250PA kickoff event celebrates state, local history

1-28-26

By Lauren Royce, Editor
MONTROSE — Local and state officials gathered with Susquehanna County residents on Jan. 20 at the courthouse in Montrose to celebrate the 250PA kickoff event, part of the nationwide celebration of America’s semiquincentennial. The Brooklyn Historical Society helped sponsor the day’s event.
Senator Jonathan Fritz, State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, Drew Popish from the office of Governor Josh Shapiro, as well as a representative from Rep. Dan Meuser’s office were in attendance. Roseann Swegel of the Susquehanna county heritage trail committee led the pledge of allegiance with everyone upstairs, sunlight brightening the elegant features of the courtroom.
“We are officially kicking off the epic statewide calendar for this momentous year,” said speaker Cassandra Coleman, executive director of the America250 PA. “Susquehanna County has long served as a vital corridor for transportation, industry and natural resources in northeastern Pennsylvania.”
Places such as The Erie Railway yards at Susquehanna, the Starrucca House, and the county’s bluestone quarry speak to this effect, as residents know.

“Together, these developments illustrate Susquehanna county’s lasting impact on the industrial, transportation and natural resource heritage of Pennsylvania,” Coleman said. Susquehanna County participated in multiple partnerships with local businesses and schools through 250PA throughout 2025.
These included a Keystone Classroom initiative visit to Susquehanna Community Elementary school, planting a liberty tree at the historic soldiers orphans’ school in Kingsley, the installation of the “red white and blueberry,” bell at the historical society and a $5,000 grant awarded to the county tourism agency in support of the heritage trail. Also, the permanent installation of a bronze bell at the historic Dennis farm settled by free Black Americans after the Revolutionary War.

Dale Webster is the seventh generation farmer of his land, another piece of county history which has been in the family for over 200 years. He and his wife Lori Webster, of Franklin Township on Franklin Hill, attended the kickoff event as proud Susquehanna County residents reflecting on the nation’s history. Lori is a member of the Susquehanna County Historical Society.
“There’s a number of revolutionary war soldiers who settled in this county,” Lori Webster said, and with Susquehanna County settled afterwards they got their pensions here to buy land for their children and grandchildren.
Dave Palmer, who heads the New Milford Rotary Club, and a member of Brooklyn Historical Society, said he had been looking forward to the Semiquincentennial since the Bicentennial. He had been in service deployed away from home at the time.
“I was in the Air Force, and I wasn’t here to see the big ships and the fireworks,” Palmer said. “That night when I was sitting in a restaurant in, of all places, Greece, a bunch of British tourists came up to us singing Happy Birthday to us. And I always remembered that— and I decided I was going to be here for the semiquincentennial.”
“As part of today’s kickoff, I encourage everyone to visit the Susquehanna County history society located across the green where the official America250 bell is on display,” said Commissioner Alan Hall. “This bell serves as a powerful symbol, calling all of us to all remember our past, reflect on our shared history, and look ahead to the shared future we are building together.”
“Today is part of something much bigger than just one event,” he said. “America250 PA is Pennsylvania’s official commission for the United States semiquincentennial, created to help plan, encourage and coordinate programming and projects for the 250th anniversary. And to highlight Pennsylvania’s role and impact on its people in the nation’s past, present and future.”
Judge Jason Legg recalled Montrose’s own historical past in his retelling of Jonathan Jasper Wright’s life as the first Black lawyer in Pennsylvania.
“I tried to think of what in this county perhaps epitomizes the best this idea of what America is founded on, the idea that all men are created equal,” Legg said. “It was a profound thought in the 1700s.”
Wright’s portrait hangs just outside the courtroom today.
Wright was born in 1840 in Luzerne County, and moved to Springville in Susquehanna County with his parents and five siblings in 1854. The local Presbyterian Church took Wright in as a student, and in 1858 went to Lancasterian University in Ithaca New York earning his degree in two years to become a teacher.
“By 1862, he began reading the law, and that meant he was studying under local attorneys,” Legg said, “that would be Bentley, Fitch and Beckham, whose law practice would have been just across the way here near Chenango Street, right next to the courthouse.”
It was a long process to get Wright admitted for the Bar exam, which was never formally submitted. His legal education continued, taking him to Wilkes-Barre, and even to South Carolina where he continued teaching. Wright was trained as a lawyer, but had not been admitted to any Bar exam.
In 1866, a new judge in Montrose was seated, and Wright returned home to finally be admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar Association. He was the first African American to do so. This was met with some criticism by newspapers at the time, Legg said, but that didn’t stop Wright.
Fritz also spoke on Susquehanna’s significance in American history, highlighting the many lives given by soldiers for America’s freedom.
“If I take the totality of individuals that have laid down their life for this country from the revolutionary war to present day,” Fritz asked, “if I took those people and placed them in a cemetery, do you know how many square miles that would be?”
The answer: 840 square miles, the same size as the size of Susquehanna County. Fritz went on to say that America was a product of divine intervention, and its 250 years of existence are an example of resolve.
“Not one that is random, or by happenstance,” he said. “Happy birthday to the United States of America, 250 years, it’s beautiful. Let your pride in this nation be forever unshaken.”