Acquiring a Homestead

Part One – Of Land, Stone, and Opportunity

Harm Jan Huidekoper: Agent Turned Landowner

In our 2022 blog “Early Surveys of Erie County,” we described how Erie County was surveyed and developed, with much of it initially owned by the Holland Land Company.
One of Holland Land’s most influential agents was Harm Jan Huidekoper (1776-1854.) He moved from Philadelphia to Meadville, PA, in 1804 and became the company’s principal agent west of the Allegheny River.

But by the mid-1830s, the Dutch investors of the Holland Land Company grew tired of low profits, political tensions, and a new Pennsylvania tax on foreign-held land debts. They decided to liquidate their American holdings, and on December 31, 1836, Harm Jan Huidekoper personally purchased the Holland Land Company’s remaining unsold holdings in northwestern Pennsylvania, totaling 58,300 acres across Erie, Crawford, Warren, and Venango counties, for $178,000. $178,000 in 1836 is equivalent to approximately $6.5 million today. With this purchase, Huidekoper transitioned from hired agent to primary owner and direct landlord. Any land contracts executed or settled in Erie County after 1836 went directly through Huidekoper and his heirs.

In our recent 2026 blog “In Search of Stone, Lots of Stone,” we reviewed the building of the Erie Extension Canal, how the Canal required building stone for the 28 locks to descend the Portage Escarpment toward Lake Erie, and how Uncle Elijah Smith led the discovery of that stone at Howard Falls in the early 1830s. Now known as the Venango 3rd Oil Sandstone, it outcrops along the top of the Portage Escarpment, and at Howard Falls it was only a few miles east of where they needed stone to build those Canal locks.

As the Laurentide glacier flowed across what would become the Great Lakes basin, it gouged out sedimentary rock layers in its path. However, as it continued south, it began to ride up onto that sedimentary rock, and as it receded, it left the ends of those layers exposed on the Portage Escarpment. A 1998 paper by Gryta, Tshudy, and Lichtinger examined these exposed layers in Erie County, PA.

(Gryta, J. J., Tshudy, Dale, and Lichtinger, Joseph, 1995, Bedrock geology of the Edinboro North 7-½’ quadrangle, Erie County, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Geological Survey, 4th ser., Open-File Report 95–07, 11 p., 1 map, scale 1:24,000.)

The following illustrations from this paper show these exposed layers, from Elk Creek south onto the Allegheny Plateau in the vicinity of Howard Falls. Notable in the second Figure is the Venango Formation, 3rd Oil Sand shown in section along the red dashed line through Franklin Township. This sandstone makes an excellent building block. Where the formation is exposed, it can be readily quarried at the surface of the ground.

The figure below shows the locations of this Venango 3rd Oil Sandstone, labeled “Dv3rd” on the map. As shown in the figure, the sandstone is prominent near Howard Falls. Importantly, the Falls Run Gorge exposes the formation along its rim and above the Falls.

The prevalence of the Venango 3rd Oil Sandstone at Howard Falls and along Falls Run above the Falls was a significant find by Elijah Smith and Henry Howard. The sandstone, exposed at the surface, could be quarried and transported west to the section of the Canal that required those 28 locks to be built. It was exactly what they needed.

The recent picture above, taken a short distance upstream from Howard Falls, shows the stream bank across from where the Quarry was opened. This natural outcropping probably looks much the same as it did nearly 200 years ago, when Elijah Smith and Henry Howard stood in that same place and discussed what they had found.

That meant the Howard family had to quickly secure a contract or title to the land around the sandstone outcroppings so they could quarry it; however, as we will see in Part Two of this blog, that was not always a straightforward process.

Land Ownership: A Matter of Contract

Because very few pioneering families could afford to buy land outright, Mr. Huidekoper relied heavily on land contracts, often called “taking an Article.” Settlers would make a small down payment, agree to clear a specific amount of timber and build a dwelling, and pay off the rest over a 5- to 10-year term. Huidekoper was known to be highly indulgent, often allowing struggling Erie-area families 15 to 30 years to clear their debt and receive a formal deed, which was then recorded in the County Deed Book.

Because of this practice, it is difficult to know how a particular area was actually settled over time. Contracts might have been taken out, but the individual may have never moved there, abandoned the contract, or sold it to another party. And because the Contracts were not recorded in the municipality or county, those documents are not indexed, nor perhaps even readily available for review in other archives.

Fortunately, occasional sketches accompanied newly registered Deeds. Those sketches are incredibly valuable, as they often show the names of individuals who had land contracts on adjacent properties and exactly where those properties were located. Because those individuals had not yet purchased and recorded a deed for their property, these sketches offer a unique window into who held particular property contracts in a given area. Those sketches offer a rare window into the past.

Likewise, deed descriptions written by Huidekoper frequently mention the names of individuals holding contracts on adjacent properties. These mentions offer another way to learn who held contracts in the area.

These early deeds and accompanying sketches also occasionally mention roads. In an earlier blog, “The Invisible Lines of the Early Surveys through the Wilderness,” we have reviewed how roads were developed in the area over time. Still, one must be mindful that, in most instances, when acquiring contracts or deeds to land in those very early formative years, there were no roads in the sense we experience today. At best, access was a footpath or narrow wagon trail through an otherwise unbroken old-growth wilderness.

Interestingly, in some instances, roads exist today only as remnants of what they once were. Examples include Shadduck Road, which ran diagonally southwest from McKean across all of what would become Franklin Township. Today only two short disconnected segments remain. Likewise, Clair Wright Road today runs diagonally across a short portion of Franklin Township. Originally, it ran for 5 miles from east of the Howard Stone Quarry to the Erie Extension Canal and was used specifically to transport building stone to where locks were needed down the Portage Escarpment. Early deeds refer to it as the “Miller-Ryan” Road.

Tracing Ownership Through Early Deeds

Finding relevant deeds is an arduous process. Both the Holland Land Company and Mr. Huidekoper were selling land in northwestern PA at the same time, so both Grantors needed to be reviewed in the Deed indexes. Compounding the issue, Franklin Township did not exist before 1844; it was part of Elk Creek Township. So all early deeds in Elk Creek Township had to be reviewed to determine whether any of the parcels being deeded were actually in what would become Franklin Township. Fortunately, when crafting the deed descriptions, the Tract numbers of the lands being recorded were almost always mentioned, allowing us to determine the property’s location.

Those Tract numbers 47-86, within the original Reese’s District holdings of the Holland Land Company, are still used today to describe the 40 Tracts that make up all of Franklin Township.

Part Two of this blog will detail how the area (Tract 53) around Howard Falls, containing Venango 3rd Oil Sandstone, was acquired by the Smith and Howard families, gaining ownership to develop the Quarries at Howard Falls.

D.D.Howard

October 2026