CHAPTER III (pp. 40-43)
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
PIONEER CONDITIONS-PIONEER CONVENIENCES-PIONEER ANIMALS AND HUNTING--SHELTER
AND FIRE-EARLY EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES-POSTAL SERVICE-FINANCIAL EXCHANGE
PIONEER PRODUCTIONS
The United States is the only nation in the
world which can be seen in all stages of its
development from its beginning to the present.
The history of all other civilized countries
fades backward into a period of mystery; their
traces becoming fainter through receding
stages of savagery finally disappear into the
caves, Here the mingled bones of men and
of animals have been preserved by the drip
from the roof, burying them under layers of
carbonate of lime left by the water. Among
these remains are conclusive evidences of re-
ligious rites and rude cuttings or drawings
upon horns and ivory. made by pointed flints,
representing animals now known only by fos-
sil remains. These most ancient savages be-
lieved in some sort of immortality, and made
their feeble appeal of art to their own kind;
even then they were forward looking.
It was a far journey through ages of time
in seas of trouble, from those eaves to the
ships which sailed from Europe at the end of
the fifteenth century westward into the un-
known, and found a new world. Up to the
time of this voyage, many notable improve-
ments upon the far era of the cave men had
been made. The three little ships and the mas-
ter mind which guided them, summarized
many of the changes. But some of the results
of the past appeared at this time as abuses.
They may have been useful in some of the
struggles through stages of barbarism; they
were now worse than useless. Chief of these
were, first, caste; second, autocracy; third,
state-imposed theology. The first limited, even
crushed human effort; the second, claimed by
divine sanction, the control of those efforts and
absolute ownership of their results; the third
circumscribed the outlook toward the future.
including education, art and immortal hope.
Human progress is the sum of individual
growth, by the free activity of each, regulated
only by the equal freedom of all. Men do
not grow, when bound by steel into masses
and forced, by authority not of themselves or
for themselves, to accomplish some secret pur-
pose beyond their sight or intention. For cen-
turies before and after this voyage of Colum-
bus men felt the repression of these old crusts
which had dosed over them. They protested,
but the bonds were drawn all the closer, Then
came doubt. discontent and bloodshed. Wars
ebbed and flowed round these three great ques-
tions. This period was known as the Reforma-
tion. It arose in widely separated places in the
Old World. in the thirteenth century. and con-
tinued onward in time, becoming wider in ex-
tent, fiercer, more intense. Its devotees were
hunted like wolves in distant glens of the
mountains. in lonely places of forests; persecu-
tion, imprisonment, torture, death, awaiting
them if they were found worshipping unlaw-
iully, or practicing treason by upholding the
right of the inner guidance of the spirit in
matters of faith and of life. They were not
convinced by arguments of rack and thumb-
screw, gibbets and gridirons, or by beheadings
and quarterings. Their numbers increased.
In England in the fifteenth century the state
theology was changed, and then back and forth
again, by royal influence. This eased up perse-
cution from that source; those inside were
chary of starting doctrinal troubles for fear
that the next change would find them on the
wrong side subject to reprisal. Still matters
improved backwards again, and were running
that way for a while. But in the middle of the
17th century a king of England was jarred
from his throne, defeated in war, tried and
executed for treason and his successor ap-
pointed -- all by the Commons. Again in this
fatal century still another King was removed
and not only his successor, but the order of
succession throughout time, were fixed upon
by the Commons. The state theology lost its
long punitive arm. Caste in the old sense had
been dead four centuries. Middle Class and
Nobility had become interchangeable. The
Commons govemed. The Atlantic coast from
northern Maine to Florida was covered by col-
onies, all English, either by common descent.
or by yet stronger bond of spiritual brother-
hood. Before another century closed. these
colonies, from the attrition of common troubles,
dangers and sufferings, had won a common
triumph and forever laid aside those three old
crusts. If those shackles reappear here, it
will be because other ideals prevail, upheld by
an entirely different race of people.
