“Every man in Cumberland County is a rioter at heart,” lamented Governor John Penn the year he ordered his family’s land in Lower Manor subdivided and sold. The concurrence of his remark and his order to sell may have been mere chance, but young Penn in this instance established himself as seer and prophet. When he used the word “rioter” he spoke of the seething Scotch-Irish, who were virtually the only group then living in the County.
During their most turbulent period the Scotch-Irish on the frontier chose as their principal spokesman a member-of their own clan, the third patentee of Lowther Manor, Robert Whitehill.
Whitehill and his associates during the thirty-seven years in which he represented them earned more opprobrious names than “rioter.” Penn himself might later have used stronger language, for it was from Scotch-Irish insistence that the new State government in 1779 confiscated about 21 million acres from the Penn heirs, leaving only 500,000 or so in Proprietary Manors to the family. Because Lowther Manor had been created as a “tenth” prior to national independence, it escaped expropriation. Thus, when the War of the Revolution ended, the Penn family retained title to about 4,200 acres, or half the Manor.
Between his death at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century obscurity has overtaken Robert Whitehill. The public’s verdict needs explanation, as does the opposite judgment of the learned editors of the Dictionary of American Biography to illuminate him by including only this one man, of the thousands who have lived in Lowther Manor, for a place in their authoritative work. Several reasons for the neglect of Whitehill might be advanced: the eclipsing brilliance of his contemporaries; a tendency of historians to neglect his political faction in particular and losers in general (how much do we remember about a defeated presidential aspirant, Alton Parker?); and the scarcity of original letters and documents from his pen.
In the eighteenth century Whitehill’s popularity metal most annual tests in a political constituency extending over an area half the size of Connecticut. Cumberland County, until Franklin County was created out of it in 1784, covered Franklin, all of modern Perry, and parts of Mifflin, Juniata, and Huntingdon Counties.
Significance might be seen in the fact that Robert Whitehill rose to prominence during the year 1776, when the traditional leaders of the area were away from home participating in the civil and military affairs of the new nation. Political fences stood unmended. Even greater significance might be read into the fact that, once Whitehill supplanted the old leaders, these men never again could win elective office. The people selected Whitehill as their spokesman again and again. His predecessors could gain only appointive positions: James Wilson as the nominee of Assembly to Congress; Armstrong and Blaine as holders of generals’ commissions that were conferred, not voted; Magaw and Montgomery, who, after national independence, could not win elections.
Cumberland County was the nest, perhaps the principal source, of the consistent opposition to the traditional conservative leadership exercised from Philadelphia. This is not to say that the county did not have some supporters of the Republican aristocracy, but that the county at large did not follow the lead of its traditional patricians. It supported Whitehill. In naming him the county leagued itself with the political party which organized and ran the State for fourteen years.
On the frontier in the eighteenth century a candidate, of course, won elections principally because voters thought well of him personally rather than because he bore any particular factional label. Parties were mere informal, unorganized coalitions in the beginning years. Nominating candidates was accomplished by gathering in a tavern on a Saturday night and choosing person who could stand for office the following Tuesday. Whitehill was thus perhaps not the only man who could state truthfully that he “never intrigued for a nomination nor solicited a vote,” as he was once quoted as saying. A farmer and an office-holder, he had little spare time to canvass votes throughout 2,700 square miles— Lowther Manor to Lewistown to Mercersburg.
Another obstacle to the documentation of the day-to-day doings of Robert Whitehill springs from the fact that he spent his career among scenes dominated by the Titans of America—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin walked the streets of Philadelphia with him. Newspapers, usually mere reporter less appendages of printing shops, understandably neglected a Lowther Manor farmer. Militating against publicity which we might read today was a press which supported his opponents, with a few strident exceptions. Finally, the standards of political warfare served to obscure him. An example was the 1787 Ratification Convention, where the recording secretary copied only the speeches of the majority party. Whitehill’s remarks never appeared in the minutes at all.
Like so many of the Scotch-Irish, Whitehill was reared by a father who mixed governmental service and other occupations. Lancaster County assessment lists indicate that a James Whitehill (1700- 1766) was both blacksmith and farmer. Apparently he arrived from Ulster about 1723, perhaps with his brother John. in the early years he married Anne Bradshaw and produced one son, James, who died in 1757. Before 1729 he married Rachel Creswell, who lived until 1795 and bore nine children. While farming the 60cleared acres of his 400, James Whitehill received six times an appointment as “Squire” and twice the elective office of assessor.
The farm stood near the source of the Pequea Creek, on Henderson’s Run, once known as “Whitehill’s Run,” two miles from the old road called “King’s Highway.” On the next farm stood the church where preached Robert Smith, D.D., a Neshaminy Log College graduate. Here was good fortune for the Whitehill children, for Presbyterian preachers doubled as teachers. At Smith’s Pequea Academy studied John Whitehill (1729-1815), later to be Assemblyman, Censor, and Congressman, and Robert, who had been born July 24, 1735. Perhaps others of the family studied here, too: David, who migrated to Centre County; Joseph, who adopted Virginias home; and Elizabeth, who married James Moore, delegate to the 1776 Convention.
Robert’s education continued in the academy at New London Crossroads operated by the Rev. Dr. Francis Alison, called by some “the Presbyterian Pope.” Whitehill would have been remarkably impervious to have survived the Alison experience unaffected. The first American honored by a foreign doctorate, Alison was termed “the finest teacher of classics in America” by the President of Yale College and “a person of greatest ingenuity and learning “by Benjamin Franklin.
