“The Season is very favourable both for A Crop of grain and Flaxseed,” Waddell Cunningham wrote Newry merchant David Gaussan in June 1756. But, he warned, “The Province of Pennsylvania will fall short of Both, as a great Part of the Province is now deserted.”1 Fear of Indian raids depopulated the frontier counties from which much of the wheat, flour, and flaxseed shipped from Philadelphia came. The amount of flaxseed imported into Ireland from the American Colonies fell below pre-war levels in 1756 and did not recover until the planting season of 1759 when the threat to the Pennsylvania backcountry had largely evaporated.2 As early as July 1755, before the first attacks struck, the Pennsylvania Gazette reported the “Back Settlers are in general fled, and are likely to be ruined for the Loss of their Crops and Summer’s Labour.”3 In 1756 the countryside west of the Susquehanna river was nearly deserted and it was said that from Carlisle to Virginia, “there is not an Inhabitant to be seen, a few in Shippensburg excepted.” From Carlisle, Adam Hoops reported to the Governor of Pennsylvania that there were 3,000 men fit to bear arms in Cumberland County in 1755 and a year later, exclusive of the provincial forces, “they did not amount to an hundred.” Hoops wrote that detachments of volunteers protected farmers harvesting their crops, but, he added, on a general alarm that Indians were coming, “The Farmers abandoned their Plantations, and left what Corn was not then stacked or carried into Barnes, to perish on the Ground.”4
As settlement moved westward in Pennsylvania, Shawnee and Delaware and other native peoples abandoned their villages east of the Susquehanna river and gradually withdrew beyond the Allegheny mountains to the Ohio country. Traders followed them into a region that the French in Canada claimed as their own. The French began constructing barrier forts across western Pennsylvania and the Ohio Company of Virginia sought to checkmate them with a fort at the Forks of the Ohio, site of Pittsburgh. France won the match in 1754 building Fort Duquesne at the Forks and compelling the surrender and withdrawal of a military force sent from Virginia under command of Col. George Washington. The stage was set for an imperial reaction. The British government sent General Sir Edward Braddock with two regiments of regulars to America to dislodge the French. By the time he was ready to march towards Fort Duquesne, Braddock had 2,500 men at his command, regulars and colonial troops, as his army inched its way through the wilderness. On July 9, 1755, Braddock’s column blundered into a French and Indian ambush and, after two hours of slaughter, the remnants of his army withdrew from the field. Col. Thomas Dunbar, who took command after Braddock’s death, still had a considerable military force and greatly outnumbered the French and their Indian allies.5 But he ordered a general retreat, abandoning artillery and supply wagons, and marched his men through Shippensburg, Carlisle, and Lancaster to the safety of Philadelphia. With the Delaware and Shawnee already gone over to the French, the Pennsylvania frontier was suddenly in danger.6
Adam Hoops and William Buchanan were typical of the frontier leaders who found scope for their abilities in the emergency and profited from wartime opportunities to each become “Merchant” and “Gentleman.” They were not without connections. Buchanan, an innkeeper-storekeeper in the Marsh Creek settlement and then in the town of Carlisle, was the son of Robert Buchanan, Sheriff of Lancaster County. Hoops, whose origins are shrouded in mystery, was himself a justice of Cumberland County.7
By 1755 the Scotch-Irish were emphatically the people on the frontier, clearing land and raising crops in the backcountry of Pennsylvania and in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and pressing on to south-western Virginia and the North Carolina piedmont. Their image as restless frontiersmen, moving on as soon as they could see smoke rise from a neighbour’s chimney, is pervasive, but they were driven by the same impulse that led them to negotiate a lease for a new farm in Ulster on better terms than their present landlord offered. In contrast to the vision of church leaders, who favoured compact communities capable of supporting a settled minister, they had solid economic reasons for selling out and starting over in a new location. They saw land as a commodity to be bought and sold to the best advantage. Rev. James Anderson, minister in the Donegal settlement in Lancaster County, complained in 1730 that members of his congregation “with a regard to their own private Interest only are for disposing of their Improvement to the best Bidders who are generally the Dutch.”8 A generation later the problem was widespread. William Burke ascribed the settlement of the Southern backcountry to Irish migrants, “who not succeeding so well in Pensylvania, as the more frugal and industrious Germans, sell their lands in that province, and take up new ground in the remote counties in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. These are chiefly presbyterians from the Northern part of Ireland, who in America are generally called Scotch Irish.”9 Longer-settled parts of Pennsylvania gradually became more German as the Scotch-Irish moved to the backcountry. The Presbyterian Synod of Pennsylvania declared in 1759 that:
The Inhabitants are inconstant and unsettled, and are always shifting their Habitations, either from a Love of variety, or from the fair Prospect of more commodious Settlements on the Frontiers of this, or the Neighbouring Provinces;… When our People remove they are generally Succeeded by Strangers from Europe, who incline at their first arrival to purchase or hire cultivated Lands; [so that] one of our most promising Settlements of Presbyterians, may in a few Years, be entirely possessed by German Menonists, or Moravians, or any other Society of Christians.10
Germans also settled on the frontiers and many of them fell victims to Delaware and Shawnee war parties, but it was seared into Scotch-Irish consciousness that their people suffered disproportionately “from the fury of the heathen,” while Quakers and others lived in security. This view was reinforced by a careless remark of Nathaniel Grubb, a Quaker who represented Chester County in the Pennsylvania Assembly, who “being informed that sundry of the Back Inhabitants were cut off, and destroyed by our savage Enemies, replied, ‘That there were only some Scotch-Irish kill’d, who could well be spared.’’11
Not all Scotch-Irish abandoned Pennsylvania, of course. Emigrants from Ulster settled in Chester and Lancaster counties in south-eastern Pennsylvania in the 1720s, with Donegal and Paxton townships on the east bank of the Susquehanna as their advance guard. They crossed the river in the 1730s, while others pressed on to Virginia, and by 1745 these Scotch-Irish settlers had formed ten Presbyterian congregations within the bounds of what was to be Cumberland County.12 Because of this, Pennsylvania west of the Susquehanna river early became the domain of the Scotch-Irish. Soon settlement had spread beyond the Susquehanna to such an extent that two new counties were created in 1749 and 1750. York County included an area along the southern boundary of the colony. Cumberland County formed a wide arc around York, from the Susquehanna to the Maryland line.
As settlement moved westward, commercial interests followed. Lancaster, established in 1729, was the first of the inland towns to become part of the trading network. The shopkeepers of the town depended on Philadelphia merchants for their supply of dry goods and the wide variety of hardware, wines, sugar, coffee, and tea that made up their stock. And a city merchant would often engage a Lancaster shopkeeper “to buy and ship to him certain agricultural and industrial products of the interior regions.” Lancaster was initially a base for the Indian trade as well.13
The new counties of York and Cumberland demanded a place where local government could be conducted with a court house, jail, and other public buildings. The Proprietor of Pennsylvania Thomas Penn authorised two new “Proprietary towns,” as they were called, to meet this need. York was the first to be laid out in 1741.14 Penn took a personal interest in planning Carlisle, the county town for Cumberland County. With “near fifty Houses built, and building,” in 1751, Carlisle promised to be a considerable place, “a great thorough fare to the back Countries, and the Depositary of the Indian Trade.”15
Never simply an administrative centre, Carlisle was intended from the first as a channel for the trade of central Pennsylvania.16 As a frontier outpost, Carlisle was the collection point for Indian traders as well as a distribution point for backcountry grain, flour and flaxseed and British manufactured goods. Established athwart the main road leading from Harris’ Ferry on the Susquehanna into the backcountry, Carlisle was fourteen miles from the ferry and fifty miles by road from Lancaster. The new town was thirty two miles from the slightly older York.17 Within a few short years of its founding, Carlisle became a frontier outpost of a different kind, the furthest bastion of imperial power, a refugee camp for settlers fleeing more exposed frontier settlements and the base for the British army’s operations in western Pennsylvania. War temporarily disrupted the Cumberland County economy with farmers afraid to harvest their crops and the fur trade stagnant, but for a few Carlisle merchants and traders the war provided a larger commercial stage and a boost in capital formation. The necessities of moving troops and supplies in wartime caused roads to be built into the wilderness of western Pennsylvania and into Maryland that would at last make Carlisle the “great thorough fare to the back Countries.”