PIONEER CONDITIONS
With such history as a prelude, the early
settlers came to Venango county. They built
their homes in the wilderness, not from the
materials found there. Their cabins were in
deed assembled from the forests around them.
But their homes were built only out of the
abiding and strong desire of their hearts
housed within crude walls at first. The log
hut from the outside might appear small and
insignificant as a building and yet the home,
inside, may have promised a beauty and a
splendor and adornment of real life, not found
in palaces. The people who came were alike
in one important respect. They came at the
call of a common need. They had been
cramped. The open spaces in the west ap-
pealed to them. Land in the vicinity of the
older settlements was expensive, often held
as an inheritance by the children of the older
and wealthier families. In the south the best
land was held in large plantations, worked by
slaves; while throughout the North, not one
of the many industries which have since con-
verted that section into a prosperous human
hive had even been thought of. A chance to
work with the hands. to earn a livelihood,
build up at the same time a home, and look
forward to future ease and independence, was
a wide-felt need over the whole country. One
is astonished in reading history, in noting how
universal was this movement to the West,
launched at this time. when the ill results of
all the wars and of the early Confederacy were
most disturbing. When the Indian menace to
settlement was quieted, the movement rolled
into full flood. The western parts of all our
colonies and lands adjacent. were settled at
this time, in the last years of the eighteenth,
and the first few of the nineteenth century. It
was a great wave of equality. and of true
democracy sweeping over the country. Not
simply more land, but freer life, larger
thought; these are the real Golden Fleece.
This idea animated those coming to Venango.
It unified the settlers. The country had been
"bled white." Thousands had cheerfully
given up fortune and life. The survivors and
the children of the dead did not asseverate;
did not express their purpose. They felt the
force of the spirit, immortal above sacrifice,
and lived it.
Most of the early arrivals came from the
eastern parts of this State and from neighbor-
ing States. Some, later, from Germany, Eng-
land, Ireland, Holland, Scotland and other dis-
tant countries, where life had brought sight,
came. They easily were combined into a har-
monious. working force. They gathered about
the idea of a group of intelligent, self-respect-
ing equals, formed into a political unit of reg-
ulated freedom, as readily as bees swarm round
the queen. The only royalty they recognized
was an ideal found in their history and visual-
ized by their own experience, soft as a snow-
flake or sharp as the lightning.
Some of the beginnings of this life seem
small, but they were very intense. One young
man, a hunter, came from Huntingdon county,
walking all the way. subsisting upon the prod-
ucts of his rifle. All his possessions were upon
his person, in the bosom of his fringed hunt-
ing shirt, or wrapped in a blanket fastened to
his shoulders by straps of deer's hide. Besides
his rifle, horn and bullet pouch, he carried the
long hunting knife, and a hatchet. He had
been a pioneer since early boyhood. He could
find his way in the night through the forest
by feeling the trees. When darkness came,
he supped and slept till daybreak. If clouds
threatened rain or snow, an Indian camp was
constructed in short order where he could stay
for days if necessary, comfortable and dry.
He stopped at Pittsburgh. then (summer of
1795) a cluster of log cabins around the fort,
long enough to secure some supplies. Con-
tinuing up the river bank. he passed Franklin,
which he noticed as only a small duster of log
huts and some ruins. near the mouth of the
creek. The fort and the few cabins near it
were nearly three fourths of a mile up stream.
At the mouth of Oil creek, the village of the
tribe of Cornplanter Indians was located. Pass-
ing this, he continued up the creek and striking
off eastward from the creek a few miles passed
the night where he afterward located his farm.
