first of the so-called Pennamite-Yankee Wars. The Sheriff approached a
number of the settlers at work, and they were attacked by men of his
posse under the command of Amos and Nathan Ogden, and “several of the
settlers were beat and wounded.” This action and its results may be
understood from a letter written to Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut:
“In September Amos and Nathan Ogden, with twenty-six others armed with
pistols and clubs, assaulted and wounded sundry of our people, whereby
their lives were endangered. The same month thirteen of our people in
three canoes loaded with wheat and flour, about sixty miles below
Wyoming, were met and robbed of their canoes and loading by thirty armed
men who came from Fort Augusta, about one-half mile away.
“In the same month came the trial of many of our men at Easton; the
charge against them was riot. * * * In the course of the trial challenge
was made to a juryman for having some time before expressed an opinion
openly against our people; but neither that nor any other exception
would prevail. The jury were treated with wine by the King’s attorney
before verdict, which verdict was brought in against the prisoners, and
they condemned them to pay a fine of £10 each, with large costs, in
which was included the cost of the wine the jury were treated with.”
Some paid the fine, others were imprisoned. These later escaped from
jail at Easton September 24, and a reward of £60 was offered by the
sheriff for their apprehension. None of the twelve was captured, for
they all fled to Connecticut.
Another skirmish took place in November, 1769, between the Yankee
settlers at Fort Durkee and a small party of Pennsylvanians under the
command of the Ogdens.
On the afternoon of November 11 Captain Ogden, apprised of the approach
of Sheriff Jennings and his “posse comitatus,” gathered together his
whole force of Pennamites, numbering about forty, and dashed rapidly and
unexpectedly on a small party of Yankees, among whom was Major Durkee,
and captured them.
Captain Ogden, also a justice of the peace, prepared legal papers for
the commitment of Major Durkee in the city jail at Philadelphia,
shackled him with irons and sent him under heavy escort to Philadelphia,
where he was imprisoned. Emboldened by their success, Ogden and his men
that night surrounded Fort Durkee and fired upon the men within.
Sheriff Jennings and his posse arrived upon the scene the next morning
(Sunday) and paraded the whole body of Pennamites, about 200 in number,
before Fort Durkee. While Jennings was carrying on a parley with the
Yankee garrison, Ogden and a party drove off all the horses and cattle
belonging to the Yankees.
The following day the Pennamites assembled in front of Fort Durkee,
where they threw up breastworks, upon which they mounted a four-pounder
brought from Fort Augusta. They demanded the surrender of the fort, or
its destruction. Deprived of their commander and having nothing but
rifles, the Yankees agreed to sign articles of capitulation.
By the terms of this agreement all but fourteen of the settlers were to
leave the region within three days; the others were allowed to remain
and live at Fort Durkee until His Majesty’s decree should determine who
had proper title to the lands at Wyoming.
Ogden and his men, however, starved out the fourteen settlers who
remained, and in a short time they were compelled to follow their
companions in exile.
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John Penn, Last of Proprietary Governors,
Died February 9, 1795
John Penn, son of Richard, and grandson of William Penn, the founder,
arrived in Philadelphia October 30, 1763, and assumed the duties of
Deputy Governor.
John was the eldest son of Richard, and was born in England in 1728. At
the age of twenty-five, he first visited the Province of Pennsylvania,
and ten years later, he came bearing the commission of Deputy Governor.
The day he arrived to assume his office was on Sunday, and was marked by
the shock of an earthquake, which the superstitious interpreted as an
evil omen to his administration.
At the time of his appointment as Governor, his father was proprietor of
one-third of the Province, and his uncle, Thomas, of two-thirds, the
latter having inherited the share of John, the oldest of the three
original proprietors, upon the occasion of his death in 1746.
When John Penn arrived as Deputy Governor he was received with great
demonstrations of respect, and many entertainments were given in his
honor, one of which was a civic feast which cost £203 17s.
The administration of John Penn began when the Province was in the
throes of the terrible Pontiac War, and the condition along the frontier
was deplorable. The “Paxtang Boys” soon thereafter murdered the Moravian
Indians in the work house at Conestoga, and Governor Penn issued several
proclamations, offering rewards for the chief actors in that affair.
