Historical Background

This narrative employs principally secondary sources to provide historical context for the Laurel Hill settlement, which is also referred to as the Brown Farm. It focuses on Pennsylvania’s political, economic, environmental, labor, and social development in the period bracketing the settlement, roughly the 1820s to the 1940s. While earlier and later historical developments are informative, they are largely outside the purview of this narrative. The content in this section largely comes from various state managed websites focused on the histories of indigenous populations and selected chapters from Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth, edited by Randall M. Miller and William A. Pencak. The history of slavery and abolition draws heavily on Beverely C. Tomek’s Slavery and Abolition in Pennsylvania. 

Indigenous Populations

Original inhabitants of present-day Pennsylvania included the Lenape (also referred to as the Lenni Lenape or their English moniker the “Delaware”), and the Susquehannock. They lived primarily in the eastern part of the state and were displaced by the Quaker colonizers. The Monongahela people inhabited western Pennsylvania immediately prior to European colonization. Members of the Haudenosaunee Confederation also actively occupied portions of Pennsylvania.  

Nanticoke and Shawnee migrated into Pennsylvania after Europeans arrived. Senecas, the westernmost tribe of the Haudenosaunee (Five Nations Iroquois Confederacy), established villages along the upper Allegheny River in the 1730s. 

Less is known about the original landscape and how indigenous people engaged with it since European colonizers fundamentally altered the landscape with their imported flora, fauna, and conversion of indigenous trails and paths to roads and railroads. 

Early Colonization and Geographic Challenges

Early colonizers experienced agricultural success along the Delaware River, in the Piedmont region. Initially the “Endless Mountains” stretching from the northeast to the southwest part of the region created a natural barrier to further western settlement. The Allegheny Forest blocked quick access to Lake Erie, and there were no navigable waterways to traverse the colony.  

These geographic barriers slowed economic growth and, due to the rugged terrain road development, the region lagged behind other areas of early colonization. Over time settlers adopted millennia old Indigenous routes and then reshaped many waterways to support their needs, including damming rivers and creating reservoirs and lakes. Eventually, a port in Erie became central to western territorial development since it opened trade through the Great Lakes

As more colonizers arrived, they expanded settlements across the region. Thoroughfares formerly developed and utilized by Native Americans were converted into roads. Overlaying early maps helps us see how settlers built on the infrastructure developed by indigenous populations in the state. Road location and usage changed over time, as illustrated by the Laurel Hill settlement. Today we consider it a remote location, but early maps clearly show it was ideally situated along a major thoroughfare between Johnstown and Westmoreland County until the late 19th century. While there is no recorded Native American road adjacent to the Laurel Hill settlement, the presence of this early European road and significant Indigenous settlements at Johnstown and New Florence suggest that there was a Native American thoroughfare in this area.  Settlement and transportation patterns impacted both individual farmsteads and entire communities, resulting in shifting county boundaries.

Cambria County was formed in 1804 from portions of Huntingdon, Bedford, and Somerset counties. Prior to then, the area around Laurel Hill Settlement was a portion of Cumberland County (1750-1771), Bedford County (1771-1773), and Somerset County (1773-1804)

People, Economies, and Livelihoods

Early colonizers were predominately a mix of English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, German, Swedes, Finns, Dutch settlers. Many engaged in local agriculture initially, but economic opportunity expanded with the development of the Main-Line canal system and later railroads. These new transportation innovations connected Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and areas further west. The economy expanded beyond agriculture to include timber, wild game, fish, and plants for use and export. Timber became the most profitable export, which explains why nearly all forests in PA are second, third, or fourth growth. This intensive lumbering also explains why it is difficult to know exactly what the landscape looked like prior to colonization and how indigenous people utilized and managed the land.  

Initially, mineral extraction was an unseen and untapped potential resource, but coal, limestone, iron ore extraction became possible with rail and water transport. As a result, Pittsburgh and other western PA communities emerged as major steel producers by the late nineteenth century. Petroleum was also first discovered in the Americas in the mid-nineteenth century.

