Montour County: Rails, Types, and Madame Montour

Montour County was formed in eighteen fifty from Columbia County and named for the Montour family, Madame Montour and her son Andrew, influential interpreters and diplomat of mixed French and Indigenous heritage who shaped relations between European colonists and the Iroquois Confederacy in the early seventeen hundreds. Two significant inventions connect to this small county. The first iron T-rails for American railroads were manufactured here, a crucial step in the expansion of the rail network across the continent.

And Christopher Latham Sholes, inventor of the practical typewriter, was born in Montour County in eighteen nineteen. His machine, refined through the eighteen seventies and licensed to Remington, transformed how the world puts words to paper. The county seat, Danville, was incorporated in eighteen forty-nine.