First Terrible Massacre of Settlers at Penn’s Creek, October 16, 1755

The year 1755 was anything but one of promise for the EnglishEnglish colonies in America. The French were aggressively pushing their domain from Canada southward toward the Mississippi Valley, and what was more alarming to the English was the effort of the French to gain a foothold in the region of the Allegheny Mountains, in what is now Western Pennsylvania.

Three great rivers virtually determined the strategic situation of the territory involved between these two great nations. The Hudson River Valley was held by the English, the Susquehanna River Valley by the Six Nations of the great Indian Confederation and the Allegheny River Valley by French, along the banks of which a chain of 721French forts had been erected. Fort Duquesne, at the forks of the Ohio and Monongahela Rivers, where Pittsburgh now stands, was the principal defense of that valley.

In the spring of 1755 the expedition was fitted out which made the ill-fated march against Fort Duquesne and resulted in the defeat of General Edward Braddock, July 9.

This defeat was a terrible disaster and left the frontiers of Pennsylvania threatened with ruin by victorious French and their savage allies, who pressed through the passes of the Blue Mountains on the heels of the fleeing British regulars.

The main body of the French encamped on the Susquehanna River near where the borough of Liverpool now stands, thirty miles above Harris’ Ferry, where they extended themselves on both sides of the main river.

Braddock’s defeat was not only a fatal termination of a campaign which had been expected would inflict a decisive blow upon the French, but it gave the signal to the disaffected Indians to make the frontiers of the province the scene of predatory warfare in which many sections of the Susquehanna Valley were severely scourged.

The Provincial Government did not act with the energy and promptness which the emergency demanded. No means were adopted for the protection of frontier settlements and the entire wilderness from the Juniata River to Shamokin, now Sunbury, was filled with parties of hostile Indians, murdering, scalping and burning. Every post brought to the Provincial Council at Philadelphia heart-rending appeals for help.

The Assembly and the Governor were deadlocked, no money bills could be passed. Troops of frontiersmen rode through the city threateningly brandishing their weapons. A party of Germans laid the corpses of the countrymen, scalped within sixty-five miles of the capital, at the door of the State House. The Quaker peace policy was denounced in unmeasured terms from the backwoods pulpits.

The Indians had driven off the Moravian missions at Shamokin and burned their own town at that important place.

Two of Colonel Weiser’s sons, Frederick and Peter, had been at Shamokin several days previously, then stopped at the house of George Gabriel, at the mouth of Penn’s Creek about the head of the Isle of Que, near the present town of Selinsgrove. While there a messenger arrived from Logan, one of Shikellamy’s sons and Lapacpicton, a friendly Delaware, who brought the alarming news that a large body of French and Indians was approaching by way of the West Branch.

The Provincial Government had been warned that a band of Indians had left the West on an expedition to the forks of the Susquehanna, but paid no heed until too late.

These Indians crossed the Allegheny Mountains, through the headwaters 722of the Otzinachson, now called West Branch, near Clearfield, thence through the “Great Plains,” now known as Penn’s Valley, Center County, through the gaps of Penn’s Creek, in Paddy Mountains, where they struck the white settlements along the creek, commencing at the present town of New Berlin and down the stream for about a mile in what is now Snyder County.

October 16, 1755, occurred the terrible massacre at Penn’s Creek, when fifteen persons were cruelly murdered and their bodies terribly mangled and ten others were carried away as Indian prisoners.

Of the twenty-five victims, one man, who was wounded, was able to reach Gabriel’s with the news of the massacre.

When the party went out to bury the dead they found thirteen bodies of men and elderly women, and one child, two weeks old.

The house of Jacob Le Roy, where the massacre was ended, was burned and his body lying just by it. He lay on his back, barbarously burnt and two tomahawks sticking in his forehead.

The conditions in the immediate neighborhood of Penn’s Creek beggared description. Conrad Weiser wrote to Governor Morris, upon the arrival of his sons, advising of the massacre, and gave him the news of the intended invasion. But John Harris rushed to the rescue of those in distress, and, with a company of forty-six men from Paxtang, arrived at the mouth of Penn’s Creek. He found the dead had been buried, and proceeded to Shamokin to learn the attitude of the Indians there.

In the Pennsylvania archives is to be found the examination of Barbara Leininger and Mary Le Roy, taken after their return from captivity. They testified that the others carried away captives at Penn’s Creek were Jacob Le Roy, Rachel Leininger, brother and sister of the testators; Marian Wheeler; Hannah, wife of Jacob Breylinger and two of their children, one of whom died of starvation, while they were being held at Kittanning; Peter Lick and two sons, John and William.

They named the principal Indians and gave a detailed narrative of their journey and captivity.

They were carried to Kittanning, where they were held prisoners until Colonel John Armstrong destroyed the town, September 8, 1756, when the Indians who had these prisoners in charge made their escape.

They were carried to Fort Duquesne and were then led twenty-five miles lower down the river to the mouth of Big Beaver Creek. In the spring of 1757 they were taken to Kuskusky, twenty-five miles up Big Beaver Creek, where they remained until the Indians learned that the English were marching against Fort Duquesne, when the Indians evacuated Kuskusky and hurried their prisoners on a forced march to the Muskingum, in the present State of Ohio.

March 16, 1759, the testators made their escape and were able to 723reach Fort Pitt fifteen days later. They reached their relatives subsequently, and were in Philadelphia, May 6, 1759, when they gave their testimony.

Ann M. LeRoy was residing in Lancaster in 1764, when she again made an affidavit in regards to the details of her capture and the visits of the supposed friendly Conestoga Indians at Kittanning.

A beautiful boulder with bronze tablet was unveiled at the site of this massacre, October, 1915. This can be seen above the bridge over Penn’s Creek, on the Susquehanna Trail, leading from Selinsgrove to Sunbury. It marks the scene of one of the most horrible of the Indian massacres in Pennsylvania.