Six Steps to Susquehanna Company Settlers

Six Steps to Susquehanna Company Settlers Donna Bingham Munger* 'TRACING PENNSYLVANIA settlers who purchased land through I the Connecticut-based Susquehanna Company has long been considered a difficult, if not impossible, task. The records seemed not to exist, and the settlers' relationship to the Pennsylvania government was not well understood. While the Susquehanna Company itself became an object of study in the late 1920s, the individuals who patronized it were buried in the records. Since the early 1860s, when the company account books were put away for safe-keeping, Pennsylvania's Susquehanna Company settlers have been lost to several generations of researchers. Except for two county historians and the editors of the Susquehanna Company Papers,' the names of these individuals have eluded their descendants. Recently, however, clues in the older historical literature enabled this author to locate the invaluable Susquehanna Company Account Books. Also, while chief of the Division of Land Records in the Pennsylvania State Archives, the author became familiar with the complete collection of Seventeen Certified Townships records.' This article will outline six steps by which researchers can resurrect their westward-looking Susquehanna Company ancestors. The land activities of the Connecticut settlers in Pennsylvania can now be traced through two sets of records: 1) the account books of the Susquehanna Company, and 2) the Pennsylvania Land Office records of the Seventeen Certified Townships. *Editor's Note: The author; who served as the final chief of the Division of Land Records, Pennsylvania State Archives, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, is currently a history advisor in the Pennsylvania Department of Education. She holds a master's degree in historyfrom the University of Washington in Seattle, has studied at the University ofMatyland, at Washington University in St. Louis, and at the Pennsylvania State Universit)i and has taught history at all levels /rum junior high school through college. One of her lateral ancestors was a commissioner of the Susquehanna Company and an aaive land speculator 125 126 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine The Susquehanna Company had purchased the Indian right to northeastern Pennsylvania several years before the Pennsylvania proprietors negotiated their purchase treaty for the same region. A few hardy Connecticut settlers had moved into Pennsylvania in 1762 and 1763, but Indian raids delayed significant settlement until after the 1768 treaty at Fort Stanwix (Rome, New York) opened the Wyoming Valley for settlement. Almost immediately thereafter, hundreds of Connecticut settlers moved into the region. Their migration led to a land dispute of extraordinary proportions. While the Wyoming Valley was closed for legal settlement through the Pennsylvania Land Office until after the Purchase of 1768, Pennsylvanians were slow to settle in the region even after it was purchased from the Indians. Tracts of land could not be warranted and surveyed until the Land Office had processed all special applications from certain "officers" and "gentlemen," veterans of the French and Indian War, and had given all "presumptive settlers" an opportunity to file applications for the land on which they were squatting.' This delay gave the Susquehanna Company sealers at least a two-year lead on Pennsylvania settlers. Establishing their own townships in the Wyoming Valley, Susquehanna Company setters claimed northeastern Pennsylvania as part of Connecticut. They attached the region to Litchfield County and named it the town of Westmoreland. Soon after, they set the area aside as its own county. Despite intervals of war, migration from Connecticut continued at a steady pace. Before the Susquehanna Company closed its books in 1803, it had allocated over 250 townships.' Susquehanna Company Account Books The first step in searching for an individual thought to be associated with the Susquehanna Company is to look within the Susquehanna Company records. The company records fall into two distinct sets. One set consists of company minutes and account books run together in chronological order. The other set comprises the township records of the first towns settled. The company minute and account books were begun by the company proprietors in Connecticut in 1753. They contain carefully recorded minutes of company meetings, accountings of the sales of shares, allocation of townships, and the conveying of shares and lots from one individual to another. In 1782, after the decree of Trenton Susquehanna Company Settlers 127 made Connecticut-based land activity in Pennsylvania illegal,' a radical faction within the company wrested control from the original proprietors. John Franklin, the self-proclaimed company champion and leader of the radical faction, transferred the records to Pennsylvania and reactivated