According to scholars Randall Miller and William Pencak, there are three distinct “Euro-American episodes” in Pennsylvania history.

Landscape I

“Landscape I” lasted from early seventeenth century to 1850s. It relied on local farming, merchants, artisans, service workers, local resources and limited distance trading to survive. Trade was conducted closer to home due to the limited speed of transportation and hauling capacity. Miller and Pencak describe this period as being more distinctly “Pennsylvanian” than later periods.

The Laurel Hill settlement was established during this time, and as census records indicate, Edenborough Smith and John Harshberger were listed as farmers and laborers. (Spelling variations occur in the historical record including “Edenborough” and “Hershberger,” respectively.) As previously noted, they situated their emerging homestead along the well-traveled Johnstown-New Florence wagon road. They likely supplemented their agricultural work with blacksmithing and serving as a stagecoach stop. John Harshberger’s Last Will and Testament in 1850 provides evidence they were also engaged in timbering.  

The Harshberger and Smith families may have acquired the property through adverse possession (squatters rights) from the absentee owners James and Joseph Taylor. Adverse possession required them to live on the property for 21 years. This length of time corresponds well with the arrival of William Harshberger and when the families begin paying taxes as the registered property owners. Living on the property for that period of time in order to possess it may have been a root for a sense of permanence. The 1890 map of Lower Yoder Township shows the lands of Elizabeth Harshberger in the same location that the 1867 map of Cambria County shows lands of Joseph Taylor (note that both maps also show Potts and Beam as owners).

Landscape II

“Landscape II” emerged in the late nineteenth century and was shaped by the telegraph, telephone, railroad, and paved highways. The most notable feature was the emergence of steel mills along the rivers and a dependence on railroads. The rise of Johnstown epitomizes this national trend. This industrial development not only altered the landscape, but it also impacted transportation and trade between communities. Whereas originally the Brown Farm was ideally located on a major thoroughfare, by the second half of the 19th century the stagecoach road was no longer in use and the Laurel Hill settlement was on its way to becoming a more remote, isolated community.  

As a result of these changes and Brown Farm existing outside of Johnstown on the side of a mountain, the site never underwent the changes associated with “Landscape III,” which Miller and Pencak describe as communities that are detached from the land and rooted in suburbia, consumerism, and the service industry.  

The records show the Harshbergers fought to retain control of the land and resisted selling it. Legal disputes over Harshberger land are found in family lore, newspapers, and court records. See Landscape and Permanence narrative for details.  

An overview of Pennsylvania history and colonization must acknowledge the role of slavery in the nation and the region. This history is particularly important to the Laurel Hill site since the founding members, Edenborough Smith and John Harshberger, were Black men. We do not have definitive evidence of their origins, but family lore and genealogical sleuthing provide some possible and plausible accounts. We begin with an overview of national policies around slavery and abolition to help contextualize their stories and those of other Black Pennsylvanians. Beverly C. Tomek’s Slavery and Abolition in Pennsylvania provides nearly all the relevant details about these topics. 

National Policies

Slavery was legal, prevalent, and expanded westward throughout the late 1700s and into the early 1800s due to cotton production. From the beginning, enslaved people sought freedom. The US Constitution (1787) provided for the legal return of fugitive slaves in Article IV, Section 2. Congress reinforced this clause with passage of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law, which the Supreme Court interpreted as granting an enslaver the right to cross state lines to seize and repossess an enslaved fugitive. (Eventually, the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution would essentially be nullified by the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865.)

Slavery became a pressing issue as the United States expanded westward. Slave holders wanted to expand the practice, but free laborers did not since they could not economically compete with enslaved labor.  

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 banned slavery in present day Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Although these areas banned slavery, that did not mean they welcomed free Black residents. Tensions increased in the 1820s as they actively sought to prevent free Blacks from settling in these areas and imposed harsh Black Laws or Black Codes on those who did live there, in order to establish racial control over them. Additionally, vigilantes terrorized communities, including a series of racially motivated attacks in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1829.

