A guide book of art, architecture, and historic interests in Pennsylvania
History
A guide book of art, architecture, and historic interests in Pennsylvania
Architecture -- Pennsylvania; Art -- Pennsylvania; Historic buildings -- Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania -- Guidebooks; Pennsylvania -- History
It was the residence of Shikellimy, 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 the whites. In 1742, Count Zinzendorf,
with Conrad Weiser and others, came to Shamokin; Shikellimy 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 Cammerhoff and Zeisberger visited the town the next
year. In 1748 Shikellimy died; “the Chief who 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, and the famous “Logan’s Lament.” A large
boulder, with memorial tablet, marks Shikellimy’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
of very close grained rock, of the kind used by the Indians for their
hardest and strongest implements; it was quarried near Wapwallopen,
about forty 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 (Sunbury) was also the residence of Allummapees, or Sassounan,
the head chief of the Delawares, so that this place was, in every sense
of the term, the Indian capital of Pennsylvania from 1728-48, 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 Second
Pennsylvania Battalion; it was the frontier, after Forts Muncy, 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 Warrior’s Run, four
miles east of Watsontown; it was a large stockaded log house, built in
1773, enclosing about half an acre.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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