ORIGIN OF THE PIONEER
“If we call the roll of American scouts, explorers, trappers, Indian
fighters of the Far West; of men like John Colter, Robert McClellan,
John Day, Jim Bridger, Bill Williams, Joe Meek, Kit Carson and their
ilk, who trapped and fought over every nook and cranny of the Far West,
from the Canadian divide to the ‘starving Gila,’ we shall find that most
of them were of the old Shenandoah-Kentucky stock that made the first
devious trail from Pennsylvania along and across the Appalachians.”
This statement of a well-advised writer is curious and interesting to
any student of the real West. It applies, also, of course, and much more
closely, to those earlier pioneers that explored the first West, that of
the Mississippi valley; the Boones, Kentons, Harrods, Finleys, Bryans,
Stuarts and hundreds of others of the fighting breed of Virginia and
North Carolina, the families of nearly all of whom had made one or more
pilgrimages to the south or even to the southeastward before the great
trek westward over the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies.
America owes much of her national character and a vast part of her
national territory to the individual initiative of these bold souls, who
waited for no policies, no purchases, no leaderships, but pressed on,
rifle and ax at hand, to find and hold our West for us. To-day we forget
these men. The names of the captains of enterprise are lost in the
tawdry modern lists of our so-called captains of industry. To-day, in a
time that is fast becoming one of American serfdom, we lose in the haze
of a national carelessness the figures of that earlier and more glorious
day when the magnificent American West offered free scope and
opportunity to a population wholly made up of men of daring, of
individuality, of initiative, of self-leadership.
That was the day of the founding of the American aristocracy, of the
birth of the American type, of the beginning of the American character.
If we would study an actual American history, we can not leave out the
American pioneer; and before, in our humble effort to approach the real
genius of our America, we follow the strong sweep of the west-bound
beyond the mighty Mississippi and toward the western sea, we shall do
best to pause for a space and to make some inquiry into the origin and
character of these early apostles of the creed of adventure.
If we ask chapter and verse in the study of the origin of this American
frontiersman, this pioneer whose ambition was an indisputable personal
independence, we shall not find the details of his ancestry among the
records of wealthy and aristocratic dwellers of the seaboard region. The
bone and brawn of the early frontier did not come from the Cavaliers,
properly so-called; though it were doing the Cavaliers, the aristocrats,
an injustice to say that they were deaf to the summons of adventure.
The man that dared life and fortune in moving to America would dare life
and fortune west of the Alleghanies; and the history of many a colony
and land grant in the early West is proof enough of this. The Cavalier
or aristocrat, however, was not our typical axman or rifleman. The man
of accomplished fortune, of stable social connections, dwelt farther
back in that East that offered the most settled society of the American
continent. The man in linsey-woolsey, the woodsman, the rifleman, was
the man at the front, and it is in regard to his origin that we may
profitably be somewhat curious. We shall, therefore, for a time be more
concerned with the mountains of Pennsylvania than with the shores of
Chesapeake Bay or the rich valleys of Maryland and the Old Dominion.
A student of the history of the early settlement of Pennsylvania[6]
furnishes data regarding the two great stems of the pioneer stock, the
Quaker and the Scotch-Irish, which were most prominent among the many
nationalities that flocked to the kindly kingdom of William Penn, where
each man was treated as a man, and where independence in thought and
action was the portion each claimed as his own.
“In the first half of the eighteenth century,” says this writer, “many
thousands of Scotch-Irish, Germans and Welsh landed at Philadelphia and
New Castle, and a large majority of them found homes in Pennsylvania. A
number of the former turned to the westward from New Castle and
established themselves in Maryland and Virginia. Among them were the
ancestors of Meriwether Lewis, whose grandfather was born in Ulster,
Ireland; and a number of other noted pathfinders of the West.
“A few isolated settlements were also formed in New Jersey and Delaware,
but as before stated, the majority of them found homes in Pennsylvania.
They swarmed up the valleys of the Delaware, Schuylkill and Susquehanna
and their tributaries, and became at once the vanguard of frontier
settlement; and they and their progeny continued to merit this
distinction until the descendants of the Atlantic seaboard settlements
looked down from the summit of the Rockies on the Pacific slope.
