James Nisbitt ²

  General Notes:

As a youth, James Nisbitt attended the best schools in Newark.

Early in 1746, orders came from England that all the Colonies as far south as Virginia were to furnish troops for the capture of Canada. In the Spring of 1746, James Nisbitt was among the six hundred troops were sent by the New Jersey Province to Albany, New York, the place of rendezvous for the Canada expedition. Here they remained idle, without pay and poorly fed, through the following Autumn and Winter, and then were sent home.

In 1760 James Nisbitt, accompanied by his wife and four children, moved from Newark to Fairfield Co., Connecticut.

In 1763, he and his cousin Elias Ward purchased 300 acres of a plantation called "Greycourt", lying about five miles from the town of Goshen, Orange Co., New York.

James Nisbitt settled at Greycourt with his family, and farmed there during the following nine years.

In 1769, James purchased a share of the Susquehanna Company. He arrived in the Connecticut settlement in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania in the second company of settlers. He was one of 171 proprietors and settlers on Susquehanna River at Wilkesbarre, who in 1769 signed a petition to the General Assembly of Connecticut asking to have a county erected, and the necessary officers commissioned and established.

Early in November, 1769, by order of the Pennsylvania Proprietary Government, a force of more than 250 armed men , called Pennamites, marched into the Wyoming Valley, captured several settlers (who were immediately sent in irons to Philadelphia), and then besieged the fort at Wilkesbarre where the remaining settlers had fled. On the 14th of November the "Yankees" surrendered. Under the terms of surrender, all the settlers under the Susquehanna Company were to depart from the Valley within three days, except 14 of them, including James, who were appointed to remain to look after the crops, livestock, etc., belonging to the settlers.

Perhaps James did not remain at Wilkesbarre very long, for he seems to have been at his Greycourt farm in New Jersey (where his wife and children were still residing) on December 12, 1769, when he and his wife Phebe sold 120 acres of the Greycourt.

Early in March, 1770, a well -armed body of men, among who was James Nisbitt, returned to Wyoming and drove out the Pennamites.

During the year 1770 there were frequent conflicts between the Pennamites and Yankees. In January, 1771, the Yankees were again driven out by a large party of Pennamites. This was the fifth expulsion of the Yankees.

In July, 1771, James Nisbitt was a member of a large expedition of Yankee settlers formed under the command of Captain Zebulon Butler to once again expel the Pennamites. Each man armed and equipped himself, and provided his own rations. After a siege of 26 days, the Pennamites capitulated on the 15th of August and departed from the Valley.

James Nisbitt having built a large house on his "home lot," went to Greycourt in November, 1772, and spent the Winter with his family. Early in the Spring of 1773 he returned to Plymouth, accompanied by his wife and eight children and brought all their movable belongings.

By 1778, the British military authorities had decided to employ certain tribes of Indians to aid in carrying on a war on the frontiers. The people dwelling at Wyoming were somewhat defenseless. Over 200 men were then away with Washington's army or in other military organizations. Thus, the able-bodied male inhabitants of Wyoming between 16 and 60 years of age were conscripted into the 24th Regiment, Connecticut Militia. James Nisbitt, who was then 60 years old, was a member of the Plymouth company commanded by Captain Asaph Whittlesey.

On June 30, 1778, a combined force of British Provincials and Indians from New York State invaded the Valley of Wyoming. The "Battle of Wyoming" (a.k.a. "Wyoming Massacre') was fought in the afternoon of the 3d of July, 1778. The settlers were overwhelmingly defeated by the loyalist troops. James Nisbitt was among the few fortunate defenders who fought through the battle unharmed, and escaped the subsequent massacre. Along with several other survivors, he fled from the Valley.

James' wife, Phebe, and their children had hastened to Shawnee Fort at the first alarm of danger. After the defeat, they joined those fugitives who took the road leading to the Lackawanna River, and then over the mountains to the Delaware River. On the second day of their journey, which was made on foot, James caught up with them. It took two weeks to reach their former home in Orange Co., New York.

He arranged for the temporary accommodation of his family in the homes of friends near Goshen. James returned to Wyoming with Uriah Marvin and Samuel Ayers on the 16th of August, 1778 and rejoined a detachment of the 24th Regiment under the command of Lieut. Colonel Zebulon Butler. For some time the militia was engaged in erecting a fort on the river bank in Wilkesbarre, and in harvesting the crops and gathering together the cattle which had not been destroyed or carried off by the enemy.

Gradually many of the exiles from Wyoming returned. James Nisbitt brought his family back from Orange Co. in the autumn of 1779.

At a town meeting held in Wilkesbarre on 6 December. 6, 1779, James Nisbitt was chosen a Selectman for the town of Westmoreland.

During the War of the Revolution both parties to the Pennamite and Yankee controversy had ceased from active hostilities. But, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania took up the matter of the Wyoming controversy early in 1782, and petitioned Congress to constitute a court to hear the parties and determine the question of jurisdiction. As a result of that court's ruling on December 30, 1782 known as the "Decree of Trenton", Connecticut and the Susquehanna Company lost jurisdictional control of the area the Company claimed in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania assumed political control.

Pennsylvania began to assert their authority and on 30 October, 1783, Pennsylvania troops proceeded to Plymouth to execute law. Eleven of the Connecticut settlers, including James Nisbitt, were taken prisoners and confined in a guardhouse at the fort at Wilkesbarre under primitive conditions. They were kept confined some six and others nine days and at last dismissed without any crime being alleged, only that they were "Yankees".

On 25 September, 1786, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed an Act creating the county of Luzerne out of certain portions of the so-called " Wyoming region". The first election of public officers in Luzerne county took place February 1, 1787, and James Nisbitt and five others were chosen Justices of the Peace. In May, 1787, they were also appointed and commissioned Justices of the Court of Common Pleas of Luzerne County, by the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, James Nisbitt served as Justice of the Peace and as Judge of the Court of Common Pleas until June, 1788, when, just before his seventieth birthday, he resigned both offices. ^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9}

  Research Notes:

After the "Decree of Trenton" in 1782, twenty years passed before overlapping Pennsylvania speculators and Connecticut settlers reached satisfactory agreement. At first, Pennsylvania offered settlers in the seventeen Company townships granted, surveyed, and settled before December 30, 1782 an opportunity to become certified claimants if they could prove a chain of title from before that date. Later, settlers only needed to prove that they had obtained their land under the rules and regulations of the Susquehanna Company. Certification meant a legal patent to the tract, but it also meant purchasing one's land all over again, this time from Pennsylvania.

DAR Ancestor #: A082353
¹⁰

James married Phebe Harrison, daughter of Stephen Harrison and Unknown, in 1748 in Newark, Essex Co., New Jersey.¹ (Phebe Harrison was born in 1728 in New Jersey ¹ and died on 17 Feb 1802 in Plymouth, Westmoreland Co., Connecticut (now Luzerne Co., Pennsylvania) ².)

  Marriage Notes:

second cousin ¹