy had been his movements that the music 
aroused the P'rench from their morning sleep. Unfortunately for Grant 
they knew the country better than he. The fort, it will be remembered, 
was near the point made by the junction of the Allegheny and Mononga- 
hela rivers, where they unite to form the Ohio. 

Shrewd indeed was the maneuver on the part of the commander of the 
fort, who sent about one-third of the forces quietly and quickly up the 
bank of the Allegheny, and one-third with similar orders up the IMononga- 
hela River, while the others remained in the fort until the first and second 
deploys had passed up their respective rivers far enough to be pracH-r 
on the rear of Grant and his army. When these positions were secured, the 
soldiers in the fort marched boldly forth toward Grant, while each of the 
other divisions moved in on the right and left rear of his band. In a few 
minutes they had practically surrounded his entire advance forces. From 
all sides came the attack. The Indians filled the woods with war whoops,_ 
and sprang on his men with tomahawks and scalping knives. Lewis heard 
the firing and hastened, perhaps by order of Grant, to his relief. But 
Grant had fallen back from his original position, and Lewis missed him. 
Both were captured by the French. There was really little left for the 
army to do but retreat, if, indeed, that was not entirely cut ofi. Just 
when the rout promised to rival Braddock's defeat three years before, a 
relief came from an unlooked-for source. Captain Bullet, stationed in the 
rear with horses, baggage, etc., heard the sound of battle and hurried to 
the rescue. Knowing that his fifty men amounted to notliing in the face 
of the enemy, he secured them in bushes and behind rocks, and by firing 
gave such effective opposition to the enemy that they imagined a much 
larger force had appeared, and to a great extent ceased firing. Then 
he resorted to a stratagem. He and his men marched boldly up to the 
enemy with arms reversed as if they meant to surrender. The Indians, 
being, pastmasters in the art of treachery, with undoubted sinister designs 
on their part, fell into the trap. When within a few yards of the Indians, 
as Bullet commanded, a death-dealing volley was thrown in their faces, 
and immediately the little command charged with bayonets. The Indians 
never withstood a bayonet charge, and by this means were thoroughly 
routed. It was learned afterward that the audacity of the onslaught con- 
vinced the Indians that a much larger force was near by in waiting. Mean- 



i6 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

while Grant's army rapidly retreated and made the best of its way back 
to Loyalhanna camp, with a loss of two hundred seventy-three men. The 
loss was mostly among the Highlanders, who fought only in the open, 
as they were taught. This battle occurred on the hill where Allegheny 
county court house now stands, and the street traversing the hill or 
ridge (Grant street) was named after the unsuccessful commander of 
the battle. The fort, as was afterwards learned, had been the day be- 
fore reinforced by four hundred men under Captain Aubrey, who planned 
the attack on Grant. Grant and Lewis were held as prisoners a short time 
and then exchanged. Grant was a man of ability, too, though he did 
not display it on this occasion. His stolen march was overlooked by the 
spies only because of its utter improbability and foolhardiness. Two 
years later he was made governor of Florida. He afterwards won high 
rank in the English army and fought part of the time in the Revolution, 
viz.: in the battles of Germantown and Monmouth Court House. He com- 
manded at the latter, and defeated General Lee. Still later he was a mem- 
ber of the British Parliament, and died in 1806, aged eighty-si.x. 

This battle occurred September 14, 1758, and the forces traveled there- 
fore from Loyalhanna to Fort Duquesne in three days. They reached 
the camp on the 17th and bore the sad news to Bouquet. He was not by 
any means discouraged, but set to work to strengthen his camp till Forbes 
and his army should arrive. Flushed by this victory over Grant, Bouquet 
had little doubt that the enemy would soon storm his gates. And so it 
was, for on October 12 the enemy was arrayed in battle around the camp 
at Loyalhanna. There came about twelve hundred French soldiers, but 
only about two hundred Indians. The smallness in the number of the 
latter was due to the fact that many of them had deserted the French 
and gone to their homes to lay in a stock of venison before cold weather 
came, so that their families might not perish during the winter. James 
Smith, who was then a prisoner in Fort Duquesne and of whom much 
more shall be said later on, made this and many other disclosures on his 
release. He also said that a close watch was kept on Forbes' army dur- 
ing all its journey, and that they hoped to surprise and defeat it as they 
had done in Braddock's case. 

The French and Indian army at Loyalhanna was under command of 
De Vitri. He began battle almost immediately on their arrival. The 
firing began about eleven o'clock in the forenoon and lasted four hours 
The battle was fought on or near the ground where is now the town of Ligo- 
nier. The army at Ligonier numbered twenty-five hundred on its first ar- 
rival from Bedford; but nearly three hundred were lost in Grant's fiasco 
leaving only about twenty-two hundred. But it is probable that some ad- 
vance companies from Forbes' army at Bedford had by October 12, reached 
Ligonier, though there is no record of it that the writer can find. Bouquet 



HISTORY Or WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



17 



was not present at the battle, but was stuck in the mud at Stony Creek, now 
in Somerset county, near the present town of Stoystown. Colonel James 
Burd commanded the forces in Bouquet's absence. 

The enemy during the battle was probably on lower ground than Burd's 
troops, though the location is not clearly outlined in the reports. It is 
known, however, that Burd was on the ground preparing for the coming 
of the enemy, and that he was easily wary enough to entrench his army on 
high ground and allow the enemy to attack him. He was also preparing 
to erect or was already erecting a fort, and it is likely that the army was 
encamped near the site selected for its location. The enemy coming from 
Fort Duquesne came, of course, from the west, but as they approached the 
camp at Ligonier they veered their course so as to approach from the 
southwest and gave battle at once on their arrival. They undoubtedly ap- 
proached from this direction rather than from the west, to more thoroughly 
surprise the camp. The French made but little impression on the army 
during the four hours" fighting in the afternoon. They renewed the attack 
after nightfall, but Colonel Burd stormed the woods in which the French 
and Indians were concealed, with shells from the mortars, and they were 
soon glad to retreat. That Burd and his army did not follow them up and 
capture them is evidence that they were well satisfied to allow them to re- 
treat, let Forbes' army with its provisions had not arrived, and the 
commissary may have been too weak to support a captured army. The 
loss in the army of Ligonier was twelve killed and fifty-five wounded. The 
loss in the French army is not known, and the small loss to the British is 
perhaps why the accounts of the battle are so meagre. A letter written 
by Captain Burd to his wife, the original of which is now in the possession ' 
of the Historical Society at Philadelphia, may be of interest here. It is as 
follows : 

Camp at Loyalhanna, 14 October. 1758. 
My Dear Love :— 

I have just time to acquaint you that the French army, consisting of 1200 French 
and 200 Indians commanded by Monsr. De Vitri attacked me on Thursday, the 12th, at 
II A. M. with great fury until 3 P. M., at which time I had the pleasure to see victory 
to the British Army I had the honor to command. The enemy attempted on the night 
of the I2th to attack me a second time, but in return for their most unmelodious Indian 
music, I gave them a number of shells from our mortars which made them retreat soon. 
Our loss on this occasion is only 63 men and officers, killed, wounded and missing. We 
have only buried of our dead and six of the enemies. The French were em- 
ployed all night carrying ofT their dead and wounded, and I am apt to think carried oflf 
our dead through mistake. 

I received your last letter wherein you hoped I might obtain my wish to our taking 
Duquesne. We shall try it soon. 

I am hearty, and with great regard my dear Sail your ever and affectionate husband, 
I am, James Burd. 



i8 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

Forbes' army liad mostly arrived at Loyalhanna by November ist, and 
Forbes, himself arrived November 6th. In the meantime Burd, Bouquet 
and Washington began to build a fort, or place of deposit, for on every hand 
were the signs of winter. Laurel ^Mountain and Chestnut Ridge, both in 
full view of the camp, were covered with snow, and a council of war was 
lield. The concensus of opinion was that with little knowledge of the 
country intervening between the army and Fort Duquesne, with the ter- 
rible lesson which the army had learned by Grant's foolhardy expedition, 
with no road cut except the path over which Grant had traveled, and with 
winter coming on, it would be unwise to attempt to march an army that 
distance. Forbes and his army had consumed fifty days in marching 
from Bedford to Loyalhanna, a distance of about fifty miles. He had been 
so reduced by the journey that much of the way he was carried on a litter. 
The outlook was so gloomy that Washington says, an abandonment of 
the expedition was contemplated. "\^ast as were the preparations." says 
the historian Bancroft, "Forbes would never, but for Washington, have 
seen the Ohio." At all events, a fort and winter quarters seemed neces- 
sary, and its construction was, therefore, pushed forward as rapidly as 
possible, and Forbes and Bouquet named it Fort Ligonier, after Sir 
John Lord Ligonier, under whom they had served in the British army. 
The place of deposit and so much of the fort as was completed were at 
once used, and the army set about to prepare winter cjuarters to remain 
in until the breaking up of winter. But just then several stragglers from 
De \'itri's army were taken, and valuable though not entirely reliable in- 
formation concerning the weakness of the enemy was gained. Further- 
more on November 12, the command ran across another • squad of De 
X^itri's men who were yet lurking around Fort Ligonier. They were 
attacked, one of them was killed, and three were taken prisoners. One of 
the prisoners proved to be an Englishman who had been taken from his 
home in Lancaster county by the Indians. His testimony concerning 
the weak condition of Fort Duquesne corresponded entirely with that of 
the prisoners. It was therefore resolved to push rapidly forward to try 
to capture it. 

Before leaving Ligonier a circumstance occurred which needlessly in- 
volved Washington in great danger, and this may as well be related here. 
To quote from his own words ( Scribner's Monthly Magazine, May, 1894, 
P- 537-) • "The enemy sent out a large detachment to reconnoitre our camp 
and to ascertain our strength ; in consequence of our intelligence that 
they were within two miles of the camp, a party commanded by Lieuten- 
ant Colonel Mercer, of the Virginia line, a gallant and good officer, was 
sent out to dislodge them. A severe conflict and hot firing ensued, which 
lasting some time and appearing to approach the camp, it was believed that 
our party was yielding the ground, and upon which, with permission of 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 19 

'General Forbes, I called for volunteers and immediately marched at their 
head to sustain our troops. Led on by the firing until we came within 
less than half a mile of the enemy and the firing ceasing, scouts were 
detached to investigate the cause and to communicate with Colonel Mercer, 
our troops advancing slowly in the meantime. But, it being near dark 
and the intelligence not having been full}- disseminated among Colonel 
IMercer's corps, they took us for the enemy, who they supposed were ap- 
]3roaching from another direction. Mercer's troops commenced a heavy 
fire on ours and drew fire in return : in spite of all the exertions of the 
officers one officer and several privates were killed and many wounded 
before a stop could be put to it. I was, in accomplishing this, never in 
more imminent danger, being between two fires and knocking up with 
my sword the presented forces." 

The late Dr. William D. AIcGowan tried to ascertain the location of 
this battle, for he regarded it as of great interest that in his last years 
A\'ashington, with the memory of all the dangers of the Revolution, indeed, 
of a life of warfare fresh upon him, should calmly write that his imminent 
danger was here in Westmoreland county. Dr. McGowan was of the 
opinion that it occurred on the blufifs northwest of Idlewild. 

In preparing for the hard march on Fort Duquesne the army was di- 
vided into three brigades. One of the brigades was under the command 
of Colonel Washington, and it was his duty to open up the read. It must 
be remembered with great pride by Westmorelanders that it was here 
in this county that Washington was first placed in actual command of a 
brigade. This promotion came to him at Ligonier in November, 1758. 
After him came Colonel Armstrong with about one thousand men to assist 
in opening the road. They opened up the western part of what has since 
been known as the Forbes road. Its location in the main is not a matter 
of conjecture, for a journal of it was kept, which was sent to the British 
War Office in London. This journal is now in the possession of the 
Historical Society of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. The road across West- 
moreland, as shown by this document, is published for the first time in 
the map accompanying these pages. The journal is labeled "General 
Forbes" Marching Journal to the Ohio," and is signed, "John Potts." 
Briefly outlined, the road took the same general direction from Bedford 
to Westmoreland that was later taken by the Harrisburg and Pittsburg 
turnpike. It crossed over Laurel Mountain froin Somerset county into 
Westmoreland, on a line almost parallel with the pike, but was from one 
to two miles north of it. It crossed the crest of the mountain and came 
down the western slope, and crossed Laurel Run near the Penrod place, 
and near Willow Grove schoolhouse. From there it took the dividing 
ridge as near as possible between the brooks that flow into Mil! creek and 
those that flow southward into the Loyalhanna, and came westwardly to 



20 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 

Loyalhanna, where they encamped, and afterwards built Fort Ligonier. 
Thus far there is no dispute as to its location. It has always been sup- 
posed that it bore oiif toward the north from Fort Ligonier and crossed 
Chestnut Ridge in the direction of Millwood, and then crossed the south- 
western part of Derry township, and crossed the Loyalhanna at Cochran's 
crossing (or ford) about two and one-half miles below — that is, north of 
Latrobe, and that it then journeyed almost directly west to the present 
Hannastown settlement and thence to Fort Duquesne. But the "Journal" 
proves clearly that such was not the route taken. If this document may 
be relied upon he crossed the Loyalhanna a few rods below Fort Ligonier 
near the present iron bridge on the road leading from Ligonier to Donegal. 
From the bank of the Loyalhanna he journeyed southward through the 
present Valley cemetery until he passed around the hill west of Ligo- 
nier, when he again turned westward, passing over the Withrow farm, 
south of the Fry farm, to the Two Alile Run, and crossed both it and the 
Four Mile Run and over the Chestnut Ridge in a comparatively straight 
line, going west and bearing slightly to the north in the direction of Youngs- 
town. After crossing the Nine Alile Run he passed out of that locality and 
journeyed northward and westward. From the time he left the Nine 
Mile Run he kept on the dividing ridge between the waters which flow 
north into the Loyalhanna and those which flow south into the Sewickley 
and into Turtle creek. He passed up the Brush Creek valley and out of 
Westmoreland near Murrysville, and when nearing the Allegheny river he 
bent his course southwardly, passing Shannopinstown, and thence to Fort 
Duquesne. Each day's journey is marked on the map, the eighth bringing 
him to Fort Ligonier, and the fourteenth to Fort Duquesne. These days 
represent the daily marches of Forbes, not those of the brigades which 
opened the road. The army was twelve days in making the road from 
Ligonier to Fort Duquesne. 

That Forbes crossed to the south of the Loyalhanna at Ligonier, and 
not at Cochran's Crossing, has been disputed by high authority on West- 
ern Pennsylvania history. Aside from the "Journal," which we regard as 
proof positive that it crossed at Ligonier, there are two other reasons which 
confirm strongly if not positively the accuracy of the journal. The first 
is that the brooks which flow into the Loyalhanna from the south were 
named Two Mile Run, Four Mile Run, Nine Mile Run and Fourteen Mile 
Run, their numerals representing their distance from Fort Ligonier. 
These names are shown on all early maps, and are used by all early writers 
on the subject, indicating strongly that the early traveling was across 
these streams, while the streams flowing into the Loyalhanna from the 
north, which would have been crossed had Forbes road gone the other way, 
have modern names which in no sense connect them with Fort Ligonier. 
And, moreover, it is difficult to see why these streams should have borne 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 21 

such names at all unless tliey were crossed by the line of early day travel- 
ing, namely, by the Forbes Road. They were not named by travel on the 
State road, for it did not go near Fort Ligonier, and the fort was abandoned 
before the State road was built. Standing at Ligonier one can readily see 
why the sharp bend to the south was necessary after crossing the Loyalhanna, 
for a high hill to the west prevented the army from taking that course directly. 
By the southern bend they avoided the hill. That the draft corresponds exactly 
with the peculiar topography of the country is a strong evidence of its accu- 
racy. We are, therefore, from this evidence forced to conclude that the 
Forbes Road crossed the Loyalhanna at Ligonier, and never crossed it again. 

Though nearly a century and a half has passed away since that damp 
chilly November when the road was made, yet in some places it can be 
followed by its original cuts and embankments, and in many places is yet 
used as a public road. For nearly a half a century it was the principal 
highway between the east and the west. It was made about twelve feet 
wide, and the object being only to make a temporary military way it was 
very hurriedly constructed, particularly, for obvious reasons, after 
it passed west of Ligonier. The army was twelve days in constructing 
the road and in marching from Ligonier to Fort Duquesne, a distance of 
fiftv-six miles. Notwithstanding the rumors about the weakness of Fort 
Duquesne the army moved westward with great caution, allowing the 
enemy no opportunity to repeat the surprise of Braddock and Grant. There 
were a few friendly Indians with them, and these and some more daring 
British were used as scouts in all directions. 

On Friday, November 24, these forerunners saw the smoke arising from 
the burning barracks of Fort Duquesne. De Lignery was in comriiand of 
the fort. He, too, had scouts out, and from there as well as from the 
actual contest at Ligonier on October 12 he knew that a defense of the 
fort was impossible. Most of his forces took boats down the Ohio river, 
having first destroyed most of the provisions and set fire to the fort. The 
British army was then about Turtle creek,, not far from the unfortunate 
defeat of three years previous. General Forbes, seeing the smoke, sent 
swift riders forward to extinguish the flames and save everything of use 
to them. Some supplies were saved, but the fort was almost entirely con- 
sumed. The main army arrived at the dismantled fort on Saturday, No- 
vember 25th. Sunday, the 26th. was by special orders observed as "A 
day of public Thanksgiving." Rev. Charles Beatty, chaplain of Colonel 
Clapham's Pennsylvania regiment, preached that morning the first Protestant 
sermon west of the Allegheny Mountains. Beatty was a Presbyterian. On 
Tuesday following a large detachment>was detailed to bury the dead of Brad- 
dock's army and to perform a like service to the dead of their own army on 
Grant's Hill. 

Now over the smoking ruins of Fort Duquesne no longer floated, with 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 




its lillied emblem, the banner of France ; in its place was the proud English 
standard. Colonel Hugh Mercer was left in charge with a force of two hun- 
dred men. General John Stanwix, of England, succeeded General ForBes, 
and on September 3rd, 1759, a new fort was begun. It was named Fort 
Pitt, in honor of William Pitt. Around it clustered a few log cabins, and 
these have now grown into the wealthiest and most powerful city in the 
world for its size. The historian, George Bancroft, has very beautifully 
referred to the monument thus erected to the memory of the great English 
premier, in the following language : "As long as the Monongahela and the 
Allegheny shall flow to form the Ohio, as long as the English tongue shall 
be the language of freedom in the boundless valley which their waters 
traverse, his name shall stand inscribed on the Gatcvv-ay of the West." 

The fort was abandoned and fired by De Lignery because of its weak- 
ness as compared with the approaching army. General Shirley had been) 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 23 

.successful in northern New York, and the French from that stronghold 
could not support him. Hence his abandonment of the fort. 

General John Forbes was born in Scotland. Though educated for the 
medical profession, he when very young entered the English army and be- 
came a lieutenant in the Scots Dragoons. He won the highest praise from 
his general. Lord Ligonier, and other superior officers, and was quarter- 
master general in the army of the Duke of Bedford. He was about forty- 
eight years old when he reached America. It is said that when the tide 
of affairs was against him he swore most violently, but this was a very 
common vice among the European generals of his age. All through the 
American campaign just described he suffered intensely from a general 
breaking down of his system. From Fort Duquesne he was carried all the 
way to Philadelphia m a litter borne by horses, and part of the way 
by men. On March 13, 1759, he died, at fortj'-nine years of age. His body 
lies buried in the chancel of Christ's Church in Philadelphia. 

An incident important in the life of Washington which grew indirectly 
out of this campaign may well be related here. The Virginia forces which 
were assembling at Winchester preparatory to marching against Fort Du- 
quesne were sadly in need of arms, tents, etc. Washington was finally or- 
dered to Williamsburg to lay their condition before the council, with the 
hope of securing further aid. He set off promptly on horseback. In cross- 
ing the Pamunkey river on a ferry, he fell in with a X'irginia planter named 
Chamberlain, who lived near by and who, with the old-time Virginia hos- 
pitality claimed Washington as his guest. Washington pleaded the urgency 
of his trip to Williamsburg, but finally consented to remain for dinner. 
Among the guests at Chamberlain's was a charming young widow, Mrs. 
Martha Custis, a daughter of John Dandridge, a patrician of Virginia. Her 
husband had been dead about three years and had left her a large fortune. 
She was of fine form, dark eyes and hair, with frank engaging manners. It 
is believed that Washington had never met her before because of his ab- 
sence on the frontier for several years. Washington had ordered his servant, 
liishop, to have his horses ready to resume their journey promptly after 
dinner. The horses pawed at the door, but for once their master loitered in 
the path of duty and remained with the host until the following morning. 
But though his stay was necessarily brief, his time waS well improved, for 
even j^et before he journeyed westward with his troops they had mutually 
plighted their faith, and they were married immediately at the close of the 
campaign (January, 6, 1759.) 

As we have seen, the main reason the citizens of Pennsylvania so greatly 
desired that Forbes should cut his way through our province was, that 
this territory of western Pennsylvania might thus be opened up for new 
settlers. Braddock's expedition had, it is true, opened up a way, but his 
ignominious defeat and the increased hostility of the Indians which fol- 



24 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

lowed it had retarded rather than facilitated the settlement of our western 
border. Immediately following Forbes" army came, therefore, the first 
real settlers of the territory now known as Westmoreland county. The 
Pennslyvania and Virginia soldiers of this army were largely disbanded in 
the early part of 1759. Many of them with their families immediately started 
west in pursuit of new homes. Many, it is true, pushed on west to the 
Ohio valley. Those who stopped here settled mainly along the Forbes 
road. Some, indeed, never returned with Forbes at all. Some of them 
settled without any right on choice land which they expected to secure and 
own by right of occupancy. To others was granted land by what was 
called military permits, to which we will refer further on. 

The entire country was then overrun by Indians and it was but natural 
that the first settlers in our county should build log cabins around Fort 
Ligonier, for there was an established military post with a guard varying 
from twenty to one hundred men, under Lieutenant Lloyd, to guard this 
part of the frontier and keep the road open. After the few families which 
thus established themselves within gunshot of the fort, first came Andrew 
Byerly in 1759. His land warrant is No. 36, and is for two hundred and 
thirty-six acres and allowance. It was located in the Brush Creek valley, 
on the Forbes road, about twenty-five miles west of Fort Ligonier, and 
about seven miles northwest of Greensburg. He built a log dwelling house, 
and kept it also as a stopping place for those who traveled back and forth 
over the Forbes road. In a year or two he had several neighbors who, like 
himself, were carving homes out of the dense wilderness. One of these 
was Christopher Rudebaugh. This was fourteen 3'ears before the forma- 
tion of the county, and they were virtually within the legal dominion of 
Cumberland county. Their lands, as will be seen later on, were not patented 
to them ; they were at first merely squatters, with perhaps a show of title 
from the commander of the fort. 

The French and Indian War was about settled. There had been a 
treaty made at Easton in 1754 between the Delawares, the Shawnees and 
the white settlers, and, as the Indians claimed and the Pennsylvania author- 
ities always admitted, the white settlers had cheated the Indians, who, 
being ignorant of 'geography, had ceded more territory by their treaty than 
they had meant to part with. This in a high degree, increased the dangers 
of our pioneers and induced the Indians to unite with Braddock's army. As 
a result the years from 1755 to 1761 were at best years of great Indian 
troubles. Nevertheless, many settlers came from the east. 

In 1763, the whole western border was plunged into a most deadly 
Indian werfare. This was due mainly to an Indian leader named Pontiac 
and its history is best told by Francis Parkman in his most entertaining 
work, entitled "Pontiac's Conspiracy." He was chief of the Ottawas, and 
his tribe at this time centered near Detroit. He had fought with the French 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAXD COUXTY. 25 

at Braddock's defeat. He was bold and daring, and had wonderful power, 
not only in his own tribe but over all Indians with whom he came in con- 
tact. He was, of course, urged on by the French, but aside from this his 
foresight and real though misguided ability gave him a particular grievance 
■against the English settler, viz. : that their whole tendency and aim was 
to drive the Indians from their homes farther west and to forever destroy 
their hunting grounds. Parkman rates Pontiac as pre-eminently endowed 
with courage, resolution and Indian eloquence, and, moreover, as the 
ablest leader the American Indians ever produced. "He could govern," 
says Parkman, "with almost despotic sway a race unruly as the winds, 
and his authority was derived chiefly from the force of his own individual 
mind." Urged on by the French, he carried on an inhuman warfare against 
the white settlers in western Pennsylvania, and e.xtending as far east as 
Carlisle, but the western settlements felt his severest blows. He had a 
powerful organization composed of warriors from each of the Six Nations. 

There was no warning, either, for one of his many strong points was 
his ability to overrun a community before the settlers knew of his pres- 
ence. Fort Pitt was in one night absolutely surrounded and cut ofif from 
all outside communications or supplies. Moreover, it was in great danger 
of falling, though the English had boasted that after so much bloodshed in 
its capture it should forever remain in their possession. Pontiac in a few 
days had devastated every settlement and surrounded each fort and block- 
house as far east as Bedford. In times of Indian incursions the settlers and 
their families left their homes and sought refuge in the forts, stockades and 
blockhouses. Sometimes the roads leading to these places of safety were 
crowded with frightened women and children. 

Pontiac particularly aimed his forces against Fort Ligonier. Here 
were collected provisions and ammunition. These were sent from Bed- 
ford, and thence by pack-horses under military guard to Fort Pitt, which 
had no other means of supply. If then Fort Ligonier fell into the hands 
of the Indians, Fort Pitt would soon be forced to surrender or starve. 
During this war Ligonier was under the command of Lieutenant Blane. 
a most excellent officer, while Captain Ourry had command of Bedford. 
Had these three forts fallen, the entire western frontier would have been 
at the mercy of the Indians. Fort Pitt was commanded by Captain Ecuyer, 
with a weak force which Pontiac's Indians, under Gu^asutha, of the Seneca 
tribe, hoped to starve out. 

In the meantime word was sent out from Ligonier and Bedford to Car- 
lisle, asking Bouquet's army to come to their relief. But this would re- 
quire weeks of marching over two ranges of mountains. The greatest 
fear pervaded the inmates of the Fort at Ligonier. It had, furthermore,^ 
large quantities of military stores ready to be sent to the relief of Fort 
Pitt. If the Indians could secure these, all else would be lost and the set- 



26 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

tlements of the west laid waste. Fort Ligonier had already been attacked^ 
and failing to take it they tried to fire it by shooting arrows with in- 
flamable substances attached, over the stockade, to the combustible build- 
ings inside. Through the alertness of Captain Blane the attack was with- 
stood and the fire man}' times extinguished. At this time Captain Ourry 
of Bedford, came to the relief of Fort Ligonier by weakening his own gar- 
rison, which, being nearer Carlisle and Philadelphia, where soldiers were 
always stationed, was stronger than either of the other forts. He selected 
twenty riflemen, all strong young men, accustomed to the hardships inci- 
dent to frontier life, and directed them to make their way as rapidly as 
possibly over the mountains to Ligonier. They could not come by the 
Forbes Road, for that was particularly watched bv the Indians. They 
struck out through the mountains, and very soon appeared on the hillside 
east of the fort, doubtless on what is now East Main street, or between 
that and the fort. Then a still greater danger confronted them, for, being 
unheralded, they dare not approach the fort lest they be mistaken for the 
enemy and fired on by those whom they sought to relieve. • But when partly 
concealed by bushes, and while creeping nearer the fort, they were dis- 
covered and fired on by the Indians who surrounded it, and with this cer- 
tificate of good faith were recognized by the ever-watchful garrison, who 
not only opened the gates to receive them but protected them by firing on 
their pursuers. This relief came none too soon. The force was nearly 
exhausted with fighting, though they had plenty of provisions, ammunition 
and water. No one dared for weeks to leave the stockade. Domestic 
animals suffered to wander outside were killed by the besiegers. It was 
almost a continuous skirmish, and many Indians, with a few French Cana- 
dians urging them on, were killed. Blane formed two companies, each 
composed of soldiers and citizens who had come there from the community 
for safety, drilled and armed the citizens, and they willingh' did watch 
duty day and night. 

In the meantime Colonel Bouquet, after eighteen days delay incident 
to such expeditions — for it must be remembered that the community around' 
Carlisle was also overrun with Pontiac's Indians — was hastening to their 
relief. Carlisle was loath to give up its protection. The town was filled 
with settlers who had flocked there for safety. Bouquet's mission was 
not an inviting one. His way lay over the mountains, and except for the 
narrow road cut by Forbes was for the main part through an almost track- 
less forest. Before him in the wilderness lay the bones of Braddock's 
army, and these dead in number far exceeded his little armv. The main' 
army of the colonies was even then fighting in the northern frontier. 
His forces were parts of the Forty-second and Forty-seventh regiments,, 
which had recently landed in Philadelphia from the West Indies, where 
they had been fighting the Spaniards. The Bouquet armv numbered less- 



HISTORY OF U'ESTMORELAXD COUXTY. 27 

than five hundred, but sixty of them were in ambulance wagons, and these 
he hoped would be recovered far enough to do post duty and relieve the 
forts on the way. Nor did his soldiers know anything about Indian warfare 
save what he taught them as they marched westward. But the bravt 
Swiss colonel was a most excellent teacher, for he was ever a match for 
the shrewdest Indian warriors. 

Not knowing Ourry had relieved Ligonier from Bedford, Bouquet 
sent thirty men on a rapid and most hazardous march to relieve Captain 
Blane. They made the march 
and entered the fort much as 
did Ourry"s men, viz. : under 
the inelTectual fire of the en- 
emy. All the way Bouquet 
saw many signs of Indian in- 
cursions but he saw no In- 
dians. They even murdered 
and captured families within 
a few miles of his army, but 
never showed themselves to 
him. He meant to give battle 
to them at Bedford, for iii 
that vicinity their depreda- 
tions indicated their presence 
in large numbers, though they 
had not attacked the fort be- 
cause of its well known 
strength. But when he arrived 
there was no army to be seen 
nor fought. He reached 
Bedford on July 25th, when 
he recruited his forces by 
inducing thirty backwoods- 
men to accompany them. 
He reached Ligonier August henry bouquet. 

2nd. His arrival again brightened up the drooping spirits of the fortress. 
He left at Ligonier much of his heavier baggage, and with small wagons- 
and packhorses carried forward only such provisions as were necessary for 
his army and for the immediate relief of Fort Pitt, which, like Carlisle, 
Bedford and Ligonier, was filled to overflowing with the frightened families 
of the pioneers, and who were moreover reported to be almost starving. He 
rested at Ligonier on August 3rd, and on the 4th marched westward by the 
Forbes road which he had helped to make five years before. The first day 
they marched about nine miles, crossing Chestnut Ridge, and camped west 




28 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

of the Loyalhanna. On August 5th, they hoped to reach Bushy Run. nine- 
teen miles away, and it is said by Francis Parkman that they meant to rest 
only during the heat of the day and then push on thirteen miles farther, 
passing the dangerous ravines east of Turtle Creek by night time, fearing 
an attack should they pass by day. The country through which they 
were marcliing was hilly, apparently intended for the lurking Indian, whose 
strength lay in ambuscades and surprises. They resumed their march at 
daylight on the morning of August 5th, and, though the weather was very 
warm, by one o'clock the tired and thirsty band was nearing Bushy Run, 
having traveled seventeen miles. Blane had added to Bouquet's army at 
Ligonier what soldiers he could spare from the fort, and he was joined 
by some civilians who were in the fort for safety. Among the latter was 
Andrew Byerly and several of his neighbors. His forces now amounted 
to about five hundred and he had about three hundred and fifty heavily 
laden pack-horses. 

A tall dense forest spreading for countless miles around covered the 
hills and deep hollows. Byerly and his pioneer neighbors were in front, 
when suddenly the sharp rattle of musketry, mingled with the Indian 
yelping, sounded through the woods. The rear pushed up to support the 
advance of the army, but the firing only increased. The fire was returned, 
for a few Indians could be seen, and on these a general charge with' 
fixed bayonets was ordered. This very soon cleared the ground, but only 
temporarily, for it almost instantly burst out in the rear, which showed 
Bouquet that his convoy of supplies was attacked. The troops at once 
fell back, drove the Indians away, and formed a circle around the terrified 
pack-horses. The attacking party was Guyasutha, heading a band of Indian 
warriors that he had collected from as far east as Laurel Hill and from 
around Fort Pitt. They knew the ground well, and fought from every pos- 
sible place of concealment. The regular soldiers and Scotch Highlanders, 
though not accustomed to such warfare, inspired by the skillful commander, 
stood up bravely and resisted them in splendid shape. Again and again 
bands of Indians, now on one side, then on the' other, would rush toward 
the circle, trying to break in. They were fired at and regularl}- chased 
back by bayonets, but escaping behind trees with great activity, very few 
of them were killed. The British suffered more, for they were less ac- 
customed to bush-fighting, and necessarily had to remain at one place 
to guard the convoy. Thus the fight was carried on for seven hours with- 
out intermission, and only ceased when the forest was darkened by the 
approach of night. Then the soldiers camped for the night in the same 
position they had occupied all afternoon, with sentinels in every direction. 
Thirst had quickened their march at one o'clock, when the word had been 
passed around that they were nearing Bushy Run. But now the surround- 
ing enemy forbade their moving from the higher ground, and not a drop 



HISTORY OFJVESTMORELAXD COUNTY. 29. 

of water was to be found there. Bouquet wrote that their "thirst was. 
more intolerable than the enemy's fire." Night was perhaps more horrible 
than day. Bouquet himself was doubtful whether his army could survive 
the contest which he knew the risintr sun would bring him. He there- 
fore wrote an account of the day's doings to Sir Jeffrey Amherst, and closes, 
with these words : "Whatever our fate may be, I thought it necessary to 
give your Excellency this early information, that you may, at all events, 
take such measures as you think proper with the provinces, for their own 
safety, and the effectual relief of Fort Pitt ; as, in case of another engage- 
ment, I fear insurmountable difificulties in protecting and transporting our 
f)rovision, being already so much weakened by the losses of this day, in men 
and horses, besides the additional necessity of carrying the wounded, whose 
situation is truly deplorable." 

About sixty of his men and several officers had been killed and wound- 
ed. A place in the centre of the camp, surrounded by flour bags, was pre- 
pared for them, but shots were fired against them nearly all night. With 
the earliest dawn of morning the battle was renewed from all sides at once, 
and, except that it was more furious, it was fought very much like that 
of the day before. This was kept up until about ten o'clock, when the 
fertile mind of the commander (and it is said on the urgency of Byerly) 
"conceived a masterly stratagem." He knew that if the enemy could be 
brought and held together he could easily whip them. He knew, too, 
that from their increased audacity, the enemy thought Bouquet was 
about to surrender. So he ordered two companies which formed part of 
the circle to fall back to the central part of the camp, while the remaining 
circle spread out to fill up the gaps made, apparently to cover the retreat 
of the two companies. The line forming the circle was also drawn in be- 
cause of their fewer numbers. The Indians, as was intended, mistook this 
for a retreat, and, bloodthirsty for a rich harvest of scalps and provisions, 
with furious yells rushed headlong towards the circle. But below the 
circle there was a depression in the ground, covered with a thick growth 
of trees, which concealed it from the Indians, who were swarming around 
the circle. Through this depression these two companies rapidly ran, and 
very soon came around behind the furious assailants and opened fire on 
them. The Indians thus surprised, and many of them killed at the first 
fire, stood their ground until the Highlanders, with yells as wild as their 
own, fell on them with bayonets. As was expected, they could not with- 
stand a charge with bayonets, and gradually lost ground. But, while the 
charge was in progress, Bouquet, with the eye of a soldier, seeing the direc- 
tion the Indians must flee when overcome, had concealed two other com- 
panies taken from other parts of the circle, in the bushes, with orders to 
await the approach of the enemy. Pressed by the terrific Highlanders, now 
maddened with hunger and thirst, they soon passed directly in front of the 



30 HISTORY OF ]VESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

Ttwo companies, concealed in the bushes. These arose and fired squarely 
into them, and then charged them with bayonets. This completed the 
rout and the four companies united drove them flying down the hill, 
firing as rapidly as possible, but giving the Indians no time to reload. Many 
were killed, and the remainder of this division were scattered in hopeless 
confusion. 

While this took place a smaller body of Indians had maintained a 
steady contest and about an equal one, with those who still guarded the 
■other side of the circle, but, when they saw their comrades flying in dis- 
order through the woods, and saw the victorious troops advancing to 
attack them with bayonets, they lost courage and ran. In a few minutes 
all was quiet, and not a living Indian was left on the ground. There were 
sixty dead ones, however, and among them were several prominent chiefs 
and warriors, and the blood stained leaves showed that many more of 
those who fled were badly wounded. The British took but one prisoner. 



The barrel of this gun was plowed up about 1828 by a man named Moore, on the Bushy Run 
battlefield (August 5, 17631, It remained in the Moore family until 1888. when it came into the 
possession of J, Howard Patton, who had it remounted. It shows the flint lock very well. 

whom they immediately shot like a wild beast. Bouquet's loss was eight 
officers and one hundred and fifteen men, undoubtedly greater than that of 
the enemy. The first battle lasted seven hours, the second about six. The 
weakened army moved only to Bushy Run that afternoon, where they en- 
camped for the night. During the march to Fort Pitt, twenty-four miles, 
they were annoyed more or less by small attacks, but reached their destina- 
tion without further severe loss. Though the contestants were nearly 
equally matched as to numbers. Bouquet had fewer troops than the enemy. 
The Indians never fought with more fury, and were equalled only by the 
valor of the Highlanders. A great deal has been said and written about 
this battle. The consensus of opinion in history is that it was one of the 
ablest contested battles ever fought in America between white men and 
Indians. It was fought on and near the land of Andrew Byerly, about 
twenty-six miles from Fort Ligonier, and about eight miles northwest from 
•Greensburg. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 31 

Colonel Henry Bouquet was born in Switzerland in 1720, and almost 
from his boyhood was a soldier, first as a cadet, and then under the King 
of Sardinia. Next he enlisted in the Holland Guards, after which he was 
made lieutenant-colonel of the Swiss Guards (1748). In 1754 he was made 
lieutenant-colonel of a regiment organized by the Duke of Cumberland 
for service in the American colonies, and came to America in 1755. He was 
fond of society, and became a great favorite in Philadelphia, where he 
was stationed. His personal appearance was commanding and dignified. 
He, though a Swiss, wrote the English language with an exactness much 
superior to the average foreign officers of his day. Naturally he was full 
of resources in times of emergency, and was without the arrogance of 




Block House at Fork of the Ohio, built 1764. by Henry Bouquet. Still 

standing, now the property of the Daughters of the American 

Revolution of Allegheny County. 

many of the officers of his time. Unlike Braddock, he almost intuitively 
acquired a practical knowledge of Indian warfare. No soldier in America 
of foreign birth so distinguished himself in this direction as he. Often, 
when necessary, he penetrated dark ravines in advance of his men, armed 
with a rifle and playing the role of a scout. The year following the battle 
of Bushy Run he organized a force which set out from Fort Pitt and invaded 
the Indian country as far as the Muskingum valley in Ohio. He baffled 
the savages at every point, and so chastised them that they were glad to 
sue for peace. The result was the "Treaty of Bouquet" (1764). The 
assembly of Pennsylvania and the Burgesses of Virginia adopted addresses 



32 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXl V. 

of gratitude and recommended h;m to His Majesty, King George III, for 
promotion. He was accordingly made a brigadier-general and sent to 
British America in charge of the English armies, where he died suddenly 
in 1767. It was on this second expedition (1764), that he built the now famous 
block house of Pittsburgh, a cut of which is here given. 

Guyasutha, commanding the Indians at Bushy Run. was a chief of the 
Senecas, and with him were members of the Ohio tribes. He, too, was a 
strong warrior, though by no means so powerful as Pontiac. He was a real 
savage, without mercy, and never made peace save when compelled to. 
When Washington made his famous trip to Venango (i753). Guyasutha ac- 
companied him as a guide. Washington thought kindly of him, and paid 
him a visit at his house in 1770, when on his way to the Ohio, at which 
time he savs the chief treated him with great kindness. 




6fff£^ COUZ/T/ 



MAP OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY, SHO' 




JG ROUTE TAKEN BY GEN. FORBES 



CHAPTER II 



The Grant to William Penn.— Disputed Boundaries. — Mason and Dixon's Line.— Indian 
Purchases. — Military Permits. — Titles, etc. 

In order to understand the methods by which our country was settled, 
and by which our titles were granted, the reader must glance at our earlier 
history and its effects upon our Province prior to the opening of the land office 
in 1769. 

All of the Province of Pennsylvania was granted by Charles II of England 
to William Penn for services which his father, Admiral Penn, had rendered 
the English government in various European wars. These wars had 
brought the royal army to riiin, and the monarch himself to the verge of 
bankruptcy. Through the stately courts of Windsor Castle the bankrupt 
monarch wandered back and forth, trying to devise a means of paying this 
debt of 10.000 pounds. Finally, a grant of land was determined on, and 
with the result that our province, unlike any other in America, was granted 
solely to an individual and not to a company or colony, as the others had 
been. 

William Penn began a settlement in his Province at Philadelphia in 
1682. It was never called a colony, as other settlements were, but a "Prov- 
ince," indicating, in some degree, that its government and direction was 
under the dominion of one man. The heirs and descendants of Penn were 
called Proprietaries, and the country which they governed a Province, 
or a Proprietary Government. From William Penn's first settlement in 
Philadelphia, his policy was primarily one of peace with the Indians. 
Though his title to the land was preeminent, yet he repurchased these 
lands from the natives ; these lands which were already his own by a 
royal grant. In this way the Province was saved much bloodshed, and 
only when his pacific principles in dealing with the Indians were for- 
gotten or disregarded was our western section deluged in blood. 

W^illiam Penn's grant began at the Delaware River, near the 40th 
degree of north latitude, and extended west in a straight line a distance 
of five degrees of longitude, and thence north to Lake Erie. When it was 



34 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

finally surveyed there was no doubt about its boundaries. But, at the 
time of the first settlement of our county, the boundary of Virginia con- 
flicted, as it was then believed, with our territory. In 1609 the Virginia 
Company had been chartered by James I. By their charter, though 
it had been revoked in 1624, they laid claim to southwestern Pennsylvania 
and Ohio, and all of the territory north and west to the Pacific Ocean. 
The Virginia authorities claimed that Penn's grant of five degrees west 
of the Delaware would not reach beyond the Allegheny Mountains, or, at 
all events not west of the Monongahela River. This river flowing nearly 
north, and the Allegheny River, flowing south, would have made a natural 
western boundary for Pennsylvania. The Virginia authorities claimed 
further that they had fought for this district to wrest it from the French 
and Indians, in the armies of Braddock and Forbes, and that the territory 
had been already settled to a considerable extent by people from their 
colony who had been guarded and protected in every way by Virginia. 
These pretensions were somewhat arrogant, and, in the main, ill founded 
for, while Virginia soldiers were fighting in western Pennsylvania, our 
soldiers, enlisted by the same authority, were in the army sent to the 
northern lakes. 

The southern boundary had been in dispute, too, but in 1767 Lord 
Baltimore, Governor of Maryland, arranged with the Penns that two sur- 
veyors should survey the line and forever determine the boundary between 
Maryland and Pennsylvania. The surveyors chosen were Charles Mason 
and Jeremiah Dixon, but their authority extended west only as far as 
western Maryland. The line they located has since been known as "Mason 
and Dixon"s Line", but it did not settle definitely the line west of Mary- 
land, though Governor Farquier and the Virginia authorities never ser- 
iously doubted its western location after that. Of course it settled noth- 
ing as to the western boundary line of western Pennsylvania, and Virginia 
continued to claim the land between the Monongahela and the Ohio rivers. 
They sold lands in that section at lower rates than the Pennsylvania au- 
thorities were selling them in any section, and the latter discouraged all 
settlements in the disputed territory until the boundaries could be deter- 
mined. The reasoning on the part of, both colony and province was obvious. 
To Virginia it was a clear gain to sell this land at any price, for the author- 
ities did not hope to hold it under the ultimate decision. But Pennsylvania 
had plenty of land for sale in undisputed territory, and why, therefore, 
sell and improve lands which might some day fall within the domain of 
Virginia? Moreover, it was the policy of the Pennsylvania authorities to 
settle lands gradually as they went west, so that frontier settlers miglit 
unitedly protect themselves against the Indians. But there was another 
still greater reason why, as far as possible, they discouraged all settlements 
in this section. William Penn, as has been said, purchased or repurchased 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



35 



his lands from the Indians, and he so thoroughly implanted this pacific 
principle in the minds of his sons and representatives that though he had 
then (1/68) been dead fifty years, they were still following his precepts in 
this matter. The Proprietaries never willingly permitted any one to 
settle on land in a district or section which had not been purchased by them 
from the Indians. Of course, the Indians were gradually receding before 
the white race. They were by nature a wandering tribe, and the white 
race was naturally progressive and aggressive. Those purchases were 
made at treaties between the Indians and the white men. At these treaties 
both races were represented, and no territory was supposed to be ceded by 
the Indians to the white race, that is, purchased from them, except for 
valuable concessions on the part of the white race, and except upon a 
mutual agreement entered into between the representatives of the white 
race and the representative Indians in the treaty. These treaties from time 
to time secured to the Indians certain districts over which they were to 
have "sole and despotic" dominion, in return for others which were ceded 
to the white race. The districts thus ceded to the white men were called 
"purchases." With but slight provocation, the Indians broke their treaties, 
but it is doubtful whether they ever, as a race, flagrantly broke a regularly 
authorized treaty without some unnecessary provocation or reason given 
them by the white settlers. jLi3G2*^0 

At the treaty at Albany in 1754, all lands lying west of the Susquehanna 
ri\'er to the limits of Pennsylvania were supposed to be ceded to or pur- 
chased l3y the white men. But the Indians very soon discovered that 
their representatives in the treaty did not understand the location of the 
western boundary, nor the points of the compass, as well as the white rep- 
resentatives, for by this treaty they had parted with all their rights as far 
west as Ohio. Much of this land had been virtually secured to them 
by former treaties between the white race and the Six Nations, viz.: 
the Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Senecas and Tuscaroras. 
To say the least, the purchase at the Albany treaty was irregularly (if not 
fraudulently) gained from them. So flagrant was this fraud perpetrated 
on the Indians that Governor Morris in 1755 issued a proclamation in 
which he denounced the Albany purchase as a fraud which he said was 
an afifront to the whole world. It took from the natives, said he, that 
which had been virtually ceded to them, and with which they had not 
knowingly parted, and was so sweeping in its dimensions that it left 
them no country east of Ohio to roam over and call their own. The white 
representatives of the Albany treaty defended their actions by giving out 
that they, too, were ignorant of the geography of western Pennsylvania, 
and by the terms of the purchase had received much more than they in- 
tended. This may have been true. 

This, as we have observed before, was one of the great incentives which 



36 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

promued the Indians to unite with the French in opposing Braddock, 
and which spurred them on to the violence and bloodshed which followed 
in the nexi three years after his defeat. The white race thus paid dearly 
for the actions of their incompetent if not dishonest representatives in the 
Albany treaty. 

For this, as a further reason, the Proprietaries opposed the settlement 
of our territory. They had no right to grant lands in this section except 
by virtue of the Albany purchase, which they admitted and published was 
fraudulently obtained, and to grant them would have been at least in 
violation of the implied prior rights of the Indians. There were several 
of these treaties by which this section was practically secured to the 
Indians, the principal ones being those of 1736, 1749 and 1758. 

But far above and paramount to the rights of the Proprietaries, were 
the reserved privileges of the King of England. At will he had the right 
to send his armies anywhere in America, to make conquests, open roads, 
establish military posts, and even to support here a standing army, if his 
policy demanded it. When the French and Indian war was terminated in 
favor of England, the Crown secured the Canadas as well as the boundless 
west. The military posts built by the French fell into possession of the 
English. These had to be kept up, and for the purpose of supplies alone, 
if for no other reason, a communication had to be kept up between them 
and with the eastern settlements as a base of supplies for the garrisons. 
Most of the forts, whether built by the French or English, were garrisoned 
all the time, and all of them part of the time. Generall}' the commandant 
was an English officer, though sometimes he was an American. These 
fort commanders were delegated the power, under certain restrictions, to 
grant permits to any one to settle on, occupy and improve lands near the 
forts or on military roads leading from one fort to another. This seemed 
necessary, too, for the sustenance of the garrison. These settlers, particu- 
larly after the first year, raised farm products in abundance to supply 
themselves, and were glad to sell a sufficient amount to supply the garri- 
son. In this way alone, perhaps, the garrison could be supported. It was 
a scheme of the great war minister. William Pitt, and was worthy of him, 
the most acute intellect of his day. The commandants did not grant 
absolute titles, but titles which might be perfected afterwards by comply- 
ing with such regulations as the Proprietaries might require. The Eng- 
lish government never even recognized the Indians' claim to the land, and, 
of course, never questioned Penn's or his successors' titles. 

In the meantime hundreds of settlers had located in our section, many 
with military titles, and many without any right and in direct disobed- 
ience to the mandates of the Proprietaries, who did not allow private indi- 
viduals to settle here at all. They squatted on land which they thought 
desirable and hoped eventually to become its owners. It was wisdom on 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 37 

the part of the Proprietaries to keep out these settlers, for their presence 
was a constant menace to the Indians, who did not and could not know but 
that they were there by grant of the Penns, and, therefore, in violation of 
their treaties. Several acts were passed to prohibit settlers from locating 
on these proscribed lands, and on February 13, 1768, an act was passed 
which provided that any one having settled here without permission, and 
who should neglect to remove after a legal notice was served on him to 
do so, should, after being convicted of such neglect, "be punished with 
death without the benefit of the clergy." There was a severe penalty, im- 
prisonment and fine, imposed on those who even hunted turkeys or deer 
or other wild animals in the prohibited district. Of course, these drastic 
measures did not apply to those who had long before settled here, nor to 
those who settled by military permits. Most of those adventurous spirits 
who were determined to come here, evaded the law in a measure by secur- 
ing military permits, and these were granted right readily by the accom- 
modating commandants. The following is a copy of a military permit, 
wliich needs no explanation : 

"By Arthur St. Clair, Late Lieut, in his Majesty's Si.xtieth Regt. of foot, having 
oare of His Majesty's Fort at Ligonier. 

"I have given permission to Frederick Rohrer to cultivate a certain piece of Land 
in the neighborhood of Fort Ligonier, over a certain creek, which empties into the Loyal- 
hanna known by the name of Coal Pit Creek : Beginning at a White Oak standing on 
a spring and marked with three letters F X R and running from thence to another tree 
marked with the same letters and standing on another spring called Falling Spring, and 
from these two marked trees to the said Coal Pit Creek supposed to contain two hun- 
dred acres: He the said Frederick Rohrer being willing to submit to all orders of the 
Commander in Chief, the Commanding officer of the District and of the Garrison. 
Given under my hand at Ligonier this nth day of .\pril, 1767. Ar. St. Clair." 



The Proprietaries, fearing an outbreak of the Indians, did everything 
they could to keep all other settlers ofif the prohibited district. Yet, in spite 
of all opposition, this section of Pennsylvania was rapidly filling up. Had 
there been nothing to prevent its settlement save the Indians, it would 
have been filled up almost at once with an aggressive pioneer element who 
would have made short work of the aboriginal race. Settlers came west by 
the Braddock road and by the Forbes road, the only highways open, and, 
both these ways traversing our county, a great many settled here. The 
Indians were always at war among themselves, and no doubt often killed 
each other. But when a dead Incban was found, the murder was always 
attributed to the white settlers. Nevertheless, George Crogan, a brave, 
loyal and most capable white settler and Indian diplomat at Redstone, 



38 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

reported many Indians killed by white settlers, and insisted on the Pro- 
prietaries devising some means to stop it effectually. These early settlers, 
it may be inferred, were a stubborn race and accustomed to roughness. 
Crogan's representations were never disbelieved nor cjuestioned. He was 
undoubtedly correct in his report. 

In April and May of 1768 a preliminary treaty was held at Fort Pitt. 
Crogan was the leading spirit among the white people, and there were 
about 1700 Indians present. Alany presents were given to the Indians, 
but no agreement or settlement of difficulties was arrived at. It was rather 




SIR WILLIAM JOHNSTON. 

H friendly meeting, and the Indian spirit was somewhat allayed, but the 
settlers would not remove, and more were constantly arriving. The 
authorities, therefore, knew that a general Indian war might be expected 
almost any time. 

One of the most prominent men then living in America was General 
Sir William Johnston. He lived near the present city of Johnstown, in New 
York, and was, all things being considered, the ablest diplomat in Indian 
affairs in this country. He had managed many treaties, and was thorough- 
ly honest and thoroughly trusted by both races. He had at the age of 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 39 

nineteen come to America in 1734 because of a disappointment in love in 
Ireland, it is said, and settled in the Mohawk Valley in New York, where 
he managed and gradually acquired large tracts of land and traded ex- 
tensively with the Indians. He became very wealthy, and built a stately 
mansion, which is yet standing near Johnstown. He was married to a 
Dutch woman, and upon her death married a handsome Indian girl. He 
was ecjually a leader, whether among the well bred citizens of his native 
land, or among the savages of America, among each class adapting him- 
self readily to their habits of life. He had been a major-general in the 
French and Indian ^^'ar, and was afterward knighted by George I. The 
novel, "Cardigan," by Chambers, will be instructive to the reader if he 
is further interested in Indian life, or in Sir William and his marvellous 
power among them. He had great influence either to end or prevent In- 
dian outbreaks. 

So now, when the Indians of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and 
Ohio were rapidly putting on their war paint, and when the trembling 
wife and mother scarcely knew when she parted with her husband and child 
in the morning whether she would ever see them again or not, all sections 
turned to Sir William as the arbitrator of the difficulties between the white 
and the Indian race. He suggested and called a convention at Fort Stan- 
wix, in New York, in the fall of 1768. By his great power over all represen- 
tatives most of the Indian grievance^ were redressed, tomahawks were 
buried, arrows were broken, and peace and harmony was secured. The 
final treaty was reached November 5th, 1768, and by its terms all territory 
from a point where the Susquehanna crosses the New York line, down to 
the south-west corner of Pennsylvania, including the Allegheny, Cone- 
maugh, Alonongahela and Youghiogheny river valleys, was conveyed to 
the Proprietaries. This was and is yet called "The New Purchase," and 
embraces the present territory of Westmoreland county. It was to us 
therefore the most important of all purchases, and was the last made by 
the Penns from the Indians. The consideration paid to the Indians is 
said to hkve been $10,000 in presents and money and unlimited rum. 

This, of course, opened up the territory so that the Proprietaries could 
grant lands in this section if they saw fit. There was accordingly a great 
clamor for land in western Pennsylvania. The east, they said, was over- 
populated, and their ambitious young men who wanted more land could 
not be provided for. Perhaps the very fact of settlement in this section 
having been so long prohibited, made the young pioneer all the more 
anxious to locate here. We were not then very far removed from England, 
with its large landed estates. The use of coal had not been discovered, 
and every land owner thought he should have enough timber to furnish 
fuel for him and his descendants forever. While they were necessarily 
wasteful of timber in clearing land they nevertheless reserved an abund- 



40 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



ance. Our people were almost purely an agricultural people, and nothing 
so pleased them as broad acres of land. Besides, there were many com- 
ing here from Europe, who had been held down by the landlord's heel of 
oppression, and -whose great cry and burning desire was large tracts of 
land. 

It had always been the custom of Penn and of his successors to re- 
serve sections of land for themselves. The proportion was generally about 
one acre of .reserved land in ten acres sold. This custom was begun in 
1700 and kept up constantly for three-fourths of a century. There were 
two such reservations in our county. The first was called the "Manor of 
Denmark," and was situated on the Forbes road, where the battle of Bushy 
Run was fought, and contained four thousand eight hundred and sixty-one 
acres. Manor station of the Pennsylvania railroad marks its location. 
The second was known as "Penn's Lodge," containing five thou- 
sand five hundred and sixty-eight acres, and is now within the limits of 
Sewickley township. The latter is rich in agricultural wealth, and the 
former was underlaid with bituminous coal. But the Penns did not sell 
all of this reserved land. They were Philadelphians, and, when the Revo- 
lution came, manv of that city's best people were Tories, and among them 
were the Penns. They took sides with England and against the colonies. 
In these reservations they had retained absolute rights of government. They 
could make laws, establish courts, appoint judges, and grant or withhold any 
special privilege they saw fit. Our state government by its representatives 
which followed the Declaration of Independence, rightly reasoned that a power 
siding with a foreign nation at war with us should not hold such dominion 
over any considerable part of a free commonwealth. Therefore, on June 28, 
1779, they passed the "Divesting Act," which took from the Penns most of 
their territory, leaving them only their private reservations, and vested it in 
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Penns were, of course, properly 
recompensed for it. It will therefore appear that the titles to lands in these 
two sections may be traced to the Penns, even though granted after the date of 
tlie "Divesting Act." All other titles granted after that date, June 28, 1779. 
were granted by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, though all titles between 
April 3, 1769, and the state's independence were granted by the Penns. 

The land office was opened for warrants from the new purchase in 
1769. The date was April 3d. The method of parting with land adopted 
by the Proprietaries has been practically unchanged even to this day. The 
party desiring land from the Provincial government first made an application 
for it. Upon this application a warrant was issued. A warrant was not a 
title in itself, but an order from the Land Office to have the tract applied for 
located and surveyed, and was directed to the surveyor-general, who in per- 
son or by deputy surveyed it and returned the survey tc the Land Office. Then, 
if there was no irregularity or no prior claimant, the land was conveyed u_v 



HISTORY Of WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 41 

the state to the appHcant by a patent under the seal of the Commonwealth 
and the signature of the governor. From the foregoing it will be learned 
that no warrant fo.r land in Westmoreland county antedated 1768, the year of 
the Fort Stanwix Treaty and the New Purchase, though we have many set- 
tlements which are older than these titles. 

Those who had settled and improved their lands were now allowed to per- 
fect their titles by securing warrants and patents. A preference of location 
was shown to those who had served in the army, and likewise to those who 
had settled by military permits. But warrants were not issued till 1772 to 
those who had made improvements or had land surveyed without some right 
to do so. After that, as far as it was possible to da so without imposing on the 
rights of others, the Land Office authorities, when it came to grant titles, 
recognized the claims of the enthusiastic pioneer who had settled here in de- 
fiance of law and authority. But the titles to some lands within the present 
limits of our county settled in this way were involved in almost endless liti- 
gation. In some instances these tracts were sold often more than once, before 
a title from the Proprietaries or the Commonwealth was possible. From this 
and other complications arose land litigation which for almost a century per- 
plexed the minds of the ablest lawyers and judges we have yet produced. They 
were known as land lawyers, a title which is almost unknown to our generation. 



CHAPTER III 



Formation of County. — First Courts. — Elections. 

The reader may wonder why, when the settlers hved so remote from their 
county seat, they were so slow about securing the erection of a new county. 
This will appear all the more remarkable when he glances at the length of time 
intervening between the formation of new counties coming westward. Phil' 
adelphia, Bucks and Chester counties were formed by William Penn when the 
Province was formed in 1682. They have always been known as the Quaker 
counties. Next, coming westward, was Lancaster county, erected in 1729. 
Twenty years afterward came York county, in 1749, and Cumberland in 1750. 
Bedford was erected out of the western part of Cumberland twenty-two years 
later, in 1772. 

The explanation is a very simple one. A new county had to be erected by 
an Act of Assembly, and the old counties had a preponderating influence in 
that body. Each county wanted to retain its political power, and, but for the 
desire on the part of the Proprietaries to sell lands in the newly formed coun- 
ties, we doubt whether they would have followed each other in their formation 
as rapidly as they did. 

The project of forming a new county out of western Cumberland county 
had been agitated for several years by Arthur St. Clair and others. It resulted 
in the formation of Bedford county, with Bedford town as a county seat. But 
still the agitation was kept up. They now asked for a county in the New Pur- 
chase, the seat of which would be west of the Allegheny mountains. Bedford 
as a county seat really suited them but little better in this respect than Cum- 
berland, for the Allegheny mountains still intervened between them and 
their county seat. 

Arthur St. Clair, Thomas Gist and Dorsey Pentecoast had been appointed 
justices for Bedford county for that section lying west of Laurel Hill. There 
was some further show of a Bedford county dominion over this western section 
of the state, for roads were laid out west of Laurel Hill, and the territory 
comprising the present Westmoreland county was divided into townships, 
and Bedford county taxes were assessed. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 43 

But they were still too far from the scat of justice to go there on busi- 
ness, or send their criminals there for trial. Bedford was seventy miles from 
Greensburg, and the means of travel were not so good then as now. Com- 
binations were formed by desperate classes to resist the power of these remote 
justices. One or two deputy sheriffs who came here from Bedford to arrest 
these evil doers were severely beaten and sent home. Indictments were pre- 
ferred against them, but the authority was too feeble. The committing mag- 
istrates were too far from the courts to make their power even felt. 

The community around Pittsburg and Ligonier had become pretty well 
settled, and there were settlements all along both Braddock's and Forbes' 
road. Those near Pittsburg were one hundred miles from their county seat, 
and were separated from it by three ranges of mountains, viz. : the Chestnut 
Ridge. Laurel Hill, and the Alleghenies. Virginia, moreover, had land for 
sale in these western parts, and at lower rates per acre than the land was sell- 
ing at in Pennsylvania. This induced many settlers to locate there instead of 
in western Pennsylvania, for rather than endure the hardships of being one 
hundred miles or more from a seat of justice, they would leave Pennsjdvania 
and purchase 'lands in Virginia. St. Clair and his friends were all this time 
urging the formation of a new county. He stood high with the Penns. He 
had been their agent for many years. He was thoroughly educated, and had 
the military distinction of having served in the army with Wolfe at Quebec. 
Through his wife, a Boston woman of high standing and culture, he had a 
great deal of wealth, and was furthermore a large owner of land west of 
Laurel Hill. His efiforts in this direction doubtless carried great weight with 
the Proprietaries. The Land Office, it will be remembered, had been opened 
in 1769, and new settlers had been coming here in caravans ever since. These 
were now headed by St. Clair, busily engaged in circulating petitions asking 
for the formation of a new county. These petitions are now preserved among 
the Penn papers in Harrisburg, and they set forth the wants and disadvantages 
of these western people very much as they are outlined above. 

In the early part of the year 1773 the Assembly took up the matter, and on 
February 26 passed the act organizing the long prayed-for new county. The 
Governor, Richard Penn, signed the bill and named its officers to serve until 
an election could be held. So far, in the selection of names for new counties, 
the Assembly, or those introducing bills, had not gotten away from the good 
old English names, and so the new county was named Westmoreland, after 
the county of the same name in England. The name was in itself somewhat 
appropriate, for here in the zt>est was, indeed more land than was then oc- 
cupied. 

The first section of the act erecting it sets forth the necessity of such a 
county as judged by the signers to the various petitions from west of Laurel 
Hill. It also bounded the new county, though in that it was necessarily some- 
what indefinite owing to the lines of Virginia and Pennsylvania not being yet 



44 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAXD COUNTY. 



definitely determined. It began at a point where the most western line of the 
Youghiogheny river crossed the boundary of Pennsylvania, thence down the 
river till it broke through Laurel Hill, thence by Laurel Hill in a northwesterly 
direction till that chain of mountains is lost, or connected with the Allegheny 
mountains: thence it followed the crest of the watershed between the west 
branch of the Susquehanna and the Allegheny rivers to a point at the head 
waters of the west branch of the Susquehanna, and from there west to the 
line of the Province, and by that line to the place of beginning. This, it will 
be seen, does not include the territory on the Ohio, or between the Ohio and 
the Monongahela rivers. That district was then claimed by Virginia, and 
Pennsylvania both, and not without reason on either side. It finally brought 
about Dunmore's war, a most unfortunate affair, as will be seen later on. 
When the dispute over this territory was finally settled it fell to Pennsylvania, 
and became for some years a very important part of Westmoreland county. 
The new county therefore practically included all the territory of the present 
counties of Westmoreland, Washington, Fayette, Greene, Allegheny, Butler. 
Beaver, Crawford, Erie, Mercer and Lawrence, and part of the counties of 
Indiana, Armstrong, Venango and Warren. Nearly one-fourth of the entire 
state of Pennsylvania was embraced in Westmoreland county, and from its 
original territory the above counties were afterwards erected. While she has 
been the mother of counties in western Pennsylvania, she is still territorially 
one of the largest in the state, and is the first in population among the strictly 
rural counties of the L^nited States. Our courts, of course, never exercised an 
extensive jurisdiction over the most remote parts of the original district, for 
they were not only but sparsely settled, but were too far away. They were 
like we were with Bedford county. Yet it is not uncommon that the first 
record titles of lands lying in many of the other counties, are found in the 
early records of Westmoreland county : particularly is this true of Allegheny 
county, which remained in Westmoreland nearly sixteen years. 

The second section of the erecting act vouchsafed to the people of the 
county the same privileges enjoyed by the old counties ; gave us one member 
in the Assembly ; one voting place for the whole territory' : and provided that 
the election should be held at the house of Robert Hanna until a court house • 
should be built. Robert Hanna lived on the Forbes road, about four miles 
nortliwest of Greensburg, and some of the voters from our most northern 
"precincts" must have traveled several hundred miles if they came out to 
vote. 

The next section gave the supreme court and its decisions the same 
authority in this as in other counties, and authorized them to hold courts of 
general jail delivery for those charged with capital offences, as in other cnim- 
ties. The next section authorized the Governor to appoint a sufficient number 
of justices to hold courts of quarter sessions, common pleas, etc., and fixed 
that the time for holding them should be the Tuesday before the Bedford 
county courts in January, July and October of each year. It also directed that 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY 



4o 



these courts should be held at the house of Robert Hanna till a court house 
should be erected. It further made a provision for the collection 
and application of such taxes as were already assessed in Bedford 
county on property within the new county, and provided for the 
appointment of trustees to build a court house and jail. It also provided for 
the trial of suits from this section already brought in Bedford county, and di- 
rected that the sheriff of Bedford county should take charge of the first elec- 
tion in Westmoreland county. 

The day after the passage of the act, Governor Richard Penn sent to the 
Assembly a list of names of those he had selected for justices of the county 
courts and justices of the peace. These names were : James Hamilton, Joseph 
Turner, William Logan. Richard Peters, Lynford Lardner, Benjamin Chew, 
Thomas Cadwalader, James Tilghman, Andrew Allen, Edward Shippen, Jr., 
William Crawford, Arthur St. Clair, Thomas Gist, Alexander McKee, Robert 
Hanna, \MlIiam Lochry, George Wilson, William Thompson, Aeneas McKay, 
Joseph Speer, Alexander McLean, James Cavett, William Bracken, James Pol- 
lock. Samuel Sloan, and Michael Rugh, Esqrs. 

A few words of explanation concerning the duties of these justices may 
not be out of place here. Any three of them had power to hold the ordinary 
common pleas and quarter sessions courts. The act of September 9, 1759, 
provided that "persons of the best discretion, capacity, judgment and integ- 
rity" should be commissioned for the common pleas and orphans' court, any 
three of whom were empowered to act. All were appointed for life on good 
behavior. By the constitution of 1776 the term was limited to seven years, but 
the constitution of 1790 restored the former tenure. The act of 1722 also 
provided for the appointment of a supreme court of three judges (afterwards 
increased to four) before whom the proceedings of the county court could be 
reviewed. This supreme court had further jurisdiction over all capital cases, 
and for this purpose they were compelled to sit in each county twice a year. 
Treason, murder, manslaughter, robbery, horse stealing, arson, burglary, 
witchcraft, etc., were all punishable by death. Any three of the above justices, 
therefore, could hold our ordinary courts, but they could not try a case the 
punishment of which was death. They were also justices of the peace, and 
could separately hear cases as our justices do now. Some of the above named 
justices were really great men, and are spoken of elsewhere in this work. They 
were not learned in the law, but were men of high standing in the community. 
Westmoreland county was therefore erected during the proprietary gov- 
ernment of the Penns. and placed under the reign of the English law. On 
April 6. 1773, in the reign of George III, the W^estmoreland courts were first 
opened at Hanna's house. There were several houses near, and the place 
soon became known as Hannastown. W^hen court was opened, William 
Crawford presided on the bench, and had two associate justices with him. 
The house in which the courts were held was a two-story log house which 



46 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

was also used as a dwelling house by Robert Hanna. This was the first 
court held west of the Allegheny Mountains, where justice, in its rude tem- 
ple of unhewn logs, was administered according to the forms and rules of 
the English law. 

The first business attended to by the court on the morning of April 6, 1773, 
was to divide the county into townships. They made eleven townships cover- 
ing the territory from the Youghiogheny River to Kittanning, and from 
Laurel Hill to the Ohio river. These townships were named Fairfield, Don- 
egal, Huntingdon, Mt. Pleasant, Hempfield, Pitt, Tyrone, Spring Hill, Ala- 
nillin, Rostraver and Armstrong. The names are not all found now in our 
countv. In the final division of the territory then embraced in Westmoreland, 
some of them fell into other counties, where they still exist by the same names. 
From the minutes of the court kept very completely, we learn that ;\It. 
Pleasant township was bounded by the Loyalhanna on the north, then ex- 
tended through the Chestnut Ridge to Crabb Tree Run, thence down Crabl) 
Tree to the Forbes road, thence by a straight line to Braddock's road and 
along it to Jacob's Creek, thence up Jacob's Creek to Fairfield township, 
on Chestnut Ridge. Hempfield was bounded on the north and west by the 
Conemaugh and Kiskiminetas rivers, and extended thence down past 
Brush Run and by Brush Creek to the mouth of the Youghiogheny River, 
and up the river to the mouth of Jacob's Creek to the Mt. Pleasant town- 
ship line. Spring Hill embraced all beyond the Youghiogheny River, and 
is now in Fayette and Washington counties. Armstrong embraced all 
north of the Conemaugh and Loyalhanna. 

The next business of the new court was to empannel a grand jury, with 
John Carnahan as foreman. They then a^Dpointed constables and road super- 
visors. The constables had immediate business, for several jurors who had 
been summoned to appear were not present, and these were sent for, and when 
brought in by the new constables they were promptly fined for their non-at- 
tendance. The next business was to license certain citizens to sell intoxicating 
liquor. There were : Erasmus Bock, John Barr, William Elliot, George Kelly 
and Joseph Erwin. The latter was a tenant of Robert Hanna and kept the 
tavern at Hannastown, and Hanna being on the bench, of course took care of 
his tenant. But there is no evidence that any vvho applied were refused a li- 
cense. The court furthermore fixed the rates to be charged by the tavern 
keepers licensed, and directed the clerk of courts to make a copy of thes(? 
rates for each one licensed, who should pay to the clerk one shilling and six 
pence for making it out. The rates fixed were spread on the minutes of the 
court and were as follows : 

Whiskey, per gill, 4 pence; West India Rum, per gill, 6 pence; Continent, per gill, 
4 pence; Toddy, per gill, i shilling; One bowl of West India rum toddy in which there 
shall be Yi pint of loaf sugar, i shilling 6 pence ; A bowl of Continent, i shilling ; Maderia 
Wine, per bottle, 7 shillings and 6 pence; Lisbon Wine, 6 shillings; Western Toland 



HISTORY OT JrESTMORELAND COUNTY. 47 

\\ine5, 5 shillings; Grain per quart. 2I2 pence; Hay and stabling per night, i shilling; 
Pasturage per night or 24 hours, 6 pence; Cider per quart, i shilling; Strong Beer per 
quart, 8 pence. 

The incompatibility of office to which we are now accustomed was not 
known in that day. One man could hold as many offices as he could secure. 
Arthur St. Clair was our first prothonotary antl clerk of courts, which offices 
he held in Bedford county. But he was also a justice, and sometimes sat on 
the common pleas bench. Occasionally too, he conducted a case, perhaps in 
the absence of a regular attorney. He kept the court records, and during the 
time of Indian incursions and during Dunmore's War. he took them to his 
house in Ligonier for safe keeping. James Brison was employed by St. Clair 
as his office clerk, and remained in the office some years after St. Clair re- 
signed to enter the Revolution. Those who will take the time to examine our 
first court records kept by Brison will feel ainply repaid, and will be delighted 
with their legibility and artistic beauty. After one hundred and thirty-two 
vears they are almost as bright and legible as though they were written but yes- 
terday. 

John Proctor was appointed sheriff, a position he had held in Bedford 
county, though he lived west of Laurel Hill, in what is now Unity township. 
Part of the time he resided in Hannastown, otherwise on his farm near St. 
Mncent's monastery. His sureties were William Laughry and iRobert Hanna, 
and they were approved in the presence of Michael Hufnaagle, by Arthur St. 
Clair, all of whom were justices. Proctor was a man of sterling qualities, and, 
though appointed by the Penns, he took sides against them when their Tory 
principles brought thein into a conflict with the people. He was a colonel in 
the militia of his day, a regiment of Associators brought into being by the 
gathering war clouds. During the Revolution he held many offices of trust. 
With Thomas Galbraith he was appointed to seize the property of Tories. 
Later he was a member of the Assembly, His last days were somewhat 
clouded, for his property was sold by the sheriff in 1791, and his family were 
afterwards very poor. He was a Presbyterian, and his house was used as a 
preaching place before a church was erected. He is buried in Unity cemetery, 
in an unknown grave, near his old but more fortunate neighbor, William Find- 
ley. We shall often have occasion to refer to John Proctor in the ensuing 
pages. 

The election which was provided for in the erecting act was held at Hanna's 
house on October i, 1773. Proctor was elected sheriff, and was commissioned 
again October i8th. Joseph Beeler, James Smith and James Cavett were 
elected first county commissioners. James Kinkaid and William Harrison 
were chosen coroners. Benjamin Davis, Charles Hitchman, Christopher Hays, 
Philip Rodgers, James IMcClean and Alexander Barr were elected asses- 
sors for the various parts of the county. All were sworn into office by St. 
Clair. The commissioners proceeded at once to adjust debts and levy a 



48 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

county tax. William Thompson was elected as our first assemblyman. 
For eight years the entire county voted at Hannastown, and at several 
elections there were less than one hundred votes cast. In 1783 there were 
two other districts provided for, but when Fayette county was erected in 
1784, one of them, the Redstone district, fell almost entirely within the new 
county. So the legislature changed the district so that those electors who 
still remained in Westmoreland should vote at William Moore's house, in 
Rostraver township. The act of September 13, 1785, redivided the county 
into five districts ; all living north of the Conemaugh and Kiskiminetas 
rivers were to vote at Daniel Dixon's house ; all in Ligonier valley between 
Fayette county and the Conemaugh river, were to vote at Samuel Jameson's 
house ; all in Huntington and Rostraver townships were to vote at William 
Moore's house, in the latter township; those in the Fort Pitt district, now 
Allegheny county, were to vote at Devereux Smith's house ; and all who 
were not included in these four districts were to vote at Hannastown. By 
act of September 19, 1786, all in the Hannastown district were to vote there- 
after at Greensburg, then called Newtown. On September 29, 1789, Derry 
township was erected into an election district, and Moses Donald's house 
was named as the voting place. By act of January 11, 1803, Franklin town- 
ship was annexed to the Greensburg district. By act of April 4, 1805, 
Fairfield township, including the present township of Ligonier, was made 
a separate district, with a voting place at William Ramsey's, now known as 
Fort Palmer, and by the same act Donegal was made a district, with the 
voting place at Major George Ambrose's. 



CHAPTBR IV 



Selection of a County Seat.— Old Hannastown .—Erection of a Jail. — Sentences of the 
Court. — Slavery. 

The Act of Assembly creating the county, as we have said, provided for 
the appointment of trustees to locate and erect public buildings. These trus- 
tees were appointed by the Supreme Executive Council, the legislative body 
of the state, and were Robert Hanna, Joseph Erwin, John Cavett, George 
Wilson and Samuel Sloan. Hanna must have been a leader of men, for in this 
case, as in many others, he managed to have matters go his way. He was 
an Irishman, and had settled on the Forbes road, about midway between 
Ligonier and Fort Pitt. There was considerable demand for a stopping 
place, and he converted his house into a tavern. As early as 1770 he had 
several other Irish settlers near him, and in 1773 the Hanna settlement had 
grown to a small town, and was the only one on that section of the Forbes 
road. He rented his house finally to Joseph Erwin, to keep the tavern, and 
in some way these two induced Sloan, who was a neighboring settler, to 
vote with them on the question of location. Thus there were three 
out of five trustees who voted for Hannastown as a county seat. It was not 
without great opposition that this selection was made. Aeneas McKay, a 
very bright and prominent citizen of Pittsburg, on March 3, 1773, wrote 
a letter to Arthur St. Clair in which he greatly deprecated the selection of 
Hannastown. After expressing surprise that the new county should thus 
be crippled in its infancy, he says : 

"Where is the convenience for transacting business there, since there are neither 
houses, tables nor chairs. The people must sit at the roots of trees and on stumps, and 
in case of rain the lawyers' books and papers must be exposed to the weather. Nothing 
can be done properly except receiving fees, and everybody attending court, except the 
lawyers, must be suflferers. 

"The whole inhabitance of Pittsburg exclaimed against this partiality. If I had as 
much influence among the great as you (St. Clair), I would try to have trustees selected 
from Philadelphia, by which means Pittsburg could not fail to be selected. But if they 
are selected from hereabouts, ten to one Joe Erwin, the tavern keeper, will prevail." 
4 



50 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

We must also read St. Clair's letter to Joseph Shippen, president of the 
Supreme Executive Council. It is dated at Ligonier, January 15, 1774, 
(See Pa. Arch. vol. 4, page 471). 

"Sir: This letter will be delivered to you by Mr. Hanna, one of the trustees of 
Westmoreland county. To some manovers of his I believe the opposition to fixing 
the County Town at Pittsburg is chiefly owing, as it is to his interest that it should con- 
tinue where the law has fixed the courts pro tempore; he lives there, used to keep a public 
house there and has now on that expectation, rented his house at an extravagant price. 
Erwin another trustee adjoins, and is also a public-house keeper. A third trustee, Sloan, 
lives in the neighborhood which always makes a majority for continuing the courts at 
the present place. A passage in the law for erecting a county is that the courts shall 
be held at Hanna's house till a court house and jail are built. This puts it in their power 
to continue them as long as they please for a little management might prevent a court 
house from being built these twenty years. That you will excuse inacuracies as I write 
in greatest hurry, Mr. Hanna holding the horse while I write. I will see you early in the 
spring." 

On October 3, 1774, the trustees made the following report.: 

"We being appointed trustees for the county of Westmoreland to make a report for 
a proper place, having accurately examined and considered the same, do report that 'tis 
our opinion that Hannas Town seems to be the most centrical and fit to answer the pur- 
pose intended. We are further of the opinion that should your Honor and the Honorable 
Council think the Brush Creek Manor a more proper place, it cannot be of much disad- 
vantage to the county. We pray your Honor sentiments on this head which will be 
most fully acknowledged by us. (Signed). Robert Hanna, Joseph Erwin, Samuel Sloan, 
John Cavett. 

John Cavett signed the report, but George Wilson did not. Both he and 
Cavett were opposed to its location at Hannastown. They had at first voted 
in favor of Pittsburg, and St. Clair spoke for the minority, and even then 
foretold something of the great future that place had in stoTe. He also 
favored Pittsburg, because, while it was really our territory, Virginia was 
claiming it, and he wanted to take possession and boldy assert the rights of 
the Province by founding a county town there. St. Clair also stated in a 
letter to Gov. Richard Penn that Hanna and Erwin had voted for Hannas- 
town through selfish motives. But how public-spirited St. Clair was can 
only be seen when we remember that he had then thousands of acres of land 
east of Hannastown, and very little around Pittsburg. In this, as in all 
other public matters, he easily forgot his own interests when they were in 
conflict with the general good. 

Hannastown was really not a bad selection as viewed now, where new 
counties were formed all around. It was centrally located, and, e.xcept in 
futuro, Pittsburg had very little advantage over Hannastown, for in 1775 



HISTORY .OF WESTMORELAND COUXTV. 51 

Pittsburg had only twenty-five or thirty log houses, and the fort, while 
Hannastown had at all events, nearly that many. 

The report and action of the trustees was never endorsed entirely by the 
Proprietary government, and it is doubtful if Hannastown would have be- 
come the permanent county seat, even though it had not met with disaster. 
The trustees adopted the plan feared by St. Clair in his letter above quoted. 
They never built a court house, but court was held in Hanna's house which, 
of course, was also his dwelling house. 

Hannastown was a collection of from fifteen to twenty houses built 
of hewed logs, and roofed with split shingles, or clapboards. Alost of these 
houses had but one story and a loft, the latter often accessible only by a 
ladder. The well-to-do people (for wealth has only a relative value) had 
two-story houses with two rooms and a large fireplace below. There was 
a stockade erected there in 1774 under the direction and by the advice of St. 
Clair. This undoubtedly helped the town and settlement a great deal, for the 
■early pioneers felt more secure if located near a fort or -stockade, and the 
stockade was therefore a great inducement to settlers. The town increased 
to from twenty-five to thirty log houses, a jail and stockade, when the Rev- 
olution came in 1775 and 1776, and it never grew any more, because during 
the war many of its citizens were bearing arms in defense of the colonies, 
and home improvements were sadly neglected. The best days of Hannas- 
town were from 1773 to 1776. Moving westward from the old counties 
was then at its height, and this was the popular and only highway through 
Pennsylvania. Then when the war clouds began to gather the militia mus- 
ters came into vogue, and for Westmoreland county were held at Hannas- 
town. This was a great event. Militia parade day, among our forefathers 
and for more than fifty years, remained without a rival as a means of as- 
sembling the honest yeomanry of our western section. Nearly all of our 
population then was in the country ; there were few towns, and but small 
need for them. The people raised all they ate, and with spinning wheels 
and looms manufactured nearly every thing they wore from wool and flax, 
both home products. There were no stores, in a modern sense, at Hannas- 
town. There was scarcely any thing to buy and almost no money to buy 
it with, hence the absence of stores. Whisky, rum, etc., were sold under 
license, and there was also a sale for flints, powder, lead, and a few other 
articles, but there was no occasion for anything like our country stores are 
now. 

Shortly after the courts were opened and the public officers sworn in, 
the commissioners began the erection of a jail. It was made of round logs, 
using only the largest trees. It was a square building, of one story and one 
room. It was strong enough to hold the average prisoner, and those who 
were considered dangerous or likely to break jail, were chained to the logs. 
In comparison to the number incarcerated, jail breaking was not so common 
then as now. Nearby the jail were the whipping post and pillory, for it 



52 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



must be remembered that our laws then required these instruments of 
punishment, and they were used, too, in Hannastown, as will be seen 
further on. The whipping post was a section of a small tree, about one 
foot in diameter, hewn flat on one side and firmly implanted in the ground. 
Five feet from the ground was a cross piece about six feet long, thoroughly 
fastened to it. The whippings were always public performances. \\'hen 
the wrong-doer was about to be whipped, his arms were stretched out and 
his hands or wrists were tied firmly to the ends of the crosspiece. The 
culprit was then ready to expiate his crimes and afford a public illustration 
of the vaunted majesty of the English law, "the accumulated wisdom of 
ages." The sheriff or his deputy did the whipping. Our court records 
show that this method of punishment was not by any means uncommon in 
Hannastown. The first man to be whipped was James Brigland, who in 
October, 1773, plead guilty to a felony and was sentenced by Judge William 
Crawford to receive ten lashes on his bare back, well laid on, the next morn- 
ing. Luke Picket was found guilty of stealing, and was sentenced to re- 
ceive twenty-one lashes on his bare back, well laid on, the next morning, be- 
tween the hours of eight and ten o'clock. So with Huens West, who was 
convicted of the same offense. His sentence called for but fifteen lashes. 

The pillory was made like large folding doors, and fastened between two 
upright posts. In this door were three holes, and through these holes the 
head and arms of the prisoner were passed and his arms tied. In this posi- 
tion he was forced to stand for such a period as his sentence directed. By 
the English law, which was then in force in Hannastown, any person pass- 
ing a prisoner in the pillory had a right to throw one stone at him. The 
pillory was erected out in the open, where the passer-by could exercise his 
time-honored common law right of stone casting. 

John Smith was charged with stealing, and pleaded guilty. His sen- 
tence reflects but little honor on our early courts. He was to receive 
thirty-nine lashes on the bare back, well laid on, and his ears were then to 
be cut off and nailed to the pillory ; and he was to stand one hour in the 
pillory. Fortunately our early court history is not often disgraced with 
sentences so inhuman as this. William Howard suffered one hour in the 
pillory in 1774, after having received thirty lashes on the bare back, well 
laid on. This was, moreover, in the month of January, when the tempera- 
ture is not supposed to have been very mild. 

In October, 1775, Elizabeth Smith was ordered to receive fifteen 
lashes on the bare back, well laid on. She was furthermore an indentured 
servant of James Kinkaid, who had therefore at that time a right to her 
uninterrupted services. Four days after she was whipped, James Kinkaid 
presented a petition to our courts setting forth that he had been unjustly 
deprived of her services while she was in prison, and while she was recover- 
ing from the elTects of the sentence. He therefore asked a redress for this 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 53 

loss. Judges Hanna, Lochry, Sloan and Cavett were on the bench and they 
deliberately considered his request and decreed that she should serve 
kinkaid for a period of two years after the expiration of her indenture. ' 

James AIcGill was found guilty of a felony in 1782, and was sentenced to 
a public whipping, then to the pillory, after which his right ear was to 
be cut oiT, and he was to be branded in the forehead with a hot iron. 

All of our court business of this character was conducted in the name of 
the King of England, George the Third. Instead of being headed "Common- 
wealth vs. John Smith," as is the custom now, the caption was "The King 
vs. John Smith," etc. But immediately after July 4, 1776, when the Decla- 
ration of Independence was signed, "the King" was dropped from the 
record, and "Republica" or "Respublica" were substituted, and later the 
change was made to the caption now used. 

It is not pleasant to contemplate these atrocious sentences, but they are 
matters of our court history, and are introduced here more to show the 
reader how our courts have advanced in their administration of justice in 
the past century, than for any other reason. 

Perhaps the servitude of Elizabeth Smith as refered to above needs some 
explanation. We had at this time three species of servitude, or slavery, 
in Pennsylvania, and consequently in Westmoreland county. First, there 
were indentured servants, who were bound either for life, or for a term 
of years, generally the latter. It may have been a very harmless indenture, 
and was of very common occurrence. A minor could thus be indentured by 
his parents, or when twenty-one years old could indenture himself. Some- 
times it was very simple, that is, when a father indentured his son to pay 
him a debt, or perhaps for the conveyance of a piece of land. It was, in 
any case, recognized by the law. The second class were foreigners who 
were very poor in Europe, and by indenture for a term of years secured 
5ome one to pay their passage money to America. These indentures 
were largely in the hands of speculators. The person giving the indenture 
was called a "Redemptioner," and the indenture was transferable, so that 
a speculator could gather up any number of people in foreign lands, inden- 
ture them for his own service, bring them to America, and, when here, sell 
their services to the highest bidder or at private sale. Thus the speculator 
could realize a large profit on the amount invested for passage money. 
This species of service is illustrated in the novels, "To Have and to Hold," 
and "The Redemptioner," by iMiss Alary Johnston. 

Our forefathers sanctioned all this by their laws, court decisions and ac- 
tions. It brought many inferior people to. America, and perhaps some good 
blood, too. Redemptioners were very common in Westmoreland. Many of 
our farmers and well-to-do people purchased their services. Sometimes the 
position of a Redemptioner was better than that of the negro slave in the 
South, but it is a deplorable fact that the more we look into the matter, the 



.,4 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY, 

less do we venerate our pioneer ancestors, of high pretentions and integrity. 
Before judging them too harshly, and before giving illustrations from our 
court records of the hardships of this systerii of servitude, it may be well 
to look into the condition of the country, its laws, and the age in general 
in which they lived, all of which should in some degree mitigate the severity 
of our opinion. For instance, a man in that day was allowed to beat his 
wife, if the stick he used was not thicker than the judge's thumb. A people 
are not generally better than their laws. Many who came from England 
and Ireland and settled in Western Pennsylvania purchased large tracts of 
land, and at once regarded themselves as nabobs, owners of large landed 
estates, like the nobles of England. They tried to emulate and imitate the 
weaker rather than the stronger characteristics of the landed gentry of 
Great Britain. Hugh Henry Brackenridge, afterwards justice of the su- 
preme court, and one of the brightest men of his day, in a chapter entitled 
"Modern Chivalry," says that we had men in Westmoreland county, who 
held and abused slaves and Redemptioners, who would not for a "fine cow 
have shaved their beards on Sunday." 

Our courts frecjuently in other cases than Kinkaid vs. Smith, as noticed 
above, were called on and did extend the time of servitude of Redemptioners 
because of loss of time and various reasons mentioned in the petitions of the 
masters. This can be seen in the case of George Paul vs. Margaret Butler, 
July sessions, 1773, and Semple vs. Jane Adams, July sessions, 1788, and in 
many other intervening cases. In July sessions, 1773, John Campbell 
stated by petition that his servant, Michael Henry, had been sent to jail, 
and that the petitioner had therefore sustained a loss of 2 lbs. and 17 shil- 
lings, together with much time and annoyance. He therefore asked such 
redress as the court saw fit to grant him. The court decreed that Michael 
Henry should serve him four and one half months after the expiration of 
his indenture. 

So in the case of Gutchell vs. Quilkin, at July sessions of 1773, wherein 
Andrew Gutchell sets forth that his servant, Joseph Quilkin, will not do 
his duty, but on the contrary is negligent and idle, and prays for relief 
against those from whom he purchased Quilkin. The court took Quilkin 
into its custody and issued a summons against Robert Meek, Alexander 
Bowling and William Bashers, to appear at the next session of the court 
and give sufficient reasons for selling Quilkin as a servant. 

In April sessions of 1779, George Godfrey sets forth by petition that he 
had been bought as a servant by Edward Lindsey, and l)y Lindsey sold 
to Edmund Price, and by Price sold to William Newell, and that the term 
of his servitude had expired, etc. The court heard the testimony, and where- 
as William Xewell, the last purchaser, was not in court to defend his claim 
to a longer ser\'ice, they discharged Godfrey from further services. 

After the destruction of Hannastown there were two men tried, con- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 55 

victed and hanged there. The one was an Indian named Mamachtaga, who 
\vas defended by Hugh Henry Brackenridge, then a young lawyer. Bracken- 
ridge has left a complete account of the trial. The Indian was a Delaware, 
and, though his tribe had generally been friends to the white settlers, he 
was always hostile. There was a camp of Delawares on Kilbuck Island, 
near Pittsburgh. Mamachtaga was among them, and badly intoxicated. A 
man named John Smith visited the tribe, whereupon the drunken Indian 
fell on him with a knife and killed him. Another man named Evans was 
also killed before the infuriated Mamachtaga could be overpowered. The 
Indian was confined in the guard house, the lock-up of Pittsburg being in- 
secure, and it was considered unsafe to transport him to Hannastown. Our 
ordinary judges, competent to try other cases, had no jurisdiction in 
capital cases, and there was considerable delay in sending a supreme court 
jadge here. There were several attempts in the meantime on the part of 
the citizens to secure the Indian and shoot him. Our people scarcely 
thought that an Indian had any rights before the law. Failing in this, they 
tried to force Brackenridge to take an oath not to defend him. They -.vera 
also afraid that his tribe would release him by force, or that he would 
break jail. So Robert Galbraith wrote to President Dickinson, urging him 
to send the properly qualified judges at once that the Indian might have a 
speedy trial. He also asked that the president send the death warrant 
along with them, to save time as he said, for there was no doubt about his 
conviction. The Indian gave his attorney an order on another Indian for a 
beaver skin as a fee and signed the order by his mark, which 
was the shape of a turkey-foot. His attorney exchanged the beaver skin 
for a blanket and some food, which he gave to the client, for his confinement 
was very uncomfortable. But the Indian now thought that this beaver 
skin satisfied the law for his crime; a good beaver skin, he reasoned, was 
a high price to pay for killing a white man. Judge ^NIcKean came to Han- 
nastown to try him and they had great difficulty to get him to plead "not 
guilty" ; to deny the killing was foreign to his ideas of the dignity of an 
Indian warrior, and moreover he had paid for the dead man with a beaver 
skin and how could he deny the killing? According to his belief, the killing 
of a white man was a badge of honor, that a warrior should boast of rather 
than deny. The court, however, entered his plea of "not guilty," and the 
case went on. The Indian challenged jurors, rejecting the cross, sour-look- 
ing ones, and accepting the cheerful pleasant faced men to try his case. 
Brackenridge defended him on the plea of drunkenness, and that he did 
not know what he was doing when he committed the act. This was over- 
ruled by the court, but when the savage was told through his interpreter 
that the judge would not excuse him on that account, he said he hoped the 
Great Spirit above would do so. The jury convicted him at once, as was 
pr' dieted by Galbraith. When the interpreter told him he must die, he 



56 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

asked that sheriff Orr should shoot him instead of tomahawking him, as 
he expected. When about to be sentenced, he asked that the court would 
allow him to hunt and trap and said he would give the proceeds of his work 
to the famil)- of the man he had killed. At the same time a man named 
Brady was sentenced to be branded on the hand with a red hot iron. To 
do this it was necessary to tie the hand and arm with a rope, so that a good 
letter could be made. The sheriff accordingly went out and broiught in the 
rope, branding tools, etc. The Indian, not having this part interpreted, 
thought that he was to suffer immediately and made a great ado about it. 
But when he saw Brady being tied and branded he calmed down and 
rather enjoyed it. The judges, as was the custom then in capital cases, 
wore scarlet robes, and the Indian said he thought they were in some 
way closely connected with the Great Spirit. When in jail awaiting his 
sentence, the jailor's child was taken sick. The Indian said he could dig 
roots in the woods to cure it. So, on promising not to try to escape, he was 
taken to the woods, w^here he procured the necessary herbs from which a 
medicine was brewed and given to the child, which recovered. The Indian 
did not try to escape. When the day of the execution arrived, the Indian 
wanted to die like a warrior. So he was again taken to the woods, when 
he procured herbs and with the juice painted his face red. A simple minded 
white man was to be hanged on the same day, though not for murder. The 
gallows was erected on the hill west of Hannastown, known to this day as 
Gallows Hill. It was made of two logs planted in the ground and a third 
log for a cross piece. A rope hung from the center of the cross-piece, and 
a ladder leaned against it. The prisoner to be hanged was taken up the 
ladder, the rope adjusted and then the ladder removed. The hands of the 
prisoner were tied so he could not grasp the ladder. The white man was 
hanged first, and the execution passed off all right. But the Indian, being 
a large heavy man, broke the rope and fell to the ground. As soon as he 
recovered he rose to his feet with a smile on his face. Another rope was pro- 
cured and both ropes were used. So he was strangled to death. With his 
last words he asked that his tribe should not go to war to avenge his death. 
The white man should have been sent to an insane asylum, but there were 
none such to send him to. , 

So long as St. Clair remained prothonotary, with James Brison as 
office deputy, the records are well kept. Had they continued it would have 
been well for the early history of the county. Cut St. Clair resigned and 
entered the Revolution in 1775, and after him came Michael Huffnagle. 
During his encumbency the records are very poorly kept, and many of 
them are lost. This may have, in part, resulted from the exigencies of the 
times, for they were often secreted from the marauding Indians. St. Clair 
took them to Ligonier for safe keeping at his home several times. During 
the Revolutionary period the records are the most meager. There is noth- 
ing to show, for instance, that Hannastown, the county seat, was destroyed. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



57 



nor that the county seat was removed to Greensburg. After some two 
years of service HutTnagle went to war as captain of the Eighth Battalion, 
and took the records with him, regarding them as private property. It is 
probable that he based this claim on the theory that with his own and not 
the public money, he had purchased the journals, dockets, etc. Many de- 
mands were made of him for them, but he refused to deliver them up. 
Finally the matter was carried to Thomas Wharton, president of the Su- 
preme Executive Council, for the urgent needs of the Westmoreland people; 
demanded their immediate restitution. President Wharton laid the matter 
beforr Gen. Washington in a letter urging its necessity, and asking that 
^^■^^hillgton order Huflfnagle to appear before the council to give the reason 
for their detention. (See Pa. Archives). Huflfnagle then, to save his good 
ramc with (Jen. Washington, delivered them up. The idea of an officer of a 
county retaining his records was not entirely uncommon. The abuse grew 
until 1804. when a law was passed making it obligatory, under a heavy pen- 
alty for disobedience, for the outgoing ofificer to deliver all records to his 
successor. 

By the Act of March ist, 1780, African slavery, the third species of ser- 
vitude to which we referred, was to be abolished gradually in Pennsylvania. 
Those who care to read the text of this act will find much to admire in it, 
for it is indeed a model in its expression of humane principles, and in its 
diction it is surpassed by nothing in our legislative enactments. It pro- 
vided, among other things, that any one who held negroes or mulattoes 
as slaves, should file in the office of the clerk of the quarter sessions court 
his own name, residence, etc., and a list of the names of all his slaves, and 
give the age and sex of each slave. The clerk entered these lists on the 
journal, and they are therefore well preserved. There were two hundred 
three slave holders who filed lists, but some of them owned onlv one 
slave. The entire number of slaves then reported was six hundred ninety-five 
of whom three hundred forty-two were male negroes, three hundred 
forty-nine were females, and four whose sex is not given. Eleven 
were listed as mulattos. The names of the slave-owners comprise our 
wealthiest and best people, and among others, are two clergv-men. They 
Ywcd mostly in the southern part of the country, ^^']len the law was passed 
many of the slaveholders who owned larger numbers moved to Maryland, 
or \'irginia. and took their slaves with them, for this they had a right to do. 

At this time George Washington owned land in the county near Jacob's 
creek, and his agent, Valentine Crawford, worked it, in part at least, with 
slaves or redemptioners owned by Washington. In a letter to Washington 
dated at Jacob's creek, July 27, 1774, he says : 

"Dear Colonel : On Sunday evening or Monday morning, one of the most orderly 
men I thought I had ran away and has taken a horse and other things. I have sent 
you an advertisement of him. * * * I have sold all the men but two and I believe 



58 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

I should have sold ihem but the man who is run away had a very sore foot, which was cut 
with an axe and John Smith was not well of the old disorder he had when he left your 
house. I sold Peter Miller and John Wood to Mr. Edward Cook for 45 pounds, the 
money to be applied to building your mill. I sold Thomas McPherson and his wife and 
James Howe to Major John McCulloch and Jones Ennis for 65 pounds, payable in six 
months from date. To my brother I sold William Luke, Thomas White and the boy 
John Knight. He is to pay you for them or if you open up your plantation down the 
Ohio, below Wheeling, he is to return them to you. * * * I should have sold all of the 
servants agreeable to your letter if I could have got cash or good pay for them, but the 
confusion of the times put it out of my power. I went down to Fort Pitt a day or two- 
and two of my own servants ran away. I followed them and caught them at Bedford 
and brought them back. While I was gone two of your servants stole a quantity of bacon- 
aiid so I sold them at once." 

The following is a copy of the advertisement referred to in the above 
letter from Crawford to Washington : 

FIVE POUNDS REWARD. 

Run away from the subscriber, living on Jacob's creek near Stewart's Crossing, in 
Westmoreland County, Pa., on Sunday night the 24th instant, a convict servant maa 
named William Orr, the property of Col. George Washington. He is a well made man,, 
about five feet ten inches high, and about twenty-four years of age. He was born in. 
Scotland and speaks that dialect pretty much. He is of a red complexion and very full- 
laced with short sandy colored hair, and very remarkable thumbs, they both being crooked. 
He had on and took with him, an old felt hat bound with black binding, one white cotton- 
coat and jacket with black horn buttons, one old brown jacket, one pair of snufif colored 
breeches, one pair of trousers made in sailor fashion and they are made of sail duck, and. 
have not been washed, a pair of red leggins, and shoes tied with strings, two Osnabary 
shirts and one Holland shirt marked V. C. which he stole, and a blanket. 

He stole likewise black horse about fourteen hands high, branded on the near shoulder 
and buttock R. W. and shod before. He had neither bridle nor saddle that we know of. 
1 expect he will make to some sea-port town as he has been much used to the seas. Who- 
ever takes up said servant and secures him so that he and horse may be had again, shall 
receive the above reward, or three pounds for the man alone and reasonable charges if 
brought home paid by me. 

All masters of vessels are forbid taking him out of the country on their peril. 

July 25, 1774. Val. Crawford. 

For Col. George Washington 

By the Act of Alarch i, 1780, and its supplements, children born to 
slaves owned in Pennsylvania were to be free when they arrived at the age 
of twenty-eight years. Likewise, slaves brought into Pennsylvania from 
other states under covenant could not be held after they reached the age 
of twenty-eight. It provided also that if the master refused or neglected 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



59 



to register his slaves, the slaves should go free. In 1798 there were twelve 
slaves in Hempfield township, which then embraced Gr'eensburg. In 
1801 the number of slaves in the county was one hundred thirty six, but part 
of this reduction was due to the fact that Allegheny and Fayette counties 
had been carved out of our former territory, but were with us when the 
registration was made. In 1810 there were twenty-one slaves, and in 1820 
only seven. One slave, a female, was reported in 1840, she being the last 
in the county. 

Slaves were often sold at public outcry in the streets of Greensburg. 
There was a regular auction block on the court house square, and from it 
the negroes were "knocked down" to the highest bidder. Sheriflf Perry 
sold a number of slaves which had been seized for debt, selling them from 
this auction block. As late as 1817 George Armstrong. Greensburg's first 
chief burgess, auctioned ofif a negro girl who belonged to a client of his. 

White men and women known as Redemptioners were also sold from the 
auction block in Greensburg. The last sale of this kind of which we have 
any record occurred IMarch 5, 1819. 



CHAPTER V 



The Boundary between Virginia and Pennsylvania. — Dunmore's War. 

