Susquehanna Discovery Center & Heritage Park
November 2024 Project Update

Pete Miele, Senior Project Leader

The Susquehanna Discovery Center & Heritage Park (SDC) project continued to make impressive strides during the last month. Master Planning and community engagement efforts are building momentum, laying out a vision that we hope will inspire locals and visitors alike.

In late October, our Master Planning consultants from Mahan Rykiel Associates (MRA) delivered presentations to our SDC Task Force, SNHA Board, and members of the community, gathering valuable insights to shape the future of this cultural landmark. The presentations centered on the project’s multifaceted goals, which include celebrating history, art, and the natural landscape. The public meeting welcomed input from more than sixty community members, eager to learn more about the project’s scope and goals. Attendees posed thoughtful questions about the integration of the SDC into Wrightsville and Hellam Township and its alignment with local heritage sites, such as York’s Goodridge Freedom Center and Lancaster’s Thaddeus Stevens & Lydia Hamilton Smith Center for History and Democracy​. This collaborative spirit has reaffirmed our focus on creating a hub that honors diverse histories while offering a dynamic experience for repeat visitors.

On the ground, October marked a significant milestone with the commencement of initial construction efforts to enhance public access to the site. This long-awaited step includes the development of a driveway, parking area, and ADA-accessible pathway. These efforts are foundational in ensuring that visitors will soon be able to access this historic space safely and comfortably. We expect this initial infrastructure to be completed by years’ end, making way for guided tours and community events as early as spring​.

Our River Art Work Group made strides toward integrating the River Art museum as part of SDC. This museum will highlight the influence of the Susquehanna River on American landscape art, preserving and celebrating the legacy of artists who have drawn inspiration from this majestic river. The group is discussing strategies to showcase a wide range of Susquehanna-inspired art that spans several centuries, depicting the natural beauty and cultural history of the region. One such strategy is to include a changing exhibit gallery, which will accommodate traveling exhibits and allow the museum to focus specific themes relating to the collection, as well as provide opportunities for ongoing community engagement​​. Over the next few months, we will work to develop an official name for the museum, as well as a case statement, guiding principles, and a mission and vision.

Looking ahead, we are excited to further refine the interpretive framework and design elements with MRA, aiming for a cohesive blend of educational programming, artistic engagement, and natural beauty that honors both the site’s historical significance and its future as a central Pennsylvania heritage destination. This month’s progress would not have been possible without the continued support from our dedicated partners and the community’s invaluable feedback. Together, we are shaping a space that will be a lasting testament to the Susquehanna region’s legacy and a beacon for future generations.

RiverRoots: “The Sage of Chiques”

River Roots is Susquehanna NHA’s blog series featuring history from York and Lancaster Counties that showcases the Susquehanna River’s historical, cultural, and natural resource contributions to our nation’s heritage.

Susquehanna NHA is pleased to introduce guest blog writers, Jean-Paul Benowitz, Director of Public Heritage Studies at Elizabethtown College, and Eric Schubert public historian and genealogist.

Read the original research paper here.

RiverRoots Heritage Blog

Have you ever seen a sign reading “Historic Haldeman Mansion” along Pennsylvania State Route 441 in Bainbridge? Did you know, that in the nineteenth century, an internationally renowned scientist and philologist lived along the banks of the Susquehanna? Samuel Haldeman was dubbed the “Sage of Chiques” for his expansive knowledge and publications on science, history, and languages.

Locust Grove and the Haldeman Homestead

In 1784, Samuel’s grandfather, John Haldeman acquired land in Conoy Township. He called the Haldeman family estate Locust Grove.  John inherited the Haldeman Homestead farm from his father-in-law. The property included a house, stone kitchen, smokehouse, barn, mill, still house, and sawmill. The home, now Haldeman Mansion, was originally a 1730s German vernacular house. In 1811, John and his wife, Maria Brennerman Haldeman, expanded the house into a mansion and remodeled it in the Federalist style. John also built a grist mill and distillery at the mouth of the Conoy Creek.

In 1804, John’s oldest son, John Brenneman Haldeman, moved to Locust Grove Estate to manage the sawmill, gristmill, and distillery. Later, John Brenneman Haldeman returned to the Haldeman Family Homestead to manage the farm. His brother, Henry Haldeman, took charge of the industries at Locust Grove.

Samuel Haldeman: Early Education

Samuel Stehman Haldeman was born at Locust Grove on August 12, 1812, to Henry and Frances Stehman Haldeman. As a child, Samuel read extensively from books in his father’s library. He taught himself about natural history by collecting specimens of shells, insects, birds, and minerals. Samuel learned how to observe and stuff birds and mammals from a traveling Methodist minister. He collected the skeletons of rabbits, opossums, muskrats, and field mice as natural history specimens.

The Locust Grove property was part of a Native American village site dating back to 1200. Samuel made archaeological digs at Locust Grove and collected artifacts from Shenks Ferry, Susquehannock, and Conoy people. After Samuel’s death, the National Register of Historic Places and the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County recognized the Haldeman Mansion for important Native American artifacts found there.

