Life in the Pennsylvania Backcountry

Life in the Pennsylvania Backcountry. Perry County Bicentennial.

1787: US Constitution written. , 1789: President George Washington inaugurated. , 1794: Whiskey Rebellion.

, Perry Countians were fiercely independent people and many were Anti-Federalists during the debate over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. They opposed the Constitution because they felt that the states rather than the national government should make most of the governing decisions. However, they were in the minority in Pennsylvania, and the state by popular vote ratified the Constitution., In 1792, settlers were still clearing their fields to plant wheat, rye, corn and flax. Most had one or two horses and cows as well as several hogs and sheep. Families lived in log houses about 18 × 20 feet in size and often housed animals and stored hay in log barns as large as 20 × 50 feet. For protection, guns were ever present., By 1792, gristmills were already in operation throughout Perry County. Not used on the map was the Martin Mill, established before the 1770s in Howe Township. William Linn built his mill about 1786 and served customers locally and from Juniata County. West's Mill along Sherman's Creek became known as Gibson's Mill, and a later building still stood in 2020., In the 1790s, merchants floated large arks with 100 to 300 barrels of flour or sacks of grain down the Juniata and Susquehanna Rivers to markets south of Perry County, after which they broke up the arks and sold the wood. Lumbermen also floated their logs down the rivers. Keelboats, two-way vessels carried flour and grains out of Perry County and returned with groceries, hardware, iron and gypsum (an early fertilizer.) Men laboriously poling the boats upstream made the reverse trip possible., At the turn of the century, the land remained a remote frontier portion of Cumberland County. However, as farms grew more productive and businesses more prosperous, stone and brick buildings began replacing log, paths turned into roads, and pressure mounted to break away from Cumberland County to form a seat of government nor the of the Blue Mountain.