Pioneer Information
Born in Pennsylvania, Price received a private education at the Westtown School, going on to study medicine in Philadelphia with a local doctor and eventually earning a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1825. After practicing medicine for a short time, he was elected surveyor of the Spring Garden District in Philadelphia, a position he held for 30 years. Price also took on private commissions, which included the city’s first rural cemeteries. He worked with John Notman and John Jay Smith on the northern section of Laurel Hill Cemetery between 1836 and 1840, and he surveyed Monument Cemetery in 1837, translating its plans into ground measurements and possibly playing a design role as well. Although Price was not officially named surveyor of The Woodlands cemetery until 1840, he had been surveying there since 1839. He subsequently drafted a plan for the cemetery, as well as plans for Center Circle and Section E, and he laid out Section C. The cemetery’s interior spaces were laid out first and were divided by curvilinear paths that followed the existing topography. Arriving in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, in 1861, Price laid out a residential subdivision known as Price’s Addition, which essentially doubled the size of Lock Haven’s residential area. That same year, he helped establish the city’s Highland Cemetery, becoming the first president of the cemetery company and donating land for the cemetery the following year. In 1852 Price joined the board of the Sunbury & Erie Railroad Company, serving as its first president and subsequently becoming its secretary and treasurer. He later served as treasurer of the Bald Eagle Valley Railroad Company. Price died in Lock Haven at the age of 68 and is buried in Highland Cemetery.