Samuel attended Dr. John Miller Keagy’s Classical Academy in Harrisburg at fourteen. The school is now called Harrisburg Academy. Two years later, Samuel enrolled with the class of 1831 at Dickinson College in Carlisle. For two years, he studied there under the geologist Henry Darwin Rogers.

Iron Industry

In 1828, Samuel’s father Henry bought several mills at the mouth of the Chikiswalungo (or Chiquesalunga) Creek in Marietta. In 1845, Henry and another son, Dr. Edwin Haldeman, established E. Haldeman and Company. They built an anthracite furnace west of Chickies Rock. Samuel and his brother Edwin managed the new enterprise. Samuel named the iron works company after the Native name of the nearby creek, meaning “place of the crabs,” hence Chikiswalungo Furnace. In 1858, when locals shortened the creek’s name, Samuel reluctantly approved changing the furnace’s name to Chickies Furnace.

Edwin, Paris, and Cyrus Summerfield Haldeman (Samuel’s brothers) eventually took over the business management. Samuel concerned himself with studying the scientific and technological aspects of iron smelting. In 1848, Samuel wrote two scholarly articles on the benefits of anthracite coal over traditional charcoal furnaces.

Personal Life

Despite being raised in the Anabaptist tradition of his Swiss German ancestors, Samuel converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1840s after studying comparative religions. Samuel belonged to St. Mary’s Church in Lancaster City and later St. Peter’s Church in Columbia. In 1869, Samuel raised funds for St Peter’s to build the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Marietta.

In 1835, Samuel married Mary Ann Hough of Bainbridge and the couple had two sons and two daughters. After their wedding, Samuel and Mary moved to a new home in Marietta at the base of Chickies Rock. In 1833, Samuel designed the Greek Revival-style mansion and named it Rock Retreat. He filled the extensive gardens with native specimens of trees and shrubs.

Academic Achievements

From 1833–1834, Samuel attended natural history lectures in the Medical Department at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1835, Samuel wrote an article for the Lancaster Journal refuting the Great Moon Hoax, a sensational story claiming that there was life on the moon.

In 1836, Henry Darwin Rogers, Samuel’s former professor and Pennsylvania state geologist, put Samuel in charge of geology field operations in New Jersey. In 1837, Samuel returned to Pennsylvania to assist with Professor Roger’s state geology survey. Samuel personally surveyed Dauphin and Lancaster counties.

In 1840, Samuel returned to Rock Retreat, where he studied the natural history of invertebrates. He was especially interested in the taxonomy of beetles and freshwater mollusks. In 1842, Samuel established the Entomological Society of Pennsylvania. It was the first scientific society formed to study insects in America. Members of the society published hundreds of descriptions of American insects and gathered the first permanent insect collections in the country. In 1842, Samuel published his first entomological paper and became a Professor of Zoology at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. His lectures were the basis for many articles published in natural science journals.

In 1842, Samuel published his Monograph on the Freshwater Mollusca of the United States in the Conchological Section of the Academy of Natural Sciences. Samuel described Scolithus linearis as a trace fossil of some burrowing organism. It was the most ancient organic remains known at the time. Samuel was a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. In 1844, Samuel joined the American Philosophical Society. He was one of the founding members and served as its president from 1876-1877.

In 1844, Samuel wrote a paper on freshwater mollusks that defended Lamarckian evolution and transmutation of species. In 1848, U. S. Navy Rear Admiral Charles Wilkes asked Samuel to study the specimens discovered on his expedition of the Pacific Ocean.

Samuel’s eyesight began to deteriorate, but his hearing became remarkably sensitive. He discovered a new sound organ in Lepidopterous insects, which he described in Benjamin Silliman’s American Journal of Science. In 1848, Samuel published an article on his discovery of sound organs in certain moths. From 1851-1852, Samuel edited the Pennsylvania Farmer’s Journal.

Samuel chaired meetings about and wrote award-winning articles on English spelling reform. In 1875, Samuel joined a committee to review Noah Webster’s new spelling and determine necessary changes to the English language. Samuel contributed to Worchester’s Dictionary, the National Dictionary, and Johnson’s Cyclopedia. In 1868, Samuel became the first chair of the Department of Comparative Philology at The University of Pennsylvania.

Samuel was especially interested in the languages of Indigenous people in the U. S. and abroad. He traveled in America and internationally to study many languages. Samuel met visiting tribal delegations in Washington, D. C., and requested Indigenous vocabularies from Western naturalists. In 1849, Samuel established a reputation as an eminent philologist by presenting a paper at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences meetings.

