Monday, July 1, 2013

4. Jacob turns a quarter century old

Way over east in Centre County beneath the peaks of the seven mountains and walled in from the great plain of the Susquehanna River...gray sandstones, a ribbed plateau, and pale blue limestone.

The Valley runs for about thirty miles down its southern barrier of Nittany Mountain.  In some spots it's a square 2 miles wide, in others the breadth is pushing five and a half.

The central region of the Nittany Valley is called "The Barrens" and its underbelly is iron ore...pig metal when it gets furnaced.  The Barrens is part ridge and part falls away to the valley floor.  Sharp and deep ravines contribute to the "uneven" contour of which Linn speaks in a History of Centre and Clinton Counties.

Big Fishing Creek spits out of Nittany Valley by the Mill Hall Gap and flows on into the Bald Eagle Creek.

The Valley's got sections...opposite Mill Hall Gap, at Bellefonte Gap, and a section near Jacksonville.

It's near McRabin's house and Mill Hall where the variety of limestone is a pale blue.

The diagonal lines of the creeks and the stern gaps played a role in the carving into county and township.

An officer of the British Provincial army engaged in the defense of the frontier thought he'd discovered an empire when he reached the top of Nittany Mountain and saw a summer prairie and forest.  But for water he had to go to a spring at a lower elevation.  The Captain was Potter and the spring got named Old Fort.

It was nearly a hundred years later that John Snyder, a teamster in the Revolution, died in "Walker Township.  The earliest surveys had long been made and the warrants piecemealed into community.

By the time Jacob and Catharine Ann's child Matilda was born in 1831 a major split between the Lick Run Church and the "Presbyterian Church of Nitanny Valley" was five years on the horizon.  The Snyders and the Emerochs were engaged in the building of churches and seemed to have worked with Valentine Meyer (on the Reformed side) as opposed to the side of the Lutheran elders who'd traced their trail of congregating and ministering back to John Beck coming to the Valley in 1806 from Northampton County.  1806...that was a mere two years before the birth of Jacob and Catharine's first child Daniel.

Daniel came in the spring of 1808, a five year period in which to be the only son passed before the birth of Levi (20th of December).

Levi'd been about two when along came Samuel in the autumn of 1815.

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William made a four-square son-only family and so the fifth boy was named Solomon.  Solomon seems to have been born about 1823.

From there on our family tree list things get a little more cloudy as to precise dates.  Daniel seems to have died in 1830 which would've been in the year before Matilda came as the only girl on the list.  As for the John born to Jacob and Catharine D. Harrison has given us no dates.

We've got Dunkels, Dunkles, and Snyders yet to visit here in Pennsylvania.  As well as Bollanders, Beech Creek and a blacksmith over in Haines Township.

Could've been a screeching eagle or it mighta been a reference to a place called Bald Eagle in what became Mifflin County.  'Twas those inhabitants that petitioned for a division of the land that was pronounced official via the April sessions of Assembly in 1799.

 "In April, 1798, the inhabitants of Bald Eagle, in Mifflin County, petitioned for a division of that township equally by a line from the mouth of Antes Run up the said run to the head thereof, and from thence a southeast course to Potter township, and also from the mouth of said run (Curtain Station) a northwest course to the Susquehanna.  At April sessions, 1799, the township was divided accordingly, and the division adjoining Lycoming County named 'Centre Township," the other part to retain the former name.  Centre township therefore embraced the western half of the present township of Walker by a diagonal line running from Logan's Gap (now called Hecla Gap) towards Jacksonville, and all of Marion west of the same line continued towards the mouth of Beech Creek, all of the present townships of Howard, Liberty, and Curtin, and that part of the present township of Beech Creek, Clinton County, lying west of a line running from about the mouth of Big Run to the south bank of the river about a mile southwest of the mouth of the Sinnemahoning, and a strip three-fourths of a mile wide along the east side of Boggs, Snow Shoe, and Burnside Townships" (39 Linn).

First officers:  Constable William Wilson; Supervisors David Lamb and Thomas Askey; Overseers Thomas Wilson and Henry McCalmont; Assessor John McCalmont and John Thompson; Auditors Francis McEwen and John Mitchell.

"The territory above was called Centre Township until January 1810 when Howard and Walker were formed out of Centre and the latter name disappears" (39).

"First rate land valued at three dollars per acre; second rate at two dollars; third rate, one dollar; fourth at fifty cents per acre; average rate per cent., five mills." pg 39 Linn

Single freemen are each taxed 50 cents; clerks and those having trades 25 cents in addition.

Haines Twp. in 1801 included that portion of Gregg (now) south of Brush Mountain and east of a line running through Spring Mill to the head of Penn's Creek, and all of Penn Twp.

1801 inhabitants include Melchior Dunkel, Casper Emerich, Christian Emerich, Nicholas Emerich (blacksmith).  Also Snyders.




The History of Centre and Clinton Counties gives us the 92 year old John Snyder with whom was living Solomon Candy Shoemaker...

"John Snyder, who was a teamster during the Revolution, died in Walker, July 31, 1850, aged ninety-two years" (457, Linn).

We can see Solomon (his wife Catharin and children William and Catharin) on the US Census of 1850 for Walker Township, Centre County, PN...


On the next page of that Census we find lots of Emerichs!  The son of Jacob and Catharine Ann [Snyder] Candy...Samuel Candy married Mary Magdalena Emerich (daughter of John Emerick and Elizabeth Dunkle) in December of 1837.



Thanks to Ancestor Tracks we can actually see the Candy's on a map of Centre County 1861.  Right near "Snydertown" we find "Candy Heirs" and "S. Candy."  These were up near Nittany Ridge.  But where they came from is still a mystery to us.

Click on the link to view the map...

The map gives us a visual image that matches up with the 1850 US Census information for Walker Township, Centre County

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