Forgotten Tales of Pennsylvania

by Thomas White

  Hansell supposedly held on to the stone for a while and continued to search for the other piece. Nine years later, he decided to sell it to a collector named Henry Paxton for $2.50. According to Hansell, he then returned to his field and looked even harder for the missing portion of the stone. After several months, he found it and gave it to Paxton for free. The total length of the combined pieces was four and a half inches.

  The stone was immediately controversial after it was made public. Henry Mercer of the Bucks County Historical Society examined the stone in the mid-1880s but never reached any definitive conclusion, other than the fact that it could never be accurately dated. The account of its discovery was purely based on Hansell’s word. Mercer did discover other Indian legends that allude to mammoth-like creatures in the northeastern and north central parts of the continent. He also noted that Hansell did not make much of a profit off the stone and implied that he was not intelligent enough to pull off such a hoax. On the other hand, none of the carvings cross over the break in the stone, which could indicate that it was carved later. And of course, there have never been any other verified mammoth carvings from that time period.

  A BULL BATTLES A BEAR

  An account of an interesting battle between a bull and a bear appeared in the Philadelphia paper the North American on Halloween 1891. A farmer in an unnamed part of the state was eating dinner one evening when he heard a disturbance among his cattle. He went out to find that a black bear had climbed over his fence to get to the herd. The farmer went to get his rifle, and when he returned, a bull had approached the bear and was attempting to scare him off. The bull jabbed the bear once with its horns, and the bear tried to climb the fence to get away. The bull attempted to poke the bear again but was met with a swat of the bear’s paw between the horns. The bull backed up and charged, and this time both animals went tumbling through the fence. After the animals staggered back to their feet, the bull charged again, but this time the bear slammed him on the top of the head and drove him to the ground. When the farmer realized that the bull was dying, he fired at the bear several times, wounding it. The bear then fled at full speed into the woods. The bull died from its injuries.

  THE Chicanere (AKA THE BLACK DUTCH)

  The Chicanere, also known as the Black Dutch, were German gypsies who once roamed the roads of Pennsylvania. The precise origin of the word Chicanere is unclear, but it was used throughout the 1800s. One suggested origin of the term is that it is the low German version of the high German word zigeuner, which may have been a corruption of “go away thief.” Since the German population of the state was called Dutch, the German gypsies who had darker features were known as the Black Dutch.

  The first bands of Black Dutch arrived by the 1750s. They came to Pennsylvania to escape the intense persecution they faced in Europe. One of their earliest meeting places was along Mill Creek in Lancaster County. Later, favorite gathering places included Philadelphia, Reading, York, Lebanon and Pittsburgh. To support themselves financially, the gypsies practiced horse breeding and coppersmithing and made pottery and glass products. For many decades, there were two main tribes, the Einsichs and the Reinholds, as well as several smaller ones. Their exact numbers were unknown, but in the mid-1800s, the population was estimated at about three thousand.

  The Black Dutch used their own dialect of Pennsylvania German, as well as their “tree language.” Symbols carved onto certain types of trees could convey secret messages and warnings to other gypsies. Though they fared better than in Europe, the Black Dutch remained outsiders. When the automobile was invented, the experience of traveling between towns changed dramatically for them. Many gypsies disliked the new form of transportation because they were accustomed to horses. Some opted to settle permanently in German communities. The world wars and the industrial jobs that they created led many of the remaining gypsies to settle permanently. Only a handful remained on the road by the middle of the twentieth century.

  A TORNADO STRIKES ELIZABETH

  A powerful tornado struck the town of Elizabeth on March 22, 1830. The town is located along the Monongahela River in Allegheny County. The storm destroyed many homes and buildings and left several families with no place to stay. Fourteen houses were toppled, along with five barns, a mill and other local businesses. The tornado even destroyed a boathouse and some of the boats tied up along the dock. Luckily, there were no casualties.

