Mittwoch, 16. Januar 2013

The unfortunate burial grounds

A white bronze grave marker bearing the ironic phrase, "These Monuments Will Endure For Ages," is toppled among the ruins of Hill Grove Cemetery in Connellsville, Pa. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

CONNELLSVILLE ? On a cool autumn afternoon I took what proved to be a disappointing journey to a decaying, rural southwestern Pennsylvania town in search of the grave of my great-great-grandmother, a descendant of a soldier who served in the American Revolution.

The destination resulted from the long belief of some amateur genealogists that my ancestor, Phoebe Ann (Sheppard) Hart, was buried in 1898 in historic Hill Grove Cemetery just outside Connellsville, a city whose heyday was forged in coal mining and coke-making along the banks of Youghiogheny River.

I arrived planning to walk the entire grounds looking for the graves of any members of the Hart family, the maiden name of my mother, June Hart Beveridge, only to become immediately shocked by the sight of this Fayette County cemetery's condition.

"What happened to this place? Was it undermined or something?" I asked a woman walking along one of the roads.

She leaned inside the passenger window of my Ford sedan said revealed the  tombstones here bearing the names of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants were toppled by vandals about five years ago. She went on to say the cemetery association had recently hired a new landscaper who has been working hard to remove brush covering some of the headstones.

It was the second known time vandals had visited this cemetery off Snyder Street since 1936, when three boys were taken into juvenile custody after admitting to causing several hundred dollars worth of damage by overturning 35 tombstones, The Pittsburgh Press reported at the time.

A nearby sign indicated Uniontown attorney John Cupp would accept donations for the cemetery through an address, yet it contained no telephone number to reach him.

I left this unfortunate burial ground without finding a trace of the final resting place of Phoebe Anne Hart, or those of any Harts.

Her grandfather, Henry Lenox Sheppard, fought for America's independence in Massachusetts, and, in 1784, bought hundreds of acres of Pennsylvania land, joining the first settlers of Westmoreland County.

She never learned to read, census records indicated, and married a blacksmith from Connellsville named Jacob Isaac Hart, an adventure seeker who would decide to join the Western Movement at about age 50. By 1870 he had relocated with his wife and three of their seven children to Saline, Ohio. Soon he took his skills and family to the wild and booming city of Abilene, Kansas, where he died in 1871, supposedly of dysentery. Poebe and her children quickly returned to Connellsville, where she died at age 79 in 1898.

Meanwhile, Hill Grove Cemetery wasn't the only burial grounds in her hometown to suffer a terrible fate.

Her father, Theophilus Ebenezer Sheppard, was initially buried in Connell Graveyard, which disappeared from the map when its land was needed in Connellsville to build a Carnegie Library.

The morbid and curious flocked to the graveyard along South Pittsburgh Street in April 1900 when his remains and the other bodies there were exhumed and relocated, with original tombstones, to the nearby Chestnut Hill Cemetery, the Connellsville Courier reported at the time. Oddly enough, two coffins were found in the same grave, and there was another marked by a tombstone bearing Indian engravings.


A tombstone that may or may not mark the grave of Phoebe Ann Hart at Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Connellsville, Pa. (Scott Beveridge photo)

In another attempt to find Phoebe's grave, I visited Connellsville Historical Society's headquarters in the library, only to learn from the librarian that the society was in limbo as it relocated to another building. The library neither had a copy of the society's 1984 book, "Cemetery Records; Chestnut Hill Cemetery and Hill Grove Cemetery, Connellsville," on its shelves of available for sale to the public.

A couple phone calls to the society's president produced a copy of the 133-page book at a cost of just under $17 in a deal arranged in a local art gallery. She didn't appear that much interested in why I wanted the book, and the gallery worker didn't have much to add about Hill Grove, other than to say it had run out of money for restorations.

The book indicated there were three Harts buried in Hill Grove, none of whom were Pheobe, and that no one with that last name would be found buried in Chestnut Hill. It revealed, thought, that some poor soul named George E. Hart was buried in 1875 at Chestnut Hill, but, to no surprise, his stone was down and overgrown.

Out of curiosity, I embarked to Chestnut Hill off Wills Road thinking her son and my great-grandfather, Mack Kelly Hart, surely would have buried his mother there with her relatives rather than beside George. It turned out to be neglected, too, and in varied stages of restoration.

