Forty leagues (120 miles) along the coast from Narragansett Bay toward Virginia, would terminate very nearly on the fortieth degree of north latitude, fixed as a boundary in the original grant to the Plymouth Company and would embrace the comparative little territory of both Wyoming and Lackawanna valleys.

The original charter of William Penn, which granted to him so many of the coal and iron-clad valleys and mountains of Pennsylvania, and which subsequently developed the Pennymite war in Wyoming, dates back to March 4, 1681. "Out of a commendable desire to enlarge our English Empire," &c., Charles the Second granted to William Penn, "all that tract or parte of land in America, with all the Islands therein conteyned, as the same is bounded on the East by the Delaware river from twelve miles distance, Northwarde of New Castle Towne unto the three and fortieth degree of Northern latitude, if the said River doth extend soe farre Northwards. But if the said River shall not extend soe farre Northward then by the said River soe farre as it doth extend, and from the head of the said River the Easterne bounds are to bee determined by a meridian line, to bee drawn from the head of the said River unto the three and fortieth degree, the said land to extend Westwards, five degrees in longitude, to bee computed from the Easterne Bounds, and the said lands to bee bounded on the North by the beginning of the three and fortieth degree of Northern latitude," &c.1

The opposing claims of Pennsylvania, as set forth by its agents, Messrs. Bradford, Read, Wilson, and Sargeant, before the Court of Commission assembled at Trenton, New Jersey, in November, 1782, to finally determine the controversy between Pennsylvania and Connecticut regarding Wyoming, will be found in ample detail in the Pennsylvania Archives, 1782-3. They claimed Wyoming

1 See Col. Rec., vol. i., pp. 17-26, for copy of original charter.

by virtue of the royal purchase of Mr. Penn, who with succeeding proprietaries had negotiated with the Indians for the full and absolute right of pre-emption for all the lands in dispute. They also claimed "that the Northern bounds have always been deemed to extend to the end of the forty-second Degree, where the figures 428 are so marked on the map; the River Delaware being found to extend so far North and farther; the said River, pursuing the East or main Branch thereof, above the Forks at Easton, hath been ever deemed to be one Boundary of Pennsylvania from twelve miles above New Castle, on the said River," &c.1

The northern part of the territory granted to William Penn, spread over a part of the western lands before granted to the colony of Connecticut, equal to one degree of latitude through the whole breadth of said grant.

The collisions, running through thirteen years of crimson austerities between Pennsylvania and Connecticut for jurisdiction and right of soil in Wyoming, originated either in great want of knowledge of the topography of America by the English Government, or an unpardonable careless exercise of it in regard to this charter to William Penn, which thus interfered with and overlapped lands already sold to Connecticut. Of this interference, Mr. Penn had notice at the time of his taking out his patent for those lands.2

The Indian title to the wilderness overshadowing the Schuylkill and "Lechhaiy Hills" (Lehigh) had been extinguished as early as 1732; and the land about the mouth of the creek called Lechawachsein (Lackawaxen) was purchased of the Indians by the Provincial Government of Pennsylvania in October, 1756; but Wyoming, more isolated in its sylvan solitude, had been reserved by the tribes controlling it, for hunting-grounds or a retreating place long after their intercourse began with the whites.

1 See Pa. Arch., 1782, p. 701. 2 Ibid., p. 707.

3

* Ibid., p. 722.

It was first sold by them, July 11, 1754, as before related, to the Connecticut Susquehanna Company.

It will be readily seen that the charter of Connecticut, embracing Wyoming, was given nineteen years anterior to that of Pennsylvania, possessed and settled by Connecticut with her strong and sturdy sons, and yet, after a deliberation of over five weeks in 1783, the adjusticating commissioners at Trenton, gave an opinion in the matter as follows, that astonished the citizens of both States with its brevity and its bias :-"We are unanimously of Opinion that the State of Connecticut has no Right to the Lands in Controversy. We are also unanimously of Opinion that the Jurisdiction and Pre-emption of all the Territory lying within the Charter Boundary of Pennsylvania, and now claimed by the State of Connecticut, do of Right belong to the State of Pennsylvania." This decision, known as the "Trenton Decree," from which there was no possible appeal or redress, while it decided the question of jurisdiction only, indicated the selfish and illiberal spirit that would and that did ultimately inspire a judicial opinion in regard to the right of soil already held by Connecticut by every essential condition giving validity to a title, viz.: grant from the king-purchase of the soil from the Indian owners, and actual occupancy of the

same.

