The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 Part 7

[24] Meginness, _Otzinachson_ (Philadelphia, 1857), p. 172.

[25] The cases referred to here are: _Hughes_ vs. _Dougherty_, _Huff_ vs. _Satcha_, and _Grier_ vs. _Tharpe_. They were located in the Appearance Dockets of Lycoming and Northumberland counties in the respective prothonotaries' offices. _Hughes_ vs. _Dougherty_ appears in the Northumberland County Docket for November, 1783, to August, 1786, in the February term of the Court of Common Pleas, file 42. Both the Huff and Grier cases were found in the Lycoming County Docket No. 2, commencing 1797, court terms and file numbers indicated as follows: _Huff_ vs. _Satcha_, February, 1799, #2, and _Grier_ vs. _Tharpe_, May, 1800, #41. A partial deposition by Eleanor Coldren, _Now and Then_, XII (1959), 220-222, was also employed. Although the case appears to be _Dewitt_ vs. _Dunn_, I could not locate it in the Appearance Dockets.

Depositions taken in the Huff and Grier cases were published in Linn, "Indian Land and Its Fair-Play Settlers," pp. 422-424.

[26] Leyburn, _The Scotch-Irish_, p. 205.

[27] Jasper Yeates, _Pennsylvania Reports_, I (Philadelphia, 1817), 497-498.

[28] Smith, _Laws_, II, 195.

[29] Yeates, _Pennsylvania Reports_, I, 497-498.

[30] "Eleanor Coldren's Deposition," pp. 220-222.

[31] Linn, "Indian Land and Its Fair-Play Settlers," p. 422.

[32] _Ibid._

[33] _Ibid._

[34] _Ibid._

[35] Meginness, _Otzinachson_ (1889), p. 469.

[36] Now Linden, in Woodward Towns.h.i.+p, a few miles west of Williamsport.

[37] King refers here to the Great Runaway of 1778.

[38] Linn, "Indian Land and Its Fair-Play Settlers," p. 423-424.

[39] Meginness, _Otzinachson_ (1889), p. 470.

[40] _Ibid._, p. 471.

[41] D. S. Maynard, _Historical View of Clinton County_ (Lock Haven, 1875), pp. 207-208. Maynard has reprinted here some excerpts from John Hamilton's "Early Times on the West Branch," which was published in the Lock Haven _Republican_ in 1875. Unfortunately, recurrent floods destroyed most of the newspaper files, and copies of this series are not now available. John Hamilton was a third-generation descendant of Alexander Hamilton, one of the original Fair Play settlers.

[42] Meginness, _Otzinachson_ (1857), p. 193.

[43] _Ibid._ An alleged copy of the declaration published in _A Picture of Clinton County_ (Lock Haven, 1942), p. 38, is clearly spurious. The language of this Pennsylvania Writers' project of the W.P.A. is obviously twentieth-century, and it contains references to events which had not yet occurred.

[44] _Fithian: Journal_, p. 72.

[45] Muncy Historical Society, Muncy, Pa., Wagner Collection, Anna Jackson Hamilton to Hon. George C. Whiting, Commissioner of Pensions, Dec. 16, 1858.

[46] _Ibid._, John Hamilton to Hon. George C. Whiting, Commissioner of Pensions, May 27, 1859.

[47] The veracity of the witness is an important question here.

Meginness, in his 1857 edition, devotes a footnote, p. 168, to this remarkable woman who was in full possession of her faculties at the time. The Rev. John Grier, son-in-law of Mrs. Hamilton and brother of Supreme Court Justice Robert C. Grier, wrote to President Buchanan on Nov. 12, 1858, (Wagner Collection), stating that "Mrs. Hamilton is one of the most intelligent in our community." Buchanan then wrote an affidavit in support of Grier's statements to the Commissioner of Pensions, Nov. 27, 1858, (Wagner Collection). Aside from the declarations of Mrs. Hamilton and her son, the only other support, and this is hearsay, is found in the account of an alleged conversation between W. H. Sanderson and Robert Couvenhoven, the famed scout. W. H.

Sanderson, _Historical Reminiscences_, ed. Henry W. Shoemaker (Altoona, 1920), pp. 6-8. Here again, the fact that the reminiscences were not recorded until some seventy years after the "chats" raises serious doubts.

[48] _Pennsylvania Archives_, Fourth Series, III, 545.

[49] _Ibid._, p. 546.

[50] Linn, _History of Centre and Clinton Counties_, p. 473.

[51] _Ibid._

[52] _Ibid._

[53] _Ibid._

[54] _Ibid._ _See also_ John H. Carter, "The Committee of Safety of Northumberland County," _The Northumberland County Historical Society Proceedings and Addresses_, XVIII (1950), 44-45.

[55] _See_ map of the Fair Play territory in Chapter One.

