Population Stability and Mobility Based Upon a Comparison of Tax Lists For the Period From 1778 to 1787.[26]
1778-80 1781 1783-84 1786 1787 ========================================================== Number of residents assessed 27 29 34 40 68 Number appearing on previous assessments 6 19 21 14 33 ----------------------------------------------------------
Except for the 1783-84 figures, all of the tax data are for State taxes. The exception is the listing for the federal supply tax in 1783-84. The steady growth rate of the area is easily recognizable both in raw figures and in percentages. Beginning with an increase of a little more than seven per cent between the first two listings, we find a seventy per cent increase in the final figures. The tremendous increase in the last two assessments may be due to the purchase of 1784 and the subsequent legitimizing of claims through the establishment of pre-emption rights.
The stability of the population is particularly noted in the consistently high percentage of residents with some tenure in the valley. Furthermore, the apparent contradiction of this statement by the decline to fourteen residents in the 1786 listing who had once left and then returned is offset when one examines the neighboring township assessments for that same year. Here fourteen additional names of former Fair Play settlers are to be found which would sustain the characteristic pattern of tenure. The statistical problem is complicated by the creation of new townships following the purchase of 1784. Pine Creek and Lycoming were the new designations for the former Fair Play territory, Pine Creek running from the creek of that same name west, and Lycoming extending from Pine Creek east to Lycoming Creek.
Petitions from the area in 1778, 1781, and 1784 give a similar picture. Almost half of the names which are found on the tax lists appear on two or more of these appeals. These include a distress petition in June of 1778, and petitions asking recognition of pre-emption rights in 1781 and 1784.[27] The signatures on the petitions range in number from thirty-nine to fifty-one, and at least twenty-four of these settlers signed two or more of these documents. The very nature of these petitions, particularly the later ones, indicates the tremendous desire on the part of these sturdy pioneers to remain in or return to their homes in the West Branch Valley. Here too, however, this tenacity of purpose is not strictly confined to the Scotch-Irish.