“They were driven from the lands on which they had settled and on April 18, 1752, Andrew Montour was commissioned by the governor to settle and reside upon these Indian lands, the Indians on July 2, 1750, having petitioned for such occupation, and arrangements having been made with them for such occupation at a place considered most central, to see that the lands were not settled upon and to warn [...]
The date was June 10th 1778. In the east, the Revolutionary War raged and colonial forces under General George Washington were seeing key victories producing a turning point in the conflict. People living here in what would become Lycoming County PA were also part of that war. They were fighting for their lives against an enemy and ally of the British whose very plan of attack included ambush and lightning [...]
So, what does a forty-five-foot tall, forty-one-ton monument on private land, the Susquehannock Indians, an ex-bank president in Indian dress-up, and a magical place called Lockabar have in common? Well, historian Carl Becker once said it best, "history is an imaginative creation" and that tongue-in-cheek remark never bore more truth than the story of the King Widaagh Monument in Nippenose Township, PA. When I first saw the monument (yes the [...]
Imagine going back 1,000 years ago to the banks of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. At that time, the area was inhabited only by Native Americans. Tank Baird of Williamsport holds a piece of pottery which he and members of the North Central Chapter 8 of the Society for PA Archeology found at the dig site at Canfield Island recently. The artifact was the top rim of [...]
Sunburned, rain whipped and with really bad hair (I was sporting the Don King look) my wife Anita and I recently rode into Washington, Pennsylvania in the early evening. We were only 20 or 30 miles short of our destination of Wheeling, West Virginia, but I promised at one point during the ride that we would go no further that day. The main reason was that my normally sweet wife [...]
