etween the first two listings, we find a seventy
per cent increase in the final figures. The tremendous increase in the
last two assessments may be due to the purchase of 1784 and the
subsequent legitimizing of claims through the establishment of
pre-emption rights.

The stability of the population is particularly noted in the
consistently high percentage of residents with some tenure in the
valley. Furthermore, the apparent contradiction of this statement by the
decline to fourteen residents in the 1786 listing who had once left and
then returned is offset when one examines the neighboring township
assessments for that same year. Here fourteen additional names of former
Fair Play settlers are to be found which would sustain the
characteristic pattern of tenure. The statistical problem is complicated
by the creation of new townships following the purchase of 1784. Pine
Creek and Lycoming were the new designations for the former Fair Play
territory, Pine Creek running from the creek of that same name west, and
Lycoming extending from Pine Creek east to Lycoming Creek.

Petitions from the area in 1778, 1781, and 1784 give a similar picture.
Almost half of the names which are found on the tax lists appear on two
or more of these appeals. These include a distress petition in June of
1778, and petitions asking recognition of pre-emption rights in 1781 and
1784.[27] The signatures on the petitions range in number from
thirty-nine to fifty-one, and at least twenty-four of these settlers
signed two or more of these documents. The very nature of these
petitions, particularly the later ones, indicates the tremendous desire
on the part of these sturdy pioneers to remain in or return to their
homes in the West Branch Valley. Here too, however, this tenacity of
purpose is not strictly confined to the Scotch-Irish.

What conclusions can be drawn from this analysis of the demographic
factors in the Fair Play settlement? Particularly evident is the
dominance of the Scotch-Irish, who numerically composed the greatest
national stock group in the population. This dominance, as we have
already noted, greatly influenced the political and social institutions
of the area. Secondly, one might consider the numbers of English
settlers, as compared with the number of Germans, surprising. As a
matter of fact, if one adds the numbers of Scots and Welsh inhabitants
to the English and Scotch-Irish, the result is an "English" percentage
of seventy-