Historic Erie County

HISTORIC
ERIE COUNTY
An Illustrated History
by Edward T. Wellejus
A publication of the Erie County Historical Society

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HISTORIC
ERIE COUNTY
An Illustrated History
by Edward T. Wellejus
Published by The Erie County Historical Society
Historical Publishing Network
A division of Lammert Incorporated
San Antonio, Texas

CONTENTS
3 CHAPTER I a working town from the very beginning
6 CHAPTER II geography shaped the Erie story
9 CHAPTER III Erie in the nineteenth century
14 CHAPTER IV transportation & jobs in Erie
20 CHAPTER V family sagas
26 CHAPTER VI two giants lead the way in the twentieth century
30 CHAPTER VII a volatile mix: business, industry & politics
35 CHAPTER VIII political & economic necessity
41 CHAPTER IX Erie as a center for higher education
46 CHAPTER X Erie & the impact of the military
52 CHAPTER XI manufacturing to service to knowledge
57 BIBLIOGRAPHY
59 SHARING THE HERITAGE
96 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
First Edition
Copyright © 2003 Historical Publishing Network
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from
the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Historical Publishing Network, 11555 Galm Road, Suite 100, San Antonio, Texas, 78254. Phone (210) 688-9006.
ISBN: 1-883658-44-6
Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2003113798
Historic Erie County: An Illustrated History
author: Edward T. Wellejus
photo researcher: Annita Andrick
cover artist: Joseph Plavcan, photo by Art Becker
contributing writer for “Sharing the Heritage”: Greg Spinks
Historical Publishing Network
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vice president: Barry Black
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HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
2

The Fairview sawmill was built in 1797 by millwrights Joseph Weaver, John Kendig, and Jacob Wice. Henry Brunner managed the sawmill for Thomas Forster from November 1, 1799,
until April 1, 1800, for the sum of $30 per month. Profits were split between Thomas Forster and Henry Brunner at the conclusion of the contract.
THE PENNSYLVANIA POPULATION COMPANY COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER I
A WORKING TOWN FROM THE VERY BEGINNING
The promise, the great potential that
was to make Erie one of Pennsylvania’s
most diversified industrial communities,
was apparent with the arrival of the
first Europeans.
In a letter written in August 1753, the
Marquis Duquesne, governor of New
France, described, “the discovery I have
made of the harbor of Presque Isle.” It was,
he continued, “regarded as the finest spot
in nature…a harbor which the largest
barks can enter, loaded, and be in perfect
safety.” Another observer, the Moravian
surveyor Jacob Eyerly in 1794, was even
more enthusiastic: “Presque Isle is a
beautiful site for a town. It has a glorious
prospect, and will without a doubt be a fine
commercial town…. The land about
Presque Isle is excellent, the soil for the
most part very rich.”
Translating this promise into actuality
was hard work, as early settlers learned.
From these early beginnings, the often
back-breaking labor made Erie a community
of workers who were fit predecessors for
the men and women who were to make
the future city a manufacturing and
transportation hub.
In Genealogy and Reminiscences of Our
Baldwin Family, James Baldwin quotes an
ancestor, an early Erie County farmer: “To
live in this [Erie County] is a continual
warfare and contention between the crops,
the adjoining forest and the wild animals,
and to eke out a living with scanty crops by
carefully saving the remnants that the
CHAPTER I
3

Andrew Ellicott, surveyor of Erie County.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
mischievous animals failed to destroy.”
Andrew Ellicott, the nationally known
surveyor, who from 1793 to 1795 was
engaged in planning a road from Reading to
Presque Isle, and the “laying and establishing
towns and outlets within the several tracts of
land heretofore reserved for public use,
situated respectively at Presque Isle on Lake
Erie, at the mouth of French Creek [now
Franklin], at the mouth of Conewango Creek
[now Warren], and at Fort LeBoeuf [now
Waterford]” was another who made it clear
developing communities in this then forest
area would not be easy. While working on
his commission, Ellicott complained, “we are
much pestered with Muskeetoes [sic] and
knats [sic].” His men resorted to smoke fires,
tobacco, and gloves to discourage the insects.
Horseflies harassed their animals.
“Poison-vine” blistered their hands. “I cannot
see anything in this Wilderness that can
make it tolerably agreeable.”
Thomas Rees, the deputy surveyor hired
by the Pennsylvania Population Company to
survey the Erie Triangle, told of another and
even more threatening problem at the time:
“In 1793, I made an attempt to go [into the
Erie Triangle]; went to the mouth of Buffalo
Creek to inquire of the Indians there whether
they would permit me to go into my district
to make surveys. They refused, and added
that if I went into that country I would be
killed.” Again, in 1794, Rees attempted to
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
4
enter the Triangle, and this time achieved
some success. But he was not without grave
concerns: “Before I had completed [the
survey] I was frequently alarmed by hearing
the Indians killed persons on the Allegheny
River in the consequence of which, as soon
as the surveys were completed, I removed
myself from the country.” Not until General
Anthony Wayne defeated the Western
Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in
Northwestern Ohio in August 1794 was the
Presque Isle area freed from possible Indian
attacks—a menace that had slowed
development in the area since Pontiac’s War
in 1763.
If work was the order of the day from
Erie’s beginnings, the immediate essential
for practically all of the early settlers was
farming. No frontier community exists
without crop production, something that is
made clear in the Judah Colt Daybook:
1798-1799, the ledger of agent Judah
Colt of the Pennsylvania Population
Company’s stores in Erie and Greenfield.
According to Beth Simmons, who studied
the daybook for an article in the Journal of
Erie Studies, settlers were able to harvest
wheat, oats, corn, buckwheat, and hay from
company fields within two years after the
road to Greenfield (near the present-day
intersection of Station Road and Route 89)
was opened in 1799. But these crops could
not have been achieved without great labor.
Sylvester K. Stevens, in Pennsylvania:
Birthplace of a Nation, said that when William
Penn arrived at the beginning of the
seventeenth century to view his province,
fully ninety percent of what is now
Pennsylvania was covered by virgin forest.
Northern Pennsylvania, the book says, was
thick with the common conifers, pine, and
hemlock, as well as a variety of hardwoods.
Historian Carl B. Lechner, who has written
frequently about Erie’s early days, tells of the
difficulty the forests posed to early surveyors.
He cites the logbook of surveyor Alexander
McClean, who reached the northern limits of
Pennsylvania’s border in 1786. The
surveyors, the logbook says, worked hard,
cutting a twenty-foot wide, straight-sided
swatch through primeval forest. They were
always in the thick of tall trees, Lechner
reports, “with few vistas over which they
could look beyond their immediate
surroundings.’’ Timothy J. Kosarsky, in
“Subsistence Farming in Erie County,
1800-1860,” published in the Journal of Erie
Studies, notes “Northwestern Pennsylvania
was heavily wooded, and it took years of
slow and laborious work to clear property.’’
Erie: A Guide to the City and County, a
Federal Writers’ Project published in
1938, explained that, “the region was a
dense forest at the time the first settlers
arrived. Louis Philippe, duke of Chartres
and later king of France, was entertained
at the mouth of Mill Creek in 1795 by
Thomas Rees and was greatly impressed
by the beauty of the wilderness scenery.’’
Rees and John Grubb, arriving in the
spring of 1795, were the first settlers to locate
here permanently, following very closely the
arrival of Captain Russell Bissell, who with
two hundred men from General Anthony
Wayne’s Army landed at Presque Isle that
same spring and built two block houses on
the bluff overlooking the harbor entrance,
just east of the mouth of Mill Creek. Oxen
were invaluable in the brutal labor of land
clearing. Beth Simmons, in her study of the
Judah Colt Daybook, wrote, “the oxen were
the real workers of the settlement, ‘hawling’
timber, lumber and logs, pulling ‘waggons’
A note of credit for $24 was give to John Vincent for a
bridge constructed over Rosencrantz Run on the Erie &
Waterford Turnpike.
THE SANFORD-SPENCER COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

and ploughs in the summer and sleighs in
the winter. The Pennsylvania Population
Company was the first U-Haul in America,
renting out their teams, and drivers to move
the settlers to their new property for $2.50
per day. The heavy oxen work often broke
the chains and ‘dogs’ on the harness; they
were mended with regularity at the smithy
shop for twenty cents per crack.”
Still, if the forests were a problem
for the farmer, they were also a major
asset. Pennsylvania 1776, published by
Pennsylvania State University in honor of
the nation’s bicentennial, tells of the many
uses of state trees, not only by colonists
but, earlier, by the Indians.
Of one prized tree—the white pine—the
Penn State book says Indians occasionally
even used the inner bark as food. But they
had no idea of the timber value of white
pine, since lumbering was unknown to
them. Not so with the colonists. “Starting in
1772, vast white pine lands in northwestern
Pennsylvania were purchased from the
Indians, and the slaughter began…. As long
as it was abundant, white pine was the most
frequently used timber. and so greedy were
the old Pennsylvania lumber barons that
they cut down hundreds of titanic pines, too
big to move, and left them rotting in the
ravished forests.’’ Pennsylvania’s modern day
“state tree,’’ the hemlock, was widely used
by the Indians for tanning and dyeing, and
twigs and leaves to make a medicinal tea
also popular with the settlers—that was held
to be anti-scorbutic and effective against
venereal diseases.
Black walnut, hickory, paper birch,
black birch, chestnut, white oak, chestnut
oak, elm, black locust, black cherry, sugar
maple, red maple—all were found in the
abundant forests of Northwestern
Pennsylvania, and all had their uses.
Leather was a most important material for
early settlers. Besides hemlock, oak, and
chestnut, colonial tanners used the bark of
beech, yellow birch, sumac, and bearberry
in preparing different kinds of leather. In
literature of the period, the Penn State
book explains, a wider range of plants was
mentioned for dyes than for tanning since
this process, along with weaving, went on
in almost every colonial home. The pink
middle bark of the hemlock and the barks
of willow, red maple, and hickory trees
made popular dyes, as did black walnut
shells, pokeweed, and bearberry.
Because of the availability of timber, log
cabins were the home style of preference for
early arrivals. They were solid, long-lasting
and fairly easy to build since the basic
material was right at hand. A Guide to the
City and County says, “the pioneer’s home
was usually a log cabin on unhewn logs laid
one upon the other, the crevices filled in
with mud. As conditions improved,
structures of hewn timber were erected,
mortar displacing mud…. As sawmills
increased in number, frame buildings of a
better character substituted for the log
cabins. An occasional brick or stone
structure was regarded as an architectural
marvel.” The dense forests covering the
country abounded with deer and other
game—a welcome source of meat for the
settlers. Not surprisingly, some of the earliest
industries in Erie County were timber
based, lumbering and sawmills, along with
gristmills once farming got underway.
The detachment of Wayne’s troops,
sent here to guard against the Indians,
built the first mill in 1795-96 to supply
timber for buildings at what became
known as Fort Presque Isle—the third fort
to be built on what is now Erie’s harbor,
following earlier efforts by first the French
and then the British. The Mill Creek site of
the first mill was followed in 1797 by
additional mills on Walnut Creek and
LeBoeuf Creek.
In Erie History: The Women’s Story, Sabina
Shields Freeman and Margaret L. Tenpas
say the first woman at the new settlement of
Erie was Hannah Reed, wife of Colonel Seth
Reed, who arrived with her husband on
June 30 or July 1, 1795. Accompanying the
couple were their sons, Charles John and
James Manning. For comforts, The Women’s
Story declared, “Hannah had only a roll of
bedding, a few utensils, and provisions that
included a small cask of whiskey….
Hannah suffered the loneliness and
Seth and Hannah Reed. The Reeds are credited with
being the first white family to settle in the Presque
Isle/Erie area.
THE EHM&P ARCHIVES, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
hardships of the frontier wife. She had no
white women for companions for several
months. Her first home was a crude
one-story log cabin covered with bark. The
cabin had no floors and strips of bark were
used for carpets.” Hannah is credited with
suggesting that the cabin become an inn,
and the Presque Isle Hotel came into being.
Martin Strong, an early visitor, wrote that
“the house was provided with plenty of
good refreshment for all itinerants that
chose to call.”
Other sources credit the Reeds with
opening Erie’s first retail store in 1796 at
what is now the southwest corner of
Second and Parade Streets.
CHAPTER I
5

The Fort LeBoeuf Archeological site is located just south of the Eagle Hotel in Waterford.
THE EHM&P ARCHIVES, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER II
GEOGRAPHY SHAPED THE ERIE STORY
It is difficult to over-emphasize the role
geography has played in Erie’s history, not
only in the beginning, but in the present day
and, almost certainly, into the future.
Geography is as important to business and
industry as to the community’s overall
historical development. You have to start
with Lake Erie itself, the 240-mile long Great
Lakes’ link which was liberated from the Ice
Age ten thousand years before Babylon was
built, in the colorful phrase of one writer on
ecological matters. For Erie and Erie County,
the most distinctive feature of the Lake Erie
shoreline is Presque Isle, the curved
seven-mile sandspit enclosing Erie harbor.
But it was not just this fine natural
harbor, cited by the Marquis Duquesne in
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
6
1753, that gave Erie its strategic
importance, first for the French, then the
British and, finally, the Americans. The
other geographic feature which drew
soldiers and traders here was the short,
thirteen-mile portage to what is now
Waterford and the branch of French Creek
that leads to the Allegheny River, then to
the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
Most of Erie County occupies a
transition zone between two major
physiographic zones—the Appalachian
Plateau and the Lake Erie Plain. On one
side, streams flow into Lake Erie. On the
other they head south toward the great
interior drainage system ending in the Gulf
of Mexico.
When the French missionaries first arrived
in Erie in 1615, the Eriez Indians utilized the
lake and the portage, although they would be
overcome by the more powerful Iroquois
confederation in the 1650s. Like the white
men who followed, the Indians made great
use of the abundant fish to be found in Lake
Erie. An article in American Heritage tells of
how the first Europeans watched in disbelief
as the fish hordes from the lake rushed
upriver to spawn and were collected by the
thousands in pools and lagoons. “They
hunted them with spears, pitchforks, axes,
nets, guns…. The fish collected so thickly in
pools below some rapids that it was said a
blindfolded man could toss a spear and get a
fish nine times out of ten.”

Henry Bouquet (1719-1765) and his expedition reached
Presque Isle July 17, 1760.
COURTESY OF MRS. GEORGE A. ROBBINS.
The French decision to build forts at
Presque Isle and Waterford (Fort LeBoeuf)
in the spring and summer of 1753, naturally
aroused suspicion and concern on the part
of the British colonists on the East Coast and
resulted in one of the Erie area’s great
historic moments: the visit to Fort LeBoeuf
by the man who would become the first
American president, George Washington.
When the French failed to heed the
warning delivered by Washington, the result
was what became known in America
as the French and Indian War. In 1759,
the British besieged Fort Niagara near Buffalo,
forcing the recall of French troops from other
forts, including Presque Isle and LeBoeuf.
When they left, the French burned the forts
they had built only six years before.
In July 1760, Colonel Bouquet arrived at
Presque Isle, where he promptly built a
British fort. The new fort was built on or very
near the site of the original French fort on
the west bank of Mill Creek, about one
hundred yards from the creek’s mouth. But
the British presence was to be even briefer
than that of the French. In 1763, the great
Ottawa chief, Pontiac, organized the Six
Nations of the Iroquois and led a concerted
attack on the entire chain of English forts
extending from Niagara and Fort Pitt to
Mackinac and St. Joseph.
An Indian attack on Fort Presque Isle
occurred in June 1763, and lasted two full
days. Ensign John Christie, with a garrison of
twenty-seven men, attempted to hold off a
force of about two hundred Ottawas and
Senecas. When Christie did surrender,
Fort Presque Isle was looted and then—
for the second time in its short career—
burned to the ground. The English never
rebuilt the fort, and with the area reverting to
wilderness, it was largely bypassed by the
American Revolution.
But geography and the resulting strategic
importance of the harbor on Lake Erie was
to result in a third fort at Presque Isle, this
time by the new American government.
When he arrived in the area in 1795,
Captain Russell Bissell, in contrast to the
French and British, chose a site on the bluff
overlooking the harbor entrance, just east
of the mouth of Mill Creek.
Before settlers could feel secure about
establishing homes and creating livelihoods
in what is now Erie, a remaining Indian
threat had to be eased and claims settled as
to which state actually had title to the Erie
shoreline. In 1789, Pennsylvania had
acquired title to the area in a treaty with the
Six Nations of the Iroquois. However,
disputes arose over conflicting claims by
other states. Pennsylvania and New York
agreed on Commissioners Andrew Ellicott
for Pennsylvania and James Clinton and
Simeon DeWitt for New York to survey the
line from the Delaware River on the east to
Lake Erie. As a result, the western boundary
of New York was fixed at twenty miles east
of Presque Isle. At the same time, however,
it appeared that the triangular area in
question fell to the north of the northern
boundary of Pennsylvania. In addition to
New York, both Connecticut and
Massachusetts had laid claim to the triangle,
on the grounds their original charters
included no western limits other than the
Pacific Ocean.
At length, all three states ceded their Erie
Triangle claims to the federal government,
which then agreed to sell the area to the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The actual
transfer took place in 1792, and consisted
of 202,187 acres sold at seventy-five cents
an acre, for a total payment of $151,640.25.
In an attempt to eliminate lingering
Indian claims, Pennsylvania also paid out
$2,000 to the Six Nations, while the United
States added another, even smaller, $1,200.
Still later. $800 was paid to three Seneca
chiefs—Cornplanter, Half Town, and Big
Tree. Despite the money transactions, Six
Nation leaders were unwilling to cede
control to the Americans, and a new war
was narrowly averted by the efforts of
Cornplanter, who had been impressed,
presumably, by his share of $800. Indian
opposition lingered until 1794, when news
arrived of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne’s
crushing defeat of the Western tribes at the
Battle of Fallen Timbers. A subsequent
treaty with the Six Nations finally
eliminated Indian resistance as a factor in
the settlement of the Erie area.
In another of those dramatic Erie
historical events, General Wayne died at
Fort Presque Isle on his way home from his
victory at Fallen Timbers. Reaching Erie in
Fall 1796, Wayne suffered a severe attack of
gout. He died on December 15 before a
surgeon could reach him, and was buried at
General Anthony Wayne (1745-1796) was made a
Major General by George Washington in 1791. After
extensive training, he led his army in the Battle of
Fallen Timbers in 1794.
THE EHM&P ARCHIVES, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER II
7

the foot of the flagstaff. Thirteen years later,
when Colonel Isaac Wayne came to Erie to
remove his father’s remains to the family
plot in Radnor, Delaware County, events
occurred which still provide the stuff of
ghost story legends. General Wayne’s
disinterred body was found to be
remarkably well preserved, so much so it
had to be dismembered in order that the
bones could be transported through the
hundreds of miles of wilderness to eastern
Pennsylvania. The remaining flesh was
reburied in Erie.
One other early historical event—for
many, the proudest single moment in the
entire Erie saga—was again the result of
geography. This, of course, was the decision
during the War of 1812 to build an
American fleet at Erie. In his Battle of Lake
Erie: Building the Fleet in the Wilderness, Rear
Admiral Denys W. Knoll told of how Erie
ship owner Captain Daniel Dobbins
persuaded the administration of President
James Madison that Erie offered the safest
anchorage on Lake Erie in which to build
an American fleet. Later, when this decision
was challenged by many in the Naval
The story of General Anthony Wayne’s disinterment by
his son Colonel Isaac Wayne in 1809, and method of
preparation for transport back to his home in Radnor,
Pennsylvania, provides a more macabre story than his
record as a soldier. Dr. J. C. Wallace was credited with
“reducing” the corpse by boiling pieces in the kettle.
Bones were removed, placed in a box and given to his
son for transport.
THE ERIE STORY ARCHIVES, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Before building the American fleet, Daniel Dobbins
(1776-1856) was master of the sloop Good Intent
(1803-1804) and schooners Ranger (1805-1807),
General Wilkins (1808), and Charlotte (1809-1812).
THE EHM&P ARCHIVES, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
establishment, Dobbins wrote to Lieutenant
Jesse Elliott at Black Rock Naval Station
near Buffalo:
In regard to the idea entertained by
you that this place is not a suitable one to
build gunboats at, allow me to differ with
you. There is a sufficiency of water on the
bar to let them into the lake, but not a
sufficiency to let any heavily armed vessel
of the enemy into the bay to destroy
them. The bay is large and spacious, and
completely landlocked, except at the
entrance. I have made arrangements in
accordance with my own convictions,
for the purpose of procuring timber
and other materials for their construction.
I believe I have as perfect a knowledge
of this lake as any other man on it and
I believe you will agree with me, were
you here, that this is the place for a
naval station.
As any Erie school child can tell you,
The fleet so vigorously championed by
Dobbins went on to win the Battle of Lake
Erie. The skilled craftsmen who had to be
brought to Erie to help build the fleet were
an invaluable gift to a community still
struggling to find its way. As noted in Erie:
Chronicle of a Great Lakes City, the infusion
of three hundred laborers into the
community “sent Erie’s primitive economy
into orbit.”
Geography, the lake in this instance,
was the key to another early aspect of the
local economy.
Mary M. Muller, in A Town at Presque Isle,
noted that salt was also a valuable
commodity in the late eigteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. Its use for preserving
meat made it vital to frontier communities.
One of the major salt mines during this
period was located at Salina in New York
State, and Erie, with its harbor, was well
positioned to serve as a transfer point for
shipping salt to Pittsburgh and the South.
While salt wells were discovered near
Pittsburgh in 1813, and it was soon no
longer profitable to ship salt through Erie.
Muller explained, “The merchants who got
their start in the salt trade—the Reed family,
the Sanford family, P. S. V. Hamot, Daniel
Dobbins, and others—had started
businesses which were to grow in other
areas of commerce, both on the lake and
on land.”
Pierre S. V. Hamot (1784-1866) became a canal
commissioner, superintendent of public works at Erie,
and principal stockholder and first cashier of the Erie
Bank during his active career in Erie.
THE EHM&P ARCHIVES, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
8

This detail of Mather’s general view of Corry, Pennsvylania, c. 1870, documents the rapid growth of the community. four years after Corry became a city, the population had increased
to 6,818.
THE PENNSYLVANIA HISTORICAL HISTORICAL & MUSEUM COMMISSION, DRAKE WELL COLLECTION, TITUSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA.
CHAPTER III
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY & HOW MANUFACTURING GOT ITS START IN ERIE
Any study of Erie’s economic life in the
nineteenth century has to include portraits of
three outstanding entrepreneurs—a father
and son, and then a protégé of the son. The
father, Rufus S. Reed, was himself one of the
sons of a pioneer settler, Seth Reed. Rufus
Reed was, until his death in 1846, the new
community’s leading merchant and ship
owner. Rufus Reed’s son, Charles Manning
Reed, vastly expanded the family’s holdings
and moved into politics, first as a state
legislator and then as a congressman. His
protégé and initially his congressional page,
William L. Scott, was as successful in the last
half of the century as the Reeds had been in
the first half. Scott’s coal and railroad empires
were to make him by most reckonings Erie’s
richest man of the century.
Rufus Reed began his mercantile career
by running his father’s public house. He
opened a store in 1796, selling goods to
passing Indians as well as to soldiers and
settlers. Later he secured government
contracts for supplying Western military
outposts with necessities such as beef, pork,
flour, and whiskey. Reed built a gristmill and
distillery on Parade Street near Fifth, and
historians delight in telling of how he got
around a law forbidding the sale of liquor to
Indians by the gill, quart, or barrel. To beat
the law, Reed devised a hollow stick that
allowed him to sell whiskey by the yard!
Charles M. Reed was born in 1803.
He attended college in Washington,
Pennsylvania, and then went to Philadelphia
to study law. After admittance to the bar he
returned to Erie and entered actively into his
father’s business enterprises. His genius was
foreseeing the advantages of steam
navigation and utilizing Erie’s fine harbor.
He became the largest owner of steamboats
on the Great Lakes.
Reed was also a key figure in the story of
the Erie Extension Canal, an effort to
expand even further the benefits of Erie’s
CHAPTER III
9

Rufus S. Reed (1775-1846) built the Mansion House
Hotel, corner of North Park Row and French Streets, in
1826. When fire destroyed it in 1839, the Reed House
was built on the site.
THE EHM&P ARCHIVES, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
harbor. New York State beat Pennsylvania
to the punch by building the Erie Canal
from Albany westward, and the impact of
the canal was very significant in a short
span of time. In 1824, the year before traffic
on the canal was opened, it cost $88 to send
a ton of freight from Albany to Buffalo.
Eleven years later, in 1835, the going price
for the same ton of freight was $3. But
Pennsylvania was late to the game, and by
the time an east -west link between
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh was completed
and work started on an Erie extension,
enthusiasm for canal construction was
cooling. By 1842, some $4 million had been
spent on the Erie extension, completing the
canal to a point north of New Castle. But at
this point legislators dug in their heels and
refused to appropriate any more money.
To Erie’s rescue came the Reed family. To
complete the project, the Reeds
incorporated the Erie Canal Company,
under the guidance of Rufus S. Reed,
reportedly spending $785,000 in company
funds on the endeavor. On December 2,
1844, with thousands gathered to welcome
them, the first boats to arrive in Erie on the
canal were the Queen of the West, a packet
crowded with passengers; the R. S. Reed,
loaded with Mercer County coal; and a
third boat with unidentified cargo.
For Erie, the canal days were
short-lived—only twenty-seven years—for
the era of the railroads was at hand. The
Pittsburgh and Erie Railroad purchased the
defunct canal company in 1870. However,
historian John Miller wrote that the
Erie-Pittsburgh Canal, in its short life, “did
much for Erie in a business way.” According
to Miller, more than one Erie fortune came
out of it, and more than one Erie industry
can trace its history back to the canal as its
origin. Writer Don Albertson, in an Erie
Story article on the canal offered this
fascinating observation: “Just think. If
Pennsylvania had got its act together and
built a canal before New York state did,
Philadelphia might now be the size of New
York City and Erie the size of Buffalo.”
During its period of ascendancy, the Erie
Extension Canal was also responsible for
the growth of several western Erie County
communities, including Albion. Although
settled originally in 1800, Albion got its
first real growth from the canal, and then
from its position on the Bessemer and Lake
Erie Railroad. Pageville and Wellsburg, not
exactly household names today, also
benefited from the canal. Cranesville which,
like Albion, was a beneficiary of the
railroad, became a Bessemer and Lake Erie
switching yard for trains heading to
Conneaut Harbor in Ohio.
It should come as no real surprise that
Charles M. Reed, now head of the family
that had stepped in to assure completion of
the Erie-Pittsburgh canal, was also a leader
in the effort to bring railroads to Erie—or
that his protégé, William L. Scott, would
become a railroad giant.
In January 1829, a bank opened in Erie
with Rufus S. Reed as president and another
prominent merchant of the day, P. S. V.
This section detail from Oliver Spafford’s inset diagram of the State of Pennsylvania showing major railroads and canals
projected to connect with the Harbour of Erie concentrates on the northwestern part of the state. It shows the relationships
between the existing turnpikes, projected canals, and railroads in 1837.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
10

Giles Sanford (1783-1866) was a merchant in
partnership with Rufus S. Reed, owner of the Erie Canal
Company, from 1814-1824.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Hamot, as cashier. Not all went smoothly
for the Reeds, and the bank ran into
difficulties in 1848. However, Charles M.
Reed, one of the original directors, held
himself personally responsible for
redemption of all the bank’s notes at only a
slight discount, thereby minimizing losses.
Charles Reed was also a director of the
branch of the United States Bank of
Pennsylvania that opened in Erie in 1839;
Thomas H. Sill served as president. With the
failure of its parent institution, it closed
down and its fine building on State Street,
built at the then-impressive price of
$70,000, was sold to the federal
government. The building was used by the
government as a U.S. custom house and
post office for many years. The First
National Bank of Erie, whose board of
directors once again included the name of
Charles M. Reed, finally succeeded two
more short-lived banks—the Erie City Bank
and the Bank of Commerce—in 1863. The
president of this successful institution was
Judah Colt Spencer, like Reed related to one
of Erie’s pioneer residents, in this case Judah
Colt, his uncle.
In 1849, Charles Reed, often referred to
as “General Reed” because of his rank in the
militia, had a mansion built at Sixth and
Peach Streets, a mansion fitting his stature
in the community and a mansion which
survives in modern day Erie as the Erie
Club. When Charles Reed died in 1871 at
the age of sixty-nine his fortune was
estimated to be somewhere between $5
million and $15 million, a great sum in
those days.
While the Reeds dominated commerce,
shipping and banking in the first half of the
nineteenth century, Erie during this period
also launched itself as a manufacturing
center. Foundries and metal-working shops
led the way, utilizing the presence of bog
iron ore in the Erie area. One of the earliest
foundries, known as the Old Furnace, and
located at the corner of Eleventh and State
Streets, was started in 1833. It made
castings for plows, sawmills, and stoves—
an Erie necessity. Considering the long hard
winters (and the requisite need for stoves),
the foundry changed hands many times
over the years. It even changed location,
moving in 1884 to East Sixteenth and
German. It was renamed the Germer Stove
Company in 1902.
Another foundry, the New Furnace
Company, was started in 1840. It later
became Johnson, Himrod, and Company,
and in the 1840s produced a cast iron
parlor stove now in the collection of the
Erie County Historical Society. The
railroads that played so significant a role in
the demise of the canal era nevertheless
offered new opportunities to the Erie area.
But the transition was not easy, even
prompting a railroad war in Erie.
Railroads came to Erie piecemeal. The
first was the Erie and North East Railroad,
originally incorporated in 1842, and built
with a track gauge of six feet. The first train
on this line from New York state line
steamed into Erie on January 19, 1852.
Meanwhile, a New York railroad
company was building a track from Buffalo
to the Erie County line. At the same time,
the Franklin Canal Company was laying
tracks west from Erie to the Ohio state line.
Both railroad lines had track gauges of 4
feet, 10 inches. Thus, only the portion of
connecting track between Erie and the New
York state line had the wider six-foot gauge,
necessitating the transfer of both passengers
and freight. While inconvenient and costly
for passengers and shippers, many Erie
residents liked things just as they were. The
transfers were, so to speak, “money in the
bank” for local residents.
Railroad companies, however, were not
amused. By November 1853, owners of the
Buffalo and State Line Railroad had
acquired two-thirds of the stock of the
Erie and North East, and the latter company
agreed to change its gauge to 4 feet,
10 inches.
The reaction in Erie was hostile, to the
point where some of the new, narrower
tracks were torn up near Harborcreek
Station. Stockholders’ homes were pelted
with stones and garbage. Merchants who
supported the new line were boycotted and
a newspaper office was vandalized. It all led
to the famous quotation by one-time Erie
newspaper worker Horace Greeley, then an
The Custom House was designed by Philadelphia
architect William Kelly as the branch Bank of the
United States in 1837-1839. After the bank closed in
1841, the structure was used for a number of other
functions including the Custom House, the headquarters
of Strong Vincent Grand Army of the Republic Post #67
(shown here), the Erie County Historical Society and the
Erie Art Museum.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER III
11

editor of the New York Herald: “Let Erie be
avoided until grass grows in her streets.”
The railroads, of course, were not to be
denied and their growing dominance was
fostered by the third Erie giant of the
nineteenth century, William L. Scott.
Grandson of a Continental Congress
delegate from Maryland, Scott while a
congressional page attracted the attention of
Congressman Charles M. Reed, who
brought the bright young man back to Erie
and put him to work in the family
enterprises. It was a shrewd stroke because
Scott was eventually to outdo his mentor as
a business tycoon. In the 1850s, Scott
became involved in the coal business, an
initiative that would result in the formation
of W. L. Scott and Company, billed at one
time as the largest coal company in the
world. Scott’s involvement with coal led to
an interest in railroads, and he became
president of the Erie and Pittsburgh
Railroad Company. The Erie and Pittsburgh
line was a leader in hauling coal from the
Pittsburgh area to Lake Erie ports, including
Erie itself. Scott was also a director and
principal owner of several other railroads,
at one time controlling a total of twenty-two
thousand miles of tracks.
As his business interests and wealth
grew, Scott moved into politics. He served
two terms as mayor of Erie, was a delegate
to several Democratic Party national
conventions, and served on the Democratic
National Committee. Like Reed, Scott was
also elected to Congress. Scott’s friendship
with President Grover Cleveland is detailed
in a Journal of Erie Studies article by S. Eric
Karsh. “Scott was many things to
Cleveland,” Karsh writes, “fellow Democrat,
advisor, and above all friend. When Scott
died in 1891, Cleveland served as one of
the pallbearers.” Upon Scott’s death, he left
a large business empire worth millions of
dollars. Though Scott was unquestionably
the wealthiest and most powerful man in
the Erie of his day, the rapidly expanding
industrial base of the community gave rise
to other fortunes, other dynasties.
Metalworking continued as the
pacesetter. The Erie City Iron Works,
established in the late 1830s as Presque Isle
Foundry by Bethuel Boyd Vincent, William
and David Himrod and W. H. Johnson,
By 1871, Erie City Iron Works men were producing boilers and stationary steam engines at the factory on the corner of
State and Twelfth Streets. One hundred and twenty-five men were employed, with a sales volume of $253,000 per year.
They used 1,250 tons of pig iron and 460 tons of bar and boiler iron to produce their products.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
By the time John Mather took this photograph of
Titusville druggist and oil producer Peter Wilson and
Colonel Edwin L. Drake at the Drake Well in 1866, the
well was no longer producing. No photograph exists of
Drake’s engine, purchased in 1859 from Liddel,
Marsh & Hershey, forerunner of Erie City Iron Works.
THE PENNSYLVANIA HISTORICAL & MUSEUM COMMISSION, DRAKE WELL
COLLECTION, TITUSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA.
prospered in the years immediately
preceding and following the Civil War. In
1851, after Erie became an incorporated
city, the name of the company was changed
to Erie City Iron Works. For a time, the
company made iron shots for the cannons
of the Northern armies. John G. Carney, in
his Tales of Old Erie, said Erie City Iron
Works produced the drilling rig and boiler
with which Colonel Edwin L. Drake made
his famous discovery of oil at Titusville in
1859. George Selden and John H. Bliss
became the owners of Erie City Iron
Works in 1866, and, as Carney notes,
prospered from the subsequent oil
discovery in Titusville.
Erie City Iron Works’ role in the discovery
of oil is echoed in a 1963 company
advertisement for the Perry Sesquicentennial.
“Erie’s Oldest Manufacturer Salutes Perry’s
Sesquicentennial,” the ad reads. “We opened
shop as an iron foundry in 1840 when Erie
was a borough of about three thousand
people. There were only twenty-six states.
Texas was a republic—California belonged to
Mexico. It was the day of the stage coach.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
12

