The soldiers of the Pennsylvania Line who served in the War of the Revolution were by act of legislation entitled to wild lands of the State and a large area of the northwestern portion of the State north of the depreciation lands and west of the Allegheny River was set apart and surveyed to the officers and soldiers. As early as March 7, 1780, while the war for the independence of the American colonies was still in active progress, and being vigorously waged by the hostile armies in the field, the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, by resolution, made a promise of “certain donations and quantities of land” to the soldiers of the State, known as the “Pennsylvania Line,” then serving in the Continental Army. This resolution provided that these lands should be “surveyed and divided off” at the end of the war, and allotted to those entitled to receive them according to their several rank. In order to comply with the letter and intention of the resolution, an act was passed by the General Assembly on March 12, 1783, by the provisions of which certain lands were set apart to be sold for the purpose of redeeming the certificates of depreciation given to the soldiers of the Pennsylvania Line. It also provided that a certain tract of country, beginning at the mouth of Mogulbughtition Creek, now known as Mahoning Creek, in Armstrong County; then up the Allegheny River to the mouth of Cagnawaga Creek, in now Warren County; thence due north to the northern boundary of the State; thence west by the said boundary, to the northwest corner of the State, thence south, by the western boundary of the State, to the northwest corner of lands appropriated by the act for discharging the depreciation certificates; and thence by the same lands east to the place of beginning, “which said tract of country shall be reserved and set apart for the only and sole use of fulfilling and carrying into execution the said resolve.” The territory thus set apart comprised parts of the present counties of Lawrence, Butler, Armstrong, Venango, Forest and Warren, all of the counties of Mercer and Crawford and that portion of Erie County which lies south of the triangle. This territory was a wild and unbroken wilderness, except at the few places fortified by the French and later occupied by the English and Colonists during the Revolution. The officers of the First and Second Battalions of the Province of Pennsylvania in the French and Indian War petitioned for and received twenty-four thousand acres of land along the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, and these officers and their families thus became pioneer settlers in that picturesque valley, and now the veterans of the Revolution were given homes in the northwestern section of the State and there planted the settlements which have grown into the most important industrial centers of the Western Hemisphere.