In 1803 the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory. Meriweather Lewis arrived shortly after in Pittsburgh to begin the journey westward. The territories carved out of the Louisiana Purchase further exacerbated tensions over the spread of slavery in the West. In the same year, Ohio was admitted to the Union as a free state.

Seeking to ease tensions and respond to growing concerns about slavery, Congress banned the international slave trade in 1808. While this action is important in reducing the number of newly enslaved people arriving in the United States, it increased risk to northern free Blacks that they might be captured and enslaved as enslavers sought to maintain a steady supply of unfree labor.  

Tensions escalated as the nineteenth century progressed, resulting in two famous compromises that essentially maintained the status quo and prevented a civil war. In 1820, Congress passed the Missouri Compromise which admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state in order to maintain the balance of power in Congress. It then drew an imaginary line along the 36° 30’ latitude line through the remaining Louisiana Territory banning slavery north of the line and permitting it south of the line. This agreement maintained peace until the United States acquired additional territory following the Mexican-American War.

Seeking to maintain the balance of power in Congress and appease both slave and non-slave holding states, Congress passed the Compromise of 1850. The new agreement had several provisions. California entered the Union as a free state and the United States established Texas’ current boundaries. Slavery was not explicitly addressed in the territories of New Mexico and Utah. Instead, they would decide the issue of slavery by the principle of popular sovereignty (choosing for themselves). The slave trade was banned in Washington, DC. But Congress passed a new Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which took control of returning runaway slaves out of the hands of states and made it a federal issue. The new act further endangered free Blacks living in the north as well as any people who had escaped slavery and fled to free areas. As a border state, Pennsylvania was profoundly impacted by the law. Many freedom seekers passed through Pennsylvania and the new law increased the risk to them and their allies.   

The Dred Scott Case (1857) made Black people’s freedom and basic rights even more precarious and highlighted the pervasive racism in the United States. Scott sued for his freedom arguing his enslaver moved him from a slave state (Missouri) to a free state (Illinois) and therefore he was entitled to his freedom. The Supreme Court declared Scott could not sue for his freedom because he was Black, and therefore not a citizen. The justification was that no people of African descent could be citizens since their ancestors had been enslaved, and the Founding Fathers had not intended Black people to have access to citizenship because they deemed enslaved people to be of an inferior status. It also reinforced the concept of enslaved people as chattel—property that could be bought, sold, and moved at the will of the enslaver. The Court went on to declare the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, stating Congress did not have the right to regulate slavery.  

In response to the tensions and legal measures enacted during the 1850s, enslaved people and their allies increased their resistance. The Underground Railroad and the anti-slavery movement expanded during this time, even though they had to do so more cautiously.

Tensions continued to escalate, especially with the election of Abraham Lincoln to president in 1860, and war broke out. The Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865. In the wake of the war, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment (1865), which banned slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime. This loophole would allow significant abuse through convict leasing and debt peonage in subsequent years. After witnessing the ongoing abuse and exploitation of newly freed people, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), which granted citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States and with it the rights and immunities associated with citizenship, among other things. Southern states found ways to circumscribe Black Americans rights, particularly their voting rights, so Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, which explicitly stated the right of citizens to vote regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This only applied to men, since women did not gain universal suffrage until passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Republicans controlled Congress during Reconstruction and knew they would have a better chance of retaining power if newly emancipated men could vote. 

Pennsylvania Attitudes and Policies 

Beverly C. Tomek argues slavery was “institutionalized in Pennsylvania in three stages.”

1682-1700, the colony passed laws making slavery a lifelong condition. 

1700-1726, Pennsylvania passed law to separate slavery from servitude by creating slave codes that established separate laws, courts, and punishments for enslaved people and restricted their movement. 

