The Shawanese Controversy

Discovery of Harvey's Lake

It has been historically accepted that an early Wyoming Valley settler, Benjamin Harvey, Sr., discovered Harvey's Lake in 1781. During the Revolutionary War the Wyoming Valley was frontier America. Prior to the War a Connecticut county was established in the Valley by the Susquehannah Company. There was conflict, sometimes bloody, between its Connecticut settlers and Pennsylvania claimants for legal and political control over Northeastern Pennsylvania. This conflict abated during the War as the Valley's settlers faced a common enemy, the British and its Native American allies.

On July 3, 1778, Valley settlers suffered catastrophic casualties from British and largely Seneca Nation marauders. The surviving settlers fled the Valley, but in time returned. For the balance of the War, the Valley was still at risk from the British and its Tory and Native American allies.

Benjamin Harvey, Sr. (1722-1795) was born in Lyme, CT., and arrived in the Valley in 1772. In 1772 he purchased a Connecticut title to 754 acres of land encompassing portions of present--day Plymouth and Plymouth Township, including the stream to become known as Harvey's Creek. In 1774 Harvey opened the first store in Plymouth.

In September 1780, a British and Seneca raiding party terrorized various points south of the Valley and in Sugarloaf, near Hazleton. They captured settlers and later stalked up the Susquehanna to Harvey's Creek, and burned Harvey's mills there. The raiders then retreated to Canada.

On November 1780, nineteen British Rangers and five Senecas left Fort Niagara, Canada, on another Susquehanna raiding party. When they reached the upper Susquehanna, they traveled by canoe to Secord, about two miles on the east side of the Susquehanna above Tunkhannock. At Secord the party disembarked and traveled an undescribed trail westward, and then southerly, to the top of Shawanese (Plymouth) Mountain on December 6, 1780.

On the evening of December 6, 1780, the British and Seneca party descended the mountain to Plymouth and raided the home of Benjamin Harvey, Sr. The invaders took Harvey and his son, Elisha, captive, along with five other men and two women. The region was blanketed with heavy snow and it was a record-cold winter. The two fearful women were released to go to the Wilkes-Barre fort to warn the garrison that its settlers were still under threat.

The raiding party and its captives were taken up Shawanese Mountain and through the wilderness to the headwaters of the Mehoopany Creek, and down the creek to the Susquehanna at Mehoopany. They then took a course up the Susquehanna to New York State and on to Fort Niagara.

The seven prisoners from Plymouth were lodged at Fort Niagara through the harsh 1780-81 winter and spring of 1781. In late May 1781, Benjamin Harvey, Sr., age 59, was considered too old to be a combatant or threat to the British. He was paroled and released from custody. He would have to travel by foot on a journey home. When he reached the Chemung River, he found a canoe and descended the Chemung to the Susquehanna at Athens, PA. When Harvey reached the mouth of Bowmans Creek at Tunkhannock, he saw signs of Native American activity. He abandoned the river route and struck out over the mountains seeking the trail his abductors followed in 1780.

The next day, Harvey was hopelessly lost. On the second day, however, Harvey glimpsed a body of water he thought was the Susquehanna. But he soon realized it was a large lake. He began to circle the lake until he came upon an outlet stream. He followed the stream until he came upon the site of his burned mills. Harvey now easily found his way to Wilkes-Barre to be reunited with his family. The Harvey family history states it was July 4, 1781. 1

Elisha Harvey and other prisoners taken captive with Benjamin Harvey, Sr., were all eventually released and safely returned home. After the Revolutionary War, the Connecticut-Pennsylvania conflict resumed over title to the Valley, and for a time Benjamin Harvey was jailed by Pennsylvania authorities. The land conflict was not fully resolved until 1799. Wyoming Valley was under the jurisdiction of Pennsylvania but the Valley's Connecticut landowners could apply for Pennsylvania land titles.

According to an account written in 1899 by Oscar Jewell Harvey, Benjamin Harvey, Sr., rebuilt his mills along Harvey's Creek in the 1785-1795 period. He and his friends explored the upper reach of the creek and Harvey's Lake. These treks drew attention to the Lake and it became popularly known as Harvey's Lake and the name was incorporated into public documents.

Benjamin Harvey, Sr., died at age 74, in November 1795 and was buried in the Turner and Wadham Cemetery in Plymouth. He and his wife, Katharine Draper Harvey, were later reinterred in the Hollenback Cemetery, Wilkes-Barre.

 

Oscar Jewell Harvey

Oscar Jewell Harvey (2 September, 1851- 26 March, 1922) was the great-grandson of Benjamin Harvey, Sr. The Harvey family can be traced back to Turner Harvey, an archer and warrior in the circle of Henry VIII of England. O.J. Harvey attended Wyoming Seminary and entered Lafayette College at age 16, where he graduated in 1871 with an B. A. and then a M.A. in 1874. He was a professor of mathematics and English at Wyoming Seminary, but left to study law and was admitted to the Luzerne County bar in 1876.