Samuel introduced a new, more empirical approach to the study of languages. He studied Indian, Chinese, and English dialects. Samuel published scholarship on the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect. He even wrote the first Pennsylvania Dutch dictionary. During six trips abroad between 1847 and 1875, Samuel investigated multilingual areas in Europe. When studying the human voice in Rome, Samuel determined the vocal repertoire of 40–50 varieties of human speech. Samuel wrote widely on linguistic topics such as the pronunciation of Latin terms for naturalists, the relationship between Chinese and Indo-European languages, the origin and use of prefixes and suffixes in Pennsylvania Dutch, and a general outline of etymology.

Samuel was a Professor of Natural History at the University of Pennsylvania from 1851-1855.  Samuel accepted a similar professorship at Delaware College (now the University of Delaware) while lecturing on geology and chemistry at the State Agricultural College of Pennsylvania (Now Pennsylvania State University).  In 1851, Samuel visited Texas to explore the presidency of an academic institution there, but he declined the position. On his return trip from Texas, Samuel was offered the position of president of Masonic College in Selma, Alabama. He accepted and held the position from January to October 1852. That same year, he described the insects collected by Captain Howard Stansbury’s 1849 geographical survey of Utah’s Great Salt Lake.

In 1861, Charles Darwin wrote an acknowledgment of Samuel’s ideas supporting the theory of evolution in a preface to his,  On the Origin of Species. Samuel authored 150 publications including important works on entomology, conchology, and philology; 120 were scientific and 30 were linguistic.  Twenty-eight scientific societies worldwide gave Samuel honorary memberships.

Samuel was fascinated by exercise physiology. On one of his many trips to Paris, Samuel discovered a French gymnastic apparatus and studied the benefits of physical exercise. Samuel’s physician, his brother Edwin, prescribed outdoor exercise. Samuel, therefore, hiked Chiques Rock and did archeology fieldwork there. At Chiques Rock, Samuel discovered and excavated an Indigenous prehistoric settlement.  In 1878, Samuel read a report before the American Philosophical Society, about his archaeological fieldwork at a prehistoric cave on his Rock Retreat property in Marietta. He published the report in 1881 as a monograph in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.

Samuel became known as the “Sage of Chiques.” Letters of inquiry from all over the world came across Samuel’s desk in Rock Retreat in Marietta. Publishers and editors asked for his opinions on and reviews of books. Writers and teachers inquired about pronunciation, spelling, and natural history facts. Naturalists forwarded packages of shells, insects, or minerals for identification, and farmers sent clays for analysis. Scientific journals and institutions sent invitations to lecture and requests for data.

On Friday, September 10, 1880, Samuel returned home to Rock Retreat from the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston. That night, he had a heart attack and died at the desk in his study at age 68. Samuel was buried in the Haldeman family plot at the Marietta Cemetery on West Fairview Avenue in Marietta.

Remembering Marietta’s Internationally Renowned Scientist

In 1911, when the Haldeman iron business sold their property and demolished their furnaces, they also tore down Rock Retreat. In 2018, the East Donegal Rotary Club and Rivertownes PA USA erected a historical marker on the Northwest Lancaster County River Trail at the location of Samuel’s Greek Revival mansion.

In 1991, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission dedicated a Pennsylvania Historical Marker to Samuel. It is located along Pennsylvania State Route 441 north of the Locust Grove Estate. In 2018, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection recognized Samuel as one of forty-one men and women who shaped Pennsylvania’s environmental heritage.

Today the Haldeman Mansion is a public historic site administered by the Haldeman Mansion Preservation Society. In 1967, local historic preservationists formed the Haldeman Society to rehabilitate Locust Grove.  In 1977, the Haldeman Mansion was placed on the Pennsylvania and National Register of Historic Places. It is number six on the inventory of historic buildings of the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County.

When Samuel died, the Columbia landscape and portraiture artist Lloyd Mifflin, known as “America’s greatest sonneteer,” wrote these lines:

The Storm Clouds
In Memory of Samuel S. Haldeman, L. L. D.

I stand beside the River as the night

Unrolls her sombre curtain o’er the day;

The pyres within the west have paled away

And only left their embers, dimly bright,

To illume the sullen hill-top’s purple height;

Then, from behind the crags, the clouds of gray-

A troop of lions held too long at bay-

Arise from out their antres in their might,

And low along the mountain ridges prowl,

Tossing their shaggy manes with lordly roar;

While, by the lash of lightning still uncowed,

They, raging and rebellious, long and loud,

Send many angry and deep-throated growl

Rumbling along the caverns of the shore!

