University of Virginia Library

The settlements on this side of the mountains commenced along the Monongahela,
and between that river and the Laurel ridge, in the year 1772. In the succeeding year
they reached the Ohio River. The greater number of the first settlers came from the
upper parts of the then colonies of Maryland and Virginia. Braddock's trail, as it was
called, was the route by which the greater number of them crossed the mountains. A
less number of them came by the way of Bedford and Fort Ligonier, the military road
from Pennsylvania to Pittsburg. They effected their removals on horses furnished with
pack-saddles. This was the more easily done, as but few of these early adventurers
into the wilderness were encumbered with much baggage.

Land was the object which invited the greater number of these people to cross the
mountain, for, as the saying then was, "It was to be had here for taking up;" that is,
building a cabin and raising a crop of grain, however small, of any kind, entitled the
occupant to four hundred acres of land, and a pre-emption right to one thousand acres
more adjoining, to be secured by a land-office warrant. This right was to take effect
if there happened to be so much vacant land, or any part thereof, adjoining the tract
secured by the settlement right.

At an early period the government of Virginia appointed three commissioners to give
certificates, of settlement rights. These certificates, together with the surveyor's plat,
were sent to the land-office of the state, where they lay six months, to await any caveat
which might be offered. If none was offered, the patent then issued.

There was, at an early period of our settlements, an inferior kind of land title denominated
a "tomahawk right," which was made by deadening a few trees near the
head of a spring, and marking the bark of some one or more of them with the initials
of the name of the person who made the improvement. I remember having seen a
number of those "tomahawk rights" when a boy. For a long time many of them bore
the names of those who made them. I have no knowledge of the efficacy of the tomahawk
improvement, or whether it conferred any right whatever, unless followed by an
actual settlement. These rights, however, were often bought and sold. Those who
wished to make settlements on their favorite tracts of land, bought up the tomahawk
improvements, rather than enter into quarrels with those who had made them. Other
improvers of the land, with a view to actual settlement, and who happened to be stout
veteran fellows, took a very different course from that of purchasing the "tomahawk
rights." When annoyed by the claimants under those rights, they deliberately cut a
few good hickories, and gave them what was called in those days a "laced jacket,"
that is, a sound whipping.

Some of the early settlers took the precaution to come over the mountains in the
spring, leaving their families behind to raise a crop of corn, and then return and bring
them out in the fall. This I should think was the better way. Others, especially those
whose families were small, brought them with them in the spring. My father took the
latter course. His family was but small, and he brought them all with him. The
Indian meal which he brought over the mountain was expended six weeks too soon, so
that for that length of time we had to live without bread. The lean venison and the
breast of wild turkeys we were taught to call bread. The flesh of the bear was denominated
meat. This artifice did not succeed very well. After living in this way for some
time we became sickly, the stomach seemed to be always empty and tormented with a
sense of hunger. I remember how narrowly the children watched the growth of the
potato tops, pumpkin and squash vines, hoping from day to day to get something to
answer in the place of bread. How delicious was the taste of the young potatoes when
we got them! What a jubilee, when we were permitted to pull the young corn for
roasting ears. Still more so, when it had acquired sufficient hardness to be made into
jonny-cakes by the aid of a tin grater. We then became healthy, vigorous, and contented
with our situation, poor as it was.

My father, with a small number of his neighbors, made their settlements in the spring
of 1773. Though they were in a poor and destitute situation, they nevertheless lived
in peace; but their tranquillity was not of long continuance. Those most atrocious
murders of the peaceable, inoffensive Indians at Captina and Yellow Creek, brought on
the war of Lord Dunmore in the spring of the year 1774. Our little settlement then
broke up. The women and children were removed to Morris's Fort, in Sandy Creek
glade, some distance to the east of Uniontown. The fort consisted of an assemblage of
small hovels, situated on the margin of a large and noxious marsh, the effluvia of which
gave the most of the women and children the fever and ague. The men were compelled
by necessity to return home, and risk the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the
Indians, in raising corn to keep their families from starvation the succeeding winter.