In the following decade Harvey relocated to Washington, D.C., where he held a senior position as an auditor with the U.S. Treasury. For a number of years he was embroiled in serious legal issues there. In May 1892 Harvey's wife, Fanny Holding Harvey, divorced Harvey. They had five children together.

In May 1895 Oscar Jewell Harvey returned to Wilkes-Barre and lived in the old Harvey homestead on Union Street, where he devoted his life to writing and lecturing on Wyoming Valley history. Late in life he moved to an apartment on W. Northampton Street, Wilkes-Barre.

In late March 1897 Harvey completed a 670 page "History of Lodge 61." This was a tome on Free Masonry in Wyoming Valley, and only 350 copies were printed. In early January 1899 Harvey released "The Harvey Book," a 1,028 door-stop genealogy of the Harvey family. Another of Harvey's ancestors was William Harvey, among the first colonists of Plymouth, MA, and a founder of Tarenton, MA. The family also had a military history. Ancestors were distinguished in the Revolutionary War. O.J. Harvey's father was a major-general of the Ninth Division of the Pennsylvania militia, and O.J. Harvey was a captain of the Ninth Regiment of the PA National Guard. The run for The Harvey Book was stated at 210 to 220 copies.

In The Harvey Book, Oscar Jewell Harvey recounted, for the first time, the full account of Benjamin Harvey's capture, release and discovery of the Lake, apparently based on family legend and documents, in addition to exhaustive research collected from Canadian and British archives.

 

The Shawanese Map

In mid-April 1893 area newspapers reported that Walter M. Dickson, a Scranton antiquarian, had purchased a rare 1795 map of Pennsylvania in New York City for two dollars. The map was on display at Butler's book store on W. Market Steet, Wilkes-Barre.

Dickson's 1775 map, drawn by William Scull, showed a lake in the general vicinity of Harvey's Lake, but named on the map as Shawanese Lake, along with map markings near the lake for an Old Shawanese Town. The 1775 map was a republishing of an earlier 1770 Scull map. The map incited a debate whether Harvey's Lake should be renamed Shawanese Lake to honor its original Native American inhabitants and not Benjamin Harvey, Sr. There was also at this time a brief discussion, which one source attributed to local historian Stewart Pearce, that the actual Native American name for the lake was Skandara, although no supporting evidence for the claim was offered, and it may have been raised in jest or to mock the controversy.

 

George Riddle Wright

In any event, the Shawanese cause was taken up by a formidable advocate, George Riddle Wright (1851-1932). Wright was a member of the anthracite aristocracy. A son of a Plymouth native and area congressman, Hendrick B. Wright (1808-1881), G. R. Wright attended private schools in Wilkes-Barre, and he was an honors graduate of Princeton University in 1873. He studied law with his father and was admitted to the local bar in 1875. Both father and son had an interest in steamboats, with a famous Susquehanna River steamboat named for the father, and the son having an early ownership interest in a Lake steamboat company which he later relinguished. The father, H.B. Wright and a partner, Charles T. Barnum, acquired the ownership rights to the bed of the Lake in 1871, an issue which bedevils property interests at the Lake to the present day. G. R. Wright inherited his father's legal interest in the Lake bed.

Wright would challenge the Harvey claim to the name for Harvey's Lake and assert that Oscar Jewell Harvey was unreasonable in selfishly protecting the Harvey family claim since Benjamin Harvey, Sr., never settled at the Lake nor claimed any ownership to Lake property. But George R. Wright's lordship of the Lake bed justified him in stocking the Lake with a variety of non-native fish, and leasing the Lake for harvesting ice. As an owner of the Lake bed, he unsuccessfully sued the Lake's steamboat company in 1900 to stop its pollution of the Lake by discharging coal ashes and human effluent into the Lake from the steamboat operations. Wright may have publicly defended a Native American right to the Lake name, as the earliest human presence at the Lake, but this cover also permitted Wright to privately exercise his proprietary instincts to name the Lake as he wished.

For many years, G. R. Wright spent considerable time at the Rhodes Hotel at the Lake. In 1880-81 his father completed a large cottage complex at Sunset, which still stands on a hill behind the Rhodes Hotel site, but the father died in September 1881. Earlier in the year, winter ice on the Susquehanna crushed the steamboat Hendrick B. Wright.

With the force of George R. Wright's social position, he had 51 of the Lake's cottage and home-owners sign a petition to change the Lake's name to Shawanese Lake. But this assault on the Benjamin Harvey claim was not successful. In November 1893, Wright persuaded the Lehigh Valley Railroad to change the station name at Alderson from Harvey's Lake to Shawanese. However, railroad employees and the public did not adopt Shawanese for the station in common practice and the LVRR dropped Shawanese from its timetable in April 1901, reverting back to Harvey's Lake.