“In the last half of the eighteenth century many hundreds of families
migrated from Pennsylvania southward into the valleys of the Shenandoah
and the south branch of the Potomac, whence numbers of them continued
their journey into North and South Carolina. The records of the Society
of Friends in Bucks, Lancaster and Chester counties show that hundreds
of certificates of removal were granted their members during this
period, to remove to Virginia and the Carolinas; and many of these
sturdy Quakers eventually found homes west of the Alleghanies, though
not a few of them, like Daniel Boone, the great king of frontiersmen,
found the exigencies of life on the frontier incompatible with peace
principles, one of the cardinal tenets of their faith, and drifted out
of the Society.
“During the same period hordes of people of other religious
denominations removed from Pennsylvania over the same route. The
counties of Augusta and Rockingham, in Virginia, were settled almost
exclusively by Pennsylvanians from Bucks and Berks and the Cumberland
valley, many of whom found homes farther west or left their bones to
bleach in the savage-tenanted wilderness of the frontier.
“Boone himself was a native of Berks County and removed in 1750, when a
lad of sixteen, with his family and a host of others, among whom were
the Hankses, Hentons, Lincolns and many others whose names became
familiar in the drama of the West, first to Virginia and later to North
Carolina. William Stewart, a companion of Boone in Kentucky who was
killed at Blue Licks, in 1785, was a native of Bucks County, and, it is
claimed by relatives of both Boone and Stewart, was also a schoolmate of
Boone’s.
“If this be true, it must have been in Virginia, as Boone never lived in
Bucks County, though his father was a resident of New Britain township
prior to the birth of Daniel. Soon after the death of Stewart, his
sister, Hannah Harris, of Newtown, made an overland trip from Newtown,
Bucks County, to Danville, Kentucky, to look after the estate bequeathed
by Stewart to his sisters, Mary Hunter and Hannah Harris of Bucks
County, and after her return made a report of the cost of the trip,
which is on record at Doylestown.
“The power of attorney of Mary Hunter to Hannah Harris to proceed to
‘Kaintuckee’ to collect her share of the Estate of William Stewart is
dated May seventh, 1787; and the power of attorney given by Hannah
Harris to John Dormer Murray to transact her business in Bucks County,
dated July twenty-fifth, 1787, states that she is ‘about setting out for
Kaintuckee’ and therefore fixes approximately the date of the beginning
of her journey.
“Dr. Hugh Shiells, of Philadelphia, who had married Ann, the daughter of
Hannah Harris, May thirtieth, 1782, preceded her to Kentucky and took up
his residence near Frankfort. He died in 1785, leaving an infant
daughter Kitty, who on arriving at womanhood married Thomas Bodley, one
of the trustees of Transylvania University.
“Archibald Finley, who, we believe, was the emigrant ancestor of the
John Finley who led an exploring party into southern Kentucky from North
Carolina in 1767, died in New Britain township, Bucks County, in March,
1749, leaving at least three sons, Henry, John and Alexander, of whom
the two former removed to Virginia and later to Kentucky. They are
believed to have been members of a party of a score or more families who
left Bucks County about 1760 and journeyed to Loudoun County, Virginia,
whence a number of them removed soon after to Orange County, North
Carolina. Of this party were Robert Jamison and his family and the
Fergusons of Plumstead.
“William, James and Morgan Bryan, brothers-in-law of Daniel Boone, who
accompanied him from North Carolina to Kentucky, were also natives of
Pennsylvania. They were the sons of Morgan Bryan, who came from Ireland
prior to 1719, at which date his name appears on the tax list of
Birmingham township, Chester County, as a ‘single man.’ He married the
following year Martha Strode, and in the year 1734 with fifteen others
obtained a grant of a large tract of land on the Opeckon and Potomac
rivers near Winchester, Virginia, and removed thereon. From this point
he removed with his family to the Yadkin, where Daniel Boone met and
married his daughter, Rebecca, in 1755.
