f Le nama ———— CHAS. R. KURTZ, Proprietor. OUR HISTORICAL | REVIEW i Short Sketch of a Famous Pio neer CAREER OF CONRAD WEISER | able The Name of Weiser Intimately Asso- ciated With The Early History of Pennsylvania—Descendants in this | County. XXXVIIL { left Schoharie in the | came to Pennsylvania, and settled among qua nation lived within a mile of his father’s house. Conrad was poorly com. pensated here as interpreter. In his | Journal he says : "So lagen auch alleseit | da es oefters was fehite dass ich viel zu | dolmetchen hatle, aber ohne Lokn " BELLEFONTE, PA, THURSDAY. NOVEMBER TO RECLAIM WASTE LAND | Something That Should Interest Our Farmers | The Germans here, amid trials and! difficulties, ever incident to new settle. | | ments, made, in a few years, consider improvements. Their Owirg to a defect in their land titles, Many of them spring of 1620; they were dispossessed. | the Indians in Tulprhocken, now Berks Of distinguished individuals, who were | actively engaged in this region of coun- | try, at an early period, or who resided | within the bounds of the several counties, of which a history is attempted, Conrad Weiser is the most prominent. The name of Weiser is intimately | associated with many of the leading | events in the history of Pennsylvania, | from 1730 to 1760, especially in all the | i | i | | | important Indian treaties during that | period. Itis a name which every Ger. | man should delight to honor, for the | disinterested benevolence of the ‘‘In. dians’ Friend,”” and fiend of bumanity. Several of our most influential men of | Pennsylvania have descended from Con. | rad Weiser. Ie was the great.grand. father, on the maternal side, of the Hon- | orable Henry A. Muhlenberg, late of Reading, and of Doctor Muhlenberg, of Lancaster. Conrad Weiser, son of Johan Conrad Weiser, was born at Herrenberg, in Wit. temberg, Germany, November 2nd, 16¢6 His father had sixteen children, Mrs Weiser died May 1st, 1709. Shortly after her death John Conrad Weiser, with 8 of his children, in company with several of his countrymen, left Germany; and arrived at Loudon, in Jupe., Several thousand Germans having arrived at the jame time, were maintained at the ex pense of Queen Anne, upon whose jovi. tation they had gooe thither. Ia De. cember about four thousand of them embarked for America. They arrived at New York June 13th, 1710. In the autumau of this year, John Conrad Weiser, with his family, and several hundred German families, were transferred, at the Queen's expense, tu Livingston Dis. trict, where many of them remained till 1713. Two younger brothers of Conrad's, George and Christopher, had their father went to Livingsto: been apprenticed the New York, to a gentleman Island. It was assigned to these Germans to before Instrict, of by governor on Long manufacture tar, and raise hemp, to re- pay freightage from Holland to Eogland, and thence to New York. The business proving unsuccessful, they were released of all freightage. More than half of the families in Livingston District, now re. solved to leave and settie at Schoharie, 40 miles west of Albany. Previous to going there, they sent deputies to Scho- bharie to consult with the Indians, ouch. ing their locating there; for one of the o chiefs, five of whom had been in England at the time these Germans were there, granted the queen a tract of land for the use of the Germans. The names of the chiefs were Te-yee-neen-ho ga prow, Sa. ga-yean qua-prah-ton, of the Maguas, Elow-oh kaom, Oh-nee-yeath-tou. no-prou of the river Sachem. John Conrad Weiser was one of the deputies to Schoharie. After returning from the Maqua country, in which Scho harie lay, a number of families moved thither in the autumn of 17131; some to Albany, others to Schenectady Weiser had moved to the latter place, and re mained with one Johannes Meynderton, during the winter, Here he was repeat. edly visited by Quagnant, a chief of the Maquas, who proposed to take Conrad, the subject of this notice, with him to his | own country, and teach him the lan. guage spoken by that nation. By the | consent of his father, Conrad accom. | panied bis lostructor, and now lived | amoung the Indians. } While with Quagnant, and acquiring | a knowledge of the Maqua tongue, his sufferic gs were beyond description. He had scarce clothes to cover his nudity, much less to protect him against the inclemency and piercing cold of a severe winter ; 10 all this was added, that often times be bad not wherewith to satisfy hunger. Still, to