Those sufferings, dangers, and losses, were the tribute we had to pay to that thirst for
blood which actuated those veteran murderers who brought the war upon us! The
memory of the sufferers in this war, as well as that of their descendants, still looks back
upon them with regret and abhorrence, and the page of history will consign their names
to posterity with the full weight of infamy they deserve.

My father, like many others, believed that, having secured his legal allotment, the
rest of the country belonged of right to those who chose to settle in it. There was a
piece of vacant land adjoining his tract, amounting to about 200 acres. To this tract
of land he had the pre-emption right, and accordingly secured it by warrant; but his
conscience would not permit him to retain it in his family; he therefore gave it to an
apprentice lad whom he had raised in his house. This lad sold it to an uncle of mine
for a cow and a calf, and a wool hat.

Owing to the equal distribution of real property directed by our land laws, and the
sterling integrity of our forefathers in their observance of them, we have no districts of
"sold land," as it is called, that is, large tracts of land in the hands of individuals, or
companies, who neither sell nor improve them, as is the case in Lower Canada, and the
northwestern part of Pennsylvania. These unsettled tracts make huge blanks in the
population of the country where they exist.

The division-lines between those whose lands adjoined, were generally made in an
amicable manner, before any survey of them was made, by the parties concerned. In
doing this they were guided mainly by the tops of ridges and water-courses, but particularly
the former. Hence the greater number of farms in the western parts of Pennsylvania
and Virginia bear a striking resemblance to an amphitheatre. The buildings
occupy a low situation, and the tops of the surrounding hills are the boundaries of the
tract to which the family mansion belongs.

Our forefathers were fond of farms of this description, because, as they said, they are
attended with this convenience, "that every thing comes to the house down hill."

Most of the early settlers considered their land as of little value, from an apprehension
that after a few years' cultivation it would lose its fertility, at least for a long time. I
have often heard them say that such a field would bear so many crops, and another so
many, more or less than that. The ground of this belief concerning the short-lived fertility
of the land in this country, was the poverty of a great proportion of the land in
the lower parts of Maryland and Virginia, which, after producing a few crops, became
unfit for use, and was thrown out into commons.

My reader will naturally ask where were their mills for grinding grain? Where their
tanneries for making leather? Where their smith-shops for making and repairing their
farming utensils? Who were their carpenters, tailors, cabinet workmen, shoemakers,
and weavers? The answer is, those manufacturers did not exist, nor had they any
tradesmen who were professedly such. Every family were under the necessity of doing
every thing for themselves as well as they could. The hommony-block and hand-mills
were in use in most of our houses. The first was made of a large block of wood about
three feet long, with an excavation burned in one end, wide at the top and narrow at
the bottom, so that the action of the pestle on the bottom threw the corn up to the
sides towards the top of it, from whence it continually fell down into the centre. In
consequence of this movement, the whole mass of the grain was pretty equally subjected
to the strokes of the pestle. In the fall of the year, while the Indian corn was soft, the
block and pestle did very well for making meal for jonny-cake and mush, but were
rather slow when the corn became hard.

The sweep was sometimes used to lessen the toil of pounding grain into meal. This
was a pole of some springy elastic wood, thirty feet long or more; the butt end was placed
under the side of a house, or a large stump. This pole was supported by two forks,
placed about one-third of its length from the butt end, so as to elevate the small end
about fifteen feet from the ground; to this was attached, by a large mortise, a piece of
a sapling, about five or six inches in diameter, and eight or ten feet long. The lower
end of this was shaped so as to answer for a pestle. A pin of wood was put through it
at a proper height, so that two persons could work at the sweep at once. This simple
machine very much lessened the labor, and expedited the work. I remember that,
when a boy, I put up an excellent sweep at my father's. It was made of a sugar-tree
sapling. It was kept going almost constantly, from morning till night, by our neighbors
for several weeks. In the Greenbrier country, where they had a number of saltpetre
caves, the first settlers made plenty of excellent gunpowder by the means of those
sweeps and mortars.

