Page:American History Told by Contemporaries, v2.djvu/417

No. 136] in the spring of 1773. Tho they were in a poor and destitute situation, they nevertheless lived in peace ; but their tranquility was not of long continuance. Those most attrocious murders of the peaceable inoffensive Indians at Captina and Yellow creek, brought on the war of Lord Dunmore in the spring of the year 1774. Our little settlement then broke up. The women and children were removed to Morris' fort in Sandy creek glade some distance to the east of Uniontown. The Fort consisted of an assemblage on [of] small hovels, situated on the margin of a large and noxious marsh, the effluvia of which gave the most of the women and children the fever and ague. The men were compelled by necessity to return home, and risk the tomahawk and scalping knife of the Indians, in raising corn to keep their families from starvation, the succeeding winter. Those sufferings, dangers, and losses were the tribute we had to pay to that thirst for blood, which actuated those veteran murderers who brought the war upon us ! The memory of the sufferers in this war as well as that of their descendants still looks back upon them with regret, and abhorrence, and the page of history will consign their names to posterity, with the full weight of infamy they deserve. . ..

. . . our early land laws. . . allowed four hundred acres, and no more, to a settlement right. Many of our first settlers seemed to regard this amount of the surface of the earth, as the allotment of divine providence for one family, and believed that any attempt to get more would be sinful. Most of them, therefore contented themselves with that amount ; although they might have evaded the law, which allowed but one settlement right to any one individual, by taking out the title papers in the names of others, to be afterwards transferred to them, as if by purchase. Some few indeed pursued this practice ; but it was held in de[te] station.

My father, like many others, believed, that having secured his legal allotment, the rest of the country belonged of right, to those who choose to settle in it. There was a piece of vacant land adjoining his tract amounting to about two hundred acres. To this tract of land he had the preemption right, and accordingly secured it by warrant ; but his conscience would not permit him to retain it in his family, he therefore gave it to an apprentice lad whom he had raised in his house. This lad sold it to an uncle of mine for a cow and calf, and a wool hat.

Owing to the equal distribution of real property directed by our land laws, and the sterling integrity of our forefathers, in their observance of