About 1840, Philo Alanson Pritchard settled on 10 acres of land north of Morgan Road and about 1/4 mile west of this intersection, where he built a house and a blacksmith shop that he operated for more than 10 years. Good blacksmiths like Pritchard were essential to the success of a farming community: he shod horses and oxen and made and repaired farm equipment and household items such as hoes and kitchen pots. His shop would have been a simple wood structure with little light except from a wide front doorway, kept dark so he could better see the color of heated iron or steel and judge when the metal was hot enough to be worked and formed; it contained a forge, bellows, and a heavy anvil. Pritchard married Eliza Jane Woodard, daughter of Charles and Claremond Woodard, in Batavia, NY, in 1829. The Woodards moved to Pittsfield Township in 1834, settling on 40 acres northwest of Textile and Thomas Roads. In 1836, Pritchard, Eliza, their three children, and his widowed mother, Sabra Johnson, also moved to Pittsfield Township and first lived at Carpenter's Corner. There Sabra Johnson met Revolutionary War veteran Archibald Armstrong, whom she married in 1839. Archibald and Sabra also lived here until his death in 1849 from complications of a rattlesnake bite. Pritchard served Pittsfield Township in various capacities, was Township Treasurer in 1850, died in 1853, and was buried in Harwood Cemetery.