Early view of Jail.
Beaver, the county seat of Beaver County, was described by Daniel Agnew as "emphatically a child of the State," in as much as its location was determined by an act of September 28, 1791. This act authorized Pennsylvania Governor Thomas Mifflin to direct the Surveyor-General to survey 200 acres in land lots near the mouth of the Beaver Creek "on or near the ground where the old French town stood." Daniel Leet made the survey in November, 1792, and it was confirmed by an act of assembly passed March 6, 1793. The sale of the town lots was held in Washington, Pennsylvania, from July 2 until August 12, 1793. Beaver, or "Beavertown" as it was often called in the early days, became the county seat in 1800 upon the formation of Beaver County and was established as a borough by an act of March 27, 1802.
But before any such acts were passed or surveys made, the area now known as the Borough of Beaver had been the scene of important events. It was the site of the Indian village of "Sawkunk," and as such, had been visited by both French and English emissaries in their attempts to gain the Indians as allies. In 1764, Colonel Henry Bouquet marched an English force through the area on his way to Muskingum in Ohio to recover white captives borne there by the Indians. In 1778, General Lachlan Mclntosh built the fort bearing his name on the bluffs overlooking the Ohio River. An important treaty was negotiated there in 1785, and the site of the fort (on present River Road) is now being excavated.
Click here to view pictures of the fort
Click here to view uniforms and cannons
Education took root early in the borough. The Beaver Academy, authorized by an act of the legislature in 1813, opened its doors in 1815. In 1853, the Beaver Female Seminary was established, and the first public school was built in 1838.
The first county court was held in Beaver on February 6, 1804 in Abner Lacock's tavern. Before 1810, a building on Quay Square housed both courtrooms and jail. In 1810, a new building on Gibson Square slightly east of the present Courthouse was built. The Courthouse built to replace this building was dedicated in 1877 but was destroyed by fire in 1932. It was replaced by the present structure, except for the addition completed in 1975. Churches were also a part of Beaver's early nineteenth century landscape. In 1825, the First Presbyterian Church of Beaver was erected in Irvin Square, followed by the First Methodist Episcopal Church completed in 1830. A Catholic Church was built in 1835, and other churches followed.
Click here to view Courthouses
Descriptions of Beaver in early travel accounts provide an interesting view of the development of the county seat. In 1807, a traveler described Beaver as standing "on a stony plain on the top of a high cliff which conceals it from the river, and contains about thirty indifferent houses much scattered on three parallel streets. There is a stone gaol (Jail) not quite finished, which was the only publick building we noticed." He stated that "no vestige" of Fort NIclntosh remained "except the hearth of the officers' fire place."
In 1843, Sherman Day's Pennsylvania Guidebook described Beaver, "the seat of justice" as "a quiet, orderly, old fashioned country town, with its respectable society, and the usual number of stores and taverns . . . A dangerous gravel shoal, formed by the confluence of the Beaver with the Ohio, lies directly abreast of the town, which accounts for the fact of there being no business street along the river. The courthouse, jail, and three churches, all substantial buildings, stand around an open square, through which runs the main street. Population in 1840, 551." J. A. Vera remembered the town in 1861 as "Beaver, the Saints Rest, disturbed only by the inrush of the ungodly to Court, convention and county fair. "
Newspapers, banking, and the practice of law flourished in Beaver; manufacturing, as such, did not. A number of famous names have been associated with Beaver including Daniel Agnew (1808-1902), a chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and Matthew S. Quay (1833-1904), a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania. Today, Beaver remains the "seat of justice," a largely residential community with the business district along Third Street. Thanks to the wisdom of its founders, it still retains eight spacious, landscaped parks, the original "squares" of 1791.