Somerset Historical Center

The rugged Allegheny Mountains, though scarcely noticed by today's high speed travelers, presented a formidable barrier to our eighteenth century ancestors. While eastern settlements grew rapidly and advanced in industry and commerce, this land beyond the mountain barrier remained isolated, traversed only by the Native American, the trapper, and fur trader. Forbes Road and Braddock's Trial, built to carry armies during the French and Indian War (1754-1763), opened this frontier to the first tentative settlement.

Tour Settlement of the area had begun in the 1760's, but because the roads were poor, the inhabitants remained isolated during the remainder of the century. Many of the necessities of life continued to be made at home, the work being done primarily with muscle power and hand tools. Maple sugar products, whiskey, ginseng, and furs were common commodities of the rural homestead. Excess quantities were bartered for goods that could not be made at home. The early settlers' soil-exploitive agricultural practices were crude and produced little surplus for market. What surplus there may have been was traded in Pittsburgh and Cumberland, Maryland, floated down the river to New Orleans, or transported by packhorse to the East. Advancements in the science of farming during the nineteenth century, along with the eventual development of land-grant colleges in the 1890's, improved the farmers' lot. The crop yield per acre increased dramatically when improved methods of crop rotation and the application of fertilizer and lime became common practices. The effects of the Industrial Revolution were felt on the rural farmsteads of the region in the 1870's. The growing industrial complex produced a variety of tools, implements, and machines which made farming more efficient and profitable. Steam powered and mechanized farm equipment made the work of the farmers easier and allowed them to increase the number of tillable acres.

 As production improved, so did the roads and railroads which supplied efficient and inexpensive means for farmers to transport goods to and from city markets. Later, the introduction of motor vehicles, the telephone and radio, rural free delivery mail and parcel post, free public schools, and other services and inventions brought some of the advantages of urban living to the countryside. Industrialization created a new class of consumers who no longer toiled on the farm, but worked in the factories and provided a growing market for the farmers' produce. In turn, handmade articles in the rural home were gradually replaced by factory goods. In less than two hundred years, farm life advanced from handwork to machine power, from rural isolation to nationwide communication, and from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture. This story of change and its effect on the everyday lives of people is dramatically presented at the Somerset Historical Center through many objects that represent the life and culture of rural southwestern Pennsylvania, the land beyond the mountain barrier.