Chapter VII: Introduction (6)

Joseph was the youngest of nine children. His father and grandfather were prosperous cloth makers, employing, for that age, a large force of workmen. From his parents, who were strict Calvinists, Joseph inherited a deeply religious nature. He attended the school of the neighborhood and at eleven had read most of the Latin authors, and in a few years had made considerable progress in Greek and Hebrew, with some knowledge of Chaldee, Syrian and Arabic.

He began to experiment at the age of eleven, when he selected spiders and insects and placed them in bottles to ascertain how long they could live without fresh air.

A few years later he made “electrifying machines,” and a kite of fine silk, six feet wide, which he could take apart and carry in his pocket. The string was composed of thirty-six threads and a wire, similar to that used by Dr. Franklin, in Philadelphia, to “bring electric fire from the clouds.”

At nineteen, Priestley was sent to Daventry, where he embraced the heterodox side of almost every question, as he afterwards wrote of his three years at Daventry: “In my time the academy was in a state peculiarly favorable to the serious pursuits of truth, and the students were about equally divided upon every question of much importance, such as ‘Liberty and Necessity,’ the ‘Sleep of the Soul’ and all the articles of theological orthodoxy and heresy.”

After leaving Daventry, he preached for three years to a dissenting congregation at Needham. In 1761 he was a professor at Warrington Academy. While here he published several of his books and made such experiments in electricity and “fixed air,” that the results began to be noised abroad. He married, while at Warrington, a daughter of a wealthy iron manufacturer, a Mr. Wilkinson.

In one of his visits to London he met Benjamin Franklin. He became a member of a famous club which met at the London Coffee House, and here he interested Franklin in his experiments, and they became the closest friends. Both became members of the Royal Society and both in turn received its highest honor, the Copley medal. Each obtained from Edinburgh University the degree LL. D. Oxford conferred a like degree upon Franklin, while for a space of a century it ignored his heretical friend.

In 1860 a statue of Dr. Priestley was erected at Oxford by Prince Albert, afterward King Edward.

Franklin wrote to Priestley, in 1777: “I rejoice to hear of your continual progress in those useful discoveries. I find you have set all the philosophers of Europe at work upon fixed air (carbonic acid gas); and it is with great pleasure I observe how high you stand in their opinion, for I enjoy my friend’s fame as my own.”

When Franklin was in France during the closing days of the Revolution, Priestley was there pursuing literary work. He was afterward made a citizen and offered a seat in the National Assembly.

Shortly before the American Revolution, Priestley wrote anonymously three pamphlets in defense of the colonies. His influence was potent.

Dr. Priestley announced his discovery of “dephlogisticated air” (oxygen) in 1774, to a large assemblage of philosophers who were dining at the house of M. Lavoisier in Paris. This was man’s first introduction to the mighty element that makes one-fifth of the atmosphere in volume and eight-ninths of the ocean by weight, besides forming one-half of the earth’s solid crust and supporting all fire and all life.

It is unfortunate that Dr. Priestley did not have a biographer worthy the name, for his life is full of dramatic incidents, scientific attainment, learning and human interest.

We find him the central figure in the great gatherings of that day, receiving the highest honors of his own and other Governments, and, when the tide turned, denounced, persecuted, the victim of the mob, home and library burned and pillaged. Through all the changes of this eventful life we find him the same able, earnest, fearless and cheerful spirit to the end.

Dr. Priestley, disregarding the warning of David Hume, and against the wishes of his philosophic friends, took up the cause of liberty in religion. In his letters he makes a strong appeal for Christianity. His desire was to revive in France and England the simple spiritual communion of the early church.

He published many works upon his religious views which made him the most hated man in England. He was everywhere detested. The streets of London were strewn with scurrilous handbills and caricatures of him. Even his fellow associates in the Royal Society turned their backs upon him.

But it must be remembered that the men, at home and abroad, who opposed Priestley’s doctrines, were the very men who honored him as a man.

At Birmingham, in 1791, the last great religious riot in England occurred. It is often spoken of today as “Priestley’s Riots,” for the doctor was the chief object of the mobs.

