Section 7:  Two Days in Clarion

Along about the time of the buckshot war, a new county was projected to be carved out of parts of Armstrong and Venango to be called Clarion. I had never seen any of the territory out of which the new county was to be made, but a number of families had removed from the valley and Center County to the settlements east of the Clarion River, and I knew it was regarded as a pretty good country. I kept trace of the bill in the Legislature till it was finally passed and the new county was created. I saw the advantage of starting in a new county where all would have an equal chance of catching business, but I had not thought seriously of settling there till one day Joseph Milliken told me J. and J. Milliken had wholesaled a good many goods out through that and Jefferson County and that if I would go to Clarion (the new county seat) he would give me five or six thousand dollars to collect out there. This struck me favorably and I thought I would go out and see it.

One morning about the beginning of August, 1840, I got on a gray horse of Oliver's and rode over to James Oliver's. The next morning I started bright and early out across the barrens, Half Moon Valley and took the Allegheny Mountains by way of Spencer's Mill, and by dinner time was at Phillipsburg and took my dinner with James McGirk. I think that was the only tavern there at that time. At any rate, I found him and his lady a very worthy couple and I often stopped with them afterwards.

At that time old Mr. Phillips occupied the Phillips' Mansion up at the woods. While I was there that day Mr. McGirk called my attention to the Phillips' carriage passing out the turnpike and was told that it was Mr. Phillips himself upon the front seat driving. After dinner I started on and met the carriage coming back with the same driver on the box. I did not notice who were in the carriage. I soon entered a pine forest and greatly enjoyed the shade and the sight of the tall trees. When about four miles out I noticed a man came out from the side of the road and looked at me and went back so I could not see him. He was a good piece ahead of me and as I approached he came out and took another look at me. This attracted my attention and I put my hand in my pocket to feel for an old single barrel pistol that I carried. I did not pull it out but just fixed it so I could lay my hand on it readily. As I came forward I noticed that the man was standing in the side of the road facing into the woods and appeared to be talking. On nearer approach I saw two bonnets and I immediately took my hand away from the pistol. About that time from under one of the bonnets came this address, "Why, James Campbell, where in the world did you come from and how did you get here?" I don't know what I replied, but it was Nan Patton and her Aunt, Miss Nancy Norris, who were visiting at Mr. Phillips', and the young man whom I had regarded with so much suspicion was a nephew of Mr. Phillips. They had started to take a ride and something broke about the carriage and the old gentleman had taken it back to get repaired and left the party in the woods and was to go back and take them out of the woods. I sat on my horse and talked to them a short time and started on -- did not tell them that I had thought they were robbers. That night I stayed at Clearfield Creek.

The next morning, just as I was getting on my horse to start, a man came trotting across the bridge, and after saluting the landlord, asked me how far I was going, and when I told him to Clarion he gave a little chuckle and said "How fortunate; why I live there and I do hate to travel alone". I did not meet him very cordially for I saw that he was not altogether sober. I got on my horse, however, and he kept up such a running fire of good-natured conversation that I could not find anything to grumble at. He said he had stayed four miles back at Lomadoo's, that he was an old hog and he did not like to stay there but his horse was tired and he thought he could stand the house one night. He said he was Marshall McMurtrie, that he was raised on Shavey Creek, had married and gone out to the new town of Clarion and was going to be elected constable the next spring and was on his way home. I found him an open hearted, talkative, rather pleasant fellow, though he carried a flask and occasionally took a nip out of it and every time offered it to me but I declined. He had been frequently along the road and seemed to know every man, woman and child on the road.

That night we got to Brookville and stopped at a brick tavern kept by a man named Perce. McMurtrie knew everybody there and introduced me to all the members of the bar, or at least most of them -- Col. Brady, R. Arthur, the Dunhams and Alexander. I think he hunted them up, for I did not leave the Hotel that night. The most I mind of Brookville was a tall young man they called Ash making a speech off the courthouse steps to a dozen or two of men and boys, I believe on politics. I also noticed a large pile of pine roots on the other side of the street.

The next day my friend and I came on to Strattonville. I stopped at the house of Robert Barber. McMurtrie, after introducing me all around, started on to Clarion. The next day was Sunday and I stayed there. In that time I became acquainted with Peter Clover, John Keath, J. W. Guthrie, John Burkholder, Samuel Wilson and a number of others. Algernon S. Howe was there. He was then the agent of the Maine Land Company, was a bright young, cultured man, and we soon became well acquainted, and I found him an intelligent companion. I also met Dr. James Ross there for the first time. He was a young physician, was full of energy and popular, though he had only been there a short time.

