History of Cumberland & Adams Counties, Pennsylvania Part 2, Chicago: Warner, Beers & Company, 1886.
West Pennsborough 1751 - Samuel Wilson, John WilsonMiddleton 1761 - Walter Denny, Widow Wilson, Samuel Wilson, John GilbreathHopewell Township 1751 - Robert McDowell, James McDowellRobert Dinney
Following is the report of the proceedings made to the governor by Mr. Peters, under date of July 2, 1750:
To James Hamilton, Esq., Governor of Pennsylvania
May it please your Honor: - Mr. Weiser, having received your Honor's orders to give information to the proper magistrates against all such as had presumed to settle and remain on the lands beyond the Kittochtinny Mountains, not purchased of the Indians, in contempt of the laws repeatedly signified by proclamations, and particularly by your Honor's last one, and bring them to a legal conviction, lest for want of their removal a breach should ensue between the Six Nations of Indians and this province, we set out Tuesday, the 15th of May, 1750, for the new county of Cumberland, where the places on which the trespassers had settled lay . . .
On Tuesday, the 22d of May, Matthew Dill, George Croghan, Benjamin Chambers, Thomas Wilson, John Finley and James Galbreath, Esqs., justices of the said county of Cumberland, attended by the under sheriff, came to Big Juniata, situate at the distance of twenty miles from the mouth thereof and about ten miles north from the Blue Hills, a place much esteemed by the Indians for some of their best hunting ground, and there found five cabins or log houses, one possessed by William White, another by George Cahoon, another, not yet quite finished in possession of David Hiddleston, another possessed by George & William Galloway, and another by Andrew Lycon. . . .
The next day being the 24th of May, Mr. Weiser & Mr. Galbreath, with the under sheriff and myself, on our way to the mouth of the Juniata called at Andrew Lycon's with the intent only to inform him that his neighbors were bound for his appearance and immediate removal, and to caution him not to bring himself or them into trouble by a refusal. But he presented a loaded gun to the magistrates and sheriff; said he would shoot the first man that dared to come nigher. On this he was disarmed, convicted and committed to the custody of the sheriff. This whole transaction happened in sight of a tribe of Indians who by accident had in the night time fixed their tent on that plantation; and Lycon's behavior giving them great offense, the Shickcalamies insisted on our burning the cabin or they would do it themselves. Whereupon, when everything was taken out of it (Andrew Lycon all the while assisting) and possession being delivered to me, the empty cabin was set on fire by the under sheriff and Lycon was carried to jail. . . .
On Wednesday, the 30th of May, the magistrates and company, being detained two days by rains, proceeded over the Kittochtinny Mountains and entered into the Tuscarora Path, or Path Valley, through which the road to Alleghany lies. Many settlements were formed in this valley, and all the people were sent for and the following persons appeared, viz: . . . Robert Wilson . . . who were all convicted by their own confession to the magistrates of the like trespasses with those at Sherman's Creek and were bound in the like recognizances to appear at court, and bonds to the proprietaries to remove with all their families, servants, cattle and effects, and having all voluntarily given possession of their houses to me, some ordinary log houses to the number of eleven were burnt to the ground, the trespassers, most of them cheerfully and a very few of them with reluctance, carrying out all their goods. Some had been deserted before and lay waste. . . .