It was during a celebration on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, at which Dr. Priestley was not present, that the cry of the mob was “Church and King.” Dr. Priestley had favored the agitation, then rife in Birmingham, for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. The mob suddenly marched toward his home and Dr. and Mrs. Priestley, who were playing a game of backgammon, barely succeeded in escaping. The doctor was pursued for several days and his life threatened.

The mob vented its rage by pillaging Priestley’s house and tearing it to pieces. The rioters made a pyre of his furniture, manuscripts, priceless apparatus, a library of 30,000 volumes, his private correspondence, and his diaries, and all were destroyed by fire.

In 1794 Dr. Priestley came to America and settled at Northumberland, Pa. Here he erected a fine house and laboratory, and resumed his experiments, which resulted in the discovery of three new gases. Here he wrote many books.

Dr. Priestley made trips to Philadelphia, where he lectured on historical and religious subjects, founding, in 1796, the first Unitarian Church in that city.

The University of Pennsylvania offered him the chair of chemistry, and afterward its presidency, but he preferred the quiet of his home at the “Forks of the Susquehanna.”

In 1874 the chemists of America met at Northumberland to celebrate at the grave of Dr. Priestley the centennial of his great discovery. Messages were flashed across the Atlantic to chemists who met the same day at Birmingham to unveil a colossal statue of the man whom that city had, eighty years before, driven from the streets, and burned his home and possessions.

Dr. Joseph Priestley was one of the most distinguished adopted citizens of our great State.

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Western Boundary in Dispute—Jail at| Hannastown Stormed February 7, 1775

Virginia, by virtue of her “sea-to-sea” charter, made an indefinite claim to all lands west and northwest of her coast line. She therefore held that the region about the forks of the Ohio belonged to her. Accordingly, in 1749, the Ohio Land Company obtained from King George II a grant of half a million acres on the branches of the Ohio. The object was to form a barrier against the French and to establish trade with the Indians.

Christopher Gist was sent to explore the country, and, with eleven other families, he settled within the present limits of Fayette County.

A fort was begun in 1754 on the present site of Pittsburgh, but the French captured the Virginians, finished the fort and named it Fort Duquesne. In November, 1758, General John Forbes captured the fort from the French. It was rebuilt and named Fort Pitt.

Before 1758 the western part of Pennsylvania could be approached from the east only by the route of the Juniata and the Kiskiminitas. In that year Forbes finished as far as Loyalhanna the road previously begun from Fort Loudon by way of Bedford. Many Scotch-Irish settlers seated themselves in the Ligonier Valley at Hannastown, and about the forks of the Ohio, and, with settlers from Maryland and Virginia, they possessed the land in comparative quiet until Pontiac’s War.

Pittsburgh, begun in 1760, was cut off from communication during Pontiac’s conspiracy, and had it not have been for Colonel Bouquet’s victory over the savages at Busby Run in 1764 it might have been entirely destroyed.

The growth of Pittsburgh was slow. England after the French and Indian War had forbidden colonists to settle west of the headwaters of the rivers in the Atlantic basin, and the settlers on Redstone Creek and the Cheat River were at one time driven off by the same British proclamation. A law was passed by the Assembly of Pennsylvania which imposed a death penalty, without benefit of clergy, for trespassing upon lands not purchased from the Indians.

But the continued accession of emigrants into this region made it necessary to erect a new county, and the General Assembly, February 26, 1773, established Westmoreland County, which included all of the southwestern portion of the province west of Laurel Hill. Robert Hanna’s settlement, on the old Forbes road near the present site of Greensburg, was made the county seat and named Hannastown.

When Virginia saw that Pennsylvania was extending jurisdiction over the forks of the Ohio she renewed her claims to that country.

The Earl of Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, asserted that Pittsburgh was outside the limits of Pennsylvania. In this contention he was supported by Colonel George Croghan and many others, who believed that the five degrees of longitude which were to be the extent westward of Pennsylvania placed the Monongahela beyond the limits of that province. Croghan maintained that the limits were at the Alleghenies or Laurel Hill Range, “having heard, among other things, that a degree of longitude at the time of the charter of William Penn meant forty-eight miles.”

