In the early 19th century, a "Mr. Sartwell" settled in what is now McKean County. It is likely that this was Solomon Sartwell, who moved to northern Pennsylvania from New Hampshire in 1816. A Sartwell family home in Smethport has been restored. A short article appeared in the McKean County Miner (22 April 1880) describing some early evidence of the First People . . .

On the Fisher farm, near Bradford, on the flats of the Tuna valley, there was an old tree which upon being felled and uprooted revealed skulls and bones of human beings, but evidently belonging to a race long since extinct, the bones were so large. Some of the skulls were of such a size that they could be easily set over the head of an ordinary-sized man, and there were thigh and shin bones several inches longer than those of the largest men then in the [McKean] county.

The reporter noted that the "finding of these human remains caused considerable of a sensation at the time, not so much because of the further evidence of a prehistoric race, which is a settled fact – human remains having been found in many parts of America in like manner – but the size of them was so extraordinary that the people were anxiously looking for further developments for many years afterwards."

In wooded areas, archaeologists often take advantage of tree windfalls, animal burrows and other natural events that disturb the ground to get a sneak peak at what clues lied below the surface.