With Alison the student who could pay three pounds, 10 shillings tuition learned “Arithmetick, Euclid elements (and the) Practical branches of Mathematicks and Logick. Since Alison advocated making every pulpit a political rostrum and practiced his own dictum, students must have learned more than advertised. Alumni like Dickinson, Smith, Ross, and McKean, of the 1776 Continental Congress, showed their thorough education in the field of government.
Formal education completed, Whitehill in 1758 married Eleanor Reed (1734-1785), daughter of Col. Adam and Catherine Wood Reed, of Hanover Township, Lancaster County. Eleanor’s sister was the second wife of John Harris, Jr., ferryman and founder of the city named for him.
The first son of Robert and Eleanor, appropriately named Adam, for his famous Indian fighter grandfather, was followed by Rachel, honoring the paternal side of the family. The eventual heir to the Manor lands, James, followed. (This James is to be distinguished from his first cousin, James, son of John Whitehill (1729-1815), who served in Congress after hitch as one of the legion of militia generals in the War of1812.) Robert Whitehill, Jr., born in 1768, was the Dickinson College graduate of 1792 who moved to Waynesburg in 1807 to make his home. In 1771 arrived Elizabeth, who married Col. Richard Moore Crain (1777-1852), of the Harrisburg Volunteer Artillery of 1812. A fourth daughter, Eleanor, and fourth son, John, were born in 1775. Joseph, who died at19, was the last in 1778.
By 1759 Robert Whitehill owned 100acresinLancasterCounty, of which he farmed 35, and another farm which was run by a James Carr. Elevenyearslaterhisholdingswere200acresand two Negroes. During these years, unlike his father, he held no office in Lancaster County except a special one, the nature of which can only be guessed from the hints in the Colonial Records. On February 22, 1771, he was voted money by the Assembly to pay expenses incurred in “prosecuting the commissioners, assessors, clerks, and treasurer of the County...for misconduct in their respective offices.” A way to spend the pay soon developed.
Land poor as always, the Proprietors were selling Lowther Manor farms. In order to win support for themselves in their contests with the Assembly, the Penn family gave first choice to certain influential people, particularly the members of the bar. In this way the County Judge, John Armstrong, as well as the Scothe lured to Carlisle to share his practice, James Wilson, received the valuable Lowther Manor plantations which fronted on the Susquehanna River and flanked the Great Road from Harris’ Ferry to Carlisle.
Immediately behind Wilson’s land were 213 acres and 136 perches surveyed for Whitehill by warrant from John Penn granted April 3, 1771. Within a month the Deputy Surveyor for Cumberland County, who was also Armstrong, executed the warrant and returned it to the Surveyor General, who issued from the Land Office a patent to the land. Perhaps Whitehill used the cash voted by the Assembly to pay the 150 pounds of “lawful money of Pennsylvania” which was recited as down payment in the patent toward the total cost. Perhaps the very decision to leave Lancaster County grew out of unpopularity which must have developed as a consequence of his work in prosecuting so distinguished a group of officials.
In assembling materials prior to 1845 for his History of Cumberland County, I. Daniel Rupp wrote Col. Crain, who at the time was living in Robert Whitehill’s house. Rupp states that this structure was the first stone house built in the Manor. This suggests that the 37-year-old Whitehill began life across Susquehanna on a more advanced economic scale than did his neighbors. Among the Scotch- Irish the usual pattern was hastily to erect a cabin of logs which would provide unadorned shelter while attention could be given to preparing the land for its first crop, usually corn.
Probably Whitehill spent a year sawing the thick wood beams, building the two feet thick limestone foundation and erecting the square home. The earliest positive knowledge of the house is an account of the ’seventies by the Rev. John Craighead, who recalled that the troop of soldiers he led “camped at the Hon. Robt. Whitehill ’s, who opened his cellar (where there was a large fire place), and where Col. Hendricks’ daughters assisted in preparing the victuals...provisions and apple brandy.”
Solid and two-storied, the house was built in the lee of alight rise near one of the two springs which appear in the Manor on the limestone side of the Great Road to Carlisle. Whitehill, according to the elder A. Boyd Hamilton, farmed his acres for forty-one years. Hamilton, who could have known Cumberland contemporaries of Whitehill, described the “county representative from Stoney Ridge” as “industrious, of fine proportion, and robust health.” Another account suggests that he had small voice which was not agreeable to the ear.
Certain assumptions might be made from the fact that he apparently retained his interest inland as a basis for earning a living. His acreage in Cumberland County was increased to 426 by 1790, by which time he purchased more land within the later borough limits of Camp Hill. Except for the 400 acres which heboughtin1793in Northampton County, he bought land to farm it, not to speculate, as did so many of his contemporaries.
Unfortunately, about Whitehill personally only a few facts are known. At his death his goods were few. Mentioned in the will were two beds and bedsteads, bed “cloathes, my best set of drawers,” and a library and desk left to James Whitehill. Of all his possessions only two can be identified as surviving his century. The home, drastically altered, stands at 1903 Market Street, Camp Hill. Until the nineteen ’thirties the desk, made in three sections and distinguish able by its piecrust decorations, was traceable via his grandson, Dr. Joseph Crain (1803-1876) and an antique dealer. Almost illegible is his horizontal tombstone in the graveyard of Silver Spring Church, of which he was named trustee in 1796.
It was a time for great rejoicing that first week of Fall 1776. In the capital on the Delaware the good people of Philadelphia, still exhilarated from the wine of national independence first sipped only two months before were sampling another heavy draught—life under a new and radically democratic State government which had just replaced an oft times unpopular proprietorship. One in congruous event diluted the pure air of celebration.