Part 94

William Cochran, Sheriff of Dauphin County, issued a proclamation in which he stated that at no time had there been any riotous proceedings, nor any disturbances which rendered necessary his interposition as a civil officer to preserve peace.

The following day, December 5, the Governor made a requisition on Major General Robert Patterson, commanding the First Division Pennsylvania Militia to furnish sufficient of his command to “quell this insurrection.”

General Patterson obtained from the Frankford Arsenal a supply of the regular ammunition for infantry, which was then buckshot. About a hundred of General Patterson’s command arrived in Harrisburg, on Saturday night, December 8, and the next afternoon 800 troops arrived. They were paraded through the streets to the public grounds in front of the State Arsenal.

The general and his staff reported to the Governor. The door was locked and barred, and the general could not gain admittance until the Governor learned from a second-story window who was seeking an entrance.

The Governor sent for his Cabinet, and five responded. They asked the General many questions, among others, if he would obey an order of the Speaker of the Senate, to which he replied in the negative. He said he had not come on a political mission, and anyway, would not sustain a party clearly in the wrong.

He was asked if he would obey an order from the Speaker of the House. He replied he would not, for two reasons: They had two Speakers, he did not know the right one, and he would not obey the regular Speaker anyway, as he had no right to give him an order. He said he would obey only the Governor, and then only when the Governor gave him an order he had a right to give.

General Patterson refused to help seat either Speaker. He said the House alone could do that. If ordered to fire, he would refuse to issue the order. Nor would he permit a single shot to be fired except in self-defense, if assailed by the rebels, or in the protection of public property. The conference ended abruptly.

The Governor had called upon Captain Sumner, then in command of the Carlisle Barracks, for troops, but he refused to send them to interfere in political troubles.

Governor Ritner also wrote to President Van Buren, laying before him a full account of the affair, requesting the President to take such measures as would protect the State against violence. The Governor named several Government officials who were active in the trouble.

The Governor’s party finding they could not get General Patterson to install them in power, his troops were ordered home and a requisition was made upon Major General Alexander, of the Eleventh Division of State Militia, a citizen of Carlisle, and an ultra-Whig in politics.

Out of three companies only sixty-seven men responded. The battalion, under the command of Colonel Willis Foulk, marched from Carlisle to Harrisburg, December 15, arriving on the following day.

There never had been occasion for soldiers and now as the Carlisle troops arrived the disturbance in the Legislature was nearing an end. The soldiers regarded the trip as a frolic.

On December 17 Messrs. Butler and Sturdevant, of Luzerne, and Montelius, of Union County, three legally elected Whig members, abandoned their Anti-Masonic associates and were sworn in as members of the “Hopkins House,” which gave it a legal quorum over and above the eight Democrats from Philadelphia whose rights the “Rump House” disputed.

Finally on December 27, Mr. Michler, of Northampton County, submitted a resolution which recognized that the House was now legally organized, and it was adopted, by the close vote of seventeen yeas to sixteen nays.

The committee called for in the resolution was named and waited on the Governor, informing him the Legislature was organized.

With this reconciliation the returns were opened and read; the amendment to the Constitution was declared carried and the election of David R. Porter as Governor of the Commonwealth promulgated. However, the animosity still existed, and resulted in the appointment by both Houses of select committees to inquire into the causes of the disturbances and other matters.

Mr. Stevens, the ring leader, refused at first to be reconciled, and absented himself several months from the sessions of the House. It was not until May 8 that his colleague in the House announced that Mr. Stevens was now in his seat and ready to take the requisite qualifications.

Objection was made, and a resolution offered declaring that Mr. Stevens had “forfeited that right by act in violation of the laws of the land, by contempt to the House, and by the virtual resignation of his character as a representative.” Action was postponed.

On the following day Mr. Stevens again appeared, and, through his colleague, demanded that the oath be administered. This was on motion postponed by a vote of forty-eight to thirty. Two days afterward Mr. Stevens appeared a third time, but by a vote of fifty-three to thirty-three the question was postponed, and a committee appointed to examine whether he had not forfeited his right to a seat as a member.

On the 20th this committee reported that he was “not entitled” to his seat.

The House, however, by declaring his seat vacant, caused an election, when Mr. Stevens was again returned and appearing, was duly qualified.

Mr. Penrose, the Speaker of the Senate, issued a manifesto “To the People of the State,” explaining his participation in the proceedings of December 4.

Subsequently a number of pamphlets appeared, chiefly of the facetious class, which attempted to make a farce of what might have resulted in a very serious affair. One of these severely criticized Secretary Burrowes for withholding the correct and legal returns; Speaker Penrose for the violation of his duty; the six Senators who were denounced as traitors and the last paragraph was:

“Finally, if the leaders of the party who claimed to be ‘all the decency,’ and were the first to cry out mob, had behaved themselves honorably and honestly there would have been no ‘Buckshot War,’ and perhaps they would not have so soon been compelled to witness the 'Last Kick of Anti-Masonry.'”

