Fox: Buffalo Swamp to Marcellus Shale: The History of Fox Township Pennsylvania

By Robert Schreiber Jr.

From woolly mammoths, through wolves and mountain lions, to the largest elk herd in the East. It begins in the heat of the tropics and continues through Ice Age Pennsylvania, from "King Coal" to Marcellus Shale. It is a story of Native Americans, pioneers and immigrants struggling for survival. Warriors, patriots, murderers and terrorists are all part of the history of a small town in Northcentral Pennsylvania. It is a unique story of men and women carving a home out of the wilderness, yet intricately involved with their nation and the world. Antietam, Normandy, Saigon and Baghdad are part of the story as is plague and the Ku Klux Klan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: May 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781426967047

Robert Schreiber Jr.

Rob Schreiber is a lifelong resident of Fox Township. A local educator, with Bachelors and Masters Degrees from Penn State University, he is President of Fox Township Manor and a member of numerous community boards and organizations. This book is meant as a gift to the communities of Fox Township.

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© Copyright 2011 Robert Schreiber Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN: 978-1-4269-6702-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4269-6703-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4269-6704-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011906437

Trafford rev. 05/27/2011

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North America & international

toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

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Contents

Foreword

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Preface

Chapter 1:

The Beginning-Geologic History

Chapter 2: Native Americans

Chapter 3:

On to the Great Buffalo Swamp

Chapter 4: The Land and Pioneers

Ch. 5: Monroe to Lincoln: Population Growth and Economic Development

Chapter 6: Civil War and Aftermath

Ch. 7: Lumber, Coal and Railroads

Ch. 8: Politics, Culture and Social History 1865-1900

Ch. 9: The Dark Side

Ch. 10: The Township at its Peak

Ch. 11: Prohibition, the Klan and Depression 1920s -1930s

Ch 12: War and Aftermath

Ch. 13: Baby Boom –

What a Time to be a Kid!

Post WWII to circa 1975

Ch. 14: 1975 to Present

Epilogue

Bibliography

To Paulette, Joseph and Rachel

Foreword

Fox Township Board of Supervisors

116 Irishtown Road

Kersey, PA 15846

It is an honor and a privilege to be leading our community during this exciting period in our townships’ history. While reading the chapters of this publication, we can’t help but think of the past community leaders and the trials and tribulations they must have faced. Undoubtedly, Fox Township has come a long way since its founding some 200 years ago – a real Rags to Riches sort of tale most would say. Though surrounded by controversy, the construction of the Greentree Landfill in Fox Township was a turning point; filling our coffers with unimaginable wealth and spurring community development beyond what our forefathers could have every imagined. But, as we read the historic accounts of how our community evolved, it becomes evident that Fox Township has always been a wealthy community – not necessarily in monetary terms but rich in community spirit and volunteerism.

It was but a handful of volunteers that started our first Volunteer Fire Department many years ago. Today this same Fire Department thrives because of that same spirited drive and devotion of volunteers. It is this resource of devoted volunteers that makes Fox Township the flourishing community that it is. They are the heart and backbone of our churches, schools, scouting organizations, service organizations, sportmen’s clubs, veteran’s organizations, emergency services and youth sporting organizations. It was this sense of community spirit and volunteerism that spearheaded the construction of the beautify Fox township Community Park, which has become the focal point for community events and recreation activities. And that same spirit leads the man, many, philanthropic endeavors of our small community.

While we can’t even begin to imagine what our successors will encounter in the years to come, we can say with confidence that they will surely be able to count on the dedicated efforts and community pride of the residents of Fox Township. We believe it will always be a community that will rally to weather any storm and step forward to help re-build should there ever be a need; a community that welcomes new faces with open arms and is always willing to help a neighbor in need.

Like these magnanimous people we serve, we expect our efforts to be nothing more than part of a faceless legacy. It is our hope, however, that we have done our part in creating a solid foundation on which our community will continue to grow and prosper.

We would like to express our sincere appreciation for the tremendous effort and years of work put into this book by Mr. Rob Schreiber and hope you thoroughly enjoy reading it.

