I have enjoyed the “2nd Saturday Civil War Series” at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall for a number of years, originally in person and more recently virtually. When I learned that the series was returning to live presentations this month, I immediately put a note on my calendar. As the date grew closer, my interest in the event increased significantly. The subject – “The West Virginia State Guard in the Civil War: 1863 – 1865” – was attractive enough to ensure my attendance. In addition, I learned that the presentation would be preceded by a half hour…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society provides the community with many valuable services, the most popular of which may well be its monthly series of historical programs. Most of these are “one-shot” deals, a speaker with specific knowledge on a particular event or subject; others are return visits by versatile presenters whom we know will excel regardless of their subject.  Dr. John Aupperle is such a presenter; his annual visit is always eagerly anticipated and he never fails to meet our expectations. He is an accomplished Methodist minister, as well as being a professor of comparative theology at Saint Vincent College….

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Ed Chabala has been a major supporter of the Bridgeville Area Historical Society since its inception. I visited the History Center last week to pick up his recent donations – high school yearbooks from 1945 and 1947, a photograph of the 1941 football team, and an aerial photograph of Mayer Field in 1940. I also dropped off my collection of Bridgers (1944 through 1949) to supplement the Society’s collection of the monthly publications of Bridgeville High School. This experience has led me to reflect on the large amount of artifacts and documents the Society possesses related to our beloved school,…

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A very welcome visit by my younger daughter Sara and my grandson Ian McCance has me wondering if indeed the isolation we have all experienced for the past many months will finally end. They live in Fort Collins, Colorado. Normally I see them three or four times a year; this time it has been a long eighteen months. During that time Ian has graduated from high school, enrolled at Colorado University at Boulder, and fought his way through two semesters of a hybrid education in his Freshman year.    Family is easily our highest priority. We spent the first two…

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One of the Senior Design projects our students in the Civil Engineering Department at Pitt implemented this term was an extensive study of the feasibility of reversing the tendency of Canonsburg Lake to slowly transition from a healthy body of water into a permanent wetland. I distinctly remember when “the aluminum dam” was constructed, forming what is now known as Canonsburg Lake. I remember my father taking my brother and me there fishing in its earlier days. I remember going to plays at the Little Lake Theater in the 1960s. My curiosity made it easy for me to decide to…

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A recent article in the Post-Gazette reported on the dedication of the Gladden Abandoned Mine Drainage (AMD) remediation facility and its effect on Millers Run. For as long as I can remember, this stream, running through the heart of South Fayette, has been a bright orange color, and perhaps the most glaring example of the pollution generated by AMD throughout the Chartiers Creek watershed. My response was to drive to the “mouth of Millers Run” and see for myself. The sight from the bridge carrying Brockwell Street over Millers Run just above the point where it enters Chartiers Creek was…

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The last Tuesday in April presented me with a conflict. The good news was that our Book Club, which has been meeting remotely for over a year was going to convene at Norm Cohen’s home, in person. The bad news was that the Bridgeville Area Historical Society was holding a program meeting that I wanted to attend, at the same time. Fortunately more good news showed up when Tim McNellie filmed the presentation and posted it on “Bridgeville.org”. I knew I would be interested in the presentation as soon as I saw its title, “Day-by-day with the 123rd Pennsylvania Volunteers:…

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One of my favorite experiences each term is serving as a mentor for a team in Pitt’s Civil Engineering Senior Design Project program. Despite the complications of pandemic social distancing, the program has managed to continue to provide each graduating senior with a valuable “near-real-world” engineering experience as a member of an integrated design team. The project assigned to the team I mentored dealt with the feasibility of renovating a major historical building in Brownsville, the Monongahela Railroad Union Station. Combining three of my passions – history, railroading, and engineering – it was an ideal fit for me. The Monongahela…

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It is always a treat to watch Spring arrive in our woods. Somehow the combination of Pandemic exhaustion and my recent illness has made it even more special than usual this year. By my calculations it is about ten days late this year, and more welcome than ever. My walks in the woods invariably begin with a visit to the tree we planted in memory of wife four years ago. We chose a tulip tree in homage to the four magnificent specimens that bordered the deck on our cottage at Conneaut Lake. We dug up saplings in my sister-in-law’s yard…

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I continue to be thrilled by the construction of a new barn at Woodville, part of Neville House Associates’ ambitious project to create “the Woodville Experience” by complementing the Neville House with authentic outbuildings. The result will provide twenty-first century visitors with an opportunity to experience life on a wealthy western Pennsylvania estate in the eighteenth century. The skeleton of the barn is constructed from hand hewn timbers that originally were part of a barn built near Latrobe early in the 1800s. When I wrote about this project a month ago, the erection crew had preassembled the four transverse bents…

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