The SNYDER COUNTY POST History Page

VISIT OUR FRIENDS AT

The Snyder County Post

To Post Your News Item, Email editor@snydercountypost.com

From the Archives of
The
Middleburg Post

116 Years Ago - 1895

JANUARY
1. 12 degrees below zero
21. Post office moved from Gabriel Beaver's building to the new building of the First National Bank.
22. William J. Gortner, Selinsgrove, committed suicide.
25. Bobsled collision with freight train at Kreamer. Isaac Romig and son, Charles, killed instantly.
31. POST published account of Stuck Massacre.

FEBRUARY
1. T.B. McWilliams purchased the Shindel drug store.
8-10. Middleburg snow bound. Not train service for three days.
11. Musical convention in Middleburg.
24. U.E. church at Aline is dedicated.
28. Real estate valuation of Snyder county for taxation purposes: $4,400,000
28. Approval of court to change the name Missionary Institute, Selinsgrove, to Susquehanna University.

MARCH
16. Prof. Charles W. Smith won the Bloomsburg Normal School scholarship prize awarded by the POST for being Snyder County's best teacher.

APRIL
1. W.H. Smith took charge of the Central Hotel.
1. Middleburg POST offers two prizes of scholarships to Bloomsburg Normal School.
10. Thirty-four applicants for liquor licenses in Snyder County.

MAY
1. Seebold and Riegle began erecting a beer bottling establishment on East Market Street in Middleburg.
8. Frank Weller accidently killed at Red Bank, Washington township.
16. A petition was presented to the county commissioners to build a bridge across the river at Port Trevorton.
30. POST publishes a notice of Abe Lazy's death and also a portrait of the deceased.
31. 182 births and 88 deaths in Snyder County in the past six months.

JUNE
8. Real estate evaluation for assessment purposes in Snyder County officially $4,365,329.
20. Isaac Longacre, Snyder County's oldest auctioneer, died, aged 65 years.

JULY
19. John Coleman and Hattie Street (colored), were brought to the county jail for holding up and robbing a stranger at Clement's Park.

The Stock Indian Massacre

    The site of the Stock Indian Massacre is in Middlecreek township, its exact site is about a mile due east of Hummel's Gun Shop in Globe Mills. The homestead sat on a farm formerly known at the John Shaffer farm.
    In the early historical records of Central PA the statement is made that this massacre occurred in 1781 in Penn Twp., Northumberland county. What has to be remembered is that Snyder County was not yet in existence at that time. Snyder was cut out of Union County in 1855, which was taken from Northumberland county in 1813. Northumberland, in turn, was carved out of parts of Cumber-land, Lancaster, Berks, and Northampton counties in 1772.
     Very little is known of the Stock family prior to their coming to the Middle Creek valley. Original ancestors are believed to have come from Switzerland in 1700 and Melchor Stock took possession of 230 acres through three different land warrants in 1765-1776. He was considered a prominent land owner in the area and became a road supervisor and a constable in Penn Township.
    It was reported that one one day, Mathias Schoch, the first settler of Middle Creek valley was away on picket duty with Captain John Clark's Volunteers during the Revolutionary War, an old Indian chief came to the Schoch home. His home was located on the present site of the village of Kreamer.
    The old Indian stayed by the fireplace all day but said very little, alarming Mrs. Schoch. He left in the evening.
    When Mathias Schoch finally came home, his wife told him of the event and Mr. Schoch in-formed his wife that if it happen-ed again, to induce the Indian to talk. He thought the visit by the Indian was an omen of some sort and wanted to gain information he may know.
    The Indian did return, and Mrs. Schoch gave him food to eat. and the Indian shared with her information he had on the coming Indian uprising against the whites in the area. He counselled the settlers to leave with their families.

     The old Indian chief warned Mrs. Schoch not to report him since he would have forfeited his own life in sharing the information.
    After Mrs. Schoch told her husband about the revelation, he rode through the night from cabin to cabin warning the settlers. The next morning the women and children were sent on horseback to the southern portion of the province but the men stayed to guard their land. These men were shelted in the old log fort which stood a short distance west of Kreamer.
    Only one family decided to stay. The family of Melchor stock. They had heard rumors before and nothing had happened. He felt nothing would come of this warning, as usual.
    On the day of the massacre, the father and three of his sons were in the fields, clearing land about a mile away from the cabin. Another son was plowing in a field adjacent to the cabin and Mrs. Stock was doing some baking in the bake-oven, built on the sloping hillside, just above the cabin. The others appeared to have been inside the cabin
    About thirty Indians arrived on the scene. These Indians were believed to be a roving band of marauding Indians that were bent on revenge that terrorized the white inhabitants of the area.
    At first, these Indians observed carefully the activities of the father and his sons but found them to be strong men, well armed, and constantly on the lookout for trouble. They decided against attacking them and struck out for the cabin.
    They lurked in the woods beyond the cabin for a while, and

then swooped down upon the unsuspecting and defenseless family.
    They first shot and scalped the son plowing in the field and killed one of his horses, while taking the other.
    The mother escaped from the cabin, defending herself with a canoe pole as she retreated towards the field where her husband and sons were working. She was killed by a tomahawk hurled at her while she was trying to escape. They then scalped her.
   The wife of the older son, Michael, was taken prisoner while her two year old child was tomahawked. The two young daughters were also likewise murdered and scalped.
    After the murders were done, the Indians started back on their way to New York state with their prisoner and horse. Young Mrs. Stock, terrified and bewildered with the gruesome experiences, became faint and could go no further. The Indians dragged her into a nearby field and there killed and scalped her. Some reported that this occurred only a few hundred yards from the cabin.
    When the Stock men returned from the field, they were greeted with a bloody scene. The alarm quickly went out of the massacre with Mathias Schoch again riding cabin to cabin spreading news of the tragedy. The men holed up at the Old Log Fort enlisted the help of three Indian fighters andmed Grove, Pence, and Stroh and in a few days they overtook the Indians somewhere on the headwaters of the North Branch of the Susquehanna.
    The posse hid in the woods and heard the Indians brag of the attack and waited until late in the night, when they were asleep. The Indians thought enough distance had come between them and felt safe.
    The men struck viciously killing many of them, with only one or two escaping. They took the better of the rifles the Indians had left and destroyed the rest. They scalped the Indians as evidence that the murders had been avenged. They also freed a 15 year old white boy whom the Indians had kidnapped.
     The men constructed a raft and started to return, but in the neighborhood of Nanticoke, the raft was wrecked and they returned by land.

Violent Indian Murders in Middlecreek Township...

A model representing the Schoch Blockhouse, sitting along Rt. 522 at Kreamer, was used as a defense against Indian attacks in the area.