One of Col Cook's early friends and neighbors was Andrew Lynn who made his first settlement in Southwestern Pennsylvania on the Redstone about 1761. He was driven away by the Indians but returned not long afterwards to remain permanently. He bought land not only on the Redstone, but a
tract below there in what is now Washington township and lived a while upon the last mentioned tract. The Washington land, now owned and occupied by Denton Lynn was sold to old Andrew Lynn by Thomas Pearce and conveyed to him by deed dated August 20, 1769. Thomas Pearce entered and application for the tract April 3, 1769. A warrant was issued to Pearce.An order of survey was issued to Andrew Lynn On June 3, 1788, and a patent for one hundred and thirty acres granted march 1, 1790. The tract was called Sedgy Fort from an Indian or prehistoric for that stood on it.
This fort was located upon an elevation close to the present site of Denton Lynn's barn. There was a large space enclosed having within it a spring and some Indian graves. Near at hand was a fine sugarbush whose near presence may have accounted for the location of the fort upon that site. The field was called and is yet called "Old Fort Field." Indian relics and skeletons have been frequently turned up from that field by Mr Denton Lynn.
In 1859 he came upon several skeletons and upon investigation concluded that the bodies must have been buried two deep. Each body appeared to have been surrounded by earthenware dishes composed of baked mussel shells and clay. One of the skeletons proved to be that of a man fully
eight feet in height. Some of the skeletons were so placed as to give the impression that the bodies had been interred in a sitting position.When Andrew Lynn came to the place in 1774, the line of the old fort was marked by the growth of thick bushes and straggling stone heaps. Andew Lynn Jr, son of Andrew Lynn the first named, inherited the lands to which he came with his father in his eighty year, or in 1774. He told the present Denton Lynn, his grandson, there was then no clearing on the tract. Being out in a field with Denton one day, Andrew Lynn Jr said to him, "Denton, in this field was built the first cabin put up on the Lynn farm." Denton replied, "Well, grandfather, it seems queer to me that whoever the man was he sould have put his house here upon low ground while he could have chosen a dozen higher or better spots." "The reason was," remarked old Andrew, "that the man had only his wife to assist him in
putting up the cabin, and is chief desire therefore, was to get where trees were handy. That's why he selected a low spot."The first Andrew Lynn increased his original lands by the purchase of an adjoining tract that had been tomahawked by William Lynn, not related to Andrew Lynn. The entire farm of four hundred and fifty acres came into possession of Andrew Lynn Jr who lived upon it from 1774 until his death
in 1855 at the age of eighty nine. Three hundred and twenty of the four hundred and fifty acres are now owned by Denton Lynn.Andrew Lynn Jr was a man of local note and among other things was distinguished for having served as justice of the peace for forty years. He built in 1790 a stone mansion fashioned after the one built by Col Edward Cook in 1772, but it did not turn out to be as durable as edifice as Cook's. The latter stands yet and serves its original purpose, while Lynn's abandoned as a human habitation in 1866, is fast falling to ruin.
Near the Lynn mansion stands a famous locust tree under whose wide-spreading branches General Washington, Andrew Lynn and Col Edward Cook are said to have met and tarried for some time in social intercourse. The tree is reckoned to be at least one hundred and sixty years old. Its circumference near the ground is nearly twenty feet. Its lower branches, blown down some years ago, measured fully one hundred feet from tip to tip.