A machine still more simple than the mortar and pestle, was used for making meal,

while the corn was too soft to be beaten. It was called a grater. This was a half-circular
piece of tin, perforated with a punch from the concave side, and nailed by its
edges to a block of wood. The ears of corn were rubbed on the rough edges of the
holes, while the meal fell through them on the board or block to which the grater was
nailed, which, being in a slanting direction, discharged the meal into a cloth or bowl
placed for its reception. This, to be sure, was a slow way of making meal, but necessity
has no law.

The hand-mill was better than the mortar and grater. It was made of two circular
stones, the lowest of which was called the bed-stone, the upper one the runner. These
were placed in a hoop, with a spout for discharging the meal. A staff was let into a
hole in the upper surface of the runner, near the outer edge, and its upper end through a
hole in a board fastened to a joist above, so that two persons could be employed in
turning the mill at the same time. The grain was put into the opening in the runner
by hand. These mills are still in use in Palestine, the ancient country of the Jews,
To a mill of this sort our Saviour alluded, when, with reference to the destruction of
Jerusalem, he said: "Two women shall be grinding at a mill, the one shall be taken
and the other left." This mill is much preferable to that used at present in Upper
Egypt for making the dhoura bread. It is a smooth stone, placed on an inclined plane,
upon which the grain is spread, which is made into meal by rubbing another stone up
and down upon it.

Our first water-mills were of that description denominated tub-mills. It consists of
a perpendicular shaft, to the lower end of which a horizontal wheel of about four or five
feet in diameter is attached; the upper end passes through the bed-stone, and carries
the runner after the manner of a trundlehead. These mills were built with very little
expense, and many of them answered the purpose very well. Instead of bolting cloths,
sifters were in general use. They were made of deerskins, in the state of parchment,
stretched over a hoop, and perforated with a hot wire.

Our clothing was all of domestic manufacture. We had no other resource for clothing,
and this indeed was a poor one. The crops of flax often failed, and the sheep were
destroyed by the wolves: Linsey, which is made of flax and wool—the former the
chain, and the latter the filling—was the warmest and most substantial cloth we could
make. Almost every house contained a loom, and almost every woman was a weaver.

Every family tanned their own leather. The tan-vat was a large trough sunk to the
upper edge in the ground. A quantity of bark was easily obtained every spring in
clearing and fencing land. This, after drying, was brought in, and in wet days was
shaved and pounded on a block of wood, with an axe or mallet. Ashes were used in
place of lime, for taking off the hair. Bears' oil, hogs' lard, and tallow, answered the
place of fish oil. The leather, to be sure, was coarse; but it was substantially good.
The operation of currying was performed by a drawing-knife with its edge turned, after
the manner of a currying-knife. The blacking for the leather was made of soot and
hogs' lard.

Almost every family contained its own tailors and shoemakers. Those who could not
make shoes, could make shoepacks. These, like moccasins, were made of a single piece
of leather, with the exception of a tongue-piece on the top of the foot. This was about
two inches broad, and circular at the lower end. To this the main piece of leather was
sewed with a gathering stitch. The seam behind was like that of a moccasin. To the
shoepack, a sole was sometimes added. The women did the tailor-work. They could
all cut out and make hunting-shirts, leggins, and drawers.

The state of society which existed in our country at an early period of its settlement,
is well calculated to call into action every native mechanical genius. This happened in
this country. There was in almost every neighborhood some one, whose natural ingenuity
enabled him to do many things for himself and his neighbors, far above what
could have been reasonably expected. With the few tools which they brought with them
into the country, they certainly performed wonders. Their ploughs, harrows with wooden
teeth, and sleds, were in many instances well made. Their cooper-ware, which comprehended
every thing for holding milk and water, was generally pretty well executed.
The cedar-ware, by having alternately a white and red stave, was then thought beautiful;
many of their puncheon floors were very neat, their joints close, and the top even
and smooth. Their looms, although heavy, did very well. Those who could not exercise
these mechanic arts, were under the necessity of giving labor or barter to their
neighbors in exchange for the use of them, so far as their necessities required.