Two Shawnee Indians cruelly murdered a man and a woman of the Conestoga tribe, April 28, 1728. John Wright, of Hempfield, wrote from Lancaster, May 2, advising James Logan of this murder, and that the Conestoga have demanded of the Shawnee the surrender of the murderers. He further wrote that some Shawnee had brought the Shawnee murderers as far as Peter Chartier’s house, but there the party engaged in a drinking bout and through the connivance of Chartier the two murderers escaped.

Chartier was an Indian trader among the Shawnee and was himself a half-blood Shawnee. He had traded for a time on the Pequea Creek and at Paxtang. Later he settled at the Shawnee town on the west side of the Susquehanna, at the mouth of the Yellow Breeches Creek, the present site of New Cumberland. He later removed on the Conemaugh, then to the Allegheny, about 1734.

The action upon the part of Chartier incensed the Conestoga so much that they threatened to wipe out the whole section of the Shawnee.

John Wright further states in his letter, “Yesterday there came seventeen or eighteen of the young men, commanded by Tilehausey, all Conestoga Indians, painted for war, all armed. We inquired which way they were going. They would not tell us, but said they or some of them were going to war, and that there were some Canoy to go along with them. But we hearing the above report, are apt to think that they are going against the Shawnee.”

Almost contemporary with this murder, the whites along the Schuylkill had their safety threatened from another quarter. Kakowwatchy, head of the Shawnee at Pechoquealon, claimed to have heard that the Flatheads, or Catawba from Carolina, had entered Pennsylvania to strike the Indians along the Susquehanna. He sent eleven warriors to ascertain the truth of this incursion of the Southern Indians, and as they approached the neighborhood of the Durham Iron Works, at Manatawny, their provisions failing, forced the inhabitants to give them victuals and drink.

The people did not know these Indians and believing the chief of the band to be a Spanish Indian, caused great alarm.

Families left their plantations, and the women and children were in great danger from exposure, as the weather was cold. About twenty white men took arms, approached the band, and soon a battle was in progress. The whites said that the Indians refused a parley and fired first, wounding several of the inhabitants. The red men made off into the woods and were not seen again. Their leader was wounded, but escaped.

The identity of this band was not known until ten days later, May 20, when the Lieutenant Governor Patrick Gordon was waited upon by John Smith and Nicholas Schonhoven, two Indian traders from Pechoquealon, who delivered to him a verbal message from Kakowwatchy, which was an explanation of the unfortunate affair, and for which the chief sent his regrets, and asked the Governor for a return of the gun which the wounded leader had lost.

The Lieutenant Governor, accompanied by many other citizens of Philadelphia went to the troubled district, and personally pleaded with those who had fled from their plantations to return. So excited were the whites that they seemed ready to kill any red man or woman.

On May 20, an Indian man, two women and two girls, appeared at John Roberts, at Cucussea, then in Chester County. Their neighbors fearing danger, rallied to their defense, and shot the man and one of the women, beat out the brains of the other woman, and wounded the girls. Their excuse was that the Indian had put an arrow into his bow.

The Provincial authorities were fearful that revenge upon the people might be attempted, so the two neighbors who committed the atrocity were arrested and sent to Chester for trial, and notice of the affair was sent to Sassoonan, Opekasset, and Manawhyhickon, with a request that they bring their people to a treaty, arranged to be held at Conestoga with Chief Civility and the Indians there.

The Pennsylvania Government did not leave all to diplomacydiplomacy. John Pawling, Marcus Hulings and Mordecai Lincoln (a relative of President Abraham Lincoln) were commissioned to gather the inhabitants and to put them in a posture to defend themselves.

Having forwarded to Kakowwatchy the watchcoats, belts and tomahawks dropped by the eleven warriors, and having sent a present, together with a request that he warn his Indians to be more cautious in the future, Governor Gordon expressed a wish to see Kakowwatchy at Durham, then went to Conestoga, and met Civility, Tawenne and other Conestoga, some Delaware and three Shawnee chiefs.

Gordon began by reminding the Indians of the links in the chain of friendship and that neither the Indians nor Christians would believe ill reports of each other without investigation of the facts. The Governor then made them presents of watchcoats, duffels, blankets, shirts, gunpowder, lead, flints and knives.