Colonel William Eyre, chief military engineer of the British army in America, wrote of Carlisle in 1762 as “mostly compos’d of People who keep Shops and Public Houses.”18 William Buchanan did both. He came to Carlisle in 1752 from the Marsh Creek settlement, the later Gettysburg, where he was also an innkeeper.19 In August 1752 a local carpenter mortgaged his house and lot in Carlisle to “William Buchanan of Carlisle, innholder.”20 During his years in Carlisle, Buchanan was more than an innkeeper. As early as 1753 he was associated with Robert Callender and Michael Taaffe in the Indian trade.21
When General Braddock asked for roads to be constructed to facilitate his army’s march and the movement of materiel and supplies, George Croghan, John Armstrong, William Buchanan, James Burd, and Adam Hoops were appointed commissioners to oversee construction of two roads from Carlisle, one to Will’s Creek, where Braddock planned to locate his base camp, the other to the Forks of the Ohio. The commissioners started from Carlisle at the end of March and followed an old traders’ path from Shippensburg across the mountains and along Raystown Creek. Deserted by their Indian guides and threatened by scouting parties of French and Indians, they stopped short of the Youghiogheny River and retired to the safety of Fort Cumberland.22 Armstrong and Buchanan advertised in April and May for “two Hundred Labourers… to work on Clearing the new Road… thro’ Cumberland County towards the Ohio.”23
Governor Morris was at Carlisle when news came of Braddock’s defeat. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, Morris “at the request of the People laid the Ground for a Wooden Fort in the Town of Carlisle and … formed four Companies of Militia to whom I distributed some Powder and Lead.” Companies of volunteer associators formed to meet the emergency and elected their own officers. William Buchanan commanded the company raised in Carlisle.24
The frontier waited through the summer and early autumn for the Indians to strike. On Saturday afternoon, November 1, 1755, a hundred Delaware and Shawnee fell upon the Big Cove settlement (present McConnellsburg) and destroyed it. When news reached Carlisle the next day, John Armstrong, John Smith, and William Buchanan decided to send a company of volunteers to Shippensburg.25 For the time being, Carlisle and Shippensburg served as refuges for settlers fleeing more exposed frontier settlements.
The French and Indian War interrupted trade with western tribes, but it gave fresh opportunity to Carlisle shopkeepers and Indian traders in supplying the needs of British and provincial troops. In May 1756 Col. John Armstrong was given the command of all forces west of the Susquehanna and William Buchanan and Adam Hoops shared responsibility for provisioning all the military posts west of the river. Armstrong was unhappy with their performance, writing that “the Contract with Messrs. Hoops & Buchanan gives a general Umbrage” as “an Extravagant sum thrown into the hands of two private persons for a Service of not more than two months in ye whole year.” Buchanan was also reimbursed for his “Expences fortifying Carlisle” and arms and ammunition sent him for its defense. His brother-in-law John Smith had similar accounts paid.26
John Smith and William Lyon were the only ones listed as “merchant” on the 1759 tax assessment, but seven others on the tax roll were identified on later returns as either merchant or shopkeeper.27 Smith was the son of Samuel Smith from Ballymagorry, near Strabane, County Tyrone, an Indian trader and one of Cumberland County’s original justices. William Lyon from County Fermanagh was John Armstrong’s nephew and as an assistant surveyor helped him in laying out the town of Carlisle in 1751.28
Carlisle’s merchants were the recognized leaders of the community. Voters chose William West as their representative in the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1756 and sent John Smith there in 1759. Francis West, William’s brother, and John and William Smith, both brothers-in-law of William Buchanan, were named justices of the county court in 1757.
Command of the second expedition against Fort Duquesne in 1758 fell to General John Forbes, but getting the army there and supplying them on the way was the responsibility of Swiss-born Col. Henry Bouquet. He turned to Adam Hoops to organize much of this as an army contractor, strictly as Agent to the Contractors for Victualling His Majesty’s Forces, since he represented Joshua Howell, who was in turn Philadelphia agent for Baker, Kilby, and Baker of London who held the contract. Hoops made his headquarters at Carlisle and enlisted his son-in-law Daniel Clark and William Buchanan as his assistants.29 Hoops had little previous experience except as a backwoods justice, but successfully organized a network of suppliers stretching from Philadelphia to the South Branch of the Potomac on the Virginia frontier. His letters to them and to army officers are written in his own version of grammar and spelling, but reflect a sagacity and drive that served him well in a complicated business.30
Bouquet was at Carlisle in May 1758 and at a dozen other places east of the Susquehanna arranging for wagons and teams and for flour, oats, beef and pork. He ordered the Berks County magistrates, for instance, to send sixty wagons and teams “to Barney Hughes’ and also to Thomas Harris’ Mill” on Conewago Creek in Lancaster County to load flour and oats and proceed with them to Carlisle.31 Long trains of wagons passed up the road on their way to Carlisle. “I have sent off 40 Waggon load of artillery stores & ammunition yesterday.” Contractors were busy filling orders. “I shall send with the Convoy 1,000 pairs of shoes, and shall order another 1,000 to be made, and have ordered Mr. [Joshua] Howell to send up some tuns of salt.” General Forbes complained about the wagons, the pork, the bad flour and meal that Hoops supplied. He insisted “our men must not be poisoned.” Supply wagons and droves of cattle continued to pass over the same route all summer. “There is plenty of Cattle moving up with a large escort of wagons loaded with flour and pork.”32
The army had to cut a new road and improve existing roads through more than 200 miles of wilderness, slowing the advance. The British were poised to attack Fort Duquesne on November 24, 1758, when the French commander evacuated it and marched his men away in the night. The British occupied the partially-destroyed fort and General John Forbes wrote a report to his superiors, dated from “Fort Duquesne, now Pittsbourg.”33
The war was far from over and the need to garrison and supply frontier outposts continued. Captain Robert Callender of Carlisle and Barnabas Hughes, a tavernkeeper of Donegal Township in Lancaster County, had a contract to supply the army with 1,000 packhorses in 1758–9. General Stanwix was well enough satisfied to give them another contract for additional packhorses in July 1759.34 Hughes moved to Baltimore in 1761 as William Buchanan’s business partner, acting for Colonel Bouquet as well. Victualling the army and supplying wagons and packhorses continued to be an important source of income for Scotch-Irish businessmen in Carlisle and their employers in Philadelphia and London through 1760. Early the next year creditors were warned to present their claims before March 25, when the books would close, to representatives in Philadelphia and Lancaster or, for those west of the Susquehanna, to Adam Hoops at Carlisle.35
Army contracts proved invaluable in the upward trajectory from counting-house or shop counter to city merchant and landed gentleman.36 They clearly played a similar role in the careers of Adam Hoops and his colleagues in Carlisle. Hoops leased his house on the square in Carlisle in 1761 and moved his family to Philadelphia. He continued to take an interest in the Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, but his business interests were now directed to importing dry goods and exporting flaxseed and flour to Ulster ports with his son-in-law Daniel Clark.37 Hoops took his family home to Belfast on his own ship New Hope in 1763 and returned the following year by way of Liverpool.38 His other daughter was the wife of Sam Carsan’s nephew and partner, Thomas Barclay. In later years he devoted time to his investments in Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia land and retired to his country home in Bucks County, where he died in 1771.39
William Buchanan left Carlisle for Baltimore in 1761, where he went into partnership with Barnabas Hughes from Donegal Township in Lancaster County as general merchants. Buchanan maintained his Carlisle connections, however, and was involved in several trading ventures cut short by Pontiac’s War in 1763. Buchanan and his partner Barnabas Hughes joined Thomas Smallman, a Carlisle Indian trader, in sending goods to the Ohio and Illinois country. George Croghan was a silent partner, backing his cousin Smallman financially. When the Indian trade reopened at Fort Pitt, they were among the first to ship trade goods to Smallman’s store there. Croghan took an active role in the business. “According to Smallman’s clerk, James Harris, ‘Any thing we do here is promoted by the influence of Mr. Croghan, without which it would not be worth while to keep a store open at this place.’”40 The partners lost heavily in ventures beyond Fort Pitt in 1763. Their severest loss was a shipment of goods valued at £3,000 sent “under the care of Hugh Crawford to Waweachteny [on the Wabash] and Miamy [upper Miami in Indiana].” Other losses were incurred on trade goods sent to the Lower Shawnee Town [near the juncture of Scioto Creek and the Ohio River] with Thomas Smallman, to Muskingum [in Ohio] under the care of John Bard, and to Illinois under Smallman’s charge as well as “two Houses Destroyed at Fort Pitt by the Indian War in June 1763” and “two Cows Drove from Fort Pitt in June or July 1763.”41 The fur trade was the anchor for Philadelphia interests in Carlisle, since much of the western trade passed that way.42
Buchanan was just one of the enterprising Ulstermen thrust forward by wartime needs. His brother-in-law John Smith, a merchant in Carlisle from 1751, also migrated to Baltimore and became Buchanan’s partner after Hughes died in 1765. Both partnerships sent cargoes of flaxseed and flour to Belfast. Buchanan’s other brother-in-law William Smith moved his family to Baltimore, too. Sligo-born Daniel Clark was introduced to London Quaker merchants Daniel Mildred and William Neale by his father-in-law Adam Hoops, ordering dry goods from both firms on their joint account with the request that “As I am but a Beginner and not Bred to the Business Some Improprieties in my Order may happen which please to amend.”43
