St. Petersburg was known as Petersburg originally and named for Judge Richard Peters of Philadelphia, who owned much of the land and donated five acres for the church and cemetery. Its name was changed to St. Petersburg in 1862 by the postal service. The village boomed during the oil excitement of 1871 from less than 100 people to over 4,000 in one year, at which time it officially became a borough. A series of fires in the late nineteenth century reduced the number of buildings, leaving St. Petersburg a crossroads town with a population in the year 2000 of approximately 400 people.
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