FOX TOWNSHIP BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

Mike Keller

Randy Gradizzi

Dave Mattiuz

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank all those who have helped with this history by providing photographs, anecdotes, news clippings, diaries, memories and much more. They are too numerous to mention here, but a partial list of these contributors is located below. I am also indebted to the authors and historians of the past for their writing and research.

I would particularly like to recognize the Township Supervisors and Township Secretary Kathy Dowie. The Elk County Historical Society and the Historical Society of St. Marys and Benzinger Township are also owed a debt of gratitude. I would especially like to thank my family for their help and encouragement and above all my wife/editor/proofreader Paulette who seems to get great pleasure out of correcting my mistakes.

Some of those who have helped and contributed include:

Deb Agosti

James P. Burke

Adam Freeburg

Ray Freeburg

Ray Gahr

Gib Higgins

John Imhof

Ben Koch

Dave Mattuiz

George Mosier

Craig Singer

Steve Skryzpek

R. J. Schreiber

Gary Tamburlin

Joan Verbka

Preface

This is an attempt to record an accurate and reasonably complete history of a small community in central Pennsylvania on its bicentennial. It is a community that at first glance, would seem to have little of interest and be of small importance. This would be incorrect. It is also a reflection of the nation, and of those citizens that have, and continue to build this country. It is a history of a community proud of its past and present with hopes to continue another two hundred years.

As a life long resident, I have endeavored to write an inclusive yet readable chronicle, and hope that it will serve future readers with information and sources, as well as inform and entertain readers of today. Though I have attempted to authenticate all the information in this book, often all that is available are family anecdotes and stories. I regret any errors or deletions that are a result and I await later writers and researchers to correct them.

The writing of this story has been a decade’s long idea and I hope you will find this first complete history of Fox Township informative and enjoyable.

Chapter 1:

The Beginning-Geologic History

"And God said,… ‘let the dry land appear.’

God called the dry land Earth."

Genesis 1:9-10

On a cold winter’s day in Kersey, the warm homes may be a result of a tropical sun that beat down on the land long ago. Though the land existed for hundreds of millions of years, what would come to be significant for Fox Township began about 320 million years ago as balmy, shallow coastal swamps and slow moving river floodplains. The future township was just north of the Equator. There was a tropical climate, warm and humid, much like today’s Everglades. The ground was flat or very gently sloping and covered with long slender trees, some up to one hundred feet high, with thirty-inch narrow leaves. Many ferns, some forty feet high, blanketed the ground and understory. There were no flowering trees and no fruits, but the ancestors of many modern evergreens such as pine, hemlock and spruce existed. Fox Township citizens today often find their remains as fossils while digging foundations or while excavating for other reasons.

Animal life was primitive. This was at least a hundred million years before dinosaurs. The larger mammals that would become so important to the survival of early pioneers did not yet exist. Insects, like dragonflies and cockroaches, abounded. Early reptiles and amphibians flourished and warmed themselves in the tropical sun. Numerous mollusks such as clams, snails and mussels were plentiful. Their shells were the precursor of the township’s abundant limestone, useful to farmers for sweetening the slightly acid soils of this area.

During this age of plants, vegetation accumulated on and in the water year after year while being protected from decay by the water. Eventually, after millions of years, a thick layer of organic matter had amassed. Periodically, floods covered these organic remains with a protective layer of sand, mud or silt. Over the millenniums as continental plates shifted and collided, these layers were put under heat and pressure, and metamorphosized into the natural gas and coal that would become so important to the economic development of Fox Township. Beginning in 2008, numerous deep gas wells have been successfully drilled into the Marcellus shale beds throughout Fox Township. Though coal production has declined over the decades, the solar energy from over 300 million years ago still employs many in the area, as well as lights and heats our homes on those frigid January and February nights.

The sedimentation process also created the sandstone essential for constructing foundations of early buildings and clay for the manufacture of bricks and sewer pipes. Uplift, erosion and other geologic forces gradually brought these layers of coal, sandstone and limestone toward the surface to be more easily used by the early settlers of the township.