The piper was now to pay and it took many years to heal the political sores. The Anti-Masonic crusade had come to an end, and from that date Masonry and Odd Fellowship, those “twin sisters of iniquity,” as Thaddeus Stevens designated them, thrived more than ever. The term “Buckshot War,” was a thorn in the side of its leaders.

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De Vries Finds Entire Dutch Colony Destroyed, December 6, 1632

The Dutch were the first Europeans to pursue explorations in the New World, and as early as 1609, sent Henry Hudson on an expedition to America, where he arrived at the head of Delaware Bay, August 28 of that year. Hudson later sailed up the New Jersey Coast and anchored off Sandy Hook, September 3; nine days later entered New York Bay through the Narrows, and entered the great river that since has borne his name.

The Dutch East India Company received glowing reports from its navigator and immediately set in motion other expeditions to the New Netherlands.

Before 1614 a fleet of five vessels, under command of Captain Cornelius Jacobson Mey, arrived in Delaware Bay, and two years later Cornelius Hendrickson sailed up the Delaware and discovered the mouth of the Schuylkill, the present site of Philadelphia.

In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was chartered and in 1623 Captain Mey built Fort Nassau about five miles above Wilmington, Del., on the eastern shore. Another settlement of a few families was made farther north upon the same side of the river, but in 1631 no white man had made a settlement on the west bank of the Delaware River.

In that year there came to the southern cape, now Henlopen, a party of colonists from Holland, under David Pieterson De Vries, of Hoorn, “a bold and skillful seaman,” and the finest personage in the settlement of America.

On December 12, 1630, a ship and a yacht for the Zuydt Revier (South River) were sent from the Texel “with a number of people and a large stock of cattle,” the object being, said De Vries, “as well to carry on a whale fishery in that region, as to plant a colony for the cultivation of all sorts of grain, for which the country is well adapted, and of tobacco.”

These colonists made a settlement near the present town of Lewes and called it Swanendael, or the Valley of the Swans. They built a substantial house, surrounded it with palisades, and began their settlement. A few weeks later the Walrus sailed on its return to Holland with De Vries aboard, who left the colony in charge of Gilles Hosset, who had come out as “commissary.” This colony was destined to be the most unfortunate and of short duration.

Early in 1632 De Vries agreed with his associates in Holland to go out to Swanendael himself. He fitted out two vessels, and with them set sail from the Texel, May 24, 1632, to be in good time at his colony, for the winter fishery. The whales, he understood, “come in the winter, and remained until March.”

As he was leaving Holland the bad news reached him that Swanendael had been destroyed by the Indians. The expedition proceeded, however, and it was December 5 when they reached Cape Cornelius and found the melancholy report only too true.

On the 6th De Vries went ashore to view the desolate place. He says:

“I found lying here and there the skulls and bones of our people, and the heads of the horses and cows which they had brought with them.”

No Indians were visible, so he went aboard the boat and let the gunner fire a shot to see if he could find any trace of them. The next day some Indians appeared.

In the conferences which followed, De Vries obtained some explanation of the disaster. It seems to have been the result of a misunderstanding. An Indian, who was induced to remain on board all night December 8, rehearsed the story. Commissary Hosset set up a pole, upon which was fastened a piece of tin bearing the arms of The Netherlands, as an evidence of its claim and profession.

An Indian, seeing the glitter of the tin, ignorant of the object of this exhibition and unconscious of the right of exclusive property, appropriated to his own use this honored symbol “for the purpose of making tobacco pipes.”

The Dutch regarded the offense as an affair of state, not merely a larceny, and Hosset urged his complaints and demands for redress with so much vehemence that the perplexed tribe brought him the head of the offender. This was a punishment which Hosset neither wished nor had foreseen, and he dreaded its consequences.

In vain he reprehended the severity of the Indians, and told them had they brought the delinquent to him, he would have been dismissed with a reprimand. The love of vengeance, inseparable from the Indian character, sought a dire gratification; and, though the culprit was executed by his own tribe, still they beheld its cause in the exaction of the strangers.

Availing themselves of the season in which many of the Dutch were engaged in the cultivation of the fields, at a distance from their house, the Indians entered it, under the amicable pretense of trade, and murdered the unsuspicious Hosset, also a sentinel who attended him. They proceeded to the fields, fell upon the laborers and massacred every individual.

De Vries did not put the blame on Hosset, but the colony was ruined. Neither did he chastise the natives nor send out a punitive expedition against them; more bloodshed would not heal the wounds already made. With a view to future fishing, he exchanged some goods with the Indians, and made an engagement of peace.