Wright also influenced the U.S. Postal Service to rename the Lake post-office at Sunset in 1894 to Shawanese, which it retained until 2011, when the tiny postal location was closed. Wright's steamboat company also changed the name of one of its steamboats from Big Boat to Shawanese in 1895. The Shawanese operated on the Lake until 1909 when it was abandoned. The Lake residents also formed the Shawanese Boat Club in 1898, which was active through 1934. Another gasp for the Shawanee name occurred on April 28, 1910. The Wilkes-Barre Record correspondent from Harvey's Lake renamed her column Lake Shawannah as "the modern name for Harvey's Lake." The reporter changed the spelling to make it easier to pronounce. The change lasted for this one issue only before reverting to Harvey's Lake in the next report.

Later in life, George R. Wright left his law practice to serve his considerable business interests, and to a life of charitable giving. Among his interests were the Wilkes-Barre Water Company and the Wilkes-Barre Electric Light Company. He was president of United Charities from 1895-1901. In 1906 he created the First National Bank of Dallas and was its president until his death. The bank was eventually absorbed by Citizens Bank.

 

The Harvey Response

Oscar Jewell Harvey did not immediately respond to the Shawanese controversy. For the next several years he quietly worked on the genealogy of his family, along with collecting research sources from England and Canada regarding Benjamin Harvey, Sr., and the Revolutionary War history of the Wyoming Valley.

The Harvey Book in 1899 not only stated a full account of Benjamin Harvey's capture, release and discovery of Harvey's Lake, but it also claimed that the 1700/1775 maps showing Shawanese Lake actually depicted Ganoga Lake in Sullivan County, not Harvey's Lake. He offered a lengthy argument to support his position. In July 1900, Harvey also published a pamphlet titled "Harvey's Lake," which re-published his research to demonstrate that Shawanese Lake was Ganoga Lake.

A copy of the 1900 Harvey pamphlet seemingly has not survived, but the content very likely is a repetition of his views he wrote in The Harvey Book a year earlier, and which he repeated in lengthy footnotes about Harvey's Lake found in his 1909 History of Wilkes-Barre.

In September 1902, George R. Wright drafted an unpublished essay akin to a legal brief of considerable length asserting "authentic information" that Shawanese Lake was in fact Harvey's Lake and refuting that Harvey was the appropriate name for it. Wright also quoted numerous passages from Harvey's 1900 pamphlet which Wright sought to discredit or challenge.

Unfortunately, Wright's 1902 essay is only in draft form. He had planned to add additional material, including supporting maps, but these items have now been lost or at least not recovered to support his arguments. Importantly, there is no indication that Harvey was ever aware of Wright's 1902 draft essay. The discussion in this web-article is based on Harvey's material about Harvey's Lake in his 1899 publication The Harvey Book, Wright's 1902 draft response, and Harvey's notes regarding the Lake in his 1909 History of Wilkes-Barre which has no mention of Wright's unpublished views.

Harvey's "just the facts" writing style is clear and convincing. Wright's "brief" has the style of a nineteenth- century lawyer, argumentative and encrusted by a nearly impenetrable sentence structure. Wright, however, does find factual errors in Harvey's accounts, and he is a formidable, but at times confusing challenger. Wright insists the debate is not personal but it is difficult not to sense it. At one point Wright refers to Harvey as "late of Washington, D.C." This is a subtle reference to Harvey's legal issues while in the federal capitol, and to his divorce during that time - not quite the "gentlemanly thing" from Wright, president of the Westmoreland Club, the Valley's premiere club for the gentlemanly elite at that time. 2

At the outset it should be noted Wright did not dispute that Benjamin Harvey, Sr., may have encountered the Lake after his release from prison by the British in 1781. Rather, based on the 1775 Scull map, and that Harvey never owned land or settled at the Lake, Wright argued that Shawanese should have prior claim to the Lake name.

 

Preliminary Considerations

The June 1775 map of Pennsylvania was created by William Scull (1739-1784) and published in London by engravers Sayer and Bennett. It was 26 3/4 inches in height and 52 3/4 inches wide. An original copy today may have an auction estimate of $35,000.00. William Scull was an American cartographer based in Philadelphia. William Scull was the grandson of Nicholas Scull, an American officer during the Revolutionary War who became the colonial Surveyor General of Pennsylvania.

The 1775 version of the map was noted as drawn from an earlier William Scull map in 1770. The 1770 map was in turn partially based on a Nicholas Scull map of a portion of the State drawn in 1759. The 1759 map, however, did not cover the territory west of the Wyoming Valley, omitting the Ganoga Lake-Harvey's Lake region. But the 1759 map did show Harvey's Creek (then titled Falls Creek) and a second unnamed creek, likely Hunlock's Creek, draining into the west side of the Susquehanna River.

The 1770 and 1775 Scull maps are virtually identical to the region in question. O.J. Harvey in his 1909 History of Wilkes-Barre published a simplified version of the Scull map, which clearly illustrates the Shawanese question.

Some initial observations may be helpful to frame the Wright-Harvey debate. It appears Shawanese Lake on the 1770-1775 maps is generally in the actual location of Harvey's Lake. But in both the 1770 and 1775 maps Shawanese Lake's lower outlet stream drains into Fishing Creek and then into the Susquehanna River. In fact, Ganoga Lake's outlet stream, Kitchen Creek, does drain into Huntington Creek and then into Fishing Creek, and Fishing Creek drains into the Susquehanna River at Bloomsburg.

