Ankeny Square
Somerset, Somerset County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Set aside for burial ground and place of worship on the original plat of Milfordstown by Ulrich Bruner, 1787, and by Peter Ankeny in 1789 when he laid out the south side of the settlement renamed Somerset in 1795.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the years just after the Revolution, the frontier of southwestern Pennsylvania was being carved into towns lot by lot. When Ulrich Bruner first platted Milfordstown in 1787 and Peter Ankeny extended it in 1789, they set aside this ground for two of a young community's most essential needs — a place to bury the dead and a place to worship. By 1795 the growing settlement had taken the name Somerset, the county seat it remains today.
Why it matters
It preserves the founding footprint of a frontier county seat, a reminder that early American towns were deliberately designed around faith and community before they were anything else.
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Related people
- · Ulrich Bruner
- · Peter Ankeny
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Adam Schneider
Somerset, PA · est. 1954
In 1795, as settlement pushed into the mountains of western Pennsylvania, Adam Schneider laid out the northern half of the newly renamed town of Somerset. With his brother Jacob he opened the settlement's first store on this site, giving the young frontier community an early anchor of commerce and everyday life.
Somerset County
Somerset, PA · est. 1982
Formed in 1795 from Bedford County and named for an English shire, Somerset County took shape along the Forbes Road, the military route cut across the Alleghenies in 1758. Settlers followed that road westward, and the county seat was incorporated in 1804. Its high, cool farmland later became famous for maple syrup.
Harmon Husband
Somerset, PA · est. 1947
Harmon Husband arrived in the Somerset country as its first settler after fleeing North Carolina in 1771, where he had helped lead the Regulator uprising against colonial authority. Living for a time at his Coffee Springs farm, he never abandoned the cause of common people against government overreach, taking up his pen as a pamphleteer. In the 1790s he threw himself into the Whiskey Rebellion, the western Pennsylvania revolt against the federal excise tax, before his death in 1795.
Berlin
Berlin, PA · est. 1994
In 1794, the newly independent United States faced its first great test of federal authority when western Pennsylvania farmers rose up against a tax on whiskey — the region's chief cash crop and de facto currency. Berlin sat at the heart of that unrest: a schoolhouse riot broke out that June, and local merchant Robert Philson raised a liberty pole and urged neighbors to defy the law. When President Washington sent troops that autumn, Governor Thomas Mifflin made his headquarters at a doctor's house on this very ground.