Researcher’s Locality Guide

Your quick primer to Jefferson County places, timelines, and where records likely live.

What’s inside

  • County formation (1804) & judicial attachments (Westmoreland → Indiana)
  • Township/borough overview
  • Ghost towns & renamed places
  • Repository cheat-sheet & finding aids

Fast place search

Use the search at the top of this page. It recognizes variants via our places.js dataset (hamlets, post offices, and nicknames).

If search isn’t available, browse the township and borough lists above.

Townships

Click a township to view churches, cemeteries, maps, and record tips. (Links point to your township pages/anchors.)

Township Snapshot

Township Earliest PO Peak Postal Years # of Localities Primary Industry (19th c.)

Boroughs

Historic Hamlets

Coal patches, vanished mills, or renamed communities that appear in older records.

Ghost Towns

How to track a lost place

  1. Search above with variant spellings (Beechtree vs. Beech Tree).
  2. Open Caldwell's 1878 atlas for township context.
  3. Check cemetery indexes & church lists within the township.

Boundary Notes

Jefferson County was created 26 March 1804 from Lycoming County. For court business it was attached to Westmoreland (1804-1806) and then Indiana County (1806-1830) until fully organized. When a record is missing, check those attachments and adjacent counties.

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