Ulster-born John Montgomery remained in Carlisle. John Montgomery described himself as merchant and shopkeeper in deeds, although he is better-remembered for his service in the Pennsylvania Assembly, the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety and the Continental Congress and as co-founder of Dickinson College. He married Sidney Smith, John Smith’s younger sister, in 1755.44 The operations of a backcountry merchant were meticulously recorded in Montgomery’s one surviving store ledger. He evidently relied on William West, James Fullton, Samuel Purviance Sr. and his own brother-in-law John Smith for his stock in trade and offered a bewildering variety of textiles and every other article from six-plate iron stoves to Philadelphia beaver hats. Customers of every social class appear to have demanded cloth of many different kinds, weaves, colours and quality. They paid him in as many different ways: cash, credit for work performed, bills of exchange, cash paid to his creditors, turnips, cider, wheat, corn, whiskey, furs and deerskins. Flaxseed was not a major item in his store credits, but he charged Robert Miller for “Carriage of Flaxseed to Phila. and goods back.” Montgomery oversaw the Cumberland County interests of Philadelphia merchants Adam Hoops and James Fullton and of John Smith, Merchant in Baltimore Town, paying taxes, collecting rents, keeping their Carlisle property in repair and marketing their share of the tenant’s crops on their plantations. Carlisle was still a frontier crossroads. John Boyd who bought a “sett of Philadelphia china cups & saucers” and a “China pint bowl” settled his account with 397 pounds of fall Deerskins. Joseph Spear, the Indian trader, sent furs to Philadelphia through Montgomery. It was also a centre for education. John Creigh, schoolmaster, was paid for schooling Montgomery’s young daughters and charged for a copy of John Dickinson’s Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer. He also paid the Rev. John Steel for schooling his son Sammy and his nephew John Smith, Jr. By 1773 the minister’s school had become the Carlisle Grammar School, with John Montgomery as one of its original board of trustees.45
While French influence over the Ohio Indians was gone, the tribes remained restive. They agreed nevertheless to come to Lancaster for a definitive peace treaty in August 1762. As spokesman for the Scotch-Irish of the frontiers, the Corporation for the Relief of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers pressed Governor James Hamilton to give first priority to the return of captives taken by the Indians and sent five flaxseed merchants, William Humphreys, John Mease, John McMichael, Adam Hoops and George Bryan, and five ministers to the treaty making as observers. The Indians took umbrage at the Governor’s peremptory demand for surrendering all captives and departed angrily for the Ohio, many of them ready to resume warfare.46 Carlisle was again the staging point for a British expedition and its supply base in 1763 when the Ottawa chief Pontiac united the western tribes and struck at frontier forts. Col. Bouquet assembled another force of provincials and British regulars, won a decisive battle at Bushy Run, and relieved the siege of Fort Pitt in August.47 During that summer hundreds of settlers were killed and many more took refuge in Carlisle. Indian traders, scattered throughout the west, were especially vulnerable.48
The backcountry remained nervous for months after Bushy Run. A letter from Carlisle published in the Belfast News Letter in May 1764 reported that:
The distresses of the back inhabitants are greater than can be conceived. Two hundred miles of an extended frontier are so exposed to the incursions of Indians, that no man can go to sleep within 10 or 15 miles of the borders, without being in danger of having his house burnt, and himself and family scalped, or led into captivity, before the next morning.49
In spite of this uncertainty, a mood of optimism swept across the backcountry from 1761, manifesting itself in new towns as nodules of expanding commercial networks that linked the back counties with Philadelphia and Baltimore.
James Fullton was one of those flaxseed merchants who depended on a large number of backcountry customers for the seed and flour he shipped to Londonderry. Fullton regularly advanced money to Joseph Larimore, a storekeeper at Chestnut Level in southern Lancaster County, and to John Morrison and James Hunter in western York County “to buy flaxseed” on his account. Backcountry merchants, such as George Erwin in York, Seth Duncan “near Wright’s Ferry” in Hellam Township, York County, Elijah Sinclair “over Susquehanna River near Nelson’s Ferry” in Chanceford Township, York County, and Samuel Gettys at Marsh Creek (Gettysburg) in York (now Adams) County, often figured in his “Flaxseed Account.” Fullton’s network of customers and commodity buyers included other storekeepers in Lancaster, and in Martic, Drumore, Donegal, and Paxton Townships in Lancaster County, at Swatara (Middletown) and Harris’ Ferry (Harrisburg) as well as in Carlisle, Shippensburg, Rocky Spring (Chambersburg), “Conigogigg” (Mercersburg) and York.50
In his first years in business Fullton attempted to supply a broad range of dry goods, hardware, wine and rum to his customers. By the 1760s he concentrated on wine, rum, sugar, lemons and other West Indian products, supplemented by Irish linens shipped by his Londonderry correspondents. At the same time he was buying flaxseed, iron, staves, and flour to ship to Ireland and flour and other articles for the West Indies. This meant that his backcountry customers necessarily dealt with other merchants for some store goods and sold them hemp, iron and other produce.51 William McCord, one of Fullton’s Lancaster customers, for instance, stocked his shop with dry goods from partners Isaac Whitelock and Benjamin Davis, and Isaac Wikoff. McCord, in turn, supplied other backcountry shopkeepers, such as Hannah Haines in Maytown, James Knox and James Dysart in Paxton Township, James Dowdall and George Erwin “Stoarkeeper,” in York, extending the network in both directions.52
Every backcountry storekeeper accepted flaxseed and other produce in payment for consumer goods. John Cameron of Lancaster sold all the flaxseed he took in to Carsan, Barclay and Mitchell of Philadelphia, but had no other dealings with this firm. He sold the hemp he acquired from Samuel Bethel at Susquehanna to Henry Keppele.53 Cameron’s extensive dealings with other Philadelphia merchants in the flaxseed trade involved the shipment of bar iron to such firms as Mease and Miller, John and David Rhea, Robert Montgomery, and White and Caldwell.54 Cameron obtained the iron from Curtis and Peter Grubb at Hopewell Forge and from Thomas Smith and Co. at Martic Forge. Peter Grubb dealt directly with White and Caldwell, but also relied on Cameron for dry goods and cash in payment for bar iron.55 Cameron had his own network, too, supplying a number of shopkeepers, among them Usher and Donaldson and George Stevenson in York, John Lowden “at Susquehanna,” Caleb Johnston, Joseph Solomon, and William McCord in Lancaster, James Patterson, John Allison and James Fullton in Donegal Township and Joseph Spear, Indian trader at Carlisle, who made his remittance in deer skins and beaver skins.56 Cameron’s own stock in trade came from Philadelphia merchant Daniel Wister, amounting to no less than £59,997.10.3, for a total indebtedness of £65,077.9.5 by 1769.57 Wister understandably felt free to draw on Cameron for cash and bills, for example to pay Carsan, Barclay and Mitchell for Irish linens, draining away whatever specie his store accumulated. When Cameron died early in 1770, he was resented by other Lancaster traders because “he received three or four times as much money as all the rest of the Shopkeepers put together” but nearly all of it “was always sent to Philadelphia, so that there would be but very little Cash circulating among us.”58
While one Philadelphia merchant’s ledgers will reveal his customers in the backcountry, these more complicated networks can also be traced in court proceedings. James Fullton, John Shee, and the heirs of Robert Usher each proceeded against Alexander Brown, a shopkeeper in Mountjoy Township, probably in Elizabethtown, for unpaid goods. The judgment for Fullton was levied on Brown’s house and three acres of ground.59 Some country storekeepers obtained stock from many different wholesalers. Flaxseed merchants John Shee, William West, Thomas Charlton, Abraham Usher and Randle Mitchell, William McCausland, William Crichton, and Henry Keppele obtained judgments against Roger Anderson, a shopkeeper in Leacock Township, for store goods each one advanced him on credit.60 Bankruptcy also brought commercial networks to light. In 1766 Lancaster shopkeeper Robert Fulton deeded his property to William West, Joseph Swift, and Samuel Purviance, Jr. He was also indebted to William Moore, Isaac Wikoff, Richard Parker, George Fullerton and James Fullton.61
Backcountry customers, like any business associates, needed to be nurtured by personal contacts. Every three months Fullton made a tour through Lancaster, Cumberland and York counties and into Maryland to settle accounts. Each time he recorded “My Expences in the Country” along with “Sundry accounts received at their homes.” His travels took him to nearly all the principal Scotch-Irish settlements in the lower Susquehanna valley and interestingly his contacts outside of the Philadelphia mercantile community were exclusively with Scotch-Irish businessmen. Whatever he did with this knowledge, he was in a position to know a great deal about backcountry Pennsylvania. A few of his extant letters refer to taking passengers on board ship at Londonderry for the voyage to America, but none mention information shared with them when they reached Philadelphia, even in the case of his own relatives. Despite the lack of documentation, one might think that Fullton used his backcountry network to inform emigrant families about land prices and prospects in one settlement or another.62
Like other merchants, Fullton acted as a banker for his backcountry customers, co-signing a note for Lancaster shopkeeper Robert Fulton in 1764, for instance, and asking another Lancaster shopkeeper to advance money to a third party on Fullton’s account.63 As James T. Lemon observed, “Rural Pennsylvanians were connected by a chain of credit through Philadelphia and Baltimore and through merchants, millers, and shopkeepers in smaller places with London merchants.”64 British wholesalers sent textiles and other manufactures on long credit and the city merchants shipped goods to backcountry shopkeepers on credit for a shorter time, usually six months.
