ATL
PAGE TEN
THE POST, FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 1951
lued in the last century for its C i 0 and. h Cl
arl Fr h fl Velie : tn amp Onawandah Closes
y French Influences In penn a rete | | THESE WOMEN! By Alessio] | Six Weeks Season CHOREMASTER
it is notable today chiefly for its
Northern Tier Counties
t
"hay
Fr ae
. Denis Cottineau of the
vacation camps and hotels, its trout Camp Onawandah closed for the ” The ONE WHEEL
streams and game, and its green season August 19 after a six weeks RY GARDEN TRACTOR
By Elsie Murray, Ph.D nah, or New Orleans, a number | woodlands and laurel and rhodo- session, Girl Scouts from the Back ;
Director Tioga Point Museum, of families remained (Homets, Le | dendron thickets. Mountain who attended’ were: ho
Athens, Pa. Fevres, La Portes, joined later by From 4
(CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK) | Prevosts, Piollets, Delpueches, and Many Qunets Co en
Adventure With John Paul Jones | others). Intermarrying with local These back country holdings, Culver, Margo Davenport, Marian
Through the pages of the 1951
brochure there stalks also Captain
“Pallas,”
joint adventurer with Paul Jones
and his “Bonhomme Richard” in
the famous raid in our behalf in
British waters in 1779. A fellow
exile, Saint-Memin, has preserved
for us Cottinneau’s handsome
Breton profile, displayed in the
Corcoran gallery in Washington
with those of nearly 200 of his
countrymen and of early Americans,
made at the time of the trial of
Aaron Burr in Richmond.
Another naval captain, Aristide
du Petit-Thouars, deflected from
his carefully planned voyage in
* search of La Perouse (lost with all
his scientific equipment in the
Solomon Islands), we find maroon-
ed also in northern Pennsylvania,
struggling with only one sound
- hand to! clear a land grant in the
hills where Dushore now stands
(county of Sullivan). Aristide,
lured back to ward off British
threats against his homeland, died
fighting Nelson in the Mediter-
ranean in 1798.
Often overlooked by half-primed
writers on Azilum history is the
fact that all three, Noailles, Cottin-
eau and Du Petit-Thouars, had
served with distinction in our War
of Independence; and while over
here had savored the true. mean-
ing of liberty and the republican
iife.
The Financier
In these pages, though never in
person at Azilum, one comes upon
the Swiss banker, Jacques Necker,
ex-minister of finance for France,
and reputed the wealthiest man in
Europe; along with him, his head-
strong literary daughter,’ Madame
de Stael. The latter, busy manipu-
lating the strings of an under-
ground in Switzerland during the
Terror, never crossed the Atlantic
to occupy the wooded height in
present Orwell Township, County of
Bradford, on which for ten years
her father paid the taxes. Her
title reverted to another distin-
guished visitor, son of the well-
known French manufacturer, Jac-
ques Le Ray de Chaumont, who
had befriended Benjamin Franklin
and backed John Paul Jones in our
Revolutionary conflict.
‘James Le’ Ray, turned American
citizen, and his son and grandson,
paid for surveys, roads, taxes, con-
tributed to the building of schools
“and churches, ‘and visited his in-
vestments personally, in the early
years of the 19th century; travelling
through dangerous narrows, over
villainous roads. Employing as
land agent, a Sheshequin man no-
torious locally for his dogged sup-
port of Connecticut claims, the Le
Rays derived insufficient revenue
from their Pennsylvania tract of
80,000 acres to stave off bank-
_‘ruptey (incurred primarily because
oft unpaid claims on our Congress).
Other investments, solicited by our
Gouvérneur Morris and backed by
Nicholas Biddle of the Bank of the
U, S., were in northern New York
State on the Black River, in the
very region traversed or skirted
by Champlain nearly 200 years be-
fore. Claims for reinbursement for
water and mining rights that have
enriched Americans in this area
over a term of years are now being
pressed by the French heirs of the
Le Rays. Jacques Le Ray, Senior
is said never to have been paid
by Congress for his/ loan of a home
in Paris to Franklin, or the powder
and ammunition with which he
early supplied the Continental
Army. Today his heirs seek re-
© dress. {
Some Pioneers Remained
‘While the titled or politically am-
bitious exiles who backed or visited
Azilum or hought stock in the Com-
pany eventually returned to France,
or retifed to older French settle-
men/s such as Charleston, Savan-
American stock, ‘they built roads,
mills, frame houses and inns; push- | as.
ed work on canals and railroads,
and
Northern Tier counties to the west.
