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Rural villages converge to celebrate Center Township bicentennial

Mr Roger K. Olsson | 28.07.2007 15:42 | Analysis | Other Press | Technology | London | World

Giuen Wealth Field



Friday, July 27, 2007


BLAIRSVILLE, Jul. 27, 2007 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) --
Head from Homer City in any direction and you'll find yourself in Center Township.

Covering a little more than 39 square miles, this mostly rural township has been home to major industries as well as farms since its formation from Armstrong Township, in 1807.

That occasion will be marked with a bicentennial celebration next weekend, when the town's 200 years of history will be reviewed.

Contributing to that history have been the respective stories of several small villages that dot the township map: Aultman and 10 Commandments, Coral, Coy, Edgewood, Graceton, Lucernemines, Luciusboro, Myr Walt, Plugtown, Red Barn, Tearing Run, Tide, Waterman and Yankeetown.

The towns all have residents who have made Center Township their lifelong homes, and three of those residents have shared their memories of growing up there in honor of the township's landmark anniversary: Wayne Jennings, of Graceton; Don Burkett, of Aultman; and Veronica Kirkpatrick, of Lucernemines.

Jennings was actually born in the neighboring town of Coral, but he moved to Graceton when he was a year old. His father, John M. Jennings, was a coal miner, as were three of his uncles.

Founded as a coal patch town in 1890, Graceton is located three miles south of Homer City. Three streets that ran parallel to Rt. 119 housed the estimated 40 houses that were built for coal miners and their families, as well as the workers who turned coal into coke.

The town's name is believed to have been coined by its original postmaster, Harry McCreary, in honor of his daughter, Grace.

The town became known for its coke ovens, the first of which were built by George Mikesell, in 1886. Graceton Coke Works was born soon after. Some of the beehive coke oven sites were reclaimed in the summer of 1990.

'It was very ethnic down here,' Jennings said.

During his early school days, he recalled, an influx of miners migrating from overseas with their families caused one of the first-grade teachers to split the class into two, after her students swelled to more than 60.

Most of the children didn't speak English, as the classroom became a melting pot of Slovaks, Croatians, Hungarians, Italians and Poles.

'There was quite a mixture,' Jennings said. 'One friend said there were so many Italians living on her street they called it 'Macaroni Street.''

Graceton started out with a single two-room school. Later, a larger building was constructed for grades 3-8, while first and second grades remained in the original school.

By the time Jennings finished eighth grade, the township schools had consolidated with those in Homer City, so he graduated from the joint Laura Lamar High School. He remembered when the entire class would walk on day-long 'field trips' to caves along Two Lick Creek.

Jennings noted most toys didn't come from the store when he was growing up. 'You made everything you played with back then,' he said.

In the winter, when the pond just outside the mine entrance froze over, Jennings and neighbor children would play ice hockey, using as a dented tin can as a puck. To protect their shins, they would wet the legs of their pants, which stiffened in the bitter cold.

One of Jennings' fondest childhood memories is of a carnival that came to town, taking over a ball field below Graceton. Itinerant musicians also would wander into the community, performing for weddings.

Baseball was a huge event for the people of Graceton in an earlier era.

'The whole town would turn out,' Jennings said. 'We didn't have television or other media to pull you away.'

The Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Co. sponsored teams in many of the local patch towns, including a combined Graceton-Coral Coal and Iron roster.

'These men mostly worked in the mines,' Jennings said. 'There were quite a few good players.'

According to Jennings, there were star players who were given preferential treatment in the mines, to prevent them from being injured.

Aside from pickup sandlot games among the children, Jennings played just one season of organized baseball, when the area Little League team was established. His playing days soon ended, when he exceed the age limit of 12.

As with any coal patch town, Graceton's heart and soul was its company store, where miners and their families found daily necessities. The store also was a meeting place for friends to gather and catch up on news.

In addition to stocking groceries, the original Graceton store housed a post office and a barber shop. Many townspeople collected elderberries and sold them, by weight, to the store.

Jennings remembers how passing steam trains would spew their 'dark, sulphur-smelling smoke,' sending the area women scurrying to their clotheslines to take the clean whites down before they were covered in soot.

A common thread running through Jennings childhood memories was the camaraderie in the community.

