Doudel in York County; James Ross and Matthew Smith in Lancaster County;
John Lowden in Northumberland County; Robert Cluggage in Bedford County;
George Nagel in Berks County; and Abraham Miller in Northampton County.
The pay of the officers and privates was as follows: Captain, twenty
dollars per month; a lieutenant, thirteen and one-third dollars;
sergeant, eight; corporal, seven and one-third; drummer, the same;
privates, six and two-thirds, and to find their own arms and clothes.
The patriotism of Pennsylvania was still further evinced in the haste
with which these companies of Colonel Thompson’s battalion were filled
to overflowing and the promptitude with which they took up their march.
Eight of the companies arrived at Boston by July 25, which may properly
be the date the activities of these riflemen actually began.
A large number of gentlemen went along as independent volunteers. Their
names were not entered on the rolls, and they claimed the privilege of
paying their own expenses and returning at their pleasure. Among them
were Edward Burd, afterwards prothonotary of the Supreme Court, Jesse
Lukens and Matthew Duncan.
The command got into action almost upon its arrival at Cambridge.
The Military Journal of the Revolution described this battalion as
“remarkably stout and hardy men; many of them exceeding six feet in
height. They are dressed in white frocks or rifle shirts and round hats.
These men are remarkable for the accuracy of their aim; striking a mark
with great certainty at 200 yards distance. At a review, a company of
them, while on a quick advance, fired their balls into objects of seven
inches diameter, at a distance of 250 yards. They are now stationed in
our lines, and their shot have frequently proved fatal to British
officers and soldiers who expose themselves to view, even at more than
double the distance of common musket shot.”
The battalion became the Second regiment (after January 1, 1776, the
First regiment) of the army of the United Colonies.
This regiment formed the picket guard of the 2,000 provincials, who, on
the evening of August 26, took possession of and threw up intrenchments
on Ploughed Hill, and on the following morning met with its first loss,
Private William Simpson, of Paxtang, a member of Captain Matthew Smith’s
company, who was wounded in the leg in front of Boston. A cannon ball
shattered his leg, which was amputated but the lad died three days
later.
The first soldier to make the supreme sacrifice was a brother of
Lieutenant, afterward General Michael Simpson, and of John Simpson, for
years recorder of Northumberland County.
On September 5 the companies of Captain Matthew Smith and Captain
William Hendricks were ordered to join the expedition against Quebec,
commanded by General Benedict Arnold.
An interesting account of the hardships and sufferings of these two
companies was written by Judge John Joseph Henry, of Lancaster, a
private in Smith’s company. At the attack on Quebec, December 31,
Captain Hendricks was killed, and those who did not fall were taken
prisoners, and held until paroled August 7, 1776.
The balance of Colonel Thompson’s command earned the public thanks of
General Washington for services rendered at Lechmere’s Point, November
9, 1775. In this action the men waded through the tide up to their
armpits and drove the British from their cover and into their boats.
Colonel Thompson lost only one killed and three wounded. British loss
was seventeen killed and one wounded.
January 1, 1776, the new army organization was commenced and this
battalion became the First Regiment of the Continental Army. Colonel
Thompson was promoted to brigadier general, March 1, 1776, and Edward
Hand became colonel. He was later promoted to brigadier. The First
Pennsylvania participated with General Sullivan in New York and Long
Island.
Washington wrote to Congress, on April 22, 1776:
“The time for which the riflemen enlisted will expire on the 1st of July
next, and as the loss of such a valuable and brave body of men will be
of great injury to the service, I would submit it to the consideration
of Congress whether it would not be best to adopt some method to induce
them to continue. They are, indeed, a very useful corps; but I need not
mention this, as their importance is already well known to the
Congress.”
On July 1 the battalion entered upon another term of service.
----------
Indians Massacre Inhabitants in the Conococheague
Valley on July 26, 1756
July 26 is a date which recalls to the minds of many inhabitants of the
present Franklin County two atrocities committed by Indians, either of
which is horrible in its every detail.