On July 7, 1765, Governor Penn again declared war against the Shawnee
and Delaware Indians, and sent Colonel Bouquet to Fort Pitt, who subdued
the savages.
On March 22, 1765, the obnoxious Stamp Act was passed by the British
Parliament, and the real troubles for Governor Penn began in earnest.
This in addition to the long controversy with the Government of
Connecticut over the claims of the Susquehanna Company for lands in the
Susquehanna Valley.
Early in 1771 Governor Penn was called to England by the death of his
father, leaving the government of the Province in the hands of the
Council, of which James Hamilton was President, who thus for the third
time became in effect Governor.
On October 17, 1771, Richard Penn, second son of the late Richard,
arrived in the Province, bearing the commission of Lieutenant Governor.
His administration was marked by the troubles with the Connecticut
settlers, which extended throughout his administration, a little less
than two years.
He was well fitted by nature and education to serve as Governor and when
his commission was unexpectedly revoked August 30, 1773, there was much
genuine regret among the people of the Province.
In May, 1772, he married Miss Mary Masters, of Philadelphia, and on
being superseded as Governor, he became a member of Council.
A few months later the merchants presented him with an address and
invited him to dine with them. He had acted with prudence and manliness
in difficult times, and the people believed in him.
Governor John Penn was present at the dinner. Robert Morris, who
presided, placed one on his right and the other on his left, but the
brothers did not speak. Richard had been deprived of his office without
cause and he resented it. However, Richard was induced to execute in
May, 1774, a release of his claim, and a reconciliation took place when
John appointed him naval officer, and Richard, accepting the position,
called to thank him.
Richard was intimate with members of the Continental Congress and when,
in 1775, he returned to England, he was intrusted with the last petition
from the Colonies ever presented to the King. He was examined respecting
American affairs at the bar of the House of Lords and gave testimony so
favorable to the Colonial cause that he incurred the displeasure of the
Peers.
Upon the death of his father, February 4, 1771, Governor John Penn
inherited the one-third of the Proprietary interest.
Soon after John Penn again assumed the gubernatorial powers his
attention was directed to Indian hostilities on the western border of
the Province. Then soon came the harsh measures adopted by Parliament
toward the Massachusetts Colony, especially toward the town of Boston.
A public meeting was held in Philadelphia, but the Governor refused to
convene the Assembly, and another meeting was held, at which nearly 8000
persons were present and John Dickinson and Thomas Willing presided.
The outcome of these meetings was a movement to urge the convening of a
Continental Congress and committees to that end were appointed. The
first Continental Congress met in Philadelphia, September 4, 1774.
Without manifesting partisan zeal, Governor Penn was believed to
sympathize with the Colonies, though he mildly remonstrated against the
system of congressional rather than Colonial action.
During the stirring times of the early days of the Revolution, Governor
Penn was only a witness to the proceedings in the province he claimed as
his own.
On September 28, 1776, the Assembly, which had existed for nearly a
century under the organic law of William Penn, ceased to exist, and John
Penn was shorn of his power as Proprietary Governor of Pennsylvania.
After he was superseded in authority by the Supreme Executive Council,
he seems to have submitted gracefully to the progress of events, which
he found himself unable to control, and remained during the Revolution a
quiet spectator of the long struggle without manifesting any particular
interest in its result.
He married Anne Allen, daughter of William Allen, Chief Justice of the
province.
In person he is described as of middle size, reserved in manners and
very nearsighted.
When Howe sailed with his army from New York to make a mighty effort to
end the Revolution by capturing Philadelphia, the Continental Congress,
July 31, 1777, recommended to the Government of Pennsylvania to make
prisoners of such of the Crown and proprietary officers as were
disaffected.
Accordingly a warrant was made out for the apprehension of the former
Governor, John Penn, and his Chief Justice, Benjamin Chew. Some of the
City Troop made the arrest.
Both Penn and Chew refused to sign any parole, and they were taken to
Fredericksburg, Va., under care of an officer and six of the troopers.
They were soon paroled and resided at the Union Iron Works until May 15,
1778, when Congress discharged them from their parole.
