The meaning of the Indian word for Wyoming is "Large Plains," which,
like most of the Indian names, fits very well indeed.
The first white man who visited Wyoming was a good Moravian missionary,
Count Zinzendorf--in 1742. He toiled among the Delaware Indians
who lived there, and those of his faith who followed him were the
means of the conversion of a great many red men.
The fierce warriors became humble Christians, who set the best
example to wild brethren, and often to the wicked white men.
More than twenty years before the Revolution settlers began making
their way into the Wyoming Valley. You would think their only
trouble would be with the Indians, who always look with anger upon
intruders of that kind, but really their chief difficulty was with
white people.
Most of these pioneers came from Connecticut. The successors of
William Penn, who had bought Pennsylvania from his king, and then
again from the Indians, did not fancy having settlers from other
colonies take possession of one of the garden spots of his grant.
I cannot tell you about the quarrels between the settlers from
Connecticut and those that were already living in Pennsylvania.
Forty of the invaders, as they may be called, put up a fort, which
was named on that account Forty Fort. This was in the winter of
1769, and two hundred more pioneers followed them in the spring.
The fort stood on the western bank of the river.
The Pennsylvanians, however, had prepared for them, and the trouble
began. During the few years following, the New Englanders were three
times driven out of the valley, and the men, women, and children
were obliged to tramp for two hundred miles through the unbroken
wilderness to their old homes. But they rallied and came back
again, and at last were strong enough to hold their ground. About
this time the mutterings of the American Revolution began to be
heard, and the Pennsylvanians and New Englanders forgot their enmity
and became brothers in their struggle for independence.
Among the pioneers from Connecticut who put up their old fashioned
log houses in Wyoming were George Ripley and his wife Ruth. They
were young, frugal, industrious, and worthy people. They had but
one child--a boy named Benjamin; but after awhile Alice was added
to the family, and at the date of which I am telling you she was
six years and her brother thirteen years old.
Mr. Ripley was absent with the continental army under General
Washington, fighting the battles of his country. Benjamin, on
this spring day, was visiting some of his friends further down the
valley; so that when Alice came forth to play "Jack Stones" alone,
no one was in sight, though her next neighbor lived hardly two
hundred yards away.
I wish you could have seen her as she looked on that summer afternoon.
She had been helping, so far as she was able, her mother in the
house, until the parent told her to go outdoors and amuse herself.
She was chubby, plump, healthy, with round pink cheeks, yellow hair
tied in a coil at the back of her head, and her big eyes were as
blue, and clear, and bright as they could be.