in the development
of American civilization. What the American pioneers encountered,
particularly in the interior settlements, was, basically, a frontier
experience. An ethnographic analysis of one part of the Provincial
frontier of Pennsylvania indicates the significance of that colonial
influence. The "primitive agricultural democracy" of this frontier
illustrates the "style of life" which provided the basis for a
distinctly "American" culture which emerged from the colonial
experience.[1]

While this writer's approach is dominantly Turnerian, this study does
not necessarily contend that this Pennsylvania frontier was typical of
the general colonial experience, nor that this ethnographic analysis
presents in microcosm the development of the American ethos. However, on
this farmer's frontier there was adequate evidence of the composite
nationality, the self-reliance, the independence, and the nationalistic
and rationalistic traits which Turner characterized as American.

In his famed essay on "The Significance of the Frontier," Turner saw the
frontier as the crucible in which the English, Scotch-Irish, and
Palatine Germans were merged into a new and distinctly American
nationality, no longer characteristically English.[2] The Pennsylvania
frontier, with its dominant Scotch-Irish and German influence, is a case
in point.

The Fair Play territory of the West Branch Valley of the Susquehanna
River, the setting for this analysis, was part of what Turner called the
second frontier, the Allegheny Mountains.[3] Located about ninety miles
up the Susquehanna from the present State capital at Harrisburg, and
extending some twenty-five-odd miles westward between the present cities
of Williamsport and Lock Haven, this territory was the heartland of the
central Pennsylvania frontier in the decade preceding the American
Revolution.

The term "Fair Play settlers," used to designate the inhabitants of this
region, is derived from the extra-legal political system which these
democratic forerunners set up to maintain order in their developing
community. Being squatters and, consequently, without the bounds of any
established political agency, they formed their own government, and
labeled it "Fair Play."

However, despite the apparent simplicity of the above geographic
description, the exact boundaries of the Fair Play territory have been
debated for almost two centuries. Before we can assess the democratic
traits of the Fair Play