Thanksgiving has always been a unique holiday, with an unfortunate emphasis on eating. I confess to enjoying turkey and pumpkin pie, but for me the holiday has traditionally been important as a family gathering. When Joe and I were young, we went to my father’s home in Quincy and celebrated being with his family. When we both had our own families, it was a great treat to get together at my mother’s home.   This year I will spend the holiday with Elizabeth, Mike, and Rachael; I am sure it will be a very pleasant day and the culinary portion…

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Like most folks, my perception of the pioneers heading west in the mid-1800s is dominated by covered wagons pulled by oxen, certainly an uncomfortable way for a family to travel. Recently however I have come across an even more uncomfortable mode of transportation – walking and pulling a handcart. We have known for a long time that several branches of our Smith family ancestors had converted to Mormonism and moved to Utah. Their story turns out to be well worth relating. It begins in 1854 in Quincy, Pennsylvania, halfway between Waynesboro and Chambersburg, when Daniel Robison returned home from a…

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On one of my recent visits to the Woodville Experience I noticed something interesting framed on the wall inside the Smoke House. It apparently is the original survey for “The Mouth of Miller’s Run”, the property warranted to John Campbell in 1790, three hundred and seventy-four acres on the southwest shore of Chartiers Creek that includes, today, the I-79 Interchange.  It is not surprising that such a document should appear at Woodville – Presley Neville sold that specific block of land to Robert Johnson in 1807. We know that John Campbell still possessed the property in the 1790s and was…

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The October program meeting for the Bridgeville Area Historical Society was an interesting presentation by Ron Baraff on the Carrie Furnace National Historic Site. Mr. Baraff is Director of Historic Resources and Facilities for Rivers of Steel Heritage Corporation, a nonprofit organization that works in partnership with the National Park Service and the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to manage the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area. Following the closing of US Steel’s Homestead Works in 1988, the Steel Industry Task Force was established to study the possibility of preserving the history of steel-making in the region. It…

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One weekend late in 1954 two of my buddies and I were enjoying a three-day pass at a luxurious “R & R” hotel in the Japan Alps, a welcome respite from our onerous duties in the U. S. Army. Whenever I visited such a hotel I invariably made a point of inspecting the Guest Register, looking for familiar names. This time I didn’t find any I recognized, but the comment of one soldier from Pittsburgh rang a bell – “Wish I was back at the Midway, diggin’ the Deuces”. “The Midway” referred to Pittsburgh’s most popular jazz venue at the…

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I have been a nonagenarian for three months, an experience I never expected but one for which I am grateful. When I was young I assumed that my life span would be the traditional “three score and ten”. When my father and two of his brothers each passed away around their seventieth birthdays, this assumption was reinforced. Somehow I have dodged that bullet and am currently enjoying exploring my tenth decade. These days, when people inquire “How are you?”, the inquiry is closer to being a question regarding my current life expectancy rather than a polite inquiry into my overall…

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It was my privilege recently to give a talk to a combined meeting of the Pennsylvania Canal Society, the Ohio Canal Society, and the Northern Ohio Chapter of the Society of Industrial Archaeology. The occasion was their annual Fall Tour, which was located in the Pittsburgh area this year. I chose for my subject the history of the twenty-three sets of dams and locks that make up the Pittsburgh District of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, with particular emphasis on the role of the Dravo Corporation in their development.   I chose to parse the subject geographically (Monongahela…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society kicked off its twenty-first year with its first Fall program meeting last month. The speaker was Norene Beatty, President of The Pittsburgh Old Stone Tavern Friends Trust, a non-profit organization with the mission of preserving one of Pittsburgh’s oldest buildings. Located at the intersection of Greentree Road and Woodville Avenue in the city’s West End neighborhood, the tavern was originally built in the late 1700s and functioned commercially until 2008. In 2009 it was scheduled for demolition, a threat that mobilized concerned citizens to organize the trust and initiate a program to acquire the property…

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One of the best things about this time of year is the proliferation of festivals. They didn’t amount to much last year, but now we seem to be ignoring the pandemic and are supporting this kind of event bigger and better than ever. The Washington-Greene County Covered Bridge Festival is one of my favorites; it was highlighted on my calendar. I determined that there would be ten festival sites this year, two in Greene County (a little too far for this nonagenarian) and eight in Washington County. Checking the list, I realized that I had visited six of the closer…

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Our Book Club meeting this month was delayed to avoid Rosh Hashanah, prompting me to investigate that holiday. My initial investigation determined that it was Jewish New Year, celebrated on the first day of the seventh month of the Jewish calendar. I also learned that this calendar was a lunar one and that its first month, Nisan, occurs coincident with the first new moon after the vernal equinox. In addition, Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of the Creation of the Earth, halfway through year one, 5781 years ago.   Armed with this new knowledge I set out to make fun…

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