The Tripp House
Scranton, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Isaac Tripp, Scranton''s first settler, built a house here in 1771. His son, Isaac II, began the present building--the oldest in Lackawanna County--about 1778. Both men represented this region in Connecticut''s Assembly. Isaac III enlarged the house in the Federal style, 1812. Col. Ira Tripp remodeled it along Victorian lines during the period 1870-91. The house remained in the family until 1900.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In 1771, Isaac Tripp became the first settler of what would become Scranton, and by about 1778 his son had begun the building that still stands as the oldest in Lackawanna County. Both men represented the region in Connecticut's Assembly—a reminder of the era when Connecticut claimed this stretch of the Susquehanna Valley. Successive generations reshaped the house in Federal and later Victorian styles, keeping it in the Tripp family until 1900.
Why it matters
The house is a rare survivor of the region's frontier settlement and a tangible record of the contested Connecticut land claims that shaped early northeastern Pennsylvania.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Isaac Tripp raised the first house on this ground in 1771, the upper Susquehanna Valley was a raw frontier at the edge of the settled colonies. The forests here were thick, the winters hard, and the nearest towns a long journey away. Families who came did so knowing they would build almost everything from scratch, and that the land beneath their feet was anything but settled in the legal sense.
That legal uncertainty is the key to this place. In the eighteenth century, Connecticut and Pennsylvania both claimed this stretch of country, thanks to overlapping colonial charters whose boundaries ran clear across the continent on paper. Connecticut sent settlers, organized towns, and even seated representatives from the region in its own Assembly — which is exactly what the men of this house did. To live here in these decades was to live inside a jurisdictional tug-of-war.
By the time later generations remodeled the house, the frontier had receded and the surrounding country was becoming the industrial heart of northeastern Pennsylvania. The same walls that began as a settler's shelter would still be standing as coal and railroads transformed the valley around them.
People & events
The story runs through four generations of a single family. Isaac Tripp arrived first and built the original house in 1771, earning his place as the first settler of what would grow into Scranton. His son, Isaac II, began the building that survives today around 1778 — a structure now recognized as the oldest in Lackawanna County.
Father and son did more than clear land. Both represented this region in Connecticut's Assembly, a striking detail that places them squarely inside the contest over who governed the valley. These were not passive homesteaders; they were figures of local standing in a community that looked eastward to Connecticut for its laws and identity.
The generations that followed left their mark in the very fabric of the house. Isaac III enlarged it in the Federal style in 1812, giving it the clean, balanced lines fashionable in the young republic. Decades later, Colonel Ira Tripp reworked it along Victorian lines between 1870 and 1891, layering the ornament and silhouette of a new age over the old frame. The family held the house until 1900, closing more than a century of continuous stewardship.
Its place in the American story
The Tripp House is a rare physical survivor from the period when America's colonial boundaries were still unsettled and contested among the colonies themselves. We tend to remember the Revolution as the great boundary drama of the era, but ordinary families were also caught in quieter struggles over which colony's writ actually ran where they lived. This house belonged to men who answered that question by serving in Connecticut's Assembly from a valley that would ultimately become Pennsylvania.
Its layered architecture tells a second national story — that of a young country changing its mind about beauty and status. A frontier dwelling grew into a Federal home and then into a Victorian one, each renovation echoing a broader American style shifting across the decades. Few buildings let you read that progression in one place, under one family's name.
Together, those threads make the house a tangible record of how the northeastern frontier was settled, disputed, and eventually absorbed into the industrial life of the nation.
If you visit
Come to this corner of Scranton ready to read a house like a set of tree rings. The oldest bones date to around 1778, and the later additions sit right on top of them, so look for where the plain, symmetrical Federal lines give way to the busier detailing of the Victorian era. Much of the building's meaning is written in those seams.
Stand back and picture the setting as it was: not a city street but a clearing at the edge of the known world, with a family betting everything on land two colonies both claimed. It's a good place to let the frontier feel real again, because so much of what surrounds it now is the industrial city that grew up long after.
The Tripp House fits naturally into a day spent exploring Scranton's deeper past, and it pairs well with the region's coal and railroad heritage — a chance to bracket the whole arc, from first settler's cabin to industrial boomtown, in a single afternoon.
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
- · Isaac Tripp
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Rev. William Bishop
Scranton, PA · est. 1948
Born in England in 1749, William Bishop became the first ordained minister to serve the future city of Scranton. Around 1795 he raised a combined log church and dwelling near this spot, where he preached to the scattered settlers of the region until moving on; he died in nearby Scott Township in 1816. His humble log meetinghouse was among the first institutions of faith in the Lackawanna Valley.
Keyser Creek
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In 1769, three families led by Timothy Keys, Solomon Hocksey, and Andrew Hickman built the first European homes in what became Lackawanna County, settling along the creek that now bears Keys's name. The frontier peace did not hold: in July 1778, amid the violence of the Revolutionary borderlands, Keys and others were killed in an Indian raid. Their brief settlement marks the earliest European foothold in the valley.
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