If you are following my family folktales - while there are other ghost stories to be told, and while there are tales of our cowboy cousins, today I want to tell the tale of one of my Quaker ancestors, Peter Babb, as he and his family made their way southward from the New England states...

Arriving in Delaware, the Babb family became Quakers in good standing, but they were apparently not suited for the life of a Quaker, at least not as a family. In the Quaker records, we find Babb after Babb being disowned for many infractions of the Quaker discipline.

A number were disowned for marrying out of unity or marrying contrary to discipline. Then there was one who was punished for having been seen sitting in a public place on a Sunday. Another attended too many weddings, while still another couple was disowned for being married by a "common hireling preacher."

Most of the ones disowned seem to have taken their punishment in stride. One, however, was not been able to shoulder the punishment. This was Samson Babb, a great-great-grandson of Phillip, the presumed Ghost of Appledore, who was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania. This is his tale:

Samson, son of Peter Babb and Mary Lewis, was born in West Caln Township in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The son of Quaker parents, he was brought up in that faith. But like a number of other Babbs of his generation, he evidently found the life of a Quaker difficult.

In 1767, about the time he married Ann Way, daughter of John Way and Ann Hannum, the Society disowned Samson for keeping and playing a fiddle. Now, Sampson and his fiddle were well known throughout Pennsylvania. The fiddle was so much a part of Samson, that it would, at times, play without Sampson's lead. At night, the fiddle playing could be heard around the country side, and the wind carried the notes near and far.

One night, in the dead of winter, Samson received word of the impending death of a small child. The snow was just beginning to fly, but Samson made ready to go to the home of his dear, and possibly only, friends to give comfort to them in their time of sorrow. However, before he could leave his cabin, the snow came, and was falling so heavily that it prevented Samson from leaving home. He sat in front of the great fire place with his head in his hands and prayed.

As his eyes wandered to the corner where he kept his fiddle, he saw that it was not there. He started a search of the cabin, but the fiddle was not to be found. He looked up, down, under, into and through. He went to the barn and even searched through the hay. He disturbed the chickens in the hen house. He coughed as he searched the smoke house. He shivered as he prodded through the ice cellar. But the fiddle was not to be found.

Ann tried to comfort him without success. The children were wont to help. His old hound dog was nosing every nook and corner. Finally, Samson fell asleep. As the black of night gave way to the graying snow-covered morning, Samson heard the well-known sounds on the wind coming from his fiddle.

He and his family bundled up against the cold and followed the music - straight to the cabin of his friends where the once sick child was happily dancing, and the fiddle was gaily playing.

To this day it is said that Samson dreamed the incident. But no one has been able to say why the sick child and her family had the same dream.

Samson continued to live for a while in Caln Township, but in 1786 when the county seat was moved to West Chester, he moved to that town where he became a tavern keeper. Three years later he built the Black Bear Hotel, which remained in the Babb family until 1867, at which time it was torn down and replaced by the Farmer's National Bank Building.

But this life was not for him, for around 1800 he left West Chester for the wilderness of old Tioga County, Pennsylvania. Tioga County at that time belonged to the County of Northumberland, and was exceedingly wild and forbidding. There were no white settlers for miles, and the country was mountainous and dangerous. So when Samson made his way up Pine Creek and settled on a tributary of that stream he became the first settler in this recently opened territory. The stream on which he settled is known today as Babb's Creek.

Though he was seeking solitude, he was never the less a courageous man, and was well pleased that he had found a place where he could bury himself from the world. Though past middle life he went to work to clear a farm. His wife, Ann, and several sons accompanied him into this wild country, but the life there was not for Ann. After a few years she returned to Chester, leaving Samson and two sons, William and Jacob, to tame the wilderness. Samson acquired more land, and laid out another farm, followed by the building of a flutter-wheel saw mill about 1806.

Tioga was no longer the unsettled wilderness that Samson had found. But the advent of neighbors did not seem to bother him. He favored the building of a road through the area and assisted in its construction.

After more than twenty years of seclusion and hard work, Samson died in October of 1815. In his will he stated that he wanted to be buried in the northwest corner of his garden and walled in. This request was carried out. In later years, however, road improvements caused the grave to be moved to another spot. Samson provided for his wife during her life though she lived in West Chester for the last fifteen or twenty years of his life. His two farms were divided among his sons.

This was the life of a Babb disowned for keeping and playing a fiddle!

I have been told by a Quaker author that this is no longer the case. In fact, he would probably be asked to play his fiddle at the next folkdance! How times change!

You may contact me any time at [email protected]

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