Cambria County Pioneers, 1910, by James L. Swank, Cambria County, PA - Early Johnstown Copyright 2004. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/cambria/ ________________________________________________ CAMBRIA COUNTY PIONEERS HON. CYRUS L. PERSHING A Collection of Brief Biographical and other Sketches Relating to the Early History of Cambria County, Pennsylvania. by JAMES M. SWANK PHILADELPHIA: No. 261 SOUTH FOURTH STREET, 1910. 40 CAMBRIA COUNTY PIONEERS. RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY JOHNSTOWN. WRITTEN IN 1909 TO REV. C. C. HAYS, D. D., PASTOR OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF JOHNSTOWN. DEAR DOCTOR: In compliance with your request I write you briefly concerning the Presbyterian Sunday-school of seventy years ago in Johnstown as I remember it. Rev. Shadrach Howell Terry was then the pastor of the congregation, but he died in 1841, when he was succeeded by Rev. Samuel Swan. It was in 1839 that my father and mother first sent me to the Sunday-school (we did not call it Sabbath-school) which met then and for many years afterwards in the Presbyterian church of that day, occupying the site of the present structure. The building, which was of brick, contained only one large room, with no other furniture whatever than a pulpit, pews, four cannon stoves with their long pipes, and strips of carpet in the aisles. I do not think that there was a cushioned pew in the whole church. There was no musical instrument except Judge Roberts's tuning fork, which he used as the leader of the unpaid choir, the congregation always joining in the singing. The church was entered by two front doors, which communicated with two main aisles, and the choir occupied pews just inside the doors and facing the pulpit. The church was first lighted at night with tallow candles, held in position by tin sconces hung on nails between the windows, but lard-oil and sperm-oil lamps were used in the pulpit. Subsequently lamps of the same character were used throughout the building, and these in time were displaced by camphene lamps, after which came petroleum lamps. The church was not hemmed in by other buildings in too close proximity but "stood four-square to all the winds that blew." It was therefore in daytime well lighted. It was in the room, or auditorium, which I have briefly described that the Presbyterian Sunday-school assembled RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY JOHNSTOWN. 41 every Sunday at 9 o'clock in summer and at 2 o'clock in winter. Boys and girls of all ages attended and were classified chiefly according to their common school attainments, with some regard also, of course, to their ages. There was no high-sounding "Bible class," but several classes studied the Bible regularly with the help of a series of Union Question Books, which were well printed and bound in blue covers. I remember particularly that one volume was devoted to Exodus and another to the Acts of the Apostles. Our teachers led us from point to point and from place to place, with comments that were interesting and instructive. No question was ever raised in these classes about the inspiration of every word of the Bible; that was taken for granted. We all grew up in those days with reverence for the Holy Book and with considerable knowledge of its contents. Other classes recited the Shorter Catechism and read biblical selections. The classes composed of little boys and little girls were taught very much as they are now. Each class occupied a pew and each teacher occupied a pew in front of his or her class. We had a superintendent and a librarian. Now about our teachers. I am writing of a period which extended from 1839 to 1850. Moses Canan, a lawyer of Scotch-Irish origin, a ruling elder in the church and often superintendent of the school, was the oldest of the teachers in years. He was one of the most impressive readers I have ever heard. George W. Munson and S. H. Smith, prominent business men of New England extraction, were good teachers. So also were James Potts and Henry Kratzer, the former born of Scotch- Irish parents and the latter a Pennsylvania German. So also were Campbell Sheridan and Cyrus L. Pershing, young men of liberal education, who afterwards became superintendents of the Sunday-school, ruling elders in the church, and prominent in the professions of their choice. Both were natives of Western Pennsylvania. There were other teachers, including many ladies, whom I need not mention, if indeed I could remember the names of all of them. There was always a full attendance of "scholars," and I think that there was never a scarcity of teachers. All the teachers I have mentioned by name 42 CAMBRIA COUNTY PIONEERS. were at one time or another in charge of classes which used the Union Question Books above-referred to. Connected with the school was a carefully selected library of well-printed books, from which every "scholar" could select one volume every Sunday, returning it the next Sunday. There was also a monthly missionary paper, well printed and freely illustrated, a copy of which was given to each of us as often as it appeared. How proud we were of these literary treasures - the handsomely-bound books especially! The books, of which there was a goodly number, covered almost every subject that would interest a healthy boy or girl; not one of them was of a sectarian character. We had books that inspired and ministered to a love of the history of our own and of other countries; books devoted to natural history; books about the North American Indians, the natives of Iceland, the Sandwich Islands, and the "heathen" everywhere; books that described the manners, customs, and habits of the civilized or half-civilized people of other countries than our own. We had Peter Parley's books, the Rollo books, and a series entitled "Travels About Home." I think that there was not a work of fiction in the whole library, although there could not have been any possible objection to such story books as "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Swiss Family Robinson." Perhaps we did have them; I hope so. Any way the boys of our school all read these stories and talked about them, and, of course, the girls did too. We had. Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," "Sanford and Merton," and "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain." The tendency of all the books in the library was to stimulate a love of good books, and without a love of such books no boy or girl will ever amount to very much. That we could get a new book every Sunday was one of the strongest reasons why we were glad to attend the Sunday-school at all. Now I am told that the library of sixty and seventy years ago no longer exists - that the boys and girls who attend the Presbyterian Sunday-school no longer carry home with them books of the character of those I have described. Instead I am informed that these boys and girls are compelled to rely mainly on the Cambria Library for RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY JOHNSTOWN. 