Click Here to Return to Milestones
Among the fondest memories of my boyhood are those of Dr. Joseph Bausman, growing up in my native Rochester, I knew him quite well.
Dr. Bausman was a neighbor and a good friend of my parents, the late Mr. and Mrs. J. Frank Malone. He was also a sometime counselor to me, a brash and impetuous youth.
With my parents and my paternal grandmother, I lived in a tiny cottage which still stands perched on the hillside above the home at 439 Delaware Avenue where Dr. and Mrs. Bausman lived with their son-in-law and daughter, the late Mr. and Mrs. Oran McDanel, and the McDanel's daughter. Dr. Bausman, when he was home from his duties as a faculty member at Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, PA, was fond of chatting with my father on the little front porch of our home. Behind the Bausman home was a flight of wooden steps ascending the hillside which he frequently used to come to our house.
Sitting on our porch, Dr. Bausman and my father told anecdotes, exchanged ideas and recounted their experiences in their respective lines of work. Many times, I listened to them as they talked - never dreaming that one day I would be writing in tribute to our friend and neighbor.
I was in the Bausman home many times. My parents raised chickens in the backyard of our home and in the Summer I grew vegetables in a small garden. Also, in season, I picked blackberries and elderberries, some of which were used by my mother and others I sold to neighbors.
Both the Bausmans and the McDanels were good customers for eggs, the produce of my small garden and the berries I picked. When I made deliveries to them, they always gave me extra money above the purchase price. (I still have a silver dollar given to me by Dr. Bausman in 1924).
Time dims the memory, so my recollection of Dr. Bausman's physical appearance is vague. But I do remember him as a gentle, kindly, soft-spoken man who was highly respected in our neighborhood. He often plied my father with questions about local history and events. One of the things which interested him was my father's account of how, after the Johnstown Flood, he had gone out into the Ohio River in a skiff (rowboat) and salvaged a gateleg table and a chair (still in my possession) from the water. He also enjoyed my father's account of how much of the wood used in the construction of our cottage-home was retrieved from the nearby Beaver River in times of flood.
It was Dr. Bausman's inquisitive mind and his desire to preserve a record of local history for posterity that prompted him to undertake the long and painstaking research which enabled him to write his massive twovolume "History of Beaver County published in 1904. (One of my most cherished possessions is copies of the books which were personally given to my parents by Dr. Bausman.)
In addition to having been a historian, Dr. Joseph Bausman was an educator, a clergyman, a scholar, and a good friend to all who had the privilege of having known him. Recording and preserving, by means of the printed word, the early history of Beaver County, he performed a service of priceless value to those who have come after his passing. For this, he will always be remembered. He could have left no finer heritage.