There, not far from the road, stood a large white marble tombstone bearing the Hart family name and little else because time had weathered away much of the information about the graves it marked.

Upon closer examination one side appeared to include the date of the death of Phoebe Ann Hart and indicated the person buried there, like her, had died at age 79.

I left believing (hoping) I had likely found her grave, and with a new appreciation for those whom are dedicated to genealogy because so much about what's out there tends to be inaccurate.


A statue missing its head, fingers and feet 'stands' guard outside the J. Soisson mausoleum at Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Connellsville, Pa. (Scott Beveridge photo)

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-unfortunate-burial-grounds.html

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Nothing boring about this grilled cheese sandwich



By Scott Beveridge


PITTSBURGH, Pa. ? Every Tuesday an offbeat food booth in Pittsburgh reaches out to Facebook to advertise its weekend menu, which offers grilled cheese Sammies, plain or fancy.


The fancy part of that sandwich would serve enough to perk my interest in Soup Nancys, a staple at Pittsburgh Public Market.


"We're also pretty good at making a delicious sandwich when your only instructions to us are, "Surprise me," Raszewski responded to my Facebook reply, after curiosity prompted me to ask Food Nancys about what it takes to make a grilled cheese sandwich fancy.


There is more than one way to fancy-up a grilled-cheese sandwich, she replied.


First the cheeses are selected and then topped with such ingredients as fresh basil, tomato and raspberry habanero jam produced locally by The Berry Patch.


"You get the idea," Raszewski continued.

Then, I get an urge to drive from where I live in the back hills of southwestern Pennsylvania's Monongahela River Valley to Soup Nancys in the city otherwise known as the Paris of Appalachia to taste one of these fancy sandwiches.


By the way, the sandwich celebrated its 250th birthday this year, having supposedly been invented by Britain's Earl of Sandwich when he demanded his servants give him sliced beef between bread so not to interrupt a card game.


The sandwich would best become spiced up by Americans, says Raszewski, who should know because she has nibbled on them while traveling the Netherlands. 


Restaurants in that country still just slam some meat between bread, nothing more, as did those who attended the Earl, she said.


Well, there is nothing boring about Soup Nancys' fancy Sammies.


"You want white or multigrain whole wheat bread?" Raszewski asks after I order one last Saturday, and, while we attempt to remember the story about bread meal inventor John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich.


"What do you suggest?" I reply.


She recommends the wheat bread, saying it holds up better than white while squished in a panini maker.


"Go for it," I say.


I'm here for fancy.


This chef selects provolone, muenster and pepper jack cheeses and garnishes them lightly with fresh basil and generously with the hot pepper jam and tomatoes, freshly picked from her garden.


Eventually I inquire as to what inspired Soup Nancys to put tongue-numbing jam on a grilled cheese.


"It took some experimenting," she said.


A few minutes later I walk to the cafe seating area with a beautiful dripping sandwich that cost just $3.50.


I later return to the booth to report that this is the greatest toasted cheese sandwich that I have ever eaten in my 55 years on the planet.


"It carries a bit of a kick," I said, adding that it requires cold water.


Next time, Raszewski said, grab yourself an avocado mint smoothie, pointing to a beverage booth across the isle.

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2012/08/noting-boring-about-these-grilled.html

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Custom Order from Facebook Friend !


Recently, a fellow "Coco-nut" (fan of Conan O'Brien ) ordered a pair of my Starflower Earrings . She wanted me to choose the colors and her only requirement was that the two colors be contrasting. I tried to elicit more info from her, and finally established that she likes metals, so I picked out a copper and gunmetal color scheme. The plan worked ! She loves them ! Whew ! Plus, I included a strip of stickers I made using my beaded Conan logo from the old "Late Night" show...she loved those too :-)

Source: http://ambrosianbeads.blogspot.com/2011/01/custom-order-from-facebook-friend.html

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My "dream" car

A 1970s Plymouth Valiant similar to models I once owned and photographed recently in the Pittsburgh area. (Mike Jones photo)


By Scott Beveridge


A reoccurring dream takes me back to my 20s and the first car I purchased.


It puts me behind the wheel again of a 1975 Plymouth Valiant that has returned to my life three decades after it went to a scrapyard, yet, it's looking as good as nearly new.