Penn continued to reside in Bucks County, where he died February 9,
1795. He was buried in the aisle of Christ Church in front of the
chancel, nineteen feet from the north wall. He was sixty-seven years
old.
----------
Munley and McAllister, Mollie Maguires,
Arrested for Murder of Thomas Sanger
and William Uren, February
10, 1876
Thomas Munley and Charles McAllister were arrested February 10, 1876,
charged with the murder of Thomas Sanger and William Uren, at Raven’s
Run, near Ashland, Wednesday, September 1, 1875.
These two Mollie Maguires were brought to trial in June 1876, at
Pottsville. Munley was tried first, before Judge D. B. Green, and a
verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree was returned July 12.
It was in this case that Hon. Franklin B. Gowen, assisting the
prosecution, made his memorable address against the Mollie Maguires.
To return to the crime, which followed in two weeks the murders of Gomer
James and Squire Gwyther.
Facts brought to light by James McParlan, the Pinkerton detective, who
joined the Mollies under the name of James McKenna and lived among them
until he collected sufficient evidence to send so many to the gallows
that they ceased to function as an organization, are as follows:
On the eventful morning, Hiram Beninger, a carpenter connected with the
colliery owned by Heaton & Company, near Ashland, was on his way to
work, when he noticed two strangers sitting on some lumber near the
carpenter shop, but such being a common occurrence he passed by, but
remembered their personal appearance. John Nicolls noticed three
strangers resting on some idle trucks as he passed by to enter the
colliery, one of whom addressed him, when he returned the salutation and
almost immediately noticed the two others, where the carpenter found
them. He also remembered how they were dressed, and the fact that they
spoke to him, he could recall many details in their clothing and
personal appearance.
About fifteen minutes afterward Thomas Sanger, a boss in Heaton &
Company’s colliery, accompanied by William Uren, a miner, who boarded in
his family and who was employed in the same mine, came along the road,
carrying their dinner pails in their hands.
Sanger was a man greatly respected by his employes and neighbors, about
thirty-three years of age, and while he had long been in the employ of
the firm, he had failed to make any enemies, excepting among the
Mollies. He had been several times threatened, but more recently
believed the anger of his organized enemies was buried, forgotten, or
appeased. This proved to be a great mistake.
Sanger and his companion had not gone far from the Sanger home, when
they were both fired upon and both mortally wounded, by the same strange
men noticed by the carpenter and Nicolls.
Beninger heard the shots, and rushed out of the shop, and saw Mr. Robert
Heaton, one of the proprietors of the colliery, firing his pistol at and
running after two of the murderers.
Two of the five assassins at this moment stopped in the flight, turned
and fired their revolvers at Heaton, but without hitting him. Mr. Heaton
boldly stood his ground and continued to empty his revolver at the
strangers.
The five men then quickly turned and ran up the mountains. Heaton
followed and when opportunity offered he continued to fire at them, but
apparently none was wounded.
It was this dogged and determined courage of Mr. Heaton which made him a
marked man for the nefarious organization of murderers, and which
eventually drove him from the coal regions to reside elsewhere.
Had any of the others who witnessed the exchange of shots between Mr.
Heaton and the Mollies been armed and helped in the uneven chase, some
of them might have been killed or captured.
The assassins made good their escape in the timber and bushes of the
mountains.
Both Sanger and Uren were removed to the home of a neighbor named
Wheevil, where every attention was given them. Mrs. Sanger soon arrived
and almost immediately that a physician came into the house Sanger
expired. Uren, who had been shot in the right groin, about same place as
Sanger had been hit, lingered until next day, when he died. Neither man
retained consciousness long enough to give any coherent description of
the manner in which they had been attacked.
Mr. Heaton was eating his breakfast when he heard the firing, and at
once his mind reverted to the men he had seen sitting by the carpenter
shop. He seized his pistol and ran out of the house. He first saw
Sanger, groaning on the ground, who said: “Don’t stop for me, Bob, but
give it to them!”
Heaton then gave the chase, as before related.
A young Williams, who wanted to join Heaton in pursuit, was prevented by
his mother, but they both saw the men attack Sanger and were able to
relate the manner in which the cold-blooded murder was committed.
