Lou’s View – March 20, 2014
A WALK THROUGH 1839
by Lou Bernard
It’s Clinton County’s 175th anniversary! It’s been almost twenty minutes since I mentioned that, so I thought it was time again. The county was founded on June 21, 1839, and if you think I’m not going to milk this to death, you’d better think again.
Lock Haven has grown considerably since those early days. These days, when I give a walking tour, I’m used to beginning at the library and going in any direction, and having historic locations to point to. Back when the county was founded, the library wasn’t built yet—We’d have been standing in a forest or a cornfield.
So, what was there in 1839? What would I have shown on a walking tour back then?
Let’s imagine we’re taking a tour. Let’s imagine that I can show you around this community back in 1839. Also, let’s imagine that it’s June and about seventy-five degrees out, because if we have to take a made-up walk together, we may as well be comfortable.
A lot of what we now know as Lock Haven would have been unsettled back then. There was a hotel, Mahan’s Hotel, along present-day Bellefonte Avenue where Carter Towers now stands. It’s safe to say that the river was there at the time. But to really get into the civilization, we’d have to go down around Jay Street.
Standing at the corner of Jay and Main, where Lindsey Place now stands, was Smith’s Hotel. Frank Smith was the first person to officially buy property in Lock Haven, and a founding member of the Thespian Society. This was a group of local hotel owners who would perform plays in a different hotel each month. It was one of the only forms of entertainment that early Clinton County had.
A few doors down from the hotel that doubled as a theater, you could see a tavern that doubled as a courthouse. W.W. Barker’s tavern was used, for a year or two, as the site of the new county government. In those days, the county government consisted of about five guys. Anthony Kleckner, Hugh White, and Robert Bridgens were the county commissioners. John Miller was the sheriff. And Philip Krebs did basically everything else.
Next to Barker’s Tavern was the canal. The Bald Eagle Cross-Cut Canal ran from the Susuquehanna River south, across town, and then took a bend to the west, heading toward Flemington. (Which is also having an anniversary this year.)
Around about 1840, if you looked to the south, you’d see the new courthouse standing where Robb Elementary now stands. But in 1839, it wasn’t built yet. What was there, around the modern-day playground area, was town founder Jerry Church’s home, complete with his tree house.
Yes, our town founder had a tree house. Referred to as “Church’s Folly,” it stood thirty feet in the air, was forty feet long, and was supported by thirteen posts. Jerry designed it that way to have each post represent one of the original states. A spiral staircase led up to the tree house itself, and when you got there, you’d find a couch running along the interior, and most likely you’d find Jerry sitting there, playing the violin for his neighbors.
One of these neighbors would have been James Jefferis, a retired pirate from Chester County. Jefferis bought the biggest and most expensive plot of land around, a hundred and twenty acres for nine thousand dollars. So pretty much all of the southern end of Lock Haven in 1839 was the Jefferis farm. He had a white house standing at the corner of Bald Eagle and Henderson Streets—And unlike most of the other stuff on this imaginary tour, it’s still there. 400 East Bald Eagle Street is still the same house James Jefferis and his family lived in back when the county began.
We’ve grown a lot in a hundred and seventy-five years. We’ve come a long way from the small community that was here in the early days. Just think what it’ll be like in another twenty-five years, when I’m giving my walking tour as the county turns two hundred.
I can hardly wait.
