Armstrong County History

Biographical and Historical Cyclopedia of Indiana and Armstrong Counties, Pennsylvania.

Published by John M. Gresham & Co.

Managed by Samuel T. Wiley, Historian and Editor.

Nos. 1218 and 1220 N. Filbert Street, Philadelphia

1891

Geological and Historical Sketch of Armstrong County.

Boundaries and area -- Geology -- Surface features -- Indians -- Armstrong's expedition -- Battles of Kittanning and Blanket Hill -- Brady's fight at the mouth of Big Mahoning creek -- Early settlers -- County formation and official lists -- Assessment lists of 1807 -- Distilleries, salt wells and furnaces -- Railroads -- Great civil war -- Religious -- Educational -- Journalism -- The bar -- Political history -- Census statistics -- Oil excitement -- Progress and development -- Miscellaneous.

Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, lies between the seventy-ninth and eightieth meridians of west longitude and the fortieth and forty-second parallels of north latitude.  It is an irregular pentagon in shape and contains six hundred and twenty-five square miles of territory, which is divided into twenty-four townships.  Armstrong county is bounded on the north by Clarion county; on the east by Jefferson and Indiana counties; on the south by Westmoreland county and on the west by Butler county.

The Kiskiminetas river is its southern boundary from Indiana county to the Allegheny river -- 15 miles in a straight line; whence to Butler county, two miles more, the Allegheny river is the boundary.  The western boundary line is a straight line running due north from where it crosses Buffalo creek at Freeport, to where it intersects the Allegheny river near Foxburg, a distance of 33 3/4 miles.  The northern boundary line follows the Allegheny river from Butler county to the north of Red Bank creek, 14 1/2 miles in a direct line, but nearly double that distance as the stream runs; thence up Red Bank creek to Jefferson county --- 18 miles.  The east boundary line runs due south from Jefferson county 18 miles to the top of the divide overlooking the north fork of Plum creek; whence to the Kiskiminetas river, 20 1/2 miles.

Armstrong county was a part of the following counties for the respective times specified:

Chester, from 1682 to May 10, 1729.

Lancaster, May 10, 1729, to Jan. 27, 1750.

Cumberland, Jan. 27, 1750, to March 9, 1771.

Bedford, March 9, 1771, to Sept. 26, 1773.

From 1773 to 1800 its territory was parts of the counties which are named on page 307 of this work.

Pg. 299

Geology. -- Prof. Leslie describes the geological structure of Armstrong county as follows:

"The whole surface is sculptured in all directions by the erosion of the Barren measures, lying almost horizontally, although several wide and gentle rolls traverse it from northeast to southwest, bringing the Lower Productive coal measures above water level along the Allegheny river and its great branches from the east, the Kiskiminetas, Crooked, Cowanshannock, Pine, Mahoning, and Redbank creeks; and on the western side, along Buffalo creek, Glade run and other small streams descending from Butler county.  The Pittsburgh coal bed occupies only a short and narrow basin in the southeast corner of the county.  The Barren measures are 600 feet thick, including the Mahoning sandstone at the bottom, the long horizontal outcrops of which edge all the valleys of the county with cliffs, and rough their steep slopes with fallen rocks.  Two coal beds, each with a limestone bed beneath it, are mined near water level at Freeport, and rise slowly northward until they merely cap the highest hills.  The three next coals are mined at Kittanning, the highest one having a limestone bed under it, and the lowest one overlying the Ferriferous Limestone, which appears at the surface in southern Armstrong only where Crooked creek is crossed by the Paddy's Run axis.  It has isolated outcrops from three to five miles long at Greendale on Cowanshannock; on both forks of Pine creek from Echo to Pine P. O., and near Goheenville; and an unbroken outcrop along both sides of the Allegheny river and Mahoning and Redbank creeks from Kittanning northward.  It varies from 4 to 18 feet in thickness and carries the famous "buhrstone" brown hematite iron-ore on which ran in early years the old Rock, Bear Creek, Allegheny, Buffalo, Ore Hill, Cowanshannock, Mahoning, America, Phoenix, Pine Creek, Olney, Stewardson, Monticello, and Great Western cold-blast charcoal furnaces (with their forges and rolling-mills), some of which were changed to hot-blast coke furnaces.  The two Clarion coal beds (beneath the limestone) only appear above water level in the northern townships; and the Pottsville conglomerate No. XII shows its upper massive layers where the anticlinal lines cross the principal river valleys, but nearly the whole formation (300 feet thick) has been cut through by the river at Parker City, where the Clarion oil belt crosses the valley.  Here on the flat beneath its vertical cliffs and on the terraces above, hundreds of derricks once stood, thick as trees in a forest, draining the Third Oil sand from a depth of 800 feet beneath the river.  At Brady's Bend this third oil sand lies 1,000 feet beneath the river.  In all other parts of this county the wells, some of them 2,000 feet deep, have yielded no petroleum."