It would be unprofitable to go further into our county's history without 
some further knowledge of the Virginia and Pennsylvania boundary trou- 
bles. To refresh the memory of the reader, we will say that Virginia 
claimed all territory west of the Monongahela river, at least, and many 
claimed that the crest of Laurel Hill was the line. The latter claim would 
have thrown all of our present county in Virginia, and the former a large 
part of the territory as it then existed. This boundary question had been 
agitated almost constantly for twenty years. As long as the territory lay 
unsettled or was not being sold by the Proprietaries of Pennsylvania, the 
boundary question did not demand, an immediate adjustment. But when 
Westmoreland county was erected, that part which Virginia most coveted,, 
the land at the forks of the rivers and Fort Pitt, was included in Westmore- 
land county, and under the dominion of the Proprietary government. Vir- 
ginia must therefore assert her claims and defend them or retire from the 
field. 

She had long since laid claim to it openly under Governor Spotswood, 
Dinwiddie had sent Washington to look after it in 1753. She had furnished 
about all the fighting element in Braddock's army. Furthermore, the Pro- 
prietaries of Pennsylvania, when asked to furnish soldiers to repel the 
French, replied that they were not certain that the French at Fort Du- 
quesne were on their territory. Yet in 1752 Governor Thomas Penn in- 
structed his soldiers to assist Virginia, to construct a fort at the forks of 
the river, but to do nothing which would injure his claims to the territory. 

Christopher Gist, a very bold and enterprising Virginia pioneer, made 
a survey of the region and assumed that the territory was in Virginia, 
though he then lived in what is now Fayette county, Pennsylvania.'' On 
this survey, on February 19, 1754, Governor Dinwiddie granted large bodies 
of land about the forks of the Ohio. The question might have been easily 
settled then, for Dinwiddie and Governor Hamilton, who succeeded Penn, 
were in a friendly correspondence in which both claimed the territory. 
The French and Indian war required them to unite their strength, and the 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 6i 

contention about it was for a time laid aside. When the question finally 
came up many of our best citizens took sides with Virginia, because they 
had purchased lands from Virginia, and had come here expecting still to 
reside in Virginia. 

England had been very successful in founding colonies in America, and 
had fostered them in a most royal manner until 1765, when she passed the 
Stamp Act. The two colonies which rebelled most violently against this 
act were ^Massachusetts and Virginia. So the King of England in 1771 
appointed John Murray to be governor of Virginia, a position he had held 
before in New York. He cared nothing for the interests of the colonists 
if they in any way conflicted with the interests of the King. He was a maa 
of strength, but was utterly without character or kindness in his make up.. 
Many are of the opinion that he was appointed to rule Virginia with an iroa 
hand to punish them for opposing the Stamp Act, and for the growing spirit 
of dissent and independence so common among her people. John Murray 
has been known in history as the Earl of Uunmore. The early pioneers, 
knew him as the "hair-buyer", because he paid the Indians for scalping 
mothers and babies of the rebellious colonists. It is said that his heartless 
design was to give the colonists plenty to do to protect themselves from 
the Indians, and thus divert them from the growing feeling of oppositioa 
to the mother country. There is little doubt but that during the Revolu- 
tiony many colonists were slaughtered by his orders. There are few 
names in history more opprobrious in America than Dunmore. 

In 1774 Dunmore determined to hold the country surrounding Fort 
Pitt as a part of Virginia. To represent him properly he sent an agent 
named John Connolly, who was a relative of his, though born in Pennsyl- 
vania. Connolly was highly connected by birth and marriage. He had been 
on terms of real intimacy with Washington, Gage, Johnson, (Sir William), 
Sir Guy Carleton, etc. In January, 1774, he took possession of Pittsburg, 
and raised an army along the banks of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny 
rivers. He at once changed the name of the fort to Fort Dunmore. He 
called the militia together, ostensibly to fight Indians, but in reality ta 
fight for Virginia. His army was composed only of the worst men in the 
community. In marching through the country they stole horses, and shot 
down domestic animals in a wanton spirit of destruction. For these acts 
and for his most flagrant usurpation, St. Clair had him arrested and brought 
before him as a justice at Ligonier, from which place he was sent to the 
new jail in Hannastown. He gave bail, and when released went to 
Staunton, Virginia, where Dunmore appointed him a justice, and, on the 
supposition that Virginia included this territory, he had a right to act under 
this appointment, either in Pittsburg or Hannastown, that is, that they 
were both in Augusta county, Virginia. This section was called the West 
Augusta district. When he returned with this show of authority he was 
mere aggressive and inhuman than ever. Court was to assemble in April 



62 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

in Hannastown, and he came there with one hundred fifty armed men. Some 
of these he stationed at the door, and refused to allow the justices to 
enter. He also had a sheriff appointed to keep the peace. His claim was 
that no one could derive any authority from the Provincial government, 
this power being lodged in Virginia, the rightful owners of this territory, 
and that it was now delegated to him. But the justices stood on their 
rights, and were accordingly arrested by Connolly. They refused to enter 
bail, whereupon he sent them in irons and under a guard to Staunton, 
Virginia, the county seat of Augusta county. Justice Mackay gained per- 
mission to go to Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia, to lay the matter 
before Dunmore. Shortly after this the imprisoned justices were set free, 
and came home. St. Clair reported these outrages regularly to the Penns, 
and his correspondence as preserved in the archieves of the state, is the 
basis of all history that has yet been written on this subject. 

The council of Pennsylvania now sent two representatives — James 
Tilghman and Andrew Allen — to Virginia. They were directed to ask that 
both Virginia and Pennsylvania petition the King of England to determine 
the boundary in dispute, and that till this was done a temporary line be 
agreed upon. Dunmore, after hearing them, dismissed them haughtily, 
and nothing came of the conference except to make Connolly much more 
impudent and oppressive in his action than before. 

All this, as may be supposed, greatly unsettled our people. Moreover, 
no new settler wanted to locate in such a district, and the price of land was 
greatly decreased. Then an Indian outbreak was daily feared. This was 
threatened by the Indians, but the objective point of the proposed raid was 
Virginia, and not that part of this section which belonged to Pennsylvania, 
ior all of the Proprietaries' territory was included in the new purchase of 
1768, and the Indians seemed to intend to keep the treaty. Still, with the 
boundary in doubt, and the well known treachery of the Indians, there was 
^reat fear among the people of even the present Westmoreland territory — 
the prospect of being subjugated by the outrages of Connolly on the one 
hand, or cut down in one night by an Indian incursion. Furthermore, if 
Dunmore and Connolly won, their titles from Pennsylvania would be of no 
value, they reasoned. Under this state of affairs many emigrants passed 
on through our section, and others left, never to return, or to return only 
when peace was effected. 

The public men of the county did all in their power to induce the citi- 
zens to remain and fight it out. Many farmers, however, did not put out 
their spring crops, expecting to be driven from the locality before they 
would ripen. Many crops when grown were left unharvested in the fields. 
Connolly's bandit gang, seemingly through a spirit of wanton destruction, 
had burned fences for miles east of Pittsburg, and live stock had strayed 
away or was shot down by this lawless band of pretended soldiers. In 
May and June public meetings were held at various places over the country. 



HISTORY -VF IVESTMORELAXD COUXTV. 63 

to make manifest by petitions to the Governor of Pennsylvania the real 
conditions of affairs, and to ask for his assistance. These petitions, in ad- 
dition to setting forth the outrageous conduct of Connolly's army, indicated 
-a general fear of an Indian outbreak. They came from Allen's block- 
house, near the mouth of Crabb Tree, from Fort Shippen, at Sheriff Proctor's, 
near Latrobe, from Pittsburg, and from other sections of the country. 
O'hey set forth their troubles and distress as indicated above. 

The justices, perhaps, became emboldened by being sent home from the 
Staunton prison, and at once endeavored to hold court in defiance of 
Connolly\ Then his soldiers by his orders broke into their houses and in- 
sulted them in every way. This made a demand for a new militia com- 
posed of our best people, to unite and resist Connolly's forces. It had 
some good results, but still he and Cressaps, his chief lieutenant, rode 
roughshod over the country and assaulted men, particularly the justices and 
■other conservators of the law. He waylaid a horse laden with gunpowder 
sent Ijy William Spear for the use of the settlers. It is hard to overdraw 
the situation, if we rely on the reports made at that time. Connolly was 
little else than a drunken outlaw, with considerable shrewdness as a leader 
of desperadoes. His men were glad to emulate these examples. They had 
all the whisky they could drink, and their only duty seemed to be to steal 
enough from day to day to subsist on. Dunmore himself came out in 
September. He established land offices, though none in this county, set up 
courts, etc., and demanded submission on the part of all who resided west 
■of Laurel Hill, as the price of peace. 

The Proprietaries recognized Arthur St. Clair as the leader in West- 
moreland, and left all military defense to him. He at once collected the 
militia from all directions, and supplied all the ablebodied farmers with 
firearms. His instructions were that they should be ready at the first out- 
break to fly to each other's assistance. Stockades and blockhouses were 
erected in every settlement when there were sufficient people to justify it. 
The old fort at Ligonier was repaired. Among the new ones built were 
Fort Shippen, Fort Allen, and one at John Shield's, on the Loyalhanna, 
about six miles from Hannastown. St. Clair also raised an organization 
at Fort Ligonier called the Rangers. Of these thirty were posted at 
Hannastown. twenty at Proctor's, twenty at Ligonier. and the rest, about 
forty, were sent to what is now Allegheny county. 

St. Clair himself says that hundreds of settlers left the county and re- 
turned east. Others, at the first false alarm, would flee from their houses 
and take refuge in the forts or blockhouses. He says, further, that it was 
shameful, if not cowardly, for the people to flee from Connolly in this way. 
St. Clair probably knew better than the people that the threatened Indian 
raid was not against this section. On July 11 reports were circulated 
that a partv of Indians was seen at or near Hannastown, and another on 



64 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTV. 

the Braddock road, south of that. Pie mounted a swift horse and found 
The reports to be unfounded, or, at all events, highly improbable. But he 
could not make the people believe it. In twenty miles' ride, he says, 
he met no less than two hundred families and two thousand cattle, all en- 
route for some fort. Nearly all the residents of Ligonier Valley moved into 
the stockade. They too were determined to leave the country. They had 
not then cut their harvests, and, had they gone, says St. Clair, they would 
undoubtedly have perished with famine. 

About this time Dunmore's war was carried west, and the greater part 
of the real battling was done in the Ohio valley, near the Kanawha river. 
Dunmore, Connolly, Cresap, Simon Girty and Alexander McKee were all 
there, and peace reigned in Westmoreland. It also became apparent that 
there was no further danger of an Indian outbreak. But very shortly the 
war in the southwest ended, and Connolly returned and renewed his hostil- 
ities against the magistrates and the people. Even in Pittsburg many 
of the settlers contemplated leaving. In November a detachment of his 
army came to Hannastown, broke open the jail, and released two> 
murderers who were sentenced to be hanged. Another party seized Mr. 
Scott, agent of the Penns, and made him give bail to appear at the next 
court to be held in Pittsburg for z-\u.gusta county, Virginia. In February, 
1775, a raid was made on Hannastown ; they broke open a blacksmith shop 
near by, took some large hammers and irons, and broke open the jail. They 
released all the prisoners, and told them to clear the country. This party 
was under Benjamin Harrison, a son-in-law of Judge Crawford, who opened 
the first courts in our county. Judge Hanna remonstrated with them from 
his upper window, but the outlaws only jeered him and the sherifif. On 
the 25th, Justices Hanna and Cavett, were arrested, for no offense what- 
ever but the general one of being magistrates under the Penns, and were 
confined at Pittsburg for three months. 

The good people of neither Pennsylvania nor Virginia, took part in 
these outrages, but each side of the boundary question had its supporters, 
and on each side were most excellent people. John Gibson, father of the re- 
nowned chief justice of Pennsylvania, John B. Gibson, and a man of the 
highest character, sided with Virginia. No better man nor purer patriot 
lived than William Crawford, as he afterwards proved by giving his life 
in defense of the people. Yet he decidedly sided with Virginia, and when 
the Executive Council heard of it they advised the governor to dismiss him 
from the office of justice, and it was accordingly done. 

Dunmore's war was now about ended, but still darker days were in store 
for our early settlers. The winter of 1774-75 was a .very severe one. In 
the spring of 1774 crops, as we have explained, were not planted as they 
should have been, and many were not harvested, because of the savages and 
of Connolly and his men, and through fear of the Indian outbreak. Late 
in the fall, when safety was assured, hundreds who had gone east came 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 65 

back to Westmoreland, and of necessity came empty handed. All who had 
been away, either as soldiers or refugees, had been consumers and not pro- 
ducers. The stock of provisions in the county was scarcely large enough 
for those who remained, and, when the list of consumers was augmented 
by those who returned, famine almost stared them in the face. But the 
settlers, with an altruistic spirit which would have done credit to our day, 
''ven. divided their scanty store with those who were in distress. Never- 
theless many would have starved had it not been for the abundant supply of 
wild game in the woods. The actual supply of farm products, corn, rye 
and potatoes, was divided around. Yet it was but the beginning of long 
years of poverty and gloom, which culminated only with the close of the 
Revolutionary war. 

Dunmore's war did not in itself settle the boundary line between Penn- 
sylvania and Virginia, though there were no further hostilities concerning 
i;. Dunmore and Connolly escaped into the British army with the breaking 
out of the Revolution. For years the names of both were most thor- 
oughly detested among our people. Had the cjuestion in dispute been 
left to honorable men, it could have been readily settled, but with a 
man like Dunmore proved to be reason was out of the question. Men like 
Benjamin Franklin, of Pennsylvania, or Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia. 
regarded these boundary disputes, as they were carried on, as unworthy 
of the citizens of either Pennsylvania or Virginia. On July 25, 1775, the 
delegates in the Continental Congress, among whom were Jefferson, 
Franklin and Patrick Henry, united in a circular asking the people of the 
disputed territory to use all mutual forbearance possible, and suggested 
tb.at neither party should keep armed men. There was really no armed 
force except that of Virginia. On August 7, the Virginia convention 
directed Captain John Neville with a company of one hundred men to 
take charge of Fort Pitt. This was, at least, a display of hostility not 
sanctioned by the leading men of Virginia, and it is probable that the action 
was taken before the suggestion from the members of congress reached the 
\'irginia convention. The Penns, willing to do anything for the sake of 
peace, permitted the matter to pass. The Revolution came at once, and 
Neville held the fort, not as a Virginian, but rather as an adjunct of the 
American army, though at first, at least, he was paid by the colony of Vir- 
ginia. He held the fort till 1777, under the direction of the Continental 
Congress, and purely in the interests of the colonies. The boundary ques- 
tion was forgotten when both Pennsylvania and Virginia were fighting 
for freedom in the Revolution. It was afterward brought up by Virginia 
and Pennsylvania unitedly and was settled as the Proprietaries always 
claimed it should be, in 1779-84, in the following manner: Three Pennsyl- 
vanians and two Virginians were appointed to permanently locate tlie 
boundary. The agreement was signed August 31, 1779. By its terms they were 
5 



66 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

to extend the then weU known JMason and Dixon's Line west five degrees 
■of longitude from the Delaware river. From the end of this line a line 
•directly north to Lake Erie should be our western line or border. It was 
further agreed that the rights of all persons should be secure, no matter 
in which state they fell, and that, in all disputes as to ownership, preference 
should be given to the older right or claim. The agreement was ratified 
by Virginia on June 27,, 1780, and by Pennsylvania on September 2t,, 
1780, and again, after certain amendments offered by \'irginia, on April 
I, 1784. During 1784 the boundaries were surveyed and marked by stones 
set up, one every five miles. On the south side of each stone was cut the 
letter "V", and on the north side the letter "P". This then, finally and for- 
ever settled the boundary question, and, as settled then, it remains today. 



CHAPTKR VI 



The Indians of Early Westmoreland. 

Our early Westmoreland annals are so replete with references to the 
Indians that it is highly proper that we should now glance casually at 
their tribal history, their leading characteristics, and their modes of life. 
All over western Pennsylvania have been found relics in abundance which 
prove beyond doubt that they once roamed over our hills in great numbers. 
But even without these the beautiful Indian nomenclature of our rivers, 
mountains, valleys, counties, and towns, prove their former presence in this 
community. 

Archaeologists and philologists have alike for a century speculated in 
vain as to the origin of this strange and pathetic people. It is idle to pre- 
tend that we know more of their early history and origin than that they 
were here when Columbus came to America, and that their name was 
given them by him because of his well known mistake in geography. Prior 
to 1750 Western Pennsylvania was inhabited by the Indian alone. It was 
never densely populated by them as we understand density now, for with 
their mode of life no section was capable of sustaining more than an e.x- 
tremely limited number of inhabitants. As a people they lived very largely 
by hunting and fishing. Their women cultivated small patches of corn, a 
cereal which has since borne their name, and in addition to this many of 
them raised a few vegetables. They also raised large quantities of tobacco. 
To this end they cleared small tracts of land here and there, generally on the 
alluvial bottoms of large streams, many of which are yet pointed out as 
old Indian fields. They knew nothing of fertilizing land and when the soil 
was exhausted they abandoned their fields and removed to new sections. 
They knew something of the medicinal qualities of roots, herbs and flowers, 
which grew in the wildwood, and these they gathered and used in times 
of external injury with a considerable degree of success. They subsisted 
largely on the meat of wild game and for this reason it required thousands 
of acres to support even a small tribe. The land was necessarily public 
land so far as the Indians were concerned. A tribe it is true, exercised a 
temporary ownership over a certain section, but this' they readily aband- 



68 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

oned if a locality more promising for the pursuit of wild game presented 
itself, or when fire wood was well nigh exhausted. All Indians were prompt 
to help each other in distress. Some families were poor and improvident, 
while others were prosperous. Yet while any member of the tribe had food, 
the indigent and shiftless did not suffer, and the results of a successful 
hunting expedition were shared with their less fortunate friends if they stood 
in need of them. Originally they made all their own implements of war- 
fare and of the chase. Their bows and arrows were made of wood. The 
former were stiffened with the dried tendons and thongs of the deer or 
buffalo, and the latter were tipped at the points with flinty stones known in 
modern times as arrow-heads. Their bowstrings were of raw-hide made 
from the skins of animals. They also made rude axes from stone, and with 
these and by the aid of fire, they were able to fell trees and to hollow out 
their huge trunks, thus converting them into canoes. However, when first 
known to Westmoreland pioneers, they were provided with iron and steel 
implements and in part at least, with firearms. Some of these they had 
captured or stolen from the whites, others were furnished them by thought- 
less and unprincipled traders in return for skins and furs. But the union 
formed between the French and Indians and still later between the Eng- 
lish and Indians, had aided them still more, in the acquisition of scalping 
knives, tomahawks and guns, and also in teaching them how to use these 
weapons to the best advantage. 

It must not be supposed, however, that the introduction of firearms 
among the Indians induced them to abandon the bow and arrow. The best 
firearm known or used then was a flintlock which was discharged by a 
spark made by a flint in the hammer striking a projection on the gun barrel. 
This spark fell into the "pan", where a small amount of powder called 
"the priming" was placed after the gun was loaded. When this was ignited 
by the spark it communicated its flame with the powder in the gun, and the 
latter was instantly discharged. As may be readily imagined, the least 
dampness or rain would render the flintlock useless, but not so with the 
bow and arrow. This the Indian always kept with him, and so skillful was 
he in its use that he rarely ever missed his mark when at short range. In 
the hands of an expert Indian it was more to be feared than a firearm, for the 
wound -was more painful and the arrow was directed with scarcely less 
unerring certainty. Not infrequently has it been found that an arrow from 
the bow of a strong armed savage had penetrated and passed entirely 
through a large horse or buft'alo. Furthermore, its discharge made no re- 
port, and the unwary pioneer or the herd of deer had little or no 
knowledge of the whereabouts of their hidden enemy. It was a weapon, 
indeed, peculiarly suited to an enemy whose strength lay largely in the 
stealthy manner in which he approached his foe. It was used by the In- 
dians in all of our earlier wars with them. In General St. Clair's battle 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 69 

with the Indians in 1791 it is on record that the arrow wounds were 
more galling and more feared by the American troops than the wounds 
from gun shots. 

The Indians inhabiting the eastern part of the United States with whom 
our early settlers came most in contact are usually designated as the 
"Six Nations," viz. : the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas 
and Tuscaroras. Each of these nations had a rude form of government, 
and their unwritten laws were well understood by the Indians and were 
binding even on the humblest members of the race. Francis Parkman says 
that they lived together by thousands with a harmony which civilized 
nations might envy. Each of these six nations was composed of smaller 
tribes of from two to five hundred members. These tribes were separated 
widely from each other, so that each could have unbounded miles of hunt- 
ing territory. Each tribe had its chief, who exercised great power over 
all his subjects. On the death of the chief the office did not generally 
descend to his son, but to his sister's son or to the dead chief's brother. 
But if t'ne rightful heir was a weakling or a coward, or was otherwise in- 
capacitated for leadership, the tribe did not hesitate to discard him and 
Sflect another. The son of a chief, while he could not inherit the office 
from his fati.er, could earn it by deeds of daring courage. Capt. John 
Smith discovered and made a note of these customs even in his day among 
the early tribe.-, of \"irginia. 

They had a marriage ceremony which was generally celebrated with 
songs and dances, and their marital relations were comparatively well kept, 
though divorce was obtainable on the arbitrary caprice of either party. 
The relationship of father, grandfather, cousin, nephew, etc., were clearly 
defined among them, and no Indian youth was allowed to marry a squaw 
of his own immediate tribe, because of the possible relationship which 
might exist between them. The average Indian was tall and straight with 
rough features, high cheek bones, Roman or aquiline nose, coarse straight 
black hair, dark penetrating eyes and beardless face. He had a swarthy 
complexion, much darker than the darkest of our race, which had a tinge 
of red or brown in it, and this gave him the well known name of red 
skin, thought it is at best something of a misnomer. 

The Indian has been widely represented as of a silent and morose dis- 
position, and this, says Washington Irving, is in some degree erroneous. 
When alone in helpless captivity among the whites, whose language he did 
not understand and whose motives he distrusted, he was invariably taciturn 
but certainly not more so than the white man would have been under like 
circumstances. Parkman describes them as continuously visiting, chat- 
ting, joking and bantering each other with sharp witticism. When among 
themselves in their smoky wigwams or around their blazing camp fires, 
they were exceedingly loquacious and mirthful. Deeds of valor, feats of 



70 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

strength and agility, narrow escapes from captivity and death when on the 
war path, the successes or failures of the last hunting expedition, and amus- 
ing incidents at the expense of the white man, constituted very largely the 
younger Indian's conversation, while the older members of the race regaled 
the youthful warriors with the oft-repeated heroic tales of incidents long 
gone by. 

The average Indian had, indeed, more endurance, and could run faster 
than the average white man, for his entire life's training tended to fortify 
him in these feats of strength; while, on the other hand, the heavy labor 
incident to pioneer life destroyed the white man's fleetness of foot, and 
rendered him less agile and less able to cope with his Indian enemy in this 
direction. In war, when equally opposed, the Indian was almost invincible. 
He never of his own volition fought in the open, but took advantage of 
every possible method of ambuscade. Familiar with all phases of forest 
life, he sought to match the superior numbers or strength of his enemy by 
a thorough concealment of his own whereabouts in battle. The military 
training of tlie English and American soldiers stood for but little when 
confronted by a foe who could fire and almost instantly disappear from 
view. Indeed, the serried columns of the drillmaster rather assisted the 
Indian in ambush, and only when his methods of warfare were learned and 
somewhat adopted was the American soldier even comparatively success- 
ful in his contests with him. The Indian did not adopt this method through 
fear or cowardice, for when forced to fight at bay he proved himself not 
lacking in bravery by fighting with a desperation found only in infuriated 
wild beasts. His leading principle in warfare was self-preservation. He 
thought it foolhardy to needlessly expose himself in battle, as foolhardy as 
though the contest were between himself and a ferocious animal. His war 
parties only received the highest meed of praise when they returned not 
only with an abundance of scalps but without the less of a warrior. He 
employed every subterfuge and stratagem possible with him to entice the 
white man into danger. He so successfully imitated the gobble of the 
wild turkey that the unsuspecting hunter was lured within reach of his 
arrow. He removed the bell from a domestic animal and by gently shaking 
it enticed the pioneer or his children to his hiding place and to captivity 
or death. His people had for centuries hunted wild animals by stealth 
and he adopted the same methods of ridding himself from the new and 
more dangerous enemy which, in countless numbers, came upon him from 
the East. 

When 'first known to the white man they were not necessarily a savage 
race. They went to war among themselves, but were not particularly 
hostile to our people until we began to displace them and to interfere, as 
they thought, with their vested rights in the natural products of the 
wilderness. They thought it their duty to exterminate the white man, and 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 71 

the latter thought it no greater crime to kill an Indian than a rattlesnake. 
If he seldom ever spared the life of a wounded or conquered adversary 
the Indian, on the other hand, asked no quarter when he himself was taken 
captive. It is quite probable that for obvious reasons, the early settler in 
his combats with the Indians met oftenest the larger and stronger speci- 
mens of the tribe. This led to the impression that they were as a race phy- 
sically much superior to our own. This is entirely erroneous. Our mert 
compared well with them in size and strength, and, considering all circum- 
stances, there-was perhaps but little advantage on either side. Our women 
were, all things considered, equal to theirs in strength, and greatly superior 
to them in physical beauty. The attractive Indian maiden of modern fiction 
is a poetical creation rather than one found in real life. The Indian womah 
was homely, and one of average comeliness was a rare exception, and this 
quality the race has preserved even to this day. But the Indian standards 
of aesthetics differed from ours, and to his eye the maiden of his race may 
have been richly dowered with personal loveliness and beauty. 

Of the smaller tribes the ones most commonly known to our early 
pioneers were the Cornplanters, Delawares, Cherokees, Mingoes, Shawnees. 
Munsies, Hurons, Ojibwas, JMiamis, Pottowatamies, etc., and some of them 
are yet represented in the remnant Indian tribes of the west. The Indian 
incursions made on our early Westmoreland settlers invariably originated 
with one or more of the tribes above mentioned. They were then scattered 
all over the countrv west of the Susquehanna and north of the Ohio 
rivers, with a few stragglers farther south and east. The Cornplanters and 
the Delawares were the tribes with whom our early settlers came most in 
contact. 

The Indians built towns, but not as places of permanent abode, for the 
reason that they were compelled to wander over a large territory and often 
to remove when game was scarce, from one locality to another to subsist 
at all. They lived in small houses made of poles, and covered with the skins 
of animals and with the bark of trees to protect them from the cold and 
rain. These houses were called wigwams. They were generally circular 
in shape at the ground, and the poles, standing on their ends, were drawn 
nearly together at the top, thus presenting a conical form, with a small 
opening at the apex for the emission of smoke. The conical shape of the 
wigwam made it less liable to be blown over by the storm. In our part of 
the state each family had a separate wigwam, though in some tribes several 
families lived in the same habitation. They usually built their wigwams 
in a valley or on the sheltered side of a mountain cr hill, and near to 
a good stream of water. Sometimes the wigwams were long and narrow, 
even as long as one hundred feet or more, and each one served for many 
families. There was always an opening at the top for the escape of smoke, 
but they were invariably filled with soot. Living almost constantly in, 



72 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



smoke, many of the Indians had inflamed eyes in winter time, and a result- 
ant blindness in old age was not infrequent. They had rude fortifications 
around their towns made by digging trenches and surmounting the ground 
thrown from them by logs, stones, bark, etc. In these rude habitations they 
cooked, ate and slept in the winter time, using leaves and dried, twigs 
covered with the skins of animals for beds. The wigwams were so poorly 
constructed that they decayed and were gone in a few years after they 
were abandoned. 

The white race in Western Pennsylvania practically came first in con- 
tact with the Indians in purchasing furs and skins from them. The Indian 
was naturally a child of the wilderness, and excelled in hunting wild an- 
imals. As a result the Indian towns abounded with the skins of the buffalo, 
bear, deer, wolf, beaver, otter, mink, fox, raccoon, etc. They shot these 
animals with bows and arrows or with firearms. They speared fish, or 
caught them with rude hooks made of bone, or drove them into ponds 
screened with small rods. They also fished with rude nets, made from the 
twisted fiber of wild hemp. Both animals and. fish and all game birds 
were then extremely plentifv^. The life the Indian led had developed his 
senses of sight, hearing and smell to a degree which amazed even the 
shrewdest woodsman among our early settlers. He knew the habits of all 
wild animals, and could detect their slightest movements in the forests, 
movements invisible to the eye of one unaccustomed to the woods. With 
these qualities he easily surpassed the average hunter in procuring skins 
and furs and wild game. 

Upon the women of the tribe devolved all the hard labor, including rais- 
ing corn, skinning wild animals and carrying heavy burdens of skins and 
dried meat when they were making long journeys. Their squaws were 
at best little better than beasts of burden. Their hard lives shriveled them 
and made them appear older than their years. They were hideous, neglect- 
ed and despised in latter years, and, as a result, became more fierce, cruel 
and vindictive than were the men of the tribe. In explanation of this cus- 
tom concerning the Indian women it may be said .that such duties were 
invariably performed by women in all nations of the world when in that 
stage of civilization. Their Indian household duties, as may be readily 
imagined, were necessarily very few. The warrior, whether hunting wild 
animals or on the warpath, needed agility, a steady nerve, and great 
strength above all things else, and these would all have been impaired by 
hard labor or by carrying heavy burdens. The Indian boy. was taught 
from childhood to run, jump, swim, fish, shoot and fight, but not to 
work. They were taught to go hungry and endure all manner of hardships 
and pain without complaint, preparing them in that way for what they 
might expect in after life. With such training it is not to be wondered at 
that he scorned and laughed at the wails of agony of his victim who felt 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 73 

the flames creeping around his quivering flesh, while he himself endured 
such pain in silence and with a fortitude worthy at least of the proverbial 
stocism of the Grecian philosopher. The Indian lived with ease some- 
times, but more often his nomadic life was attended with great hardships 
and privations. Only when the weather was pleasant, and when wild 
berries, fruits and nuts were plentiful and when the forest abounded with 
game, was his life one of comparative ease. They were forced sometimes to 
live on the roots, bark and buds of trees, and even cannibalism was not 
by any means unknown among them. 

Leading a lonely life in the wilderness the Indian became a close ob- 
server of the phenomena of nature. He had studied the heavens for signs 
of rain and clear weather, and so mastered them that his forecasting was 
almost unerring. Long before he knew the white man he had discovered 
that there were four seasons which regularly followed each other each 
year, and he had discovered further that these four periods were measured 
by thirteen moons. By moons he accurately counted his own age and the 
ages of his children, and kept account of the noted events in his monotonous 
life. All this was kept in his mind purely, for the race had no method of 
writing or of physically preserving a record of events. Resultant upon 
this we have no account or history of the Indians as kept by themselves. 
^^^e can form a fair estimate of the Indian character only by remembering 
that the heartrending tales of his inhumanities have been written almost 
solely by his enemies. His lips were sealed as to his side of the difficulties, 
for he could neither speak nor write his defense in a language which we 
could understand. Their traditions, customs and laws were preserved in 
memory and transmitted orally, and they consequently perished almost en- 
tirely with the illfated race. Stone implements, battle axes, tomahawks, 
P'pes. arrow and spearheads have survived the ravages of time, and are 
almost the only tangible evidences left by the Indian of his long dominion 
in Pennsylvania. 

The Indians did not recognize any special diff"erence between an 
animal and a human being, be he red or white. When killing an animal 
he frequently performed incantations over its body to appease its spirit 
so that it. or the spirit of surviving animals, would not become hostile 
to him or his people. He killed animals only for their skin or flesh or in 
self defense in ridding himself of dangerous beasts. The wanton destruction 
of wild animals was unknown to the Indian. The average Indian killed a 
white man as readily as an animal, for the former he regarded as his 
mortal enemy. Murder among the Indians was very rare, and the crime 
was seldom punished by public authority. The murderer and his friends 
were forced to give presents, sometimes of considerable value, to the rep- 
resentatives of the unfortunate Indian who had been killed. Where pres- 
ents were refused by the dead man's family the murderer was given over 



^4 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

to them as a slave, and he was made to hunt or fish for them and to assist 
them in their support. The presents given by a murderer consisted of 
corn or growing corn, skins, guns, bows and arrows, and objects of adorn- 
ment. From twenty to thirty presents were considered a good recompense 
for the murder of an Indian man. The murder of woman, because of 
her helplessness, demanded more presents from the murderer than that 
of a man. Her life was moreover more necessary for the increase of the 
Indian race than that of a man, hence a greater number of presents must 
be given to atone for it. Stealing was more common among them, and was 
punished by allowing the injured party not only to retake the goods stolen 
by force, but to take from the robber all the property he possessed. For 
treason, or betraying his tribe in any way, the oilender was put to death, 
the chief of the tribe usually appointing an Indian to stealthily shoot 
him. 

They had dogs in our section, but no other domestic animals. They did 
not have horses until they secured them from the pioneers, and very few 
were used by them here. This was probably because they were inhabiting 
a mountainous wilderness unsuited by nature for horseback riding. The 
riiuch vaunted Indian feats of horsemanship were confined almost en- 
tirely to the boundless prairies of the West. Their long journeys were 
performed on foot or in canoes. Thty had trails or paths through the 
dense forests and over mountain chains on which they journeyed, con- 
forming in many instances to our modern highways, but which will be 
treated elsewhere in these pages. The Indians also travelled a great deal 
on water, particularly in the lake regions. Though they made canoes by 
hollowing out logs, they were cumbersome at best, and a canoe made of 
birch bark was perhaps the favorite one in Indian navigation. They had 
learned to calk the cracks or joints with the exudations of the pine tree and 
make them perfectly water-proof. They also made canoes from the skins 
of animals, and even as late as 1832 Washington Irving, in his "Tour of the 
Prairies," speaks of crossing streams in the west in buffalo skin canoes. 
In these frail barks they floated up and down our iimpid streams, dreaming 
not that better methods of navigation near at hand would soon appear to 
force them from their hunting grounds and, in the end, practically work the 
extermination of the whole Indian race. 

Though the Indians were naturally a strong athletic race, capable of 
great endurance and inured to all manner of hardships, they did not in- 
crease rapidly in number. Their poorly constructed habitations, the 
necessary unsanitary condition of such homes, and their wandering disposi- 
tion superinduced a great mortality among their children and, perhaps, 
only the stronger ones survived. This, with their habitual outdoor life, 
accounted in a great measure for the unusual strength and vitality of the 
Indian warrior. Living as they did, they were almost necessarily filthy in 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



75' 



their habits, and as a result were greatly subjected to infestious diseases, 
such as fever and small pox. When these diseases broke out they were ex- 
tremely destructive to the race, for they 'had little knowledge of how to treat 
them successfully. They believed that all sickness was the result of an evil 
spirit which pervaded the sick man, and the Indian doctors sought by 
signs, magic, and hideous noises to drive the demon from his patient. The 
result of such treatment may be readily imagined. 

They had crude forms of religion; they believed in "Manitou," a Great 
Spirit which ruled the heavens and earth, and with whom both good and bad 
Indians should live and hunt after death, for they were thorough Univer- 
salists. They believed, however, in a distinction between the final home of 
a good, brave warrior on the one hand, and that of the cowardh', lazy 
Indian, on the other ; the latter they thought would be compelled to eat 
serpents and ashes in a gloomy division of the next world. In keeping with 
their general belief, they thought animals would in the next world be ad- 
mitted on equal terms with Indians. They believed that the Great Spirit 
sometimes endowed minor spirits with certain special powers. This belief 
saved many a white man's life. If they once believed that a prisoner had 
some special connection with the Great Spirit, his life was safe. Their sys- 
tem of worship was with song and dance, and every great undertaking, such 
as going on an extended hunt or on the war path, was begun with some 
ceremony of this kind. A similar ceremony ended the expedition, the first 
to please the Great Spirit, to induce him to favor their cause, and the 
second to in a measure express their gratitude for favors granted. But 
those who have investigated the subject of religion among the primitive 
Indians bfelieve that they had no conception of a Supreme Being until they 
came in contact with civilized white men. The first missionaries among 
them, who were Jesuit priests, found no word in their language to express 
our idea of God, and the common opinion is that the idea of the primitive 
red man worshipping a Great Spirit before he was taught to do so by 
the advent of Christianity from Europe, originated and had existence only 
in the brains of sentimental writers and in the idle dreams of poets. 

A leading characteristic of the Indian was his inability to forgive or 
forget an injury done him by the white race, yet, on the other hand he 
has been credited with being equally mindful of favors shown him. With 
his understanding of the early settlers' encroachment upon his territory, 
he was as Ishmael, who thought that every man's hand was against him. 
The pioneer was slowly but surely working his exclusion, and his vindic- 
tive wrath was indiscriminately meted out against all pale-faces. Too often 
it fell with great severity on the innocent and unoffending and on the guilty 
alike. 

Alorally they did not compare with our race by any means, and should 
not be expected to do so, for we have had the advantages of centuries of civ- 



76 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

ilization and education. But if we compare them with our own race, 
when, as a race, we had reached the stage in which we found the Indian, 
the only fair comparison, they undoubtedly equal us. If the reader of 
these pages is astonished at this statement on recalling the cruel manner 
in which the Indian dealt with his supposed white enemy when in helpless 
captivity, let him remember that it is but a few generations since the ablest 
and best of the English speaking people were tortured on the rack, confined 
in dungeons, mutilated, and burned at the stake, by the decree of the 
highest tribunal in English civilization, and that even in Massachusetts 
innocent men and women were burned for witchcraft. And these bar- 
barities were committed not by unlettered savages, but by a people who 
were making history, writing poetry, and building cities and palaces which 
stand to this day and command the admiration of the world. 

The Indian had, indeed, many bad traits, but those who labored long 
among them as missionaries, or who were long held captive by them, 
generally saw much good in them, and became greatly attached to them. 
They were not originally the treacherous race they have lately been re- 
puted to be. Few men of our later history have fought the Indians more 
valiantly or more successfully than General William Henry Harrison, 
yet he in after years bore this testimony concerning them : "A long and 
intimate knowledge of the Delaware tribe, in peace and in war, as enemies 
and as friends, has left upon my mind the most favorable impressions of 
their character for bravery, generosity and fidelity to their engagements." 
In many cases, even in our own county, the Indian divided his scanty food 
with the early settlers, and in some instances saved them from starvation. 

When first known to the whites they knew nothing of intoxicants 
nor even the simplest form of fermentation or distillation. They smoked 
tobacco, and taught the habit to Sir Walter Raleigh, who introduced it in 
England, but this was their nearest approach to a stimulant or a narcotic. 
Our people soon taught them the use of liquor, and most bitterly did both 
races suffer from it. They took to rum almost intuitively, and it seemed 
to arouse only the baser principles of their nature. They would part 
with their finest furs to secure a taste of rum, and this exhorbitant appetite 
in the end perhaps did more than anything else to rob them of their 
vigor and reason, and finally of all lands they possessed. 

A strong trait of Indian character was his love of bright colors and 
ornamentation. He painted his face and body, wore ornaments in his 
ears and nose, and dressed his hair with bright feathers and his rude deer- 
hide garments with fringe. It has been supposed that this originated as 
a means of protection, for, when in a dense wilderness, clothed only by the 
skins of animals without some bright colors or ornamentation, he might 
easily have been the victim of an arrow intended for a wild animal. But 
so long did they thus array themselves that it became a passion with 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. yj 

them, from which they have never been able to divest themselves. A 
youth may be educated away from his people, yet upon his first opportu- 
nity he most likely again resumes the garb of his tribe, and is generally 
discontented with any other than the Indian life. The Secretary of the 
Interior some years ago sent dark clothes to a western tribe, which after 
the fashion of that day were lined with red and white barred material. 
\'isiting them shortly afterward he noticed that they had uniformly turned 
their garments wrong side out, so that they might display the bright 
colored linings. Less than any other members of the human family do 
they seem able to discard their hereditary customs. As a result, it has 
been found almost impossible to civilize them or to induce them to engage 
in the habits and callings of our enlightened age. 

The early settlers in America found the Indian in undisputed posses- 
sion of a land of singular beauty and of great fertility and natural wealth. 
To dispossess him of his hunting grounds was to incur his undying hatred 
and wrath. To suffer him to remain precluded the possibility of our pres- 
ent civilization, for the interests of the two races were directly opposite 
to each other. The Indian could subsist only in an unbounded wilderness ; 
the white man's sole ambition was to conquer the forest, to tame and im- 
prove the wild lands, and make them contribute to his welfare. It was the 
Indian's misfortune that he was contented to lead only an idle and un- 
civilized life; that he in his make-up was entirely void of ambition, progress 
and industry, and that he could not or would not improve the country which 
he inhabited. The white man, on the other hand, was contented only 
with improvement, and was most happy when living on the products of his 
own labor. This same peculiarly unfortunate situation confronted the early 
settler in our county as well as elsewhere. Had the Indian not been dis- 
possessed, our county would perhaps to this day have been covered with 
its primeval forest and inhabited mainly by Indians and wild animals. 
It was inevitable, therefore, that, for our present civilization, the Indian 
should be gradually driven back. Before the aggressive white man, filled 
with industry and ambition, the indolent Indian slowly followed the 
setting sun until his course has been almost a direct retreat from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. And with this westward march he was 
gradually blighted until his once powerful race has now almost perished 
from the earth. 

The most humane methods in dealing with the Indians in dispossessing 
them of their land may not always, indeed, may not generally, have been 
adopted by our ancestors. Gen. Jeffery Amherst suggested to Col. Bouquet to 
try to inoculate the Westmoreland Indians with small pox by means of 
blankets, and the latter, whom even,' one reveres, replied that he would do 
so, and that he regretted only that he could not adopt the Spanish method of 
hunting them with English dogs. In this connection, before we censure them 



j8 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

it should be remembered that they were a sturdy, industrious people, not 
lacking in intellect, nor in the cardinal virtues of charity, affection and 
honor, and that they were surrounded by obstacles which cannot be 
appreciated by our present generation. They doubtless dealt with the 
Indians as they thoirght the exigencies of the time demanded. On the 
question as to whose dominion, that of the Indian or the white man, in 
the Western hemisphere, was fraught with the greatest benefit to the 
human family, there can certainly be no two opinions. 



CHAPTER VII 



Early Indian Troubles. — Places of Refuge. — Forls.^Stockades. — Block Houses.^Cabins. 
— Indian Stories. 

It must always be remembered that the EngHsh soldiers and the Indians 
were not the only enemies the ^^'estmoreland pioneers had to contend 
against. They were harrassed on all sides by the Indians, who were urged 
on by the English who formed alliances with them in every section possible. 
This may have been considered legitimate warfare, on the theory that any- 
thing which would weaken and sap strength from the enemy was legitimate. 
It is probable, also, that the English government at home never knew 
the inhuman results of their alliances with the Indians. The idea that the 
Crown authorized or knowingly sanctioned the butchery of innocent women 
and children, in that age of the world, is abhorrent to human reason, and, 
indeed it is at war with the established reputation of the English people. 

In addition to these enemies were a few disreputable white men who 
allied themselves with the Indians and became leaders more brutal than the 
most savage of their tribe. These men left civilization, joined various 
tribes, and adopted their mode of life and warfare. What induced them to 
do this, can never be definitely known. In some cases it is known that de- 
serters from the American army who were afraid to return, and being like- 
wise outcasts from their home communities, went over to the English, or, 
perhaps, to the Indians. But most likely their actions were mostly due to 
the alluring rewards offered on the part of British officers for scalps. At all 
events they were more dangerous to the white settlers than the Indians, 
because they knew the weak points of the settlement, knew the territory, 
and knew more about the individual bravery or weakness of the settler, 
than the Indians did. When, therefore, a band of Indians under the leader- 
ship of one of these infuriated wretches actuated by their inborn hatred of 
the American pioneer, came down upon a settlement, it was indeed a most 
formidable and blood-thirsty onslaught. The white leaders, moreover, had 
-great power over the Indians, more indeed than Indian leaders generally 
had themselves. They could, with a word, release a prisoner at the stake, 
around whose naked limbs the fire was slowly creeping, or could have him 



8o HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

stripped, tied to a tree, and slowly tortured to death, as they wished or 
ordered. The Indians cared little for the gold of the English, but they were 
willing to commit any outrage for bright beads, blankets and rum, while 
the renegade whites cared nothing for these, but took the English gold as 
their share of the booty. A great deal of our trouble in Westmoreland 
county was traceable to these outlaws. Their names for generations have 
been held in abhorrence by the pioneers and their descendents. 

There were three conspicuous men among these outlaw leaders who 
surpassed all others. They were Simon Girty, Alexander McKee and 
Matthew Elliott, and by far the most inhuman of these was the former. 
Though one hundred twenty-five eventful years have passed since his evil 
deeds were perpetrated, yet his name is still a name of infamy. He had 
adopted the life of the Mingoes, with whom he generally associated, though 
■ he associated with other tribes, and wherever he went he was a leader. He 
knew the Westmoreland people, its houses, strength, places of refuge, etc., 
as well as any one in the county, and was therefore not likely to lead the 
Indians into a stronghold where they might be captured. He had been 
a trapper, and later a trader among the Indians of the Ohio valley, and 
mention is made of him in some of the early writings in this capacity as 
early as 1749. He was a shining light in the bandit gang known as 
"Dunmore's Army" and at Hannastown was second in command after 
Connolly. He led the ga.ig to Hannastown when the jail w.is opened and 
the prisonerr released. He worked all over Western Pennsylvania and 
Ohio, and led more incursions in Westmoreland county than any other. He 
was utterly without feeling of pity. When Colonel William Crawford, our 
first judge, was being burned at the stake, the Indians having first cut off 
his ears and nose, he saw Girty, whom he knew quite Vv'ell, among his 
tormenters. In the agony of despair he cried, "shoot me, Simon ; shoot me, 
to end my sufferings," and Girty tauntingly replied, "I can't, I have no 
gun," though he held a gun in his hands all the time. McKee operated 
less here than Girty, and Elliott less than either of them. Neither of 
them was as brutal as Girty. McKee had formerly acquired land in the 
region of Pittsburgh, and was then a man of average standing in the com- 
munity. He had been a justice of the peace and of our early ccurts when 
the county was formed, and for some years was a respectable member of 
the court and of society. He forsook the white race and, like Girty, com- 
mitted acts of brutality which have forever consigned his name to infancy. 
These briefly referred to border troubles made it necessary for our west- 
ern people to protect themselves by garrisons and militia, and often to 
call for aid from the Colonial army. They explain why the county, large as 
it was then, furnished so few troops for the main army, in comparison with 
the same population in the New England states. When the family of 
a settler needed his daily protection at home, he could not be expected to 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 81 

leave them and enlist in the general cause against Great Britain. It ex- 
plains also why it was necessary to build and repair our forts during the 
Revolution, though the real field of the Revolutionary war was several hun- 
dred miles from us. These forts and the armed soldiers within were 
indispensable. When a forray was made by the Indians into any settle- 
ment, the people ran for their lives to the nearest blockhouse, or fort. Even 
though they were able when within a blockhouse to defend themselves, 
starvation would soon have compelled them to surrender. But a swift 
riding messenger could soon communicate with the nearest garrison, 
whose soldiers were ready at all times to hasten to their relief. This was 
done times without number, as the reader will see later on. Without 
these garrisoned forts to draw upon, our early settlements would have 
been literally devastated, and our people either murdered or driven east of 
the Allegheny mountains. And it must also be remembered that these 
garrisons were w-eak, and at best but poorly equipped, though they were 
as strong as the new government, struggling for its first foothold, could 
attord. 

There were four structures built by our pioneer ancestors for defense 
against the Indians, or any other attacking party. They were called forts, 
blockhouses, blockhouse cabins, and stockades. When either of the first 
two had a stockade in addition, it was properly called a stockade fort or 
stockade blockhouse ; blockhouses were often called forts, and perhaps the 
general resemblance and method of construction warranted this somewhat 
extravagant designation. A first-class fort was usually surrounded by a 
stockade; a blockhouse was not very securely guarded. A block- 
house was generally made of heavy logs, and in construction did not 
differ materially from the log houses of the last century, which all have 
seen but which are rapidly passing away. The logs used were very heavy, 
to give strength to the building, and were generally unhewn. A blockhouse 
was often large enough to accommodate many families in times of 
distress. The first story was made from nine to eleven feet high. Then 
another story was begun on top of the first, but the logs of the second 
story extended several feet (generally about five) beyond the lower story. 
By this projecting second story, if Indians were to attack the lower story„ 
they could be shot from above. The upper story was made six or seven 
feet high, and had in its walls port holes through which to fire at the at- 
tacking party. This was only a place of refuge in time of Indian incursions 
and not designed as a place of permanent abode. 

Blockhouses were often constructed by the neighbors, who went to- 
gether, felled the timber, and thus erected a place of public safety. They 
were not built strong enough to resist an attack made by an enemy 
with heavy guns. They were easily a splendid barrier against the Indians,, 
whose implements of warfare were almost exclusively confined to muskets. 



82 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

or rifles, bows and arrows, tomahawks and scalping knives. The English 
government generally built forts, and most of them were stockade forts. 
They were more substantially built than blockhouses, and were strong 
■enough to resist an attack of the heaviest guns, as heavy guns were then. 
They would, of course, be mere kindling wood as against the heavy guns of 
today. 

All forts or blockhouses or stockade forts built by the English were 
constructed under the supervision of their best engineers, according to 
the methods laid down by the best authorities on military tactics, or the best 
that were practicable in a new country. Accurate drawings and pictures 
of these fortresses were made by the engineers and sent to the war depart- 
ment of England and carefully filed away. The same method was after- 
ward pursued by the Colonial army, so that we have in the English and 
American archives accurate drawings of these structures. The stockade 
of a stockade fort surrounded the fort, or blockhouse proper. All in 
this section were made of logs. 

Fort Ligonier was the first fort built by the English west of the Alle- 
ghenv mountains. It was built, as has been seen by Forbes' army, in 1758. 
Its construction was determined by Colonel Henry Bouquet, and superin- 
tended by Colonel James Burd. It was not completed at that time by the 
English, but was subsequently finished after the manner designed by them 
by our early military forces. The place of its location was well 
selected, since there was on the south side a rocky blufif, or almost 
perpendicular wall of projecting rocks between the fort and the Loyal- 
hanna creek. This afforded a natural barrier against any approach from the 
south. The fort at its highest point was ninety-four feet above the water 
of the creek. It was also fortified to a great extent on the north side, for 
there lay a deep ravine from a strong spring to the east. These natural 
fortifications are yet visible. The stockade was in the main about one 
hundred feet square, with large diamond shaped extensions on each cor- 
ner, so that, through loop-holes, a soldier within the enclosure of the 
stockade could fire on an enemy who might be attempting to scale the 
stockade. The stockade was made of logs from ten to twelve feet long, 
and set firmly in the ground. These logs were generally split and the flat 
surface turned outward. These were called palisades, and were set in the 
■ground so closely that they touched each other. They were reinforced by 
others which were set so as to close the spaces that might be made by the 
logs not fitting together exactly, and, to add strength to the structure. 
Strong timbers were .fastened to the palisades near the tops, and these were 
thoroughly pinned together. In that part of the fort which was most likely 
to be attacked, this horizontal log was reinforced by others, all thoroughly 
braced and held in place by strong brace timbers reaching to the ground. 
On the outside earth was thrown up against these posts, and this made a 



84 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

ditch which practically g-ave an additional height to the stockades. The 
enclosure thus made was a space over one hundred feet square, while the 
circumference made by the palisades was over five hundred feet long, this 
being due to the projecting corners. Within this enclosure were the of- 
ficers' quarters, while outside were the soldiers' cabins. In time of a siege, 
which frequently happened at Ligonier, soldiers, settlers and officers 
were all within the stockade. At each angle of the stockade were mounted 
caimon. \Yithin the stockade were also the storerooms, powder maga-' 
zines, etc. A covered way led from the east side of the fort to the 
spring, and the ravine was marked as crossed by a foot log. This covered 
way was made of shorter logs, and was necessary in times of a siege. It 
gave rise to a popular belief that there was a tunnel extending down to 
the Loyalhanna. There has never been any evidence of a tunnel discovered^, 
save a few cavities in the rocks overhanging the creek and these extend intO: 
the hill but a few feet. It is not supposed that an underground tunnel 
would be made and not reported or outlined on the map or plan, for the Eng-' 
lish did not generally report less than they did. There was also a gate, made 
of strong logs, like the posts of the stockade, firmly fastened together, and 
hung on immense iron hinges. This in times of danger was kept closed 
and bolted. The gate was on the east side. For many years it was kept up 
by the English army, and when Independence was declared in 1776, the 
Colonial army took charge of it, and it was yet a place of safety to all the 
surrounding settlers. 

There was also a new fort built at Ligonier during the Revolution, when 
the old one was badly decayed. It has been called Fort Preservation and was 
down by the bank of the creek, for the accounts of it represent that a canal from 
the creek filled the ditch surrounding the fort with water. It was a small affair 
compared with the old fort and even its exact location is not known. It was 
probably built entirely by the pioneers of that locality and hence we have no 
draft of it. 

The garrison was very useful, indeed indispensable, to the early settlers 
of the valley. Those who lived near enough to the fort could at anytime 
call the soldiers of the garrison out to protect them, by blowing on large 
horns. These, when properly winded by the settler or his wife, could be 
heard two miles or more. With the first sound of a horn the mounted 
soldiers hastened to their relief. In this way many Indian raiders were 
frightened away, or deterred from committing depredations and many a 
family was protected. 

Perhaps a still more comrhon method of defense was in what was called 
blockhouse cabins. Sometimes they were called stations, and perhaps- 
sometimes forts, or blockhouses, but they were properly neither. They were 
strongly built log houses, with heavy doors, and heavy covering for the 
windows, which could be put up and barred from the inside. In the 



HISTORY. -OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 85 

gables were cracks which admitted light and air. A\'hen built after the' 
fashion of the pioneer, they could withstand a long siege from the Indians 
on the outside. There were rifle holes on every side, and the Indian who 
thought he could approach them with any degree of safety was generally 
a dead Indian before any damage was done. Two or three dozen people 
could be reasonably secure in one of these cabins, and, armed with a few 
flintlock guns, were easily able to cope with twice their number of savages. 
Hannastown, thcaigh in Hempfield township, where the settlers were 
nearly all Pennsylvania Dutch, was settled by Robert Hanna and his 
friends, and they were nearly all Irish or Scotch-Irish. In 1774. the first 
year after it became the county seat of the new county. Hanna and his 
neighbors joined together and hurriedly put up a fort. This was necessary 
not only through fear of the Indians, but through fear of Dunmore's ma- 
rauders as well. It was a large two-roomed log house, with only one door, 
and no windows \\-hatever in the upper story. The only light came from 
small holes in the upper story, through which the barrel of a musket could 
be aimed at an Indian. It had a flat or nearly flat roof to prevent the 
Indians from firing it from the outside. It was additionally strengthened 
by palisades which surrounded it, made after the fashion of the one above 
described at Fort Ligonier. The upper story was higher than the tops of 
the palisades, so that they could be defended from the inner fort. The 
structure of 1774 was but a temporary affair, but in 1776 it was greatly 
strengthened, and was of great service. Its construction was superintended 
by David Semple, and for this service the minutes of the supreme executive 
council show he was paid twenty pounds. After its extension and improve- 
ment it included a store-house, where the private property of the frightened 
settlers could be stored. It will be remembered that this fort was half way 
between Fort Ligonier and Fort Duquesne, and in transporting provisions,, 
ammunition, etc., from the east, it became a very important stopping place. 
From 1776 it was very frequently filled with families of the neighborhood, 
who were thus forced to take refuge from the Indians. It was not for several 
years attacked, for the reason of the strength of its garrison. During 
all these years there were either soldiers of the Continental army or mili- 
tia stationed there all the time. This was, however, a force not by any means 
sufficient for the preservation of peace, as may be seen from a letter from 
Col. Archibald Laughry to President Reed, of the supreme executive coun- 
cil. In it he says that "the savages are continually making depredations 
among us ; not less than forty people have been killed, wounded or capti- 
vated this spring, and the enemy have killed our creatures within three 
hundred yards of this town." This is dated at Hannastown, ^lay I, 1779. 
On June i, 1780, he wrote to President Reed saying, "I have been imder the 
necessity' of removing the public records from Hannastown to my own 
plantation, not without the consent of the judge of the court." 



85 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

Miller's Station, sometimeg erroneously called Miller's Fort, was another 
very important one to this region. It was located about three miles south- 
east from Hannastown, and one mile west from the present George sta- 
tion, on the Penns\'lvania Railroad. It was named after Captain Samuel 
Miller, a farmer who had taken up land there and was one of the leading 
men of his limited section. He is mentioned hereafter as one of the cap- 
tains of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment. With his regiment he came 
here from \'alley Forge in February, 1778, and was killed by the Indians 
July 7. His house was a plain substantial log house, and, being strongly 
built, became a rendevous for the surrounding neighbors in time of danger. 
It was probably only resorted to by those who could not reach strongly 
fortified places. Gathered there from time to time were men of daring 
courage who were able to resist any attack on the part of the Indians unless 
they were greatly outnumbered. It was a two-roomed log h'ouse, and was 
a fair specimen of the blockhouse cabin. 

Often when Indians had been seen lurking in the community, or per- 
haps when a false alarm had been spread through the country, the inhabi- 
tants would gather at these cabins and spend the night, resuming their 
work the day following in the fields. Their protection depended more in- 
their united strength than on the strength of the cabin in which they 
were collected. Men, women and children were from time to time col- 
lected in these places of refuge. The women of that day were enured to 
the hardships of frontier life, and in these times of danger readily performed 
very important services. They could, from much practice, dress the 
wounds of those who were shot, and knew the herbs of the fields which 
would, when brewed, cure or allay the suffering of their injured defenders. 
They could stand guard at night, and give the alarm if a stealthy foe -ap- 
proached. They could make bullets, cut patches and load muskets. 

We shall learn later that the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment was- 
raised in Westmoreland county exclusively for border defense, and that 
in an emergency it was ordered to Kew Jersey. After its remova;l in 
January, 1777. the whole western frontier was laid open to the most vio- 
lent Indian depredations. The militia was called out, but they were poorly 
drilled, poorly equipped and if paid at all it was in depreciated continental 
currency. In 'jj and '78, therefore, there were numerous depredations all 
along the border. Indians under the leadership of Simon Girty, or others 
of like character, seemed lurking in every place of concealment. The 
dangers of this community from ambushing red men, are illustrated in 
Captain James Smith's narrative, which has been previously referred to. 
About this time he marched a regiment to the Allegheny river region ta 
chastise the Indians. In his notes he says they marched in four columns, 
forty rods apart, with scouts posted on the flanks of each column. The men 
of each column marched one rod apart. In case of an attack each man- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 87 

was to face out and take to the nearest tree. This was to keep the Indians 
from surrounding them, and to prevent them from shooting more than once 
without exposing themselves. At night they encamped in a hollow square, 
each line being about a quarter of a mile long. Guards were placed outside 
to watch for the approach of an enemy and to guard the cattle which were 
taken along for meat for the army. 

These were dark years indeed. The Continental Congress had no way 
of raising money sufficient to carry on the war except by promises to pay 
in the future. These promises were based on the credit of the country, and 
depended entirely on the success of the Colonial army. Every one knew 
that if the cause of the Colonies failed, their promises to pay would be worth 
nothing. No man who entered the service after 1778 expected to be paid in 
continental money, for it had then depreciated until it was almost worth- 
less. For the few expenses of the army which must be paid, Congress de- 
pended on private subscriptions. Soon the depreciation was so great that 
they ceased sending it out as soldiers' pay. Under these difficulties Colonel 
Broadhead marched out with the Eighth Regiment in the summer of 1778. 
and did great service against the Indians up the Allegheny. His regiment 
cut off a party of about forty savages on their way to raid Westmoreland 
county. Both Colonels Smith and Lochry accompanied the expedition. 
It hail a salutary effect upon the peace and good order of Westmoreland, 
l)ut they returned exhausted, for, serving without pay, and clothing them- 
selves, they had nothing wherewith to recuperate unless their work at home 
went on while they were gone. Thus were difficulties without limit heaped 
on the pioneers of our county, and they were all thoroughly understood by 
the enemy. Finally, the supreme executive council issued a proclamation 
encouraging young men to turn out to fight the Indians in small parties, 
and in a manner somewhat after the Indian style. This proclamation had 
good effect. There was an adventure in it which was very attractive to 
small parties of energetic young men. These parties were called '"Rangers." 
Prominent among the Rangers were David Shaw and his brother, the 
Brownlees, Colonel Wilson, the Barrs, the Wallaces, Captain Brady, Cap- 
tain \'an Swearingen, Samuel Shannon, William Cooper, Joseph Erwin, 
Michael Huffnagle, James Guthrie, Matthew Jack, James Smith, Thomas 
Stokely and others. These were all bold young rangers, any one of whom 
might have figured as a character in the inspiring novels of Sir Walter 
Scott ; might have taken the place of Bois Gilbert, or Ivanhoe, or of bold 
MacGregor, with his foot upon the heather of his native land, and his 
eye on the peak of the much loved Ben Lomond. They went forth dressed 
in homespun garments, each armed at his own expense, and comparatively 
well armed for that day, for each had a rifle or a musket, a knife and a 
hatchet. They acted together, or each set separately, as the occasion de- 
manded. They stood together for protection, and they were frequently 



88 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

neighbors and well acquainted friends who would not stop at any danger 
-to rescue a companion from a difficulty. They had officers whom they 
obeyed, whether they were in small parties or engaged in a general turnout 
for public defense. More than all this, they were at home in the woods, 
and upon any sign or news of distress they knew how to travel by the 
shortest route to the place of need. They could soon spread the news of 
the presence of Indians over an entire community, and they very rapidly 
gathered the women and children to the nearest blockhouse or place of 
safety. From long experience in the woods they could travel the almost 
trackless forest on dark nights with unerring certainty. Their faculties of 
hearing and of sight were sharpened to such acuteness by constant use that 
the slightest movement in the bushes was noticed by them, and sounds 
which fell on deafened ears of others were distinctly heard and under- 
stood by them. They could endure long tramps through the woods and 
over mountains, without food. They were rapid runners, and so expert 
in the use of a rifle that whether moving or standing they rarely ever failed 
to hit the mark. From places and difficulties in which capture seemed al- 
most inevitable, they freed themselves by a display of nerve and strength 
which made even the hardened Indian marvel and fall back. All these 
qualities were bred and born in them from their youth, and were, in hun- 
dreds of instances, necessary for self-preservation. Much perception, uner- 
ring judgment and boldness of execution, scores of times saved their lives. 
For years they were the salvation of our pioneer homes, and to them we owe 
every possible meed of praise. Nor were the women of that age less heroic, 
and it is not our intention to pass them and their deeds of heroism unnoticed- 

In the southern end of the valley those who had carved out little farms 
along Indian Creek and on the headwaters of the Four Mile Run had built 
a good strong blockhouse on the land taken up by a farmer named Williams, 
and this they called Fort Williams. Both the settlers from Indian Creek 
and from the Four Mill Run valley had access to this fort. It was on the 
west side of the main road leading from Ligonier to Donegal. Here they 
gathered in times of danger, for they were too far from Fort Ligonier to 
go there. When the Indians had satisfied themselves and left the community 
the settlers gathered up their scattered live stock and went back joyfully to 
their cabins. 

Among the early settlers were the Harmans, the Williams and the 
Hayses. Some of them came as early as 1767 or 1768, and perhaps earlier, 
but they are known to have been there then. They had all settled in viola- 
tion of the law, which forbade the settlement of a section until it was first 
purchased from the Indians. They were a brave, daring class of people, 
and doubtless cared very little about the original rights of the Indian 
race, less, at all events, than did the Penns. 

The progenitor of the Harman familv came from Germany, and brought 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 89 

with his family a very scanty supply of this world's goods. Tradition says 
that they had little else than a rifle, an ax and a mattock, and that the first 
summer they lived in a hut built against a rock and covered with bark. 
Around the hut he began to clear away the trees sa that his crops might 
grow. No one can now appreciate the hardships of these people. They 
could not transport grain from the east for bread, for they were right glad, 
indeed, if they could get enough for seed. Necessarily they had to live on 
the scanty product of a new garden, wild berries, and on game, with which 
the woods abounded. Most of them saw no one save the members of 
their own families for months, or even for a year after their arrival. This 
.and much more fell to the sad lot of the elder Harmans. 

When more neighbors came the dangers increased, for, while one man or 
a family could live in a lonely valley unmolested by the Indians, he could not 
■expect to do this when his flocks had so increased and his neighbors become so 
numerous as to tempt the greed of the red men. It was, at best, a continu- 
ous warfare for life, not only as against the Indians but as against the wild 
and stingy soil as well. 

Harman lived about midway between Stahlstown and Donegal, though 
not on the present main road, but near Williams' blockhouse. In 1777 he, 
with three of his neighbors, were returning from a sale north of their place. 
As they rode along the path all were fired on by concealed Indians and 
killed. One of them lived long enough to throw his arms around his 
horse's neck and be carried away. The Indians did not get his horse nor his 
scalp, for he was found the day following with the faithful animal standing 
by his side. The others fell where they were shot, and were buried there 
the day following. To this day the neighbors point out the place of their 
■graves. Harman's widow was left with his land on Four Mile Run, which 
included the mouth of Laurel Run. She had three sons — Andrew, John 
and Philip, of whom Andrew was the oldest, a lad of fourteen years. They 
■removed to the blockhouse over winter, and when spring opened up they 
were compelled to resume their work on the "clearing." One morning the 
widow saw some neighbors' horses in a field of growing grain near the 
curve of the stream, and she sent the two oldest boys to drive them off. 
Three hostile Indians were hidden behind the roots and ground of a large 
tree which had been uprooted by the storm, lying in wait for the boys to 
come near. They readily captured John, but Andrew ran towards their 
cabin. He was soon overtaken by an Indian with a tomahawk raised over 
his head, and was taken back to wdiere his brother was held captive by the 
other two Indians. Both were made to understand in the broken English 
■of the Indians that if they made any outcry they would be killed at once. 
All of them first went up a steep hill beyond Four Mile Run, from which 
thev could see the log cabin and hear their widowed mother calling for 
them, bvit they dare not answer her. The Indians asked them if there were 



90 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



men at the cabin, and Andrew told them there were. Had not the precocious, 
youth thus deceived them, they would doubtless have killed and scalped 
their mother, and taken their other brother and such property as was use- 
ful to them. Then they started on their journey down the Four Mile Run, 
and soon came across two horses belonging to a neighbor of Harman's 
named Johnson. One horse was unable to travel, and they cut its throat. 
so that it might not annoy them when the other was taken away. They 
took the young horse and made him carry some skins, a kettle, etc.,. 
which they had with them. That day they killed a deer and cooked some 
of the meat over the coals of a fire, giving the prisoner boys all they wanted. 
The first night they spent not far from Fort Ligonier, near enough to 
hear some noises there, to which the Indians listened very cautiously. 
They gave the boys deer skins to sleep on, and made them each a pair of 
moccasins from the same material, for they were barefooted when they were 
captured. 

On the journey one of the Indians showed the boys a pocket wallet 
which they recognized at once. When asked where they had procured it 
they said they had taken it from a little old Dutchman they had killed the- 
year before. It was the pocket wallet of their father, and at least one ot 
the Indians had been among the awaiting party which killed him and his: 
three neighbors while returning from the sale. When they came to the 
Susquehanna river they had great difficulty in crossing. They had a canoe, 
but could not propel it and lead the horse. At one time in the passage the 
boA's and the guns were on one side of the river and the Indians and the 
horse on the other. The boys were probably afraid to shoot and try to make 
their escape. They finally reached the Seneca tribe. These were known 
generally as the Cornplanters, and Cornplanter was the name of their 
chief. They had a reservation in northern Pennsylvania and New York, 
were partly civilized, and many of them could speak English. The boys, 
were adopted as members of the tribe and were treated kindly. The year 
following their capture was one of great sickness among the Indians. 
Many of the tribe died, and among others John Harman. Andrew was at- 
tached to a prominent chieftain of the tribe who had a son about his age 
and the boys became great friends. By the Indians he was called "Andus" 
and was liked very much, because he readily fell into their habits. He w^as 
treated by them as one of their own tribe, nor would they allow him to be- 
ill treated. He was among them when General Broadhead took the Eighth 
Regiment up the Allegheny to lay waste their habitations. The tribe suf- 
fered greatly from this expedition. The following winter was severe and 
they were almost entirely without provisions ; moreover, the snow was- 
deep, and all kinds of game were scarce. They contemplated killing An- 
drew so that they would no longer have to feed him. One day his master 
sent his son and Andrew down the river on the ice to another Indian towm 



HISTORY O-F WESTMORELAND COUNTY. gi 

to procure some provisions. The master told his son to put Andrew under 
the ice when a good opportunity was presented, but the boy overhearing it, 
was told that it was the old dog that was to be put under the ice. The 
voung warrior did not make the attempt. At another time he accompanied 
his master on a hunting expedition. Three deer had been killed and car- 
ried to one place, the master leaving Andrew to watch two of them while 
he carried a third to his house, telling the boy that he would soon return. 
It was very cold and he did not return. So the boy hung the deer so they 
would be out of the reach of wolves, wrapped himself up in skins, and was 
soon sound asleep. The master came the next morning and found him 
covered with snow, and, supposing him to be frozen to death, he kicked 
him to ascertain his condition and found the boy in perfect health. After 
that they never attempted his life. 

One Indian who was a very successful gardner raised a great many 
early squashes. The boy had grown tired of dieting on smoked venison and 
corn all winter and helped himself to some squashes. For this the Indian 
who had raised them fell on him and beat him severely, in fact would prob- 
ably have killed him had not Andrew's friends interfered. 

Gradually the boy became very like an Indian, adopting their habits 
and learning their language. Gradually, too, the memory of his home al- 
most faded away, and he had abandoned ever seeing his people again. 
After two years he was sold to a British officer for a bottle of rum. The 
officer took him to England and kept him as a servant in London for two 
years. When the Revolutionary War closed he was exchanged and sent 
to Xew York, and from there came to his home in Ligonier Valley. In the 
meantime his mother, through many privations, had remained in the old 
cabin, and her third son was well grown to manhood. She had long since 
ceased to look for the return of her long lost son. Without a moments 
warning he walked into her cabin. A neighbor woman who chanced to be 
in the Harman cabin at the time, related the circumstance. The boy had 
grown to manhood ; the mother was prematurely aged with hardships and 
sorrow. When she recognized him she was overcome with joy, and fainted 
in his arms. The news of his return was rapidly spread through the valley. 
The following Svmday the cabin was crowded all dav with those who had 
come from near and far to see the returned captive. Men, women and 
children came, many not believing the story until they saw and recognized 
him. For many years he and his mother lived together on the old home- 
stead, the scene of so much sorrow to her. Andrew never ceased to be a 
woodsman. He loved to hunt, and with the gait of the Indian, which he 
acquired in captivity, and which he kept even till old age, he was never 
happier than when traveling through the wilderness. He, moreover, always 
spoke kindly of the Indians, remembering the good and not the evil they had 
done him and his family. 



92 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



In Ligonier Valley there was almost a constant warfare between the 
settlers and the Indians from the earliest settlement till 1792. It was, as 
we shall learn later, the first stopping place west of the Allegheny moun- 
tains in our county for those who were journeying towards the setting 
sun in quest of new homes. The first log cabins were erected very near 
the fort, mostly east of it, in the region now traversed by East ]\Iain street, 
Ligonier. Gradually these cabins spread out, generally locating as near the 
Forbes Road as possible. These settlers made frequent journeys to the fort. 
even in times of safety, for there were kept all supplies that could not be 
raised by the farmer — such as powder, lead, flints for their guns, as well as 
firearms. These were sent out from the east and kept at the garrison. In 
return they gave potatoes, grain, and such other products as the garrison 
stood in need of. 

The valley was also a favorite place for Indian depredations, on account 
of its topography. They could readily approach it unheralded, for it was 
almost surrounded with uninhabitated mountains. When they had cap- 
tured families, taken scalps and stolen horses, they could readily pass out 
northward, crossing the Conemaugh or the Kiskiminetas, and almost at 
once enter an unbroken forest which practically extended to New York 
state. This is the reason why the northern end of the valley was more 
harrassed by the Indians than the southern end. 

It has been extremely difficult in dealing with the Indian outrages on 
our early settlers, to sift the really authentic from the improbable. Of 
many of them all that can be found is a reference in a letter from some 
prominent man to the council, giving the number killed or carried away, 
but nothing of the circumstances surrounding the afifair. There were no 
newspapers then to publish such news, and our ancestors had more import- 
ant matters to attend to than to describe their enemies. There are msny 
traditions which, if only the romantic was sought, would interest the reader, 
but most of them are not sufficiently substantiated by surrounding well 
known facts to be included here. The years of their greatest trouble with 
the Indians were those of the Revolutionary War. The danger then was 
so great that families very rarely remained in their houses all year. AVith 
the first warning of the presence of Indians, even in the remotest section 
of the community, they came to the fort or to cabins near it, and remained 
there till the storm had blown over. From there the husband and sons went 
daily to their labor on their farms, with their scanty enough lunches tied 
in a homespun cloth, but they rarely ever went alone. They united, and, 
from five to twent3^ sometimes more, went to one place one day, and to 
another the next, and so on till the crops were planted or harvested at each 
place. In this way their force was more formidable than though thev had 
gone each to his own work. This custom of labor held sway long after the 
Indians were forever banished from this section, and was not uncommon 



HISTORY OJ^ WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 95 

even in the middle of the last century. In the early days, it is needless to 
say, they always took their guns with them, and they often appointed one 
or more to keep a lookout for an approaching enemy. Their farms were 
called "deadnings," or "clearings." The first name indicated that the trees 
of the original forest had been deadened by cutting a ring around their 
trunks, near the ground, of sufficient depth to prevent the sap from sup- 
plying the tree. The trees thus treated made but little shade, and the crop 
grew among them comparatively well. When the trees had been largely 
cut down and destroyed, the land was called a "clearing," a term still in use 
in some sections of our county. The first clearings were made near the 
fort, then they reached up and down the Loyalhanna and up Mill Creek and 
up the Four J\Iile Run, so named because its junction with the Loyalhanna 
was about four miles from the fort. 

Even in times of peace, when these settlers remained in their houses, 
the bolts, bars, window shutters, etc., with which to barricade the cabin 
against the Indians, should they appear suddenly, were always kept in 
order. So, too, the house-wife kept a store of provisions against a siege, 
and, with that in view, many of the old houses were built not near but 
actually on springs, so that water could be had from a spring in the cellar, 
in times when all outside communication was cut oil. A family thus 
barricaded could often withstand an attack of three or four Indians, till 
aid would come to drive them away. Many a red-skin has bitten the 
dust from the shot of a farmer or his wife through a loophole made for 
that purpose. The following incidents of Indian warfare do not depend 
on tradition alone, and can be taken as actual happenings. 

Robert Campbell lived with his parents in Fairfield, now Cook township,, 
near the Pleasant Grove church. In July, 1776, he and his brothers ^Vill- 
iam and Thomas were working in the harvest field and were unguarded, 
for there had been no rumor of the presence of Indians for some time. 
Suddenly a party of Indians swooped down on them. The lads started to 
run home, and this disclosed to the Indians the direction of their cabin, if 
they did not know it before. The boys being but half grown, were soon 
overtaken by the Indians, who then divided, one set of them guarding the 
prisoner boys, while the others went to the Campbell cabin. The mother, 
with an infant babe in her arms, started to run away, but she was soon 
overtaken and struck down with one blow from a tomahawk which crushed 
her skull. In falling she is supposed to have killed her babe. Both were 
found the next day and were interred in one grave. Both had been scalped. 
There were left in the cabin three girls, named Polly, Isabel and Sarah, all 
of whom, with Robert, William and Thomas, taken in the field, were taken 
away as prisoners. The Indians had stolen their horses and now rode 
them away. The boys were compelled to walk, but the girls were taken on 
the horses, each one riding behind an Indian. The youngest of the girls. 



94 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



icould not stay on -the horse, so they killed her with a blow from a toma- 
hawk and threw her body by the wayside, where it was found a few days 
afterward. This was about one mile north of their cabin. They travelled 
northward and crossed the Kiskiminetas below Saltsburg, and then went 
up through Pennsylvania to New York. There the children were separated. 
Thomas was sold to an English officer and was afterwards taken to Eng- 
Jand. The two girls were kept four years, and then released and returned 
to the valley. William came back at the close of the Revolution. While 
Robert was being taken north, he was in charge of a band of Indians who 
had a good many other prisoners with them. One night a prisoner, a half 
grown bo3% escaped, but was retaken the day following. Shortly after 
that he again escaped and was again recaptured. The second attempt was 
-not forgiven by the Indians. As soon as he was returned to camp all the 
prisoners were brought out and the boy was tied to a tree and gradually 
turned to death and to ashes. This horrible spectacle all prisoners were 
compelled to witness, perhaps to deter them from attempting to make an 
■escape. After being six years in captivity Robert escaped and in 1782 reached 
his old home, where he lived the remainder of his days. He was 
known far and near as "Elder" Robert Campbell, to distinguish him from 
others of the same name who perhaps were less pious, for he was a leader 
in the Presbyterian church at Pleasant Grove. He was a most placid tem- 
pered man, and the progenitor of a large family which has since inhabited 
Cook and Donegal townships. He is buried in the little cemetery at Pleas- 
ant Grove. 

During the war of the Revolution the Ulery family owned and lived on 
a farm about two miles south of Fort Ligonier, now owned by Mr. Isaac 
Slater. Like all other settlers in pioneer days, they stayed in the fort in 
dangerous times, but even then went out on every possible occasion to 
plant and harvest their crops. One day in July, Abigail, Elizabeth and 
Juliann went to a meadow near their log house to rake some new mown 
hay. At that time there had been no recent word of Indian incursions in the 
community and therefore the Ulery family was at home and doubtless off 
their guard. Their house stood near the present Slater farm house. In 
the midst of their work in the fields the girls were suddenly surprised by 
Indians, who had stealthily approached them under the cover of the 
woods beyond, and were nearly upon them before they were discovered. 
The three girls ran at once towards the house. Abigail, the youngest, was 
about sixteen years of age, while Elizabeth was eighteen, and the other 
sister about twenty. The two older sisters easily outran Abigail, but she 
followed as rapidly as possible. The other sisters doubtless thought she 
had been captured, for they mistook the sound of her footfalls behind them 
for those of an Indian pursuer, and put forth every effort to keep ahead 
of her. The two older girls reached the house, ran in and barred the door. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 95 

.When the younger sister reached the door she was unable to gain admit- 
tance, those in tlie inside thinking her to be an Indian pursuer. 
Witliout stopping and without making herself known, because of her 
frightened condition, she ran around the house and up on the higher ground 
above the house. The Indians were almost within reach of her when she 
ran from the door and they at once tried to break it in by pushing against 
it with their united strength. As they were doing this the father of the 
g-irls fired through the door and shot an Indian, most likely in the bowels, 
as he always thought. Being unable to break down the door, and perhaps 
fearing another shot, the Indians left the house and followed in the direc- 
tion the young girl Abigail had taken when she ran away. The door 



through which the Indian was shot is a heavy oaken one, and is yet pre- 
served by the Slater family. The hole through which the Indian was shot 
is about in its center. The young girl Abigail ran but a short distance 
until she found a hiding place in a hole in the ground, made by a large 
tree having been blown out of root. In this depression were many leaves, 
dropped there by the wind, and with these and with tall weeds and grass 
she pretty thoroughly concealed herself. She lay there but a few minutes 
until the Indians came by and stopped to search for her, for they doubtless 



96 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTV. 



thought she would most likely hide herself in the branches of the fallen 
tree, and undoubtedly searched more thoroughly among the branches than 
at the root. She heard one of them say to another to look carefully, for 
she was certainly there, because he could smell her, and that they would 
scalp and kill her when they found her. Long years afterwards she 
told her grandchildren and many others that the greatest trial of her life 
had been to keep from jumping up and attempting to run awav at this 
instant, which would of course have been fatal to her. She said also that 
she was in agonizing fear lest her hiding place should be discovered by the 
movement of the leaves covering her, occasioned by the violent beating 
of her heart. 

But her rescue came from another 
source. Fortunately for the girl the 
wounded Indian was moaning bitterly, 
as though in great agony, and de- 
manded a great deal of attention from 
his fellows. This undoubtedly saved 
her life, for her hiding place must 
necessarily have been discovered with 
but little further search. So they took 
the groaning Indian away, one on 
either side supporting him, and left 
the hidden girl to herself. She at 
once, when they were out of sight, 
ran rapidly to the cabin, this time be- 
ing received into the house and wel- 
comed with open arms, for the 
family thought she was lost in cap- 
tivity or death. The Indians with 
their wounded comrade went but 
a short distance till they passed 
over the brow of the hill and 
were out of sight of the house. There it has always been supposed the 
Indian died and was buried, for a grave was afterwards found there, and 
bones supposed to be Indian bones were dug up on the spot many years 
afterwards by Isaac Slater. 

When the Indians once raided a community they did not generally visit 
the same place again for some time, for the result of an attack was to 
arouse the neighborhood thoroughly. For their own safety, therefore, 
the Indians usually skulked away to a new locality where their presence was 
unheralded. Relying on the expected immunity from further attacks, the 
family very soon resumed their usual work. Most likely the day following, 
the two girls, Elizabeth and her older sister, went out to work in the same 




of Ulery log house. showinK hole througl 
ich Indian was shot. This door has been 
preserved by the Slater family 



HISTORY QF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



97 



fields again. Fields were small then, and were skirted with large trees and 
underbrush. Concealed in this way, two Indians approached the cabin and 
managed to get between it and the girls in the field, thus effectually 
cutting off their retreat homeward and precluding the possibility of an es- 
cape such as they had made the day before. Only two of the girls were in 
the field the second day, their sister Abigail not yet having recovered from 
her experience of the day before. Elizabeth and Juliann, thus cut off 
from a place of safety to which they could fly, were easily captured by the 
Indians. They took them with them at once, going to the southeast, or 
towards the present location of Brants' school house. The young women 
were overcome with grief, and were Utterly dragged along for about a half a 
mile. The Indians tried to have the girls accompany them willingly, and 
held out every inducement in the way of promises of kind treatment and 
safety if they would do so, then threatening them with instant death if they 
did not accompany them more cheerfully. The Indians probably thought it 
necessary for them to "get out of that community with their captives as 
soon as possible, lest they be followed by a rescuing party. But the 
threat of death had less horror for the average pioneer woman than cap- 
tivity among the savages, and their ilight from the community was still 
retarded by the struggling women. It is probable that both of the girls 
were barefooted when taken as prisoners, for shces, in that early period, 
were rarely ever worn by either men or women when about their work 
in the summer-time. At all events, the girls soon complained that the thorns 
and briers were hurting their feet. The Indians then, to make peace with 
them and to facilitate their journey, gave them each a pair of moccasins. 
When they were near a rivulet which flows past Brant's school house and 
thence into the Two Mile Run, the captors became truly savage at the 
way their progress was delayed by the struggling women, and again asked 
them to chose between captivity or death. This had probably no effect 
upon the heart-broken girls except to add to their shrieks of horror and to 
increase their efforts to escape. The Indians then tomahawked and scalped 
them both, and left them lying on the hillside in the woods. It is probable 
that they were impelled to do this because of their fear of pursuit by their 
father or other rescuing parties of greater strength. The Indians hurried 
on, but were gone but a short time when they returned, having forgotten, 
to take their moccasins from the feet of the girls. Neither of the girls had 
been killed by the blows given them, nor by being scalped. When the 
Indians returned Juliann was lying on the ground as they had left her, 
though she was conscious of her surroundings. Elizabeth had unfortu- 
nately so far recovered that she was sitting up and leaning against a tree. 
She was killed at once by the Indian sinking his tomahawk through the top 
of her head. Juliann lay quiet, and heard the one Indian advise the 
other to make sure of her death by sinking the tomahawk into her brain 



98 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

too. but with the reply that she was as dead as she would ever be, they pro- 
cured their moccasins and hastened away. 

Not long after their capture their father missed them and turned to 
search for them. They were not found until the day following. The dead 
girl was buried perhaps near where the tragedy took place. Juliann 
was as tenderly cared for as possible at her home and at Fort Ligonier 
and finally recovered. Her scalp wcimd never healed over entirely, 
though we believe that after a year or so it gave her no pain. She was 
never healthy, but lived most of her life with her sister, Abigail, who at 
the close of the Revolution, was married to Isaac Slater. Abigail was 
the grandmother and namesake of the mother of the writer, as well as the 
grandmother of Mr. Isaac Slater, at present a citizen of Ligonier borough. 
From them the writer secured this story. They had heard their grand- 
mother tell it many times. She lived more than three-quarters of a cen- 
tury after she made her marvelous escape from the Indians, and until her 
oldest great-grandchildren were nearly full grown, and died October 29, 1855. 

Of the capture of Charles Clifford we have a very good account both 
by tradition and by various writings which confirm it. He resided on Mill 
Creek, a tributary of Loyalhanna, two and one-half miles northwest of Fort 
Ligonier. In winter time he and his family stayed in or near the fort, and 
in the early spring they resumed their work on their clearings. On April 
27, 1779, he and two sons went to their land to do some work preparatory to 
planting their spring crops. When they reached the place of their work 
they could not find their horses which they had left there the day before to 
graze over night. The boys set to clearing up the land, and the father 
went to look for the horses. He first went up to some newly deadened 
timber tracts near the present town of Waterford, for there he had found 
them once before when they strayed away. Not finding them there he 
continued the search, and finally reached the Forbes road leading to the 
fort, perhaps between Waterford and the present town of Laughlinstown. 
Still he could not find his horses, and so concluded to abandon the search 
and returned to the fort by this road. He had gone down the road but 
a short distance until he was fired on by five Indians who were concealed 
behind a log lying by the wayside. None of the balls wounded 
him severely, though one of them splintered his gunstock and thus 
cut his face, which bled profusely, though it was only a flesh wound. 
The Indians ran up to him. wiped the blood from his face, and 
seemed very glad he was not injured. They told him he would make a good 
man for them, and that they would take him to Niagara. They took from him 
his hat, coat, vest and shirt, allowing him to retain his trousers and shoes. 
One of the Indians cut away the brim from his hat and amused his fel- 
lows very much by wearing the crown. Another wore his shirt and an- 
other his vest. They gave him his coat to put on, but to this he objected un- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. rjg 

less they gave him his shirt also, saying- lie could not wear a coat without 
a shirt under it. But they did not take his suggestion kindly, and he was 
forced to submit, and told to hurry up as they must hasten on their journey. 
On the long march they treated him much more kindly than one miglit 
expect. The whole race was superstitious, and when five of them shot at 
him at once and failed to kill him, they concluded that he had some power 
to ward oft dangers and might be very useful to them. They did not tie 
his arms, as was their universal custom even among half-grown boys. At 
night he slept between two Indians, with a leather strap across his breast, 
the ends held firmly by the Indians lying on them. As soon as they lay 
down they slept, but Clifford had too many things to think of to sleep so 
readily. Gently he drew the one end of the strap from under the Indian 
by his side and sat up. The moon was shining bright, but there sat an 
Indian on a log. whose turn it was to watch the camp and keep up the 
fire. The watch sat silent and motionless as a statue, but the prisoner knew 
he was awake and would probably make short work of him if he attempted 
to escape. They had journeyed nearly north from where they captured 
him. At a point where now the village of Fairfield is located, they were 
joined by fifty-two other Indians, whose general trend was northward. 
The chief, Clifford said, had his head and arms covered with silver trinkets. 
They tore down fences to roast meat, but warily marched a mile or so 
away from the smoke to eat and prepare a place to rest over night. Clifford 
had great desire to see the other prisoners and to learn if his sons were 
among them. They had only one other prisoner, whose name was Peter 
Maharg. When Clifford found him he was sitting on a log much dejected, 
too much so to reply to Clifford's salutation, and sat with his head down in 
perfect silence. As it was learned afterwards he had been taken the same 
day and while hunting his horses. Maharg had a small dog with him when 
looking for his horses. He had seen the Indians before they saw him, 
and was making his escape, but his dog running ahead of him, came run- 
ning back to his master as soon as he saw the Indians. To the Indian this 
was all that was necessary. Maharg was taken at once. They further 
scoured the northern part of the valley for prisoners or booty, but finding 
nothing that was not guarded they left on the third day for their home, 
which was near the boundary between Pennsylvania and New York, near 
the head waters of the Allegheny river. They had thus journeyed about two 
hundred miles and killed but two people and secured but two prisoners. 
On their long march homeward they marched by daylight, but always 
camped an hour or so before sunset. Eight or ten of them guarded the 
prisoners while the others hunted through the woods. At the camp they 
generally all met about the same time, and the hunters generally brought 
in venison, turkey or smaller birds. After the evening meal they lay down 
after the manner of the first night. After they crossed the Allegheny river 



lOO HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

the game became very scarce, perhaps because of the hard winter. They 
could not shoot even a scjuirrel. All the party from that on suffered 
greatly from hunger. At one time for three days they had nothing to eat 
at all except the tender bark of young chestnut trees. This they cut with 
their tomahawks and offered it to their prisoners. Each of them refused, 
and received the consolation of "you fool ; you die." They now sent out 
two swift Indians who went ahead and in three days returned with some 
other Indians, among them some squaws, and who had beans, dried corn, 
and dried venison. They gave the two prisoners a fair share of these 
provisions. The Indians then divided into two parties, and one of them 
took the dejected Maharg, while the ether took Clifford. Maharg was 
treated most cruelly, most likely because he remained so morose and de- 
jected, for this from the first disgusted them with him. They made him 
run the gauntlet, and pounded him so severely that he fell before he had 
passed the line. The beating he received did not stop when he fell. He 
never recovered from it, but bore marks from it on his body when he was 
laid down many years afterwards in his last sleep. Running the gauntlet 
consisted in passing between two lines of Indians stationed about six feet 
apart, and the lines the same distance apart. The Indians were provided 
with clubs, and each had a right to hit the prisoner as he passed. If the 
prisoner was strong and active he could sometimes escape pretty well, 
but it was at best a most painful and dangerous ordeal. 

Clifford had been from the first under an Indian who claimed him as 
his servant. After he had become somewhat accustomed to traveling 
without a shirt, his Indian gave him a shirt and hat. The shirt was cov- 
ered with blood and had two bullet holes in it, and was probably taken 
from one of the men whom they had killed. Before he was taken prisoner, 
Clifford while working among the bushes had badly snagged his foot, 
and this without care became very painful, and the long marches had 
brought about inflammation and swelling. On showing it to his particular 
Indian guardian, he examined it very carefully and then went to a wild 
cherry tree with his tomahawk and procured some of the inner bark. This 
he boiled in a small pot and made a syrup with which he bathed the foot, 
and after laying the boiled bark on the wound bound it up with pieces of 
a shirt. It very rapidly reduced the swelling and allayed the pain. They 
kept Clifford six weeks and then delivered him to the British at Montreal. 
He learned much about their customs and curious manners, and never failed 
to interest his hearers by a narration of his experience and observations 
among them. He saw four prisoners running the gauntlet, one of whom 
was killed. At another time, when a horse had kicked a boy, the animal 
was at once shot by the father of the lad, and the Indians ate the raw 
meat of the animal, which they thought very delicious. At Montreal he 
grew in favor with the officers of the garrison and fared much better than 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. joi 

most .prisoners. He procured from one officer a pocket compass which he 
gave to a prisoner named James Flock, who escaped, and by the aid of 
the compass, made his way back to Westmoreland county through an al- 
most endless wilderness, finally arriving at his home long after his friends 
had given him up for dead. Clififord was in Alontreal two years and a half 
when he was exchanged. He then made his way back to Ligonier valle_v, 
having been gone three years. He lived to be an old man and was respected 
by all who knew him. He is buried in the old Fort Palmer cemetery, one of 
the oldest graveyards in the county. He died in 1816. He was a soldier of 
the Revolution. 

The year before the father Charles was captured, his son James left 
Fort Ligcnier to hunt game, having with him a very sagacious and well- 
trained dog. The dog all at once showed signs of scenting an enemy and 
came to his master whining and snarling as though something was wrong. 
He continued to advance along the path in the forest, but with a very 
watchful eye. In front of him stood a large tree with thick bushes growing 
about its stem. Behind these he saw an Indian crouching stealthily and 



waiting for him to come nearer. He saw instantly that to turn back or 
to stop would be to draw the Indian's fire, and perhaps with a fatal result. 
So he walked on. whistling in an unconcerned way, but slowly fetching 
his rifle down by his side and cocking it. When this was done he fired 
quickly at the Indian, though almost entirely concealed by the bushes, 
then turned and ran to the fort, where he found his father and Captain 
Shannon talking about the noise of the firing. The captain immediately 
started out with a party of fifteen or twenty men to try to get the Indian, 
either dead or alive. They found that he had not been killed, but they 
tracked him by the blood on the ground, and found that he was twisting 



102 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

leaves and forcing them into the wound to stop the flow of blood. It was 
evident from the loss of blood that he could not survive long, but from 
his not being found it was surmised that he had not been alone, but had 
been carried off by others who were with him. Not long after this Robert 
Knox, Sr., one of the first settlers of the valley, had a conversation with 
a renegade who asked Knox who it was who killed the Indian, mentioning 
the circumstances. Knox told him it was one of his neighbor's boys. This 
shooting happened near Hunger's spring, at Ligonier, The Cliffords are the 
ancestors of the well known Clifford family in Westmoreland county. 

Fort Walthour was one and a half miles west of Adamsburg, and was 
properly a blockhouse, built by the surrounding neighbors for temporary 
safety. It was in the midst of a Pennsylvania Dutch settlement, and 
clustering around it were the cabins of the settlers. For some weeks the 
settlers had been stopping there at night and going to their fields to labor 
in the daytime. The account of the killing of the Williards is well auth- 
enticated. Captain Williard, his daughter, a young woman well 
grown, and two sons, were working in the fields near the fort, which stood 
on Walthour's land. One morning in 1786 there suddenly appeared a small 
band of Indians who began firing cii them. The Williards seized their 
guns and ran towards the blockhouse. The daughter was overtaken, hvX 
the father and sons fired as they retreated, and, when very near the fort, 
the old man was killed by a shot from an Indian at close range. The 
Indian ran up, placed his foot on the prostrate man, and was just about 
to scalp him, when a shot from the fort hit the Indian in the leg or hip ; 
with a frightful yell he fled to his companions, but it was noticed that he 
limped at every step. He was pursued, but succeeded in hiding himself 
among the bushes and thus evaded his pursuers. There he lay for three 
days, until the citizens had given up finding him. Then he crawled out 
and secured a long stick which he used for a cane or crutch. Living on 
berries, roots and bark, and traveling mostly at night, he approached 
Turtle Creek, where there was a garrison. It is probable that he would 
have given himself up had the soldiers at the garrison been regulars, but 
they were militia, as he noticed, and they were much more severe on 
Indians than regulars were. They had no sympathy for an Indian, and 
would have made short work of him. For thirty-seven days after the 
killing of Williard this wretch had wandered over the hills, creeping most 
of the time, and having nothing to eat except what he could find in the 
woods. At length he reached Pittsburgh and practically gave himself up. 
He was a mere skeleton, so weakened that he could only ask for milk. 
When he was partially recovered, after considerable beating about, he 
practically admitted that it was his party who had attacked the Williards. 
and related the circumstances as given above. 

After the Indians were driven away from Fort Walthour, a party 



HISTORY OF IVESTMORELAND COUNTY. 103 

pursued them to the Allegheny river, but could not follow them beyond 
that. On their way they found the body of the daughter who had been 
captured. She had been killed with a tomahawk and scalped. This still 
further aggravated the feelings of the community towards the Indians, and 
when at length it was learned that the limping Indian was a prisoner in 
Pittsburgh, a new party was organized to bring him to justice. This was 
headed by Airs. Williard, widow and mother of the victims of the recent 
incursion. They went to Fort Pitt, and asked that the Indian be given to 
them that they might do with him as the relatives of the Williards 
thought proper. He was accordingly given into their custody. The 
Indians did not carry on war according to any recognized methods of war- 
fare, and hence were not supposed to be entitled to the protection of the 
law when caught. There was, furthermore, a feeling in the Walthour 
community that the Fort Pitt authorities should have killed him at once. 

When the Indian was delivered to them he was put on a horse and 
brought to the Walthour blockhouse. The Williards were deservedly 
very popular. The old man was remembered with that high esteem which 
usually surrounds those whose advancing years have been years of use- 
fulness. The young girl was just blooming into womanhood and had 
as many friends and as bright prospects as any maiden in the neighbor- 
hood. Here then was the opportunity to avenge their cruel murder. 
The entire populace was aroused. The Indian and his guard arrived late 
in the afternoon. To add to the occasion, it was determined that he 
should have a trial by jury, and should suffer the penalty which they by 
their verdict decreed. It is probable that the jury would not have been 
entirely unprejudiced, for to be an Indian alone was sufficient to con- 
demn him to death. The prevalent opinion was that he would be burned 
at the stake, which was the Indian method adopted a short time before in 
disposing of Colonel Crawford and many others. But a night must elapse 
before an impartial jury could be summoned. A deputy was sent out to 
procure a jury for the trial the next day. Others were detailed to cut and 
carry wood to the place where the old man Williard had fallen. This, 
in our highly censorious modern age, might have been considered as 
unduly presumptive of the verdict, but firewood of a good dry quality could be 
used for other purposes if not needed in carrying out the mandate of law. 

Xow the Indian had fallen from the horse in bringing him from Fort 
Pitt, and had apparently rebroken or badly injured his lame leg. Therefore 
the guard which was detailed to keep him in the blockhouse over night 
did not watch him as closely as they should have done. He climbed up the 
logs of the buildin.g to the place where the second story projected and was 
left open to shoot down on Indians who might try to break in below. From 
there he climbed down the outside and was gone. In the morning a jury 
was ])resent : the populace, women and children, had come from long 



I04 • HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

distances, the firewood was ready, in fact they had e-^-ery thing for a first- 
class trial and immolation except the Indian. After the outbreak of feel- 
ing against the guards had passed, a most exhaustive search was instituted. 
This extended in every direction and lasted for two days, yet it failed to 
reveal the whereabouts of the prisoner and his hiding place is to this day 
a mystery. On the fourth day after the escape of the Indian a lad in the 
community near by was looking for his horses when he saw an Indian 
mounting one of them by the aid of a pole and a fallen tree. The Indian 
had made a bark bridle, and at once set off towards the frontier at a 
rapid gait. The boy was afraid to claim the horse, but hurried home and 
gave the alarm. A searching party was collected and set out in pursuit. 
They followed his tracks till darkness compelled them to lay by till morn- 
ing came, when the search was again resumed. The Indian frequently rode 
in the middle of streams, or turned the wrong way, to mislead his pursuers. 
They traced him to the Allegheny River, a distance of about ninety miles, 
where they found the horse with the bark bridle. The horse was yet 
warm, the sweat not having dried on him, and it was evident that the 
Indian had left him but a short time before. Across the river the country 
was entirely unsettled and belonged to the Indians, so it was useless to 
follow him further. With the hope that he had drowned in the river, 
or famished in the wilderness, or that his wound had wrought his death, 
they returned and nothing definite was ever heard of the lame Indian. 

The murder of the Francis family was one of the most inhuman and 
barbarous incidents in border warfare. The family resided two miles 
or more east of Brush Creek. There had been no special alarm on ac- 
count of Indians for some months, and their usual vigilance was some- 
what relaxed. On the day of the murder they did not have their cabin 
barricaded, and a party of Indians therefore very easily gained access. 
Two of the family were killed at once, and the remaining members were 
taken prisoners. One was a young girl who lived to return to the settle- 
ment, where she was married and has left descendants in Hempfield town- 
ship. Her brothers and sisters were divided among several tribes repre- 
sented among the captors. Those who were killed were scalped and their 
bodies were found near the ruins of the cabin the day following. They were 
buried in the garden, a custom then prevalent among the pioneers, and 
which lasted till regular cemeteries or graveyards, as thev were called, 
were established. 

In the fall of 1795 Captain Sloan, John Wallace, his nephew, and two 
neighbors named Hunt and Knott, all citizens of Derry township, and near 
neighbors on the banks of the Loyalhanna, concluded to make a trip to 
the west. All were expert woodsmen, and were perhaps somewhat tired 
of their monotonous home life. Their objective point was the ^liami 
Valley, in Ohio. They did not go to fight Indians, but went thoroughly 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 105 

armed for self-protection. They took with them two horses which carried 
an abundance of provisions. They rode the horses time about, particularly 
after the store of provisions was somewhat lightened. Their first point 
of destination was Cincinnati, which they reached^ without noteworthy 
adventure. After leaving there they camped at night on the banks of the 
Big Maumee. The next morning Knott and Sloan were riding and were 
fired on by a large band of Indians who were concealed near by. Knott 
was killed at the first shot, and Sloan was shot through his left side. Hunt 
was captured after a very short run, but Wallace continued to run, and 
gained on his pursuers until his foot caught in a root and threw him vio- 
lently to the ground. In his fall he also lost his gun. Sloan, though 
wounded, managed to capture the frightened horses and rapidly galloped 
^fter Wallace. When the latter fell, Sloan stopped both horses, but Wal- 
lace was so weakened he could not mount. Sloan then dismounted to as- 
sist him, and this delay gave their pursuers time to almost overtake them. 
They were again fired at but not wounded, and the frightened horses 
soon galloped far away from the Indians. They knew that Fort ^^'ash^ 
ington was the nearest place they could secure a surgeon, yet they went to 
Fort Hamilton first, to warn them of the Indians presence. There they 
remained till morning, Ijut as they were about to ride out by break of 
day they found the fort entirely surrounded by Indians. There were 
several hundred Indians, and only a small garrison of about fifteen men, 
under the command of a young officer of little or no military experience. 
The Indians knew this and demanded a surrender. The young officer 
favored a surrender but told Sloan he should take the forces and make 
a defense if he thought proper. Sloan held a conference with their leader 
from the top of the fort, and told them of their provisions and that they 
expected reinforcements. After considerable conversation through an 
interpreter he refused to surrender. 

