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The Erie County Oyer and Terminer Collection is one of the Erie County Historical Society’s most interesting archival collections. Courts of Oyer and Terminer and General Gaol Delivery were established by the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790 at the county level to hear and determine capital crimes (murder, rape, treason, burglary, robbery, arson, and others), formerly a function of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

We have quite the library at the Hagen History Center with hundreds of volumes on a variety of historical topics available.  You must be a member of the society to access those books, however; so please check on our website to join if you are not. Not only do you have access to the library and archives but to our exhibits as well.  We are currently not open to visitors but will be soon! 

Hello, is anybody out there?  If you want to reach me you can call my landline, cell phone, email, use social media or send me a telegram.  What?  Nobody sends telegrams any more, but they did from 1847 until 2006 and we had a busy office here in Erie.

Little is known about Sarah M. Woodruff’s personal story. Her artwork, however, remains as a lasting legacy to her life and advocacy for the arts.

The town of Erie was first settled permanently by Seth Reed and his family in 1795 near the mouth of Mill Creek, which runs through the city (tunneled after the 1915 Flood) and empties into Presque Isle Bay.  In that same year, the City of Erie was officially laid out by Andrew Ellicott and William Irvine.  The marker stone pictured below was one of four that marked the first Erie community borders.

The Erie County Oyer and Terminer Collection is one of the Erie County Historical Society’s most interesting archival collections.

Ida M. Tarbell’s name would become synonymous with the term muckraker after publication of her 19-part expose of the business practices of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company that had destroyed her father’s oil business, as well as many other small oil related companies in Pennsylvania’s oil region in the 1870s.

Beginning two-hundred million years ago, at various times Pennsylvania was literally covered by an ocean! The land would rise and fall over the millennia.  When it rose, lush vegetation would cover the land only to be covered by water when it fell. Each time, sand and water would compact the vegetation forming layers of coal such as what is found south of Pittsburgh near the Scranton area and into West Virginia.

The Nicholson House, at 4838 West Ridge, Erie, was built in 1837 for Isobella Nicholson, widow of John Nicholson, one of Erie’s pioneer settlers. The Hagen History Center houses many collections containing the photos, papers, and ephemera of Erie County’s earliest settlers. These collections will once again be available to researchers after HHC’s grand reopening this summer.

Do you have a family member who worked here for the Watson or Curtze families between 1891 and 1941?

If so, we would love to hear from you. We would like to share their stories with our visitors. If you have photographs or stories, please contact Museum Educator Jeff Sherry at jsherry@eriehistory.org.