them in Wilkes-Bane in 178'7.6 Eight years later he established a land office farther up the Susquehanna River, in Athens, Pennsylvania, and the company operated from there until 1803.7 In 1862, many years after Franklin's death, the company records were recovered from his homestead in Athens and donated to the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford.8 Subjected to a series of events similar to the game of Hide and Seek, these valuable volumes remained inaccessible to all but a few local historians. It was not until 1929 that Julian P. Boyd, then the director of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, Wilkes-Barre, and the first editor of the Susquehanna Company Papers, located the several volumes in Hartford and had them photostated. In the process, he changed the pagination, so that the photostat pages are numbered differently from the original volumes.9 Boyd separated the minutes of the company meetings from the land accounts. He incorporated the minutes into the published Susquehanna Company Papers. Included in the 11-volume project, which was completed by Roberti. Taylor, are lists of individuals who purchased shares, correspondence relating to the company, petitions, memorials, resolutions, and all other related documents that Boyd and Taylor were able to locate in major archival repositories. All research should begin with these volumes. Although the publisher indexed each volume separately, original shareholders can be identified easily, as can individuals who played a prominent role in company activities. In searching for the land activities of particular individuals, however, the account books are of much greater value. They should be consulted as the second step in looking for a Susquehanna Company purchaser or settler. Begun in 1769 when shareholders in the Susquehanna Company commenced serious settlement in Pennsylvania, the account books record every land transaction the company made. Organized into books called Liber, they are designated by succeeding letters of the alphabet, A through I. Books B and C have grantor/grantee indexes, but these indexes are incomplete. Books D 128 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine through I are not indexed. Apparently Julian Boyd intended to solve the index problem by publishing an all-name index to the photostatic version of the account books as a twelfth volume in the Susquehanna Company Papers series. His assistant prepared typescript summaries of account book entries and nearly completed a file card index before they abandoned the project.' After rediscovering the file cards, account books, and photostats, this author decided to readdress Boyd's missing twelfth volume by preparing a computerized data base index based upon the original version of the account books." This index is forthcoming as Susquehanna Company Purchasers: A Data Base of the Account Books. When this is available, all research can begin with these volumes. As the third step in looking for individuals, researchers should consult the records of the first townships settled by the pioneers from Connecticut. These volumes, preserved at the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society in Wilkes-Barre, are called the Westmoreland Records. When the Susquehanna Company shareowners actually began to settle in Pennsylvania, they organized into townships and began to keep local records. Comprising four volumes, the Westmoreland Records contain, among other items, minutes of meetings, land surveys, lot numbers, and conveyances between settlers. The town book of Wilkes-Barre, the third volume in the series, is actually the first in chronological order. Begun in 1770, it includes minutes of settlers' meetings and deed records through 1777. The remaining three volumes continue under the title Records of the Town of Westmoreland and cover the period from 1777 to 1782. Appended to volume four are lists of settlers of the first five towns settled: Forty (Kingston), Wilkes-Barre, Plymouth, Lackawanna (Pittstown), and Nanticoke (Hanover). To augment the Westmoreland records, researchers should refer to extant probate and tax records. Probate records for the period 6 January 1777 through 16 June 1783 are preserved in one volume housed at the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society and were published in volume 18 of the Society Proceedings (pp. 139-242). A copy of the original also has been published separately as The Wyoming Valley Probate Records. The earliest tax lists begin with the August 1776 list of inhabitants. A yearly listing continued for the next five years. The original tax lists for the first four years are among the Sheldon Reynolds manuscripts at the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society. They were published by Horace Hayden as "List of Taxable Susquehanna Company Swims 129 Inhabitants in the Town and County of Westmoreland, . . 