0° .i^:'„ °o ,^-^* , ^ v^. ^ A 0' .*V1 .^ . % A- -^^«^^ ^^ '0>^" - A ^. ,^ . .<^' V O N O ^ ^0' V9- <^ ^oV*^ 4 o < o OONTHIBUTIONS TO TIIR HISTORY LACKA¥AINA VALLEY BY H. HOLLISTEE, M.D. NEW YORK : W. H. TINSON, PRINTER ,^ BTEREOTYPEK, 43 & 45 OENTUK HTKEKT. r, 1^7 . UilU Entkkro Rooor.liiig to Act of Coiigrnse, in the ymir 1851, l-y II. HO LLISTER, M. P. , III flio Clerk's Ollice of llio Distiwl Court of llio Uuitcd SUitcs, for the Soutliern District of Now York. -^4"^^ Bytran.te 5 JelSOT I- 10^^"^ CONTENTS Preface, Contributions, . . . • Indian Names, .... Lackawanna Valley and River, . Ancient Course of the Susquehanna, Minerals and Mining, . Formation of Coal, Organic Remains in Coal Strata, Indian Tribes and History, . Capousc Meadow, War Tath, Indian Spring, .... Indian Relics and Fortificatioufl, An Indian Legend, Salt Spring, .... Rattlesnakes, .... Original English Charter of Lands embracing the Lackawanna Valley, .... William Pcnn's Clahn, PAGK . 7 9 10 10 12 15 11 19 21 2*7 30 31 82 40 41 45 49 51 IV CONTENTS. PAoa Purchase of tlie Indians by the Susquehanna Company, . . .52 Purchase by the Delaware Company, 53 First Settlement upon the Delaware Purchase, 54 First Settlement upon the Susquehanna Purchase, . . . .55 Pennymite Settlement, 58 Trenton Decree, 59 First Settlement in the Lackawanna Yalley, 61 Isaac Tripp, 69 Early Emigration, '76 List of Settlers, between 1Y69 and 111&, 11 James Leggett, . ,18 First Koad from Pittston to the Delaware, 80 Military Organization, 82 Religion, Temperance, and Still-Houses, 83 Mills and Forges, 91 Old Forge and Doctor Smith, 92 Settlement of Slocum Hollow (now Scranton), . . . .96 The Slocums, 100 The History of Scranton, 105 Mail Operations Forty-five Years ago, 136 "Wyoming Massacre, 188 The Signal Tree, . . .159 Settlement around Providence Borough, 161 The Griffins, 166 Blakely, 1*70 A Singular Character, .Ill Yankee Way of pulling a Tooth, 175 Dunniore, ....•••••••• 177 Thomas Smith, . . • • . • . . . . . .180 CONTENTS. V PAGE Scott, the Ninirod, . . . . 181 Early History of Drinker's Beech (Covington), 183 The French Canadian, 189 The Squire of the Shades of Death, 195 Settlement of Abington, 207 The Valley Fifty Years ago, 212 Elder John Miller, 212 General History, 226 Formation of Townships by Pennsylvania, 231 Ancient Division of the same Territory by Connecticut Authority, . 232 Elder William Bishop, 232 Proprietor's School Fund, 237 Settlement of Jefferson, 240 Chase by a Panther, 243 Carbondale, 246 Life Under Ground— Falling of Mines, 248 Paths and Roads, 252 Journey from Connecticut to Pittston — Mrs. Von Storch, . . . 255 Little Meadows, 257 Hurricane in Providence, 261 Boating on the Lackawanna, 264 Rise of Methodism in the Valley, 269 Smelling Hell, 273 Greenfield and Scott, 275 Chas. H, Silkman, 276 Coal Lands Fifty Years ago, 278 The Discovery and Introduction into Use of Anthracite Coal, . .279 "Wm. Wurts — Explorations in the Coal Fields of the Lackawanna — History of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, . . 286 VI CONTENTS. PAOB Pennsylvania Coal Company, 299 Trip over the Pennsylvania Coal Company's Road, .... 303 Ilistorical Summary of the Susquehanna and Delaware Canal and Railroad ("The Drinker Road")— Leggett's Gap Railroad— The Delaware and Cobb's Gap Railroad Company, now the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, 312 The Lackawanna and Bloomsburg Railroad, 321 Lackawanna and Lanesborough Railroad, 324 List of Coal Operators at, or preparing for the work this Year (IBS'?), in the Northern Coal Basin, 326 PREFACE In presenting to the public these " Contributions," it seems proper to state that the collection of the embodied facts was more the result of the love possessed by the writer for such incidents and history, than the hope of either a pecuniary reward or a literary reputation. Becoming familiar with a few features in the history of the Lackawanna Valley, the writer was induced by the sohcita- tion of his friends to put them into a shape whereby their pub- lication might possibly awaken an interest, or perhaps elicit new and more connected material from a region where nothing yet had been done in the way of gathering its local history. From the absence of a proper and continued record — from indistinct and often conflicting memories — and from the death of all who were familiar with its earliest settlement, it is very probable that events narrated are sometimes given in an im- perfect, and even in an inaccurate manner. It would not be surprising if such was the fact ; but the reader must bear in mind that not only the personal, but the general history Vlll PREFACE. recorded bcre was written while the author was engaged in o. large practice, and harassed by all the continual anxieties occurring in one of the most exhausting and thankless profes- sions in the country. While the author asks no indulgence from this circumstance, yet he apprehends that a practice of twelve years, with its too often accompanying annoyances — compelled to view human nature in every possible light, and encounter it in its most humiliating aspect — eminently fits him to bear the murmurs of those who suppose that a volume can be as easily written as read. None of the Sketches are arranged in chronological order ; many are necessarily brief, meagre and unsatisfactory, owing to the gi'eat dearth of material ; while some, it is possible, do better justice to the subject. It would have given pleasure to the writer, to have presented a genealogical view of the original families in the valley; but as this contemplated feature would necessarily have enlarged the volume beyond its intended limits, without adding much to its general interest, it was abandoned. The obligations of the writer are due to all his friends, who have, by their liberal subscriptions to the volume, manifested such an interest in its welfare. H. HOLLISTER. Providence, Pa. THE LACKA¥A:^I(1 yallet, The Lackawanna Yalley — a valley so identified with that of its sister, Wyoming, in its early settle- ment and privations ; included in the satne purchase, and subject to the same organic laws of the colony, as a considerable portion of this originally was ; and in a geographical or commercial position being more impor- tant and accessible than that classic soil — it seems to many has been passed over with apparent neglect by those to whom the Wyoming Yalley is indebted for its written history. To contribute a few facts, reminiscences, and incidents in its local history, gathered from sources entitled to the greatest credence, is the purpose of the crude notes now presented ; and, if their perusal should prove either satisfactory, instructive, or entertaining to anybody, ample will be the reward of the writer. That many of the conclusions and facts, arrived at honestly, and as honestly presented, should differ with 1* 9 10 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. those pre-conceived by otiiers, will not be denied ; bnt their publication is intended to elicit a local interest in a region where the materials tor its history are scanty and obscure, and where nothing has been done in the way of gathering them. INDIAN NAMES. The Indians, ever having an extraordinary apprecia- tion of the beauties of Nature, have given to their rivers and lakes, their mountains and valleys, names really poetic and expressive. " Lackawanna " is a cor- ruption of the Indian ''Leehaw-ha7ina ;''^ Leehaw — the prefix — signifies the forks^ or point of intersection ; Hanna, as in Susque-hanna, Toby-hanna, Rappa-han- nock, Tunk-hanna, and Tunk-hannock, implies, in Indian language, a stream of water. Hence the name of our valley Leehaw-hanna or Lackawanna, the meeting of two streams — a name highly suggestive and sweet-sounding. LACKAWANNA RIVER AND VALLEY. This stream rises princi2:)ally in Susquehanna county, but one considerable branch comes from the same marshy region in Preston, Wayne county, which gives birth to the Starucca, Lackawaxen and Equinnunk, and after pursuing a rapid and often a serpentine course, runs for a distance of about eighty miles before it inter- sects the Susquehanna River at Pittston. Along its banks, the scenery is at times singularly fine and beautiful, and presents to the eye every variety LACKAWANNA KIVER AND VALLEY. 11 of smooth water, pool and rapids. Here its banks are bold and pleasing with tlie picturesqne, and there opens the alluvial meadow, where the wheat, ripe for the cradle, and the luxuriant cornfield, yellow with the pumpkin, attest how fertile is the soiL In Pittston, Lackawanna, Providence and Blakely Townships more especially, lay many farms of great natural beauty, which, would many of the farmers pos- sessing them exhibit more skill instead of liberal means, the Genesee farms would hardly equal. The Lackawanna Yalley, watered ^principally by the river of the same name, lies west of New York about 138 miles, where reposes the most northerly of the only like deposits of anthracite coal known in America. It is about thirty miles in length, and runs south and southwest, and, considered in its topographical charac- ter, is nothing less than the continuation, or rather the right northern arm of the classic and celebrated valley of Wyoming, Kimmed upon either side by a range of mountains called the Moosic — from the vast herd of the moose once sweeping along the pines — it lies like a huge trough, tapering off at its upper and lesser extremity to a mere sloping, plain ravine. A few miles above Car- bondale, the valley itself, somewhat narrowed before, is more successfully interrupted by a succession of boulders, or hills, facetiously called " Hog's Back," from their stiff bristling appearance. ISTow and then the mountain, diversified by rudely broken gaps or depressions scooped from the sides, crowds upon the river in rugged, broken masses, alter- nating with steep slopes and dense timber-land, giving to the waters of the stream many sudden and frequent windings. 12 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. The sliores of the Lackawanna are rich in many inter- esting and salient views, and, with the bold chain of hills and mountain slopes, and the towns and villages painted along their sides, forms a long and variegated landscape. Along the central and lower portion, coal of the highest quality lies in careless profusion, interstratiiied in many places with iron ores of the most desirable and productive character. ANCIENT COUESE OF THE SUSQUEHANNA. The Kittatinny, or blue ridge of mountain, which skirts along Pennsylvania and Virginia, is probably one of the most even ranges in the world. At its base it rarely exceeds a mile, but its summit, clothed with rank shrubbery and tree-tops, looms up against the sky, as if to get the latest glimpse of dying sunset. At some period in the world's history, this ridge seems to have been the margin of a vast lake, or estuary, into which poured the waters of the Chemung, Chenango, Dela- ware and Susquehanna, and over mountain and valley around us, swept one common wave. Yolcanic agency, in its strange submarine operations, probably broke the various gaps in the mountain, and as the liberated waters hurried from the lake into the sea, the geological features then effaced or effected must ever remain to man a mere matter of geological conjecture. And whether this great abyss boiled with a heat far beyond the temperature of white-hot iron from the volcanic fur- naces below, over the seams of liquid coal, or at what period these eruptive changes took place, lies so far ANCIENT COURSE OF THE SUSQUEHANNA. 13 beyond the earliest times of any written history, that all attemj)ted explanation perplexes more than it enlightens. Contemporaneous with these phenomena, or perhaps in more pre-Adamic times, it is highly probable that the topographical character of the Lackawanna Yalley was suddenly altered. The peculiar geological conformation of the country along the Lackawanna; the character, form, and direction of the Alleghany range rising along southern 'New York ; its mean altitude near the Great Bend of the Susquehanna River, being but little, if any, greater than at Tioga (or Ta-hi-o-ga) Point ; the compa- rative freshness and shape of rocks along both the Sus- quehanna and the Lackawanna ; with the general appearance of the country along each stream, afford no little evidence to this conclusion. Instead of breaking off so abruptly from its apparent course at this point, and cautiously feeling its way along the mountain border until it reaches Tioga Point, then forcing itself through a passage choleric and cramped, until, with all its singular boldness and beauty, it opens upon the Wyoming Yalley, it probably struck boldly down into a channel now partly closed by some superior upheaval or disturbance in the geological world, and entered the valley below us, where now the Lackawanna mingles silently wuth the dark waters of the Susque- hanna. Trace up the Susquehanna, step by step, to where its two lakes, six and nine miles long, give it origin, or down through its unnatural passage to Wyoming, and not a single spar of coal is visible ; go up the Lacka- wanna to the indicated point, and more than midway from the mouth of the stream, coal deposits, both grand and profuse in their character, are seen : all forcing the 14 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. conclusion upon the mind, that whatever local causes or convulsions once effected the mineralogical features around us, the sound of the ocean itself, or that of a much larger stream than the Lackawanna, gave music to our valley once. 'No less than five veins of coal have been washed away from the eastern side of the Lackawanna, in Providence, by the force of water, and their crushed and blackened deposit is found in the alluvial banks a great distance below. A portion of the village of Scranton stands upon such a singular deposit. That various portions of the earth's surface have been subject to vast changes in elevations, depressions, temperature, and topography, and still are being affected thus, there can be no reasonable doubt, all confirming .the conclu- sions we have advanced. By the old Danish chronicles, Greenland was discov- ered 975 years ago, and its mountains and its valleys being everywhere spread with the richest verdure, gave to it then its present name. That it differed essentially once from its present glacial aspect, is well shown by discoveries made as late as 1850, of trees covered with lava, whose trunks measured three feet in diameter, where now shrubs not a foot high hardly exist. Sweden is supposed by Linnaeus to rise from the lev- el of the sea about five feet per year ; the Rocky Moun- tains are supposed to have been in shallow water long after the formation of the great Appalachian chain, while North America itself, having a greater altitude than any other portion of the globe, attains with gradual certainty, a higher elevation. The lower border of the State of Maine abounds in tertiary series, and formed at no distant period the bed MTNEKALS AND MINING. 15 of the ocean — the effects of whose waters are everywhere visible— /^;y/5 of late date may be traced in its broad unduLations and valleys, abonnding in marine fossils and seaish remains. New Orleans — with all the lingerino- licentionsness of the Oriental world — owes its site to the fossiliferous deposits of the great father of waters— the Mississippi. The sea, which once gave Yenice her glory and her Avealth, is making sad inroads upon its departino- glory, while many other portions of the world have not apparently changed a hair's breadth since the earliest epoch of written Koman History. MINERALS AND MINING. In its mineralogical character, the Lackawanna Yallej is both varied and productive. From side to side it is filled with the coal measure— a series of slate and sand- stone strata of great depth, interstratified with anthracite coal, from a few inches to several feet in depth, as well as bog, argillaceous and calcareous ores. Limestone is also found in the valley. The mining resources of the valley— a valley in comparison and capability behind no other portion of the world— can partly be appreciated by the fact, that four of the great coal-seams lying in the basin, the 7, the 8, the 10 and the 12 foot veins (least thickness) furnish a total thickness of 37 feet : affording a yield of merchantable coal of 27 feet or 44,000 tons per acre. The farthest mines up the valley which are work- ed are those at Carbondale ; these are operated by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company ; and the coal, by an ingenious application of the power of steam and grav- itation, inclined planes and short ascents and descents, is 16 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. carried over the Moosic moimtain to their canal at Honesdale. To exhibit in a clear light the remarkable productive- ness of the Lackawanna coal-basin, we present the follow- ing table, prejDared by Prof. Rogers,* and although it was intended to represent the actual thickness of the coal-measure in the vicinity of Scranton, it will hold good for a great portion of the valley. Least Thickness. Good Coal. Yield of good Coal per Acre. 5 feet. 7 " 10 " 6 " 12 *' 8 " 6 " 3 feet. 4i " n " 3 " 9 " 6 " 4^ " 4,000 tons. 7,000 " 12,000 " 6,000 " 15,000 " 10,000 " 7,000 " 54 37^ 60,000 Although it is impossible to estimate with precision the total thickness of the coal in the deepest portion of the coal-basin until after fuller researches have been made by the geologist, it can be seen by this table, that the seve7i veins of coal recognized as possessing working capacity for profitable mining, produce per acre, the no- ble ratio of sixty thousand tons. Twelve distinct, separate beds of anthracite, already have been enumerated by the geologist along the Lack- awanna, besides many sub-divisions of compound beds, too thin for present use ; making a total depth of strata of 74 feet, or about 40 feet of pure coal for commercial purposes. In fact, coal and iron-ore are so extensively * Report of the Geology and Mining in the Lackawanna Valley, FORMATION OF COAL. IT concentrated and associated here, that for centuries yet to come, immense and ample will be the supply. About 25 miles in length may be considered as the extent of the Lackawanna coal formation, with an average breadth of three or four miles, and running northeast and south- west with the general direction of the Appalachian ranges. FORMATION OF COAL. To the curious in geological matters, coal formation af- fords great scope for reflection and theory. Heads emi- nent and grey, have supposed the coal-fields once dense- ly covered with great and untrimmed forests, which, be- ing suddenly submerged by volcanic action, formed a vast lake, into which wreck-like rushed mud, stone, sand and animals, flooding the vegetable mass, and making beds of shale, coal and sand-stone respectively. Difier- ent seams or veins of coal are supposed to have been formed at different periods but under similar circumstan- ces, by being thus alternately elevated or depressed. The "progressive character of fossils appearing in the different strata, show that they were deposited at different periods : and it is more than probable that millions of centuries in- tervened between their respective formation. Yegetable and organic remains have been found to exist in one stratum, which in another, were absent and unknown. The contraction of the earth's surface, or this coal-crust while cooling, naturally wrinkled it, and thus gave the broken and often dipping appearance to many veins of coal, termed by geologists an "anticlinal axis." In the Igneous rock or that formed by tire, no carbon- iferous plants or organic remains are found, nor does the IS LACKAWANNA VALLEY. coal itself contain any perceptible traces of plants unless placed under a microscope, although these were contem- poraneous w^itli its formation. More than 500 species of plants now nearly extinct have been recognized in the secondary series of rocks. The fern is found in the great- est abundance, while the branching mosses — the cala- mi tes — the sigillaria — the cy cades and the palm appear in ceaseless profusion. Geological examinations made in the Lackawanna coal- basin seem to favor the idea that the rocks of this region, with their intervening coal-strata, originally level in po- sition, were crumpled or folded into their present form of alternate basins and ridges by the same tremendous convulsions or slow changes which crowded up the Alle- ghany ranges ; and that, since then, the action of diluvial and atmospheric agencies have worn away the upper or coal-bearing strata on most of the high and exposed points of the Moosic hills and mountains, leaving them only in the troughs or depressions which were sheltered by the moun- tain rock and left in the position now found by the miner. Coal, destitute of bitumen, or anthracite^ is found in Russia, France, Ireland, South Wales, and in a few of the United States, and in all the carboniferous series presents similar phenomena of fossil. The fern, being identified in species and genus to ail those found in coal bottoms, it is inferred that the earth in its primitive period w^as in- sular, and that the rank vegetable growing then was the result of the internal heat of the globe, which at that time was too imiform to affect the latitudes. In fact, the immense quantity of fossils brought to light along the Lackawanna, the remains of that by-gone time, attest how numerous the herd, and how hot and fertile the clime of that ancient epoch. ORGANIC REMAINS IN COAL STRATA. 19 Many ingenious hypotheses of coal-formation connected with the change of climate and temperature thereto, have been offered by some, and by others, as often refuted. That a large portion of the earth's surface is to-day noise- lessly becoming altered, is no more fabulous than changes told of in history. In the time of Ovid, the Euxine and the Tiber were frozen over, and snow lay in Rome for 40 days. Even now, on the extreme range of Siberia is found evidence of former animal existence now only known in the tropics, and, incased in the ice is the ele- phant of Lena, preserving the hair, the shin and the very flesh, from a remote period down through centu- ries to the present day. In the preparation of vegetable matter for coal, it is probable that heat, pressure and water were the con- trolling agents, and that the vast mass of vegetable mat- ter was cooked into coal millions of years ago. ORGANIC REMAINS IN COAL STRATA. Vegetable fossil and organic remains have been found in various mines in the valley — more especially in the townships of Providence and Carbondale, imbedded firmly in the inclosing strata ; preserving all their ori- ginal outlines, except the change effected by the sn^^erior pressure, from the rounded to the flattened form. A large turtle family, fossil sea shells, and fish resem- bling the small garpike or common pickerel, in shape and size, were found in Providence during the last sum- mer, by Captain Martin, while engaged in sinking "a shaft to the depth of about 200 feet. These were all in- cased in the old carboniferous strata. There is every 20 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. reason to believe that these fish had once inhabited an open space of water, communicating with a larger body, or with the ocean itself, which by some means becom- ing closed, the pond dried up, and the fish being cov- ered to a considerable depth by shale, sand, and stone, furnish the specimens of old and young, which have been taken from the excavation by the miner with his humble drill. One large fish, more than a foot in diameter, and six feet in length, its fins, scales, and general structure yet distinctly seen upon the stereotyping stone, was ex- humed from its sepulchre, and, blackened and brain- less as it was found, takes us back to a period, unknown and remote. This fish was broken while being blasted out by the miner, so that the skillful anatomist could soon determine, by the nature as well as by the number of the exposed vertebra, its true species. Kain-marks, foot-prints, stigmaria, and other charac- teristics of the coal measure, have been furnished in interesting abundance, within a comparative small space, during the progress of the excavation here at the shaft of the Yan Stork Coal Company. In 1831, while Captain Stott was driving a drift in the mines at Carbondale for the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, the roof off the mine becoming dislo- cated from the parent earth, fell in over a considerable surface, furnishing the richest aspect of vegetable and organic fossil. Deep in the fractured interstratifying stone and slate were imprinted innumerable delicate impressions of leaves, flowers, broken limbs ; of the palm leaf and the fern, so remarkable in size as to indi- cate that the temperature of the earth's surface at the period of their growth was far too heated for human INDIAN TRIBES AND HISTORY. 21 life ; fallen trunks and branches of trees, so singularly dark and beautiful, that Dagaure could neither imitate nor improve ; huge outlines and tracks of the ichthyo- sauri — the giant lizard, curious in anatomical structure and strength ; snakes, ribbed and rounded, whose like is rarely known, and whose analogues are only found near the tropics ; a class of amphibians intermediate between reptiles and hsli — the hatracian tribe — the mammoth frog, were displayed foot-marks of which, exhibiting live toes before and four behind, marked their presence and passage in other times ; all so distinctly and so terribly delineated upon this master-press of na- ture, as to convey to the mind some faint idea of the monsters once swarming the jungles, and whose courts on the low, wet, warm marshes were suddenly ad- journed by the great phenomena of coal formation. Having thus briefly touched upon a few geological facts of more or less local interest to the reader, the writer will as briefly notice a little of the Indian his- tory, which seems somewhat associated with that of the valley. The apparently inexhaustible resources of the valley, of its hills, and its heart of coal — just touched by the drill — holding the certain advantage of their contiguity to the great metropolis, will be noticed in the future pages of the volume. INDIAN TRIBES AND HISTORY. Of the Indian tribes, forming the aboriginal inhabi- tants of America, but little is known that is at all reliable or satisfactory. 22 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. The smoked and greasy Esquimaux are said to have records upon bark of events in their history centuries back ; the ancient parchment of the Icelander tells of its once warm climate and green plateaux — now glacial with ice ; but the poor driven Indians, whose war-whoop only echoes along the pine and cypress hammocks of Florida, or from the bluffs and gorges of the Rocky Mountains, have left behind them only a few legends of their ancient history. Important events are said to have transpired among them, but their certainty even is quite as doubtful as their date. Whatever might have been the former character of Indian warfare in the earlier history of the valley, or how- ever much the infiint settlements then may have suffered from the fagot and the knife — when helpless woman- hood and the innocence of childhood pleaded alike in vain, to savage mercy — it is very certain that in the more recent wars the Indians have not been the aggressors. We know by living testimony that they have been crowded inch by inch southward and westward by the incursions and shameful aggressions of the Circassian race, until from being a great, proud, and powerful na- tion, alike respected and feared for their virtues and their power, extending their influence far and wide over the western world, they have been reduced to a mere handful of warriors, rendered desperate by maltreat- ment, and impoverished by misfortune. The Onondagas, Senecas, Cayugas, Oneidas, and Mohawks, early banded themselves together for mutual protection and formed the dreaded confederacy — The Five Nations. Their power was long and absolute. Their government — a limited monarchy. This was vested in a great chief or king, directed and controlled INDIAN TRIBES AND HISTORY. 23 by a council of braves and aged warriors of the nation. Heckewelder, who was a missionary among the Dela- wares for many years, and who has probably let in more light upon Indian history and character than any other writer, tells us that when the Dutch first settled N"ew York, the power of the Five ISTations was so great that all the tribes along the Hudson, Delaware, and Susque- hanna were compelled to pay them tribute and lift or lay the hatchet at their command. Jefferson says that in 1712 the Tuscaroras united with the Iroquois— the allies of the French in the early colonial wars— thus forming the powerful Six Kations— the Komans of the Western World. Among the lonely and lovely lakes in the Onondaga country — the ancient Ohnaquago~nQ2iY Chenango, blazed their great council-fire, while the voices of their chiefs, assembled in council, were heard from the quiet Manhattan to the distant shores of the great Mississippi. Their hunting-grounds lay on every hill, and spread in every valley. With a dialect whose strange intonations seemed like mere idiotic grunts to the white man, and whose tongues, from the parent language, was so diverse, corrupt, and confused, that many of the tribes could only converse with each other through an interpreter; with neither books nor charts, with no history but the wigwam's lore, no guide but the moon's grey twilight, there was no lake too obscure, no river too distant, nor no mountains too rugged and remote, to escape their reaching trails. The Shawnee Indians, once inhabiting the everglades of Florida and Georgia, fled from the aggressive neigh- boring tribes, and settled in the forks of the Delaware, 26 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. few years since by Dr. Throop, now owned by C. D. Hockwell, Esq., there was at the time of the first explo- ration of the valley by the whites, in 1762, the only per- manent camp found here, which then existed along its darkened border. Within this ancient clearing, the passer can hardly fail to observe an apple tree, short, cragged and venerable, standing on the east side of the road. This is the Indian apple tree, of great age, 13|- feet in circumference, and possibly was planted by old Capouse himself, more than a century ago. By hands selfish and rude, it was bereft of all its mates many years ago, merely because their wide-spread branches threw too much shade upon the inclosing meadow ! A few tall sprigs of grass probably repaid for the destroy- ing act. This single tree now stands alone as a relic of other times; afi:brding in the summer months, by its fatherly branches, as ample shade to the lolling ox as it did to the squaw or her wily lord, when he skimmed along the waters of the Lee-haw-hanna in his curling bark. In one of the apple trees cut down in 1804, were counted 150 concentric circles, or yearly growths, thus dating the tree back to a time long before the reports of the trapper or the story of the Indians came to tlie whites from the valley. Sixty years ago, a large wild- plum orchard, standing in a swale adjoining this clear- ing, hung with millions of the juicy fruit, while the grape, with all its tropical luxuriance, purpled the loaded tree-tops. The vines as well as the trees, were doubtless the result of Indian culture. CAPOUSE MEADOW. 27 CAPOUSE MEADOW. Among the few Indian names in the valley preserved from the departed red-man, appears that of Capouse, the Indian signification of which nothing is found bearing upon. In this meadow, surrounded hy all the wild loneli- ness of momitain and valley, and peoj)led by a race or clan proud of all their savage virtues, Capouse was King. He was a brave, venerable Sachem, or Chief, of the Moncey tribe of Indians, whose council-fires lit up the valley long before the arrival of the whites. This tribe occupied, at an early day, the country ex- tending from the Kittatinnunk, or Blue Mountain, to the head of the Delaware and Susquehanna. Their great or principal fire blazed from Minisink, on the Delaware River, or as the Indians called it, 3fa-kerish~ Iciskon, while a clan or portion of the tribe chose the wilds of the Lee-haw-hanna for their residence. Of the exact time of the arrival of this tribe here, but very little or nothing reliable is known. The difiiculties with the Six I^ations and the Delawares at the time, induced the Monceys to concentrate their numbers around their principal settlement at Minisink. The Monceys paid tribute to their haughtier and more warlike neighbors, the Delawares, and of course were a dependent of that once powerful tribe. After a lapse of years of misfortune, both of these tribes have, after being wronged, driven, and almost destroyed by the spoiler of their power and heritage, reached Kansas Territory, where the Monceys are slowly merging with the Delaware tribe. The rich, flat, beautiful meadow-land, literally scooped 28 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. out of the Moosic range, and which gives to that por- tion of the valley lying within the old certified town of Providence upon the west side of the Lackawanna such a basin-like appearance, was early designated by the Yankee settler " Capouse Meadow," to perpetuate the name as well as the virtues of this pacific chief. Al- though the whole valley was occupied by the Indians long before the blankness of his life was interrupted by the aggressions of the pale-face, or before the topo- graphy of the country was learned by the hunter, this clearing was the only one found in the valley by the pioneer, where rose from the forest banks the barked wigwam. In accordance with the usual habit practised by the wild tribes, of annually burning over their hunt- ing-grounds, there was little or no sapling growth to in- terfere with the chase around this meadow ; besides this, the lower and larger limbs were kept so completely trimmed by the hatchet, that game could be seen among the trees for a considerable distance. This meadow, now known as " Tripp's Flats," and mostly owned by our liberal townsman Col. Ira Tripp, was one of their favorite hunting-places. Around this camp game was abundant. The pheasant whirred from the brake, the duck sat in the silver stream as if it was its throne, the rabbit squatted in the laurel, the elk and the fleeter moose stood among their native pines, or thun- dered onward like the tread of cavalry — the deer in fearless mood browsed on the juicy leaf, while the moun- tain sides, though stern with wilderness, offered to tlie panther or the bear but little shield from the well-poised arrow of the Indian. The otter, the martin, the beaver and the musk-rat, held their haunts along the stream, where fish were numerous. Perch, pike, and the chub, OAPOUSE MEADOW. 