Weekend Fun: Meet Me on Market

59°f/15°C, partly cloudy.

Parkersburg Actors Guild, performing selections from their current musical, Oliver.

With beautiful weather on tap, we played hooky on grass and gardens and went gadding about.  I figure it will be too hot soon for us to enjoy festivals and such, so better have some fun before the heat arrives.

The terrible storms we were told to brace for actually went south of us Friday night. Early that evening we drove upiver to Parkersburg for their first ever "Meet Me on Market", a sip-and-stroll event on downtown Market Street. Businesses normally closed at 5 stayed open and offered specials, and there were arts and crafts for kids, street performances by the local actors guild, live music, food trucks and so on.

Entrance to the United Bank building on Market is a shiny delight in gold mosaic tile.

I was especially interested in the tour being offered by the historic Blennerhassett Hotel, so we went there first. 

It turned out to be about a half-mile walk from where we parked,  not bad but the heat and humidity didn't make it too pleasant.  And when we got there? No tour, no drink specials as advertised by the event's Facebook page, and clueless staff. Tours, they said, only happened at 4 pm and the drinks special ended at 5, when the event actually started. But they were gracious and friendly, and offered the drink special anyway, which was gratefully received after our walk!

We then went to the new Resilience Center, where hotel staff told us the Vet Center was now located, and that there were tours of this new facility. A further block or two and we arrived to find the place seemingly empty,  but soon a young lady came from the building's nether regions with a tour group. But no, the Vet Center was not there, it was uptown! She took was very gracious, and gave us a lovely hardback book of Parkersburg 's history, and we had a nice chat with her.

A mural I spotted as we walked. I need to go back for a better photo. I had never noticed this one before.

We passed the Wood county courthouse as we walked. I believe it was built around 1899.

Then the long, uphill hike back uptown! Things were hopping! Lots of people were enjoying the beautiful evening, restaurants were busy and streetwise tables were full. A bookstore had a book launch, and the atmosphere was festive and upbeat. 

Inside the book store, a cozy seating area.

Beautiful laurel in front of the Catholic Church.

This place is called Wine Down on Market. Next time I want to go there; we usually go to the brewery because Larry prefers beer, but it's time I had a turn 😊 and he can have ice watering! I like the outdoor seating.

Music, vendors and food had many customers.

We stopped at the Parkersburg Brewery where Larry had another beer and I enjoyed a tall ice water. A table full of young Asian men in the center of the brewery seemed to be having a good time. (in our area, that is not a common sight. Our diversity is woefully non- diverse.) An older man approached them and then began a lively conversation as they asked about places of interest and he offered suggestions and they made notes on their phones.

Saturday's event setup for "A Taste of Parkersburg".  They expect a big crowd, but we had other plans, so maybe next year we will give this a try.

Another Meet Me on Market is planned in June, and we may go back to see how it improves. I have a feeling the town is on to a good thing. 

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Covid Journal, Day 65: Fort Boreman

65 this morning, humid and partly cloudy. Rain in the forecast materialized this afternoon with a light shower, enough to drop the temperature a bit.

It's been a quiet day here. We'd planned a road trip but then remembered we had 2 deliveries coming, so the trip is postponed. I weeded flowerbeds, caught up the laundry (we sure make a lot of dirty clothes!) and worked on a wooden case that I'm stenciling. No big projects today. Larry put up a rack on the root cellar to hang my most-used garden tools, cut up some more of the big tree and then cut grass until the rain. Now he's moving the wood he cut to the woodshed.

Last week, on our way home from getting our Marietta booth ready to open, we stopped at a place I've wanted to see for a while: Fort Boreman, a former Civil War fort site that overlooks the city of Parkersburg, WV. It was a cold, blustery day so we could not stay long, but I was glad to finally see the place, especially since it's only an hour from home. I took lots of photos--and have lost  all of them except this one. So sad! Apparently I deleted them while cleaning off the camera card, or stored them in a never-to-be-found-again location. So all I have is this, a view from the overlook, looking upriver.:

According to what I've read, there may once have been a flat-topped Indian mound on top of the hill where the fort was later located. No one knows for sure; the early history of the area was focused mostly on the Ohio River and the Little Kanawha (pronounced Ken-aww) River. The confluence of these two waters proved to be an ideal site for a town, and so Parkersburg was founded, at first a collection of log buildings and rough shelters but growing into a strong commercial center with thriving steamboat and railroad traffic.

