At the age of 18, William Edward Charles of Snyder County, near Port Trevorton, was hired to tend four mules towing two canal boats from Port Trevorton to New York City and back in 1888. His diary entries in June and July provide insightful content on canal life as seen through his eyes.
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Now and Then "Devoted to Local History, Amusement, Instruction and Advancement of the Borough and the Valley of Muncy, Penna." was a privately printed magazine published at irregular intervals between the years 1868 and 1878. Its publisher was Jeremiah Meitzler Mohr Gernerd, who started a music and variety store in Muncy, Pennsylvania, which he continued until 1872. His magazine was devoted to preserving local history in the Muncy area of Lycoming County. The following story from 1888, talks about the arrival of the North American Circus of Spalding and Rogers in September of 1849. It caused a great deal of excitement, and also provided what Gernerd called a “humbug.”
Northern Pennsylvania’s “lumbering days” were roughly from the early 1800s into the 1920s, with the great boom years from about the Civil War through the first decade of the 1900s. Logs could be rafted or driven downstream. Later, narrow-gauge logging railroads, splash dams, steam mills, and tanneries pushed the industry deep into the mountains. Harry Cranmer, of Hammersley Fork in Clinton County, was a veteran lumberman and was also an historian who shared his stories of life in lumber camps.
When Danville and the entire country celebrated the bicentennial in 1976, a story written by newspaper reporter Jim Birt in a July Danville news supplement included the proud ancestry of Mrs. Pearl Fitch Diehl. She was the wife of Fred W. Diehl, the man who served as superintendent of Danville schools for decades and authored several local history books. Mrs. Diehl was a direct descendant of Captain Thomas Fitch Junior.
