Читать книгу The Way to the West, and the Lives of Three Early Americans: Boone—Crockett—Carson - Emerson Hough - Страница 10

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“If we call the roll of American scouts, explorers, trappers, Indian fighters of the Far West; of men like John Colter, Robert McClellan, John Day, Jim Bridger, Bill Williams, Joe Meek, Kit Carson and their ilk, who trapped and fought over every nook and cranny of the Far West, from the Canadian divide to the ‘starving Gila,’ we shall find that most of them were of the old Shenandoah-Kentucky stock that made the first devious trail from Pennsylvania along and across the Appalachians.”

This statement of a well-advised writer is curious and interesting to any student of the real West. It applies, also, of course, and much more closely, to those earlier pioneers that explored the first West, that of the Mississippi valley; the Boones, Kentons, Harrods, Finleys, Bryans, Stuarts and hundreds of others of the fighting breed of Virginia and North Carolina, the families of nearly all of whom had made one or more pilgrimages to the south or even to the southeastward before the great trek westward over the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies.

America owes much of her national character and a vast part of her national territory to the individual initiative of these bold souls, who waited for no policies, no purchases, no leaderships, but pressed on, rifle and ax at hand, to find and hold our West for us. To-day we forget these men. The names of the captains of enterprise are lost in the tawdry modern lists of our so-called captains of industry. To-day, in a time that is fast becoming one of American serfdom, we lose in the haze of a national carelessness the figures of that earlier and more glorious day when the magnificent American West offered free scope and opportunity to a population wholly made up of men of daring, of individuality, of initiative, of self-leadership.

That was the day of the founding of the American aristocracy, of the birth of the American type, of the beginning of the American character. If we would study an actual American history, we can not leave out the American pioneer; and before, in our humble effort to approach the real genius of our America, we follow the strong sweep of the west-bound beyond the mighty Mississippi and toward the western sea, we shall do best to pause for a space and to make some inquiry into the origin and character of these early apostles of the creed of adventure.

If we ask chapter and verse in the study of the origin of this American frontiersman, this pioneer whose ambition was an indisputable personal independence, we shall not find the details of his ancestry among the records of wealthy and aristocratic dwellers of the seaboard region. The bone and brawn of the early frontier did not come from the Cavaliers, properly so-called; though it were doing the Cavaliers, the aristocrats, an injustice to say that they were deaf to the summons of adventure.

The man that dared life and fortune in moving to America would dare life and fortune west of the Alleghanies; and the history of many a colony and land grant in the early West is proof enough of this. The Cavalier or aristocrat, however, was not our typical axman or rifleman. The man of accomplished fortune, of stable social connections, dwelt farther back in that East that offered the most settled society of the American continent. The man in linsey-woolsey, the woodsman, the rifleman, was the man at the front, and it is in regard to his origin that we may profitably be somewhat curious. We shall, therefore, for a time be more concerned with the mountains of Pennsylvania than with the shores of Chesapeake Bay or the rich valleys of Maryland and the Old Dominion.

A student of the history of the early settlement of Pennsylvania^[6] furnishes data regarding the two great stems of the pioneer stock, the Quaker and the Scotch-Irish, which were most prominent among the many nationalities that flocked to the kindly kingdom of William Penn, where each man was treated as a man, and where independence in thought and action was the portion each claimed as his own.

“In the first half of the eighteenth century,” says this writer, “many thousands of Scotch-Irish, Germans and Welsh landed at Philadelphia and New Castle, and a large majority of them found homes in Pennsylvania. A number of the former turned to the westward from New Castle and established themselves in Maryland and Virginia. Among them were the ancestors of Meriwether Lewis, whose grandfather was born in Ulster, Ireland; and a number of other noted pathfinders of the West.

