them, are seen at No. Six, favored with no thought of their former value to the community.

A store was opened at the Corners in 1820 under the auspices of the Drinker Turnpike; but the village, consisting of but four houses, had but a negative existence until the Pennsylvania Coal Company, in 1847-8, turned the sterile pasture-fields around it into a town liberal in the extent of its territory and diversified by every variety of life.

source.

The immense machine-shops of this company, concen trating and fostering a vast amount of superior mechani cal skill, are located at No. Six, and serve to give Dunmore additional note and character as a business village. In fact, Dunmore can congratulate itself not so much upon the internal wealth of its hills, as upon the vigor of the men who furrowed them out, and thus encouraged a town at this time deriving its daily inspirations wholly from this While Gen. Jolin Ewen, President of the Pennsylvania Coal Company, especially looks after its affairs in New York with a zeal assuring his courage and fidelity, the general superintendence of the entire works in Pennsylvania has been exercised by John B. Smith, of Dunmore, through an administration of nearly twenty years, in a manner so discreet, popular, and yet withal so modest, as jointly to advance the interests of the company, impart strength of development to Pittston, Dunmore, and Hawley, and change the circumstances and fortunes of a large class of men employed along the line of the road, who looked and trusted to industry for reward.

Dunmore is now an incorporated borough, is connected with Scranton, Hyde Park, and Providence by a streetrailroad, and enjoys an aggregate population of about five thousand souls.

HISTORY OF SCRANTON.

Nay-aug, or Roaring Brook, linked together by successive rapids and falls for many miles, emerges from the

water-shedding crest separating the Delaware from the Susquehanna, and forms the noisiest tributary of the Lackawanna, which it enters at Scranton, one mile below the ancient village of Capoose. The woodland along the brook, unbroken on its gorgeous surface save by the achievements of the beaver, whose dams and villages deepened many a curve, had no fixed tenantry but beasts of prey until 1788.

Across the Lackawanna, the skin-clad savages had vanished from their wigwams with a sigh, leaving their fertile meadows to be tilled by men efficient in industry, yet indifferent to fear, who used the jungle now marked by Scranton, to return the visits of the wolf and the bear coming often to them unannounced. Although the great war-path from the Indian villages on the Delaware to the

tribes strolling over Wyoming, intelligence of which had been early gained of the wandering bowmen, entered Capoose at the eddy affording moorage for the warrior's canoe, no one looked upon the tamarack swamp, now hid in the interior of Scranton, as suitable for a dwelling-place, while the richer lands west of the Lackawanna, more easily cared for, invited occupancy and tillage.

Philip Abbott was the first settler in "Deep Hollow," as this place was designated from 1788 until 1798, when it took the name of Slocum Hollow. While the month of May charmed the glen with its foliage and fragrance, Mr. Abbott marked out his clearing. On a ledge of rocks, washed by the brook whose waters it overlooked, near where stands the old Slocum House, rose from the uprolled logs the first cabin in the Hollow. It was simply a log hut or pen covered with boughs, formed but a single room, occupied in great part by a huge fire-place four or five feet in width and as many in depth, filled in the long evenings of winter with great sticks of wood before a back-log, which furnished both light and warmth to the hardy inmates. Philip was a native of Connecticut, had emigrated to Wyoming Valley with the Yankees before the Revolution, owned property under the Connecticut title, which he transferred to his brother James, both of whom were expelled by the Tories and Indians in 1778.

The settlers in Providence Township in 1788 were limited in numbers, yet their necessities sometimes pressing, found expression in the settlement of Deep Hollow. Corn and rye raised in the valley, had to be carried twenty miles to mill in Wyoming Valley, or half cracked by the pestle and mortar, and eaten almost whole. The wants of the inhabitants, multiplying gradually by the development of the settlement, and other causes wonderfully productive here in the wild woods, suggested to the practical mind of Mr. Abbott the erection of a grist-mill upon the Roaring Brook. Its waters were ample in volume and power; a dam easy of construction along its rocky

grottoes. The Lackawanna, spanned by no bridge, could generally be forded during the summer months, unless swollen by rains; in winter an ice-bridge favored communication with the farmers living across the stream.

The construction of the mill was marked by strong simplicity. One millstone wrought from the granite of an adjoining ledge, slightly elevated by an iron spindle, revolved upon its nether stone as rudely and firmly adjusted upon a rock. A belt cut from skin, half wrapped on the drum of the water-wheel, passing over the spindle with a twist, formed the running gear of a mill fulfilling the expectations of its projector, and the hopes of those encouraging its erection. The mill building, upheld by saplings firmly placed in the earth, was roofed and sided by slabs hewn from trees and affixed by wooden pins and withes. Nails comprised no part of its construction, nor did the sound of the mallet and chisel take part in the triumph of its completion. No portion of the mill surpassed its bolt in novelty. A large deer-skin, well tanned and stretched upon poles, perforated sieve-like with holes, made partial separation of the flour from the coarser bran. The strong arm of the miller or the customer worked the bolt. An old gentleman, now deceased, informed the writer many years ago, that when he was a mere lad "he often went to Abbott's mill with his father, and that while the corn was being ground the old man and the miller got jolly on whisky punches in the house, while he was compelled to stay in the mill to shake the meal through the bolt." So primitive and unique was the construction of this corn-cracker, without tools or machinery, that it simply broke the kernels of corn into a samp-meal, which made a kind of food very popular in the earlier history of the valley.

The grist-mill, maintaining and even increasing its importance among the yeomanry scattered along the river, needed additional capital and labor to arrange and enlarge its capacity. These requirements came with James Abbott,