Chapter 16
Section 16 of A Guide Book of Art, Architecture, and Historic Interests in Pennsylvania, edited by Margareta R. Schembeau. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Tatiana Cicilla. Northumberland County. Formed March 21, 1772. Named for the Duke of Northumberland. Mountainous, with great amount of fertile land, watered by the Susquehanna River in tributaries. Chief industry is coal mining.
County seat, Sunbury. Population 15,721. On site of a populous Indian village named Chemogan. Occupied variously by different tribes. In 1745, the town contained about 50 houses and 300 inhabitants. The Six Nations used it as a tearing place for their war parties against the Catawbas of the South. It was the residence of Chicolemi, an Oneida chief sent by the Iroquois, who claimed the land by conquest in 1728. He was the Indian diplomat and land agent of the three great tribes of Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware. With supervision of the Delaware, Shawnee, and other tribes. He also had to look after all matters relating to the settlement and purchase of Indian lands by whites.
In 1742, Count Zinzendorf, with Conrad Weiser and others, came to Chemogan. Chicolemi gave them a hearty welcome and promised to forward their design of having a Moravian mission there. It was established in 1747 by Martin Mack and his wife. Bishop Kamerhoff and Zeisberger visited the town the next year. In 1748, Chicolemi died. The chief who had never swerved in his friendship to the province. He had been baptized in the Christian faith in Bethlehem and was buried just outside of what was later Fort Augusta.
James Logan, his second son, was perhaps the best known of his children. Made so by the murder of his family near the mouth of Yellow Creek on the Ohio in 1774, the famous Logan's lament. A large boulder with memorial tablet marks Chicolemi's grave. It was placed in 1915 by the Fort Augusta chapter, daughters of the American Revolution and the Pennsylvania Historical Commission. The boulder is a very close-grained rock of the kind used by the Indians for their hardest and strongest implements.
It was quarried near Wapwallapin, about 40 miles above Sunbury. This rock boulder from our local mountains will resist the forces of nature for centuries to come, as it has done for ages past. Shamokin, or Sunbury, was also the residence of Alamappes, or Sasunin, the head chief of the Delawares. So that this place was, in every sense of the term, the Indian capital of Pennsylvania from 1728 to 48, and was deserted in 1749 on account of a severe famine along the Susquehanna.
At the north of Sunbury, along the River Drive, is site of Fort Augusta, built in 1756 by Colonel Miles and Captain Trump of the 2nd Pennsylvania Battalion. It was the frontier after Forts Muncie, Brady, and Freeland were destroyed in 1779 by British and Indians. The powder magazine and well, built of brick, are still intact and in good preservation. This was said to have been the most strategic point in the whole section, a monument on either side of the roadway marks the place. On the site of the fortifications is a brick mansion. Within are many relics taken from the fort and draft of original plan.
Visitors are welcome. Site of Fort Freeland on north side of Warriors Run, four miles east of Watson Town, it was a large stockaded bog house built in 1773 and closing about half an acre. Sunbury was laid out in 1772 by William McClay and John Lukens by order of Governor Richard Penn, who named it. William McClay, first United States Senator from Pennsylvania, built his stone residence, still standing, on the riverbank in the northwest part of town. The city plan is like that of Philadelphia, and many of the streets have Philadelphia names.
Market Street faces a public square between 2nd and 3rd streets, known as Cameron Park, in which is the Civil War Soldiers Monument. Granite shafts are mounted by a life-size granite statue of Colonel James Cameron, who organized a regiment from this county. Courthouse, 2nd Street facing west side of Cameron Park, originally built in 1866. Georgian, brick with Hummelstown brown stone trimmings, was remodeled in the same style in 1915 and enlarged in the rear with a cross wing, giving two fine courtrooms. Last architect, William H. Lee Shmokin.
The prison, one block away at the corner of 2nd and Arch Streets, medieval castle style, built 1878. Dark grey stone, with stone wall 20 feet high, surrounding the whole structure, has wing used as a penitentiary, where prisoners serve out their sentences. They weave carpets and make coarse hosiery. Northumberland, settled 1772, population 4061. Dr. Joseph Priestley, chemist and philosopher, was its most noted inhabitant.
He emigrated here in 1794 to be with his son, and died 1804. In 1874, scientists of America celebrated here the centennial of Dr. Priestley's discovery of oxygen. His house, built 1796, is still standing, in excellent preservation. A portrait of Dr. Priestley by Gilbert Stuart is owned by Ms. Priestley. The academy was erected in 1803, mainly through the efforts of Dr. Priestley.
Rev. Isaac Greer, 1st principal. End of section 16.
