Lou’s View: CLEARY CAMPBELL CAME FIRST
By Lou Bernard
People like hearing about firsts. Anyone or anything that came first is generally a topic of interest. The first mayor of Lock Haven was Levi Mackey. The first community founded in Clinton County was Dunnstown. The first house in the county was the Chatham-Ferguson House in Pine Creek Township.
And, while we’re at it, the first settler in Clinton County was Cleary Campbell.
To be completely accurate, we’re talking about present-day Clinton County here. During Cleary Campbell’s day, Clinton County hadn’t been founded yet. At the time he came out and settled here, it was Berks County, and then Northumberland. Around 1800, the area became Lycoming, and then in 1839, parts of Lycoming and Centre were taken to form Clinton.
But back then, it was Berks, and it was a wild, open forest land. And Cleary Campbell came from Juniata County to settle here.
He was the first settler in the territory that later became Clinton County. And nobody could exactly figure out how that happened, because in all other aspects of his life, he was known as the laziest man anyone could imagine.
The Clinton Republican ran a piece by John Hamilton on Campbell on April 18, 1875 that turned out to be the definitive work on his settlement. It was later quoted for John Blair Linn’s “History of Centre and Clinton Counties,” the most thorough book on the county’s history.
About 1769, when explorers reached a tract of land that had been granted to William Glass, they found Campbell living there illegally in a cabin, near the site of present-day Lock Haven. He was a squatter and had no title to the land, but there he was anyway.
Hamilton wrote,”There must have been something in the character of the man that was not generally seen by his neighbors. What should induce him to venture among the first, or rather ahead of the first settlers in this then remote region was a mystery, for he was regarded as the laziest man to be found.”
This wasn’t exactly just rumor, either. There was at least one recorded incident that backed up Campbell’s reputation for being lazy. It involved a cabin and a cat.
Back in those days, cabins were not what you’d call elaborate affairs. We’re talking about a time when you needed a home to stand up against the rain and cold, and you had to build it yourself, and you were sleeping outside until you did. So simple was the general design—A cabin usually consisted of one room, which did duty as the bedroom, dining room, and living room, plus pretty much anything else the resident might require.
“It was invariably the practice of Cleary Campbell, being too lazy to sit up, to throw himself down upon a bed,” wrote Hamilton. “This habit must have drawn to it universal attention, as the following story will show.”
On a visit to a neighbor’s house, once he gained some neighbors, Campbell walked into the cabin and dropped onto the closest bed. The problem was, that particular neighbor had a cat, and it was sleeping on the bed, as cats do. And Campbell landed right on it.
The cat began to yowl. Campbell didn’t move, remaining prone on the bed.
“Poor pussy,” he said. “I pity you, but I cannot help you.”
Cleary Campbell died in August of 1809, at age 69. He’s buried in the Hays-Fearon Cemetery in Beech Creek. (I have no information on what happened to the cat, or where the cat was buried.) The bad news is that Campbell was not the first person buried there. On the other hand, he hasn’t had to stand up in quite a while.