  THE SMALLEST OFFICIALLY DESIGNATED WILDERNESS IN AMERICA

  The Allegheny River Islands Wilderness is unique for many reasons. First, it is made of seven islands in the Allegheny River that total only 368 acres. It is also the smallest officially designated wilderness area in the United States. The seven islands—Crull’s Island, Thompson Island, R. Thompson Island, Courson Island, King Island, Baker Island and No Name Island—stretch from the Warren area to just south of West Hickory.

  The islands have gone through many changes over the centuries. They were created over the years by deposits of sand, silt, mud and clay. In the 1700s, the Seneca Indians utilized the islands as agricultural land. They discovered that crops grew well on the rich soil, but flooding only allowed seasonal settlement. In 1779, the only Revolutionary War campaign fought in the northwestern part of the state took place in the nearby village of Buckaloons and on Thompson Island. General Sullivan sent a contingent of men to punish the Senecas, who were aiding the British.

  A tavern was established in the 1820s on Crull’s Island to accommodate lumberjacks who were working in the area. It was gone by the 1850s. In the Pennsylvania oil boom of the 1860s, wells were set up on most of the islands to access the oil underneath the river. Eventually, the area reverted to wilderness and was taken over by the U.S. Forest Service.

  THE MCCRUTCHEON MEMORIAL

  The McCrutcheon Memorial, sometimes referred to as the “spite monument,” is located in Taylor Methodist Church Cemetery in Centerville, Washington County. It is called the spite monument because of a dispute that James McCrutcheon was having with his family. Rather than leave his wealth to his heirs, he spent it all on his grave marker. His two brothers were each paid $1,000 to construct the memorial, which used up the rest of his money. He died in 1902, when it was only half complete, but the brothers finished the job. The granite memorial once stood over eighty-five feet tall and loomed over the cemetery. A bad storm in 1936 toppled all but eighteen feet of the memorial.

  THE HORN PAPER HOAX

  According to W.F. Horn of Topeka, Kansas, the Horn Papers were a collection of historical documents gathered by his great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Horn between 1765 and 1795. They recorded the early history of southwestern Pennsylvania, southeastern Ohio, western Maryland and northern West Virginia. W.F. Horn took it upon himself to transcribe these documents in 1932. The transcriptions contained enormous amounts of historical and genealogical information that was thought to be lost. They gave the location of the lost villages of Razortown and Augusta Town, discussed numerous early families and even described the previously unheard of Battle of Flint Top, where twelve thousand Indians were massacred in 1748.

  Horn sent information about his transcriptions to the Washington Observer and the Waynesburg Democrat-Messenger. Excerpts were published in the paper, and Horn quickly became a minor celebrity. Hundreds of people gathered when he came to give talks. When Horn supposedly discovered lead plates buried by the French that were marked on maps in his ancestor’s papers, it seemed to verify his account, despite the fact that there were no witnesses to the discovery. The excitement surrounding the papers led to their publication by the Greene County Historical Society. Its president, A.L. Moredock, and J.L. Fulton served as editors of the three volumes. After several years of fundraising and wartime paper shortages, the books finally made it to press in 1945.

  The only problem was that the papers were a hoax. They had apparently been entirely fabricated by Horn. Skeptics had appeared early on but were generally ignored because of the excitement of the “discovery.” Once published, h
istorians had access to the papers and pointed out hundreds of discrepancies and contradictions of proven historical fact. Horn had used modern phrases and the wrong calendar and wrote about the exploits of explorer Christopher Gist ten years after he is known to have died. In addition, Horn refused to produce any further evidence of the documents’ authenticity. The lone document he had earlier produced was analyzed by a lab and found to be no older that 1930. Horn never disclosed to anyone why he had spent so much time and effort on such a seemingly meaningless hoax.