In the dream I still have my 2009 Ford Focus sedan, which is nearly as boring of a ride as the one conjured up in stage 5, or rapid eye movement sleep, when a brain is in gear while the body is partially paralyzed.


Yet, I prefer in this fantasy to drive that avocado Valiant sedan to work and play, while looking over my shoulder for the police because its inspection and registration stickers are illegal.


I pass several police officers in cruisers and they don't take notice of my old car. It's engine purrs perfectly so I give up worrying about a traffic violation and travel happily on down the road.


The morning greets me with a smile that soon disappears upon the realization that only my imagination had conjured my "dream car."


In reality the vehicle was anything but a chick magnet. I purchased it for maybe $1,400 in 1979 when I was raking in big tips as the main bartender at Mon Valley Country Club in Monongahela, Pa.. 


Club member Jim Hamilton owned the nearby Lazzari Motors Inc. car dealership at the Forward Township side of the old Monongahela Bridge, and he promised me a good deal over whatever it was he was drinking. And he soon delivered one in the form of an extremely dependable car about a sexy then as the 2012 Ford Transit Connect is today.


That Valiant needed little more attention than a few drops of oil when its engine started knocking and a change of spark plugs every 50,000 miles.


The car's slant six engine was so reliable and easy to work on that its lasting power likely prompted Plymouth to discontinue making the model in order to sell more cars. So other drivers of that vehicle said at the time.


Everyone who drove that car for long eventually had to have its rusted out rear quater panels repaired.


I drove mine so long that a hole formed in the floorboard around the switch on the driver's side floor that controlled the headlight's high beams. That problem was easily fixed with a one-foot square of sheet metal, drill and handful of pop rivets to piece together the floor and keep rain water on the road from creeping up my pantlegs.


The car was eventually retired  in 1982 after its odometer had rolled over some 200,000 miles on its engine. But, the car had proven so dependable that I bought another of the same color and style from a guy who had mostly kept it in his garage.


That car lasted longer on the road, retiring in 1988, but not before I pulled from it a souvenir chrome nameplate from one of its front fenders.


I pulled the logo out the other day after a friend began to pester me about trying to find an old Valiant to purchase and restore, possibly as an excuse to convince him to also buy an old car.


God only knows why he wants one of those ugly 1980 Chevy El Caminos and would even drive to North Carolina to buy one of them. In his defense, those cars are in demand by collectors, according to another friend who collects old cars.


Stange as it seems the vintage Valiants have become collectible, too.


It's rare to see one the road or at an antique car show around here.


And, too my surprise people have been bidding more money today for Valiants on eBay than what I paid for the used ones of my youth.


One souped-up Valiant can be found on YouTube in a drag race with a much-cooler automobile. Another video shows one burning some mean tire rubber to the point where it looks as if its about to catch fire.


Hell someone even once posted on eBay a 1970s chrome Plymouth Valiant logo, different from the one in the photo, below, listing its sale price at  $199.


Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined my old man car one day becoming a hot ride.


A chrome decoration pulled as a souviner from one of my old Plymouth Valiants.

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2012/07/my-dream-car.html

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Furloughed workers return to their steel-making roots


Former U.S. Steel employee Gary Condon of North Strabane Township, Pa., right, leads a tour of Carrie Furnaces. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

RANKIN, Pa.  ? Gary Condon went into a routine meeting with other steelworkers at the Homestead Works of U.S. Steel on a Thursday in 1981, expecting to learn his schedule for the upcoming week.

But, instead, his supervisor instructed the crew at the 10 a.m. meeting to begin banking the row of seven Carrie Furnaces in Rankin for their shutdown the following Saturday.

"He said, 'We'll never turn them on again,'" said Condon, 60, of North Strabane Township, Pa., who once worked as a pipefitter at the historic blast furnaces just south of Pittsburgh .

Condon often revisits his former workplace now to tell stories and lead tours through what remains of these rare examples of pre-World War II blast furnaces, the only ones still standing in the Pittsburgh region.

"It's like coming home. The pipes around here, I worked on every one of them," said Condon, who lived in nearby Bethel Park when the mill was running.

"So much of this has been torn down so it's hard to imagine what all went on here," he said on a May 5 tour of Carrie Furnaces.

Nothing, however, would have remained at the site on eastern banks of the Monongahela River just south of Pittsburgh had it not been for the efforts of local residents who took on big business to preserve their history.

