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NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY
FORMED March 21, 1772; named for the Duke of Northumberland. Mountainous, with great amount of fertile land, watered by the Susquehanna River and tributaries. Chief industry is coal mining.
County seat, Sunbury, population 15,721, on site of a populous Indian village named Shamokin, occupied variously by different tribes; in 1745, the town contained about fifty houses and three hundred inhabitants; the Six Nations used it as a tarrying place for their war parties against the Catawbas of the South.
It was the residence of Shikellimy, an Oneida chief sent by the Iroquois, who claimed the land by conquest in 1728, he was the Indian diplomat, and land agent of the three great tribes of Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware, with supervision of the Delaware, Shawnee, and other tribes. He also had to look after all matters relating to the settlement and purchase of Indian lands by the whites. In 1742, Count Zinzendorf, with Conrad Weiser and others, came to Shamokin; Shikellimy gave them a hearty welcome, and promised to forward their design of having a Moravian Mission there; it was established in 1747 by Martin Mack and his wife; Bishop Cammerhoff and Zeisberger visited the town the next year. In 1748 Shikellimy died; “the Chief who never swerved in his friendship to the Province”; he had been baptized in the Christian faith in Bethlehem, and was buried just outside of what was later Fort Augusta; James Logan, his second son, was perhaps the best known of his children; made so by the murder of his family, near the mouth of Yellow Creek, on the Ohio, in 1774, and the famous “Logan’s Lament.” A large boulder, with memorial tablet, marks Shikellimy’s grave; it was placed, in 1915, by the Fort Augusta Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Pennsylvania Historical Commission; the boulder is of very close grained rock, of the kind used by the Indians for their hardest and strongest implements; it was quarried near Wapwallopen, about forty miles above Sunbury; this rock boulder, from our local mountains, will resist the forces of nature for centuries to come, as it has done for ages past.
Shamokin (Sunbury) was also the residence of Allummapees, or Sassounan, the head chief of the Delawares, so that this place was, in every sense of the term, the Indian capital of Pennsylvania from 1728-48, and was deserted in 1749 on account of a severe famine along the Susquehanna. At the north of Sunbury, along the river drive, is site of Fort Augusta, built in 1756 by Colonel Miles and Captain Trump of the Second Pennsylvania Battalion; it was the frontier, after Forts Muncy, Brady, and Freeland were destroyed in 1779 by British and Indians; the powder magazine, and well, built of brick, are still intact and in good preservation. This was said to have been the most strategic point in the whole section; a monument on either side of the roadway marks the place. On the site of the fortifications is a brick mansion; within are many relics taken from the fort, and draft of original plan. Visitors are welcome. Site of Fort Freeland on north side of Warrior’s Run, four miles east of Watsontown; it was a large stockaded log house, built in 1773, enclosing about half an acre.
Sunbury was laid out 1772, by William Maclay and John Lukens, by order of Governor Richard Penn, who named it. William Maclay, first United States Senator from Pennsylvania, built his stone residence, still standing, on the river bank in northwest part of town; the city plan is like that of Philadelphia, and many of the streets have the Philadelphia names; Market Street faces a public square between Second and Third Streets, known as Cameron Park, in which is the Civil War Soldiers’ Monument, granite shaft surmounted by a life-size, granite statue of Colonel James Cameron, who organized a regiment from this county. Courthouse, Second Street, facing west side of Cameron Park, originally built in 1866; Georgian; brick with Hummelstown brownstone trimmings; was remodeled in the same style in 1915 and enlarged, in the rear, with a cross wing, giving two fine courtrooms, last architect, William H. Lee, Shamokin. The prison, one block away, at the corner of Second and Arch Streets, medieval castle style, built, 1878, dark gray stone, with stone wall twenty feet high, surrounding the whole structure, has wing used as a penitentiary, where prisoners serve out their sentences; they weave carpets and make coarse hosiery.
Northumberland, settled, 1772, population 4061. Dr. Joseph Priestly, chemist and philosopher, was its most noted inhabitant; he emigrated here in 1794, to be with his son, and died, 1804; in 1874, Scientists of America celebrated here the centennial of Dr. Priestly’s discovery of oxygen; his house, built, 1796, is still standing, in excellent preservation; a portrait of Dr. Priestly, by Gilbert Stuart, is owned by Miss Priestly. The Academy was erected in 1803, mainly through the efforts of Dr. Priestly; Rev. Isaac Greer, first principal.
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WESTMORELAND COUNTY
FORMED February 26, 1773, named for the County of Westmoreland, England. Chief industries, coal, coke, gas, and manufactories. Ruins of old furnaces abound in this section, relics of the iron industry about 1800. The Lincoln Highway crosses this county, formerly the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh Turnpike, entering near Laughlinstown, at the base of Laurel Ridge, elevation, 2700 feet; here is a museum of relics, shown in an old tavern of stage coach days, built about 1800, where Daniel Webster is said to have stopped, and Zachary Taylor, in 1848, held a reception. Three miles west is Ligonier, on site of a fort built by Captain Burd under the direction of Colonel Bouquet, a Swiss; named for Sir John Ligonier, a famous English general; all traces of the fort have been obliterated; a descriptive tablet, erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution, is in the town square. In the High School Library is an engraving, from a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Sir John Ligonier. Near by is Idlewild Park.