The Jesuits do not mention this fate, but intimate that he met his death at the town of Toanchain, about one mile from Thunder Bay.
Such was the fate of the man who was the first to cross from Lake Ontario to the Susquehanna and pass from the villages of the Iroquois through neutral country to the shores of Lake Huron. Certainly he was the first European to discover the picturesque beauty of the great Susquehanna River.
John Harris, Who Laid Out Harrisburg,
Had Narrow Escape, October 25, 1755
John Harris, Sr., built his log house on the bank of the Susquehanna River where the City of Harrisburg now stands in the year of 1705. This building was subsequently stockaded and became known as Fort Harris.
Harris was especially an Indian trader, but engaged largely in agriculture. It is said of him that he was the first person to use a plow on the Susquehanna, and moreover, that “he was as honest a man as ever broke bread.”
The elder Harris was born in the County of Yorkshire, England, of Welsh parents, in the year 1673, and was brought up in the trade of his father, that of a brewer. He was of middle age when he emigrated to America and located in Philadelphia, where he became a contractor for cleaning and grading the streets of the city. He married Esther Say, an English lady, who possessed a remarkable personality and was noted for her extraordinary energy and learning.
In January, 1705, John Harris was given a license to “seat himself on the Susquehanna, and to erect such buildings as are necessary for his trade, and to enclose and improve such quantities of land as he shall think fit.”
He tarried at Conewago awhile, but soon learned of the beauty and superior advantages of Paxtang, and that the best fording-place on the Susquehanna was near there, so he removed and, immediately upon his arrival, commenced the erection of a home and storehouse, which were subsequently to figure so conspicuously in the pioneer history of the young Province.