The Manor of the Masque/Maske
From "County History," by B.F.M. MacPherson, Gettysburg Times, 26 April 1958:
James Wilson came to America 1736-37 and took up a tract of land in the Manor of the Masque. He married Jane (or Jean) after his arrival in this country,
and they were the parents of Elizabeth (b. 1743), Hugh (b. 1746), James (b. 1747), David (b. 1752) and Martha (b. 1754). What was the Manor of the
Masque?
From "Early History of Hamiltonban,"
http://hamiltonban.com/earl yhistory.html
The earliest European settlers came to the area in the 1730s. Before 1767, parts of what are now Adams and York Counties were claimed by both
Maryland and Pennsylvania. Two disputed settlements in Adams County were "Digges Choice", in the vicinity of Littlestown and Hanover, and "Carroll's
Delight," in the vicinity of Fairfield and Hamiltonban. Pennsylvania countered the claims of Maryland for the disputed areas by importing settlers. About
1729 the Governor of Pennsylvania, in order to stop further encroachment on the part of Maryland, sent word to the Penn brothers, sons of William Penn,
to send him some fighting men. In response, they sent a colony of one hundred forty families from Ulster, Ireland, led by Captain Hance Hamilton. This
colony of Scotch-Irish settlers landed at New Castle, Delaware, August 24, 1729, and went almost immediately to what is now Adams County, where
they took up land and began to build their homes. Captain Hance Hamilton had a large family, including two daughters and six sons. One of his sons, also
named Hance, became Sheriff of YorkCounty.
In 1735, the proprietor of Maryland, Lord Baltimore, granted 5,000 acres in what is now Hamiltonban Township to Charles Carroll, who named it
Carroll's Delight. In 1741 Archibald Beard, John Withrow, James McGinley and Jeremiah Lochery purchased Carroll's Delight. At that time, the
purchasers believed that the land was in Maryland, and it was not until the Mason-Dixon line was surveyed in 1767 that it was determined that Carroll's
Delight was actually in Pennsylvania.
In 1739-40, the Penn brothers laid out, in what is now Adams County, Pennsylvania, a reservation for themselves and family of 43,500 acres which was
called "The Manor of the Masque." They ordered all settlers to be removed from this tract, but the Scotch-Irish who had settled there refused to leave.
This reservation included much of the land that had been settled by the colony led by Capt. Hance Hamilton besides many other colonists' that had moved
into this section of the state. The Manor of Masque reservation adjoined Carroll's Delight to the east, and included what is now Gettysburg.
From 1886 History of Adams County,
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ ~paadams/Deeds/manorofmaske.htm
n the year 1736 William Penn purchased all the region lying west of the Lower Susquehanna from the Indians. There is strong evidence that as soon as the
purchase became known to the borders east of the river, they began to move across to these rich and beautiful lands. Prior to that time, doubtless, some of
them had, in friendly visits to the Indians here in their hunting and trapping expeditions, looked from many of those elevations about us over the
enchanting sweep of valleys, the gently rolling hills, and drank of the cool crystal waters that went rippling down nearly every hill side. They had
described what they saw to their friends and a few of the most adventurous came across.
There is no record or tradition now to tell exactly who they were or when they first came. In 1739-40, Penn laid out, in what is now Adams county, a
reservation for himself and family, and called it "Manor of Masque", after the title of an old English estate belonging to some of his distant relatives. He
sent surveyors to run out the manor.
In a letter dated June 17, 1741, the surveyor, Zachary Butcher told of his attempts to survey the land, discussing the "unreasonable Creatures" who then
inhabited the land and their attempts to "kill or cripple" any who attempted to lay out a manor there.
Butcher compiled a list of the names of such unreasonable creatures; it includes James Wilson.
And more, from http://clanboyd.info/state/pennsylvania/adamscounty/index.htm
Between 1735-36 and 1741 a number of Irish peasantry from the hills of Tyrone, Derry, Cavan, and Sligo Counties, came hither to stay, to erect a free home for themselves
at the foot of the old South Mountains. The Hamiltons, Sweenys, Eddys, Boyds, Blacks, McClains, McClures, Wilsons, Agnews, Darbys and others were here, near
Gettysubrg, in 1741. Then came the landlords’ agent to survey the “Manor of Maske,” and a second one to drive off the “squatters,” or obtain from them pay for the
permission to work in the heat of summer and cold of winter among the rocky hills, who declared “yt if ye Chain be spread again, he wou’d stop it, and then stop ye
Compass from ye Surv. Gen.” The men who resisted the survey of the “Manor of Maske” were prosecuted, but the wisdom of the Penns prompted a fair settlement with the
squatters, which resulted in the Irish peasant becoming his own laborer and master, his own tenant and landlord. This same band of fighters for the right, organized for
defense against the Indians and shared in the honors of saving the frontier from many an Indian raid. This same band of peasants first saw the tyranny of the “tea tax,” and
were among the first to hail the Revolution. They were among the first to recognize the liberty conventions and swear fealty to the act of such conventions in 1775. They
were the men who formed McPherson’s battalion in 1775, and the Eleventh Pennsylvania Regiment of the line in 1776.
They spoke bad Irish and as bad English, but their shout was heard unmistakably wherever the wave of revolution struck, and when, with their brothers of the thirteen stars,
they raised the flag of the Union, they, at that moment saw the shackles fall from the husbandman, and the industry and liberty march forward over the trails and military
roads cut by the retreating soldiers of Great Britain.
...
The pioneers of the township came here between 1733 and 1739, from Ireland. The term “Scotch-Irish of the border” was a name given to these settlers by the colonial land
grabbers of the Penn coterie (A. Boyd Hamilton, Harrisburg). The tract over which they squatted was wild land when they came; but a few years later, in 1740, the Penns
named it “The Manor of the Maske.” In 1765 a list of the squatters was made out, which was recorded April 2, 1792.
The Wilsons don't appear on the list of squatters, but John Wilson is listed among the original taxpayers of Hamiltonban.
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 06 Mar 2013
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