sharpsville area historical society newsletter · 2020. 4. 26. · neighborhood of the dead-ends of...
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History, the common thinking goes, is about great events and
personages—wars and presidents, revolutions and inventors. But it is
much more than that—most broadly it is about preserving the memory
of human experience. Many memories often overlooked, though,
because they deal with the humble and every-day. They are thus at risk
of being never recorded and, once forgotten, lost forever.
One category that is often neglected yet is so vital to human culture
and experience are traditions of food and cookery. Knowledge and
expertise that was once regularly passed down from grandmother to
mother to daughter is now at risk of being forgotten.
We now live in an age where knowledge of cooking has been largely
removed from daily life. As best-selling food author Michael Pollan
points out, many Americans spend more time watching cooking shows
than in actual food preparation. Various trends, spanning several
decades, are blamed: generations of relatives living in different towns
let alone in the same household, women entering the workforce, greater
time demands made by careers, and a long, concerted effort of the food
industry to encourage purchase of ready-made or convenience foods,
whether at the drive-through or in the supermarket.
Alarming headlines of recent years include: “Millennials Don’t Know
How to Cook,” “The Traditional Cooking Skills that are Dying Out,”
“The Modern Destruction of Food Culture,” and so forth.
Surely, cookbooks preserve much of this knowledge, but they often
don’t record homestyle meals. Nor are they likely to include the hints
and techniques that, if grandma were peering over your shoulder, she
would be sure to remind you were the “right way” to prepare a dish. And,
when describing the notable dishes of a country or region, cookbooks
often include the disclaimer: “but every household has its own
variation.”
With Sharpsville’s strong representation of many ethnic groups, we
would especially like to preserve those recipes with a direct link to the
town’s immigrant ancestors. The Historical Society has in its archives
four cookbooks from local churches and women’s groups. But, being
from the 60s, and 70s, their recipes rely heavily on condensed soups,
jello molds, and the like: worthy now of their own sort of nostalgia, but
certainly not reflecting the traditional cookery of past generations. If you
have recipes that reflect one of the groups that make up Sharpsville—
Italian, Slovak, Irish, German, African-American, Yankee, and others—
we would like to include them in our archives. At the very least, if you
have an old dog-eared index card with one of Grandma’s favorites, take
it out and give it try sometime. And make sure to ask older family
members about their favorite memories of the kitchen and take care to
pass on this knowledge to the younger generations.
Sharpsville Area Historical Society Newsletter
Vol. IX, No. 1
May 2020
Upcoming Events
Due to restrictions on gatherings to help combat
the spread of COVID-19
Our ANNUAL QUILT SHOW, originally scheduled
for May 2nd
has been postponed until a later date
The following events are cancelled
until further notice:
GAMBLING SPREE BUS TRIPS
SATURDAY MUSEUM HOURS AT OUR HEADQUARTERS
MONTHLY MEETINGS OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Interesting items may be viewed under the Archives
section of our website
www.sharpsvillehistorical.org
With Gratitude
A significant grant that will allow us to continue
the restoration of our historic headquarters was
made by:
Erie Insurance Group
Contact Us
website: www.sharpsvillehistorical.org
email: [email protected]
see our website for officers’ phone numbers
Headquarters: 131 N. Mercer Ave., Sharpsville, Pa.
Mailing address: 955 Forest Lane,
Sharpsville, Pa. 16150
Meetings are held the First Monday of the Month at
7:00pm at our headquarters
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Building the Town
Annexation & Development
With Sharpsville’s borders mostly unchanged for close to a century, it can be hard to picture the borough any different
than it is now. Yet, the 1.4 square miles occupied by the town have had three significant additions—all at the expense of
Hickory Township. Indeed, Sharpsville along with the other incorporated municipalities in the Shenango Valley all at one
point belonged to Hickory Township (now Hermitage).
When Sharpsville was formed as a borough in 1874, the original northern boundary was, as now, the Shenango River. It
extended west to what is now 15th
Street. The eastern border was Mercer Avenue, before it made a jut along Walnut Street
to what is now Union Street. The southern boundary follows the current border between 15th
and 10th
Streets (in the
neighborhood of the dead-ends of 12th
and 13th
Street and extending in a straight line eastwards; Hittle Drive forms part of
that line as does Twitmyer Avenue (though at that time, Twitmyer was not yet part of Sharpsville).
While these borders remained static until 1909, we see earlier references to the Milliken Addition and Strawbridge
Addition to Sharpsville. Milliken’s added the section along Main Street, including the numbered streets, from First to
Seventh, and dates from either 1866 or 1869. Strawbridge’s continued further westward from Seventh to Eleventh Streets.
