U NCOVERING THE H ISTORIC
CREEK IS AN EXAMPLE OF COLLABORATION, PERSISTENCE IN TACKLING ABANDONED MINE DRAINAGE ISSUES
BOSLEY CABIN
by Linda Sones
Some of you may have heard about the old cabin found within the walls of a derelict bar in Washingtonville during the winter of 2020 by a crew from Fares Farhat Construction Company employed to level the rotting building. Years of modifications covered the cabin and it was lost from sight. Once found, the search for its original owners was underway, as was a new home for the cabin. So, who did own this cabin originally? To answer this, we must jump back in time and look at the history of the region and Washingtonville. In 1768, approximately one-third of Pennsylvania, including the region that contains Montour County,
became open to settlement. About 4,000 applications were received by Pennsylvania Land Office Secretary James Tilghman to settle this new area. Of all those applications, James Tilghman’s application for land in what is today the Washingtonville area was the largest award made by the colony. Tilghman was originally from Maryland and never lived in this region. Instead, he leased parcels to those individuals wanting to settle in this wild territory. One of the people was John Bosley. John Bosley was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 6, 1734. He married twice; he married Hannah Bull on October 18, 1759, and later, Susannah Price on July 27, 1785, both in the Baltimore region. The date
that the Bosley family migrated to this region is not known exactly, but it is thought to be about 1773. John, his wife Hannah, and five children became the leaseholders of the parcel that would include present- day Washingtonville. Upon it, John built a grist mill and a sawmill. In July of 1778, the Bosleys and the rest of the settlers of this region evacuated the area as a result of the Wyoming Massacre, an encounter during the American Revolutionary War between American Patriots and Loyalists accompanied by Iroquois raiders. The clash took place in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania on July 3, 1778, in Exeter and Wyoming, Pennsylvania. More than 300 Patriots were killed in this battle.
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