At first he thought to stay a few days looking
round for game. He built an Indian camp,
afterwards a log hut, in which he passed the
winter. He could outshoot and outtrap any
of the Indians, hut could not compete with
them in catching trout with his fingers. though
they often illustrated their skill to him very
good-naturedly. Here he lived for four years,
alone probably except for the dog and horse
he had acquired. His skill as a hunter and
trapper was almost like witchery. He was on
good terms with nature. He had a neighbor
or two at the end of the century. within trav-
eling distance. In the meantime he had made
the improvements necessary to secure his
homestead. He stayed upon the land where
he had thought to rest for a day or two be-
cause the spring water and the forest there
appealed to him; here he passed a long life
and left numerous descendants.
There were others like him in various parts
of the county. In one of the earliest settled
portions of northern Venango several young
men in the last year or two of the eighteenth
century had arranged to take land In allot-
ments near enough so that they could assist one
another in some of their most strenuous duties.
They had trouble with the Indians. On more
than one occasion, when one of their number
had undertaken the long overland trip to se
cure the salt necessary to preserve their venison
or bear beef for winter, he had been attacked
while returning and his precious burden taken
from him. Salt cost eight dollars a bushel,
and the surest way to get it even at that price
was to walk to Erie and return, with it upon
the shoulders. The journey over and back
consumed a week or ten days, so the loss was
serious. The trip to the Land Company's grist-
mill, near the Crawford county line, was at-
tended with like danger. It was therefore ar-
ranged to make these journeys in companies
of three or four, to take turns in carrying and
in watching for savages or wild beasts. Their
rifles were loaded and they were marksmen.
Their freight then came through with cer-
tainty and dispatch. Later, a gristmill was
erected on Tionesta creek. This made "going
to mill" easier for all the residents of that
section. The mill also served to draw the at-
tention of its visitors to the natural meadows,
containing many flowers. along the Allegheny
and Tionesta creek. The flowering plants
served to brighten some of the homes, and to
make more summer in the front yards and in
the hearts of the women and the children in
the solitudes. Some of the dose observers saw
more in the flowers than bright colors. They
saw bees; and afterward "lined" them to their
hollow trees. crowning the ordinary buckwheats
of winter with pleasing "calories." Hunting
bee trees was much enjoyed by the early set-
tlers generally.
After the fall crops had been harvested there
came a season of hunting and trapping. Bears
and red deer supplied the meat and most of the
fats for winter's tables. Salt preserved the
meat aided by smoke from the sweetest woods.
jerked venison. which was deer's flesh cut into
sheets or webs and dried on pegs above glow-
ing embers, was thought by travelers to be both
board and lodging in trying times. The fur-
bearing animals were also plentiful, otters.
beavers, foxes, wolves, muskrats, even squirrels--
all these yielded a ready substute for
current cash. Fish were taken from the river
and the larger streams at their mouths by draw-
ing brush nets. Sometimes, after a successful
drawing, bushels of this fine food were dis-
tributed among the settlers to provider.for
winter. During winter "felling" trees was in
order. Land was to be cleared; fuel. was thus .
provided and timber for future home needs.
At the same time, choice logs were reserved
for sale in the growing markets downstream.
Rafting timber was one of the early industries
of the county, at first to Pittsburgh; then fur-
ther down, and finally down the Mississippi.
Many of our early lumbermen have floated
timber to New Orleans as it was the best mar-
ket and, after disposing of it, have walked back.
Walking was the quickest way of traveling in
those days. "Walking all day. is riot so hard
as most other jobs," said an old settler. The
people of those times had considerable of it.
One pedestrian made the trip to New Orleans
and back. not because he had to, but simply
to decide a mooted question. He was :gone
three months and more. He gained his point.
saw the country, and returned a wiser and
healthier man doubtless. Much traveling for
political purposes has been done since then, but
not many such long trips, on foot. Now, the
same conclusion would be reached with very
little effort by mail or telegraph; but our pedes-
trian was right; he chose the quickest an only
certain way then available.
(Source: Venango County Pennsylvania: her pioneers and people, Chas. A. Babcock, Vol. 1, J. H. Beers & Co., 1919, pp. 40-43.)