This uplift formed the Allegheny Plateau, on which the township is located, and had a significant impact on the settlement of Northcentral Pennsylvania. It will make migrating into the area extremely difficult and shorten the growing season. On early maps, Northcentral Pennsylvania was labeled the Great Buffalo Swamp. In 1890, when the U.S. government officially closed the frontier, the area was on the list. It was one of the Last Frontiers. Today, partly because of transportation difficulties, climate and geomorphology it is still one of the least settled regions east of the Mississippi River. As evidence, the 5th Congressional District, which encompasses all of this area, is one of the largest districts in the Eastern United States.

In a region with relatively poor soils, a short growing season and in the middle of nowhere, the natural resources, especially the coal and timber resources would be the basis for the economic growth of Fox Township. It would keep settlement somewhat viable until technological improvements made life in the wilderness of Elk County a bit easier. Life in Fox Township, today, would be much different, if not for the events of hundreds of millions of years ago. The effects on our history, geography, economy and culture are significant and still felt, especially in the winter!

Chapter 2: Native Americans

You now have become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets.

Red Jacket, Seneca 1805

Humans in Fox Township before the Egyptian Pyramids were built? Yes, in fact, much earlier. The Great Pyramid was constructed more than 3,500 years ago. Humans were in Elk County probably 12,000 years ago. Archeologists have found evidence of Native Americans living along the upper Ohio River as early as 14,200 B.C. (perhaps 17,000 B.C.). Excavations at Meadowcroft Rockshelter, located about forty miles southwest of Pittsburgh, have placed Indians in the hills and valleys of the Pennsylvania Appalachians much earlier than previously believed. Several archeological sites in Northcentral Pennsylvania have been found that extend back to 10,000 B.C. A stone scraper was discovered while excavating a pond near Fisher Hill in St. Marys. In the summer of 2008 archeologists in the Allegheny Forest near Mill Creek found artifacts dating to four thousand years ago, even though the humid climate and acid soils of the area are not conducive to preserving evidence of human activity.

The climate was cooler then and vegetation was more tundra like with open grasslands, low shrubs and some pine in patches. The glaciers that covered much of North America for millennia surrounded Elk County on three sides- north, west and east, but never came closer than forty miles. Though the glaciers finally receded between 22,000 and 17,000 years ago, the climate remained cool. Animals like mammoth, saber-toothed tiger, and the giant sloth that lived south of the ice were probably gone when man arrived in the region.

These Stone Age groups of people were hunters and gatherers. They had not yet developed bows and arrows but used a thrusting technology to hunt caribou, elk, buffalo and deer as well as small animals. The human density was low. Small family groups did not live in one place but roamed about for months without seeing other humans. Groups had to be small because food was limited. Larger groups were inefficient in this type of economic system and would have found it extremely difficult to survive. The small groups moved with the seasons and the animals, perhaps hundreds of miles, and when food became scarce they moved on. There was little competition for resources between groups and probably little or no conflict. When they met, it was a time for trading and marriages.

About 10,000 years ago the climate began to gradually warm. Forests, much as we have today, developed. The family groups expanded into bands of twenty or thirty people and became more numerous. They still hunted and foraged following seasonal rounds but things were changing. The atlatl or spear thrower appeared about this time, and, along with the corner-notch spear point, enabled these hunters to kill more easily the smaller, faster animals of the forest.

About 3,000 years ago, the climate and forests were like ours today. People became more sedentary, perhaps using rockshelters, caves or something similar as base camps, and then moving about from there on hunting and foraging trips. Numerous archeological sites from this time period exist along the Little Toby and the Clarion River that have been excavated and studied, and there are probably more to be discovered in Fox Township where large rock outcrops occur near streams and valleys. The Byrnes, Kersey and Hywick Run areas are likely candidates for these sites.

By 2,000 years ago, pottery appeared as did a trading network, but the area still remained lightly settled. Agriculture and the bow and arrow made their appearance about 1,000 years ago. Corn and squash were grown. Pottery improved. Groups became larger and settlement more permanent. Some settlements had stockades around them, which may indicate that conflicts could have arisen between groups competing for land or resources. There are numerous palisaded sites in our area that have been discovered, and some excavated (Russell City/Elk County Earthworks, Auman Farm, Dubois Continental Divide, etc.). Trading in shells, minerals and ideas increased along the overland trails of our area which connected the Ohio and Susquehanna watersheds.