Their descendants are scattered up
and down the Susquehanna Valley,
and westward over the entire U. S.
French names—Du Thouars (Du-
shore), La Porte, Homet's Ferry—
are sprinkled over the countryside.
Fleur-de-lis reminiscent of their
homeland decorate local residences
and churches.
Fantastic and misleading webs
of romance have been woven about
the colony by ill-informed or pre-
judiced countryfolk, city reporters,
and aspiring novelists. A simple
but relatively accurate story, ‘New
World or Old?” based on the let-
ters of a group who settled first
at Greene in New York State, com-
ing down the Chenango to the col-
ony at Azilum later when disputes
over their land title arose, was pub-
lished in 1945 by the author of the
recent brochure, above mentioned.
While there is ample evidence
that it was in the original plan to
provide in this remote area a ref-
uge, possibly permanent, for Marie
Antoinette, widow of the French
king Louis XVI, and their children,
the princess and the 8-year-old
Dauphin, it is of course historic
fact that Marie left prison only
for the guillotine.
It is further exceedingly doubtful
that the Dauphin ever reached
America or Azilum, though a hun-
dred years ago, after a visit from
King Louis Philippe’s son, a half-
breed missionary among the Onei-
das, Eleazar Williams, for a time
put up a claim that kept many
guessing. As for the Queen's jew-
els, among them the stone later
known (ironically) as the Hope
Diamond, there is even less likeli-
hood that any were brought to
America by Azilum refugees. Most
of the exiles escaped across the
border in the final crash of the
monarchy with their lives alone—
and the clothes on their backs.
La Grande Maison
La Grande Maison, the Queen's
House—for the King was guillo-
tined in January 1793 before Azi-
lum was started, and only those
for whom French history is a blank
have ever called it the King’s Man-
sion—was an 80-foot two-to three-
story planed-log structure, just off
the block of town lots and facing
the river. Here the colony man-
ager, ex-judge Antoine Omer Talon
for a few years played host to dis-
tinquished exiles. About 1801 the
great house was placed in charge
of Barthelemi La Porte, to whom
Talon was indebted for effecting
his rescue from pursuing Revolu-
tionists in 1792.
emi’s son, Congressman John La
Porte,
home just off from the Great House,
of similar proportions but on a les-
Fearing fire, he had the
old log structure razed, using some
of the timbers and probably some
of the woodwork and the glass of
ser scale.
its numerous windows.
The La Porte House
The La Porte house with its great
swinging
crane and H-hinges, now for sev-
eral decades owned by the Hager- |,
man family, has of late been open-
ed by Mrs. Mark Hagerman as a
A cluster of farm-
houses, with lines of trees marking |,
the old avenues, a white-steepled |,
church and graveyard, known loc-
in the town-
ship of Asylum, mark the site of
the village laid out across the river
fireplaces, brick oven,
show place.
ally as “Frenchtown,”
from the main highway in 1793.
The records show it was designed
as the river port of a million-acre
area reaching back into the hills,
and reported by its early surveyors
to contain iron and other minerals.
in legislature and congress
worked for the laying out of other
In 1839, Barthel-
built a spacious summer
organized by Robert Morris in 1794
the Asylum Company, have
known many masters. Following
the business troubles that converg-
ed on Morris and his partner John
Nicholson (as the French armies
and Napoleon swung out over
Europe, laying embargoes on At-
lantic ports, and disrupting world
finance) passed from one set of
creditors to another. A remnant
came in the middle of the last
century to the Meilerts, Secku and
his son Michael. The elder Meilert,
a German emigrant who had served
Napoleon, and was affiliated by
marriage with the banker Roths-
child, gave the land in the adja-
cent county of Sullivan (erected
in 1847) for a county-seat, and
named it for his friend the state
surveyor John La Porte.
Dogged by Connecticut claimants
long after Federal and State laws
had adjusted their legal claims,
Michael, whose fine old residence
dominates La Porte on its high
plateau near Lake Mokoma, died,
it is alleged, of injuries received at
the hands of agents of the old
Susquehannah Company. A poster
of the period in the Bingham Land
office at Wellsboro offers a reward
for the apprehension of the assail-
ants who stole his trunk and burn-
ed his papers.