The Indians then fired on the fort and set up a warwhoop which meant 
that no quarter was to be shown to those in the fort should they be over- 
come. The fort had been built by General Arthur St. Clair, only four 
years previous, and was yet strong enciugh to resist their firing. The firing 
continued all day, but the Indians were at a safe distance from the fort, 
and likely but one of them was killed. At night they tried to burn the 
fort, but this attempt was also unsuccessful. Near the fort was a stable 
where the horses were kept, and where their cattle used as beeves were fed. 
Projecting past the corner of the stable was a corncrib. An Indian con- 
cealed himself behind this corncrib and watched the openings of the fort 
very closely, firing now and then at the port holes. It was discovered 
that the Indian was anxious to leave his place behind the corncrib, and 
feared to do so while the upper porthole which commanded his retreat was 
occupied. Sloan it was who was watching him. His wounded side 



io6 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

bothered him a ,a:reat deal, so that he had others load his gun for him. In- 
tending to deceive the Indian, he fired at the point of a gun which the 
Indian was exposing for the purpose of drawing Sloan's fire. When Sloan 
fired the Indian came out in full view and started to run to his associates, 
for he supposed that Sloan could not fire again till he reloaded his gun. 
But Sloan had two guns, the second to surprise the Indian with should 
he appear after the first fire. The Indian ran but a few steps in view until a- 
shot from Sloan's second gun laid him cold in death. Another Indian 
took Sloan's horse from the stable, and, putting on Sloan's cocked hat, 
which was lost the day before in the chase, rode round and round the fort 
but at a safe distance from it. Finally the whole band went away after 
killing all the cattle and taking all the horses belonging to the garrison 
and both of Sloan's as well. The dead Indian at the corncrib was left be- 
hind, for no one would venture near enough to take his body. The band 
left, it is presumed, because they feared the arrival of reinforcements. 
Sloan and Wallace went to Fort Washington, where a surgeon treated 
the captain's side, but, though it was temporarily healed up, he suffered 
with it till the day of his death. Hunt was never heard of again. Sloan 
and Wallace returned to their more peaceful homes on the Loyalhanna. 
and spent their lives here in our county. Sloan was elected sheriff of 
Westmoreland county. Before leaving Fort Hamilton he scalped the 
Indian he killed at the corncrib, and for many years afterwards the scalp 
was on exhibition at gatherings in Sloan's section of the county. 

After the close of the Revolutionary War and after the burning of Han- 
nastown in 1782, there was really but little mischief done by the Indians 
in Westmoreland county as it now exists, or rather, we should say, little 
in comparison with what was done before. Often a stray Indian or even 
a band of three or four came through to steal horses, capture settlers and 
secure scalps, but these incursions were so few and far between that the 
general fear of the Indians on the part of our settlers had almost subsided. 
This was due largely to the return of our soldiers from the Revolution, 
who were now sufficiently strong to thoroughly defend the western bor- 
der and to deter the Indians from attempting to overrun this section. 

But in 1790 the Indians in Ohio succeeded in badly defeating the army 
of General Harmar, and the following year achieved a still greater victory 
over the army of General St. Clair. These victories inspired the Indians 
with confidence, and they began a series of incursions which were only 
stopped when General Anthony Wayne won a sigmal victory over them at 
the battle of Fallen Timber, in 1794. 

Resulting from the boldness of the Indians brought about by the suc- 
cess of 1790 and '91, our people suffered in several sections, and the raiders 
came so near Greensburg that a blockhouse was built there in 1792, 
though the other forts and blockhouses in the count}' were rapidly goin'^ 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 107 

into decay. Several white settlers were captured, some horses were 
stolen, and one or two citizens were murdered. The only instance of these 
incursions after 1791, and indeed, the only one after the burning of Han- 
nastown, of which we have any definite information, is that of the capture 
and murder of the Mitchell family in Derry township. They had come here 
in 1773 and purchased lands on the banks of the Loyalhanna, east of the 
present town of Latrobe. Their house is said to have been two miles east 
of Latrobe, on the line of the Ligonier Valley Railroad. The family in 
1 79 1 consisted of the mother and two children, Charles and Susan, aged 
respectively seventeen and fifteen years. The husband and father had 
been dead some years, and his defenseless family was living alone. A 
band of four Indians approached the house while Charles and Susan were 
in the stable. They noticed the Indians approaching, and Charles tried to 
escape by running toward the Loyalhanna. They all ran after and soon 
captured him. While this was going on Susan hid herself under a large 
trough used in feeding horses, where she remained quietly, and though the In- 
dians all looked for her they failed to discover her hiding place. They 
then captured the lonely old mother and started hurriedly away to the north, 
for they knew that their depredations would soon be generally known, 
and that a party of rescuers much larger than their band could soon be 
raised to follow them. They soon found that Mrs. Mitchell was too old 
to keep up with them in their hurried trip north. To turn her back would 
be but to give assistance to the pursuers in following them, yet it appeared 
that they did not want to kill her in the presence of her son. So two of 
them pushed on with the son, and, it being about dark, they kindled a fire. 
The other two loitered behind with Mrs. Mitchell. While the advance party 
were standing around the fire the two who remained behind came up. One 
of them was carrying the bloody scalp of the prisoner's mother. He pro- 
ceeded to stretch it over a bent twig and dry it at the fire in presence of the 
boy with as little compunction as though it had been the scalp of a wild 
animal. In Armstrong coimty they came upon the tracks of two white 
men. Both Charles and the Indian who was guarding him saw them at 
a distance, and young Mitchell recognized them as Captain Sloan and 
Harry Hill, both of whom were neighbors to the Mitchells on the banks of 
the Loyalhanna. The ground was covered with snow, and Sloan was a 
large man with very large feet, so his tracks in the snow were so unusually 
large that the Indian measured them with a ramrod. His exclamations of 
surprise led Charles to tell him that it was the track of the big Captain 
Sloan, the great Indian fighter. The band concluded from this not to try 
to capture them, but pushed on in another direction. Later in the day 
Sloan and Hill discovered the tracks of the Indians, and also that they had 
a white prisoner, judging from his tracks. They concluded that to run 
them down would insure the death of the prisoner, and therefore, with no 



io8 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

fear for themselves, they wisely determined not to pursue. The boy was 
taken to the Cornplanter tribe and there adopted by a squaw who had 
lost her own boy in the war. He was compelled to obey her as though 
he had been her son. They made him hoe corn and do all kinds of work 
which usually fell to the hard lot of a squaw. After three years he escaped 
from them and returned to his old home, where he was afterwards married 
and there remained till he died, at a good old age. He often told how a 
band of Indians crossed a large swollen stream when they had no canoes. 
They cut a long slender sapling and placed it on the shoulders of two of 
their tallest and strongest men, one at each end. The smaller men and 
squaws held on to the pole, their places being between the two men at the 
ends. If one shoidd slip he could draw himself up by the pole, for it was 
not likely that all would be carried down at once. 

While the efficient Lieutenant Blane was commander of Fort Ligonier 
in 1763, several parties of Indians claiming to be friendly visited the fort, 
and were always treated kindly by the lieutenant and his forces. On 
one of these visits, at least, they were accompanied by a young warrior 
named Maidenfoot. While there a pioneer named Means, with his, wife 
and daughter, the latter a young girl of eleven years, also entered the 
fort." Maidenfoot was greatly pleased with the young girl. From her he 
learned that she lived about a mile south of the fort, and on leaving her 
he gave her a string of beads, which as an Indian he must have valued 
very highly. It was noticed, too, that in talking to the girl he seemed very 
sad and heartbroken, as though her bright young face touched a tender 
place in his memory. The beads were preserved by the girl as an Indian 
present, and often worn as ornaments, which were somewhat rare in the 
new settlement. 

One day late in ]\Iay or early in June, Mrs. ]\Ieans, and her daughter 
started again to the fort, but this time to remain, for there was a rumor of 
Indians in the neighborhood. The girl, as may be supposed, wore her bead* 
around her neck. When they were nearing the fort they were captured 
by two large Indians who took them into the woods a short distance and 
bound them to saplings with deer thongs. They were warned to keep quiet 
or they would be tomahawked at once. Very shortly after this they heard 
the report of many rifles from the direction of the fort, as though an at- 
tack had been made on it by a band of Indians. It was even so, for Pon- 
tiac's Indians had arrived and were then making the first of their many 
assaults on Captain Blane and his limited force. The battle raged for 
several hours but the fortress was not injured. Late in the afternoon 
Maidenfoot appeared before the prisoners, sent perhaps to take their 
scalps. He recognized them at once, because of the string of beads, and 
unbound them. Then he conducted them in a roundal)out wav to their 
home, where tliey were met bv their husband and father, Yw. Means. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 109 

Maidenfoot told them that their only safety depended on their flight to 
the mountains, and pointed out to them, towards the south, a safe place for 
them to hide. He told them further, that the band would soon be gone, and 
that they need only remain there a short time. Mr. Means and his fam- 
ily lost no time in going to the ravine pointed out by Maidenfoot, and there 
remained till the Indians had passed on. Before he left them the young 
warrior took the handkerchief of the girl, and on it was worked in black 
silk her name, Mary ^Means. 

Time passed on; the county was more thickly settled, and Mr. Means 
and his family removed to Ohio, where he purchased a larger tract of 
land not far from where the city of Cincinnati is built. There the father and 
mother of the girl died, and she grew to womanhood and was married to an 
officer of the Revolutionary period, named Kearney. They owned and tilled 
the land left by their parents. Kearney commanded a company under Gen- 
eral Anthony Wayne at Fallen Timber. After the battle was over, as he 
and some of his soldiers were looking over the field, they came to an elderly 
Indian who, while sitting on a log, waved a white handkerchief over his 
head. Some of Kearney's companions would have shot him at once, but 
the captain interfered and approached him. The Indian told them that 
he had been an Indian warrior all his life, that he had fought at Ligonier, 
at Bushy Run, at Hannastown, at Wabash against St. Clair, and at 
Fallen Timber. Now that he was old he asked only peace ; that he had 
buried the hatchet and would fight no more; that he had done his share of 
fighting in defense of his race, and thereafter meant to live at peace with 
all mankind. Search was made of his possessions, which revealed that he 
had in his bullet pouch a handkerchief with the maiden name of Captain 
Kearney's wife ("Alary Means") worked on it in black silk letters. The 
story of the beads, and how they saved the life of his wife when a child, 
had been often told to the husband. Upon learning that the Indian had 
once been known by the name of Maidenfoot, he took him to his home. His 
wife and the Indian recognized each other, though thirty-one years had 
passed since they had parted on that gloomy morning in Ligonier Valley. 
All these years the woman liad treasured her beads because they had once 
saved her life, while the Indian had treasured her handkerchief from an- 
other reason, which he disclosed on further acquaintance. He said that 
but a short time before he met the young girl in the fort he had lost his 
sister, aliout her age and size ; that when he gave her the beads he adopted 
her as his sister, though he had no desire to take her from her parents. 
This young girl touched a tender chord in his memory. Maidenfoot was 
taken into the family of Captain Kearney. -He was always cheerful, and 
readily adapted himself to the customs of his near friends. In about four 
years he died of consumption, and was buried with military honors in a 



no HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

little churchyard near Cincinnati. Over his grave was erected a marble 
slab with the following inscription : 

"In memory of Maidenfoot, an Indian Chief of the Eighteenth Century, 
who died a civilian and a christian." 

Among the early settlers around Fort Ligonier was a farmer named 
Reed, whose family consisted of his wife and four children. His oldest 
child, a daughter named Rebecca, was a young woman in 1778, and his son 
George was a year or so her junior. Quite often it became the duty of the 
daughter to assist her father in outdoor labors, such as planting corn and 
harvesting crops. This gave to her physical system a strength and lithe- 
ness unusual to her sex. In her old age she had a very attractive face, and 
those who remembered her loved to tell of the beauty and personal at- 
tractions of her youth. She was the pride of her parents, and her lovely 
character made her easily the favorite of the valley settlement. The Reeds 
had a comfortable log house, and while at first they were almost alone in 
the wilderness, other families gathered around them, so that their com- 
munity was dotted all over with clearings, cabins and houses. Here 
lived then perhaps sixty families of fearless and happy people. During 
the winter they were not disturbed much by the Indians, but in the sum- 
mer they were frequently compelled to seek refuge in the fort. Winter was 
a poor season for the Indians to make long journeys on foot, for the reason 
that they always subsisted on the country through which they traveled. 
Further more, the snows of winter made it easy for the settlers or the 
soldiers of a garrison to track them. 

In the summer of 1778 nearly all outdoor work was done in common, 
and they rarely ever worked without a certain number of them standing 
guard at the edge of the fields. The men went out from the fort almost 
daily, for they were compelled to look after their crops or face hunger in 
the following winter. The women were cooped up in the fort very closely 
during the dangerous period of the year. A favorite rural sport and 
exercise for the young men and women in the fort was foot racing be- 
tween the two extremes of the stockade. Among all the young women who 
entered the contest. Miss Reed was the fleetest of foot. Indeed, she could 
outrun most young men in the fort. A young man named Shannon, of 
noted athletic power, often contested in races with her, and it is said felt a 
special thrill of joy when, either through his gallantry or her fleetness, she 
came out victor. The summer of 1778 was a gloomy one in all parts of our 
county, for the Indians were lurking in almost every defile, and rumors of 
depredations came almost daily to the garrison. One afternoon Rebecca 
Reed and her brother George, in company with a young man named 
I\Icans and his sister, Sarah, left the fort to gather berries on a clear- 
ing about two miles away, where they were reported to be most plentiful. 
Their way as they neared the clearing led them through a thick growth of 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. m 

underbrush which ahuost arched over the narrow road they were walking 
along. While passing through this narrow way they met Major McDowell 
returning on horseback from the farms beyond and unconcernedly carrying 
his rifle on his shoulder. Suddenly the little party was fired on by Indians 
who were lying in ambush near by. George Reed and young Means were 
in front. Reed was mortally wounded, but ran a short distance into the 
bushes. Another ball struck McDowell's rifle, shattered the stock, and 
forced splinters of it into his face and neck. The young man with Reed 
ran back towards the girls, perhaps to protect them, but was almost in- 
stantly surrounded by Indians who ran from the bushes, and made a cap- 
tive. The girls started to run towards the fort and the Indians pursued 
them. They soon caught Miss Means, who was holding to Miss Reed's arm, 
and when they caught her were so close to Miss Reed that an Indian 
grasped at her clothes, but failed to stop her. Now that she was freed 
from the other girl she bounded off like a deer. The savage who had 
grasped for her was determined to catch her, and a most novel race 
ensued. The Indian doubtless expected an easy victory, but was very 
soon mortified to find himself losing ground. This continued, and then 
he began a series of terrific yells so well known in Indian warfare and 
calculated to confuse or unnerve the girl. But instead of being inti- 
midated or overcome as he hoped, the fiendish yells had the opposite 
effect on the brave girl, as she often afterward related. She now 
put forth additional energy, and by straining every nerve accelerated 
her speed. She was clearly in the lead and by every step was in- 
creasing the distance between her and her pursurer. The Indian 
kept up the pursuit, doubtless with the hope that his great power 
of endurance would yet enable him to capture the rich prize flying before 
him, and thus preserve his good name among the tribe. 

In the fort the noise of the shooting and the yells of the Indian were 
distinctly heard. Knowing that a party of four had gone out in that direc- 
tion, a relief party sprang for their rifles and hurried to the rescue. Shan- 
non headed the party, and the fact that Miss Reed was among those in 
danger was sufficient \o call forth his best energies, if, indeed, a loyal 
frontiersman needed any stimulant when pursuing Indians. But at all events 
he soon left the rescue party in the rear by the fleetness of his movements. 
When he had gone about a half mile from the fort he saw Miss Reed 
flying along the path towards him at a greater speed than she ever ran 
before, and the Indian several rods behind her. But the quick eye of the 
Indian caught sight of Shannon perhaps before Miss Reed saw him. Notic- 
ing also the rifle in his hands, the Indian stopped at once and turned into the 
bushes. A few steps brought Miss Reed to Shannon, who assisted her to 
the fort, while the rest of the rescuing party ran to the locality hurriedly 
pointed out by Miss Reed. She was very nearly exhausted, and it was 
doubtful whether, without the interposition of Shannon and his trusty 



112 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

rifle, she could have held out in her terrific speed long enough to gain the 
fort. The rescuing party found the lifeless body of Reed, but he was not 
scalped. Perhaps that was left for the Indian who pursued Miss Reed to 
attend to on his return, but he did not return that way. They found the 
body of Miss Means, who had been tomahawked and scalped. The In- 
dians made good their retreat with young Means, as a prisoner. Shannon 
and Miss Reed were married shortly after the Indian troubles ceased, and 
lived most happily on a farm in Ligonier Valley until both were bowed 
with the weight of more than four-score years. But a vastly different 
fate awaited the Indian who was defeated in the race with Miss Reed. 
Three years later, when the captive Means returned home, it was learned 
that the Indian was disgraced forever among his people because he had 
been fairly distanced in a race with a "white squaw." He was a splen- 
did specimen of his race, and had been the accepted suitor of a chieftain's 
daughter, the belle of the forest. But ever after this, to him, unfortunate 
episode, she treated him only with feelings of scorn and contempt. For 
three years at least, that is, while the prisoner Means remained with the 
tribe, he was little more than a slave to the other Indians, performing only 
the meanest drudgery encumbent on these natives of the forest. 

There is a version of this story which says that Miss Reed was carried 
to the fort on the horse behind McDowell, and that with his assistance she 
sprung to the horse's back while at full fiallop. This is unlikely, and 
moreover is not true. The circumstances exactly as above detailed were 
gotten by the writer from one who had them directly from Mr. and I\Irs-. 
Shannon in their old age. 

Jacob Nicely was one of the last boys captured by the Indians in West- 
moreland county. This took place in 1790, or perhaps a year later. The 
circumstances surrounding it are all well authenticated. He was the son 
and perhaps the youngest son of Adam Nicely, who lived on the Four 
Mile Run, about two miles from its junction with the Loyalhanna. 

One bright morning the Nicely children were out in the meadow pick- 
ing berries, when the little boy Jacob started to the house. The mother was 
baking, and giving the child a warm cake, told it to rejoin the other chil- 
dren. But the child came back, saying the cake was too hot, and the other 
poured some cold water on it and again the child went away. These 
little journeys were closely watched by a party of Seneca Indians con- 
cealed near by. They captured the boy on his way back to the meadow. 
His capture, his struggles to free himself, and his cries, were seen and 
heard by the other children, who ran home and reported it to their parents. 
The father raised a company of willing neighbors who pursued the Indians 
with all possible speed. They traced them to the Kiskiminetas river, but 
in the wilderness beyond their track was soon lost. The father and his 
neighbors then returned to the heartbroken mother. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



"3 



The captured boy was about five years old, and was at once adopted 
into the Seneca tribe. He rapidly forgot almost all he knew about his 
home and people in the lonely valley of the Loyalhanna. He readily ac- 
quired the habits and customs of the Indians, and was to all intents and 
purposes a member of the Seneca tribe. He learned to speak a new lan- 
guage, and forgot the few words taught him in childhood by his mother. 
He even forgot his own name, and could not pronounce it when he heard it. 
He spoke the Seneca language as though born in the wilderess, and spoke 
nis mother tongue haltingly as did his Indian associates. 

Many years after, a trader, perhaps a fur dealer, who lived near the 
Nicely family on the Four Alile Run, chanced to be among the Senecas 
and saw this captive, now grown to manhood. The traveler was so im- 
pressed b}' the resemblance of the man to the Nicely family, whom he 
knew well in Ligonier Valley, that he made inquiry, and learned that the man 
had been captured when a child in Westmoreland county. The traveler came 
home and reported this to the Nicelys in 1828, nearly forty years after the cap- 
ture. The father of the boy had long since died and his mother had passed her 
three-score years and ten. A brother of the captured boy decided at once 
to visit the Indian tribe and see the long lost captive. Neighbors spoke 
dissuadingly of the project, but he was determined, and after a short prepa- 
ration mounted a horse and rode away to the northern tribe. He made the 
journey in safety and found his brother. There was no doubt of the 
identity in the minds of either of them. The captured brother had been 
married to a squaw, and had around him a family of Indian children. He 
was prosperous for his surroundings, and had about him plenty of land, 
horses and cattle, and was well supplied with hunting and fishing imple- 
ments. When his brother was in his house he sent out to procure a white 
woman as cook, for the Indian manner of preparing meals was not sup- 
posed to be palatable to white people. There is a tradition in the family 
that the captured brother had visited Westmoreland prior to this, trying 
to locate his people and his home, and that, mispronouncing his name, he 
could not find them. At all events. Jacob arranged with his brother to 
visit his mother and relatives the following year. He also accompanied 
his brother part of the way home, made him a present of a rifle, etc. But 
the captive son and 'brother did not come as he promised. Perhaps he 
died before the following year, which was the time set for his visit. At all 
events, he was never heard from again. When the aged mother spoke of 
him, which was very often as the years advanced, she always called him 
hei- "Jakey," and with her eyes filled with tears. After a while the family 
ceased to look for him. but his mother never gave up the idea that he 
would return to her. Her hair grew gray in fruitless longing for a sight 
of her long lost child, and this yearning only ceased when her whitened 
head was pillowed in its last and sweetest sleep. 

At the outbreak of the French and Indian war a Scotch-Irish settle- 



114 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

ment had been made in what is now Fulton county, Pennsylvania, at a 
place known as the Big Cove. The Quaker government of Pennsylvania 
had refused to give these people land except within the area that was then 
open to settlement, and they had therefore gone farther west and taken 
up land on their own account. The state authorities, fearing that this 
movement would exasperate the Indians of the west, tried to prevent this 
settlement, but failed to do so, as the settlers promptly returned to their 
lands when the ofificers who had been sent to eject them, left. Among these 
pioneers was John Martin, the ancestor of the Martin family of Western 
Pennsylvania. Following the disastrous defeat of General Braddock on 
the Monongahela in the summer of 1755, the Indians carried the war east- 
ward across the Alleghenies, and on the first of Xovember of that year a 
band of them suddenly fell upon the settlers at the Big Cove. Among the 
homes destroyed was that of John Martin, who at the time of the raid was 
absent on a trip to Philadelphia, having taken his horses with him. His oldest 
son, Hugh Martin, afterwards one of the most prominent men in the formative 
period of Westmoreland history, was then seventeen years of age, and hearing 
of the impending attack, started to warn his neighbor and arrange 
for the escape of the two families to a blockhouse somewhere in 
the settlement. He found his neighbor's cabin in flames, and, returning, 
saw the Indians sacking his own home, his mother, two brothers and three 
sisters, being prisoners. As he was unable to render assistance to the 
family he kept hidden from view until the Indians left, and then started 
eastward for help, traveling under cover as best he could. He met a body 
of armed men on the second day, and returned with them to the Cove, but 
the Indians had gone, taking their prisoners with them to their village on 
the Allegheny River, at or near the present site of Kittanning. The set- 
tlers dared not follow, being too few in number. John Alartin returned 
from the east, and with his son Hugh rebuilt the home. 

The Martin prisoners consisted of Mrs. Martin ; Mary, aged nineteen ; 
Martha, aged twelve; James and William, aged ten and eight respectively; 
and Janet, aged two years. Mary, upon her refusal to adopt the Indian 
life, was beaten to death by the squaws, and within a short tim.e the mother 
was torn away from her children and carried to Quebec by the French. 
She worked as a domestic, and in time was able to secure her freedom. A 
French merchant of Quebec who was trading with the Indians along the 
Allegheny River, secured the little girl Janet and took her to his home. The 
mother had the good fortune to meet her child there, and, proving her 
claim, was allowed to redeem her. After a considerable period of time 
Mrs. Martin was able to take passage on a ship to Liverpool, and from there 
she sailed to Philadelphia, finally reaching her home at the Cove with 
her young daughter after several years of trials. Martha, James and Will- 
iam Martin were held in captivity by the Indians for about nine years. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 115 

They were carried along by roving bands of the Delaware and Tuscar- 
■ora tribes over Western Pennsylvania and as far west as the Scioto \'alley, 
in Ohio. They spent some time in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, the 
encampment bein;g; on Big Sewickley creek, near the present site of Bell's 
Mills in Sewickley township. The Martin boys were attached to this 
spot, and after their release they returned in 1769' and took patent to two 
tracts of land there, where they continued to live during most of their lives. 
\\hile there was no communication between the prisoners and their family 
at Big Cove, the latter had learned in some way that their lives had been 
spared, for John Martin had come as far as Fort Ligonier at one time to 
treat with the Indians for their ransom. He was not successful, however, 
and nearly lost his life in this attempt. After the notable defeat of the 
Indians by Col. Boquet at Bushy Run in 1763, the Indians agreed to give 
up their prisoners, and the Martins, along with others, were brought to 
Fort Pitt and surrendered to their friends. 

The habits of life acquired by their long contact with the Indians 
never forsook the two Martin boys. Though they made permanent homes 
on land of their own, they had no inclination to labor or to improve, but 
spent their days in hunting or idleness. Their elder brother, Hugh Mar- 
tin, while a young man, also came to Westmoreland county, and, as indi- 
cated above, became prominent in its early history. Later their j'oungest 
sister, Janet, captured as a child when two years old, came as the wife of 
John Jamison and settled on a tract of land on Dry Ridge, three miles 
southeast of Greensburg. She lived there many years until her death in 
1839, and was the mother of a large family. She was the grandmother of 
Tthe late Robert S. Jamison of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and of Margaret 
J. Jamison, to the latter of whom the author is indebted for this sketch. 



CHAPTER VIII 



Scotch. — Irish. — German. 

Westmoreland county as it now exists in territory was settled largely 
by Scotch-Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch. The Scotch-Irish was a sturdy 
race of people in all colonies wherever found. They came from Ireland, 
but their ancestors had originally been the bone and sinew of Scotland be- 
fore they had removed to the Emerald Isle. They were scattered over 
Western Pennsylvania, and were the first to cluster around the forts and 
blockhouses, where they made money by trading in lands, furs, and skins- 
and other products, rather than by agricultural pursuits. They lived by 
thrift, rather than by hard labor, yet they did not attempt to live on the 
unpaid labor of others. They were an extremely aggressive and indepen- 
dent people who made splendid pioneers in a new country. 

There were also a good many descendants of French Huguenots who, 
by the Edict of Nantes, were driven from their vine-clad houses in France 
because of their religious belief. Many of them had lived so long among 
the European nations surrounding France that they by intermarriage and 
association had lost not only their original tongues but their names, 
though they still retained their distinctive nationalities. Therefore they not 
infrequently came to America with French names and German, English 
cr Swiss tongues. Probably three-fourths of all the settlers who came to 
Westmoreland, however, had for their mother tongue the English language. 
Of the other fourth the German tongue predominated. Our early set- 
tlers were in their make-up not unlike the people in other parts of the state, 
that is, extremely heterogeneous. This was due to the fact that the policy 
of the Province had been, even from the days of William Penn, its founder, 
that men of all shades of political and religious belief in Europe or else- 
where, should find a welcome home among our hills. 

The Scotch-Irish very soon obtained control of our public affairs in 
Westmoreland county, as, indeed, they did of almost every colony or prov- 
ince in which they settled. They designated their coming here as a "set- 
tlement among the Broadrims," a term applied to Pennsylvanians because 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAXD COUXTY. 117 

of the shape of their hats. More of them came to Pennsylvania than to any 
other section of America. About the time our country was opening up to 
settlers, they fled from a series of domestic troubles in Ireland. Promi- 
nent among these were high rents and peculiarly oppressive actions on the 
part of the land owners. The landed estates in Ireland, it will be re- 
membered, were almost entirely owned by lords, dukes and nobles, who lived 
in London, and this metropolis was then the center of a most profligate and 
spendthrift age and race, to keep up with which high rents and oppresive 
measures seemed to be necessary. Here in Western Pennsylvania land was 
cheap and plenty, and here they came in untold numbers. With them came 
many from Philadelphia, Chester, Lancaster, Berks, Bucks, York and Cum- 
berland counties, these latter actuated mainly by that progressive west- 
ward moving spirit so common in America, and which has since filled the 
western states with a thrifty and intelligent population. 

The Scotch-Irish adhered to the Calvinistic religion, and they had a 
personality strong enough to very largely impress it upon their new neigh- 
bors. They were, indeed, an intellectual and steadfast people. They were 
not only independent, but were shrewd, industrious and ambitious. They 
very readily became Americanized, perhaps more so than any other set- 
tlers. They had no strict nationality to forget, nor sympathetic national 
feelings to unlearn. Tfiere was no pure Celtic blood in their veins. They 
iiad no nation which bound them as purely their own. The songs of Rob- 
ert Burns, which made the Scotchman forever loyal to his native heather, 
had no special music for them, nor did the memory of any song learned in 
childhood from the lips of an Irish mother fill them with patriotism and 
glory, or draw them from the New back to the Old World. The Sham- 
rock, to which the true sons of Erin are universally loyal, had no tender 
memoried mystic cord interest to them. They were no more attached to 
Ireland than the Hebrews were to Egypt by their long sojourn there, or 
than the Puritans were to Holland, from whence they came to America in 
1620. The pure Irish are loyal to the mystic traditions of their hearthstones 
in wdiatever nation they may be found. The pure Scotch weep as readily 
on the banks of the Mississippi as in Scotland over the chant of "Bonnie 
Doon." But the Scotch-Irish remembered Ireland only as a place of a 
severe and temporary tenantry. These characteristics made them ex- 
cessively independent, if not arrogant, in the New Word, and gave them 
power to impress their identity on, if not to govern, any community in which 
they settled. They and their deeds of heroism in America have received 
the highest measure of praise by their friends, while their enemies have ap- 
parently, with equal reason, held them up to bitterest ridicule. They al- 
ways looked down on the Puritans and Quakers who, in turn, despised them. 
They abhorred the Pennsylvania Dutch, and yet from the beginning to the 
end they ruled Quaker, Puritan and Dutchman with a rod of iron. 



Ti8 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

This aggressive spirit led to many difficulties between the Indian and 
the white men in our country. The English and Dutch had both, as far 
as practicable, adopted Penn's peace-loving policy in dealing with the 
Indians. They had endured many hardships and wrongs on the part of the 
Indian, for the sake of a hoped-for future peace. But not so with the ag- 
gressive spirit which characterized the Scotch-Irish. They wanted land, 
caring little whether it came from the Indians or the Proprietary govern- 
ment ; whether it destroyed the Indians' hunting ground or encroached 
on the squatter-rights of the Quakers, English or Dutch, and, when they 
once procured a title to it, woe be unto the one who interfered with their 
possessions. No ignorant brutal race of red men should encroach on the 
rights of a people who had for centuries stood up against and held their own 
with the oppressive hand of the Irish landholder. But, when the Indian 
came to retaliate, he made no distinction between the pacific Dutch, Quaker 
or English, and the high-minded if not warlike Scotch-Irish. All were 
alike white men to him, and upon the white race, without distinction, fell 
the severity of the incursions, which he doubtless thought were a just 
punishment for wrongs received at the hands of the white man in general. 
The Germans in Western Pennsylvania did not generally come from 
Germany, but rather from Berks, Lancaster, Cumberland, Philadelphia, 
and other eastern counties. Their ancestors, however, had come from the 
banks of the Rhine, from Alsace and Loraine, from the Netherlands, or 
Holland. They were called Pennsylvania Dutch, and spoke a langua;je 
that was a mixture of German and English, with now and then a word or 
an expression engrafted from other European tongues. It very greatly re- 
sembled pure German, so much so that a German scholar can converse 
readily with a Pennsylvania Dutchman, while the latter has even today no 
trouble whatever in making himself understood in Germany. This lan- 
guage was even in its best days, almost entirely a colloquial dialect, and 
consequently has declined very rapidly in the last fifty years. 

There were Pennsylvania Dutch scattered all over Westmoreland 
county, but they settled mostly in Hempfield and Huntingdon townships. 
There were also a great many on the Chestnut Ridge bordering Somerset 
county, where they were very numerous. They lived isolated lives com- 
pared with the Scotch-Irish, and the township of Hempfield and Hunting- 
don as well, have in a great measure retained their Dutch characteristics 
even to our day. They never went abroad to seek public preferment or 
office. They were almost exclusively farmers, and they were good farmers, 
too, with apparently little ambition to engage in other industries. They 
were sober, industrious, economical, unprogressive and honest. The early 
settlers of this race believed in ghosts, haunted houses, signs, etc., more than 
their neighbors of other extraction did. Many of them even yet plant their 
crops, kill their live stock, cut their grass, roof their houses, build fences. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 119 

etc., in certain signs which they learned from their ancestors. In the early 
years many of them had horseshoes nailed above their doors to keep away 
the witches. They burnt brimstone in the coop to keep the witches from 
bewitching the chickens. Aiany a fond mother taught her children that as 
long as they wore the breastbone of a chicken tied around their necks with a 
string, they would not take whooping cough. They made tea from the dried 
lung of a fox to cure consumption. The rattles 'of a snake killed without 
biting itself would not only cure headache but would ward off sunstroke 
as well. So it was that long long years after the last Indian had been driven 
to the Mississippi valley, they imagined that they heard warwhoops of 
savages on dismal evenings, and the music of fife and drums, once so com- 
mon at forts and stockades, often came back to dispel the Indian spirits 
which nightly hovered around their former hunting grounds. Many be- 
lieved that children with certain ailments could be cured by putting them 
three times through a horse collar. So a felon could be cured by a child 
which in its youth had strangled a groundmole by holding it above its 
head. This peculiar ability remained with the child even to aged man- 
hood. Diseases of horses were cured by words and charms, and water was 
discovered by the twigs of trees held in certain positions. Many believed 
that immense treasures were buried in the ground. This was generally 
English gold, and more than one field has been dug over in fruitless 
searches tor the rich mineral. 

But it can scarcely be said that they were ignorantly superstitious, or 
superstitious greatly beyond the age in which they lived It must be re- 
membered that Blackstone, the greatest of English law commentators, 
believed in witchcraft, etc. He says. Book 4, Chapt. 4, Sec. 6: "To deny 
the possibility, nay actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once 
flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of 
the Old and New Testament : and the thing itself is a truth to which every 
nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony, either by examples 
seemingly well attested or by prohibitory laws ; which at least supposes 
the possibility of commerce with evil spirits. The civil law punishes 
with death not only the sorcerers themselves, but also those who consult 
them imitating in the former the express law of God, "Thou shalt not suf- 
fer a witch to live," and our laws both before and since the Conquest have 
been equally penal ; ranking this crime in the same class with heresy 
and condemning both to the flames." 

There were some old Dutch cures that though seemingly foolish, may 
have cured the patient. To illustrate : they believed that a horse could be 
cured of sweeny, which is an atrophy of the muscles, by taking a round 
stone from the bottom of a creek and rubbing the sweenied parts for fifteen 
minutes before breakfast. This cure, foolish as it mav seem, had in it all 



I20 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

the essentials of tlie most modern methods of the massage treatment. 
and doubtless cured many a sufifering horse. So, too, erysipelas, a 
feverish skin disease with painful swelling, could be cured by taking the 
blood of a black rooster killed before sun-rise and covering the diseased 
parts thoroughly with it. Now the blood of the rooster when dried formed 
a covering which kept the air from it. and doubtless in many instances ef- 
fected a cure. The skillful modern surgeon would apply collodion, which 
would effect a cure in the same way. 

But very early they established churches and Sunday schools. They 
had preachers from Germany or men educated in the German language and 
this is one reason why the Pennsylvania Dutch language has lasted as long 
as it has. In religion the most intelligent of them were largely Lutherans 
or German Reformed. There were Mennonites or Mennonists, who were fol- 
lowers of Simon Menno, born in 1496. There were also many Dunkards 
and Ornish. These three branches were nearly the same in religious be- 
liefs and they were all extremely superstitious. They rejected infant bap- 
tism, would not be sworn in court nor perform military duty. They are 
remembered now mostly from their peculiar dress and from their public 
feet washing as a religious ceremony. The shrill whistle of the locomotive 
was the death knell to many of these superstitions. Neither the Dunkards, 
Mennonites nor the Omish have held their own with the march of educa- 
tion and improvement. The common school system wherein the text books 
and teachers were almost exclusively English, has well nigh obliterated the 
Pennsylvania Dutch language. 

Nor must it be supposed that these people, ignorant and superstitious 
as they were, were inferior in native intellect or morality. For their day 
they acquired large estates and lived comfortably. At the time of which 
we write, they were within the limits of Bedford county, too far from 
the seat of justice to redress their grievances by going to law. They had 
therefore an unwritten law among themselves which in effect worked out 
the spirit of all law as defined by Justinian, the Great Roman law giver, 
viz. : "To live honestly, hurt nobody, and render to every one his due." 
One in that community who habitually violated this precept, was very soon 
ostracised from the society of his neighbors ; the ordinary field hand would 
not work for or associate with him. He was not invited to the barn rais- 
ing or log rollings so common then in the sparsely settled country, and this 
unwritten law of social ostracism was carried out so thoroughly against the 
offending dishonest or unworthy neighbor that families thus ostracised 
have abhorrently left the fields they had cleared with great labor, never to 
return to them. 

These principles of right living were brought with them and thoroughly 
implanted in the new country, for most of them had been brought up under 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAXD COUNTY. 121 

the English law and knew thoroughly their inherent rights as citizens of a 
■community. The very absence of courts or covenient tribunals before 
■which to redress their grievances, helped them in a great measure, to give 
a liigh moral tone to their rural communities in their personal relations with 
€ach other. 



CHAPTER IX 



The Beginning of the Revolution. — Early Movements Towards Freedom. — Westmoreland 
Patriots' Resolution. — The Rattlesnake Flag. 

The people of Westmoreland may well feel proud of their record in the 
Revolutionary war. Though the county had been open to settlement but six 
years, and erected but three years prior to the great contest ; though we were 
almost entirely a coinmunity of farmers, and struggling pioneers, with but two 
small towns, neither of which had a population of five hundred ; yet we have 
the proud distinction, as the records show, of having furnished more men for 
the various branches of the Revolutionary army than the city and county of 
Philadelphia furnished. True, they were not all under the direct command of 
Washington, but they were an integral part of the forces which brought about 
the glorious victory at Yorktown. That Philadelphia had many Quakers who- 
would not fight, and many Tories, who were against us, must not lessen the 
glory which attaches to our Revolutionary record. 

The battle of Lexington, on April 19, 1775, brought on a rapid crystali- 
zation of the general spirit of freedom and independence which pervaded 
all of the colonies in America. Whatever may have been the ill feeling 
between Pennsylvania and Virginia, before this, they were as one colony 
or one province when united in the cause of freedom, or as against England 
whose oppressive policy they thought they could no longer endure. This 
was true of all of the colonies. But we believe there was a special reason 
why the people of Westmoreland county were more hostile and bitter 
against the mother country than the inhabitants of any other section of 
the Province. Dunmore, as we have said, was an English Earl, and had 
been appointed by George II as they thought, for the purpose of punish- 
ing the Virginia "colony for resisting the Stamp Act of 1765. But his pun- 
ishment fell as we have seen, most heavily on Westmoreland county. Our 
people associated him directly with King George, and traced their mis- 
fortunes under Dunmore directly to the English government. 

The news of the battle of Lexington doubtless flew across the colonies 
very rapidly for that day, though it did not reach the western section of the 



HISTORY OF IVESTMORELAXD COUXTY. 123 

province till about the first of Alay. Four weeks after the battle, on May 
16, 1775, a largely attended meeting was held at Hannastown. The call 
must have been general in this county, for a similar meeting was held on, 
the same day in Pittsburg. 

In many respects the meeting at Hannastown was the most glorious, 
one ever held in the county, even up to our present day of great events. 
True, they met in a log cabin — met as pioneers, and many of them were 
doubtless clothed in homespun garments, or hunting suits of buckskin; 
met in the shade of the "forest primeval", on the border of civilization. But 
nevertheless, let the reader suggest a meeting in modern times, and com- 
pare its proceedings with those of the Hannastown meeting and its patrio- 
tic resolutions, and they will pale into utter insignificance. There is but 
one document in American letters which can be compared with the Han- 
nastown Resolutions, and that is the Declaration of Independence itself, 
which was not then in existence except in the mind of Thomas Jefferson. It^ 
must always be remembered that the Hannastown Convention met and 
adopted its resolutions more than a year before the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was signed. The Hannastown Resolutions embrace the sub- 
stance of the Magna Charta as wrested from King John at Runnymede in- 
12 1 5, and nearly every principle enunciated in them was repeated in the 
Great Declaration of July 4, 1776. Take the two together, and we find 
sentences in either which may be substituted in the other, and read with- 
out detection, except upon the closest scrutiny. Nay, more. Had the prin- 
cipal clauses of the Hannastown Resolution been adopted in Philadelphia 
as part of the Declaration on July 4, 1776, the statesmen of the day would 
not have noticed the substitution. It is as positive as any state paper- 
we have in the English language, not excepting the best writings of Alex- 
ander Hamilton. It defines as clearly the causes of complaint, and points 
out the remedy for our evils, with a precision as unerring as any paper ever 
printed either in Europe or America : 

Resolved unanimously. That the Parliament of Great Britain, by several late acts, 
have declared the inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay to be in rebellion; and the ministry,, 
by endeavoring to enforce these acts, have attempted to reduce the said inhabitants to 
a more wretched state of slavery than ever before existed in any state or country. Not 
content with violating their constitutional and chartered privileges, they would strip 
them of the rights of humanity, exposing lives to the wanton and unpunishable sport of 
licentious soldiery, and depriving them of the very means of sustenance. 

Resolved unanimously. That there is no reason to doubt but the same system of 
tyranny and oppression will, should it meet with success in Massachusetts Bay, be extended, 
to every other part of America : it is, therefore, become the indispensable duty of every 
American, of every man who has any public virtue or love of his country, or for pos- 
terity, by every means which God has put in his power, to resist and oppose the execu- 
tion of it ; that for us, we will be ready to oppose it with our lives, and fortunes, and the 
better to enable us to accomplish it, we will immediately form ourselves into a military 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



body, to consist of companies to be made up out of the several townships under the 
following association, which is declared to be the Association of Westmoreland county. 

We declare to the world, that we do not mean by this Association to deviate from 
that loyalty which we hold it our bounded duty to observe ; but, animated with the love 
of liberty, it is no less our duty to maintain and defend our just rights, which with 
sorrow we have seen of late wantonly violated in many instances by a wicked ministry 
and a corrupted Parliament, and transmit them entire to our posterity, for which purpose 
■we do agree and associate together. 

. Possessed with the most unshaken loyalty and fidelity to His Majesty King 
George the Third, whom we acknowledge to be our lawful and rightful King, and who 
■we wish may long be the beloved sovereign of a free and happy people throughout the 
whole British Empire ; we declare to the world that we do not mean by this association 
to deviate from that loyalty which we hold it to be our bounden duty to observe ; but, 
animated with the love of liberty, it is no less our duty to maintain and defend our just 
rights (which with sorrow, we have seen of late wantonly violated in many instances 
"by a wicked ministry and a corrupted Parliament) and transmit them entire to our 
posterity, for which purpose we do agree and associate together. 

ist. To arm and form ourselves into a regiment or regiments, and choose officers 
to command us. 

2nd. We will with alacrity, endeavor to make ourselves masters of the manual 
exercise, and such evolutions as shall be necessary to enable us to act in a body with 
concert ; and to that end we will meet at such times and places as shall be appointed, 
cither for the companies or regiment, by the officers commanding each when chosen. 

3rd. That should our country be invaded by a foreign enemy, or should troops be 
sent from Great Britain to enforce the late arbitrary acts of Parliament, we will cheer- 
fully submit to a -military discipline, and to the utmost of our power, resist and oppose 
them, or either of them, and will coincide with any plan that may be formed for the de- 
fense of America in general, or Pennsylvania in particular. 

4th. That we do not desire any innovation, but only that things may be restored 
to, and go on in the same way as before the era of the Stamp Act, when Boston grew great 
and America was happy. As a proof of this disposition, we will quietly submit to the 
laws by which we have been accustomed to be governed before that period, and will, in 
our several or associate capacities, be ready when called on to assist the civil magi- 
strates in carrying the same into execution. 

5th. That when the British Parliament shall have repealed their late obnoxious 
statutes, and shall recede from their claim to tax us, and make laws for us in every in- 
stance, or when some general plan of union or reconciliation has been formed and ac- 
cepted by America, this, our association, shall be dissolved ; but till then it shall remain 
in full force ; and to the observation of it we bind ourselves by everything dear and 
sacred amongst men. No licensed murder ; no famine introduced by law. 

Resolved, That on Wednesday the 24th instant, the township meet to accede to the 
said association and choose their officers. 

These resolutions, with the proceedings, are found in the American 
Archives, Fourth Series, vol. 2, page 615. The reader cannot but ask who 
wrote them. Some eastern writers have claimed that they were not writ- 
ten and adopted then, but were forged many years afterwards. It was 
probably hard for them to think that here in the western wilderness were 
men who were intellectually equal to the task of preparing them thus early 
in the great struggle against England. Their genuineness is not difficult to 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 125, 

prove. Arthur St. Clair, in a letter to Governor Penn, writing of the meet- 
ing, the resolutions, etc., says : "I got a clause added to it by which they 
bind themselves to assist the civil magistrates in the execution of the laws, 
they ha\-e been accustomed to be governed by." This undoubtedly re- 
fers to the latter part of the fourth clause of the resolutions: Furthermore, 
in a letter written to Joseph Shippen from Ligonier the day after the meet- 
ing, in refering to the arming and disciplining of the citizens of the county, 
St. Clair says, "I doubt their utility, and am almost as much afraid of suc- 
cess in this contest as of being vanquished." Both of them agree exactly 
with the text of the resolutions, and we take it therefore that those who 
doubted their genuineness were not aware of the existence of this corres- 
pondence. 

On the other hand, it has been claimed that St. Clair was the sole author 
of the resolutions. This claim is not borne out, indeed, it is almost dis- 
proved by his letters as quoted above. Had he been their sole author he 
would scarcely have written, "I got a clause added," etc., and in the second 
letter, if he "doubted their utility," etc., he would not have written that 
clause. But from their general style, from the strong English, inter- 
spersed with English law terms, it is known that they were prepared by a 
thoroughly educated man and one of high literary attainments and likely 
by some one who had been educated in Great Britain. Such a man in every 
particular was Arthur St. Clair, and he was present in the convention, 
also, as is indicated by his letters. He is generally regarded as a soldier 
purely, but he was in reality one of the best educated men of the Revolution,, 
and a master of English letters. No one can read his writings without ad- 
mitting this. He had, moreover, the benefit oi a college education, was 
descended from a long line of ancestors, illustrious alike for deeds of noble 
daring and for their intellectual and social standing. In America he had 
associated with our most polished people. To those who will look into his 
modest life, the fact that he never claimed their authorship is no evidence 
that he was not the author. It is generally believed that he was, in the 
main, their author, and that he was one of the leading spirits of the conven- 
tion. Yet there was one clause in them which he did not endorse, and 
one which could not have been in the original draft, for St. Clair says he 
had it added to them. 

The regiment, the necessity of which was suggested in the resolutions,, 
and the utility of which he doubted, was almost at once organized at Han- 
nastown, and was the first in the county at the breaking out of the Revolu- 
tion. It was moreover commanded by our first sheriff, John Proctor, of 
whom we have formerly spoken. It adopted a flag for its own use before 
the colonies had conceived the idea of a general flag for all of the American 
troops. The flag has been preserved, and is yet one of the most noted and 
highly valued mementoes of the past. It is made of crimson silk, and has 
in its upper left hand corner the coat-of-arms of Great Britain, for it will" 



'126 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 



be remembered that we had not yet thrown off the yoke of Engfland, but 
were still professedly loyal subjects to His Majesty, George the Third. On 
its folds is a rattlesnake with thirteen rattles, indicative of the thirteen col- 
onies in America. Underneath the snake are the words "Don't tread on 
me." In a half circle are the letters, "J. P. F. B. W. C. P.", which are the 
initials of the words : John Proctor's First Battalion, Westmoreland County^ 
Pennsylvania. The flag has long years been in the possession of Elizabeth 
Craig, of New Alexandria, a small station on the New Alexandria branch 
of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It came to her by descent from her ances- 
tor. The flag has not been seen by many because of the inaccessibility of 
the town in which its owner lives. Many antiquarians and collectors of Rev- 
■ olutionary relics have wisely been refused its possession, though large sums 



71 IS 



THE RATTLESNAKE FLAG 



-of money have been offered for it. It is properly one of Westmoreland's 
most valuable heritages of the past, and we trust will ever remain with our 

-people, and be preserved for the admiration and patriotic inspiration of 
generations yet unborn. 

The Boston Port Bill was to go into effect on June i, 1774. In brief it 
closed the port to commerce; forbade town meetings except at the pleasure 

■of the governor; placed the appointment of the governor, council and sher- 
iffs in the crown ; and gave to the appointed sheriffs the power of electing 
juries. On May 13, the Boston authorities by resolution called on other 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 12; 

colonies to unite with them to stop all importation from Great Britain and 
the West Indies. In Pennsylvania a meeting of representatives from all of 
the counties was called for July 15, at Philadelphia. A Westmoreland 
county meeting was held at Hannastown to elect delegates to the Phila- 
delphia convention. It resulted in the selection of Robert Hanna and James 
Cavett to represent our county and they attended. Both of them were men 
of little education or culture, and were probably but illy fitted to associate 
with men like Thomas jNIifflin, Joseph Reed, and the learned and polished 
John Dickinson. Hanna had recently been a tavernkeeper, and was a jus- 
tice, while Cavett was a county commissioner. They were perhaps called 
upon to pass on questions of government and royal prerogatives which 
more learned men would have handled with better grace. But they were 
strong in common sense, a very useful quality in popular assemblies, while 
there were plenty of abler men to supply the necessary dignity and learning. 
The Continental Congress acted on the recommendations of this and other 
assemblies, and resolved to raise an army, of which George Washington 
was chosen commander-in-chief. The Province of Pennsylvania was to 
furnish 4300 troops for this army. The Philadelphia assembly suggested 
that all counties secure arms and provide minute-men who should be able 
to march to the seat of war on the shortest notice. In our county a com- 
mittee of safety was appointed, and William Thompson, our first assembly- 
man, elected in 1773, was alone constituted the committee. 

The militia men associated themselves together to resist foreign in- 
vasion, and were accordingly called "Associators" all over the Province. 
The assessors were asked to furnish the names of all who were physically 
able to bear arms. On all who were not Associators a tax of two one-half 
pounds in addition to the regular tax was levied. The assembly provided 
that if any of the Associators was called to war and should thus leave his 
family without the proper means of support, in his absence, the justices of 
the peace and the overseers of the poor should look after them and see 
that they were supported at public expense. Late in 1775 four battalions 
were called for from Pennsylvania, and one of them was put under the com- 
mand of Arthur St. Clair, who was made its colonel. 

A long struggle ensued between the Penns, the Proprietaries of the 
Province and their adherents, and their opponents, who were called Whigs. 
At length the Whigs called a convention, the ultimate object of which was 
to devise means by which a new government of the state could be formed. 
Westmoreland sent Edward Cook and James Perry. This convention met 
in May, and among other things decided that a new form of govern- 
ment was necessary, and recommended a convention of representatives 
from the difTerent counties of the Province, who should be elected with the 
understanding that they were to form a new constitution. A committee of 
this convention was also appointed to decide the number of delegates 



128 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

each county should be entitled to, and to determine the method by which 
the delegates should be elected, etc. There were two members from each 
county in the Province except from Westmoreland, which was represented 
by but one, and Edward Cook was our representative. In providing for the 
election of these delegates it was decided that only those who had paid a 
Provincial tax for three years should be entitled to vote. Our county and 
Bedford being new counties, had been relieved from the payment of Prov- 
incial tax, and consequently under that ruling cauld not have been represent- 
ed at all, so an exception was made for these two counties. Otherwise it 
was supposed that a man who had not paid tax for three years should not 
have much to say in the overthrow of the Provincial government. For the 
purpose of electing these delegates, our county was divided into two dis- 
tricts. All south of the Youghiogheny River were to vote at Spark's Fort, 
on the river, and all north of the river, which embraced nearly all of our 
present county, were to vote at Hannastown. Each county in the Province 
was to elect eight men who should, if they thought fit, reorganize the state 
government. Those elected from Westmoreland county were James Barr, 
Edward Cook, James Smith, John Moore, John Carmichael, James Perry, 
James McClelland and Christopher Lobingier. Since these men were elected 
to perform the most important duty which had yet devolved upon any 
of the county's representatives, it may be well to look briefly into their 
lives. All were, moreover, prominent men who made their share of the 
early history of our county and Province. 

James Barr was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, in 1749, and 
came to Westmoreland county, settling in Derry township, which then 
extended to the far north, about 1770. He very early became a leader in 
the organi-zation of companies to defend the border settlements against the 
Indians, and performed similar services in the early days of the Revolution. 
He was a member of the convention of July 15, 1776, and was also a justice 
of the peace in our county till 1787. From 1787 till 1789 he was a member 
of the general assembly, and opposed in every way the calling of a state 
convention, the object of which was to change the organic law of the state 
in 1790. Nevertheless the convention was called, and a new constitution, 
known as the Constitution of 1790, was adopted. Under this constitution he 
was associate judge of Westmoreland county. When Armstrong county 
was organized, in 1800, he fell within the limits of the new county. He 
died May 11, 1824. 

Edward Cook was born in 1738, of English parents who had settled in 
the Cumberland Valley. In 1772 he came to Westmoreland and took up 
lands on the Youghiogheny and Monongahela rivers. In 1776 he built a 
stone house, which is still standing. He was a storekeeper, farmer, and dis- 
tiller, and also owned slaves, which came under the gradual abolition law 
of 1782. He was a member of the committee of conference which met in 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 129 

Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia. June 18, 1776, and of the convention of 
July 15, 1776. In 1777 he was appointed by the assembly of Pennsylvania 
to meet similarly appointed delegates from other states in New Haven, 
Connecticut, to regulate prices of all commodities produced by the new 
states. They met November 22, 1777. In 1781-he commanded a battalion 
for frontier defense, and was county lieutenant from early in 1782 till early 
in 1783. Later he was a justice for both Westmoreland and Washington 
counties, and under the new constitution was associate judge of Fayette 
county. He was largely instrumental in ending the Whisky Insurrection 
of 1794. He died in 1808, and his wife died in 1837, aged ninety-four, both 
dying in the stone house in which they had moved when built in 1776. 

James Perry lived near the mouth of Turtle Creek. He was a member 
of the Provincial Convention which met in Carpenter's Hall on June 28, 
1776, and of the convention of July 15, 1776, after which he moved to Ken- 
tucky. 

John McClelland was born in 1734, in Lancaster county, and after com- 
ing to Westmoreland county lived in that part which fell within Fayette 
county on its organization in 1783. He was a member of the convention 
of July 15, 1776, and represented Westmoreland in the general assembly 
in 1778. He was a captain in the First Battalion of Westmoreland Militia 
at the beginning of the Revolution, and was also prominent in the Whisky 
Insurrection. 

Christopher Lobingier was a son of Christopher Lobingier, of Witten- 
Derg, Germany, and was born in Lancaster (now Dauphin) county, in 
1740, shortly after his parents came to America. In 1772 he removed to 
Mount Pleasant township in Westmoreland county, not far from the pres- 
ent village of Laurelville. He served on the Revolutionary Committee ot 
Correspondence and was a member of the convention of July 15, 1776. He 
was also a member of the general assembly under the constitution of 1790, 
in the lower house, 1791 to '93. He died July 4, 1798, leaving a widow 
whose name had been Elizabeth Mulley, who died in Stoyestown, Pennsyl- 
vania, September, 15, 1815. His son George was associate judge of West- 
moreland county and also a member of the assembly. 

John Carmichael was a native of Cumberland county, and was born 
about 1757. Shortly before the Revolution he had settled in Westmoreland 
county, but in the part which afterwards fell in Fayette county. He lived 
near Redstone Creek. He owned a mill and a distillery. In addition to be- 
ing a member of the convention of July 15, 1776, he was a member of the 
assembly in 1777. He died in 1796. 

Brief sketches of John Moore and James Smith will be found in other 
sections of this work, the former in the chapter treating of the judiciary of 
Westmoreland, he being one of our early judges, and the latter in that part 



130 ' HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

which treats of Westmoreland in the Revolution, he having earned addi- 
tional laurels later in our later history. 

This convention met July 15th, 1776, eleven days after the Continental 
Congress had declared all the colonies free and independent states. Hitherto 
the oaths taken by all officers had acknowledged loyalty to the King of Eng- 
land, but now congress prescribed an oath which pledged allegiance to 
the new government, and was so sweeping that it cannot but be of interest 
to the reader. The following is the text in full : 

"I do swear (or affirm) that I renounce and refuse all allegiance to George the 
Third, King of Great Britain, his heirs and successors, and that I will be faithful and 
bear true allegiance to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a free and independent 
state, and that I will not at any time do or cause to be done any matter or thing that will 
be injurious to the freedom and independence thereof as declared by Congress; and also 
that I will discover and make known to some one justice of the peace of said state all 
treasons or traitorous conspiracies which I now know or hereafter shall know to be 
found against this or any of the United States of America." 

The old assembly, mostly composed of the Penns, their relations and 
adherents, objected violently to the supreme authority assumed by this 
new convention, but, under the Declaration of Independence, with soldiers 
marching everywhere and liberty bells ringing out the old and in the new, 
they made but a slight impression. The new convention took supreme 
authority over the state aiTairs, approved the Declaration of Independence, 
appointed new justices who were compelled to take the new oath. They 
declared us a free state and arranged for a new plan of government, known 
as the Constitution of 1776, which went into effect September 28. The con- 
vention paid great attention to the military of our new state. All white 
citizens over eighteen years of age were to be enrolled for military duty, 
and to take the oath of allegiance before August 1st. All who refused 
or neglected to go before the justices and perform this duty were to be 
regarded as Tories, that is, enemies of the state, and adherents of the 
King, and were to be subjected to fine and imprisonment. 

The military affairs were farther put under the supervision of an officer 
called a county lieutenant. He had power to order out the militia and send 
them where he pleased. He distributed arms and clothing, and paid the 
military the money raised in the county to the supreme executive council. 
His authority was limited only by the council itself, except of course when 
the county was under the supervision of a branch of the regular army, in 
which case he was subject to its commander. Archibald Lochry, one of 
the inany progressive Scotch-Irish who had settled in our county, was the 
first and, we believe the most efficient county lieutenant of Westmoreland 
county. He was appointed March 21, 1777. He resided on a large estate 
in Unity township, near the present town of Latrobe. In 1782 he was sue- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 131 

ce;?ded by Edward Cook, but as he lived in that part of Westmoreland now 
embraced in Washington county, which was formed in 1781, he was soon 
succeeded in this county by Colonel Charles Campbell. He was a plain un- 
polished man, but was a noted Indian fighter, and filled the office well, 
though his duties were extremely onerous. He was not only expected to 
furnish Westmoreland's quota of men for the front, but to look after the 
Western border as will. It is fair to state, however, that on account of the 
Western border troubles our county was not called on to furnish as many 
men for the service in the eastern army as its number of inhabitants would 
warrant. But they were expected to look after themselves, in addition to 
the troops they sent east. The Indians were more or less allied with the 
English, and frequently raided the western border. During the Revolution 
they regarded it to be their just right to exterminate the white population if 
they could. They were paid for scalps by the English, and were strongly 
in sympathy with them because of presents, firearms, ammunition and money 
— all of which were plentiful with the British and extremely scarce with 
the colonial army. No alliance could be made with the Indians by the col- 
onists, for a neutral hostility was bred and born in both of them. Their 
interests were always inimical. 

By the constitution adopted the executive power was vested in a Pres- 
ident and Council. The council was to consist of twelve members from 
various parts of the state. Westmoreland county was allowed one to be 
elected by the people, and John Proctor was our first member He was 
succeeded by Thomas Scott, who filled the office three years, the limit as 
defined by the constitution. Scott lived in what is now Washington county, 
was a man of fine ability, and was afterwards elected as the first member of 
congress from that county. 



CHAPTER X 



Westmoreland in the Revolution. 



Late in 1775 the Continental Congress requested the Assembly of Penn- 
sylvania to raise one battalion for service in the regular army. About this 
time John Nelson had raised a company of riflemen, nearly all of whom were 
Westmorelanders, and had offered them to the Continental Congress. His 
company was composed of one captain, himself; three lieutenants, four sei- 
geants, four corporals and seventy privates. As soon as they were received 
in New York they were sent to Canada by order of General Benedict Arnold. 
They were at first in Colonel De Hass' battalion, and in November, 1776, 
they were placed under command of Colonel Anthony Waj'ne. After March, 
1777, they were placed under command of Colonel Francis Johnston, of the 
Fifth Pennsylvania Regiment. In Canada they served under Colonel St. 
Clair. Some of them fought under Colonel Richard Butler, a brave young 
soldier from Westmoreland county, of whom and of whose family we shall 
write more extensively later on. He was under Wayne with these West- 
moreland soldiers in the southern campaign when the long continued war 
was nearing its end. They were also at Germantown, Brandywine, Mon- 
mouth, Stony Point and Yorktown. 

The Second Pennsylvania Battalion was raised by an order of Congress 
dated December 9, 1775, calling for four more battalions, and the enlistment 
of these was for one year. This was also connected with Wayne's Fourth 
Battalion, and with the Sixth as well, which was under the command of 
Colonel, afterwards General, William Irvine. In January, 1776, Congress 
promoted both St. Clair and Wayne, and they will hereafter be known as 
Generals. St. Clair had up to this time been engaged in drilling troops as 
they came as new recruits from the country, and organizing them into com- 
panies. This was done near Philadelphia, and as rapidly as they were ready 
they were disposed of and became the effective force of the regular army. 
But now he was ordered to Canada. With him went two new companies 
from Westmoreland county, most of whom he knew intimately. One of these 
Westmoreland companies was in command of William Butler, a brother of 
Richard, and a lifelong friend of St. Clair's. These two men not only went 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 133 

through the Revokitionary war together for the most part, but were together 
in the unfortunate Ohio expedition against the Indians in 1791, when Butler, 
as second in command, bravely laid down his life. The other company from 
Westmoreland county was under command of Stephen Bayard, who was 
afterwards lieutenant-colonel of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment, which 
was composed very largely of Westmoreland soldiers. 

General St. Clair, according to the order of the war committee of Con- 
gress, prepared his battalion as rapidly as possible for the Canadian com- 
mission. Though they were very poorly equipped, their equipment was the 
best the colonial exchequer could afiford. As rapidly as possible they passed 
up the Hudson and thence into Canada. It was a desperate march, for it 
was through an almost unbroken forest, and then into the heart of the Eng- 
lish colony, and that the strongest in America. Without great difficulty he 
took Quebec. JMuch had been hoped for from this expedition. It was sup- 
posed that Canada would be as anxious to cut itself loose from England as 
our colonies were, and that all that was necessary was to afiford them an 
opportunity, when they would unite with us and enlarge and strengthen 
our colonies. The advantage of this addition to our territory, thus leaving 
England no foothold whatever in America, can easily be seen, and accounts 
for tlie brilliant prospects of the Canadian expedition. But the contrary was 
found by St. Clair and his army. After taking their capital they refused 
to assist him or to declare themselves free from England'. They did not 
want to be "liberated,"' and, instead of allying themselves with the American 
troops, they decidedly leaned towards the British. They even took up arms 
against the Colonial army, whom they treated on every hand as invaders. 
Of course, under this state of affairs the Colonial troops could not hold 
what they had so boldly marched for and captured. St. Clair could do noth- 
ing but retreat toward the Sorrel river, which is the outlet of Lake Cham- 
plain and flows into the St. Lawrence. The British, reinforced, now pursued 
his retreating army. They finally came together at Three Rivers, and St. 
Clair gave battle in a manner which has been the adhiiration of military 
writers ever since, and which has been considered by them as one of the 
best contested fields, from a scientific military standpoint, among all the 
battles of the Revolution. In fact, no campaign in all the war showed more 
military genius nor more ^personal heroism on the part of its soldiers than 
this one. Hardships seemingly almost insurmountable were bravely endured 
and conquered. After one of the most difficult marches in our history, they 
practically conquered the British army on their own ground. The English 
army was now reinforced by Canadians and Indians, and was under the 
command of General Burgoyne. St. Clair's army could do nothing but re- 
treat gradually before the English bayonets into a cold and snowy wilder- 
ness to their own country. In all this the Westmoreland soldiers bore their 
part, and in every instance, so far as the records show, acquitted themselves 
as became brave men of the new nation. 



134 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

. The Third Pennsylvania Regiment was formed from part of St. Clair s 
Second Battalion, in which were the companies commanded by Captains 
Butler and Bayard. It was enlarged by recruits in the latter part of 1776 
and early in 1777. There is very little information in the army reports con- 
cerning this regiment, but it was taken into the Continental service in Alarch, 
1777. Colonel Joseph Wood was its coiiimander, but he had been wounded 
in Canada, and, his wounds growing more serious, he resigned and was suc- 
ceeded by Thomas Craig, who was kept in command till the close of the Rev- 
olution. Captain Butler was made lieutenant-colonel of Daniel Alorgan's 
rifle regiment, and was succeeded as captain by James Christie. From time 
to time several of the companies were transferred to other regiments, and 
some of its officers were promoted or given other commands. The men of 
Captain Butler's company mostly re-enlisted when their time of service had 
expired, and remained in the regiment under Captain Christie. They were 
never, while they remained in the army, more than half clothed, and generally 
were poorly fed, but this was the general condition of the Colonial army, and 
makes still greater the honor of the victory they eventually won at York- 
town. At one time, it is reported that the regiment had but one blanket on 
an average to six men, and none of them had whole tents. The officers were 
as poorly clad as the soldiers, none of them having uniforms, and they par- 
took of the same scanty food. They spent an ever memorable winter at 
Valley Forge, and from there recruiting officers were sent out. The recruit- 
ing stations for Westmoreland county were established at the houses of Lieu- 
tenant Francis Moore, James Carnahan and Lieutenant Joseph Brownlee. 
Twenty dollars bounty was offered by Congress, and the state offered one 
hundred dollars, but these bounties were paid by the county to Congress and 
the state, so that in reality one hundred and twenty dollars was paid by the 
county for each recruit. Small as it may seem to us, it was a great tax on 
the early inhabitants of the county. Nevertheless there were many of our 
Westmoreland soldiers who enlisted early and without bounty, and remained 
in the army till after the battle of Yorktown. In some cases they came home 
only to enlist in defense of the border settlements against the Indians. This 
service was largely performed by militia in short-term enlistments, and' by 
independent companies called "rangers." 

The Third Regiment, by deaths in and out of battles and from various 
other causes, was so greatly reduced that it had to be reorganized at Easton, 
Pennsylvania, in January, 1781. Colonel Craig was its commander, and it 
was attached to the command of General Wayne in his justly celebrated south- 
ern campaign. The officers were Captain James Christie, Captain Thomas 
Butler, Lieutenants Daniel St. Clair and Ebenezer Denny, and Colonels Rich- 
ard Butler and Stephen Bayard. 

James Christie was a Scotchman, born in Edinburgh, in 1750. He came 
to Westmoreland countv some time before the Revolution, perhaps when 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 135 

about twenty years old, and died here in the early part of the eighteenth 
century. When Benedict Arnold's treacherous plot was discovered to Wash- 
ington, he appointed Christie to visit all the posts along the Hudson and re- 
port their general condition to him. When it is remembered that Washing- 
ton (after Arnold attempted to sell the Colonial armies out for British gold) 
said he did not know whom to trust, Christie's appointment indicated that the 
commander-in-chief had great faith in him. He was a brave soldier, and 
lived a most exemplary life. 

Nor was Colonel Thomas Butler less distinguished and trusted by the 
great chief. At the battle of Brandy wine he saw a squad of American troops 
retreating in disorder. Butler, placing himself at their head, successfully 
rallied them so that they did good service. For this he received the highest 
praise from the lips of Washington on the field of battle. He accompanied 
General St. Clair in the Ohio campaign, when defeated by the Indians in 1791, 
and was badly wounded in the leg. His brother. Captain Edward Butler, 
carried him to a place of safety. In I794 he was made a lieutenant-colonel, 
and died in Westmoreland county in 1805, aged fifty-one years. 

Daniel St. Clair was the eldest son of General Arthur St. Clair, and was 
born in Boston, in 1762. He was rather meagerly educated, considering the 
polished education of his father, for he spent his boyhood days on the frontier, 
where schools were unknown — in Fort Bedford and Fort Ligonier. He en- 
tered the Revolution as an ensign, September 20, 1776, was promoted to 
first lieutenant April ist, 1777, and served continuously till 1781. He read 
law, and was admitted to the bar in Westmoreland county in January, 1789, 
and practiced in Greensburg. He served a short time in the war of 1812. 
In 1791, February 3, he was married to Rachel Shannon, of Perkiomen, Penn- 
sylvania. Later he removed to Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, where 
he died, February 18, 1833, and was buried at Evansburg, Pennsylvania. 

Two strictly Pennsylvania regiments organized for the protection of the 
province were the Pennsylvania Regiment of Musketry and the Pennsylvania 
Rifle Regiment. They were authorized by a resolution of the Pennsylvania 
Assembly, passed March 4, 1776. In the Rifle Regiment was the company 
of Joseph Erwin, which was raised in Westmoreland county and enlisted for 
two years. This company was afterwards transferred to the Thirteenth 
Pennsylvania Regiment, and thence to the Second Pennsylvania, and was 
finally discharged at Valley Forge in 1778, their time of enlistment having 
expired. In 1777 a state regiment of foot was founded, and Captain Erwin's 
company, under James Carnahan, Erwin having been promoted, was in- 
cluded in it. They were at Brandywine and Germantown. They had also 
been in the disastrous battle of Long Island when Generals Howe, Clinton 
and Cornwallis, with the best equipped army in the world and the largest 
British army that ever contended against American forces, thought they won 
a great victory over the ragged and starving American troops under Gen- 
erals Washington, Putnam, Miles, Sullivan and Stirling. 



136 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

Captain James Carnahan lived in the northern part of Westmoreland 
county. At the close of the Revolution he returned to our county, and in 
the winter of 1786-87 he was drowned in the Allegheny river. He was the 
father of Dr. James Carnahan, who was president of Princeton College from 
1831 to 1853. 

The Second Pennsylvania Regiment entered the service in October, 1776, 
and with various changes remained till the close of the war, returning home 
late in 1783. In the first years of its services in the war there were few if 
any Westmoreland soldiers in it, but later on, when its hardships were greater, 
there were very many from Westmoreland added to it, both by transfer from 
other regiments and by recruits directly from the pioneer families. The list 
is very imperfect, but it nevertheless discloses that many Westmoreland sol- 
diers were killed while serving in it. Many others serving through the war 
returned and spent their last years here, and their names may yet be read on 
the mossy headstones of our old cemeteries. That they were under Generals 
Anthony Wayne and Nathaniel Greene is sufficient evidence that they saw 
much active service. They doubtless bore their part at Guilford Court House 
and Ninety-Six, and finally at Yorktown. The only complete lists of this 
regiment are said to have been destroyed by the British army when they 
burned the capitol at Washington in 1814. 

We have referred several times to the border troubles of Western Penn- 
sylvania during the Revolution. Although we were far removed from the 
actual fighting ground of the armies, the Indians were a much greater menace 
to our people. Several attempts were made by Connolly, then in the British 
service, to take the western part of our state from the dominion of our Colo- 
nial army. Pittsburgh was to be -his headquarters, and all that saved us 
from the additional misfortune was the unbending loyalty of our people. 
The British, failing in this, allied themselves thoroughly with the Indians, 
who were readily induced to annoy and harrass our almost defenseless pio- 
neers. The Indians were by this time pushed west as far as the valley of 
the Ohio river. Our Congress knew of this impending trouble, and that a daily 
outbreak by the Indians was looked for. In 1776 Colonel George ]\Iorgan was 
directed to negotiate with the tribes and endeavor to secure them as our allies, 
or, failing in this, to induce them to remain neutral. A further committee 
from Congress visited them, but, like ]\Iorgan, failed to accomplish anything 
of permanent good. All this was promptly reported to Congress. They 
traced their failure mainly to Governor Hamilton, who had been appointed 
by the British, and had great power with the Shawnees and the Delawares. 
The result was that all of the militia which our county could spare was moved 
to Fort Pitt and to other western forts. Some of our forts having been long 
since abandoned, were repaired and garrisoned. In furtherance of this project 
the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment was authorized by a resolution of Con- 
gress, passe! July 15. 1776, and was designed for the special purpose of 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 137 

protecting the frontier of Pennsylvania, particularly that part north of Pitts- 
burgh, for the southern border, notably around Fort Pitt, had been in a meas- 
ure protected all the time, and the fort itself had never been abandoned. 
This regfiment had been mustered at Pittsburgh, and did duty along the fron- 
tier during- the summer months of 1776. The officers were Colonels Aeneas 
Rlackay and George Wilson, and ]\Iajor Richard Butler. Rev. David Mc- 
Clure was appointed chaplain, and Ephraim Douglas quartermaster. Many 
of the soldiers were from our county, for, to remain near home and protect 
their own firesides and families, was doubtless more inviting to them than 
service in the army with Washington. For that reason they enlisted most 
readily, all of them between August 9 and December 16. But now large 
additional reinforcements for the British army landed in New York, and 
this demanded that all troops from every part of the army who could be spared 
should be added at once to Washington's army. They had, therefore, scarcely 
become settled in their posts on the frontier until Congress ordered them to 
New Jersey to reinforce Washington's army, which was indeed sadly in 
need of them. Orders were issued, and all troops were to assemble at Kittan- 
ning on December 15, to begin a march of about five hundred miles on foot 
across the Allegheny mountains, in the dead of winter. They were so poorly 
clad that Colonel ]\Iackay wrote that he would be obliged to go by the way 
of Philadelphia in order to secure clothes and other much needed supplies. 
Colonel George Wilson, writing from Kittanning, December 5, to Colonel 
James Wilson, among other things makes the following observations : "To 
march east is disagreeable to me, for both officers and men understood when 
entering the service that we were to defend the western frontier. Now to 
leave their families in so defenseless a situation as they will be in their 
absence seems to give great trouble here. But I hope we will leave some 
of our trifling officers behind, who pretend to have more wit than seven men. 
We are ill provided for a march at this season. We need tents, kettles, 
blankets and clothes, that we may not cut a despicable figvire in the east. I 
have recommended all to lay aside personal resentment and issued orders 
to have your soldiers meet at Hannastown by December 15." 

They left Hannastown and Kittanning on January 6, 1777, and made, 
all things being considered, one of the most wonderful marches known in 
the military history of America. They crossed the Allegheny mountains, 
then across Pennsylvania, and across the Delaware into New Jersey. They 
had no tents, were poorly clothed and poorly subsisted. They camped at 
night on the snow, building fires to keep themselves from freezing. Many 
of them died on the way. At Trenton, Colonel Mackay died, and, a few days 
after. Colonel George Wilson, whose letter is quoted in part above, also died. 
Both succumbed to. the hardships of this long wintry march. Many of the 
soldiers who survived the march were laid up with a throat disease of a 
putrid nature. After the deaths of Mackay and Wilson, Daniel Broadhead 



138 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

was made colonel, Richard Butler lieutenant-colonel, and Stephen Bayard 
major. Butler was shortly afterwards made lieutenant-colonel of Morgan's 
rifle regiment, and Major James Ross took his place. There were ten com- 
panies in the regiment, which numbered 681 soldiers in all, exclusive of the 
ofilicers. Nearly all of them were enlisted from Westmoreland county, as 
the» limits were then. Captain David Kilgore's company had 58 men ; Cap- 
tain Samuel Miller's had 85 ; Captain Van Swearingen's had 74 ; Captain 
Joseph Piggot's had 59; Captain Wendel Ourry's 59; Captain Andrew Mann's 
62; Captain James Montgomery's 59; Captain Michael Hufifnagle's 74; Captain 
John Finley's 79, and Captain Basil Prather's 73. In this regiment was Mat- 
thew Jack, afterwards quite noted in Westmoreland, as shall be learned 
later. He was wounded April 13. They had made the long march from 
January 6 to about February 22. 

The reader will recognize several old Westmoreland names in the list 
of captains, among others that of Hufifnagle, the second prothonotary of West- 
moreland county. 

Several Westmoreland soldiers deserted on the long march, and, we be- 
lieve, afterwards returned to the army and performed good service. It must 
not be forgotten that to desert was not regarded as harshly as it is now. In the 
Revolution many honest soldiers ran away in the spring to their crops, and 
then returned to duty again. Washington readily saw the difference between 
a genuine deserter and one whoi went home to assist his needy wife and chil- 
dren. 

The regiment was under General Benjamin Lincoln, and suffered severely 
at Bound Brook, where they were attacked by Cornwallis. They stood up 
and repulsed a charge of British bayonets at Paoli, and were also in the battles 
of Ash Swamp, Brandywine and Germantown. Like all regiments in the 
Revolution, it was often divided, and parts of it attached to other battalions. 
Officers were also removed to other commands, and all this was apparently 
necessary then, and was done much more extensively in the Revolution than 
in later wars. The soldiers of the Revolution were generally enlisted for short 
terms. It was not uncommon for them to serve a year or two and then go 
home to provide for their families by repairing their houses, improving farms 
and then return to the army. Their enlistments were for as long as they thought 
their families could subsist without them. But in the meantime, the army had 
to be kept up and in the best possible condition, for it was invariably called 
on to meet larger numbers of trained British soldiers. 

Some of our Westmoreland members of the Eighth Regiment re-enlisted, 
and were sent with Morgan to fight the battle of Saratoga, and others with 
Wayne to captuie Stony Point. They were nearly all at Valley Forge. On 
March 5, 1778, after more than a year's service in the east, the regiment was 
sent back to Pittsburgh to defend the frontier, for which purpose it was orig- 
inally intended. This was necessary because of the constant Indian raids 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



139 



made on the frontier, which is treated elsewhere. At Pittsburgh, they were 
under the command of General Mcintosh. Captain iMatthew Jack has de- 
scribed them as first going down the Ohio river to the mouth of the Beaver 
river, where they built Fort Mcintosh, after which they journeyed to the 
headwaters of the [Muskingum, in Ohio, where they built Fort Laurens. In 
1779 they went up the Allegheny river about two hundred miles with Gen- 
eral Broadhead's expedition and attacked the Indians at various points, de- 
feating them and burning their towns. On their return, says Captain Jack, 
who accompanied both expeditions, they were discharged because their term 
of service had expired. The Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment was not dis- 
banded, however, but was kept up by recruits from this county till the close 
of the war, and most if not all of the time after their return from the east 
in INIarch. 1778, they were doing frontier duty in and arbund Pittsburgh. 

The name of Daniel Morgan will not soon be forgotten by the American 
people. As the commander of Morgan's Rifles and as the hero of Cowpens. 
his name will shine with star-brightened splendor as long as the American 
people revere true courage and patriotism. It is not generally known how 
closely his name is linked with Westmoreland soldiers in the Revolution. 
Reference has already been made to his participation in Braddock's expe- 
dition in the attempted capture of Fort Duquesne. The Eighth Regiment 
was with him at Saratoga, as we have said, and one of his most trusted 
colonels was our own Richard Butler. Morgan's corps was made up of the 
best sharpshooters selected from all the American army, though the credit 
of it is generally attributed to Virginia, because Morgan himself was a 
Mrginian. In reality, the fifth company was commanded by Captain Van 
Swearingen, of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment. In General James Wilk- 
inson's memoirs, it is said there were 163 Virginians and 193 Pennsyl- 
vanians, these two states furnishing the greater part of the corps, since the 
entire regiment numbered only 508. The ofiicial name was not Morgan's 
Rifles, as it is generally called, but "Morgan's Partisan Corps." It was or- 
ganized for the special purpose of sharpshooting by Washington himself, 
and he selected the officers with his well-known unerring judgment of 
military men. Of their services at Saratoga. George Bancroft, the greatest 
of Revolutionary historians, has the following: "In concurrence with the 
advice of Arnold, Gates ordered out Morgan's riflemen and light infantry. 
They put a picket to flight at a quarter past one, but retired before the di- 
vision of Burgoyne. Leading his forces unmolested through the woods, 
and securing his right by thickets and ravines, Morgan next fell unexpect- 
edly upon the left of the British center division. To support him, Gates, 
at two o'clock, sent out three New Hampshire battalions, of which that of 
Scammel met the enemy in front, that of Lilly took them in flank. In a 
warm engagement Morgan had his horse shot under him, and with his rifle- 
men captured a cannon, but could not carry it off." 



I40 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNT V. 

General Henry L. Lee in his "Memoirs of the Revolution in the South- 
ern States," speaks of Colonel Butler as the renowned second and rival of 
Morgan in the Saratoga encounter. But this is not all. Captain \'an 
Swearingen and Lieutenants Basil, Prather and John Hardin were all West- 
morelanders and were with Morgan, and all of them rendered distinguished 
services, particularly in the many encounters which resulted in the over- 
throw and capture of Burgoyne's army. Van Swearingen was probably the 
most noted captain of the regiment. On September 9, 1777, he and twenty 
of his men were captured by a charge of the British into the heart of Mor- 
gan's force. He was taken before General Fraser, who wanted him to 
give information concerning the strength of the American forces. The 
captain persistently refused to answer, except that it was commanded by 
Generals Gates and Arnold. Upon this the general said he would hang him, 
but the only words elicited were, "You may if you wish," and then General 
Fraser rode away, but first handed him over to Sergeant Dunbar and Lieu- 
tenant Aubury, who had him guarded with other prisoners, but gave orders 
that he should not be illtreated. Not long after this Burgoyne's army was 
captured, and Van Swearingen made every exertion to have Dunbar and 
Aubury exchanged. But a moment after General Fraser rode away, he was 
seen from a long distance by Morgan. He ordered Timothy Murphy, from 
Northumberland county, one of his best sharpshooters, to shoot him. with 
the result that Fraser fell from his horse dead, almost immediately after 
threatening to hang Van Swearingen. Van Swearingen returned to West- 
moreland from the army, and was afterwards the first sheriff of Washing- 
ton county. Another company of Morgan's Rifles was commanded by Major 
James Parr, of Westmoreland, and was sent to western New York to defend 
the frontier against the Indians, after which they came to Tioga and united 
with General Sullivan's army in his campaign against the Indians, who 
were engaged in the Massacre of Wyoming. Other Westmoreland soldiers 
were with ]\Iorgan when he won his greatest honors in the south, from 
which he is remembered as the "Hero of Cowpens." 

Lieutenant John Hardin, of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment, after 
the war was over removed from our county to Kentucky, where he is 
remembered as General Hardin. He took a prominent part in the Indian 
warfare conducted in the west by Generals Harmar and St. Clair, and rose 
to distinction in arms. He was murdered by the Indians near Sandusky, 
in 1791. We think he was the father of General Benjamin Hardin, a con- 
temporary of Henry Clay, and one of the ablest lawyers Kentucky has yet 
produced. 

Aeneas Mackay, who was so prominent in those days, was born in 
South Carolina, in 1721. The first mention of him seems to be that when 
Washington was at Great Meadows, and was building Fort Necessity, in 
1754, he was reinforced by Captain Aeneas Mackay with one hundred soldiers 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 141 

from South Carolina. There, without as much grace as he showed later in hfe, 
he resented the idea of serving under Washington, who was a mere un- 
known backwoods mihtiaman, while he was commissioned by the King. 
After leaving Great Meadows he took his company to Will's Creek, where 
he assisted in building Fort Cumberland, which was named after the Duke 
of Cumberland, a name the city built there bears yet. Later he was for 
several years commander of the garrison at Fort Ligonier, under the commis- 
sion of the King of England. From his Bible it is learned that his son 
Samuel was born there on July 20, 1766. The same year he was moved to 
Fort Pitt. He was a tower of strength in Dunmore's war over the bound- 
ary question, and was appointed a justice in Westmoreland county. His 
death, as colonel of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment, as a result of the 
long march from Westmoreland to New Jersey, has been mentioned else- 
where. He died Februaiy 14, 1777, and was buried in the "Presbyterian 
bur^-ing ground" at Trenton, New Jersey. His wife was born in New 
York, and was afterwards married to George Adams, of Pittsburgh. His 
daughter Elizabeth was married to Stephen Bayard. Had Mackay lived 
through the Revolution he would undoubtedly have made for himself an 
enviable name in our military annals, for he was a man of superior char- 
acter, training and courage. 

Stephen Bayard was born January 23, 1744, of an old family in Mary- 
land. Early in life he was a Philadelphia merchant, and in the beginning 
of the Revolution raised a company in Philadelphia, of which he was 
niadt captain. The company was part of St. Clair's expedition to Quebec. 
Later he served under Richard Butler, and was with the Eighth Regi- 
ment when it returned from Valley Forge to Pittsburgh. He was a colonel 
under Broadhead when he conquered the Indians in Ohio, and up the 
Allegheny river. In 1781 he commanded the regiment at Fort Pitt. After 
the Revolution he located in Pittsburgh and became wealthy. He had taken 
up large tracts of land on the Alonongahela river, and on one of them 
founded a boat-building town which he named after his wife Elizabeth, 
which yet bears her name. In the war of 1812 President Aladison offered 
him a major general's commission, but he wisely declined it because of his 
age. He died in Pittsburgh, December 13, 1815. 

George Wilson, lieutenant-colonel of the Eighth Regiment, was a na- 
tive of Augusta county, Virginia. He was an officer in the French and 
Indian war, and settled in Westmoreland county shortly after the close of 
the war. He was appointed a justice, first for Bedford county, and later, 
when our county was erected, held the same position here for many years. 
He was also, as will be remembered, one of the trustees appointed to locate 
the county seat of Westmoreland county. Of course he was a leading spirit 
in Dunmore's war, and was one of the justices whom Connolly arrested. 
Rather than give bail he was taken to Staunton in irons. He died like 



142 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

Colonel Mackay, from the effects of the long march to New Jersey. His 
death occurred in April, 1777, and he was buried at Ouibbletown. 

Daniel Broadhead commanded our Westmoreland soldiers in the army 
frequently, but had no other special connection with our county as it is 
now bounded. He was a native of New York, and was afterwards survey- 
or-general of Pennsylvania. 

The Butler family was purely a Westmoreland family and it was the 
most noted family we produced during the Revolution. Their father was 
Thomas Butler, who was born in Ireland, and three of his sons were also 
born there, viz. : Richard, William and Thomas. Richard, as will be recalled, 
was lieutenant-colonel of Morgan's Rifle Regiment. From his first con- 
nection with the regiment he drilled them at all reasonable hours, and much 
of the honor they gained was doubtless due to the pains he took in prepar- 
ing them for future actions. Butler was with Wayne when he charged up 
Stony Point, and was prominent at the last when Cornwallis was compelled 
to surrender to Washington. In 1790 he was appointed a major-general, 
but unfortunately, as we have said, he was killed the following year (1791) 
while fighting the Indians in Ohio with St. Clair. It is well authenticated 
that on the night before the battle, knowing more about Indian warfare 
than St. Clair, he said to him, "I have some good wine here, general ; let us 
eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." 

Thomas Butler was a law student in Philadelphia in 1776. when the 
Revolution was beginning to be thoroughly felt in that city. He enlisted 
as a private and rose to the rank of captain, serving till the close of the war,. 
It was he whom General Washington publicly thanked at the battle of' 
Brandywine. At the battle of Monmouth he defended a dangerous ravine, 
while his brother Richard's regiment was retreating through it. For this 
he received the thanks of General Wayne. He was also in the Ohio Indian 
battle with St. Clair in 1791, as commander of a battalion. St. Clair in that 
battle ordered a bayonet charge. Thomas Butler was on horseback and 
had had his leg broken by a ball, yet in this painful condition he led the 
charge. He was removed from the field by a third brother, Edward. 
Thomas died September 5, 1805. 

Percival, the fourth son, was born in Carlisle, and entered the Revolu- 
tion when eighteen years old, as a lieutenant. He was at Valley Forge, 
Monmouth and Yorktown, and was greatly trusted by General Washing- 
ton. He moved to Kentucky in 1784, and was adjutant general of that state 
in the war of 1812. 

Edward was too young to enter the Revolution, but was a captain in 
St. Clair's army in 1791, and in 1794 was adjutant-general of General 
Wayne's army. 

The mother o'f the Butler brothers was a strong-minded, patriotic woman 
who was willing to part with her husband and sons, and endure the hard- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 143 

ships wliich their absence added to her life, if only the cause of the colonies 
might thereby be advanced. It was probably this that led Washington, at 
his own table, surrounded by army officers, to propose that toast. "The 
Butlers and their five sons." Lafayette at one time said that when he 
wanted anything well done he ordered a Butler to do it. 

.-Vt the surrender of Cornwallis, Baron Steuben had command of the 
trenches when the white flag was sent out by the British. While the terms 
of surrender were being considered by Washington and his generals, 
Lafayette's division marched up to relieve Steuben, the time for relief hav- 
ing arrived. But the Baron did not want to be relieved then, for he knew 
that the surrender would soon be at hand, and wanted the honor of hoisting 
the flag. Washington decided that neither he nor Lafayette should hoist 
it, but gave the honor to Ebenezer Denny, of Pittsburgh. But when the 
ensign was about to plant it, Steuben, perhaps in excitement, hurried for- 
ward, took the flag and hoisted it himself. Richard Butler thought this an 
insult to the Pennsylvania troops and challenged Steuben. Both these men 
had rendered great services to the colonial army, and there was too much 
glory in the army now to allow two of its best officers to engage in a deadly 
conflict : but it required all the efiforts of Washington, Hamilton and 
Rochambeau to prevent the duel. It is but fair to say that the Butlers, while 
coming from Westmoreland, were from that part of it now included in Alle- 
gheny county. 

Colonel James Smith has often been referred to as early even as in 
Braddock's march. He was, indeed, a very important factor in the early 
annals of our county. He was born in Cumberland county, perhaps in a 
part that is now Bedford county, in 1737. In 1755 he was hunting near 
Bedford, and was captured by the Indians. He was a prisoner in Fort Du- 
quesne on July 9, 1755, and heard and saw the preparations made between 
Beaujeu and the Indians to surprise Braddock's army. Much of the in- 
formation concerning that attack comes from his writings. He escaped 
from the Indians in 1760 and went to Franklin county. His natural ability 
and his kno;ivledge of the Indians, gained while a captive, made him valu- 
able to Bouquet in his Ohio expedition in 1764, when he served as an en- 
sign. Later he was a lieutenant in the militia of Western Pennsylvania. 
In 1769 and '70 he purchased lands along Jacob's creek and on the Yough- 
iogheny river. In 1774 he assisted St. Clair in organizing the Rangers to 
protect our frontier against Dunmore's invasions, and was one of the mem- 
bers of the Hannastown convention on May 16. 1775, which adopted the 
celebrated resolutions previously referred to. He was also one of the Asso- 
ciators called for in those resolutions. Later he was elected a member of 
the convention of July 15. 1776, and was elected to the assembly of the 
state in i/yS-'jj. Here he was kr>own as an authority on Indian aflfairs, 
and respected for his knowledge of border warfare. The assembly was 



144 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY 



in session in Philadelphia in 1777, and at his own request he was granted a 
leave of absence to conduct a scouting party through New Jersey. He re- 
mained in Washington's division of the army, and in 1778 was made a 
colonel, and sent to Western Pennsylvania, where he performed valuable 
services in the continuous warfare against the Indians. In 1788 he re- 
moved to Kentucky, where he was again a member of the assembly, 
though of another state. In 1812 he wrote "A Treatise on the Mode and 
Manner af Indian War," with many extracts from his journal kept when 
a prisoner among the Indians. It is a valuable work because of its simplic- 
ity, and contains much information about the habits of a race now almost 
extinct. He died in Washington county, Kentucky, in 181 2. 



CHAPTBR XI 



The Closing Years of the Revohition.— Indians, Hard Times.— Locliry's and Crawford': 
Ill-Fated Expeditions. 



After perusing a preceding chapter the reader can form some idea of the 
condition of our county in 1779 and '80. With many soldiers in the field, 
our ranging parties, performing almost daily duty, and, the militia constantly 
guarding the forts, agricultural interests were sadly neglected and many 
homes were reduced to absolute want. Many had left their western homes 
for more peaceful habitations east of the mountains. It was not unusual to 
find several families living in one house or cabin, which, if strongly barri- 
caded, afforded a comparatively safe place of refuge from the Indians. There 
were not men enough to guard all of the houses, and by uniting them they 
felt more secure. There were scarcely men enough to gather their scanty 
crops. Sometimes they were not permitted to sow their ground in the spring, 
and some who sowed amid dangers in the spring were unable to reap in the 
fall. Often the husband and older sons went to the field in the morning and 
never returned. Often, also, upon their return at night, they found the family 
had been either captured or murdered. From 1778 to 1782 there was scarcely 
a family within the limits of our present county that had bread sufficient 
to subsist on Jrom fall till spring. Their live stock was destroyed and stolen. 
With all their vigilance in watching the enemy there was scarcely a week that 
some depredation was not committed. Men, women and children were taken 
prisoners and carried away, and nothing was heard from them for months 
or years, and often they were never heard of again. This apparently never- 
ending war induced the authorities to offer and from time to time to in- 
crease the bounty on scalps of Indians. 

Reference has been made heretofore to a scalp bounty paid regularly by 
the English. The fact is abundantly proved by the archives of New York 
and Pennsylvania, and the history of the Revolutionary period ; and, it mav 
be said, the thrilling, blood-curdling stories told by novelists of the present 
day are by no means without ample foundation. 

But. on the other hand, the Indian was rightly regarded as the natural 



146 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

enemy of the white man, and it soon became the belief of the pioneers that 
the only solution to the question was the utter extermination of the native 
Indian race. From an early date the Proprietors offered a bounty for the 
scalps of Indian warriors. In 1756 (says Craig in "Early Pittsburgh") Gov- 
ernor Morris offered one hundred and fifty Spanish dollars for every male 
Indian above the age of twelve years taken prisoner and delivered to the 
authorities ; for the scalp of every male Indian over twelve years old taken 
in war, one hundred and thirty Spanish dollars ; for every male or female 
prisoner under twelve years old, one hundred and thirty Spanish dollars ; 
for the scalp of every Indian woman, produced with evidence of being killed, 
fifty dollars. These bounties were payable by the commanders of the forts 
that were kept up by the province, upon the delivery of the prisoner or scalps 
with proper proofs ; the jail keepers at the county seats were also authorized 
to pay for them. In 1764 Governor Penn ofifered a reward of $150 for every 
male Indian prisoner over ten years old, and $134 for his scalp when killed. 
For every male or female under ten years of age when captured, $130, or 
$50 for the scalp when killed. About 1782 there was a standing reward of 
$100 for a dead Indian's scalp, and $150 for the Indian if captured alive and 
brought to the garrison. The same ofifer was made for all white men taken 
prisoner while aiding the Indians. Colonel Samuel Hunter, Colonel Jacob 
Stroud and others in Westmoreland were authorized to offer the rewards. 
In a letter to President Reed the former says that he has just organized a 
party to go scalp-hunting, and that though they do not make as much out 
of a dead Indian as out of a living one, yet it was much less trouble and 
much more agreeable to the hunters to shoot him at once and scalp him than 
to be bothered carrying him along as a prisoner. Colonel Archibald Lochry, 
the county lieutenant, wrote from his house near Latrobe that there was no 
doubt but that the reward would answer a good end. He also in the same 
letter asks for more ammunition to supply the parties of scalp-hunters. But 
Colonel Hunter reported later an unsuccessful return of his party so far as 
procuring scalps was concerned, and in reply. President Reed told him to 
be of good cheer, and expressed a hope that another hunting excursion would 
prove more successful. Many scalps were thus taken, and on one occasion 
thirteen, with accompanying certificates, were sent in at one time. The scalp- 
hunting business reached its highest point in 1781 and 1782, if the Colonial 
records are to be believed. It must not be forgotten that the Indians were 
all these years engaged in the same business, and that thev scalped men, 
women and children, and even innocent babes. 

A person who was scalped was always supposed to be killed, though 
we have instances of some who survived the injury. The scalping itself did 
not kill the prisoner, for it consisted in the taking of the skin only from the 
crown of the head— a piece about four inches in circumference. This op- 
eration was performed by taking a firm hold of the hair with the left hand, 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 147 

and, when the skin was slightly drawn away from the bone, a sharp knife 
readily severed a circular piece from the head. It was a custom prevalent 
among the Indians in warfare among themselves when the first Europeans 
arrived, and was probably then only used to verify the number of the enemy 
they had slain. The greed for scalps was afterwards induced by the re- 
wards ofifered. It will be recalled that this greed for scalps and spoils on 
the part of the Indians saved Braddock's army from complete annihilation. 

This method of warfare was perhaps questionable, but the exigencies of 
the times prompted it. The bounty was rarely ever taken by the settlers. 
But whether the theory was right or wrong, they never offered a bounty 
for scalps of friendly Indians. Perhaps sometimes a dishonest settler did not 
discriminate between a friendly and a hostile Indian, but nevertheless the 
government itself was actuated by good intentions towards all but the hos- 
tile warrior. On this question Colonel Broadhead, in a letter to President 
Reed, says that about forty friendly Delaware Indians had come to assist 
the white settlers in the frontier war, and that a party of about fortv white 
men from the region of Hannastown attempted to destroy them, and were 
only prevented from doing so by his soldiers. He says in the same letter 
that he could have gotten one hundred Indians to join him had it not been 
for such open enmity as was evinced by these men from Hannastown. Among 
the Hannastown party were Captains Irwin and Jack, Lieutenant Brownlee 
and Ensign Guthrie, all of whom were gallant rangers who had more than 
once risked their lives in the frontier warfare. Colonel Broadhead, how- 
ever, knew as much of the Indians as any man of his day, and had fought 
them as effectually as any one since the days of Bouquet. Yet he says dis- 
tinctly that the whites were themselves in part to blame for their great trouble 
with the red men. His statement has always been considered detrimental 
to the good names of the rangers mentioned in his letter. It is more likely, 
however, that these rangers did not know or did not believe that the forty 
Indians were friendly ones in reality. The well known treachery of the 
race was ever present in the minds of the white man. The modern saying 
that the only good Indian is a dead one undoubtedly existed in the minds 
of the rangers long ago. No men were more anxious to add strength to the 
white man's camp than Irwin, Jack and Brownlee, and no men ran greater 
risks in trying to preserve order than they, as will be seen later on. But, on 
the other hand, it is likewise true that if they believed the forty friendly 
Indians were treacherous, no set of men could have exterminated them in 
shorter time than forty rangers headed by such men as Jack, Irwin, Brown- 
lee and Guthrie. This is, at least, a charitable view of Colonel Broadhead's 
letter, and we believe is not unduly fair to the rangers. 

Judge Wilkinson, in the American Pioneer, says the scalp bountv law was 
brought into disrepute by killing friendly Indians to sell their scalps. There 
was no bounty durmg the Revolution on Indian prisoners, and this led to the 



148 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

death of some. Moreover, a friendly Indian was much more easily scalped 
than a hostile one. At all events, the abuse of the law, says the above writer, 
"brought the scalp bounty measure into disrepute," and it was rightfully re- 
pealed. It had onlv been ofifered to encourage settlers to sustain the soldiers 
in battle. 

The Indian troubles had thus been going on from bad to worse since 
the beginning of the Revolution, and in February and March, 1781, a plan 
of defense was suggested by General George Rogers Clark, and concurred 
in by Broadhead and Lochry. It was to take an army into the heart of the 
Indian country, to burn their houses, devastate their country, and destroy 
their warriors, and to so weaken them that they would thereafter be unable 
to disturb the settlers of Western Pennsylvania. It was not a new plan in 
Indian warfare, for it was practically the same that was adopted success- 
fully by Broadhead in his movements down the Ohio and up the Allegheny 
in 1778. It was little other than the plan with which Scipio Africanus 
had electrified the Roman senate two thousand years before, when the great 
Carthagenian was threatening the Eternal City. The plan was laid before 
Washington and' Jefferson, and met with their approval, and was likewise 
approved bv the supreme executive council, though they averred that they 
could do but little for the project because all of the troops that Pennsylvania 
could spare were then with General Nathanael Greene in the south. All the 
council could do was to encourage the Westmoreland people to assist in the 
project in every way possible. Christopher Hays was then the Westmore- 
land member of the council, and was opposed to the expedition, doubtless 
from fear of the result. Colonel Archibald Lochry, the county lieutenant, 
was the foremost man in the project after Clark, and had in his spirit of 
patriotic zeal taken upon himself to raise all the soldiers in Westmoreland 
county he could. All were bitter against Hays. There were many bickerings 
and jealousies among the leaders, notwithstanding the universal suilfering, 
and these weakened the cause a great deal. Each leader seemed to have a 
corresponding enemy who villified him. Broadhead, Lochry, Perry and oth- 
ers were accused of having misappropriated public money and speculating 
in ammunition and whisky furnished by the council for the troops. The 
charges were probably all groundless. Early in 1781 the council became 
alarmed at the threatenings of the Indians, and at the delay in raising the 
soldiers for the expedition, which they thought was occasioned by incom- 
petency and by jealous feelings among the leading men. They therefore 
directed Lochry, the leader of the forces here, to raise at once a company 
of fifty volunteers enlisted for a four months campaign, and promised to add 
a full company, all to be under Lochry, and to carry the war into the Indian 
country, and to be posted as he might direct. David Duncan was appointed 
commissioner of supplies in place of James Perry, the latter, either through 
inefificiency or negligence, having proved very unsatisfactory in his admin- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 149 

istration of the office. President Reed, in a letter to Lochry, says, "It is with 
much concern that we hear that when troops are raised for your protection, 
thev are permitted to loiter away their time at taverns or straggling about 
the country." He had probably received this information from those who 
were jealous of Lochry. He also advises that all troops should be moved 
from Hannastown and sent where they could be of more service. He evi- 
dently did not understand the Hannastown situation. Lochry replied in good 
style under date of April, 1781, and reported that the savages had already 
begun their hostilities in four places on the frontier, and had either killed 
or taken prisoners thirteen settlers, two of whom had been murdered 
within one mile of Hannastown. He wrote further that the country was 
more nearly depopulated than ever before, and that the condition on the 
frontier would be much worse if their real weakness was known to the en- 
emy. (See Pa. Arch., Vol. 9, p. 79.) He lamented the scarcity of provisions 
to supply the militia, and reported that ammunition was so scarce among the 
settlers that he was compelled to supply them with a part of the supply in- 
tended for the army. Lochry had built a magazine and blockhouse on his 
place in Lenity township, where he meant to keep the army stores and am- 
munition. President Reed disapproved of this, and directed that thev should 
be kept in the garrisons. 

