Area History: A Centennial History - Mahanoy City FORWARD AND CHAPTER 1 PAGES 1 - 4 This copy contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Shirley Ryan sryan@enter.net USGENWEB NOTICE: Printing this file by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission fromthe submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. __________________________________________________________________ FORWARD AND CHAPTER 1 PAGES 1 - 4 A CENNENTIAL HISTORY: THIS MATERIAL IS TRANSCRIBED FROM THE 1963 CENTENNIAL BOOKLET ENTITLED "MAHANOY CITY, SCHUYLKILL COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA 1863-1963, A HISTORY". THE HISTORIANS WHO COMPILED THIS HISTORY WERE: JOSEPH H. DAVIES, CHAIRMAN CHARLES H. ENGLE ELWOOD M. YOUNG Transcribed by: Shirley E. Thomas Ryan June 22, 2002 MAHANOY CITY, SCHUYLKILL COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA 1863-1963 A HISTORY Foreword: It is impossible, in a volume this size, to include many events and incidents that should be chronicled. Hundreds of pages of manuscript have been condensed or eliminated in the preparation of this work. It attempts only to present dates relating to the early life of the community. The compilers hope that at some future time a more complete history will be written. The Historical Committee is deeply indebted to the writers of county histories and those who have made available newspaper files, legal documents, diaries, letters and photographs, as well as recollections from "the treasure-house of Memory". Space limitations prevent the name of the many individuals who have been helpful in the preparation o The Centennial History of Mahanoy City, but the contributions of the late Mrs. Thomas L. (Augusta Dillman) Thomas are of much value as to merit grateful acknowledgment. Joseph H. Davies, Chairman Charles H. Engle Elwood M. Young CHAPTER I Page 1 - 4 THE PIONEERS Page 1 - While the history of Mahanoy City dates officially from September 11, 1863, when the petition for the borough charter was approved by the Grand Jury of Schuylkill County or, to be more exact, from December 16 that year when an order of the Court of Common Pleas confirmed the charter, the community had its beginnings more than seven decades earlier. The Schuylkill County histories of 1881, 1893 and 1907 are agreed on this for each speak of "A German named Reisch, who located on the present side of Mahanoy City in 1791". Mrs. T. H. B. Lyon, in a paper read at a meeting of the Schuylkill County Historical Society on May 31, 1905, on the subject, "History of Mahanoy City and the Building of Mahanoy Tunnel", also mentions Reisch, "a hunter", who "some say...used to spend most of his time in the woods". "The Immortal Peddler or The Story of the Peddler's Grave", believed to have been first published in the magazine sections of a metropolitan newspaper many years ago, which tells of the gruesome murder of Jost Folhaber, an itinerant merchant who made a simple living traveling from place to place, gives us more detailed information concerning our pioneer settler for it was at Reisch's dwelling that the peddler and his slayer, Benjamin Bailey, of Morristown, N.J., met on the morning of August 11, 1797, several hours before the crime. But, throughout "The Immortal Peddler" narrative, Reisch's name appears as "John Reich" and since court records of Bailey's trail are quoted, we may assume that rendering is correct. Of Reich's dwelling, Mrs. Lyons wrote: "It was an old log house when first known and situated on the east side of the old Catawissa Turnpike, which is now Main Street, and directly opposite the offices of the Mansion House building". The author of "The Immortal Peddler" says the pike was a "single road, sparsely traveled". The Cataswissa road entered Schuylkill County at Port Clinton, turning northward, west of the Little Schuylkill River, to McKeansburg. Continuing in the same northerly direction, it passed through "Devil's Hole" to Lewiston then went down Sharp Mountain to Tuscarora. Turning northwestward as it went down the Locust Mountain, it next crossed Locust Valley, passing in front of St. Peter's Church to the Valley House from Page 2 - were it traveled through the hollow south to the present road from Locust Valley to Mahanoy City, which course it then followed. It crossed Mahanoy City to the Peddler's Gravel and Krebs Stations, then on to Ringtown and along the Catawissa Creek to the town of Catawissa. The road reached Mahanoy City at the east end of the first block on Spruce Street and proceeded diagonally through the middle of Main and Market Streets, skipping the corner of the Mansion House, passing over the ground where the Reing Building now stands and then north to the present road known as Route 44. Until March 23, 1923, the site of the cabin was marked by some weigh scales, which were removed during a repaving program. The main part of the simple structure was torn down about 1850. For a number of years the Reich home was the only house for three miles along the Catawissa pike. Of Reich's and his family, little is known. That there was a Mrs. Reich is attested by records of the Berks County Courts and "The Immortal Peddler" narrative. After Bailey had committed his foul deed, the tale unfolds, he discarded his coat and hat, which were covered with the blood of his victim, whose skull he split with a hatchet or small ax after shooting him in the back. He then returned to the inn where "Mrs. Reich, the landlord's wife, greeted him." Statements made by the murderer later told how she inquired for his coat and hat, to which he replied that he had lost both "in the wilderness". Bailey was apprehended in Easton, when suspicion pointed to him after the discovery of Folhaber's partially decomposed body on August 26, 1797, fifteen days after the murder was committed. He was traced hrough his attempts to dispose of the peddler's wares, which he had stolen. John Christ, sheriff of Berks County, took Bailey into custody and removed him tot he county prison in Reading. At the time of his arrest, he denied any knowledge of the crime and tried to incriminate eich by asserting that it was his opinion that the man who had befriended him by giving him food and lodging had committed the murder. Because of his charges, Reich was placed under arrest but no further action was taken when the falsity of the allegation was proved. The murder trial began on Thursday, November 1, 1797, and twenty-four hours later the jury returned a verdict of "guilty of