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
PIONEER CONDITIONS-PIONEER CONVENIENCES-PIONEER ANIMALS AND HUNTING--SHELTER
AND FIRE-EARLY EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES-POSTAL SERVICE-FINANCIAL EXCHANGE
PIONEER PRODUCTIONS
The United States is the only nation in the
world which can be seen in all stages of its
development from its beginning to the present.
The history of all other civilized countries
fades backward into a period of mystery; their
traces becoming fainter through receding
stages of savagery finally disappear into the
caves, Here the mingled bones of men and
of animals have been preserved by the drip
from the roof, burying them under layers of
carbonate of lime left by the water. Among
these remains are conclusive evidences of re-
ligious rites and rude cuttings or drawings
upon horns and ivory. made by pointed flints,
representing animals now known only by fos-
sil remains. These most ancient savages be-
lieved in some sort of immortality, and made
their feeble appeal of art to their own kind;
even then they were forward looking.
It was a far journey through ages of time
in seas of trouble, from those eaves to the
ships which sailed from Europe at the end of
the fifteenth century westward into the un-
known, and found a new world. Up to the
time of this voyage, many notable improve-
ments upon the far era of the cave men had
been made. The three little ships and the mas-
ter mind which guided them, summarized
many of the changes. But some of the results
of the past appeared at this time as abuses.
They may have been useful in some of the
struggles through stages of barbarism; they
were now worse than useless. Chief of these
were, first, caste; second, autocracy; third,
state-imposed theology. The first limited, even
crushed human effort; the second, claimed by
divine sanction, the control of those efforts and
absolute ownership of their results; the third
circumscribed the outlook toward the future.
including education, art and immortal hope.
Human progress is the sum of individual
growth, by the free activity of each, regulated
only by the equal freedom of all. Men do
not grow, when bound by steel into masses
and forced, by authority not of themselves or
for themselves, to accomplish some secret pur-
pose beyond their sight or intention. For cen-
turies before and after this voyage of Colum-
bus men felt the repression of these old crusts
which had dosed over them. They protested,
but the bonds were drawn all the closer, Then
came doubt. discontent and bloodshed. Wars
ebbed and flowed round these three great ques-
tions. This period was known as the Reforma-
tion. It arose in widely separated places in the
Old World. in the thirteenth century. and con-
tinued onward in time, becoming wider in ex-
tent, fiercer, more intense. Its devotees were
hunted like wolves in distant glens of the
mountains. in lonely places of forests; persecu-
tion, imprisonment, torture, death, awaiting
them if they were found worshipping unlaw-
iully, or practicing treason by upholding the
right of the inner guidance of the spirit in
matters of faith and of life. They were not
convinced by arguments of rack and thumb-
screw, gibbets and gridirons, or by beheadings
and quarterings. Their numbers increased.
In England in the fifteenth century the state
theology was changed, and then back and forth
again, by royal influence. This eased up perse-
cution from that source; those inside were
chary of starting doctrinal troubles for fear
that the next change would find them on the
wrong side subject to reprisal. Still matters
improved backwards again, and were running
that way for a while. But in the middle of the
17th century a king of England was jarred
from his throne, defeated in war, tried and
executed for treason and his successor ap-
pointed -- all by the Commons. Again in this
fatal century still another King was removed
and not only his successor, but the order of
succession throughout time, were fixed upon
by the Commons. The state theology lost its
long punitive arm. Caste in the old sense had
been dead four centuries. Middle Class and
Nobility had become interchangeable. The
Commons govemed. The Atlantic coast from
northern Maine to Florida was covered by col-
onies, all English, either by common descent.
or by yet stronger bond of spiritual brother-
hood. Before another century closed. these
colonies, from the attrition of common troubles,
dangers and sufferings, had won a common
triumph and forever laid aside those three old
crusts. If those shackles reappear here, it
will be because other ideals prevail, upheld by
an entirely different race of people.
