History of Beaver County

Beaver County was created March 12, 1800 from parts of Allegheny and Washington Counties.
The county seat is Beaver Borough.

Origin Of The Name

The name "Beaver" was doubtless given to the county from the stream and town so called which were within its limits at the time of its erection, and the town had been named from the stream. As to the origin of the name of the stream itself, we need be in no doubt. It was a translation into English of the Indian word for beaver, after which much-prized animal the aborigines had named the stream. This word in the Delaware tongue was Amockwi. The Delawares called the stream Amockwi-sipu or Amockwi-hanne, literally, "Beaver stream." They gave this name to the creek on account of its being a favorite home of the beaver. The French, who were the first whites to reach this region, merely translated the Indian name for the stream, calling it, as we learn from a map in Pouchot's Memoires, "Riviere au Castor" ("Beaver River"), and the English, when they came, did the same thing, as all the early journals, etc., as Weiser's, Post's, and Croghan's, name the stream Beaver. Previous to the laying out of a town and outlots at the mouth of this stream, under the Act of September 28, 1791, the point was known by the Indian names of Sawkunk and Shingoe's town, and by the English as "the old French town"; later it was called McIntosh, from the fort there, and the town laid out by the legislative action referred to was called Beaver, and, in intention at least, marked as the county seat of the new county which was in near prospect of erection. It was natural, therefore, that when the time arrived for the erection of that county, it should receive a name associated with the most important stream and locality belonging distinctively to its territory, and it was accordingly called BEAVER.

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Source for 'Origin Of The Name':   History of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, Volume 1
Page 2-3
By Joseph Henderson Bausman

Beaver County, Pennsylvania

Present day Beaver County (left)
& Beaver County in 1888 (right)
Click map to view larger image