heighten the sufferings of this young stranger among savages, they repeatedly threatened him, when they were drunk, with death, to escape which be had to secret himself, till reason had given them a ‘sober second thought” to restrain the execution of their threats upon him, While the pa- tient young scholar was among the sav. ages, his father moved in the spring of 1714 to Schoharie, accompanied by up. wards of ove hundred German families, In the month of July, having mastered that language, Conrad left Quagnant : be returned to his father's house, and as occasion demanded, he was interpreter between the Germans and Maquas or Mohawks. Several families of the Ma. { county, aus ia | House, in Philadelphia.” | ords, {of Virginia, | through a wilderness, [ journey, The Weiser family however re. mained till 1729, when Conrad left with his wife and five children, Philip, Fred. erick, Auna, Madlina and Maria, and came to Pesnsylvania. He settled half a mile east of the present site of Wom elsdorff. His father, John Conrad, re. mained at Schoharie till 1746. He left then on account of the dangers | which he apprehended from the French | and Indians, who had already murdered several German families at Schoharie, | Soon after his arrival at the house of his { son, Conrad, he died at the advanced of nearly ninety. Weiser's profound knowledge of the Indian character, and an quaintance with their language, attracted 5 intimate ac- | the attention of Governor Gordon, of the | Province of Pennsylvania, shortly after As preter and Indian agent, having received his arrival at Tulpehod ken inter. that appointment from the governor, he accompanied the noted Shikelamy, of his Rec. Shamokin, and Cehacbyuay. from residence to Philadelphia. — [Prov ords He was now nearly constantly absent for years, oo Indian missions, on behalf of the Province of Pennsylvania. He and Shikelamy were appointed by the treaty of 1712, “as fit and proper persons to go between the Six Nations and the | government, and to be employed in all the actions with ome another, bodies, the Indians equally divided between them and us; said, were to be we have one half—that they (Indians) bad found Conrad Weiser faithful and honest—a true and good man, and had spoken heir words, and ony words, and not-his own." (Prov. Records. In Governor on mis Now In iB. 1736, Thomas stoned him a justice of the peace. in a threefold capacity srpreter, the which was added that of colonel, 1a 17¢f dian agent and justice of peace, to He continued his public career for many years. His was emphatically an acfive the chief the Six Nations were expected at Phila. life. In September, 1736 s of delphia, to confirm a treaty that Weiser on this occasion, as we had been made in 1732; was active the “Conrad Weiser, our interpreter, about the beginning of September, learn from Provincial Records. 1736, advised from Tualpe hocken, that he had certain intelligence from some Indians, sent before him, that there was a large number of those people, with many of the chiefs, arrived at Sha- mokin, on the Susquehanna, upon which he was directed to repair thither to at tend them, and supply them with neces saries on their journey to Philadelphia.” "On the 27th of September, the chiefs with Weiser the président’s house at Stenton, being near the road, where a suitable entertainment was pro. vided for them ; on the next day the bon. orable proprietor, came to Thomas Penn, and some of the council, with other gentle- | men, coming thither from Philadelphia; after dinner a council was held at Sten. ton, September 28th. The con. tinued till the 29th, then adjourned to meet Oct, and, the Meeting Prov. Rec. council in Great In the year 1737, | dago, N. Y., at the desire of the governor He departed quite unex. pectedly, towards the close of February, on a journey of five hundred miles, neither road nor path, asd at a time of the year when animals could not be met with for food. It wes an unpleasant In a letter, he says, “There were with me, a Dutchman and three Indians. After we had gone one hundred and fifty miles on our journey, we came to a narrow valley, about hall a mile broad and thirty miles Jong, both sides of which were ecocompassed by high mountains, on which the snow lay about three feet deep; in it ran a stream of water also three feet deep. The stream was 80 crooked that it kept a continual winding from oue side of the valley to the other. In order to avoid wading so often through the water, we endeavored to pass