Did you know? A Huntingdon County town was once sold off by lottery, and the lottery is a big part of why it never became the city it was drawn up to be.
On December 13, 1797, John Cadwallader laid out Birmingham on the north bank of the Little Juniata, about three miles below where Tyrone sits now. The county history says it was laid out "for a manufacturing town, at the head of navigation." Three hundred acres. Streets from sixty six to two hundred feet wide. Two lots set aside for a school house and a library hall, and four lots promised to any established religious society that wanted to build a church and a burial ground.
Then came the part that sank it. The lots were sold by ticket. Ten dollars for a town lot, five dollars down. Which lot you actually got was drawn by ballot, overseen by five freeholders who had to swear or affirm to act impartially before they could start. People in eastern cities bought in without ever standing on the ground.
The history is blunt about what the plan hid. It was "made to look very attractive to a people who knew nothing of the steep hills and ravines included within the limits of the plat." When buyers came to see what they had drawn, a good many found their lot "perched upon a steep hillside or in the bottom of a deep hollow," and they walked away from money they had already paid.
The great city never came. The village is still there.
Read the full story, with 3 passages quoted from the county histories →