But the 1770 and 1775 maps also show an outlet stream at the upper east side of Shawanese Lake which drains into an unnamed creek which enters the Susquehanna River at the "Falls" (presumably Harvey's Creek at West Nanticoke). Ganoga Lake has no second outlet stream. This second Shawanese outlet hopelessly muddles interpretation of the Scull maps. It could be argued that Scull conflated the Ganoga Lake and Harvey's Lake terrain into one lake with no surviving documentary evidence to support the identity of which lake he may have intended. Or, as Oscar Jewell Harvey will argue, Scull clearly acknowledged Ganoga Lake's lower outlet stream drained into Fishing Creek, but unaware of Harvey's Lake, Scull assumed the known Falls Creek was also ultimately sourced at Ganoga Lake. Scull therefore drew an upper secondary upper outlet from Shawanese Lake to the Falls [Harvey's Creek] on the Susquehanna.

The following discussion reviews the key issues Wright and Harvey debated as to whether Shawanese Lake is in fact Harvey's Lake.

 

The Wright-Harvey Debate

1. Wright's 1902 essay raised several arguments in defense of Shawanese Lake as the correct name of Harvey's Lake. Harvey claimed that in the 1700s the Lake became popularly known as Harvey's Lake. In response, Wright reviewed the earliest historical publications of the Wyoming Valley which were compiled and published from 1818 to 1841. None of these books note Benjamin Harvey's discovery of Harvey's Lake and only a couple note Harvey's mills or Harvey's Creek. One historian, Charles Miner, in 1845, does relate the Native American capture in December 1780 of Benjamin Harvey and his release and return to the Valley. Miner did not note Harvey's discovery of a lake on his return journey.

It should also be noted that the Valley's earliest historical works were designed largely to celebrate the Connecticut settlement of the Valley, to honor the Connecticut settlers' heroic defense but loss in the Battle of Wyoming, and to importantly cement the primacy of Connecticut descendants in the local social order. None of the early works were comprehensive studies of areas or events outside of the Valley's settled and conflicted floor. They did not cover the Back Mountain, for example, let alone an unsettled Lake region.

Wright failed to note that his father, H.B. Wright, recounted Benjamin Harvey's 1780 capture and release by British-Seneca raiders in the father's "Historical Sketches of Plymouth, Luzerne County, PA," published in 1873. H.B. Wright's account, however, is very general and partially inaccurate. Wright states Harvey was released by his captors, due to his age and infirmity, when the captured settlers reached the Mehoopany area. There is no mention of Harvey's trek to and imprisonment at Fort Niagara before his release in 1781. H.B. Wright also does not mention Harvey's discovery of Harvey's Lake.

George R. Wright also noted that in Harvey's 1900 pamphlet Harvey cited various maps and documents published in 1873, 1874 and 1897 which refer to Harvey's Lake, claiming these support Harvey's claim of early popular acceptance of the Lake's name as Harvey's Lake. Yet, Wright has a valid point that these 1873-1897 sources are not evidence of the popular acceptance of the name Harvey's Lake in the early years after Benjamin Harvey's death in 1795.

However, in a new era of digitized records it is now easy to find widespread recognition of Harvey's Lake as the accepted name early in the Valley's history. In a February 24, 1789, Luzerne County deed, Benjamin Harvey paid 400 Spanish dollars for a tract of land described as along "Harvey's Creek." In another deed on October 29, 1798, Jesse Fell sold Matthias Hollenback a large tract of land which the deed noted was at "Harvey's Lake." Another tract at "Harvey's Lake" was sold on behalf of Fell to Hollenback on September 5, 1801.

On January 4, 1804, the Gleaner newspaper in Wilkes-Barre published a sale of 6,000 acres in Luzerne County "on the water of Toby's Creek and Harvey's Creek and adjoining Harvey's Lake." On July 4, 1810, holiday makers in Wyoming Valley "celebrated the day at Harvey's Lake" feasting on deer and spirits. Later in the fall of 1810, the Harvey's Lake Association was formed to promote moderate civility in local politics on "Harvey's Lake principles." There are countless other examples of common usage of Harvey's Lake in early Valley history.

2. Both Harvey and Wright noted that an early survey of the Wyoming Valley by the Susquehannah Company in 1794-1795 resulted in a map which showed an unnamed lake now called Harvey's Lake. A 1768 map also showed that Harvey's Creek was at first known as Head's Creek before it was called Falls Creek. To Wright, this is seemingly evidence that other unnamed explorers or surveyors may have discovered the lake and outlet creek before Harvey in 1781. 3

The dating of a Susquehannah Company map to 1794-95 may be an error. There is an early c.1790 map of the Susquehannah Company's claim to the Valley followed by a second Company map also dated c.1790. The exact years for these two maps are not known. In the first c.1790 map [located at wisconsinhistory.org], the Company documented an unnamed lake [now Harvey's Lake] with its irregular shape and its unnamed outlet stream flowing into the "Falls" on the Susquehanna. This map extends westward towards the Susquehanna's West Branch but Ganoga Lake is not located on it.

