road leading to Slocum Hollow, where Ebenezer and Benjamin Slocum, with their less than a dozen employees, enumerated the entire white inhabitants of this tranquil and independent settlement.

James Abbott, whose iron energy had animated the glen of Roaring Brook, resided on the bank of Stafford Meadow Creek. Some two miles below Slocum Hollow, a tract of land improved as early as 1776, by Comer Philips, was tenanted jointly by David Dewee and David David. The latter met with a sudden death a year or two later. Engaged at the break of day in prying up a rock for a hearth-stone, he was mistaken by Dewee, in search of game, for a beast of prey, and shot dead upon the spot. His widow subsequently married Mr. Abbott.

John Scott, father of the great hunter Elias, lived upon the farm lying farthest down in the township of Providence. His nearest neighbor was Joseph Knapp, a brave old revolutionary soldier, spurning alike title or pretension. At the surrender of Burgoyne he received a wound long incapacitating him from active service. After the declaration of peace he resumed farming in Columbia County, New York, until 1790, when he emigrated to the valley and settled in the "gore."1

His son Zephaniah, attaining eighty years, yet lives among us. Much of his early life was spent in hunting and trapping various animals inhabiting the valley over half a century ago. Sometimes during the autumn months he was out alone for weeks, engaged in hunting, subsisting on the trophies of his gun, and finding on friendly leaves and boughs his only bivouac. He has kept a curious record of the number of bears and other wild animals he killed upon the Lackawanna; of the time and manner of their capture, with their respective weight, in a work of over one hundred folio pages; a work probably

1 The gore was a narrow strip of land, lying between Pittston and Providence. It is now Lackawanna Township, set off as an electoral district, Feb. 25, 1795; into a township at the November sessions, 1838.

unmatched in novelty and interest by any manuscript of the kind found in the country. He has given it the inimitable title of "The Leather Shirt.”

This enumeration, embracing no particular creed nor politics, comprised the entire inhabitants of the valley four and sixty years ago. To many who may peruse these pages the foregoing particulars may seem out of place, but to those who visit the Lackawanna Valley, or make it their home, it will not be amiss to thus catch a retrospective glance of the days gone by, so as better to contemplate the changes years have wrought, and judge from the past how rapid and marvelous will be the prosperity of the future. Six years later the census was taken by the Hon. Charles Miner. Within the Lackawannian district existed but two townships, Pittston and Providence, the first having a population of 694, the last 589, or a total population of 1,283 for the entire valley in 1804. Abington had an inhabitancy of 511.

The same territory, divided and sub-divided into cities, townships, and boroughs, will furnish in 1870, according to the same ratio of increase, a population of one hundred thousand. Diffused along its living border, it falls to-day little short of eighty thousand, and a more enterprising, intelligent community, a more thrifty and successful people, remarkable alike for their love of liberty and their attachments to their country, can nowhere be found.

The thrift everywhere diffused along the intervale, no longer hid in its native fastnesses, has kept pace with the steady hum of its population. It is in fact impossible to contemplate the unvaried progress of the Lackawanna Valley for the last thirty years without astonishment and pride. It has been a progress at once so rapid, so liberal, so vast and comprehensive in its character, as to exhibit alike the importance of the valley, and the sagacity of those to whom its development has been intrusted. Buried deep in the forest of northeastern Pennsylvania, as it has

been within a few years, walled in from the great world by natural mountain barriers, like the Northmen among their glimmering crags, with no outlet to the east or the west, but for the slow coach, swinging along at the rate of four miles an hour behind the jaded stage-horse, with no incitement but its slumbering wealth, it has risen like a man awakened from his slumbers, strong, refreshed, invigorated, until it has become one of the most commercial and prosperous valleys in the State.

FORMATION OF TOWNSHIPS UNDER PENNSYLVANIA JURIS

DICTION PRIMITIVE MINISTERS.

Pittston was formed in 1790.

Providence was formed, August, 1792.

Abington was formed, August, 1806.
Greenfield was formed, January, 1816.
Covington was formed, January, 1818.
Blakeley was formed, April, 1818.
Carbondale was formed, April, 1831.

Jefferson was formed, April, 1836.

Lackawanna was formed, November, 1838.