The plan in general was known as Clark's plan, and its movements were 
minutely disclosed in a letter written by him to the council on June 3, 1781. 
There were two objective points, viz. : First, the houses built by the Shawnee 
and Delaware Indians, west of the Scioto river, in Ohio; and second, the 
Sandusky tribes, which had gradually been pushed west from the Allegheny 
river section. His outline plan suggested that if the Westmoreland expedi- 
tion under Lochry should march against the Sandusky tribes, he might lead 
an army against the Shawnees and Delawares in the southern part of Ohio. 
After each army had accomplished the object of its expedition, they should 
unite and pursue the Indians still further, if necessary. One party would 
thus support 'the other, and the extermination of these tribes could thus be 
so complete that further molestations from them need not be feared by our 
Western Pennsylvania borders. If the military of the state was so weak that 
two armies could not be furnished, then one stronger than either should do 
the work of both, and it should be provisioned according to the magnitude 
of the undertaking, which, he intimated, was indeed an arduous one. Clark 
was a brave, cool man of genius, and his character and reputation as a sol- 
dier were well known in Westmoreland county. It was expected that our 
people, inspired by the faith they had in him, would flock to his assistance. 
Three hundred men had been promised from Washington and Westmoreland 
counties, but from all this section only two of the leading men of Westmore- 
land came forth to assist him. The reason lay not in their lack of faitli in 
Clark, nor in the project, but they were simply afraid to leave their homes 



1.50, HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNT)'. 

and families, exposed as they would have been to the merciless attack of the 
red men, whose depredations were every day growing bolder and more inhuman. 
Broadhead also, from feelings of jealousy referred to above, discouraged the 
project by talking of organizing an expedition himself, and called on the young 
men of the country to join him. Lochry's reputation had unjustly suffered 
somewhat from the spirit of jealousy referred to, and he probably longed for 
an opportunity to show the people that he had only the good of the country 
at heart. Both Clark and Lochry determined not to wait any longer on volun- 
teers from Western Pennsylvania. Clark had a small force at and around 
Fort Pitt, but he depended mainly for his forces on the settlements along the 
Ohio river, and on Kentucky, for all were interested in punishing the Indians. 
Lochry brought his forces together at Carnahan's blockhouse, a stronghold 
about ten miles northwest of Hannastown. Among them were Captain Rob- 
ert Orr, a friend of Lochry's of long standing, and an officer in the militia. 
Orr had furthermore induced many of the militia to join Lochry. Captains 
Thomas Stokes and Samuel Shearer each headed a small band of Westmore- 
land rangers, and Captain Charles Campbell had a squad of men on horseback. 
On July 25th they left Carnahan's for Fort Henry, now the industrious city of 
Wheeling. It is acknowledged by all that the men of our county whom Lochry 
took with him were the best Indian fighters we had ; in fact, none but the most 
daring and active young men could engage in such a project. All were poorly 
equipped for such a journey. Stokely's company was described as being liter- 
ally half naked. Outfits for all of them had been promised by President Reed, 
and their expected arrival delayed the expedition. When finally they failed 
to arrive, many who meant to join them were compelled to remain behind. 
The outfit which might have helped them a great deal arrived after they had 
left. Ensign \/illiam Cooper hurried on with it, but it never reached them. 
Lochry's entire command when he started numbered one hundred and seven 
men. 

Fort Pitt was also to send out troops under Captain Isaac Craig. They 
were to join Clark's forces in company with some troops from Kentucky at 
Louisville. The Kentucky troops failed to meet them, and all of Craig's forces 
returned to Fort Pitt. Clark had collected from Redstone, Ohio and Kentucky 
about seven hundred and fifty men. Lochry was to join Clark at Wheeling, 
but when they reached that point they found that Clark had gone on, leaving 
a boat and some provisions for Lochry, with instructions to follow and join 
him twelve miles belov/. Lochry's army was delayed at Wheeling fitting out 
additional boats, and when he reached the designated point of meeting twelve 
miles below he found that Clark had left it the day before, but had left orders 
for him to follow and join at the mouth of the Kanawha river. But Lochry 
was now about out of provisions and ammunition both, and the outlook was 
growing darker each day. His forces, if joined to Clark's would have been 
safe enough, but when alone they were at best at the mercy of the enemy. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 151 

Clark did not know for a certanity that Lochry was on the way. But the 
undaunted Lochry journeyed on towards the mouth of the Kanawha. Here 
again he arrived too late. Clark had erected a pole on the bank of the river, 
and on it was a letter to Lochry directing him to follow on down the river to the 
falls in the Ohio, where now stands the city of Louisville. Clark, however, 
was doing the best he could. First, he had no evidence that Lochry was on the 
way at all, and to leave provisions taken from his already scanty supply, with no 
assurance that Lochry would get them, was more than should be expected. 
Second, his men were rapidly becoming impatient to go out and give battle 
to the Indians, and return to their homes, where they were doubtless badly 
needed. They were deserting, and the only way he could hold them together 
at all was by moving towards the enemy. 

Nothing was left for Lochry to do but to go down the river. Yet, without 
provisions and with but little ammunition and nothing in the country to draw 
from, his advance must indeed have looked very gloomy. Nor could he now 
hope to overtake Clark, for his boats were clumsy and poorly manned by pilots 
who knew nothing of the channel or the surrounding country. The best he 
could do was to dispatch Captain Shannon in a boat with three or four men, 
hoping that a lighter craft might overtake Clark's army and secure supplies, etc. 
Shannon and his party were captured by the Indians, and with them a letter 
from Lochry to Clark, which gave them some idea of the weak condition of 
Lochry's forces. The Indians, as was afterwards learned, were only prevented 
from attacking Lochry's army by a fear that Clark might have forces near 
enough to assist him. Moreover, while Lochry was in the middle of the river, 
an attack would have been very serious on the part of the Indians. But from 
deserters from Clark's army whom they captured, they learned pretty nearly 
the true situation, and rapidly collected large forces of Indians near the mouth 
of the Miami river. They then stationed their prisoners on a small island 
on the Ohio side of the river, where they could see any craft which might 
pass down t^ie Ohio. They were to hail the expedition as it came down the 
stream and induce them to land on the island. Should they succeed in this 
treachery, they were to be set free, and if they failed to perform their part 
they were to be put to death. But Lochry's men landed on the Ohio side, 
about three miles above the island, near the mouth of a small creek which 
yet bears his name, being known as Lochry's creek. He has been criticised 
for landing at all, and thus making his capture possible. He knew more about 
Indian warfare than any of his modern critics do, and his landing was probably 
a matter of necessity. He landed at a place of peculiar beauty even to this day, 
and his starving horses were turned out to graze, for the bank was rich in 
herbage. One oi his men killed a buffalo, and there was plenty to eat for all his 
forces. This was about 10 o'clock a. m., August 24, 1781. Clark, if at the falls, 
was yet one hundred and twenty miles down the river, but with refreshed 



rs2 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

troops and horses this distance might easily be covered in three or four days, 
and the hopes of the soldiers ran high. 

But the Indians had their scouts out along both banks, and the news of 
the landing was soon made known to their main forces. Without the slightest 
warning, as was the Indian custom, came the leaden hail and the well known 
Indian yell from a bluff near by. This bluff was covered with large trees, 
and from behind these and among their branches the six hundred and forty- 
eight assailants fought at a great advantage. Lochry's men sprang to their 
guns, and while their ammunition lasted defended themselves as well as they 
could. When it was exhausted they made for their boats, but by this time the 
Indians had closed in on them, and at once took them prisoners. Not one of 
them escaped capture. Lochry was killed soon after being taken. He had with 
him one hundred and six men when he landed, of whom forty-two were killed 
and sixty-four were captured. The prisoners, their arms, etc., were divided 
among all the tribes represented in the attack, in proportion to the number of 
each tribe. They were thus separated, but nearly all were held captive until 
the fall of 1782, when they were collected by the British officers and exchanged 
for prisoners whom the American army had captured. All whom the English 
ransomed were taken to Montreal, but in the meantime a few had escaped. 
In the spring of 1783 most of them sailed for New York, and thus returned to 
Westmoreland county, after an absence of twenty-two months. 

More than half of the one hundred and seven men who left Carnahan's 
never returned, and until their return very little was heard of them. On the 
return of Captain Craig's troops he could scarcely be persuaded that Lochry 
had not returned before. Isaac Anderson and Richard Wallace were 
taken to Montreal and escaped. After long marches through the gloomy 
forests they reached Philadelphia, and sent a letter to the council telling who 
they were and how they had reached the city. They asked for clothing and 
money to take them home to Westmoreland county. Captain Orr had his arm 
broken in the fight. He was taken to Sandusky and thence to Detroit, and 
finally to Montreal, where he was exchanged. Samuel Craig, a lieutenant in 
Orr's company, from Derry township, was taken prisoner. As the Indians 
were crossing a river they threw him overboard, intending to drown him, but 
he was a splendid swimmer, and repeatedly made his way to the canoe, and, 
with his hands on the sides, tried to climb in. They beat him over the 
hands with the oars and pressed his head under the water as often as he came 
to the surface for breath. Finally, when he was about exhausted, an Indian 
claimed him as his own, and took him into the boat. In his long captivity 
Craig suffered perhaps more than any other. Several times both he and his 
captors came near starving. He had a cheerful disposition and was a good 
singer, and the Indians loved his songs. At one time thev grew tired of their 
prisoners and took them all out and placed them in a row on a log. Thev then 
blackened their faces, which meant that thev were to he killed. But iust then 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 153 

Craig began to sing as loud and well as he could. This so pleased the Indians 
that they spared his life, while all the others were murdered. Soon after this 
he was. sold to a British officer for a gallon of whisky. After his return he was 
married to a daughter of John Shields, and left a family of five sons and two 
daughters. He was by trade a fuller, and built a fulling mill on the banks of 
the Loyalhanna, near New Alexandria. Another survivor from Lochry's army 
was James Kane, who was for nearly a life time a court-cryer under Judge John 
Young, of Greensburg. He died in 1845. 

Archibald Lochry was one of the strongest men in Westmoreland in Revo- 
lutionary days. He was of North-Irish extraction, but was born in the Octo- 
raro settlement, for he was an ensign in the Second Battalion in the provincial 
service. Both he and his brother \^'illiam were appointed justices in Bedford 
county at its organization, and later when Westmoreland was organized, he 
was made a justice here, as the reader has seen. He very early took up a large 
tract of land in what is now Unity township. It is on the south side of the 
turnpike between Greensburg and Youngstown, and near St. Xavier's Convent. 
The land has since added great wealth to the county, for it is within the cele- 
brated Connellsville coal belt, and is underlaid with a thick vein of coal. His 
correspondence is generally dated at "Twelve Mile Run," the name of a small 
stream on his land which flows into the "Fourteen IMile Run," which in turn 
flows into the Loyalhanna fourteen miles below Fort Ligonier. His services 
as county lieutenant, then a position of great importance, though now unknown, 
made him very nearly if not quite our ablest man after General St. Clair, of 
the Revolutionary period. His name has been spelled differently from the 
spelling here. We take this from his will which he signs, "A. Lochry." It is 
recorded in will book No. i, page 31, of the Westmoreland recorder's office. 
His will appoints John Proctor, his neighbor, as his sole executor, and letters 
were granted to him July 11, 1782. His ill-fated expedition, while it seemingly 
accomplished but little, was necessary to work out our final peace and harmony 
on the western border. As long as Westmoreland people revere the struggles 
and courage of their pioneer ancestry, will the name of Archibald Lochry be 
held in highest esteem. 

It is hardly fair to the Indian not to tell his side of this most important 
feature of our pioneer history. It is, moreover, necessary to know something 
of both sides in order to judge correctly of either. It has been our purpose 
to take the reader outside of the present limits of our county as little as possi- 
ble, except in matters in which our people were directly interested. We are 
now to go outside of Westmoreland for by far the bloodiest chapter in our 
work, and are happy to say that our people were in no way connected with it. 

The Moravian Church in the eastern part of Pennsylvania sent mission- 
aries among the Indians of our section as early as 1769. In every section these 
missionaries made themselves felt and in one or two tribes they had quite a 
following. But whether a tribe was Christianized or not, all were alike slowly 



154 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



pushed westward by advancing civilization. In 1780 a colony known as the 
Moravian Indians, who had embraced that faith of religion, were located on 
the Tuscarawas river, in Ohio, in what is now Tuscarawas county. Here they 
lived at peace with all mankind, and, having abandoned the nomadic nature of 
the average Indian, had acquired considerable personal property and had better 
houses than the average of their race. Their preacher was Rev. John Hecke- 
welder. They had three villages on the Tuscarawas, about six miles apart, 
which were regarded as a model of Indian civilization, and of what might be 
<lone generally for the race by Christianity. They were about midway between 
the hostile tribes or western Indians and the frontier settlements of Pennsylva- 
nia. Both the Pennsylvania settlers and the Indians west of them frequently 
passed through or near the Moravian settlements in going to war. and often 
through kindness they entertained representatives of both parties on their way 
to battle. This brought them into bad odor with each, and they were frequently 
mistreated by both sides. Broadhead with his army in 1780 had passed near 
their settlements, and he and his soldiers respected their rights. Their minister 
visited him and he forbade any of his soldiers interfering with them. In 1781 
the militia from Washington county (which had suffered much from other 
tribes but none from the Moravians) concluded to destroy them. It was easier 
to fight and scalp resistless Indians than the average savage. Colonel David 
Williamson led tne party. The Moravian tribe had, on several occasions, 
warned the white race of intended Indian raids from the farther west. This 
was learned by the British, who had their towns partly destroyed by white 
Tories under the leadership of Girty and [McKee. They hoped thus to force 
the peaceable Moravians to make war on the white settlers. Though they were 
then driven from their homes many of them had gone back, and were living in 
their old places in 1782, when David Williamson's party of Washington county 
militia arrived. This party consisted of about ninety men. A few were from 
settlements on the Ohio river, below Pittsburgh, but the large majority of 
them came from the central part of what is now Washington county. It is 
said that they coveted the fine horses of the Moravians. 

Williamson and his party represented themselves as friendly to them, and 
as coming to defend them from the attack of Girty, JMcKee and others. They 
thus secured possession of their towns, and then disclosed their real purposes by 
taking them all as prisoners, confining them in log houses, and proceeding to de- 
liberate as to what they should do with them. Williamson knew that to put the 
average Indian to death would have added to their glory, but he was afraid to 
do so in this case. So they lined up the militia and allowed them to vote as to 
whether the prisoners should be put to death or taken in captivity to Pitts- 
burgh. Only eighteen voted in favor of taking them, the others, about seventy, 
voting that they should be put to death. The cringing Indians were then told 
to prepare for death. On hearing this they began to sing and pray as they 
had been taught by their pious minister. To make a show of reason for this 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 155 

outrage, they were charged with many things they had not done, such as har- 
boring hostile Indians and steaHng property. To this they answered that they 
had not refused shelter to either the white or the Indian race, and had never 
knowingly aided any one who was intent on committing depredations. To 
all charges they answered equally well, offering, by the way, to show all the 
propertv they had to prove that none of it was stolen. But they were told to 
prepare for death. They then asked for more time to sing and pray and this 
was granted. They asked forgiveness as they had been taught to do, and bade 
each other good-bye, but in the hope of a speedy reunion after death. Some of 
the murderers outside were impatient for the slaughter, and they moreover 
could not agree as to the manner in which they should be put to death. Many 
wanted to burn the house? in which they were imprisoned, and shoot all who 
would attempt to escape the flames. This was objectionable because it would 
destroy the scalps, from which they hoped to realize a handsome revenue. The 
eighteen members of the militia washed their hands of all complicity in the 
affair, and there is no evideijce that any of them took any part in it. One of 
the murderers took a cooper's mallet and began killing them by breaking 
their skulls. He kept this up until he had killed fourteen, and then complained 
that his arm was tired and handed his mallet, wreaking with blood, to another. 
In this way all were put to death save two boys, one of whom had hidden in a 
cellar; the other, surviving the stroke of the mallet and the removal of his 
scalp, escaped that night. Thus, quotes one writer on the subject. "By the 
mouth of two witnesses shall these things be established." When all had been 
murdered the dead bodies were put in one house, which was fired. They then 
started home, and on their way met a body of friendly Delawares, all but a few 
of whom were killed. 

Colonel Williamson was afterwards elected to office in Washington county, 
and, it is said, died in jail as a debtor, without a friend in the world. County 
• Lieutenant John Cannon was among them. It is said that the fiend who killed 
the fourteen with a mallet was at the time a county commissioner and justice 
of the county, and that he was subsequently elected sheriff of the county. John 
Cannon founded Cannonsburg, and from him the Academy so noted in the past 
took its name. Now this outrage, the blackest in Pennsylvania annals, was 
committed by a people who prided themselves on their advancement, wealth and 
culture, and who looked with scorn on the Dutch, who, in their dealings with 
the Indians, followed as far as possible the policy of William Penn. How the 
patriotic and justice-loving Washington must have blushed with shame when 
he learned that these murderers had sought to perpetuate his name by giving 
it to their newly formed country! 

It must ever be remembered that the Indian's side of the long contest 
between the early settlers and his race, can never be truly known. Our knowl- 
edge of these events almost invariably comes from his enemies. Few nations. 



156 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

indeed, would be correctly portrayed if they were compelled to take the place 
in history given them by their enemies. 

The Westmoreland reader is interested in another expedition to Ohio, made 
in 1782, from the fact that its leader, Colonel William Crawford, was the pre- 
siding judge of our first courts held at Hannastown, in 1773. In May he 
started out with an army of about five hundred horsemen, all mounted on their 
own animals. They were largely from Washington county. His objective 
point was the Indian strongholds in western Ohio. His force was repulsed, 
and he was in a fair way to escape had he not turned back to look after his son, 
son-in-law and two nephews, who were of his retreating ^party. He could not 
overtake the men because of the weariness of his horse. Crawford and a friend 
of his, Dr. Knight, and nine others, were taken prisoners on June loth. His 
cruel death has been written of a great deal, and is perhaps, of all outrages 
committed by the Indians, the one which will dwell longest in the memory of 
civilized people. He was tied to a tree and burning wood placed near him so 
as to lengthen his torture. The squaws cut his ears and nose off, and heaped 
burning coals on his head and back. For three hours he endured this agony, 
when at last the brave but exhausted Colonel sank into a most welcome death. 
Simon Girty superintended this barbarous affair. Dr. Knight witnessed it, 
and knew that he was to be saved for a similar exhibition in another locality a 
night or two following. When being taken there he escaped, and after twenty- 
two days of wandering reached Fort Mcintosh, and thence returned to his 
home. A further reference to Crawford as our first judge will be found in the 
part of this work which treats of the judiciary. 

By this time the resources of all kinds of our county were nearly exhausted. 
To illustrate: the business done in our courts had almost dwindled away. In 
January, 1780, they failed to get men in the county to form a grand jury, and 
the court adjourned without doing any business. In October, 1780, there was 
only one constable present, and he was from Pittsburgh. In January, 1781, a 
traverse jury was secured and their names are quite familiar to the reader. 
Though they doubtless have often been published, we are constrained to give 
them again. They were : William Love, John Guthrie, Joseph Brownlee, Will- 
iam Jack, William Guthrie, Adam Hatfield, Matthew Miller, Samuel Beatty, 
Lawrence Irwin, William Shaw, Conrad Houk and William Maxwell. There 
were, however, as is always the case in hard times, many (ninety-two) execu- 
tions issued. The enormity of this number may be better understood when it 
is known that in 1902, one hundred and twenty years after, there were only 
three hundred and seventy-four issued, and this when our population was verg- 
ing on 200,000. 

.A transcript from the records is as follows: "The court having considered 
the application of David Rankin, he living on the frontiers, excuse him from 
paying license in the year 1781, and at the same time rule that the several 
people having sold or continue to sell spirituous liquors living on the frontiers. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 157 

and may be entitled to the favor of the court, are discharged from paying 
license until July sessions last, agreeable to the directions of the Honorable, 
the Supreme Executive Council." 

A law was passed on March 10, 1780, empowering the county commis- 
sioners to remit the taxes of those who had been driven from their homes by 
the Indians, and also of those who, though not driven away, had greatly suf- 
fered from the enemy. That year we were not even called on for troops, for it 
was known that our men able to perform military duty, and many who were 
not, were already enlisted. Colonel John Boynton, who was a commissioner in 
the western frontier, says in a letter to President Reed that in three years he 
was scarcely able to purchase such necessaries of life as decency required. Con- 
tinental money had also depreciated so greatly that the Pennsylvania council 
found it necessary to control the payment of debts by fixing a scale of paying 
power for the depreciated currency, and the same law enacted that the 
law limiting tlje time of bringing suits should not run when the courts were 
closed. In 1780 Broadhead wrote to President Reed, "For heaven's sake hurry 
up the promised forces, or Westmoreland county will be a wilderness." This 
year a flying company, or rather two of them, were introduced, and these 
were to pass rapidly back and forth between Fort Pitt and Fort Ligonier. 
Westmoreland county furnished sixty-five men for this purpose, and they were 
divided into two companies. 

The following is a partial list of the Revolutionary soldiers who have 
lived and died in Westmoreland county. It is, of course, not complete, but 
it was mostly gathered by the editors of the Greensburg Democrat with 
great care, and published by them from time to time. Perhaps the list 
may contain errors, and we regret that it can never be completed, yet it is 
almost invaluable so far as it goes. 

George Ament, of Franklin township, died December 11, 1843, aged 85 
years. 

Christopher Aukerman, of Mt. Pleasant township, died July 17, 1845, 
in the 88th year of his age. He was a drummer and later a soldier in the 
war. His body was buried in the Aukerman graveyard, near Lycippus. 

John Ansley was a native of New Jersey. Prior to 1798 he removed to 
the northern part of Westmoreland county, where he spent the balance of 
his life. 

Thomas Anderson took up a large tract of land, known as the Richlands, 
in Derry township, near New Alexandria. He died there in 1826. aged 
103 }-ears, and was buried in the Salem Presbyterian churchyard, Derry 
township. 

Joseph Brownlee was a lieutenant in Captain Joseph Erwin's company, 
Pennsylvania Rifle Regiment. He was murdered by the Indians near 
Miller's Station (or fort), two miles northeast of Greensburg, July 13, 
1782, the same day that Hannastown was burned. A more extended no- 



158 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

tice of Captain Brownlee will be found in the chapter on the burning of 
Hannastown. 

Sergeant Thomas Beatty, of Derry township, died April 4, 1822, in the 
70th year of his age. He enlisted in June, 1776, in Captain James Cham- 
fer's company of musketry. Colonel Raelly's regiment, Pennsylvania Line, 
year. In June, 1777, he reenlisted for three years in the First Pennsylvania 
Regiment, Continental Line. During nine months of that period he was a 
prisoner on board a British vessel. He served until the end of his term and 
was honorably discharged. 

David Brown, of Fairfield township, died May 2, 1819, in the 70th year of 
Jiis age. 

John Brennen, of Hempfield township, died July 10, 1826, aged "/J years. 
He enlisted in 1777 at McCallistertown, Pennsylvania, in Captain McCallis- 
ter's company of musketry. Colonel Raelly's regiment, Pennsylvania Line, 
for the war, and served .six years. He participated in the battles of Brandy- 
wine, Monmouth, Germantown and Paoli, being severely wounded by a 
bayonet in the latter engagement. 

Hon. John Brandon died November 27, 1823, in Washington township. 
Indiana county, in the 70th year of his age. He was a soldier from the 
battle of Bunker Hill to the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. After 
the war ^Nlr. Brandon settled in Westmoreland county, and was elected 
sheriff in 1792 and again in 1801 ; also a state senator, and held several 
minor positions. 

Leonard Beck, of Hempfield township, died March 14, 183 1, in the 
72nd year of his age. His remains are buried in the graveyard at Seanor's 
Church, Hempfield township. 

John Barns, of L'nity township, died December 10, 1836, in the 83rd 
year of his age. 

Adam Brantuwer died in Westmoreland county, July 29, 1834, aged 
84 years. He enlisted in Captain Thomas Craig's Company, Second Penn- 
sylvania Battalion, Colonel Arthur St. Clair, on January 13, 1776, as a 
private for one year. At the end of that term he re-enlisted in the Penn- 
sylvania Line for three years or during the war, and was honorably dis- 
charged in 1781. 

James Black was sergeant in Captain Robert Orr's company in a 
battalion of Westmoreland militia, under command of Colonel Archibald 
Lochry. In 1781 the battalion was ordered on an expedition down the 
Ohio river, and August 24th of that year, while in service. Sergeant Black 
was tomahawked and killed by the Indians. A more extended notice of 
the Lochry Expedition is given in former pages. 

Joseph Bullman was a son of Thomas Bullman and Anna Walling. He 
was married November 18, 1762, to Mary Baird, sister of Captain John 
and Major William Baird, and daughter of John and Avis Baird; all were 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 159 

of Monmouth county, New Jersey. Part of the time he was an ensign with 
Captain Carter and Colonel Hathaway. He removed to Westmoreland 
county and settled in Loyalhanna township at the woolen factory near 
Fennell church, where he spent the remainder of his lif€. His remains were 
probably interred at the Congruity Presbyterian cemetery, as his son, Rev. 
Samuel P. Bullman, was a member of that church during his youth. 

Jacob Byerly died in North Huntington township, July 7, 1858, aged 
99 years. He was born in Bedford Fort, and came with his father to the 
vicinity of Harrison City in 1762. He did valiant service on frontier and in 
a number of expeditions against the Indians, and during the war was at- 
tached to the Thirteenth \'irginia regiment, part of which was stationed at 
Fort Pitt. 

James Carnahan was a lieutenant in Captain Joseph Erwin's company of 
the Pennsylvania Rifle regiment. He was subsequently at \-arious times 
a captain in the Second, Eighth and Thirteenth Pennsylvania regiments, 
Continental Line. He served from March, 1776, until 1781, and was ac- 
cidentall}- drowned in the Allegheny river in the winter of 1786. His 
father, John Carnahan. was one of the early settlers of Bell township, where 
he l:)uilt a log house in 1774. Captain James Carnahan was the father of 
the late Dr. Carnahan, president of Princeton College. He is spoken of earlier 
in the chapter, and was, indeed, one of our best men in the Revolution. 

Garret Covode, of Fairfield township, died I ebruary 21, 1826, in the 91st 
year of his age. His remains are interred in the old Fairfield Presbyterian 
churchyard. He was a native of Holland, and a resident of the Ligonier 
\'alley for thirty six years. 

Captain Daniel Carpenter, of Franklin township, died December 14, 
1827, in the 79th year of his age. He was a captain in the war under Gen- 
eral Washington. He was a native of Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. 

John Curry, Sr., died in Preble county, Ohio. August 27, 1835, aged 85 
years. He was one of the first settlers on the Allegheny river in West- 
moreland county, located three miles southeast of Freeport. He served 
several years in the war, and at its close returned to his home on the 
river. Three times the Indians burned his house, and three times he was 
compelled to flee with his family ( ast of the mountains to escape the sav- 
ages. In 1814 he removed to Preble county, Ohio. 

The Craig family, father and three sons, rendered splendid service in the 
war. Samuel Craig, Sr., was a lieutenant in Colonel John Proctor's battalion 
of militia. He was captured by the Indians. John Craig died in 1847, 'I's re- 
mains resting at Freeport, Pennsylvania. Alexander Craig died October 29, 
1832, in his 77th year, his body being buried at Congruity, and Samuel Craig, 
Jr., died in 1808. 

Samuel Carson was buried in the cemetery at Long Run church. North 
Huntington township. He enlisted at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Jan- 
uary 25. 1776 as a private in Captain James Taylor's companj-. Fourth 



i6o HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

Pennsylvania Battalion, under Colonel Anthony Wayne, and served until 
the close of the war. 

Zebulon Doty was born in New Jersey, in 1760. After the war he emi- 
grated to Derry township, and settled near the Salem Presbyterian Church. 
He died at Blairsville, Pennsylvania. 

William Donald, of Franklin township, died March 31, 1842, in the 
90th year of his age. 

Philip Drum, of Franklin township, died June 10, 1845, in the 95th 
year of his age. He was a native of Northampton county. He participated 
in the battles of Long Island, White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Brandy- 
wme and Germantown. His remains were interred in the graveyard on his 
own farm with military honors. The Franklin Blues, under command of 
Captain Hugh Irwin, performed the last sad honors. 

Francis Davidson, of Salem township, died October 8, 1845, 3t the 
age of 106 years. 

George Dugan, of Westmorelard county, died August 16. 1834. He 
left no family. 

Nathaniel Dc y died at his residence in Derry township, Alarch 24, 
1848, in his 86th year. He was a native of New Jersey, and served in Cap- 
tain Carter's company, Colonel Hathaway's regiment, New Jersey Line. 
His remains are interred in the Salem Presbyterian Churchyard, Derry 
township. 

David Dickey's remains are interred at Congruity. 

John Eggert (Eckert), of Unity township, died February 15, 1845, in 
his 86th year. He was one oi- the Hessians captured by Wshington. Sub- 
sequently he joined the American army and served during the remainder 
of the war with bravery and fidelity. He was ever a respected and ex- 
cellent citizen of his adopted country. 

Robert Elder served five years in the war. In 1784 he emigrated from 
a section of Lancaster county that is now included in Dauphin, to West- 
moreland, and settled near New Alexandria, where he died many years 
afterwards, at the age of 86 years. His remains are interred in the Salem 
Presbyterian churchyard, Derry township. 

John Finley Avas a lieutenant in Captain Aloses Carson's company in 
1776 to range the frontiers. He died on his farm in South Huntington 
tov/nship, Septem.ber g, 1813. 

Hon. William Findley, of LTnity township, died April 4, 1821, aged 80 years. 
His body was buried in the graveyard at Unity Church. He rose to the 
rank of captain in the war, and was a member of the council of censors, of 
the supreme executive council, of the convention that ratified the federal 
constitution, a member of the convention that framed the state constitution 
of 1790, a member of the general assembly, and for twenty-two years a 
representative in Congress. He was a prominent figure on the side of law 
and order during the latter part of the Whiskey Insurrection, and the 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. i6i 

author of a history of that notable affair, which was pubhshed in 1796. A 
more extended account of his life will be found elsewhere in these pages. 

William Farrell died in Mt. Pleasant borough, June 20, 1828, aged 82 
years. He enlisted in 1777 in the Seventh Regiment Pennsylvania Line, 
under Col. ^\'illiam Butler (the Flying Camp), and participated in the 
battles of Brunswick, Trenton, Germantown, Monmouth, Brandywine and 
Paoli, and was wounded in the head at the latter place. He also served 
under Col. William Butler (the Flying Camp). At his funeral his 
remains were interred with the honors of war by the Mt. Pleasant Volun- 
teers, under command of Lieutenant A. Miller. 

Lieutenant Andrew Finley, of South Huntingdon township, died July 
3, 1829, aged about 80 years. Sixty years previously, when surrounded by 
difficulties and encountering danger at every step, he visited the state of 
Kentucky, at that time a trackless wilderness. He enlisted in the Con- 
tinental army as first lieutenant in the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment, 
commanded by Colonel Aeneas Mackay, and after his death Colonel Daniel 
Broadhead. On various occasions Mr. Finley distinguished himself by his 
daring intrepidity in opposing the Lidians and relieving the inhabitants of 
our frontier settlements. 

Mathias Fisher, of Ligonier township, died February 17, 1834. 

Lieutenant Ennos Grannis, of Hempfield township, died ]\larch 18. 
1824, aged 69 years. He enlisted in Connecticut, August 25, 1777, in a 
company of artificers commanded by Captain Pendleton. In November, 
1779, hs '^■'is appointed a lieutenant in that company, which was attached 
to the regiment commanded by Colonel Baldwin, Connecticut Line. The 
regiment joined the southern army and marched to South Carolina. Lieu- 
tenant Grannis was honorably discharged at Philadelphia, November 3, 
1783. Not long thereafter he became a citizen of Westmoreland county. 

William Guthrie, of Washington township, died August 8, 1829, in the 
9Sth year of his age. He was one of the pioneers. He enlisted in May, 1777, 
and continued in the service for four years, in the Seventh Pennsylvania Regi- 
ment, Continental Line. He participated in many engagements with the In- 
dians on the Westmoreland frontier and was noted for his great bravery. 

James Gaghby, of Fairfield township, died May 23, 1834, in the 82nd 
year of his age. He immigrated to this country during the war, and 
joined the army. After the war he settled in Fairfield township, where 
he resided until his death. 

Mathias H. Holston, of Derry township, died August 8, 1822. 

William Hitchman, of Mt. Pleasant township, died February 10, 1834, 
aged about 75 years. He was a native of Cecil county, Maryland. At the 
age of sixteen he enlisted under Captain Maxwell in a corps attached to 
the Maryland Line. He emigrated to this country in an early day, and 
suffered the hardships and privations to which the pioneers of the western 
country were exposed. 



l62 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

Robert Hamill was born in county Antrim, Ireland, and came with his 
parents, John Hamill and Elizabeth Gibson, to America, in 1761, and about 
1785 moved to Ligonier Valley, two miles south of Palmer's Fort. The 
father, John Hamill, being drafted, Robert went in his place and served 
three years. He died in 1841, in the 83rd year of his age. 

Hugh Hamill served in Captain Finley's company from 1776 to 1779. 
He resided in Ligonier Valley in 1809, and was one of the original first 
session of the Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church of that section. 

Jacob Himinger died in Mt. Pleasant borough, April 5, 1842, in the 
86th year of his age, and his remains were interred with military honors 
by Captain Clark's volunteer corps of Jackson Greys. 

Jacob Holtzer immigrated to America from Germany prior to the strug- 
gle for independence. He settled near Lewistown, Pennsylvania, enlisted 
in the army, and was promoted to sergeant. After the war he came to 
Westmoreland and settled in the southwestern section of Unity township. 
His remains were buried in Hempfield township, in what is known as 
Central Cemetery. Alany of his descendants are well known residents of 
the country. 

Colonel John Irwin, of Brush Hill ( Xorth Huntingdon township), died 
February 22, 1822, in the 83rd year of his age. He arrived in the country 
in 1762, and soon after was appointed a commissary in the British army. 
■During the war he was quartermaster for the western department. He 
represented Westrnoreland for several sessions in the general assembly. In 
1794 he was appointed associate judge of the courts of this county by 
Governor Mifflin. Colonel Irwin was active in promoting the building of 
the Greensburg and Stoyestown turnpike. 

Capt. Matthew Jack, of Salem township, died November 26, 1836, in 
the 82nd year of his age. His remains are interred at Congruity. He 
entered the service a« first lieutenant in the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment, 
Continental Line. He lost the use of his left hand by the bursting of his 
gun at Bound Brook, New Jersey. He was promoted to captain April 13, 
1777, and became supernumerary January 31, 1779. He also rendered ser- 
vice at times in defense of the frontiers. .At the burning of Hannastown by 
the Indians in July, 1782, he was among the first to go out from the stock- 
ade to discover the intention of the savages and to alarm the settlers. His 
famous ride and rescue of Mrs. Love and her babe on that memorable day 
are now well known facts of history. Captain Jack likewise participated 
in the war of 1812, and among his effects, still to be seen, is a valuable relic 
made from the wood of a British vessel, and marked with a silver plate 
bearing this inscription, "Capt. Matthew Jack ; Perry's Victory, Lake 
Erie, 1813." 

John Johnston, of .\llegheny township, died March 12, 1843. in the 
103d year of his age. He served faithfully from the beginning to the 
close of the war, and was in General .Anthony Wayne's command, and par- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 163 

ticipated in the battles of White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, 
Germantown, Monmouth, Stony Point, Guilford Court House and York- 
town. At the storming of Stony Point he was. one of the gallant "forlorn 
hope." His body was escorted to the grave by the militia under command 
of Major George W. Martin and Captain Kipp, and buried with the honors 
■of war, in presence of the largest concourse of people ever assembled in 
the neighborhood at an interment. 

General William Jack died at his residence near Greensburg, February 
18, 1821, in the 68th year of his ag-e. He was born near Strabane, county 
Tyrone, Ireland, in 1751, and came to Westmoreland county with his elder 
brother. Matthew Jack, in 1772. General Jack was distinguished for zeal 
and activity in protecting the frontiers, and was one of the founders of 
Greensburg. With Christopher Truby and Ludwick Otterman he donated 
the ground upon which are erected our present public buildings. He 
was second lieutenant of the Pennsylvania independent company of which 
Samuel Moorehead was captain, his commission bearing date January i, 
1777. He gained the title of General by virtue of appointment as brigadier- 
general of Westmoreland militia, his commission signed by Governor 
Thomas Mifflin, April 19, 1793. He was a justice of the court of common 
pleas during the Revolution. He donated to the burgesses and inhabitants 
of Greensburg lots of ground for a school building, house of worship and 
burial ground, now embraced within the old St. Clair Cemetery. His re- 
mains are interred there near the remains of the patriot and soldier. Gen- 
eral Arthur St. Clair. 

James Jones served in the war al. out six years and six months. He 
was born November 11, 1761. and died August 18, 181 1. His remains rest 
in the ])urial ground at Congruity Church, Salem township. James Jones 
was the grandfather of ex-County Superintendent H. M. Jones, of that 
township. 

Captain David Kilgore, of Mt. Pleasant township, died July 11, 1814, 
at an advanced age. He was an early settler in the county, and had been 
a captain in the war. 

Joseph Kaylor, Sr., of Hempfield township, died April i, 1833, in the 
77th year of his age. At the commencement of the war he was snatched 
from his native country and widowed mother on the coast of Germany by 
a British press gang for enforced service against the Americans. On the 
first opportunity after his arrival in this countrv he escaped from the 
British and their unrighteous cause, and joined his fortunes to the standard 
of liberty under Washington. He -distinguished himself as a brave soldier 
in three severe engagements. At the close of the war he settled in this 
county, where he spent the remainder of his life. 

Captain David Kilgore, of Mt. Pleasant township, died July 11, 1814, 
in the 70th year of his age. His remains were interred in the graveyard at 



l64 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

the Middle Church in the township named. He was captain of a company 
in a regiment enHsted in June, 1776, for the defense of the frontier, and 
which subsequently became . the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment, Continen- 
tal Line. 

Colonel Archibald Lochry was killed and scalped by the Indians, on 
August 24, 1781, below the mouth of the Big Maumee. He was lieutenant- 
colonel under Colonel John Proctor, First Battalion Westmoreland Associ- 
ators, 1776. He was county lieutenant for Westmoreland county, and com- 
manded a regiment of Westmoreland militia in General Clark's proposed 
expedition against the Indians. 

David Logan, of Franklin township, died November 28, 1815, aged sixty 
years. 

Jacob Peter Long, of Mt. Pleasant township, died January 19, 1842, in 
the 83d year of his age. He was a teamster in the war. His body 
rests in the Middle Church graveyard, in the township named. 

Captain Jeremiah Lochrey died January 21, 1824, at the residence of 
Samuel Moorhead, in Salem township, in the 93d year of his age, and was 
interred at Congruity. He was a captain in the Sixth Pennsylvania Regi- 
ment, Continental Line. 

John Leach, a private in Captain James Leech's company of militia of 
W^estmoreland county during the war, was killed by the Indians while in 
service. 

James Montgomery, of Unity township, died March 14, 1824, aged 
72 years. He participated in the war, and subsequently in several tours 
against the Indians. He settled in Westmoreland in 1784, was elected a 
number of times to the state legislature, and appointed register and recorder 
by Governor Snyder in 1813. 

Alexander McClain died at Youngstown, February 2, 1826, aged 84 
years. He served his country during the war and received four wounds, one 
each at the battles of Trenton, Brandy wine, Germantown and Paoli. 

Mathias Marker, of Donegal township, died April 17, 1840, aged 91 
years. He came from Maryland, enlisting perhaps from Virginia. 

Edward McDonnell died February 5, 1836. He left no family. 

Peter Martin, of North Huntingdon township, died May 20, 1822, aged' 
about 72 years. He enlisted for three years in the company commanded 
by Captain William Bratton, in the Seventh Pennsylvania Regiment, com- 
manded by Colonel William Irvine, and for a time by Colonel Josiah Har- 
mer. He served his full term, and was honorably discharged at Trenton, 
New Jersey, his discharge being signed by General Wayne. 

Captain William Moore, of Salem township, died January 12, 1819, in 
the 79th year of his age. He was one of the earliest settlers of that localitv, 
and was an active and useful citizen during the trying frontier davs of this, 
section, and was an officer in the Revolutionarv war. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 165 

Isaac AIcKissack was born in Count_y Antrim, Ireland, in 1752, and im- 
migrated to America in 1772. At the outbreak of the war he enhsted in 
the armv for seven years, was with Washington at Valley Forge, and en- 
dured all the trials of a soldier until peace was declared. He came west and 
was one of the soldiers on the frontiers, protecting the settlers from the at- 
tacks of the Indians. When Hannastown was burned he was in the field 
harvesting, near Latrobe. Hearing the report of the firearms he dropped his 
sickle, and with gim in hand started for the scene of action. He was one 
of the men who guarded the fort that night at Hannastown. After the raids 
of the Indians ceased, he settled on a farm in Unity township. He married 
Mary Cochran, of Salem township, and two daughters were born to them ; 
one died when young, and the other, Eleanor, married William Barnes, of 
Unity township. They moved to a farm in North Huntingdon township, 
near Irwin. Isaac lilcKissack and his wife, in their declining years, made 
their home with William Barnes. He died of apoplexy, September 19, 1830, 
aged 78 years. The remains were interred in the Long Run Presbyterian 
Church graveyard, Circleville, Westmoreland county. Two grandchildren 
survive him, jMiss Martha Barnes and ]\Irs. John Blair. 

James McBride died December 21, 1837, aged 79 years, 9 months and 6 
days. His remains rest in the family burial ground on the McBride farm, 
Loyalhanna township. He enlisted three times, first in August, 1777. and 
was granted a pension by the United States, August 10, 1833. 

Peter McHarg died 1803, his remains being interred in the old Fairfield 
Presbyterian churchyard. He was in Captain Thomas Stokely's company 
with Lochrey's expedition, was taken a prisoner by the Indians and returned 
from captivity in 1782. A more extensive notice of his captivity is found 
in a former chapter. 

Alexander McCurdy died at the residence of his son, Samuel, near Tun- 
nel Hill, Derry township, January 6, 1839, aged 86 years. He enlisted in 
1776 in Captain William Peebles' company, Second Battalion, Regiment of 
Riflemen, Pennsylvania Line, commanded by Colonel Miles. He was a na- 
tive of Ireland, but removed when young to the Ligonier \'alley. His body 
was buried in the Baptist churchyard, Loyalhanna township. 

James JNIontgomery was appointed a captain in the Eighth Pennsylvania 
Regiment, Continental Line, and died in service, August 26, 1777. 

Samuel ^lehafifey resided on the line between Salem and Loyalhanna 
townships. He died in 1842, and was buried in the Congruity churchyard, 
but his grave is unmarked. 

John AlcConnell, of Franklin township, died May 2^. 1832. in the 78th 
year of his age. He enlisted in Captain Eli Myers' company, Eighth Penn- 
sylvania Regiment, in June, 1776. The regiment first did duty at Kittanning, 
and in the autumn was marched to New Jersey. He was in the battle of 
Bound Brook, and a number of skirmishes in that locality. About a vear 



i66 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

and a half later the regiment returned to the western country to operate 
against the Indians. It marched by way of Pittsburgh to Beaver Creek, and 
assisted in building Fort Mcintosh. It then joined in the campaign under 
General Mcintosh against the Indians on the Tuscaroras, and later in the 
campaign against the Muncy Indians under command of Colonel Broadhead. 
After three years service Mr. McConnell was discharged at Pittsburgh by 
Colonel Bayard, who then commanded the regiment. 

William :\Iarshall, of Unity township, died November 17, 1828, in the 
76th year of his age. He resided in this section of the country previous to 
the war, and encountered all the dangers to which the inhabitants of the 
frontier settlements were then exposed. He volunteered his services at an 
early period, and while on an expedition against the Indians was taken by 
them and carried to Detroit, where he was detained for a considerable time, 
during which time his sufferings were great. He at length succeeded in 
reaching home. 

Samuel Miller, August 9, 1776, was appointed captain of a company in 
a battalion enlisted for the protection of the frontier on the west side of the 
Allegheny Mountains. It was afterwards called to New Jersey, and was 
known as the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment. While at home on a furlough 
he, with others, was conveying grain to Fort Hand, Washington township, 
July 7, 1778, when they were surprised by a party of Indians and he and 
seven of the party were killed. He was the original owner of Miller's Sta- 
tion, two miles northeast of Greensburg, which was attacked and destroyed 
by the Indians and renegades who burned Hannastown, July 13, 1782. 

Thomas Newill, of Mt. Pleasant township, died November 8, 1828, in 
the 86th year of his age. He participated in the battles of Brandywine and 
Germantown, and was distinguished for his gallantry and devotion. 

Joseph Pound enlisted January 13, 1776, at Philadelphia, as Joseph Points, 
and served as sergeant in Captain Stephen Bayard's company of Arthur St. 
Clair's Second Pennsylvania Battalion. At the time of the outbreak of the 
war his parents resided at Bound Brook, New Jersey. Joseph Pound's father 
and three brothers also served in the war. He emigrated from Basking 
Ridge, New Jersey, to Westmoreland county in 1795, and finally located at 
Tunnel Hill, near Livermore. He died April 4, 1813, aged 63, his remains 
being interred in the Salem Presbyterian churchyard, Derry township. 

Thomas Patterson, Sr., of Derry township, died August 11, 1834, in the 
78th year of his age. He was a resident of Derry township for more than 
sixty years prior to his death. 

Zebulon Park, of Donegal township, died July 4, 1846, in his 90th year. 
He enlisted in Captain Thomas Patterson's company. Third New Jersey Regi- 
ment, Continental Line, January, 1776, and was in the service for four years 
and six months. He participated in the battles of Ticonderoga, Monmouth, 
Long Island, Elizabethtown, Brandvwine, Trenton and others. He was 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 167 

wounded at Brandywine. He resided on the farm where he died, in Donegal 
township, for over fifty years, and was buried in the Pleasant Grove church- 
yard. Cook township. 

John Payne's remains are buried in the Pleasant Grove Church grave- 
yard, Cook township. His grave is not marked. 

Major Andrew Ralston, of New Alexandria, died August 31, 1819, aged 
66 years, and was buried at New Alexandria, He enlisted at the first call 
for troops, entered the service as a private in the Pennsylvania militia, and 
served throughout the entire war in various military stations. 

General William Reed, of New Alexandria, died June 17, 1813, and was 
buried at that place. He took an active part in the war, and subsequently 
filled various public offices. At the time of his deatli he was adjutant-general 
of the militia of Pennsylvania. 

Brintnell Robbins served as an ofiicer under Washington during the 
Revolution. He subsequently became a tradesman, farmer and shipbuilder, 
distinguished in the last named occupation for building the boats that con- 
veyed Scott's troops across the Niagara and into Canada. In 1830 he moved 
to a farm near Greensburg. He died in a stone building where the Stark 
House now is, comer Pennsylvania avenue and West Otterman street, July 25, 
1836, and is buried in Harrold's graveyard, three miles south of Greensburg. 

John Rose served two terms in the war, and his remains rest in the Olive 
graveyard, Franklin township, three miles north of Murrysville. 

Charles Richart, Sr., of jMt. Pleasant township, died August 17, 1852, aged 
96 years, 10 months and 20 days. His body was interred in St. Paul's (or 
the Ridge Church) burial ground, near Trauger. He was a iifer in the war. 

George Frederick Sclieibeler, of Hempfield township, died February 28, 
at Frederickstown, Maryland, in the company commanded by Captain John 
Steth, in the dragoons commanded by Colonel William Washington. After near- 
ly two years service he was taken a prisoner at Santee River, and kept one year 
on board a prison ship at Charleston, from whence he was taken to the West 
Indies. He made his escape, but was unable to return to America until after 
the war. He was a resident of Westmoreland for fifty years. At the time 
of his death he was survived by two children, sixteen grandchildren and forty- 
six great-grandchildren. 

Major Isaac Saddler, of Washington township, died June 20, 1843, '" the 
84th year of his age. He was born May 14, 1760, and enlisted in the army 
when quite young. He was reared when the country was yet wild and des- 
olate, and the savages frequented the borders. 

Captain John Shields died near New Alexandria, November 3, 1821, in 
the 82nd year of his age. He was an early settler of the western country, 
having emigrated here in 1771, and resided there until his death. In 1776 he 
commanded a company that marched to Pittsburgh, to guard a number of 



i68 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

commissioners deputed to treat with certain Indian nations. For several 
years he was actively employed in guarding the frontiers against the sav- 
ages. When the war broke out he marched eastward as captain of a com- 
pany. He had been a member of the general assembly, was a magistrate 
for many years, and was one of the trustees for the erection of the first 
court house at Greensburg. 

Daniel St. Clair died February i8, 1833, ™ Mifllin county, Pennsylva- 
nia, at an advanced age. He was an ensign in Captain John Reese's com- 
pany, Second Pennsylvania Battalion, and subsequently a first lieutenant 
in the Third Pennsylvania Regiment, Continental Line. He was a son of 
Major General Arthur St. Clair. 

Ezekiel Sample, of South Huntingdon township, died ]\Iarch 31, 1829, 
in the 80th year of his age. He lived in the township forty-two years, and 
was a justice of the peace for twenty-seven years. 

Lieutenant David Sloan, of Captain Joseph Erwin's company, Pennsyl- 
vania Rifle Regiment, was killed in the battle of Long Island, August 27, 
1776. 

Andrew Simpson, of Salem township, was an ensign in a company of 
foot commanded by Captain Samuel Ivloorhead, of the First Battalion of 
Westmoreland militia. The command had been at the Kittanning Fort. Re- 
turning home on March 16, 1777, and still in the service. Ensign Simpson 
was shot, killed and scalped by the Indians. 

John Stewart, of Hannastown, a private in Captain Robert Orr's com- 
pany. Colonel Archibald Lochry's battalion of W'estmoreland militia, was 
killed August 24, 1781, below the mouth of the Big Maumee, on the Ohio, 
in a battle with the Indians. 

Nehemiah Stokely was a captain in the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment, 
Continental Line. He died in Westmoreland county in 181 1. 

John Topper, of Unity township, died February 16, 1839, in the 90th 
3'ear of his age. 

Balsar Trout, of Allegheny township, died July 5, 1837, in the 80th year 
of his age. He served throughout the entire war, and in 1777 marched from 
Winchester, Virginia, to Fort Pitt, and subsequently participated in the bat- 
tle of Yorktown, and witnessed the surrender of his sword by Lord Corn- 
wallis to General Washington. 

Hugh Torrence, of Franklin township, died June 23, 1830, in the 85th 
year of his age. He was a member of the regiment cdmmanded by Colonel 
Cadwallader. and was in the battles of Monmouth, Brandywine, German- 
town and others. He resided in this county thirty-three years prior to his 
death. 

Simon Taylor died at his home near New Alexandria, April 21, 1S31. 

John \\'oods, of Salem township, died April 28, 1827. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 169 

]\Iott Wilkinson, of Bairdstown, Derry township, died December 4, 1856, 
aged ninety-six years. He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and served 
in the war with his uncle. Captain Daniel Lawrence. After the war he re- 
moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania, and in 1820 to Blacklick township, In- 
<Lliana county, and thence to Bairdstown. His remains are interred at Blairs- 
ville, Indiana county, Pennsylvania. 

Adam Weaver died at Pleasant Unity, about the year 183 1, aged about 
seventy-eight years. His remains were interred in a country burial ground 
on the old William T. Nicolls farm, Mt. Pleasant township, one-half mile 
from Lycippus. He enlisted in Captain David Kilgore's company, Eighth 
Pennsylvania Regiment, in 1776, and was honorably discharged by Colonel 
Broadhead in 1779 at Pittsburgh. He participated in the battles of Brandy- 
wine. Germantown, Paoli and Bound Brook. His body was laid to rest with 
the honors of war. 

Nathan Williams, -of Greensburg, died November 2, 1830, aged ^2 years. 
He was a private in the Second Pennsylvania Regiment, Continental Line. 
His remains were interred in the old St. Clair cemetery. 

George Wagner died in 1820. His remains are buried in the graveyard 
at Seanor's Church, Hempfield township. 

Captain John Young died at his home in Salem township, August 13, 
1841. in the 87th year of his age. He enlisted in the army under Captain 
Abraham Smith, of Cumberland county, in 1775, and marched to lower 
Canada, where he served under Generals Schuyler and Sullivan. He was 
in several battles, one of them being the battle of Three Rivers. He moved 
to Salem township in 1775, where he resided for fifty-six years. For seven 
years after he settled there the Indians were troublesome in that locality, and 
Captain Young on a number of occasions raised men and rendered impor- 
tant service in guarding the frontier. 

Captain Jeremiah Lochry died January 21, 1824, aged ninety-four years, 
and is buried at Congruity. He was in Braddock's army, and at the defeat. 
He was adjutant of the Eighth Regiment, and went with it from Westmoreland 
to New Jersey, under his brother. Colonel Archibald Lochry. As a captain 
lie served during the remainder of the Revolution. 

The state of Pennsylvania, by special acts of assembly, often granted 
pensions to her worthy and needy who had rendered service in the Revolu- 
tion, and also to their widows. The following is a list of the names of those 
to whom pensions were granted by special acts of the legislature ; they 
are not published among the regular lists of Pennsylvania who were pen- 
sioned by the government. All these were pensioned as W^estmoreland citi- 
zens. The date opposite the name denotes the year the pension was granted. 
This list was made from the "Pamphlet Laws of Pennsylvania," and we 
believe w^e have omitted none : 



I70 HISTOR} 


OF WESTMORELAND 


COUNTY. 




John Brannon, 


1820 


Mary Geary. 


1847. 


Sam Marshall. Sr. 


1845- 


William Brown, 


1825 


Mary Gray. 


1847 


Henry Mosher. 


1849. 


William Briney, 


1836 


Robert Hunter, 


1808. 


Hannah Mosher, 


1855- 


Eleanor Blair. 


1836 


Andrew Hazlet, 


1826. 


Catharine Mclntyre, 1854- 


Killian Briney, 


1838 


Robert Hunter, 


1827. 


Rebecca Moreland 


1857. 


Margaret Barnet, 


1844 


J. W. HoUingsworth, 


1835. 


Jane Nixon, 


1846. 


Nancy Blair, 


1844 


Eleanor Hagerman, 


1838. 


James Payton, 


1830. 


William Beatty, 


1845 


Michael Huffman, 


1835. 


Robert Pain, 


1838. 


Robert Crawford, 


1822 


Catherine Huffnagle, 


1838. 


James Patrick, 


18+4- 


Thomas Campbell, 


1824 


David Hossack, 


1836. 


William Patrick, 


1845. 


Eanor Conner, 


1837 


John Harbison, 


1838. 


Sarah Patterson, 


1857. 


George Chambers, 


1837 


Robert Hanna, 


1841. 


Robert Piper, 


1845. 


Robert Cooper, 


1837 


Christena Huffman, 


1840. 


Adam F. Roesser, 


1824. 


James Cowen, 


1837 


Samuel Henderson, 


1844- 


George Reem, 


1836. 


John Campbell, 


1838 


Jacob Houseman, 


1854. 


Samuel Robb, 


1838. 


Henry Croushour, 


1838 


Hugh Irvin, 


1849. 


Ann Reger, 


1849. 


Margaret Callahan 


1841 


John Johnston, 


1825. 


Simon Ruffner, 


1838. 


William Campbell, 


1838 


Elizabeth Jamison, 


1839. 


Barbara Ruffner, 


1851. 


Mary Cowen, 


1849 


Margaret Johnston, 


1838. 


Susanna Stokely, 


1834- 


William Donnel, 


1825 


Joseph Johnston, 


1845. 


Fred Septer, 


1835- 


Francis Davdison, 


1829 


Ephraim Jellison, 


1846. 


Andrew Shaw, 


1835- 


Sarah Davis, 


1836 


James Kean, 


1826. 


David Shaw, 


183s- 


James Denning, 


1838 


Gerge Koehler, 


1826. 


Mary Snyder, 


1839- 


James Duncan, 


1844 


Hannah M. Kimmel. 


1827. 


Alexander Scott, 


1842. 


Elizabeth Davidson 


, 1846 


(widow of Jacob Kimmel.) 


Ann Smith. 


1839- 


Jane Duncan, 


1848 


David Louther, 


1838. 


Catharine Shaw, 


1844. 


(widow of James 


Duncan] 


Alexander Lyons, 


1845. 


George Singerly, 


1843- 


Rosanna Eager, 


1842 


Margaret Libengood, 


i860. 


Barbara Snyder, 


1844. 


Robert Ewing, 


1835 


Sarah Louther, 


1854. 


Reynold Stevens, 


1845- 


Jacob Freeman, 


1838 


Capt. Jerry Lockry, 


1807. 


John A. Smith, 


1844. 


James Freeman, 


1845 


Jane McGuire, 


1824. 


Catharine Septer, 


1848- 


Mary Frantz, 


1856 


Jane Martin, 


1827. 


Elizabeth Shields, 


i8S7- 


James Flood, 


1857 


James McSorley, 


1834. 


(widow of John 


Shields) 


James Gageby, 


1824 


Margaret McClain, 


1827. 


John Taylor, 


1838. 


Robert Gibb, 


182s 


Nancy McConnel, 


1834. 


.Daniel Yarr, 


1843- 


Jacob Grist, 


1838 


James McKensey, 


1838. 


Adam Weaver, 


1833. 


Martin Gray, 


1844 


John Mertz, 


1834. 


Robert Williams, 


1838. 


Eleanor Gilgore, 


1846 


George McWilliams, 


1838. 


John G. Wilkins, 


1838. 


Peter Gordon, 


1844. 


William Moreland, 


1839- 


James Wilson, 


1849. 


Robert Gilchrist, 


1846. 


Robert McGuire, 


1843. 


Ananias Wisener, 


1838. 


Rachel George, 


I8S9. 


Mary A. Mowry, 


1845- 






(widow of David 


George) 


James McElroy, 


1845. 






Eve Oury was 


granted 


a special pension of forty dollar^ 


per year by Act of 


April I, 


i8^6. The act itself recites 


that it was granted for 


heroic 


bravery and risking 


her life 


in defense of the garrison o 


■ Hannastown Fort, in i 


778, when it was attacked by 


a large 


number of Indians, 


and Iha 


by her fortitude, she performed efficient service in 


driving 


away the Indians, and thus s 


aved the inmates from a 


horrid butchery by the mere 


less and 


savage foe. (See P 


. L. iS.\t 


, page 210). She was a 


daughter of Francis Oury, and died 


>.t Shieldsburg, in 184S. and 


s buried at Congruity. 









CHAPTER XII 



The Hannastown War.— Burning of the County Seat.— Destruction of Miller's 
Blockhouse. 

The summer of 1782 was the gloomiest in our pioneer histon-. ]\Iany of 
our people did not pretend to do anything else than stand guard around the 
fields where others worked. The increased Indian hostility was due in 
part to the murder of the Moravian Indians the year before. The enemy 
was also emboldened by the unfortunate termination of Lochry's expe- 
dition. 

Around Hannastown those who were looked up to as special defenders- 
were Colonel Campbell, Captain Matthew Jack, Captain Love. Lieutenant 
Guthrie, the Browiilecs, the Brisons, the Shaws and the Wilsons. As the 
Indian troubles accumulated the pioneers became more and more united,, 
until in the summer of 1782 they nearU' all lived in the forts and block- 
houses, or in close proximity with them. When a field of grain was to be 
harvested it was done not by the owner alone, but by the community, so 
that the reaping party might be more formidable in the event of an attack 
by the Indians. In addition to the forts at Hannastown, Fort Walthour and 
[Miller's blockhouse, there was in the Hannastown community a strong- 
hold known as George's cabin, less than a mile southeast of Miller's, and 
Rugh's blockhouse, about one mile south of the present borough limits 
of Greensburg. Within these places of comparative safety were collected 
at all times in the summer of 1782 a large part of the population of the 
Hannastown settlement. The land surrounding these localities and be- 
tween them had nearly all bpen taken up by pioneer settlers. Hannas- 
town, it will be remembered, had been a county seat for inore than nine 
years, and the country for several miles in each direction was pretty well 
cleared and, for that day, thickly populated. The farmers had fenced 
their land, some of it at least, with stake and rider fences to protect their 
crops against live stock. Each farmer had cattle, horses, sheep, etc., and 
the community bid fair to surpass all others in the county, if, indeed, it 
had not alreadv done so. Its onlv rival was the Pittsburgh settlement. 



172 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

There had been mihtia soldiers guarding the garrison at Hannastown, 
but they had deserted their post because they were not paid. Xor can 
they be blamed for this, for they are said to have been actually in rags when 
they left. The settlers were, therefore, left to take care of themselves. 
Farther north from Hannastown, and in many other parts of the county, 
farms were deserted, the owners and their families having gone to their 
original homes east of the mountains. The Hannastown community, be- 
cause of its prominence, had special fear that if a raid was made their settle- 
ment would be the objective point. They were, therefore, unusually vigi- 
lant, but they had had no particular warning to put them on their guard. 

On Saturday, July 13, 1782, the men of Hannastown and the near com- 
munity were engaged in cutting a field of grain for Captain Michael Huff- 
nagle. The reader will recall him as the prothonotary who succeeded Ar- 
thur St. Clair, and also as a captain of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment. 
He had sat on the bench as a justice, had acquired considerable property, 
and was a man of great strength of character. In the Revolutionary ser- 
vice he had been wounded in the leg, and this incapacitated him for fur- 
ther duty, in the main army, but it did not prevent him from taking a lead- 
ing part in the defense of the frontier. His fields of grain lay one and a 
half miles north of Hannastown, the land now being owned by Jacob 
Longsdorf. The grain of that day, whether wheat, rye or oats, was cut 
entirely by sickles, and the reapers, with their heads and bodies bent 
down, could be easily approached by the Indians. They had cut one 
field and eaten their cold dinners in the shade, and were about ready to 
begin on another field. One of the reapers crossed over to the side of the 
field bordering on the woods, and as he neared the woodland he detected. 
Indians hiding behind the trees and stealthily awaiting till the reapers 
-should resume their work. The reaper ran back and gave the alarm and 
immediately the entire party ran for their lives. Some of them secured 
their firearms, others ran to notify their neighbors, but the general trend 
Avas toward the fort at Hannastown. In a few minutes they reached the 
town, and then, in an instant almost, all was commotion. Our court min- 
utes show that court began on Tuesday, July 9, with Judge Edward Cook 
and his associates on the bench. It was held in the original log house built 
by Robert Hanna, which had been used as a court house since the for- 
mation of the county in 1773. The first thing the excited inhabitants did 
was to take the court records from the court room to the stockade. These 
are the records, heirlooms of the pioneer days, from which we have so fre- 
quently quoted, and which are yet in a good state of preservation. The 
door of the log jail was then broken open, and all the prisoners were set 
free. Able young people hurriedly assisted the children and decrepit old 
men and women from their houses to the stockade. The haste in which 
this was done mav be imagined from the fact that thev took with them 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 173. 

none of their clothes, furniture nor belongings, not even provisions for a 
single meal. In a few minutes all were in the fort who wanted to go in, and, 
preparations were made to close the gate of the palisades. 

There were several young men who did not want to enter the fort, but 
who preferred to stay out and fight the Indians in their own way. These- 
were rangers whose exploits in Indian warfare have been referred to be- 
fore. They regarded it as their duty to seek the protection of the fortress, 
only after they had warned the entire settlement of the presence of the 
Indians. Among these were James Brison, David Shaw and Matthew 
Jack. There were several others, but their names have not come down to 
us. James Brison, is, by the way, the same young man who, as clerk to 
Arthur St. Clair, kept the early court records in such splendid shape. He 
and David Shaw and others volunteered to go north toward the approach- 
ing Indians and learn something of their strength and their intention. There 
was no way for them to go but on foot, yet be it said to their credit that 
they went willingly. But before Shaw, Brison and their associates started, 
.Matthew Jack had mounted his gallant horse and set out, not directly to 
the north, but in a circular direction, intending to pass around and recon- 
noiter the enemy, and learn all that could be learned there, and also notify 
all the surrounding settlements of their presence. 

The Indians did not at once pursue the reapers. Their object had evi- 
dently been to make way with them and then attack the town without 
warning. Thinking, perhaps, that the reapers did not know the strength 
of the invaders, and that they would return to pursue them, they waited 
nearly an hour at the grain field, instead of chasing the reapers to the 
fort. Captain Jack was not a citizen of Hannastown, but chanced to be 
in the village that day, perhaps in attendance at court. By rapid riding 
he very soon reached the vicinity of the grain field and discovered the 
strength of the band. They were apparently deliberating upon the place 
of attack. Jack was a ranger whose perceptive qualities had been sharpened 
by much usage. He saw the Indians before they saw him, and turning to 
ride back, was followed by them. On the way he met Shaw, Brison and the 
others, whom he warned to run for their lives, and said he would circle- 
around somewhat before entering the fort, and still, owing to the fleetness 
of his horse, be able to enter with the scouting party. He was naturally 
daring and courageous, and had probably no more fear of the Indians than 
if they had been so many wild animals. He therefore rode to the south- 
east and came to the cabin of the Love family, (lately the John L. Bierer 
farm) whom he warned to flee. He took Mrs. Love and her children on the 
horse behind him, and galloped toward the fort. The scouting party — 
Shaw, Brison and their associates — took Jack's advice and ran as rapidly 
as they could toward Hannastown. The Indians, following on Jack's 
trail, soon caught sight of the scouting party, and gave them a hard run 
for their lives. They undoubtedly mistook them for the reapers, who,. 



174 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



they supposed, had not yet warned the citizens of the town. If, therefore, 
they could catch them, they could still surprise the citizens of Hannastown. 
On any other theory, the Indians would have shot them while on the run, 
but a shot fired would have aroused the town. It was a very exciting race 
for life. The distance was about a mile, with this advantage only on the 
part of the scouts, namely, that they knew the ground thoroughly, knew 
every short-cut path to take or hill to evade. This familiarity with the 
ground probably won the race for them. They knew too, that if they could 
reach a stream which flowed into the Crab Tree Rim, from a spring near the 
fort, they would be safe, for there they would be practically under the protec- 
tion of the rifles m the fort. The foremost Indians, they concluded, would not 
venture much nearer than the run until they were joined by the main forces. 
Before they reached the creek they could hear the foot sounds of their pur- 
suers, and a backward glance revealed the naked breasts and glistening fore- 
locks of the savages. All of them ran directly to the fort except Shaw. He 
iirst ran to his father's house to see if they were all safe, and then made for the 
stockade gate. Before he reached the gate the savages were swarming on the 
banks of the Crab Tree below. The fearless scout drew up his long barreled 
gun and, taking deliberate aim, sent his unerring ball to end the career of a 
warrior, and then quickly ran into the forr. He was the last to enter, and the 
gate was closed and barred at once. Thus all the Hannastown people had 
passed the stockade gates before the Indians reached the town. 

In INlichael HuiTnagle's report he says that at about two o'clock in the 
afternoon the town, consisting of about thirty houses and cabins, was at- 
tacked by about one hundred and fifty Indians and Tories. When they saw 
that they had failed to surprise the town, and that the scalps must be fought 
for, if gained by them, they gave forth a prolonged, indescribable Indian yell, 
resembling the cry of an infuriated wild beast in torture, the recollection of 
which alone caused those who had escaped to shudder with horror, long years 
afterward. The Indians then took possession of the houses and cabins in the 
town, in full view of the fort. Clothes and household goods were thrown into 
the streets. Some of the bolder Indians arrayed themselves in these clothes, 
and, brandishing knives and tomahawks, danced in full view of the fort, though 
at a safe distance from it. They soon assembled to consult as to what should 
be done. Their gestures and talk were most vehement, but they were appar- 
ently controlled by their leaders, who seemed to be white men dressed as 
Indians. There seems to be no doubt but that this assembly of Indians and 
their renegade white leaders could have been successfully fired on by the armed 
forces in the fort. But those in the fort were slow to begin battle, knowing 
their own weakness. They knew also that the force of Indians, though at 
considerable loss, co.uld take the fort, and that their own safety lay in receiving 
additional strength. After the consultation was ended, part of the band, per- 
haps about one-third, started oflf in the direction of Miller's blockhouse. There 
were, according to Hufifnagle's report, about one himdred remaining and about 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 175 

fifty in the squad which went away. In a short time those remaining set fire 
to the town in many places, and perhaps in every house. These houses had 
been built some years, and their clapboard roofs were perfectly dry. In a few 
minutes the entire town, save two houses which were too near the fort for them 
to fire, was in flames. One house left standing- was Robert Hanna's, which had 
served as a court house since the county was erected. The Indians found some 
rum aiid whisky in the houses, and with the aid o.f this they had a very jovial 
time while the town was burning. They paraded in the garments of the set- 
tlers in full view of the fort, but at a safe distance. One Indian, however, 
decked himself out in a bright colored military coat which he had taken from 
one of the houses. He at length grew bold, and paraded, peacock-like, too 
close to the stockade. Some one within, it is not known who, took a steady 
shot at him. The Indian leaped into the air and fell dead. Thus his vanity 
cost him his life. 

All communication with the outside world was cut off when the stockade 
gate was closed. There were several scouts out, but they did not return. On 
the contrary, they kept moving about, alarming the settlement and trying to 
devise some means of rescuing the inmates of the fort. The stockade at Han- 
nastown was naturally a strong one, but on this occasion its defense was very 
weak. Some reports say that they had only nine firearms, some say thirteen, 
but all agree that they were of a poor quality, being the cast-off arms of the 
militia. It is possible that a few of the scouts, like Shaw and Brison, had good 
arms. The Hannastown people in the fort were largely elderly men and women 
and children. The young people of the community were at Miller's block- 
house that afternoon, as will be seen later on. 

This weak condition of the fortress was known to those outside, and hence 
their anxiety to devise some means of rescue rather than to try to save them- 
selves. The whole number of those in the fort is not known, nor are t'leir 
names given in any of the accounts, except such few who performed certain 
services worthy of special remark in the reports. At Miller's blockhouse, two 
and a half miles southeast of Hannastown, were collected about forty people. 
Samuel Miller had been a captain in the Eighth Regiment of the Pennsylvania 
Line, but had been killed on July 7, 1778, while detailed in the recruiting ser- 
vice in Westmoreland. His widow had married Andrew Cruickshanks. At 
all times their house was open for all who came there socially or for safely. 
In addition to the blockhouse there were several log cabins built nearby, and 
all of them were strong in times of Indian raids, and were, moreover, capable 
of being quickly barricaded. The Millers were a lively, sociable people, and 
thither went the young men and maidens often for an evening's dance. But 
these forty more or less people who were at Miller's that day did not go there 
for safety, for it is well known that there were several people there from Han- 
nastown, among whom were Judge Robert Hanna's wife and daughters. Now, 
were they in quest of place of safety against the Indians, they would have re- 
mained at home, for the Hannastown stockade was stronger than ^ililler's 



176 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNT/. 

blockhouse. It was the strongest fort between Fort Pitt and Fort Ligonier. 
It has often been asserted that there was a wedding there that da}', and this was 
the chief attraction, but this has as often been denied. Justice Richard Coul- 
ter, who wrote his account of the burning of Hannastown in 1836, and who 
gathered much of his material directly from those who were captured at ]\Iil- 
ler's, as well as from others who participated in the affair, says this about the 
wedding: "At Miller's there had been a wedding the day before. Love is a 
delicate plant, but will take root in the midst of perils in gentle bosoms. A 
young couple, fugitives from the frontier, fell in love and were married." 

From the best testimony the writer can obtain, the Justice's story is reason- 
ably well corroborated. Two families named Dunlap and Courla had some 
time previous to tlfis moved farther west than Westmoreland, and were driven 
back by the Indians in the summer of 1782. James Duncan, who has been 
described as a young man of superior looks and bearing, belonged to one of the 
returning families, and JMary Courla, a young Scotch girl who was long after- 
ward written of as a very lovely and beautiful woman, belonged to the other. 
Love in this case, like wild violets, blossomed in the wilderness, and they, on 
their hurried flight from their frontier homes, were married near Hannastown, 
on July 12, 1782. In the olden time the wedding day was the bride's day, and 
the next day was the groom's, and its chief gathering was called the "Infair." 
This day was often a gayer and more festive occasion than the wedding day 
itself. It was celebrated at Miller's blockhouse, and this is doubtless the reason 
why so many young people were there that fatal afternoon. From the fact that 
neither the bride nor the groom were then residents in that community, and that 
the gay assembly was not celebrating a wedding ceremony but an infair, has 
probably sprung most of the doubt surrounding it. It is, moreover, on the 
other hand, a fact that there were but few weddings among the pioneer fam- 
ilies during the Revolution and Indian war troubles. But the very fact that 
these ceremonies were so few and far between may have been the reason that 
so many guests were bidden and present. All accounts agree that there were 
many women there, chief among whom were Mrs. Hanna and her daughters. 
The company had perhaps all assembled. There had been dancing to the tune 
of a fiddle, and playing and great glee among the guests, as was the custom in 
that day. Everything went off merrily until about the middle of the after- 
noon, when suddenly, like a peal of thunder from a cloudless sky, the war- 
whoop burst upon their ears, and a band of savages rushed into their midst. 

Among the men who were there was Captain Brownlee, whose deeds as a 
ranger have been mentioned. He was also one of Captain Erwin's bravest 
soldiers in the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment. When his enlistment expired 
he left the service and devoted his energies to Indian fighting on the frontier. 
In this he was very successful. He did not discriminate between a good and a 
bad Indian, thinking perhaps that there were none of the former class. He 
thought it his duty to kill an Indian as he would a snake or a dangerous wild 
beast. Yet he was an excellent neighbor and a good husband and father. In- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. lyj 

deed, it was to protect those he loved that he remained at home rather than 
do service in the army. Few names are better or more honorably known in ' 
border warfare than that of Brownlee. He Uved on a farm a short distance 
northwest of Miller's blockhouse, lately the Frederick Cope farm, and now 
owned by the Jamison Coal Company. 

On the afternoon of the Hannastown trouble some men were mowing in a 
field not far from Miller's blockhouse. Their quick ears caught the rumbling 
of firing at Hannastown, and this was the first intimation they had of any 
difficulty. At once they became apprehensive of danger and hastened to the 
blockhouse. They left the field none too soon, for, as they were leaving it, 
the fifty or more Indians from the Hannastown band of marauders entered it at 
the other side. Here again the Indians were foiled, for they undoubtedly 
meant to capture the men in the field and thus have an easy victory at Miller's. 
By the time the mowers reached the blockhouse the Indians were but a short 
distance behind, and the sound of the war-whoop had already terrified the 
festive women and children. Some shots were fired, but the Indians very soon 
closed in on the frightened party, and all were in the wildest confusion. A 
few women ran over the hills and some of them escaped. A little girl, wha 
lived to be an old arid highly respected woman, hid herself among the black- 
berry bushes until night came. Most of those left behind were women and 
children. The cries of these helpless people, mingled with the Indian yells, 
added to the consternation of the few fighters who were left. But the mowers 
did not desert them. One or two, at least, lost their lives in trying to save 
those who were comparative strangers to them. But, though strangers, they 
were defenseless women, and that has always called forth the best efforts of 
Anglo-Saxon manhood. Those who ran at the first sign of danger made their 
escape by going to the George cabin, while others made good their way to 
Rugh's blockhouse. Some few, like the little girl, hid in the fields till night- 
fall. The majority, and perhaps the more timid ones, remained in the houses 
and were all captured. 

When the Indians arrived, Brownlee was in the blockhouse, most likely as 
a guard, and Mrs. Brownlee and her children were also there. He seized his 
rifle and ran out to intercept two Indians who were just entering the yard. He 
could easily have escaped, and it was probably his intention to do so, with the 
hope of forming a strong party and overtaking them should they capture and 
carry away the women and children. But his wife cried to him, "Captain, you 
are not going to leave me, are you ?" The brave man turned around and gave 
himself up as a prisoner to those to whom he had never before bent his knee. 
He had faced the hostile Indians time and again, but he could not resist the 
plea of his wife. No one who knew him imagined that he could make a selfish 
escape. Very soon the blockhouses and cabins were surrounded, and all were 
prisoners. Part of the Indian force was then sent out to hunt down the fright- 
ened women and children who had escaped. Most of them were soon over- 
taken and brought back to ^Miller's as prisoners. 

IS 



178 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

Among those who escaped by flight was the daughter of Judge Hanna. 
She was taken on horseback by Samuel Findley, a pack-horse driver, and car- 
ried to the country, and thus escaped. A young man who had hastened to 
Miller's to give the alarm, in making his escape took with him a child, which 
it is said was one of Brownlee's. He was very soon pursued by three or four 
Indians who were gaining on him, although he could easily have distanced them 
in a foot race had he not been burdened by the child. This race was kept up 
for some time, and the young man's strength was rapidly waning. Fortunately, 
he came to a thick growth of underbrush, and beyond it was a high rail fence 
which bordered a field of uncut rye. He passed through the brush, mounted 
the fence, and jumped from the top of it as far into the rye field as he could. 
While in the brush and crossing the fence he was out of sight of the Indians. 
Then he lay down on the ground in the rye with the child. Which fortunately 
kept quiet. The Indians came up and passed him without discovering him. 
They soon returned and looked more closely, but did not find him. Their 
time was necessarily brief, and they left with many mutterings of disgust. 

Another 3'oung man was escaping with his child, and was also assisting 
his mother, an elderly woman, in the race, for a number of Indians were in hot 
pursuit of them, when he found that all would be captured unless he abandoned 
one or the other. So he put down the child, and helping his mother, they 
both escaped. Now comes the strange part of the story, which, by the way, 
is well authenticated. The Indians passed the child, perhaps unnoticed ; at all 
events, they did not kill it. The ne.xt morning the child was found in the 
former home safe and sound. After the storm was over it had probably in- 
nocently wandered back to it's home. 

Mrs. Cruickshank also tried to escape with a child, and was assisted by 
her brother. They were pursued by but one Indian. Finally, as he was gain- 
ing upon them, the brother turned and fired at him. The Indian dodged behind 
trees and the shot may have missed him. But he did not pursue them further. 
In the excitement of shooting at the Indian they forgot the child and ran on 
without it. The next morning it, too, was found in it's cabin home at Millers, 
sleeping the sleep of innocent childhood in it's own little cot. This child lived 
to be an old woman. She was married to a man named Campbell, and often 
related the story as it was given to her from lips that had long since been 
silent. 

All these and many more were the happenings of a half-hour after the In- 
dians reached Miller's. Soon after the Indian party captured Brownlee, true 
to his promise, Captain Jack came galloping toward the house to give the 
alarm. As he approached he saw he was too late, for he was not slow to 
perceive that the yard was full of Indians. He therefore turned his horse 
and galloped wildly away. The Indians had remained quiet as he approached, 
but as he turned they .sent a shower of bullets after him. They all missed him, 
although they whistled about his head and one cut his bridle rein. From there 
he rode over the country to George's, where the fugitives from ]\Iiller's were 



HISTORY OP WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 179 

collecting, and where a relief party of pioneers was rapidly being organized. 

But the alarm was not confined to this community alone. It was a still, 
calm afternoon, preceding a rain, when sound traveled" a long distance. Many 
in the neighborhood heard the excessive firfng and were on the alert. At Unity 
church, six or seven miles east of Miller's, the congregation had met for pre- 
paratory communion services when the rumor of the incursion came. The 
people hastened to their homes, and the pastor, Rev. James Power, who lived 
long afterward to tell the story, rode with his utmost speed to his home near 
Mt. Pleasant. Men in fields heard the distant roar of muskets, and went to 
their homes to make bullets, call in their children, and barricade the openings 
in their cabins. All near Allen's fort were gathered there. About one and a 
half miles north of Greensburg, on the Salem road, lived a man named Kepple. 
He was in his field, and noticed his dog frisking angily about as though he 
scented danger. He also heard the far-off rumble, perhaps from Hannastown. 
He hastily unhitched his horses and went to his log house, which was built 
for a residence and fortress both. One or two families of the neighborhood 
also gathered there. They at once closed up the openings and were prepared 
fo,r a siege. 

The Indians proceeded hurriedly to secure the prisoners taken at Miller's. 
The hands of the men were tied behind their backs, and after taking from the 
houses all they wanted in the way of provisions, clothes, etc., they fired the 
blockhouse, which was consumed. The smaller cabins were not all de- 
stroyed. Those who went there for safety had taken with them their live- 
stock, consisting of cattle, horses and a few sheep. These were all shot by the 
Indians. Botli HufFnagle and Duncan, in their reports, estimate that one hun- 
dred cattle were killed. Of the captive prisoners the most conspicuous man 
was Captain Brownlee. Two of Robert Hanna's daughters were at Miller's 
participating in the function that afternoon, and one was taken. They are 
said to have been very attractive young women. Their names were Marion 
and Jeanette. 

The captive prisoners were made to carry the goods stolen from their 
houses. The women and children were driven in a flock. It was a sad march, 
yet some stout hearts kept up, perhaps in the hope of relief by pursuing neigh- 
bors, for this was not an unusual happening in border warfare. Brownlee 
kept up his courage, and undoubtedly added strength to the disconsolate party. 
At length an unthinking woman, said to have been Mrs. Robert Hanna, through 
her tears, said, "Captain Brownlee, it is well you are here to cheer us up." 
This unfortunate remark was undoubtedly the first intimation the Indians had 
that their do.cile prisoner was their fearless enemy. Captain Brownlee. All 
the Indians knew him by name and reputation, but few Indians who met him 
face to face ever disturbed settlers afterwards. After all was over it was 
plain to Captain Brownlee's friends that he was all the while attempting to 
conceal his identity with the hope of keeping up the concealment for a day 
•or so. when all might be rescued. None knew better than he that his days 



i8o HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

were numbered when the Indians discovered who he was. It was thus to con- 
ceal his name that he gave himself up when resistance would probably have 
availed him nothing. He kept quiet, and was extremely meek when they tied 
his hands and pl-aced heavy burdens on his back. All this was entirely unlike 
the bold and fearless Brownlee, whom the Indians knew of only. All his acts 
were now apparently indicative of perfect submission. He was evidently try- 
ing to .deceive them. All his friends, both among the prisoners and among 
those who were free, believed implicitly that he would soon escape, perhaps 
that night, and return with a full knowledge of their strength and how best to 
follow and attack them. If so, he could raise a company which would avenge 
the outrage at Miller's. But at the time his name was mentioned by the unfor- 
tunate woman, his doom was decided on. Immediately there were hasty 
glances from one Indian to another, and two of them in gutteral tones con- 
sulted together. In addition to his burden he was carrying one of his children 
on his back. As he bent down to enable the innocent child tOi cling more tightly 
with its arms around his neck, a savage sneaked up behind him and buried a 
hatchet in his brain. Brownlee fell dead, and the child rolled over him. As it 
was scrambling to it's feet the Indian killed it in the same way. A woman near 
by screamed and fell swooning to the ground. She met with the same ill fate, 
the Indians doubtless mistaking her for the wife of Brownlee. Mrs. Brownlee, 
on account of her children and the other captives, was compelled to witness 
these barbarous deeds in the silent agony of despair. The Brownlees' bodies 
and that of the woman were found about one-half mile from IMiller's, and were 
buried, as was the custom then, on the spot where they fell. Over his grave 
stood a wild cherry tree which grew to immense size and marked the spot for 
many years. A second grew from its roots or .stump, and it is now half grown, 
and is preserved by the owner of the field, Mr. J. J. Blank. It is but a short 
distance east from his residence. The farm was formerly the Meckling farm. 

The march of the captives was toward Hannastown, and, when there, they 
joined the band which had remained to burn the town. About dark the entire 
band changed their location, moving to the northeast, and encamping for the 
night in the ravine, or hollow made by Crabb Tree creek. There they partook 
of what provisions they had. Some watched the prisoners, while others at- 
tended a council to deliberate what should be the next move. 

While the detached band of Indians was destroying the Miller blockhouse 
and returning with their prisoners, the Indians at Hannastown kept a close 
watch on the fort. They also kept up an irregular fire on it all afternoon. 
They were evidently afraid to attack it : they did not know of its real weakness. 
Those within had only feelings of hope and fear. If their neighbors could not 
unite and rescue them they expected captivity and death the next morning. 

The romantic event of the afternoon was the shooting of Margaret Shaw. 
The story of this young girl's death has been repeated many times, but it never 
grows old. It has been exaggerated by romanticists, but the simple story 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. i8i 

makes her character and actions so beautiful and attractive that no false col- 
oring is necessary. She has lived since, and always shall live in the sad 
story of that day, as a genuine heroine of Hannastown. She was the daughter 
of Moses Shaw, and the sister of Alexander and David Shaw. Both of her 
brothers were hunters and scouts, and both were well known Indian fighters 
and rangers. David had entered the Revolution as a substitute for his 
father. When his term of enlistment expired he came home like Brownlee to 
assist in border defense. Like Brownlee, too, he thought it was always right 
to kill an Indian. Otherwise he was a man of most gentle nature, and was liv- 
ing up to his general reputation when, before he entered the fort, he first ran 
to ascertain whether his father's family had been taken in or not. Margaret 
(or Peggy, as she was called), resembled him in the gentleness of her dispo- 
sition. She was about fourteen years old, but large and strong for her age. 
During the afternoon in the fort the older people were devising means of 
defense should an attack be made, and perhaps the children were somewhat 
neglected. Inadvertently a small child wandered toward the picketing of the 
fort, and was in a section of the enclosure which was within the range of the 
enemy's bullets. Seeing this, ]\Iargaret ran to it to fetch it back to safety. As 
she bent down to pick it up a bullet struck her in the breast and penetrated 
her right lung. With the skill in surgery of our present day she might easily 
have recovered. As it was, she lingered two weeks and had wasted away until 
she was but a mere skeleton, when death relieved her. She was buried at a 
Presbyterian graveyard two miles north of Mt. Pleasant, now known as the 
Middle churches. 

Thus it will be seen that there was a great deal of firing at Hannastown, 
and this, among other things, aroused the entire community. The men as- 
sembled at George's are said to have fired all their guns at once to arouse the 
neighborhood. About forty men gathered there by dark. All were bent on 
rescuing the prisoners in the fort. The night fortunately brought dark clouds 
and rain which favored the rescuing party. Only about thirty of them were 
able to go to the relief of the fortress. Suspicions of cowardice were hinted 
for long years afterwards, concerning some who failed to accompany them. Of 
these thirty, many were on horses and all were armed. The location of the 
Indians, the destruction of the town, etc., was all reported by scouts who, by 
much practice, were as wary as the Indians themselves. The party advanced 
with great caution. They could see from the gleam of burning logs the outline 
of the fort with its whitewashed palisades. As they crept up to it the scouts 
made known their arrival, the gates were opened and all entered in safety. 

As soon as the evening meal was over the Indians proceeded to divide 
their plunder. Many of them attired themselves in the new garments which 
fell to them. One unusually large Indian tried to array himself in a silk 
dress, but could not get his foot through the sleeve. His attempts were very 
ludicrous, and he seemed highly pleased that he could make others laugh 
so heartily. They also prepared to celebrate their victory. One captive was 



i82 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

selected, his body painted with black stripes, and tied to a tree. He was to 
be tortured by being burned alive. They also made the prisoners run the 
gauntlet, the men first and then a number of the women. Some of them were 
very badly beaten. The daughter of Robert Hanna was put through, but 
had gained the favor of an Indian by laughing at his grotesqueness when 
arrayed in the silk dress, and therefore got through without great injury. 
But a young woman named Freeman, who had red hair, which was always 
held in contempt by the dark-haired race, was beaten nearly to death. More 
than a generation afterward she was treated by Dr. Postlewaite, in Greens- 
burg, for injuries to her skull received that night. But about twelve o'clock 
the Indians discovered that forces were arriving at the fort. They did not 
have time to torture the prisoner, so they tomahawked him and soon after- 
ward began their march. 

It was believed by those in the fort that an attack would be made in the 
morning, so they tried to. deceive the Indians by making them think that very 
large forces had arrived. Some old drums were brought out and beaten. 
There was a wooden bridge across the entrance to the fort, and all the horses 
were galloped across this bridge to the music of the drums. They were then 
taken around the bridge and brought over several times. All in the fort 
were now hilarious, or acting so, at least, and, as was intended, these acclama- 
tions of joy, apparently over the arrival of forces, were plainly heard by the 
Indians. It was, moreover, not unlikely that by twelve or one o'clock forces 
should arrive from Fort Pitt or Fort Ligonier, and the stratagem had its 
desired efifect on the minds of the Indians. As soon as possible, therefore, 
they moved with their prisoners and baggage, stealing away so silently that 
no one in the fort knew they were going. They traveled north, passing be- 
tween Congruity and Harvey's Five Points and on northward, crossing the 
Kiskiminetas at about where Apollo now stands. When morning came 
those in the fort were delighted to learn that the Indians had gone. The 
forces followed them as far as the place where they crossed the river, but 
could not pursue them into the Indian country, which was then a wilderness. 
For their failure to pursue them further they have been more or less cen- 
sured, but we think unjustly. There were at least one hundred and fifty 
well-armed Indians and Tories, and the forces in the fort, including the relief 
party from George's, did not amount ta more than fifty, if both old and young 
should join in the pursuit, which was practically impossible. 

The Indians had with them about twenty prisoners, whom they had taken 
at and near Miller's. Their march to Canada was comparatively without in- 
cident, unusual in such parties, though it was a trying ordeal on the cast- 
down and over-burdened prisoners. Arriving in Canada they sold both pris- 
oners and scalps to the English for beads, trinkets, firearms and whisky. 
The prisoners were kept until a final peace was effected between Great Britain 
and the colonies, after which most of them found their way back to West- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 183 

moreland county. It has been often said that one of the daughters of Robert 
Hanna, Marian, was married to a British officer, but this has been partly 
disproved by recent researches. 

Of those who are known to have helped to rescue the fort and follow 
the Indians to the river, not yet mentioned here, were the Craigs, the Sloans, 
Captain David Kilgore and two of his sons. Captain Wendel Ourry was also 
with them. James Moore, of Salem township, who died in 1846, aged sev- 
enty-three, wa3 in the fort. He was a child living with his widowed mother 
in Hannastown when the great calamity overtook it. From Miller's was 
taken Dorcas Miller, a daughter of Captain Samuel, and her younger brother, 
whom they killed because he could not travel rapidly enough. Dorcas was 
kept at Niagara, and some three years afterward was ransomed and sent 
home by a British officer named Butler, who knew her father. She came 
home, and was afterward married to Joseph Russell, residing most of her 
Hfe on the farm where she was captured. She died in Greensburg, March 

15. 1851- 

Who commanded the Indian forces on the Hannastown raid will never 
be certainly known. Some have written that it was Simon Girty. This is 
now known to be an error, for it is latterly pretty well proved that he was 
in Kentucky at that time. The leadership of nearly all incursions of that 
character was attributed to him. It was more likely Guyasutha on the part 
of the Indians, and Connolly of the Dunmore's war fame on the part of the 
white Tories, though his presence was never proved. The Indians were 
mainly from a small tribe called Munsies, then in northern Pennsylvania. 

Captain Matthew Jack and David Shaw were for many years justly called 
the "Heroes of Hannastown War." Jack was sheriff of the county at the 
time, which probably accounts for his being at Hannastown that afternoon. 
He was also a county justice, and was all-around one of the most noted and 
daring Indian fighters of his day. He was a man of great strength and 
agility, and was without personal fear. Often in after years, at barn-raisings, 
musters, etc., he illustrated his manner of riding that day. He could place 
his hat on the ground and pick it up a-s he galloped by. Later he was 
known as General Jack, from his prominence in the Whisky Insurrection. 
He was born in 1755, and died November 26, 1836. Both he and his wife, 
Nancy (Wilson) Jack (born 1760, died September 20, 1840), are buried 
at Congrnity, about seven miles northeast of Greensburg. 

Hannastown was never rebuilt, though the courts were held there (the 
courthouse not being burnt) for more than four years afterwards. Cities 
of untold wealth and power have risen, but few of them have achieved as 
glorious a record in history as this little collection of mud-plastered log huts, 
built in the heart of a primeval forest in western Pennsylvania. It was per- 
haps at its best in 1782, when it was burned. 

On February 5. 1829, a petition was presented to the legislature of Penn- 



i84 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

sylvania by the wife of Captain Brownlee, asking for a pension, and from 
it we gather the following: She was born in Londonderry, in 1755, her 
maiden name being Elizabeth Guthrie, and was a daughter of John Guthrie. 
With her father she came to this country in 1771, and settled in Westmore- 
land county, near the present town of Greensburg, in 1772. During Dun- 
more's war they were repeatedly compelled to fly to Hannastown for safety. 
In 177s she was married to Captain Brownlee, who was with Erwin as a 
rifleman in the Revolution, and was taken a prisoner at the battle of Long 
Island. After serving his time in the Revolution he came home and en- 
gaged in Indian warfare until the burning of Hannastown. He, with his 
wife and children, were captured at Miller's fort. In that petition it is stated, 
also, that it was Mrs. Hanna, the wife of Robert Hanna, who mentioned 
Captain Brownlee's name in the presence of the Indian captors, and thus 
led to his identification and death, as indicated above. From there they were 
taken to Cataraugus, a journey of thirteen days, during which the pris- 
oners, unable to subsist on the scanty fare of the Indians, almost perished 
from hunger. From Cataraugus they were taken to Bulifalo, where the In- 
dians concluded, because of Mrs. Brownlee's weakness, she being greatly 
reduced by fever and ague, to burn her at the stake. But a white man, 
Captain Lattridge, told them she was too far reduced to afiford them any 
amusement, and prevailed upon them to sell her for whisky, which would 
afiford them much more pleasure. So they listened to his advice, and she and 
her child, which she carried tied to her back, were marched to Niagara and 
sold for twenty dollars and two gallons of rum. There she was better cared 
for, and finally arrived in Montreal. When peace was declared, after many 
hardships, she returned to Hannastown. Two years later she was married 
to Captain William Guthrie, captain of the rangers in protecting the frontier. 
Guthrie was a good Indian fighter but a poor farmer, and afforded her but 
a scanty living. He lived until 1829, when he was killed by falling from 
a wagon which went over the side of a high bridge. John Beatty, Robert 
Orr, Sr., and Jane Beatty testify to these statements. By act of March 23, 
1829, she was paid $60, and $60 per year thereafter as long as she lived. 

Mrs. Robert Hanna's maiden name was Elizabeth Kelly, a daughter of 
John Kelly, and she was a sister of Colonel John Kelly, a member of the 
first Continental convention, also a soldier in the Revolution. Both she and 
her daughter were taken to jMontreal, where they were kindly treated, through 
the efforts of Rev. William Hanna, an Episcopal minister. They were re- 
leased in December, 1782, and returned home by way of Lake George, 
Albany, New York and Philadelphia. Jeanette Hanna, the captured daugh- 
ter, afterward married David Hammond, an officer in the Revolution. They 
were the parents of General Robert Hanna Hammond, who fought in the 
Mexican war. They were buried near Milton, Pennsylvania. 

In a letter from General William Irvine to General Washington, dated 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 185 

January 27, 1783, we learn that the Indians had assembled near the head- 
waters of the Allegheny. Further the letter says: "In the year 1782 a de- 
tachment composed of three hundred British and five hundred Indians was 
formed, and actually embarked in canoes on Lake Jadaque (Chautauqua) 
with twelve pieces of artillery, with an avowed intention of attacking Fort 
Pitt. This expedition was laid aside in consequence of the reported repairs 
and strength of Fort Pitt, carried by a spy from the neighborhood of the 
fort. They then contented themselves with the usual mode of warfare, by 
sending small parties on the frontier, one of which burned Hannastown.*' 

The destruction of Hannastown and the injuries inflicted on the com- 
munity in connection with it were much more serious and far-reaching than 
the reader may at first blush imagine. Its evil effects cannot be estimated in 
dollars and cents, though when viewed, even from that standpoint alone, it 
was a fearful calamity. For almost a quarter of a century western Penn- 
sylvania had been gradually increasing, with Hannastown as its chief center 
and seat of justice. Rude though its log cabins may have been, they were 
the best in the community, and with their contents represented many years 
of toil and sacrifice. Here the hardy pioneer had expended his best energies 
in taming the land, and building up a civilization. Upon the perpetuity and 
growth of law and order depended the values of their properties, not only 
in Hannastown but all over Western Pennsylvania. But now all for which 
they labored had been swept away by a single blow, and the word went east 
to prospective settlers and land purchasers that in Westmoreland county, 
even under the shadow of the temple of justice, savage warfare prevailed, 
property was ruthlessly destroyed and life itself was in constant danger. 

With the exception of a country store and a few old houses at Hannastown, 
built long since the original town was destroyed, there is nothing there to 
point the inquiring stranger to one of the most historic spots in western 
Pennsylvania. When it was burned the war for Independence was prac- 
tically over, for Cornwallis had surrendered to Washington in October of 
the previous year. Its destruction was in reality the last instance in America 
during the Revolution, in which the English united with their savage allies 
to destroy the innocent pioneer by what can be called little else than common 
butchery. The site of Hannastown is now farming land, owned bv Air. 
William Steel. 



CHAPTHR XIII 



The Removal of County Seat to Greensburg. 

It will be remembered that the law which provided for the formation 
of the county specified also that the courts should be held at the house of 
Robert Hanna until a courthouse should be built. The same act authorized 
Robert Hanna, George Wilson, Samuel Sloan, Joseph Erwin and John Cavett, 
or any three of them, to select a county seat, purchase land, and erect a court- 
house. A letter has already been quoted in which Arthur St. Clair lamented 
that the law had been worded so that the commissioners, by failing to build 
a courthouse, could indefinitely continue the courts at Hannastown. That 
was exactly what was done. Hanna was undoubtedly a strong-minded Irish- 
man, of great shrewdness. Against the will of the people and against the 
power of St. Clair, who had more than any other secured the erection of 
the new county, he forced the unwilling committee to retain the county seat 
at his place for thirteen years. Indeed, it is doubtful whether it would ever 
have been removed had not the town been destroyed by the Indians. 

Another misfortune for Hannastown was the location of the state road 
about three miles south. This road was a better and a more direct route 
between the east and the west than the Forbes road, on which Hannastown 
was built. On the new road sprang up a village called Newtown, about 
three miles southwest of Hannastown. This town, as well as Pittsburgh, be- 
came an aspirant for the location of the county seat. The courts were reg- 
ularly held at Hannastown after it was destroyed (July 13, 1782), and it 
certainly must have been an inconvenient place, for but few houses were 
rebuilt, and the town was practically without accommodations. Still, Hanna 
was strong enough to prevent the commission from acting, and therefore 
the courts were from vear to vear held at his house. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 187 

In 1784 this question of a county seat was carried to the legislature, and 
on November 22 an act was passed which set forth that, whereas, the trustees 
appointed by the law erecting the county had not cornplied with the powers 
given them to erect county buildings, they were dismissed, and a new com- 
mission was named. The new commissioners were John Irwin, Benjamin 
Davis, Charles Campbell, James Pollock and Joseph Wilkins. They or any 
three of them were authorized and empowered to perform the duties required 
of the commissioners in the erecting act of February 26, 1773. The second 
board of commissioners could not agree on the location, though they met 
and deliberated over the various claimants. They were confronted by rep- 
resentatives from three places, all demanding the county seat. First, Robert 
Hanna and his friends wanted it to remain in Hannastown. Second, there 
were those who were trying to have it located in Pittsburgh, which was then 
by far the most important town in Westmoreland county, and was rapidly 
increasing in population. Third, there was the village of Newtown, well 
located and full of promise, and its friends were urging it with all their 
power. 

Upon the refusal or inability of the second commission to select between 
these three aspiring towns, the legislature, on September 13, 1785, removed 
them and appointed a third board. As this act is the one under which the 
county seat was actually located, we give that part of it in full : 

"Whereas, the seat of justice of Westmoreland hath not heretofore been established 
by law, for want of which the inhabitants labor under great inconveniences, it shall and 
may be lawful for Benjamin Davis, Michael Rugh, John Shields, John Ponieroy and Hugh 
]\Iartin, of the county of Westmoreland or any three of them, to purchase and take 
assurance in the name of the Commonwealth, of a piece of land in trust for the use 
of the inhabitants of Westmoreland county : Provided said piece of land be not situated 
furiher east than the Nine Mile Run, nor further west than Bushy Run, further north 
than Loyalhanna, nor further south than five miles south of the Old Pennsylvania road 
leading to Pittsburgh : On which piece of ground said commissioners shall erect a Court 
House and prison, sufficient to accommodate the public service of the said county." 

By this act it will be seen that Pittsburgh had lost all power in the legis- 
lature, for the county seat could not go further west than Bushy Run, which 
is at least twenty miles east of Pittsburgh. The act further provided that the 
money expended in purchasing land and erecting a court house and jail should 
not exceed one hundred pounds. 

The contest now lay between Hannastown, on the old and somewhat 
abandoned Forbes road, and Newtown, now beginning to be called Greens- 
burg, on the new state road. Of the new commissioners named in the above 
act, Benjamin Davis lived in Rostraver township, ]\Iichael Rugh in Hemp- 
field township, Hugh Martin in Mt. Pleasant township, John Shields in 
Salem township, and John Pomeroy in Derry township. Three of them 



l88 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

lived south of the Forbes road and three north of it, while Pittsburgh had no 
representative on the commission at all, even if the act itself had not proscribed 
it as a county seat. 

