~ The Quarterly Bulletin of the Casselman River Area Amish & Mennonite Historians, Grantsville, Md. ~
The Historian
www.AmishMennoniteHistorians.com
Oct. 2015, Vol. 27, No. 4
The Casselman Valley in the Late 1700s
By Kenton E. Yoder
T
he material in this article is taken from the author’s presentation at the annual meeting of the Casselman Historians at Grantsville, Maryland, on
September 18, 2015. Under the topic, “The Wilderness They Found,” the author
describes the Casselman River area of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, to which
the first Amish Mennonite settlers migrated, mostly from Berks County, Pennsylvania, in the late 1700s. In addition to the footnoted references, the author
acknowledges major input by interview with Kenneth L. Yoder of Grantsville,
Maryland. Kenton E. Yoder lives in St. Paul, Pennsylvania. He teaches at Mountain View Christian School, sings with the Mountain Anthems, and is a member
and secretary of the Executive Committee of the Casselman Historians.
A Hideous and Desolate
Wilderness
As the Pilgrims landed on the
shores of America and gazed upon the
land they were hoping to call home,
William Bradford says of them:
Being now passed the vast ocean, and a
sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or re-
This view from Negro Mountain, near Mt. Davis, gives a perspective of the landscape as found by the early settlers in the Casselman Valley. Even
after decades of the first European settlers, only minimal acreage of land area was cleared. Photo by Kenton E. Yoder in October 2015.
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fresh them, no houses, or much less
towns, to repair unto to seek for succour;
and for the season it was winter,… Besides, what could they see but a hideous
and desolate wilderness, full of wilde
beasts and wilde men?...[A]nd the whole
country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew.1
These were people who had come
from lands in Europe that had been cultivated for the comfort of man for hundreds of years. Here they saw none of
these comforts and only the promise of
great toil required to achieve just a small
percentage of what they were used to.
When they looked at the vast forests covering the land, they rejoiced only because
trees were plentiful for building homes
and heating them, for building ships and
defenses against wild animals and potential enemies. But none of them rejoiced
because it comforted their eyes or
soothed their souls.
Today we set aside vast tracts of land
we hope will remain unspoiled wilderness. We like parks and green spaces and
struggle to maintain enough of them in
our cities. Tired of civilized life, we lay
aside some of our technology which
shields us from hard work and discomfort
and go hiking and camping, secure in the
knowledge that at any time we can return
home to hot, running water and clean
sheets; rush to the store for groceries; to
the hospital or doctor in case of injury.
We return from our wilderness vacation
to admire our scenic photos, refreshed by
the change from our everyday lives.
I want us to try to see with new eyes
the way the land in the Casselman River
Valley once was. Let us wipe away the
houses, fields, roads, electric and telephone lines. Imagine nothing but trees
and a few Indian villages and the game
trails made by wild animals covering
these hills and valleys for many days of
travel in all directions. This land had the
potential to be a rich, productive, and
pleasant land. But in 1750, twenty-five
years before the Revolutionary War, its
potential would have been difficult to see.
A few fur traders or hunters may have
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travelled through here, but no European
had ever explored this area and reported
to the colonists back East. Disputes between Britain, France, the colonists, and
various Indian groups might have prevented any settlers for some time.2
This is an attempt to learn about this
land as found by the first explorers and
settlers.
The Natural Landscape — High
Elevation
A unique and widely influential aspect of this area is its elevation. Mt. Davis, a part of the thirty-mile long Negro
Mountain ridge, is the highest point in
Pennsylvania at 3, 213 feet. It lies along
the west side of the Casselman Valley
community. The elevation affects the
temperature—cool in summer, cold in
winter. It affects what vegetation grows
here and what doesn’t. The growing season is about four weeks shorter here than
just twenty-five miles southeast in Cumberland or forty miles northeast in Bedford. It also affects insect life. The winter
temperatures here remain cold enough for
long enough that few mosquitoes survive,
which certainly helps make the summers
more pleasant.