On January 1, 1634, he proceeded up the river and on the 6th arrived at Fort Nassau. It was now deserted, except by Indians. He was suspicious of these, and traded with extreme caution. He remained in the vicinity of the fort for four days, ever on the alert. He nearly fell a victim here to the perfidy of the natives.

They directed him to haul his yacht into the narrow Timmer-Kill, which furnished a convenient place for an attack, but he was warned by a female of the tribe of their design, and told the English crew of a vessel which had been sent from Virginia to explore the river the September previous had been murdered. De Vries then hastened to Fort Nassau, which he found filled with savages.

On January 10 he drifted his yacht off on the ebbtide, anchored at noon “on the bar at Jacques Island” and on the 13th rejoined his ship at Swanendael.

Jacques Island has been identified as Little Tinicum, opposite the greater Tinicum which is now part of Delaware County. The kill in which he lay was therefore Ridley, or perhaps Chester Creek. In either case, it seems, De Vries was then within the State of Pennsylvania.

In April De Vries returned to Holland. Thus at the expiration of twenty-five years from the discovery of the Delaware by Hudson, not a single European remained upon its shores.

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Fires of Early Days; First Fire Fighting Company Organized December 7, 1736

The City of Philadelphia had not been laid out one year until it was visited by a fire, the sufferers being some recently arrived Germans and for whose relief a subscription was made.

From this time until 1696 no public precautions seem to have been taken against fire. In the latter year the Provincial Assembly passed a law for preventing accidents that might happen by fire in the towns of Philadelphia and New Castle, by which persons were forbidden to fire their chimneys to cleanse them, or suffer them to be so foul as to take fire, under a penalty of forty shillings, and each house owner was required to provide and keep ready a swab twelve or fourteen feet long, and a bucket or pail, under a penalty of ten shillings.

No person should presume to smoke tobacco in the streets, either by day or night, under a penalty of twelve pence. All such fines were to be used to buy leather buckets and other instruments or engines against fires for the public use.

An act was passed in 1700, applying to Philadelphia, Bristol, Germantown, Darby and Chester, which provided for two leather buckets, and forbade more than six pounds of powder to be kept in any house or shop, unless forty perches distant from any dwelling house, under the penalty of ten pounds. A year later the magistrates were directed to procure “six or eight good hooks for tearing down houses on fire.”

As the city grew, fires became more frequent, through faulty constructed chimneys and the general use of wood for fuel. Mayor Samuel Preston in 1711 recommended the purchase of buckets, hooks and an engine. In December, 1718, the City Council purchased of Abraham Bickley a fire engine he had imported from England for £50. This fire engine was then in Bethlehem. It was the first fire engine purchased by the city of Philadelphia.

The first “great fire” took place between 10 and 11 o’clock on the night of April 24, 1730. The fire started in a store along the wharf and burned several stores under one roof, two cooper shops and an immense quantity of staves on King Street, and two new tenement houses, all owned by Mr. Fishbourne; a new house of Mr. Plumstead’s; John Dickinson’s fine new house, and Captain Anthony’s house. Several other buildings were damaged and much property fell prey to thieves.

This disastrous fire made the whole population realize that new fire-fighting apparatus was needed. The City Council at once ordered three fire engines and 400 leather buckets to be purchased in England and provided twenty ladders and twenty-five hooks and axes.

A year elapsed, however, before two of the engines and 250 buckets were received, and Mayor Hassel directed one to be stationed in the yard of the Friends’ Meeting House, Second and Market Streets, and the other on the lot of Francis Jones, corner Second and Walnut Streets.

The old Bickley engine was stationed in the yard of the Baptist Church, on Second near Arch Street. As late as 1771 only six fire engines comprised the entire force of the city.

A third engine was built in Philadelphia by Anthony Nichols, in 1733, and other buckets were manufactured there. This is the first fire engine ever built in Pennsylvania.

At a fire in January, 1733, this engine threw a stream higher than any other engine had been able to do, but Nichols was not given another order because his price was too high, he had “used wood instead of brass and they feared it would not last long.”

In December, 1733, there appeared in Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette an article on fires and their origin, and the mode of putting them out. Another article suggested that public pumps should be built, and gave a plan for the organization of a club or society for putting out fires, after the manner of one in Boston.

Franklin was the author of both articles, and they caused such interest that a project of forming such a company was soon undertaken. Thirty joined the association, and every member was obliged to keep in order and fit for service a certain number of buckets. They were to meet monthly and discuss topics which might be useful in their conduct at fires.

The advantages of the association were so apparent they became so numerous as to include quite all the inhabitants who were men of property.

Out of this movement started by Benjamin Franklin was organized the Union Fire Company, December 7, 1736, this being the first fire company in Philadelphia. Among the early members were Franklin, Isaac Paschal, Philip Syng, William Rawle and Samuel Powell.