The carboniferous system occupies the whole surface of the county.  The Upper Productive Coal measures are in the southeastern corner of hte county, the Lower Barren measures spread over the uplands and the Lower Productive Coal measures are in the sides of the valleys, while the Pottsville conglomerate comes to daylight in the deep and rocky ravines.

The geological structure of Armstrong county consists of a series of anticlinal and synclinal flexures arranged in nearly parallel order form southwest to northeast.  By the geologists of the First Survey, nearly the whole of Armstrong county was included within what was called the Fifth Great basin, which had for its southeast boundary the Fourth Great axis, crossing the Kiskiminetas at the mouth of Roaring run; and for its northwest boundary, the Fifth Great Axis, which, coming southward from Clarion county, was though to cross the Allegheny river between the mouths of Red Bank and Mahoning creeks.  This great basin is twenty miles wide.

The anticlinal axes and synclinal basins from the southeast to the northwest corner of the county are as follows:

Pg. 300

1.  Lisbon West Lebanon Synclinal.

2.  Maysville Anticlinal. } Lisbon Basin

3. Perrysville Anticlinal. } Lisbon Basin

4.  Smicksburg Synclinal.

5.  Waynesburg Anticlinal (Fourth Axis of the First Survey).

6.  Port Barnet Anticlinal.

7. Waynesburg or Apollo Synclinal.

8.  Apollo Anticlinal.

9.  Glad Run Anticlinal.

10.  Leechburg Synclinal.

11.  Pinhook or Brookville Anticlinal.

12.  Fairmont Synclinal.

13.  Anthony's Bend Anticlinal.

14.  Centreville Synclinal.

15.  Kellysburg Anticlinal.

16.  Lawsonham Synclinal.

17.  Brady's Bend Anticlinal (Fifth Axis of the First Survey.

18.  Millerstown Anticlinal.

Surface Features. -- Of the topography of Armstrong county, Prof. Platt says:

"The topography of Armstrong county consists of easy-rolling hill and valley surface, in great variety of aspect, but without especially commanding features.  There are here no ridges of mountain land, and no extensive gorges similar to those which control the topography in the counties to the east and southeast.  It belongs, in fact, to the open country of Western Pennsylvania -- a region of deep valleys with broad, undulating uplands between a broken table-land, upon which the erosive agencies have acted unceasingly since Palaeozoic times.

"The main valleys are, for the most part, narrow and tortuous.  Their sides range from 300 to 600 feet in height, sometimes steep and precipitous, and having long lines of cliffs; at other times the slopes are gentle and rise slowly towards the dividing water-sheds.  In this respect, moreover, the topography often unmistakably reveals the geological structure; but only in the valleys.  There the steep and narrow stretches of surface indicate the anticlinals, and the more open country with gentle declivities, the synclinals.  On the uplands this distinction is obliterated, and the arrangement of the hills fails, in ever case, to give expression to this geology.

"The glacial age, whose effect upon the topographical features of the northwest counties was to exert a radical change there, straightening the valleys and planing down the hills, modified but little if any of the then existing outlines of Armstrong.  The great sheet of southward-moving ice, which, coming from far distant northerly regions, crossed northwest Pennsylvania during that time, passed close to Armstrong county, but wholly west of it.  No marks of glacial action therefore appear in any of its valleys' and no rolled pebbles on its uplands; the crystalline pebbles of the northern drift in the bottom lands of the Allegheny river have come from the abundant masses of morainic matter which the receding ice left about the heads of that stream at the close of the glacial age. 

"Referred to ocean level, the elevation of hte upland region ranges from 1500 to 1600 feet.  Occasionally an isolated knob or 'round top,' as, for example, Concord Hill, rises from 75 to 100 feet still higher, and stands forth then as a prominent feature in the landscape.  The elevations along some of the principal lines of drainage are shown in the following tables:

The Allegheny river, flowing from north to south through Armstrong county, and dividing it into two unequal parts, receives all of the surface water.  The drainage system of the county is thus greatly simplified, consisting in brief, of two sets of tributary streams, of which one flows west, and the other east to join the main river flowing south.