along the slope of the mountain — the snow now being three feet deep, and 80 hard frozen on the top that we walked upon it, but were obliged to make holes into the snow with our hatches, that we would rot slide down the mountain, and thus we crept on, It bappenen that the old Indian's foot slipped, and the root of Continued on page 4, flattering | prospects were, however, wholly blasted, | whose | | be was sent to Onon- where there was | {GREAT CHESTNUT GROVES C. K. Sober’'s Novel Experiment With Chestnut Trees—Expects Some Large Returns—100,000 Trees Un- der Cultivation. i | The following article is taken from last | Sundays Press and bears on a point that | will pot fail but jvterest manv of our | farmers and those who have large areas { of waste mountain land, C. K. Sober 1s { well and favorably known to most of our | readers having extensive lumber opera- | | ions in the eastern portion of the county | | for many years: There are coal oil, kings, steel barons | { and Napoleons of finance, but within 1 | the next five years Coleman K Sober, of | | { Union county, He is the in owner of the the of the country. largest chestnut grove United States, | on which there are growing over 160,000 | {| expenses of protecting and gathering the chestnut trees. Mr. Sober's object has | been to solve the problem of rendering | | | productive and profitable the millions of | acres of wild mountain land in this Com | monwealth CK | whose home is in Lewisburg Sober isa wealthy lumberman His atten. tion was first attracted to the culture of chestuut when he was a lad of twelve on his father’s farm grafting small While his father was fruits the boy insisted he old that The as pre. Five years ago the boy, now a wav past fifty, put oto execution his graft chestnut trees | gentieman laughed at the idea posterous, early idea, and ut is a demonstrable pro | position that be will have an income of | thousands a vear from his chestaut or. i chard within the next few years. UTILIZING WASTE LAND The trees are all what would otherwise be waste mountain land, soil that growing upon could not even be profitably utilized as sheep pasture. It is such land as is found in every county of the state where lumbering operations have denud ed the soil { a wilderness of This Sober harvested his first crop and left it un fall thirty mat He derbrush and tasgled vine, M1: bushels of Paragon chestouts, the ket value of which is §7 per bushe : distributed the « 3 op among his friends The Sober chestuut groves are located ou the m on sides that inclose Irish Valley, six miles from Paxinos Station, nd a about eight miles from Shamokin i e de and the west by parallel spurs of the Alleghanies The sides rock rish Valley is a beautiful and ferti pression walled in to the east f the latter are sloping and s orginally covered with nak, sap pine and chestnut timber. The pine and oak were cut down a generation ago, leaving the chestout the latter there has since grown up a second growth standing in place, Some of was marketed and of this timber The method pursued by Mr, Sober in beginning bis chestnut grove experiment | was to cut down thestandiog trees on this {land in the fall. The following spring young shoots would appear around the stump of the fallen tree. These shoots were grafted with scions of the Paragon nut, a chestnut that was originally raised hy W. L. Shaffer, of Philadelphia, from a foreign nut planted eighteen years 20. This Paragon nut is aboul five times the size of the average American chestnut, It is crisp and sweet and differs from the Italian chestnut, which is coarse and or else has an acorn flavor The first the Sober H. tasteless, which is decidedly unpleasant scions used in grafting w. trees were obtained fiom | Marietta, Pa Ninety per of the trees in Mr, | Sobers groves were grafled during the Bugle, of cent, first year. The Paragon scions were cat { In February and laid away in sand, and [the grafting process early spring. | Mr. So himself with the assistance of a farmMod or two. Last year be em- | ployed eight nurserymen for five weeks, | each man grafting ou an average of Joo trees per dav. Last spring the same number of men were employed for the same period. Nioety per cent. of the grafts were successiul, The “cleft,” or wedge graft, which was originally used, has been entisely superseded by the “tongue,” or whip grait. This graft is held in place by a wax, the formula of which is original with Mr. Sober, and is wade as follows. To two pounds of rosin