Among the public buildings and institutions are the Cambria free library (containing about 14,000 volumes in 1908), the city hall, a fine high school, and the Conemaugh Valley memorial hospital.
In the Alleghenies, in 1799, he planned a settlement in what is now Cambria county, Pennsylvania, and bought up much land which he gave or sold at low prices to Catholic immigrants, spending $150,000 or more in the purchase of some 20,000 acres in a spot singularly ill suited for such an enterprise.
In November 1768, at a general council of the Six Nations with Sir William Johnson and representatives of Pennsylvania and Virginia, held at Fort Stanwix, on the site of the present Rome, New York (q.v.), at which was signed a treaty establishing the boundary line between the English possessions and the territory claimed by the Six Nations, the Indians sold for $io,000 to Thomas Penn (1702-1775) and Richard Penn (1706-1771), respectively, the second and third sons of William Penn - the founder of Pennsylvania - by his second wife, the remaining land in the province of Pennsylvania to which they claimed title, namely the tract lying south of the west branch of the Susquehanna river and of a straight line from the north-west corner of what is now Cambria county to the present Kittanning (in Armstrong county), and all of the territory east of the Allegheny river below Kittanning and south of the Ohio river.
Another Welshman, Hugh Hughes, was responsible for the Beauties of Cambria, 1823; this was illustrated by wood engravings.
These were my limits on board the British steamship Cambria.