The eastern tributary streams are Kiskiminetas river and Crooked, Cowanshannock, Pine, Mahoning and Red Bank creeks; while its western affluents are Buffalo creek, Glade run, Limestone run, Sugar creek and Bear creek.

The soils of the county are good, and are the product of the disintegration of local rocks, excepting the Allegheny river bottom lands, which were formed from drift material.

 Indians. --- The Delaware and Shawanee tribes settled on the Allegheny river as early as 1719.  Their principal town or village was Kittanning, from which war parties went forth to harass the white settlers east of the Alleghenies, but it is unnecessary to speak further of this town, as a full description of it will be found in the account of Gen. Armstrong's expedition.

The Delawares and Shawanees were tenants at will of the Six Nations and had few villages in the county which will be noticed in the history of the townships.  They had one great trail or war path which ran from the forks of the Ohio up the Allegheny river and passed into New York.  This path was sometimes called the "Warriors' Road."  An eastern trail was the noted "Kittanning Path," which run from Kittanning to Huntingdon.  There were many branch paths of which to-day all trace seems to be lost.

Armstrong's Expedition. --- After examining several accounts of this campaign we have found R. M. Smith's description to be the most accurate and give it below in full:

"Eight companies of soldiers, constituting the second battalion of the Pennsylvania regiment, under the command of Lieut.-Col. John Armstrong, were stationed at the forts on the west side of the Susquehanna.  For the purpose of carrying out the expedition against Kittanning, planned as above stated, Col. Armstrong, with a part of the force assigned to him, consisting of three hundred and seven men, marched upon Fort Shirley, Monday, September 3, 1756, and joined his advanced party at Beaver Dam, near Frankstown, which they left on the 4th and advanced to within fifty miles of Kittanning on the 6th, whence an officer, one of the pilots,  and two soldiers were sent forward to reconnoiter the town.  These men returned on the 7th and informed Col. Armstrong that the roads were entirely clear of the enemy, but it appeared from what else they said that they had not approached near enough to the town to learn its situation, the number of persons in it or how it might be most advantageously attacked.  The  march was continued on the 8th with the intention of advancing as near as possible to the town that night.  A half was, however, made about nine or ten o'clock on account of information received from one of the guides that he had seen a fire by the roadside a few perches from the front at which were two or three Indians.  The pilot returned again in a short time and reported that from the best observations he could make there were not more than three or four Indians at the fire.  It was determined not to surround and cut them off immediately, lest, if only one should escape, he might communicate their presence to his people in the town, and thus their well-laid plan of attack would be, in a measure at least, frustrated.  Lieut. James Hogg, of Capt. Armstrong's company, with twelve men and the pilot who first discovered the fire, was ordered to remain, watch the enemy until the break of day, on the 9th, and then cut them off if possible at that point, which was about six miles from Kittanning.

"The tired horses, the blankets and other baggage were left there, and the rest of the force took a circuit off the road, so as not to be heard by the Indians at the fire, which route they found to be stony.  That condition of the route and the fallen trees along the way greatly retarded their march.  Still greater delay was caused by the ignorance of the pilots, who, it seems, knew neither the real situation of the town nor the paths leading to it.

"After crossing hills and valleys, the front reached the Allegheny river shortly before the setting of the moon on the morning of the 9th, about a hundred rods below the main body of the town, or about that distance below Market street, at or near the present site of the poorhouse, on lot number 241, in modern Kittanning.  They were guided thither by the beating of the drum and the whooping of the Indians at their dances, rather than by the pilots.  It was necessary for them to make the best possible use of the remaining moonlight, but in this they were interrupted for a few moments by the sudden and singular whistling of an Indian, about thirty feet to the front, at the foot of a cornfield, which was at first thought by Col. Armstrong to be a signal of their approach to the rest of the Indians.  He was informed by a soldier by the name of Baker that it was the way a young Indian called his squaw after the dance.  Silence was passed to the rear and they lay quietly until after the going down of the moon.  A number of fires soon flashed up in various parts of the cornfield, which, Baker said, were kindled to keep off the gnats, and would soon go out.  As the weather was warm that night, the Indians slept by the fires in the cornfield.

