Governor Shunk issued a proclamation announcing the grant to Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad to be null and void.
In 1837 a group of Pittsburgh men obtained a charter for the Pittsburgh
and Connellsville Railroad. This with the design to get into Baltimore,
as it would build fifty-eight miles of the route to that city.
That scheme fell through, but in 1843 the charter was renewed and the
interest of the Baltimore crowd was obtained. But they did not seem to
appreciate the advantage secured for them by the astute Pittsburgh
business men, and the Pittsburgh and Connellsville relapsed into
slumberland until 1853.
The Baltimore and Ohio had completed its line to Wheeling and the
Pennsylvania was about to finish its line into Pittsburgh. The
Pittsburgh and Connellsville obtained authority to make connection with
the Baltimore and Ohio at Cumberland. But new troubles arose. The
president of the company embezzled the funds and the City of Baltimore
failed to give as liberally as promised.
In spite of those obstacles the road was opened from Pittsburgh to
Connellsville January, 1857. Then came the panic of 1857 and the
depression by the prospect of the Civil War.
In 1864 the stretch of ninety miles between Uniontown and Cumberland
again became a political matter. Thomas A. Scott, president of the
Pennsylvania Railroad, determined this link should not be built, as the
last thing he wanted was a competing line in Pittsburgh.
On April 11, 1864, two bills were introduced into the Legislature. One
claimed the Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad had misused its
charter; the other incorporated a new railroad from Connellsville. The
bills passed and became laws without the approval of Governor Curtin.
Judge Grier in United States Court June 20, 1865, held the repeal of the
Pittsburgh and Connellsville to be unconstitutional. This case now
became a legal battle for years and eventually got into Congress and
back into the Pennsylvania Legislature. On January 29, 1868, the Supreme
Court of Pennsylvania unanimously decided in favor of the Pittsburgh and
Connellsville Railroad. The next day the Legislature repealed the Act of
1864.
The happy ending was in spite of all litigation. Pittsburgh and the
great mineral and lumber wealth along the Monongahela and Youghiogheny
Valleys was opened up, and on June 26, 1871, the Pittsburgh, Washington
and Baltimore Railroad was formally opened and the long struggle for
Pittsburgh ended.
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Governor Andrew G. Curtin Inaugurated
War Governor January 15, 1861
Andrew Gregg Curtin, of Bellefonte, was inaugurated Governor of
Pennsylvania January 15, 1861, and assumed the office at a time when the
gravest problems ever presented to American statesmanship were to be
solved. The mutterings of the coming storm were approaching nearer and
nearer, and the year opened up gloomily.
In his inaugural he took occasion “to declare that Pennsylvania would,
under any circumstances, render a full and determined support of the
free institutions of the Union,” and pledged himself to stand between
the Constitution and all encroachments instigated by hatred, ambition,
fanaticism and folly.
He spoke with words of deliberation, decision and wisdom, and made a
record of statesmanship that stood the severe test of years of bloody
and lasting war. The conflict obliterated old and sacred landmarks in
political teaching.
On February 17, the House adopted resolutions pledging to Maryland the
fellowship and support of Pennsylvania. On January 24, the House had
adopted resolutions taking high ground in favor of sustaining the
Constitution of the Union.
Threatening as was the danger, while the Legislature was in session and
meetings were being held in Philadelphia and throughout the State, no
one anticipated that the strife would actually break forth so suddenly,
nor that it would grow to such fearful proportions at the very
beginning.
It is true, that the soldiers of the South, who had long secretly been
preparing to dissolve the Union unmasked their design when the guns of
Fort Moultrie were trained on Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, South
Carolina, April 12, 1861. No State in the Union was less prepared, so
far as munitions of war were concerned, to take its part in the conflict
than Pennsylvania. Her volunteer soldiery system had fallen in decay.
There were fewer volunteer companies of militia in Pennsylvania at that
moment than ever before on the rolls of the Adjutant General’s office.
But when the first overt act was committed, and the news was flashed
over the Northland, it created no fiercer feeling of resentment anywhere
than it did throughout the Keystone State.
