In 1822, Jacob Lee (1770-1847), along with his wife and children came from the Milesburg area of Centre County to settle in a hollow, which is located in both Burnside Township and New Washington Borough of Clearfield County.
Jacob and Isaac Lee built one of the first stone houses in Bellefonte in 1795. The two are believed to have been brothers.
Jacob Lee purchased 220 acres in 1839 in Burnside Township. Jacob’s home was used as an early meeting house for Methodists.
According to a history of the New Washington Methodist Church complied by E.V. Mitchell in 1962, services were held under a large hemlock tree and afterward in a nearby log house belonging to Crawford Gallaher.
The Lee family began businesses with farming and timbering that built up the little community of Lee Hollow. In 1870, the mining business developed and carried on for the Lee family until they sold it in 1890.
It was recorded in R.D. Swoope’s 1911 book Twentieth Century History of Clearfield County, Pennsylvania and Representative Citizens the Lee Hollow Mine was an “E” vein with a thickness of three feet. It had a daily capacity of 1,000 tons.
The small community of Lee Hollow once had both single and double houses for the miners. There was a company store and large home for “boss” along with roads. Today all these structures are but a memory.