The Appalachian Mountains, of
which Mt. Davis is a part, provide many
rolling hills and valleys. The elevation
and climate is similar to that of the
“Oberland” (highlands) of Switzerland,
the original home of some of the early
settlers. While the peaks of the Swiss
Alps are much more steep and jagged
than those of the Appalachians, the settlers would have felt right at home here,
knowing how to survive and farm these
valleys. After some two hundred and fifty
years, many of their descendants still are
here.
Explorers’ Findings
Christopher Gist was the first nonIndian to lead a party to explore the Ohio
Valley. His sketches and journals provided the first detailed information to the
British about the area, and he is known to
have camped just a few miles east of
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Grantsville at Little Meadows.3 He was
George Washington’s guide on his first
trip in 1753 to order the French to leave
the Ohio Valley, as well as in 1754 when
George Washington and some Virginia
militia attempted to force the French out
and were defeated at Fort Necessity. Gist
described the land he found this way:
“Mean, stony, and broken. Here and there
good spots upon the creeks and branches,
but no body of it,” meaning that he found
no large tracts of good land.
But George Washington, riding 12
miles to look over some land near the
Youghiogheny River, said:
The lands I passed over today, were generally hilly, and the growth chiefly white
oak, but very good notwithstanding; and
what is extraordinary, and contrary to the
property of all other lands I ever saw before, the hills are the richest land; the soil
upon the sides and summits of them being
as black as a coal, and the growth walnut
and cherry. The flats are not so rich, and a
good deal more mixed with stone.4
The Casselman Valley and the surrounding areas have an abundance of water—running springs of fresh water creating creeks and rivers, uniquely forming
this valley “on top of the mountain.” Rainfall is plentiful as well, producing lush
growth in all vegetation and providing
drinking water for people and animals.
With the continental ridge to the east of the
Casselman Valley, these streams are the
headwaters of the Ohio River, and provide
fresh water throughout the Ohio Valley
before eventually flowing into the Mississippi River.
Contrast to Jamestown
Contrast these conditions with those
of Jamestown, the first permanent settlement in North America. It was begun as
Fort James in 1607 on low, marshy
ground close to the James River.
(Jamestown, the James River, and the
King James Bible all are named after King
James I of England, whose reign ended in
1625.) Mosquitoes survived the mild winters and flourished there during the warm
Oct. 2015, Vol. 27, No. 4
summers, spreading malaria with its high
fevers, which weakened the settlers (and
probably the surrounding Indian tribes).
Though the malaria may not have killed
many settlers outright, it made them more
susceptible to infections, dysentery, typhoid fever, and famine from poor harvests.
About the water of Jamestown,
George Percy wrote: “… our drinke cold
water taken out of the River, which was
at a floud verie salt, at a low tide full of
slime and filth, which was the destruction
of many of our men.”5 This “slime and
filth” would have harbored many diseasecausing parasites and germs, which probably accounted for most of the deaths.
As a result, nearly 90% of those early
colonists died (most within two years of
their arrival), and the colony would have
failed multiple times except for a continued supply of new colonists coming over
from England. In 1624 a Royal Council
in England investigated the loss of five
thousand “missing subjects of His Majesty.”6 If that figure is correct, there was an
average loss of life of nearly three hundred colonists per year in the seventeen
years since Jamestown’s founding in
1607. The population of the colony seldom exceeded nine hundred people and
was often considerably lower. One out of
three died every year for seventeen years!
Some died from Indian attacks, but disease and famine killed most of them. In
contrast, settlers in western Pennsylvania,
with the plentiful supply of clean, fresh
water and fewer disease-spreading insects, thankfully were spared such misery.
Plant Life
The Ohio Valley (including the Casselman Valley) had many kinds of huge
trees and uncut virgin timber. There were
trees for building, for making furniture,
for fences, shade trees, and trees for firewood. There were trees that produced
food for humans and animals—Maple
trees for sugar and the nut trees: chestnut,
black walnut, butternut, hickory nut, and
oak trees producing acorns. There were
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trees with bees in them for honey.