Meet the Guest Writer Jean-Paul Benowitz

Jean-Paul Benowitz teaches history at Elizabethtown College where he is the Director of Public Heritage Studies.  Since 1993 he has been on the faculty teaching in the Departments of History and Religious Studies.  He earned his BS in History at Eastern Mennonite University where he wrote his senior thesis on the history of the Horse and Buggy Mennonites of Virginia. He earned his MA in History at Millersville University where he wrote his MA thesis on the history of the Horse and Buggy Mennonites of Pennsylvania and Virginia. He was a scholar in residence at Elizabethtown College’s Center for Anabaptist Studies. During this time, he authored several scholarly articles and books about Pennsylvania Dutch Culture. He teaches community-based learning Honors courses about local history and historic preservation; particularly related to the National Historic District of Marietta and the Chickies National Historic District. These courses have been recognized by the National Collegiate Honors Council where he serves on national committees for teaching and advising honors students and has authored monographs published by NCHC about teaching honors students. He has authored books about local history, articles about the Historic Peace Churches, and a column in the local newspaper in Elizabethtown about local history. Jean-Paul did his doctoral work at Temple University.  His dissertation is a biography of U. S. Congressman James Wadsworth Symington who worked in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations.  Much of Jean-Paul’s scholarship, published works, and public presentations have focused on 20th-century American political history, particularly presidential studies, and international relations. This has been the foundation for Honors courses he teaches about leadership in the Honors Program where he is an academic advisor and where he directs the Office of Prestigious Scholarships and Fellowships.  Jean-Paul has been active in the Historic Harrisburg Association and Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County. The Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County presented Jean-Paul with the Smedley Award which is given to an educator who has shown extraordinary support for historic preservation in Lancaster County.

Meet the Guest Writer Eric Schubert

Eric Schubert, public historian, is an internationally recognized genealogist and forensic genetic genealogist with over ten years of research experience. A recent graduate of Elizabethtown College, he is a current History M.A. candidate at Millersville University. His journey helping individuals through genealogy began at the age of ten and has led to countless reunifications – as well as several solved cold cases. Features include People Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Good Morning America, and various other publications. His public history work throughout Lancaster County, often related to historic preservation and biography of the Marietta area, has been highlighted in Lancaster Online and Community Press. At Elizabethtown College Eric led a National Trust for Historic Preservation, This Place Matters Campaign, for the National Historic Districts of Marietta and Chickies, celebrating the role these places played, particularly Marietta Restoration Associates, Inc. in establishing a national historic preservation movement in the 1960s and especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Agnes 1972.

Sources 

Ancestry.com, “Online Family Trees,” accessed March 12, 2024,
https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1030/

Barber, Edwin A.”The Late Professor S.S. Haldeman” The Museum; 1885. MG-344 S. S.
Haldeman Papers, Lancaster County Historical Society.

Biographical Annals of Lancaster County, Pa., Beers, 1903, pp. 144-5.

Brinton, D. G. “Memoir of S. S. Haldeman, A. M., Ph. D., etc.” Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society. 1881, 19 (108): 279–285.

Croll, P. C. “Famous Pennsylvania Germans; Professor Samuel S. Haldeman, LL.D.” The
Pennsylvania German, v.6 1905.

Gramm, Bertha Sue. The Ironmasters of Marietta and Vicinity During the Period 1848-
1878, Lancaster County Historical Society: Lancaster, PA. 1948.

Haldeman, Horace L. “A Memoir of Prof. Samuel Steman Haldeman. LL. D.” Records of the
American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia. 1898, 9 (3): 257–292.

Hamersly, Lewis Randolph, ed. Who’s Who in Pennsylvania; Containing Authentic Biographies
of Pennsylvanians Who are Leaders and Representatives in Various Departments of
Worthy Human Achievement … New York: L. R. Hamersly Company, 1904.

Hart, Charles Henry. Memoir of Samuel Stehman Haldeman, LL.D., Professor of Comparative
Philology in the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia: Press of E. Stern & Co., 1881.

Lancaster County Historical Society, S. S. Haldeman Papers.

Landis, Hunt Maragret. “War of the Words, or Which Came First, Chiques or Chickes?” The
Journal of Lancaster County’s Historical Society, 2009, 111 (1): 12-27.

Malone, Dumas, ed. Dictionary of American Biography, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1932.

Men of Science and Industry: A Guide to the Biographies of Scientists, Engineers, Inventors and
Physicians, in the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh: Carnegie Library, 1915.

Sorensen, W. Conner. “Haldeman, Samuel Stehman (1812-1880), Naturalist and Philologist,”
American National Biography, 1999.

RiverRoots: Rattlesnake Colonel: Thomas Cresap, An American Paradox

River Roots is Susquehanna NHA’s blog series featuring history from York and Lancaster Counties that showcases the Susquehanna River’s historic, cultural, and natural resource contributions to our nation’s heritage.

Susquehanna NHA is pleased to introduce guest blog writer, Michael Maloney. He is a native of York County, Pennsylvania, and recently published a biography of Thomas Cresap.

RiverRoots Heritage Blog

An American Paradox

Four miles south of Wrightsville on Long Level Road, a bronze tablet at the Zimmerman Center for Heritage and a nearby roadside marker commemorate Marylander Thomas Cresap and the site of Cresap’s Fort, where Cresap lived before having his cabin burned to the ground and being arrested by Pennsylvania authorities nearly 300 years ago.

