CHAPTER VII
FROM THE SETTLEMENT OF THE COUNTY TO THE WAR OF 1812
Absalom Travis – Securing Warrants – John Laughlin – Settlers from Westmoreland-From Centre County – Character of Pioneers -Pioneer Life – Mills- Churches – Schools Pastimes – “First Things.”
1792-1812
OF the settlement of Absalom Travis, the pioneer of Clarion county, few particulars have reached us. All that is known of him is that about 1790 he removed from New York, his native State, to the Black Lick settlement, Indiana county. There he remained but a short time, and about 1792-it is impossible to fix the date exactly-he came with his three sons, Robert, James, and Stephen, and squatted or settled on the spot now occupied by the farm of J. Barnhart, in the southeastern corner of Monroe township, Brodhead Thomas tract No. 5589. He did not live long enough to reap the profit of his enterprise and labors; he died on his humble homestead in or before 1795. His grave is still discernible.
We cannot but admire the hardihood of this, the first settler of Clarion county, in going forth at an advanced age, accompanied only by his family, to seek a home solitary in the wilds, where the half-conquered savage yet roamed at will; where the sound of the pioneer’s ax had never disturbed the forest’s depths, and nature in her most uncouth garb frowned at the efforts of man to smooth her ruggedness. He was many miles in advance of the northernmost settlements of Armstrong (then Northumberland and Westmoreland) county, and outstripped organized colonization by eight years.
It is not difficult to imagine what a panorama of Clarion county at the time of the arrival of Absalom Travis, would have presented. A vast expanse of forest, rugged and tangled, yet majestic, unbroken save by rare openings from which the smoke of the Indian camp ascended, or by windfalls where a storm had hurled the monarchs of the forest in impassable confusion. Here and there a dimly discernible Indian path traversed the waste; sometimes the vivid rattlesnake darted across it. The deer, the bear, the wolf and panther roamed everywhere; a few elk were yet here; the pheasant and wild turkey, and at night the, dismal baying of wolves, made the air resonant at times. Otherwise the silence was only broken by the swaying of the limitless forest, the murmur of the streams, and an occasional shot from an Indian’s rifle. Such was this region when this bold pioneer broke the spell of its vacancy and penetrated its unhospitable bosom.
The Travis’ family remained and have resided continuously in the county ever since. The sons of Absalom continued their father’s work and culled out a home and a little plantation in the wilderness. Their sojourn must have been an isolated one for a long time. The earliest settlers of Limestone township remembered the Travis farm as being the only one in the county for a number of years which produced apples, it alone having been long enough under cultivation. Robert and his brothers about 1814 (having either sold the homestead or been ousted therefrom) moved away, some going to Greenville and others to the settlement in Clarion township. *
The law of 1794 required that applications for warrants on vacant lands in the east Allegheny territory should be received, provided only that on each separate tract called for, settlements had been made, grain raised, and the improvement occupied by living thereon. Of this it was necessary to furnish sworn certificates of two disinterested parties.
This act for some years failed to accomplish the end designed. True, settlements were made, but they were of the rudest and most ephemeral kind- formal and barely sufficient to meet the letter of the law. A rude hut would be thrown together, a little patch burnt, cleared and strewn with corn. The woodsman slept under the cover of the roof and waited until the blades sprouted and the surveys were issued, when, presto! the settler vanished to more sa1ubrious climes, and the scene of his “labors” relapsed into decay and solitude, the bantling settlement-stillborn.
In this way the Ingersoll, Dallas, and Adlum warrants No. 795 in Richland and Licking townships, and a few other isolated tracts in the county were laid.
In 1798 John Laughlin (father of Reynolds Laughlin, esq.) and William Wilkins, of Indiana county, came here to secure warrants. Laughlin erected a cabin and made a clearing in northern Piney township for a 440 acre tract, west of the mouth of Piney, and now owned by heirs of Martin Kearny, Armstrong and others. At the same time William Wilkins settled a tract in western Piney township, returned home with Laughlin and sold his warrant right to Colonel John Sloan.
