CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST SETTLERS AND THEIR LIFE

The Scotch-Irish-The Germans-The Moravians-Date of Early Settlements-Claims of Priority-Incidents of Indian Incursions-The Poes and Captain Brady-The Last Indian Murder-North Side Settlers-Pioneer Life-“Forts” and Blockhouses-Dress and Provisions-Homes and Furniture-Sports and Diversions-Morals and Manners-Religious Beliefs and Superstitions-Education.

What was his name? I do not know his name.
I only know he heard God’s voice, and came:
Brought all he loved across the sea,
To live and work for God and me:
Felled the ungracious oak;
With rugged toil
Dragged from the soil
The thrice-gnarled roots and stubborn rock:
With plenty filled the haggard mountain side;
And, when his work was done, without memorial died.
EDWARD EVERETT HALE, The Pioneer.

BUCKLE, in his great fragment on the History of Civilization in England, has ably argued the influence of food and climate on the character of the various civilizations of the earth. 1 Doubtless these are important factors, but the character of a civilization is still more dependent upon what manner of men they are who are its founders. Heredity is at least as decisively a formative influence as is environment. “Blood tells, “-tells on the development of the individual, tells on the character of a community. In the preceding chapters we have spoken of the
heroic services of the men of the West; how, like the fire-guard which the Dakota farmer to-day ploughs about his home to protect it from the sweeping flames of a prairie fire, ran the

1 Vol. i., P. 37. Appleton & Co.’s Ed. 1891. Vol. L -10.

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cordon of defense which these brave men drew around the border settlements. Who were the heroic fighters on this firing­ line, and whence came they? In this chapter we shall try to answer briefly these questions.

THE SCOTCH-IRISH

In any worthy chronicle of the life of the people of western Pennsylvania one racial cognomen, viz ., “Scotch-Irish,” will occur with a frequency which the unsympathetic reader who has other blood and traditions might even call with Falstaff “a damnable iteration.” But the generous reader will find no fault with this. For dead of soul, indeed, is the man who has no love for the history and achievements of those who were his forbears, and if the Puritans, the Pilgrims, and the Huguenots in the East and South have had their full meed of praise in song and story, the historian of the West should be permitted to give to the
Scotch-Irish the recognition they deserve.
It would be hard to find a spot in this wide land of ours where the early population was more homogeneous than in the region round about the head of the Ohio River. Among the first emigrants to this region those other than Scotch, or Irish, or Scotch-Irish were so few in number as to be almost a negligible quantity! And who were, and are, the Scotch-Irish? The name stands for a great fact of racial evolution. It designates a composite people, in whose veins mingles the blood of Briton, and “Saxon, Norman, and Dane.” History knows them first
as the Lowland Scotch, a canny, thrifty, fearless folk, who were found in every part of Europe where there was glory to be won in the halls of learning or on the fields of battle. The evolution proceeds by the transplanting of these Lowland Scotchmen into

1 The credit due to the Germans in Pennsylvania is fully exhibited by Lucy Forney Bittinger in her book, The Germans in Colonial Times (Lippincott, 1901.) She says, page 231: “Everywhere along the Pennsylvanian frontier … we find the Germans, either as pioneers, as the first permanent settlers, or as following or intermingling witll the Scotch­Irish who are commonly but mistakenly credited with being always and everywhere the pioneers.”
But, she herself does not seem to succeed in tracing them much west of Bedford and Somerset counties. Mr. Lawrence Washington (a half-brother of George Washington), one of the Ohio Company, tried to induce the ” Pennsylvania Dutch” and their brethren from Germany to colonize this Ohio valley region, but as he says in a letter to Mr. Hanbury he failed on account of their prejudice against paying the “parish taxes” which were levied here by the Episcopal establishment of Vuginia (Old Redstone, p. 23). The German. ele­
ment now here dates its arrival principally after 1830.

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northern Ireland, where their blood is still further enriched by that of other races, by Huguenots from France, Burghers from Holland, Puritans and Quakers from England; and all becomes at last the one intelligent and hardy people that is known in America by the hyphenated appellation-” Scotch-Irish.”
Thousands of these hardy Ulstermen came to America (as many as twenty-five thousand between I771 and 1773 I), most of whom landed in Pennsylvania, many of these, after various haltings and migrations, settling finally in western Pennsylvania.
They brought with them a burning sense of hatred to all monarchical and ecclesiastical exactions, and so every settlement of them became a seed-plot of revolutionary sentiments. Bancroft says: “The first public voice in America for dissolving all connection with Great Britain came, not from the Puritans of New
England, the Dutch of New York, nor the planters of Virginia, but from the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians.” It is matter of dispute whether the so-called “Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence,” to which Bancroft probably here refers, is genuine or not, with the sifted evidence against it 2; but there is no
doubt that the Scotch-Irish of the North Carolina county of Mecklenburg were among the first to protest by word and deed against the tyranny of the British government. And so in all the colonies the men of that blood distinguished themselves in the championship of the Revolutionary cause, whether on the
field of debate or on the battlefield. It was, as we have said, the men of that blood, too, who most largely settled western Pennsylvania generally, and the territory of Beaver County in particular. So much as to the character of the early emigration
into this region. We glance now at its time.

DATE OF EARLY SETTLEMENTS

Previous to 1700 the foot of the white man had scarcely
touched the soil of these western parts.3 The eighteenth century
1 James Logan, Secretary of the proprietary government, himself an Irish Quaker, wrote in 1729: “It looks as if Ireland is to send all her inhabitants hither, for last week not less than six ships arrived, and every day two or three arrive also. The common fear is that if they continue to come they will make themselves proprietors of the province.”
2 See article, “Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence” in The Universal Cyclopedia.
3 Marquette and La Salle and the Jesuit fathers had been on the Mississippi. previous to 1700. Colonel Wood, of Virginia, is alleged to have explored several branches of the Ohio and “Meschacebe” (Mississippi) from 1654 to 1664 (Western Annals. p. 94). Thomas Woods and Robert Pallam. in I674, and Captain Botts, in 1674, are reported as making