In the second c.1790 Susquehannah Company map [located at the Library of Congress], the unnamed lake is also located but its outlet stream is named Harvey's Creek. The map shows the lake outside Bedford Township which was a Connecticut name for the Back Mountain wilderness. This c.1790 map was essentially limited to the Wyoming Valley and did not cover the Ganoga region. This second c.1790 map is the "seventeen townships" of Connecticut's Westmoreland County, and very likely the 1794-1795 map to which Harvey and Wright referred. Wright ignored the name Harvey's Creek on it.

Neither Harvey nor Wright cite a 1791 Pennsylvania map by John Adlum and John Wallis which highlighted the State's roads and inland navigation. The map does not depict Harvey's Lake but it does cite Harvey's Creek draining into the Susquehanna at Nanticoke Falls [and no marking for a Wyoming Falls elsewhere]. It is the earliest clearly dated designation of the creek with Harvey's name.

Wright argued that since Susquehannah Company surveyors did not name the lake on their maps for Harvey, it is evidence that Harvey did not discover it or at least did not deserve its name. An unnamed surveyor may have discovered the lake before Harvey. Too, if Harvey's Creek was known earlier as Head's or Falls Creek, for which there is documentation, the creek should not be named for Harvey either. Obviously, a surveyor's failure to name a lake a decade after its discovery is not necessarily evidence Harvey's earlier discovery did not occur or that the Harvey name is not deserved. Nor does a surveyor enjoy discretion to unilaterally name lakes or features and to usurp a current or potential landowner's privilege to name landmarks or features of surveyed land.

3. Harvey gave weight to the oval shape of Shawanese Lake on the 1770/1775 Scull maps as demonstrating that it could not be Harvey's Lake which has an irregular shape. But Ganoga in fact has a shape which is oval or more precisely oblong in shape. It was named Long Pond for a considerable period, then briefly Highland Lake, and then finally Ganoga Lake.

In his 1902 essay, Wright correctly noted that cartographers in this early period were chartered to survey the ground and its key features to support ownership claims, not to survey lake dimensions. He claimed it was a common practice of surveyors at the time to denote lakes in a general circle or oval fashion. This claim may be generally true among other surveyors but an examination of the Scull maps, particularly for the Pocono region, shows Scull generally drew a rough sketch of a lake and not simply a circle or oval pattern. The 1770/1775 maps do show Shawanese Lake roughly in its actual shape. This circumstance may support Harvey's Ganoga claim as the lake at issue but does not conclusively resolve it. 4

The 1770-1775 maps clearly mark an Old Shawanese Town near Shawanese Lake. Wright advances a two-prong argument that this Native American town could only have existed at Harvey's Lake, and it could not have existed at Ganoga Lake. Wright had nephews, among others, who found Native American artifacts in 1892-93 around Harvey's Lake. These included arrowheads, sinkers, pottery, pipes and stone axes.

In contrast, Wright asserted he had thoroughly explored the Ganoga Lake region, with its owner, Col. R. Bruce Ricketts, and never found any Native American artifacts. Consequently, Old Shawanese Town could only have been at Harvey's Lake. Wright also cited he Worthington family who settled at the top of Carpenter Road at Sunset in 1808, and who also found arrowheads and artifacts in their plowed fields. But like the Wright family finds, the Worthington finds were never documented or dated, nor can they be attributed to the Shawnee.

The difficulty with Wright's assertion is that proto-Native Americans were evident in the Wyoming Valley at least 11,000 years ago. These were family bands or cultures who occupied the Valley. By the early 1700's, the Valley was under the control, but not occupied, by the Iroquois Nation in New York. The vacant Valley became a refuge for displaced tribes amongst Native American-British-Colonial conflicts. Some Shawnee took refuge in Plymouth by 1701, and elsewhere at other times in Pennsylvania, including Northumberland, Bradford and Lycoming counties. The Delawares took refuge in the Wyoming Valley by 1742, along with members of other Native American tribes. The Nanticokes arrived in the Valley in 1750. The local Shawnee and Nanticoke settlements left the Valley by 1756-58, to move to New York State near Binghamton. (Today, the Shawnee are largely based in Oklahoma). The Delaware and any remaining Native American refugees left the Valley after 1768 when the Iroquois fully ceded Pennsylvania to the colonists.

Wright assumed that the Native American artifacts at Harvey's Lake were attributable to the Shawnee's Wyoming Valley occupation in 1701-1758. There is no evidence that the Lake artifacts were professionally examined as to origin or date. The Lake's artifacts could have been created or abandoned during any period over an 11,000 -year timespan.

4. It is true that there is scant or no evidence of Native American presence at or near Ganoga Lake. Indeed, there is no record of who actually discovered the lake. It was originally known as Robinson's Lake after a hunter or squatter named Robinson who was the earliest to live there.