The Cleveland-based Park Corp. purchased the 430-acre brownfield after U.S. Steel forever closed the mill July 25, 1986, and reinvented most of the property at the Waterfront, a string of strip malls, restaurants and theaters. The corporation was in the process of dismantling Carrie Furnace No. 7 when a court battle halted demolition.

"It was a grassroots effort to say, 'Wait a minute. You can't wipe away our history. We have to save some of it,'" said Ron Baraff, director of archives and museum collections at the Homestead-based Rivers of Steel Heritage Corp., the nonprofit that manages Carrie Furnaces.

The organization also saved the mill's pump house, the site of the infamous Battle of Homestead waged in 1892 when Carnegie Steel Corp. hired Pinkertown guards to quell a lockout of Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Seven steelworkers and three detectives were killed in the battle, which dealt a crushing blow to the U.S. labor movement.

               
Visitors make their way around the seemingly frozen-in-time Carrie Furnace No. 6, part of the infamous Homestead Works near Pittsburgh. (Scott Beveridge photo)

Rivers of Steel was determined to memorialize the mill's role, which went far beyond the battle, as it once employed 15,000 workers and produced a third of all of the steel used in the United States, Baraff said.

"It's the story of the growth of this region, the growth of this country," he said.

Tens of thousands of families immigrated from Europe to work in Pittsburgh's steel industry, which produced materials that allowed the nation to "grow vertically and expand westward," he said.

Steel manufactured at Homestead forms the gates of the Panama Canal and Gateway Arch in St. Louis, and gives structural support to the Empire State Building, U.S. Steel Tower in Pittsburgh and Willis (Sears) Tower in Chicago.

The fate of the last of the Carrie Furnaces, Nos. 6 and 7, wasn't sealed, though, until June 2010, five years after Allegheny County purchased the site from Park Corp. in a $7.2 million investment. The deal allowed Rivers of Steel to trade the Hot Metal Bridge it owned from the site into Homestead, which the county needed for access into the property, for management rights of the furnaces, said Sherris Moreira, the heritage corporation's marketing and tourism director. The organization has begun raising money to convert a large building on the property into a regional steel museum, she said.

"There's a lot of history here. It's the real stuff," said Howard L. Wickerham III of Peters Township, who once worked here as an electrician and is being trained as a guide for tours the nonprofit now offers of the site.

Meanwhile, Condon explains how raw materials ? iron ore, limestone and coke ? were offloaded by rail to make pig iron in the furnaces. Larrymen would measure the correct amounts of the ingredients into skip cars, which carried the mix into the furnaces. Hot air was then blown into the furnaces to suspend the materials until they melted, a process that separated the iron from the slag. Other workers around the base of the 2,000-degree furnace manually opened gates that permitted the iron to flow into troughs and drain into torpedo-shaped rail cars, which carried it across the Mon to form steel.

Near the base of Carrie No. 6, Wickerham tells a story that best describes the fortitude of the men who once worked here. A coworker smashed his thumb with a sledgehammer, only to remove his glove, wrap the injury with electrical tape and resume his duties.

"He turned to me and said, 'You didn't see anything,'" Wickerham said, adding that such accidents resulted in five days off without pay.

"It was noble work."


A torpedo-shaped railcar that has survived its days of carrying hot metal across a bridge over the Monongahela River to the U.S. Steel Homestead Works. (Scott Beveridge photo)

This story first appeared in the Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa.

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2012/08/noble-workers-return-to-their-steel.html

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Metropolis Necklace-Etsy Beadweavers Challenge


This month's Etsy Beadweavers challenge theme, Fashion Through the Ages , struck a chord with me because I had a pattern developed that fit perfectly with the Art Deco style of design. I created the triangular portion of my Metropolis Necklace using the pattern I made with my BeadTool design program and stitched it in herringbone using 4 beads at a time. Then I worked upward in brick stitch to a decent choker width of 1/2" and finished out the rest of the choker in peyote. I had fun looking through my vintage button collection and found the perfect button to complement the Art Deco design. Of course, I finished it all last minute and could only get some basic photos done. Next time, no procrastinating (yeah right) ! You can check out all the amazing entries from our beadweaving team now and vote on March 8th.