The careful description of the story of this murder as related in the
Shenandoah Herald, gave McParlan the clue which he pursued in running
down the murderers. It was at this time that he was believed to be the
worst Mollie in the world and was in constant danger of being killed by
people who did not know his true character.
On February 10, 1875, Captain R. J. Linden, a fellow Pinkerton operative
with McParlan, captured Thomas Munley at his home in Gilberton. Charles
McAllister was apprehended at the same time.
McAllister demanded a separate trial and George Kaercher, Esq., the
District Attorney, elected to try Munley first.
McParlan voluntarily testified in the case, and his evidence was so
accurate and convincing that no other verdict could be possible.
The wonderful address of Mr. Gowen, and those of General Charles
Albright, Hon. F. W. Hughes, and Guy E. Farquhar, Esq., added just the
argument which the jury required to find a just verdict of “guilty of
murder in the first degree.”
In November McAllister was convicted.
Munley was hanged in the Pottsville jail August 16, 1876, and McAllister
was hanged later.
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First Anthracite Coal Burned in Grate by
Judge Jesse Fell, February 11, 1808
The first knowledge of anthracite in America dates back to about 1750 or
1755, when an Indian brought a supply of it to a gunsmith at Nazareth
for repairing his rifle, the smith’s supply of charcoal having become
exhausted.
Stone coal was used by the garrison at Fort Augusta, mention of which
fact is made by Colonel William Plunket, who was one of the original
soldiers sent to build this important provincial fortress. The records
in the British War Office also contain references to its use there.
A certain Ensign Holler, of the fort’s garrison, wrote that in the
winter of 1758 the house was heated by stone coal brought down the river
from near Nanticoke and that a wagon load had been brought from a place
six leagues from Fort Augusta, which point must have been at or near
either the present Shamokin or Mount Carmel.
Anthracite had been used in the Wyoming Valley before 1755, and during
the Revolutionary War it was shipped down the Susquehanna for the use of
the arsenal at Carlisle.
On November 25, 1780, the Congress “Resolved, That all the artificers in
the department of military stores in Pennsylvania be removed to Carlisle
and that in the future only an issuing store and an elaboratory fixing
ammunition be kept in Philadelphia.”
Immediately thereafter Colonel Blaine was directed to prepare stores,
etc., for the troops, and during the month of December of 1780 nearly
all the artificers were sent to Carlisle.
There is no doubt that coal from Wyoming was there used in the casting
of cannon, as it could have been more readily brought down the
Susquehanna in bateaux than hauled from the seaports for that purpose.
It is also well known that provisions were taken up the Susquehanna, and
as coal was then known and probably mined, the bateaux in returning
evidently conveyed the fuel to Kelso’s ferry, opposite Harrisburg.
The barracks erected by the Hessian soldiers captured by General
Washington at the battle of Trenton, and sent to Carlisle as prisoners
of war, later became one of the historic buildings of Pennsylvania. The
building was one long used by the Carlisle Indian School and is still
standing on the Government reservation there.
Pittsburgh, too, had used fuel dug from a high bluff before the town.
Coal was known to have existed near the present City of Pottsville as
early as 1790, when Nicho Allen is said to have discovered some of the
black stones and tested their burning qualities.
An act approved by the Legislature of Pennsylvania, March 15, 1784, was
“for the purpose of improving the navigation of the Schuylkill so as to
make it passable at all times, enabling the inhabitants to bring their
produce to market, furnishing the county adjoining the same and the City
of Philadelphia with coal, masts, boards,” etc.
In 1766 a company of Nanticoke and Mohican Indians visited Philadelphia
and reported to the Governor that there were mines in Wyoming. A survey
of Wyoming in 1768 notes “stone coal” near the mouth of Toby’s Creek.
One of General Sullivan’s officers in 1779 records the presence of “vast
mines of coal, pewter, lead and copperas.”
Obadiah Gore used coal in his blacksmith forge as early as 1769. He also
used it in nailing in 1788.
The Conestoga wagons might have transported the products of the farm to
market for many years more had not Philip Ginter, the hunter, in 1791
discovered “stone coals” under the roots of a fallen tree nine miles
west of Mauch Chunk.
