Shenango U. P. Church Cemetery Neshannock Township Lawrence County, PA Diaries

Austin Seeley, Jr., died 1796, white marble, Arlington, VT

Excerpts from 1803 Diary of John Pearson
(kept during his travels in what is now
Lawrence County and Mercer County, PA)

On August 31, 1803, John Pearson, accompanied by his son George, "Left home to take a tour to the westward." They were the first of the Pearson family to come to Western Pennsylvania. They traveled with horses and a light wagon and their route led them through the towns of Lancaster and York to Black's Gap, where they crossed the mountain; they went on through Chambersburg and a few miles west of that town passed over the North Mountain; thence they traveled through Connellsburg to Tassey's Mountain, which they crossed through the gap. They continued on through Bedford and Raystown, crossed the Allegheny Mountain and arrived at the town of Somerset. From this point they proceeded through Mt. Pleasant, Washington, Canonsburg and Noblestown. Thence they seem to have traveled in as direct route as possible to the town of Beaver, theretofore called Fort Mackintosh and still known by that name at this time. En route to Beaver their four-wheeled wagon attracted much attention; at one place a number of women examined the strange vehicle with greatest interest and, after various comments, one of them solved the unusual problem by saying, "Well, it must be one of them d--d French things." From Beaver they journeyed to the site of the present city of New Castle. The travelers' impression of Mercer county, in which New Castle at that time was located, may best be gathered from a diary kept by John Pearson during this trip, in which he noted his views in detail of the people, vegetation, municipal conditions, etc., of the country through which they passed. The following verbatim extract from the diary covers the time from their arrival at New Castle, the journey thence to Mercer and the country surrounding, back to New Castle on their return to their home in Darby. In this diary John Pearson says:

"We arrived at what they call the town of Newcastle, between the Shenango and Neshannock, and laid out on the former; a level piece of land and prettily situated, a light soil and many acres without any timber of consequence; it is said to be about 22 miles from the town of Beaver. There are five or six houses or cabins in it, widely dispersed, and two cabins on the west side of the creek which is here about 100 yards wide. We lodged at Joseph Townsend's, close on the creek; he keeps a tavern and store; we were well accommodated, bread excellent, venison and some fine perch and buffalo fish; a perch weighed 4 3/4 pounds. Coffee used here as common as with us. It is said that there is good lime stone on the Neshannock within about a mile, an excellent stone quarry almost opposite the town, in the neighborhood, stone fit for grindstones, millstones; plenty of iron ore near. Coal within two miles plenty. Earth containing allum and copperas and in the low ground they have hops and cranberries.

"At New Castle iron is 10d per pound, wheat 4/6 to 5s, rye 3.9, oats 2/6 to 3s, old corn was 4/6, new is commonly 3, wood has no price, it is usual for those who want to take the nearest and the best they can find. It is said there is little labour done in this country in the winter. It appears that poor men settle, build and improve hereabouts wherever they find a place which pleases them; several instances of such settlements we saw in the country.

"We were informed that there are salt springs up the Mahoning about thirty miles from New Castle and also eight miles above Beaver town near the mouth of Connoquenessing Creek. There is a grist mill on the Neshannock about half a mile from New Castle and another at the distance of about a mile and a quarter. At the last mentioned place a saw mill is expected to be ready to go in two or three weeks; saw a fine spring at Carlisle Stewart's in the town; appeared similar to the best with us.

"On leaving New Castle intending to proceed to Mercer County town, or where it's proposed to be, for the first mile it is middling land and then for a mile or two of fine country in which stone coal is plenty and then thro' some land good but somewhat stony; further on too stony, the stone good, as usual on the mountains and westward as far as I travelled. Much of the woods here has been lately burned and abundance of fallen timber; we see no limestone, but much excellent timber--as fine saplings as I have seen; killed a black snake five feet long. We proceeded on to one Hunter's tavern above a mile beyond the site for Mercer town, computed to be twenty miles from New Castle; in that distance we neither met nor passed a human creature; it appears there is not much travelling. Hunter lives on the Neshannock, or a branch of it, and has a sawmill near to which there is a pretty piece of white pine woods. On the road hither we crossed the little Neshannock at Mean's mill and to Hunter's crossed the Neshannock and Otter creek.

"The site for the town of Mercer is about a quarter of a mile west of the Neshannock, on a pretty eminence, but the land is poor and stony; it is said that lime stone and coal are found within two miles of it. Hunter's is a tolerable good house but covered with boards which let the water thro' it when it rained in the night of the 14th inst., (Sept. 14, 1803) in which more rain fell by far than at any time since we left home and rained some in the morning, the day cloudy and windy. At Hunter's I saw corn eight feet and two inches to the setting on of the ear. On the 15th of September we rode thro' the pine woods noted before and other chiefly white oak level land to Benjamin Stokely's; a lively, active man and very respectable wife, kind and hospitable, his house of the cabin kind, that is of logs, and covered with pieces of split wood for roof; he says he prepared timber to build a better but lost it totally in a great storm in the night of the 4th of June, 1801. On enquiring how the timber could possibly be lost in a storm he said there was so much timber blown down on it that it would be too much trouble to remove it; he lost eight acres of meadow land in the same storm, and in like manner he has a considerable quantity of cleared and part cleared land, a large field of corn, some oats now uncut, has a great number good water and musk melons. In the storm above mentioned his sugar camp was blown down, consisting of a great number of trees, 400 of them were destroyed; they were from two to near four feet in diameter; previous to that misfortune he made sugar sufficient for his family but at this time buys at one shilling per pound; the sugar is very good.

