BV student to address massacre of Sewickley Creek

Dylan Haney is just 17 but said he’s been interested in history for as long as he can remember. He claims to have read every historical marker he came across as a youngster and considers a weeklong visit to Gettysburg a highlight of his early childhood.
The Belle Vernon High School senior worked on a project for National History Day when he was in eighth grade that focused on Pontiac’s Rebellion. The 1763 conspiracy led by the American Indian chief attempted to turn back British settlement in Native American lands west of the Alleghenies through an alliance of tribes along the Eastern woodlands.
As Haney began his research, he read several journal entries that dealt with a brutal massacre close to home, one in which several settlers, including members of the Col. William Clapham family, were killed at their homestead along Sewickley Creek under the leadership of a Delaware Indian named Wolf.
During the skirmish, which took place at the end of May 1763, the raiding party torched and burned a trading post at the point where Sewickley Creek empties into the Youghiogheny River near present day West Newton.
“I found reference to the attack and massacre in journals of Col. Henry Bouquet and (Capt. Simeon) Ecuyer and in a letter Ecuyer sent to Bouquet,” said Haney, of Rostraver Township.
Haney posted his written research project on the internet and later took first place in the regional National History Day competition at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh. He later went on to win fourth-place honors in the state competition in Millersville. (To read his project report, search for Dylan Haney Weebly on the internet.)
Subsequent researches under the guidance of Ross Farmer, a history teacher for the Belle Vernon School District, got Haney interested in the site of the trading post. Haney, his father and Farmer began searching the area around the mouth of Sewickley Creek with metal detectors once or twice a week over the period of a few months. For their efforts, the came up with a trove of items.
“I now have a display case at home with at least 25 items,” Haney said. “My teacher has even more.”
Among the artifacts they discovered is a 1749 British penny, two Spanish coins, an Indian trading bell, old square nails used in frontier days construction, serpent belt buckles, old knives, and a musket ball. Both Haney and Farmer donated some of the items they found to the Fort Pitt Museum and Bushy Run Battlefield.
While in the eighth grade, Haney gave a talk on Pontiac’s War and the Clapham Massacre at an Ohio Country Conference held at Westmoreland County Community College. At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, he will speak for the first time solely on the Clapham Massacre during a meeting of the Rostraver Township Historical Society at the Old Fells Church, 800 Fellsburg Road in Belle Vernon.
“What people may not know is that three people escaped the massacre by boarding a boat they then floated down the river to Fort Pitt,” Haney said. “There, they alerted the townsfolk who went inside the fort for safety.”
According to Haney, the American Indian siege of Fort Pitt lasted until August 5 and 6, when they left the area after Col. Henry Bouquet and his army defeated the warriors at the Battle of Bushy Run and Bouquet proceeded to Pittsburgh to relieve the British garrison.
During his talk, Haney, who plays middle linebacker on the high school football team, plans to include a slide presentation.
According to Stu Boyd, historical society vice president, George Croghan purchased land in Southwestern Pennsylvania that starts at the point where the Youghiogheny meets the Monongahela near McKeesport and includes all the land between the Monongahela to almost Brownsville and the Youghiogheny to Jacobs Creek near Smithton. He subsequently named it Rostraver, for his home town in Ireland.
“The Clapham family came into the area in 1758 and built their homestead and trading post along Sewickley Creek,” he said. “Things went OK for five years, until the Indians west of the Alleghenies realized whites were crossing the mountains and that their cultures were in danger.”
Pontiac tried to get the tribes from Vermont to Georgia to band together to kill all the British soldiers and settlers west of the Alleghenies. The British ignored the signs of pending warfare, including a huge increase in the purchase of black beads by the Native Americans. These were incorporated into belts used to communicate with one another as a sign of war. When the Native American allies finally attacked along the front in May 1763, they took nine of 13 British forts west of the Alleghenies.
“They tried to get Fort Pitt but were unsuccessful;” Boyd said.
The talk by Haney at 6 p.m. Thursday is free and open to the public. For more information on the Rostraver Township Historical Society, phone 724-823-0351.