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Somerset County, PA
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Created on April 17, 1795, from part of Bedford County
and named for Somersetshire, England. Somerset, the
county seat was laid out in 1795 and incorporated as a
borough on March 5, 1804.
 Traversed
by the Forbes Road in 1758, it became legal to settle
the Somerset area after the “New Purchase” of 1768.
German Brethren groups from New Jersey settled Brothers
Valley, and the radical preacher Harmon Husband joined
them in 1771. A rye and whiskey economy involved the
area in the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 against the
federal government’s tax on distilleries. Although
punished, Husband, who died June 1795, saw the county
created that April. Robert Philson, also a Whiskey
leader, lived on as Somerset’s political leader. More
land was added in 1800, but some was yielded to create
Cambria County in 1804. An Agricultural Society was
formed in 1828 to pursue intelligent farm methods.
Cattle and sheep were very productive, and the cloth
called linsey-woolsey was manufactured. Maple sugar was
important. There was a severe frost in 1859, when only
the buckwheat crop prevented starvation. Although coal
had been mined and timber cut since 1770s, only when the
Somerset and Cumberland Railroad opened in 1871 were big
lumber and coal industries developed. Large mines began
in 1872, and later a branch of the B. & O. Railroad
opened the northern coal section. Babcock Lumber Company
flourished until the lumber was gone in 1912. The
population had mushroomed. Peak coal production occurred
in 1920—10.5 million tons! There were violent coal
strikes in 1903, 1906, and 1922. Coal production fell
off sharply, but dairying and potato production
increased in the 1920s. The 1936 flood eliminated the
old wooden miners’ houses. The peak population occurred
in 1940 (84,957), the same year the Pennsylvania
Turnpike appeared and saved the county’s economy. Today
there is heavy production of hay, oats, milk, potatoes,
and alfalfa; one third of the county is farmland. Potato
chips are produced, and tourism, especially skiing, is
important. When U.S. 219 opened from Ebensburg to
Somerset in 1969, it augmented the Turnpike by providing
a north-south artery. Somerset is now the second highest
bituminous producing county. |
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