On the morning of April 12, 1861, a message was handed to Governor
Curtin in Harrisburg which read as follows:
“The war is commenced. The batteries began firing at 4 o’clock this
morning. Major Anderson replied, and a brisk cannonading commenced. This
is reliable and has just come by Associated Press. The vessels were not
in sight.”
Later in the day, in response to the Governor’s suggestion, the
Legislature passed an act reorganizing the military department of the
State and appropriated $500,000 for the purpose.
President Lincoln issued a proclamation, April 15, calling out 75,000
militia from the different States to serve for three months. A
requisition was at once made on Pennsylvania for fourteen regiments. The
alacrity with which these regiments were furnished demonstrated not so
much the military ardor as it did the patriotic spirit of the people.
Sufficient men were rushed to Harrisburg not only to fill up the State
quota of fourteen regiments, but enough to organize twenty-five.
There were two distinguished patriotic Pennsylvanians who comprehended
the seriousness of the situation from the outset. General Simon Cameron,
who had resigned his seat in the United States Senate to become the
Secretary of War in President Lincoln’s Cabinet, advised the
organization of the most powerful army the North could raise, so that at
one blow armed rebellion might be effectually crushed. Governor Curtin
took advantage of the excess men offering their services and began at
once, after the complement of the three months’ men had been furnished
to the Federal Government, to organize the famous Reserve Corps.
He discovered the approaching tornado in the distance, and thus
commenced to prepare for its fury, the Reserves being the only troops
well organized and disciplined in the North ready for the services of
the Union at the moment of the disaster of the first battle of Bull Run.
During the second year of the Civil War, Governor Curtin broke down his
health through overwork and anxiety, and was compelled to give himself,
for weeks at a time, to the exclusive care of eminent physicians.
President Lincoln, appreciating Curtin’s faithful services, and
recognizing the necessity for a change of climate and employment,
formally tendered him a first-class Foreign Mission, which the Governor
signified his willingness to accept when his term should expire. But in
the meantime he was nominated for re-election, and again entered upon
the canvass, and was elected by more than 15,000 majority.
As is well known, the early part of the war went against the Union
forces. All through the North there were many persons, the “peace at any
price” men, who thought war was wrong, or a failure, and tried to have
it end. Governor Curtin, in order to check this feeling, issued an
invitation to the Northern Governors to hold a meeting, for the purpose
of considering how the Government might be more strongly supported and
how the loyalty of the people might be increased.
In September, 1862, just after the battle of Antietam, which stopped
Lee’s invasion of the north, eleven Governors met at Altoona. They
adopted an address to President Lincoln, warmly commending his
Emancipation Proclamation. The Governors then went to Washington,
presented the address, and asked Lincoln to keep on hand in the various
states a reserve army of 100,000, and pledged “Loyal and cordial
support, hereafter as heretofore.” It gave Lincoln renewed courage for
his heavy task.
In 1866, his health was such that his life was despaired of and in
November his physicians ordered him to Cuba to recuperate. President
Johnson offered him a foreign post but he again declined to leave his
executive duties in the state and completed his term.
In 1867 he was a strong candidate for the United States Senate and a
year later received a large vote for vice president in the Republican
Convention which nominated General Grant for President. Soon after Grant
became President, he nominated former Governor Curtin for Minister to
Russia, and he was promptly confirmed by the Senate.
Before embarking for his new post of duty Governor Curtin was the
recipient of a marked evidence of devotion. The Councils of Philadelphia
unanimously invited him to a public reception in Independence Hall and
in addition, the leading citizens, without distinction of party, united
in giving him a banquet at the Academy of Music, that has seldom been
equalled for elegance and every manifestation of popular affection and
applause.
He sailed June, 1869, and in the discharge of his diplomatic duties
proved himself one of the most popular representatives ever sent abroad
by our nation. He was again supported for the vice presidential
nomination in 1872.
Governor Curtin died October 7, 1894, in fullness of years, and
Bellefonte mourned as it had never done before, and there was given to
the great War Governor the biggest soldier’s funeral that the Bald Eagle
Valley ever saw.