But, G. Murray Reynolds, a contemporary of George R. Wright, found a significant Native American pot at North Mountain in 1890, now in the collection of the Luzerne County Historical Society, but it clearly is pre-historic and not of Shawnee origin. The pot is likely from a proto-Susquehannock cultural tradition circa 1,000 A.D. Sites attributed to this cultural tradition have been professionally excavated at the "Airport 1 and 2" sites in Forty Fort.

There are 21 documented Native American archaeological sites in Sullivan County, but none at Ganoga Lake, and all are pre-historic or pre-dating the Shawnee presence in Pennsylvania.

There are 307 Native American archeological sites in Luzerne County, and none at Harvey's Lake. Wright ignores a legal maxim that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." The failure to find Native American artifacts at Ganoga Lake is not evidence artifacts there do not exist. In short, there is no actual evidence to prove or disprove a Shawnee site at either Ganoga Lake or Harvey's Lake.

5. Harvey correctly stated that prior to 1768 there were Shawnee villages in the Fishing Creek region and along the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. There was a Native American path in this region which ran from Bloomsburg to Orangeville and "to or near" near Ganoga Lake and on to Tunkhannock and the Susquehanna. Harvey raises three points regarding Old Shawanese Town on Scull's 1770/1775 maps. One, the "Fishing Creek" path passed through the Ganoga Lake region and Shawnees could have camped at Ganoga. 5 Two, if Scull's upper easterly outlet of Shawanese Lake is actually Harvey's Creek (but connected in error to Ganoga Lake) then the Shawanese village was mistakenly drawn nearer to the lake instead of lower on the map closer to Briar Creek in Columbia County, or to Plymouth, where vacated Shawnee villages were located. Third, Harvey asserts there was no Native American path from the west side of the Wyoming Valley through the Back Mountain region near the lake and on to Iroquois country. The Shawnee had a settled base at Plymouth and ready access to the river for a food supply. There was no reason for a Shawanee village at Harvey's Lake - especially if there was no trail to it.

The issue of a Native American path through the Back Mountain to the upper Susquehanna is intriguing because the British Rangers and Seneca presumably followed a path from Mehoopany through the Back Mountain region to Plymouth, to capture Benjamin Harvey in 1780. In countering O.J. Harvey, Wright claimed he had maps showing three paths through this region to support a Shawnee or Native American path to Harvey's Lake. But Wright did not complete and publish his essay and the maps were not disclosed. Oddly, in 1965 the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission published Indian Paths of Pennsylvania, a substantial study of over 130 significant Native American trails in the state during the "historic period" when Native Americans encountered Europeans. There were five Native America paths to the Wyoming Valley but no Wyoming Valley - Back Mountain - Mehoopany trail was cited. 6

6. Perhaps the most serious issue facing Wright are the 1770/1775 maps' depiction of a second outlet at the upper end of Ganoga Lake. At the lower end of the 1770 and 1775 Scull maps, the lake's outlet stream becomes Fishing Creek which empties into the Susquehanna at Bloomsburg. However, an upper easterly outlet at Ganoga does not exist.

Harvey believes that the 1770 surveyor was clearly aware of Fall's Creek (later named Harvey's Creek) which entered the Susquehanna at the Falls (West Nanticoke). Harvey speculates the surveyor thought Falls Creek must have a source, too, and, unaware of Harvey's Lake, he drew a second outlet from Ganoga Lake to the known Falls Creek on the Susquehanna. Admittedly, this is a speculative reach, but otherwise the 1770/1775 second outlet from Ganoga Lake to West Nanticoke would be a mystery.

Wright countered the second outlet was no mystery at all. The upper outlet stream and a lower connecting stream, were not related to Ganoga Lake. If Shawanese Lake is in fact Harvey's Lake, the upper or second lake outlet is Huntsville Creek, the easterly flowing Huntsville branch of Toby's Creek which joins a lower westerly flowing Trout Run branch at Toby's Creek near Hillside Farms before flowing to the Susquehanna at Wyoming Falls, not Nanticoke Falls, along the boundary of Kingston and Larksville.

Wright's argument could account for the stream complex which emerges from the upper east side of Shawanese Lake on Scull's maps. But Wright admits that Huntsville Creek does not in fact emerge as a second outlet of Shawanese [as Harvey's Lake]. There is some distance between Shawanese [as Harvey's Lake] and the beginning of Huntsville Creek. Wright states springs are the source of Huntsville Creek. He concludes springs or rock seepages under Shawanese [as Harvey's Lake] emerge some distance elsewhere to form the source or head springs of Huntsville Creek. Scull presumably but unnecessarily connected the Lake to Huntsville Creek which resulted in the second outlet stream from Shawanese [as Harvey's Lake]. 7

But Wright's speculation has its own challenges. First, Wright interprets the upper outlet of Shawanese Lake and its Y-shaped stream to the "Falls" on the Susquehanna as Toby's Creek. But in the Valley on Scull's maps opposite the "Wyoming" settlement, another Y-shaped stream enters the west side of the river from the Back Mountain. This second stream is more likely Toby's Creek (and far less likely Abraham's Creek in Wyoming Borough). Wright does not address this second stream which is remarkably drawn and located as if it were Toby's Creek. If Wright has misidentified Toby's Creek, his theory fails. Shawanese Lake's Y-shaped outlet stream then remains a mystery. At best, the issue of which "Falls" Scull intended, at Harvey's Creek or Toby's Creek, may be as conflicted as the identity of Shawanese Lake.

