Frontier Country. Patrick Spero

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СКАЧАТЬ Blunston stood at the head of the operations that fall day. Blunston held the titles of justice of the peace, recorder of the deeds, and county prothonotary—a central position in county government that had important powers of oversight. Blunston had the perfect pedigree for the job. His roots in Pennsylvania went back to the colony’s founding. His father followed William Penn’s call and eventually rose to the highest levels of government, serving in various local offices and in both the Assembly and Provincial Council. Samuel, now forty-two years old, was following in his father’s footsteps. Blunston arrived on the banks of the Susquehanna in 1728 after purchasing a three-hundred-acre farm.³

      By 1731, after only three short years in the area, Blunston had become more than a leading figure in the new county. Blunston’s many roles meant that he was the new government. His task was no small one. It fell to him to establish the colony’s authority in a region populated by, in his words, the “idle and dissolute persons who resorted hither to keep out of the hands of justice.” A functioning courthouse was going to be essential to his success. He would administer its daily operations, ranging from marriage licenses to road maintenance; enforce its laws; and oversee its expansion through a land office. The courthouse may have been the symbol of the expanding colonial government, but it was Blunston who would give it real force.⁴

      As Blunston helped the other men from Lancaster raise the walls of this courthouse, Captain Civility, the Conestogas’ chief representative to Pennsylvania, approached him with an interpreter in tow. Civility, worried that the burst of colonial settlement would fray the good relations Gordon had recently cemented, came to express his concerns. He began by presenting a “string of wampum” before Blunston that carried the following urgent message for the governor:

      That the Conestogoe Indians have always lived in good friendship with the Christian inhabitants of Pensilvania, and have behaved themselves agreeable to their treatys with them. That William Penn had promis’d them they should not be disturbed by any settlers on the west side of Sasquehannah, but now, contrary thereto, several Marylanders are settled by the river, on that side, at Conejohela; and one Crissop, particularly, is very abusive to them when they pass that way, and has beat and wounded one of their women who went to get apples from their own trees…. And further says, that, as they shal always take care their people do us no hurt, so they also expect we shall protect them.⁵

      Civility’s message came as no surprise. The border controversy that Penn first confronted in 1682 still simmered. For most of the intervening fifty years, the dispute was a minor squabble between proprietors based in England. Occasionally, testy neighbors in the disputed southern region would use their loyalty to one lord as a way to exacerbate a personal feud that they had with someone loyal to the other. More recently, however, Maryland began to assert its rights by instigating jurisdictional clashes in an attempt to regain territory Pennsylvania occupied. Most of these disputes occurred on the Delmarva Peninsula in which Delaware and Maryland jurisdictions collided. Early in 1731, as Captain Civility was then discovering, Maryland moved to gain control of the western side of the Susquehanna. By settling the territory, Maryland forced an issue that had only been considered in the abstract until that time: both colonies needed to agree to a border between them if the empire was to function properly. Civility felt the pressure of this uncertainty, and he looked to his allies in Pennsylvania for protection from Maryland.⁶

      Maryland, however, had a strong case in the west. The charters of Pennsylvania and Maryland both contained vague wording about the fortieth parallel of latitude forming the extent of each colony. When the charters were first written, no one was sure of the precise location of the line. In fact, most of the Greater Philadelphia region fell under the parallel; a literal reading of the charters employing what eventually became the fixed fortieth parallel line meant that the capital of Pennsylvania belonged to Maryland. While Baltimore demanded compensation for his loss, the Penns argued that Baltimore had it all wrong. They pointed to an early map that gave Penn control of territory well south of the fortieth parallel, evidence they said of the true intent of the Crown. Still, the wording of the charters gave Baltimore the ground, and the competing interpretation created an opportunity for the current Lord Baltimore to reassert his claims.⁷

      There was another significant difference in the dispute over the west—the man named “Crissop.” Thomas Cresap arrived in Maryland from England sometime in the 1720s. His early years in North America remain unclear. There is evidence that after finding little initial success in Maryland, he traveled to Virginia and rented land from the Washington family. In any case, by the 1730s, he had developed a reputation as a wily and pugnacious individual. Having no particular loyalties to Maryland or its Catholic founding—though rumors circulated that he harbored sympathies for Rome—Cresap’s sole purpose in the colonies was to better himself. Rather than follow the staid, conformist path of the Blunstons, Cresap seized opportunity, if necessary, by force. He was perfect for Maryland’s plans. In time, Cresap showed a devotion to Maryland and Lord Baltimore as strong as Blunston’s was to Pennsylvania. He also possessed an audacity that made his gambit nearly successful.⁸

      Evidence suggests that in 1730 or early 1731, Cresap received a patent from Lord Baltimore for land on the western side of the Susquehanna River. He made quite a show of it too. He built a sturdy homestead near the burned remnants of squatter Edward Parnel’s place, a clear sign to his Pennsylvanian neighbors that he would not be so easily cowed. Friends and family members joined him—people “of loose morals and turbulent spirits,” according to Blunston. Soon, Maryland had a bustling and tight-knit community on the contested western bank, situated just north of Lancaster.⁹

      Cresap’s thriving community left Pennsylvania officials flummoxed. Cresap was no squatter, like Edward Parnel, who Pennsylvania’s government could evict through force. The Marylanders all possessed a legal claim from a neighboring colony, a partner in the British Empire who shared a common sovereign. Pennsylvania might dispute the validity of the Maryland land deeds, but it could not displace the residents without undermining the authority of its fellow British colony. Worse still for the Pennsylvanians, Maryland appeared willing to actively support the rights of these settlers. As James Logan remarked, because their opponent was another British colony, he did not “know … how to make war with them.”¹⁰

      “Lands … Are More Valuable Now, Then They Were Before Any Form of Government Was Settled, Any Plantation Made, or Any Markets Found”

      Fights between Maryland settlers and Pennsylvania officials over property rights and jurisdiction marked the first phase of the war as each side tried to accomplish their goal of establishing an undisturbed claim to the western side of the river. For Pennsylvanians, their challenge was to preserve that side of the river as undisturbed land still in Indian hands to honor the implied rights conveyed to the Conestoga at the Treaty of 1701. The way to do that was to remove the irritant, which meant they needed to target Cresap. For Marylanders, who were not party to the same treaty, their strategy was to persist by attracting settlers and to prevent Pennsylvania from establishing its authority over the region. The situation thus called for Pennsylvania to take offensive actions, though Pennsylvanians clearly saw the Marylanders who had built homes on the western side as the original offenders.

      Civility’s message that October day provided Pennsylvania officials with the opportunity to seize Cresap. Before the meeting, James Logan had confided to Blunston that “he should be glad if Crissop could be taken.” The problem was the government lacked the legal pretext to do so, at least until Civility showed up. When Blunston relayed Civility’s concerns to higher officials, he also noted that Cresap harbored Samuel Chance, a runaway servant of Edmund Cartlidge, a prominent Pennsylvanian trader. Cresap, Blunston reported, “threatens to shoot any person who shal offer to take away said servant.” Blunston saw in Cresap’s seizure of Pennsylvania property a cause to act, writing “if you think it will be of service to the government to have him taken, I believe it may be done.”¹¹

      Though there are no records of the government’s response, a few weeks СКАЧАТЬ