The Governor then told them of the recent murders, and of the intention to punish those who killed the Indians, if found guilty. The chiefs, in turn, declared that they had no cause of complaint.

Sassoonan, or Allummapees, the head of the Delaware, and his nephew, Opekasset, and some other chiefs, including the great Shikellamy, vicegerent of the Six Nations, met with Governor Gordon at Molatton, and from there went to Philadelphia, where a great council was held June 4, 1728, which was concluded most satisfactorily for all concerned.

Christian Frederic Post, who has been denominated “the great Moravian peace-maker,” was a simple uneducated missionary of the Moravian Church. He was born in Polish Prussia, in 1710, and at an early age came under the influence of the Moravians. He emigrated to this country as a member of the “Sea Congregation,” which arrived on the Catherine, at New London, Conn., May 30, 1742. Post, with the other members, joined the congregation at Bethlehem, Pa., three weeks later.

From that time until his death, at Germantown, April 29, 1785, he performed many hazardous missions for his church and the Provincial Government of Pennsylvania, and many times was in imminent peril. The first several years of his residence in Pennsylvania he was employed as a Moravian missionary, but afterwards was almost constantly performing important services for the Province in its Indian dealings.

Some of the journals of Post, which appear in the Archives of Pennsylvania, and have been republished elsewhere, are valuable for the intimate history of the peoples and the country through which he traveled. One of the editors who republished his journals, wrote as follows concerning the missionary and mediator: “Antiquarians and historians have alike admired the sublime courage of the man and the heroic patriotism which made him capable of advancing into the heart of a hostile territory, into the very hands of a cruel and treacherous foe. But aside from Post’s supreme religious faith, he had a shrewd knowledge of Indian customs, and knew that in the character of an ambassador requested by the Western tribes his mission would be a source of protection. Therefore, even under the very walls of Fort Dusquesne, he trusted not in vain to Indian good faith.”

When Conrad Weiser visited Shikellamy at Shamokin, May, 1743, he wrote: “As I saw their old men seated on rude benches and on the ground listening with decorous gravity and rapt attention to Post, I fancied I saw before me a congregation of primitive Christians.”

In 1743 Post was married to a converted Indian woman, and endeared himself to all the Indians. But all was not smooth, for the Brethren were persecuted and humbled before their converts. Post, who had been on a journey to the Iroquois country, in March, 1745, was arrested at Canajoharie and sent to New York, where he was imprisoned for weeks, on a trumped-up charge of abetting Indian raids. He was released April 10.

In 1758 it became a matter of importance with Governor Denny and Sir William Johnson, that a treaty of peace be secured with the Western Indians. Post was selected to convey to them the white belt of peace and reconciliation. Tedyuskung, the Delaware king, protested against his going, declaring he would never return alive, but the bold and confident Christian said it was a mission of peace, that God would protect him, and that he must go.

On July 15, 1758, Post departed from Philadelphia with five Indian guides. He carried with him copies of the treaties made with Tedyuskung, belts of wampum and messages from the Governor. He made his trip by way of Bethlehem, Shamokin, Great Island, Chinclamoose, etc.

It was a perilous journey. Twice he got lost in the woods, and one of his guides strayed away and could not be found. Without food and drenched with rain, night after night he slept on the cold, wet ground. He was frequently very near the French. Finally he arrived at King Beaver’s, who ruled over the Delaware in the West. These Indians remembered him when he preached the gospel at Wyoming, and were glad to see him. They gave him a public dinner, to which they invited the surroundingsurrounding tribes.

The French sent spies to watch him and to induce him to go to Fort Duquesne. Post refused to be trapped, but instead succeeded in making arrangements for kindling a great council-fire at Easton in October following.

Post now set out on his return and had not proceeded far when he heard the thunder of nineteen cannon discharged at the fort. Under the very mouths of these guns he had, singly and alone, with the full knowledge of the French, laid a plan which rent asunder the alliance between them and their Indian allies.

Post succeeded in his mission, and the French at the fort, finding themselves abandoned by their allies, fired it and fled, as the invalid general, John Forbes, and his army made their appearance.