29 in fabulous numbers, swam tlie Lackawanna, while every fair water brook that bubbled from the mountain was alive with trout. Hooks, constructed with singular ingenuity by the red-men from bone, or nets, wove from the inner bark of trees, or even the spear, which they threw with admirable adroitness at a distance of thirty feet while the fish were moving rapidly, never failed to supply the wigwam with this delicious fish. The Capouse region, although traversed only by wild beasts and warriors up until lYTO, has, since that period, been the scene of many an Indian drama. Savage appetite, already sharpened by the wars pre- ceding the Hevolution, found at that time only pleasure in murder and pillage along the Delaware and the Sus- quehanna. In 1778, after the massacres in Cherry Yalley and Wyoming, the savages swept up the Lack- awanna in small parties, where but few white settlers were still remaining. The scattered houses of the whites were lit by the torch, the few inhabitants who had neg- lected or were unable to fiee were either shot or taken away as prisoners, and the cattle, sheep, and horses, driven away into the Indian country. Three persons, named Keys, Hocksey, and Isaac Tripp, were taken prisoners here by the Indians. The next day they were taken up on the war-path leading through the forest of Abington to Oquago, where Keys and Hocksey were tomahawked, while Tripp, who had previously shown kindness to the savages, was painted over with war-paint and sent back to the valley. A short time after, while he was engaged in gathering his crops upon the flats, near where now resides Capt. Lewis Carr, he was shot and scalped by a straggling party of Indians. 30 LACKAWAI^NA VALLEY. A small detachment of soldiers were sent here in 1779 by Gen. Sullivan, to reconnoitre, but finding no Indians here, they returned to the main body of the army, and accompanied that distinguished general up the Susquehanna to the Indian villages scattered along the stream. James Brown, who died in Greenfield a few yeai's ago, was one of the party thus detailed. The gun and the tomahawk, the knife and the fagot^ did the work of destruction, wherever the white man was found defenceless. Three persons, named Avery, Lyons, and Jones, were taken from the Capouse about this time, and carried away as prisoners into the lake country."^ These were some of the fugitives from the "Wyoming Yalley, rendered homeless by the Indian bat- tle there in 1778. WAR PATH. One of the three long-trodden paths of the warrior leading out of the Wyoming, led eastward to Coshutunk (now Cochecton), a small Indian settlement upon the shore of the Delaware. Leaving the valley at the mouth of the Lackawanna River, as it is pleasantly called, it followed the eastern bank of this stream up to Spring, Stafi'ord Meadow, and Roaring Brook, crossing the last two named ones a short distance below the present loca- tion of Scranton, and passing into the Indian village of Capouse. Here one path led ofl' to Oquago, New York (now Windsor), through Leggett's Gap, and the * Miner. INDIAN SPRING. 31 wilderness of Abington, while the other, passing np from the Lackawanna in an easterly direction, struck boldly into the forest, passing along where Dunmore now stands, and up the mountain slope where footholds seemed un- safe. This path crossed the Moosic range near the present residence of John Cobbs, and thence through Little Meadows in Salem, and the Wallenpanpack region. This trail seldom ran through the mountain gaps, but it generally, like all their war-paths, kept the higher ground, or where the woods were less dense, for the wild tribes preferred climbing over a considerable elevation, to the labor of cutting a trail over more level ground, or through deep wooded ravines ; besides this, overlooking points were chosen so that upon entering or leaving a valley they could better be apprised of the presence or approach of an enemy. Of this old, nar- row trail, few indeed are the remaining traces, where the war-song once resounded, while the brave lapped the blood of his foe or his game. The first wagon-road cut and opened to the Wyoming Yalley followed this path the greater part of the way, as being the most direct route from the parent State to the county and town of Westmoreland. INDIAN BPEING, Almost upon the very summit of the Moosic moun- tain, between the valley and John Cobbs, by the side of this old trail, bubbles from the earth a large spring, called the " Indian Spring." No matter how parched the lips of mother earth — how shrunken the volume of streams elsewhere, this spring pays no attention to the 32 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. drought, but, summer or winter is ever filled to its brim with the coldest and clearest water. Away from the world's hot pulse ; hemmed in com- pletely by the pine, whose waving tops give partial entrance to the noon-day sun it seems sweeter and more sublime from its very loneliness. The mountain, the rocks, the inclosing forest — all is silence around it, but winds and bird-songs. The spring boils up from the white sand, lingers but a moment in its quiet eddy, then down the mountain staircase, dallies child-like, and forms the little Roaring Brook, one of the tributa- ries of the Roaring Brook. In July, 17T8, two fugitives were killed here. Retreating from the smoking valley at Wyoming, imme- diately after the massacre there by the Tories and Indians, they sat down thirsty and exhausted by this spring, for the invigorating draught. They never rose again. The gory hatchet of the savage flew from the ambush ; the red knife swung through their scalps, and the wolves at night made loud their carnival over the imresisting and unburied dead. A large red rock rims one side of this spring, whose crimson color, tradition already tells, was imparted to it by the victims thus immolated ! This spring possesses a good deal of interest to the lovers of the wonderful and the wild. INDIAN KELICS AND FORTIFICATIONS. Ko evidence is found of Indian forts in the Lackawanna Yalley, although there existed one or more a few miles below it, one of which is thus described by Chapman : INDIAN EELICS AND FORTIFICATIONS. 33 " In the valley of Wyoming, there exist some remains of Indian fortifications, which appear to have been con- structed by a race of people very different in their habits from those who occupied the place when first discovered b}^ the whites. Most of these ruins have been so much obliterated by the operations of agricul- ture, that their forms cannot now be distinctly ascer- tained. That which remains the most entire was examined by the writer during the summer of 1817, and its dimensions carefully ascertained; although, from frequent ploughing, its form had become almost destroyed. It is situated in the township of Kington, upon a level plain on the north side of Toby's creek, about one hundred and fifty feet from its bank, and about a half mile from its confluence with the Sus- quehanna. It is of an oval or elliptical form, having its longest diameter from the northwest to the southeast, at right angles to the creek, three hundred and thirty- seven feet, and its shortest diameter from the northeast to the southwest, two hundred and seventy-two feet. On the southwest side, appears to have been a gate- way about twelve feet wide, opening towards the great eddy of the river, into which the creek falls. From present appearances, it consisted, probably, of only one mound or rampart, which, in height and thickness, appears to have been the same on all sides, and was constructed of earth ; the plain on which it stands, not abounding in stone. *' On the outside of the rampart is an intrenchment or ditch, formed, probably, by removing the earth of which it is composed, and which appears never to have been walled. The creek, on which it stands, is bounded by a high steep bank on that side, and at ordinary times is 2* 34 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. sufficiently deep to admit canoes to ascend from the river to the fortification. When the first settlers came to Wyoming, this plain was covered with its native forest, consisting principally of oak and yellow pine ; and the trees which grew in the rampart and in the in- trenchment, are said to have been as large as those in any other part of the valley ; one large oak particularly, upon being cut down, was ascertained to be seven hun- dred years old. The Indians had no tradition concern- ing these fortifications, neither did they appear to have any knowledge of the purposes for which they were constructed. They were, perhaps, erected about the same time with those upon the waters of the Ohio, and probably by a similar people and for similar purposes." '' Another fortification existed on Jacob's Plains or the Upper Flats, in Wilkes Barre. Its situation is the highest part of the low grounds, so that, only in ex- traordinary floods, is the spot covered with water." * This fort seems to have been of about the same in form, shape, and size, to that described by Chapman, and in its interior, near the southern line, the ancient people all concur in stating that there existed a well.f At the confluence of the Lackawanna with the Sus- quehanna, Indian graves and remains were found in great abundance, fifty years ago. Skeletons, exhumed and brought to light by the the waters of spring freshets, lay in such numbers upon the fields, and so familiar had they become to the thoughtless passer, that boys were often seen with a thigh bone in each hand, growing pa- triotic with the tune of Yankee Doodle, drummed upon the bleached and chimeless skulls, strewed upon the * Miner's History. f Miner's History. INDIAN RELICS AND FORTIFICATIONS. 35 plain around tliem. Some of these, no doubt, were the remains of the warriors, who fell in the battles of the valley, as bullets, so corroded as to be white in appear- ance, and broken arrow-heads, were often found with them, indicating the sudden manner of their death. Others, crumbling the moment they were uncovered, or only furnishing a dark and peculiar deposit, bore the evidence of greater age in their burial. Bowls of the ca- pacity of a gallon or more, ingeniously cut from soap- stone, were often found with the remains. These would seem to indicate the commercial or migratory character of their possessors, as none of these stones are found nearer this place than in Maryland. Hard and hand- somely dressed stones, five or six inches in length, fitted for the hand and used probably for skinning deer and other animals, here and there appeared among the re- mains. On the brink of the western range of the Moosic mountain, in Leggett's Gap, between Providence and Abington, an Indian grave w^as found in a very simple, but singular manner, a number of years ago. A deer, fleeing from his pursuers, leaped upon the end of a pro- jecting gun barrel, bringing it to view. A little exca- vating by the hunter exhibited a quantity of flint, worked into arrow and spear heads, a stone tomahawk, a French gun-barrel, a hoe, and some human bones. The skeleton lay on its right side with the knees drawn up, the head pointing towards the east, while immedi ately over lay the implements and weapons of the de ceased. The hoe and the gun, both much corroded, were probably obtained from the French, while their burial with the warrior would indicate the time of their depo- sit as a period of peace. In his lap were found the S6 LACKAWAJSTNA VALLEY. arrows, made from one to two inches in length. J^early a hundred sm.all snail shells, all fitted for stringing, and which had probably been used for belts or beads, lay immediately under the arrows. There was also a pipe, made of dark stone, one end of it being shaped for a stopple, and the other for a scoop or spoon. This sin- gular contrivance could either be used for a whistle, or for eating porridge or broth. A small quantity of min- eral, resembling black lead, had also been deposited in the grave beside the departed. A portion of these interesting relics, in a tolerable state of preservation, are now in the possession of the writer. Upon the western bank of the Lackawanna in the up- per part of Capouse, on the Yan Stork farm, rises up a quiet little mound, where, in 1795, a number of Indian graves were discovered. As one of the mounds seemed to have been prepared with especial attention, and con- tained, with the bones of the warrior, a great quantity of the implements of the deceased, it was erroneously supposed to have been that of Capouse himself. These graves, perhaps, pointed to the last of the group of war- riors who had offered incense and sacrifice to the Great Spirit at Capouse. The wampum and their war instru- ments — ^for which the graves were disturbed — bore them silent company as they lay piled over with the grey sand of the meadow, and were protected on their long journey by these rude amulets. These graves, however, by the operations of agriculture, have been so complete- ly obliterated, that no trace of them now appears to the eye. Arrows, stone vessels, tomahawks ajid knives, stone mortars and their accompanying pestles for pounding INDIAN RELICS AND FORTIFICATIONS. 37 corn, and other curious relics of Indian times, are occa- sionally met with in the valley, and although time has robbed them of much of their original beauty, they have lost none of their stran^re interest nor savag^e lore. To the antiquarian, however, none would afford more interest than the remains of an Indian mound or en- campment, found near Clifton, in Luzerne county, which to all appearances were as old as those existing in the Wyoming Yalley. These remains were discov- ered in 1833 by Mr. Welch, now a draughtsman in the Land Office at Washington, while he was engaged in hunting along Bell-meadow Brook, a small tributary of the Lehigh. The accidental discovery of a piece of pottery among the loose pebbles upon the bank of the brook, so different in its character to anything he had ever seen before, naturally awakened his curiosity and led to the subsequent excavation of a vast quantity of sharp and flinty arrow-heads, a large stone hatchet, bowls of great capacity, fashioned from sand and a large proportion of clay. These bowls were upon their sides, indented with deep finger prints, and some were tastily and curiously ornamented with characters, original and unique. Kichard Drinker, Esq., of Scranton, to whom the writer is indebted for the above facts, was present at the time of their discovery, and says that the amount of pottery thus found was enormous. A very neat, short pipe, belonging probably to a squaw, was also found immediately under the tomahawk, in so perfect a state of preservation that it was, to all appearances, as fit for the consumption of their favorite weed as when first fashioned into shape. A huge pile of elk bones and teeth was also found, but the bones crumbled to dust 38 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. tlie moment they were exposed to the air or the toiicli. Underneath them all, lay the remains of a great camp- fire, which was probably hm-riedly deserted, and as hur- riedly smothered with sand and stone to the depth of twelve or fourteen inches. Ashes, coals, and half-burned brands, one of which still bore the marks of the hatchet distinctly upon it, were spread over a surface of fifteen feet. The most singular article of anything exhumed from the mass, was a large number of flat, delicately smoothed stones, in shape and size resembling the carpenter's whet- stone, bored with a number of small, circular holes. Whether these had been drilled and used for weaving fish-nets from hemp or wood, making belts of wampum, or for other mechanical purposes, remains a matter of mere conjecture. Trees of Norway girth have grown upon the edge of this brook since this camp-fire was left and buried, and almost upon these remains, one immense hemlock, which has defied the storms of centuries, stands like a sentinel over this silent but savage sepulchre. All of these relics had probably been deposited here by the red-men long before their knowledge of the European race, but why they were thus left so isolated from any of their known war-paths, or the period and purpose of their smothered fire, will be left to the anti- quarian to determine. The beaver, which was caught more for its furs than for its castoreum — now a considerable medicinal agent — once held their court in a little marsh or meadow adjoining this ancient camp, where the Indians evi- dently obtained sand for their pottery. In fact, the Lackawanna Spring, and Roaring Brook INDIAN RELICS AND FORTIFICATIONS. 39 as well as the wilder waters of the Lehigh — the Le-haw of tlie Indian — were inhabited by the beaver at the time of the first settlement of the valley by the whites. Across these streams they built their dams upon the most scientific principles of the engineering art, living upon ash, birch, and poplars, of which they were par- ticularly fond.* In the deepest part of the pond they built their houses, resembling the wigwam of the Indian in shape and size, with a floor of saplings, which sloped towards the water like an inclined plane. Here they slept with thei7' tails under water^ ascending their chamber with the rise of the stream. Rafting in the larger streams destroyed their dams, driving the beaver to brooks lesser and more remote. In 1826 there came from Canada a villainous old trapper, who caught all of these singular animals from the Lachawanna and the Lehigh but a single one ; this, by his superior instinct, defied the trapper's cunning, and he, wandering down the shallow waters of Broadhead's Creek in search of his lost companions, was killed a year or two later near Stroudsburg. Is it not a little curious that, with all the interest said to be felt in everything pertaining to the Wyoming and Lackawanna Yalleys, no attention whatever has ever been paid towards collecting and preserving the various Indian implements once used in peace or in war ? The writer has a strong passion for the old — not the old hills, nor the forest, through whose hoary locks centuries have rustled along unsung and unobserved, but the lingering relics of the red-man, which convey at once to the mind the ideal, the strifes, the passions, and the glory of * There are many places along these streams which were thus origi- Tially stripped of all their growth by the beaver. 4:0 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. another day and a departed race. These fading links and landmarks of the past: the coarse yst ingenius utensils of pottery and bone; the rarer implements of copper sometimes found in their ancient graves ; the rude inscriptions which mark the first impulses of the wild men towards letters or written legend ; the stone battle-axe or tomahawk once flung or brandished by the brave ; the knife whose scalping edge once gleamed over the victim, whose age and weakness plead alike in vain for life ; the arrow sprung upon its fatal mission^ or the pipe once smoked around the forest fire — all are so associated with by-gone times, that as the obedient plough now and then up-turns some little remembrance of the warrior's life, it seems strange that not half a dozen of these sad memorials have been gathered and preserved in the valley to-day. Such a collection could not fail to be really interesting to every thoughtful mind, and how much more valuable would they become as years rendered their possession more difficult or quite impossible ! AN INDIAN LEGEND. It is probable that no part of the country affords a broader scope for the researches of legendary than that along the Susquehanna and the Lackawanna. Here, im- mured in the wide forest, and surrounded by every ele- ment of grandeur, the Onondagoes, the Senekas, the Ca- yugas, Oneidas and Mohawks, went forth with paint and war song, to gather the scalps of the white man — the spoiler of their thresholds. The red-men who are paying their late visit to the Great Spirit, held their coun- AN INDIAN LEGEND. 41 cil fires on the plains, where doom and danger were breathed upon the expanding settlements. The following is among the many legends of midnight massacres and adventures, which are yet preserved in the traditions of the valley. Upon a commanding eminence, contiguous to, and overlooking a portion of the valley, there lived at the period we speak of, a farmer, whose hospitality and in- tegrity the savage even could not dispute, and whose modest, narrow patch of earth, and attachments of a family, gave him all the happiness he could comprehend or wish for. The family so abruptly introduced, had fal- len npon perilous times. The scenes of Colonial warfare, where the easily excited savages became active parti- cipants, broke in upon their night-dreams. The house fell by the lurid brand, and the family of fourteen persons, with one exception, perished by the tomahawk or the flames. Little David, 14 years of age, was carried away captive by the Indians, and just as morning dawned up- on the hills, found himself upon a mountain which af- forded an indistinct view of the then little village of Wilkes Barre. Here the Indians camped, preparatory to their migration to the Upper Indian Country. And here a mysterious transaction took place, which has subse- quently given rise to no little surmise and search. An old Indian chief, to whom all paid reverence, and whose advice controlled every movement, arose, and advancing a few rods, stooped down and removed a large flat stone, exposing to view a spring. The waters of this were conducted away by a subterranean aqueduct, pur- posely constructed so that when they came to light every appearance would seem to indicate that they had their origin in the very opposite direction to what tliey 4:2 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. did. At the mouth of the spring, a roll of bark, forming a spont, was placed in such a manner as to readily con- duct the water from it, and mider this a handkerchief — belonging to David's mother but a few hours before — was so held as to receive the stream of water. For some minutes the chief stirred up the spring with so much vio- lence as to render it turbid and sandy. After this was done, everything around the spring was restored to its former appearance by the concealing rock, earth and leaves, so that no one not familiar with the fact, could have suspected a spring in contiguity to the spot. The handkerchief was now lifted from the spout, com- pletely covered with fine, yellow particles resembling gold. This was taken by the chief, and placed in a rudely fashioned stone vessel, purposely made to re- ceive the glittering treasure. The fire being extinguished, and certain incantations necessary to prevent any but the rightful owners to dis- cover the hidden spring being performed, the Indians left this point guarded by the wild rock, and resumed their trail to the north, guided by the polar star. Of the hopes and heart-aches of young David during the jour- ney, it is not necessary to write. After a walk of six days, the village of Kingston upon the Hudson was reached, where the substance, which the old chief had been so careful to collect and conceal, was exchanged for such tawdry goods as seemed desir- able to the Indians. David was at once ransomed by the whites. In after years, he often related the incident to his children — one of whom, in company with other per- sons, has traversed and dug over a considerable portion of Bald Mountain and CamphelVs Ledge without find- ing the secret channel. SALT SPRING. 43 Of tlie value ot gold and silver the Indians early learned during their intercourse with the whites, and, knowing how fatal to their hunting grounds were the aggressions of the pale-face, they took the most severe caution in concealing from them all knowledge of the existence of mines and mineral substances. The Indian who informed the whites of any such location, paid the penalty of his imprudence by death. Yet the whites at an early day, by some treacherous means, knew of the locality of a silver mine not far from the Lacka- w^anna Yalley ; this knowledge, however, appears to have passed away with the generation possessing it. In the Pennsylvania Archives, we are informed, that the Indians complained to the Proprietary Government as early as in 1766, of persons who had " dug a trench, 45 feet long and 6 feet deep, from which 3 boat-loads of silver ore were taken away." This mine was situated 12 miles above the Indian vilhige Wywamick, or Maugh-Ava-w^ame (now Wilkes Barre). Instead of being taken in boats, the silver ore thus purloined was taken down the Susquehanna Piver in canoes. Could we gather all the startling incidents in the early settlement of the Lackawanna, they would fill a volume larger than this is intended. It is full of relics, full of the mysterious, full of excit- ing foot-prints, and those who are fond of the rigid lore of the Indian can find here all they desire. SALT SPPwING. Passing through Leggett's Gap and near the saw-mill of Benjamin Leach, we find a point of some little inter- 44 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. est from tlie existence there of a salt spring, once used by the aboriginal race. It is a small spring, strongly impregnated with saline properties. When the white adventurer first sought the valley for his home and found no other luxury than steak from the bear or the deer, and no other voice than that spoken from the throat of the musket, the waters of this spring were boiled to obtained the scarce and necessary salt. That the Indians frequented this place for the purpose of cur- ing venison and other purposes, evidence is afforded by the vast quantity of warlike and domestic relics of theirs found here at an early day. The warrior's path from Oquago, where there also was a salt spring, came immediately along here, as it entered Capouse below. There is no " deer lick " or salt spring along the Lackawanna, other than this — the nearest being in the northern part of Wayne county. Mr. Blackman, who was taken captive from Wy- oming, relates of the Indians, that when salt became scarce, they went up the Lackawanna and returned the next day, loaded with the desired article, which was sometimes warm. From a knowledge of this spring, advantage was early taken by the hunter and trapper, for in such numbers deer frequented this briny foun- tain to lap its waters, that they easily and often fell a trophy to the woodsman. A hunter of seventy winters tells the writer that, in his younger days, deer were so tame in the vicinity of this spring, that he has killed and dressed during his lifetime one hundred and forty-seven deer at this place alone ! This little spring was known to the Indians by the name of Mesomersic, or Me-shom-as-seck, which signi- RATTLESNAKES. 45 fies in their language abundance of Rattlesnakes.'^ Like all the old Indian names in the valley, this is now obso- lete and quite forgotten. Within a few years, the waters of this spring have been boiled to obtain salt. RATTLESNAKES. Wlien the Indian skimmed along the Lee-haw-hanna in his light canoe, the rattlesnake lay coiled on every rock. Within the old Capouse Meadow these reptiles were found in such abundance that in the year 1790 over two hundred were killed here during the year, by one man — killed, too, at a time of such great scarcity, that they were skinned eel-fashion, and furnished food to the starving settlers. Cooked in Indian fashion, the meat of this reptile was much relished by the forest tribes, as it yet is by many. Cows were often bitten by them, causing much suffer- ing to the poor family depending for subsistence mainly upon their milk. An old white-headed man, whose thread of sand has not yet been broken, relates to the writer an instance of Ms only cow, thus becom- ing poisoned, when from sheer necessity he brought one of his oxen to give w.ilk. Of all the tropical climates, Ceylon is said to be the nursery of snakes, but the interior of Arkansas is the North American capital of the rattlesnake. Here they exist in such numbers in every thicket and mea- dow, that it is unsafe for the hunter to camp out at I * Mishom — grcat^ and sesses and asseh — roAtlesnaJce. — RogerWilliams. 46 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. night, unless protected by lohite ash leaves, or a hair rojpe drawn around the ground chosen for the camp- pLace. They grow here to an immense size, and many species of them fraternize in their rocky den, during their winter retreat, and only when their devouring enemy the hog, with its long, intruding, adipose snout, gets on the scent of these ugly creatures, are they dis- turbed and thinned. The fatty portion of swine, is so impervious to the poison of this snake, that unless the bite is introduced near some blood-vessel, where it runs along with lightning-like rapidity, it is resisted with silent and harmless indifference. Many other active poisons, among which is the Gyclameti Eurjpc&um^ or com- mon sow-weed, one of the most violent poisons, and in its effects similar to the Gurara used by many tribes of Indians to poison the tips of their arrows, is eaten by the hog in large quantities with perfect impunity? while the juice of the root, upon all other kinds of animal life, is quickly fatal. The fact may not generally be known that the high state of excitement of the rattlesnake attending the phenomena of charming, is nothing more than a singu- lar and necessary provision of Mature to prepare the stomach of the reptile for the reception of the food, while the " charming jpwjoer " as it is called, is nothing more nor less than an eleetrical ciu^ent, passing from the snake to the bird, or to any object charmed. The snake, livincr iu or on the orround, is alwavs in the most negative condition of any kind of animal life, while the bird, floating in the air, where the positive preponderates, is always charged with this electric power, so naturally attracted by tlie oppositely charged condition of the snake. During this stimulating process, the digestive RATTLESNAKES. 