The Ladies of Lancaster, 1789. (pages 23 thru 32)
(page 23, par. 3, line 1) Benajah Osman (d. 1815) had served the entire Revolutionary War as both militia and in the Continental Line. Lyman Draper outlined his military service: "at the defeat of General Washington's troops on Long Island, in August 1776, when he was made a prisoner; he was then, apparently, a soldier in the ranks. On January 1, 1777, he was appointed a second lieutenant and quartermaster in Colonel [Israel] Shreve’s Second New Jersey regiment, which he subsequently resigned. In September 1778, he again entered the army as an ensign in the second regiment; was a prisoner of war on April 25, 1780; made a lieutenant January 1, 1781, retiring at the close of the war with the brevet rank of captain. In 1802, he was made lieutenant-colonel of the Adams County militia…"
Osman and many others often identified themselves by the highest military rank they had achieved in regular or militia service, or had been brevetted at their honorable discharge. "Captain Osman" would have been a constant reminder to Samuel S. Forman that he was too young to have served in the army. It also was a not-so-subtle signal reinforcing hierarchy and expected deference to higher ranks among ubiquitous white male military veterans. In actual use, depending on context, it may have carried an additional affectionate connotation of appreciative recognition afforded to veterans. Or it could reinforce a domineering personality. David Forman insisted on being called General, although his actual rank in New Jersey militia and brief Continental Army service was never higher than colonel.
Variations of Osman's first and last names exist among primary sources, amusingly including ones penned by Osman himself. These include Benjamin, Ozman, Ozmun, and Osmun. The Society of the Cincinnati of New Jersey, of which he was an original member, lists him as Benajah Osmun.
(page 23, par. 2) George Washington’s Continental troops had done a few miles upriver at McConkey’s Ferry on Christmas Day 1776. "We crossed the Delaware five miles above Trenton" Forman and Draper, Op. cit., pp. 20. Identification of the late 18th century Delaware River ferries and their modes of use are discussed in David Hackett Fisher's Washington's Crossing, Appendix I. Samuel S. Forman did not name the ferry his emigrant band used to cross the Delaware. Rather, he described its location as five miles above Trenton. Names and ferry locations had not changed in the intervening years between 1776 and 1789. An alternative could have been Howell's Ferry, which crossed the Delaware a half mile south and closer to Trenton. I judge that unlikely since the Forman emigrants approached the crossing on the road from Cranberry and Princeton. Their intent was to get to the Lancaster Road on the Pennsylvania side, all the while staying well to the north of Philadelphia.
The best known of the ferries to modern observers is McConkey's Ferry. McConkey's had been the main point of embarkation on Christmas Day, December 25, 1776, of Washington's crossing of the Delaware River in his successful surprise attack on the Hessian mercenary garrison at Trenton. Within days Washington's Army re-crossed the Delaware to defeat the British at Princeton. Thirteen different ferries across the Delaware had been used by the Americans during that one campaign. There were no bridges in the area spanning the Delaware River until well into the 19th century.
(page 23, par. 1) the Delaware River, transecting the former Indian ancestral realm of the Lenni Lenape, who had adopted the settlers' name for the river for themselves. The Indians would have described it as the great river in their eastern land of the rising sun. English settlers had since named it Delaware, after the governor of another English colony to the South. Lord de la Warre’s name stuck so tenaciously that river, valley, and the former residents themselves were no longer the Lenni Lenape but the exonymic Delaware Indians. See: Heckewelder, John G. A Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians.
An exonym is a name externally conferred that displaces a previous term, even if the displaced term had been conferred by the group itself. Such instances can carry strong feelings. The exonym may bring connotations hostile or offensive to the named group. The modern tribe employs both their traditional name and the exonym.
The Indians of the New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, Staten Island, Manhattan, and lower New York, called themselves the Lenni Lenape, translating to "human beings" or "real people." I refer to Lenni Lenape as Delawares. To the Americans of the 18th century, their feared Chief Buckongahelas led warlike factions of the Delaware Tribe, then residing in the Ohio Territory. They named the largest river going through their realm Kitanne, or simply Lenapewithutuk, or the "Lenape’s River." To the English, and their American successors, these Indians were the Delawares. In Monmouth County the Indians had been displaced for decades, although some faint memories of the former occupants were left behind in place names, like ocean fronting Manasquan and inland Navasink. Samuel S. Forman likely did not give the Delawares much thought, though he and the Forman pioneer party would doubtless come to rue their inattention.
