.

First of all, Fithian's _Journal_ gives insight into the possible
motivation for such independent action. In an entry for Thursday, July
27, 1775, he writes of reviewing "the 'Squires Library," noting that
"After some Perusal I fix'd in the Farmer's memorable Letters."[44]
Fithian was reading John Dickinson's _Letters from a Farmer in
Pennsylvania_, which he had come across in the library of John Fleming,
his host for a week in the West Branch Valley. Dickinson's dozen
uncompromising epistles in opposition to the Grenville and Townshend
programs both inspired and incited liberty-lovers. Furthermore, Fleming
himself was a leader among the Fair Play settlers, and may have been
aroused to action by the eloquence of Dickinson's expression. Every idea
is an incitement to action and the ideas of _Letters from a Farmer_,
which made Dickinson the chief American propagandist prior to Thomas
Paine, reached into the frontier of the West Branch Valley.

The best contemporary evidence in support of the Pine Creek declaration
is found in the widow's pension application of Anna Jackson Hamilton,
daughter-in-law of Alexander Hamilton, who was one of the early settlers
and a prominent leader along the West Branch of the Susquehanna. Mrs.
Hamilton, whose pension application and accompanying statement were
made in 1858, lived within one mile of the reputedly historic elm. In
her sworn statement she says, "I remember well the day independence was
declared on the plains of Pine Creek, seeing such numbers flocking
there, and Independence being all the talk, I had a knolege of what was
doing."[45] Her son John corroborates this in his statement that "She
and an old colored woman are the only persons now living in the country
who remembers the meeting of the 4th of July, 1776, at Pine Creek. She
remembers it well."[46] Mrs. Hamilton was ninety years old at the time
of her declaration, which was made some eighty-two years after the
celebrated event.[47]

Following the outbreak of the Revolution and the meeting of the Second
Continental Congress, the Fair Play system of the West Branch Valley was
soon augmented by another extra-legal organization, the Committee of
Safety. Ostensibly created for the purpose of raising and equipping a
"suitable force to form Pennsylvania's quota of the Continental Army,"
it soon exercised executive authority dually with the assembly.[48] The
Council of Safety was instituted as the successor to the Committee o