On July 26, 1756, the Indians killed Joseph Martin, and took captive two
brothers, named John and James McCullough, all residents of the
Conococheague settlement. This was followed, August 27, with a great
slaughter, wherein the Indians killed thirty-nine persons, near the
mouth of the Conococheague Creek.
Early in November following, the Indians discovered some soldiers of the
garrison at Fort McDowell, a few miles distant, ambushed them and killed
and scalped Privates James McDonald, William McDonald, Bartholemew
McCafferty, and Anthony McQuoid; and carried off Captain James Corken
and Private William Cornwall. The following inhabitants were killed:
John Culbertson, Samuel Perry, Hugh Kerrel, John Woods and his
mother-in-law, and Elizabeth Archer; and carried off four children
belonging to John Archer; and two lads named Samuel Neily and James
McQuoid.
To return to the first atrocity. James McCullough had but a few years
before removed from Delaware to what is now Montgomery Township,
Franklin County, where he immediately began to clear the land and till
the soil.
The McCullough family had been temporarily living in a cabin three miles
distant from their home, and the parents and their daughter, Mary, went
home to pull flax. A neighbor, John Allen, who had business at Fort
Loudon accompanied them, and promised to come that way in the evening
and go along back to the cabin.
Allen had proceeded about two miles when he learned that the Indians had
that morning killed a man, a short distance from the McCullough home.
Allen failed to keep his promise and returned by a circuitous route.
When he reached the McCulloughs he told the lads to hide, that Indians
were near at hand, and added, at the same time, that he supposed they
had killed their parents.
John McCullough was eight years old and James but five. They alarmed
their neighbors, but all hurried to make preparations to go to the fort,
a mile distant. None would volunteer to warn Mr. and Mrs. McCullough of
their danger, so the lads determined to do it themselves. They left
their little sister, Elizabeth, aged two years sleeping in bed.
The brave lads reached a point where they could see their house and
began to halloo. They were happy to reach their parents in safety. When
about sixty yards from the house, five Indians and one Frenchman came
rushing out of the thicket and took the lads captive. The Indians missed
capturing the parents by the mere accident that the father had heard the
lads and left his work to meet them and thus the Indians missed him, and
failed to notice the mother and daughter in a field at work.
The lads were taken to the forks of the Ohio, whence James, the younger,
was carried into Canada and all trace of him lost. John remained with
the Indians for nine years, when he and hundreds of other captives were
released. They eventually were able to find their way back to their
homes in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.
John lived in the community from which he had been taken for nearly
sixty years and left a written record of what he suffered during this
long captivity.
The other Indian massacres, which inhabitants of the Conococheague
Valley will ever relate, began with the appearance of savages on Sunday,
July 22, 1764, when several were discovered near Fort Loudon.
On Wednesday Susan King Cunningham left her home and started through the
woods to call on a neighbor. As she did not return when expected a
search was made, and soon her body was found lying near her home. The
fiends had not been content to murder and scalp this good woman, but had
performed a Caesarian operation and had placed her child on the ground
beside her.
The next day, July 26, occurred the murder of Enoch Brown, schoolmaster,
and ten of his pupils. A tragedy unique in the long story of Indian
atrocities.
This terrible massacre occurred about three miles north of Greencastle,
Franklin County. Brown and each of the ten small children were killed
and scalped, and a lad, Archibald McCullough, was scalped and left for
dead among the other victims, but he recovered and lived for many years.
With few exceptions the scholars were much averse to going to school
that morning. And the account afterward given by McCullough is that two
of the scholars informed Mr. Brown that on their way to school they had
seen Indians. The master paid no attention to what had been told him,
and ordered them to their books.
Soon after school had opened three Indians rushed up to the door. The
schoolmaster, seeing them, prayed the Indians only to take his life and
spare the children, but they refused. The Indians stood at the door,
whilst the third entered the school room, and with a piece of wood in
the shape of a maul, killed the master and the scholars, after which all
of them were scalped.
Young McCollough, left for dead, dragged himself to a spring a short
distance from the school house where he slaked his burning thirst and
washed his wound.
This Archie was a cousin of John and James McCullough, taken by the
Indians in that same place exactly eight years before. John was at that
time a captive and living with the Indians. In his interesting narrative
he says that he knew the three Indians who murdered Brown and the
children, and that he was present when they returned to their chief.