The hill on which Fort Boreman was built in 1863 was an ideal defensive position to protect the town and the railroad bridges over the rivers. The fort had five cannons, some entrenchments, and buildings to house some 200 soldiers. One can assume that there must have been a blacksmith, stables, and other buildings that supported the fort and its inhabitants.

Fort Boreman never saw any actual action during the Civil War, and its buildings fell into disrepair. One large cannon known as Long Tom was brought to the site and was fired to commemorate various holidays, but this huge gun was so powerful to literally shook houses and broke windows in homes located at the base of the hill, so that practice was discontinued.

There are some strange stories connected to the Fort. A "pest house" was built somewhere on the hill to house smallpox victims because the house Parkersburg used for this purpose became overcrowded when the soldiers and their camp followers came to the area, bringing many cases of the disease with them. The pest house eventually burned down, and its exact location is not certain, nor is the location of the many unmarked graves of those who died there. Apparently there was once a hog farm on the site, which was said to be a way of processing garbage, at least for a time.

Another story has to do with murder and hanging. Three men of the Union persuasion were convicted of murdering a Southern sympathizer, and were hanged at the base of Fort Boreman hill. And for a period of time, the Nemesis Temple owned the property and built a good concrete road to the site. No one knows exactly what activities the Temple conducted there. At some point the National Guard used the site for training practice. Perhaps these various uses and events, or the bones of the Native Americans in the vanished burial mound have caused some people to believe they have seen and heard strange things on the hill.

The hill was almost overgrown completely with brush and vines when the city of Parkersburg decided to reclaim the area and turn it into a historical site and public park. Work began in 2006 or 2007, and today the park is a beautiful place that sees many visitors annually.

I guess I'll have to go back one day to get more photos. I won't mind a bit.

Sources:
Greater Parkersburg

West Virginia Encyclopedia

Clutchmov



Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

The Haunted Tunnel

I made an effort to get to places I wanted to see, or see again, during our recent travels.

One such place was Eatons Tunnel.

I heard about the tunnel one night when we were lost on a back road in Ritchie county. We met a couple in a Jeep back that narrow dirt road, and the man asked why we were out there. I explained that I was a storyteller and was looking for the community called Petroleum because the place had such a rich history.

"Petroleum? Ain't nothin' much there. You keep on this road, you'll get there. But if you're a storyteller then you know about Eatons Tunnel."

My ears perked up. No, I had not heard of this tunnel. But it is now one of the stories I tell most often. (You can hear it on my latest CD, Beyond the Grave II, available from me or on eBay)

"You just passed it. The tunnel collapsed when they was building it and three men got trapped inside. They couldn't get 'em out so they just sealed it up and built a new tunnel. People can hear things in the old tunnel, voices, a train, machinery..."

I researched what the man told me, and it was mostly true. While widening the tunnels for the newer, bigger locomotives, Eaton Tunnel (Tunnel 21 on the B&O line from Grafton to Parkersburg) did collapse. The tunnel was originally built in 1869, and it collapsed during construction then too, killing young Thomas Nashville Johnson and leaving his young wife with four children to raise. (she married two more times, ending up with 15 children).

The second collapse happened on June 6, 1963. Three men were trapped; one was rescued within hours and suffered only a broken ankle. The second man, Arthur Boggs, was rescued after 18 frantic hours, but later died in hospital of his injuries. He was only 24.

From the Find-A-Grave website:

"BOGGS RIGHTS TO BE HELD WEDNESDAY
Funeral services for Arthur Brooks Boggs, 24 of Perkins, Gilmer county, who died Sunday morning in Mt. Carmel Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, as a result of injuries suffered in a tunnel cave in at Eatons, Wood county, will be held at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Rosedale Baptist Church, Gilmer county.
The Rev. Rodney Minney will officiate, and burial will be in Shiloh cemetery, near Glenville. 
Boggs was born June 16,1938 at Perkins, near Glenville, son of Benton Boggs, deceased, and Mrs. Sylvia Boggs Dejean of Cleveland, and was a member of the Rosedale Baptist Church.
Survivors, mother Sylvia Boggs Dejean, wife, Marlene Furr Boggs; son Arthur Brooks Boggs Jr. Four sisters, Mrs Lucy Vanscoy; of Gassaway, Mrs. Pearl Carpenter, Akron; and seven brothers, William and Earl Boggs,Akron, Floyd, Lester, and Herbert Boggs of Mansfield, Ohio, and Harvey Boggs, with the U S Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
He was preceded in death by a daughter.
Mr Boggs was one of two men caught in a rock fall last Thursday in the B&O Railroad tunnel, approximately 20 miles east of Parkersburg and 18 hours of labor by rescue crews were required to extricate him. The second man, Harry Buck Nichols, 51 of Bartlett Ohio has not been found but is presumed dead. 
Mr. Boggs was rushed to Camden Clark Memorial Hospital after his rescue from the rock slide but was later transported to the Columbus institution when his kidneys ceased to function. 
Funeral arrangements are under the direction of the Spurgeon funeral home at Glenville, where friends may call."
-----------------------
The third man was Harry "Buck" Nichols of Cutler, Ohio. Despite trying for two weeks, recovery efforts were abandoned and the tunnel was sealed.

