Orbisonia

The founding record

The growth of the town continued and on November 23, 1855, it was incorporated as a borough, with Simon Gratz as the first chief burgess. Orbisonia has two banks, a weekly newspaper, churches of different denominations, a good retail trade with the surrounding country and in 1910 the population was 618. The first school house was a small log structure, but this has been replaced by a modem building. Six miles west of Huntingdon, on the main line of the Pennsylvania railroad, stands the borough of Petersburg, one of the oldest towns in the county. It was laid out on May 21, 1795, by Peter Shoenberger on the tract of land owned by him on the east side of Shaver's creek, opposite the site of old Fort Anderson. Mr. Shoenbergcr, for whom the borough was named, was the first merchant and also kept the first tavern. A postoffice called Shaver's Creek was established there at an early date, with Valentine Wingart as postmaster. Dr. Peter Sevine was the first physician. While the Pennsylvania canal was in operation Petersburg was quite a commercial center and shipping point. Flour and saw mills were established at an early day and the Juniata forge, operated by Hunter & Swoope, was located at the mouth of Shaver's creek. It was one of the pioneer concerns in the manufacture of the famous Juniata charcoal iron. John W. Jordan, ed., History of the Juniata Valley and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1913) · character 231,171 of the scanned text

In the spring of 1879 Orbisonia and Shade Gap Presbyterian Churches united in calling Rev. J. D. Owens, who is at present serving both churches, Among the early or pioneer members of the Orbisonia Presbyterian Church were John Bollinger, Sr., Mrs. John Bollinger, William Lykely and wife, Mrs. Hooper, Mrs. Jordan, Mrs. Gilliland, Daniel Montgomery and wife, Mrs. T. E. Orbison, Mrs. Bigham, John Bollinger, Jr., and wife, and Mrs. Noble. The pastors who have served this people are Revs. Britton E. Collins, who was for forty-two years a pastor of some church, Shaffer, , , Forbes, Samuel Alexander, Prideaux, and Watson (the two last were supplies), and in the spring of 1879, J. D. Owens, present pastor. Present membership, fifty; value of church property, five thousand dollars. The Sunday-school conCROMWELL TOWNSHIP. 263 nected with this church has a membership of ninety pupils, with an average attendance of seventy, with N. E. Otto superintendent. Methodist Episcopal Church., Just when the first Methodist class was formed in Orbisonia cannot well be ascertained. However, the first Methodist church edifice in this place was of stone, forty-five feet square, and stood on the line between the lands of Thomas T. Cromwell and William Orbison, each one contributing half the land upon whichJ. Simpson Africa, History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1883) · character 1,707,350

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.