They were young Indians, not over twenty years of age. Old Night Walker,
the chief, called them cowards for having so many children’s scalps.
Thus it is a singular coincidence that these two crimes should be
committed on July 26, that McCulloughs should figure in them both, and
that the only accurate details of each massacre are given by the only
two survivors, John and Archie McCullough, yet they occurred eight years
apart.
----------
Ruffians Mob Pastor and Cause Organization
of First Moravian Church July 27, 1742
An affair occurred in Philadelphia July 27, 1742, which, disgraceful as
were the proceedings, was the means of establishing a separate Moravian
Church in that city.
Count Nicholas Ludwig Zinzindorf arrived in Philadelphia, December 10,
1741. He came with the hope of uniting all Protestant Christians into a
confederacy or league.
Almost immediately upon his arrival Henry Antes, a pious wheel-wright
and farmer in Falkner’s Swamp, now Frederick Township, Montgomery
County, invited Zinzindorf to attend a synod or conference at
Germantown, which had for its object a movement similar to that of the
distinguished visitor.
Zinzindorf accepted the invitation and attended the Synod, January 12,
1742. Indeed he went there before that date, and preached in the German
Reformed Church, January 1, his first sermon in America. He got
acquainted with the people and earnestly began his great work.
This Synod was the first of seven. It was held in the house of Theobold
Endt, a Germantown clockmaker. Zinzindorf was made moderator.
The delegates of the different sects met and discussed the best way of
bringing about a more perfect union of all Protestant denominations.
There were a number of Moravians present, but not as delegates, for no
settled congregation of that sect as yet existed.
No definite results were reached though Zinzindorf’s ideas impressed the
assemblies.
During the earlier months of 1742 Zinzindorf preached at Oley, Falkner’s
Swamp, Germantown, and other places, and gathered the nuclei of
subsequent Moravian congregations.
A house was rented in Germantown for Count Zinzindorf and his
assistants, which was opened as a school May 4, of that year. The
Countess Benigna assisted as a teacher, as did also Anna Nitschmann, who
subsequently became the second wife of Zinzindorf. The school opened
with twenty-five girls as pupils.
In Philadelphia Zinzindorf began ministrations in a barn on Arch Street
below Fifth, then fitted up with seats and used in partnership by the
German Reformed and the Lutherans.
His Lutheran tendencies and training fitted him to take charge of a
Lutheran Church, and May 30, 1742, this congregation called him to take
its charge. Indeed, it is said that he claimed to be inspector-general
of the Lutherans, and had for some months supplied a Lutheran Church in
Germantown.
Zinzindorf accepted the call of the Philadelphia Lutherans, but wishing
to do a certain amount of missionary work elsewhere, associated John
Christopher Pyrlaeus, a Saxony Presbyter, with him as assistant, and
left matters much in his charge.
Reverend Henry Jacobson, in his “History of the Moravian Church in
Philadelphia,” proceeds to tell what the consequence was.
Pyrlaeus, though evidently a hard worker, gave offense to a strong
faction, and on July 27, 1742, while in the pulpit and officiating, a
gang of his opponents dragged him down from his place, trampled upon
him, and roughly handled him, as they ejected him from the building.
The only accounts left do not enable us to identify the cowardly
assailants, except that there seems to have been serious trouble between
the growing Moravian faction and the conservative Lutheran element.
The affair was the prime cause of the establishment of a separate
Moravian Church as soon as Count Zinzindorf returned from his preaching
tour. Without this event to crystallize the tendencies of things,
separation might have been long delayed.
Another view of this movement is that Zinzindorf built the church for
the Lutheran congregation over which he claimed authority, upon his
first arrival in the country, but that the arrival of Henry Melchior
Muhlenberg, with direct authority from the University at Halle, in the
latter part of 1742, changed the tactics of Zinzindorf, and so he made
arrangements to transfer the church to the Moravians.