Second, why would Scull create a second outlet at Shawanese Lake when it had a clear lower outlet and a second did not exist at either Ganoga or Harvey's Lake. A parallel stream system easterly of either lake could have remained independent of the lake. There appears to be no reason for Scull to connect this unnamed stream with the lake.

Another issue is that in fact there is no parallel stream system easterly of Ganoga Lake as shown on the Scull maps. The closest easterly steams are the headwaters of Mehoopany Creek but they flow to the Susquehanna in Wyoming County. The Scull stream system at issue on his maps flows to the Wyoming Valley. Harvey interpretated this easterly stream system as Scull's imaginative leap to connect Shawanese Lake to Falls/Harvey's Creek in the Wyoming Valley in order to make some sense of Scull's incomplete explorations, not the actual geographical facts on the ground. Scull apparently was not aware that the secondary Ganoga outlet stream system depicted on his maps does not match the Ganoga region.

Standing alone, Wright's interpretation of Scull's stream complex as Toby's Creek would be plausible but it appears to be deeply flawed. If he was correct, it would be his strongest argument that Shawanese Lake is Harvey's Lake. But the Scull maps at issue clearly show a primary outlet from Ganoga to Fishing Creek and the Susquehanna. The Fishing Creek drainage area was well-known in Scull's time. Fort Augusta on the Forks of the Susquehanna at Sunbury had a frontier history as historic and conflicted as the Wyoming Valley. Wright comments on the Fishing Creek outlet but he becomes evasive at best and incoherent at worst. If he admits Shawanese Lake drains into Fishing Creek, then Shawanese cannot be Harvey's Lake. Wright sought to explain the Fishing Creek outlet but his commentary is too convoluted to truly untangle. He unconvincingly evades the issue or flicks it way. Or, Wright suggests Scull was mistaken when he drew Fishing Creek as an outlet for Shawanese. Rather, Scull confused Fishing Creek with Falls Creek, 30 miles away, and he either meant to draw, or should have drawn, only a Shawanese Lake outlet at Falls Creek at the Susquehanna. 8

Wright's thesis that Shawanese Lake is Harvey's Lake could also have been challenged by an observation Harvey did not raise. Scull's maps locate Shawanese Lake nearly equidistant between the Wyoming Valley and the headwaters of Muncy Creek. These headwaters originate in the Sullivan County region near Ganoga Lake and arguably support Shawanese as Ganoga Lake. Otherwise. the stream system titled Muncy Creek by Scull to the upper left of Shawanese is misplaced. This is another example which may suggest the conflation of Ganoga and Harvey's Lake.

Stated plainly, Wright's conclusion is that Shawanese Lake is actually Harvey's Lake because it appears placed by Scull near the Wyoming Valley. The Valley's Shawnee presence in the 1700s is evidence that an Old Shawanese Town could have existed at the lake. The upper outlet stream of Shawanese Lake and its lower connecting branch accurately traces the course of Toby's Creek, which enters the Susquehanna along the Kingston-Larksville line. But these predicates can be seriously challenged. Then, too, Wright badly stumbles to account for Scull's mapping of Fishing Creek as Shawanese Lake's outlet.

Harvey's strength rests on the Scull maps' Fishing Creek as the correct outlet stream for Shawanese Lake as Ganoga Lake. Its specific oval shaping by Scull provides some support for his view. His theory that the second outlet stream from Ganoga to the Susquehanna is Scull's survey error is possible but very speculative. Harvey can also account for a documented Shawnee presence in the Fishing Creek region as possible support that near Shawanese Lake (now Ganoga) there could have been a Shawnee or Native American presence as noted on Scull's maps. 9 Harvey's reputation as a local historical scholar, if not obsessive at least surgical, combined with clarity in presentation, adds weight to his authority.

Interestingly, in 1792, one year before the Shawanese map discovery, another surveyor, Reading Howell, presented to Thomas Mifflin, Governor of Pennsylvania, a new map of the State. It has been described as "the best map of Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century." The Reading Howell map was noted for its depiction of lakes, streams, and other landmarks. Howell depicts the lake later named Harvey's Lake and further west a lake which was later named Ganoga Lake. Neither lake has a name attached by Howell but both lakes have the correct outlet streams, Harvey's and Toby's, to the Susquehanna. Howell does not have the erroneous second outlet for Ganoga Lake found on the Scull maps. Reading Howell essentially set the standard for Pennsylvania maps from 1791 onwards.