PIONEER CONDITIONS
With such history as a prelude, the early
settlers came to Venango county. They built
their homes in the wilderness, not from the
materials found there. Their cabins were in
deed assembled from the forests around them.
But their homes were built only out of the
abiding and strong desire of their hearts
housed within crude walls at first. The log
hut from the outside might appear small and
insignificant as a building and yet the home,
inside, may have promised a beauty and a
splendor and adornment of real life, not found
in palaces. The people who came were alike
in one important respect. They came at the
call of a common need. They had been
cramped. The open spaces in the west ap-
pealed to them. Land in the vicinity of the
older settlements was expensive, often held
as an inheritance by the children of the older
and wealthier families. In the south the best
land was held in large plantations, worked by
slaves; while throughout the North, not one
of the many industries which have since con-
verted that section into a prosperous human
hive had even been thought of. A chance to
work with the hands. to earn a livelihood,
build up at the same time a home, and look
forward to future ease and independence, was
a wide-felt need over the whole country. One
is astonished in reading history, in noting how
universal was this movement to the West,
launched at this time. when the ill results of
all the wars and of the early Confederacy were
most disturbing. When the Indian menace to
settlement was quieted, the movement rolled
into full flood. The western parts of all our
colonies and lands adjacent. were settled at
this time, in the last years of the eighteenth,
and the first few of the nineteenth century. It
was a great wave of equality. and of true
democracy sweeping over the country. Not
simply more land, but freer life, larger
thought; these are the real Golden Fleece.
This idea animated those coming to Venango.
It unified the settlers. The country had been
"bled white." Thousands had cheerfully
given up fortune and life. The survivors and
the children of the dead did not asseverate;
did not express their purpose. They felt the
force of the spirit, immortal above sacrifice,
and lived it.
Most of the early arrivals came from the
eastern parts of this State and from neighbor-
ing States. Some, later, from Germany, Eng-
land, Ireland, Holland, Scotland and other dis-
tant countries, where life had brought sight,
came. They easily were combined into a har-
monious. working force. They gathered about
the idea of a group of intelligent, self-respect-
ing equals, formed into a political unit of reg-
ulated freedom, as readily as bees swarm round
the queen. The only royalty they recognized
was an ideal found in their history and visual-
ized by their own experience, soft as a snow-
flake or sharp as the lightning.
Some of the beginnings of this life seem
small, but they were very intense. One young
man, a hunter, came from Huntingdon county,
walking all the way. subsisting upon the prod-
ucts of his rifle. All his possessions were upon
his person, in the bosom of his fringed hunt-
ing shirt, or wrapped in a blanket fastened to
his shoulders by straps of deer's hide. Besides
his rifle, horn and bullet pouch, he carried the
long hunting knife, and a hatchet. He had
been a pioneer since early boyhood. He could
find his way in the night through the forest
by feeling the trees. When darkness came,
he supped and slept till daybreak. If clouds
threatened rain or snow, an Indian camp was
constructed in short order where he could stay
for days if necessary, comfortable and dry.
He stopped at Pittsburgh. then (summer of
1795) a cluster of log cabins around the fort,
long enough to secure some supplies. Con-
tinuing up the river bank. he passed Franklin,
which he noticed as only a small duster of log
huts and some ruins. near the mouth of the
creek. The fort and the few cabins near it
were nearly three fourths of a mile up stream.
At the mouth of Oil creek, the village of the
tribe of Cornplanter Indians was located. Pass-
ing this, he continued up the creek and striking
off eastward from the creek a few miles passed
the night where he afterward located his farm.
