Ode to Spring: Moonshine and Horseradish, the life and wisdom of Joyce Gaumer

March 20, 2014, 2:36 pm

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There’s a certain constancy that lingers here, in pockets of woods and runs, in places where time is trapped in the ticking calls of the chickadee above gurgling springs, where kingfishers work the same worn beat as their mothers and grandmothers. 

Mountain life included getting what you could from nature.  Which meant harvesting what was available: Root vegetables and greens in springtime and black bear in the fall.  This hunt is from the Ahner clan of Franklin Township who had kin ties with the Eckley clan of the mountain.  This shot from 1922.

Author's note: I've been sitting on this story since last spring (2013).  Like many of my stories, I often need some final push to finish them.  In this case, I've been waiting for to hold in my own hands that copper pitcher her grandfather caught alternating drips wintergreen oil and moonshine from the coil of their still.  It was a hard winter. I'll be sitting with Joyce tomorrow, but today is the first of spring.

Read the companion piece to this Post - 'Lost Stills of the Pine Swamp' detailing the wintergreen industry of Carbon County.

It’s a steady rhythm, the Lehigh waters resound today as they did when the hardscrabble immigrants first gathered around her to work, developing a distinct work ethic unique to these woods and valleys.  

The Great Pine Swamp was home to virgin hemlocks, oaks and pines.  Development though, soon followed with sawmills and tanneries.  Then came Josiah White’s Upper Grand and the railroads and soon the forest was deflowered.

It’s not certain whether the Great Depression ever left from here, it’s embedded in a culture of remembrance, of self-reliant resilience.

Joyce (Eckley) Gaumer just remembers being poor and moving around a lot, between Meckesville to Stoney Creek.  Her Stoney Creek home for the last fifty-four years once held the postal address “Christmans.”  Today it’s Star Route Jim Thorpe or Penn Forest.

One view of the Great Pine Swamp of Northern Carbon County.  Photo courtesy of PA Department of  Conservation and Natural Resources website.

Something can be said for keeping one’s roots here, connected to a land largely unchanged, though surrounded and increasingly permeated by an electronic grid that frazzles the senses and breeds an aversion to sinking one’s fingers into the earth. 


Mountain top living was austere, honest and tough.  Its people were bound to the earth, in timbering and tanning jobs.  But they also found work on the canal and the railroad as boatmen, brakemen, mule boys and firemen.

Archie Eckley's Bethlehem Steel photo.

Joyce's father was “Archie” Eckley (Archibald was born October 19, 1898).  As a young man, he worked in a stave mill along the Stoney, making slats for barrels.  

There were many sawmills here around the Great Pine Swamp, there was one where Yellow Run and Stoney Creek come together.  (Joyce's grandfather Eckley's sister Lillian married a Schock who ran Schock's sawmill at Mecksville.) Archie’s kid brother Isaac too worked at the same mill, doing the timbering.

One of the Pine Swampers or Ridge Runners, as people the mountain were known, was A. W. Smith (Anna Smith's father, Curtin Gaumer's grandfather).  He was a railroad track walker and also was a "distiller of wintergreens."

Always making do, Alexander Wilson Smith (known as "Willis") and his wife Anna secured contracts from New York City firms who procured an agreed upon number of gallons of extract a year.  the 1918 letter from Joseph H. Bowne of New York City states his firm would take twenty-five to fifty pounds at $5.25 per pound.

"A. W." and his wife Alice Smith - He was Alexander Wilson Smith, but everyone called him "Willis." He worked a still but was also on the Drake's Creek School Board.  They were parents to Annie Smith who married Martin Gaumer, Curtin's parents. Alice had 19 brothers and sisters.  After their daughter Annie became an early widow, they moved into her home in Christman's, which is today near Stoney Creek, just up Route 903 from "This Old House."

It went into all kind of flavorings from ice cream to cough syrup.  

This is Abraham Ahner, son of Amos Ahner of Franklin Township.  He was a brother to Herman Ahner. This photo certainly harkens to the Bonnie and Clyde days.  Herman did know his way around the still.  In fact, our home today still bears the scorched joists in the cellar from the day Herman's still exploded.  According to family lore, the oil cloth on the kitchen floor above lifted off the ground and Herman's wife was scalded.  Nearly all the men on this branch of the Ahner clan distilled spirits.  Amos had public square dances on his property during Prohibition. Those he knew and trusted got the Applejack.  All the rest got Near-Beer.  Earning extra money with a still even ran into Herman's offspring.  One of his sons lost all his firearms after the ATF descended upon his property in the 1980s for operating a distilling operation.

Today, teaberry goes largely untouched here on the forest floor, synthetic flavoring being more convenient. 

The Drake's Creek School ran from October 3, 1910 to April 25, 1911 and ran for 140 days.  The calendar was more reflective of the closeness the people of the area held to the land.  Children were needed for farm work from May through September.  A. W. Smith was a school director and Annie was a student.

Joyce remembers picking teaberry leaves with her mom and grandmother Amanda Eckley (both Adam and Amanda were first generation German-Americans) at an early age.  

The sliding around on the stony forest floor on her hands and knees was tough work.  They would use a short handled wooden rake with two-inch long dowel rod tines to pull leaves and twig debris away for the five-inch tall teaberry or winter greens.

A distiller's home - Alexander "Wilson" and Alice Smith's home near Drake's Creek.

They would take it to Paury Green who also distilled and he would sift through their burlap sacks for any foreign material, especially rocks that would drive up the cost he'd pay.  

Joyce recalls being paid five cents per pound of teaberry.  She and her cousins would try to pick at least five pounds worth for spending money for special events like their community picnics.

Other than a few times a year when they looked forward to the pin-money, most times she and her cousins would cringe when their mother of grandmother announced it was a day for picking.  It must have been difficult and dirty work, for knowing Joyce now you know how hard she works and cleans.

Annie and Martin Gaumer in early 1930s with their only child Curtain.  Martin died young before the start of WWII.  Annie helped make do running a "speak easy" on the mountain.

Her mother would say, "Dirty windows, a dirty house." (As well as "A dirty kitchen door sill, a dirty house.")  Note: Joyce's house is spotless.

Wintergreen can still be found in many places in Carbon County forests.  But like the huckleberry, the terrain is lacking.  Joyce cites the source of the problem due to lack of the once intentionally set brush fires.  The now frowned upon practice would burn off enough undergrowth that allowed these low growing cash crops to thrive.

Later on, once A. W. Smith gave up the still and took on the job as a bonded supervisor of the township, they would take their teaberry greens to Paury (pronounced "Purie") Green’s grocery store, who also ran a still on the side. 

An early courtship letter from Martin to Annie.  Martin's family left the mountain for the "city life" of Weissport. This letter offers to take Anna back home Sunday if she can find a way to Weissport on Saturday.  The postcard of 100 years ago has been replaced by more instantaneous messaging of the tweets or texts of the cellphone.

And as the Smith-Gaumer family lore goes, Curtin's grandfather would occupy his still’s slack time by making Moonshine between the wintergreen and apple harvests.  Applejack season was his favorite.  Many a hunter lodging around Lake Harmony in the late fall came calling for his cider spirits.

Joyce Gaumer poses with Curtin Gaumer's grandfather's distilling pitcher.  The copper container caught the drips from the copper coil, whether those drips were from wintergreen or other mountain products.

An early picture of the Martin and Anna Guamer home. It still stands today, relatively unchanged, near Stoney Creek, along Route 903.

Though some considered it bootlegging, to them it was a plain matter of making do.  Curtin’s father Martin (born May 13, 1896) died near the start of the war when Curtin was just 17, leaving both he and Anna with an extra burden.  Anna like many others on the mountain enhanced her small grocery business with a little speakeasy, selling ‘shine and beer.'

Sometimes the revenuers would come to claim their share in raids and stings.  But the Pine Swampers went on about their business, in full knowledge of those possible setbacks, just as one looked upon the coming of a hard winter, taken as a matter of course, as something one simply endured.

The final raid came in November of 1950.  The agents, dressed in the clothes of house painters, were escorted by a here to be nameless man married to Joyce’s sister Marie.  Legend says the licensed inns on the mountain paid the said man $100 to help root out the speakeasies.

Curtin Gaumer was a veteran of the Great War, surviving the beaches of Normandy.  And when he came home he reacquainted himself with Joyce, the girl next door. They married in 1949.

Curtin and Joyce Gaumer homestead next door to Anna Gaumer's home.  Joyce and Curtin built this home side-by-side, like that did so many other things in life.

Joyce and Curtin were as natural together as the cool beneath the pines.  When he went fishing, Joyce fished too.  They loved to fish together, occasionally traveling to Canada.  When his old Dodge truck needed a tune-up, she stood across the fender, taking care of the plugs on her side of the block just as well as Curtin took care of his.

In 1959, the wooded lot of pines and oaks next to his mother’s home and store was cleared by Curtin and Joyce with their two-man saw.  Together they drew up the prints and took the timbers to Milton Schock’s sawmill. 

Curtin loved to make homemade wines, like dandelion wine, from oranges, lemons, currants, raisins and of course sugar and dandelion.  He was a foreman on the railroad and Joyce worked in Dr. Thomas’ office and after his passing she continued working in Attorney Carol Walbert’s office.

When they both retired, they took a cross-country trip, across the north, through the Badlands, Yellowstone, to the space needle in Seattle and along the Puget Sound.  They enjoyed salmon cooked on open-grills by the Northwest Indians as well as fresh caught tuna in Oregon. 

They returned through California, saw the swallows of Capistrano, then onto Texas, and the Grand Ole Opry.  They saw Lincoln’s log cabin of his birth in Kentucky.  Joyce was struck by its primitiveness, lacking windows.  

Spring emerges with promise of life. The horseradish emerges during the dogwood winter in the Gaumer back yard.

Joyce set the “Dogwood Winter” as our appointed date to meet to make some horseradish, a time of the first warm days just after the last of the snow is gone, when the blooms of the Dogwood set.  Had we waited too long past the early, hoped for Spring, the horseradish would otherwise become too “pithy.”

I waited for Joyce to come home, she arrived in Curtin’s old black Dodge, her “fishin’ truck.”  Once again she showed up the men at “the Pond” up in the Swamp, catching four meaty brookie’s in less than two hours.  She soaked them in the kitchen sink while she went to work chopping up the horseradish roots. 

Joyce once again shows up the men at her favorite fishing hole.

We saved the peelings and the tops to replant, most of which ended up on my patch, the former farmette of Herman Ahner in Franklin Township, who also knew his way around a still.  And along with it, comes the hope that the tradition will carry on. (Click here to read more on the Herman Ahner family.)  

And now, just a few weeks later, the green leaves are already reaching into the air, to produce white flowers by June.

One of the smaller roots to go into our horseradish. The peelings though, were transplanted to the Rabenold homestead in Franklin Township so the tradition can be restarted at the former Herman Ahner homestead.

In talking of these old habits, of reaping sustenance from these springtime offerings, Joyce laments, as perhaps only a Dutchwoman of her generation can, of how “young people today don’t take the time to do the simple things,” like picking dandelion greens for salads and making home-made hot bacon-dressing for on top.  (The key is to pluck the leaves before the flowers emerge.) 

She was always told how dandelion was good for “cleansing the blood.”  Of course there is science today that supports this Dutch wisdom, citing dandelion’s plentiful iron and antioxidants.   

Joyce also remembers how the Swampers would forage through the hills for early spring teaberry sprouts, coming up in a deep burgundy color.  These were sought after because they too were good for the blood.



It’s the same wisdom that tells her to put bay leaves in her cupboards to keep the ants away each spring.  It’s common sense. 

We placed the pieces of horseradish root into her food processor, adding “enough vinegar (only use white vinegar) to hold it together, to make it wet.”   

We underestimated the power of our creation, it having thoroughly cleared our sinuses to such a degree that the open window wasn’t enough.  We had to finish bottling it out on the porch. 

Joyce reels from the vapor.

We took to the porch as we were overcome by the strong horseradish vapors.

We took our rest at the kitchen table, reflecting on our productive day over a glass of Curtin’s last bottle of dandelion wine.  It was labeled “1984.”  

We were warmed not only by our friendship and our little homesteader’s project but also by Curtin’s labors of so long ago.  

We drank a toast, to spring and to the many springtime gifts, to Curtin, and to all good things that had passed, to the simple things, to the goodness of life to come. 

 

If you have the pleasure to talk to Joyce you won't miss the joy in her voice when she speaks of her departed husband.  The two were surely happy.

 POSTNOTE:

The following account has been transcribed word-for-word from The Miami News of Palm Beach, August 18, 1928 describing the wintergreen industry in the Pocono Mountains:

Waning Wintergreen

The old mountain industries die out as we progress.  The wintergreen still, under pressure of the black birch, in on shaky legs.  A few wintergreen distillers may be found up in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania and in several adjoining states, but they grow fewer. 

The evergreen teaberry, or checker berry, is one of the commonest of mountain herbs.  It is a pretty plant.  Its flowers are white and bell shaped, its leaves of a leathery texture.  Pleasantly flavored red berries follow the blossoms, but the wintergreen is distilled from the stems and the leaves.  The checker berry grows in great abundance in the mountains of the Atlantic states and once yielded a fair income to collectors.

The remaining stills not infrequently afford a means of livelihood to several families each.  Wintergreen oil was once a common cure for rheumatism.  It is widely used now as a flavoring in cooking, medicine, chewing gum and confections.  The distiller finds a market for all he can produce, but his small-capacity plant cannot compete with the chemist who produces synthetic wintergreen or extracts, as a substitute, the oil of the black birch.

Most of the gatherers of the checker berry herb are women.  An efficient picker can collect 200 pounds a day, but the average is 125 pounds.  This is brought to the crude outfit of the distiller, who pays about $3.25 for 100 pounds.  The plants are put into the still with water.  The container is sealed airtight.  A fire beneath the great kettle boils the mixture.  The condensed vapors drip from a coil into a jar.  The oil sinks to the bottom, and the waste flows off the top.  Then the oil is filtered and sold.  The day’s production averages from two and one-half to three and one-half pounds of oil.

The distiller as a rule makes little more than 250 pounds of oil in a year.  More energetic and larger operators have produced 600 pounds, but that output is rare.

The extracting of the oil from the bark of the sweet or black birch is a forest industry which has supplanted, to a great extent, the picturesque figure of the wintergreen distiller.  In time it will be crowded out by the artificial product.  The dawning synthetic age is due to bring many changes.  It will be a more efficient, but hardly as colorful, era.

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Carbon's Most Desolate Place: Penn Haven Junction...the story of Reds O'Donnell

April 18, 2014, 2:27 pm

≫ Next: Ups and Downs, Breaths In, Breaths Out in Carbon County - A writer in repose

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The area around what is known as Penn Haven Junction was called “one of the most desolate places in Carbon County” in a 1905 newspaper account.  A visit there today reveals that little has changed in the 100 years since.

This shot is looking North or toward the west bound lanes of the mainlines of the Lehigh Valley and Central Jersey lines.  The two lines on the left belong to the M & H branch which runs to Weatherly and Hazleton.  The double tower/depot of the Valley railroad is in the center, obscuring the view of the 20-room hotel/residence that was home to Richard "Reds" O'Donnell and his parents from the early 1940s until 1958 and the company abandoned residential workers at this most remote spot.  The former incline planes, abondaned some 100-years earlier are still visible in the background.  The tracks on the right are following the Lehigh River while the Black Creek enters from the left of the frame, entering the river beneath the trestle seen supporting the passenger car at the right.  Photo appears courtesy of Bernard Krebs of Jim Thorpe.

For a complete tour of the entire Lehigh Gorge State Park Rails-to-Trails from Lehighton to White Haven, click here for culturedcarboncounty's "Virtual Tour."

Penn Haven: Epicenter of Wrecks, Death and Sorrow - Post #1 of 3 - Covers approximately 60 deaths that occurred in the Penn Haven area from 1874 to 1910 (Including my Great Aunt Jennie Rex.)

Steep Grades and Dangerous Curves - Train Wrecks of Penn Haven Post #2 of 3

Penn Haven Train Wrecks - The Mud Run Disaster, October 10, 1888 - Post #3 of 3
  

Penn Haven’s location was the site of many floods, rockslides, and wrecks over the years.  With several mainlines running through here, the Central Jersey Railroad and Lehigh Valley Railroad, along with branch lines to Hazelton (Mahony and Hazleton) following the steep gorge of the Black Creek, this area was busy yet extremely remote.

Back in 1850, the emphasis of coal transport rested mainly on Josiah White's Lehigh Canal.  This area became the crowded focal point of the Beaver Meadow and Hazleton Railroads, the first steam railroad built in Pennsylvania.  It terminated here from the Hazleton fields and shipped via Josiah White’s “Upper Grand” section of Lehigh Coal and Navigation’s Lehigh Canal.

A modern view from about three-fourth's the way up the newer of the two planes givens an idea to the viewer just how desolate and rugged this place is.  The plane descending on the left of this frame was built by the Hazleton Railroad in 1859 and abandoned after the June 6, 1862 flood.  The winding S-curves along the rockslide-prone Black Creek ravine looks beautiful, however the steeply graded decline of at time 9%, in addition to the curves, have proven deadly to both man and machine.  "Mauch Chunk" and Glen Onoko Falls can be reached about seven to six miles down the gorge at left and Weatherly is just over five miles up the ravine at the right.  Photo by Ron Rabenold.

(The Switchback Gravity Railroad was the first railroad of consequence in PA, dating back to the time when rails were applied to the all downhill “Stone Turnpike” in 1827.  The “Back Track,” completed in 1845, created an 18-mile loop with two stationary steam engines atop Mt Pisgah and Mt Jefferson allowing cars and passengers to return to Summit Hill.)  

The first incline was built in 1850 to try to overcome the continual rockslides and floods of the steep ravine leading from Weatherly to the gorge.  The plane was 1,200 feet long and rose over 450-feet in elevation.  The first plane installed was the one on the right with two lines.  As one loaded car was lowered, an empty car was pulled up the hill.

The Penn Haven Planes and the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company's coal wharves as they looked from across the river just two years before the flood that ended this method of transport here forever.  It did lead to the modern way of the rail the world was moving at that time.  Photo appears courtesy of Robert F. Archer.

This is how the junction looked previous to the 1862 flood.  Back then, the Penn Haven Junction was further south or eastward bound down the line. The Black Creek flows between the above mountain side and the tracks curving left.  This photo and the following photo appear courtesy of the Central Jersey Railroad website. You can access this informative site by clicking here.

Looking straight up the 6-lines of the 1,200 foot long planes rising 450-feet of elevation.  The Black Creek flows beneath between the photographer and the workers shown.  Note how narrow the engine house looks toward the right. Compare this image to the latter modern image of the stone foundations.

The second incline, a four-track plane, was built by the Hazleton Railroad in 1859 but it was to be short-lived.

A walk to the top of this plane today reveals a 30-foot high rock foundation over which the cars rode over and which housed the engines which operated the machinery.  Incredibly, hemp rope was used before the advent of metal rope. 

The June 6, 1862 flood proved to show a fatal flaw in White’s grand dream.  The Upper Grand contributed to its own demise in that the dams and locks necessary to allow the coal barges to travel on the river meant that huge pools of water sat at the ready.  Once the heavy June rains began, and dams began to be breached, devastating tidal waves of flood water burst dam after dam causing a great flood and loss of life.

John J. Leisenring Jr., then Superintendent of the LCN & Co. estimated that 200 people lost their lives from White Haven down to Lehighton.  The state legislature stepped in and prohibited the LCN & Co. from rebuilding. 

These two pictures of the engine house remains belie their height.  The exterior wall on the right exposes toward the Lehigh River is about 30-feet high.  Photo by Ron Rabenold.

Thus once the LVRR took over this location in favor of direct rail access, the once inventive planes of Penn Haven were abandoned.  The Hazleton Railroad was absorbed into the Valley in 1868.  Another railroad that moved through this busy intersection was the Penn Haven and White Haven Railroad.  It too was taken over by the LVRR.

There is one man, Richard “Reds” O’Donnell, who can lay claim to being the last living person to live there.

His childhood there was chronicled by a two-part story in the Times News four years ago written by Al Zagofsky (Click here for the link to Part One.  Part Two.).

All lines had section gangs of “gandy-dancers” who maintained the lines.  But given Penn Haven’s location of being miles in the middle of nowhere, the rail workers often were held over in the company’s hotel.  One half of the building was a hotel of ten rooms. 

The other half with its identical ten rooms is where Reds O’Donnell and his family lived.  By the 1950s, the railroad starting its decline into bankruptcy, they were unwilling to put money into the home despite its dilapidated condition.   

This black and white shot of the hotel at Penn Haven harkens of better days.  The picture below was taken sometime near the year the O'Donnells moved away, as the house was in great disrepair.

This color picture from the late 1950s shows just one of the interlocking towers remaining of the two that can be seen in the earlier photo at the beginning of this post.  This picture appears courtesy of Robert J. Yanosey.

Reds has many fond memories of living there.  He recalls the common and dramatic rail incidents both, as well as of wild animals like black bear playing tag with each other.  And of course were the hard working men themselves, each with a good story from working the section.  But when these men, tucked into this steep and remote intersection of the Black Creek ravine and the Lehigh Gorge, began to unwind from their working day, much of them often times would revel into long rowdy nights of hard drinking.

This even later photo shows the lone tower after the hotel was torn down shortly after 1958, a symbol of the decline of railroading in general and specifically chronicling the Valley's demise.  Photo courtesy of the Central Jersey website.

Reds was born to Margaret and James O’Donnell in 1943, the last of their nine children.  James was born in January of 1896 and Margaret in 1903, making them 47 and 40 when Reds was born.

James worked for forty-seven years on the “Valley” (Lehigh Valley Railroad).   He remembers fondly how the stories would pass from the “deadheaders,” other day labors, and during the winter months of big game season, the numerous hunters who collected themselves at the desolate depot along the LVRR and Central Jersey main lines. 

Many had extended stays at the twenty-room hotel the O’Donnells called home.  (“Deadheaders” refers to workmen who travel from one depot or work section in preparation for work at another.)

The O’Donnell family rented the once fine home from their railroad owner landlords for $5 per month.  Reds’s father often questioned the arrangement, often times saying most wouldn’t live in it if they were paid for it. 

One of several locations the water supply pipe is still visible along the plane.  Up to three times per year, Reds and his father James would tote shovel and rakes up the plane to clear debris away from the opening of the spring that funneled into this pipe.  "That water was cold and clear mountain water," Reds recalls.  Photo by Ron Rabenold.

The roof was beginning to fail and the ice cold water from atop of the Penn Haven Planes that was piped down the mountain side in a 1-1/2-inch pipe would freeze in the winter if they didn’t leave the water run full force.  He recalls on at least one occasion of how the spray from the splashing water caused an ice slick across the kitchen floor one morning.

Reds also remembers how about three times a year, how he and his father would climb the plane with shovels and a rake, and clear the debris out and away from the spring that supplied their water.

Reds recalls how much he favored the hunting season for the rowdy parties the men would have.  Hunters paid $3 per week to stay there and he recalls many large deer being taken and the stories he’d hear of their pursuits.  The men often sang, playing their accordions, fiddles and guitars.  Eventually Reds too joined them when he turned twelve.  These were some of the best hunts of his life.

Among the many hazards to rail traffic in this steep gorge was the even present threat of rockslides. James O'Donnell took his duty seriously and walked the tracks of his section each time it rained heavily to call in rock obstructions.

His father James was a “trackwalker” in constant pursuit of rockslides during the fiercest of storms, between Penn Haven and Rockport, which was about six miles west or up river.  But he also considered himself Mayor, Postmaster, Fire Chief and Police Chief all rolled into one.  Other official duties included ensuring the switches and “frogs” (the “X”-shaped connectors of the junction) were in working order and weren’t frozen in the winter time.

Back then, workers had to manually monitor canister switch heaters to keep switches working in cold conditions.  Reds said, “And you know when it’s ten degrees everywhere else, it was below zero at Penn Haven.”  This and many other situations made it necessary to employ a full-time resident at the junction. 

James O'Donnell's WWII Draft Card shows his simple address as "Penn Haven Junction."

One story goes how James O’Donnell found been doing his due diligence and found a 12-inch section of track broken out.  When he called in the problem to stop the scheduled train, the dispatcher questioned his sobriety to which James answered, “I may have been drinking, but I still know when a foot of rail is missing.”

As chronicled in the Zagofsky article, as a very young boy, Reds would have to wake at 5:00 AM to catch the 5:31 train to Weatherly.   But school didn’t start until 9:00 so he finished his night’s rest by sleeping at the train station. 

And though it was a harsh and unforgiving landscape, Reds said they never felt cut off.  The passing engineers did their best to keep them supplied with newspapers from far and wide.  Sometimes they stopped to chat and other times they simply tossed them out to them from their moving trains.  Reds remembers up to twenty different titles including the Daily Mirror and the Wall Street Journal.  They also pulled in radio stations from Indiana and Chicago.

Another pastime for the young boy was to sit in the control tower with the tower-man/telegrapher.  To this day Reds can tell you about the signals and semaphores (the “boards”) and how things operated there.  Today, the complex system of switches all across Pennsylvania are controlled from a central dispatch in Harrisburg.

Here is towerman'telegrapher John J. Bittorf Jr. as he calls in from his Ashmore tower near Hazleton which summons a very similar scene to the scene Reds O'Donnell had sitting at his tower at Penn Haven.  Photo appears courtesy of Bill Baker.

Reds remembers how the junction had a special siding used to rest cars dubbed as “hotboxes” from over-heated brakes from the steep grade of the main line along the gorge.  The decline from Weatherly was particularly brutal for both man and machine.  There were many runaway trains due to human error and failed braking systems most of which predated Red’s time there.  (These incidents will be explored in a follow-up post.)

Likewise, sometimes engines had trouble pulling their loads up the grade to Weatherly/Hazleton branch as well as toward Wilkes-Barre/Buffalo on the mainline.  “Pusher” engines were necessary to get the 100-car coal trains up the grade.  The engines would return solo, “deadheaded.”

The post-war uptick in rail traffic was winding down but the cold war was not.  This brought an influx of government geologists who were in pursuit of uranium that was said to be contained in the exposed rock along the gorge. 

Reds remembers accompanying them with their diamond-tipped drill head the size of half-dollars.  They’d bore into the mountainside to pull out samples, careful to have him step aside when they came out as to not get hit by debris in the face and to prevent him from potential radiation exposure.

The above to views appear courtesy of the Central Jersey website.  The picture here below shows the junction when both the Central and the Valley were both operating and is looking northward, or toward west as the trains ran.

He also remembers watching in frozen pantomime, how the passing mail train passed by from Lehighton to Wilkes-Barre of the men inside sorting the mail on the fly, and how those men knew to look and wave to him most days. 

He also recalls how the engineers and firemen would throw him and his family hot potatoes, baked atop their boilers, as a special treat, like manna from heaven.

By 1958, the Valley Railroad ceased to require a resident worker. 

Reds was fifteen and despite pleas from his son that he wished to stay, James knew it was time for them to move.  He sought a transfer within the company. 

A modern day view shows the tracks for the most part remaining, except for the Central Jersey lines that are now the rails-to-trail of the Lehigh Gorge State Park. Beyond the port-a-john in the grassy meadow-like area at the trees is where the hotel and tower/depot once stood.  Photo by Ron Rabenold.

The house was in major disrepair with no prospects from the railroad to fix it.  It was time for the O’Donnells to say good-bye to their remote mountain home.  They were its last permanent residents.  The building was razed shortly after.

Today, tanks of propane for heating switches and solar-power aided by generators that are now replaced by underground electric, in addition to the precipitous drop in rail usage since then, all together have afforded the rail companies the ability to remove all full-time station workers from these outposts.

How the above triangle of land of the junction appears from Druckenmiller's porch. The Black Creek white-caps can be seen at the bottom left flowing up and left. Photo by Ron Rabenold.

It was in those last few years there that Reds became friends with Lansford physician Dr. Stanley Freeman Druckenmiller.  Druckenmiller owned a large section of land overlooking Penn Haven from above the abandoned planes of the Beaver Meadow and Hazleton Railroads.  His land also reached to the bottom abutting to the rail junction. He built a one-room cabin high in the clouds that remains there today.

This map courtesy of the Central Jersey Railroad website shows the configuration of buildings at Penn Haven from over 60 years ago.  The Valley tower building is still two-sided as well as the lesser in size CNJ Depot.  A residence is pictured beyond the Black Creek's entry into the river, is perhaps the stone foundation visible along the line in a draw in the moutain.  (Click here to see photos of it on another page of this blog.)

Dr. Druckenmiller’s roots extend back to the Kistler Valley (New Tripoli) farm of his grandparents Charles and Maria (Kistler) Druckenmiller.  They were married at the Ebenezer Union Church in 1841.  Charles fought with Co I of the 176 PA Volunteers in the Civil War.  Dr. Druckenmiller’s father was Wilson, who was the sixth child of eight children born to them.  (He had five brothers and two sisters.).

By 1880, Wilson Druckenmiller was working as a carpenter but still living unmarried on his parents’ farm.  In 1883 his mother died and by March of 1894, his father has also died.  It was somewhere in this time that Wilson made his move to the coal regions of Carbon County.

From 1900 until the 1930s, Wilson and his wife Mary lived in Weatherly.  Wilson worked as a carpenter for the silk works there.  Among their children were Erasmus, Stanley, and Barton.  Though his brothers too followed their father’s laborer vocation, Stanley sought a lifetime of study of medicine.

The doctor and his wife Fan (Thomas) lived and conducted his practice at 35 East Ridge Street in Lansford.  They had a daughter named Gretchen who married William Kellow.  He was the son of Joseph Edgar and Alice Kellow of Lansford.  He was a musician at one time in Lansford and he and his wife are buried in Nisky Cemetery in Bethlehem.

William worked for Baldwin Locomotives at Eddystone outside Philadelphia for a number of years before relocating his family to Tuscan Arizona.  Even though he lived outside the area for a long number of years, he kept his ties to the Lansford Panther Valley Lodge #677 for over fifty years.

The Drukenmillers also had a son, Stanley “Thomas” Druckenmiller who was married to Eleanor (White) and had worked for DuPont in Delaware for thirty-seven years in employee relations before retiring to Lake Harmony.  Stanley died in 2005 and William Kellow died in 1997.  According to her brother’s death notice, Gretchen (Druckenmiller) Kellow was still alive in 2005 and would have been about eighty-nine.

Even though Stanley spent most of his life living outside of the area, when he died in 2005, he was buried at Weatherly’s Union Cemetery.  Perhaps there is a Druckenmiller family plot there.

Dr. Druckenmiller's WWI Draft Card.

Druckenmiller was fond enough of the outdoors to purchase the top of the former planes that were abandoned in 1862.  The property had an access road from the outskirts of his hometown of Weatherly.  The doctor had big plans for this remote hunting get-away and saw more work than he could do on his own.

That’s when Reds became Dr. Druckenmiller’s right-hand man (or “Golden Boy” as the doctor liked to call him).  Because there was no one else around, Reds was a willing helper and a godsend of help to the middle-aged doctor.

Here is Druckenmiller's privy as it looks today.  The chimney and left side of the porch roof line is seen center of the open space to the left of the outhouse.  Photo by Ron Rabenold.

Without a phone or any other way of knowing when Druckenmiller was coming to work, Reds would be summoned to the top of the mountain by the doctor with blows from the horn of the yellow army jeep.

Hearing the horn and Reds knew he had a 450-foot elevation climb to do some work.  He’d walk along the cast-iron pipe that carried water to his home on his way.  Together, Reds and Druckenmiller would make food plots, planting pine and oak trees, and wrapping the saplings in fencing to keep the deer from eating off the tops.

Richard "Reds" O'Donnell: I have much gratitude to Kevin O'Donnell for providing the impetus for me to write this post which, like many, are long overdo.  And of course to Reds too, for graciously allowing me to pick his brain and allowing his story to be told here.  Thanks too to Al Zagofsky for allowing me to use this photo of Reds.

Though Drukenmiller is long gone, his cabin remains and still affords the hearty visitor a breath-taking view of the Lehigh Gorge and the steep hillsides of the Black Creek ravine.  The privy is also still there along with a few other outbuildings, all now on Lehigh Gorge State Park land.

 “I wished I had stayed in touch with the Druckenmiller’s after we moved away,” Reds now relates.  “He meant a lot to me...I guess I just kind of lost track of him due to my youth.”

Visiting Penn Haven today, one can find the solitude that Reds and Dr. Drukenmiller once appreciated here.  With a determined climb of 450-feet of elevation over 1,200-feet of run of these nearly 200-year-old planes, one can take in the peace and quiet, and enjoy the view that these men too once found in their lives.

 

This is the view from Dr. Druckenmiller's cabin atop the Lehigh and Black Creek Gorges today.  Photo by Ron Rabenold.

(Given its sparse and remote location, Penn Haven today can only be reached by the State Gorge Rails Trails path from Glen Onoko by foot or bicycle six miles up-river.  It is also about six miles from Weatherly on an abandoned set of tracks though it is not as easy to ride and it is about seven-miles down-river from the Rockport access.

Part two of this story will detail the fifty or so deaths from accidents and murders that occurred in the Penn Haven vicinity from the 1870s until 1910.

Ups and Downs, Breaths In, Breaths Out in Carbon County - A writer in repose

April 21, 2014, 5:35 pm

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Fall is certainly my favorite time of year to be in.
But Spring is the season that is hoped for.  On the tails of this Winter, it was yearned for.

At long last, in the past fourteen days, Spring finally arrived here.

It has been a productive winter as far as research for CulturedCarbonCounty.  Stories keep cropping up like a multi-headed hydra, as stories presented themselves and try as I might to finish one, three more would crop up in the midst.

My son Nate and his friend Cris Hess, the artist.  Atop Sleeping Bear above the Bear's Den.  Looking toward Flagstaff. Lehighton is out of frame left, Packerton in view, Jim Thorpe out of frame right.

Extant Nature after a harsh winter - The cotton wood catkin buds stand at the ready to spring forth across from Tank Hollow near Stony Creek.

Today I actually said the word "hiatus" to myself, in regard to the works of this blog.  Covering local history here is an insatiable mistress.

Like this relentless winter that had still been lurking over our shoulder as of just days ago, I find writing the stories I do to be both gratifying and exhilarating but the hours it takes in front of a computer screen typing and searching away and rough drafts and checking and double checking sources, can be brutally harsh at times.  (I've actually developed an impinged shoulder from sitting here in this computer-human symbiotic relationship in delivering this blog to Carbon County.)

And here, on April 21 on the inside of the Stony Creek curve off the Central Jersey rail mainline exists this severe overhang where perhaps the last snow of Carbon County remains.

There are times when we take in pure mountain air, (like at Hawk Falls, along the water reservoir, of Stony Creek, or Tank Hollow) holding in its sweetness, in both mind and body.  But as I was reminded by a friend recently, we too must remember to breathe out.  Which is why the word hiatus from local history writing entered the vernacular of my brain today.

Taking in things of beauty is high on my lists of things to do to relax as the last two weeks show here.  Looking back in such as recent a proximity as today, tells me that these whirlwind- of-good-time-memories-in-nature are all blurring together.  In a few months and in the ensuing years, they will only be traces of dust in the boot treads of my memory.  So I ask for my reader's indulgences to place this little resting spot here, a post of reflection of one of the most hoped for springs in recent memory.

The following pictures are representative of some high points of beauty atop some well known peaks around these parts, Mount Pisgah, above the Black Creek, and Sleeping Bear.  Interspersed and linking them together were hikes and bike rides along the Lehigh Gorge from Lehighton to Mud Run over these last two weeks.  All of it culminated with a satisfying Easter dinner eaten outside on a grand porch of a secluded cabin in White Haven.

She is just right - My beautiful wife Kim at Hawk Falls as it empties over the Mud Run Gorge.

I look forward to possibly taking some time to sit and read and think about something other than the multiple stories swimming around in my frontal and parietal lobes that are willing their way out onto my keyboard through my fingertips.  Balance comes to mind.

Life can be as sweet as the teaberries found all around this county come May.  It can be as harsh as the roots of horseradish in a Dutch wife's herb garden too.  It's important to take in what is freely given to us.  It too is important to freely give.

Happy Springtime Carbon County.  Thank you.

Lock #1 of the upper Grand is newly exposed as progress toward a new bridge is made.

Old and New - As piers for the new bridge are prepared, a silent testimony to the olden days of steam trains looms rusted at the right of the frame - an old water tender for the thirsty locomotives of the past.

The Rimbey twins clowning around at Hawk Falls entertains Kim.

Ron and Kim Along the Mud Run Gorge

Ron, Cris and Nate atop Sleeping Bear.

The Nesquehoning Junction control tower winds around the curve of the trestle as the lookout from Mt Pisgah hovers overhead.

The forty or so odd parents and students of the Lehighton Area Middle School Fifth Grade out for the annual Spring hike to the top of Mt Pisgah and on out to the Hackelbernie Tunnel.  The hike is also completed each Fall as well.  This year's Spring Hike was on a beautiful day before Easter, April 19th.

The Black Creek Ravine is at right and the Lehigh descends past Penn Haven Junction at left.  The view from Dr. Stanley F. Druckenmiller's front porch of his old hunting cabin.  Today the property is claimed by the Lehigh Gorge State Park..

One of the Rimbey twins proves Carbon residents are friendly as he says hello to a sportsman on the fly-fishing-only Mud Run Creek beneath the highest bridge on the Northeast Extension of the Turnpike.

The Writer in Repose - Breathing in, breathing out.

Penn Haven: Epicenter of Wrecks - Post 1 of 3

April 27, 2014, 7:48 pm

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Awareness.  Taking everything in.  Then, in a flash of time, a lapse of focus, it’s all set and you’re all in.

The accounts are full of people who, failed to recognize the situation that would cost them a limb, their life, or the multiple lives of others.  This post will examine the more than 120 deaths that occurred from 1874 until 1910 in the Penn Haven area, the epicenter of wrecks for Carbon’s rail history. 

News of the Mud Run Disaster, killing around 60 people made front page of Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper in New York.  It is one of the deadliest accidents in our nation's early rail history.

The dangerous curves and steep grades combined with Penn Haven’s paradoxically busy yet remote location to create unparalleled ruin and heartbreak among the many rails of Carbon County.

For more on Penn Haven and how the O'Donnell family was the last family to live there, click here to visit part one of this series on Penn Haven.

Post #2: Steep Grades and Dangerous Curves - The Wrecks around Penn Haven
Post #3 of 3 - Penn Haven Train Wrecks - The Mud Run Disaster of October 10, 1888

This junction hosted the confluence of rail traffic from the mainlines of the Central Jersey Railroad (The “Central”) and the Lehigh Valley Railroad (The “Valley”).  It also merged with the Mahanoy and Hazelton Railroad’s (the “M & H”) branch-line (later absorbed by the LVRR). 

An early picture of the Penn Haven Junction looking northward or to rail workers as a "westward" direction, as these lines of the L.V.R.R. on the right are heading toward Buffalo New York.  The mainlines of the Central Jersey appear on the left.  The peaked shadow of the L.V.R.R. Hotel at Penn Haven, the home of workers and occasional hunters, can be seen in the Central tracks.

Junctions are notoriously dangerous places.  But this junction has proven to be a challenge for both man and machine.  Trains of 125 cars or more, filled with the world’s most desired anthracite, rumbled through the twisty Black Creek at grades of nine-percent, to join with those of the Central and the Valley from Hazleton and Weatherly. 

It wasn’t any easier on the main-lines of the Central or the Valley that ran through the Lehigh Gorge with equally challenging grades and curves so severe they nearly turned back onto themselves, almost 180 degrees.  Full trains going upgrade, or westward, sometimes needed special assistance from an extra engine to help in the towing.  

Here is an official railroad map showing the twisting curves of Penn Haven at right to Rockport at left.  Notice how close Penn Haven and Rockport are "as the crow flies." The critical, nearly 180-degree tight turning radius in between these locations is the Stony Creek Curve.  The narrow turning radius of Rockport was lessened by the tunnel driven by the Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1884, the Valley's first tunnel.

Because of the coal wharves and inclined planes that existed here until of 1862 flood, the "old Penn Haven Junction" was much farther down the river.  After the floods and the legislation forbidding the LC N C from rebuilding the canal, the junction was reconfigured to its more modern layout.  Today it exists as it once did but with the absence of the Central Jersey lines now being the bicycling/snowmobiling trail of the Lehigh Gorge State Park.