Buckongahelas, latter day chief of the Delawares, and his confederated chiefs Little Turtle of the Miami and Blue Jacket of the Shawnee Nations, would offer a gauntlet of deadly tomahawks, skilled marksmanship, and ambushes along the entire length of the Ohio River. The Indians then dominated the Northwest Territory.
Delaware Indians had been pushed out of New Jersey to settle around Central Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River by 1750, and still further west following the French and Indian War. The Forman pioneers would soon dare to traverse the Northwest Indian Confederation’s middle ground, encountering descendants of the twice displaced Delawares.
It was a Delaware chief Tammany who first met with William Penn and famously came into a treaty of mutual respect and accommodation in 1682. That event occurred under the long-remembered Treaty Elm, alongside the expansive Delaware River, or Kitanne as Tammany would have it.
As in New England in the decades following the amity of the Pilgrims, Squanto and the first Thanksgiving, the westward pressure of new settlers; colonials acquisitive of Indian lands; diseases; war; and disruption of traditional Eastern Woodlands seasonal cycle of corn-based agriculture, hunting and fishing; generated cycles of hostility and accommodation. The frontier between primarily agricultural colonists, and Indians trying to pursue traditional ways, relentlessly moved west. Peaceful intent and good relations between the English William Penn and Delawares, led to the name of Tammany to become something of a lay saint. Tammany became the symbol of an idealized "good Indian," that somehow worked better for settler Americans in the abstract than with real Delaware Indians.
(page 25, par. 4, lines 1-2) Proceeding west on the Lancaster Road, and bypassing Philadelphia, the wagon train made its painstaking way The wagon train's first stop might have been at or in the vicinity of the Admiral Warren Tavern, renamed in the Early Republic for American Revolutionary War hero General Joseph Warren. The identities and distances between Lancaster Road taverns, and those further west on the Forbes Road to Fort Pitt, were of sufficient interest to westward travelers and businessmen as to be listed in almanacs such as Father Tammany's, printed annually in Philadelphia. It is likely that at least one of the pioneering group leaders – Ezekiel Forman, Benajah Osman, or Samuel S. Forman – purchased and consulted such an almanac. A likely candidate for inclusion in Benajah Osman’s or Samuel S. Forman’s saddlebags was.: Worman, B. Father Tammany’s Almanac for 1791.
Warren Tavern to Lancaster court house was 43 more miles, which would have taken an additional 2 days. Roads coursing over gently rolling hills would have been firm in that season. The party travelled only 15 miles on their first day from Monmouth, New Jersey, a rate of progress in which Samuel S. was disappointed. Forman and Draper, Journey Down the Ohio and Mississippi 1888 does not specify rates of progress and exact dates of arrival and departure from intermediate destinations. I have been able to infer some of them from notable weather events, Samuel S. Forman's surviving accountings of his business transactions in Pittsburgh and Louisville, and in locales where collateral primary sources mention the group. I am indebted to a local Pennsylvania area antiquarian, who insists on anonymity, for laboriously collected extracts of Lancaster Road-related primary sources.
(page 25, par. 4, line 1) bypassing Philadelphia General Forman had several reasons to direct that the wagon train bypass Philadelphia, though Ezekiel Forman would depart from there and the city was the source of the expedition’s stock of trading goods. Philadelphia hosted a significant community of free Blacks and a recently revitalized anti-slavery organization. As discussed by Erica Dunbar Armstrong's Never Caught: the Washingtons' relentless pursuit of their runaway slave, Ona Judge, p. 30 – In May 1789 Matthew Carey produced a broadside for the newly reorganized Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, later known as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Benjamin Franklin became its president in 1787, re-energizing the predecessor group associated with Anthony Benezet. From the standpoint of Forman plantation entrepreneurs, the prospect of exposing their "servants" to Pennsylvania free Blacks and abolitionists threatened disruption of their venture.