1776 1780" in volume 5 of the Society Proceedings (pp. 205-42). The tax list for 1781 is included in Hayden's book, The Massacre of Wyoming (WilkesBarre, 1895), pp. 78-83. Seventeen Certified Townships Records Land records of Susquehanna Company settlers or their descendants who remained in Pennsylvania and eventually attempted to transfer their land from titles issued under the authority of the Susquehanna Company to titles issued under the authority of Pennsylvania may be located in the Seventeen Certified Townships records in the Pennsylvania State Archives. These records fall into two distinct sets: 1) the loose, original documents collected from the landowners or created by the state when land claims were evaluated and settled, and 2) the bound volumes of copies of many, but not all, of these documents. Consulting the master index and bound volumes of copies of these records should be the fourth step in looking for Susquehanna Company settlers. Although the decree of Trenton had nullified Connecticut jurisdiction in Pennsylvania, it had left the issue of individual land ownership unsettled. Connecticut settlers and Philadelphia land speculators continued to vie for control of northeastern Pennsylvania. Each group had purchased land in its own way: Connecticut settlers through John Franklin and the radical faction of the Susquehanna Company; Pennsylvania speculators by warrant and patent through the Pennsylvania Land Office. Frequently, the land they had purchased was one and the same tract. Determined to heal the festering wound of conflicting land ownership, the Pennsylvania legislature enacted a compromise law in 1799.12 The terms of the law provided compensation to title holders claiming disputed land under Pennsylvania warrants dated prior to the 1782 decree of Trenton on which a survey was executed, provided they released their land to the state. Susquehanna Company landholders on the same tracts would be certified as the new owners if they could prove a chain of title dated from before the 1782 decree in a township also formed before the decree. Since only 17 of the 250 Susquehanna Company townships had been founded before 1782, many settlers were automatically disqualified. Townships that had been founded before 1782 were Bedford, Braintrim, Claverack, Exeter, Hanover, 130 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine Huntington, Kingston, Newport, Northmoreland, Pittstown, Plymouth, Providence, Putnam, Salem, Springfield, Ulster, and Wilkes-Barre. To evaluate the legality of Pennsylvania releases and Susquehanna Company claims, the compromise law of 1799 created a board of three claims commissioners. Their first job was to classify into four categories the land returned to the state by Pennsylvania survey holders. The lists of Pennsylvania releasers and copies of the deeds returning their land to the state are entered in four Land Office volumes as follows: Names of Releasors—john and Richard Penn by Their Attorney Edmund Physick Vol. A and Vol. B, and Luzerne Release Book Na. 1 and No. 3. By law, once 40,000 acres had been returned, the commissioners could entertain the claims of Connecticut settlers. Unfortunately, it was 1801 before a group of claims commissioners was appointed who could agree on procedure for settling Connecticut claims. With the power of the state behind them, this board ordered John Franklin to surrender the official Susquehanna Company records. The commissioners promised to return the records after they had been copied. Franklin complied by sending as little as possible, only the minutes of the company meetings." From the minutes, the commissioners decided that Bedford and Ulster townships may not have been formed prior to 1782 and temporarily removed them from the list of certified townships. In their process of deciding claims, the commissioners collected a vast amount of evidence before awarding resurveys and the right to a Pennsylvania patent. The master index to the surveys and patents granted in the 17 certified townships is the volume titled Certified Townships Luzerne.' All individuals who were certified are listed by their Susquehanna Company township and lot number. It is important to remember that these townships differ in name and configuration from those laid out in the same location by the Pennsylvania authorities. The survey book and number in the index refer to the series of 12 oversized, copied survey volumes titled Seventeen Certified Townships, Surveys and Certifications. These volumes have not been microfilmed, but the original surveys are filed under the file title "17 Townships—Luzerne," use the same numbering system, and have been microfilmed.' The names of the patentees of each tract are also cited in the index volume. In cases where the patentee differs from the certified Connecticut claimant, the claimant sold his tract Susquehanna Company Settlers 131 before completing the patenting process. The patent series, book, and page refers to the regular