Here is a real photo from the 1950s or earlier of the Penn Haven Junction with annotations.  Courtesy of the Central New Jersey Railroad.

Likewise, loaded trains coming down slope, or eastward, sometimes had problems with seized brakes or brake failures resulting in a car being sided as a “hot-box.”

Overcoming these challenges wasn’t always easy.  Mishaps due to equipment failure, the severe winter weather, and simple human error turned deadly.  One accident alone, the Mud Run Disaster of October 10, 1888 accounts for about sixty, or nearly half of the total rail associated deaths here.

An early steam engine, replete with a "cowcatcher" front apron, is seen here traveling north or "westward" toward Penn Haven. Photo courtesy of Richard Palmer.

The wreck at Mud Run is considered to be among the worst of the early national train wrecks.  (The Library of Congress even gives it its own title in its card catalog system.)  The initial reports lit up the telegraph wires with over sixty killed and over 200 injured.  (This wreck will be examined in a future post.)

Doctors were on call up and down the entire Lehigh Valley, wherever the tracks of commerce were located.  They stood ready to be pressed into service at a moment’s notice.  The railroads also had wreck crews who similarly were on call awaiting dispatch. 

Each station had a telegraph operator who could relay urgent messages of need to the towns like Lehighton where the specially built and supplied rail cars stood ready.  These had the latest medical equipment such as stretchers and tools the surgeons would need to deal with life-threatening injuries that many times involved the loss of limbs. 

Often times the only assistance the surgeons could provide was to buy the worker enough time to simply say goodbye to friends and loved ones who would gather in bated vigils at their home stations.

If need be, these same cars transport the injured to St’ Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem.  St. Lukes was the nearest local hospital then.  It was built by Asa Packer and his Valley Railroad for that explicit purpose.

The John Wilkes engine as it approaches Penn Haven Junction on the Central Jersey line.  The photo was taken from the L.V.R.R. station tower. Tracks to the left are "Valley" tracks and those bearing off to the right are headed toward Weatherly/Hazleton on the old "M & H" line.

Likewise, Coaldale’s Miner’s Memorial Hospital (originally named “Panther Creek Valley Hospital”) stood ready near the mines of northern Carbon County for the same reason: railroading and mining were both highly dangerous jobs.  (Which makes it all the more fitting that St’ Luke’s Hospital has taken over the Coaldale Miner’s Hospital.)

There was a medical society known as the “Association of Lehigh Valley Railroad Surgeons.”  The Honorable Dr. Jacob Gilbert Zern of Weissport served as it’s secretary in the 1880s. 

Dr. Zern was originally from Montgomery County and was a veteran of the Civil War.  Certainly, his war experience helped prepare him for the wounded horrors he would encounter as a railroad surgeon.     

Besides serving as the first president of the Carbon County Medical Society, Dr. Zern held several local and state political posts.  He was postmaster of Weissport, mayor of Lehighton, and state representative.  He was an associate judge of Carbon County in 1894 and a state senator in 1902.  

Unlike today’s rail travel that is dispatched and controlled from one station in Harrisburg, each junction was manned to handle these duties.  Penn Haven itself rests on an inside cleft or curve of the mountain.  Many workers lived on site to do a number of jobs, from hitching and unhitching cars and engines, to making safe switchings for the many trains passing through Penn Haven. 

A reverse modern view of the above photo of Penn Haven Junction.  The M & H branchlines are going off to the left, while the tracks on the right are Norfolk Southern lines, formerly Conrail, formerly L. V. R. R.  The center path, now the Lehigh Gorge Rail-Trail lines, were at one time the Central Jersey lines.

Worker Deaths Around Penn Haven:

Abram Arner and his wife Mary originally of Lehighton lived there for a time in the 1880s.  Perhaps God was testing him as the proverbial Job of the Old Testement. 

“Abe’s” trouble began around 1881 when he lost his foot in a rail accident (most likely precipitating his move to the junction to be closer to his work).  Troubles continued when in April of 1883, he buried a young child due to illness, had a second child with both legs broken, in addition to his wife being “at the point of death.”

Then, about a month later, infant Carrie May Arner died.  Five years later, their seven year old son Robert William died.  Also living there was another Arner, Andrew, who buried an infant child.  (No other record of these Arners exist, therefore a relationship of Andrew and Abram is not known.)

In October of 1879, the little girl of the Gallagher family living at Penn Haven was struck and killed by a passenger train there.  The child was “thrown high into the air, falling down the embankment, breaking both legs, neck and arms.”  The mother was said to have stood in her doorway of the hotel, watching in frozen, helpless shock.

Both a woman and a two year old young toddler drowned at Penn Haven in separate incidents.  In 1891, a woman from Alden, PA, apparently passing through was said to have fallen into the river.  There was no description of how she could have fallen, nor was there any speculation of foul play or signs of self-destruction.  

Her body was never found.  (There are records of people who traveled to Carbon by rail, purchased poison at local pharmacies, and drank themselves to the netherworld here; more on these in future posts.)

Another view of the junction from the M & H junction lines.  The twin Valley line station towers hide the Valley Hotel behind it.

In 1886, the toddler daughter of Frank Eck drowned behind their home at Penn Haven.  Eck was the section boss of the repair department on the Valley.  They made their home in the hotel built by and for the lodging of railroad employees.  Some stayed temporary, others, such as “deadheaders” only stayed temporarily when passing through to another assignment. 

A newer picture reveals the ravages of time to these remote buildings.  The dual tower reduced to one.  The roof of the dilapidated hotel to the rear.

The twenty-room hotel was nestled inside the “Y” of the tracks at the junction, between the dual Valley control and telegraph tower and the Black Creek to the rear.  Across this swift, rocky-bottomed clear watered stream rested a board about eighteen inches wide used to cross the stream.  In the briefest of moments, the child was upon the plank, and with the unsteadiness of her age, wobbled into the waters.  The forceful current washed her into the Lehigh. 

That was one of many sad tragedies to occur here.  Thomas J. Hogan, originally of White Haven, worked as the station agent and operator at the junction for about four years.  In April of 1885, a recently fired and disgruntled “gandy-dancer” (a section-gang or track hand) named Michael Colyer (a “Hungarian” as the paper reported) decided to take out the frustrations of his unemployment on Mr. Hogan. 

A slightly older shot, possibly around 1958, the last year of when the Richard "Reds" O'Donnell family lived in a ten-room half of the hotel.

He harassed Hogan by repeatedly entering the station and messy up the paperwork and time tables.  The taunts increased until Hogan tried to physically force Colyer out the door.  To which, Coyler fired two shots from a concealed revolver.  The first shot landed in Hogan’s left breast, causing him to exclaim, “Oh! My God.”  Hogan was able to push him aside as the second shot missed, he left the station, and entered the hotel.  He placed both his arms on the bar, tried to speak and could not.  He sank to the floor dead.

A fireman from a shifting engine heard the commotion, tricked Coyler to come toward him, to which the fireman was able to knock the murder to the floor with a “blow of his arm.”  He was taken to jail in Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe).

In September of 1887, the skeletal remains of a man were found beneath a large pile of rocks at the junction.  Evidence that the man was “foully dealt with” was arrived at by the bullet found lodged in his cheek.

Further examination of accidents occurring around Penn Haven Junction from 1874 to 1910 finds an additional thirty people who lost their lives in falls from trains and from mutilations of being run over at this busy rail hub.

Thirteen of them were rail workers while another seventeen were passengers died at and near the junction.  All of the following died at Penn Haven unless otherwise noted.  It should be noted though that nearly all of the “civilian” causalities were those illegally traveling or walking along the tracks.

The Penn Haven tower after the hotel was razed.

Jacob Booterman, a brakeman for the Valley was run over and cut in two while shifting cars at the junction in February 1876.  Another brakeman, twenty-four year old Bernard Devers who lived at Penn Haven with his parents slipped between the two oil tanks he was coupling and was “crushed in a terrible manner.”  He survived long enough to be taken home to die in the company of his parents (August 19, 1879). 

On September 14, 1880, brakeman Jeremiah Rockwell fell off his train at the junction and killed instantly. 

Martin Gauley/Gawley (b. 1861) and his brother James (b. 1859) both lived and worked out of Penn Haven as the sole support of their widowed mother Mary and their sister Bridget.  (Prior to their father Owen’s death in the 1860s, they lived at Lehigh Tannery).  Martin, a brakeman on a coal train, was killed in Catasauqua when he tried to signal another train and was struck by the No. 1 passenger train.  He had one arm and both legs severed and he “survived but a few minutes.”

Thomas Begley, Central Employee run over at Penn Haven, killed instantly, January 30, 1881.  Another worker, George Zimmerman fell and lost both legs and died en route to Hazleton in August of 1883.

Henry Winterstein, a veteran of the Civil War of 132 PA Regiment, Co G (though Patriotism of Carbon County lists a “Henry Werstein” in Co F), a car inspector on the Valley killed at Penn Haven June 5, 1887.

 George Clevell, a son-in-law of Lehighton native Owen Klotz was killed instantly upon being cut in half falling between two cars in October 1887.

Likewise Edward Green of White Haven was coupling cars at the junction and slipped beneath the wheels and killed instantly (October 1, 1889). 

Here you can see the elevated tracks of the Lehigh Valley Railroad above from the current trail and the former Central Jersey tracks just below Hetchel's Tooth curve out ahead.  About 1 mile above Glenn Onoko and about 5 miles below Penn Haven.

Paulolo Zurick, a section hand on the Valley living at Hetchel Tooth (with his foreman Patrick Mulligan) received a visit from his brother he lived and worked at Penn Haven.  That afternoon, after walking his brother part of the five miles back to Penn Haven, Paulolo was struck by a westward near Bear Creek. The train “passed over the remains, mangling them in a terrible manner. 

The paper reported that the “deceased was a Hungarian of more than average intelligence.”  (The accounts are full of less than complimentary attitudes from the “native born” residents toward “foreigners” at this time, especially those from Eastern Europe, and specifically “Hungarians.”)

A postcard from near the water tank station below Penn Haven from a postcard of about 100 years ago.  Note the finely maintained ballast stone along these tracks.  The L.V.R.R. was known for keeping their ballast in impeccable order.  Photo courtesy of Bill Schwab.

August 24, 1893, Lehighton native and engineer William F. Hofford was cited for heroism, having the “presence of mind that the remainder of the section gang escaped death.”  Two workers were struck and killed. 

Hofford (b. April 1865) was married to Ellen (B. December 1864) and they lived on Third Street.  He remained as an engineer through the early 1900s. 

In 1910, at the death of Maria Culton of Weissport, Hofford purchased the large brick building from the Culton estate and built his own silk mill enterprise.  Hofford had a step daughter named Hellen Hofford (b. 1899). 

On June 2, 1901, conductor Charles Lentz of Hazleton, thirty-six, fell off his train at the junction.  His normal run was from Hazleton to Packerton.  Three cars plus the caboose “passed over his body severing it in twain.”  He left a wife and four children.

John Flick was originally from White Haven but had been living and worked as a flagman out of Lehighton for the Valley Railroad in 1901.  He was a widower of two years with three grown children at the time of his accident in 1910 (Son John and daughters Mrs. Robert Fritzinger and Miss Irene all of Lehighton).  

He fell from his train at Penn Haven on a Monday night on August 8th, severing his legs and other injuries to his body.  When the lights from the lanterns of his concerned comrades reached his face, he said plainly, “I’m all in boys.”

He was “tenderly” picked up by his crew, brought to the hospital car, where “local surgeons” dressed his wounds.  The car was dispatched to St Luke’s in Bethlehem where it was plain he wouldn’t last.  Shortly after 1:30 pm the next day he had passed.  

However he was “conscious almost to the last and conversed with those about him.” 

"I'm All In Boys" - John Flick's grave as he rests at Gnaden Hutten Cemetery in Lehighton.

Civilian Deaths Around Penn Haven:

My youth was filled with stern warnings and examples of the many people who died along the railroad tracks.  We were told to stay away.  Rail traffic in my youth was greater than it is today, but it was nothing like it was 100 years ago.

The accounts of full of people who either used the rails as a pathway to walk from town to town, or who were tempted to try to hitch a free ride.  An 1880 editorial spoke of the filly of do so for the sake of a “few cents.”  The foolishness of “men and boys” who do so to “gratify a venturesome spirit of deviltry” was a “hazardous and dangerous practice.”

As sorts of characters could be found around the tracks of my youth.  And also into my mother’s youth, who filled my head with stories of “hobos” who passed through town and who worked the sympathies of my grandmother at the family store for ends of meat and other foods.

A stranger in these parts in September of 1877 was killed by the No. 6 train bound for New York known to be working his way to Mahanoy City just below Penn Haven.  His only identification was the name “Gill” “pricked upon his arm in India ink.” 

Later that month, another unknown man, a “supposed tramp” riding on top of the coal cars and somehow fell from the train and was run over and killed at the junction.

In February of 1880, William Phifer, a sixteen year old from East Mauch Chunk, was at Penn Haven and decided to hop a coal train home.  As he he hopped from car to car across the piles of coal, he misjudged and fell between two cars a short distance from the station.  “His body was terribly mangled and his death quick.”

 A traveling salesman from Pottsville was killed after his leg was severed by the passing cars at the Penn Haven station.  William Hadley got off his passenger train at the junction and went inside the hotel to “procure a cork for a medicine bottle that he had with him.”  (Many folks drank “medicine” for whatever ailed them in those days, most times as a thinly disguised motive to drink alcohol among those who had a distaste for intemperate people.)

While in the hotel, he thought he heard his train pulling out without him, in a frenzied rush to his train, he ran into the path of on oncoming freighter.  Drs Latham and J. B. Tweedle of Weatherly amputated his leg above the knee. He was taken to the Gilbert House, but he only survived until the next morning.  His wife arrived later that day and “took the corpse home.”  Hadley was only thirty-eight and left five kids (November 1881).

In June of 1886, forty-five year old John Essling was on his way home to Weatherly from a day in court.  A carpet weaver by trade, he was a witness in a larceny case.  He jumped onto a coal train in Mauch Chunk and rode it until it stopped to take on water from the tank a mile and a half below Penn Haven. 

Another Bill Schwab postcard about a mile and looking southward toward Glen Onoko.

Being thirsty himself, he jumped off and proceeded to the peaceful, cool water spring coming off the mountain side there.  As he crossed the double Valley lines, he failed to hear the No. 7 passenger train. 

The collision threw him up the embankment, from which he rolled under the wheels, “severing the head and legs from the body.”  Workers picked up the “terribly mutilated” body which presented a “ghastly sight.”  

A modern look at the spring near the water taking station about 1 mile below Penn Haven.  This would have been the last scene John Essling's eyes might have taken in before he was killed. Photo by Ronald Rabenold.

In August of 1886, two “Hungarians” were walking along the tracks near Bear Creek (about two miles below the junction), were run over and killed by the No. 18 train.

Another “unknown man,” this one about sixty years old was found dead with a “large hole in his head,” somehow affixed to the cowcatcher of a Valley train.  

He was presumed to have been walking between White Haven and Penn Haven and was struck without the engineer noticing (Sunday, December 4, 1887).  No one claimed the body and he was buried in an unmarked grave in “Laurytown” (A small community near Weatherly and Rockport.).

One Sunday afternoon, a “crowd of boys” had gathered to view a train wreck near Penn Haven.  The two o’clock afternoon express train from Hazleton to Philadelphia was running on time and “at a high rate of speed.”   The boys were walking home to Weatherly and they noticed a special train approaching them.  The engineer whistled and waved frantically at them, but they misunderstood. 

The competing sounds of the special train and the express train set the boys into a helpless position in the path of the express.  The men in the special train were “horror stricken” when the “two forms were dashed to instant death before their eyes…the mangled bodies of the two lads were taken by the special train to their homes.”  They were George Reese, age 17, and Albert Weeks, 13, of Weatherly (March 1891).

Similarly, two loggers were also walking along the Valley line between Weatherly who had been working for “Mr. Hawk on the Broad Mountain.”  They came off the mountain and took the track to their “lumbering tent near the Iron Bridge.”

They stepped away from an east bound train but stepped into the path of the No. 6 passenger train approaching from the other direction.  Both were killed immediately.  Both were from Monroe County and married.  One left two children, the other left six.  One of them was named “Dotter” (August 1891).

The water tending station as it appears just above the current Jim Thorpe bridge near where the new bridge construction is taking place.

On July 2, 1892, two “strangers” were walking below Penn Haven near the water station.  They were walking along the train stopped taking on water, when the No. 6 again rumbled through, catching the boy of about fourteen unaware.  He had his “brains knocked out” and died instantly. 

However, the man, presumed to be his father of about forty-five years, got out of the way of the train in time.  The was severely injured though after being struck by the remains of the boy striking him.  They were found lying side-by-side.  The engineer could not see them due to the curve in the road.  They were taken to Mauch Chunk station and the father died several hours later.  They were believed to be recent immigrants, said to have been “Russian” or “Arabian peddlers.”

News of the death of Jennie Rex as it appeared on the front page of the Lehighton Press in August 1901.

Jennie Rex, the “estimable” young lady of the Mahoning Valley too was on an enjoyable Sunday afternoon enjoying the beauty of Glen Onoko one July day in 1891 when the sounds of two competing trains baffled her senses. 

Her friends were able to stand out of the way between the two tracks, but Jenny could not dash off to the side in time and made a vain attempt to outrun the train.  She nearly cleared the end of the bridge when she tripped and was horribly mangled.

Her remains were placed onto the second section of the No. 4 passenger train back to Lehighton where she was brought to the Lehighton station accompanied by her two friends, Frederick Long, Jr. and Miss Mertz.  Jenny was a first cousin to my grandfather, Zach Rabenold who both about the same age. 

Jennie Rex was my grandfather Zach Rabenold's first cousin.

Jennie's grave in St. John's Cemetery in the Mahoning Valley.

One way the Rex's tried to assuage the grief from the loss of their only child was to take in my grandfather's youngest five year old sister, Myrtle "Mertie" Rabenold.  But Nathan and Alvena Rex once again had their hearts broken when Mertie died just a few years later.  Mertie, my great aunt, is buried next to Jennie.

I grew up intrigued by my grandmother’s emotionally vivid account of this and other deaths of her youth.  Though eighty years removed, her retelling felt freshly painful and I know these stories included here now appear in cyberspace because of the impact these retellings had on me in my youth. 

Jennie's adopted sister Mertie's premature grave rests next to Jenie.  Mertie was Zach Rabenold's younger sister.

Mamie was from another time, born in 1889 to German immigrants.  She’s been gone for more than thirty years.  And writing this story makes me miss her all the more.

Next Post: The Mud Run Train Disaster and the derailments of Ox Bow Curve.

For a Virtual Tour of the Lehigh Gorge, click here to be taken to another post on this website.


Reds O'Donnell is the Last Man Standing at Penn Haven.

Monet Still-life in Real-life: Springtime comes to Kemmerer Park

May 3, 2014, 9:42 am

≫ Next: Steep Grades and Dangerous Curves of the Lehigh Gorge around Penn Haven - Train Wrecks Post 2 of 3

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Considering what Kemmerer Park once was, taking in its beauty today makes the progress there even more commendable.

Click here for a post here at CultureCarbonCounty for a story and more pictures of the renovation efforts here in the past few years.

Kemmerer Park has had its ups and downs.  Here it is, May 2, 2014, at near peak perfection.

Here is a view looking down to the river from the "chutes" from the Switchback.  Even on clear days, Victorians in their finest cloths traveling from Mauch Chunk to the East Side needed to pass beneath this menagerie, getting drippings of coal soot on them.

A river view looking toward the north end of the property before Kemmerer built his mansion.  You can see people traveling by horseback on the road with the chutes passing overhead. Many Victorians of the day complained of the filth that would drop on them as they passed beneath.

From the late 1840s until the Hauto Railroad Tunnel was completed in 1872, what is today the park was at one time a dusty, noisy cog in the anthracite supply chain from mine to river.  The Switchback Gravity Railroad deposited car after car of coal here onto a chute system that took the coal from a platform from a 200 foot terrace above the river.  Here is where countless tons of coal were deposited into the Lehigh.

But the tunnel allowed direct rail access into the coal fields and circumvented the necessity of this wharf. In that year, a contemporary industrialist of Asa Packer, by the name of Mahlon S. Kemmerer took ownership of the property and built a fine mansion there (roughly where the basketball court is today, where the overarching coal chutes once passed over).

Mahlon had married Annie Leisenring, the daughter of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Companay superintendent John Leisenring.  The Leisenrings and Kemmerers became two prominent families in the later part of the boom to strike Jim Thorpe.  They amassed enough wealth for their future generations to enjoy and still profit from today.

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One of the flower urns as it looks today.

Urns from the Kemmerer estate of a slightly different variety.

However Mahlon could never quite escape the business shadow of the Packers, and so he struck out to Wyoming to see what mineral development he could establish there near Jackson Hole.  The move was a successful one, so much so that the town of Kemmerer Wyoming was established in his honor.

Here is what it looked like just a few years ago.  The park wasn't even this nice just five years ago.  And now that it has reached a modern zenith, it is hoped that its new beauty is here to stay.

The Kemmerers though kept their mansion on this hillside for many years.  And for many of those years, the contents of antiques and personal items remained there intact and untouched by the family.  Perhaps one day they hoped they would return and so they kept the house open for them.  But it eventually fell to disrepair and was torn down.  The property was given to the town of Jim Thorpe and it became a park.

However in the 1970s and 1980s it fell to great disrepair and there was talk of closing it down.  Lately, revitalization efforts have centered around the restoration of the Kemmerer Carriage.  It was in great disrepair, its roof was caving in.  Through the efforts of the park committee and especially from John Drury's efforts of securing grants from the Kemmerer Family Foundation, the carriage house renovations have completed enough to allow for a full-time live-in caretaker there.

Maintenance of the pathways and over-growing foliage over the years fell to the volunteer efforts of Bob Handwerk.  He and his family have owned the Harry Packer Mansion for quite some time now.

Enjoying a living moment, in this real-life Impressionistic painting is a true treat in life to be savored.  My thanks to all of the above people for making this happen.

Steep Grades and Dangerous Curves of the Lehigh Gorge around Penn Haven - Train Wrecks Post 2 of 3

May 11, 2014, 12:46 pm

≫ Next: Mud Run Train Disaster - "A name of terror for all time" - Wrecks of Penn Haven Post 3 of 3

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Events of consequence, deadly ones on the rails, often turn on the smallest details.

Post #1 covered the accidental deaths of those struck and run over on the rails around Penn Haven (including two murders…click here to read that post). 

Follow-up Post #2 and #3 will report on the derailments and train collisions that occurred here from 1874 to 1910. 

This undated wreck, most likely in the early 1900s, occurred just below the Stony Creek curve at a slight curve known as the Barn Door Curve. The Stony Creek curve is upriver and at the extreme right of the picture. The photographer's back is facing Penn Haven, about one-half mile down grade or timetable east.

The derailments and collisions that occurred in the vicinity, including wrecks around Ox Bow Curve will be discussed here in Post #2. 
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Related links on this blog:

Penn Haven - Epicenter of Wrecks - Post #1 of 3
Penn Haven Train Wrecks - The Mud Run Disaster - Post #3 of 3
Carbon's Most Desolate Place Penn Haven - the Reds O'Donnell Story
Lehigh Gorge Virtual Tour on Cultured Carbon County

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The most tragic of these accidents, among the worst in our national rail history, was the sixty-plus death accident that happened at Mud Run on October 10, 1888.  The Mud Run disaster will be covered in Post #3. 

All told, the accumulated deaths of all three posts exceed 120 killed.

Railroad companies were driven for profit, as they should be.  And certainly there were a lot of deadly accidents associated with this transportation system.  But they also invested sizeable capital into the construction and operation. 

These companies benefitted from an efficient enterprise.  It was in their best interests to be as incident free as possible.   

Many people are unaware of the many details these companies took to ensure safe transport of its stock and passengers.  The interlocking signal and switch system for one, was a huge safety innovation.

Likewise, the engineering that went into the rails, as far as banking on curves, is often overlooked.  During this time the rails were banked on curves, as well as the outer rail raised higher than the inside rail, to allow freight trains to travel up to forty-miles an hour.  Once “express trains” were added, rails were banked to allow for speeds of up to sixty miles per hour.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad (the “Valley”) owned the best routes for delivering the world’s most favored anthracite the world over.  The Valley in fact owed its very existence to the Lehigh River.  But the Lehigh was also its biggest liability.

The Valley and the New Jersey Central (the “Central”) followed the dangerous curves of the Lehigh River.  In order for the Valley’s famed “Black Diamond” and other express trains to run from New York City to Buffalo, it had to roll through New Jersey and up the twisty Lehigh Gorge to get to Buffalo. 

This circuitous route was necessary for coal freight.  But the “jet-setter” passengers of the late 1800s held it in disdain.  The mix of so much freight interspersed with passenger service was at odds with each other with costly consequences.

This Valley passenger train heads timetable westward from the Ox Bow curve toward Penn Haven.  Note the slight embankment between the Valley and Central tracks to the right.   The grade between them is level at Glen Onoko rising to about fifteen feet at the Ox Bow and then back down to level as it approaches Penn Haven.

Keeping Penn Haven as our focal point, a quick examination of this area reveals what the Lehigh Valley Railroad was up against.  Two miles up grade or westward, you will find the “Barn Door Curve” just before reaching the Stony Creek curve. 

The Stony Creek is perhaps the second tightest of all the Lehigh Gorge curves.  Trains here completed a near 180-degree turn on a tight radius.  This mattered more to the Jersey Central mainline which hugged the tight inside turn of the river.  The Valley, splitting off at Penn Haven to the opposite bank, rode around the inside cleft of Tank Hollow.    

Travel seven miles above Penn Haven and trains arrived at Rockport.  It had a small station and a village at Indian Run.  This was the Valley’s toughest curve.  It was so severe that it nearly folded back onto itself. 

This curve was circumvented when the Rockport Tunnel made a shortcut through the mountain.  It was the Valley’s first tunnel, driven in 1884.  One mile beyond there, toward White Haven, is another tight inside curve at Mud Run.

The Ox Bow Curve as it looks from atop Broad Mountain.  The entire curve is one-mile long, beginning just south of Penn Haven and just north of Glen Onoko.  The beginning of the curve, out of frame left, is where Bear Creek enters the Lehigh.

None of these curves though holds the distinction as being the most deadly curve. The Ox Bow seems to hold that distinction.  It is about one-mile in length.  It begins about three miles down-grade from Penn Haven and about two miles up-grade from Glen Onoko.  One mile outside of the Glen is an inside curve known as Hetchel’s Tooth.

Being struck or run over was a constant worry to rail workers as seen in Post #1.  

Workers lived with the possibility of collisions and derailments too.  Sometimes, even the simplest of equipment failure lead to death.  Some were scalded to death by steam from the boiler.  And of course many were horribly mangled in twisted iron flung with speed and force. 

Here is another view below the Ox Bow of an area known as Hetchel's Tooth.  To the left is the end of the Ox Bow curve. Toward the right, is near Glen Onoko.  East side of Jim Thorpe can be seen distant center in the area known as the "Kettle" for its resemblance to one.  Photo by Ronald Rabenold.

Equipment Failure:

December 20, 1875 - Monday

A rail broke on the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad (this rail company was later absorbed by the L. V. R. R) causing the engine to charge down the embankment into the river.  Killed were the fireman and also the brakeman Luke Wait.  Wait's body was shipped to Lehighton in a “neat coffin” and sent to his home in South Easton on the 4:35 pm train.

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August 1, 1884 - Friday

Boiler explosions could be violent.  There could be a weak seam, low water level, or a faulty pressure release valve.  The destruction was often times utterly forceful and complete.

Engine #146 known as the “Mohawk” blew its boiler just two miles north of White Haven at Brady’s Switch.

The #146 was assisting a heavy train of coal cars up the mountain when something failed on the boiler.  Four men on board were most likely killed instantly: Both engineer Jacob Hassell (age 42) and his son, brakeman John Hassell (age 18), fireman John Armbruster (age 30) and telegraph operator R. S. Smith (age 21) from Nescopek.  All except Smith were from Mauch Chunk.

The explosion of the #146’s boiler left wreckage across the tracks.

Engineer Michael Greaney of Engine #345 was drawing a train of 125 loaded coal cars down the mountain.  By the time he noticed the obstruction, it was too late for any of his remediation’s to have much effect, his train too heavy to be stopped in time.

Far off, some three miles away, a farmer was reaping hay in his fields.  He heard what he described as the rumble of an earthquake.  His horses were said to have become “unmanageable in the reaper.”

The tracks were destroyed for a “considerable distance,” the railroad iron “torn from its fastenings” and the bed and ballast were “transferred to a hole in the ground.”

Engineer Hassell was found a hundred yards from the engine, among “a mass of wreck, mangled so horribly that it was difficult to identify.”  Fireman Armbruster was found 200 yards away under a pile of debris.  Young Hassell was found in a ditch one hundred yards away with his “legs blown off.”

Engineer Hassell had a premonition just days before the wreck.  He told his wife of it and she tried to discount and allay his fears and discount his beliefs in the powers of knowing.   But Hassell bought a “Knights of Honor” policy anyway.  His widow was to collect $2,000 from it.  The company was said to have incurred $50,000 in the accident.

A “large gang of men” worked there all day.  It wasn’t until noon that the trains could run through that way again.  The Valley trains were diverted over the Philadelphia and Reading tracks between Wilkes-Barre and Penn Haven until then.

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An old picture of the Valley tracks somewhere south of Penn Haven junction.

November 21, 1891 – Saturday

A broken wheel sent another coal train into the river at Penn Haven. Ten cars in all went over the steep bank into the Lehigh.  One of the crew, Michael Polsko, was thrown from the derailed train and onto the opposing track, laid out helplessly incapacitated. 

Just then, an ill-timed train proved to be the terminal event of his life.  Both of his legs were cut off in addition to his other injuries.  The hospital car arrived and whisked him to Bethlehem to St Luke’s Hospital.  But as the paper reported “he cannot recover.”

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November 10, 1898 – Thursday

“John McNally met Death like a Hero”

Another accident killed six due to a failure of the air brakes.  Although it occurred slightly above the studied range near Wilkes-Barre, it bears special note because local men were killed.  It also shows how the Mud Run disaster became ingrained in our local vernacular. 

It was ten years and one month to the day after Mud Run accident, the most costly Valley wreck in terms of life lost.  However the 1898 accident was described as the “most destructive accident ever” to occur on the railroad. 

Though only six were killed, this wreck was said to have had one of the highest financial impacts because three engines were involved.  Unlike the Mud Run wreck that was blamed on human error, this one was deemed unavoidable because of the failure of the air brakes.

This Central  passenger car is heading down river near Hetchel's Tooth.  The steepness of grade through the gorge as well as the dangerously sharp curves played roles is numerous accidents here.

It was an early Friday morning, at 12:31, when the Buffalo Express, the No. 5 train drawn by Engine #417, passed through Lehighton.  It was an hour late, and as a result, two trains met on a single track instead of the double track further along.  

Both trains were said to be “heavy,” composed of several cars each.   Engine #444, with Lehighton resident engineer John McNally with fireman Fred Glasser of Mauch Chunk, was called upon to assist a heavy train up the steep mountain grade. 

Engine #444 (McNally/Glasser) joined up with the No. 6 train with Engine #425 (D. E. Price/William Yoxheimer).  They left Wilkes-Barre at 3:00 am headed toward White Haven.  It was ordered to pull off at siding #7 and to wait for the No. 5 train (Engine #417) to pass. 

The #417 (John Rohlfing/John Boyle) was coming down grade and was also ordered to wait at the siding.  As previously mentioned, the #417 was running late.  These two trains should have passed each other beyond Wilkes-Barre, near Pittston on a double set of tracks.  Instead, they were heading toward each other on a single track, at a fast speed.

This aerial shot shows the trestles at Glen Onoko at the lower left and Hetchel's Tooth curve at the top.  At the right where the river is obscured by the hill was the famed Hotel Wahnetah Resort that burned down around 1917.

The heavy train No. 5 could not stop and passed the siding at a “good rate of speed.”  Suddenly, there was the glare of opposing headlights on the same track. All three engineers reversed engines at once.  All were said to have stuck to their posts until the end.

All three engines were totally wrecked, the passenger coaches were said to “crush like eggshells, wrecked into a mass of rubbish and kindling wood.”

The dead were engineer John McNally, fireman William Yoxheimer of White Haven, fireman Fred Glasser of Mauch Chunk, express manager John McGreggor of Wilkes-Barre, brakeman Jacob Engleman of Easton, and engineer D. E. Price of Easton.

Glasser and Yoxheimer were killed in their engines, McGreggor and Engleman were found “horribly crushed” beneath the engines several hours later. 

Both engineer Rohlfing and fireman Boyle jumped just before the crash and escaped serious injury and death.

McNally lived for about six hours after the crash.  Staying at his post, he suffered painful scalding burns from the steam of his own boiler.  He had just moved to Lehighton from White Haven.  His home was under construction, the foundation had only recently been completed on his Coal Street lot.

Each engine was valued at $15,000.  The passenger car total amounted to $5,000 each.  The White Haven paper paid homage to their lost son:

“John McNally met death like a hero. He could have jumped before the collision as his train was running comparatively slow. But he stuck to his throttle saying before he died that he feared it would be another Mud Run. His first thought was for the passengers and to save them he died…may his memory long be cherished and his devotion to duty emulated.”

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The “Ox Bow Curve” Incidents

No place in the area under study had more wrecks than the “Ox Bow Curve.”  It is an inside curve with a slightly steeper turning radius than the one at Stony Creek.  The distinctive difference here is that both the Lehigh Valley and the Jersey Central double mainlines are running side by side. 

The Valley lines are on the mountain side and were laid out on an elevated plane at places as much as fifteen feet above the Central lines.  (At Glen Onoko they are on the level with each other, rising to about fifteen feet by the Ox Bow, and then back to level once again at Penn Haven.)

June 19, 1898 – 4:30 Sunday afternoon - Jersey Central Wreck

The Central No. 706 passenger train was said to be going sixty miles per hour through the Ox Bow curve when it jumped the track and “ploughed into the stone wall” of the raised Valley mainline.  

Here is how the elevated plane of the Valley looks in the vicinity of wrecks around the Ox Bow.  The twelve to fifteen foot high separation played a role in several wrecks with both trains coming off and down as well as at least one that lurch upward and colliding with opposing trains.  The steepness of the gorge offers just the right thermals to for the soaring Turkey Vulture in the sky, low center.

All told, the engine, baggage car, and “smoker car” left the track (see the end of this article about the designated smoking only cars.)  The Valley line is only at about five feet above the Central line at this spot.  The mass of iron and splinters said to instantly form also helped propel the baggage car up onto the raised plane of the Valley line. 

Just then, an opposing train, Valley Engine #4, collided with the wreckage.  The collision sent the “smoker” car down the fifteen foot embankment.  With its roof partially tore off, it landed on its wheels in the Lehigh.  The passengers we said to have had “an experience which they will never forget.” 

There was no damage to the Valley train.  However there were some Central fatalities.  Engineer Richard McHale (53 years old of Easton) was found dead amid the wreckage with both legs cut off.  The news agent, Charles Ebner, also of Easton was “injured so badly that he died shortly afterwards.”

The retaining wall as it looks from river level just below Ox Bow curve.

Baggagemaster Charles Taylor of Easton was seriously injured and was later said that he “may not recover.”  And perhaps most sad of all, Engineer McHale had his eight year old nephew along for the ride and he died as well.

About a dozen others were also “more or less hurt.” 

A brakeman by the name of Bell ran the three miles to Penn Haven Junction to telegraph for help.  The Central hospital car and a “corps of surgeons from Mauch Chunk” were quickly on the scene.

Soon after, rumors spread that the Central and Valley trains were racing each other.  Men of both companies flatly denied the rumor, though both were said to be fast trains.                    

Oct 2,1899 -Monday afternoon–Lehigh Valley wreck

(Same place and exactly 24 hours before the Central wreck below)

The No. 782, said to be the “latest and biggest engine of the Wyoming division,” was running “empty,” eastbound and approaching Bear Creek, at the beginning of the Ox Bow Curve when the “monster jumped the tracks.”  Engineer John Van Buskirk tried in vain to stop it, but it ripped up 350 feet of track and then toppled over the fifteen foot wall down onto the Central tracks.

At the same time, a fully-loaded coal train from the opposite direction crashed into the wreckage of the Valley train.  Van Buskirk was badly injured and unconscious when they found him even though he was pinned beneath the engine.  Despite being stuck in a fog of deadly steam from his boiler, he was extricated and taken to his home in Lehighton where he was said to be “on a fair way to recovery.”

The Jersey Central crew escaped injury by jumping out.  Three however died from the Valley train.  Albert Heimbach of Hickory Run (There is a beautiful farm just outside Hickory Run on the Albrightsville side owned by a Heimbach family today.)  and James J Denion of Weatherly were brakemen and found dead at the scene.  They were said to be “horribly mangled and scalded almost beyond recognition.”  Arthur Kanapel, signal inspector was found, badly injured and taken to St Luke’s hospital.  He died the following day.

Before the Lehigh Valley consolidated into ConRail in the 1970s, this black and white Valley freight train travels timetable east below Penn Haven in the area of the spring about one mile south.

Oct 3, 1889 - Tuesday- Jersey Central

(Same place and exactly 24 hours after the Valley wreck above)

The second wreck within several yards and at the same hour exactly twenty-four hours later originated on the Central line.  The accident had nothing to do with the repaired track but rather was caused by a broken axle.  A twenty-four year old brakeman by the name of William S. Miller was crushed to death under a “huge oil tank.”  As a result of this wreck, Central trains were temporarily diverted over the Valley tracks between Packerton and Penn Haven.

August 28, 1901 – Wednesday 6:00 am– Lehigh Valley wreck

The train, “of the latest design and only recently out of the shops” was going down grade in the area approaching the “dangerous curves” of the Ox Bow running at full speed.  It was said to have “swerved” giving engineer Charles Burroughs little time to reverse the engine, causing it to leave the track and crash down the bank onto the Central tracks.

It happened so suddenly, the crew had no chance of escape.  Both Burroughs (of Sayre) and fireman Charles Glasser (of Wilkes-Barre) were caught under the wreckage and were crushed and scalded to death.  Rumors at the time attributed the derailment to the spreading of the rails while a more likely theory was that the train was running too fast around the curve.

Like so many of these fatalities, the bodies were taken to Lehighton undertaker Henry Schwartz to be prepared for burial before being shipped to their hometowns.

Winter time along the Black Creek

January 4, 1905 – Wednesday 3:00 am during a “Blizzard”

The steepness of the Black Creek ravine is apparent in this modern day picture.  Rock slides were a common hazard especially during the springe rains and thaw.  Winter time was also harsh here, as in the blizzard of January of 1905 and its contribution to the wreck of a 27-car coal train.

Weather was said to be a contributing factor to this “most frightful wrecks in the annals of railroading” happened as twenty-seven loaded coal cars came down the decline a mile outside of Weatherly at the Black Creek Junction.  The snow and “terrific speed” caused the train to derail and tumble down the fifteen foot embankment into the creek.  It was said to have covered the distance from the Hazel Creek bridge to the point of the wreck in one minute and forty-five seconds.

The conductor and flagman sensed the danger in time and were able to uncouple their caboose which saved their lives.  Another man sensed the danger just out of Weatherly and jumped from the train though it was traveling at a “great speed,” he escaped with “terrible cuts” and bruises from rolling many feet.

Engineer William Swank, Fireman Robert Turner and Brakeman Morchimer, all of Hazleton were “buried in the wreck.”  “Portions of their bodies” were found at “different points…literally ground to bits.”  A right leg was discovered the next day, but it was unknown from whose body it came from.  It was buried in Hazleton pending more identification.

The Packerton wrecking crew was on the scene for more than a day.  It wasn’t until about two weeks later when the actual remains of Swank and Turner were found.  Turner’s body was under a large rock, “preventing his body from being washed downstream.  His head was split and his face badly crushed and disfigured. 

It was then determined the previously buried right leg belonged to Turner.  His left arm from the elbow down, and left leg were still are missing. 

Then, two hours later, the body of Swank was recovered and identified.  He was pinned beneath a heavy piece of iron in the creek just a few yards away from where Turner was discovered.  His head too, was badly crushed in.

January 11, 1907 – Friday

(The picture credits the accident on January 10^th.  The January 18^th edition of the Lehighton Press reported it to have happened Friday January 11^th.)