After obtaining a patent for the above tract (1800) John Laughlin made a similar improvement on the adjacent one, shut up the cabin and returned home for the winter. In his absence one Riley took possession, had the land surveyed and sold it to Keefer, of Westmoreland county, who sometime afterward removed here and took up his residence on it.
But these are transitory instances. No one followed on the footsteps of Absalom Travis, with the intention of permanent settlement, till 1800. Then occurred the effectual colonization of Clarion county. In the autumn of that year four sturdy young men crossed Redbank to “view the land ” and build a shelter provisionally to permanent immigration. They were Alexander Guthrie, John Guthrie, Thomas Guthrie, brothers, and William Maffet, a brother in-law, all of New Derry, Westmoreland county. Picking their way over the dubious trail with rifles in hand and driving a pack-horse laden with tools and flour, they ascended the valley of Town Run and then struck north through the unbroken woodland. They had come via the path from Black Lick, which intersected the Venango trail. ** This they followed, as far as it ran, along Town Run. Having penetrated the wilderness to a point a mile east of Strattanville, they halted, made a clearing, and built a cabin on the present farm of Samuel Johnson. They then returned, after having lowered a sapling, tied a sack of flour left over to its top, and let it spring back. They found it unharmed when they came back.
The circumstances that brought about the emigration from Westmoreland county to the banks of the Clarion are involved in almost hopeless obscurity. The tradition of the settlement makes them come out under the patronage of Surveyor-General Daniel Brodhead. The land was supposed to be vacant, and each settler was to take up four hundred acres, of which Brodhead was to have the half. It is very strange that a man of his official position should introduce a colony on land belonging to another, for it was afterwards discovered that they had settled on Bingham territory; and they were obliged to purchase their right to the soil.
The Guthries and Maffet returned in May of the following year, bringing their families and additional utensils. They were guided on their route by the trees they had blazed the previous year. With them also came James Maguire, Herman Skiles, Mrs. Fulton, a widow, and her son James, James McFadden and a few others.
More cabins were built, and the nucleus of Clarion county sprang into existence.
The Centre county colonists press hard upon the Westmorelanders for the honor of being the first on the ground, but the little “improvement” made by the Guthries and Maffet in 1800 establish their priority beyond a doubt.
The first immigrants from the center of the state were William Young, Philip Clover, John Love, James Potter, John Roll, John C. Corbett, Samuel Wilson, William Smith, and Philip Clover, jr. They resided in Penn’s Valley and neighborhood. About 1800 the tide of emigration to the undeveloped West set in strongly. They caught the infection, and purchased land from James Potter, the heir of the Pickering lands in this vicinity. In 1801 they set out for their yet unseen home in the wilderness A long and arduous journey it was over the Susquehanna trail through an otherwise unbroken solitude, “the women and children mounted upon horses, the cooking utensils, farming implements, such as hoes, axes, plows, and shovels, together with bedding and provision, placed in what was called pack-saddles; while following on foot were the men with their guns upon their shoulders, ready to take down any small game that might cross their path, which would go towards making up their next meal.” *** William Young had a cart and a span of oxen; they stalled upon the mountain, and were only brought to ascend by Mrs. Young going before and scattering feed in front of them. Port Barnett, near Brookville, was the only habitation of man encountered on their journey, and its lowly hut and rude mill must have met their weary gaze, after their struggle through wilds, as the very acme of comfort and hospitality. Here they rested, re-shod their horses, and purchased additions to their outfit.
Their lines were cast on the banks of Brush Run, but a mile south of the habitat of the pioneers from the south, and their improvements extended from its source to Williamsburg. Samuel Wilson returned to Centre county to pass the winter, and died there. In the following spring his widow and her five sons-Robert, Samuel, William, John, and David-came out and occupied his improvement.
