Dale,...
It was settled by those from CT but not long after you had the Dutch there,.. a big Germanic influence,.... this is what I found historically, so I figured maybe you had a lot of the Bucks Co. and Lehigh influence perhaps?
In a book by the name of "Atlas of the North American Indian" in regards to the "Rebellions Against The Dutch" the map showed a wide spread area that looks to be that with which the Dutch traded with the Indians of the PA area as far west as the Pittsburg area and covering PA all the way to "New Amsterdam" (NYC today).
Now in my home town of Nanticoke, PA (Named after the Nanticoke Indians of Maryland who migrated there) the Nanticoke indians migrated there about 1750. Adopted in 1753 by the Six Nations, they settled at Chenango, near Binghamton, to guard the "Southern Door" of the Confederacy.
A few "firsts" for that town as it took strides forward specifically include the following:
1774 The first school teacher was William McKarrichan.
1776 The first two "great roads," Middle and River Roads, were staked out.
1780 First weekly mail from Wilkes-Barre.
Also, we see "Harvey creek", draining Harvey lake and, going south, falls into the river at West Nanticoke. This is joined by Pikes creek in Jackson township. This lake was named for Benjamin Harvey, who located near its junction in 1775.... now known as "Harvey's Lake".
All seem to point to Connecticut settlers however in that specific area which seems odd as there is such a heavy Germanic influence found in primitive antiques in the area.
There was a fur trade on years beforehand, active as it was, but no specific notes of "settlemets" to speak of other than that of Forty-Fort and others of the area fraught with those from Connecticut?
One interesting thing that I have found however, is an exceept from a book written in 1893.
As follows ***(Note the mention of "Quakers" here in the second paragraph!!)***
History of Luzerne County Pennsylvania
H. C. Bradsby, Editor
S. B. Nelson & Co., Publishers, 1893
CHAPTER II.
1762
"Within a circle of ten miles from the Wilkes-Barre court house, where is now a population of considerably over 100,000, was for fifty years the heart of the battlefield between savagery and civilization, and then came the War of the Roses in contention for the possession and ownership of the soil. The wave of the death struggle swept back and forth; literally charges and retreats and counter charges; captures and expulsions and then recaptures and again repulsed; the swarming immigrant this year, the sad exodus the next: the victory to-day, the bloody massacre almost sure to swiftly follow. The scythe of death mowed its winrows in the ranks and eagerly came others in the place of the dead. What destiny hung in the balance, so long suspended by a single hair! This was something of the alembic that distilled the remarkable manhood that has inscribed high in the temple of the immortals the names of most of the first settlers of what is now Luzerne county. Illustrious men and glorious women, all as brave as death! Your sufferings and your dearly earned triumphs deserve the record of the inspired pen, and that page would be the most luminous in history. Men, real men, develop best under adversity; the weak and inefficient faint and fall by the way, and the fittest survive and stamp their iron qualities upon their offspring, and this natural selection brings us a race of men on whose shoulders may rest a world. Heroes indeed, a race of the world's bravest and best. The simple story of their struggles and, the final supreme triumphs are each and ail an epic that should be written in every living, heart. Let their deeds be immortal! their memories most sacred.
The climax of the struggle came only when it was Puritan versus Quaker over the question of ownership of the soil. This was serious indeed; no men were ever more intensely earnest in the claims on both sides of the question. The law as interpreted by authority was on the side of the Quakers; yet the plain equity was with the Puritans. Both were right and both were, not intentionally, wrong. This paradox only expresses the general phase of the great problems. As a question of the letter of the law the Quaker's triumph was complete, yet to-day from Old Shamokin (Sunbury) to Tioga Point (Athens), this once disputed land is as Yankee in fact as any portion of Connecticut. When these forces were arrayed in armed hostility, the scant records now left us of the communications between the respective leaders, communications offering adjustments, proclamations giving the world the facts in the case; petitions to the Pennsylvania authorities, and statements in the nature of pleas for justice, as well as arguments before courts, show these pioneers from the Nutmeg State mostly as remarkable statesmen, diplomats and broad [p.38] constitutional lawyers and defenders of the rights of man such as are not surpassed in any chapter in our country's history. These men it must be remembered were simple pioneers, the most favored with but sparsest advantages of the schoolroom and none of them really trained to the law, the courts or statesmanship. Yet they rose with the great emergency. Their records were halt and lame in spelling, yet they are the enduring evidences that their minds were strong and nimble."
