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Pennsylvania Counties

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Pennsylvania Counties

There are sixty-seven counties of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States of America. The city of Philadelphia is coterminous with Philadelphia County, and governmental functions have been consolidated since 1854.

Crawford County, Pennsylvania

Crawford County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Meadville
Year Organized: 1800
Square Miles: 1,013

Court House:

903 Diamond Square
County Courthouse
Meadville, PA 16335-2643

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for William Crawford (1732 – 11 June 1782), an American soldier and surveyor who worked as a western land agent for George Washington. Crawford fought in the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War. He was tortured and burnt at the stake by American Indians in a notorious incident near the end of the American Revolution.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Created on March 12, 1800, from part of Allegheny County, and named for Colonel William Crawford, a frontier hero. Meadville, the county seat, was named for its founder, David Mead, and incorporated as a borough on March 29, 1823. On February 15, 1866 it was incorporated as a city.

First settlement occurred in 1788. Three big land companies (the Holland, North American, and Population) sold land to Irish and Scotch-Irish immigrants. Roger Alden from the Holland Company stayed on to found a bank and stimulate road building. Timothy Alden led early Allegheny College, founded 1815, part of the New England influence in the area. Corn and rye grew well from the start, leading to advanced livestock production. The Erie Extension Canal, opened 1844, boosted the economy. Lumber and wood products flourished in the nineteenth century. Following Drake's discovery of oil in Venango County (1859) Crawford had an oil boom centered around Titusville. Later a tool and die industry arose. Talon Zipper Company came into existence about 1900, Channellock was famous for hand tools, and Spirella Corset developed a superior product. Today, thirty-seven percent of the land is farmed. There were Underground Railroad stations in Meadville and Randolph. Author Ida Tarbell, abolitionist John Brown, and Supreme Court Justice Henry Baldwin once lived in Crawford.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 1,038 square miles (2,688 km²), of which, 1,013 square miles (2,623 km²) of it is land and 25 square miles (65 km²) of it (2.41%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Erie County (north)
Warren County (east)
Venango County (southeast)
Mercer County (south)
Trumbull County, Ohio (southwest)
Ashtabula County, Ohio (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Blooming Valley	borough	Incorporated Area
- Cambridge	township
- Cambridge Springs	borough	Incorporated Area
- Centerville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Cochranton	borough	Incorporated Area
- Conneaut	township
- Conneaut Lake	borough	Incorporated Area
- Conneautville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Cussewago	township
- East Fairfield	township
- East Fallowfield	township
- East Mead	township
- Greenwood	township
- Hayfield	township
- Hydetown	borough	Incorporated Area
- Linesville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Meadville (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- North Shenango	township
- Pine	township
- Randolph	township
- Richmond	township
- Rockdale	township
- Sadsbury	township
- Saegertown	borough	Incorporated Area
- South Shenango	township
- Sparta	township
- Spartansburg	borough	Incorporated Area
- Spring	township
- Springboro	borough	Incorporated Area
- Steuben	township
- Titusville	city	Incorporated Area
- Townville	borough	Incorporated Area
- Union	township
- Venango	borough	Incorporated Area
- Vernon	township
- West Fallowfield	township
- West Mead	township
- West Shenango	township
- Woodcock	borough	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."