“A few isolated settlements were also formed in New Jersey and Delaware, but as before stated, the majority of them found homes in Pennsylvania. They swarmed up the valleys of the Delaware, Schuylkill and Susquehanna and their tributaries, and became at once the vanguard of frontier settlement; and they and their progeny continued to merit this distinction until the descendants of the Atlantic seaboard settlements looked down from the summit of the Rockies on the Pacific slope.

“In the last half of the eighteenth century many hundreds of families migrated from Pennsylvania southward into the valleys of the Shenandoah and the south branch of the Potomac, whence numbers of them continued their journey into North and South Carolina. The records of the Society of Friends in Bucks, Lancaster and Chester counties show that hundreds of certificates of removal were granted their members during this period, to remove to Virginia and the Carolinas; and many of these sturdy Quakers eventually found homes west of the Alleghanies, though not a few of them, like Daniel Boone, the great king of frontiersmen, found the exigencies of life on the frontier incompatible with peace principles, one of the cardinal tenets of their faith, and drifted out of the Society.

“During the same period hordes of people of other religious denominations removed from Pennsylvania over the same route. The counties of Augusta and Rockingham, in Virginia, were settled almost exclusively by Pennsylvanians from Bucks and Berks and the Cumberland valley, many of whom found homes farther west or left their bones to bleach in the savage-tenanted wilderness of the frontier.

“Boone himself was a native of Berks County and removed in 1750, when a lad of sixteen, with his family and a host of others, among whom were the Hankses, Hentons, Lincolns and many others whose names became familiar in the drama of the West, first to Virginia and later to North Carolina. William Stewart, a companion of Boone in Kentucky who was killed at Blue Licks, in 1785, was a native of Bucks County, and, it is claimed by relatives of both Boone and Stewart, was also a schoolmate of Boone’s.

“If this be true, it must have been in Virginia, as Boone never lived in Bucks County, though his father was a resident of New Britain township prior to the birth of Daniel. Soon after the death of Stewart, his sister, Hannah Harris, of Newtown, made an overland trip from Newtown, Bucks County, to Danville, Kentucky, to look after the estate bequeathed by Stewart to his sisters, Mary Hunter and Hannah Harris of Bucks County, and after her return made a report of the cost of the trip, which is on record at Doylestown.

“The power of attorney of Mary Hunter to Hannah Harris to proceed to ‘Kaintuckee’ to collect her share of the Estate of William Stewart is dated May seventh, 1787; and the power of attorney given by Hannah Harris to John Dormer Murray to transact her business in Bucks County, dated July twenty-fifth, 1787, states that she is ‘about setting out for Kaintuckee’ and therefore fixes approximately the date of the beginning of her journey.

“Dr. Hugh Shiells, of Philadelphia, who had married Ann, the daughter of Hannah Harris, May thirtieth, 1782, preceded her to Kentucky and took up his residence near Frankfort. He died in 1785, leaving an infant daughter Kitty, who on arriving at womanhood married Thomas Bodley, one of the trustees of Transylvania University.

“Archibald Finley, who, we believe, was the emigrant ancestor of the John Finley who led an exploring party into southern Kentucky from North Carolina in 1767, died in New Britain township, Bucks County, in March, 1749, leaving at least three sons, Henry, John and Alexander, of whom the two former removed to Virginia and later to Kentucky. They are believed to have been members of a party of a score or more families who left Bucks County about 1760 and journeyed to Loudoun County, Virginia, whence a number of them removed soon after to Orange County, North Carolina. Of this party were Robert Jamison and his family and the Fergusons of Plumstead.

“William, James and Morgan Bryan, brothers-in-law of Daniel Boone, who accompanied him from North Carolina to Kentucky, were also natives of Pennsylvania. They were the sons of Morgan Bryan, who came from Ireland prior to 1719, at which date his name appears on the tax list of Birmingham township, Chester County, as a ‘single man.’ He married the following year Martha Strode, and in the year 1734 with fifteen others obtained a grant of a large tract of land on the Opeckon and Potomac rivers near Winchester, Virginia, and removed thereon. From this point he removed with his family to the Yadkin, where Daniel Boone met and married his daughter, Rebecca, in 1755.

