Last week we reported on an enjoyable Saturday spent in Beaver County at Fort McIntosh. The next day we stayed closer to home and had an equally enjoyable experience with visits to two local historical sites – Old St. Luke’s Church and Woodville. Located less than half a mile apart on opposite sides of Chartiers Creek, they are closely linked in the monumental historical events that occurred in Western Pennsylvania in the late eighteenth century.
In 1765 Captain David Steel was dispatched from Fort Pitt to establish an outpost in the Chartiers Valley to provide an early warning against attack by marauding Indians. His contingent paddled down the Ohio River to McKees Rocks, then up Chartiers Creek to (today) Heidelberg, where they selected a promontory to the east as a site for their stockaded camp. That same year an Anglican (Episcopalian) church service was held there, the first west of the Allegheny Mountains. After the stockade was abandoned, the property on which the site was located was eventually granted to William Lea; in 1790 he donated a plot on it for the construction of a wooden Anglican Church. This church served as a refuge for General John Neville when four years later when the Whisky Rebels burned his mansion at Bower Hill.
In 1823 the Trinity Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh ordered an English cabinet pipe organ to be constructed by craftsman Joseph Harvey. It was transported to America on a merchant ship, then carried across the mountains by a mule train, and installed in the church. In 1852 the original St. Luke’s Church was replaced by the handsome Gothic Revival stone building that has survived to the present. In honor of its construction, the organ was donated by Trinity Episcopal, and installed in St. Luke’s.
The instrument is still in excellent shape. It has a fifty-four-note keyboard with a direct mechanical connection to 246 individual pipes. During a restoration in 1982, the hand pump was replaced by an electric blower. This year’s event celebrated the two-hundredth birthday of this remarkable organ; when I was there the organist demonstrated its quality and versatility by “pulling out all its stops”.
This weekend’s event at Old St. Luke’s was a combination of the celebration of the 200th birthday of the organ and the dedication of a new gravestone in their cemetery for early settler Daniel South. Recently a young man wearing two hats — Board member of the Church and active participant in the Society of Mayflower Descendants – combined both interests with an investigation into the lineage of the early settlers buried in St. Luke’s Cemetery. Sure enough, he determined that Daniel South was the great-great-great grandson of Edward Fuller, a passenger on the Mayflower in 1620.
Born in 1746, South is reported to have served in the French and Indian War and in the Revolution. We know that he secured the warrant for “South Hall”, 211 acres on the north side of Chartiers Creek in the Presto area, just west of the Neville plantation at Woodville. He married Euphemia Nixon and sired ten children before passing away in 1811 and being buried at St. Luke’s. The celebration included military re-enactors, civilian re-enactors performing period dances, booths representing historical organizations, and tours of the historic church and cemetery.
This week’s event at Woodville was an impressive display of military miniatures (toy soldiers), curated by Dave Frankowski, a significant figure in local historical organizations. The displays, located on the wrap-around porch of the Neville House, ran the historical gamut from Ancient Egypt to the Twentieth Century. The Egyptian Diorama was particularly impressive, with hundreds of archers and spear carriers defending a large temple against an equally large number of Roman Legionnaires.
My favorite, of course, was a diorama representing the Gettysburg battlefield late in the afternoon of Day One (July 1, 1863). This engagement is quite familiar to me for several reasons. The 149th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment (also known as the 2nd Bucktail Regiment) was in position behind the fence row along the Cashtown Pike facing the 45th North Carolina Infantry, now in control of “the railroad cut”. Company D of the 149th, organized in the Robinson Run area and commanded by Captain James Glenn, was one of three volunteer companies from the Chartiers Valley area that saw heavy action at Gettysburg.
Directly behind them, in the diorama, was a large stone-ended bank barn, known locally as the MacPherson Barn. When my daughter and I visited Gettysburg two years ago, this barn was a “must be seen” destination for us. My great-great-great-grandfather, Andrew Oyler, and his three brothers were well-known builders of this style of barn in the early 1800s. Since it was built in 1820 just twenty-five miles from their home in Chambersburg, I strongly suspect they were its builders.
I was also pleased to see that Mr. Frankowski had borrowed one of Ken Schwartz’ papier mache figures from the Bridgeville Area Historical Society and included it in the display. The one he chose was a favorite of mine, a Revolutionary War soldier about ten inches high. The Society is fortunate to have a collection of Schwartz’ figures; they warrant a visit to the History Center.
Other notable dioramas were “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, the British army in the Sudan, and Mr. Frankowski’s impressive “The Long Grey Line”, hundreds of cadets in formation on the famous West Point Parade Ground. It has been many decades since I fought World War II battles with lead soldiers on our living room carpet; I am envious of the folks who have pursued this hobby to the extent these exhibitors have.
We are fortunate to be living in a region with a rich historical heritage, containing so many relevant historical facilities staffed with enthusiastic, knowledgeable volunteer docents. It behooves us to support them with equal enthusiasm.