Why is Potato creek in Mckean county pa called Potato creek?

Answer 1

Historic Canoe Trip to Pittsburgh in 1816 - the year without summer ... and a small treatise on the Iroquois words for 'potato'

The necessity of canoeing skills figures prominently in my family's history.  Isaac Burlingame, a pioneer settler in McKean County, was confronted with starvation for his family in the afternath of the volcanic explosion of Mt. Tambora  - which erupted in 1815 and was the greatest known volcanic explosion in history.   (See below for its comparison to more modern volcanic eruptions.) It is estimated that 82,000 people died as a result of the explosion and its year-long after effects.   Probably as a result of the worldwide ash clouds, people in the earth's norhern hemisphere suffered devastating frosts and early snows in 1816 -- known in the Northeastern United States as the "year without a summer."  Crops also failed on the meager pioneer farms in McKean County.  Isaac Burlingame and his father in law, Timothy Wolcott (the spelling of the name had actually been changed from Walcott) travelled by canoe to Pittsburgh taking six weeks to make the journey.  They returned with desperately needed food supplies.  Oral history recounts how one of their canoes tipped spilling potatoes into the creek.  The local Seneca Indians noted this event with the word that these settlers recalled as "nunundah."  That creek was subsequently named "Nunundah Creek" (today it is just called "Potato Creek"), and the yearbook at nearby Smethport High School is named "Nunundah."