The like proceedings at Big Cove (now within Bedford County) against . . . William Shepperd . . . James Wilson and John Wilson, who coming before the magistrates, were convicted on their own confession of the like trespasses as in former cases, and were all bound over in like recognizances and executed the like bond to the proprietaries. Three waste cabins of no value were burned at the north end of the cove by the persons that claimed a right to them. . . . [end of report that I'm giving]
After the close of Pontiac's war, the valley, which had been so sadly devastated, soon began to wear an air of great prosperity. When it became a positive assurance that the savages, in fear of whom the people had lived for years, were to trouble them no longer, the joy of the afflicted was great, being tempered, however, by the recollections of the awful scenes through which they had so lately passed. The inhabitants who had left their homes to seek safety in the older settled counties to the east now returned to their homes in the valley, and many immigrants of a desirable class also came in and took advantage of the chances offered to them in the new country. In 1762 of 141,000 acres of land in the county, 72,000 acres had been patented and warranted by actual settlers. About the same time (1761-62) a few Germans had settled in the eastern part of the county, near the Susquehanna. Louther Manor was resurveyed and opened for settlement (1764-65), and two years later it was again surveyed and divided into twenty-eight lots or parcels, containing from 150 to 500 acres each, which lots were purchased principally by Scotch-Irish in Lancaster and Cumberland Counties, though some were sold to Germans. . . . Among purchasers of manor lands who were of Scotch-Irish nativity were . . . James Wilson . . . John Wilson . . .
Prominent settlers about the same time in various parts of the county were . . . James Galbraith, Esq. . . . in East Pennsborough; . . . Thomas Wilson (judge) . . . of Middleton.
East Pennsborough Township 1762 - . . . Robert Denny, . . . John Edwards . . . James Galbraith . . .
Carlisle 1762 - . . .William Denny . . . William Spear . . . William Spear for court house . . .
Allen Township 1762 - . . . David Willson, John Willson (weaver), John Willson . . .
West Pennsborough Township 1762 - . . . Thomas Butler . . . John Denny . . .
Middleton Township 1762 - . . . Walter Denny . . .
Hopewell Township 1762 - . . . James McDowel, Robert McDowel . . .
More Early Settlers . . . [Hopewell Township] . . . Andrew & John Galbreath owned land adjoining them on the east, and William Walker on the west. . . .
"David Williams, a wealthy land-holder and the earliest known elder in the congregation of Upper Pennsborough . . . " Thomas Wilson was farther east, near the present Henderson ill . . . Farther south near the present Walnut Bottom road were John Huston . . . Between them and the South Mountain, as early as 1749 were James McKnight . . . and in the same vicinity were . . . John Galbreath . . . John Wilson . . .
February 15, 1756, William Trent, in writing from Carlisle, stated that "several murders or captures and house burnings had taken place under Parnell's Knob, and that all the people between Carlisle and the North Mountain had fled from their homes and come to town, or were gathered into the little forts, that the people in Shippensburg were moving their families and effects, and that everybody was preparing to fly." [Dr. Wing, from Pennsylvania Archives] Shingas kep the upper end of the county in a state of terror, and fresh outrages were reported daily. The Indians killed, indiscriminately, men, women and children, and received rewards from the French for their scalps; they boasted that they killed fifty white people for each Indian slain by the English. Inhabitants of the Great Cove fled from their homes in November, with the crackling of their burning roofs and yells of the Indians ringing in their ears. John Potter, formerly sheriff sheltered at his house one night 100 fleeing women and children. The cries of the widows and fatherless children were pitiful, and those who had fortunately escaped with their lives had neither food, bedding nor clothing to cover their nakedness, everything having been consumed in their burning dwellings. "Fifty person," so it is recorded, "were killed or taken prisoners. . . . Twenty-seven houses were burned, a great number of cattle were killed or driven off, and out of the ninety-three families settled in the two coves and by the Conolloway's, members of forty-seven families were either killed or captured and the remainder fled, so that those settlements were entirely broken up." . . . Preparations were made at Shippensburg and Carlisle, where the people flocked in such numbers as to crowd the houses, to give the enemy a warm reception, and 400 men (of whom 200 were from this part of the valley) marched under the command of Hans Hamilton, sheriff of York County, to McDowell's Mill, in Franklin County, a few miles from the scene of the slaughter, but the Indians had retreated. . . .
