Sugarloaf Massacre - PLAQUE
Conyngham, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Near this spot occurred the Sugarloaf Massacre on Sept. 11, 1780. A detachment of Captain John Van Etten's company Northampton County Militia, resting at the spring, was surprised by a band of Indians and Tories led by the Seneca Chief Roland Montour. Those who perished were - Captain Daniel Klader, Corporal Samuel Bond, Jacob Arndt, Peter Groom, Philip George, Abraham Klader, John Kouts, James McGraw, Paul Neely, George Peter Renhart, Jacob Row, George Shillhamer, Abraham Smith, Baltzer Snyder, John Weaver.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In September 1780, as the Revolutionary War flared along the Pennsylvania frontier, a detachment of Northampton County militia paused to rest at a spring near Sugarloaf Mountain. They were ambushed by a party of Native warriors and Loyalists led by the Seneca chief Roland Montour, and more than a dozen men were killed. The marker preserves the names of the fallen, a roster of ordinary frontier soldiers caught in the war's brutal borderland fighting.
Why it matters
The Sugarloaf Massacre reflects how the Revolution on the frontier was a savage civil and inter-cultural war, fought between neighbors, Loyalists, and Native nations far from the main armies.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the autumn of 1780, the Revolutionary War had settled into a grinding, brutal stalemate in the East — but along the Pennsylvania frontier it burned hotter than ever. The upper Susquehanna and the valleys of what is now Luzerne County were a borderland where the war had no clear front line. Farms sat within reach of raiding parties, and every isolated spring or wood lot could become a battlefield.
This was a country of militia, not regulars. Ordinary men — farmers, laborers, tradesmen from the settlements around Northampton County — took turns marching out to patrol the frontier, then returned to their fields. They were lightly trained and often lightly led, and the ground they covered was vast, broken, and easy to hide in.
Into that landscape came the wider war's fault lines: the Continental cause, the Crown's Loyalist supporters, and the Native nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, several of whom had allied with the British. The result near Sugarloaf Mountain was not a clash of armies but an ambush — the characteristic violence of the frontier war.
People & events
On September 11, 1780, a detachment of Captain John Van Etten's company of Northampton County militia had halted to rest near a spring in the shadow of Sugarloaf Mountain. Men on the march in hostile country prized water and a moment's ease; a spring was a natural place to stop, and a dangerous one, because the enemy knew that too.
The rest ended in gunfire. A party of Native warriors and Loyalists, led by the Seneca chief Roland Montour, fell on the resting soldiers. In the confusion, Captain Daniel Klader and more than a dozen of his men were killed. The suddenness was the whole point of such warfare — surprise did the work that numbers and discipline might otherwise have decided.
What the marker preserves above all is a list of names. Corporal Samuel Bond, Jacob Arndt, Peter Groom, Philip George, Abraham Klader, John Kouts, James McGraw, Paul Neely, George Peter Renhart, Jacob Row, George Shillhamer, Abraham Smith, Baltzer Snyder, John Weaver, and their captain. They were not famous men, and that is exactly why the roster matters: it is a deliberate act of remembrance for ordinary soldiers who might otherwise have vanished from the record entirely.
Its place in the American story
We tend to picture the Revolution through Boston, Saratoga, and Yorktown — great set-piece battles between uniformed armies. But a large part of the war was fought like this, in small, savage encounters far from any general's headquarters. The frontier was where the Revolution became, at once, a civil war among neighbors and a war between nations and cultures.
For the Iroquois nations, the conflict was an agonizing choice with no safe answer, and communities that had lived on this land for generations were drawn into a struggle that would reshape their world. For the Loyalists, it was a fight to hold the country for the Crown against neighbors turned rebels. For the militiamen, it was the defense of home ground. Sugarloaf shows how those forces collided at the level of a single spring and a single afternoon.
Events like this one remind us that American independence was not won only on famous fields. It was also paid for in these obscure, painful skirmishes — and that the war's cost fell heavily on people whose names most history books never had room to print.
If you visit
Come to this quiet corner of Luzerne County ready to slow down and imagine. This was not a fortress or a great battlefield; it was a rest stop that turned deadly, and the landscape's very ordinariness is what makes it powerful. Picture tired men, a cool spring, the wooded slopes of Sugarloaf rising nearby, and how quickly ease could turn to ambush in such terrain.
Give the roster of the dead the time it asks for. Read the names slowly. Each one belonged to a person with a family and a life in the settlements, and the marker exists so that they are counted rather than forgotten.
If you're building a road trip through Pennsylvania's Revolutionary frontier, this stop pairs naturally with the region's other militia and settlement sites. It's a chance to trade the famous names of the Revolution for its ordinary ones — and to stand where the war's harshest, most personal face was turned toward the people who lived here.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Captain Daniel Klader
- · Roland Montour
- · Captain John Van Etten
Related events
- · Sugarloaf Massacre
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sugarloaf Massacre
Sugarloaf Township, PA · est. 1947
In the autumn of 1780 a party of Native warriors and Loyalist Tories, turned back from an attempt on Fort Augusta, fell upon a detachment of Northumberland County militia near here. The surprise attack on September 11 left the small company overwhelmed, one of many such bloody clashes that made the Pennsylvania frontier a war zone long after the fighting had shifted elsewhere.
Fort Jenkins
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Shawnee Fort
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