Land Office patent books. As part of the patenting process, certified claimants were required to purchase their land anew from the state of Pennsylvania. Each tract was divided into as many as four classifications depending upon quality. First class land was valued at $2.00 per acre, second class at $1.20 per acre, third class at 50 cents per acre, and fourth class at 8.33 cents per acre. This was less than half the amount per acre that Pennsylvania claimants were reimbursed when they released their land to the state.' Another Land Office volume, Classification 17 Townships—Luzerne,17 contains the lists of classifications for all the tracts certified in 15 of the 17 townships. The valuations for the temporarily disqualified townships of Bedford and Ulster are bound in a separate volume titled Classification and Valuation Bedford and Ulster.' In addition to these official bound records, other documents were gathered by the claims commissioners. To complete the search for individuals, these documents must be consulted as a fifth step. Many Connecticut claimants were not certified as eligible to receive Pennsylvania patents for their land, and, therefore, they do not appear in any of the foregoing Land Office volumes. Because they submitted claims, however, their records can be found in the loose records and/or bound volumes discussed below. The claims commissioners held meetings in each township. They copied or abstracted the records the claimants submitted into folio volumes titled "Minutes of Evidence respecting the Titles of Connecticut Claimants." The Land Office bound the folios into three volumes. One volume carries the title Letters of Evidence—Hanover, Newport, Wilkes-Barre, Kingston." The other two volumes are tided Connecticut Claimants Vol. 2 and Connecticut Claimants Vol. 3." Volume 2 contains abstracts for the townships of Claverack, Northmoreland, Bedford, Huntington, Exeter, Braintrim, Springfield, and Salem. Volume 3 contains records for Plymouth, Pittstown, Providence, and Putnam. Volume 1 of Connecticut Claimants contains a chronological abstract of deeds which claimants recorded in Luzerne County deed books between the time Pennsylvania established jurisdiction in 1786 and the passage of the compromise law in 1799. The Wyoming Historical and Geological Society has duplicate copies of some of the Letters of Evidence volumes. 132 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine Many of the original records from which these volumes were prepared, and many other records which Connecticut claimants submitted to prove land ownership, are filed by township as part of the loose Seventeen Certified Townships records. The Land Office used such headings as applications, deeds, claims, and oaths of single tide.21 Other records are filed under Miscellaneous. All have been microfilmed in the order in which they are Filed.n Not every Connecticut claimant was able to secure title to his land under the terms of the 1799 compromise law. In cases where a Pennsylvania landholder had secured title to the same or overlapping tract after 1782, a conflict still remained. The problem festered until 1807, when the Pennsylvania legislature finally passed an amendment to the compromise law." The new legislation also authorized compensation for these landholders provided they released their land to the state. The records of Connecticut claimants submit ted under this amendment are copied in a volume titled Book of the Fifteen Townships. This book is printed in Pennsylvania Archives, 2d series, volume 18.2' The settlement of individual titles was not complete until 1810, however, when Bedford and Ulster were reinstated as certified townships. All claimants who could prove acquisition and occupation of their lots prior to March 1787, with the further stipulation that Ulster claimants were to trace their title to the first grant of the township in 1775, were certified.' Deeds and documents gathered under this law are bound in a book titled journal of the Commissioners, 1810. This book is also printed in Pennsylvania Archives, 2d series, volume 18.26 To identify the location of a Connecticut claimant's landholdings, a sixth step must be taken. Maps of connected surveys, otherwise known as warrantee township maps, must be consulted, but it can be confusing to use these maps. Researchers must remember that all certified Connecticut claimants' surveys and patents supplanted warrants, surveys, and patents given to other individuals for the same or overlapping pieces of land. Although the Land Office has completed maps for most of the region encompassing the Seventeen Certified Townships,' the maps are based upon the configurations of the current Pennsylvania townships. The Luzerne County township maps correctly show only the certified claimants' tracts and not the underlying Pennsylvania warrantee tracts. On the other hand, township maps for Bradford County show the Pennsylvania warrantee's tract