In 1871, it was reported that the “Strawbridge addition to Sharpsville thus far consists of 200 lots, of which over one-half
have been sold.” Two other sections named for James Pierce and his son Jonas, dated 1869 and 1872 respectively, are also
recorded. But since these “additions” were included in the Borough of Sharpsville’s original 1874 boundaries, they were
not annexations but expansions to the street plan of the town. Another relevant change happened shortly before Sharpsville’s
incorporation, though this involved a border. In 1870, a slice of land at the river bend, encompassing much of the Canal
Street flats area, was annexed to Hickory Township from Pymatuning Township. (What is now South Pymatuning was part
of Pymatuning Township until 1914.)
The development of a new town is measured, however, not just in the physical borders but in its population. With recent
decades of stagnant if not declining population, it is easy to forget an era when population growth was assumed. In the
twentieth century, the census enumeration for the borough grew from 2,970 (1900), 3,634 (1910), 4,674 (1920), 5,194
(1930), 5,129 (1940), 5,414 (1950), and to 6,061 (1960), before reaching a peak of 6,126 in 1970. (The population stands
at 4,415 as of the 2010 census.) Yet, even these figures fail to give a picture of the rapid growth in the town’s early years.
A 1873 newspaper report—when Sharpsville was but a locality with a post office, and a year before its incorporation—notes
that the population “is now over 2,000, having more than doubled during the past two years.” (This boomtown growth did
level off with the count in the 1880 census at 1,826, and 2,330 in the 1890 census.)
Despite these growing numbers, during the 19th century at least, Sharpsville’s original borders contained plenty of empty
tracts and room to grow. The map of Sharpsville from 1873, below, shows the lay-out building lots, both improved and
vacant. (Zoom in to see the detail on this and other images.)
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Annexation & Development, cont’d.
Even as late as 1930, photos taken from the top of a blast furnace looking south show an almost pastoral landscape beyond Pierce Avenue.
Above is 7th St. intersecting with Main St. at the billboard (with Rossi Barber Shop next to it. The First Presbyterian Church is in the Middle distance. Below is 8th St. intersecting with Main.
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Annexation & Development, cont’d.
The homebuilding during these early decades was often part of a real estate development. This is not a modern
phenomenon. In an older example, in 1896 the Oak Grove
Plan’s 27 fine residence lots were advertised. This was in the
area between of East Ridge Avenue and Line Street, between
Walnut Street and Mercer Avenue. In 1893, J.C. Mell offered
“Lots For Sale Cheap” along Pierce and Ridge Avenues,
between Tenth and Thirteenth Streets. The same year, Jonas
Pierce’s Edgewood Development was laid out, as shown in the
newspaper advertisement to the right; it touted the healthful air
and water of its hillside elevation. It even had a windmill,
reminiscent of the western prairie, to pump the well water. (In
the lower part of town, the stagnant water in the old canal was
considered disease-ridden, with malaria striking the borough
just nine years prior.) Both Pierce’s and Mell’s developments
promoted their proximity to the newly-opened streetcar line that
ran along Ridge Avenue to Sharon. Edgewood’s developer, Jonas
Pierce, even secured Borough Council’s approval for a small
streetcar station to service the new neighborhood.
If you are perplexed by Edgewood’s street layout, most were
never built. Nin-Ten Avenue, as indicated, was in-between
Ninth and Tenth Streets; if it extended further south in would
have included part of present-day Franklin Avenue. Orchard
Avenue corresponds to the western half of Quarry Way, and
Woodland Avenue is placed around the current location of
Pryde Avenue. Since the streets were never built as originally
laid out, we must presume that sale of the lots was slow.
Moreover, the Boston firm Sadler & Henderson later bought the
remaining Edgewood lots from Jonas Pierce and were still
offering them for sale in 1919: “All Large Lots $49 to $149.”
Yet, eventually Sharpsville would need to
expand its borders. The map shown to the left is
provided by the useful website
www.localgeohistory.pro. It shows the original
boundaries of the town, shaded in rose, plus its
three main additions that were carved off from
Hickory Township, outlined in blue to the east,
west, and south.