Tallow candles and tinderboxes and there
were only a few log cabins in Chicago. It was
nineteen years before Drake ushered in a new
era of industry by drilling the first oil well in
the world at Titusville, Pennysylvania. Drake
used one of our boiler-engines and opened
up a new market for our products.”
In 1859, the Erie City Iron Works built
200 freight cars for the Buffalo and Erie
Railroad, plus another 148 cars for the
Philadelphia and Erie. Under the leadership
of Selden and Bliss, Erie City Iron Works
concentrated on the manufacture of steam
engines and boilers. A separate plant, the
Erie Car Works, was established for
building railroad cars, making it a
forerunner for a later Erie industrial giant of
the twentieth century, which was to build
railroad locomotives.
Discovery of oil in 1859 in the Titusville-
Oil City area not only proved a boon to
several Erie industries but led directly to the
development of Erie County’s second city,
Corry, which became a railroad center for
the burgeoning oil business, as well as a site
for refinery service companies. The Jarecki
Manufacturing Company, established in
Erie by Henry Jarecki in 1850 shortly after
his arrival from Germany, had begun as a
small foundry and machine shop. But with
the oil boom, the company expanded into
the manufacture of oil-drilling equipment,
employing several hundred workers. By the
1890s, it had a large brass works at Ninth
and Holland, and another at Twelfth and
Chestnut. The company remained in
business until 1949.
What was to become the Hays
Manufacturing Company also got its start in
post-Civil War days. Known originally as
the G. and F. Jarecki (a different branch of
the Jarecki family) Company, it served as a
brass foundry and maker of lightning rods
as well as gas pipe and fittings. In 1869,
William B. and John W. Hays bought a part
interest in the company and the name was
changed to Jarecki, Hays, and Company,
keeping that name until 1887 when the
Jarecki’s relinquished their holdings and it
became Hays Manufacturing Company.
William H. Forster entered the firm in 1896
The Nagle Machine Shop “bunch” of workers appear in this rare group photo from the album of Dolph Kylor, c. 1908.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
and Otto G. R. Hitchcock became a firm
member in 1900.
The Adams and Lovell Company, which
was to become Lovell Manufacturing, was
founded in 1869. The company became
famous for the manufacture of washing
machine wringers. Other new companies
that emerged in the explosive latter half of
the nineteenth century included Erie Forge
Company, later Erie Forge and Steel, an iron
works manufacturer; Skinner and Woods
Engine Works, later the Skinner Engine
Company, maker of engines and boilers;
Watson Paper Mills, later absorbed by the
Ruberoid Company, paper and chemical
manufacturing; Erie Malleable Iron
Company, malleable and gray iron castings;
and T. M. Nagle Company, an engine and
boiler maker.
As the century neared an end, metalworking
was still the dominant Erie
manufacture, with about thirty different iron
works and several other brass works in
operation. In 1890 it was estimated these
companies had a combined capital of $4.5
million, produced nearly $8 million in annual
output and accounted for nearly half of the
total Erie work force of sixty-eight hundred
engaged in manufacturing. Total population at
the time was just over forty thousand.
Other industries in 1890 with more than
$1 million in annual output were railroad
car works, wood-planing mills, flour mills,
and breweries. Other manufactured goods
produced in Erie at the time included
furniture, stoves, pianos, organs, boots, and
shoes. Well on its way to becoming a major
industrial community, Erie also boasted
three slaughterhouses, one commercial
bakery, two bicycle works, four printers, six
brick works, two button works, three
carriage makers, one cement works, two oil
refineries, one paint works, one paper
mill, two pump makers, two rubber works,
three stonecutters, three tanneries, and a
pickling works.
Erie’s growing industrialization, some
called the community the “Boiler and Engine
Capital of the World”, brought workers and
their families to the area. Population had
grown from only 81 residents in 1800 to
5,858 in 1850 and then to 52,733 in 1900. As
the new century dawned, the city’s boundaries
had been expanded west to Cranberry Street,
east to East Avenue and south to Twentysixth
Street.
CHAPTER III
13

The Stewart J. Cort’s mid-body section was produced at Erie Machine and assembled in forty-eight-foot-long modules. This image shows the module in rotation, nearly horizontal, on
June 25, 1969.
NORTH AMERICAN FILMS, ERIE MARINE COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY .
CHAPTER IV
TRANSPORTATION & JOBS IN ERIE
It is a truism of economic development
that jobs follow efficient and inexpensive
transportation. Lake Erie, Erie’s fine harbor,
the relatively short overland passage to French
Creek and thence to the Allegheny River, all
these fueled the community’s original growth.
Then came the short-lived Erie Extension
Canal and the railroads—all job makers. But,
remember, the railroads didn’t come easily to
Erie. The so-called railroad war was one of the
nineteenth century’s uglier moments—and it
may have cost Erie truly spectacular growth.
At least, that’s the speculation that has
emerged over one of the really intriguing—
and unanswered questions in Erie history:
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
14
Why did the oil industry, developed initially
in the nearby Titusville -Oil City area, select
Cleveland for its rail and sea terminus to the
world instead of the much nearer Erie, with its
more attractive harbor?
In a 1982 address to a local service club,
Erie County Historical Society board member,
and retired executive of the United Oil
Company, Gordon Gebhardt, noted that in
1866, only seven years after the Drake well
was drilled in Titusville, there were 16
refineries in Erie, running 840,000 gallons of
crude a year and exporting 130,000 gallons
just to Toronto. There was even an oil well at
Sixteenth and State Streets.
Why then Cleveland and not Erie as the
major terminus? There are no definitive
answers. The people who made the decisions
are not on record as far as is known. That
leaves speculation, and the most interesting
observation comes in a 1983 article in the The
Erie Story, published by Clare Swisher. The
article describes the north -south roads
between Erie and Crawford counties in 1859
as “among the worst mud pits imaginable.’’
The obvious solution, of course: use railroads.
The tracks south of Erie at the time extended
only to Union City (the Philadelphia & Erie
Railroad has been extended to then Miles
Mills in 1852; the community’s name was

The 1896 Hagenlocher No. 1 was built in Erie, by Henry
Hagenlocher and Charles LaJeal after their visit to meet
Henry Ford. This 1-cylinder, 4-cycle vehicle with its rearmounted,
air-cooled engine had two speeds and no
reverse gear. Its top speed was fifteen miles per hour.
THE ERIE STORY ARCHIVES, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
changed to Union City in 1863), which meant
that slow-moving tank wagons would have to
move overland from Union City to the oil
fields to the south. Logic would seem to
indicate railroad men should have laid track
from Union City south. But railroad men may
have had long memories—and the railroad
war in which Erie residents attempted to
thwart construction of single-gauged tracks
across the city was only six years in the past.
New York editor Horace Greeley’s bitter
comment in the New York Herald may provide
the best clue: “Let Erie be avoided until grass
grows in her streets.” So the tracks went to
Cleveland, which got the bulk of the refineries
and served as the access point to the world for
an oil industry that was to create the fortune
of John D. Rockefeller and others.
Still, you can get an argument today by
raising the question of whether Erie was
really hurt by this or whether it is fortunate
to have remained a medium-sized city with
a comfortable and engaging lifestyle.
Speculation also surrounds another
major “if’’ in the Erie industrial story. When
automobiles were in their infancy, two Erie
men were in the forefront in the race for
development. In 1895, Erieite Henry
Hagenlocher enlisted the aid of a friend,
Charles LeJeal, in building an automobile.
Laura Ann Grotzinger, in a Journal of Erie
Studies report, says the completed creation
was called the “Hagenlocher” because he
had done most of the planning and work.
According to Grotzinger, the Hagenlocher
resembled the bicycle-like DeDion of France.
LeJeal and Hagenlocher first used a bicycle
sprocket-wheel, chain, and pedals to power the
four-spoked bicycle wheels. It accommodated
two riders, a driver and a passenger. But this
was just the beginning. Later, the two men
added a two-gallon gas tank and an engine
developed by LeJeal, which was LeJeal’s major
contribution to the vehicle. It was the only part
of the car on which the LeJeal name appeared.
With the installation of LeJeal’s engine, the car
had a top speed of fifteen miles per hour. It
could move in two directions—forward and
reverse—without having to make a 180-degree
turn. For several years the Hagenlocher car
became a familiar sight on the streets of Erie.
Hagenlocher and LeJeal even developed an
advanced model, featuring a single cylinder,
water-cooled engine. In place of the hot tube
ignition, there was a modern, dry -cell battery
ignition system. Other improvements included
a five-gallon gas tank and acetylene headlights
that ran on a gas generated by adding water
drops to calcium chloride.
With this kind of inventive and
technological skill, why not an automobile
manufacturing center in Erie, the kind of
development which carried Detroit to the top
rank of American cities? In this case, the most
interesting speculation comes in an Erie Daily
Times story by long-time industrial reporter
Les Lowman. As Lowman saw it, Hagenlocher
could have turned Erie into an automobile
manufacturing city, the potential was there.
Erie’s favorable location on the major highway
connecting Buffalo and the East and Cleveland
and the West would have been a natural for
such an industry. The fine Erie port would
have been ideal for importing supplies and
delivering finished cars to other markets.
Lowman’s conclusions are indefinite: “Possibly
Hagenlocher was unable to gain the necessary
financial backing from local businessmen
because they saw the automobile industry as a
poor stock risk. On the other hand,
Hagenlocher might not have wanted to enter
the manufacturing aspect of automobiles.’’
In his book, Pennsylvania: Birthplace of a
Nation, Sylvester K. Stevens comments,
“Pennsylvania’s connection with the
development of the automobile is easily
overlooked, but it could have been
revolutionary in its consequences had not a
young mechanic named Henry Ford chanced
to live in Michigan and made it the capital of
the automobile industry.’’
There were many opportunities for road improvement in Erie County. In October 1923, Waterford’s Township Road was
unpaved. This view shows the two-track grade crossing on Township Road which connects with Route 271 near LeBoeuf Station.
THE DEPARTMENT OF HIGHWAYS COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER IV
15

By May 1928 progress was being made on Erie County highway abutments and other improvements.
THE DEPARTMENT OF HIGHWAYS COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Hagenlocher and LeJeal were not the
only Erie developers of an early automobile.
In 1906, Calvin Payne began building his
own design of a car. Grotzinger says that
because little documentary evidence
survives on the old Payne -Modern car
company, only sketches of its background
can be made. Calvin Payne and his son,
Frank H. Payne established the company in
1906, and, by 1909, production had come
to a halt. The factory had been part of the
Modern Tool Company, located on the
northeastern corner of Fourth and State, a
building that has been remodeled and
continues in active use in the early twentyfirst
century for offices, a restaurant, and
residential apartments.
The high costs of the Payne -Modern
may have killed it off. In 1908, the sixcylinder
vehicle sold for $4,000, a lot of
money at the time. Advent of the
automobile and its companion, the freight
hauling truck, forced a new look at the
area’s roadways. The Hamilton Road Bill of
1897, providing an appropriation of $1
million to repair Pennsylvania’s roads, and
the report of the road commission to the
state general assembly in 1899, led to the
passage of the Sproul-Roberts Act of 1903.
This legislation created the Pennsylvania
Department of Highways, and was the first
important step toward a state highway system.
The next forward step was the Sproul Road Act
of 1911. Senator William C. Sproul, who later
became governor, is known, according to E.
Willard Miller in his book, Pennsylvania:
Keystone to Progress, as the “father of good
roads’’ in Pennsylvania. The 1911 Act
reorganized the State Highway Department
and greatly expanded state aid. The state took
8,855 miles of main highways connecting the
principal cities and towns and assumed
responsibility for their reconstruction with
“durable material.” Most of Pennsylvania’s
main roads had been improved by 1930, but
many rural roads remained gravel or dirt. In
1931, Gifford Pinchot campaigned for
governor on the issue “Take the farmers out of
the mud.’’ By 1940, there were 18,314 miles of
“Pinchot roads’’ in the Commonwealth. This
state initiative, of course, greatly benefited the
Erie area, as did a companion federal effort to
improve highway transportation.
Federal legislation in 1916 provided that a
state could designate not more than seven
percent of its total highway mileage as part of
a federal highway system, thereby creating a
federal-state highway partnership. Between
1917 and 1971, more than $3 billion in
federal highway funds were appropriated to
Pennsylvania. Several major east -west and
north-south routes were selected as federal
highways, some with direct benefits to the
Erie area. On the northern border of the state
is U.S. Route 6, a coast-to-coast highway that
winds westward from the New Jersey border
to Northwestern Pennsylvania. A north
branch enters Ohio from Erie County, and a
south branch enters Ohio through Meadville
and Crawford County. On the western border
of the state, U.S. 19 extends from Erie to
Pittsburgh and then south to West Virginia.
In the 1950s, construction was started on
Erie County’s first interstate highway, I-90, part
of a vast federal network initiated during the
administration of President Dwight
Eisenhower. At ribbon cutting ceremonies,
marking the nearly completed $41-million
construction project linking Ohio and New
York across Erie County, then Pennsylvania
Secretary of Highways Park H. Martin
proclaimed I-90 would “be one of the finest
highways in the country.’’ That was in October
1960—but it didn’t quite work out that way.
Within months of encountering Erie’s difficult
winter weather and the pounding of cars and
heavy trucks, the new highway heaved and
buckled. Beginning in June 1961 there were
increasing calls for an investigation into its
construction. Charges were leveled that the
highway was “ill conceived’’ and “unbelievably
bad.’’ After a full -scale state legislative
investigation, Erie County State Senator
William G. Sesler (later to secure a Democratic
nomination for U.S. Senator, the first Erie
County native to secure such a role) said
conclusions revealed no major criminal activity
or dishonesty. Maintenance remained a
problem until virtual reconstruction.
Erie’s other interstate, I -79, was an
accomplishment often credited primarily to
the first Northwestern Pennsylvania man to
become governor, Meadville’s Raymond P.
Shafer. In a tribute to Shafer held at
Allegheny College in 1999, then Erie Times
reporter Jim Thompson told the I-79 story
this way:
In 1966, the main highway artery
between Erie and Pittsburgh was Route 19
two lanes with bumper-to-bumper traffic on
weekends. There were plenty of accidents.
Northwestern Pennsylvania was not just the
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
16

forgotten corner of Pennsylvania in a
political sense; it was isolated because of an
old worn-out highway system.
The Erie-Pittsburgh-West Virginia
Freeway Association had been formed in
the late 1950s to lobby for a four-lane
interstate highway along the Route 19
corridor. There were many battles with
special interests and Ray was involved in
all of them, supporting what was to
become Interstate 79. The road did get
built and it was so fitting that the
ceremony opening the major section of
the highway, from Erie to Allegheny
County, took place in Meadville while
Ray was still in office. And that I-79 was
at that time dedicated the Governor
Raymond P. Shafer highway.
The two interstates have become major
economic corridors for Erie County, the
developing business and industrial center of
the greater metropolitan area. Instrumental in
the industrial developments along the super
highways has been the Greater Erie Industrial
Development Corporation, one arm of an
umbrella organization responsible for
economic development throughout the
county, the Erie County Economic
Development Corporation.
GEIDC was responsible in the 1980s and
1990s for purchasing and developing land for
industrial parks through the use of state and
federal funds. While the corporation is
responsible for other industrial parks scattered
throughout the county, the heaviest
concentration has been along I-90. The earliest
park along I-90 is at the site of the former Erie
County Field House where at one time
thousands of people attended rock concerts
and hockey games. Located at the Route 8
interchange with I-90, the new industrial park
was developed in the mid-1980s.
According to Robert Ploehn, former
executive director of GEIDC, Erie County was
in a recession which had begun in 1982. Judy
Lynch was elected county executive, and the
Erie County Field House “was an albatross
around her neck.” The Tullio Convention
Center in Erie was also being built at the time.
Federal funds became available and Erie
After acquiring management responsibilities for the Warner Theatre, the Erie Civic Center Authority explored the
feasibility of developing a multi-purpose facility in downtown Erie. The Authority received funding from the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to purchase property from Eighth to Ninth Streets and from French to Holland Streets.
Construction started in 1980.
THE ERIE CONFERENCE ON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
received a grant for $700,000. There were all
kinds of other problems to be overcome, of
course. A key factor in the success of the
endeavor was the administration of Mayor
Louis J. Tullio and Erie’s city council. As Judy
Lynch acknowledged, “Without the (city)
water and sewer system nothing would have
happened there.” While the interstates were
the fast track to new industrial and commercial
development in the latter part of the twentieth
century, credit also has to be given to two other
transportation developments—revitalization
of the port and creation of a modern airport.
For years, through the nineteenth century
and well into the twentieth century, the port
was a major source of jobs for Erie. As we’ve
seen, the salt trade was one of the first
examples of lake commerce and local
prosperity. Steamboats followed sailing vessels
into Erie’s fine harbor. The Lake Erie
Steamboat Line was launched by the
Reed family, those nineteenth century
commercial giants. Railroad lines were built
which connected directly with the harbor and
the docks, so much so that many complained
the railroads owned the Erie waterfront. For
years, too, the Erie and Western
Transportation Company, more commonly
known as the Anchor Line, was one of the
main companies shipping bulk cargoes out of
Erie. It was eventually taken over and became
part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system.
It was the Anchor Line that built the large
grain elevator, a bay-front landmark for
decades until taken down as part of modern
day revitalization. Mary Muller, in A Town At
Presque Isle, included a chart showing board
of trade statistics for bulk cargo passing
through the Port of Erie from 1885 to 1894.
Listed separately are grain, lumber, pig iron,
iron ore, copper, coal, and general
merchandise. The figures are substantial,
those of a major port with jobs for a lot of
stevedores and other laborers.
CHAPTER IV
17

A shipment of cars including new Hudsons, Buicks, Chryslers, Packards, Plymouths, DeSotos and Dodges arrived in Erie,
via the Norris S. Tremaine, on April 26, 1939. Vehicles were then loaded onto trucks and taken to their final destinations.
THE CRANCH COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
A 1913 study by planner John Nolen,
Greater Erie, tells proudly that Erie is the
gateway of Pennsylvania to the Great Lakes,
with a harbor four and a half miles long and
one and a half miles wide. “Erie,’’ Nolen
wrote, “is the meeting place of iron ores
from the upper lake regions and coal from
the Pennsylvania fields.’’ He also noted that
ninety-two passenger trains in and out of
Erie daily. Then he adds that five railroad
lines, the Pennsylvania, the New York
Central, the Nickel Plate, the Bessemer and
Erie & Pittsburgh, and “the new
doubled-tracked main line of the Erie
Railroad, count new industries brought to
Erie among their best business makers.’’
Other Nolen statistics are worth noting.
In 1913, he said, Erie had 464
manufacturing establishments, with
foundries employing 2,900 men and boiler
plants another 2,500. “As an engine and
boiler making center, the fame of Erie has
gone around the world. Malleable and gray
iron, open hearth and hammered steel
castings from Erie have reached an
extensive market. World’s largest industries
located in Erie are making horseshoes,
hardware, sterilizing machinery, pipe
organs, bond and ledger papers, tools of
several kinds, baby carriages, gas mantles,
and wringers.’’
Another major job maker in the last half
of the nineteenth century and the first half
of the twentieth century was fishing in Lake
Erie. Fishing as a business came of age here
in 1854 “with the appearance of the first
truly commercial fisherman, a man named
Hitchcock,’’ Greg Spinks wrote in a 1987
Erie Story article. Because of the abundance
of fish, growth came rapidly in subsequent
decades and by 1908, some fifty-four
fishing vessels were registered at Erie. In
1920 the number of fishing vessels
exceeded one hundred, and each year tons
of fresh fish were being shipped out of Erie
on both trains and trucks. It was at this time
that Erie gained a reputation as the
freshwater fishing capital of the world.
Old-time fisherman Fred Ralph recalled
those days in Spink’s article: “On an average
we usually shipped 300 to 400 tons of fish
each year. In one of our best years, we
shipped almost 1 million pounds or about
500 tons.’’ But growing pollution and
over-fishing took its toll. And with the
decline of the fish population, the
Pennsylvania Fish Commission placed rules
and quotas on commercial fishermen.
Commercial fishing became only a shadow
of its former self.
As with the fishing trade, waterborne
traffic at the port of Erie continued high
during the first half of the twentieth century,
reaching a peak of 10.2 million tons in 1942.
After that it declined steadily, especially in the
area of bulk cargo, coal, iron ore, and grain.
Iron ore from Minnesota, destined for the steel
mills of Pittsburgh and Youngstown, started to
take advantage of the shorter distances and
superior facilities at the Ohio ports of Lorain,
Fairport, Ashtabula and Conneaut.
Pulpwood sources shifted, so that the
Hammermill Paper Company (later
International Paper) no longer obtained the
bulk of its raw material from Canada, and
Canadian wheat, which once was trans -
shipped through Erie, moved to the Canadian
ports of Montreal and Quebec.
Hope for a revival of the port’s fortunes
came with construction of the St. Lawrence
Seaway in the early 1950s. The goal was to
allow ocean ships to move directly into the
Great Lakes. Anxious to seize the opportunity,
Erie Mayor Arthur J. Gardner in 1956
appointed a fifteen-member Port Commission
(forerunner of the present day Erie -Western
Pennsylvania Port Authority) to initiate and
supervise needed improvements to Erie’s
waterfront facilities. By the time the Seaway
opened in April 1959, Erie was ready with a
new deep-draft berth to accommodate
oceangoing vessels.
In its first season as a world port, Erie
handled fifteen foreign ships with 3,800 tons
of cargo. In 1977, more than 178 commercial
ships used the various harbor facilities, and
145,586 tons of cargo were handled at the
Erie International Marine Terminal. In 1978,
this figure jumped to 286,488 tons, partly
because of the installation of a new heavy-lift
crane, one of the largest on the lakes. But
the high hopes for the Seaway diminished in
the 1980s and 1990s, and Erie planners
and the Port Authority shifted part of
their focus from lake trade and waterfront
manufacturing to tourism.
The opening of the Seaway and
revitalization of the port had another
consequence, the revival for a period of Erie’s
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
18

Mayor Arthur J. Gardner (1917-1998) served the
balance of Flatley’s term, and was re-elected in 1956
and 1959. He played an important role in the
redevelopment of Erie’s downtown area and worked
diligently to develop the Port of Erie into a world port.
REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF TIMES PUBLISHING COMPANY, ERIE,
PENNSYLVANIA. COPYRIGHT 2002.
shipbuilding industry. In the late 1960s, Litton
Industries established an impressive new ship
building operation at the foot of Holland Street
under the name of Erie Marine. At this yard
was built the first of the huge 1,000-foot ore
carriers that transformed the movement of
bulk cargo on the Great Lakes. Built for the
Bethlehem Steel Corporation, the Stewart J.
Cort was 1,000 feet long, with a 105-foot beam
and a capacity of 52,000 long tons—twice that
of any previously existing lake carrier. Sadly,
only one more of these giant ore carriers was
built here before shipbuilding slowed to a halt,
to be partially revived later as a repair facility
for lake freighters.
Another plus for Erie’s job -making
potential, perhaps even more so for the future,
was the opening in the early 1920s of an airport
here, an airport now known as Erie
International Airport, Tom Ridge Field, in
honor of the first Erie man to become governor.
Roger Griswold started the then small airfield at
the intersection of West Lake Road and Asbury
Road and, in 1925, it was licensed by the U.S.
Department of Commerce, Airways Section,
making it one of the earliest airports in the
country to secure this distinction.
In 1929, Carl Litzenberger and Fred
Downing, Jr., using land owned by
Downing, and renting additional land from
Griswold, began formal airport operations.
In 1933, the still infant operation was
turned over the Aulenbacher family. On
January 15, 1936, Erie Mayor Charles R.
Barber announced that the City of Erie
planned to sponsor under the Federal
Works Projects Administration, a Class A-1
Municipal Airport for Erie. Owners of the
airfield agreed to deed their holdings to the
city, receiving in turn a lease to operate the
proposed municipal airfield.
On September 24, 1937, the first
passenger plane took off from the revamped
Port Erie lanes. According to the official
airport history, the plane left Erie for New
York City with Gerald Richardson at the
controls and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Zeisenheim
and Mr. and Mrs. Neil McCray as passengers.
The next major step toward taking the airport
into the modern age came in 1950 with
leadership by then Mayor Clairence K.
Pulling. With support from Councilmen
Kenneth W. Momeyer, Raymond J. Wager,
Thomas M. McCarty and Charles G.
Downing, Pulling created the Erie Municipal
Airport Authority, an agency that was to
guide airport fortunes through the last half of
the century and into the twenty-first century.
The role of Pulling, a former city engineer,
was critical in the airport decision, freeing the
port from political interference. Richard K.
Pulling, son of the mayor, later offered this
comment in a letter to this writer: “He (Mayor
Pulling) was working against state and federal
deadlines and often conflicting
requirements—all of which had to be met or
worked around in order to secure funding for
the project…. Countless times during that
period, my father would work round the
clock. Often he would come home at 2 a.m.,
pack and leave almost immediately for
Harrisburg or Washington to deal with a
virtual alphabet soup of bureaucracies.’’
Initial members of the important authority
were banker Roy C. Mauer as president,
William P. Johnson, Jr., Fred B. Downing, Jr.,
Edwin W. Nick, and Franklin B. Hosbach.
Commercial air service was launched in
1953, when both Capitol and Allegheny
airlines inaugurated regular flights in and out
In 1950, Mayor Clarence K. Pulling received the
City Council’s approval to establish the Erie Airport
Authority. By 1952 plans were being made to expand
the Port Erie airport. Through the years, the airport
has continued to change and improve. On July 16,
2000, the airport name was officially changed to Erie
International Airport, Tom Ridge Field to honor then
Governor Tom Ridge, an Erie native and six-term
member of Congress.
THE ERIE STORY ARCHIVES, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
of Erie. Construction began at the airport on
a terminal building in 1956. E.E. Austin and
Son of Erie built the structure at a cost of
$660,000. The four-story control tower was
opened on December 17, 1956, and the
terminal itself on September 4, 1958.
Major improvements followed through
the years. The terminal main lobby area was
remodeled in 1999 and 2000. But the really
exciting improvements are still to come,
with plans for a 1,900-foot extension of the
main airport runway across Powell Avenue
(a $24 million project in itself), expansion of
the boarding area within the terminal
building, boosting the terminal’s available jet
gates from four to six, and relocation of the
restaurant area. And for additional jobs, the
airport also plans to create an intermodal
freight facility at the former Penn Brass and
Fenestra properties, which are now owned
by the airport. There is agreement within the
community that an improved and modern
airport is essential to attract new industry to
the area, and to retain existing industries.
CHAPTER IV
19

A bird’s eye view shows activity at Trask, Prescott & Richardson’s in the efficient, well-designed Downing building, located at the corner of Ninth and State Streets. The store occupied over
fifty-thousand-plus square feet of space from the third floor to the basement.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER V
FAMILY
SAGAS
There are a number of remarkable
family sagas in the history of business and
industry in Erie, sagas all the more
notable for the difficulty in holding onto
success over the generations. The Chinese
have a saying, Fu bu guo san dai, or
“Wealth never survives three
generations.” But some in Erie, notably,
have bucked that trend. One family that
has survived and prospered through three
generations in a difficult commercial
environment is the Mead family, now
owners of Erie’s only newspaper.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
20
In 1888, when as a company
publication puts it, “nine printers on the
hopeless side of a labor dispute with
the Evening Herald wound up with too
much time, too little money, and no
jobs” decided to start their own
newspaper, the community already had
five newspapers to choose from. The
odds for the new venture were slight but
the Erie Daily Times, now the Erie
Times-News, has survived to become the
metropolitan area’s only daily journal
of record.
One of those nine founding printers was
John J. Mead, Sr. Over time, other members
of the initial organizing group dropped out
for one reason or another, until only Mead
remained to guide the struggling publication.
Newspapers have a long tradition in
Erie. Joseph M. Sterrett started the
community’s first successful newspaper, the
Gazette, way back in 1820, when the
community’s population numbered only
635. After a number of changes through the
years, the Gazette was purchased by the
Dispatch Company in 1890.

