The day after the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumtner on April 12, 1861, Philadelphian Thomas Leiper Kane contacted Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin and offered to go to McKean and Elk Counties to raise a company of skilled soldiers. Kane chose Smethport for recruitment because he believed the men of the region were fiercely patriotic, skilled with firearms, seasoned in survival techniques, physically strong, and unusually determined. Governor Curtin approved Colonel Kane's request but required each new infantry recruit to bring his own musket or rifle. When new recruit James Landregan saw a deer hanging from a butcher shop at the P. Ford Building on Church Street across from the McKean County Courthouse and below the Methodist Church, he cut off the tail and attached it to his hat. Kane immediately embraced the symbol and had the other recruits cut strips of deer hide and attach them to their hats and caps, declaring that the regiment would be known as the Bucktails. On April 17, 1861, Kane arrived in Smethport and immediately had a recruitment poster printed and distributed throughout the county announcing the formation of Company I, McKean County Rifles, of the Pennsylvania Reserves. He established the Bennett House Hotel as his headquarters, and recruitment in Smethport continued over the next several days.