Crawford County, Pennsylvania
History
1876 ATLAS 1
"HISTORY OF THE VILLAGES AND TOWNSHIPS OF CRAWFORD COUNTY."
RANDOLPH TOWNSHIP.
Randolph was formed in 1824. Area, twenty-three thousand six hundred and ninety-seven acres. Population, in 1870, one thousand seven hundred and thirty-two. Surface hilly and drained by Woodcock Creek, flowing north, and Sugar Creek, flowing southward. The soil is adapted to grazing. The eastward is still thinly settled. Hickory Corners, Guy's Mills, and Black Ash are villages having post-offices. James Brawley is regarded as the pioneer to this portion of the County. He came from Lycoming, and located near Sugar Lake hamlet of today. His log house was the first white man's habitation in this region, and his patch of ground planted in potatoes and harvested, during his absence, by Indians, the inception of civilized tillage. The settlers succeeding Brawley were Amos Daniels, located on the Oil Creek Road, in the southwest, Alexander McFadden in the south, and Alexander Johnson in the west part. Johnson was from Harrisburg in 1799. Phillip Catshall [sic] moving in, took up a State lot of two hundred acres, and bought a two-hundred-acre tract, and one hundred acres of another. On his homestead he passed his days. Michael Radle, a German, came in from Philadelphia in 1806, and began a settler's work in the northern part; and Dennis Kane, a soldier of the Revolution, located in the southern part. Jacob Guy settled at Guy's Mills in 1815. He was an educated man: bought a large tract, and surveyed his own and neighbors' lands. William and Warner Waid, from New York, in 1816, bought one hundred acres from Guy, and cut out the small timber from about ten acres and put in crop. Leonard Hall, from Vermont, was the first settler at Hickory Creek, where he still lives; and Moses Gilbert, from New York, settled in 1818 near the centre of the township, where he remained till his death. James Brawley was compelled to make long and tedious journeys through the woods for meal and flour, and to save this labor and accommodate neighbors, a mill was in time erected at Guy's Mills. Brawley built the first framed house and barn in Randolph, and erected the first saw mill on a branch of Sugar Creek, about two miles south of Guy's Mills. The first marriage was of James Brawley to Mary Glenn, in 1800. The first white child born was William R. Brawley, January 29, 1802, and the first death was of Mary A. Brawley, in 1805. The first house erected at Guy's Mills was for Jacob Guy. A graduate from Yale College lived in 1815 in a cabin walled of poles and roofed with hemlock brush. Mr. Guy was a prominent citizen of the township, and is credited with the construction of the first frame house in the place which bears his name, and of a saw-mill erected in 1816 or '17,—the first framed building there. Guy was the first Justice of the Peace, and on him devolved the duty of receiving wolf-scalps and issuing orders for the bounty on the same—a business to the hunters both necessary and profitable. Guy was also the first merchant in Randolph, and James Foreman the first tavern keeper. The Baptist Church organized at Guy's Mills, in 1820, was the first in the township. Oliver Alfred was their first minister. The next was the Presbyterian, founded October 31, 1825, Rev. Nathan Harned the pastor. The first school-house was built in the southwestern part. It was small, solid, rude, yet available, and no better than the homes whence the children came. The first school was taught in the Brawley neighborhood, in the upper part of a building used as a barn, Miss Mary H. Guy being the school-mistress. Settlers went full seven miles to work road tax, and walked to Meadville to attend militia musters—then a legal requirement. The first physician was Kennedy, from Meadville. He practiced in the County for miles out from the town from 1796 to 1813, at which time he died. Dr. Daniel Bemus, from Bemus Heights, Maryland, came to Meadville in 1811, and there resided till his death, in 1865. He was well known to the settlers of Randolph, and, in the exercise of his merciful calling, endured the perils and hardships of frontier life with a fortitude equal to the bravest. The story of that time cannot be written—it was a period of hard labor, close economy, and homely fare, offset by sound slumber, vigorous appetite, and excellent health.
