Jackson Township
Cambria County, Pennsylvania
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Chapter 1
Annals
Of Jackson Township Jackson township, Cambria county, Pennsylvania was organized on January 3, 1828, prior to that being part of Cambria and Summerhill townships. It was named for Andrew Jackson who was elected president of the United States during that year. There are eighteen Jackson townships in the state and a large number by that name in the United States.
Jackson township
contains one railroad and no large towns. There are six churches and ten
schools and the population in 1940 was 2,442. In 1860 the population
was 854. At Mundy's Corner the height above sea level is 1,897 feet;
at Chickaree, 2,369; at Dearmin, 2,000 feet; at Vinco, 1,722 feet; on
Rager
Mountain 2,400 feet; at Vintondale, 1,408 feet.
Many industries
have flourished here and disappeared, some of them beyond
the memory of the
oldest inhabitant. The several communities are mainly made up of
descendants of those first settlers who through perseverance and
often-great
hardships made their homes in the wilderness and established
their families.
Several nationalities are represented by these first families.
Here we have
the immigrants coming over from Germany, Wales, England,
Holland,
Ireland, and in more recent times, Austria and southern Europe.
One family is
supposed to be a direct descendant of an Italian priest. Another, Irish
to their finger tips, tell of their immigrant ancestor coming over on a
cattleboat, and among their precious possessions a blue butter
bowl, carefully
guarded, which is still in the family. Yet another family
claims the
Mayflower as the boat their ancestor came on, English they are,
and proud of it.
But, wherever they came from, those pioneers, their
descendants have
stayed here in large numbers and have made of this
township a
thriving group of communities, wherein anyone might well be proud to
live.
The township
contains rich farming land; the community known as
Clinefelter being
made up of especially well kept farms. Most of the wage earners,
however, are employed in the towns nearby, especially at the Bethlehem
and Lorain Steel Companies in Johnstown. The average resident of the
township is a home loving person, attested to by the well-kept
appearance of most of the homes. In recent years some of the communities
near the
towns have really become suburbs of those towns, and homes,
modern in every
detail have been erected.
The residents of
this locality are as a rule, religion conscious, most of them
belonging to one
of the six churches in the township, or maintaining
membership in a
city church. Here we have Brethren, Methodists, Presbyterians,
Evangelicals, Catholics, Lutherans, and Christian church
members, as well
as several other sects. The various churches, as a rule, are
also social
centers of their own communities. Although the township boasts of no
high school, high qualifications are required of the teachers in the
eight
country and two village schools.
It is a far cry
from the Jackson township of today, with its thickly populated
communities, its
smooth highways, electric lights, radios, telephones,
automobiles, to
the olden days of the plank road, candle-lit log cabin homes, and travel
by horse-drawn vehicles, but the hand of man has, through the years,
added much to the great natural beauty of this section of Perm's Woods,
although in some places forests have been cut away in the natural
progress of
human beings. In other places, particularly as one stands high on
Chickaree, on
the upper part of the Meegan farm, may be glimpsed far vistas
of as beautiful
scenery as is found anywhere in the state. Also, in the
Clinefelter
community one may see for miles, rolling fields under cultivation
or miles of a
solid green of forests, seemingly so untouched as to appear
almost as virgin
timber. Near the Millwood section, too, there are miles of timber, dense
in places as any jungle, yet of a third or fourth growth. In
these woods deer
are yet plentiful although they have been thinned out to a
large extent by
the annual hunt. Many species of wild life yet abound, but
the ferocious
animals have long since disappeared. In the mountain streams
running through
this beautiful section of Pennsylvania the Speckled trout, as
well as many
other kinds of fish, have their home. Little wonder that the
natives feel,
and rightly so, that this is truly a "garden spot". |