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was two, perhaps three, decades advanced before those fore runners of civilization-the traders-began to venture into the wilds of this region. It was nearly half gone before the attempt at settlement by the Ohio Company was made (I748), and the first actual settlement of whites was not until 1752, at which
date Christopher Gist’s little company of eleven families took up their abode on lands west of the Youghiogheny River in what is now Fayette County.’ In the most southern portion of the province near the Maryland line a few feeble settlements were made prior to 1754, and in 1760 what is now the great centre
of population which we know as Pittsburg was a little group of cabins about the fort, with not much above two hundred inhabitants.2 About 1768 or 1769 Alexander McKee had made improvements at what is now known as McKee’s Rocks in Allegheny County. Washington makes mention of him, in his account of his canoe trip down the Ohio in 1770. In 1770 a mission of the Moravian Brethren, under the leadership of Zeisberger and Senseman, was established in what became Beaver County, at a point now within the bounds of Lawrence County.3
Owing to the opposition of hostile Indians the mission was soon removed into Ohio, where, at Salem and Gnadenhutten, was per­ petrated upon its peaceful members what was perhaps the most, horrible butchery that ever disgraced the annals of border life.
When we ask who was the first permanent white settler in what is now Beaver County, we raise a question that is difficult to answer, at least to the satisfaction of all. Formerly it was thought to have been one George Baker, a German, who came to America in 1750, and who, after a residence of some years in the eastern part of the country, came to this region in I772 or 1773 and settled on land in what is at present Moon township. Three months after his arrival in America Baker married a young

tours of the same region. The visits of these men were to points beyond our immediate region.
1 Hist: of West. Penna: (Rupp). p.40.
2 From a carefully prepared list: of the houses and inhabitants outside of the fort, made for Colonel Bouquet, April 15, 1761, by Captain. William Clapham, headed “A return of the number of houses, of the names of owners, and number of men. women and children in each house, April 14, 1761, and which is the first description of Pittsburg that we possess, the number of inhabitants is 233, with the addition of ninety-five officers, soldiers, and their families residing in the town, making the whole number 332; with 104 houses. The lower town was nearest the fort. The upper, on the high ground, principally along the banks of the Monongahela, extended as far as the present Market Street.
3 See Chapter XIL for a full account of the Moravian mission in this region.

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English girl. who had her wedding dress sent over from England, the home-country at that early day furnishing the luxuries, as well as most of the necessaries, for the colonists. A piece of this wedding dress was exhibited in the Loan Collection at the Centennial of Beaver County in I900.
The Bakers, on their arrival in this region, built their cabin, or fort, as it was called, on land now known as the Michael Mateer farm, situated on a ridge on the east side of Raccoon Creek, about four miles from its mouth. Near the site of the cabin is still in existence the old Baker burial-ground, where repose the ashes of
George Baker and his kinsfolk. In the Indian outrages about the beginning of the Revolutionary War the Bakers-husband, wife, and five children-were among the first victims, being taken by the Indians to Detroit and delivered to the British.
In the manuscript letter-books of Colonel George Morgan, Indian Agent of the United States at Fort Pitt, which we frequently cite in this work, we have found an interesting trace of Baker’s captivity, namely his signature to a paper certifying
the humanity shown him and his family by his Indian captors while on the march, and at Detroit by Governor Henry Hamilton, who is generally represented in the traditions of the time to have been a very Nero for cruelty. It would appear from the papers, copies of which we give herewith, that Hamilton’s policy was to have the proclamation of British and Indian clemency therein made left in the neighborhood where outrages by the savages were committed, in order that the people might be induced to surrender themselves to the British in hopes of escaping destruction. The first name attached to the certificate of white
prisoners at Detroit, testifying to their kindly treatment, is, as will be seen, that of George Baker. The following letter accompanied the papers, or “writings,”as they are called by the friendly Delawares who sent them to Morgan:

Captains White Eyes 6″ John Killbuck’s
Message to Colo. George Morgan-
Cuchockunk [Coshocton], March 14th, 1778.
BROTHER TAIMENEND [the name given to Morgan by the Indians, pro­
nounced Tammany],
A Man from Detroit his name Edward Hazel, 1 came here with some
Writings from the Governor & desired us to send some Indians with him
1 This Edward Hazel was sent by Governor lHamilton to escort Alexander McKee, the renegade, and his companions, who two weeks after the date of this letter deserted from Pittsburg, safely through the Indian tribes to Detroit. See The Girtys, pp. 58, 59.

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to bring them. into the Inhabitants of the white people, but we declined it & told him that we would not meddle with such affairs-Writings of the same kind was also sent to the Shawnese to leave them where they should kill any white people, which they delivered to me-both I send to you & you will see the contents thereof-Edward Hazel who will stay here some time wisheth to get some Writings from General Hand to the Governor of Detroit which he would carry there.
Brother Taimenend,
I am always glad to hear from you of our friendship–Iet us always be strong & continue therein & when dark Clouds arise over us let nothing stop our friendship Road, that we may always hear from each other. We on our Side will do as much as it is in our power that it may be kept open, but be strong Brother & do the same for the good of our young Men, Women & Children-

and the “writings” are as follows:
DETROIT, January 5th, I778.

Notwithstanding all endeavors to apprize his Majesty’s faithful & loyal Subjects dispersed over the Colonies, of his gracious intentions towards them, signified to them at different times, ’tis to be feared the mistaken zeal of the deluded multitude acted upon by the artful and wicked design of rebellious Counsellors, has prevented many from profiting of his Majesty’s Clemency, this is to acquaint all whom it may concern that nothing can give greater satisfaction to those persons who command for his Majesty at the different Posts, than to save from ruin those innocent people who are unhappily involved in distresses they have noways merited-The moderation shown by the Indians who have gone to War from this place is a speaking Proof of the truth, & the injunctions con­
stantly laid upon them on their setting out, having been to spare the defenceless and aged of both sexes, shew that compassion for the unhappy is blended with the severity necessary to be exercised on the obstinate & perverse Enemies of His Majesty’s Crown & Dignity.-
The Persons undernamed are living Witnesses of the moderation & even gentleness of Savages shewn to them their Wives & Children, which may it is hoped induce others to exchange the hardships experienced under their present Masters for Security & freedom under their lawful Sovereign.
The bearer hereof Edward Hazel, has my orders to make known to all
persons whom it may concern that the Indians are encouraged to shew the same kindness to all who shall embrace the offer of safety & protection hereby held out to them, & he is further to make known as far as lies in his power, that if a number of people can agree upon a place of rendez vous, & a proper time for coming to this Post, the Miamis, Sandoske or Post Vincennes, the properest methods will be taken for their Security & a safeguard of white people with an Officer and Interpreter sent to conduct them.