Daniel Clark, Adam Hoops’ son-in-law and partner, needed a network of shopkeepers in Shippensburg, York and elsewhere in the backcountry to distribute the dry goods he imported from England and Ireland. Clark also shipped goods for the Indian trade. For example, Clark offered to supply a stock of goods at six months credit, “the usual time,” to Captain John Clark, who kept a tavern and store at Bird-in-Hand, six miles east of Lancaster on the Philadelphia road.65
The Mitchell brothers from Glenarm, County Antrim, developed a different sort of network. John and Randle Mitchell each supplied dry goods to many backcountry merchants who sent them flaxseed and other produce. George Erwin of York and Charles Hamilton of Lancaster, who was married to a Mitchell niece, were typical in that they had extensive dealings with John Mitchell year after year.66 While most of their business was conducted through their principal and autonomous Philadelphia firms, the Mitchells inclined to form separate partnerships with country storekeepers, such as Randle Mitchell’s partner Francis Murray at Newtown in Bucks County.67 John Mitchell had similar business relationships, for example, with John Reynolds at Allentown. This led the Mitchells to acquire town lots in many of the new towns created in the 1760s. Nor were they alone in choosing new towns as business centres.
Merchants like Fullton and the Mitchells depended on at least passable roads to send goods by wagon to customers as far away as Fort Ligonier and bring flaxseed, flour, hemp, even bar iron by the same wagons to Philadelphia. “The traveler who headed west from Philadelphia would find the road rutted and muddy, thanks to heavy use by hundreds of Conestoga wagons loaded with produce.” Wagons and teams crossed the broad Susquehanna with some difficulty by ferryboat.68 Crossroads taverns and stores provided collection points for country produce and the advantages of laying out a town at such points were readily understood.
Initially stores, often in connection with taverns, were widely dispersed in the back counties. Both were situated at the distance of a day’s journey on main highways and at ferries. With the creation of proprietary towns as centres of local government, some traders settled there, while others continued to do business at rural crossroads that would in many cases be the site for new towns in the 1760s.69
James T. Lemon wrote of a “town-making fever” that led to the founding of more than twenty-nine new towns in the Pennsylvania backcountry between 1756 and 1765, more than in all of Pennsylvania in the previous 75 years.70 This fever reached its peak in 1761–2, with the end of Indian raids on the frontier and a positive economic outlook based on wartime profits on backcountry produce. It also reflected the commercial development of the county towns in the backcountry, notably Lancaster, York, and Carlisle, as secondary centres for the distribution of manufactured goods and the shipment of wheat, flour, flaxseed, beef and pork to Philadelphia and a market overseas. Lemon suggested that some of the new towns, such as McAllisterstown (Hanover) in York County and Chambersburg and Shippensburg in Cumberland County, developed in the 1760s as satellites of the county towns, important transport centres at major crossroads. He also recognized a different network for which the established county towns and the new towns were nodal points, the commercial network linking Philadelphia merchants and backcountry shopkeepers.71
New towns sprang up along the main roads. Stretching across the Pennsylvania backcountry from Northampton Town (Allentown) in the “Irish Settlement” on the Lehigh River to Taneytown in western Maryland at least a dozen new towns were laid out and lots sold in 1761–2 alone. Edward Shippen of Lancaster, one of the principal merchants in the Indian trade, began selling lots in Shippensburg in Cumberland County in February 1763. The 173 lots went mainly to Scotch-Irish buyers. The deeds described the lots as “within a certain new town called Shippensburg,” but there had been a small settlement there before 1750.72 Benjamin Chambers from County Antrim settled at the site of the Falling Spring by 1734, but he laid out the town of Chambersburg only in 1764.73 Richard McAllister laid out his town, later called Hanover, in 1763 or 1764 to the great amusement of his German neighbours. He was the son of Archibald McAllister, an Ulster emigrant, who settled near the Big Spring in Cumberland County in 1732.74
Although a few established merchants, like John Cox, Jr., Edward Shippen and Barnabas Hughes, laid out backcountry towns and others played ancillary roles in their development, much of the impetus for town-making came from local interests, from the tavernkeepers, shopkeepers, and land speculators of the back counties, who were often enough one and the same person.75 They seized on the real or imagined advantages of a place on the main roads or the river as a link in the chain that bound them to the transatlantic commerce of Philadelphia and Baltimore. These rural entrepreneurs were not simply retailers of imported dry goods making remittances in country produce. They frequently acted as purchasing agents for city merchants, assembling large orders of flaxseed or flour, and handled other business for their principals in the seaport. While staking out town lots in a rocky pasture alongside a crossroads tavern or store would add to their annual income, the founders of backcountry towns primarily aimed at consolidating the trade of their rural neighbourhoods.
