be paid in land or money. The Connecticut claimants, with the memory of the repeal of the "confirming act" fresh in their minds, were little disposed to act or take the benefit of this law.

April 6, 1802, an act was passed requiring the commissioners to survey, value and certify the whole of each tract claimed by Connecticut people, and turned the Pennsylvania claimant, who had not released, over to the mercy of a jury to award his compensation.

In 1805 the Westmoreland county records were authorized to be deposited with the recorder of deeds in Luzerne county, and certified copies made evidence.

April 9, 1807, Pennsylvania claimants, under title previous to the "confirming act," were permitted to release, and the commissioner in examining Connecticut claims "shall not require the same lands to have been occupied prior to the decree of Trenton, but the same lands to the several applicants certify, if under the rules and regulations of the Susquehanna company, at any time they should otherwise thereto be entitled." This commission was abolished March 28, 1808.

These laws were executed with intelligence and fidelity. By October, 20, 1802, about 1,000 Connecticut people had exhibited their titles. All the lines in the seventeen townships had been again surveyed, and certificates issued to the holders. These certificates were conclusive between Connecticut claimants, but did not conclude a Pennsylvania claimant.

Of the compromise act of 1799, in the case of Barney vs. Sutton, 2 Watts, 36 Scott, president judge of the Luzerne common pleas court sums up the whole thus: "At last the legislature adopted the expedient of acting as mediators between the Connecticut and the Pennsylvania claimants, for, the purpose of putting a final end to the controversy. The act was strictly the act of mediation. It proposed terms of settlement and compromise to the parties, and the controversy was finally happily settled. The judge then gives the following as pertinent history of the longdrawn-out contention:

At the commencement of the Revolution settlements had been effected in most, if not all, of the seventeen townships, and in many of them extensive improvements had been made. The settlers were a hardy, intelligent, brave and patriotic people. During the Revolutionary struggle neither the sufferings and privations which they endured nor the menace of the executive authority of Pennsylvania could drive them from their settlements, nor could the offers of British gold tempt them to abandon their country or the common cause of liberty and independence in which they were engaged. They had become so numerous that they furnished nearly 1,000 men for the regular service. They did still more. They sustained, single handed, for more than three years, a frontier war, during the most gloomy period of the Revolution, and successfully repelled an enemy "whose known mode of warfare spared neither age nor sex nor condition." On July 3, 1778, they were attacked by a numerous body of Indians, British and tories, and in one disastrous battle nearly the whole settlement were reduced to widowhood and orphanage. The feeble remnant that escaped soon mustered and returned to the settlement, and until the close of the war presented a barrier to the incursions of the savage foe. This is a mere skeleton of the early history of this settlement. It would require a volume to fill it up. But enough has been noticed to satisfy any one not blinded by interest or prejudice of the equitable claims of these people. They came into possession under color of title, such a title, too, as they honestly believed to be good, and in which they were induced to confide by a government claiming jurisdiction over the territory. Was this circumstance nothing as a ground of equity? Were the improvements and possession of the country nothing? Were the sacrifices and sufferings and privations of the people in defence of the country and in the common cause nothing? Are such a people to be considered outlaws? To this last question I adopt the answer of the late chief justice in the case of Satterlee vs.

Matthewson: "God forbid! They are not to be so considered.' Considerations like these have uniformly been regarded as sufficient in Pennsylvania to ground an equity. The principle has been carried further. Our statute books and the decisions of our courts furnish numerous instances where like considerations have been deemed sufficient grounds of equity in favor of those who had taken possession of lands without title or color of title, and in favor of those who had taken possession in violation of the positive enactments of the legislature, as in the case of lands not purchased of the Indians.

"Half-share Men."-An act of the assembly, March 11, 1800, repealed the general act for the limitation of actions to be brought under the act of March 26, 1785, within the seventeen townships, or in any case where title is claimed under the Susquehanna company.

April 6, 1802, an act was passed by the legislature, which the court, in the case of Irish vs. Scovell, 6 Binn, 57, fully explains when it says: "The manifest object of this act appears to have been to continue the kindness which had been extended to the seventeen townships, but to cut up by the roots the title of Connecticut in all other parts."

