First "Commercial Venture" Along the West Branch, Northumberland Pa

 

1720 Map Of the Susquehanna River, by Isaac Taylor

If there's every a Susquehanna Valley Trivia Night, this would be a good question.  Where was the first "commercial venture" [store] along the West Branch?  Of course that's impossible to answer with absolute certainty, but according to Herbert Bell, in his History of Northumberland County, it was John Letorts Store, located in what is now the borough of Northumberland.

"He was a French trader, and probably carried on a thriving business with the Indians in the exchange of such commodities as a savage population could assimilate for peltries, etc. This was doubtless the initial commercial venture of the West Branch valley."

The first post office in central Pennsylvania was also located in Northumberland.

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https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2021/03/northumberland-pennsylvania.html

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"Northumberland's position astride the two branches of the Susquehanna made it a population center during the early settlement of central Pennsylvania. The first known white settler was James LeTort who lived at the forks in 1701; other French traders were on the site in 1728. The first permanent settler was Robert Martin, who moved from the Wyoming Valley sometime before the 1768 purchase that opened the West Branch for settlement. His log house served as tavern and hotel for surveyors and land speculators.

Laid out by John Lowden and William Patterson in 1772, Northumberland became the property of Reuben Haines, the Philadelphia brewer who owned vast tracts of land in this new frontier area. With neighboring Sunbury, laid out in the same year, Northumberland was the chief town in central Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War. Northumberland was abandoned and its residents scattered during the Great Runaway, but with the end of the war and the gradual return of normality on the frontier, the town was reoccupied in 1784-85." - https://www.livingplaces.com/PA/Northumberland_County/Northumberland_Borough/Northumberland_Historic_District.html