Richard McAllister operated a tavern and a store where the high road from Carlisle to Baltimore crossed the road leading to York and Philadelphia. When he announced his intention to make a town there, his neighbours thought it a good joke. McAllister persisted and in 1763 or 1764 offered lots subject to an annual rent. At the suggestion of an influential neighbour, McAllisterstown became Hanover.76 “Richard M’Callister’s store at Hanover-town in York county” was broken into on an October night in 1767 and a great variety of calico, linens, handkerchiefs and other dry goods taken away, together with about six pounds in cash.77 Records of both store and town are extant.78 McAllister’s accounts are mainly of small purchases by customers who lived in his immediate neighbourhood and at McSherrystown, Abbotstown, Littlestown, Spring Forge, and Mary Ann Furnace. A few of these customers paid in flaxseed. His accounts with his suppliers are more revealing. He ordered “Sundries” of considerable value from David M’Lure, John and Alexander M’Lure, James Sterrett & Son, all of Baltimore, beginning in 1774, and from Baltimore merchants Joseph McGoffin and William Neill, beginning in 1775. He also had dealings with John Montgomery, a merchant in Carlisle. His account with “John Smith, Merchant”, presumably the well-known Baltimore merchant of that name, differs from the others in that the amount of McAllister’s cash payments greatly exceeded the value of “Sundries” supplied.79
Carlisle still looked eastward over Harris’ Ferry to commercial links with Philadelphia. Between 1763 and 1775 twelve Cumberland County residents, including five Carlisle shopkeepers, mortgaged property to Philadelphia merchants to secure debts and only three, all local merchants, mortgaged property to Baltimore merchants.80 An equal and opposite force drew the trade of Carlisle and the western shore to the new commercial centre of Baltimore. Its rise was due in part to the migration of several rising merchants from Carlisle to Baltimore beginning in 1760.81 Baltimore claimed a lion’s share of the trade in grain, flour, and flaxseed within the Cumberland Valley. This was especially true of the region west of the Susquehanna, where by 1770 no fewer than eight major roads led south to Baltimore.82
Shippensburg and Chambersburg were in many ways satellites of Carlisle. Both new towns would seem to have an even closer relation to Baltimore firms, since the distance there by road was so much less than to Philadelphia. Samuel Jack and Robert Boyd of Chambersburg, shopkeepers, mortgaged real estate to Alexander M’Clure and William Goodwin, merchants of Baltimore, to secure payment of a bonded debt in 1773, but Samuel Jack mortgaged other property the same year to Caleb and Amos Foulke of Philadelphia.83
With Philadelphia merchants like Samuel Carsan and Samuel Purviance opening branches of their firms in Baltimore in the 1760s, others found correspondents in the new town, supplying one another’s needs, so that the relationship between the two cities was more symbiotic than a simple trade rivalry.84 In 1771, a Philadelphian could nevertheless write that:
Baltimore town in Maryland has within a few years past carried off from this city almost the whole trade of Frederick, York, Bedford, and Cumberland Counties, its situation on the West side of the river Susquehannah and its vicinity to these counties will always be a prevailing inducement with the inhabitants of those parts to resort to Baltimore for trade, rather than to be at the expense of crossing the river Susquehannah and afterwards to drag their wagons along a road rendered almost impassable by the multitude of carriages which use it, and the insufficiency of our road Acts to keep it in repair.85
Another Philadelphian observed that “immense quantities” of wheat and flour “are now carried to Baltimore in Maryland” and “that, not only all the Inhabitants to the westward of Susquehanna, but also a large tract of the country adjacent, on the east side of said river, transport their commodities to that growing town.”86
With the threat of Indian raids gone, settlers moved up the Susquehanna and the Juniata, both navigable by flatboats or rafts at certain seasons of the year. New towns sprang up along the river to capture their trade for Philadelphia. John and Thomas Simpson sold lots in their new town “on the eastern side of Susquehana, about two miles above Mr. Harris’s ferry, in the township of Paxton” on a bitter cold day in February 1765, but advertised a second lottery when the weather was less severe. They claimed their town was “the most convenient for trade of any yet formed in the back parts of this province, where the new settlers in Sherman’s Valley, on Juniata, and up Susquehana, may easily repair by water.”87 John Cox, Jr., a Philadelphia merchant and partner of Samuel Purviance, Jr. in western land speculation, offered lots in Estherton, his new town, also in Paxton Township.88
Towns in this part of Pennsylvania sprang up along the main roads leading to Philadelphia. George Fisher, son of a Philadelphia merchant, sold the first lots “in a certain new Town, called Middletown, in Paxtang” in 1761.89 According to one Middletown boomer, merchants there traded up the Susquehanna and produce was brought down the river to Middletown “with many thousand bushels of wheat, rye, and Indian corn annually unloaded here.”90 Barnabas Hughes, by this time a Baltimore merchant, made the first deeds for lots in Elizabethtown, the town he laid out around a central diamond and named for his wife, in 1763. Both towns lay on the main road from Harris’ Ferry to Lancaster.91
Another road from Harris’ Ferry swung southeast through Lancaster County to meet the main Philadelphia road. In 1762 Frederick Hummel bought land in Derry Township from John Campbell and laid out Hummelstown athwart this road.92 A few miles further east John Campbell divided another piece of his “property into lots, for the purpose of erecting a town or village,” called Campbellstown.93 This road continued past Ephrata Cloister to the Blue Ball tavern in Earl Township, where Robert Wallace opened a store in 1762, and on to the distant metropolis.94 Another road forked off from this road near Hummelstown going northeast through the new town of Lebanon to Reading. George Stites deeded 365 acres “including land platted into Town of Lebanon” to his grandson George Reynolds in 1761 “for the purpose of building a town.”95
Several town founders had stores or taverns or both as the nucleus for their new town. George Reynolds and his partner John Nicholas Henicke were storekeepers in Lebanon. Philadelphia merchants Henry Keppele, Philip Benezet, Isaac Myer, Owen Jones and Daniel Wister, Moses Heyman, and Marcus Kuhl supplied them with goods and obtained judgments against them when they failed to pay. The debts were levied on”a brick messauge” and other houses and lots in Lebanon Town.96 Frederick Stump conveyed a lot on Market Street in Fredericksburgh in Bethel Township in May 1761. The buyer agreed to build a sixteen-foot-square house with a good chimney within eighteen months.97 Matthias Bush and Henry Keppele of Philadelphia each sued him to be paid for store goods.98 George Newman, another storekeeper and town founder, owed both Jones and Wister and Whitelock and Davies for goods.99
The new towns east of the Susquehanna were generally inhabited by Germans, who had recently arrived in Pennsylvania. This was true even in areas with substantial Scotch-Irish rural populations. Travelling from Lancaster to Maytown, Elizabethtown, Middletown and Hummelstown to visit Lutheran congregations in 1769, the Rev. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg commented on each community in almost the same words: “The inhabitants of this town are young newcomers and for the most part poor.”100 The men who laid out these towns were sometimes Germans, but most often of British ancestry. Shopkeepers in these towns and villages were more likely born in Scotland or Ireland.
The 1760s were not particularly good years for retail traders. Many backcountry shopkeepers were overextended and found themselves unable to meet their obligations. William McCord, a shopkeeper in Lancaster, was bankrupt in 1767. Joseph Swift, Cadwallader Morris, George Fullerton and Isaac Wikoff were his principal creditors.101 George M’Dowell of Middletown, Lancaster County, shopkeeper, signed over all his effects and debts to John Boyle and John Murray in 1767.102 The same year William McCullough, storekeeper in Hanover Township, mortgaged his property to Joseph Swift and Caleb Foulke, trustees for themselves and his other creditors, Owen Jones and Daniel Wister, Charles Willing, Alexander Todd, Benjamin Davis, Benjamin Fuller, Samuel Hudson, Robert Lloyd, and Daniel Wister.103 McCullough evidently recovered since he later advertised land in Lancaster County, including lots in Miller’s town [Millersville] in Manor Township, Frederick’s Town [Hummelstown] and Jones’ town for sale in 1769.104 James Wilson granted 201 acres in Paxton Township to Matthew Smith, who then conveyed the property in trust to Samuel Purviance Jr and Caleb Foulke, merchants of Philadelphia, who were to sell it for the best price and pay debts owed by Wilson to John and Joseph Swift of Philadelphia, then themselves, Abel James, and the assignees of Wilson’s other creditors, Mordecai Yarnel, Jeremiah Warder, Richard Parker and Matthias Bush.105
Many backcountry shopkeepers were young men hoping to rise to the status of merchant. One such was Hugh Swan, who came to Pennsylvania with a stock of linen from north Antrim markets. Like William Pollard who “embarked for Philadelphia with the intent of setting up as an importer of woollen goods from his native West Yorkshire,” Swan discovered that connections at home were not enough to offset the advantages London held for established dry goods merchants.106 Swan’s story is told in terms of actions for debt. Isaac Whitelock and Benjamin Davis, merchants of Philadelphia sued Hugh Swan, shopkeeper of Paxton Township, in August 1763 for a debt of £493.17.10 which Swan then paid. At the next session of the court James Simm brought an action against Hugh Swan of Lancaster County, “otherwise called Hugh Swan of Killead Parish, County of Antrim, linen draper,” for a small sum. He also settled this debt. In February 1764 the court ordered the sheriff to seize 200 acres in Paxton and 250 acres in neighbouring Hanover Township to settle claims by William Hay for £2000 and by Andrew Elliott for a small sum. Hugh Swan, merchant, was taken into custody in August 1764 at the suit of Philadelphia merchant Jeremiah Warder. He evidently paid all of these creditors. In May 1765 Robert Thompson, John Singleton and Allen Gillespie, John Lindsay, and John Hughes were granted executions levied on Swan’s land. He again paid his debts and held onto his real estate.107 In 1771 Hugh Swan, storekeeper in Hanover Township, and his wife mortgaged his property to William Sitgreaves, a Philadelphia merchant.108 They returned home at a time when other Ulster families were sailing to Pennsylvania. Hugh Swan joined his relatives in County Antrim, where he had a long career as a respected linen merchant and owner of bleach greens.109
Merchants of substance were not immune to the shifting tides of the Atlantic economy. Adam Hoops, now retired to his country estate, deeded much of his property in Cumberland County to his son-in-law Daniel Clark, who promptly transferred title to his creditors, Jeremiah Warder, Abel James, and William West. Clark and his wife evidently needed her father’s help to stave off bankruptcy.110
Many flaxseed merchants owned lots in the new towns springing up at every crossroads. James Fullton, for instance, invested in houses and lots in Middletown and Shippensburg. The Mitchell brothers were unusual in acquiring property in the new towns as a marketing strategy. Like more modest ventures into the backcountry trade, it also led ultimately to business failure.
