the winter to pass away and also the spring, and it was not until June, 1778, that about seven hundred of them, accompanied by four or five hundred British and Tories moved down from the headwaters of the Susquehanna. They made no attempt at a surprise. They seemed to know that the Wyoming men were the easiest people in the world to find, and that they would not have to chase them. They may even have thought that the more slowly and openly they advanced the richer would be their reward; for the Wyoming soldiers in the Continental army would hurry home to defend their families.

This was at any rate the result so far as circumstances would admit. The soldiers who were away made every effort to return and reminded their superiors of the understanding on which they were enlisted that they should not be compelled to serve far away from the valley. But they were delayed and delayed until the officers began to resign and the men to desert, and then when permission was given it was given too late.

The Indians entered the upper end of the valley, and finding seven or eight settlers at their work near evening, killed or captured them all except a boy, who escaped into the river; and among these first victims, if I mistake not, were several family names well known to this day in Wyoming.

But still the Indians and British were deliberate and moved down the valley destroying it piecemeal, finding exactly what they expected, a people who had not the slightest thought of escaping, nor the slightest hesitation of boldly attacking the superior force which made of them an easy prey.

The three hundred grandfathers and boys, "the undisciplined, the youthful and then aged" as the monument describes them, assembled under Zebulon Butler in Forty Fort, and the most natural plan of defense for them to fol

low was to remain in the fort and hold it until assistance should arrive. The Continental soldiers were hurrying in, and help was coming from every quarter that could send it. The gaining of time was everything and the contemptuous delay of the Indians, if continued might become their defeat.

But that was not the prudent decision of the three hundred of the valley. They overruled their officers and overruled Zebulon Butlor. They decided to go out in mass far beyond the fort, and on ground of their own choosing, fight the twelve hundred British and Indians. It was noon on the third day of July, 1778, almost at this very hour of one hundred and eighteen years ago, that this strange company moved out beyond the safety of their fort and even beyond chance of retreat to it, and took their stand near this spot, where the zeal of your people has erected a monument to their memory.

They formed a military line of battle, these grandfathers and grandsons, with their right resting on the high bank towards the river and their left on a swamp towards the mountain. It was an unfortunate position, for it gave the Indians a chance to out-flank them in the swamp. But they cared nothing for that, and when they saw the enemy outnumbering them three to one in their front, they moved forward, taking a step every time they fired.

On the open ground where they could see their enemy they had the advantage, and at that point they forced back the British line. But as they advanced the Indians came more and more round on their flanks. The swamp was full of them, yelling and picking off their victims. An order to wheel the Wyoming men so as to face the swamp was mistaken for permission to retreat, and at this first symptom of yielding the Indians rushed in to begin their butchery.

Wyoming was again annihilated. The overwhelming force of savages and tories cut down and captured the remnant of the three hundred as they ran. Unable to restrain their fury the Indians killed many of the prisoners as soon as they had seized them or had persuaded them to surrender by promise of quarter. Eighteen of them were almost immediately arranged in order round the Bloody Rock, as you now call it, and Queen Esther passed through the circle singing her war song and dashing out brains. In the evening the rest of the prisoners were collected,

stripped naked, and chased back and forth through fires until they fell in the flames.

It was a rich harvest of blood and excitement for the savage soul. The valley was plundered from end to end, every man that could be found shot and scalped, and the women and children sent flying in terror through the woods and mountains towards Connecticut.

But within two months after this sixth destruction of Wyoming (1778), people were back again, collecting the remains of their property and planting their crops anew. They began again to re-build their fortunes from the beginning with as much alacrity, devotion and determination as if they had just discovered Wyoming in all the freshness of its virgin beauty.

It might be supposed that this was the end of their troubles, but it was not. Four years afterwards, when the revolution was over, Pennsylvania applied to the Continental Congress for a commission to decide the disputed claim of territory to decide whether Wyoming belonged to Pennsylvania or to Connecticut. The court assembled Trenton, New Jersey, in the autumn of 1782 and after an exhaustive trial and argument by the most learned lawyers of the time, lasting in all forty-one days, the court decided in favor of Pennsylvania.