Frank Cowan, poet of Southwestern Pennsylvania, tells the story in one of his songs, of which the following is a verse:

Again, in 1761, he proceeded to the Muskingum and built the first white man’s house within the present State of Ohio. He had made previous trips into this country, and always succeeded in persuading the Shawnee and Delaware to “bury the hatchet” and desert the French. He did this with a heavy reward upon his scalp, and while his every footstep was surrounded with danger.

In 1762 the Reverend John G. B. Heckewelder, the Moravian missionary and writer, especially among the Delaware, was an assistant to Post.

Toward the close of his eventful life Post retired from the Moravian sect and entered the Protestant Episcopal Church. He died at Germantown on April 29, 1785, and on May 1 his remains were interred in the “Lower graveyard of that place, the Reverend William White, then rector of Christ Church,” conducting the funeral service.

As early as 1764 officers of the First and Second Battalions of Pennsylvania who had served under Colonel Henry Bouquet during the French and Indian War tarried at Bedford on their way home and formed an association. The purpose of this organization was that they be awarded the land to which they were entitled for service rendered.

This association held another and more important meeting at Carlisle, April 30, 1765, when they elected officers and renewed their application to the proprietaries and asked for 24,000 acres of land along the West Branch of the Susquehanna.

In this formal application they stated their object was “to embody themselves on some good land at some distance from the inhabited part of the Province, where by their industry they might procure a comfortable subsistance for themselves and by their arms, union and increase become a powerful barrier to the Province.”

These officers knew that the Proprietaries had not that much land to award them and that they had not yet purchased the West Branch lands from the Indians, but at this meeting they adopted a strong resolution calling upon them to make such a purchase.

Following the French and Indian War the lawless white men had been encroaching upon Indian lands, provoked hostilities and murdered many innocent Indians. The situation became so acute that General Gage offered troops to assist Governor Penn in removing and punishing these intruders.

Governor Penn appealed to the Assembly for help. In the discussion of this important matter it was learned from George Croghan, Sir William Johnson and others that the Indians designed a northern confederacy, and were determined to avenge this intrusion and the murder of the Conestoga Indians at Lancaster.

The Assembly agreed to pass a boundary bill. They also sent a message to the Indians promising to punish those responsible for the Conestoga massacre, and urged a conference at which a boundary line could be established. They also appropriated £3000 as a present to appease the Indians.

During the following spring several conferences were held, the largest being at Fort Pitt, where many chiefs and warriors of the Six Nations were present; in all 1103 men, women and children. The explanations were satisfactory and the presents and cash joyously received.

But it is quite probable that another savage war was averted by the intervention of Sir William Johnson, who, at this critical period, suggested a great council be held at Fort Stanwix, where this vital question could be definitely decided. This council was held in October, 1768, with Governor Penn present in person, as well as the principal chiefs of the tribes which had grievances to air.

The council, in the treaty of November 5, 1768, settled the boundary dispute and the Indians sold to the Proprietaries of Pennsylvania most of the central and western end of the State, excepting a small strip along Lake Erie. The consideration was $10,000.

Now that the Proprietaries had purchased the land desired by the association, on February 3, 1769, it was ordered by the Board of Property “that Colonel Francis and the officers of the First and Second Battalions of the Pennsylvania Regiment be allowed to take up 24,000 acres, to be divided among them in district surveys on the waters of the West Branch of the Susquehanna, to be seated with a family for each 300 acres, within two years from the time of the survey, paying £5 per hundred and one penny sterling per acre.”

Near the close of February many of the officers met at Fort Augusta and agreed to take the land proposed by the Proprietaries, and that one of the tracts should be surveyed on the West Branch, adjoining Andrew Montour’s place at Chillisquaque Creek, and one in Buffalo Valley. It was also agreed that Captains Plunket, Brady, Piper and Lieutenant Askey should accompany William Scull to the eastern side of the river as they made the surveys.

These surveys were promptly made and another meeting was held at Fort Augusta, when it was determined that the third tract of 8000 acres should be surveyed on Bald Eagle Creek. Captains Hunter, Brady and Piper were appointed to accompany Charles Lukens as he made the survey.

May 16, 1769, the officers met at Harris Ferry, where Messrs. Maclay, Scull and Lukens laid before them the drafts of their respective surveys. They agreed that Colonel Turbutt Francis should receive his share, 2075 acres, surveyed to him in one tract. Accordingly he selected land upon which the town of Milton is now the center.

