Part 13
The Susquehanna Company, which had been organized at Windham, Conn., July 18, 1753, determined to take possession formally of the lands located at Wyoming, purchased by them from the Indians at Albany. The first forty settlers under this company arrived at Wyoming February 8, 1769. A large body, led by Major John Durkee, with authority from the Susquehanna Company, arrived at Wyoming from Connecticut and New York May 12, 1769. They immediately began the erection of about twenty substantial and commodious one-story log cabins. A few days later 150 additional settlers arrived.
The Connecticut settlers finished the erection of their first twenty-five cabins by May 20 and a week later began the erection of the stockade to surround them, which, when completed, they named “Fort Durkee,” in honor of their leader, Major John Durkee.
Governor John Penn was immediately advised of the arrival of the Connecticut settlers, and he at once planned to discourage their permanent location and directed letters to Colonel Turbutt Francis, then in command of the small garrison of provincial troops stationed at Fort Augusta, and to John Jennings, of Bethlehem, Sheriff of Northampton County. These letters urged them to discourage unlawful settlements, but to use force, if necessary, to drive them off.
May 24 Sheriff Jennings arrived at Wyoming and read the Governor’s proclamation to the “intruders.”
An exciting occurrence took place when “Colonel Turbut Francis, commanding a fine company from the city (Philadelphia), in full military array, with colors streaming and martial music, descended into the plain and sat down before Fort Durkee about the 20th of June, but finding the Yankees too strongly fortified, returned to await re-enforcements below the mountains.”
Another version of the affair is: “June 22 Colonel Francis, with sixty men, in a hostile manner demanded a surrender of our houses and possessions. He embodied his forces within thirty or forty rods of their (the settlers) dwelling, threatened to fire their houses and kill our people unless they surrendered and quitted their possessions, which they refused to do; and after many terrible threatenings by him he withdrew.”
Soon as Major Durkee, who had been in Easton on court business, returned to Wyoming and learned of the hostile demonstration of Colonel Francis and his small force he set about to strengthen the defenses of Fort Durkee. It was at this time, July 1, 1769, that the major compounded and originated the almost unique name “Wilkes-Barre” and bestowed it upon the settlement and territory at and immediately adjacent to Fort Durkee.
Governor Penn was fully aware that the Yankees were determined to keep possession of the lands upon which they were settled, and on August 24, 1769, wrote to Colonel Francis at Fort Augusta, directing him to raise an expedition to assist the Sheriff of Northampton County in executing the King’s writ, and concluded as follows: “It is hoped you will be able to procure the people to go without pay, as they have already manifested a very good disposition to bring the intruders to justice.”
The attempt to serve these writs in September, 1769, precipitated the 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.
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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.