Murders Gave Captain Ecuyer Great Concern. He Wrote to Colonel Bouquet
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PONTIAC'S WAR 163 murders gave Captain Ecuyer great concern. He wrote to Colonel Bouquet: "I am uneasy for the little Posts: as for this, I will answer for it." Colonel William Clapham, above mentioned, was one of the prominent military officers on the Susquehanna frontier during the French and Indian War. In 1762, he brought his family over the mountains and settled on the large tract of land near West Newton, purchased by George Croghan from Tanacharison and Scarouady, at Logstown, early in August, 1749-the first land con- veyed by the Indian to the white man in the valley of the Ohio. Andrew Byerly, above mentioned, was a Pennsyl- vania-German, who, coming from Lancaster County with his family, in 1759, settled near Harrison City, Westmoreland County. He had been a baker in the army of General Braddock, in 1755. He loved to re- late that, in the Braddock campaign, he, with George Washington as his backer, won a wager of 20 shillings in a foot race with a Catawba Indian warrior. He was the founder of the Pennsylvania-German settle- ment in the Brush Creek Valley-if not the first settlement, at least one of the first within the limits of the present Westmoreland County. He died just be- fore the Revoluntionary War, while on a visit to Lan- caster County, and his dust reposes at Strasburg. In Chapters XI and XII, we shall learn much more about this Westmoreland pioneer who has numerous descend- ants in Western Pennsylvania. On May 30, Captain Ecuyer moved the inhabitants of the frontier village of Pittsburgh into the Fort, and leveled the cabins and houses outside the rampart to the ground. According to Captain Ecuyer's report to Colonel Bouquet, the total population of the town and fort was 540--330 men, 104 women and 106 children..