At first he thought to stay a few days looking
round for game. He built an Indian camp,
afterwards a log hut, in which he passed the
winter. He could outshoot and outtrap any
of the Indians, hut could not compete with
them in catching trout with his fingers. though
they often illustrated their skill to him very
good-naturedly. Here he lived for four years,
alone probably except for the dog and horse
he had acquired. His skill as a hunter and
trapper was almost like witchery. He was on
good terms with nature. He had a neighbor
or two at the end of the century. within trav-
eling distance. In the meantime he had made
the improvements necessary to secure his
homestead. He stayed upon the land where
he had thought to rest for a day or two be-
cause the spring water and the forest there
appealed to him; here he passed a long life
and left numerous descendants.
There were others like him in various parts
of the county. In one of the earliest settled
portions of northern Venango several young
men in the last year or two of the eighteenth
century had arranged to take land In allot-
ments near enough so that they could assist one
another in some of their most strenuous duties.
They had trouble with the Indians. On more
than one occasion, when one of their number
had undertaken the long overland trip to se
cure the salt necessary to preserve their venison
or bear beef for winter, he had been attacked
while returning and his precious burden taken
from him. Salt cost eight dollars a bushel,
and the surest way to get it even at that price
was to walk to Erie and return, with it upon
the shoulders. The journey over and back
consumed a week or ten days, so the loss was
serious. The trip to the Land Company's grist-
mill, near the Crawford county line, was at-
tended with like danger. It was therefore ar-
ranged to make these journeys in companies
of three or four, to take turns in carrying and
in watching for savages or wild beasts. Their
rifles were loaded and they were marksmen.
Their freight then came through with cer-
tainty and dispatch. Later, a gristmill was
erected on Tionesta creek. This made "going
to mill" easier for all the residents of that
section. The mill also served to draw the at-
tention of its visitors to the natural meadows,
containing many flowers. along the Allegheny
and Tionesta creek. The flowering plants
served to brighten some of the homes, and to
make more summer in the front yards and in
the hearts of the women and the children in
the solitudes. Some of the dose observers saw
more in the flowers than bright colors. They
saw bees; and afterward "lined" them to their
hollow trees. crowning the ordinary buckwheats
of winter with pleasing "calories." Hunting
bee trees was much enjoyed by the early set-
tlers generally.
After the fall crops had been harvested there
came a season of hunting and trapping. Bears
and red deer supplied the meat and most of the
fats for winter's tables. Salt preserved the
meat aided by smoke from the sweetest woods.
jerked venison. which was deer's flesh cut into
sheets or webs and dried on pegs above glow-
ing embers, was thought by travelers to be both
board and lodging in trying times. The fur-
bearing animals were also plentiful, otters.
beavers, foxes, wolves, muskrats, even squirrels--
all these yielded a ready substute for
current cash. Fish were taken from the river
and the larger streams at their mouths by draw-
ing brush nets. Sometimes, after a successful
drawing, bushels of this fine food were dis-
tributed among the settlers to provider.for
winter. During winter "felling" trees was in
order. Land was to be cleared; fuel. was thus .
provided and timber for future home needs.
At the same time, choice logs were reserved
for sale in the growing markets downstream.
Rafting timber was one of the early industries
of the county, at first to Pittsburgh; then fur-
ther down, and finally down the Mississippi.
Many of our early lumbermen have floated
timber to New Orleans as it was the best mar-
ket and, after disposing of it, have walked back.
Walking was the quickest way of traveling in
those days. "Walking all day. is riot so hard
as most other jobs," said an old settler. The
people of those times had considerable of it.
One pedestrian made the trip to New Orleans
and back. not because he had to, but simply
to decide a mooted question. He was :gone
three months and more. He gained his point.
saw the country, and returned a wiser and
healthier man doubtless. Much traveling for
political purposes has been done since then, but
not many such long trips, on foot. Now, the
same conclusion would be reached with very
little effort by mail or telegraph; but our pedes-
trian was right; he chose the quickest an only
certain way then available.
(Source: Venango County Pennsylvania: her pioneers and people, Chas. A. Babcock, Vol. 1, J. H. Beers & Co., 1919, pp. 40-43.)