Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

The geography of Clinton County has always interested me. Across the middle, you get this sort of “community strip,” with Beech Creek on one end and Avis on the other, and a cluster of communities in between: Lock Haven, Flemington, Mill Hall, McElhattan, and so on. Below is mostly Sugar Valley, and above is a lot of forest punctuated by Renovo.

It gets more interesting when you split it all up into townships. A township is a kind of half-size community—Smaller than a county, bigger than a borough. Clinton County has twenty-one of them. I’ve counted. A let me tell you, when you list them in an article, you’d better get all of them, or you will get nasty e-mails from literally EVERYONE in the missing township, including the dogs and cats.

But at least all those townships are still around. You can’t say the same for Grove Township.

You’re not going to find Grove Township on any maps these days. You’d have to go back a century and a half or so. The township was formed back when half the county was still Lycoming County, between 1800 and 1839. At the time, it was bordered by Leidy, Keating, and Chapman, but wouldn’t be these days—Chapman Township was later chopped up into Noyes Township, which would border Grove Township, if it still existed.

It was named after Peter Grove, a settler back in the colonial times. He’s currently buried in the Dunnstown Cemetery, and pretty likely to remain there. Grove Street is also named after him, but not Peter’s Steps, which is generally attributed to Grove. The rock outcropping on the north side of the river was actually named after Peter McGinley, a local hunter, but often mistakenly attributed to Grove.

The first tavern in Grove Township was known as the “Mad House,” and established in the 1800s by Jacob Berge. For the record, I would totally have a beer at anywhere called the Mad House.

When Clinton County was founded, on June 21, 1839, it started off a little larger than it is now. There was more space on the northeast and northwest sides that were later ceded to other counties. Tioga took one, but as I’m writing about Grove Township, that’s not the important part. The northwest area was ceded to Cameron County in 1860, and a significant chunk of Grove Township went with it.

This created two Grove Townships, one in each county, across the border. The county commissioners couldn’t have that; it would mess with the Amazon deliveries. So they renamed the Grove Township on the Clinton side, calling it East Keating Township in 1875, and changing the name of Keating Township to West Keating.

Now, in retrospect, very little of this makes any logical sense. I have a tendency to lump both Keatings together and refer to them as one township, which I feel is reasonable, as they have a combined population of maybe eleven. (Again, including the dogs and cats.) Also, though they are East and West Keating, they are more north and south of one another if you’re really paying attention. The county commissioners in 1875 may not have thought things all the way through.

That’s Grove Township, the township that no longer exists. If you’re more interested in hearing about one that’s still around, let me know. I can write about, say, Dunnstable Township anytime.