Big Runaway

The Big Runaway

Date	July 1778
Location	Pennsylvania
Result	British victory, American evacuation of the West Branch Susquehanna Valley

Belligerents

Great Britain

United States

Commanders and leaders

Samuel Hunter

The Big Runaway was a mass evacuation in June and July 1778 of settlers from the frontier areas of what is now north central Pennsylvania during the American Revolutionary War. A major campaign by Loyalists and Native Americans allied with the British devastated the small communities on the northern and western branches of the Susquehanna River, prompting local militia leaders to order the evacuation. Most of the settlers relocated to Fort Augusta at modern-day Sunbury at the confluence of the North and West Branches of the Susquehanna River, while their abandoned houses and farms were all burnt.

Some settlers returned soon after, but the attacks were renewed the following year, leading to a second evacuation known as The Little Runaway. These attacks on the Pennsylvania frontier led to retaliatory scorched earth tactics by the American army against the Native Americans, including Sullivan's Expedition, which destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages.

In 1768 the Colony of Pennsylvania and the Iroquois Confederacy signed the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, in which the boundary between colonial and Iroquois lands was adjusted in the colony's favor in exchange for some financial considerations and other guarantees. Settlers soon began arriving in the area (known as the "New Purchase") and increased settlements along the West Branch of the Susquehanna helped lead to the formation of Northumberland County in 1772. The settlements along the river were in what are now parts of Northumberland, Union, Lycoming, and Clinton Counties.

...
Wikipedia