Mingo Cemetery contains graves of many who participated in the Whiskey Insurrection
Monongahela historian Terry Necciai visits the Mingo Cemetery grave of Capt. James McFarlane with Norene Beatty, a Whiskey Rebellion researcher from Bethel Park, and her grandson, Graydon Sarnowski.
The epitaph on Capt. James McFarlane’s tombstone in Mingo Cemetery
Mingo Creek Presbyterian Church at Mingo Church Road and Route 88, about a mile south of Finleyville
The Mingo Cemetery grave of John Hollcroft, a man widely believed to have been Tom the Tinker, who tarred and feathered tax collectors and damaged the stills of farmers who sided with the government during the Whiskey Rebellion.
FINLEYVILLE – An American Revolutionary War veteran’s grave in Mingo Cemetery near Finleyville contains an epitaph stating he “fell at last by the hands of an unprincipled villain.”
However, the enemy in the story of Capt. James McFarlane’s death wasn’t the British troops, but rather the young United States and its excise tax on the whiskey he and other farmers in the region produced from their grain.
“These people were really mad at their government,” said Monongahela historian Terry Necciai. “They were not in favor of taxes and big government.”
McFarlane, of Washington, died quickly July 17, 1794, at age 43 after he was shot in the groin during an attack near present-day Bridgeville on the country estate of Gen. John Neville, who President George Washington appointed as inspector of the tax during the uprising known as the Whiskey Rebellion.
McFarlane was then given a hero’s burial in the cemetery in Union Township, grounds that contains some of the most rebellious of the men who took part in the insurrection, said Clay Kilgore, executive director of the Washington County Historical Society.
McFarlane’s death only served to incite more heated opposition to the tax that was enacted to pay down the new nation’s debt from the Revolutionary War at a time when farmers in Southwestern Pennsylvania had no form of currency and used whiskey to pay their preachers.
“They lived in log houses and were not so interested in material wealth,” Necciai said.
It’s difficult to pin down the exact history of the rebellion as few people kept records then on what became the first challenge to the new nation, Kilgore said.
He said he believes the villain mentioned on McFarlane’s tabletop-style tombstone is a reference to Neville because the rebels “hated him so badly.”
McFarlane was killed after a white flag was displayed at Neville’s house signaling a surrender to the rebels.
It was the second day of skirmishes there when as many as 300 rebels arrived in an effort to seize Neville’s tax records. One account of the story placed 60 firearms in the hands of the rebels while the others carried sticks and stones. Two were killed and an unknown number of others were wounded by the time the rebels set fire to a barn causing a blaze that spread to Neville’s house.
There were reports that Neville fled that day to safety while wearing women’s clothing, but Kilgore believes the general had already fled with his tax records to Pittsburgh the night before the second attack on his land on Bower Hill.
Mingo Cemetery, at 510 Mingo Church Road, is on the National Register of Historic Places because of the rebels who were buried there.
It also contains the grave of John Holcroft, who was widely believed to have been the mischievous character known as Tom the Tinker who tarred and feathered tax collectors and destroyed the stills of farmers who sided with the government during the rebellion. At the time there were 542 stills in Washington and Greene counties, according to the 1939 book “Whiskey Rebels: The Story of a Frontier Uprising,” by Leland D. Baldwin.
Others believe Tom the Tinker referred to a group of men led by Holcroft because tax collectors were tarred and feathered in Wheeling, W.Va., and Pittsburgh on the same day and there were claims that he was in both places at the same time, Kilgore said.
Kilgore said the cemetery “is such an important part of our heritage.”
“It contains the bodies of this group of men who put it all at risk,” he said.
Members of the Mingo Militia were living among an isolated pocket of Scottish and Irish Presbyterian immigrants who met town hall-style in a log church named the Mingo Meeting House beside the cemetery to debate whether or not democracy was going to work, Necciai said.
To make money, the farmers smuggled their wheat to England and also floated it downriver to New Orleans in a trip that required the men to then embark on a two-year walk back to their homes, he said.
The rebellion came to an end Aug. 14, 1794, when statesman Albert Gallatin gave a speech to the rebels in Monongahela convincing them to surrender to federal demands as thousands of President Washington’s troops were preparing to do battle with them.
Today the insurrection is celebrated annually at the Whiskey Rebellion Festival in Washington with this years events scheduled for July 7 to 10.
For festival information visit http://www.whiskeyrebellionfestival.com/