Category: Water Under the Bridge

I am safely home from a family vacation in the Wild West. It began with a flight to Denver where my daughter Sara and my twelve year old grand-daughter Nora met me and drove me to their home in Fort Collins. The big excitement there was the appearance of Nora’s siblings, fifteen year old Ian and nine year old Claire in four performances of “Fiddler on the Roof”. Ian was cast as Lazar Wolf, the village butcher whose arranged marriage to Tevya’s daughter Zeitel is scuttled. Adorned with a long gray beard he was a very credible sorehead once the…

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In a recent column regarding a 1797 map of Pennsylvania I mentioned my puzzlement about the term “Fowler’s” appearing on the east side of Chartiers Creek south of the present location of Bridgeville. The mystery has been solved by one of my ex-students at Pitt. I was delighted to receive an email from Sonya Gray, a 2010 graduate from the University. She reported that she had found a copy of the column in my blog and, being “a bit of a local history and map nerd”, had decided to investigate my question. She obviously is as good a historical researcher…

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The middle of July marked the two hundred and twenty third anniversary of the climax of the Whiskey Rebellion, the burning of John Neville’s mansion, Bower Hill. As is their custom a group of dedicated history buffs reenacted that event, on the grounds of Woodville Plantation. Key to this event were the members of Wayne’s 4th Sub-Legion, a group of volunteers dedicated to recreating the campaign and camp life of the twelve members of the Army of the United States who were sent from Fort Fayette to defend Bower Hill against insurgents on July 17, 1794. For this reenactment they…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society “Second Tuesday” workshop for July was a continuation of the review of the history of Bridgeville High School. The Class of 1926 was the first one to spend its entire senior year in the new building on Gregg Avenue and, we thought, the first class to publish a Yearbook. Consequently we spent the entire evening discussing that class and the consequences of moving to the new, modern facility. It is difficult to imagine the culture shock this class experienced. For eleven years they were shoe-horned into Washington School and several temporary buildings erected on the…

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While researching “Newspapers.com” for articles related to Bridgeville High School in 1926 for our recent “Second Tuesday” workshop on that subject, I came across several dozen clippings of non-school related topics that were relevant to the community. Most of them were from the Canonsburg “Daily Notes”, plus a few from the Pittsburgh Post. On January 6, 1926, the death of Lysander Foster at the age of eighty six was reported. Described as “one of the most highly respected citizens of this section”, Mr. Lysander was survived by his son Edward, a local business man. The deceased had served as Superintendent…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical society’s final program meeting for the 2016/2017 season was an enlightening presentation by Ken Kobus with the perfectly appropriate title “It’s About Time!” His talk focused on the significant role this area played in the development of our current standard time system. The speaker began by explaining the complications of inventing a time system. We have chosen to base our system on twenty four hour days, with one day being the time interval between successive passages of the sun over our longitude. It would appear easy to measure time this way; all one needs is a…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society’s “Second Tuesday” workshop for June continued the review of the early years of Bridgeville High School, covering the period between 1917 and 1925. The facilitator began the program by reviewing where we left off at the end of the first workshop. At that point the high school was housed on the third floor of Washington School. The student body consisted of about thirty students in three grades, taught by Principal T. S. McAnlis, Joseph Ferree, and Romaine Russell. In 1917 a decision was made to offer a fourth year of high school; consequently there was…

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Thanks to my nephew Paul I was able to get to the Oyler Reunion, in Chambersburg this year. He volunteered to drive his parents (my brother and his wife) and me down and back, an offer that was greatly appreciated. Another passenger on the trip East was his niece Michaela, who had spent the previous week with her grand-parents, and would meet her parents at the Reunion. The event is actually the reunion of the descendants of my father’s parents – Adam Douglas Oyler and his wife Annie Malinda Smith. After the last of my father’s generation passed away, my…

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A few months ago the Bridgeville Area Historical Society was contacted by the Three Rivers Depression Era Glass Collectors Society with a request for a program on the John B. Higbee Glass Company. Since I had done a workshop on Higbee glass last Fall, I was drafted to make the presentation. A week before the event I dug out the Power Point slides for the workshop, made a few modifications, and figured I was in good shape. After all, a bunch of “Depression Glass” collectors would hardly know anything about Higbee Glass, which is of an earlier era, known as…

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Every year, when Father’s Day arrives and I begin thinking about my father, I realize I should record what I know of his life in a column. This year I planned ahead and was able to compile a modest biography of him. Francis Marion Oyler was born in Quincy Township, Franklin County, Pennsylvania in 1891, the youngest of eight children, six of whom (five boys and a girl) survived childhood. Before he was a year old, his father was killed in an accident while working for the Cumberland Valley Railroad. His mother was left with a farmhouse, some outbuildings, and…

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