However, the historical markers only hint at the much larger story of a seven-year conflict, sometimes called “Cresap’s War,” where Pennsylvania and Maryland squared off against each other for ownership of a thirty-mile wide swatch of land along the southern border of Pennsylvania. Although the hostilities may not adhere to the modern perception of a war, both colonies mustered militia, planned and carried out attacks, destroyed property, displaced settlers, and took prisoners. To those living there, it most likely felt like a war zone, as they were under constant threat of attack and fear of losing their homes. Several lives were lost and many more ordinary citizens had their lives disrupted.

If you ask almost anyone living in York or Lancaster County today if they know who Thomas Cresap was, most have never heard of him and only a few might mention he had something to do with Maryland. The real answer is complicated and would have depended on who, and when, you asked the question.

In the summer of 1736, if you asked a room of German and Scotch-Irish settlers gathered in John Wright’s ferry house in today’s Wrightsville, you would have been met with a chorus of boos and hisses. Everyone knew the “Maryland Monster” who had been terrorizing Pennsylvania settlers on the west side of the Susquehanna River for the previous five years. However, if you happened to encounter a band of Six Nations warriors passing by Cresap’s trading post at Oldtown in Western Maryland fifteen years later, they knew Thomas Cresap as “Big Spoon,” their friend who always seemed to have a big pot of food ready. In 1755, if you mentioned Thomas Cresap to a British army officer during the French and Indian War, you would have heard yet a third opinion. The officer would not have been impressed with the “Rattlesnake Colonel,” a lowly Colonial militia officer who often mishandled provisions for General Braddock’s troops. At the beginning of the American Revolution, if you asked the same question to anyone in Frederick County, Maryland, you would have been greeted with enthusiastic cheers and huzzahs for Thomas Cresap, who they considered a frontier hero.

Thomas Cresap was all those things and so much more. His professional resume would have included extensive experience as a frontiersman, Indian trader, soldier, ferryman, land speculator, farmer, trailblazer, surveyor, politician, patriot, husband, and father. Had he applied for the job of a Colonial man’s man, he would have been hired on the spot.

Cresap’s War

Cresap’s War had its roots fifty years before he arrived when William Penn received his Colonial charter in 1681, which defined Pennsylvania’s southern border as the fortieth parallel of north latitude. At first glance, this seems to correspond nicely with Cecil Calvert’s charter of 1632, which specified the same fortieth parallel as Maryland’s northern border. However, Penn’s charter was based on grossly inaccurate maps and he erroneously assumed his new colony extended as far south as the Chesapeake Bay.

When commissioners from both colonies met the following year and took their first astronomical measurement in New Castle, now in Delaware, Penn was shocked that the fortieth parallel lay much farther north, placing Pennsylvania’s proposed capital city of Philadelphia within the bounds of Maryland. For the next eight decades, the Penn family and five generations of Calverts attempted to settle the dispute themselves but the controversy was not permanently resolved until Charles Mason and Jerimiah Dixon completed their survey of the Maryland and Pennsylvania border.

In 1730, Maryland began issuing generous land grants on the west side of the Susquehanna River, as far north as today’s Wrightsville and near the actual fortieth parallel, which crosses York County at the Highpoint Scenic Vista & Recreation Area. At the time, the area was still largely uninhabited due to Pennsylvania’s policy of prohibiting settlements on land they had not yet purchased from the Native Americans. Maryland had no such policy, and by establishing tax-paying settlers, they were the first to stake a claim to the disputed area.

The following year, Thomas Cresap received a Maryland land grant called Pleasant Garden, along the bank of the river below a former Native American village. Although the exact location of his cabin, often called “Cresap’s Fort,” was lost to history when the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal was constructed one hundred years after Cresap left the area, the Zimmerman Center for Heritage on Long Level Road, built by John Meyer around 1740, is located on Cresap’s Pleasant Garden tract.

Shortly after Cresap settled at Pleasant Garden with his wife Hannah and their two children, he was appointed as a Baltimore County Justice, received a license to operate a ferry across the Susquehanna at Blue Rock, obtained a captain’s commission in the Maryland militia, and was encouraged to recruit other Maryland settlers to the area. He immediately clashed with Pennsylvania authorities in Lancaster County, settlers on the west side of the river, and the local Conestoga tribe, who still used the land around their former village for hunting and gathering food.

The next seven years were a continual cycle of retaliatory arrests, armed assaults, property destruction, and harassment of settlers, with both Maryland and Pennsylvania flexing their jurisdictional muscles in an attempt to control the contested area. On several occasions, Thomas Cresap and the Maryland militia confronted volunteers from Lancaster County, but backed down before any serious violence erupted. In 1734, during one of the many failed attempts to capture Cresap, a vigilante posse attacked his cabin and in the skirmish he shot and killed a Pennsylvanian named Knowles Daunt.

