Last Updated on February 1, 2021
Take time to orient yourself. We are in Franklin Township, settled between 1820 and 1850. When you face west, towards the woods, then the lengthy Fry Road (once called Townline Road) is to your back and running north/south. Charles Billings, Archie’s father, moved here from Washington Township at age 22, to establish a farm and home for his future family. He bought 100 acres for $2 per acre.
Imagine the work it took for this young man, armed just with an axe and saw, to clear land by cutting huge beech, hemlock and maple trees, then removing the stumps and rocks. To the south, you can see one field he cleared plus a current maple woods, known as a “sugarbush.”
Where settlers cleared land for farming, sawmills were built nearby to process the wood for making houses and barns, though the first shelters were snug and small log cabins. Today, near the Fry Road bridge north of the creek, there is a tell-tale mound of a former sawmill. Also, we can faintly see the “run” where water flowed around the uphill side of the mound to power the mill. At first, there was a barn at the site where we see a brick house standing.
As other farms developed, shortly after the Civil War in the 1860’s, a school was needed. The first Townline School was on Fellows land a mile north of here, and the second early school remains, as a home.
By 1922, the farmers in this locale each paid $100 to have an electric line run up the south end of Fry Road from Edinboro, the nearest town.
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