Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

“ The Assembly of Pennsylvania named Colonels Lowrey and Cunningham, while the Council of Safety sent Colonels Dean and Bull. Thomas Paine was appointed secretary to the commission.
On January 7, a company of Indians arrived at Wilkes-Barre to 71announce the coming of the larger body en route to Easton. About January 15 the main delegation reached Wilkes-Barre. There were seventy men and one hundred women and children in the party.
Among the chiefs were the following: Taasquah, or “King Charles,” of the Cayuga; Tawanah, or “The Big Tree,” of the Seneca ”

“ On the 22d of September, along with Elkin, I made a speech at Wilkes-Barre before the League of Republican Clubs, reviewing what had been accomplished, including the newspaper act. The resolutions adopted declared that I had proven to be “a wise, prudent, firm and conscientious executive.” On the invitation of “Uncle Jerry Roth,” an enterprising Pennsylvania Dutchman, I saw the Allentown Fair, generally regarded as the most successful agricultural fair in the state, and found thirty thousand people there. ”

“ The Lehigh Valley R.R. has not resumed, and trains are stopped on other roads by miners. Engineers driven from pumps, and mines are flooding. In Wilkes-Barre there is said to be a scarcity of provisions, owing to interrupted transportation, and fears are felt of disturbance on that account. A concentration of troops in Luzerne, to give control of property, open traffic, and protect workmen, would remove the last vestige of lawlessness in eastern Pennsylvania. ”

“ Besides, Pennsylvania bought a large tract of land from the Six Nations at the same treaty, and in a way not satisfactory to the Indians.
The French and Indian War prevented any attempt at settlement of the Wyoming Valley until 1762, when about 200 colonists and their families entered the valley and commenced building and planting near the site of the present Wilkes-Barre. Before winter set in, extensive fields of wheat had been sown upon lands covered with forest trees in 492August. But owing to the scantiness of provisions, the settlers returned to Connecticut for the winter. ”

“ The large population and enormous production have caused all the railways to send in branches to tap its lucrative traffic, so that it is the best-served region in Pennsylvania. It has two large cities—Wilkesbarre, in Luzerne, and Scranton, in Lackawanna. Wilkesbarre is on the eastern Susquehanna river bank, a town of forty thousand people, named after the two English champions of American Colonial rights. It covers much surface in the centre of the valley, with suburbs spreading far up the mountain sides. ”

“ Messieurs, I know the strong must rule the weak, the big brain the little one, but why not some small approximation towards equilibrium, just a slightly less heavily loaded table for Dives and a few more crumbs for Lazarus? I beg you—a few more crumbs! You will appear so much more pleasing because of your generosity.
Wilkes-Barré proved a city of charm—a city so instinct with a certain constructive verve that merely to enter it was to feel revivified. ”

“ Its pleasant shores are a favorite resort of the Wilkesbarre people. The flourishing city of Scranton is about nineteen miles north of Wilkesbarre, in the Lackawanna Valley. 239 It has grown to a population of a hundred thousand people, and is picturesquely situated among the coal mines, with a higher elevation than Wilkesbarre, being nearly eleven hundred feet above tide, at the confluence of the Roaring Brook with the Lackawanna River; and it has extensive iron industries, being the chief city of northeastern Pennsylvania. ”

“ WILKINSBURG, a borough of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., immediately E. of Pittsburg, of which it is a residential suburb. Pop. (1890) 4662; (1900) 11,886, of whom 1336 were foreign-born and 275 were negroes; (1910 census) 18,924. Wilkinsburg is served by the Pennsylvania railway and by interurban electric lines. It is a post-station of Pittsburg. In the borough are a Home for Aged Protestants (1882) , the United Presbyterian Home for the Aged (1879) , and Columbia hospital (1908) . ”

