George Shaffer, John Rumbarger, and John DuBois were central to the settlement and early development of the land that became DuBois. George Shaffer, a Revolutionary War veteran, accompanied surveyors into what was then Lycoming County in 1785 and laid warrant on tract No. 92 on May 17, 1785; after financial setbacks, he moved his family to the property in Clearfield County and made a home where two streams met on May 13, 1812, though it was later discovered they had settled on tract No. 521 rather than No. 92. After a lengthy court battle, tract No. 521 was deeded to George II, while tract No. 92 went to Fred and Michael, and Shaffer, who died in 1817, became the first person buried in what later became Morningside Cemetery. His descendants continued to hold and exchange land, and tract No. 92, including the Beaver Meadows, later became an important part of John DuBois' properties and the industrial development of DuBois. John Rumbarger, born in 1810, worked as a lumberman before purchasing 325 acres of wilderness in 1865 from David Heberling, whose father had bought the land from George Shaffer. With railroad construction beginning in 1870 and John DuBois arriving in 1871 to develop nearby properties, Rumbarger envisioned a new town, employed surveyor George Kirk in 1872 to lay out lots, and promoted the area as a business center near the railroad and John DuBois's sawmill enterprise; he remained in control of his business until about 1879 and died in January 1889. John DuBois, born in 1809 in Owego, New York, entered the lumber business with his family, visited the Shaffers in 1842, returned in 1844 to buy land, and eventually purchased more than 32,000 acres of timber lands in Clearfield and Elk Counties. In 1855 he bought the lower Beaver Meadow area from Fred Shaffer, and after timber became scarce elsewhere, he returned in 1871 to begin developing his Clearfield County holdings. He first built a small sawmill in 1872, followed by the Big Mill, said to be the largest in the state when it was operating by 1874, and expanded into factories, a tannery partnership, a hotel, store, farm, dairy, machine shop, foundry, blacksmith shop, lumber camps, and logging railroads. The growth of the mills and the Allegheny Valley Railroad Low Grade Division brought a population boom, and although the first post office was called Rumbarger, both the postal service and railroad station adopted the name DuBois in 1876. John DuBois died on May 5, 1886, and left his fortune and properties to his nephew John E. DuBois.