Frederic Antes Godcharles

“ When the party arrived at Kittanning, all the prisoners were cruelly treated, and Turner, the man who opened the gates of the fort to the savages, suffered the torture of being burned to death at the stake. He endured the most horrible torment for more than three hours, during which time red hot gun barrels were forced through parts of his body, his scalp was torn from his head and burning splinters of pine were stuck in his flesh until at last an Indian boy, who was held up for the purpose, sunk a tomahawk into his brain and released him from his misery. ”

“ On July 9 Colonel Samuel Hunter, the county lieutenant and commandant of the garrison at Fort Augusta (Sunbury) , wrote to the Governor:
“Nothing but a firm reliance upon Divine Providence and the virtue of our neighbors induces the few to stand that remain; and if they are not speedily re-enforced they must give way; but will have this consolation, that they have stood in defense of their liberty and country as long as they could. In justice to this county (Northumberland) I must bear testimony that the States never applied to it for men in vain. ”

“ A party armed themselves and went out to warn the living and bury the dead. They found death and destruction everywhere, and sickened with horror at seeing groups of hogs tearing and devouring the bodies of the dead.
After a delay of eighteen days, Bouquet secured enough wagons, horses and oxen, and began his perilous march towards Fort Pitt. His force was much smaller than General Braddock’s and he had to encounter a foe much more formidable. But Bouquet, the man of iron will and iron hand, had served seven years in American forests and, unlike the unfortunate Braddock, understood his work. ”

“ The same hall which had resounded with words of patriotic defiance that shook the throne of King George III and proclaimed to an astonished world the Declaration of Independence, that same hall in which the Congress had continued to sit during the greater part of that war, the State House in Philadelphia, was soon to witness the assembling of such a body of men as in point of intellectual talent, personal integrity and lofty purpose had perhaps never before been brought together. ”

“ When Sir Henry Clinton heard of the revolt of the Pennsylvania Line he misunderstood the spirit of the mutineers and dispatched two emissaries—a British sergeant named John Mason and a New Jersey Tory named James Ogden—to the insurgents, with a written offer that, on laying down their arms and marching to New York, they should receive their arrearages; be furnished with good clothes, have a free pardon for all past offenses and be taken under the protection of the British Government and that no military service should be required of them unless voluntarily offered. ”

“ The inhabitants of the infant Nation believed that Great Britain had wantonly trampled on their rights, and on May 12, 1812, Governor Simon Snyder expressed the feelings of the people in his call for Pennsylvania’s quota of 14,000 militia, when he stated that for thirty years we had lived at peace with all the nations of the earth, while the storm of war had been desolating many countries of the civilized world, and that all means which wisdom and patience could devise had been in vain resorted to in the hope of preserving peace. ”

“ Several years ago more than one thousand persons from every section of Pennsylvania, and not a few from Southern New York State, journeyed to a most out-of-the-way place up in the wilds of Potter County to do homage to the memory of a great man, and to view the scene of one of the saddest failures in the history of the settlement of our great Commonwealth. ”

“ As soon as the dawn of the new day made the town visible the troops attacked it through the cornfield, killing several of the enemy. The men were wearied by a forced march of thirty miles and had been aroused from sound sleep to make the attack, but they fought with great eagerness.
When the firing began Captain Jacobs immediately sounded the war whoop, and with a number of Indians, as the English prisoners afterward told Colonel Armstrong, cried: “The white men are at last come, we will soon have scalps enough,” but at the same time ordered their squaws and children to flee to the woods. ”

“ Colonel Hunter the same day sent a most pathetic appeal to the president of the Supreme Executive Council, dated Fort Augusta, July 12:
“The calamities so long dreaded and of which you have been more than once informed must fall upon this country, if not assisted by Continental troops or the militia of the neighboring counties. At this date the towns of Sunbury and Northumberland are the frontiers where a few virtuous inhabitants and fugitives seem determined to stand, though doubtful whether tomorrow’s sun shall rise on them free men, captives or in eternity.” ”