Given under my hand & Seal at Detroit
Sign’d HENRY HAMILTON
Lieut: Gov’r & Superintendent
God save the King

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Appended was the following testimony to the humanity of the Indians and the British:
We who have undersigned our Names do voluntarily declare that we have been conducted from the several places mentioned opposite our names to Detroit, by Indians accompanied with white people, that we have neither been cruelly treated or in any way ill used by them, & further that on our arrival, we have been treated with the greatest humanity & our wants supplied in the best manner possible.
George Baker….. for himself, Wife & five Children now here from 5 miles below Logs Town
James Butterworth….. from Bigg Kenhawa-
his
Thomas X Shoers …. from Harridge Town near Kentucke-
mark Jjacob Pugh ….. from six Miles below the Fort at Wheeling-
Jonathan Muchmore ….. from Fort Pitt
James Whitaker from … do… taken at Fish Creek
………………………… from Bedford taken at Sandy Run-
his
John X Bridges….. from do….. taken at do.1
mark

We have received from a direct descendant of Baker confirmation of the statement made in this paper. Mrs. Harrison (Baker) Brobeck, of Rochester, Pa., a niece of George Baker who died in 190I, at eighty-one years of age, used to say that the old people of her family always testified to the kindly treatment shown the Bakers during their five years’ captivity among the Indians and British. On the march to Detroit, however, the savages several times offered to kill one of the smallest of the children who annoyed them with its crying, but yielded to the
entreaties of the mother to spare it. The poor mother then, to keep the little one quiet and prevent a recurrence of its peril, would carry it as long as she could. This little band of captives was also guarded at night in the usual manner of the Indians, each one being made to lie between two warriors. During their

1 Hamilton was also kind to the famous Daniel Boone, who was captured by a party of Shawanese at the Lower Blue Licks in Kentucky, February 7, 1773, and brought by them to Detroit:

“On the 10th of March [says the historian] eleven of the party, including Boone himself, were dispatched for the north, and, after twenty days of journeying, were presented to the English governor, who treated them. Boone says, with great humanity. To Boone himself, Hamilton and several other gentlemen seem to have taken an especial fancy, and offered considerable sums for his release; but the Shawanese had also become enamored of the veteran hunter, and would not part with him, He must go home with them, they said, and be one of them, and become a great chief”-(Western Annals. p. 296.)
See. however, what is said of Hamilton’s conduct in the preceding chapter. According to the testimony of many witnesses he was very cruel.

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stay among the Indians at least one of the children learned to speak the language of the tribe. It is thought that the Bakers were in captivity between four and five years and that they were exchanged a year or two after the surrender of Burgoyne. They then returned to the south branch of the Potomac, whence
they had emigrated to the frontier, and after living there a few years concluded to come back to their Beaver County home. Here they found their cabin in ashes, the clearing overgrown with weeds and thickets, the apple-tree they had planted a
dozen years before now in blossom, a rose-bush become a large wild growth, and their well nearly filled with rubbish. Such were the vicissitudes of these early inhabitants. Baker died at an advanced age in 1802, two years after the erection of the county which he had helped to redeem from savage wildness.
But it seems now probable that another pioneer settler in this county had preceded Baker at least two years. This was Levi Dungan. From his grandson, the Hon. Warren S. Dungan, ex-Lieutenant-Governor of Iowa, who was present at the Beaver County Centennial in 1900, presiding and making an address on
“Old Settlers’ Day,” we have obtained the following data con­ cerning him. Levi Dungan was born on a farm near Philadelphia, and, on February 2, 1764, he was married in that city, by the Rev. Morgan Edwards, to Mary Davis.’ He was a first
cousin to” Mad Anthony” Wayne, whose mother was a Dungan. In 1772, he, with his wife and two or three small children and two slaves, one named Fortune and the other Lunn, 2 removed to this section, where he located at the head of King’s Creek a tract

1 The entry in the Marriage Book of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia is as
follows:

” Levy Dungan & Mary Dungan (Davis), Both of Philadelphia were married at their Inn in Second street on February the second day in the year One Thousand seven hunderd (hundred) and sixty-four by Morgan Edwards.”
The above is from a letter to the editor from Hon. W arren S. Dungan. In the same letter Mr. Dungan says that when Anthony Wayne was at Fort McIntosh with his army on his way to Ohio, Levi Dungan visited him and invited him to come to the Dungan home, about twenty miles away. Wayne declined to pay the visit, saying, “I have a wild set of devils to handle, and if I left them so long as to visit you. I should expect half of them to be missing on my return.”
2 The institution of slavery could not gain a strong hold upon the northern colonies and States. because it was not profitable there. Pennsylvania, by the Constitution of 1790, made provision for its gradual abolition. Beaver County was comparatively free from the influence of the institution, but a few slaves were nevertheless bought, sold, and held within its borders. In 1800 there were four slaves in the county; in 1810 there were eight, and in 1820 five. By 1830, under the operation of the law, as stated, all had been liberated. The following instances of slave-holding in this county are the only ones that are known: James Nicholson, a farmer in Big Beaver, owned three slaves,-Pompey and Tamar Frazier

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of one thousand acres-e-land now within the limits of Hanover township. He settled where the village of Frankfort Springs now stands, building his house over an excellent spring. The house was a large log structure, built for the double purpose of a dwelling and for a fort, to be used by all the neighbors as a place of asylum in times of danger. Its position over the spring had also doubtless been selected with a view to the possibilities of their being besieged, when access to water could thus be had without the peril of exposure. Here, too, he began to
clear the land, and to plant vegetables and corn, and to do all the arduous work required by the life of a pioneer farmer.
Mary Dungan, his wife, was a woman well qualified to be a helpmeet for him in this wilderness life. Two instances may be given of her courage and capability. In 1789 she made the long journey from her western home to Philadelphia on horseback, with a few neighbors, taking with her money to enter the tract of land which had been blazed out by her husband in 1772. She made the journey to the east and back in safety, and brought with her the patents for the land, dated September 1,1789. The other instance needs a word of preface.
Before her marriage Mrs. Dungan had been an inmate of the home of the celebrated physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush, to whom she was related, and with whom she studied medicine until he went to Edinburgh to complete his training. At his departure, the library which they had jointly accumulated, became, by
mutual agreement, her property. After her marriage to Levi Dungan, she took a part of this library with her to her wilderness home, and continued there her medical studies. At one time from danger of Indian attacks these precious books had to be hid away for nearly a year, and they were nearly ruined as a consequence of dampness and mildew.’ But the medical knowledge thus acquired by this brave little woman was often drawn

