Feedback from readers of this column continues to be a great source of satisfaction for me, especially when someone I don’t know recognizes me and reports his or her enjoyment in reading the column. Even more satisfying are the unsolicited comments I get from readers regarding things they have read in a particular column. I recently received an email from Ronald Carlisle regarding my puzzlement with the term “a point near Cowan”s” which was one of the Landmarks in Charles DeHass’ original alignment for the Washington and Pittsburgh (later Chartiers Valley) Railroad. Mr. Carlisle is a legitimate expert on the…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society’s February program meeting was an extremely interesting talk by local Civil Engineer Todd Wilson, entitled “The History of Pittsburgh’s Bridges”, which coincidentally is the topic of an Arcadia “Images of America” book he recently authored. The speaker began with a drawing of Fort Pitt which clearly showed footbridges across the moat around the fort, confirming that the topic went back at least two hundred and sixty years. By 1818 the first bridge across the Monongahela River was constructed, at the Smithfield Street location which currently is occupied by the historic bridge with that name. The…

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I usually don’t pay much attention to occasions like Black History Month and Presidents Day, but this year I enjoyed special events from both of them on back to back days. On Sunday, February 19, we went to Dormont to the Hollywood Theater to see a classic silent movie, “The Flying Ace”. The theater is operated by the Friends of the Hollywood Theater, a non-profit organization whose mission is to celebrate cinema and preserve the single-screen theater experience. It began life as a silent movie theater in the 1920s and currently is one of a very few surviving single-screen theaters…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society “Second Tuesday” workshop for February focused on “downtown” Bridgeville in the 1940s, an effort to document the businesses, institutions, and residences on Washington Avenue during the War Years. The facilitator established the mood for the program by reading an eloquent document written by Jane Patton for the Bethany Church Servicemen’s Newsletter in August, 1944. The Newsletter was sent monthly to Bridgeville area servicemen all over the world in an effort to let them know the folks on the Home Front were thinking of them. In this issue Jane recorded a hypothetical walk up Washington Avenue…

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In an earlier column I mentioned that Judy Oelschlager Dames had loaned us a family heirloom, the ticket book her mother, Pauline Engel, used when she accompanied Mr. and Mrs. C. P. Mayer on an excursion to Los Angeles in 1924. Miss Engel was serving as Mrs. Mayer’s “companion”; this was an exciting experience for a young lady who had only been in this country four years at the time. The occasion was the sixth annual convention of the Common Brick Manufacturers’ Association of America, an organization in which Mr. Mayer was a prominent member. It appears that this organization…

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One of my long term projects is to write a chapter about railroads for a book entitled “The Civil Engineering Heritage of Western Pennsylvania”, to be published by the History and Heritage Committee of the Pittsburgh Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers. I immediately realized that the beginning of the chapter should be the story of the beginning of the Chartiers Valley Railroad, the first example of railroad engineering in this region. I knew that a group of developers decided to organize a corporation to build a railroad linking Washington, Pa. and Pittsburgh, in 1830. The construction of…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society welcomed back Dr. Jack Aupperle for its January program meeting. As is its custom, the Society holds its January and February program meetings on Sunday afternoons, to minimize potential winter weather complications for its members. Dr. Aupperle has a remarkable talent for reviewing current historical books and using their content as a basis for presenting a comprehensive picture of a relevant event or individual. This time it was “Admiral Bill Halsey: A Naval Life” by renowned historian Thomas Alexander Hughes. The speaker drew on Hughes’ biography of the well-known World War II hero to portray…

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The most recent addition to the Bridgeville Area Historical Society archives is a collection of four large historical maps of Pennsylvania, donated by Dana Spriggs, a donation greatly appreciated especially by me. Being a Civil Engineer and surveyor and possessing an MOS (military occupational specialty) of cartographic draftsman, I am thrilled by every map I see and particularly old maps of this region. The first map has a title in French, “La Pensilvanie, en trois Feuilles”. I think “trois Feuilles” refers to its size – three sheets. The print Dana sent is about twenty four inches high by forty eight…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society’s January “Second Tuesday” program was a comprehensive review of the C. P. Mayer Brick Company, brickmaking in general, and the unusual hobby of brick collecting. Based on the variety of comments and questions it is obvious this was a popular topic. The facilitator began with a brief overview of the brick-making process. Raw materials include sand (silica), clay (alumina), lime, magnesia, iron oxide, and water combined in fairly specific proportions. The mixture is then ground very fine; mixed well; and fired at temperatures well over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. The Mayer Brick Company mined shale on…

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I spent most of the first full weekend of this month “putting away Christmas”, carefully wrapping up our precious collection of artifacts that constitute our family’s Yuletide heritage. This was a difficult Christmas for us, the first since my wife’s passing. Nonetheless it was a joyful occasion with our house filled with grandchildren and their parents, eleven in total. Holidays and family were always important to my wife; consequently Christmas was her favorite time of year. She particularly enjoyed hand-crafting things for the holidays, apparently a tradition in her family. One year she hand-painted overboards, to be placed on top…

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