By the summer of 1775, when Philip Vickers Fithian first included the West Branch in his itinerary--the valley by then supported some 100 families--Henry Antes had already distinguished himself as a public servant. He, along with five others, had been commissioned by the county court to lay out a road from Fort Augusta to the mouth of Bald Eagle Creek;[10] he had served as a spokesman for the Fair Play men in a land title dispute;[11] he had been made a justice of the peace;[12] and he had been appointed as a judge of the Court of Quarter Sessions.[13] This was to be only the beginning, for in 1775, when the Associators were organized, Henry Antes was made captain of company eight, embodying the Nippenose and Pine Creek settlers.[14] But even this is not the complete picture, for when the settlers returned to the region in the eighties, following the Great Runaway of 1778, Antes became sheriff, the chief law enforcement officer of Northumberland County.[15] The popular miller had become the popular leader, a popularity enhanced by his interpretation of the sheriff's role, an interpretation which occasionally brought him into conflict with the State's leaders.[16] The leadership of the Antes brothers is further accentuated by the activities of Frederick Antes. Between 1776 and 1784 he was a delegate to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, justice of the peace, president judge of the county courts, county treasurer, commissioner of purchase for Northumberland County, a representative in the General Assembly, and a colonel of militia.[17] With Henry on the West Branch and Frederick frequently in Philadelphia, the Antes family had a constant finger on the pulse of Pennsylvania politics. Official duties, plus the strategic location of the Antes fort and mill, made Frederick and Henry Antes the most influential persons in the West Branch Valley during the operation of the Fair Play system. Eminently qualified by numerous public responsibilities, the Antes brothers were major leaders of the Fair Play settlers.