and Betsy Mathews. At Mr. Nicholson’s death he willed the farm to these three slaves. Soon the two Fraziers died, and Betsy then owned the farm and was married to a man named Henry Jordan in 1840. Betsy then sold the main part of the farm, and upon this the borough of New GaIlilee was afterwards built. The two slaves of Levi Dungan. named above, remained with him until they died. Isaac Hall, a black man, was bought at an auction in New Orleans by Captain John Ossman, in 1810, for $270, and brought to this county, where he remained a. slave until his death. Henry and HenleyWebster, two slaves of John Roberts, of Hanover township, were brought with their master to this county from Virginia, and remained here until they worked out their purchase money and keeping.
1 This was probably at the time when Dungan had removed his family for- safety to Washington County, where he enlisted in the Revolutionary Army. See Chapter XIV.

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upon for the relief of her own family and of her neighbors. The following incident of exigent need and prompt assistance from her skill is related. Two neighbors, William Langfitt and Isaac Wiseman, had been to a mill down on King’s Creek to get some corn ground. On their way home they were attacked by Indians. Wiseman was instantly killed and Langfitt was shot several times through the body, but kept his seat while his frightened horse carried him back over the trail to Dungan’s, where he was taken in, unconscious. There was no surgeon obtainable nearer than Fort Pitt and Mrs. Dungan at once set about to care for the
wounded man. With a knitting-needle she packed the bleeding wounds with strips from from a silk handkerchief, and with com press and bandage arrested the hemorrhage. Langfitt recovered, and lived to the age of ninety-six, dying in Hanover township, Beaver County, August 23, 1831.
Levi Dungan, according to the family records, died in I825, and it is thought that his wife’s death was somewhat earlier. He (and probably also his wife) was buried in Brook, now Hancock, County , West Virginia, about five miles southwest of Frankfort Springs, Pa., and about one and a half miles west of
the village of Paris, on King’s Creek. Near the spot a Baptist church was organized, of which Levi Dungan was an active member and an officer; and there stood also an old mill which is supposed to be the one which Wiseman and Langfitt had been at when, on their way home, they were attacked by the Indians, as related above. Richard Roberts, a Revolutionary soldier, the father of John Roberts (an uncle of Hon, Warren S. Dungan) and the grandfather of Colonel Richard P. Roberts, is buried here be side the Dungans. The locality may be identified for some of our readers by mention of the fact that a few years ago there lived in the neighborhood a man named Levi Standish.
It is believed by some that the first settler in what is now Beaver County was the celebrated Colonel (afterwards General) John Gibson, an uncle of the great jurist, John Bannister Gibson. Three papers are offered in evidence for this settlement, copies of which we have examined. There is, first, an unsigned state­
ment, dated at Jeffersonville (Indiana?), November 20,1813, in which the following affirmations are made, apparently as coming from Gibson himself; viz., that “in 1769, at the opening of the Land Office in the then Province of Pennsylvania, an entry was

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made of 300 acres of land to include the old Indian com-field opposite Logstown 1 for the use of John Gibson, Sen., he having drawn at a lottery the earliest number, and the land was surveyed for him in the same year by James Hendricks, Esq.,
District Surveyor” ; that “in 1771, he, John Gibson, settled upon the land, built a house, and cleared and fenced 30 acres of ground”; that in 1778 “he sold his claim to Matthias Slough, of Lancaster, Pa.,” and that “he, John Gibson, has understood
that the land was sold by Slough to a Mr. Scott, who sold to Mr. McDonald.”
Second, there is an affidavit of Presley Neville,” dated about the same time, which sets forth his knowledge of John Gibson’s having resided on that tract, and having had, with the other settlers, to flee from his home during the Revolutionary War on account of the incursions of the Indians.
Third, we have an affidavit of Rob’t Vance, sworn and sub scribed to before John Way, a justice of the peace of Allegheny County, Pa., and dated December 6, 1807. Herein Vance de­ clares that ” he hath for the past fifty years been well acquainted with the tract of land in question, having lived upwards of thirty-two years of the latter part of that time in the same

1 We would note that this statement incidentally bears out our position in regard to the site of Logstown (see Chapter XXVIII.), which we hold to have been on the right-hand bank of the Ohio as one descends the stream. This paper puts Logstown “opposite” “the old Indian cornfield.” The cornfield is conceded by all to have been on the south (properly, west) side: therefore Logstown, according to the witness of this paper, was on the north (properly east) side, or right-hand bank of the river. From what is said in McClure’s and Parrish’s journals (quoted ante, pp, 24-26) it might seem that Gibson had a house at Logs town and one on the opposite side of the river. The former may have been his trading-post.
Diligent search at Harrisburg for the record of Gibson’s entries discovered nothing be yond the following: Among a list of Benjamin Johnston’s “VIrginia Entries” on file in the Department of Internal Affairs, the name of John Gibson is entered, under date of June 23, 1780, for 400 acres, described as located at “Logstown,” also for another tract of 400 acres described as located “adjoining do,” entered on the same date. No return of survey is credited to either of these tracts and no mention of a patent: being: granted is noted in either case.
The word “entry,” as used here, means the date of filing of claims for lands with the Virginia commissioners appointed to settle claims to unpatented lands, and the granting of certificates by the said commissioners to individual claimants.
The fact of these two entries being given in Johnston’s list is evidence that such certifi cates were actually granted to Gibson on the date above mentioned. but the reason for no return of survey having been made does not appear. The lands have likely been patented to some other person under the regular warrant system at a later date.
2 Presley Neville was a graduate of the University ofPennsylvania, a classical scholar, and entered the army at the early age of twenty years under his father, General John Neville. He rose to the rank of Major and was Aide-de-Camp to General Lafayette. He was the only son of the distinguished John Neville, and married the daughter of General Morgan. After his marriage he removed to his property, at Woodville, on Chartiers Creek.
He resided in Pittsburg from 1792 to 1816.