Annie Scott Strong (1859-1928) was a dynamic force in
the Erie community. She was socially active and
supportive of many charities in the community, and
rarely at rest. Annie Scott Strong expressed her opinions
frequently via the Erie Herald newspaper, which she
owned. On occasion, her opinions conflicted with those
of her husband, Charles H. Strong (1853-1936), owner
of the Erie Dispatch.
THE F. J. BASSETT COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Another early newspaper, the Erie
Observer, founded in 1830, lasted long
enough to overlap the founding of the Erie
Daily Times as the Observer and Graphic.
Editor F. S. Phelps united the Observer and
Graphic with the Times on February 2,
1894, giving a powerful shot in the arm to
the new Times publication.
Another storied Erie newspaper, the
Dispatch, was started in Waterford in 1851
by Joseph S. Young. During the Erie
railroad war of that period, the new paper
took such a strong stand on the side of the
anti-railroad men that anti-railroaders
induced Young to move his office to Erie.
The Dispatch eventually became the
property of Charles H. Strong, son-in-law
of William L. Scott, Erie’s most famous
industrialist and politician of the late
nineteenth century. In a rather unusual
twist in Erie’s newspaper story, another
local paper, the Herald, founded in 1878,
was acquired by Annie Scott Strong,
William L. Scott’s daughter. Perhaps the
acquisition wasn’t totally surprising since
the Herald, was described in one later day
newspaper story as “the mouthpiece for
Scott, who acquired it from the founders a
few months after the first issue.”
With the Strongs owning two Erie
newspapers, the seemingly inevitable
happened and the Dispatch and Herald
were merged in 1922. The combined
newspaper served for many years as the
chief competition to the Times.
In January, 1957, at a time when the
Dispatch-Herald was owned by a nationally
known labor lawyer and industrialist
Edward C. Lamb from Toledo, Ohio, the
Times Publishing Company, then directed
by John J. Mead, Jr., George J. Mead, and
Frank J. Mead, sons of John J. Mead, Sr.,
made a successful offer to purchase the
Dispatch. The company then moved from
its longtime West Tenth Street plant (now
home to United Way of Erie County), to
the former and larger Dispatch building at
Twelfth and French, a building where
passersby could watch the presses rolling
out the latest edition.
With the newspaper field to themselves,
the Meads decided to launch something
new for modern-day Erie, a morning
newspaper, the Erie Morning News, which
for a number of years provided early
competition to the afternoon Times. In
1970, thirteen years after achieving single
newspaper ownership, George J. Mead
moved the two newspapers into a new
plant at West Twelfth and Sassafras Streets,
the location previously of a coal yard. Mead
pondered moving the facility to a suburban
location, but to his credit, in the eyes of
many decided to remain part of center city.
At the turn of the century, with television
news a competitor for evening attention,
then publishers Edward M. Mead (son of
John Mead, Jr.) and Michael J. Mead (son of
George Mead) decided to merge the two
company newspapers into one, the morning
Erie Times-News, the sole daily journal for a
metropolitan area that in Erie County alone
then exceeded 280,000 people.
Another family saga is of special interest
because it tells of the start of not one but two
commercial dynasties, where contemporary
third- and fourth-generation families have
had an impact on the community.
How the McBrier and Vicary families
got their Erie start is explained in Designed
For Digging, by two Northwestern
University professors, Harold F.
Williamson and Kenneth H. Myers.
Designed for Digging tells the story of the
Bucyrus-Erie Company. One chapter in
the book focuses on the Erie connection,
and explains how the Erie Steam Shovel
Company, which merged in the late 1920s
with Bucyrus, was an outgrowth of the
Ball Engine Company, founded in 1883 by
F. H. Ball and W. H. Nicholson. Ball
manufactured stationary steam engines.
In March 1887, James McBrier, who had
recently sold his lumber business in
Allegheny, Pennsylvania, bought out the
interests of the Nicholson family. F. H. Ball
continued his association with the
organization until 1892, when his holdings
were also acquired by McBrier. Even prior
to this date, McBrier had brought his elder
son, D. N. McBrier, into the organization
by having him elected a director. Another
son, Fred McBrier, a graduate of Cornell
University in 1896, was also made a
director in February 1897.
As Williamson and Myers relate, under
an all-McBrier management the business
continued to forge ahead. Still, although
the Ball Engine Company had done well
in the manufacture of steam engines, and
sales in 1912 were around $400,000,
changes associated with the growing use
of electricity had raised questions about
the future of the company. A chance
meeting between Fred McBrier and A. C.
Vicary led to the manufacture of steam
shovels by the Ball Engine Company.
Vicary, a native of LeRoy, New York, and
a graduate of Case Institute of Technology,
had been with the Thew Automatic Shovel
Company, where he had become a top
salesman. Vicary became intimately familiar
with the shovel market through first-hand
experience, and he became convinced that
the market for small shovels offered
numerous possibilities. Unable to convince
the Thew management of the merit of his
CHAPTER V
21

proposals, Vicary was ready for a change
when he met McBrier on a train. Vicary
described the prospects for shovel sales in
glowing terms. McBrier stated that
engine-manufacturing was poor and getting
worse, and that he and his brother were
looking for a new line of products.
The results of the McBrier-Vicary
association were impressive. From 1914
through 1922, the Ball Engine Company
(the name was changed to Erie Steam
Shovel Company in 1920) reported net
earnings of $4.57 million. In 1926,
however, D. N. McBrier came into the
sales manager’s office and said, “Vicary,
we have a big offer for our stock. You’re
the only young man in the crowd, do you
want to go along with us?”
Vicary agreed, leading to this comment
in the book: “By any standards the Erie
old-stock holders obtained a handsome
return for their holdings. They not only
received $7,955,650 in cash, but retained
100,000 shares of new common stock with
an estimated market value of $2.5 million.”
Additionally, F. B. McBrier, A. C. Vicary,
A. W. Milne, and W. L. Litle continued as
officers under a reorganization that led to
consolidation with Bucyrus Company.
Another aspect of the McBrier saga is
detailed in another book, The Prescott Story
by Ray Brighton. Brighton told of the
beginnings of one of Erie’s great mercantile
adventures, the founding, development
and eventual closing of Trask, Prescott &
Richardson department store, ultimately
known simply as “Trask’s.” And, in the
process, he also told of one of Erie’s biggest
money fights—of how money made in
Erie was sent back to New Hampshire
through the wills of Charles W. Prescott
and Susie Walker Trask, both of whom
came from Portsmouth.
William B. Trask, the founder of the
department stores empire, as well as a key
figure in the early history of both Lovell
Manufacturing Company and the Marine
Bank (now PNC), left his money in Erie
upon his death, willing it to his wife,
Susie, and to business associates and
friends. But then the story turned darker.
As Brighton related:
Few people realized how ill the
seventy-nine-year-old Prescott was when
he entered Erie’s Hamot Hospital in
mid-November 1932. He lived on a few
days, dying on November 20. In those last
hours, a human drama was enacted in
Prescott’s hospital room that brought
about one of Erie County’s most celebrated
will fights. Prescott’s attending physician
was Dr. Elmer Hess (later to become
president of the American Medical
Association), and, under the doctor’s aegis,
a document was prepared that was offered
for probate as the last will and testament
of Charles William Prescott. It was
handwritten, and most obviously Prescott
was not the scribe. It read, ‘I desire to
leave one-third of my estate to Hamot and
St. Vincent’s Hospitals, $200,000 to the
Erie Boys’ Club, $100,000 each to Mr.
Vollmer and Mr. Warner (store aides). The
balance of the estate to be placed in trust
for my sisters, while they live, the
principal to revert to Hamot and
St.Vincent’s Hospitals equally upon their
deaths as an endowment’….
The Ervite Corporation started business in 1945 with three employees. The Odin Stove Company was a major customer of
Ervite’s porcelain enameling services at the beginning. When the stove business declined, Ervite manufactured porcelain
enamel signs, architectural panels, and other products.
FRANK SCHAUBLE, PHOTOGRAPHER, ERVITE COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
This “curious document,” as the book
put it, was witnessed by Dr. Hess and a
nurse, Ruth H. Kraschuske. A study of
the original document, on file in the Erie
County probate office, shows an attempt
by someone, presumably Prescott, to
write the word, “Charl.” Then below that,
is a ragged-line “X” and written beside it
“his Charles Prescott’s mark.”
But the story didn’t end there. The
Prescott sisters, back in New Hampshire,
hired an attorney to break the estimated
$2.5-million will. And the man they
chose to fight for them was an attorney of
stature who was to become a New
Hampshire governor—Charles M. Dale.
In the end, although he made his
unhappiness over the decision clear, Erie
County Probate Judge J. Orin Waite
ordered the hand-written will set aside.
When Mrs. Trask died in 1936, another
large estate ($1.7 million), was dispatched
from Erie to New Hampshire, this time
mostly to a home for aged women. The wills
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
22

of Susie Trask and Charles Prescott set
up an odd situation wherein control of
one of Erie’s leading department stores
was centered for a number of years in
New England, until 1947, when James R.
McBrier, grandson of the third original
partner, John H. Richardson, and son of
Fred McBrier, headed a family group
which began negotiations for purchase of
the store. The completed transaction was
announced in the Erie Daily Times on
December 17, 1947:
Control of the Trask, Prescott &
Richardson Co. department store returned
to Erie yesterday with the announcement by
James R. McBrier, a director of the firm that
the land and buildings occupied by the
company had been purchased by the
McBrier family. New owners of the real
estate, purchased from Josie F. Prescott
and three charitable institutions, include
Grace R. McBrier, Lydia McBrier Jarecki,
and McBrier.
As Brighton acknowledges, the return
of the McBrier family brought a renewed
enterprising spirit similar to the spirit of
the chain’s original three founders. Within
eight years of the takeover, Trask, Prescott
& Richardson had become simply
“Trask’s,” and branch stores were operating
throughout the Erie area. Another major
change was in location. Trask’s built a
new structure at Eighth and Peach Streets
(now part of Gannon University) and
moved from its longtime Ninth and
State location. Trask, Prescott &
Richardson’s time ended when Trask’s
became part of the Carlisle’s chain based
in Ashtabula, Ohio. A fourth generation
of McBriers was active in Erie industrial
and commercial life in the late twentieth
century and into the twenty-first century.
Operating under the umbrella McBrier
Company, the family holdings included
Builders Hardware and Specialty
Company with James P. McBrier as
president and CEO; Sterling Fabrication
System, again with James McBrier as
president and CEO; and McBrier
Properties with Dale R. McBrier as
president and Diana McBrier Hendrick
as vice president. In an unusual
coincidence, Sterling was once owned
by Ervite Corporation, the porcelain
and enamel products, as well as metal
fabricating and assembly company,
operated by a later generation of Vicarys.
Ervite (an acronym for Vitreous
Enamel) was founded in 1945 by James
W. Vicary with a capital investment of
$95,000, according to an Erie Story article
in 1967. The original plant at West
Twenty-third and Colonial Avenue had
8,000 square feet, but within two decades
it had been expanded to 92,000 square
feet. There was a disastrous fire in 1952,
which destroyed the plant, but it was
quickly rebuilt.
In 1965, the first step in the latter
day coincidence occurred when Ervite
acquired the Sterling Factory, then
located at West Twenty-sixth and Cherry.
Ervite’s initial production centered on
porcelain enameling productions, and
the company’s first customer was the
Odin Stove Company. With the decline
in local stove business, Ervite converted
its facilities into, among other things, the
manufacture of porcelain enamel signs.
Officers of the company at the time
were James W. Vicary, president and
founder; Rush S. Dale, vice president of
manufacturing; William J. Collins, vice
president of sales; Charles C. Vicary, vice
president and treasurer; Frank C. Endean,
vice president of the sterling division; and
Enoch C. Filer, secretary.
Later, Ervite moved into manufacturing
and assembling sheet metal products.
According to a 1993 report in the Erie
Daily Times by reporter Pam Eckert,
Ervite played a major role in the building
of duplication machines and computer
equipment, including providing materials
for Xerox copiers. However, by the time
the Eckert story was published, Ervite
had become Metalode of Pennsylvania,
Inc., Ervite Division, with the New York
State-based sheet metal fabricator taking
over the company’s operations in 1991.
In 1965, Secretary of Commerce John T. Connor (right),
and Commerce Department officials met with the U.S.
Trade Expansion Mission to Peru. Melvin A. Zurn
(1901-1970), chairman of Zurn Industries, Inc. (left)
and other leaders were part of this effort to expand
markets for American industry.
THE J. A. ZURN MANUFACTURING COMPANY/ZURN INDUSTRIES
COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Another industrial family saga in Erie
County is that of the Zurns. As a Zurn
Industries history published during Erie’s
bicentennial in 1995 related, Zurn grew
out of Erie City Iron Works, which was
established in 1840. At the turn of the
twentieth century, John A. Zurn
purchased Erie City Iron Works’ patents
and tooling for backwater valves that
prevented the flow of storm and waste
waters back into a building’s drainage
system. In 1900, Zurn founded the
Advance Manufacturing Company, and
later headquartering the business at 1401
German Street. In 1916, Zurn partnered
with Milton Rowley to purchase Keystone
Brass Works. Three years later they
purchased Lake Erie Foundry in Girard.
In 1920, John’s son, Melvin, joined
the company, and they renamed the firm
the J. A. Zurn Manufacturing Company.
In 1931, Melvin’s brother, Everett, joined
the firm. The growing concern
continued to expand its lines into
wastewater treatment, plumbing drainage
installations, and water pollution control.
CHAPTER V
23

John A. Zurn (1874 -1957) founded Advance
Manufacturing Company in 1902 at 1402 German
Street. The company purchased many local companies
as it grew. Heisler Locomotive Works was purchased by
J. A. Zurn Manufacturing Company in 1942. Hays
Manufacturing, Bay City Forge, Griswold Foundry, and
Erie Engine Manufacturing Company all were
purchased after the company was reorganized as Zurn
Industries Incorporated in 1954.
THE J. A. ZURN MANUFACTURING COMPANY/ZURN INDUSTRIES
COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
John’s brother, Frank W. Zurn, joined the
company in 1950 and, in 1965, he became
company president. That same year, Zurn
Industries branched out from its water
control and water pollution control
products to tackle the problems of solid
waste, air pollution control and land
pollution control.
In an ironic twist, in 1966 Zurn
acquired Erie City Iron Works, the
company from which it was created,
which then became known as the Zurn
Energy Division.
During the next two decades, Zurn
continued to grow under the leadership
of Frank Zurn as chairman and his
brother, David M. Zurn, as company
president. During this period, too, the
company acquired Leisure Products, a
manufacturer of golf equipment, as a
complement to its environmental focus.
By the late 1980s, the domestic business
climate had changed. Frank and David
Zurn left the company to pursue other
interests, and the board shifted emphasis to
internal growth. New management focused
on opportunities in power generation and
water control. The changing business
climate led to another, less positive
development for the community. In 1998,
Zurn merged with U.S. Industries, Inc. and
a number of Erie operations were shut
down or moved.
One continuing bright spot in the Zurn
story is Aalborg Industries, which traces its
roots to Zurn Industries’ Energy Division,
and has generated solid growth at its
impressive new facility in Knowledge Park
on the Penn State-Behrend campus.
Strictly speaking, Aalborg cannot be
labeled as a “local manufacturer” since it
doesn’t produce any of its products locally,
and all its work is outsourced to suppliers.
Instead, its Erie workforce focuses on new
business development and on execution of
existing projects. As a result, according to
By 1954, the firm, now called Zurn
Industries, Inc., with Everett Zurn as
president, had divided into four divisions:
mechanical power transmission, fluid
control, hydromechanics, and research
and development.
A family tragedy marred the success
story. John Henry Zurn, eldest son of
Melvin Zurn, had brought, in the words of
the company history, “new enthusiasm to
the management team.” Melvin Zurn
was being groomed to take a leadership
position in the company, but he was killed
in an airplane crash in 1959 at the age of
thirty-four.
In his short career at the company, John
Henry Zurn had focused on converting the
family-held company to public ownership,
a source of new capital, In 1961, his work
was accomplished, the history says, and
Zurn common stock began trading on the
New York Stock Exchange.
This multi-generation family portrait, c. 1960, includes Allyn Wright (d. 1994), who became president of Reed Manufacturing;
Ross Pier Wright (d.1967) who was secretary/treasurer; and Richard Wright (1909-1994) who was secretary/treasurer of the
company at a later date. Theron Wright (seated at left) was not involved in Reed Manufacturing Company.
COURTESY OF JOHN WRIGHT.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
24

president Jim Davis, the company now
tailors its products to meet the needs of
individual customers.
“It was a change from pretty much an
inward focus to a customer focus,” Davis
told Times reporter Peter Panepento.
“Employees have become stakeholders.
Everyone contributes to our success.” And a
success it has been. Aalborg moved into
Knowledge Park in January 1999 with 119
employees. But, by May 2001, the company
could report employment had reached
nearly two hundred skilled workers.
Another three-generation family, the
Wrights, directed Reed Manufacturing
Company at 1425 West Eighth Street, since
1902. Reuben Gridley Wright was the head
of the family when the Westfield, New
York, family moved to Erie to take over
Reed, a manufacturer of vises and pipe
tools. The Reed plant had been founded in
Erie in 1896 and was originally located on
Myrtle Street near West Fourth.
In addition to his role at Reed, Reuben
Wright had another distinction. He was a
partner in the firm of Wright and Pier that
on May 15, 1863, bought 255 acres of
timberland for $157.40 from Phillip H.
Shannon, sheriff of Jefferson County,
Pennsylvania. It was on this land, according
to Pennsylvania Profiles, that Wright built
the first known steam locomotive to haul
logs on a tram road in Pennsylvania.
A brother of Reuben Wright’s also
achieved distinction. Paul D. Wright was
Pennsylvania’s first secretary of highways,
serving in 1922 and 1923. It was Paul
Wright who started the Highways Motor
Patrol, forerunner to the present state police.
Reuben Wright was later succeeded at
Reed Manufacturing by his son, Allyn, as
president, and another son, Richard, as
secretary-treasurer. Allyn’s son, Ralph
Wright, is currently president and CEO of
the firm, and Richard’s son, John, was active
in the company for many years. Under
Ralph Wright’s leadership, Reed drastically
updated its manufacturing capability,
installing state-of-the-art equipment which
is particularly striking in its weathered,
century-old manufacturing facility location.
In 1936 the American Sterilizer Company produced sterilizers for dressings, water and utensils. This small unit was
steam-heated with a left hand mounting. Hospitals including the University of Pennsylvania and the U. S. Naval Hospital
in Philadelphia, Los Angeles County General Hospital and the John Gaston Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee,
used AMSCO sterilizers.
THE DEPARTMENT OF HIGHWAYS COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
In 1894, launching another Erie family
saga, the Hall brothers—J. Everett and
George F.—began manufacturing sterilizers
at East Eighth and Holland Streets, the
forerunner of American Sterilizer Company
(AMSCO). With J. E., as J. Everett was
known, as president, and George as
treasurer, the firm grew so rapidly that in
1909 a new factory was built at Twelfth and
Plum Streets.
Originally, sterilizers could only be
operated manually by nurses. But in 1950,
the controls were unified into an automatic
push button control, freeing nurses for
patient care. In 1979, AMSCO combined
the sterilization process with a
microcomputer and the first computercontrolled
sterilizers, the Eagle series, were
developed. It was a major breakthrough in
the healthcare industry. According to a
company history, then marketing executive
Howard M. Fish, working on an idea of
George W. Bach (company president from
1942 to 1949) developed what is considered
the first direct sales organization for a
manufacturer of hospital capital equipment.
At that time, company products consisted
primarily of sterilizers, operating tables, and
lights. Eventually, Fish and Walter Yahn
established nineteen regional offices.
Fish became president of the company
from 1949 to 1962. He was succeeded by
Vincent Lechner, who became chairman of
the board in 1974 and retired in 1976.
Lechner was succeeded by Henry E. Fish,
the grandson of the founder, J. Everett Hall,
who served thirteen years until succeeded
by Frank DeFazio.
Henry Fish also played a role in
establishing Jetstream International Airlines
at Erie’s airport. Jetstream became part of the
Piedmont commuter system. DeFazio
moved AMSCO’s headquarters to Pittsburgh
and, in 1996, merged the company with
Steris, an Ohio-based firm, although
AMSCO manufacturing remained in Erie.
CHAPTER V
25

This photograph shows Hammermill Paper Company c. 1908. By 1909, paper sales at Hammermill Paper Company totaled over $1.45 million. Profits had increased to more than $181,000.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER VI
TWO GIANTS LEAD THE WAY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Erie’s late nineteenth century development
as an industrial giant drew this apt comment
from historian John Miller: “Within a
comparatively brief period, Erie has become
one of the leading manufacturing cities in the
Union, with a reputation not confined to the
American continent.’’
Miller then goes on to make the proud
claim Erie by the turn of the century was
building more engines and boilers than any
other city in the world. One important
industrial story with significant ties to both
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is that
of the Griswold Manufacturing Company.
Founded in 1868 by J. C. and Samuel
Selden and Matthew Griswold, the company
made cast iron and aluminum as well as
cooking equipment. Originally, Griswold
manufactured separable door butts, a new
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
26
type of hinge for doors, as well as other light
hardware. In 1873, it was known as the
Selden & Griswold Manufacturing Company,
but in 1897, the business was reorganized,
and the Griswold Manufacturing Company
emerged. The old plant on the bayfront was
abandoned in 1903, and the property of the
Shaw Piano Company at Twelfth and
Raspberry was taken over. While it is now out
of business, Griswold is still recognized
today for the quality and durability of its
cooking equipment.
Still, it is for another connection that the
name Griswold has even greater continuing
significance for modern day Erie. As the late
John W. Teker, a longtime engineer at Erie
GE, told the story in The Journal of Erie
Studies, it was Matthew Griswold, Jr., at the
time head of the Griswold Manufacturing
Company, who played an influential role in
the General Electric Company decision to
build a plant in Erie.
The General Electric Company was
created in 1892 by the merger of the Edison
General Electric of Schenectady, New York,
and the Thomson-Houston Company of
Lynn, Massachusetts. By 1906 the
manufacturing facilities of both the Lynn and
Schenectady plants had reached full capacity.
More space was needed. And rather than
expand the existing facilities at Lynn and
Schenectady, the board of directors decided
to develop a new plant closer to the growing
Midwestern market.
“As the first step of action upon this
decision, Francis C. Pratt, assistant to E. W.
Rice, vice president of engineering and
manufacturing, was directed to conduct a

surface of the land to provide good
footings for buildings and heavy
machinery foundations. Also, five years
earlier, in 1901, an electric trolley line had
been extended from the Erie city street car
system eastward, with track on each side of
East Lake Road to reach Four Mile Creek
Park, an amusement park, at the mouth of
Four Mile Creek on the shore of Lake Erie.
Matthew Griswold, Jr., (1866-1929) played a major
role persuading the New York Central and Pennsylvania
Railroads and the U.S. Post Office to develop the
downtown post office and Union Station site at
Fourteenth and Peach Streets. It was named Griswold
Plaza in his honor.
THE F. J. BASSETT COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
search in the Buffalo-Cleveland region for a
suitable location for the new plant.’’
This is where the friendship between
Griswold and Pratt—onetime classmates at
Yale University —came into play. Pratt
stopped in Erie to visit Griswold:
During Pratt’s visit with Griswold, he
revealed the purpose of his journey.
Griswold then persuaded Pratt to also look
into the possibility of a site for the new
plant in the Erie area. Griswold was
eloquent in his praise of Erie and
particularly of the farmlands east of the city
boundary in what was then part of
Millcreek Township, and he pointed out its
many advantages. There was good access
to mainline railroads going east, west and
south. The land was on the Lake Erie
shore, with low cost water transportation
to all the Great Lakes ports and to the Erie
Canal at Buffalo for shipment of materials
and products as well as a source for an
ample supply of good water for the plant
and community to be. The underlying
strata of shale rock were close to the
Griswold, who was actively involved
with the Erie Board of Trade, also pointed to
the fact the proposed site was
geographically midway between Buffalo and
Cleveland, virtually at the center of General
Electric’s search objective. Impressed, Pratt
made a favorable report. Complications did
arise, but on August 7, 1907, the Erie Daily
Times carried the headline reading: “General
Electric Will Come to Erie for a Certainty.’’
Erie’s location on Lake Erie was also a key
factor in securing a second twentieth
century industrial giant, the Hammermill
Paper Company, a story detailed in the 1985
book, The Best Known Name in Paper:
Hammermill A History of the Company by
Michael J. McQuillen and William P. Garvey,
the latter president of Mercyhurst College.
Hammermill was launched in Erie in
1898 by Moritz Behrend and his sons, Ernst
Behrend and Dr. Otto Behrend. The
Behrends learned the paper business in
Europe where Moritz once operated a
papermill for Otto von Bismarck, Prussia’s
famed “Iron Chancellor.”
Disliking Germany’s authoritarian
political system and convinced that Europe
was headed for war, Moritz Behrend was
determined to see his sons launch a new
paper mill operation in America. According
to McQuillen and Garvey, it is not certain
exactly when the Behrends determined on
Erie as the site for their proposed mill. One
story has it that the city was chosen while
Moritz and his sons studied maps of America
while still in Germany.
Still, the basic reasoning behind the
location seems clear:
Erie was then located very near the
population center of the country; over
Inventor of the brown wood-pulp process, and
manufacturer of the first telegraph rolls, Moritz
Behrend (1836-1915) created the Hammermill Paper
Company in 1898 with support from his sons Ernst
Behrend and Dr. Otto Behrend.
THE HAMMERMILL PAPER COMPANY COLLECTION,
ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
eighty percent of the American people lived
within five hundred miles of the city at that
time. It was nearly equidistant from both
the established market centers of the East,
such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia,
and Buffalo, and from the burgeoning cities
of the Midwest including Cleveland,
Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis. Its
position on Lake Erie ensured both an
abundant supply of fresh water, so vital to
any paper mill, and ready access to the
plentiful softwood forests of the Upper
Great Lakes and Canada, whose spruce and
balsam trees would provide the bulk of the
mill’s pulpwood for over half a century.
Finally, proximity to the coal fields of
western Pennsylvania and the excellent
network of railroads in the area assured
ample and relatively inexpensive supplies of
other necessary raw materials, including
coal, lime, and sulphur.
There was one surprising aspect to the
decision to locate in Erie. As the book on
Hammermill explains, most paper mills at that
time were located in sparsely populated rural
CHAPTER VI
27

The 1931 top-of-the-line Odin lowboy stove, featuring
“Brewster” marbleized enamel parts and a “Wilcolator”
temperature regulator and insulation, listed for
$112.25. The Odin Stove Company manufactured hot
plates, laundry plates, Odin highboy and lowboy stoves,
as well as a bungalow range.
THE ODIN STOVE/REPUBLIC HEATER COLLECTION,
ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
areas or near very small towns. Erie’s 1900
population of 52,733, and its rapid growth in
the recent past, made it by the standards of the
day an unusual choice for a papermill.
According to Ernst Behrend, it was his
father who wanted to break with tradition,
and build the mill close to civilization, as
opposed to in a rural area. When the
Hammermill plant was located in Erie, many
thought that the mill was destined to fail.
However, time has proven the Behrends
correct, and has resulted in Hammermill
being able to conduct its business and give its
employees the benefits of living near a city,
with the advantages of medical care,
education, and entertainment. All of these
ingredients, plus the jobs provided by Erie’s
new industries were also factors in luring
thousands of new workers to the growing
city. Before moving past the Griswold story
and its fine cooking equipment, it is
appropriate to note that Erie early in the new
century was also known as a major stove
manufacturing center.
Three companies competed in the
business—the Germer Stove Company, the
Eriez Range Company and the Odin Stove
Manufacturing Company (The God of Fire
was called Odin in Norse mythology). Odin,
founded in 1897 by Carl H. Hoffstetter, was
the most successful of the three.
Odin began its life in a small wooden
frame building on the south side of West
Twelfth Street. According to the Erie Story
publication, Erie was selected as the site for
the Odin plant, which initially made gas hot
plates, because the city had a central
location with regard to steel, iron ore, and
coal, as well as rail and water transportation
facilities. Shortly after the company began
production, Hoffstetter’s brother, Robert,
and their father, John, joined the venture.
Business grew and the company expanded
into other product areas, including gas
heaters, furnace burners, soldering furnaces,
oil heaters, and domestic cooking ranges.
The success of the “Odin Beautyrange’’
prompted a search for a new home and the
plant eventually took over the entire block of
West Twelfth and Myrtle. The company also
established a modern foundry on the site of
the former Erie Engine Company at West
Thirteenth and Walnut Streets. According to
The Erie Story, the company used an
assembly line process to produce nearly
three hundred stoves daily. The employment
figures in the late 1930s and 1940s were
around five hundred people.
One of the developments in which Odin
was heavily involved in marketing and
research was in the field of bottled gas. The
company worked closely with the Propane
Corporation of Erie that was one of the leaders
in the development. Odin Stove was sold to
the Dearborn Stove Company of Dallas, Texas,
in July 1953. Less than three years later, it was
sold again, this time to Republic Heater
Corporation of California. The last Odin Stove
rolled off the former two-block long assembly
line in 1956,’ and the building was closed for
good in the spring of 1972, and was
subsequently demolished in 1987.
Another unusual area in which Erie
manufacturers made their mark was the pipe
organ industry. In a study published by the
Journal of Erie Studies, John R. Kane made the
point that the history of pipe organ building
in Erie, Pennsylvania, stands out as being
unique when compared to other cities.
Beginning with the Burdett Organ
Company and the A. B. Felgemaker
Company in 1872, the Anton Gottfried
Company in 1894, and the Tellers Organ
Company in 1892, organ pipe production by
Erie companies continued well into the
twentieth century, giving the city an
international reputation.
The Erie Reed Pipe Company was
founded in 1920, the same year as National
Organ Supply Company. The Organ Supply
Company followed in 1924. Durst and
Company followed in 1926 and Lawrence
Phelps and Associates in 1972. Kane was
most impressed with Durst and Company
which he described at that time “as being the
largest and most complete pipe organ
supply house in North America.’’ In his
conclusion, however, he lamented that, as of
By 1941, the Odin “Beautyrange” was a standard. Prices ranged from $94.50 to $104.50 for deluxe model 331L-5.
THE ODIN STOVE/REPUBLIC HEATER COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
28