Shortly after .their appointment the commission viewed the territory, and 
met at Hannastown to deliberate. On November ist and 2nd they came to 
no agreement, and in December met again at Newtown (or Greensburg) and 
the three of them living south of the Forbes road decided on Newtown as 
the county seat. They were Benjamin Davis, Michael Rugh and Hugh 
Martin. John Shields and John Pomeroy, living north of the Forbes road, 
favored Hannastown, and, dissenting from the decision, refused to act fur- 
ther with the trustees or commissioners. But by the terms of the act three 
of them had the necessary power, and on December lo, 1785, they entered 
into an agreement with Christopher Truby and William Jack, to which 
Ludwig Otterman afterwards subscribed, to sell to them, in trust for the 
county, two acres of land on which to erect public buildings. This day, 
December 10, 1785, is the day upon which Greensburg was legally selected 
as the county seat of Westmoreland county. 

The three trustees proceeded at once to erect the public buildings. An- 
thony Altman was selected to erect the court house, and was to perform the 
work under the supervision of Michael Rugh, who was a trustee. The 
court house and jail were but one building, built of logs and heavy plank. 
The jail portion had a heavy stone wall which extended some distance above 
the ground, perhaps to keep prisoners from cutting their way out. The 
structure was pushed rapidly, and by July ist, 1786, both jail and court house 
were ready for occupancy. The trustees reported its completion to the July 
sessions of the court at Hannastown. Upon this the justices of the peace, 
who were also judges of the courts, visited the new county seat and inspected 
its buildings, after which they made the following report : 

We the subscribers. Justices of the Peace in and for the county of Westmoreland, 
upon receiving a written report from the Trustees of said county informing us that a 
new Court House and prison was erected in Newtown, and that a number of other con- 
venient buildings were also erected and open for entertainmenT, found that we were war- 
ranted by law in adjourning our courts to the said town; now being desirous as soon as 
possible to take leave of the many inconveniences and difficulties which attend our situa- 
tion at Hannastown, as well as to avoid the cost for rent for a very uncomfortable house, 
in which we held our courts, we did, therefore, accordingly adjourn to the said town. 
And we do certify that we found a very comfortable, convenient Court House and prison, 
included in one commodious building, together with a number of large commodious 
houses, open for public entertainment, in which we enjoyed great satisfaction during our 
residence at court. We do further give it as our opinion that the situation is good, and 
possessed of every natural advantage that can contribute to the comfort and conven- 
ience of an inland town ; that it is as nearly centrical to the body of people as any spot 
that can be found possessed of the same advantages : that it lies in direct course between 
Ligonier and Pittsburgh, and will admit of the straightest and best road between these 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY 



;\vo places : that its situation is in the center of the finest and weaUhiest settlement in 
this western country, and cannot fail of being supplied with the greatest abundance, upon 
the most reasonable terms ; in short, we think the said Trusteees have done themselves 
lienor in their choice and proceeding through the whole of this business. Given under 
our hand the lOth of August, 1786. 

Hugh Martin. Alexander Mitchell, William Jack. • 

Richard Williams, Christopher Truby, George Baird. 

John Miller, George Wallace, 



There was still a great deal of hostility against Newtown (now Greens- 
burg) as a county seat. This dissatisfaction came from north of the Forbes 
road, and from the region around Pittsburgh. All these interests united to 
overthrow what had already been done in the way of permanently locating 
the seat of justice at Greensburg. As a result of this agitation the legisla- 
ture on December 27, 1786, passed an act suspending the authority granted 
to the trustees to establish a county seat, etc., until further directed. The 
act further provided that the trustees were to exhibit their accounts, with 
proper vouchers for all expenditures made by them in their work so far as 
they had gone. These were to be inspected by William Moore, Charles 
Campbell and James Bryson, and to be laid before the justices of the court 
and the grand jtiry. Two of these inspecting committeemen were from un- 
friendly sections, Bryson being then a resident of Pittsburgh and Campbell 
of Wheatfield township, now in Indiana county. The subject was takew 
up by the people, who discussed it in the Pittsburgh Gazette, there being then 
no newspaper in Greensburg. Some one from Brush Creek, who signs 
himself "A Friend of His Country,' has a letter in the Gazette of October 
26, 1786, from which we quote extensively. 



"It is well known that the establishment of our present seat of justice was not a 
hasty, rash or inconsiderate piece of business. Almost sixteen years elapsed since it first 
claimed the attention of the Government ; it has been deliberately considered and cau- 
tiously conducted ; the sense of the people have been generally and repeatedly known by 
petition, remonstrance, etc., and in consequence thereof no less than four different Acts 
of the Legislature have been passed to effect and complete its establishinent. When we 
reflect upon the many evils which have resulted from the want of such establishment, 
I think we ought rather to congratulate ourselves on the event, and rest perfectly satis- 
fied that it is at last fixed anywhere nearly centrical to the body of the people." 



Hugh Henry Brackenridge, who was then a member of the legislature 
from this county, and a resident of Pittsburgh, on December 16, 1786, wrote 
the following letter, which was published in the Gazette of January 6, 1787: 



I90 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

"A bill is published superceding the powers of the Trustees for building a Court 
House and jail in Greensburg. The object is to prevent any further expenditure of 
public money in public buildings at that place, inasmuch as the Court House and jail 
already erected are sufficient, at least for a number of years. This appeared to us, the 
Representatives from Westmoreland, to be sufficient for the present. It must remain 
with future time to determine whether the seat of justice shall be removed or a new 
county erected on the Kiskiminetas. The last, I believe, will be deemed most eligible." 



In the same paper of February lo, 1787, the following letter appeared, 
written by one who signed himself "A Friend of Westmoreland" : 



"We find by Mr. Brackenridge's late publication that the seat of justice in this county 
yet remains an object of envy in our Legislature, as 'a bill is published superceding 
th.e powers of the Trustees for building a Court House and jail in Greensburg': I wonder 
when we shall see an end of the cavilings on this subject, and the succession of ridiculous 
laws occasioned thereby . 3y the first law we find a number of Trustees appointed for 
erecting a Court House and prison, etc. By the, second law we find their proceedings 
rejected, though perfectly legal, and the former repealed, and another set of Trustees 
appointed, with more extensive and conclusive powers. A third law approves and con- 
firms their proceedings, and a fourth law supercedes their powers in the midst of the 
duty assigned them ; and to carry the farce a little farther, I think the fifth law ought to 
amount to the total annihilation of the county." 



The reader will discover that in the justices' letter or certificate given 
above, and dated August 10, 1786, they say that they have adjourned the 
courts to the new court house in Newtown. They had probably done this, 
but even then troubles were brewing, engendered largely by Hanna and 
his friends, who were loathe to see the courthouse leave Hannastown. So, 
to in some degree appease the wrath of these adherents of Hanna, it was 
determined to hold the October term of court in Hannastown, and this was 
accordingly done. The first court held in Greensburg was the January term 
of 1787, beginning on January 7th, with Judge John Moore on the bench. 
The following is a list of the jurors who served at this first court in the new 
county seat : Grand Jurors— David Duncan, James Carnahan, John Carna- 
han, John Sloan, Abrahm Fulton, Charles Baird, William Best, Nathaniel 
McBrier, Joseph Mann, James Fulton, William Mann, Charles Johnston, 
Jacob Hufifman, Samuel Sinclair, and John Craig. Traverse Jurors : Al- 
exander Craig, John McCready, Peter Cherry, John GifTen, John Buch, 
Philip Cams, Patrick Campbell, George Swan, Isaac McKendry, Robert 
McKee, John Anderson, James Watterson and Lawrence Irwin. 

The term only lasted for about three days, and the minutes do not show 
any proceedings of momentous interest. The grand jury, however, reported 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 191 

that the new jail was insufficient, and not strong enough to hold the pris- 
oners. 

The trustees submitted their account as required by the suspending act. 
The total expenditures so far had been less than a thousand dollars. The ac- 
counts were finally laid before the grand jury on July 17, 1787. 

It may be added here by way of explanation, that much of Brackenridge's 
opposition to the court house and county seat proceedings arose from his de- 
sire to fomi a new county. This is intimated in his letter above quoted, though 
there he, for reasons of his own, located his proposed new county on the Kis- 
kiminetas. His object was probably to unite the north with him in opposition 
to Westmoreland and in the end take them into the new county at the forks of 
the Ohio river. It is admitted on all hands that he was elected to the legisla- 
ture for the purpose of erecting a new county. To this project our part of 
Westmoreland was naturally hostile. They were proud of their large dimen- 
sions, as the county was originally formed, but ini78i Washington county, and 
in 1783 Fayette county, were entirely carved from our territory. Naturally 
they tried to prevent any further encroachments on their territory. Neverthe- 
less, by the Act of September 24. 1788, .Allegheny county was organized from 
Westmoreland. 

After the formation of Allegheny county an act was passed on February 
14, 1789, repealing the superceding act, and authorizing the Westmoreland 
trustees to proceed in the erection of a court house and jail. The act itself is 
all the defense they need as against the act supending them. It recites that, 
whereas they found it expedient to erect at once a small wooden structure to 
accommodate the business as a temporary convenience, until a more substantial 
one could be built, and that whereas the temporary structure was too small 
and inconvenient, that ^^'estmoreland county should have "a decent, sufficient 
and pennanent building," constructed by the expenditure of the balance of the 
money levied and collected for that purpose agreeable to the intention of the; 
law. Therefore it was enacted that the said trustees be required to apply the 
remaining part of the money as indicated above. This remaining part was 
about four thousand dollars, and in 1796 and 1797 they proceeded to build our 
second court house, though really the first permanent one in Greensburg. 
During the Whisky Insurrection the building of it was temporarily abandoned. 
It was not completed till 1801, although the courts were held in it a year or 
two before that, and the state supreme court met in it in 1799. It was a two- 
story brick building, for by this time a law was passed compelling all counties 
which had not already done so, to build court houses of brick or stone. It 
fronted towards the east, that is, on Main street, with an arched door entrance 
in the center. In the rear was a smaller door which led to the jail yard. The 
main building stood on the old courthouse square, with its gable front on Main 
street. The whole of the first storv was used as a court room. This room 



192 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY 



was divided by a balustrade running north and south. The part west of the 
division, that is, the rear of the room, was reserved for the judges, lawyers, 
jurymen, litigants, etc., while the front, or eastern division, was used as an 
audience room by those who attended court. The judges sat against the west- 
ern wall, facing the east. There were large round columns in the center, along 
the line of the balustrade, which supported the ceiling. In the upper story was 
a large grand jury room, where theatrical performances and other public meet- 
ings were frequently held when not in use by the courts. Above the second 
story was the belfry, wherein the old courthouse bell was hung. 

North of this structure, but built against it, was a two-story brick building 
in which were the offices of the sheriff, recorder, prothonotar, clerk of courts, 
etc., etc. South of it was a brick building one-story high, which was used as 
a county commissioners' office only. 

The old log court house served its purpose until about 1794. After that 
time it was used for public offices until 1797, when it was removed. From 
June, 1794, until April, 1795, the courts were held in a tavern kept by Robert 
Taylor. After that, for about three years, they were held in a tavern kept by 
Bartel Laffer. The new brick courthouse when completed in 1801 was con- 
sidered a very handsome structure, and was so commented on by many travelers 
who chanced to pass through Greensburg. 

The long continued contest with the trustees who built the log court house, 
and the opposition to their expenditure of the public money, has been urged in 
defense of a mistake which they committed from which the county can never 
recover. It will be remembered that they purchased two acres of ground in 
Newtown (or Greensburg) for county buildings. It can scarcely be said that it 
was purchased, for the purchase money was only five shillings, or about the 
nominal sum of one dollar — common even yet, in such transactions, for the 
purpose of making a legal transfer. Two acres was more ground than they 
needed in that day, and in order to reduce the grounds of complaint to their 
minimum, they concluded to sell over three-fourths of it. The two acres were 
divided into ten lots by Benjamin Davis, who was one of the trustees and a sur- 
veyor as well. In October, 1786. after publicly advertising them, nine of these 
lots were sold, the other being reserved for court house purposes. The original 
two acres were bounded by Main street, West Otterman street, Pennsylvania 
avenue and West Pittsburgh street, being one full square, and the lot reserved 
is the ground upon which the new courthouse, the fourth in Greensburg, is 
now being builded. For these nine lots the trustees received $258.88. In 
1795 a law was passed by the legislature legalizing the sale. 

The new county town was at first named Newtown, most likely by Christo- 
pher Truby, one of the original land owners. He had removed to our county 
from Bucks county in 1771. In the east he had lived in or near a small village 
named Newtown, which had become historic during the Revolution, for there 
Washington had his headquarters for a time in 1776, when he was battling 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 193 

ftith almost a forlorn hope, against the British army. It is supposed that he 
named the cluster of log houses springing up on his land after his historic 
home in Bucks count}-. In 1786 it was named Greensburg, in memory of the 
Rhode Island Quaker, Major General Nathanael Greene, to whom most writers 
have given first place among the generals of the Revolution after Washington. 



CHAPTER XIV 



Thr W'hisky Insurrection. 

The Whisky Insurrection was confined almost entirely ta four counties in 
Southwestern Pennsylvania, viz. : Allegheny, Westmoreland, Washington and 
Fayette. Of these four, Westmoreland county was the least concerned. The 
trouble was due to the method adopted, mainly by the National Government, 
of raising money by taxation. This tax was known in the popular language 
of that day as an excise tax, a term extremely opprobrious to the English speak- 
ing people of all ages. These people were not opposed to paying tax, if levied, 
for example, on landed property, -for then it was at least supposed to. be based 
on the valuation of the land. Xor did they seriously object to a tarifif, which 
is primarily a duty collected on all articles brought into this country from 
abroad. But an excise tax is one levied on home manufactures, and collected 
either when the material is produced, or when it is first offered for sale. If 
fairly collected, its very nature demands that the government imposing and 
collecting it shall take charge, to a very great extent, of the labor and the raw 
material which produces the commodity tOi be taxed. Because of this neces- 
sary supervision on the part of the government, the excise tax had for ages been 
obnoxious in Great Botam. In Scotland the inherent hatred of excise duties 
had become proverbial before the days of Robert Burns, for in his age, among 
the peasantry, the killing of an excise tax-collector was considered almost, if 
not entirely a virtue. This was largely due to the necessary supervision which 
the collector imposed on the private aiTairs of the individual. 

The predominating nationality among the pioneers of these four counties 
was Scotch-Irish. But whether they were Scotch-Irish, English, Scotch or 
Irish, they brought here a deep-rooted hatred for the excise system of the Eng- 
lish government. These four counties, as we have seen, were moreover well 
ada]3te(l to the product of grain, and could in that day of limited market, pro- 
duce but little else that was salable to any extent. Of course, we have spoken 
of the skin and fur trade, but that was necessarily the business of but few of 
the early pioneers, and could not be followed by our people generally. There 
seemed to be an injustice in the excise tax on liquor for the reason that the tax 



HISTORY OF IVESTMORELAXD COUXTV. 195 

was based on the quantity of goods, and not on their vakie. Our owners of 
poor lands of today could with reason object to a system of taxation if the same 
amount of tax was levied on every acre of land in the state. Land in our . 
mountains may be assessed at one dollar per acre, and lands near our cities at 
a thousand dollars per acre, and the tax based on these valuations may be per- 
fectlv equitable. Our pioneers imagined that the very opposite of this equit- 
able adjustment was brought about by the excise tax on distilled spirits. To 
illustrate their view of the situation: Whisky in any of these four counties 
could be purchased in any desirable quantities at from twenty to twenty -five 
cents per gallon, and an excise tax of seven cents per gallon was a little more 
than one-fourth of its value. But this same whisky, if transported to Philadel- 
phia, or if a liquor of equal grade was produced near there, would readily sell 
for fifty or sixty cents per gallon, and the excise duty of seven cents per gallon 
was therefore less than one-eighth of its value. So they theorized and rea- 
soned that if a farmer in Westmoreland county raised a hundred dollars' worth 
of rye and made it into whisky, he paid twenty-five dollars tax on it, but if he 
lived near Philadelphia, and by the same labor produced the same amount of 
rye, he paid but twelve dollars. Those who framed the law had in view, of 
course, the greater value of the land in the east than in the west. Nevertheless 
the apparent injustice was very patent to those who, while they could not un- 
derstand fine theories of economics, could see the difference between giving the 
government the one-fourth of their grain product in \\'ashington county, and 
only the one-eighth of it in another section. 

An excise law in Pennsylvania had been passed by the legislature in 1772, 
but had never been carried out, particularly in the western section, largely be- 
cause there v/ere but few products here to tax. But the state still owed con- 
siderable money on the Revolutionary war debt, which had been appropriated 
but never paid. This law of 1772 was greatly opposed by the counties west of 
the Allegheny Mountains. It w^as complied with in a. measure by the eastern 
counties, who rightfully complained violently of the growing injustice of 
forcing them and not the western counties to pay the excise tax. It was there- 
fore concluded in 1785 to pay the Revolutionary debt by an enforcement of the 
excise law of 1772. This, they reasoned, was such a debt that the patriotic 
men of the w^st, who had done sO' much for the cause of freedom, would gladly 
help to pay regardless of the mode of taxation. So in June, 1785, an excise 
collector named Graham was sent out to enforce the obnoxious law. He met 
with much opposition by all o.ur people, but succeeded in collecting some money 
in Fayette county, and perhaps a few small amounts in Westmoreland county. 
When ready to begin on our county he came to Greensburg and put up at a 
hotel. About midnight he was awakened and called to his door by a man of 
gigantic proportions, in complete disguise, who told Graham that his name 
was Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils, and that a number of his smaller devils 
were outside waiting for him, and that it was his pleasant duty to hand him 



196 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAXD COUNTY. 

over to them. After mucli trouble, with the assistance of the landlord, the 
collector managed to escape the mob. He had a man arrested whom he 
thought to be the pretended Beelzebub, but on a trial the defendant proved an 
alibi, and was discharged. So he left Greensburg and went over to Washing- 
ton county, where he received still rougher treatment. The Washington mob 
took his pistols and broke them to pieces before his eyes. They also took his 
commission and all of his papers, and threw them in a very muddy part of the 
street, and then compelled the collector to walk back and forth over them and 
tramp them out of sight in the mud. Then they shaved one side of his head, 
fixed his hat up so that it looked ridiculous, and compelled him to wear it 
wrong end foremost, for the cocked hats of those days were made with a well- 
defined front to them. They also shaved his horse's tail, and then put him 
astride of the animal and started him toward the Westmoreland county line, 
with instructions that he should not stop until he passed from Washington 
county. A committee o.f the mob went with him and made him "halt" at every 
still house, where they compelled him to drink a sample of their product. 
When he reached the county line he was passed over to Westmoreland, and 
threatened with treatment compared with which his present treatment was 
mild, should he ever return. So the west would not pay the excise tax on. 
whisky, and rather than engage in an open war the legislature repealed the 
law. But in 1791, Congress passed a law laying four pence (about eight 
cents) per gallon on all distilled spirits. These four counties with which we 
are dealing, had two members in congress. They were Smiley, from Fayette 
county, and William Findley, from Westmoreland. They opposed its passage 
all they could, but it was nevertheless passed. In opposing it they undoubtedly 
expressed the almost unanimous sentiments of their constituents. Findley, at 
least, was a man of fine ability. Albert Gallatin, undoubtedly one of the 
greatest men of the nation, was then a citizen of Fayette county, and opposed 
it with all his power. 

But when they came to appoint a collector, for once no one wanted the ap- 
pointment. The government also, on March 3rd, 1791, modified the tax and 
the general provisions of the law, to take efTect, however, only in 1794. 

In the meantime the four western counties were united in their opposition 
to the law or its execution, and were boastful of the victory they had achieved 
over the state government. They were now emboldened by their success to- 
resist the national authority as well. 

The state was divided into districts for the purpose of collecting this excise 
tax on liquor, and an inspector was appointed for each district,- or "survey,"" 
as they were denominated in the act. By the terms of the law each distiller 
was to furnish the inspector nearest his works a full description of his estab- 
lishment, which was at any time to be open to a visit and a searching examina- 
tion on the part of the inspector. This does not seem unreasonable to us now, 
but it appeared to raise the wrath of the pioneer to its highest pitch. A public 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 197 

meeting to oppose the law was accordingly called at Redstone (now Browns- 
ville) for July 27th, 1791, and all of the four counties were to be represented 
by delegates. The meeting was held on the day appointed, with a very general 
attendance of delegates. They recommended county meetings in the county 
seats of the counties of Allegheny, Westmoreland, Fayette and Washington. 
The Washington county meeting was the most hostile. They resolved in a 
published resolution, that any one who accepted an office under Congress, and 
who tried by virtue of the office to execute the provisions of the excise law, 
should be regarded as an enemy to his country. They advised the people to 
treat all officers with scorn and contempt, and to refuse to associate with them. 
A meeting of delegates was held in Pittsburgh, on September 7, 1791, which 
also passed resolutions against the law. 

The government finally appointed Benjamin Wells, of Fayette county, as 
the excise collector for Fayette and Westmoreland counties, and Robert John- 
son, of Allegheny county, for Washington and Allegheny counties. Wells was 
not a man of high character by any means, and could not have been chosen to 
any office by those who knew him. Johnson was a good man, of honest inten- 
tions, though not a man of great force. Wells opened an office at his own 
house near Connellsville, on the south side of the Youghiogheny river. John- 
son Avas overtaken on the road home, on September 6, by a band of disguised 
men, who stripped him naked and gave him a complete coat of tar and feathers, 
then shaved his head, and, taking his horse, started him home on foot in this 
condition. Then came an officer to arrest the supposed offenders. He was 
promptly hoTsewhipped, tarred and feathered, and his money and horse taken 
from him. Then he was blindfolded, taken to the woods, and tied to a tree 
where he remained for five hours, till an accidental passerby released him. 

In May, 1792, Congress lowered the rate of tax and permitted the distiller 
to take out a monthly license instead of a yearly one, but the penalty for not 
complying with the law was raised from one hundred to two hundred and fifty 
dollars. No office could be procured for the officer in Washington or West- 
moreland county, but each officer established his home as his office in the other 
two counties. In June, 1792, Wells undertook to open an office in Greensburg 
and one in L'niontown, but he was soon forced to abandon both offices. 

Some of our distillers returned their establishments, but the large majority 
refused to do so, hoping that by a united opposition they could soon force the 
government to abandon the execution of the law. Still others abandoned the 
liquor business as manufacturers entirely. On August 21, 1792, a meeting 
was held at Pittsburgh, which was attended by prominent men from all of the 
four counties. They drafted resolutions urging the people to obstruct the exe- 
cution of the iniquitous law in every legal way possible, and to petition Con- 
gress to repeal it at once. On September 15th, 1792, President Washington, 
in a very dignified but firm published address, admonished all good citizens to 
refrain from unlawful combinations and from doing anything looking toward 
the obstruction of the law. The time for returning stills was in June of each 



198 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

year, and the difficulty with the government was to get offices in the var- 
ious counties in the district. On June ist, notices appeared in the Pittsburgh 
Gazette, giving the location of the various offices. Philip Reagan's house was 
designated as the place where the office would be opened for Westmoreland 
county. 

The Secretary of the Treasury at that time was Alexander Hamilton. He 
made a complete report of the entire trouble, and this report has been the ground 
work of nearly all that has been written about the subject since. In it he notes 
the great difficulty the officers found in procuring an office in Westmoreland 
county. Wells was still the officer for oair county, and held to his position with 
z zeal that might be expected from a better man. He was insulted and abused 
both at home and abroad, and his family was ostracised, and even threatened 
with violence, when he was not at home. His house was attacked in April, 
1792, by a large party of men in disguise. It is likely they thought he was at 
home, for on finding him absent they left without doing much mischief. On 
November 22 a similarly attired band found him at home, compelled him to 
surrender his books and commission, and to sign and publish his resignation in 
the papers within two weeks, or have his house burned on his failure to do so. 
This he promised to do, and the disguised band left without committing further 
depredations. The reader has doubtless noticed that the entire community 
seemed to be personally interested in overthrowing the law. There were, of 
course, many distillers in comparison to the whole number of inhabitants, but 
these could not have held up as they did had they been unaided. The secjuel 
to the popular uprising, lies in the fact that nearly every man in the community 
was engaged in producing rye, and therefore the law came home to each and 
every one of them. 

Finally, in June, 1794, John Wells, a son of the collector, was made deputy 
for Westmoreland county, and actually opened an office in the private residence 
of Philip Reagan, on the Big Sewickley, and not far from his father's house 
near Connellsville. Both Wells and Reagan had charge of the office. The 
likelihood is that Reagan knew the sentiments of the community, and w^as to 
stand guard over the office. At all events, he at once converted the house into 
an old-fashioned blockhouse, with portholes, and barred doors and windows. 
They also employed a few men to. assist them in defense, though these were hard 
to procure, for the sentiment among the good and bad people of the community 
was decidedly on the other side. The warm nights of June had scarcely ar- 
rived till the new blockhouse was put to a test. It stood several nightly at- 
tacks, and each night the attacking party grew more foTmidable. Finally, a 
large band of armed citizens gathered round it and began firing. The fire was 
returned by Reagan and his' forces, and this was kept up for several hours. 
Fortunately no one was hurt on either side, and the crowd repaired to Reagan's 
barn, which they burnt to the ground, and then repaired to their homes. 

In two or three days the whole community was tho.roughly aroused, and a 



HISTORY OP IVESTMORBLAXD COUXTV. 199 

small army almost, numbering- not less than two hnndred and fifty, went to 
renew the attack. Reagan, under a sort of an armistice, held a conference with 
their leaders. Knowing that they would soon overpower his small party, he 
])roposed to surrender if they would grant him honorable terms, and also as- 
sure him that his property and person should not be destroyed or injured. In 
return for this he was to give up his commission, and forever wash his hands 
of excise tax in the future. These arrangements were put in writing, each 
party taking a copy. Then Reagan came out, and brought with him a keg of 
whisky. Upon the whole, it was too much of a victory to pass over without 
properly celebrating it. and a great many of the victors became intoxicated. 
Later in the celebration it was proposed that Reagan was escaping too easily, 
and that he should be set up as a mark to be shot at. Others, who were op- 
posed to this, were bent on giving him a good coat of tar and feathers, for they 
had brought an abundant supply of these materials with them. Others, who 
were more honorable, said that he should go unmolested as was stipulated in 
the agreement when he surrendered. This controversy was finally settled by 
agreeing that the party should go and capture Wells, and that he and Reagai- 
should then both be tried by a court martial and tried together. So they set out 
for his residence to capture Wells, but fortunately he was not at home. This 
enraged them still further, and they burned his house to ashes, with all its con • 
tents. They also posted a few of their party in ambush to capture him on hir 
return. But during all this, Reagan escaped, and the mob having recovered 
from the effects of too much whisky, let Wells go. 

Shortly after this tearing up of the Westmoreland office about one hun- 
dred and fifty men from our county, emboldened by this success, went to 
Somerset county and attacked Captain Webster. They destroyed his com- 
mission, and made him promise never to act as collector of excise tax again. 
They made him accompany them part of the way home, and also mount a 
stump and give three cheers for "Tom the Tinker," that being the popular 
'.ame of the day used to personate the opponents of the law. It probably 
originated with a distiller who would not join the opponents of the law, and 
had his still cut into pieces by the mob. This they called, mending, that is, 
"tinkering" the still. So many anonymous letters from the outlaws were 
signed "Tom the Tinker." 

It is difficult now to appreciate the extent of this uprising, or the rapidity 
of its growth. Reason was thrown to the winds. Many ministers took 
the side of the people, though they did not encourage mob violence. No 
minister could have retained his pulpit had he sustained the excise law. The 
lawyer was popular if he defended the rabble, and not otherwise. No man's 
jiroperty was safe if his neighbors even suspicioned that he was against them. 
In their general opposition they w^ere led by the best mdn in the community, 
who, however, never sanctioned mob violence. Findley, Smiley, Bracken- 
ridge, Cook, Young, Ross, Bradford, Holcroft and others were all in sympathy 



200 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 

with any legitimate methods of opposing the execution of the law. They prob- 
ably laughed at head-shaving, and were not entirely cast down when the 
exciseman was clothed in a coat of tar and feathers. 

In 1794 the law was modified by Congress, but nothing short of a general 
repeal would satisfy the people. Some of the outlaws were indicted before 
the courts, but able lawyers defended them, and no jury could be found to 
all agree to convict them, no matter what the evidence might be. A number 
of distillers who had not complied with the law were finally summoned to 
be tried in the United States courts at Philadelphia. General Neville and the 
marshal of the district went to serve a summons on a distiller named Miller. 
A furious outbreak followed, which was due more to Neville's presence than 
to the serving of the summons, for others had been served before this. ■Men 
came from the surrounding harvest fields and chased them out of the country. 
The same day a military meeting was being held at ]Mingo Creek, in Wash- 
ington county, to draft men for service against the Indians. The report of 
chasing the marshal and Neville soon reached this meeting, seven miles 
away, and a mob at once took across the country for the marshal's house. 
When they arrived they demanded a surrender of his commission, his papers, 
etc., which was refused. A general battle began at once. The inmates 
of the house were better armed and better protected than the attacking party. 
Six of the mob were wounded, and one man was shot dead. On this the 
besiegers retired, but only to better prepare for another attack. A meeting 
was called, and all good citizens were warned to "strike for freedom," or be 
"forever enslaved," etc. In response a large meeting was held at Mingo 
Creek meeting-house, the purpose of which was to avenge the outrages of 
the previous day. They appointed three men as their leaders, and IMajor 
McFarlane, an old and experienced Revolutionary, officer, was elected com- 
mander of the forces. In the meantime United States soldiers were collected 
by the marshal to guard General Neville's house. The mob marched at 
once to his house and demanded his papers and commission. This, of course, 
was refused. Then the women were allowed to pass from the house unmo- 
lested, and the battle began. The regular soldiers defending the house were 
in command of Major Kirkpatrick. It is hardly fair to say that McFarlane 
commanded the insurgents, for they very soon reached that degree of ex- 
citement that the commander was impotent. Early in the fight, Major Mc- 
Farlane stepped from behind a large tree to confer with Major Kirkpatrick. 
As he did so he was shot, and died immediately. The death of their leader 
only added fuel to the fire. The barn and out-houses, with all their harvested 
crops, were at once set on fire, and Kirkpatrick and his soldiers were allowed 
to retire. 

^^'llcn this became more generally known, lawlessness became the rule, 
even in our own county. The United States mail carrier was waylaid within 
a mile of Grecnsburg by two men, who perhaps had no other motive in view 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAXD COUNTY. 201 

Ihan to show their contempt for the authority of the government of the 
United States. They broke open the mail bags and rifled their contents, not 
for financial gain, but to show that the people, and not the government, 
lield complete sway. After this trouble at Neville's, and the Greensburg mail 
robberv, a public meeting was called for by David Bradford, of Washing- 
ton, who claimed to be a leader of the uniteil forces of the four counties. 
This meeting was held at Braddock's Fields, the location of which is well 
known. The call was that all should come armed, and provided with four 
davs' rations. About sixteen thousand citizens actually came together on 
the day appointed, though thousands came through curiosity, and with neither 
arms nor rations. David Bradford was chosen commander-in-chief of the 
forces, and Edward Cook was his chief lieutenant. Bradford's idea was 
to besiege the town" of Pittsburgh and burn the houses of the leading citi- 
zens interested in sustaining the law, such as Neville, Gibson, Brison, Kirk- 
patrick, etc. 

Hugh Henry Brackenridge was then the most gifted and eloquent lawyer 
in Western Pennsylvania. He had defended free of charge many of the 
ringleaders of this insurrection who had been indicted heretofore, and was 
thoroughly trusted by all of them. When he and his friends saw that no 
power would prevent them from marching to Pittsburgh, they tried to induce 
them to go in a peaceable and orderly manner. ''Let us go there to show them 
that we are not a mob, as they believe us to be, but that we are law-abiding 
citizens who are only asserting our rights." etc. '"Let us march through the 
town, turn around and come out again, and encamp on the banks of the river 
in peace, then we will have won the people of Pittsburgh to our side." 
Cook advocated the same behavior on their visit, and the mob could not 
well turn a deaf ear to the advice of either of them, particularly to the ad- 
vice of Brackenridge. The inhabitants of Pittsburgh were greatly alarmed, 
but their fears were allayed on the arrival of the army, for they had, indeed, 
very largely been governed by Brackenridge's advice. Had they attempted 
to burn the buildings marked by Bradford for destruction,- the citizens of 
Pittsburgh would have fired on them, and undoubtedly a general conflagra- 
tion and slaughter would have ensued. As it was, there was little harm done. 
Some one in the night set fire to Kirkpatrick's barn, and we believe this 
was the only damage done the town. In a day or so the greater part of the 
army was disbanded, or disbanded itself, and peace and quiet again reigned 
in the four counties. 

About this time the more conservative citizens of the four counties began 
to see the inevitable result of this opposition, if not in some way gotten under 
control. A meeting was therefore called for at Parkinson's Ferry on August 
14th, 1794. This was attended by two hundred and sixty delegates from the 
four western counties. Edward Cook was made chairman of the meeting, 
and Albert Gallatin secretary. They, as usual, protested in a series of reso- 



202 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

lutions against the excise law and against taking offenders to Philadelphia, 
three hundred miles away, for trial, etc. The meeting was the most con- 
servative held yet in the' district. There were some very eloquent addresses 
made by such men as Gallatin, Brackenridge, Rev. Edgar and others, and 
a slow proceedure by purely legal methods was the trend of their remarks. 
It is now generally supposed that these men and many of the delegates were 
there for the purpose of manipulating the convention, and to thus gain, by 
clever management and wholesome advice, what could not be gained by 
open opposition to the rabble. The whole force of the insurrection was 
here represented by two hundred and sixty delegates, and by the manage- 
ment of Brackenridge and his friends their power was delegated to one 
representative from each township, which reduced them to sixty delegates. 
Then these sixty delegates appointed a committee of twelve who would 
thereafter represent them and serve as a standing committee in the future. 
The newly constituted committee could therefore bind the four counties, 
and could be much more readily handled by the conservative leaders than 
a larger body could be. It was certainl}' a master stroke on the part of the 
managers, and went far towards a re-establishment of order in the excited 
community. The committee of sixty met at Redstone on September 2nd, and 
the standing committee of twelve was ready at any time to meet a similar 
committee appointed by the government or the state. 

About this time Governor Mifflin, of Pennsylvania, appointed Justice Mc- 
Kean and General William Irvine to investigate matters in the four counties, 
and to report the situation as soon as possible. He also ordered that the 
Pennsylvania troops be equipped for service at once, and issued a call for 
an extra session of the General Assembly. The capital of the United States 
was then in Philadelphia, and President Washington was not slow to act 
in a matter of this magnitude. On August 7th he issued a proclamation 
commanding all insurgents to lay down their arms before September ist, 
or abide the consequences. He also began to raise an army, and in a few 
days had 12,950 men ready to march at a moment's notice. They were 
largely from the drilled soldiers of the Revolution, and were recruited from 
Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia. The President 
appointed James Ross, Jasper Yates and William Bradford to represent the 
government and to confer with a like delegation, should one be appointed, 
representing the insurgents. Governor Lee, of Virginia, commanded the 
troops raised by Washington, and the Governors of the several states com- 
manded the troops sent out by them. The President himself, as commander- 
in-chief of the army, arranged to accompany the troops, and with him were 
General Henry Knox, Secretary Hamilton and Judge Peters, the latter judge 
of the United States district court of Pennsylvania. The army set out from 
Philadelphia on October ist. and President Washington, leaving a few days 
later joined them at Carlisle. There he met \\'illiam Findley, Ejjhraim 



HISTORY OF U'ESTMORELAXD COUXTY. 203; 

Douglass and Thomas :\Iorton, who were appointed to represent the insur- 
gents in a conference with the President. It is probable that Washington 
learned for the first time at Carlisle from these three representatives of the 
conciliatory movements that were in progress, and of the actions of the 
committees referred to above. Washington came on west with the army 
as far as Bedford, where he arrived on October 19th. There he remained 
for two or three days, and then went back to Philadelphia, reaching that 
city on October 28th. It is often claimed that he came on west and was 
in Westmoreland county, but the claim is entirely unfounded. From the fact 
that he came west at all and then returned without coming near the real 
seat of war, it is supposed that he learned on the way that the backbone of 
the insurrection was broken by the conciliatory meeting, and the uprising 
of the loyal and conservative citizens. It will be remembered that news 
did not travel rapidly at that time. 

The United States commissioners and those appointed by the state and 
also those on the part of the insurgents appointed by the Parkinson Ferry 
meeting, all met in Pittsburgh on August 20. The commissioners had no 
power to compromise, and refused to make any recommendations for the 
postponement of the trials of those who had been summoned east, or for par- 
dons for those who had committed crimes, until they had been fully assured 
of a sincere determination on the part of the people that thev would there- 
after obey and assist in the execution of the laws. The committee on the 
part of the people presented their grievances as to the injustice of the 
excise .law, and also the new grievance, viz.: the injustice of being taken 
three hundred miles away from home for trial in a strange land and by a 
strange jury. They were in session about a week, and then adjourned to 
Brownsville, where they met on August 28. There they held a two days' 
session. Brackenridge and Gallatin both talked long and with more even 
than their usual eloquence in favor of law and order, and in favor of a com- 
plete submission of the people to the provisions of the excise tax law^. Brad- 
ford spoke in favor of forcible resistance, but he failed to carry the com- 
mittee with him. They were afraid to vote openly lest they be ill-treated 
by their neighbors, who were still in favor of resistance. So each delegate 
was provided with a piece of paper on which was written the two words, 
"yea" and "nay." They tore ofT the one word and destroyed it, -while they 
voted the other, thus securing an absolutely secret ballot. The result of all 
this was a final decision to submit the matter to the people. They were to 
have an opportunity to sign a paper pledging loyalty to the government and 
its laws, and for that purpose the polls were to be open on September nth, 
which was the last day given for them to submit. But many of the remote 
sections did not learn of this decision, and therefore thousands did not turn 
out at all. It was no small matter, it must be remembered, to circulate this 
decision over our four large counties in that day of slow travel. In some- 



^04 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

places a lawless element prevailed, and the polls were broken up. Many, 
Jiowever, refused to sign this pledge of allegiance. Bradford came over and 
signed, and urged the people to do the same. Nevertheless, from all these 
circumstances, the signatures were very few compared with the population, 
or with the number of men in revolt. The commissioners had gone east, 
.all except James Ross, who remained here to carry the report back to Wash- 
ington, at Philadelphia, 'ihe result did not by any means satisfy the Presi- 
dent, and he determined at once to send the army to the west. 

Then the sixty township delegates met on October 2nd and drafted reso- 
lutions explanatory of the meager number of signatures to the allegiance 
papers. The burden of their explanations was that it was owing to want of 
time, and in proof of the general feeling in the community, they, the repre- 
sentatives of the district, resolved to submit, and so severally pledged them- 
selves.- They appointed Findley and David Reddick, the latter from Wash- 
ington county, to wait on the President and the Governor. They met Wash- 
ington at Carlisle on October 10, as has been above stated, and wi:h them 
were delegates Douglass and IMorton, who. with Findley, composed the other 
■delegation. Their purpose in presenting the matter to the President was 
with the hope that after learning the true situation here — that is. after being 
made familiar with the real change of sentiment — he would not permit the 
army to march further west. They tried, therefore, to prove the genuine- 
ness of the change of sentiment, and to show that the meagerly signed al- 
legiance papers did not fairly represent the situation. President Washington 
heard them patiently, but declined to stop the progress of the army, inasmuch 
as it was then nearing the seat of war. He assured them that there would 
be no violence done by the soldiers, and that all that was necessary on the 
part of the people was to show a genuine evidence of their return t^ their 
former allegiance to the United States government and its laws. A rapid 
change was taking place all over the survey, but particularly here in We;t- 
moreland. Shortly before this a man's property and person were not safe 
if he was even suspicioned by the Greensburg people. To illustrate : Colonel 
Gibson came to Greensburg, and, having been guilty of no oiTense except that 
he tried to have the people remain loyal to the law, he should have been 
safe anywhere. Yet his arrival was scarcely known until he was waited 
■on by a body of men who ordered him to quit the towai within half an hour. 
He was concealed in the house of General William Jack. Yet in October our 
people had so far backed down that they were almost falling over each other in 
-irder to sign the allegiance papers. 

When Findley and Reddick came back to Westmoreland from their visit 
to President Washington, they called a meeting of the committee for Oc- 
tober 24th to report the result of their mission. Many citizens' meetings were 
held in all parts of the four counties, so that the delegates who were to meet 
•on the 24th could know for a certainty that there was a change of sentiment 



HISTORY OF U'ESTMORELAXD COUXTY. 205, 

generally, and could act accordingly. They also wanted these expressions- 
made public before the army should reach here. One of these meetings was 
held in Greensburg on October 22d. They drafted resolutions and in no un- 
certain sound set forth their disposition to sustain the law. David Marchand,. 
afterwards a member of Congress, was president of the meeting. The resolu- 
tions adopted here were as follows : 

1. Resolved, As the sense of this meeting, that it is the duty of every good citizen 
to yield obedience to the existing laws of his country. 

2. That we discountenance all illegal acts of violence from whatever motive, and 
that for redress of grievances the privilege and right of the citizen is to petition and remon- 
strate if necessary. 

3. That we will support the civil authority and all officers in the lawful exercise 
of their respective duties, and assist in securing for legal trial all offenders against, 
the laws when called upon. 

4. That the citizens of this town and township will give no opposition to the open- 
ing of an office of inspection therein, should the same be contemplated by the govern- 
ment, and that we will use our endeavors to remove improper prejudices, and recom- 
mend a peaceable and general submission. 

5. That a copy of the preceding resolutions be given to one or more of the deputies 
of the town or township who are to meet at Parkinson's Ferry on Friday the 24th inst.,. 
together with a copy of the assurance paper, signed by the citizens of this meeting, in 
order that the same may be laid before the members of the said committee, and that another 
copy may be made out for publication in the Pittsburgh Gazette, and that the same be 
attested by the chairman and clerk of the meeting. 

Four hundred and twenty citizens of Greensburg and vicinity signed these- 
resolutions. Similar resolutions were adopted in all parts of the four counties 
and, as may be supposed, when the convention inet all was harmony. The- 
same committee was appointed to carry this general expression of sentiment 
to President Washington. They started at once for Bedford, but, learning- 
that Washington had left there for Philadelphia, they went to Uniontown 
to confer with General Lee, whose advance forces had reached there. Lee 
was a brave officer of the Revolution, and a most refined and cultured gen- 
tlenian. He treated the committee with great courtesy, and assured them that 
the soldiers would respect the rights and propertv of the citizens, and asked 
them to pass that word over the four counties as rapidly as possible. All 
the General required was allegiance to the law. He asked of the people that 
they be only as active in restoring law and order as they had formerly been 
in raising a disturbance. The report of this conference with General Lee was 
printed and rapidly circulated throughout the four counties, and greatly 
allayed the fears of the people, who had great fear of the approaching army, 
for they rei-nembered too well, and to their sorrow, the visits of the British 
army a few years before this. Books were now opened at nearly all of the 
offices of the justices of the peace, so that the people might take the oath of 



^o6 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTV. 

allegiance. A day was fixed for the entry of stills, and, almost without an 
exception, the distillers reported them as required by law. It indeed seemed 
.that the people were, as General Lee requested, as anxious to sustain the 
law as they had formerly been to oppose it. 

The army came on west, most of them marching as far as Pittsburgh. 
But all was quiet, and thousands were daily taking the oath of allegiance. 
So, on November 17th, orders were given for the return of the troops. In 
.a few days all were gone except a small battalion under General Morgan, 
which it was thought best to have remain all winter in the vicinity of Pitts- 
burgh. One company was stationed at Greensburg and one at Uniontown. 

While the army was passing through here it became its dutv to hunt up 
and arrest men who had been most active in raising this disturbance, as well 
as distillers who had failed to make their reports as required by law. ;\Iost 
■of those who were arrested were guilty, but Judge Peters, perhaps in every 
case where he could do so without stultifying himself, ruled that they were 
not guilty of any oflfense against the government. Some who had been ar- 
rested were released after a hearing, and others were sent to Pittsburgh. 
While confined there, some were released, because they had influential friends, 
it is said, while others, no more guilty than they, were sent to Philadelphia 
for trial. There they were confined nearly a year before they were tried. 
This was a great injustice to them, and particularly does the injustice appear 
when it is learned that nearly all were eventually acquitted. Two were 
convicted from Westmoreland county. Probably by even a fair construction 
of the law all might have been found guilty of treason, for they had levied 
war against the United States', had incited and engaged in rebellion and in- 
surrection.' John JNIitchell was the leader of those who robbed the mail 
near Greensburg. He was convicted and sentenced to be hanged, but was 
afterwards pardoned by the President. The other conviction was for arson, 
he being the one who had set fire to Wells' house. After being sentenced 
to be hanged it was learned that he was a very ignorant man, and was sub- 
ject to epileptic fits. Washington first reprieved and then pardoned him. 
The march of the army eastward may be fraught with interest to those 
who are accustomed to the rapid mobilization of soldiers in our present day. 
The first day's march was to Hellman's, fifteen miles east of Pittsburgh; the 
second day's march was to a point near Greensburg, marching fourteen 
miles that day ; the third day they marched to the Nine Mill Run near 
Youngstown, eleven miles ; the fourth day they camped two miles east of 
Fort Ligonier, eleven miles ; the fifth day they crossed Laurel Hill, and en- 
camped at the foot of its eastern slope, nine miles. The sixth day's march 
they reached Stony Creek, where Stonystown now stands, or a mile beyond, 
making eleven miles. On the seventh and eighth days they marched respect- 
ively eleven and twenty-four miles, and reached Bedford. From Bedford they 
marched to Carlisle, a distance of ninetv-five miles. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTV. 207 

David Bradford was die leading spirit of the Whisky Insurrection. He 
was a citizen of Washington county, and was a prominent lawyer, practicing 
both there and in Westmoreland. He was a very unsafe man to follow, but 
had great powers as an agitator. When the government issued a general 
amnesty proclamation it included all citizens engaged in the insurrection ex- 
cept Bradford. He had fled to Louisiana, then a Spanish possession, and 
become an extensive planter. He was always respectably connected, being 
during the insurrection a brother-in-law of Judge Allison, the grandfather 
of John Allison, late register of the treasury of the United States. His 
granddaughter was married to Richard Broadhead, United States senator 
from Pennsylvania, from 185 1 to 1857. His son was married to a sister of 
Jefferson Davis, late President of the Southern Confederacy. In Louisiana 
he became wealthy, and as a planter attained a fairly high social position. 
He died there in i8og. 

James McFarlane had been a soldier and officer of undaunted courage 
in the Revolution. He was born in 175 1, and was therefore but forty-three 
years old when he was killed near General Neville's house, on July 17th. 
On his tombstone are engraved these words among others : "He defended 
American Independence against the lawless and despotic encroachments of 
Great Britain. He fell at last by the hands of an unprincipled villain in 
the support of what he supposed to be the rights of his countrv. much la- 
mented by a numerous and respectable circle of acc[uaintances." 

General John Neville was born in Virginia in 1731, and was one of the 
few brave officers of the Virginia troops who escaped death at Braddock's 
defeat. Afterwards he was colonel of the Fourth Virginia Regiment in the 
Revolution, and was in the battles of Trenton, Princeton. Germantown and 
]\Ionmouth. After the Revolution he moved to Pennsylvania, and was a 
member of the supreme executive council. President Washington appointed 
him inspector of revenue for the counties of Western Pennsylvania, and 
this was why his residence, etc., were burned on July 17, 1794, as has been 
told above. He died near Pittsburgh, July 29, 1803. 

William Findley was by far the most looted man connected with the 
^^■hisky Insurrection, but as he represented Westmoreland in Congress for 
nearly a quarter of a century we shall refer to him at length among special 
biographies of distin,guished men of Westmoreland county. 

The Whisky Insurrection is an important event in our history and one that 
has been much written of. It was the first attempt on the part of the people to 
disobey or overthrow the national authority. It came when the new govern- 
ment was in its infancy. It is well for us that Washington was then president 
of the United States, and that he met the opposition with that strength and 
dignity which characterized his every act. Those who would know more of 
the insurrection will be abundantly repaid by reading "The Lattimers," a novel 
of great strength founded entirely on the \Miiskv Insurrection. 



CHAPTKR XV 



Old Customs. — Crops. — Industries. — Clothes. — Wild Animals, etc. 

Westmoreland's early settlers were nearly all young men. Rarely ever 
were they beyond middle age. The old people were left behind in the east. 
Often a young man came across the mountains unmarried, and here located a 
tract of land, cleared a part of it, and sometiines built a house the first year. Late 
in the fall or winter he returned to his former home to get married. Then the 
two set out for their new home. He usually had a horse, not likely a thorough- 
bred, but an animal upon which the young wife rode, and on which was also 
carried a few indispensable household goods which could not be purchased here. 
Sometimes the well-to-do pioneer had two horses. If so, on one was a pack- 
saddle on which could be carried about three hundred and fifty pounds of 
household utensils. In any event they brought a skillet, a pot, perhaps a few 
dishes, an ax and mattock, for clearing land. There was generally some bed- 
ding material, though this was often entirely of skins of animals killed on the 
way or after their arrival. They also brought garden seeds, and a few driea 
herbs to last them until new ones could be raised. 

Seed corn and seed grain generally was kept at the garrison, and thither 
went the farmer who was in need when planting time came. They also brought 
seeds from favorite apple and peach trees. The settler himself usually walked 
all the way, and carried a rifle on his shoulder, for a rifle he must have. Then 
if +hey had with them a few pounds of hard baked bread, and if he was fortunate 
enough to shoot a deer, ?. turkey or smaller game, they were all right for a 
week's journey or more through the wilderness. In novels one often reads of a 
bed in the wilderness, made of small branches of trees, and this is exactly what 
was done. There were often days of travel without the sign of a human habita- 
tion. If the travelers were near a settler's house, be it ever so humble and 
crowded, they were alwa^'s welcome. This long journey was almost always 
made in the springtime, when sleeping outside was not dangerous nor incon- 
venient. They were nearly always going to a settlement where they were 
looked for and welcomed by old acquaintances or relatives. The journey had 
in it much to look forward to with pleasure. Seldom did a family locate 



HISiORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 209 

in a new country alone. In case the community into which they 
were moving was entirely new, they formed a company among- neigh- 
bors in the east who journeyed and located together. These companies 
were called colonies, and often had among- them entire families. As has been 
observed before, the first log huts or cabins were built near the forts ; then they 
spread out along the military roads, and finally the entire community was set- 
tled. Nearly all the forts in our county were garrisoned by the government 
of the state, and in these the settler and his wife or family were made welcome 
until the log house was ready for occupancy. Their residence in the fort was 
therefore not limited to times of danger. 

We had few Daniel Boones in our early pioneer days — men who isolated 
themselves entirely from companionship, and lived alone in the wilderness. 
Our people were home-makers, and after the acquisition of land, what they 
most desired w-as neighbors. They did not come here to hunt and fish, nor to 
buy furs and skins from the Indians. Generally they left better homes in the 
east, but were willing to endure all manner of hardships for a few years, with 
the hope of abundance later on. They very soon learned to love their new 
homes, and to fight for and defend them as though they were palaces. How- 
ever rough the land, however small the clearing, or however rude his mud- 
plastered log cabin, i.t was his own, and that consolation compensated him for 
all its imperfections. Because he owned it himself he was willing to defend it 
against all the world, if necessary. "To be a land owner," said James G. 
Blaine in his eulogy on President Garfield, "has been a patent and passport of 
self-respect with the Anglo-Saxon race, ever since Horsa and Hengist landed on 
the shores of England." For many years, as we have seen, he worked with his 
gun near him, and in company with his neighbors. In house building he was 
compelled to have neighbors, or at least some assistance, in putting the logs in 
place. He could cut down and hew the timber, and perhaps a neighbor could 
help him drag the hewn logs to the place selected for the house. Then came 
the "raising," which was the big day of our pioneer ancestry. The whole com- 
munity assembled and put up the skeleton of a house in a single day. Some- 
times they cut and hewed the logs, and put up the house between "sun up and 
sun down." A house fifteen by thirty feet, two rooms below and one or two 
above, was a good sized house for that period. The axe was the principal tool 
used in house building. On the day of the raising the older citizens had each 
a "dram" before they began work, for whisky was supposed to be indispensable 
in every well regulated community. There was also a big dinner, which was 
prepared by the women of the community, and thus both old and young were 
brought together at the raising, and all had a part to perform. The young 
man could show his strength lifting logs to their places. And not by any 
means the least attractive feature of the occasion, were the young maidens who 
attended to prepare the noon dinner. The young men were rough and un- 
polished, half hunter, half farmer, but nevertheless they greatly attracted our 



210 HISTORY OF W EST M OREL AN-D COUNTY. 

grand dames. The raising was governed by rules which greatly facilitated the 
work. The men were divided into two equal parties, and after the military 
order of the day, each side chose a captain. The logs were pushed up long 
slides at each side and at the ends, and the party which could the most rapidly 
put its logs in place were the victors. When it was at its place, it was notched 
at the ends to fit on the log underneath it, and thus be firmly held in place. 
The man who notched the ends of the logs was called the "corner man," and 
there were four of these, that is, one for each corner. A sharp axe, a true eye 
and a strong arm were the necessary requisites of a good "corner man." Had 
he these qualifications he could very quickly notch the log to fit on the log be- 
low, and cut its upper side to fit the triangular notch of the next log. He must 
also keep his corner plumb. While he was doing this, those on the ground were 
moving the next log up the slides to its final position. A good "corner man" 
must have the last log finished by the time the next arrived, so as not to keep 
the men waiting. But if he did keep them waiting sometimes in the morning, 
when the logs did not have to be raised very high, later in the day he could 
often indulge in the sarcasm of calling for logs, for each succeeding log had 
to be raised one log higher. The average log when green, if twenty feet long, 
would weigh not less than fifteen hundred pounds, and it was not an easy 
matter to hoist it fifteen or twenty feet with their limited appliances. 

The average house of say twenty by thirty feet was nine or ten feet to the 
top of the first story, and the second story was not generally more than four or 
four and one-half feet to the eaves of the roof. Sometimes when the house 
was more pretentious, the second was a full story of eight or nine feet. The 
house was generally built of logs of equal length, making no provision for door 
or windows. The logs were afterwards sawed away for such openings. That 
this was done can be noticed even to this day in our old log houses. Some- 
times there was a chimney in the center, with a fireplace on each side, but not 
often. It was oftener at one side or end of the house, and frequently on the 
outside, in which case there was an opening through the logs for the fire place 
In most houses the chimney was made of stones and mortar. A few houses 
had chimneys made of small pieces of wood, which, when laid in thick mortar 
which was made to thoroughly cover the inside, were fairly well prot<'cted from 
the sparks of the fire. The earliest houses had no glass windows. Light was 
admitted through greased paper, and the light at best was very poor. There 
was no glass manufactured in America then, and it was a luxury only inilulged 
in by the very wealthy. 

At the top of the first story were logs called joists, which were hewn on one 
side only. They were usually made from small saplings, say eight or ten 
inches in diameter. On tlie top came the rafters, made after the manner of the 
joists, but not so heavy. The roof was made of clapboards — that is, boardlike 
pieces split from straight-grained trees. They were nmch larger and thicker 
than split shingles. Sometimes they were smoothed off with a drawing-knife. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 211 

From these were also made the rough floor of the second story, if there was a 
second story at all, for some of the houses were but one story high. The floor 
of the first story in the most primitive houses was made of clay. Next to clay 
in advancement was the puncheon floor, which was made of logs split in the 
center and the flat side turned up. These flat surfaces, with a little dressing, 
made a comparatively level floor. The fireplace was a great wide opening, so 
that a log even six feet long could be rolled into it as a back log, and this helped 
to throw out heat. Over this great fireplace was hung the rifle, bullet-pouch 
and powder horn. Sometimes the antlers of a deer hung above the fireplace, 
and from this were suspended the implements of the hunter. The door was 
hung on wooden hinges. The door latch was a short bar of wood on the inside, 
and from it upward and through a hole in the door passed the latch-string, so 
that it could be opened from the outside if the string was out. But when night 
came, the latch-string could be drawn in, a simple way of locking the door. 

The house was made comparatively wami by filling up the cracks with 
small pieces of wood, and covering them with mortar. It was also a dry house 
after the floor was put in, but these were almost its only merits. The houses 
burnt in Hannastown were the best in the county in 1782, yet none of them were 
better than the description above, and some of them were smaller. The houses 
in Pittsburgh before the Revolution were not equal to this. In 1774 there was 
but one house in Pittsburgh with a shingle roof, and it was pointed out as a 
marvel in wooden improvement, and as an evidence of the enterprise of the 
city. 

Dr. McMillen, who came to Westmoreland county to preach in 1788, says: 
"The cabin in which I was to live was raised, but there was no roof to it, nor 
any chimney or floor. We had neither bedstead, nor table, nor stool, nor 
chair, nor bucket. We placed two boxes, one on the other, which served us 
for a table, and two kegs served us for seats, and having committed ourselves 
to God in family worship we spread our bed on the floor and slept soundly 
till morning. Sometimes, indeed, we had no. bread for weeks together, but 
we had plenty of pumpkins and potatoes, and all the necessaries of life ; as for 
luxuries, we were not much concerned about them." 

Dr.' Power, who also preached here during the Revolution, says that for 
years after he came there was not a frame, stone or brick house within the 
limits of his congregation, and his charge included the most advanced parts 
of our present county. Stone houses were not built till the latter part of the 
century, and even then only when building stones could be readily procured. 
The furniture within the house was, as Dr. McMillen has indicated, nearly all 
home-made, and generally without sawed lumber. 

Our day laborers now would not live in such houses, even though they 
were rent free, yet these were the houses and castles of our ancestors, who 
were not inferior to us in physical or moral qualifications, nor were they by 
nature intellectually inferior to us. If any reader who prides himself on being 



212 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

descended from one of Westmoreland's old families will go back far enough 
he will find his ancestor living in just such a house as is described, and likely 
in one not quite so complete. Nor will he be ashamed of it, if he is a truly 
worthy and loyal son of his pioneer ancestry. The greatest and most distin- 
guished man of the last century, Abraham Lincoln, was born in a one-storied 
log cabin in Kentucky. Daniel Webster, in a political address made during the 
"Log Cabin" campaign of 1840 at Saratoga, New York, said : "It did not 
happen to me to be born in a log cabin, but my elder brothers and sisters were 
born in a log cabin, raised amid the snowdrifts of New Hampshire, at a period 
so. early that when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney and curled over 
the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence of a white man's habitation be- 
tween it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist. 
I make to it an annual visit. I carry my children to it, to teach them the hard- 
ships endured by the generations which have gone before them." 

JNIany of our early houses had but one room, and sometimes these had a 
second story, called a loft, which was reached by a ladder, or by pins driven 
into the logs. On the rafters were hung pieces of smoked meat, all kinds of 
herbs for medicines, and clothes not in use. 

Stables were built like houses, but of smaller logs, and they were very 
rarely hewn logs. They were built of smaller logs to protect the stock from 
wild animals, such as bears and wolves, which roamed the country at will, and 
were very destructive. The stables were not much of a protection against the 
blasts of winter, for the cracks between the logs were very rarely closed. 

When the early settler began to erect a building he always located it near a 
never failing spring, and thus generally on the lower ground. In felling trees 
for his house and stable he was clearing his land, and thus his first fields were 
near his house. Then he cut down others, rolled them together and burnt 
them. Other trees were deadened, and among these he raised grain. One 
man in a few days, could deaden the trees on a piece of land that would make 
a good sized field. In a few years the storms uprooted the deadened trees, and 
the huge boles by that time were very dry. So if three or four were rolled 
together, making a "log heap," they could be reduced to ashes in a few hours. 
In this way the primeval woods were cut away. Very little of the timber was 
utilized. 

The next duty was to fence a few of his fields, that is, such as he intended 
to farm regularly. Cattle and horses were allowed to wander at large, brows- 
ing in the woodland. Bells were hung on the necks of animals, so that they 
could be found when needed, and that the farmer might know from the sound 
of the bell when they were encroaching upon his fields. Bells were almost in- 
dispensable in the new unfenced country, yet they sometimes wrought great 
harm. Often the Indians removed the bells from the animals, and, hiding be- 
hind bushes or in dark ravines, induced children thither whom they captured, 
the children thinking they were approaching the cows or horses for which they 
were searching. The bells on animals were also a protection against wild 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 213 

beasts ; rarely ever, it is said, would a wolf or a bear attack an animal which 
wore a bell. 

Corn, rye and potatoes were the principal products of the early farmers. 
They were very anxious to raise wheat, but had poor success in its culture, 
even in our present wheat growing communities. They believed that wheat 
and rye could be raised only on high ground, and for that reason settled the 
highlands first. The more level tracts and rich river or creek bottoms which 
now constitute our most productive farming communities, were considered too 
damp for wheat or rye to live in over winter. Furthermore, the rich bottom 
land was very wild, and had to be reclaimed by more farming than the higher 
ground. Corn was largely used for bread, and by hunters and travelers in 
the form of "Johnny cake," which was originally called "journey cake." The 
average garden was a very small affair. • They raised there the sage from the 
leaves of which they made a tea. used as a substitute for the tea of commerce ; 
to the real tea our ancestors were always hostile after the tax was put on it. 
When Arthur St. Clair first moved his family to Ligonier valley, Mrs. St. 
Clair brought with her a chest of real tea. Many of her new neighbors had 
heard of it before, but had never seen or tasted it. They came from near and 
from far to attend her "tea parties." They enjoyed it so much that it was 
but a short time till it was all used up. CofTee was not known to our early set- 
tlers, but by the time of the Revolution it was used for special occasions. The 
root-bark of the sassafras tree, roasted chestnuts and rye were all used in the 
place of coffee. From necessitv our ancestors in that age were clothed almost 
entirely in home-made garments of linen or wool, or a mixture of the two 
called "linsey-woolsey." or of deer skins. 

Flax culture is so far removed from our generation that perhaps a few 
words concerning it may not be out of place here, for it was undoubtedly the 
mainstay among our early pioneers. Flax culture is one of the oldest of human 
industries. Dr. Heer, the great German botanist, has proved pretty thoroughly 
that it was cultivated before history was written among the prehistoric races 
of Europe. After many years of research he asserts that it was cultivated in 
Egypt five thousand years ago. Its use in the formation of textile fabrics is 
much older than the use of wool, notwithstanding the fact that sheep are among 
the oldest of domestic animals. 

It is a fibrous plant, from the bark of which all linen is made. It will 
grow readily on any soil, but best on moist channery ground. The seed is a 
small brown grain, and from it is manufactured all pure linseed oil. The seea 
being small, a gallon would sow about two acres of ground. It grew about 
two and one-half feet high, and bore a very pretty blue blossom, a field of 
which was most attractive to the eye. When ripe it was pulled up by the 
roots and dried on the ground. The seeds were removed by threshing with a 
flail. The stem itself was very brittle when dried, and the bark was very 
tough, so, when "broken" on a crude machine called a break, the bark remained 
whole, while the brittle stems were reduced to small pieces, and they were easily 



214 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



separated from the fiber. The finer part of the fiber or bark could be spun 
into linen, and the coarser part was made into a cloth called tow. This separa- 
tion was done by drawing it lengthwise over a "hackle," which was a board set 
with numerous iron spikes projecting about four inches. These caught the 
rough material and allowed the finer fibers to be drawn through. 

Then the housewife spun it on a spinning wheel propelled by a treadle 
tramped by one foot. Spinning wheels can yet be seen in many houses, pre- 
served as mementoes of the past age. Spinning with a wheel was a very an- 
cient and a very simple art. They spun in the days of Virgil, for he says the 
"slender thread of life is drawn out from the spindles of the Fates." They 
both spun and wove in Greece, and, still farther back than Homer's age, the 
Egyptians were weaving linens, which would be of a high order even in our 
own advanced age. Homer compares the life of man to the "swift flying 
shuttle of the weaver." 

Nor was spinning confined to the pioneer women in the west, but our 
grandmothers in the best of families were taught to spin and knit, and many 
of them to weave. The mother of General Washington, herself a woman of 
high birth and great wealth, could spin, knit and weave, and Martha, the 
wife of the General, became famous for her knitting societies in the Revo- 
lution. The cloth was woven on looms, wdiich were rather expensive affairs, 
and only perhaps one family in a dozen could afford one. The neighbor 
who had a loom took in weaving, and retained a part of each web woven 
in payment for such services. A fabric made of tow or linen was durable, 
but not a warm covering for cold weather. So a mixture of wool and linen 
called "linsey-woolsey" was made. Wool could be prepared for home spin- 
ning by carding it, which was done by two hand-cards looking not unlike 
currycombs for horses. Then it could be spun and woven like linen or tow. 
But the early pioneers' great difficulty in producing wool was to protect 
the sheep from wolves and bears, which were found in every section of our 
county. Foxes, too, were very destructive of young lambs. When the 
country grew older these animals were banished, and wool carding by hand 
was abandoned, for in many localities there sprang up fulling mills. To 
these the farmer sent his wool to have it made ready for home spinning, or he 
could have it spun at the factory and woven into such cloth as he stood in 
need of. The woolen factories were run by water-power, and the work 
they did was not expensive. They also colored the wool and made it into 
blankets of red and white, or blue and white, some of which may yet be 
seen among the older families of the county. These factories were not built 
in Westmoreland county till after 1800, and for twenty-five or thirty years 
at least the early pioneer families spun and wove their own cloth almost en- 
tirely. In 1807 there were two of these factories in Greensburg, as is noticed 
from the Fanners' Register of that year. They colored and carded wool into 
rolls so that the pioneer's wife could spin them, and for this they charged 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 215 

ten cents per ponnd. Some time before this there was a fulhng mill at 
Jones' Mills, and there was also one erected in North Huntingdon township, 
on Robinson's creek. Every house in the community had one or more spin- 
ning wheels, but there was not one family in ten that had a loom. Through 
many a long evening, aided only by the flickering light of a tallow dip, did 
the industrious mother nod and bend over the spinning wheel, or grasp the 
countless threads with weary fingers and weave them into lasting webs of 
cloth for her children. 

In the winter men wore caps made from the skins of animals, and 
in summer they wore straw hats, but all of home manufacture. Later the 
hatters came and made wool felt hats, which never wore out. Men wore 
buckskin trousers, and these were worn by men in all ranks of life. They 
often wore a hunting shirt, as it was called, though its use was not con- 
fined to the chase. This was sometimes made of doeskin, and was very 
slow to wear out. The well-to-do men wore shoes with buckles in the sum- 
mer, while the poorer class wore moccasins, a soft-soled shoe of home manu- 
facture, made of buckskin. Along with shoe buckles and knee breeches went 
blue coats and brass buttons. There was much more difference between the 
well-to-do and the poor as to dress than there is now. 

Women wore short skirts of linsey-woolsey in summer, and of all wool 
in the winter. They wore beaver or felt hats upon special occasions, and 
their hats did not differ very much from those worn by men. It was then 
fashionable to tie a fringed silk handkerchief over the head. Most of the 
women before 1800 went barefooted in the summer when about their house 
work, and prior to that many of them attended church, the only dress oc- 
casion they had, without shoes. In the winter they wore moccasins. It was 
at least thirty years after the first settlers came here that silk dresses began 
to be worn by women. It is true, as we have said, that a silk dress was taken 
from a house in Hannastown by an Indian, but this was remarkable, and 
its being silk was perhaps what preserved the incident to us. Calico and 
all kindred fabrics were unknown to our ancestors of the Revolutionary 
period. Part of the time in the early years of the last century calico sold 
here for one dollar per yard, and as late as 1825 it was selling for fifty cents 
per yard. 

Another crude industry by which they lived was boiling the sap of the 
maple or sugar trees, and making syrup and sugar. It was done in a very 
primitive manner compared with the same industry of our age, yet the result 
was nearly the same. They bored a small hole into the tree and inserted a 
hollow reed or stick through which the sap dropped rapidly into a trough 
made of the halves of a split log, each about three feet long. These pieces 
were hollowed out with an ax, and could be made to hold three or four 
gallons. This they boiled in kettles over wood fires. The season for making 
it was very short, being confined to the first mild weather of spring time, 



2i6 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

and when the farmer had many trees they kept the sap boihng night and day. 
The sugar camp was a favorite place for young men and women to meet 
at night to make sugar, and keep the fire going and the water boiling after 
the older people had gone home, for the boiling was always done in the 
midst of the grove of trees. The trees on the eastern slopes of the hills 
and in the bottoms where the warm spring sun struck them best were the 
most productive. 

A Scotch-Irisnman located here about 1840 and was very much delighted 
with the sugar making, which to him was a new way of securing the saccha- 
rine substance. He worked his trees all he could in the early spring time, 
and then told his neighbors that he would "stop ofif" till his corn was planted 
and then would begin again. The English novelist, Thackeray, made a greater 
error than this. In his charming story entitled "The Virginians," written to 
portray the ill-fated expedition of General Braddock to Fort Duquesne, he 
represents his hero, George Warrington, as being taken a prisoner by the 
French and confined in the fort until his 'escape in October, 1756. The hero 
started on foot at once by long night journeys through the wilderness to his 
home in Virginia. The novelist represents him as verv greatly admiring the 
hues of October frosts on the forest of western Pennsylvania. Traveling 
mostly at night to escape pursuers, he saw one night a distant light in a valley. 
The hero was very hungry, yet feared to go to the light lest it be the camp of 
Indians or hostile French. But finally, spurred on by hunger, he ventured 
close enough to discover, to his great joy, that they were farmers boiling sugar, 
for this, says the novelist, "is the season of the year that the Pennsylvania 
farmers secure their sugar by boiling the sap of the maple tree.'" 

The Indians, too, made syrup from maple sap. They cut a small niche into 
a tree and caught the drops of sap in pots or troughs, boiling very much as our 
forefathers did. The sugar, or syrup, was like all other products made for 
home consumption only. It was long years before there was a sale for it. The 
industry, with many modern improvements, is yet extensively carried on in 
many parts of western Pennsylvania, though the product now is almost exclu- 
sively syrup. 

The woods also at that time were full of wild fruits, and moreover all small 
berries and fruits grew more abundantly and were more luscious than now. 
Horace Greeley noticed this same change in the New England states, and attrib- 
uted it entirely to the destruction of the original forests. This so changed the 
moisture of the atmosphere and the earth, and thus so subjected the tender 
buds to intense heat, stormy blasts of wind and severe cold, that small fruits 
scarcely thrive at all now compared with what they did when the country was 
in its original condition. Blackberries, whortleberries, raspberries, wild 
plums, wild strawberries, haws, wild grapes, and sarvesberries, the latter rip- 
ening early in June, were plentiful then, and of a much finer quality than the 
few stragglers which the woodsmen may now occasionally find. Peach trees 
bear fruit in tbeir third vear. and were easily raised, while, owing to climatic 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 217 

changes, can scarcely be orrown at all now. Then they grew in every com- 
munity. So also with cherries, another early bearer and rapid grower. As we 
have seen from Dr. JNIcMillen's statement, our ancestors lived sometimes for 
days without bread. Often an escaping captive traveled hundreds of miles 
through an almost unbroken forest subsisting entirely on wild fruits. 

Most of the early families depended mainly for their meat supply on the 
trusty rifle. All men were presumed to know how to handle a gun. Small 
boys looked forward to a great day in the future when they could be entrusted 
with firearms. There was a necessity for this long after the Indians were driven 
away. Judge John B. Steel tells of a well founded tradition of an old land- 
owner near Greensburg who had nine sons, and in boasting about it always 
added "that each son had a gun." The country was full of game. The most 
prominent animals were the black and brown bears which were very common 
and especially so in the eastern parts of the county, where spurs of the Alle- 
gheny mountains afforded them a ready passage from their natural haunts. 
They by nature inhabited deep ravines, and had dens among the rocks and in 
caves, common in the mountains. They ventured out into the settlement per- 
haps only in pursuit of food. The settlers' sheep, pigs and calves were always 
in danger, and much more likely to be carried off in the winter than in the sum- 
mer, for obvious reasons. 

Charles Mitchell lived on the Loyalhanna, not far above Latrobe. One 
morning he saw a large bear seize one of his half-grown pigs and carry it off. 
The bear swam the creek with the pig, and there hid it behind some rocks by 
covering it with leaves. IMitchell would have shot the bear, he said, had it not 
happened on the "Sabbath day." All parts of the county till at least 1810 suf- 
fered from such depredations. Bears were often seen and killed in the county, 
notably in the eastern part, after 1833. I" 1^*^ years they have been seen on 
Laurel Hill, and occasionally one has been chased over Ligonier valley. But 
all of them probably belonged to the Allegheny mountains, and were driven 
from their lair by hunger or by dogs. It is safe to say that no bears inhabited 
^^^estmo^eland county except temporarily after 1850. The meat of the bear 
very much resembled pork, and was hiehly relished by the pioneers. They 
invariably laid in a stock for winter, and preserved it by salting and smoking 
it. The bear skin also made at least the half of a ven,' warm blanket, because 
of his thick covering of fine soft hair. The bear was hunted with dogs. He 
could travel long distances through dense underbrush, and was therefore not 
by any means an easv prey for the hunter. \\'hen closely pursued by dogs he 
climbed a tree for safety, and could then be easily brought down by a ball from 
a rifle. They were also caught in large steel traps, and were so furious when 
thus snared that they frequently bit the foot off above the jaws of the trap and 
thus escaped. They were caught more securely in pens made of strong logs, 
built on the side of a hill, or so that the bear could easily reach the top o.f the 
pen which was bated with a tempting cow's head. But the roof or top of the 
pen was so arranged that it tilted with the bear's weight and dropped him into 



2i8 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY 

the pen, the roof immediately closing over his head. It was thus ready to an- 
trap another bear. They were not crafty or cunning animals, and were often 
entrapped by these simple devices. 

There were also many deer in the country, and they were not confined to 
the mountains, but roamed all over the present limits of the county. Later, 
of course, they were driven to the mountains exclusively. They fed on grass, 
herbs and buds. They were wild and quick of movement when frightened, but, 
with the hunter who understood their habits, were comparatively easily shot. 
Dozens of them were sometimes shot in a single year by one hunter. The deer 
had certain places that it crossed from one hill or spur of mountains to another, 
and the hunter who knew these crossings could easily get a shot at them. There 
were then certain places where the water was slightly salted, and these places, 
called "deer-licks," were much frequented by them, for they had the same 
taste for salt that cattle, sheep- and horses have. The meat was unlike bear 
meat; it more nearly resembled mutton or beef. It was dried, or "jerked," 
for preservation for future use. The skin of the deer was, like that of the bear, 
of great service to the hunter. It was covered with a thick growth of hair that 
was almost impervious to cold or rain. When prepared in the form of buckskin 
or doeskin it was manufactured into breeches, coats, moccasins, etc. 

Small game such as wild turkeys, pheasants, partridges, rabbits, squirrels, 
etc., abounded, and in some localities were a nuisance to the growing crops. 
Ammunition was too expensive to be wasted on such small game, though wild 
turkeys were always considered a great delicacy. Twice each year they had 
droves of wild pigeons to shoot, that is, on their migrations north in the spring, 
and south in the fall. To give some idea of small game hunting let us quote 
the following from an old newspaper published in 1820. "On July 4th (1820) 
fourteen hunters, citizens of Donegal township, divided into two parties and 
commenced the pursuit of game. In the evening they met, and the scalps 
being counted, it appeared that they had killed 239 squirrels, 216 blackbirds, 
255 ground squirrels, 258 woodpeckers, 7 ground hogs, 18 hawks and 16 
crows. Total number, 1009." 

The hunters of that day did not hunt for pleasure alone. From the Farm- 
ers' Chronicle of January 25, 1828, we learn of a meeting of many citizens of 
the county, held at the house of Jacob Coon, in Unity township, to devise some 
means of destroying wild animals which had been committing great depreda- 
tions among the sheep and poultry. At this meeting it was resolved that the 
citizens of Derry, Unity, Salem and Hempfield townships, and others, be re- 
quested to turn out and form a line or circle around a certain district therein 
agreed on, and to have a great circular hunt. The line from Greensburg to 
New Alexandria was to be under the direction of Peter George, John H. Wise, 
William Williams, William McKinney, John Morrison, George Wallace, John 
Bigham, James Craig, James Kean and Jacob Frantz. The line then continued 
along the Loyalhanna and Nine Mile Run to Youngstown, and was to be su- 
perintended by James ^loorhead, John Craig, Abraham Mansfield, Daniel H. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 219 

Barr, James Haney, Samuel Cockran, Edward Braden. ^^'illiam Johnston, 
Tames Guthrie, John Welsh, Robert Dixon, William Cochran and William T. 
Smith. The next line was to reach to Tranger's, on the Buzzardstown road, 
and to be in charge of George Guiger, John Gibson. John Cline, Henry Tranger, 
John Aukerman, Archibald Shearer, William Dinsmore, John Brindle and 
Henry Fiscus. From Tranger's, the line passed through Pleasant Unity to 
Greensburg, and was in charge of Michael Poorman, Henry Grafif, John Welty, 
Robert Jamison, Solomon Camp, Daniel Barns, John Barns, Daniel Kuhns, 
Eli Coulter, John H. Isett, Hugh Y. Brady, William F. Johnston and William 
Jack. 

All were invited to turn out and assist in the work. The place of meeting 
was about the center of the ground surrounded, at McKissock's place, on the 
road leading from Johnston's, or Shaeffer's Mills, to Greensburg. No one was 
to bring firearms, nor dogs unless they led them. All who had tin horns were to 
take them along. Peter George, Jacob Coon, James McGuire, Peter Bridge, 
Adam Coon, Jacob Markle, Robert Storey, Oliver Niccolls and Peter Rogers 
were to stake off the meeting place and manage the final arrangements. To 
manage the hunt, superintend the line and prevent disorder and confusion, were 
appointed Major John B. Alexander, Dr. David Marchand, Alexander John- 
ston, Captain Alexander Storey, Jacob Eichor, George Smith, Major William 
Kean, John Chambers, John Markle and John Rogers. The reader will no- 
tice that the most prominent men in the county took part in this hunt. 

From the same paper of February 8th following we learn that the "Grand 
Hunt" was a great success. The movements began by slow regular steps under 
a clear blue sky, and were accompanied by horns, bells, rattles, etc. When 
they met at the center there were about two thousand five hundred men, and 
foxes were running in every direction. There were thirty red foxes killed. 
The lines also enclosed a bear and a deer, but both escaped before the line was 
thoroughly guarded. Wild turkeys, pheasants and rabbits were passed by the 
score, and were kept very little account of. 

There were then few tools in use by the farmer compared with those found 
on a well regulated farm now. Scarcely any farmer had a wagon, but hauled 
his crops on a sled, which he could easily manufacture himself if he had an 
auger, a saw and an axe. Hay was often hauled with a grape vine instead of 
a rope, and a comparatively good sized pile weighing several hundred pounds 
could be thus dragged in at once by drawing the grape vine around it. There 
were no ropes in the community then. They had a rude shaped plow, but very 
few harrows. To mellow the ground after plowing it, they dragged a thorn or 
other scrubby tree over it. The land was covered with deadened trees and 
stumps, and was very unproductive compared with the same land when thor- 
oughly cleared and farmed. Grass was cut with a scythe, and grain with a 
sickle. Finally grain cradles were introduced, but were used only in cutting 
buckwheat. So it will appear that a farmer with an axe, saw, auger, sickle, 
scythe and plow could manage to get along reasonably well. 



220 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

There was little else done in the county then except farming. There were 
no towns of any consequence, nearly all the people depending upon agriculture 
for a livelihood. Women invariably worked in the fields and helped to per- 
form much of the labor which is now done by men exclusively. To destroy 
the forest was the pioneer's first duty, for it will be remembered that the entire 
country was practically an unbroken wilderness at that time. The work on 
the farm was very hard. A day's work was from daylight till dark. In the 
winter months they cleared lands, and later threshed their grain with flails. 
No one who worked a day or a few days for a neighbor, was paid in money, 
but in return labor when the neighbor needed help. Any one who lived within 
three or four miles was a neighbor. 

Prior to 1790 there was scarcely a market for any farm product, but each 
was content if he raised enough to live on from year to year, and improved his 
farm or enlarged it. After that, when there came a market for rye, if distilled, 
or when the manufacture of iron made a market for horses, oats and com, then 
the farmers began to build better houses, and all over the county we can see the 
crumbling ruins of old stone houses and barns built in the early years of the 
last century. The farmer during these primitive years had few expenses. He 
had no doctor bills, because there were no physicians. His fuel was cut from 
the surrounding forest. His clothes were homespun or grew on the backs of 
wild animals. Salt, a few iron implements and lead for bullets, were among 
the few necessaries which he could not produce, but even these were subjects 
of barter, and he could procure them in return for rye, potatoes, or skins of 
animals. 

A good hunter in those days used nothing but a rifle, and for small game a 
gun of very small bore and bullet was used. It was not uncommon for a 
hunter to bring in a dozen squirrels or small birds like partridge or pheasant, 
and all of them shot in the head. Squirrels were often killed by "barking 
them." that is, hw shooting a ball into the'bark, or between the squirrel and the 
bark. This was almost sure death to the squirrel, and did not destroy its 
meat. 

Wolves were a great nuisance to the farmer. Taken singly, a wolf was a 
cowardly, skulking animal, but a pack of them, when driven to desperation by 
hunger, would attack either man or beast. The wolf of Pennsylvania was 
brown in color, rather than the gray wolf of the west with which we are 
familiar. They hunted their prey by scent like a dog. A pack would approach 
the cabin of a farmer in quest of pigs or sheep, and announced their presence 
by prolonged howls which terrified the community almost as much as did the 
warwhoop of the Indian a few years previous. In that frenzied condition 
produced by hunger, a gang of them would spring on a horse or cow, fasten 
their teeth and claws into its flesh, and, though fought olif by all the strength 
the suffering brute could command, in a few minutes the animal was brought 
to the ground and devoured. A man alone after nightfall was equally in dan- 
ger. All wild animals were bolder, and more likelv to assault either man or 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 221 

beast a century ago than they are now. This was due, as President Roosevelt 
repeatedly says in his "XMnning of the West," to the fear which has been bred 
and born in the animal by generations of gun-bearing enemies. The only safety 
for a man pursued by a pack of wolves was to climb a tree. They could not 
follow him there, though they could watch him till morning, and it was not a 
pleasant place to spend the night. An early settler named Christian Shockey, 
a resident of Unity township, was returning home from a hunt one cold even- 
ing in the first or second year of the last century. A pack of wolves pursued 
him a long distance. He could have shot one of them, but he knew this would 
not arrest the pack, so he liurriedly climbed a tree. The animals howled around 
the trunk of the tree all night. They would jump, with jaws opened, as far 
up towards him as they could, and he would hear the sharp sound of their 
closing teeth. Far up the sides of the tree the bark for years afterwards 
showed the marks of their teeth and claws. In the morning they skulked ofif 
to their rocky dens, and Shockey wa% permitted to come down and go home. 
Near Shockey's cabin was a large spring which never froze over, though it 
was about twenty-five or thirty feet either way, being in fact the largest spring 
in the county at that time. Here the wolves came for water, and here he 
caught hundreds of them in steel traps, and sold their skins. The spring is 
to this day called Wolf Spring. 

Shockey was, as his name indicates, a German, and we can not pass him 
without a few words concerning his character. He was the son of a Revolu- 
tionary soldier who had been wounded at Brandywine. Christian dealt in 
skins more or less all his life, trapping all the animals he could, and buying 
manv from his neighbors. In 1807 he went to Hagerstown, Maryland, with 
two packhorses laden with furs. He had been a lifelong patron of Jacob 
Gruber's Hagerstown Almanac. Now that he was in the city where they 
were published, he determined to get at least enough to supply his neighbors. 
They were oflfered at a low price, much lower than he expected, so, with an 
eye to a good business investment, he invested the proceeds of his skins largely 
in almanacs, printed some in German and some in English. But, unfor- 
tunately when he reached home he found that they were for the current year, 
which was near its close, so he could not sell them. It is said that he bore it 
good naturedly, and blamed only himself. 

Wolves were always gregarious animals. They generally inhabited moun- 
tains where they could find dens among the cavernous rocks, and where they 
were not too far removed from the domestic animals of the settler. The settle- 
ments contiguous to Laurel Hill and Chestnut Ridge therefore were most sub- 
jected to their depredations. In 1782 the state ofifered five dollars for the 
scalp o,f a wolf whelp and twenty-five dollars for that of a full grown wolf. 
This was in continental currency, which was greatly depreciated, but in 1806 
a reward of eight dollars in gold was oflfered for every wolf killed, and this 
was afterwards raised to twelve dollars. In addition to this, some counties 
which were sorelv afflicted with them offered special rewards. As a result the 



222. HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

premium offered for scalps was much larger in Westmoreland than it was in 
Somerset county, though the animals were more plentiful in Somerset, 
because there were more mountains and it was not so well settled. So many 
old hunters baited the wolves near the county line, but on the Westmoreland 
side, and drew them over to Westmoreland, where the bounty was greater, 
each hunter having to prove that the scalps were from animals taken in the 
county where the bounty was demanded. One old hunter named Dumbold, of 
Somerset county, drew the carcass of an old horse over to the Westmoreland 
side, and there trapped ten wolves from it. He also received one dollar for 
each wolf skin. 

Squirrels and crows were also a great nuisance to the farmer. They dug 
out the newly planted corn grains and feasted on the ripening fields of grain. 
Premiums were put on their scalps also. Westmoreland and Fayette counties 
were authorized by a special act of the legislature to assess and collect a squirrel 
scalp fund. The premium offered was two cents for squirrels and three cents 
for crows. Thf- ]mn::::ii' v.as l>m lullc more than the cost of ammunition. 
This ammunition question alone was a perplexing one. for they could not pro- 
duce the ingredients of powder, nor could they dig lead from the earth. All 
firearms were then discharged by flint locks, and hence they were not compelled 
to buy caps. But lead must be purchased. Powder was often manufactured by 
the pioneer. Its explosive qualities are brought about by the chemical action 
of a union of three non-explosive ingredients, viz., saltpeter, charcoal and 
sulphur. Taking about six-tenths of the former and two-tenths of each of the 
latter, they first pulverized each separately, then mixed them in water, and 
dried the mixture in a skillet o.r pot on the house fire. To keep the mixture 
from becoming a solid mass they were compelled to stir it constantly. When 
finally dried they had a fair quality of powder. The charcoal they could pro- 
duce, but had to purchase saltpeter and sulphur. It could still be made at a 
less cost than the selling price of powder. One old hunter in the eastern part 
oi the county was thus manufacturing powder and drying it on a cook stove. 
Forgetting himself, or perhaps not realizing that it was dry, he stirred the fire 
below with the same paddle he was using in stirring the powder. When 
he again began to stir the powder a small coal perhaps adhered to the paddle. 
At all events it exploded, and very nearly cost him his life. 

Another crying need of the settler was salt. This they could not produce 
from their land, and neither they nor their live stock could get along well 
without it. In Craig's "History of Pittsburgh" is quoted a letter from Broad- 
head, written to the president of the council, in which he says salt will purchase 
material which money would not buy. He urges them to send salt, and that 
they can't possibly send too much salt. All the salt was then brought here on 
packhorses from Hagerstown, Maryland, or from Philadelphia, hence its great 
scarcity. In 179.0 one bushel of salt was worth twenty bushels of wheat. 
Meat could not be kept without salt, so the scarcity of salt brought about a 
corresponding scarcitv of meat. When Pittsburgh was garrisoned it was not 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 223 

uncommon to send the soldiers out to hunt in the woods for game. Few cattle 
were raised because of the enormous prices of salt. About 1800, 
Kentucky salt was manufactured from the inexhaustible salt wells of that state, 
and was brought up to Pittsburgh in barrels on boats, and after that it was 
cheaper. Yet, in 1806, Kentucky salt was worth fourteen dollars per barrel, 
though the barrels were about one-third larger than they are now. For many 
years it was worth from 12^ to 20 cents per quart at retail. Deer licks were 
known here long before the Revolution, but the farmers had neither the money 
nor the knowledge to bore for and manufacture it. It was not infrequent that 
a train of packhorses went east laden with skins and furs and returned laden 
with salt. 

Both congress and the legislature of Pennsylvania passed measures to re- 
lieve the people from their crying need of salt. In September, 1776, a large 
amount of salt was found secreted by some Tory merchants in Philadelphia, 
and it was at once confiscated and divided around among the counties, the 
share of Westmoreland county being three hundred and nineteen bushels. In 
1778 the legislature purchased a large quantity for free distribution, and they 
also passed a law against any one having a monopoly of the salt trade. The 
Continental Congress itself established a salt works in New Jersey, but like most 
of its exploits, the works were not successful. In 1779 a "Committee of Salt" 
was appointed by the state to regulate its price and to force its sale on the part 
of those who had laid by large quantities of it. In a "Merchants ^Memorial" 
relative to a seizure of salt made by the "Salt Committee" on October 23, 
1779, it is stated that they had refused $200 per bushel for it, and that now 
when taken from them for the state's benefit they were only receiving 30 pounds, 
or $150 for it. Flour was very scarce in the east, so President Reed proposed 
in 1799 that salt be distributed among the counties in proportion to the amount 
of flour sent east by them. 

Salt wells were inexhaustible in Kentucky, but they had not as yet begun 
to distill whisky, so when our people began to make whisky, boat loads of it 
were sent down the river and exchanged for salt. But salt in the early part 
of the last century remained high in price, and it was not unusual for farmers 
to unite and send down to Hagerstown or Kentucky a train of packhorses 
which could carry back the salt for the farmer for the coming year. Each 
packhorse could carry from three to four hundred pounds of salt. As late as 1820 
famers' boys went in groups far salt. One horse could carry two hundred and 
fifty pounds of salt, and a boy rider in addition. The rate of travel was about 
twenty-five miles per day. The boys looked forward all year to the prospect 
of the trip to the salt works in the fall. When they returned they were veritable 
young heroes, and were sought to tell of their sight-seeing trip. Shortly 
after 1800 salt was discovered in the Conemaugh Valley by an old woman 
named Deemer, who saw salt water oozing up in the river bottom in times of 
low water. William Johnston first sunk a well and started a salt works there. 
His land lay near Saltsburg, where he built a grist mill and called his place 



224 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



Point Johnston. This was in 1812 or 1813, and his works, which could pro- 
duce about thirty bushels of salt a day, brought down the price considerably. 
Salt was known on Jacob's Creek long before this, because of the deer-licks 
there. William Beck first began its manufacture in that locality, that is on 
Sewickley Creek. It was there about five hundred feet below the surface, 
while Johnston bored a well only about two hundred and ninety feet deep, 
where he found an abundance of salt water. On Sewickley they bored the well 
by man-power purely. Four men stood on the ground, four on a platform 
above them, and the eight men grasped the shaft of the auger, and, raising 




SMITH'S MILL BUILT AT SMITHTON ABOUT 1801 



it about three feet, let it fall ; this was repeated time after time, and the 
auger was turned an inch or so each time. There was a rope fastened to the 
auger after the end of the shaft passed under the ground. It is known 
that they were three years in boring a hole five hundred feet deep, but it 
is scarcely probable that the work was steadily pursued. The well was tubed 
and the manufacture of salt began, and this reduced the price of salt in 
Westmoreland county from five to seven dollars a barrel, the manufacture 
being fairly started in 1820. It was boiled in kettles and salt pans over 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 225 

wood fires. The water was pumped from the well with horse-power. All 
this primitive manner of manufacture made it very expensive, and for years 
afterwards a good cow might be exchanged for salt, but brought only one 
barrel. 

A great manv references have been made to the Continental money of 
this formative period of our county, and to its fluctuating values. The real 
value was so indefinite that it is hard to say what it was worth in gold or 
silver. It was, however, an important factor in the settlement of our county, 
and must be properly considered. It was practically the only measure of 
values they had for years. Gold and silver had scarcely any circulation at 
all in those years west of the Allegheny mountains, but it became a measure 
of values in 1789, when the country as a Union came under the new or pres- 
ent constitution. Prior to that Continental money had scarcely any pur- 
chasing power at all. An old order book of 1780 among other things pre- 
scribes the amounts which landlords are allowed to charge their patrons 
for licjuor and accommodations. These rates are as follows, and are given 
in Continental money: One-half pint of whisky, $6; whole pint of whisky, 
$8.50; supper, $2; breakfast, $2; lodging, with clean sheets on the bed, $3; 
one horse and hay over night, $3. 

So no valuation of property based on such depreciated currency can 
be of any value to us. In 1779 flour and bacon were very scarce here and 
were brought across the mountains on packsaddles. Bacon sold for one 
dollar a pound, and flour was $16 per barrel. Congress resorted to all man- 
ner of devices to sustain the value of its currency. It passed embargo acts, 
legal tender acts, limitation of prices acts, enacted penalties for refusing to 
take it, etc., but all their enactments were ineffectual in giving it a pur- 
chasing power equal cr anything like equal to its denomination. The only 
result seemed to be to bring the Continental Congress into greater con- 
tempt. Perhaps our people suft'ered more from it after the Revolution than 
at any other time. Soldiers at the close of the war were paid oflf in it. 
This brought much of it into our county, and resulted in the immediate 
disappearance of what little gold and silver we had. As if this was not 
enough, the state also issued a currency. There was no reason why this 
might not have been good, for it could have been redeemed by the issuing 
power. But the people were so opposed to paper money that the state's cur- 
rency had but little more value than that of Congress. 

The county commissioners of our county in 1780 adopted a system of 
value which must have been about fair, for it was confirmed by our courts. 
In this system $30 in Continental money was valued at three shillings and 
six pence. This would indicate that one dollar in gold was worth more than 
$150 in Continental currency. David Duncan, commissioner of purchases, 
reported that he had purchased in 1781 stall-fed beef at one shilling per 
pound, state money, and whisky at six or seven shillings per gallon. He 



226 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

further said, "I have liatl men in the Glades trying to purchase beef, but not 
one would sell without hard money." 

The people in Westmoreland had much trouble to pay their preachers. 
Instead of money they often delivered farm products. In Fairfield township, 
in 1789, they stipulated that the amounts subscribed by the members were 
to be paid either in money or grain, and wheat was to be rated, when de- 
livered at the parsonage, at four shillings per bushel, rye or corn at two 
shillings and six pence per bushel. They also bargained that this should be 
paid quarterly, and that it should be sued for as lawful debts if not paid. 
In Sewickley congregation in 1792 they agreed that one-half the preacher's 
salary should be paid in money and one-half in produce. They rated wheat 
at four shillings per bushel, rye at three shillings, and com at two shillings 
and six pence per bushel. Rye was higher then than corn, because they 
had begun to manufacture it into whisky. It is not uncommon to find an old 
will among our records in which the father gives his land to a son. or per- 
haps divides it between his sons, and stipulates that he shall deliver to the 
other son or daughters, as the case ma}- be, a certain number of bushels of 
wheat, rye, oats or corn, and sometimes these products of the farm were 
to be delivered annually to such heirs as their entire share of the estate. 
Thus he made, as he supposed, an equal division of his property, and one 
which his children could carry out. 

Late in the century the merchant came, and stores were started by the mer- 
chant laying in a stock of groceries and common fabrics, which he replen- 
ished twice each year by going east for them. Heretofore we have been 
dealing almost entirely with the farmers, for there were few others worth 
considering in ths community. But late in the century came the first stores 
kept bv the old-time merchants. They were usually at some important cross- 
roads, where was also a blacksmith shop and a few other houses, and some- 
times, when water-power was near, a gristmill was the center around which 
the others clustered. The merchant kept a "store," not a shop, and usually 
lived in the rear of his storeroom. His storeroom was perhaps not over 
twelve by sixteen feet, and had counters around three sides of it. It was 
heated by a wood fire. On his shelves he had dishes, groceries, ammunition, 
tobacco, and a few common fabrics by the web. His goods were sold mostly 
at about one hundred per cent, profit. While this seems enormous, it was 
perhaps not too great, for he took all kinds of farm products in payment, 
and sometimes had great difficulty in disposing of them. He took in bacon, 
wool, butter, eggs, whisky, flour, and, as an old-time merchant of a much 
later date once told the writer, "a little of everything except money." With 
all his profits on his goods he generally had hard work to replenish his store 
twice each year. This he did in the early years after 1800 by a long horse- 
back journey to Baltimore or Philadelphia, carrying in his saddlebags the 
gold with which to pay for the goods he purchased. He was usually looked 



HISTORY OF U'ESTMORELAND COUNTY 



227 



up to as the leading business man of his community. He wrote letters, 
articles of agreement, etc., for his neighbors, and sometimes founded a little 
town, which frequently even yet exists. Later he was postmaster of the 
community or the village, and kept an account of letters sent from the office, 
and charged his patrons with those which they received, for the postao-e 
was then paid by the person who received the letter. So, if the patron who 
received the letter did not have the cash to pay the postage, it was charged 
to him on the books of the storekeeper, in the postoffice book, however, as 
though he had received so much powder or lead. A book of that kind 
kept by an old-time merchant in the early half of the last century is now 
in the possession of the writer. It is a home-made, red-lined book, and is 
kept very neatly with a quill pen. It gives the names of the people receiv- 
ing letters, the office or state from which they came, and the amount of 
postage charged, for this varied according to the distance the letter was 
carried. A letter from any place in this county is charged six cents postage ; 
one from Pittsburgh 10 cents and i2y> cents, perhaps according to its size. 
From Ohio a letter cost 18^ cents ; from New York, 25 cents. There are 
several charges of 39^ cents, and in each the word "ship," or England, 
is opposite, indicating that it came from a foreign land. Only about one 
letter in a hundred is written to a woman, and even these are mostly to widows. 

Western Pennsylvania is by nature a grain producing country. When 
the century closed, Pennsylvania was the only state that was producing more 
grain than its inhabitants consumed. For this surplus there was but a lim- 
ited market. Flour could not, with profit, be shipped a long distance on 
packhorses, even though the east had great need of it. Every section in that 
age had learned, because of the limited facilities for transportation, to pro- 
duce enough of each commodity to supply its own needs if possible. Nev- 
ertheless, we had a surplus of grain, and this brought about the -manufac- 
ture of whisky. When it was taxed by the United States, as we have before 
seen, it came very nearly bringing about a civil war, so great had the in- 
dustry grown in a few years. 

Furthermore, the country dealer had to purchase skins and furs from 
the Indians, who wanted liquor more than any other commodity. \\'e have 
therefore preserved to us many letters from traders to their houses in the 
east, stating that they are handicapped in securing furs and skins by not 
having whisky to ofter in return for them, and that those who have whisky 
get all the paltry trade. Their universal request is for whisky. 

About 1784 the firm of Turnbull, Marmie & Co., who were iron pro- 
ducers in Philadelphia, sent a few stills to Westmoreland county. They were 
at once set up, and the business grew very rapidly. In a few years the Phil- 
adelphia company opened up an iron business in Pittsburgh with the main 
purpose of making stills, though they engaged also in a general iron busi- 
ness. They were among the first, if not the first, iron producers in the city 
which has since controlled the iron market of the world. Our people now 



228 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

could find a market for their whisky, and could not find a market for their 
rye and corn. Hence they were in a measure compelled to distill their 
products. By 1792, or thereabouts, stills were very numerous all over West- 
ern Pennsylvania. Judge Veech, who wrote a great deal on the Whisky 
Insurrection and the early history generally, says there were only a few less 
than six hundred in the western counties of the state. Every community 
had them. In some sections there was a still in every fifth or sixth house. 
:Manv, indeed all of them, were very small affairs compared with our mam- 
moth plants of this, generation, but they made whisky, and that was all they 
were meant to do. Many farmers traded land for stills. A farmer who 
had no still took his grain to his neighbor who had one, and the neighbor 
took a part of the product in pay for distilling it. Resultant from this the 
farmers engaged largely in rye culture, and even those who had no money 
could convert their rye into liquor. The stills were small, such as are used 
by the latter day- "moonshiners," and could be put in a cellar, a spring-house, 
or a small log cabin built for that purpose, and which has since been known 
by the pretentious name of "still-house." Very few of them had mills con- 
nected with the stills, but some of the larger ones were located near an old- 
fashioned gristmill. The farmer took his grain to the mill, and after it was 
properlv ground, hauled it to the distiller. 

As a result the use of liquor became very general, though the almost 
universal testimony is that but few of our ancestors drank to excess. Store- 
keepers took whisky regularly in exchange for goods, and sold it to their 
customers. It was not unusual, indeed it was quite common, for the country 
merchant to have a barrel on his counter, and to give each customer a dram, 
the women and children as well as the men. There were few farmers who 
did not have a barrel in their cellars, to which all members of the family 
had free access. This custom was kept up and was not uncommon as late 
as 1840. The general custom was to drink it straight, but sometimes it was 
mixed with tansy or mint, or sweetened with maple sugar. Taken in mod- 
eration, it was probably a preventive of fevers, ague and colds, and many 
other diseases in their incipiency. Davy Crockett said it made a man warm 
in winter and cool in summer. It was used bv the barrel at raisings, parades 
and musters. It was common to pass it around at weddings and at all other 
gatherings. Ministers did not preach against it as they do now. Often at 
funerals, in cold weather, it was heated and given in tin cups to those who 
had a long ride or walk to the graveyard. This appears almost shocking to 
us, but it must be remembered that they drank it as a tonic or medicine, 
as we drink coffee, and not as a beverage. Clergymen drank it openly. Rev. 
Dr. McMillen was certainly a man of high character and many virtues, yet 
his biographers all' relate of him that when on his way to Presbytery, in 
company with Rev. James Patterson, they stopped at a tavern to get a drink. 
When the liquor was poured into the glasses, Patterson, being a very devout 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 229 

man, proposed to ask a blessing before drinking- it. But, the blessing bein'T 
a somewhat protracted eft'ort, while it was in progress and Patterson's eyes 
were closed, tne old doctor drank both glasses, and then admonished the 
young preacher that he must ever thereafter "watch as well as pray." But 
the young preacher did not go away thirsty. On one occasion Bishop Onder- 
donk came to Greensburg to attend and officiate at a rather extensive and 
important confirmation. On his way to the church, clad in the usual robes 
of his order, he stopped at Rhorer's hotel and drank a tumbler of brandy 
and no one thought he had done anything particularly out of the way. It 
is not correct to say that clergymen generally drank, using the term as we 
use it now, but many of them, like their parishioners, used liquor, but in 
moderation. 