At the close of 1773 Governor Dunmore appointed Dr. John Connelly, a Pennsylvanian, as commandant of the militia of Pittsburgh. He took possession of Fort Pitt and changed its name to Fort Dunmore.

Connelly defied Pennsylvania authority and commanded all the people to appear as a militia under the authority of Lord Dunmore.

Arthur St. Clair, Prothonotary, Clerk, and Recorder of Westmoreland County, had Connelly arrested and bound over to keep the peace. St. Clair reported his actions to Governor Penn, who sent to Lord Dunmore a draught of the lines of Pennsylvania as surveyed by David Rittenhouse, William Smith and Surveyor General John Lukens, showing that Pittsburgh was east of the westernmost limit of the grant to the Proprietaries.

Dunmore demanded better evidence and that St. Clair should be dismissed from office for committing Dr. Connelly to jail.

A large company paraded in arms through the streets of Pittsburgh, and opened a cask of rum. St. Clair issued an order for them to disperse.

The Sheriff allowed Connelly to go to Pittsburgh under promise to return. He traveled about collecting adherents, and on the day he was to return he appeared before the Hannastown court house at the head of 200 men, all armed and colors flying. He placed sentinels at the door and kept the magistrates from entering unless they agreed to act under Virginia authority, and he demanded their decision in writing.

The magistrates declared they would continue to act under authority of Pennsylvania, when Connelly, a few days later, had them arrested and brought before him in Pittsburgh. When they refused to give bail, he sent them to the court of Augusta County, at Staunton, Va.

Governor Penn advised the three magistrates to get bail, but sent the Attorney General of Pennsylvania and James Tilghman, as commissioners to induce Lord Dunmore to join with the Proprietaries in a petition to the King to have the boundary line run and marked, and in the meantime to agree to a temporary line of jurisdiction, suggesting that the Monongahela River would answer for a line.

The application to the King was consented to, but the boundary was not agreed upon.

The adherents of Virginia increased in strength at Pittsburgh, and it became impossible to collect taxes imposed by Pennsylvania. How these troubles would have ended is unforeseen, for during the latter part of 1774, the attention of all the western frontier was turned to the Indian invasion, since known as Dunmore’s War.

While this war was confined to the western border of Virginia, the inhabitants of Westmoreland County organized, under command of St. Clair, assisted by Colonels Proctor and Lochrey and Captain James Smith, and put the frontier in a state of defense.

On February 7, 1775, by order of a Virginia magistrate, a man named Benjamin Harrison with an armed party broke open the jail at Hannastown and set free the prisoners. Robert Hanna, who was a magistrate, read to them the riot act, but Harrison said he did not regard that act, or those who read it, or those who made it. Two weeks later Hanna and another magistrate, James Cavett, were arrested and confined in Fort Dunmore, where they remained for months.

The controversy got into Congress, but the Revolution brought about a more amicable feeling, and by 1779 the Virginians and Pennsylvanians agreed to a settlement.

A commission surveyed the boundary by extending the Mason and Dixon’s line to its western limit of five degrees. There a meridian was drawn as far north as the Ohio.

Ceding her western lands, north of the Ohio to Congress in 1784, Virginia had no further interest in the boundary and the next year Pennsylvania alone extended the meridian to Lake Erie.

After the Revolution, affairs in Western Pennsylvania were generally peaceful.

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First Members of Susquehanna Company
Settle in Wyoming, February 8, 1769

The Proprietaries of Pennsylvania, determined to hold possession of lands in the Wyoming Valley, which were claimed by the Connecticut settlers, sent Captain Amos Ogden, John Anderson, Charles Stewart, Alexander Patterson, John Jennings and several other Pennsylvanians and New Jerseymen into that section with the intention of becoming lessees or purchasers of the proprietary lands at Wyoming.

They established themselves on Mill Creek, December, 1768, where they erected a small fort or blockhouse, this settlement being within the Manor of Stoke, which had been located and surveyed for the Proprietaries December 9 of that year.

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.