  ATTEMPTED TRAIN ROBBERY

  On September 15, 1883, two men described as “tramps” boarded a Pennsylvania Railroad train in Lancaster. They climbed over the tops of the boxcars while the train was moving until they reached the brakeman and railroad policeman. The robbers drew pistols and caught the other two men off guard. When the robbers were distracted momentarily, the brakeman and police officer tackled them. One of the robbers jumped off the moving train to get away. The officer drew his pistol and shot the other robber in the torso. The wounded robber then fell backward off of the train. The brakeman stopped as soon as he could, but neither robber could be located.

  PANIC AT THE THEATRE

  A terrible and unnecessary tragedy occurred at a movie theatre in Canonsburg, Washington County, on August 26, 1911. Fifteen hundred people were packed into the Canonsburg Opera House to watch the latest form of entertainment, motion pictures. Everything was fine until a small fire started in the projection room. The operator kept the door shut and managed to extinguish the fire, despite breathing damaging fumes and suffering burns on his hands. The fire was out when he walked out of the room. Some of the smoke drifted down into the seating area once the door was opened. The audience had been unaware of the fire until that time.

  Someone shouted “Fire!” and the panic started. Despite the fact that there were no flames, everyone rushed to the narrow stairway that led to the door. Women and children fell to the ground and were trampled. People were screaming and climbing over piles of bodies to escape. Outside, thousands of people gathered and watched people stream out of the building, screaming in terror. When members of the fire department arrived, they were shocked. There was no active fire, only crushed bodies in the stairwell. Twenty-six people were dead, including several small children. More than sixty others had been injured after they were stepped on. The pile of bodies at the bottom of the stairs was ten feet high.

  A DESTRUCTIVE LIGHTNING STRIKE

  An intense thunderstorm pounded Ashland, Schuylkill County, on the evening of June 7, 1883. One intense lightning bolt struck a ninety-ton boulder at the top of Locust Mountain at 10:00 p.m. The immense stone shattered, and its pieces tore apart two nearby houses. The shock was said to have been felt for miles. Searchers did not find the Hungarian families that occupied the two homes until the next day. The inhabitants of the first house told them that a second lighting strike hit their house after the boulder exploded. A woman was killed and buried under the debris. Another man was paralyzed, and a boy had broken an arm and a leg. A fourth man escaped unharmed but was so traumatized that he had a mental breakdown and was found wandering in the woods by the family that inhabited the second house. The members of the second family all survived without injury.

  THE PHILADELPHIA BALLOON HOAX

  During the late 1700s, hot air balloons were becoming objects of fascination in Europe. In September 1783, the first balloon was flown in France. In November of the same year, the first manned flight took place. No balloons had yet been flown in the fledgling United States, but that did not stop a couple of Philadelphians from playing a prank on their friends in Paris. David Rittenhouse and Francis Hopkinson sent word to French newspapers that a man in Philadelphia named James Wilcox had flown on December 28, 1783. His flying contraption was supposedly held up by forty-seven smaller balloons, which he had to pop if he wanted to land. The story was read and believed in Paris for several weeks before finally being exposed as a hoax.

  The first real balloon flight in America occurred almost ten years later, on January 9, 1793. The balloon flew fifteen miles from Philadelphia to New Jersey, taking about forty minutes to complete the trip. The balloon, which was piloted by Jean-Pierre Blanchard, received permission to fly from President George Washington himself.

  DEATH BY COMIC BOOK

  “Comics Blamed in Death” read a headline in the New York Times. In the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the sensational title “Coroner’s Jury Raps Lurid Killer Comics” appeared. It was September 14, 1947, and a coroner’s jury in Allegheny County had just implicated comic books in the death of a twelve-year-old Sewickley boy. On August 29 of that year, the boy was found hanging from a clothesline in the family’s basement. His mother told the jury that her son was “an incessant reader of comic books and probably hanged himself re-enacting one scene.” Though the jury ruled the death accidental, it cited comic books as a contributing factor. Comic books had claimed another young victim, or at least that is what many educators, parents, civic organizations and law enforcement officials believed. It was Pennsylvania’s turn to lead the crusade against comic books in the postwar years.