At bottom, Harvey and Wright were seeking to explain the inexplicable. The Shawanese map has elements which arguably can support a case for either Ganoga Lake or Harvey's Lake. Wright challenged the established Harvey name for the Lake. In a legal setting, Wright had the "burden of proof" to establish a superior claim over Harvey. Based on an interpretation of the Scull maps alone, at best the debate is a draw, not because either Harvey or Wright is more or less convincing but because the Scull maps are so conflicted.

More importantly, the Harvey-Wright debate is academic. Wright asserts the Harvey name is undeserving not only because the Shawnees were the earliest occupants of Harvey's Lake, but also because Benjamin Harvey, Sr., never lived or owned land at the Lake. But geographical or place names are not necessarily based on Wright's criteria. The Harvey name was attached to the Lake due to his 1781 adventure and the attachment of the Harvey name by common public acceptance.

Wilkes-Barre was named In July 1769 by Connecticut's Maj. John Durkee for John Wilkes and Isaac Barre, members of the British Parliament, who sided with the American Colonists during the Stamp Act crisis, and against King George III. Wilkes never visited North America. Barre was a British soldier in Canada during the French and Indian War. 10 Wilkes-Barre was the center of Connecticut's "Wyoming" settlement. Under Wright's criteria, the name Wilkes-Barre would also be wrongful. The city should be named Maughwauwama (on the great plain or extensive meadows), the name given by Delaware Native Americans to the Wyoming Valley and later corrupted by white intruders to the more musical "Wyoming."

Ironically, if Wright wished to honor a Native American name for the earliest occupation of a local community, he would have had an incontestable case if he had advocated the name Shawnee for Plymouth, his family's home town.

 

Afterword

In August 1900 it was announced that Harvey was working on a monumental history of the Wyoming Valley. The plan was to produce a 700-page work with an additional 100 pages of half-tone photos and illustrations, a work unprecedented in both detail and accuracy. It would also impoverish him and destroy his health.

In July 1903 Harvey sought to raise subscriptions for his new work priced at $7.50 each, or $12.50 for a deluxe edition. He hoped to have it published in early 1904. The publication of Harvey's magisterial A History of Wilkes-Barre, Vols. 1 and 2, did not appear until 1909 with two more volumes still in progress. By March 26, 1922, when Harvey died, portions of Vol. III were in notes or draft form.

The completion of Harvey's history was assumed by Col. Ernest Gray Smith, a distinguished WWI veteran, graduate of Lafayette College and Yale Law School, and President and Editor of the Times-Leader newspaper.

Gray completed Vol. III and IV of The History of Wilkes-Barre in 1927, along with two supplemental volumes of biographies of prominent persons in the Valley. These later volumes V and VI also contain informative essays on various Valley subjects. Gray was married to Marjorie Harvey, a great-great-great grand-daughter of Benjamin Harvey, Sr.

George R. Wright died on October 1. 1932, at age 80. Until his death he worked full-time at his First National bank in Dallas as its President. Among his interests was the Wilkes-Barre Baseball Club, a professional team he brought to Wilkes-Barre in 1896. The club had a field under the South Street bridge between the Lehigh Valley and Jersey Central railroad tracks. The unmarried Wright had no children. He left his estate to various relatives and charities.

Wright willed his father's collection of 12-14,000 personal and political documents to the Luzerne County Historical Society, along with a $15,000 fund for the preparation and publishing of a biography of his father Hendrick B. Wright. This biography was never produced. However, in 1962, based on the H. B. Wright Collection, Kings College Professor Dr. Daniel J. Curran wrote a Fordham University doctoral thesis titled "Hendrick B. Wright: A Study in Leadership", the equivalent of a biography, which can be accessed on-line. Wright's interest in the legal bed to the Lake was gifted to the local blind society-perhaps a story for another time. There is no explanation why George R. Wright did not complete and publish his Shawanese essay. This web-editor did not assume any negative implications from this failure in assessing the merits of Wright's arguments in this controversy.

Oddly, the research notes, historical papers and other supporting documents collected by Oscar Jewell Harvey and Ernest Gray Smith to create The History of Wilkes-Barre, were not deposited with the Luzerne County Historical Society. Harvey dedicated Vols. 1-2 of his 1909 History 0f Wilkes-Barre to the society. Why these years of critical Valley research were lost was also a mystery to Harrison Harvey Smith, who succeeded Oscar Jewell Harvey and E.G. Smith as the Valley's premier historian.

Harrison Harvey Smith (1915-2012) was the son of Ernest Gray Smith. H. H. Smith succeeded his father as editor and publisher of the Times-Leader Publishing Company. For 37 years H. H. Smith wrote a column titled Little Studies which were observations on life and incidents in the Wyoming Valley. From October 1954 to August 1978, H.H. Smith wrote a weekly column captioned Valley Views on local history for the Times-Leader. In 1995 this web-editor, with the encouragement of Harrison H. Smith, compiled the 1,200 columns of Valley Views columns and deposited a set with the Osterhout Library and the Luzerne County Historical Society.