“ But from almost every point of view in the city the outlook is over black culm-heaps or coal-breakers or at rows of coal cars, so that there is a monotony in the steady reminder of the source of their riches, the omnipresent anthracite. About twelve miles northwest of Wilkesbarre, up in the North Mountain range, is the largest lake in Pennsylvania—Harvey's Lake—elevated nearly thirteen hundred feet and covering about two square miles. ”

“ The first bulletin announcing the tidings of the Wilkes-Barre uprising is posted by the Javelin at 2.35 o'clock. From this moment the crowds in City Hall increase. No one who can get within range of the blackboard thinks of leaving. ”

“ For him, every one within reach of his voice has the deepest love and admiration; for the hapless woman beside him, there is not a man or woman who would turn a hand to keep her from starving.
If the men and women of Wilkes-Barre can be made to sanction the union of Trueman and Ethel Purdy, is there any reason to doubt that the question of social inequalities can be settled without bloodshed? Trueman determines to venture his election, his future, his life, to win the greatest triumph of his career, a wife whom the world despises as the favorite of fatuous fortune. ”

“ Will any man presume to affirm that Colonel Luttrell is the free choice of the electors of Middlesex? We all know the contrary. We all know that Mr Wilkes - whom I mention without either praise or censure - was the favorite of the county, and chosen by a very great and acknowledged majority to represent them in Parliament. ”

“ The king's hatred of Barré, a dislike second only to that felt for Wilkes, blocked Barré's promotion in the army, and led to his retirement from the service in February 1773. When the Rockingham ministry was formed in the spring of 1782, he was appointed treasurer of the navy, and received a pension of 3,200l. a year, to take effect ‘whenever he should quit his then office,’ a proceeding which made the ministry unpopular, and enabled the younger Pitt some time later to gain applause by granting to Barré the clerkship of the Pells in lieu of the pension. ”

“ The women organized themselves into societies, the object of which was to make uniforms and to pick lint and to prepare for nursing.
At this time my uncle, Joseph R. Whitaker, lived at Mount Pleasant, in Maryland, about a mile and a half from Havre de Grace, and my uncle, William P. C. Whitaker, with a family of five daughters, lived in Havre de Grace. It looked for a time as though Maryland would follow the other states of the South into the maelstrom of secession, and the clouds gathered darkly up to the very borders of Pennsylvania. ”

“ As early as 1722 we read that “William Wilkins was 150 miles up the Sasquehannah trading for his master.” His master was John Cartlidge, an Indian trader living at Conestoga, and 150 miles farther up the 553Susquehanna was a venturesome trip at that date. There are also records of several Frenchmen engaged in the trade living among the Indians east of the mountains, extending their travels up the Susquehanna and its branches.
A great council was held in Philadelphia, July 3, 1727, with the chiefs of the Six Nations, but most of those in attendance were Cayuga, Conestoga and Ganawese. ”

“ Either he or one of his trusted lieutenants visited all the American settlements on both sides of the Cascade mountains and an exhaustive report of the expedition was later printed by the United States Government. Wilkes was in frequent consultation with the missionaries and the leading men among the settlers, and later became the object of most acrimonious criticisms, charging him with disloyalty to American interests and unwarranted friendship toward the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company. ”

“ Foreign ministers must drive a carriage and four with a postilion.” He left St. Petersburg on 8 Aug., 1833, spent a short time in Paris and London, and reached home in November. The next year was spent in private occupations in Lancaster, except that he was one of the commissioners appointed by Pennsylvania to arrange with commissioners from New Jersey concerning the use of the waters of Delaware river. On 6 Dec., 1834, the legislature of Pennsylvania elected him to the U. S. senate to succeed Mr. Wilkins, who had been appointed minister to Russia. ”

“ What sentiments were entertained towards him may be gathered from the speech which Wilkes, the chamberlain of the city, made on this occasion. After lavishing much praise on Pitt, he thus alluded to the parliamentary contest, which was then at its height:—“I know, sir, how high you stand in the confidence of the public: much is to be done, but you have youth, capacity, and firmness; it is the characteristic of a true patriot never to despair. ”