Source: http://ambrosianbeads.blogspot.com/2011/03/metropolis-necklace-etsy-beadweavers.html

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Mock jury cites military in deadly 1862 Allegheny Arsenal explosion

Michael G. Kraus, curator of Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in Pittsburgh, left, testifies at a mock coroner's inquest into the 1862 Allegheny Arsenal explosion, before Cyril Wecht, a noted pathologist in the city. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH, Pa. ? A jury at a mock coroner's inquest headlined today by noted pathologist Cyril Wecht found the U.S. military negligent during the Civil War in the handling of gunpowder leading up to the Allegheny Arsenal explosion that killed 78 workers, mostly women and children.

After hearing nearly two hours of testimony at Sen. John Heinz History Center the jury also concluded a spark from a horseshoe or the wheel of a cart the animal was pulling ignited gunpowder wrongly swept by boys from an arsenal porch onto the cobblestone street, set off three back-to-back explosions.

"Yes, Army officers were concerned about powder accumulating in the street," said Andy Masich, the center's president and chief executive officer who served as chief investigator at the event timed for the 150th anniversary of the disaster.

The ruling contradicted conclusions reached by a military inquest that followed the Sept. 17, 1862, explosion in Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville section, an investigation that relieved Union Army officers from being responsible for the deaths and didn't nail down the cause of the blasts. Meanwhile, a local coroner's inquest at the time reached decisions similar to those rendered after the evidence was re-examined through a modern-day lens at the history center.

"Lots of blame goes around to lots of people, people taking shortcuts when the supply demand was up," said Jim Wudarczyk, a Lawrenceville Historical Society historian who testified at the mock inquest.

Following the explosions and subsequent fire that leveled the arsenal's laboratory, the wagon driver, J.R. Frick, reported hearing a "fizzing sound" about 2 p.m. and then seeing flames shooting up from its right, front wheel, said Tom Powers, another Lawrenceville historian.

Frick was then blown out of his wagon and he landed on a fence before becoming covered, uninjured, by two feet of debris consisting of pieces of the laboratory roof. His horse was badly burned, Powers said. A woman nearby the wagon, Rachel Dunlap, reaffirmed Frick's statements, yet she was never called to testify before the military inquest, he added.

The roof also collapsed on the female workers, causing most of the casualties. Nearly half of the bodies were so badly burned they could not be positively identified.

The initial investigation attempted to place the blame on the victims over claims the steel hoops they wore under their skirts or friction from their woolen, silk and cotton clothing created the spark that set off the explosions in gunpowder dust.

"It could not be ruled out," said Jimmie Oxley, a Homeland Security explosives detection expert, while discussing the possibility a static charge from the women's clothing caused the catastrophe. Oxley disagreed with the mock inquest's finding of negligences.

"They did very well for its time," Oxley said, referring to the practices at 19th Century U.S. arsenals.
Col. John Symington

Pittsburgh, though, was shocked before the tragedy after the arsenal's commander, Col. John Symington, fired the 200 boys who worked there for playing with matches and replaced them with females, mostly Irish immigrants. The girls were favored because they had small, nimble fingers that could quickly fill paper-lined cartridges with gunpowder and work for less money than boys, said Mary Callard, an author of Civil War history.

"It was a shock to Pittsburgh sensibilities to bring women into this factory," Callard testified. "But, there was a war."

Some people in 1862 suspected a conspiracy, that Symington had sympathized with Confederate saboteurs to wipe out the arsenal.

"The sentiment in Pittsburgh was against those military officers," Masich said.

Others blamed the Dupont family for insisting the barrels they used to ship the gunpowder be recycled, something that caused their lids to eventually jiggle and leak. There even were suggestions the deadly spark was caused by heavy shoes with nails in their soles worn by men in the plant

"You see we've got a lot of different possibilities here," Wecht said.

However, "sabotage was the most absurd theory," Wudarczyk said, adding that Symington had a stellar military career.

In the end the situation that day seemed to have been a perfect story, with too much gunpowder in use or stored in buildings that were too close together, allowing the flames to easily jump from one to the next.

"This (was) a very, very volitile situation," said Michael G. Kraus, curator of Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in Pittsburgh's Oakland section. "They knew they shouldn't be doing things that caused sparks."



Kate Lukaszewicz portrays an Allegheny Arsenal employee during a mock coroner's inquest at Sen. John Heinz History Center into explosions at the Civil War-era factory 150 years. (Scott Beveridge photo)

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2012/09/mock-jury-cites-military-in-deadly-1862.html

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