156 History of Beaver County

neighborhood”; and that “the land during that time was in the quiet and peaceable possession of John McDonald, his heirs or those under whom the said 10hn McDonald claims.”(Italics ours.) These last would be Scott, Slough, and Gibson, and we have been informed by descendants of John McDonald that he
did claim under these three men. We have thought that an impartial treatment of this subject called for the mention of these papers, and we submit the evidence which they afford for what it may be worth.’
We have ourselves previously shown the proof that Gibson was at Logstown certainly as early as Dungan was on his settlement in what is now Hanover township (the spring of 1772), and very probably a year or two earlier. This proof will be found in the extracts from the journal of the Rev. David McClure
previously quoted,” McClure, in I772, finds Gibson a resident at Logstown, with a store and house, and his place a well-known rendezvous for travelers. But we still think that Dungan is entitled to be called the first settler. Gibson was primarily an
Indian trader. He had also a store at Fort Pitt, where he spent good part of his time. He came to Logstown, as many other
1 Gibson was a note-worthy man, and was much connected with the early history of Beaver County. He was born at Lancaster, Pa., May 23, 1740, and received his early education there, pursuing a classical course and entering the service at the age of eighteen. His first campaign was with General Forbes in the expedition against Fort Duquesne. He then settled at Fort Pitt as a trader. In the Indian war of 1763, while descending the Ohio River in a canoe, he was taken prisoner at the mouth of the Big Beaver Creek. Of two men who were his companions, one was immediately burned at the stake, and the other carried to the Kanawha, where he suffered the same fate. Gibson was saved by the
intervention of an old squaw, who adopted him in the place of a son killed in battle. He was surrendered by the Indians to Colonel Bouquet in 1764. In 1774 he negotiated the peace with the Shawanese and while on this mission, at a conference with the Indians near the Scioto River, Logan, the Mingo chief, made to him the celebrated speech which 50 many schoolboys have used as a select oration, and which is justly rated as one of the masterpieces of natural eloquence. Who does not remember the words:

“I appeal to any white man if ever he entered Logan’s cabin hungry and he gave him not meat . . . But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt a fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.” *
At the outbreak of the Revolution Gibson was made Colonel of the 13th Virginia Regiment. He was temporarily in command several times during the war at Fort Pitt (his command including Fort McIntosh), was in command for a time at Fort Laurens. and held other important military trusts. He was also a Member of the convention wbich framed the constitution of Pennsylvania in 1790; later a Judge of Allegheny County, Major­General of militia, and Secretary of the Territory of Indiana until it became a State, being at one time its acting Governor. Gibson died at Braddock’s Field. Pa., April 10. r&22.

2 See ante, pages 23-26.
. * We are familiar with the controversy as to the genuineness of this speech, and believe that the arguments in its favor have not been satisfactorily answered.. See notices of Logan. ante, pp. 24 – 26.

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traders had done before him, to buy and sell rather than to build a homestead in the wilderness,” Levi Dungan, on the other hand, traveled over three hundred miles, through manifold hardships and dangers, not for present gain, but for the sole purpose of seeking a permanent home for himself and his little family. If
residence in the territory as an Indian trader constituted a claim as a settler, then Alexander McKee would have to be put before Gibson, for he had made improvements opposite Logstown (within the present limits of Beaver County) sometime prior to 1769. In that year a tract of land there was surveyed for him,
containing three hundred acres, on which he had erected a house. This tract was confiscated and advertised for sale in Pittsburg shortly after McKee had become a renegade (March 28, 1778).2 But he, like Gibson, must, we think, be considered as belonging to what became Allegheny County rather than to Beaver.
Another very early settler in this region was David Kerr, who was born in Ireland, and in the year 1778 emigrated to America with his wife and two children, Mary Ann and David, the latter then about a year old. The family settled on Chartiers Creek in Washington County, Pa., where they remained
but a short time when they removed to the headwaters of King’s Creek in what is now Beaver County. Here David Kerr, Sr., bought a tract of land consisting of 236 acres, for which he agreed to pay one dollar per acre. Sickness and the expense of
travel had well-nigh exhausted his stock of money, and he was obliged to pay for his purchase in grain at the rate of three shillings per bushel for rye and four shillings for wheat. But by diligence he succeeded in cultivating a large farm, and in meeting all his obligations. He died, in 1804, at the age of forty-five, and was buried at King’s Creek. His wife survived him ten years, and was buried beside him. These were the great-grandparents of Franklin David Kerr, M.D., formerly of Hookstown, now of Shousetown, Pa. Doctor Kerr’s maternal

1 In the Pittsburgh. Gazette of Saturday, September 16, I786, appears the following ad vertisement by Gibson:

“Just opened and to be sold by the subscriber living on the bank of the river. between Mr. David Duncan’s and Mr. John Ormsby’s.
“A LARGE and generaI assortment of DRY and WET GOODS, which he will dispose of on the most reasonable terms for cash, country produce, peltry or gin-
seng “JOHN GIBSON.
“Pittsburgh, Sept. 16”
3 EarlyHistory ofWesternPenna. (Rupp), p.42; Penna. Arch ., vol. iv., p. 346; Pennsylvania Gazette, September 8, 1784.

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great-grandfather, Thomas Moore, was also an early settler of the south side of Beaver County, preceding David Kerr by about two years. He was born near the site of Leesburg, Virginia, in 1750, and in I776 came with his wife, Rachel Phillis Moore, and settled on a tract of five hundred acres of land three miles south­
east of what is now Hookstown, this county. In 1777 he took part in the defense of Fort Pitt against the savages. Thomas Moore was a successful farmer, and lived to see a large family of sons and daughters grow up about him. He was an elder in
the Presbyterian Church of Mill Creek, in whose cemetery he was buried. He died of typhoid fever June 2, 1821. Rachel, his wife, died December I6, 1823, and was laid beside her husband, and her father, Joseph Phillis, who was born in England in 1694, and whose last days had been spent with her. Joseph Phillis was 107 years old when he died.
Other settlers may be mentioned who came to this region while it was still a wilderness, and shared with those already spoken of in the hard and dangerous task of subduing the forest and contending with the relentless foes who beset them and disputed their right to occupy the land. From the early settlers in Beaver County these foes were separated only by the Ohio River, across which they made frequent bloody forays. The settlements on Raccoon Creek, especially about Levi Dungan’s in what is now Beaver County, and Matthew Dillow’s in Wash ington County, were the quarter in which the Indian attacks were most frequently made. I The path which was followed by the savages as they invaded the south side of the Ohio was on the ridge between the waters of Raccoon Creek and King’s Creek. It is substantially the line of the State road, running at the pres­
ent day from Georgetown, this county, to Washington, Pa. While Dillow’s settlement was in what is now Washington County, it was closely connected with the history of the pioneer families of the south side of Beaver County. Matthew Dillow himself fell a victim to the fury of the foe. In 1782, he, with his son John, was at work in the clearing when Indians in am-

1 Colonel David Redick to Governor Mifflin, on the I3th of February, 1792, in a letter which we refer to elsewhere, writes as follows:

” I have read your letter of information and instructions to the County Lieutenants, on the subject of protection. I find that a considerable gap is left open to the enemy on the northwesterly part of the county, and that a place where, in former wars, the enemy perpetually made their approach on that quarter-the settlements on Raccoon, especially about Dilloe’s constantly experienced in former times the repeated attacks of the enemy.”­
2d Penna. Arch., vol, iv., p. 700.