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This settled the question of political jurisdiction. Wyoming ceased to be a Connecticut town and ceased to send representatives to the Connecticut legislature. But in 1771 the Penn family had sold parts of the land in the valley to various individuals, and as time pass

ed on the titles these persons held had passed by sale or inheritance to others until after the decision of the court at Trenton in 1782 there was a considerable body of Pennsylvania claimants, as they were called, who professed to own the very land occupied and cultivated by the Connecticut settlers. As Pennsylvania now had jurisdiction over the valley these claimants demanded that the Connecticut settlers should be ejected from their farms and the farms given to the Pennsylvanians.

The old struggle for possession and the scenes of the Pennamite wars were renewed. The Pennsylvania claimants controlled the legislature and through it organized expeditions of militia to drive out the Yankees from their valley, which they supposed they had at last secured in peace under the jurisdiction of Pennsylvania. A slight show of resistance gave the militia the opportunity they wanted and Wyoming was again destroyed and the women and children again fled across the mountains to the eastward. Between the cruelty of the red men and the cruelty of the Pennamites they had little to choose.

But the better element in our State was aroused; the plans of the land jobbers were checked; and by a series of acts the legislature secured to the original Connecticut settlers the full title to their farms. By the close of the century Wyoming had ceased to be a question and a controversy; her fifty years of romantic youth and struggle were closed, and she began that era of material success and happiness which you, her citizens, know so well how to create and enjoy.

It should not be a profitless occupation for us to allow our attention to be directed occasionally to the characters of those who originated the conditions of comfortable existence in this valley. I have selected John Franklin as illustrating as completely as any the prominent attributes of that earlier race; no attempt has been made to contribute new material to the information now at disposal. Many facts that are of great interest in themselves have been omitted, since the mere enumeration of Col. Franklin's noteworthy achievements is not physically susceptible of a ten minutes limitation, and the plan of treatment of the subject which will most nearly accommodate this time limitation, and at the same time be of some value will be to draw a character sketch which may present him, if we may truthfully draw that inference, as a type both of the pioneer and the patriot as they were exemplified among the early Wyoming settlers. For a reading of his life convinces one that in his single spirit were united all those high and bold qualities essential to the constitution of those men who won our soil from nature and the savage, and then defended their own while they could lift an arm.

A pioneer, Col. Franklin certainly could claim to be. Though he came to this region in 1774, some years after the earlier settlers, he plunged into the van of the struggle with nature, appropriating land in Huntington. He was the first white man to settle there; spent a whole summer entirely alone. He carried his provisions on his back from Plymouth, through a pathless wilderness. Sometimes he traveled this distance of eighteen miles by night, not leaving his work until sun-down. At one time he was forced to make the trip entirely barefooted.

He was not the mere rough and ready pioneer. He quickly became prominent in the councils of the community, and eventually occupied almost every office within the gift of the people. The democratic diversity of his employments is illustrated by a few entries from his journal in 1781. He repaired to the assembly at Hartford, debated zealously, returned Nov. 10, and im

mediately sat as one of the justices of the quorum, as judge of the county court. The journal reads: "Nov. 21, Wednesday, thrashed wheat for Scott. Thursday, thrashing wheat, and not long afterwards dressed flax for Capt. Fuller." Such was the combination of statesman, judge and day laborer.

Col. Franklin's widest fame was reached after 1782. His patriotism and courage, to be sure, shone prominently on many occasions prior to that time. He was captain of the Huntington and Salem company, which arrived too late to take part in the battle of the fatal third. In the expedition of Col. Hartley in September, 1778, against the Indian settlement at Shesequin, Franklin and his troops were particularly commended by the commanding officer. Sullivan's expedition in 1779 found Franklin a valuable addition. He was wounded in the shoulder at the engagement at Newtown. He afterwards commanded the militia which formed part of the garrison, and was variously occupied in hunting, farming, taking occasional prisoners on scouting expeditions, and administering the laws as justice of the peace. One of his judgments in the latter capacity discloses that in those times woman's liberty of movement was within somewhat narrow limits. He fined Mary Pritchard five shillings upon her being found "guilty of unnecessarily going from her place of abode on the Lord's Day."

