The settlement of this township was clouded by a calamity which, however obscure the victims and remote the scene, appeals to human sympathy as one of the most pathetic of backwoods incidents. Mr. Purcell was the first inhabitant within the present limits of Highland Township. He came from the east, but little is known of him, and the date of his arrival cannot be ascertained. The family consisted of a wife and sister-in-law. He was killed by the falling of a tree, near where the corncrib on the Helen Furnace farm now stands. The solitary women were of course unable to extricate his body, and the poor widow traveled on foot, over the State road, to the nearest white settlement, Holmans's (now called Tionesta) on the Allegheny, nineteen miles distant, to get assistance for liberating and burying her husband's corpse.
It is likely that this ill-fated pioneer had been a resident of Centre county, for Alexander McNaughton, of that district, bought the widow's right - it was Bingham land - helped her remove from the place, and in April 1806, settled with his family on Purcell's improvement, now the property of S. Wilson's heirs, at Helen Furnace. He was a Scotchman by birth; had emigrated, married an Irish woman in Philadelphia, and removed to Bald Eagle Valley, Centre County, where he was engaged in transporting and marketing iron from the eastern furnaces and forges, and whence he came to the wilds of Venango county. His family, at that time, was composed of his wife, five sons, Samuel, James, John, David, Daniel Alexander, and two daughters, Margaret and Anne, and a domestic, Betsy Harris - a splendid auxiliary force for pioneering. These are now all dead. Daniel, the last survivor, died a few years ago. The father, mother, three of the children and Betsey Harris (Mrs. P. Drysler) sleep in the little cemetery at Helen.
McNaughton and his five sons cleared a large tract and prospered fairly. The father distributed portions of the homestead plantation among his sons. The Clarion township pioneers were not far distant and were reached by a forest trail; but along the State road for many years the nearest settlements were Holmans on the west and Port Barnett on the east. The arrival of the Kapps and Siegworths, Washington township colonists brought civilization one step nearer. Later came John Vogelbacher. All these immigrants halted awhile at McNaughton's pioneer cabin, and it must have seemed a very haven of rest after their long and solitary journey over the wilderness-girt State road. And here we may remark the important bearing which the existence of this road had on the opening-up of the north.
There were two Indian camps within the bounds of Highland Township on the arrival of Alexander McNaughton. The largest was at the State Road Ripple; the other stood on the present George Bittenbender farm. The relations of the early settlers with these dusky sons of the forest were amicable, and they were not unpleasant neighbors. Betsey Harris once witnessed an Indian wedding at the Ripple. Not long after the coming of the McNaughtons, the Cornplanters all decamped. Occasionally after that Indians would pass along the road on hunting expeditions, and in 1820 a party of sixty men and four squaws passed en route to Jefferson County to hunt, returning in the winter.
McNaughton's cabin was a stopping-place and inn for travelers and immigrants on the State road. During the War of 1812 great numbers of militia men from the eastern part of the State, passed over this highway to and fro, and many encamped on McNaughton's farm. Among these was the company to which belonged James Bird, who was executed for desertion at Erie, October 1814, just before the arrival of the messenger bearing a pardon, and whose lamentable fate is the theme of a ballad well known in olden times. "Highland Alex", as was his familiar title, was also an auctioneer, and used to travel miles to act in that capacity.
McNaughton, after some years, was followed by a man named Waterhouse, who settled near by, on the Henry farm. He did not remain. George Hanhold, from New Jersey, came soon after to the farm of Samuel Gilmore. After having raised a family there, he sold the farm and returned. David Whitehill, the next settler, originally of Centre County, came from Armstrong County in the spring of 1817, and cleared the farm on which his descendants now live. Alexander Criswell emigrated from Centre County to McNaughton's Mill in 1819, but lived there a short time before departing for the State of Indiana. His eldest daughter, Hannah, married Daniel McNaughton, and is still living at the age of eighty-eight. In 1820 William Reed came from Holman's Island, in the Allegheny, to the present farm of Joseph Porter. Alexander Porter removed the same year to the land now occupied by Louis Franz; and about the same time two Irish families, those of David and James Boyd, located, the former on the Duncan McNaughton farm, the latter on that of Paul Mahle. John Reed, in 1821, moved to a tract now occupied by the farms of Isaac Imhoff and others. The descendants of William and James Reed are very numerous. Thomas Cathers settled in the township next, and after him came John Callahan (a Dunkard) in 1827, from Bedford County. Then the region began to fill up more rapidly.
Source: Pages 516-518,
History of Clarion County, A.J. Davis, Editor, 1887This page was last updated on Saturday, February 18, 2006.
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