(page 25, par. 4, lines 4-6) Each stone mile marker was emblazoned with a numeral and the coat of arms of the Penn family Lancaster Road milestones had been set in 1769 at a time when Pennsylvania was a proprietary province of British North America. William Penn obtained a proprietary land grant for all of Pennsylvania in 1682. Penn's descendants strongly influence provincial policies and politics well into the American Revolutionary era. The Lenni Lenape Indians were not consulted in advance concerning the English claims or the Swedes and Dutch Europeans who preceded the English. William Penn himself took pains to deal with the Indians fairly and in mutually beneficial treaties. General amicable early interactions did not follow over to Penn's descendants, following a general pattern discernable in the early histories of other East Coast English colonies,
(page 25, par. 4, line 9) knowledge encouraged for reading…at the Old Tennent Church back in Monmouth See: Hodges, Graham Russell. Slavery, and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, New Jersey, p. 76. Hodges observes" "Despite [Reverend] Whitfield's emphasis on docility and obedience, blacks interpreted his words by distinguishing between good Christians, who opened Christianity to them, and false Christians, who enslaved them. In Freehold the Tennent brothers, a family of ministers, welcomed Whitefield with open arms." African Americans, both free and enslaved, participated heartily at public church rituals. An analysis of Old Tennant Church records reveals that there were, however, few baptisms of African Americans, only nine recorded over a thirty-five-year period. None held church offices. See: Symmes, Frank R. History of the Old Tennent Church.
I recall the description of the departing Israelite slaves from Egypt: "every one according to his service, and according to his burden" Campbell, Gordon, ed. King James Bible, Book of Numbers 4:31 verse 49. General ‘Black David’ Forman would be an anti-Moses in this analogy. The irony in conjuring this association in this context is that the Forman pioneer migration would involve a retrograde "Washington's Crossing," taking the enslaved African Americans away from, not toward, possibilities for collective and individual self-determination and liberty. There is no evidence that masters or enslaved thought in those terms at the time. Nothing documenting observations or reflections of the enslaved Formans survives. It is plausible conjecture that some of the religiously oriented enslaved people, those participating with enthusiasm when permitted at Old Tennent Church, thought in terms of the biblical Exodus.
(page 27, par. 2, line 1) American Army and militia contingents passing through Lancaster town remained a constant presence A few surviving descriptions of traveling along the Lancaster Road during this time survive. These include journals of military officers and surveyors on their way to and from the Ohio territory. See Shreve, Israel. "Journal from Jersey to the Monongahela, August 11, 1788." Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 1928, Vol. 52, pp. 193-195.
(page 28, par. 3, lines 7-9) [Lancaster, PA] was also religiously diverse, encompassing congregants of Lutheran and Mennonite churches and the early and avowedly abolitionist Quaker meeting The existence of abolitionist sentiment ready to spring into action, in Lancaster in late 1789, is conjectural. The incident concerning the Forman wagon train, about which Samuel S. Forman's narrative is the sole source, strongly suggests that abolitionism had taken root in Lancaster and was influenced by activists based in nearby Philadelphia.
See: Dunbar, Never Caught, Op. cit., pp. 65-66. Ms. Dunbar provides a succinct summary of Quaker and German abolitionism’s 18th century origins in Pennsylvania. Quakers is Chester County , located west of Philadelphia toward Lancaster, preceded the Philadelphia Quaker meeting in passing measures to eliminate slavery among their adherents. Later in the century Philadelphia Quakers, combining with local leadership by free blacks of the city, united to form Anthony Benezet's pioneering abolitionist efforts in 1775. The organization lost momentum during the Revolutionary War. The Philadelphia area and Eastern Pennsylvania experienced military battles, British occupation of the city, and accompanying displacements of opposing factions and neutrals, involving all races in some manner. Anthony Benezet himself passed away in 1784, a loss of one of the movement's founding luminaries. The organization revived in the late 1780s, with Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, and other prominent citizens assuming leading roles.
I was unable to discovery any surviving documentation of abolitionist activity in Lancaster circa 1790. If Samuel S. Forman's accounts are to be taken on face value, such sentiments existed among Caucasian and perhaps African American residents of Lancaster County. Further, they could coalesce into an ambitious, if unsuccessful, attempt to disrupt the final passage of the Formans’ enslaved immigrant pioneers.
Central and western Pennsylvania were hotbeds for active resistance to slavery in the 19th century. See\: Smith, David G. On the Edge of Freedom: The Fugitive Slave Issue in South Central Pennsylvania, 1820-1870.
(page 28, par. 4, line 2) itinerant popular entertainments. The German and English language newspapers of Lancaster provide a sense of the issues and activities that concerned local townspeople. An acrobatic performance offered multiple performance dates just prior to the Forman wagon train's arrival. See: Lerbscher, August, and Albert Cavin. "Items from the Neue Unpartreyiche Lancaster Zeitung und Anzeigs-Nachtrichten." Historical Papers and Addresses of the Lancaster County Historical Society, 1931, Vol. 35 (2).
