Excerpt from Burtner House--A Landmark to Remember

In the quiet valley of the Little Bull Creek, beyond the noisy traffic of Route 28 east from Tarentum, in Harrison Township of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, stands the Burtner Stone House. Its massive walls measure thirty inches thick at the base, perfectly plumb on the outer surface but tapered on the inside to a height of three stories until they reach a thickness of one and one-half feet at the eaves. The open fields surrounding the house lie fallow where once grew corn and flax. The mill which ground the flour has disappeared from the bank across the creek and the busy hands that wove the linsey-woolsey now rest in the cemetery on the hill. Behind the house, and past the site of the firm tool shed and smithy, rises Pine Hill, where game was always plentiful to the pioneers. The hill still boasts an overgrowth of small trees and shrubs, but many of the pines have been felled for the making of pitch. Below the hill Pitch Hollow extends to the Indian cave and the artesian spring at its upper limits. Here, before 1800, flourished a Cornplanter Indian settlement, but, upon the arrival of the pioneers, the settlement was moved to a spot along the Buffalo Creek. Downstream from the hollow, where the Little Bull makes a wide bend and changes the direction of its course, were the marshlands with their cat-tails and lilies to furnish food for the Indians. When the mill-dam was built this area became flooded.

On the side of the hill above the dam and across the Burtner Road from the cemetery, is the remains of the spring upon which the settlers were dependent for their water supply. The water for it was channeled through bored-out trees into a wooden trough below the breast of the dam.

A grove of butternut trees stood on the creek bank, and, to the left of the house, the huge log barn was built about 1815. It burned in 1930, nine years after the centennial celebration at the Stone House that had attracted crowds from all areas of Western Pennsylvania.