Woodville celebrated Emancipation Day (also known as Juneteenth) with a particularly appropriate program focused on the life of enslaved persons on the Neville estates at Bower Hill and Woodville in post-colonial times. The format for the program was a tour of the Neville House narrated by Rob Windhorst, followed by a demonstration of the cuisine of enslaved persons there by Rob’s wife Erin.  Both presentations were well done and filled with interesting information on a topic that warrants much more exploration. The researchers at Woodville are making a major contribution in our understanding of slavery in western Pennsylvania in the early…

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Bridgeville’s most famous train wreck occurred on April 28, 1907, when a west-bound Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway (WPTR) passenger train “jumped the track” while on the bridge over Chartiers Creek north of town. Fortuitously, three occupied passenger cars came uncoupled during the incident; only the engine, tender, and one empty passenger car went into the Creek. The remaining cars coasted into Bridgeville and came to a stop. The only fatalities were the engineer and the fireman. Because of several unusual factors that prevented injuries to the rest of the crew and the train’s one hundred passengers, its story deserves to…

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The morning mail recently provided me with a treasure, a copy of a thirty-six-page pamphlet entitled “History of the Wreck of the Old 97”. Its author is a gentleman named G. Howard Gregory, a resident of Appomattox, Virginia, and obviously a fellow history buff. Mr. Gregory had graciously autographed this specific copy. The return address on the envelope in which it arrived identified the sender as Don Colton. That wasn’t a surprise – Don is the perfect combination of extensive knowledge and immaculate thoughtfulness. I’m sure he knew of my history with the subject and immediately acquired the pamphlet for…

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For its May program meeting, the Bridgeville Area Historical Society invited Brady Crytzer back for an interesting discussion of the events during the American Revolution that impacted Western Pennsylvania. Mr. Crytzer is a remarkably productive young man, a professional historian who is carving out a successful career as an author, University professor, television personality, and social media contributor, all focused on colonial history in this general region. His twenty-episode series on YouTube entitled “Robinson Run” is well worth watching. He began his presentation by emphasizing the contrast during the Revolution between the conventional European military actions along the Eastern Seaboard and…

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Spring in Bridgeville means a refreshing of the Public Art Bridgeville outdoor sculpture exhibits and another opportunity for us to present our comments on an art form for which we have no critical qualifications. This year we have four pieces that have been held over for another year by popular demand and three brand new ones. We will employ the tried-and-true gimmick of the self-guided tour as a format for reviewing them. Let’s begin at Triangle Park where we have an exciting new piece and a particularly attractive (to my eyes) carryover. The new piece is another impressive sculpture from…

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The second leg of this spring’s western adventure took me to Silicon Valley to visit John and his family. The flight west from Fort Collins was spectacular, especially the view of the snow-capped Rockies, marching north all the way to Canada. They are always impressive; this time they had just the right amount of snow on them to perfectly enhance them. I also liked seeing Helper, Utah from the air; we (Dravo Corporation) built a coal preparation plant there in the 1970s, very close to one of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s most famous bank robberies. And I was…

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Our first trip to the Fort Collins area was in 1994 when Sara was a doctoral student in Wildlife Ecology at Colorado State University. She and Jim were living modestly in a second-floor apartment in Laporte, a small town about five miles northwest of Fort Collins, close to the point where Cache la Poudre River comes out of Poudre Canyon onto the Prairie. Many memorable trips to the Northern Front Range Foothills have followed, each enhancing our affection for the area. The primary reason for this Spring’s visit was Ian’s graduation from the University of Colorado, but it was only…

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My visits to the Bridgeville Area Historical Society are always pleasant, and frequently quite rewarding. The volunteers there include many of my favorite people. When I stopped there last Friday, Leesa Shady greeted me with “I think we found something you were looking for” and promptly produced a large scrapbook, which I immediately recognized, one that had been misplaced for a number of years. For me it is a treasure house of Bridgeville history. Three decades ago when I began writing this column, Bridgeville history was a frequent topic. Invariably, a few days after an historical column was published I…

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Our family lost a great lady when my brother Joe’s wife passed away. Her impact on all of us for the past six and a half decades has been immense. Pauline grew up in Rennerdale, was educated at Clark High School in Scott Township, trained in secretarial science at Robert Morris, and was working at Duquesne Light when Joe was hired there in 1959. Two years later they were married; they shared a wonderful life together for over sixty-three years. Joe had worked for Dravo Corporation’s Contracting Division during the three summers of his undergraduate career at Penn State, as…

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I have been involved with the Senior Design Project program at Pitt’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Department for thirty years in different roles – mentor, program coordinator, and reviewer. During that time the program has changed significantly, as has our society and the Civil Engineering profession. Senior Design is a capstone course, the culmination of the students’ undergraduate career. In their final semester students are required to participate in a multi-discipline team effort to implement a “near-real-world” project. This effort culminates in a formal presentation of their final designs to an audience composed of faculty, friends and family,…

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