there are added one pound of beeswax and ove half pound of beef tallow. This melied to- gether and worked like taffy will stand any weather. This was colored so that the work of each man can be distinguish. ed by the color of the wax used, BEAUTIFUL MODKL FARM, Mr. Sover bas expended something like $50 000 in developing and maintam- lug the model farm of which his chest: began in will be the chestnut king | { the product 3128 bushels of chestnuts. It comprises 205 acres of land | The first grafting was dove by | | ordinary American game fowl | greatest destroyer of grubs, worms and 21, 1001. | along the bordering mountain side for { nearly a mile on the right hand side of | the road. It consists af 130 acres | the left. The roads leading to the chest. unt groves are bordered with cherry | trees, forty feet apart. Between farmhouse and the mountain are or. chards of peach, pear, apple, cherry and { other fruits, embracing over sixty acres, {| The chestnut trees begin bearing in a | The | { third year the burrs increase in number | | very small way the second year, { and as high as three pints of chestnuts | have been gathered from a three-year. | | old tree not more than six feet high, The | | four and five-year-old trees bear from | two quarts to half a peck the | tree grows the tionately, A GROVE OF 100,020 TREKS, and gs There are today on the Sober farm 100,000 trees, which will bear from pint upward of chestnuts next fall, a general average of one quart per tree | be estimated for the yield of the groves one paombers will be At the low rate of §6 pér bushel an income of §18,. 75088 assared. Allowing £3750 for the in round crop the net profit to Mr. Sober will be $15,000. And this from land which for | agricultural purposes would not bring $3 per acre. As the grove increases in size ® snd age there must, if necessity, be weeding out. But while the number trees will be reduced the productiven of the grove will uot be lessened Mr i waste land, and in which be is endeavor. ng the young chestnut seedlings Sober's idea for the 10 iuterest arboriculturists all over country, is the transplanting of The establish meat of a grove from planting the sat he regards as a process entirely too slow, There are seedlings millions of young chestnut land which can be grafted the Paragon scion with no expense beyond the cost of graft on otherwise waste on ing and protection against the enemies of the chestnat the order of their danger, are fire, weevil and thieves These enemies, in The Sober groves are protected against wide then brush fire on two sides by fire roads; denuded of timber and in the all the gathered in the grove is heaped in piles and avenues burned over fall permitted to Jie until midwinter when the ground is covered with snow Then on a rainy day the brush are large hioged wards covered saturated with kerosene frames of pine with as bestos are set up to protect the trees in the vicinity and the brush piles are fired DANGERS OF FIRE wen on the place are fully in. The structed as to their duties in case of fire: last winter a fire started on an adjoining All the hands on the farm were summoned, and, property. armed with stable forks, they cleared a stretch of ground stick and scored the soil 10 a depth of several two rods wide of every leaf and inches. They were prepared to “back” fire lo protect the chestnut grove, but a falling rain rendered this precaution un. necessary. Next to fire the chestnut weevil, whose product is the fat, white, grub familiar | to chestaut eaters, is the most destructive enemy of the nat, It is a beetle about half an inch long with sharp mandibles, which enables it to bore through the bury and into the nut and there deposit its egg The grub finds its way into the ground, after the nut falls, where it burrows and remains until spring to come forth as a winged insect and propogate its kind in like manner, Mr. Sober has made a close study of this insect for the past five years and | | has at length hit apon a plas to prevent its ravages and ultimately destroy it, The ordinary game chicken be finds is the greatest enemy of the chestnut weevil A brood of one bundred game chickens | in a grove of twenty five acres will in the course of a few years reduce the multi. tude of chestnnt weevils to a minimum Sheep turned to pasture in a chestnut grove with the chickens assist in keep. ing the grass and undergrowth cropped close, thus aiding the fowls in their scar. enger work, Experiments on the Sober farm demonstrate that