Lots were then drawn by the other officers for the choice of lands. Captain William Hendricks, Captain William Plunket, Captain John Brady, Captain John Kern, Lieutenant Dr. Thomas Wiggins, Captain Conrad Bucher, Captain William Irvine and Lieutenants Askey, Stewart and McAllister took land in Buffalo Valley.

Ensign A. Stein, Lieutenant Daniel Hunsicker, Captain William Piper, Lieutenant James Hayes, Captain Samuel Hunter, Captain Nicholas Hausegger took lands above Chillisquaque Creek. Major John Philip de Haas was the principal officer to be awarded land on the Bald Eagle, and near him were Lieutenant James Hays and Thomas Wiggans, Ensign William McMeen, Lieutenant Hunsicker, Captain Timothy Green, Captain John Brady, Captain James Irvine and Captain William Plunket.

Colonel Francis acquired by purchase land from Chillisquaque Creek to and including the present town of Northumberland, and then owned a continuous strip from the North Branch to a point near Watsontown, a distance of eighteen miles along the West Branch. This made him one of the most extensive land owners of that time.

By these awards the West Branch Valley was permanently settled by these distinguished officers or their kin, and many of the families resident there today are descendants of these sturdy patriots.

With the exception of occasional depredations committed by the British foraging parties during the winter of 1777–78, all was quiet on the Delaware. The vigilance of Generals James Potter and John Lacey greatly restrained these forays. In the meantime General Washington, with the aid of Baron von Steuben and other foreign officers in the Continental army, transformed the band of American patriots into a well-disciplined, well-drilled and confident army.

General Wayne’s command was encamped during the whole winter and spring at Mount Joy, in MontgomeryMontgomery County, and materially assisted in securing supplies of provisions for the army at Valley Forge.

When Washington withdrew from Whitemarsh, he was anxious that the upper part of the Delaware-Schuylkill peninsula should be well guarded. A thousand Pennsylvania militia were placed under command of General John Lacey, January 9, 1778. Lacey established his headquarters at the Crooked Billet Tavern, Bucks County, now called Hatboro, about twenty-five miles north of Philadelphia.

The country nearer Philadelphia, where the British were encamped, was thus open to the Queen’s Rangers and James’ and Hovenden’s Loyalists, who foraged and ravaged as they pleased. There was intense hatred between these Tories and the Continentals.

The British continually employed troops to forage and plunder, and while Lacey was himself in Bucks County, he could do nothing to save it from their ravages. But his energy and enterprise, even with his small forces, enabled him to reduce the supplies of Philadelphia so materially that the attempt was made to destroy his command, and an expedition was sent against him.

The party was under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Abercrombie, comprising light infantry, cavalry and Simcoe’s Rangers, and started on May 1, 1778. Simcoe was to get in Lacey’s rear and a party was to be placed in ambush, while the mounted infantry and cavalry advanced along the road.

Lacey’s officers and patrols were negligent, and his force was completely surprised and surrounded on all sides. They retreated fighting, but without their baggage, and finally got away with a loss of twenty-six killed, eight or ten wounded, and fifty-eight missing.

The British, as at Paoli, bayoneted many of the American troops after they were so seriously wounded they could be of no further effect against them; others of the wounded were thrown in among some buckwheat straw, which was then set on fire, and they were roasted to death. The bodies of many of the killed among the Americans were then thrown into the burning straw. The famous scoundrels who committed these atrocities were the Tory soldiers of Simcoe’s Rangers. The British loss was nominal.

Among the American slain in this massacre was Captain John Downey, who had been a schoolmaster in Philadelphia and a gallant volunteer at Trenton and Princeton. He had surveyed the Delaware River for the Committee of Safety, and was acting as commissary to General Lacey’s brigade. He was bayoneted and mutilated while lying wounded and a prisoner at the Crooked Billet.

A monument was erected in December, 1861, to the victims of Lacey’s command in this fight, on the battlefield at Hatboro. The surprise was a legitimate act of war, but the massacre after surrender was a barbarous atrocity.

