How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [20]
Connecticut land claims
Connecticut gave little thought to this vast western wilderness during its first hundred years. There was land enough for cultivation and expansion surrounding its settlements in the bays and rivers leading to Long Island Sound. But its population grew exponentially as the initial hardships and dangers in the New World dissipated.1 By the mid-1700s, Connecticut needed more land.
Connecticut first asserted its western claims in 1754, when Governor Roger Wolcott allowed the Susquehanna Company to purchase land from the Iroquois along the Susquehanna River. The fact that Connecticut made no effort to assert its claim to the intervening lands in New York and New Jersey would later become legally significant. Politically and militarily, however, Connecticut knew it could not achieve a claim to land already populated by New York and New Jersey. The land in Pennsylvania, however, was still populated primarily by Iroquois tribes. If Connecticut thought that Pennsylvania’s pacifist Quakers would enable it to settle the disputed land without a fight, that notion was soon corrected. When the first forty pioneers arrived in January 1769, three were promptly arrested and the others ordered to leave. Leave they did, but en route they encountered 200 other Connecticut settlers heading for the valley. Joining their ranks, they returned and were joined by even more in the months that followed—one of whom was Zebulon Butler.
When Butler arrived in July 1769, he was simply another settler, though he had distinguished himself in the recently concluded French and Indian War. The group’s leader was Major John Durkee, who named the first settlement after two members of England’s Parliament who supported the growing protests of the nation’s American colonists: Isaac Barre and John Wilkes. To this day Connecticut’s imprint, and an imprint of the approaching Revolutionary War, remains in the name Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
In early November Pennsylvania Governor John Penn sent troops to attack the Connecticut settlements. (This Governor Penn, whose father had returned to the Anglican Church, did not hesitate to use force.) The Pennsylvanians captured Durkee, and within two weeks the Connecticut settlers surrendered and again agreed to leave.
In the wake of this defeat, Zebulon Butler’s leadership began to surface. No sooner had the settlers returned to Connecticut than they began to plan their return, with Butler among those mapping out their strategy. He served as a key aide to the newly released Durkee when the Connecticut settlers departed yet again for the Wyoming Valley in March 1770. To clear the way for their return, Connecticut settlers availed themselves of the services of a group of Pennsylvania vigilantes known as the Paxton Boys, for which they would later pay a heavy price. In the series of skirmishes, cannonades, and sieges that ensued, both Butler and Durkee were captured. This time Pennsylvania kept Durkee imprisoned. But Butler was released after four months and emerged as the new leader of Connecticut’s forces.
Butler displayed a keen sense of when to attack, when to wait, and when to lay siege to an enemy settlement. In mid-August 1771, the Pennsylvanians, trapped and without provisions, surrendered to Captain Butler, thus ending the first eruption of what became known as the Pennamite War.
A stalemate prevailed over the next four years as both colonies awaited a ruling from King George III regarding their conflicting claims.