(page 28, par. 5, line 1) a force of natives and British Ranger allies had destroyed Hannah’s Town Delaware Chief Guyasuta, up until then neutral in the hostilities, attacked Hanna's Town, on the Forbes Road within miles of Pittsburgh, in July 1782. He and his warriors despoiled and destroyed Westmoreland County's seat, never to be rebuilt. See: Albert, George Dallas. History of the County of Westmoreland, p. 50.
(page 29, par. 5) Hubley stopped the train, demanding to review their papers as “we rather expected they would.” The quote is from Forman Travels, NYHS manuscript c. 1850. Hubley family members were prominent in Lancaster town affairs. For details on the Hubley family of Lancaster see: Harris, Alex. Biographical History of Lancaster County, pp. 321-323; Ellis, Franklin, and Samuel Evans. History of Lancaster County Pennsylvania with Biographical Sketches, p. 363; and Miller, Ken Dangerous Guests: Enemy Captives and Revolutionary Communities during the War for Independence, pp. 51-52. Unfortunately, I was unable to discover anything characterizing the personalities and interests of the Hubley-associated women. One or more may or may not have been among the proto-Abolitionist ladies of Lancaster.
Bernardo Hubley, Jr. penned one of the earlier histories of the American Revolution. Its content does not hint at his position on chattel slavery. The fact that he wrote it suggests a person interested in the defining American conflict of the era. (page Hubley, Bernard Jr. History of the American Revolution, Northumberland, 1805.
(page 30, par. 1, line 1) "whether they were willing to go South" Forman and Draper, Journey Down the Ohio and Mississippi 1888, p. 21.
(page 30, par. 5, lines 1-3) no grounds to detain the wagon train Hubley Collection, 1741-1864. Lancaster, PA: Lancaster County Historical Society. Ms MG-2. I found nothing relative to court or other legal actions in Lancaster with respect to the Forman emigrant wagon train. If any formal action or note would have been made, I would have expected to find some reference to the matter in Folder 18 – Court decisions and transcripts, 1767-1811; or Folder 27 – Court Accounts.
A pivotal question remains. Did this incident occur at all? Samuel S. Forman's autobiographical writings remain the sole source for it, as of this writing. No reference to the incident appears in the newspaper dated immediately following when the incident would have occurred. The incident and a later one near Pittsburgh rise neither to threshold of the number of rebellious slaves involved, nor contemporary publicity, as set by Aptheker in his 1943 monograph American Negro Slave Revolts.
The topic was likely on the minds of Lancastrians in this specific timeframe. In the days immediately following, both the German and English language newspapers in Lancaster simultaneously reprinted the full text, in their respective languages, of a recent anti-slavery essay written by Benjamin Franklin for the Philadelphia-based Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Representing the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in Philadelphia, and presaging his petition to the U.S. Congress advocating for abolition dated February 1790, Franklin's essay described the evils of chattel slavery and the necessity to act towards its dismantling. See: "”Ein Plan Um Den Zustand Der Freyen Schwarzen Zu Verbessern" In: Neue Unpartheyische Lancaster Zeitung und Anzeigs-Nachrichten, December 9, 1789.
Perhaps corroborating detail of the incident, and who exactly were the audacious proto-Abolitionist ladies of Lancaster, will come to light from subsequent scholarly inquiry into local church records. Perhaps the ladies concocted an organized scheme in course of a Quaker, Mennonite, or Moravian church council, which was recorded and survives. Or maybe it was a spontaneous initiative by Lancaster women, who happened to be in town and were appalled by their county’s highways being used to transport human chattel across their state Another avenue for research would be to closely scrutinize surviving records, archived at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery in the late 1780s, for their membership and correspondents in Lancaster County and further West. Mennonite Church records may provide clues, if the Ladies of Lancaster were women from the German community trying to put their religious scruples opposing slavery into action. Free and enslaved African Americans were present in Lancaster County and are likely to have played some significant role in the initiative. However, it was unlikely that any were in privileged positions capable of offering other people roles as domestics in their households.
(page 30, par. 7, line 1) "our colored women laughed at the Lancaster ladies" Forman and Draper, Op. cit., p. 21.