1726-1780, the colony, and later the state, refined and strengthened its laws to prevent Black mobility and create a second-class status for free Black populations. The new laws also created severe punishments, such as enslaving free Blacks who violated the new laws. Additionally, the laws permitted children born to interracial couples to be enslaved. Both groups of newly enslaved people were called “term slaves,” though enslavers often tried to permanently enslave them, especially the children.

Slavery expanded throughout the 1700s as larger numbers of individuals were imported to the colony, particularly in regions where iron production occurred, like southwestern Pennsylvania. Most enslaved people came from the Caribbean, where they had undergone a “seasoning” process, though some came directly from Africa. Seasoning was a brutal process that sought to dehumanize enslaved people and strip them of their language, culture, identities and acclimate them to their new environments. The slave trade and slavery practiced throughout Pennsylvania’s diverse industries created immense wealth and infrastructure in the state.xiv Slavery was most prevalent in the southeastern part of the state, but it spread westward and arrived in Pittsburgh by 1759. Tomek argues “Slavery grew out of white aversion to doing hard work for someone else’s profit.” Most Pennsylvanians preferred to buy their own land or start businesses. Employers who needed wage workers first utilized indentured labor but later turned to enslaved labor when the former started drying up. Slavery was used in diverse industries across the state, based on the local economies. Tomek argues enslaved people likely worked in every kind of industry in the state. She contends it is easier to erase the history of slavery in Pennsylvania since enslaved people lived and worked alongside their enslavers. They did not have separate spaces, as seen in the plantation South. Documentary evidence and visits to historical southern plantations today often reveal where enslaved people lived and worked. Either the physical structures still exist or there is documentary or archeological evidence of the sites where they existed. Tomek contends it was more difficult for rural enslaved Pennsylvanians to form community in rural areas since they were often spread out, as opposed to in more densely populated areas in the Chesapeake and South. City-dwellers, though, often had robust kinship networks and community with both enslaved and free Blacks. Enslavers sought to maintain control through violence, and Tomek argues the brutality of slavery was just as severe in the mid-Atlantic and in Pennsylvania as it was in the South. Enslaved people, though, have always resisted slavery in a variety of ways including work stoppages, running away, suicide, murdering enslavers, abortion, infanticide, and rebellion. Running away was seen as one of the greatest threats to the system, so enslavers often spent years trying to track people down. This increased fear amongst free Black people that they would be captured and enslaved, especially as both the state and the nation passed more vigorous fugitive slave laws. Additionally, all Black people in urban areas, regardless of their labor status, were treated the same since it was impossible to immediately determine if someone was free or enslaved. The result was that “race-based laws led to race-based punishments that wove oppression deep into the fabric of life and culture in the mid-Atlantic," as will be seen after full abolition.

Abolition occurred in fits and starts in Pennsylvania. The Quakers, also known as the Society of Friends, were some of the earliest abolitionists due to their religious beliefs, but prior to abolition they also made up the largest number of slaveholding households.  

Quakers banned members of the community from participating in the slave trade in the 1750s and extended the ban to include slave owning by the 1770s. They formed the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS) which began recruiting non-Quakers to support the movement.  

Black activists and churches played an important role in the abolition movement. The Free African Society, a Black organization established in 1787, partnered with PAS.  

On March 1, 1780, the Pennsylvania Assembly passed “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery,” the first statewide legal prohibition of slave owning in Pennsylvania and the first abolition act in the United States. The act had several provisions, though, many of which undermined the law’s efficacy and created loopholes that allowed slavery to persist well beyond 1780. (Quakers tended to believe they had a responsibility to help Black Pennsylvanians survive and thrive and in 1788 they helped pass a law attempting to strengthen the 1780 law to speed up emancipation, though this had limited results.) The main provisions of the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery were as follows:

1. Freedom was not universal or immediate. Those held in bondage would remain in slavery if properly registered by their enslavers. Individuals who were not registered, however, would be freed.  
2. Abolition was gradual. Children born to enslaved parents after the act was passed would only be free when they reached the age of 28. Enslaved people brought into the state could only be held for 6 months or until they reached the age of 28, unless they were domestic servants held by members of Congress visiting from other states.  
3. Registered slaves and formerly enslaved children became “term slaves” and would be entitled to freedom dues and rights associated with indentured servitude. 
4. Enslaved people who ran away would be treated like absconding indentured servants. 
5. Former slave owners had to post a 30-pound bond on manumitted people to provide for their welfare so the freedpeople did not become burdens to the state.  
6. The law made null and void racially discriminatory laws and repealed law requiring separate courts for Black people. Although the laws were no longer on the books, in Pennsylvania as elsewhere, those practices persisted well into the modern era.  