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bush shot the father and took the son a prisoner. John saw them secrete the body of his father near a large log before starting on their march. The boy was kept a prisoner for several years, and upon his release and return to his former home was questioned as to what became of the body of his father. He recalled and narrated the incidents of his capture and of his father’s death. A number of his friends gathered together, and after a search found the skeleton of the elder Dillow in the described location. It was brought to near his old home and buried.’
Near Dillow’s place settled early Thomas Armor, Thomas Bigger and William Anderson. Thomas Armor does not properly belong to the history of Beaver County, but his son Thomas inherited a body of 140 acres of land lying principally in this county, part of a tract which the father had received under a
Virginia certificate in 1776. Thomas Bigger has well known and highly respected descendants still living in the old home neighborhood on the south side. The history of William Anderson and his family illustrates the suffering to which these pioneer people were exposed. On one of their incursions into the settlements on Raccoon Creek, in July, 1779, the Indians surprised Anderson while he was at work near his house, and shot him through the left breast. He was able to escape, and to reach the house of his neighbor, Thomas Armor. Mr. Armor, who was a man of unusual strength, took Anderson on his back and carried him to “fort” Dillow for succor. Mrs. Anderson, mean time, having heard the firing of the Indians, had left the house and hidden in the bushy top of a fallen tree with her infant child. The savages came to the cabin and set fire to it, passing several
times close by her hiding-place without discovering her. At this time, or shortly after, two boys of the Anderson family were taken by the Indians, and carried into captivity.2 They were step-brothers, one four and the other seven years of age. Five or six years later the elder brother, Logan, returned to Fort McIntosh, probably among the prisoners delivered in accordance with the terms of the treaty made there in 1785. The other boy never came back. He is reported to have married a half-breed
1 Crumrine’s Hist. of Washington County, p. 804.
2 Colonel Brodhead to Ensign John Beck from Pittsburg, August 1, 1779, says:

“I have just now received information that one Anderson, who lived about two miles from Dillar’s [Dillow’s] Fort, was slightly wounded, and two of his little boys carried off by the savages on the same day! the mischief was done on “Wheeling.”-(Brodhead’s Letter-Book No. 39; Penna. Arch., vol, XII., p, 142.)

160 History of Beaver County

Indian-French woman near Detroit, and it is said that two of their sons became chiefs in one of the Indian tribes. It was not an unusual thing for white children who had been long in captivity among the Indians to refuse to leave them when opportunity offered. Even when taken away from them by force, they had sometimes to be closely watched for a while to prevent their escaping again to their dusky friends.’
On Raccoon Creek lived also the Foulkes family, who suffered severely at the hands of the savages: On the second Sabbath of March, I780, an attack was made by them at a sugar camp at the mouth of Reardon’s run, a tributary of Raccoon Creek, where the Foulkes family and two other families, by name Tucker and
Turner, of Noblestown, were spending the day together. Five men were killed, and three boys and three girls were taken prisoners.2 One of the prisoners was George Foulkes, eleven years old, and another was his sister, Elizabeth, two years
younger. A brother, named William, eighteen years of age, was among the killed. Samuel Whitaker, a lad about the age of George Foulkes, was also made a prisoner and with the others lived to manhood among the Indians. He married Elizabeth Foulkes after the close of their captivity, and settled on the Sandusky River, in Ohio. George Foulkes was a prisoner eleven years, and afterwards became a scout under the famous Indian

1 Bouquet’s Expedition against the Ohio Indians, p, 29.
2 We have already quoted Brodhead’s letter to the President of the Council, of March I8, 1780, in which he said:
” I am sorry to inform you that the Savages have already begun their hostilities. Last Sunday morning at a Sugar Camp upon Raccoon Creek five men were killed & three lads & three girls taken prisoners.”
We copy here a letter from the original MS. of Colonel George Morgan’s letter-book. It has no bearing on the particular incidents of the text above, but it has some local color:

” The United American States to their Brethren the Delawares
met in Council at Coochocking [now Coshocton, 0.].

“March 29. I777.
“BROTHERS:-

“. . . About twenty days ago some of our Brothers the Delawares who live at
Tuscarawas crossed the Ohio to a White Man’s house opposite Beaver Creek which they robbed to a considerable value-but as the Family were from home they committed no murder–On hearing some of our people coming up, & it being dark they made off in their Cannoe with the Goods to the value of – Bucks. * I prevented our people going across the Ohio River after them knowing you would cause everything to be restored & prevent your foolish people from doing so again- I send you a list of the Goods they stole. . . .

“GEORGE MORGAN.”

“Agent for the United States, Fort Pitt.”

* Peltries were used as a medium of exchange, Colonel Cresap, a Maryland trader, advertised rates as follows: “A Matchcoat for a Buck, a Strowd [blanket] for a Buck and a Doe. A pair of Stockings for two Racoons, twelve Bars of Lead for a Buck and so on in proportion!”-Col. Rec., vol. v., p. 440.