An Italian fruit vendor greeted customers at his stand in the open public market at 1015 State Street in April 1894. Many
Italian immigrants settled in the “Little Italy” neighborhood of the city of Erie, an area bounded by West Fourth, West
Nineteenth, Sassafras and Cascade Streets. Others settled in North East, Corry and parts of Erie County.
THE C. B. HALL COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
1979, organ-building activities in this area
had become very limited in number and size
as they have elsewhere.
Kane makes one point that deserves
emphasis. For the success of the industry in
Erie for so long he credits in part “the
vast ethnic communities of this area
which provided the builders with highly
skilled craftsmen and workers possessing
musical talent.’’
Thanks to its rapid industrial development
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, Erie had become a community of
rich cultural mixes—from the original
Anglo-Saxons, Germans, and Irish, to new
arrivals from Italy and Poland. After World
War II, the area also attracted increasing
numbers of African-Americans, joining those
who had settled here before and after the Civil
War when Erie was a way station on the famed
Underground Railroad for escaping slaves.
In a paper submitted for his doctorate
degree at Washington State University, Erie
native David L. Hood says the Italian colony
here grew slowly at first. By 1900, he says,
there were about 350 Italians living in the city.
In 1911, that number had risen to over 3,000,
and in 1920 to about 11,000. Accompanying
this growth was the development of a business
and professional class that was to have
profound influence on the community.
Although the first Poles arrived in Erie as
early as the 1830s, the colony also developed
slowly and didn’t become one of Erie’s largest
ethnic groups until early in the twentieth
century. In 1901 there were eight hundred
Polish-American families. By 1920 their
numbers had risen to over twenty-two
thousand people. Again, accompanying this
growth was the development of a new business
and professional class for the community.
The African-American community in the
area was small until the second half of the
twentieth century, but it still produced one of
Erie’s great men, Harry T. Burleigh, an eminent
American baritone composer and arranger,
who arranged the immortal “Deep River’’ and
other spirituals. Born in Erie’s First Ward on
December 2, 1866, the son of a school janitor
and the grandson of an ex -slave, Burleigh
became a student and associate of famed
composer Anton Dvorak. He died in 1949.
Before 1940, less than one percent of Erie
residents were African-Americans. By the late
twentieth century, this number had climbed
to ten percent. A publication produced by
the Times Publishing Company on the
occasion of the paper’s hundredth birthday
in 1988 cited the impact of the community
of Laurel, Mississippi, on Erie’s African -
American colony.
“Today,” the publication declared, “as many
as half of Erie’s blacks have ties to this part of
the South. Much of this unique relationship
centers on Reverend Ernest Franklin Smith, a
black Methodist Episcopal minister who came
to Erie in 1934. He led other blacks to Erie,
buying meals for some on the long train ride
north, searching for housing for them in Erie,
and encouraging them to join his parish.”
Reverend Smith had many friends in
Laurel, which was hard hit by the Depression
of the 1930s. Laurel boasted one of the few
black middle classes of the early 1900s and a
respected black high school, Oak Park High.
Fred Rush, an administrative assistant to the
late Mayor Louis J. Tullio, told the Associated
Press in 1988 that the Oak Park connection
was important to Erie. According to Rush,
Oak Park provided “seed corn’’ for black
achievement and black pride here in Erie.
“Once you get pride, things can change.”
Rush said.
Harry Burleigh (1866-1949) graduated from Erie High
School in 1887. In 1892, with encouragement and
sponsorship from Isadore Sobel and others, Burleigh was
able to audition at the National Conservatory of Music
in New York City. He won a scholarship and began an
impressive career as a composer and performer.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER VI
29

The Pennsylvania State Board of Fisheries hosted a Chamber of Commerce Day on the Peninsula, July 22, 1914, for over six hundred members and their families. At the beginning of the
athletic events, Mayor William J. Stern and John F. Brown competed in a fifty-yard footrace. The mayor won by a close margin.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER VII
A VOLATILE MIX: BUSINESS, INDUSTRY & POLITICS
Business and industry have always
been important role players in Erie’s
colorful political life. Never, perhaps, has
this been clearer than in the municipal
election of 1913, a watershed event that
helped shape Erie politics for much of the
twentieth century. The election struggle
began with a labor dispute, one of the
ugliest in the city’s history.
As Erie: Chronicle of a Great Lakes City
reported, in 1910, Erie had a population of
66,525, of whom 11,087 were workers in a
rapidly expanding industrial base. Of these,
4,441—just over forty percent—worked in
the foundries and machine shops that were
the backbone of Erie’s economy. The
products produced by these industries
included everyday items such as stoves and
skillets and more specialized items like the
metal fixtures holding the cables of San
Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and the
locks of the Panama Canal. Each piece was
the product of a skilled worker, typically
working long hours at low wages under
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
30
difficult and dangerous conditions. It was,
as events demonstrated, a combustible mix.
Anxious to increase their share of the
wealth for which they felt their efforts
were partially responsible, many of the
molders, auxiliary workers, pattern
makers, machinists, and metal polishers
joined the Molders and Allied Workers
Labor Union.
However, the manufacturers, anxious to
protect what they saw as their basic property
rights—the right to hire and fire, to pay their
workers as they saw fit, and to run their
businesses under strict management
direction—refused for the most part to have
anything to do with the new union. The
economic, political, and legal systems of the
day all were slanted toward the
manufacturers, carrying over the prevailing
political climate from the industrial boom of
the late nineteenth century.
In Erie, the spark which ignited the
resulting flame came on November 17,
1912, when two union members—one of
them the president of the Molders and
Allied Workers Union, Local 38—were
fired from their jobs at the Erie Engine
Works. Charging the company with
trying to intimidate union workers,
the union demanded reinstatement of
the fired workers, plus a wage increase,
a nine-hour day, time-and-a-half for
overtime, and recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent.
The die had been cast for a prolonged
and bitter dispute. Erie Engine Works
union members walked off the jobs, and.
shortly afterwards, another forty workers
followed suit at the National Foundry. Nor
was this the end. Over the next few months,
the strike spread to Erie Foundry, Urick
Foundry, Cascade Foundry Company,
Jarecki Manufacturing Company, Griswold
Manufacturing Company, and Odin Stove
Manufacturing Company. Everywhere the
key issue was recognition of the union. By
the end of February 1913, 12 of the city’s 31
foundries were on strike.

But there had been a small break in
industry’s solid front. Van Natta Aluminum,
with only six employees, settled with the
union. More serious for the manufacturer’s
position, Erie Malleable Iron Company, the
largest foundry in Erie with over three
hundred molders and core makers, agreed
to recognize the union and provided an
increase of eighty cents a day in wages and
fringe benefits over a three year period.
Further, Erie Malleable resigned from the
Manufacturers Association.
Rather than following Erie Malleable’s
lead, the other companies that had been
struck stiffened their resolve. Turning to
the legal system, they succeeded in
obtaining injunctions against picketing or
harassment of non-union “scabs,’’ as the
strikers called them. To enforce these
edicts, a number of arrests were made.
The next milestone came on March 20,
1913, when violence broke out at the Hays
Manufacturing Company, with union
workers accused of throwing rocks at the
strikebreakers. Fourteen men were arrested
and charged with rioting, inciting to riot,
assault, and battery. Defiantly, those
arrested chose to go to jail rather than pay
the fines levied against them.
With tension high, political leaders
attempted to resolve the impasse. Offering
to arbitrate the dispute, several top elected
city leaders suggested each side to the
dispute send three members to meet with
three representatives of the select and
common council. The union immediately
accepted, but the Manufacturers Association
said, no, this would be tantamount to
recognition of the union.
Another break came in June when an
adjudicator from the U.S. Department of
Labor came to Erie in hopes of securing a
settlement at the Erie Forge Company,
which was under contract to supply
materials needed for the Panama Canal.
The adjudicator was successful; Erie
Forge agreed to recognize the union and
the Forge strikers went back to work.
But the overall struggle continued.
And on August 9, 1913, a fight broke out
between union and nonunion workers
that resulted in the fatal stabbing of
a union molder, Stanley Bezel. One of
the strikebreakers was later convicted
of murder.
With further violence threatened,
Pennsylvania State Police units were sent
into Erie. On Labor Day, the union held a
massive, peaceful demonstration, a parade
of some 1,200 molders and core makers,
along with more than 8,000 supporters
and sympathizers.
If public support for the union cause
seemed to be growing, the manufacturers
remained determined to utilize their
economic power. The strike dragged on
into another winter. Discouraged, and
with many of their members facing
financial ruin, in February 1914 the
union voted to throw in its hand. Union
members were free to find employment, if
work could be found. Two of the struck
foundries, Morse Iron Works and Erie
Engine Works, had closed down, and
others were feeling the effects of the long
local struggle and a national recession.
Was this victory, then, for the
manufacturers? Not quite. To again quote
Erie: Chronicle of a Great Lakes City:
In an immediate sense, the
manufacturers had won. The union had
failed to get universal recognition as the
bargaining agent for the city’s molders.
The industrial status quo had been
maintained. But politically, as we shall see,
the workers had won, and this victory
would prove to be longer lasting.
The union victory came in the
municipal election of 1913, an election
significant not only for its clear indication
of the growing political muscle of
ordinary workers, but for a change in the
form of city government.
From 1851 to 1913, Erie’s municipal
government consisted of a mayor, a select
council, and a common council, whose
members were elected separately by wards.
However, as part of a nationwide
Progressive reform movement, in 1913, Erie
Unidentified Erie Engine Works boiler workers appeared in a lighter mood in this image taken by amateur photographer
Arthur J. Conrad c. 1911.
THE ARTHUR J. CONRAD COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER VII
31

scrapped the mayor and select-common
council system and replaced it with a
commission government: five council
members elected city wide, a mayor and
four others, each of whom was in charge of
one of the five city departments—the
department of public affairs, headed by the
mayor and including the police department;
the department of accounts and finance; the
department of public safety; the department
of streets; and the department of parks and
public property.
When the votes were counted after the
November election, three of the successful
candidates—Theodore Eichhorn, a printer;
Frank E. Pelow, a pattern maker; and John
C. Dundon, a grocer—were men endorsed
by the unions. Cassius Baker, another
victor, had been supported by the
manufacturers, while the mayor, William J.
Stern, who had ordered the arrest of strikers
and had called in the state police, was a
carryover from the previous government.
When Stern did come up for reelection in
1916, he was defeated by a labor-backed
candidate, Miles B. Kitts, one of the most
colorful of all Erie political figures.
In his thoughtful and much-quoted
doctoral thesis, Ethnic Politics in Erie,
William P. Garvey (later to become the
influential president of Mercyhurst
College) cited the Molders Strike and the
confrontation over Erie’s social order
during the Kitts administration as
decisive events in shaping Erie politics for
the remainder of the century.
The Kitts administration at City Hall,
which continued into the “Roaring
Twenties,’’ was, to say the least,
entertaining, perhaps too much so for
many. As one colorful description of the
Kitts era described it:
As the nation carried on its postwar
orgy of fun and frenzy, Erie played its own
jazz-age sinfonia. Nobody could say for
sure just how many houses of prostitution,
horse rooms, casinos, and speakeasies the
town supported. Few even seemed to care.
At the various dives, it was sufficient to
say, ‘Joe sent me.’ or maybe it was Mike or
Miles B. Kitts (1880-1947) served as mayor of Erie
from 1916-1924. During his controversial term, there
was much pressure from the reform group The
Committee of Sixteen to investigate and clean up vice
and other criminal activity in the community. At the end
of his term Kitts returned to practicing law, became a
state senator for two terms, and was elected county
judge in 1935.
COURTESY OF THE GANNON UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES.
Steve. Under Mayor Miles B. Kitts, City
Hall seemed to wink at the festivities.
But the spectacle of a wide-open Erie
did not go down well with a reform
element in the ranks of the Republican
party. Protest meetings were held, which
led to the formation of the Committee of
16. Agitation by the Committee of 16 led
in 1921 to a grand jury investigation of the
police department, controlled by Mayor
Kitts. Attorney Samuel L. Gilson was
appointed as assistant to the district
attorney and placed in charge of the grand
jury investigation. A chain of similar
events would occur in 1954 with a
Republican-led investigation of the Mayor
Thomas W. Flatley administration. Gilson’s
investigation included just about every city
official, including most prominently,
Mayor Kitts himself.
A special squad of twelve state police
raiders was sent into Erie and new
demands were made by the Committee of
Sixteen for Kitts to clean up the city. The
mayor did nothing to comply with the
demands except to angrily ask who
specifically had asked for the state police
detachment. Sheriff Guy Fox was fingered,
but Fox, perhaps fearful of Kitts’ political
power, denied the charge. In any
event, Kitts then conferred with
Republican Governor William C. Sproul in
Harrisburg. He said Erie did not need
outside help in investigating conditions
within the city. And, as an indication of his
good faith, he agreed to appear before the
grand jury and testify.
In all, the grand jury heard from over 100
witnesses, including 47 members of the
police department. While there were
eventually indictments against Kitts and
Police Chief Detzel, the indictments went
nowhere and were finally thrown out of
court. Kitts, tired of the struggle and anxious
to return to the greater financial rewards of a
private law practice, did not seek re-election
and was succeeded by fellow Democrat
Joseph C. Williams, who defeated William
Morrison, the candidate of the reformers.
Garvey, commenting on the Kitts era in
a 1987 Erie Story article by Greg Spinks,
observed that although Kitts was at odds
with the reformers, he reflected the views
of Erie’s more recent arrivals.
Many of these immigrants saw nothing
wrong with gambling, drinking and
prostitution, much to the consternation of
many ministers and manufacturing
leaders. Kitts was a political realist and
established himself with the immigrant
workers. He was an effective politician and
saw the balance of power was moving to
the new immigrants.
An “effective politician,’’ indeed—
Kitts, who had already served as a state
representative, later in the ’20s was
elected a state senator and in the ’30s
went on to win election as an Erie County
common pleas judge. Looking back at
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
32

Kitts’ career from the vantage point of late
in the century, two respected political
observers—onetime Democratic Mayor
Joseph C. Martin and onetime Republican
County Commissioner Fred Lamberton—
both agreed that Kitts’ had the political
talent to have been elected governor if he
had focused on that goal.
Before leaving the Kitts’ story, it should
be noted that, as mayor, Kitts was largely
responsible for the installation of the Mill
Creek tube, still in use today, and
designed to prevent a repetition of Erie’s
greatest natural disaster, the Millcreek
flood of August 3, 1915, which killed as
many as thirty-seven people. Unprecedented
rainfall caused the flood, and
the creek overflowed its banks near
Glenwood Park Avenue, south of Twentysixth
Street, creating a lake with depths of
as much as thirty feet. When the culvert to
the north buckled, a wall of water surged
toward the bay, sweeping victims as well
as buildings away with it. One of the
victims was an Erie fireman, Pipeman
John Donovan.
For Kitts’ successor as mayor, Joseph
C. Williams, and his two immediate
successors in the city’s top job—James P.
Rossiter and Charles R. Barber—jobs, or
rather the lack of jobs, were clearly the
major political issue. The excesses of the
Roaring Twenties had been followed by
the grim national recession of the 1930s.
In the days before unemployment
insurance and Social Security many were
faced with a stark need for the basics—
food, clothing and shelter. Under the
Rossiter administration, a bureau of
charities was created within the Erie
Department of Public Affairs. Two series
of bonds were issued to finance the
bureau, the first in 1931 in $1,000
denominations at four percent, and the
second in 1932 in $2,000 denominations
at four and three-quarters percent.
Proceeds were distributed to a number of
private charitable institutions, including
Saint Vincent and Hamot hospitals, the
Salvation Army, and the Community
Chest, forerunner of today’s United Way.
Mulligan Hall was opened in
November 1930 in the old Park
Presbyterian Church next to the City
Hall. It was a project of the Uplift Society
of Erie, an organization of civic-minded
businessmen with Thomas G. Sterrett as
its secretary.
Originally intended as a short-term
relief measure, Mulligan Hall remained
active for two and a half years, during
which time it served between two and
three million meals of its famous
Mulligan stew. The project was supported
in part by the city Bureau of Charities,
but largely by private contributions of
money and produce.
Direct relief was also provided by
the county poor board. With a branch
Workers and management surveyed damage caused by the Millcreek Flood of August 3, 1915. Workers began clearing the
wreckage piled up on the right bank at the culvert opening under the Stearns Company plant just below Thirteenth Street.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
The Millcreek Tube was designed as a permanent solution to the flooding problems which occurred in 1895 and 1915.
A bond issue was approved and the tube was constructed. This part of the tube was constructed from Sixteenth Street to
Seventeenth Street.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER VII
33

known as the Community Market, it
distributed boxes of food once a week to
needy families.
When he ran for mayor in the 1931
election, Rossiter, an attorney by
profession, decided to seek both party
nominations, as candidates were free to do
at the time. As John Carney explained in
his 1960 book, Highlights of Erie Politics:
...many of Jim’s Democratic friends
changed their registration to Republican so
that they could vote for him and help him
win the Republican nomination. They felt
he was unbeatable for the Democratic spot.
The plan worked and he emerged from the
primaries with both nominations.’’ Once
elected, however, Rossiter and his fellow
Democrats made what Carney termed
‘drastic’ personnel changes, changes which
irked “certain people in the local
Republican set-up.”
A group headed by attorney Charles
H. English (the grandfather of current
Congressman Phil English) sought a
popular candidate to run against Rossiter
in the 1935 election and settled on
Alderman Charles R. Barber. “To add to
their strength,’’ Carney said, “they urged
Rossiter’s city solicitor, Edward Murphy,
to join their ranks. As the campaign went
on the battle became rough and there was
much “mud’ slinging. Young Barber
(he was only thirty-five at the time)
showed remarkable strength and won by
450 votes.’’
Barber was the pacesetter in what
became one of Erie’s most famous political
families. His brother, Thomas W. Barber,
an attorney who was close to Miles B. Kitts
and served as Kitts’ campaign manager
when the former mayor was elected judge,
went on to become a judge himself. But
perhaps the most famous of all the Barbers
was a sister, Dr. Gertrude A. Barber, a onetime
assistant superintendent of Erie
schools, who in 1952 founded the Dr.
Gertrude A. Barber Center, a home and
training center for those with physical and
mental disabilities.
The story of the Barber Center, and
how Dr. Barber brought these children and
adults with developmental disabilities “out
of the closet,’’ is told movingly in A Legacy
of Love, by Dr. Michael J. McQuillen.
Dr. Barber began her pioneering effort
in a room in the downtown YMCA. Four
years later, preschool classes and a
program for adults was opened in
Hamilton School. And in 1958, the Barber
Center moved to the former Lakeview
Municipal Hospital on lower East Avenue.
Lakeview, once known as the “Pest
House,’’ had served as a quarantine
hospital for patients suffering from scarlet
fever and other contagious diseases. The
introduction of sulfa drugs, vaccines and
antibiotics had significantly reduced the
patient load and by the 1950s almost the
only patients left were those suffering from
polio. Increased use of the Salk vaccine,
however, reduced the number of polio
patients at Lakeview from a high of 97 in
1952 to only two in 1957.
When the city decided to close the
hospital, there was some talk of utilizing the
building as a City Hall Annex or even, after
reconstruction, as a new City Hall proper.
It was Safety Director Michael A.
Cannavino who first suggested turning it
over to Dr. Barber. The Erie Daily Times
editorialized in favor of the suggestion
and Mayor Arthur Gardner threw in his
support. Council unanimously approved
the transfer on June 24, 1958.
Under Dr. Barber’s continuing
leadership, the Barber Center became a
major Erie success story, a state and
national leader in the effort to help those
who previously had been shut up in
institutions or virtually hidden by many
families. By century’s end, the Barber
Center was serving over twenty-two
hundred individuals at the Erie facility
and had expanded its services to both the
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas.
Charlie Barber, as everyone called him,
was a transition mayor, leading the city in
the closing years of the Great Depression
and through World War II. He was
reelected in 1939 and 1943, but resigned
Mayor Louis Tullio (1916-1990) proclaimed
“Uncle Jackson Day” in July 1969. “Uncle Jackson
Koehler,” played by Gordon Crandall, supports the
mayor’s proclamation.
THE ERIE BREWING COMPANY COLLECTION,
ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
in the middle of his third term to join the
cabinet of Republican Governor James H.
Duff as secretary of welfare. Subsequently,
he was elected to two statewide offices—
state treasurer and auditor general.
Erie had grown steadily from 1795 to
the middle of the twentieth century,
reaching its high-water mark in the 1960
census when the city’s population was
listed at 138,440. But urbanization ran
into trouble during the postwar years.
While industry had brought families into
the city during most of Erie’s history, by
the second half of the twentieth century
the family automobile was allowing
families to move to the suburbs if they so
chose—and many did. Erie city’s
population began to decline even as the
metro population and Erie County’s as a
whole continued to grow.
The city’s population fell to 129,265 in
1970, to 119,123 in 1980, to 108,718 in
1990, and to 103,715 in 2000, when the
city lost its proud status as
“Pennsylvania’s third city.’’ Population
figures were one symptom; aging
industrial plants were another. Erie had
become part of a national “Rust Belt.’’
Corrective steps were needed.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
34

This detail of John Nolen’s plan shows a railroad beltway where the Bayfront Parkway now runs.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER VIII
POLITICAL & ECONOMIC NECESSITY
Aging industrial plants and a declining
city population were a clear warning to
both political leaders and businessmen
and women. Renewal and revitalization
were essential in the last half of the
twentieth century if Erie was to retain its
status as a major north coast job maker.
The signs were not clear-cut at first,
of course. The period immediately
following World War II, indeed, was the
heyday for downtown Erie as a commercial
center. Downtown was the retail and
entertainment center, not only for Erie, but
also for much of the tri-state area
encompassing northwestern Pennsylvania,
northeastern Ohio and southwestern New
York State.
The six-story landmark Boston Store, a
virtual mall in itself, Trask’s, Halle’s, and
companion specialty stores, provided a
scope of merchandise unequaled short of
Buffalo, Pittsburgh or Cleveland. The
Warner, Shea’s, Strand, Colonial, and
Columbia offered not only the latest from
Hollywood, but live theater and regular
appearances by the big bands which
became so popular in the war years. The
elegant Hotel Lawrence, the Press Club, the
Moose and Elks Clubs, and the Musician’s
Hall were popular nightspots.
Many still regret the loss of the Hotel
Lawrence. The handsome hotel at Tenth
and Peach opened in June 1913.
Originally eight stories high, it was
expanded by three additional floors in
1917. Although the largest, the Lawrence
was hardly Erie’s only hotel in the premotel
era. The 1950 Erie Directory lists a
total of twenty-nine hotels in the city,
including the Richford (the former Ford)
and the Reed Hotel, which was declining
in stature and was located where the
present Erie Insurance Building now
stands at Sixth and French.
The exodus of merchants from
downtown, fueled by the fact virtually
every family now had at least one
automobile, came with construction of
the Millcreek Mall on upper Peach Street
at the site of the former Kearsarge
Airport. Sears, a downtown landmark,
moved to the mall in 1973, harbinger of a
flood of such moves.
While evidence of the need for
renewal may have been blurred at the
time, a significant first step was taken
during the two-year administration of
Mayor Clarence K. Pulling. It was Pulling
who took the lead in creating the Erie
Municipal Airport Authority, a decision
that took the airport out of City Hall
politics and provided an opportunity to
develop a badly needed modern facility
CHAPTER VIII
35

The six-story Boston Store was designed by Erie
Architects Frank Shutts and Karl Morrison and
construction was completed by 1931.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
for a city where passenger train service
was about to lose its primacy.
If Pulling was ahead of the game in
creating an Airport Authority, his overall
administration was a major disappointment
for local Republicans. A former city
engineer, Pulling, when elected mayor, tried
to have the city engineer’s office transferred
to the Department of Public Works, which
he headed. But he failed to take into
consideration the strong views of one of his
fellow Republicans, Streets Director
Thomas McCarty.
McCarty teamed up with another
Republican, Safety Director Ray Wagner,
and with a Democrat, Parks Director
Charles “Bus” Downing, to form a threeman
majority in the five-member city
council. Pulling was left with only the
regular support of Finance Director
Kenneth W. Momeyer. Interestingly, the
three majority councilmen, all Eastsiders,
each had ties to the Barber family and the
informal political organization the
Barber’s headed.
If Pulling was a disappointment for the
Republicans, his successor, Thomas W.
Flatley, was an even greater disappointment
for the Democrats. A popular and
successful county commissioner, Flatley
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
36
had to be persuaded to run for mayor. It
was an unfortunate decision. Like Mayor
Kitts before him, Flatley was caught up in a
Republican-inspired investigation of
gambling in the city and the accompanying
cooperation, as the GOP saw it, of City Hall
officials and the police. While Kitts had
dodged the bullet, Flatley was not so lucky
and eventually went to jail after being
charged with bribery and conspiracy. Also
jailed were Flatley’s top political advisor and
one of his police department lieutenants.
City voters, however, acted as calmly
as they had after the Kitts investigation,
and Flatley was succeeded by a fellow
Democrat, Arthur J. Gardner, who had
been serving as city assessor.
If Pulling can be credited with getting
airport improvement off and running,
Gardner did the same for the port and for
downtown redevelopment.
Taking office in the immediate
aftermath of the Flatley scandal, Gardner
had turned to respected Pittsburgh Mayor
David L. Lawrence, later to become
Pennsylvania’s governor, for advice.
Lawrence not only sent one of his
respected police lieutenants to Erie to help
Gardner reorganize the police, but also
offered advice on something even more
lasting—urban renewal. Lawrence was in
the midst of a rejuvenation of downtown
Pittsburgh, and with this as a guide,
Gardner in 1955 spearheaded the creation
of the Erie Redevelopment Authority.
For the critical chairmanship position,
Gardner chose J. Robert Baldwin, a
builder himself and one of the city’s
richest and most successful men. Other
first termers on the authority, the men
responsible for getting this vital program
moving, were industrialist James Currie,
utility executive Kenneth Ishler, labor
leader Lew Jenkins, and realtor Fred
Sesler, a well balanced and talented group.
Erie’s business community aligned itself
solidly behind Gardner’s redevelopment
initiative. And, again following the
Pittsburgh lead, Times Publishing Company
executive George Mead took the initiative in
the formation in 1958 of a Citizens Action
Committee (later to become the Erie
Conference on Community Development),
a committee based on a Pittsburgh model
and charged with both encouraging and
overseeing overall community renewal.
The first chairman of the Citizens Action
Committee was John Dwyer, president of
the Firch Baking Company. He was later
succeeded by Dr. Elmer Hess, onetime
president of the American Medical Society,
and then by J. Robert Baldwin. It was the
Citizens Action Committee that engaged
the services of internationally known
planner Maurice E. Rotival to come up with
a master plan for the Erie of the future.
The Rotival plan projected economic
expansion as part of overall growth in the
Great Lakes area, growth fueled in part by
the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway,
which allowed ocean ships to enter the
lakes. To keep pace with this projected
growth, Rotival recommended promotion
of industrial development in both urban
and satellite areas, development of world
trade facilities at the port of Erie, and,
critically, development of an arterial
highway system, including an interstate
link to Pittsburgh and a bay front highway
along Erie’s waterfront.
While details have changed, and the
Seaway didn’t meet expectations, the
basic outlines of the Rotival plan have
been pushed by each of the mayors
during the last half of the century,
Gardner, Charles B. Williamson, Louis J.
Tullio and Joyce Savocchio.
The first achievement of the new
Redevelopment Authority was the Peach
Sassafras Urban Renewal Project. With
Thomas C. Hoffman as executive director,
the authority transformed an eight-block
urban area that had been steadily
deteriorating, creating among other
features the Erie Central Mall.
Assessments in the area more than
doubled. Peach-Sassafras was followed by
Liberty-Sassafras, stabilizing part of the
West Twelfth Street industrial corridor,
and by the Downtown Erie and State
Street Project. The latter endeavor
included razing of the venerable and

somewhat shabby Lawrence Hotel, and
construction of a new $6-million hotel
(now the Avalon) on Tenth Street between
State and Peach. It also included a
serpentine $1.4-million Transitway Mall,
a pedestrian favored area along State
Street, a final effort to save some retail
business for downtown. As it turned out,
the movement to suburban malls was
too far along and the Transitway Mall in
a few short years was to be reduced to
a memory.
Fueled for a while, particularly during
the Tullio Administration, by generous
federal grants under President Lyndon
Johnson’s Great Society program,
redevelopment also included a project
near Saint Vincent’s Health Center,
including construction of the fifteen-story
Highpoint Towers with medical offices
and apartments, the French-Holland
project eliminating one of the city’s worst
residential slums and a Bayfront General
Neighborhood endeavor, among others.
During his term, Mayor Gardner also
created the Erie Port Commission,
forerunner of today’s Erie-Western
Pennsylvania Port Authority. For a
number of years the Commission was
competently guided by former Mayor
Joseph C. Martin. As part of the reform
pattern of the Gardner administration, a
city charter commission was elected in
1959 to study the structure of city
government and make recommendations
for the future. Chaired by Leonard Ostrow
(with professional guidance from Joseph
Scottino, Ph.D., a Gannon College
professor who would go on to become
the college’s president) the group
recommended replacing the city’s
commission government, in which
council members were both legislators
and administrators, with a strong
mayor-council system, with the mayor
having sole administrative power. City
voters approved the government change
in 1960, thus the importance of
the election of 1961. It was an election
in which Republicans had a real chance
to overcome growing Democratic
dominance, a chance coming not so much
from Republican voting strength as from a
deep split between Democrats. For much
of his administration, Gardner had been
opposed on a number of issues by Safety
Director Michael Cannavino and, after the
primary pitting the victorious Gardner
against Cannavino, many of Cannavino’s
supporters threw their support to
Williamson. The result was a narrow
Williamson victory and a chance for the
GOP to shape Erie’s first strong mayor
government. As it turned out, however,
the mayor and his team were unable to
take full advantage of the opportunity
they had won.
Ironically, one problem area came with
Williamson’s efforts to reward the
Democratic disaffection that had given him
victory. Early on in his administration
Williamson gave the position of chief of the
Erie Bureau of Refuse Disposal to Jack
Fatica, former top lieutenant to Cannavino.
As an Erie Daily Times report at the time
observed, “In his new post, Fatica will have
direct administration over the controversial
question of Cannavino’s patronage empire
at the trash plant, Twelfth and Greengarden
Road. Critics have charged that the plant
is overstaffed.”
In another appointment aimed at
pleasing those breakaway Democrats who
had backed him, Williamson named
Dorothy Brabender Consider, wife of
fireman Hugh Consider, and daughter of
former Democratic Councilman George
Brabender, as personal assistant in the
mayor’s office. The patronage offerings to
Democrats angered many Republicans, the
beginning of friction that was to plague the
Williamson tenure.
A major Williamson accomplishment
was a sidewalk ordinance, making
construction of sidewalks mandatory
throughout the city, something adjoining
suburbs have yet to do. The step took
courage, something Williamson showed
repeatedly during his administration. But
he also displayed stubbornness and an
inability to deal with political difficulties.
In the upshot he was a one-term mayor,
Thomas W. Flatley was mayor of Erie from 1952 until
his resignation on December 14, 1954, following his
arrest in a state raid on gambling.
THE EHM&P ARCHIVES, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
and power shifted back to a Democratic
leader who knew exactly what to do with
strong mayor government.
Still, the Democratic victory in the 1965
election was not to be an easy one.
Unsuccessful in two previous tries for the
mayoralty, Cannavino, a career politician,
was convinced this was to be his year. But
Democratic County Chairman Peter Schaaf
and a number of other party leaders
hesitated at backing the maverick
Cannavino and instead voiced support for
the other Democratic candidate, Erie School
District Business Manager Louis J. Tullio.
Tullio, football coach at Academy
High School, had established a good
record in the School District, but
Cannavino (who once portrayed his idol,
the legendary New York City Mayor
Fiorello LaGuardia, in an Erie Playhouse
production) had “the little people,” the
blue-collar workers who lived in the ethnic
Italian and Polish neighborhoods with him.
Of the campaign, writer Tom Weber, son of
Federal Judge Gerald J. Weber, put it this
way in Erie Magazine: “Cannavino went for
the throat with a barrage of attacks on
Tullio and his administrative record, many
of them personal.”
CHAPTER VIII
37