One of several regional centres in eastern Pennsylvania, Reading was a market town and the county seat of Berks County. As in the county, German settlers predominated in Reading. Thomas Penn chose the site where a main road crossed the Schuykill River, laid out the town and the sale of lots began in 1749. By the end of 1763 Reading counted 210 families or 1,300 inhabitants. Ten shopkeepers and four wagoners employed hauling goods to and from Philadelphia lived in Reading in 1767. The Mitchells chose the town as the site for one of their first retail outlets in the backcountry. Randle Mitchell, Benjamin Lightfoot, Thomas Dundas and Adam Witman had their shops on Penn Square in the centre of town.111 Robert Patton was employed to manage the Reading store and given considerable freedom to act on his own. When the store was short of cash, a perennial problem in the back counties, Patton obtained a loan from Carsan, Barclay and Mitchell which he had some difficulty repaying. His surviving correspondence with John Mitchell reflects the high level of consumer preferences that drove retail business as Patton ordered cloth in specific colours, patterns and quality that he believed suitable for Quakers or for Germans.112 Patton moved on to manage the Baltimore store. His successors bought flaxseed for the Mitchells.113
Allentown, originally Northampton Town, was another of the new towns platted in 1762. Only thirteen persons paid taxes in the town the first year and there were just thirty eight names on the 1766 tax list, but they included two shopkeepers. John Reynolds kept the Allentown store for the Mitchells, sending down pork, corn, beeswax and cheese taken in payment for store goods and buying barrel staves.114 Reynolds was also busy buying flaxseed in season.115
Charles Hamilton, whose wife was a sister of Randle and John Mitchell, and his partner William Moore were sons of merchants in Londonderry. They established a mercantile business in Lancaster in 1771. Hamilton and Moore sent flaxseed to John Mitchell, ordering goods from him.116 Their store occupied “the premises where John Cameron had his store.” They promised “the highest price for Bees Wax, Hemp, Flax Seed, in its season, and country made Linen, and most sorts of Country Produce.”117 Hamilton & Moore dissolved their partnership in 1774 and William Moore moved to Reading.118 Hamilton asked Mitchell,
to Ship in the first Vessell that Sails to LondonDerry 2Hhds. Flaxseed for Charles Hamilton in Broadpath Consigned to William Moore Merchant Londonderry which Charge to William Moore of Reading who will Remit you the Cash Immediately, he Sends my Father the Two Hhds Seed in Consequence of a present of £33 Interest I made him in our Settlement when we dissolved our Partnership.”119
Hamilton was assiduous in finding new customers for Mitchell, not always with the best results. Hamilton recommended Michael Montgomery, “a person that lives & keeps Store in Maytown & tavern which is about 14 Miles from this place,” and wanted Mitchell to send him goods on credit for which he would remit in flour.120 Montgomery wrote to Mitchell and sent his own brother with his wagon to Philadelphia for a selection of goods suitable for a store, since “Your Brother Mr. Hamilton Mercht. In Lanchaster promised that I should Get as good treatment as he gets.”121 Unfortunately, with the assortment of store goods in hand, Montgomery took off for Shamokin on the upper Susquehanna and Mitchell and Hamilton had great difficulty reclaiming their property.122
Their partner in Middletown caused them no less grief. Randle and John Mitchell drew up an agreement with John Williams, “to furnish a Store to be kept by said Williams at Middletown aforesaid with all kinds of Goods and Merchandises that might Be necessary for the same.” Williams would have “for his Trouble and Attendance on said Store One third part of the Issues and profits arising from the sale of all such goods as he should dispose of on account of said Partnership.” After several years Williams was in debt to the Mitchells for a considerable sum and conveyed his house and lot in Middletown and all claims on the business to them.123 With little incentive left to be loyal to his employers, Williams removed the store goods and prepared to leave for the frontier settlement on the Holston River in Virginia. Charles Hamilton reported:
Williams is this Morning Lodged safe in Our Gaol, the sheriff took him Friday last in Middletown and he pretended he had no objection to come with the Sheriff but in the night made his escape leaving his Pocket Book and every Stick of his Cloaths that he had taken off when he went to bed & got himself dressed in others. the Sheriff then Advertised a Reward and Raised a party & after a long pursuit Retook him in Cumberland County. he had sent his Chest three days before he was taken toward Holstens River Virginia by one of his Associates and had got his Horse Ruff Shod & every thing packed up to follow the next day after he was first taken.124
Such were the perils of doing business in the backcountry. Randle Mitchell had returned to Belfast in 1770 with the flaxseed ships, leaving his friend Hugh Donaldson to conduct his business.125 He came back to Philadelphia, determined to retire from trade. Mitchell offered to sell the Reading store to his competitor Thomas Dundas.126 He offered his stock in goods at prime cost to merchants and shopkeepers and sold off the Middletown, Caernarvon and Reading stores.127 But John Mitchell was apparently still convinced that opening new retail stores to absorb more and more British goods was the way to wealth. Benjamin Fuller recorded the denouement.
I make no doubt that you will have heard that our friend Jack Mitchell has been obliged to stop, it was an act of his own before his affairs should become desperate, and deserves its merit. He very imprudently greatly over imported himself, in proportion to his original capital; however from the present appearance of his affairs, there will be a sufficiency to pay all his debts, but it will take time to bring them into a narrow compass.128
1 Waddell Cunningham to David Gaussan, June 17, 1756, Truxes, Letterbook of Greg and Cunningham, 155.
2 Imports reflected the previous year’s harvest. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, 284.
3 Pennsylvania Gazette, July 31, 1755. On the impact of these frontier raids on backcountry society, see Matthew C. Ward, Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years’ War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754–1765 (Pittsburgh, PA, 2003), 64–8, 71–3.
4 Pennsylvania Gazette, August 19, 1756. Adam Hoops to Robert Hunter Morris, September 6, 1756, in Colonial Records, VII, 242.
5 William Buchanan wrote from Carlisle with news of Braddock’s defeat. “It is now reduced to a certainty that our Army are defeated, the General & Sir John are dangerously wounded, about the number of one thousand men lost with the train of Artillery & baggage. The remain[in]g part of the Army have destroy’d all their baggage except two Six pounders which was in Dunbar’s Regiment and Provisions necessary for their retreat to Wills’ Creek where I expect they are by this time.” William Buchanan to William Franklin, July 21, 1755 (HSP).
6 John Richard Alden, General Gage in America (Baton Rouge, LA, 1948), 24–6. Governor Morris was outraged at the idea that “all that extensive and Rich Country which lies West of the Sasquehannah be abandoned and laid waste.” Robert L. D. Davidson, War Comes to Quaker Pennsylvania 1682–1756 (New York, 1957), 150–51. Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, colonies, and tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York, 1988), 159.
7 Priscilla H. Roberts and James N. Tull, Adam Hoops, Thomas Barclay, and the House in Morrisville Known as Summerseat, 1764–1791, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, Volume 90, Pt. 5 (Philadelphia, 2000), 11.