“ The four young men were hotly pursued by the Indians, who did not fire upon them, for they expected to take the inhabitants by a surprise attack. Shaw rushed into the town to learn if his kindred had gone into the fort. As he reached his father’s threshold he saw all within desolate and, as he turned, discovered the savages rushing toward him with their brandished tomahawks, and yelling the fearful warwhoop. He counted upon making one give the death halloo, and raising his rifle, the bullet sped true, for the savage at whom he aimed bounded in the air and fell dead. ”

“ The lives of men like James Logan ennoble the pages of history and make its study an elevating pursuit and a reinforcement to the resources of public morality. This man was worthy the compliment which the great vicegerent Shikellamy paid him, when he named his son in his honor; he was worthy to have been the trusted friend of William Penn, and to have had Benjamin Franklin for his printer. ”

“ Neither the Governor nor the Assembly showed the proper spirit. It was a time when the tomahawk, the scalping knife and the torch were desolating the frontiers of the Province.
The Indians set fire to houses, barns, corn, hay, in short, to everything that was combustible, so that the whole frontier seemed to be one general blaze. Great numbers of back inhabitants were murdered in the most shocking manner and their dead bodies inhumanly mangled. ”

“ His widow, who survived him twenty-one years, in 1824 received the first private call made by Lafayette in Philadelphia.
It is sad to think that a man who did so much for his country should at last have done so badly for himself. If we had had no Robert Morris there would probably have been no United States. All he had was at the service of America. There was no truer patriot. It was his confidence in the quick growth of the young nation that ruined him. Our country owes a great debt to Robert Morris, the Financier of the Revolution. ”

“ In that year there came to the southern cape, now Henlopen, a party of colonists from Holland, under David Pieterson De Vries, of Hoorn, “a bold and skillful seaman,” and the finest personage in the settlement of America.
On December 12, 1630, a ship and a yacht for the Zuydt Revier (South River) were sent from the Texel “with a number of people and a large stock of cattle,” the object being, said De Vries, “as well to carry on a whale fishery in that region, as to plant a colony for the cultivation of all sorts of grain, for which the country is well adapted, and of tobacco.” ”

“ The Delaware Indians viewed with alarm the steady encroachments of the whites, and many had already taken up arms against the English. The Quick family, however, had always lived on friendly terms with them, but the Indians were not unmindful of the fact that this sturdy Hollander had been the very first to push that far into their favorite hunting grounds.
The prospect of plundering an opulent man like Quick overcame any feelings of gratitude that might linger in the savage breast. ”

“ Captain Hawkins Boone, cousin of Daniel Boone, and himself one of the bravest soldiers in the Continental army, with a detail, consisting of thirty-two as brave men as ever fired a gun, rushed to the relief of the unfortunate defenders of Fort Freeland.
But in a few terrible hours the most advanced haven of refuge for the frontier settlers in the West Branch Valley was a mass of ruins; its defenders either victims of the tomahawk or prisoners of war; and the women and children objects of charity. ”

“ He will have many difficulties to encounter and many prejudices to overcome; but his fame will exceed that of the great Clinton, in the same proportion that mind is superior to matter. Whilst, the one has erected a frail memorial, which like everything human must decay and perish, the other will raise a monument which shall flourish in immortal youth, and endure whilst the human soul shall continue to exist. ‘Ages unborn and nations yet behind’ shall bless his memory.”
To Governor George Wolf that honor was accorded. ”

“ At what date and by whom the North and West Branch Valleys of the Susquehanna and the Juniata Valley were first traversed, and the Alleghenies first crossed by Europeans in a journey to the Ohio, is unrecorded, and must forever remain unknown.
The first white men who ventured into the unexplored forests among these mountains were not given to keeping journals of their travels for future historians. No one seems to have thought of immortalizing himself by bequeathing to us a good description giving minute details of the country and its tribes. ”

