Townville Borough Hall is located at 33559 East Freemont Street, Townville PA 16360.
Phone: 814‑967‑4253.
Beginnings [1]
For the first thirty years after the place was settled Townville grew only from the original settler's home to a hamlet of perhaps fifteen homes; but soon after 1850, and more rapidly after the striking of oil at Titusville in 1859, the place came to be a village of about three hundred inhabitants. It was necessary to have sidewalks, and by becoming a borough the territory of the borough would then be a separate school district, and more than was done generally in Steuben Township might be done to provide school facilities. And, of course, the people wished to be an organization by themselves, for then they would go on growing and extending the regulation of their affairs as might be necessary.
So the majority of the landowners of the town made application to the Court of Quarter Sessions of the county, setting forth that the majority of the freeholders wanted the place incorporated and giving the boundaries, a little beyond Kingsley's Corners on the north, to the creek on the east, nearly to the Sellew place on the south, and about as far west of the main street on the west as the creek is on the east, with a map of the territory. The court examined the facts and found them as stated to the court, giving the people who opposed the step an opportunity to be heard as well as those who favored it, and finally decreed that the place be a borough and have all the rights of a borough. These proceedings are recorded in the office of the Recorder of Deeds. Thus the place became a borough in 1867, and is now fifty-seven years old. The first election, held Oct. 8, that year, chose the following officers: William R. King, burgess; Horace C. Rounds Thomas J. Shonts; Salmon Phillips, Byron Smith, and John Black Hawthorne, councilmen; Abraham F. Titus, constable; and H. C. Birchard, clerk.