“There is an abundance of documentary evidence in Bucks County and in possession of her sons elsewhere, showing that many of the pioneers of Kentucky were natives of Bucks. The wills of many Bucks-countians devise estates to brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, ‘now or late of Virginia,’ or ‘in the county called Kaintuckee, Province of Virginia.’

“Rev. J. W. Wallace, of Independence, Missouri, has in his possession an old account book and diary combined, kept by his great-grandfather, John Wallace, who was born in Warrington, Bucks County, in 1748, and who served with distinction as a lieutenant in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, some of the entries having been made in this book while the owner was in camp with Washington at Valley Forge in the dark winter of 1777-8. Lieutenant John Wallace married into the Finley family and joining them in Loudoun County, removed with them into Kentucky in 1788.

“This remarkable book contains the record of the birth of John Wallace and his eight brothers and sisters, several of whom accompanied him to Kentucky, as well as an account of the journey of the emigrants from Virginia to Kentucky, which was made in wagons from Loudoun County to the Ohio River; from which point a portion of the party went in boats down the Ohio River to Limestone, now Maysville, then overland to Frankfort, while the remainder crossed over the mountains on pack-horses. They had doubtless been preceded by their relative, John Finley, of North Carolina.

“A similar book is in possession of W. W. Flack, of Davenport, Iowa, the great-great-grandson of the first owner. On the fly leaf is endorsed the following: ‘Receipt Book of William Flack, May 20, 1789.’ This William Flack was born in Buckingham township, Bucks County, on May eleventh, 1746, and died at Crab Orchard, Lincoln County, Kentucky, in 1824. He was a son of James and Ann (Baxter) Flack, Scotch-Irish emigrants who came to Bucks County about 1730 and settled near Bushington. William Flack was captain of the Buckingham company of militia during the Revolution, and is said to have been in active service at the battle of Brandywine and at other points. After the close of the war, accompanied by his brother Benjamin and a nephew of the same name, he removed to Kentucky, by way of Virginia.

“One of the memoranda in the old book is as follows: ‘Benjamin Flack was killed by the Indians at the Mouth of Salt River the 1st Day of March 1786.’ William Flack married Susannah Callison in Kentucky, March twenty-first, 1797, and the ‘Receipt Book’ records that event and the births of their six children, two of whom died in infancy. On hearing of the death of his father, which occurred September second, 1802, Captain Flack started for Bucks County, and it is related that his long absence on this tedious journey led his family to believe that he had been captured by the Indians.

“While these Pennsylvanians were wending their way southward, their brethren in the Cumberland and Juniata valleys, augmented by recruits from settlements farther east, were pushing their way westward into Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties, whence they migrated to Kentucky and the Northwest Territory.”^[7]

As to that war-like breed, the Scotch-Irish, famous in American frontiering, the same historian first quoted goes on in detailed description from which we may take the following:

“History has touched lightly upon the home life of the little colony of Ulster Scots, who settled on the banks of the Neshaminy in the townships of Warwick, Warrington and New Britain, in Bucks County, Pa.; but these people were none the less worthy of a prominent place in the records of the past. Driven by religious persecution from their native Highlands in the seventeenth century, the remnants of many a noble clan sought temporary refuge in the province of Ulster, Ireland, whence, between the years 1720 and 1740, thousands of them migrated to America, and peopled the hills and valleys of Pennsylvania’s frontier with a sturdy, rugged race that was destined to play an important part in the formation of our national character.

“Clannish by nature and tradition, they clung together in small communities of two score or more families, a majority of them related by ties of blood or marriage. They took up the unsettled portions of the new province. Accustomed for generations to the rugged mountain sides of their own native land, the roughness of the new territory did not discourage them. In fact, the steep hillsides on the banks of our rivers and smaller streams, shunned or neglected by the early English settlers, seem to have had an especial attraction for them.