'They were so helpful, so friendly,' Jennings said of his neighbors growing up. 'It was that type of generosity that made living here so nice. It was that type of friendship I really enjoyed. I miss that.'

Aultman, another coal patch town, began with two parallel streets of miners' homes. Established in 1912, in southwestern Center Township, it was named for a nearby stream, Aultman's Run. The mines shut down in the late 1920s.

Born in Aultman, Burkett spent his entire life there, except for a four-year stint in the military. His father, Howard Burkett, was a coal miner, and his grandfather was a mine boss.

A row of houses along Rt. 286, just outside of town, is alternately known as the '10 Commandments' and as 'No. 5,' the numerical designation of a former mine in that area.

Two mine shafts were located in Aultman and another was on the outskirts of town.

The Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad extended a line to the village in 1912. The tracks served the town's coal tipple, running behind the 10 Commandments and on to the Jacksonville Railroad Station as well as other mines in Coal Run and McIntyre.

Aultman had its own school for grades 1-8. Then students were sent to Laura Lamar. The original elementary school burned down and a new one was erected, but it was closed in a cost-cutting move in the 1960s.

Burkett recalled when someone erected a sign at Aultman's entrance, reading: 'Population 93; Dogs 250.'

'A lot of dogs ran loose,' he said. 'Most people were hunters, and everyone had a beagle.'

The company store was the town's lifeline. Miners' paychecks were often spent in one fell swoop on food, clothes, books and even furniture.

'The miners lived off of the company store,' which was located where tennis courts now stand, Burkett said. The post office also was housed in the store.

The store closed in the 1950s and soon was razed, its wood and stone salvaged to construct a farmhouse. 'But it's still part of history,' Burkett said of the vanished landmark.

When Aultman's mines were shuttered, the train, instead of hauling coal, transported men to work at nearby McIntyre

Aultman's R&P-sponsored baseball team, the Terriers, played at a diamond constructed following World War II, near the town's old water tank.

'We were a really close-knit community,' Burkett said. 'We made a lot of our own fun.'

In the summer, kids would grab balls and bats and head to the diamond for pickup games, sometimes playing until there was no sunlight left.

'We'd go with a brand-new baseball, come home and knock the cover off of it and tape it up,' Burkett noted.

The hill against one side of town was popular for skiing and sled-riding.

'We all had fun,' he said. 'Nobody had any money back then. But we made good.'

The Aultman Universal Church -- now the Aultman Baptist Church -- served three purposes, according to Burkett: as a movie theater, where films like 'Cowboy Joe' were shown Friday and Saturday nights; for Sunday church services; and as a union hall.

He recalled how the church sent out a man, Lloyd Baxter, in a car with a speaker system to preach the Gospel as he drove around town.

In 1973, the town playground was built on land donated by the Aultman Volunteer Fire Association. A few years later, the township renovated it.

Burkett indicated Aultman was one of the first local mining towns to have a public sewage system, originally developed by the Indiana County Community Action Program (ICCAP).

During Burkett's youth, Aultman had very few cars and no televisions. The town did have electricity -- supplied by the mine until 1949, when Penelec started to take over the utility.

Burkett said many of the town's biggest events had already happened by the time he was born. That includes a major mine explosion in 1942 that killed five workers and injured many others.

The town of Lucernemines has had its fair share of tragedy, with major fires destroying many of its mining landmarks, including the company store.

The Lucernemines store, which had the post office attached, as known as Mahoning Supply when it burned down in January 1967.

'I could see the flames and feel the heat,' Veronica Kirkpatrick, a longtime resident, recalled. 'It was a big blaze. For a couple of days after that, you could still hear the paint cans exploding from the heat.'

The town was christened Lucerne, after a Swiss city beloved by a chief investment banker with R&P, Adrian Iselin Jr. Some still call the community simply Lucerne; to others, like Kirkpatrick, it's Lucerne Mines.

Kirkpatrick was born in Indiana, but lived most of her life in Lucernemines -- except for two years spent in New York, while her husband was in the military.

She and her husband returned to Lucernemines in December 1960, but they almost left again when work was hard to come by. The sudden death of Kirkpatrick's father, George Stuckich, prompted them to stay on to help her mother, Caroline.

Kirkpatrick found a position as an office manager with Indiana Hospital. Her husband got a job at Indiana's Robertshaw plant.

