A guide book of art, architecture, and historic interests in Pennsylvania
History
A guide book of art, architecture, and historic interests in Pennsylvania
Architecture -- Pennsylvania; Art -- Pennsylvania; Historic buildings -- Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania -- Guidebooks; Pennsylvania -- History
HUNTINGDON, county seat; population 7051, largest town on the Juniata.
The first white visitors to this region were traders, in traffic with
Indians, exchanging goods for furs and skins. On incursions, made before
the middle of the eighteenth century, they found a tribe, a branch of
the Six Nations, located on the now southeast portion of this borough,
their wigwams circling around a pillar of stone, 14 feet high and 6
inches square, covered with hieroglyphics supposed to be a record of
their history and achievements. This tribe, besides hunting and fishing,
had cleared land and cultivated corn. This stone was regarded with
great veneration by the natives; here they had assembled for centuries
to hold their grand councils; its conspicuous position and appearance
led the white visitors to name the locality, “Standing Stone,” it stood
above Second Street, on or near 208 Allegheny Street. Conrad Weiser, in
1748, and John Harris, in 1754, in accounts of their journeys to the
Ohio River, both describe this stone.
The Proprietaries of this province, ever mindful of the rights of the
Indians, would not grant lands, nor permit settlements to be made until
the Indian title had been purchased; at a treaty held in Albany, in
1754, the Six Nations, consisting of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas,
Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras, executed a deed to the Proprietaries
for a large portion of the province, including the whole valley of the
Juniata; soon after, the resident tribe migrated, and, it is supposed,
carried the stone with them. The seal of the borough has, as its central
figure, a Standing Stone. A second stone was erected by the settlers;
and in 1896 a third, at Penn and Third Streets; as a memorial of the
ancient standing stone of the Indians. Fort Standing Stone was built
here at an early date; site about intersection of Penn and Second
Streets, it was stockaded and provided with barracks, blockhouses, and
magazines constructed of heavy hewn timber, and was the place of many
important incidents during troublesome times following the defeat of
General Braddock in 1755, and until peace was made with Great Britain in
1783.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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