Military Road, 1755 - This was in no part in the present county of Cumberland, though at the time it was Cumberland. It extended from McDowell's mill, near Chambersburg, "over the mountains to Raystown (Bedford) by the forks of the Youghiogheny, to intersect the Virginia road somewhere on the Monongahela," being supposed indispensable for the supply of Braddock's troops on the route to Fort DuQuesne, and after their arrival. The commissioners appointed to lay it out were principally from Cumberland County . . . A route was surveyed from a gap in the mountain near Shippensburg oer an old Indian trail to Raystown. . . . The road was from 10 to 30 feet wide, according to work necessary to construct it. 200 men from Cumberland County worked on the road, the whole cost being nearly £2,000. The road was completed to Raystown in the latter part of June. Braddock's defeat rendered further work further work unnecessary and Indian troubles caused a cessation of labor upon the roads. . . .
Robert Miller . . . (in 1768 until 1782, and later, according to the records, owned a tan-yard, and he also is said to have been a merchant. He was an elder in the church and held numerous offices. His daughter, Margaret, married Maj. James Armstrong Wilson). . . . [The Committee of Correspondence] recommended as officers for such a regiment . . . captains . . . A. Galbreath . . . The Sixth Regiment was accordingly organized, and William Irvine received his commission as colonel, January 9, 1776. Changes were made in the other officers and they were as follows . . . captains . . . James A. Wilson . . .
Early in the war James Wilson & John Montgomery were appointed colonels, and in the battalion of the former are mentioned the companies of Capt. Thomas Clarke and Thomas Turbitt. Montgomery was in the army at New York in 1776, and was at the surrender of Fort Washington, but both and he and Wilson were soon called into the civil department of the service and do not appear in the army after that year. . . .
The privates were . . . James Galbreath . . .
An act of the Supreme Executive Council passed March 17, 1777, provided for the appointment of one or more lieutenants of militia in each city or county, also, of sub-lieutenants, with duties which the act prescribed. . . . April 10, 1777, James Galbreath, of East Pennsborough Township was appointed, and finally accepted the position and performed its duties faithfully. He was succeeded by John Carothers . . . The sub-lieutenants were . . . James McDowell, of Peters Township . . . appointed in 1777 . . .
Justices During the Provincial Period - Thomas Wilson, April, 1763. . . . Thomas Wilson lived near Carlisle. . . .
Practitioners [Lawyers] - . . . James Wilson (also a signer of the Declaration of Independence).
The Bar in 1776 - . . . James Wilson . . . Robert Galbreath . . .
Revolutionary Period - . . . James Wilson, Robert Magaw & William Irvine were appointed deputies to meet those from other counties of the province. The first was afterward a signer of the Declaration, the second a colonel, and the third a general in the Revolutionary Army. . . .
James [Carnahan] had two son, Adam & James . . . Adam Carnahan died in 1800. His brother, James & Robert Carnahan (son of William) were his executors and at this death the name of the Carnahan disappears from Newtown Township. Robert only remained in Mifflin. He was married to Judith McDowell, who was born in Philadelphia a few days after her parents landed (1763), and died May 21, 1835. They had four children - two sons, William and Robert, and two daughters, Margaret and Jane. William, the elder son, immigrated to Indiana in 1835 (died 1869, aged eighty-four). Robert went to Cncinnati 9died ---). Margaret married Robert McElhenny. They moved to Columbus, Ohio, but , he dying soon after, she returned to the old home in Mifflin. Jane married Isaac Koons. . . .
Thomas Sharp, the father, had married Margaret Elder, the daughter of a Scottish laird, by whom he had five sons and five daughters . . . These were Robert, Alexander, Andrew (killed by the Indians), John and James. Of the daughters one married John McCune, another James Hemphill, another (--?--) Fullerton, another John Smith of Lurgan Township, now Franklin but then Cumberland County, and another (--?--) Harper . . . All of these sons, except Andrew, and all the husbands of the daughters, lived and died in the neighborhood of the Big Spring. . . . All of these sons of Thomas Sharp were, with the exception of Alexander, commissioned officers in the Indian War or the Revolution. Alexander went as a private. The children of Alexander, who married Margaret McDowell, were Andrew, Rev. Alexander Sharp, Dr. William M. Sharp, John, the father of Gen. Alexander Brady Sharpe, of Carlisle, known as "John Sharp of the Barren;" Col. Thomas Sharp, elder, who died unmarried, aged nineteen, and Ellen, who married Samuel McCune. . . .
