Paxton Boys facts for kids
The Paxton Boys were frontiersmen from along the Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania who formed a vigilante group in 1763 to defend themselves against attack from local American Indians in the aftermath of the French and Indian War and Pontiac's War. They are widely known for murdering 20 Susquehannock men, women, and children in events collectively called the Conestoga Massacre. The creation of the Paxton Boys stemmed from colonial anger at Pontiac's rebellion, and perceived lack of action taken by the Pennsylvania government. The Paxton Boys were violent and hostile, contrasting the Quaker pacifist worldview for which Pennsylvania is known.
Following attacks on the Conestoga, in January 1764 about 250 Paxton Boys marched on Philadelphia to demonstrate their anger at the legislature. Met by leaders in Germantown, they agreed to disperse on the promise by Benjamin Franklin to provide their grievances a hearing in the legislature.
Attack on Susquehannock
In the aftermath of the French and Indian War, no Europeans had yet settled in the frontier of Pennsylvania. A new wave of Scots-Irish immigrants encroached on Native American land in the backcountry often in blatant violation of previously signed treaties. These settlers claimed that Indians often raided their homes. Reverend John Elder, who was the parson at Paxtang, became a leader of the settlers. He was known as the "Fighting Parson" and kept his rifle in the pulpit while he delivered his sermons. Elder helped organize the settlers into a mounted militia and was named captain of the group, known as the "Pextony boys."
Despite no provocation from the local native community, the Paxton Boys made unsubstantiated claims that the Conestoga secretly provided aid and intelligence to rebellious tribes. At daybreak on December 14, 1763, a vigilante group of drunken Scots-Irish frontiersmen attacked Conestoga homes at Conestoga Town (near present-day Millersville), murdered six, and burned their cabins. Most of the camp burned down.
The colonial government held an inquest and determined that the killings were murder. The new governor, John Penn offered a reward for capture of the Paxton Boys. Penn placed the remaining sixteen Conestoga in protective custody in Lancaster but the Paxton Boys broke in on December 27, 1763. They killed six adults and eight children. The government of Pennsylvania offered a new reward after this second attack, this time $600, for the capture of anyone involved. The attackers were never identified. Many of the residents of where they lived had sympathy towards the Paxton Boys and their efforts, therefore no prosecutions were put into act.
March on Philadelphia
In January 1764, the Paxton Boys marched toward Philadelphia with about 250 men to challenge the government for failing to protect them. Benjamin Franklin led a group of civic leaders to meet them in Germantown, then a separate settlement northwest of the city, and hear their grievances. After the leaders agreed to read the men's pamphlet of issues before the colonial legislature, the mob agreed to disperse.
Many colonists were outraged about the December killings of innocent Conestoga, describing the murders as more savage than those committed by Indians. Benjamin Franklin's "Narrative of the Late Massacres" concluded with noting that the Conestoga would have been safe among any other people on earth, no matter how primitive, except "'white savages' from Peckstang and Donegall!"
Lazarus Stewart, a former leader of the Paxton Boys, was killed by Iroquois warriors in the Wyoming Massacre in 1778 during the American Revolutionary War. In the Wyoming Valley event, one of three famous massacres during many scattered Tory-Amerindian staged attacks on colonial settlements that year in Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, Mohawk chief Joseph Brant led a group of Loyalists, Mohawk and other warriors against rebel colonial settlers in the area along the North Branch Susquehanna River. The raids resulted in the Sullivan Expedition the next year which effectively broke the power of the Six Nations of the Iroquois below Canada; and forced the British administration in Canada to shelter the Amerindians who fled from the devastation caused by the expedition.
In fiction
Each of these books references the Paxton Boys:
- The Light in the Forest (1953), by Conrad Richter.
- Mason & Dixon (1997) by Thomas Pynchon, includes the Lancaster Massacre.
- Robert J. Shade. Conestoga Winter: A Story of Border Vengeance (Forbes Road) (volume 2; 2013) includes the Lancaster Massacre.
- Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould. The Amish Seamstress (2013); the narrator finds out quite a bit about Amish involvement in the events of the time.
- Ghost River: The Fall & Rise of the Conestoga, published by the Library Company of Philadelphia.
