Local History-part 5

In 1743 George Orwig and wife Gloria, German immigrants, settled in the area of Orwigsburg. Their grandson, Peter Orwig, in 1796, laid out the streets and lots and named the site Orwigsburg.

In 1811, when Schuylkill county was formed, Orwigsburg was designated as the county seat. the town incorporated as a borough in 1813. Court was held in the Arcardian Hotel until 1815 when a courthouse was built.

In 1831, the question to move the county seat to Pottsville was put on the ballot and the vote was 3551 in favor of Pottsville and 3091 in favor of Orwigsburg. Finally, in 1851, an act of legislature and vote of the county citizens resulted in the seat being moved to Pottsville.

The old courthouse was empty for three years until 1854 when it became an educational academy known as Arcadian Institute. It was vacant again from 1864 to 1870 when, with approval of the legislature, it was leased for 99 years to the Orwigsburg Shoe Manufacturing Company. For a time it was occupied by the Rehr Shoe Company and in October 1934, it was used as a storehouse by Levin and Harris, shirt manufacturers.

Through the years, various shoe firms were located in the town. In the 1930s, five underwear mills were operating. In 1888, Howard Moyer opened a box manufacturing plant which was still operating in the 1930s. Other industries in the 1800s were tanneries, a cigar plant, a brick plant, a planing mill and two powder mills. A Chinese laundry was run by Sing Kee and a tinsmith shop by John Waltman.

The First National Bank opened on September 26, 1890, in a store room at Wayne and Market Streets, with P.J. Ferguson on Shenandoah as chairman of the board and Alonzo P. Blakslee as president.

Churches included Zion Red Church, founded in 1755; Salem Evangelical, 1817; St. John's Reformed, 1831; St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran, 1843; Covenant Methodist, 1891.

The first school was the Orwigsburg Academy opened in 1813 through a $2,000 grant from the state. It was succeeded by the Arcadia Academy (1854-64) opened by W. J. Burnside in the former courthouse. The first school house was located at Tammany and Washington Streets where John Geisenheimer taught in German including reading, writing, arithmetic, catechism and singing of the psalms.

From 1834, when state law established free education, the borough maintained public schools. One room of the former county jail was used as a school from 1864-69 when it became too small and was torn down and replaced by a building which served as a high school. In 1911 there was a need for more space and a new high school was built. A six-room addition was added in 1932.

      The Schuylkill County Fair began at Cressona in 1923 on a 179 acre piece of land acquired from several owners.  Attendees saw auto and horse races from a grandstand which seated 4000 and box seats which accommodated several thousand more.  There were fortune tellers, vaudeville performances, wheels of chance, shell games and more to enjoy such as dancing girls, tents of freaks and a motor home on a brilliantly lighted midway.

     In the exhibition hall fairgoers could see displays of county grown vegetables, crafts, needlework, sewing machines and other mechanical inventions.  There were agricultural attractions for the farmers and automotive ones for those interested in the Maxwell, Studebaker, McFarland, Haynes, Nash, Hudson, Essex, Gardner, Willys Knight, Stutz, Ford and Lincoln cars.

     The attendance declined due to the Great Depression and now Cressona Aluminum stands on the site.

      Sleighs were used exclusively during heavy accumulations of snow in the 1800s and early 1900s.  Barnesville, Brandonville, Ringtown, and Schuylkill Haven were popular destinations for sleighing parties.  A total of twenty-four persons could sit on either side of a large sleigh, facing each other.  Livery stables did a good business during these times renting out horses and sleighs or cutters.  A cutter held two people--very nice for a moonlight ride with your favorite beau.  The country hotels were patronized by sleighing parties, serving suppers or warm drinks to the merrymakers.  Ice skating was another popular form of recreation in the winter on the local ponds.

      The blizzard of March 13, 1993, had nothing on the wrath of "The Great Storm" of March 11-14, 1888.  The "granddaddy of all storms" stunned the region as Mother Nature lashed the landscape for three days with a fury not seen before nor since.  The fact that the storm caught everyone by surprise made its impact much worse and the disruption of communications further aggravated the situation.