J. Robert Baldwin (third from the left) is shown with other community leaders during the YMCA’s $3-million development
fund campaign.
THE ERIE CONFERENCE ON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Tullio ran a competitive race but the
Second and Third Wards, bastions of
worker strength, did him in. Cannavino
won with 14,613 votes to 13,869 for Tullio.
What happened next is best described
by City Treasurer Carl Cannavino,
nephew to both Cannavino and Tullio:
“The people spoke when they elected
Mike. And, of course, God spoke when
He took Mike.” Ten days before the
general election. Mike Cannavino died of
a heart attack in the Lawrence Hotel room
where he was living. Party leaders quickly
chose Tullio to replace him on the
ballot and Tullio went on to defeat
incumbent Mayor Williamson by a
26,889 to 23,183 margin.
Although his victory had been
achieved partly by chance, Tullio was to
go on to become an Erie legend, a
six-term mayor who, in the words of a
Philadelphia Inquirer obituary at the time
of his death in 1990, “had cast a
giant shadow over the city of Erie for a
quarter century.”
Many saw Tullio as a living model for
the fictional Boston mayor in Edwin
O’Connor’s 1956 novel, The Last Hurrah.
O’Connor wrote at one point: “The old
politician captivated his imagination; he
saw him as a unique, rich, extraordinary
personality who contained within himself
a part of local history which soon would
be no more and which never again would
reappear. It was a vein that called out to
be tapped before it disappeared, first,
from view, then even from memory.”
In a paper he wrote while a student at
Allegheny College, Erieite Mark
Ostrowski quoted Erie civil rights leader
Reverend Fred Thompson as saying,
“You’ll never, never find another Lou
Tullio.” Many others would agree. Tullio,
incidentally, handled skillfully and with
courage the civil rights turmoil of the
’60s, helped, in part, by the many
African-American friends he had made
during his coaching days.
Ostrowski also commented of the
mayor: “Tullio was able to be the leader of
Erie because his style fit the city and the
times. He was very perceptive as to what
the people in the city wanted and needed
and he knew how to get it for them.
Tullio, unlike his predecessor, Charles
Williamson, understood that politics was
what made Erie work, so he used politics
to get things done.”
Quoting Mercyhurst College president
William P. Garvey, Ostrowski said, “Tullio
was an extremely charismatic person. He
had an aura about him that allowed him
to influence large groups as well as
individuals. His very presence in a room
attracted attention regardless of how
many people were there.”
With his personal and political skills,
Tullio made an art out of securing federal
and state funds for Erie. An Erie Times
analysis piece in 1983 observed, “whoever
succeeds Louis J. Tullio, there is no
returning to the pre-Tullio days when the
mayor of Erie relied primarily on city tax
revenues to finance city expenditures.”
By 1983, Tullio had brought a total of
$250 million back to Erie—the equivalent
of 448 tax mills to the taxpayers of Erie, in
the words of the Times story.
Before he was done, Tullio had upped
this total to nearly $300 million, and the
revitalization that Erie so badly needed
was well underway.
In his college thesis, Ostrowski notes
Tullio was “very concerned about business
and industry. Each provided him with an
important part of his backing.” According
to Ostrowski, they (business and
industry) saw him as a mayor who wanted
to move the city ahead, to improve it.”
Late in his administration, Tullio did
drag his heels on one measure keenly
desired by the business community—the
creation of an independent water
authority, one free of City Hall politics.
City Councilman Robert “Bob” Brabender,
the key force within council for this
important move, had to persuade both a
reluctant Tullio, who was seriously ill with
amyloidosis, and city council to approve
the 1989 ordinance transferring the water
department out of City Hall.
One who had watched closely as Tullio
forged links with business and industrial
leaders was City Councilwoman Joyce
Savocchio. And when she defeated
Stanley Prazer, a long-time water bureau
aide, in the 1989 election, Savocchio’s first
step was to announce a partners program
with some of the most prominent
members of the business community.
Savocchio herself served as chairman,
but her vice chairman was Ralph Wright,
president of Reed Manufacturing
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
38

Company. and other key posts went to
Thomas Hagen, president of Erie
Insurance Group; John Horan, director of
the Erie Housing Authority; Carl
Schlemmer, retired GE vice president; Max
Funk, retired Zurn, Inc., official; Dr.
Richard Brown, retired Hammermill Paper
Co. official; M.S. Richardson, retired GE
vice president; Jane Theuerkauf, local
realtor; Frank Marra, Pennsylvania Electric
Co. executive; and C. Ted Dombrowski, a
local labor leader.
The partners did a great job for
Savocchio and the community. And the
mayor continued to cultivate the
relationship through her twelve-year
tenure, to Erie’s benefit.
Savocchio also proved adept at another
skill badly needed when she
took over as mayor—handling city
finances. As she described the situation:
“Erie city government was facing financial
crisis and near bankruptcy. This financial
situation, the city’s junk bond status,
flat tax base, lack of reserves and
new revenue streams provided no hope
to reinvest in the city’s aging infrastructure,
aging city vehicles and equipment, and
faltering city services and operations.”
To her everlasting credit, Savocchio
turned the financial situation around. In
addition, with help from another 20th
Century political giant, onetime
congressman and the city’s first
Pennsylvania governor, Tom Ridge, she set
the stage for new job growth. To again
quote Savocchio herself:
The public-private partnerships
established during the early 1990s between
city, state and federal governments, the
private sector and such non-profit
corporations as the Greater Erie Economic
Development Corporation, the Technical
Institute, the Erie Conference on
Community Development, the Job Training
Partnership, the Regional Skills Center.
Team Pennsylvania and the Strategic
Roundtable (to name a few) made possible
the climate and reality that brought about
the expansion of the city’s Enterprise Zone,
that brought about new industrial parks
and renovated industrial space, that aided
retention and expansion of Erie’s industries,
and created new job growth. And. yes,
brought new industries to the city of Erie.
Throughout the early years of her
administration, Savocchio called
repeatedly for Erie County government to
reassess real estate values, something that
hadn’t been done since 1964. She got help
from Common Pleas Court Judge George
Levin, who, after a much-publicized
hearing, ordered reassessment.
Levin also made another decision of
importance to local government. On May
18, 1990, he reversed a county
assessment board decision, thus forcing
Hamot Medical Center to pay taxes.
According to Levin, Hamot’s tax problems
arose from the fact its primary function
had changed from being strictly a
The Peach-Sassafras Urban Renewal Project focused
on central Erie, an area experiencing decline. The
Downtown Erie and State Street projects followed. The
Erie Transitway Mall was built to attract pedestrians
and shoppers to downtown Erie. The Millcreek Mall and
other centers outside of the city offered greater variety
and acres of free parking. The Transitway Mall never
lived up to its potential. In 1993 it was removed and
State Street was widened. Craig Scott took this aerial
view of State Street on March 23, 1976.
JOHN L. SCOTT, CRAIG “BUZZ” SCOTT HISTORICAL AERIAL PHOTOS.
charitable institution. After his ruling,
Levin’s office received some 129 inquiries
from all over the country for further
information on the decision.
A new ballpark was built in downtown
Erie during the Savocchio administration,
joining the Convention Center built under
Tullio. Additionally, an empty steamgeneration
plant was converted into a
maritime museum, the home of the U.S.S.
Niagara, and the Blasco Library. These new
cultural centers formed a community and
learning center second to none. Other
recent developments, including a new
Transient Boating Facility, the 2001
groundbreaking for the Intermodal
Transportation Center, and the promise of a
new convention center and hotel complex,
continue to enhance Erie’s bayfront.
During much of this, Savocchio and
Erie had help from the native son
occupying the governor’s chair in
Harrisburg. By the end of 2000, with two
years yet to go in his second term,
Governor Tom Ridge had catapulted
ahead of his predecessor in direct aid to
Erie. Governor Robert Casey, a Scranton
native who had a close personal
friendship with Mayor Tullio based on
their Holy Cross University days, had
been generous to the tune of $461.3
million in eight years. But after six years,
Ridge had sent home $469.5 million,
according to the Erie Times.
First elected to Congress in 1982,
Ridge, a Vietnam War Bronze Star medal
holder, served in Washington for twelve
years before being elected governor
in 1994. He was re-elected four years
later with a 780,000-vote margin, the
largest for a Republican governor in the
state’s history.
Ridge’s future was to take a dramatic
new turn, however, following the
terrorism attack on the United States on
September 11, 2001. In the wake of
destruction of the World Trade Center in
New York and serious damage to the
Pentagon in Washington, President Bush
named Ridge to head the Cabinet-level
Office of Homeland Security.
CHAPTER VIII
39

Ridge’s new job prompted a number of
assessments of his six years-plus as
governor. Republicans said he had vastly
improved economic competitiveness for
Pennsylvania, shored up the state budget,
and launched education reform
initiatives. Still, the latter was achieved at
a price to which many objected, a deal
with legislators to increase their already
generous pensions in exchange for an
education package. Other critics said
Ridge, as governor in a period of huge
budget surpluses, had squandered an
opportunity to boost social programs.
Perhaps the harshest criticism came from
Philadelphia Democratic leader Senator
Vince Fumo who said Ridge did little to
improve anything as governor. But Fumo
had no problem whatsoever with Ridge
delivering a total of $500 million in
capital projects to Erie.
“Everybody understands that,”
Fumo told Erie Daily Times reporter
Ed Palattella. “If you can’t take care
of your hometown, who can?” One
thing was certain—Erie and its leaders
would miss having Tom Ridge in the
governor’s chair.
Another certainty was that in their six
years in Harrisburg, Ridge, his wife,
Michelle, a former Erie County librarian,
and their two children, had put Erie on
the Pennsylvania political map. No longer
would Philadelphians, for instance,
wonder where Erie was. This new political
status for Erie may, indeed, have helped
Erie County State Senator Jane Earl win
the Republican nomination for lieutenant
governor early in the year 2002—the first
woman to be awarded that honor.
Erie’s city government was not the only
governmental area to strive for reform
during the century. In 1974, the Erie
County government formed an Erie
County Government Study Commission
under the leadership of Irving Olds
Murphy, with Judith M. Lynch as vice
chairman. The commission advocated a
change from the old three-member county
commissioner operation to an elected
executive-county council form of
operation. This measure was eventually
approved by the voters, 31,677 to 27,387.
Lynch, a high school teacher and a
Democrat, was elected to the first county
council in the 1977 election, serving
Construction was completed on the Intermodal Transportation Center in the summer of 2002. Located next to the Blasco
Memorial Library and Erie Maritime Museum Complex on the bayfront, the center offers an efficient, aesthetically
pleasing, centralized facility for access to buses, taxis and other forms of transportation.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
under Republican Russell Robison, the
first county executive. Robison, helped by
the seeming reluctance of county voters to
vote for city politicians, had defeated Erie
city councilman Bob Brabender for the
right to lead the new government in its
initial effort.
A fiscal conservative, Robison lopped
forty-five jobs off the county payroll
during his tenure, and reduced county
taxes by $1 million in the last budget.
Robison, however, didn’t run for
re-election and was succeeded in 1982,
by Lynch. Lynch went on to serve four
full terms as county executive. In 2001,
seeking a fifth four-year term, Lynch was
defeated by Rick Schenker, a former
Pennsylvania Department of Highways
public relations aide.
Ironically, Schenker won partly by
vigorously advocating greater efforts by
the county executive in private enterprise
job creation—an area where Lynch had
been much more active than any previous
county leader. Lynch also was a key figure
in the decision to build the Blasco
Memorial Library on the bayfront.
One other twentieth century political
giant can not be forgotten. Samuel J.
Roberts, the first Erie man to serve as chief
justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court,
died in June 1987. A former Erie County
Republican chairman, Roberts went on to
serve as a common pleas court judge, before
being elected to the state’s highest court. He
became chief justice in the final year of his
twenty-one-year term.
Roberts’ reputation came from more
than just the positions he held. As a
Philadelphia Inquirer writer put it: “No law
student who has pursued an accredited
course of study has not read at least one
leading case written by Justice Roberts.”
Of Roberts, R. G. Freeman then added:
“He is one of those appellate court judges
who, law students are advised, reside
in a firmament above the others. He is
a star, right up there with Cardozo,
Brandeis, Chief Justice Robert Traynor of
the California Supreme Court, and
Learned Hand.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
40

The first library of Gannon College was housed in the former ballroom of the Strong mansion. In March 1948 the rapidly growing library was moved to the second floor of the new
Annex. Students are shown using the reference collection and studying in 1958. Fifteen years later collections were moved to the Nash Library, and students enjoyed the resources of the
$4.2-million facility.
THE GANNON UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER IX
ERIE AS A CENTER FOR HIGHER EDUCATION & THE IMPACT ON JOBS
Even if portrayed in the most utilitarian
of terms, economic benefits and creation of
jobs—the development of Erie as a center
for higher education, has been one of the
great community success stories of the
twentieth century perhaps the single
greatest achievement of all.
In a service club talk early in the
twenty-first century, Mercyhurst College
President Dr. William P. Garvey noted that
over sixteen thousand students were
attending college in Erie County annually,
“bringing millions of dollars into the area.’’
And the numbers keep going up. In another
service club talk, just before he left Erie to
become president of the University of
Nevada in Reno. Penn State -Behrend
Provost and Dean Dr. John Lilley said
Behrend would increase enrollment to
4,000 students in the 2001-2002 academic
year, and has been asked by Pennsylvania
State University officials to prepare for
an enrollment of 5,000. When the
Behrend campus first opened its doors to
students in 1948, it had an enrollment of
152 freshmen.
Nor is Behrend unique in its enrollment
growth. In his service club talk, Garvey
said when he came to Mercyhurst 36
years ago as a young instructor, there were
400 students at the all -women college.
When he took over as president nineteen
years ago, he said, there were twelve
hundred coed students. In 2001, there were
twenty-eight hundred male and female
students in an institution which now
attracts applicants from across the country
and even overseas.
A deliberate decision to limit physical
growth at its main campus (to a maximum of
about three thousand students there), and
the number of applicants being turned away,
was a factor in Mercyhurst’s 1991 decision to
purchase the former Saint Mary’s Seminary in
North East. Mercyhurst opened a junior
college on the site, with a capacity of about
eight hundred students.
The enrollment story at Gannon
University is equally upbeat. During the
years from 1933 to 1941, Cathedral
College, forerunner of Gannon, never had
more than one hundred students, a figure
that was to increase four fold when Bishop
John Mark Gannon purchased the former
Scott mansion on Perry Square and opened
Gannon College. But this increased
enrollment was not to last as the official
CHAPTER IX
41

At graduation ceremonies on May 26, 2002, at the
historic Warner Theatre, Dr. William Garvey
commented on the future of Mercyhurst College
graduates and what they might anticipate in the
new millennium.
THE SR. M. L. FRANKLIN ARCHIVAL CENTER, MERCYHURST COLLEGE.
college history, The Story of Gannon
University: Education on the Square , makes
clear. Because Gannon was then an all-male
institution, American entry into World War
II cut sharply into enrollment, taking it at
one point down to less than fifty. But as the
twenty-first century began, Acting President
Dr. Thomas S. Ostrowski could report that
the now coed Gannon University
enrollment had reached 3,292.
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania,
which started as Edinboro Academy and the
Northwestern State Normal School in 1857,
had an enrollment during its early years that
ranged from a low of fifty in 1860 to a high
of 570 in 1865 -66 with an average
attendance of 300 to 500 during the period.
By the end of the twentieth century, after
transforming itself six times on the way to
university status, Edinboro President Dr.
Frank G. Pogue could report an enrollment
of 7,079.
There was also a newcomer in the higher
education field by the end of the twentieth
century—the Lake Erie College of
Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM), which was
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
42
founded in 1992 with 52 students. By 2001,
the college had an enrollment of nearly 600
and expected to approach the 1,000 mark
by 2003.
Many of the area college students live off
campus, providing additional economic
benefits to the community. Gannon, for
instance, says that roughly eighteen hundred
of its students maintain off -campus
residences other than their parents’ homes.
But in economic terms, colleges are more
than enrollment, of course. Garvey,
speaking of just the four large colleges,
Mercyhurst, Gannon, Behrend and
Edinboro, said they ranked with the top
Erie County manufacturing firms in terms
of numbers of employees. A Times-News
study, in fact, listed Gannon as twenty-first
among the county’s top fifty employers.
Mercyhurst was listed as thirty-first and
Penn State-Behrend as thirty-fifth. Edinboro
wasn’t listed (the Pennsylvania state
government overall was number four as a
county employer), but another report in the
year 2000, had Edinboro with 909
employees, to 632 for Gannon, 507 for
Behrend, 440 for Mercyhurst, and 200 for
the new LECOM.
Garvey, in his talk on the economic
impact of the colleges, said the combined
budgets of the four colleges (excluding
LECOM) approached $150 million a
year. And the capital budgets, he added,
topped $100 million in just the past
decade, most of it spent with local builders
and architects.
Payrolls at the colleges are impressive.
Here are the totals in a year 2000 report:
Edinboro, $55.8 million; Gannon, $22.2
million; Mercyhurst, $16.7 million; Penn
State-Behrend, $14.1 million; and LECOM,
$4.5 million. But John M. Ferritti, D.O.,
president of LECOM, in another
community presentation, said that in 2001,
financial benefits to the area from the new
college would reach the $100-million mark,
if you included capital spending, some of it
related to the fact LECOM plans to open a
School of Pharmacy in 2002.
Still another indicator of the college’s
economic impact came in a Times-News
report in 2001 on endowments. Gannon
University was credited with a $32-million
endowment total, Behrend with $14.2
million, Mercyhurst with $11 million, and
Edinboro with $7.3 million. Still, there’s a
ways to go here. Allegheny College in
nearby Meadville, tracing its roots back to
1815, has an endowment of $120 million.
Although Edinboro got its start in the
nineteenth century, the other Erie colleges
are all twentieth century products.
First honors go to a college that no
longer exists, Villa Maria College, a female
institution founded in 1925 by Mother
M. Helena and Sister Stella, of the Sisters
of St. Joseph. Cathedral College, the
forerunner to Gannon, operated under
the charter of Villa Maria, a tie that was
to reoccur in 1992 when Villa was absorbed
by Gannon, and some seven hundred
President Dr. Frank G. Pogue has provided educational
leadership for the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
community since his inauguration. His other
accomplishments include the chairmanship of the Erie
County Millennium Commission. The commission’s
“Civility Counts” campaign focused on creating a kinder,
gentler Erie County community. The Committee
believed that routine acts of respect and kindness
supported by the Civility Campaign can have a much
larger impact by helping to reduce violence, anger and
intolerance in schools and the business community.
THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, EDINBORO UNIVERSITY.

students, along with faculty and staff,
moved to the downtown Gannon campus.
The closing of Villa Maria was regretted by
many, particularly alumnae who remembered
the great years at the college,
including those under the respected Sister
M. Lawrence Antoun, who had been given
an honorary doctorate when Gannon
achieved university status.
Mercyhurst followed Villa Maria by one
year, opening in 1926 under the guidance
of Mother Mary Borgia of the Sisters of
Mercy. This allowed Mercyhurst to celebrate
its seventy-fifth year in 2001.
Mercyhurst’s heritage is traced back to
Mother Catherine McAuley, founder of the
Sisters of Mercy in Dublin, Ireland.
Mercyhurst’s founder and first president,
Mother Borgia Egan, was obviously a
woman of determination. She persuaded
the Sisters of Mercy to invest $51,000 for a
76-acre farm on a southern ridge
overlooking the city and bay of Erie. That
decision, along with the erection of a
majestic Tudor-style Old Main (which still
dominates today’s much expanded campus)
laid the foundation for the college.
Another Mercyhurst leader of note
was Sister Carolyn Herrmann. By the
early 1960s, enrollment had grown from
a fledgling 25 students in 1926 to 500
female students. However, like many
colleges during that turbulent period,
Mercyhurst was experiencing a drop in
enrollment. It was during this period that
college trustees began exploring
coeducation. And in 1969, under Sister
Carolyn’s leadership, the previously
all-female school began admitting men.
And. to help attract them, Mercyhurst
developed a strong men’s athletic program,
including football, to go along with growing
women’s sports activities.
The decision to go coed was obviously a
wise one, allowing the college to grow
significantly. And grow significantly it did
under the leadership of Gannon College
graduate William P. Garvey, Ph.D., who
took over the leadership reins at Mercyhurst
in 1980. In the twenty-plus years he’s been
president the college has invested over $20
Mercyhurst College accepted male students a number of years before the campus “officially” became coed. Mercyhurst
College’s first football game was a “win” as the team ran to victory over St. John Fisher of Rochester at Academy stadium,
September 5, 1981.
THE SR. M. L. FRANKLIN ARCHIVAL CENTER, MERCYHURST COLLEGE.
million in new construction and Garvey
now has developed a further $20 million
“legacy plan’’ for the future, a plan he thinks
will take the Erie college “a big step closer
to national recognition.’’
Over the past few years, Mercyhurst has
added these major additions to the campus:
Sullivan Hall, D’Angelo School of Music,
the Maura Smith Child Learning Center,
Carolyn Herrmann Union, the Mercyhurst
Ice Center, and, most recently, construction
of $6.4-million fourth floor expansion to
the Hammermill Library and a $1.3-million
Recreation Center expansion.
Garvey’s plans for the future include a
$6-million, 40,000-square-foot academic
building, a $2-million renovation of Zurn
Hall, and a $2-million renovation of Old
Main, among other endeavors. Gannon’s
history centers first of on the much admired
Monsignor Joseph J. Wehrle, the college’s
founder and first president.
A native of Punxsutawney, Wehrle
became a priest in 1915 and superintendent
of schools in the Diocese of Erie as early as
December of 1919. In 1921, Dr. Wehrle (he
received his doctorate in Rome) also
became founder and Headmaster of
Cathedral Preparatory School. Bishop
Alfred M. Watson told of an incident, as
related in The Story of Gannon University,
that in 1933, when he left on a trip to
Rome, Bishop John Mark Gannon
instructed Wehrle not to start a college
when he was away. But, in the event,
Wehrle did just that.
Wehrle had wanted to found a
men’s college for sometime. As Headmaster
at Prep, he had seen how young graduates
were often unable to afford the costs
of going away to college. As superintendent
of schools, Dr. Wehrle in 1925 had
been directed by Bishop Gannon to aid
in the establishment of Villa Maria College.
The Gannon history offered further
explanation: “Dr. Wehrle was pragmatic
enough to recognize the impossibility of the
diocese establishing two colleges
simultaneously, one for women and another
for men, and so he shelved his plans for
a men’s college, but only momentarily
and temporarily.’’
The crunch came for Wehrle in 1933
with the Depression hitting home in Erie.
CHAPTER IX
43

The hardships of the depression made higher education an impossibility for many. The W. P. A. supported projects all over
Erie County which put people to work and lessened the financial difficulty for those who were hired.
THE CRANCH COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
“By the summer of 1933, the possibility of
higher education for men in Erie had
lessened. If the first graduates of Cathedral
Prep were financially bad off in 1925,
by 1933 their condition was tragic.
The year 1933 represented the worst
deepening of that economic collapse of the
entire country.’’
There were thirty-six graduates in
Wehrle’s Cathedral Prep School in 1933,
and only two of them were financially able
to plan for college. Most of the rest of the
graduating class sought Wehrle’s help.
Wehrle “knew that now was the time to act’’
and, to his eternal credit, he did. “There are
no records of what the returning Bishop
Gannon (he had been in Rome) either
thought or remarked about the infant junior
college opening almost in his yard.’’
The first class at Cathedral College
boasted fifty-six students and six faculty
members. Students paid $75 per semester
and resident students lived in a makeshift
dormitory for $1 a day. Cathedral College’s
1933 budget total was $6,725.63 and the
income at term end was $6,727. The infant
college had survived its first year with a
profit of $1.37.
In its eighth year, Cathedral College
obtained a charter on its own and became
the Gannon School of Arts and Sciences.
World War II made the first years in
Gannon’s new home in the Strong mansion
on Perry Square difficult ones. But on
November 3, 1944, Gannon became a fouryear
college. The carriage house of the
Strong estate was remodeled, and from this
former stable came Gannon’s second
building, the Downey Science Hall.
The first library in Gannon’s history was
a collection of old books stored by priests in
the attic of the old Downing Building,
where Cathedral College had been located.
The collection had grown to fourteen
thousand volumes when the original
Gannon Library was erected on West Sixth
Street in 1948.
The Wehrle years at Gannon ended in
1956, with Monsignor Wilfred J. Nash, who
had been dean, taking over as president.
Nash took the college through twenty-one
critical expansion years, with student
enrollment, academic programs and
physical plant, all increasing in numbers.
When Nash retired on July 1, 1977, he
was succeeded by Dr. Joseph P. Scottino,
who had started at Gannon as a student and
had returned, after obtaining a Ph.D. at
Fordham, to serve as both teacher and
administrator. Building on the growth
fostered during the Nash years, Scottino
was able to take the college to university
status. The Scottino efforts culminated on
December 19, 1979, when Governor
Richard Thornburgh came to the campus to
proclaim in person that Gannon was
henceforth to be a university.
Gannon’s growth over the years through
the lower west side prompted Monsignor
David A. Rubino, Scottino’s successor, to
undertake a market analysis to find out
what prospective students thought about
the college. When concerns were expressed
about Gannon not having a collegiate
atmosphere because the campus was so
spread out, Rubino determined to recenter
the focus around Old Main, and rebuild
the campus center. The result was a
handsome renewal for a vital part of
Erie’s center city area. The community
as well as the university were winners,
as Rubino’s successor, Acting President
Dr. Thomas S. Ostrowski was able to tell
a local service club in a March 2001
speaking appearance.
For the future, Ostrowski spoke of plans
for a student-housing quadrangle to be
built around the new Gannon athletic field
that takes the entire block of West Fourth
and Fifth Streets, Sassafras to Myrtle. In the
spring of 2001, Antoine M. Garibaldi,
Ph.D., was named the sixth president of
Gannon, and in his first public speaking
appearance he promised to increase both
graduate and undergraduate enrollment at
the downtown university. While Behrend
College didn’t come into being until 1948,
the first steps in the story actually came
much earlier.
In 1920, Penn State University launched
a cooperative program with the Erie
Vocational School to offer three -year
courses in shop and steam engineering as
well as sheet metal work. In 1926, Penn
State opened an Erie Branch School with a
hundred students enrolled in three -year
programs in mining and engineering.
After World War II, acting on the request
of a group of civic leaders led by the late J.
Elmer Reed, and armed with a generous gift
from Mrs. Mary E. Behrend, widow of Ernst
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
44

Behrend, founder of the Hammermill Paper
Company. Penn State agreed to locate a
two-year campus in Erie County.
The Behrend gift was impressive, a
handsome stone residence and 420 acres of
land sitting high on the Station Road hill
overlooking Lake Erie. In 1948 Behrend
opened its doors to a class of 152 freshmen.
The full Behrend story is told in
“Behrend Remembered, A Half Century of
Penn State in Erie,’’ by Benjamin A. Lane, a
retired dean at the college.
Lane takes the story from the difficult
years of first administrator, T. Reed Ferguson,
who served from 1948 to 1954, on to the
tenure of Irvin H. Kochel, from 1954 to
1980, and then to Dr. John Lilley, from 1980
to 2001. It is a story of impressive, even
spectacular, growth. In the summer of 1948,
the first floor of the Behrend barn was made
into three classrooms and three laboratories.
The carriage house became a chemistry lab
Dr. Joseph P. Scottino (1929-1999) began his academic
career at Gannon as a student. He returned, as a
professor, then provost. Eventually he became vice
president for academic affairs, dean, and president. Dr.
Scottino was recognized as a driving force behind the
change in status granted by the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania in 1979 when Gannon College became
known as Gannon University.
THE GANNON UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES.
and the family drawing room became a
library. But this relatively humble start was
just the beginning.
Erie Hall, the first building in the history
of Penn State to be constructed with private
funds, went up in 1952.
In the summer of 1971, the board of
trustees of Penn State met on the Behrend
campus with the Behrend Advisory Board. It
was a historic meeting with the trustees
approving plans that were to make Behrend
the first of the Penn State branch campuses to
grant its own baccalaureate degrees. The
Behrend Campus officially became the
Behrend College of the Pennsylvania State
University on January 20, 1973. By 1980,
when Kochel stepped down, there were
eighteen hundred students on campus and
the college offered fourteen baccalaureate
majors. Its associate degrees in engineering
had also been accredited by the National
Council on Engineering Development.
As Lane explained, “The designation of
Behrend as a baccalaureate college is
testimony to the dedicated leadership of
Director Kochel. Behrend’s growth in
students, faculty, programs and facilities,
seven new buildings during the twenty -
six years of his administration prompted
the university in 1980 to appoint Mr.
Kochel assistant vice president of the
university for admissions.”
Growth under Dr. Lilley was also
impressive, starting in 1985 with the
breaking of ground for the Hammermill
and Zurn Buildings. In May 1994 buildings
to house the new library and the faculty of
the Schools of Humanities and Social
Science were completed. In 1994, a new
engineering complex was also opened on
the Behrend campus.
On March 26, 1998, Behrend became
the recipient of a $20-million gift from an
anonymous donor, the largest gift in
Behrend’s history and the third largest at the
time ever given to Penn State.
By the time Lilley left Erie in 2001 to
assume the presidency of the University of
Nevada-Reno, Behrend had expanded its
campus to just over seven hundred acres. It
had 45 buildings and was close to 4,000
Dr. John M. Lilley served as provost and dean of Penn
State Erie, The Behrend College for twenty-one years
from 1980-1991. More than twenty buildings were built
during his tenure. He was recently honored as the 17th
recipient of the Behrend Medallion which recognizes
outstanding community service and professional
accomplishments. The Library has been named the John
M. Lilley Library in his honor.
THE OFFICE OF DEVELOPMENT & UNIVERSITY RELATIONS, PENN STATE
ERIE, THE BEHREND COLLEGE.
students, with half of them living on
campus, testimony to the steady addition of
residence halls. Still, despite all this, the
potentially most significant development at
Behrend as far as the future economic
health of the community is concerned,
could be the opening in 1999 of Knowledge
Park on the college campus.
Located on the north side of Interstate
90, Knowledge Park is an innovative
partnership between Penn State Erie
and the Greater Erie Industrial
Development Corporation, a partnership
designed to link knowledge -based
companies with the college’s technology
transfer, applied research, education
and outreach services. Quite simply,
Knowledge Park is expected to diversify
and strengthen the region’s economic base
and to provide increased employment
opportunities for graduates of all local
colleges and universities.
CHAPTER IX
45

