Local History: Tillard Pen Pictures, 1911, Altoona, Blair Co., PA - Mills

Contributed by Judy Banja jbanja@msn.com

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               Pen Pictures of Friends and Reminiscent Sketches
                               by J. N. Tillard

            Altoona, PA: William F. Gable & Co., Mirror Press, 1911 

                       Sketches of Early Local History

AUTHOR'S NOTE - The following articles were written for the Altoona Mirror at 
odd times, several years ago, the subject matter having been gleaned by the 
author partly from various publications; partly from the folk lore stories he 
beard told in the old Pottsgrove flour mill during his childhood, and partly 
from personal observation.

                                             J. N. TILLARD DECEMBER 1, 1911

                       Famous Mills That No Longer Exist

             Pottsgrove Mills Were at One Time The Busiest Places
                     In The Upper End of Tuckahoe Valley

IN the days when all the freemen of Logan Township voted at the White Hall 
Hotel on Sixteenth Street, a city and township political worker coming 
together in the vicinity of the polling place, both a little the worse for 
the liquid refreshments that were freely passed about, started a luminous 
argument based upon the right of the "Country Jakes" to vote within the 
sacred precincts of the city. The countryman living close to the soil and 
feeling all the pride of land ownership inherited from ancestors, said "take 
your town out of our township, we were here first and you are nothing but a 
lot of squatters."
  However, Logan Township as a geographical fact did not find a place on the 
map very long prior to the village of Altoona, for up until 1850, the 
territory was part of Antis and Allegheney Townships and not so long before 
had been a wilderness of tall timber with an occasional clearing dignified by 
the name of farm.
  Among the taxables of Antis Township in 1830 was George Pottsgrove, 
assessed for one hundred and sixty-six acres, one grist mill, one saw mill, 
one distillery, three horses and three cows. At that time Pottsgrove Mills 
were about the centre of civilization in the upper end of Tuckahoe Valley, 
the place producing sawed timber, the bread of life and "life itself" in the 
shape of mountain dew, though the history of the distillery does not occupy 
any space in the chronicles of the time save in the assessor's book, and 
probably did not last a great while or do a very rushing business. Judging 
from the old ledgers in Galbraith's Store in "Mudtown" the inhabitants got 
most of their wet goods at that emporium at that era of neighborhood history. 
Indeed, the accounts of most of the customers show that the majority of items 
were whiskey at sixty-two and one-half cents and tobacco at a "levy."
  The Pottsgrove stimulant was only an incident, the grinding of grain and 
the sawing of lumber being a real industry around which the community 
revolved. The farmer boy who brought the "grist" to the old mill at the foot 
of Brush Mountain was always glad to wait awhile to listen to the music of 
George Pottsgrove's fiddle, his wondrous bear stories and the tall yarns of 
the regular habitues of the place. There is still many an old fellow somewhat 
saddened by the vicissitudes of life who looks back with pleasant memories to 
the long days spent in playing around the mills and the wonderful evenings in 
the grist mill when the fiddle was brought out and the men told stories of 
the yet earlier days.
  In the memory of the writer now arises a picture of the group on one summer 
evening as he, a barefoot urchin perched on a meal sack, listened with bated 
breath to a patriarch with long white hair but ruddy, youthful visage and 
twinkling eyes, who told story after story of personal adventures covering 
periods of time that even the entranced boy thought marvellous; so marvellous 
in fact that he was prompted to slyly inquire during a lull in the talk:
  "You have been here a good while hav'nt you Mr. B-."
  The crowd chuckled and the boy, frightened a little at his temerity, was 
preparing to hastily vacate the meal sack, expecting to have his ears boxed 
for his insinuation. But this old gent was too genuine a humorist to take 
umbrage at a trifle of that sort and gracefully saved the situation by kindly 
patting the lad on the shoulder and with the merriest possible twinkle in his 
eye, said:
  "Why, son, when I came here they were just putting the bark on the trees 
and digging the ditch for Sandy Run."
  While the little single saw mills with their single perpendicular saws were 
making some inroad upon the forests that still covered the mountain sides and 
a good portion of the flats, the axe of the charcoal burners were working 
greater havoc and were in a few years to almost completely denude the valley 
of timber in order that the several furnaces in the neighborhood might make 
pig iron for the world's markets.

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