******

                                                      ******

President's Report, By David Wulderk - Spring 2020         

____________

None of us, as we entered 2020, would have thought that our lives would have been so disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.  It is the worst health crisis since the 1918 Influenza Epidemic that took hundreds of lives in Clearfield County alone.  Let us hope and pray that we will never see such a tragedy ever repeated. 

The Clearfield County Historical Society, like any other organization in the US, has too been affected.  We will not be able to open our Kerr House Museum and the Alexander Research Center on May 3; as was planned.  We will not open until Governor Wolf, working with commonwealth health experts, deems it safe to do so.  Unfortunately, our Mothers Day Tea, planned for May 10, is cancelled for this year.    We will have to see what June and the summer months bring us.

Our board of directors held a monthly meeting by means of a phone conference call.   This is a part of the new and, hopefully, temporary normal. We are, though, making progress.  Our heating system at the research center has been replaced and upgraded.  The board has purchased a Scan Pro 2200 microfilm reader and a laser jet printer to vastly improve the efficiency of researching our county microfilmed data holdings.

The board has also republished the 1922 James Mitchell Lumbering and Rafting book and will add it to our publications inventory for sale.  It is an excellent book that has been skillfully reviewed in this bulletin issue by board member Bob Eshelman.

 Our Christmas Holiday annual book sale in December was an outstanding success!  Many of the books purchased were used for gifts, including the new Public Spirit book of genealogy and township anecdotes, compiled by Diane and Jim Yarger.  Over 200 of the 300 printed copies of our Back In the Day cookbook, which is a collection of submitted family recipes, were sold in the month of December alone! Julie Houston, of our board, was the driving force behind the cookbook’s creation.

On a sad note; the CCHS mourns the passing of former board member, Sgt. Major Morton Shea Landy of Mahaffey.  He passed away in November at the age of 91.  He was a decent man, a dedicated and career US Marine, and a good friend and board member.  Mort asked that his dress blue uniform be donated to the CCHS Museum’s military display room.  We will be proud to feature it.  Board member, Denny Shaffner, has written a moving tribute to Mort that appears in this issue of our bulletin.

In spite of these troubled times; the CCHS still looks forward.  We hope to have a Suffern’ Suffrage program, for the public, to be held in late June to mark the 100^th anniversary of the passing of the 19th US constitutional amendment, that granted women’s voting rights, everywhere in the nation. The Clearfield County Fair is always an attraction and the CCHS plans to again be a part of the fair parade and sponsor the Derby Hat Day at the Grandstand racing track. We are making and tweaking plans to hold our vastly popular Night At The Museum event in August.  The Apple Cider Festival at the historic Bloody Knox Cabin in Kellytown is still on for October.

We are a historical society, so we also look to the past.  In July, the Frenchville Picnic will mark its 150^th outing at the St. Mary’s RC Church grounds.  Board member, Mary Kay Royer, has been instrumental in coordinating this time honored and well loved event.  Likewise, in late July, the Houtzdale Days Committee is expanding its celebration to mark the 150^th anniversary of the borough’s founding.  1870 was a significant year for Clearfield County!

Please visit our website at clearfieldcountyhistoricalsociety.net review samples of our ever growing collection of county historical postcard and photo scenes.  They represent a wide selection of life and scenes in Clearfield County that have since passed into county history.  Our website manager, Jim Moore, has created and added this great visual section and invites site visitors to submit their post cards by emailing them to Here’s My Postcard. These confining times have seen more and more interest in our website, as well as our Facebook and Instagram  sites.

We are proud to have all of you as part of our CCHS!  When this virus passes; remember to renew and reignite your interest in the rich history of Clearfield County.  When we all able to move about freely; bring your family and friends to visit our museum and research center.  Make it a family tradition to attend our historical events.  We warmly welcome you!  Remember, history often begins at home! 