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Simon Girty, Outlaw and Renegade,
Born January 16, 1744
Much of the ride along the Susquehanna trail on the western side of the
Susquehanna River is at the base of majestic hills along the old
Pennsylvania Canal bed, and more beautiful scenery it is not possible to
find anywhere. Especially is this true as the motorist nears the quaint
town of Liverpool. A few miles before reaching this place there is a gap
in the mountains long known as Girty’s Gap, named in memory of one of
the most despised outlaws in the provincial history of Pennsylvania.
The rocks on the face of the precipitous hills at this point have formed
an almost perfect Indian head; indeed, it seems to be smiling down upon
the thousands who pause to view this wonderful natural likeness of the
primitive American race.
So important is this rock-face that when the new State highway was being
built at this point summer of 1922, the engineers intended that the
rocks should be blasted out and the road straightened at this bend, but
on account of the sentiment connected with this really wonderful image
the roadway was finally laid around the rocks and so the Indian face at
Girty’s Notch is still to be seen.
Simon Girty, Senior, was a licensed Indian trader on the frontiers of
Pennsylvania as early as 1740, and about that period he located on
Sherman’s Creek, in what is now Perry County. Here his son, Simon, who
figures so conspicuously in the annals of border life, was born January
16, 1744. There were three other sons, Thomas, George and James.
In 1750, the father and sundry other “squatters” on Sherman’s Creek,
were dispossessed of their settlements by the Sheriff of Cumberland
County and his posses, under orders of the Provincial authorities.
Girty removed his family to the east side of the Susquehanna River, near
where the town of Halifax is now situated. Afterward he moved to the
Conococheague settlement, where it is related he was killed in a drunken
brawl. In 1756, his widow was killed by the savages, and Simon, George
and James were taken captives by the Indians. Thomas, the eldest
brother, being absent at his uncle’s at Antietam, was the only one who
escaped.
Simon Girty was adopted by the Seneca and given the Indian name of
Katepacomen. He became an expert hunter, and in dress, language and
habits became a thorough Indian. The author of “Crawford’s Campaign”
says that “it must be passed to his credit that his early training as a
savage was compulsory, not voluntary as has generally been supposed.”
George Girty was adopted by the Delaware and became a fierce and
ferocious savage, while James, who was adopted into the Shawnee nation,
became no less infamous as a cruel and bloodthirsty raider of the
Kentucky border, “sparing not even women and children from horrid
tortures.”
Simon Girty and his tribe roamed the wilderness northwest of the Ohio,
and when the expedition under Colonel Henry Bouquet, at the close of the
Pontiac War, in 1764, dictated peace to the Indian tribe on the
Muskingum, one of the hostages given up by the Ohio Indians was Simon
Girty. Preferring the wild life of the savage, Girty soon escaped and
returned to his home among the Seneca.
One of the conditions of the treaty referred to, was the yielding up by
the Ohio Indians of all their captives, willing or unwilling. This being
the case, Girty was again returned to the settlements and took up his
home near Fort Pitt, on the little run emptying into the Allegheny and
since known as Girty’s Run.
In the unprovoked war of Lord Dunmore, in company with Simon Kenton,
Girty served as a hunter and scout. He subsequently acted as an Indian
agent, and became intimately acquainted with Colonel William Crawford,
at whose cabin on the Youghiogheny he was a frequent and welcome guest,
and it is stated by some writers, although without any worthwhile
evidence to substantiate it, was a suitor for the hand of one of his
daughters, but was rejected.
At the outset of the Revolution, Simon Girty was a commissioned officer
of militia at Fort Pitt, took the test oath as required by the Committee
of Safety, but March 28, 1778, deserted to the enemy, in company with
the notorious Alexander McKee and Matthew Elliott.
Simon Girty began his wild career by sudden forays against the
borderers, and in his fierceness and cruelty outdid the Indians
themselves. Hence the sobriquet of “Girty the White Savage.”
Many atrocious crimes were attributed to the notorious renegade, but the
campaign against the Sandusky Indian towns in 1782, under the command of
Colonel William Crawford, proved to be the one in which Girty displayed
the most hardened nature and showed him to be a relentless foe of the
Colonies.