Kirkpatrick's grandparents lived in a house right up the street from her current residence. When her parents were married, they also stayed temporarily in that house, while they waited for a house to open up in town.

'They had to put down their names on a waiting list for a house,' she stated.

They were granted the house in which Kirkpatrick grew up when she was three years old, and she lives there to this day.

The rent on the home in the 1930s and '40s cost $12 a month, and there was no addition bill for electrical or water services.

Electricity was provided by the Lucerne power plant, until Penelec took over. The town's water supply came from a large wooden tank.

When their work shifts began, miners walked downhill from their homes to the mine portal.

The Lucerne mines were one of the first opened in Indiana County, in 1906, shortly after the BR&P railway was extended into the area.

The Lucerne power plant began operation in 1911, and, by 1920, it was providing electrical power to all of the R&P mines in Indiana County as well as to the Indiana Street Railway system near Lucerne.

Housing in Lucerne couldn't keep up with the growth of the mine's work force. In 1911, a little more than 200 houses stood in the town, but there were an estimated 1,000 people in the community.

Every family had at least a dozen boarders, and every room doubled as a bedroom. Often, men coming off a shift at the mines would crawl into bed as soon as another crawled out to begin work.

On pay day, workers formed a line at the mine office, located on the main road into town. 'Men would get paid in cash and, quite often, men who had been hurt in the mine or who didn't have a job would stand in the line for handouts,' Kirkpatrick said.

Miners usually purchased items from the company store on credit and settled their bill on payday.

Since her father was a coal miner, Kirkpatrick remembered many mine strikes while she was growing up.

Miners who owned cars would drive up and down the streets and blow their horns -- signalling workers to meet at the center of town and carpool to the picket lines.

The second floor of the mine office accommodated church services for those of the Protestant faith. The town's Catholic faithful constructed St. Louis Church in 1914.

The glow from Lucerne's 264 beehive ovens could be seen from Rt. 119 until they were closed in 1972.

Lucerne's No. 1 and No. 2 mines closed down in 1929 and 1943, respectively. When R&P shut down the remaining mine, Lucerne No. 3, in 1968, it brought to an end 61 years of coal operations that had produced 42,277,000 tons of the fuel.

The town' movie theater, 'The Rex'--a great distraction in the early part of the century -- burned down in 1927, before Kirkpatrick was born. A Saturday night movie could be enjoyed for 15 cents, but thrifty movie-goers could also cover the price of admission with five potatoes.

Lucernemines had its own school, located on what is now part of the property of the St. Louis Church. Lucerne Elementary housed grades 1-8. Older students attended high school in Homer City.

Kirkpatrick remembered walking to the spot off Old Rt. 119 where a carnival would set up every year. Fireworks sometimes were set off in the field where the Haliburton company now is located.

'When you went, you would stand shoulder-to-shoulder,' she recalled of the pyrotechnic displays.

Children would keep themselves occupied with games such as hopscotch and marbles. Or they rode bicycles, jumped rope or played softball games in the field.

'We would play different games under the streetlights at night,' Kirkpatrick recalled. 'And we never had to worry about people bothering us.'

At Christmastime, festive wreaths appeared in the windows of Lucerne houses. Today's endless strings of twinkling lights were unheard of; a homeowner in that previous era simply replaced the one light bulb on the porch with a colored one.

Telephones were scare in Lucernemines. In addition to a pay phone at the store, only one private home was equipped with the device.

'If you needed to call a doctor or had some other emergency, you could go to them and they were very accommodating,' Kirkpatrick said of the family.

Her own household didn't add a telephone until after World War II. 'We had to put our name on a list and had to wait,' she said. 'And it wasn't even a private line -- it was a four-party line.'

Kirkpatrick recalled how the St. Louis Church expanded its parking lot years ago. The property to the side of the church had belonged to R&P, and the church's priest, Father Henry Podowski approached the president of R&P, George Potter, about purchasing it.

'Mr. Potter came down one day and handed the deed to the property to Father Podowski, and I don't think the church paid a cent for it,' she said.

The streets through town were made of dirt, and were often littered with potholes, especially in the winter. The roads weren't plowed very often, either. 'We'd have a big snow and it'd be a couple of days before the plow would come through and clear the roads,' Kirkpatrick said.