In addition to being far too gradual, the law provided loopholes that perpetuated slavery. Both Quakers and non-Quakers alike had a vested interest in maintaining the institution. Many prominent Pennsylvanians profited from slavery. For example, Robert Morris, known as the “financier” of the American Revolution,” the founder of the Bank of North America, a member of the Continental Congress, and the namesake of Robert Morris University (located just outside Pittsburgh), made significant money on the international slave trade. Once it was banned in 1780, he landed human cargo in New Jersey and smuggled enslaved people into Pennsylvania to maintain his profits. After the United States banned the international slave traded in 1808, many enslavers sold people through the domestic slave trade to continue their profits. The 1780 Pennsylvania law contained a fugitive slave clause, which was reinforced with ratification of the U.S. Constitution within the decade. Additionally, a conservative-leaning Assembly in 1782 chipped away at the law by extending indentures and sometime re-enslaving people who had initially gained their freedom. As a result of the many loopholes and gradual approach, full abolition did not occur in Pennsylvania until it was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment after the Civil War (1865). During this gradual abolition, Black women were the least likely to be freed because employers wanted to maintain their domestic labor. Additionally, women were often tied to children who were also enslaved or under contract, so it was more difficult for women to run away

Abolitionists persisted in the face of these challenges and took a revolutionary step in the 1830s when they invited women and African Americans to join the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) in 1833. Women were first invited mainly as spectators, though they contributed to the discussions and wording of publications. Tomek credits women and black participants with getting their white male counterparts to broaden their thinking and tactics. This included the idea of immediate abolition. They also introduced and advocated for the “free produce” movement, which involved boycotting slave-produced goods to speed up abolition. The AASS encouraged Pennsylvania activists to form their own organization, which they did in 1837, called the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Throughout the 1830s Black activists also debated emigration, and idea advocated by the white American Colonization Society. A Black convention met at Mother Bethel Church in 1830 and decided they were open to settlement in Canada, but not Africa. The abolition movement gained momentum thanks to pressure from groups like Quakers, and diverse membership including women and people of color. Additionally, the American Revolution (1775-1782) employed language, like self-determination and liberty, which were incompatible with slavery. Gradual emancipation allowed enslavers to recoup as much money as possible, which mitigated the impacts of abolition on white enslavers.

Researchers must not overlook the role Black abolitionists played in the push for freedom. They formed organizations like the Free African Society of Philadelphia in 1787, which served as a mutual aid society to provide Black residents with resources to help the sick, bury the dead, and support widows and orphans, and they established some of the oldest Black churches in the United States, including African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas and Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. They were alarmed by the creation of the American Colonization Society since, as noted, they did not support exiling Black Americans to Africa. In addition to formal organizations and partnerships, Black abolitionists sought to undermine the system by running away if they themselves were enslaved and by supporting others seeking freedom.

Pennsylvania passed a series of laws attempting to prevent freedom seekers from being recaptured without a warrant or other judicial measures, but these laws were overturned in 1842 in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, when the US Supreme Court ruled that the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 superseded all state laws. Pennsylvania responded with a personal liberty law conforming to the Prigg standards but essentially nullified the federal law by using state jurisdiction to enforce the act. Pennsylvania abolitionists had long been involved in helping escaped slaves, but they formalized and expanded their efforts after passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which was part of the Compromise of 1850. This new law posed a greater threat to all northern free Blacks for several reasons. The burden was on the individual to prove they were free, they were no longer entitled to a trial by jury, and law enforcement officers and citizens had to aid in returning runaway escapees. For this reason, some northern Blacks armed themselves or migrated.

