Two Ill-Tempered Fellows in the Colony Made in Hell (pages 33-46)
The chapter title is an appreciative nod to one my comprehensive secondary sources – A Colony Sprung from Hell: Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Authority on the Western Pennsylvania Frontier, 1744-1794 by Daniel P. Barr (Kent, OH, Kent State University Press, 2014).
(page 33, chapter title) the Colony Made in Hell This chapter’s name is suggested by a book on the tumultuous Western Pennsylvania of the 18th century. Barr, Daniel P. A Colony Sprung from Hell. Jennifer Wallace, in a review of Barr’s arguments, summarizes: “Acts of violence against Native Americans – from the Paxton Boys to the massacre of Christian Delaware Indians at Gnadenhütten in 1782 – demonstrated the deep-seated belief among the region’s white inhabitants that violence was the proper response to their problems, long ignored by eastern leaders.”
(page 35, par. 3, line 6) Citizens covered the entire Monongahela wharf Forman and Draper, Op. cit., p. 25
(page 35, par. 5, line 6) Charles Morgan Forman Travels, NYPL manuscript c. 1850, p. 41; Forman and Draper, Journey Down the Ohio and Mississippi 1888, pp. 21-22. The identity of Charley Morgan and other details of his life remain sketchy. There were two Charles Morgans listed among Continental army veterans from New Jersey. It is unclear which of them made his way to the Pennsylvania Western frontier. Complicating matters is the fact that Morgan is a common surname. In a personal communication of December 6, 2017, from Anita Zenke of the Westmoreland County Historical Society, she notes that the 1790 Federal census lists a Charles Morgan as resident in Allegheny County. Allegheny had just been created from Westmoreland County in 1788. Samuel S. Forman identifies Charley Morgan as a resident of Westmoreland County. A Morgan, likely a different person, appears in several places in the Virginia court records for Pennsylvania, 1775-1780, as compiled by antiquarian Boyd Crumrine. Still another Morgan had been a county sheriff in 1789. Unlike the latter two Morgans, Samuel S. Forman’s New Jersey acquaintance seems to have been “living off the grid” in backwoods Pennsylvania. Perhaps he was a squatter. In the unpublished Forman Travels, NYPL manuscript c. 1850, Samuel S. Forman reports he knew something of Morgan’s subsequent story: subsequently relocating back to New Jersey and ultimately to upstate New York. Morgan never applied for a veteran pension, which Samuel S. believed was well earned.
(page 36, par. 2) “sent as a spy into the British army” Forman Travels, NYPL manuscript c. 1850, p. 45. The anecdote about this Charles Morgan’s service as a spy for the Americans during the Revolutionary War is found uniquely, as credible hearsay, in Samuel S. Forman&aops;s writings. If truly recounted, Mr. Morgan’s name belongs among the short list of American soldiers who undertook hazardous covert spying duty the Revolutionary War, and who lived to tell their tale.
Benajah Osman was not to be outdone in boastfully recounting wartime exploits. Credulous Samuel S. Forman accepted them as gospel. Whether or not a modern observer should is another matter entirely.
Benajah related the tale of one of two stints as prisoner of war on one of the infamous British prison hulks. He had claimed to be a physician in a bid to garner preferential treatment. A Hessian jailer, whose family were camp followers, sought Benajah out for a cure for his deathly ill young daughter. “The case baffling the skill of all the English and German physicians, and the child’s recovery was given up as hopeless.” Osman was called to attend as a forlorn hope. He rolled pills of “powder-post, mixed up with rye-bread,” delivering them with solemn directions for their administration. Benajah declared that, “he knew they could do no harm, if they did no good.” On the third day the child’s symptoms improved. In no time the little girl recovered fully.
Osman merely “regarded himself as only an instrument in the hands of the Almighty in saving the child’s life.” The grateful parents repaid the self-styled Patriot physician with a handful of gold Guineas. Before the episode, he suffered as much as fellow enlisted prisoners, thousands of whom died on the fetid prison hulks. Now, he used his new-found money to “procure needful comforts until his exchange [as a prisoner of war].”