Silver Spring Township . . . Of the Galbreaths there were also two brothers, Andrew & John. Andrew lived just below Bryson's (now Eberly's) farm, and John, up the creek, north of Bryson's farm. . . .
Upper Allen Township - Allen Township was formed from East Pennsborough in 1766. It then embraced what is now Monroe, Upper and Lower Allen Townships. Monroe was taken from Allen first in 1825, and in 1850 the remainder was divided into Upper and Lower Allen. Upper Allen is bounded on the north by portions of Silver Spring and Hampden; on the east by Lower Allen; on the south, where the Yellow Breeches Creek is the dividing line, by York County; and on the west of Monroe Township. . . .
In 1867 Mr. [George] Schroeder married Mrs. Martha Leas, born in this county, daughter of Robert Galbreath a descendant of James Galbreath, Jr., the founder of the family in Pennsylvania, and who was of Scotch-Irish stock, having immigrated to Pennsylvania, settling in 1712 at Donegal, in what is now Lancaster County, where he bought large tracts of land from William Penn. He married, in 1735, Elizabeth Bertram, who, with her father, Rev. William Bertram, came from Edinburgh, Scotland - all these people were Presbyterians. James Galbreath, Jr., was elected sheriff of Lancaster County in 1742 and judge of common pleas in 1745 and for many years served as justice of the peace. He removed to Cumberland County in 1760, and in 1763 was appointed judge of Cumberland County. He took an active part in the French & Indian war of 1755-56, and during the Revolution, in 1777, was appointed a colonel in this county, being at that time seventy-three years of age. Mrs. Schroeder died in November 1881, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church . . .
Mr. [William Miles] Watts married Miss Anna M. Reed, at Carlisle, June 28, 1847. She was born at Carlisle May 30, 1836, a daughter of Judge John and Sarah A. (McDowell) Reed. The former was born at Millerstown, Adams County, this State, in June 1786, and was appointed judge, under Gov. Findlay of Cumberland, Franklin and Adams Counties, and held that office for many years. He died January 19, 1850, at Carlisle. His wife was born at Fort Harmer, May 21, 1787, a daughter of Dr. John & Margaret Sanderson (Lukens) McDowell. Dr. McDowell was a surgeon in the Revolutionary war. . . .
Samuel Galbraith (deceased), of Scotch descent, was born in County Antrim, Ireland, in 1767, and came to the United States while quite a young man. There were four brothers - Robert, Samuel, Joseph and John. The subject of this sketch was a contractor on public works, and as such was closely connected with the early development of the country. In 1794 he settled in Cumberland County, buying, with his brother Robert, a tract of land in Dickinson Township, to which he moved when he retired to private life. He married a daughter of Squire Moore (John Moore), who died in 1813, leaving six children - John, Eleanor, Samuel, Maria, Matthew and Thompson Moore. He died in January, 1851. . . .
The early settlers upon the Manor of Maske located on Marsh Creek. A paper published in the Compiler, January 16, 1876, gives an interesting account of an old record paper found in the possession of the county surveyor. It is a report to Penn's agent of a list of settlers on the manor who had filed their claims upon lands, and included those who had taken out warrants as well as those who had not. To this valuable list of early settlers are added the names of those who took out warrants between 1765 and 1775, as appears on the records of the Department of Internal Affairs at Harrisburg.