------

The Homer-Center Historical Society is playing host to a Center Township Bicentennial Festival Aug. 4 and 5, from noon to 8 p.m. each day, at the Red Barn Sportsmen's Club, near Homer City.

The weekend will feature ethnic food, crafts, games, history, heritage and homecomings. Featured entertainers include folk singer Alex Pruszenski, the Latrobe Dulcimers, alternative rock group Drowning Edd, The Sprucemen barbershop quartet, Cathi Rhodes' tribute to Patsy Cline, a car cruise and an oldies dance. A petting zoo and the Rainbow Express train will be on hand for children.

Accounts of local history, generated as part of an Indiana University of Pennsylvania course, 'Working Class Culture and Society,' will be shared at the festival.

Led by instructor Jim Dougherty, IUP students sat down and talked with 13 lifelong residents from each of the smaller communities in Center Township, who shared memories of growing up there. The participants' recollections will be printed in a Center Township Bicentennial Book being developed by the Homer-Center Historical Society. The books will be available for sale at the festival.

'It's going to be one of those books that you can keep referring back to when you need any information on Center Township,' said Denise Jennings-Doyle, a member of the historical society.

For information about the book, or for directions to the festival, call Jennings-Doyle at 724-459-0861.

The schedule of events is as follows:

SATURDAY

12 p.m.--Welcome and 2007 Historic Site Designation

12-5 p.m.--Luther Ford Cruise-In (at Luther Ford in Homer City)

12:30 p.m.--Alex Pruszenski (acoustic guitar folk music)

2 p.m.--The Sprucemen (barbershop quartet)

4 p.m.--Latrobe Dulcimers

5:30 p.m.--Car Cruise-In

6 p.m.--Jerry B's Oldies Dance

All day -- Barnhart's Petting Zoo

SUNDAY

12-3 p.m.--Rainbow Express

12:30 p.m.--Alex Pruszenski (acoustic guitar folk music)

2 p.m.--Cathi Rhodes (Patsy Cline tribute)

4 p.m.--Latrobe Dulcimers

6:30 p.m.--Drowning Edd (local alternative rock band)

All day -- Barnhart's Petting Zoo

------

A town's name can say a lot about its history. The following is a list of many of the communities in Center Township and how they came about their monikers:

Aultman (10 Commandments) --named for Aultman's Run, a stream that ran through the site; the row of 10 houses detached from Aultman proper was known as the 10 Commandments, simply because of their number.

Coral -- originally named 'Oklahoma,' Coral was renamed in 1902; local folklore says that the name was derived from the statement of an 'oldtime coal prospector,' evidently a far-sighted man, who stated to an early oral historian, 'the coal and clay hereabouts will be as valuable as coral.'

Coy -- named for J.B. Coy, whose properties were bought by the Brush Creek Mining Co. to form the nucleus of the Brush Creek coal mining operation.

Graceton -- originally known as 'Ranson,' after the railroad station that was in that area; many people believe that the town was named for a relative, namely, a daughter, of Harry McCreary, the town's first postmaster.

Lucernemines -- the town was christened Lucerne, after a Swiss city beloved by a chief investment banker with R&P, Adrian Iselin Jr. The 'miners' was added on later.

Luciusboro -- Lucius Waterman Robinson was president of R&P Co. at the time of Brush Creek Coal Mining Company organization, and two of the mining towns, Waterman and Luciusboro, were named in his honor.

Plugtown -- named after a water plug located along the railroad tracks near town. The trains needed water for their steam engines, and this town is where they often stopped to fill up.

Red Barn -- As its name suggests, its named was derived from a barn owned by a local farmer.

Tearing Run -- named for nearby Tearing Run stream.

Tide -- town was originally owned by the Tide Coal Mining Company, a subsidiary of R& P.

Waterman -- Lucius Waterman Robinson was president of R&P Co. at the time of Brush Creek Coal Mining Company organization, two of the mining towns, Waterman and Luciusboro, were named in his honor.

Yankeetown -- originally called North Homer City, the locals took to calling the town North Yankee (a nod to the Civil War and the soldiers from the North known as Yankees).

For more information on Center Township towns and their coal mining history, visit  http://patheoldminer.rootsweb.com.

Gina Delfavero can be reached at  gdelfavero@tribweb.com or .

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