Click Here to Return To Milestones Vol 11 No 1
I made frequent visits to Fallston in Beaver County, where Johnston & Stockton had a paper mill, a store stocked with goods of every description, and numerous tenement houses. A hearty welcome always awaited me there in the family of the general manager, William Cannon, at whose house I usually stayed.
I found recreation in rowing a skiff on Beaver River, in fishing above the dam, and in catching turtles below it in the numerous holes worn by the action of the water. I also rode frequently on horseback in the country roundabout.
Once while visiting Miner & Merrick's bucket factory I was desperately smitten with the charms of a young woman whom I discovered at work in the paint shop. The soft influence diffused itself through every fibre of my ten or eleven years' frame; -she was about eighteen. It was indeed a severe case, both as to its suddenness and grip. That so much loveliness should be engaged in the degrading occupation of painting buckets - some red and some blue (the insides were invariably painted white) was a shock to my sensitive nature! The circumstances were such that they seemed to warrant a resort to poetry to give proper expression to the thoughts which both impressed and oppressed me; and a balm for my troubled breast was found in the couplet: -
"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its fragrance on the desert air."
But the momentous question was not one of mere sentiment, and whole volumes of poetry would not have sufficed. There must be some practical solution. In legendary lore, I had read of gallant knights rescuing fair ladies from dismal dungeons, where they pined in solitude, and of conveying them to their own castles for safety. Why should not I emulate examples so worthy? Why not release from her galling imprisonment, and from contact with begrimed paintpots - associations not less vile than any dungeon keep - this beautiful creature, immured in the paint shop of a bucket factory? Fate decreed that I should be the instrument for her liberation; the knight to carry her to a place of safety, and that refuge, Hymen's altar! When I consulted Sam Hillis, - brotherin-law of Mr. Cannon, - and invited his assistance, he so nearly went into convulsions with laughter that I was obliged to abandon the project, and leave the fair maiden to her dismal fate.
The first boots I ever wore were a pair which Marcus Tullius Cicero Gould, of New Brighton, had purchased for his son; but alas! before the poor boy could enjoy so much as a single day's wear of the boots, he sickened and died, and I in some way fell heir to them. Whether he bore the name of his father, with the addition of the word "Junior," and this proved too much for his feeble frame to bear, I never learned. Mr. Gould was a stenographer; as such he practised in the courts, and was the author of a work on the science of short-hand writing. Whether influenced in this direction by an overwhelming conviction that there should be some method for abbreviating long sentences, such for example as his name, I am unable to say. He became famous for stirring up a great excitement as to the future in store for New Brighton, which was to become the center of the universe. A tremendous bubble was raised; real estate became inflated, and when the collapse came Gould, having faith in his fiction, failed, as did many others who had pinned their faith to his coat-tail, when it was flapping in the whirlwind he had created. In the midst of this excitement a large hotel was built, but not finished. Some years later it became the "Merrick House," and sustained an excellent reputation; its proprietor, Mr. Merrick, knowing how to make it a success. During one of my visits there, about the year 1840, the culture of the silkworm was a mania which had taken hold of many in New Brighton; and the hotel building was at that time being used for the purpose named. I visited the establishment, and witnessed the operation in various stages, as exhibited in different rooms. It was interesting and instructive, but proved a financial failure, its projectors being brought to grief. This was known as the morus multicaulis craze.
Fifty yearsago it was a considerable journey from Pittsburgh to New Brighton. Boats starting from the foot of Wood Street ran daily, landing their passengers at Rochester, from whence they were carried by hacks to the towns on Beaver River as far up as the one called Brighton (now Beaver Falls). Travelling by these modes of conveyance occupied almost an entire day; an hour now by some of the railroad trains is all sufficient.
The material Is a reprint of LIFE AND REMINISCENCES by William G. Johnston originally printed In 1901 and reprinted In 1968 by the William G. Johnston Printing Co., which was 150 years old In 1968.