Robert Wood, of the Goschenhoppen Folk Festival in southeastern Pennsylvania, says “It’s safe to say that in years gone by every Lutheran and Reformed church in Pennsylvania as well as most Mennonite meeting houses celebrated the gathering in of the harvest with a special “Harvest Home” service. The August 07th, 1867, Bloomsburg Democrat reported, “On last Saturday afternoon, according to notice by handbills, the people of this County (Columbia), without respect to class, sex, or party, held a Harvest Home Celebration in Megargell’s Grove near Orangeville."
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In the days before the railroad system in Pennsylvania provided transportation for cargo and passengers, the state’s canal system was an important mode of travel. The packets often had contracts to carry mail. Before he became a doctor in Columbia County, Dr. I. W. Willits, as a boy of ten, had a part in that important task. His father had the contract to handle the packet boat mail between Catawissa and Espy. To the doctor was delegated the duty of meeting the packet boat at Catawissa, taking from it a small pouch of mail, which he slung over his horse as he would a pair of saddle bags, and then off the horse loped for the Catawissa post office. There the pouch was opened, the letters for Catawissa, were removed, and those for points up the river were placed therein, and then for the Bloomsburg post office, the doctor of today started. The same process was repeated in Bloomsburg and then on to Espy he went. He was supposed to get his work finished in the three offices and cover the six miles in time that permitted him to put the mail pouch on the packet boat at Espy. Some packet boats were built in the Susquehanna Valley. In Danville, Montour County, there was a boatyard on the site of what later became the Structural Tubing Works. In the 1840s, two of the boats built there were the "Eagle" and the “New York.” They traveled between Northumberland and Wilkes-Barre.
The borough of Selinsgrove, Snyder County was struck by the “Big Fire” on October 30th of 1874, just two years after another blaze had raced through the town. Information on the 1874 fire was detailed on October 27, 1932, in the Selinsgrove-Times by its owner and regular columnist Agnes Selin Schoch.
"In the wintertime, in the pine jobs, and later in the hardwood camps, and the remote farmhouses and cabins, music was an integral part. In the summer evenings, after the day's bark peeling was done, the crews would gather under a tree or by the creek, and the song singer of the camp would begin his cycle of woodsmen's songs of old-time ballads, while the camp musicians accompanied him on violin, mouth-organ or dulcimer." --- Author Henry Wharton Shoemaker
James Pollock's friendships, achievements, and Christian values provide a wonderful story. As a freshman congressman, James boarded in the same rooming house as another new congressman, Abraham Lincoln (who would later become the 16th President of the United States), and they soon developed a mutual respect and longstanding friendship. Pollock was an early supporter of Samuel Morse and his idea for a telegraph and was instrumental in getting the United States Congress to appropriate a small amount to help build the first line. He was present in the room when the first message, "What hath God wrought" was received, ushering in a new age of telecommunication. Pollock was also the first in congress to advocate the construction of a railroad across the continent, connecting newly acquired California with the east. As Secretary of the U.S. Mint, he urged Congress to approve the slogan "In God We Trust" which is still found on coins and currency in thee 21st Century. Mr. Pollock served as Vice President of the American Sunday School Union from 1855 until he died in 1890. In that role he had the distinction of presiding over more mission business meetings than any man in the history of AMF other than the first president. Greatly respected by his fellow managers, it was recorded that 'he was always eager to do his Lord's business with earnestness and dispatch' and while conscious of the power of his masterful mind and loving heart, his fellow managers 'most appreciated his depth of consecration.' Pollock co-founded Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter and soup kitchen, in 1878 with notable fellow churchgoers John B. Stetson and John Wanamaker. What began as a simple cup of coffee and roll before church has grown to become the leading emergency shelter and largest indoor provider of meals in Philadelphia.
John Wise was a familiar figure in northcentral Pennsylvania in the mid-1800s. Danville, Montour County, was included in his barnstorming tour. In Arthur Toye Foulke’s “My Danville, Where the Bright Water’s Meet” there is an account of two visits made to Danville in June of 1841. Lynn Reichen, president of the Montour County Historical Society, provided more on John Wise in this story in December of 2009.
Did you ever fall asleep as someone read you the poem, Wynken, Blynken, and Nod? It was written in 1899 by newspaperman and writer Eugene Field who was best known for hundreds of children’s poems. How did a fountain featuring the beloved poem and a famous sculpture find a place of honor on the Green of Wellsboro, Tioga County?
In 1840 nearly every wife in Brookville, Jefferson County, milked a cow and churned butter. The cows were milked at the front door on Main Street. These cows were ornery, ill-looking, and ill-fed. Every wife had to make her own soap, bake her own bread, sew and dye all the clothes for the family, spin the wool for and knit the mittens and socks, make the coverlets, quilt the quilts, see that the children's shoes for Sunday were greased with tallow every Saturday night, nurse the sick, give " sheep saffron" for the measles, and do all the cooking. Such was the life for the pioneer women in Pennsylvania.
Followers of the Saturday Evening Post are no doubt familiar with Norman Rockwell's iconic illustrations. But many may not realize that another illustrator with a similar style, Frances Tipton Hunter, was born in Centre County and raised in Williamsport.
On Thursday, October 8, 1896, nothing appeared out of the ordinary at the Montour Rolling Mills of the Reading Iron Company. But just before 8 p.m., the Number 5 boiler exploded, ripping through the building and sending a portion of it outside and into a home on Northumberland Street like a 20th-century rocket. The explosion was felt in most parts of Danville, shaking some buildings and rattling windows.
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