8 James Logan to James Anderson and Andrew Galbraith, March 2, 1730 (Logan Letterbooks, III, 170, HSP).
9 William Burke, An Account of the European Settlements in America (London, 1760), II, 216.
10 Minutes of the Corporation for the Relief of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers, 1759, in Maurice W. Armstrong, Lefferts A. Loetscher, and Charles A. Anderson, eds., The Presbyterian Enterprise: Sources of American Presbyterian History (Philadelphia, 1956), 71.
11 Grubb denied that he said anything of the sort. Pennsylvania Gazette, June 10, 1756.
12 William M. Swaim, “The Evolution of Ten Pre-1745 Presbyterian Societies in the Cumberland Valley,” Cumberland County History, 2(1985), 3–30.
13 Jerome Wood, Jr., Conestoga Crossroads: Lancaster, Pennsylvania 1730–1790 (Harrisburg, PA, 1979), 93, 103–08.
14 Paul Erb Doutrich, “The Evolution of an Early American Town: Yorktown, Pennsylvania 1740–1790,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kentucky (1985), 17–18.
15 Judith Anne Ridner, “A Handsomely Improved Place: Economic, Social, and Gender Role Development in a Backcountry Town, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 1750–1815,” Ph.D. dissertation, College of William and Mary (1994), 26–7.
16 Indian trade was seen as the lifeblood of the new town. Governor James Hamilton wrote in 1752 that the trading partnership of George Croghan and William Trent “drew a great deal of trade to that part of the country, and made money circulate briskly,” but their unexpected bankruptcy “will, I fear, retard the progress of the town.” Hamilton to Thomas Penn, June 19, 1752 (Penn MSS, Official Correspondence, V, 183, HSP, as quoted in Nicholas B. Wainwright, George Croghan Wilderness Diplomat (Chapel Hill, NC, 1959), 45).
17 James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man’s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (Baltimore, 1971), 104.
18 Ridner, “A Handsomely Improved Place,” 92.
19 Pennsylvania Gazette, February 11, 1752.
20 Cumberland Deeds, A–30 (CCCH). Buchanan’s tavern was located on Lot 109. In January 1760, William Buchanan of Carlisle, gentleman, and his wife Esther conveyed this property to James Pollock of Carlisle, tavernkeeper, for the substantial sum of £1200 Pennsylvania currency, since the Buchanans were about to move to Baltimore. Merri Lou Scribner Schaumann, A History and Genealogy of Carlisle, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 1751–1835 (Carlisle, PA, 1995), 55.
21 Robert Callender and Michael Taaffe to William Buchanan, September 2, 1753, in Colonial Records, V, 684.
22 Albert T. Volwiler, George Croghan and the Westward Movement 1741–1782 (Cleveland, OH, 1926), 92–4.
23 Ridner, “A Handsomely Improved Place ,” 91.
24 William A. Hunter, Forts on the Pennsylvania Frontier 1753–1758 (Harrisburg, PA, 1960), 171.
25 Hunter, Forts on the Pennsylvania Frontier, 177. See also, Jane T. Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003), 176–81. Armstrong was from County Fermanagh.
26 Hunter, Forts on the Pennsylvania Frontier, 200–02, 441, 447. Adam Hoops, first resided in present Franklin County, PA., later moving to Carlisle.
27 Stephen Duncan, Thomas Donnellan, William Spear, and Francis West, merchants, and Andrew Grier, John Montgomery, and Elizabeth Ross, shopkeepers. Tax List in Schaumann, History, 173–4.
28 Lyon’s business records from 1759 are in the Cumberland County Historical Society, Carlisle, PA.
29 Roberts and Tull, Adam Hoops, 11–15.
30 Numerous letters from and to Hoops are in the Henry Bouquet Papers. His birthplace is unknown, but his Ulster associations suggest he was born in Ireland. Roberts and Tull, Adam Hoops, 3–4.
31 Barnabas (Barney) Hughes, who was also an army contractor, kept “The Sign of the Bear in Donegal” at Elizabethtown, a town he laid out in 1763. Sylvester K. Stevens, ed., The Papers of Henry Bouquet (Harrisburg, PA, 1951), II, 31–2.
32 Alfred P. James, ed., Writings of General John Forbes Relating to his Service in North America (Menasha, WI, 1938), 97–111, 178.
33 James, Writings of General John Forbes, 262.
34 Donald H. Kent, ed., The Papers of Henry Bouquet (Harrisburg, PA, 1976), III, 112–13, 289–91, 293–5, 429.
35 Pennsylvania Gazette, February 19, 1761.
36 This is one of the themes developed in David Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community 1735–1785 (Cambridge and New York, 1995), 224–7.
37 Roberts and Tull, Adam Hoops, 17–22. Daniel Clark Letterbook, 1759–61 (HSP).
38 Pennsylvania Gazette, October 22, 1761. Pennsylvania Journal, November 15, 1763, June 14, 1764. Hoops also owned the snow Elizabeth in partnership with William Hodge of Philadelphia and Thomas Montgomery of Delaware. “Ship Registers,” PMHB, 27(1903), 98, 353.
39 Roberts and Tull, Adam Hoops, 28.
40 Harris to Buchanan and Hughes, June 21, 1762, as quoted in Wainwright, Croghan, 190–91.
41 “An Account of Losses sustained by William Buchanan, Barnabas Hughes & Thomas Smallman in Sundry Adventures of Trade to the Indian Countries by Indian Hostilities in the Year 1763” (AM–2229, HSP).
42 On Carlisle’s role in the fur trade in the 1760s, see also Judith Ridner, “Relying on the ‘Saucy’ Men of the Backcountry: Middlemen and the Fur Trade in Pennsylvania,” PMHB, 129(2005), 133–62.
43 Daniel Clark to William Neale, December 20, 1759, August 27, 1760, to Daniel Mildred, November 15, 1760, November 29, 1760 (Daniel Clark Letterbook, 1–9, 12, 27, 30, HSP).
44 Cumberland County Deeds, B–45, C–304 (CCCH). “Smith Family Genealogy” (1729/179, Special Collections, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville).
45 [John Montgomery], “Leger 3 1765–71” (Joseph Kent Collection, MS 092–31, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University, Blacksburg). On the Grammar School, Merri Lou Scribner Schaumann, History and Genealogy of Carlisle, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania (Dover, PA, 1987), 213.
46 “Minutes of the Corporation for the Relief of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers,” 37–41, PHS. Colonial Records, VIII, 723ff. Guy S. Klett, ed., Journals of Charles Beatty 1762–1769 (University Park, PA, 1962), 32–3. Ward, Breaking the Backcountry, 214–6.
47 Howard H. Peckham, Pontiac and the Indian Uprising (Princeton, NJ, 1947), 37ff. Niles Anderson, The Battle of Bushy Run (Harrisburg, PA, 1966), 5–6.
48 George Croghan estimated 2,000 killed or captured by Indians and thousands “drove to beggary.” Wainwright, Croghan, 199. Volwiler, George Croghan, 265–6.
49 Belfast News Letter, May 25, 1764.
50 Ledger A (1761–65), November 26, 1761, November 19, 1763. Day Book (1763–66), November 11, 1763, April 1, 1765 and passim (James Fullton Papers, HSYC).
51 Fullton’s business career is sketched in Richard K. MacMaster, “James Fullton, A Philadelphia Merchant and His Customers,” Familia 17(2001), 23–34.
52 Invoices, William McCord to Whitelock and Davies, November 27, 1763, William McCord to Isaac Wikoff, November 28, 1763. Account, Mr. Jas. Dowdall to Wm McCord Dr. Dec. 17, 1764–Sep. 4, 1766. Invoice Book, 9. Ledger, 6, 32 (William McCord Papers, MG–2, Pennsylvania State Archives).
53 Samuel Carsan, his nephew Thomas Barclay, and William Mitchell comprised this firm. Samuel Bethel was a storekeeper at present Columbia, PA. John Cameron Ledger 1767–70, 108–09, 198 (Wistar Papers, HSP).
54 Cameron Ledger, 47, 110, 202, 208 (Wistar Papers, HSP).
55 White and Caldwell to Peter Grubb, July 22, 1767, October 7, 1767, June 2, 1768; John Cameron to Peter Grubb, July 29, 1767, July 22, 1768 (Grubb Papers, HSP).
56 Cameron Ledger, 111 (Wistar Papers, HSP).
57 Cameron Ledger, 138 (Wistar Papers, HSP).
58 Pennsylvania Chronicle, January 29, 1770. Edward Shippen to James Hamilton, August 21, 1770, Shippen Letterbook, American Philosophical Society, as quoted in Wood, Conestoga Crossroads, 100.
