12 Fish, Fishing and Fisheries of Pennsylvania. 



ate, and in their famished state they declared a more "delicious meal 

 was never partaken of" by either of them. In addition to these troubles 

 the Wyoming' settlers were great sufferers from other sources, the terri- 

 ble massacre by the Indians on July 30, 1778, is a matter of history 

 with which everybody is acquainted. Notwithstanding- these things^ 

 the hardy pioneers persisted in their location, but it was not until after 

 the close of the Revolutionary war, when all differences were settled, 

 that the fishing industries of the Susquehanna were allowed to be con- 

 ducted in peace, and their vast product made manifest. The bloodshed 

 through which they passed left the settlements with so many widows and 

 fatherless children that special provisions of bounty had to be made for 

 them. In this particular fish formed the chief article. An arrangement was 

 made among the fishermen by which one of the hauls at each fishery 

 every year was given to the widows and the fatherless of the neighbor- 

 hood, and to this was given the name of the "widows' haul." By com- 

 mon consent it was agreed that the widows should have every fish of a 

 haul made of the first Sunday after the shad-fishing commenced. In 

 one of these annual widows' hauls, it is given on good authority, that at 

 the Stewart fishery alone, about midway between Wilkes-Barre and Ply- 

 mouth, ten thousand shad were caught and turned over for the fund. 



Some years ago the Hon. P. M. Osterhout contributed to the Historical 

 Society of Luzerne county a deeply interesting paper on the early fish- 

 eries of the Susquehanna. After noting the arrival of the Connecticut 

 settlers he says: "Say ten men (and it took about that number to man 

 a seine) would form themselves into a company for the purpose of a 

 shad fishery. They raised the flax, their wives would spin and make 

 the t^ine and the men would knit the seine. The river being on an aver- 

 age forty yards wide, the seine would be from sixty to eighty yards long. 

 The shad congregated mostly on shoals on the point of some island for* 

 spawning, and there the fisheries were generally established. Shad fishing 

 was mostly done in the night, commencing soon after dark, and contin- 

 uing till daylight in the morning, when the shad caught would be made 

 into as many piles as there were rights in the seine. One of their num- 

 ber would then turn his back and another would touch them off saying,, 

 pointing to a pile, "who shall have this, and who shall have that," and 

 so on till all were disposed of, when the happy fishermen would go to 

 their homes well laden with the spoils of the night. Between the times 

 of drawing the net, which would be generally about an hour, the time 

 was spent in the recital of fish stories, hair-breadth escapes from the 

 beasts of the forests, the wily Indian, or the Yankee production, the 

 ghosts and witches of New England. 



This method of dividing fish lasted for many years, for a gentleman 

 named H. 0. Wilson, in 1881, a resident of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, and in his 

 boyhood days a dweller on the banks of the Susquehanna, gives testi- 

 mony to the same effect. He also learned to knit nets, the work beino- 