At that time the Village of Strattonville was a lively place. Captain Barber owned and ran the Hotel and was a partner in the store across the way of Wilson and Barber. Wm. H. and Hugh Lowry kept a store on the same side of the street further west. Clover and Keath ran a blacksmith shop and were prosperous business men. John Wynkoop made hats; John Burkholder made cabinet ware and James W. Guthrie, as the sub-agent of Dr. Ross, managed the entire business of the Bingham Estate and was regarded as a man of no small importance. John R. Shatton had a store -- I am not certain whether alone or with his father. Jo Stratton then or soon after ran a Hotel east of the Barber House.

On Monday morning Dr. Ross told me he was going down to Clarion, and so we got on our horses and rode down together and stopped with old William Clark, now the Loomis House. As I had come 125 miles to see the place with a view of making it my future home, I looked around with considerable interest, although disposed to take a favorable view of everything, there was very little I could see to fascinate. Previous to the spring of 1840 it had been a piece of poor pine woodland and the only money that had ever been made off it had been by John C. Corbett, who some years before that had gathered up the pine knots on the site of the town and burnt a tar kiln and realized out of it eleven barrels of tar. It was all woodland -- poor, and some of it stony. The main street was the waterfront and Susquehanna Turnpike, and the sides were occasionally or[n]amented with piles of half rotten logs that had been cut out and piled when the turnpike was made. Quite a number of houses were up along both sides, but if any were finished, I did not see them. Generally only enough land was cleared on which to set the building, and the back end was frequently lost in bushes and brush heaps. The town looked to me more like a camp meeting than the metropolis of a flourishing county.

Mr. Clark's Hotel was open for the accommodation of strangers and travelers, and I suppose had a bar for the spiritual nourishment of his customers, but I did not patronize it. The house was up, roofed and partitioned off into rooms and apartments and the outside doors were hung, but the carpenters and plasterers were still at work. The painters had not begun yet, and I slept my first night in Clarion in a room with a sheet hung up for a door. The window sash had not been put in, but these sheets and garments hung up were to partially shut out the view from the outside.

Dr. Ross had introduced me to Jacques W. Johnston, a young lawyer from Cumberland Valley, somewhere about Carlisle. He was very polite and introduced me to everybody we met. We walked up the street and out the west end of town as far as the turn of the road below where the fair ground now is, till we could see the Clarion River. It was all woods with a thick undergrowth of bushes.

The diamond looked hard. The pine trees, had been grubbed out and were lying on the ground with roots projecting up-some of them ten feet. The masons were building the wall of the jail yard. The jail and courthouse had not been commenced. A thick growth of young white pine extended all the way from the Alexander house to the Loomis house. The streets had generally been cut out and the brush burned, but logs and stumps were everywhere. On the east end of town a couple of fields had been cleared south of the turnpike extending back of where the Seminary now stands and down to Garvens, but all the rest of the town and surroundings were woods and thick underbrush. Including workmen, there might have been there five or six hundred inhabitants.

Down by the spring, near where the planing mill stood, there was an old log cabin with clapboard roof that had probably been built when the turnpike was made. At any rate, it looked old. An old Dutchman lived in it called George Lightner, with a grown-up family -- principally girls, and at the time I went there he had not less than twenty boarders. Where he stowed them away or where they all slept, I never knew.

Living in the town at that time looked very much like camping out. Those who had come to stay were generally young married people starting in the world on small means and were from all parts of the State, but in their primitive way of living soon formed acquaintances and all were busy getting their houses ready for winter.

Thomas Gahagan lived in a little house still standing east of the nursery; two other small one story houses were occupied between that and 7th Avenue, one on the Montgomery lot and one of [sic] the A. G. Corbett lot. Samuel M. Camant had a blacksmith shop where the Republican Gazette office now stands, and the kitchen end of the house was up and occupied by him. James McKee lived in the kitchen end of J. T. Moffett's house. The next building that I recollect was the Great Western Hotel (D. B. Curll's lot). It was up and roofed, but not far enough along to occupy as a Hotel. The next was a frame storeroom back off the street on the east side of the Jones House lot, occupied by John Potter. The Jesse D. Porter house was built and occupied by a man named Sloan, a cabinet maker. Between that and Dr. Pretner's house he had built a long shop and ware room which long afterwards was moved to the hind end of the Jones House and made into a kitchen and dining room. Dr. Pretner was in his house (now the post office). Linsay C. Pretner was living in a frame house on the east side of the Kribbs block lot and had a store in front of it. Ann Wills and Miss Jack of Brookville, afterwards Mrs. G. W. Andrews, were visiting there and Mr. Johnston took me to call on them that afternoon.

