Editing McHenry Township, Pennsylvania (section)

==History==
McHenry Township was formed from parts of [[Cummings Township, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania|Cummings]] and [[Brown Township, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania|Brown]] townships on August 21, 1861. It was named in honor of a [[Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania|Jersey Shore]] [[Surveying|surveyor]], Alexander H. McHenry.<ref name="history">{{cite book
 | last = Meginness
 | first = John Franklin
 | title = History of Lycoming County, Pennsylvania: including its aboriginal history; the colonial and revolutionary periods; early settlement and subsequent growth; organization and civil administration; the legal and medical professions; internal improvement; past and present history of Williamsport; manufacturing and lumber interests; religious, educational, and social development; geology and agriculture; military record; sketches of boroughs, townships, and villages; portraits and biographies of pioneers and representative citizens, etc. etc. 
 | year = 1892
 | url = http://www.usgennet.org/usa/pa/county/lycoming/history/lyco-history-01.html
 | access-date = 2007-04-18
 | edition = 1st
 | publisher = Brown, Runk & Co.
 | location = Chicago
 | isbn = 0-7884-0428-8
 | chapter = Brown, Cummings, Pine, and McHenry
 | chapter-url = http://www.usgennet.org/usa/pa/county/lycoming/history/Chapter-46.html
 | quote = (Note: ISBN refers to Heritage Books July 1996 reprint. URL is to a scan of the 1892 version with some [[Optical Character Recognition|OCR]] typos).
}}</ref>

The first [[warrant (finance)|warrant]] for land in what is now McHenry Township was issued to John Nixon on May 17, 1785. John English and his wife, Fanny Boatman, settled on the largest island in the area as early as 1784. They left hurriedly after a warning from a friendly Indian, Shawnee John, returning about a year later. Claudius Boatman and his son-in-law, Comfort Wanzer, married to Mary "Polly" Boatman, settled in the area in 1785. Boatman, a Frenchman by birth, formerly lived in the Buffalo Valley area of [[Union County, Pennsylvania]], near [[Winfield, Pennsylvania|Winfield]], then in [[Mahoning Township, Montour County, Pennsylvania|Mahoning Township]] in [[Montour County, Pennsylvania|Montour County]], before moving further up the [[West Branch Susquehanna River]] to [[Pine Creek (Pennsylvania)|Pine Creek]]. Boatman, at that time married to his second wife, Esther, had a rather large family.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://claudiusboatman.wordpress.com/family/|title = Claudius Boatman's Family|date = 8 June 2012}}</ref> A daughter, Rebecca, married and lived a long life despite being partially [[scalping|scalped]] when she was 15 in 1782; her mother, Boatman's first wife, was killed in the same incident.<ref name="history"/><ref name="history5">{{cite book
 | last = Ellis
 | first = Franklin
 | title = History of That Part of the Susquehanna and Juniata Valleys, Embraced in the Counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ...volume 1 
 | year = 1886
 | url = https://archive.org/details/historyofthatpar01elli
 | access-date = 2013-09-08
 | edition = 1st
 | publisher = Everetts, Peck and Richards
 | location = Philadelphia
 | page = [https://archive.org/details/historyofthatpar01elli/page/117 117]
}}</ref><ref name="history6">{{cite book
 | last = Ellis
 | first = Franklin
 | title = History of That Part of the Susquehanna and Juniata Valleys, Embraced in the Counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ...volume 2 
 | year = 1886
 | url = https://archive.org/stream/historyofthatpar02elli#page/n5/mode/2up
 | access-date = 2013-09-08
 | edition = 1st
 | publisher = Everetts, Peck and Richards
 | location = Philadelphia
 | page = 1323  
}}</ref> Esther Boatman served as a [[nurse]] and rural physician for the pioneers along Pine Creek. The descendants of Claudius Boatman remain in fairly large numbers in western Lycoming County.

The first white settlers in the vicinity of what became [[Jersey Mills, Pennsylvania|Jersey Mills]] arrived in the late 18th and very early 19th centuries. For the next 100 years, lumbering and farming were the main drivers of the local economy. The first lumber mill in the area began operations in 1809. Farm crops included cereal grasses and potatoes. The village of Jersey Mills was officially established in 1855, when its post office opened.<ref name="Kagan">{{cite book |last=Kagan |first=David Ira |title=Pine Creek Villages |publisher=Arcadia Publishing |location=Charleston, South Carolina |pages=49&ndash;58 |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-7385-5663-5}}</ref>

[[Flagstone]] quarries in the area provided income in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as lumbering income steeply declined. The village had a one-room school through 1946 and a general store and boarding house through 1965. A smaller general store, the last commercial business in Jersey Mills, operated from 1980 though 2007.<ref name="Kagan"/>

[[Lumber]]ing was the primary industry in McHenry Township during the mid-to-late 19th century. Thousands of acres of [[old-growth forest]] were cleared to meet the demands for lumber during the lumber era that swept throughout Pennsylvania. Williamsport, which is {{convert|30|mi}} southeast of McHenry Township, was known at the "Lumber Capital of the World". Logs were floated down Pine Creek and into the West Branch Susquehanna River to various [[sawmill]]s along both streams and in Williamsport.

McHenry Township is a very rural and remote section of Lycoming County. The hills and valleys are now covered with a thriving [[Secondary forest|second growth forest]]. The population as of the 2010 census was just 143.