History

Perry was the second township organized in Jefferson county, being taken from Pine Creek in 1818. It embraced the whole of the county south of Little Sandy, and the dividing line was for a long time called the "Mason and Dixon line of Jefferson county." It was organized soon after the brilliant victory gained on Lake Erie, by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, and was named for him.

The first settler in what is now Perry township, was John Bell, who was born in Virginia on the 28th of January, 1770, and when but an infant was taken by his family to Cumberland county, and subsequently to the Sewickly settlement, then in Westmoreland county, where he resided until 1800, when he moved to the vicinity of what is now the town of Indiana, where he was in 1805, on the formation of Indiana county, elected the first constable in that county. In 1809 he decided to penetrate still further into the wilderness, and settled upon the farm about one mile north of the Big Mahoning Creek, and made the first improvement in that part of Jefferson county. Until the year 1812 his nearest neighbors were nine miles distant, in Indiana county, and the nearest, in what is now Jefferson county were those living in the Barnett Settlement, over twenty miles north of him.

Kate Scott History of the Township

Contributed for use by the Jefferson County Genealogy Project http://www.pa-roots.com/jefferson/)

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