An important part of Maryland’s strategy was to persuade the German settlers on the west side of the river to identify as Marylanders. Although a few held provisional land patents from Pennsylvania, called Blunston Licenses, most were squatters who had settled without permission. In exchange for paying taxes to Maryland, Cresap promised them deeds for their properties, which he never delivered. However, after Pennsylvania purchased the land west of the river from the Six Nations in 1736, the Germans decided to defect to Pennsylvania, hoping to gain legal ownership of their property and liberate themselves from Cresap’s strong-arm tactics. Maryland authorities were infuriated and issued arrest warrants for sixty settlers, triggering renewed violence against the German settlers.

Pennsylvania finally had enough and ordered Cresap’s arrest. In late November 1736, Sheriff Samuel Smith and a large posse from Lancaster County surrounded Cresap’s cabin. After a day-long siege and exchanges of gunfire and insults, his cabin was set afire. As Cresap, his family, and his allies escaped from the flames, one of his indentured servants, Loughlin Malone, was killed by the sheriff’s men. The Maryland Monster was finally captured and taken to jail in Philadelphia, where he sarcastically commented that it was the one of the prettiest cities in Maryland. He remained locked up until early 1738, when King George II ordered that all hostilities should cease, prisoners on both sides should be released, and the Maryland and Pennsylvania border would be located on an east-west line fifteen miles south of Philadelphia.

After Cresap was released from jail and returned home, he realized he had nothing left to fight for since Pleasant Garden was now officially outside the bounds of Maryland. Not wanting to be a subject of Pennsylvania, Cresap moved his family to the frontier of Western Maryland, briefly settling near the future town of Hagerstown, Maryland, before relocating farther west to an abandoned Shawnee Village at today’s Oldtown, Maryland. Cresap soon established a trading post and became a well-known figure on the frontier, providing a place of refuge for settlers in time of war. He earned himself the nickname Big Spoon by supplying provisions to the Native Americans passing through Oldtown.

American Frontier

When the French and Indian War spread across Western Maryland, Colonel Cresap was in the middle of the action. He was placed in charge of transporting the prisoners taken by George Washington in the opening shot of the war at Jumonville Glen, and the following year, Cresap and a Delaware Indian named Nemacolin blazed a trail from Western Maryland to today’s Pittsburgh for General Braddock’s 1755 expedition to capture Fort Duquesne. The British officers who camped at Oldtown were not particularly impressed with Cresap, especially after he supplied spoiled food to the troops, and referred to him as a Rattlesnake Colonel, a rank which they felt could be earned by anyone in the colonies for simply killing a rattlesnake.

Cresap amassed thousands of acres of land in Western Maryland and was a founding member of the Ohio Company of Virginia, a land speculation company that was determined to acquire and settle a large land grant in the Ohio Valley, in today’s West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. In 1757, he entered politics and served as a representative in the Lower House of Maryland for more than a decade. Despite being in his early 80’s when the Revolutionary War broke out, Cresap was an active member in the Frederick County Committee of Observation, a local organization designed to enforce boycotts of British goods, solicit funds for arms and ammunition, and identify British loyalists. An ardent patriot, Cresap formed a local Sons of Liberty Chapter in Frederick, Maryland.

Thomas Cresap died in 1787 at the age of ninety-three. Whether his legacy is viewed as positive or negative depends largely on perspective. Although there is no doubt his influence in the development of the Ohio Valley was significant, his contributions remain a largely misunderstood side note in American history, often overshadowed by his controversial actions over five decades to redefine the borders of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Few individuals did more, over such a long period of time, to further Colonial America’s westward expansion. History has shown that Cresap’s fervent commitment to the interests of Maryland was a product of the narrow-minded sectionalist views of his time, emphasizing his loyalty to one colony rather than the country as a whole. Whatever his motives, he remained true to his convictions, whether in support of Maryland, Great Britain, or America, making him both famous and infamous – a true American paradox.

Author Information

Michael Maloney is a native of York County, Pennsylvania, and currently resides with his wife in Red Lion. Now retired, he was the Director of Technical Services for Lifetime Brands (the former Pfaltzgraff Company) since 2005. Although he grew up in York, both his parents and many of his relatives are from Marietta and Mount Joy in Lancaster County. Consequently, he spent many summers along the Susquehanna River at his grandparent’s house, exploring the river shore and the surrounding hills.

After learning of a gravesite behind the Accomac Inn, he was curious to research the Accomac ferry crossing, the town of Marietta, and the murder of Emily Myers at the hand of John Coyle, Jr. on Decoration Day, 1881. His love of local history led him to write his first book, Across the River, Murder at Accomac, released in 2012 for the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the borough of Marietta.

His second non-fiction book, Rattlesnake Colonel Thomas Cresap – An American Paradox, is a biography of Thomas Cresap’s contradictory and often controversial life. Cresap’s life experiences in Pennsylvania and Western Maryland are used to narrate the complicated political and military conflicts of eighteenth-century Colonial America in a comprehensive yet understandable way. For more information, presentation schedule, where to buy, and bonus content, visit michaelmaloneybooks.com!

