Lacking returns of the annual elections of the tribunal and minutes of its actual meetings, we have only Smith's _Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania_, petitions from the Fair Play settlers, and the subsequent review of land questions by the Northumberland and Lycoming County courts to evaluate the tribunal, its members, and its procedures. However, these data are more than adequate in giving us a picture of this _de facto_, though illegal, rule, which existed in the West Branch Valley until the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784 brought the territory under Commonwealth jurisdiction. The composition of the electorate varied with the fluctuations in population caused by the two Stanwix treaties, the Revolution, and the Great Runaway.
Since property and religious qualifications were the primary prerequisites to voting at this time, it seems logical to assume that a similar basis for suffrage operated in the West Branch Valley.[8] Having no regular church--the first, a Presbyterian, was not organized until 1792--property qualifications appear to have been the basis for what, in this area, was practically universal manhood suffrage. Due to the fact that the entire settlement consisted of squatters, practically all of the heads of households were property holders, regardless of the questionable legality of their holdings. The tax lists indicate holdings of some 100 to 300 acres on the average for residents, so it is particularly difficult to know whether or not a minimum holding requirement prevailed. The Provincial suffrage requirement in this period was generally fifty acres of land or £50 of personal property.[9]
Although this study encompasses a fifteen-year period from 1769 to 1784, it appears that the Fair Play system functioned for about five years, from 1773 to 1778. This is due to the fact that only "fourty Improvements,"[10] meaning forty family settlements, existed in the area by 1773, and that following the Great Runaway of 1778, the territory was almost devoid of settlers. The void was filled, however, when settlers began returning toward the end of the Revolution and following the accession of the territory in the second Stanwix Treaty, in 1784. Thus, for all practical purposes, the functioning of the Fair Play system was confined to this more limited time. Furthermore, the system was supplemented in 1776 by the introduction of the Committee of Safety, and later that year by the Council of Safety.[11]