Charles L. Blockson notes in African Americans in Pennsylvania: Above Ground and Underground an Illustrated Guide, “When runaway slaves settled down in a free state such as Pennsylvania, it was along the Underground Railroad routes, so they could get away quickly if necessary.”

According to Cheryl LaRoche the Underground Railroad often connected to Black settlements outside of cities and towns because these places allowed passengers to hide in plain sight and provided work for them as they made their way to their new homes.

Perhaps the Laurel Hill founders recognized their selected site might prove beneficial to freedom seekers. It existed outside Johnstown proper and the purview of white neighbors, it could provide easy access to those traveling the Underground Railroad, and it could provide an accessible escape route for the Smith and Harshberger families if need be.  

Freedom seekers also often received aid and shelter in Johnstown in homes and churches in free African American communities. A few established routes in present day Cambria County include the following.

The “old Conemaugh Path through Pleasantville, Elton, and to an area now called Windber”  

“Claysburg over the mountains into Beaverdale, then over the Blue Knob Mountain area, and finally into Elton and Giestown.”  

Blockson also explains that Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 led many escaped slaves from western Virginia to flee through Uniontown in Fayette County and up to Pittsburgh.

It is worth considering that the law might have led any number of enslaved people, including Edenborough Smith, to seek freedom further westward or north. Therefore, the Gradual Abolition Act may have been one of the causes of the Laurel Hill settlement.  

In the wake of a robust abolitionist movement, gradual abolition of some enslaved people, and a thriving Underground Railroad, Pennsylvania underwent its “First Reconstruction” in the 1830s. “Reconstruction” typically refers to the process of rebuilding the South after the Civil War until 1877. Pennsylvania underwent the initial transition away from slavery in this earlier period and would do so again following the end of the Civil War. By 1830s in Pennsylvania, segregation and oppression replaced enslavement where it had been abolished.

Supporting abolition did not inherently mean supporting equal rights for Black Americans. Many Pennsylvanians held profoundly racist views. Tomek notes elite white Pennsylvanians wanted to continue sharing cultural and economic practices with elite whites in the South, and anti-Black racism was a central part of that identity. Additionally, white Pennsylvanians of all social classes resented sharing space with Black Americans. Working-class whites (German and Irish Americans in particular) also resented having to compete for jobs and they feared possible social or sexual contact resulting in race mixing due to living and working side-by-side with free Blacks. White Pennsylvanians at large, then, sought to limit Black freedom as much as possible. Many whites also feared Black retaliation for past wrongs and resented the successes of the Black middle class. Responding to these pressures, Black communities looked inward to provide for necessities.

In an effort to avoid job competition and sharing their communities with African Americans, many whites supported colonization, which included sending Black Pennsylvanians to western territories, the Caribbean, or Africa. Some Black people supported these emigration policies, but many did not since they were born and raised in the United States.  

Even amongst allies, tensions emerged. White abolitionists often monitored or tried to control black abolitionists and allies. They also perpetuated the false idea that working hard or behaving “properly” would eventually secure Black people equal opportunities. Long-time Black residents and a growing middle class felt threatened by the arrival of new Black residents and their impact on local communities.

Pennsylvania further hardened racial discrimination and tensions when it revised its constitution in 1838 to strip Black Pennsylvanians of their voting rights. It limited suffrage to white men. Some free Black men had been able to vote for a generation or more. Disfranchisement highlighted the increasing racism. This racial hardening may have been a response to the growing abolitionist movement, the larger numbers of Black people entering the state from the South and rising tensions over job scarcity and immigration from Europe.   