Indians, British and Tories being abolished, as a menace, by the close of the revolutionary war, it might seem that the patriotism of the Wyoming settlers, so nobly exhibited during the war, should entitle them to quiet enjoyment of their fair estate. But the Trenton decree against the Connecticut claim ushered in a new fight with the old foe, and the Yankees in Pennsylvania were called upon to show a patriotism far more localized than heretofore, and quite as intense. For now they struggled not as an atomic part of the great sisterhood of States, but for the very right to possess their hearthstones (already sufficiently blood-bought, one might think); not the less because waged by a small body of men, and directly not the enjoyment of their own particular estates, was the struggle of

the settlers the result of as real a patriotism as was their participation in the greater contest. They were not mere land grabbers. They had entered with good color of right, had spent some of the best years of their lives in the construction and defense of their homes, and they had a firm belief in the justice of their cause.

It is in this view of the case that we may be able still consistently to claim for John Franklin that he was throughout the true type of the patriot. Fitted as he seems in every natural part, by the strength and vigor of mind and body, by the boldness of his attitude, by his indefatigability and perseverance to assume such a position, it would be a pity indeed were we to discover that any lowness of motive, or purely personal ambition, must force us to reject him as our type. The justification of this view, it is hoped, may develop as we proceed. His eminence as a strong man is indisputable. He was one of the finest of a fine lot. The early Wyoming settlers were wonderfully strong individually and collectively. When we consider that each of them got his living from the soil as nature gave it to him, and at the same time recall how many men there were, able in the administration of justice and of government, powerful in legislative council and debate, and of no mean capacity in literary composition; in a word, how rounded they were, we feel that they satisfy our ideal of the strong man. To have been, for a period of years, the most prominent character among them -no more need be said to entitle such a one to our most respectful consideration. This was John Franklin's distinction.

The recommendation of commissioners appointed by assembly that the Connecticut settlers be dispossessed and awarded compensation in the West, the appointment by the commissioners of Pennsylvania justices of the peace; these events ushered in the reign of Patterson, the lawless justice. Forcible ejectment of the Yankees, attempted by Patterson, met with as vigorous resistance. After a wholesale expulsion of Yankee families, Franklin, at the head of sixty men, marched up and down the river, dispossessing every Pennsylvania family, save two (from humane motives), on the line of march. He then set siege to the fort, sending in a peremptory demand for surrender, proffering humane consequences upon compliance, but fatal and bloody upon refusal. Pennsylvania officials just then arriving, under instructions to

stop hostilities, found the Connecticut men reasonable and obedient, while the Pennsylvania malcontents were defiant even of their own State's authority. A few days later, Gen., then Colonel, Armstrong, of national reputation, destined to become notoriety, marched in at the head of a strong force, and having, by an unworthy trick, disarmed Franklin's people, took them prisoners, sending some to Easton and others to Sunbury. Franklin, who kept a journal, very minute, considering the fullness of his life, recounts the treatment of these prisoners as actually barbarous. We cannot suspect him of exaggeration, for not even a Pennamite ever hesitated to take Col. Franklin's word. It is characteristic of the Yankee-Pennamite wars that victory vibrated between the parties with a celerity suggestive of comic opera governments and in less than two months the prisoners had escaped and the two determined antagonists were contending again on even terms, the Yankees under Franklin successfully defending their position against Armstrong's attacking force. Here Franklin swore upon the bloody rifle of his friend William Jackson the memorable oath, "that he would never lay down his arms until death should arrest his hand, or Patterson and Armstrong be expelled from Wyoming and the people restored to their rights of possession and a legal trial guaranteed to every citizen by the constitution, by justice, and by law."

Dispossession and counter dispossession ensued for a short time, when came the news that the assembly had ordered the settlers to be restored to their possessions, a detraction probably from the ultra-violent methods of Patterson and Armstrong. Franklin's journal for November, 1784, contains the following entries: "Saturday, 27-The Pennamites evacuated the fort at 11 p. m. Tuesday, 30-The Yankees destroyed the fort."

With the withdrawal of the garrison a militia regiment was formed and Capt. Franklin became Col. Franklin.

