Rejected four times, Menchey becomes a decorated veteran
Before Francis J. Menchey could fight for his country amid the islands of the Pacific Ocean during World War II, he first had the win the battles against the draft boards at home that didn’t want him to fight. When Menchey graduated from Gettysburg High School in 1943, the U.S. had been at war with the Axis Powers for about 18 months. Like many Americans, the young man wanted to do his part to help his country. Shortly before his graduation, he traveled to Baltimore to try and enlist in the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Navy rejected him because the physician at the enlistment center said Menchey had a hernia. That was news to Menchey who felt perfectly fine and had never had any indication that he had a hernia. “Returning to Gettysburg, Menchey consulted his family physician who declared Read more…
A policeman, an owl, and a cow go out one night…
It sounds like the opening line for a joke. A policeman, an owl, and a cow went out one night. However, while not funny, it is certainly odd. Bedford Police Officer James Young was station near the corner of Pitt and Julianna streets in the town one early morning in April 1950. Around 2 a.m., he watched a large owl dive out of the night school and crash into the window of Murdock’s Jewelry and Gift Shop. The store had been around since 1910 when J. F. Murdock took over the J. W. Ridenour dtore. “His gifts are especially well known for their unique and pleasing qualities,” the Bedford Gazette said of Murdock’s. As Young watched the large owl flopping around groggily on the sidewalk, “It occurred to Officer Young that owls are birds of prey with a bounty on Read more…
Western Pennsylvania Ghost Towns
Susan Tassin was hiking with her husband one day along a Pennsylvania trail when they came across stacked cut stones in a large rectangle. Tassin recognized what she was seeing as the foundation of a house. The home was long gone, and the stones were all that remained to mark that someone had once called that out-of-the-way place home. “I was excited,” Tassin said. “We saw some other hikers and told them what we had found.” The other hikers didn’t understand the Tassins’ excitement. The hikers pointed out a historical marker that told readers the site had once been more than a place for a single home. An entire home had been located there. It was all gone, though. All that was left was a ghost town. When most people think of ghost towns, they picture dusty streets flanked by Read more…
Flight to Mars falls far short of goal
On Monday morning June 5, 1939, 22-year-old Cheston Lee Eshleman climbed into the cockpit of a small plane in Camden, N. J. and flew it east. His goal wasn’t to cross the Atlantic Ocean. No, the Gettysburg High School graduate had a much further destination in mind. He was going to fly to Mars. He had given a letter to a “jittery citizen” at the airport asking that it be mailed to the Philadelphia newspapers. The letter noted his interstellar destination and said that Eshleman wanted to return the “visit to Mars on Sunday evening, October 1938 (the night of the Orson Welles radio broadcast),” according to the Ironwood (Mich.) Daily Globe, one of the many newspapers nationwide that carried the story. Orson Welles’ adaptation of War of the Worlds during a radio program on Halloween night 1938 had sent Read more…
Adams County celebrates 150 years
On a hot evening in July 1948, a group of Adams Countians met in a room that was made even hotter by the presence of so many people. The air conditioning was cranked up and everyone got down to the business of planning a celebration of Adams County’s sesquicentennial. The committee had been formed at the suggestion of the Adams County Historical Society. “Anniversary celebrations are both entertaining and informative,” wrote Leighton Taylor, chairman of the Adams County Sesqui-Centennial Association. “They promote good will and fraternalism, encourage enterprise and initiative, and create a just and pardonable pride in progress and achievement. Moreover, with subversive elements trying to destroy our American Way of Life, we need a revitalization of our patriotism and love of country. This we think can be done most efficiently by reminding Adams Countians, in dramatic and colorful Read more…
Read about Gettysburg's forgotten history
Home to a U.S. president, Hall of Fame pitcher and a classic automobile inventor, there’s so much more to Gettysburg than just a three-day battle. Sure Gettysburg is best-known for the epic Civil War battle that was fought there in 1863. It tends to overshadow many of the other interesting and important stories that have taken place in Gettysburg and the vicinity. Gettysburg was also home to one of the first tank training camps in the country during World War I. This camp brought a young army officer to Gettysburg who would play a very important role in town but also the world. His name was Dwight David Eisenhower. Hall of Fame pitcher Eddie Plank called Gettysburg home. He even owned a garage in town after he retired. Gettysburg is filled with stories of the famous and the not so Read more…
LOOKING BACK 1945: Lincoln's chair reappears
Last week, I wrote about how the chair that Abraham Lincoln may have used using the Gettysburg Address ceremony disappeared from Gettysburg College. This week, the rest of the story…. For years, Gettysburg College had displayed a rocking chair believed to have been the one Abraham Lincoln used as he sat on the platform during the dedication of Soldiers’ National Cemetery where he delivered his Gettysburg Address. At some point in the 1920’s, it disappeared from the collection. No one knew who had taken it or how and no big deal was made of its loss. Then on April 7, 1945, the Gettysburg Times reported, “The little old rocking chair that Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have used on the platform in the National cemetery November 19, 1863, when he delivered his deathless Gettysburg Address, has come back to the Read more…
Living near the entrance to Hell
The story of Centralia, PA, has always amazed me. I wonder if anyone has written a book about it. It’s hard for me to imagine that a fire has been burning underground for more than 50 years. Centralia was a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania. In 1962, a fire started in one of the mine shafts and spread throughout the network of shafts of under the town. Since it was a coal mine, the fire found plenty of fuel. If that wasn’t bad enough, the residents had to deal with poisonous gases leaking out of the mines and sinkholes appearing. Yahoo News reported, “The mine fire has transformed Centralia into a macabre tourist attraction. There’s an intact street grid with almost nothing on it, clouds of steam waft from the cracked earth, and visitors gawk at the ruins of an abandoned Read more…
1833: The night the sky fell in Gettysburg
The old Adams County jail wasn’t the most secure of prisons. Early in the morning of November 12, 1833, a convicted murderer was so scared that he broke out of the prison, according to the History of Adams County published in 1886. Though the man was free from prison, he still wore shackles. He ran to the nearest blacksmith shop and filed them off. Then, “as he forgot to come back and give himself up to be hanged, it may be inferred he is still fleeing from the ‘stars’ that do not pursue,” according to the History of Adams County. Few people probably even noticed the killer’s escape that evening. Their eyes were turned to the heavens watching the reason the man had become scared enough to break out. “The whole heavens appeared to be illuminated by countless meteors, of Read more…
Lincoln’s Last Visit to Harrisburg, Pa.
On April 21, 1865, a locomotive slowly pulled out of the depot in Washington D.C. carrying about 300 people. Those who saw the train generally bowed their heads. Many of them cried. The train was carrying the remains of President Abraham Lincoln who had been assassinated a week earlier and Willie Lincoln who had died in 1862 back to Springfield, IL. The Lincoln Special The train consisted of the funeral car, baggage cars and coaches and the engine, which had a photo of Lincoln mounted on the front of the train over the cowcatcher. The funeral car was decorated with black garland and silver tassels and had a U.S. coat of arms painted on the side of it. “With sixteen wheels for a smoother ride, rounded monitor ends, fine woodwork, upholstered walls, [and] etched glass windows” this funeral car surely Read more…
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