The Supreme Executive Council of the State, and the Assembly in session at Lancaster, and the Continental Congress at York had been principally engaged in legislating for the interests of the army, preparing for the ensuing campaign. The Assembly passed the “act for the attainder of divers traitors,” among whom were specially mentioned Joseph Galloway, Andrew Allen, Reverend Jacob Duche, John Biddle, John Allen, William Allen, James Rankin, of York County, Gilbert Hicks, of Bucks County, Samuel Shoemaker, late of Penn’s Council, John Potts, Nathaniel Vernon, ex-Sheriff of Chester County, Christian Fouts, formerly lieutenant-colonel in Lancaster militia, Reynold Keen and John Biddle, latter two of Berks County. Reverend Duche had made the prayer at the opening of the first Continental Congress and since had been chaplain to Congress, but had prayed for the King.

Joseph Galloway’s estate was worth in excess of £40,000 sterling, and his handsome home on the southeast corner of Sixth and High Streets in Philadelphia, was appropriated by the State of Pennsylvania as a residence for the President of the Supreme ExecutiveExecutive Council, who was the chief executive officer of the State. This house was afterwards sold to Robert Morris.

Through the influence and negotiations of Benjamin Franklin Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, Commissioners sent to Paris by Congress, France had now openly espoused the American cause. The joyful news reached Congress sitting at York, May 2, 1778.

On May 7, Lord Howe was superseded by Sir Henry Clinton. Previous to the British commander’s departure, a magnificent fete called the “Mischianza,” was held May 18 in his honor.

On the following day, Lafayette with 2500 men and eight cannon crossed the Schuylkill to Barren Hill. Howe, with 5700 under Clinton and Knyphausen, supported by Grant in his rear, with 5,300 troops, marched to overwhelm this important post of the American army. Lafayette escaped by Matson’s Ford. Four days later, May 24, Howe embarked for England.

The same day a council of war was held under Sir Henry Clinton, and it was resolved to evacuate the city, which event occurred on June 19. This movement had been delayed owing to the arrival on June 6, of three British Commissioners to negotiate peace and a reconciliation. It was too late.

Among other intrigues, it is stated, the Commissioners secretly offered to General Joseph Reed, then delegate to Congress, and afterwards President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, £10,000 sterling, with the best office in the Colonies to promote their plans. General Reed promptly replied: “I am not worth purchasing, but such as I am, the King of Great Britain is not rich enough to do it.”

Upon occupation of Philadelphia, General Benedict Arnold was ordered by General Washington to take command of the city, and “prevent the disorders which were expected upon the evacuation of the place and return of the Whigs after being so long kept out of their property.”

For some time General Washington had believed that the permanent safety of the western section of Pennsylvania could only be secured by carrying on a successful war, in an aggressive manner, against the enemy in their own country. That determination was strengthened by the Commissioners of Congress, who met in Pittsburgh late in 1777, and learned first handed of the barbarous warfare carried on against the western frontier by the British under Henry Hamilton, then Governor of Detroit, with the assistance of their Indian allies.

During October and November, 1777, while General Edward Hand, then commandant at Fort Pitt, was trying to recruit his army for the invasion of the Indian country, many raids were made in Westmoreland County. Eleven men were killed and scalped near Palmer’s Fort, in Ligonier Valley, and a few days later four children were killed within sight of the fort. Three men were killed and a woman captured within a few miles of Ligonier. A band of Indians, led by a Canadian, made a fierce attack on Fort Wallace, near Blairsville, but the Canadian was killed and the savages repulsed. These mauraudersmaurauders were pursued by a party of rangers led by Captain James Smith and overtaken near Kittanning, where five redskins were killed and scalped. The snows of winter prevented other ravages.

During the Christmas holidays General Hand learned that the British had built a magazine where Cleveland now stands and had stored arms, ammunition, clothing and provisions in it for the use of the Indians in the spring. He immediately planned an expedition for the destruction of the magazine. His call for troops required each man to be mounted and provided with food for a short campaign. He promised to provide the arms and ammunition.

The general proposed, as a special inducement to enlist, that all plunder would be sold and the cash proceeds divided among the force. February 15, about 500 horsemen were at Pittsburgh ready for the adventure, and this considerable force caused General Hand to be sanguine for its success.

The expedition followed the old Indian trail which descended the Ohio River to the Beaver and then ascended that stream and the Mahoning toward the Cuyahoga. The snow on the ground was soon melted by heavy rains and the marching was made difficult.

