Since the Pennsylvania frontiersmen of the Wyoming Valley were of English stock, and immigrated from New England, it might have been assumed that some of these Connecticut settlers came into the West Branch Valley. Here, however, all evidence points to the fact that Connecticut settlers did not migrate west of Muncy, which is located at the juncture of Muncy Creek and the West Branch of the Susquehanna River (where the bend in the river turns into a directly western pattern). Thus the Connecticut boundary dispute of 1769-1775, which erupted into the Pennamite Wars, did not involve the Fair Play settlers.[8] Nevertheless, at least one Fair Play settler looked forward to the possibility of an advance of the Connecticut settlement along the West Branch.[9]
The impact of events upon the settlement of the Fair Play territory is particularly apparent when one examines the periods of immigration to and emigration from the region. Three events seemed to have had the greatest influence upon the immigration: the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, which extended the Provincial limits to Lycoming Creek in this region, and the resultant opening of the Land Office for claims in the "New Purchase" on April 3, 1769;[10] the almost complete evacuation of the territory in the "Great Runaway" of the summer of 1778, which was prompted by Indian attacks and the fear of a great massacre comparable to the "Wyoming Valley Massacre" of that same year;[11] and finally, the Stanwix Treaty of 1784, which brought the Fair Play area within the limits of the Province.[12]
The first Stanwix Treaty, made by Sir William Johnson with the Six Nations in November of 1768, extended the legitimate line of English colonial settlement from the line established by the Proclamation of 1763 to a point on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River at the mouth of Lycoming Creek (the Tiadaghton, as it was so ambiguously labeled).[13] This extension, ostensibly for the purpose of providing lands for the colonial veterans of the French and Indian War, became a boon to speculators and an inducement to the Scotch-Irish squatters who took lands beyond the limits of this "New Purchase" in what was to become the Fair Play territory.