From Find-A-Grave:

"Died in the Eaton Tunnel cave in on June 6, 1963.
Body was never recovered, was sealed and still entombed there.
Harry was 46 years of age, married to Lucy E Nichols, was a resident of Cutler, Ohio
Was the son of Calvin and Virgie Nichols."

The path to the old tunnel

The sealed entrance to the old tunnel 21--Harry Nichols' resting place.

The other entrance to the old Tunnel 21

I never found an obituary for Harry Nichols. Perhaps there wasn't one since there was a time lapse of several months between the time of the cave-in and his official death certificate.

Today Tunnel 21 is part of the North Bend Rail Trail. You can walk through the new tunnel, and there is a muddy path leading to where the old tunnel, now completely collapsed, once was. Many people visit the new tunnel, leaving graffiti, ouija boards and other things to note their visit.

There is no marker to say that the old tunnel is a man's final resting place. Perhaps if there were, the sounds people hear at the tunnel would cease.

I am glad we visited. Next time, we'll be sure to bring some flowers. Rest in peace, Mr. Nichols.

Sounds inside the new tunnel:

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Traveling West Virginia: Henderson Hall

I had been promising myself for months that we would stop at Henderson Hall on day on our way to our Marietta booth. This past week I made it a plan instead of a promise and it was certainly worth taking the time to visit.

The Henderson family arrived in the Ohio Valley in the late 1700's and promptly established themselves as a primary force in the settlement communities along the river. With connections to many in power in the relatively new United States government, it stands to reason that this family would play a prominent role in the government of the frontier. they must have recognized that fact early on, for they saved every letter, receipt, diary, broken cup, school book, chair, and much more--all put away in a third floor attic room for the enjoyment, wonderment and edification of future generations
.
The exterior is imposing but not overly ostentatious. Larry, the retired bricklayer, enjoyed seeing the fine masonry work,

and we were both impressed by the carved sandstone columns and corners of the front entry porch.

The interior was like stepping back in time. This family, as I said, did not throw much away, and took good care of the things they owned so the decor is a mixture of eras and styles, but all tastefully blended and interesting as can be to anyone interested in antiques.

We went upstairs to the find...

bedrooms

and bedrooms...

and more bedrooms,

and even a wedding gown.

This is the third floor storage room, which I'm betting they called they "lumber room" since that was the English term and the USA was only recently separated from the mother country at the time Henderson Hall was built. Lots of treasures here!

And a view looking down the stairwell,

which is very similar to this view at the Louis Bennett house, built in 1875 in Weston, WV, which now house the public library. Henderson Hall (the new section) was built in 1836, but the style is certainly comparable.

 Wonder of wonders, you can even go up into the widow's walk on top of the mansion to see the view! I tried to imagine what it looked like in the early 1800's when the Hendersons were farming the fields around their home. What a sight it must have been.

Back to the second floor landing, where it was much cooler than the windowed widow's walk,

and then to the first floor to view the lovely parlor (can't imagine calling it a living room!),

and the gorgeous dining room, with the table set for ten guests,

and into the kitchen, where the last Henderson to live in the house uncovered and restored the original fireplace:

There is much more to see in Henderson Hall than what I have shown here. So many antiques, photos, artifacts that it boggles the mind, truly. The Hall is funded by the Oil and Gas Museum in Parkersburg, WV, and volunteers from that group do upkeep and are docents at the hall. A labor of love, certainly.