- McDowell, John, April, 1741
- Parke, David, March 1741
- Parke, John, March 1741
- Wilson, James 600 acres, April 16, 1765
- Wilson, James, 538 acres, Feb. 23, 1767
- Wilson, Joseph March 1738
- Wilson, Thomas 418 acres, June 1764 and October 1765
- Wilson, Joseph 200 acres, Jan. 16, 1767
- Wilson, Thomas 200 acres, June 21, 1768
Adams County marriages:
- Robt. Jamison & Jene Wilson, Feb. 25, 1777, Cove
- William Galbraith & Sarah Ker, Dec. 29, 1778, Moounpleasant
- Moses Blackburn & Margaret McKnight Jan. 6, 1780 Canniwago
- William Reynolds & Sarah Wilson March 28, 1780 Cumberland
- William McCreery & Agnis Speer, Jan. 5, 1790 Hamilton's Bann
- James Wilson & Mary Young, March 17, 1791 Mount Pleasant
Highland Township - The principal streams of this township are Marsh Creek, which forms a part of its eastern boundary, and Little Marsh Creek, which flows into the parent stream just south of the old cemetery on the hill. There are many small streams found throughout this township which flow by many a dell into the two creeks named.
In the western part of the township the foot-hills of South Mountain rise up as if to hide the proud Sugar Loaf of Hamiltonban from the Eastern traveler. . . .
The greater part of this township outside of Carroll's Delight and within the boundaries given to The Manor of Maske in 1740. Here many of the Marsh Creek settlers made their homes between 1733 and 1741, and here also was enacted that agrarian drama, which ultimately won for the cultivator his ownership of the soil.
A list of entries in this portion of the manor, made in 1742 and recorded April 2, 1792, gives the following names of settlers: . . . John McDowell, April 1741 . . .
Menallen Township - The streams of this township are Conowago Creek, forming a part of the southern boundary, and its numerous northern feeders; Opossum Creek, rising in Bear Mountain and flowing north by east to Bendersville; hence southeast, and Mountain Creek which rises in the western foot hills of Piney Hill, flowing northeast into Cumberland County. There are many mountain streams coursing throughout the township, bringing a wealth of water to the higher lands and affording a full supply in all seasons to the settlers in the valleys.
Piney Hill ranges northeast through the western part of the township; Bear Mountain holds a central position; Pine Hill is on the Butler Township border; Rattlesnake Hill, southwest of Bendersville near Flora Dale; Round Top, just north of Bendersville, and North Hill, east of Round Top. Mountains form the dividing line between Menallen and the southern townships of Cumberland County. . . .
The tax payers of this township in 1799, which then comprised a part of Butler Township, are named as follows, with the trade and assessed valuation given:
- John Gibreath (or Galbraith) $2,224
Mountpleasant Township . . . The assessments for the year 1800, made in 1799 . . . The names of property owners, and values assessed as given are as follows:
- Margaret Degraff, widow $2,254, one male slave $30
- William Galbreath $720
- Robert Galbreath $890
Kelker, Luther. History of Dauphin County Pennsylvania with Genealogical Memoirs, New York, NY: Lewis Publishing Company, 1907
A return of the State supplies assessed on the taxable inhabitants of Dauphin county for the year 1787 - Londonderry Township [pounds, shillings, pence]:
- Wolf, Conrad £2.0.0
- Cloyd, Thomas [inmate] £0.5.0
I do hereby Certify that the Bearer hereof George Wolf of the fourth Betalyon a private has mustered in the yeares 1777, 1778 under Capt. Ludwick Myer and likewise in the year 1779 under Captain Jacob Writtelinger & me James Jackson Ensign. May the 3d. 1781.
A return of the First Class of the Fourth Battalion that served their tower of Duty at Lancaster 15th April 1778
- Private in 4th Company John Parks yr. 1777
A Return of Capt. Jas. Clark Compy of the fifth class of the fourth Batt'n Lancaster County Militia commanded by Robt. Elder, May 20th, 1778
- Private in 6th Class Allexr. Speer
- Private in 6th Class James Speer
A return of Capt. Jonathan McClure's Comp'y of the Fourth Battn. of Lancaster County Militia as the stand Classed October 15th 1779
- Private in 7th Class John Parks
A Return of Capt. James Clarks Company of the Fifth Class of the Fourth Battalion Lancaster County Militia, commanded by Col. Robert Elder, 18th Oct. 1779
- Private 4th Class James Speer
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