World War I soldiers from Company G marched from Union Depot on State Street past George L. Pratt Furniture Company at 1620-1622 State Street.
THE ERIE STORY ARCHIVES, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER X
ERIE & THE IMPACT OF THE MILITARY
It should come as no surprise that
America’s military history has always
figured strongly in the Erie story. After all,
Erie started as a military outpost—first
French, then British, and finally American.
The military aspect of the Erie saga is
usually told in terms of heroes, those who
distinguished themselves in battle. Again no
surprise. The galaxy of heroes who have an
Erie or area connection is impressive indeed.
Less frequently described is the impact
military events have had on Erie’s economic
life although this has been truly significant,
ranging from the fact it was a military triumph
which cleared the way for the first permanent
settlement in 1795, to the manufacturing
changes various wars have engendered, most
dramatically in World War II.
Even into the twenty-first century’s new
type of conflict, the war on terrorism, there
have been economic consequences for Erie.
Efforts to refit the USS Cole, heavily damaged
in a terrorist attack in Yemen in Fall 2000,
brought a portion of the destroyer back to Erie
for repairs. Eleven sections of propulsion shaft
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
46
were made at Erie Forge & Steel in the early
1990s, and they were returned to Erie in the
spring of 2001 for repair and inspection—
ironically just before Erie Forge & Steel was
closed and auctioned off to an Ohio firm.
Erie’s location on the southern shore of
Lake Erie, with a fine natural harbor and short
relative portage to French Creek and the Ohio
River passage to the South, made it a natural
focus for military activity even in the precolonial
days. One of the great Indian battles,
the destruction of the Eriez by the Iroquois,
took place, by most accounts, along tbe Lake
Erie shoreline near Erie. Dr. James Adovasio,
director of the Mercyhurst College Archaeological
Institute, believes one major battle in
this clash was fought on Erie’s east side.
Erie’s strategic importance was quickly
recognized by European empire builders, and
when Marquis Duquesne became governor of
New France in Summer 1752, he gave the
order to build a French fort at Presque Isle, a
story well told by Erie native Maxwell P.
Schoenfeld in his 1977 Erie County Historical
Society publication, Fort De La Presqu’ile.
The French decision put the Erie area
onto the world stage for the first time and it
brought quick consequences, one of which
was a visit to Fort LeBoeuf at what is now
Waterford by a young Virginian, then a
British officer, who politely told the French
they should go home. The French, of course,
didn’t take George Washington’s advice and
the French and Indian War followed.
The brief period of British dominance in
the Erie area after the war was followed by an
even briefer Indian ascendancy (events told
so well by Francis Parkman in Conspiracy of
Pontiac), and then by the American
Revolution. The American victory in the
Revolution and the subsequent defeat of
Indian forces by General Anthony Wayne at
Maumee, Ohio, in 1790, cleared the way for
the arrival of permanent settlers in Erie.
Unfortunately, Wayne died in Erie on his way
back East following the battle, another Erie
encounter with a military great.
Of course, every Erie school child knows
about Erie’s key role in the War of 1812, of
how Daniel Dobbins persuaded the Madison

Strong Vincent (1847-1863) is best known for his
leadership of soldiers from the 83rd Regiment at the
Battle of Little Round Top at Gettysburg in July 1863.
Before he began his military career, he worked at
Himrod, Johnson & Co., an iron foundry and machine
shop, co-owned by his father B. B. Vincent, William and
David Himrod, and William H. Johnson. He eventually
enrolled at Harvard and graduated with a degree in law
in 1859. Admitted to the Erie County Bar in 1860, he
practiced law until Lincoln’s call for troops in 1861.
Colonel Strong Vincent died defending Little Round Top
at the Battle of Gettysburg.
COURTESY OF GEORGE DEUTSCH.
Administration to build a fleet at Erie, the
fleet with which Oliver Hazard Perry won
the battle of Lake Erie. Less well known is
how the carpenters and other skilled
tradesmen brought to Erie to build the fleet
favorably influenced Erie’s industrial life,
with many of them staying in the area.
Shipbuilding, not surprisingly, was an early
Erie industry. Perhaps the best telling of Erie’s
heroic role in the War of 1812 is that provided
by a legitimate World War II hero, Rear
Admiral Denys W. Knoll, in his treatise, Perry’s
Victory on Lake Erie, An Account of the Building
of the Fleet in the Wilderness, The Decisive Battle
at Put-in Bay and Its Consequences ,
subsequently republished by the Erie County
Historical Society.
Erie also had heroes in the Civil War,
most notably Strong Vincent, a young
attorney who went from Erie to greater fame
(and his death) in the crucial battle of
Gettysburg, where his initiative and valor at
the Battle of Little Round Top may have
been decisive. Another is Colonel John W.
McLane, who organized and led Erie’s
Eighty-third Regiment into battle and was
killed in fighting around Richmond in 1862.
Economically, Erie wasn’t yet a significant
enough manufacturing community for the
war to have a major impact. Erie’s
population at the time was only 9,419
people. Erie: Chronicle of a Great Lakes City
tells the Civil War story in this way: “For the
most part in Erie, it was business as usual.
Trade and manufacturing carried on
normally throughout the war—although
costs were subject to the inflation that
plagued the entire nation. By Fall 1862,
prices had gone up 25 to 40 percent, gold
and silver had disappeared from circulation,
and even paper money was scarce.”
The Civil War also had a role in another
great Erie story, a story that got its start
because Erie was a waystation on the
Underground Railroad, the secret network
built to allow escaped slaves from the South
to make their way to freedom. Hamilton
Waters, a one-time slave in Somerset
County, Maryland, stopped in Erie en route
to Canada with his daughter, Elizabeth.
Waters apparently liked what he saw in Erie
and stayed. Elizabeth Waters married Harry
B. Burleigh. Their second son, Harry T.
Burleigh, born in Erie on December 2, 1866,
became one of America’s great musical
talents and is credited with preserving early
Black spirituals for posterity.
During and after the Civil War, the USS
Michigan, a federal patrol boat, was based in
Erie, assigned to regular patrols on Lake
Erie. Service aboard the iron -hulled ship,
later renamed the Wolverine, was considered
a choice one for graduates of the Naval
Academy at Annapolis and the vessel
eventually came to be known jokingly as
“the mother-in-law of the Navy,” because so
many young officers married Erie girls.
One such marriage gave Erie another
military hero. Harriet Vincent, daughter of
Judge and Mrs. John Vincent, married an
up-and-coming young Naval officer,
Charles V. Gridley. Gridley became a
national hero at the Battle of Manila Bay in
the Spanish-American War in 1898.
Gridley, after whom Gridley Park is named,
is buried in Lakeside Cemetery on the city’s
lower Eastside.
World War I began perhaps the greatest
saga of group heroism in Erie’s history, the
courage and valor displayed in two wars by
Northwestern Pennsylvania’s 112th Infantry
Regiment of the 28th Pennsylvania National
Guard division—a World War I story that
was to be duplicated, even exceeded, in
World War II. The World War I saga is told
in some detail by Brian Kridler in a Journal of
Erie Studies article, published in Spring 1999.
The Twenty-eighth Division traces its
lineage to a group founded in 1747 by
Benjamin Franklin. The so -called “Fire
Association” was formed to combat any
threat to Philadelphia. For Erie, the World
Elizabeth Waters (c1837-1903) lived at 137 East Third
Street with her parents, Hamilton and Lucinda Waters.
She met and married Henry T. Burleigh, a bank
messenger and servant in the early 1860s. They had
four children. Harry T. Burleigh, their child, was born
on December 2, 1866. He later went on to a career
in music.
THE F. J. BASSETT COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER X
47

The USS Michigan, under power in this later image, was launched in 1843. It was the first iron-hulled vessel on the
Great Lakes. Deck logs survive at the Library of Congress which tell the story of its long successful career. Renamed the
Wolverine and repainted in 1905, it continued to sail the lakes. In 1949 the hull was scrapped and a portion was moved
to lower State Street. It can be viewed at the Erie Maritime Museum.
THE MARTHA SCHAAF COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
War I focus centers on Company G, some
176 men strong and commanded by Captain
Lucius M. Phelps and Lieutenant Edward
Schmelzer. The local company, along with
Company A, which included residents of
Corry, saw action at Chateau -Thierry, the
Argonne-Meuse, and Thiaucourt.
But none of the other battles matched
the horror area soldiers encountered at
Fismette. On August 26, 1918, Company G
was the victim of a surprise attack that
decimated the company. In hand -to-hand
fighting, 27 Erieites were killed, 22 were
wounded, and 73 were captured, including
Lieutenant Schmelzer.
In all, 154 Erie County men lost their lives
in World War I, many of them from the
Twenty-eighth Division. Interestingly, David
McCullough, in his Pulitzer Prize -winning
biography Truman, says the toll for the
Twenty-eighth could have been even worse
except for timely intervention by an artillery
unit commanded by Captain Harry S.
Truman, future president of the United States.
McCullough wrote:
west, then turning his field glasses on the
spot, saw a German battery pulling into
position on the left flank, across a small
river in front of the Twenty-eighth
Division, which was beyond his own
assigned sector. Standing orders were to
fire only at enemy batteries facing the
Thirty-fifth Division. Harry decided to
disregard that. ‘Truman didn’t panic,’
remembered Private Leigh. ‘He let them
(the Germans) take their horses away from
the guns, which was exactly what he
should have done. If it had been me I
would have hollered for D Battery to start
firing as soon as I saw them. He didn’t do
that, he let them get into position, get all
set to fire, with their horses by this time a
couple of miles away. Then he had his
firing data exact. It’s no good to have a man
up there if he don’t know what the hell he’s
doing.’ The decision undoubtedly saved
lives in the Twenty-eighth Division, and
though an outraged Colonel Klemm was
on the phone almost at once, threatening
Captain Truman with court martial for
violating orders, nothing came of it.
No mention is made of what units of the
Twenty-eighth Division benefited from the
Truman decision.
On the home front, Erie, now a major
manufacturing center, saw the war start a
trend that would be vastly increased in
World War II a quarter century later. This
was a transition from normal production
into war-time production, and a vast
increase in the number of women factory
workers called upon to do that work.
About dusk (Thursday, September 26,
1918), from the crest of a hill, Harry saw
an American plane drop a flare off to the
American Brakeshoe and Foundry Co., located on the south side of West 12th Street, west of Cranberry Street, produced
this gun for the European theatre during World War I.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
48

Mary M. Muller, in A Town at Presque Isle,
provides a list of factories employing twentyfive
or more women at the time of the
Armistice. Included were Erie Specialty
Company (109); American Brake and Foundry
Company (250); Erie Malleable Iron (85);
Ashby Printing Company (36); Hammermill
(155); Metric Metal (39); Continental Rubber
(369); Erie Forge (80); Hayes Manufacturing
Company (41); General Electric (676); Burke
Electric (152); C. F. Adams Company (48);
Griswold Manufacturing Company (42); C. E.
Carter Company (54); Modern Tool Company
(83); Erie Silk Mills (112); Erie Forge and
Steel (125); and Strauss Manufacturing
Company (59).
Henry Gayek, in his history of Erie
General Electric, published in the Journal of
Erie Studies in the Spring 1995 issue, tells
how, beginning in 1914, Erie GE moved
into “war production: castings, artillery
shells, ship turbines.”
In 1914, too, Erie GE delivered electric
locomotives, known as “Panama Mules” to
the Canal Zone. The locomotives were used
to tow ships through the Panama Canal,
work that became more important with
entry of the U.S. into World War I. Gayek is
much more expansive about Erie GE’s
manufacturing efforts in World War II. The
inventory of war-related items produced by
the Erie plant is impressive indeed:
• Steam turbines for the propulsion of Navy
ships, including destroyers, cruisers, and
cargo ships and for Merchant Marine
cargo vessels. These machines, rated
thirty-thousand horsepower each, were
applied in pairs and drove the propellers
of ships used in landings in North Africa,
Sicily and Normandy and in every major
campaign in the Pacific. About thirteen
hundred turbines were built during the
course of the war.
• Over two thousand complete seventy-five
millimeter howitzers for the Army.
• Remotely controlled gun turrets for
B-29 bombers.
• Projectile hoists for lifting shells into
guns on battleships.
• Gun mounts for battleship guns, to
swivel the guns into position for firing.
• Portable power plants for providing
power for the sixty-inch, 800-millioncandlepower
searchlights used in
antiaircraft defense.
• Design and manufacture of a small
freezer used by the Army Air Force to
ship medicines and medical supplies to
the front lines.
Gayek notes these small freezers
subsequently led to the beginning of GE’s
food freezer business following the end of
the war.
This transfer of technology and products
developed during wartime to peacetime
production is also cited by Richard Lanzillo
in his 1985 Journal of Erie Studies article. “The
Impact of the Second World War on Selected
Erie Industrial Producers.” Lanzillo focuses
on GE, Hammermill, and Lord Corporation.
Lord Corporation grew out of experiments
begun in the home of Erie patent attorney
Hugh C. Lord in 1919. Lord was determined
to meet the challenge of noise and vibration
control. In five years, according to a company
account, Lord patented fifteen of his
inventions. Then, after failing to find a
company which could manufacture his
inventions to his standards, Hugh Lord
founded Lord Manufacturing Company, now
Lord Corporation, in 1924.
As company spokesperson Don Saurer
noted in a 1987 address, “The first product
sold by Lord was an air compressor
mounting, and its customer was the General
Electric Company here in Erie.” Saurer went
on to say it wasn’t until 1933 that the Lord
Company turned its first profit.
World War II was critical for Lord
Corporation. Lanzillo quotes from a speech by
company executive Donald Alstadt that, “Lord
was soon caught up in the current of the war.”
With President Roosevelt calling for the
production of fifty thousand U.S. warplanes,
Lord, which specialized in vibration control
engines and instrument mountings, standard
on both commercial and military aircraft, was
poised to increase its business. “Rather than
wait for specific orders from the government,”
Lanzillo said, “Lord stepped up production.”
Despite Lord’s internal expansion, it became
necessary for the company to subcontract by
In 1924, Erie Patent attorney Hugh C. Lord
(1867-1952) hired six employees and formed Lord
Manufacturing Company to manufacture his
fifteen inventions.
THE LORD CORPORATION ARCHIVES.
mid-1942. To increase capacity, Lovell
Manufacturing Company of Erie; Metric Metal,
a branch of American Meter Company of Erie;
and Talon, Inc., of Meadville were selected as
sub contractors. But Lord Corporation’s World
War II story was not all happy. Lanzillo
described the difficulty this way:
“In 1943, government procurement
officials raised the issue of price controls.
Since all of the company’s resources were tied
up in facilities, and since no general price
increase had occurred, Lord personnel did not
feel that price reductions were warranted.
More importantly, Lord did not feel they could
continue production operations if prices were
cut. Consequently, discussions continued on
the devaluation of aircraft products for several
months. Despite the company’s protests, a
government repricing order was issued.
Lybrands, the Lord Corporation auditors,
advised that the new pricing structure could
cause bankruptcy in ten months.”
Still, on October 25, 1944, by order of
President Roosevelt, the government seized
the Lord manufacturing plant and main
offices. The order claimed that the seizure
was due to the firm’s failure to abide by “fair
and reasonable” prices set on its products by
CHAPTER X
49

The U. S. Navy took over the Lord Manufacturing Company on October 24, 1944, based on charges of price gouging. The
Navy later found it necessary to raise prices under their own management of the company. The Navy returned the Lord
plant on September 10, 1945.
THE LORD CORPORATION ARCHIVES.
the War and Navy departments. Rear Admiral
Harold G. Bowan and his Naval Department
staff took over the plant. As justification for
the action, the government pointed to $29
million in annual sales for 1943, compared
with a pre-war average of $238,000.
The day after the takeover, company
spokesman Thomas Lord, son of the
founder, said, “There hasn’t been any
production delays, and there won’t be any.”
He went on to say that he wanted to clear up
any misconceptions that might have
occurred as a result of media coverage of the
seizure order. Bowan explained that all plant
employees could remain at their jobs if they
desired. In fact, except for the removal of
three officers, company personnel were kept
intact during the period of government
control. The plant was returned to Lord
control on September 10, 1945.
All legal appeals of federal war -time
actions by Lord met with failure. The
company sued the government for $225
million in patent infringements committed
during the seizure period. On August 28,
1953, the Justice Department announced
Lord would be awarded $750,000, or about
a third of one percent of the total amount
Lord had sought.
Saurer, in his 1987 address, offered the
following comment on Lord’s World War II
experience: “Because of World War II,
things really started to happen for Lord
Corporation. During the war, Lord built
nearly ninety percent of all the aircraft
engine mountings for the war effort. As the
result of this, Lord mountings became
almost a generic term when anyone in
aviation is asked about engine mountings.”
In the postwar period, Lord became a
highly diversified company, manufacturing
energy control systems, adhesives, coatings,
robot devices, polyurethane film, and mold
advanced thermoplastic materials.
Hammermill also did vital work during
World War II. Paper, of course, was needed in
war work as well as in civilian life. In
addition, thousands of pieces of military
equipment, spare parts, and medical supplies
had to be transported to battle zones. Most of
these items were tightly packed in heavy
paper cases, many built at Hammermill.
Further, pulpwood products were being
used in many aspects of the war, and
Hammermill was asked to make a number of
items such as bazooka and rocket-launching
tubes. The process was started at
Hammermill and in some cases finished at
the nearby GE plant.
Dramatic as they were, homefront
activities were dwarfed by the worldwide
scope of the fighting. Erie men and women
were participating in all corners of the
world. Some 13,941 men, ten percent of the
population of the city, were sent to war by
the six city draft boards during the four
years of American participation in the war.
And this was just the number in the city.
From the entire county, including draftees,
volunteers, and college students in the
Reserve Officers Training Corps, state
records show that 26,105 men and women
served. Women, while not subject to the
draft, were encouraged to volunteer and
substantial numbers did. One hundred and
forty-nine in the Army Nurses Corps, 155 in
the WACs or Women’s Army Corps, 208 in
the WAVES (Navy), 26 in the SPARS (Coast
Guard), and 20 in the WAF (Air Force).
The casualty list of those who were
killed or who died while in the service
contains the names of 718 men and one
woman from Erie County. The woman was
Second Lieutenant Clare Celestine Riley of
the Army Nurses Corps, who was killed in
action in North Africa on June 29, 1943.
Again, as in World War I, the Twentyeighth
Division and Northwestern
Pennsylvania’s 112th Infantry Regiment
engaged in combat heroics. Activated into
federal service, the Twenty-eighth landed on
the beaches of Normandy on July 22, 1944
and fought its way across the hedgerows of
northern France. But the division’s most
grueling and deadly moments occurred in
two struggles late in the year, battles in the
Hurtgen Forest and in the Ardennes. There is
a fine re-telling of the Twenty-eighth’s role in
these battles in Robert L. Smith’s book. Medic:
A World War II Combat Medic Remembers .
Smith, who served in the division, follows the
unit, step-by-step, almost day-by-day, across
France and Germany.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
50

Not all Erie World War II heroes were in
the Twenty-eighth, of course, and not all
were stationed in Europe. For many, sailors,
marines, soldiers, the war was fought in the
South Pacific, an island -hopping death
struggle against Japan, which had started it
all, as far as the United States was
concerned, by attacking Pearl Harbor.
But to return briefly to the European
conflict: One Erieite was involved in one of
the ugliest episodes of the entire war, the
massacre at Malmedy. Danny S. Parker
describes the horror this way in his book,
Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s Ardennes Offensive.
On December 17, 1944, the U.S. Seventh
Armoured Division was in the process of
moving from Heerlen, Holland, to St. Vith in
the Ardennes to help rescue the encircled
106th Division. Battery B of the 285th Field
Artillery Observation Battalion, about 140
men, was assigned to move south with
the division.
Near the Five Points intersection, the
little convoy was confronted by a long line
of German tanks. The tanks were the
vanguard of a unit of the Adolf Hitler Panzer
Division commanded by SS leader Joachim
Peiper. After a short and unequal firefight,
the American group was forced to surrender.
German commanders had been told no time
was to be wasted with prisoners. And many
of the SS men had recently come from the
conflict in Russia where barbarity knew no
limits.
The captives were herded into an open field
where, around 2 p.m., a gunner in one
German tank fired a pistol into the American
group. Then, one survivor recounted, came
the order: “Macht alie kaputt”—“Kill them all!”
Several machine guns from the tanks opened
fire. Most of the prisoners were either killed
outright or wounded.
As the book says: “The events that
followed were indisputably a war crime—a
phenomenon known as blutrausch, or
“killing frenzy.’ “ German SS men moved
through the group of bodies lying in the
snow, shooting those through the head who
still seemed to be alive.
“Sergeant Kenneth Ahrens (an Erieite, a
graduate of East High School) was sprawled
World War II Army Air Force flying ace Phil Cochran
(1910-1979) coordinated the glider plane attack on
Burma in March 1944, among many other
accomplishments during the war. He received the
distinguished service medal in 1945. After resigning
from the Air Force in 1947, he worked as vice president
for Skymotive, Inc. of Chicago. In 1950 he left for the
West Coast, where he directed flying sequences for
Howard Hughes’ film Jet Pilot. He returned to
Erie and joined his brother at Lyons Transportation
Lines, as vice president, and later became a trustee at
Gannon University.
THE PHIL COCHRAN COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
on the ground with a machine gun round
his back. “I could hear them walking down
amongst the boys that were lying
there…there was a lot of moaning…. You
could hear a stray shot here and a stray shot
there; they were walking around making
sure that nobody was left. Each time they
would hear somebody moan, they would
shoot him; and there was one particular
time when I could feel a foot step right
alongside me, where one of the boys laid
across the back of me and they shot him.
But why they didn’t shoot me I don’t
know…. Every once in a while a tank or
half track would roll by and turn their guns
on us, just for a goodtime. I mean they were
laughing, and having a good time.”
Amazingly, about twenty men, including
Ahrens, survived to spread the story of the
German atrocity.
Erie’s most famous World War II hero was
undoubtedly Colonel Philip Cochran, a
daring flying officer who saw service in Burma
and China under the command of another
hero, Britain’s Lord Louis Mountbatten.
Cochran’s exploits were vividly portrayed in a
nationally distributed comic strip, Flip Corkin.
Another flying hero, Frederick T. Murray,
who became manager of wood procurement
for Hammermill, did his flying for the Royal
Canadian Air Force the only Erie man to fly
a British-made Spitfire in the war. Toward
the end of the war, Murray was shot down
over Holland and spent the last few months
of World War II in a German prison camp.
World War II was followed closely by the
Korean War, the “police action” declared by
President Harry Truman on June 25, 1950.
Because of the closeness of the two
conflicts, many local men served in both.
Among them was William 0. Hill, a future
Erie County commissioner, who won the
Silver Star for gallantry in action in leading
an assault in Burma in World War II and
then went on to fight in Korea.
And if bitter cold was an enemy in
Korea, jungle heat was equally formidable
in the Vietnam conflict, where American
involvement began on August 4. 1964, and
didn’t end until a 1973 ceasefire.
Hill, who also served for a period as Erie
County veteran affairs officer, says he knows
of no official records on the number of local
men who fought in Vietnam. But one of
them, Tom Ridge, became a national figure
as a congressman, Pennsylvania governor
and then director of Homeland Security in
the war on terrorism. In Vietnam, Ridge
served with distinction as a staff sergeant,
and in his government career he always
spoke out strongly for Vietnam veterans.
The twentieh century neared its end with a
successful American led effort in the Middle
East to contain Iraq’s Saddam Hussein (again,
a number of Erie area residents served), but
many see this not completely resolved
struggle, along with the Israeli -Palestinian
conflict, as forerunners of the war on terrorism
which began September 11, 2001, with the
attacks on the World Trade Center in New
York City and the Pentagon in Washington.
CHAPTER X
51

In 1933 a new ward building was added to the Hamot Hospital campus. The original Hamot residence is located on the left. In 1895 the Selden and Scott units were built. In 1913 a new
addition was completed as the demand for services to provide proper medical care increased.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CHAPTER XI
MANUFACTURING TO SERVICE TO KNOWLEDGE
From agriculture to manufacturing to
service—the Erie economic story at the start
of the twenty-first century mirrors that of
much of the rest of the nation. But what
about the future? The next society, according
to futurist Peter F. Drucker, a professor of
Social Science and Management at
Claremont Graduate University, California,
will be a knowledge society, a sentiment
echoed by Dr. Robert Light, associate provost
and dean at Penn State -Behrend in a Fall
2001, commentary in the Erie Times-News.
“Knowledge will be its key resource, and
knowledge workers will be the dominant
group in its workforce.” Drucker wrote in
the British newsmagazine. The Economist
of November 3, 2001. Light basically
agreed, saying “what we need to do is
replace lost manufacturing jobs with
high-paying service jobs in the high -tech
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
52
sector.” And the way to do this, Light
added, is “with knowledge.”
In preparing for this knowledge society,
Erie at the dawn of the new century seemed
increasingly well poised, a community that
had during the last half of the twentieth
century become a major center for higher
education, as we have noted earlier. Not
coincidentally, one showplace of this Erie
higher education network is Knowledge
Park on the Penn State-Behrend campus in
Harborcreek Township.
Change, of course, is inevitable. The
twentieth century saw the decline in
economic terms of the sector that had
dominated human history for thousands of
years, agriculture. Agricultural production is
up, but the number of people relying on
farming for their livelihood is down
drastically, as the Economist report noted.
Manufacturing is travelling down the
same road. Again, production is up but
number of workers is down. Drucker says
manufacturing employment in America has
fallen from thirty-five percent in the 1950s
to less than half of that now, with service
jobs more than taking up the slack.
For years Erie held onto manufacturing
jobs better than the nation as a
whole. Manufacturing employment, which
represented about half of Erie’s work force as
recently as the 1960s, declined like the
nations through the last quarter of the
century and accounted for about one-quarter
of the work force by the year 2000,
according to the Pennsylvania Department of
Labor and Industry.
Erie County hit its peak of manufacturing
jobs in 1974 with 48,700. There were 36,300
manufacturing jobs both in 1985 and 1990.

The number declined to 35.000 in 1995 and
34,100 in 2000. The decline of manufacturing
continued at the start of the new century.
A particularly hard blow was the
decision made by International Paper
Company in October 2001 to close the
former Hammermill plant on the East Lake
Road. This was followed by a January, 2002,
announcement at Erie GE Transportation
Systems that as many as 970 jobs would be
cut by the end of the year, the result of a
national, even worldwide, recession which
had reduced locomotive orders.
The bad news at Hammermill started in
August of 1986 when International Paper
acquired Hammermill—this at a time when,
partially because of its continuing success
as a manufacturer of fine paper, the Erie
firm was under attack by corporate raiders.
International Paper, ironically, was
considered “a white knight.”
Hammermill employment, about 2,000
at the time of the acquisition had shrunk to
only 760 employees by the time the closing
announcement came in Fall 2001.
Despite manufacturing losses, the overall
number of non-farm jobs in Erie county in the
final twenty years of the last century and the
beginning of the new continued to increase—
the result of a growing service sector.
According to Carol Patterson of the state
Department of Labor and Industry, Erie
County had 113,100 non-farm jobs in 1980.
That figure dipped to 109,600 in 1985, but
then climbed steadily. It was 120,500 in 1990,
127,500 in 1995, and 136,000 in 2000.
Patterson said the growth of jobs in the
service-production sector, such as
transportation, utilities, wholesale and retail
trade, finance and real estate, and other areas
has more than offset the loss of manufacturing
jobs. The number of service jobs, she said, has
increased from 21,600 in 1980 to 41,000 in
2000. Part of this was the development of the
Erie area during the last quarter of the
twentieth century into a regional commercial
center, and the astonishing business growth
first at the Millcreek Mall, and then on upper
Peach Street into Summit Township.
Gannon University marketing professor Jill
Slomski said prior to this growth, particularly
in the 1900s, Erie was “under-retailed.” People
had to go to Pittsburgh, Cleveland or Buffalo
for major shopping. That has now changed.
According to the state Department of Labor
and Industry, the number of retail companies
in Erie County went from 1.454 in 1990 to
1,555 in 1998, and the number of related jobs
rose from 21,300 in 1990 to 24,500 in 1999.
Retail changes began with the opening of
the Millcreek Mall in the 1970s. But the surge
in the 1990s and into the new century has
mostly been to the south of the mall. Perhaps
nothing better illustrates the Erie transition
from manufacturing to service jobs than the
development and growth of Erie Insurance.
Employing more than 3,000 people, some
1,900 in downtown Erie—boosting the
company to number five on a June 2000
listing of the top fifty Erie County employers.
ERIE originated, company sources say, with
two men who had great insight into meeting
the needs of customers.
One of Erie Insurance’s founders, H.O.
Hirt, taught in his youth at a prep school in
Dallas, Texas. While there, however, he
developed tuberculosis. Hirt beat the disease
after a two-year battle, but never returned to
teaching. Instead, as he later explained, Hirt
worked at a number of “dead -end jobs”
before joining Pennsylvania Indemnity
Exchange where he met O.G. Crawford. In
1925, after working together for only two
years, Hirt and Crawford decided to open
their own company. The first home office of
Erie Insurance was in the Scott Building at
10th and State Streets, site today of the
Avalon Hotel. As an auto insurer only, the
company had $31,000 in premiums by year’s
end. To quote from a company release:
“Service was the key that led to their success.”
To compete against older and larger
insurers, Hirt took the lead in initiating
24-hour service, seven days a week. Steady
growth in product and customers followed
and the company moved first to a building at
the southeast corner of Sixth and French
Streets, and then in 1956 to a newly
constructed headquarters building across
H. O. Hirt (1887-1982) moved Erie Insurance into its first home office in the Scott Block, northwest corner of Tenth and
State Streets, now the location of the Avalon Hotel. In 1938 the home office moved to the C. F. Adams Building at Sixth
and French Streets to accommodate its thirty employees. Eighteen years later, H. O. Hirt built a larger facility and
relocated across the street to the newly constructed Georgian Colonial-Style H. O. Hirt Building.
THE ERIE INSURANCE GROUP CORPORATE ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER XI
53