It is impossible now to tell whether the colony from Westmoreland or that from Centre county was the first to be permanently on the ground. In all probability they came, almost simultaneously. There was little difference in the distance traversed, and the starting time would be about the same. A singular and interesting fact concerning these twin settlements is that they were unaware of each other’s existence for some time, though in places within gun-shot of each other. It is significant of the density of the forest at that date. The discovery was made in this wise: One day Alexander Guthrie heard the sound of an ax on a hillside to the southwest. Knowing that none of his neighbors were at work in that vicinity, he went over to ascertain who the woodsman was. Judge of his amazement when he discovered an entire stranger in the person of William Young, who was splitting rails. A similar incident is related by Judge Clover: “One morning,” he says, “early, my father was out in pursuit of wild game, when much to his surprise he heard a cow-bell. Starting immediately, he traced the sound, and soon came upon a small clearing and cabin together with the widow’s (Fulton) family. They were as much surprised as he was, not knowing that any one was living near them.”
In 1801 Samuel C. Orr, Tate Allison, William Cochran, Robert Warden, Peter Pence, Thomas Meredith, John Sloan, and Mark Williams, all from Westmoreland, made improvements further south, in what is now Limestone township.
In the same year Thomas Pollock and James Elder improved land in northern Perry township. In 1802 Hugh Reid and Robert McGarrah, from Fayette county, removed to this part of Armstrong county.
Abraham, John, and Isaac Stanford, John Magee, William Courson, Henry Benn, William Munks, and others settled the vicinity of Curllsville in 1804-5..
The first settlements made on Redbank Creek were between 1809-1815, by Henry Nulph, Colin McNutt, sr., the Doverspike family (originally Daubenspeck), John Ardery, and others.
Settlements were made on Leatherwood Creek between 1810 and 1815 by Robert Travis, the Beattys, Malachi Buzzard, and others. Capt. William Guthrie and David Shields squatted on vacant land at its mouth in 1810. Tradition, apparently well authenticated, tells that Shields’s son had been kidnapped by a band of Indians at a very tender age, and taken to some northern point on the shores of Redbank. After many years, and having moved in the mean time, the father discovered his whereabouts and rescued him; but the wild propensities he had imbibed in his long sojourn among the Indians made the tameness of the paternal roof galling to him. He married an Indian maiden, and one night, when a gang of Senecas were roystering about the house, he joined them, and never returned.
Mathew Hosey, and the Rankins, in Toby township, came about 1805.
Regarding Alexander Moorhead, who settled at a very early date on the west branch of cherry Run, there is a picturesque legend. He was a mighty hunter, and rivaled only by an Indian in that vicinity. The two met one day at a deer-lick, and picked off the deer as they came to drink. As it grew dusk the Indian wagered Moorhead that he would kill the last deer. The bet was accepted, and as the next stag approached, Moorhead leveled his rifle at the red man, shot him, dead, and then killed the deer. The wager was won.
In 1803-05 came the Everets, Hagans, McKibbens, Jonathan and Daniel Mortimer, and Alex. McCain, along the Allegheny. Between 1805 and 1810 the valleys of Beaver and Canoe Creeks were colonized by Westmorelanders of German extraction, the Bests, Berlins, Knechts (now Knights), Keefers, Shoups and others.
The earliest pioneers of Clarion county settled in clusters, as we have seen, and they may be classified as follows: The Clarion township (Westmoreland), the Clarion township (Centre), Limestone township, Redbank Creek, Leatherwood, Curllsville, Toby township, Madison, Perry township, and Beaver township, nine in all. The Centre county pioneers were of English ancestry; the great majority of the others were either of north of Ireland extraction or Pennsylvania Germans-two sturdy races, to whom Pennsylvania owes so much of her greatness and prosperity.
