The city of Germany, a paper town, was laid out by Dr. Samuel F. Conover, of Philadelphia, in 1810. Its site is about six miles northeast of Buckstown, in the Sand Spring school district, somewhere about the junction of the two streams that form the Beaver dam run. The locality is sometimes also referred to as being in the forks of Conover’s run.
Here in what must have been a wilderness, off from the main lines of travel, in 1810 Dr. Conover laid out a pretentious town, calling it the City of Germany. Its streets were named after the principal cities of Germany. There used to be a finely engraved plan of it on file at the court house, which cannot now be found. At this day it is difficult to see how this man could contrive to sell lots laid out in a wilderness. That he did so is fully evidenced by more than a hundred of his deeds that were placed on record, and for many of them he received considerable prices.
The victims, for such they certainly were, lived mostly in the city of Philadelphia and adjacent parts of New Jersey. No names of any of these purchasers can be identified as being residents of Somerset county, nor it is known that any houses were ever built in this paper city on the mountain. Dr. Conover appears to have owned large bodies of land in this section, and effected sales of them at prices of five or six dollars an acre a hundred years ago. Unless it would be known that they were underlaid with coal, it would be difficult to secure such prices even now for unimproved lands.
About Author