47 powers are awakened, while the throat is rendered suffi- ciently moist and elastic to receive animals of astonish- ing size with perfect ease. The rattlesnake, however, with all its dreaded and deadly qualities, possesses one honorable characteristic worthy of imitation elsewhere: it never, or rarely springs upon the intruder, without first giving warning by its rattle, nor is it known to devour an animal placed in its cage, without first exciting the large salivary organs by the phenomena of charming. Without the squeezing or constricting power of the black snake, or the terrible death-wind of the boa ; this essential peculiarity seems to have been furnished this species of snake, for the purpose of obtaining ani- mal food as well as for its proper digestion. An old settler, who often watched their movements in the valley, while he was a mere lad, relates to the writer an instance or two he witnessed of this " snake charm- ing." After being buried in the rocks during the months of cold weather, they emerge in the spring from their hid- ing places, prepared to glut themselves upon the swift est and sweetest of birds. In going to this Indian salt spring, in the notch, while a boy, says the old man, I perceived, coiled almost immediately before me, in the path, a huge rattlesake, with its head slightly raised from the ground and thrown gently to and fro, like a tree-top moved by the wind Within fifteen feet, fluttered a blue-bird, chirping piteously as it listened to the soft, sweet, death-song of the rattle, its eye fastened upon that of the snake, which flashed like the diamond as nearer drew the struggling bird. The snake threw out a strong narcotic 48 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. odor, wliose sleepy effects were soon perceived on tlie victim. Sweeter and softer fell the fatal music, closer and closer to tlie reptile hopped the helpless bird, until it came within about one foot of its month, when the club dropped upon the enchanter. So intent the snake's eye upon its victim, that it neither observed the intruding footsteps nor the missile of death impending. For a few moments the bird seemed intoxicated, but it soon flew away among it mates, as noisy and unharmed as before its song was interrupted. Another instance related was that of a weasel. In pass- ing along the Capouse Meadow in mid-summer, I saw one of these attenuated creatures, as it was running along the fence with singular rapidity, stop suddenly, uttering at the same time a wail, wild, frightful, and sad. Simul- taneously with this, I heard the sound of a rattle coming from a large, brilliant, yellow snake beside the fence, having the most beautiful, fire-like eye I ever saw, look- ing at the weasel. Wishing to see the result of an en- counter, so unusual to the sight of boyhood, and hav- ing but little sympathy for the animal, as the chicken coop, more than once, had been visited by the sharp- toothed assassin or his kindred associates, I watched the unequal combat with interest, knowing that the snake easily could be killed after its victory, as it then lies torpid and indifferent as a drunken man to every object around it. When the weasel first halted for the snake, it was some twenty feet from it, and it was about one hour be- fore it became a trophy to the strange power of the rep- tile. Now and then the poor animal would stop, then start and stagger oft' in a slanting direction as if to get ENGLISH CHARTER OF LANDS. 4:9 away, when the snake would throw the full glare of his eye upon it, accompanied with such a low, lulling sound of his rattle, that the weasel would again advance hur- riedly for a foot or two, then alternately stop and start, until it approached within a few inches of the charmer, when it gave one quick, nervous spring into its excited, opened mouth. One coil the snake gave to its glisten- ing neck and body during the operation of deglutition, then, stretching itself out in the noonday sun with the greatest complacency, dropped into a lazy slumber. A light tap on the back of his head rendered him lifeless at once. Opening its body with a jack-knife, the mo- ment it was killed, the weasel was found dead in its stomach, without any apparent contusion or wound from the fangs of the snake. ORIGINAL ENGLISH CHARTER OF THE LANDS OF WHICH LACKAWANNA VALLEY WAS A PART. The Lackawanna Yalley was originally owned and settled by Connecticut, whose jurisdiction over her " Westmoreland " Colony, extended for a period of nine years. To better comprehend the nature of her claim to these lands, over which Pennsylvania also claimed proprietor- ship, a very brief historical summary of their respective claims, and their ultimate adjustment, seems here ap- propriate. Nations, like individuals, recognize the law of aggran- dizement as being as valid as it seems natural. Thus the different nations of the world, eager to reap the ad- 3 50 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. vantages of any discovery of their respective subjects, claim all territory tlius discovered. That portion of North America from Florida to lati- tude 58° being discovered in 1497 by Sebastian Cabot, was thus claimed by the English, and when adventurei-s wished to settle upon any portion of such land, the rights and limits were regulated by their respective govern- ments, to make them of any value. Different companies, whose charters extended over a vast area, imperfectly defined and understood in its ter- ritorial limits, and only known by the reports of the Indians and the trappei-s, which upon all questions of geography and topography are always vague, and over which, as there had been no actual survey, claims be- coming overlapped, proved conflicting. The General Charter of New England was granted in 1620, to " the Councils established at Plymouth, in the County of Devon, for Planting, Ruling and Governing of New England in America." ^ Lands thus granted included all " that portion of America lying and being in breadth from 40 degrees of the said northerly latitude inclusively, and in length of and within all the breadth aforesaid, thronghout the mainland from sea to sea, etc." Parts of this wide territory being subsequently trans- ferred to other companies, new colonies were planted and organized, and as their boundaries were very inde- finite even to the conceptions of the best, they often overreached each other, giving rise in their develop- ment to territorial conflicts, alike humiliating, passion- ate, and dangerous. * Trumbell 61 Such was the contest between Connecticut and Penn- sylvania in the Wyoming Valley, which has been so ably described both by Miner and Chapman. On the 4th of March, 1681, William Penn,^ son of Admiral Penn, a member of the Society of Friends, ob- tained of Charles the Second a grant of all lands em- braced within the i^resent State of Pennsylvania. This grant included " all that tract or part of land in Ameri- ca, with all the islands therein contained, as the same is bounded on the east by the Delaware River from 12 miles distant northwards of New Castle Town unto the 3 and 40 degrees of northern latitude (if the said river doeth not extend so far northward, then by the said river 60 far as it doeth extend,) and from the head of the said river the eastern bounds are to be determined by a me- ridian line to be drawn from the head of the said river unto the said 3 and 40 degrees in longitude, to be com- puted from the eastern bounds, and the said lands to be bounded on the north by the beginning of the 3 and 40 degrees of northern latitude." This grant from the King of England was given to Penn partly in consideration of his desire to extend and enlarge the boundaries of the British Empire, and partly, as expressed in the charter, as a recompense for valu- able services rendered by his father to the British nation. * Penn received from the Indians the name of Onas, i. e., quill or pen, from the fact that he governed by these instead of guns. 62 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. l^early forty years before the settlement of Penn, a portion of this territory was colonized by the Swedes. These lands, which were sold July 11, 1754, by their original owners, the Six Nations, to the Susquehanna Company of Connecticut, were again sold by the Indians, assembled Nov. 5, 1768, at Fort Stanwix, to the Penn- sylvania Proprietaries. INDIAN PURCHASE BY CONNECTICIJT. Nineteen years, however, previous to this grant to Wm. Penn, an association of men under the name of the Colony of Connecticut, purchased of the proprietors of the old Plymouth grant, all their right and interest in the original charter, for 16,000 pounds sterling. In 1662, King Charles the Second confirmed and re- newed the Connecticut charter proper. " The charter of Penn extended his claims as far north as the boundary of Connecticut, and there was conse- quently an interference in the two claims, equal to one degree of latitude and 5 degrees of longitude,"* embrac- ing the Lackawanna Yalley and the adjacent country. Thus stood the charter claims at this time, between the respective parties, to lands which were yet in the possession of the Indians, without whose talk or title no colonial settlement could expect to be permanent, pros- perous, or safe. ♦ In 1753, 673 persons, ten of whom were Pennsylva- nians and the rest inhabitants of Connecticut, associated themselves for the purpose of extinguishing or procuring * Miner. INDIAN PURCHASE BY THE DELAWARE COMPANY. 63 tlie Indian title, by presents and purchase, of the very lands already acquired by royal grant.^ At a general treaty, held at Albany in July, 1T54, with the Five Nations, the Susquehanna Company, by the payment of 2,000 pounds sterling to the assembled Indians, received from them a deed signed by eighteen Sachems, the Indians reserving to themselves the right of hunting upon the land they had sold for the term of seven years. This conveyed to this Companyf all the lands " beginning from the one and 42 degree of north latitude, at 10 miles east of the Susquehanna Kiver, and from thence with a northward line ten miles east of the river to the end of the 4c2d or beginning of the 43d de- gree of north latitude, and so to extend west 2 degrees of longitude 120 miles, and from thence south to the beginning of the 42d degree, and from thence east to the above mentioned boundary, which is 10 miles east of the Susquehanna River." INDIAN PURCHASE BY THE DELAWARE COMPANY. All of that portion of country lying between the Delaware River and within ten miles east of the Susque- hanna, was subsequently purchased of the Indians by a Connecticut company called the "Delaware," so that the southern and western portion of the Lackawanna was embraced in the original Indian sale of lands to the Susquehanna Company, made. at Albany in 1Y54, while the upper and nothern part of the valley, as well as the country eastward, belonged to the Delaware Company. * Miner. f The Susquehanna Company. 54: LACKAWANNA VALLEY. The region embraced within these purchases received the name of " Westmoreland." With a view of settlement here, commissioners were chosen by the Susquehanna Company to survey these lands. In the summer of 1755, they commenced their explorations in the Wyoming Yalley, and although their discoveries and surveys were sadly interrupted by one of those French and Indian wars so frequent and terrible in their character, the Commissioners returned to Hart- ford satisfied that these lands lay within the jurisdiction of Connecticut. FIRST SETTLEMENT UPON THE DELAWARE PURCHASE. About one hundred years ago — in 1754 — a settlement upon the Wallenpau]3ack (now in Wa^me county) was attempted by a man named Carter. Here, upon the products of his gun, his trap, and his line, his simple wants drew plenty. He lived here but a short time, however, before he fell by the tomahawk. 'No other white man ventured to settle in the Paupack region again for a number of years, and it was not until a short time previous to the Revolutionary War, that a settle- ment here was successful. The remains of an old block- house, used by the early adventurers at this place, could be seen a few years ago. In 1793, these ancient lands upon the Paupack passed into the hands of James Wil- son, the founder of Wilsonville, the first county seat of Wayne county. The nearest settlement to this point at that day was at Gnad-en-hutten,^ near Mauch Chunk, where the * Huts of mercy. SETTLEMENT UPON THE SUSQUEHANNA PURCHASE. 55 Moravians, in the friendly character of missionaries, settled as early as 1742 among the Indians. In the summer of 1757, the first settlement attempted by the Delaware Company within the limits of the Con- necticut charter west was at Coshutunk, now Damascus, on the Delaware E-iver. The accretions to this were so rapid, that in three years from its commencing it contained 30 dwelling houses. FIRST SETTLEMENT UPON THE SUSQUEHANNA PURCHASE. To push a colony farther to the west — to Westmore- land — an attempt was made in August, 1762. Under the authority and direction of this Company, 200 pio- neers from Connecticut arrived at Mill Creek, in the Wyoming Valley, making the first improvement there.* Canada being ceded to England by the treaty of Paris, in 1763, hostilities between the French and English were closed. This, however, was no sooner done than an Indian and English war broke out with such violence as to strike terror among the little Colony at Wyoming. It was attacked by the Indians on the 15th of October ; and of the settlers about twenty were slain, and the remainder driven across the mountains to their native State in 1763.t * Miner^s History. f Gov. Hamlinton, of Philadelphia, ordered Col. Boyd to repair to Wyoming, in the month of September, who found the valley aban- doned by whites and Indians. From the " Pennsylvania Gazette,'''' Nov., 1763. Extract of a letter from Paxton, in Lancaster county, dated Oct. 23 : ^6 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. In 1Y68, those persons who were interested in this pur- chase, upon the Susquehanna Kiver, met at Hartford, Connecticut, and " resolved that 5 townships, live miles square, should be surveyed and granted each to 40 set- tlers " in Westmoreland. Thus persons were induced to migrate to these wild and then almost worthless lands. These original settlers, or proprietors, were each to have a whole share, or settling right, or half-right, on wliicli they were obligated to remain, so as to be able to repel encroachments either of tlie Indians or those from Pennsylvania claimants. Forty settlers tlius emigrated to Wyoming, where they arrived February 8, 17G9 — 200 otliers followed in the spring.* These settled in the live townships, then existing, viz. Wilkes Barre, Hanover, Kingston, Plymouth and Pittston. Tlie wilderness between the settled points of the East- ern States, and Canada, began now to fill up and feel the tide of emigration. Along the Wallenpaupack Creek was an "Indian clear- ing," near which the whites made a permanent settle- ment in 1774:.f Lands occu})ied by the original emi- grants here are known as " The Walleiipaupack Manor." " When the first Wyoming emigrants from Connecti- " Our party, under dipt. Clayton, lias returned from Wyoming, where they met with no Indians, but found the New Englanders who had been killed and scalped a day or two before we got thei^e. We buried the dead, nine men and a woman, who had been most cruelly butchered ; the woman was roasted, and had two hinges in her hands, supposed to be put in red hot, and several of the men had awls thrust into their eyes, and spears arrows, pitchforks, etc., sticking in their bodies. We burnt what houses the Indians had left, and destroyed a quantity of Indian corn. The enemy's tracks were up the river, toward Wighaloasing." * Miner's Ilistory. f Ibid. SEITLEMENT UPON TtlE SUSQUEHANNA. rUROIlASE. 57 cut reached the Wullenpiiu])}ick, the iiiiuii Ixxly hiilted, and some pioneers were sent forward in a westerly di- rection to procure intelligence of the position of tho country on the Hus<{ut'haima. Tlie pioneers followed the Indian patii before alluded to, leading from Oocliecton in New York, across the Lackawaxen, to the point on the Wallenpaupack below the Carter House, where there was an " Indian clearing," and thence to tho " Indian clearing " on the Susquehan- na. This path crossed " Cobh Mountain." TIk^ |)ioneers attaincul the; summit, from which the Susquohuima was in viow, in the evening, and biiilt up a large lire to in- dicate to the settlers tlie point to which they should di- rect their course. Tlic! next morning the emigrants commenced their jcujriiey, building their road as they proceeded. That road, being the Sterling road before mentioned about a miU; down the creek, below the site of the Carter iiouse, is the one which is now constantly travelled be- tween Wilkes Barre and Milford. It is said to have been most judiciously located. The point on which the fire was built on Cobb's Mountain, was near the present residence of John Cobb, Es(|., and is pointed out by tho people residing on the Walleni)aupack to the i)re8ent time.* The " Lackawa" settlement was in the Walh^npaupack Manor, and was not merely within the territorial limits of Westmoreland, but united in jurisdiction ; taking part in the Government, and attending elections at Wilkes Uarrcf * Mincr'a History of Wyoming. f Ibid. 3* 58 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. PENNYMITE SETTLEMENT. Lands upon the Susquehanna, purchased in 1754 of the Five ISTations by the Susquehanna Company, were also sold in 1768 by the Indians, to the Pennsylvania Propri- etors. With a view of turning to some account this purchase, one hundred acres of it were leased by the Pennymites to Ogden Stewart and Jenkins, for the term of seven years for the purpose of establishing a trading house in the Wyoming Yalley, which from the contiguity of numer- ous tribes of Indians and the abundance of furs, was supposed could not fail to result greatly to the advantage of its projectors. The first gaze of Ogden and. his party upon Wyoming was given in January, 1769. He took immediate pos- session of the rude block house at Mill Creek, from which the Connecticut emigrants had. been driven six years before. One month later — on the 8th of February, 1769, the first forty of the Connecticut settlers arrived at the Block House, and finding it in the possession of an enemy, pre- pared, to recapture it."^ The alternate successes and reverses of the subsequent civil conflict upon the fertile flats of Wyoming, although alfecting in a greater or less degree the few inhabitants along the Lackawanna, possess too little general inte- rest to draw larger or longer upon the patience of the reader. • Chapman. TRENTON DECREE. 69 TRENTON DECREE. For a period of nine years Connecticut held jurisdic- tion over Westmoreland, when the long and fratricidal dispute here, between Pennsylvania and Connecticut claimants, was settled by the " Decree of Trenton." During the Eevolutionary War, State governments were too much absorbed in the great life-struggle to remedy internal strifes and wrongs, even when they ap- pealed urgently for redress, but when Lord Cornwallis surrendered his army on the 19th of October, 1Y81, to the American and French forces, thus virtually closing the war, it imparted to individuals as well as to States the brightest hopes of domestic repose. Immediately after this momentous event, the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania j^etitioned Congress to have some measures adopted to settle the respective claims of Pennsylvania and Connecticut, to lands lying upon the Susquehanna and Lackawanna. Five Commis- sioners composing this Court met at Trenton Nov. 12, 1782, and, after a session of forty-one judicial days, de- cided that Connecticut had no right to the lands in con- troversy.* This decision which gave peace to a region long har- assed by internal warfare, is known as the Trenton Decree. In 1787, the confirming law was passed. It provided " that all said rights or lots, now lying within the county of Luzerne, which were occupied or acquired by Con- necticut claimants, who were actual settlers there, at or before the termination of the claims of the State of * Miner. 60 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. Connecticut, by the (Trenton) decree, aforesaid, and which rights or lots w^ere purticulai'lj assigned to the settlers prior to the said decree, agreeably to the regula- tions then in force among them, be and they are hereby confirmed to them and their heirs and assigns." April, 1790, this act was repealed. In 1799, an act similar to the one repealed was passed, providing for a final settlement of the prolonged controversy, so far as it related to the inhabitants of the seventeen town- ships.'^ Commissioners were appointed by this act, to re-sur- vey all lands claimed by Connecticut settlers as well as Pennsylvania claimants, situated in these townships, which were then to be released or re-conveyed by such claimants to the Commonwealth. A number of settlers in the Lackawanna had bought and paid both the Sus- quehanna Company and the State of Pennsylvania, for their lands, but in order to restore harmony, and give full operation to the compromising law, they surren- dered their titles again to the State for a mere nominal consideration, and purchased their own lands again at the appraisement of the Commissioners appointed by the State. Such land, according to its quality, was divided into four classes : " As soon as forty thousand acres should be so released to the State, and the Connecticut settlers claiming land to the same amount should bind them- selves to submit to the determinations of the Commis- sioners, then the law was to take effect and the Penn- sylvania claimants, who had so released their lands, were to receive a compensation for the same, from the trea- * Miner, FIRST SETTLEMENT IN LACKAWANNA VALLEY. 61 siiiy, at tlie rate of $5 per acre for lands of the first class, $3 for the second, $1 50 for the third, and twenty-five cents for lands of the fourth class. The Connecticut settlers were also to receive patents from the State, confirming their lands to them upon condi- tions of paying into the State Treasury, the sum of $2 per acre, foi- lands of the first class ; $1 25 for lands of the second class ; fifty cents for lands of the third class, and 8J cents for lands of the fourth class." * FIRST SETTLEMENT IN LACKAWANNA VALLEY. Contemporaneous with the permanent settlement of the Wyoming Yalley, began that of the Lackawanna. This was in the summer of 1709. The first party of emigrants from Connecticut, as they came into Wyoming or Westmoreland this year, located themselves in a body as much as possible, so as better to defend themselves from attacks, should they come from the red or the white man. After the Pennsyl- vania claimants had been temporarily ex])elled from Wyoming, the Yankees began cautiously to extend their " pitches,"f farther back into the unpruned wilder- ness. Five towns were originally recognized in Westmore- land; subsequently it was divided into seventeen towns, or districts. Settlers were permitted '^ to make a pitch " or settle in any of the towns, only by the consent, or the vote, of the inhabitants, who held their stated meet- * Chapman. f The homes or clearings of the settlers took this name. 62 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. ings at Wilkes Barre Fort ; and then only upon certain stipulated conditions. " At a meeting of ye Inhabitants of ye townships at Wyoming, in Wilksbury, legally w^arned and held Dec. 7, 1771, Capt. Zebnlon Butler, was chosen moderator for ye day," it was voted " that this Company is to take in Settlers on ye following Considerations, that those that take up a Settling Right in Lockaworna, shall pay to this Company Forty dollars ; and those that take a Right in Wilksbury or Plymouth, shall Pay Fifty Dollors ; and those that take a Right in Kingstown shall pay Sixty Dollors all for ye use of this Company, etc."* A committee was also appointed to take bonds from those who should be admitted as settlers. Lackawanna — or Lockaworna, as it then was desig- nated — being farther from the main settlement and con- sequently more exposed to wild beasts and Indians, than either Wilkes Barre or " Kingstown," was offered * Westmoreland Records. — These old Records, wliich deserve a more honored place than the musty coop they occupy in Wilkes Barre, are the records of the doings and laws of the Colony at Wyoming, while the authority of Connecticut was acknowledged here. As often as occasion required, the settlers met together at Wilkes Barre Fort, or at Kingstown, to pass laws and transact public business. These meetings were designated as " ye meeting of ye Proprietors " where all who chose to attend had an equal voice in the proceedings. A " moderator " was chosen at each meeting as well as a " clerk," whose duty it was to record in a book purposely kept, all the proceedings. This book took the place of Blackstone and Chitty, and was commenced in 1^70, and terminated only with the expulsion of the jurisdiction of Connecticut, at Wyoming, in 1783. We know of no other ancient manuscript, whose publication would afford more interest and insight of other days, than the three or four written volumes of Westmoreland Records which are now so rapidly passing to decay. FIRST SETTLEMENT IN LACKAWANNA VALLEY. G3 to the adventurer upon terms apparently more advan- tageous. Lackawanna, then extending the farthest up the Lackawanna Yalley of any of the existing Districts, contained in 1770, only thirty-five settlers. In regard to these, it was voted April 25, 1772, by this Company, '' that those 35 men that is now in ye township of Lockaworna shall be entitled to all ye Companyes Right to sd. township." With a view of imparting to the colony, a healthy, moral stamina, a committee of five were appointed at the same meeting " to admit settlers into ye six mile township. But for no one of the committee to admit in settlers unless ye major part of said Committee be present to admit," etc. and then to allow only " such as good wholsom inhabitants " to settle. December 17, 1771, " this meeting is opened and held by adjournment, voted, that Joseph Sprague, David Sandford, Barnabus Cary, Elezer Cary, jun., Arter French, Jolm Frazier, Timothy Reine, jun., Stephen Harden, and Caleb Bates, have each one, a Settling Right in ye township." Not only had morality its defenders in the early set- tlers, but industry was considered one of the essential virtues at this period, for at the meeting held in Wilkes Barre, December, 1771, it was voted '^ that Frank Phil- lips be admitted to Purchoys a settling Right in Locka- worna, Provided he puts on an Able Bodyed man on sd. Right and Due Duty Equal to ye Rest of ye Settlers," etc. April 29, 1772, voted " that Samuel Slougher is ad- mitted in as a Settler, in ye Room of Mortin Nelson, in ye township of Lockorworna," and in January 13, 1772, voted " that David Carr is admitted in as a Settler in 64: LACKAWANNA VALLEY. Lockaworna & lies Given His Bond for Forty Dollors," etc. Samuel Harden and Solomon Johnson were residents of the valley at this time, for in December, 1YY2, Har- den was chosen collector for Pittston, and Johnson " for ye town of Providence." Out of the original number of 240, who emigrated to Wyoming in 1769 — all of whom were males — only 35 were located along the Lackawanna. The old " AVest- moreland Records," while they furnish so much that is valuable, fail to throw any light upon the precise loca tion of these ; they all lived, however, near the mouth of the stream. The absence of any block-house or fort nearer than Pittston, to afford security at night or day, in case of any great emergency, rendered the settlement farther up the stream neither desirable nor safe. A block-liouse was built in Pittston in 1772. At a meeting of the proprietors and settlers, held in Wilkes Barre, May 20, 1772, it was voted " that ye Proprietors Belonging to ye town of Pittston Have ye Liberty to Go into their town, and there to fortyfie and Keep in a Body E'ear together and Gourd by themselves until fur- ther notice from this Committee." Pittston, one of the original towns, lying as it did but a little distance above the block-house at Mill Creek, be- gan to fill up with the Yankee emigrants, before the Lackawanna Yalley. Among the early families here, were the Marcys, Careys, Bennetts, Benedicts, Blanch- ards. Sawyers, Silbeys, St. Johns, and Browns. One of the forts at Pittston, being built by the Browns, took the name of Fort Brown, and was commanded at the time of the Wyoming massacre by Captain Blanchard. FIRST SETTLEMENT m LACKAWANNA VALLEY. 65 By the roadside in Pittston township, could be seen, a few years ago, the remaining stone once forming the rude chimney of one of the earliest cabins of the white man, from which a faint wreath of smoke arose in 1770. This cabin was erected by Zebulon Marcy, who emi- grated from Connecticut the same year, in the 26th year of his age. He was brother of Ebenezer, who shortly after came into possession of the narrow clear- ing with its modest dwelling. Choosing this spot upon the warrior's path from its inviting situation and soil for his residence, his little Hut- tentot-like hut, subsequently became famous for its hos- pitable fireside. This was but a short distance below the retrograding locality — long known as " Old Forge." At the time of the Wyoming massacre in 1778, Ebe- nezer Marcy was engaged with his comrades in defend- ing the valley below from the ravages of the British, Tories and Indians, when the news of the defeat of the Wyoming soldiers flew through the defenceless settle- ment with painful rapidity. Marcy 's wife was among the fugitives who fled from the valley, on the evening of the 3d of July, 1778, across the mountains to Strondburg. She " was taken in labour in the wilderness. Having no mode of conveyance, her sufi'erings were inexpressi- bly severe. She was able to drag her fainting footsteps but about two miles that day. The next, being overtaken by a neighbor with a horse, she rode, and in a week's time was more than 100 miles with her infant from the place of its birth. ""^ The child born then and subse- quently married t^\;ice, died a short time since in "Wyo- ming county. Miner. ()6 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. Marcy liiiiiself was a man of some prominence and usefulness in liis clay, and January 30, 1772, was chosen the first Constable in Pittston. Barnabas Carky, whose right to settle here was voted in 1771, pitched farther up the valley, where, from the fallen tree and gathered bark, he fashioned a frail cabin, so as to afford a little protection from the storms and the w^olves. It is believed to have been the first one erect- ed by the white man above the Falls of the Lackawanna. The next year, 1772, Carey sold his claim to " the eight meadow Lott in ye township of Lockaworna to Jere- miah Blanchard for thirteen pounds and four shillings." John Taylor early made his " pitch " in Providence. He sou2:ht the solitude of the Lackawanna forest while he was young and filled with boy-dreams, settling near the farm, now familiarly known as " Uncle Jo. Grif- fin's." With no companions but his axe, his spade and his ri- fle at the time, he subsequently became a man of more than ordinary usefulness in the colony. lEe was a mem- ber of a number of committees, which received their existence with the expansion of the settlement, and he took an active part in the social and political organiza- tions of the day. Constant Searles and John Phillips were among the Connecticut emigrants who located in the valley in 1771. Frank (Francis) who was voted a settling right in " Lock- aworna" in December, 1771, was the father of John — then only 14 years of age, and settled in the " gore," between Pittston and Providence ; his lands adjoining those of Barnabas Carey. In April, 1777, Phillips' farm was sold to his son John for thirty pounds current money. Among the five commissioners chosen to purchase FIRST SETTLEMENT IN LACKAWANNA VALLEY. 67 land, whereon to erect tlie necessary public buildings, at the time Luzerne coujity was formed, in 1786, appears the name of John Phillips. After the Trenton Decree authorized a re-survey of the prolonged disputed lands in the old certified town- ships, the Pennsylvania soldiers, excited and brutal with rum, began to lay open fields of grain for common pas- turage, destroying all belonging to the Yankee settlers, while establishing the boundaries of Pennsylvania, re- gardless of those of Connecticut. Phillips and his family were among those driven from their farms in 1784, in a manner so graphically described below by Charles Miner, in hi sllistory of Wyoming : — " On the 13th and Idth of May the soldiers were sent forth, and at the point of the bayonet, with the most high-handed arrogance, dispossessed one hundred and fifty families ; in many instances, set fire to their dwell- ings, avowing the intention utterly to expel them from the country. Unable to make any efi'ectual resistance, the people implored for leave to remove either up or down the river, as with their wdves and children, in the state of the roads, it would be impossible to travel. A stern refusal met this seemingly reasonal)le request, and they were directed to take the Lackawaxen road as lead- ing most directly to Connecticut. But this wayconsisted of sixty miles of wilderness wdth scarce a house ; the roads were wholly neglected during the war, and they then beG:2:ed leave to take the Easton or Stroudsburg route, where bridges spanned the larger streams, still swollen by recent rains. All importunities were vain, and the peoj^le fled towards the Delaware, objects of destitution and pity that should have moved a heart of marble. About five hundred men, women and children, bo LACKAWANNA VALLEY. with scarce provisions to sustain life, plodded their wea- rj way mostly on foot, the roa^s being impassable for wagons ; mothers carrying their infants, and pregnant women literally wading the streams, the water reaching to their arm-pits, and at night slept on the naked earth, the heavens their canopy, and scarce clothes to cover them. A Mr. John Gardner and John Jenkins, both aged men and lame, sought their way on crutches. Lit- tle children, tired with travelling, crying to their mo- thers for bread which the}^ had not to give them, sunk from exhaustion into stillness and slumber, while the mothers could only shed tears of sorrow and compassion, till in sleep they forgot their griefs and cares. Several of the unfortunate sufferers died in the wilderness, others were taken sick from excessive fatigue, and expired soon after reaching the settlements. A widow with a numerous family of children, whose husband had been slain in the war, endured inexpressible hardships. One child died, and she buried it as she could beneath a hem- lock log, probably to be disinterred from its shallow cov- ering and be devoured by wolves." A little mound, spread over with wild vines, lies by the old roadside in Salem, where this child was buried. '' One shocking instance of suffering is related by a survivor of this scene of death, it is the case of a mother whose infant having died, roasted it by piece- meals for the daily subsistence of her suffering chil- dren."