And it thoroughly accomplished its purpose, but was attended with some unfortunate circumstances, but of these it is necessary here to notice only such as were enacted within Luzerne county. The "half share" men were often called the "Wild Yankees"-they realized that they were being ruthlessly outlawed-and Col. John Franklin, the Satterlees, Kingsburys and Spaldings were their friends, and in some respects their leaders. Acts of bloody violence were committed. Col. Arthur Erwin, an extensive land owner in the north part of the county, was shot dead while sitting in the door of Mr. McDuffie, of Athens; the Rev. Thomas Smiley, at that time living eight or ten miles up the Towanda creek, while acting as an assistant agent under the "intrusion law," was tarred and feathered. Col. Abraham Horn had been appointed by the Pennsylvania landholders to put the "intrusion law" in force, and at once entered upon his duties. In June, 1801, he went to Bradford county, but, apprehending danger from the violent oppression of the people, he stopped at Asylum. Rev. Thomas Smiley had written to the agent that nearly all the forty settlers on Towanda creek would renounce their Connecticut titles, and purchase of the Pennsylvania claimants. A conference was held at Asylum. Mr. Smiley was commissioned a deputy agent, and furnished with the necessary papers. July 7 he obtained the signature of nearly forty to their relinquishments and submissions, and started for Asylum. A meeting was held, and the "Wild Yankees" determined that the business must be stopped. About twenty men from Sugar Creek, Ulster and Sheshequin, armed and diguised, started in pursuit. Mr. Smiley, hearing the arrangements of the conspirators, went down to Joshua Wythe's, near Monroeton, where he remained until dark, and then stopped for the night at Jacob Granteer's. The parties followed him and broke into the room where he was sleeping, captured his papers, burned them, and led him down to the creek, tarred and feathered him, and the leader giving him a kick told him to "go." John Murphy, David Campbell, Jacob Irvine, Ebenezer Shaw Stephen Ballard and Benjamin Griffin were presented to the grand jury for this, but no bill was found.

Gov. Hoyt concludes with the following propositions:

1. In the form of law, Connecticut, with a title regular on its face, failed justly.

2. In the form of equity the Connecticut settlers, without other title than the possessio pedis prevailed rightly.

This is the condensed story of the "seventeen townships," the "Connecticut claims"-the "first and second Pennamite and Yankee wars," as well as the story of the settlement of northern Pennsylvania and the unequaled bravery,

patience and endurance of our distinguished forefathers. A chapter of deep interest to every student of American history; the central individual figure in it all was Col. John Franklin, the representative of Connecticut. To this day men in considering it are liable to confuse the two and only questions in it all into one question, and thereby bias their own otherwise better judgments. These questions should have been kept distinct, namely, right of jurisdiction and the right of soil, and in this light would have been easily settled. The actual settlers cared nothing as to the jurisdiction over them, and it must be conceded that on both sides purchasers bought good. titles, that is, the individual acted in good faith, and the authorities on each side had good color of authority to dispose of the soil. In this view the judicial question for the courts should have been simply one of priority of claim, regardless of which faction either party belonged to or claimed under. When the Trenton decree was promulgated it was the plain duty of Pennsylvania to have promptly accepted that as a settlement of all questions in her favor of jurisdiction, and at once recognize every title of the Connecticut claimants, and this would have incorporated the colony as good and loyal citizens of the State, and have ended forever all dispute or bad blood. The State erred in making itself a partisan in the question of soil, a mere agent or attorney, intent upon land-grabbing in behalf of its clients, regardless of all questions of equity or even justice, and it proceeded in a long course of evictions that were not only unjust, but utterly cruel. As seen above, in the end the State had to become a mediator-the very thing it should have done at first. It did this only when Connecticut ceased to trifle with the question, and set about in earnest a bold defence of its long-suffering people. After the thing had run on a hundred years or more, and the people had suffered an unbroken stream of wrongs to which they had been led by the promises of Connecticut, then it roused up and boldly said to its colonists, if you can get justice in no other way than by forming yourselves into a new and separate State, we will back you even to the bloody issue. This action of Connecticut brought here Ethan Allen and his followers, flushed with his successes in Vermont, and it is estimated that by the time the mediatory act of Pennsylvania, 1799, was passed, there were 10,000 people in the valley, ready to carve out with their sharp swords the new State; that these men, made desperate, could have defended themselves against the world. Many of the ablest and purest men of the State were now taking sides with the Connecticut claimants, and happily the authorities saw the gathering cloud and promptly, though now impossible of fairness and equity, took the only step it could take, and the end came.

Nothing more fitting could conclude this chapter, which is a mere compilation from the historical lecture of Gov. Hoyt before the society, than the words of the same gentleman used in an address delivered at the base of the monument July 3, 1891. Of all men living perhaps not one is so well qualified to treat the subject so profoundly, judicially and understandingly as Ex-Gov. Hoyt, who for years investigated all sides of the question as a lawyer and student in cases in which he was engaged, where the cold, impartial truth alone could avail:

The Wyoming massacre was a most deplorable episode. It had no necessary connection with the orderly development of history in this valley. It was an incident which happened to occur here, but which was produced by no local causes, and, as I think, was not inspired by local considerations. From 1769 to 1799 a controversy between the purchasers under the Susquehanna company and the State of Pennsylvania wore out one whole generation of men in itself. I myself have never seen any historical connection between that controversy and the massacre. At the same time the partisans of one side of that controversy were the victims of the massacre, and hence the tendency to identify the controversy with the massacre. I think it well, here and now, to get right, historically, on this question, and to try and arrest the tide of resentment which is apt to arise against the State in which our ancestors