Once the American Chestnut was the
most common tree in the Appalachian
forests (an estimated 25% of all trees
were Chestnut). But a blight caused by a
fungus accidently introduced here from
Asia, in the early twentieth century, destroyed them almost totally. Blight resistant trees are finally being produced;
field tests are underway with the eventual
goal of restoring these magnificent trees
to our forests.
The Hemlock, as the state tree of
Pennsylvania, deserves special mention.
It was used by early settlers to build their
log cabins. It’s bark is high in tannic acid,
a solution used on animal hides to make
soft and strong tanned leather. The settlers
would have stripped the bark from the
trees and soaked it in water to make the
solution for tanning hides.
The hemlock is a beautiful tree, tolerant of shady conditions, but slowgrowing, reaching maturity between 250
and 300 years old. The oldest documented hemlock was found in Tionesta, Pennsylvania, and was probably at least 554
years old. It was likely over 60 years old
when Columbus sailed to the Americas.
There are claims made of hemlocks over
900 years old, but the data is not certain.7
In the area now known as Long
Stretch on the National Pike between
Grantsville and Frostburg, evergreens
grew so tall and dense that they caused a
dark place where robbers liked to hide. It
was named “The Shades of Death.”
The forest floor had many berry
bushes growing wild – huckleberries,
blackberries, elderberries, and black raspberries.
Animal Life
Meshach Browning, known as Maryland’s most famous hunter, Holmes
Wiley, and Christian Garlitz, were settlers
and hunters in the Casselman Valley.
Although they likely were not here until
after 1800, they describe an area that had
probably existed for quite some time prior. They hunted turkeys, geese, deer, elk,
squirrels, pheasants, and buffalo.8 Migrat-
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ing flocks of passenger pigeons with
birds numbering in the millions were so
large that they would shade the ground
like a large black cloud or a solar eclipse.
John James Audubon counted 163 flocks
passing overhead in 21 minutes and then
gave up counting. The flocks continued
to stream overhead for three full days “in
undiminished numbers.”9 The larger
streams held carp, catfish, perch, and sturgeon. Bears, wolves, and wildcats flourished.
Game was unbelievably plentiful.
After a hunting trip across the Allegheny
Mountains in 1750, Dr. Thomas Walker
said, “We killed in the journey 13 buffaloes, 8 elks, 53 bears, 20 deers [sic], 4
wild geese, and about 150 wild turkeys,
besides small game. We might have
killed 3 times as much meat if we had
wanted it.”10
While wild animals were the bread
and butter of the trappers and hunters,
they were often a real danger to the settlers and their animals. A little north of
Somerset County in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Fergus Moorhead and James Kelly
built cabins close to each other. One
morning when Moorhead went to visit
his neighbor Kelly, he found blood and
tufts of human hair, but no Kelly. Looking around cautiously to see if he could
find the remains of the body, he found
Kelly sitting by a spring, washing blood
out of his hair. While he was sleeping in
his cabin, as given by one writer:
…a wolf reached through a crack between the logs, and seized him by the
head. This was repeated twice or thrice
before he was sufficiently wakened to
change his position. The smallness of the
crack, and the size of his head prevented
the wolf from grasping it so far as to have
11
a secure hold, and that saved his life.
In the Casselman Valley, wolves
were so plentiful at the west foot of
Meadow Mountain that it was called
Wolf Swamp. Leo Beachy wrote that the
howling of the wolves was so disruptive
of their sleep, that they would make noise
to disturb them and make them stop.
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Some folks reportedly would get up in the
middle of the night and blow loud blasts
on a tin horn to scare the large gray
wolves away and stop the hideous racket.
Meshach Browning writes of an attack by wolves on his wife and daughter.
Jacob Brown, a historian and writer during the 1800’s, mentions an attack on his
mother and sister by a panther close to
their home. In 1803 Thomas Stanton at
Little Crossings (where Casselman Bridge
now is) disappeared while looking for his
horses. Only his cap was ever found. It
was thought that a large animal had attacked and killed him. Years later, human
bones were found along Laurel Run, and
they are believed to be his remains.
Because the danger posed by wolves
was particularly bad, a $30 bounty was
placed on each wolf killed in Garrett
County, Maryland. The last wolf in this
area was shot in 1832.
