The Pine Creek Declaration of Independence
The American Revolutionary War started in April 1775. Men from the area volunteered to serve in the Continental Army that year. Most of the settlers in the West Branch Susquehanna River valley were for the revolution. On July 4, 1776, the Fair Play Men met on the west bank of Pine Creek near the mouth of the West Branch Susquehanna River and declared their Independence from Britain. The traditional site for the declaration was beneath the "Tiadaghton Elm" tree, which stood until the 1970s in what is now Clinton County, Pennsylvania. This was west of Pine Creek in what was clearly Native American land.
Afterwards the Fair Play Men met in their own Fort Horn (near the elm tree) and chose to send two men with the news to Philadelphia, not knowing that the Second Continental Congress had declared independence there the same day. The two messengers, Patrick Gilfillen and Michael Quigley Jr., were ambushed and robbed by Native Americans and later jailed by Loyalists, but escaped and made it to Philadelphia on July 10. They returned a short time later to bring word of the United States Declaration of Independence.
Read more about this topic: Fair Play Men
Famous quotes containing the words declaration of independence, pine, creek, declaration and/or independence:
“I enclose to you a copy of the declaration of independence as agreed to by the House, and also, as originally framed. You will judge whether it is the better or worse for the Critics.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“How far men go for the material of their houses! The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of their civilization, where the moose and bear and savage dwell, for their pine boards for ordinary use. And, on the other hand, the savage soon receives from cities iron arrow-points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness with.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)
“The Declaration [of Independence] was not a protest against government, but against the excess of government. It prescribed the proper role of government, to secure the rights of individuals and to effect their safety and happiness. In modern society, no individual can do this alone. So government is not a necessary evil but a necessary good.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“The Indian’s intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)