NEWS: Cambria Freeman; Ebensburg, Cambria Cnty., PA; May 1908 Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Patty Millich Copyright 2011. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/cambria ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Cambria Freeman Ebensburg, Pa. Friday, 22 May 1908 Volume 42, Number 21 Local and Personal Squire J. J. Rhoddy of Ashville was in town today. Mr. John A. Schwab of Loretto was in Ebensburg on Saturday. Miss Bessie Reagan of Ashville spent the early part of the week with friends in Ebensburg. Squire Letts of Cresson was in Ebensburg yesterday and of course paid THE FREEMAN office a visit. Among the visitors to Ebensburg on Thursday were Landlord Frank O'Neill and his son of South Fork. Berney Hendler, Cassandra's prominent merchant and steamship agent, was in town on business yesterday. Owing to the repairs in the Congregational church the Memorial Sabbath services will be held in the Court House. Miss Effie Warner, a milliner in the store of Mrs. R. E. Jones, in this place, spent Sunday at her home in Fallen Timber. Louis E. Kaylor has just housed an elaborate show bookcase in his bookstore on Center street, adjoining the FREEMAN office. Henry Lance, one of Summerhill Township's energetic young farmers, was in Ebensburg on Monday and paid THE FREEMAN office a visit. The cross on the spire of the Catholic church in this place was taken down on Wednesday last by Harry Pruner for the purpose of re-gilding it, which will take about a week. Mr. Richard Denny and his son, Victor, of Allegheny Township were in Ebensburg on Saturday and paid THE FREEMAN office a pleasant visit to renew subscriptions which had not yet expired. Charles Shenkemeyer of Johnstown came to Ebensburg this morning and from here drove to Amsbry to view the site of the proposed new concrete bridge to be erected over Clearfield Creek at that point. Pleasant Birthday Surprise Party Miss Mary Cassidy Pleasantly Surprised at Her Home Last Night Last evening several of the many young friends of Miss Mary Cassidy tendered that estimable young lady a birthday surprise at the home of her parent, Mr. and Mrs. R. V. Cassidy in the West ward, it being the eve of the twenty-first anniversary of her birth. Music and games were the order of the evening and an enjoyable time was spent after which an elaborate lunch was served, when all departed for their homes, wishing the object of the surprise many such happy returns of her birthday anniversary. Those present were Messrs. Robert Cassidy, Ed McConnell, Ed Cassidy, George DeLancey, Alonzo Danvir, Lemuel Gill and Thomas Cassidy and Misses Irene Hamilton, Effie Warner, Harriet Squiers, Gertrude Cassidy, Emma Marsh, Grace Gibson, Mabel Kline, Bertha Marsh and Mary Cassidy and Mr. and Mrs. Otto Raizic of Cambria Township. Makin Estate Unsold Bids not Satisfactory and Property Withdrawn The widow and administratrix of William Makin, deceased, late of Ebensburg, offered for sale Saturday afternoon the property of the deceased in the West ward of Ebensburg. The property was bid up to $800 but this price not being deemed sufficient it was withdrawn from sale for the present. Civil War Veteran Made Happy Washington, Pa., May 7 -- John Milliken, a Civil War veteran of Jefferson, Greene County, has been presented with the old battle flag of his company in the Eighty-fifth Pennsylvania Infantry, organized at Zollarsville in 1861, with William H. Horn, Captain. The banner was made and given to the company by women of Zollarsville. It had been in custody of the widow of Captain R. O. Phillips of Lincoln, Neb., whose husband succeeded Captain Horn in command. Letters Lately Issued Estate of Margaret E. Buck, late of Allegheny Township. Letters of administration issued to J. M. Buck. Estate of Christina Hertzog, late of Patton. Renunciation of Albert J. Hertzog and Oscar M. Hertzog filed. Letters of administration issued to Philip Hertzog. Estate of Patrick Connelly, late of the city of Johnstown. Letters of administration issued to Mary R. Connelly. Estate of Elizabeth Noel, late of Portage. Will filed and letters testamentary issued to Harry M. Kiek. Tom Seymour Meets with an Accident Falls off Scaffold in Congregational Church on Monday and His Shoulder Dislocated Thomas Seymour, a workman in the employ of Burr & Clement of this place, the contractors who are now frescoing the Congregational church in this place, fell from a scaffolding while at work in the church on Wednesday morning last and had one of his shoulder joints dislocated. He was conveyed to the Blair House where he boards and Drs. Jones and Bennett set the dislocated member. He is now doing well. Miniature Cyclone Hits Johnstown Storm on Saturday Evening Last Unroofs Tenement House and Injures Seven Persons On Saturday afternoon last a storm of wind and rain passed over Johnstown, doing considerable damage in places. The storm was worst in the Seventh Ward and on Westmont. The roof of a large brick tenement house on Messenger street owned by James M. McKee was blown off and carried to a vacant lot across the street. The smoke stack of the Johnstown Garbage Plant nearby was blown down, breaking a limb for Mrs. Cyrus Horner, who having run out of her house when she heard the storm, was within a few feet of where the smokestack fell, part of it striking her. She was taken to the Memorial Hospital for treatment. Six other persons – Fred Krieger, Charles and Joseph Shoemaker, William and John Kyle and William Sabo were less seriously injured. O. H. Osman Arrested on Wednesday Undertaker With Headquarters at Ebensburg Arrested for Exhibiting an Indecent Picture O. H. Osman, who