By the time the Mahoning was reached that stream was almost impassable, even some of the level lands were covered with water for wide stretches. The horsemen grumbled and Hand too was so discouraged that he was about to give up the expedition and return, when the foot-prints of some Indians were discovered on the high ground.

The tracks led to a small village, where a sudden attack was made, but the place contained only one old man, some squaws and children. The warriors were away on a hunt. The startled savages scattered and all escaped except the old man and one woman, who were shot and a woman taken prisoner.

This affair took place about where Edenburg is, in Lawrence County. The Indian told her captors that ten Wolf, or Munsee, Indians were making salt ten miles farther up the Mahoning. Hand dispatched a detachment after these savages and he went into camp under uncomfortable conditions.

The reported Munsee proved to be four squaws and a boy. The soldiers killed three of the squaws and the boy, the other squaw was taken prisoner. One of the soldiers was wounded here and another drowned during the march.

The weather conditions made further campaigns impossible and General Hand led his dispirited and hungry men back to Fort Pitt. The trophies were two Indian women. His formidable force had slain one old man, four women and a boy. On his arrival at Fort Pitt his work was generally derided by the frontiersmen and his expedition was dubbed the Squaw Campaign.

This finished General Hand as an Indian fighter. He asked General Washington to relieve him and May 2, 1778, Congress voted his recall and commissioned General Lachlan McIntosh to succeed him.

General Edward Hand won distinction in other directions. He was born at Elzduffs, Kings County, Ireland, December 31, 1744.

In 1767 he was appointed by George III surgeon of the 18th Royal Irish Regiment of foot, and sailed with the regiment from Cork on May 20 of the same year, arriving in Philadelphia July 11.

He served with this regiment at Fort Pitt and returning to Philadelphia in 1774, resigned his commission, receiving a regular discharge from the British service. In the same year he went to Lancaster and began the practice of his profession.

He joined the First Battalion of Pennsylvania Riflemen as lieutenant-colonel at the outbreak of the Revolution and served in the siege of Boston. He was promoted to colonel in 1776, and led his regiment in the Battle of Long Island, and also at Trenton. In April, 1777, he was appointed brigadier-general; and in this capacity served in command of the Western Department until relieved May 2, 1778; in October following he succeeded General Stark in command at Albany.

In the successful expedition against the Six Nations Indians in 1779, led by General John Sullivan, General Hand was an active participant.

Near the close of 1780, General Hand succeeded General Scammel as adjutant-general. He was an intimate friend of General Washington and had his full confidence during the entire struggle of the colonies. He was one of the original members of the Order of the Cincinnati.

In 1785 General Hand was elected to the Assembly; then he was a member of Congress and assisted in the formation of the Constitution of Pennsylvania in 1789, when the second Constitution of the State was written, and adopted the following year.

General Hand died at Rockford, Lancaster County, September 3, 1802.

The Reverend George Whitefield was an exceeding earnest worker for the good of souls. He came to America and spent much of his time in Georgia, where he preached effectively and established an orphan house and school near Savannah, laying the first brick himself for the building, March 25, 1740. He named it “Bethesda”—a house of mercy. It afterward became eminently useful.

Whitefield undertook to found a school for Negroes in Pennsylvania, and with it a settlement for persons converted in England by his preaching and subjected to annoyance on that account.

An agreement for a site was made with William Allen, May 3, 1740, when 5000 acres of land were purchased, situated at the Forks of the Delaware, the consideration being £2200. The title was made to Whitefield and then assigned to his friend William Seward, who was a man of considerable wealth, as security for Seward’s advancing the purchase money.

Two days afterward Whitefield preached in the morning at the German settlement on the Skippack Creek to about 5000 persons, and in the evening, after riding twelve miles to Henry Antes’, he preached to about 3000. The Moravian Boehler followed with an address in German.

During this same day Whitefield offered to hire as builders the Moravians who had arrived from Savannah on the sloop with him.

Whitefield and the Moravians then visited the ground, when the latter, by the cast of the lot, according to their custom, felt directed to engage in the enterprise.

Seward, several days after the purchase of the site was made, sailed from Philadelphia for England, partly to convert some securities into cash and also to solicit further contributions. He was accidentally hit on the head while at Caerleon, Wales, from the effect of which blow he died a few days later, October 22, 1740.