The second company was the Fellowship Fire Company, organized March 1, 1738; the third the Hand-in-Hand, organized March 1, 1742; the fourth the Heart-in-Hand, organized February 22, 1743; the fifth the Friendship, organized July 30, 1747; the sixth the Britannia, organized in 1750.

Richard Mason in 1768 manufactured engines which were operated by levers at the ends instead of the side of the engine. These were successful, and he continued to produce his engines until 1801.

Patrick Lyon, about 1794, became the greatest fire-engine builder, when he invented an engine which would throw more water and with greater force than the others. He built fire engines as late as 1824. The “Reliance” and “Old Diligent,” built by him, performed useful service until the introduction of steam fire engines in 1855.

The first truly great fire in Philadelphia occurred July 9, 1850, when 367 houses were destroyed on Delaware Avenue, near Vine Street.

On November 12, 1851, three lives were lost in a fire which destroyed Bruner’s cotton factory.

The borough of Somerset was almost totally destroyed in 1833, and again on May 9, 1872. In the latter conflagration 117 buildings were destroyed.

On April 10, 1845, the city of Pittsburgh was visited by its first great fire, which burned over a space of fifty-six acres of the business and residential section.

December 15, 1850, the greater portion of the borough of Carbondale was wiped out.

Chambersburg suffered first in Stuart’s rebel raid, October 10, 1862, and again when General McCausland destroyed the beautiful Franklin County seat, July 30, 1864.

Selinsgrove was visited by a terrible fire February 22, 1872, and another fire almost wiped out the town October 30, 1874.

Mifflintown suffered by a great fire in 1871, again on August 23, 1873, and the borough of Milton was almost destroyed May 14, 1880, when 644 houses and business blocks were burned from noon until 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

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Washington’s Headquarters in Several Bucks County Mansions Began December

8, 1776

During the Revolution General Washington established his headquarters in no less than three of the old-time dwellings of Bucks County.

When Washington crossed the Delaware into Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with the rear guard of his army, Sunday, December 8, 1776, he took up his quarters in the country house of Mrs. Berkley, while the troops were stationed opposite the crossing.

This dwelling was built in 1750, in the village of Morrisville. The house is still in a fine state of preservation, occupies a commanding situation, with a farm of one hundred and sixty-two acres belonging to it, and is within the site once selected by Congress for the capital of the United States.

In this house, George Clymer, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, lived and died. It was then owned by his son, Henry Clymer, afterwards it became the property of the Waddells.

Local tradition, seldom at fault in such cases, points this house out as Washington’s quarters immediately after he crossed the river, and mementos of the troops have been found in the adjacent fields.

After Washington had placed his troops in position to guard the fords of the Delaware and prevent the enemy crossing, the headquarters of the army, and the quarters of the commander-in-chief’s most trusted lieutenants, were fixed at farm houses in the same neighborhood in Upper Wakefield Township, where they were always within easy communication.

General Washington occupied the dwelling of William Keith, on the road from Brownsburg to the Eagle Tavern; General Green was at Robert Merrick’s, a few hundred yards away across the fields and meadows; General Sullivan was at John Hayhurst’s; and Generals Knox and Hamilton were at Doctor Chapman’s over Jericho Hill.

The troops belonging to the headquarters were encamped in sheltered places along the creeks, and not far removed from the river.

This position for headquarters was selected on account of its seclusion, its nearness to the river and because of its proximity to Jericho Mountain. From the top of this mountain in the winter, signals may be seen a long distance up and down the river.

Here, too, Washington was near the fords, at which the enemy would attempt to cross, if pursuit was intended, and he was also within a half hour’s ride of Newtown, the depot of supplies.

The three old mansions in which Washington, Greene and Knox quartered, are still standing.

The Keith mansion was a two-story, pointed-stone house, twenty-four by twenty-eight feet in size, built by William Keith in 1763.

The pine door, in two folds, set in a solid oaken frame, is garnished with a wooden lock, fourteen by eighteen inches, the same which locked out intruders when Washington occupied the house. The interior is finished in yellow pine. At the time Washington used the dwelling the yard was inclosed with a stone wall. The property, containing two hundred and forty acres, and purchased by William Keith, of the London Company, December 3, 1761, has never been out of the family.

The Merrick house, a quarter of a mile distant to the east, on the road from Newtown to Neely’s Mill, is a pointed-stone dwelling, twenty by twenty feet, and kitchen adjoining. It was bought by Samuel Merrick in 1773, and was for many years owned by Edward, a descendant.

When General Greene occupied the dwelling, the first floor was divided into three rooms, and the family lived in the log end on the west. As the house was not then finished, the General had the walls of the rooms on the ground floor painted in a tasteful manner, with a picture of the rising sun over the fireplace.

At that time Samuel Merrick had a family of half-grown children, who were deeply impressed with passing events, and many traditions have been handed down to the present generations.