located in Ebensburg about a year and a half ago and has since been engaged in the undertaking business principally in Nant-y-Glo, was arrested on Wednesday afternoon last by County Detective J. L. Berkebile on a charge of exhibiting an obscene picture to young boys contrary to a statute of the State which provides a penalty of a maximum of two years imprisonment and $500 fine for such an offense. He was taken before Squire A. J. Waters who in default of $300 bail committed him to jail to await trial at June term of Court. Osman denies that he exhibited the picture to boys but says that he procured it from a party in Nant-y-Glo and had it in his desk and a young man who worked for him, having gotten hold of it from the desk, and that he had put it in his pocket, intending to return it to the party from whom he got it and had it on his person when arrested. The picture which is now in the custody of District Attorney Leech is one of the most abominable of the filthy pictures that have been flooding the country for several years and not one that no decent person should keep from destruction for one moment, except as in the case with the District Attorney. It is necessary to preserve it to be produced in evidence at the trial of the case. Murder at Barnesboro Guesippe Sciowto Shot to Death by Chicken Thieves On Wednesday night last Guesippe Sciowto, an Italian, was shot at his home near the Madeira mines, a short distance from Barnesboro and died in a few minutes. The wife of Sciowto at a late hour on the night in question heard a noise in the chicken coup in the cellar of the house, and arousing her husband, he went down to see what was the matter when some person, as yet unknown, fired a load of buckshot into his neck, tearing away arteries, tendons and veins, from the result of which he died in the arms of his wife who had gone to his assistance. District Attorney Leech was immediately notified of the occurrence and County Detective Berkebile was immediately dispatched to the scene of the murder and an investigation was started. Chicken feathers indicated a path to the house of a suspicious character and red feathers found in his house which Mrs. Sciowto believes came from a rooster she owned. The man was arrested but no direct evidence against him being at hand, he was discharged from custody as was also a young man of the neighborhood whom it was afterwards found had been acting strangely that night from the effects of booze. The affair has caused a great sensation in the neighborhood but it is doubtful if any evidence can be found to fasten the crime on the guilty. A Recent Visit to Loretto Our Reporter Pays a Visit to Town Founded by the Apostle of the Alleghenies The McGuire Settlement About the year 1787 or 1788 Captain Michael McGuire, a Revolutionary soldier who had fought in the Maryland Line under Washington – possibly under Moylan at Bunker Hill, for Moylan's Rifles were behind the rail fence leading from the redoubt down to the waters edge on the eastward on that eventful day – who had, it is said, as early as 1768 established a hunting camp near the present town of Chest Springs, came to the valley of this branch of the Clearfield, a short distance to the eastward of Loretto and having cleared out a small piece of land and erected thereon a cabin, a few months afterwards, brought his family to the place and being joined by his brother soon afterwards, began what is now known as the McGuire settlement, taking up several hundred acres of land, some of which he bequeathed for church use for Captain McGuire was a devout Catholic and although remote from a church, the settlement was sometimes visited by priests from Conewago. Father Gallitzin, it appears, was not the first priest to visit the McGuire settlement, as the following documents furnished by the late Squire E. R. Dunegan of St. Augustine to the Cambria Tribune in 1899 will show: "I received from Mrs. Rachael McGuire a dollar for her part of the sum that ought to be spent in buying a horse for the priest serving the parishes of Huntington, Sinking Valley, Allegheny, Path Valley, Etc. Lewis Sibourd, Priest Allegheny, December 15, 1794 "I have received from the inhabitants over Allegheny the sum of sixteen dollars for my maintenance for six months." Lewis Sibourd, Priest Allegheny, June 6, 1795 Captain McGuire died long before the coming of Father Gallitzin - the prince-priest and apostle of the Alleghenies, as the following epitaph inscribed upon a neat marble monument erected over his remains in the cemetery near St. Michael's church will show: Here Lie the Mortal Remains Of Captain Michael McGuire Departed This Life Nov. 17, 1793 He manifested his zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls by bestowing this land for the benefit of the resident clergy. May He Rest in Peace. Amen. Erected by A. J. McGuire of Baltimore and R. Scanlan of Loretto, 1856 The McGuire settlement grew and soon became a thing of permanence. The nearest neighbors with whom they had intercourse at first were those at Blair's Mills, on the eastern side of the mountain at the foot of Blair's Gap, up which and across Cambria county, passing to the south of the present town of Munster, crossing the North branch of the Little Conemaugh about three quarters of a mile below O'Hara's Mill to Henry Rager's on Laurel Hill and thence to the mouth of the Blacklick where it crossed the Conemaugh, thence to the mouth of Loyal Hannah Creek and eventually to Pittsburg - ran the first road, not a military road, laid out across Western Pennsylvania. This road was laid out by order of The Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, of