                               David Wulderk, President CCHS

President’s Report - Fall 2019

As usual, the summer has gone by rapidly and the crisp autumn air and diminishing daylight are once again upon us. Also, as usual, the Clearfield County Historical Society is firmly dedicated to the service of preserving and retelling Clearfield County’s fascinating, and often times personal historical stories, that can move us all.

Our society and board members have reached out to include a sizeable network of reliable and generous friends and donors.  Our events, now annual landmarks as a society, would not be possible without the efforts of so many kind  locals who are glad to pitch in and help.

Our Mothers Day Tea and participation in the Clearfield County Fair Parade were great successes!  Our first of its kind “Hat Derby”, mimicking the Kentucky Derby event, was a hit at the county fair harness races, as women (and a few men) donned most fancy and unique hats they could find or make.  The pageant culminated in the judging of the best hat of the day and was won by Monica McMahon, of Janesville.  It was a good time worth repeating next year!

 The Night At The Museum event, after only two years, has become a showpiece.  It began, on August 14, with a disheartening rain, which stopped after 45 minutes.  And then the crowds came pouring in! At last count, 534 people attended to hear and see nearly two dozen volunteers dress and take the part of significant Clearfield County folks whose life stories stood out as worthy of portraying.  Our message is that ordinary people can find themselves in situations, achievements and jobs that make them stand out as extraordinary.  The event is family friendly and free of charge. This year, we observed more parents and grandparents who brought their kids and teens.

Likewise, our October Apple Cider Festival, at the Bloody Knox Cabin, in Kellytown again this year, displayed slices of life and technology that are gone or fading fast.  The Society has used this festival to turn a tragic Civil War shootout into a family oriented local history day; complete with pumpkins and an egg toss game!

We have kept up with building maintained by replacing the Carriage House garage doors and replacing the heating system in the Alexander Research Center. The county theater display, in the Kerr House Museum is fascinating to visitors and we will have an amateur radio display in place shortly.  1892 crank wall phones have been installed and are popular with kid’s tours.

The 1897 Public Spirit History of Clearfield County has been researched and reedited by Diane Stodart Yarger, formerly of Madera and her husband Jim, formerly of Sanborn.  Their thousands of hours of work have produced an outstanding book that details genealogies and an incredible amount of short and often amusing anecdotes.  The stories sometimes sound like the old Believe It Or Not series that once ran on The Progress’ comic page.  Mrs. Yarger was the guest speaker at our dinner; detailing how she went about resurrecting the unique county history from obscurity to an educational and entertaining level.  CCHS board members and friends read select excerpts from the many anecdotes as part of the dinner’s speaking program.  The crowd loved it!  The CCHS has published the book and added it to our sale inventory list.

I would be remiss if I did not thank two Clearfield County news publications for their kind support the CCHS’s goal of bringing county history to life.  Each week, Jessica Shirey, of Gant Daily, an online source, presents a Throwback Thursday section to show an old county photo, accompanied by an explaining article.  They have run everything from an 1890’s trained bear act in Wallaceton to 1919 tornado damage in Glen Richey to teens doing the Limbo Rock at an early 60’s YMCA dance in Clearfield!  We are grateful.

Our profound thanks and appreciation go out to The Progress for donating over a century’s worth of the newspaper’s microfilm reels to the CCHS.  This acquisition is a historical treasure, if there ever was one!  Our microfilm library now has the foremost county news source of the 20^th century and beyond. The reels cover the time from the newspaper’s beginnings in 1913 until 2016. Everything from business ads to obituaries, to area happenings are chronicled for visiting researchers, genealogists and historians to use.  Our gratitude is deep and we thank publisher Pat Patterson and editor, Julie Benemati-Noal, for their kind efforts at coming through for us! We will now concentrate at upgrading our microfilm reading and printing machine technology.

So please visit our museum and research center.  You are most welcome to attend our events.  Pennsylvania’s rural county historical museums are more valuable than many people would imagine.  We invite you to see ours. 