Girty’s brutality reached its climax when he refused any request, even
to discuss terms of easier punishment for his former friend and brother
officer, but viewed with apparent satisfaction the most horrible and
excruciating tortures which that ill-fated but brave and gallant
Crawford was doomed to suffer. This episode in his career has placed his
name among the most infamous whose long list of crimes causes a shudder
as the details are told, even after a lapse of a century and a half.
During the next seven years but little is recorded of this renegade and
desperado, except that a year after Crawford’s defeat, he married
Catharine Malott, a captive among the Shawnee. They had several children
and she survived her husband many years, dying at an advanced age.
Notwithstanding Girty’s brutality and depravity he never lost the
confidence of the Indians; the advice of Simon Girty was always
conclusive.
Girty acted as interpreter when the United States attempted to negotiate
with the Confederated Nations, for an adjustment of the difficulties
during which his conduct was insolent, and he was false in his duty as
interpreter.
In the defeat of General St. Clair, Girty saw and knew General Richard
Butler, who was writhing in agony with his wounds. The traitor told a
savage warrior he was a high officer, whereupon the Indian buried his
tomahawk in General Butler’s head, scalped him, took his heart out and
divided it into as many pieces as there were tribes engaged in the
battle.
When General Anthony Wayne in 1795 forever destroyed the power of the
Indians of the Northwest, Girty sold his trading post and removed to
Canada, where he settled upon a farm near Malden, on the Detroit River,
the recipient of a British pension. Here he resided until the War of
1812 undisturbed, but almost blind.
After the capture of the British fleet on Lake Erie, Girty followed the
British in retreat and remained away from his home until the treaty of
peace was signed, when he returned to his farm, where he died in the
fall of 1819, aged seventy-four years.
There have been efforts to make a hero of Girty, but without success. He
was without one redeeming quality. He reveled in the very excess of
malignity and above all in his hatred for his own countrymen. Such was
the life and career of Simon Girty, the outlaw and renegade.
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Benjamin Franklin, Youngest Son of Seventeen
Children, Born January 17, 1706
Benjamin Franklin, American statesman, philosopher and printer, was born
in Boston January 17, 1706, youngest son of the seventeen children of
Josiah and Abiah Folger Franklin.
Born a subject of Queen Anne of England and on the same day receiving
the baptismal name of Benjamin in the Old South Church, he continued for
more than seventy of the eighty-four years of his life a subject of four
successive British monarchs. During that period, neither Anne nor the
three Georges, who succeeded her, had a subject of whom they had more
reason to be proud nor one whom at his death their people generally
supposed they had more reason to detest.
Franklin learned the art of printing with his brother, but they
disagreeing, Benjamin left Boston when seventeen years old, sought
employment in New York, but, not succeeding, went to Philadelphia and
there found success, and for much more than half a century was the
greatest man in Pennsylvania.
Franklin soon attracted the attention of Governor Keith, who, making him
a promise of the Government printing, induced young Franklin to go to
England to purchase printing materials. He was deceived and remained
there eighteen months, working as a journeyman printer in London. He
returned to Philadelphia late in 1726, an accomplished printer and a man
of the world.
In 1730 he had a printing establishment and newspaper, the Pennsylvania
Gazette, and stationers’ shop of his own. Was married to Deborah Read, a
young woman whose husband had absconded, and was already pressing upon
public opinion with a powerful leverage.
For many years he published an almanac under the assumed name of Richard
Saunders. It became widely known as “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” and is
still one of the marvels of modern literature.
As a practical printer Franklin was reported to have had no superiors.
As a journalist he exerted an influence not only unrivaled in his day,
but more potent, on this continent at least, than either of his
sovereigns or their parliaments.
Franklin was the chief founder of the Philadelphia Library in 1731. The
organization of a police and later of the militia for Philadelphia; of
companies for extinguishing fires; making the sweeping and paving of the
streets a municipal function, and establishment of an academy which has
matured into the now famous University of Pennsylvania, were among the
conspicuous reforms which he planted and watered in the columns of the
Gazette.