In 1756 Reverend Beatty. who has been spoken of as chaplain in Forbes' 
army, and as preaching the first sermon at Fort Duquesne after its capture, 
accompanied Benjamin Franklin and his forces to Fort Allen. Franklin says 
in his autobiography that the preacher complained to him that the soldiers 
did not attend prayers with any degree of regularity, and Franklin told him 
that each soldier was entitled to a gill of rum each day, and advised Rev. 
Beatty to act as steward in dispensing the rum, and to distribute it each 
morning after prayers, or after the sermon. The reverend gentleman took 
the advice kindly, and told Franklin afterward that it worked to a charm, 
saying that prayers were never more generally nor more punctually attended. 
Yet he was a man of high character, and, as the reader will see, figured 
largely in the early Presbyterianism of the county and of Western Penn- 
sylvania. 

In 181 1, Washington Furnace, near Laughlintown, had just been com- 
pleted, and on the Fourth of July the citizens had a great celebration, not 
only of the nation's birth, but of the great strides they were making in the 
iron industry as v/ell. The Register of that date reports the proceedings, 
and says that "after partaking of a handsome and wholesome repast, they 
drank some whisky mixed with pure water." These people were leaders 
in the religious and social world, and we must not be considered as seeking 
to cast a reflection or disrespect upon their memories. We are merely en- 
deavoring to give the reader a few illustrations of the almost universal cus- 
tom of using liquor among our better people. 

The government, though economical by necessity, purchased a great deal 
of whisky for the Revolutionary soldiers, and issued it to them as regular 
rations. It was not uncommon for a young man to engage to work with a 
farmer all winter for his bed and board and three drams per day. In fact, 
whisky in those days was used somewhat like coffee is now. A favorite 
proverb of our liquor using ancestor was, "Give strong drink unto hini that 
is ready to perish and wine unto those that be heavy of heart." "Let him 
drmk and forget his poverty and remember his misery no more." 



230 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



When General ^^'illiam Irvine announced the "Glorious News" of the 
surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, he added the following : "The com- 
missaries will issue a gill of whisky extraordinary, to the non-commissioned 
officers and privates upon this joyful occasion." Commissioned officers were 
not limited to a "gill, extraordinary." This was in Pittsburgh, and the sur- 
render was doubtless properly ratified. 

Furthermore, in the age of which we are writing, whisky was almost 
a measure of value, a medium of exchange in the place of gold which did 
not circulate, or of Continental or state money which had no fixed value. 
Corn, wheat, rye, etc., were valued by the quantity of whisky a bushel would 
bring. John Barleycorn was always a ready sale, and with it the pioneer 
could purchase all groceries, household goods or anything else in the market. 
Land was often bought with whisky. Our best men bartered farms for stills 
or their product. Our records show that farms now in the coal belt, and 
worth more than a thousand dollars per acre, were once sold for a few 
gallons of whisky. Even subscriptions to the clergyman's salary were some- 
times paid in wnisky, and not infrequently it was used in paying ofl: church 
debts. 

From the first, as we have seen, its manufacture and sale were under 
the control of the courts, which also fixed the rates the landlord might charge 
his customers for accommodations. By our law a justice of the courts could 
neither make nor sell liquor. Several times Edward Cook, one of the 
justices, was returned for distilling lic[uor. These informations were always 
either quashed by the court or ignored by the grand jury. In 1784 several 
men in our county were convicted and fined for both making and selling 
liquor without license. The council in Philadelphia remitted the fines be- 
cause of "the peculiar distress to which the frontier inhabitants had been 
subjected during the Revolution." While a justice could not sell liquor, 
he could grant the permission to his relatives, and so Robert Hanna, a justice, 
had his daughter Jean repeatedly licensed to sell spirituous liquors. 

In March sessions of our court in 1794 the judges regulated the num- 
ber of tavern-keepers' licenses to be granted in this county. They licensed 
eight for the town of Greensburg. There were no other towns in the county- 
then, for Pittsburgh had left us with the formation of Allegheny county, 
in 1788, but there were several highways leading to Greensburg. On each 
of these thev granted licenses, and to these were granted twenty-seven licenses, 
making thirty-five in all. At that time a great many little matters now paid 
for by the county were done without the thought of pay, except a free al- 
lowance of whisky. When the trial lists were to be made up the lawyers 
met in the prothonotary's office and selected the cases to be tried. The 
prothonotarv had for this occasion a jug of old rye and a plentiful supply of 
tobacco. On election dav the constables served at the window of the election 
room, and never received any other remuneration than as much whisky 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAXD COUXTY. 231 

as they wanted to drink. Jurors served regularly without pay or mileage, 
but the county commissioners supplied them witli free whisky while here. 
Later was added the pay for their dinner at the hotel, but no further re- 
muneration was thought of till about 1810. 

The first mills for grinding grain were small hand affairs which could 
be hauled around from one farm to another, to suit the trade. Later on 
a larger and better style was introduced, which were turned by a water- 
wheel, but they generally had tread-wheel attachments by which they could 
be propelled in times of low water. These mills were called tub mills, 
because of the tub-shaped hopper into which the grain was put to be ground. 
From this we have several streams named Tub Mill, Tub Creek, etc., after 
the mills located on them. These streams, it may be observed, were larger 
then than now, and were regular in their flow. This is of course due to the 
cutting away of the forests, which allows the rainfall to flow at once from 
the hillsides, consequently manv of the streams which formerly turned mills 
are now almost gone. 

The location of mills brought about petitions for roads to them. Many 
of the early road petitions set forth that the proposed road is necessary to 
reach a permanently located mill, etc. Arthur St. Clair built, we think, 
the first permanent mill in the present Westmoreland county in about 1772. 
It was located on ]\Iil! Creek, near where Hermitage Furnac« site, about 
one and a quarter miles north of Ligonier. A notice of it may be seen in the 
quarter sessions docket. 

Dennison's mill, on the Loyalhanna, and Saxman's mill, below Latrobe, 
on the same stream, were built about the close of the Revolution. Jones' 
mill, on Indiana Creek, and Irwin's mill,, on Brush Creek, were built about 
that time, but we cannot determfne the date. The farmer or his boy took 
a bag of wheat to the mill and waited till it was ground. Sometimes when 
water was plenty the mill ran all night, and the miller entertained his cus- 
tomers from long distances till the grist was ground. Water mills on small 
streams could not run all year because of the low water. In the winter, 
moreover, the ice clogged the water-wheels, and the grinding again had to 
stop. Some of the mills had horse-power attachments, and, in times of low 
water, men who wanted grain ground had to furnish horses to propel the 
mill, and to pay toll also, for from time immemorial grain was ground for 
a part of the flour. 

The reader can have but little doubt that our county owed its first settle- 
ment to the roads cut througli it by Braddock and Forbes. We are always slow 
to acknowledge what we, as a community, reallv owe to good roads, to speedy 
methods of travel and transportation of goods. Forbes' road traversed the 
county from east to west, and was long known as the "Great Road." Brad- 
dock's was not so directly across the county. Each was about twelve feet 
wide, and in an early day was arched nearly all the way with overhanging 



232 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



branches. Close by the side of the road stood the tall trees of the original for- 
ests. The road was made for heavy army wagons and mounted guns, but after 
a few years, owing to the undergrowth of the forests and the wash of period- 
ical floods, they were almost impassable. Bouquet, it will be remembered, in 
passing over the Forbes road five years after it was constructed, was compelled 
to leave his heavy wagons at Ligoaiier in order to facilitate his journey to Fort 
Pitt. This was mainly because of the roughness of the road, and Dunmore's 
troops were fortunately handicapped in the same way. 

One of the first of the many petitions presented to our first court, in ]\Iarch, 
1773, was from men living along the Forbes road, asking the court to appoint 
viewers to report the condition of the road with a view of having it repaired. 
They represented that because of washouts, fallen timber and undergrowth, it 
was impossible in some places to pass along it. Of course, the roads in a new 
country, with comparatively few settlers, could not be kept in good condition. 
There was no broken stone in the road-bed. It was, moreover, shaded all the 
year, and therefore very slow to become dry and hard. Over the swamps, 
bridges of corduroy were thrown, but there were no bridges built across the 
streams. AH streams were forded. There were no fences to speak of, and 
but few cleared fields on the western section of the road. The traveler fre- 
quently saw a bear crossing the road in front of him, a deer bounding away 
from a stream as he approached. Sprouts grew rapidly from the stumps of the 
trees felled to make the road, and it is possible that the roads generally were 
not better than those that are now made hurriedly through our mountains to 
remove ties and bark from the central parts of the forests. 

The reader will understand that travel on these roads by wagons was out 
of the question, even if our early settlers had possessed such vehicles. Goods 
were carried long distances by pack-horses only. Wagons did not come in 
use for long hauls till several years after the Revolution, when the State road, 
which will be considered later, was constructed. Men journeyed on horseback 
when traveling either on pleasure or business. This was much more speedy, 
much safer and more comfortable than being jolted over a rough road in a 
carriage or wagon. By horseback remained the popular way of travel long 
after it ceased to be the only means of going about. 

English writers of an early period, notably SmoJlett in his "Adventures of 
Roderick Random." and Shakespeare in "Henry the Fourth," have spoken of 
pack-horses traveling thirty miles per day. If well laden, on our rough roads 
this was impossible. Twenty miles was a good day's journey, and with a bur- 
den of three or four hundred pounds, it required an extraordinary horse to 
make that much. The pack-horse train became a regular business. They 
made much better time than a wagon train could have made, and perhaps 
transported nearly as much weight per horse as the early wagoners. They 
carried one hundred weight by regular contract from Philadelphia or Baltimore 
to Pittsburgh, for from ten to twelve dollars, depending somewhat on the char- 
acter of the eoods. Pack-horses were driven in trains, and one driver, who 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 233 

rode on another horse, managed from eight to twelve of them. All were tied 
by halters to a rope which was fastened to. a breast strap or other similar de- 
vice on the front horse, and all walked in single file. The horses soon learned 
to walk along quietly under their heavy burdens, following the one in front, 
which carried also an iron band across his shoulders, on which was fastened 
several bright sounding bells. They made the trip from Philadelphia to Pitts- 
burgh in about two weeks, and did not travel on Sunday, as a rule, for at June 
sessions of our court, in 1785, Michael Huflfnagle receipted to George Nixon and 
Philip Bradley for six pounds for "breaking Sunday" by driving pack-horses 
through Hannastown. 

A pack-saddle was made o,f wood, and except that it was wider and longer 
it did not differ otherwise from a modern cavalry saddle. Upon it a skillful 
packer could load a great variety of goods if necessary. To make a saddle fit 
the horse and not injure his back, required a skillful tradesman, and there was 
a regular pack-saddle maker in Pittsburgh and one in Greensburg. Pieces of 
cloth or old blankets were put under the saddle to prevent it from galling the 
lior;e. These saddles, with the addition of stirrups, were used for horseback 
riding also, though they were not so well adapted to it as the regular saddle. 
Upon the pack-saddle were often tied baskets which contained babies, the chil- 
dren of emigrants to the west, bars of iron, clothing, webs of dry goods, tools 
of all kinds, kegs of powder, salt, glass, skins and furs, whisky and even ten- 
plate stoves. 

Merchants for safety generally rode to Baltimore or Philadelphia, when on 
their annual or semi-annual trips to purchase goods, in companies of from four 
to a dozen, and trains of pack-horses brought back the goods they purchased. 
r^Iembers of Congress and of the Assembly went east at the first of the session 
and remained till its close. They generally went in companies of from eight 
to ten, and had pack-horses to follow with such clothes or other articles as they 
might need there. Lawyers and judges rode from the west to the east on busi- 
ness, or from one county seat to another, tc attend court. A good riding horse 
would carry a man from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia in about eight days, and 
sometimes in less than that. At night they stopped at the wayside tavern, and 
■sat around old-fashioned log fires in the evening, telling stories. 



CHAPTER XVI 



Indian Trails Across Westmoreland. — Braddock's Road. — Forbes' Road. — State Road. — - 
Felgar. — Post Road. — The Main Turnpike From Pittsburgh to the East. 

The old roads of Westmoreland county were in reality marked out by the 
Indians long before the first white man came here. There seems to be an 
instinct in man to follow the setting sun in his journeys, and the Red men were 
no exception to mankind in general in this matter. They had well defined foot- 
paths and trails which they traveled in going from one hunting or fishing 
ground to another, to other neighboring tribes, to their council meetings, or to 
other posts, and back to their homes. As far as possible these journeys were 
made to lead along streams, but far enough away to avoid the low marshy 
grounds. Frequently these paths took an undeviating line which had evidently 
been directed by the unerring sun. Sometimes unchanging landmarks were 
used to guide them back and forth. Later in their history their paths diverged 
to take advantage oi unfrequented localities, but until the advent of the white 
race there was no necessity for this. 

In their long journeys they always followed each other, "Indian fashion," 
as it has been designated. They did not walk erect but rather stooping for- 
ward, as a hunter naturally does when in pursuit of game. Their walk was a 
peculiar swing, somewhat more rapid than our ideas of walking are, but not so 
fast as a run. This gait they seemed able to keep up almost tirelessly for days 
and days when necessary. There were three principal paths, each distinctly 
marked, which crossed our county. One of these led from the Allegheny river 
by the Kiskiminetas and Juniata rivers to the Susquehanna. Another was a 
path from the Allegheny across Laurel Hill. Then there was another path, 
greater and more important than either of these, called Nemacolin's path. This 
name was probably given to it by Washington, for an Indian named Nemacoliu' 
guided him over it on his first visit to western Pennsylvania, when he was sent 
out in the interests of the Ohio company. Nemacolin was a bright, active Del- 
aware Indian. When Washington passed over it in 1753, it was a reasonably 
well broken path, almost good enough for a wagon or a train of pack-horses. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 235. 

\\'hen Washington came to pilot Braddock to Fort Duquesne, he selected this 
path, and the latter improved it and called it Braddock's road. 

All these paths, it will be seen, led to the forks of the Ohio. This was, 
from time immemorial, a meeting- place for the Indians. Those from the- 
north came down the Allegheny on a regular path. The paths leading north 
and south were not so well known generally. The Indians had paths extending 
all the wav from Florida, through South and North Carolina and \'irginia, 
into Pennsylvania, terminating at the headwaters of the Ohio^. Another came- 
from Tennessee and Kentucky into Pennsylvania, and, passing Uniontown,, 
crossed the Youghiogheny river where Braddock crossed it, thence passed 
through Ligonier valley, crossing the Conemaugh river and passing the head- 
waters of the Susquehanna, led the travelers to western New York, where the 
"Six Nations" often met in holding ccuncil-fires. Along these trails the In- 
dians traveled either visiting or hunting, and they were all well marked wherr 
the first real road making began with the advent of the white settler. These 
trails were known to the white men as well, and by watching them many cap- 
tures were avoided. The first settlers and explorers, such as George Crogan, 
Christopher Gist, Post and others, often saw them moving rapidly along these 
paths imconscious that their movements were being watched. Long afterward, 
along these routes were the ashes of the pioneer's log cabin, or the mutilated 
remains of its owner. 

The Indians who inhabited Westmoreland county originally were the Del- 
awares and the Shawnees. The depredations committed were only in part by 
these races, for along these old trails came more hostile tribes than either of 
these, from New York, northern Pennsylvania and the west. Generally the 
Delawares were more friendly or more nearly friendly than any other tribe. 
There was a trail which left the Allegheny river a short distance above the 
Forks at Shannopinstown, and passed southeastward across W'estmoreland 
county to Ligonier valley, where it intersected the main trail through the val- 
ley, going north and south, which latter crossed the Conemaugh near where 
New Florence now stands. 

The Indians had had many towns and camps on these trials within the pres- 
ent limits of the county. This is evidenced by the discovery of curious pieces 
of pottery, implements of stone, weapons of war, club-heads, arrow-heads, 
darts, spear-headed flints, etc., and these being found in some sections in abund- 
ance, indicates that the race which made and used them tarried long at these 
places. Along these trails, too. have been found Indian graves and burying- 
places, these in greater numbers along them than in any other places west of 
the Allegheny mountains. 

Christopher Gist was, so far as we can learn, the first explorer who. crossed 
our county. He was a Virginia surveyor, and a woodsman of high ability. 
On November 14, 1750, he arrived at "an old Indian town called Loyalhanna, 
on a creek of the Ohio called Kiscominetas." This was eight years before 
Forbes' army built a fort tliere. The town stood where the fort was built, that 



/236 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

is, where the town of Ligonier now stands. The Indian chief at Loyalhanna 
■could speak English to some extent, and directed Gist to Shannopinstown. 

None of our Indian villages were of any great magnitude like they had in 
New York and later in the west. They were of such a character that the in- 
habitants could remove at any time if hunting or fishing were better elsewhere. 
It must further be remembered that the Indians never occupied permanently 
anv part of our territory after the Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1768. Into these 
main trails ran smaller ones, but only the leading ones are known to us. These 
Indians had selected good routes over which to travel, for some of our best 
roads were located on the trails made by the Indians. The National Pike 
through southwestern Pennsylvania took a path made by the Delawares a cen- 
tury before it was constructed. Braddock's road, as we have said, took an- 
other, while Forbes' road was practically the same general route of the Indian 
trail from Shannopinstown to Loyalhanna. The Old State road, and after it 
the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia turnpike, took the same general direction all 
the way from Pittsburgh to Bedford. Of these later roads we shall now speak. 

There was scarcely a session of court up to 1790 that there were not several 
petitions for public roads. They were, however, often to accommodate, per- 
liaps at the time they were laid out, but one or two people, or perhaps for the 
benefit of a mill of some kind. At that time the county, even from its limited 
exchequer, assisted in making and maintaining some of these early roads. One 
of these petitions, dated June 20, 1789, is headed, "The Worshipful Bench 
at Greensburg," and also asks for a road from "Crooked Creek to Col. Charles 
Campbell's." Another petition filed at April sessions, 1789, asks for a road to 
begin at a "May-pole in Greensburg, etc." In still another, Greensburg is styled 
the "^Metropolis." All these roads then laid out were to be twenty-five feet 
wide. 

On September 25, 1785, the legislature passed an act providing for the con- 
struction oi a road, the eastern end or Westmoreland part of which, when 
built, was known as the State road. The act appropriated $2000 to open this 
road from the western part of Cumberland countv to Pittsburgh, a distance of 
over one hundred miles, or less than twenty dollars per mile. It also author- 
ized the council to appoint a commission to lay it out, and provided that it 
should be made as straight and direct a line as the hills and mountains would 
admit. It was to be sixty feet wide. The council had unlimited authority to 
refuse all locations determined on by the commission. It was surveyed and 
laid out at once, and the report of the commission for that part of it lying east 
of Bedford was confirmed November 24, 1787. The part from Bedford to 
Pittsburgh was refused a confirmation, and a resurvey was ordered. The west- 
ern section of Pennsylvania, particularly Westmoreland and Allegheny coun- 
ties, was greatly in need of the road. It may be asked why a new road was 
needed from Bedford to Pittsburgh when the Forbes road traversed that very 
locality. The explanation is very simple. The Forbes road was a military 
road purely. It was, moreover, made for the sole purpose of transporting an 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 237 

armv through a wilderness infested with a steahhy and barbarous enemy. As 
such, a precursory glance at the topography of the country will show that it was 
very wisely laid out. What Forbes endeavored most to do was to avoid the 
possibility of ambuscades or surprises on the part of the Indians, and to do this 
most effectually, he kept on the highest ground possible. To illustrate, he 
crossed Laurel Hill at a high, though not at its highest point, and crossed the 
Ligonier valley by keeping on high ground, and as far as convenient from the 
narrow bottom of the Loyalhanna. Except when necessary for them to do so, 
the route did not come near the low ground skirting the Loyalhanna ; even in 
going to Fort Ligonier, which was perhaps necessarily built on its banks, they 
kept on high ground. But for this desire to keep on high grounds he could 
have gone down the Loyalhanna water-gap through the Chestnut Ridge on al- 
most level but low ground. After leaving the Loyalhanna he kept on the high- 
est possible ground, that is, on the dividing ridge between the tributaries of the 
Loyalhanna and Kiskiniinetas rivers on the north, and those of the Sewickley 
and Youghiogheny on the south. So his road, often called in those days the 
"King's road," was not suited for a public road in many places in times of 
peace. It was so steep in sections of it that wagoners tied trees to their rear 
axle which, by dragging on the ground, let them down slowly. Braddock's 
road was laid out according to the same principle in engineering. No other 
consideration than to protect his army from being surprised while in a narrow 
valley, by Indians on higher ground, would have prompted them to cross the 
Monongahela river twice in four miles when approaching Fort Duquesne. 

The western end of the Old State road was finally approved after several 
surveys, on May 26, 1790, and was very soon opened up for public travel. It 
entered the county east of Laughlintown, and passed through that village, 
crossing the Loyalhanna and then passed a mile south of the present location of 
Ligonier, and passed over the Chestnut Ridge to the west of the Loyalhanna 
gap, and thence down the western slope of the Ridge to Youngstown. It was 
on this old road that General St. Clair resided in his declining years. The road 
then passed through Greensburg and Adamsburg. leaving Irwin a short distance 
to the north, and thence out of the county directl)- towards Turtle Creek. When 
it was laid out in 1791, none of the above places had an existence at all as 
villages, except Greensburg. It had been the county-seat for five years, and 
had a growing population. Villages and tavern stands sprung up all along 
the route. Near the tavern a blacksmith and a wagonmaker located and soon 
others came. The location of the Old State Road is more nearly the location of 
the present turnpike, which came much later. It was over the Old State road 
that transportation by pack-horses reached its highest point. Strong wagons, 
with now and then a carriage, also passed over it, but from the limited amount 
of money expended upon it we may be assured that it was never a complete 
highway even for that day. It served its purpose, however, and over it came 
many new settlers both for this section and the boundless west. A mail route 



^38 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

was established and finally carried over it regularly by express riders on horse- 
back. Mail was often sent by private individuals who chanced to be passing 
over the road. Many a letter now important to. us as indicating the early con- 
■ dition of our people, was carried across the mountains in the pocket of a casual 
passerby on this road to the east. Prior to the completion oi this road, that is 
about 1784, the people tried by private subscriptions to have mail carried regu- 
larly between Pittsburgh and the east, but it failed. In 1786 James Brison was 
authorized by the national government to establish a post route from Philadel- 
phia to Pittsburgh. This was, of course, on the Forbes road as far east as Bed- 
ford, but it was not a regularly kept up mail route for many years after that. 
The Grccnsburg and Indiana Register of November 12, 1812, seems to hail with 
great joy the fact that a regular mail route was then recently established be- 
tween Bedford and Greensburg. The rider, as was proposed, left Greensburg 
every Saturday morning, and passed through Youngstown, Laughlintown, 
Stoystown, etc., etc., reaching Bedford on Sunday evening. He also carried 
mail to patrons on the way, somewhat after the manner of our present rural 
carriers, and for this he received extra compensation. 

It was the custom then, as now, for the postmaster to advertise unclaimed 
letters. The following is a list that appeared in the Greensburg Register Oc- 
tober I, 1798, and shows the method of addressing letters when we had but few 
postoffices : 

"Hugh Abbercrombery, Blacklick Settlement, Armstrong township." 

"Alichael Berr}', three miles from Greensburg, near Brush Creek, care of 
Mr. Clark in Greensburg." 

"Rev. Matthew Henderson, at the Forks of the Yough, care of John Kirk- 
patrick, Greensburg." 

"James Welsh, Judge, Quemahoning township, near Laurel Hill, care of 
Col. Rudgers Taylor, Greensburg." 

Quemahoning township is in Somerset county, about thirty miles from 
Greensburg. The Forks of the Yough is most nearly represented by the pres- 
ent location of IMcKeesport. 

Colonel Morgan, an Indian agent appointed by Congress, is generally re- 
garded as the first man who crossed the Allegheny mountains in a carriage, but 
he did not traverse our county. That honor is due to Dr. Schoep, who was a 
German physician and naturalist. He crossed over the mountains on the 
Forbes road in 178.^. After returning to Germany he published an account of 
his trip, which w^as printed in 1788 and has been translated. From it we learn 
that his carriage was a great curiosity all the way westward. As he passed the 
lonely cabins in the wilderness, the women and children came to look with won- 
der and admiration at this new and peculiar method of travel. When he ar- 
rived in Pittsburgh his carriage was for days the chief object of interest in the 
village. He says that "Many well dressed gentlemen and highlv adorned ladies 
•came to his tavern to see it." 

All wagons and carriages in that early period were necessarily clumsy af- 



HISTORY OF U'ESTMORELAXD COUNTY 



239 



fairs. The tires on the wheels were put on in sections, each section being 
about the one-eighth of a circle, and they were bolted to the felloe, or wooden 
part of the wheel, which alone necessitated great heavy wheels, and all other 
parts were made in proportion. 

The first line of coaches was put on the road by the way of Lancaster, Har- 
risburg, Carlisle, Bedford, Stoystown, Somerset, Greensburg and Pittsburgh, 
in about 1804, but it was neither successful nor regular. The trip took about 
seven days, and the roughness of the roads precluded the possibilitv of driving 
at night. In 1805 a mail coach was put on the road, to go east as far as Cham- 
bersburg, for from that place east the mail facilities were much better. Its 
coming was widely heralded and the citizens collected to see it. Doubtless 
thev, like we, wondered if the next generation would witness such vast improve- 
ments as the past had wrought. But the same generation, when yet young, 
saw the present turnpike completed and could ride from Pittsburgh to Philadel- 
phia in two and a half days by riding at night. 

There was then no road between Somerset and Greensburg, and a petition 
was presented to the legislature for state aid in the construction of such a high- 
way. They represented that two chains of mountains with but few settlers in- 
tervened between the two places, and that the travel was very great. The sum 
of $800 was appropriated for this road, and it was constructed at once. The 
Westmoreland part of this road was known as the Felgar road, it taking its 
name from a man who kept a tavern on the top of Laurel Mountain. In 1809 
a road was projected from Somerset to Jones' mills, INIount Pleasant and Con- 
nellsville. 

The great road in Westmoreland county was the turnpike, which passes 
nearly through its center, running east and west. It had two corporate names 
in our county. The western section was known as the Pittsburgh and Greens- 
burg Turnpike Company, and the eastern section as the Greensburg and Stoys- 
town Turnpike Company. Its history dates back to February 24, 1806, when 
the legislature authorized the governor of Pennsylvania to incorporate a com- 
pany to build a turnpike from the west bank of the Susquehanna at Harrisburg 
to Pittsburgh. The act provided that the road should be called the Harrisburg 
and Pittsburgh Turnpike Company. But, by an act passed March 31, 1897, 
supplementing the act of 1806, it was arranged that it should be built in sec- 
tions, and that each section should be a complete company or corporation. The 
second act also fi.xed the route through Carlisle, Shippensburg, Chambersburg, 
McConnellsburg, Bedford, Stoystown, and Greensburg, 

The Northern Turnpike, so called to distinguish it from the Greensburg 
pike, had its origin in an act of March 20, 1787, which provided for the making 
of a road from the Frankstown branch of the Juniata river to the Conemaugh 
river. It came into our county a short distance west of Blairsville. In an act 
of 1800 its location was changed somewhat so that its final course was through 
New Alexandria, New Salem, and Murryville. These roads became rivals in 
their construction, and this verv much delaved the building of either of them 



240 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



for tlie reason that a later act of Assembly authorized the Governor of the Com- 
monwealth to subscribe $300,000 on the part of the state to any Turnpike Com- 
pany when there should be $150,000 subscribed by the citizens of the counties 
through which the turnpike passed. Both companies wanted the $300,000 
state subscription. Finally commissioners were appointed by the governor to 
go over the routes and determine which should be taken up by the state. These 
commissioners reported in favor o.f the Greensburg route, and they extended the 
time for building the road for three years from April 2, 181 1. By an adver- 
tisement in the Greensburg Register of May 20, 1812, the books of the company 
were opened for stock subscriptions at the house of Simon Drum, Sr., on June 
3rd, at 10 o'clock. In 1816 another notice appears offering to let contracts for 
certain sections of it yet unfinished. The road was built accordingly and was 
completed through Westmoreland county in 1818, parts of it having been in 
use a year or so earlier. The name turnpike, as applied to a road, originated 
from the fact that a pike or pole was placed across the road at the toll house, 
which prevented the traveler from passing until he paid his toll, when the pike 
or pole was turned around, and he was allowed to pass through. As its name 
indicated, this was a toll road, and from the proceeds the stockholders were to 
be paid their dividends. Toll was collected about every twelve miles, and 
though the rates may have varied somewhat under different managers, the fol- 
lowing list of rates does not vary much if any from the amounts charged 
throughout its entire life as a toll road : 

RATES OF TOLL ON THE STOYSTOWN AND GREENSBURG 

TURNPIKE ROAD : FOR EVERY TEN MILES ON SAID ROAD : 

For Swine, Sheep and Cattle, viz. : 

For every score of swine 6 cents 

For every ]/> score of swine 3 cents 

For every score of sheep 6 cents 

For every 1/2 score of sheep 3 cents 

For every score of cattle 10 cents 

For every J4 score of cattle 5 cents 

For every horse or mule, laden or unladen, led or drove 6 cents 

For every sulky, chair or chaise, with one horse 12 cents 

For every chair, coach, phaeton chaise, sulkey and light wagon with 

two horses 25 cents 

For either oj them, with four horses 50 cents 

For every other carriage of pleasure it may go to like sum according 

to the number of horses drawing the same. 

For every sleigh or sled, for each horse 6 cents 

For every csrt, wagon or other carriage of burthen the wheels of which 

do not in breadth exceed four inches, per horse 12 cents 

For every cart, wagon or other carriage of burthen the wheels of which 

do exceed in breath four inches, per horse 8 cents 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 241 

And when any such carriage aforesaid, the whole or part is drawn by oxen, 
two oxen shaU be estimated as equal to one horse in charging the aforesaid toll. 

EXCEPTION. 

No Toll shall be demanded froni any person or persons passing or re-passing 
from one part of their farm to another. Nor from any persons attending 
funerals, or going to and from places of worship. 

(Republican-Democrat Print, Greensburg.) 

The building of a turnpike road was quite a big undertaking for that day 
and generation, fully as much so as the building of a railroad across the state is 
with us. It was moreover of great importance to the people, and improved our 
county more than any other highway prior to the construction of the Pennsyl- 
vania railroad. Next to the National Pike advocated so long by the matchless 
Henry Clay, it was the most complete road of any extent in Western Pennsyl- 
vania in its day. It wound over mountains and through fertile valleys, and on 
it was displayed some very good engineering. It has been censured because in 
some places it passed over hills, when it might have gone over lower and more 
level ground. But the object of the engineer was to secure dry ground, to 
pass through rich sections of farm land, and through hamlets which might be- 
come busy centers of population, thus affording traffic for the road. Some- 
times they were compelled to pass over a hill, or forfeit the subscription of a 
wealthy landowner. Then our low grounds were covered with timber and were 
much more marshy than they are now, and the popular idea of road construct- 
ing was to keep on high and dry groimd. The funds for its construction were 
limited. With these matters being considered, we doubt whether its general 
location could have been much better than it was. The engineering is much 
better in the mountains than through the agricultural sections, owing to the 
above reasons. There is perhaps only one place in its course through Chestnut 
Ridge where it could be improved. Going up the western side of Laurel Hill 
and zigzaging down the more precipitous eastern slope, its course could not be 
improved by our best modern engineers. Likewise it passes over the Allegheny 
mountains, going up the western side in a straight line for seven miles, and 
passing down the eastern side by a system of curves and turns which our ad- 
vanced science of engineering would not in any way improve on. In the 
mountains the engineers were free to select the best routes, and they should be 
judged by their work there rather than b\ such parts as they could not locate 
exactly where they thought proper. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



The Westmoreland Soldiers in the War of 1812. 

The war of 1812 was indeed a small affair to our nation compared with 
the Revolution, and consequently has never been fraught with much interest 
to the American people. Yet it was a war of heroic deeds, and by its suc- 
cessful termination we not only won the right for which we contended, but 
added greatly to our civil and military glory among the nations of the world. 

After the Revolution, though we had fairly won our freedoin, yet England 
scarcely realized that we were one of the civil powers. For a quarter of a 
century the Mother Country treated us as though we were a few struggling 
colonies whose rights in America were conceded by them, but whose rights 
on the oceans were' still retained by England. They accordingly assumed 
rights on the seas which they did not presume to exercise when dealing with 
other governments. One of these unwarranted powers which they assumed 
was that of overhauling American vessels on the high seas and searching them 
for men who had deserted the English naval service, and in this they neces- 
sarily committed many outrages upon our ocean trade. These may not have 
been authorized by the English government, but it was responsible for them, 
and practically admitted its responsibility by defending them. 

For many years our government protested most vehemently against this 
right of search. The people of the United States were much aroused over 
it. In various ways Great Britain advanced her assumed prerogative on 
the seas and greatly restricted our commerce. This was carried on till 181 1, 
when, because of the growing trouble. Congress was called together a month 
earlier than usual. On due consideration it sustained President Madison, 
who had almost declared England guilty of offensive actions, and prepara- 
tions were made for war. On June 12 the President laid before Congress 
the official correspondence relative to the subject, and all hope of a settle- 
ment without war was dissipated. Madison drew one of the best of his 
many strong papers in enutnerating our grievances. Everything seemed to 
point to war, and accordingly, on June 18th, 1812, Congress declared war 
against Great Britain. Congress also took measures to increase the regular 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 243 

armv to 35.000 men, and a much larger volunteer army of one year enlist- 
ments was to be raised, equipped and put in the field. 

Simon Snyder was governor of Pennsylvania. He had great courage 
and executive ability, and had in his makeup much of the old-time Revolu- 
tionary spirit. The Pennsylvania militia was therefore organized by him 
at once. Our state was to furnish 14,000 militia on the one-year enlist- 
ments, beside our share of the proposed regular army of 35,000. 

Again the British allied themselves with their old companions in crime, 
the Indians, and a large force of Indians appeared on Lake Erie opposite 
the town of Erie. At this the whole of Pennsylvania was aroused, expect- 
ing an invasion of the western part, at least, to follow. Accordingly the 
militia of that portion of the state was sent there, and took part in the now 
world-famous naval battle of Oliver Hazard Perry, which settled the Eng- 
lish and Indians in that section. It will be remembered that before Perry 
could fight the English on water he had to cut down trees and construct a 
navy. The main forces who guarded these preparations were from Western 
Pennsylvania, and they were ready to support him in any emergency, eitlier 
on land or on sea. 

The English had an army in the region of Baltimore, and man}- of our 
soldiers were sent there, particularly after the British army under General 
Ross burned the National Capitol, but there was very little fighting done 
in that section by our troops. Still others were sent to the northwest and 
placetl under command of General William Henry Harrison. It was in 
that army that our Westmoreland soldiers did most duty. 

In considering this war we must always remember that we were yet at 
enmity with the Indians, though not here in the East as we had been during 
the Revolution. They had been driven west to Indiana, Illinois and jNIich- 
igan. We had soldiers from Westmoreland who fought with Harrison at the 
famous battle of Tippecanoe. So, also, it must be remembered that the Eng- 
lish army was fighting us on the extreme southern border, where General 
Jackson defeated Packenham at the battle of New Orleans, after peace 
had been declared between the two countries. So the war was raging in 
every direction. 

General Hull was at this time governor of the Territory of Michigan, 
and was in command of an army of volunteers who were warring with the 
Northwestern Indians. When he heard that war had been declared against 
"England he foolishly, and on his own authority, led his army across from 
Michi.Tan into Canada, to "invade the enemy's country." But the British 
immediately sent forces there who, with much more experience and skill 
in military matters, so encompassed the field that Hull surrendered 1,700 
trooi)s to about 700 British and 600 Indians. The surrender also included 
great stores of military supplies and provisions, which were sent there at 
.•great expense to support his army. This weakened our cause -a great deal, 



244 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

for hundreds of troops became discouraged and deserted. In fact, de- 
sertions , were more numerous in the war of 1812 than in any other of the 
five wars in which we as a nation have been engaged, and in this, too, West- 
moreland county did its share. 

But, on the other hand, the surrender of Huh did us good. The mem- 
ory of the Revohition was then fresh in the minds of our people. Often in 
those days had a small, starving, poorly equipped army of American soldiers 
escaped from or even taken captive a larger and stronger force. But here 
the larger army surrendered to the smaller and weaker one, and it aroused 
the people in every section of the Union. As a result we had, after Hull's 
surrender, more men in Western Pennsylvania and in our county wanting 
to enlist than could be accepted. Refreshed in his memory of the events of 
the war by these general remarks the reader, we trust, will better understand 
the part taken by our Westmoreland troops. 

There were several companies formed here a few years before the war, 
when trouble was brewing and war clouds were overhanging America. The 
most prominent one of these companies was a rifle company in Greensburg, 
of which John B. Alexander was the leading spirit as well as the captain. 
This company was organized by authority of Thomas McKean, governor of 
Pennrylvania, in 1807, and was enlisted for four years. In 181 1 their time 
had expired, and another commission was issued by Governor Simon Snyder, 
authorizing Alexander to raise another company. The second was largely 
composed of re-enlistments from the first. Alexander himself had been 
brought up in the military town of Carlisle, where from long before the Rev- 
olution the government had continuously kept a barracks. He had there- 
fore from boyhood imbibed a martial spirit. In four years he had drilled 
his company most completely, so that when the war at last came he had 
ready for the field a company of thoroughly drilled men. Alexander him- 
self was a lawyer of high standing at the Westmoreland bar. Some have 
thought proper to write him as the ablest lawyer who has yet practiced 
regularly before the Westmoreland courts. Being only about eight years 
at the bar before the war of 1812, his great prominence as a lawyer was 
achieved mostly after its close. 

On June 6, 1812, in conformity with a resolution passed by the company, 
Alexander tendered his company of riflemen to William Eustis, Secretary 
of War under President Madison. In this letter he says the company con- 
sists of one captain, two lieutenants, four sergeants, two corporals, two mu- 
sicians and forty-five rank and filemen. He further says they are all uni- 
formed and equipped for service, except that their rifles were of various 
lengths, weight and calibre, such as are in general use in the country, and 
suggests that uniform ones be furnished them. This letter is endorsed as 
"Sent copy to Sec'y, enclosed to Wm. Findley, Esq." By a letter of Julv 
15 the company was accepted. By letter of September 5th thev were noti- 




^y^Jla^^J^^^ 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 245 

fied that the frontier in Western Ohio was in such a deplorable condition, 
owing to General Hull's surrender, that they should hold themselves in 
readiness to march there at once. On September 11 the order was sent for 
them to march to Cleveland, Ohio, or wherever else the northwestern army 
should be when they reached that locality. The destination was changed 
after they reached Pittsburgh, by order of William Henry Harrison. The 
order was as follows : 

Gentlemen : You will proceed with yonr companies to this place immediately and 
remain here imtil you receive further orders. 

To Captains Alexander and Butler, William Henry Harrison. 

Pittsburgh, Pa. Franklintown, Ohio. 

Harrison's object in this military campaign was a twofold one. First, 
he wanted to oppose the British army, and second to protect the frontier 
from Indian incursions. The immediate purpose of this move was to war 
against the Indians. 

Pentland, a minor officer of the Pittsburgh Blues, kept a journal of their 
marches southwestward. From it we learn that Alexander's company, with 
Butler's, encamped on the night of September 10 on Grant's Hill, now in 
Pittsburgh. Then they marched one mile, he says, and crossed the Ohio 
river, where they were compelled to wait for boats till September 23, when 
thev got ofif down the Ohio. They passed Beaver on the 24th, Steubenville 
on the 25th, and reached Wheeling on the 26th. On October ist they passed 
Marietta and Gallipolis. On Sunday, October 11, Alexander's boat struck 
a snag and was abandoned. The companies finally landed at Cincinnati, 
on October 14, and camped two miles below. From there they marched 
through the country by Lebanon, Xenia, Yellow Springs and Springfield, 
and finally joined the Northwestern army at Franklintown, as directed by 
General Harrison. 

Their first attack was directed against the Indian town on Mississinewa 
river, about fifteen miles above its junction with the Wabash. On the 
i8th of November they fought the battle of Mississinewa, and completely 
destroyed the town, but not many of the Indians were killed. From there 
Harrison ordered Alexander's company against several smaller towns among 
the Indians and they were promptly destroyed. Afterwards they marched 
to the Upper Sandusky and were joined to the command of Colonel Camp- 
bell. 

In this connection we must not forget Rev. William Swan's letter to the 
soldiers in Alexander's command. It is unique, but doubtless expressed the 
feeling of that day. Rev. Swan was pastor of the Long Run Church at 
that time, and wrote as follows : 

"Please inform the unmarried gentlemen of the comp.Tny that the wives of tho = e who 
are married are not alone pleased with and proud of the patriotic conduct of their hus- 



246 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

bands. The young ladies so admire the manly fortitude and patriotic spirit which they 
have manifested that some of them have expressed a determination to wait for husbands 
initil they return ; and that they would prefer the brave soldier for a husband, ex-^n 
though he should have but one eye and one arm." 

The journey connected with the battle of Mississiniwa was an extremely 
severe one. On leaving the camp at Franklintov^fn, Ohio, General Harrison 
addressed the troops in a most patriotic vein, and foretold great things of 
them, for he said he considered them the flower of the army. It was very 
cold weather. The troops were warned that it was a hard march and 
withal a perilous venture, and were told that if any felt timid about it they 
should remain at camp. They crossed the partly frozen Miami river with 
great dilificulty. At New Lexington they received the last supply of forage. 
Each man was furnished with one bushel of corn to be carried on his horse. 
There were about six hundred troops in the party, and great care was 
taken to instill in them a spirit of caution, for they were to penetrate a wilder- 
ness infested with Indians and were guided only by spies. In the same 
locality the army of the "brave but unfortunate St. Clair" had been cut 
to pieces by the same treacherous enemy who, in addition, were now aided 
by the British. The weather grew colder, and most of the streams and 
swamps were crossed on the ice. The snow was about six inches deep. On 
the night before the battle, December 17, they marched all night, and in 
the morning attacked the Indian town of Mississiniwa. Without great 
difficulty they drove the Indians away and destroyed their houses. Aftet 
the troops under Major Alexander had returned from destroying the towns 
down the river, they all encamped in the snow without shelter, and the night 
was bitter cold. The officers feared an attack, and were determined that 
they would not be surprised by the enemy. But little rest was gained by 
anyone, for half the forces were on guard duty all night. At three o'clock 
there was an alarm, and all were ready, but it proved to be false. Shortly 
before daylight the real attack came. It was a heavy volley from the Indians, 
and was accompanied as usual with terrific yells. Captain Hopkins' troops 
were closely pressed, and were promptly relieved by the Pittsburgh Blues 
under the gallant Colonel Butler. Captain Markle's company came in, and 
all united in a charge against the Indians and drove them away. It was 
then about daybreak, and they returned to find the wounded and dying 
lying in the snow and almost overcome with cold. There were about forty- 
four killed and wounded, and another attack with reinforcements was mo- 
mentarily expected. 

The situation was appalling. They were ninety-six miles from the set- 
tlement, and the increased cold had greatly reduced their rations. They 
proceeded at once to bury their dead soldiers in the frozen ground. Litters 
were made for the twenty-seven wounded, and they started for headquarters 
on the i8th. They fortified their camp at night with logs and brush, and 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 247 

kept fires burning to keep the troops from freezing. They straggled into 
Dayton December 24, and were given a royal welcome. They had left the 
town in high glee two weeks before. They had greatly weakened the enemy 
yet it had been at a fearful cost. 

The muster roll of the company was as follows : 

John B. Alexander, captain ; Christian Drum, Heutenant ; Peter Drum, ensign ; Richard 
Hardin, ist sergeant; John Jameson, 2nd sergeant; Peter Fleeger, 3rd sergeant; Henry 
Hawkins, 4th sergeant ; Adam Kettering, corporal ; William Richards, corporal ; Jacob 
Gossert, drummer. Privates — Samuel Singer, Leonard Miller, Henry Miller, Daniel 
Miller, Jacob Sickafoos, George Sickafoos, George Myers, Adam Williams, Henry Barton, 
Robert Thompson, Isaac Keck, John Wingart. Jacob Rupert, Frederick Stewart, Jonas 
Keel, Abraham Weaver, Samuel McLean, William Cassiday, James Thompson, John Rice, 
Edward Shelletto, John Collins, Jonas Kneemier, James Taylor, Jacob Wingart, Solomon 
Dehaven, George Sheeffer, Benj. Jameson, William Kernes, William Singer, John Mit- 
chell, Daniel Rugh, John Shuey, Peter Walter, William Vandyke. 

There was another company, a cavalry organization, sent out from West- 
moreland. It was raised by Captain Joseph Markle, the ancestor of the 
Markle family at West Newton. This company was raised largely in Sewickley 
township. They left Greensburg for Pittsburgh on September 29, 1812, 
and from there went to Urbana, Ohio. Everywhere in the old writings Cap- 
tain Markle's company of cavalry is highly spoken of for its good behavior, 
both in camp and when in action, and also on account of its fine appearance. 
It is moreover on record that General Harrison regarded it as the finest 
company of troops in the volunteer service of the Northwestern army. They 
are mentioned many times as participating in engagements under Major 
Ball, and are always spoken of in the highest terms. 

On December 18 they were, attacked by several hundred Indians, who 
had collected from the surrounding territory. As usual they had concealed 
themselves in the forest near by the camp. But the cavalry company made 
a charge on them, and they were soon driven from their concealed positions. 
In this engagement Lieutenant Daniel Alartz, of the Markle cavalry, was 
killed. The cavalry troops and Lieutenant Waltz both received the highesc 
praise for bravery in this action. 

The American army had troops at Fort Wayne, and the object of the 
expedition was to drive the Indians away from that section so that they 
could not interfere with a free passage from the settlement to the troops. 
The purpose was to break up parties and drive them to Michigan so that 
they could not unite and surprise the troops at Fort Wayne or elsewhere. 
For this reason our Westmoreland troops had been sent away from the 
main army, and when the work was to a great extent accomplished they 
returned to the army. It was a very severe though brief campaign, for they 
suffered from cold, from hunger and from hard marching. Nearly two 
hundred of them had their feet frozen. The loss to the Indians was very 
great in men. houses and property, and they suffered still more from hunger 



248 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

and cold. It has bpen called one of the ablest managed campaigns of the war. 

On January 9, 1813, Captain Alexander was put in command of the 
battalion composed of his own, Butler's and McRae's companies, and he 
was commissioned a major of infantry by President Madison. 

The muster-roll of the cavalry company raised and commanded by Cap- 
tain Joseph Markle, and which did splendid service, is as follows : 

Joseph Markle, captain; Humphrey Fullerton, 1st lieutenant: Jacob Markle, 2nd 
lieutenant : William Thompson, cornet ; Jno. C. Plumer, sergeant ; Samuel H. Daily, ser- 
geant ; Samuel Davis, sergeant; Samuel Miller, sergeant; Robert Skelly, -corporal ; Henry 
Breneman, corporal; James Ryan, corporal; Robert M. Grififin, corporal; James Sinith, 
Sadler; George Frigs, farrier; James Alexander, trumpeter. Privates — John Becket, 
John Bennett, James Brickenridge, Robert Cooper, Joseph Chambers, John Conner, Jno. 
C. Carpenter. Edward Cook, Daniel Flemming, Samuel Hamilton, ■ Jacob Hessaul, 
Stephen Lowry, William Logue, William McClurg, Jonathan McClintock, John McClain, 
Nathan Magrew, William Miller, John McCommont, Isaac McCommont, Stephen Rowan, 
Johnathan Robeson, John Redick, James Selby, Samuel Selby, Samuel Stofiet, Joseph 
Byerly, James McBride, David Hall, Samuel Rodger, John Gilbert, William Newsum, 
Thomas Brandt, William Mitchell, Robert Thompson. 

Early in the year 1813 General Harrison determined to recapture the 
territory in Michigan which had been held by the English since General 
Hull's strange surrender. To do this he had to extend his line of forts. In 
furtherance of this scheme Fort Meigs was erected on the Maumee river, 
near where General Wayne had defeated the Indians in 1794. This fort 
was left in command of General Leftwich, with his own Virginia troops and 
two hundred and fifty Pennsylvanians. Shortly after this the enemy began 
to assemble in the region of Fort Meigs, which was situated on rising 
ground and surrounded by timbered prairies. When the enemy began to 
appear General Leftwich and his Virginia troops left the fort, most likely 
because their time of enlistment had expired. There was as yet no con- 
centrated army to prevent their going. The Pennsylvania troops, though 
their term of enlistment had also expired, determined to remain and defend 
it. When General Harrison learned of these movements he hastened for- 
ward with' relief forces, and these raised the strength of the fort to about 
twelve hundred. They all worked night and day to strengthen the fort. On 
April 28 the British army appeared in a concentrated force. Orders were 
sent to General Green Clay, who was bringing on fifteen hundred Kentucky 
volunteers, to hasten his journey to Fort Meigs. The British and their 
Indian allies began at once to entrench themselves, and the American army 
under General Harrison were not idle by any means. On May 3rd the 
armies began to storm each other with cannon, but with little effect on either 
side. On May 4 the British were reinforced, and General Harrison learned 
to his great joy that General Clay was approaching, coming down the river 
in open boats with his 1500 troops, which he hoped to land in front of Fort 
Meigs about four o'clock in the morning of May 5th. Harrison was not 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 249 

slow in strategic warfare. He sent word to Clay to land about half of liis 
forces as he came down the river, and have them quietly gain the rear of 
the British fortifications. At the proper time, while the enemy would nat- 
urallv be giving their attention to the remainder of Clay's forces, and when 
Harrison from near his own fortress would be storming them. Clay's landed 
troops were to assault the fortress from the rear, destroy their wagons, spike 
their guns, and do all the damage they could, and then take their boats and 
pull for Fort Meigs. Clay's main forces were to come on down the river 
and enter the fort. Clay was delayed till about eight o'clock in the morning, 
and his forces w'ere severely attacked by a band of savages as they were 
entering the fort, the morning of i\Iay 5, 1813. Major John B. Alexander, 
with his Pennsylvania troops, was ordered to protect them when thev sliould 
land. The Indians increased, and Alexander's troops charged tliem with 
bayonets and forced them back about a half mile, while Clay's troops dis- 
embarked and entered the fort. 

The part of Clay's forces which had landed up the river was under the 
command of Colonel Dudley, a daring officer of sufficient skill and executive 
ability to successfully carry out the scheme. They gained the rear of the 
enemy and at the proper time by a furious attack had captured their four 
batteries and put them to flight before they realized the situation. Their 
guns were spiked, their carriages cut to pieces, and the red cross of St. 
George was hauled down. Then Dudley, always cool-headed, ordered an 
immediate retreat to the boats and Fort Meigs as had been prearranged. 
But the soldiers were wild with joy and excitement over their unprecedented 
victory. In place of obeying orders they madly pursued the enemy. The 
English soon recovered themselves. After being routed from their fortifi- 
cations they united with a band of Indians and quietly awaited the approach 
of Dudley's reckless forces. They exposed a few Indians and British, who 
drew them into the proper locality. The batteries taken by Dudley's men 
had in their excitement been left lightly gtzarded. Dudley's men were cut 
off from the fortress they had taken, and the British and Indians easily 
overpowered the guard left there. It was a victory fairly won by brave 
troops, but thrown away through ?. reckless disobedience. The Americans 
in charge of the fortifications resisted bravelv wdien the British came back, 
but were nearly all killed or wounded. Fifty of them were killed and seventy 
wounded. About five hundred of Dudley's troops were taken prisoners and 
only one hundred and fifty of them escaped. These fought their way to the 
boats and entered Fort Meigs. Colonel Dudley, while trying to cut through 
the lines and gain the boats, was mortally wounded. After he fell he killed 
an Indian assailant and then himself expired. 

Then the Indians began to murder the prisoners under the eye of the 
British General Proctor, who had not nianhood enough to even attempt to 
stop it. In the midst of the slaughter came the greatest Indian warrior of 



250 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



his age, and, next to Pontiac, the greatest leader of the Indian race, Tecum- 
seh, who had been engaged in another part of the battle. He stopped their 
bloody work at once, saying that no defenseless prisoners should be killed 
when he commanded. 

When Dudley began his attack on the batteries, Harrison was carrying 
out his part of the program to the letter. Alexander's battalion had acquit- 
ted themselves so nobly in protecting Clay's landing that Harrison at once 
assigned them to Colonel John IMiller's forces to storm the British fortifi- 
cations. There were under Miller the Pittsburgh Blues, the Peterson Rifles 
and the Pennsylvania Volunteers, among whom were the Westmoreland sol- 
diers. The part of the_fortification which they meant to and did attack was 
the side next to the river, for in doing so they would not interfere with 
Dudley's command in their work at the rear. They were opposed largely 
by Indians under the command of Tecumseh and his brother, and there were 
also five companies of British troops. The American army numbered only 
350, for that was all that General Harrison could spare from the fort for that 
part of the attack. They charged the British and Indians, numbering about 
1 1 50, routed them from their concealment, killed and wounded many of 
them, and drove the remainder into the woods. The attack, though against 
great odds, succeeded admirably; they also took forty-three prisoners. 

Then the English General Proctor sent a request to have Harrison sur- 
render, but this was indignantly refused. Proctor's army was in a bad con- 
dition. Thev had provisions, but no wagons. Their four cannon had been 
rendered useless by Dudley's men. They had also lost more men than the 
enemy whom they attacked and whom they hoped to annihilate. .\n ex- 
change of prisoners was asked for and granted by Harrison. On }ilay 9th 
the British army moved oflF under a heavy fire on the part of the Americans. 
Thus ended the siege of Fort Meigs, which had lasted about two weeks. 
Had Dudley's soldiers obeyed orders it would undoubtedly have resulted in 
one of the most brilliant victories of American arms. Even as it was, our 
army did most glorious work. Our loss was 131 killed and 259 wounded. Gen- 
eral Harrison made special mention of the gallant conduct of the 350 meiv 
under Miller and Alexander. 

A detachment composed of the Pittsburgh Blues, Petersburg \'olunteers 
and the Westmoreland soldiers, in all about one hundred and sixty men, were 
sent to the Lower Sandusky, where there was a stockade fort commanded 
by Major George Crogan, an extremely youthful but brave officer. On Au- 
gust 1st, 1813, the fort was surrounded by five hundred British soldiers under 
Proctor and about eight hundred Indians, besides a large number of Indians 
who were stationed outside to intercept any reinforcements to the fort. Proc- 
tor then sent a demand for surrender under a flag of truce, and warned them 
that they should be butchered if they compelled him to take the stockade by 
force. Crogan, young as he was, had plenty of the true soldier spirit, and his; 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 251 

soldiers were mostly voung and spirited like their commander. He first learned 
that their sentiments were all in favor of holding out as long as possible, 
and then sent an answer declining to surrender. To the threat, he an- 
swered that when the fort was taken there would be none left to butcher, as 
it would not be given up while one man was left able to fight. The firing 
began at night from the enemy in boats on the bay. It was soon discovered 
that the enemy fired on one angle of the fort alone, intending doubtless to 
effect an entrance there when sufficiently weakened. Crogan had only one 
cannon, and this he mounted in a position that it would rake the ditch sur- 
rounding the fort, should the enemy attempt to climb over the palisades. 
The fire was kept up all the next day, but Crogan's men put bags of sand, 
and even bags of flour, in the angle aimed at, so as to prevent any serious 
damage. At four o'clock they turned all their guns on this one angle, and 
made the assault amid the clouds of smoke w^hich this heavy firing produced. 
Two attempts were made by three hundred and fifty British soldiers, but each 
time their ranks were thrown into confusion by the active firing from within. 
They w-ere then led on by a brave officer. Colonel Short, and actually jumped 
into the ditch. The porthole was opened at once, and the six-pounder, w'ithin 
thirty feet of the men in the ditch, was fired. By this enfilading shot Colonel 
Short and over fifty of his men were cut down, though some of them were 
only wounded.- At the same time the rifles in the fort, perhaps one hundred 
and fiftv of them, opened on the men in the ditch, and this soon compelled 
them to retire, leaving the wounded behind. By this time darkness came. 
The wounded begged for water, but their friends dare not venture near enough 
to them to supply it. Major Crogan and his men handed them water over the 
pickets. He also opened a hole under the pickets to the ditch, and many of 
the wounded crawled through it into the fort. At three o'clock in the morn- 
ing Proctor and his men quietly retreated down the bay, and in their haste 
left a boatload of valuable supplies behind. They also left seventy stand 
of arms and many braces of pistols. The Americans lost one killed and 
seven or eight slightly wounded. The loss to the British was estimated at 
one hundred and fifty or more, for over fifty were left in the ditch. 

Nothing can better close this brief account of Westmoreland's troops in 
the war of 1812 than a reprint of the order by which they were discharged 
from further services. It is as follows : 

Headquarters, Seneca Town, Aug. 28, 1813. 
(After General Orders) 

The Pittsburgh Volunteers, commanded by Captain Butler, and those of Greensburg 
by Lieutenant Drum, of Major Alexander's battalion, having performed their services, 
the General hereby presents them an honorable discharge. 

The General has ever considered this corps as the first in the North Western Army. 
Equal in point of bravery and subordination, it excelled in every other of those attain- 
ments which form complete and efficient soldiers. In battle, in camp, and on the march, 
their conduct has done honor to themselves and their country. 

A. H. Holmes, 
.^sst. Adj. General. 



252 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY 



The life and character of Major John B. Alexander has been considered 
in the chapter entitled the Bench and Bar of Westmoreland. 

Captain Joseph Markle, generally known to our generation as General 
Markle, was born near West Newton, February 15, 1777. The genealogy 
of the Markle family, which was quite a noted one, has been considered 
elsewhere. A sketch of his life will be found among the prominent West- 
morelanders elsewhere in these pages. 



CHAPTER XVIII 



Taverns. — Turnpikes. — Wagons. — Stage Coaches. 

The public houses erected and used as taverns along the Forbes and the 
State roads were very generally built of logs, and would not in our day be re- 
garded as attractive hostelries. They are nearly all gone now, but were not 
much better than the private houses of that period of house building. But 
when the turnpike between Pittsburgh and Bedford was completed, a new era 
in house building began. The pike was so thoroughly constructed, carrying 
with it every evidence of permanency, that builders thought they might well 
expend enough on their new houses to have them in keeping with the new age. 
This perhaps applied no less to the public than to the private houses along the 
way. Many specimens of both are standing yet, having withstood the storms 
of nearly a century. They were built in advance of the style of their day. 

When a village was laid out there was usually a pubhc square in the center, 
and at least two corners of the square were set apart for taverns. These towns 
and public houses followed the stage-coach lines and the wagon lines upon 
which were transported nearly all of the passengers and goods between Phila- 
delphia and Pittsburgh. The best men and women of our country traveled 
back and ' forth along the turnpike, and their entertainment called for and 
brought about a new and better style of hostelries. There was almost a con- 
tinuous stream of four or six-horse wagons laden with merchandise going west, 
and returning with the product of the west to supply the eastern cities. They 
journeyed mostly between Philadelphia or Baltimore and Pittsburgh. Wagon- 
ers generally stopped at the wayside tavern, which was less expensive than to 
put up at the villages. They cared little for style, but demanded an abundance, 
while the stage-coach passengers wanted both. The ^vagoner invariably slept 
on a bunk which he carried with him, and which he laid on the floor of the big 
bar-room and office of the country hotel. Stage drivers and their passengers 
stopped at the best hotels and paid higher prices. 

The public square, so common in many of the older Pennsylvania towns, 
was not intended to be an ornament as it is now, but was for a special purpose. 
There the wagons laden with freight stood over night, and as a general rule, 



254 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY 



in all kinds of weather. The horses were blanketed, fed and bedded in the 
square also. For this purpose the wagoner carried a long trough which at 
night he fastened with special irons on the tongue of the wagon, the end of 
which was held up by a prop. There are few of our public scjuares which have 
not thus been filled even to overflowing with wagons and horses. An old gen- 
tleman told the writer that he had once seen fifty-two wagons in an unbroken 
line going west on the Greensburg and Stoystown turnpike. These were 
Conestoga wagons, with great bowed beds covered with white canvas, and it 
must have taken a large stable-yard and square to stow them away for the 
night wherever they stopped. The square of a wagon or stage road town was 
usually from three to five hundred feet long, by perhaps two to three hundred 
feet wide. Some old villages had two squares separated a short distance from 
each other. 

A requisite of the old fashioned wagon or stage town hotel, or of the way- 
side tavern, was a large room used as an office, a bar-room, and a sleeping 
place for the wagoners. In it was a large open fire-place which was abund- 
antly supplied with wood in the early days, and later with coal. Around this, 
when their horses were cared for and the evening diversion over, the wagoners 
spread their bunks in a sort of semi-circle, with their feet to the fire. Colored 
men drove wagons, but never became stage drivers. They stopped at the same 
hotel with white wagoners, but never ate at the same table. Wagoners drove 
in all kinds of weather, and the descent of a mountain or large hill was often 
attended with great danger, when it was covered with ice, for instance. The 
day's journey for a regular wagoner when heavily laden was rather less than 
over fifteen miles, and one hundred miles in a week was more than the average. 
To urge his horses on, or compel a lazy one to pull its share, the wagoner used 
a large tapering wagon-whip made of black leather and about five feet long, 
with a silken cracker at the end. The best whips were called Loudon whips, 
made in a little town in Franklin county, named Loudon. The average load 
hauled was about six thousand pounds for a six-horse team. Sometimes four 
tons were put on, and even five tons, which the wagoner boastfully called "a 
hundred hundred," were hauled, but these were the exceptions. 

The wagons were made with broad wheels, four inches or more, so that 
they would not "cut in" if a soft place was passed over. The standard wagon 
was the "Conestoga." The bed was low in the center, and higher at each end. 
The lower part of the bed was painted blue. Above this was a red board about 
a foot wide, which could be taken off when necessary, and these, with the white 
canvas covering, made the patriotic tri-color of the American flag, though this 
was unintentional. Bells were often used in all seasons of the year, though not 
strings of bells such as used now in sleighing. They were fastened to an iron 
bow above the hames, and were pear-shaped, and very sweet-toned. They 
perhaps relieved the monotony of a long journey over the lonely pike. 

Wagoners always preferred to stop with a landlord who was a good fiddler, 
— not a violinist, but "just a plain old-fashioned fiddler." Then, when the even- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 255 

ing work of the wagoner was over, an evening's dance in the dining-room or 
bar-room was not an infrequent occurrence. Gathered together at one place 
were the young maidens of two or three nearby taverns, or other neighbors, and 
then to the music of the landlord's fiddle came the Virginia hoe-down, the 
memory of which makes the old wagoner's eyes sparkle with joy even to this 
day. 

A youngs wagoner who saved his money did not always remain a wagoner. 
Very soon he could own a team of his own, then another and another, until he 
could purchase a farm with a "tavern stand" on it, or engage in other business. 
Some of them became men of prominence as merchants and manufacturers in 
Pittsburgh or elsewhere. One of the best known wagoners between Pittsburgh 
and the east was Jacob Painter, who afterward became a business man of high 
standing and great wealth in Pittsburgh. On one occasion he said that he had 
"driven over the road many times, and knew every man, woman and child on 
the way. I was welcome everywhere, and had plenty of enjoyment. Indeed," 
said he, "those were the happiest days of my life." 

Gears, not harness, was the name used in that day, and they were so large 
that they almost covered the horse. The backhands were often over a foot 
wide, and the hipstraps as much as ten inches in width. The breeching of the 
wheelhorses were so large and ponderous that they almost covered the hind- 
quarters of the large horses. The housing was of heavy black leather, and 
came down almost to the bottom of the hames. It required the strength of a 
man to throw them on the back of a large horse. The wagoner's saddle was 
made of black leather, with long wide flaps or skirts cut square at the bottom. 
With the Conestoga wagoners originated our modern stogie cigars, which 
have become so common among smokers. They were made of pure home- 
grown tobacco, and, being used very largely, at first by the Conestoga wagon- 
ers, took the name "stogies," which clings to them yet. There was no revenue 
on them then, and, labor being cheap, they were retailed at three and four for 
a cent. They are made now by the million in western Pennsylvania and in 
'Wheeling, West Virginia. The wagoner smoked a great deal, perhaps to re- 
heve the monotony of his life, but he very rarely drank liquor to excess, though 
whisky was only worth three cents per drink and was free at most tavern 
stands to wagoners. Landlords kept liquor, not to make money out of it, but 
to accommodate the traveling public. There was on our old pike, it is said, an 
average of one tavern every two miles between Pittsburgh and Bedford, yet 
all put together outside of the city did not sell as much as one well patronized 
bouse does now. In the corner of the bar-room of the county tavern was a 
small counter, and back of this were kept several bottles labeled with the name 
of the liquor they contained. The guest had his choice. 

It may be somewhat surprising to the modern reader that the best of wagons 
in the early days of our pike were not supplied with brakes, or rubbers to 
enable the wagoner to move slowly going down a steep hill. Thev were not in 
Aise till later in the history of the pike, and are said to, have been invented bv a 



^ 



256 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



man named Jones, of Brownsville, on the old National pike. They were never 
patented, but came into general use soon after the inventor first put them on a 
wagon. In place of these the wagoner tied a hickory pole across his wagon, 
so that the one end bore heavily on the wheel. Sometimes he cut a small tree, 
which he tied to his rear axle and allowed it to drag behind, and thus descended 
the hill safely. In winter v^'hen the pike was covered with ice, he used a 
rough lock, which was a heavy linked chain tied around the wheel, and then he 
tied the wheel when the chain touched the grovmd or ice. 

Wagoning, as a business between the east and west, began about 1818. and 
reached its highest point about 1840, or perhaps a year or so earlier. The busi- 
ness of the pike declined very rapidly when the Pennsylvania railroad was 
built, so that in 1853 it was almost a feature of the past. The canal across the 
state, finished about 1829, also injured the wagoner's business, but it had little 




SIX HORSE TEAM USED 



EARLY TURNPIKE DAYS. 



efifect on the stage-coach traffic. Most of the elderly men of the past few 
years fi.x the highest point of travel and transportation on the pike as at about 
1840. This was the year of the greatest political campaign in the nation's his- 
tory, and this year is likely fixed by that event in the minds of the old-timer. 
There is no reason why more business should not have been done in 1842, 
though after that it began to decline. Our pike played a great part in the 
campaign of 1840 — the Log Cabin Campaign. William Henry Harrison, the 
hero of Tippecanoe, and grandfather of the late President Benjamin Harrison, 
was the candidate of the Whig party for the presidency, while his Democratic 
opponent was Martin Van Buren, of New York. Harrison had been born and 
lived in a log cabin in Ohio, so the war cry on the part of the Whigs was 
"Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," and this rang for months throughout the Union. 
Business was actually almost suspended in many parts of the country. Penn- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 257 

svlvania was particularly the scene of great excitement. In Ligonier the 
Whigs met and constructed a log cabin about twenty feet long, ten feet wide, 
and eight feet high to the roof, and placed it firmly on a large Conestoga 
wagon, after removing the bed. It had a regular sloping roof, doors, windows, 
floor, etc., and the room within was bountifully supplied with hard cider, 
and whisky. With eight horses they took this to places on the pike where big 
meetings were to be held in the interests of the Whig party. Their longest and 
most noted trip was to Somerset, where the assembled Whigs, numbering 
thousands, were addressed by Charles (alias "Spoony") Ogle, whose eloquent 
tongue was a power in every part of the Union in winning victory for the Whig 
ticket. The leading spirit in constructing the cabin was Conrad George, who 
lived nearly fifty years afterwards, and was always delighted to tell of it. 

After wagoning a few years at this rate, the times demanded a faster method 
of transportation between the east and west, and this brought about the Pitts- 
burgh and Philadelphia Transportation Company. They introduced a system 
of relays, that is, a change of horses about every ten or fifteen miles, by which 
they kept the wagon going day and night from the beginning to the end of the 
trip. When the tired team entered the relay station, a new team and another 
driver took the wagon and moved on at once. The tired horses rested, and in 
a few hours took a returning wagon of the same company back over the route. 
These wagons were never heavily loaded, four thousand pounds being about 
the heaviest they carried. The driver was expected to make on an average two 
miles per hour. For freight thus delivered in less than half the time consumed 
in the old way, merchants were willing to pay a much greater rate per pound. 
It was rarely ever that a team was fed at the middle of the day, the morning 
and evening meal being all they got. The rates of freight varied with the times. 

The tollgate keeper took the toll from all who passed over the road, except- 
ing officers or others who were entitled to free travel. To approximate the ex- 
tent of travel it is hardly fair to take the record kept by gatekeepers in a popu- 
lous community or near a growing town. But the gatekeeper on Chestnut 
Ridge between Youngstown and Ligonier reported the following for the year 
ending May 31, 1818, which was the first year- after the road was completed: 
Single horses, 7,112; one horse vehicles, 350; two-horse vehicles, 501; three- 
horse vehicles, 105: four-horse vehicles, 281; five-horse vehicles, 2,412; six- 
horse vehicles, 2,698 ; one-horse sleighs and sleds, 38 ; two-horse sleighs and 
sleds. 201 ; making a total of 38,599 horses for the first year of the pike. From 
March i to March 20, in 1827, 500 wagons passed through the gate east of 
Greensburg. On iMarch i, 1832, eighty-five wagons passed through the 
same gate. On Alarch 12, 1837, ninety-two wagons passed through it and this 
was one of the best days. 

Wagoners often drove in companies of six or eight, and sometimes more. 
In this way they could assist each other in any misfortune that might befall 
them, and they were thus company for each other at night. It was not unusual 
for a wagoner with a heavy load to, get two additional horses, making eight in 



25S HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

all, to help him up Laurel Hill, or up any steep grade. These were furnished 
at regular rates by a farmer or tavern keeper who lived near by, and who sent 
a boy along to bring the team back. 

Another feature of the old pike days was driving horses, cattle, sheep, and 
sometimes hogs, to the eastern market. Then, as now, the west raised more 
live stock than they needed, and they were made to walk east in droves. By 
the west in that day was meant Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. J\Ien in the live- 
stock business were called drovers. They bought up live stock of all kinds in 
western Pennsylvania and in the states farther west, and drove them east on 
the pike for Philadelphia and New York markets. Horses were taken east by 
the score, and even by hundreds. They could be taken at almost any season 
of the year, for they could be stabled and fed on hay at night. They were al- 
ways led, that is, a man rode on one and led five or six others with halters. 
They did not necessarily therefore go. in large droves. Hogs moved slowly, 
and droves of them were not so common. A drove of hogs could only walk 
from eight to ten miles per day. Droves of cattle and sheep were more numer- 
ous, and during the summer months could be seen almost daily on any part of 
the pike, all going east. Sheep were taken in droves of from three to six or 
even ten hundred. They walked farther each day than hogs, but not so far as 
horses or cattle. An average drove of cattle was about one hundred and fifty, 
sometimes more or less. They paid toJl by the score, and less than a score 
originally passed free. So occasionally a drover took east a herd of nine- 
teen to avoid the payment of toll. These small droves were the exception, 
however, for a larger number could be driven with about the same help. The 
cattle were generally full grown, that is, from two to four years old. One large 
steer, having a rope around his horns, was led by a boy, and the rest followed 
him. After a few days' driving they followed the leader as though they had 
been driven all their lives. In that day oxen were used more or less instead of 
horses, for heavy drawing and farm work. When a yoke of oxen became old 
they were frequently fattened and sent east with other cattle, so that the drove 
often included a number of very large, long-horned steers. Behind the drove 
followed a driver who kept the lazy cattle from lagging behind. The owner of 
the drove generally rode on horseback. In the afternoon he rode on ahead to 
look out a good field of pasture where they could be kept all night. They paid 
the farmer a price which varied, but it was generally about three cents per 
head for the night's pasture. A drove of cattle, particularly if they were heavy 
animals, could not make more than twelve or fifteen miles per day. They plod- 
ded along and at length reached the market, where, if they were fat enough, 
they were slaughtered at once. As a general rule they gained in weight 
rather than lost on the way east, particularly if the pasture was good and the 
drover a careful one. The drover was paid in cash for his cattle, and this he 
]iut in his saddlebags, and rode home to purchase another lot. The young 
men who drove for him generally walked home and tried to reach there by the 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY 



^59 



time the drover had another lot of cattle collected and ready for the long 
journey. 

But the most romantic feature of the pike to our generation, as we look 
back through the dim years to the forties, is the stage-coach. Xo one. it 
is said, who ever saw a genuine old stage-coach in use, can forget it. The 
outside of the coach was tastefully painted and beautified with bright colors, 
while the inside was lined with soft silk plush. There were three seats 
within splendidly cushioned, and three people could ride on each seat. There 
was also another seat by the side of the driver, which was very desirable in 




TVVEEN PITTSBURGH 



fine weather. Then on the top, others could ride in a way, if the manage- 
ment allowed it, and these in turn took the inside seats as they were vacated 
in the journey. Thus sometimes a stage bore as hiany as fifteen people, 
while its capacity was nine or ten and the driver. It was without springs, 
as springs are now, but the bed or top part was swung on large leather 
girders called thorough-braces, which were stretched between high bolsters 
or jacks on the front and rear axles. Bv this arrangement stiff .springs were 
obviated, and, whether heavily bden or nearly empty, the passenger rode 



26o HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 

with equal ease, a feature of comfort which could not be obtained with our 
modern springs of steel. This gave it, moreover, a gentle swinging back and 
forth, or rocking motion, which was not by any means unpleasant to the 
passenger. At the extreme rear of the stage was the boot, a three-cornered 
leather-covered affair, in which baggage was carried. The driver sat high 
up in front, swinging his long whip and handling the lines of the four 
spirited horses with a grace and skill which has never been equaled since 
his day. 

The horses were invariably showy animals, selected because of their 
lightness of foot, and yet they were strongly built. Most of them were of the 
"North Star," the "Murat," "Hickory" or Winflo,wer" breed — strains which are 
now extinct, but which for beauty of carriage, speed and endurance com- 
bined, have not been surpassed by the best of our modern thorougjibreds. 
They were driven very rapidly, generally making ten miles in an hour if 
conditions were at all favorable. The object of the stage line was to speed 
the passenger, and every possible arrangement was made to facilitate his 
journey. To this end a system of relays was established all along the pikes 
where stage-coach lines were operated. By this means fresh spans of horses 
were hitched to the sfage-coach about every ten or twelve miles. With his 
long whip the driver could touch his horses gently, or at his will lash them 
into their highest speed. Under ordinary circumstances they made from 
six to eight miles an hour, and by relays kept that speed up all day. The 
mail stage stopped at the postoffices, at the relay stations, at taverns at meal 
times to accommodate passengers, and not otherwise. They often came into- 
Greensburg, Youngstown or Ligonier at a dead run, and drew up at the 
principal tavern for fresh horses. There awaiting its arrival was the relay 
of horses, each span held by a groom. The driver threw down the lines,, 
the grooms unhitched the panting horses and "almost in the twinkling of an 
eye," says an old stager, the new spans took their places, the lines were 
handed to the driver, who, without leaving his seat, cracked his whip and 
away rolled the coach for the next station. If it was at meal times the stay 
was longer, but even then did not exceed twenty or twenty-five minutes.- 
The mail coaches had to stop at the postoffices long enough to leave the in- 
coming and secure the outgoing mail. This was called "changing the mail," 
a correct term in that age to signify the changing done by the postmaster. 
But the word has come down to us so that we now often hear the word 
"changed" used in country offices in place of the word "distributed," a re- 
minder of the days of long ago. This changing of the mail took perhaps not 
over five minutes, for letters were not so numerous then as now. 

The main pike in Westmoreland county was, as we have said before, the 
one running from Pittsburgh through Greensburg, Bedford. Carlisle, Harris- 
burg, Reading, etc., to Philadelphia. On this highway in its popular days 
there were regularly two or more daily stages each way, that is, two going 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTV. 261 

east and two going west each day. Leaving Pittsburgh in the early morn- 
ing, the coach reached Greensburg about ten o'clock, having already 
exhausted three relays, that is twelve horses. Greensburg, to most 
of the stage lines, was a relay station, with another at Youngstown, another 
at Ligonier, etc. So bv rapid driving the passengers who left Pittsburgh 
in the morning took dinner in Ligonier, having come fifty miles in about 
si.x and a half hours. The next fifty miles took them to Bedford, but the 
time occupied in the trip was much longer, for they had two ranges of moun- 
tains to climb. The regular time between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia was 
fifty-six hours, and a good line of stages invariably made it on time, or nearly 
so. Of course there were more than two lines of stages on the eastern part 
of the road where the more thickly populated districts gave rise to more 
travel, and part of the time there were more than two on the western end. 
Later in the day another stage line sent a coach out of Pittsburgh which fol- 
lowed the first and kept up the same general rate of speed. This was kept up 
from day to day, from one year's end to another. 

One of these lines was called the United States Mail Line. It was owned 
by a company which changed some of its members from time to time, but its 
prominent and main owners were James Resides, Noah ]Mendell, Abraham 
Harbaugh and Joseph Henderson. This line carried the mail, and while they 
lost more or less time in waiting for the "changing" of the mail, they made it 
np by a faster rate of speed at other times. Another line was called "The 
People's Line," or the "Good Intent Line." Colonel Samuel Elder, William 
^IcCall, and Samuel Ricker were its chief owners and proprietors. These 
rival lines, as may be supposed, prompted each to give the best possible service 
and a rapid passage from one end of the line to the other. 

The fare from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia was twenty dollars. Passengers 
generally changed coaches about every fifty miles. The heavier coaches were 
used in the mountainous regions between Ligonier and Bedford, while the 
newer and handsomer ones were near the cities at the beginning and the end 
of the line. Teams were also arranged to suit the road, the heavier and 
stronger ones being used to draw the coaches over the mountains, and the 
most showy horses being near the cities. The relays of horses journeyed back 
and forth over the same road, and thus learned its easy and hard places thor- 
oughly. The four horses which hauled the morning stage to Youngstown then 
rested from ten to twelve hours, when they hauled a west bound stage coach 
back to Greensburg. 

The coaches did not stop at night. Passengers were required to travel in 
them night and day in a continuous passage, till they reached their destination. 
Each driver had a given length of time to make his run from one relay station 
to another, and he invariably made it on time. Going up the mountains in the 
eastern part of the county, or up the Alleghenies, not infrequentlv the pas- 
sengers got out to walk for exercise and to enjoy the beautiful scenery. 



262 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

A stage driver never attended to his teams, though douhtless he assured 
himself that they were well cared for. Xo position seemed so commanding in 
the eyes of a boy as that of the stage driver. Many a youth looked forward 
with bright anticipations to the time in manhood when he could reach that 
acme of fame in his estimation, viz., the seat of a professional- stage driver. 
He was paid about fifteen dollars per month and board, and the best of them 
never received as much as twenty dollars per month, and that was considered 
good wages in that day. A good horse could be purchased in those days for 
fifty or sixty dollars, and a span of horses, with an occasional rest, was good 
for eight or ten years. While they were being driven they were made to 
strain every nerve. They went slowly up a hill or mountain where the pulling 
was heavy. As soon as the top was reached, or a little before it, they started 
off more rapidly, and on the level rarely ever went slower than a trot, while 
down grade or down the mountain side they sometimes went on a steady 
gallop. It was thus often that a stage driver coming east started his team on a 
fast trot at the top of Laurel Hill, and made each horse strain every nerve 
to keep out of the way of the stage, and thus kept up this speed for six miles 
until the first hill was reached, more than a mile east of Laughlinstown. The 
horses invariably came up to the relay stations panting and covered with foam,- 
but they had then a rest of ten or eleven hours before another effort was- 
required of them. There was very little holding back done by the wheel-horses 
of the average stage-coach when going down a hill or down the mountains. 
The wheel-horses, if made to hold back, in time became "sprung in the knees," 
and this was an evidence of bad driving. 

The regularity of their arrival at given points was remarkable. It was 
rarely ever that a coach was more than a few minutes either behind or ahead 
of time. Excitement, therefore, followed the whirl of the stage-coach all along 
the pike. The driver invariably carried a horn with a very highly keyed loud 
sounding tone, which he winded at the brow of the last hill before entering a 
village or town, to give notice of his approaching stage. New passengers, the 
relay horses and the postmaster or the landlord, were all therefore ready and 
waiting for its arrival. To the country villages the arrival of the stage-coach 
was the leading event of the day, much more so than the arrival of an import- 
ant train is to us. Loafers collected around the stations to learn the latest 
news, or become acquainted with the newest arrival, should there be any. 
Farmers and workmen along the pike stopped their work when the stage 
passed by. They could regulate their work in a measure without a timepiece 
for they knew the time that the stage was due to pass them. 

Washington Irving took great interest in the stage driver and wrote of 
him as follows : 

"The stnge-driver Iiad a dress, manner, language and air pecnliar to himself and 
prevalent thro'jghont the fraternity. He enjoyed great consequence and consideration 
along the road. The women looked np to him as a man of great trust and dependence. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 263 

and he had a good understanding with every brighteyed country lass. Kis duty was to 
drive from one station to another, and on his arrival he threw^ down the lines to the 
hostler with a lordly air. His uress was always showy, and in winter his usually bulky 
form was further increased by a multiplicity of coats. At the villages he was surrounded 
by a crowd of loafers, errand boys and nameless hangers-on, who looked UP to him as 
an oracle and treasured up his cant phrases and opinions about horses and other topics. 
Above all, they endeavored to imitate his air and rolling gait, his talk and slang, and the 
youth tried to imagine himself an embryonic stage driver. 

"The horn he sounded at the entrance of the village produced a general bustle, and his 
passage through the country put the world in motion. Some hastened to meet friends, 
some with bundles and bandboxes to secure seats, and in the hurry of the moment could 
hardly take leave of the group that accompanied them. As the stage rattled through the 
village everyone ran to the window, and the passenger had glances on every side of 
fresh country faces and blooming giggling girls. At the corners were assembled the 
village idlers and wise men, who took their station there to see the compan}- pass," 

The Stage-driver carried a long whip composed of a stock, lash and silk 
cracker. The stock was made of hickory, heavy at the hand end, but tapering 
till it was very slender and flexible at the lash end. It was about a yard long. 
The lash was made of platted rawhide, and was much thicker at the upper mid- 
dle than at the ends This shape and the flexible stock made it possible for the 
driver to handle it by a series of curves and swings that were very accurate 
and made it very severe in its work when he chose to make it so. 
With years of practice they learned to handle the whip with great dexterity. 
An old friend has assured the writer that he has often seen an expert knock 
a fly from the back and shoulders and even from the necks of his leaders with 
his whip and do it so gently that it would not injure the horse nor urge him to 
greater speed. When the driver cracked this long whip over the horses, it 
was like the report of a small gun, and without anything else urged every 
horse to strain every muscle. It was seldom that a careful driver was com- 
pelled to use the whip severely. 

Sometimes when one line stage tried to pass another, then the driver used 
his whip with all the skill he could command. Two stages abreast have more 
than once gone down the mountain into Ligonier valley, going west, every 
horse galloping and at his utmost speed, and the drivers lashing them to still 
greater exertions. In a race of this kind the rumbling of the stages could be 
heard for miles. The heavy bed with its tightly drawn sides and top, its 
glass doors and the heavy thorough-braces laden to their utmost strength, 
gave it at all times a rumbling noise, but when several of them were racing 
or making time coming down a mountain, the road bed of which was stone, 
the noise is said to have been terrific. If the driver knew his business well 
there was little danger in such a race, and it was to the passengers one of the 
most exciting events of their lives. 

The old stage driver of a day gone by, has been written of in song and 
story. We subjoin a fragment of verse found in a book entitled "Searight's 
National Road," written, we believe, by Tames Newton -Matthews. These 



264 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

verses were read on a recent occasion by one whose reading is not of the best, 
to an old stage driver who was moved to tears by the memories they awakened : 

"It stands all alone like a goblin in gray, 
The old-fashioned inn of a pioneer day. 
In a land so forlorn and forgotten, it seems 
Like a wraith of the past rising into our dreams; 
Its glories have vanished, and only the ghost 
Of a sign-board now creaks on its desolate post, 
Recalling the time when all hearts were akin 
As they rested at night in that welcoming inn. 

"Oh the songs thej' would sing and the tales they would spin, 

As they lounged in the light of the old country inn. 

But a day came at last when the stage brought no load 

To the gate, as it rolled up the long, dusty road. 

And lo ! at the sunrise a shrill whistle blew 

O'er the hills — and the old yielded place to the new — 

And a merciless age with its discord and din 

Made wreck, as it passed, of the pioneer inn." 



CHAPTER XIX 



Canals. 



At the close of the Revolution our people, as we have seen, began to agitate 
the transportation question. The first result was the formation of state and 
-county roads, which served their day and generation. Next after these came 
the canals. Water always had been and perhaps always will be, the cheapest 
:medium of transportation when practicable, and where speed was not a re- 
quisite. Wind has been the great power which carried the wealth of the East 
rto the old time centers of industry in western Asia and eastern Europe. But 
this was out of the question as a motive power for internal navigation. 

In honoring Robert Fulton as the father of steam navigation, it is generally 
forgotten that he was an apostle of canal building prior to the invention so in- 
separably connected with his name and fame. He was a native of Lancaster 
county, and spent several years in England studying the question of internal 
navigation. There he published a book illustrated with drawings of canal 
boats, aqueducts, and locks for lifting and lowering boats. On his return to his 
native land he urged canal building as a method of internal navigation 
for the people of the United States. In a letter which he wrote to Governor 
Penn, of Pennsylvania, he used these words : "The time will come when canals 
shall pass through every vale, wind round every hill, and bind the whole coun- 
try in one band of social intercourse." This became an oit-quoted sentence by 
ithe early advocates of canal building as a means of internal improvement. 

It nnist not be supposed that canals were then new in the world's history. 
They had been used. in Egypt and China before the days of Julius Caesar, and 
had for centuries been in use throughout Europe. But most of the places of 
canals in Europe, although of ingenious conception, were not practicable in 
America, and none were so valuable to us as those outlined and advocated by 
Robert Fulton. 

In 1791 a "Society for Promoting the Improvement of Roads and Inland 
Navigation" was formed in our state, and it gave a great deal of attention to 
the surveying of several routes across Pennsylvania by which the Delaware 
river might be connected with the northern lakes. At that time the ^Mississippi 
was closed to American commerce, for the Spaniards owned Louisiana, and they 



266 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

were hostile to the United States. Xor was the situation improved bv its sale 
to France. But when Thomas Jefferson purchased it from Napoleon Bona- 
parte for the United States in 1803, thenceforth the great object sought bj- our 
people was a water connection between the Delaware and the Ohio river. The 
great utility of such an achievement is patent to any one who contemplates 
our surroundings at that time. The "Louisiana purchase" meant more to 
westerrl Pennsylvania then than we are likely to imagine now. It gave an 
isolated section, rich in products, or, rather, rich in the possibility of its pro- 
ducts, its first real outlet to the seaboard and to. the commerce of the world. 
So the eastern sections of Pennsylvania, far in advance of us in wealth, became 
greativ interested in a canal across our state, so that our products might not 
reach them by sailing first westward on the Ohio river. 

The canal from Buffalo to New York, was built largely through the efforts 
of DeWitt Clinton, and was opened up on November 4, 1825. The result was 
that the cost of carrying freight over -the route was reduced from $100 per ton 
to $10 per ton. This awakened our people to the importance of a similar 
waterway across Pennsylvania. The legislature took up the Cjuestio.n at once, 
and had surveys made of all the principal rivers in order that the most prac- 
ticable route might be selected. A canal across the Alleghenies was impossible, 
but the gap was to be supplied by good roads across the mountains. Much 
time was spent in trying to locate the canals on either side, so that the roads 
crossing the mountains would be as short as possible. In 1824 the assembly 
authorized the appointment of three canal commissioners to explore a route 
from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and on April 11, 1825, they were appointed. 
The Union Canal had already been built connecting the Schuylkill river with 
the Susquehanna, its western terminus being near Harrisburg. The commis- 
sioners appointed by the Governor reported the route by the Juniata and the 
Conemaugh to be the most practicable. Accordingly, in 1826, the legislature 
provided for the construction of the Pennsylvania Canal. It was to begin at 
the western terminus of the Union Canal, and extend to the mouth of the 
Juniata river. West oi the mountains it was to extend from Pittsburgh to the 
mouth of the Kiskiminetas river, the object undoubtedly being that both the 
Juniata and the Kiskiminetas rivers should be made navigable by slackwater. 
The legislature appropriated three hundred thousand dollars, so that work 
could be begun on it at once. This was done, and it was pushed so rapidly that 
in 1827 the water was turned into the levels at Leechburg. Later the slack- 
water projects for the navigation of the Juniata and Kiskiminetas rivers were 
abandoned, and the canal, when completed, reached from the Susquehanna tO' 
Holidaysburg, at the base of the eastern slope of the Alleghenies and from 
Johnstown at the foot of the western slope to Pittsburgh. These canals were 
managed by a board of canal commissioners consisting of three men appointed 
by the Governor. The appointment was then one of the most important in. 
the state .and almost invariably our leading business men were selected. 

No improvement up to that time in the history of Pennsylvania was at- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 267- 

tended with so much benefit to the west as the completion of this canal. Towns 
and villages sprang up all along its route, and the population was everywhere 
increased. Blast furnaces were started at once. Mountains which had hitherto 
been regarded as worthless at once became of great value because of the 
deposits of iron ore which they contained. The furnaces afforded a market for 
the timber, for they were operated entirely by charcoal. The canal came west 
from Johnstown on the north bank of the Conemaugh, passing near the towns 
of Nineveh, New Florence, Lockport, Bolivar, Blairsville. Bairdstown, Liver- 
more, Saltsburg, Leechbiirg and thence to Freeport. It crossed the Con- 
emaugh river on a beautifully arched stone aquaduct at Lockport. It will 
thus be seen that it passed along and through the northern part of our county 
for a distance of about sixty miles, and that, though part of this distance it 
was not within our limits, it was at all points within our reach and benefitted 
our county correspondingly. The first canal boat o« our part of the canal 
was built at Apollo, and was called the "General Abner Leacock." It was in- 
tended as a freight and passenger boat, and had berths, etc., like the steamboats 
of a later period. 

In 1834 the Philadelphia and Columbia railroad was completed, and also 
the Portage railroad over the mountains, which latter connected the two canals. 
So a canal boat was brought from the east over the canal and over the moun- 
tains on trucks to Johnstown, w^here it was put on the canal and finally reached 
Pittsburgh. The newspapers of the day hailed this as one of the great feats 
of modern times. Capitalists invested money in schemes all along the canal 
route, and business men who were not interested in canal lines, its boats, or 
its adjuncts such as turnpikes, stages, etc., were not regarded as wealthy nor 
enterprising nor on the true highway to fortune. 

A canal may be briefly described as an artificial waterway over which- 
boats were drawn by mules. Beside the canal was a narrow path called a tow- 
path, on which the mules were driven. They were hitched tandem to a long 
rope which was fastened to the front part of the boat. By means of the rud- 
der the boat was kept in the middle of the canal and could be landed at the side 
opposite the towpath when necessary. Each section of the canal was neces- 
sarily level from one end to the other. The next section of the canal being 
either lower or higher than the first, the boat was lowered or raised, as- 
might be necessary, by means of a lock, which was practically the same in con- 
struction as the locks now used on rivers which are made navigable by slack- 
water dams. The average canal was about thirty feet wide, and held about 
four feet of water. Canal boats varied in length and somewhat in width ; they 
were generally about twelve feet wide and from twenty-five to fifty feet long. 
Two boats could therefore pass each other, for they were never quite half as 
wide as the canal. They sometimes passed through hills by tunnels, and like- 
wise over small valleys or rivers by embankments or bridges, the latter being 
called aqueducts. The canal was fed at the beginning of its highest section, 
usually by a dam across a stream or river, and the water moved so slowdy in 



268 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

the canal, passing from one basin to another, that it often became stagnant. 
There being no current, the boat could be landed at any time, and the draft 
was about the same going either way. It was a very cheap system of trans- 
portation. Two mules could easily draw fifty tons, and average about two mdes 
per hour. The mules were driven on a rapid walk unless the boat was un- 
usually heavily laden. While this speed was sufficient for iron, coal, lumber, 
■or almost any species of freight, it was too slow for passenger traffic, and the 
canals therefore were never much opposition to the stage lines passing over our 
turnpikes. They were, however, of great advantage in the transportation of 
freight. They are now nearly all abandoned, and one sees only the remnants 
■of a lock or basin that is slowly filling up with sediment, so thoroughly have 
they been supplanted by railroads. 

From the Blairsvillc Record of July 23, 1829. we copy the following: 

"We have delayed the publication of our paper till this morning so that we might 
announce the arrival of the first packet boats, the Pioneer and the Pennsylvania, at the 
port of Blairsville. They arrived last evening. They are owned by Mr. David Leech, 
-whose enterprise and perseverance entitle him to much credit. A large party of citizens 
and strangers met the boats a few miles below this town and were received on board 
with that politeness and attention for which Mr. Leech is proverbial. 

"The Pioneer passed the first lift lock below this place in the short space of three 
minutes. The boats are handsomely fitted up and well calculated to give comfort to 
passengers. They were welcomed at our wharves by the presence of many of our citizens 
of both sexes. They departed at nine o'clock this morning for Pittsburgh." 

The reader will understand that these were the first real passenger boats 
on the canal ; freight boats had been in use two years before this. 

One of the most interesting descriptions of traveling by canal in western 
Pennsylvania is given by Charles Dickens in his "American Notes," written 
■during his first visit to America in 1842 : 

"The canal extends to the foot of the mountain, and there of course it stops, the 
passengers being conveyed across it by land carriages, and taken on afterwards by another 
canal boat, the counterpart of the first, which awaits them on the other side. There are 
two canal lines of passage-boats ; one is called the Express, and the otiier, a cheaper one. 
the Pioneer. The Pioneer gets first to the mountain, and waits for the Express people 
to come tip, both sets of passengers being conveyed across it at the same time. We were 
the Express company, but when we had crossed the mountain and had come to the second 
lioat, the proprietors took it in their heads to draft all the Pioneers into it likewise, so 
that we were five and forty at least, and the accession of passengers was not at all of that 
kind which improved the prospect of sleeping at night. One of two remarkable circum- 
stances is indisputably a fact with reference to that class of society who travels in these 
boats, either they carry their restlessness to such a pitch that they never sleep at all, or 
they expectorate in dreams, which would be a remarkable mingling of the real and the 
ideal. All night long and every night on this canal, there was a perfect storm and temp- 
est of spitting. Between five and six o'clock in the morning we got up, and some of 
us went on deck to give them an opportunity of taking the shelves down, while others, 
the morning being very cold, crowded round the rusty stove, cherishing the newly-kindled 
fire, and filling the grate with these volunteer contributions of which they had been so 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 269. 

liberal at night. The washing accommodations were primitive. There was a tin ladle- 
chained to the deck, with which every gentleman who thought it necessary to cleanse 
himself, many were superior of thir weakness, fished the dirty water out of the canal and. 
poured it into a tin basin secured in like manner. There was also a jack-towel. Hanging 
up before a little looking glass in the bar, in the immediate vicinity of the bread and 
cheese and biscuits, were a public comb and a hair brush. And yet, despite these oddities, 
and, even they had, for me at least, a humor of their own — there was much in this mode 
of traveling which I heartily enjoyed at the time, and look back upon it now with great 
pleasure. Even the running up bare-necked at five o'clock in the morning from the tainted 
cabin to the dirty deck, scooping up the icy water, plunging one's head into it and drawing. 
it out aJl fresh and glowing with the cold, was a good thing. The fast, brisk walk upon 
the towing-path between that time and breakfast, when every vein and artery seemed to 
tingle with health, the exquisite beauty of the opening day, when light comes gleaming 
off from every thing; the lazy motion of the boat when one lay idly on the deck, looking; 
through, rather than at the deep blue sky ; the gliding on at night so noiselessly, past 
frowning hills, sullen with dark trees, and sometimes angry in one red, burning spot high 
up where unseen men lay crouching round a fire; the shining out of the bright stars, un- 
disturbed by noise of wheels or steam or any other sound than the rippling of the water 
as the boat went on, all these were pure delights." 

Charles Dickens arrived in Pittsburgh at 9:30 p. m. on j\Iarch 28, as is an- 
nounced in the Morning Chronicle of March 29, so this trip was taken on the 
28th. He came from Johnstown on David Leech's packet called the "Ex- 
press." He went from Pittsburgh to St. Louis. 

The primitive mode of navigation on the Monongahela and Youghiogheny 
rivers was the simple Indian canoe propelled by either one or two oars. The 
canoe was constructed by the unskilled hand and was the pride of the un- 
tutored red man, for upon it he glided up and down our limpid waters. Gen- 
erally they were made of a solid section of a tree hewn into proper shape by a 
rude tomahawk. Sometimes the natural bark was nicely ornamented. The 
successor to the canoe was the skiff. The original freight crafts were con- 
structed in the form of rafts of logs, but on the coming of the saw mills, the 
flat-boat and broad-horn boats took their place, serving well the purpose for 
which intended. Li the early part of the nineteenth century they were super- 
ceded by the keelboat, and they in time gave way to the steamboat. The first 
steamboat built in the Monongahela Valley was at West Brownsville, but it is 
not now known by whom built. Its name was the "Enterprise," and for many 
years it plied up and down the Monongahela river. 

After several attempts to have the general government permanently im- 
prove the navigation of the Monongahela river without any practical success, 
the Monongahela Navigation Company was authorized by an Act of the As- 
sembly of Pennsylvania, March 31, 1836. The only improved condition of 
navigation heretofore had been the construction of chutes and wing-walls at 
the dififerent points. The improvements proposed by this company was a 
series of locks and dams, and lock Nos. i and 2, beginning at Pittsburgh, v.'cre 
built in 1841. Nos. 3 and 4 were completed for use to Brownsville November 
13, 1844. Other locks and dams were completed at various dates, until finally 



2.']0 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY 



the government aided in improving the stream. Below Alorgantown, West 
Mrginia, navigation is easy and complete. The slackvvater is in perfect work- 
ing order so that steamboats can run from Pittsburgh to ^lorgantown all sea- 
sons of the year except when the river is frozen over. November 8, 1889, the 
locks and dams were completed to Morgantown, and the steamboat "James G. 
Blaine" passed up from Pittsburgh to that place, being the first to make the 
trip. 

Prior -.0 the completion of slackwater to Brownsville there were no regular 
packets on the river. The Liberty, Exchange, Oella, Massachusetts, Export, 
and that class of boats, did duty as carriers of freight and passengers' when- 
ever the depth of the water would admit of it, but navigation depended entirely 
on high water. 

The Pittsburgh & Brcwnsville Packet Company was organized 1844 by 
Adam Jacobs, G. W. Cass, J. K. Moorehead, J. L. Dawson, I. C. Woodward 
and others. The Consul was the first boat built for this company. She was 
commanded by Captain Samuel Clarke. Soon after this the Louis McLane 
was put on the line under command o,f Captain Adam Jacobs. In 1851 the 
Red Stone was placed on the line with I. C. Woodward as commander. After 
a short service she was sold, and a few months later exploded her boilers near 
Cincinnati, Ohio, killing the engineer and several others. In 1852 the Jeflfer- 
-son and Luzerne were put in service, and in 1856 the Telegraph, Captain I. C. 
Woodward: 1859, the Gallatin, Captain Clarke; the Dunbar, Captain Bennett; 
i860, the Franklin, Captain Bennett; 1864, the Fayette, Captain S. C. Spears; 
1866, the E. Bennett, Captain M. A. Cox in command. 

In 1868 the People's Line consolidated with the old line and was known 
thereafter as the Pittsburgh, Brownsville & Geneva Packet Company. The 
Geneva was built in 1871 bv this company and was in trade fourteen years. 
The stern-wheel boat John Snowden came to service in ,1876, Captain Peter 
Donaldson in charge, and later was turned into an excursion boat by Captain 
L. N. Clarke of Pittsburgh. The Bennett and Chieftain were lost in a destruc- 
tive ice break-up in 1882. The Adam Jacobs made her maiden trip Septem- 
ber 15, 1885, Captain M. A. Cox in command. This was the first boat to use 
electric light, which has since been added to nearly all the larger packet boats. 

Before the completion of the Pennsylvania railroad to Pittsburgh the Mo- 
nongahela was on the great route between the west and east. This packet com- 
pany was a very important link in the route, and the number of passengers and 
the freight carried by the boats prior to 1852 would astonish the modern en- 
thusiast. Both freight and passengers came up the Ohio and then up the 
Monongahela. The turnpike from Robbstown, (now West Newtown), to 
]\It. Pleasant, Somerset, etc., was built to intercept this river trade. The slack- 
water navigation of these rivers was therefore an important factor in our early 
Westmoreland industries, and even yet affords a cheap method of transporta- 
tion for thousands of tons annually of our southwestern products. 



CHAPTER XX 



Mexican War. 

After over thirty years of peace with other nations, we were again engaged 
in war, the third in our national history. It is known as the Mexican war. The 
contention was over the territory north of the Rio Grande river, and residted 
in the cession to the United States of that territory and CaHfornia. The war 
came late in 1846. There was something glorious, in the opinion of the average 
American youth, about going to a far-off land to fight an enem\- about whom 
they knew nothing. They knew of the victory of General Sam Houston at the 
battle of San Jacinto, in 1836, around which a glamour of romance had been 
thrown. Mexico was, moreover, old in civilization when we were struggling 
colonies. Its untold wealth of architecture rivaled that of the city on the Tiber 
in the days of the Caesars. They were now to see its luxuriant marble baths, 
its magnificent porticoes, its temples dedicated to the Sun, and the grand 
palaces and halls of the ancient Montezumas. The magnificent yet decaying 
splendor of all this was extremely attractive to the youthful Westmorelander 
whose traveling had been limited in almost every case to his native state. 
There, too, were the tempting fruits which ripened all the year round under the 
bright rays of the tropical sun. 