History of Beaver County 161

fighter, Captain Samuel Brady. He married Miss Catherine Ullery, whose home was on Grant’s Hill, near Fort Pitt, and after Wayne’s victory and the treaty at Greenville in 1795,he settled with her on a farm three miles down the Little Beaver from Darlington, where he died about 1840. He built the first brick house in that section of the country. The old crane and pot hooks used in his first house, which was a log cabin, were exhibited in the Loan Collection of the Beaver County Centennial in 1900. They were made from the stays of an English gun carriage brought from Detroit.
None of the pioneer settlers of the region which is now Beaver and Washington counties enjoy so much fame as Indian fighters as do the two brothers, Andrew and Adam Poe. In the hostilities with the Indians that were waged along the Ohio River from 1777 until 1784, they were ever the first and most fearless, with
physical strength and personal prowess combined in each in a degree that was unusual even in that day, when both were the commonest possessions of the frontiersmen. The Poe brothers came to the Ohio River region from NewEngland, and located tracts of land for which they were granted Virginia certificates. Andrew’s tract was surveyed February IS, 1786, and contained 333 acres. It was called” Poe Wood.” Adam’s tract, known as “Poeville,” was surveyed January 13, 1786. It contained 377 acres. Prior to this time they also owned a tract in what
was afterwards Smith township, Washington County. The Poes were pious as well as brave men, and were active in church affairs. In 1779, when the Presbyterian congregations of Cross Creek and Buffalo called the Rev. Joseph Smith, then of York County, Pa., as pastor of the united charge, Andrew and Adam Poe signed the call. Many traditions of the Poe brothers have been handed down since the days of border warfare, and are still current. Some of these have grown in the telling, especially the story of Andrew Poe’s fight with the fabled Big Foot, the
giant Indian chief. We reluctantly suggest any diminution of the marvels of a story that was one of the choice morsels of our own early boyhood reading. The true story is still heroic enough, however, and we will tell it in substance as it is given by a careful historian.
In the fall of I78I, just as Brodhead’s expedition to Sandusky was arranged to rendezvous at Fort McIntosh, intelligence
VOL. I,-11.

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152
stay among the Indians at least one of the children learned to speak the language of the tribe. It is thought that the Bakers were in captivity between four and five years and that they were exchanged a year or two after the surrender of Burgoyne. They then returned to the south branch of the Potomac, whence
they had emigrated to the frontier, and after living there a few years concluded to come back to their Beaver County home. Here they found their cabin in ashes, the clearing overgrown with weeds and thickets, the apple-tree they had planted a
dozen years before now in blossom, a rose-bush become a large wild growth, and their well nearly filled with rubbish. Such were the vicissitudes of these early inhabitants. Baker died at an advanced age in 1802, two years after the erection of the county which he had helped to redeem from savage wildness.
But it seems now probable that another pioneer settler in this county had preceded Baker at least two years. This was Levi Dungan. From his grandson, the Hon. Warren S. Dungan, ex-Lieutenant-Governor of Iowa, who was present at the Beaver County Centennial in 1900, presiding and making an address on
“Old Settlers’ Day,” we have obtained the following data con­ cerning him. Levi Dungan was born on a farm near Philadelphia, and, on February 2, 1764, he was married in that city, by the Rev. Morgan Edwards, to Mary Davis.’ He was a first
cousin to” Mad Anthony” Wayne, whose mother was a Dungan. In 1772, he, with his wife and two or three small children and two slaves, one named Fortune and the other Lunn, 2 removed to this section, where he located at the head of King’s Creek a tract

1 The entry in the Marriage Book of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia is as
follows:

” Levy Dungan & Mary Dungan (Davis), Both of Philadelphia were married at their Inn in Second street on February the second day in the year One Thousand seven hunderd (hundred) and sixty-four by Morgan Edwards.”
The above is from a letter to the editor from Hon. W arren S. Dungan. In the same letter Mr. Dungan says that when Anthony Wayne was at Fort McIntosh with his army on his way to Ohio, Levi Dungan visited him and invited him to come to the Dungan home, about twenty miles away. Wayne declined to pay the visit, saying, “I have a wild set of devils to handle, and if I left them so long as to visit you. I should expect half of them to be missing on my return.”
2 The institution of slavery could not gain a strong hold upon the northern colonies and States. because it was not profitable there. Pennsylvania, by the Constitution of 1790, made provision for its gradual abolition. Beaver County was comparatively free from the influence of the institution, but a few slaves were nevertheless bought, sold, and held within its borders. In 1800 there were four slaves in the county; in 1810 there were eight, and in 1820 five. By 1830, under the operation of the law, as stated, all had been liberated. The following instances of slave-holding in this county are the only ones that are known: James Nicholson, a farmer in Big Beaver, owned three slaves,-Pompey and Tamar Frazier

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of one thousand acres-e-land now within the limits of Hanover township. He settled where the village of Frankfort Springs now stands, building his house over an excellent spring. The house was a large log structure, built for the double purpose of a dwelling and for a fort, to be used by all the neighbors as a place of asylum in times of danger. Its position over the spring had also doubtless been selected with a view to the possibilities of their being besieged, when access to water could thus be had without the peril of exposure. Here, too, he began to
clear the land, and to plant vegetables and corn, and to do all the arduous work required by the life of a pioneer farmer.
Mary Dungan, his wife, was a woman well qualified to be a helpmeet for him in this wilderness life. Two instances may be given of her courage and capability. In 1789 she made the long journey from her western home to Philadelphia on horseback, with a few neighbors, taking with her money to enter the tract of land which had been blazed out by her husband in 1772. She made the journey to the east and back in safety, and brought with her the patents for the land, dated September 1,1789. The other instance needs a word of preface.
Before her marriage Mrs. Dungan had been an inmate of the home of the celebrated physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush, to whom she was related, and with whom she studied medicine until he went to Edinburgh to complete his training. At his departure, the library which they had jointly accumulated, became, by
mutual agreement, her property. After her marriage to Levi Dungan, she took a part of this library with her to her wilderness home, and continued there her medical studies. At one time from danger of Indian attacks these precious books had to be hid away for nearly a year, and they were nearly ruined as a consequence of dampness and mildew.’ But the medical knowledge thus acquired by this brave little woman was often drawn

and Betsy Mathews. At Mr. Nicholson’s death he willed the farm to these three slaves. Soon the two Fraziers died, and Betsy then owned the farm and was married to a man named Henry Jordan in 1840. Betsy then sold the main part of the farm, and upon this the borough of New GaIlilee was afterwards built. The two slaves of Levi Dungan. named above, remained with him until they died. Isaac Hall, a black man, was bought at an auction in New Orleans by Captain John Ossman, in 1810, for $270, and brought to this county, where he remained a. slave until his death. Henry and HenleyWebster, two slaves of John Roberts, of Hanover township, were brought with their master to this county from Virginia, and remained here until they worked out their purchase money and keeping.
1 This was probably at the time when Dungan had removed his family for- safety to Washington County, where he enlisted in the Revolutionary Army. See Chapter XIV.