"Three companies of Col. Armstrong's force had not, at daybreak on the 9th, passed over the last precipice.  Their march of thirty miles had wearied them and most of them were asleep.  Proper persons were dispatched to rouse them; a suitable number, under several officers, were ordered to take the end of the hill at which they then lay, and to march along to the top of it at least one hundred perches, and so much farther as would carry them opposite the upper part, or at least the body of the town.  Col. Armstrong, presuming that the Indian warriors were at the lower end of that hill, kept the larger portion of his men there, promising to postpone the attack eighteen or twenty minutes, until the detachment along the hill should have time to advance to the point to which they had been ordered.  They were somewhat unfortunate in making that advance.  The time having elapsed, a simultaneous attack was made as expeditiously as possible, through and upon every part of the cornfield.   A party was dispatched to the houses, when Capt. Jacobs and several other Indians, as the English prisoners afterward stated, shouted the war-whoop and yelled: 'The white men are come at last and we will have scalps enough,' at the same time ordering their squaws and children to flee to the woods."

Battle of Kittanning. --- "Col. Armstrong's men rushed through and fired into the cornfield, where they received several returns from the Indians in the field and from the opposite side of the river.  A brisk fire commenced soon after among the houses, which was very resolutely returned from the house of Capt. Jacobs, which was situated on the north side of Market, a short distance above McKean street, on Jacobs' Hill, in the rear of the site at the northern end of the stone wall in the garden, on which Dr. John Gilpin built, in 1834-35, that large two-story brick mansion now owned and occupied by Alexander Reynolds.  Thither Col. Armstrong repaired and found that several of his men had been wounded, and some had been killed from the port-holes of that house and other advantages which it afforded to the Indians within it.  As the returning fire upon that houses proved ineffectual, he ordered the adjoining house to be fired, which was quickly done, the Indians seldom failing to wound or kill some of their assailants when they presented themselves.  Col. Armstrong, while moving about and giving the necessary orders, received a bullet-wound in his shoulder from Capt. Jacobs' house.  It is stated in 'Robinson's Narrative' that Col. Armstrong said: 'Are there none of you that will set fire to these rascals that have wounded me and killed so many of us?'  John Ferguson, a soldier, swore he would.  He went to a house covered with bark and took a strip of it which had fire on it, and rushed up tot he cover of Jacobs' house and held it there till it had burned about a yard square.  Then he ran and the Indians fired at him.  The smoke blew about his legs and the shots missed him.  That house contained the magazine, which for a time caused it to be observed, to see whether the Indians, knowing their peril, would escape from it.  They, as we say now-a-days, 'held the fort' until the guns were discharged by the approaching fire. 

"Several persons were ordered during the action to tell the Indians to surrender themselves prisoners.  On being thus told, one of them replied: 'I am a man and I will not be a prisoner.'  Being told in his own language, that he would be burned, he said: 'I don't care, for I will kill four or five before I die.'  Had not Col. Armstrong and his men desisted from exposing themselves, the Indians, who had a number of loaded guns, would have killed many more of them.  As the fire approached and the smoke thickened, one of the Indians evinced his manhood by singing.  A squaw being heard to cry was severely rebuked by the Indians.  But after awhile, the fire having become too hot for them, two Indians and a squaw sprang out of the house and started for the cornfield, but were immediately shot by some of their foemen.  It was thought that Capt. Jacobs tumbled out of the garret or cockloft window when the houses were surrounded.  The English prisoners who were recaptured offered to be qualified that the powder-horn and pouch taken from him were the very ones which Capt. Jacobs had obtained from a French officer in exchange for Lieut. Armstrong's boots, which he had brought from Fort Greenville, where the lieutenant was killed.  Those prisoners said they were perfectly assured of Capt. Jacobs' scalp, because no other Indians there wore their hair in the same manner, and that they knew his squaw's scalp by a particular bob, and the scalp of a young Indian, called the king's son.

"The report of the explosion of the magazine under Capt. Jacobs' house, says Patterson's 'History of the Backwoods,' was heard at Fort Du Quesne, whereupon some French and Indians, fearing an attack had been made on the town (Kittanning), instantly started up the river, but did not reach the place until the day after the explosion and battle, when the troops had been withdrawn.  They found among the ruins the bodies of Capt. Jacobs, his squaw and his son.

"Capt. Hugh Mercer, who was wounded in the arm early in the action, had been, before the attack on Capt. Jacobs' house, taken to the top of the hill above the town, where several of the officers and a number of the men had gathered.  From that position they discovered some Indians crossing the river and taking to the hill, with the intention, as they thought, to surround Col. Armstrong and his force, and cut them off from their retreat.  The colonel received several very pressing requests to leave the house and retreat to the hill, lest all should be cut off, which he would not consent to do until all the houses were fired.  Although the spreading out of that part of the force on the hill appeared to be necessary, it nevertheless prevented an examination of the cornfield and river side.  Thus some scalps, and probably some squaws, children and English prisoners were left behind, that might have otherwise been secured.