But the coal trade was active in Wyoming Valley as early as 1807, when the Smiths shipped a boat load to Columbia. George H. Hollenback shipped two loads down the river in 1813, and sent coal by wagon to Philadelphia. Lord Butler and Crandall Wilcox both shipped coal in 1814.

The use of anthracite for domestic purposes seems to have been discovered by Judge Jesse Fell, of Wilkes-Barre. The following memorandum was made at the time on the fly-leaf of one of his books:

“February 11, 1808, made the experiment of burning the common stone coal of the valley in a grate, in a common fireplace in my house, and found it will answer the purpose of fuel, making a clearer and better fire, at less expense, than burning wood in the common way. Jesse Fell.”

News of this successful experiment soon spread through the town and country, and people flocked to witness the discovery. Similar grates were soon constructed by Judge Fell’s neighbors, and in a short time were in general use throughout the valley.

In the spring of that year, John and Abijah Smith loaded two arks with coal at Ransoms Creek, in Plymouth, and took it down the river to Columbia; but on offering it for sale, no person could be induced to purchase. They were compelled to leave the black stones behind them unsold, when they returned to their homes.

The next year the Smiths, not in the least discouraged, took two arks of coal and a grate, and again proceeded to Columbia. The grate was put up, and the coals were burned in it, thus proving the practicability of using coal as a fuel. The result was a sale of the coal, and thus began the initiative of the immense coal trade of Pennsylvania.

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Quakers Make Protest Against Slavery to
Congress February 12, 1790

There is unmistakable evidence of Negro slavery among the Dutch on the South (now Delaware) River as early as the year 1639. In that year a convict from Manhattan was sentenced to serve with the blacks on that river.

In September and October, 1664, the English defeated the Dutch, and some of the Dutch soldiers were sold in Virginia as slaves. The Negro slaves were also confiscated by the victors and sold. A cargo of three hundred of those unhappy beings having just landed, failed to escape capture.

In 1688 Pastorius, the Op den Graffs (now Updegraffs), and Gerhardt Hendricks sent to the Friends’ meeting house the first public protest ever made on this continent against the holding of slaves, or as they uncompromisingly styled it, “the traffick of men’s body.”

These early residents of Germantown compared Negro slavery to slavery under Turkish pirates, and failed to note that one was better than the other. Their protest said:

“There is a saying that we shall doe to all men licke as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent, or colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alicke? Here is liberty of Conscience, which is right and reasonable; here ought to be likewise liberty of ye body, except of evil doers, which is another case. In Europe there are many oppressed for Conscience sake; and here there are those oppressed which are of a black colour.”

This memorial is believed to be in the handwriting of Francis Daniel Pastorius, and at the date it was written New England was doing a large business in the Guinea trade, the slave depots being located chiefly at Newport, where the gangs for the Southern market were arranged.

All honor is due these honest first settlers of Germantown, who asked categorically: “Have these Negers not as much right to fight for their freedom as you have to keep them slaves?”

They asked, further, to be informed what right Christians have to maintain slavery, “to the end we shall be satisfied on this point and satisfy likewise our good friends and acquaintances in our natif country, to whom it is a fairfull thing that men should be handled so in Pennsilvania.”

The Quakers were embarrassed by the memorial and its blunt style of interrogatory. It was submitted to the Monthly Meeting at Dublin Township, “inspected” and found so “weighty” that it was passed on to the Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting, which “recommended” it to the Yearly Meeting at Burlington, where it was adjudged “not to be so proper for this meeting to give a positive judgment in the case, it having so general a relation to many other parts, and, therefore, at present they forebore it.” So the matter slept.

Very soon thereafter slavery in Philadelphia was not very different from what it was in the South at a later period. The white mechanics and laborers complained to the authorities that their wages were reduced by the competition of Negroes hired out by their owners, and the owners objected to the capital punishment of slaves for crime, as thereby their property would be destroyed.

In 1708 two slaves, Tony and Quashy, were sentenced to death for burglary, but their owners were allowed to sell them out of the province after a severe flogging had been given them upon the streets on three successive market days.

