Quick facts on Bellefonte
Courtesy of Leadership Centre County Class of 2006 (provided by Susan Hoover)
- Bellefonte's Big Spring was first seen by white men on July 1769
- Émigrés to Centre County in 1802-1823 were almost entirely from Ireland with only four from other countries: one each from Novia Scotia, Germany, Poland and Scotland
- Centre County's quota for soldiers during the Civil War was 1593. 374 of that total were from Bellefonte and the County as a whole exceeded its quota by 352
- President Lincoln's great aunt by marriage, Mrs. Lucy Potter, lived in Bellefonte on North Allegheny Street, now the residence of the Centre County Library & Historical Museum
- Bellefonte was the second town or city in the United States to have the streets lighted with electricity. The first was New York City.
- Penn State's #1 football status isn't anything new: the Bellefonte Academy played Texas and Oklahoma schools in the 1926 football season to claim the National Prep School Championship
- In 1815, a Bellefonte doctor told his patients if they spoke German they should bring an interpreter
- Delaware Indian tribe Chief Bald Eagle was murdered in 1773 and at one time lived in Milesburg, in a spot called Bald Eagle's Nest
- Centre County's earliest Post Offices: Aaronsburg (1797), Bellefonte (1798), Centre Furnace (1799), Milesburg (1799), Pine Grove Mills (1809), Potters Mills (1811), Stormstown (1811), Millheim (1824), Rebersburg (1828) and Spring Mills (1828)
- Bellefonte's African American population in the 1860s was 11% - only Philadelphia or Pittsburgh had higher percentages
- In 1896, the votes for naming State College were as follows: State College, 28; University Heights, 24; State Centre, 1; University Place, 0; Barrensville, 0; and Irvinville, 0
- Dr. Evan Pugh, former president of Penn State, said State College was equally inaccessible from all points
- Aaronsburg was laid out as the first planned town in Centre County in 1789
- Examples of Americanized last names in Centre County/Bellefonte: Stober to Stover; Albrecht to Albright; Yatntzanbach to Johnsonbaugh; Schmidt to Smith; Deckard to Decker; Hauser to House
- Philipsburg Episcopal Church was the nation's first church with electricity in the early 1800s