Pennamite–Yankee War

Pennamite-Yankee War
Part of American Revolutionary War

Pennsylvania and the competing land claims of other states
Date1769-1799
LocationSusquehanna River
Result

Negotiated, Legal Settlement

  • Land titles preserved and transferred to Pennsylvania as part of larger settlement
Belligerents
Pennsylvania Pennamites Connecticut Yankees
Commanders and leaders
Pennsylvania Unknown Connecticut John Franklin
Strength
Unknown Unknown
Casualties and losses
1 killed 2 killed

The Pennamite–Yankee Wars or Yankee–Pennamite Wars were a series of conflicts consisting of the First Pennamite War (1769-1770), the Second Pennamite War (1774), and the Third Pennamite War (1784), in which the Wyoming Valley along the North Branch of the Susquehanna River was disputed between settlers from Connecticut (Yankees) and Pennsylvania (Pennamites).[1]

Grants to Connecticut and Penn

Claims on the Wyoming Valley were disputed from the start. The Dutch regarded the Susquehanna River as the border between New Netherland and the English colony of Virginia. King Charles II of England rejected all Dutch claims on North America and he granted the land to Connecticut in 1662, two years before his country's conquest of New Netherland and its subsequent conversion into the Province of New York. In 1681, Charles II also included the same land in the grant to William Penn.

The charter of each colony assigned the territory to the colony so that overlapping land claims existed. In the 17th century, fierce resistance by the Susquehannock rendered the debate academic, but by the mid-18th century, the double grant became problematic. Thomas Paine mentioned the conflict in his pro-independence pamphlet Common Sense as evidence that "Continental matters" could be sensibly regulated only by a Continental government.[2]

Both colonies purchased the same land by treaties with the Indians. Connecticut sent settlers to the area in 1754. Yankee settlers from Connecticut founded the town of Wilkes-Barre in 1769. Armed bands of Pennsylvanian Pennamites tried to expel them without success from 1769–70, starting the First Pennamite War. This was followed by the Second Pennamite War in 1775, and by the Third Pennamite War in 1784. The "wars" were not particularly bloody. In the First Pennamite war, two men from Connecticut and one man from Pennsylvania were killed in the course of two years.

Colonel John Franklin, a leader of the Yankees

Connecticut's claim was confirmed by King George III in 1771. In 1773, more settlers from Connecticut erected a new town which they named Westmoreland. The Pennsylvanians refused to leave, and the militia of Northumberland County, Pennsylvania made an abortive attack on a Connecticut settlement in December 1775.

Resolution

Conflicts continued between the two claimants at the end of the American Revolution, and the Continental Congress overturned the king's ruling in 1782 and upheld Pennsylvania's claim to the area. As such, it remains the only interstate dispute settled by Congress under the Articles of Confederation. But the state of Pennsylvania sought to force the Yankees from the land in 1784, which began the Third Pennamite War, with Connecticut and Vermont sending men to help the settlers. Umbrage remained until the Pennsylvania Legislature confirmed the various land titles in 1788. The controversy ended in 1799, with the Wyoming Valley becoming part of Pennsylvania and the Yankee settlers becoming Pennsylvanians with legal claims to their land.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Fisher, Sydney George (1896). The Making of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott Company.
  2. ↑ Paine, Thomas (1776). Common Sense (PDF).

Bibliography

Primary sources

The following printed resources are in the collection of the Connecticut State Library (CSL)

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