additional churches of our faith, some of them quite large, remained Independent churches.*

The Congregational churches and ministers of New York are now organized in ten District Associations and one Conference, and in a General Association which includes ten Pennsylvania churches. Besides these ecclesiastical organizations, there is the Manhattan Association of ten ministers and as many churches.

The number of Congregational churches in the State, in 1879, was two hundred and fifty-six; of ministers, two hundred and forty-five; and of communicants, thirty-three thousand one hundred and fifteen; a net gain of nine hundred and thirteen on the previous year.†

*For the materials of this sketch of New York Associations I am much indebted to manuscript communications from the Rev. Pindar Field, who was intimately acquainted with Congregational history in New York from 1825 to 1840, and was Registrar of the General Association.

The Rev. John Gibbs, of New York city, and the Rev. David Abel, of Saratoga county, have aided me most materially in my inquiries, by long written letters and sundry printed documents, covering the time from 1834 to 1840 particularly, which they have kindly furnished. My great regret is, that I am able to crowd into this sketch hardly a tenth of the matter which I had prepared from their copious materials.

† Congregational Year-Book for 1879.

IT is well understood that the Swedes, Dutch, Finns and English Quakers were early settlers in Pennsylvania; also, that Germans and ScotchIrish were subsequently found in considerable numbers in that country. But is it as well known that New England Congregationalists were among the very earliest adventurers into Pennsylvania?

Connecticut claimed, under her original patent of 1631, the sovereignty of all Northern Pennsylvania a strip of country sixty miles wide and five times as long from east to west; and rightfully, too, according to the letter of her patent.

But they had a still better right to that country by the purchase of it from the Indians. In 1640

- forty years before William Penn's grant and purchase of the country-a company of New Haven people bought of the Indians about half of the land in question, paying liberally for it — two thousand pounds in current New York money; and in 1641 began the actual settlement of the country by sending nearly fifty families into it to take possession and prepare the way for a large immigration. "This purchase," we are told by

Trumbull,"was made with a view to trade and for the settlement of churches in gospel order and purity." But the hostility of the Dutch, and a severe epidemic sickness which prevailed through all the settlements on the Delaware bay, so discouraged the prosecution of the enterprise that it was abandoned for the time.*

Between 1642 and 1651, repeated efforts were made to renew this settlement. But every effort failed, and the project was suffered, at last, to sleep for an entire century.

In 1753-54, however, it was revived with great enthusiasm, and many hundreds of persons became personally interested in planting New England settlements between the Delaware river and the Alleghany mountains. Large purchases of lands were made of the Six Nations for this purpose; embracing about seventy miles of territory from north to south and twice that from east to west; beginning ten miles east of the Susquehanna river, and including the whole Wyoming valley, rich and beautiful, and the country westward to the sources of the Alleghany river and the roots of the mountains.†

This large purchase was made by the "Connecticut Susquehanna Company," which at that time

* Hist. Conn., 1, 115, 120, 134; Winthrop, 11, 62, 76; Holmes' Ann., 1, 260, 267, 273, 290.

↑ Poetry and History of Wyoming, by William L. Stone, 13537; Appendix, 383-92.

CHAP. II.]

THE WYOMING VALLEY.

65

An

numbered over six hundred stockholders. other Connecticut land company, called the "Delaware Company," about the same time purchased largely toward the Delaware river and bay, and southward as far as the Susquehanna Company's land extended. The two purchases amounted to nearly five millions of acres,* or three times as much as all the cultivated land of Connecticut in 1870.

Arrangements were first made for the settlement of the Wyoming valley, and a detachment of colonists, with surveyors, was sent forward in 1755 to prepare the way. But on their arrival in the valley, the neighboring Indians were found in such a ferment, in consequence of General Braddock's disastrous defeat, that it was not deemed safe to attempt to lay out the settlement at that time. But in 1757 the Delaware Company succeeded in making a promising beginning at Cushetunk, on the Delaware river. Yet it was not until 1762 that the Susquehanna Company ventured again into the valley of the Wyoming. That year saw about two hundred hardy, enterprising New England people preparing for a settlement on the Susquehanna, near Mill creek, a fine, intersecting stream, a little north of the present town of Wilkesbarre. Here the forests were soon felled, log houses were built, large fields were sowed, and

* History of Wyoming, by Charles Miner, p. 145; cf. Stone,

preparations generally were made for a permanent settlement. Returning to Connecticut to pass the winter, the pioneers were ready in the spring of 1763, with their families, and a considerable addition to their number of settlers, with live stock and all needed conveniences for frontier life, to return to the valley. Safely arrived, they resumed their work in the valley, and everything went prosperously until autumn, when the settlement was suddenly attacked by the Indians, and in a few hours utterly desolated and destroyed, the houses and crops burned, many of the inhabitants massacred in cold blood, and the remainder driven away from their pleasant homes.

It was six years before the company gathered courage to renew this enterprise. At length, however, in 1769, another company of resolute men was equipped and sent into the Wyoming valley. But, on their arrival, they found that the Pennsylvanians had anticipated them and taken possession of their lands. And now began a violent contest for the possession of this charming country. Five times the Yankees were driven out, and five times they returned, enforced from Connecticut; and finally, in 1771, made good their possession and drove the Pennymites from the land. From two to three hundred New England men were concerned in this dangerous undertaking, all pledged to "man their rights" at the hazard of their lives; and this they did most effectually.

For two years they lived in peace and prospered