Pennsylvania Game News - September 2017 - 7

Mountain Road, about 3 miles south of
unincorporated Kersey. A short walk back
the trail beyond the gate leads to a marsh
downstream of Kersey Run's headwaters.
If the water there ever were high
enough to reach the road, it wouldn't have
much farther to go until it was headed for
the Little Toby Creek, by way of either the
headwaters or tributary Limestone Run.
It's certainly close to the locale identiﬁed in the 1826 canal report.
And that report is a meaningful one,
given it was written and published while
the swamp still was a swamp, and through
the ﬁeldwork of individuals who physically were in the area, said Aaron McWilliams, an archivist with the Pennsylvania
Historical and Museum Commission.
"The way we look at it, that source
would be given a lot more weight,"
McWilliams said. "That's not to say it's
100 percent correct."

The Jim Jacobs story
It's human nature. When we're looking for answers and don't have a lot of

information to help form them, we might
well pick the story we like best - because
it's most descriptive, most dramatic or just
says what we want it to say - regardless
of what really is true.
The 1829-published Flag Swamp
description might fall into that category.
And so might the story of Jim Jacobs.
Those same history books that mention
Jacobs' famous elk hunt, give some clues
to who he was, but - again - there are
plenty of disagreeing statements.
Jacobs is consistently described as a
full-blooded Seneca. Some accounts state
he was born in 1790, others 1795. He's
described at times as living in Salamanca,
N.Y., and on the Cattaraugus Reservation.
Others suggest he lived near Bradford,
and on the Cornplanter Reservation, with
one account specifying he was born in a
home across the road from the cemetery
in which the Seneca chief Cornplanter
was buried. Today, that locale could be
found only by exploring the depths of the
Allegheny Reservoir.
Jacobs generally is cited as being killed
when struck by a train in 1880, perhaps

It's easy to picture an elk standing in the
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Lake - names synonymous with those historian
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SEPTEMBER 2017

Pennsylvania Game News - September 2017

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