McMurtrie Mansion
Huntingdon, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
David McMurtrie built this house in 1817. A pioneer family; leaders in local political and business affairs. Now houses the Historical Society and the Library of Huntingdon County.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
David McMurtrie built this substantial house in 1817, when Huntingdon was still a young town on the Juniata. The McMurtries were a pioneer family who took the lead in local politics and business during the early republic. Fittingly, the mansion now shelters the Historical Society and the Library of Huntingdon County, keeping the community's memory under the same roof that once housed its founders.
Why it matters
It shows how early settler families shaped the civic and commercial life of frontier Pennsylvania towns, and how their homes later became keepers of local heritage.
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Related people
- Β· David McMurtrie
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hart's Log
Porter Township, PA Β· est. 1946
Long before roads crossed these ridges, the Frankstown Path carried Native travelers and colonial traders through the region, passing the spot that became Hart's Log. The name came from a hollow log that the trader John Hart used between 1744 and 1755 as a feeding trough for his pack horses. The little settlement grew from that humble waypoint into the town later called Hartslog, and eventually Alexandria.
McAlevy's Fort
Jackson Township, PA Β· est. 2018
In 1778, as the Revolution reached the Pennsylvania frontier, Col. William McAlevy β a pioneer settler and Revolutionary War officer β 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.
Spruce Creek Church
Snyder Township, PA Β· est. 1949
The Presbyterian congregation here organized in 1798, when this stretch of central Pennsylvania was still hard frontier country, and raised its first log house of worship in 1805 within what became Graysville Cemetery. The handsome church standing today dates to 1858, the third chapter in a faith community that had by then endured for six decades. Its story traces the arc from a rough log meetinghouse to an established rural parish.
Blair Homestead
Allegheny Township, PA Β· est. 1947
Thomas Blair built his stone house here in 1785, in the years just after the Revolution when settlers were pressing into the ridges and valleys of central Pennsylvania. The homestead passed to his son John Blair, who became a leading citizen of the area. When a new county was carved out in 1846, it was named Blair in the family's honor.