* Elisha Harding who formed one of this party, says, that " the first night we encamped at the Capouse ; the second at Cobb's, the third at Little Meadows (Salem), cold, hungry, and drenched with rain, the poor women * Chapman. ISAAC TRIPP. 69 and children suffenn^r miicli. The fourth night at Lackawaxen, fifth at Bhjomington, sixth atShchuhi, and seventh on the Delaware, where the people disbanded, some going up and some down the river." Pennsylvania repudiated this ferocious conduct of the soldiers, and at once indignantly dismissed the respective companies engaged in proceedings so infamous.* After the Compromising law gave peace to the valley, Phillips returned, taking possession of his former farm. Timothy Keys, Andrew Hickman and Ilocksey, set- tled in Providence Township, in 1771. Six years later they were all killed by the Indians. keys was chosen Constable of Providence, June 30, 1772.' Among the five first women in the Wyoming Valley, was the wife of Hickman. At this time the old Records inform us that "Augustine Hunt, one of ye Proprietors in ye Susquehanna Pur- chois has made a pitch of about one^ hundred and fifty acres of Land in Lockaworna township." ISAAC TRIPP. Among the names of the original Proprietors of the Susnuelianna Company, appears that of " Isaak Tryp." Emigrating to the Wyoming, in 1769, with the first Pioneer Company, and, finding the blockhouse at Mdl Creek in possession of the Pennymites, under Captam Ogden, Tripp and his -€ompanion8 made preparations to recapture a prize of such vital importance to their Colonial existence. Tripp himself, had seen some service in the J^rencU * Miner. TO LACKAWANNA VALLEY. and Indian wars, of that period, while a few of his com- panions had been schooled in the raw exercises of the Militia of Connecticut. All however, were familiar with the use of the musket, for their flint guns, powder- horns, and shot bags, had often accompanied them in former days, in pursuit of game. But with their conceptions of military discipline or border life and warfare, they were here completely out- witted by the superior tact of the party in the block- house, under Captain Ogden. Ogden, " having only ten men able to bear arms, one-fourth only of his invad- ing foe, determined to have recourse to negotiation. A very polite and conciliatory note was addressed to the commander of the fortij^ an interview respectfully solicited, and a friendly conference asked on the subject of the respective titles. Ogden proved himself an ac- complished angler. The bait was too tempting. Pro- pose to a Yankee to talk over a matter especially which he has studied, and believes to be right, and you touch the most susceptible chord that vibrates in his heart. That they could out-talk the Pennymites, and convince them the Susquehanna title was good, not one of the forty doubted. Three of the chief men, were deputed to argue the matter, viz : Isaac Tripp and Benjamin Pollet, two of the executive committee, accompanied by Mr. Yine Elderkin. ]^o sooner were they within the block-house, than Sheriff Jenkins clapped a writ on their shoulders. — ' Gentlemen, in the name of the Com- monwealth of Pennsylvania, you are my prisoners !' 'Laugh when we must, be candid when we can.' The Yankees were decidedly outwitted. By common con- sent the prisoners were transported to Easton jail, guarded by Captain Ogden ; but accompanied in no ISAAC TRIPP. 71 hostile manner, by the thirty-seven remnants of the forty." * Tripp was liberated from jail by his friends at once, and returning again to the valley, was a continual actor in the seven years' conflict before it found a peaceful solution. Upon the old Records, the name of Isaac Tryp or Esq. Tryp, as he was familiarly termed, often occurs. At a meeting of the Susquehanna Company, held at Hartford, June 2d, 1773, for the purpose of electing officers for the Westmoreland Colony, Gideon Bald- win, Timothy Keys and Isaac Tripp were chosen Direc- tors or Proprietors of Providence. By reference to that curious body of fact and litera- ture — the Westmoreland Records — we find the first pur- chase of land in Providence, by Tripp, was made in 1774. This was upon the flats subsequently known as " Tripp's Flats." As tlie deed, from its age and peculi- arity possesses some local interest it is inserted entire. " To all People to whom these Presents shall come. Know ye that I Daniel Adams of west-moreland, in ye County of Litchfield and Colony of Connecticutt, in New England, for and in Consideration of Ninety pounds Currant money, of Connecticutt, to me in hand. Paid Before ye Ensealing hereof to my full satisfaction by Isooc Tripp, Esq., of ye same town, County and Colony, aforesaid, ye Receipt whereof I am fully sattisfyed and contented and Do therefore freely, fully, and absolutely Give, Grant, Bargain, Sell, alienate, Convay, and Con- firm unto him, ye said Isooc Trypp, His Hairs, Execors. Adminors. and assighns, for Ever all and singular one * Miner. 72 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. Certain Lott of land, Lying and Being in ye township of Providence, Known by No. 14, Lying on the west side of Lockawarna River, and Butted and Bounded as follows : abuting East on sd. River ; west on sd. town Line, North and South on Land Belonging to sd. Tripp, and Contains by Estimation 875 acres, be ye same more or Less, Reference being had to ye Survay of sd. town for ye more perticulerments. Bounds thereof to be and Remain unto him ye sd. Isooc tripp, and to his heirs, Execu — ors, or Admin — ors, or assigns for Ever free and clear from me, ye sd. Daniel Adams, or any Heirs, Execu — ors, or Admin — ors, or assigns, or any other Persons by from or under me or any part thereof, as witness my hand this 7th Day of July, in ye year of our Lord, 1774, and in ye 14th year of his majosties Raign. "Signed, sealed, and Delivered In Presence of " Danl. Adams. " Nathan. Denison and '' Saml. Slater, Jr. " Received ye above Deed to Record July ye 8th, A.D. 1774, and Recorded By me. " EzEKiEL Peirce, clcrk." Tripp, being one of the original proprietors of the Town of Providence, had already located himself within the old Indian clearing, as early as in the summer of 1771. Providence at that time was designated as the " sixth town of ye Capouse Meadows." These flats, perpetuating the name of the first white settler upon them, are now in the possession of another branch of the Tripp family. Isaac Tripp, the grandson of Isaac Tripp the elder, ISAAC TKIPP. 73 came into the valley in 1774, choosing this spot for his residence. They were both " taken prisoners in 1778, and two young men by the name of Keys and Hocksey ; the old gentleman they J^the Indians] painted and dismissed, but hurried the others into the forest (now Abington) above Liggitt's gap, on the warrior's path to Oquago. Resting one night, tiiey rose the next morning, travelled about two miles, when they stopped at a little stream of water. The two young Indians then took Keys and Hocksey some distance from the path, and were absent half an hour, the old Indian looking anxiously the way they had gone. Presently the death-whoop was heard, and the Indians returned, brandishing bloody toma- hawks and exhibiting the scalps of their victims. Tripp's hat was taken from his head, and his scalp ex- amined twice, the savages speaking earnestly, when at length they told him to fear nothing, he should not be hurt, and carried him off prisoner." '^ Finding him apparently happy and harmless, the Indians painted his face with their war-paint, which would enable him to pass with safety any body of In- dians he might chance meet on the war-path, and then allowed him to return to the Capouse again, where the next snmmer he was shot by the Indians who overran the valley. In the spring of 1803, two skulls and some human bones were found in Abington by Deacon Clark, upon the edge of the little brook passing through Clark's Green, and were at that time supposed to be, as they probably were, the remains of Tripp's two companions. * Miner. 4 74 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. Isaac Tripp the elder was shot by an Indian, in 1Y79, within speaking distance of the fort at Wilkes Barre. This was done under such singular circumstances, that we will relate the facts. At the time of the Revolutionary War, the British often offered large rewards for the scalps of Americans. This was done for the purpose of inciting the savages to more murderous activity, and to annoy and exterminate the frontier settlements as fast and frightfully as pos- sible. As Tripp was a man of some little prominence among his associates, the Indians were often asked by the British why he was not killed ? They replied, " Tripp was a good man." He was a Quaker, and his intercourse with the Indians had been so universally kind and conciliatory, that when he fell into their hands as a prisoner, in 1778, upon the flats of Capouse, they were not disposed to harm him, but let him go, after painting his face with war-paint, as it was their custom to do with those they did not wish to harm. A short time after this, Tripp was sent to Hartford, Connecticut, to represent the wants and the grievances of the Wyoming Colony, and he very naturally removed this paint from his face. After his return, a double reward was offered for his scalp, and having forfeited their protection by displacing the war-paint, was shot and scalped the first time he was discovered. The meadow lot, No. 13, in Lockawarna, was sold to Jeremiah Blanchard, for fifty pounds of lawful currency, by Dr. Joseph Sprague, one of the proprietors in the ISAAC TRIPP. 75 town. This sale, the records inform ns, was made on the " 27th day of Maj, and in ye 12th year of ye reign of our Sovereign Lord, George ye 3d, King, &c., a.d., 1772." John Stevens was a proprietor in ^' ye township called ye Capouse Meadow." As early as May, 1772, for the " Consideration of ye Love, Good will and affections I Have, & Do Bare towards my Loveing Son in Law John yoimgs, son to my wife Mary," he conveyed to Young a settling right at a place called " ye Capouse Meadow." In October, 1773, Maj. Fitch Alden purchased of John Stevens, of Wilkes Barre, " one Certain Lott of Land Lying in ye township of Providence on ye N'orth side of Lockaworna Kiver; sd. Lott is known by Num- ber two & Contains 370 acres." Fifteen pounds lawful currency was the price given. It does not appear that Fitch, Young, or Stevens ever settled in the forest of the Lackawanna, for its attractions at this period were few. Fitch sold his land in 1774 to John Alden, for eighty pounds New York currency. It must be borne in mind, that after the original sur- vey of the Connecticut Indian Purchase of the Susque- hanna Company, all the land thus embraced within their survey was laid out in lots or rights, many of which lay for years unimproved by a " pitch," while others were sold, by the proprietors of each town, for a small sum, and resold by the purchaser to any person who dare risk fortune or life among Indians, panthers, and wolves. 76 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. EAELY EMIGRATION. Previous to 1800, the settlement in the valley had made but little progress. The French and Indian wars, the 02)posing claims of Pennsylvania and Connecticut to the lands of West- moreland, and the absorbing war of the Pevolution, all contributed to darken, and at times to render hopeless and appalling, the life of the early emigrant. In fact, the greatest obstacle to the accretion of the settlement here was the rival claims to the country along the Susquehanna and Lackawanna. As early as 1768, a body of adventurers from Phila- delphia came to Wyoming, taking possession of lands which, in 1762, had been claimed and settled by others, and from which they were driven by the Indians in 1763. This led to the alternate success or expulsion of one party or the other, for a period of seven years, embitter- ing the intercourse of the colony, and giving a sangui- nary character to inhabitants naturally quiet, industri- ous, and peace-loving. Many, too, of those whose humble cabins stood along the Lackawanna, returned to the Delaware after finding the valley so exposed to cruelty and invasion from every quarter ; others moved down nearer the forts in Wyom- ing, so as better to avoid surrounding danger. Eighty-eight years ago, the settler fought against enemies more savage and exasperated than the yellow panther or the bear ! People in our easy day, can hardly estimate the exposure and insecurity of that time. The pioneer, as he toiled on the plain or in the narrow clearing, kept closely at his side his sharpened knife and ISAAC TEIPP. 77 loaded mnsket, expecting every rustle of the leaf to announce the stealth}^ approach of the savage. And even when they slept in their lonely cabins, their arms stood freshly primed beside them. The following persons were residents of the Lacka- wanna Yalley for a longer or shorter period between 1769 and 1776 : Names. Where Settled. When. Remarks. Erected the first stock- Thomas Brown Pittston 1169 ade here. Both slain in the Indian John Brown ti battle. Danl. St. John (( II'ZO Massacred in 1118, Erected first cabin i7i Zebulon Marcy (( u the valley. Purchased of Zebulon Ebenezer Marcy C( in 1111. First Collector in Pitts- Samuel Harden Lackawanna 1711 ton. First permanent settler Barnabas Carey (( u above the Lacka- wanna falls or rapids. Arter French (( " One " settling right" John Frazier (( 1 was voted to each Timothy Reme, Jr. (( (( ' one of these in Stephen Harden u " " Lockaworna." Caleb Bates u '* Isaac Tripp, the elder Capouse a Emigrated to Wyoming in 1169 First physician in the Dr. Joseph Sprague Lackawanna " valley. Martin Nelson (( " Voted a right. Emigrated to Wyoming Solomon Johnson Capouse (( in 1169. First Col- lector in Providence. Frank Phillips Lackawanna (( Right voted. Augustus Hunt u (( A proprietor. ^ Tomahawked in Ab- Timothy Keys Providence (( V ington, near Clark's Solomon Hocksey " " j Green, 1118. Andrew Hickman (( a Killed at Capouse, 1118. Samuel Carr Lackawanna 1112 Daniel Allen u u 1 All forfeited their Rickard Wert (( " 1 bonds. Peter Matthews {( u J 78 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. Name. Where Settled. When. Remarks. Frederic Curtis Providence 1773 Lived by trapping bea- ver. Isaac Tripp, the younger Capouse 1774 Located in the "Indian clearing." Thomas Pukits "Town of ye Ca- pouse Meadow." (( Soon removed. Wm. Shoy Pittston " Purchased of Hickman. John Dewit Capouse (1 Half right voted. Wm. Hopkins Pittston (( Purchased of Bates. Isaac Baldwin u " Purchased of Moses Utler. Cabin stood near the James Leggett Providence 1775 mouth of Leggett's brook. Gideon Baldwin (( (( Jonathan Haskall Pittston " Sold to Phillips his " pitch." 1 Jonathan Parker " " One of the famous " Boston tea party " visited Ca- pouse Meadow in the fall of 1776, with a view of making it his permanent residence, but while he was looking forward to the coming spring as the most suitable time to emigrate here with his family, he was taken ill and died. JAMES leggp:tt. That swift, loose-tongued tributary of the Lackawanna, leaping along the rocky staircase in the gap of the mountain between Abington and the valley, " Leggett's Creek," derived its name from Mr. Leggett. He was from " ye Province of New York," and liis axe was the first to swing in the deep forest where now lies the Heermans' farm."^ * This farm successively passed through the hands of Abraham Stanton, John Staples, David Thayer, James Leggett, James Bagley, Elephean Spencer, and McKeel, before it reached those of Harry Heer- mans. J AM KB LKGGKTT. 79 By iin original draught of the Town ot* Capouso, or Providence, this land fell into the hands of Abraham Stanton. This was in 1772. As it was so wild and seemed so worthless to him he sold it the next year to John Staples. By a vote of the Susquehanna Company Staples's right to this property was declared forfeited, and in 177-J: it formed a basis for speculation by David Thayer. His investment proved unfortunate, and he soon became poor as former owners. June 24rth, 1775, he sold out several tracts of land lying in this portion of the Lackawanna to James Leggett, who was the person first making an improvement upon it. A little distance above the present gristmill of Jud- 6on Clark, in Providence, Leggett cleared a small spot sufficiently large to show the fertility of the soil, where he erected his simple cabin, in 1775 ; but the treacher- ous, and often exciting aspect of border life, rendered sometimes appalling by the howl of the wolf or the wdioop of the red-man, contributed so little to his love of quiet, that he soon abandoned the place for a time, retiring to Wliite Plains. After the close of the Kevolutionary War, he again took possession of his land here, living upon it a num- ber of years, and upon this creek erecting the first saw- mill in this portion of the Lackawanna. That many others emigrated to the valley aiul left again without making a permanent pitch, there can be no doubt, while many of those thus onunu'rated becom- ing discouraged or alarmed during the Avar, sought the larger and safer settlement in Wyoming or at San- bury. 80 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. FIRST ROAD FROM PITTSTON TO THE DELAWARE. The nearest point from the Westmoreland Colony to the abode of the whites, was to the Delaware — a dis- tance of about forty miles. From this, the valley was separated by a country whose general features partook strongly of the sternness of the times ; and the interven- ing wilderness, frowning with wild beasts and the un- subdued savage, had through it no other road than that hurriedly constructed by the emigrating party from Connecticut, in 1769. This followed the warrior's trail, and was formed in a very indistinct manner, by simply removing the larger trees and a few of the more troublesome stones. Paths through the forest, made by the tread of the Indian for centuries, or tree-marks of the pioneer axe- man or hunter, furnished the only guidance along the profound wilderness. This natural privation to every frontier settlement— the absence of roads — and the necessity of a better com- munication with the parent State, or nearer villages along the Delaware, induced the proprietors and settlers, as they held their meeting in Wilkes Barre, October, 2d, 1Y72, to vote " that Mr. Durkins of Kingstown, Mr. Carey of Lockaworna, Mr. Goss for Plymouth, Mr. Danl. Gore for wilkesbarre, Mr. william Stewart for Hannover, are appointed a comtee to Draw sub- scriptions & se what they Can Git sighned by ye ad- journed meeting for ye making a Pode from Dilieware Piver to Pitts-town." At the adjourned meeting, held October 5th, 1772, it was " voted that Esq. Tryp, Mr. John Jenkins, Mr. Phil- FIRST ROAD FROM PITTSTON TO THE DELAWARE. 81 lip Goss, Mr. John Durkins, Captain Bates, Mr. Daniel Gore, Mr. william Stewart are appointed Comtee-men to mark out ye Rode from Dilleware River to Pitts- town," etc. This committee were to act until the completion of the road. October 19th, 1772, " voted that Esq. Tryp is appointed to oversee those persons that shall from time to time be sent out from ye severall towns to work on ye Road from Dilleware River to this place & so that ye work be Done according to ye Directions of ye Comtee, that was sent out to mark out ye Road," etc. This herculean task, at that day, was commenced in ISTovember 1772 ; every person who owned a settling- right in the valley, as well as those living upon " ye East Branch of the Susquehanna River " contributing towards its construction. Wages paid then for the necessary labor would hardly be deemed tempting to the idler of to-day, for it was " voted, that those Persons that shall Go out to work on ye Rode from Dilleware River to ye westermost part of ye Great Swamp Shall Have three sillings ye day LawfuU money for ye time tliey work to ye Exceptance of ye overseors ; and from ye Great Swamp this way, shall Have one shilling and sixpence pr. Day and no more," etc. Tripp, who was appointed to oversee the work, was allowed " Five Shillings LawfuU money pr. Day." This road — a road quite as important in its conse- quence, to the inhabitants of that day as any railroad communication subsequently has been to the valley — was at length completed, and it is said to have been very judiciously located. 4* S:^ 1 VOK \NY ANN V V \l \ KY. Mil Vr \ K Y OKI? A N I-' \ ru'>N . ^Vholl this iwid \vas built, tinios woro porilous iiuiood. As oarlv :is l7Ti\ it was voted that oaoh sottUn- should provide hiiuselt with a tliut loek and aiuinuuitioii, and cvntinue to iriiani mui scout around the sertlenieut. Th^\ie gvuuine outlets to Yankee patriotism — **7ra/Vj- in '"- -seem hove to have had a hurried ineep- tion. At a uieetiiii; vn" the iuhalnt^iutii and proprietors held Maivh i?i*d, 1 7 To, it was voted "that the Oomtee ot' Settlors be IX^sired to send to tlie several towns or to their Ooiutee RequiriniT them to Call all the Inhabitants in Kaeh of ye said towns to meet on Thui-sday Next at five a Olook in ye attornoou on sd. Pay in some Oon- vouiont place in sd. town, and that tliey then Chouse one Person in Kaeh ot' sd. towns as an otHcer to muster thorn vV: so that all aro ^nnpiipt acci^niino: to Law with tiro arms and ammunitions, vV that they Ohuso two Ser- givnts vV: a Olerk, vV: that the sd. ChietV otHcer is llerobv Commanded A: Dirocted to Call yo Inhabitants together once in 14 Days tV^r ye future until this Company oniers otherwise, vV that in Case of an allarm or ye appearance of an Enemy, he is Diivcted to Call ye sd. Inhabitants together v^ st5\nd for ye Defense of ye sd. towns ^V- settle- ments without any furiher onier."* Orxler and discipline were not only oWerved in a military jxMut of \iew% hut wore carried into every social, cx^mmercial and domestic arnuigoment. Thus by paying a trille, settlers had voted to them au UELKilON, TKMI'KiiANCK, ANJJ BTILL-JIOUBEB. 83 ear 7ri/ir]c for ca,ltlc and blioep. Tlio Jtocordn tell us that " JoHcph HtaplcB, IjIh Ear mark a hXj^uarc Hole tlirough ye Left Ear." "JobTryjj ye 2nd, His Ear mark — a Brnootli CroBH of ye i^eft Ear, Ai a Half jxiurie ye fore Hide of i'^ack Ear." '' WilJiain Jtay/iold, IiIb Ear mark a swallow's tail in ye lei't Ear <^ a Half Cross on ye Jtigljt Ear. ''Mwiitvi'A April 28tli, 1774, pr. me Ezekiel Pierce, Clerk." JoIjm J^liil lip's ear mark was " a smootli cross of ye Jti^lit Ear &; a Half jjeuney ye fore side ye same." 8 wine, too, liad rigid laws imposed upon them. A wandering one having intruded or broken into Mr. KufiJB J.awrence's field of oats, " back in tlie woods," damaging thereby 15 bushek of oats, " August ye 23d, 1777, then ye above stray Hog was sold to ye Highest J>idj)(H*n,t,i<>im ol* lliiH loi'/^-ci wvvv, iiccdHsjirily liniilcd. IlHcxir.'ict.ion in \)\c\. Ikmii*; Ji.llriHlcd willi moiHi I.'iJkh- limii icjil |»rolil, iillimjitc.ly coinix-licd il, 1,0 ho .Hl>iiMd()ii(^d. Two lircs .Mild one li'i|> liMiniucr riirniHii(Ml .-iIxmiI. lOO )»<>iiii«ls of iron ill Iwclvt^ lioiirs ; IIiih wjim j»i'iiici|>.'dly ImInCII II|> IIic SllK(|ll('Il}MIII!l I(iv(M" ill ho.'ilH. I )i-. Siiiilli, ill ISIO, iii.'idc^ .'I very Hiiit!;iiljir will, .'MkI in ISI.S lie died in 'l'niii< luiniiock, u\. llid ri|Mi jii^'c of !)(. Ill 1S;>S, liin licirH riuuMV^d iVoiii ( Ioii^ih^kk, llio huiii ol' $2,-100, ns pay ior Aclini; Siirous(^ ncMi* ilicuiorllicrn p.'irl of Scw.'ui- loii, ;ind wjiH, ln'lorci IIk^ jM'rivjd of \\n\ wliilc^K, |Ik5 only known tniil jipproMcliin;^' iJic valley iVoni IIk; (iasl. 'riu'lirnl road Iniill in IIki adjoining coiiiily of W.'iyiio, Htarl(Ml from ( liislicl unk (n(»\v I ):i,iii;i,sciiw), ;ind r;in from Mi(in('<^ lo \V\<^ Mddy (NarrowslnirL;-), IJumicu t.o llio nar- rows on llu^ La(dIK licin^ tli<; iicjinjsl, roul.c, it, wjik koI(;c,1,(;(|, und uh \t f'ollow(Ml tliis old tniil of t,ii(5 IndijiiiH, it, rccjuirc.d losH \ii\iov U> ^iv(; it, llui l(iW jKlvjint.a^cB it, ])(>hhohh(',(1 over tlio Hmr()ini(iiii^ wil Al>l><>tt,, wlio ret,nrned to M»o l.aekawanna Valley in 17Hf>, at tli(5 time t,li(!J renowned (Jol. Ktlian Allen, of Vermont, viHited Wyoniin^ Valley, with a view of forniini^ an indepcncJent Statxi oi' " W(»,Ht- inorelatid," with the (ya|>it.o] at WilkeH J>arr(!. I*hilij) waH a native ol' Windham connty, (Jonneetient, and had ])rcviouHly owned j)ro])(5rty in Wyoming, whieh lie had diH|)OHed of, in 1777, to Jiin more daring l)rot,hcr .lames, who was anion^ the numlx'.r expelled hy the 'J'orieH and Indijuis the ennui n^ year. After ]*hili|) liad exph)red the fine water-j)ow(5r alon^ the Lackawanna, with a view of HUj)})Iyinf:^ the prcwint or any future want that agri- cultural devch)prncnt in tlie (JapouHO Meadow, or o1h(5- where along tlie valley, could not fail to inspire, ho cornrneneed to enict a mere miniature; corn or griHt-mill, nj)on the northern bank of the Roaring Hrook,"^ junt im * This brook wan (jailed Nay aiig or Naw-yaii;; l»y Uifi IiidianH. Tlio <'tyiii(»l<>;^^y of UiJH word in WHiicUiiiif^ in (ioiil>l. TIm^ HyllaMo m/— pro- nounced Dum, wjciiiH to liavIit obstruction about the race of the forge, when he accidentally fell into the current while the forge was in full operation. The negro, who was at * Miner. THE SLOCUMS. 103 work with the trip-hammer at tlie time, sprang for a piece of wood, which, with great presence of mind, he placed under the hammer in such a manner as to arrest the motion of the water-wheel at once, leaving the buckets so in range with the race, that Slocum passed through with the current, coming out below the forge without sustaining any greater injury than the terrible fright the submarine journey gave him. What seems the most incredible is, that while Slocum was a man of more than liberal stature — weighing about two hundred pounds — he could pass alive through a race whose actual width was only eight inches ! His son Joseph yet retains the purse, etc., his father had in his pocket at the time of this remarkable adven- ture. Until after this impressive event, he never acknowledged the existence of another world. In 1810, although there were but three houses in Slocum Hollow, a postoffice was established here, and Maj. Slocum appointed Postmaster. Ten years later it was discontinued here, and the point upon the turnpike at Fellow's Corners selected as a more suitable place for the inhabitants in Providence to receive their letters and papers. The office itself was not exceedingly lucrative, for the mail was only brought here over the mountains from Easton ma Wilkes Barre once a week, upon horseback or by hand, and the grand total of the mail-bag in those times, for this destination, was often less than the mail matter now received each day by many business firms in the same vicinity. July 11, 1821, Ebenezer received a commission for Justice of the Peace. Previous to his death — which took place suddenly at Wilkes Barre — he had such a 104 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. strong presentiment that " the Hollow " would at some period be a great place, that he often wished he could revisit it fifty years after his departure. Although half of the time has not yet expired, a portion of his land is so divided and parcelled out among the sons of toil, and so changed, that could we summon his spirit from the '' vasty deep," he could even now hardly recognize his former home. Elisha Hitchcock, Esq., moved into the country from l^ew Hampshire in 1809, and purchased land in Slocum Hollow in 1816. For a period of twenty-four years he was the only person in the upper portion of this secluded glen. He has lived to see the forest re- treat before the intruding axe-stroke ; and by his long years of usefulness, sobriety, and experience, has con- tributed no little to elevate and improve the generation around him. The fine brick mansion, standing on the slope of the hill northeast of Scranton, from which one of the prettiest views of the valley, with its close-headed hills, is had, and where the villages, reposing in its bosom, and the sturdy locomotive sweeping along the greensward, as if it were mere chess-play, the rich farms, and the shaded streams, all make up a picture framed by the Moosic range of mountain, is the present residence of the venerable old gentleman. After the forge in Slocum Hollow had ceased to operate, in 1828, there was nothing at this point to attract the attention of the passer but the saw and grist- mill and the busy still-house of the Slocums. In 1828, the North Branch Canal was commenced at Pittston, and it was hoped by many of the citizens along the Lackawanna that it might be extended up this stream as far as Slocum Hollow or Providence. Meetings THE HISTORY OF SCKANTON. 105 were held in Hyde Park, Providence, and Blakely, for the purpose of urging upon the Legislature the propri- ety of extending " \h.Q feeder of this canal, or some other improvement, up the valley as far as would be thought of service to our citizens and the commonwealth." Al- though the moving spirit in these gatherings was Charles H. Silkman, the names of Thomas Griffin, "William Merrifield, Sylvenas Heermans, Elisha Hitch- cock, John Yaughn, William W. Winton, Moses Yaughn, Lewis S. Watres, and the veritable John Q. Smith, appear as a committee to correspond with the members upon the subject. "While these meetings denounced the " llacMeg drivellers^ in the shape of in- corporated companies," ^ they no doubt directed a little attention to the coal and iron hills along the valley, where nothing had been done yet in the way of their development, except by the simple operations of Dr. William Hooker Smith at Old Forge, by the Slocums at Slocum Hollow, and by the more comprehensive yet persecuted Maurice and William Wurts in the forest at Carbondale. It is a curious fact that the village of Scranton owes its inception to an effort made by the friends of the " Drinker Raih'oad " to get it constructed. Henry Drinker and William Henry, who were actively and prominently associated in this enterprise during a series of years of terrible commercial embarrassment and dis- aster, and who, after great pecuniary sacrifice and physical labor, could not infuse into the stubborn times the importance of this eastern outlet, although they themselves never despaired of ultimately seeing it * See Wilkes Barre Advocate, Dec. 19, 1838. 5* 106 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. opened, concluded to let the age ripen before again urging capitalists to look upon their proposed high- way. Years of reconnoissance along the western end of the contemplated route, made Henry so familiar with the mineralogical character of the country, that at a meeting of the friends of this road, held three days in Easton, in June, 1836, he expressed a belief that if an iron interest was awakened in the Lackawanna Yalley, a town would probably be built as well as the road. He proposed to the gentlemen present to erect a hlast furnace some- where on the route above Pittston, and if success attended the manufacturing of iron, as he was sanguine it would, it could not fail to accomplish in a short period of time the great desideratum years had failed to mature. Men composing this meeting were marked by strong good sense and liberal views, and yet this idea partook so much of the bold and the original, that with a single exception it received about the same attention from them as the public generally had given their own favorite project. Edward Armstrong, a gentleman of wealth, residing on the deliglitful east bank of the Hud- son, not only favored the proposition, but offered him- self to Mr. Henry as a partner in the purchase of land, and in the erection of such iron works at any point deemed most judicious by him, after a more minute sur- vey. Daring the summer of 1839, Mr. Henry traversed the country w^estward and southward, examining vari- ous places along the route, to find the best location. On the low, wild, narrow strip of land, lying almost in the forks of the Lackaw^anna and the Roaring Brook, from which Scranton itself seems to have exhaled.^ he found iron ore, the analysis of which proved so produc- THE HISTOIiY CF SCKANTON. 107 tive and inviting as to determine at once the site of tlie furnace. This tract of land comprised a portion of the old " Parsonage lot," which was so wisely set apart by the original laws of the Connecticut settlers in Westmore- land, for the use of the first minister in fee^ and which w^as so shrewdly obtained subsequently of the State of Pennsylvania, and disposed of by Elder William Bishop, the first Baptist preacher in the Lackawanna Yalley. This tract of land, after passing through several hands, had fallen into the possession of William Merrifield, Zenus Albro, and William Picketson. Situated as it was upon this brook, where water comes bubbling down from the mountain side ; imbedded with vast deposits of iron and coal ; and being on the route of the Susque- hanna and Delaware Pailroad, the location apparently furnished every feature and element essential to success. The ledge of rock here projecting its silicious face over the brook, promised a good article of hearth- stones for the furnace, and stone for the erection of the stack. Nor w^as this all; the ISTorth Branch* excite- ment was reaching its meridian. Col. H. B. Wright, and Chester Butler, Esq., two of the foremost politi- cians of the day in Luzerne county, became interested in the project, and gave assurance of its being car- ried up the Lackaw^anna, as far as Poaring Brook, so that limestone, for the use of the works, could be abun- dantly and cheaply furnished. Of all these facts, Mr. Armstrong was apprised by Mr. Henry in January, 1840; visited by him in the following March, when every arrangement was made * As early as 1817, an act to incorporate a company for improving the navigation of the Lackawanna Creek was passed. 