Centre County Overview

Native Americans – Delaware, Shawnee, Mingo, Iroquois – flourished in the early history of Centre County, planting the valleys in corn and squash, and hunting in the ridges. Their paths through the valleys and the water gaps were linked to paths extending to the Susquehanna and the Allegheny River systems. County place names suggest this early history. Some examples: the legend of Princess Nita-nee has provided the names for Nittany Valley and Nittany Mountain; Chief Bald Eagle's principal camp was near Milesburg, resulting in the naming of Bald Eagle Creek, Bald Eagle Mountain, and Bald Eagle Valley; and Chief Logan is referenced by Logan Branch of Spring Creek and Logan Gap.

The documented history of Centre County began with the original land warrants, legal documents conveying William Penn's domain to private owners. Penn had repurchased from resident tribes, land given him by the King of England. Penn allowed a white settler to choose an open piece of land, obtain a warrant for it, have it surveyed and patented as previously unowned, and then record it in the land office for a few shillings an acre. This process, which reflected Penn's faith in fairness and initiative, resulted in a jigsaw pattern of warrant boundaries. Many are still evident in fence lines, property lines, and roads, and represent the first layer of the modern cultural landscape of Centre County.

Centre County was part of the frontier that divided settled and unsettled land at the time of the American Revolution. Many local warrants date to this time. By limiting claims to 400 acres for any one person, the warrant process was intended to favor poor settlers. However, Penn and his descendants took prime land as "Manors," consisting of 1/10th of any new land opened to warranting. Merchants, speculators, and military officers claimed multiple warrants under their own names and those of relatives and friends. Most settlers, predominantly Scotch-Irish and German, bought land already warranted or took out later, "junior," warrants on tracts where they had squatted.

Using rivers, creeks, and the paths that had been established by Native Americans, the earliest settlers moved east and west into the valleys. James Potter, the first to record his exploration of the area, followed the West Branch of the Susquehanna upriver from Sunbury to Bald Eagle Creek in 1764. At its junction with Spring Creek, Potter headed south into unfamiliar land. Reaching the approximate place where Bellefonte now stands, he continued along an Indian trail to the edge of Nittany Mountain and crossed through the mountain, perhaps at Black Hawk Gap west of Centre Hall. As he overlooked Penns Valley for the first time he is reported to have exclaimed to his traveling companion, "My Heavens, Thompson, I have discovered an empire." Through an accumulation of warrants he acquired that empire, and built a fortified log home near Old Fort in 1774.

The first white settler emigrant to this area was Andrew Boggs, who settled in 1769 in present day Milesburg, near the junction of Spring and Bald Eagle Creeks. In 1775, Reverend Philip Vickers Fithian, a young Presbyterian minister from Princeton who was touring frontier settlements, wrote a vivid account of frontier life at the Boggs and Potter homes.

While farmland was being set aside in Penns Valley and elsewhere, the discovery of iron ore, in 1784, brought a new momentum. An ample supply of excellent quality iron – central Pennsylvania's "gold" – brought settlement to the area in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Centre Furnace, the first iron furnace to be built (in 1791) by prominent Philadelphians Samuel Miles and John Patton, was known far beyond the central Pennsylvania frontier. For example, French aristocrat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand spent the winter of 1794-95 with John Patton at his Mansion House. The success of Centre Furnace led to a rapid multiplication of ironworks along local streams with the furnace giving its name to the county in 1800. Under the ownership of entrepreneurs Philip Benner, John Dunlop, Roland Curtain, and others, by 1832 more than a dozen new iron furnaces and forges were in operation along Spring and Bald Eagle Creeks and their tributaries.

Thousands of acres of land were acquired by these ironmasters to provide the natural resources needed to operate the furnace. In addition to the ore and a supply of fast moving water power to operate the bellows, limestone was necessary for flux to collect impurities, along with enough hardwood to supply each furnace with an acre a day to be used for making charcoal. Put into blast in the spring, iron furnaces and forges remained in continuous operation until cold weather froze or slowed their water power sources.

These early ironmaking communities or plantations were isolated and largely self sufficient. In addition to the furnace stack and accessory buildings, the villages consisted of the ironmaster's mansion, post office, store, church, school, and a small settlement of homes for workers and their families. A large labor force was essential to the operation, to mine and deliver the ore and limestone, make and bring the charcoal to the furnace, process the iron, transport it to market, and work the farms to feed the community.