Waiting for a new Home

Note: some unsourced statements in this section appear in the History section of the City of Greensburg's official website After the end of the Revolutionary War, an inn was built along a wagon trail that stretched from Philadelphia west over the Appalachian Mountains to Fort Pitt, now the city of Pittsburgh. A tiny settlement known as Newtown grew around the inn, today the center of Greensburg's Business District at the intersection of Pittsburgh and Main Streets. At Pittsburgh, the wagon trail became Penn Avenue. Newtown became the Westmoreland County seat in 1785, after the original county seat, Hannastown, was damaged during a raid by Seneca people and Canadian rangers. On December 10, 1785 county officials entered into an agreement with Christopher Truby and William Jack to purchase two acres of land in Newtown on which to erect public buildings.