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Landscape Use and Permanence
This narrative draws on the stories and physical evidence of how the Laurel Hill landscape was used and modified by residents
Landscape Use and Modification
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1850 US Census for Conemaugh Township, Cambria County, listing Edenborough and John Smith
Residents were most regularly listed as farmers in primary documents (census, marriage records, death notices, etc.). There are occasionally other occupations listed for men, including blacksmith, teamster, and laborer, and regularly for women, including house maid, washerwoman, and domestic, but farmer is the most common and consistent male occupation.
Edenborough Smith (ca. 1780-1865) and John Harshberger (1800-1851) are listed as farmers in 1850 census. Edenborough Smith is listed as a farmer in the 1860 census. John Smith (Edenborough son, 1827-1895) is a laborer in 1850 and a farm laborer in 1860. When Edenborough Smith was murdered in 1865, The Johnstown Tribune noted that he left behind horses, cattle, and crops on a 200-acre farm.
1939 Aerial (left) and 1951 Aerial (right) (slide arrows back and forth to see how the farm changed)
Prior to 1850, no more than 10 acres were cleared at any one time. In 1855, Edenborough Smith had 20 cleared acres. Approximately 23 acres are visibly cleared in the aerial photographs from the first half of the 20th century.
Prior to 1832 and the completion of the Western Division of the Main Line Canal, the families were likely prosperous, supplementing farming with a stage stop along the Johnstown-New Florence Road and blacksmithing. The canal, and later railroad, ended the need for that route over the ridge and the source of income. Timbering may have filled some of this loss of income (see below).
By the 1950s the property was commonly referred to as the Brown Farm, but Brown family presence on the landscape began in the mid-19th century when John Brown married Keziah Jane Wallace Harshberger. Distinct farm fields with evidence of plowing are visible in early 20th century aerial photographs. They grew corn and possibly other crops.
Trees
Livestock, Wood, and Other Forms of Production
Elmer Brown
Wood Harvesting
Harvesting hardwoods for the nearby furnaces and tanbark (hemlock, spruce, or chestnut oak) for tanneries would have been a good source of income for the families in the mid-19th century. While logical, there is not yet evidence for this practice.
John E. Smith (1827-1895, son of Edenborough Smith and Keziah Harshberger) was variously referred to as “Sassafras” (or “Sassyfras”) John and “Clothes-pole” John due to the wares that he sold. Sassafras wood is a lightweight, easily worked, and durable wood. Clothes poles were used to support lines on which clothes were hung to dry. It is unknown if the clothes poles were made from sassafras wood or from the wood of the oak, maple, and chestnut trees that cover the mountain. Sassafras roots were brewed as teas and beers to serve as a tonic and are important to Native American and Appalachian medicines.
Elmer Brown (1868-1946) was known for selling the best clothes props, or poles, in the area. The wood was likely harvested on the farm.
The Brown family during the mid-20th century harvested timber for use as mine props. The children were actively involved in splitting these timbers.
Descendants attending the 2023 Juneteenth celebration in Johnstown reported that the family made root beer every year from plants, possibly sassafras and teaberry, found on the mountain.
Maple trees on the property, in particular those near the cemetery, were tapped for sugar.
Annie Bowser Brown
Livestock
In the early 20th century, cows were present on the farm. Annie Elizabeth Bowser Brown (married Elmer Brown 1903) and other Brown family members appear in photographs with cows. Pigs and sheep were also noted on the Brown farm during Annie’s tenure.
John T. Brown (b. 1906) owned hogs on the property. Some of the hogs were aggressive. One story recounts them chasing off a truant officer. John T. Brown was paid to collect food waste from the school cafeteria. He drove a green 1930s truck with trash cans in the bed and collected food scraps to feed to the hogs. Hogs would have been a viable livestock prior to John T. Brown because they can be allowed to roam through woodlands and forage for themselves. These characteristics make them good livestock for farms surrounded by undeveloped lands.
Apple tree, Fall 2023
Other Forms of Production
Circa 1955. Alonzo “Lonny” Brown (b. 1945, son of John T. Brown) and sister (likely Irene, b. 1947) would pick blueberries, apples, etc. and sell them door to door. The “upper” field, located northwest of the center of the Brown Farm was referred to as “the blueberry field.”
