Jackson

The founding record

Jackson township, situated in the western part of the county, was erected in 1844, the greater part of its territory being taken from Toboyne. At the November term in 1843 the court received a petition asking for the formation of a new township. Viewers were appointed and on August 8, 1844, two of them , Jacob Bernheisel and W. B. Anderson, reported in favor of granting the prayer of the petitioners. They recommended the following boundaries for the new township: "Beginning at the county line on top of the Tuscarora mountain; thence south 30 degrees east, nine miles one hundred and twenty perches through mountain land of Peter Shively, John Baker, Daniel Kern, Jacob Kreamer, Peter Smith, John Long, and others to the Cumberland county line; thence along the said county line on the top of the Blue mountain to the Madison township line; thence along the said township line to the top of the Tuscarora mountain and Juniata county line; thence along the county line and on top of Tuscarora mountain to the place of beginning." As thus constituted Jackson township extends entirely across the county, being bounded on the north by Juniata county ; on the east by Madison township; on the south by Cumberland county; and on the west by the township of Toboyne. John W. Jordan, ed., History of the Juniata Valley and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1913) · character 502,750 of the scanned text

JACKSON is one of the border townships of the county, occupying the upper parts of Shaver's Creek and Standing Stone Valleys. On the west and north is Centre County, Mifflin County forming the eastern boundary. On the south is Miller township, and on the west Barree. The greatest portion of the area is mountainous, seven distinct ranges appearing in the northern and eastern parts. Of these, Tussey Mountain and Standing Stone Mountain are dividing ridges between Huntingdon and Centre and Mifflin Counties, The intermediate and parallel ridges are Shaver's Creek Ridge, Greenlee Mountain, Long Mountain, Bare Meadow Mountain, and Broad Mountain. These confine the tillable lands to the southeastern part of the township, except a few narrow vales between the ranges named. The latter were originally heavily timbered, chiefly by pine-trees, although a large area of timber land yet remains upon some of the higher ridges. Bare Meadow Mountain owes its name to the fact that it is an almost treeless plateau, with a surface soft and yielding, being somewhat of the nature of swampy lands. In the valleys the soil is usually fertile and in some localities it is underlaid by limestone.J. Simpson Africa, History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1883) · character 1,900,334

Quoted from a work published before 1929 and therefore in the public domain in the United States. Spelling and punctuation are as printed, including nineteenth century spellings of place names. Scanned text carries optical character recognition errors; the character offset is given so the passage can be found and checked in the original.