Clinton County
Lock Haven, Clinton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Formed on June 21, 1839 out of Lycoming and Centre counties. Named probably for New York's Gov. DeWitt Clinton. Site of "Tiadaghton Declaration of Independence," 1776. In 19th century a lumbering center. Lock Haven, the county seat, became a city in 1870.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Clinton County was carved from Lycoming and Centre in 1839 and most likely named for New York's Governor DeWitt Clinton, the champion of the Erie Canal. Its ground carries an older memory: the 1776 'Tiadaghton Declaration of Independence,' when frontier 'Fair Play' settlers reportedly declared their own independence in the same season as the Continental Congress. By the 19th century the county was a busy lumbering center, and Lock Haven, its seat, became a city in 1870.
Why it matters
The Tiadaghton story captures how the spirit of 1776 reached even Pennsylvania's raw frontier, where settlers beyond the reach of colonial law claimed the same right to self-government being proclaimed in Philadelphia.
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Related people
- · DeWitt Clinton
Related events
- · Tiadaghton Declaration of Independence
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Widow Catherine Smith
White Deer Township, PA · est. 1967
In 1774 Catherine Smith, a widow, established a stone house and a complex of saw and grist mills along this stretch of the West Branch frontier. When the Revolution came, she built a boring mill in 1776 that finished gun barrels for the Continental Army, turning a backwoods industrial site into a small arsenal for the war effort. Running such works alone in a contested wilderness was a formidable undertaking for anyone, and remarkable for a woman of her day.
Muncy Mills
Muncy Creek Township, PA · est. 1947
Around 1772 John Alward raised this valley's first gristmill, a cornerstone of any frontier settlement where neighbors brought grain to be ground into flour and meal. Burned by Native raiders in 1779 amid the Revolution's border warfare, it was rebuilt again and again—new mills rising in 1783 and 1800—and the last of them ground on until 1872, a full century of milling on one spot.
McAlevy's Fort
Jackson Township, PA · est. 2018
In 1778, as the Revolution reached the Pennsylvania frontier, Col. William McAlevy — a pioneer settler and Revolutionary War officer — raised a blockhouse near this spot to shelter early settlers from raids. Decades later, in the 1840s, the entrepreneur Robert McBurney founded a village here and spent the following years developing it. Nearby 19th-century ironworks and mills fueled the community's growth, layering an industrial chapter atop its frontier origins.
Pennsylvania Canal (West Branch Division)
Lock Haven, PA · est. 1952
Built between 1828 and 1834, the West Branch Division of the Pennsylvania Canal carried the traffic of the upper Susquehanna region down to eastern markets. Boats loaded with iron, lumber, and manufactured goods moved along this artificial waterway until 1889. Here the Bald Eagle Cross Cut Canal tied in through two locks, a dam, and a towpath bridge, knitting the region's valleys into a single commercial network.