African Americans continued to self-emancipate prior to and during the Civil War. Many chose to serve in the war as well to demonstrate their patriotism and bring justice to their enslaved brethren. Black men have a long history of military service, beginning with the American Revolution. During the Civil War, Black men served as both volunteers and as part of the segregated US Colored Troops (USCT). Although essential to the war effort, Black veterans were excluded from the 1865 Grand Review for Union armies in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the Union victory. Black Pennsylvanians responded by organizing their own parade in Harrisburg. During and after the Civil War many refugees moved to Pennsylvania to escape the South. This increased tensions in the state with white residents and sometimes with older established Black communities. This trend persisted well into the twentieth century as racial tensions hardened in post-emancipation America. African American men’s voting rights were restored with passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. Black Pennsylvanians organized and actively worked to secure full civil rights through voting and political activism, and integrating schools, transportation, and businesses, but they faced many challenges. 

John Harshberger’s 1862 obituary states he served in the Pennsylvania 54th Colored Regiment under Captain Bonaker.

The two graves with clear markers in the Brown Farm cemetery include John Brown and John Smith, who both served in the Civil War.  John Brown served in Company H of the 4th Pennsylvania Calvary. John married Keziah Jane Wallace Harshberger. John Smith thought he was part of the 4th US Colored Troops, which appears on his headstone, but according to government records, he was not and that was why he was unable to claim a pension after the war. Smith was, however, part of the 3rd US Colored Troops that were stationed at Camp William Penn, outside of Philadelphia.

Examining how national trends played out in Johnstown helps further contextualize the Laurel Hill Settlement and the community in which the founding members established themselves and the land they claimed and improved.

Johnstown, originally Conemaugh Old Town, was settled by Joseph Johns (Jahns, Schantz) in 1791 in the area of an earlier Indigenous town. The Allegheny Portage Railroad connected the Western Division and Juniata Division of the Main Line Canal System at Johnstown in 1834, the same year the town took the name Johnstown. The canal was largely replaced by the Pennsylvania Railroad after its completion in 1854. 

Livelihoods 

Iron, coal, and steel were major industrial products of Johnstown. Cambria Iron Company, founded in 1852, was the nation’s largest steel producer by 1860.  Male immigrants, many from southern and eastern Europe, without craft experience, flocked to Western Pennsylvania steel mills at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of these early workers had formed unions, but by the 1880s to early 1890s, employers worked hard to break them. The notorious Homestead Strike (1892) at Carnegie’s steel mills epitomizes the strikebreaking efforts of the era. Around this same time, bituminous coal mining emerged in Johnstown in the late 1800s, bringing new wealth and job opportunities to the region. Although essential to the region’s early iron production, Black male workers were later excluded from industrial jobs due to employer racism and pressure from white workers who feared job loss or lower wages if Black workers were hired. According to Walter Licht, this resulted in 60 percent of Black men in domestic service positions and 30 percent in common day labor jobs like hauling and carting, and the roughly 10 percent of remaining Black men with skilled training in the state “could find jobs only in black-owned businesses serving the black community.”

Changes in coke production negatively impacted Pennsylvania’s economy in the 1920s, and this occurred in the Pittsburgh region, specifically Connellsville. The extraction process did not occur at the mining site, so the profitable by-products helped other regions develop. The declining use of anthracite coal for heating also contributed to the economic downturn. Pennsylvania largely failed to transition to new industries, like automobile production, and it relied too heavily on past industry and wealth. The collapse of mining and steel production led to population decline. 

The Great Migrations and Racial Tensions 

Most of the information and data in this section come from Richard B. Sherman’s “Johnstown v. The Negro: Southern Migrants and the Exodus of 1923,” in the Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies. 

The first phase of black migration to Johnstown was from 1916-17. There was a sharp decline after that, until a second phase occurred from 1922-23. Johnstown’s population rapidly increased from 1880 to 1920 (800% increase) during the Second Industrial Revolution. It had a small Black population since the 19th century, but it increased by 262% between 1910 and 1920, and more people arrived in the 1922-23 migration. The Cambria Steel Company (previously named the Cambria Iron Company) was the main employer. The company then became the Bethlehem Steel Company, owned by Charles M. Schwab, in 1922. Many blamed the steel company’s new leadership for the increasing Black population since some steel employers in western Pennsylvania and Ohio had brought in increasing numbers of workers starting in 1916. Many of these workers served as strikebreakers during the great steel strike of 1919.