"Nearly thirty houses were fired, and while they were burning, the ears of Col. Armstrong and his men were regaled by the successive discharges of loaded guns, and still more so by the explosion of sundry bags and large kegs of powder stored away in every house.  The English prisoners, after their recapture, said that the Indians often told them that they had ammunition enough to war ten years with the English.  The leg and thigh of an Indian and a child three years old were thrown, when the powder exploded, with the roof of Capt. Jacobs' house, so high that they appeared as nothing and fell into an adjacent cornfield.  A large quantity of goods which the Indians had received from the French ten days before was burned.

"Col. Armstrong then went to the hill to have his wound tied up and the blood stopped.  Then the English prisoners, who had come to his men in the morning, informed him that on that very day two batteaux of Frenchmen, with Delaware and French Indians, were to join Capt. Jacobs at Kittanning, and to set out early the next morning to take Fort Shirley, and that twenty-four warriors who had lately arrived were sent before them the previous evening, whether to prepare meat, spy the fort, or make an attack on the frontier settlements, these prisoners did not know.

"Col. Armstrong and others were convinced, on reflection, that those twenty-four warriors were all at the fire the night before, and began to fear the fate of Lieut. Hogg and his party.  They, therefore, deemed it imprudent to wait to to cut down the corn, as they had designed.  So they immediately collected their wounded and forced their way back as well as they could, by using a few Indian horses.  It was difficult to keep the men together on the march, because of their fears of being waylaid and surrounded, which were increased by a few Indians firing, for awhile after the march began, on each wing, and then running off whereby one man was shot through the legs.  For several miles the march did not exceed two miles an hour."

Blanket Hill. --- "On the return of Col. Armstrong and his force to the place where the Indian fire had been discovered the night before, they met a sergeant of Capt. Mercer's company and two or three others of his men who had deserted that morning immediately after the action at Kittanning, who, in running away, had met Lieut. Hogg, lying by the roadside, wounded in two parts of his body, who then told them of the fatal mistake which had been made by the pilot in assuring them that there were only three Indians at the fireplace the previous night, and that when he and his men attacked the Indians that morning, according to orders, he found their number considerably superior to his own.  He also said that he believed he had killed or mortally wounded three of the Indians at the first fire; that the rest fled, and he was obliged to conceal himself in a thicket, where he might have lain safely if 'that cowardly sergeant and his co-deserters,' as Col. Armstrong stigmatizes them in his report, had not removed him.  When they had marched a short distance, four Indians appeared and those deserters fled.  Lieut. Hogg, not-withstanding his wounds, with the true heroism of a brave soldier, was still urging and commanding those about him to stand and fight, but they all refused.  The Indians then pursued, killed one man and inflicted a third wound upon the gallant lieutenant -- in his belly, from which he died in a few hours, having ridden on horseback seven miles from the place of action.  That sergeant also represented to Col. Armstrong that there was a much larger number of Indians than had appeared to them to be; that they fought five rounds; that he had see Lieut. Hogg and several others killed and scalped; that he had discovered a number of Indians throwing themselves before Col. Armstrong and his force, which, with other such stuff, caused confusion in the colonel's ranks, so that the officers had difficulty in keeping the men together, and could not prevail on them to collect the horses and baggage which the Indians had left, except a few of the horses, which some of the bravest of the men were persuaded to secure.

"From the mistake of the pilot in underrating the number of Indians at the fire the night before, and the cowardice of that sergeant and the other deserters, Col. Armstrong and his command met with a considerable loss of their horses and baggage, which had been left, as before stated, with Lieut. Hogg and his detachment when the main force had made their detour to Kittanning.

"Many blankets were afterward found on the ground where Lieut. Hogg and his small force were defeated by the superior number -- about double -- of their Indian foes.  Hence that battle-field has ever since borne the name of 'Blanket Hill.'  It is on the farm of Philip Dunmire, in Kittanning township, to the right, going east, of the turnpike road from Kittanning to Elderton and Indiana, about four hundred and seventy-five rods, a little east of south from the present site of the Blanket Hill post-office, and two hundred and seventy-five rods west of the Plum creek township line.

"Various other relics of that fight have been found from time to time, among which a straight sword with the initials 'J. H.' on it, which is owned by James Stewart, of Kittanning borough, was on exhibition with other relics at the Centennial exposition, Philadelphia.