The wreckage of a runaway train from Weatherly.  The Black Creek is on the right.  Only  engineer Henry A. Rehrig of Weatherly was killed.  His crew jumped to safety.

Engineer Harry A. Rehrig of Weatherly stayed at the helm of his run-away train as it traveled out of control through the Weatherly yard, down the Weatherly Hill incline at a “terrific speed” until it collided with another train at Black Creek Junction.  It was a heavily loaded coal train.  Rehrig was killed but his crew escaped relatively unharmed by jumping off.  It was said to have caused $50,000 in damages.

Stony Creek –“One of the Most Dangerous Curves”

November 30, 1905 - Thursday – The Jersey “Central Flyer”

The express train was running twenty minutes late and was said to have been trying to make up for lost time as it neared Stony Creek.  The speed was said to be too great for the decline and the curve.  The article called the Stony Creek curve “one of the most dangerous spots” of the Central line between New York and Scranton.  

The engine, known to be “the heaviest and swiftest runners on the road,” “plunged” down the thirty-five feet of embankment into the “shallow” Lehigh waters.  Engineer George Willis had numerous cuts and was scalded on one side.  Miraculously, Willis of East Mauch Chunk, survived but his fireman didn’t. 

Fireman John Luebbert was thirty years old and lived with his parents Mr. and Mrs. Harry Luebbert in Mauch Chunk.

The other man killed was fifty-two year old Clarence S. Dettro of Ashley who was deadheading to Mauch Chunk.  He was riding in the baggage car, sitting on the mountain side of the car, and as the car tumbled down into a heap of wreckage, he was thrown across the car, the impact breaking his neck.

Thomas Goodwin, a newsboy, of Scranton incurred a fractured skull and wasn’t expected to live.  Others listed among the wounded were: trainman Robert Kneas of Mauch Chunk, Frank Soloman of East Mauch Chunk (Born in 1857, he later ran a hotel on Center St,), trainman Mahlon Headman of Mauch Chunk, conductor Thomas Snyder of Bethlehem, baggage master Philip Reilly of Bethlehem, newsboy Calvin Swisher of Scranton, F.V. Salkeld, Howard Fuller of Scranton, Charles Brady of Slatedale, M. B. Tilton of Bethlehem, Thomas McLaughlin of Tamaqua, Rev. Samuel Schultz of the Lutheran “Slavonian” church of Lansford, R. A. Lindsey of Scranton, George H. Craver of Scranton, and Mrs. G. C. Graves and F. E. DeLong, both of Philadelphia. 

Related Stories on CultruedCarbonCounty:

Pre-Post Story: Penn Haven, Carbon's "Most Desolate Place"

Post #1 - Penn Haven Junction: Epicenter of Wrecks 

Virtual Tour of the Lehigh Gorge Today

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The following article appeared in the New York Times on August 27, 1881.  The author apparently thinks he or she has discovered the secret as to why so many non-smokers occupy seats in cars designated for smokers known as "smokers" or "smoking cars." It is somewhat hard to wholly believe, as it suggests that doctors of that day prescribed their patients with early stages of smallpox to treat and cure themselves by smoke immersion on these cars.

This editorial from the New York Times from August 27, 1881 is written almost as if it were a thinly veiled scare tactic by the anti-tobacco lobby.

Mud Run Train Disaster - "A name of terror for all time" - Wrecks of Penn Haven Post 3 of 3

May 18, 2014, 2:58 pm

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Ocotber 10, 1888 – Wednesday evening -Temperance Excursion Train Disaster at Mud Run: “A name of terror for all time.”

Please view a companion piece to this story of the "Great Fire" of 1875 that tore through Mud Run and the surrounding area.

The most costly wreck in early Pennsylvania and Lehigh Valley Railroad history took roughly sixty lives.  The passengers had attended a Temperance Parade in Hazleton earlier that day.  There were men, women and children of all ages aboard the seven separate passenger trains boarded in Hazleton around 6:30 pm.  The special orders from the L.V.R.R. included the spacing of the trains at ten minute intervals.  This interval was considered more than sufficient since five minute intervals was standard practice.

The three passenger cars, borrowed from the Jersey Central, were telescoped together just above the Mud Run station on October 10, 1888.  There were seventy-eight cars needed to haul the roughly 5,500 temperance attendees from the annual parade in Hazelton back to their homes in the Wilkes-Barre area.   Roughly 70 people were loaded into each car.  Some say the Central cars were of "flimsy" construction and led to the unnecessary death.  The Valley had to borrow cars from the Central because of the unusually high-volume of passengers that day.  Over work and lack of sleep may have contributed.

The company also took the precaution of posting all the special orders associated with this huge undertaking and had all involved employees sign that they read them after they had been “studied for several days,” having been posted on all the bulletin boards.

Penn Haven - Carbon County's Most Desolate Place - The Reds O'Donnell Story

Post 1 of 3 on Lehigh Gorge Train Wrecks from 1874 to 1910 - Civilians and Workers hit and runover, including two murders.

Post 2 of 3 on Lehigh Gorge Train Wrecks from 1874 to 1910 - Derailments and collisions

The Lehigh Gorge - Former Valley and Central Lines Rails-Trails Virtual Tour

Verbal instructions were also given to the engineers to “be careful.”  It would appear legally, the Valley Railroad did everything in its power to avoid the unthinkable.  But in the final analysis lack of sleep and over work seemed to play the most significant role.

All the special orders, signatures, and ten minute intervals were for naught.  The unthinkable indeed happened, killing at least sixty-four.

The victims were members of the Father Mathew Society.  Many were Irish Catholic coal miners relatively new to this country.  It was reported that there were seventy-eight car loads of people, of over 5,500 loaded onto the eight different trains, which would be about seventy people per car.

This broad sweeping curve shows the entry of Mud Run into the river. The station would have been about one half mile toward the left.  The train that was struck was sitting just above the station.  This would be one of two curves the approaching train passed through before the collision.

The ill-fated sixth train was stopped at the Mud Run Station because the lights signaled that they were too close to the fifth train running ahead of it.  The rear of the sixth train was parked at the edge of a curve.

Brakeman James Hanighan later testified that the train stopped “a short distance above the station” at Mud Run.  He said he immediately took a red and a white light “as far back as the depot.”

The Mud Run as it flows into the Lehigh today beneath the Valley bridge still in use today.

He went on to say he signaled with his red light and was on the platform when the last train went past him “at a lively rate.”  He estimated the speed to be twenty-five miles per hour, nearly twice the speed sworn by one of the engineers, Henry Cook.

This said train, the seventh, was pulled by Engine #466 (Engineer James Sharkey) and assisted by Engine #452 (Engineer Henry Cook assisted by his fireman Hugh Gallagher). 

According to rail officials of the Valley, it is alleged that lookouts aboard the #452 should have seen the flagmen and yielded to the red signal light.  However, it was the crew of the #466, not the #452, who had control of the air brake system. 

Engineer Cook’s testimony was at odds with Hanighan’s.  First, he estimated his train’s speed at “twelve to fourteen” miles per hour.  Other expert testimony supported this to be a safe speed under the circumstances.

Cook also said that he was alert, leaning out the right side of the cab and slowed to ten miles per hour when he approached the platform at Mud Run.  At this point, he noticed the “violent swinging of a white light.”

“I immediately whistled down brakes,” he said.  However, the engine behind him, the #466, had “charge of the train” and had the control over the air brakes.

Other witnesses said Cook had been on duty for several days “with but little sleep.”  Cook claimed to be still “fresh and wide awake.” 

Thomas Major of East Mauch Chunk had never run a passenger train before.  He thought one engine was enough to pull the train, and besides, had they had just one, the engineer would have had a better view. 

Major also said he had been on duty since Monday night at nine o’clock (a near twenty-four hours) with but six hours of rest.  Despite this, he said he “did not feel sleepy.”

Fireman Joseph Pohl testified from his hospital bed in Bethlehem, where he was recovering from leg injuries sustained in the accident.  He had been on duty since five o’clock that morning, a more than twelve hour shift.  He said he saw the white target and told the engineer everything was alright. 

He just then momentarily rested his head in his hands when the next thing he knew, he heard the “whistle for down brakes.”  He saw the engineer’s hand go to the lever, but had no recollection as to whether he was able to turn it or not.

Engineer Cook’s main defense was that he never saw or heard any danger signal, “when such should have been exposed.”  He also asserted, and no one disagreed, that there were no “torpedoes” deployed onto the tracks. 

(Torpedoes are small explosives/metal encased fireworks that detonate when a train approaches a disabled train.  See the accidental death received by a young woman from a prank torpedo left on a trolley track in Mauch Chunk – click here.)

Henry Cook alleged that no flagman or light was placed east, or below, the Mud Run Station.  Other witnesses alleged brakeman Hanighan was inside the station and not on the platform as he claimed to be.

The crash according to one survivor of the seventh train occurred at 7:45 pm.

Even at such a low speed as twelve miles per hour, the force of the impact was deadly.  The rear three cars of the sixth train were telescoped together, mangling and trapping people in a mass of flesh, blood, iron and steam.

Besides those killed outright, others were scattered about and pinned under the engines.  The trapped and wounded “could put their heads out of the windows but could get no further, as their lower limbs were held in the wreckage like a vice.”

On the scene was James J. McGinty who was the recorder of deeds in Luzerne County.  He estimated the speed of the train at fifteen miles an hour.  He said, “I have read thrilling accounts of railroad disasters, but never pictured in my mind anything like this.”

He went on to say, “The injured would say, “Oh, lift that iron and take me out; for God’s sake help me.”  Another would say, “My leg is fast, cut off my leg; get an axe and cut it off.”  Every few minutes another of the poor victims would die.  Some were scalded by escaping steam, some were crushed to death, and some dying slowly of their awful injuries.”

Directly beneath Engine #452 lay four young boys, mangled and severely burned.  They were members of the “Father Mathew Cadet Society” and were so ravaged that they were barely recognizable as human forms.

Some of these survivors, pinned in contorted positions, suffered fatal scalding burns from the escaping steam of the engines.  A man known only as “McGinty,” “risked all danger,” got inside the wrecked engine and “pulled out the fire.”

In the hope to free those trapped, a trainman attached a locomotive to the rear of the merged telescoped cars and engine, and tried to pull them apart.  The first tug brought “such cries of distress that the surrounding friends ordered the engineer to desist on pain of his life.”

One group attending the parade was known as the "St. Francis Pioneer Society." One of the trademarks of their attire is to carry broad axes.  In the mayhem that ensued after the wreck, many sprung to action to help the suffering and dislodge the entangled.  The Pioneers soon discovered their largely decorative axes were of little use, breaking apart in demolition work.

Friends and relatives in most cases could do nothing to help in the agony of their trapped loved ones.

John Lynch was hanging outside the car, his legs trapped inside.  He screamed in such agony his friends supported his weight on their backs to help alleviate his suffering.  He was burned about his arms and shoulders and was in serious condition.

Another woman was also pinned by her legs.  The men with axes were able to free her one leg, but a misdirected swing severed her other leg from her body.  She calmly accepted her fate, withdrew a gold watch from her pocket, and directed those attending her to give it to her friend back home.  Her friends accompanied her to a hospital car where it was said she died en route home.

News of the Mud Run Disaster took on a national scope when Frank Leslie's Illustrated newspaper of New York picked up the story.  The above illustration most likely drawn from eye-witness accounts does bear scrutiny to actual some of the nuances that unfolded just after the collision.

Some of the papers seemed happy to report that “many temperance pledges were quickly forgotten” as the survivors boarded trains away from the disaster.

Within thirty minutes, a train with the Valley superintendent and physicians was dispatched from Bethlehem.  Bonfires were built to give light to the rescue efforts. 

Though quite remote, there were a few homes in the area.  Soon these homes were lit up and converted into temporary shelter for the wounded who could be gathered there.

At 6:30 the following evening, “a funeral train arrived in Wilkes-Barre bearing fifty-seven bodies partially prepared for burial.”  The bodies were lain “upon boards across the backs of seats, each covered with a white cloth.”

Frantic friends boarded the cars despite officials asking for them to show some restraint.  They began tearing off the sheets in search of their loved ones, revealing the “gay uniforms of the St Aloysius’s men, cadets and other members of societies.”

Two special trains carried the wounded to hospitals at Bethlehem and Wilkes-Barre.  Forty doctors were said to be on the ground at daybreak.

The initial reports had the death toll ranging from the upper fifty’s to the low sixty’s.  An article in the following day’s Philadelphia paper recorded from a dispatch from Easton that fifty-six were killed outright and another forty injured could die. 

A Wilkes-Barre paper reported on the following day of forty-six dead names and also stated that there were still ten unidentified bodies.  It went on to say that two of the victims died overnight in the hospital with “six or eight more” expected to die.

On October 12, a New York Times reprint of a Scranton newspaper listed the dead and wounded.  There were seventy names listed under the killed column.  Of the wounded, several there were listed as “serious” and others listed as “will die.”  The small town of Pleasant Valley (today’s Avoca) had thirty-one names alone.

Reporters of the 1880s were perhaps more impetuously aggressive than one could imagine.  One reporter was able to track down engineer Henry Cook as he tried to sleep in his bed in Wilkes-Barre on the very night of the wreck.  The reporter noted with plain unspoken disdain of his only injury being “a bruised ankle.”

Despite his reluctance to talk, the reporter assailed Cook with provocative questions such as: “Were you asleep?...Were you drunk?...Rumor has set out some ugly stories about you.”

The New York Times of October 12, 1888 published Cook’s reply to his thoughts on the enormity of the accident.  They wrote, “Yes,” Cook said with a groan, “and I suppose the blame will be fixed on someone, and railroad companies don’t usually take such blame themselves.”

The alleged transcript between Engineer Cook and the reporter on the night of the accident.

The coroner’s jury investigation cited the engineers of both the #452 and the #466 for negligence.  Also, the brakeman of the sixth train was cited for only going 400 feet instead of the proper distance of one half mile.  They also found fault with the conductors of the sixth train for not personally seeing to it that the brakemen protected the rear of their train.

A later trial acquitted all the defendants.

 Some debate was held over the use of the Jersey Central cars which according to one person interviewed then said that if Valley cars had been used, there wouldn’t have been as much loss of life.  The Valley cars were said to be of a sturdier construction.  The cars were on loan to the Valley due to the large number of excursionists signed up for the annual parade.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad took the lead in the court of public opinion by posting what they felt was a fair monetary settlement number in the papers.  Mr. William Connell, a coal operator was appointed by the L.V. R. R. as an impartial administrator for victim’s claims.  He was said to “not have interest in the Lehigh Valley Company.”

“He finds that nearly all the claimants want $5,000 each.  The company desires to avoid litigation, and is anxious for an amicable settlement…the general feeling is averse to going to law in case there can be a reasonable settlement outside the courts.”

It seemed like all the papers at once began to throw around the same numbers: $5,000 per adult and $1,000 per child killed.  A meeting of the St. Aloysius Society held a meeting of over 500 people in Scranton and passed a resolution authorizing Rev. Father Crave of Pleasant Valley (Avoca) to draw upon them for $500 or $1,000 to be at his disposal to help in cases of need for the “sufferers” of the Pleasant Valley parishioners.

The above list was printed in the New York Times the next day.  Of those listed here, at least two were said to be near death while another three were listed as "serious." It is unknown how accurate these lists were, but these early reports listed 64 dead outright with several more not expected to live.

March 11, 1889 – Monday - One Last Mud Run Death –

The coroner’s jury inquest trial was conducted over three days in late October of 1888.  But other civil cases related to the trial were on-going into March of 1889.  Many witnesses, defendants, and concerned family members of the sixty-odd victims were flocking to town on both foot and rail.  

One man named Ottoman Schmidt had been in town and was walking the track home when he was struck and instantly killed at the Mud Run Station.  The paper reported that there were a “number of cases similar to that of Schmidts” at this terribly famous spot.   

One article describing the Mud Run Disaster from October 27, 1888.

This is a 64-person list of dead as of the next day's papers.  There are bound to be omissions and additions and other errors in this list.  Names from the above list of Annie Curran, John Coleman, and Owen Kilcullen appear both on the list and their graves are pictured below.

Also buried at St. Mary's is 15-year-old Patrick Curran.  Also killed was Annie Curran of Minooka

John Coleman rests in Avoca's St. Mary's Cemetery, a vicitim of the Mud Run Disaster. Also killed were Michael and Patrick Coleman. He was 40 years old at the time.

A native of Castle-Connor, County Silco Ireland was Owen Kilcullen thirty-five, vicitm of the Mud Run Disaster.

 is

Think, Love, and Remember - Memorial Day 2014 St. John's Lutheran, Mahoning Valley

May 25, 2014, 4:55 am

≫ Next: “Work, Work, Work:” Lehighton’s Baking Past -Post #3 of 3

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Today is a glorious day. 

We are alive: we have sunlight on our face, we have wind in our hair, and we have dew upon our feet (and sometimes rain that dampens our skin.)   

We have our minds that allow us to think, to love, and to remember. 

It is Memorial Day and to remember is what we must do, to honor those who served America.

Over the course of America’s history, 40 million soldiers have served.

If you could ask any of them, what they missed most while they were away, they’d tell you, they simply missed their home.  They missed things we take for granted: a hot bath, their own comfortable bed, and of course their mother’s home cooking.

We take many things, such as our home and our freedom, for granted.

We have no idea how much these mean to us until they are lost. 

So the next time you are tired, the next time you are hungry, the next time you think you had a rough day, I want you to think about, I want you to remember, the 40 million who have served, think of those who suffered and remember those who died. 

Not all who served died for our freedom, all gave a small, but mighty sacrifice of simply being away from home.

Think of all of them and you will appreciate your freedom all the more. 

This blessed and fertile Mahoning Valley has produced much.  It has produced a wealth of soldiers too.

We have both the living and the dead with us today.

We the living will all eventually join the dead.  It is for us, while we are living, to honor the dead, for their sacrifice, for they too once lived like us, enjoying freedom and all the comforts of home.

We are here to honor all who served our country. 

Look around, there are many among us:

Members of the UVO, Chester Mertz who served in WWII, and many others seamlessly hidden among us.   These men and women know sacrifice.  We the living, promise you, your service will not be forgotten.

Chester Mertz a Navy Veteran of WWII tends to flowers of the grave of his parents at St. John's Lutheran in the Mahoning Valley.

The dead are also among us, they lay silently here on these grounds:

Oliver Musselman KIA at Antietam, September 17, 1862.  He was 19.

Oliver Musselman died Sept 17, 1862 at Antietam.  He was only 19.  Jonathan Gombert, also a Civil War Veteran, is buried here too.  He made it home alive.  But he too made a sacrifice at Antietam, giving up his right arm.

The Jonathan Gombert farm today.

Merlin Hollenbach is buried up there.  He was thinking, I’m sure, of his home three days before Christmas.  He landed in Vietnam on his birthday, just a month before.  He was most likely thinking of his mother baking his favorite cookies, wondering how his father was doing setting up the family tree, surely he was thinking of his new wife Irene.  But on December 22^rd, 1967, far from his home, Merlin Hollenbach as a medic among the forward observers, died in an ambush, in the swampy jungles of Vietnam.

Merlin Hollenbach was newly married, twenty-one, and only in Vietnam one with as a medic attached to forward observers when he was killed in an ambush three days before Christmas 1967.

A memorial from Merlin Hollenbach's family at St. John's Lutheran.  Hollenbach died three days before Christmas in 1967.

But not all died from enemy bullets.  Moses Mertz has rested here for nearly 100 years.  He died in France but he lies right over there. We know he had a weakened heart, we know he was in a hospital in France, and he died far away from his family and loved ones.  It has been said of Moses that he died of a broken heart, from an unbearable homesickness…

Moses Mertz, son of Nathan and Sallie Mertz of Mahoning.  As his draft card below reveals, he was a blacksmith's helper in the Lehigh Valley Railroad Packerton Shops.  He listed an exception to military service as a "weak heart." Some say he died of a broken, homesick heart in France on October 2, 1918, just days before the end of the war.

Today is a Glorious Day.

We are alive: we have sunlight on our face, we have wind in our hair, and we have the dew upon our feet.  

We have our minds that allow us to think, to love, and to remember. 

We have been summoned here,

To think about their sacrifice, to always love our freedom, and

To always, always remember…their sacrifice for us.

~~~~~

More Mahoning Valley Veterans:

WWI: Anthony Dougher was mentioned in last years Memorial Day address at St. Peter and Paul Cemetery while Moses Mertz was mentioned this year.

Daniel Kressley served in Co F of the 132nd PA Regiment.  He was discharged in January of 1863 due to disability but re-enlisted in the 202 PA Regiment until August 1865.

Here is a closeup of the 1907 plaque that stands in the current Mahoning Elementary School built in 1954.  It was originally posted in the wooden one room school house and was erected by friends and classmates of Civil War servicemen who originated from the school.  It contains the following names: Killed: Oliver F. Musselman (Sgt Co F 132nd), Otto Stermer (Co F 132; Antietam), James Eames, John Miller, John Callahan, William Nothstein.  Also listed: Henry Snyder, William H. Fulton (1st Lt, Co G, 132nd), Joseph Acherman, Samuel Eberts (27th), William Stermer, Nathan Stermer, D. W. C. Henline, Thomas Musselman (Co F 132nd; wounded at both Fredericksburg and Antietam), Jacob Nothstein (Co F 132nd; buried at Zimmerman Cemetery), Daniel Houser (Co H 11th), Thomas Strauss, Reuben Reinsmith (Co G 34th), Robert Sinyard, William Sendel, Amon Fritz (75th), Josiah Musselman (Sgt Co A 202nd), Daniel Kressely (Co F 132), Stephen Fenstermacher (Co G 34th), Peter Eberts (4th Sgt Co F 27th Militia), David Eberts (27th), William Eberts (27th), Henry Zellner (Co G 34th), Jacob Strauss, Aaron B. Miller, Moses Neyer (Co F 132), Aaron Snyder (Co A 202nd), Elias Hoppes, John H. Arner (Co F 34th), and James Kresge.  Also listed are teachers Joseph Fulton and James Swank.

Josiah Musselman is buried at the Zimmerman Cemetery near the old Wos-Wit.

Josiah Musselman was a seargent in Company A of the 202 Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers.  He was the son of Mary (Miller) and Charles Musselman, born November 5, 1837.  He married Emaline  He died on December 20, 1912 and was buried in the Zimmerman Cemetery, Mahoning Township on Christmas Eve.

Thomas Musselman buried at St. John's Lutheran in Mahoning Valley.

Daniel Creitz of Co I 176th PA Regiment.

Daniel Creitz was born in May of 1836 and was a farmer from Lynn Township.  He served in Company I of the 176^th PA Infantry Regiment from November 8, 1862 until October of 1863.  He was the husband to Mary Creitz (b. March 1840) and they had twelve children, nine of whom lived to adulthood.  One of their youngest children, Daniel Creitz had a farm near the Jonathan Gombert farm in Mahoning Township.  By 1900, Daniel Sr. and Mary moved onto the farm with their son.  By March of 1879 Daniel was declared disabled and by September 23, 1915 his widow Mary filed for widow’s benefits.

Henry J. Lange/Long was born in Germany February 16, 1833.  He served in Company G of the 132^ndPA Regiment from August 15, 1862 to May 24, 1863.  Henry and many other veterans from the Valley in the 132nd hit a bees hive on the "Bloody Lane" during the Battle of Antietam.  The men had bees covering their bodies and inside their coats while taking hostile fire. He and his wife Sarah farmed the Mahoning Valley and had at least eight children: Henry, Anna, Mary, Alfred, William, Jenetta, George, and Edgar.  He died May 2, 1921.

Henry J. Long's tombstone reads "Lange" as he was also known.  His several great grand son Henry Long is bugler for the current Lehighton UVO, and his son, Kevin "Spike" Long is commander.

George Arb's grave at St. John's Lutheran.

George Arb enlisted for a three year term on October 15, 1861.  He was wounded and discharged on a surgeon’s certificate.

Jonathan and Anna Gombert.  Jonathan lost his right arm at Antietam and later became Carbon County Sheriff in 1900.  My grandfather Zacharias Rabenold was hired as his servant when he was just sixteen at that time and served as saddler on Gombert's farm as well as "orderly" at the Carbon County Jail.

Henry Snyder served in Company I of 81^st PA Infantry Regiment.  He enlisted for a three year term on October 15, 1861 and served until the company mustered out at the end of the war  on June 29, 1865.

Henry Snyder of Co I of 81st PA Regiment.

Justus G. Walton of Co I 67th PA Regiment.

Justus G. Walton was a sergeant in Company I of the 67^thPA Infantry Regiment.  He enlisted for three years on October 22, 1861.  At some point he transferred to Company F.  He mustered out with Company F on July 14, 1865.  He was the son of Body and Polly Walton of Mauch Chunk and was second oldest of at least eight children (in order): Thomas, Washington, Wilson, Alfred, Peter, Joseph and Rebecca.  In 1850, his brother Thomas was a machinist and Justus was most likely an iron casting moulder. 

Valentine Newmeyer enlisted in Company F of the 132^ndInfantry Regiment from August 15, 1862 until May 24, 1863.

Jonathan Gombert gave up his right arm at the Battle of Antietam.  He was born on June 19, 1835 to Philip (1792-1880) and Salome (1794-1878) Gombert He enlisted in Company H of the 81^st PA Infantry Regiment.  He married Anna Loucile (Hontz) Gombert.  Her parents were Jonas and Sarah (Reinsmith) Hontz and lived from October 4, 1842 to June 7, 1920.  Three of their children were Sarah, Andrew, and Ella.  (Andrew would die in a tragic accident with his hay tedder at the age of  He died January 16, 1911.

 

William Grow of the 34th PA Militia most likely died in June 1888, but little else is known of this veteran buried alone at St. John's Lutheran.

William Grow 34^th PA Militia served until August 24, 1864.  It appears on his government burial card that the granite company was contracted on June 9, 1888.

Henry Wehrstein was the son of John and Catharina Wehrstein.  In 1860 he was a twenty-one year old tailor living in Mauch Chunk. He served in Company F of the 132^ndPA Regiment from August 1862 to May 1863.   After the war he and his wife Elizabeth settled in Mahoning Valley and raised a son James, where Henry continued on as a tailor.

Henry Wehrstein Company F 132nd PA Regiment.

Jacob Hoffman, born July 3, 1848 was able at a young age to serve in Co C of the 54th PA Regiment.  He died in 1909 leaving a wife, four daughters, and a son.  

Jacob Hoffman Comapany C 54th PA.

Moses Hontz/Hantz (1843 to 1907) served in Co. G of the 81st PA Regiment.  He was married to Sarah Hontz and they had eight of their eleven children grow to adulthood.  Of them alive and living with them in 1900 were: Carrie (age 17), Lizzie (12) and Raymond (10).  They also had their grandson Willie Eberts living with them too.  Moses was a well-known boatman on the canal as well as farming in the Valley.  Moses enlisted for three years on September 16, 1861 and discharged September 15, 1864.  His brother Amon Hontz also served in Company G. 

Moses Hantz also known as Moses Hontz, brother to Amon Hontz.  Both were said to be born in Weissport but are buried at St. John's Lutheran in Mahoning Valley.

Amon Hontz took a minnie ball at the Battle of Spottsylvania Courthouse.  Both brothers also fought at the Battle of Antietam. 

 

Ammon and his brother Moses were born in Weissport but are buried in Mahoning.  Ammon took a minnie ball at the Battle of Spottsylvania Courthouse, VA.

Nathan Gombert

Nathan Gombert was born on October 5, 1847.  He died on December 1, 1925.

Samuel Mertz lies in Lehighton Cemetery and is pictured below.

Daniel Kressley was born in Lynnport on January 18, 1844.  His parents moved to a farm in the  Mahoning Valley when he was just six years old.  He enlisted in Co F of the 132nd PA Regiment.  He was at the Battle of South Mountain and at Antietam where he was wounded at the "Bloody Lane." After discharge for typhoid fever in Jaunary of 1863, Daniel re-enlisted and served out the war with the 202nd PA Regiment.  He returned to the Mahoning Valley where he taught school for thirteen seasons.  He also farmed, worked for the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company and the Lehigh Valley Railroad in between sessions.  He and his wife, the former Mary Dilcher had eight children, two sons and six daughters.  Both sons became ministers Clement Daniel and Thomas M, both serving in Schuylkill County.      

This 1914 veterans reunion in front of Lehigh Fire Co No. 1 marked the 50th Anniversary of the last year of the war.  Daniel Kressley is incorrectly identified as the second from left and is the third from left.  These photos appear courtesy of the Thomas Eckhart "History of Carbon County" Volume IV, page 196.

Daniel Kressley, though sickened with typhoid fever in Jaunary of 1863 and discharged, he later re-enlisted in the 202nd PA Regiment and served to the end of the war.

Merlin Hollenbach KIA December 22, 1967.

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“Work, Work, Work:” Lehighton’s Baking Past -Post #3 of 3

June 10, 2014, 7:29 pm

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It is believed that many bakeries began baking a pastry similar to Lehighton’s “Persian” after World War I.  It is widely accepted that it was originally created to honor the tough and well-loved Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing.  His last name was somehow altered into the misnomer of the “Persian” pastry.

If Lehighton has a pop-culture baking legacy, it would be the Young “Persian” Doughnut.  The Young family made it a staple treat in Carbon County, making it distinctly their own.  Take an iced cinnamon roll with a dollop of raspberry jelly and you have it. 

(This story is Post #3 of 3 posts on early Lehighton Business.  Please check out the previous two posts as well: #1: Connecting the Dots of Lehighton Business and #2: Lehighton's Vibrant Business Moves Forward.)

We know a few things: James Oliver Young (center, on chair) was as tough as nails.  Many of the men he led into battle from Lehighton sung his praises.  He came home more or less unscathed, but the war instilled a bit of restlessness in him.  The 1930 census, just after his mother died, showed him living in the Carbon County Prison.  He dropped in on his brother Marcus the baker from time to time, where he was always welcomed.  He'd work there for a stretch until the rumblings of rambling once again took him away.  He fought under General Pershing and some say that this is how Marcus came to create Young's "Persian" doughnut.  We have been able to identify several in this photo of the WWI lads on the night before they shipped out on July 13, 1917.  Can you help us identify more?  Please contact me.

A list as it appeared in the Lehighton Press the following day, July 13, 1917.

Marcus Valentine Young was the Young’s Bakery patriarch.  His older brother James O. was one tough cookie.  He not only fought in WWI, but he established himself as a fighting man along the border war with Mexico and Pancho Villa just before the war. 

He had just the right experience to lead the first group of Lehighton men to march off to that war.  And so he did. 

Even years after his death men who served under James came into the bakery with stories of the stone-cold bravery he exhibited.  It is here, through the experience of his brother James, that Marcus was inspired to create this well-known treat.  (There will be more on the Young family military history later.) 

This post will focus on three of Lehighton’s most important baking families, each playing a significant role in Lehighton’s baking legacy: The Kennels, the Blazevichs and the Youngs.

Had it not been for several small tragedies in each of these families, Lehighton may have missed out on this specialty pastry. 

Baking is far from a “cupcake” job.  All these families worked extremely hard, for the business was relentless.  The exhausting early morning hours of hauling hundred pound sacks of flour over a shoulder, the hours of standing while mixing the batches of dough, molding bread by hand at the table, or shuffling loaves in and out of a hot oven every twenty-five minutes, make the baker a slave to both his dough and to the fire of his oven. 

One key root of the Lehighton baking family tree reaches back to North Whitehall Township in Lehigh County.  The Kennel family was one of the frontier families who settled along the Coplay Creek in the early 1700s. 

The Charles Kennel Bakery:

This early Kennel Bakery ad helps date the start of the venture he started with his mother Alice.

Jacob and Susanna (Schneck) Kennel were farmers and raised their family together starting with Elias (b. 1819), Aaron (b. 1823), Paul (b. 1828), David (b. 1830) and Jonas (b. 1832).  At some point before Jacob’s death 1868, he and his son Elias started a sawmill along the Coplay Creek near Wotring’s grist mill.  

Walter Kennel was born to Aaron and Gloria in 1860.  However Walter would be orphaned by the age of three.  His father died by 1863 and his mother died sometime before that. Walter then moved in with his widowed uncles David and Jonas Kennel on their farm in Neffs. 

By 1880, he had left the family farm and sawmill and was living with and working at Reuben Semmel’s tannery in North Whitehall Township.

Walter married Alice and they had just one child: Charles Kennel, born in 1885.  Walter, like his own parents, died a premature death in 1893.  Walter was just thirty-three and Charles was just eight. 

By 1900, Charles and his mother Alice were still living next to Semmel’s Tannery, though by now it was being run by Reuben’s son Oliver.  Alice was making do as a “house keeper.”  Although Charles was well into what was considered working age at fifteen, Alice could afford to keep him in school rather than force him out to work and contribute to the family income.

By 1910, Charles and Alice were living in Slatington.  He was working as a telegraph operator for the Lehigh Valley Railroad and she was not working.  Still working the telegraph for the railroad, they were living at 122 South Second Street in Lehighton by 1917.  Charles was unmarried at thirty-three and his mother was fifty-two.  Charles and Alice lived this way while he was still with the railroad until about 1925.

Charlie Kennel stands in front of his bakery delivery sedan.  He employed Marcus Young at his three-story brick factory, later to be named the "Lehigh Valley Baking Factory."

By then the Kennels were making a move into the baking business.  It has been said that Alice Kennel, not Charles, built the large three-level brick building that would become first Kennel’s Bakery and later Lehigh Valley Baking Factory.  It is unclear though how this young widow came upon the money to do so.  The building still stands there today as a storage unit.

The bakery was more than a neighborhood bakery, it was a baking factory.  It had two ovens with a combined capacity to bake 500 loaves of bread at a time.  Given the twenty-five minute bake time, Kennel’s bakery could produce 1,000 loaves an hour.  By 1930, Kennel’s bakery had three-shifts and employed nine men plus others who ran the bakery route.  (In 1933, the bakery was known to employ five men.)

From the 1926 Lehighton High yearbook.

Despite the widespread use of the car and truck, from the 1930s on up to 1940, one of Kennel’s delivery men still delivered bread by horse and carriage.  Edward Christman, who lived on Alum Street near the First Ward school, made a living in this way, selling loaves of bread, five-cents at a time. 

(My own grandfather, Calvin Haas, ran three such bread routes.  One was for George Strohl’s Bakery in the late 1920s.  He earned enough money to eventually build his own grocery store at the corner of Fifth and Coal Streets - see Haas post by clicking here). 

George Strohl's Bakery pre-dated Young's Bakery just two doors to the right in this picture from Mahoning Street.  This structure has been torn down and was rebuilt as a multi-unit apartment building not much bigger than what is seen here.  There is a professional building and parking lot to the right.  The home with the towers across the street was also owned by Strohl.

At the end of each day, Christman would unhitch his horse from the delivery wagon and park it in the garage behind Kennel’s bakery.  It was a daily ritual each knew well.  The horse would walk on his own, unescorted, up the alley.  He’d find his stable, walk into his stall, and wait to be fed. 

The size of Kennel’s operation was considerable.  The lower level was used for storage.  Kennel would purchase an entire freight car of 100-pound sacks of flour.  He would hire draymen “Benner and Hartung,” John Benner and Charles Hartung, to haul the flour on their open wagons from the Central Jersey Freight Station. (The station was behind the Lehighton/Mansion House Hotel, most recently Kovatch Jeep at the end of the bypass.  The foundation of the station is still there.)

This advertisement for Benner and Hartung hauling appeared in the 1928 Lehighton High yearbook.

The flour was dumped into a bulk flour bin and raised up to the second level by cup elevator where it dumped into a giant mixer with an automatic scale that also mixed in the correct amount of water. Such an operation was necessary, because at various times of the year, Kennel’s bakery worked all three shifts at full tilt.

One successful avenue for Kennel’s bakery was the Carbon County Fair in Lehighton.  He supplied all the hamburger and hot dog buns sold there.  Buns back then sold for a penny a piece, when hamburgers sold for a nickel.  Kennel also served on the Fair Board during the 1930s and 1940s. 

When you weren’t standing at your mixer or oven, you were standing at the bread table.  Any dough from the table, meaning dough that had to be worked into shape by hand such as Vienna bread, sticky buns and etc would be placed on large racks and placed into a raising machine for the “first raise.” 

Then they were removed and placed into pans and go into a steam closet for the “second raise.”  This closet could hold three large racks at a time.  From this closet the dough entered one of two ovens. 

One of the ovens was slightly larger than the second one, but together could bake 500 loaves of bread at a time.  Consider that each bake would last twenty-five minutes and running three-shifts a day, this Lehighton factory could produce 24,000 loaves of bread a day.

The Youngs Come to Town:

Marcus Valentine Young was born on his family farm back in March of 1884 in Kresgeville.  Theodore and Alma Ann Young started their home on a small farm.  Besides the farm, Theodore also made a living as a blacksmith. 

As a young twenty-six year old and before they had any children of their own, Theodore Young was successful enough to hire and provide board for a blacksmith’s helper.  Eventually, their oldest son Ezra “Ezree” and second oldest Albert would assume that role with their father, thus was the beginning of the Youngs in family business.

Theodore and Alma had seven children and all seven survived to adulthood: Ezra D. (b. January 1881), Albert T. (b. November 1883), Clara (b. June 1887), James O. (b. June 1890), Harry L. (b. July 1893), Marcus (b. March 1894), and Ervin D. (b. 1899).

They lived a long walking distance from the one-room schoolhouse at the present day four-way stop at Wildcreek.  One day in early June 1902 the course of events took an unexpected turn. Father Theodore died at the age of forty-seven. 

Theodore Young's untimely death caused his wife and young family to move from Kresgeville to Lehighton, thus starting the chain of events leading to the evolution of Young's Bakery.

Marcus was the second youngest at just nine.  “Ezree” took on the full responsibilities for his family and looked out for his five brothers and one sister Clara.

Eventually mother Alma decided she couldn’t do enough to support her family living on the farm.  So one day sometime between 1904 and 1910 they said goodbye to it. 

Leaving it to oldest son Ezree to continue on, they packed up into a horse and buggy and made the day-long journey into Lehighton from Kresgeville.  In less than a day shewas employed in the kitchen of the Lehighton Exchange Hotel (click here for more details about this business.) They lived in an apartment on South First St.

Life would be different living in town.  Farm chores were replaced by a wide variety of jobs:  Albert, now twenty-five, was a laborer on the railroad; Clara, twenty-one, was a servant in a private home; Jameswas a molderer at Lehigh Stoves in the Flats; Harry, sixteen, was working at one of the many silk mills in town. 

Second youngest, Marcus, found work at the “BenjaminK. Culton” bakery on first street, (across the street from Alfies Pizza today).  Both Harry and Marcus would make these early careers of their youth into their life-long professions.  (The Benjamin Culton story is chronicled in another post on this blog “Lehighton’s Vibrant Business Past” –click here.)

Marcus Valentine Young's WWI draft card.

By the age of twenty-three, Harry was living in Paterson New Jersey and working for the Eugene Baer “Helvetica” Silk Mill there (This is where the Baer family first got its start before also opening a millin Lehighton - click here for more details.)  

At the age of twenty-seven, Harry moved temporarily to Sherbrooke Quebec, employed as the superintendent of the Julius Kayser Silk Throwing Plant there making $3,800 a year in 1920.  Eventually he ran another mill in Ohio before finally retiring to Florida.  Descendents of Harry and Ethel May (Williams) Young still live there.

Youngest brother, Ervin, became a big band musician in Brooklyn, in addition to his career with a pharmaceutical company.  He worked clubs and in places like the Waldorf-Astoria.  He also worked the cruise ship circuit to the islands of the Caribbean. 

Music was a key ingredient in sister Clara Young’s life too.  Her and her Lehigh Valley Railroad engineer husband Harry had one son: Donald Seiwell (1916-1973).  A drummer of certain skill, he turned down a music scholarship offer to work at the rail yard.

Donald would have two sons who made a living playing music.  Son Darryl is a retired music teacher at the Jim Thorpe School District. 

The other of Clara Young’s grandsons, Denny Seiwell, later played in ex-Beatle Paul McCarthy’s band “Wings,” playing drums on many songs including his signature hit “Live and Let Die.”  Donald and wife Faye also had a daughter Paula.

Sometime around 1915, Marcus Young married Ella Mae David.  They had two children together: Ethel, born in February of 1917 and Woodrow, born October 3, 1918. 

Just then, the terrible Influenza Pandemic was making its rounds through the area as it did worldwide.  The entire Marcus Young family was sick with it. 

The obituary from the "Lehighton Press" from October 1918.  The writer was unaware that Ella had just given birth to son Woody about two weeks prior.

It was only two weeks after Woody was born when Ella Mae died of flu.  Ethel was sent out to be raised by her mother’s parents, Albert and Rosa David of Ninth Street.  Woody divided his time with his father and on his Uncle Ezree’s Polk Township farm.  Even on up into his young adult life, Woody spent his summers out on the farm.

Marcus was still earning a living at B. K. Culton’s Bakery on First Street.  But sometime after 1920, most likely at the same time Culton closed his shop, Marcus and his brother James were working as fire tenders on the Lehigh Valley Railroad engines.  The railroad job would be short-lived, for by 1930, Marcus was working at Charles Kennel’s Bakery on Second Street.

Also around 1920, Marcus married his second wife.  Lulu was the daughter of Mahlon and Della Warner of Ninth Street.  She had one child she brought to the marriage, Clarence Warner, who was being raised by her parents.  Besides their three previous children, Marcus and Lulu had five children together: Albert (b. 1921), Marcus “Marc” (b. 1922), Madalene (b. 1923), Frederick (b. 1925), Russell (b. 1927).

The Kennel’s Bakery job provided enough for Marcus to raise his family on.  By 1940 he was a foreman there.  The last living child of Marcus and Lulu Young is Frederick.  He still recalls many of these early years well and how his father made $30 per week then.  He remembers his father always working middle "bread and bun" shift, and how Lulu would walk down to the bakery at supper time each day, with young Fred in tow, to bring a hot-meal to her husband. 

Bretney the Baker  on Second Street - From the Brad Haupt Collection.  Bretney had a bakery next door to his son's photography studio on Second Street, between today's Lehighton Hardware and the Lehigh Valley Baking Company.  This could very well be the same delivery carriage Ed Christman used for Charlie Kennel in the 1930s.   (See Post Two of "Lehighton's Vibrant Business" for more details by clicking here.)

That is when Fred recalls seeing deliveryman Ed Christman unhitch his horse and watched in awe as the horse found his way home to his stall.  According to Fred, the delivery wagon used by "Bretney the Baker" was identical to the one Christman used.  Given the Bretney shop was just two doors away from Kennel, it stands to reason that this delivery carriage could be the same.

Sometime after 1942, Marcus began thinking about venturing out on his own.  Until then, Charles Kennel had been a life-long bachelor.  He married a much younger Mahoning Valley woman at about the same time his business began to suffer.  Kennel lost his bakery to the First National Bank of Lehighton around 1940.

Sadly, Charlie died rather young at the age of 65 in 1950.  His mother Alice lived until 1960, to the age of 96.  Some have said she worked as an telephone operator in Lehighton.

By October of 1946, with all his sons home from the war, Marcus rented his first bakery at the corner of First and Ochre Streets at 368 North First Street.  It would be short-lived though. About then, Fisher Motors eyed the lot as a prime corner location for their new Pontiac Garage.  Marcus needed to find a new home.  

Former Lehighton High School teacher Edgar Paulsen was looking for a buyer for his corner grocery store at Fourth and Mahoning.  After a few liens were paid (despite Paulson’s assurances that the title was clear), the Young’s began to set up shop of their own.

After all his sons returned from the war, they began gathering up bakery supplies: mixing bowls, an oven and the lot.  The Young's also started rounding up suppliers for the incessant essential ingredients: flour and lard.  At that time suppliers didn't deliver and these items had to be picked up.  

The Blazevichs Come to Town:

Avram "Monk" Blazevich first worked in Nesquehoning and later took over Kennel's Baking Factory, renaming it "Lehigh Valley Baking Company." It was located in the rear of South Second Street.  The three- story brick building is still there today, down the alley from the Lehighton Fire Company.

Another tributary into the stream of Lehighton baking was forming in McAdoo.  A widowed miner’s wife was making do with her three children: Theodore (b. 1924), Eugene (b. 1929), and John Jr. (b. 1931).  Her name was Anastazja “Stella” Yanick (b. February 27, 1897) and she was a Polish Orthodox immigrant. 

Her eldest son Zigmund Yanick (b. April 8, 1917) had already made his way to Nesquehoning and perhaps that is how she met her soon to be new husband Avram “Monk” Blazevich (b. 1890). 

Bonnie and Brenda Benner look happy with their mother in the snow in front of the home of Stella Blazevich.  It also contained the store for their family bakery.  The home is now gone, though Linda still lives in her childhood home next door.  Brenda Benner's aunt Betty Benner married Albert Young.

Blazevich was also recently widowed and living with his son Alexander (b. 1922) at 131 Mill Street in Nesquehoning at the bakery owned by Sofron “Serf” Nikodinoviek (b. 1890).  Avram and Alexander had a truck bread route while tow other lodgers Augen Gerosa (b. 1892), a “cake baker” and Elia Christoff (July 6, 1891) who also ran a truck route, lived there.

It was “Serf” Nikodinoviek and “Monk” Blazevich who purchased the bakery from Charlie Kennel.  By April of 1942, Stella and Avram were married and living at 23 South 2^ndStreet in Lehighton and were the operators of the Lehigh Valley Baking Company at 128 South Second Street. 

A 1940s deliveryman for the Lehigh Valley Baking Company.

(According to Avram’s draft card at the time, he was listed as 6’ 2” and 170 pounds with blonde hair and blue eyes but with a “ruddy” complexion, perhaps from hours a facing the large brick bakery oven.)

Once the new owners, the Blazevich’s, took over the bakery from the bank for $8,000, Marcus resumed working there as their foreman.  At about this time, Marcus concluded he too could start one of his own with his coming of age sons. 

All the Young men (including Clarence Warner) served in the military during the war except for Albert who was “4-F” due to ear troubles from his youth.  (More details of the Young family will be available on a future post).

Albert was working in the Packerton Car Shops and later worked for Interstate Dress Carriers (I.D.C.) of Lehighton.

Russell tried the business for a time and took his father’s advice: “If you don’t like what you’re doing, if you don’t love your job, move on from it while you’re still young,” which is exactly what Russell did.

By the late 1940’s, Marcus and his sons were well on their way into making the Fourth and Mahoning Street location their own.  They did some remodeling, put a garage door on the horse carriage house in the back, and had Charlie Kratzer of Ninth Street put new siding on it.

Then in the early 1950s they began to modernize by installing a new oven.  It came from a company in Baltimore and it was delivered from the Jersey Central Freight station by Benner and Hartung. 

The purchase price included the service installation by a man sent from the company.  Marcus and his sons helped by running each piece and part up from the cellar.  Fred remembers pouring “bags and bags and bags” of insulation into the walls.

When it was supper time, the worker asked where he could go to eat his supper.  Marcus said he’d have none of that.  The man was already so appreciative of all the help the Young’s were giving him, they were finishing the job much faster than he would have do so alone, and still and all, he didn’t want to further impose of their hospitality. 

The Young represented themselves in the Lehighton Halloween parade in the late 1950s, replete with giant replicas of the famed "Persian" doughnuts.  It is believed to be Betty Benner Young as the cake.  Betty was married to Albert Young.

“You eat right here with us,” Marcus said.  And they did.

The oven could make 100 loaves at a time, baking a batch of bread in twenty-five minutes.  It cost them $5,000, which was steep money at that time.  They knew they would have to work hard and non-stop to pay off such a debt.  In a few short years they did. 

The next item need was the 120-quart mixer that could take a 100-pound sack of flour at a time.  This $2,500 investment was also the first to be paid off before anyone thought of taking any extra money for themselves.

Every few days, the sons would take the back seat out of the car and drive to Mauser's Flour Mill at Treichlers for three to four 100# bags of flour.  They would also stop by a slaughter house near Freidens for lard.  Marcus telling them, "Get all that you can get."

And thus Marcus was able to set in motion a business that would carry his family through for fifty years.  Set up well enough that his grandson Fred Jr. and his wife Dawn would end up retiring from the business on November 24, 1995. 

Marcus died in 1955, leaving his sons with a livelihood that would serve them their whole life.  The brothers worked side-by-side, hour-by-hour in the painstaking work of bakers six days per week. 

On Sundays, they’d hike up the old trolley line to Flagstaff Park.  They enjoyed these simply pleasures and they enjoyed all the time they spent together. 

According to Fred, “it was work, work, work in the bakery business.”  They didn’t even think about vacations in those early days.  A few years after their dad died, Marc suggested they shut down one week per year in the summer.  And so they did.

They had built up a good retail and wholesale trade by then.  The baked for restaurants like Trainer’s Inn and others.  In the days leading up to their week’s vacation, they’d bake ahead, storing the bread in large, walk-in freezers in Bowmanstown, where the gas station/pizza shop is today. 

They helped build customer loyalty just like the Blazevich’s did at Lehigh Valley Baking.  Each holiday they offered their ovens to their customers and roasted their turkeys and hams for them for free. 

They also offered their oven space, since it was easier to keep it heated than to restart from nothing, to the area churches when they cooked their large congregational dinners and for their food stands at the Carbon County Fair.

"My brothers and me, we got along real good together." - The Young brothers pose here in their "Brothers of the Brush" outfits.  "Brothers of the Brush" was a social club leading up to Lehighton's Centennial celebration in 1966.  This picture was taken just months before Albert (front, center) died in 1958 after only three months of marriage.  Others in front are Marcus (left) and Woody (right).  Back row, left to right: Russell, Clarence Warner, and Fred.

“My brothers and me, we got along real good together.”

Albert on his wedding night.  He died three months later.

Fred remembers the occasional nights he and his brothers would stop in the Lehigh Fire Company for a beer and be accosted with shouts of, “Don’t you guys ever get sick of each other?”  Causing Fred to recall his dad’s warnings, when tempers would heat a bit, “If you can’t work together, you’re gonna get the boot.”   So Fred replied, “What do you want us to do?  Fight?”

The Blazevich’s ran the Lehigh Valley Baking Company into the 1970s.  Stella’s sons ran it for several years after her death in 1968.  Though they had good foot traffic in the Stella’s storefront home on Second Street, their business was mainly wholesale. 

One of their larger accounts was through the Hazelton-based Gennetti’s food market chain.  They sold their bread under their own label, but they also sold donuts and pastries.  They were famous for their Kaiser rolls and marble ryes.

One of their employees, George Markley, was a then recent pastry baker from Steven’s Trade School.  Many people in the Lehighton area only know George through his work with the Lutheran Brotherhood.  But today, George still has the pained shoulder from the years of hefting 100-pound bags of flour.

According to George, when they would run specials on their breads, they’d bake “thousands and thousands of rolls per shift.”  George remembers working mostly overnight and also second shift.

“A deliveryman would show up around 5:00 am,” he remembers.  He also recalls working many weeks of sixty hours or more for mere peanuts on the dollar.

Stella’s children inherited the bakery upon her death and tried to keep it operating, some of them running deliveries themselves to area Farmer’s Markets, restaurants, and stores.

I know this may sound as tacky as day-old dough on a dry bread board, but I can remember the days of going into Young’s, with Woody behind the counter with my thirty-five cents my dad gave me each week from his little blue coin purse. 

Celebrating their mother's 90th birthday in the banquet room of Trainer's Inn in 1982: Back row, left to right: Fred, Russel, Clarence Warner, Woody, and Marc.  Front row, Ethel, Lulu and Madeline.  Woody and Ethel were from their father's first wife Ella who died of the Influenza outbreak during the fall of 1918.

My usual was a ten-cent glazed and a twenty-five cent Persian.  But sometimes I’d be tempted by the 5-cent pretzel rods in the jar on the counter. 

I can still picture Marc at the mixer, his lips were in the shape of what I thought was a permanent state of whistling.  I can still see Fred then too, the only one with a full head of hair.  I remember how seamlessly they worked together, with few words.  All of them always dressed in white.   I’d sit on the sacks of flour, all the while they worked around me, allowing me to silently sit and watch. 

When one lives in moments like these, you never think it can ever end.

One day in December of 1981, a heavy slush was lying around the pavements of the bakery, and Woody couldn’t rest knowing it needed tending to.  The strain was too much and he collapsed on the sidewalks.  It broke their hearts.  You could say their life belonged to the bakery.  Neither Marc nor Woody had ever married. 

Even Fred, back at the end of World War II, when asked to continue baking for the troops in the army field bakery, declined the offer, only thinking about getting back to his brothers.

Marc said he couldn’t work another day there without his half-brother Woody.  He missed him too much.

At that time, it was Fred’s son Fred Jr. who wished to make a go at the family business.  And several weeks after Woody’s passing, the oven once again fired with another father and son Young team.  Eventually Marc was able to return and the three men worked together.

The last of the Young crew in the 1990s.  Fred Jr at left, his father center loading a tray of hoagie rolls, while Marcus takes a brief moment's pause.  Only Fred Sr. survives.

Marc passed away a year and a month after the Fred Jr. and Dawn retired the business for the last time.  Shortly afterward, Fred and Dawn moved to South Carolina.  Fred, a Vietnam combat veteran, died a few years ago. 

The famous Young’s “Persian” is history.  Young’s started making the iced cinnamon roll with a dollop of jelly filling from the 1950s until the Bakery closed in 1996.  Since then, a few different names have kept its spirit alive, most recently Bill Gothard at Lehighton Bakery which closed just in the last few years. 

Fred Sr. is widowed from his wife Roberta and lives in Maple Shade in Nesquehoning.  He gets plenty of visitors: his son Allen, his good friend Pappy Warner, and his old neighbors John and Melissa Moser who take the time to take him out for dinner at his favorite spot, the Beacon Diner at Hometown. 

Ask him why he likes to go there, he’ll tell you: they have delicious raisin pie.

Though he’s a bit hard of hearing, his mind is sharp.  And if you are lucky enough to share a word with Fred, one thing is abundantly clear, he is the last of those of the generation that knew how to work. 

Thanks Fred, I too have developed a taste for the stuff. 