Annie Elizabeth Bowser Brown and family produced wine from local grapes and moonshine, presumably from grains produced on the farm.
The Browns also mined flagstone from the property.
Building
Pond Location
Pond
A small, man-made pond is located west of the cemetery. The pond traps water flowing down the mountainside and lets out excess water into a small unnamed stream. The pond was installed circa 1960, at approximately the same time that the house was wired for electric and phone. The pond would have provided water for livestock and possibly residents. Ice harvested from the pond in winter could have been used in an icehouse to store produce through the summer. A cold storage house is noted as “across the road” from the main house in some oral histories.
Road System
Cemetery
Log house
Permanence
The Laurel Hill Settlement landscape provides ample evidence of a mindset of permanence among the residents. While many fields were cleared across Cambria County, planting trees that take time to mature suggests a long view of residency. Similarly, establishing a cemetery is both an investment in the location and a means to publicly, forcefully, display a connection to the land. Other landscapes uses, including constructing the pond and repeated reuse of farm lanes, support the long-term and place-invested perspective of the residents. The loss of the Harshberger log home to arson impacted many people because it, along with the cemetery, was a major landmark in the landscape. The continued use of the home for more than 130 years by 5 generations of the same also speaks to how devoted the family was to this land.
Portion of 1867 Pomeroy map of Cambria County
Physical evidence of permanence is supported by historical and legal documents. There is evidence of the families working within the legal system to obtain and hold the property.
Portion of 1890 map of Lower Yoder Township
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, see below).
Laurel Hill Settlement Map
William Harsberger willed approximately 400 acres to his son John Harsberger and son-in-law Edenborough Smith, splitting the entire tract owned by Joseph Taylor between them. It is unclear how William acquired the land and neither he, nor John or Edenborough, ever paid taxes on the full extent of land described in William’s will. John and Edenborough both sold lands during the 1840s that were included in their inheritance but separate from the farms they worked on that land. It is unclear from the documents how William and his descendants came to own the land. It may be that they claimed it and only established title through the act of willing and selling it.
John Harshberger left a will indicating that the property should be passed down through the Harshberger family. Elizabeth Harshberger (John’s daughter) married John Wallace and had at least 5 children, but kept the Harshberger name, possibly to preserve her claim to the land. However, between ca. 1854 and 1890 portions of the property had to be sold to pay taxes. By the 1890s, Elmer (Harshberger) Brown was able to purchase land. He changed his name from Elmer Harshberger, his mother’s married name, to Elmer Brown at this time, as he no longer required the connection to John Harshberger’s will to hold the property. Despite the increasing difficulty of making a living on the property and the loss of portions of the property, the families seem to have worked hard to maintain ownership of the land.
John E. Smith continued to live on the land he had inherited from Edenborough Smith even after the property was sold for unpaid taxes.
Protection of Property
When John Harshberger died (ca. 1851) his property was divided with upper portion and family home going to Elizabeth and lower portion to Mary. However, the lower portion needed to be sold to pay John’s debts. Mary continued to live on the lower property and was harassed by the men who bought it, James Potts and George Beam. During one of their attempts to take possession, Elizabeth beat them with a stick and chased them off.
During the early 20th century the Brown family was very possessive of the land. They ran off or accosted passersby who were perceived as trespassing.
Construction of Sense of Place
Camp meetings and picnics
August 4, 1874 Johnstown Tribune article describing picnic at Harshberger’s Grove
Katherine “Katy” Clarissa Riley Coleman Brown (sister of Jane Riley Dorman, wife of Orange) described attending a “bush meetin’” of African Americans in the Johnstown area on “Laurel Hill” in the mid-19th century. There she met Frank Coleman, leading to their engagement. The meeting was foretold to Katy by a fortuneteller a year earlier. The meetings seemed to be a semi-regular event that attracted African Americans from outside the Laurel Hill community because Frank Coleman was not well known. The meeting was held in the summer and was a religious event with an “altar” and “service.”
