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Massacre marker.

Monument to Mythical Massacre

Field review by the editors.

Loganton, Pennsylvania

A battered marble plaque, at a former picnic area that's now a gas station, tells of an 1801 massacre "by a band of marauding Indians" of a certain "Captain Harry Green and companions" that happened nearby.

There are several problems with this narrative: 1) 1801 seems too late for Indians to be marauding within a couple hundred miles of New York City; 2) No one can find any contemporary record of Captain Green and his companions, let alone any of the massacre itself; 3) The plaque wasn't erected until 1916, and it was sponsored by Col. Henry Shoemaker, a wealthy local "folklorist" known for not letting facts get in the way of a good story.

It's like people today who want to believe that a tree is cursed or a stretch of road haunted, except that Shoemaker had the money to engrave his beliefs into a marble slab and erect a monument. Most historians don't buy it.

Monument to Mythical Massacre

Address:
Valley Rd, Loganton, PA
Directions:
I-80 exit 192. Drive east on Valley Rd. The monument is on the right, a little pylon of rocks in front of the gas pumps at the Sunoco station.
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