~~~~~~~~~

Postscript:

Here are some other noteworthy pictures associated with Lehighton's baking past:

Bill Leslie, along with Sylvester "Wes" Solt and Marcus Young who first tried to buy Kennel's Bakery from the bank but were unable to secure the loan.  It worked out anyway, for both Bill's Bakery and Young's went on separately to make their own distinctive products.

The Lehigh Valley Baking Company as it looked this past winter.  Lehighton Hardware is to the photographers rear in the alley.

C. E. or Charlie Kennel's grave engraved on the end of his parent's stone in Neffs. Charlie died at the age of 65 in 1950.

The Young Matriarch - Alma widowed from Theodore - She had the courage to leave the farm she knew to bring her family to Lehighton for more economic opportunity.  Lehighton Cemetery on the Legion plot.

Add caption

Marcus Theodore Young, Fred's brother, son to Marcus and Lulu never married and is buried next to his other unmarried half-brother Woodrow who is buried next to their uncle James O. Young who served in the first world war.  All of Marcus V. Young's sons served in WWII except Albert who was 4-F due to his ears.

Marcus Valentine Young next to his first wife Ella who died in the Influenza outbreak in October 1918.  Together they had Ethel and Woodrow.  His wife Lulu is also buried here.

Walter and Alice Kennel's grave in Neffs. Alice lived 67 years as a widow until 1960. Walter died in 1893.

The Mystery of the Recluse of Gnadenhutten: Frederica Misca

November 26, 2014, 1:42 pm

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Frederica Misca, a shadowy figure of early Lehighton lore, came to live among the ruins of the fateful Moravian settlement.  In her own time there were many who praised her saintliness as well as many who detracted and scoffed at the very mention of the hermetic zealot’s name.   

Click here for "Gnadenhutten Massacre" post on the 11 Moravians killed here and details of Ben Franklin's defensive response.

This is a scan from Eckhart's History of Carbon County.  It is the only likeness known to be Misca.  It is taken from a copy of the lithograph she allegedly gave to people who purchased $50 subscriptions for her proposed church she wanted to build at the Moravian Massacre site in Lehighton.  The entire print is included below.

So little is directly known of her now, that it is nearly impossible to know the complete truth. 

According to Brenckman’s History of Carbon County, Misca purchased two tracts of the Moravian land and arrived here in 1825.  She lived here in the hope of turning it into the permanent home for a Presbyterian Church, to honor the deaths of the eleven Moravians who were martyred here.   

We have one sketchy account, written by Moravian newspaper and almanac publisher, Brother John Christian Blum. 

 Blum was born in Pennsylvania but moved to Salem, North Carolina when his family migrated down the Great Wagon Road.  They settled in the Moravian village known as Bethabara in 1787 when Blum was just three.

In August of 1831, Blum was part of a group of Moravian pilgrims who left Salem through noted Moravian towns of Lititz, Nazareth, and Bethlehem  They passed through Lehighton to see the “stone coal” fields west of Mauch Chunk.  They even rode the railroad while there. 

He recounted details of seeing the “stone coal” operations and how they traveled on cars “rolling along at a velocity of nine miles in twenty-eight minutes!”   

Eventually their pilgrimage brought them to the Gnadenhutten Massacre site by September.    

Misca's book, translated by a Rev McClure from 1836, was published at about the same time Rev James Alexander referred to Misca as a hoax and a "Pennsylvania huckster."

Blum referred to Lehighton as the place noted as “a great missionary place among the Indians, where our brethren and sisters were murdered.”  They paid homage at the marble tombstone and then happened to make a call on the lonely inhabitant of the place, the one many referred to as the “Recluse of Gnadenhutten,” the self-proclaimed German baroness, Miss Frederica Misca.

Blum noted that the church and the dwelling house of the minster still stood there.  And though he was most generous in his descriptions of the numerous people they had thus far met, he cast Miss Misca in a less than favorable light, believing her to be “somewhat deranged.”

After silencing her many dogs, she at first “addressed us in English, but soon discovering we were German, she began using the local Dutch dialect, which is far removed from our German.”   She said, “Gentlemen, I suppose you are from Bethlehem.”

If this account can be trusted as accurate, how then does this “German baroness,” only living here about five years, prefer to speak in a Pennsylvania Dutch dialect over the supposed High German tongue of her pedigree?

Her solitude in this place seemed to be tempered by the presence of the many animals in her care.  Her goat Sophy had just bore two kids the night before.  She recounted this to the weary travelers as she bent down to one of her dogs saying, “Lilla, kiss mama,” to which the dog licked Misca’s face. 

Blum goes on to describe how talkative she was, telling of her many pets including another dog named “Columbus” she brought with her here from Germany.  Blum retells how she said she had, “…seven cows, that is six cows and one bull named Hemrich.”

Frederica was pleasant in touring the graveyard of the departed Moravians but bristled at the requests by the pilgrims to see the interior of the dwellings there. 

A mention of Misca in Lehighton Cemetery Association's Constitution, published in 1920.

“She made off and ran as fast as she could to prevent our entrance, as we thought.  Following her we arrived at the door, which, however, she opened for us.  We found the church hall filled with wheat and rye in the straw, and Frederica used part of it as a threshing floor.  She talked a great deal on different subjects, saying she was very desirous to purchase the place where she lived and requested Brother Herman to tell Brother Schweinitz, or Schweinrich, as she called him, that it was her wish to buy it.”

Perhaps the two tracts she purchased occurred after this late 1831 encounter or she was hopeful of purchasing more of the land.

Blum described Gnadenhutten as “situated in a poor slate country.”  This was somewhat confirmed later on, when Lehighton pioneer resident Lewis Graver, known for his timbering and brick making here, also quarried slate there.  

An 1877 newspaper account spoke of “seven to eight men clearing off the top rock…reached a depth of about seven or 8 feet,” finding specimens of slate easily split at uniform thickness, pronounced 'A No.1' and said to be equal to the “celebrated Vermont slate.”

This is a view from Graverville toward Lehighton: Note the cemetery at the left/center of the horizon and First Ward Elementary school at the right.  The photo is dated at around 1899 when the Henry Graver brick-works were still in operation.  Both the First and Third Ward buildings were built with Graver bricks.  The land was originally owned by the Moravians and later Misca.  (Photo Courtesy of Larry Graver).

Lewis Graver was born to Henry and Elizabeth in 1813.  They came to Lehighton, under contract to timber the Moravian’s lands he would later own, when Lewis was twelve.  

An August 18, 1888 article in the “Carbon Advocate” proclaimed Lewis to have “known Frederica Misca well.”  Graver was also known in the late years of his life to still show the curious “foolscaps” paper deeds direct from the Moravians, though they were “worn through with age.”

In this 1938 aerial view of South Lehighton, you can see the rectangular "Graver's Swimming Casino" mid-left with the Graver's Ice Dam dominate at the center and right of the pool.  At bottom, you can see the symmetrical pattern of Henry Graver's "Gnadenhutten Fruit Farm." In the mid 1950s, this view would be bisected left to right by Route 443.

Lewis Graver’s son Henry was known to have an apple orchard on the 175 acres later to be known as “Graverville.”  Henry’s early huckster wagon delivered potatoes and apples to the area and into New Jersey.  Graver the younger even took this home-made hard-tired, chain-driven jalopy all the way to Florida in the 1910s.  He eventually established a permanent winter home there prior to his death in West Palm Beach Florida in December of 1926.  His fruit business was known as the “Gnadenhutten Fruit Farm.”

Henry Graver relaxing in West Palm Beach Florida with his "Gnadenhutten Fruit Farm" huckster wagon.  Note the chain-drive, hard tires, and lanterns.  One can only imagine how difficult this journey must have been in the 1910s with mostly dirt roads and the heat of the south.  Henry died in West Palm Beach on December 18, 1926. (Photo Courtesy of Larry Graver.)

A 1916 newspaper account told of the recent Graver family reunion that was recently held on the massacre site and former home of Misca.

The First Presbyterian Church of Lehighton was built in 1874.  It was said to have originated as the “Gnadenhutten Presbyterian Church of Lehighton" in the year 1859.  The Reverend Edward Franklin Reimer employed the circulation power of the New York Times to help shed light onto the Frederica Misca mystery in a letter to the editor in April of 1904.

The end of Rev Reimer's 1904 letter printed in the New York Times seeking information on Misca.

Rev. Reimer stated his church was experiencing the “most prosperous days it had ever seen” and he wanted to find out more about the “Recluse of Gnadenhutten” to pay homage to her founding efforts.  To his knowledge, Misca arrived in the area around 1825.

Few people claim to have known much about Misca.  Besides Graver, another Lehighton resident, Catherine Snyder, daughter of Peter Snyder of Towamensing Township, was born around 1825.  It was claimed in her 1909 obituary that she remembered seeing the recluse as a young girl.

The only reference I was able to find as to her eventual demise comes in the Rev Reimer letter.  Misca was known to travel far and wide, selling subscriptions for her proposed church.  She had produced a lithograph depicting a shining new church under her prayerful likeness complete with supplicating hands amid the burning remnants of the settlement.  The prints were given with each $50 subscription she secured.  

The Misca lithograph depicted her amid the burning ruins of the massacre as well as her proposed church beneath the watchful eye of the Moravian martyrs killed November 1755.

Reimer related that Misca disappeared while out on one of her fundraising tours through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.  She was said to have been attacked and died in a Baltimore hospital.  Another account claimed she had disappeared near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

In January 1836, a book written by “Frederica E. Misca” was translated from the German by the Reverend A. W. McClure.  McClure wrote in the preface of that book, “The Love of Jesus, A Treatise Upon the Confirmation and the Lord’s Supper,” that Misca “consecrated her soul and body, and all the living that she hath, to the cause of her Redeemer.”  

He went on to say she devoted “years of toil, and all her pecuniary means.”  McClure too was passing the proceeds of his book onto the mission of her life’s work.  His preface was dated June 2, 1836.

However in a letter, dated April 14 of the same year, the Rev. James Waddle Alexander, the son of famed Presbyterian minister Archibald Alexander, wrote a letter to a life-long friend that shares a different sentiment of Misca.  

He writes, “You probably see by the papers what a hoax there has been about Miss Frederica Misca, who turns out, instead of a German baroness, to be a Pennsylvania huckster.”

Regardless of what anyone can believe about her, her work and devotion ultimately led to her intended hope that one day a church dedicated to her faith would be built in Lehighton.

According to Brenckman, a New York gentleman named George Douglass came to the aid of Misca’s cause in 1831.  Douglass helped fund the balance of her mortgage on the property and soon after lumber and windows were hauled to the site.  A deed of November 1, 1833 was drawn, making Douglass the sole trustee of the property.

Douglass transferred his trust to the members of the Mauch Chunk Presbyterians in 1852.  Some of the property was sold, the proceeds helping the construction of the Mauch Chunk Presbyterian Church.  Passage of a 1870 church act by their assembly sold the remainder of the property to the Gnadenhutten Cemetery Association.
 

By February of 1872, money was transferred from Mauch Chunk to Lehighton for the building of the First Presbyterian Church at Third and Mahoning Streets.

It is unknown for sure whatever became of Frederica Misca.

The Lehighton Gravers: Alvenia and Adaline (Post 1 of 4)

December 13, 2014, 6:58 pm

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A colored advertisement for Alvenia Graver's Millinery Shop in Lehighton.  She first opened with her twin sister Adaline as "Mrs. L. Wehr & Sister." Unlike her sister, Alvenia kept her maiden name for business though she married Sheriff C. W. Lentz.  (Courtesy of Larry Graver.)

The Graver family literally built Lehighton.  They not only serve as a link from the Moravian and Frederica Misca days, their descendents continue to be part of business life in this area today, even though Lewis and his brother Andrew Graver came here nearly 200 years ago.

The Penn Lace Building, on the site of the former Daniel Olewine tannery, was most likely built with bricks from the Graver family brickyard of South Lehighton.

Lewis Graver came to Lehighton when he was just twelve.  His father, Heinrich Graver brought his young family to timber the Moravian lands with both Lewis and Andrew in 1825. 

As a young man, Heinrich Graver’s father (“Andreas Graber” born in 1735) emigrated from Germany to the Montgomery County area and later to Lehigh County. 

The beginning: The Recluse of Gnaden Hutten/Lewis Graver lands

Post #2 - From Lewis to Henry Graver
Post #3 - Graver's Bathing Casino
Post #4 - Henry Graver's Diminished Dream

Eventually the Graver’s conducted a brickyard in the south end of Lehighton on those old lands.  They eventually also had a fruit orchard, skating rink, ice dam and ice factory and the largest swimming pool in Pennsylvania. 

The 175-acres also included bungalows for vacationers.  These eventually turned into the homes of permanent residents known as “Graverville.” "Graverville" is a term nearly gone from the Lehighton lexicon.

This post is the first of a series featuring the various Graver family business ventures in Lehighton. 

Here, we begin with Lewis Graver’s twin daughters Alvenia and Adaline Graver. 

Alvenia and Adeline Graver were born on May 3, 1853.  They conducted their “millinery and notions” shop on South Street Lehighton.  They announced their opening for “new and fashionable CHEAP CASH Milinery and Dressmaking” store in the building “formerly occupied by Dollenmayer’s Jewelry” in May 1880.

They began as “Mrs. Wehr and Sister” as Adaline was married to Mr. Lewis Wehr.  And though Alvenia at first was just the “Sister” end of the partnership, by 1883 it had become the shop of “Miss Alvenia Graver,” an agent for “King’s Dyeing Company.”  The sisters would make trips to Philadelphia to purchase materials for their shop.

It appears that Adaline’s husband Lewis had an ice cream parlor on Bank St as a June 1884 ad attests: “Son, take thy best girl to an ice cream parlor…get the best, and thou art probably aware, the best cream is kept by Lewis Wehr.” 

(Curiously, another powerful Lehighton and Weissport millinery businesswoman, Maria Culton, also had a husband, Ben Culton, who owned an ice cream confectionery shop in downtown Lehighton.  Click here for their story.)

In July of 1892, the family Adaline Wehr was joined by the families of her sister Emma (married to town druggist T. D. Thomas) and their brother Ed Graver for a week of rest and play at Towamensing’s "Lake Harmony."   

A 1900 census showed Lewis Wehr’s occupation as “hide tanner.”  In 1902, Adaline was forty-nine and had a “rheumatic” attack that lasted several weeks.  According to her April obituary, these “seemed to be moving round to different parts of her body” which affected her heart. 

The Graver family plot at the Lehighton Cemetery - Centers upon family patriarch Lewis Graver.

From the "Carbon Advocate," printed in Lehighton, Saturday, November 5, 1887

Adaline left four children: Gertrude, Mabel, Leah, and Vesicon.  She was also outlived by her mother, Leah (Lauchnor) Graver.

Gertrude went on to marry Harry A. Andrews.  It is unclear what happened to Vesicon.  They also had two brothers die as infants.

"Carbon Advocate" ad from July 1883.

Leah Wehr would later move in with her Aunt Alvenia.  Mabel Wehr, the spinster sister, would live the rest of her life with her father.  Lewis Wehr buried her after her apparent suicide from mercury poisoning in 1919.  She was thirty-nine and is buried on the Graver plot with her parents.   

A "Carbon Advocate" ad for Alvenia Graver after she continued with the business she and her sister Adeline Wehr started.  This one from April 1891.

Alvenia Graver was thrice married (Maria Culton too, was thrice married.)  She was first married to Charles W. Lentz.  Their only child to live to adulthood was son William Graver Lentz who was a veteran of the Spanish American War.  They had a daughter, Mattie, who died in 1884 at the age of five.  However there is a mystery here.

Searching William’s military paper work, his death certificate and more, his birth date is listed as August 11, 1878.  His baptism record at Zion UCC in Lehighton was in November 1878.  His sister’s birth date on her tombstone states November 13, 1878 which is confirmed on her January 1879 baptismal record.

Lentz and Graver married on April 4, 1878, just four months before William Graver Lentz was born on August 11, 1878. 

Obviously if these two dates are correct, they cannot both be natural born children of Alvenia born just three months apart.  In census records in later years, Alvenia claimed having just one child with “none” living. 

Mattie Minerva Lentz’s tombstone says she is the daughter of Alvenia.  One answer to this mystery lies with William's death certificate.  It says his mother was "Elizabeth Graber." 

Alvenia had a sister named Elizabeth who married Samuel Seiler and lived in Allentown.  She died in 1927.  Her death certificate states indicates "unknown" in the box entitled "If married, widowed, divorced" as well "unknown" in the box "Birth date." 

Census records for Elizabeth state she had three children, two who survived.  It looks as though she had a son Edgar and and daughter Emma.  None of the records indicate that William Graver could have been a Seiler but it is one possible explanation.  

The most likely mother to William would be Alvenia's sister-in-law Elizabeth married to her brother Martin Graver, but they had a son named David born in 1884 and a son named Martin born in 1885.  Martin later lived with Alvenia after her second marriage.  No other sons are known to have come from Martin and Elizabeth.

Sheriff Lentz and his brother in law Henry Graver (subject Post 2)entertained Judge D. W. Neeley of Poncha Springs Colorado in November 1881.  In early December, the three men left Lehighton for Colorado.  

From the "Carbon Advocate" December 1881.  The above article contains a typo - the town is "Poncha" Springs.

According to the press, Lentz and Graver didn't "expect to return east until spring, if all goes well.”  Nothing further could be found on Judge Neeley beyond this one obscure newspaper article.

Perhaps the leaving of his wife and two young children at home for this trip can be seen as the type of behavior that led to the couple's eventual estrangement.

Lentz and Alvenia ended their marriage by March of 1884.   At about this time, he must have been romantically involved with Atlas “Addie” B. Kuntz of Millport (today’s Aquashicola) as they had a daughter (Naomi Lentz) born by December 1884. 

Sheriff Lentz died an untimely death.  According to his obituary of 1902 his greatest enemy was himself, as he was generous to a fault.  One obituary stated he fell six feet over a rail at Rehrig’s Saloon in Mauch Chunk, striking his head on the stone. 

On May 22, 1894, Alvenia Graver married her second husband: a Mr. William H. Westlake of North Charleroi.  North Charleroi, a small town north of Pittsburgh, is also known as the town of “Lock #4” on the Monongahela River.  

Alvenia appears to be Westlake’s second or third wife, as he had children prior to 1894 and records seem to support at least one other wife.

Perhaps Alvenia intended to move to Pittsburgh with Westlake, as the papers stated, since it appears this is the time she closed her millinery shop.

Westlake was an agent for the P. V. & C. Railroad (Pennsylvania, Virginia & Chesapeake, a forerunner to the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad) at the time.  He also, just the month before the wedding, became the patent holder for a water and dust proof folding trunk.   

The Pittsburgh papers announced that the wedding was a surprise to his friends.  After the ceremony he returned to his home town alone, expecting Alvenia to join him by July. 

However things must have bent to Alvenia’s will as they were residing in Lehighton by 1900 with Westlake’s school teacher son Earl.  Westlake listed his occupation as “landlord” while nothing was noted for Alvenia’s profession.

By 1910, she still listed her last name as Westlake even though she was living without him.  It is unclear where Westlake was living in 1910.  In the censuses of 1920 to 1940, he lived with his son Earl in San Fransico as a “widower,” though Alvenia was alive until 1932.

Alvenia was living with her twenty-three year old niece Leah Wehr (sister Adaline’s daughter) and twenty-two year old nephew “Raymond” Graver on Bridge Street as a “keeper of a boardinghouse.”  

Martin “Raymond” Graver, the orphaned son of Martin and Elizabeth (Straussburger) Graver, mentioned earlier.   

Alvenia married Henry Weiss sometime after 1910. 

Weiss was born in Lehigh County and raised a family including sons Henry Jr. and Jefferson Parades Weiss.  They all moved to Emporia Virginia by 1900 and engaged in various enterprises.

Jefferson worked at his own garage and his brother Henry was a surveyor for his father’s real estate firm.  

All this changed when Alvenia moved from Lehighton to Emporia when she wed Weiss, her third husband.  She lived with Weiss and Henry Jr, now divorced, and Jefferson, now widowed.

Weiss seems to have made a name for himself in Emporia by 1900 as he had three African American servants, was proprietor of the “Emporia Hotel” and listed his occupation as “publisher.”  In 1897, he was active in trying to lure a sugar factory to his town for economic development. 

Weiss was born in 1844 and lived in Lehigh County.  Apparently widowed of his children’s mother, he married a second wife, Matilda Grim of Northampton County North Carolina on May 3, 1885. 

He was in Emporia Virginia by February 1884, a small town just south of Petersburg and Richmond, when he wrote a letter to his old commander. 

Colonel Tobias B. Kaufman was in command of Weiss’s 209^th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment.  Kaufman was born in Boiling Springs but had moved to Iowa after the war.  

It seems Colonel Weiss enjoyed chatting and reminiscing with the former confederate soldiers he met as well as strolling around at Fort Stedman and through the battlefield at Petersburg, known as the “Battle of the Crater.”    

In the letter, he refers to a “Johnny” (as in “Johnny Reb”) he met by the name “Britton” who was “seven feet tall” who had captured Colonel Kaufman and who took Kaufman’s sword and revolver.  Britton was known to have worn the sword until the end of the war. 

This book contains the letters between Weiss and Kaufman as well as those with Britton, the "Seven foot tall" rebel officer.

Colonel Weiss’s chance meeting led to an exchange of letters between Kaufman and Britton and in time, led to the return of both the sword and his revolver.  The letters attest to the cordial and respectful manner these two old foes held for each other.

Even though Kaufman’s capture led him to be sent to the Confederate Libby Prison in Richmond and later shipped out to Danville Prison, a friendship flowered and endured.  Kaufman was returned to his unit on April 14, 1865 as part of the surrender signed by Lee and Grant.

As was the case with her second husband from Pittsburgh, it is unclear how Alvenia met husband number three in Virginia, but it appears that they were married sometime after 1910. 

Where Weiss adopted the title “Colonel” is uncertain.  He served in Company H of the 209^th Regiment as a private throughout his enlistment from September 3, 1864 to May 1865.   

The term must have been bestowed upon him as a social convention due to his standing in the community, since no other military record can be found.

“Colonel” Weiss died and was buried, apparently in Virginia.  By 1930, Alvenia was back in Lehighton living with her niece, nephew, and her twin sister’s widowed husband Lewis Wehr. 

She lived until 1932 as the “Widow Mrs. Alvenia Weiss.”

And although she was married three times, her grave stone still refers to her as “Graver,” even though it concludes with: “Wife of Colonel H. W. Weiss.”  She was seventy-nine.

And here is where a comma must be placed on the story of the Lehighton Gravers.  Please click this link on Post #2, a more thorough look at Lewis and his son Henry Graver.  Post 3 is also in development.

 Footnotes:

William Graver Lentz survived the Spanish American War, came home, and married his wife Jane.  He was a salesman for National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) living in Bloomsburg.  His 1950 death certificate, completed by his wife, listed his mother as “Elizabeth Graber.”

Sheriff Charles W. Lentz and his second wife Addie had one daughter together, Miss Naomi Lentz born in December 1884.  She was only thirty-three and single when she died in October of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. 

Her mother Addie apparently never remarried and died alone, an invalid at Good Shepherd, crippled by arthritis.

U.S. Army Retired Captain William H. Westlake is buried in Gold Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno California.  Alvenia Graver’s widow lived with his warrant officer son Earl until his death 1945.

A Few Other Untimely Graver Deaths:

One of Lewis Graver’s grandsons, Henry, the son of Layfayette Graver, was killed when the gasoline stove in his apple cellar exploded, catching his clothing on fire.  He was burned to death on their Pine Run farm on June 10, 1931.  He is the great uncle to Richard Graver who runs the Graver Apple Orchard today.  He was just twenty-five.  (Perhaps this was actually an exploding distillery?)

Another branch of the Graver tree that endured a chain of unfortunate deaths was that of Lewis Graver’s eldest son Martin, born in 1845.  Martin lived in Packerton and was drafted into the Civil War while he was a laborer on the Lehigh Canal.   He died and buried among the Graver family plot in the Lehighton Cemetery in 1884.  He was thirty-nine.

Martin had a son named David Graver who was an engineer on the Lehigh Valley Railroad.  He was killed at 6:00 am on February 27, 1943 while crossing First St.  He was while walking to the Packerton Yard and struck by a car.  He died of a broken neck and left leg. He was fifty-nine.

David Graver had a son Paul, who stood trial for the murder of his boss’s wife.  Paul Graver was an amusement operator at Gilhool’s Harverys Lake Casino.  Dorothy Gilhool’s body was beaten to death and found half frozen near the lake in 1954.

Witnesses swore that the forty-two year old Graver was one of the last people to see her at a late night party.  An expert on fibers testified that hair found in Graver’s room matched those of Mrs. Gilhool.

Another son of Martin’s, Martin “Raymond” Graver, who lived with Alvenia at her boarding house, died of influenza in 1941 at the age of fifty-five.

Charles Thomas, grandson of Lewis Graver and son of town pharmacist T. D. and Emma (Graver) Thomas died in November 1954 of smoke inhalation when his home burned.

"I think of Cal everyday...People must think I'm crazy..."

August 22, 2015, 5:00 pm

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“I think of Cal everyday…Even today, each day that man makes me smile…sometimes I catch myself alone in the car, laughing and laughing at something Cal said…People passing me by must think I’m crazy…but they didn’t know Cal Haas.” ~ Dick “Jockey” Semmel, March 2011

  

Ahead of his time: Cal Haas, with his George Strohl delivery wagon prior to opening his store on Coal St in early 1930.  This photo was taken just south of the corner at Third and Iron Sts, Lehighton.  Though he was just a deliveryman for Strohl, Cal had his own name painted over the rear fender.

(This story is a companion piece to another post "From Farmers, To Grocers, To Tire Dealers: They were the enterprising Haas's" can be found by clicking here.  There you will find more genaology and a few other stories not found here.)   

Haas' Store: the institution, it was the nerve center of the neighborhood universe at Fifth and Coal Streets in Lehighton. 

It was the center of my life. 

Cal Haas was enterprising and industrious.  He left his family farm in Andreas before he was ten to live with his older brother Ivan who was a green grocer living on Ninth St in Lehighton.

L to R: Miriam, Madeline, and Mildred "Sis" in the earliest days of the store circa 1933.

All the Haas’s had a dint for hard work and a nose for business.  His father David farmed but huckstered oysters.  Brother Clint timbered, raised cattle and ran a hotel at New Ringgold (On the same lot as the mini-mart gas Station is today, at the railroad crossing.) 

Davie ran an ice cream shop at today’s “Bridge Street Hotel.”  Jeremiah “Jerry” ran a tire re-tread business in Allentown and later worked at the Tropical Fruit Store at Sixth and Tilghman Sts.   

