Other sources, including the county marker, state that it was actually named for his mother, a French and Oneida woman known as Madame or Mrs. Montour; her first name may have been Elizabeth, or possibly Isabelle, but this is unconfirmed. (She was a member of the same family which produced a wom- an known as Queen Esther, who will be the subject of a future blog post.) Like her son, she spoke mul- tiple languages and provided interpreter services to many of the European transplants. She was born in a village known as Otstonwakin, which was located near what is today the community of Montoursville. It’s known for sure that Montoursville was named for Madame, but whether the county was named for her or her son is unclear. It’s an interesting puzzle that will likely never be solved. The seat of Montour County is Danville, which I’ve visited for a few past blog posts. It was first laid out in 1792, at which time Montour County didn’t exist; it was then part of Columbia County. Danville was in- corporated as a borough in 1849, and the following year, Montour was established as a separate county with Danville as its seat. The county lines were re- arranged a little bit in 1853, giving some townships back to Columbia while changing the borders of a few others, but it has been as it is ever since then. Danville is probably most famous for the Montour Iron Works, which in 1845 produced its first “T rails” for railroad tracks. They were definitely the first ones manufactured in Pennsylvania and very likely the first in the United States, although there is a tiny dis- pute about that; you can read more about it in one of my past blog posts on the subject. During the colonial era, what is now Montour Coun- ty was - like most of its neighbors - home to a garri- soned fort to protect settlers from wild animals and hostile attacks. Like many of those other forts, it has a historical marker of its own, so I’ll be telling you more about it in the future. Fort Bosley was named for John Bosley, who constructed a grist mill near what today is Washingtonville. It was fortified after the Battle of Brandywine, where General Washing- ton’s defeat led to the construction of many such forts to defend residents from the British. It was the only fortified location in all of Montour County during the Revolutionary War. Montour County has contributed plenty of soldiers to the various wars since well before its establish- ment as a separate county. The earliest known re- cord of a company is of the Danville Militia, which served in the War of 1812. It had roughly one hun- dred men, but the names of only two have sur- vived - Captain Samuel Yorks, who commanded the outfit, and one of his subordinate officers, Thomas Bell. Slightly better records survive of the members of the Danville Blues, a rifle company from around the same time who were commanded by a Captain Isaac Blue; they unfortunately lost a number of their men to an epidemic of what was known as Black Rock Fever. When the Civil War broke out, a unit of one hundred men under the command of Captain William McClure called themselves “the First in War”
TOP: A portrayal of Madame Montour and her son Andrew in a painting by John Buxton. BOTTOM: Danville’s Soldiers & Sailors Civil War Memorial, located at the intersection of Bloom Street and Church Street.
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