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Welcome new life members Robert Dwyer and Barbara Dwyer. Thank you to Joyce Adgate for becoming a Life Member.
Make dinner plans for Oct. 8 for the Spaghetti Take-Out dinner at the Sons and Daughters of Italy at 1 N. Henderson St., Lock Haven, from 5-7p.m. Cost is $10. Tickets are on sale at the Heisey House Museum, from board members and may be purchased online at https://www.zeffy.com/en/US/ticketing/spaghetti-dinner-20
We had a great time with Dave and Monique Pinelli in September. A lot of friends and members came out to enjoy music about their growing up in Lock Haven and the conversation flowed. Four women, all named Joanne or JoAnn, met up for a few laughs! (Facebook's AI noted it was a lighthearted posting.)
Thanks to Wayne Laubscher, who also attended Dave Pinelli's concert, we now know the names of the men in the 1927 General Refractories Beech Creek photo. Wayne found his grandfather in the photo by locating a list identifying the employees in the photo.
We also thank Patriot tree surgeons for spraying and trimming foliage off the furnace in Farrandsville. On the list of Historic Places, the Furnace is the first of its type to be built in North America!
There was a great turnout for our Happy Hour and we were able to say thanks to the generous donors funding the cleaning of Annie Snyder's "Strawberries." "Peaches in a Basket" and "Three Pears" will be delivered to Hallman Conservators in Montgomery Village, Md., within the next two weeks.
We saw a great turnout for artist Hua Shen's art exhibit opening on Sept 22. The art pieces are thrilling and the Chinese Tea Ceremony quite interesting! We thank Hua for sharing her passion for tea culture and art. The exhibit in the Poorman Gallery will be on display through January 2026.
Local fifth and sixth graders visited the Heisey to supplement their studies of American History. We hope they enjoyed it as much as we did! Comparing the stereoscopes with View Masters was fun.
From the Collection
By Kathy Arndt
The 1860 journal of R. P. Huling was found recently in the collection. Written between April 1st and December 31st, Huling's diary detailed his life while working for the Chatham Run sawmill and for nearby farms. His friends mentioned in the diary included other young people (Ben Miller, Tom Crawford, Bob and John Quiggle and the Crowell boys), farmers (George Ramm, the Browns and the Fergusons) and sawmill owners (the Shaws, the Whites and the Crists).
Each day's entry began with a weather report. He described the days variously as being cloudy, clear, fine, sultry, snowy, rainy, disagreeable, hot, cold, cool or warm, among other terms. He was also lucky enough to see a rare lunar rainbow (moon bow) as well as one of the greatest celestial events of the 1800s -- the Great Meteor Procession of 1860. On July 20th, Huling wrote of a passing meteor that lit up his room at 10 o'clock in the evening. The meteor shower that traveled almost 1,000 miles from the skies of Michigan to the Atlantic Ocean inspired a painting by Frederick Church and a poem by Walt Whitman.
Huling followed his daily weather reports with descriptions of his day's work. He detailed his work at the sawmill that included working on the machinery; clearing the wood yard and maintaining the slide; making fences, railroad ties and boom timbers; and supervising "the boys." His farm duties throughout the growing seasons included topping and husking corn, raking buckwheat, stacking straw, cradling oats and Hungarian grass, raising potatoes and seeding wheat. One interesting note of his daily activity schedule was that he never used the term "morning" but instead used the term "forenoon."
Much of his spare time was spent at parties and dances with his friends and the ladies at the Charlton House and the Shaws. After seeing a panorama at the Charlton House he described himself as being "a sight worth a nickel coming down the stairs." He also attended Republican meetings at "Trump's place" in Wayne Township and Democratic meetings in Lock Haven. He played Euchre, a card game that may have been invented in Pa. in the 1820s, was learning chess and taking German lessons at the Ramm farm. He attended frequent church services and prayer meetings "across the river" in Wayne Township although he did admit to sleeping through some of the sermons. He read books and wrote frequent letters to his relatives, some of whom lived in Jersey Shore. Huling also swam in the canal and was placqueing chubb that may mean something other than putting chubb on a plaque.
The last quarter of Huling's journal was about preparing to move logs down Sinnamahoning Creek in Elk County to the Susquehanna River in Keating to the Chatham Run sawmill. He spent time in a logging camp in Caledonia in Elk County. At the camp, Huling peeled and stamped logs, helped build the slide to get the logs to the landing, "splashed" the logs into a pool behind a dam and broke up log jams. Unfortunately, the year ended before he started down the creek with the logs. His 1860 journal finished with the following: "the boys are shooting the old year away this evening."
The journal was a challenge to read because of his penmanship, unfamiliar words and the jargon of the lumber industry, but it was certainly worth it to see mid-century Clinton County directly through the words of one of its residents. I just wish the Historical Society had his 1861 journal if he had written one. We'll keep looking.