Raymond home delivered produce and ran a Store on Second St. in Lehighton before returning to his own farm. Youngest brother Wilmer ran “Haas’ Restaurant” at 806 Hamilton St.  Owing to the Haas work ethic, Wilmer claimed to give “25 Hour Service.” 

And two of Cal’s daughters, the two who scoured the neighborhood with order pads, Miriam and Mildred “Sis,” also had businesses of their own.   

"Sis" working the counter at Garvin's Restaurant at Third and Coal Sts while her husband Lee Garvin works the grill in the early 1960s.

“Sis” Garvin ran a restaurant on the corner of Third and Coal Sts in the 1960s.  It later became the “D&D Print Shop” and is currently “Deet’s Salon.”  Miriam ran a cement lawn ornament shop at her Center Valley home for many years into the 1990s.

Bread was king, it was the "bread and butter" to most corner stores.  Most stores also had these promotional pictures of the store owner posing with "Freihofer's Breads."

Haas’ Store’s “big bang” was in bread.  Cal Haas ran three bread routes for George Strohl.  Cal’s first step of breaking from Strohl was the advent of his own home-delivery of groceries, his “Store on wheels.”

(Cal had a brother-in-law, Raymond Weigner, married to his sister Sadie, who was also in bread delivery.  He was struck by a car and killed in Summit Lawn, Allentown, just three days after Christmas in 1928.)

Strohl’s cream donuts were said to be particularly sought after.  Miriam remembers George Strohl to be a tobacco-chewing, unshaven son of a gun who made the best bread in town (click here to read more of Lehighton’s baking past.)

The early years were harder on the older children who were fully employed by the store.  Madeline, Miriam and Mildred (“Sis”) went with order pads and taking orders door-to-door to be delivered later.

Madeline Haas with Cal Haas sedan, with the ever present "rabbit," which is what Haas means in German.

Cal was known to be a night owl, entertaining other insomniacs with his stories while he shucked oysters or watched television to the early morning hours. 

Miriam especially felt a great responsibility to her family’s livelihood.  She remembers leaping from her bed before 7:00am at the noise of delivery trucks.  She’d rush down before the delivery was complete, scrutinizing the actual delivered goods versus the invoice to insure a fair trade. 

The restocking the Haas delivery sedan each evening also fell on Miriam’s shoulders. 

A key friend of Cal’s was William Snyder.  Snyder ran a confection and tobacco business out of his 458 Cypress Street home, just down the alley from the store, during the 1920s and 30s that predated Haas' Store. 

Bill Snyder's Cypress St business pre-dated his friend Cal Haas' Store.  This is an ad from the 1928 'Gachtin Bambil,' LHS Yearbook.

William "Bill" Snyder and Cal having a weenie roast in "Bill's Lot." The store is in the background.   Bill's lot was a favored place to play for many of the Haas children and grandchildren.  The lot is now owned by Hilly Haas.

Ruth Arlene Haas and family would rent the former home of William and Arlene Snyder while the Snyders occupied their home above a garage to the rear of 458 Cypress St.  And from the 1950s into the 1980s, the Snyders never-raised rent rate of $45 per month. 

 Eventually, the Snyder estate was divided among the Haas siblings, the home going to Ruth.

George Freeby's own label, here and below. Clever: "Free-B" with a 'bee' atop the 'B.'

Arlene Snyder was the sister to Progressive Merchant Wholesale grocer George Freeby.  Freeby was also Vice President of the Pennsylvania Grocer’s Association and was a founding investor and director of two Lehighton Banks.  His warehouse was on Maiden Lane, Lehighton and Cal purchased many of his groceries from Freeby including George's own label "Free-B."

(As children all of us grandkids were enthralled to go there for orders, going to the second floor to watch the cigarette cartons travel at a high rate, getting their Pennsylvania tax stamps, and then watch as the automated machine folded and sealed up the cartons.)

(George Freeby killed blacksmith Charles Mertz at Mertz Corner on his way to the Country Club with three friends.  Mertz was on the road, as he returned from voting on November 6, 1928.  Freeby was also a good friend of George Rabenold, brother to Zacharias.)

Like most legends, separating Cal Haas the man and Cal Haas the myth is nearly impossible. 

People like Dick “Jockey” Semmel adored him.  Cal Haas was an enigma: known for an unfiltered wit and quirky habits, sprinkled with moments of intemperance, his behavior yet another testament to why people considered my Grandmother Becky as among the saints.

According to Semmel, Cal’s ‘Twain-esque’ humor and insight created ideas ahead of their time.  He credits Cal with originating the idea of a hotline between the President and Moscow, long before the Cold War necessitated one.  The store didn’t have a warehouse, but it did have a “wareroom,” another moniker that allegedly originated with Cal.

On at least one occasion, Cal would check-in at his favorite stop, Diehl’s Triangle Hotel at South First and Bankway. A call would come into the store, “Cal’s too drunk to finish his route,” and Bobby or Miriam had to walk to the truck and finish the deliveries.

Other times, Lehighton Officer “Tuggles” Armbruster would bring Cal home.  

Undeterred by such setbacks to his fun, he’d walk back to Diehl’s or to the Eagles club.

Miriam with perhaps Tommy Buck along the Fifth St side of the store. The cellar door at right received stock from truck deliveries.

 Another time, Cal drove the wrong car home. When Tuggles came to retrieve it, Cal handed over the keys with a promise to wait until the morning to retrieve his own car. 

And with that promise,  the case of Cal’s grand theft larceny was forgotten and forgiven.

Like most corner stores, Haas’ provided store credit.  Customers could put things “on the tick.”  One night of reverie led Cal to end the inner nagging of some of his longest outstanding debts. 

According to Cal Haas lore, on at least one occasion, he came home assembled about $2,000 of unpaid customer bills and burned them.  To understand the magnitude of this figure, know that a loaf of bread was under ten cents at this time.

I remember, near the waning days of the store, I made a perusal of the unpaid bills, some reaching back to the 1940s and 1950s.  The sum, then once again, was well into the thousands of dollars. 

Hilly Haas makes a delivery to long-time customer Lavona Ronemus in 1989.

I can remember being around nine or ten and delivering one of my first home orders to a neighbor woman struggling with an alcohol problem who subsequently developed the habit of owning grocery debt. 

My uncle’s admonishment and coaching before I left went like this: “Do not to enter the house and certainly do not let go of that box, until you have cash in hand.” 

I can still see the shock in her eyes as I took the order back to the store with me.

During my lifetime at the store, I saw how many people relied on the store for more than groceries.  Some like Tex Gilbert came for meat ends because he had nothing else to eat.  The store would also break a box of butter down to quarters to make it more affordable for those unable to buy a whole pound.  I can still see Oscar Diehl buying one stick and eating it straight from the wrapper like a popsicle.

Becky's big-heart emerged from a childhood of uncertainty.  Her father died was she was in her early teens, forcing her mother and family to move off the farm and into town. She and her mother and sisters cleaned homes and lived with an older couple as caretakers to survive.  She married cal when she was just sixteen.  Becky with Robert and Ruth behind the store around 1936.

My mother would often mention how Becky’s generosity was well known among the collection of hobos who passed through town among the freight lines of our town’s famed “Packerton Yards.”

Others found an outlet for their gambling needs with both the Pennsylvania Lottery and in the small bets the uncles covered in the kitchen, the nerve center of the store. 

Bill Bayer and Uncle Hilly often covering each other on several NFL games each week at $5 per game.  Each man getting to choose 1 game over the other.

The front counter had a doorbell button connected to a buzzer when assistance was needed from one of the Haas men who were posted for duty at the meat counter but whiled away their time, with foot on the former table of Becky and Cal, watching TV between customers.

In the 1930s and 1940s, and even into the 1950s, only about half of the neighborhood had a telephone.  The store served as a vital communication center, relaying messages from relatives far away. 

Railroad dispatchers too, called the store when they couldn’t find one of the many railroad workers for an assignment.  Many times the Haas children were enlisted to find these trainmen to get them to their posts.

Cal put most of his drinking behind him by the 1950s.  However for one occasion, the wedding of his daughter Ruth, he reached deep down for a good one.  His jag included the theatrics of accusing his son Robert of bilking him for over $60,000. 

Cal, back center, with son Bobby holding hat.

Cal and Becky enjoyed Sunday afternoon excursions to the “Ridge Cup,” along present day Route 309, back near his old homestead.  They’d pack Becky’s knitting and Cal’s rubber ball, and of course his favorite: a thermos of oyster stew.  Cal would find a nice flat spot to bounce his ball.

He was known to have bounced a ball a million times on at least three to five separate occasions.  He kept records of it in his safe.  One day a disbelieving salesman asked to see the records but only saw Cal’s fury when it appeared that someone had gotten in the safe and thrown the records away.

One of many of the many colorful characters associated in Haas' lore: Johnny Nothstein.  He later had his produce shop on North First St below Carbon St which he ran into the 1980s, long enough for the grandchildren of Cal like myself to be old enough to drive there produce order pick-ups for the store.

He’d save his money for various things in unique ways.  He had a tire fund, a tax fund, a deep sea fishing trip fund and what have you.  After the total was determined, he’d calculate the thickness in quarters or half dollars to reach his monetary goal.  Then he’d cut pipe to the length necessary. 

Once the pipe was full, he knew he had the right amount.  He’d do the same thing by calculating the volume of glass jars and cans as well.  All the while, he kept his accountings on pieces of butcher paper slung across the hallway wall, hence you could say Cal was first to utilize “spreadsheets.”

(I remember my mother saving for my sister’s orthodontic braces in the same way with her tip money from waitressing.)

David and Mary Alice Haas on one of their two farms they lived at in Andreas.  A fire necessitated their need to find a second home. This picture most likely late 1920s.

Sometime in the 1920s, Cal’s parents David and Alice moved to 222 South Sixth Street to semi-retire.  David still huckstered oysters nearly up until his death in 1937.

Cal’s store was underway and he took over more and more of the oyster business as his father’s health faded.  Many of people who stopped by the store watched him sort the stewers from the fryers, carefully saving the juice, dropping the shells through a hole in the counter he special built for oyster shucking.

Some of the shells made their way to the chicken farm across from the present day high school which had a hammer-mill for cracking down corn and oyster shells to be mixed into chicken feed. 

Bobby behind the counter of the store near the end in 1998.

Other shells were used as fill for the dirt alley leading down to Cypress St where I grew up, in William Snyder’s old home.  Even though the alley was paved in the early 1980s, you could still find chunks of oyster shells there until recently.

There are more stories and a more genealogical look at Cal found by clicking here.

Besides my cousins and the constant homecoming parade of old friends, there was always a colorful array of characters dropping in, much like Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment.  They always had a new dilemma, a new story, a new heartache to discuss, or just to simply sit in silence across the kitchen table at the rear of the store.

Tough Girls: One of my favorite pictures of my aunts, epitomizing their witty charisma: Aunt Miriam Haas waving from her thumb to Aunt "Sis" second from right,  with their friends Claire Parish Whitehead sporting the Winston Churchill "victory" sign and her future husband's sister, Melba Whitehead.

A partial list of real people here: Earl Simmons, Tommy Buck (Aunt Miriam still fawns for his ever so white teeth), Attorney Bayer, Wimp Nothstein, Tex Gilbert, Richard Herlihy, Tom Polk, the Kostaks, Dorthea Xander, Bill Blocker, Jimmy Murphy, Wesley Bowman and etc. 

For me, it was a place to belong.  And It was a center of my learning too.  Chiefly, I learned the value of hard work.  But ever so subtly, it is where I learned how a family can work together as well as argue like enemies.  

The Uncle Bobby vs. Uncle Hilly fights were epic.  Poor Hilly, forever the “little brother,” could seldom do right in Bobby’s eyes. Visible through that ever settling debris field of family dust-ups, one could still find the love instilled through the ages of family.

It is where I realized you didn’t have to always like your family, and yet you never stopped loving them.  As I’ve aged, one of my favorite “compliments” from my own brothers, when we’re fighting, is that I’m just like Uncle Bobby.

Bobby Haas's lottery permit originated in 1972.

Six of Seven of the Haas Children: Mildred, Miriam and Madeline fronted by Hilbert, Ruth, and Robert.  BetteMae, the youngest is not pictured.

The store was a place to spend many hours with my aunts and uncles: Uncle Bobby, Uncle Hilly, Aunt Madeline, and Aunt “Sis” (Mildred).  Additionally, there were the many deliverymen I looked forward to seeing each week.

There was the 7-Up man who controlled his blood pressure herbally and smelled so strongly like garlic, that he forced everyone to hold their breath until he left.  And once he did, the store was properly aired out.

There was Ernie Long and the Zimmerman’s Dairy truck.  Ernie was among the many deliverymen who’d let me sit at the wheel, pretending to drive, honk the horn and flash the hazard lights as they completed their delivery. 

The Tastykake man would bring me Phillies schedules on little cardboard cards, the home games listed in red ink on the front, away games were in blue on the back.

And of course there were the best delivery day of them all: Thursday mornings between 8:30 and 9:00am, "Trexler Park" day.   Trexler Park was a major distributor and wholesaler to small grocery stores.  To me, it was nearly as anticipated as Christmas day.  (See “Epilogue” for more on this.)

Robert Haas with some Krakow Polish Ham - 1970s.

My earliest sin and lie that I can remember was committed there.  Uncle Hilly just returned from Johnny’s Produce on North First Street with a box of tomatoes. 

I promptly remember sticking my fingertip into one of them.  There was a tactile thrill here.  So I did it again and again, until the whole top layer of tomatoes was ruined.

 

View of aisle leading to the kitchen, the Chip and Tasykake shelf,  foreground right is where Cal and Becky's stairs once made their descent. This left side of the modern store was originally downstairs living space.

I can remember the anxiousness on Hilly’s face when he called me into the wareroom, alone. 

My heart sunk as my fears were confirmed with the presentation of the key evidence against me: the damaged tomatoes. 

Scared to death, I lied.  I was released and went down the alley home.

Later that day, I was summoned again by Hilly, frantic now after finishing the questioning of all the other cousins who had been in the store that day.  His elimination process had left him with the only likely and logical suspect.  After carefully considering each and every alibi and modus operandi, I remained his main suspect.

And in my little six year old heart, I knew he had me.  Mea culpa!  I had nothing left to do but to break down.

The store was a constant stream of the off-color story, adult jokes, and the zany, unfiltered humor of the Haas family and customers alike. 

There was a stack of my uncle’s men’s magazines, carefully concealed in the wareroom that certainly opened my young eyes.  I can also remember being shown the picture of a close relative who unabashedly sent her own picture into one of the amateur sections of one of those magazines.  (Uggh.  I don’t even know where to begin to heal those scars.)

Katie Nothstein Boyer with her sister Becky Haas.  Cal always teased about Aunt Katie.

Though he had just a third grade education, Cal was an avid reader.  He loved, probably in this order: greasy foods, Friday night boxing on TV, and of course his wife (though often joking how he married her only to get closer to her sister Kate).  

Benches were set up on the porch and the TV was brought outside. The fights drew crowds to the only TV set on the block.  

Cal's unpredictable wit and deadpan stare was known to scare people at times.

But it was his wit and charm that amassed the loyal friends like former Lehighton resident Dick Semmel. 

With a capriciously sharp wit and a shotgun leaning against the back kitchen door, Cal could also scare people too.  

He once literally caused a woman to faint in the Street.  And on at least one occasion, Cal made threats toward his one daughter who still remembers the menacing voice and expression to this day.  Those words if taken literally would scare anyone.  But knowing the hyperbolic Cal, I'm certain it was all in dark fun.

Cal indulged in staying up late and eating fatty foods, like fried summer sausage.  He refused to interrupt his mastication for the grease running out and down the corners of his mouth.

Many have attested to Becky’s saintly big heart, Dick Semmel and recently deceased Bill Blocker of Lehighton among them. 

She took a steady decline due to Parkinson’s disease and died in an Allentown nursing home in 1969, her mind nearly gone due to dementia.

The late nights and poor diet caught up with Cal too.  The diabetes soon took his leg. 

To boost his spirits, his son Bob and Dick “Jockey” Semmel took him for a ride, out past the old Ridge Cup, past his brother Clint’s old hotel and when they got home, they all had some oyster stew.  Seeing the old sights did much to lighten his mood.

Bu on June 28, 1967, Cal felt the pain in his arm that prompted daughter Madeline to take to the Lehighton Hospital.   Soon though, the doctors and nurses discovered the Haas humor, and all seemed to be all right.

Feeling better, Madeline left him with the staff to phone the store to tell everyone Cal seemed to be fine.  But during that call, his heart arrested and Cal Haas was no more.

The store made it through another thirty years with son Bob.  He expanded the building, and for a time, it thrived, despite the introduction of the big supermarkets of the 1970s.

And so it goes.  But memories linger on.

Oyster stew remains as one of my go to comfort foods to this day.  It seems to do so for untold and unseen reasons.

Studying this story of my past connects those threads, the love of oysters going back to my great-grandfather, Cal’s father David, born over 150 years ago.

It’s funny how the small subtle pleasures that we gain throughout our lives gain clarity as we age.  Having grown from a boy to a father of grown children myself, I can to see and taste my mother’s oyster stew, stretched out over time.

The Store: the 1950s version above, 1970s below.  Note the vintage 7-Up machine cut-off left, below as well as the exterior porch and stairs cut-off at right, and of course the expansion of the store to fill the entire downstairs.  These are the most notable changes Bobby Haas made expanding the store from the family residence to a more "modern" corner store.

Changing times: the "Cigarette Permit" of 1953 evolved into one owned by both Robert and wife Geri by 1958 (below.)

EPILOGUE:

Trexler Park Day:

His name as I remember it was ‘Bill:’ This big-jawed, scruffy-faced, cigarette smoking, hoarsed-mouthed, laughing man brought that sixteen-wheeler along the Fifth St side curbing each Thursday morning around 9:00.

The street would be cleared of cars from the burn pit to the corner to make way.  He’d parallel park so that his side door opened to the cellar door, and the skate wheel conveyor was set up.  Almost always it was Uncle Hilly at the bottom catching.

Early on, it was a thrill just to be in the truck while “Bill” set the stuff down.  

Occasionally he’d miss-time Hilly’s return, sending a case of Maxwell House Instant coffee in glass jars crashing to the cellar floor.  But maybe not so much so accidentally, the big box of Bounty towels inevitably always one of the last items sent, was sent to the floor.

One of the favorite pastimes of the many grandchildren and stock-boys was writing graffiti and stories on the cellar stairwell.  Fights between Hilly and Bobby gained permanence here, documenting how one fight erupted over the placing boxes on the stairs in a "wrong" manner (top right). Some of the writings extended past the stairs onto the surrounding beams in the cellar.  These markings are still preserved despite major renovations to the building.  It is now owned by the Larry Markley Nationwide Insurance Agency.

Eventually I got big enough to release the boxes from the top and I loved sending the paper towels flying without Hilly to receive them.  And then, perhaps by around ten years of age, I Started helping Hilly catch the boxes.  I had to work up to the big and heavy boxes of laundry detergent, but eventually I could do those and the boxes of Campbell’s Soup and everything.

The store passed from my grandfather Cal to his son Robert in the 1960s.  Robert expanded the store drastically: knocking down the wall that separated the Haas family living space of the left side of the house and taking out the interior stairs to the upstairs.  The former second floor living area was now an apartment accessible only by an exterior set of stairs.

Ezra Kreiss was the first husband ofMadeline Haas.  He was lost without ever seeing his only child, Ezra (click herefor his story.)

One kooky employee was my Aunt Madeline’s second husband Chester.  (Her first husband, hertrue love, died in the English Channel at the hands of a German schnellboat.  Read his story by clicking here.)

Around the kitchen table at Haas's: BetteMae, Bill Snyder, Sis, Becky, John and Miriam, Bob and Geri, and Arlene. Chester wears the vest and Cal front and center.

Chester, also a WWII veteran, had many compulsive habits.  He believed in living out literal biblical pronouncements and kept separate places for his and his wife’s foods.  He constantly monitored the distance from the back of their cupboard to the stacks of their dishes.

He also once set out to cross Pennsylvania by foot.  After crossing a bridge of the Delaware, his determination was stilted after a few miles of blisters from his stiff new leather dress shoes.  

His phone call was to Becky at the store, mustering only the words, “Mam, I failed.”  The newspapers proclaimed, “Five Miles and Ouch (Out)!”

Chester was the shelf-stocker long before the days of the grandchildren stock-boy generation came along.  His precision and attention to detail was unmatched.  But to his chagrin, it was near impossible for him to ever quite finish the job.

If he neared the end of his stocking and if there were customers still shopping, Chester’s world would get stiflingly frantic.  As each gap appeared from this missing can or that missing box, Chester would dutifully descend the stairs for a replacement, one can or one box at a time.  This customer-stockboy cat-and-mouse was said to go on for hours.

Most of the oldest generation of Haas grandchildren at the annual Haas family Christmas Eve Party mid 1960s- Starting back Left: Brenda Garvin, Debbie and Kathy Haas, Randy Rabenold with Jimmy and Jeff Garvin.  Susan Haas is cut-off front center.

The Break-Ins:

In the 1980s, a local man, well-known to everyone in the Haas' Store neighborhood, began to have a series of run-ins with the law.  During his time "on the lamb" he used the store as a 'home-base' of sorts.  

More Grandchildren: Brenda Garvin helps with Jacqueline Parker's socks at the store 1950s.

Because he couldn't show his face in the day hours but still needing sustenance, the man would find easy egress into the store by pushing one of the exhaust fans aside that simply sat in front of the open cellar windows.  

He generally took cigarettes and lunch-meat, but on at least one occasion wrote a note, with an apology and thus gave a fair accounting of the items he took.  

Rebecca Haas saw to it that her children, and thus her grandchildren, were raised with an abiding faith within the teachings of a Mennonite based, Salem Bible Fellowship Church.  Here is the wedding at the Cypress St Church in 1951 for Miriam's wedding to John Parker.  The Jesus as Shepard painting in the background was relocated to the new church now in the Mahoning Valley.  Becky was strongly assisted in this en devour through the efforts of Arlene Haas.

The man also knew of Hilly's habit of leaving his keys in his station wagon.  At first, the man took the care on rare or perhaps desperate occasions when he needed a ride someplace.  

I remember on at least two occasions driving around in Dick Herlihy's taxi with Uncle Hilly searching for his car.

But the joy-ride that took the cake was the night the man, in some sort of anger toward his car-loaning benefactor, decided to ditch the car, front end into the Mahoning Creek. 

I can still picture the sweep of the headlights as we turned into Baer Memorial and how they found the wagon at a pitched angle in the water.  And despite our best attempts at gunning the engine and spinning tires, it just wouldn't budge.
  
The break-ins continued over several weeks.  And thus began a rather long series of measures to stop them, including some diabolical "Home Alone"-style booby-traps at the cellar windows, reinforcement of interior door from the cellar and even late night stake-outs on alternating nights between Hilly and Bobby.  Cousins even sat in the store, in silence, each night through the small hours of the night.

Finally, one evening, when Bobby was on post alone, the mouse had entered the trap.  A slight scuffle and perhaps a shot from a revolver (this fact has strong confirmations though it was later disputed as happening), and the fugitive tore off through Bill's lot.  

Word passed on the town police scanner and some residents in the know went on alert.  It was local Power and Light Manager Lonnie Armbruster who apprehended the man hiding in his mother's shrubbery near Sixth and Cypress Sts.  

Bobby removes the letters in 1998.

The Eventual Demise:

Bobby and Ruth middle 1930s, at the rear of the store prior to the building of the "wareroom."

Family stores and businesses were under pressure for some time.  The Carbon Plaza Mall’s advent in the 1970s introduced the area to its first “supermarket.”  And later the 1990s saw the coming of Walmart.  First Street’s A&P market accepted defeat a few years before Haas’ eventual end.

The small furniture store of Mel Everett on Third St., formerly Trainer’s Grocery, is gone.  Along with Kirkendall’s Dairy, Ice Cream and grocery on South Second St. and Lou Volkert’s dinette counter and grocery on North Second.

Madeline (rear) and Bobby (ground) hamming it up behind the store.

Gone too are Bennett’s Candy Shop, Levine’s Furniture, the Lehighton News Agency as was as Hammel’s store which was a news agency and dinette at the bottom of Coal Street.  And today we are saying goodbye to Lehighton Hardware.

I started at the store on my own volition.  I didn’t do it to seek a salary, but rather because it was something fun, a hobby.  It was a chance to be with those zany Haas’s worth more than change my aunts and uncles could put in my pocket.

I remember simply sitting up front, next to Aunt Madeline or Sis, waiting to be of service: bag five or ten pounds of potatoes, filling up the Lifesavers or Hershey bars running low, the extra stock beneath the counter, assessing the stockpile of bags: two, five, eight, twelve, twenty and the largest ones, the “flat-bottom” bags, and running to the cellar for replacements.

I made the “payroll” sometime around fourth grade.  I was allowed one returnable, quart-bottle of A-Treat (almost always “Cream,” but sometimes “Grape” or “Birch Beer”).  I was also allowed one small bag of chips, usually “Wise Onions Rings.” 

But soon my best hopes were answered when Hilly’s high-school age son Kenny gave up his duties of burning trash and carrying up the “List.”

Stock storage in the basement.  The stock needing replacing was placed on a 'list' by Hilbert, then he would place the items into boxes that were placed on these stairs.  The carrying of these boxes up by stockboys like, Jimmmy and Jeff Garvin, Kenny Haas, and last Rick and Ron Rabenold was known as 'the List.' The "Dollar Days" canned food sales required much heavy lifting.  The area to the left was where Cal had his oyster shucking table as well as his barrels of molasses that according to Delbert Haydt,  Cal once fell asleep mid-tap, pouring a hundred gallons of the sticky stuff all over the floor.  Bobby also recalled times when these wooden barrels broke upon the cellar stairs mid-delivery, causing a similar sticky situation.

At first it was $5 per week for burning the trash on most days (never on a Sunday or when the neighbors had wash hanging to dry.)  Then it was increased to $7 when the “List” was added.  But the biggest promotion to my young heart was around Junior High, when my handwriting was deemed good enough to price the stock: 33 cents for a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup.

The work was nearly worth the reward to my best friends as well.  Something akin to Huck Finn, I’d recruit one of two friends to help me carry boxes up from the cellar.  After which we’d share the A-Treat soda from the bottle, enjoying Hilly or Bobby’s company in the kitchen. 




The End of the Institution:

Upon entering the kitchen you could count on seeing at least one of two things: Uncle Bobby, with his nearly perpetual cigarette or Uncle Hilly, his right foot up on the table with a patch of  Lipton iced tea in a glass half-gallon orange juice bottle.

Hilly in a familiar pose in the kitchen between meat counter customers.

The “List” was each Monday and Thursday.  Hilly would appraise the stock on all the shelves, make a list, and collate the assorted cans and packages into boxes and place them on the cellar stairs to be carried up.

Early on, I can remember the stairs being quite full, with only a narrow walkway down the center, some of the boxes were piled two high across the nearly four-foot wide treads.  But these piles also served as a barometer of the store’s failing business, getting appalling scant as the 1980s turned into the 90s.  

After the sale of the store, Bobby and other relatives were on hand on the day when the new owners demolished Cal Haas's  "wareroom." Found amid the wreckage was the maroon toilet seat.

Cal Haas's son, Robert "Bobby" Haas closed the store in 1998.  

The two sisters most associated with the store, Madeline and Sis are both gone.  Madeline in 2008 and Sis in 2011.


Though Bobby suffered and conquered several open heart surgeries from the 1970s he lived into his own 70s.  


He struggled for several months after a complicated aneurysm surgery and passed in April of 2012.  

The last of Cal and Rebecca’s offspring who remain are three: Second oldest Miriam just celebrated her 90^th birthday, while the two youngest, Hilbert and BetteMae are still alive and healthy.

Madeline and Mildred "Sis" Haas were the two Haas sisters who are most known for working the front counter of the store.  Forever taking trips and having themed parties together, here they are in their retirement years above and as Devil and Angel below.

This tranquil winter scene of Lehighton taken from the second floor window looking toward the Lehigh Gap with Zion's clock tower and Trinity's steeple.  This background compares to the one in the picture of Bobby above. This post was posted at 8:00pm, the time the store closed each night.

Albrightsville: The Fire and the Fury Part 2 - "The Fury"

January 30, 2016, 10:10 am

≫ Next: "Stumble in, Fall Out" - The Life and Art of William "Hicks" Bergenstock

≪ Previous: "I think of Cal everyday...People must think I'm crazy..."

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So the Devil was Waiting…

(Part 1 of this post "the Fire" can be viewed by clicking here...)

(Also, a companion post about the Pine Swamp distilleries by clicking here...)

“…Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?...So I run to the rock, please hide me…But the rock cried out, ‘I can’t hide you’…I said, ‘Rock, what’s a matter with you rock?  Don’t you see I need you, rock?’...So I run to the Lord, ‘Please hide me Lord, don’t you see me prayin’?’… The Lord said, go to the Devil…So the Devil was waitin’…” ~Nina Simone “Sinnerman”

“Most men there serve as guides during the hunting season.  Otherwise they grow potatoes or do a little lumbering.  Hardly anybody but hunters ever go in that section and when they want a deer, one of those swamp men will get him one.” ~Samuel W. Hofford, clerk of U.S. court in Scranton in 1933 and former Carbon County resident.

Long-line of undertakers and hunters of the Pine Swamp - Henry C. Melber (l) with sons Ed Melber and Harry Melber with his son Nathan Melber, proudly display their readiness for bird hunting, a tradition that is still carried on by the successive generation (5) of Melbers being undertakers and hunters.  Henry was the originator, starting as a furniture maker in Mauch Chunk.  Great, great grandson Tom Melber and his son Nathan continue in Jim Thorpe and Weissport today.

Everyone fights their own war.

Folks in the Pine Swamp had no more, and most likely no less, distress than most anyone else.

But it was a devil’s sequester: far from the “city” life of say Mauch Chunk or Lehighton. 

People vanished here.

The embrace of a bear.

Jacob Hait brought the Pine Swamp bruin down with a gunshot, presumed it to be dead, and knelt beside it “to draw the blood.”  

Jacob Hait grew up in Tannery and later lived in the Pine Swamp, though no census record exists for him after the 1880 Census.

With one mighty and final stroke of power, the bear swiped a paw downward, breaking Hait’s neck and drawing his face into his mouth.

They found both Hait and the bear in a death embrace. 

His parents, John and Sally Hait, show up in the records in Tannery in the 1870s and 1880s with Jacob, Eliza and other children.  The article of Jacob’s death said he lived in the Pine Swamp, but no record exists of him after the 1880 Census.

The Pine Swamp was so rural, many folks were simply invisible to the Census takers of those days.

“Stumble in and fall out.”

“Hicks” Bergenstock lived the life of a hobo.  He’d traded in paint: painting interiors of farmhouses and exteriors of barns in exchange for room and board. 

At times he traded the isolation of the Pine Swamp for the bustle of city life in Mauch Chunk, painting while living in the American Hotel. 

By the 1940s, he squatted on a patch of land across from the Albrightsville Fire Co, his mailbox said it all: “Stumble in and Fall out.”

Hicks is remembered today for his painting of Christ in the clouds at St Paul’s Lutheran.  His final and most permanent residence is there, in the rear of the church graveyard, a stone’s throw from his only other known address.

 “R.D. Ritter’s” wife packed on ice.

At least one swindler succeeded in using these north woods as cover for a con. 

On a summer day in 1892, teary-eyed “Ritter” (hereafter known as the “Swindler”) appeared before undertaker Harry C. Melber of Mauch Chunk to make arrangements for his wife.

Harry made the sober arrangements with the Swindler, promising a coffin and six chairs, for the weary mourners to sit upon, to be delivered up to Tannery the following Monday.

Harry’s bill of service came to $36.12.  Forthwith the Swindler provided him with a check for $42.00, drawn from the “Second National Bank of Wilkes-Barre.”  Harry coughed up the $6.12 difference in hard-earned currency and the con was complete.

The ever faithful Harry set out early Monday morning, up and over the dusty mountain road, the same used by the stage coach (today’s Old Stage Road), finding no said wife on no said ice.

And then there was blood.

Two murder-suicides occurred with two months, and later, two suicides occurred between two sister-in-laws within ten days.

Two Murder Suicides:

Benjamin and Ellamanda Kresge were longtime homesteaders of Leonardsville, near Hayes Creek.  Their daughter Margaret “Maggie” Kresge received many proposals from “Big John” Woblan, by some accounts the two were lovers.  Big John worked at the neighboring Mel Dotter farm.

Margaret "Maggie" Kresge - Killed by her lover in Kidder Township.

Just why she objected to his overtures is unclear.  However on a Thursday afternoon on September 19, 1912, he gunned Maggie down in the kitchen of her parents’ home. 

Big John then went to shoot himself, on her back porch.  Maggie was just nineteen and John was 25.  She is buried in White Haven from St. Paul’s Lutheran Church there.

The home of Maggie Kresge near Hayes' Creek.

Two months later, Irwin Hawk lost control of his jealousies with his fiancé and did the same to Mary “Mae” Gibson.

Irwin was the son of Jacob S. and Mable Hawk.  Jacob was a Civil War veteran, county commissioner, wintergreen distiller, sawmill owner, and hotel keeper who was born in Albrightsville.  His lumbering operations were disrupted in the Great

Benjamin Kresge and his horse Collie.  Benjamin and Ellamanda were parents of Maggie.

Fire of 1875 (See Post #1 of “Fire and Fury”.)

Son Irwin, age 27, worked for his father as both a lumberman in the Pine Swamp as well as a bartender at the family hotel on Susquehanna Street in Mauch Chunk.  Mae Gibson, aged 28, worked there as a house keeper.

She died of two bullet wounds to the chest on November 29^th, 1912.  Irwin died the following day in Palmerton Hospital, of a single shot to the right side of his head.

At first arrangements were being made to have her body taken to family back in New York City (she was born in England).  

However, through either a bittersweet change of heart or perhaps just for convenience, the two were buried side-by-side in Old Albrightsville Cemetery.

Ever faithful H. C. Melber handled the arrangements.

Sister-in-Law Suicide #1:

Roger Meckes was a hearty lumberman in the Pine Swamp, also known as Carbon’s “Christmas Tree King.”  

He also competed with Robert Getz for title of “The Potato King."  Over the years he employed different area men in this pursuit.  

April 1927 Scranton Republican - Mellie Meckes

Norman Eckley Sr., now of Lehighton, formerly of Meckesville, picked for Roger at $4.00 per day. 

Roger took leave each fall to the woods of Maine and Canada to secure freight cars of Christmas trees to resell here in Carbon, taking young Getz’s, Kibler’s, and Henning’s over the border to Quebec with him as helpers. 

Meckes was could be a hard man and known to be a bit of a rake.  His wife could bake a variety of pies, and still he’d hunger for what wasn’t there.

Whether out of kindness or opportunity, Rog’ even employed young widowed boarders and their sons to work his farm and timbering interests. 

Roger and his first wife Mellie (Eschenbach) took in his widowed, invalid step-mother (Rosanna Himmelberger) as well as his own children.  He also had for a time an adopted son George Shupp (whose mother Sarah Shupp bled to death near the end of her last pregnancy).

Mellie Meckes sought to schedule her own death, her opportunity was found in the death of Roger’s cousin Amandus Meckes.

Roger took the older children along with him to Amandus’ funeral which left Mellie at home with the eight-month-old, a toddler, and her sickly step-mother-in-law.

A young Roger Meckes from a family portrait with his three sisters (Courtesy of Jean Keiper of Meckesville).

She took care of her morning duties and breakfast dishes.  She even churned some butter.  She saw Rosanna’s needs and tucked-in her eight-month-old.  

Then she took Roger’s .38 revolver for a 300-yard walk down Mauch Chunk road, in the fields beyond her back step, far enough, she’d hoped, to mute the sounds of her last sin.

Roger found her there upon his return late that night.  She was thirty-three.

Maria Getz answered the call of domestic assistance for Meckes.  Maria was the daughter of Freeman and Arsula Getz of Albrightsville.  (Grandson Charlie Getz still lives on their farm.) 

What was to be simple, temporary assistance, turned into either a romance or a permanent business arrangement.  Maria became Mrs. Roger Meckes the Second.

Sister-in-Law Suicide #2:

If one had any Pine Swamp gossip to dole, prudent discretion was certainly necessary.  Though these neighbors were flung apart on dirt roads and up the wilderness of sawmill creeks, their bloodlines made them tighter than a woolen girdle left out in the rain.

Pittston Gazette - May 1927 - Ella Meckes Altemose

The family names of Christman, Dotter, Eckley, Getz, Henning, Hibbler, Kibler, Meckes, and Van Horn dotted the limbs of most people’s family trees.

One “undercover” Meckes was Mrs. Ellamanda Altemouse, wife of Milton.  She was Roger’s sister and Mellie’s death ten days before encouraged her to do the same.

Milton knew Ella was fragile.  She battled private wars of depression for years.  He was always careful to take precautions with her during her downswings.  The shock of Mellie’s death seemed to resonant an ever increasing bleakness inside her ever darkening mind.

The children of Samuel and Isabella (Ziegenfuss) Meckes: from left: Ellamanda, Emma Jane, Amelia and Roger. Ellamanda married Milton Altemose and died in his arms. The picture is circa 1900 (Courtesy of Jean Keiper).

Her extended morning absence to fetch fresh water wasn’t noticeable, until Milton went to shave and realized his razor was missing.

He found her in the woods, her neck opened from ear to ear.  She died moments later in his arms.

Thus this little hamlet of fewer than ninety people suffered two suicides in two weeks.  “Mental disorders” were blamed in both deaths.  She was 52, ten years younger than husband Milton.

Blurried Lines:

In June 1878, Rueben Serfass hired the 17-year-old wife who lived “up the road” to assist his wife, Caroline. 

Caroline Groat married George Brown in 1875 when she was just 15 and Brown was a spry forty-five.

The Carbon County DA took some flak from the local papers for its handling of the Brown vs Serfass case in January of 1879. The Brown's were represented by Gen. Charles Albright himself.

Both Caroline Brown and Caroline Searfoss had young, still nursing newborns.  

Emma Searfoss was born in February of 1877 and George Brown Jr. was born eight months later.

Both parties were satisfied with the arrangement.  The Browns received extra “pin money” and the Serfass’ increased their domestic bliss with a lightened load, for Emma was their seventh child, age twelve down to newborn.

Then one night things went south.

Mrs. Serfass made an overnight visit to her aging father in Towamensing.

Upon her return, Mrs Serfass found her home humming and gleaming.  She found all the coziness of the tidying and fresh baking to smack of a “crookedness hatched out of Gommorah.”  

The enraged Mrs Serfass gave Caroline Brown the boot.

According to later testimony of the Serfass', Mrs. Brown had forgot her place.  

Also according to the Serfass' testimony, the case against Mr. Serfass resulted from Mrs Brown feeling ashamed and jilted by her ousting of Mrs. Serfass.

However the Brown's maintained that Reuben was imposing certain extra domestic demands upon his young servant woman.

 

The record shows the young Mrs. Brown was a “novice making herself understood in English.”  The court hired regionally and nationally known character “Pit Schweffelbenner” (Mauch Chunk resident editor Captain Edward H. Rauch) to translate her testimony in her case against Reuben.

The trial exonerated Reuben.

Soon after, the Browns moved to Franklin Township.

Love and Death of Arlington Hay.

Some say similar passions were at work in the death of Arlington Hay, a handsome and well-liked man of the Pine Swamp.  A World War I veteran, he married Evelyn Wernett on May 30, 1920, in the city of Allentown.

Arlington Hay was a popular and handsome man of the Pine Swamp.  A WWI veteran he died, some say poisoned, early on in his marriage.

Family loyalty dictates who to believe.  Those in the Hay tree say Evelyn had fallen for Claude Kibler while Arlington was overseas, but married Hay anyway despite finding this new love.

They say she poisoned him with a pesticide used by local apple growers known as “Paris green,” so named for its use in that city to control the rat population back in the 19^th-century.

Arlington fought a three-day battle with “indigestion due to drinking stagnant water,” which are the same symptoms of the said poison.

Hay served in WWI as a corporal in the 305^thMotor Supply Train from April of 1918 until August of 1919. 

Brash Boy Bandits.

Edward and Joseph Lewis were hucksters from White Haven. 

Hucksters Edward and Joseph Lewis of White Haven robbed by Frederick and Charles Wernett in May 1919.

During the broad-daylight robbery, one of the Lewis brothers had his ear creased from a pistol.  It took place four miles from the Wernettt Hotel.  