In the upper end of the town the settlers that I recollect were Andrew Gardner, my traveling friend M. McMurtrie, Wilson S. Packer, Joseph Kelly, Benjamin Crestman, William Black; I think Goble and Everding and James Sweeny did not come till the next spring. There was a house built or building out towards the fair ground by the Arthurs family and I think occupied by some of the family. Then there was a house opposite Jo Kelly's on Wood Street but I don't mind by whom occupied.

Jacob K. Boyd was the first resident lawyer in the county. He had a family and had a house somewhere in the upper end of the town.

Jonathan Frampton was living in the shell of a house on the lot now owned by Joseph H. Patrick. Alexander Reynolds was having the house and store built where Captain Alexander now lives. These are about all the buildings I now recollect, but there were many workmen and some families that I did not get acquainted with at that time, though I kept moving about pretty lively while I stayed. I recollect the first night. Johnson, Charley Waters, John McPherson and I played euchre from dark to bed time in a back room that was neither plastered nor weatherboarded. Waters was not living here at the time, but I think was peddling some kind of goods.

The lot on which I live and I think the whole square, was virgin forest. An old Mrs. Emply had the shell of the Colonel Alexander house up and was keeping tavern in it. The lot occupied by the Frampton block was covered with a growth of white oak timber. Wilson and Clover had a store on where the Arnold block now stands. I think it was shoved back and is still standing on the back end of the lot.

This is about what I learned about location, prospects and people of the town the two days I was there and I was pretty busy. My first thought was there is not a house in town fit to live in. I could see nothing in or in sight out of which money could be made. People would have to come through the woods in every direction to get to the town. A mile on each side of the river on an average was not fit for cultivation or settlement. The timber would not pay for the cutting and running to market. The cleared land between this and the Jefferson County line generally looked thin and poor, and on a good many spots oats were still standing in shock. The soil was surely not good for grain raising or stock raising, and I could see no sources of wealth that could be developed so as to make even a tolerably rich county. The greater part of the land I had seen was still in woods. I wanted to make some money and I did not see where it was to come from. The people told me a great deal about the furnaces that furnished a market for the farmer, but I had seen none of them and I thought they would do little for the county -- only to furnish a market for the wood used in making charcoal. In that I thought they might help the farmer to open up a farm.

On the whole I thought the prospect decidedly forbidding, and on Wednesday I thought I had seen enough and would turn my horse's head eastward. Johnson who had a higher opinion of the capabilities of the county than I had, wanted me to stay longer, but when I declined he and Waters concluded to accompany me to Strattonville, and we rode up there in the afternoon, and after talking a while they started back and I went up to close out a sale of a small interest in a piece of land in Millcreek Township to T. W. Guthrie. This had been entrusted to me by a man in Mifflin County who wanted to sell out. I effected a sale and got it all closed up that night. I again met A. S. Howe and had a pleasant talk with him. He was a clever fellow and on the short acquaintance I formed a most high opinion of him. At bed time I bid him goodbye and I have never seen him since. He went home to Maine and after some time married and lived in his native State; had one daughter. Shortly after middle age he got softening of the brain and died. His widow afterwards married a man named Samuel C. Smith of North Bridgdon. Forty years after that I had occasion to correspond with Mr. Smith and I happened to mention in a letter that I had a pleasant but short acquaintance with his wife's former husband, and within the last year she sent me a photograph of Mr. Howe. It was taken off an old tin type and not very good, but I readily recognized it.

My grey horse had nothing to do but eat oats after I got out here and he felt pretty frisky, so on Thursday morning I got up early and without breakfast started to Brookville.

As I got on the hill beyond Captain M. Grimes, the sun was just getting up, and I turned my horse around and took a survey of the country back towards Strattonville and Clarion. I wanted to carry away with me a clear and vivid impression of the land and neighborhood for I was fully convinced that I would never look on them again -- and I never wanted to. I turned and rode with a satisfied feeling that I had done all I ought to do towards finding a settlement in this direction. By eight o'clock I was in Brookville. I got my breakfast, fed my horse, walked a little out through the town, saw some of the acquaintances I had formed, and was again on the road. I did not intend to stop till I got to Luthersburg, 22 miles, but the day got very warm and my horse seemed to get tired about the middle of the day and I turned into a farm house and asked if I could get a feed for my horse and my dinner. I found only the lady of the house and her daughter, 16 or 18 years old, at home. They told me I could and the daughter went with me to the barn to show me where to get the oats. I fed my horse and came back to the house.