The congregation organized by Zinzindorf consisted of thirty-four
persons. They took up a lot on the east side of Bread Street and south
of Sassafras (now Race) Street, which on August 20, 1742, was
transferred by William Allen and wife to Samuel Powell, Joseph Powell,
Edward Evans, William Rice, John Okley, and Owen Rice, for another lot
on Sassafras Street.
The parties named were not all Moravians, but the deed was made to them
in trust for “a certain congregation of Christian people, as well German
as English, residing in the City of Philadelphia, belonging to the
church of the Evangelical Brethren, who have caused to be erected
thereon a new building for and to their use and service as a church and
school house to S. Lewis Zinzindorf, David Nitschmann, Joseph
Spangenberg, Henry Antes, John Bloomfield, and Charles Brockden.”
Additional real estate was acquired and the church building was
commenced immediately. The corner stone was laid September 10, 1742, by
Count Zinzindorf, and the work proceeded so rapidly that it was
dedicated by him on November 25, following.
This building was set back from Sassafras Street thirty-five feet. It
had a front of forty-five feet on Bread Street, afterward called
Moravian Alley.
The edifice was two stories high, the first story being used as the
church proper. This room was twenty feet in height from the floor,
wainscoted about five feet, and whitewashed above to the ceiling. The
roof was of the hip-roof design. There were large windows in each side.
The congregation used this church for more than fifty years without a
stove in winter.
The first Moravian congregation in Philadelphia contained those who had
left the Lutherans when the Pyrlaeus affair occurred, and a number of
Moravians who had been awhile at Nazareth and Bethlehem.
On the evening of his departure from America Count Zinzindorf organized
these members into the First Moravian Church.
----------
British and Seneca Indian Allies Destroy
Fort Freeland, July 28, 1779
Many Pennsylvanians may not know that a definite, well-planned battle of
the Revolution was fought far up in old Northumberland County. This is a
fact and until now this battle has only been known of as an ordinary
Indian incursion. Such was not the case.
True there were Indians in the battle of Fort Freeland, July 28, 1779,
and they were the ferocious Seneca, 300 of them under the command of
Hiokatoo, the most bloodthirsty and cruel Indian of whom we have any
direct evidence.
After Colonel Thomas Hartley led his successful expedition against the
Indians in 1778, the savages did not long remain subdued, but the year
following again became so vicious that the settlers, who had returned
after the Great Runaway, lived in such constant fear of attack that
General Washington ordered General John Sullivan to rendezvous his
troops at Wyoming and wipe out every Indian town from that point to
Elmira in New York State.
The troops were supplied with rations and stores from Fort Augusta. This
fort was defended by a line of forts, or blockhouses extending in an
almost straight line from Fort Jenkins near Berwick, on the North
Branch, to Fort Wheeler, at Fishing Creek, to Fort Bostley, at
Washingtonville, to Fort Montgomery, to Fort Freeland, two miles above
McEwensville, to Fort Muncy, where the line of defense touched the West
Branch.
No sooner had General Sullivan started his march from Easton toward
Wyoming than the Indians learned of his plans and put into operation a
series of movements which were intended to defeat the design of the
Continental troops.
Captain John MacDonald, of the British Army, a Tory of New York State,
was in command of a large detachment of British who had employed 300
Seneca Indians as allies. They made a forced march from the vicinity of
Wyalusing, and arrived near Fort Muncy on the morning of July 28, 1779,
and immediately started down, over what is now the Susquehanna Trail,
toward Fort Augusta. The Continental troops had unfortunately been
withdrawn from Fort Muncy.
Less than six miles march brought the British and their Indian allies in
contact with the garrison at Fort Freeland, where, in addition to the
troops, all the inhabitants of the valley below Muncy Hill and as far
south as Chillisquaque Creek, had fled for protection.
When the battle for possession of the fort began, the firing could be
heard at Fort Boone, about four miles south, a mile above the present
site of Milton. Captain Hawkins Boone, cousin of Daniel Boone, and
himself one of the bravest soldiers in the Continental army, with a
detail, consisting of thirty-two as brave men as ever fired a gun,
rushed to the relief of the unfortunate defenders of Fort Freeland.