Suspicion quickly fell upon two rascals belonging to landlord Charles Wernett:  Frederick (age 20) and Charles Wernett Jr (age 18), brothers of Evelyn Wernett Hay Kibler. 

Their denials could not save them from a hearing before Squire Granville Rehrig in Mauch Chunk.  Not only were they innocent they claimed but they knew who did it.  It was the Van Horn brothers, most likely Harrison and either his brother Austin or Monroe they said. 

Magistrate Rehrig wasn’t fooled and immediately sent the Wernett’s to Judge Barber.  They were fined $500 each with costs and to serve not more than ten nor less than eight years in prison. 

However, it appears they served four years or less.  Charles Jr. married a Bethlehem woman in Lehigh County almost four years to the day of the incident.  He lived out his life in Bethelhem until his death in the 1970s.

Older brother Frederick worked for their father, who had a farm, lumbering and stave mill.  He also ran the Charles Wernett House with his brother Xavier until it burned down in October of 1948.  Frederick died of throat cancer in Bethlehem in the 1960s. 

Enter the one-armed school teacher.

Harry Wilkinson left his hometown of Freeland to teach.  Either from birth or accident, he was without his right arm.  

Early on, he was a night watchman in a Freeland Silk Mill, later turning to teaching: first in Foster Township and then, fatefully, a job in the Meckesville School appealed to him.

H.C. Wilkinson left Meckesville for Big Creek - Seen here with graduates of Franklin Schools.  He was Assistant Principal with B. M. Shull of Lehighton.

It wasn’t long before some “bad blood” developed between the new teacher (who was also serving as deputy game-agent) and the Henning family. 

Aquila Henning Jr., the 18-year-old son of “Quilly” Henning was arrested by Wilkinson for a game law violation some months before.

The rest of the story and the true motives of those involved is a Carbon County mystery lost to time.

What is known is that one of the dogs used by the Wilkinson family was shot and killed.  Earlier, according to Robert Wilkinson’s testimony, Aquila Henning Jr. taunted Wilkinson with threats against the family’s dogs.

Later, according to Robert, upon entering a clearing, he indeed found one of his dogs shot to death.  At the same time, “obscured behind a stump” was the elder Henning, Quilly,  who just took a potshot at Harry Wilkinson, scraping the top of his head.  (Some say two dogs were shot, others say one.)

Robert Wilkinson felt he needed quick action to prevent a second shot from killing his brother.   So he shot Aquila Henning Sr. with buckshot, flooding his lungs with blood.  

Harry Wilkinson quickly summoned help to carry Quilly out of the brush and arranged for a vehicle to take him over an “ancient logging” road, over the mountain to the Palmerton hospital.  He arrived there alive.

Some of Quilly’s last words to the staff included his denial of knowingly shooting at Wilkinson or his dogs.  He died within hours.

The subsequent trial sought justice for what the Henning family saw as murder. 

However the law saw it as justifiable self-defense and Robert Wilkinson was acquitted.

There were two other suits brought to court over the case.  

  

Woman of the wilderness: Annie Henning

Still dressed in black a year later, the “backwoodsman’s wife” Annie Henning, was back in court in November of 1933. 

She refused to take the $4,000 from the New York Life Insurance Company policy.  Annie was holding out for the $8,000 double indemnity clause she felt was owed.  

The witnesses called were as “characteristically rustic as herself.” Annie sat, unmoved, next to her counsel as Robert Wilkinson described the details of Quilly’s death with the accent “peculiar of those of that area.” 

At 31-year-old who looked to be still in his teens, his testimony never wavered. 

New York Life’s attorneys saw it as no accident, meaning they favored the Wilkinson testimony which proved in their eyes that Henning's malice is what resulted in his death. 

So they refused to double the payment.

 Annie returned home broken-hearted.

The Case versus Wenz:

Old Albrightsville Cemetery - Aquila's marker from the Wenz Company of Allentown stirred controversy, depicting Henning as a victim of an ambush by a one-armed man and accomplices, some with faces of dogs.

Five and a half years later, Harry Wilkinson sues the Wenz Memorial Company of Allentown for $50,000 in damages, claiming the tombstone falsely implies his guilt in Henning’s death. Hennings stone says an “innocent soul sent to eternity.”  It replaced the usual “BORN” and “DIED” language with “SHOT.”

It also shows what could be considered dog-faced images that could be human or canines.  But central to it all, stands a one-armed man looking like he’s part of an ambush in the woods.

The Reclusive Harrison Van Horn:

The Van Horns were a knock-about family of Meckesville for a time.  They still lived the hard life of private day to day lumbering when times were at their leanest.  Their home was a ramshackle cabin of their dead parents.  Harrison, Monroe, and Austin Van Horn were unmarried and still living in the ramshackle cabin of their dead parents.

(My mind travels to the unmarried Ward brothers of upstate New York, subject of the document “Brother’s Keeper.”  Delbert Ward was charged in the smothering, some say mercy killing of his older brother William.)

The Van Horns held constant struggles in their bellies and upon their backs, and were known to be reclusive, even by Pine Swamp standards.  Roger Meckes would help them with odd jobs when he could.  But Meckes was gone, his farm sold at sheriff sale to Robert Getz.  Getz, taking pity on the Van Horns, offered them free firewood from the Meckes farm to help them through the winter.

How much wood they were entitled to take became a matter of opinion.  Meckes tried to talk to Harrison but found him too unreasonable, so he called in the state police to mediate a suitable outcome.

A pauper's grave - The Van Horn family eked a rough and tumble existence in the Pine Swamp.

With the state police on approach to the Van Horn cabin, Harrison went “berserk” and shot.  He was forty-nine.    

Charles and Liza Van Horn died in the mid-1930s with little more than with which they were born.  Their graves in the Old Albrightsville Cemetery are marked still by the temporary markers placed there over eighty years ago.

~~~~~~~~~~

"Tweety's" Place Today - Just below the Old Albrightsville Cemetery along Mud Run.

I have a strong nostalgia for this place.  

I started fishing there when I was 7, sleeping overnight in the bed of my brother in law’s pickup.  We’d always pass “Mrs. Tweetie’s” place, the small plank home just below the Old Albrightsville Cemetery on the edge of Mud Run, and we’d see her either drawing water from the creek or even washing her clothes.

Looking back on those memories now some 35 years later makes me wonder how people thrived and succumbed to the withering and bleak winters of this final frontier of our county.

"Mrs. Tweetie" would spend her time alone mostly.  Sometimes her out of state sons would pay a visit for a time.  When the creek froze in the winter she would grudgingly accept the hospitality of the Getzs, but only until the cold snap broke and the water flowed again.

Then one day, in the late 1970s she was no longer there, the last of her kind, gone but not forgotten.

Afterword and Sidenotes:

Curious Connector:

~Hannah “Almite” Christman was perhaps born of the wrong age.  For by the age of twenty-nine had produced two sons, Aquila Henning (by John) in 1893 and Harley Getz (by Ira in 1899) and one daughter Jesse R. Hawk Serfass in 1888.  Quilly of course was killed by Robert Wilkinson in 1932 and Harley worked for Roger Meckes in his Christmas tree wholesaling. 

Hannah “Almite” Christman was living with William and Ira Getz in 1900, when son Harley Getz was just a newborn.  Robert Getz was Ira’s brother.  Hannah’s sister was Arsula Christman Getz who married Freeman Getz.  Oddly, in the 1910 Census Ira was living with his brother Robert and so was Hannah (as a “servant”) and son Harley was listed as a “cousin” to Robert.

In 1910, Ira is head of the house with his father William still living with him.  Also there, is Hannah Christman with both Aquila Henning and Harley Getz.  Ira still lists Harley as his “cousin.”  Aquila had a son he seems to have named after his half-brother Harley.  

Hannah’s daughter Jesse married Rodger Green who also worked for Robert Getz, he was killed by a fall on the head in 1919.  Quilly Henning’s father John Henning also worked for Robert Getz.

It was Harley who saw his mother through her old age in East Greenville in 1950.  She hemorrhaged from her lungs from tuberculosis in 1950.  She’s buried beside her parents in Albrightsville, retaining her God-given name, never marrying.

Albert Henning, the old postmaster at Albrightsville for over 40 years, was the step-father of Claude Kibler.  His step-daughter married Harley Getz, who as of Albert’s 1961 death, was still living in Greenville, Montgomery County.  His sister was married to James Getz of White Haven.

~Harry C. Wilkinson spent his later years in Franklin Township’s Big Creek area with his second wife, Gladys Markley, one of the teachers he supervised in Franklin schools. 

His first wife, “Bessie” (Elizabeth) Hibbler Wilkinson raised their two children, Elizabeth (“Betty”) and Harry Junior, in Mahoning Township.  She supported herself in a dress factory.  They lived by Hammel's Gas Station near Pleasant Corners.

Harry died due to a failed surgery to fix the diverticulitis in his intestines.  His obituary failed to mention his children.  He was survived by three brothers and two sisters, including the one who fired the fatal shot on Henning, Robert.

~Annie Henning lived a long and austere life, spending her final years in the Packerton Dam area.  She would return to the swamp from time to time, no doubt visiting Quily’s grave.  Her former neighbors, always delighted to see her, would take her in for lunch and coffee. 

Known for her quiet piety, it’s been said that she made lengthy prayers before eating, some up to five to ten minutes long.  She died in 1980, a forty-eight year widow.

The “Kings” of Meckesville:

Robert Getz, the “Potato King,” harvested over 300 acres of potatoes on farms in Monroe and Carbon Counties.  Getz’s father was Wilheim/William Getz (1824-1910), a founding father of Albrightsville. 

According to Norman Eckley, Roger Meckes was also known as the “Potato King.”   Francis ‘Franz’ Wernett, father of Charles Sr. and the Wernett who started the hotel who was mentioned above was known as the “Huckleberry King” of the Pine Swamp in the 1870s.

Getz’s two sons, Luther and Lawrence took over the substantial land holdings of their father, making their own mark in real estate and other businesses that their descendents successfully run today.

Roger Meckes died alone and poor.  His 76-acre “Fairview Farm” was sold from under him at Sheriff Sale and purchased by Robert Getz.  Marie died in 1954.

Roger's seventy-six-acre “Fairview Farm” and homestead, at the western edge of “Meckesville,” was purchased by Robert Getz and later became part of the Mt. Pocahontas development, the clubhouse today being his former home.

 

Roger spent his final years in an Odd Fellows nursing home near Harrisburg.  He is buried next to his first wife Mellie at the Gilbert Cemetery in Monroe County.  He died in 1958. 

Many in the area owed their employment to Roger Meckes and Robert Getz.

The Meckes’ share the same graveyard with Sebastian Kresge, founder of the 600-store chain Kmart, which began as the “S.S. Kresge Company” five & dime stores. 

~The economy of this wilderness was much different than today.  Roger “the Christmas Tree King” Meckes found it profitable to harvest in the wild, his cost to cut and transport smaller trees was around 15 to 25 cents.  These trees were resold in the towns of Carbon County for 50 cents to one dollar.  This of course was before the plantation style tree farming common in Carbon County today. 

Christmas trees being sorted for freight delivery from the Pittsburgh Daily Post - December 1902.  Men like Roger Meckes ensured trees came to Carbon from the wild woods of Maine and Canada long before the current plantation-style of farming existed.

Interesting to note that Carbon County has supplied the White House tree on five occasions in recent years, four times by Chris Botek’s Crystal Spring Farms and once by Bustard Farms. Botek has provided the state tree in Harrisburg nineteen times in the last twenty years. Perhaps these men owe a tip of the hat to Meckes.

~It is unclear, but Jacob Hait looks to have left a wife and at least one daughter when he passed.  The 1900 Census shows his mother Sally “Heydt” living out her widowed days in Lehighton with Jacob’s sister Eliza Everett, wife of Nathan. 

~Captain E. H. Rauch published his still renowned “Rauch’s Pennsylvania Dutch Handbook” with translation from Dutch and from English the same year as the Brown vs. Serfass trial.  

Edward H. Rauch was a long-time newspaperman, starting papers all over the Lehigh Valley.  He was also a highly regarded expert in putting the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect down in written form.  He was also instrumental in fulfilling the promise of construction of the inter-urban trolley line from Flagstaff over the mountain to Lehighton.

If not the penultimate in Pa Dutch writing works, no legitimate discussion of the written Dutch word can occur without citing Rauch.  Published in 1879 it is still in print by Penn State University Press and required book for Pennsylvania Studies.

 

~The Hawk Run and Hawk Falls derives their names from the Jacob S. Hawk family farm, which is along Rt 534 just before entering Hickory Run State Park.  The Hawk farm was mainly across the street from the 25-foot natural falls parking lot.  A must see spot of beauty in Carbon County (From Rt 903, you will see parking on both sides of the road just be the Turnpike overpass.  Hawk Run empties into Mud Run.  The Turnpike Mud Run Gorge Bridge is said to be the highest on the pike.)

Jacob Hawk's grave at the Old Albrightsville Cemetery.

Civil War Veteran, Commissioner, Lumberman, and Hotelier Jacob S. Hawk of Albrightsville lived to be a seventy-six year-old widower with senility.  

On August 27, 1916, he wandered into the path of a car and was killed.

Rauch is either the man seated at the terminus of the rail or the one standing with his cane on it.  Rauch "Schweffelbenner" was said to have driven the connecting "Golden Spike" on the trolley line connecting Lehighton to Mauch Chunk's Flagstaff.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Timeline:

January 1879 – Trial of Caroline Brown versus Reuben Serfass.  Same year “Pit Schweffelbenner,” E. H. Rauch, of Mauch Chunk publishes his definitive Pennsylvania Dutch handbook.

19 August 1892 – H. C. Melber gets swindled.

19 September 1912 – “Big John” Woblan kills Maggie Kresge for refusing to marry him and in turn kills himself.

29 November 1912 – Irwin Hawk duplicates the Kresge murder by killing his fiancé Mary Gibson in Mauch Chunk.

23 May 1919 – Frederick and Charles Wernett Jr rob the Edward and Joseph Lewis of White Haven.

1 December 1920 – Jacob Hait killed by blackbear.

28 October 1922 – Arlington Hay dies of “severe indigestion.”

19 April 1927 – Mellie (Eschbach) Meckes kills herself.

1 May 1927 – Ellamanda (Meckes) Altemose kills herself.

24 November 1932 – Aquila Henning Sr shot by Robert Wilkinson; ruled justifiable homicide.

14 August 1952 – Harrison Van Horn killed by state police; ruled justifiable homicide.

This 1958 Pocono Record news account describes the successful hunt of one of its native sons.  Albert was the son of Howard and Martha "Toots" (Dotter) Henning.  Albert was in the Air Force, married Pearl Smith of Branson Missouri and eventually retired back to Albrightsville.

One group of hearty Pine Swamp lumbermen were the Boatmen of the Lehigh Canal took to the woods for seasonal work.

Allentown Leader - 26 November 1904 - Nothstein and Freyman were cousins.  Nothstein was an attorney in Mauch Chunk (a cousin of mine) who died an untimely death due to tonsillectomy complications in 1912, aged 44.

Son Jon, and his girlfriend Nichole, Kim, me and Solly - Hawk Falls - May 2015

~

"Stumble in, Fall Out" - The Life and Art of William "Hicks" Bergenstock

March 27, 2016, 6:44 am

≫ Next: Chester P. Mertz

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Hicks was living as caretaker on a remote piece of unoccupied land owned by Tom "Spook" Doughtery in Meckesville.

“Aren’t you afraid to live out here, all by yourself?” asked the young visitor.

William "Hicks" Bergenstock outside Berger's Hotel in Albrightsville. Most who knew him considered "Hicks" to be his last name. His paintings were simply signed "Wm. Hicks." His gravestone simply reads "Bergenstock." Picture courtesy of Jean Keiper.

Hicks answered by reaching beneath his pillow.  His arm swept through the air in a circle, retrieving the revolver in one motion.  

But his index finger deflexed on the return arch.  The two reeled from shock of the crack as dust swirled around the sunlight coming through the plank and clapboard wall.   
The youngster had to promise never to mention it to anyone what happened, least of all to Spook.


The one room shanty was one of many homes for Hicks.  Both as a child and throughout his life, he moved around a lot.  

Besides Spook, Hicks lived with Roger Meckes, at Bergers Hotel, at the Getzs, and with anyone who would take him in, in exchange for paint or wall-paper hanging. 

Hicks cultivated a simple and happy life, enriched by his artistic and musical talents even though it sprouted from a childhood garden of turmoil.

Hicks' Mandolin - A gift from Hicks to Jean Keiper. She remembers Hicks singing to her and teaching her guitar and mandolin as a little girl. One of his favorite songs: Red River Valley.

Adversity can pull a family together or it can tear it asunder.  

William Alfred "Hicks" Bergenstock was born to Alfred and Emma (Beidler) on January 25, 1890.  He was the grandson of a Civil War private, Henry Bergenstock. 

Alfred and Emma Beidler married at Allentown’s Salem United Methodist Church when he was twenty-one and Emma was one day shy of her eighteenth birthday.  The next year, Alfred’s father died.

Their family soon followed.  Alfred and Emma first had three boys and then four girls.  William or “Hicks” was the second oldest.  All were the men worked as moulders in an iron works early on.  

His paintings were signed with a simple "Wm. Hicks."  Either this was more convenient than writing out "Bergenstock" or he simply preferred to be known by Hicks is unclear.  His talent was undeniable.

For Mabel's 15th birthday in 1911 there was much music and merriment.  

Hicks sang bass in a quartet self-proclaimed as “Holy-tare-ra Rib-and-tare-re” with fellow iron moulder Adam Strohl (baritone), Peter Brendel (second tenor) and “Monks” Reese (first tenor).  

Hicks also played some “ragtime” songs on the piano.  The night was complete with food and a session of haas-im-pfeffer cards too.

A similar time was had later that year for the 20th birthday of brother Walter on Halloween.  This time, it was sister Mabel who gave the musical entertainment. 

(Mabel’s son, Russell Dauscher would later distinguish himself musically, playing trombone in the Allentown Band, Les Baer Orchestra, his own Russell Dauscher Orchestra, the Pioneer Band, Catasauqua Band, and the Dorney Park Riverboat Band.)

One of William "Hicks" Bergenstock paintings that remain at Chubby Berger's Hotel in Albrightsville.

The Bergenstock family seemed to be on a pleasant path in 1911.

But there were unsteady tremors.

It was another year and another move into another rented apartment.  Father Alfred testified on behalf of Landlord Ed Henninger owner of a hotel known for its salacious and unsavory characters which was targeted by the Anti-Saloon league of Philadelphia.  

All the Bergenstock boys started work by the age of fourteen or younger.  And they all moved out by 1915.  Likewise the four sisters married their way out of the house by the time they were 18.  

Hicks seemed to bounce from job to job too.  At times a moulder, then in a shoe shop, then back as an apprentice in the steel works.  Somewhere along the way he lost an eye and permanently injured his right side.

He had a manner of walking that involved lunging forward by lifting his entire hip and leg as a stationary unit.  An injury that certainly could have occurred in the iron works in his young adult years. 

All three brothers were of the age to serve in World War I, but only Walter has a draft card.  Perhaps Hicks had already been disqualified due to physical impairment.

By 1917 Alfred was brought before the Allentown Aldermen on at least two separate occasions for desertion and non-support of his wife.  He offered some money to her, but Emma refused it on the grounds it wasn’t enough.

Hick’s brother Private Walter “Ellsworth” suffered a “serious wounding” in battle in September 1918.

The final unraveling of the Bergenstock family occurred on August 17^th 1928.  

Alfred was estranged from Emma and living at the Order of Owls’ home in Allentown, working there as bartender.  At around 3:00 pm, Alfred placed a gun to his head and ended his life at 60.

Very little is known of Hicks during the twenty year period between the great wars.  

He disappears. His name is absent from all census and city records.

We do know creativity lurked within his mind taking shape in music, painting, and in making miniature toys of wood.  

Jean Keiper of Albrightsville has many fond memories of Hicks as a young girl.  Like most people, she accepted for fact that his name was William Hicks.  Not only did he sing for her and took time to teach her to paint, he also gave her these miniature toys.  Several residents of the area have similar items and paintings.

The wood work was a leftover from his shoe cobbler days.  

Many residents of Albrightsville still cherish these items made by Hicks.

One of his longest residences was at the American Hotel in old Mauch Chunk (today’s Inn at Jim Thorpe).  He lived there from at least 1940 to 1942.

Toys in Scale: The cradle is only 5 inches long.

It appears during this time he permanently severed all ties to his family.


On his draft card, Hicks put down Ben Freed as the person who would always know him.  (Freed owned the American Hotel and Hicks no doubt painted for him.)  (Hicks' brother Walter answered the same question on his draft card as "No One.")

Today, residents of Albrightsville have nothing but fond memories of him.

During one stay with the Getzs, Arsula Getz watched Hicks walk backwards up the back stairs to his room.  When she pressed him for a reason, Hicks replied, “So I won’t have to turn around when I come down tomorrow.”

One of many of Hicks' paintings that survive in the area.  A talented fine art painter, he survived on painting interiors of homes and exteriors of barns.

When one Albrightsville couple was set to leave on a short honeymoon to Allentown, Hicks slipped one of his glass eyes into the bride's suitcase, explaining he could "look out" after them while they were gone.

Hicks lived a nomadic, bucolic life, never owing to a master.

Owning little in possession, still he rarely imposed on others for things like rides to town.  

Otherwise, he was as free as a bird.  He lived as though somehow whatever he needed would always be provided.

For one of his last homes, Hicks had permission to squat in a small, one-room house across from the Albrightsville Fire Company.  Neither a drunk or a teetotaler, Hicks knew how to have a good time.  A sign at the road welcomed all of similar spirit: "Stumble in and Fall out."

He lived the longest of everyone in his family, further evidence of a life well lived.

William Alfred Bergenstock died in Lehighton in February 1982, just after his 92nd birthday.  

One of his last paint jobs was for St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Albrightsville, the little white church with its own little graveyard atop a plateau in Northern Carbon County, a green patch of paradise of solitude for Hicks.

This last exchange assured Hicks of his final resting place there. 

He painted Christ's ascension, transcending the earth through the clouds.

A simple marker marks the end of a life that knew how to live a simple and happy life.

One of Hicks' final works, it assured his final resting place. St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Albrightsville.

Hicks is nearly in the far corner of St. Paul's graveyard.  A simple marker reads "Bergenstock."

The Remains:

Alfred Bergenstock defended the reputation of Ed Henninger, an Allentown saloon owner, in court.  He either moonlighted or patronized his hotels (the Astoria and American) in Allentown.  

The Philadelphia Anti-Saloon League brought the case to trial in Allentown in 1909 after a sting operation.  They produced a long list of women (of dubious backgrounds) who were called to testify. 

One woman was accused of feeding her infant while drinking a beer.  Livelihoods were questioned.  Detectives testified the rates quoted to them by these women as $4 for a short time or $7 for overnight.  

Two of women refused to take the oath upon the Bible because they eschewed belief in the Christian faith.  Researching the names of these young women reveals a subculture of struggled and shortened lives.


~

None of the brothers ever settled and stayed in one place very long.  All of them seemed restless.  They boarded in short stretches mostly with strangers, occasionally with a sister, doing manual labor jobs.  

Only one of the three brothers may have married.  There is some evidence that Walter "Ellsworth" was briefly married in 1922 to an Elenoria Buchert.  If so, they had one child, Charles, who died after 25 days in September of 1922.  

None of Walter's subsequent records show he was ever married.  Severely wounded in action in September 1918, his 1934 application for veterans benefits declares no wife or children.  His WWII draft card answered "No one" to the question "Who will always know you?" He is buried alone in Allentown's "Grandview Cemetery." He died in February 1960. 

At one point Walter lived with Mabel’s estranged husband in Whitehall.  Mabel supported herself and their son by working in a cigar factory in Allentown.

~

Sister Helen spent the last 10 months of her life at the Allentown State Hospital.  A year prior, she took a near fatal dose of bichloride of mercury.  She died nearly two years later of the effects.

Though Alfred had deserted her in life, Emma stayed true to him in death.  She arranged herself to be buried next to him in Highland Memorial Park in Allentown.  

Helen is buried with them.   She was the youngest and first of the siblings to die. It is unclear where her surviving husband Charles is buried.  

~

Oldest brother Edward Henry Bergenstock apparently drifted his way out to Ohio.  Social Security records indicate an "Edward H. Bergenstock" born in Pennsylvania on 1 December 1888, died there in November 1963.  His headstone in Highland Hills Ohio gives no birth information.  There is no record of him having a family there.

~

Along with his father, two friends of Hicks also took their own lives.

Adam Strohl, an early friend from the iron foundry and quartet partner, drown himself in the Lehigh River in 1935.  He left a widow Emma at 529 Hickory St in Allentown.

American Hotel owner Ben Freed was two years younger than Hicks.  Of Jewish-Russian descent, he emigrated here from England.  He distinguishing himself locally by owning movie houses in Weatherly and White Haven before purchasing the American Hotel.  He served America in WWI.

Freed took his own life feeling despondent over the loss of control over his bowels, bladder and legs in 1959.  He took a heavy rubber band to tighten a plastic bag over his head.

~

Mabel seemed to have been the one who held the family together.  Her name appears more than any other on important family papers and death certificates.  

Their mother Emma lived her last years in her home.  Mabel's husband Calvin appears to have deserted her sometime after Emma’s death in 1936.

Sister Eva is buried with her husband Fred Brown in Northwood Cemetery in Emmaus.


Mabel's estranged husband is buried in St. Mark's in Allentown.  

There's no record of a grave for Mabel.  

~

There is no way of knowing whether Hicks knew about the deaths of his family and friends.  Those who knew him cannot recall him ever talking about his family.  

Speaking to two relatives of his alive today, a nephew and great nephew, neither man can recall knowing more than being related to the Bergenstocks.  

Neither man knew their uncle nor had any evidence from his life.

Chester P. Mertz

April 6, 2016, 7:15 am

≫ Next: Lehighton's Sesquicentennial: The Pioneers and the Promise

≪ Previous: "Stumble in, Fall Out" - The Life and Art of William "Hicks" Bergenstock

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Chester P. Mertz lived without entanglements.  He was not timid.  He was not brash.  

And he’d be upset with me for writing this.

I am not sure how much of his story I can tell and still keep my word.  

And for that, this might be my hardest blog post to date.



The Mahoning Mertz's were a big family.  Chester's father Ambrose "Amby" was one of fifteen children.  Most lived to adulthood.

His mother Sarah was a distant Mertz cousin of Amby.  She was one of five daughters.  Her sister Lillian married Moses Heilman and their large family grew up next door to Amby and Sarah's small family of three:  Chester was an only child.

Sarah and Lillian's sister Carrie Mertz lived in the home of her parents next to all her cousins and her school.  She was from the old notion that for a woman, once you chose to teach, you either married and resigned or never marry.  

She never drove or married and taught school across the street at the Sandel School (Today's Union Sunday School, where Chester continued to play the organ up until recently).  Carrie was one of several of Mertz family that relied on Chester to drive them and to take care of them in the later years. 

This is the school all the Mertz and Heilman children attended.  Carrie taught all of them at one time, First through Eighth grades.  The fourth sister, Elsie Mertz Mosser was also a teacher.  One of them took a horse and buggy past today's Charlie Snyder Tractors to teach in the one room schoolhouse there.

And even though it was the Depression, and the children had a wide range of farm and chore duties, growing up there immersed in love and family sounds so ideal today in a society that is rushed and somewhat fragmented, distanced from each other with too many modern responsibilities and technology's crutch of false connectedness.

His 1931 class picture looks like something from "Our Gang."

This is the 1931 picture of the Sandal School First through Eight grades taught by Chester's Aunt Carrie Mertz.  Chester is bottom row, third from left.  Two rows above him are a pair of twins with piercing eyes.  If anyone knows any other people in this picture please let me know.

~~~~

So suffice it to say this is all I am comfortable telling for now.  But as I see fit and as I feel his story needs to be told, I will re-visit this post and add more.  But as for now, this is all.

So many people knew Chester.  He was so social, he seemed to be everywhere.  And yet, he rarely if ever, thought of himself first.  It's hard not to make a god out of him.

He was my number one reference point, he was my Mahoning Valley local history instant Google search.  He always answered his phone or always returned the call.  I feel a tremendous loss of knowledge, a void that is saddening me more as the reality of his departure is sinking in.

There are several posts on this site where Chester's wit and wisdom still lives.

Today was the day we buried him, a day we all said goodbye to the best of friends.