Benton was formed 1838.

Newton was formed 1844.

Madison was formed 1845.

Fell was formed 1845.

Scott was formed 1846.

The same territory, divided into lots of 300 acres each, extending back two and a half miles, was covered by two towns, while under Connecticut jurisdiction, viz. : Pittston and Providence. Three hundred acres of land were appropriated or reserved in either of these original towns for the use of the first minister in fee, before other lots were offered to the settler. Before the ministerial occupancy of these reservations, the adjoining town of Wilkes Barre with that of Kingston, prospered under the spiritual pleadings of the Rev. Jacob Johnson, a Presbyterian minister, for whom a house was built by the colony in 1772, and whose salary this year was fixed at sixty pounds Connecticut currency.1

1 Westmoreland Records.

After the annihilation of the Connecticut claim in 1782, by the court at Trenton, the commissioners allowed "The Rev. Mr. Johnson to have the full use of all the grounds he Tilled for two years, ending the first of May, 1785." He refused the kindness of the favor in a spirit less chafing than biblical, as evinced by the following letter' of

"JACOB JOHNSON To the Comte of the Pennsylvania Landowners, &c.: Gentlemen,

I thank you for your distinguished Favor shewed to me the widows, &c., in a proposal of Indulgence, Permitting us to reside in our present Possessions and Improvements for the present & succeeding Year. Altho I cannot Consistly accept the offer, having Chosen a Comte for that purpose, who are not disposed to accept of or Comply with your proposals. However, I will for myself (as an Individual) make you a proposal agreable to that Royal President, Sam1 9th, 16th, & 19th Chapter, if that dont suit you and no Compromise can be made, or Tryal be had, according to the law of the States, I will say as Mepheboseth, Jonathan's son (who was lame on both his feet) said to King David, Sam' 19, 30, yea let him take all. So I say to you Gentlemen if there be no resource, Neither by our Petition to the Assembly of the State of Pennsyvania or otherwise, Let the Landholders take all. I have only this to add for my Consolation and you Gentlemen's serious Consideration, Viz: that however the Cause may be determined for or against me (in this present uncertain State of things,) there is an Inheritance in the Heavens, sure & Certain that fadeth not a way reserved for me, and all that love the Saviour Jesus Christ's appearing.

I am Gentlemen, with all due Respect, & good Will your Most Obt Humble Servt, JACOB JOHNSON.

Wioming, Ap1 24th, 1783.

To the Gentlemen Comte, &c.

'Pa. Arch., 1783-1786, p. 32.

2 Ibid., pp. 34, 35.

N. B. it is my Serious Opinion if we proceed to a Compromise according to the Will of heaven that the lands (as to the Right of soil) be equally divided between the two Parties Claiming, and I am fully Satisfied this Opinion of mine may be proved even to a demonstration out of the Sacred Oracles. I would wish you Gentlemen would turn your thoughts and enquiries to those 3 Chapters above refered to and see if my Opinion is not well Grounded & if so, I doubt not but we Can Compromise in love and Peace and save the Cost and Trouble of a Tryal at Law."

The doctrines of Methodism were occasionally expounded to the people of Pittston and Providence in 1790; in 1794 an Englishman named William Bishop, a fervid Baptist preacher, kindled his fire on the parsonage lot in Providence. This lot lay on the east side of Hyde Park, and extended over the marsh or pond which a few years since gave to the interior of Scranton such a piscatory appearance. The principal hotels and churches, as well as the greater portion of Scranton, stand upon these ancient church lands.

On the bluff, upheaved from the Lackawanna, whose waters so gracefully bend around its base, the log-house and church of Elder Bishop, combined in one, emerged from the forest. It was a rude, paintless affair. No bell, steeple, pulpit, nor pews, marked it as a house of worship; four plain sides, chinked with wood held by adhesive mud, formed a room where the backwoodsmen gathered in a spirit of real piety, sincerity, and an absence of display impossible to find to-day in the more costly and imposing sanctuaries around us.

The habits of the assemblage were in keeping with the character of the humble edifice. Women wore dresses made from flax and woolen, fitting them so closely and straight as a bean-pole. These were sometimes plain from the loom, but generally colored and striped with a domestic dye, giving to the woolen fabric every variety