not circulated until 1802, when the _Lycoming Gazette_ was
first published in Williamsport.[11] On the eve of the Revolution there
were only seven newspapers available in the entire Province, none of
which circulated as far north as the Fair Play territory.[12] As a
matter of fact, there were only thirty-seven papers printed in all
thirteen colonies at the beginning of the Revolution.[13]

The Fair Play settler was an "outlaw," a squatter who came into this
central Pennsylvania wilderness with his family and without the benefit
of a land grant, and who literally hacked and carved out a living. The
natural elements, the savage natives, and the wild life all resisted
him; but he conquered them all, and the conquest gave him a feeling of
accomplishment which enhanced his independent spirit.

If the story of the Great Plains frontier can be told in terms of
railroads, barbed-wire fences, windmills, and six-shooters,[14] then the
cruder tale of the West Branch frontier can be told in terms of the
rifle, the axe, and the plow. The rifle, first and foremost as the
weapon of security, was the basic means of self-preservation in a wild
land where survival was a constant question.[15] The axe, which Theodore
Roosevelt later described as "a servant hardly standing second even to
the rifle,"[16] was the main implement of destruction and construction.
It was used for clearing the forest of the many trees which encroached
upon the acreage which the settler had staked out for himself, and for
cutting the logs which would provide the rude, one-room shelter the
pioneer constructed for himself and his family. The crude wooden plow
was the implement which made this frontiersman a farmer, although its
effectiveness was extremely limited. However, the soil was so fertile,
and the weeds so sparse, that scratching the earth and scattering seeds
produced a crop.[17]

A contemporary description of squatter settlements in Muncy Hills, some
twenty-odd miles east of the Fair Play territory, but in the West Branch
Valley, gives a vivid picture of the nature of these early
establishments:

They came from no Body enquires where, or how, but generally with
Families, fix on any Spot in the Wood that pleases them. Cut down
some trees & make up a Log Hut in a Day, clear away the underweed &
girdle.... The Trees they have no use for if cut down after their
Hut is made. They dig up & harrow the Ground, plant Potatoes, a Crop
wh