The pioneers of Clarion county were, as a rule, pious, upright, sincere in their religious convictions, and church members almost to a man. Theirs was a genuine manhood, both moral and physical, which, though disguised under an uncouth exterior and an unlettered intellect, was well fitted to conquer the wilderness and build up prosperous communities on a permanent basis. They are the foundation stones, of the structure, rough dressed, but true as steel
PIONEER LIFE
The founder of a college deserves and obtains the gratitude and honor of the generations who profit by his munificence. The founders of a community merit in some measure, a similar fame; they who live and thrive in a spot reclaimed from savage nature by the toil and hardihood of the first settlers, owe them a debt of gratitude. The uncouth woodsman who built a rude hut which was the nucleus of a town, is a creditor of civilization. True, the early colonists may not have had single in their minds such elevated motives. A desire of bettering their condition and acquiring independence was the preponderating idea which urged them to leave their comparatively civilized homes and take up their march for the wilderness. Alone, this mere selfish spur does not detract from their usefulness. But they had that noble instinct, too, though perhaps unconscious of it-an instinct inborn in each of us-to go where no one has been before us, to improve uncultivated nature, and make the wilderness “blossom like the rose.”
This is the criterion of the character of these pioneers-the hardships of many years, foreseen by them to be inevitable before anything like the comforts of a populous community would surround them.
We of the present age-the age of railroads, of rapid communication, with a store at every corner or cross-roads, and who enjoy the innumerable little conveniences of modern life-cannot realize the difficulties and privations, not to mention dangers, which the pioneers of Clarion county had to encounter. Imagine yourself traveling twenty-five miles to bring a doctor, going to Kittanning for groceries, and toiling seventy-five or a hundred miles through the forest over a clearance dignified by the name of a road, to visit your parents, and you may form some idea of it.
The first object of the immigrant, of course, was to secure a roof for his head as soon as possible. A place near a spring was selected, an opening made in the woods, and a log cabin was built. Often this was done at a preliminary visit the previous year. These cabins, in height about eight feet, were made of round logs, with a floor and roof of hewed – plank or “puncheon.” A recess was formed for a fire-place, in which the “back-log” supplied the place of the modern fire-brick. Later the familiar chimney of natural stones cemented with clay was constructed. Stoves and stove-pipes did not come until about 1818. The spaces between the logs forming the walls were chinked with wood and then daubed with clay. At the approach of every winter the walls were re-daubed in order to keep out the frosts. A piece of oiled paper sufficed for a window. The primitive colonist was satisfied with one room, partitioned into apartments at night by a blanket; his more fastidious successor preferred the luxury of two. A deal table, a trundle bed, a few rough made stools, some pieces of pewter-ware, a kettle or two, a carding-machine, spinning-wheel, and the omnipresent rifle and pouch-these comprised the furniture.
The hewn house-log was the first improvement on the round, and on the introduction of saw-mills they were clapboarded and furnished with a clapboard roof. The first saw-mill in the county was erected by James Laughlin and Frederick Miles, from Center county, at the mouth of Piney, in 1805. Very good, substantial roofing was made by splitting shingles of red oak by hand, in which branch of carpentry a few were very quick and expert. They exposed ten inches to the weather and were held down by cross-pieces, “weight-poles.” A few remembered the thatched roofs of their European ancestors, and built them of long rye straws; these had to be renewed and repaired frequently.
Venison and bear meat, potatoes, turnips, milk, and a little butter were the staples of the bill of fare. “Coffee” made from rye or wheat was good enough when the regular article was exhausted. Maple sugar was the only sweetener. The supply of fresh meat depended on the skill of the hunter; when the “meat” ran short the Nimrod would take down his rifle, take a perch at a deer-lick, and seldom fail to come home loaded with a quarter. In the earliest years the few who were unpracticed or timid in the chase fared miserably, unless they could prevail on their more skillful neighbor to act as their purveyor. If not, during the long winter months they were doomed to an unvaried diet of milk and potatoes. Mr. Jesse Berlin, who resided in Elk township, remembers of one family who were in such straits for food that they followed the cows to see what they got as forage.
In those days the virgin soil gave bountiful, hardly ever failing harvests to the thrifty. Almost every season a new patch would be cleared and seeded. Shear plows were in general vogue. The staple crops were potatoes, turnips, maize, wheat, rye, and grass. The latter three, however, were not cultivated till a later date, and the first hay produced in the county is said to have been grown on the clearing where Sligo stands, by Peter Delp and _____ Stanford. The primitive fanning-mill was a very simple institution. It consisted of a sheet suspended in the barn, and a sieve. One person waved the sheet, and another threw the grain and manipulated the sieve.
