Centre County Government

13. Philipsburg: Western Dreams

Built on the log story of the 1820 Union Meeting house, Hardman Philip's 1842 chapel was to be an Episcopal church but the townspeople objected. CCHS Collections, donor Walter Swoope

The Philips brothers' Allegheny empire started as a Philadelphian's dream of western colony, like Samuel Miles' but with a later start. The State's Land Act of 1794 made land speculation attractive just when limestone farmland in the state became unavailable. Sent to Philadelphia as American agent by his English merchant family, Henry Philips bought 36,000 acres of plateau forest for $89,000 in 1795. Moving to Milesburg the next year to open trade in this wilderness, he hired Charles Trczyulny to survey a town on its east rim as a base for settlers. In 1798 he moved to Philipsburg himself to jump start the colony. The frontier was too much for him and he died in Philadelphia two years later at 33.

Twelve families responded to Henry's 1797 offer of a free lot and 4-acre "outlot" in the new town. Ten were German-born, dismayed to find the town a forest so thick that John Simler "had to fell seven trees before the first hit the ground." All but two eventually left.

The town's remoteness was refuge for the Philips family black sheep, Hardman. He fled England in 1810 under a death sentence after a sordid duel, and by 1813 built a rambling house for himself he named Moshannon Hall. Reinstated with his father in 1816, he built a forge to provide local iron for settlers' tools. His father secured a royal pardon in 1821, and backed him in setting up a screw factory. Feeding a stream of English settlers to Philipsburg, the family saw that industry, not farming, was Moshannon Valley's future. Hardman worked from 1830 to build a railroad 28 miles to the Juniata Canal, to ship local iron competitively. His forge burned, his screw factory grew outmoded, rail plans fizzled; when he failed in 1844 to Anglicize the Union Church he returned to England.

Graph shows how closely Philipsburg's growth followed Clearfield County's while Bellefonte was static between 1890 and 1820, with the rest of Centre County.

Railroads finally came. In 1863 the Tyrone and Clearfield RR reached Philipsburg and linked it with the world. From a village of 70 houses that year, the town shot to 1,764 by 1880, double that by 1895. Coal mining, lumber, and refractories threw Philipsburg's economy with Clearfield County's, booming while Centre County wilted during the half-century between 1870 and 1920. Exuberant building of downtown business blocks in the 1880s fostered dreams in Philipsburg of rivaling Bellefonte, and turning the county from facing east to facing west in Pennsylvania. Construction of the Rowland Theater in 1917 for touring plays and silent films lavished by organ or orchestra marked the acme of those dreams. In 1920 Philipsburg briefly led Centre County boroughs in population.

But extraction industries always face a bust hastened by the very intensity of their boom. The lumber gave out, and coal mining faltered in the 1920s under union stresses. Along with all western Pennsylvania, the Moshannon Valley suffered decline and outmigration into the 1970s as strip mines replaced shaft mining. The collapse of big steel in Pittsburgh renewed the decline in the 1980s.

Sandra Martin,
Mayor of Philipsburg

Candace Dannaker,
Mayor of Bellefonte

New life has been ushered into Philipsburg, as it has for other municipalities in Centre County, hand in hand with the most profound sociological change in the nation of the last quarter century—the women's movement. Symbolic of this change is the physical emergence of women into pulpits, boardrooms, and political offices throughout the county, notably mayors Sandra Martin in Philipsburg, Candace Dannaker in Bellefonte, Vi Duncan in Port Matilda, and Angeline Wutz in Unionville, four of the county's most traditional boroughs. But the movement reaches far beyond symbols. A new emphasis on quality of life colors public actions ranging from downtown revitalization to the design of transportation corridors. Philipsburg's love/hate relationship with the ancient artery now US 322, bringing vital commerce and endless through trucks, is currently weighing heritage preservation against decibels in designing the cornerstone of the borough's dream for the new millennium.