which body Benjamin Franklin was then President, passed in March 1787, and surveyed the same year by a surveyor named James Harris, assisted by Charles Campbell and Solomon Adams, brother of Samuel Adams who was killed by Indians while, with his brother – Solomon – Thornton Bridges and John Cheeney, driving their cattle from the Adams settlement on the site of the Seventeenth Ward (Moxham) Johnstown, about the beginning of 1778. The course and distance of this road mentions the clearing of Henry Rengle (Rager) on Laurel Hill; and the field notes of Robert Galbraith, the contractor who opened it, mentions an "Anderson improvement" somewhere between Munster and Cresson. Besides this a Martin Cable lived on a farm near the present Deep Cut east of Summerhill and a history of Indiana County gives the maiden name of a Mrs. Coleman who died in that county in 1760, aged 47 years, as Hannah Cable, who was born in Cambria county; so it is probable the McGuire's had neighbors of whom they never knew. Over most of the roads herein mentioned, sometimes known as the "Frankstown Road," but more familiarly as "The Galbraith Road," Captain Michael McGuire, according to an affidavit he made in 1789, hauled a load of "twenty hundred" pounds with two horses without difficulty. About the year 1794 Luke McGuire, son of Captain Michael McGuire, having married Margaret O'Hara, went to housekeeping in a log house still in a good state of preservation and now occupied by George Luke McGuire, grandson of Luke McGuire and father of W. A. McGuire Esq. of this place. This is undoubtedly the oldest house now occupied as a place of residence in Cambria County. An older house - that of John Grosnickel, near Geistown, was standing a few years ago but was used only as a chicken coop. In the history of Loretto Margaret McGuire is a very important actor. She it was who early in the year 1799 rode to Conewago - 130 miles - to procure the services of a priest to attend the spiritual wants of a Mrs. John Burgoon, whose maiden name was Anderson, a non-Catholic who was sick it was believed unto death and who desired, with a great desire, to join the Catholic church. The priest Mrs. McGuire brought with her to visit her sick friend, who lived for years afterwards, was then known as Rev. Augustine Smith, a comparatively obscure clergyman, but now enjoying a world-wide reputation as Rev. Demetrious Augustine Gallitzin, Prince and Priest and Apostle of the Alleghenies. (To Be Continued) Doings of 50 Years Ago! From the Mountaineer of May 20, 1858 For Hot Weather - One of the most simple methods and at the same time cheapest means of artificially lowering the temperature of a room is to wet a cloth of any size, the larger the better, suspend it in the place you want cooling, let the room be well ventilated and the temperature will sink from ten to twenty degrees in less than half an hour. – Scientific American Bagged at Last – Shortly after the STAR went to press yesterday, a dispatch was received by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs as follows: Head of Pass, May 13, via New Orleans, May 14 "I am here with Billy Bowlegs and one hundred and sixty-five Florida Seminoles on Board U. S. steamer Grey Cloud. Wrote you particulars from Pensacola. E. Rector, Supt. Ind. Affairs. It means neither more or less than that the twenty years Florida war is ended! Billy Bowlegs has at length been coaxed to emigrate with the whole of his band, who for so many years, really defied all the power of this Government for their dislodgement from the Florida everglades, the most impenetrable fastnesses to the white man (in either hemisphere) known to any other land than Africa. [snip] The barn of Joseph Christ in Washington Township was, we learn, blown down. Joseph Sharp's house had the roof blown off. The barn belonging to Hugh McCloskey was unroofed and the upper story of his house was blown off. The damage to the fences very great. The sufferers have the sympathies of the community which was testified in a substantial manner by a large number of the neighbors congregating on Thursday and assisting to repair the injury. [snip] At the municipal election in Johnstown last week – the first held since the ancient borough was divided into wards - Hon. G. W. Easley was elected Burgess by 28 majority. This was a deserved compliment to a gentleman who is preeminently worthy of the confidence of his fellow citizens. Hymeneal – Married at the residence of the bride's father, on Tuesday morning the 18th inst. by the Rev. D. Harbison, Dr. J. Lowman of Johnstown to Mrs. Mary J. Heyer, daughter of J. Moore Esq. of Ebensburg. Obituary – Died at his residence in Munster Township on Wednesday evening, Mr. John Myers, aged 68 years. The funeral will start from his late residence to proceed to Loretto cemetery on Friday at 10 o'clock A. M. Mr. Myers was among the oldest residents of the county and no one possessed to a greater extent the confidence and esteem of his fellow citizens. He was a kind father, a faithful friend, a generous neighbor, a consistent Christian and an honest man. May he rest in peace. The Peace commissioners Traveling in Splendor – A St. Joseph paper of the 30th says: "We learn from Major Baldwin, agent of the Kickapoo Indians at Kennekuk, who had an interview with the Utah Peace Commissioners, Gov. Powell and Maj. McCullough while encamped at his place that they are traveling in great splendor. They have an escort of fifteen men and eight splendid carriages, each drawn by four superior mules. They expect to travel at the rate of 50 miles per day and will get their teams replenished at Fort Laramie."