MILLS
In 1803 the first grist-mill in the county was built by Jonathan Mortimer, on Catfish Run. It was a simple tub-mill, as were all the earliest mills. The next, about 1804, was constructed at the mouth of Mill Creek, by Thomas Guthrie. James Laughlin (a brother of John) and Frederick Miles built a tub-mill, about 1805, in connection with their saw-mill on Piney Creek. Hugh Reid had one of the first mills on the spot now occupied by Reidsburg. The next mill was built by John and Isaac Corbett on Brush Run at Corbett’s dam. Henry Best, with the assistance of the neighbors, built a mill on Beaver Creek about 1812, the first north of the river. Before the existence of mills in this county the settlers had long distances to carry their grain Parker’s mill at the mouth of Bear Creek, one on Mudick, in Armstrong county, and on French Creek, in Venango county, were the nearest.
STORES
In those primitive times the remoteness of towns, and the scarcity of money stimulated home manufacture and made few purchases necessary. Iron, ” plaster,” and salt were the most important. For these it was necessary to go either to Erie or Kittanning. When Franklin rose in commercial importance it took the place of Erie. The salt wells on the Kiskiminetas produced large quantities of that article. Coffee was fifty cents a pound, salt one dollar per bushel, flour was brought up in flat boats from Pittsburgh at the expense of twelve dollars a barrel; calico was fifty cents a yard.
The first store opened in the limits of the county was James Pink’s at Curllsville, in 1812. For a while his only wares were tobacco, powder and salt. A little while after Hagan entered the mercantile business in Perry township near Perryville.
Whisky was an indispensable article, and a staple of commerce and consumption. Unburdened by revenue, it was a pure, copious, and almost universal beverage; its price averaged seventy-five cents per gallon. Innumerable little distilleries were scattered over the country. Whisky and furs largely took the place of currency in trading for salt, etc.
When cash was particularly scarce and desirable, some gathered pine tar, boated it to Pittsburgh, and turned it there into money.
Every cabin was supplied with a carding-machine and spinning-wheel, and the weavers of the neighborhood converted the home-produced linen and wool (mixing a little tow) into the compound termed linsey woolsey. The masculine garb of the pioneers in the winter consisted of a hunting-shirt of linsey woolsey (those fancifully inclined trimmed it with fur), breeches of the same material, or deerskin and moccasins. These were replaced in summer by homemade knickerbockers, deerskin gaiters, and linsey or coarse linen shirts, with collars four inches wide turned over their shoulders. A plain skirt and upper “short gown” resembling a modern sack, with the single adornment of a home-made neckerchief formed the usual feminine gear. The children’s clothing was simplicity itself, and during the summer months was often but a single shirt covering but half their nakedness.
The men folk were supplied with felt hats by a few hatters throughout the county; the Clarion settlement by Joseph McMasters, who plied the trade on his farm, now Samuel Frampton’s. The women made their own head-dresses out of rye straw, and became dexterous milliners. In course of time the more fine and fashionable home-made “leghorns,” fashioned of wire-grass, were introduced. Shoes were luxuries of once a year; in warm weather, barefoot was the rule for men and women, young and old, sometimes even to school and church.
The first tailors and cobblers were itinerants, brought from a distance by arrangement of the community. Useful tradesmen in other branches were found among the settlers; James Maguire was a scythe maker, Philip Clover was the first tanner and weaver. The first blacksmith shop in the county was kept by Philip Clover, jr., where the Stone House, near Clarion, stands; Philip Jones, of the Clarion, and John Cherry, of the Beaver settlement, were the first gun-smiths, and their houses were largely resorted to by Indians with firelocks out of repair; Jacob Herroldt, of Beaver, was a basket maker. Surveying was one of the most lucrative, but at the same time most arduous employments of that day. John Corbett, David Lawson, and John Sloan were the first resident surveyors.
