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[edit] DocumentationSee:
[edit] Text...Captain Jacques Le Tort, and his wife, Anne Le Tort, [were] early Indian Traders near the Schuylkill...in December, 1693, [they] were wrongfully accused of carrying on treasonable correspondence with the Shallna-rooners [Shawnees] and the French of Canada. The first appearance of Le Tort's name on the Pennsylvania Colonial Records seems to have been on August 29, 1689, when the Governor laid a letter before the Council which he had received from "Capt. Le Tort, a Frenchman living up in the countrey." On May 22, 1690, a minute of the Council recites that "Capt. Le Tort, making his application to ye Council that he may have liberty to go for England; resolved, That he may, provided he performs the laws of Government in that case provided." The Le Torts were Huguenot refugees, who came to Pennsylvania from London in 1686. [1] Col. Casparus Hermann informed the Maryland Council May 4, 1696, that "Peter Basilion does now live at St. Jones's [St. John's, in Chester County, Penna.]; but formerly lived thirty miles backwards from any inhabitants, where he treated with the Indians, and was then reported that he kept private correspondence with the Canida Indians and the French; and since, he [Hermann] has heard that he has a brother taken by the Mohages from Canada, to whom he was intended to go, in order to redeem him. That Capt. Le Tort, a Frenchman, does now live back in the woods in the same place where the said Basilion formerly lived, and trades with the Indians." [2] A letter received from Governor William Markham of Pennsylvania in regard to Jacques Le Tort was laid before the Maryland Council, July 10, 1696. Governor Markham wrote: "Le Tort is a Protestant, who was sent over in the year 1686 with a considerable cargo and several French Protestants, of whom he had the charge, by Doctor Cox, Sir Mathias Vincent, and a third gentleman [Benjohan Furloy], to settle 30,000 acres of land up the Schuylkill, that they had bought of Mr. Penn; and that's the place he lives at." [3] While going to England in the ship with Governor Hamilton, Captain Le Tort was taken prisoner by the French and carried to Toulon where he narrowly escaped the galleys; but he finally succeeded in reaching England. There he made an agreement with the West Jersey Company to carry on a trade with the Indians for that Company's account, at his house on the Schuylkill[4] which was located on the ancient path of the Minquas, leading from the mouth of the Schuylkill, up that river, up French Creek, and down Conestoga Creek to the Conestoga Town. The senior Le Tort seems to have begun trading at Conestoga and Octorara as early as 1695. His son, James Le Tort ("son of James Le Tort"), with the consent of his mother, Anne Le Tort, bound himself to a five years' term of service to John King, a sea-captain, May 28, 1692.[5] It is recorded of him in June, 1703, that "James Le Tort, who about two years ago went out of this Province to Canada, and returned last spring, having been upon his return examined before several of ye Council and magistrates, and no great occasion found to suspect him of any evil designs against the Government, he having been bred in it from his infancy, had hitherto behaved himself inoffensively, and was seduced to depart in time of peace by the instigation of some others, without any evil intentions that could be made appear in himself; and being now in town, together with Peter Bezalion, another Frenchman and Indian Trader, it was judged necessary to call them both before Council, and for further satisfaction, to take security of them for their behavior towards the Government. Accordingly, they were sent for, and obliged each to give security in five hundred pounds sterling." A short time after these bonds were executed, James Le Tort was locked up as a prisoner in the common jail. He was released, however, and continued trading with the Indians, his mother assisting him; and, apparently, she was the more business-like of the two. He was again imprisoned in 1711, because of his French descent. He was licensed to trade in January, 1713, by the Governor, and is referred to in the records of that year. In his petition in 1722 to the Chester County Court, for a renewal of his trading license, he asked for the renewal on the grounds that he had then been a Trader amongst the Indians "for the past twenty-five years." Governor Evans found James Le Tort to be a Trader among the Shawnees at Peixtan, when in July, 1707, he visited that town to arrest Nicole Godin. Five years later, Conguegoes, the old queen of the Conestogas, complained to the Governor that Madame Anne Le Tort did the Indians at Conestoga great damage by "keeping of hogs; and that twice she turned them into the Queen's corn in her own sight." In March, 1704, Madame Anne Le Tort lived at Conestoga, from which place she wrote to Edward Farmar at Philadelphia, advising him of the killing of two families of Conestogas by the "Towittois" (Twightwees) Indians. In a letter written by Secretary James Logan to Isaac Taylor, the Surveyor for Chester County, November 4,1719, instructing him to survey lands for Peter Bezaillion's wife, Martha, for Moses Coombe, her brother, and for Anne Le Tort, along the east bank of the Susquehanna, between Conewago and Chickasalunga creeks, Logan refers, probably, to Anne Le Tort in the following language: "I am very desirous the old gentlewoman should have some land, that she may be fixed, and leave something to her grandchildren. Pray see that it be laid out of a sufficient depth. I think a mile and a half, or a quarter at least, is little enough. . . J. Le Tort is also to have 500 acres laid out in the same manner." In accordance with this order, a tract of land was surveyed to her, lying along the east bank of the Susquehanna just below the mouth of Conewago Creek. After this time, and probably after the death of his mother, James Le Tort settled at Le Tort's Spring, in Cumberland County, which took its name from him. He built a trading post at this place, which afterwards became the site of Carlisle. Between 1725 and 1727, or perhaps earlier, he had a store at the Forks of the Susquehanna, on the north side, where he carried on a trade with the Shawnees of Chillisquaque, at the mouth of the creek of the same name; as well as with the Mingoes and Delawares then living at Shamokin; with the Minsis under Manawkyhickon at Muncy Creek; and with the Indians of the Shawnee and other towns located on the West Branch between there and Great Island. In a conference at Philadelphia, July 4, 1727, between the Governor and Council and some chiefs of the Six Nations (they became the Six Nations about 1722), the Indians desired "that none of the Traders be allowed to carry any rum to the remoter parts where James Le Tort trades (that is, Allegheny, on the branches of Ohio)." James Le Tort was one of the earliest, if not the first of the Shamokin Traders to follow the Delawares westward of the Alleghanies. The site of an old Indian town near the present village of Shelocta in Indiana County, was known as late as 1769 as "James Letort's Town."[6] This was probably the site of his trading post "at Allegheny" for some years after 1729. As early as 1728 he made preparations for a trading trip to the Twightwees' or Miamis' country, which was then between the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan and the head of the Maumee. Le Tort's Rapids, Le Tort's Creek, and Le Tort's Island (all now corrupted to "Letart's"), in the Ohio River, along the southern border of Meigs County, attest his presence in those parts at a very early day, when he traded with the Shawnees and Delawares at their towns there: one of which was at or near the mouth of what since before 1755 has been known as Le Tort's or Old Town Creek; and two below,—Kiskiminetas Old Town, on the west side of the Ohio, eight miles above the mouth of the Kanawha, and Shawnee Old Town, on the east bank of the Ohio, three miles north of the Great Kanawha.[7] He may have settled in the Ohio country permanently; but more probably continued making trips between Philadelphia and Allegheny until he became an old man. His name appears as a witness to a deed of release signed by the Delaware chiefs at Philadelphia, August 25, 1737. As late as July, 1742, Governor Thomas speaks of having received a letter from " Le Tort, the Indian trader at Allegheny," informing him that some Taway (Ottawa) Indians had passed through the Shawnee settlement there, having with them the scalps of two white persons whom they had slain. No later references to Le Tort appear in the records of Pennsylvania; although there was a James Le Tort with Washington at Great Meadows in 1754, a member of Captain Peter Hog's Company.3[8] [edit] Footnotes
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