USA | Allegheny Mountains | Stonycreek Glades | John Croner Sr. | John Croner Jr.

 Recently my thoughts turned to my ancestor, John Croner Jr. (Jan. 5, 1779–Dec. 17, 1848), who lived in the Stonycreek Glades just north of the town of Berlin, the Cloaca Maxima of Somerset County, Pennsylvania.  According to one history of the Brethren Church in Brothersvalley Township, where the Glades are located, John Croner was a practitioner of herbal medicine:

It was said that he traveled all over the mountains and glades collecting herbs and flowers for his medicines. He was one of the two doctors in the area and was busy all the time in his practice. Not much is known about either Dr. John Groner (old spelling of Croner) or his father Elder John Groner.

In fact, very little is known about the elder John Groner (Croner), and what we do know is confusing. Efforts to document his life are complicated by the appearance of what appears to be two different John Croners around this time. According to One Source:

When John Croner was born in 1753, in Pennsylvania, United States, his father, William Croner, was 20 and his mother, Dama Croner, was 18. He married Elizabeth Magdalene Speicher on 3 January 1774, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, British Colonial America. They were the parents of at least 3 sons and 4 daughters. He died on 17 December 1806, in Brothersvalley Township, Somerset, Pennsylvania, United States, at the age of 53.

According to this chronology, however, he would have been only seventeen or eighteen years old when he turned up in the Glades as a settler. This seems unlikely.  Five of his children are listed: Barbara Croner (1774–1841); Dr. John Croner (1779–1848; Magdalena Croner 1781–1866); Leah Croner (1783–?); and Abraham Croner (1785–?). Thus according to this source the John Croner named here was the father of Dr. John Croner Jr.

Another genealogical Account maintains, however,  that the elder John Croner. was born “about” 1728 in Lancaster County, just west of Philadelphia. This would have put him in his early forties when he settled in the Glades. According to This Version of events he was not married to Elizabeth Magdalene Speicher but to two different women: Elizabeth (born c.1730), last name unknown, and then to Magdalene, last name unknown. It is highly suspicious that the wife of the first John Croner was named Elizabeth Magdalene, while the two wives of the second John Croner were named Elizabeth and Magdalene. In any case, since divorces were frowned upon, if not forbidden, by the Brethren Sect to which the Croners belonged, it seems safe to assume that his first wife Elizabeth mentioned in this account died and John Croner Sr. later married a woman named Magdalene. It is not clear from the account which of this John Croner’s wives was the mother of John Jr., nor how many other children they may have had. Although it would appear that we are dealing with two different John Croners, both are credited with being the father of John Croner Jr. born in 1779, and both reportedly died on Dec. 7, 1806. This leads to the conclusion that the compilers of the genealogies somehow conflated the two John Croners into one.

John Croner Sr., in all likelihood the one born c.1728, arrived in the Glades in either 1770 or 1771, when he was in his early forties. As we have seen the John Croner born in 1753 was married in Lancaster County in eastern Pennsylvania in 1774, further evidence that this was a different person. The second John Croner, the one born c.1728, “built a log house over a small spring,” in the Glades in 1771, according to one account. Another account maintains, however, that an early settler by the name of Francis Philippi actually built the log cabin sometime prior to 1771, and that John Croner Sr. somehow, perhaps by purchase, acquired the dwelling and took up residence in 1771.

Jorg Frantz Phillippi, later Francis Phillippi, was born on October 1, 1729, in Alsace, France. On September 15, 1749,  he arrived in Philadelphia on the ship Phoenix and first settled in Lancaster County, west of Philadelphia. A French citizen when he arrived in the New World, he took an oath to the king of England and by 1753 was serving in the Virginia Militia under George Washington during Washington’s ill-fated march on Fort Pitt (current-day Pittsburgh). His religion is unknown, but he was probably not a Brethren, who were strict pacifists. This would soon get them trouble when they even refused to fight against the British in the Revolutionary War. In 1755 Philippi served as a wagoner in the army in General Braddock, whose march on Fort Pitt also ended disastrously. Philippi reportedly was shot in the leg and escaped on his own across the mountains into what is now Somerset County. At some point between 1755 and 1771 he built a log cabin in the Glades. Like many who first settled in the Glades, included a contingent of Amish, he eventually moved to the rich lands bordering the Casselman River to the south, settling in the village of Casselman.  He crossed the River Styx in 1798 and was buried in New Centerville, four miles north of Casselman village. An inscription on his Tombstone says, “He was the first white man to see Somerset County.” This is almost certainly inaccurate. Hunters, trappers, and traders dealing with the Native population had penetrated into Somerset County during the first half of the eighteenth century and explorer Christopher Gist had passed through the Glades in 1750, just a year after Philippi arrived in the New World. 

Tombstone of  Francis Phillippi. An inscription on the tombstone claims: “He was the first white man to see Somerset County.”  

By 1773 the log cabin in which John Croner Sr. lived was also being used as a meeting house for local Brethren. His son, the doctor John Jr. born in 1779, eventually took over the cabin. While living here he also turned it into a doctor’s office. Here he kept the medicinal plants he gathered in the area. The doctor also practiced blood-letting or blood-cupping. The cabin eventually became known as “Old Schweppy.” The word schweppy derives from shreppa, which is turn is a corruption of the German word schröpfen, which means cupping, or drawing of blood through suction over lanced skin. In Pennsylvania Dutch (Dutch being a corruption of Deutsch or German), the language spoken by early German settlers, the standard German ö regularly shifts to e, and so schröpf would naturally become schrep in local speech. The final a in shreppa is a common Pennsylvania Deutsch feminine/neuter noun ending. Eventually shreppa was further corrupted into schweppy. 

An historian who examined the cabin in the late 1950s wrote:

In talking about it (Old Schweppy), there is an air of mystery cast about it. As well as this author can get its meaning, it seems to indicate that it was the doctor’s office or laboratory, or place for operations, or a place for “bleeding” or “blood letting.” It was here where the doctor kept his herbs, etc. The medicine cabinets are still in the walls.

The same historian gives a detailed description of the cabin as it appeared in the 1950s: 

In the] back of the house was the oven that baked the coarse bread. The basement once had a huge fireplace in it. There was an opening to the good spring just outside the wall. The water flowed through the basement. This was for protection against the Indians and wild animals. The wall is high and made of thick stones. The upper wall is logs with wide rough clapboards covering. The main floor is really the second floor with steep steps that indicated that they were once hanging. There on the west wall is the built-in cabinet for the medicine bottles and books and instruments. There are many ancient tools strange to this author. The windows are ancient in design and material. Heavy oak shutters once hung there with rifle loop holes in them. The sleeping loft is most interesting. One enters it from a ladder type stairs, also indicating that it might have been hanging. The steps or ladder was lifted up each night for protection. The interior is dark save for a small window at each end, high in the ends beneath the steep roof. Four candle sconces were in the room, one on each wall. There are flax “Skutching” machines and ancient flax spinning wheels much as they were left a hundred years ago, in the attic.

The cabin still existed as late as 1977, when one Local History claimed it was “the oldest remaining house in Somerset County.” The current owner of the property allowed the cabin to fall into ruins and now no trace of its remains. 

Old Schweppy, as of 1977 “the oldest remaining house in Somerset County.”