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LOCATION OF DUBOIS
CHAPTER I
THE City of DuBois is located on nine warrants or tracts of land in
the
Indian Purchase of 1783. Eight of these warrants were laid in the
month of May,
1795 and surveyed in July of that year. The Samuel Zortman Warrant
was laid on
the 14th of August, 1837 and surveyed on the 8th of September, 1841.
Patents or
deeds by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the various tracts
were made to
the following persons, viz : Warrants Nos. 521 and 524 to Jared
Ingersoll,
Esq., Warrant 155 to Casper Stiver, Warrant 27 to Benjamin Harvey,
and Warrant
2009 to Roberts Jr., Fox. The warrant of the 15th of October, 1785
was conveyed
to Charles Biddle and Isaac Meeson, known as Warrant No. 71.
In addition to warrant numbers, several of the parties gave names to
their land, viz : Warrant 521 was called "Jericho," of the other
warrants one
was named "China," one "Mount Holly," and one "Crabapple."
Nothing is known locally of the purchasers of these tracts, except
Jared
Ingersoll, Esq., who was one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania.
These persons resided in or around Philadelphia, and it is not
likely
they saw the lands they purchased from the Commonwealth or knew
anything of the
location, except as they got their maps and titles from the
Commonwealth. They
did not hold them long, and the transfers show that these lands were
sold at a
considerable profit over the original purchase.
The present generation has no monopoly in speculation. When one
examines
the records of the Land Office of Pennsylvania, he finds the people
of that
generation were given more largely to speculation in public lands
than the
present one. Considering the population of the State at that time,
there was
ample land to satisfy the demand without the Indian Purchase of
1783. One is
led to the conclusion that this purchase was made more largely for
speculation
rather than necessity. Nearly all the land of this purchase was
disposed of by
the State prior to 1800, and a few individuals and corporations were
the
purchasers.
The lands upon which DuBois stands had one of the finest growths of
timber of any territory in the United States east of the Pacific
Coast. This
same description may well apply to the last Indian Purchase. Persons
who have
been engaged in lumbering between the Atlantic and Pacific are of
the opinion
that there was no timber growth so dense and so prolific as that of
the last
Indian Purchase in Pennsylvania, east of the coast range of the
Pacific. The
white pine stood thick. Plenty of trees were more than one hundred
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