"It was impossible for Col. Armstrong to ascertain the exact number of the enemy killed in the action at Kittanning, since some were burned in the conflagration of the houses and others fell in different parts of the cornfield; but he thought there could not be less, on a moderate estimate, than thirty or forty either killed or mortally wounded, as much blood was found in various parts of the cornfield, as Indians were seen crawling from several parts thereof into the woods, whom the soldiers, in their pursuit of others, passed by, expecting afterward to find and scalp them, and as several others were killed and wounded while crossing the river.

"When the victors commenced their return march they had about a dozen scalps and eleven English prisoners.  Part of the scalps were lost on the road, and some of them and four of the prisoners were in the custody of Capt. Mercer, who had separated from the main body, so that on the arrival of the main body at Fort Littleton, Sabbath night, September 14, 1756, Col. Armstrong could report to Governor Denny only seven of the re-captured prisoners and a part of the scalps.

Brady's Fight. ---In 1780, Capt. Samuel Brady, with five men and his pet Indian, intercepted, at the mouth of the Big Mahoning creek, a war party of Indians who were returning from a murdering and plundering expedition in the Sewickley Creek region of Westmoreland county.  He surprised the Indians in their camp at break of day and killed five of them besides securing all of their plunder and a valuable horse which they had stolen.

Early Settlers.---The early settlers were chiefly of Scotch-Irish and German descent.  The former came from Westmoreland county and the Cumberland Valley, while the latter were mainly from Lehigh and Northampton counties.  One of the pioneer settlers was Capt. Andrew Sharp, who died from wounds received in a fight with Indians, which will be described in the history of Plum Creek township.  In the histories of the townships will be given the few names of all the pioneers which we have been enabled to secure, although it is fair to presume that a respectable number of those residents given in the assessment lists of 1807 were pioneer settlers.

"Armstrong county was formed out of parts of Allegheny, Westmoreland and Lycoming counties by act of March 12, 1800.  All that portion west of the Allegheny river was taken from Allegheny county; all that portion on the east side of that river between the Kiskiminetas river and the then northern boundary of Westmoreland county, viz., a line due west from the purchase line at the head of the Susquehanna, striking the Allegheny river a short distance below the mouth of Cowanshannock creek, was taken from Westmoreland county, east of the Allegheny river and Clarion river was taken from Lycoming county which had been formed out of Northumberland county by act of April 13, 1795.

"The original boundaries of Armstrong county were: 'Beginning on the Allegheny river, at the mouth of Buffalo creek, the corner of Butler county,'" which was also erected by act of March 12, 1800; " ' thence northerly along the line of said county of Butler to where the northeast corner of the said county of Butler shall strike the Allegheny river; thence from the said corner, on a line at a right angle from the first line of the county of Butler, until the said line shall strike the Allegheny river; thence by the margin of said river to the mouth of Toby's creek' -- Clarion river -- 'thence crossing the river and up said creek to the line dividing Wood's and Hamilton's districts: thence southerly along said line to the present line of Westmoreland county; thence down the (Kiskiminetas) river to the mouth thereof on the Allegheny river; thence across the said river to the westwardly margin thereof; thence down the said river to the mouth of Buffalo creek, the place of beginning.'

"By act of March 11, 1839, that part east of the Allegheny river and between Red Bank creek and the Clarion river was detached from Armstrong and annexed to Clarion county.  Thus it appears that the territory of Armstrong county has been successively included in the counties of Chester, Lancaster, Cumberland and Bedford, wholly, and in Northumberland, Westmoreland, Allegheny, and Lycoming, partly."

While the above is correct in regard to the legislative acts creating the different counties named, yet the Legislature prohibited settlements in that part of the county south of a straight line from Kittanning to the Indiana county line (Purchase Line) and east of the Allegheny river, until the purchase of 1768, and the remainder oft he county until the succeeding purchase from the Indians, of 1784.

We endeavored to compile a list of senators and assemblymen from Armstrong county, from 1860 to 1890, from "Smull's Legislative Hand-Book."  We found several errors in names and dates, and were compelled to drop the list for want of time to correct it.

We give the county roster as found in Smith's history of the county.

Assessment Lists of 1807. -- The following lists of taxables were returned in the above-named year for the townships of Kittanning, Toby, Sugar Creek, Red Bank, Allegheny, and the borough of Kittanning:

Transcribed by Linda Blum-Barton October 2008

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By Linda Blum-Barton