     The weather had been unusually balmy during the early part of March.  Robins and wild geese were spotted and farmers were plowing for spring planting, some even had potato crops put in.  The U.S. Signal Service Corps (forerunner of the National Weather Service) telegraphed a mid-Atlantic weather report at 5 p.m. Saturday, March 10, calling for Sunday to dawn with overcast skies and possibly see some light rain by afternoon.

     Having connections with telegraph stations across the country, the Signal Service was aware that a snow storm was moving rapidly moving eastward from the Great Plains, covering 600 miles a day but its path indicated it would pass south of Pennsylvania Sunday, moving through Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Carolinas as it continued out to sea.  A second storm front began forming rapidly over the Atlantic Ocean east of the Carolinas.  This front was laden with warm moist air and began moving rapidly inland with gale force winds.

     The two systems combined and began to move northward early Sunday evening.  The temperature fell rapidly and the rainfall turned to sleet and freezing rain.  Soon the weight of ice began snapping telegraph lines and all communications around Washington were severed.  The Signal Service had carrier pigeons to serve as backup messengers but the storm kept them grounded.  The region lay in the directly in the path of the blizzard but there was no way to send a warning!

     Sunday night, shortly after midnight, an eerie calm settled over eastern Pennsylvania, as if the eye of a hurricane were passing.  Shortly afterward the wind began to howl from the west and northwest, bringing with it madly swirling snow.  Unable to move any farther north because of a strong frigid air mass from Canada, the storm stalled over the mid-Atlantic states for the next 30 hours.

     By daybreak  Monday, Schuylkill County had 12 inches of snow on the ground and it was still snowing heavily.  Meanwhile, the 60 mile per hour wind whipped snow into huge drifts against the fronts of buildings on the south sides of the streets.  The temperature was in the 20s and falling, making it extremely dangerous to be outside in the wind chill.  On top of this, there was danger of being seriously hurt by flying debris as the gusts sent broken glass, signs, roofing and other items hurling through the air like missiles.

     Collieries shut down, stores closed and the owners of horses refused to expose the animals to the treacherous ice hidden beneath the snow.  Just about the only establishments doing any business were the taverns, as the miners took advantage of the unexpected holiday. 

     Even the powerful railroad locomotives were no match for nature.  The few trains able to get through were way behind schedule.  The Pennsylvania passenger train from Wilkes-Barre to Philadelphia was 17 hours late arriving in Shenandoah.  It had been due here at 6 p.m. Tuesday but didn't pull into the South Main Street depot until 11 a.m. Wednesday.  By the time it reached Pottsville, it was 20 hours late and many of the passengers got off to seek refuge in hotels rather than spend another day cooped up in the passenger cars.  The Pottsville Miners Journal reported that when the people alighted from the train "they skipped away like freed birds."  The Philadelphia and Reading trains from Philadelphia were running eight hours later but were able to get through because the railroad employed large groups of men to shovel open the tracks.

     New Boston and Morea were snowed in for four days as the railroad running through there was totally block by a mountain of snow at the cut coming out of Delano.  Mine workers were called out for shovel duty to clear snow from the colliery tracks and buildings.  There was plenty of work for men and boys hiring out to shovel openings through the 20-foot drifts blocking entrances to buildings facing the north.  Streets were comparatively free of snow because the wind had wiped them clean, so there was no difficulty resuming horse and buggy travel when the storm ended.

     Although Schuylkill County papers reported no deaths directly due to the storm, there was a  tragic rail wreck at Newkirk just west of Tamaqua.  A Philadelphia and Reading train jumped the ice-covered tracks on a bridge over the Wabash Creek and two passenger cars plunged down the embankment.  One railway employee, Charles Humes of Mahanoy City, was hurled through a window and crushed when the car toppled on him.  Some 30 passengers were injured.