The August 4, 1874 edition of The Johnstown Tribune reported on a picnic for the African American community of Johnstown in “Harshberger’s grove.” John Brown played violin while Sam Johnson called the dances.
Vertical posts
Family reunions at the site were an important aspect of identity building beginning in the late 19th century. By ca. 1900 most of the children of the first and second generation of the Harsberger and Smith families had moved to Johnstown or elsewhere. Descendants remained on the mountain, for example the Browns, but many moved away.
The vertical posts along the east approach to the site may be the remnants of a hall constructed for these celebrations. The posts are near where the main road would have approached the site. The posts may also be related to a barn; further work is necessary to substantiate this use.
Cemetery and late continued intermits
Kelvin “Tommy” Brown maintained the property after it was taken over by the state and installed the initial fence around the cemetery.
The ashes of Irene Brown Hamner (1947-2012, daughter of John T. Brown) were spread within the cemetery in 2012. A cross was affixed to one of the larger trees marking where she was laid.
Conclusions
A sense of place created through repeated use and interactions with humans and landscape.
The Laurel Hill Settlement may have served as a “homespace” as defined by bell hooks. Homsepace describes how African American people, and in particular women, used their homes and the spaces around their homes as safe places for humanization. These were spaces where people could be fully human in a world that tried to dehumanize them. Spaces where people felt comfortable, supported, and wrapped in the love of community and family. It is difficult to know how the Laurel Hill settlers felt and how those feelings changed generation to generation, but homespace is a useful framework for investigating those questions and may help understand the importance of the place to subsequent generations.
Why this place continues to matter?
Family members continued to visit the location after the property became less populated and after the property was taken.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the settlement was removed from the everyday lives of many descendants but became a place for special occasions such as family reunions.
During the second half of the 20th century a group of descendants travelled to the site of the settlement. “Being there on the mountain made me feel as I was walking through the pages of a history book only this is my history. Part of who I am and where I came from; which I am very proud to be a part of.”
Special purpose use in later periods built upon the many family connections that developed within and to the property during the early and mid-19th century.
Importance may also be tied to the fact that the Laurel Hill Settlement is the earliest location that many family members can trace their lineage to. Because some of the early residents likely escaped enslavement, the appearance of an ancestor at Laurel Hill may be the clearest indicator of that ancestor. The presence of the cemetery, containing the physical remains of many of these ancestors, contributes to the special place the landscape holds for individuals searching for their personal past.
The Laurel Hill Settlement might be considered a Traditional Cultural Property. A Traditional Cultural Property is a property “that is eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places because of its association with cultural practices or beliefs of a living community that (a) are rooted in that community’s history, and (b) are important in maintaining the continuing cultural identity of the community."
The Laurel Hill Settlement is also important due to its association with nationally important historical trends.
The landscape speaks to the emigration of Americans to the Midwest. The site is particularly associated with African American emigration but also relates to more general trends in the movement of people during the 19th century.
The site and the changing economic strategies of the residents relate to regional-scale economic trends in agricultural and industrial production.
The site may have Underground Railroad associations. These associations remain to be proven but there is significant circumstantial evidence.
John Graff (UGRR proponent in Blairsville) owned Laurel Hill hot-blast charcoal furnace located three miles east of New Florence RR Station. That would place it just west of Brown Settlement. The furnace was built 1846, ran until 1855, and was then leased to E. Hoover of New Florence. LaRoche associates furnaces with UGRR.
The UGRR at least occasionally ran through Johnstown. For example, there is a letter dated July 31, 1858 from Cyrus Elder to Edwin Vickroy of Johnstown inquiring about status of UGRR in Johnstown and asking to send a freedom seeker that direction. The UGRR often placed freedom seekers with existing African American communities in the vicinity of cities where the freedom seeker would be less noticeable.
The changing fortunes of the residents, their increasing isolation due to changes in transportation networks and family choice, and the changing attitudes of family members towards education and strangers all resonate with the construction of Appalachian identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That many of the Laurel Hill Settlement residents were of African descent complicates and enriches the construction of an Appalachian identity.
Further historical and archaeological investigations may make it possible to list the property in the National Register of Historic Places for its association with historically significant regional and national trends.
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.