The first area to be annexed, on February 2,
1909, was the East End (sometimes called
Irishtown); it encompassed the Twitmyer and
Covert Avenue area, as well as lots on Thorn
Avenue and the east side of Union Avenue. (A
small sliver was added in 1920 to include the
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Annexation & Development, cont’d.
lots on the east side of Covert.) In 1919, Sharpsville’s boundary was extended west to include the area from 15th to 18th
Streets, along Ridge, Ashton, and Hall Avenues. This was known as Knight’s Addition or Annex, and was named by Martin
L. Knight, secretary of the Shenango Valley Street Railway Company. Growth in this area—too far to easily walk to the
business districts of Sharpsville or Sharon—was made possible by the construction of that streetcar line that connected the
two towns in 1893. A number of real estate transfers from Knight, beginning June 3, 1893, indicate the he saw the
investment potential of land along the new streetcar line. The designation as an “Annex”, however, was made long before
the actual annexation. A 1904 religious census of Sharpsville, for example, broke out separately Knight’s Annex (as well
as the West Side in South Pymatuning) from Sharpsville proper. Growth in this area was also influenced by the large number
of jobs only about a mile away at the Westinghouse plant in Sharon. Finally, the largest addition to the borough, to the
south, was added October 14, 1925 (after an unsuccessful attempt two months prior).
In 1939, a group of South Pymatuning residents proposed to Sharpsville Council that their section of the township be
annexed to the borough in order to gain access to water and sewer service. No action seems to have been taken on this
request.
Developers continued to play a part in the building of these newer parts of town. Reminders of these original
developments—whether by an active developer, or merely someone who owned a little acreage that was later subdivided
into lots—is given in the deed descriptions for many homes in Sharpsville. Examples include the Fye Plan of Lots on South
Fourth and Charles Street, the Paul DeSantis Plan of Lots going up the hill on Seventh, the Martin E. Cusick Plan of Lots
on Second Street near Buhl Park, and the William Perfett plan of lots along Eleanor Street. Out-of-state developers even
speculated in Sharpsville land. In 1925, lots in the Park Vista Plan, in the blocks of Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Streets
leading up to Buhl Park, were offered by the Miami Realty Auction Co. of Miami, Florida. They even sponsored a letter
writing contest “Why you should buy a lot in Park Vista”; first prize was won by Agnes Hunter, age 13.
The post- World War II building boom saw at times an almost frantic pace of building and development. From 1947 to
1955, 332 new homes were built in the Borough. Much of the residential construction continued to be done on lots
subdivided for development, often with contractors building the homes on spec. In 1950, Council gave approval for Calvert
Lumber Company to build thirteen new homes—two on Third Street, ten on Fourth Street, and one on Koehler Drive.
Builders Wade D. Mertz and Anthony Hoban, though competitors, each put up homes on alternating lots on Mayfield Road.
James McCracken laid out the lots in the much of the Wakefield-Koehler Drive and South Mercer Avenue area.
Aerial view ca. 1945 showing largely undeveloped area along 7th Street toward Buhl Park.
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Annexation & Development, cont’d.
This growth was bound to slow, if for no other reason, there was no more land to add to Sharpsville. (The only
exceptions were two small residential lots, each on Hughes Alley, that were annexed in 1946 and 1953. These were
essentially “islands” of Hickory Township that were not contiguous with any other street frontage in the township.) By
1955, annexation of Hickory Township was dead. Twentieth century annexations were usually for the purpose of
obtaining sewer service for new developments. (Septic tanks and leachbeds work fine for larger, rural lots, but not for
closely spaced suburban lots.) With Sharon, Farrell, and Sharpsville having existing sewer systems, poor Hickory was
slowly being eaten away. Township supervisors had plans to build their own sewer system, but realized that this would
never get off the ground if their potential customers were continually being poached by neighboring municipalities.
These supervisors saw that if they graduated from a second-class township to a first-class township, a township-wide
referendum would be required to approve any further annexation requests from a neighborhood. After overcoming
various legal hurdles and petition deadlines, the referendum was passed overwhelmingly. Further loss of land was
essentially stopped and Hickory proceeded with its own sewer system.
Yet, there remains a curious attempt an annexation since. In the 1960s, it was proposed that the land of the Riverside
Cemetery be annexed to be within Sharpsville. Some of you may say—wait, the town’s cemetery isn’t in Sharpsville?
Others of you may nod knowingly and respond—none of the cemeteries in the Shenango Valley lie within the
traditionally incorporated municipalities—that is, disregarding the latecomer City of Hermitage since it was an
unincorporated township until 1983. (Originally Hickory Township, it was renamed Hermitage Township in 1976.)
