The Dennis Farm: Two Hundred Years of Free Black Ownership

Along Creek Road in Susquehanna County lies one of the most remarkable pieces of land in Pennsylvania. The Dennis Farm has been owned continuously by the same African American family for more than two hundred years, tracing back to Prince Perkins, a free Black man and Revolutionary War veteran who came from Connecticut and settled here in seventeen ninety-three.

The farm grew under Perkins's granddaughter Angeline Perkins Dennis and her husband Henry W. Dennis, who expanded the property and built the family's presence in the community. What makes the farm exceptional is what it represents: documented evidence of free Black landownership and community life in rural, integrated northeastern Pennsylvania during an era when such realities have often been overlooked or forgotten. The property also reflects the strong antislavery tradition of the region. It remains a working piece of living history.