of all chickens the is the insects, MR. SORRR'S INSECT TRAP, Although a business man with a wide range of investment, Mr, Sober is also an inventor of marked ability, Most of his devices have never been patented, One night last summer farmers driving to market saw & dozen lights twinkling in widely separated places on the Sober farm. They smiled to themselves when they learned that they were fusect traps set in the garden aod fields. They con. sisted of a circular sheet iron dish or pan, three inches deep, filled with water and with a light covering of coal oil, In the centre was placed a small lamp, while rising above this lamp, and extending nul groves are the boundary, The principal chestnut grove stretches B from the surface of the oil to a height of An | | eighty.acre grove crowas the hillside to | the | yield increases propor | If | COL. DUNHAM i Among the Moqui Indians of | Arizona DESCRIBES STRANGE PEOPLE LA Short Sketch of T heir Manner of Life Live in the Cliffs and Observe Weird Customs—A Ceremony That is Truly Remarkable. (Col. D. 8, Dunham is well kuown to the many readers in Bellefonte, For | several years he was editor of the Belle | fonte Fountain. After that he devoted { bis tie to writing for the Grit and other periodicals, For a time he was a tipstaff in our court, | age, several vears ago he concluded to | accept an offer from his daughter to make his home with ber at Passadena, {Cal,, where the balmy breezes of the Pacific slope would be more congenial than the rigors of our climate Being a versatile writer and a keen observer of unique and original events, the Col. very thoughtfully sent us a description of the weird snake dance by the Moqui Indians of Arizona, as witnessed by him, which is exceedingly vivid and intensely inter esting Ed) The Moqui Indians lis Arizona, one of the great wonderlands and richest € in territories of this country minerals. in The Moquis are the strangest people on i © peo; earth without exception. There are the ne about 2000 of them and they link present generation back U« * ARCS by. Personal experies » more in teresting than dry fact hat can be gleaned from libraries Coming over 3 we looked northward across a ¢ five miles There thousand patches of growing cory in this val wide were several ey, which make these portions of the country The so acter, and the corn had been planted The out on the stalks close to the ground. In look green is of a sandy char. without plowing small ears come this valley there is scarcely a bouse to be seen. On the opposite side of the valley rises abruptly a solid stone ridge On the top of this ridge are the villages of the Moqui, or Chiff Dwellers some $00 10 630 feet stone There are but two trails the These strange people perched up there have lived thas This is the has preserved leadivy up to dwellic gs for uvknown generations bh the other Gibraltar of the desert wh i the remuan. of wise extinct C he { from the heights and door, wiz sides farming implements and seed, but the dusky natives prefer to live upon the barren mountains while they pack a their wood, water, food and everything up those two trails Before telling of the antelope and of the Weird and the A stroll of a few minutes brings us to where the stone houses are piled one oa top of another at the edges of the cliff. At the bottom of the trail can be seen filling | earthen vessels containing from 4 to 8 galions of water. Each woman puts her load in a cloth sack, one part of which is swung over the forehead and the other part holds the water vessel in the small of the back. Ona the same trail there are burros, some have loads of wood, others corn, others melons and others different produce. Meeting a Mogui we asked him why be didn’t move bis home down in the valley instead of packing every. thing up there “All right now ; women pack water up, buiro pack wood and food. suake dances, I will write bome life of these strange people unique as those dances are, people Are even more interesting women His reply was Fine up there to- | gether.” At 14 minutes after 5 o'clock on the 24th of August, 1901, the dancers ap- | peared. From a cistern like room at the north side of the narrow street the “an. | telope men’ came out of the lower room {by a ladder. A small boy leads them | They march three times round | square chanting and making time with a { stick composed of turkey feathers. As they go by the cottonwood clump each stamps heavily with lus right foot on the come the spake men-—28 of thew in