Tioga Point Museum
Thirty miles up the river at At-
hens, Tioga Point Museum, found-
ed largely through the efforts of
a La Porte descendant, houses loan
collections of letters, accounts,
maps, portraits and personal pos-
sessions of the French refugees and
the Asylum Company. Highly treas-
sured is a sketch of the Queen’s
house, and its ground floor plan,
which ‘we owe to the elder La
Porte’s granddaughter, Elizabeth
La Porte (Mrs. Charles F. Welles,
Jr.), who was born and brought
up in it. Fairly recently, through
the kindness of Gilbert Chinard,
of Princeton, and ‘the comte de
Leusse of Paris, a replica of a
sketch made in 1798 of the entire
village, including the house, has
been added to the collection. A
plan to reproduce a six-foot model
of the village based on the 18th
century map preserved by the La
Portés and now on display at the
Bradford County Historical So-
ciety’s rooms in Towanda, with
details added from accounts in old
deeds and records, has been ad-
vanced by the Tioga Point Museum,
seconded by Mrs, Mark Hagerman.
Authorities Given
Records in the State Archives at
Harrisburg, in the Wyoming His-
torical Society at Wilkes-Barre, in
the Locust Street rooms of the
Historical Society ‘of Pennsylvania
can Philosophical Society (near In-
depéndence Hall), in the Manu-
script Division of the Library of
Congress,
Library and Historical Society, in
the White Library of Cornell Uni-
versity, and in French Archives cor-
roborate many of the details of the
story as given out by the Tioga
Point Historical Society, and by the
Wyoming Historical Society in
Craft's “Day at Aslyum” (1902).
They do not, of course, confirm
the gross distortions launched by
DONT!
Overlook These
VALUES
SEE T
in Philadelphia and in the Ameri- {
in the New York Public |
1950 Studebaker $458 Down
.
Champion Sedan
1949 Hudson $595 Down
.
Com. 8 Sedan
“I want about this many books!
1
Honored On Anniversary
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ruggles of
Meeker were guests of honor at a
dinner given on their fifty-fourth
wedding anniversary recently.
Present were: Mr. and Mrs.
Wayne King, Theodore Lyle, Pvt.
Richard King of Meeker; Mr. and
Mrs. Roy King and son, Harveys
Lake; Mr. and Mrs. Donald King
and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Frank
Wadas and sons, Wilkes-Barre; Mr.
and Mrs. Jack Ruggles and sons,
Mr. and Mrs, Lawrence Drabick
and sons of Lehman; and the
Ruggleses.
various writers of fiction.
Highway markers along the Sul-
livan Route, of a fair degree of
accuracy, call the attention of pass-
ing tourists to what sentimentalists
delight to dub a “ghost town.”
Widespread interest is evoked, in
bird’s eye view. of the site from
the mountain opposite, with cloud
shadows drifting over its grain
fields, and distant blue ridges fram-
ing the picture. Though slightly
off the main highway, if developed
by the State this might easily be-
come one of the major attractions
of Pennsylvania.
—Tioga Point Museum, Athens, Pa.
CAR SPECIAL
WASHING
service
MOBIL GAS STATION
Luzerne-Dallas Highway
Phone 9067-R-7
20 tons of corn
Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles Are |Return To Lakehurst
part by the hauntingly beautiful.
NOW YOU CAN CUT UP TO
silage an hour!
John MacDonald has returned to
his air base at Lakehurst, N. J.,
after visiting his family in the
Back Mountain Area.
John who has returned to the
States after spending two years
in overseas, part of the time in
North Africa, the last part in Lon-
don, brought home an English
bride, the former Violet Whatley.
The couple now resides at Lake-
wood, N. J. near John’s air base.
SEE THESE
I
CAR
IN TTI
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CHEVROLET CO.
1950 CHEVROLET $ i 4715
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EASY G. M. A. C. TERMS
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Used Car XLot
. 866 Wyoming Avenue
Phone 8-0319
Dixon, Jean Carol Dodson, Gwen
Weaver, Nancy Valentine, Mar-
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Shavertown, Alta and Margaret
Lou Hall, Sandra Yeisley, Marie
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ville, Penny Williams, Sylvia Tre-
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Helen Sellers, Director, says that
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More campers stayed for longer
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a
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SWEET VALLEY, PENNA.—Phones 8421 - 8431
Listen to the latest farm mews every day at 7:00 and
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Main St. Market St.
PHONE
2-2144
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As Long As 18 Months To Pay
CITY CHEVROLET CO.
Market St., Gates to Thomas St. Kingston 7-1171
690 Hazle St., Newtown Phone 3-6736
LOTS
| OLIVERS
USED CAR LOCATION
Junction of Dallas,
Tunkhannock Highway
DALLAS, PA.
171-R-0
BOTH LOTS
OPEN NITES
AND SUNDAYS
PHONE
3.2159 tl