Photo courtesy of the Warren County Historical Society A postcard image of downtown Warren. Notice the trolley car and track as well as the sign on the top of the flatiron building.

Whether talking about the county or the city, Warren was named in honor of a Revolutionary War general who is known variously as America’s forgotten Founding Father or the Founding Martyr.

Gen. Joseph Warren, the namesake of Warren County and the City of Warren, has a park and a statue in his honor in the triangle formed by Pennsylvania Avenue West and the western end of Third Avenue.

He was killed early in the war at the Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775 — not leading troops, but fighting among them, according to Ernest Miller’s Place Names in Warren County. Warren “volunteered to fight under Presscott and Putnam” when his commission as a general failed to arrive in time for the battle.

Gen. Warren was a Harvard graduate and a doctor.

He was considered a leading revolutionary. He had been president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress — a post also held by one John Hancock.

It was he who sent Paul Revere on his famous ride.

The Warren name was not attached to the area until 1792. Even then, that honor took some time to settle in.

Early records put this part of the state in Allegheny or Lycoming county.

When talking about the first permanent settlers in the county, Miller said, “A few men were residing most of the time along Brokenstraw Creek as early as 1740, where they operated fur trading posts.” George Croghan and John Fraser were listed as key investors in those posts.

After that, “in the county, the first permanent settlers were Robert Andrews of Pittsfield, his son, John Andrews, of Irvine, and John McKinney of Youngsville.”

In 1792, an act of the Pennsylvania legislature set aside land for a town of Warren. The surveying was done in 1795 by Gen. William Irvine (after whom Irvine is named) and Andrew Ellicott — for whose brother, Joseph, Ellicott, N.Y., is named.

The legislature created eight new counties, including Warren County, in 1800. However, for tax purposes, the five new counties in the northwestern part of the state were lumped together as Crawford County, with Meadville as the county seat. Later that year, the county set up a Brokenstraw Township. The boundaries of Brokenstraw Township, Crawford County, eventually outlined Warren County.

Warren was not completely independent from Crawford County until 1805… when it shifted its dependence. Warren was added to Venango County for “judicial and other purposes,” according to Miller. In 1808, the Court of Common Pleas in Franklin approved Warren County’s first municipalities — Brokenstraw and Conewango townships — which made up the whole of the county.

By an 1819 act of the legislature, Warren County became a separate county, losing its affiliation with Venango County.

Court first convened in the county in 1819, in the “unfinished home” of Ebenezer Jackson — one of the first permanent settlers within the current city limits (along with James Morrison), according to Miller.

In 1821, the county’s two municipalities were subdivided, creating a total of 12 townships.

From 1800, when the official population was 233, the county’s population grew to 38,946 by 1900. The highest ever census population was 47,682 in 1970.

The Borough of Warren was incorporated on May 7, 1832. The borough’s highest population was enumerated in the 1940 census — 14,891.

The borough became the City of Warren in 1988.