Pennsylvania State Facts & Information

Select a county from the table below to to view more information on genealogical information & records pertaining to each county.

Information in the County Pages include the mailing address of the recorder of deeds, where deeds and mortgages are found. The date of county formation, with the name or names of the parent county or counties. The date the earliest deed was recorded. The the mailing address of the register of wills, if different from the recorder. Estate records are found in the register's office or orphans' court. (See Court Records for other county offices.)

The Official State Website is http://www.state.pa.us/

Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, one of the Middle Atlantic states, and one of the 13 original states of the United States. It entered the Union on December 12, 1787, making it second after Delaware. Pennsylvania means “Penn’s woodland.” It was named in honor of Admiral William Penn, whose son, William Penn, founded the colony as a haven for members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, and other religious minorities in 1682. The state is known as the Quaker State, and is also referred to as the Keystone State. This term was apparently first used because of the state’s political importance, though it is also appropriate because of its location in the middle of the 13 original states. With six states to the north and six to the south, Pennsylvania was the keystone in an arch of states. Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is its largest city.

One of Pennsylvania’s outstanding characteristics is its great diversity. In southeastern Pennsylvania, Berks, Lancaster, York, and Chester counties contain some particularly fertile soils. Dairy products, poultry and poultry products, cattle, nursery and greenhouse products, and grains are especially valuable. Central and northern Pennsylvania contains extensive areas of commercial forest. The state continues to be an important industrial state, though there has been a dramatic shift to service-based employment. Especially in western Pennsylvania, many smaller communities as well as Pittsburgh are no longer the flourishing centers of manufacturing that they once were.

Such national shrines as Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, Valley Forge, and Gettysburg are in the state and are constant reminders of Pennsylvania’s importance in the history of the United States.

The Dutch first came to the area now known as Pennsylvania following Henry Hudson's exploration of the Delaware River, the state's waterway to the Atlantic, but they did little more than establish trading posts. Swedes arrived in 1638 and, with the Finns who came about the same time, spilled over into what is now the Philadelphia area. The Dutch gained control of New Sweden in 1655, but nine years later England conquered New Netherland, and Pennsylvania became a part of the Duke of York's new territory, which included New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. In 1673-74 the Dutch regained control, but soon the colony was back under English rule.

None of these early settlements had the lasting impression on Pennsylvania as did William Penn's colony. Chartered in 1681 by King Charles II to Penn, a Quaker, Pennsylvania received her new governor aboard the Welcome the following year. The new immigrants were primarily English Quakers, although some were of Welsh, Scottish, and Irish ancestry. Pennsylvania became a royal province briefly in 1692-94 when Penn lost his power over the conflict between the proprietary and popular elements, but the colony then resumed under the proprietary government until the American Revolution, and Penn and his descendants left a long-standing influence, especially in terms of governing, in dealing with the native population, and in providing a haven of religious tolerance.

Penn's “Holy Experiment” encouraged throngs of immigrants in the next century. The two largest groups were the Ulster-Scots, who first came in 1707 and in greater numbers from 1728 on, and the Germans, who first arrived in 1683. The Germans, mostly from the Rhine, included subgroups that characterize those who have become known, more culturally than ethnically, as the “Pennsylvania Dutch”—Amish, Dunkers, Mennonites, Moravians, and Schwenkfelders, although the majority of Pennsylvania Germans were Lutheran, Reformed, Roman Catholic. They first settled beyond the Quakers of the Philadelphia area—in Lancaster, Northampton, Berks, and Lehigh counties—eventually moving west along a more central route. The Ulster-Scots tended to settle a bit beyond the Germans, first in the Cumberland Valley, and then they continued west, but southerly, and populated southwestern Pennsylvania. The westward movements were made despite the Allepheny mountains that diagonally divide the rectangular-shaped state, and early settlements tended to be made in the valleys, such as the Cumberland, Lebanon, and Lehigh. Other immigrants in the 1700s included Welsh (some of whom were Quakers), French (including Huguenots, later Acadians, and at the end of the century refugees from revolutionary-torn France and Haiti), Irish, Jews, and blacks. In spite of the strong Quaker influence, slavery did exist in Pennsylvania, but of the 10,000 blacks there in 1790, over half were free, and slavery was phased out by the early 1800s.

Most of Pennsylvania's western settlers had migrated from the eastern part of the province. Some came up from Maryland and Virginia, such as Ulster-Scots and Germans, many of whom had ventured south from Pennsylvania earlier. The Holland Land Company's territory extended into the Northwestern part of Pennsylvania, where New Yorkers met Pennsylvanians coming north from Washington, Allegheny, and other southwestern counties.

It has generally been believed that the Penns dealt fairly with the Native Americans, peacefully acquiring additional territory through treaties and purchase; however, some historians question this. As settlers pushed westward, however, they forced the natives ahead of them, and the resulting hostilities peaked during the French and Indian War. This conflict caused Pennsylvania to create its first militia in order to defend the frontier settlements.

Pennsylvania claimed northeastern Pennsylvania and began sending settlers there in the 1750s. A bitter conflict ensued until Pennsylvania relinquished its claim through the Decree of Trenton in 1782. Other boundary disputes took place with New York and, in the southwest, with Virginia. The most famous, however, was the controversy between the Penns and Lord Baltimore. A temporary line was drawn with Maryland in 1739, but the fixed boundary was not settled until Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon's work was ratified in 1769, creating what became the historic slave/free state division between the North and South.

At the time of the Revolutionary War, Pennsylvania was the “Keystone” between the northern and southern colonies, and many important events took place in Philadelphia that shaped the emerging nation; the state's charter referred to the “Commonwealth” of Pennsylvania, to help express democracy. The British invaded Philadelphia and defeated the patriots at Germantown in 1776, but Pennsylvania is probably best remembered for the harsh winter of 1777-78 that Washington's poorly trained army spent at Valley Forge. During the War of 1812 Pennsylvanians were instrumental in Commodore Perry's victory on Lake Erie. (The “Erie Triangle,” now Erie County, was purchased from Native Americans in 1792, to provide the state with a port on the lake. Pennsylvania's third port is Pittsburgh, whose early development was the result of its location on the Ohio River.) The Commonwealth was greatly involved in the Civil War, including the Battle of Gettysburg, a major turning point for the Union army.

• Ontario County: Formed in 1810, Renamed and organized as Bradford County in 1812

The destruction of courthouses greatly affects genealogists in every way. No only are these historic structures torn from our lives, so are the records they housed: marriage, wills, probate, land records, and others. Once destroyed they are lost forever. Even if they have been placed on mircofilm, computers and film burn too. The most heartbreaking side of this is the fact that many of our courthouses are destroyed at the hands of arsonist. However, not all records were lost.

Below is a list of Pennsylvania Counties and the years the Courthouses were subjected to a disaster. This does NOT mean that ALL RECORDS were lost. Often, folks took their documents again in for recording after a disaster and later deeds will contain long chains of title, etc.

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