Prior to this we had had militia companies with their attendant parade or 
review days, in nearly every section of the county, and these had engendered 
a martial spirit among our young men which, at all events, has not been sur- 
passed since that day. In the Greensburg company were attorneys, doctors, 
preachers, merchants, clerks, mechanics, etc. They responded promptly to the 
csll for troops, and about one hundred young men were sent to Mexico. They 
were the best educated young men in the county, and in nearly every case 
came from what might be called our best families. Nearly one-third of all 
who left, never returned. But few of them fell in battle, and perhaps their 
greatest mortality was due to diseases incident to the hot climate. Some were 
laid in the hot sands at \'era Cruz, others were buried in the City of Mexico, 
and still others, who died on the way home, were committed to the waves of the 
great Gulf. 



272 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

There was but one company in the war from our county, and it was raised 
in and around Greensburg. The company roll is as follows : 

Commissioned Officers : — Captain, Jno. W. Johnson ; first lieutenant. James Arm- 
strong; second lieutenant, Washington Murry; second junior lieutenant, James Coulter. 

Non Commissioned Officers : — First sergeant, Henry C. Marchand ; second sergeant, 
Thomas J. Barclay; third sergeant, H. Byers Kuhns ; fourth sergeant, James M. Mc- 
Laughlin ; first corporal, James M'. Carpenter ; second corporal, Andrew Ross ; third cor- 
poral, William Bigelow ; fourth corporal, Daniel C. Byerly. Musicians. — drummer, An- 
drew J. Forney ; fifer, Michael J. Kettering. 

Privates : — John Arkins, Andrew Bates, Hugh Y. Brady, George W. Bonnin, William 

A. Campbell, Humphrey Carson, Richard Coulter, Archibald Dougherty, Henry Fishel, 
Samuel Gorgas, John R. Grow, Frederick Kaines, James M. Hartford, James Hays, 
Andrew R. Huston, James Johnston, Jacob Kagarize, John Kerr, Jacob Kuhn, Philip 

Kuhn. Jacob Linsebigler, Macready, George May, William H. Melville, Samuel 

Milner, Samuel C. Moorhead, Peter McCabe, Samuel McClanen, James H. McDerniott. 
Robert McGinley, Amon McLean, William McWilliams, Frederick Rexwood, Joseph 
Shaw, Thomas Spears, Henry Scickle, Nathaniel Thomas, James Underwood, Williom 
R. Vance, Lebbeus Allshouse, McClure Bills, Samuel Byerly, Henry Bloom, Hagen Car- 
r.ey, Milton Cloud, George Decker, James L. Elliott, Henry Gresyn, Andrew D. Gor- 
don, George Haggerty, Edward Hansberry, George W. Hartman, Michael Heasely, Jacob 
Haffer. Richard H. L. Johnston. William Kelly, Henry Keslar, Daniel D. Kuhns, Edmund 

B. Landon, Benjamin Martz, Jacob Marrhead, David Mechling, Jacob P. Miller, Samuel 
H. Montgomery, Lewis Myers, Richard McClelland. John McCollum, Charles McGarvey, 
William Mclntire. James McWilliams, David R. McCutcheon. James Reager, Chauncey 
F. Sergeant, William R. Shields, Frederick D. Steck, John Taylor, Israel Uncapher, 
Samuel Waters. 

The troops bound for Mexico from the southern part of Pennsylvania, came 
west largely on the Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Philadelphia turnpike, and ail 
along the farmers and others who had sleds, wagons and teams turned out to 
haul them a few miles, and thus hasten their westward journey. The farmers 
and others in the western part of Somerset county hauled them over the Laurel 
Hill, where the Ligonier \^alley people took them up and delivered them at 
Youngstown, and so on. 

On December 23, 1846, a public meeting was held in Greensburg to raise a 
fund to transport our company in the best of style to Pittsburgh. The company 
was organized late in December, and all its members were entertained during 
most of the holiday season by the citizens of Greensburg in their private 
houses. Christmas came on Sunday that year, but the day following the women 
of Greensburg gave the soldiers a "complimentary supper" in the court house. 
On Tuesday Rev. Brownson, of the Presbyterian church, presented each mem- 
ber of the company with a neatly bound Bible. They were received by ]\Ir. 
Andrew Ross, who was a member of the bar and a member of the company. On 
Wednesday morning, December 28. they started in wagons, coaches, etc., for 
Pittsburgh. They started early, so that with their baggage they might reach 
the city the same day, the accomplishment of which was regarded as quite a 
success as to its rapidity in the mobilization of armies. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 273 

In Greensburp^ they were called the "Westmoreland Guards," but in the 
service they were designated as Company E, Second Regiment Pennsylvania 
Volunteers, and were in 'General Pillow's brigade, General Patterson's di- 
vision, and of course, under General Winfield Scott. Ninety-four were mus- 
tered into service at Pittsburgh, on January i, 1847. They left Pittsburgh 
on January 8, and passed down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the Gulf of 
^Mexico, and thence to \'era Cruz, which they reached on March 9th. They were 
engaged in many battles. Only forty-four of them were mustered out on July 
14, 1848. Their first colonel was William B. Roberts, but, on his being taken 
sick, John W. Geary, who afterwards became Governor of Pennsylvania, suc- 
ceeded him. 

General Stephen W. Kearney commanded the "Army of the West;" Gen- 
eral Zachary Taylor commanded the "Army of Occupation," and General Scott 
commanded the "Army." On March 22d, our armies demanded a surrender 
of Vera Cruz. This being refused, the batteries and the fleet which lay near 
by in a bay af the Gulf, opened fire on the city. San Juan was the name of the 
gate to the city, and it offered a stubborn resistance until our soldiers had deter- 
mined to carry the works by an assault. The Mexican commander then of- 
fered to surrender, the terms were agreed upon, and our troops took possession 
of \'era Cruz. 

On April 14 our army again confronted the Mexican army at Cerro Gordo. 
To cut oft" the retreat, General Scott cut a road to the left of Cerro Gordo and 
around the base of the mountain, and came in at the rear of the Mexican forts. 
This took several days. A part of our army charged the enemy with such 
impetuosity that they drove them back like sheep. Our batteries now occu- 
pied the heights in front of Cerro Gordo. General Harney stormed the heights, 
while General Shields guarded the left to prevent the escape of the enemy. 
The city was taken and the enemy completely cut to pieces. Our army took 
three thousand prisoners and killed and wounded one thousand two hundred. 
Then the hot weather began to tell on the army, and there were only about 
five thousand out of fourteen thousand troops who were able to march against 
the City of Mexico. For this reason further movements were delayed till 
August, at which time the effective army was increased to eleven thousand 
troops. With these General Scott marched from Pueblo on May 5. This was 
a long march for northern soldiers in that hot climate, and, when they were 
about worn out, they passed over the crest of the mountains and suddenly 
came in full view of the valley of Mexico with the famous capital in the dis- 
tance. There, glittering in the sunlight, were the lofty domes and castles of 
the Montezumas, and beyond were the snow-capped mountains and volcanoes. 
But the road to the city was the most strongly fortified in Mexico, and to reach 
it by that route which lay before them seemed out of the question. They there- 
fore decided to cut a road around Lake Chalo, though the Mexicans thought 
that was impossible. On the i8th the army was on the Acapulco road, near 
San Augustine, and within nine miles of the city. But between them and the 



274 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

city still lay the pass of San Antonio. It was a narrow gorge between two 
mountains that were strongly fortified. General Scott concluded not to at- 
tempt the pass until he would first take Contreras, a fortification which 
guarded the pass. On August 19 four brigades of our soldiers fought the 
enemy around Contreras all day. The Mexicans were superior in numbers 
and in fortifications, and held their own verj' well all day. To the west was 
Santa Anna with about ten thousand troops. Finally our infantry was moved 
to the rear of the enemy, and the fight began from that section about an hour 
before daybreak. At sunrise the other divisions of the army began the attack, 
each from its position, bringing to bear against the enemy all the force it could 
command. Though General Smith was not the senior ofiicer, he had command 
of and outlined the place of the battle. After the battle properly began from all 
sides, at break of day, it only took them a few minutes more than a quarter of 
an hour to thoroughly defeat the enemy. Among other events of the battle 
was the capture of two guns which had been taken by the Mexicans at Buena 
Vista. They were recaptured by Simon H. Drum, of the well known Drum 
family of Greensburg. 

Four miles from Contreras was the fortress of Cherubusco. When Contreras 
was once thoroughly commanded by our army. General Worth's division was 
sent to attack San Antonio and thus open a shorter route to the city of Mexico. 
After taking San Antanio they were to move on to join another division which 
was at that time moving towards Cherubusco. The Mexican troops at San 
Antonio did not wait to be attacked, but fled before our army reached them. 
In fleeing, however, they fled to Cherubusco, and added great strength to that 
fortress, so that our army met with a strong resistance at that place. It was 
situated on a hill, and our forces crossed ditches, and by sheer force and fear- 
less charging took one intervening point after another until at length they en- 
tered the citadel of Cherubusco with drawn swords and drove the Mexicans 
out, even pursuing them till they reached the gates Oif Mexico. Our army 
lost about one thousand men while the Mexican army lost about 
seven thousand, or nearly one-fourth of all they had engaged. Nearly 
all this fighting, the reader must understand, was done in one day, August 
20, 1847. There were really five battles in two days, but very little fighting 
was done on the first day. The battles of Contreras, San Antonio, Cherubusco, 
and that of the one wing Oif Santa Anna's army, were of such magnitude that 
a nation might exult in the glory of winning any one of them. ( hir army then 
marched towards the City of Mexico. When they came within two and a half 
miles of the gates the Mexicans sued for peace, and these negotiations lasted 
over two weeks. In the end the negotiations were of no avail. 

General Scott had established his headquarters in a large stone building of 
thick high walls, and high towers at each end. This building was at the foot 
of a hill, and about a mile from Chapultepec and was called Jilolino del Rey. 
Santa Anna's army, about fourteen thousand strong, lay west of this. On 
September 8th, Scott attacked their lines in three places. He cut the Mexican 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 275 

army in two, but could not support this advanced position, and was driven 
back by the Mexicans, who reunited their army. On another attack he 
opened the army again, and this time held his ground. There were now two 
wings of the Mexican army, and Scott's forces were between them. It was in 
this second attack that Drum's battery, in which were the Westmoreland sol- 
diers, did more effectual fighting than in any other part of the entire war. 
Drum himself was killed, and with him fell the brave young officer, "Dick" 
Johnston. 

While the attack was being made the Mexican army was recruited, and a 
division of cavalry and one of infantry came suddenly upon the left of our 
army, but they were met and driven back with considerable loss of life. This 
battle is known in history as the battle of Molino del Rey, and was the bloodiest 
battle of the Mexican war, but our troops won a great victory. Our loss was 
1787, of whom fifty-eight were officers. The Mexican loss was still greater, 
(rounting killed, wounded and prisoners, their army was reduced not less than 
three thousand. 

Four days after the battle of Molino del Rey, that is, on September 12, 
our army began firing on Chapultepec. They shelled the fortress all day till 
night fell, but with little or no effect. It was situated on a steep, rocky hill 
one hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding grounds, and, like all 
Mexican fortresses, was additionally strengthened by heavy stone walls. The 
fort was nearly one thousand feet long. At the foot of the hill was a high, 
thick stone wall, and behind it were several companies of Mexican troops. 
In addition, the ground over which our army must pass to approach the fort 
was mined and supposedly very dangerous. Beyond this was a strong redoubt, 
heavily guarded. Farther on was another wall, and outside of each wall was 
a deep ditch. In these strongholds were the IMexican soldiers whom our army 
must dislodge, and, in addition to all this, the entire fortifications were pro- 
tected by eleven heavy guns. In the early forenoon of September 13th the 
command was given for a general move on the enemy from all sides. By 
this time the fortress, or the bluff upon which it was located, was almost sur- 
rounded. They were met by a perfect hail of bullets from the fortress, and 
by the incessant firing from the eleven guns surmounting all. Our soldiers 
bridged the ditches with fascines and passed over them quickly. Each com- 
pany carried scaling ladders, and these were placed against the walls so that 
they were soon escaladed, and, regardless of a loss of life, hundreds of soldiers 
rushed into the citadel. The South Carolina and New York volunteers and the 
Second Pennsylvania, in which it will be remembered were the Westmoreland 
soldiers, were all in the thickest part of the battle at the final assault. The 
fierce struggle lasted but a moment, and then victory came to the Union 
armies. They took all of the artillery of the fort, and a large number of 
prisoners. 

Weakened and discouraged as the ^lexican armv necessarilv was bv all 



276 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

these defeats, the city of Mexico, which was originally supposed to be the 
stronghold of the nation, and the place where our armies would be compelled 
to unite in order to conquer, was comparatively easily taken. It was a walled 
city, and a few soldiers defended their gates stubbornly. But early on Sep- 
tember 14, 1847, our army marched into the city with but little resistance. 
In all these battles from Vera Cruz to Mexico our Westmoreland troops par- 
ticipated, and in every instance gave splendid account of themselves. 

In order to appreciate the work done by our Westmoreland soldiers it is 
necessary to consider a few matters not patent on the bare narration of the 
incidents of the war. The Union soldiers who fought in Mexico were largely 
brought up in states south of Pennsylvania, and consequently were somewhat 
accustomed to the hot climate. As a result of this they suffered much less 
from the blazing sun of the tropics than the northern soldiers did. It must 
also be remembered that from A'^era Cruz to Mexico they were marching 
through a hostile country, and much of the time had no base of supplies with 
which the rear of the army could communicate. They were compelled during 
much of this long and weary march to subsist entirely on what they carried 
with them and on what they could procure from the surrounding country. 
They were in a country the topography of which was entirely unknown to 
them, while around them skirted hungry and desperate guerrillas who required 
most constant vigilance on the part of those who would protect themselves or 
their property. Nor were there any railroads nor navigable streams upon which 
they could transport their army. The route from Vera Cruz to Mexico lay 
over mountains, through deep valleys and across malarial swamps, all of 
which told with peculiar severity on the northern troops. Much of the road 
was cut through a wilderness renowned for its density. 

Simon H. Drum, who was killed at the great gate of the City of Mexico, 
on September- 13, 1847, was born in Greensburg, and was the son of Simon 
Drum, one of the pioneers of the town. He was a brother to Richard C. 
Drum, late adjutant-general of the United States army. In the Mexican war 
he was captain of the Fourth United States Artillery. The charge at Con- 
treras, whereby he recovered the two cannon taken at Buena Vista, was one 
of the most daring in the whole war. At some distance before them and 
within the enemy's lines, he saw and recognized the guns, and at once gave the 
order that they must be taken at all hazards. This was accordingly done by a 
number of his men whom he led in the charge. They ran forward regardless 
of the consequences, and quickly overpowered the Mexicans who were in 
charge of them. They brought them safely within army lines, and they were 
never captured again. During the battle of Cherubusco, Drum's battery kept 
up a constant and destructive fire all day. 

At the hour of his death most of his men had been cut down, and he was. 
unable to move his guns on this account. Near by him, in the arches of 
an aqueduct, lay many of the Westmoreland Guards. Drum had known most 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 277 

of them in boyhood, and many of them had been schoohiiates with him. He 
accordingly appealed to them for help. At his call a band of Westmoreland 
soldiers ran forward and moved the cannon to a place where they would be 
more effectual, but they left the dead body of the brave Captain Drum in the 
rear. He was born June 8, 1807, and was graduated from West Point in July, 
1829. He served in the Black Hawk war, and was for three years an officer 
in the artillery of the Regular Army. In 1846 he entered the service in the 
war with Mexico. He came under General Scott at Vera Cruz, and was with 
the army till his death the day before the great city was taken. In battle 
he was always distinguished for his coolness and his bravery. In the battles 
of Cerro Gordo and Contreras his gallantry reflected great credit upon himself 
and upon his native county. 

Richard H. J. Johnston, generally called "Dick" Johnston, was killed the 
same day. He entered the army at the breaking out of the war as a private, 
and was shortly appointed a lieutenant by the President. He had two brothers 
in the war. He escaped through all the battles of the campaign, and also the 
sickness to which most of the soldiers were subjected — all this, only to be cut 
down at the last, when in view of the city. He was a son of Alexander John- 
ston, of Kingston House, the old stone mansion on the pike near Kingston Sta- 
tion, on the Ligonier Valley railroad. 

Andrew Ross was a member of the Westmoreland bar. He was born in 
Allegheny township, was graduated at Union College in New York, and was 
admitted to the bar. Shortly after this he enlisted in the Mexican war service, 
and served througn the campaign from Vera Cruz to Mexico, but had con- 
tracted a sickness from the great heat, and died on a ship while homeward 
bound. His body was cast overboard into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. 
James Kerr was a student at law when he entered the Guards. He was taken 
sick at New Orleans, and never reached Vera Cruz, dying on March nth. 
George May, of Youngstown ; James M. Hartford, of Stewartsville, and Lewis 
Meyers, of Carlisle, were also members of the company, and all died at Vera 
Cruz before the march began. Lieutenant Murry lost his health in the 
campaign between Vera Cruz and Cerro Gordo. After the battle at the latter 
place he started home to regain his health, but died before he reached here. 
His remains were sent home and were buried at Long Run churchyard. The 
drummer, A. J. Forney, died on his way home at Louisville, Kentucky. 
Andrew R. Huston was detailed to care for yellow fever patients at Vera Cruz. 
While thus engaged he contracted the disease and soon died himself. William 
A. Campbell reached home in a greatly debilitated health, and died shortly 
after. Robert McGinley, of Salem township, a brave young man of much 
promise, died and was buried in Mexico. Sergeant James McLaughlin, son 
of Randall McLaughlin, of Greensburg, participated in all the battles from 
Vera Cruz to Mexico. His health was badly broken and he returned home 
but never regained it. He died March 30. 1848. 



278 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

There were six Westmorelanders who were not in the Greensburg com- 
pany, but with the Duquesne Grays, First Regiment. They were John C. 
Gilchrist, killed October 12, 1847; James Keenan, Jr., promoted to second lieu- 
tenant of the Eleventh Infantry; Richard C. Drum, also promoted to second 
lieutenant of the Eleventh Infantry; Joseph Spencer, and Henry Bates, both 
died at Puerto, Mexico ; and William Bums, of whom there is no return. 

The largest part of the Greensburg company who lived to return home 
came up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and reached Pittsburgh on the morning 
of July II, 1848. Great arrangements were made to welcome them at Greens- 
burg and in the county generally. People came from all sections to attend a 
pubHc meeting called to perfect the preparations for a grand welcome. When 
the boat arrived at the wharf in Pittsburgh a delegation of Westmorelanders 
was on hand to meet them. "A host of warm hearts from Old Westmoreland," 
says a Pittsburgh paper, "were soon on the steamer. Fathers, sons, wives and 
sweethearts were found in happy communion." "They were escorted to their 
quarters by a number of our citizens and by the Westmoreland friends. We 
got a fair look at them. They were the best looking fellows that have yet re- 
turned. This is the opinion of all. Captain Johnston, as well as his men, de- 
serves great credit for the really good appearance they made." The com- 
mittee brought them to Greensburg, after which they were feted and feasted 
wherever they went. Ball rooms were opened, banquets were spread, and both 
young and old, but particularly the young women, vied with each other in 
doing honor to the returned soldiers. Captain Johnston lived at Kingston 
House, near Youngstown, and great preparations were made there to receive 
him and his soldiers, several of whom were from that neighborhood. The old 
town was hung with garlands, flags and streamers, and across the street were 
several triumphal arches of evergreens. 



CHAPTER XXI 



Railroads. 



Westmoreland county is abundantly supplied with railroads. Nearly the one- 
sixth of the Pennsylvania road between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia lies within 
its bounds. It was the first railroad across the county, built in the early days of 
railroad making, and it has been a prominent factor in the development of our 
industries. From the earliest history to the present time the problem of trans- 
portation has taxed the resources and the ingenuity of mankind. In our state, 
as we have seen, it was a tedious journey from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. 
First came pack-horses, and these in time were supplanted by wagons and stage- 
coaches. The best stage-coach time from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia did not 
vary much from fifty-six hours. With the building of the railroad the time 
was at once reduced to twelve hours, and even this has since been greatly 
shortened. 

The building of the Pennsylvania was one of the first railroad projects in 
America. On March 31, 1823, our legislature incorporated a company to build 
a railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia, a town situated on the Susque- 
hanna river in Lancaster county. The distance was about eighty miles. It was 
not built for some years afterwards, but its agitation helped to prepare the 
public mind, and thus contributed greatly to its ultimate success. Among its 
incorporators were Horace Binney and Stephen Girard of Philadelphia. John 
Stevens, of New Jersey, was the leading spirit in the enterprise. At that time 
the majority of our people had no faith in railroads. They truly regarded ag- 
riculture as the basis of all wealth, and reasoned that steam transportation 
would injure the sale of oats, horses, etc. But New York in 1826 had com- 
pleted the Erie canal, which connected the Northern Lakes with New York 
city, and our Pennsylvania legislators were bright enough to see that some- 
thing must be done or the western trade would all go that way to the sea- 
board. The Erie canal was already carrying seventy million dollars worth of 
western products to the East each year. In 1828, therefore, the canal commis- 
sioners were directed to complete a railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia 
within two years, and to examine a route over the Allegheny mountains with 
the ultimate purpose of thus reaching the navigable waters of the Ohio river 



28o HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

at Pittsburgh. The Erie canal was a sad blow to Philadelphia and to our 
state in general, for it stimulated the New York trade at the expense of Penn- 
sylvania. Our state therefore appropriated two millions of dollars for the 
project of opening a way between the Ohio river and Philadelphia. It was a 
large sum for that day, but the legislature was equal to the emergency. They 
continued the cnarter of the Bank of Pennsylvania for eighteen years on an 
agreement that the bank would lend the state four millions of dollars at five 
and one-half per centum interest. This money all went into canals and rail- 
roads between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. With it was built the Columbia 
road and also the Portage railroad across the Allegheny mountains. Thus they 
triumphed over a most serious barrier between the East and West. Under the 
circumstances the "Old Portage Road" has not been surpassed by railroad 
building in America. It consisted of eleven levels or grade lines, and ten in- 
clined planes. The cars were pulled over the levels by locomotives, and were 
pulled up the incline planes by wire ropes attached to stationary engines at the 
tops. It was operated for twenty years, and was the wonder of America. 
From Johnstown going east, the five inclines, with an aggregate length of 9670 
feet, raised the train 800 feet ; the five inclines on the eastern slope of the moun- 
tains, with an aggregate length of 13,499 feet, lowered it 1202 feet. The levels 
between the inclines were constructed so as to gradually raise or lower the train, 
that is, they were not quite level. Thus, by means of these two railroads and the 
canals, they opened up a continuous line of travel and transportation from 
Philadelphia to Pittsburgh as early as 1834. The line consisted of a railroad 
from Philadelphia to Columbia, eighty-two miles ; then came the canal, 172 
miles long, reaching from Columbia to Hollidaysburg ; then the Portage road 
from Hollidaysburg to Johnstown, thirty-six miles ; and a canal from Johns- 
town across the northern part of Westmoreland county to Pittsburgh, a distance 
of 104 miles, making in all 394 miles. Freight, of course, had to be handled 
with every transfer, and its transportation was slow and expensive. The state 
had expended about fourteen million dollars on the project, and never realized, 
anything of value from it by the way of dividends. But it was of untold bene- 
fit to the country through which it passed, and by the development of our re- 
sources, the state was in the end an abundant gainer. 

Almost as soon as this route was finished, a project was set on foot and 
agitated to construct a railroad all the way, that is, to supplant the canals with 
railroads. On March 6, 1838, a general convention was held in Harrisburg to 
urge the building of the road to Pittsburgh. Delegates were present from 
twenty-nine counties, and a good many from Ohio. Thus the matter was agi- 
tated, and not long after Mr. Charles L. Schlatter was appointed by the canal 
commissioners to survey and determine the best route upon which to build a 
railroad to the west. In 1840 he reported three routes which he had surveyed, 
one of which followed the Juniata and, crossing the mountains, passed down 
the Conemaugh. This was thought to be the best route. It was he and his 
survey whicli fir.st demonstrated conclusively that the Allegheny mountains 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 281 

could be crossed without using inclined planes. The project did not assume 
a tangible shape till 1846, when, on April 13, the act incorporating the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad Company was passed by our legislature. On February 25, 
1847, Governor Francis R. Shunk granted a charter to the company, and work 
was soon begun at both ends, that is at Pittsburgh and at Harrisburg, the 
grading of fifteen miles east of the former city being let on the 22d day of July. 
On September 17, 1850, the road was opened to Holli'daysburg, where it con- 
nected with the Portage road across the mountains. In August, 185 1, twenty- 
one miles west from Johnstown were finished, and this, with the part built east 
from Pittsburgh, left a gap of only about twenty-eight miles to complete the 
entire road. The year following this gap was closed up, and on December 10, 
1852, the cars began to run through from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The 
Portage road was still used by which to cross the mountain, but by February 
15, 1854, the road over the mountains was finished, and trains passed through 
from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia without using the inclined planes. 

The Allegheny mountains had for twenty-five years been considered an 
insurmountable barrier. Its completion was of great advantage to Westmore- 
land county and its industries. Otherwise we should not so long have dwelt on 
its construction. A great deal of credit for its construction is due our early 
representatives and senators in the legislature. They were men of much more 
than average ability and influence in public affairs. Those who represented 
Westmoreland were vigilant in looking after the interests of their county, and 
managed to have it included in all the great railroad and canal building schemes 
undertaken by the commonwealth. 

Public meetings were held in Greensburg, one as early as April 19, 1836, 
to express the desire of the people to have the railroad pass through Westmore- 
land and through Greensburg. Such agitation was not unnecessary, nor were 
they without reason. Schlatter was then surveying, and from his examinations 
reported a route south of the present location, and which would have passed 
only through the southern part of the county. This route had moreover been 
reported as a feasible one by Hother Hage, a distinguished engineer, some 
years prior to Schlatter's survey. This was called the southern route. But 
Schlatter also reported a third route, called the northern route, which passed 
up the Susquehanna and down the Allegheny to Pittsburgh. While this route 
was longer than either of the others, it had one advantage which appealed to all, 
viz.: by a short branch to the northwest Lake Erie, 'with all the commerce on 
the northern lakes then passing through New York, could be reached, and 
doubtless this commerce could be diverted and drawn over the proposed Penn- 
sylvania Railroad. The survey of the road through, our county was made by 
Charles De Hass, and it was he who in January, -1837, first reported in favor of 
the route passing through Greensburg. 

The grading of the road near Greensburg began in 1849. The tunnel at 
Greensburg and the immense fills east and west, made it one of the most diffi- 
cult antl expensive sections west of the Alleghenv mountains. The contractor 



282 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

was JMichael jMalone. The section west of Greensburg, which included the 
old Radebaugh tunnel, was let by contract to Richard McGrann, Jr. Charles 
McCausland was contractor for the next section eastward, including the "cut" 
near the old fair grounds. It required about three years to complete the work 
near Greensburg on account of the heavy fills, etc., above referred to. All the 
earth for these fills was hauled there in carts. A strike occurred in November, 
1850, the report of which shows something of the wages paid laborers em- 
ployed on the work. When the days began to shorten with approaching winter, 
the contractors reduced the wages from one dollar per day to 873^ cents per 
day, and a general strike was inaugurated. As is usual in such cases, the men 
went to work again after a week's idleness, at the reduced rates. 

The first locomotive which entered Westmoreland county came from the 
West, that is from Pittsburgh. It had been made in the East, and taken to 
Pittsburgh in pieces on canal boats. It arrived at Radebaugh's near Greens- 
burg, on Monday, July 5, 1852. Its coming had been widely heralded, and 
men and women came from all sections of the county to witness the unpre- 
cedented event. Most of them had never seen a locomotive before, and many 
a level headed visitor studied it with deep and curious interest trying to dis- 
cover the secret of its hidden strength. On Thursday, July 15, 1852, trains 
began to run regularly from Radebaugh's to Pittsburgh and return. The 
daily train left the "station" at 6 o'clock a. m., and reached Pittsburgh twenty- 
nine miles, in two hours. It returned again in the evening, leaving Pittsburgh 
at 6 :30, and reaching Radebaugh's at 8 o'clock. The fare each way was eighty 
cents. 

A few months after, on November 29, was the eventful day for Greens- 
burg, so far as railroad building was concerned. It will be understood that the 
train from Pittsburgh stopped at Radebaugh's two miles west of Greensburg, 
because the immense fill immediately west of Greensburg was not completed. 
On November 29, it had been finished, and the locomotive passed over it and 
through the tunnel and over the embankments east of the tunnel. It passed 
over them very slowly, going over them several times, perhaps each time with 
more assurance and speed, to test the solidity of the massive piles of earth and 
stone. Later in the day a train passed over the entire length of the road 
through the county. It was a great event. For almost a generation they had 
been talking about and projecting it. Now, at last, it was a reality. Citizens 
of all ages, men, women and children, gathered at the stations or along the 
line, to see this wonder of the nineteenth century. Not alone was the railroad 
a curiosity among the people of the rural sections when it first made its ap- 
pearance. Though poorly equipped and only in embryonic form of what we 
have today, travel by railroad was the marvel of the age. 

The celebrated abolitionist, Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio, one of the ablest 
lawyers and statesmen of his day, when on his way to Washington, in No- 
vember, 1838, to assume the duties of his long and noted career in Congress, 
took his first ride on a railroad. The experience was so remarkable to him 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 283 

that he made the following note of it in his journal. Its uniqueness entitles 
it to a prominent place in any railroad literature. 

"At eleven o'clock about one hundred and twenty passenger^;, seated in three cars, 
carrying from forty to sixty passengers each, started upon the Baltimore and Ohio Rail- 
road for Washington. The cars are well carpeted and the seats cushioned. We had also 
a stove in each car which rendered them comfortably warm. Thus seated, some convers- 
ing in groups, others reading newsapers, and some, from loss of sleep in traveling, sleep- 
ing in their seats, we were swept along at the rate of fifteen miles per hour. At the 
usual time our candles were lighted and we presented the appearance of three drawing 
rooms filled with guests traveling by land. At about seven o'clock we arrived at Wash- 
ington City. The moment we stopped we were surrounded on every side with runners, 
porters, hackmen and servants, one calling to know if you would go to Gadsby's, another 
if you would go to Brown's, another if you would take a hack, etc. They are a source 
of great annoyance, which the police ought to prevent." 

The Pennsylvania Railroad enters Westmoreland county at its most eastern 
point, in St. Clair township, passing through that township through the bor- 
ough of New Florence ; thence through Fairfield township, by the banks of the 
Cornemaugh river, through Lockport and Bolivar; thence into Derry township 
to Branch, where it takes a southwestwardly course through Derry township, 
passing through ]\Iillwood, Derry, Bradenville, and Latrobe, where it crosses 
the Loyalhanna, and passes west across Unity township; thence in a west- 
wardly direction through Hempfield township, passing through Greensburg, 
Grapeville, Jeannette, Penn Station, Manor, Irwin, and Larimer, in North 
Huntingdon township ; thence northwest, passing out of ^^'estmoreland county 
west of Trafford City, in North Huntingdon township. 

The Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad enters the county at the northwest 
part of Rostraver township, and traverses the western part of the township close 
to the ^lonongahela river, passing through the borough of ]\lonessen, leaving 
the county at the southwest corner of Rostraver township. 

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad enters the county in the southwest portion 
of South Huntingdon township, and runs northward along the Youghiogheny 
river, passing the borough of West Newton ; thence through the western part 
of Sewickley township, leaving the county north of Robbins Station, in North 
Huntingdon township. 

The South-West Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad begins at Greens- 
burg, running southwest through Hempfield township ; thence southeast 
through East Huntingdon township, passing the towns of Youngwood, New 
Stanton, Hunker, Rufifsdale, Tarr, Alverton, etc., to Scottdale. 

The Sewickley Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad leaves the South-West 
Branch at Youngwood, running southwest through Hempfield and Mt. Pleas- 
ant townships to Unity and Tranger. Branches run also to ^lammoth, in Mt. 
Pleasant township, to Humphries and Klondike in Unitv township, and to the 
Hecklas. 

The Hempfield Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad begins at South 



284 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



Greensburg, and runs north, and thence southwest through a rich coal field 
to Arona, in Sewickley township. It also connects with the main line of the 
Pennsylvania at Radebaugh and Irwin. 

The Youghiogheny Railroad, with one terminus at Irwin, extending south 
through North Huntingdon township ; thence through Sewickley township, in- 
tersecting the Baltimore & Ohio at Lock No. 4, in the southwest part of Se- 
wickley township. 

The Unity Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad leaves the main line at 
Latrobe, runs southward through Unity to-wnship, to Baggley and Lippincott. 

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad has a branch extending from near Scott- 
dale passing through the southern part of East Huntingdon township, passing 
Bridgeport and Mt. Pleasant, extending to the Standard Mines of Mt. Pleasant 
township. 

The Pennsylvania Railroad has a branch extending through East Hunting- 
don township from Scottdale to Mt. Pleasant. 

The Ligonier Valley Railroad has one of its termini at Latrobe, extending 
southeast through Derry township along the banks of the Loyalhanna, through 
Ligonier township to Ligonier, a distance of ten miles. 

The Turtle Creek branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad leaves the main line 
at Trafiford City, passing northwest through North Huntingdon, Penn and 
Franklin townships, to Murry ville ; thence east through Franklin township to 
Export and New Salem. 

The Allegheny Valley Railroad enters the county at the southwest part of 
Burrell township, passing north to Parnassus, New Kensington and Arnold, 
being close to the Allegheny river, passes northeast through Lower Burrell and 
Allegheny township to Lucesco. 

The West Penn Railroad enters Westmoreland county at the northern part 
of Allegheny township, passes southeast along the Kiskiminetas river, with 
stations at Hyde Park, and Vandergrift, and through the northern part of 
Washington township in a southeasterly course, through Bell township to 
Avonmore. 

The Pittsburgh, Westmoreland and Somerset Railroad has its northern ter- 
minus at Ligonier, extending south through Ligonier and Cook townships to 
Somerset. 

The Westmoreland Central Railroad has its southern terminus at Ligonier, 
extending north through Ligonier township to the coal mines of the Colonial 
Coal and Coke Company. 

The Alexandria Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad leaves the main line 
at Donohoe, runs north througli Linity township to Crabtree. 



CHAPTER X^II 



Church History. 

There was no other state in the Union which began with as many rehgious 
denominations and as much genuine religious toleration as Pennsylvania. From 
the first settlement of Penn and his Quaker adherents, the Province was an 
asylum for all elements in Europe. Particularly did they come to Pennsyl- 
vania if they were persecuted because of their religion at home. Other colonies 
were formed like ours by people who fled from the religious persecutions of 
Europe, but many of them instituted a series of persecutions in America that 
were scarcely less vigorous than those from which they had fled in the old 
world. The Puritans were determined to worship as they saw fit, but they did 
not allow Roger Williams to do so. It was different in Pennsylvania. With 
one exception we had absolute toleration of all religions, and this gave us more 
denominations than any other state, if not more than all the others put together. 

This heterogeneous religion prevented our old Congress and our Constitu- 
tional Convention in 1787 from endorsing or establishing any religion. There 
is little doubt but that, had the colonies been all Puritan like Massachusetts, or 
all Cavalier like Virginia, Congress would have been forced to establish a 
church as the sanctioned religion of the new nation, thus following the religious 
policy of all European countries. But here in Pennsylvania we had all kinds 
of religion, and among our people were many skeptics, and prominent men 
without religious belief at all. This influence in Philadelphia, where both our 
Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention met, prevented these 
bodies in no small degree from forming an established religion. Indeed, it 
might be said that our many religious beliefs prompted both bodies to sanction 
our system as the prevailing system throughout the Union as it is today. Here; 
we had genuine religious freedom. The Congregationalists in the east and the 
Episcopalians in the south tolerated but little else in the way of religion. What 
might be called persecutions on account of religion, while they were common 
in New England and A^irginia, were practically unknown from the beginning 
in Pennsylvania. The Acadian persecution of 1755 was the only exception in 
the history of the Province to a system of absolute religious toleration. Our 
system of religion then differed none whatever from that which is common in 



28.6 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 

the United States tocla_\'. The poet Longfellow wrote "Evangeline." to de- 
scribe this one exception in our history to complete and perfect toleration. 
We have, it is true, on our early statute books, a few laws known as Blue- 
Laws (a name given them because they resembled the rigorous laws of Xew 
England), but we never had any that compared in their severity with those of 
other st:.tes. Yet there is no indication that we were less moral, that we were 
more negligent of church duties, or less enthusiastic in going into all the world 
"and preaching the gospel to every creature. Xor were they ever accused of be- 
ing less devout in their observance of the Sabbath than the people of any other 
state. Though they recognized marriage as a civil contract into, which they 
entered with almost no ceremony at all, each church adopting its own simple 
form, yet they adhered as closely to its vows as the people of any other state. 




This generous view of life, this universal toleration so thoroughly lived up to, 
not only led our lawgivers to adopt ours as a national system, but it brought 
to our state people representing all forms and creeds of religion. Here, at 
last, was a province where no man was persecuted because of his religion or 
because of his lack of religion. Yet our morals were as high, our piety as 
sincere and wide-spread, as in any other colony. 

As every one knows, Philadelphia and the eastern counties were settled by 
Quakers. They did not hold their own as the state filled up with immigration. 
Though at first they outnumbered all others, they have gradually lost ground 
until thev are now onlv found in a few eastern counties. Westmoreland county 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 287 

was settled largely by Presbyterians and Lutherans. The former had for that 
day a well educated minister, and, with their energy shown no less in religion 
than in other matters, they spread their theories and tenets very rapidly. 

Christopher Gist, a surveyor from Virginia, in the employ of the Ohio 
Land Company, often as early as 1750 read prayers from the Established 
Church prayer books to the Indians and white men in his employ. 
The Roman Catholics who founded and built Fort Duquesne held religious serv- 
ices regularly until the fort was taken by the English, and the day following, 
Rev. Beatty, as we have said, preached a Thanksgiving sermon. He was a 
Presbyterian, and following this up the first permanent preaching and church 
founding in our county was done by the Presbyterians. They were already 
strong in the ea.st, and sent out missionaries. 

THE PRESBYTERL\N CHURCH. 

Rev. John Steel came here at the request of Governor Penn to try to induce 
those who had settled here prior to 1769 in disregard of the law which forbade 
them to settle on lands not yet purchased by the Indians, to remove. Steel was 
a brave and daring spirit who did not fear the savages. He had been a captain 
in the expedition under Armstrong against Kittanning in 1756. But, as 
most of them would not move. Revs. George Duffield and Charles Beatty were 
sent to Western Pennsylvania by the Synod of New York and Philadelphia, to 
preach to them and to try to found churches. Beatty had been a chaplain not 
only with Forbes' army but with Braddock's ill-fated troops as well, and was 
therefore well suited to minister to the spiritual wants of the pioneers. Their 
work was scattered over a wide range of territory, and further than that they 
busily sowed the seed which afterwards brought forth an abundant harvest, 
little is definitely known of their work. Soon after this a minister named An- 
derson was sent here by the Donegal Synod who were to pay him twenty shill- 
ings a day for every Sabbath he preached west of the Allegheny mountains. 
For the year 1769 the same synod ordered that the western frontier be supplied 
with ministers "for ten Sabbaths." 

Rev. Mr. Finley also did missionary work here. He arrived on horseback 
in 1 77 1. He purchased lands in what is now Washington county, then in Bed- 
ford county, as the old assessment books of Bedford show. 

Rev. James Power came from the east also, and was the first who had the 
nerve to remain with our frontier people. He came first in 1774, and preached 
several months. In 1776 he came with his family and remained. He traveled 
very widely over what is now \\'ashington, Allegheny, Westmoreland and Fay- 
ette counties. He preached in private houses, in barns, in forts, and in the 
woods. He thus organized small bodies of people which eventually grew into 
church organizations and procured pastors of their own. After a few years 
of general work over a large field, he became the regular pastor of the Mt. 
Pleasant and Sewickley congregations, in 1779. He remained constantly with 



288 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

them till 1817, when he was released because he was too old to perform the 
arduous duties of this position. Mount Pleasant church was two miles north 
of the present town of Mt. Pleasant. Its name, being a purely Scotch-Irish 
one, indicated the nationality of its founders. From the church the town 
afterwards took its name. It was he who was preaching at Unity, perhaps in 
Proctor's house, on the day that Hannastown was destroyed, and who dismissed 
his people and rode rapidly homeward. 

He was born in Chester county in 1746, graduated from Princeton in 1766, 
and began to preach regularly in 1772. He and his family and what scanty 
goods they had came here on pack-horses, having crossed the Allegheny moun- 
tains on the Forbes road. He carried his eldest daughter on a horse behind 
him, and his youngest child in his arms. The two other children were carried 
in baskets which balanced each other as they hung across the back of another 
pack-horse, while the remainder of the horse's burden was made up by clothes 
tied to the saddle. The mother rode another horse, and the remainder of their 
goods were packed on other horses. In 1787 he was relieved from the Se- 
wickley church pastorate, after which he devoted his time entirely to the Rlt. 
Pleasant work. He has been described as a straight slender man, of medium 
height, and one who displayed much grace, and manners, both in and out of the 
pulpit. He was, moreover, very neat in his dress, and a very able preacher. 
He died August 5, 1830, aged eighty-five years. After his retirement in 1817 
the charge remained vacant till 1821, when Rev. A. O. Patterson was made 
pastor of Mt. Pleasant and Sewickley, again united. The Sewickley charge 
had been organized by Dr. Power in 1776. When it was cut ofif from Mt. 
Pleasant it was united with Long Run congregation, and both charges were 
under the ministry of Rev. William Swan. 

Rev. James Finley, who, as we said, was the first minister who visited this 
part of the state, was born in Ulster, Ireland, and was thoroughly educated be- 
fore he came to America. He was licensed to preach in 1752. In person he 
was a short, compactly built, nervous man, and able both by nature and by 
preparation to endure the many hardships necessarily encountered in a fron- 
tier life. With his family he came here in 1783, and began preaching at Re- 
hoboth, or Upper Meeting House, in Sewickley township. He remained their 
pastor till 1795. This is one of the oldest Presbyterian congregations in our 
county. Rev. Finley preached there first in 1772 when he was only prospect- 
ing for a field of labor, as it were, and when his hearers were but a few scat- 
tered white settlers. In 1778 he gathered the people together at Rehoboth, and 
organized them, and in 1784 took regular pastoral charge of them. He died 
in 1795, and was succeeded shortly after by Rev. David Smith, whoi seived 
them till his death, August 24, 1803. He, in turn, was succeeded by Rev. 
William Wylie, who remained their pastor till 1817, when he was succeeded 
by Rev. Robert Johnston. This section of the county was on the frontier bor- 
der, and was greatly annoyed by the Indians in the last quarter of the eigh- 
teenth century. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNI V. 2S9 

Long Run congregation is about as old as the Red Stone Presbytery, which 
was formed in 1781. It was supphed by the Presbytery till 1793, when it and 
Sewickley were united, and Rev. William Swan became their pastor. He min- 
istered to them till 1S18, when after a short vacation, he became the pastor of 
Long Run alone, and continued with them till 1822, when he resigned because 
of his age. Fairfield, in Ligonier Valley, w-as also an early organization and 
was supplied by the Redstone Presbytery for some years. It was then united 
with Donegal and Wheatfield congregations, and Rev. George Hill was made 
pastor. His ordination took place November 13, 1792. He continued to preach 
to them till his death, June 17, 1822. In 1824, June 17, Rev. Samuel Swan was 
ordained pastor of Fairfield, Ligonier and Donegal. 

L'nity congregation was organized about 1776. They preached there, as 
was the custom, several years before they built a church. It was known as 
Proctor's Tent. The present church edifice is the building on the same ground. 
Among its early members were William Findley, John Proctor, the Lochrys, 
the Sloons. the Craigs, etc. For some years they had no regular pastor, but 
were served with supplies. The first regular pastor was Rev. JoJin McPerrin, 
who was installed in 1791, and remained till 1800. He served the Salem con- 
gregation at the same time. Both Salem and Congruity charges were organ- 
ized about the time Unity was, though Unity was older as a preaching place 
than either of them, and all were added to the Redstone Presbytery. The first 
pastor at Congruity was Rev. Samuel Porter, who preached at the same time 
at Poke Run. Porter and McPerrin were both ordained together, on Septem- 
ber 22, 1790. 

All these men were practically missionaries then. The Redstone Presbytery 
was erected by the Synod of New York and Philadelphia on May 16, 178 1. It 
was to meet in what is now Fayette county in September, but its meeting had 
to be put off on account of Indians who were prowling about the country. 
Their first meeting was held shortly after that at Pigeon Creek, in Washington 
county. There were present Revs. McMillen, Power, and Thaddeus Dodds, 
and Elders John Xeil, Dennis Findley and Patrick Scott. Rev. Joseph Smith 
is marked "absent." 

Rev. Samuel Porter was an Irishman, born in 1760. He studied Greek 
and Latin and theology under Rev. McAlillen, and boarded with his family 
while doing so, all free o.f charge. He was licensed to preach in 1789, and the 
year following began preaching at Polk Run and Congruity. He died Septem- 
ber 23, 1825, while pastor in charge of the latter congregation. 

Rev. George Hill was born in York county, March 13, 1764, and was li- 
censed to preach December 22, 1791. He was first assigned to Wheatfield, 
Fairfield and Donegal, November 13, 1792. In 1798 he took on the charge of 
Ligonier, at which time Wheatfield was otherwise provided for. There he 
labored diligently and with much vigor and success till his death, June 9. 1822. 

John McPerrin was born in York or Adams county, in 1757. He learned 
the dead languages under Rev. Robert Smith, and was graduated from Dick- 



29P 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAXD COUNTY 



inson college at Carlisle on May 17, 1788. He was licensed to preach bv the 
Redstone Presbytery in 17S9, and became pastor of Salem and Unity congre- 
gation, September 22. 1791. In 1800 he removed from the locality and died in 
1822. 

William Swan was a native of Cumberland county, and was educated at 
Cannonsburg. He was licensed to preach December 22, 1791, and began 
preaching at Long Run and Sewickley, April 7, 1793. There he preached more 
than a quarter of a century. In 1822 his lungs failed and he closed his work. 
He died in 1827. 

Many oi these early ministers preached for years without churches. There 
was generally a pulpit of rough boards or logs erected, while fallen trees 
served those who wanted to sit down during the services. Most of the con- 
gregation remained standing, or leaned against trees, during the whole of a 
long sermon. The men often came to the meeting without coats, and often 
the preacher spoke in his shirt sleeves. When they had churches they were 
very cold in the winter, and the people often brought heavy blankets and a 
superabundance of deer skins to keep them warm. Often, too, they built a log 
heap near the church, so that they could fire it and go there between services 
to get warm. They usually had two sermons, one in the forenoon and one in 
the afternoon, with an hour's intermission between for luncheon. They often 
met together, the citizens of a community, and built a log church in a single 
day. There was rarely ever a fire place in them, but they often placed a large 
kettle filled with red hot coals which made the room a little warmer. The roof 
was made of clapboards held in place by small saplings laid on the top of them. 
It was about in keeping with the rude log houses in which the early settlers 
lived. The singing was done by the unlearned congregation, and from all ac- 
counts had ven,' little music in it. 

The early ministers traveled long distances on horseback from one preach- 
ing place to another. At all times they were in danger from wild beasts and 
Indians. Often the distance between preaching stations was so great that they 
were compelled to pass a night in the wilderness, sleeping on the bare earth 
and under a canopy of stars. There were no bridges across the large streams. 
They had to be forded, and this, particularly in the winter time, was attended 
with great danger. They endured the vigor of our climate without complaint, 
and did it practically without remuneration. They carried the Gospel to half- 
dressed pioneers who stood around the rude pulpit leaning on their rifles. They 
invariably worked at some kind of manual labor in order to assist in support- 
ing their families. They sowed good seed, and by their simple methods of life 
most of them outlived the span of years allotted to man, and saw a rich har- 
vest as the result of their earlv labors. 

THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 

The United Presbyterian Church of North America, Scotch in its theology, 
ancestrv and traditions, was constituted bv the union of the Associate' and 



HISTORY OF IVESTMORELAND COUNTY. 2gi 

Associate Reformed Presbyterian Churches at Old City Hall in the city of 
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 26, 1858. 

The United Presbyterian Church, as one of the distinctive branches holding 
the Calvinistic faith, dates its origin back to the later years of Charles II and 
James II. This denomination in the United States heads at many fountains. 
While these at the Union in 1858 had gathered into the two main branches, the 
Associate and Associate Reformed, the body traces a considerable portion of its 
followers back to the Scotch Covenanters, those "Mountain Men" and "Hill 
]\Ien," who, following the battle of Bothwell Bridge and outlawry by the 
Stuarts, held their Conventicles for worship in the hills under the guidance of 
Cameron, Cargill and Renwick, leaders who were soon after to wear the crown 
of martyrdom. 

The entrance of this "psalm-singing" denomination into Westmoreland 
county is coincident with the earliest settlements established in the county. 
\\'herever Scotch-Irish families built their cabins and hewed their farms out 
of the wilderness, like the Pilgrim fathers in Xew England, they established 
the church and school. Among the earliest settlements to establish worship 
according to Associate Reformed Presbyterian (now United Presbyterian) 
standards were the settlements at Hannastown and New Alexandria. Rev. 
John Jamison preached at these places as early as 1792, and exercised pastoral 
oversight over the scattered families of the faith until the New Alexandria 
congregation was organized, August 19. 1805. Soon after the organization 
of the congregation Rev. Dr. Alungo Dick became pastor and remained in 
pastoral charge until 1816. 

Rev. John Jamison, above referred to, had an eventful and busy life. Upon 
his mother's side he was descended from Sir William Wallace, and on his 
father's side from the royal line of Bruce. He was graduated by St. Andrew's 
University, and received his theological training under the celebrated John 
Brown, of Haddington, who formulated the Westminster Confession of Faith, 
promulgated by the famous body of Westminster divines. Jamison was li- 
censed to preach by a burgher Presbytery of Scotland, and in 1783 migrated 
to Pennsylvania and entered upon his first pastorate at Big Springs, later re- 
moving to Hannastown. He was a man of robust frame, more than six feet 
tall, quick in temper, unbending in will, kindly in disposition, yet withal a ter- 
ror to evil-doers, an able preacher, and a leader among men. He was a man 
of tireless energy. During his ministry he labored in thirty-six fields, in twen- 
ty-five of which there are now strong United Presbyterian congregations. He 
is said to be the first minister who preached north of the Conemaugh river. 
After his pastorate at Xew Alexandria he removed to Crete, Indiana county, 
where he died and was buried in 1821. The other pastors of the New Alex- 
andria church have been Rev. Jonathan G. Fulton, John W. Dufif, Matthew 
Clark, Oliver Katz and Samuel Collins, D. D., who gave to this congregation 
the evening of his days in a ministry that extended over a period of fifty-nine 
years. Rev. J. B. Pollock is the present pastor. The centennial of this con- 



292 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



gregation's formal organization was celebrated in its handsome new church 
home in October, 1905. 

Another point where the church was early established was on the banks of 
the Pockety creek, in Allegheny township. In 1794 a nucleus of people com- 
posed of the Ross, Reed, and other families held services and petitioned the 
presbvtery for preaching. Revs. Joseph Kerr and Dr. Alungo Dick, and later, 
Rev. Mathew Henderson, all pioneer ministers of western Pennsylvania, occa- 
sionally held services. Living at remote distances, these ministers were com- 
pelled to journey on horseback to fill their appointments, through unsettled 
portions of country, beset by dangers from unbridged streams, wild beasts and 
prowling savages. Their compensation for this hard work was very small. 
Rev. James McConnell, the first settled pastor, was installed September 4, 181 1. 
The first log church was built in 1815. Rev. McConnell was another pupil of 
John Brown, of Haddington. He remained pastor of the congregation until 
1833. The church was burned in May, 1836, but in 1837 a new house of wor- 
ship was erected. Rev. Jonathan G. Fulton became pastor in 1838. He re- 
mained but a year and two months. Mr. Fulton, whom many yet living re- 
member, was one of the most logical, eloquent and earnest preachers that ever 
served the denomination. The succeeding pasto.rs have been Revs. W. A. I\Ic- 
Kinney, J. W. Dufif, John C. Bryson, James Given, M. M. Patterson, D. D., C. 
H. Marshall, J. B. Mclsaack, and L. R. Peacock. In 1897 the brick church was 
burned, and in 1898 the present fine frame structure was erected. The Watts, 
McGearys, Crooks, Rosses, Stewarts, Andersons and Hunnells are among the 
substantial people connected with this church. The congregation celebrated 
its centennial October 13, 1904. 

In 1802 the Associa-te Reformed Church of 'Sit. Pleasant was organized. 
Like many of its sisters, the services were first held in a tent with a bean] ].iulpit 
erected therein. The promoters of this organization were the Andrews fam- 
ilies, who a few years before had come from Ireland, and the Wardens, the an- 
cestors of the Warden family of Mt. Pleasant, who had come from the 
north of Ireland in 1765. Rev. Dr. Mungo Dick, born at Fifeshire, Scotland, 
in 1772, educated at the University of Edinburgh, was settled as the first pas- 
tor in 1806, in connection with Sewickley and New Alexandria. He was re- 
garded as one of the ablest preachers of his day. He served the congregation 
for sixteen years. After a vacancy of fifteen years. Rev. Richard Gaily became 
pastor in 1839 and remained for ten years. Rev. D. H. Pollock followed with 
a pastorate of four years, until 1853. In 1856 Rev. James H. Fife became 
pastor, until his death in 1861. The fifth pastor was Rev. A. B. Fields, for^ 
four years. In August, 1871, Rev. John A. Nelson was installed and remained 
pastor for four years. Rev. Robert B. Taggart, now of Harriman, Tennessee, 
was installed in 1877 and served the congregation for six years. He is one of 
the most erudite linguists and church historians in his denomination. The 
present pastor. Rev. Howard S. Wilson, was installed in 1884, this being his 
first and onlv charge. 



HISTORY OF ]VESTMORELAND COUNTY 



293 



In the later years of the eighteenth century httle colonies of Seceders set- 
tled in the Ligonier \'alley, near Fort Palmer, Fort Ligoni.er, and Donegal 
township. These were troublous times ; the restless savages were a constant 
source of danger and the people built their cabins within easy reach of the forts 
and lilockhouses, to which they were compelled to flee for refuge from the 
turbulent Indians. \'ery early after these settlements were made, Associate 
Presbyterian congregations were organized at Fairfield, within hailing dis- 
tance of Fort Palmer, and in Donegal township. Rev. John Cree served as 
pastor from 1803 to 1806, after which these congregations, so far as can be 
learned, were vacant until October 18, 1815, when Rev. Dr. Joseph Scroggs, to 
whom we have referred at length elsewhere in these pages, became pastor. 
The field of Dr. Scrogg's ministry has been prolific of preachers in the United 
Presbyterian ministry. Rev. Dr. James P. Lytle, Revs. Joseph Scroggs, James 
D. Lytle, R. H. Pollock, T. C. Pollock, Andrew Graham, William Graham, 
Joseph McKelvey, A. \\ . Lytle, D. P. Smith, T. :\I. Huston, Allen A. Graham 
and S. Alvin Work were reared under his spiritual oversight. Rev. A. R. 
Rankin, Rev. Dr. G. C. Vincent, D. D., LL. D., W. H. Vincent, D. D., 
T. M. Jamison, and R. H. Rockwell have since ministered to the congregation. 
Since Dr. Scroggs' death the pastors of Ligonier and Fairfield have been Rev. 
W. H. Vincent, D. D., Revs. T. :\I. Jamison. R. H. Rockwell and W. T. 
Brownlee, the present pastor. 

The congregation of West Fairfield was organized in 1874. Its pastors 
have been Revs. D. W. ]\IcLane, J. S. Hill, R. E. Stewart, and S. M. Black, 
the present pastor. New Florence congregation was .organized in 1875. ^^^ 
pastors have b^en the above named and Rev. J. W. Smith. It is now vacant. 

The Associate Reformed congregation of Sewickley was organized m 1805. 
Rev. Dr. IMungo Dick was pastor 1806-36; Rev. Richard Gaily from 1839-49; 
Rev. A. G. Fergus in 1851 ; Rev. D. H. Pollock, 1854-60; W. L. McConnell, 
1860-65; J- D. Walkinshaw, 1865-69; W. R. Stevenson, 1872-81 ; J. A. Law- 
rence. 1884-86; D. M. Thorne, 1887-97. J- H. McCormick, 1899-1901 ; and 
\\. N. Leeper, 1902 to 1904. This old congregation is the mother of the West 
Newton and Madison congregations. Its old brick church is one of the land- 
marks of that community. It was the home for many years of Dr. Dick, who 
gave two of his sons to the ministry, John M. Dick, D. D., and Rev. J. M. Dick, 
the latter for many years a home missionary on the Pacific slope. 

The Associate Reformed congregation of Brush Creek (now Bethel) near 
Circleville, is the oldest organized church of the denomination in the county, 
and was organized in 1784. Rev. Mathew Henderson served as pastor from 
1785 to 1788, and from 1800 to 1818. Rev. John Jamison, 1793-95. James 
\\'alker, 1820-23. Dr. Mungo Dick, 1824-35. Joseph Osborne, 1836-47. 
\\'illiam Conner, 1849-52. A. G. Wallace. D. D., 1854-68. J. W. McFarland, 
1869-71. W. H. McMaster, 1871-74. John N. Dick. D. D., 1877-89. IMajcr 
E. Dunn, 1892 to 1901, and D. D. Dodds, the present pastor, from 1902. This 
congregation is the mother of the United Presbvterian congregation of Irwin. 



294 



IIISIORV OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



Stewart Station and Duffsville. DutTsville was organized September 28, 
1896, and has since its organization been connected with Bethel. 

Irwin Statipn congregation was organized October 17, 1874. Its pastors 
have been Revs. J. W. jMcFraland, 1869-71 : E. N. ^IcElree, D. D., 1875-79; 

C. B. Hatch, 1880-83: J. M. Atchison. D. D., 1884-98, and E. C. Paxton, the 
present pastor since 1898. 

Stewarts' Station was organized January 5, 1869. Its pastors have been 
Revs. D. A. Duff from 1871 to 1879; W. S. Fulton in 1881. and A. D. McCar- 
rell since 1881. The Stewarts, Shaws, Millers and others have been prominent 
in its work. 

Union Congregation, near Sardis, was organized August 7, 1858. Rev. ]. 

D. Walkinshaw served as pastor from i860 to 1865; S. B. McBride, 1870-77; 
R. A. Jamison, 1878-88, and J. L. Thorne, the present pastor, from 1891 to 
the present. 

Alurraysville was organized October 12, 1877. ^ts pastors have been Rev. 
A. R. Rankin, 1879 to 1886; J. I\I. Imbrie, 1891 to 1895; Charles Stunkard, 
the present pastor since 1895. 

Beulah, near Claridge, was organized June 14, 1844. Rev. William Con- 
ner served as pastor from 1844 to 1857; J. D. Walkinshaw, 1860-65: T. H. 
Boyd, 1868-74. From 1879 to the present it has been in union with Murrays- 
ville, and the pastors have been Revs. A. R. Rankin, J. M. Imbrie and Charles 
Stunkard. 

Parnassus was organized February 4, 1876. Rev. C. H. Marshall was pas- 
tor from 1885 to 1889: George Whiteside, 1891-97, and J. M. Atchison, the 
present pastor, from 1898. 

Shearersburg was organized August 19, 1898, largely from Puckety. Its 
pastors have been Revs. J. B. Mclsaac, from 1898 to 1900, and L. K. Peacock 
from 1 90 1 to the present. 

Vandergrift congregation was organized December 10, 1898. The con- 
gregation, although one of the youngest, is strong and active, with a fine brick 
church and a devoted people. The pastors have been Rev. J. E. Walker from 
1899 to 1901 : and C. R. Stevenson from 1901 to the present. 

The Monessen Mission was established in 1903. Rev. J. Isl. Jamison, Jr.. 
has charge. Youngwood Mission was established in 1903. Revs. A. M. Reed, 
W. N. Leeper served as stated supplies. Rev. W. E. Baird now has charge. 

West Newton Associate Reformed congregation was organized November 
5, 1850, largely from Sewickley. Its pastors have been Revs. A. G. Fergus, 
185 1 : D. H. Pollock, 1854-60: W. L. McConnell, 1860-65; J- D. Walkinshaw, 
1865-69; W. R. Stevenson, 1872-81, and Rev. Dr. J. S. Garvin from 1882 unti! 
the present time. This congregation has always been one of the solid conserva- 
tive prosperous congregations in the county. It has a fine church building, a 
splendid record of liberality to the philanthropies of the denomination, and a 
membership strong in numbers and character. 

The Scottdale congregation was organized July 22. 1875. ^^^'- R- B. Tag- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 293 

gart, of the Alount Pleasant church, served as pastor from 1879 to 1883; Rev. 
J. M. :\Ioore, 1885-88; J. D. Pahner, 1889-91: J. H. Morhead, 1895-98; and 
Rev. H. W. Miller from 1900 to the present time. 

Latrobe was organized May 25, 1853. Rev. William Conner served the 
congregation from 1853 to 1857; Rev. J. Buff Jackson, 1873-77; ^^v. Josias 
Stevenson. 1878-82 ; Rev. G. C. Vincent, D. D., "LL. D., 1885-89 ; Rev. A. W. 
Lytle, 1890-92: and Rev. J. S. Hill, the present pastor from 1893. The con- 
gregation has made rapid strides under tlie present pastorate. It has a tine 
church building and parsonage. 

Bolivar congregation was organized August 20, 1899. Rev. D. S. Tinker 
has been the only pastor. The congregation has a fine new church building, 
and has had substantial growth. 

The Jeannette congregation was organized in 1890, and its building erected 
the same year. Its first regular pastor was Rev. D. H. Graham, in 1893, who 
served until 1897: Rev. T. L. Jamison. 1897 and 1898: Rev. J. H. Leitch, 1899 
till 1903 ; and Rev. J. T. Wright from 1904 to the present. 

Greensburg's organization is of comparatively recent origin. Its history is 
one of trial and vicissitude. For years beset with discouragement, chilled by 
indifference, depleted by removals and hampered by want of a house of wor- 
ship, the congregation labored on with a zeal and persistance until it has at- 
tained prosperity. 

In response to a petition presented to Presbytery, ]May 29, 1855, Rev. 
Jonathan G. Fulton by appointment preached June 3, 1855. The interest was 
such that further appointments were filled by Mr. Fulton. The active and 
liberal promoters were Gordon M. Lyon, James C. Clark, H. M. Jamison, 
William Welsh, C. R. Painter and Andrew Graham, many of whose descend- 
ants are still actively identified with the church. In 1857 an organization was 
formed, twenty-six members being enrolled, but one of whom (Mrs. Mary A. 
Lyon, widow of Gordon A[. Lyon) now remains in the congregation. William 
McCall, Joseph Greer and H. ]\I. Jamison were elected elders. In 1858, by 
death and removal of two members of session, the congregation became dis- 
organized, but was reorganized in 1861 by the election of Gordon M. Lyon and 
W. H. Barr to the session. From time to time the congregation was united 
with the Xew Alexandria, Mt. Pleasant and Latrobe congregations, and by 
courtesy of other denominations its services were held in their churches. Dur- 
ing the war the congregation again became disorganized by the absence of W. 
H. Barr and Joseph Greer in the army, leaving Gordon M. Lyon the only 
resident member of session. Greatly discouraged and disheartened by deaths 
and removals, a few faithful ones struggled on maintaining ordinances until 
September, 1872, when the congregation was reorganized with thirty-seven 
members. After the decease of Rev. J. G. Fulton, who had labored long and 
faithfully, April 8, 1873, Rev. J. Buff Jackson was ordained and installed pastor 
over the United charge o'i Greensburg and Latrobe, and so remained until Jan- 
uary, 1876. January i, 1878, Rev. Josiah Stevenson became pastor, and 



296 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

served until June, 1884. The Sabbath School was organized in November, 
1872, Hon. James C. Clark being the first superintendent. In 1880 the present 
brick church was erected at the corner of Pennsylvania avenue and Third 
street, and was dedicated June 20, 1881, with the presence of the Westmoreland 
Presbytery. 

Rev. J. A. Brandon became pastor in June, 1885, and served for two years. 
In February, 1888, Rev. H. S. Boyd was installed pastor, and so continued 
imtil February i, 1894. The present pastor, Rev. John A. Douthett, D. D., 
began his labors in June, 1894. The congregation has thus far been served by 
five pastors, covering a period of thirty-three years. The leading forces of the 
congregation have been the Clarks, Lyons, Welshs, Greers, Johnstons, Gra- 
hams, Ludwicks, Baers, Irwins, Davidsons, Cliffords, Fultons, Bells, Watts, 
Leasures, Gills, Laughreys, and many others. 

THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

In October, 1766, nine years before the passage of the act creating the 
county of Westmoreland, the first Methodist meeting was held in New York 
City, in the house of Philip Embury, who had been a local preacher in Ireland. 
Mrs. Barabara Hick gathered the congregation. She found four persons will- 
ing to attend, she herself made the fifth, and with the preacher, six persons con- 
stituted the congregation. Such was the humble beginning of Methodism in 
America. It was not until 1769 that John Wesley sent two preachers to the 
Colonies. The growth of Methodism was for some years confined to the 
eastern shores and then the itinerants began their journey southward to Y\r- 
ginia and the Carolinas and to Georgia. The Revolution beginning in 1775 
was a decided check to the spread of Methodism. The preachers of that time 
were Englishmen ; many of them were Tories in their sympathies, and those 
who were not were under suspicion. 

Western Pennsylvania was, at the time that Methodism began in New York, 
a battleground between the French, the Indians and the English. Settlers who 
had only squatters' or traders' rights followed Braddock's expedition and began 
to settle along his route in 1755. More followed in the wake of Forbes in 
1758, and the first settlers' permits were issued between 1755 and 1769. The first 
actual settlement by Pennsylvania authority was in 1769, the Stanwix Pur- 
chase having been made the preceeding year. The settlers were Scotch-Irish 
traders and Dutch farmers. 

The only part of Great Britain in which \\'esley himself had made little 
direct impression was Scotland. The Dutch, so far as they were inclined to- 
wards religion, were Lutheran and Reformed. Preachers from the Cumber- 
land Valley established Presbyterian churches here and there, and the Lutheran 
and German Reformed ministers were early on the ground. The first Metho- 
dist sermon preached in Pittsburgh was by Rev. Wilson Lee, in 1785. Lee was 
preacher in charge of the Redstone circuit. Three years later Charles Conway 
was sent to the newly formed circuit of Pittsburgh ; at the close 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUSTY. 297 

of the conference year he reported no members. He was returned the next 
year It is not likely that there were then many Methodists within what is 
now Westmoreland county. In julv, 1789. Bishop Asbtiry writes in his jour- 
nal ■ "I passed through Greenshurg, dined at Rowletts, six miles from Greens- 
buro- and went to Pittsburgh." There he preached in the evening. "This, 
he writes, "is the dav of small things. What can we hope? Yet what can we 
fear"? In I/Sj. Redstone circuit made its first appearance among the ap- 
pointments of the Baltimore conference. The wide journeyings of John Cooper 
and Samuel Breeze, with their thirty preaching places, doubtless took in the 
portions of Westmoreland that lay along the Youghiogheny and Monongahela 
riyers. W'e read of the society formed by them at the forks of the Yough- 
iogheny. Here Benjamin Fell, with his wife, ten sons and daughters, the 
wrdow Beazell and her large family, formed the nucleus of what soon grew 
into a large congregation. In 1788 Jacob Surton and Lasley Mathews, then 
■on the Redstone circuit, formed the first Methodist society in the Ligonier 
\alley. In this neighborhood lived Robert Morgan Roberts, who with his 
family afterward johied the ]\Iethodists. One of his sons, Robert Rickford 
Roberts, afterwards entered the Methodist ministry, was elected a bishop in 
i8i6, and died in Indiana, March 26, 1843. His father moved tQ Westmore- 
land county in 1785, when the future bishop was seven years old. "The Life 
of Bishop Roberts," now a rare book of great value, is valuable not only as the 
record of the labors of a great and useful man, but as history of the early 
frontier conditions and customs. We read in it descriptions of the early Scotch- 
Irish school teachers and their methods. In the school which young Roberts 
attended, reading, writing and arithmetic were all the branches then taught, 
but the instruction in these was thorough. ;\Ir. McAbee taught near Mr. 
Fisher's, three and a half miles from the Roberts home. The future bishop 
worked for his board at ]\IcCracken's. The discipline of this school had the old 
Irish features, ^^'hen a boy became unruly, and an ordinary whipping with a 
rod did not have the desired effect, the last punishment was "horsing." The 
refractory boy was mounted on the back of another, or, if there were two, they 
interchanged the office of horse and rider. The "cat with nine tails" was then 
freely applied. On one occasion, when a bad boy was mounted on the back of 
another, and Mr. McAbee was about to apply the "cat," young Roberts offered 
himself as security for the boy and agreed to take a horsing if the boy did not 
Ijehave, and his offer was accepted. In 1785 the "Life of Bishop Roberts" 
states that the people of Ligonier Valley, as far as they were religious, were 
generally Presbyterians and Seceders. The standards of conduct were not 
high. Dancing, shooting matches and drinking were the customary diversions. 
It was not unusual for some of the elders of the church to become intoxicated. 
In tlie Ligonier Valley of these times there lived a Quaker named Abel 
Fisher, who was regarded as a singular character because he would not drink, 
and because he was unusually moral and upright in his life. He joined the 
:\Iethodists, and did much to establish the denomination in that section. His 



298 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

son, Abel Fisher, became one of the best known laymen in Western Penns3-1- 
vania Methodism. His intelligence and pnrity of life gave him a much more 
than local influence. He lived till 1876. 

A Methodist society was formed at an early date at the Black Lick set- 
tlement of Mr. Wakefield, the grandfather of the late Dr. Samuel Wakefield. 
The early Methodist societies were nearly all along the mountains and ridges. 
\Mien the rich lands of the Scioto and other Ohio valleys and the Shenango 
lands were opened for settlement, the Methodist itinerants who knew^ the 
country well, as they journeyed back and forth, were instrumental in persuading 
many of the owners of ridge and mountain farms to emigrate westward and to 
the north. This at an early day weakened Methodism in Westmoreland 
county. 

In the rich farming regions of what is now Westmoreland county, Metho- 
dism was slow in taking root. Other denominations were in possession. In 
the first attempts to plant i\Iethodism some of the foremost men of the church 
took part. AIcKendree, Asbury, Valentine Cook and Lorenzo Dow often 
preached and labored within the present limits of our county. Valentine Cook 
was on Redstone circuit for one year, and on the Pittsburgh district for twO' 
years. At a later date Bishop Henry B. Bascom, Asa Shinn, Wesley Kenney, 
Thornton Flemming, Charles , Elliott, Charles Cooke, and John J. Swayzee 
were all heard repeatedly within the limits of our county. All of them were 
preachers of the highest order, and men who subsequently achieved national 
fame. 

Short as was Valentine Cook's ministry in Western Pennsylvania, his in- 
fluence for the church was great. He was a kinsman of Captain Cook, the 
navigator. He came to the Redstone circuit in 1792, having preached but four 
years before that. He had been a diligent student at Cokesbury College. He 
was over six feet in height, of dark complexion, coarse, black hair, deepset eyes, 
large nose, and an unusually large mouth. He was absent-minded, eccen- 
tric, absolved in thought, and over-fired with zeal for his church, yet .Amer- 
ican jMethodism has not had a more eloquent man in all its history than \'alen- 
tine Cook. The restlessness of the explorer was in his veins. The traditions 
of his eJoquence still live in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1796, while 
on the Pittsburgh district, ]\Ir. Cook accepted a challenge for a public discus- 
sion from a Seceder minister. The discussion took place in a grove near 
Congruity. People came to it forty and fifty miles. The Methodists were 
somewhat downcast when they saw their unprepossessing-looking advocate. 
The Scotchman arrived rather late, but said, "I'm here in ample time to give the 
youngster a dose from which he will not soon recover." For two hours the 
Methodist church and its doctrines, after the fashion of public discussions of 
that day, were bitterly assailed. But when Mr. Cook began to speak his per- 
sonal appearance seemed to change. He overwhelmed the audience from the 
beginning. His opponent cried out, "W^olf, wolf, in sheep's clothing." When 
he cnnlcl endure it no longer, he sprang to his feet and cried out, "Follow me. 



HISTORY OF IVESTMORELAXD COUXTV. 299 

follow me, leave the babbler to himself." Some few left, but the majority re- 
mained. As Cook discussed infant salvation and the provisions of the atone- 
ment, the audience rose from their seats and stood in enraptured silence. 
When he quit speaking they crowded around the rude platform and remained 
long after he had finished. Bishop Roberts, then a boy, had walked from 
Ligonier to hear the discussion. Long afterward he wrote in the highest terms 
of the effort of Cook, and said that he heard one elderly man say to another, 
"Did ye ever hear such a man"? His companion answered, with apparent ex- 
citement and solicitude, "Ye are in great danger of being led captive by the 
devil at his will. Ha'e ye never heard how that Satan can transform himself 
into an angel of light that he may deceive the very elect, if it were possible ? I 
tell you, sir, he is a dangerous man, and the less we have to do with him the 
better for us." The age of such discussions has long since passed, but they 
were common then, and now they but illustrate the methods by which different 
religions were implanted in early Westmoreland. 

The name of Rev. Samuel Wakefield is prominently connected with Aletho- 
dism in \\'estmoreland county. He was born March 6, 1799, and died Septem- 
ber 13, 1895. On June 11, 1819, he walked with his father thirteen miles ta 
wh.ere New Florence now stands, to attend a Methodist meeting. The meeting 
was conducted by John Jasper Wirsing, a local preacher of great native power, 
who had served as a soldier under Napoleon. There Samuel Wakefield went 
forward and gave his name to the church. He had been a wild young m.an. 
but of considerable education for his day. His love for music made him a 
prominent factor in dancing parties, and when he joined the church an old lady 
cried out. "Thank God, the devil has lost his fiddler." Two months afterward 
he began to preach, and preached the gospel for seventy-six years. He was a 
great student, and his pen was seldom idle. He published works- on music^ 
taught singing schools, and divided with James G. Samson the fame of the 
sweetest singer of Methodism. His work on Theology was for years a stand- 
ard, and may yet be consulted with profit. Most of his years in the ministry 
were spent as pastor of the churches in this county, and he was always a con- 
cise writer and a strong preacher. He spent the evening of his life at West 
Xewton, preaching almost constantly even to the last. 

Space forbids the mention of the great number of preachers of the Methodist 
church who have ministered to the people of this coimty. Though slow in its- 
youth in the early years of last century. Methodism has increased very rapidly 
in the last fifty years. The conference minutes for 1905 show that within the 
present bounds of the county there are thirty-six regular pastors, and that the 
church has 9,159 members, with an enrollment in the Sunday schools of 91 13. 

THE REFORMED CHURCH. 

When our early Pennsylvania German or pure German pioneers first came 
to ^^'estmoreland county they brought no ministers with them, nor did they 
h;ive any ministers for many years after they began to form congregations. 



300 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

The duties usually performed by a minister outside of the pulpit, such as bap- 
tizing, performing the marriage ceremony, reading the burial service, etc., 
were performed by the schoolmasters. They very early built rude churches, 
and near by they built a schoolhouse. Often the schoolhouse came first, and 
served as a church till a church could be built. Before they had either school- 
houses or churches they designated the house of some German Reform or 
Lutheran pioneer which was centrally located, and at his house services were 
lield. Occasionally they had a regular preacher to. come to them from the 
■east, where they were more numerous, and on such occasions they had a 
:series of services which not infrequently lasted a week or more. 

The German Protestants in Pennsylvania all sprang from the Reformation 
started by Martin Luther in the sixteenth century. Here they formed two 
branches, known distinctly as the German Reformed and the Lutheran 
•churches. At the early period in our history of which we are now writing, and, 
indeed, up to 1869. the first named branch was popularly and properly known 
.as the German Reformed church. At that time a general synod met in Phila- 
delphia and dropped the word "German," and since then have been known as 
■the Reformed church. The church did not differ widely in general doctrine or 
belief from the Presbyterian church. Sometimes it was supposed to be a Ger- 
man branch of Presbyterianism, but this was not the case. Both the Reformed 
churches and the Lutheran churches were kept up almost entirely by the Ger- 
man speaking people of Europe. These two churches were bound together by 
lineage, by speaking the same language, and by using the same liturgies. 
They were governed by the same pastoral authority, and made about the same 
professions of faith. It so happened that both congregations frequently wor- 
:shipped in the same church or schoolhouse. Both churches have Presbyterian 
forms of government in contradistinction to the Episcopal, or Papal, or Con- 
gregational governments of other churches. Both the German Reformed and 
the Lutheran churches were and are yet governed by the minister and certain 
representatives from the congregation, so far as the immediate government of 
the society i*s concerned. The higher governmental body of the Reformed 
church is called the "Classis." 

The German Reformed church and the Lutheran church were much more 
nearly united in former years than they are now. In their early years in our 
state the nearest pastor of either church was asked to baptize the children of a 
family, to perform a marriage ceremony, or read the last sad rites of the dead, 
and this almost without regard to the church to which they belonged. 

As we have said, the first church services in our county were without a 
mniister. They brought with them an inherent desire to be religious, and 
doubtless failed to bring with thciii and support a minister, because of the few- 
ness of their number and their poverty. Their church services consisted in 
meeting at tlie house of sctme German Reformed or Lutheran family, it mat- 
tered little which, and reading the Bibl& and offering prayers from a German 
prayer book. It then became the duty of the schoolmaster to catechise the 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 301, 

children and baptise them. By this means they held their people together till, 
they could afford both churches and preachers. When a pastor was finally en- 
gaged for a church, they came long distances to attend services. At Brusli 
Creek, it is said that in former days they frequently came as much as twenty 
miles or more, and brought with them their children. 

The German Reformed and the Lutheran churches also owned nearly all 
their church property in common. They worshipped alternately in these 
churches, and quite often their ministers performed services for each other. 
Alembers of these churches intermarried more than in other churcnes, and 
w^ere buried finally side by side in the common graveyard. 

The early members secured land while it was very cheap, and put up a log 
church. Near by they erected a small ho.use for the pastor. They also built 
a schoolhouse, and sometimes a house for the schoolmaster to live in. The 
pastor's house always had some extra land attached, so that he might dig a part 
of his living from the earth. They also provided for a cemetery, or graveyard,, 
as it was generally called, and, be it said to their honor, they were unusually 
careful to mark the last resting places of their dead with tombstones. From, 
their inscriptions a great many dates and other matters relative to pioneer his- 
tory have been gathered. One is well repaid by making a visit to the Harrold. 
church graveyard, near the oldest of the German Refomied churches in West- 
moreland county. Most of the gravestones are from a nearby quarry. In an 
early day they were dressed and carved by an ordinary stone cutter named 
Hines, who belonged to the cliurch. While the carving and lettering is some- 
times very crude, and almost amusing to our generation, they tell well the 
story of the primitive condition of our early people. 

Harrold church was founded by the German Reformed people at least as. 
early as August, 1772, for on that date the schoolmaster, Balthazer Meyer, 
officiated and baptised a child named Peter Walter. He was the schoolmaster 
who held the services in place of a preacher whom the members at that time 
felt themselves too poor to support. This he continued for a period of ten 
}ears, until the organization had increased enough to call a minister. At that 
time, 1782, Rev. John William Weber was sent here perhaps on trial, but most 
likely as a missionary. At all events he remained with them for thirty-eight 
years. He had four charges, viz. : Harrold's and Brush Creek, in Hempfield 
township, and Kintig's in Mt. Pleasant township, and Ridge church, south of 
Pleasant Unity, in Unity township. He had also a small charge in Pittsburgh to- 
whom he preached occasionally, and he traveled a great deal over Ligonier \'al- 
ley and over all other parts of the county where he thought he might start new 
organizations. Many places where he went for perhaps but one member, have- 
now large congregations. Two other ministers who followed him to this county 
were Rev. Henry Harbison and William Winel. These ministers and their 
people were under the Old Synod o.f the United States. The first Classis was 
composed of all ministers west of Bedford county, and was called the Western 
Pennsylvania Classis. In 1836 it was joined to the Ohio Synod, and in 1842 



^02 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



it was changed into the \\'estmoreland Classis. It remained with the Ohio 
Synod till 1870, when, on the formation of the Pittsburgh Synod, it became a 
part of it. 

Rev. John William \\'eber, the first pastor of this church in our county, 
was born in Germany, ]\Iarch 4, 1735- He was early in life a school teacher, 
and came to America about 1764. Shortly after his arrival here he was li- 
censed to preach, and preached first in Monroe county. A German traveler be- 
fore quoted, named Schoepf, who passed through that section of Pennsylvania 
in 1782, speaks of passing several fine farms owned and managed by Germans, 
and of finally coming to a rude log church which had been built by the Ger- 
man Refcrmed and Lutheran people under the ministry of Rev. Weber. In a 
document written by Weber himself, he says he came to this country in 1782, 
and that his salary was 116 pounds, 100 bushels of wheat, free house rent, and 
free firewood all the year. The traveler Schoepf met him in Pittsburgh again 
the same year. He says there was no church there then, but that there was a 
German preacher who ministers to believing persons of different confessions. 
These were doubtless organized by Rev. Weber into a congregation. He 
preached and rode a great deal, and always catechised the young on his visits 
among his members. He was an able man, and well suited to lay the founda- 
tion of a church in a new country. In personal appearance he was a fine look- 
ing portly man, of great physical strength, and thus enabled to endure the great 
labor and hardships incident to the missionary work of a new country. All 
his life he was noted for boldly denouncing the wrongs of the community ; for 
preaching strong, forcible sermons which could not be misunderstood. He 
preached occasionally in Pittsburgh as late as 1812, and died in 1816, aged 
eighty-two years. A more extended review of his life is given in Harbaugh's 
"Fathers of the Reformed Church." 

One of the greatest men the Reformed Church ever had in Westmoreland 
county was Rev. Nicholas P. Hacke, D. D., who began to preach here when 
the county was a wilderness, and continued in the work till his death, August 
26, 1878. He was born in Baltimore, and sent to Germany for his early edu- 
cation. He studied theology in his native city under a Reformed minister and 
came to Greensburg in 1819. At that time he took charge of the German Re- 
formed Church of Greensburg, Harrold's and Brush Creek. His first sermons 
here were preached in the court house, for they were then building a new 
church on South Main street, and until it was finished they used the Temple 
of Justice as a house of worship. He also during his long ministry had at 
various times, charge of Ridge, Ligonier, Youngstown, Hills, Seanors and 
Manor congregations, but only for a year or so at each place, when they were 
without regular pastors. 

He was closely associated with the prominent men of the county who were 
outside of the church or in other churches. There were few young men in 
professional life who did not seek his acquaintance. He was intellectually far 
above even the average ministers of his church. His wit, his learning and his 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 303 

excellent judgment of human nature drew aruund him men Hke Judge Burrcll. 
Dr. King and Senator Cowan, who were all unusually bright men, but not 
members of his church. Their friendships were therefore purely intellectual. 
The preacher was more than an average preacher. He" was a Christian phil- 
osopher who in any age of the world would have occupied a prominent place 
among his fellowmen. But he, like Henry Ward Beecher, though great in 
many lines of human thought, was greatest in the pulpit. For fifty-eight years 
he sustained himself here in Greensburg, and did so. mainly by sheer force of 
his intellectual power. He was an omniverous reader, and was always well 
informed on the scientific and political questions of the day. After a popular 
wave in morals, politics, or religion passed over the country, his friends not 
infrequently waited to hear Dr. Hacke's opinion of it before taking sides. It 
was always an opinion based on a good understanding of the subject, and on 
sound judgment. 

He had great difficulty with his people in effecting a change from the Ger- 
man to the English language. The old members wanted to adhere to the Ger- 
man tongue, because they knew but little about the English language, while 
the young people knew and spoke the English language w-ell but knew very 
little of the German. He knew that the change must come in all English 
speaking communities like ours. For himself, he spoke or wrote equally well 
in either language, but saw the advantage of the young people being taught 
thoroughly in the predominant language of the country. His diplomacy was 
shown ip the fact that he managed the transition without disrupting the church ; 
his liberality is shown in his leaning towards the English language, because its 
adoption would greatly benefit the rising generation, though he himself was of 
pure Saxon blood, with no trace of the English in his make up. When he 
died he was sadly missed by all who knew him, without respect to their re- 
ligious beliefs. On the day of his funeral all stores and business houses in 
Greensburg were closed out of respect to his memory. He was buried in the 
old German burying ground in Greensburg. 

The Greensburg Seminary was established by the Reformed Church. The 
resolution authorizing its founding was passed by the trustees of the Literary 
Institutions of the Pittsburgh Synod, March 3, 1874. Rev. Lucian Court was 
placed at its head. Under supervision the grounds were purchased and the 
necessary buildings were soon under process of construction. The location is 
a beautiful one overlooking the town of Greensburg and the surrounding 
country. The building is of brick, and is arranged for boarding and rooming 
pupils, for recitations, and public educational meetings. It was formally 
opened April 7, 1875, less than a year after the ground was purchased. At 
first it was exclusively an institution for the education of young women, but 
in 1878 a system of co-education was introduced and this has proved a great 
advantage to both the institution and the community. The Seminary was 
largely patronized by both the Reformed and the Lutheran churches and by 
all other denominations in the community. Its greatest patronage probably 



304 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

came from the Lutheran church, which was particularly strong in this vicinity. 
The Evangelical Lutheran Church, commonly called the Lutheran Church, 
is a very strong organization in Westmoreland county. They are Protestants 
who hold the doctrines of theology as taught by Martin Luther and as con- 
tained in the Augsburg Confession. This was written by Philip Alelanchton, 
and was read in the presence of Charles V, Emperor of Germany, at the Diet 
of Augsburg, on June 25, 1530. The Confession has since obtained a per- 
manent place in the literature of the Christian world, having been translated 
into every modern language. It is now the guiding star in religion of millions 
of people in the United States. 

The first Lutherans in Westmoreland county were nearly all Germans, or 
people of Germ?n extraction. Their early records were written in the Germarr 
language almost exclusively. Fifty or seventy-five years later these records 
fell into the hands of English speaking people who were not able to translate 
them, and who therefore unfortunately did not preserve them. The early work 
of the church is accordingly largely a matter of tradition. That there were 
many Lutherans here before the county was formed in 1773, is undoubted, 
for their presence is well proved by our early records. The Detars, the Rughs, 
the Gongawares, the INIillers, the Harrolds, the Altmans, the Longs, all were 
originally Lutherans and had taken up land in Hempfield township between 
1760 and 1770. There were also Lutherans in other sections of the county in 
that period, so that it can safely be said that the Lutheran church in West- 
moreland began with its early settlement shortly after the construction of the 
Forbes road. Like all other early churches, they met at first in private houses, 
and, when they were without ministers, such services were performed by the 
school teacher. The schoolmaster had perhaps no special claim in the per- 
formances of these offices except that he could read, and many of the early 
settlers could not. At these from house-to-house meetings they read the Bible, 
had prayers and singing, and sometimes the teacher read a sermon or per- 
haps oftener made some remarks which took the place and partook of the na- 
ture of a sermon. The ceremony of baptism was performed by laymen as well 
as by schoolmasters. This was the case for several years at Harrold's Church, 
the Lutheran branch of whose worshipers \yere called "Zion's Church." The 
records made by Balthazer Meyer indicates that he baptized children of Luth- 
eran as well as of the Reformed Church, from 1772 to 1782, and that the 
Lutheran Church was also without a pastor for all these years. The same 
was done at Brush Creek, a congregation organized a few . years after the 
Harrold congregation. 

The first Lutheran preacher who settled in Westmoreland county was Rev. 
A. L". Liitje. He had been born and educated in Germany, and came to Har- 
rold Church in 1782. He preached there about ten years and accomplished a 
great deal for the church organization. The first church at Harrold's was 
built of logs, and had a puncheon floor. It had no pews, but rough benches 
witliout backs, and all its arrangements were made in the same primitive style. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 305 

It was Rev. Liitje who secured the land for the church organizations at Har- 
rold's, that is, for the German Reformed and the Lutheran churches. This 
tract of land contained about seventy acres, and was held in common by the 
two congregations. Rev. Liitje also preached to the congregation of Brush 
Creek and many other places in the county, though these (Harrold's and Brush 
Creek) were undoubtedly the fields of his greatest labors. 

In 1791 Rev. John ]\I. Steck came from the eastern part of Pennsylvania 
and settled in Greensburg. He was born in Germany, and when he succeeded 
Rev. Liitje was thirty-five years old. Here he continued in the ministry till 
his death, July 14, 1830, a period of thirty-eight years. He was an energetic 
worker, and accomplished much for his church. At his death he left a son, 
Rev. Michael J. Steck, who succeeded him as pastor of the Greensburg con- 
gregation. 

Rev. John M. Steck is probably entitled to first rank among the Lutheran 
ministers of our county. He did not come here, it is true, until ten years after 
Rev. Liitje had begun his work here, but he came, nevertheless, when the or- 
ganization of Lutheran congregations all over- the county were in progress and 
forming. He moreover, by his energy, organized most of the older churches 
now existing in the county. He organized the first German congregation in 
Greensburg, and preached to them for many years in the German language. 
In 1809 he organized the Manor church, and a few years later organized St. 
James and Hankey's congregations in the northern part of the county. Still 
later came St. John's, Swope's, Ridge, Youngstown, and other congregations 
near Greensburg. For many long and weary years he served all these people, 
and rode on horseback from one preaching place to another. He was assisted 
somewhat in his later years by young men and by his son, Rev. Michael J. 
Steck, but the bulk of this work for at least thirty years fell on him. Rev. 
Jonas Rlechling assisted him somewhat, and in 1820 was added to the pas- 
toral force of the large fields. Rev. Mechling had charge of St. James' and 
Hankey's churches, in the northern part of the county, and of the West New- 
ton and Barren Run churches, and also of the Donegal Church and the Dutch 
meeting house in Ligonier Valley. All the rest of the county was ministered 
to almost entirely and alone by Rev. Steck as long as he lived. Many of the 
above charges were small ones. The main ones in the county were the First 
German Church at Greensburg, Harrold's, Brush Creek and Manor. Their early 
existence and the influence they exerted over other churches in the county dur- 
ing this formative period gives them special interest to the student of our early 
church history. 

As we have said, the German Lutheran Church of Greensburg was estab- 
lished by Rev. Steck shortly after he arrived here. There is a record of bap- 
tisms performed by him in 1792, but there is no record of any communion being 
held for several years after, nor can the date of its general organization be 
fixed. It is most likely that it grew and waxed strong without special organi- 
zation. A log church was built by them late in the century, perhaps about 



3o6 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



1796, and the tradition is that it was built after the style of the Harrold church. 
It stood until 181 5, when the second church was built, which was completed in 
1819. For more than fifty years services were conducted in the German 
language. In 1848 this question of language brought about a division of the 
church, and Zion's Church was formed, wherein the English language was 
used entirely in all services. 

Brush Creek Church had a log house, too, no doubt very like the others, 
and it lasted them till 1820, when a second structure of brick was built. The 
Manor congregation, founded in 1809, built at first a rude log house, and a 
second church in 1815. These were four of the leading Lutheran churches, 




BRUSH CREEK CHURCH. 



and were ministered to by three preachers for a period of seventy-seven years. 
These ministers, as will be remembered from the above, were Rev. John 'M. 
Steck, the founder ; Rev. Michael J. Steck, his son ; and Rev. Jonas IMechling. 
The elder Steck, commonly called Father Steck, because of his age, preached 
here from 1791 till 1830; his son, Rev. Michael J. Steck, from 1828 till 1848, 
and Rev. Jonas Mechling from 1848 till the time of his death, in 1868. The 
Greensburg charge, under Rev. John M. Steck. had charge of all the churches 
in the county. He was bishop of the county of Westmoreland. During his 
son's pastorate, St. James', Hankey's, Seanor's and other small points were 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 307 

connected with this charge, and during the pastorate of Rev. Jonas JMechling 
his charges were reduced to the four above named, viz. : Greensburg, Harrold, 
Brush Creek and Manor. Since his death these charges, have been still further 
divided, so that each church now supports a pastor of its own. In 1841 Rev. 
Jacob Zimmerman took charge of the Lutheran congregation in the northern 
part of the county. 

Alichael J. Stack was a son of John M. Steck, and was born in Greensburg 
in 1793. He was one of the founders of the Pittsburgh Synod, was its first 
president and was elected consecutively for five years. For many years he was 
regarded as the ablest preacher of the Lutheran faith in the county. He was 
more liberally educated than his father had been. In his youth he studied 
theology with his father, and with Rev. Scharle, of Pittsburgh. He was li- 
censed to preach in June, 1816, but had already done considerable ministerial 
work by way of assisting his fathe'r. The same year he accepted a call in Lan- 
caster, Ohio, then in the backwoods of the church development. He was very 
successful in his work there for twelve years. \\'hen his father grew too old 
to attend without assistance to his duties as pastor in Westmoreland work, he 
returned to Greensburg to assist him. This was in 1828, and two years after- 
ward, when his father died, the son succeeded him in the Westmoreland work. 
Here the son labored with great energ>- and success till his death, in 1848. 
During the greater part of his ministry in this county he preached regularly to 
eleven congregations. He often preached four times in a day, and rode many 
miles on horseback in order to do so. He preached about eight thousand ser- 
mons in his thirty-two years of ministry, and baptized about five thousand 
children. He received into the church about two thousand people by confirma- 
tion. Like his father, he was a man of high character and standing in the 
community, and many regarded him as the ablest man in the church in western 
Pennsylvania. He, like Dr. Hacke, saw that the German language was on the 
wane, and that it was of vast importance to introduce the English language in 
all church services, so that the young people might grow up with a knowledge 
of the language they would be expected to use mostly throughout their lives. 
. He therefore advocated the formation of an English Lutheran congregation in 
Greensburg, and its establishment was largely due to him. He was a man of 
fine appearance, and had a splendid voice and a clear enunciation. He was an 
abler man than his father, and had received a more liberal education in his 
youth. Had his ministry been prolonged for a half a century he would un- 
doubtedly have attained a much higher degree of eminence in the church than 
that of his father. He died in Greensburg, in September, 1848, aged fifty-fiva 
years. 

Jonas JMechling was born in Hempfield township, near Greensburg, August 
14, 1798. He studied theology under Rev. Schnee, of Pittsburgh, and later under 
the elder Rev. Steck, in Greensburg. He began the regular ministry in 1820 
as assistant to Rev. Steck. His work at first lay all over Westmoreland county, 
particularly in the northern part and in Ligonier \'alley. In 1827 he was given 



3o8 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

charge of Ridge and Youngstown congiegations, where he preached till 1848, 
when, on the death of Rev. M. J. Steck, he came to Greensburg. Unlike the 
Stacks, his whole life's work was here in Westmoreland county. The last 
twenty years of his life he devoted to the German congregation and to the 
English congregation in Greensburg' and to Harrold's, Brush Creek, and Manor 
congregations. He was a man of simple manners, amiable disposition, and of 
high social culture. He preached here forty-eight years, and in that time de- 
livered six thousand three hundred and twenty-seven sermons, not including 
funeral sermons.- He baptized six thousand two hundred and eighty-six 
people, confirmed two thousand and thirty-nine as members o.f the church, and ' 
performed nine hundred and ninety marriages. 

In a pamphlet written by the venerable Judge Thomas jNIellon, in 1880, on 
the Sunday question, are found some interesting observations on the early con- 
dition of religion in Franklin township, where he was brought up. The period 
of which he writes is between 1825 and 1830. He says : 

"Rev. Father Wynal, of the Lutheran persuasion, was nursing an embryo con- 
gregation among the Germans. He resided near Saltsburg, but came over and 
preached to them every fourth Sunday, holding services in the dwelling of our 
nearest neighbor, Peter Hill. The congregation has since developed into that now 
v.orshiping in a comfortable brick edifice known as Hill's Church. Well, at the 
time to which I refer, when Mr. Wynal was the pastor, old Peter Hill, as honest a 
man and good a neighbor as need be, was the contributor, treasurer, trustee and 
entire session. The Sunday on which preaching was to be at Peter's was regarded 
us a holiday, indeed, by the surrounding German population. They gathered from 
all quarters. The services lasted from nine till twelve a. m., when Peter's wife 
Hetty, (for he was married twice and had in all twenty-five children), with the as- 
sistance of her neighbor women, would have an ample dinner cooked, which was 
not only free but welcome to all who had come to meeting. The dinner being 
over, the younger men would spend the afternoon in games of corner ball and 
pitching quoits on the green in front of the house, whilst Mr. Wynal and Peter and 
the old men sat smoking their pipes on the porch, looking on at the sport with 
marked satisfaction. Evidently it occurred to neither pastor nor people that there 
was anything wrong or sinful in the performance. Times change, however, and 
religious observances, as well as other habits, change according to the prevailing 
fashion, for the same congregation would not now spend Sunday in that way. 

"At the same time we, of Scotch Presbyterian proclivities, had a similar gath- 
ering every third Sunday at Duff's Tent. Duff's Tent was a place in the woods, 
wkh benches made of split logs, and an eight-by-ten box-shaped structure, boarded 
up and roofed, for a pulpit. For a pastor we had Rev. Hugh Kirkland, a fresh 
graduate from the Theological School at Glasgow, and zealous in the strictest 
ideas of the Scotch kirk. He regarded the merits of Rouse's Version of David's 
Psalms and the enormity of Sabbath breaking as of vital importance. He preached 
on few topics except 'To prove the Roman Catholic Church to be the antichrist 
and whore of Babylon.' or 'The desecration of the Sabbath by the Lutherans,' 
or 'The damnable heresies of the Methodists in defying the doctrines of innate 
depravity and predestination and persisting in singing choral songs instead of the 
Psalms of David.' 

"This kind of preaching, however, did not bring lorth good fruit, even in the 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 309 

Scotch Presbyterian soil in which it was sown. My father allowed the Methodists 
the use of a vacant house on his place to hold their meetings, and several of the 
dock attended a Methodist meeting on one occasion to hear the Rev. Bascom and 
some of the leading men. Mr. Humes joined in the singing. This the reverend 
gentleman regarded as an indignity to his teaching, and in his next sermon he 
took occasion to animadvert severely on the conduct of those who, after being 
washed from their sins, had, like the sow, again betaken themselves to wallowing 
in the mire. He was as pointed as to nearly designate the delinquents by name, 
and this raised a row. But the straw that broke the camel's back was the starting 
of a Sabbath-school. George and Michael Haymaher and some other young people 
of this flock undertook to open a Sabbath-school in the schoolhouse at Newlans- 
burg, nearby. This was too great a sacrilege for the good man to bear. He could 
not brook the desecration of the Sabbath-day by such worldly employment as 
school teaching, and. as a majority of his flock inclined to favor the Sabbath- 
school, he shook the dust from his feet and departed." 

THE MENNONITES. 

In writing the history of the A'lennonites at Scottdale, it is necessary to 
make a division of two periods : the first period dating from the time of the 
first settlement to 1893, the year of the organization of the Mennonite Church 
of Scottdale ; the second period from that time on to the present. 

Among the first Mennonite people in this section were the Staufifers and 
Sherricks, who came here from Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, in 1790. The 
Louckses and Frettses followed in 1800. from Bucks county. Other families 
who came with these and later on are the Tinsmans, Overholts, Stoners, Funks, 
Rists, Rosenbergers, Strohms. Dillingers, Foxes, Shellenbergers, Basslers, 
Stricklers, Ruths, Myers, Durstines, Lanes, Shupes, Mumaw^ Shellys, Bares, 
Landises, and Bachtels. 

Of the early congregational worship of these settlers, little is known. 
During the first few years they evidently held their services in the homes. 
Just when the congregation was organized cannot be learned. The first meet- 
ing house, a log structure, was built near Pennsville, Fayette county, about the 
year 1800. A few years later a log meeting house was built near Stonerville 
(now Alverton), Westinareland county. The Stonerville church was replaced 
by a brick building in 1841. and also the Pennsville church in 1852. Neither 
of these buildings are now standing. Though there were two places of worship, 
the church existed as a single congregation, services being held every two 
weeks at each place. The first ministers of this congregation were Abram 
Stauffer, Joseph Sherrick, and David Funk. Abram Stauffer was born Sep- 
tember 3, 1752. and died September 3, 1826. He caine here from Lancaster 
county in 1790. He was great-great-grandfather of Aaron Lo.ucks, now bishop 
in this district. 

Joseph Sherrick was born in Switzerland, December 25, 1757. He was the 
eldest of five sons, who came to America with their father (a widower) in 
1765. He first located in Lancaster county, and in 1790 moved to Westmore- 
land countv. His death occurred December 21, 181 1. David Funk was born 



3IO 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



November lo, 1765, and died October 4, 1833. He was the first bishop of this 
congregation. Other ministers were: Conrad Rist, born September 10, 1787, 
died June 22, 1841. Christian Sherrick (a son of Joseph Sherrick) ; born Janu- 
ary 19, 1789, died jNIarch 12, 1845. John D. Overholt, born April 19, 1787, 
died August 29, 1878; ordained minister in 1830; ordained bishop 1833. Mar- 
tin Loucks, born December 9, 1798, died November 7, 1869; ordained minister 
in 1833. Henry Moyer. John Snyder. Henry Yothers, born January 10, 18 10, 
died April 18, 1900; ordained minister September, 1845; ordained bishop Oc- 
tober, 1857. In October, 1864, he moved with his family to Livingston county, 
Illinois, and later to Blue Springs, Nebraska, where he died at the advanced 
age of ninety years. Up to his death he retained an active mind. He was 
especially gifted with ability to recall exact dates and incidents. He was very 
able as a quoter of Scripture. Jonas Blough moved here from Somerset county. 
In 1879 he moved to the Johnstown district, and was the last resident minister 
of this period. 

