Part 2. From the Lykens Standard, 2 May 1902:
RECOLLECTIONS OF 40 YEARS
Regarding the Lykens Valley Coal Mines and Vicinity Adjacent
BY RICHARD NOLEN, ESQ.
Which first appeared in 1865 in the Upper Dauphin Register and Lykens Valley Miner, published by Samuel B. Coles and G. Washington Fenn.
I was still living on my little farm, three miles below, whither I went and got my horse and rode to Halifax, which was thirteen miles farther, and procured the Rev. Mr. Sovrain, a preacher in the M. E. church, to come up and perform the funeral services. He did so, and stood on the porch in front of Michael Sheafer’s house opposite the large brick house where he preached the first sermon that was ever preached in that section of the country. The corpse was then taken to Gratztown and buried. The next religious service was a prayer meeting held in a little stone schoolhouse which stood near about where the coal dirt bank has been burning for years. This schoolhouse I also built. I was advised by some of my friends to go up there and open a prayer-meeting, which I did upon consultation with another member of the same church and with his aid. The meeting was kept up in the schoolhouse for some time – in fact until another schoolhouse was built, near where the small grave-yard now is; the preaching and other meetings and Sunday schools were held after that in the latter mentioned house until churches were built, of which I shall speak hereafter.
It was in this year (1833), that the Company commenced, through Mr. H. Sheafer, their agent, to send coal to Millersburg. This was done in cars drawn by mules, and occupied two days to make a trip, as the road was poorly constructed and they often got off the track. Upon arriving at Millersburg the coal was shipped across the Susquehanna River to the canal at Mt. Patrick. The mode of transferring the coal across the river was in this wise: the cars were run on large boats which had each a railroad track on them, each flat taking about four cars at a trip, and were thus poled across the river.
About this time Mr. Jacob Stehley of Harrisburg, opened a small rum-home in Lykens near the WIconisco Creek, and close by the old railroad. His liquor was brought up to him from Millersburg and Dietrich’s still house in jugs by the drivers who took the coal down the railroad. The jugs generally came back full, but as I understood sometime afterwards from some of the drivers, it was not always the same stuff that was put into them where they started, as the fine springs along the road enabled them to extract their percentage without detection.
Just about this time Henry Sheafer opened the first store ever kept thereabouts in a small shanty built alongside Mr. Michael Sheafer’s In this year, 1833, the large brick house was also built; I done the stone work and Mr. Morgan of Harrisburg done the brick work.
Our elections were still held in Gratz, as Wiconisco Township had not yet been erected out of Lykens Township. In the years 1838 we held our first election under the common school law (for its adoption or rejection). We who were the friends of the system, carried the election by one majority; but one of our opponents went to Harrisburg and had the election set aside, on the ground that there were one or more illegal votes cast. A second election was ordered and we failed in carrying this system by forty votes.
Soon after this I went to Mr. Thomas Harper, living at the time at the Oak Dale Forge, and asked him how he through it would do to have the township divided. He replied that he though it would do very well. I stated to him that I would take a petition around if he would write it, which he consented to do. He wrote the petition and I took it up to Gratz and at the ensuing election, I procured from two hundred signatures, all seeming glad to get rid of making the Williams Valley Road, not for a moment thinking they were cutting off the most valuable part of the then Lykens Township by including all the coal lands within the proposed Wiconisco Township. Mr. Frey was keeping the tavern at Gratz, and Mr. Solomon Shindle owned the store in the same house in which the election was held, and after I procured most of the signatures to the petition they comprehended its import and tried t persuade members of its signers to erase their names, but as I did not want my petition spoiled I started for home. In a few days I went to Harrisburg to have it acted upon by the Legislature, but found that body on the point of adjournment. One of the members advised me to present the petition to the next court and have it locate the boundaries of the new township, which advice I acted upon and went down to the next court; but being ignorant of the fact that matters of this kind had to be laid before the grand jury, I found myself again too late as the grand jury was through its business. Fortunately it happened that an extra session of the Legislature was held in June (this was 1839) and at this session a law was passed fixing the boundary lines as well as the place of holding future elections for Wiconisco Township. The time for holding the election on the adoption or rejection of the Common School Law was the second Monday of August of said year, and the place was the house of Michael Sheafer in what is now Wiconisco. The election was held accordingly, 78 votes being polled and only three of that number were against the law. Thomas Harper, Henry Scheafer and myself were elected the first school directors. Shortly afterward we started out to determine upon the locations of the new schoolhouses, as at this time there was but one schoolhouse within the entire boundaries of the new township. The first we located in the lower end of the township, the second at the point called Stony Hill, both of which are now in Washington Township. The third we located in what is now Wiconisco; the fourth, father up the valley. The elections were still held in the house of Michael Sheafer, and it was not until 1851 that an act was passed by the Legislature changing the place to a house of Mr. Henry Sheafer, Michael Sheafer having died in November of the year 1849, about the time he was finishing his hotel stand, now owned by J. H. Pontius. In 1851 Captain George E. Wilt from Harrisburg, moved into the house occupied by Michael Sheafer until his death, and in the same year the Legislature passed an act changing the place of holding the elections back to its original base.
[Continued in part 3].
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From Newspapers.com.
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