“ But the Wilcoxes have no part in the place, nor in any place. It is not their names that recur in the parish register. It is not their ghosts that sigh among the alders at evening. They have swept into the valley and swept out of it, leaving a little dust and a little money behind. ”

“ After several failures better fortune attended his efforts in another direction, for on the 3rd of May 1782 all the declarations and orders against him for his elections in Middlesex were ordered to be expunged from the journals of the House. In 1779 Wilkes was elected chamberlain of the city by a large majority, and the office became his freehold for life. He died at his house in Grosvenor Square, London, on the 26th of December 1797. ”

“ Like Burr, Wilkinson was extravagant, loved display, and lived beyond his means. In an age when heavy drinking was not uncommon his indulgence was sufficiently conspicuous to provoke comment. He was soon overwhelmed with debt and, following the example of many other men in the same predicament, decided to go west to recoup his fortunes. It was in Kentucky and the Southwest that he was destined to spend the rest of his life.
The Spaniards were then in possession of New Orleans, parts of the present Louisiana, the Floridas, Texas, and Mexico. ”

“ Walpole was no less struck with the irrepressibility of Wilkes's character than annoyed at his being elected to an office which would bring him into close contact with the king;—"Wilkes is another Phœnix revived from his own ashes. He was sunk—it was over with him; but the ministers too precipitately hurrying to [Pg 122] bury him alive, blew up the embers, and he is again as formidable as ever; and what will seem worse he must go into the very closet whenever the city sends him there with a message.... Wilkes in prison is chosen member of Parliament and then alderman of London. ”

“ When the first intelligence was received in the village of Wilkesbarre that the battle was lost, the women fled with their children to the mountains on their way to the settlements on the Delaware, where many of them at length arrived after suffering extreme hardships. ”

“ At two in the morning we flanked Wilkesboro, the capital of Wilkes County. To a chorus of barking dogs, we crept softly around it, within a few hundred yards of the houses. The air was full of snow, and when we reached the hills again, the biting wind was hard to breathe.
We walked about a mile through the dense woods, when Captain Wolfe, who had been all the time declaring that the North Star was on the wrong side of us, convinced our pilot that he had mistaken the road, and we retraced our steps to the right thoroughfare. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Washington soon became comfortably settled in the fine home of Robert Morris, the same house which Sir William Howe occupied while the British were in possession of Philadelphia and General Washington was suffering with the Colonial troops at Valley Forge. The Morris house was built of brick, three stories high. The stable could accommodate twelve horses. ”

“ This was held in the House of Commons to be a seditious libel and Wilkes was again expelled from the House. The electors of Middlesex protested by returning him again and again, defying the House of Commons and glorifying Wilkes—who was still imprisoned in the King’s Bench—as the champion of national liberty. Wilkes was now the most popular man in England. ”

“ The deadly disease swept away whole families. Eleven persons died in one house within a day.
Philadelphia with 50,000 population in 1792 was then not only the largest and busiest city of the Nation but its seat of government. The Congress moved from the city to Germantown; President George Washington and the members of his Cabinet and their families departed the city, and every person who could afford it followed their example. ”

“ When the United States were yet very young, in fact, before the Federal Constitution was even proposed, before Washington was elected president, when the small cluster of log huts, protected by a stockade called Fort Pitt, was all that constituted Pittsburgh, is the time this old newspaper began its long and honorable career. ”

“ My present expectation is an oration from Barr`e (400 in honour of Mr. Pitt; for those are scenes that make the world so entertaining. After that, I shall demand a satire on Mr. Pitt, from Mr. Wilkes; and I do not believe I shall be balked, for Wilkes has already expressed his resentment on being given up by Pitt, who, says Wilkes, ought to be expelled for an impostor. (401) I do not know whether the Duke of Newcastle does not expect a palinodia from me (402) T'other morning at the Duke's lev`ee he embraced me, and hoped I would come and eat a bit of Sussex mutton With him. ”