In addition to wolves and panthers,
early settlers also had to face rattlesnakes
and copperheads. They had to guard
against large numbers of bees, insects, and
spiders who made their home in this area.
Meshach Browning relates that he killed
thousands of rattlesnakes in his lifetime,
but was never bitten by them because he
would take tall grass and braid it, wrapping it around his legs before he went out
to the woods. When the rattlesnakes
would strike, they would just bite into the
grass and not hurt him.12
The Political Situation
One would think that the solitude of a
virgin forest would result in a peaceful
place where everything and everybody
lived in harmony with their Creator. In
fact, the opposite was true. The land was
highly contested by several nations and
numerous smaller entities. Living in the
Casselman Valley in the 1700s was
fraught with many uncertainties.
Nationality & Language
Settlers could not be certain what
nation would eventually rule the area—an
Indian tribe, England, France? They could
not be sure what language would be spoken here. An Indian language? Warriors
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from several different tribes passed
through the area many times. German?
Many of the original settlers farther north
were German Baptists, today called
Church of the Brethren. Soon Amish and
Mennonites from Switzerland and Germany followed. English and French, of
course, were the languages of the two
world powers which were competing to
gain full control of the area.
If England won, to which colony—
Virginia, Maryland, or Pennsylvania—
would the Casselman Valley eventually
belong? Where would the county boundaries be drawn, or where would the towns
be situated? All these things would take
time to sort out.
Territorial Claims
The years from 1750–1776 were
crucial in determining the future political
direction of this area. The French claimed
the Mississippi River valley. Since the
Ohio River flows into the Mississippi,
they claimed the land along the Ohio River also. To cement their control of the area, they established a series of forts coming south from Lake Erie and planted the
last one, Fort Duquesne, right at the triangle where the Ohio River is formed.
All the way back in 1609 and 1611,
trying to grab as much territory as possible, the British king made sweeping land
grants to the company then trying to establish a colony in Jamestown. Those grants
were reduced over the years as new colonies were founded, but Virginia still
claimed vast areas north and west of their
settled lands, including the Ohio Valley.
In 1749, the British king granted a
different Virginia company, the Ohio
Company, up to 500,000 acres of land in
the Ohio valley if they could get one hundred families to settle there in seven years.
(They also were required to build a fort
and supply soldiers to protect the settlement.) Unfortunately the king had bad
maps of the Ohio Valley (no one had any
good ones yet), and that grant overlapped
with the original land grant to William
Penn.
The Pennsylvania/Maryland
Border
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The border between Maryland and
Pennsylvania was in dispute because
more bad maps had led the king to make
conflicting land grants there as well. And
various Indian tribes had claims to the
area, primarily as a hunting ground.
(There were no Indian tribes living in the
Casselman Valley at that time.) The closest Indians were Shawnees living in three
villages on “Connemach Creek” or as we
say today “Conemaugh,” where the city
of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is today. In
1731 there were 45 families with 200 men
total. The towns are marked there on a
1770 map.13
Virginia made the entire Ohio Valley
area (including the Casselman Valley)
part of Augusta County, Virginia, and
offered the land for settlement. The Ohio
Company continued to push to get settlers
moved into the area from 1750 onward.
At the same time, Pennsylvania forbid
settlers in the area because the land was
supposed to belong to the Indians. So the
few people who settled here prior to 176768 would have done so under Virginia.
Things started to clear up in the Casselman Valley in 1767. The Pennsylvania/Maryland border was supposed to be
along the 40th parallel, but that would have
put it north of Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania wasn’t about to give their capital to
Maryland. Because of continual border
disputes with Maryland, the king of England ordered them to settle their disputes.
A court case was needed to decide upon a
suitable compromise. Charles Mason and
Jeremiah Dixon were hired to survey the
border westward. They placed stone
markers every five miles. Their line split
our valley, with the Salisbury/Meyersdale
area belonging to Pennsylvania and the
Grantsville area belonging to Maryland.
This settled the long-running dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Mason and Dixon did not survey the
whole way to the southwestern corner of
Pennsylvania because of Indian troubles.