willful and deliberate murder". The court records disclose that Reich and his wife had at least one child, a son, as he, with his parents, is listed among the twenty-six witnesses who testified against Bailey. Page 3 - Governor Mifflin signed Bailey's death warrant on December 23, 1797 and he was hanged on the Commons, now the public park, at Reading, on January 8, 1798. He was in his thirty-first year at the time of his execution. Shortly after midnight, on the day on which he was hanged, Bailey confessed his guilt and mourned the fact that he had tried to implicate Reich. In support of Mrs. Lyon's statement, "Many different tenants seem to have occupied this log temporarily," later research has discovered their identity. Judge D. C. Henning, in a paper published in Volume I, No. 3, of the proceedings of the Schuylkill County Historical Society, wrote that Reich was succeeded in the occupancy of the log house by "one Godard, whose successor was Jacob Faust, who was succeeded by Emanuel Boyer". However, Jacob Faust was not the immediate successor of Godard but the last one of several members of the Faust family to reside in the house within a brief span of years. In "The Guidebook of the Lehigh Valley and Its Several Branches and Connections", published by J. B. Lippincott and Co., Philadelphia in 1873, mention is made that in 1810 Peter Knalb erected a tavern "near the site of the hay scales, which is the first house of which anything positive is remembered". There is a possibility that Knalb enlarged the original Reich domicile. John Faust (1774-1847) was the first member of his family to occupy the cabin into which he moved in 1835 "to look after some timber land which belonged to the Little Schuylkill Company", according to family records. He was 61 years old at the time. Apparently he was not in good health as he remained in the house only during the winter months moving, in the spring, to Locust Valley where on April 27, 1827, he had acquired twelve acres of land. His sons, William, Henry (Jonathan) and Jacob, with their families, then occupied the possession house in that order.A daughter, Rebecca, born there to William and his wife, Rebecca, nee Lindenmuth, was the first child born on the present site of the borough. In young womanhood, she because he bride of Henry (William) Mauger. Jacob Faust, the last tenant to bear the Faust name, brought some land near Pleasant Hill and, in 1853, built a hostelry for Emanuel Boyer, his successor and final occupant of the old log house. To Boyer belongs the distinction of being the first permanent resident of Mahanoy City. Arriving here in 1853, in which year he accepted the post of agent for the Little Schuylkil Company, he and is family resided tentatively in the old Reich inn while Jacob Faust erected the new hotel, The Mahanoy House, at 10 East Centre Street. With its completion, the front part of the old building, which had been standing for sixty-two years, was torn down and the back part moved and attached to the rear of the Mahanoy House to be used as a dining room and kitchen. In the new hotel, William H. Boyer, the community's first male child, was born on February 15, 185. His sister, Mary, was born there in March 1856, a year-and-seven-months earlier. Emanuel Boyer was a native of Schuylkill County, having been born in Schuylkill Township in 1829. On reaching manhood, he located in Middleport and opened a tailorshop there. In 1850, he was married to Elizabeth Horne, of Union Township, at Tuscarora. The newlyweds resided for a short time in that community where Mr. Boyer was employed in the store of Joseph Adlers. The couple then moved to Tamaqua where their son, Ben, was born, and where, in 1853, Boyer accepted the position of agent for the Little Schuylkill Company. Mrs. Lyons tells us: "When Mr. Boyer settled here his nearest neighbor was Mr. William Faust, who was stationed by the Little Schuylkill Company in a possession house on a small farm back of what is now known as Lanigan's Patch (Ellengowen). That was three miles from Mahanoy City". In recalling his boyhood, William H. Boyer remembered Samuel Everett, "who resided back of Maple Hill", as his father's nearest neighbor. More correctly, the Everett farm was west of Suffolk. Page 4 - Upon locating here, Mr. Boyer acquired four lots. Three were located at the southeast corner of Main and Centre Streets and he built the Mahanoy House on the third lot, disposing of the other lots as well as three lots from market Street to Pine Street, just opposite his Centre Street Lots, which he bought also, within several years. He paid $1100 for the six lots for which he received a deed in 1861. In the same year that Mahanoy City because a borough, Mr. Boyer sold the Mahanoy House to M. L. Johnson who previously had been a salesman of Howe sewing machines. Mr. Boyer built two brick kilns, one near Pine Street and another near the northeast corner of Main and Mahanoy Streets. The bricks were made from the clay taken from these lots which were covered with culm and earth and sold to Messrs. Kear and Patterson. St. Paul's United Church of Christ now stands where the first mentioned of these kilns was located. For many years, Mr. Boyer was prominent in borough affairs. In 1873, he served a term as Chief Burgess and, to quote the invaluable 1881 history, "his term...was marked by a contest between the Council and himself, in which he maintained the interests of the taxpayers in the courts, and contributed materially to a more economical administration". He possessed a keen memory even in his advanced years and was able to recall with clarity early events during the Old Home week celebration in 1913. His demise occurred the same year. His son, William, who furnished many of the above details, died September 12, 1938. Mrs. Lyons also tells of an old cemetery "on the hillside north of the Reading depot". She writes: "The graves were fenced in when Mr. Boyer came here, but there were never any headstones or marks of any kind to tell who bodies they contained. The graves are now entirely obliterated". Can it be that John Reich was buried there? Did the unmarked graves contain the mortal remains of his wife and son, or of other children the couple may have had? Might not one or more of these unknown dead have fought in the War of the Revolution? Whoever they may have been, they are the unsung pioneers of Mahanoy City and we pay them tribute. Fain would we know more of them. Brave pioneering sous, "in pace requiescat". .txt