“There is an abundance of documentary evidence in Bucks County and in
possession of her sons elsewhere, showing that many of the pioneers of
Kentucky were natives of Bucks. The wills of many Bucks-countians devise
estates to brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, ‘now or late of
Virginia,’ or ‘in the county called Kaintuckee, Province of Virginia.’
“Rev. J. W. Wallace, of Independence, Missouri, has in his possession an
old account book and diary combined, kept by his great-grandfather, John
Wallace, who was born in Warrington, Bucks County, in 1748, and who
served with distinction as a lieutenant in the Continental Army during
the Revolutionary War, some of the entries having been made in this book
while the owner was in camp with Washington at Valley Forge in the dark
winter of 1777-8. Lieutenant John Wallace married into the Finley family
and joining them in Loudoun County, removed with them into Kentucky in
1788.
“This remarkable book contains the record of the birth of John Wallace
and his eight brothers and sisters, several of whom accompanied him to
Kentucky, as well as an account of the journey of the emigrants from
Virginia to Kentucky, which was made in wagons from Loudoun County to
the Ohio River; from which point a portion of the party went in boats
down the Ohio River to Limestone, now Maysville, then overland to
Frankfort, while the remainder crossed over the mountains on
pack-horses. They had doubtless been preceded by their relative, John
Finley, of North Carolina.
“A similar book is in possession of W. W. Flack, of Davenport, Iowa, the
great-great-grandson of the first owner. On the fly leaf is endorsed the
following: ‘Receipt Book of William Flack, May 20, 1789.’ This William
Flack was born in Buckingham township, Bucks County, on May eleventh,
1746, and died at Crab Orchard, Lincoln County, Kentucky, in 1824. He
was a son of James and Ann (Baxter) Flack, Scotch-Irish emigrants who
came to Bucks County about 1730 and settled near Bushington. William
Flack was captain of the Buckingham company of militia during the
Revolution, and is said to have been in active service at the battle of
Brandywine and at other points. After the close of the war, accompanied
by his brother Benjamin and a nephew of the same name, he removed to
Kentucky, by way of Virginia.
“One of the memoranda in the old book is as follows: ‘Benjamin Flack was
killed by the Indians at the Mouth of Salt River the 1st Day of March
1786.’ William Flack married Susannah Callison in Kentucky, March
twenty-first, 1797, and the ‘Receipt Book’ records that event and the
births of their six children, two of whom died in infancy. On hearing of
the death of his father, which occurred September second, 1802, Captain
Flack started for Bucks County, and it is related that his long absence
on this tedious journey led his family to believe that he had been
captured by the Indians.
“While these Pennsylvanians were wending their way southward, their
brethren in the Cumberland and Juniata valleys, augmented by recruits
from settlements farther east, were pushing their way westward into
Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties, whence they migrated to
Kentucky and the Northwest Territory.”[7]
As to that war-like breed, the Scotch-Irish, famous in American
frontiering, the same historian first quoted goes on in detailed
description from which we may take the following:
“History has touched lightly upon the home life of the little colony of
Ulster Scots, who settled on the banks of the Neshaminy in the townships
of Warwick, Warrington and New Britain, in Bucks County, Pa.; but these
people were none the less worthy of a prominent place in the records of
the past. Driven by religious persecution from their native Highlands in
the seventeenth century, the remnants of many a noble clan sought
temporary refuge in the province of Ulster, Ireland, whence, between the
years 1720 and 1740, thousands of them migrated to America, and peopled
the hills and valleys of Pennsylvania’s frontier with a sturdy, rugged
race that was destined to play an important part in the formation of our
national character.
“Clannish by nature and tradition, they clung together in small
communities of two score or more families, a majority of them related by
ties of blood or marriage. They took up the unsettled portions of the
new province. Accustomed for generations to the rugged mountain sides of
their own native land, the roughness of the new territory did not
discourage them. In fact, the steep hillsides on the banks of our rivers
and smaller streams, shunned or neglected by the early English settlers,
seem to have had an especial attraction for them.