In 1736 he became clerk of the Provincial Assembly, and the following
year was postmaster of Philadelphia. He was the founder of the
Philosophical Society of Philadelphia in 1744, and six years later was
elected to the Provincial Assembly.
In 1753 Franklin was appointed deputy postmaster for the
English-American colonies. In 1754 he was a delegate to the Colonial
Congress at Albany, in which he prepared a plan of union for the
colonies, which was the basis of the Articles of Confederation adopted
by Congress more than twenty years afterward.
Franklin graduated from journalism into diplomacy as naturally as winter
glides into spring.
The question of taxing the Penn Proprietary estates for the defense of
the Province from the French and Indians had assumed such an acute stage
in 1757 that the Assembly decided to petition the King upon the subject,
and selected Franklin to visit London and present their petition. The
next forty-one years of his life were virtually spent in the diplomatic
service.
Franklin was five years absent on this first mission. Every interest in
London was against him. He finally obtained a compromise, and for his
success the Penns and their partisans never forgave him, and his fellow
Colonists never forgot him.
Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, but not to remain. The
question of taxing the Colonies without representation was soon thrust
upon them in the shape of a stamp duty, and Franklin was sent out again
to urge its repeal. He reached London in November, 1764, where he
remained the next eleven years, until it became apparent that there
would never be a change during the reign of George III.
Satisfied that his usefulness was at an end, he sailed for Philadelphia
March 21, 1775, and on the morning of his arrival was elected by the
Assembly of Pennsylvania a delegate to Continental Congress.
Franklin served on ten committees in this Congress. He was one of five
who drew up the Declaration of Independence, July, 1776, and in
September following was chosen unanimously as one of the three
commissioners to be sent to solicit for the infant Republic the aid of
France and the sympathies of Continental Europe.
Franklin had begun his investigations and experiments in electricity, by
which he demonstrated its identity with lightning, as early as 1746. The
publication of his account of these experiments procured his election as
an honorary member of the Royal Society of London and his undisputed
rank among the most eminent natural philosophers of his time.
He received the Copley gold medal and the degree of LL.D. from Oxford
and Edinburgh in 1762. Harvard and Yale had previously conferred upon
him the degree of master of arts.
When Franklin arrived in Paris, therefore, he was already a member of
every important learned society in Europe.
The history of his mission and how Franklin succeeded in procuring
financial aid from the French King, and finally a treaty of peace more
favorable to his country than either England or France wished to
concede, has been often told.
Franklin’s reputation grew with his success. More was published about
him in the newspapers of the world than of any other man that ever
lived.
Franklin landed in Philadelphia on September 13, 1785, on the same wharf
on which sixty-two years before he had stepped, a friendless and
virtually penniless runaway apprentice of seventeen.
Though now in his seventy-ninth year and a victim of infirmities, he had
hardly unpacked his trunks when he was chosen a member of the Municipal
Council of Philadelphia and its chairman. Shortly after he was elected
President of Pennsylvania, his own vote only lacking to make the vote
unanimous.
He was unanimously elected for two succeeding years, and while holding
that office was chosen a member of the convention which met in May,
1787, to frame the Constitution under which the people of the United
States are still living. With the adoption of that instrument, to which
he contributed as much as any other individual, he retired from official
life, though not from the service of the public.
His last public act was the signing of a memorial to Congress on the
subject of human slavery by the Abolition Society, of which he was the
founder and president.
He died in Philadelphia April 17, 1790, and four days later his body was
interred in Christ Church burying ground. His funeral was such as the
greatest philosopher and statesman had deserved.
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Long Reign of Terror by Mollie Maguires
Brought to End January 18, 1876
January 18, 1876, was an eventful day in Mauch Chunk, the county seat of
Carbon County, and, in fact, for the State of Pennsylvania and the
entire country.
On that day Michael J. Doyle, of Mount Laffee, Schuylkill County, and
Edward Kelly were arraigned charged with the crime of the murder of John
P. Jones, of Lansford.