Most Black residents of Johnstown lived in the Rosedale section of town, 3 miles north of the business district. Bethlehem Steel owned most of the property in this area and according to Dean Kelly Miller of Howard University’s Junior College, “only two families owned their homes” in (1923). The company-owned Rosedale neighborhood provided poor living conditions and inadequate housing.

During the “Rosedale incident” in 1923, a young Black man had a run-in with police and led to his death and the death of two officers and the wounding of several others. The incident brought racial tensions to a head and created fertile ground for KKK propaganda and led to Republican Mayor Joseph Cauffiel implementing illegal, anti-Black policies.  

In response to larger African American communities emerging in the North and Midwest following the Great Migration, and anti-immigrant attitudes increasing throughout the early decades of the twentieth century, the Klan revived and spread throughout the nation. According to David R. Contosta, “An estimated quarter-million Pennsylvanians were members of the Klan during its peak in the 1920s. The largest concentration of Klan lodges, or “klaverns,” as they were called were in southwestern Pennsylvania—that is, in Allegheny and surrounding counties.” The Klan organized in Pennsylvania in 1921 and started to decline in the late 1920s due to scandals and internal tensions among leaders.

In the wake of the Rosedale Incident, Johnstown’s Mayor Joseph Cauffiel issued a series of orders intended to drive Black residents from Johnstown, for what appears to be mainly political and racial reasons. He ordered Black residents who had lived less than seven years in Johnstown and all new arrivals to leave immediately. Visiting Black people would have to register with the police or mayor, and they would not be allowed entrance unless they proved they were law-abiding. He also said Johnstown would take steps to ban the importation of Black and Mexican labor. He further decreed Blacks could not hold public gatherings of any kind except church services. Cauffiel did not produce formal written orders to the police nor did they deport local Black or Mexican residents, but the practices were carried out in different ways. For example, when serving as a judge of local police court he ordered Black defendants to leave town. He also told Bethlehem to ship its Black workers elsewhere. Many Black and Mexican residents--possibly as many as 2000--were forced out of town or did not know their rights and left.

Apparently, the Mayor never visited Rosedale to see conditions or thought through consequences of his actions. The Johnstown Democrat condemned his action arguing it would appeal to the Klan and others with racial prejudice, but initially there was little local reaction to the mayor’s orders until they became known outside Johnstown. Eventually, though, Cauffiel was voted out of office. The event shows that Black residents would not find allies in the Republican Party at large or locally. Although Cauffiel was not reelected, Republican leaders did not loudly condemn his actions or attitudes either.

It is purely speculation, but perhaps the limited housing and employment opportunities and overt racism in Johnstown encouraged residents of Laurel Hill to continue living on the mountain and visit Johnstown to trade and attend school for many years. Following a public presentation for Juneteenth in 2023, one Brown family member noted that over time her relatives left the mountain because living there was difficult and moving closer to town afforded new opportunities.

Laurel Ridge State Park was created July 10, 1967, but much of the land on Laurel Hill was not transferred to the commonwealth until 1968. Western Pennsylvania Conservancy acquired most of the land and transferred it to the state. Much of the park land was acquired through eminent domain.

John Brown’s name and land (100 acres) appears on a 1967 map showing a gas line through Western Pennsylvania Conservancy lands. The ‘lands of Elmer Brown’ or ‘former lands of Elmer Brown’ are referenced as landmarks in several of the documents conveying property to WPC. A conveyance document from Brown to WPC, however, has not yet been identified. It may be that Brown did not settle with WPC until later than others. Brown’s property was eventually transferred to the commonwealth.

This narrative was financed in part by a grant from the Community Conservation Partnerships Program, Keystone Fund, under the administration of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Bureau of Recreation and Conservation.