The Assembly of Pennsylvania soon viewed with much concern and apprehension the introduction of so many slaves into the province, but the House would not consider any proposition to free Negroes, deciding that to attempt to do so would be “neither just nor convenient,” but it did resolve to discourage the introduction of Negroes from Africa and the West Indies. It laid a tax of £20 a head upon all such importations. The Queen and Royal Council failed to approve the act, for the British Government was set like flint against any provincial attempt to arrest the African slave trade or tax it out of existence—that trade was a royal perquisite.

The year 1780 is memorable in the annals of Pennsylvania for the passage of an act for the gradual abolition of slavery in this State. On February 5, 1780, the Supreme Executive Council in its message to the Assembly, called the attention of that body to this subject, and although it was forcibly presented, the matter was dismissed, “as the Constitution would not allow them to receive the law from the Council.”

On March 1, 1780, by a vote of thirty-four to twenty-one, an abolition act passed the Assembly. It provided for the registration of every Negro or mulatto slave or servant for life, or till the age of thirty-one years, before the first of November following, and also provided “that no man or woman of any nation or color except the Negroes or mulattoes who shall be registered as aforesaid, shall at any time hereafter be deemed, or adjudged, or holden within the territory of this Commonwealth, as slaves or servants for life, but as free men and free women.”

The Quakers partly forgot their woes on hearing of an act which they so much approved, as in 1774 the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting had taken a definite and decided stand against slavery.

They proceeded without delay to urge war on the system.

On February 12, 1790, the Quakers made their first formal protest to Congress for the abolition of slavery in every form.

The movement against slavery had been making quiet progress during all these years, and on January 1, 1794, a convention was held in Philadelphia by invitation of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, of delegates from all societies throughout the United States.

At this convention two memorials were adopted, one to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, and the other to Congress, asking for suitable laws to suppress the slave trade.

The petition to Congress was referred to a committee, which made a report recommending the passage of a law against the fitting out of any ship or vessel in any port of the United States, or by foreigners, for the purpose of procuring from any part of the coast of Africa the inhabitants of the said country, to be transshipped into any foreign ports or places of the world to be sold or disposed of as slaves. The law was finally passed on March 22, 1794, and vessels were thereafter liable to heavy fine and forfeiture, and the freedom of the slaves on board.

Thus after the taunt of the early German settlers, the Quakers cleared their own skirts and then led in the movement which abolished slaves from Pennsylvania and were the first to lay this great question before Congress.

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First Magazine in America Published in

Philadelphia, February 13, 1741

There has been recent controversy, especially among New York newspapers, regarding the oldest magazine in America, one such newspaper concluding that the oldest such publication was Oliver Oldschool’s “Portfolio,” published by Bradford and Inskeep, of Philadelphia, and Inskeep and Bradford, in New York, 1809–1810.

That is not the fact and Pennsylvania cannot be denied the honor of being the home of the earliest magazine published on this continent.

On November 6, 1740, Andrew Bradford’s “Mercury,” published in Philadelphia, contained a two page editorial which must surely have caused some sensation, heralding as it did a genuine innovation.

“’Tis not in mortals to command success,” and if the innovator in this case failed, he was at least the first to make the attempt, not alone in Philadelphia, but throughout America.

The editorial plunged headlong into the business at hand as follows:

“The PLAN of an intended MAGAZINE.”

“The Success and Approbation which the Magazines, published in Great Britain, have met with for many years past among all Ranks and Degrees of People, Encouraged us to Attempt a Work of the like Nature in America. But the Plan on which we intend to proceed, being in many respects different from the British Models, it therefore becomes necessary, in the first Place, to lay before the Reader a general Prospect of the present Design.

“It is proposed to publish Monthly, ‘An Account of the Publick Affairs transacted in His Majesty’s Colonies, as well on the Continent of America, as well as in the West India Islands,’ and at the end of each session, ‘an Extract of the Laws therein passed, with the Reasons on which they were founded, the Grievances intended to be Remedied by them, and the Benefits expected from them.”