RiverRoots: The Black Defenders of the Susquehanna

River Roots is Susquehanna NHA’s blog series featuring history from York and Lancaster Counties that showcases the Susquehanna River’s historic, cultural, and natural resource contributions to our nation’s heritage.

Susquehanna NHA is pleased to introduce guest blog writer, local historian, and author Scott Mingus.

RiverRoots Heritage Blog

Join Mr. Mingus for a lecture at Columbia Crossing River Trail Center on December 13, 2023! This is a part of SNHA’s RiverRoots LIVE! Lecture Series.

Purchase Tickets Here!

The Black Defenders of the Susquehanna

In the late spring of 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy’s main military force in the Eastern Theater of the Civil War, began moving north through Virginia and Maryland toward south-central Pennsylvania. Its commander, famed General Robert E. Lee, hoped to win a major victory on Northern soil, sever critical Union supply routes, and gather much-needed supplies. A full third of his army, Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell’s Second Corps, had arrived in Franklin County by June 23 and the remainder was well on the way.

Ewell split his powerful corps, leading two divisions northeasterly through lush Cumberland County toward Pennsylvania’s capital city, Harrisburg, while Maj. Gen. Jubal Early’s 6,600-man division headed east through Adams County, capturing fresh horses and supplies along the way. After a brief fight at Gettysburg on a rainy Friday, June 26, Early left the next morning for York, the largest town between Harrisburg and Baltimore. He would ransom York for $100,000 in cash and massive amounts of shoes, boots, food, flour, cattle, and other goods.

Terrified citizens fled as Ewell’s twin columns marched steadily toward the vital Susquehanna River bridges at Bridgeport (now Lemoyne) and Wrightsville, which provided access to strategically important Harrisburg. General Lee had instructed Ewell to “capture Harrisburg, if it comes within your means.” Town after town fell to the approaching Confederates and by, Sunday, June 28, Carlisle and York were firmly under enemy control, as was Chambersburg.

Defending the broad river became a priority to halt or delay the Confederates long enough for the pursuing Union Army of the Potomac to catch up and bring Lee to battle. Those plans included potentially burning sections of the Camelback Bridge at Bridgeport and Columbia Bridge at Wrightsville if necessary to prevent the Confederate soldiers and their artillery and wagons from crossing the Susquehanna.

A motley force of Union troops and civilian home guard companies assembled at Wrightsville. They included a full regiment of hastily organized and barely trained Pennsylvania emergency militia and several companies from other state-authorized units, including detachments of cavalrymen from Philadelphia and Gettysburg. The five home guard units defending the Wrightsville crossing included four companies of white men from Lancaster County and one of Black volunteers, mostly employees of the Maltby & Case Rolling Mill in Columbia. The latter group made an immediate impression on the soldiers. “They presented a motley appearance, attired as they were in every description of citizens’ dress,” an observer later wrote (Pottsville Miner’s Journal, 24 October 1863).  None wore uniforms; most carried outdated weapons.

Earlier in the year, abolitionist Frederick Douglass had visited Lancaster County to raise men for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry, Black soldiers serving under white officers. Forty-one men from the river region signed up for the two regiments at various times and headed for Boston. Now, more than 50 other Black men in Captain William Case’s home guard company shouldered weapons to help defend the mile-and-a-quarter-long Columbia Bridge, the longest covered bridge in the world. They lacked uniforms and military equipment, so the 27th Pennsylvania Volunteer Militia’s quartermaster supplied them with modern rifle muskets and ammunition. Until the enemy arrived, however, these Black home guardsmen toiled side-by-side with the state soldiers to dig trenches and protective rifle pits (much like World War II’s foxholes). Lieutenant Francis Wallace, a newspaper reporter from Pottsville, served in the 27th Militia. “No men on that day worked more faithfully or zealously, than the colored company,” he later wrote. “Their conduct elicited the admiration of all who saw them” (Pottsville Miner’s Journal, 24 October 1863).

York lawyer James W. Latimer and his friend James Kell took a train to Harrisburg to see Governor Curtin, a fellow Republican, to get an update on the Confederate invasion. Peering out the window of his railcar as it approached Wrightsville, Latimer watched the back-breaking construction efforts in the fields to the north. “They are digging rifle-pits and throwing up entrenchments at Wrightsville to protect the Columbia bridge and say they are acting under orders from Gen. Couch. They have a force of men on the bridge night and day to destroy it if necessary.”

Throughout Sunday morning, June 28, a steady stream of refugees passed through the Union position on the turnpike between York and Wrightsville. They shared graphic descriptions of the Confederate advance through Adams and York counties. The excitement that morning was high, despite a persistent drizzle. The fleeing crowds included large numbers of Black men, women, and children, as well as hordes of livestock. Lieutenant Wallace observed, “The negroes are especially anxious to elude the rebels as they fear they would be made slaves if captured” (Pottsville Miner’s Journal, 4 July 1863). Despite the danger, Captain Case’s Black volunteers stayed put, even when the four companies of white home guardsmen returned to Columbia for breakfast but failed to return.