154 History of Beaver County

upon for the relief of her own family and of her neighbors. The following incident of exigent need and prompt assistance from her skill is related. Two neighbors, William Langfitt and Isaac Wiseman, had been to a mill down on King’s Creek to get some corn ground. On their way home they were attacked by Indians. Wiseman was instantly killed and Langfitt was shot several times through the body, but kept his seat while his frightened horse carried him back over the trail to Dungan’s, where he was taken in, unconscious. There was no surgeon obtainable nearer than Fort Pitt and Mrs. Dungan at once set about to care for the
wounded man. With a knitting-needle she packed the bleeding wounds with strips from from a silk handkerchief, and with com press and bandage arrested the hemorrhage. Langfitt recovered, and lived to the age of ninety-six, dying in Hanover township, Beaver County, August 23, 1831.
Levi Dungan, according to the family records, died in I825, and it is thought that his wife’s death was somewhat earlier. He (and probably also his wife) was buried in Brook, now Hancock, County , West Virginia, about five miles southwest of Frankfort Springs, Pa., and about one and a half miles west of
the village of Paris, on King’s Creek. Near the spot a Baptist church was organized, of which Levi Dungan was an active member and an officer; and there stood also an old mill which is supposed to be the one which Wiseman and Langfitt had been at when, on their way home, they were attacked by the Indians, as related above. Richard Roberts, a Revolutionary soldier, the father of John Roberts (an uncle of Hon, Warren S. Dungan) and the grandfather of Colonel Richard P. Roberts, is buried here be side the Dungans. The locality may be identified for some of our readers by mention of the fact that a few years ago there lived in the neighborhood a man named Levi Standish.
It is believed by some that the first settler in what is now Beaver County was the celebrated Colonel (afterwards General) John Gibson, an uncle of the great jurist, John Bannister Gibson. Three papers are offered in evidence for this settlement, copies of which we have examined. There is, first, an unsigned state­
ment, dated at Jeffersonville (Indiana?), November 20,1813, in which the following affirmations are made, apparently as coming from Gibson himself; viz., that “in 1769, at the opening of the Land Office in the then Province of Pennsylvania, an entry was

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made of 300 acres of land to include the old Indian com-field opposite Logstown 1 for the use of John Gibson, Sen., he having drawn at a lottery the earliest number, and the land was surveyed for him in the same year by James Hendricks, Esq.,
District Surveyor” ; that “in 1771, he, John Gibson, settled upon the land, built a house, and cleared and fenced 30 acres of ground”; that in 1778 “he sold his claim to Matthias Slough, of Lancaster, Pa.,” and that “he, John Gibson, has understood
that the land was sold by Slough to a Mr. Scott, who sold to Mr. McDonald.”
Second, there is an affidavit of Presley Neville,” dated about the same time, which sets forth his knowledge of John Gibson’s having resided on that tract, and having had, with the other settlers, to flee from his home during the Revolutionary War on account of the incursions of the Indians.
Third, we have an affidavit of Rob’t Vance, sworn and sub scribed to before John Way, a justice of the peace of Allegheny County, Pa., and dated December 6, 1807. Herein Vance de­ clares that ” he hath for the past fifty years been well acquainted with the tract of land in question, having lived upwards of thirty-two years of the latter part of that time in the same

1 We would note that this statement incidentally bears out our position in regard to the site of Logstown (see Chapter XXVIII.), which we hold to have been on the right-hand bank of the Ohio as one descends the stream. This paper puts Logstown “opposite” “the old Indian cornfield.” The cornfield is conceded by all to have been on the south (properly, west) side: therefore Logstown, according to the witness of this paper, was on the north (properly east) side, or right-hand bank of the river. From what is said in McClure’s and Parrish’s journals (quoted ante, pp, 24-26) it might seem that Gibson had a house at Logs town and one on the opposite side of the river. The former may have been his trading-post.
Diligent search at Harrisburg for the record of Gibson’s entries discovered nothing be yond the following: Among a list of Benjamin Johnston’s “VIrginia Entries” on file in the Department of Internal Affairs, the name of John Gibson is entered, under date of June 23, 1780, for 400 acres, described as located at “Logstown,” also for another tract of 400 acres described as located “adjoining do,” entered on the same date. No return of survey is credited to either of these tracts and no mention of a patent: being: granted is noted in either case.
The word “entry,” as used here, means the date of filing of claims for lands with the Virginia commissioners appointed to settle claims to unpatented lands, and the granting of certificates by the said commissioners to individual claimants.
The fact of these two entries being given in Johnston’s list is evidence that such certifi cates were actually granted to Gibson on the date above mentioned. but the reason for no return of survey having been made does not appear. The lands have likely been patented to some other person under the regular warrant system at a later date.
2 Presley Neville was a graduate of the University ofPennsylvania, a classical scholar, and entered the army at the early age of twenty years under his father, General John Neville. He rose to the rank of Major and was Aide-de-Camp to General Lafayette. He was the only son of the distinguished John Neville, and married the daughter of General Morgan. After his marriage he removed to his property, at Woodville, on Chartiers Creek.
He resided in Pittsburg from 1792 to 1816.

156 History of Beaver County

neighborhood”; and that “the land during that time was in the quiet and peaceable possession of John McDonald, his heirs or those under whom the said 10hn McDonald claims.”(Italics ours.) These last would be Scott, Slough, and Gibson, and we have been informed by descendants of John McDonald that he
did claim under these three men. We have thought that an impartial treatment of this subject called for the mention of these papers, and we submit the evidence which they afford for what it may be worth.’
We have ourselves previously shown the proof that Gibson was at Logstown certainly as early as Dungan was on his settlement in what is now Hanover township (the spring of 1772), and very probably a year or two earlier. This proof will be found in the extracts from the journal of the Rev. David McClure
previously quoted,” McClure, in I772, finds Gibson a resident at Logstown, with a store and house, and his place a well-known rendezvous for travelers. But we still think that Dungan is entitled to be called the first settler. Gibson was primarily an
Indian trader. He had also a store at Fort Pitt, where he spent good part of his time. He came to Logstown, as many other
1 Gibson was a note-worthy man, and was much connected with the early history of Beaver County. He was born at Lancaster, Pa., May 23, 1740, and received his early education there, pursuing a classical course and entering the service at the age of eighteen. His first campaign was with General Forbes in the expedition against Fort Duquesne. He then settled at Fort Pitt as a trader.

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