The years 1785 and 1786 were occupied largely by vain efforts on the part of the settlers to procure from Congress a judicial method of trial of their private right of soil. Col. Franklin was very prominent in this and attended sessions of Congress for considerable periods as agent for the Wyoming people. In the year 1785, besides his service in this capacity, he made four trips to Connecticut. He kept up a constant agita

His

tion in Connecticut for the purpose of inspiring aggressive action on the part of the Susquhanna Company on behalf of the holders (past and prospective) of their shares. In Wyoming his agitation was with the constant intent of stiffening the sturdy inhabitants in their resistance to Pennsylvania authority unless accompanied with assurances of their lands being secured to them. attitude is exhibited in a letter written by him to William Montgomery June 26, 1786, in answer to one from Montgomery to Mr. Myers in which Franklin's name was mentioned apparently with great reflections. In answer to a "query" of Montgomery, whether Franklin and his adherents would be satisfied with compensation out of the wild lands on Lake Erie, he says: "It's no query in my mind. I expect to enjoy my lands here, unless legally removed by a regular course of law, had before a proper tribunal." Further on he forcibly implies that "the wise, righteous and just," (meaning his party) "will stand forth in a just and righteous cause and overthrow the hellish schemes of the land monopolizers who wish to destroy the Yankees from the face of the earth that they may enjoy the lands our hands have cultivated and our blood enriched." He further insinuates a desire of the Pennsylvanians to persuade the "wise and virtuous" to "give up their all for a rattle box" and a further intention to cheat them out of even that. He states that the "wise and virtuous" will not withdraw. "We have been inured to danger, hardship and devastation; we have been too often deceived by your people, the land schemers as well as by some of the officers of government, who made great pretensions of honesty, justice and friendship, and whose fair words and flattering speeches are not to be believed for thus saith the Lord, their hearts are full of all manner of abominations."

This letter is preserved in the Pennsylvania archives.

His influence was potent, for the company, infused with new life, issued shares and passed confirming resolutions with great activity, adventurers poured into the settlement, and the inhabitants maintained such a determined front that the Pennsylvania assembly was moved anew to remedial action. This first took form in the act to establish Luzerne County, Sept. 25, 1786, and subsequently provision was made for the election of county officers. Several tempting sops were thrown to

with Zebulon Butler and Timothy Pickering, Col. Franklin was made member of the committee to notify the electors of the election. As a result of the election he was chosen member of assembly. Neither the overtures of Pennsylvania, however, nor this attempt on the part of his more peaceful fellow citizens to reconcile him with his ancient enemy, availed to cut the claws of John Franklin. He denounced the participants in the election, spurned the honor tendered him and when a mass meeting was held to consider the confirming act of March 28, 1787, his eloquence was violently against the Greeks bearing gifts. This marks the beginning of division among the settlers. Butler, Denison and Hollenback carrying with them the majority of the people, advocated the acceptance of the advances of Pennsylvania. Whether or

not Franklin was deep in a scheme with prominent men in Connecticut for the dismemberment of Wyoming from Pennsylvania, and the establishment of a new State, of which Franklin was to be lieutenant governor, the material at hand is too scant to base an opinion upon. The evidence which Mr. Miner presents is all that way. There is also a strong indication to the same effect in his violent rejection of the apparently fair enactment of the assembly. Or shall we more charitably suppose that a long experience of fair words and false deeds had induced a complete skepticism as to any good coming out of Nazareth? As you will, the PickeringFranklin feud waged hotly for two years. During more than the latter half of that time, the redoubtable "Hero of Wyoming" languished in the Philadelphia gaol. He was arrested on the river bank, having just come off the ferry, on a charge of high treason. Four men started in on the arrest; the vagaries of the party's march, which Col. Franklin's pronounced dissent produced, led them to the old Ross mansion on Main street (then inhabited by Col. Pickering), where the latter and another volunteered to sustain the majesty of the law, and finally, with legs ignobly bound beneath the horse, the gallant Franklin was hustled to the scene of his long humiliation. The protracted confinement and discomfort wore upon his health and spirit; convinced of the uselessness of further resistance (his party dissipated during his absence), and probably having a canny preference for a long life and as