bergie
Bronze Member
- Aug 2, 2004
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I came across this account doing some research today. This relates to Sullivan County Pennsylvania. Not in my area--someone should check it out.
A little known but interesting fact in the county history concerns the activities of the Copperheads during the Civil War. Few in number in Sullivan, they affiliated themselves with the notorious Fishing Creek Confederacy to aid the deserters and draft evaders who had taken refuge in a fort on North Mountain. Though hardly worth of the name fort, it was no figment of imagination. It was a rude block house built by the occupants themselves. It measured about 400 square feet, had two stories, a roof of bark laid shingle-wise, door of poles, fireplace of stone and table and seats of hand hewn logs. Fifty men could be quartered there at a pinch. It was headquarters for disloyal men from Sullivan, Luzerne and Columbia counties.
Game was plentiful in the dense woods; the mountain streams abounded with trout and to eke out their food supply, the men went down to friendly farmhouses on the Sullivan side and brought back provisions. A regular outlook was kept from certain hill farms in Upper Davidson Township to warn the refugees if it was not safe to venture down. This was especially the case after a detachment of troops had marched up Fishing Creek searching for the fort which rumor exaggerated into housing 5,000 armed "rebels."
Had the troops gone up Muncy Creek as far as Long Brook then searched for the camp around its source, they might have stumbled across it. But no military outfit traveled up Muncy Valley and the watchers had no need to use the signals they had adopted. The most overt acts of rebellion in Sullivan County included stopping the sheriff from serving draft papers by turning him back on the highway. There was plenty of loose talk about joining the Confederate army when it invaded the North and setting free the prisoners of war held at Elmira and some men are said to have shown their colors by wearing a copperhead made out of an ordinary penny. In the end, when the war was over, such deserters and reluctant draftees as remained in the "Fort" went quietly back home and those who had been caught and imprisoned by the government were pardoned. There is no record of anyone from Sullivan County having been convicted of disloyalty, although more than fifty were sentenced from the other side of North Mountain.
The ruins of the old fort have disappeared only recently. Where bark peelers, hunters and men pasturing cattle on the mountain once saw its walls and chimney, today all are moss covered and the sole memorial to its existence is the stream near which it stood and which is still called "Deserters Run"
A little known but interesting fact in the county history concerns the activities of the Copperheads during the Civil War. Few in number in Sullivan, they affiliated themselves with the notorious Fishing Creek Confederacy to aid the deserters and draft evaders who had taken refuge in a fort on North Mountain. Though hardly worth of the name fort, it was no figment of imagination. It was a rude block house built by the occupants themselves. It measured about 400 square feet, had two stories, a roof of bark laid shingle-wise, door of poles, fireplace of stone and table and seats of hand hewn logs. Fifty men could be quartered there at a pinch. It was headquarters for disloyal men from Sullivan, Luzerne and Columbia counties.
Game was plentiful in the dense woods; the mountain streams abounded with trout and to eke out their food supply, the men went down to friendly farmhouses on the Sullivan side and brought back provisions. A regular outlook was kept from certain hill farms in Upper Davidson Township to warn the refugees if it was not safe to venture down. This was especially the case after a detachment of troops had marched up Fishing Creek searching for the fort which rumor exaggerated into housing 5,000 armed "rebels."
Had the troops gone up Muncy Creek as far as Long Brook then searched for the camp around its source, they might have stumbled across it. But no military outfit traveled up Muncy Valley and the watchers had no need to use the signals they had adopted. The most overt acts of rebellion in Sullivan County included stopping the sheriff from serving draft papers by turning him back on the highway. There was plenty of loose talk about joining the Confederate army when it invaded the North and setting free the prisoners of war held at Elmira and some men are said to have shown their colors by wearing a copperhead made out of an ordinary penny. In the end, when the war was over, such deserters and reluctant draftees as remained in the "Fort" went quietly back home and those who had been caught and imprisoned by the government were pardoned. There is no record of anyone from Sullivan County having been convicted of disloyalty, although more than fifty were sentenced from the other side of North Mountain.
The ruins of the old fort have disappeared only recently. Where bark peelers, hunters and men pasturing cattle on the mountain once saw its walls and chimney, today all are moss covered and the sole memorial to its existence is the stream near which it stood and which is still called "Deserters Run"
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