(page 38, par. 2) [Samuel S. Forman] offered to sell the inn’s proprietor his mare at an attractively low price It is my conjecture, based on geography and very few alternatives, that McConnelsburg tavern and Mr. McConnell himself was the storekeeper who extended credit to the Forman wagon train at a critical juncture. Samuel S. Forman did not recall or identify the exact location and store owner in his travel account.
(page 38, par. 5) Samuel S. did expend some of his personal funds Samuel S. Forman papers, In: Fairchild Collection, NYPL. From an 1801 accounting by Samuel S. Forman of charges to the estate of General David Forman. Years after brothers Ezekiel and General David Forman both had died, Samuel S. was still seeking 7 Pounds 0/0 “balance due me on a Mare” and other expenses “for the maintenance of the servants on the road to Pittsburgh.” This document implies that Samuel S. had sold his horse for money to feed the slaves, while Forman and Draper, Op. cit., p. 22, states that he offered is horse for sale at a bargain price, but unexpectedly the store owner instead extended him credit on the account of Ezekiel Forman. Samuel S. also sought 19/12/2 for as-yet unreimbursed expenses while traversing Pennsylvania in December of 1789 on behalf of General David Forman’s enterprise.
The NYPL Fairchild Collection manuscript contains a detailed spreadsheet of Samuel S. Forman’s transactions during the month long stay in Pittsburgh ending January 20, 1790.
(page 39, pars. 3-4) one Westmoreland Irish justice of the peace looking to stir up trouble”… “willing to take up arms” The name of that justice of the peace, arming the enslaved Formans, is lost to history. We know from the Forman travel narrative, a single source with an unsympathetic observer, that he was Irish, perhaps known from his accent and surname and fondness for whiskey. There were a dozen justices of the peace at the time in the county, which was then being reorganized, and county records were irregularly made and spottily survive. There was no shortage of Irish and Scottish immigrants to the West. The total population of all Western Pennsylvania counties in the 1790 U.S. Census was about 13,000. I could not find circumstantial hints among named householders listed in Census records of who the “drunken Irish justice of the peace” may have been. Modern observers are likely to apprise his actions, though aborted, in a considerably different light than had Samuel S. Forman in his recollections.
(page 39, par. 4) “two ill-tempered blacks of our party with old swords and pistols” Forman and Draper, Op. cit., p. 21.
(page 40, par. 1-3) Because of an informant, however, “a faithful old colored woman,” Osman intervened to defuse the situation. The plot did not proceed. Benajah Osman put down the incipient revolt. Traversing the Old Forbes Road west of Lancaster and crossing the Alleghenies, comprised a tenuous leg of the trip for the white plantation entrepreneurs. They were in the midst of an arduous crossing of the Allegheny mountains. There were no hostile Indians thereabouts. Some Pennsylvanians in the area were apparently toying with abolitionism. The slaves were unchained. They could conceivably have absconded en mass if they had wanted to. I conclude, from a perspective removed by well over two centuries, that the slaves implicitly possessed maximum agency over their own fates during the three weeks of the transit of the enslaved pioneer settlers crossing Pennsylvania.
Overseer Benajah Osman held them in thrall. He bloodlessly quelled an incipient armed revolt by “two disaffected fellows” abetted by a “drunken Irish” justice of the peace and free blacks they would encounter closer to Pittsburgh. I have no details or even hints of how Osman defused that fraught situation. Everyone returned to their roles. There appeared no overt resistance among the enslaved afterward. Adhering strictly to the dictates of non-fiction, I do not elaborate on this episode beyond the sketchy outline in primary sources. Samuel S. Forman glossed over it for his own reasons, which he did not elaborate.
“faithful old colored woman” Forman Autobiography and Travels 1838, manuscript privately owned by the author, p. 53. None of the manuscript variants name her. See Appendix II.