108 LACKAWAKNA VALLEY. by them to form a copartnership in the pm*chase of this property, consisting of 503 acres, and in the erec- tion thereon of one or more blast furnaces. Henry returned to the valley ; and, after negotiating some three months for the land, finally purchased it for $8,000, or about $16 per acre — a price then considered enormous by people generally, for land possessing no otlier attractions than the useless minerals reposing within its bosom, and the huge stones and trees conceal- ing the scanty soil. As the purchase-money was to be furnished by Mr. Armstrong, he required the deed to be made in his own name. For the first payment, a draft of $2,500, in favor of the owners of the property, was given by Mr. Henry on Edward Armstrong, at thirty days ; but before it matured Mr. Armstrong was laid in his grave. A few days previous to his illness, which lasted but four days, he wrote to Mr. Henry "to be sure and secure the Slocum property." He died with the scarlet fever, a disease which, at the same time, carried off two of his children, and for a long time rendered helpless and heart-broken his wife. Thus death, at one stern blow, not only made the fireside desolate with grief, but seemed to claim for the sepul- chre the efforts of the living partner. Mr. Maitland, his administrator, at once wrote to Mr. Henry, at Stroudsburg, to abandon the purchase by all means. Depressed, but not daunted by this painful misfortune, he immediately wrote to Messrs. Merrifield, Albro, and Kicketson in Hyde Park, the news of the death of his late partner, and the non- acceptance of the draft; asking them to extend the time of payment thirty days, and in the meantime he would endeavor* to engage with other parties to step in THE HISTORY OF SCRANTON. 109 and take the place of Mr. Armstrong. Mr. Merrifield returned a prompt reply, that the request would be acceded to on tlie part of the sellers, provided funds were paid, should the sale be eflected, which were par in ISTew York. The death of ]\Ii'. Armstrong — a gentleman eminently able, consistent and liberal — introduced persons into the valley, who, subsequent to this event, began to figure conspicuously in its rapid and healthy develop- ment. ISTot willing to lose a bargain deemed so great, Mr. Henry left Stroudsburg to see some friends in Morris county, Kew Jersey, who before had been anx- ious to join an enterprise of this character. Meeting his son-in-law, Seldeu T. Scranton, who then resided at Oxford Furnace, New Jersey, he communicated these facts to him ; urging him to come forward himself, or induce his friends to do so, and assume, at least as far as the purchase and payment were concerned, the place of Mr. Armstrong. At a public meeting held at Stan- hope in the memorable year of coon-skins. Col. George W. Scranton learned from his brother Selden the nature of the contemplated purchase. It was at once deter- mined by them to go to the Lackawanna Yalley with Mr. Henry, and if, upon a personal examination of the property, it should be found as promising and valuable as represented, they then would assist in carrying out the purchase-agreement previously made by Mr. Henry. Mr. Sanford Grant, then residing at Belvidere, was solicited to accompany the exploring party, and join in the proposed purchase. On the morning of the 17th of August, 1840, the Messrs. Scrantons and Grant left Belvidere, and being joined at Stroudsburg by Mr. Henry, proceeded to 110 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. Slocuiii Hollow. It was then two days' journey from this point to the valley, over the old Drinker turnpike, Avhich lay over the swamps and jungles of the Pocona ; where nature seems to have concentrated all that is barren, o-loomv and sava^-e. Tiie passer who has es- caped with his life over the rude hospitalities of this turnpike, knows tliat the whole scenery from the Dela- ware to "Tlie Hollow" (now^ Scranton) consisted of nothing but mountains, hills, and woods, and, save the whir of some pheasant, or the wild babblings of the trout-brook, all was silence and desolation. Hardly a cabin or a sign of love and life appeared anywhere along this lonely road. The Urst night was spent in Covington, where a little round sign, creaking from a post standing almost in the road, announced that ''man and beast" %ver6 entertained. The next noon, the party reached Slocuni Hollow, drove into the woods and tied their horses to a tree, near where now stands the residence of Mr. Archibald ; wound their way among the slim pines and undergrowth of laurel and saplings, down the steep east bank of the Eoaring Brook to the large vein of coal then prominently ex- posed to view, and since opened and worked. None of the party, except Mr. Henry, had ever seen a coal- vein before. Among the brush and leaves, the pick previously concealed by Henry was exhumed, by the aid of which large pieces of coal and iron-ore balls, lying in the vicinity, were dug up. After nuiking a careful examination of the fine water-power then mur- muring idly through the property, they drove over to Hyde Park, having been nearly a half day surveying the unpruned premises without seeing or being seen by a single person. THE HISTORY OF 6CRANT0N. HI A single saw-mill, with its clattering saw, and two small, wooden dwelling-houses, were all the evidence upon this property that it had passed from the Indian to the white man. Immediately below and adjoining, lay the debris of the old forge of Slocum's, near which now stood the grist-mill, two dwellings owned by Bar- ton Mott, and next below was the large red stone house and barn of Samuel Slocum, which yet remain like landmarks of other days ; and a little schoolhouse, yet in use, made complete the town of Slocum Hollow in 1840. Mr. Hitchcock lived in the house now occupied by Charles F. Mattes, which was then considered a good way out of town. Harsh as seemed the features of the valley, and par- ticularly of the chosen portion of it, it was concluded to purchase, and on the following day the parties with whom Mr. Henry had negotiated accepted the renewed proposition, and the titles were executed. The parties in their return home, via Wilkes Barre, discussed vari- ous plans for an organization, preparatory to commenc- ing operations. Mr. Henry submitted a plan and the estimate for a blast furnace, with sufficient houses to accommodate the necessary workmen. The Company now consisted of four persons, viz., S. T. and G. W. Scranton, S. Grant, and W. Henry. It was decided to unite Philip H. Mattes with the enterprise. He examined the purchase and became a partner, when the Company was immediately organized under the firm of Scrantons, Grant & Co. On the 11th of September, 1810, the first day's work for this Company was done here upon the furnace by Mr. Simon Ward, under the direction and superinten- 112 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. dence of Ileniy, who had moved his family from Stroudsburg to the house now occupied by Henry Fellows, in Hyde Park. Hyde Park contained at this time one store, one tavern, and six or eight dwellings; Providence (then RazoTville)^ some ten or twelve, while Dunmore {alias The Corners, or Biichtown)^ simply four brown, nn- painted buildings. JSTew men naturally introduced new names into a region which was found so silent and drow^sy among the pines. At first, it was the simple, sweet-sounding Capouse, replete with Indian song and legend. Hardly had the Slocums destroyed the balance between the savage and the civilized life by the erection of their structures upon the bank of the brook before " Deep," or "Slocum Hollow," became a place famous for its good whishy. In fact, it retained this name from 1Y98 until 1840, when "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" were sweeping like an avalanche towards the White House, and then Mr. Henry gave to the new work and the location the name of Harrison. This name, affording as it did evidence of the proverbial feebleness of the American people in name-j)ower and invention, lost caste after eight or ten years. Scrantonm was now substituted as being more beautiful and less meaning- less. But the boy with his father's clothes on could hardly sw^addle, so the doctor w^as called, and after a little amputating and medication, the name of Scranton was born — a name probably good enough, but how much more appropriate and musical would have been its primitive one, Capouse, or Lee-haw-hanna, or even Nay-aiig, the Indian name for the Poaring Brook ? Providence, too, has run through the curious and THE HISTORY OF SCRANTON. 113 purifying nomenclature of names. After the jurisdic- tion of Connecticut had departed from the Yankee town and county of Westmoreland (now Luzerne county, etc.), Providence was called Jamestown ; when the ''Drinker turnpike" was completed and brought, or was expected to bring, this portion of country exactly in the centre of the world, it was called Centre-mile^ and when a Jerseyman could not exchange his jpewter sixjpence, which he had long carried, for some of the inspiring rye, he wet his whistle indignantly with cold water, turned his back to the offending towm, which he called " Eazorville " — a name so full of music that for many years it was retained among Jerseymen. It finally returned to its first-love — Providence. But we digress. While a few tenant-houses and the furnace were being erected, the new county measure and the canal project up the Lackawanna — two unfortunate twin-chil- dren — began to excite a deeper interest. Already had a law been passed, authorizing the feeder dam to be located at the falls on said river, but as nothing yet had been done towards its construction, hopes w^ere entertained by the sanguine of having the northern terminus of the canal at or near the embryo town of Harrison. For the purpose of raising funds to defray the expenses of some individual to go to Harrisburg and advocate the proposed measure, a subscription was raised in January, 1841. This new company, through Mr. Henry, paid $5, Samuel Slocum and Barton Mott, $5 each, John Sax and S. P. Templin, fifty cents each ; to make the $25 up Mr. Henry paid $4. For this thankless, outside mission, Charles H. Silk- man, Esq., a lawyer, whose ingenious persuasions it was 114: LACKAWANNA VALLEY. supposed none could gainsay or resist, was selected, and although he drew up several bills favorable to the val- ley, and strenuously urged their adoption, the Canal Board, the Legislature, and even the Governor himself, after looking upon the measure with apparent approba- tion, averted their kindness, and both fell into a volca- nic grave. During this winter considerable progress was made on the furnace, and a small store-house, office, and dwelling, all under one roof, were erected. This build- ing, after being enlarged, was subsequently known as Kresler's Hotel. It is now torn down to make room for the imposing works connected with the manufacturing of iron. In the spring of 1841, Mr. Grant, with his family, came here, and the store of the Company, then opened, was conducted under his management for seve- ral years. Mr. Charles F. Mattes, son of P. H. Mattes, and representing his father's interest in the concern, also came here about this time, and from the time the first furnace was put in blast has been actively engaged at the head of some of the departments ; at this time he is the manager of all the Company's blast fur- naces. Iron was first made with anthracite coal about the year 1836 in Wales ; in 1837 the idea of using anthracite for smelting iron ore began to be agitated in the United States, and few thought it would succeed, although bitu- minous coal had thus been employed about one hundred years before for this purpose in England. Experiments made in 1837 and 1838 proved such failures, that those who had witnessed their phenomena, saw nothing to hope for in the final result, but associations of loss and defeat- ed expectations. The first successful experiment was at THE HISTORY OF SCEANTON. 115 the Crane Iron Works, on the Lehigh, and the next at Danville. The furnace being erected at Harrison was to be adapted to the use of anthracite. It was contemplated from the first to use the iron ore, commonly called hall ore^ lying adjacent to one of the veins of coal running through the whole coal region, but it was found to be too expensive to mine. Fortunately for the Company, in the spring of 1841, a large, rich body of iron ore was dis- covered on the southern slope of the Moosic Mountain, about three miles from the furnace, which was purchased ; but in order to get the ore to the brook at Harrison, nearly four thousand acres of the intervening land had to be purchased, thus subjecting the Company to an in- vestment not contemplated nor provided for in the origi- nal outline and estimate. This unavoidable yet unfore- seen outlay, together with the increased cost of the iron w^orks, which were now ready to go into operation, and the cost of a new and expensive railroad constructed to these iron deposits in the mountain, three and a half miles distant, and the mining houses, etc., exhausted the capital and left, upon the very outset, an oppressive debt. Col. George W. Scranton, in the fall of 1841, became a temporary resident of Harrison, and at once an ener- getic associate with Mr. Henry in the superintendence of the affairs and interests of the Company, just as the furnace was ready to be put in blast. The first attempt to start it was made by Mr. Templin, the head founder, but the stack was new and wet, so the experiment failed. The next attempt was made by Mr. Clark, of Stanhope, N. J., and this, too, failed to produce the desired result. Alterations in the machinery and in the hot-air ovens were made, and the services of Mr. John F. Davis, a 116 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. practical workman and the present head founder, be- ing procured, the furnace was successfully blowed in De- cember, 1841. During the period of these disheartening attempts to start the furnace, which occupied some three months, it began to be generally feared and predicted in the neigh- borhood that the thing was a failure, if not actually a " Jersey humbug P but when the great obstacles had been rendered powerless, and the massive walls of the furnace yielded from the reddened crater great rolls and bars of iron, light broke in on the gathering cloud, and there was genuine rejoicing among the inhabitants of the valley, as well as among the Proprietors them- selves, who now looked forward with cheerfulness to the time when their united and untiring duties would be ap- preciated and rewarded. For several months, the oper- ations of the furnace were satisfactory, although the quantity of iron made was less than had been expected ; its quality for foundry purposes was fair, and for bar iron, superior. In the following spring, some alterations and improvements were made in the machinery. At this time the only market to any extent for the pro- duct of the furnace was on the sea-board. To this the Company had the choice or rather the necessity of only two routes, which were both hard, slow, and expensive, viz. the Delaware and Hudson Canal, and the other the North Branch and tide water Canal to Havre-de-Grace. In either case the iron was compelled to be drawn upon wagons. To the canal at Pittston it was seven miles, and to Carbondale, then the western terminus of the rail- road running to Honesdale, fifteen miles. The first year's product was shipped to New York and Boston, via Havre-de-Grace, at a time when great commercial THE HISTOEY OF SCRANTON. 117 embarrassment was pervading the wliole country, and threatening to annihilate manufacturing interests all over the country. Iron had fallen in price since the commencement of the furnace, 40 per cent., and in fact the demand for it soon became so feeble that it could not be sold at any price. This was not without its influence, even upon a Com- pany so sanguine and tireless as this, and had they not been temporarily relieved from financial difiiculty, at this time, by a loan made to them by Mr. Joseph H. Scranton and E. C. Scranton, then of Augusta, Georgia, it is difficult to conceive at this period, the disasters which, after accumulating, might have swept away this strug- gling Company, and left the Lackawanna Yalley enjoy- ing its slumber and visions of idleness for at least half a century to come. The enterprise, so far, had been a losing one, and it soon became apparent that making and selling pig-iron alone, would always make it so. All of the Company were disheartened, as they were out of money — out of credit — out of everything, and their notes could hardly be sold at 40 per cent, discount. Even Col. Scranton himself, with his naturally confident temperament, be- gan to despair. S. T. Scranton was sent to JSTew York to negotiate for funds, and the effective influence of his peculiar address was illustrated in the result of his mis- sion. The very first man he called upon was John H. Howland, who at once advanced the Scranton Company $20,000, and whose son John subsequently became a partner in the concern, and furnished additional capital. It was now concluded to make iron into bars and nails, thus giving it increased value, with 25 per cent, less ton- 118 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. nage to transport to market. To secure tlie largest ad- vantage from the location in the coal-basin, where coal was cheap, this pLan was adopted, and by the assist- ance of Mr. Howland began to mature. During this year (1843) the first rolling-mill and nail factory were commenced on the northern border of the brook where it first comes through the mountain rock into the valley. In February, 1844, the mill was completed, and the nail factory a few months afterwards ; both working to the fullest anticipations. Additional business rendered ne- cessary additional houses for employees, and this called for more capital than was at first apprehended to answer. In March, 1844, S. T. Scranton removed from Oxford Furnace, New Jersey, and settled at the " Lackawanna Iron Works," in Harrison, where he assumed the posi- tion occupied by his brother George, who in return took the place just vacated at Oxford Furnace, by Selden. For the next two years the business of the Company at Harrison was under the immediate supervision of Mr. Grant. The pLan of the village of Harrison being laid out in April 1841, by Captain James Stott of Carbondale, on a very small scale, however, it began to grow with jealous rapidity. Starting from nothing as it did, some of the surrounding villages of a dozen houses, feared it might at some distant day equal or perhaps rival theirs ! During this year an attempt was made by Dr. B. H. Throop, Chas. H. Silkman, Esq., and others, to get a post-office established here. There was at this time but two offices in the Township of Providence (now there are five), and letters reached this new Company only through the Hyde Park or Providence offices. x\s the application met with opposition from the two named places, and as tlie THE HISTORY OF SCRA.NTON". 119 Department at Washington saw no necessity for locat- ing an office within half a mile of the old one, at a point, too, so obscure that the Hyde Park office a number of years before, while Slocum was Post- master, was removed from it, the measure was easily defeated. Railroads — those great blood-vessels now pulsating with long, living, snaky trains throughout almost every portion of the Union — ^had begun to awaken throughout the country unusual attention. This naturally intro- duced among iron-men the subject of making rail- road iron. The English iron-masters across the water, had predicted that this was a branch of the trade that their ambitious, simple Brother Jonathan would never blunder into ; consequently, the monopoly of making the heavy T rail could never pass from their hands. How thoroughly this illusion has been dispelled, let the thousands of miles of railroads laid with this superior kind of rail bear evidence. The T rail was first made in the United States in 184:5. The same year the Scranton Company, after a little deliberation, decided to add this more profitable branch of the trade to their business. A happy circumstance, now threw upon the Company a glimpse of sunnier days. The New York and Erie railroad — that grand aoi'ta which now flows along southern New York, and over a mere corner of the '' Key-stone^'' State, and from which our own State steals $10,000 per year, for the simple privilege of crossing its before useless, inhospitable border — was at this time in operation no farther than Goshen, as the Company were besieged by embarrassment and surrendered the whole concern to new and stronger-headed men, soon after- 120 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. wards, who at once took hold of this magnificent under- taking, determined to push it to Lake Erie, as was origi- nally intended. English iron, which this road so far as completed was laid with, cost the Railroad Company $80 per ton. It was believed by the Scranton Com- pany that good T rails could be furnished the Erie Rail- road Company, especially upon the Delaware and Sus- quehanna divisions, on terms more advantageous to the interests of the road than it before had enjoyed. Joseph H. Scranton purchased the entire interest in the concern of Mr.Grant, in 1845, who retired from a position subsequently filled by Mr. J. C. Piatt. Mr. Piatt became a partner the next year, and although the firm has been changed several times, and gradually enlarged their borders by the purchase of real estate, and by continual enlargement and improvement around them, he has ever held the same satisfactory relation to the place. The year of 1846 was one of the most important ones in the history of Harrison. Col. Geo. W. Scranton. having returned to the works to reside permanently, at this time, negotiated, by the assistance of his brothers J. H. and S. T. Scranton, a contract with the Erie Rail- road Company, for 12,000 tons of iron-rail, to weigh 581bs. to the yard; to be made and delivered at the mouth of the Lackawaxen, in Pike county, during the years of 1847-8, at $70 per ton. To estimate rightly which of the contracting parties gained the most by this arrangement, is now impossible. Mr. Loder, President of the Erie Company at this time, stated in a public speech at the opening of the northern division of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, that had it not been for this contract and its prompt fulfillment, the road could not have been THE HISTORY OF SCRANTON. 121 opened at the time specified to Binghamton, as the Erie Raih-oad Company must have failed or suspended. To the Scranton Company it was everything. Those even who knew, that in spite of all the close economy and foresight with which the affairs of this Company were conducted, how fearfully it was involved, can hardly appreciate the invigorating influence this large sale of iron infused into the Proprietors. To fulfill this heavy agreement required mills and machinery of a corresponding character. ISTot only had these to be erected, but the essential wherewith to be obtained. Several wealthy gentlemen, warm friends of the Erie Road, promptly came forward, and on the simple obliga- tions of the Scrantons alone, with no security, loaned them $100,000 to construct the necessarj^ iron-works so that the contract should be fulfilled. Extraordinary activity was now displayed in Harrison in every de2:>art- ment of business, the active management of which passed into the hands of Joseph H. Scranton, who came here to reside in 1847. Up to this time, the means of transportation to market of the now largely increased annual product of iron, remained as difficult as at the commencement, with the exception of the extension of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company's Railroad? from Carbondale to Archibald, which reduced the hauling by teams to nine miles ; the iron ore was carted three miles and a half from the mines ; the limestone and pig-iron * purchased at Danville, drawn from the canal at Pittston, seven miles, and the Railroad iron * As the production of the blast furnace was not equal to the wants and capacity of the mill, pig iron in large quantities was purchased and brought up the canal from Columbia county. 6 122 ' LACKAWANNA VALLEY. (wliicli had become the principal product of the works, as the manufacturing of nails had ceased), was drawn to Archibald upon heavy wagons, a distance of nine miles from Harrison, requiring the use of over four hundred horses and mules. In fact, during the summer months, so slow and difficult was the transportation of the iron by their own force, that all the horses belonging to the farmers in the Township of Providence, which could be, were engaged by this Company, to assist in delivering it to the indicated point by the indicated time. Two large blast furnaces were now in the course of construction, as well as a railroad to their ore mines on the mountain. To make this grade so that the cars could be drawn up to the ore places by mules, and when loaded, return to the furnace by the power of gravity, five and a half miles of road were rendered necessary. This, however, dispensed with nearly all the team power heretofore essential in delivering the raw material. The Company had, previous to this, organized under the General Partnership law. George W. Scranton, Selden T. Scranton, Joseph H. Scranton, and J. C. Piatt comprising the general partners, and several well-known, wealthy gentlemen of New York being special ones. With this change, the capital of the Company was correspondingly increased. On the south side of the Roaring Brook some three hundred houses for the workmen had been built by the Company, while the only building up to this time, aside from those of the Company, put up upon the other, was one made by Dr. Tlu'oop for his brother, and now occupied by Mr. Albright. Tlie doctor, at this time, resided in Providence, but as there was no physician at THE HISTORY OF SCRANTON. 123 Harrison (now tliere are just tioenty at this point, of every size, color, and calibre), he removed here, and among the shady pines which gave a fresh and tranquil air to the old road leading from the " Hollow " to " Razorville," he built his cottage-home. Here, retired in a spot too lonely to tempt hither the indolent, with no house in sight but his own, he lived many years, where, after the exhausting and often thankless duties of his daily professional drives, he enjoyed the cheerful fireside and smoked his pipe in peace, unless disturbed by the clear, deep-throated ho-loonk-blonh of the frogs, holding nightly their carnival in the neighboring pond. This cottage is yet in good condition, and is now occupied by Mr. Phinney, secretary of the Iron Company, surrounded by large blocks of brick stores, and hotels, and immediately under the towering spire of the Presbyterian church. Up to this recent period, from the time railroad iron was first made here, the Company labored under every variety of disheartening influences and elements, the secrets of which were only known and felt by them- selves. To carry out the great programme which they had undertaken to do, with the limited capital at com- mand, required exertions almost superhuman. Extra w^ork, additional machinery, and various and expensive materials, all called for restless labor and more money. Large iron contrivances, which were essential to the works, had to be carted by the stubborn mule, or the jaded horse, about sixty or seventy miles, over roads loading over mountains covered with a growth of hem- lock and spruce as black as night. Eight mule teams were used for this service — a ser- vice so full of the w^earisome and so apt to derange the patience of the drivers, that it often was iin]>o?sible to 124: LACKAWANNA VALLEY. get willing and competent ones anywhere. When it was thought such were obtained, the Company found it necessary to contract w^ith the keepers of the small, loitering taverns along the road, to furnish suppers for their drivers, and feed for their teams, and forward their bills each month to the office for payment. It was especially provided that no liquor should be fur- nished them or paid for upon aiiy terms ; but some of the men, in common parlance, would " whip the devil round the stump," and bring in bills with "sixteen glasses of leming ayde^'' — a very poetic drink — " at six- pence a glass, and one pint of whisky," — probably for a cooling lotion for the mules' backs. These bills came from places where a lemon had never been seen or heard of before. The business of the Company, so broad, so vast, so comprehensive in its character, and so beneficial in its influence, afforded throughout the country, and the Lackawanna Yalley, where its benefits were more especially felt, a theme of great congratulation. To see a town emerge from the barren surface with a growth marvellous as tropical life, into a maze of found- ries, furnaces, manufacturing works, and dwellings, was an occurrence so rare as to cause no little astonish- ment and pride among those accustomed to the slow accretions to the valley before. The rise of real estate along the Lackawanna Yalley since the inception of this Company, was at least 100 per cent., while the relations of the Scrantons with the public were harmo- nious and characterized by general good feeling. We say general. There were then, as there are yet, and as there always probably will be, a debilitated, but croaking class of persons who by some hidden process THE HISTORY OF SCRANTON. 125 manage to keep up a little animation in their useless bodies, who, gathered in bar-room corners, and who, with a peculiar wisdom belonging to this class w'hile discussing weighty matters, gravely predicted that " the Scrantons must fail !" A line of four-horse stages ran through the valley on the western side of the Lack- awanna from Wilkes Barre to Carbondale, and, con- necting at each place w^ith a similar line, via Milford and Morristown to New York, and via Easton to Phila- delphia, furnished the only mode of conveyance to or from the Lackawanna Valley. The mills were completed, and as they began to con- vert the hills into railroad iron the last lingerer among the dark clouds moved off from the Lackawanna Iron Company. The first fifteen hundred tons of railroad iron that was made on the 12,000 contract were deliv- ered at the mouth of the Lackaw^axen. Here it was taken by canal to Port Jervis and laid on the road between Port Jervis and Otisville. After that portion of the Erie Railroad was opened for use, the Company having been so delayed by injunctions and the want of ih.Q piratical legislation to cross the river into Pennsylva- nia at the Glass-house rocks, that they found they were certain to be defeated in opening their road to Binghamp- ton by the time they had specified, unless they could get the Scranton company to deliver the balance of the iron on the line of the railroad, at different points along the Delaware Piver. The terms of delivery having been arranged, the Scranton Company carted by teams about seven thousand tons of iron and delivered it at Big Eddy (Narrow^sburg), Cochecton, Equinunk, Stockport, Summit, and Lanesborough, an average distance of about fifty miles, thus enabling the Company to lay the 126 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. track at all points along the Delaware division as fast as the grading was ready, and open the road for one hundred and thirty miles at once — four days ahead of the time appointed. The difficulty of carting so large an amount of iron in so short a time can be inferred by those familiar with the mountainous roads and the wil- derness intervening. Another effort now being made to get a post-office es- tablished at Harrison, was, by the assistance of the late Chester Butler, then a Member of Congress, successful ; at the time he gave the name of Scrantonia to the vil- lage of Harrison. This was in 1848. The same office, now hardly nine years of age, is the only salaried one in northern Pennsylvania. The same year, Scrantonia was divested of its superfluous appendage, when " Ca- pouse," " Slocum Hollow," " Harrison," "Lackawanna Iron Works," Scranto-nia were all laid aside for the name of Scranton. The rapid expansion and concentration of business at this point, as well as the absence of all necessary com- munication with the sea-board and the lakes, rendered more apparent and desirable an outlet east or west. The subject of connecting the valley by railroad with the New York and Erie Road in a northerly direction was frequently discussed by the general partners ; in fjict, it was with the most sanguine expectations of a line of public improvement being extended both north and south at no distant day, that went far towards deciding the original proprietors in locating here. With a view of bringing the subject of railroad pro- jects and connections generally with the valley before the minds of capitalists, in a manner both advantageous and effective, Col. George W. Scranton was detailed THE HISTORY OF SCEANTON. 