But in a few terrible hours the most advanced haven of refuge for the
frontier settlers in the West Branch Valley was a mass of ruins; its
defenders either victims of the tomahawk or prisoners of war; and the
women and children objects of charity.
The defenders of Fort Freeland did their utmost in this trying hour.
Their resistance was so stubborn that the articles of capitulation were
not accepted until the third proposal, and not then until all their
ammunition was expended. The women even melted the pewter into bullets,
while the men fired them at the besiegers. No further relief was
believed possible.
After Captain MacDonald had sent the third demand for surrender, the
defenders, under a flag of truce, agreed with the victors upon the terms
which were as follows:
“Articles of Capitulation Entd into Between Captain John McDonald on his
Majesties part & John Little on that of the Continental Congress.
“Article 1st. The Men in Garrison to March out & Ground their Arms in
the Green, in Front of the Fort which is to be taken in possession of
Immediately by his Majesty’s Troops. Agreed to.
“2ndly. All Men Bearing Arms are to Surrender themselves Prisoners of
War & to be Sent to Niagara. Agd. to.
“3d. The Women and Children not to be Stript of their Clothing nor
Molested by the Indians and to be at Liberty to move down the Country
where they please. Agd. to.
John Mac Donald
Capt. of Rangers.
John Little.”
As soon as the fort capitulated, the Indians took possession of it, and
their squaws became mischievous and destructive. Having completed the
pillage of the fort, both Indians and British gathered together all the
provisions they could find and proceeded to the creek, where they made
preparations for a feast, but did not long enjoy it.
Captain Boone’s party soon arrived on opposite bank of creek, within
less than one hundred yards of the feast. Not knowing the fort had been
surrendered, they fired upon the British and Indians. We are advised
thirty fell dead at the first volley. It was but a brief triumph,
however, for the others rallied and surrounded the handful of
Continentals, killing thirteen men, among the slain being Captain Boone
himself.
When this party found itself caught in an ambuscade, word was quickly
passed for each man to save himself, thus enabling a few to escape.
Every male in the fort had been taken prisoner and started toward
Niagara where the few who survived the hardship of the forced march and
the privations of the long imprisonment, remained until after the close
of the war, when they rejoined the surviving members of their families.
In and about Fort Freeland, as a result of the attack 108 settlers were
killed or led away as prisoners of war, not by Indians, but by the
organized militia of Great Britain.
Fifty-two women and children, and four old men, were permitted to depart
for Fort Augusta. Among the latter was John Vincent, who was permitted
to care for his crippled wife. But Bethuel, Cornelius and Daniel Vincent
were taken prisoners. Among others taken to Canada, who also lived to
return to their families, were Captain John Little, James Daugherty,
Moses Kirk, James Durham, Samuel Gould and two of the Freelands.
The enemy ravaged the country in the vicinity of the fort and burned and
destroyed everything they could find. They advanced as far as Milton,
where they burned Marcus Huling’s blacksmith shop, mill and dwelling
house. The country presented a scene of desolation, and it remained in
this condition for several years, the settlers being afraid to return.
This heavy toll of human life, to which should also be added the killed
and wounded among the British and their Indian allies, numbering
possibly as many more, marks a definite battle of the Revolution; with
the magazines and stores at Fort Augusta and the cutting off of the rear
of General Sullivan’s army, as the object of the attack.
----------
First Newspaper West of the Allegheny
Mountains, the Gazette, of Pittsburgh,
Established July 29, 1786
The first newspaper published west of the Allegheny Mountains was the
Pittsburgh Gazette which made its initial bow to the public, July 29,
1786, and today, one hundred and thirty-eight years later, it is the
largest paper published in the world’s greatest industrial district.
When the United States were yet very young, in fact, before the Federal
Constitution was even proposed, before Washington was elected president,
when the small cluster of log huts, protected by a stockade called Fort
Pitt, was all that constituted Pittsburgh, is the time this old
newspaper began its long and honorable career.
Early in the year 1786, John Scull and Joseph Hall rode into that
western frontier post on the backs of heavy pack horses, over a long and
rough trail, all the way from Philadelphia. They brought with them a
small printing press, some type and a small supply of paper.