That meant there was land still to the west
of us remaining in dispute with Virginia.
But the land in the Casselman Valley was
no longer in dispute as far as the colonies
were concerned. With this matter finally
Oct. 2015, Vol. 27, No. 4
settled, the Amish could continue to
come here, assured that they could remain in their beloved state of Pennsylvania. William Penn had sought them
out in Germany, encouraging them to
come settle here, free from compulsory
military service and with religious toleration.
With the boundaries of Pennsylvania clearly established for the English
authorities, the Penns wanted to settle
the disagreement with the Indians. The
Iroquois Indians who lived in New
York claimed that they owned this land
by right of conquest,14 but the Indians
who lived in the Ohio Valley didn’t
necessarily agree. They said that the
Iroquois didn’t speak for them. Nevertheless, in 1768, a treaty with the Cherokee and the Six Nations Indian Confederation gave the land west of the Allegheny Mountains and south of the Ohio
River to the British for settlement. Several Indian tribes in Ohio still disputed
ownership of the land, however. A war
in 1774 forced these remaining tribes to
concede that the Ohio River would be
the boundary line in the future.
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Building Roads
The only way into the Casselman
Valley from the East in the first half of
the 1700s was by an Indian trail, later
called the Turkeyfoot Path or Turkeyfoot
Trail. It came from Wills Creek (now
Cumberland, Maryland), through the area
that is now Pocahontas, then through
present-day Salisbury, across the Casselman River, and then up Tub Mill Run.
Then it travelled near Springs and across
Negro Mountain to Turkeyfoot. Travel
on this trail would have been possible
only on foot or horseback. Sometimes
many horses were tied one after the other
in a long train, each horse with saddlebags loaded with trade goods that could
be used to trade with Indians and trappers
for furs to be sold back East. There were
no wagon roads into the area, but interest
was heating up fast.
Let’s return for a moment to the
Ohio Company and its efforts to settle
families in this area after 1750. To do so,
they needed wagon roads. They asked
Christopher Gist and the Indian chief,
Page 5
The Conestoga wagon was developed in eastern Pennsylvania. It represents remarkable engineering for
use on primitive rough roads. Important features are the large wheels
for navigating bumps and ruts in the
road bed, the smaller front wheels to
permit turning, the curved floor for
preventing contents from tipping and
shifting, the brake system manhandled from the rear, the box on
the back end for feeding the horses,
and, sometimes, tarred seams for
floating when crossing rivers. The
frequent use of a six-horse team provided the horse power for moving up
to 6 tons of freight. Photo in Public
Domain.
Nemacolin, who lived west of Negro
Mountain, to lay out the best route for a
road from Fort Cumberland to Fort Duquesne. Then in 1754, the governor of
Virginia directed George Washington to
raise a force of men to build a fort at the
location of Fort Duquesne and to take all
Page 6
necessary steps against anyone who
attempted to stop him. He and his
men began building a 12-foot wide
wagon road over the route which Gist
and Nemacolin had begun. They extended the road as far as Fort Necessity, but there they were stopped and
forced to surrender by the French and
their Indian allies. This was the first
wagon road across the Alleghenies.
In 1755, the British sent General
Braddock with a large army of British
troops and colonial settlers to drive the
French out of the Ohio valley. They
followed Washington’s road, but widened it to 20 feet. Here is one individual’s account of what that was like:
Still, the men labored on, clearing
Meadow Mountain and marching for
ten hours the remaining four miles to
Little Meadows over “very Bad
Roads Over Rocks and Mountain
almost unpassable” … at Little
Meadows they stopped. They were a
mere twenty-four miles beyond Fort
Cumberland, still in Maryland, just
past the Eastern Continental Divide
[near today’s Grantsville]. And in
utter wilderness, where ambush
could come at any time. That day,
their hunter, who supplied the advance party with meat, shot two elks,
a bear, and a
deer.15
That was the advance party on
June 5, 1755. On June 6, the main
body caught up, and we get this
little note: “The men celebrated
reaching Little Meadows, their
first objective on the march, by
feasting on rattlesnake, bear, and
deer.”16 Despite the difficulties of
wilderness road building, Braddock
and his men pressed on toward their
objective, extending their road till they
were 7 miles from Fort Duquesne.