From 1879 to 1892 the appointments were filled by ministers from other 
places. Among those from a distance were C. B. Brennaman and C. C. Beery 
from Oliio ; J. S. CofTman from Virginia, afterwards from Indiana ; Daniel 
Roth, from Washington county, Maryland. Afterwards, according to a request 
made to conference, Herman Snyder of Blair county, Pennsylvania, and J. N. 
Durr, of Masontown, Fayette county, Pennsylvania, were appointed to look 
after the work and see that appointments were filled every four weeks. Fol- 
lowing are some of the ministers who assisted in filling appointments during 
that time : Henry Blauch, David Keim, Levi A. Blough, D. H. Bender, Chris- 
tian Defifenbaugh, David Johnson, G. D. Miller, and others. 

During this first period the congregation grew from a few members to a 
body of at least two hundred. As many as thirty persons were baptized and 
received into the church at one time. The growth continued until 1840, when, 
it reached its climax. From that time on there were fewer members added 
and some of those who were members left the church and united with other 
denominations, some moved into other localities, and others were removed by 
death ; so that in 1892 there were but sixteen members left, and with but few 
. exceptions these were all old people. Among the apparent causes for the fall- 
ing off and decay of this congregation was the preaching in German to a 
people whose education was English, and who understood and spoke the Eng- 
lish language. Another cause was the neglect of special effort to reach and 
hold the young people, such as Sunday school, evening meeting, etc. 

On September 18, 1892, the step was taken that led to the reviving of the 
work at this place. At this time Aaron Loucks was chosen and ordained min- 
ister by the unanimous voice of the congregation. January 10, 1891, he was 
ordained bishop. 

As most of the members of the church at this time lived in and about Scott- 
dale, it became necessary for the best interests of the congregation that the 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 311 

church be located in the town. At a meeting of the members held July 22, 
1893, at the home of Jacob S. Loucks, it was unanimously decided to erect a 
meeting house in Scottdale. The work of excavating was begun early in Au- 
gust, and a brick building, thirty-four feet by fifty feet, was erected on the 
corner of Market and Grove streets. It was dedicated December 3, 1903. 
J. S. Coffman, of Elkhart, Indiana, conducted the opening services and con- 
tinued the meetings for two weeks. As a result a number of young people 
confessed Christ. The Sunday school was organized December 24, and has 
been continued ever since. January 4, 1894, the first new members were re- 
ceived into the church — three by baptism, and one from another denomination 
— making a total membership at that time of twenty. From that date on there 
has been a gradual increase in membership. At the present time there are 
fifty members enrolled. 

The Second Sunday School Conference of the Southwestern Pennsylvania 
District was held here the third Thursday in October, 1896. The First Bible 
Conference was held here from December 28, 1896, to January 9, 1897. 

In April, 1895. Jacob A. Kessler and family, of Lancaster county, located 
with this congregation. July 28, 1895, he was ordained a minister. Bishop 
Isaac Eby, of Lancaster county, officiating. He assisted in the work of the min- 
istry until November 4, 1898, when at a meeting held in Elkhart, following the 
General Conference held near Wakarusa, Indiana, he was chosen a missionary 
to India. He with W. B. Page and sister, of Elkhart, Indiana, sailed February 
22. 1899. He was ordained bishop January, 1899. at Tub, Somerset county, J. 
N. Durr officiating. After J. A. Ressler left for India, Aaron Loucks con- 
tinued to serve the church as pastor until 1901 when he moved to Riverside, 
California. He returned to Scottdale a year later. On March 10, 1901. A. D. 
Martin, who was formerly of Franklin county, Pennsylvania, was ordained to 
the ministry. He was born October 17, 1878, and united with the church at 
the age of fourteen. 

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

The earliest Catholics in Westmoreland were in Unity township. In 1787 
five men with their families came from Berks county and settled a short dis- 
tance east of Youngstown. Their names were John Propst, John Jung, Pat- 
rick Archibald, Simon Christian and George Ruiifner. They came directly 
across the state, coming up the Juniata and crossing the Allegheny mountains, 
and thence to Unity township. They purchased rich lands, and two years later 
they were joined by Henry Kuhn, also from Berks county. They were not 
close neighbors in the new country, but were more or less associated together, 
for in 1789 they unitedly attempted to purchase a lot in Greensburg upon 
which to build a church and lay out a graveyard. They were very poor, hav- 
ing but a few shillings in cash. A lot was presented to them, perhaps with a 
view of encouraging the growth of Greensburg. 

Before leaving their eastern homes they had arranged with Rev. John Bpt. 



312 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



Cause)', of Conewago, to visit them after they were located in their new homes. 
This he did in June, 1789. They had no church then, and the humble log cabin 
of John Propst, near Youngstown, was used as an edifice in which the visiting 
priest celebrated the faith of the church. This was perhaps the first promul- 
gation of the Catholic religion in Pennsylvania west of the Allegheny moun- 
tains, except that of the French Catholics in Fort Duquesne, prior to its cap- 
ture by General Forbes, in 1758. Other duties were pressing on Father Causey, 
and he remained here only a short time, and, we believe, never returned. They 
were also visited by Rev. Peter Hielborn, who in 1789 became pastor of St. 
IMary's parish, in Philadelphia. \Miile here he founded the first permanent 
settlement of the followers of his faith on a tract of land called "Sportsman's 
Hall." The seed he planted took deep root, for his labors were on the spot now 
occupied by St. Vincent's Abbey. Soon after him came a priest named Theo- 
dore Browers, whose permanent location there was a great inducement for 
Catholic families to settle in that vicinity. Father Browers came from Hol- 
land, and reached Philadelphia in 1789. He brought with him a considerable 
sum of money to dispose of in the interests of his church. Great efforts were 
made by the Philadelphia societies to have him apply it there, for they had 
heavy debts, and, like all churches, had great need of both his services and his 
money. This he refused to do, for he had determined to settle with some poor 
people who had neither money nor priest. In some way he heard of the des- 
titute circumstances of these people in Unity township, and accordingly came 
here. He purchased one hundred and sixty-two acres of land in Derry town- 
ship, on the banks of the Loyalhartna. He came to Greensburg and boarded for 
some time with Christian RuiTner, who lived three miles to the east. It was 
his intention to build on his own land, a residence and a church for the poor 
of his faith, but he learned on investigation that the land was very poor and 
uninviting, and moreover, situated a long distance away from a Catholic set- 
tlement. So he purchased the tract known as "Sportsman's Hall," three hun- 
dred and thirteen acres, and had it conveyed to him April 16, 1790. With a 
carpenter he soon put up a building seventeen by seventeen feet, and one and a 
half stories high, where he lived and held services. Later an addition was 
built to his house, and it was used as a chapel. It had no seats, save some 
humble benches for the older people. Father Browers died, perhaps from over- 
work, on October 29, 1790. By will he bequeathed both his tracts of land to 
his successor, who should be a duly authorized pastor of the settlement. His 
will was not written by one of sufficient knowledge to draw it properly, and its 
construction gave rise to much litigation which lasted many years. The leg- 
islature, by act of March 7, 1827, legalized the will and gave the property to 
the congregation of St. Vincent's Church. In spite of this litigation the Unity 
township colony of Catholics increased very rapidly, so that Rev. Peter Heil- 
burn was made pastor in 1799, and in November of that year had seventy-five 
communicants. Though the Catholic settlement at Unity increased very rap- 
idl}-, the litigation mto which the society was plunged because of Father Brow- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



313 



ers' poorly written will, injured it a great deal. In 1797 Rev. F. Lannigan 
headed a considerable number of his people who left the Unity colony and lo- 
cated at West Alexander, in Washington county, and afterwards removed to 
Waynesburg, all because of the contentions in the Unity colony. 

For a number ot years after the death of Father Browers the Catholics of 
Unity were without a pastor. Fathers Brosius and Pellentz came occasionally 
from missions in the east and ministered to them. For a time Rev. Whalen 
came and lived among them, living in great destitution and poverty in order to 
minister to them. In the meantime a colony of Roman Catholics was estab- 
lished on the Allegheny mountains by Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, a Rus- 
sian Prince, and he took charge of the Unity colony also. 

"Sportsman's Hall" has long since been abandoned as a name of the col- 
ony. It is now and has for many years been known as St. Vincent's. It is, 




SPORTSMAN'S HALL. 

we believe, the parent of all Catholic churches in Westmoreland county. It 
adopted its present name from the patron saint of a church erected by Rev. 
A. Stillinger, its pastor, in 1833. The dimensions of this church were fifty-one 
and one-half by eighty-seven feet. It was finished in 1835, ^"^ on July 19th 
was blessed by Bishop Kendrick. Father Stillinger remained pastor till 1845, 
when the work became too heavy for one of his age, and he was transferred to 
Blairsville. He was succeeded at St. Vincent's by Rev. F. Gallagher, who a 
year later was succeeded by Rev. D. Boniface Wimmer. He labored with great 
energy and success at St. Vincent's. 

The Benedictine Order was founded by St. Benedict, an Italian, born in 
480. Much of the civilization and christianization of Europe, and particularly 
England, is due to this order. Doubtless without the work performed by this 
order manv of the treasures of science and literature of Greece and Rome, and 



u 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



even the Bible itself, would have been lost. This seems to be admitted by most 
historians, and should dispel a mistaken idea so prevalent among many that 
the ancient monks were ignorant and superstitious. Many Benedictine mon- 
asteries were established centuries ago in the wilds of western Europe. Around 
these people of all religious beliefs settled and formed civic communities which 
are now flournishing as cities and towns. Thus the spread of Benedictine 
mo.nasticism became extremely potent in the civilization of Europe. In the 
dark ages a flood of heathenism poured in on Europe from Asia, and these 
monasteries were the rallying points of Christianity, the refuge of modern civ- 
ilization, piety and learning. 

The founder of the Benedictine order in the United States was Rt. Rev. 
Abbot Boniface Wimmer, O. S. B.,and the order was founded in Westmoreland 
county. He was born near Ratisbon, in Bavaria, January 14, 1809. Display- 
ing talents of a high order in his youth, his 
parents sent him to school in Ratisbon, 
where he received a classical education. 
From there he went to the University of 
Munich, in 1827, and began to study law. 
A year later he changed his mind, aban- 
doned the law for theology, and was or- 
dained a priest August 31, 183 1. A year 
later he entered the Benedictine monastery 
at Metten, in Bavaria, where he wore the 
robes of his order and received the church 
name of Boniface. For some fourteen 
years he was employed as priest in various 
parts of Bavaria, and was a professor at 
St. Stephens' in Augsburg, and also in 
Munich. 

In the meantime the population of the 
United States had increased to about 
twenty millions, and the Roman Cath- 
olics had increased correspondingly. The RT. rev. boniface wimmer. o. s. b. 
German element of this faith were calling loudly for priests and churches of 
their own nationality. This became known to Rev. Boniface Wimmer, and 
he therefore resolved to establish a Benedictine Abbey in America, in order that 
young men might be educated for the priesthood. As a general proposition 
his plan was opposed in Germany, but he nevertheless had many friends who 
tendered him material aid in the great enterprise, among whom was King 
Louis I, of Bavaria. Others followed this royal example, and very soon some 
nineteen young men were ready to turn their backs to their native land and 
sail with Father Wimmer to assist in his great undertaking in the New 
World. They accordingly left Munich for America, July 25, 1846. They em- 
barked at Rotterdam on the steamer "Iowa," and landed in New York on 




HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 315 

September 16, 1846. They rested a few days in the city, and were met by Rev. 
Henry Lemke, a priest of Cambria county, who had heard of the project and 
had gone to. New York to welcome them, and to suggest Western Pennsyl- 
vania as a proper place to found the abbey. He also offered his property and 
colo.ny at a moderate sum should they locate there. Rev. Wimmer was cau- 
tious, and consulted Bishop O'Connor, of Pittsburgh, and on his advice lo- 
cated the abbey at St. Vincent, in Unity township, abovit forty miles east of 
Pittsburgh. When he arrived there in October, 1846, he found the brick 
church we have referred to, a small pastor's residence, a small schoolhouse and 
an old log barn, or stable. On October i8th they took possession of the prop- 
erty. On October 24th they laid the foundation of the future monastery by con- 
ferring the right to wear the Benedictine gown on his nineteen associates. Un- 
fortunately there were only six habits to be found, but the difficulty was in a 
measure overcome by transferring their gowns from one to another. The 
same scarcity was found as to dishes, but this was overcome by only five or six 
eating at a time. Notwithstanding these hindrances, their zeal for the cause 
in which they had enlisted was such that no one of them ever regretted the 
steps he had taken. 

Their first duty was to sow wheat on the few cleared fields, so that they 
might have bread for the coming year. Rev. Wimmer set them all an example 
in this direction. Though bred to other work, he felled many a tree in the 
work of clearing land. He had, with his associates, cast his lot in a new 
country, and shrank from no hardships whatever. This example was neces- 
sary, too, for in the summer of 1847 their means were all exhausted, and star- 
vation almost stared them in the face. Some wanted to abandon the project, 
but at the darkest hour a letter reached them from Munich, stating that Rev. 
Peter Lechner, O. S. B., would soon arrive with a purse of coin equal to about 
two thousand dollars in gold, as a present from the Louis Mission Union of 
Bavaria, and a promise of eight hundred dollars per year from the same source 
if they would remain and make a success of the project. All their sorrow was 
turned into joy when Lechner and the twenty aspirants for the Benedictine or- 
der arrived on August 17, 1847. 

Many difficulties arose. One was the scarcity of priests. Father Wini- 
mer's time should have been given to the founding of the order exclusively, 
yet there were Catholic societies in Saltsburg, Greensburg and Indiana, none 
of whom were supplied with priests. In addition to his monastic duties he was 
compelled to look after and minister to these societies. It was too much for 
him, and he therefore raised to the priesthood, on March 18, 1847, a young 
man who had finished his religious studies in Germany, named Martin Geyer- 
stanger, who took the name of Charles in religion. This was the first ordina- 
tion of a Benedictine in America. 

Father Charles was born in Austria, November 20, 1820. He was a man 
of medium height, broad shoulders, and strong constitution. He was of san- 
guine temperament, well suited to cheer up the despondent feelings of a new 



3i6 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTY. 

country. Equally affable and pious, he won many friends, and was respected 
by all who knew him. In addition to his extensive knowledge of theology and 
histon.-, he is said to have possessed a keen sense of humor which always stood 
him in good stead. At his death April 22, 1881, in the community in which he 
had labored during his entire religious life, he had few, if any, equals in his 
knowledge of sacred liturgy and literature. Rev. Lechner's arrival with twen- 
ty new aspirants to the Order and the contribution in money, though encour- 
aging generally, incommoded in a great degree the young family at the mon- 
astery, for the buildings were scarcely large enough to accommodate the twenty 
who were already there. A new building was begun shortly after. It was 
forty by one hundred feet, and the foundation stones were laid on September 
28, 1848. The winter set in early that year, and it was but little service to them 
until the spring of 1849. It was under a hurriedly made board roo.f late in the 
fall of 1848, and was occupied that winter by a few aspirants because of neces- 
sity. Often when they woke in the morning their beds were covered with 
snow or drenched with rain and sleet. Nevertheless they did good work in the 
way of educating young men for the priesthood, but the demand was much 
greater than the supply. News of their hard work and privations in America 
reached Rome, and Pope Pius IX, to encourage them, raised the rank of the 
Benedictine Colony to that of a monastery, and the requisite number of priests 
to supply the pioneer Catholic societies in Westmoreland were at hand. In 
1853 the legislature of Pennsylvania incorporated the monks at St. A'incent 
with the title, "The Benedictine Society of Westmoreland County." A new 
field for their energies was found in the demand for nuns to minister to the 
wants of the people and to act as teachers of parochial schools. A" call for 
them was sent to Bavaria but only three sisters responded. 

In 1854 Father Wimmer journeyed to Rome to thank Pope Pius IX for 
past favors, and to ask that the monastery be raised to the dignity of an abbey. 
The Pope did more. He made Father ^^'immer an abbot, and gave him power 
to found new Benedictine Orders as the offspring of his own, in any diocese in 
the United States. Quite a mimber now flourishing in the United States were 
thus founded by Abbot Wimmer, and all are the offspring of the Benedictine 
Society of Westmoreland county. One was founded in Minnesota in 1856, 
which he named St. Louis, in honor of his benefactor, Louis I, King of Ba- 
varia. When the news of it reached His Royal Highness he sent the abbot the 
following letter, which is preserved in the archives of St. Vincent. 

Lord Abbot P. Boniface Wimmer. Aug. 29, 1867. 

For (he good wishes tendered me on the anniversary of my birthday, and that 
of the Saint whose name I bear, contained in your letter dated the loth, I kindly 
thank you. I know well how to appreciate the grateful sentiments of the Bene- 
dictines in America. It pleased me very much to hear that the new Abbey in 
Minnesota bears my name. I wish the best prosperity to it. to you and to the 
whole Benedictine order in America. 

With profound esteem, and devoted to you as ever. 

Yours most sincerely LOUIS I. 



H-ISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



2,^7 



Uii business relative to the success of the Abbe}-, he visited Rome in 1865 
and again in 1869. In 1880 he made a fourth trip there, that time to attend a 
celebration which he himself originally suggested, viz. : The fourteen hundredth 
anniversary o'^ the founding of the Benedictine Order. First established as it 
was in 480, the anniversary was held at ;\Ionte Carlo, in Italy, in 1880. He 
died December 8, 1887. 

The present number of students is 423. Although their buildings cover 
several acres of ground, they have been compelled each year for some years to 
refuse the admission of several hundred students. Very extensive additions 
to the buildings are now in process of construction. So hampered are they for 
room that many departments, including natural history, have been suppressed. 
For this reason rare and costly apparatus has been stored away and is not 




NTERIOR OF MON.'\STERY CHURCH. 



now in use, in order that the room originally assigned to such departments 
might be made available for the accommodation of students. In celebrated 
paintings, sculpturing and other almost priceless works of art, the institution is 
indeed replete. A large proportion of the work of the institution is performed 
by their own people. They operate, for instance, their own publishing house, 
printing office, bindery, machine and furniture shops, etc. In all there are over 
seven hundred persons housed within buildings of the institution. This in- 
cludes the faculty, students, and those who are otherwise employed. 

In 1890, they began the erection of one of the most magnificent church edi- 
fices in the United States. The exterior of this building is of brick and stone, 
and may be equalled or surpassed by other structures, but the interior has no 
equal on the American continent. It is difficult, even impossible, to estimate 



3i8 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY 

its cost, because a great part of the work on it has been performed by those 
who belonged to the institution, and no account of their time was kept, though 
these include many, skilled artisans. Its main altar, made of onyx and set with 
precious stones, alone cost $18,000, and its immense pipe organ cost many 
thousands more. The fine art carving, mostly done in Italy, lends an artistic 
beauty and richness to the interior that no pen can truly describe. It was 
dedicated in August, 1905. 

ST. XAVIER'S CONVENT, 

In 1845 Henry Kuhn, an old gentleman from Westmoreland county, offered 
the Sisters a farm on liberal terms, upon which he wanted them to establish an 
academy for young women. With the encouragement and assistance of Abbot 
Wimmer they accepted the farm under the conditions of Mr. Kuhn. This farm 
was beautifully located, forty miles east of Pittsburgh, on the Pittsburgh and 
Philadelphia turnpike. The Pennsylvania railroad was not then projected, and 
the location on the pike made it a most desirable one. There were no buildings 
worthy of mention on the farm. The pastor of St. Vincent's church, which 
was but a mile distant, gave up his residence to accommodate the Sisters and 
their first pupils. As soon as possible they began the erection of a three-story 
brick structure which could later on be used as a wing of a more imposing 
edifice. In the foreground, as viewed from the building, lies the fertile valley 
of the Loyalhanna, while in the distance is the blue outline of the Chestnut 
Ridge clad in forests to its crest. The new building was almost finished in 
1846. Trees were planted and the grounds were most beautifully laid out. 
On May 14, 1487, the Sisters and their pupils took possession of the new build- 
ing, with ceremonies appropriate to the occasion. They had in the meantime 
been incorporated under the title, "The Sisters of Mercy," and now worked with 
renewed energy to build up the school. 

The trees planted afforded little shade, and for some years the grounds 
looked desolate enough. But near by was another farm which had on it a most 
enchanting grove of tall oak trees. Fortunately for the struggling institution, 
this farm was not for sale till 1852. By that time the Sisters, with some out- 
side assistance, saw their way clear to purchase it on extended payments which 
were promptly met when due. This, with the growing trees planted, made it, 
as it has been frequently termed by visitors, a veritable "little Paradise." In 
the same year the Pennsylvania railroad was completed, passing within two 
miles of it. These advantages so increased its popularity that in 1861 a chape) 
costing $40,000 was contracted for. Then came the Rebellion, and the build- 
ing progressed so slowly that it was not completed till 1866. In the meantime 
a "Guest House" was built on the grounds to accommodate the pupils' friends 
when visiting them. 

But now comes a dark page in its histo^\^ At about 2 o'clock p. m., on 
February ist, 1868, a fire broke out, and in a few hours there was nothing left 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



319 



of all these vast buildings but smouldering ruins. The fire first showed itself 
in the middle building, out of which dark volumes of smoke and flame were 
pouring. There was no water to oppose it except from a few pumps on the 
premises. Neighbors gathered quickly, and saved a great amount of house- 
hold furniture. The Guest House alone remained. There was an insurance 
of $20,000, but one building alone had cost more than twice that amount. The 
friends of the institution came to its aid with liberal donations. Part of the 
grounds was sold, and in a few weeks they were ready to begin the construction 
of a new building on the site of the former one. It was of Gothic design, with 
irregular outline. Its front to the east was 74 feet by 40 feet deep, the left 
wing, extending northwest, 174 by 44; the right wing to the south was 100 
feet by 50 feet. The chapel was connected with the front building and ran 
parallel with the left wing. It was o.f Gothic architecture, 74 by 34 feet. The 
work began in April, 1868. In September, 1869, the academy building was 
ready to accommodate pupils. The chapel was completed in 1870, and the 
new structures have a beauty of architecture and a symmetry about them which 
could not have been attained under the original process o.f construction. The 
purpose of the academy is to impart a solid English education, together with a 
knowledge of the languages and fine arts, and to fit the students for useful 
places in social life. 

St. Xavier's, the Abbey and the College buildings are all erected on a gentle 
elevation. The fertile valleys of the Loyalhanna lie before them, while in the 
distance is the Chestnut Ridge, thickly covered with its primeval forests. Near 
the buildings are spacious lawns, beds of flowers, blooming shrubbery, vines, 
ferns, and hundreds of ornamental trees. 



CHAPTKR XXIII 



The Early Bench and Bar, 1773-1790. 

The leading features in the hves of some of the judges and more eminent 
lawyers from 1773 to 1850 have been partially preserved by the reminiscences 
of ]\Ir. James Johnston, late of "Kingston House," and by the writings of Mr. 
George Dallas Albert, late of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. To these authorities and 
to newspaper files generally the writer has had access, and has drawn material 
from them freely, which he has treated as authentic. 

Westmoreland county was erected during the proprietary government of 
the Penns and under the reign of the English law, though the latter was some- 
what modified by the constitution o.f 1776. The act of May 22, 1722, authorized 
the appointment of a "competent number of justices of the peace" for each 
county, and any three of them had power to hold the ordinary quarter sessions 
court and common pleas court. The act of September 9, 1759, provided that 
"five persons of the best discretion, capacity, judgment and integrity" should 
be commissioned for the common pleas and orphans' court, any three of whom 
were empowered to act. All were appointed for life on good behavior. B\ 
the constitution of 1776 the term was limited to seven years, but the constitu- 
tion of 1790 restored the former tenure. The act of 1722 also provided for the 
appointment of a supreme court of three judges (afterwards increased to four), 
before whom the proceedings of the county court could be reviewed. This 
supreme court had further jurisdiction over all capital cases, and for this pur- 
pose they were compelled to sit in each county twice a year. Treason, murder, 
manslaughter, robbery, horse stealing, arson, burglary, witchcraft, etc., were 
all punishable by death. 

On February 27, the day following the passage of the act creating West- 
moreland county, William Crawford, among others, was appointed a justice of 
the new county. The place of holding court was fixed at Hannastown and on 
April 6, 1773, the first court of the county was convened with Judge William 
Crawford on the bench. The first business transacted was to divide the county 
into townships. Then a grand jury was called, with John Carnahan as fore- 
man. This court was held in the log house of Robert Hanna, as were practi- 
callv all of the courts of the countv for the next thirteen vears. 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 321 

The judges who sat on the bench during- this period of Westmoreland's his- 
tory were not learned in the law. The)- were men of high standing in the com- 
munity, but were generally little more than justices of the peace. This was the 
case all over the province at that time, and yet a writer of no less distinction 
than Henry Cabot Lodge, in his "History of the English Colonies in America," 
page 232, speaks of the judicial system of Pennsylvania as "far above the co- 
lonial standard both as to the bench and the bar." 

All of the judges and justices of the province were appointed by the presi- 
dent of the supreme executive council under the act of May 22, 1722, with the 
above modifications. Their powers were very similar to those of the present 
common pleas and orphans' court judges. They were not only the highest 
judicial officers of the county, but were men of distinction in social life. Their 
houses, it is true, were the ordinary log houses, with perhaps a few supplemen- 
tary articles of furniture, but there was undoubtedly a higher standard of so- 
ciability and a finer polish among them than among the pioneers generally. 
There was a vestige of the old world manners about them. 

The distinction between the title "justice" and "judge" seems to have been 
that when they sat on the bench of the county court they were called "judges," 
and otherwise they were known as "justices." All were commissioned as 
justices. 

\'ery early in the Pennsylvania province it became the custom to distinguish 
one of the justices as president judge, and this honor fell first to William Craw- 
ford when he was present, but the records sometimes show instances in which 
Lochry, Gist, Hanna, Foreman, Jack and Moore were named as president or 
"precedent" judges. When they met to hold court, if the regular president 
was not present, they selected one of their number to preside in his absence, but 
he did not hold the office of president by legislative authority prior to the act of 
January 28, 1777. This act has the following: 

"The president and council shall appoint one of the justices in each county 
10 preside in the respective courts, and in his absence the justices who shall attend 
tlie court shall choose one of themselves president for the time being.'" 

Crawford was a man who, even in his younger years, stood very high 
among the pioneers of both Pennsylvania and Virginia. He came west on the 
Braddock road shortly after the memorable defeat and took up land in 1767 
near Connellsville, where be resided. He is described as a gentleman of the 
old school. He was pefsoinally visited by Washington before the latter was 
appointed commander of the American armies (1775). He served under 
Washington in the Braddock campaign, and is mentioned in many places in 
\\'ashington's letters. He was born in \'irginia in 1733. In order to fully 
understand his surroundings and his retirement from the Westmoreland bench 
the reader should acquaint himself with the causes of "Dunmo.re's War," 
which perplexed our courts a great deal during this period. It arose from a 



322 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY 



dispute as to the boundary line between \'irginia and Pennsylvania, and has 
been treated of at length in this volume. 

In this matter Judge Crawford sided with Lord Dunmore and took the 
oath of allegiance to Virginia in 1775. He was at once removed from office 
by the president of the supreme executive council, and the order removing him 
recognized him as the presiding justice. But his memory has not suffered in 
history because of his leaning towards Virginia. When the war of the Revolu- 
tion came he raised a regiment in western Virginia and Westmoreland county, 
was made its colonel, and with it did great service in the Continental army. 
Toward the close of the war he was sent to guard the frontier against Indian 
incursions. To this end he built Fort Crawford, on the Allegheny river, near 
the present town of Arnold. In 1782 he was appointed to command an expedi- 
tion against the Indians on the Sandusky. It is known as Crawford's expedi- 
tion, and is the basis of one of the most heart-rending chapters of border his- 
tory. His army was outnumbered, and he himself was captured by the In- 
dians under the leadership of the notorious Simon Girty. After much torture 
he was tied hand and foot, and, amid fiendish yells of joy, the Indians, thinking 
they were avenging the red men who had fallen before his command, put the 
bold and intrepid frontiersman to a most cruel death by burning him at the 
stake. Thus died the first of Westmoreland's provincial judges. He will ever 
be remembered as an honest and upright judge, a true patriot, and a brave 
soldier. 

Judge Crawford, being retired from the bench prior to the passage 
of the act (1777) authorizing the appointment of a president judge, therefore 
the judicial distinction by legislative authority came first in reality to John 
Moore. At the commencement of the colonial rebellion he was engaged in 
clearing out and cultivating a farm, of four hundred and fifty acres, on the 
Crabtree Run, a branch of the Loyalhanna, two miles southeast of New Alex- 
andria. A comfortable stone dwelling, still in pretty good condition, marked 
the place of his residence, and indicated a man in advance of the rude civiliza- 
tion of that day. His wife was a daughter of Isaac Parr, of New Jersey. 
Thev had one child when the Revolution opened. These, together with several 
colored servants, constituted his household. He was at that time about thirty- 
seven years of age. 

His first appearance in public life was as a delegate from the county of 
Westmoreland to the convention which met at Philadelphia, July 15, 1776, to 
form a costitution and frame a government for the state of Pennsylvania. A 
committee of conference, of eminent citizens of the state, met at Carpenter's 
Hail, in Philadelphia, June 15, 1776, to make arrangements for calling a conven- 
tion to form a constitution and frame of government upon the separation of the 
colonies from England. The people were invoked by the committee of co,n-. 
ference "to choose such persons only to act for them in the ensuing convention 
as are distinguished for wisdom, integrity, and a firm attachment to the liberties 
of this province." In pursuance of this recommendation, delegates were chosen 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUM'Y. 



323 



July 5, 1776, and the eight delegates to the convention elected for ^^'estmoreland 
county were John Moore, Edward Cook, James Perry, James Barr, James 
Smith, John Carmichael, John McClellan, and Christopher Lobingier. In the 
convention John Moore was placed on the committee to draw up a declaration 
or bill of rights, and also on the committee to report a plan or constitution of 
government. The convention selected "a Council of Safety to exercise the whole 
of the executive powers of government, so far as relates to the military defense 
and safety of the province," which consisted of David Rittenhouse, John Moore, 
Owen Eiddle. James Cannon, Joseph Blewor, Frederick Kuhl. Col. John Bull, 
Timothy Matlack, Samuel ]\Iorris, B. Bartholomew, Thomas Wharton, Henry 




Kepples, John Weitzel, John Hubly, Henry Wyncoop, George Gray, John Bay- 
ard, Francis Gurney, Joseph Donaldson, and William Lyon. 

September 30th John Moore returned to Westmoreland. During the time 
he was in session with the Council of Safety he procured for the defense of 
Westmoreland county about four hundred pounds sterling, half a ton of rifle 
powder, one ton of lead, and four thousand flints. In 1777 he was commis- 
sioned a justice of the peace, and about the same time was appointed surveyor 
of public lands in Westmoreland covmty. In 1779 he was commissioned one 
of the judges of the several courts of Westmoreland county, and in 1785 ap- 
pointed president judge of the same county. No. appointment was made for 
AV'estmoreland county until October 24th of that year ( Col. Rec. vol. xiv, p. 



324 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



516). His commission bore date on the day following^ and is recorded in tlie 
register's office, in Book A, p. 544. He was succeeded in the fall of 1791 by the 
Hon. Alexander Addison. After Judge JMoore retired from the bench he was 
elected for two terms to the state senate from the senatorial district of Alle- 
gheny and Westmoreland. 

He was born in Lancaster county. His father, William JMoore, died when 
he was but a boy ; and afterwards his mother, Jeannette Aloore, and her son, in 
company with her brothers, Charles Wilson, Esq., and John Wilson, removed to 
the district of Westmoreland county. What his opportunities for an education 
were are not known. He wrote a good hand, and in language and orthography 
his composition indicated a man of strong, vigorous, and clear intellect. After 
his mother had removed to Westmoreland county, she was again married, to 
James Guthrie, of Greensburg, by whom she had several children, one of whom, 
James, was afterwards sheriff of Westmoreland county. John B. Guthrie, 
once mayor of Pittsburgh, was a descendant. 

John Moore had four daughters and two sons. One of his sons was after- 
wards county surveyor. The other died in Kentucky, while engaged as princi- 
pal civil engineer in the location of a rail- 
road His daughters, who were all women 
of hue personal appearance and intelligence, 
wcic respectively married to JMajor John 
Kuk Patrick, a merchant of Greensburg; 
lohn j\I. Snowden, editor of the Fanners' 
Ri^i\-tcr, in Greensburg, afterwards editor 
of the Pittsburgh Mercury, and later m 
lite mayor of Pittsburgh, one of the asso- 
nati judges of Allegheny county, and at 
J ( \K time the nominee of the Democratic 
party for congress in the Allegheny dis- 
trict ; another was married to the Rev. 
Francis Laird, D. D., and the last to James ?\IcJunkin, a prominent farmer. 
All these women lived until they were over eighty years old, in the enjoyment 
of perfect health and sound constitutions, and were, throughout a long life, 
worthy examples of the highest standard of female propriety. 

In personal appearance John Moore was a man full six feet high, very 
straight and erect ; had large brown eyes, brown hair, and nose rather aquiline. 
A gentleman who met him in his own house for the first time in 1798 has left the 
following description of his appearance and the impression he made on his 
mind at first sight and afterwards : "A tall gentleman, of erect and manly 
form, whose intelligent countenance and strikingly expressive eye indicated a 
man of more than ordinary ability. He was then about sixty years old, and 
the rough buffeting of a frontier life had left a slight shade of sternness over a 
countenance at all times dignified. Fie was extremely correct in his habits,- 
unbending in his course, stern in his commands, but remarkable for his affec- 




HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 325 

tion to his children ; and although generally mild was notwithstanding pos- 
sessed of a great deal of temper, being deeply sensitive, and having a high 
sense of honor." 

John Moore died in iSii, in the seventy-third year of his age, honored and 
respected by all good men who knew him, and his body was buried at Congruity 
church. His widow survived him many years. For many years he was an 
■elder in the Presbyterian church at Congruity, and was acting in such capacity 
Avhen chosen a delegate to the convention which framed the first constitution. 
By his will he set free the older of his colored servants, and allowed the younger 
ones to serve an apprenticeship with any of his children they might chose. 

Judge Robert Hanna, for whom Hannastown was named, was one of the 
trustees appointed to locate the public buildings for the new county. The other 
trustees were Erwin, Cavett, Sloan and Wilson. Hanna was the most powerful 
of these, for he succeeded in locating the county seat and its buildings on his 
lands. 

Hf was born in the northern part of Ireland, and on reaching western Penn- 
sylvania, settled on the Forbes road. He took up lands about midway between 
Fort Ligonier and Fort Pitt, and on them erected a log house for a residence. 
There being a good deal of travel on the road, his house was soon leased to a 
neighbor and converted mto a tavern. Near him he rapidly induced other 
■emigrants to settle, and by 1773, when the county was formed, there was quite 
a colony of houses around Hanna's. It was, moreover, the chief stopping 
place between Pittsburgh and Ligonier. On the formation of the county 
Robert Hanna was appointed a justice. The court at Hannastown being held 
at his house, he was on the bench very regularly, but nevertheless little is known 
•of his work as a judge. 

Judge William Jack was born near the town of Strabane. county Tyrone 
Ireland, in 1751. But little is known of his life prior to his arrival in America. 
Tradition has it, however, that the family was of Huguenot descent, having 
been driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In 1772 
\Mlliam Jack and his brother ]\Iatthew, aged twenty-one and seventeen re- 
spectively, settled near the present town of Greensburg. William married 
Margaret, a daughter of Charles \\'ilson, July 7, 1774, and Matthew married 
her sister Nancy some years later. 

In the preliminary steps taken to form the new county in 1773, in Dun- 
more's war and the various Indian wars and in the Revolution, \\'illiam and 
Matthew Jack both took active parts. William was commissary officer of Col- 
onel Mackey's regiment, a lieutenant of Captain Samuel Moorhead's independ- 
ent company, and was commissioned a brigadier-general of militia by Governor 
Thomas Mifflin on April 19, 1793. In 1784 he was commissioned by John 
Dickinson, president of the supreme executive council, as one of the county 
justices, and was therefore ex officio a county judge. Christopher Truby and 
John Moore' were on the bench with him, and his commission ran seven vears. 



326 HISTORY OP WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

The court minutes show that he was in more constant exercise of his functions, 
on the bench at Greensburtv than any other judge. John Moore was designated 
president judge, but frequently in Moore's absence William Jack is noted as 
presiding. Upon the accession of Judge Addison ( 1791 ) Jack became an asso- 
ciate judge. Up to the close of the century he was on the bench at almost every 
term of court. 

There is in possession of the descendants of General Jack, the children of 
r\Irs. Xancy Jack Wentling, late of Greensburg, a very laudatory letter given to 
General Jack on the eve of his departure for Europe. The letter indicates that 
he was a man of many high and noble qualities and is signed by John Moore, 
president judge; Christopher Truby, Michael Rugh, judges, and attested by 
Michael Hufi'nagle, prothonotary. The letter is dated November 4, 1788. 
General Jack lived many years after this, dying February 18, 1821. 

There were other justices who sat on the bench during this provincial per- 
iod, but these of whom we have written are, fairly representative men of their 
day, and, we believe, will enable the reader to form a correct estimate of the 
men who presided over our courts during the years between 1773 and 1790. 

THE EARLY BAR. 

For some years after the , formation of the county the Westmoreland bar 
scarcely had a name as a bar. There were no resident lawyers in Hannastown. 
Lawyers came from other counties to try cases regularly before judges and 
jurymen, but sessions of court were short and far between. The first lawyer 
who was regularly admitted to the bar, so far as the records show, was Francis 
Dade, who was sworn August 3, 1773. The old records show the names of 
Espy, Irwin, Smiley, Galbraith, Megraw, Sample, Ross, Scott, Wilson and 
others. 

Hugh Henry Brackenridge, noted for his learning, eloquence and wit, after- 
wards justice of the supreme court of Pennsylvania, was admitted at Hannas- 
town, April 2nd, 1781, and for many years practiced a great deal at this bar. 
L^pon his motion David Bradford was admitted in 1782. Bradford came to this 
county from [Maryland, became the head and front of the Whisky Insurrection, 
and was forced to flee the country. He settled finally in Mississippi, where 
he became a wealthy planter. These attorneys and some others were the first, 
and they practiced while the courts were held at Hannastown, and before the 
removal of the county seat to Greensburg. ' Brackenridge was the most noted 
of them all, and an extended sketch of him would be in keeping. in these pages 
were it not that he belonged to the Allegheny county bar. 

It must not be supposed that the early courts were of an inferior character 
because the justices were not learned in the law. It will be remembered that 
Ebenezer Webster, the father of Daniel Webster, though not a lawyer, sat for 
many years as a judge of the common pleas court of New Hampshire. The 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. ^27 

justices were selected with great care, and were well suited and equipped to 
carry on the litigation of the primitive age in which they lived. They brought 
order out of chaos, and steadily advanced the pioneer standards of jurisprudence 
until 1790, when the community was intellectually ready for the more exacting 
principles of the new constitution. After the constitution of 1790 went into 
force, there were still three judges on the bench, the president judge alone being 
learned in law, the other two being associate judges. The associate judges re- 
mained on the bench in Westmoreland county until after the adoption of the 
constitution of 1873. 

Those who sat on the bench in Westmoreland county since the adoption of 
the constitution in 1790, that is, those who were "learned in the law," as was 
provided for in that constitution, are as follows : 

Alexander Addison, from 1791 to 1803 ; Samuel Roberts, from 1803 to 
1805 ; John Young, from 1806 to 1836, a period of thirty and a half years, 
which was longer than that of any other judge on this bench ; Thomas White, 
of Indiana county, from 1836 to 1847; Jeremiah J\I. Burrell, from 1847 to 
1848, and again, he being a second time on the bench, as in his biography later 
on will appear, from 1851 to 1855; John C. Knox, from 1848 to 1850; Joseph 
Buffington, from 1855 to 1871 ; James A. Logan, from 1871 to 1879; James A. 
Hunter, from 1879 to 1890. 

Judges Lucian W. Doty, Alexander D. McConnell and John B. Steel are 
the present occupants of the bench. 

Judge Alexander Addison, like many prominent men of his day, was born 
in a foreign land — in Ireland, in 1759. He received a thorough 
education at Edinburgh, and was for many years a clergyman in the Presby- 
terian church in Scotland. He arrived in Pennsylvania, December 20, 1785, and 
applied to the old renowned Redstone Presbytery for license to preach in 
southwestern Pennsylvania. From some unknown cause the examination 
proved very unsatisfactory, but permission was granted to him to preach, his 
application having been made from the town of Washington. Not long after 
this, being perhaps disgruntled because of the difficulty in his examination, he 
abandoned the ministry and took up the study of law. He finally settled in 
Pittsburgh, where he practiced law for many years and with great success. 

He was president judge of this district, which included the four western 
counties which became so notorious in 1795 in the Whisky Insurrection. Dur- 
ing this period, and for decisions growing out of the Whisky Insurrection, he 
became very unpopular with the anti-Federalists. There was at that time an 
associate judge on the bench named Lucas, who though not a lawyer, fre- 
quently differed from the judge and tried to overrule him. He finally tried 
to charge the grand jury contrary to the custom, and to set forth views opposite 
those expressed by Judge Addison. On this Judge Addison stopped him, 
wliich was probably what he desired. He applied to the legislature, which 
tried Judge Addison by impeachment, and removed him from office in January, 
1803, en the flimsiest of charges. "Xo person can read the report of the trial," 



328 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

says Judge J. W. F. White, "without feeling that it was a legal farce ; that 
gross injustice was done Judge Addison from the beginning to the end, and 
that the whole proceeding was a disgrace to the state. The trial took place at 
Lancaster, where the legislature sat. The house and senate refused to give him 
copies of certain papers, or to give assistance in procuring witnesses from Pitts- 
burgh for his defense. The speakers of the counsel against him, and the rul- 
ings of the senate on all questions raised in the progress of the trial, were char- 
acterized by intense partisan feeling. It was not a judicial trial, but a partisan 
scheme to turn out a political opponent. It resulted in deposing one of the 
purest, best and ablest judges that ever sat on the bench in Pennsylvania." 

Judge Addison was a scholar and learned writer. He published "Observa- 
tions on Gallatin's Speech," 1798; "Analysis of the Report of the Virginia As- 
sembly," 1800; and "Pennsylvania Reports," 1800. A great writer of that day 
has spoken of him as "an intelligent, learned, upright and fearless judge; one 
whose equal was not to be found in Pennsylvania." His charge to the grand 
jury during the Whisky Insurrection is a monument to his talents and worth, 
and one who remembers the political surroundings of that dav cannot read it 
without being impressed with the fact that Judge Addison had fully his share 
of moral courage and stamina. 

Judge Addison was succeeded on the bench by Hon. Samuel Roberts, who 
came from Allegheny county, and therefore little is known of him in West- 
moreland. He was president judge of the Fifth Judicial district, and held the 
position from 1803 to 1805. He presided in Greensburg at June term, 1803, 
beginning June 20, and for the last time at December term, 1805. At that 
time the judicial system of the state was remodeled by an act of the legislature 
of that year. The new district of the counties of Allegheny, Beaver, ^^'ash- 
ington, Fayette and Greene, was constituted the Fifth district, in which Judge 
Roberts continued to preside. Westmoreland was, for the first time, in the 
Tenth Judicial district, a position which it has held ever since. With this 
change, therefore, Judge Roberts' connection with Westmoreland county ceased, 
and since he belongs to another county we do not deem it necessary to write 
further of him in these pages. He came originally from Sunbury. 

Judge John Young was born in a foreign land — in Glasgow, Scotland, July 
12, 1762. He was a shining member of a very prominent Scottish family 
which was noted in Scotland for its learning, its aristocratic standing and 
nobility, and one branch of it was knighted before the reign of unfortunate 
Mary, Queen of Scots. He took the name John from his father and grand- 
father. He had three brothers respectively named Thomas, Douglass and 
William, and one sister named IMary, all of whom were highly educated. 

The father of Judge Young was a well-to-do merchant in Glasgow and few 
men of his day lived in greater affluence. He also gained a reputation for 
liberality and kind qualities, which, if tradition is to be depended upon, were 
inherited by his son. the subject of this sketch. Perhaps from undue liberality 
he became financially involved in his later years. Still later he liailed his 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 329 

brother William for a large sum of money, for which debt his property was 
sold, and he died shortly after this from anxiety, superinduced by his financial 
reverses. 

At the time of his father's death Judge Young was a student at law in the 
office of the father of the renowned novelist, Sir Walter Scott. He relin- 
quished the study of law, and, first procuring places under the crown for his 
brothers, he emigrated to this country, reaching Philadelphia in 1780. It is 
said that he arrived with but one English shilling in his pocket. In Phil- 
adelphia he attracted notice by his fine bearing. He entered the office of Mr. 
Duponceau, who was an interpreter for the Philadelphia courts. In this office 
h.e became very useful, not only because of his rapidly increasing knowledge 
•of the law, but because of his eminent talents as a French scholar. Afterwards 
he entered the office of Judge Wilson and read law diligently with him until 
his admission to the bar, which was January 8, 1786. After his admission he 
remained for some years practicing in the eastern counties, mainly in Phila- 
delphia. 

It must be remembered that Eastern Pennsylvania was settled largely by 
■Germans and that the western part of the state was settled largely by Scotch- 
Irish. This induced I^Ir. Young to remove to \\'estmoreland county, which 
he did in 1789. Greensburg had recently been made a county seat and he 
settled here and in a short time gained a large practice in this and adjoining 
counties, because of his ability and his high character for integrity. For many 
years after this, however, he was frequently called to Philadelphia and r)alti- 
more. 

He was a member of the Swendenborg church, and this belief often brought 
him into association with Mr. Francis Bailey and his cultured family, where he 
became acquainted with Miss Maria Barclav, who, we believe, was an orphan, 
and to whom he was married in 1794. With her he lived for many years and 
they had a family of three sons and five daughters. After his wife's death he 
contracted a second marriage with Satira Barclay, a cousin of his former wife, 
and by her he had two children — a son and a daughter. 

He was always known as a man of fine ability and great force of character. 
In 1 79 1 he, in company with an old Revolutionary soldier named Stokely, was 
appointed a delegate to the first meeting in Pittsburgh called to consider troubles 
then rife, concerning an act of Congress which had been passed in March of that 
year, imposing a duty upon spirits distilled within the United States. This 
law was called the "Excise Act," but the difficulties arising from it have been 
written of here as the Whisky Insurrection. His participation in these ne- 
gotiations added largely to his popularity and greatly increased his clientage. 

In 1790, 1792 and 1793 the Indians were very troublesome in the western 
part of Pennsylvania and Mr. Young is known to have served two or three 
terms of two or three months each in a military capacity in defending the early 
settlers against incursions. He had, however, no military predilections, his 
■enlisting being only a question of duty. 



330 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



He continued in the practice of law with great success until the year 1805. 
In that year a vacancy occurred in the president judgeship of the Tenth judicial 
district, then composed of the counties of Westmoreland, Armstrong, Somer- 
. set, Cambria and Indiana. Thomas ^VIcKean was then governor of Pennsvl- 
vania. There were, of course, many applicants from these counties for the 
position of judge, but John Young because of his integrity, firmness and legal 
erudition, was appointed, though the governor said, with what was perhaps at 
that time pardonable dislike, that he did not like his religion, but had the utmost 
confidence in the man. Judge Young's commission was dated at Lancaster on 
the first of March, 1806, and he held office until the latter part of 1836,- a period 
of thirty and one-half years, when having reached the age of life when most 
men wish to retire from its active duties he resigned his commission and re- 
tired to private life. 

When he was appointed to the bench his learning and ability as a lawyer 
were so great that even in that age, when money was extremely scarce, it is said 
that his income from his practice was usually over $5,000 a year, and as a mat- 
ter of course he was slow to relinquish it for the judgeship, which then paid but 
a few hundred. At that time he was generally employed in all the larger cases 
tried in the several courts in this and adjoining counties. There is one case of 
which we have knowledge where his superior education was greatly displayed 
and stood him in good' stead. It was a case involving the right of land upon 
which the Roman Catholic church and monastery near Beatty's station now 
stands, the dispute being between the secular and the regular clergy. H. H. 
Brackenridge, Esq., afterwards Justice Brackenridge, was employed on the 
other side. He had been educated for the ministry and on the trial there was a 
great display of ecclesiastical learning. The bulls of the Pope and the decrees 
of the council were read in the original Latin and explained with ease and ac- 
curacy, and the exact extent to which canon law was acknowledged by the 
common law and the statute law was thoroughly discussed. Judge Young was 
at this time regarded as the best special pleader at the Western Pennsylvania 
bar. In criminal court it is said that he nearly always leaned towards the 
prisoner on account of a kindness of heart which has been referred to hereto- 
fore. In all cases he tempered justice with leniency. 

Judge Young survived his resignation a few years, dying in Greensburg, 
October 6, 1840. His remains are now lying near Greensburg in a burying 
ground known as the old St. Clair cemetery. 

It is said that Judge Young was a master of seven languages, and one or two 
of these at least were acquired when he was quite advanced in years. He wrote 
and translated Latin with perfect fluency, and was equally proficient in the 
French language. At one time while he was on the bench a Frenchman named 
\'ictor Noel was arrested and confined in jail in Somerset county for the murder 
of a man named Pollock, from Ligonier valley. Pollock was a merchant and 
had been going east with a large amount of money to buy goods, when he was 
waylaid by the Frenchman and murdered for his money. Judge Young ex- 




-JrZ^Ent-^JZ.-. 



df 9h .(^^-r-ril^ 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. ;,^i 

plained the indictment and the whole process of trial to the prisoner in French, 
and, after his conviction, sentenced him to be hanged in "the polite and pohsned 
language of his native land." 

Th2 residence of Judge Young in Greensburg was on Main street, opposite 
the present location of the Methodist church building. From this place he dis- 
pensed charity with a lavish hand and there received his friends and indeed all 
travelers who came, w'ith the most kindly and amiable disposition. An excellent 
portrait of Judge Young was painted by the renowned artist Gilbert Stuart,, 
who also painted the famous portrait of Washington known as the "Stuart Pic- 
ture." 

After the resignation of Judge Young, Thomas White, Esq., an Indiana 
county lawyer, was commissioned judge of this district, it then being composed 
of the counties of Westmoreland, Indiana. Armstrong and Cambria. His com- 
mission was dated December 13, 1836. Early in 1837 it was read in the \\'est- 
moreland county courts and he began his work on the bench. He presided at 
practically all the courts held in Westmoreland county until 1847, when Jere- 
miah M. Bnrrell was appointed and commissioned his successor. 

Judge White had read law with the celebrated William Rawle, of Philadel- 
phia, a gentleman well known in the legal annals of our state, and commenced 
the practice of the law in Indiana in 1820 or 1821, wdien he was but twenty-one 
years of age. He rapidly obtained a good practice. He was also engaged ex- . 
tensively in business, being among other things the agent of George Clymer, 
who owned great tracts of land in Indiana county. Judge White lived many 
years after retiring from the bench, and served during the war of the rebellion- 
as one o.f the commissioners of the well-known "Peace Convention," which met 
at Washington. 

On the expiration of Judge White's commission, Francis R. Shunk, gov- 
ernor of Pennsylvania, appointed Jeremiah Murray Burrell, of Greensburg, to 
the vacancy. He was born near Murryville, in Westmoreland county, his 
father being Dr. Benjamin Burrell, who removed to Westmoreland from 
Dauphin county. His mother was a daughter of the renowned Jeremiah ;\Iur- 
rav, Esq. He was the only son, and his parents being wealthy, gave him a 
thorough education. He was graduated at Jefferson College, at Cannonsburg, 
Pennsylvania, and read law with Richard Couher, who afterwards went on the 
supreme bench of the state, and is mentioned in another part of this work. Mr. 
Burrell was admitted to the bar July 14, 1835. Some years after that he be- 
came the owner and editor of the Pennsylvania Argus, an avocation not un- 
common for active, energetic members of the bar in that day. He was a 
staunch Democrat, and made his paper bristle with the doctrines of his party. 
In the great campaign of 1840, the "Log Cabin campaign," the hottest in the 
history of national politics, he established a great name as a writer. He not 
onlv made a state reputation, but some of his articles on political topics were 
answered by Horace Greeley in the Nczv York Tribune, this giving him a still 
wider fame. In the campaign of 1844 he was one of the most eloquent speakers- 



332 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

and writers in Pennsylvania in behalf of James K. Polk, and in debate was 
pitted against Thomas Williams and otlier great orators of that day. He was 
after this elected to the state legislature, where he distinguished himself as a 
leader of the house. It is said that no man in the state in his day could speak 
more eloquently than he. 

The late Major William H. Hackey, who was contemporaneous with Judge 
Burrell. delighted to tell a story illustrative of the latter's splendid oratory. A 
large outdoor Democratic convention was being held in Pittsburgh in 1844. 
The addresses were made from the portico o,f the Monongahela house, but the 
crowd was so dense and enthusiastic that the speakers could not be heard. 
Finally Burrell, then twenty-nine years old, was introduced and in loud clear 
tones readily made himself heard by all the surging multitude. Some one, 
caught by his eloquence, inquired of those around him who the speaker was. 
"I told him," said the major, "with all the home pride I could muster, that the 
■eloquent speaker was J. W. Burrell, of Greensburg, the most gifted young ora- 
tor in Pennsylvania." Very soon, as the major said, the audience was quieted 
■down and listened to his address with enraptured admiration till he had fin- 
ished speaking. 

At that time in Pennsylvania judges were appointed by the governor and 
confirmed by the senate. When the chief executive sent ^Mr. Burrell's name 
to the senate, so bitter had been many of his contests in the legislature, that the 
senate refused, doubtless on political grounds, to confirm the nomination. After 
the legislature adjourned Governor Shunk commissioned him and he imme- 
diately assumed the duties of the office. The question as to whether the gov- 
ernor had this power was widely discussed in Pennsylvania. There had been 
several legal expositions of parallel cases under the constitution of the United 
States, which in its method of filling certain vacancies was identical in lan- 
-guage with that of the Pennsylvania constitution of 1838. These expositions 
of opinion had been given by William \\'irt and Roger B. Taney, both attor- 
ney generals, and the latter afterwards chief justice of the United States. Upon 
these opinions Governor Shunk based his right to make the appointment. 

The record of the court of common pleas has this minute : "Monday morn- 
ing, 24th May, 1847, Jeremiah M. Burrell appeared upon the bench and pre- 
sented his commission from the Governor of Pennsylvania, dated 27th March, 

1847, appointing him President Judge of the Tenth Judicial District of Penn- 
sylvania, composed of the counties of Cambria, Indiana, Armstrong and West- 
moreland." 

After carefully weighing tlie different opinions, it was deemed advisable 
to vacate this appointment, and the governor nominated Hon. John C. Knox, 
of Tioga county, for the position. His nomination was promptly confirmed 
by the senate. Judge Knox thereupon began his work on the bench ]\Iay 22, 

1848, Judge Burrell becoming a practicing lawyer in the bar. In 1850 the 
constitution of the state was so amended that the judgeship became an elective 
ofTice. It is highly creditable to Judge Burrell that when this new law went 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 1,^1,, 

into effect he was the one man in the district who, in the popular opinion, was 
pre-eminently above all others fitted for the position. His nomination fol- 
lowed and resulted in his election in 185 1. 

His new commission was presented in Westmoreland county and read on 
February 16, 1852. He filled the office in this district until 1855, when Presi- 
dent Franklin Pierce appointed him judge of the District Court of the United 
States for Kansas. Shortly after assuming the duties of this office he came to 
Greensburg on a visit, apparently in good health, but was suddenly afflicted 
with laryngitis, from which he died on October 21, 1856, after but a few days' 
illness. 

Judge Burrell's early training was in the old school Presbyterian faith. 
When quite a young man he married Miss Anna Elizabeth Richardson, a wo- 
man of unusual beauty and accomplishments, who is yet living (1905). A few 
years after his marriage he built a handsome residence in Greensburg, which 
was surrounded by large grounds, most tastefully laid out. He was a man. 
gifted with high social qualities, rare tastes and refinement, and was of a 
generous nature, passionately fond of his library and of music. Like the em- 
ment Chief Justice Gibson, he played with singular skill upon both the f^ute 
and violin. As a judge, he lent dignity to and created a good impression in 
all the courts in which he presided. He was a full cousin to the mother of 
Judge Samuel A. and W. H. JNlcClung, of Pittsburgh. 

That he was a lawyer of large practice before going on the bench is evi- 
denced by our court records, which show that Judge Kimmell, of Somerset 
county, and Judge Agnew, afterwards chief justice of Pennsylvania, frequently 
came to Greensburg to try cases in which Judge Burrell had been engaged as 
counsel while a practicing lawyer, and was therefore disqualified to try. His 
early death was deeply regretted by both the bench and the bar. 

When court met on the morning of May 22, 1848, John C. Knox, of Tioga 
county, appeared and was conducted to the bench by Judge Burrell, when a 
commission appointing Knox to the office of judgeship of the Tenth judicial 
district was read in open court. A perusal of the sketch of Judge Burrell, im- 
mediately preceding this, will explain his elevation to the bench. 

Judge Knox was easily one of the most eminent lawyers who ever sat on the 
bench in the Tenth judicial district, then composed of the counties of Cambria, 
Indiana, Armstrong and Westmoreland. He presided but a short time in West- 
moreland, for the new law of 1850 vacated his position, and the election of 
Judge Burrell, as above indicated, followed. In 1 851 he therefore left the 
district, returned to his home in Tioga county and was at once 
elected judge of his district over Judge Buffington. In 1853 he- 
was appointed to the supreme bench to fill the vacancy caused by the death of 
the most eminent lawyer and jurist ever produced in Pennsylvania, Chief Jus- 
tice John Bannister Gibson. That the governor should select him to fill this 
position is of itself a sufficient eulogy of his character and legal attainments.. 
He filled the position with ability until 1857, when he resigned to become attor- 



334 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

ney g-eneral of the commonwealth under Governor Pollock. In 1861 he re- 
moved to Philadelphia to practice law. Unfortunately very shortly after this 
he was afflicted with softening of the brain, from which he never recovered, but 
spent the remainder of his days in the state asylum at Norristown, where he 
died about a quarter of a century after. More would be said of him in these 
pages were it not that he belongs properly to Tioga county. 

Judge Joseph Buffington presided for many years in what was and is now 
termed the "old Tenth" district. He was born in the town of West Chester, 
Pennsylvania, on November 27, 1803. He was of Quaker extraction, his an- 
cestors coming from the Friends or Quakers in Middlesex, England. His 
•grandfather, Jonathan Buffington, was a miller near Chad's Ford, in Chester 
county, during the Revolution. His 'father, Ephraim Buffington, kept an inn or 
tavern stand known as the "Whitehall," at West Chester, which in its day was a 
■celebrated hostelry. When Joseph Buffington was ten years of old, his father, 
in hopes of improving his fortune, moved .west and settled on the Allegheny 
river, near Pittsburgh. During this journey, which, of course, was made in 
wagons, as Judge Buffington often related, he passed through Greensburg and 
stopped at the old Rohrer house, now the Null house. He also said that it was 
here for the first time that he saw a soft coal fire. A few years afterwards he 
■entered the University of Pittsburgh, and though he was not graduated, he was 
well educated. Afterwards young Buffington settled in Butler, Pennsylvania, 
and before studying law was an editor of a weekly paper called the Butler Re- 
pository, and in this he was associated with Samuel A. Purviance, who after- 
wards became eminent in the Allegheny county bar and was attorney general 
of the commonwealth under Governor Curtin in 1861. Buffington read law 
with Samuel Ayers, of Butler, and while a student was married to Catharine 
Mechling, daughter of Jacob Mechling, who, about that time, was in the Penn- 
sylvania senate. In July, 1826, he was admitted to the bar and began to prac- 
tice in Butler county. He only remained there about a year and then removed 
to Armstrong county, locating in Kittanning, where he resided continuously 
until his death. His industry, integrity and close application brought him the 
highest fruit of his profession. Like most lawyers of his day, he took an active 
part in politics. He was a member of the Anti-Masonic party in 1831, and 
served as a delegate to the national convention of that body in 1832, which met 
in Baltimore and nominated William Wirt for the presidency. He was several 
times nominated for offices, but his party being in the minority, he was not 
elected. In 1840 he became identified with the Whig party and took an active 
■interest in the election of General Harrison, being a presidential elector. 

During these years when he was engaged in the practice of the law, his work 
was not confined to Armstrong county, but spread over Clarion, Jefiferson and 
Indiana, and sometimes he appeared in the Westmoreland county courts. In 
these counties he was connected with nearly all of the important land trials, and 
it is said that his knowledge of the law regulating this then very prominent 
branch of litigation was most accurate. In 1842 he was elected a member of 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



335 



Congress as a Whig in the district composed of the counties of Armstrong, 
Butler, Clearfield and Indiana. He was re-elected in 1844. Shortly after his 
retirement from Congress, his friend and fellow townsman, William F. John- 
ston, having been elected governor, appointed him judge of the Eighteenth 
judicial district, composed of the counties of Clarion, Elk, Jefferson and \'en- 
ango. This position he held until the office became elective in 185 1, when he 
was defeated by Hon. John C. Knox, of whom we have previouslv spoken. In 
1852 he was nominated by the Whig party for a place on the supreme bench of 
Pennsylvania. But the Whig party that year was defeated, the candidate for 
president being Gen. \Mnfield Scott, and Buffington went down with his party, 
the late Justice Woodward, of Luzerne county, being elected. During the 
same year President Filmore nominated him to be chief justice of Utah terri- 
tory. The great distance of Utah territory from his home led him to decline 
the proffered honor, though he was greatly pressed to accept it. 

On the resignation of Judge Burrell as judge of the Tenth judicial district 
he was appointed to that position in 1855 by Governor Pollock, with whom he 
had served in Congress, and then began his connection with Westmoreland 
county. The year following he was elected for a term of ten years. In this 
contest he had no opponent, the opposition declining to nominate through the 
advice of James Buchanan, who was a personal friend of Buffington's and who 
was himself a candidate for president of the United States. In 1866 Judge 
Bufifington was re-elected for another term of ten years. In 1871 he resigned 
from the bench, when declining health admonished him tliat his days of labor 
were nearly ended. Judge Buffington was undoubtedly one of the ablest law- 
yers who ever sat on the Westmoreland bench. He died in Kittaning on Sat- 
urday, Februarv- 3, 1872. 

Judge James Addison Logan descended from Scotch-Irish ancestry and 
was born in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, on the Allegheny river, De- 
cember 3, 1839. His boyhood days were spent on the farm, on the river and at 
the country school in the neighborhood of his birthplace. After reaching the 
proper age he began an academic course at Elders Ridge academy, from which 
he was graduated in due course of time with the honors of his class. Upon 
completing his academic course he began the study of law in the office of Major 
W. A. Stokes, then a celebrated lawyer and counsel for the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road company at Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Soon afterwards Major Stokes 
went into the army, and Mr. Logan entered the office of Hon. Harrison P. 
Laird. Under this preceptorship he finished his studies, and was admitted to 
the bar in May, 1863. With such lawyers as Henry D. Foster and Edgar 
Cowan in active practice in the courts in a rural county, the field for young 
effort was not inviting. Mr. Logan, however, immediately gained a prominent 
place at the bar. 

In 1868, when Henry D. Foster contested the seat of Hon. John Covode in 
the national house of representatives, Mr. Logan was counsel for the respon- 
dent, and conducted the defence with such skill as to greatly extend his repu- 



336 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

tation. In 1870 he was appointed local solicitor for the Pennsylvania Railroad 
company at Greensburg. That corporation was at that time involved in some 
important litigation, of which the new solicitor assumed charge. Among the 
suits was the celebrated case of John Snodgrass and Israel Painter, contrac- 
tors for furnishing the Union army with beeves, who claimed that the railroad 
company had overcharged them a large amount on their shipments of cattle. 
'The case was referred to arbitration. The arbitrators appointed were Judge 
Buffington, ot Armstrong county ; Judge J. K. Ewing, Hon. James Veach and 
Hon. Daniel Kane, of Fayette county, Hon. Hugh Weir, of Indiana county, rep- 
resenting the best legal talent in Western Pennsylvania. Eminent lawyers were 
retained by the plaintiffs, and a stubborn fight was made. Mr. Logan sub- 
stantially won the case. 

In 1871 Judge Buffington resigned, leaving a vacancy on the bench. The 
governor selected Mr. Logan for the position. He was at that time thirty-cne 
years of age, and was perhaps the youngest judge on the common pleas bench, 
and presided over the largest judicial district, both in population and area, 
in the state. The following year he was unanimously nominated by his party 
for the full term of ten years. The Democratic candidate was Hon. Silas AI. 
Clark, a resident of Indiana county, who subsequently became one of the jus- 
tices of the supreme court of the state. Judge Clark was very popular and 
widely known in the district, but Judge Logan was elected by the usual ma- 
jority. His judicial career was eminently successful. When he came upon the 
bench a lawless class had for some time infested the coal regions of Armstrong 
county, and was growing dominant. By vigorous and fearless administration 
of the criminal law Judge Logan restored authority, and brought the county 
back to cjuiet and good order. 

In 1875 occurred what were known as the Italian riots in \\'estmoreland 
county. A large number of persons, some of them prominent in the county, 
were concerned in fomenting disturbance, which resulted in the daylight 
slaughter of four Italian miners. The judge did not halt or wait for others 
to move in the enforcement of the law. He called the grand jury together and 
submitted the facts to them. A number of indictments were immediately 
found. The moral effect of this energetic course was long felt in the county. 

He served on the bench until 1879, when he resigned to accept the position 
with the Pennsylvania Railroad company, as their assistant general solicitor, 
and was shortly afterwards promoted to the office of general solicitor. 

During his service on the bench Judge Logan won an enviable reputation 
as a judge. Prompt and vigorous in the dispatch of business, the work of the 
court was pressed forward and the interest of the people promoted. He was 
courteous but firm, severe but dignified, and enjoyed the fullest confidence of 
the bar, and the respect and esteem of the public. His judicial opinions, when 
orally delivered, were clear, concise and to the point, and when written, force- 
ful, lucid and admirable in every respect. Upon his retirement the people were 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 7,17 

unanimous in expressions of regret at the loss of his valuable services on the 
bench. 

An adequate sketch of his career as a railroad lawyer is not possible 
without considering with more detail than is here practicable the functions of 
the legal department of a great and growing railroad corporation. Railroad 
and corporation law demands for its successful prosecution, from the practical 
side to-day, the same high order of talent in the lawyer that the law of real 
property demanded of its successful practitioners during its formative period, 
and which constitutional law as a branch of jurisprudence has required in all 
times. And. indeed, railroad law has so much to do with constitutional law 
that, to be a great railroad lawyer, a man must also be a great constitutional 
lawyer. 

Judge Logan's connection with the litigation of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
Company and its more than one hundred associated corporations has been in- 
timate and direct, and much of the success with which it has met has been also 
his success. In the famous suit which Attorney General Cassidy brought 
against the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and other lines a few years ago, 
known as the South Penn Equity Proceedings, he took a prominent part. The 
cases of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company vs. Lippincott, and the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad Company vs. Marchant, known as the Filbert Street Extension 
cases, were argued by counsel and decided by the court upon grounds which 
he suggested. Those cases which were decided in 1887 and 1888, and are al- 
ready leading cases in the law, established that the property of a railroad cor- 
poration is governed by the same rules as to liabilities in its user as that of in- 
dividuals. It declared that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was not liable 
for the depreciation of real estate values on the north side of Filbert street in- 
cidentally caused by the lawful operation of its trains on its own property on 
the south side. The declaration of this principle, it is' needless to say, was 
worth a great deal to corporations throughout the state. At least fifty suits 
for damages against the Pennsylvania Railroad Company fell with the de- 
cisions in which it was announced. 

Since the formation of the Inter-State Commerce Commission, Judge Logan 
largely rei)resented the corporation in the contested cases before the commis- 
sion, as well as in many conferences with the commission. In the line of 
official duty he has been brought in contact with the most distinguished law- 
yers from all sections of the country, and his reputation as a lawyer has not 
suffered by the contact. Judge Logan's duties required general supervision of 
all the litigation of the company and the lines it leased or controlled east of 
Pittsburgh, and immediate advice and conference with the chief executive and 
department officers in connection with the important administrative conduct of 
corporate affairs. He had. therefore, use for all the legal attainments of his 
lifetime, as well as the habits of industry which he early acquired. 

He was married April 13, 1871, to a daughter of Hon. A. G. Marchand. 
who is written of elsewhere in these pages. With his wife and children he 



338 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

lived comfortably at Bala, on the Schuylkill valley branch of the Pennsylvania 
railroad, just beyond the limits of Fairmount Park. 

In 1888 the faculty of ^^'ashington and Jeiiferson College, at Washington, 
Pennsylvania, one of the most noted and conservative educational institutions 
of the country, conferred on him the honorary degree of doctor of laws. He 
died October 29, 1902. 

Immediately upon the resignation of Judge Logan, in 1879, Governo.r Henry 
M. Hoyt appointed Hon. James A. Hunter to the Westmoreland countv bench, 
his commission being dated July 12, 1879. At that time Westmoreland county 
was strongly Democratic, and even Judge Hunter's most ardent friends scarcely 
entertained any hope of his election. He, however, accepted the commission 
and assumed the duties of the office at once. Later on in the year he was 
nominated by the Republican party as their candidate for judge, against Arch- 
ibald A. Stewart, who had been previously nominated by the Democrats. The 
election came on and proved to be a very bitter one. Many old line Democrats 
were dissatisfied with the nomination of Mr. Stewart. The Republicans took 
advantage of this disaiTection in the Democratic party, with the result that in 
the November election Judge Hunter was victorious, having more than a 
thousand majority over Mr. Stewart, and therefore filled the office by virtue 
of his appointment and his election from July 12, 1879, to January i, 1890. 

Judge Hunter was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, April 18, 1835, 
his father having been a native of Londonderry, Ireland. He received a com- 
mon school education, was afterwards a school teacher, read law with James 
Todd, of the Westmoreland bar, who had been formerly a Philadelphia lawyer 
and attorney general of the commonwealth under Governor Rittner. Judge 
Hunter was admitted to the bar in 1858 and practiced law almost continuously 
until he went on the bench. He was register in bankruptcy under the L'nited 
States bankrupt law in 1S67, which position he resigned to become a member 
of the legislature for the session of 1869. Very early after his admission to the 
bar he made for himself a reputation as a public speaker second to no one at 
the bar, and he was always greatly sought for to address all kinds of meetings, 
particularly Republican meetings, where, as a stump speaker, he had few 
equals. 

After Judge Hunter's retirement from the bench he resumed the practice 
of the law. He was never a man of strong constitution, and in 1893 was taken 
sick with pneumonia, and died June 13, after a few days' illness, and was buried 
at Greensburg. 

Judge Hunter's term of office finished up exactly one hundred years of 
courts with judges learned in the law, as was provided for in the constitution 
of 1790. He was the ninth judge in a century, though Judges Roberts and 
Knox served short terms, and Burrell and Logan both resigned. 

A desultory glance at the advancements made in the administration of jus- 
tice will show the most casual observer that thev have done their work faith- 



HISTORY OF JVESTMORELAND COUNTY. 339 

fully and well. A century has wrought great changes in the county. As has 
been seen, the early judges presided over a number of counties, never less than 
three. During these years the judges journeyed on horseback from one county 
to another, and the more prominent lawyers rode the circuit with them. It was 
jiot infrequent in those days that litigants stood at the court house steps and 
employed their attorneys perhaps but a few minutes before their cause was 
called for trial. 

For long years in Greensburg the sheriff of the county, after the ancient 
English custom, collected a body of mounted men who rode out to meet the 
coming judge and escort him into the village. This custom was kept up until 
the early fifties, passing away with railroad building, after which the judges 
no longer arrived on horseback. 

By the constitution of 1790 the judges were appointed for life. This pro- 
vision obtained until 1838. when a new constitution changed the term only, 
making it for ten years instead of for life. In 1850 the constitution was 
amended so as to make the office an elective one, the term remaining the same. 
This amendment was ingrafted in the constitution of 1873 ^"d still prevails. 

Since 1874 Westmoreland county has been a separate judicial district, gain- 
ing this by virtue of the new constitution adopted in 1873. Since then we have 
bad no associate judges on the bench. 

EMINENT LAWYERS OF THE PAST. 

There is but one name, leading all others, with which to head this list, and 
that is John B. Alexander. He was born in Carlisle, Cumberland county, Penn- 
sylvania, and was admitted to the Westmoreland bar in December, 1804. After 
that, during his long lifetime, he was always one of its most prominent and 
active members, and in his later years there is little doubt but that he stood at 
the very head of the profession in Western Pennsylvania. 

Mr. Alexander was highly educated, having received a thorough collegiate 
education in the early days of the last century, when classical attainments were 
regarded at their true value and had not been proscribed by the modern, so- 
called educaticinal reformers. He was, moreover, a lifelong student, confining 
liimself to the law, the Greek and Latin languages and to Shakespeare, to the 
exclusion of nearly everything else. With the writings of the great dramatist 
be was so familiar that he quoted them almost unconsciously when addressing 
a court or a jury. From this source he undoubtedly gathered much of his re- 
nowned strength as an advocate. 

On only two occasions did he allow his mind to be drawn from his chosen 
profession. The first was in the war of 1812, during which he collected a com- 
pany of volunteers, was elected its captain and served with credit under Gen. 
eral \\'illiam Henry Harrison. The company was named the "Greensburg 
Rifles."' \\'hen his company entered the service a battalion was formed by 
-uniting it with several other companies, and Alexander was elected major. 



340 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



Thus he received the niiUtary title b_v which he was known during the rest of 
his Hfe. This was, of course, in his younger days, when he had not yet risen to 
the highest place in his profession. He had been brought up in the town of 
Carlisle, where the United States had long maintained a barracks, and though 
evincing no special military predilections, he always commanded his company 
in a rich and gaudy uniform, which was made none the less showy by his 
majestic person. He expended large sums of money from his own purse on 
equipments and horses. 

His military services were largely in the Northwestern territory. His bat- 
talion captured a six-pound cannon of great weight, made, as its inscription 
indicates, by the Spaniards in the eighteenth century. At the close of the war 
Major Alexander brought this prize to Greensburg, and it is yet a valued pos- 
session of his nephew. General Richard Couher. In 1824 the major and his 
companv turned out to do honors to Lafayette on the occasion of the patriotic 
Frenchman's visit to Westmoreland county. 

It is said that his fondness for military display, acquired in his youth, be- 
came a weakness in his old age, and that as he grew older he was easily flat- 
tered on that point. His military reputation, however, had a substantial foun- 
dation. Some years after the war, when Sanford was acting in Pittsburgh in 
the role of "Jim Crow," it was discovered by the actor that Alexander was in 
the audience, he being there in attendance upon the supreme court. The ready 
actor drew the attention of the audience to Alexander by improvising the fol- 
lowing : 

"Old General Harrison, 

He was a big commander; 
And the next big hero there 
Was Major Alexander." 

Of course a compliment of this kind was received with uproarious applause 
by the Pittsburgh people, and the major was highly gratified. 

At one time he fought a duel with a man named Mason, of Uniontown, 
Fayette county, but neither combatant was wounded. Both desired a second 
fire, but the seconds interfered and prevented it. 

The second occasion which drew him from the practice of the law was his 
election to the general assembly. In 1834 this county was represented in the 
general assembly by James Findla}-, who was appointed secretary of the com- 
monwealth by Governor Wolf. Findlay himself w-as a very brilliant man, and 
the people, with one accord, wishing to send a man to fill his place who would 
not discredit his high standing, selected Alexander. He was not a successful 
representative. As may be supposed, so eminent a lawyer as he was entirely 
out of his element when in the state legislature. There he had to measure swords 
with men in small matters who were much beneath him. His great powers 
were not called into requisition, and before the session was over he left the 
legislature in disgust, mounted his horse, "Somerset," which he had ridden 
from Westmoreland county to Harrisburg, and came home. He characterized 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 341 

the legislature in language more emphatic than elegant. After that he took no 
part whatever in politics until 1840, when his "Old Commander" was a can- 
didate for the presidency. He presided that year at a Harrison meeting in 
Greensbnrg, but wa^ infirm with age, and died but a short time after Har- 
rison's election. Alexander was always an uncompromising old line Whig 
m politics. 

It is doubtless fair to say that prior to 1850 he had no equal at the West- 
moreland bar. Richard Coulter, it is true, though a younger man, was su- 
perior in eloquence to Alexander ; and in his exhaustive reading and in his 
general knowledge, Alexander W. Foster may have been quite his equal, but 
in the give and take of the trials at the bar, in the preparation of papers and in 
all that goes to make a truly great lawyer, Alexander had at all events no su- 
perior. Once when complimented upon his legal knowledge as having come 
naturally to him, he replied: "Oh, no; I owe it all to hard study; I arise early 
ill the morning and study while others are in bed ;" a habit which he retained 
fven in his old age. There is a tradition of him that he read Blackstone once 
a year. At one time he was counsel in a very heavy land title case which was 
to be tried in the United States supreme court, and against him was employed 
the celebrated William Wirt, of Baltimore. In his argument before this high 
court the \\'estniore!and lawyer showed such knowledge of the law and such 
general ability that he astonished the bar and the court. At the conclusion of 
his argument he was complimented by Wirt, and by Daniel Webster, also, who 
was present, and who expressed in his grandest way his admiration of the 
manner in which Alexander had handled the case and of his exposition of the 
law. This must not appear remarkable, for perhaps in the abstruse land law 
of Pennsylvania Alexander was superior to either Wirt or Webster. 

A few years ago an old gentleman, now dead, told the writer that when a 
boy in the early "thirties" he saw Major Alexander take a drink in the present 
Fisher house, which those with him said was to stimulate him for an address 
he was to deliver that afternoon in a very important trial. Holding up the 
glass, showing the liquid scarcely concealed by his hand, he said, "Four fin- 
gers, gentlemen, and for every finger the old judge gets an hour this afternoon." 
Shortly before that, when Webster replied to Hayne, as he was passing down 
the senate chamber, Clayton said to him: "Are you loaded, Mr. Webster?" 
Glancing angrily at Vice-President Calhoun and holding up his hand, he said, 
"Four fingers." It was a pioneer hunter's expression, meaning a heavy charge 
of powder, a load for big game. 

John R. Alexander was a son of John Alexander, who was of Scotch-Irish 
extraction and who was born in Cumberland county. His wife was a j\Iiss 
Smith, also of Cumberland county. They had no children. Two of his sis- 
ters, however, were married in Westmoreland county, the one to Hon. Joseph 
H. Kuhns, the other to Eli Coulter, the father of General Richard Coulter. 

In personal appearance ^Ir. Alexander was about five feet ten inches tall 
and weighed about two hundred and forty pounds. His residence in Greens- 



342 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



burg was a large brick liouse on ]\[ain street, diagonally across the street from 
the Methodist church, where the Zimmerman house now stands. Indeed, the 
Zimmerman house is but an enlargement of his old residence, the main front 
and side walls of the present structure being those of Alexander's home. In 
the latter years of his life he lived south of Greensburg on a farm, where he 
greatly amused himself by agriculture and horticulture and by raising superior 
breeds of cattle and poultry. The engraving of IMajor Alexander given in 
these pages is from an oil painting made about the close of the war of 1812, 
and now in possession of General Coulter. 

Alexander W. Foster was the soji of William Foster, of Chester county, 
and was born in 1771. He was admitted to the Philadelphia bar, having read 
law with Edward Bird, Esq., in 1793. In 1796 his family moved from Chester 
county to Meadville, Crawford county. Here he practiced law for a number 
of years and achieved an enviable reputation in his profession. So wide was 
his fame that his practice frequently took him to most of the counties between 
Pittsburgh and Erie. In 1812 he was retained in a Westmoreland case, and 
he so favorably impressed some of his clients and was so favorably impressed 
with the town and the community that he removed to Greensburg, thereafter 
becoming a citizen of Westmoreland county and a member of the Westmore- 
land bar. He very rapidly attained a large practice and was undoubtedly one 
of the best lawyers in the profession. The trio, Alexander, Foster and Coul- 
ter, had no superiors in Western Pennsylvania. He did not possess the im- 
passioned and florid eloquence of Richard Coulter, nor the great legal erudi- 
tion of Alexander, but his professional attainments were said to have been 
more extensive than those of the former, and as a trial lawyer, particularly in 
the cross-examination of witnesses, he had more ability than the latter. Al- 
though inferior to Alexander in an argument before the court, he was superior 
to him before a jury, where he was nearly, if not quite, equal to Coulter. 

Foster had a kind, genial .disposition and his office was for many years 
said to be the best place in Greensburg to read law. He often conferred with 
his students, put questions to them, argued with them, examined them and 
held in his office a sort of "moot" court. Several of his students who arose to 
distinction in the law in after years attributed a great part of their success to 
him, and one at least has said that he learned more law orally from Foster than 
he learned by reading his books. Of course he excelled in any branch of the 
profession, but in the cross-examination of witnesses he was probably seen at 
his best. It is said that he could, better than any member of the bar of his 
day, expose the falsehood or fraud of an evily disposed witness, and that he 
could do this in a mild, genteel way which nevertheless forced attention or 
moved to laughter. His kindly nature precluded the possibility of his being 
genuinely sarcastic, yet when necessary he could be extremely severe. He 
excelled also in his command of language and in the marshalling of his ideas. 
He could most suitably express his thoughts without halting, without error, 
and apparently without effort. ]\Iost of his arguments were copiously illus- 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



343 



trated with amusing anecdotes, some of which he seemed, hke Lincohi, to have 
invented for the occasion. Many of these stories are fresh and interesting 
when read or repeated even to-day. Socially he was always a leader, being- 
very fond of company, and he moreover had great conversational powers. 

yir. Foster. like Alexander, delighted in agriculture. He wrote articles on 
the practical application of chemistry to farming and delivered many orations 
at public gatherings and at county fairs in Greensburg. a practice that was 
then in vogue throughout all the counties of the state. 

In 1820 and 1822 he was the Federalist candidate for Congress in the dis- 
trict which was then composed of Westmoreland, Indiana, Armstrong and 
Jefferson counties, but he was defeated in each case because he was on the un- 
popular side, though in 1820. in the strong Democratic county of Westmore- 
land, he obtained a small majority. After the breaking up of the Federalist 
party he became an Anti-iMason, and when that political party collapsed he be- 
came a Whig, and so remained until his death. 

In person he was of medium size and weight, rather inclined to leanness 
than to corpulency, was of the nervo-bilious temperament and his complexion 
sallow, with a tendency to pallor. He was greatly addicted to smoking, a cigar 
being his constant companion, and for his own use he had hot houses built and 
grew Spanish tobacco. He was the uncle of Henry D. Foster, who will be 
spoken of hereafter and who later arose to great eminence at this bar. 

James Findlay was born in 1801. in Franklin county. He was educated at 
Princeton College and read law in Harrisburg with Francis R. Shimk, his 
father having in the meantime removed from Franklin county to Dauphin 
county. For the first year or two after being admitted to the bar he practiced 
in York county, but without great success, and in 1824 removed to Greensburg 
and was admitted to the bar August 23 of that year. This was a good loca- 
tion for him. The legal business of Westmoreland county in that day was 
abundant. Law^yers from Pittsburgh and other counties frequently attended 
the courts in Westmoreland county. His natural talents, fine education and 
thorough training in the law soon placed him at the head of his profession. 
\ ery soon after he came to Westmoreland county he was made prosecuting 
attorney and was filling that office when James Evans was tried for murder in 
1830. This murder case is perhaps, all things being considered, the most noted 
one ever tried in Westmoreland county. Findlay was a Democrat. General 
Jackson was president of the United States, and Wolf, a Democrat, was gov- 
ernor of Pennsylvania. Thus his party was in power both in the state and 
nation, and perhaps the political side of life looked more rosy to him than the 
more rugged life of a practicing lawyer. At all events he entered politics and 
in 183 1. 1832 and 1833 he was elected to the legislature. In the latter year 
Samuel McLean, who was secretary of the commonwealth, was elected to the 
United States Senate. Such was the reputation of James Findlay, though only 
thirty-two years old, that Governor Wolf at once tendered him the place of 
secretary of the commonwealth. This place he filled for a number of years, 



344 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

and in 1836 he removed to Pittsburgh, where he adiieved a still greater emi- 
nence in his profession. 

The story of the life and professional services of John F. Beaver is well 
told in an article which appeared about the time of his death, which was writ- 
ten by a fellow member of this bar, now dead, and we depend on it largely con- 
cerning this notable man. He died in Newton Falls, Ohio, on June 12, 1877. 
Sixty-two years have passed away since he left Greensburg, yet his name and 
fame are still fresh in the recollection of the older people of the county. His 
genial character and his exuberant flow of animal spirits rendered him conspic- 
uous in every company, so. much so, indeed, that it was difficult to forget him. 

He was born near Stoystown, in Somerset county, his maternal grandfather, 
Daniel M. Stoy, having given his name to the village. His father, Henry 
Beaver, removed some years afterwards to Grapeville, and here John F. Beaver 
continued to live until 1844, when he removed to Ohio. His physical organiza- 
tion was remarkable, and he excelled in all athletic sports which required 
strength and precision of muscular action. He was a large heavy man. With 
a rifle he was unerring and, like Xatty Bumpo, nothing but the center — "pierc- 
ing the bull's eye" — would satisfy him. 

Hearing upon one occasion of a match to. shoot for a bear in a remote part 
of the county, he dropped in and was solicited to take a stake to make up the 
match, which he' could not decline. No one, of course, knew Beaver, who was 
apparently without a gun, but a boy was standing near with a ponderous, rather 
rusty looking rifle, and Beaver suggested that he might borrow this from the 
bo}^ The affair then commenced and when Beaver's turn came some one 
kindly volunteered to show him how to hold his weapon and so on. He was 
very unsteady, his rifle shaking, but somehow the nail was driven. This was 
rare sport and the luck of the lawyer was marvelous. But each round was fol- 
lowed by the same result. Finally he won the bear and then a chain was seen 
hanging from the pocket of the boy who had brought the rusty gun. This was 
Beaver's son, who had come prepared to take the bear home. To. finish up the 
affair he then disclosed his identity and gave a good dinner to the whole party, 
and, of course, made them ever afterwards his friends. 

At about the age of twenty-one he cut himself with an ax and was confined 
to bed for some weeks. At that time he was illiterate, barely able to read, but 
seeing a copy of Smith's Laws, which had belonged to his Grandfather Story 
when a justice of the peace in Somerset county, he determined to read them, 
dry as they were. This he did, and with so much zeal and vigor that by the 
time his wound was healed he was regarded as quite a lawyer in the com- 
munity, .^t all events this reading gave him a taste for the law, and with this 
purpose in view he placed himself under the direction of Alexander W. Foster, 
Esq., and read law with him. Foster thought he saw in this rugged young 
Hercules something better than muscle, and he encouraged him to persevere. 

He read law for five years, boarding all the time in Grapeville, four miles 
from Greensburg. walking in and out every day. He was admitted to the bar 



HISTORY or ]l'ESTMOREL.L\D COUXTV. 345 

in February, 1833, and soon gained a large practice. He was an Anti-JMason 
in politics and afterwards a Whig, and then belonged to the Free-Soil party. 
He ran for congress in 1840 as a Whig and was defeated by Hon. A. G. 
Marchand, who will be mentioned hereafter. The well-known late editor of 
the Argus. John M. Laird, Esq., was, during this campaign, chairman of the 
Democratic county committee. On the day of a large convention in Greensburg 
he and Beaver stopped at the same hotel. Mr. Lafrd was on a committee to 
frame resolutions against the election of Beaver. 

Mr. Laird had a very large head, so had Beaver : and when Mr. Laird went 
to dinner he mistook his hat and put his resolutions in Beaver's hat. Imme- 
diately after dinner Beaver discovered the mistake and taking his hat with Mr. 
Laird's resolutions went over to the courthouse and presented them in open 
•court. These resolutions denounced him (Beaver) as a scamp and unworthy 
■of any respectable citizen's support. Judge White was on the bench. No one 
relished a joke more than he, but he gravely decided that he had no jurisdic- 
tion in the matter. The resolutions were returned to Mr. Laird. Such was 
the good humor and fun of the old men of the bar more than sixty years ago. 

Beaver, however, had a great deal of professional business, not only in 
this, but in Allegheny county. In 1842 he sold his office and furniture to 
Edgar Cowan, then a young member of the bar. His success at the bar in the 
supreme court was very marked, he being a great favorite with the judges 
on account of his fair and candid bearing toward them, as well as because 
•of his ability and native wit. 

In Ohio he was elected to the state senate as soon as he had resided there 
long enough to be qualified, and attracted attention and consideration by his 
immense size, his dress and his singular intellectual ability. The senate was a 
tie without him and he was looked for with great anxiety when that body met. 
He drove all the way from Mahoning countv to Columbus, as there were no 
railroads in those days. His wagon broke down when he was twelve miles 
distant from the state capital. He completed the journey on foot and reached 
the senate just as they were about to take an important vote. He was a 
stranger, of immense build, covered with mud, and as he strode into the cham- 
her he was greeted with cheers, and "his boots" became famous in song and 
story for }'ears afterwards. He was a leader in politics for some time, and at 
one time came within one or two votes of being nominated for governor of 
Ohio. All his life he was a student, and enlarged year by year the boundaries 
of his knowledge in every direction. His memory was astonishing, extending 
even to tlie minutest details. He was without vanity or pride or conceit, and 
if his clothes had been indestructible he would have worn the same suit all his 
life. Mr. Cowan, once having in various ways got his measure, procured for 
him a new suit of fashionable clothes, including a pair of polished boots and a 
■■stove])ipe" hat. There was some coaxing necessary to get him to don the rig, 
liut once on and in the street, the town turned out and gave him an ovation. 



346 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

He was a unique character, a great lawyer and a thoroughly representative 
man of his day. 

Justice Richard Coulter was in all probability the most eloquent member 
of the Westmoreland county bar in the nineteenth century. He was the son of 
Eli and Priscilla (Small) Coulter, and was of Scotch-Irish descent. He was 
born in Westmoreland county, in what is now Versailles township, Allegheny 
county, Pennsylvania, in Alarch, 1788. In 1793 his family moved to Greens- 
burg. He was educated at Jefiferson College, but did not remain for gradua- 
tion. He read lav/ in the office of his brother-in-law, John Lyon, of Union- 
town, Fayette county, and was admitted to practice in that county November 
19, 1810. On February 18, 181 1, on motion of John B. Alexander, he was 
admitted to the Westmoreland county bar. Soon after his admission he 
entered the field of politics, induced to do so doubtless by his friends, because 
of his natural talent as a public speaker. It was the age of oratory both in 
legislative halls and at the bar, and a young man of forceful powers of public 
speech was naturally pushed out into political life. 

He began at the bottom, being elected to the Pennsylvania legislature in 
1816 and was returned in 1817, 1818, 1819 and 1820. He was nominated in 
1826 as an independent candidate for congress against James Clark, the Dem- 
ocratic nominee, and was elected. In 1828 he was re-elected without opposi- 
tion, and was also elected in 1830 and 1832, latterly as the regular Democratic 
nominee, the parties having been reorganized since he first entered congres- 
sional life. He went to congress as the leader of his party in his county, 
and because of tiis forensic talents and pronounced ability, very soon gained 
an enviable standing in that body. The great question in congress then was 
the re-charter of the United States Bank. Andrew Jackson was president and 
brought all the power of his administration to bear to defeat its re-charter. 
Coulter had the courage to oppose the president and to support the United 
States Bank. This position lost him many friends in his district who were 
stanch adherents of "Old Hickory." In 1834, therefore, John Klingensmith, 
a plain man of German descent, was nominated for congress. He was re- 
garded as a strong man in his district. Many of the voters were of German 
extraction, and a man of their dialect and nationality, particularly if they 
imagined him to, in some degree, resemble their idea of President Jackson, 
as was the case with Klingensmith, would receive almost their solid vote. 
Coulter was the opposing candidate, and it was hoped that by his eloquence 
and personal popularity he could overcome this united opposition. But, though 
he made a gallant fight, he was defeated by Klingensmith. A leading news- 
paper at this time lamented his defeat in the following language : 

"Poor Pennsylvania! She is the Boeotia of the Union; where else could such 
a man as Richard Coulter have been defeated by such an unknown and illiterate 
person as his antagonist?" 





^ ^^kc^ 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUXTV. 347 

At the close of his last term in congress, in 1835. he resumed the practice 
of the law in Greensburg, which had been somewhat neglected during the years- 
he was in political life. He was then forty-seven years old, and for eleven 
years was engaged exclusively in his profession. The bar was not, by any 
means, a weak one in his day. John B. Alexander, the elder Foster and Beaver 
were men who could give any bar a high standing. Coulter easily took rank 
with these men. Alexander perhaps excelled him in his knowledge of the law, 
and Foster was doubtless greater than he in the management of a case, but 
in his address before a jury he easily surpassed either of them. 

Mr. Cowan was then a young man, but in his latter years he said he re- 
garded Coulter as the most eloquent and impressive jury lawyer who ever 
practiced at the Westmoreland bar. His practice during these years was one 
of the largest, if not the largest, at the bar, and if the reader imagines that he- 
was an advocate alone he is sadly in error. He was the best educated man 
of his day at the bar, and in his knowledge of the law he was excelled only 
by the elder Foster and Alexander, and this is not by any means a discredit 
to Coulter. 

In 1846 a vacancy occurred on the supreme bench of the state, occasioned 
by the death of Justice John Kennedy. The governor was urged by a petition 
to appoint Richard Coulter to the position, the Westmoreland bar signing the 
petition without regard to party. He was accordingly appointed justice of the 
supreme court of Pennsylvania by Governor Francis R. Shunk, and took his 
seat September i6th of that year. By virtue of this appointment, he filled the 
office until the organic law was so changed in 1850 that all positions on the 
bench were vacated and thereafter were to be filled by popular election. The 
first election under the new law was in the fall of 185 1. The Democratic 
nominees were John Bannister Gibson, Jeremiah S. Black, Ellis Lewis, Walter 
H. Lowrie and James Campbell. Richard Coulter and four others were nomi- 
nated by the Whigs. In the Democratic convention in 1851 Coulter received 
support and the nomination by the Whig party was tendered him without 
solicitation. At the fall election all of the Whig candidates were defeated 
except Coulter, he defeating James Campbell by several thousand votes. 
Campbell shortly afterwards became attorney general of Pennsylvania, and 
later postmaster general under Franklin Pierce. Under a constitutional pro- 
vision lots were drawn for length of term. Justice Black drew the short term 
of three years, and thereby became chief justice of Pennsylvania. Lewis drew 
the six. Gibson the nine, Lowrie the twelve and Coulter the fifteen year term. 

Justice Coulter very early distinguished himself on the bench by an elab- 
orate opinion in the case of Hummell vs Brown (6th Bar. p. 86). in which he, 
with peculiar erudition, outlined the legislative power of the state in the coer- 
cion and control of corporations. When this opinion was delivered, in 1847, 
it was regarded by lawyers as one of the ablest and most eloquent opinions- 
ever delivered from the supreme bench. 



_348 HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 

He did not live long to fill the office to which he had been chosen, but died 
in Greensburg April 20, 1852, his death being announced from the supreme 
bench on JMay 11 following. 

Justice Coulter was the only member of the Westmoreland bar who ever 
reached the supreme bench. As a lawyer he took high rank on the bench, and 
his decisions are yet valued and quoted by the profession. No man could take 
first place on a bench that was adorned by John Bannister Gibson, but Coulter 
was undoubtedly entitled to rank high after Gibson, and in one respect, viz. : 
as a scholar outside of the law, he was superior to Gibson or any other man 
on the bench. 

His addresses in congress and elsewhere were not only elociuent, but charm- 
ing in literary style and grace. His poetic temperament lent a richness and 
beauty to his speech, while his logic and marshaling of facts made his argu- 
ments almost irresistible. Though over fifty years have passed away since his 
death, his fame as an orator still lives. 

He was never married, but lived most of his life with his widowed mother 
and a maiden sister. 

We insert the inscription he wrote about 1826, as an epitaph for his 
mother's tombstone, which loses nothing by being compared with Lord 
Macauley's well-known tribute to his mother : 

"The tears which sorrow sheds, the flowers that affection plants, and the monument 
gratitude rears over the grave of a beloved parent soon pass away, but the deep memory 
of maternal kindness, piety and virtue, survives over death and time, and will last while 
the soul itself endures." 

The Drum family was a very noted one in this county in the last century. 
Augustus Drum was a grandson of Simon and a son of Simon Drum, Jr., 
the latter being well remembered in the early history of Greensburg as its 
old-time postmaster, a position from which he was retired with the election of 
W^illiam Henry Harrison in 1 840, after almost a lifetime of service. Among 
other prominent men, he was on the funeral committee of Gen. Arthur St. 
Clair in 1818. 

Three of his sons became prominent. Simon H. Drum was a graduate 
from West Point in the class of 1830 and was killed at Garita De Belen, in the 
Mexican war, September 13, 1847. Richard Coulter Drum, his youngest son, 
was also in the JNIexican war, and afterwards, by gradual promotions, reached 
. the position of adjutant general of the United States army. He was the only 
man in our country's history who filled that position who had not been edu- 
cated at West Point. 

Augustus Drum was the sixth son, born in Greensburg November 26, 
181 5, and was educated at Jefferson College. He read law with Alexander W. 
Foster and was admitted to the bar in May, 1836. He was a man of medium 
height and build, with brown hair and blue eyes. Not long after his admission 




^hjii 



^ y I Jo-^ c^ Ca^ 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 349, 

to the bar he was married to Isabel, a daughter of Daniel Stannard, of Indiana, 
Pennsylvania, and for many years, after the prevalent custom of that day, 
practiced in both Indiana and Westmoreland counties. - In Indiana he was a 
politician and leader of the Democratic party, but in Greensburg was mostly 
renowned as a lawyer and excelled in his addresses before a jury. He was the 
same age as Cowan and Burrell, and in his profession advanced so rapidly that 
at the age of forty he easily ranked with the first lawyers of the bar. 

Late in the forties he represented his district in the state senate of Penn- 
sylvania. In 1852 he was the candidate of the Democratic party for congress 
and was elected after a spirited contest over a number of opponents. A song 
was improvised and sung widely by his friends, with a stanza for each oppo- 
nent. The last of each division was : 

"He'll be left at home because he can't beat a Drum." 

Mr. Drum made himself heard in congress, but unfortunately he introduced' 
an amendment relative to the questions involved in the Wilmot Proviso, and^ 
this made him many enemies among the rapidly increasing Abolition element 
of his district. In 1854 he was a candidate for re-election, but the Know-Noth- 
ing party had already gained great strength, and when they united with the 
Whigs they accomplished his defeat. John Covode was elected over him and 
commenced his long and notable career in congress. 

At the close of his term in congress, in 1855, he returned to Greensburg 
and devoted himself exclusively to the practice of the law. In 1857 he built 
a residence on South j\Iain street, now owned by the heirs of James C. Clark, 
but he had scarcely completed it until he was taken ill and died in 1858, in 
the forty-third year of his age. 

John Young Barclay, a riephew and namesake of Judge John Young, was 
born in Bedford county on November 29, 1798. About 18 17 he came to 
Greensburg to read law with his uncle, and was admitted to the bar in the 
November term, 1819. He was a man of large frame, being about six feet 
high, strongly built and of a fair complexion. He devoted himself entirely to 
the practice of nis profession. He rode from one county to another in com- 
pany with the judge and the more prominent lawyers, after the fashion of 
the olden time, and soon acquired a good practice in each county of the Tenth 
judicial district. He was a member of the constitutional convention which 
framed the Pennsylvania constitution of 1838, but further than this he never 
sought or obtained office. He was a Mason in Anti-Masonic times, a Democrat 
and a stanch supporter of Andrew Jackson ; yet, notwithstanding this, he 
supported Thaddeus Stevens and Governor George Wolf in their heroic 
efforts to establish the common-school system of Pennsylvania, a measure with 
which their names must ever be closely connected. For this Mr. Barclav was 
violently opposed, the opposition even threatening to mob him, but nothing 
daunted, he still advocated the cause of the common schools and lived to see 
his ideas triumph. 



350 



HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY. 



He was married to Isabella, a daughter of Alexander Johnston, of "Kings- 
ton House," a sister of Governor William F. Johnston. All his life he was 
fond of athletic sports, outdoor life and horseback riding, and this fondness 
perhaps led him to his early death. In 1841, when he was but forty-three 
years of age, he v.fas thrown from a horse and received an injury from which 
he died the day following, February 18. He left a large family, one of his 
daughters, Elizabeth, being married to Gen. James Keenan ; his son, Thomas 
J,, became eminent in the financial circles of the county. 

Thomas Johnston Barclay was the eldest son of John Y. Barclay. He was 
much more widely known in his latter years as a financier than as a member of 
the bar, though be.'Dre he became a banker he won his spurs in the legal profes- 
sion. He was born in Greensburg on January 23, 1826, and was educated at 
Jefferson College. He read law with his uncle, Governor William F. John- 
ston, and with Henry D. Foster. He was admitted to the bar in August, 
1844, in his nineteenth year, and for eight years devoted himself exclusively 
to the practice of the law, barring the time spent in the Mexican war. In 
November following his admission he was appointed district attorney by Gov- 
ernor David R. Porter and held this position for some years. He, like his 
iather, was a man of six feet three inches high, with a rugged constitution. 

When the war with Mexico came he enlisted as second sergeant under 
Captain, afterwards Colonel, John W. Johnston, late of "Kingston House," 
in the Second Pennsylvania regiment, and was promoted to the first lieutenancy' 
December 31, 1847. He participated in the battles of Molino del Rev, Chapul- 
tepec, Vera Cruz, the storming of