Sixth Street that was designed to mirror the
architectural beauty of Independence Hall in
Philadelphia. In 1983, Erie Insurance built
the F. W. Hirt Perry Square Building, a twohundred-thousand-square-foot
addition. And
in 1993, the Erie branch office moved into a
new building at Sixth and Holland.
This impressive construction in a once
deteriorating area has helped insure a
revitalization process that has transformed
Erie’s downtown and its bayfront, another
positive for the community’s future.
Nor is the end in sight for positive
announcements from Erie Insurance. In
January of 2002, Erie Insurance President
Stephen A. Milne announced that the
company’s plans for the future envision
boosting employment at its downtown Erie
headquarters from the present 1,900 to 3,100,
this within the next two decades. In the same
time frame, Erie also plans to add another
437,000 square feet of office space to its
downtown Erie campus. All this assures new
vitality for center city.Another job -making
area that combines service and knowledge is
the steady development of Erie into a regional
health center. Hamot Medical Center, Saint
Vincent Health Center, MetroHealth,
Millcreek Community Hospital (both
osteopathic hospitals were started during
World War II), The Regional Cancer Center,
HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital, Shriners
Hospital for Children, and the Veterans Affairs
Medical Center (built in 1948), combined
these have pushed Erie into a leading role in
medical treatment for the area.
In a 2001 listing in the Times-News of Erie
County’s fifty largest employers, Saint
Vincent Health Center was listed at number
two and Hamot Medical Center was number
three. The Dr. Gertrude A. Barber Center,
while not a traditional hospital, was number
15, while Pleasant Ridge Manor, the county
home for seniors and just one of a growing
number of facilities devoted to care of the
elderly, was number 32. Hamot and Saint
Vincent, the two giants, both got their start
in the nineteenth century, Saint Vincent in
1875 and Hamot in 1881.
It was an accident, quite literally, that led
to the opening of Erie’s first hospital, Saint
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
54
Vincent. In 1872, an elderly man fell and
broke his leg in front of an orphanage run by
the Sisters of Saint Joseph. The sisters took
the man into the orphanage and cared for
him. Soon after, others sought out the
sisters’ services, and the need for a hospital
became clear.
Hospital construction took place on the
site of the former Catholic cemetery at 24th
and Sassafras Streets. On September 5,
1875, the three-story brick structure with
twelve beds and a basement operating room
opened to the public. Dr. J. L. Stewart was
the physician in charge and seven sisters
handled nursing care and other duties.
There were just 20 hospital beds avail -
able in the then city of 75,000 people when
a coalition of citizens and community leaders
in February of 1881 created Hamot
Hospital, a new 25-bed facility on the former
homestead of French immigrant Pierre
Simon Vincent Hamot. The philanthropist
donated the land with the condition that it
would bear his name and no person would
ever be denied medical care.
While the trend in Erie during the latter
half of the twentieth century was toward
service and knowledge, manufacturing was
far from done. As the new century began,
Erie’s top job maker, as it had been for
decades, was still General Electric. While the
transfer of General Electric’s refrigeration unit
in Erie in 1955 to Louisville was undeniably a
blow, the Erie plant stabilized with GE’s
determined effort to streamline and make
fully competitive its locomotive production
unit in Erie—a move that ultimately made
Erie and GE synonymous with the world’s
best locomotives.
While sales were down in 2001 and
2002, due to the worldwide recession,
employment was until the January 2002
announcement still near the five-thousandbenchmark
level of recent years.
One of the most dramatic labor stories of
the twentieth century occurred at Erie GE, a
story well told by James Young in “Trial By
Fire” in the spring 1980 issue of the Journal
of Erie Studies. General Electric employees
voted to join the United Electric Workers in
1940 and a long and difficult strike by UE at
The Sunshine Valley Camp began in July 1924, when
Zem Zem Temple members financed construction of a
small cottage on property donated by the Elizabeth
Milne family at Echo Mountain. Twelve children with
physical handicaps attended the first year. Building on
this successful experience, the Zem Zem membership
decided to establish a “convalescent home for crippled
children” on land donated by Charles H. Strong to the
Hamot Hospital Association. Dedicated June 26, 1927,
Zem Zem Hospital eventually became known as the
Shriners’ Hospital for Crippled Children.
THE SHRINERS’ HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN COLLECTION,
ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
GE in 1946 divided the community. Then, as
Young explains, many of the militant UE
leaders, (justifiably or unjustifiably, there is
still controversy on the subject) were
regarded as Communists or Communist
sympathizers, a difficult position in the Red
scare days of McCarthyism.
Labor’s strength in Erie, demonstrated in
the days of the Moulder’s Strike, was
enhanced in the years before and after World
War II. The Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO) organized locals at
various Erie plants in 1936 and 1937, this
during the dark days of the Great Depression.
These union campaigns were bitterly fought
and concessions by management did not

come easily. Good background material on
labor’s significant role in the Erie story can be
found in Martin McDonough’s “The Erie
Central Labor Union’s Political Evolution,
1892-1937,” in the Spring 2001 edition of the
Journal of Erie Studies . The transition from
industrial jobs to service and knowledge
employment could make life difficult for some
unions, a fact cited in an Erie Times-News
article in November, 2001. Still, as the article
by Jim Martin noted, AFL-CIO-affiliated locals
in Erie County had 11,470 members in June
of 2001, not much different than the 11.570
total recorded in 1991.
Pat Bruno, legislative chairman of the
AFL-CIO Central Labor Council, explained
that “we have lost local unions, but we
haven’t lost members. Unions tend to
merge. At one time we had 100 affiliated
local unions, but now we have 60.” A major
industrial success story in the latter half of
the century was Eriez Magnetics.
The firm got its start in 1942 in the
basement of the O. F. Merwin home at 939
West Seventh Street. In a stroke of what
proved to be genius, Merwin hit on a way
that permanent magnets could be utilized
in industry, initially as a way millers could
use the magnets to eliminate what is known
as tramp iron in the milling process.
Chester F. Giermak, president and CEO
of the firm in 2001, tells the story of how in
the beginning O.F. Merwin didn’t have the
capital to put his unique ideas into practice
and how he solved the problem.
According to Giermak, O.F.’s son and
daughter-in-law, Bob and Betty Merwin,
stopped by the house for a visit. They
listened to O.F. explain his ideas. “All I
need,” he concluded, “is some money to
make one of the permanent magnets.”
Betty said she had saved some money
from her earnings as a schoolteacher and
would be happy to make it available. The
next day she brought over a check for $351.
“This is a classic example of American
free enterprise,” Giermak declared, “from
$351 to $90-million-a-year in sales.” To
accommodate this kind of growth, Eriez in
1963 built a modern new plant on a 25-acre
site just west of Erie International Airport.
“Discovering Presque Isle” has been a tradition since settlers first arrived, long before Presque Isle became a state park in
1921. These three visitors enjoyed the natural beauty of a canoe trip, and explored less traveled areas of the Peninsula in
the summer of 1914.
THE CRANCH COLLECTION, ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Another Erie industrial success story in
the last half of the 20th Century was the
development and growth of a plastics
industry. A fine summation of this development
is provided by the Manufacturers’
Association of Northwest Pennsylvania in
its Monthly Business Report publication.
According to the report, published in
1995, Erie’s plastics industry began in 1935
when G. Richard Fryling, president of Erie
Resistor Corp., a successful electric resistor
manufacturer, granted a few minutes to a
sales representative from a German compa -
ny that manufactured injection molding
machines. As a result of that sales call,
Fryling later took a business trip to
Germany, purchased six new machines and
began a plastics division in his company.
His goal, the Manufacturers’ Association
report explained, “was to use the emerging
plastics technology to make plastic parts to
replace parts currently being manufactured
in wood, metal, hard rubber, glass and
ceramics, and to create new and innovative
products made from plastic.”
Within a short time, Erie Resistor was
producing products such as compacts,
combs, Kodak camera components, and, in
World War II, machine gun ammunition
links. Later innovations in plastic included
parts for radios, refrigerators, toys and automobile
parts. In cooperation with Talon, in
nearby Meadville, Erie Resistor pioneered
plastic extrusion of zipper components.
But success breeds competition. A total
of 17 Erie Resistor employees “broke away
from the company to begin their own plastics
firms. Among them was Robert Rooney,
one of the co-founders of Niagara Plastics in
1953, and Robert Brown, a later partner.”
“Erie Resistor was the grandfather of the
plastics industry locally,” M. Shawn Rooney,
president of Niagara Plastics and son of its
founder, told Monthly Business Report. “It
laid the groundwork for what would
eventually become one of the cradles of the
plastics industry in the East.”
Among the largest companies to emerge
from Erie Resistor were Johnson Controls
(formerly Quinn-Berry), Plastek, Inc., and Port
Erie Plastics. Still another of the newer area
industrial concerns is PHB Inc., in Fairview.
According to chief executive, William Hilbert,
PHB was among the suppliers who had a hand
in developing the new self balancing,
electric-powered personal transportation
machine called “It”—a major national news
maker in the closing days of the year 2001.
In the 1980s, plastic industry executives,
headed by P. C. “Hoop” Roche, Jr., president
CHAPTER XI
55

Residents and visitors along the 900 block of Parade Street enjoyed the arrival of the Dupont powder wagon during
the Perry Centennial Celebration in July 1913. Today the Parade Street Development Corporation is working to help the
neighborhood regain its former economic vitality. The Erie Redevelopment Authority recently moved nearby to support
the effort.
THE ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
of Erie Plastics in Corry, and Joseph
Prischak, president of Plastek, concerned
about the shortage of skilled workers for
area plants, approached Penn State-Behrend
about establishing a baccalaureate degree
program in plastics engineering. A four-year
degree program was established and graduated
its first class in 1989.
The move toward high -paying service
and knowledge jobs is perhaps most
fittingly illustrated by the development of
Aalborg Industries in Penn State -Behrend’s
Knowledge Park.
Aalborg, in the words of Times-News
business writer Peter Panepento, “a corporate
stepson of the former Zurn Energy
Division,” no longer makes the boilers that
were Zurn’s trade-mark during its heyday in
Erie in the 1960s and 1970s.
“But the Danish company’s Erie division,
which designs and supplies steam generating
equipment for the power generation and
industrial steam markets, has been growing
by one hundred percent annually in sales
since 1998,” Panepento said in a 2001 report.
Another growth industry for Erie in the
last half of the twentieh century and into the
twenty-first century is tourism. Tourism
anchored on Presque Isle State Park with its
seven miles of beaches, 14 miles of paved,
multi-purpose trails, seven miles of hiking
trails, six boat launches, nearly 700 picnic
tables, 9,400 parking spaces and one of the
top 10 birding sites in the United States.
Presque Isle’s attractions are such it annually
draws more visitors (many are repeat
visitors, to be fair) than Yellowstone National
Park. The Erie Park has had an average
annual attendance of more than four million
people for the ten-year period encompassing
the last eight years of the 1990s and the first
two years of the new century.
Despite the appeal of Presque Isle, many,
including Erie native Barbara Chaffee,
Pennsylvania’s deputy secretary of tourism
during the Ridge Administration, feel Erie
has yet to fully capitalize on tourism. To
correct this situation, the community at the
dawn of the new century was moving
rapidly to expand its attractions.
The new Erie waterfront, opened up in
1990 by the Bayfront Parkway, includes the
Maritime Museum with its star attraction,
the flagship Niagara of War of 1812 fame,
and the new Erie County library. Then there
is the handsome Warner Theater, to be
restored to its 1930’s luster, the new
downtown baseball stadium, the Tullio
Center with its Otters’ hockey games,
Waldameer Park, the impressive Glenwood
Zoo, the booming mercantile center along
upper Peach Street, as well as a projected
new convention center and hotel near
Dobbins Landing on the bayfront.
Another positive for Erie as the
community marches into a new century is
the Erie Community Foundation, which got
its start in 1935 during the very depths of
the Great Depression.
It was during this dark period that Elisha
H. Mack, co -founder of the Boston Store,
determined he should invest in the future of
the region. His generosity established the Erie
Endowment, predecessor to today’s Erie
Community Foundation, a $100-million
organization. A Fall 2001 report said new
gifts received during the year to date had
already exceeded $11 million. Once each
quarter, trustees of the Erie Community
Foundation meet to review grant
applications. Non-profits seeking support
from the Foundation’s unrestricted funds
present their best case for support.
The same Fall 2001 report listed a few of
the recent grants: Boys & Girls Club, $24,000;
The Caring Place, $20,000; Erie Chamber of
Commerce, $5,000; Community of Caring,
$10,000; Erie Zoological Society, $80,000;
House of Healing, $7.500; Protection from
Abuse, Coordinated services, SafeNet and Safe
Horizons, $20,000; and Vision and Blindness
Resources, Erie Center, $30,000. And these
were just a few of the 2001 grants. Obviously,
the Erie Community Foundation has become a
major Erie resource.
Erie assets, then, are considerable as
the community looks ahead to the rest
of the twenty-first century. Erie’s geographic
location on Lake Erie, close to the major
metropolitan centers of the eastern and
Midwestern U.S., as well as Canada,
remains a major plus in any effort to retain
existing job makers and to attract new
ones. And the community’s access to the
fresh water system of the Great Lakes could
be the greatest of all assets for the future
if, again as futurists suggest, “the time
is approaching when water will be the
new currency.”
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
56

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Sanford, Laura G. The History of Erie County, Pennsylvania, From Its First Settlement. Published by author, 1862 and 1894.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
57

Schoenfeld, Max. Fort De Le Presqu’ile. Erie: Erie County Historical Society: 1979, 1989.
Shaw, Douglas A. “The Railroad War in Popular Culture.” The Journal of Erie Studies, Spring 1986.
Skarupski, Karen A. “Solidarity on the East Side: Erie’s Polish Americans.” The Journal of Erie Studies, Fall 1982.
Spencer, Herbert Reynolds. Erie…A History. Published by author, 1962.
Stevens, Sylvester K. Pennsylvania, Birthplace of a Nation. New York: Random House, 1964.
Swisher, Clare, ed. The Erie Story Album. Erie: The Erie Story Magazine, 1976.
Teker, John W. and R. A. Williamson, ed. “General Electric Company, The Erie Works Story Begins, 1906-1911.” The Journal of Erie Studies,
Spring 1995.
Vance, Russell. A Portrait of Edinboro: From Private Academy to State College, 1876-1976. Rochester, New York: PSI Publishers, 1977.
Wellejus, Edward. Erie: Chronicle of the Great Lakes City. Woodland Hills, California: Windsor Publications, 1980.
Wellejus, Edward. Erie and Its Newspaper: the Story of a Community, The Times Publishing Company and the Last One Hundred Years. Erie: The Times
Publishing Company, 1988.
Wellejus, Edward and Liz Allen, Chris Mead, Doug Rieder, and Mark Weber. Erie: Two Hundred Years as a Community, 1795-1995. Erie: Times
Publishing Company, 1995.
Wieczorek, Judith Stoffa. “Thomas Rees and Other Pioneer Settlers of Harborcreek Township.” The Journal of Erie Studies, Fall 1991.
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HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
58

SHARING THE HERITAGE
historic profiles of businesses, organizations,
and families that have contributed to the
development and economic base of Erie County
Diocese of Erie ....................................................................................................................60
Pulakos 926 Chocolates .........................................................................................................64
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania .......................................................................................68
Erie Water Works .................................................................................................................70
Saint Vincent Health System ..................................................................................................72
Fairview School District........................................................................................................74
Mercyhurst College...............................................................................................................76
Jet Broadcasting ...................................................................................................................78
Gannon University ...............................................................................................................80
The Barber Family ...............................................................................................................82
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College ......................................................................................84
Renaissance & Palace Centres ................................................................................................86
Erie Strayer Company ...........................................................................................................87
Millcreek Health Systems.......................................................................................................88
Geiger and Sons ...................................................................................................................89
YMCA ................................................................................................................................90
B. F. Fields Moving & Storage ................................................................................................91
Millcreek Township School District..........................................................................................92
Dr. Gertrude A Barber Center ................................................................................................93
Erie County Historical Society ...............................................................................................94
HANDS Housing and Neighborhood Development Service ............................................................95
SHARING THE HERITAGE
59

DIOCESE OF
ERIE
BY REVEREND
MONSIGNOR
ROBERT G. BARCIO
EDITED BY
GREG SPINKS
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
60
The Diocese of Erie was officially
established by Vatican Decree on July 29,
1853, and was to embrace thirteen counties of
Northwestern Pennsylvania. The new Diocese
was carved out of the Diocese of Pittsburgh
founded in 1843 with its first Bishop the Most
Reverend Michael O’Connor.
O’Connor was an Irish immigrant who
became vicar-general of the Philadelphia
Diocese, the diocese which covered the entire
state of Pennsylvania. He also served as the
rector of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in
Philadelphia before he was appointed the
bishop of Pittsburgh.
Subsequently, because of the large territory
to which he was compelled to minister, he
petitioned Archbishop Kenrick in Baltimore
to create a new diocese in the northwestern
section of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. His
request became a new reality when the
Diocese of Erie was established and O’Connor
became its first bishop.
In the meantime, Father Josue M. Young, a
priest of the Cincinnati Diocese was
appointed Bishop of Pittsburgh, which he
refused but agreed later to go to Erie when
Bishop O’Connor returned to Pittsburgh.
Bishop Young (1854-1866) was a convert to
Catholicism. He was born in Sharpleigh, Maine
of a prominent colonial family on October 28,
1808. He attended seminaries in Kentucky and
Ohio. He served the faithful with a great deal of
zeal despite the poverty and sparse population
of the ten thousand square miles of his rural
diocese. He supported the anti-slavery cause
during the Civil War and witnessed the
discovery of oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. He
was instrumental in persuading the Sisters of St.
Benedict to remain in Erie to teach the children
at St. Mary’s School. Later, he welcomed the
Sisters of St. Joseph from Buffalo, New York,
under the leadership of Mother Agnes Spencer,
to work in his missionary diocese where they
eventually built a hospital and a home for
orphans both in Meadville and Erie. Bishop
Young died suddenly during the evening of
September 18, 1866.
His successor was Tobias Mullen (1868-
1899), the Vicar General of the Diocese of
Pittsburgh who shepherded the Diocese of Erie
for thirty-one years. The greatest single
monument to his memory was the construction
of St. Peter Cathedral in Erie. It was dubbed
“Mullen’s Folly” because at the time of its
construction, which began in 1873, there were
approximately one thousand adult Catholics in
Erie and its location was considered to be too
far out of town. The new Cathedral was not
finished until twenty years later as Bishop
Mullen would not go forward with construction
until he had the funds in hand.
Institutional development of the Diocese of
Erie was remarkable during the administration
of Bishop Mullen. He established many
parishes with resident pastors, expanded two
hospitals and an orphanage, invited several
religious communities including the Sisters of
Mercy to teach in his schools and erected a
home for the aged.
When word reached the Apostolic delegate
in Washington, D.C. that Bishop Mullen had

✧
Opposite: Archbishop John M. Gannon
served the Erie Diocese as bishop for fortysix
years. Physical expansion and spiritual
development were unprecedented during his
tenure, including the Cathedral College,
which was the forerunner of Gannon
University in downtown Erie.
Left: Cathedral Preparatory School opened
in September 1921 and continues to be a
leader in spiritual, scholastic and athletic
development in Erie. It was one of many
educational centers which opened during the
tenure of Archbishop John M. Gannon
suffered a debilitating stroke, the Very
Reverend John E. Fitzmaurice, the rector
of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary,
Philadelphia was appointed to the Erie See in
1898. During his twenty-one year tenure
(1899-1920), he first installed the bells in
the tower of the Cathedral, larger marble
altars and eventually the complete interior
decoration of the Cathedral.
The diocese also continued to expand with
the establishment of several new parishes
especially for the recent immigrants from
eastern and southern Europe. A new rectory
on Tenth Street was purchased for the
Cathedral, a large addition was made to the
orphanage, the Harborcreek Training School
for Boys was established, and the Sisters
of Mercy opened a new hospital in DuBois
in 1910.
With the death of Bishop Fitzmaurice on
June 11, 1920, Bishop John M. Gannon
(1920-1966), who had been ordained
SHARING THE HERITAGE
61

✧
The construction of a new Cathedral, St
Peter began in 1873 and it took twenty
years for the edifice to be completed. Until
then the temporary or Pro-Cathedral was
St. Patrick’s on East Fourth Street, the only
English-speaking parish in the City of Erie
at the time.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
62
Auxiliary Bishop of Erie on February 16,
1918, succeeded to the Erie See. It was the
beginning of a golden era in the history of the
Erie Diocese.
During the forty-six years of the Gannon
episcopate, the physical expansion and the
spiritual development of the diocese was
unprecedented. The purchase of the
former Metcalf home on West Ninth and
Sassafras Street for the Bishop’s residence
began a long series of activities, which
facilitated the almost miraculous expansion
of Catholic institutions.
Among the first was the Cathedral
Preparatory School for Boys that Gannon
at first envisioned as a seminary. The
school opened its doors in September 1921.
In 1923 he laid the cornerstone for St.
Joseph’s Home for Children, a million-dollar
facility that provided housing and care
for over three hundred children for several
decades. During the first decade of his
episcopacy Cathedral College, a twoyear
institution was the forerunner of
Gannon University.
In 1953, Bishop Gannon was honored with
the title of archbishop in recognition of
his many accomplishments both at home
and abroad.
With the resignation of Archbishop
Gannon, John Francis Whealon (1966-1968)
was named the sixth bishop of Erie on
December 14, 1966. He was an Ohio native
who was ordained as auxiliary bishop of
Cleveland by Archbishop Egidio Vagnozzi, the
Apostolic Delegate at St. John Cathedral on
July 6, 1961. He was Bishop of Erie for less
than two years when he was appointed the
archbishop of Hartford in December 1968.
With the appointment of Bishop Whealon
to Hartford, auxiliary Bishop Alfred M.
Watson (1969-1982) became the seventh
bishop of Erie. He was the second native son
to be appointed to the Erie See. The untimely
death of auxiliary Bishop Edward P.
McManaman in June 1967, led to Bishop
Watson’s elevation as the third auxiliary
bishop in the history of the diocese. He was
installed as bishop of Erie on May 13, 1969.
However, due to growing health problems,
Bishop Watson’s administrative responsibilities
were reduced on December 27, 1978, when
Bishop Michael Murphy was installed
Coadjutor with the right of succession in late
November 1978. Bishop Watson retired on July
11, 1982 and Bishop Murphy (1982-1990)
succeeded him immediately.
During his fruitful episcopate in the Diocese
of Erie, Bishop Murphy tried mightily to
implement the teachings of Vatican 11.
Working with Bishop Watson in 1978, Bishop
Murphy began to formulate plans for the
reorganization of the administration of the
diocese under the governance model “to
improve pastoral services to Catholics.” In
1982 Bishop Murphy inaugurated the Emmaus
program for priests. On July 1, 1990, Bishop
Murphy turned seventy-five, the mandatory
retirement age for Catholic bishops.
Auxiliary Bishop Donald W. Trautman of
Buffalo, New York was named by Pope John
Paul 11 on June 12, 1990, to be the ninth
bishop of Erie. He was formally installed on
July 16, 1990.
The project that consumed much of Bishop
Trautman’s attention for the first two and a

half years of his episcopate was the renovation
of the interior of the Cathedral and the
celebration of it’s centennial. The restoration
was completed in the summer of 1993.
Bishop Trautman has received national and
international attention for his work with
inclusive language in Scripture and Liturgy.
He has proven to be an energetic and loyal
adherent of the teaching church.
The Erie Diocese encompasses thirteen
counties in northwestern Pennsylvania; Erie,
Crawford, Mercer, Venango, Forest, Clarion,
Jefferson, Clearfield, Cameron, Elk, Potter,
and Warren. The 9,936 square mile diocese in
2000 had 127 parishes served by 245 priests
and 512 women in religious orders.
The estimated 234,000 Catholics in the
region support some 43 elementary schools,
two middle schools, and eight secondary
schools with an estimated students population
of over 14,000 pupils.
Today, the once sparsely settled and
poverty stricken missionary diocese, is
well prepared to meet the challenges of the
future, because of the deep faith of the
early believers and the dedication of those
who followed.
✧
Above: Archbishop John M. Gannon founded
Gannon University, located in the heart of
downtown Erie, in 1925. Today, the
coeducational Catholic University has 168
full-time faculty members, 119 adjunct
faculty members and a student enrollment
of 3,500 in both undergraduate and
graduate courses.
Left: St Peter Cathedral was dedicated on
August 1 and 2, 1893, by Bishop Tobias
Mullen, who began the project twenty
years earlier.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
63

PULAKOS 926
CHOCOLATES
✧
Below, Four generations of the
Pulakos family.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
64
For countless area residents, Pulakos is more
than a family name; it’s a rich tradition, a fond
memory, and a meaningful stop anytime of the
year. The Pulakos family has owned and
operated one of Erie’s most distinguished local
businesses, Pulakos 926 Chocolates, since 1903.
Pulakos family members and dedicated staff
have helped and overseen the specially blended
chocolates from heirloom recipes, mixed with
the hand-me-down techniques of the trade.
Using the freshest fruits and nuts, and the timetested,
best tasting flavors, and spiced with the
maximum patience of time honored cooks, the
company has gained a reputation for the
highest quality, chocolate products customers
have anticipated for generations.
Each batch of candy made in the kitchen has
different requirements to maintain the high
standards of quality.
“We pay a great deal of attention to the
details involved,” fourth generation George A.
Pulakos, who can often be seen working in
the production area, said. “If the weather is
very humid or rainy, we have to adjust the
process in making the candy, or if it is warm
outside, a different set of rules apply. Candy
making is science and art.”
The science and art are the result of many
years of experience, coupled with the spirit of
excellence. At Pulakos Chocolates, that is one
of the key elements in producing the most
prestigious quality chocolates, candies and
unsurpassed customer service. The family
owned business has a long-standing
reputation of excellence in the region for their
specially blended chocolates, community
service and homespun values.
George P. Pulakos, the original founder,
came to the United States in 1893 from the
Daphini area of Sparta, Greece. He worked
in Philadelphia selling candy from a pushcart
for several years before moving to Batavia,
New York, an unexpected stopover on his way
to Chicago.

In 1903, wishing to establish a business in
a larger and growing city, he moved to Erie,
Pennsylvania. The original store was located
at 1108 State Street in the thriving downtown
business district of the rapidly growing
manufacturing city with a thriving harbor and
port on Lake Erie.
In 1916 the candy manufacturing and store
operations moved into an ornate building
located at 926 State Street. The building, once a
cigar factory, proved to be an excellent location
for the candy, ice cream, bakery and restaurant
business and became one of the most visited
landmark buildings in the downtown district.
The downtown store attracted customers
from throughout the city and the region. The
window displays of elegant chocolate sculptures
added with the family atmosphere and aroma of
fresh baked goods and newly blended
chocolates and ever-popular homemade ice
cream were a major draw. The store featured the
first “soda fountain” in the region an early
indication of the company’s future innovative
and cutting edge business approach.
Constantine “Gus” Pulakos, a secondgeneration
family member was an established
chocolate artist. Handcrafted displays during
the Christmas and Easter season drew large
crowds of customers and onlookers. Gus, who
was also an avid and widely traveled
archaeologist and author, became known
throughout the nation for his chocolate
sculpture. Among the many sculptures Gus
created was a decorative chocolate chest filled
with candy and presented it to President
Franklin Roosevelt to help celebrate his fiftysecond
birthday. He delivered the chocolate
sculpture to the president during a visit to the
White House. On another occasion after two
weeks of work, he created a one-hundredpound
sculpture of the Supreme Court, which
was placed in the window display at 926
State. Another was later presented to radio
commentator Paul Harvey during a “Save an
Eye” football game, a local traditional matchup
between county and city football teams.
Other unique and detailed chocolate
sculptures included a tribute to the famous
Battle of Lake Erie in 1813 and Charles
Lindbergh’s Flight from New York to Paris
in 1927. The window displays also portrayed
local churches, Presque State Park and famous
buildings, such as the Warner Theater and
frequently delighted out of town conventioneers,
like the Congress of National P.T.A.
and the Knights of Templars with displays
depicting their organizations.
In 1971 the 926 State Street location was
forced to move to another location because of
downtown redevelopment. The new chocolate
manufacturing and retail store opened in 1971
at 2530 Parade Street, a building that was
already used by the company to produce baked
goods since 1946. The 15,000 square foot
manufacturing/retail outlet and an adjacent
5,000 square foot warehouse, just south of the
downtown district remains the headquarters
and anchor for the family business.
While the physical characteristics of the store
changed, the spirit and traditions continued to
grow at the new store with new chocolate
introductions, specialty gift selections, and
singular window displays.
“I learned the craft from my grandfather
and my father,” George A. Pulakos, the
fourth generation of the family to lead the
manufacturing plant said. “We still create
the sculptures and unique plaques by hand.”
✧
926 State Street was one of the most visited
landmarks in the downtown district.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
65

✧
Samples of the fine chocolates made
at Pulakos.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
66
While all the holidays are busy at the 926
Chocolate stores, Easter, as in the past,
remains one of the busiest. Thousands of
chocolate rabbits and roosters, decorative
eggs and windows displays are an important
tradition. Many of the items are still colorfully
and individually hand crafted.
The holiday seasons throughout the year
bring a lot of smiles as well. Pulakos is a wellknown
name and special treat for hundreds of
area youngsters in hospitals and homes who
otherwise might not have the chance at holidays
or any time of the year to experience the
best of the candy world.
Likewise, the company today helps to
celebrate statewide or important victories and
honors Erie sports teams with unique sculptures.
“We’ve presented many chocolate sculptures
to various Erie area teams,” Pulakos said. “We
want to help honor the athletes of our region.
It’s a lot of fun when we are able to present these
handmade trophies and it’s great to see them
broken apart and enjoyed.”
Athletic skills are an important family and
community value. Achilles “Herk” Pulakos,
George’s father, was an avid Erie athlete, as was
“Herk’s” father “Gus”, a well-known swimmer,
basketball player and wrestler. Achilles was one
of the most outstanding swimmers in the
region and held many national championships,
including benchmark feats while he attended
the University of Michigan.
In 1993, George, who graduated from
Michigan State University, began taking over
the operations of the family business. His office
walls are covered with numerous plaques,
honors and distinction over the generations.
“Even when I was six year old, I would go
to help my father and grandfather at the store
before school and then after school I would
return,” he said. “I knew how to start up the
machines and run the equipment. I learned
everything about this business from him. I
really enjoy this business. It’s my life. I love it,
I’m fascinated by it.”
As in all industries, computers and high
tech machinery are essential, but there’s still a
lot of room at Pulakos for creativity and oldfashioned
homemade traditions. Today, the
process of making excellent chocolates and
other candies remains an art passed down
from generation to generation.
“My dad always said to learn how to make
candy by hand in case the machines went
down,” current owner George A. Pulakos said.
“A true candy-maker is one who can still pro -
duce superb candies when the machines fail.
A few steps away from the office is the
Pulakos kitchen. Meticulously clean, pots,
many of them copper, hang from racks
around stoves and mixers.
“The chocolate, which arrives in ten pound
blocks, is first melted down when needed and
then blended,” Pulakos said. “Our blends are
what makes our chocolates distinctive from
everyone else’s. Our trade secret blends gives
our chocolate the quality flavor and aromas
that you will only find here.”
Pulakos 926 Chocolates is also helping
others learn the art and science of candy
making. In 1966 the company under the
direction of “Gus” and his son Achilles formed
the first of a kind chocolate school. The
school began in cooperation with the Retail
Confectioners International, an organization
to help small retail confectioners, and Gannon
University of Erie. The school has a capacity
of twenty-four students and has thirty
professional faculty members representing
some of the most highly qualified people in
the nationwide industry.