“Possessed of a character as stern and uncompromising as the granite of their native mountains, this little colony did not concern itself in the affairs of its neighbors. Indeed there was no occasion to do so. They had brought with them the things they needed, and had inherent in their nature that which made them a people separate and apart from the communities by which they were surrounded. In their lives and characters was a declaration of independence that in itself nourished the spirit of freedom, which was to carry these people into the thick of the fight when the time arrived to bid defiance to the mother country.

“This spirit was further augmented by their independence and resources in the development of the material affairs of the colony. As previously stated, there were among the first settlers men of every trade and calling calculated to make the colony self-sustaining. There were husbandmen, weavers, smiths, masons, joiners, cord-wainers, millers and tradesmen, whose industry and thrift made it possible for the schoolmaster and preacher to devote himself exclusively to the intellectual and spiritual needs of the community. But with true Scotch economy, the teacher and preacher were often one and the same. As an illustration may be cited the founding of Tennent’s famous Log College as an adjunct to the Neshaminy Church, of which he was pastor.

“The stimulus given to civil and religious freedom by the uninterrupted exercise of these liberties, in strong contrast to the repression and persecution in the old country, cannot be overestimated. Princeton, as well as like institutions elsewhere, had its inception in our own Log College; and Finley, its first president, was akin to those of the same name in Warrington.

“The sons of Bucks County’s sturdy pioneers were constantly pushing on beyond our frontiers, carrying with them the lessons of frugality, piety and independence learned in this primitive community. They formed new colonies and engendered therein the love of freedom, which, when the Revolutionary War broke out, easily made the Scotch-Irish element the dominant party in the struggle for national independence in our state. Independence accomplished, they returned to their homes and again took up the business of self-government, broadened and refined by contact with the outside world, the primitive characteristics of their early life gone, but retaining the independence and courage of their forebears which had developed in them the best elements of citizenship.”

[6]	Warren S. Ely, of Doylestown, Pa.

[7]

The Pennsylvania historian might also have given us some word of that Col. George Morgan, some of whose descendants reside even now at Morganza, in Pennsylvania. Col. George Morgan had passed westward over the Alleghanies some years in advance of Daniel Boone’s first visit to Kentucky. Mr. James Morris Morgan, of Washington, D. C., in correspondence has this to say in regard to certain early voyagings of his ancestor, which were undertaken while the Quakers of Pennsylvania were still quietly dropping down from the hills of Pennsylvania into the eastern portions of Virginia and the Carolinas: “Col. George Morgan embarked at the village of Kaskaskia, on the Kaskaskia River, for his voyage down the Mississippi on the 21st of November, 1766. Butler, in his history of Kentucky, gives the credit of being the first American citizen to descend the Mississippi to Col. Taylor, in 1769. Col. Morgan was the first American citizen to found a colony in the Territory of Louisiana. Under a grant of King Carlos IV, he built the city of New Madrid, March, 1789. The grant embraced some 15,000,000 acres of land. (Gayarré; ‘History of Louisiana.’) On June 20, 1788, Congress ordered the annulment of Col. Morgan’s Indian claim to a greater portion of the state of Illinois, ‘claiming the land bordering on the Mississippi, from the mouth of the Ohio to a determined station on the Mississippi that shall be sixty or eighty miles north from the mouth of the Illinois River, and extending from the Mississippi as far eastward as may.’ The treaty meeting held under the auspices of Sir William Johnson at Fort Stanwix, when the Indians deeded the territory of Indiana to George Morgan, his father-in-law John Boynton, and his partner Samuel Wharton, (Boynton, Wharton & Morgan) and several other minor traders whose goods had been despoiled, was held on November 3, 1768. The state of Virginia claimed the territory after the Revolutionary War, and bullied the national government into compliance with her claims, the United States accepting the property as a present from Virginia, immediately after deciding in her favor. (See Journal of Congress, 1784, Feb. 26.)”