The Moravians arrived in that part of Northampton County, which is now within the limits of Upper and Lower Nazareth and Bethlehem Townships, and there commenced to erect a large stone house which Whitefield proposed to use as the school for Negroes. This tract its proprietor named Nazareth.

Here the Moravians worked for the remainder of the year and by their efforts had built two houses. But at this time there arose a dispute between Whitefield and those employed on the buildings. It is believed Whitefield disapproved of Boehler’s doctrinal opinions and, unable in an argument conducted in Latin to convince him, discharged the workmen.

The Moravians were allowed to stay on the property for some time by Allen’s agent, but the whole project failed, largely through Seward’s death. Whitefield again secured the title and cheerfully assigned it to the Moravians.

The Moravian workmen were compelled to seek a new home. This they found when their Bishop, David Nitcshmann, secured a tract of 5000 acres at the confluence of the Monocacy Creek and the Delaware River, on which, in March, 1741, they began to build Bethlehem. This eventually became the principal settlement of the Moravians in the province.

George Whitefield was born in Gloucester, England, December 16, 1714, and entered Oxford in 1732. He was a religious enthusiast in very early life, fasting twice a week for thirty-six hours and while an undergraduate became a member of the “Holy Club,” in which the denomination of Methodists took its rise.

Whitefield became intimately associated in religious matters with John and Charles Wesley. He was made deacon by the Bishop of Gloucester on Sunday, June 20, 1736, two weeks before his graduation, and attracted attention even by his first sermon; he drew such crowds in London and Bristol that people hung upon the rails of the organ loft and climbed in the windows.

The Wesleys accompanied Oglethorpe to Georgia in 1736 and the following year John Wesley invited Whitefield to join him in his work in America. He came in May, 1738, and after laboring for months as a missionary in the colony of Georgia he returned to England and was ordained priest at Oxford, Sunday, January 14, 1739. On his way a second time to Georgia he first visited Pennsylvania.

Whitefield and his friend, William Seward, arrived in Philadelphia in the evening of Friday, November 2, 1739, on horseback from Lewes, where they had disembarked.

He read prayers and assisted at Christ Church in the services of the following Sunday, and preached there in the afternoon and every day for the rest of the week with increasing congregations. He dined at Thomas Penn’s, and was visited by the ministers of the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches and by many Quakers. He preached twice to more than three thousand persons.

He made a trip to New York, and on his return preached from the yard of the Reverend William Tennent’s church on the Neshaminy to about three thousand, and from the porch window of the Presbyterian Church at Abington, and again several times at Christ Church.

When Whitefield was to preach his farewell sermon in the afternoon of November 28, the church not being large enough for those expected he adjourned to the fields, and preached to 10,000. Twenty gentlemen on horseback accompanied him out of town. At Chester he spoke from a balcony to 5000, of whom one-fifth had come from Philadelphia.

He was energetically philanthropic. His main purpose in going back to Georgia was to carry on his work among the poor orphans.

On Boston Common he preached to 20,000 at one time, and was distinctly heard.

Although he was active in the establishment of the Methodist denomination, he disagreed with Wesley on points of doctrine, and was finally an evangelist without the discipline of any denomination.

Whitefield crossed the ocean many times, and made tours from Georgia to New Hampshire. In September, 1769, he started on his seventh tour there, and the day before his death he preached two hours at Exeter, N. H., and the same evening preached in the open air at Newburyport, Mass. He died of asthma the next day, September 30, 1770, and was buried under the pulpit of the Federal Street Church in that town.

On May 4, 1876, James Carroll, Thomas Duffy, James Roarty, Hugh McGehan, and James Boyle, were placed on trial in Schuylkill County Court at Pottsville, for the murder of Benjamin F. Yost, of Tamaqua.

The details of this revolting crime and the apprehension of the Mollie Maguires are of interest as they reveal the terrible horrors experienced in the anthracite coal fields during the reign of this lawless organization.

James McParlan, the Pinkerton detective, who joined the Mollies under the alias of James McKenna, and successfully brought their leaders to the gallows, was working on the Gomer James murder outrage, when he learned that the next victim was to be an excellent and competent policeman of Tamaqua, of the name of Benjamin F. Yost.

