Fourth in a series of nine 1904-1905 newspaper articles in which two old-timers are portrayed reminiscing about the Lykens Valley of the past. The two fictional characters, the “old railroader” and the “patriarch,” wander into the offices of the Elizabethville Echo, Elizabethville, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania at different times and tell a concise, folksy history of the valley.
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Local Reminiscences for Home Historians
The Patriarch came in alone and being somewhat agitated in mind because of the weather, opened the conversation with, –
“Land o’Gosh, seems like the overhead water company had all the spigots turned on! Folks that had been rather short on Adam’s ale a while past can’t complain now. Some of ’em have been talking about a flood, and that makes me think of what my father used to tell us, about the pumkin flood. Yes, indeedy, somewhere around 1786 the river was a-floating so full of pumpkins it ‘peared like it was bridged over so you could walk across, – on pumpkins.
“You see, the bottom lands, up the river had been planted thick with ’em, and when the high water came it just rafted them off and whole acres of ’em went sailing, and they called it the pumpkin flood.
“That was the year after they cur our county from Lancaster and called it Dauphin County in honor of the eldest son of the King of France. You know, there was a sort of lovin’ feeling for the French, on account of the way she had stood by the colonies.
“Why, the county seat once came near being called Louisburgh, naming it for Louis XVI, and court was even called to be held at Louisburgh, but it was all owing to a Judge’s bad feeling for John Harris. It used to be Harris’ Ferry and of course it ought by right to be Harrisburg.
“Seven years after that, about 1792, they started the first newspaper in the county. It was called the Harrisburg Advertiser, and was soon succeeded by The Oracle of Dauphin. Some people likely don’t know that the first penny paper in the United States was published right down here at our county seat. German, so it was, and called Die Morgenrothe.
“Yes indeedy, they made news and they made history in those day. None of ’em had read preacher Wagoner’s ‘Simple Life’ but they lead it just the same. I like to think of those pioneers, and how, as Kipling says, they went about their business, –
'Each for the joy of the working and each in his separate star,
Doing the thing as he sees it, for the God of things as they are.'
“Think of old John Armstrong, back in 1740s, trading across the mountains with the Indians and finally giving up his life to a red-skin’s treachery. Think of having to pronounce the Indian names: Wikenkniskue for Wiconisco; Susquesahanough for Susquehanna; why, I guess Mohantanga for Mahantango was the favorite of ’em all, for that meant, – ‘where we had plenty of meat to eat.’
“And that reminds me, I want a yard of fresh sausages.”
With that he was gone.
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From the Elizabethville Echo, 12 January 1905
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.
[Indians]