Clement Biddle Valentine Gardne го athan Potts M.Hillegas Joeph Pafchally Faul Fosks. Mauh-Clarkson James Wilson, The Cadwalader Jacob Buché John Redman Jacob Ducké, Clark LambertCarwale der Francis Hopkinson ids. Sanington John Murgatroyd theart by end Whn Dickinion Nicholas Waln Funny Drinker Herry From: Evans The Liverzey John Hellers Tuphen Paphall "OLD MOTHER CUMBERLAND." BY GEORGE O. SEILHAMER, ESQ. [A paper read before the Kittochtinny Historical Society, at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.] IN the march of civilization westward from the Delaware the Indian trader was always in the van. First among the Indian traders who penetrated the wilderness in advance of . the pioneer were three Frenchmen,-Pierre Bizailon, Martin Chartier, and Jacques Le Tort. At the beginning of the eighteenth century these Frenchmen were objects of suspicion. They were harassed in their trade, being often fined for alleged irregularities in their importations, and sometimes sent to jail on frivolous charges. But within a year or two of his arrival in the province they found a friend in James Logan. From the outset Logan saw how they might be made useful to the Proprietary, and he used and rewarded them. All of them were granted plantations on the Susquehanna, Bizailon among the Indians of Peshtang, Chartier at Turkey Hill, near the Conestoga reservation, and Le Tort in Donegal, above Shawneetown. The only one of these to establish a trading-post in the Cumberland Valley was Le Tort, who built a cabin at Beaver Pond, near Carlisle, as early as 1720. As the first white man to obtain a foothold in the valley, Jacques Le Tort becomes an object of interest for all of us. Unfortunately, nobody ever took the trouble to write his biography, and such allusions as the colonial annals contain relating to his personal and domestic affairs tell us more of the traits and characteristics of his wife, Ann Le Tort, than of the busy trader upon whom Logan depended for his knowledge of the vast region west of the Susquehanna. Madame Le Tort was a woman of intrepid spirit, and someVOL. XXIV.-2 |