Armstrong County
Kittanning, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Formed March 12, 1800 out of Westmoreland, Allegheny, and Lycoming counties. Named for Gen. John Armstrong, who had destroyed the Indian Village at Kittanning, 1756. Here, county seat was laid out, 1803, and "Daugherty Visible" typewriter invented in 1881.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Created in 1800, this county was named for General John Armstrong, who in 1756 led a raid that destroyed the Delaware village at Kittanning during the French and Indian War. The county seat took shape on that same ground in 1803. Decades later, in 1881, local ingenuity produced the "Daugherty Visible" typewriter, an early machine that let writers see their words as they typed.
Why it matters
It links the violent frontier struggles between colonists and Native nations to the later inventive spirit of industrial Pennsylvania.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the middle of the eighteenth century, the land around present-day Kittanning sat on the edge of the known colonial world. West of the Allegheny Mountains, the maps ran thin and the claims ran hot. Britain and France both wanted the Ohio Country, and the Native nations who actually lived there — Delaware (Lenape), Shawnee, and others — were caught between two empires pressing in from opposite directions.
This was the era of the French and Indian War, the North American front of a much larger global struggle. Frontier Pennsylvania was not a quiet backcountry; it was a contested borderland where a river town could be a strategic prize. The Allegheny River, which still slides past this spot, was a highway for war parties and traders alike.
By the time the county itself was formally organized at the turn of the nineteenth century, the frontier had begun to settle into farms, county seats, and courthouses. The same ground that had been a war zone was becoming ordinary American place — and, before long, a place where a local tinkerer might invent a machine.
People & events
The county carries the name of General John Armstrong, a figure remembered for a raid on the Delaware village that stood at Kittanning in 1756. That expedition, during the French and Indian War, was one of the sharp, brutal episodes of frontier fighting that marked the whole conflict — a strike meant to break the power of a settlement that colonists saw as a base for raids against them.
Decades later, on that very ground, the county seat was laid out at the start of the nineteenth century, turning a place of conflict into a place of civic life — surveyor's stakes where war parties had once passed.
And then, in a wholly different key, the marker records a burst of local ingenuity: the invention here in 1881 of the "Daugherty Visible" typewriter, an early machine notable because it let a writer actually see the words appearing on the page — something the first generation of typewriters could not do. It's a small, telling reminder that the same county could hold both a frontier general and a hometown inventor.
Its place in the American story
Armstrong County is a compact lesson in how the American frontier moved and changed. The story that begins with a raid in the 1750s is part of the larger contest for the trans-Allegheny West, a struggle whose outcome helped set the course toward British dominance in eastern North America — and, not long after, toward the American Revolution.
That a village destroyed in wartime becomes a county seat within a couple of generations captures a pattern repeated across the young nation: contested ground giving way to courthouses, roads, and settled communities.
The typewriter chapter connects this quiet corner of Pennsylvania to the great American age of invention. A device that let writers see their words as they typed points ahead to the office, the newsroom, and the modern written word. Few places can claim both a frontier war story and a footnote in the history of how Americans came to write.
If you visit
Come for the river. The Allegheny still defines Kittanning, and standing on its banks is the simplest way to feel why this place mattered — it was a route, a boundary, and a prize all at once.
Walk the county-seat streets and notice how ordinary and orderly they feel. That's the point. You're standing where a frontier flashpoint became a working American town, and the grid of streets is itself a kind of monument to that transformation.
This marker rewards the traveler who likes layers. Read it and hold two very different centuries in your head at once — the smoke of an eighteenth-century raid and the clatter of a nineteenth-century typewriter. It makes a fine stop on a drive through western Pennsylvania's river valleys, where nearly every town has one foot in the frontier and one in the industrial age.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · John Armstrong
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Kittanning or Attiqué Indian Town
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On this river flat above the Allegheny stood Kittanning, also called Attiqué, a Lenni-Lenape (Delaware) town that by 1727 had become the most important Native settlement west of the mountains as the Delaware pushed westward from the Susquehanna. During the French and Indian War it served as a staging base for raids on Pennsylvania's frontier settlements. In September 1756 Colonel John Armstrong led some 300 provincial troops from the Cumberland Valley on a surprise strike that destroyed the town.
Kittanning
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For a generation before the French and Indian War, Kittanning was the largest Delaware (Lenape) town beyond the Allegheny front, a thriving community on the Allegheny River whose name carried the sense of the "great river" that fed the Ohio country. From the 1730s it grew into a hub of Native life and, by the 1750s, a staging ground for raids on frontier settlements. In September 1756 a Pennsylvania force under Lt. Col. John Armstrong marched west and burned the town, one of the war's few colonial strikes deep into Indian country.
Kittanning
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For roughly a generation, this bluff above the Allegheny River held Kittanning, the largest Delaware (Lenape) town west of the Appalachian ridges — a thriving community whose name honored the "great river" it overlooked. During the French and Indian War it became a staging ground for raids on Pennsylvania's frontier settlements, and in September 1756 a colonial force under Colonel John Armstrong marched over the mountains and burned it. The destruction of the village broke a key node in the borderland war and became one of Pennsylvania's most celebrated frontier exploits.
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During the French and Indian War, Pennsylvania's frontier was raided repeatedly by warriors based at Kittanning, a Delaware (Lenape) town on the Allegheny River. In September 1756, Lt. Col. John Armstrong led a force of provincial soldiers on a bold overland strike against the town, and this rise marked one of their stopping points on the march. The expedition destroyed Kittanning, and tradition holds the hill took its name from the blankets the men discarded here as they moved fast toward their objective.