The Shavers Creek Fire Company in the village of Mooresville, West township, photographed in August 2024.
What the fact check changed. Placed by the photograph's own coordinates against the Census geocoder, which returns Huntingdon / West / .
Township · Huntingdon County
West
2 stories on file, each with its sources. 31.1 square miles of land in the ridge and valley country of central Pennsylvania.
515
Population
2020 Census, P.L. 94-171
31.07 sq mi
Land area
2020 Census gazetteer
0.02 sq mi
Water
2020 Census gazetteer
Township
Type
GEOID 4206182352
The founding record
West township, located chiefly in the Shaver's creek valley, was established in April, 1796, its territory being taken from the old township of Barree. Part of Oneida was taken from West in 1856 and it was further reduced in size by the erection of Logan township in 1878. James Childs settled in the township in 1762; William Wilson came the next year, and James and John Dickey in 1764. The first saw and grist mill was built by Alexander McCormick on Gardner's run, but the date when it was built is not known. John Ambrose erected a ■ mill on Lightner's run soon afterward. In 1798, two years after the township was organized, there were upon the tax lists the names of more than one hundred land owners. Shaver's creek runs through one of the most fertile valleys in the county and farming is the chief occupation of the people of West township. Samuel Anderson, who settled in that part of the township afterward cut off to form Logan, built a fort on the west side of Shaver's creek about 1778. Concerning this fort, J. Simpson Africa, late of Huntingdon, relates the following incident : "The inhabitants of the fort, after defending themselves for a long time against the attacks of the savages, finding their supplies becoming exhausted, fled to Standing Stone fort. John W. Jordan, ed., History of the Juniata Valley and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1913) · character 207,894 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 West
From the county histories, on West township. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883, including the spelling of the day and the errors the scanner made. It has not been rewritten, summarised or added to.
On the death of his father, *Stone Hall" and its lands became the possession of Col. Huyett, and with the exception of three years, 1851-53, passed at Neff's mills, West township, he always lived at the "Stone Hall." He received the education afforded by the common schools of the day, but the colonel was always a great reader, and had ‘" picked up" an education which enabled him to intelligently fill any position in life which he would accept. With the exception of the three years already mentioned, during which time he leased the farm, the colonel worked it himself. During the time he lived in West township he was employed as contractor in the construction of railroads. He was interested in the ownership of steam saw-mills, situated on the Racetown Branch of the Juniata River and at Fostoria (the first steam saw-mills in the county), supplying in large quantities timber and lumber for the canal and railroads. These enterprises did not always prove a success financially; on the contrary, he was a heavy loser thereby. His last venture in the building of railroads was on the West Pennsylvania, now a division ofthe Pénnsylvania Railroad. The firm of Huyett & Seeds were among the heaviest contractors. The original company becoming involved and unable to pay, the contractors were heavy losers, the colonel losing over eighty thousand dollars in that undertaking.J. Simpson Africa, History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1883) · character 2,666,499 of the scanned text
Sources
- J. Simpson Africa, History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1883)
Where it sits