Chosen for the beauty and utility of the graceful French Creek, the area now known as Saegertown was first settled by brothers Arthur and Patrick McGill in 1792. Nine years later, Holland Land Company agent Rodger Alden bought land from the McGills and built a mill along the creek, starting a community that thrives to this day. Around Saegertown chronicles how Saegertown and its neighboring
villages and rural areas transformed from a small agricultural community into an area full of industry and tourism attracting the wealthy and influential to its elegant inns and healing mineral...

Following the drilling of the world's first oil well in 1859 just south of town, the small village of Titusville exploded into a bustling city. Through the early 1870s, newly prosperous citizens built stores, banks, hotels, and churches, as well as hundreds of residences. Into the 20th century, residents remodeled or built anew, leaving Titusville with a crop of Victorian buildings, many of which still stand today. The nearby cities of Petroleum Center and Pithole developed at significant oil production sites. As production moved elsewhere in the 1870s, both cities were abandoned and soon...