[56] Linn, _History of Centre and Clinton Counties_, p. 469. _See also_, Carter, "The Committee of Safety," pp. 33-45, for a full account of the activities of the Committee. Carter notes that the county committee consisted of thirty-three members, three from each of the eleven towns.h.i.+ps chosen for a period of six months.

[57] _Ibid._, pp. 472-474.

CHAPTER FOUR

_The Farmers' Frontier_

The economy of the West Branch Valley was basically agrarian--a farmers'

frontier. The "new order of Americanism"[1] which arose on this frontier was in part due to the cultural background of its inhabitants, the knowledge and traditional values which they had brought with them. It was further influenced by the frontier status of the region itself--an area of virgin land in the earliest stages of development. And finally, it was affected by the physical characteristics of the territory, particularly the mountains which separated these settlers from the more established settlements. It has been said that "many of the enduring characteristics of the American creed and the American national character originated in the way of life of the colonial farmer."[2] The Fair Play territory was typical of this development.

The early pioneer, particularly if he was Scotch-Irish, generally came into the area from the c.u.mberland Valley, the "seed-plot and nursery" of the Scotch-Irish in America, the "original reservoir" of this leading frontier stock, via the Great Shamokin Path.[3] Since there were no roads, only Indian trails, the frontier traveler customarily followed the Indian paths which had been cleared along the rivers and streams.

The Great Shamokin Path followed the Susquehanna from Shamokin (now Sunbury) to the West Branch, then out along the West Branch to the Allegheny Mountains.[4] Loading his wife and smaller children on a pack horse, his scanty possessions on another horse, the prospective settler drove a cow or two into the wild frontier at the rate of about twenty miles a day.[5] This meant that a trip of approximately two days brought him from Fort Augusta to the Fair Play country.

Indian paths were the primary means of ingress and egress, although supplemented by the waterways which they paralleled. In addition to the Great Shamokin Path, there were paths up Lycoming Creek (the Sh.e.s.h.equin Path), and up Pine Creek, besides the path which followed Bald Eagle Creek down into the Juniata Valley. These trails and adjoining water routes were usually traveled on horseback or in canoes, depending upon the route to be followed. However, the rivers and streams were more often pa.s.sages of departure than courses of entry.

Established roads, that is authorized public constructions, were not to reach the West Branch region until 1775, although the Northumberland County Court ordered such construction and reported on it at the October term in 1772.[6] Appointments were made at the August session of 1775 "to view, and if they saw cause, to lay out a bridle road from the mouth of Bald Eagle Creek to the town of Sunbury."[7] It was not until ten years later that extensions of this road were authorized, carrying it into the Nittany Valley and to Bald Eagle's Nest (near Milesburg, on the Indian path from the Great Island to Ohio).[8]

Travel was usually on horseback or on foot. Canoes and flatboats, or simply rafts, were used on the rivers and creeks where available.

Wagons, however, appeared after the construction of public roads and were seen in the Great Runaway of 1778.[9]

The problem of communication between the frontier and the settled areas was a difficult one compounded by the natural geographic barriers and the fact that post and coach roads did not extend into this central Pennsylvania region. As a result the inhabitants had to depend upon occasional travelers, circuit riders, surveyors, and other Provincial authorities who visited them infrequently. Otherwise, the meetings of the Fair Play tribunal, irregular as they were, and the communications from the county Committee of Safety were about the only sources of information available. Of course, cabin-building, cornhusking, and quilting parties provided ample opportunities for the dissemination of strictly "local" news.

Newspapers were not introduced into the upper Susquehanna Valley until around the turn of the century. The _Northumberland Gazette_ was published in Sunbury in 1797 or 1798.[10] The first truly West Branch paper was not circulated until 1802, when the _Lycoming Gazette_ was first published in Williamsport.[11] On the eve of the Revolution there were only seven newspapers available in the entire Province, none of which circulated as far north as the Fair Play territory.[12] As a matter of fact, there were only thirty-seven papers printed in all thirteen colonies at the beginning of the Revolution.[13]

The Fair Play settler was an "outlaw," a squatter who came into this central Pennsylvania wilderness with his family and without the benefit of a land grant, and who literally hacked and carved out a living. The natural elements, the savage natives, and the wild life all resisted him; but he conquered them all, and the conquest gave him a feeling of accomplishment which enhanced his independent spirit.

If the story of the Great Plains frontier can be told in terms of railroads, barbed-wire fences, windmills, and six-shooters,[14] then the cruder tale of the West Branch frontier can be told in terms of the rifle, the axe, and the plow. The rifle, first and foremost as the weapon of security, was the basic means of self-preservation in a wild land where survival was a constant question.[15] The axe, which Theodore Roosevelt later described as "a servant hardly standing second even to the rifle,"[16] was the main implement of destruction and construction.