About the same time that Ginter made his discovery coal was discovered
by Isaac Tomlinson at what is now Shamokin. He had recently removed on a
farm between there and Mount Carmel and found the coals lying in the bed
of Quaker Run, a stream running through his farm and so called because
he was a member of the Society of Friends.
Thus we see that the three discoverers of anthracite were Allen, Ginter
and Tomlinson, and what is more remarkable, all these discoveries were
made about the same time, and yet it is a fact that coal was mined at
Wyoming nearly a quarter century before these “discoveries.”
Philip Ginter did not exactly “discover anthracite.” He knew all about
the existence of coal at Wyoming and something of its use. But his
discovery of coal in 1791 while hunting on the mountains where is now
Summit Hill is the date from which the great business of the Lehigh Coal
and Navigation Company originated, though it was twenty-nine years
before the coal trade really began.
The date is usually accepted as 1820, the time that the Lehigh schemes
got into action.
Ginter made known his discovery to Colonel Jacob Weiss, residing at what
is now known as Weissport, who took a sample in his saddlebags to
Philadelphia.
But the coal trade was active in Wyoming Valley as early as 1807, when
the Smiths shipped a boat load to Columbia. George H. Hollenback shipped
two loads down the river in 1813, and sent coal by wagon to
Philadelphia. Lord Butler and Crandall Wilcox both shipped coal in 1814.
The use of anthracite for domestic purposes seems to have been
discovered by Judge Jesse Fell, of Wilkes-Barre. The following
memorandum was made at the time on the fly-leaf of one of his books:
“February 11, 1808, made the experiment of burning the common stone coal
of the valley in a grate, in a common fireplace in my house, and found
it will answer the purpose of fuel, making a clearer and better fire, at
less expense, than burning wood in the common way. Jesse Fell.”
News of this successful experiment soon spread through the town and
country, and people flocked to witness the discovery. Similar grates
were soon constructed by Judge Fell’s neighbors, and in a short time
were in general use throughout the valley.
In the spring of that year, John and Abijah Smith loaded two arks with
coal at Ransoms Creek, in Plymouth, and took it down the river to
Columbia; but on offering it for sale, no person could be induced to
purchase. They were compelled to leave the black stones behind them
unsold, when they returned to their homes.
The next year the Smiths, not in the least discouraged, took two arks of
coal and a grate, and again proceeded to Columbia. The grate was put up,
and the coals were burned in it, thus proving the practicability of
using coal as a fuel. The result was a sale of the coal, and thus began
the initiative of the immense coal trade of Pennsylvania.
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Quakers Make Protest Against Slavery to
Congress February 12, 1790
There is unmistakable evidence of Negro slavery among the Dutch on the
South (now Delaware) River as early as the year 1639. In that year a
convict from Manhattan was sentenced to serve with the blacks on that
river.
In September and October, 1664, the English defeated the Dutch, and some
of the Dutch soldiers were sold in Virginia as slaves. The Negro slaves
were also confiscated by the victors and sold. A cargo of three hundred
of those unhappy beings having just landed, failed to escape capture.
In 1688 Pastorius, the Op den Graffs (now Updegraffs), and Gerhardt
Hendricks sent to the Friends’ meeting house the first public protest
ever made on this continent against the holding of slaves, or as they
uncompromisingly styled it, “the traffick of men’s body.”
These early residents of Germantown compared Negro slavery to slavery
under Turkish pirates, and failed to note that one was better than the
other. Their protest said:
“There is a saying that we shall doe to all men licke as we will be done
ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent, or colour
they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase
them, are they not all alicke? Here is liberty of Conscience, which is
right and reasonable; here ought to be likewise liberty of ye body,
except of evil doers, which is another case. In Europe there are many
oppressed for Conscience sake; and here there are those oppressed which
are of a black colour.”
This memorial is believed to be in the handwriting of Francis Daniel
Pastorius, and at the date it was written New England was doing a large
business in the Guinea trade, the slave depots being located chiefly at
Newport, where the gangs for the Southern market were arranged.
All honor is due these honest first settlers of Germantown, who asked
categorically: “Have these Negers not as much right to fight for their
freedom as you have to keep them slaves?”