(page 40, par. 3, block quotation) “Nothing occurred, but poor Ginnie apprised me of it.” Forman Travels, NYPL manuscript c. 1850, pp. 44-45. There is no mention of Samuel S. Forman and Benajah Osman sleeping among the slaves in the published book version. Forman Autobiography and Travels 1838, Op. cit., offers an intriguing variation: “Old Mammy Ginny made the Captain’s [Osman] and my bed before the fire and the [enslaved black] people all next to us, old Ginny next to me to protect me if anything bad happened.”
(page 42, par. 1) It has the absolute command of both rivers Washington continued to opine that the future site of Pittsburgh was “extremely well situated for a fort.” Jackson, Donald. Dorothy Twohig, ed. The Diaries of George Washington, University Press of Virginia, 1976, Vol. 1
(page 43, par. 1) The Forman pioneers, arriving in Pittsburgh about Sunday, December 20, 1789 Some impressions of Pittsburgh made around that time: “[inhabitants] spend very little of their time in idleness” Cramer, Zadok. The Ohio and Mississippi Navigator, Cramer observation on Pittsburgh: p. 29. “not a priest of any persuasion, nor a church or chapel” Lorant, Stefan. Pittsburgh – The Story of an American City, as quoted from Arthur Lee’s journal for December 14, 1784.
(page 43, par. 2, lines 3-4) a former Philadelphian now resident in Pittsburgh Colonel Turnbull Forman and Draper, Op. cit., p. 25 is described as a polite and hospitable widower. Trimble, William F. in: “From Sail to Steam: Shipbuilding in the Pittsburgh Area, 1790-1865” mentions the firm of Turnbull, Marmie and Company in Pittsburgh as selling “several Kentucke [sic] Boats” in this timeframe.
(page 43, par. 3, line 7) Ezekiel commissioned a flatboat and keelboat to be built at a local shipyard For a description of the variety of river craft prior to the age of steamboats, see: Hogeland, H.E. “Early Transportation on the Mississippi.” Journal of Political Economy 1911, Vol. 19 (2): pp. 111-123; and Lorant, Ibid, Chapter 2 “Gateway to the West, pp. 47-80; Trimble, William F. “From Sail to Steam: Shipbuilding in the Pittsburgh Area, 1790-1865” Op. cit. Trimble quotes boat builders’ advertisements from the Pittsburgh Gazette of Sep 30, 1786; Feb 16, 23, and April 19, 1788. He notes that Pittsburgh hosted abundant relevant resources. Black walnut was common along the Monongahela, excellent for shaping frames on ocean going craft, as well as great stands of white pine and hemlock standing “remarkably tall and straight.” Many river towns, including Pittsburgh, had rope walks capable of supplying cordage for ships’ rigging. Several entrepreneurs advocated construction of ocean-going vessels destined for Caribbean and Atlantic trade routes. The Falls of the Ohio and seasonal extremes of river depth limited the practicality of such ambitious schemes. Pittsburgh instead developed a lively trade constructing more modest flatboats and keel boats for trade and transport down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
(page 44, par. 1) Insides armored with oak planked interiors “to prevent the Indians from penetrating through with their [musket] balls, should they attack us.” Forman and Draper, Op. cit., pp. 23-24.
(page 44, par. 2, lines 1-2) Flatboats were built to be expendable. Once arriving at their destination, which could be as far south as New Orleans See: Arena, Richard C. “Philadelphia-Spanish New Orleans Trade in the 1790&apo;s” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 1961, Vol.2 (4): pp. 429-445.
(page 44, par. 3, line 5) “remarkably handsome dark cherry” Forman Travels, NYPL manuscript c. 1850, p. 79
(page 46, par. 2) “William Wyckoff and his brother-in-law Kenneth Scudder of Monmouth County, New Jersey” Forman and Draper, Op. cit., p. 24. The Wyckoffs and Scudders were a prominent New Jersey families the 18th century. Samuel S. recalled that Wyckoff had been an Indian trade seven years prior to their meeting in Pittsburgh and was then on his was to Nashville. Wyckoff and Scudder were two of many individuals the Forman pioneers encountered en route, representing overlapping ties of kinship, New Jersey geography, and Continental Army service. Several of these meetings were unplanned and unexpected. They all enabled the enterprise.