Harrison was established in 1696 by a patent granted by the British government to John Harrison and three others, who had a year earlier bargained with local Native Americans to purchase an area of land above Westchester Path, an old trail that led from Manhattan to Port Chester and below Rye Lake. Local custom holds that Harrison was given 24 hours to ride his horse around the area he could claim, and the horse could not swim or did not want to get its feet wet, but this is folklore. In fact, the land below Westchester Path and along Long Island Sound had already been purchased and partly developed by the settlers of Rye, New York.
Passages that mention Harrison, cut from the printed page as they were published.
Centennial history of Harrison, Maine1909 · page 37Read the page →
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The Act to incorporate the town of Harrison is found in the laws of Massachusetts, Chapter XXXIV, 1805, and is entitled : "An Act to incorporate the northwesterly part of the town of Otisfield, and the easterly part of the town of Bridgton, in the County of Cumberland, into a separate town by the name of Harrison."
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Centennial history of Harrison, Maine1909 · page 133Read the page →
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lature : "To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Maine in Legislature assembled : — The undersigned, legal voters of the Town of Harrison, beg leave to remonstrate against the petition of Ira Crocker and others praying for the incorporation of a new town to include a part of the towns of Bridgton and Harrison, as far forth as the same, if granted, would affect the Town of
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Historical collections of Harrison County, in the state of Ohio, with lists of the first land-owners, early marriages (to 1841), will records (to 1861), burial records of the early settlements, and numerous genealogies1900 · page 44Read the page →
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memoration of the admission of the State into the Union; and the year 190-i will witness the hundreth anniversary of the laying out of the town of Cadiz. The Centennial of the settlement of Harrison county would nominally be about 1900, — 1800 being the year !n which the land office was opened at Steubenville for the sale of lands in the territory now included in Harrison. The records of that office dur'ng the five years followiug that date show, among others, entries of land titles in what is now Harrison county by the following named settlers:
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Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
By decade
Harrison, decade by decade
2 decades in the archive, from the 1870s to the 1940s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
In 1696, according to Wikidata and Wikipedia’s history of the town. Harrison’s post office opened in 1827, and the census of 1980 counted 23,046 people here.
What is on the National Register in Harrison?
4 listings: 3 buildings, among them the Reid Hall, Manhattanville College (listed 1974, the first), and 1 site.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (12), the National Register of Historic Places (4), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System, Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress) and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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