Mount Union borough

Alexander Maxwell and the Two Farms That Became Town Lots

Alexander Maxwell was born on January 11, 1849, at Fairview in Sherman's Valley, Perry County, a son of Andrew and Hannah (Kelly) Maxwell. His father was a tanner. The family spent three years in Tell Township in Huntingdon County before going back to Perry County. He was 15 when he went to McVeytown to work in the tannery there.

He reached Mount Union on February 3, 1867. He worked in the tannery here for a while and then went into the teaming business, taking on contracting jobs that called for heavy hauling. Charles Welch, whose 1909 history of Mount Union is the source for most of this story, says he was known far and wide in this section for that work. A nephew, J. Albert Rosensteel, went with him as a boy and helped with the teaming and hauling until 1892, and in 1899 Rosensteel bought him out and carried the business on. J. Simpson Africa's 1883 county history lists Alexander Maxwell on the town council for 1879 and for 1882.

On August 15, 1882, Maxwell bought the place Welch calls the former Smawley farm, previously the Pollock farm. He kept it and farmed it until 1905, when he sold to the Union Realty Corporation, the company that laid out Jefferson Heights on the high ground west of town. The company held a lot sale on August 31, 1905, and gave the place its name. Welch wrote that many people bought lots, that a number of homes had gone up by his time, and that the rise gave a fine view of Mount Union and the country around it.

The farm's earlier owners come from scattered lines in the same book. Welch says the lands to the west, including what is now Jefferson Heights, were early owned by the Pollocks, and his next sentence names Col. William Pollock as living in that section, without saying that he held this farm. His entry for Louis Smawley says Smawley's mother bought the place and lived there a long time, and calls it earlier the Harshberger farm. His reading of an 1873 atlas has Mrs. E. Smawley owning and living on it that year.

A different chapter tells the end of the story differently. It says the Eliza Smawley farm “is now owned by Alexander Maxwell, part of which is now Jefferson Heights.” That leaves open whether he sold the whole farm in 1905 or only part of it.

Maxwell also bought the former Speer farm and the ground adjoining it on the northwest, under a deed dated in 1883. George W. Speer and his wife had bought that land from Samuel Miller, and Maxwell bought it from the Speer heirs. It became part of North Mount Union, the part of the borough between the new railroad line and the Juniata River.

The Pennsylvania Railroad acquired the Faust lands and 18 acres of the Maxwell lands beside them, ground that included the town's athletic field, which Welch says the railroad gave. About 60 acres of Maxwell's lands, between Washington and Division Streets and running to the river, were plotted into building lots with streets and alleys. They went on the borough plans as the Alexander Maxwell addition and the first and second additions of John C. Appleby, and Welch dated that part of town from 1903.

By the time Welch wrote, he says, Maxwell was able to retire from active work. He owned three farms in Long Hollow, property in Mount Union and part of the North Side, kept six head of stock, two of them good drivers, and had a comfortable home on Water Street. His brother, H. Wilson Maxwell, went into the hardware business in 1886, and his Maxwell Hardware store was on the corner of Shirley and Jefferson Streets, “in the centre of town.” A Find a Grave memorial gives Alexander Maxwell's death as August 22, 1921, and his burial at Mount Union Cemetery.

Checked against the record. Nearly all of this comes from Charles Howard Welch's 1909 history of Mount Union, read on the page images. The town council years come from J. Simpson Africa's 1883 county history. The death date and burial rest on a Find a Grave memorial, whose birth date matches Welch's. We have not seen a death certificate or an obituary. The day of the 1883 deed is faint in the printed book, so we give only the year. Still open: we have not read the deeds of 1882, 1883 or 1905, so those dates are Welch's account of them. The deeds would show whether Maxwell sold all of the first farm or only part of it, and the order of its earlier owners, since no one source gives the whole chain. We have not found the Union Realty Corporation's charter or a newspaper notice of the 1905 lot sale.

Sources