There they were ambushed by the
French and Indians. General Braddock himself was slain, his army
was defeated, and the few survi-
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vors fled.
Three years later in 1758, General
Forbes came from England to conquer
the Ohio Valley. He started in Bedford
and built a new road about where Route
30 now is. He and his men successfully
pushed through to Fort Duquesne, and
the French fled. This was the end of
French attempts to control the Ohio
Valley.
These roads were not all-weather
roads like we imagine today. After a
spring thaw or a heavy rain, they would
quickly dissolve into mud and become
unusable. Nevertheless, these two
roads, Braddock’s and Forbes, opened
the Ohio Valley to mass settlement.
Settlers Arrive
The Casselman Valley was very
sparsely populated before 1750. The
years 1750 to 1775 saw the beginning
of settlement that would eventually
grow to towns, churches, and schools.
The first permanent settlers came to the
Elk Lick area in 1754 and settled along
the Turkeyfoot Path. This was the family of John Markley, with four sons and
three daughters. He was from Wurttemberg, Germany. If the Amish began
arriving in the early 1770s, this family
would have been here nearly 20 years
prior. German speaking neighbors
would have made the Amish feel right
at home.
There was a small amount of
cleared land that the Indians had
cleared, perhaps for some farming, but
this would have been very limited. As
we look around today and see all the
open fields and gardens, the roads, the
houses, it is hard to imagine the backbreaking labor needed to cut down
enough trees to plant an acre or so of
corn and other garden plants in order to
raise sufficient food between the
stumps for family and livestock .
There would have been no
churches, schools, or doctors. There
would have been no stores to buy
things, only the occasional peddler
Oct. 2015, Vol. 27, No. 4
wanting to trade his wares for furs
to take back East. But they were
very self-reliant; almost all were
able to do a little blacksmithing or
doctoring along with other useful
skills necessary for survival. And it
is said that when people first moved
in, they could survive for several
years off what the local forest provided. Plenty of deer, elk, turkey,
squirrels, nuts, berries, honey in bee
trees, and so on.
Neighbors Few and Far Between
One of our ancestors, Christian
Yoder, settled in the area close to
present-day Somerset twenty-five
years after settlement started in the
area. His nearest neighbor was still
five miles away.
In the spring of 1776 [Christian Yoder]
removed with his family to Bedford,
now Somerset county, where he had
previously bought a large tract of timber land situated where Pugh now
stands, about seven miles east of Somerset, in Stony Creek township.…
There were no roads and the nearest
neighbor was five miles distant. There
was a small clearing where Christian
erected a log house and barn.… He
then began his battle with the wilderness, wild beasts and occasional Indians. Field after field was cleared and
cultivated, until he had one of the largest and best farms in the county.17
Change and Growth
In 1771 Bedford County was
formed out of Delaware County. Until
1771, if a settler in this area wanted to
go to his county seat for a question of
land title or something similar, he had
to go all the way back to the Cumberland County seat of Carlisle. From the
Casselman Valley that would be a distance of 130 miles by foot or on horseback. With a county seat in Bedford,
this distance was reduced to 40 or 50
miles. By 1795, enough people had
Oct. 2015, Vol. 27, No. 4
moved into the area that Somerset County was carved out of Bedford County.18
1795 was an important year. In addition to the formation of Somerset County, it was the year that Mr. Ulrick Bruner
laid down the plan for the town of
“Milford,” but no one ever used the
name, always calling it “Bruner’s
Town.” Eventually the name was
changed to Somerset when it became the
county seat.19 It was also the year that
Salisbury was founded by Joseph Markley.
Salisbury was first known as Brushtown, and the local Dutch settlers called it
Salsburrich because of salt deposits
found in the area. With its first post office
established in 1812, the name was officially given as Elk Lick. Later, in 1928, it
was renamed Salisbury.20 The name Elk
Lick was given to the township surrounding Salisbury when it was formed
in 1785. It was named for a salt lick in
the area that deer and elk used to frequent.