                                         David Wulderk, President

President’s Report

My first year as president of the Clearfield County Historical Society has gone by quickly.  That is probably because it has been so busy!  Our Kerr House Museum and Alexander Research Center have hosted plenty of visitors and researchers. We have received a good deal of worthwhile acquisitions and have opened our doors and sponsored events to a great cross section of the public.  Clearfield County has a richly storied past.  It is easy to begin by looking for a few facts and then end up with surprising events and stories.

The first Mothers Day Tea was held in the dining room of the Kerr House in May.  It was well attended and worth having again.

In August, the Society hosted a Night At The Museum program. Both directors and friends of the Society dressed and acted he parts pertinent county historical figures; some famous and some obscure.  The format mimicked the movie of the same title.  WTAJ-TV featured us on their Central PA Live program. The whole evening was a smashing success!  Perhaps 350 visitors passed through the rooms of the Kerr House to see and hear characters portrayed as if they had come alive.  The heat and humidity were oppressive and the rain may have kept some away, but the evening backed up the old “learning can be fun” maxim. Refreshments were offered. Our heartfelt thanks go out to all involved with the evening!  We hope to do it all again next summer with some of the same and some added characters!

The Apple Cider Festival at Kellytown’s Bloody Knox Cabin was a fine time had by all!  For fourteen years, we have been blessed by good weather (or at least not rained out) so that we can make 19^th and early 20^th century county history and craftsmanship come alive.  We aim to please and target this day as a family friendly event to be enjoyed by those of all ages.  Our Society’s public programs are, as always, free of charge. Our heartfelt thanks go out to Northwest Bank for again sponsoring the festival.

This year, The Progress office relocated to its new quarters on Market Street, in Clearfield. Before leaving the old Locust Street site, the management donated thousands of negatives of local news photos; some going back sixty or more years.  It may take that long to sort them all out, but we are indeed grateful. Special thanks go to director Dave Mayersky for using his work crew and equipment to move the many boxes and keeping them in safe storage until they can be examined.

The volunteer group who cleared and restored the Old County Home Cemetery has finished most of its work.  This group did the hard and dirty physical labor to give a presentable upgrade to the final resting place of hundreds of the county’s indigent and often disposed citizens.  Look forward, next year, to the dedication of a sign marking the cemetery and the commemorating the restoration.

Our 64^th Annual CCHS Dinner was held on Thursday, October 25, at St. Timothy’s Church Hall in Curwensville.   We are grateful to CBT/Riverview Bank and Bee Kind Winery for their generous sponsorship. Rebecca Inlow, of Osceola Mills, gave a superb presentation regarding her new book, The Rowland Story From Ashes To Beauty . The book portrays a fascinating biography of Charles Rowland of Houtzdale, and later Philipsburg, as well as the history of Philipsburg’s Rowland Theater.  Rowland served two terms in the US House of Representatives and was a founding corporate officer and investor in the legendary Alley Popper Railroad; that provided passenger and coal hauling service to southeastern Clearfield County, from Philipsburg to Fernwood. One of Rowland’s Successful business efforts was the theater that bears his name; opened in 1917. It is today operated by a community volunteer group of which Mrs. Inlow is dedicated and vital member.

The annual Christmas program and local historical book and map sale is scheduled for Saturday, December 8, from 1:00 to 4:00, at the Kerr House museum.

Our volunteer host program continues to serve us well. Jim Moore does a splendid job at maintaining our very comprehensive website at clearfieldcountyhistoricalsociety.org

So, it has been a whirlwind year; but a productive one.  It would not be possible without the hard working and dedicated board of directors and such good friends and volunteers. If one wants to see the good in this world; he/she need only to look around Clearfield County.

Have a health, safe and blessed Holiday Season and New Year!

                                                          David Wulderk, President, CCHS

(Click any image for a 'blow-up view)