“ Nothing less than the impending war for liberty could justify the methods that were employed to change the frame of government under which the people had lived for nearly a century.
The most effective improvement in this instrument could have been made by amendment in the regular manner, but this method would not have served to satisfy the determined purposes of the leaders of that day.
The chief objections to the Constitution were the existence of a single legislative body, and a council of censors consisting of two men from each city and county in the State to hold office for seven years. ”

“ From our own great Commonwealth were Franklin, one of the profoundest philosophers in the world, and, though nearly fourscore years of age, was able to grasp and throw light upon the complex problems relating to the science of government; Robert Morris, the great financier, of whom it has been truthfully said, that “Americans owed, and still owe, as much acknowledgment to the financial operations of Robert Morris, as to the negotiations of Benjamin Franklin, or even to the arms of George Washington.” ”

“ Two days later, Nikes, the Mohawk, stood up and, addressing himself to Governors Denny and Bernard, said:
“We thought proper to meet you here to have some discourse about our nephew, Tedyuskung. You all know that he gives out that he is a great man and chief of ten nations. This is his constant discourse. Now I, on behalf of the Mohawks, say that we do not know he is such a great man, if he is such a great man, we desire to know who made him so. Perhaps you have; and if this be the case, tell us so. It may be the French have made him so. We want to inquire and know whence the greatness arose.” ”

“ King Charles II was at once willing to grant the petition of William Penn because he could thus pay the debt owed Sir William. Some of his counselors objected, saying, that it would be ridiculous to suppose that the interests of the British nation were to be promoted by sending a colony of people that would not fight, that would have nothing to do with gin and gunpowder in dealing with the Indians. But the young Quaker stood high in the favor of the Duke of York, and of Charles II, and the King gladly consented to this easy mode of discharging the obligation. ”

“ The spirit of the early settlers in Pennsylvania was alive with the idea of internal improvement, and very early they were anxious to reach out toward the western empire that was to become the promised land and furnish food for the world. The ultimate result of this vision was the construction of the grand system of canals connecting the navigable rivers, Delaware and Ohio, by which products of the States and Territories to the westward could be carried to Philadelphia, the metropolitan seaport city of Pennsylvania. ”

“ The struggle for independence had been fought and won, but with the triumph of the Revolution even those who had been opposed to the movement speedily acquiesced, though many years elapsed before all the bitter memories engendered by the strife could pass away. Time was healing the wounds of war, and others were growing up who had not suffered.
The adoption of the Federal Constitution had rendered the institution of measures necessary for the election of members of Congress and electors of President and Vice President of the United States. ”

“ The landing upon our shores, by the enemy, of hordes of marauders, for the purpose avowedly to create by plunder, burning and general devastation, all possible individual and public distress, gives scope for action to the militia of Pennsylvania by repelling that foe, and with just indignation seek to avenge the unprovoked wrongs heaped on our unoffending country. ”

“ June 2, 1753
Though not the largest nor yet the oldest, but to all Americans by far the most celebrated bell is the grand old “Liberty Bell,” whose tones on July 4, 1776, proclaimed the birthday of our Nation.
This historic bell was originally cast in London, in 1752, for the State House in Philadelphia. There it hung in the belfry of Independence Hall until July 8, 1835, when it cracked while tolling the news of the death of John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States. ”

“ Old man Walthour and Willard were killed, the latter falling not far from the stockade. An Indian rushed out of the bushes to scalp Willard, and was just in the act of twisting his fingers in the white man’s long hair, when a well-directed rifle shot, fired from the fort, struck the savage in the leg, who gave a horrid yell and made off toward the woods, leaving his gun beside his victim.
As soon as a band of frontiersmen could be collected they pursued the Indians, following their trail as far as the Allegheny River. ”

“ Had the Provincial Assembly acted promptly in the matter an effective defense could have been provided. The Government was deaf to all entreaties, and General Jeffreys Amherst, commander of the British forces in America, did not hesitate to vent his feelings in emphatic expression:
“The conduct of the Pennsylvania Assembly is altogether so infatuated and stupidly obstinate that I want words to express my indignation thereat. They tamely look on while their brethren are butchered by the savages.” ”