THE INDIANS
Were of Cornplanter’s tribe, of the upper Allegheny, and were friendly. They roamed around in twos and threes, clothed in blankets and deerskin breeches. They were very familiar in the cabins of the whites, and would enter without knocking or ceremony, often to the consternation of the children. One of their first demands would be whisky. The pioneers generally treated them with hospitality and fairness, though this was due not so much to love for the red man as to the fear of arousing his belligerent propensities. There is no known incident of treachery or violence on the part of the Indians towards the settlers of Clarion county.
We take the following from “Caldwell’s Historical Atlas”: “An Indian by the name of Jack Snow was for many years in the habit of coming up the Clarion River to hunt and trap. Sheriff Delo recollects the last time he ever came here. It was in the fall of 1809. He and his party of hunters and squaws stopped and built a camp at the mouth of Deer Creek. After they had been there some time, Snow got into a quarrel with some white men who had gone to his camp. After the white men left, one of them (whose name I will not mention) threatened to shoot Snow the first opportunity that offered. Sheriff Delo’s father, who then lived at the mouth of Piney, went over the river and advised Snow to leave, informing him at the same time of the threat made against his life. This had the desired effect, and in a short time the camp was broken up, the meat, furs, and all the camp fixtures packed, the canoes loaded and pulled out, and started down the Clarion River.” The author adds: “The last hunting party of Indians that ever visited Clarion county,” but this is an error. They continued to encamp regularly till a later date at a spot on Town Run, Farmington township. The advance of civilization, however, curtailed their hunting ground and gradually hemmed them into the wilds of Forest and Warren counties. From the time of the arrival of the pioneers they grew yearly rarer in Clarion county, till about 1830 they disappeared altogether. The settlers were greatly annoyed by wolves in the fall and winter. The lighting of a brush fire at night would be the signal for a terrific howl from the neighboring hillsides; in winter they increased in numbers, boldness, and voracity, and pressing around the houses, made night hideous. It was unsafe then to venture out of doors after nightfall, and stock and fowl had to be securely housed. Panthers, wild cats, and bears were so plentiful as to make a rifle necessary for protection in a journey of any distance. Of smaller game there was a surfeit, and hunting did not begin to be a sport till about 1820. Rattlesnakes were in alarming numbers, and many an adventure and narrow escape from their deadly fangs occurred.
AMUSEMENTS
The settlers were an extremely social folk, almost necessarily so, for otherwise, their life – toilsome and solitary enough – would have been intolerable. Their struggle with the rude soil allowed little time to be thrown away in pleasures, pure and simple, and they generally combined work and play under the name of a “frolic.” Barn-raising was among the first of these diversions. When a barn was to be elevated, the people would gather from a radius of ten or fifteen miles. The inevitable keg of spirits was always on hand. Out-of-door banquets of bacon, dodgers, maple molasses, and gingerbread were served by the females of the place; the broad joke ran round; the latest news was discussed, and a general exchange of ideas took place. Parties would go from one raising to another, and were sometimes absent from home for two weeks on such expeditions. Log- rollings were next in importance. Then there were fulling or “kicking” frolics, the most unique in the series. The purpose was to give a nap and firmness of texture to home-made blankets. These were suspended, in the proper state of wetness from a rack, the men ranged themselves on opposite sides, squatting on benches, and with bare feet pounded the blankets vigorously, amid much hilarity and merriment. “Flax-scutchings,” and “grubbing-bees” were important elements of pioneer life. Dances were rarer on account of lack of sufficient space, but when indulged in, they were kept up with remarkable vigor to the inspiring strains of a solitary fiddle, and enlivened by frequent draughts on the whisky keg on the part of the swains. Shooting matches were a favorite masculine pastime. (4*) With these festive gatherings the pioneers diversified their toilsome lot, and in the constant accessions to their ranks, and ever increasing conveniences and comforts, both largely due to their own enterprise and labor, they must have found additional sources of compensation and pleasure.
CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS
For the first several years were wanting, and the first ones were rude log edifices, differing only from the cabins in size and interior. The first church erected in the county was by the Clarion settlers, about 1808, on the site of Seceders Church, near Mechanicsville. It was called Rehoboth, and used both by the regular Presbyterians and Seceders. Its pastor was Rev. Robert McGarrah, a Presbyterian, who had been preaching in private houses for several years before. The first church north of the river was the German Reformed (Lutheran), which stood on the site of Stone Church of the same denomination, near Jefferson. Henry Koch was its first pastor. The Methodists were the only other denomination existing in the county before 1812, and for a short while after. One of its first places of worship was Asbury Church on the pike; the first minister was Francis Asbury Montjar.
Of schools, Judge Clover writes: “Our teachers happened to be Scotch-Irish, very unfortunately for us, as their accent was rather broad for the English language. Among the first teachers were Gabriel Glenn, William Kelley, Job Johnson, Joseph Reid, and John Ball. Schools were supported by subscription, at the rate of six dollars per year, the teachers boarding around amongst the scholars. For the benefit of young teachers I will give the mode of correction. The teachers invariably kept what was called Tom, or more vulgarly, cat-o-nine-tails, all luck being in odd numbers. The instrument of torture was made with an oaken stick about twelve inches long, and to which was attached a piece of rawhide, cut in strips and twisted while wet, and then dried. This instrument was freely made use of for correction, and those who got thus corrected did not soon forget it, and not a few carried the marks during life. Another, and no less cruel instrument, was a green cow-hide, which I remember, still carrying marks made by the same. Comment on the above is useless, as the words cruelty and barbarity will suggest themselves to the minds of all who read it. For our text-books we had Dilworth’s and the United States Speller, and our readers were the good old Bible and Testament. The Western Calculator was all the arithmetic that was in use, and the one who got through the ‘rule of three’ was called tolerably good in figures, and the lucky wight who got, through the book was considered a graduate in mathematics. Grammar and geography were not taught in the common schools, being considered higher branches.
The first school erected in the county stood on the Furgeson farm, one-half mile southwest of Strattanville. Here Job Johnson earliest held pedagogic sway. The Beaver township settlers also had a school at a very early date; both English and German were taught. William McGinnis was the first teacher, and Lawrence the second. Lawrence was fond of the bottle, and unpopular with the scholars. This school, together with the school books, was burnt, and not rebuilt for two or three years. In the mean time the settlement was deprived of all educational advantages.
Dr. Simon Hovey, living near Parker, was for years the only physician in the country. Dr. Rankin, near Curllsville, was the next, and the first resident within the county.
The visits of the settlers to their distant homesteads were angelic in rarity. They left them with the feelings of one who in our day leaves the paternal roof to take up a residence in the Far West, knowing that vast stretches of forest, unbridged streams, and rugged hills would intervene between their old and new homes. To many, especially of the tender sex, this was one of the sorest trials of frontier life, and could only be alleviated by a refusal to allow one’s self to revert to the scenes of home and comfort.
“THE FIRST”
The first casualty in Clarion county was the drowning of Daniel Gregg in landing from a raft at Furman’s Eddy in 1804. The first fire destroyed the house of James Maguire, father of Hon. Hugh Maguire, in 1803. The first white male child born was Thomas Young, in a house which stood beneath the shade of the old wide-spreading oak, near the residence of Mr. William Young on the turnpike. The first female child who saw the light in Clarion county was Mary Guthrie, lately deceased. The first marriage was celebrated between William Bloom and Mary Roll in 1802. The first death was that of James McFadden, of the Westmoreland settlement, in 1802.
* Absalom Travis was the grandfather of S.R. Travis, of Greenville, and T.T. Travis, of Edenburg.
** This was the usual route taken by the earliest Westmoreland and Indiana immigrants.
*** Judge Clover in “Caldwell’s Atlas.”
(4*) Hunting parties did not come into vogue till about 1825. From 1828 to ’30 there was a mania for circular hunts, and immense quantities of game were slaughtered.
SOURCE: Page(s) 76-87, History of Clarion County, A.J. Davis, A.J.; Syracuse, N.Y.: D. Mason & Co. 1887
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