Lymansville
Coudersport, Potter County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The pioneer settlement in this region was made here in 1808 by Major Isaac Lyman, land agent and a Revolutionary officer. The first saw and grist mill, post office, and court were also located here.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
The first settlement in this rugged region took root in 1808, planted by Major Isaac Lyman, a land agent and veteran of the Revolutionary War. Around his pioneer holding grew the essential institutions of frontier life: the area's first saw and grist mills, its first post office, and its first court. Lymansville became the seedbed from which the wider settlement of the county followed.
Why it matters
The story of a single founder's mills, courts, and post office captures how the American frontier was organized settlement by settlement into functioning communities.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Isaac Lyman
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cameron County
Emporium, PA · est. 1982
Cameron County was pieced together in 1860 from four neighboring counties and named for U.S. Senator Simon Cameron, the powerful Pennsylvania politician who would soon serve as Lincoln's first Secretary of War. Its seat, Emporium, took shape in the 1860s in a landscape of deep forests, and lumbering drove the early economy. Flagstone quarried in the county was later chosen for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington.
First State Game Lands
Jones Township, PA · est. 1950
In 1920, the Pennsylvania Game Commission used money raised entirely from hunting-license fees to buy 6,288 acres of Elk County forest — the first tract in what would become the state's vast State Game Lands system. The purchase reflected a Progressive-Era conviction that wildlife and wild country were public resources worth conserving for everyone, and that hunters themselves should foot the bill. From this single Elk County parcel grew a statewide network now covering well over a million acres.
Clearfield County
Clearfield, PA · est. 1982
Clearfield County, formed in 1804 from Huntingdon and Lycoming, drew its name from the open 'clear fields' that early travelers found in the wilderness. Through the second half of the 19th century it was a great timber county, its loggers felling the forests and running rafts of logs down the West Branch of the Susquehanna between 1850 and 1901. The county seat, Clearfield, was incorporated in 1840.
Jefferson County
Brookville, PA · est. 1982
Formed in 1804 and named for the sitting president, Thomas Jefferson, this county spent its early decades administratively tethered to neighboring counties before it could stand on its own. Its wealth lay underground and in the forests: rich coal seams and vast stands of timber that fed the industrial appetite of a growing nation. Brookville, the county seat, took shape as a lumbering and mining town and was incorporated in 1834.