59 Lancaster County Fieri Facias, May 1763, November 1763, February 1764 (LCHS).
60 Lancaster County Fieri Facias, August 1763, August 1764 (LCHS).
61 Lancaster Deeds, M–142, M–144 (LCCH).
62 Ledger A (1761–65), January 3, 1765, February 27, 1765. (James Fullton Papers. HSYC). James Fullton to John Fullton and Ephraim Campbell, December 19, 1766, June 30, 1767 (James Fullton Letterbook (typescript), LCHS).
63 Bond, James Fullton and Robert Fulton to John Ross, November 27, 1764. James Fullton to William McCord, February 12, 1765 (Stauffer Collection, 27/2152, 21/1616, HSP).
64 Lemon, Best Poor Man’s Country, 27.
65 Daniel Clark to John Clark, March 15, 1761 (Clark Letterbook, 54, HSP).
66 Numerous letters in John Mitchell’s correspondence from Charles Hamilton, Hamilton & Moore, and George Erwin. On the family connection, Charles Hamilton to John Mitchell, June 1, 1774 (Mitchell Papers, MG92, PSA).
67 Pennsylvania Gazette, April 27, 1769, August 16, 1770.
68 Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit, 76.
69 A. G. Seyfert, “The Wallace Family and the Wallace Store of East Earl,” Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society, 28(1924), 20–29.
70 Lemon, Best Poor Man’s Country, 29, 143.
71 Lemon, Best Poor Man’s Country, 133–4.
72 History of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, 1886), 257–61. James Fullton to Robert Magaw, September 10, 1766 (James Fullton Letterbook (typescript), LCHS).
73 Pennsylvania Gazette, July 19, 1764. I. H. McCauley, Historical Sketch of Franklin County (Chambersburg, 1878), 9, 22.
74 John Gibson, ed., History of York County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, 1886), 574–5, 592.
75 On storekeeper-tavern keepers, see Diane Wenger, “Delivering the Goods: The Country Storekeeper and Inland Commerce in the Mid-Atlantic,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 129 (2005), 60. Daniel Thorp found tavern keeping and storekeeping was the practice in rural North Carolina, but less common in urban areas where the larger population allowed people to specialize. Daniel B. Thorp, “Doing Business in the Backcountry: Retail Trade in Colonial Rowan County, North Carolina,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 48(1991), 391.
76 John Gibson, ed., History of York County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, 1886), 574.
77 Pennsylvania Journal, October 15, 1767.
78 McAllister kept his store accounts from 1773 to 1781 in a ledger that already was stamped “Paul Zantzinger, Lancaster.” The first 69 pages are missing. It was understandably accessioned as Paul Zantzinger Ledger, MG–2, PSA. McAllister’s Store Book, 1781–5, and Rent Roll, 1782, are in McAllister Papers, MG–81, PSA.
79 “Paul Zantzinger” Ledger, 248, 375, 400, 408, 446, 464, 493 (MG–2, PSA).
80 Cumberland County Deeds, B–72, B–146, B–208, B–211, B–245, C–113, C–302, C–327, C–333, C–363, C–437, C–450, D–402 (Cumberland County Court House, Carlisle, PA).
81 Richard K. MacMaster, “Scotch-Irish Merchants and the Rise of Baltimore: Identity and Community, 1755–1775,” Journal of Scotch-Irish Studies 1(Summer 2001), 19–32.
82 James Weston Livingood, The Philadelphia-Baltimore Trade Rivalry 1780–1860 (Harrisburg, PA, 1947), 4–6.
83 Cumberland County Deeds, C–399, C–436 (CCCH).
84 The idea of a symbiotic relationship was proposed by Jo Hays for the nineteenth century, but it seems valid for the eighteenth as well. Cf. Jo N. Hays, “Overlapping Hinterlands: York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore 1800–1850,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 116 (1992), 295–321.
85 A Friend of Trade, “An Address to the Merchants and Inhabitants of Pennsylvania,” Library of Congress, Pennsylvania Broadsides, fol. 143, as quoted in Livingood, Philadelphia-Baltimore Trade Rivalry, 6.
86 “Philo-Pennsylvaniensis,” Pennsylvania Chronicle, February 17, 1772.
87 Pennsylvania Journal, February 14, 1765, March 7, 1765, July 25, 1765.
88 Pennsylvania Journal, March 21, 1765, June 6, 1765.
89 Lancaster County Deeds, N–1–59, O–1–445 (LCCH).
90 Pennsylvania Gazette, March 8, 1775.
91 Lancaster County Deeds, O–1–368, O–1–370 (LCCH).
92 Lancaster County Deeds, X–1–42 (LCCH).
93 Lancaster County Deeds, R–1–568, S–1–519, Q–1–462 (LCCH).
94 Records of the Wallace store from 1762 are Accession 1004, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware. A. G. Seyfert, “The Wallace Family and the Wallace Store of East Earl,” Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society, 28(1924), 20–29.
95 Lancaster County Deeds, G–1–95 (LCCH).
96 Lancaster County Fieri Facias, May 1762, August 1762, February 1763, May 1763, November 1763 (LCHS).
97 Lancaster Deeds, H–295, R–495 (LCCH).
98 Lancaster County Fieri Facias, May 1762, November 1762 (LCHS).
99 Lancaster County Fieri Facias, May 1762, August 1762 (LCHS).
100 Theodore G. Tappert and John W. Doberstein, eds., The Journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (Philadelphia, 1944), II, 389–90.
101 Pennsylvania Journal, April 23, 1767, June 11, 1767.
102 Pennsylvania Journal, September 3, 1767.
103 Lancaster Deeds, M–194, M–216 (LCCH).
104 Pennsylvania Gazette, July 27, 1769.
105 Lancaster Deeds, P–11 (LCCH).
106 Smail, Merchants, Markets and Manufacture, 1–2.
107 Merchant John Hughes was the Stamp Act collector. Lancaster County Fieri Facias, August 1763, November 1763, February 1764, August 1764, May 1765 (LCHS).
108 Lancaster Deeds, O–545 (LCCH).
109 Belfast News Letter, May 24, 1774, April 11, 1775.
110 Cumberland Deeds, 1–K–28, 1–K–30 (CCCH).
111 Laura L. Becker, “The American Revolution as a Community Experience: A Case Study of Reading, Pennsylvania,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania (1978), 18–26, 185.
112 Robert Patton to John Mitchell, January 8, 1772, June 1, 1772 (John Mitchell Papers. MG 92, PSA).
113 Murray and Conolly to John Mitchell, November 21, 1772, November 22, 1772 (Mitchell Papers).
114 John Reynolds to John Mitchell, January 17, 1772, June 19, 1772, November 6, 1772 (Mitchell Papers). Charles Rhoads Roberts, History of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania (Allentown, PA, 1914), I, 388–92.
115 John Reynolds to John Mitchell, October 23, 1772, November 13, 1772, November 18, 1772, November 20, 1772, December 4, 1772, December 15, 1772 (Mitchell Papers).
116 Hamilton & Moore to John Mitchell, December 30, 1771 (Mitchell Papers).
117 Pennsylvania Journal, December 22, 1773.
118 Pennsylvania Gazette, February 2, 1774.
119 Charles Hamilton to John Mitchell, December 9, 1774 (Mitchell Papers).
120 Charles Hamilton to John Mitchell, November 20, 1774 (Mitchell Papers).
121 Michael Montgomery to John Mitchell, November 10, 1774 (Mitchell Papers).
122 Charles Hamilton to John Mitchell, May 29, 1774 (Mitchell Papers).
123 Lancaster Deeds, N–1–644 (LCCH).
124 Charles Hamilton to John Mitchell, January 8, 1775 (Mitchell Papers).
125 Pennsylvania Gazette, August 16, 1770, October 18, 1770, December 27, 1770, April 18, 1771.
126 Thomas Dundas to John Mitchell, August 23, 1772 (Mitchell Papers).
127 Pennsylvania Gazette, September 22, 1773, October 6, 1773, November 10, 1773, January 5, 1774.
128 Benjamin Fuller to Anthony Stocker, November 15, 1773 (Benjamin Fuller Letterbook, I, 32–33, HSP).