single file, keeping time as they step and circle around the square. Bach tramps heavily on the plank covering the snakes, Their costumes peisonify savagery in all its weirdness. Finally the snake chief starts on a pe- cullar hop down the line, while the ante. lope chief puts his arms around the snake chief's veck and together they dance round and round. Then, as they hop to the snake den, the snake chief runs his bare arm down the opening beside the plank in among the creeping was of snakes and pulls out a long, hissing, live rattlesnake, and puts it in his mouth, holding the reptile about four inches back of his head, while the tail wriggles on one side and the head on the other, the brilliant litle eyes stariug and the tongoe snapping viciously, but the snake Continued on 4th page. he knows vot, is a fool Having reached advanced | The Centre Democrat, ts — 3. XO. 46. a FACT, FUN AND FANCY AT A SNAK E DANCE Bright Sparkling Paragraphs— Selected and Original. and knows not that Avold him Knows “He who knows not, ‘He he knows not, i= simple who knows not, and ial Teach | “He who knows and knows not that he m knows, Is Wake him “But he knows asleep who Knows and knows that he $4 wise man. Follow him From the Arabian Proverbs i man is A level beade« one who always agrees with us The optician cannot always remedy short.sightedness, The fellow with a poor memory sel. dom forgets his troubles. Most women bookkeepers pride them. selves on their figures, The fewer clothes a burlesque actress wears the more airs she puts on Smoking in this world isn’t such a sin that it leads to smokivg in the next, A dude who be described as is a graceful dancer can “light at both ends ”’ Charity may begin at home but reform is usually practiced on some one else POOR MAN AGAIN Schley Spent His Savings to Defend His Honor. The savings from He finds 000 which he had expe $20 to his family, pguiry. that every a to | the prize for his part in Spanish-American Deen the Financially the is worse off than he ie in addition to a money which he will get the spent war, bas on inquiry admiral was a'most half a century sy) when be entered the naval academy As a ment retired rear admiral! the Govern. wi ve him $5,625 a but the bad boped to assure the comfort year as long as he lives money with which he his wife, should any gone. Mrs. Schiey insists that the money bas been well spent, and ber children agree with ber nt vow that the mone the say 1 long way ot I cannot said Admiral Schley I had the sssurance my wile want It is more than proba the admirs!’s admirers who are members the the of Congress will introduce a bill at coming session to reimburse him for CX penses Warrants at the treasury department drawn §$12.000 The larger part this came as bis share of the spoils of the The of will be about fs, show that Sampsos has prize money of battle of Santiago amount Schiey's prize money YO » Hog Cholera Raging Sugar Valley Journal: Cholera in all | its severity and fatal result is attacking the | plank under which are the snakes. Then |bome at Ryde, the fattening hogs in Greene township, Upwards of 100 porkers have already died and many more are sack. A partial list of the losses to date is follows : John Augustine, 12; John 1; Fred Womeldorg, 5; Jefferson Eckle, 6; Albert Schrader, 7; A. J. Mark, 1; Sam- wel Frankenberger, 11. Mrs. Trouper, i; John Mizener, 4; Mrs. D. L. Stamm, 1; Noah Cramer, 10; Frank sfiller, 1 and others Fvety means has been tried Wo check the ravages of the disease, but 10 no suc. cess, as Esterloe, Killed While Walking in Her Sleep. The body of Miss Emma Heister, 45 years old, clad only in ber night dress, was found Moaoday mornmg along the Pennsylvania railroad tracks vear her Mifflin county. Miss Helster was subject to walking in her sleep and it is believed she wandered from her home while in a somnambalistic state and was struck by a train, Committed to Jail, During the past week a man named Harry Botdorf, of near Runville, in Boggs township, was arrested on the charge of shooting his wife and danghter and using violence in other ways towards them. It seems that be came home under the influence of liquor and became rantankerous. His case will come u in the quarter sessions next week, i - State Won Easily. The game of foot ball at Williamsport, on Saturday, between State and Lehigh, was well attended. It was a walk over for State as they wou easily by a score of 38100. Lehigh was no match lor the
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