"We viewed some donation land, part middling, some very good with excellent timber, fine poplar. Stokely directed us by the compass to the great bend of Shenango; no path; in some places the timber has been burnt within a few years; an amazing number of fallen trees, difficult from the size of some to go over them and are often obliged to pass round; the bushes very thick; at the great bend the creek appears to be about 120 feet wide, the banks a proper height, no danger of being overflowed; on the east side is an extensive piece of land without timber, a fine situation for a town; in it is one eminence remarkably fine; as far we saw up and down it's a fine stream, no rocks in it or on the adjoining land of either side, the water moves slowly; as noted elsewhere the east side is a good situation for a town and of sufficient extent for one, the adjoining lands are of a middling quality. This is the spot which a great number of the people wished to be the site for the County town and many of the members of the Legislature. But the Commissioners appointed by the Governor fixed on that near the Neshannock, which, as has been elsewhere observed, is not navigable, alleging the great bend was remote from the center of the County when the distance is only about 3 or 3 1/2 miles from it; their opinion unhappily had too much influence tho' they were not unanimous; one of them did not attend and one of those who signed the report in favor of the present site would not have agreed to it had he known the owner of the land and known that it could be had for that purpose at the bend. Thus owing to an opinion unaccountable to me the town is fixed on a wretched creek, up which an Indian could never pass with his canoe, and a place rejected on an excellent navigable stream which from near to the Pymatuning Swamp in Crawford County is a fine navigable creek without obstructions, as I am informed, to the falls of Beaver, a distance by water of probably a hundred miles on the various courses of the creek.

"We continued to view this excellent country; the land good and timber generally fine; rode within about 30 feet of deer, the only one I saw except at New Castle a young tame one; a white oak tree fourteen feet round, a black ash nine feet seven inches and about fifty feet to the first limb; great numbers of the best shellbark hickory I ever saw; considerable extents of land on which white oaks principally grew, old ones very large, the saplings amazing tall, thousands of them would make from four to five rail cuts. On the branches of the Neshannock we see extensive level bottoms and appears to be a light sandy and fertile soil, covered with bushes, trees intermixed, sugar, wild cherry, cucumber tree and thorn, some of the latter very large, one measured five feet round and great numbers were equal to it. The linden tree is frequently to be seen on low grounds; I thought it resembled parents surrounded by their children; it is a pretty tree; some of them are two feet in diameter, a soft wood tho' the old ones are standing and thriving; suckers arise from the root and ascend with the parent tree to the number of 8 or 10 together as perpendicular as possible without touching.

"Fire makes dreadful havoc in these forests; killed by it the trees are blown down by tempests, which makes it extremely difficult in many parts to pass thro' the woods; to add to the difficulty vast numbers of young trees grow very close together, which must cause expensive clearing. So far as we have yet seen the country is level enough, few hills and few rocks. I think the people are indolent, but may be mistaken. The best house I have seen in Mercer County is one McMillan's, not far from the place fixed on for the town; it is large, of wood with good rooms, an excellent stone chimney, that is the stone is excellent, (and I do not recollect seeing any bad), covered with oak shingles, a garden of good size paled in; upon the whole a very respectable settlement. The people hereabouts save no trees for shade when they build and plant none for that purpose, and seem to have been careless of planting fruit trees, tho' from the lateness of the settlement perhaps they are excusable; we saw at one place six apple trees and a few peach, small. Benjamin Stokely was, he says, the first settler; that seven years ago (1796), when he settled he had no neighbor nearer than twenty-five miles. There is no tree for shade near to his cabin nor a single fruit tree that I recollect; the people appear to raise many potatoes; their gardens, if any, are very ordinary."

On the morning of the 19th of September, 1803, the travelers had returned to New Castle on their way to their home at Darby and, therefore, there is no further comment on Mercer county or matters pertaining thereto. On the 20th of September, 1803, they left New Castle and set their faces toward Pittsburg, left out of their itinerary on their journey west, where they arrived in a few days and, thence, journeyed eastward through Greensburg, Ligonier Valley and other well known points on that route; the diary account of the trip concludes with "We came home to Darby in good health on the 4th day of October, 1803."

In 1806 a number of the Pearson family came from Darby and vicinity to settle in Western Pennsylvania; among the number were John Pearson and his son George, altho' the former did not at that time nor, until about 1826, become a permanent resident. On this trip he visited the German Society known as "Harmonyites" located at Harmony and whose leader was George Rapp. In a volume of memoranda dated 1810 he says: "In 1803 a colony of Germans settled in Butler County, Pennsylvania. I was at their settlement in 1806."

J. G. White, ed., A Twentieth Century History of Mercer County Pennsylvania: A Narrative Account of Its Historical Progress, Its People, and Its Principal Interests, Prepared under the General Editorial Supervision of Mr. J. G. White. (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1909), 867-876.