After 1775, the number of settlers
moving into the area must have risen
rapidly. By 1800 the official census figure for Somerset County was 10,188
people and 12,175 for Garrett County.21
There was at least one mill located on
Tub Mill Run by 1790 and more such
businesses would have opened with every passing year.
The pace of change must have been
breathtaking for the people living here.
For those who liked the challenge of new
lands; who liked the freedom that came
with only a few distant neighbors; who
could live independently, without being
beholden to any man; perhaps it’s no
wonder that so many, during the 1800s,
would pack up and move further west,
following their dreams, looking for that
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perfect land. But those who stayed in the
Casselman Valley turned the wilderness
into a pleasant land and built an enduring
community.
__________________________
Notes
1. Bradford, William, Of Plymouth Plantation: Book1, Chapter IX
2. I use the term “Indian” instead of “Native
American” throughout this paper. It is not the
preferred usage today, but fits the historical
context better. No offense is intended and no
hidden meaning or motive is implied.
3. Lorenzen, Robert C., Salisbury Centennial
Souvenir Book, Meyersdale: Meyersdale
Printing and Publishing Company, 1962, p.
14
4. Kauffman, Daniel W., Early History of
Western Pennsylvania, Harrisburg: Theodore
Fenn, Printer, 1846, quoting George Washington’s journal of 1770, p. 44
5. “Death in Jamestown,” http://
historynotebook.blogspot.com/2008/02/deathin-jamestown.html, accessed September 13,
2015, quoting George Percy, “Observations
gathered out of a Discourse of the Plantation
of the Southerne Colonie in Virginia by the
English, 1606.” In Purchas his Pilgrimes, vol.
4 (1625), 1685-1690.
6. “Death in Jamestown,” accessed September 13, 2015, quoting Samuel Eliot Morison,
The Oxford History of the American People.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.
7. Native Tree Society BBS discussion, http://
www.ents-bbs.org/viewtopic.php?
f=150&t=4302, accessed September 15,
2015.
8. Yoder, Kenneth L., Grantsville, Maryland,
Interview September 2015, in reference to this
and much of the material in the immediately
following paragraphs.
9. “Passenger Pigeon,” Wikipedia, accessed
September 16, 2015
10. “Contested Lands,” The First American
West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820,
Page 7
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/
icuhtml/fawhome.html, accessed September
16, 2015
11. Kauffman, p. 49-50
12. Brown, Jacob, Brown’s Miscellaneous
Writings, Bicentennial Committee of Garrett
County, MD, reprint 1976, pp. 162, 315, 316.
13. Walkinshaw, Lewis C., Annals of Southwestern Pennsylvania, New York: Lewis
Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1939, p.
14. “Virginia—Pennsylvania Boundary,”
http://www.virginiaplaces.org/boundaries/
paboundary.html, accessed September 18,
2015
15. Crocker, Thomas E., Braddock's March:
How The Man Sent to Seize A Continent
Changed American History. Yardley:
Westholme, 2009. pp. 166-167. Print
16. Crocker, p. 167
17. History of Bedford and Somerset Counties, Pennsylvania. Bedford County by E.
Howard Blackburn; Somerset County by
William H. Welfley; v.3, New York: The
Lewis Publishing Company, 1906, pp. 116117. https://archive.org/details/
historyofbedford03blac, accessed September
17, 2015.
18. Kauffman, p. 331.
19. “Brunerstown,” Somerset County
Genealogy Project, http://pa-roots.com/
somerset/articles.php?article_id=349,
2010, accessed September 21, 2015.