Susquehanna Company Settlers 133 overlaid by the certified Connecticut claimant's tract. Nevertheless, by adjusting a warrantee tract map and a current topographical map to the same magnification through the use of a duplicating machine, and then overlaying one on the other, it is possible to determine location with moderate accuracy. Warrantee maps can be purchased from the Land Office. In summary, by following these six steps and their side excursions, researchers should be able to follow the land activities of Susquehanna Company patrons. The account books contain the names of all share purchasers entitled to land and to whom they conveyed their shares or land. The Pennsylvania land records created under the compromise law of 1799, the 1807 amendment, and the Bedford and Ulster Act of 1810 provide ample opportunity to find a Susquehanna Company settler or his family who remained in Pennsylvania to become a Connecticut claimant. It is neither difficult nor impossible to trace Susquehanna Company settlers. Readers who wish to learn more about land settlement in Pennsylvania should consult the author's recently published guide, Pennsylvania Land Records: A History and Guide to Research. The guide provides a historical discussion of each type of record held in the Pennsylvania Land Office, an annotated inventory of the records, and a complete microfilm correlation. Since the microfilm can be purchased, the guide enables users to do their research wherever they have access to a microfilm reader. Notes 1. Both David Craft's Historical Discoutse of the li5Talusing Presbyterian Church (privately printed, 1870) and his History of Bradford County (Philadelphia, 1878) contain material from the four account books that he was able to find in 1868 or 1869 when he visited the Connecticut Historical Society ( hereafter CHS) in Hartford. Oscar Jewell Harvey's A History of Wilkes-Barre, vols. 1 and 2 ( Wilkes-Barre, 1909) is based upon all Susquehanna Company minute and account books. Julian P. Boyd edited vols. 1-4 of the Susquehanna Company Papers (Wilkes-Barre, 1932, repr. Ithaca, New York, 1962) and Robert,]. Taylor edited vols 5-11 (Ithaca, 1967-71). 2. For an explanation of the Seventeen Certified Townships, see below. For a detailed discussion, see Donna Bingham Munger, Pennsylvania Land Records: A History and Guide to Reseamh (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1991). 3. For the Purchase of 1768, see Munger, Pennsylvania Land Records, section iiI.E.2. 4. For the townships see, Susquehanna Company Papen, 10:566-77, and the map inserts in vols. 1 and 2. 134 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine 5. The actual date of the proclamation announcing the decree was 6 Jan. 1783. For a copy of the decree, see Patent Bk. P, 2:299, Land Office, Pennsylvania State Archives, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), Harrisburg. 6. The company clerk, Samuel Gray, recorded his last entry in Liber C, p. 108. Between 7 and 20 Feb. 1787, Franklin moved the company records to Wilkes-Barre, where he used them in hearings to determine the amount of land actually settled under company rules and regulations. 7. The assistant clerk, David Paine, began to record deeds in 1795 in Liber C, p. log. 8. Edward O. Herrick, jr., to Charles Homer, 26 June 1862, CHS. 9. For a correlation of photostat pages to original pages, see Donna Bingham Munger, "Following Connecticut Ancestors to Pennsylvania: Susquehanna Company Settlers," New England Historical and Genealogical RATister, 139 ( 1985):112-25. Photostats not lost in the 1936 flood are at the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society (MICAS), Wilkes-Barre. 10. These materials are at the WHGS, Wilkes-Barre. 11. The original Susquehanna Company records have been microfilmed and can be used in that form at the CHS and at the Pennsylvania State Archives ( PSA) in Harrisburg. 12. "An Act for Offering Compensation to the Pennsylvania Claimants of Certain Lands within the Seventeen Townships, in the County of Luzerne, and For Other Purposes Therein Mentioned," in Charles Smith, ed., Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania [hereafter cited as Smith's Law], 3:362-69. 13. Susquehanna Company Papers, 11:246 49, 331. 14. Land Office microfilm reel number [ hereafter LO micro:] L22, Pennsylvania State Archives, PHMC. 15. LO micro: 9.13-9.19. 16. Smith's Laws, 3:362-69. 17. LO micro: 25.31-25.32. 18. LO micro: 2530. 19. Ibid. 20. LO micro: 25.32. 21. Oath of single title means tide held under one jurisdiction only, either the Susquehanna Company or the Pennsylvania Land Office, a requirement of the 1799 law. 22. LO micro: 9.1-9.13, 9.20. 23. Smith's Laws, 4:41142. 24. LO micro: 25.30. 25. Smith's Laws, 5:127-31. 26. LO micro: 25.21. 27. Wyoming County has not been mapped; thus, portions of the following Susquehanna Company townships have not been mapped: Exeter, Putnam, Braintrim, and Northmoreland. -