Generations have been born and buried since our hillsides and villages, now exulting and expanding in their thrift, knew no tranquillity but that given for an hour by the stronger wielded bayonet of one rival party or the other, struggling for mastery of the valley; and even while the Indian wars smote down a father or a son with no shroud but the gloom of the forest, and no grave but some friendly rock yet full of the farewell whispers of the dead; or even when the Revolution came with its burden borne cheerfully and valiantly even here, the Connecticut set

1 Pa. Arch., 1783, p. 732.

tlers had hardly a moment's respite from officious sheriffs, and their often brutal posses, sent out by Pennsylvania to annoy, imprison, or expel the naturally quiet people of Wyoming.

The Connecticut controversy and the Pennymite contention for Wyoming, which had all the grand features of an epic poem, has long ceased to occupy the public mind as it did prominently for a half a century, because less occasion for its existence was known after the final compromising law of 1799 established kind and harmonious relations between the contending parties; but no one can peruse the able works of Peck, Miner, Chapman, or Pearce, or wade through the voluminous official papers of the State, giving such vast variety and abundance of documentary evidence pertaining to this matter, without feeling that the early emigrants from Connecticut who sought out and settled the lands of the Susquehanna and Delaware companies at Wyoming and Wallenpaupack in the best faith, were shamefully robbed and wronged by unprincipled persons acting by and with the authority of Pennsylvania. The bad spirit evinced by either party, as far as it relates to the history of the Lackawanna Valley, will be briefly noticed in a future page.

GENERAL HISTORY-CONTINUED.

To obviate trouble with a portion of the Indians rendered dissatisfied with the sale of Wyoming lands by the representations of the Penn interests inimical to the sale, the English Government, through its agents in America, held a treaty at Fort Stanwix, near Oneida Lake, in the fall of 1768, with the Six Nations; at which time and place the most friendly assurances were given and received by both parties, and the lands on the Susquehanna were ceded to the English. At the same general treaty, some of the chiefs of the Six Nations, willing to sell their lands

to as many parties and as many times as pay would be forthcoming, gave the Proprietaries of Pennsylvania a deed of Wyoming lands which had been sold nineteen years previous to the Susquehanna Company.

Immediately after the close of this Indian Congress, the Susquehanna Company held a meeting at Hartford, and voted to settle Wyoming at once. It was also "voted that forty Persons, upwards of the age of twenty-one years, Proprietors in said Purchase, proceed to take possession of said land by the first day of February next, and that two hundred more of the age aforesaid join the said forty as early in the Spring as may be." For the purpose of encouraging the self-reliant men who were expected to encounter many a repelling wave as they went into this Indian land, the sum of two hundred pounds was appropriated to purchase "proper materials, sustenance, and Provisions for said forty." Five townships, each five miles square, were to be laid out for "the said forty and the said two hundred persons, reserving and appropriating three whole Rights or Shares in each Township for the Public use of a Gospel Minister and Schools in each of said Towns, and also reserving for the use of said Company all Beds, Mines, Iron Ore, and Coals." " John Jenkins, Isaac Tripp, Benj. Follett, Wm. Burk, and Benj. Shoemaker, were appointed a committee to exercise a general superintendence over the affairs of the forty settlers, and to lay out and prepare a road through the wilderness to Susquehanna River. Fifty pounds, Connecticut currency ($167), was voted this committee to build this, the first road opened from the East to Wyoming. This trail or public road followed the warriors' path, and, unbridged for swamps and streams sometimes formidable indeed, was simply widened for the saddled horse.

A road had been opened to Teedyuscung's village from

1 Col. Rec., vol. ix., p. 570.

Ibid.