Aunt Jane Ross:
Among the Old Folks
Those Who Know of the Colonial Times
Old Aunt Jane Ross and George Roach—The Primeval Forest of Lycoming—Williamsport’s First Days—The Red Man, The Deer and Bears—General Washington and the Massacre of Wyoming—A Plain Old Story of a Flood—The First Colored Vote for Andrew Jackson.
It is safe to presume that every town and village in the country has an old person around whom the most interesting and exciting associations of the early days cluster. Their words are those that are regarded as oracles to which the utmost importance and reverence attaches. It is an instance that clearly disproves the beginning of the old and popular axiom, “Young people think old people are fools, but old people know that young ones are.
Aunty Jane Ross
Such a person as this is Jane Ross, a plain, senile old colored woman, who has now passed, her one hundred and eighth year, and is called by all Aunty Jane. Very dark, and decrepid with age, she wanders about the yard surrounding her humble home on River alley, with the assistance of a curiously shaped stick that was cut from the forests of this county over forty years ago. Her hair has turned perfectly white, and the voice and actions are those of a child. In dress she affects the styles that were so often seen in the old colored women upon the plantations, before the war, scrupulously neat and clean, even to the white cap upon her head.
How We Found Her
Yesterday afternoon a representative of the Gazette and Bulletin, having heard so much of the old lady and her knowledge of the primitive days of the West Branch Valley, determined to call upon her. She was sitting upon the front porch and at our approach bade us be seated. It was then that an opportunity was offered to watch her action and her manner of speech, all so simple and plain, just as Tennyson has so faithfully pictured an old lady in his “Grandmother’s Story.” Everything so unaffected with good hearty laugh as the memory was refreshed with pleasant little incidents that occurred to her when she was relating to us the pleasant days her girlhood and early womanhood. Upon her knowledge of the past and what is now tradition and become with us a legend, she places feelings of considerable pride. And while hundreds of little children have sat at her feet and listened to the stories of the red man who once camped where they then stood, and hunted the bear and deer over the mountains, she gazed down at them with a wise look, as did the great Greek orators when teaching the assembled thousands.
Aunt Jane’s Story
But we let Aunt Jane tell her own story in her own simple, plain way: “Why bless your soul, honey, it’s been so long since I was born that I forgot how old I was, but I hearn um say a good long time ago that I was over a hundred. Old Mrs. Weatherhead, in Delaware State, he sot it down in the big book when I was born. Why child, I forgot to tell you I was born out on a wharf in the Delaware river, right where Delaware city is. My masrter, a good old man, came there from Maryland, and he set all his colored people free. But it have been so mightiy long that I don’t have much recollection about that old place. Old Gineral Washing used to come by there on his way to Washington from Philadelphia. Did I ever see him? why he stopped there and took dinner, he and a man that they called Light Horse Harry Lee, and the gineral was
The Nicest Looking Man
I ever seed, with his gray hair and black eyes, He was followed arter by five hundred Indians, the ugliest looking men not to be devils I ever came across. I was a little girl then, but I can recollect everything that happened, because when I handed him corn bread at the table he said “thank you, so pretty.”
“What did I come to this state? why I was a little girl, and it was a mighty short time after I seed Washington. I came fust to Muncy, where I lived with lawyer Petriken, and there want no more un two or three houses there, and after I have live there three years I came to Williamsport. Was it a small place? Why bless your soul, child, there want but two or three houses here, and me and my folks come up here to see if we couldn’t get some work. These three houses was lived in by Judge Woodward, Mr. Peter Vanderbilt and Mr. Updergraff. There were lots of Indians who lived on the mountains and used to come here, but they wan’t. So Very Pestiferous as they was once; they used to come to look around to see what they could pick up and then mind their own business. The people used to tell me about how them and the Britishers killed the poor white folks down in the Wyoming, for I was too small to know anything about it, and then it was just before I came here. The canal hadn’t been dug and it took the people just one week to go to Philadelphia. The main road, my child, was Third street and that’s whar I lived when I got married. It was always wide right whar the square now is, and my house stood right in the middle of it, and they couldn’t get me out ‘cause I had no other place to go, and Mrs. Huling give me a piece of ground down on the side of the river and I put me up a shanty.”
A Short Story
Here the old women broke into a hearty laugh, and in response to the enquiry what amused her so much she said that is was a story she did not like to tell. After a little persuasion however, she adjusted her spectacles, fixed her cap strings and commenced as follows: “Well, you see, one night when me and my old man was living in the shanty, the water come to rising mighty sudden, and the folks outside made a mighty fuss about if we didn’t come out, we’d all be perished in the water, and I kalkerlated that if the water didn’t get to high I’d stay, and was about to go to sleep again, when I diskivered the bed was about to float and it was about time for me to get out, and out I went of the window. I begged my old man to come, but he said the Lord would take care of him. Well, you see, I wasn’t quite ligious as he was and I did not stay. After I landed safe I saw somebody wid a white shirt comin onton dat winder quicker’n I ever seed anything, and it was my old man. I said to him where is de Lord now? and says he you go and find out but I didn’t go.
There was two grist mills” she continued after her story, “one was owned by Mr. Lloyd, on Loyalsock creek, and the other was up ‘twards Lock Haven. All this country was a farm, and we used to go to mill once a week in a cart. My husband drove the baggage wagon for Gineral Washington once, and was set free by his marster Mr. Joshua Kinnard, of Maryland, when he was twenty one. Them was good old days, and I recollects mighty well how they used to walk around with their white hair, puffed shirts and knee breeches. Folks that could live in a brick house them days was mighty rich. The houses I told you bout was all down town, and it’s been so long since I was down there that I don’t know how to find it.
The Old Lady’s Good Bye
The representative of the Gazette and Bulletin then arose to go, and extended his hand, she, to his surprise, got up quickly and taking the proffered hand shook it warmly at the same time making a curtsey as gracefully almost as any young woman could have done.
Not far away from Aunt Jane’s lives George Roach, a colored man seventy-six years of age, who enjoys as good health and is as active as many who are twenty years his junior. He stated that he came here in the year 1816 from Northumberland county where he was born free. The canal had not been build and there were very few houses here, the largest one at the lower end of town, which is now occupied by Mr. J.V. Brown. It was then the residence of Mr. Michael Ross.
There was also in the same neighborhood a frame house where Mr. Tinnsman now lives, and Judge Woodward lived in the same neighborhood. Mr. Vannerdilt had his blacksmith shop and house close by, and there was an old log house very near there that was recently burned down.
We had a paper here then, the Lycoming Gazette, published by Mr. Thomas Simpson. I was steward on the first packet that ever ran the canal, and I ran up to a farm which is now called Lock Haven. My first vote was in this city, in the year 1817, when I voted for Joseph Heister, a Federal, for Governor, and my next vote was for Andrew Jackson, for President, and, added Mr. Roach with a twinkle in his eye, we elected him.
My Mother
Died at the age of on hundred and ten years, and was the property in the early portion of her life of Mr. Harris, who lived where Harrisburg is now located, and after whom the place is named. He traded a great deal with the Indians, coming up the river in his canoe made of bark for that purpose, as far as Lock Haven. Mr. Roach has a store on River alley, is a fluent talker, and reads and writes well.