20. www.salisburypa.com, accessed September 17, 2015; Cassidy, John C., The Somerset
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21. Historical Census Browser. 2004. Retrieved September 21, 2015, from the University of Virginia, Geospatial and Statistical
Data Center:
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The Historian is published quarterly by the Casselman River Area Amish and Mennonite Historians (a.k.a The Casselman Historians). Executive
Committee: David I. Miller, chairman; Kenneth L. Yoder, vice-chairman; Kenton Yoder, secretary; Bernard Orendorf, treasurer; Carl Bender; Roger Felix, Delvin Mast, James L. Yoder. Address: P.O. Box 591, Grantsville, MD 21536. Phone: 301-245-4326. Subscription with membership is
$30/yr; subscription without membership is $15/yr. Back issues and online subscription options for The Historian are available at
www.amishmennonitehistorians.com. For admission to the archives at 29 Dorsey Hotel Rd., Grantsville, contact Alice Orendorf at 301-245-4326
([email protected]) or Karl Westmeier at 301-895-4490 ([email protected]). Editor: David I. Miller. Layout by Kevin D. Miller. Scroll art
work on masthead created by Alta Byler Nisly for the first issue of the Historian in April 1989.
Page 8
The Historian
Oct. 2015, Vol. 27, No. 4
The Historian
P.O. Box 591
Grantsville, MD 21536
amishmennonitehistorians.com
Casselman River Amish and Mennonite Historians:
Statement of Purpose
To encourage and implement the collection and preservation of Amish and Mennonite historical material
related to the Casselman River area of Somer-set
County, PA and Gar-rett County, MD.
To encourage writing and publishing Amish and Mennonite historical materials.
To provide a forum where persons interested in and
knowledgeable about churches in the area can gain
an understanding of how church life in SomersetGarrett Counties influenced Amish and Mennonite
church life in other communities.
To hold meetings for fellowship, mutual encouragement,
and business.
To pursue a scope of Amish and Mennonite history, within the purpose of the organization, that includes
church history, family history, and cultural and social features of Amish and Mennonite history.
Anyone interested in these purposes is invited to be a
member.
For information on contacting The Casselman Historians, see the information box on page 7.
Casselman Historians Meetings
The annual meeting of the Casselman Historians in September 2015 focused on the experiences of the first Amish settlers in the Casselman Valley of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. These pioneers found land and settled along a corridor a few miles wide along
the Casselman River in present-day Elk Lick and Summit Townships. They arrived first
in the early 1770s. The period covered in the 2015 meeting extended to about 1800. The
Historians are planning to follow-up on the history of the 1800s in future meetings. But
first, for the meeting of 2016, plans are to look into the eastern Pennsylvania background
of the early Casselman Valley settlers. This takes us to the Amish experience in Berks
County, Pennsylvania, and surrounding counties where these immigrants settled after
arriving in Philadelphia from Europe, many during the 1730s, but some earlier and some
later. Thus, the following announcement for 2016.
Annual Historians Meeting Next Year 2016
The annual historical meeting of the Casselman Historians is scheduled for Friday evening and Saturday, September 16,17, 2016, at the Maple Glen church, Grantsville, Maryland. A program is in the planning stages with a focus on the Berks County, Pennsylvania, origins of the early Amish settlers of the Casselman Valley of Somerset County,
Pennsylvania. As a follow-up to the program of 2015, with its focus on the Casselman
Valley settlers of the 1770s, the program of 2016 is intended to focus on the Berks County experience they left behind. Questions to be addressed include: From where in Berks
and surrounding counties did the Casselman River area settlers come? What were some
of their unique circumstances from the time of arrival in Philadelphia to their departure
for western Pennsylvania? How did the church experience its identity and vitality during
that period? What circumstances may have motivated emigration further west?
Membership and Subscription Offered Now for 2016
Subscriptions to The Historian and
membership with the Casselman Historians are available now for the calendar
year of 2016. Readers who attended the
annual meeting in September may already have taken membership for next
year. Others are invited to give special
attention to the enclosed Membership/Subscription card. You will note
these options:
1. Membership includes subscription to
The Historian ($15 value) and subscription to
the quarterly Mennonite Family History ($25
retail value). Rate: $30/year
2. Subscription without membership
brings The Historian to your mailbox quarterly. Rate: $15/yr.
3. Subscription and membership also can
be taken on-line, payable by credit card at
AmishMennoniteHistorians.com, including
discounted two or three-year options.
Fill out the enclosed card, and send
with your check to The Casselman Historians P.O. Box 591, Grantsville, MD
21536. Thank you for your support!