Following the French and Indian War (1755–63) and the forced migration of Native American tribes westward, German, Scots-Irish, and other European immigrants settled in the central Susquehanna Valley, including in the area that would become Northumberland, Pennsylvania. Northumberland was laid out around a central village green in 1772, on land originally purchased from the Iroquois by the Province of Pennsylvania in 1768, as part of the first Treaty of Fort Stanwix. During the American Revolution, the village was evacuated as part of the Big Runaway in 1778, and only finally resettled in 1784. In 1794, when the Priestleys moved there, it included Quaker and Wesleyan meeting houses, a brewery, two potteries, a potash manufacturer, a clock maker, a printer (who issued a weekly newspaper), several stores, and approximately one hundred houses.