Replica of "The Standing Stone"
Photograph by F.W. Thorlton

Standing Stone was famous Indian landmark on the right bank of a creek of the same name, on the Kittanning Trail, at the site of the present Huntingdon, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania.

The "standing stone" is described by John Harris; (1754) as being 14 ft high and 6 in. square, and covered with Indian picto-o-graphs. It was highly prized by the Indians, and is supposed to have been erected by one of the tribes of the Iroquois perhaps the Seneca.

After the treaty of 1754 the stone was carried away by the Indians. A similar one was erected on the same spot, which soon became covered with the names and initials of the Indian traders who passed by Conrad Weiser, in his mission to the Ohio Indians at Logstown in 1748, passed near the place, which he mentions in his Journal as "the Standing Stone".

There is no evidence that this place was ever the site of an Indian settlement. Many Indian objects have been found in the vicinity of the " standing stone," which may have been a meeting place of the Indians after returning from their raids and hunts. A settlers' fort was begun at the locality in 1762, but was abandoned soon after the commencement of the Indian hostilities, when all the settlers in that region fled to Carlisle. At the beginning of the Revolution this fort was rebuilt.

In 1778 it was a meeting place for the Tories of Sinking valley, on their way to Kittanning, who, according to various letters from the frontier, " drove away the inhabitants of Standing Stone town". The only "Indian massacre" near Standing Stone was on June 19, 1777, at the Big Spring, some miles west of the fort, when a band of hostile Indians killed a boy named Donnelly. The inhabitants during this period were in a constant state of alarm, and frequently fled to the various posts for protection from the Indians.

Reverand Dr. William Smith, provost of the University of Pennsylvania, laid out a town on the site of Standing Stone in 1767, to which he gave the name of Huntingdon, in honor of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (England), who had made a gift to the university. The old name, however, clung to the place for years afterward.

Nearly all the traders and military officers of the 18th century use the old name. It is marked "Standing Stone" on Lewis Evans' maps of 1755 and 1770; "Standing Stone, Huntington," on the Pownall map of 1776.

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