43 reading matter, and that the books they obtain at the library are largely modern works of fiction. What books, if any, little children can get at the Cambria Library that will take the place of the books that are printed especially for Sunday-school children I am not informed. Is the substitution of modern works of fiction for the well-selected books of the Presbyterian Sunday-school of long ago a change for the better or the worse? Undoubtedly it is for the worse. No thoughtful person will say otherwise. William F. Prosser, the son of David Prosser and about one year my junior, was one of the Presbyterian Sunday-school "scholars" in 1840, 1841, and 1842, and the only one except myself that I feel sure is now living. Growing to manhood elsewhere he made an honorable record in the civil war, at its close being colonel of a Tennessee regiment. He was subsequently a member of Congress from Tennessee, a member of the Centennial Commission from that State, and postmaster of Nashville. He has long been a citizen of the new State of Washington and is at present city treasurer of Seattle. As a general proposition I think that the old times in Johnstown were better than the new. If seventy years ago we did not have a homogeneous population we had a population that was perfectly assimilated. Everybody spoke the English language. We had no class distinctions. There were no rich men. There were no long rows of drinking saloons. The Washingtonian temperance movement, which originated in Baltimore in 1840, gave a great blow to intemperance in Johnstown in the early 40s, and it was followed in the same decade by the Sons of Temperance and the Cadets of Temperance. We had two literary societies, each with a large membership of adults, which discussed regularly the leading questions of the day and of other days. There was marked literary taste and much literary culture in Johnstown from 1840 to 1850 and for a few years after 1850. There were no "Sunday morning papers" in those days. If we had no public library there were a few books in almost every home, and it was a common practice for the boys and girls to borrow books from one another. We had in those days two volunteer military companies, com- 44 CAMBRIA COUNTY PIONEERS. posed of our leading citizens. Military encampments, in which these companies participated, took place every year in Johnstown and neighboring towns, and they were great occasions for the boys and for others, as were also the parades which occurred more frequently at home. The decade from 1840 to 1850 embraced three very exciting Presidential campaigns, which greatly interested the men and women and also the boys and girls of Johnstown - the election of General Harrison and John Tyler over Van Buren and Johnson in 1840, the defeat of Henry Clay in 1844 by James K. Polk, and the election of General Zachary Taylor over Lewis Cass in 1848. It witnessed the annexation of Texas in 1845 and the war with Mexico in 1846, the settlement in 1846 of the controversy with Great Britain over our northwestern boundary, the acquisition of California and other Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast territory in 1848, the discovery of gold in California in 1848, the Irish famine which so stirred the sympathies of the people of our country in 1846, 1847, and 1848, the passage of the tariff of 1842 and its repeal in 1846, and the great Pittsburgh fire in 1845. I well remember the passage through Johnstown in 1846 of Philadelphia volunteer soldiers on their way to Mexico and the return of the Cambria county volunteers in 1848. The latter were welcomed and praised at a large meeting in their honor in Levergood's orchard, on which occasion Cyrus L. Pershing delivered an address which I heard. When the Philadelphia volunteers reached Johnstown over the Portage Railroad on their way to Mexico they were distributed in squads among the leading families and given a good supper. I remember standing in awe of these soldiers with their new uniforms and bright muskets. We had good public schools from 1839 to 1850, which were taught by Samuel Douglass, Orson H. Smith, David F. Gordon, Cyrus L. Pershing, Robert H. Canan, and others, all of whom were well qualified for their work. The schools were ungraded, which was a great advantage over the present system - the younger pupils learning from the recitations of their elders. The classes of boys and girls were required to toe the mark once or twice a day in RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY JOHNSTOWN. 45 spelling and reading, and they learned to spell and read correctly because they were taught correctly. Words were divided into syllables and so pronounced, and sentences received proper emphasis. The multiplication table was taught by a whole class reciting it in concert. Instruction in the schoolroom in those days was largely oral; now it is largely lacking in this most desirable feature. That I may not lose the thread and purpose of this letter reading aloud formed a part of the exercises of the Sunday-schools of that time in Johnstown, all of which were conducted in the same spirit and substantially upon the same lines as the one I have briefly described. Johnstown itself was a beautiful town in my boyhood days. Its surrounding hills were covered with dense forests down to the very margins of the streams which then bounded it on nearly all sides. These streams were not polluted in any way. The water in their channels was as clear as crystal and there was a larger volume of water than now. Fish abounded in them; now there are none. Every spring boys and men organized a fishing party and swept the Stony creek with a brush net, securing hundreds of fish, which were fairly divided and carried home in triumph. In the town, here and there, were many apple orchards which had been planted by Joseph Johns and the other native Pennsylvanians who were its first settlers, and many sycamores, black and white walnuts, and other native trees were still standing. There were many log houses, reminders of the pioneers, and a few brick houses. Every house had a garden attached to it, and there were lilacs, poppies, hollyhocks, sunflowers, and other old-fashioned flowers everywhere. There were but two houses in all "Kernville" in 1840. There was no smoke of mill or factory, but there was little want in any home. Nearly all the business of the town was dependent upon the Pennsylvania Canal and the Portage Railroad, which had given the town its business start only a few years before. As we all know, every town, like every country, has its golden age, and I candidly believe that the golden age of Johnstown was in the ten or fifteen years before 1850. I feel sure that my early friend, W. C. Lewis, will confirm my opinion.