127 from the active management of tlie affairs of the Iron Company in the summer of 1848. Valuable coal lands had been secured as a reliable ba- sis of such an enterprise ; large delegations of New York and 'New England gentlemen were persuaded from time to time to visit the valley and examine the vast mineral resources everywhere apparent along its border, and witness the dark croppings of coal, the fertile farms and luxurious intervale, the abundant water-power for mills, or manufacturing purposes, the splendid sights and the fine timber ; all of which, the moment a rail- road outlet appeared, would be trebled in value. By many, the valley was considered too wild and remote, or too difficult of access, even for an exploring tour. Such never left the parental roof, and it was left for bolder ones and stouter arms to sow and reap the har- vest. An extra stage-coach, with its five miles an hour speed, now and then brought into the valley delega- tion after delegation from the East, which w^ere hailed with friendly solicitude by the inhabitants. Often and always was the inquiry heard of that firm friend of the public interest, Sam Tripp, when the " Yorkers " were coming? All eyes for a time were directed towards the local movements of the Yorkers, and the hope of every honest citizen then, as well as now, was that long life and prosperity would accompany all who came. • The subject of connecting the Susquehanna River at Pittston with the Delaware Water Gap, suggested itself to the mind of Henry W. Drinker as early as 1819, long before his vigorous mind comprehended how much more formidable a railroad project would prove than the turnpikes hh energy was about directing through the trackless forests. In 1826 he obtained a charter for 128 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. this road ; six years later, the first instrumental survey of the contemplated route was made by Captain Beach, who was employed and principally paid by John Jor- don, Jr., H. W. Drinker, and William Henry, the last two of whom became intimately associated in the enter- prise. They spent years of exhausting toil, and largely of their means, to throw living functions into this high- way ; but, wisely as seemed the plan to have been con- ceived, it failed entirely in its gestation. Time, how- ever — the great administrator of events — has shown that not only was their judgment correct, but greatly in advance of the age in regard to this new breath- less road. This line was run with a view of inclined planes, operated by water-power, and perhaps a canal a portion of the way. The "headwaters of the river Lehigh and its tributary streams " were prohibited from being used for feeding the canal, as it might " injure the navi- gation of said river Lehigh.'' Another charter, known as the " Ligett's Gap," had been obtained simultaneously with this survey of the "Drinker road." It authorized the construction of an inclined plane railroad, from some point near Cobb's Gap to the State of New York, in a northwesterly direction. Both of these charters, kept alive by supple- mentary acts, were found to be too defective for prac- tical purposes. Upon one, the use of horse power, between the planes, to draw the cars, was contemplated by the original projectors of the road, while the other provided that toll-houses were to be established along the line, and collectors appointed, and that the drivers or conductors of "such carriage, wagon, or conveyance, boat, or raft," were to give the collectors notice of their THE HISTORY OF SCRANTON. 129 approach to said toll-liouses by blowing a " trumpet or horn ;" these and many other singuhir features were afterwards replaced by those more in harmony with the times. The Ligett's Gap (afterwards Lackawanna and West- ern Railroad) was consolidated with the Delaware and Cobb's Gap charter, under the name of Delaware, Lackawanna and Western. The old Drinker charter was never used. The Company generously paid to all the different parties who had assisted in obtaining the several charters, and making the original surveys, over seven thousand dollars, although not legally bound to pay a farthing. Up until 1847 no car had rolled, nor had a single rail been laid, along the Lackawanna, with the single exception of those upon the railroad running from Carbondale to Honesdale. This road, too, was a grav- ity one, w^orked by stationary steam engines and horse power, over the Moosic Mountain, and was one of the first railroads built in the State of Pennsylvania. The honor of the inception as well as the completion of a locomotive engine road^ from Great Bend to the Delaware Water Gap, belongs justly to Colonel George W. ScRANTON. Mountainous and forbidding as were the natural features of the country through which it was to pass, and formidable as appeared the idea to many of his associates around him, he nevertheless advocated and clung to the object of his sanguine hope as clings a parent to his child. At his own suggestion, and under his immediate direction, the preliminary surveys were made upon the route by Major Murrel, assisted by the late James Seymour, and E. McNeill, since chief engineer of the whole line. The route was 6* 130 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. found quite as feasible as Colonel Scranton had sup- posed, from his own personal observations, and, as the charter of the " Ligett's Gap Eailroad " was found suit- able for all practical purposes, after a little alteration, it was purchased. To inspire general confidence in an undertaking which, when completed, would not only make Scranton matchless in life and growth, but revolutionize a valley so long buried in its slumber, a bold move was made. The books of subscription were opened at Kresler's Hotel in Scranton, in 1847, by the Commissioners, and the whole stock subscribed, and 10 per cent, paid in. While these flattering movements were not without some good effect, it was the work of more than two years' ceaseless labor, amidst every possible discourage- ment, before any real capital could be calculated upon. As this road was to lead to the Erie Railroad instead of the Erie Canal, it was thought by many moneyed men that the coal market, for a while, would be so limited, that no investment would pay. This road was com- menced in 1850. To overcome this objection, as far as possible, and reach and make a more northern market (for the first loads of coal taken hither were given away, in order to introduce the black stuff into general use), the Ithaca and Oswego Railroad, one of the oldest roads in the country, was purchased by the Iron Company and their associates, in 1849. This old road, like all railroads in the United States, was laid with the flat or strap rail — a rail possessing neither strength nor safety, as one end of it sometimes becoming bent, would dart with the rapidity of lightning with its ^^ snake liead^'' into the passing train, marking its red progress with appalling slaughter upon the living and the loved. THE HISTORY OF SCRANTON. 131 A new company being now organized, called the Cayuga and Susquehanna Railroad Company, for the purpose of building this road, Col. G. W. Scranton was chosen President, who at once repaired to Ithaca to engage in his active duties, which were discharged with the happiest ability and success. To carry out the original plan contemplated by the colonel, of connecting the Iron Works with New York City, a survey was made in 1851-2 for the eastward outlet, and in 1853 the present line adopted. While this new, absorbing project was taking shape and being, the business of the Scranton Company was still enlarging. The Iron Company organized this year under a special charter with a capital of $800,000, and Selden T. Scran- ton elected President, and Joseph H. Scranton, Super- intendent — positions they yet retain. After the Lackawanna and Western Railroad was consolidated with the Delaware and Cobb's Gab char- ter, under the name of "Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad Company," work was commenced vigorously on the southern division of this road. On the 21st of January, 1856, the first locomotive and train of cars passed over the Delaware. Rapid as has been the symjpatJietic growth of Carbon- dale, Archibald, Jessup, Dunmore, Providence, and Hyde Park, theirs has been a snail's pace compared to the stronger development of Scranton. In July, 1810, only seventeen years ago, five brown dwelling- houses made up the complete town at ^^ The Holler^'* where now the village of Scranton, founded on the sure basis of manufacturing industry, stands in the doorway to the east, with a population of ten thousand! The tourist who visits Scranton to-day, may not find 132 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. as much wildness and sublimity around it, as when from the Pocona range, his eye first catches a ghmpse of the truly bold outlines of the Delaware Water Gap, he will, nevertheless, as he walks along the walls of Roaring Brook, and gazes on the massive piles of furnace-stacks pouring out, day after day, ponds of rude or finished iron, from the ponderous bar to the delicate bolt, and witness the quiet, yet resistless motion of the largest stationary engine on the American Continent, will feel proud and pleased with the sights of industry and thrift everywhere around him. One of the most home-like hotels found in the State, is the Wyoming House, in Scrauton, kept by Judge Bristol. To get and appreciate a bird's-eye view of the town, let the tourist ascend to the balcony of the Judge's house, where the charming panorama that un- rolls itself before him, will compensate in the highest degree for the trouble of the visit. He will then look down into a region interesting for its scenery, its strata of coal, its beds of iron ore, and its Indian history. The first impression is one favorable towards this portion of the valley, as there appears upon every side evidence of neatness and life. Yonder, the noisy water of the red-man (Roaring Brook) takes a white leap from one of the loveliest and loneliest nooks carved from the mountain, before it splashes on the busy wheel of the manufacturers, and and after being nsed three or four times in its passage through the village, mingles with the waters of the Lackawanna below. The huge, round slate-roofed loco- motive depot filled with engines, as it first strikes the eye, reminds him of the Roman Colliseum, while the landscape sprinkled with brown colored depots, car- THE HISTOKY OF SCBANTON. 133 shops, and Yulcan's works upon every side ; the chaste, imposing churches, the long, white lines of public and private architecture contrasting finely with the deep green of the surrounding trees, tastily left for shade ; the train of coal-cars, serpentine and dark, emerging from the " Diamond Mines," or skimming along the iron veins down a grade of seventy feet to the mile from the pro- ductive coal-works at the "Notch," some two miles distant, on their passage to New York ; the locomotive, with its nightingale song and vapory breath, rushing along the western side of tlie Lackawanna, from the "Wyoming Valley over the Lackawanna and Bloomsburg Eailroad which terminates at Scranton ; the villages of Hyde Park, Providence, Dimmore and half a dozen little rosy buds of villages, standing like sentinels at the out-posts about to be surrendered ; the Lee-haw-hanna, with its modest throat and richer shade, drawn like a belt of silver along the picture ; the neat farm-houses here and there nestling in some lovely meadow or half hid among the blossoms of orchards, and the back- ground of the unshorn mountain swelling upwards from Wyoming or the Lackawanna region, all make up a sight as beautiful as the Jewish ruler of old once wit- nessed from the sacred Mount. Nor is this all , as he looks into the bosom of " Capouse Meadow," his eye wanders over coal lands which, fifteen years before the completion of a railroad outlet north from the valley could be purchased for fifteen dollars per acre, and which now are worth $800 ; and lots which then no respectable man was willing to accept as a gratuity, now readily bring from one to two thousand dollars ! This sketch of the history of Scranton can hardly appropriately be closed without a glance at the great 134 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. iron works now in blast here, capable of smelting about seventy tliousand tons of ore a year. The sizes of these blast furnaces may be inferred from the diameter of the hashes, which are respectively 15, 17, 18, and 20 feet, with a height of 50 feet. Into these furnaces air is forced by double, connected, lever-beam engines, of vast power. The steam cylinders are 54 inches in diameter. The blowing cylinders are 110 inches in diameter, with 10 feet stroke. The wind is forced by this appa- ratus into the furnaces, under an average pressure of four pounds to the square inch. The huge fly-wheel which regulates the movements of this enormous appa- ratus weighs forty thousand pounds. In order to be prepared for any possible exigency, and have increased blowing power, the Iron Company are now building appropriate apartments upon the very ground where formerly stood, under one roof, the first ofiice, store, and dwelling, of Messrs. Scranton and Grant, in Harri- son, subsequently known as " Kresler's Hotel." The pair of engines will have cylinders 59 inches in diameter, and the blowing cylinders will be 90 inches. Each engine is to have two fly-wheels, 28 feet in diam- eter, and to weigh seventy-five thousand pounds. By this power they will be able to force the air into the furnaces under a pressure of eight or nine pounds to the square inch, a great advantage, as it is found by experiments that, in order for a furnace to yield the greatest product, it must not only have a certain amount of air, but that the air, to be most advanta- geous, must be introduced under heavy pressure, and at many places simultaneously, when it is more equally difl\ised through the stack. Some thirty thousand tons of pig metal can now be produced each year. THE HISTORY OF SCR ANTON. 135 A walk of five minutes brings one to the rolling- mills, which also stand on the north side of the Roaring Brook. Midway between the furnaces and the mills, down the bank of the brook, to the right, is seen a rail- road track leading into a mine directly under our feet, into which a few blackened coal-cars, drawn by mules, disappear in midnight. This vein of coal, at this point, w^hich is used in all the iron works now, is the very one first seen by the exploring party, in 1840, led by Mr. Henry, and which, in connection with the adjacent iron deposits, decided the Scrantons and Mr. Grant to pur- chase this property for sixteen dollars an acre. Enter- ing the rolling-mill, one is surprised to see the mag- nitude and the precision of the whole arrangement. The principal product of the mills is in T railroad bars, of which from fifteen to twenty thousand tons a year are finished. A great quantity of railroad spikes and chairs are made, beside some three thousand tons of merchant iron. Some general idea can be inferred of the imposing character of the iron works by the fact that one hun- dred thousand tons of anthracite coal per year are con- sumed by them alone, while they furnish employment to an effective army of one thousand men ! The amount of capital already expended by the Dela- ware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company in their railroad and coal property, including the Cayuga and Susquehanna Railroad, and the Warren Railroad, in New Jersey, is, at this time, over twelve million dol- lai-s, and a large amount will yet be required to com- plete the double track and properly equi]3 the road. The influence of the opening of this great eastern and western outlet upon a valley so long imprisoned by 136 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. mountain bamers, facts of yesterday and to-day, bear too recent evidence to need repeating. It is visible in every liamlet, it is felt in every cottage by the way- side, and it is written in genial lines everywhere along the Lackawanna, as well as in the historic valley of Wyoming. MAIL OPERATIONS IN THE VALLEY AND ADJACENT COUN- TRY FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. As late as 1812, while much of the country was unsubdued, except here and there where the stumpy clearing of the settler broke in upon the wilderness, the United States Mail was carried once a week, from Wilkes Barre up the Lackawanna Yalley to Capouse, or Slocum Hollow, thence through the Paupack settle- ment to Milford ; returning by way of Indian Orchard, Bethany, and Montrose, and down along the Susque- hanna villages to Wilkes Barre. Having no other outlet, all mail packages for the Lackawanna had to pass through Wilkes Barre, as they came over the mountain, via Easton. The inhabitants being few and sparse, the post-office was sometimes located at points where there stood but a single cabin, but where the operations of the office were none the less harmonious and comprehensive. There yet lives in the valley an old gentleman, per- forming then the duties of mail-boy, and who not only encountered dangers in fording streams, often swift and swollen by the rains, traversing new roads and marked paths, but who found much to amuse his boyhood while the mail was being changed at places along his route. MAIL OPERATIONS. 137 At one point, the ^' office " was kept in a low, log, savage-looking bar-room, where the contents of the mail-pouch were emptied on a floor, suggestive of a freshly dug potato-patch, where all the inmates of the house gave slow and ponderous motion to each resp'ec- tive paper and letter. Sometimes the mail-boy, finding no one at home but the children, who were generally engaged drumming on the dinner-pot, or the housewife, unctuous with lard and dough, lol-li-bye-babying a boisterous child to sleep, was compelled to act as carrier and post-master himself. At another point upon the route, the commission of post-master fell upon the thick shoulders of a Dutch- man, remarkable for nothing but his full, round stom- ach. This was his pride, and he would pat it inces- santly while he dilated upon the virtues of his " krout " and his " frow." It would have been amazingly stupid for the Depart- ment to have questioned his order or integrity, for as the lean mail-bag came tumbling into his door from the saddle, the old comical Dutchman and his devoted wife carried it to a rear bed-room in his house, poured the contents upon the floor, where at one time it actually took them both from three o'clock one afternoon until nine the next morning to change the mail ! Believing with Lord Bacon, that "knowledge is power," he detained about election time, all political documents, directed to his opponents. These he carefully deposited in a safe place in his garret until after election day, when they were handed over with great liberality to those to whom they belonged, provided he was paid the postage. At another of the obscure cabins where the office was 138 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. ke23t, beyond all but the noon-day sun, the mail-bag being returned to the post-boy often quite empty, led him to investigate the cause of this new and strange fea- ture, especially as nobody else lived in the neighbor- hood. The prolific number of ten children, graduating from one to twenty years in age, all called the Post- master " dad," and as none of them could understand or read a word, letters and papers came to a dead stop when they arrived here. As these were poured out on the floor among pans and kettles, each child would seize a package, saying, " this is for me and this for you, and that for some one else, until the greater portion of mail matter intended for offices more remote, was thus parcelled out and appropriated, and probably never heard of again. THE WYOMING MASSACRE IN 1778. Although the inhabitants of the State of Connecticut met at Hartford, as early as September 1774, for the purpose of adopting measures of resistance to British tyranny, her young colony at Westmoreland (Wyoming), consisting of about 2,300 persons within all its bounda- ries, were so much absorbed in the long strife with Pennsylvania claimants to the very land they themselves occupied, that nothing was done in the way of building forts or preparing for the sterner and bloodier conflict of the Revolution, until after it had actually commenced. Forty Fort and one at Wilkes Barre were erected a short time previous to this. The spirit of the Revolution, however, was not without impulse even here on the old grounds of the Five Nations. THE WYOMING MASSACRE IN 1778. 139 As tlie war broke out, measures were taken to place the valley in a defensive condition. At a town meeting '' legally warned, and held in Westmoreland, Wilkes Barre district, August 21:th, 1776," it was voted that forts be built in Hanover, Plymouth, "Wilkes Barre and Pittston, at once, at points deemed most judicious by the military committee. In the simple language of the times, it was voted that the people erect such forts " without either fee or reward from ye town." Before the battle on Abraham's Plain, July 3d, 1778, there stood in the valley of Wyoming, eight Forts — one of which was the Tory Fort of Winter- moots. Among the families, which at the time of the breaking out of the Kevolutionary War, left the eastern shores of the Hudson, and sought the fertile border of the Susquehanna, for no good purpose, was a large, rich, Tory family named Wintermoot, who, on the high, rio-ht bank of the river, at the extreme head of the valley, where a noble spring of fairest water boiled up from the earth, cleared a small piece of land. Here he erected a rude fort known as Wintermoot's, and, although this simple fact afforded no actual evidence of Toryism, its erection at this point and at this exciting period, justly aroused the suspicions of the neighbor- ing settlers, who forthwith erected another one about one mile above this point, where lived the truly patriotic families of the Hardings and Jenkins. This was called Fort Jenkins. It stood nearly opposite the celebrated ledge of Campbell, a little distance above the mouth of the Lackawa^nna.. The war, which the stubborn and stronger power of England forced upon America, already had began with fearful strokes at Lexington, Ticonderoga, Bunker 14:0 LACEJlWANNA VALLEr. Hill, and Montreal, and, wliile the Connecticut Colony at Wyoming were exerting every means to promote the cause of American freedom, by protecting its own frontier fire-sides from the rapine of Tories and Indians, who grew more bold and haughty in their intercourse with the settlers, Connecticut was called upon by Con- gress in August, 1776, to raise two companies of eighty- four men each, to be stationed at proper places in West- moreland, for the defence of its inhabitants. Connecticut — a state which furnished to the Continental army during the Revolutionary War, the greatest number of soldiers raised by any one State, with the single exception of Massachusetts — raised the one hundred and sixty-eight men in Wyoming, for its defence. No sooner, however, was the number complete, than Congress conceived that the wants of the country elsewhere, were more impera- tive and critical, if possible, than they were here. The American army of about 14,000 men, under General Washington, had been driven from Long Island and New York by the British army, numbering 25,000. Forts Washington and Lee, on the Hudson River, were taken by the superior forces of the enemy, November 16th, 1776. With only 3,000 men, General Washington retreated to Newark, and was driven from camp to camp with his desponding soldiers ; crossing the Delaware as the victorious British approached Philadelphia. At this imminent moment. Congress, which adjourned the same day from Philadelphia to Baltimore, ordered these two Wyoming companies to join the Commander-in- chief " icith all possible expedition.'^'' This was done and at once Wyoming was left without soldiers. Dis- heartening events in many portions of the country began to transpire and dismay. With 10,000 troops, Gen. Bur- THE WYOMING MASSACRE IN 1778. 141 goyne was sweeping down from the Canadian frontiers, accompanied by his Indian allies, which it took little to excite to war upon their white brothers, and to what is ever so dear to the wild-man's breast — revenge. Ticon- deroga had already fallen into his hands, while General Howe was crowding up victory after victory in 'New York and E'ew Jersey, and the Indians living along the upper branches of the Susquehanna and Chenango, became restless and joyous at the prospect of once more visiting and possessing their old hunting plains at Wyo- mink. Parties of them were often seen here and there, to emerge from the mountain forest into the valley, and although at first they shed no blood nor destroyed any property, a captive now and then was hurried off towards the Indian country. Persons in the settlement saw the gathering danger. Scouting parties — bold and experienced woodsmen — were sent out daily from the valley to watch the war-paths leading over the moun- tains, while trainings were held every fourteen days in all the settled towns, where the old and the young drilled side by side, in their country's service ; expect- ing every report of the musket, or the bark of the watch -dog, to announce the approach of Indians. The Colony was now (1 778) but nine years old, and out of its total population of about 2,000 persons, 168 formed part of the main army under Gen. Washington, when the meditated attack on Wyoming was made known to the inhabitants. A large body of Indians and Tories were already assembled at Niagara and at Tioga, for this purpose ; the Indians being under the command of the famous Chief of mixed blood, named Brant, or Gi-en-gwah-toh.* This attack was possibly suggested * *' He who ffoes in the smoke." — Col. Stone. 142 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. by the known absence of so many soldiers from the valle}^, as well as by desire of the Tories who had been expelled from the Wyoming colony, to seek revenge on the exposed settlement. From the Lackawaxen, the Lackawanna, and from the mountains along the Delaware, and Susquehanna, the Indians were summoned to Oliiiaquaga^ to join the enterprise, while all the Tories living at Tunkhannock and Wyalusing, simultaneously repaired to the enemy. Early in the spring of 1TY8, Congress had been ap- prised by Gen. Schuyler of the threatened attack, but so engaged was this body in this all-absorbing struggle, that nothing was or could be done for the safety of "Wyoming until March 16th, 1778, when it was re- solved " that one full company of foot be raised " here for its defence. This really furnished no assistance, as this company were compelled " to find their arms, accoutrements, and blankets," although they were after- wards paid for by the United States. Congress has been censured by the historian in terms not the most flattering, for not recalling to Wyoming the absent soldiers under Captains Durkee and Kansom, but it must be remembered that the remnant of Wash- ington's army was retreating before the superior and exulting forces of the British, and had not its exhausted strength been invigorated sufficiently by reinforce- ments and recruits to meet and drive back the enemy at this very time, it is hardly possible to esti- mate the pregnant consequences to the country to-day ; Independence itself might have been deferred forever. In May, 1778, the first life was taken in Westmoreland near Tunkhannock, by the Indians, who each day became more defiant and numerous. A day or two THE WYOMING MASSACKE IN 1778. 143 afterwards, a scouting party of six persons were fired upon a few^ miles below this, by a body of savages lurking along the river path, and although two of the whites were wounded, and one fatally so, they sprang into their canoe and escaped down the Susquehanna. Throughout the entire settlement alarm began to spread with painful rapidity. Persons living along the Lackawanna at Capouse and below, and in all the outer towns, either deserted their little homes and sought the parent State, or fled to the Wyoming forts for safety. If anything had been wanting in the picture of danger to make it more lurid with coming blood and tragic outline, an event simple in its character, but terrible in its meaning, which occurred here at this time, furnished it. "Two Indians, formerly residents of Wyoming, and acquainted with the people, came down with their squaws on a visit, professing warm friendship ; but suspicions existed that they were spies, and directions were given that they should be carefully watched. An old companion of one of them, with more than Indian cunning, professing his attachment to the natives, gave his visitor drink after drink of his favorite rum, when in the confidence and the fullness of his maudlin heart, he avowed that his peoj)le were prepared to cut off the settlement; the attack to be made soon, and that they had come down to see and report how things were. The squaws were dismissed, but the two Indians were arrested and confined in Forty Fort.* While men heard this intelligence with lips whitened and compressed, they at once prepared to receive those * Miner's History. 144 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. who were so soon to converse with them from musket throats. Every instrument of death was examined, and fitted for instant use. Guns were repaired, bayonets were sharpened, bullets moulded, powder made, and every man and boy able to shoulder a musket, either fell into the ranks of a new company being formed by Capt. Dethic Hewit, or in the daily train-bands, expect- ing every messenger to proclaim the arrival of the invaders. Two deserters from the British army, one by the name of Pike from Canada, and the other a sergeant named Boyd from Boston, we are told by Miner, " were particularly useful in training the mi- litia." While these preparations along the valley were being made by those whose alarm amounted almost to frenzy, the British, Indians, and Tories, began to darken the waters at Ta-hi-o-ga, with a fleet of rafts, river-boats, and canoes, preparatory to a descent upon the " large plains." In all the wide area of territory embraced within the limits of Westmoreland — being about 70 miles square — there was then no larger gun than the old flint mus- ket, with the exception of a single cannon at the fort in Wilkes Barre. This was a four pounder, of no use, however, as no suitable balls were in the settlement, and had been brought into the colony merely for an alarm-gun in the Yankee and Pennymite war. The force of the Americans, without discipline or appropri- ate arms, amounted to about 400 persons, to resist the attack of nearly four times their number. The enemy, numbering about 400 British provincials, six or seven hundred Seneca and Mohawk Indians, painted for battle and dressed in their warlike costume, THE WYOMING MASSACRE IN 1778. 145 and a large body of Tories from Wyoming, New York, and Kew Jersey, under the command of Col. John Butler, a British officer, and accompanied by the notorious Brant, left their rendezvous on Tioga Kiver, descended the Susquehanna, and landed on the west bank of the river, a little below the mouth of Bowman's Creek, and about twenty miles above the head of the valley. Here, in a shady deep curve in the river, they moored their boats ; marching across a rugged spur of the mountain, thus shortening the distance a number of miles, and on the 30th of June, just at the edge of evening, arrived on the western mountain, a little distance above the Tory Fort of Wintermoot. This fort, standing about one mile below Fort Jenkins, probably owed its incep- tion to British cunning and gold. From Fort Jenkins, eight persons who had no notice nor suspicions of the proximity of the enemy, had gone up the valley into Exeter to work upon their farms, a little distance from the fort, taking with them their trusty and always attending weapons of defence, with their agricultural utensils. While unsuspectingly engaged at their work, which they were about closing for the day, they were surrounded by a portion of the invading army, with a view of making them prisoners, so that the British Butler might learn the actual posture of affairs down in the valley. Surprised, but not intimidated, they chose to die by the bullet, rather than the hatchet or the torturing knife ; they fought for a few moments, killing live of the enemy, three Tories and two Indians, when four of their own number fell, and were completely cut in pieces by exasperated Indians ; three were taken alive, and a single boy leaped in the river, and aided by the 7 116 LACKA. WANNA VALLEY. grey twilight of evening escaped. One of the slain was a son of the barbarous Queen Esther, who accom- panied tlie expedition with her tribe, and whose cruel- ties at the Bloody Rock rendered her memory infamous forever. Fort Jenkins, thus bereft of its protectors, capitulated tlio same evening to Capt. Caldwell, while the united forces of Batler and Brant bivouacked at the friendly quarters of Fort Wintermoot. 