#pennamite

The Yankee-Pennamite, or Yankee Penn Wars Wars 1769-1794, were a series of American colonial conflicts that took place before, during, and after the American Revolution, between Connecticut settlers and their militias, and the armed forces and militias of the Pennsylvania colonists in what is today the Wyoming and Luzerne counties of the US state Pennsylvania.

Connecticut Colony land claims in Eastern Pennsylvania dated back to 1662 when England’s newly restored King Charles II (b.1630-1685) granted a Royal charter to settle the Wyoming Valley to the Connecticut ‘Yankees’, originally a pejorative Dutch name for Englishman in North America.

King Charles II

In 1681 King Charles granted a similar charter to William Penn who became the founder of the new colony. An event which sowed the seeds for a long and relatively bloody conflict for the rights and land deeds to settle what became Western Pennsylvania.

William Penn 1644-1718

Other important preceding conflicts or events in relation to the War in the Wyoming Valley included the First Anglo Dutch War 1652-1654, the massacre of Dutch Mennonites in Delaware 1664-1665, and King Philips War in New England 1675-1678.

The Yankee-Pennamite Wars truly began in the 1750’s in a frantic climate of land grabs as speculators and settlers arrived in Western Pennsylvania to claim land. These settlers were of both Yankee, those from Connecticut or New York even, and Penn (Pennamite from the English Penn family, who ruled the Pennsylvania colony) descent.

There were three separate Yankee-Pennamite Wars during 1769-1794, only in remission for a time during the height of the American Revolution.

The First Yankee-Pennamite War began in 1769 and was fought until August 1771. After some skirmishing and the harassment of local officials a Connecticut army Major by the name of John Durkee marched on Pennsylvania, erecting the Forty Fort, named for the first 40 or so settlers who came to the Wyoming Valley, later erecting another named Fort Durkee and reinforcing the region with an army of around 300 men or so.

After Durkee was captured and his fort seized by a force of Pennamite militia, another Connecticut major Zebulon Butler (b.1731-1795), a veteran of the French and Indian Wars, took control of all the Connecticut army and militia forces in Pennsylvania.

Zebulon Butler

Butler quickly took charge recruiting the services of Captain Lazarus Steward and the Paxton boys, known also as the Paxton or Paxtang Rangers, an irregular force of Pennsylvania outlaws who had fought their own war against Penn control from 1763-1764.

Colonial American rangers were a very important military asset to the nations, states, and political movements who fought for control over the territories and eventual states and provinces of North America.

Rangers used a combination of skills most certainly inspired by the Native tribes of the North and Northwest of the America’s, like the Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida, and Onondaga of the Iroquois Confederacy. In fact many Ranger units or regiments of the French and later the British were comprised of friendly tribesman Rangers who knew the land well.

Those of the colonial era fought with accurate long rifles, pistols, tomahawks, cutlasses or swords, and daggers with great effect & skill first in the French and Indian Wars for Great Britain, France, and the American colonists who all relied heavily on the native tribes. The British would rely havily on native support from the Revolution until the War of 1812 and its immediate aftermath.

Depiction of Robert Rogers (b.1731-1795), a British Ranger in the French and Indian wars and later in the Revolution 

In the aftermath of the Yankee-Pennamite Wars, Rangers were important to the security and ever present conflicts in the Wyoming Valley and in the other frontier regions from the mid 1700’s to 1800’s.

In 1770 the region had more than 3,000 Yankee settlers and with the support of the Scots-Irish population of Lancaster county, Connecticut could all but overthrew Pennsylvania’s authority in a territory more than 200 miles away from Connecticut’s colonial (or modern day) boundaries.

Butler’s Yankees had won the war by 1771 by first recapturing Fort Durkee, and then capturing the Pennamite built Fort Wyoming on the banks of the Susquehanna River after a 26 day siege.

After the First Yankee-Pennamite War part of the Wyoming Valley territory from 1771-1778 became known as Westmoreland, and was annexed to the control of Connecticut’sLitchfield County. Zebulon Butler represented Westmoreland in the Connecticut General Assembly (state senate) from 1774-1776, and was later a Continental Army general partly due to his fame in the region.

The Second Yankee-Pennamite War took place in 1775 beginning with skirmishes & ambushes between the settlers and militias of the Wyoming Valley. This short but bloody confrontation ended at the Battle of Rampart Rocks on Christmas Day 1775.

Here an unknown number of Yankee’s under Zebulon Butler defeated 600 or so Pennamite’s under Colonel Plunkett.

The Yankees used the natural cover of the Rampart Rocks cliffs near the Nanticoke Falls to inflict heavy casualties on the Penns who retreated after considerable losses.

Shortly after however the Yankee’s and Pennsylvanians, seemingly forgetting their past conflicts called an official treaty, supplying fighting men to the Continental army and the militias of the Patriot cause.

Western Pennsylvania was also a haven for Loyalists which would cause further bloodshed as a result. It was Butler who led the Yankee militia during the Revolution, up until the infamous Massacre of Wyoming Valley following the Battle of Wyoming July 3, 1778.

Following America’s War for Independence in 1783 politically and diplomatically Connecticut had lost all sympathy and support for their far off claims in Pennsylvania. In 1782 the Decree of Trenton confirmed that the Yankees were illegally settled in theWyoming Valley, loosing their rights as citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and being stripped of their land claims as a result.

When the Third Pennamite War was fought and ended in 1783 after a Yankee army burned the fort Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania and then abandoned the settlers of the Wyoming Valley Connecticut control in Western PA was virtually over. However bloodshed and a low intensity guerilla conflict of sorts would ensue for years after, not completely ending until 1794.

Part of the renewed Yankee campaigns from 1784-1790 began when 700-800 Yankee settlers were forcefully driven from their lands, loosing their claims and for some of them, their lives, following hardships in the wilderness after their eviction by the Pennamites.