McParlan had been unable to learn sufficient of their designs to get a warning to Yost, as he had so frequently done in other cases.

Yost had experienced considerable trouble with the Mollies, especially as he had several times arrested James Kerrigan, their local leader, for drunkenness. Barney McCarron, the other member of the Tamaqua police force, had also come in for his share of their ill-will, but, from his German parentage, Yost was the more intensely hated. Yost had been threatened several times but was a fearless man, a veteran of the Civil War, where he displayed conspicuous valor on many battlefields, and a policeman who served his community with fidelity.

About midnight of July 5, 1875, the two policemen in passing Carroll’s saloon, noted that the place was still open, went inside and saw Kerrigan and another man drinking.

The policemen proceeded with their duties, and extinguished the street lamps on their route. They arrived at Yost’s residence about two o’clock and partook of a lunch, preparatory to finishing up the night’s work.

The two officers parted at Yost’s front gate, and Mrs. Yost, looking out of her bedroom window, saw her husband place a small ladder against a lamp post a short distance from their home, and step upon the rungs, but he never reached the light.

The woman saw two flashes from a pistol; heard the two loud reports and saw her husband fall from the ladder. She ran down the stairs and into the street, and met the wounded man, staggering and weak with loss of blood, clinging to the fence, looking toward his once happy home.

Yost lived long enough to say that his murderers were two Irishmen who had been in Carroll’s saloon that evening. He exonerated Kerrigan of the crime, saying one was larger and the other smaller than he. He did not see Kerrigan.

Yost died at nine o’clock that morning; he was then thirty-three years of age.

McParlan was soon on the trail of the Mollies who committed this cruel murder, and Captain Linden, another Pinkerton operative, was also active on the case.

McParlan was at this time under suspicion by the Mollies of being a detective and his work was the most dangerous any man was ever called upon to perform, but he was a hero.

He now affected the role of a drunken man and while sleeping off his debauch listened to a conversation which gave him a clue; he then fell in with Carroll, engaged his wife in conversation and soon learned much of importance.

The next day he learned the names of two of the men who had killed Yost, Hugh McGehan and James Boyle, both of Summit Hill.

The following day he went to Coaldale and visited James Roarty, head of the Mollie branch there, ostensibly to see another person. Here they had a drinking bout, and Roarty told too much, and he was Mollie number three.

Two days later McParlan was back in Tamaqua and lounging about Carroll’s saloon where he got more information from Roarty and Carroll. He then learned that Thomas Duffy was an actor in the crime.

Sunday, July 26, McParlan and Carroll spent some time together, when the latter related the conversation he had had with some detectives (which McParlan had sent there), and boasted about loaning his pistol to the man who did the job. This made Carroll number four.

Soon afterwards Duffy bragged to McParlan of the part he had taken and the fifth Mollie was trapped.

All that was then needed was to gather his evidence so that it could be used against these criminals, and for this purpose Captain Linden was most valuable.

Kerrigan took McParlan to the scene of the murder and enacted the crime for his friend’s benefit, and soon after this incident the detective learned that McGehan fired the two shots which killed Yost.

This is the same James Kerrigan who turned State’s evidence in the great trial of Mollies at Mauch Chunk, January 18, 1876, which resulted in the conviction of Kerrigan, Michael J. Doyle, and Edward Kelly for the murder of John P. Jones. Kerrigan’s evidence was the most stunning blow the Mollies had thus far received, but they knew not the heavier blows which were to fall on their villainous heads.

The great trial of Thomas Munley and Charles McAllister for the murder of Thomas Sanger and William Uren, which was held at Pottsville, June, 1876, brought the great Franklin B. Gowen into the case, and the testimony of McParlan, the Pinkerton detective. Conviction followed.

Then May 4, when the five Mollies were placed on trial at Pottsville for the murder of Yost. Judges C. L. Pershing, D. B. Green and T. H. Walker presided.

A juror was taken sick and died, and the second trial was begun July 6, each of the Mollies was found guilty of murder in the first degree, and each was hanged in the Pottsville jail yard, the warrants being signed by Governor Hartranft, May 21, 1877, the executions being held June 21, the day eight Mollies expiated their crimes.