“Possessed of a character as stern and uncompromising as the granite of
their native mountains, this little colony did not concern itself in the
affairs of its neighbors. Indeed there was no occasion to do so. They
had brought with them the things they needed, and had inherent in their
nature that which made them a people separate and apart from the
communities by which they were surrounded. In their lives and characters
was a declaration of independence that in itself nourished the spirit of
freedom, which was to carry these people into the thick of the fight
when the time arrived to bid defiance to the mother country.
“This spirit was further augmented by their independence and resources
in the development of the material affairs of the colony. As previously
stated, there were among the first settlers men of every trade and
calling calculated to make the colony self-sustaining. There were
husbandmen, weavers, smiths, masons, joiners, cord-wainers, millers and
tradesmen, whose industry and thrift made it possible for the
schoolmaster and preacher to devote himself exclusively to the
intellectual and spiritual needs of the community. But with true Scotch
economy, the teacher and preacher were often one and the same. As an
illustration may be cited the founding of Tennent’s famous Log College
as an adjunct to the Neshaminy Church, of which he was pastor.
“The stimulus given to civil and religious freedom by the uninterrupted
exercise of these liberties, in strong contrast to the repression and
persecution in the old country, cannot be overestimated. Princeton, as
well as like institutions elsewhere, had its inception in our own Log
College; and Finley, its first president, was akin to those of the same
name in Warrington.
“The sons of Bucks County’s sturdy pioneers were constantly pushing on
beyond our frontiers, carrying with them the lessons of frugality, piety
and independence learned in this primitive community. They formed new
colonies and engendered therein the love of freedom, which, when the
Revolutionary War broke out, easily made the Scotch-Irish element the
dominant party in the struggle for national independence in our state.
Independence accomplished, they returned to their homes and again took
up the business of self-government, broadened and refined by contact
with the outside world, the primitive characteristics of their early
life gone, but retaining the independence and courage of their forebears
which had developed in them the best elements of citizenship.”
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Footnote 6:
Warren S. Ely, of Doylestown, Pa.
Footnote 7:
The Pennsylvania historian might also have given us some word of that
Col. George Morgan, some of whose descendants reside even now at
Morganza, in Pennsylvania. Col. George Morgan had passed westward over
the Alleghanies some years in advance of Daniel Boone’s first visit to
Kentucky. Mr. James Morris Morgan, of Washington, D. C., in
correspondence has this to say in regard to certain early voyagings of
his ancestor, which were undertaken while the Quakers of Pennsylvania
were still quietly dropping down from the hills of Pennsylvania into
the eastern portions of Virginia and the Carolinas:
“Col. George Morgan embarked at the village of Kaskaskia, on the
Kaskaskia River, for his voyage down the Mississippi on the 21st of
November, 1766. Butler, in his history of Kentucky, gives the credit
of being the first American citizen to descend the Mississippi to Col.
Taylor, in 1769. Col. Morgan was the first American citizen to found a
colony in the Territory of Louisiana. Under a grant of King Carlos IV,
he built the city of New Madrid, March, 1789. The grant embraced some
15,000,000 acres of land. (Gayarré; ‘History of Louisiana.’) On June
20, 1788, Congress ordered the annulment of Col. Morgan’s Indian claim
to a greater portion of the state of Illinois, ‘claiming the land
bordering on the Mississippi, from the mouth of the Ohio to a
determined station on the Mississippi that shall be sixty or eighty
miles north from the mouth of the Illinois River, and extending from
the Mississippi as far eastward as may.’ The treaty meeting held under
the auspices of Sir William Johnson at Fort Stanwix, when the Indians
deeded the territory of Indiana to George Morgan, his father-in-law
John Boynton, and his partner Samuel Wharton, (Boynton, Wharton &
Morgan) and several other minor traders whose goods had been
despoiled, was held on November 3, 1768. The state of Virginia claimed
the territory after the Revolutionary War, and bullied the national
government into compliance with her claims, the United States
accepting the property as a present from Virginia, immediately after
deciding in her favor. (See Journal of Congress, 1784, Feb. 26.)”