Reverend Ammon Stapleton was both a pastor and historian who contributed regularly to Egle’s Publication Notes and Queries Historical, Biographical Genealogical Relating Chiefly to Interior Pennsylvania. He died shortly after preaching a sermon at his church, Saint Paul’s Evangelical Church in Williamsport in September of 1899.

In this 1899 article, Stapleton discusses several ancient burial mounds in northern Pennsylvania.

Prehistoric Earthworks in Central Pennsylvania

The general impression prevails that the Aborigines of North America have left but few memorials of their occupancy east of the Mississippi Valley. The works of the mound builders were formerly supposed not to extend farther East than Wheeling on the Ohio River, but unmistakable traces discovered in recent years, extends their settlements into West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

When the whites arrived in Pennsylvania, they found a number of memorials which it is difficult to ascribe to the Delawares and other tribes then occupying the country. Among such works was an immense burial mound on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. This mound, which was situated at Hall's Station, three miles above Muncy, was over fifteen feet high when the first settlers arrived about 1768. When Conrad Weiser visited it in 1737, he describes it as having the appearance of having been deserted beyond the memory of man. Some claim a recent origin for this mound from the fact that some steel tomahawks and other articles made by Europeans have been discovered among the remains; but this proves nothing, except that interments were made in it after the white man’s arrival in America, while its origin may have been centuries before.

The earthwork at Bryner’s Bridge, near Academia, in Juniata County, was a still far more extensive affair. Besides the tumulus (ancient burial ground) filled with human bones, there was an enclosure of about three acres on an elevated plateau. It was semi-circular in form, and the banks were still three feet high within the memory of old residents. There were paved fireplaces and a step-way cut down the rocky embankment to Doyl’s Run, which here enters the Tuscarora Creek. It is hardly probable that this was the work of the Tuscarora Indians, who came here from North Carolina to join the Iroquois Confederacy, long after Penn’s arrival.

Another earthwork, and which has never before been described—at least to my knowledge—is situated near Potter's Bank, in Centre County. My first acquaintance with this memorial was in 1872 when I traveled through this region as an “itinerant” preacher. At that time, it was a large circle, forty-six paces in diameter. The public road ran through it, one side being in a cultivated field and the ridge barely visible. The other side, however, was a virgin forest, and great trees, pine, hemlock, and oak, growing in the circle and on the embankment, which was about two feet high. The late John Blair Linn, Esq., informed me that he also visited the place to gather information concerning it, but no one could give a clue as to its origin. In company with William Lucas, Esq., who lives nearby, I lately visited the place again in order to more fully describe it. The entire circle is now under cultivation, and its outlines can scarcely be made out. Its situation was on a well-rounded hill and commanded a beautiful view of Upper Penn’s Valley. At the foot of the hill is Sinking Greek, and also a splendid spring, which supplied the dusky denizens with water. Flint chips and arrowheads are found on the hill in abundance. Michael Strohm, merchant and postmaster at Centre Hill nearby this place, informed me that when he came here in 1835 as a boy from Lebanon County, the “Indian Fort,'’ as they called it, was considered a great curiosity. The entire hill was then thickly wooded. When he came there, some of the first settlers were still living, who told him it had the same appearance as when they came, which was prior to the Revolution. I believe the place to have been of great importance to the Aborigines. It was situated on the great Indian path or trail which led from the Tuscarora Valley—thence across the Juniata River westward through Big Valley, past Logan’s Spring—over the Seven Mountains, thence it debouched (flowed over) into Penn’s Valley, at the end of Tussey Mountain, near the circle under consideration, thence northward through the Allegheny Mountain, where it reached the West Branch of the Susquehanna near Karthaus. Considerable portions of this path are still traceable. - Ammon Stapleton Carlisle, Pa.