Alongside the 27th Militia, the 53 Black men, including 15-year-old John Aquilla Wilson of Fawn Grove in southeastern York County, continued entrenching. A few must have questioned their fate should they fall into Confederate hands. Free Black people who were captured by Confederate forces throughout the war often received shackles and a trip into slavery. Even uniformed Black soldiers were not treated as prisoners of war in several cases. The Wrightsville volunteers kept their muskets and ammunition stacked nearby.

At 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, distant Confederate artillery opened fire on the entrenchments. The defenders huddled behind the earthworks as shell fragments rained down, almost decapitating one of the Black guardsmen. A New York Herald reporter wrote, “Our men gave them a volley or two from their rifle-pits, knocking six or eight over and losing two themselves, one of whom belonged to a colored company organized in the town. His head was shattered by a fragment from one of the enemy shells” (New York Herald, 30 June 1863).

Two hours later, as long lines of enemy soldiers began flanking the horseshoe-shaped position, the Union commander ordered a retreat across the bridge into Columbia. Civilian volunteers had previously prepared a 200-foot section of the bridge with charges of explosive gunpowder. Once most of the men were safely across, orders came to light the fuse. An “old colored man,” Jacob Miller, had the honor. He sat calmly smoking his cigar while the artillery shells whizzed overhead. Now, he touched that stogie to the fuse and scampered to safety. However, the explosion failed to destroy the sturdy bridge deck and merely blew out some side walls and pieces of the roofing. The charge “simply splintered the arch. It scarcely shook the bridge” (John Q. Denney deposition, 1863).

The black volunteer company performed well that day, surprising considering their lack of combat experience. A Philadelphia correspondent noted, “Two companies of colored troops remained in the intrenchments [sic] until ordered to retreat. They were volunteers, and behaved very well, except in the retreat, which was accomplished rather hastily.” They reassembled on a hill along Third Street in Columbia. The militia commander detached one group upriver to guard a ford at Bainbridge. They marched out to their new post, “bearing themselves like veteran soldiers” according to a witness. (Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 June 1863)

Having failed to destroy the bridge with explosives, the soldiers hastily doused the partially shattered section with coal oil and set it on fire. The wind shifted and soon the conflagration grew into an unquenchable inferno that engulfed the entire bridge. Six hours later, it was entirely gone as thousands of fascinated soldiers and civilians watched the flames dance into the night sky.

By morning, the Confederates were gone, having withdrawn at dawn toward York. The defenders had successfully accomplished their goal of preventing the enemy soldiers from crossing the Susquehanna River.

The Sunday events at Wrightsville had another favorable outcome—newfound respect for black volunteers. They had shouldered arms alongside the white soldiers and performed courageously. Lancaster’s Examiner and Herald trumpeted, “The only Columbia volunteers in the fight were fifty-three negros, who after making entrenchments with the soldiers, took muskets and fought bravely” (1 July 1863). In his official report, militia commander Col. Jacob Frick praised the excellent conduct of these black civilians. “After working industriously in the rifle pits all day, when the fight commenced they took their guns and stood up to their work bravely. They fell back only when ordered to do so” (War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 27, pt.2, 279). Lieutenant Francis Wallace wrote to his Pottsville paper, “All honor to the colored men of Columbia. They will die in defense of life and liberty, which is more than a majority of the whites here seem disposed to do—the cravens” (Pottsville Miner’s Journal, 4 July 1863).

In Harrisburg, Darius Couch oversaw the Department of the Susquehanna, a military district stretching from the Laurel Highlands east to Philadelphia. He later wrote, “The militia of Pennsylvania raised to resist the invasion was composed of all classes and professions, and was a fine body of men.” Thankful for the hundreds of Harrisburg residents who constructed earthworks, he added, “Some of the patriotic citizens of that city volunteered to work in the trenches; others were paid. The colored population were not far behind their white brethren in giving assistance.”

Unfortunately, the name of the Black volunteer killed by Confederate artillery has been lost to history. Columbia’s black cemeteries and churches did not maintain detailed records during this period. The only existing muster roll for the Columbia Black volunteers is from November, well after the skirmish. Some Black men who shouldered muskets in the earthworks, including young John Aquilla Wilson of York County, later enlisted in three-year United States Colored Troops and fought in other battles against the Confederates. They never forgot their first military experience, defending the Susquehanna.

Meet the Guest Writer Scott Mingus

Scott L. Mingus, Sr., is a retired scientist and executive in the global pulp & paper industry, holds patents in self-adhesive postage stamps and bar code labels. He was part of the research team that developed the first commercially successful self-adhesive U.S. postage stamps. He is a multiple award-winning author, having written or co-written over three dozen books on the American Civil War and Underground Railroad. He also wrote several articles for Gettysburg Magazine and other journals. Scott maintains a blog on the Civil War history of York County PA and received the Heritage Profile Award from the York County History Center for his many contributions to local Civil War history.