'No sooner did the report oi musketry at the head of the valley, denote tlie pre- sence of the foe, then the real critical position of the settlement was sternly appreciated. Men not accus- tomed to scour the woods for miles in the vicinity of their frontier homes, to discover Indian trails and give the inhabitants warning, would liave shrunk from the coming struggle with dismay, but they left the scythe ill the swath, the plough in the furrow, and gathering 111^ the weak and weeping ones, hurried to Forty Fort. This fort stood on the west bank of the river, below Monockonock Island and three miles above Wyoming Fort, where in a short time were collected the principal forces of Wyoming Valley, consisting of 368 men. On the Lackawanna side of the river at Pitts ton, and almost opposite Wintermoot's, Fort Brown had been erected, and this was garrisoned by a body of forty settlers under the command of Captain Blanchard. By the means of wily spies who were continually reconnoitering the plains upon either side of the river. Col. John Butler, soon learned how completely the en- tire valley was at his mercy, unless reinforcements, ex- pected from the main army, should arrive and relieve tiie inhabitants. Already were two forts in his posses- sion, but, not wishing to bring the Indians into a general THE WYOMING MASSACRE IN 17Y8. 147 battle, where, becoming infuriato'l and completely un- governable after a victory, he feired they might com- mence those scenes of rapine and bloodshed, such as the fate of war too often witnessed, he sent one of the prison, ers taken in Exeter to Col. Zeoulon Butler, on the morning of the day of the battle, accompanied by a Tory and an Indian, demanding the immediate surrender not only of his own fort, but of all other ones, with all the public property in the valley, as ^^ell as the militia com- pany of Capt. Hewit as prisoners of war. He also sug- gested to the commander of Forty Fort the propriety of destroying all intoxicating drinks, provided these terms were rejected, for, said the British Butler, " drunken savages can't be controlled." Some urged the accept- ance of these apparently exacting, but really liberal terms, in the hope that the tide of slaughter might be stayed ; the majority opposed it, and the messenger was sent away with this decision. A council of war was immediately held in the fort. "While a few hoped that the absent military companies would arrive and furnish reinforcements sufficiently large to give the enemy battle, and possibly expel them from Wyoming, if a few days intervened ; others, more impul- sive and restive, replied that the force concentrated in the fort could march out on the plains, where, being per- fectly familiar with the ground, they could surprise and take advantage of the enemy at once ; and, as their own homes were already being lit by the torch, their crops destroyed, and the murder of the Hardings at Fort Jenkins was but the introduction to the drama about to crimson the valley, unless interrupted by offensive measures, they were anxious and determined to fight. Unfortunately, this bold but fatal couns-l prevailed. 148 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. With tlie colonial development in Westmoreland had grown the love of intrn. So fixed and so general, in fact, had become this unmanning habit — so essential was whisky regarded in its sanative and commercial aspect, that one of the first buildings of 2i public character erect- ed in the colony after a stockade or fort afi*orded tem- porary protection to the j)ioneers, was a still or brew- house. The custom of drinking prevailed to an alarm- ing extent throughout the whole settlement. In accordance, however, with the suggestion of the British Butler, who was apprised of every movement of the Americans, all the liquor in the fort had been rolled out and emptied into the river, with the exception of a single barrel of whisky. The head of this was knocked in while the council of war was being held, and as the meeting was anything but harmonious, it is possible that the inspiring influence derived from this barrel, con- tributed in an eminent degree towards its deliberations. A gourd-shell cup in the most inviting manner floated in the hospitable beverage. A hard fight — and a terri- ble one, in fact, was expected in the course of an hour, and, as the drum and fife struck up an animating air while the soldiers marched out of the fort one by one, this gourd-cup, filled with whisky, was passed to each comrade and drank. Yolcanic, dangerous, and unwelcome as seems the in- timation of the fact at this late period, yet there is every reason to believe, from evidence heretofore suppressed from the most natural and delicate motives, that if many of the soldiers were not actually ineh^iated at this time, their ideas of their own strength were singularly con- fused and exalted. Col. George Dorrance, an ofiicer whose prudent counsels to remain in the fort were disre- THE WYOMING MASSACRE IN 1778. 149 garded, was repeatedly taunted with cowardice, because he advised against this death-errand. However pleasant it might be to pass by this great error of the times — an error which rendered certain and merciless the fate of Wyoming — with the same studied silence and charity others have done before, justice to the living and the dead demands a faithful record of events. The forces of Brant and Col. John Butler were at Wintermoot's Fort, opposite Pittston. To hastily reach this point, and, protected by the large pine trees extend- ing over this portion of the plain, spring on the enemy unawares, was the plan adopted. The little band, num- bering about 850 persons, under the command of Col. Zebulon Butler, left the fort amid the cries of dear and defenceless ones. Old men whose worn and welted hands could hardly point the musket, and younger ones, whose thread of life reached short of manhood, marched side by side to the place of conflict. So great was the emergency ; so much was to be lost or won by the coming battle, that all left the Fort but the women and children. Silently and rapidly up along the banks of the river, Colonel Z. Butler led his forces within half a mile of Wintermoot's. Here he halted a few minutes, and sent forward two volunteers to reconnoitre the position and strength of the enemy ; these were fired upon by the opposing scouts, who, like the main body of the British, were not only apprised by Indian runners of the approach of the Yankees, but were prepared to give them a terrific reception. As the Americans approached the dark masses of British soldiers and painted savages, Wintermoot's Fort, which had served its intended and mischievous purpose, was set on fire by the Tories; 150 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. why tins was done has never yet been explained. The British colonel at once formed his forces in battle order ; the provincial and Tories being placed in front and towards the Susquehanna, while the deep morass, lying to the right, concealed vast numbers of the painted warriors, under Bryant and Queen Esther. Among the tall pines, covering at this time the greater portion of the Wyoming plains, Col. Zebulon Butler placed his men so as better to resist the first attack of the enemy, which were preparing to commence the battle. Colonels Butler and Dorrance each urged the soldiers to meet the first shock with firmness, as their lives and their homes depended on the issue. Hardly had the words been heard along the line, before the bullets of the enemy began to thin the ranks of the Connecticut party, which, to defend their firesides, had thus, in this weak and injudicious condition, marched forth to battle with over a thousand men. " About four in the afternoon the battle began ; Col. Z. Butler ordered his men to fire, and at each discharge to advance a step. Along the whole line the discharges were rapid and steady. It was evident, on the more open ground the Yankees were doing most execution. As our men advanced, pouring in their platoon fires with great vivacity, the British line gave way, in spite of all their officers' efforts to prevent it. The Indian flanking party on our right, kept up from their hiding-places a galling tire. Lieut. Daniel Gore received a ball through the left arm. " Captain Durkee," said he, " look sharp for the Indians in those bushes." Captain D. stepped to the bank to look, preparatory to making a charge and dislodging them, when he fell. On die British Butler's right, his Indian warriors were sharply engaged. They THE WYOMING MASSACRE IN 1778. 151 seemed to be divided into six bands, for a yell would be raised at one end of tlie line, taken up, and carried through six distinct bodies appearing at each time to repeat the cry. As the battle waxed warmer, that fearful yell was renewed again and again, with more and more spirii. It appeared to be at once their animating shout, aiid their signal of communication. As several fell near Col. Dorrance, one of his men gave way ; " Stand up to your work, sir," said he, firmly but coolly, and the soldier resumed his place. For half an hour a hot fire had been given and sus- tained, when the vastly superior numbers of the enemy began to develop its power. The Indians had tlirowu into the swamp a large force, which now completely outflanked our left. It was impossible it should be otherwise : that wing was thrown into confusion. Col. Dennison gave orders that the company of Whittlesey should wheel back, so as to form an angle with the main line, and thus present his front instead of flank, to the enemy. The difiiculty of performing evolutions, by the bravest militia, on the field, under a hot fire, is well known. On the attempt the savages rushed in with horrid yells. Some had mistaken the order to fall l)acl\ as one to retreat^ and that word, that fatal word, ran along the line. Utter confusion now prevailed on the left. Seeing the disorder, and his own men beginning to give way. Col. Z. Butler threw himself between the fires of the opposing ranks, and rode up and down the in the most reckless exposure. "Don't leave me, my children, and the victory is Miner's History. 152 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. The treacherous whisky and the murderous bullets had done their work. Had the soldiers been in a condition to have understood and obeyed the proper orders of Col. Dennison, whatever might have been the final result of the engagement, it is hardly possible that the scenes of cruelty and bloodshed which rendered that afternoon memorable in the history of Wyoming would have been enacted. When it was seen that defeat had come, the confusion became general. Some fought in the hopeless conflict, and fell upon the battle-ground, mangled by the bayonet or the hatchet : others, throwing away their guns, fled in wild disorder down the valley toward Forty Fort, or "Wilkes Barre, followed by the Indians, whose belts were soon lined with the scalps of the slain. " A portion of the Indian flanking party pushed for- ward in the rear of the Connecticut line, to cut ofi" re- treat to Forty Fort, and then pressed the retreating army toward the river. Monockasy Island affording the only hope of crossing, the stream of flight flowed in that direction through fields of grain."* The Tories, even more atrocious than the whooping red-men, also hastened after the fugitives. Mr. Carey and Judge Hollenback were standing side by side when they saw the victorious forces sweeping down upon them ; Carey ran, while Hollenback threw away his gun, his hat, his coat and vest, and started to- wards Wilkes Barre. A gold piece he had taken from his vest-pocket, he placed in his mouth, thus showing the strength of the ruling passion, even at the door of death. Being thus divested of his clothing, he soon was enabled * Miner's History, THE WYOMING MASSACRE IN 17Y8. 153 to leave his weaker comrades far in the rear, swam the river, and was the first to tell the painful tale of defeat to the remaining ones in Wilkes Barre. Carey fled to the right towards the river, where, under its sheltering bank, he sank down on the sand too exhausted to swim, still retaining his musket. He heard the quick footsteps of the retreating fugitives, and as they were plunging in the water to reach Pittston Fort, saw the tomahawk sink them in the quiet Susquehanna. Upon the bank below him he saw three of the Americans clubbed to death by the Tories. His own musket, with its reddened bayonet, he grasped in his hand, determined to sell his life as dearly as possible, if necessary ; but as he was not discovered by them, he swam the river and escaped. The cruelties practised by the Tories and Indians after the defeat, one instance will suffice to illustrate. A short distance below the battle-ground, there lay in the languid waters of the river, a large, long Island, covered with willows and wild-grass, called " Monock Island." As the path down the valley swarmed with warriors, few of the fleeing soldiers could hope to escape this way in safety, so many fled to this island, defence- less, exhausted, and almost naked. This was perceived by the ruthless Tories, who followed in pursuit, reached the island, and deliberately wiped their guns dry, pre- paratory to finishing their murderous drama. One of the Tories, who had just loaded his gun, saw lying half- concealed in the deep grass before him, his own hrother. Perceiving that he was discovered, he came towards his Tory kinsman, and falling on his knees, called him by name, and implored him not to kill him ; promising to be his slave as long as he lived, if only his life was 154 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. spared. " All this is mighty good," replied the demo niac Tory, with a sardonic smile, as he again pointed to- wards his brother his obedient gun, " but you're a d — d rebel !" and shot him dead. Such was the spirit breathed at the Wyoming massacre. Col. Z. Butler reached Wilkes Fort in safety, where many of the families were preparing to flee across the mountains to the Delaware. Mothers and children anx- iously watching for the news, stood on the river bank at Forty Fort, and soon learned from the closer report of musketry, and from the fleeing soldiers, the result of the battle. About dusk, Capt. John Franklin arrived at the Fort with thirty-five fresh men, who at once took every precaution to prevent a surprise during the night. After the battle and the chase had ceased, the scenes of torture commenced. Opposite the mouth of the Lackawanna, and almost under the shadows of " Camp- bell's Ledge," a band of Indians had gathered their prisoners in a circle, stripped them of all their clothing, and, with their bloody spears drove them into the flames of a large tire, amidst their agonizing cries, and the yells of the infuriated savages. On the battle-ground, was cleft each scalp of the dead and the dying, before the bloody work was adjourned to " Bloody Rock." Around this large rock, some eighteen of the prisoners, who had been taken under the solemn promise of quarter, were collected and surrounded by a ring of warriors under the command of Esther, Queen of the Seneca tribe, whose natural malignity was rendered more intense and ferocious by the loss of her favorite son, who was slain at Exeter, by Zebulon Marcy, a day or two previous. In the battle she had led her Indian column with more THE WYOMING MASSACliE IN 1778. 155 than Indian bravery, and now around the fatal ring was she to avenge her loss. Seizing the Avar-club with both of her hands, or the merciless hatchet in her right, she walked around the ring, and as suited her whim, dashed out the brains of a prisoner. Only two escaped. The mangled bodies of fourteen or fifteen were afterwards found around this rock, where they had fallen scalped, and shockingly mangled. Nine more were found in a similar circle, some distance above.^ In the battle and the massacre about 160 of the Con- necticut people fell, and 140 escaped. The surviving settlers fled towards the Del aw^ are. Before them frowned the foodless forest, since known as the '* Shades of Death," and behind, save the low w^ail of the scattered fugitives, who were clambering up the mountain side by the light of their burning homes — all w^as silence. The dweller in wigwams had revenged too cruelly his wrongs — the Tory, by his club and bayonet, had forfeited what little remembrance of honor or right he claimed over the wild man — the British soldier, led hither by command, turned away from the sickening, unsoldierlike scenes of the day — and all sank on the shady plain of the old Indian Empire, for short repose. Early on the morning of the 4:th, the Eorts at Pitts- ton surrendered to Col. J. Butler, upon the following terms : " Articles of Capitulation for three Forts at Lacawa- nack, 4th July, 1778. Akt. 1st.— That the difi'ereDfc Commanders of the said Forts, do immediately deliver them up, with all the arms, ammunition and stores, in the said forts. * Miner, 156 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. a 2d. — Major Butler promises that the lives of the men, women, and children be preserved intire." * These terms were complied with, and not a person in Pittston was molested by the Indians ; all the prisoners in the forts were marked with black war-paint, which exempted them from the attack of any straggling bodies. The same afternoon Forty Fort was surrendered to Major John Butler, upon terms far more advantageous to the garrison than could have been expected, as can be seen by the articles of capitulation. " Art. 1st. — ^That the inhabitants of the settlement lay down their arms, and the garrison be demolished. ''2d. — That the inhabitants are to occupy their farms peaceably, and the lives of the inhabitants preserved intire and unhurt. " 3d. — ^That the Continental stores be delivered up. "4th. — ^That Major Butler will use his utmost influ- ence that the private property of the inhabitants shall be preserved intire to them. " 5th. — ^That the prisoners in Forty Fort be delivered up, and that Samuel Finch, now in Major Butler's pos- session, be delivered up also. " 6th. — That the property taken from the people called Tories, up the river, be made good ; and they to remain in peaceable possession of their farms, unmo- lested in a free-trade, in and throughout this State, as far as lies in my power. " Tth. — That the inhabitants, that Colonel Dennistou * Miner. — Copied from Her Majesty's State Paper Documents io London. THE WYOMING MASSACRE IN 1778. 157 now capitulates for, together with himself, do not take up arms (luring the present contest. (Signed), " Nathan Denniston, "John Butler, " Zarah Beech, "Samuel Gustin, " John Johnson, " Wm. Caldwell.""^ The only person known to have been in the fort at that time who is yet living, is Mrs. Deborah Bedford^ the pious and aged mother of Dr. Andrew Bedford, of Abington. She is now in her eighty-fifth year, and although she was hardly six years old at tliis time, retains yet a vivid recollection of the events transpiring when Butler, Brant, and Queen Esther, marched into the fort. Honest, and even honorable as was the British Butler in signing the articles of capitulation, he was unable to restrain the Indians from plundering and breaking open all the trunks in search of whisky, which had previously been poured into the river by the settlers. They ran- sacked every place, and with their tomahawks broke into the floors and partitions, without finding the object of their search. Baftled in this, they rifled boxes and chests ; clothes were rudely taken from the men, and even tobacco, pipes, and money, in spite of the orders of the British Commander ; but among all those who surrendered in the fort, not a single life was taken with the exception of that of Sergeant Boyd, who was ordered to be shot by Col. Butler, as a deserter. Permission was given by the British Butler for some of the inmates of the fort to build a raft or a boat, and go down the Susquehanna. One was thus built by Dr * Miner. 158 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. Samuel Giistin and James Sutton, near the fort, and on the morning of the loth of July, 1778, James Sutton, father of Mrs. Bedford, Polly, Deborah, and William Sutton, Louisa Burnham, a girl given them. Dr. Gustin, his father, mother, and one grandchild, with Sarah, Polly, and William Gustin, a child given to the doctor, and his housekeeper, started from Forty Fort, in a boat or scow so leaky as to be impossible to keep it afloat without continual bailing. Landing for a short time at Northumberland, Dr. Gustin gave the little girl away, who, when she saw herself thus left, cried piteously after her late protectors. A Bible, a little clothing and a scanty supply of corn meal were all that was taken by the party in the boat. They landed at the ferry of Harris (now Harris- burg), with about $100 in Continental currency, and flnding an empty house or cabin here, took possession of it at once. After the close of the w^ar, Sutton returned to the valley with his family, and for many years was a partner with Dr. William Hooker Smith, in the iron business at Old Forge. On Wednesday, the eighth of July, only five days after the battle. Col. Butler left Wyoming with all the force he could control, sick with the scenes of cruelty and bloodshed he had witnessed around the camj^-fires in the valley. " With Butler a large portion of the Indians withdrew, and their march presented a picture at once melancholy and ludicrous. Squaws, to a considerable number, brought up the rear, a belt of scalps stretched on small hoops, around the waist for a girdle, having on some four, some six, and even more, dresses of chintz or silk, one over the other; being mounted astride on horses, of course all stolen, and on their heads three, THE WYOMINa MASSACRE IN 1778. 159 four, or five bonnets, one within the other, worn wrong- side before."^ Strangling parties of Indians yet prowled around the encircling mountain, burning the village of Wilkes Barre, consisting of twenty-three houses, and skulked along the plains, where yet lay the unburied dead. Most of those who had perished in the battle lay on the Held where they had fallen, until the 22d of October, when a large hole was dug by the settlers, into which the half decayed, unrecognized bodies of the slain were deposited with little form and display, as the Indians were known to be but little distance off. A short time previous to this, Isaac Tripp the elder, Isaac Tripp, his grandson, and two young men, named Keys and Hocksey, were taken prisoners in Provi- dence. The Tripps were painted with war-paint and released, while their comrades were killed in Abington, the next morning. The Wyoming Massacre, so butcher-like in its charac- ter, gave birth to the celebrated expedition of General Sullivan, who with 2,500 troops passed through Wyo- ming July 31, 1779, for the Indian settlements, along the upper waters of the Susquehanna, where, after lay- ing waste the Indian country as far as the Genesee Kiver, he returned by way of Tioga to Wyoming, the seventh of October, 1779. THE SIGNAL TREE. Standing on any of the peaks of the Moosic Moun- tain, some twenty miles distant from Wyoming, and * Miner. 160 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. by the aid of a glass, or even with the naked eye, when the morning is clear, can be seen looming np from the surrounding trees, covering the summit of the mountain, lying north of the monument, a slim pine tree, its trunk so shorn of its limbs to the very top, that with the umbel spread of its deep foliage, it resembles a great umbrella. Over the tops of all the other trees along the valley, this one floats with a kingly air, and when the sun sinks behind the hills, this tall monarch of the forest is the last to catch a glimpse of the descend- ing light. This tree is known as the signal tree. Tra- dition tells that at the time of the battle, an Indian was stationed in the top of the tree, so that when the defeat of the whites was announced by the louder peals of the war-whoop, he commenced to cut off the limbs of the tree, and as this could be seen many miles from every direction, parties of Indians were thus informed to watch the paths leading out of the valley and prevent the escape of the fugitives. This, however, is mere tradi- tion. A more reasonable interpretation of the matter is this : Some years ago one of the knots of this tree was removed, and from the concentric rings or yearly growths indicated by them, the lopping of the limbs was dated back to 1762 — the first year a settlement was commenced here by the whites — thus showing quite clearly that the tree had been trimmed previous to the massacre, and that it had been used by the emigrating parties from Connecticut, as a guiding tree to the Wyo- ming lands, where a colony, with no roads but the war- rior's pathway, and but little knowledge of a reliable character of the locality of the new country, crossed the frowning mountains, mostly on foot, and made a per- manent residence here in 1769. SETTLEMENT AROUND PROVIDENCE BOROUGH. 161 SETTLEMENT AROUND PROVIDENCE BOROUGH. The District of Providence,* in the old town and county of Westmoreland, was originally surveyed by Isaac Tripp the elder, and John Jenkins, and was five miles square. After the Indian sale of these lands, in 1754, to the Susquehanna Company, a considerable portion of them now lying in the middle and upper part of Providence Township, fell into the hands of Captain John Howard, of Connecticut, by a draft. So remote, in fact, from the parent State, and so iso- lated from the larger colony upon the Susquehanna, and swarming with wild tribes and beasts of prey, as were these lands at this time, they ofi"ered to the first emi- grating parties inhospitality and peril. Over this dis- trict the hunter — not the imbecile creature who to-day, with shot-gun stretched from his arms, blazes away at every feeble songster before it falls a trophy to his own more feeble genius — but the hunter whose life and the lives of a whole family were often intrusted to his gun, found the exciting chase, and the sometimes terrible encounters in the forest, more congenial to his taste than rustic and slow agriculture. Providence was the only certified, or Yankee town, on the Lackawanna above Pittston, being divided into lots of 300 acres each, generally running back two and a half miles. Those not reserved for public purposes, * Providence took its name from Providence, R. I., which was founded in 1637 by the famous Roger Williams. The origin of the name of that Providence is explained in a curious deed executed by him : " Having a sense of God's merciful providence unto me in my duties, I called the name Providence." 162 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. were thrown into market by the proprietors of the town, to be sold upon terms the most advantageous to the Susquehanna Company. There being at this time but little disposition to settle upon any lands lying above Capouse Meadow, much of them came under the control of Captain John Howard, Christopher Avery, and Isaac Tri})p the elder. None of the three made a pitch here except Tripp. A lot "in ye Township of Providence, alious Capouse," originally laid out to Colonel Lodwick Ojidirk, passed into the hands of Jonathan Slocum in 1771, " on account of Doeing ye Duty of a settler " for said Ojidirk. This tract of land, containing about 180 acres, came into the possession of James Bagley April 29th, 1778. Bagley was driven away the ensuing summer by the Indians, but returned again after the close of the war. The old records tell us that, in 1772, the Committee at Wilkes Barre " sertiiie that Mr. Ebenezer Searles is Intitled to a Right of Land in N^ewprovidence," but it does not appear that he ever saw or settled upon it. Above Providence village, James Leggett made the first clearing in the woods in 1775, near the mouth of one of the wild tributaries of the Lackawanna, known now as " Leggett's Creek." A few months later, Thomas Pichit made a purchase of 100 acres of land in the Capouse, adjoining that of Leggett, of Christopher Avery. His right was easily obtained, for the land was given him merely for " ye Consideration of Certain Duties & Ser- vices Done for " said Avery. In August, 1775, Benja- min Baily purchased of Solomon Strong a " Certain Peace of Ground in ye township of Providence at Capouse Meadow, near Capouse River." ^ The charac- * The Lackawanna was called by this name by the first emigrants. SETTLEMENT AROUND PEOVIDENCE BOROUGH. 163 ter of this region was too stern for his genial nature, so he sold his lot to Tripp for a few furs and " a flint gun." In June, 1777, Matthew Dalson bought 375 acres of land " on ye Capouse River so called," bounded on the north by " Lands Bolonging to one Loggit." Part of this purchase was the present farm known as " old Uncle Joshua Griflin's." As we have before stated, Isaac Tripp the elder, and Isaac Tripp, his grandson, both fell by Indian bullets during the Revolutionary War. Seven years later, in IT 86, another Isaac Tripp emigrated from Greenwich, R. I., accompanied by his son Stephen, then a lad of only ten summers. He brought no other members of his family at this time, so that his residence at Capouse was not permanent until two or three years later. Isaac married Miss Patty Wall, by whom he had — Elizabeth, Polly, William, Susan, Amasa, Stephen, Isaac, Martha, Catharine, Holden, and Nancy. The last named, or " Aunt Kancy Vaughn," is yet living. Stephen Tripp married Miss Mary Benedict, by whom he had — Horace, married Alvira Stevens. Harriet, " Samuel Church. Samuel, " Sally Brown. Wisener. William, " Delilah Thompson. Polly, unmarried. Fanny, married Armstrong. Isaac Tripp, Jr., or fourth^ married Miss Catharine Lafronse, by whom he had — Diana, Benjamin, Ira, Isaac, Mahala, Maria, Holden, and Catharine. 164 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. The descendants of Isaac are yet living in the valley and are among our most active and energetic citizens. In April, 1799, Isaac Tripp sold a portion of his farm in Capoiise to his son Stephen, " for 800 pounds of law- ful money," and the remainder at the same time passed into the hands of Isaac Tripp, Jr. The first clearing made by the white man in what is now known as Providence Borough, was commenced in 1788 by Enoch Holmes, who emigrated from White Plains, New York, the previous year. The single apple-tree, bereft of all its mates by de- stroying hands, now standing near the residence of E. S. M. Hill, Esq., marks the original location of his log cabin. Here he lived two years, clearing enough land to raise the necessary corn and potatoes for his family, although sometimes he was compelled to subsist on veni- son and bear-meat alone. From trees and brakes found along the stream, he constructed brooms and baskets, taking them to the Wyoming Yalley to exchange for the most needful commodities. An Englishman from New York, named Charles Unam, purchased his right and improvement, but his abilities to endure the privations of forest life being of an order so inferior, he soon left his land in the hands of John Phillips, of Pittston, to dispose of, moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he died the same year with the yellow fever. His widow married a man in the Palmetto State, a short time after, by the name of Bradshaw, who, as late as 1816, visited Providence in search of lands belonging to his wife. This property, comprising the greater portion of what is now Providence, was sold to James Griffin in the SETTLEMENT AROUND PROVIDENCE BOROUGH. 165 winter of 1812, by Taylor, as the agent of Unam. Grif- fin, with his three children,* moved into the valley when it was frosted and white with snow in the follow- ing winter, taking possession of this solitary log-house. Nathaniel Cottrill and Elisha S. Potter, Esq., pur- chased fourteen acres of this tract of Griffin, in 1828, for $4,000, but subsequently it passed into Cottrill's hands alone. The next settler in this immediate vicinage after Holmes, was Daniel Waderman, a soldier of the Kevo- lution. Charged with being a Hessian soldier — the facts are these : Of pure German extraction, Waderman was a native of Hamburg. Yisiting England upon business entirely of a personal nature, he was seized by the British press- gang and forced into British service, according to their custom at the time of the war with her American Colo- nies and previous to this. He was present at the battle of Bunker Hill, in 1775, where General Gage won so little glory for himself or his troops. Returning to Portsmouth, England, to winter, the next spring he ac- companied Burgoyne to Quebec. After wintering at Montreal, we find him the ensuing summer in an en- gagement on the Mohawk, where he was taken prisoner by the friendly Stockbridge Indians, after which he enlisted in the American service, and by his faithful service as a private soldier in the army from 1779 to the close of the war, furnished the best evidence of his fidelity and sympathy with colonial arms. J^ear where now stands the house of Daniel Silkman, in Providence Borough, Waderman erected his barky cabin in 1790, * Elias and Ezekiel Griffin, and Mrs. John Stevens. 