Due to the Penns’ pact with local Indian tribes, the Allegheny Wilderness was closed to white settlement until the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768. Only an occasional traveler on the Governor’s business or a licensed trader like John Hart ventured in. There is little proof that there was a large population of the “Early People” but a few sites are visible to the trained eye today.

          These sites include Fort Hill (near your Prince Gallitzin State Park), the Indian village at Old Conemaugh Town (Johnstown), the Indian Steps (near Wilmore) and the famous Kittanning Indian Trail which cuts though the northern woods of Cambria County.  Making good use of that path was John Hart. He first received his trader’s licenses in 1744 from the Governor’s Office.  His stop in Cambria County became known as Hart’s Sleeping Place (near Hastings). At Huntingdon his trading place was known as Hart’s Log.

          In 1769, only a year after the treaty of Fort Stanwix opened the door, the white settlers, Samuel, Rachel and Solomon Adams made their way up from Bedford County to settle near Elton. This pioneering family had to make several hasty retreats back to Bedford due to hostile Indian attacks. Finally, after about eight years of hostilities Samuel and an Indian warrior killed each other in hand-to-hand combat. Rachel herself was later killed by Indians. Today the family is remembered in the place names such as: Adams Township, Solomon Run, Rachel Hill and Rachel’s Run.

          Around 1783 a Dunkard, John Martin Cable (Kebel in German) brought his family to the Elk Pastures near Wilmore. Two of his daughters married two Pringle brothers and together they built their homestead on Pringle Hill back in 1795.

          There is no more stirring image in the history of Cambria County than that of the Revolutionary patriarch, Captain Michael McGuire, coming over the mountain at the age of 71 years with a string of grown sons, Cornelius, Luke, Richard, Peter and Michael to found a new home for his family at the very limits of our infant nation. Captain McGuire had also arrived about the time of the Fort Stanwix Treaty (1768) to hunt and fish in the Ashville area. Up from his native Maryland the Irish-Catholic McGuire had recruited and commanded a company of the Fredrick militia in 1776. By 1788 he and his family were living on the 1400 acres they had bought near Loretto. 

          Having arrived in the Summerhill area around 1794,  Thomas and Barbara Croyle built their fortress stone house in 1800. The Croyle’s had their hands full with marauding Indians despite the fact that Thomas was raised by a Native American (Seneca) mother. Barbara Croyle dictated that their house be made of stone, solid on the vulnerable sides and windows only where they provided a clear lane of rifle fire. This stone house stands today.

          Around this time (1795) a Pennsylvania German, Joseph Johns,  moved his farm to Conemaugh, which later developed in the county’s largest city, Johnstown. By 1800, however, Johns had moved again to the Davidsville area.

          In late 1796, the first band of Welshmen, new to America, arrived in the Ebensburg area and a year later at Beulah. Obviously having no clue as to the type of weather conditions they might encounter, these hearty settlers left Philadelphia in September only to arrive atop the Allegheny Mountain in the November preceding one of the coldest winter’s on record. They survived in hemlock shacks being built of limbs “no larger than a man’s thigh”. The group’s leader, Rev. Rees Lloyd, built the first house of worship in the Allegheny Wilderness. Built in 1799, it was known as the Ebenezer Chapel.

          A year after the Ebensburg party arrived, Morgan John Rhys, brought over “100 professional and mechanics”. Having rejected the site chosen by the Ebensburg advance party, Rev. Rhys mounted an organized assault on the rocky lands of the Blacklick, some three miles to the west. The surveyors of his Cambrian Company laid out a town one mile square with land set aside for public buildings, a library, schools and a seminary. The streets had optimistic names such as: Truth, Zeal, Hope, Joy and Free. Town lots were bought by famous people such as Joseph Priestly, the discoverer of oxygen, and M. Boudinot, Master of the U.S. Mint.

          Rev. Morgan John Rhys campaigned in Washington D.C. to established the first U.S. Post Office and polling place at Beulah. Despite its ambitious beginning, however, Beulah quickly failed as morale crumbled under the brute labor of coxing tillable land from rocky forest soil. The difference between Beulah and Ebensburg may have been the difference between its two leaders; Rev. Morgan John Rhys and Rev. Rhees Lloyd. It may have been as simple as Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare. Whereas Morgan John Rhys spent the initial years of Beulah’s life traveling up and down the Eastern Seaboard promoting his ideal town of the future; Rev. Rhees Lloyd labored tirelessly between his fields and his religious flock.