Huntingdon County Information Page

Township · Huntingdon County

Smithfield

2 stories on file, each with its sources. 5.5 square miles of land in the ridge and valley country of central Pennsylvania.

4,618
Population
2020 Census, P.L. 94-171
5.50 sq mi
Land area
2020 Census gazetteer
0.11 sq mi
Water
2020 Census gazetteer
Township
Type
GEOID 4206171328

The founding record

Smithiield is one of the newer townships of the county, having been organized in March, 1886, from Porter, Walker, and Juniata. It lies directly across the Juniata river from Huntingdon borough, the village of Smithfield forming practically a suburb of the county seat. The Huntingdon & Broad Top railroad runs southwest through the township. John W. Jordan, ed., History of the Juniata Valley and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1913) · character 201,058 of the scanned text

Quoted from a work published before 1929 and therefore in the public domain in the United States. Spelling and punctuation are as printed, including nineteenth century spellings of place names. Scanned text carries optical character recognition errors; the character offset is given so the passage can be found and checked in the original.

2 stories

Stories from Smithfield

From the newspaper the county was reading at the time, on Smithfield township. Smithfield is one of the newer townships, organized in March 1886 out of Porter, Walker and Juniata, so the papers of the 1870s do not name it. They do name the village of Smithfield, which sits across the Juniata from Huntingdon borough and which the township was later formed around. One of the items below calls it "near this place", and the paper was printed in Huntingdon, which is how we know it is this Smithfield and not the one in Fayette county or the street in Pittsburgh. Three items are printed below, each with the date it appeared, exactly as the page reads.

14 February 1872. "A young man named Westbrook, a resident of Smithfield, near this place, and an employee on the Penn'a. Railroad, was seriously injured , on Friday last, by three cars passing over him. The accident happened above Spruce Creek, but we have been unable to get any particu lars. The young man is in a critical condition." — 21 February 1872. "Joshua Hicks, of Smithfield, an aged gentle. man, stepped upon some ice, covered with snow, while out walking, on last Sunday after noon, fell and broke his left limb. Dr. Brum baugh was called in immediately and admin istered to the wants of the patient." — 30 April 1873. "The Board walk through Smithfield has gone into decline."Huntingdon Journal, 14 and 21 February 1872 and 30 April 1873, all p. 3 · character 0 of the scanned text

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Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, welcome sign
Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, welcome signPhotograph by Harrison Keely, 2025-06-05. Licensed CC BY 4.0; reused with credit. Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, welcome sign.jpg

The welcome sign for Huntingdon, photographed in June 2025. It is worth knowing where it actually stands: the sign greets drivers on the way into the county seat, and the ground it is planted in is Smithfield township, which wraps around the borough.

What the fact check changed. Placed by the photograph's own coordinates against the Census geocoder, which returns Huntingdon / Smithfield / .

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Where it sits

Alexandria borough: 3 storiesBirmingham borough: 2 storiesBroad Top City borough: 2 storiesCassville borough: 2 storiesCoalmont borough: 2 storiesDudley borough: 2 storiesHuntingdon borough: 22 storiesMapleton borough: 3 storiesMarklesburg borough: 2 storiesMill Creek borough: 2 storiesMount Union borough: 131 storiesOrbisonia borough: 6 storiesPetersburg borough: 2 storiesRockhill borough: 2 storiesSaltillo borough: 2 storiesShade Gap borough: 2 storiesShirleysburg borough: 2 storiesThree Springs borough: 4 storiesBarree township: 3 storiesBrady township: 2 storiesCarbon township: 2 storiesCass township: 2 storiesClay township: 2 storiesCromwell township: 3 storiesDublin township: 4 storiesFranklin township: 2 storiesHenderson township: 4 storiesHopewell township: 2 storiesJackson township: 2 storiesJuniata township: 4 storiesLincoln township: 3 storiesLogan township: 2 storiesMiller township: 4 storiesMorris township: 2 storiesOneida township: 3 storiesPenn township: 2 storiesPorter township: 3 storiesShirley township: 5 storiesSmithfield township: 2 storiesSpringfield township: 3 storiesSpruce Creek township: 3 storiesTell township: 3 storiesTodd township: 2 storiesUnion township: 4 storiesWalker township: 4 storiesWarriors Mark township: 3 storiesWest township: 2 storiesWood township: 2 storiesHuntingdonMount UnionOrbisoniaThree SpringsPetersburgMapletonAlexandriaRockhillBroad Top CitySaltillo
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