166 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. where lie lived for a period of twenty-one years, when he removed farther np the valley, and died in 1835. Preserved Taylor came into Providence about the same time of Waderman, and settled just below the house of Stephen Tripp, on the Hyde Park road. Two years later, Constant Searles emigrated to the valley. In 1791, the name of Griffin first appears in the val- ley, and as this portion of country is now numerously represented by them, they deserve a passing notice. The original branch of the family, from whence sprung the descendants here, lived in Westchester county, New York. Joseph Grtffin was born there, where he also died, leaving twelve children, viz : Mary, Phebe, James, Thomas, Tamer, Hannah, Stephen, Anna, Elizabeth, Sarah, Joseph, and Deborah. Of his children, the first to emigrate here was Stephen Gkiffin, who, in 1794 left the banks of the Hudson, and taking the only bridle path or road leading across the mountains from Orange county into it from the east, located himself here, and at once commenced to battle with the forest in Provi- dence, near the new and narrow clearing of Coonrad Lutz. He married Miss Polly Place, by whom he had Matilda, who married Benjamin Slociim. Jackson, Miss E'esbit. Jerusha, Henry Fellows. Armilla, Israel Loovner. Maria, Sylvenas Fellows. Sarah, Philip Wickizer. Mary, Benedict. Thomas Griffin was the next one of the family who became a resident of the valley in 1811. He purchased a piece of land of John Hollenback, lying below Provi- SETTLEMENT AROUND PROVIDENCE BOROTJGH. 167 dence village, married Maria Briindage, by whom ho had eight children, some of whom are still enjoying the patrimony. Next to the youngest child of Joseph Griffin, Sen., was a young man of vigorous constitution and temper- ate habits, who emigrated to the valley in 1816, and who now is known throughout the valley by the familiar name of " Uncle Joe." On the commanding hill lying below Hyde Park, where yet the old gentleman resides, stretches out the farm he purchased of Reuben Taylor. After the land in Westmoreland passed from the wild man to the whites, Timothy Keys lirst began to bring light and love into the grand old forest then covering this farm. Keys fell by the hatchet in 1778, and this farm, after passing through the hands of his heirs, after the war had closed, came into the possession of Keuben Taylor, who afterw^ards sold it to Griffin. This is one of the pieces of land upon w^hich Doctor W. Hooker Smith, nearly seventy years ago, purchased for a mere trifle, the right to mine ore, " and a certain mineral called stone coal." Uncle Joe married Miss Thorn for his first wife, and Miss Hoysradt for his second, by whom he had seven children. The productiveness of the different Griffin families can be inferred from the fact, that in the year of 1820, while the mother of Joseph Griffin was living with him in Pro- vidence, there were then residing within a radius of a hundred miles, over one hundred of her children and her grand-children, besides an uncounted multitude of great-grandchildren. Eight members of this family had nine children each, while two, disregarding the respec- table standard of nine, enumerated the total number of twenty-six children as their own. Uncle Joe, filled the 168 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. office of Justice of the Peace for some years, (liis com- mission bears date Oct. 24:th, 1832,) and, in 1839, re- presented Luzerne county in the State Legislature ; being the first person ever chosen from the valley for this purpose, with the single exception of Isaac Tripp, the elder, who, some fifty years before, was sent to Connecticut, to show the wants and the condition of the colony in Westmoreland. Tamkk Gkiffin, one of the daughters of the senior Joseph, married Selah Mead, in Westchester, moving into the valley in 1812. The same year James Griffin settled in Providence. He married Miss Clapp, by whom he had — Marium, married Huffman. Eliza, " Elder John Miller. Ezekiel, Samuel, Elias, Philip and James. At the time of his arrival here, there was no other residence in the immediate vicinity of the log-house he purchased, but tlie plain cabin of Waderman's, standing about a cpiarter of a mile above. One of the pioneers at this time was Eltsha S. Potter. Hearing of the rich, lowlands which were sold so cheap along the Lackawanna, he left his native place, White Hall, New York, to seek his fortune here, settling in Blakely. In this portion of country, Potter was the first justice of the peace, and, and so well were the vexatious duties of the magistrate performed by him, that the litigating parties seeking redress, were gener- rally satisfied with his impartial judgment and decisions. He was the father of the late lamented Charles W. Potter, Esq., of Dunmore. Isaac Gkiffin, oldest son of Thomas, appeared here in EDMUND GEIFFIN. 169 the summer of 1816. Moving into tlie house of Joseph, with him his first child, Edmund was born soon after- wards. The fine farm now owned by Dr. Robinson, in Providence — a man, who, for the last half century, has thrown the healing mantle of Elisha over the inhabi- tants of the Lackawanna Yalley, was given to Isaac the same year by his father. He sold this to the doctor, and located himself permanently in " Razorville," on a por- tion of the property previously purchased by James. Born in the wilderness almost, as Edmund was, he early learned among the solitary nooks and lonely walks that, " To climb steep hills, Requires slow steps at first." Upon his father's farm he found too little to amuse his restless nature, so he went to Peekskill, I^. Y., where some relatives resided. Being observed one day by a grocery-man from l^ew York city, who was struck with the quick, bold, ofl'-hand manner of the lad, he at once engaged him as an errand-boy, at eight dollars per month and found. After a few months his wages was raised to twelve dollars. The slender product of his in- dustry, he remitted monthly with conscientious exact- ness to his parents in Providence. This filial feature, as well as others, so unusual in a young man, naturally attracted the notice of his employer, who, on the very day Edmund attained his twentieth year, told him to consider himself of age, as from that time he could carry on the business as his own. From that day his fortime was made. In the spring of 1849, Edmund Griffin was chosen Assistant Alderman, in the First Ward in New York 8 170 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. city, and in the following November, elected Alderman for two years. From January, 1850, to January, 1852, he represented this ward in a manner highly creditable to himself, and satisfactory to those who had intrusted their interest into his hands. "The great rise in coal lands in his native valley, of which he largely took the advan- tage, placed the " Alderman," as he is generally called, in a position of ease and social standing, not often reached in so short a time. linear the old home- stead, bordering the ancient Indian clearing of Capouse, the Alderman a few years ago sought retirement ; and the massive, hospitable mansion, standing by the road- side, between Providence and Scranton, near the for- mer village, is his present residence. BLAKEL Y. In April, 1808, Blakely* Township was formed from " a part of Providence, including a corner of Greenfield, east of the Lackawanna mountain." 'No real settlement was attempted here until after the close of the Kevolutionary War. In 1Y86, Timothy Stevens, a veteran wdio had served in the war from its inception to its close, with no little courage, emigrated from Westchester, New York, settling here in the depth of the forest. No " Indian clearings " were found here, and his path, marked upon tree-sides with the axe, fur- nished the only guide for advancing or retreating foot- * Named from Capt. Blakely of the U. S. sloop of war Wasp, who sig- nalized himself iu an engagement with the British brig Avon. — Chap- man. A SINGULAR CHARACTER. 171 steps. Here, immured in the wilderness, where the pulse of the great world only throbbed in storms and winds, he cleared enough of the land around him to show its fertility, and lived many years upon it, with his family alone. This was upon the place now known as the Mott farm, where, in 1814, he built a grist-mill upon the Lackawanna, subsequently known as " Mott's Mill." A SINGULAR CHARACTER. There was a strange character here in 1795, about whom there was a good deal of mystery. He carried a gold snuff-box, from which he was incessantly inspiring his nose, wore an olive velvet coat, was a man of considerable literary attainment : exhibiting a good deal of " Grandeur's remains and gleams of other days." His name was Nicholas Leuchens. With a classic edu- cation, he had mastered seven modern languages, and had once been a large German merchant in Hamburg. He loved the imposing and the mysterious, and at his wedding in Germany, had expended one thousand pounds sterling for that purpose. Before ^N'apoleon began to make Europe tremble with the force of his genius and his arms, Leuchens fled from his native shore, landing in Philadelphia, August 25th, 1795. Wyoming Yalley, with all its loveliness, had been pictured to him in poetry and song, and hither he sought the promised land. 1T2 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. After his arrival here he left the yet disturbed valley, pushing up in the forest and clearing, along the Lacka- wanna, until the flats in Blakely, where now stands Peck's Mill, were reached. Here he built his German fortress, in the shape of the rudest log-house. This was thirteen years before Blakely was formed, and at that time Leuchens was the only real settler in this portion of Providence, except Stevens, living about two miles below. Finding no owner for the land, he took possession of five hundred acres, for which he afterwards agreed to pay Hollenback and Fisher fifty cents per acre. He never, however, paid a cent. Here he built his plain habitation, with barks and boughs for its roof; with only one room, in which he successively piled layer after layer of his beds, until they almost reached the very roof, so as better to defy the approach of ghosts, of which he was especially afraid. Although he was sixty-two years old at the time, he kept a district school for boys, in the old jail in Wilkes Barre, in 1806, and one of his pupils ^ then, relates the following of his school : On a little basin of water, called "Yankee Pond," lying just back of this old schoolhouse, there was during the winter months, gene- rally, good and safe skating — skating too, presenting more attraction and probable a healthier development to the mind and the muscles of boyhood than all the advantages of his school. Passionate as Leuchens was, so little control had he over his school, that some of the larger boys would go out to skate without permission ; another would ask to go, and not returning, recruit after recruit would be sent after the rebellious ones until none * Anson Goodrich. A SINGULAR CHARACTEE. 173 were left to do homage to the master, when he would go himself, animated with the remaining virtues of the birch or the ferule. Being old, and quite near sighted, .before he could discover which were his scholars, they, taking advantage of his misfortune, would pelt him so vigorously with snow-balls, that he neither could find his pupils, nor trace out the authors of the mischief. At this time he used during the year twenty-four pounds of snufi" and tobacco, and presented a peculiar appearance ; his whiskers, which never held less than a tea-cup full of snuff in their brownish jungle, were completely frosted over. The forcep like grasp of the German merchant distin- guishing him in other days forsook him on his farm, as rapidly as did his fortune ; he grew aimless, indolent and disheartened, and in a few years later, returned to Philadelphia, where he ended his earthly pilgrimage, and was buried by the hand of charity. A remaining son, whom he called " God save Francis Leuchens," possessed many of his father's singularities, and but little of his father's genius. His ladder to fame consisted of a yellow pair of buck- skin breeches. These were his standard of beauty, giv- ing to his manhood the faultless and finishing touch. Eeturning one day from the cave, with a roll of butter for his dinner, he stumbled to the ground with the unctuous mass. Eather than it should waste in the noon-day sun, he oiled his " buckskins " from top to toe with the softening compound, which, presenting such a triumph of genius over grease, was regarded as the only brilliant achievement in his lifetime. Upon the road from Providence to Carbondale, the observer cannot fail to notice, in Blakely, lying just 174: LACKAWANNA VALLEY. below the road in the meadow, to the southeast, a large orchard, where John Yaughn, who had seen some ser- vice in border warfare, settled with his sons in 1797. A man named Ralph had made a clearing on the east side of the Lackawanna, below Leuchens, the year previous ; this passed into the hands of Ferris in 1798. Moses DoLPH, the grandfather of Edward Dolph, Esq., also made a pitch here in 1798 ; he had eleven children, all of whom have passed away, except Alexander Dolph, who yet lives on the patrimony. At this time no white man had settled farther up the valley than Leuchens, and sparse and poor indeed were the cabins standing between here and the Wyoming Yalley. Mt. Yernon, the present residence of L. S. Watres, Esq., was settled in 1812. The forbidding aspect of the country along the borders of the forest, the long severe winters with their prodigious depth of snow, rising often with its long, white lines of drift, to the very tops of the cabins, and the absence of all roads to commu- nicate with the settlement below, imposed upon the inhabitants the most exacting hardships. Markings upon trees along the woods directed the path of the pioneer. No bridge spanned the Lackawanna at this time, and all the streams were forded if passed at all. Once swollen, and wild by the lengthened rain or spring freshet, and all intercourse with the neighbor- hood was suspended as much as when the winter months sometimes made the streams formidable. Nor was this all, neither churches, schoolhouses, nor mills, nor any of those comforts so essential to domestic life, existed here. The product of the soil in the shape of Indian corn, was either broken up after the Indian fashion, by the stone or wooden mortar and pestle, or YANKEE WAY OF PULLING A TOOTH. ^ 175 boiled and eaten wliole. Bear meat, venison, potatoes, and the scanty salt comprised the luxm-ies of the day — potatoes in one instance became so scarce that those planted for seed, were re-dug in one instance to sustain a family perishing from hunger. For many years, especially during the spring and autumn months, wolves became so bold and voracious that large fires were built around the inclosures holding the sheep and cattle, while the howl of the wolves, dis- tinct and prolonged, even at the very door of the cabins, imparted to the stirring scenes of border life, an exciting feature. Wilkes Barre then furnished the nearest store from Stroudsburg or Easton, and every spring after tramping weeks in the Sap-woods, was the ox-journey hither undertaken, exchanging the maple sugar for tea and other essentials. For many years sweet fern was substituted for tea ; and browned rye and various herbs smoked upon the table in the place of cofi*ee. Pine knots or " candle-wood," as the Yankees termed it, threw on the little families the only light other than that furnished by Heaven. YANKEE WAY OP PULLING A TOOTH. Long before doctors armed with lancets and saddle- bags, went forth in the valley, empowered like the beast in the Kevelations, " to kill a fourth part," at least, of those they met, the duties of the physician necessarily fell upon the patient himself, or the odd skill of some good- natured neighbor, or perhaps were more often assumed ■^'^ . LACKAWAKNA VALLEY. by some old, adipose, ignorant and meddlesome woman whose roots and '^ yarls,'' gathered from the mountain and meadow, had such wonderful '•' vartu;' that no dis- ease could resist. Tooth-ache, although then not often treated with the savage dignity of forceps or turn- keys, came in the young settlement, just as often, and like any unwelcome visitor, stayed just as long. Some- times, however, its court was summarily adjourned by methods having the merit of being original, cheap and quick. * ^ Among the settlers in Blakely, at the time spoken of was a long, lean, bony son of a former, troubled with that most provoking of all pains, or as Burns called It-," thou h— 11 o' a' diseases,"— the tooth-ache. The troublesome member was one of the wide pronged molars, as firm in its socket as if held in a vice. The pain was so acute as it ran alono- the in- flamed gums, that the usual series of manipulations with decoctions and "m^J-ments," alternated with useless swearing, failed to bring relief to the sufferer. As the ache grew keener with torture, a ''remejil'' ao-ent was suggested and tried. One end of a firm hemp string was fastened upon the rebellious member, while the other securely fixed around a bullet, purposely notched was placed in the barrel of an old flint-lock musket^ loaded with an extra charge of powder. When all was ready, the desperate operator caught hold of the gun and " let drive." Out flew the tooth from the bleed- ing jaw, and away bounded the musket several feet. After this new way of extracting teeth had thus been demonstrated by one so simple and unskilled in the dental science, it became at once the chosen and only mode practised here for many years. DUNMORE. 177 DUNMOEE.* The purchase of land from the Indians, by the Dela- ware Connecticut Company, came within ten miles of the Susquehanna River, and included within its boundaries all of the upper and eastern portion of the Yankee Town of Providence, and extended to the Delaware. The dividing line ran between this point and a part of Providence. 'No settlement was attempted here until 1783, when William Allswokth, struck up his camp-fire among the tall trees. Allsworth was a Yankee, who, living on the extreme border of the State of New York, was in- duced to leave and emigrate to "Nine Partners," in 1782, a large tract of land lying on the west bank of the Hudson, above Catskill, belonging originally to nine persons. He was a shoemaker by trade, and, learning how scarce they were in Westmoreland, determined to migrate hither. Taking the old Connecticut road, which passed from Orange county to the Yankee possessions at Wyoming, lie reached this point in the forest just at the edge of evening, in May, 1783. Surrounded by the shadows of night, he lit his bright fires around his covered wagon, containing his family, to intimidate the horde of wild- * In 1835-6, there was travelling in the United States, an English nobleman named Sir Augustus Murray, who, meeting with the friends of the " Drinker Railroad" at Easton, in 1836, who were making every possi- ble efforts to mature their project, promised them that when he returned to Europe, the next month, he would raise 100,000 pounds sterhng, to begin the road. In honor of Mr. Murray, whose father was the Earl of DuNMORE, this name was given to this place by H. W. Drinker and W. Henry. 178 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. cats and wolves swarmiDg in the chaparral toward the Roaring Brook, while the surrounding trees, fallen and rolled in a cabin shape, and covered with the limbs and poles, became tolerably comfortable. He had married in early life Miss Esther Pettibone, by whom he had — Asenath, who married Mr. Daniels for her first husband and Millard for her second. Rachael w^io married Deodat Smith,* of Lackawanna. Dorothy, " " Noah Stevens, of Blakely. John, " " Miss Polly Benedict. Huldah, " " Enock Holmes. The descendants of Mr. Allsworth filled many places of usefulness in the county, and many are still adorning the various walks of life. The cabin of Allsworth being the only one upon the road this side of Little Meadows, some seventeen miles toward the Paupack settlement, it naturally became a place of some note for emigrating parties to stop. The old cabin stood upon the ground where was burned last winter the hotel of Coolbaugh. As nothing but forest intervened from the " Lackawa " settlement to that at Capouse, the lairs and frequent visits of wild beasts proved dangerously troublesome to the settler. At one time a bear came to the cabin of Allsworth, just at the edge of evening, and jumping into the pen, seized the old sow in its bushy, brawny arms, and in spite of every efibrt of those daring to pursue, carried the noisy porker off" to the w^oods towards little Poaring Brook. The little pigs, frightened but safe, were left in the pen. For greater safety, the barn-yard, or the strong inclosure into which cattle and sheep were * " He gives to God." DUNMOEE. 179 driven at niglit, was built contiguously to the rear of the cabin. At another time, during the absence of Allsworth, a large panther came to this yard in the afternoon in search of food. This animal is as partial to veal as a bear is to pork. A calf was in the pen at the time. On this the panther sprang, when Mrs. Alls- worth, hearing an unusual bleat, seized the huge tongs standing in the corner of the fire-place, and actually drove the yellow intruder away without its intended meal. The same night, however, the calf was killed by the panther, which, in return, was the same week secured in a bear-trap and slain. After a few years, Edward Lunnon, John Carey, and Charles Dalph, moved in this region and settled a short distance from Allsworth up the valley. John West also moved in the county, and commenced a small clearing in the present vicinity of that point now designated as " No. 6," in the spring of the year 1795. Four paths now diverging from Allsworth, two of which were fol- lowed by marked trees, led to the simple and the com- mon name where two roads crossed, of " The Corners." The old Cobb or Connecticut road passed through the Corners, and a faint path was cut from the log cabin of West up through this place into the Providence forest where Blakely now lies. James Brown settled at the Corners in 1799, and being one of the laziest men in the world, did little else than hunt his favorite buck, as the haunches of venison hanging in his cabin, and the deer-horns piled in one corner of the room, well attested. He rifled the original name of all its beauty when he imparted to the Corners the famous appellation of " Bucktown " — a name not yet entirely obsolete. For a period of twenty-two years, the " Tavern " of the 180 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. widow Allsworth, and the house of Brown, were all that enlivened the lonely site of Bucktown. In 1836, this place was named Dunmore. THOMAS SMITH. Among other resolute pioneers who sought the shores of the Susquehanna in 1783, appears the name of Thomas Smith, grandsire of T. Smith, Esq., of Abington. On the east side of the river below Nanticoke, he laid the foundation for his future home. The great ice freshet of 1784, which bore down from the upper waters of the Susquehanna such vast masses of ice, overflowing the plains and destroying the property along the river, swept his farm of all its harvest product, leaving it with little else than its gullied soil. Hardly had his recu])er- ative energies again made cheerful his fireside, when the " pumpkin freshet," as it was called, from the count- less number of pumpkins it brought down the swollen river, again inundated its banks, sweeping away houses, barns, mills, fences, stacks of hay and grain, cattle, flocks of sheep and droves of swine, in the general de- struction, and spreading desolation where but yesterday autumn promised abundance. Smith, not stoic enough to receive the visits of such floods with indifi'erence, moved up in the "gore" (now Lackawanna Township) in 1786, " for," said the old gentleman, " I want to get above high-water mark." His son, Deodat, intermarried with the Allsworth family in Dunmore, from whom sprung a large family of childi-en. ELIAS SCOTT, THE HUNTEK. 181 ELIAS SCOTT, THE HUNTER. During the summer of 1792, Daniel Scott, the father of Elias, emigrated to the Lackawanna Yalley and pur- chased from the State 400 acres of land, lying then in Providence. His son Elias was a perfect ISTimrod, but the rapid encroachments of civilized life have crowded the forest world from him, as much as the aggressions of the white man have driven and stripped the Indian from his ancient huntino^-crrounds. Perceiving him, one day last summer, standing in front of the Wyoming House, in Scranton, and in a mood apparently thoughtful and sorrowful, the writer asked him what was the matter ? " Matter ! matter !" he exclaimed, as he looked up with a sigh, and pointed his wilted bony hand and hickory cane towards the railroad depots, " see how the tarnal rascals have spiled the old' hunting-grounds, where I've killed many a bear and deer." Upon his left hand unmistakable evidence appears of an encounter with a huge bear many years ago, while hunting along Stafford Meadow Brook, a short distance to the south from the present village of Scranton. Being camped out at night, with his knapsack for a pillow, his knife, belt, and long heavy rifle for compan- ions, where the glare of his camp-fire startled the deer and the elk, as they browsed along the mountain side, or were chased by the gaunt wolf or more blood- thirsty panther through the forest, he met old bruin just as the day broke, while the brute was gathering the juicy berry for his morning lunch. His organs of diges- 182 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. tion, liowever, did not relisli the tickling sensation of the bullet thrown from Scott's rifle, and he immediatelj approached the hunter with all the familiarity and warmth of an old friend, until he came frightfully close. Scott, declining his advances, retreated as rapidly as possible from the wounded and enraged brute, and by the frequent punches of his gun, now empty and broken, avoided the embrace of the bear. Walking backwards from the ensanguined animal, the heel of his boot caught in a treacherous root of a tree, and he fell to the ground. Before he could raise himself again, commenced the death-struggle. Bruin sprang on the hunter with such violence as to rupture an internal blood-vessel, and for a moment the copious flow of blood from his mouth threatened suffocation. Smarting with the wound of the bullet, the bear seized the left hand of Scott in his mouth, as it was uplifted to divert attention from his throat, while with his right arm he drew from his belt the well-tried trusty knife. This he plunged rej^eatedly into the bear, until, exhausted from the loss of blood, he fell dead on the mangled hunter. Hunters then lived a life of plenty, for game of all kinds was so abundant at that period, that in the course of one year's casual hunting, Scott killed one hun- dred and seventy-five deer, five bears, three wolves, and a panther, besides wild turkeys in great numbers. He has killed and dressed eleven deer in one day, three of them being slain at 07ie shot. EARLY HISTORY OF " DRINKEr's BEECH." 183 NOW COVINGTON. As the dweller in wigwams turned his footsteps to- wards the setting sun, in search of other hunting grounds, where the deer, the moose, and the buffalo, had not been driven by the white conqueror, no region was left be- hind him more fitted for the chase, the war-dance, or hostile camp-fires, than that section of country lying between Stroudsburg and the Lackawanna, first known as Drinker's Beech — a name suggested by the quantity of beech trees growing upon the region owned by Drinker. 'No attention of the white man had been directed here until the year of 1Y8T. At this time, and during the year of 1791, Henry Drinker, Jr., of Philadelphia, father of Henry W. and Richard Drinker, purchased from the State about 25,000 acres of unseated land, lying in a section of country now embraced by Wayne, Pike, and Luzerne counties. Nothing was done with these wild lands until 1792, when he hired John Delong, of Stroudsburg, and a few other persons, to mark or cut a road to them from at or near the twenty-one mile tree, on the north and south road, which was also called the Drinker road, from the fact that it was opened princi- pally at the expense of Henry Drinker the elder, who was an uncle of Henry Drinker, Jr., and was also a large landholder in the north of the State. The road cut by Delong extended in a westerly direc- tion, passed that romantic sheet of water. Lake Henry, crossed the present track of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, and thence, taking a southerly 184: LACKAWANNA VALLEY. course, terminated on a branch of the Lehigh, called Bell Meadow Brook, near the old Indian encampment upon the edge of this brook, mentioned before. After these pioneer choppers returned, as the road was not travelled, it grew so full of underbrush as to forbid passage to all but the woodsman or the wild-cat. In reopening this road from the lake to within a short distance of the north and south turnpike, in the fall of 1821, the name of "Henry Drinker," with the date of 1792, was found cut on a large beech tree. Until as late as 1813, the late Ebenezer Bowman, Esq., of Wilkes Barre, was the agent employed to pay the taxes upon these lands, when they were given in charge of Henry W. Drinker, who was instructed to offer them for sale and settlement. In the spring of tliis year, H. Drinker, Jr., with his sons, II. W. and Hichard Drinker, visited the village of Stoddartsville — a village which was built by the late John Stoddart, of Philadelphia, w^ho, being an alien when war was declared against Great Britain in 1811, was required to remove from the city, and owning several tracts of land along the waters of the Lehigh, one of which embraced the Great Fails, employed his time and capital in the creation of that retired settle- ment. As the southern portion of the Drinker lands lay on the Lehigh and its tributaries, about twelve miles north- east of Stoddartsville, it was decided to open a communi- cation to them from that place by a road nearly follow- ing the course of the river, if the same was found at all practicable. Previous, however, to running any line of road, H. W. Drinker determined to ascend that stream in a small EARLY HISTORY OF " DRINKEr's BEECH." 185 canoe or skiff, up to the very mouth of Wild Meadow Brook— now called " Mill Creek." This the old hunt- ers and sturdy woodsmen declared impossible, as the stream in one place was completely closed by a com- pact body of drift-wood of very large size and great extent, on the top of which a considerable strata of vege- table and earthy matter had accumulated, and brush- wood was growing luxuriantly ; in other places there were swift and narrow rapids, beaver dams, and alder and laurel, twisted and interwoven over the very cur- rent in such a manner that it seemed as if no boat could ascend the Lehigh, unless carried upon shoulders the greater portion of the way, as the bark canoes of the Indians were sometimes taken. ISTotwithstanding these discouraging but genuine representations, by offering high wages, a resolute set of axemen were at length engaged to undertake this truly formidable task, and after the expenditure of no little energy and money, accompanied with some of the hardest swearing among the choppers, a boat channel to the desired point was opened in the course of two months. The first encampment of the Messrs. Drinkers, with their choppers, was near the mouth of Wild Meadow Brook, where they erected a bai'k cabin, or shed, open in front and at the sides, and sloping back to the ground. Each man was furnished with a blanket, in which he rolled himself up at night, and while a large crackling fire blazed in front of the cabin without, the soft hem- lock boughs within furnished invigorating repose after the fatiguing labors of the day. Now and then, they were annoyed by the serenade of a school of owls, at- tracted to the camp by the strange glare of the fire, or the piercing scream of the sleepless panther, watching 186 LACKAWANNA VALLEY. the intruders : and in damp, rainy weather, by the visits of the grey-coated gnats," or " punks," as the woodsmen called them. Trout and venison were so abundant here, that an hour's fish or hunt, supplied the cabin for a week. This encampment was made in 1815, when this new avenue along the Lehigh was used for boating and freight. Provisions and lumber were taken up the stream from Stoddartsville, in a large batteau, drawn by a tough old mare, who was hitched to the bow with a plough harness, and with a setting pole to assist her when there was a tight pull, and occasionally to push her en deTriere^ when the speed was too slow to suit the i?