About 1450 the climate in the Northern Hemisphere cooled about three or four degrees Fahrenheit. This Little Ice Age lasted about 400 years and had a severe impact on settlement in areas marginally suited for agriculture such as Northcentral Pennsylvania. In this upland region, the number of days between the last frost of spring and the first frost of fall was reduced to below the 120 days needed to grow corn. This, along with the relatively poor soils of the region, made farming unsuitable for the Iroquoian people of the area, and may have caused them to migrate to lower elevations that had better soils and a longer growing season. They moved principally to villages along river valleys (Allegheny, Susquehanna) and beyond the Allegheny Front into Central Pennsylvania. Elk County and surrounding areas were basically depopulated and the land served as hunting grounds.

Recently, St. Marys archeologist Andrew J. Myers theorized that Elk County and Fox Township were crossed with numerous trails linking the Allegheny and West Branch of the Susquehanna watersheds. These paths followed Bellmouth, Dog Hollow and Laurel Runs as well as the Little Toby Creek west of Ridgway to the base of Boones Mountain near Helens Mills. From there they followed a path that would later become John Kersey’s road into Toby and Coal Hollow. They would then cross the eastern continental divide into the Susquehanna watershed perhaps by way of Byrnes, Kersey or Hywick Run valleys. More sites need to be revealed, excavated and researched to fully establish the routes, but as most of the southeast section of the township is unsettled forest land these sites might be waiting for our discovery. Adam Freeburg, Toby native and anthropologist at the University of Washington, said that he and Billy Stenta visited rockshelters in the Medix Run area that could be good sights for future excavation.

The trade along these footpaths going east was probably fur. This was the beginning of the trade with Europeans. The Native Americans of our area would not have directly traded with whites, but would have used several other Indian tribes as intermediaries. Going west on the paths would have been seashells, lead and even some metals.

During the 1700s numerous eastern tribes, pushed from their homes by whites, migrated to and through our area for short amounts of time. They did this with the approval of the Seneca Iroquois who controlled this land and used it as a hunting ground. In 1785, following American victory in their war for independence, this land was transferred to the U.S. government by the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. This treaty would begin the breakup and sale of the land by the government to white speculators that would last for more than a decade. Chief Cornplanter of the Seneca Nation signed for the Iroquois Confederation and ended the over 10,000 years of domination of Northcentral Pennsylvania by Native Americans.

Indians would still use this land for a time, and they would be here to help the original whites when they arrive after the turn of the century. Mr. Slade, one of the first settlers in Fox Township, would marry an Indian maid, the Maid of the Blue Rock in the early 1800s near present day Portland Mills. Chief Tamsqua married them. Slade and General Wade had moved there previously after only living in Fox for a short time.

As the early settlers arrived in the wilderness of what would later be Fox Township, encounters with Native Americans were not uncommon. Indians from the Cornplanter Seneca often made hunting and trading forays into the area. The Indians were generally helpful and friendly. Early settler Judge Kyler mentions Big John, Captain Crow and Logan in his reminiscences.

In her book, Looking for Ephraim, Helen Hughes writes of settler Conrad Moyer of Toby Valley (possibly from near Graveyard Schoolhouse on Brandy Camp Road) having an interesting experience with Iroquois Indians about 1840. Mr. Moyer was a teamster and made trips to Freeport, Kittanning, Pittsburgh and other towns. He would take local products for trade and return with much needed supplies that would often have to last the year. On a return trip from Bellefonte, he encountered a group of Seneca encamped near Caledonia. This was not unusual at the time as they still hunted the area. While driving his wagon passed the campsite, Moyer accidentally broke a stake that had been driven into the ground by the hunters. The Indians immediately stopped the wagon and, in broken English and sign language, had Mr. Moyer get down from the wagon, whereupon their leader jumped up and started driving the team back in the direction from which Moyer came. Mr. Moyer was fearful of the Indians but also angry at having his wagon and supplies stolen. The Indian turned the wagon back around as another replaced the broken stake with a new stake in the exact spot of the