Chester was always diligent and faithful to all his family and friends. Chester weeds at the grave of his parents, just up the slope from his own grave, leaving little unfinished burden on others.

~~~~~~
Last June I finally got the call I'd hope I'd get from him.  He said he wanted to sell me his truck.

We celebrated the sale with lunch at the Boulevard, chicken barbecue with a cup of beef, barley and vegetable.  It was Chester's treat.

We did some porch sitting.  One of the best porches in all Mahoning Valley.  We said our good byes with enough said.  And as his truck left the driveway that night, I could hear Chester call from the kitchen, “Now mind the gas gauge.” 

Dear Chester,
It must be hard for you
To see them all so proud.
But Chester

Could you play,

Just a little?

Something
That lets me close my eyes, 

Some ragtime,
Something new,

But play it from your shoulders,

Like Joplin used to do.

---

Lehighton's Sesquicentennial: The Pioneers and the Promise

May 31, 2016, 5:48 am

≫ Next: Lehighton Sesquicentennial Trivia Night

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Although this is Lehighton’s 150th year as a borough, its original founding reaches back to 1746.

Currently, a group of dedicated individuals is wrapping up several years of work to showcase the essence of Lehighton: a trolley tour, a talent show, a cemetery walk, revival of the Brothers of the Brush and Sister of the Swish, etc.

There will be all kinds of contests such as corn on the cob eating, trivia night, and the Coaster Races.  The Coaster Races are said to have originated in Lehighton in 1923 and have been revived from time to time over the years.  (See pictures of the 1950 & 1951 races at the end of this article.)

The Leuckel Building, most recently known as "White's Trading," in the 1980s it was Rea and Derrick Drugs seen here around 1942 with the opening of the Windsor Clothing Store.  There for the promotional first night was the then Lehighton Boys Band, roughly 40 years before they changed to the Lehighton Boys and Girls Band.  The Leuckel Building was completed in 1899 by Frederick and John Leuckel and once housed the post office and two banks.  The expressions on the faces of the citizens in their hats and band members in their capes as well as  the young girl looking down from the window gives this photo a classic Americana feel.  This never before published photo appears here courtesy of Paula Kistler Ewaniuk, a descendant of the T.D. Clauss and Mahlon Kistler, both key Lehighton businessmen from the glory days of Lehighton's downtown.

There will be an opening ceremony of the burying of men’s razors and women’s makeup as well as the uncovering of them on the last day.  The park will have music each night with it all culminating with a fireworks display that will be seen from anywhere in Lehighton.

It could be easy to develop a romanticized version of life in those days.  Often times the “good old days” are remembered as blissful times without strife.

Lehighton’s early days had a “wild west” mystique.  There were saloons and cigar shops, and unsolved murders in our muddy streets.  We had constables, horse thieves, and posses, but we had no jail.  Once in 1870, a trio of banks robbers was caught here and was held captive in Mantz’s Hotel over night (see 1940s picture of First St below for the Mantz Hotel).

Constable John Weston formed a posse and cornered the desperate outlaws amid a fierce February snowstorm.  The outlaws had swum the icy Lehigh to a hiding place in the woods across the river.  This robbery also led to an unsolved murder of an unidentified man here in town over thirty years later (See footnotes for more).

Another story tells how the southern end of town was quarantined and several citizens died due to smallpox that Lehighton silk mill owner and town benefactor Eugene Baer accidentally brought to town from New Jersey in 1902.  (See footnotes for more & click here for more on Baer's Mill and family.)

You name it, we had it: Rowdy council meetings with political backbiting, scandalous behavior at the fair including illegal gambling and drinking, as well as fraud and other crimes of all sorts, from the salacious sort to the comical and accidental.

      Other Lehighton articles on this blog:
Lehighton Business of the Past Post #1: Maria Culton
Lehighton Business Post #2: 
Lehighton Business Post #3: Young's Bakery
Haas' Store: Cal Haas
Lewis & Henry Graver articles
Moravian & Massacre Article
The Recluse of Lehighton: Frederica Misca

Two men who clashed in the 1890s were Burgess (mayor) Benjamin J. Kuntz and newspaperman George W. Morthimer.  Kuntz, who succeeded Dan Olewine at his Seventh and Bridge Sts tannery, summoned Chief of Police Raworth to town council meeting to “settle down the rowdies.”

The Lehighton Press of North First Street - David McCormick, son of locally famous Civil War veteran William Carpenter McCormick in the press room with his longtime pressman Harry Miner.  The two women are likely other longtime employees typist Alice Heintzleman and McCormick's sister, columnists Mary (McCormick) Ray.   This picture and other valuable McCormick family primary sources provided by Bill and Kathy White of Lehighton.

Morthimer was a member at that council and among other things, didn’t appreciate Kuntz’s allegations.  However Morthimer’s power of the press (the “Fourth Estate” as they say) led to Kuntz’s undoing.  Kuntz was mayor in 1879 and later again from 1891-92.  However, his fourth run (as mayors seemed to serve only one year terms in those days) as mayor ended in November 1892 amid attacks from Morthimer’s “Carbon Advocate.”

Morthimer later served as mayor from 1903 to 1913.  McCormick served from 1918 to 1921.  By this time, it seems like the three-year terms had begun.

A March 1890 snipett in the Carbon Advocate announced B.J. Kuntz as "big, tall, tanner and Republican politician was a familiar figure on our streets on Wednesday." Morthimer was a Democrat.  One of Morthimer's complaints about Kuntz was that not until after he lost the election did he complain about the illegal gambling at the fair grounds.

As of June 1910 Lehighton had three newspapers.

By 1902, Morthimer sold his "Carbon Advocate" to Attorney Philip M. Graul.  One long-time employee of Graul was future Lehighton mayor William F. Hummel (1942 to 1953).  But Morthimer would continue a South First St paper under the name of Lehighton’s “Evening Leader." His other competitor, David McCormick, ran the weekly “Lehighton Press” on North First.  Both of these men were themselves involved in public office.  (See footnotes for more on Morthimer and McCormick).

Graul's weekly "Carbon Advocate" raised its rate from $1.00 to $1.50 for its annual subscription.  This was announced in February 1917, taking effect for 1918.  Gaul was the first in the county to raise the rate, thought the other county papers soon followed.  The Advocate burned in the early 1920s.  Graul was appointed postmaster when President Wilson took office in 1913.

George Williams Morthimer as he appears in Brenckman's Carbon History of 1913 Morthimer ran the Lehighton Evening Leader. Born 1866 - Died 1918.  Buried in the Lehighton Mausoleum.

The Carbon Advocate had some advice for improving our town back in 1890: “Consider…Electric illumination, widening of the thoroughfares leading from Fourth St to the Fair Grounds, and from Alum Street to Kuntz’s tannery, a town hall and hose house and the beautifying of the two Parks.  Cut this out and paste it in your hats.”

After several months of pleas using such phrases as "let there be light" and trying to shame the town for still using coal-oil because Lansford, Mauch Chunk, and Weatherly already had electiric street lights, The Carbon Advocate was pleased to announce in June 1891 that the town had secured a contract with the electric company to "illuminate the town."

Lehighton was of course founded by the Moravian settlers on the banks of the Mahoning Creek in 1746.  It was part of what was known as the Moravian “Economy,” various industrious pursuits to make money for the mother organization to further its missionary work among the Indians.

This letterhead among the papers discovered inside Guy Morthimer's copy of Brenckman's Carbon County History from 1913.  G. W. (George Williams) Morthimer took over the Carbon Advocate from his father Harry V. Morthimer.  And in turn Guy Morthimer took full control of the Leader when his father passed in 1918.

Lehighton was just one town of the many founded by the Moravians.  Bethlehem and Nazareth were their first two settlements in the area as well as Emmaus in 1759.  The Moravians also made settlements elsewhere, as far away as Georgia.

Lehighton was formed as an important stepping stone to the harder to reach native groups of the Wyoming and Susquehanna valleys.  They lived in peace here but many colonial leaders had viewed these missionaries with at least some suspicion and perhaps a bit of contempt.

As the French and Indian War approached, laws were passed in New York barring Christians from spending the night among the native groups.  This was aimed at the French Jesuit priests who lived among and ministered to the Indian souls they were trying to win over.  Many felt the Moravians were simply French Catholics in disguise and were trying to infiltrate the English speaking lands

Fear of Indians led to an overall distrust of anyone who aided the natives.  The Lehigh Valley then became a refuge for these exiled New York Moravians and their Indian cohorts when they were forced out of New York.

Another sticking point came from the Moravian blacksmiths.  Though it was colonial policy not to provide the Indians with firearms, the Gnadenhutten blacksmiths were eager to help repair the flintlocks of any Indian who passed through here, and many did.

With British General Braddock’s western Pennsylvania defeat in July of 1755 came fear of further Indian reprisals would move eastward.

They of course were right.  Attacks were made on many area settlements, but the peace and good relations the Moravians established here made them feel impervious to any hostility.  And as the story goes, on the evening of November 24th it all came to an end here.  Many of those attacked here had only been in this country for a few weeks.

Not all were killed.  One husband and wife became separated: she spent the night in the hollow of a tree and he ran to Bethlehem and back through the night, to get help.  They were reunited in the morning, each fearing the other had died.

And had the 16-year-old lad Joseph Sturgis not jumped from the burning attic and lived, we may not have the pretzel today.  He went to live at another Moravian settlement in Lititz and was a successful potter.

His grandson Julius Sturgis developed the first commercial pretzel bakery in the country.  (More of this including information of those lost and those who survived can be read here.)

Few people realize that one somewhat mysterious woman came to live on these grounds.  Here purpose was to venerate the martyred souls lost here.  Her name was Fredericka Misca.  (More of her can be read here: )

Jacob Weiss of course bought some of the Moravian lands on both sides of the river.  And another highly industrious man named William Henry partnered with him.  Henry learned the gunsmith trade in the Moravian settlement of Lititz before moving to Nazareth.  When the mission here faded, the Moravians found an eager buyer in Henry and Weiss.

The timing of this venture was enhanced with Josiah White’s successful launch of the coal trade, first on the river with his “bear trap locks” and later in 1828 with the Lehigh Canal, leaving the lands of Weiss and Henry open to the future promise of the industrial settlement of Lehighton.  (More on Josiah White can be found here.)

Speculative minds and hard working hands soon followed.

Of the first industries here were grist mills and leather tanning.  There was a mill sluice and run that ran parallel and along today’s Route 209 bypass, behind today’s Lehighton Hi-Rise.

Later Moses Heilman had a grist mill on the Mahoning Creek and a large dam behind what is today’s Boulevard Restaurant.  He also had a feed mill on First Street.  He last lived at the corner of Third and Alum Sts.

In 1915, the Burd brothers well-diggers found three human skulls near Heilman’s dam, which was just downstream from where Henry Graver would build his ice dam and pond.  The skulls were thought to be from the colonial days of the Moravians.  Some speculated these were Indian skulls.

However, another theory that should be considered would be those of the six men Ben Franklin hastily buried along the banks of the Lehigh when he came to build the fort in Weissport in January 1756.  About six colonial militiamen were lured into an attack on New Year’s Day that year.

Heilman was just one of many of our town’s “pioneer” residents.  Another was Lewis Graver, father of Henry, the patriarch of the many Graver enterprises here. Lewis came to timber the Moravian lands as a youngster of twelve with his father and was an early boat builder with his brother Andrew.  They had a boatyard at the canal and were also leather tanners.

Here is a view from the Carbon House looking south on First St Lehighton around the 1940s.  You can see the Elk's Building, destroyed by fire in 1934, is refurbished here with the A&P Store in residence.  Also, G.C. Murphy, Hotel Lehighton (now the Hi-Rise) and further down the "Mantz Building" with its ornate top (most recently Renee's Beauty Shop).

Lewis Graver’s son Henry later ran a brickworks, ice house, and skating rink.  He also built two of Pennsylvania’s largest cement swimming pools.  First here and another in Lebanon PA in the 1920s (Read more about this family here:). Lewis also had two daughters with business sense.  Alvenia and Adaline were milliners in town (Read more here):

Eastern Pennsylvania, but especially northern Carbon County in the Pine Swamp and Hickory Run area, held plentiful reserves of hemlock pine trees.

Hemlock (and oak to a slightly lesser degree) bark was preferred for the tanning of hides into malleable leather because of its high tannic acid content.  So the fact that Lehighton had no less than two well-established tanneries should come as no surprise.  

The first tannery in town is believed to be started by David Heller in the area behind First Street in 1820.  It was in the vicinity of where G.C. Murphy was operated a department store, across the narrow street of today’s Hi-Rise.

This tannery property was eventually developed into what was known as the “Linderman Block, so named for Asa Packer’s son-in-law, Dr. Garrett B. Linderman.

Dr. Linderman came to Mauch Chunk in the great cholera epidemic in 1854, falling in love with Packer’s daughter Lucy.  (Read more here: )

It is unclear whether Heller sold his interests directly to Stephen Kistler (no direct relation to Lehighton’s Daniel "Jacob" or "Jake" Kistler).  After Stephen left to develop his Tannersville properties, he left the Lehighton tannery in the hands of his brother William.  However one newspaper article mentioned a tanner and animal fertilizer business owned by a Benjamin J. Kistler (not to be confused with Lehighton tanner Benjamin J. Kuntz.)

Kistler came from Kistler Valley to start his first one of the four tanneries he would eventually own.  At his death, it was said that he was the wealthiest tanner in the state and perhaps the nation.

He lived and operated a larger one in Monroe County’s “Tannersville” as well as two in Susquehanna County.

Owen W. Snyder once owned this fine Victorian-era home on the corner of Second and Alum Sts.  Snyder was a horse surgeon born in the Kistler Valley, Lynnport in 1860.  He died of heart failure in 1922.  He and his wife Amanda did not have children, though they did raise her nephew Arnold Rusell (born 1912).  Snyder lived first in the Mansion House Hotel when he arrived here in the spring of 1887.  By 1890 he was living near Kistler's Livery at the Carbon House.  Since this is most likely Snyder and his nephew Arnold who looks to be as young as maybe 5 or so, this picture is probably taken around 1917 or so.  The house was later owned by widowed physician John Hammel, father of two well-known Hammels: William and Andrew.  Currently Gregory Duschak is refurbishing the home and it will be for sale.  (Picture courtesy of the Brad Haupt collection.)

Here is a modern view of the three Queen Anne sashes in the attic tower of the Snyder home, currently being refurbished by Gregory Duschak.

Owen W. Snyder lived in a handsome Victorian-era home on the corner of South Second and Alum Sts (currently being refurbished by Gregory Dsuchak).  He was a veterinarian surgeon, specializing in the many horses that kept Lehighton running in the early days.

Born in the Kistler Valley, he attended the "celebrated" Ontario Veterinary College.  Snyder made the papers frequently, known for his cure for tetanus in horses, he performed hernia operations, and removed tumors.  He was also always prepared to put a horse or cow down if he had to.  Dead animals were then taken to B.J. Kistler's animal fertilizer plant in Jamestown.

The gambling in town most definitely centered on the Fair's horse racing.  Purses of $100 or more were often touted in the papers.  Horses from places like Stroudsburg and Allentown would come here to race our local mares.  Snyder was known for always having the nicest, newest and fastest mares as the Carbon Advocate would often announce.  He and Jonathan Kistler were known to trade gray mares with each other as well as Snyder buying from horse trader Knaus and others in Allentown.

Snyder encountered a run of some paid luck starting in the fall of 1902.  In September, a half-drunk horse thief entered town and made off with one of Snyder's thoroughbreds and one owned by William Walters of town.  Unknowingly, the Rev G. G. Kunkle of Mauch Chunk accepted a ride from a "half-drunken" man who drove him from Packerton down the Mansion House hill.

Rev Kunkle said the man drove so recklessly that he tried several times to have the man stop and let him off.  However he drove the horse so hard and into the wall that the horse died.  Kunkle walked home, thinking little of it until he heard of the horse thefts.  The next morning the dead horse of the Mauch Chunk mountain road was found to be Snyder's valuable track horse.

It is believed the horse thief went back to Lehighton and then stole the Walters' horse.  That horse was found dead a few days after on the Blue Mountain.

Then in early June 1903, Snyder's stables were struck by lightning and two of his horses were killed.  It did not mention the specific location of these stables.  One article in 1893 implied he owned stables on Seventh St and was trying to get council to open up Alum Street through to his property there.  His stolen horse was valued at $750, a vast sum in those days.

Following Snyder in this home was Dr. John Hammel, father of Hammel's Store owner William Hammel.  William was a magician in the old vaudeville days before opening the store at First and Coal Sts.

His brother Andrew was a projectionist at theaters in town before opening Hammel's Gas Station near today's Mahoning Elementary school (the small white shed on the opposite side of the road was the station and is still there.)  He was also the projectionist at the Mahoning Valley Drive-in for years.

Lehighton the Borough was only six months old when the famous Dan Rice Circus came to town in June.  A one “mile-long” parade was sent down First St to try to lure townsfolk into the show at fifty-cents a head.

However, as one team of Rice’s horses approached the lower park, the team became “spooked,” supposedly due to the severe from Kistler’s tannery.

The team made a deadly trot toward one of Lehighton’s earliest hotels, the “Carbon House,” which sat on the corner of First and North Streets (below today’s library).  Some reports say it was a Mauch Chunk man, others that it was a man from the Mahoning Valley, who was killed (or so severely injured he wasn’t expected to live) trying to arrest the team.

(Read David Carlyon’s book “Dan Rice: The Most Famous Man You Never Heard of.”) Rice was once considered for candidacy for president.

The Carbon House, from North and First Sts, at the corner below the library ~ Circa 1900.

Another Lehighton tanner and pioneer resident was Daniel Olewine.  He and his wife Esther (Zoll) originated from Towamensing Township.  Olewine first journeyed to Mauch Chunk as a tanner.  But by 1856 he built his own enterprise at Seventh and Bridge Streets in Lehighton in 1856.

Today the former Penn Lace building stands where the tannery once operated.

Olewine was a founding president of First National Bank in Lehighton in 1875.  This bank was first housed in a portion of Joseph Obert’s First St residence in the 1880s.

The bank later became the Hazleton National Bank that opened for business in its once thoroughly modern stone-façade building.  Though now vacant, it is still an impressive downtown building that first opened in 1910.

Olewine’s tannery burned down in 1873.  At that point he retired to his spacious brick home next door that still stands at 600 Bridge St.  As mentioned earlier, the tannery was then rebuilt by B. J. Kuntz who operated it into the 1890s.

Daniel Olewine was father-in-law to two well known Lehighton residents: Chief clerk of the LVRR Car Dept Franklin Pierce Lentz (Clara Olewine) and William S. Koch (Susan Esther Olewine) of the well-known Koch farm in southwest Lehighton.

Isborn Koch and his brother William S. once ran a cigar factory in downtown Lehighton.  Their partnership dissolved in 1882.  I.S. continued on while W.S. went full-time into farming.

William was just one of the first three Koch brothers to live in Lehighton, all sons of Daniel and Mary Ann Koch of Northampton County.  Besides, William there was Isborn S. and Milton.  Until 1882, Isborn and William were in the cigar manufacturing business together in downtown Lehighton.

Isborn continued in cigars while William furthered himself in his large 200-acre farm in the southwest corner of town.  (One of several unsolved Lehighton deaths was once solved by I.S. Koch, search this story for more on that).

A portion of this farm became the Small and Koch Dairy Farm with William’s son and son-in-law Reuben Koch running the dairy until the mid 1930s.  It later became Geurstlaurer’s and still operates today as Zimmerman’s Dairy.

From the horse drawn days of Small and Koch Dairy.  Originally started on William S. Koch's farm by his son William "Daniel" Koch  and son-in-law Reuben Small, they first called it Orchard Poultry and Truck Farm.  Reuben Small arrived in the Lehigh Valley for business school and met and married 'the farmers' daughter' Esther Koch in 1905.  Small and Koch operated the farm until the mid-Depression.  (Small & Koch photos are courtesy of Lois Small).

Reuben Small (left) and William "Daniel" Koch left in the early 1900s at the Small and Koch Dairy in the southwest corner of Lehighton.

Small and Koch Dairy was the first Carbon County dairy to pasteurize milk.  It was also the only diary of the over 268 in the county to receive a state department of health satisfactory rating in 1916.  (See footnotes for more on Reuben Small).

Lehighton was also home to two of the three Lentz brothers from Colonel John Lentz.  Col Lentz was a soldier in the War of 1812 and later, though advanced in age, led a defense of Harrisburg when Lee’s army advanced there in the summer of 1863.

One of these sons, Lafayette of Mauch Chunk, made a fortune in the coal fields.  Lentz Trail along Mauch Chunk lake and creek is named for him.

Lafayette’s son, Horace DeYoung Lentz, graduated Harvard Law in 1891.  He in turn endowed a scholarship there that still provides full tuition to any Carbon resident who attends Harvard Law.  Current resident Neil Makhija of Lehighton is the only living person who has benefitted from this trust.

Here in Lehighton, John S. Lentz lived at Third and Alum Streets, today’s “Schaeffer Funeral Home.”  He was superintendent of the Packerton shops.

Franklin Pierce Lentz lived at the former brick home of his father-in-law Daniel Olewine.  He held various positions with the LVRR including chief clerk of the car department at the Packerton Yard as well as Justice of the Peace in Lehighton.  He was educated at Lehighton’s “Academy” school.

The crowning achievement Frederick Leuckel's life of work in Lehighton, his 1899 building still stands today.  Neither Frederick and his son John who completed the building would live long to enjoy it. Both men were dead by October 1899.  (Most photos without photo credit are from the Haupt family collection).

Another pioneer immigrant of Lehighton was Frederick Leuckel, his building is still prominent in the downtown.  Born in Germany in 1807, Frederick Leuckel came to America by way of Amsterdam with $40 to his name.

He apprenticed there for seven years as a butcher.  He then made a 130-day voyage to New York City at the age of twenty-three.  He worked in the sugar factory in Easton and started a meat shop there before moving to Lehighton.  He married another German émigré Lecetta Lenzler.

Leuckel rose to financial prominence from the hard-work of his butcher shop, to investing in real estate, banks, and other businesses.  He was a major shareholder in at least four banks: two in Mauch Chunk, one bank in Catasauqua, as well as in Lehighton’s First National.

By the time of his 1875 “retirement,” he was one of our town’s wealthiest self-made men.

This circa 1908 fire next to the Leuckel building led the way for Citizen's National Bank to construct its stone facade building next door in around 1909.

The ‘Leuckel Building,’ completed in 1899, was the former home of Lehighton’s post office and was home to Leuckel’s and Olewine’s “First National Bank.”   It later housed the “Citizen’s National Bank.”

A fire next door around 1908 led the way for “Citizen’s” to build its prominent stone-façade modern bank building next door.  First Federal, the last and most recent bank that occupied this building, added a more modern metal face to it in the 1970s.

Lehighton has had its shares of fires.  Many of these will be detailed in 25 stop trolley tour guide book being published by the Sesquicentennial Committee.  But many businesses have been relocated or otherwise affected by the many downtown fires over the years.  The tour book will chronicle the major ones from the 1930s Elks fire, to the 1950s North First St and the 1960s South First St fires.

Here is the bunting of the opening of the new Citizen's National Bank building with the Leuckel Building to the left.  The building still stands today, however the last bank, First Federal, covered it with a more modern looking metal facade.

Serfass Motors before May 1918 fire - Looking north on Iron St, with the former Trinity Lutheran Church tower at Third and Iron in the distance.

Serfass Motors burned to the ground in May of 1918 and a three-story brown brick building went in its place.  (It is currently a Blue Ridge Cable office behind the former Times News building.)


Within the personal collection of dairyman Reuben Small are pictures of burned out cars from a "Lehighton garage fire." Though no one is certain these are of the Serfass Motors, it is certainly a possibility.  These photos will appear at the end.

This is the Serfass fire from May 1918, taken from the south side of Iron St, looking toward the alley behind what would one day by the the Opera House/Bayer Building/Times News Building.  The long building in the background was the original band hall and still stands.  Look at the end of this story for fire pictures from the Reuben Small personal collection from this time period.

Eventually, sometime before 1946, Moyer and Haupt had their first garage there.  By 1946 they took over the former Acme building at 200 to 206 North First St and began moving their Ford dealership there, this being another currently building housing BRC offices today.

Later, Moyer and Haupt moved out to Route 443 with an Edsel dealership, this dealership now trades as "Lehighton Ford." They also operated a service station at the corner of Eighth and Mahoning Sts, today it is a medical center in the 1940s.

Moyer and Haupt on Iron St pre-1946.  Not the brick ornaments above the row of windows.  Those can still be seen today on this building currently housing some Blue Ridge Cable offices at the alley behind the former Times News Building.

This picture shows Moyer and Haupt converting the old Acme back into a garage.  Prior to it being Acme, it housed Otto Kropp's First St garage.  Today it is the main Lehighton BRC office.

Prior to the Acme occupying 200 North First, Otto Kropp had a garage there.  He also had a Studebaker and Hudson dealership in the area of our current library.  Otto must have been quite a character.  It has been said that he once made a late-night car-swap deal with gangster "Legs" Diamond, a bootlegger who operated between New York and Philadelphia.

In 1937, Otto and his wife hosted Dr. J. Lavarowitz who was president of the "Rambling Hobos of America." Otto was the grandfather who raised the well-known Lehighton geography teacher Michael "Corky" Kordilla.

Another well-known Lehighton business that grew, burned, and moved to another street was Kistler's Hardware.

Here is Mahlon Kistler (left) and business parnter William F. Hamilton in his mid-1920s First St Hardware Store. It transferred to his son Mahlon "Jake" in 1957 and later to his step-son George Griffith.  The store continues today on Second St as "Lehighton Hardware." Hamilton was born in Scranton and was a boilermaker for the LVRR in 1910.  He died of a stroke in 1935 at the age of 50. (Kistler pictures appear courtesy of Paula Kistler Ewaniuk.)

Kistler’s Lehighton Hardware would later move to Second Street, its current location.  Kistler started his hardware store in 1925 and ran a progressive business model, taking pride in decorating his front window.  In 1957 he handed the reins over to his son Mahlon Jr.  In 1963 they were burned out and moved to its current location on Second St.  The business went from Mahlon Jr's step-brother George Griffith.

The show window of Kistler's first hardware store included shotguns, shells and stuffed raccoons.  See the end of this story for the new store front further up First St that later burned in a 1963 fire, sending the store to Second St.

Curiously, Kistler's Hardware was located at 237 North First St,  in what would be in today's Rite Aid parking lot.  After the fire, the A&P, which was then located in today's Lehighton Hardware's Second St building, built the 14,000 square foot building Rite Aid uses today.  The A&P left the current Rite Aid building back in the 1980s.

One of the longest tenured corner grocery stores in Lehighton was Cal Haas' store at the corner of Fifth and Coal.  It served their neighborhood with credit for groceries from 1930 to 1996.  The last thirty years it was ron by Cal's son Robert "Bobby" Haas, who was known for his regimented scheduled coffee breaks at the Beacon 443 Diner.

Here are some of the Haas family from the 1955 celebration of the 200 year anniversary of the Gnadenhutten Massacre.  From Left: Robert Haas, his wife Geri Haas, Cal Haas, and daughter Madeline (Haas) Kreiss Folweiler.  (Madeline's first husband Ezra Kreiss was lost in Operation Tiger in WWII.  She re-married Chester Folweiler, another WWII veteran.

The Trainer family had a corner store on Third and Cypress Sts.  It was taken over by Mel Everett and Dick Koch as "Ev-Ko" furniture and home appliances in 1966.  A fire destroyed the business in 1968 and the pair split in 1974.  Everett continued there in furniture and Koch established himself on Coal St where they remain today.

Mel's brother Arlington "A.W." Everett's furniture frame business in Franklin Township is also still running today, though now they specialize in frames for lift chairs.









Like Leuckel, Joseph Obert was another German immigrant butcher who prospered here.  He opened a dry goods business in Lehighton in the 1870s to which he parlayed into farm land speculation.

He eventually built one of the largest pork and cattle processing and packing plants in the east.  His sons continued the business into the 1930s.

Livestock would arrive on the LVRR and enter Obert’s stockyard on the east side of First St.  Pigs and cattle (but mostly pigs) were then marched across the street and up the alley between what is today Alfie’s Pizza and the former Hinkle’s Downtown Grille (a building first built by Obert and once held “Malta Hall” on the second floor.

This building still stands across the alley from Obert's (today's "Alfies") and was built by Obert after the "Lyric Theater" was torn down.  It was home to Losos and Sondheim clothiers (who once occupied part of the Obert building). The second floor once housed the Knights of Malta and a portion of Obert's slaughter house can be seen rear left.  Look for interior pictures of this building at the end of this article.  Most will also remember the most recent owner of this building was Hinkle's Downtown Grille.

The large slaughter house was located on what is today a municipal parking lot behind Alfies.  The block across from this alley, once was known as the Obert block.

The Obert’s lived at both his sprawling building in front of his slaughter house on First Street as well as another home he built later on South Second near Trinity Lutheran Church (now owned by Barrett Ravenhurst and Rick Brong).

The beautiful Victorian-era home was first built by Joseph and Catherine Obert in the 1880s or 1890s at 212 South Second, catty-corner from Trinity Lutheran Church and is one of the 25 stops of the Sesquicentennial Trolley tour.  Seen here in this photo is Joseph and Catherine's son William and their grandson Horace Obert Sr.  William's wife was Florence.  Horace Obert Jr was the long time chiropractor in Lehighton up until is recent retirement a few years ago.  The new and only third owners of the home are currently Barrett Ravenhurst and Rick Brong.

The three Gaston brothers (Carson, Wayne, and LeRoy who run the pizza shop), are the current owners of Obert’s First St property and have done well maintaining the building’s former glory.

This picture gives quite a glimpse at the classes of society of early 1900 Lehighton.  The Victorian-era garbed ladies and gentlemen on the yard versus the blood-stained work clothes of the man in the street.  You can also see Loso's and Sondheim's former location before moving across the alley.

It is here where we can see the meeting point today.

By studying the many buildings in Lehighton and by getting to know our history, we can see where our past meets our future.  The Obert and Leuckel buildings are a good place to start.

The once ornate dental work and finials are gone.  The large rectangular sign that proudly touted the “Leuckel Building 1899” now says “White’s Trading.”

Just like the once powerful anthracite and transportation industries are likely never to return, the works and fortunes of our pioneer residents are also mostly long gone.

But we are here today because of them.  And their legacy to us is to live in a town where their dreams once prospered.  It is for us to fulfill that potential as we are fit to do.


Footnotes:

Lehighton Deaths of the 1890s:

The 1890s were hard on many of Lehighton’s most prominent pioneer citizens.  Lewis Graver died in January 1892 (just weeks after his and Leah’s 50th wedding anniversary).

Joseph Obert died in June of 1897 at the age of 76.  He once donated the land at the corner of Second and Iron to build Zion’s United Church of Christ.

Moses Heilman died in May of 1898.

Also, two sons of two early Lehighton tanners died prematurely in 1898.  Daniel Olewine Sr died at seventy-nine in March of 1895.  But his son Daniel Irwin Olewine died of typhoid fever in Philadelphia in January 1898 at the age of forty-two.

Another Lehighton connected tragedy occurred in May of 1898 when Burgess B. J. Kuntz’s son Edward was seriously injured from an exploding gasoline tank at a Missouri steel company.  He had just begun working there as a chemist.

Upon receiving the news via telegram, Postmaster and former tanner and mayor Kuntz immediately left for Missouri.  However he was unable to reach his son before he passed.  His remains were shipped back to Lehighton for burial.  Edward J. Kuntz was only twenty-five.

Ironically, in 1899, in the same year that their building was completed, both Frederick and John Leuckel died.  Frederick in June and his son John died unexpectedly in October from stomach difficulties.

Incidentally, John Leuckel’s mother-in-law, who was also the mother of Lehighton’s well-known planning mill owner Henry Miller died in an unfortunate accident just months after John’s death.  Mrs George Miller died at the age of 79 from a fractured her skull after falling into the family well at their Franklin home.

~~~

The Wilkes-Barre Bank Heist in 1870 leads to arrests and a murder:

My favorite story involves a pair of bank robbers who hit a bank in Wilkes-Barre in 1870 who came to Lehighton to lay low.  The four suspicious men were “loafing about” Mantz’s Hotel (in the block south of the Hi-Rise today) and rumors quickly spread around town about the character and deeds of these men.

Forty year old Constable John “J. T.” Weston took the gossip seriously.  The robbers instantly drew their guns on the constable’s approach, making their escape out the back of the hotel.  And though it was February, they crossed the LVRR tracks and went into the river, all the while during a “raging snowstorm.”

Weston gathered a posse of men, all armed, and made their way to Weissport, to the vicinity of old bottling works (behind Hofford’s red-brick mill at the end of the bridge owned today by Tom McEvilly) where the crooks were said to leave the river.

The men were captured later, but not without resistance.  Their attempts to fire at the posse were in vain as their weapons were too wet from their mid-winter swim.  Rumors quickly spread that the $30,000 in cash, bonds, and securities were stashed on the mountainside somewhere opposite of Packerton dip, in the Long Run section of East Weissport.

The robbers were sentenced to 20 years in the Eastern State penitentiary and were said to have died there.  However by 1906, it was speculated that they communicated the whereabouts to other prisoners who upon their release came to town to claim the treasure.

In May 1906 three strangers arrived in town, at least one of them was well-dressed and seemed to be carrying a large sum of money.  He and a friend got into fisticuffs in a Lehighton “saloon” in the afternoon, the friend threatening to have the other arrested.

Later, word spread through town that these men, along with another man, were seen digging in the area of the missing bank loot.  That night, three shots rang out in a yard of a home on the outer edge of town.

They found the well dressed man with three bullets in his lungs, with the muzzle blast burned into his clothes, shot at close range.

Suicide was ruled out.  He had a watch and about $35 on him.  Authorities suspected the clever perpetrator left a small portion to give the appearance of suicide over robbery.

Constable J. T. Weston was born in Carbon’s “frontier” logging settlement of Sandy Run.  He died in Allentown in 1914.

~~~

Lehighton's Three Stone-facade Banks:

At about the same time Citizen's Bank was going in, the Hazleton National Bank arrived in town and likewise wanted to build an impressive structure to lure Lehighton's abundant cash flows.  Hazleton took over the former First National Bank.

First St was once known as “Bank St," most likely referring to the street closest to the bank of the river.

The Hazelton Bank building was opened in December of 1911, and for the convenience of a parking lot and modern drive-up window, moved to the corner of First and North Sts in 1963.  The original stone face of Citizens Bank has long been obscured by metal-work meant to give the old bank a “modern” look.  It was most recently known as First Federal Bank.  Another bank, on South First, was once known as Dine Bank in 1916, then later Bank of Lehighton, then People’s Bank, and most recently PNC Bank.

Next to the former PNC Bank building was once the regal looking hotel owned by Alvin Hausman, which was later run by his son Howard Hausman.  Howard's son Willard graduated from Lehighton High School Class of 1927.

Alvin's hotel was torn down by People's Bank to make way for a parking lot.  This picture shows Alvin standing at post, with his son Howard at the wheel of the car along with grandson Willard.

This is the Alvin Hausman hotel as it appeared on First St around 1920 (Willard, the boy in the car was born in 1909).  This was torn down to make room for People's/PNC Bank's side parking lot.  Note two things: You can still see the steep gables of the building to the left in today's green-painted "14-Acre Farm" Deli (formerly Lehighton Bakery).  Also note the edge of the building on the right has balcony woodwork that matches Owen W. Snyder's balcony woodwork.  The fact that both this hotel and the Snyder property picture show their respective buildings festooned with our flag leads me to believe it was an important anniversary year.  The 150th Centennial of our nation would have been 1926, however that would make the boy Willard in the passenger seat to be 15 or 16 and he is certainly younger than that.  Perhaps it was the 50th year of our town, which would have been 1916.

The woodwork of the railing of Dr. Owen Snyder home today being readied to be remounted to the balcony is the same pattern as the First Street building next to the Hausman Hotel pictured above.

The McCormicks of the Lehighton Press:

Publisher David McCormick was the grandson of Mary Mockler.  In her obituary of 1900, Mockler was described as a longtime resident of Lehighton with an ever clear mind.  She was well versed in world and local affairs due to her extensive reading.  Her first husband David McCormick was born in Ireland in 1804 and died here in 1854.

But when the Civil War broke out, her new husband, Dr. William Mockler (also of Ireland) enlisted along with her three of her sons, including William Carpenter McCormick.  Mockler was fatally killed at Fredericksburg and the twice widowed mother lived out her years with her son W.C.

William Carpenter McCormick, father of publisher David owned a bit of Civil War celebrity.  After the war, McCormick was known to be among the people to personally guard ex-Confederate President Jefferson Davis.  The two grew in friendship and mutual admiration for each other.

A current Lehighton-area resident, Larry E. Ahner of Long Run had a similar experience.  Ahner was given command and control of guarding Saddam Hussein after his capture during the Iraq war.  Ahner had daily, personal, one-on-one contact with the reviled dictator.  Ahner is hoping to one day write a book of this experience.

After the war, the McCormicks first lived at Hickory Run, working for the logging families there, which is where David and his siblings were born.  Two of those siblings died as toddlers and are buried in the peaceful little cemetery near the park office, surrounded by majestic 200-plus-year old hemlocks.

The quote on James and Thomas McCormick's grave at Hickory Run reads: "Suffer them to come unto me and forbid them not."

Prior to the McCormick family arrival in Hickory Run, there was a devastating flood there in October of 1849.  Due to the over timbering of land and the steep and narrow terrain, flash flood waters rushed unabated into three dams, one of which owned by logger J. S.  Gould (it was a 70-plus-acre dam) and two owned by Mahlon Taylor, gave way.

Most of the family homesteads were wiped out, children, fathers and mothers were lost.  One well-respected blacksmith of that area lost his wife and four children that night.  He survived them by forty years and was one of the last people buried in this nearly forgotten cemetery.

~~~

The Morthimer & McCormick Rivalry:

Not only did the business and political rivaly spill into their respective papers from time to time, but I have in my possession G.W. Morthimer’s copy of Brenckman’s 1913 “History of Carbon County.”  Based on his handwriting and notes in the margins, Morthimer apparently regularly consulted this copy when preparing articles such as obituaries of Lehighton’s leading people.

Brenckman’s book of course was written in rather flattering language.  However, when David McCromick died at the age of 60 of a heartattack in 1933, allowed Morthimer to write his rival’s obituary.

The Evening Leader’s copy is fairly true to Brenckman’s biography with a few edits.  Morthimer’s pencil crossed out words like “well-known” and striking out phrases like “The Lehighton Press faithfully mirrors the important happenings” with “No” written in the margin.

McCormick had also been postmaster of Lehighton several years after Morthimer’s tenure.  McCormick was also treasurer of Lehigh Fire Company and was the first person of the newly formed “Loyal Order of Buffalo” lodge in Lehighton in 1912.

The “Lehighton Press’s” David McCormick was also involved in politics, running for some of the same offices held by Morthimer.  McCormick was the son of the locally famous Civil War veteran W.C. McCormick.

One of David McCormick's palm cards from his mayoral run in the early 1900s.

Given the prominence of his father’s veteran status, gives little wonder in his chairman’s role in the Sons of Veterans organization.  This group held a large encampment at the Lehighton Fair grounds in the summer of 1916.

Members from all over the county and beyond came to parade, drill, and wake to reveille each morning in a week long camp out during the first week of July.  They even fired guns on the grounds of the fair.  Lehighton won the right to host this annual event over Weatherly’s application due to McCormick’s persistence.  Several letters of correspondence for this event still exist and are included here.

The final edition of the “Lehighton Press” ran on Christmas Day 1947.  With David’s passing in 1933, the paper was published by son Robert David McCormick.  In the end, the final three employees were: linotypist Alice Heintzelman, Robert’s sister and columnist Mary (McCormick) Ray, as well as Harry Miner who was a 54-year employee who worked as typesetter and printer for most of his career but also as reporter.

Miner was of the old Weissport Miner’s.  This family was deeply involved in Weissport’s past from postmasters to the Fort Allen Iron Works.)

George W. Morthimer took over the Evening Leader from his father, an immigrant from Scotland.  He was county auditor in 1893, a member of Borough Council and the board of education in town.  He himself became burgess as it was then known in 1903 and ran again in 1909 unopposed.  He was also Assistant Postmaster of Lehighton during Grover Cleveland’s first term in the late 1880s.

~~~

Handwritten notes of Guy Morthimer from the news of the day, August 1, 1924.

A typed letter from David McCormick of the Lehighton Press 1918.

Reuben Small of Small and Koch Dairy:

Employees of Small and Koch in 1926.  The very front and center gentleman is Reuben Koch.  On his right is his father-in-law William S. Koch and to Reuben's left is William Daniel Koch.  The man to the right of William S. looks like one of William S.'s brothers.   Isborn Koch who was formerly in business with his brother died in 1930.  The taller woman left of the post is book-keeper Rachel Strang who one day pronounced to all that she would one day marry Reuben.  And they did.

Reuben Small came to the Lehigh Valley from Massachusetts to attend business school.  Along with his education, he married Mary “Esther” Koch 1905 and created one of Carbon County’s best early dairies.  William S. and Susan (Daniel Olewine’s daughter) Koch owned the southwest 200 acres of Lehighton next door to the Olewine homestead.

The first enterprise of Small and his brother in law, William “Daniel” Koch on the Koch land was to form the Orchard Poultry and Truck Farm.  Soon after it became the business traded as Small and Koch Dairy.

But then it appears that Reuben had a few missteps in the early years of the Great Depression.  He built a large brick home (the home directly behind the PennDOT building on Ninth St today) and apparently misapplied money from the dairy for its construction.

His marriage to Esther also ended and Reuben married the dairy’s bookkeeper Rachel Strang.  Strang once grandly pronounced to Esther that she would one day steal Reuben away from her.

Eventually bought out by Gerstlauer Dairy, Small moved back home to Massachusetts with his second wife Rachel.  The well-known and recently departed WWII veteran of Mahoning Valley, Chester Mertz, was a relation to the Smalls and visited them often, helping out on their Westport dairy farm.

Gerstlauer’s operated well into the 1950s until it was taken over by the Zimmerman family of New Mahoning.  Zimmerman’s of course is home to the champagne of Lehighton, Zimmerman’s Dairy ice tea.

~~~

Reuben Small and his family and friends loved hunting in Potter County.  The more well known picture of them at the Lehighton Park appeared in Ebbert and Ripkey's Lehighton book.  These photos all appear courtesy of Lois Small of Westport, Massachusetts.

That's Reuben Small on the right.  Photo taken 1/2 block from Bretney's Photo Studio above the Jacob Weiss Park in 1920s.

Isborn Koch Solves a Death:
I. S. Koch was involved in helping to solve a local suicide mystery in an odd occurrence of happenstance.  In September of 1900, the body of a man was discovered in the Packerton Yard.  It was determined that the man had purchased a bottle of carbolic acid from a drugstore in Mauch Chunk and swallowed the deadly dose in a freight car.  The man’s age was estimated at thirty-three years of age and he was buried in the “common ground” of the Lehighton Cemetery.

While talking to customers on a routine business sweep through the lower Lehigh Valley, Koch was able to connect the unidentified man to a missing butcher from Richlandtown near Quakertown.  His name was George J. Jones and he had a wife and two children.  It was fully expected that his family would reinter his body closer to his home.

~~~

Moses Heilman and the construction of his Ice House:

Tragedy befell the Heilman’s when in 1891 he contracted Thomas Arner of Franklin Township to expand his ice house to a 60 by 160 foot building.  Not only was this building to be 30 feet wider, it was also 30 feet higher than the previous one.

Arner had a 30 foot platform built for his workers to set the heavy timbers for the rafters of this mammoth building.  The then aging Moses Heilman was there supervising when he saw the great weight cause the platform to fail.  When the timber smashed down, several workers were thrown into the air.  Oscar Heilman, a son of Nathan Heilman, was among two of the young men killed that day.  Arner received a broken jaw.

~~~

Eugene Baer- Silk and Smallpox:
Of course Baer and his expansive silk mill at Seventh and Bridge Sts was an asset to our community.  Baer had bestowed land to the borough on which the community pool was built along with our booster club football field.  Baer even sponsored one of our local semi-professional baseball teams.

His parents were the ones who got their start in silk mills and still lived in and operated one in New Jersey.  Upon visiting his family in Paterson in February 1902, Eugene came home to Lehighton with the dreaded disease and his home was quarantined.

This was not an isolated outbreak.  Many cases were reported in the larger cities in the northeast at that time.  By May however, it was more widespread in Lehighton with at least eight more people in this vicinity became ill, including Nathan Ebert, Carrie Bachman and her father William, the and the Robert Drumbore family.

Most of the cases were near Baer's Third and Alums Sts home and along Bridge St in the upper vicinity of his silk mill.  The Lehighton Board of Health took the extreme measure of quarantining this portion of town and southward on Bridge St with rope, with monitors to ensure no one would enter or leave.

Railroader and grocery store owner William Bachman of Bridge St died in June.  His adult daughter Carrie followed him two weeks later.  His widow Sarah continued running their Bridge St grocery store with their daughter Gertrude.

Benjamin J. Kuntz – Tanner & Mayor:

Kuntz, as mentioned earlier, was a three-term mayor of town and lived in a small home at the corner of Second and Alum, across the street from the O. W. Snyder residence.

Kuntz spent his last years as a fire insurance agent in Philadelphia, but made arrangements to be buried in his hometown, alongside that of his son Edgar and wife Ellen.

~~~

The End

~~~

Appendix of Pictures:

At first glance, this almost looks like the former G.C. Murphy building that once operated across the lane from today's Hi-Rise.  However this building burned in a 1963 fire in what is today the parking lot of Rite Aid on North First St Lehighton.

Above is the inverted cross painted on the ceiling of the Knights of Malta Hall, on the second floor of the former "Hinkle's Downtown Grille." Also pictured here are the wardrobe closets.  Each door was labeled for the costumes contained: "Blueman Master Builder,""White...Goliath's,""Knight of the Green," and "Priestly Pass."

The Moyer and Haupt Edsel dealership did not last long before the entire Ford Garage located there when the Edsel line of cars was discontinued.  Lehighton Ford trades in this Route 443 building today.

Inside of the Elks August 12, 1950 Coaster Races Program in Lehighton.

Back of the August 11, 1951 Coaster Race giving the history of the event back to 1923 in Lehighton.

The above three fire pictures are from Reuben Small's collection of that time simply labeled "Lehighton Garage fire." The problem with this being Serfass is there doesnt appear to be brick walls in the known Serfass Motor fire pictures.

This picture is from the Haupt family collection of the Serfass Motor fire in May 1918.  Note the distinct roof profile of today's Dr. Bruce Hartman's dental office building, next to today's Mallard Market (not seen here), in the background.  This is the current location of a three story brown brick building directly behind the former Times News Building on Iron St.

Lehighton Sesquicentennial Trivia Night

June 27, 2016, 3:33 pm

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Trying to enjoy all the intriguing events of this week is tough to do.  The Trolley Tour on Saturday, the Cemetery Tour last night and the parade and fireworks coming up Saturday are among the many highlights, not to mention the talent show, various contests, and of course the variety of musical performances each night.

~Be sure to read my other Lehighton Sesquicentennial articles found from this link~

One of my favorite Lehighton pictures: Chief of Police (most likely Harry Yenser) and then Mayor William J Zahn chat in our business district. Zahn served as Chief Burgess from 1934 to 1941.  Chief Yenser modernized the department by adding new technology necessary to combat the "gangster" 1930s: a teletype machine, a .45 cal machine gun, and bulletproof glass in the windshield of the patrol car.  Most work was still done on foot and even horseback into the 1930s. The department also owned a motorcycle as early as 1929.

I have a two fold reason for sharing this post to those interested in the Trivia Night this Friday, July 1st from 5:00 to 7:00 PM at the Amphitheater: To give a sampling of some of the questions and also to give a rundown of how the contest will work.

No matter what your level of Lehighton knowledge is, you will be rewarded by attending this event.  Not only will you learn tidbits you never knew existed, but by competing you will achieve a shred of immortality: All competitor's names will be placed in the Time Capsule at week's end along with all the questions and answers.

This was the Lehighton Airport dedication day, on July 20 and 21, 1929 (photographer is facing the homes on Ninth Street).  Pictured here is Mahlon Kistler Sr (4th from left).  It is unclear if Jensen is in this picture.  Other dignitaries attending the event were Governor Fisher and National Labor Secretary Davis.  Jensen was born in Kansas but also lived in Harrisburg in the 1930s.  One article stated that he was a former resident of our town.

So let's start with a few sample questions that didn't make the cut.

Sample #1: Martin Jensen was the second person in the world to fly from California to where?  (Answers will appear at the end of this article.  Jensen took his $10,000 of prize money from the Dole fruit company to invest it in Lehighton's airfield.  At least 15 other crews attempted this feat, most of those ended fatally.)

Now that could be hard for some folks?  Well first of all, this one is so tough I threw it out.  Also, the first three rounds are all multiple choice.  So is it: A. Jamaica, B. Spain, C. Iwo Jima, D. Hawaii?

An attempt was made to make the questions begin with some relative ease.  Given freely here are some hints at a few of them: "What day does this certain weekly event take place in Lehighton?" "What is the fee the town charges for someone applying for a ______ permit?" etc.

Sample question #2: Although this is Lehighton's 150th anniversary of its incorporation as a borough, what group originally founded here many years before?  

#3: Give the year of Lehighton's founding by this group.  (Again this is multiple choice in the first three rounds.)

#4: Name one thing you could buy at Karl Shaeffer's store on First St?

Karl "Smotz" Schaeffer ran a novelty store in downtown Lehighton for years, here in World War II.

There will be questions about the lives of some of the people nominated for "Citizen of the Century." #5: He was among the last doctors to still make house calls?  #6: Who are the current owners of the Eugene Baer Silk Mill on Bridge St? etc, etc.

Here's How it will Work:

You can go it alone or pair up with a partner to become a dynamic duo.

Let's say we have 50 teams competing.  You will have a 50% chance of advancing based on how well you do on the first fifteen questions of Round One.  At the end of Round One, only the top 25 teams will advance.

There are lucky-guess tie-breaker questions to help sort out ties if needed.  Here's one: Name (guess) the year Ben Franklin came to Weissport to build a fort.  Or how about guess the number of fire hydrants there are in town.  Person's getting it on the nose will advance.  If no one answers it correctly, the closest without going over will advance. 

Easy right?

Here's an interesting question that was eliminated because it was too hard: Name the Lehighton Chief of Police who died of natural causes at the wheel of his patrol car in 1947?  (See sample answer #6 below).

Mark Blank was Chief of Police prior to Harry Yenser in the 1930s.  He later became a US Marshall in Scranton.  In 1929 he was seriously wounded in a head-on collision on a motorcycle on the "Mahoning Trail." The force did have a motorcycle in its livery at the time.

Round Two and another fifteen questions (they are getting harder now) will have the top fifteen teams advancing to Round Three.  After Round Three, we will have just the top five teams left.

Now it gets interesting.  Multiple choice is gone.  Contestants will then enter the "Jeopardy"-style of play, except for one twist: when in control of the board, they can choose "Battle Questions."

Here's an example.  Suppose this were "State Trivia." A Battle question could be "Name all the states beginning with the letter "N." Each question has the number of correct answers available.  In this case there are 8 correct answers.  

The player in control of the board may choose one of these Battle Questions as their turn.  They also get the option of answering first or second.  The player/team that gives the last correct answer gets 5 points.  The losing competitor loses 5 points.  So if you believe the competitor you are playing against knows all their states, you can have them go first, allowing you to give the last correct answer and winning.

Here are some of the Battle Question categories: "Streets (7),""Streets (11),""Players (10+)", "Restaurants (10+),""Service Stations (10+)," and etc. 

There are parameters, such as "Name the streets, including alleys, named after people." There are eleven of them.  Make sense?  Good.  "Players (10+)" asks contestants to name the players of the 1977 District 11 championship basketball team.  There are more than ten correct names that could be given.  You wont have to know them all, you just need to know one more than the person you choose to "battle" with.

As for the "Jeopardy" side of the game, the categories are: "Sports,""Famous,""Borough,""Corner Stores," and "Current Events."

Questions could be something like: Where could you buy ice cream on South Second Street?  Who was the Olympic Swimmer who trained at Graver's Pool?  Who is our current Chief of Police? etc etc.