The prospectus then proceeds to apologize beforehand for “the mistakes which will probably be committed in handling so great a Variety of Matter.” It sketches the general lines of the future magazine in regard to “remarkable Trials as well Civil as Criminal,” also the “Course of Exchange, Party-Disputes, Free Inquiry into all sorts of Subjects, its views of the Liberty and Licentiousness of the Press, its contempt for the rude Clamours of envious Ignorance,’ and the ‘base suggestions of the Malevolence’,” and then terminates as follows:

“To conclude, the Reader is desired to consider the Undertaking as an attempt to Erect on Neutral Principles A PUBLIC THEATRE in the Center of the British Empire in America, on which the most remarkable Transactions of each Government may be impartially represented, and fairly exhibited to the View of all His Majesty’s Subjects, whether at Home or abroad, who are disposed to be Spectators.

“This is TRUE Liberty, when freeborn Men,
Having to advise the Publick, may speak free,
Which he who can, and will, deserves high Praise;
Who neither can, nor will, may hold his Peace;
What can be juster in a State than this?

“From Euripides, by Milton, for a motto to his Vindication of the Subject’s Right to the Liberty of the Press.”

The first number of this, The American Magazine, was to be published “in March next, if by that Time there are a Sufficient Number of Subscriptions.”

But something went wrong with the plans. The very week following this announcement, out came Benjamin Franklin with the charge that this scheme now put forth by John Webbe and Bradford was really his own, “Communicated in Confidence,” to the said Webbe, who was to be the editor of his magazine.

Webbe was not slow to indignantly repudiate the charge, and an unseemly controversy followed between the two rival printing houses, which, no doubt, interfered considerably with the ultimate result or their respective ventures.

Be that as it may, “The American Magazine, or a monthly view of the Political State of the British Colonies,” 8vo size, price eight pence sterling, made its appearance, not in March as advertised and expected, but on February 13, 1741.

Thus the first magazine in America made its initial bow to the public, and only three days later, Franklin’s press brought out “The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle, for All the British Plantations in America.”

Both of these periodicals were advertised as monthly publications, and the Mercury carried a small advertisement March 19, which announced the issuance of “The American Magazine” for February; but alas! that is the last we read of Andrew Bradford’s pioneer magazine publication.

Franklin’s “General Magazine” reached its sixth month of existence, after which it simply ceased, no explanation of its discontinuance, not a semblance of a valedictory appeared in “The Gazette,” where its monthly advent had been so well heralded and advertised.

The name of these original “magazines” naturally suggests to the present-day reader a very incorrect idea of their general appearance and contents, thanks to the luxurious works of art that American enterprise has put into publications now classed as magazines.

Franklin’s magazine, for example, had but one illustration, and a poor one at that, a representation of the Prince of Wales’ feathers and the motto “Ich dien” on its front page.

It was only a 12mo; yet under existing conditions the labor of filling seventy-six pages with small print month after month and the neat manner in which the work was performed reflect the highest credit upon the publisher and was deserving of more favorable circumstances. The contents of each number bear a favorable comparison with the best magazines of today.

Dr. William Smith, provost of the University of Pennsylvania, soon manifested a practical interest in intellectual affairs in the province in an effort to found a literary review called “The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies.”

The first number appeared October, 1757, and was printed by William Bradford, presumably for “a society of gentlemen,” which in truth consisted of Dr. Smith and several of his pupils in the college. This periodical was principally devoted to political matters, literary discussions and poetry. It was discontinued November 14, 1758, and Pennsylvania had not yet had a successful magazine.

Between 1741 and the close of the century nearly fifty magazines were born in America, only deservedly to die. Philadelphia and Boston struggled for literary supremacy, yet the four magazines of today which may be called the veterans of the field are the North American Review, Harper’s, and Scribner’s, each published in New York, and the Atlantic, published in Boston.

But Philadelphia was long the home of three widely circulated magazines—Graham’s, Peterson’s and Godey’s Lady’s Book. The last named was perhaps the most famous, established in July, 1830, by Louis A. Godey, and it reached the enormous circulation of 150,000 a month in the heyday of its prosperity.

If the Saturday Evening Post is regarded as a magazine, Philadelphia is today the home of the oldest and largest in the world.

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Christopher L. Sholes, Inventor of Typewriter,
Born in Mooresburg, February
14, 1819