  The Allegheny County coroner, William McClelland, called on state law enforcement officials and politicians to ban comics with unacceptable themes (which was most of them). The Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association supported him and passed a resolution attributing the rise of crime and juvenile delinquency, in part, to comic books. Other law enforcement agencies followed suit. Similar sentiment had been expressed around the country since the end of World War II because of the increasingly graphic content and serious subject matter of the comics. It had become a moral panic. The scare faded in the mid-1950s, when many of the publishers were forced out of business or complied with the new Comics Code. (And by that time, they could blame juvenile delinquency on rock ’n’ roll.)

  MOLL DERRY—THE WITCH OF FAYETTE COUNTY

  Moll Derry had a fearsome reputation in Fayette County and throughout much of southwestern Pennsylvania. Described as an old hag, she was credited with an impressive array of magical abilities. She lived near Haydentown, several miles south of Uniontown. Most of the stories that have been told about her take place between the 1780s and the 1820s.

  Many locals believed that Derry could cast spells, place curses, predict the future and even transform into animals and birds. There were even those who claimed that the old woman could fly. People came to her for help in finding lost money and possessions, tracking down thieves, finding missing persons and foretelling the future. Derry also sold whiskey to supplement her income. The witch was known to take vengeance on those who were foolish enough to cross her. She made cattle ill, prevented bread from rising and even caused deaths, if you believe the stories.

  One of the most popular accounts tells of how Derry cursed three men who had mocked her and her abilities. She told all three men that they would hang. It was not long before the curse seemed to take effect. One of the men, John McFall, killed a man in a drunken brawl in 1795. He was quickly convicted and hanged for the murder. The second man, Ned Cassidy, proceeded to kill two men, and he was hanged five years after McFall. When the third man, whose name is not known, learned the fate of the other two, he hanged himself in Greene County.

  It is not clear exactly how and when Moll Derry died. She seems to have simply disappeared. Or perhaps she turned into a bird and flew away.

  LIBRARIAN SPOTTED UFO

  On the sunny and clear afternoon of June 4, 1961, a librarian spotted strange objects in the sky over Blue Ridge Summit. Mrs. Annis saw a large oval-shaped object floating low in the sky just to the north. To the east, she noticed several smaller objects just above the treetops. Suddenly, at a very high rate of speed, the smaller UFOs flew toward the larger one. They all moved farther away behind another set of trees and out of Mrs. Annis’s sight.

  TWO CIRCUS TRAIN WRECKS

  At 8:30 p.m. on October 22, 1885, the first five cars of Adam Forepaugh’s eighteen-car cir
cus train wrecked and derailed when the axle on one of the front cars snapped. The accident shut down the line for over five hours. One of the cars that overturned contained twenty-five horses. One of the horses died, and several others were injured. The accident happened at the Valley Creek switches near Woodbine. Several of the circus’s attractions were destroyed, including the beehive chariot, the goddess of liberty chariot and Forepaugh’s personal buggy. The wreck was Forepaugh’s sixth train accident that year.

  Another even more dramatic circus train accident occurred in May 1893 near Altoona. The train carrying W.L. Main’s circus jumped the tracks and was severely damaged. Six people were killed, and at least seven others were seriously injured. The cars carrying the animals were knocked open. Some of the animals were injured, and a tiger, a water buffalo, hyenas, a bear, alligators, three lions, a black panther, monkeys, birds and snakes all got loose. Forty-nine horses were killed. The elephants and camels were uninjured and did not escape.

  Some of the animals were recaptured by the circus crew. Two of the three lions were subdued. The snake charmer caught one of the anacondas in the nearby bushes. The tiger had made its way to a nearby farm and decided to eat a cow. The farmer, Alfred Thomas, shot and killed the tiger before it could kill any more of his animals. The rest of the circus animals eluded capture. The financial loss for the circus was estimated at $100,000.