Lou’s View – July 3, 2014
The Fair Play Mystery
by Lou Bernard
Every Fourth of July, I get the urge to write about the Fair Play Men … The guys who lived at Fort Horn in McElhattan, and signed a Declaration of Independence. Not the one you know, another one known as the Tiadaghton Declaration of Independence. (Or the Pine Creek Declaration, for those who can’t spell.) They gathered under a tree on July 4, 1776, and signed a document declaring their break from England. (Some sources say it was actually July 2, but that’s not as poetic, so we’ll ignore it.)
I have written about them before, for this holiday. But I don’t want to just trot out the same old thing every year … I don’t want people thinking I’m a one-trick wonder. There is, though, a possible mystery … Or a solution to one … Connected with this history, and I thought I’d mention that.
This would be Junius, a British mystery stretching back over two hundred years.
Junius first appeared in 1769 as the pen name of an anonymous letter-writer to the newspapers in London. He was highly critical of the king, who would have happily had him killed, except he couldn’t figure out who this guy was. He hid his identity, sending mail through a series of drops and secret posts.
He was very sarcastic about the king and the British government, writing satire that made them look like fools. The government hated it … And the people loved it. He was very smart-alecky in print, which people enjoyed. (I’m told I sell papers for largely the same reason.)
Junius faded out of the public eye after his last letter on January 21, 1772. An impostor popped up briefly, but didn’t last long. Nobody ever unmasked him, and his identity remains a mystery even today.
So, my question is: Did he move to present-day Clinton County?
I’ve suggested before that Junius may have traveled here and become one of the Fair Play Men. My friend Norman Houser from Centre County, who was the one who told me about the Junius mystery in the first place, tells me I’m really reaching on this one. He is correct. But when you look at the facts, I can make a pretty good case for it.
Out of the twenty-three known signers of the Tiadaghton Declaration, my favorite candidate would have to be Adam Carson. Carson built a fort along the Susquehanna near the eastern end of present-day Lock Haven, but it quickly flooded and he gave it up and moved into the McElhattan area. He’s my favorite candidate for Junius.
When I first got curious about this, I looked up all the signers of the Tiadaghton Declaration. There were twenty-three. I immediately crossed off all the ones born in Germany, Scotland, or Holland, as they were unlikely to be writing letters to the London papers. That left about a dozen. Then I looked into when they’d come to America; Junius was certainly not sending letters from this country, and e-mail hadn’t been invented yet. Ruling out the ones who came here pre-1769, that left me with two: Alexander Donaldson and Adam Carson. Carson is the most likely.
Let’s take a look at what we know about Junius, and compare it with Adam Carson.
Junius was British. Adam Carson was British. That one’s easy.
Junius was critical of the British government. Carson not only left England to live in America, he was one of the signers of a document declaring freedom from Britain. You don’t do that if you’re highly supportive of the old government.
Junius was a good writer. Again, Carson helped with the writing of the Tiadaghton Declaration. I can’t be sure if he actually wrote it himself—Chances are he did not, some sources suggest a Thomas Clark was the main composer—But it is certain that he signed it, and assisted with the writing.
Junius stopped writing in 1772. Carson, from what I can discern, arrived in America and built his fort about 1773. Assuming he stopped sending letters when he left the country, the timing works out.
Was Adam Carson really Junius? Maybe, maybe not. It’s as good a theory as anyone else’s, I suppose, and a fun mystery to think about. Maybe Junius actually signed the Tiadaghton Declaration—Which was, by the way, buried somewhere in the McElhattan area and never found. So there’s another mystery.