Sharon’s cemetery, Oakwood, is not in Sharon. (Actually, its office and maintenance building are, but the graves are
all in Hermitage.) A map of the Farrell-Hermitage border shows a curious zig-zag on Sharon-New Castle Road and an
odd island on Mercer Avenue; they carve out the cemeteries in the vicinity so that they lie within Hermitage. It has
been assumed that reason for this was some old state law forbade the location of a cemetery within a city or borough.
But is that the case?
No state law prohibited a burial ground from being located within a city or borough, though various statutes regulated
them. For example, the Act of April 18, 1877 permitted that: “When, by the growth of cities and the opening of
incorporated cemeteries in the vicinity thereof, or from other causes, any burial ground belonging to or in charge of any
religious society or church directly or through trustees therefor, has ceased to be used for interments, the courts . . .,
upon petition of the . . . trustees of such . . .church, . . . may direct the removal of the remains of the dead,” provided
proper notice is given, a majority of the parish members approve, and the removal is to permit the expansion of buildings
for religious purposes. On the other hand, the Borough Act of 1851 did grant to the local authority the power “to
Aerial view of 7th Street, mid-1950s, with new construction on Woodland and Mayfield.
Brown’s Greenhouse is in the lower left.
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Annexation & Development, cont’d.
prohibit within the borough the burial or interment of deceased persons.”
Indeed, we see this in Sharon which had churchyard cemeteries behind the First Baptist and First Methodist. (Three
Catholic burial plots were also located in the Fisher Hill area, on North Oakland Avenue, Meek Street, and Brooklyn
Street. These graves were later moved to St. Mary’s Cemetery.) Dr. J.M. Irvine, one of the co-founders of Oakwood
Cemetery, lobbied the state legislature to pass an act in 1868 to prohibit burials within Sharon’s boundaries. Four
years later, the General Assembly passed another law to allow the graves behind the First Methodist Episcopal Church
in Sharon (at Irvine Avenue and Silver Street) to be removed to Oakwood, as the Methodist burying ground “is now
located in a populous part of said town, and from situation and size is no longer suitable for such purpose.” It is left
to speculation whether Dr. Irvine’s push to ban in-town burials was motivated by a desire to increase lot sales for
Oakwood Cemetery. But whatever the particular impetus behind the Sharon cemetery statute, the establishments of
Oakwood in 1866 and Riverside in 1872 were part of the Rural Cemetery Movement. This movement, started in the
1830s, joined together various interests—concerns over public health, freeing up city lots to accommodate growth, and
a reconsideration that a natural surrounding offered the tranquility more appropriate for a final resting place. The
park-like landscapes of this style of cemetery offered beauty and solitude away from the noise of the town, in contrast
to the somber, crowded churchyards they replaced.
Sharpsville, on the other hand, was still part of Hickory Township when Riverside Cemetery was founded in 1872.
The location for Riverside was personally chosen by General Pierce for being on a pleasant bluff, and not because it
stood outside of any municipal boundary. When the original borough lines were drawn two years later, there would
have been little reason to include acreage that did not add to the tax base. Likewise, as Sharon grew in size, it annexed
the land around Oakwood Cemetery but not the cemetery itself. A similar process can be seen as Farrell grew eastward
toward the cemeteries on Mercer Avenue and Sharon-New Castle Road.
This brings us back to the proposed an nexation of the eleven acres of Riverside Cemetery. The idea appears to have
first been broached at a February 13, 1962 meeting of the cemetery’s board. Since its members were from Sharpsville,
the interments were mostly Sharpsville residents, and there was a history of cooperation with the Borough, the idea
seemed natural and to some extent symbolic, though for the cemetery they would receive improved police patrols as
well as assistance with upkeep of its roads. Sharpsville would officially have a place to stage its Memorial Day
observation and Hickory’s police would be freed from patrolling a disconnected area. Initial inquiries to Hickory
Township were made then, but it was not until 1966 that the formal procedure of distributing a petition was begun.
The measure was place on the ballot, where it was received approval of both Sharpsville and Hickory voters in the
November 7, 1967 election.
Indeed, meeting minutes of the
Riverside Cemetery Board over
the next fifteen years show that it
was the understanding of both the
Cemetery Board and the Borough
Council that the annexation did
take place.
Yet, the belief that Riverside
still lies within what is now the
City of Hermitage, not only
persists but is general. While
some current maps position the
border correctly, the majority were
never updated and still show the
old boundary line. The confusion
can thus be blamed on the
inattention of mapmakers who
ignored this last addition to
Sharpsville.
Aerial view, ca. 1930, of Ridge Avenue, 15th, 16th and 17th Streets