Our guide told us that the letters and other ephemera were currently being sorted and placed into archival boxes. I hope that these will be made available to researchers and historians, as 200 years of letters is really a treasure trove and a perfect insight into the way of life in bygone days.

This photo shows the original house at the rear and the later addition of the "hall." It's apparent that the family's fortunes continued to do well in the valley.

Henderson Hall is located at 517 River Rd, Williamstown, WV (Off WV 14 north of Parkersburg)

Call 304-375-2129 for information about group tours, hours, etc. Admission is $5.00 per person, and they usually open Noon to 5:00pm daily.
Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Weekend Journey: Trans Allegheny Book Store

Saturday was a cold, rainy day. Larry planned to split wood all day, but the rain took care of those plans. I had no real plans at all. While enjoying our usual Saturday morning breakfast with friends at the Downtowner, someone mentioned "bookstore." That reminded me: I have wanted for years to visit Trans Allegheny Books in Parkersburg, WV, just 50 miles north of my home. Why I haven't been there before I really don't know, but after our visit to the store on Saturday, I know I will be returning as often as I can.

The store is housed in a historic Carnegie building. (Click here to see a short video that takes you through the store and tells a little of its history). It's massive, ornate and full of twists and turns, fireplaces, intriguing staircases, fancy woodwork and obvious artisan work in every room.

Oh, did I mention the store is supposed to be haunted? If you're so inclined, you can book a ghost tour. While I'm always interested in ghost stories, Saturday I was mainly interested in finding some good old books to add to my collection.

The two staircases are visible as soon as you enter the store.

The spiral staircase is worth the trip by itself--intricate ironwork and a brass handrail create a work of art in the middle of the store. I could not take this photo because I got too dizzy, so a friend snapped it for me.

Looking up the spiral stairs from down below. Did I mention I have vertigo? It seriously kicked in when I looked up those steps, but I was determined to go up anyway. If you have vertigo, you know that going up isn't so bad--coming down is a nightmare. I get terribly dizzy and lose my balance; it's so weird.

I found three good books on the upper levels, and that meant only one hand coming down. I could not do it. For a moment it seemed I would have to sit down and inch down the stairs that way. Then I hit on another idea--I put the books on one of the steps, went down three steps, reached back to get the books, moved them down a few more steps, and on all the way down the stairs. It was time-consuming but it worked and I saved my dignity!

One of the surprises in the store is the glass floors. Another challenge for someone with vertigo, they were still fascinating to me. I mean, walk on glass? Who would think it? I suppose the idea was that glass floors allowed more light in the stacks below. The glass is about 3/4" thick.

A stained glass window in the building gleams on the upper floors.

Why the locked door? What does the sign say?

Ahhhhh! So that's where they keep them!

The range of materials for sale is just astonishing--there are over 500,000 volumes from which to choose. I loved this one about hedgehogs. Especially the "special chapter" on understanding hedgehogs! (I didn't buy it, though--I'm not planning on a hedgehog pet right now.)

One of the two bookstore cats in residence.

The staircase were supposedly most of the ghostly sightings occur. Of all the pictures I took in the bookstore, only this one was blurry. Coincidence? This was also the only place orbs appeared in my pictures. You can see one just at the top of the frame. There are more in other shots that I have not included here. Do orbs really have any meaning? Who knows. I'm just sayin' they showed up only in the staricase photos.

Our little friend shows off the stunning end post on the balustrade. The marble post, though cracked and showing hard use, was a beautiful rich gold, set in panels to form the post.

Lunch was at the Third Street Deli. I didn't even know the place existed, but it apparently was a train station at one time. The food was delicious. I opted for dessert instead of lunch; the Bailey's Cheese Cake and a fruit cup with good fresh coffee were superb. Larry pronounced his Reuben one of the best he's ever had.

We spent a little time in the old downtown section, visiting a superb yarn shop. I don't knit. I knew how years ago, but I let it go because I had no time for it, and I developed problems with my thumbs. (However....today Andrea stopped by with some yarn and needles. She bought yarn and needles at the shop yesterday to make socks; today she has me knitting again! More on that later this week--if indeed I can really get going again.)

Home again in pouring rain that had let up only for brief intervals all day. It was a good day to spend browsing books and hanging out with friends. The evening was spent with the books we'd bought (my pocket was $100 lighter!) and with granddaughters Hannah and Haley who came to spend the night.

All in all, a very good, relaxing and interesting day.