Here is one tough looking dude.  He was William Swartz and he was Lehighton's police chief in 1917.  He tried to calm down a rowdy 22-year old punk in a Lehighton hotel and was shot and killed.  The only Lehighton officer killed in the line of duty.  He left 8 children.

Then of course there is the "Final Jeopardy" question where the five finalists will wager an amount of their score before they answer.  I can tell you the topic now: "Lehighton."

These questions were designed to challenge yes, to inform, certainly.  But my ultimate hope is for all of us present to be enriched by our shared knowledge and love of this great town of ours.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Enjoy!

PS: After the event is over, a complete post of all the questions and answers will be posted, accompanied of course with current and historical pictures.

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Sample Answers:

#1: D. Hawaii

#2: The Moravians

#3: 1746

#4: Novelties, trophies, fireworks, small games of chance supplies

#5: Dr. Marvin Snyder

#6: Woody and Robin Frey

Only three of these questions are actually in the game, however they are seen here in a modified form.  The other three questions will not appear at all.

Questions from Trivia Night at the Sesquicentennial

July 3, 2016, 9:06 pm

≫ Next: Answers from Trivia Night at the Sesquicentennial

≪ Previous: Lehighton Sesquicentennial Trivia Night

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The Top Five Teams sweat out the last "Jeopardy" question: Name all the streets and alleys named after people?  From the Left: Deb and Kris Kunkle, Steve "Hogan" Ebbert, Mike Mriss and Jimmy Young, and Justin Markell and Scott Nothstein.  Off frame to the left was Nancy Shaffer.  Contestants could compete alone or in pairs.  The Lehighton Fire Department Brothers of the Brush were well represented.  Scorekeeper was Nate Rabenold.  (A full list of contestants are listed at the end of this post.)  Trivia Night photos are courtesy of Lisa Hopstock photography.  Click here for her website.

Lehighton was the world's gateway to the industrial revolution.  As one step from the coal transport hub of Mauch Chunk, many saw the town's industrial potential.

Parryville had Carbon Iron Works.  The Beaver Meadow Railroad was the first rail-line in Carbon County, originating in 1830.  Not to mention the paint pigments mined in the Bowmanstown area in the 1800s.  The Lehigh Valley Railroad sourced through town in 1855 and Lehighton's Packerton Yard became its main repair facility.

For other Lehighton posts:
~CLICK HERE FOR THE ANSWERS TO THE TRIVIA IN THIS POST

A testament to the area's industrial past comes from this 1851 article about a powder mill in Mahoning Township owned by the Dormetzger brothers.

~Lehighton Sesquicentennial: The Pioneers and the Promise

~Lehighton Sesquicentennial Trivia Night Introduction and sample questions

So it is little wonder with America's industrial apotheosis can be directly connected to the coal and iron that came through town.  Evidence of the promise of our town is shown in the naming of five of our streets: Carbon Street, Ochre Street, Coal Street, Iron Street, and Alum Street.

On the second last night of the eight-day Sesquicentennial Celebration this week, eighteen teams squared off in a trivia contest that answered questions about our town and our proud history.

Over 100 questions were developed, however only about forty-five were used.  This will be the first of two posts written on this trivia.  Following here will be the questions as posed Friday night.  However the answers to them will appear in the next post, giving the reader a chance to test themselves.

Besides the committee members like Autumn Abelovsky and Duane Dellecker, the Trivia Night would not have been possible without the volunteer help of many individuals: Rosanne Klotz Hoats, Nate Rabenold, Lori Stubits, Rachel Quinn, Kim Rabenold, Kathy Rhoads Long, Angela Tobash, Olivia Frendt, Izabella Baka, Samantha Banning, Jess Ripkey, Dane Frantz, Nate Petit-Clair, Nathan Kemmerer, Jake Petit-Clair, Alyssa Stubits and Kennedy Quinn.

Hosting of the event at the Amphiteahter were Ronald Rabenold and Kathy Rhoads Long. Courtesy Hopstock Photo.

The focus of the second post will be to cover the information contained within the questions that were not used.  All 100 questions (with answers) as well as competitor names will be sealed into the time-capsule bench in front of borough hall to be opened in 2066.  I'll be ninety-nine, and judging from the current state of my mind, I am certain all this material will be fairly absent from my mind by then.

1. Who is the current mayor of Lehighton?
A. Scott Rehrig, B. Grant Hunsicker, C. Thomas Mase, D. Cap Bauchspies

2. What day is garbage day in Lehighton?  A. Tuesday, B. Wednesday, C. Thursday, D. Friday

3. How many parks does Lehighton have?
A. 3, B. 4, C. 5, D. 6 - (This question was thrown out due to a discrepancy on what a 'park' is...I didn't count "Sixth and Coal" but I can see how many disagreed.)

4. How much does a moving permit cost in Lehighton?  A. $5, B. $10, C. $15, D. $25

5. What Lehighton sports team won the 1977 and 1987 District 11 Title?
A. Basketball, B. football,C. Cross Country, D. wrestling

6. Nominated for “Citizen of the Century,” this man was one of the last doctors to still make house calls:
A. Dr. Owen Snyder, B. Dr. Marvin Snyder, C. Dr. Alvin Reber, D. Dr. R. Scholl

7. Which one of the following is NOT an actual benevolent Lehighton organization?
A. International Order of Odd Fellows, B. Loyal Order of Buffalo,
C. The Excelsior Marines,D.  Germania Saengerbund ("Zanger-bund")

8. What Lehighton sports team is the only one to win a state championship?
A. Cross Country, B. Tennis, C. Field Hockey, D. Wrestling
(Though the gymanstic team led by teachers Lewis Ginder and Mildred Obert won regionally at least four years in a row which included a trip to Pittsburgh and competed in a national invitational in 1935.  Mildred was the granddaughter of town meat-packer Joe Obert and Lewis Ginder was a respected teacher, football coach and along with his wife, ran the popular "Camp Chickawaukee" summer program.)

Obert married George Fritzinger of Mauch Chunk in 1936. He graduated from Bucknell with an engineering degree and worked for PP & L.  Obert attended LHS and Sargent School of Physical Education in Cambridge Mass as well as doctoral studies at Columbia Universtiy.  She was well traveled to places in Europe as well as our west coast.

9. In the 1950s, this civic group started a fundraising campaign to fund the Lehighton Memorial Library:
A. the Masons, B. the Elks, C. the Lions, D. Loyal Order of Buffalo  (Remember the gumball machines with Ford gum?  That was the original fundraiser...one of these gumball machines is still in use at the Lehighton Boulevard Drive-in.)

10. The Lehighton Lions also sponsored what annual event starting back as far back as 1949.  It continued at the Lehighton Fair into the 1980s.
A. Bicycle races, B. Demolition derby, C. Miss Carbon County pageant, D. pie-eating contest

11. Which of these Lehighton businesses was known to employ the most people:
A. The Packerton Yard, B. Scotty’s Fashions, C. Blue Ridge Pressure Castings, D. Baer Silk Mill

12. Which of the following could you purchase at Kirkendall’s on South Second Street?
A. ice cream, B. bicycles, C. shoe repair, D. tombstones

13. Which of these current Lehighton businesses has operated the longest:
A. Zimmerman’s Dairy, B. Blue Ridge Pressure Castings, C. Lehighton Hardware, D. Dunbar Bottling (Hint: This question may also be open for discussion as the Zimmerman's Dairy first started in Mahoning Valley, those years were not included in this logic, so this question too should have been thrown out.  Of "B,""C," and "D," the correct business was started in 1925.)

14. Though this is the 150th year of its incorporation as a borough, Lehighton was actually founded prior to the Revolutionary War, over 250 years ago.  Who founded this first settlement?
A. Col. Jacob Weiss, B. Ben Franklin, C. George Whitfield of Nazareth, D. Moravian Missionaries

15. Who made the tastiest chicken in all of Lehighton, known as “chicken in the rough?”
A. Your mother, B. the Boulevard, C. Getz’s, D. Kleintops

This ended round one and we had to say goodbye to our lowest scoring teams.  Before they left the were given the chance at a “parting gift” question:
Approximately, how many fire hydrants does the borough of Lehighton have?
A. Less than 50, B. 50-100, C. 100-150, D. More than 150 (Contestants did not get choices to pick from.  The winner of a Sesquicentennial mug was Tanner Eckman.)

The top 15 teams advanced to the next round.

Round Two:

16. Which Lehighton business once produced the iconic and highly sought after 'Hurst' shifter handle:

A. Hersh Iron Foundry (down on the 'flats')B. Knepper Airplane Manufacturer (Iron St)

C. Blue Mountain Machine(originally started at Graver’s Pool)D. Blue Ridge Pressure Castings

17. What store in downtown Lehighton was the first and only business  in Carbon County to have both an elevator and escalator:

A. Brights’ Dept Store, B. Cohen’s, C. Greenberger’s, D. G.C. Murphy

18. This auto dealer was first on Iron St, then moved to First St, and lastly on Route 443:

A. Hahn & Son, B. Kovatch, C. Moyer and Haupt, D. Serfas Motors

19. This early auto dealer suffered a devastating fire in May of 1918:

A. Hahn & Son, B. Otto Kropf Studebaker, C. Moyer and Haupt, D. Serfas Motors

20. This Lehighton man had a stand-out football and basketball career at Lehighton, became the quarterback at Syracuse University and is presently offensive coordinator at Michigan State University.

A. Pete Barclay, B. Dave Warner, C. Tom Kresge, D. John Armbruster

Not only did T. A. Snyder buy the Michigan State building, but other buildings from the Pan-Am Expostiion in Buffalo New York were brought here to create a resort area of the Flgstaff Mountain in an effort to build ridership on his trolley line.  Click here for more on Snyder.

21. Theodore A. Snyder bought a mansion at the Pan American Exposition and had it reassembled near the Grove and was considered our grandest home until it burned.  The home was called:

A. Windmere, B. Builtmore, C. Mahoning Court, D. Colonial Court

22. Which of the following year was Lehighton said to have reached its peak population:

A. 1940, B. 1960, C. 1970, D. None of these

23. What was Lehighton’s peak population:

A. 5,500, B. over 6,500, C. Over 7,000, D. Over 8,000

24. Lehighton lies on this line of north latitude of the equator:

A. About 25, B. 35, C. About 40, D. 55

25. This Lehighton bottler died in 1945.  He was overweight and one inch too short to be enlisted in WWI.  But after hanging around the recruiting station for over a month, his “mirthful spirit” caught the eye of a major and they took him overseas.  

A. Mahlon Kistler, B. Eugene Baer, C. Eugene Small, D. Lewis Dunbar

(Lewis Dunbar was a wagon driver a confections business in the 1920s and up to the 1930s.  He wanted to enlist in WWI, but was an inch short (5'3") and was about 100 pounds overweight.  He didn't take 'no' for an answer.  Living in Ohio and married to a local girl there at that time, he hung around the recruiting station for a month until finally a major couldn't resist his “mirth” and humor.  He attended a 1935 national Legionaries' convention and made the papers as the nations heaviest veteran at 285 pounds, with a 65 inch waist (at 63 tall!).  Naturally plagued with illness including diabetes, he died of a coronary in 1945 at the age of 56.)

From the 1931 LHS yearbook.

26. What was the year of Lehighton’s first founding by the Moravians?

A. 1707, B. 1737 (year of Thomas Penn’s Walking Purchase), C. 1746, D. 1755 

Joseph Semanoff was a veteran of WWII in the 101st Airborne and was Carbon's state representative to the General Assemply.  His son Gene served in the Air Force and Gene's son Peter is a Captain  in the Army today.  Gene's daughter Major Alison serves as an Army doctor. Another son of Joe Semanoff, Greg, did two tours in Vietnam with the combat engineers.  Greg's son, Mike Semanoff, was in the 82nd Airborne in the 1990s.

27. This Lehighton business man was said to have accidentally brought smallpox into the community in 1903 causing a general quarantine of southern Lehighton:

A. James Blakslee, B. Moses Heilman, C. Theodore Snyder, D. Eugene Baer

28. Who made Lehighton’s famous “Grandma’s Potato Chips” on Bridge St:

A. Orville Shoemaker, B. Gordon Bennett, C. George Freeby, D. Mel Gilham

29. Prior to representing Carbon County as our state representative in the 1970s, what was the profession of Lehighton’s Joseph Semanoff?

A. mechanic, B. teacher, C. grocery store owner, D. hotel owner

30. Who was a state qualifier in wrestling and went onto West Point and finished as a NCAA National Runner-up in college.  He is currently a teacher in Lehighton: 

A. Denny Semmel, B. Rick Long, C. Charlie Bachert, D. Dave Warner

After this question, only the top five teams remained to play a round of "Jeopardy." All five of these teams scored at least twenty points, the highest advancing team had twenty-five points.  The topics were: "Sports,""Famous,""Borough,""Corner 'Stores'," and "Current Events." 

Even though it was a "Jeopardy" board, Alyssa and Kennedy worked as "Vanna White's" removing category markers during game play.  Courtesy of Hopstock Photo.

There were five questions in each category numbered in graduated difficulty from one to five.  These points were added to previously earned points.  Not all the questions were selected, but all of them are listed here.  Questions that were not used in competition will be marked with an '*.'

Guided by Mildred Obert and Lewis Ginder, the Lehighton Gymnastics teams of the early 1930s went unbeaten in regional competition and even went onto compete nationally.

SPORTS:

*#1. The 1976 Boys Basketball team went undefeated in the inaugural Centennial League, winning 21 games before losing in Districts.  However, they lost their season-opener to whom?     

*#2. What Lehighton athlete sits in the Top 70 scorers of all time in Pennsylvania Basketball history with 2,234 points, this was in a 1980s career without the 3-point line.  (#63 on the list is Wilt Chamberlain!)

#3. This Olympic athlete from Weissport held the world-record in the butterfly and trained at Graver’s Swimming pool.

    

#4. This man once played for Lehighton’s semi-pro baseball teams in the late 1890s for $5 a game eventually made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.  (He was a lawyer by trade from Pittston and was known to have entered to words into our lexicon: "Atta-boy" when someone does a good thing as well as "Ee-yah!" He was known as an incessant picker of grass from his first base coaching post.  Made the Hall for his managing, coaching, and playing.)

A family of fair-goers in the early 1960s. The photo, from the Morning Call archives of Ralph Kreamer lists "Mr and Mrs Thomas German with daughter Brenda Dianne.

      

#5. What sport came to an end in the borough with the two fatalities in two separate incidents at the Carbon Fair?

   

Franz Kline had a little fun drawing this sketch in the 1931 LHS yearbook describing a day in November when he and Harold Rabenold took a day off for "nature study." Using some Pennsylvania Dutch humor of "I vonder vare dot rabbit vent to."

FAMOUS:

#1. Arguably the most famous person to come out of Lehighton, he was best known for his abstract art, he painted the Legion mural.

In addition to Dunbar Bottling, there was also Ripkey's "Carbon Bottling Works" in the alley of South Ninth between Iron and Mahoning.

Ripkey carried Horlacher's that got it start with father and son Fred and George at Bridge and First Sts Lehighton before moving to Allentown.

#2. Lehighton’s Fair was well-known state-wide.  Where was it in the 1870s-1890s?

 #3. Lehighton Moxie outsold Coca-cola in the early 1900s.  In the 1930s and 1940s Lehighton was one of two places this soda was produced.  Name the other city.        

*#4. This regionally famous beer got its start at Lehighton’s First and Bridge Streets in the late 1800s/early 1900s with father and son Fred and George.

#5. Most widely known for playing drums with Paul McCartney’s “Wings,” this Lehighton native also played for Janis Joplin, James Brown, Art Garfunkel, and Billy Joel.

In what only can be described as a bizarre piece of news, William Hammel was threatened by a lynch mob for his refusal to buy a war bond even though the drive was over.  It is unknown if his decision was based on economics or some other objection.

    

BOROUGH:

#1. How many cemeteries are there in the borough?

#2. In 1880, which occupation was claimed by the most Lehighton residents?   Doctors, barbers, cigar makers, ministers, or painters?

#3. Name the shortest street in town.

#4. Who is the current supervisor of the Lehighton Water Authority?

#5. Who is the current supervisor of the Power Dept?

    

CORNER "STORES" (not just stores):

*#1. Koch and Everett partnered in furniture and appliances at the site of the former Trainer’s Grocery Store at Third and Cypress.  What was their business called?

#2. The steep hill of Coal St is named after this business.

     (As a bonus questions, give William Hammel's occupation before he started his store?)

#3. The Mandour family (Joe, Ed, George) ran what two well-known Lehighton businesses on two different downtown corners. 

*#4. Larry Markley’s Nationwide Insurance agency is the current site of a corner grocery store, Lehighton’s longest family run grocery store, into 1998.

#5. Who ran an Atlantic gas station on the corner of 7th and Mahoning from the 1930s to the 1980s?

CURRENT EVENTS:

#1. Who is Lehighton’s tax collector?

#2. Name the organization that saved the Lehighton Baer Memorial Pool?

#3. Who is Lehighton’s Fire Chief?

#4. Who is the longtime bugler for the UVO, cemetery care-taker, and well-known for his Perseverance jazz band? (His band played in the amphitheater following Trivia Night.)

Son of a silk mill owner in New Jersey, Baer's son Carlos married Florence Teets. It was Carlos who arranged for the lands of southwest Lehighton to be made into a recreational area.  Carlos and Florence were uncle and aunt to current town resident Carlos Teets.

*#5. Who is the current owner of Mallard Markets?

  

The Contestants:  (Occupations were listed for purposes of the historical records to be entered into the Time Capusle.)

#1 - Danny Stubits – Retired

#3 Olivia Frendt and Jess Ripkey - Students

#5 Steve Ebbert - THIRD PLACE FINISHER

#6 Tanner Eckman

#15 Suzy and Lyle Cordes – Teacher and child/student (daughter of Lehighton Electronics Austin Blew)

#20 – James Young/Michael Mriss – HVAC Technician/OPS Mgr & Asst Fire Chief - FIRST PLACE FINISHERS

#22 Susan Cook/Jordan Cook – Wilkes College & LAHS Student

#24 – Justin E Markell & Scott Nothstein – Senior 911 Dispatcher/Equipment operator - TOP FIVE FINISHER

#27 – Mary Strohl & Karen Reichard (Snyder sisters) – Lehighton Tax collector and Borough police secretary

#29 – Nathan Kemmerer & Jake Pettit-Clair -  LAHS Students (They marked “Hoodlums” as their occupation!)

#32 – Nancy L. Shaffer – retired - TOP FIVE FINISHER

#44 – Sam Banning and Isabella Baka – Students LAHS

#69 – Duane and Barb Dellecker

#46 – Nick and Logan Yaro – Students

#50 – Nicole Beckett – Borough Manager

#55- Jean Everett – Retired bank teller

#57 – Kris&Deb Kunkle/Superintendent of Public Works - SECOND PLACE FINISHERS

#60 Dane Frantz and Matt Pettit-Clair – Students

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DON'T FORGET: 

Answers will appear in the next blog post in a few days!

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All of the Top 5 contestants can be seen in this photo: Nancy Shaffer, Deb and Kris Kunkle, Steve Ebbert, Michael and Jim Young, and Justin Markell and Scott Nothstein.  Mriss & Young finished first followed by the Kunkles and Ebbert.

This picture was used by TV-13 for their parade coverage intro and is my favorite picture of my grandfather who founded Haas' Store in the early 1930s.

Cal Haas' son Robert at the meat counter in the middle 1970s.  Bobboy took over the store in the 1960s and ran it until 1998.

Add caption

Answers from Trivia Night at the Sesquicentennial

July 4, 2016, 2:22 pm

≫ Next: You Are Splendid...Lehighton's 2016 National Honor Society Induction Ceremony

≪ Previous: Questions from Trivia Night at the Sesquicentennial

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Now that you've had a day to think about the questions, I now freely give you the answers.

Here is Lehighton's first chief of police, William Swartz. He was killed by a rowdy and drunk youth of twenty- two at the Carbon House that sat at the corner of North and First Sts.  He left eight children when he was shot in 1917.

~QUESTIONS POST: Here is the link back to the questions.  You could have a tab open with each post to go back and forth to.

~BACKGROUND STORY: From the twenty-five stop "Trolley Tour" to accompany the commemorative 150th book sold at the event.  If you missed out, the Lehighton Memorial Library will continue to sell these.

1. "C": Mayor Thomas Mase
2. D: Friday
3. D: 6 Parks.  The consensus was that the "Upper and Lower" parks count as one.  Baer Memorial, Skyline, and The Grove were definitely thought of as parks.  However, the new Rails-to-Trails Bike path trail-head was overlooked.  Also, included here is "Sixth and Coal Sts" athletic field.
4. A: $5 for a moving permit.
5. A: Basketball
6. B: Dr. Marvin Snyder
7. C: The Excelsior Marines was not a Lehighton Organization.  The Germania Saegerbund was located next to the "Academy" Building on southern First St.  The Loyal Order of Buffalo (L.O.O.B), Lehighton Herd #17 started in April of 1913 with Lehighton Press's David McCormick's father William, the Civil War Veteran, was the first chair. Applicants for membership had to "be of the Caucasian race and not less than eighteen years of age and more than fifty years of age." Admission fee for the herd was $10 for 18 to 40 year olds and $15 for 41 to 50 year olds.  Fifty cents a month paid in a advance were the yearly dues.  Though they stated they were not an "insurance organization," payments were made to sick and disabled "brothers." "No sick or death benefits shall be paid for illness or death resulting from immoral or intemperate habits of any Brother." Along with the International Order of Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F.) there were a total of nine secret societies in Lehighton as of 1890.
8. C: Field Hockey
9. B: the Lions
10. C: Miss Carbon County Pageant
11. A: Packerton Yard (Some thought this choice was wrong because it was technically out of the Borough limits.  The Baer Silk Mill at it's peak employed about 400 around 1915.  Scotty's Fashion was third and Blue Ridge Pressure Castings had a Lehighton payroll of less than 100.
12. A: ice cream

Jess Ripkey, Livi Frendt, Izzy Baka, and Sam Banning work the registration table from the LAHS Student Council.

13. C: Lehighton Hardware started in 1925.  Zimmerman's Dairy, though a long-time family farm in the Mahoning area, did not establish itself in Lehighton until after Gerstaluer's Dairy in the 1950s.  Gerstlauer's took over Small and Koch at the present day location of Zimmmerman's around 1934.  Blue Ridge Pressure Castings started in a warehouse on the Fair Grounds in the 1940s before moving to its present location after a fire.  Lehighton Hardware started by Mahlon Kistler Sr and William F. Hamilton started on First St and moved to Second St after a 1963 fire.
14. D: Count Zinzendorf himself oversaw the selection of the site at the mouth of the Mahoning Creek for his group of hard-working Moravian missionaries.
15. D: Kleintop's Diner was located at the bottom of Ninth St where the "fotune teller" single-wide is today.  One of the Kleintop boys was the recently deceased Paul Kleintop that ran Normal Square Inn in the 1990s and early 2000s before retiring to become a Carbon County Community Transit bus driver. His specialty and my favorite: Vienna Onion Roast.  Melted in one's mouth!

Parting gift Question: Lehighton has about 155 fire hydrants in the Borough limits.

The Brights Department Store credit card.  Brights put Lehighton's Cohen Department Store out of business partly by providing free bus transportation to its Lansford Store in the 1950s.  Later, Brights bought out Cohen's less than a year after starting this program.  Brights also provided a free Mother's Day luncheon for all its female shoppers.  As for how they procured the finest items? Lehighton purchasing agents were often flown to Newark New Jersey for buyers meetings sometimes up to two to three times a week, employing local pilots like Mr. Walp from South Street to fly out of Lehighton's own airstrip off Ninth St at the Fairgrounds.

Round #2:
16. Blue Ridge Pressure Castings, is still a leader in the manufacture of specialty parts for the automotive industry.  Knepper Airplane Parts building is now a hospital auxiliary building, the Hersh Iron Foundry closed many years ago while Blue Mountain Machine has recently become a leading producer of mobility chairs.
17. A: An escalator and an elevator.  Bright's had style.  Once it moved to the Carbon Plaza Mall in 1976 (it occupied the Mahoning Valley Cinema down to and including Big Lots) it also opened their own "Hess Brother's"-styled restaurant.  They also provided their own store credit card like the large stores like Macy's and JC Penny's.
18. C: W. Melvin "Mush" Moyer and Earl Haupt formed "Moyer and Haupt" in 1945.  They sold their dealership to the Bennett group in 1986.  Mush Moyer formed a orchestra known as the Lehightonians from 1928 to 1942.  They started their American Motors dealership in 1957.
19. D. Serfas Motors (used just one final 's') was located on Iron St at the alley behind the former Classic Theater/Times News Building.  The fire occurred in May of 1918.  The current building was built sometime after this date and was once occupied by Moyer and Haupt before they moved to First St.
20. B: Dave Warner, son of Dave "Pap" Warner from North Eighth Street was a three year letter winner at Syracuse and tried out for the Eagles before getting cut.
21. D: Colonial Court reviled Asa Packer's mansion as the grandest of Carbon County homes.  It burned to the ground in 1916 and was catty-corner from the Grove.
22. A: 1940.
23. B: about 6,500.
24. C: about 40 degrees north latitude.
25. D: Lewis Dunbar.  It was later taken over by Mel Gilham who moved it from Fourth St to the bypass in the 1980s.  It continues today under the ownership of Craig and Jennifer Gilham, Mel's son.  Lewis enlisted in Ohio and that is where he married his wife who was from that state.  By 1930, his mother-in-law moved here to Lehighton and lived with Lewis and his wife.
26. C: Moravians first came here to live in 1746.  Therefore our birth as a town goes to 1866, but our founding was in 1746.

These placards were used in the southern section of town during Lehighton's 1903 outbreak.  This one was from 1916 Lehighton Board of Health.

27. D: Baer went home to New Jersey to visit his parents and siblings.  It wasn't apparent until he reached home that their unknown malady they were starting with was smallpox.  This was part of a larger outbreak in many major northeastern cities at that time.
28. A: Orville Shoemaker was from Lehighton, made a go of this business first in Allentown before resettling back here and making Lehighton "Grandma's Chips" permanent home, north and opposite of the Legion Home, next to the home of James and Shirley Wentz.
29. C: Semanoff's grocery store was on the corner of Fourth and Iron Sts, most recently well-known as Marshall's Meat Market.  This iconic Lehighton building is the last of many that once had a porch overhang roof over the sidewalks in front.  This is an ideal bus stop location for kids bused to the western end of town today.
30. A: Denny Semmel.  Made it to the NCAA championship round in the national wrestling tournament for West Point.  He is currently a fifth grade math teacher at Lehighton.


Parting Gift Question: The first bridge between Weissport and Lehighton was built in 1804.

SPORTS:
1. Jim Thorpe - Lehighton was led by point guard Randy Rabenold while his father Randolph Rabenold was Jim Thorpe's assistant coach.  Lehighton went on to win twenty-one games in a row to earn an undefeated season in the inaugural Centennial League of 1976.
2. Thomas Kresge, brother to Steve and Greg who themselves also fine Lehighton players.  Son of Russell and Donna Kresge.
3. Betty Mullen Brey - Her son is the current Notre Dame Men's Basketball coach, their winningest coach in their history.
4. Hughie Jennings played here before going off on a Hall of Fame career as a major league player and coach.  He was from Pittston and a lawyer by trade.

This picture of an unidentified wreck at the Lehighton Fair certainly matches what is known of the two fatalilites from September 6, 1958.  It was said that there was only a light wooden picket fence and that the George girls was pinned to a tree.  Some said that the Mertz boy was killed when flying debirs hit him while he was up in a tree.  According to the lore I heard growing up, these accidents occurred near the horse stables as they approached the chicken house, which this pictures also confirms.

5. Stock-car racing.  There were two fatalities in two separate accidents.  Eleven year old Dennis Mertz of Mahoing Valley was in a tree and seventeen year old Shirley George of Palmerton was pinned to a tree on September 6, 1958 at the Lehighton Fair.

FAMOUS:
1. Franz Kline.  His works are in most every major museum in the world.  He was known to come home, especially for fair week, in his grey Ferrari.  He came to Lehighton with his mother, after his father killed himself over a sour real estate deal on the family hotel prorperty he first sold and then tried to reclaim.  Franz was a handsome young man who excelled in sports too.  He was known to punt the football bare-footed.
2. The Lehighton Fair was first located in the vicinity of First Ward school at Fourth and Alum Sts in the 1870s to the 1890s.
3. Boston.  Moxie executives wanted to 'modernize' the recipe to the resistance of the Lehighton bottlers.  The coporation closed the Lehighton bottler as a result of this disagreement.
4.  Fred Horlacher ran a bottling works at First and Bridge Sts.  After he moved to Allentown, Horlacher Beer had a large and loyal customer base in the Northeast, especially after son George took it over.
5. Dennis "Denny" Seiwell is a brother to Darryl Seiwell of the locally popular "Becky and the Beasts."


BOROUGH:
1. Three: Gnaden Hutten, Lehighton, and the Ss Peter and Paul Cemetery at the end of North Fourth St.
2. There were fourteen people employed in cigar making in Lehighton in 1880.  Two of which were women who were "tobacco strippers" the one facet of the industry reserved for women.  Painters was the next group with eleven, followed by five ministers, four doctors and three barbers.
3. Constitution Avenue is the short block in front of the Municipal Building.
4. Armando Gallasso.
5. Lonnie Armbruster.


CORNER "STORES":
1. "Ev-Ko" was formed from Mel Everett and Paul Koch's last names.  Their partnership dissolved after a fire with Mel keeping the furniture line of the business and Koch continuing with the appliance line of their business on Coal St, eventually expanding to Palmerton and Bowmanstown.
2. Hammel's Store.  Prior to becoming a merchant, Hammel worked at the New Jersey Zinc and later in the Packerton Shops while working part-time as a vaudeville magician.  A fact that attests to his carrying of small magic tricks.
3. Owned and operated both the Lehighton Hotel (at the corner of Main Lane and First St) and the Hotel Carbon (at the corner of North and First Sts).  The Mandours owned the Hotel Lehighton until it was demolished to become the Lehighton Elderly Hi-Rise.

This picture was taken just south of the intersection of Fourth and Iron Sts.  Though he ran bread for George A. Strohl's Lehighton Bakery, Cal with his currently hip 'man-purse' shows his comical side with his outward turned foot, on a truck bearing his name.  His hard work eventually manifested itself in "Haas' Store" at Fifth and Coal Sts, Lehighton's longest running family run corner grocery store.

4. Cal Haas opened the store in the early 1930s.  His son Robert took it over in the 1960s until 1998.  TV-13 used a picture of Cal on his George Strohl Bakery Truck in their promotional introduction to the parade.  Cal ran at least three bakery routes, selling five cent loaves of bread, to earn enough money to start his own store.  He was my grandfather and Robert was my uncle.
5. Henry Bretney.  Son of the Dine Bank Cashier and related to the Bretney Photography studio, Henry Bretney's character lives on in the many who knew him.  He was a close friend of Franz Kline.  A painting Kline gave Bretney can be viewed at the Lehighton Memorial Library.

CURRENT EVENTS:
1.  Mary Strohl, who along with her sister Karen Reichard, the borough police secretary paired up to compete in Trivia Night.  Both Mary and her son Steven were "150 Club" members.
2. Lehighton Area Pool Pals, who was headed up by Citizen of the Century and Shade Tree Committee member Mark Hoffman among many others.
3. Patrick Mriss, brother of assistant chief Michael Mriss.
4. Henry Long, who's Perseverance Jazz Band played immediately following Trivia Night.
5. Frank Kuhn.  A former Laneco Store Manager, Frank fulfilled a dream of one day owning his own store.

FINAL JEOPARDY:
The final contestants were given a choice between an open-ended question and a question that was more "cut and dry." They unanimously decided to go the shorter route.  It was "Name the streets and alleys that were named after people.  The team of Mriss and Young had the most at eight of the twelve.

They had Dunbar Alley ,Grant Alley, Hamilton St, Sgt Stanely Hoffman Blvd, Blakslee Blvd, Lentz Ave, Stedman Ave, and Graver St.  They missed Ebbert's Park, Willard St, Lentz Alley, and Penn Ave.

The open-ended response was going to involve judging from the audience.  Contestants would have been given ninety seconds to explain why they loved their hometown.

BATTLE QUESTIONS:
There were sixteen "Battle Questions" developed for this game that went unused.  Some of them are presented here for information purposes.

#1. Borough Council: Had a contestant felt knowledgeable of the seven current council member names, they could have selected this question and chosen another competitor to 'battle' against.  The person who gives the last correct answer wins.  Given that there are seven names, the person initiating this question should have chosen to go first.  They then should have said the most familiar of the names, such as "Grant Hunsicker." The other person would then given another valid name such as Sesquicentennial Committer person "Helen Torok." This would continue back and forth until all the names were used or someone couldn't give another name.  Remaining members are: Scott Rehrig, Lehighton firefighter Joe Flickinger, Lisa Perry, Darryl Arner, and Jared McEvoy.

#2. "Women": There have only ever been four women to serve on Borough Council.  Two of them are currently serving.  The others were Melissa Ebbert Wagner and longtime councilperson and mayor's wife Bessie Bauchspies.

#3. "Homes": This one was tricky.  Working backward, name the current to the previous owners of the Funeral Home at Third and Alum Sts: Corey and Rebecca Schaeffer, Ken Phifer (1988-1998), William Garrett (1947-1988), Wendell Swartz (1944 to 1947), and John S. Lentz.  All but Lentz used the home as a funeral home.  Lentz was yardmaster at the Packerton Shops.

#4. "Papers": Name all the newspapers that once operated in Lehighton.  I wont give you the answer here, but there were at least five of them.

#5. "Streets": Name all the streets and alleys named after people.  This question was used in lieu of the open-ended essay question discussed earlier.

#6. "Streets": Name the streets and alleys named after trees.  All but two are alleys.  However the two that are named 'streets' are actually nothing more than the width of an alley: Birch Alley, Cedar St, Cherry Alley, Cypress St,  Maple Alley, Peach Alley, and Poplar alley.

#7. "Chiefs": Name the last twelve (and most likely only) police chiefs of Lehighton.  Our first known police chief,  William Swartz was also our only patrolman lost in the line of duty in 1917.  He left eight children.    Next came Mark Blank who would later become a U.S. Marshall in Scranton.  Then Harry Yenser who died of a heart-attack at the wheel of his squad car in front of the Municipal Building in 1947.  Then it was Lee Walsh, Bill Kunkle (contestant and public works supervisor Kris Kunkle's father), Lionel Cote,  Edward Hutto (who killed himself outside his wife's church because of his concern with her apparent close relationship with its minister), Frederick Scott, Dennis Wentz, Matt Bender, Neil Ebbert and currently Brian Biechy.

#8. "Streets": This one was discussed at the beginning of the 'question' post.  If I could have done it again, I would have chosen this question as the Final Jeopardy questions: Name the streets and alleys that are named after industrial elements: Carbon Alley, Carbon St, Ochre St, Coal St, Iron St, and Alum St.

The remaining categories will simply be listed here in an effort to save them for another Trivia Night in the future.

#9. Name the original first four numbered streets in Lehighton (they obviously weren't always just numbers).
#10. Sports: Name the members of the 1975 to 1977 (two-years) of Lehighton boys basketball team.  The 1976 team won the Centennial League and the 1977 matched that but also won the District 11 title.
#11. Name Lehighton's Furniture Stores, including appliances.
#12. Clothiers and Department Stores
#13. Family named restaurants.
#14. Gas Stations: Must give the owners name, not simply "Exxon."
#15. Pharmacy: Again must give the owners name.
#16. Garment/Silk Mills.

What's Next for Lehighton History Here?  For the remainder of this year, this blog will feature mainly Lehighton stories.  There will be one more post on trivia questions as well as at least one post focusing on Lehighton's mayors and police chiefs.

Thanks for visiting!

You Are Splendid...Lehighton's 2016 National Honor Society Induction Ceremony

November 20, 2016, 9:05 am

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On Thursday, November 17th, the Daniel I. Farren Chapter of the National Honor Society inducted its newest members.

Congratulations to these new members:  Aubrey Blasiak, Caine Carpenter, Piper DeMatte, Jennifer Dobrowski, Julia Frey, Patrick Lawler, Matthew Pettit-Clair, Maura Phelan, Brandon Schnell, Ty Sharrow, Nolan Wentz, Grant Wetzel, and Mary Wilhelm.

They join Julia Banning, Tia Brownmiller, Tyler Dietz, Andrew Ebbert, Matthew Eckhart, Bethany Evans, Kaitlin Higgins, Elise Johnston (President), Brianna Keiser, McKEnna Knappenberger, and Morgan Yurasits.

Many members are former students of mine and some of them asked if I would deliver a few words at the ceremony.



Here are those remarks:

Aced my calculus test – Check!

Homecoming weekend – danced like a freak!- Check!

Induction into the National Honor Society – Check!

Congratulations!...You are now 'honorable.'

You now have more pieces of your Puzzle.

Things are now 'Over.' Time to get onto what's 'Next'…

~~~~

 What I have to say to you tonight might not make sense…

This won't be so much of a good speech, as it will be more like a bad poem...

~~~

You have entered into a society of scholars…honor…

Honor is a heavy responsibility, though it does not have to be difficult…

You are vibrant.  You are splendid. 

And yet you will be forgotten.  And you will forget. 

  

One by one, your brain will filter and prioritize these memories.

One by one, days like these come together and form the jigsaw puzzle of your life…

These random days, these random pieces…

Once strewn about and separate, are now coming together to form the image of what your life is….

Today is one of those days when all your puzzle pieces seem to fit.

It's been a long time since you were in my 5th grade class.  Can you remember those days?  You've assembled many new pieces since then.

And like those days have faded to you, so too will the memory of this day.

Oddly, it seems like just as you begin to lose the memory of your individual pieces…is the time when your life begins to make sense. 

Here's some good advice, simple advice: 'Over'& 'Next.'

Learn to know when things are over.  Learn to know when to deal with what comes next. 

  

When one part of your life is over, it’s over.  Time to move on to the next thing. 

Among my best hopes for you, is for you to have a place to rest somewhere between what’s ‘Over’ and what’s ‘Next’. 

  

Maybe you could string up a hammock, and lay there in the sweet in-between time of what's ‘Over’ and what comes ‘Next.’

However, "Life is very long." (T.S. Eliot)  

It is too long to simply lie in a hammock. 

After all, you have a puzzle to finish!

You want to move, you want to connect things. 

You have dreams to fulfill. 

You are made of positive light...it's time to shine!

And yet…

Sometimes in life, we do some pretty foolish things, things we hope will be forgotten, will be forgiven…

Sometimes running is useless, sometimes fighting is foolish, sometimes we spend too much time thinking of ways not to lose…

All can be forgotten.  All can be forgiven.

One by one, your dreams will fade to twilight,

One by one …flowers fade in your garden,

One by one…the leaves fall from the trees,

And so too, one by one, the hair of your head will fall, it will fade, and it will turn gray...

One by one, your sweetest days will slip behind you…

One by one, stars will brighten, and stars will fade…

And even though this day, this day of ceremony,

...will most likely fade and be forgotten,

It remains part of the whole, the ‘Over’ and ‘Next’…

There is much to come, in this day, in future days…

There is a premonition that lurks inside you like a match of hidden potential,

A match that can spark, it can flame, it can ignite, it can engulf, it can consume…

In all of it, lays life’s goal: to shine, to be incandescent.

Can we possibly ask for anything more?

~~~~

You the new inductees and current members of our National Honor Society chapter certainly possess nothing less…

May your hands always be busy, may your heart always be joyful,

May you always see the truth…

May you live to see the virtue of your own actions…

May you never seek the virtue of your own actions.

May you make dust and not eat it...

May you treat others, not as you wish to be treated, but rather how they need to be treated...

May you sparkle, may you pulse, may you shine...

May you be like the match and burn on, and burn on, burn on...

May your potential shine down like the stars up in the sky…

  

And no matter how bumpy your road becomes...

...No matter how twisty your life’s roads turn, …

Learn to rest between what is ‘Over’ and what is ‘Next’…

You may forget a lot of things, but always remember...

How honorable you were this day…

~~~~

You are vibrant…

You are splendid…

Now Go Forth! (Whitman)...Go Forth and Shine!...

...thank you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sources:

~Arthur Sze's poem "The Ginkgo Light"

~Bob Dylan's "Forever Young"

~Woody Guthrie/Billy Bragg's "One by One"