Ever since it’s inception, the highly
respected, comprehensive two-week school
has trained candy makers from all over the
world in the fine art of candy-making and
other business aspects of the industry and has
involved some of the most well known candymaking
names in the country.
Several days during the two week intensive
course are spent on the learning various
aspects of the business. Participants learn the
basics of candy-making, including chocolates,
corn syrups, starches, fats and oils,
machinery, cost computations, decorations,
packaging and plant lay-out. The remainder
of the school involves hands-on working in
manufacturing at the Pulakos kitchen.
“It was my dad, “Herk’s” idea to have the
school,” George said. “There was a need for
good candy makers after World War II and he
was able to get certification so returning
soldiers could attend under the GI bill.”
Enhancing the local region are the popular
fund raising candy-bars used by schools and
various civic organizations. The popular fund
raising programs offer the same quality and
distinctive chocolates and other Pulakos
candies for any season throughout the year
and are a vital part of many local organizations
because of the quality products and the
dependable Pulakos service.
In 2000, Pulakos restored another popular,
long-time tradition, which was discontinued
thirty-six years ago, the sale of homemade, fresh,
ice cream. A branch store located at West
Twenty-sixth and Elmwood is the center for the
ice cream. The store features homemade sundaes,
cones, milkshakes, old-fashion sodas and
famous syrups in addition to chocolate candies.
Pre-packaged ice cream is also available at
the main store and branch outlets in the
Eastway Plaza and the Keystone Plaza.
Pulakos, a landmark Erie based company
employs about fifty workers who help make
and sell a complete line of candies such as
fudge, nougats, caramels, sponge taffy and the
ever popular chocolate covered strawberries
and raspberries and other fruits and nuts.
Gift ordering is simple at the Pulakos
Website, www.pulakoschocolates.com. For a
unique and elegant gift or taste of the freshest,
distinctly blended chocolates, the Pulakos name
and products are unsurpassed.
✧
Head candy maker Souksnanh Andusinh
prepares a batch of carmel for cooking.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
67

EDINBORO
UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA
✧
Above: Normal Hall, dedicated in 1875,
was the center of academic and
administrative activities until it was
destroyed by fire in 1969.
Bottom: Academy Hall is the oldest Normal
School building in use for educational
purposes east of the Mississippi and possibly
in the United States.
In 1856 opportunities for the young
people of rural Edinboro, Pennsylvania, were
limited. In a town of less than four hundred
people, with only one-room common schools
available to them, the Edinboro townsfolk
had to send their children to Waterford
Academy for more advanced education.
To remedy this, town leaders campaigned to
raise money to build their own school. In
October 1856 a charter of incorporation for
Edinboro Academy was recorded. One acre of
land was donated and a subscription drive began
to raise the money to build the schoolhouse. The
seed for what has grown to become Edinboro
University of Pennsylvania was planted.
Opening day for Edinboro Academy was
December 15, 1857. It was the same year that
Pennsylvania passed a Normal School Act
providing for the training of teachers.
Joel Merriman, from Waterford Academy,
was hired as Edinboro’s first principal. On
opening day, he and his two teachers greeted
110 cold children as they piled into Austin Hall
(now Academy Hall) for the first day of school.
Edinboro opened as an academy but
operated as a Normal School, a training school
for teachers, from its earliest days. To be
officially chartered as a Pennsylvania Normal
School, Edinboro needed additional land and
buildings. The school grew to meet those
requirements and recognition as a chartered
State Normal School came on January 26, 1861.
For fifty-seven years, the school operated
as a state-related entity until 1914 when the
state purchased the school from the stockholders.
From then until now, Edinboro has
been a public institution in its truest sense.
In 1857 Pennsylvania saw a deficiency in
teachers as its most pressing educational need.
As time passed, the needs of society changed
and Edinboro evolved to meet those needs. In
1927 the school became Edinboro State
Teachers College and began granting four-year
college degrees in Education. In 1960 it became
Edinboro State College with the ability to confer
degrees in the arts and sciences.
The years did not pass without high and low
points. In 1912 President Taft visited the school
and spoke to the students. He was encouraging,
but realistic:
When you become a teacher, you must be
content to live in pretty moderate
circumstances…. You must be content to live
a life of usefulness, knowing that your greatest
reward will come from the knowledge that
you have done your duty, that you have added
your might to the betterment of the human
race and that you have made those you taught
better men and better women.
Two years after Edinboro became a State
Teachers College, the Depression gripped the
country. Pennsylvania made a ten percent acrossthe-board
cut in spending. Enrollment began a
steady decline, from 600 in 1928 to 111 in 1944.
Just as Edinboro hit its lowest point, the
Second World War ended. Returning GI’s
flooded the schools. The state-owned schools
were asked to accept the overload from Penn
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
68

State, which they were glad to do. In all,
Edinboro accepted over one thousand assignees,
more than any other state-owned school.
As times began to improve, Dr. Thomas
Miller was hired as president. From 1954 to his
untimely death in 1966, Miller oversaw an
increase in the student body from 636 to over
3,400. During that same period, the campus
expanded by over five hundred acres. The
student yearbook dubbed him “The Builder.”
Dr. Chester McNerney succeeded Dr. Miller
as president. During his tenure, the institution
continued to see a rapid increase in the student
body. As he shepherded the school through the
turbulent Vietnam era, a tragedy occurred that
did more to demonstrate the character of
Edinboro students than any other single event.
In May of 1969, an electrical fire started in
the attic of Normal Hall. Normal was the center
of all campus life—academic and administrative.
Nearly every file necessary for the
operation of the school was in Normal Hall. The
offices of the president, business manager, dean
of instruction, and bursar were all located there.
Students, faculty, and anyone nearby immediately
began carrying files out of the building.
They formed bucket brigade-style lines and
handed drawers of files out of the building to
safety. At a time when students around the country
were staging sit-ins and protests, Edinboro
students joined hands to save the school.
The next evolution of the school occurred
during the administration of President Foster F.
Diebold who collaborated with colleagues
statewide to usher the creation of the State System
of Higher Education via Act 188 of 1983.
Edinboro State College became Edinboro
University of Pennsylvania.
Today, under the leadership of Dr. Frank G.
Pogue, the University continues its mission to
provide educational opportunities for all citizens
in a student-centered environment that is
characterized by civility. As the fifteenth president
of Edinboro University and the University’s first
African-American president, Pogue celebrates
Edinboro’s rich and unique history.
Reflecting on the many contributions and
innovations of the countless students, faculty
and staff who have joined the Edinboro family
since 1857, President Pogue has encouraged
members of the the Edinboro family to make
a difference during their time on campus:
It’s not so important to calculate the number
of years you spend here, the number of hours on
the job, the number of classes you teach or
students you advise…. What’s important is that
you make a difference—a positive difference—as
you pass through.
Education for the average citizen was the
initial reason for building the school. Edinboro
continues to fulfill this mission while
expanding to include out-of-state and
international students as we prepare citizens for
a global economy characterized by increasing
diversity and unprecedented technological
change and innovation.
✧
Above: Edinboro University is recognized as
one of the nation’s best for its programs and
services for students with disabilities.
Below: The seven-story Baron-Forness
Library serves as a centerpiece of the
campus and as a focal point for research
and other academic activities.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
69

ERIE WATER
WORKS
✧
Above: The 1869 Chestnut Street
Pumphouse, Standpipe, and Administration
Building.
Below:The current EWW Administration
Building is located at the foot of
Chestnut Street.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
70
Enhancing our region’s water system. The
Erie Water Works began operation
of the former City of Erie water system on
January 2, 1992. The EWW immediately
embarked on a series of well planned, futuristic,
and highly successful expansion, rehabilitation,
and repair projects.
After only ten years, the City of Erie and its
the surrounding region, are now home to a
premier water system. The EWW has
positioned the entire northwestern region for
immediate economic development based on an
abundant supply of affordable, high quality
water. The multi-million dollar, modern water
delivery system, which normally pumps an
average 30 million gallons of water daily, is
more than capable of pumping up to 70 million
gallons of water every day.
The complex and intricate water production
and distribution systems are key factors in the
high quality of life throughout the region.
However, this world-class water system had
humble beginnings. Even though the City is
situated on the shores of Lake Erie, the first
water system relied on springs and wells.
As is often the case, a public water supply
system was organized after a destructive fire in
1840. The only hotel in the growing lakeside
community, the Mansion House, burned to the
ground the evening of January 24, 1840.
Community response was quick, and for a cost
of $442.28 the first water lines,
a series of drilled logs, called
pump logs, were constructed.
Workers tapped into wells
and springs at the Reed Farm
near the intersection of East
18th and Parade Streets. As
the lines progressed
northward down State Street
towards the Erie Bay, cistern
wells were dug where buckets
could be used to fill the early
horse-drawn fire wagons.
By 1851, Erie was
designated a City, and the need
for a more reliable water system
was evident as commercial
businesses, manufacturing
facilities, and the community’s
population began to expand. In
April 1867 the first independent water
commission was created and marks the
beginning of the current system.
For generations of area residents, the
Chestnut Street water plant, the oldest in the
system, is the most familiar icon on the Erie
Bayfront. Constructed in 1868, the plant began
to pump water from the Erie Bay. An intake
pipe, four feet in diameter, was laid 975 feet
into the bay waters. An enormous, 265 feet tall
standpipe was constructed next to the pump
station. The standpipe was the largest ever
constructed, and it holds a unique, but often
forgotten place in local history.
The first wireless radio transmission from
Erie was broadcast from atop the standpipe on
August 9, 1909. George C. Gensheimer, a
member of the Water Commissioners Board,
made the broadcast to the Superintendent of
the Cleveland Water Works, E.W. Bemis.
By the turn of the century, public health
concerns resulted in extending the raw water
intake pipe from the Bay into the waters of Lake
Erie. The Water Commissioners also helped to
fund a wastewater treatment plant for the city.
On the peninsula, an increasingly popular
spit of sand, (now Presque Isle State Park), the
Water Commissioners established Waterworks
Park, built the first roads, constructed beach
houses, hired life guards, and even created its
own motorcycle police department.

The Great Depression signaled a major
change. The Water Commission was
disbanded, and water service became part of
city government. Money from the highly
profitable water system was then used to help
other city departments. However, many
important facilities, and the system in general,
were aging, and in desperate need of
rehabilitation. The City lacked the necessary
funds for much needed improvements, and the
system continued to deteriorate until the
creation of the Erie Water Works, in 1992.
Since then, the nine member, all volunteer,
EWW Board of Directors, have been
instrumental in improving many miles of water
lines, pumping stations, and the installation of
water meters as part of an aggressive $75 million
capital improvement plan. The EWW water
rates remain more affordable than many others
throughout the region, and even the nation.
The water produced by the Erie Water Works
meets or exceeds all drinking water safety
standards, and water quality technicians check
the system’s water quality daily. Recently, the
EWW voluntarily joined the Partnership for Safe
Water, and works with state and federal agencies
to conduct rigorous self-assessment procedures
to optimize water treatment performance
beyond what is required by regulations.
All of the raw water utilized by the EWW
comes from Lake Erie via two large intake pipes.
One intake extends from the Chestnut Street
Plant to a mile into Lake Erie, and the other
intake, from the Sommerheim Plant, built in
1930, extends the same distance into Lake Erie.
The EWW regularly oversees cleaning and
maintenance of the intake pipes. These processes
include zebra mussel eradication programs.
Both water plants have been extensively
rehabilitated and sophisticated, state-of-the-art
automation systems have been installed. An
old fish hatchery and meter building has been
transformed into a beautiful Administration
Building that offers panoramic views of
Presque Isle Bay.
The Erie Water Works also operates and
maintains several large finished water
reservoirs and storage tanks with a combined
capacity of 64 million gallons of water, 12
satelite pumping stations, 2 plant pump
stations, and well over 600 miles of water
mains. Affordable, high quality water is used
daily throughout the EWW’s reigional service
area, which includes: the City of Erie,
Wesleyville, Lawrence Park, and the Townships
of Millcreek, Harborcreek, and Summit.
The Erie Water Works has led the region to
a threshold of excellence. It has established
itself as a pro-active steward of critical physical
and natural resources, and remains the icon on
the Bayfront for cultivating future economic
growth and stability.
✧
Above: Sommerheim Low-Duty Pump
Station Zebra Mussel Building.
Below: Sommerheim Filtration Plant.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
71

SAINT VINCENT
HEALTH SYSTEM
✧
Above: The original Saint Vincent Hospital
in 1875: A three-story brick building with
just twelve patient beds.
Below: Operating rooms in the Annex, built
in 1912, were equipped with “the most
modern devices for the relief of distress.”
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
72
Saint Vincent Health Center has been the
heart and soul of excellence, compassion, and
quality healthcare since September 5, 1875.
Founded by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of
Northwestern Pennsylvania under the
leadership of Mother Agnes Spencer, a Catholic
missionary born in England in 1823, the health
center has marched with the times in providing
the latest advances in healthcare.
The march through excellence and
compassion began with a parade through Erie
in 1875. Beginning at the Church of Saint
Patrick’s, then the procathedral for the
Diocese of Erie, and located near the first
Saint Joseph’s Orphanage, also operated by
the religious order, several hundred people
walked in procession to a new threestory
brick building at West Twenty-fourth
and Sassafras Streets, the site of a former
Catholic cemetery.
The new hospital cost $6,000, had 12 beds,
and a staff of seven sisters and one doctor. The
hospital was blessed that day by the third
bishop of the Erie Catholic Diocese, Bishop
Tobias Mullen, also a former missionary born
in Ireland in 1818, and a driving force in the
early organization.
The hospital, like the orphanage, was
maintained financially by generous public
support and bequests from wealthy families.
From the very beginning, patients were accepted
regardless of ethnic origin, religious belief or
economic condition. Saint Vincent Hospital was
incorporated as a public institution by the
courts on December 10, 1894, and first received
state funding June 1, 1895.
The simple beginnings became a milestone
of tradition. Saint Vincent embarked on a
journey of “firsts” in the local healthcare field
as the hospital together with the region
continued to expand.
“The world moves rapidly, but Saint
Vincent’s will progress with it,” wrote William
Stern, president of the board of trustees in
the 1925 annual report, “Fifty Years of Service
to Humanity.”
By 1975, its centennial year, Saint Vincent
was a major medical center utilizing the best
advances in technologies in dozens of
healthcare fields and community outreach
programs. It also had a new name–Saint
Vincent Health Center—to reflect its new
emphasis on total healthcare.
The original hospital, Erie’s first, was
dedicated to providing care and comfort to
the sick and injured.
Through the years, Saint Vincent has
continued to reach out to those in need, to
add programs and services as appropriate, to
increase technological and professional
expertise and to change with the forces
of healthcare to ensure continued access for
all. Lasers, computerization, miniaturization,
minimally invasive procedures, telemedicine…
the list goes on and on. New
treatments, new tools, new medications, new
programs and services help Saint Vincent
meet the changing needs of people in an everexpanding
region.

The facilities and technology are
thoroughly up to date, but Saint Vincent
continues to excel at providing care and
comfort to the sick and injured.
As the region’s number one provider of
both inpatient and outpatient services, Saint
Vincent in recent years has treated more heart
patients, cared for more emergencies,
performed more surgeries and delivered more
babies than any other health system in
northwestern Pennsylvania.
In 1987 Saint Vincent opened the area’s
first freestanding outpatient surgery center.
The Saint Vincent Surgery Center is one of the
busiest in the nation, with consistently high
marks for patient satisfaction.
Physicians at the health center are
recognized nationally and internationally for
their work in several medical fields and have
frequently been awarded prestigious awards
in their professions. Thirty-four members
of the Saint Vincent Medical Staff were
recognized in the Best Doctors in America
in 1999.
These men and women follow in the
footsteps of such physicians as the late Dr.
Elmer Hess and the late Dr. Russell Roth, both
noted urologists. Both men served, at different
times, as president of the American Medical
Association, a unique distinction.
The health center has evolved into the
Saint Vincent Health System, which includes,
as well as Saint Vincent Health Center,
Westfield Memorial Hospital, a full-service
outpatient center in Union City and the Saint
Vincent Medical Group, the largest medical
practice in the region with approximately
ninety physicians and mid-level providers.
Saint Vincent has joined with four other
hospitals in the Regional Heart Network, a
nonprofit joint venture aimed at improving
heart care throughout the area through
standardization of care and shared technology,
including telemedicine links. Additional joint
ventures, such as the Regional Cancer Center,
the Community Blood Bank, EnergyCare and
LifeStar emergency transport systems, help to
assure the best healthcare for the community
while reducing costly duplication.
The Sisters of Saint Joseph still remain an
active presence not just at the physical
complex of the health center but within the
surrounding neighborhood as they work with
residents to further revitalization efforts. The
efforts are varied; depending on needs, but
have included home visits, food assistance
and English language classes.
Saint Vincent Health System is a regional
icon for excellence in medical care forged in
timeless religious values brought to the
frontier settlement a century ago by dedicated
men and women whose imprint still lies in
the future.
✧
Above: More than three thousand nurses
graduated from the Saint Vincent School of
Nursing between 1904 and 1999, including
these members of the Class of 1914.
Below: The Saint Vincent Health Center of
today is a 450-bed regional referral center
and teaching hospital that also serves as the
nucleus of the Saint Vincent Health System.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
73

FAIRVIEW
SCHOOL
DISTRICT
BY SABINA
SHIELDS FREEMAN
✧
Above: Public school No. 2 was built in
1897 and is one of a few early schoolhouses
remaining in Fairview Township.
Below: James Brown, fourth grade teacher
at the Fairview Elementary School, works
with students on a computer-assisted lesson.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
74
The Mission of the Fairview School District
states that it will meet the needs of all students
through the utilization of technology, the
development of school business partnerships,
the creation of innovative staff development
programs, the maintenance of a comprehensive
curriculum and the provision of state-of-the-art
facilities, in order for students to compete
successfully in a global society.
Professional educators in the Fairview
School District are dedicated to continuing
the District’s tradition of excellence through
the development of the unique gifts and
talents of all its students. Staff, school board,
and community cooperate to ensure that all
Fairview students have access to a quality
instructional program that assists them in
reaching their full potential.
From the earliest days of Fairview’s
settlement, of primary importance to its
citizens was educating their children. The
scope of that education has kept abreast of the
national trends and needs.
According to county histories, the first
structure built specifically as a school was a log
building, erected in 1804 and located about
one-half mile from the landmark Swan’s Tavern.
By 1866 a two-story structure called the Union
School replaced three other smaller buildings
and housed all of the children located within
the Fairview Borough. The building burned in
1891 and was replaced by a new structure the
same year. It was in this building in 1895 a full
four-year high school program was offered and
was available to all of the children of Fairview
Township. By 1905, South High was
constructed at the corner of State Route 98 and
Tannery Road and housed grades 9 through 12.
By the late 1920s, Fairview Township
began to change from a mostly agrarian
community to one that included industrial
and residential development. Recognizing
that Fairview was a growing, changing
community, in 1927 the two school boards
representing the Borough and Township of
Fairview, constructed the first joint school to
educate high school children. The structure
was located on Chestnut Street in the Borough
and contained six classrooms and a basement.
In 1949 the State Department of Public
Instruction mandated consolidation of the
small school district with the Commonwealth.
Prior to 1953, the Fairview Borough and
township had already consolidated, built an
elementary addition onto the Chestnut Street
School and added several specialized rooms
onto the high school wing. Because of the new
construction, the board voted to sell the
remaining four brick structures located with
the four quadrants of the Township. This left
only the two buildings within the Borough and
Township, the old Union School and the
Chestnut Street School.
As the postwar boom encroached upon
Fairview, many areas were being developed
for industrial as well as residential growth.

Thus in 1958, the modern Manchester
Elementary School was built in the township
and in 1961 the Garwood Junior-Senior High
School was constructed in the Borough.
As the student population continued to
grow, it became obvious that new classrooms
would be needed to facilitate the growing
student population as well as meet the needs
of an expanding curriculum. In 1973, after it
was decided that instead of expanding the
facilities at Garwood, a new high school would
be constructed on the sight overlooking
Garwood School. The new facility contained a
swimming pool, a large gymnasium, science
laboratories, a one-thousand-seat auditorium,
space for the arts and numerous academic
classrooms. Today, Fairview High School
continues to provide its students with a quality
education. As a result of the construction of
the new high school, the Garwood School was
converted to a middle school housing grades 5
through 8, and the Manchester building was
closed and sold.
The newest facility was built in 1996
replacing the aging Chestnut Elementary
School. By this time, a new Administration
Building and a new Transportation Complex
were constructed on campus. For the first
time, the entire education program was now
housed on a single campus.
Fairview School District is proud of its
academic achievements throughout the years.
Consistently, the District has tested far above
the State and Federal Standards. To meet their
educational goals, Fairview’s educators and
administrators have developed some of the
most successful programs in the region. These
include the use of the Block Schedule at the
high school which allows students to
concentrate their time in a variety of academic
tasks, the infusion of the Adopt an Artist
Program at the Middle School, which exposes
students to some of the most accomplished
artists and musicians in the nation; and the
integration of technology as an integral part of
the elementary curriculum, to mention a few.
Fairview School District has prided itself in
its past accomplishments and is continually
searching for new and innovative programs to
meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.
✧
Above: Kerry Logue, principal of Garwood
Middle School, discusses with two students
the renovations and new construction to
begin in the near future.
Below: Amy Luce conducts an English
lesson with a group of Fairview High
School students.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
75

MERCYHURST
COLLEGE
In 1926, Mercyhurst College opened its
doors on a wind-swept hill overlooking Lake
Erie, just a few blocks away from the city’s
southern boundary. That day saw the
fulfillment of a dream held tightly in the
hearts of the Sisters of Mercy of the Erie
Catholic Diocese.
It was the Sisters who founded Mercyhurst,
putting their own sweat and tears into the
campus, which prospered in its early
years under the strong leadership of Mother
M. Borgia Egan, the college’s first president.
The heritage of Mercyhurst, however,
can be traced back to Mother Catherine
McAuley, who founded the Sisters of Mercy in
Dublin, Ireland.
During its evolution from acres of farmland
to today’s modern campus, Mercyhurst has
undergone dynamic change. In 2002
Mercyhurst covers six city blocks and is the
largest piece of unbroken real estate in Erie. It
boasts of 50 buildings, and while it continues
to grow, the college grounds remain one of the
most beautiful areas in the region.
More importantly, since its early beginnings
as an all-women’s school, Mercyhurst has
emerged as a major force in the educational
landscape of the region, while remaining true
to its mission as a private Catholic liberal arts
college in the Mercy tradition.
From the beginning, Mother Borgia was
determined to make Mercyhurst the “beauty
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
76

spot in the Diocese of Erie.” Wanting the
institution to be a masterpiece of harmony,
she directed that the exterior of the college be
given as much attention as its interior.
Under her direction, the Sisters hired
prominent Architect F. Ferdinand Durang of
Philadelphia to create Old Main. It became a
masterpiece of English Gothic design and
stateliness that is suggestive of a medieval
castle in its lines. With the addition of the
college gates in 1950, the Mercyhurst campus
became a city landmark and an attraction to
all who drove up its front boulevard.
In Mercyhurst history, three dates stand out
above all others: September 20, 1926, when
the college opened; October 5, 1928, when
the school received its charter; and February
3, 1969, when the board of trustees voted to
admit the first class of men to Mercyhurst.
There were three periods of rapid growth
and remarkable leadership in the 75 years of
the college. Led by three outstanding
presidents, they were: the first spring under
Mother Borgia (1926-1959), who gave birth
to the college and guided it through its
formative years; the second spring
spearheaded by Sister Carolyn Herrmann
(1963-1972), who led Mercyhurst through
the challenge of coeducation; and the third
spring, under the driving force of Dr. William
P. Garvey (1980 to the present), who brought
the college to its current vitality.
In the past two decades of the third spring,
Mercyhurst has become one of the 12 top
private liberal arts colleges in the North and
the second largest Mercy College in America.
Its student body has grown to a record 3,700
students, its faculty to 150, its endowment to
$12 million and its budget to $60 million.
An unprecedented $40 million program of
new buildings and campus renovations has
dramatically changed the look of Mercyhurst
during the past 15 years. Old Main remains the
spiritual center of a campus that has blossomed
to include 50 structures stretching to the east,
west and south. A $7.5 million academic
building on the southeastern campus across
from Zurn Hall opened in fall 2002, a longawaited,
technology-rich building funded
largely through a $20 million capital campaign.
In addition to the extensive growth on the
main campus, in 1991 Mercyhurst purchased
the 100-year-old Redemptorist Seminary in
North East for a second campus called
Mercyhurst North East. At that site, nestled in
the bluffs just west of the New York state line,
700 students are enrolled in two-year and
certificate programs at the 84-acre campus
located in the middle of the country’s Concord
grape region.
As Mercyhurst begins its 78th year, the
college continues to honor its past, celebrate its
present and work together to bring to full
maturity the fruits of the third spring. At the
same time, it seeks to fulfill the dreams of its
founders to create a great college on the hill.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
77

JET
BROADCASTING
✧
Above: The JET microphone c. 1955.
Below: JET Broadcasting co-founders Bill
Fleckenstein and Myron Jones c. 1951.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
78
Few would imagine in 1951 that a small AM
radio station on Erie’s Ash Street, founded by
two young men Myron Jones and William
Fleckenstein with a big dream and little cash,
would become the areas best known and most
successful Broadcasting Company with a fiftyyear
history.
WJET premiered as Erie’s first independent all
music radio station. An entirely new kind of
station with user friendly call letters able to be
said in a word: JET…with exciting disc jockey
personalities’ keeping beat for a Happy Days
generation. Frank Martin, everybody’s disc
jockey for fifty years to come, Bob Conners’ wit
and big time sound, and Ray Otis’ million-dollar
voice brought JET number one ratings. The early
days saw numerous firsts: playing those little
records with a big hole—the 45 RPMs; where the
hits were made; airing custom recorded station
jingles; being on-the-air twenty-four hours a day;
and using a roving mobile unit to broadcast
instantly from anywhere, like big city stations in
the 1950s. Many of JET’s early disc jockeys went
on to major cities, including Ray Otis (St. Louis
and New York City), Ernie Davis (Houston), Ron
Cash and Don Evans (Pittsburgh), Biggie Nevens
(Los Angeles), and Barney Pip (Chicago).
JET was among the first stations anywhere to
have a strict play list. Kay Jones, music director
for thirty years, picked the hit songs that got the
ratings earning nationwide acclaim. Her
published music lists are today a collector’s item.
JET’s studio was a place to be with visiting
record stars, and exciting contests—the
thousand-dollar high school spirit contest; Ron
Cash atop a flagpole; the famous $10,000 showus-your-sign
contest; a virtual turkey shoot with
hundreds of Thanksgiving turkeys for listeners;
and many of today’s Baby-Boomer generation
treasured their Kash for Kids Cards, which
helped put money in their pockets in the 1950s
and ’60s. And who could forget Chicken man?
The ’60s and ’70s brought the Good
Guys, JET DJ’s, who played high school
basketball with teachers raising money for
school events—great personalities Frank
Martin, Johnny Holiday (Bob Bach), Randy
Michaels, Oggie Pringle, Jim Conners, and
Al Knight (Dick Thompson/Larry Jones), who
were later joined by Sandy Beach, Ron Seggi,
Barney Love, Jim Cook, Jay Bohanan, and
Craig Warvel.
For decades JET Radio maintained an
around the clock hourly news service
unequaled in Erie Radio history. Its awardwinning
journalists had many scoops, local
and national. In 1972 a world scoop was the
death of famed FBI head J. Edgar Hoover
several hours before any national media.
Among JET reporters, Dave Gifford, Chuck
Woodard, Jim Renshaw, Dennis Buckel, Ken
Shannon, Bob Sutherland, Jerry Trambly,
Mathew Locke, Dick Klancher and Ed
Wellejus from the Erie Times editorial room.

On April 2, 1966, the Sunday Times-News
carried a sixteen-page insert introducing Erie’s
new television station WJET-TV Channel 24, a
primary affiliate of ABC. A bold venture for a
company experienced only in radio. A thirtyhour
movie marathon, still recalled by movie
buffs, premiered over April Fools weekend
showing movies in color–an Erie first. ABC
programs included Bewitched, Payton Place,
Batman, The Fugitive, Marcus Welby and
Lawrence Welk. Erie’s most experienced
broadcast journalist Bob Sutherland headed the
JET-TV News Department; a very young Peter
Jennings was ABC’s News anchor (circa 1966).
Soon JET-TV grew to rival competitors
WICU/NBC & WSEE/CBS, particularly with
sports and miniseries programming. Who could
forget the miniseries Roots, Winds of War, and The
Thornbirds. ABC invented Olympic coverage via
satellite, not to neglect NBA Basketball and
Monday Night Football. In 1978, JET-TV
premiered “Action News” with anchors Don
Shriver, Joey Stevens, and John Evans, led by Bob
Sutherland and Eric Johnson. “Action News”
achieved overwhelming number one ratings for
two decades and attracted national attention.
Senior reporters included Steve Drexler, Janice
Edwards, Theresa Murtland, Mathew Locke, and
Sean Lafferty. Cindy Patton anchored morning
and noon news, and Kelly Gaughan and Don
Shriver co-anchoring evening news.
Much happened in JET Radio’s thirty-fifth
year—JET-AM 1400 became JET-FM 102, easily
regaining top ratings, ably guided by Jim Cook,
a programming genius, and “FROGGY,” a new
sister station founded as Erie’s first all-Oldies
station, came on the air. Frank Martin
celebrated forty years as JET’s morning disc
jockey, a nationally acclaimed feat to receive the
high honor of induction to The Museum of
Television & Radio, New York City where a
recording of his show is archived.
Jet Broadcasting was widely noted for the
longevity of its personnel, of whom more than
half serving beyond twenty years. Sadly, three
members of its early management team were
deceased prior to the company’s greatest years.
Peter Coticchia, vice president and general
manager dating to 1953, died in 1980; Rick
Hanna, JET Radio vice president, died in
1979; and Ken Fanizini, well remembered as
Erie’s best-known television program manager,
died in 1988. John Kanzius, a gifted
engineering executive, assumed management
in 1980 and presided over WJET-TV’s most
successful years as president and equity
partner. WJET-TV was sold in 1998 and JET-
FM & FROGGY in August 2000.
JET’s co-founder William Fleckenstein
retired in 1990 after a highly successful thirtyfive-year
career with WHOT-Youngstown,
Ohio; a sister station to WJET. Myron Jones, Jet
Broadcasting founder and CEO for fifty years,
retired in 2001, pleased to have pioneered a
style of radio that is everywhere today.
WJET-AM 1400 celebrated its fiftieth year
broadcasting with oldies station, FROGGY,
from Next Media’s show window studios in
Erie’s historic Boston Store. WJET-TV, a
NextStar station continues its leading news and
community service position. Regency
Broadcasting now owns JET-FM 102, with new
call letters.
✧
Above News Director Bob Southerland,
c. 1966.
Bottom, left: Frank Martin, JET disc jockey
for forty-eight years. He has been inducted
into The Museum of Television and Radio in
New York City.
Below: Kathryn Jones, JET music director
for thirty years, was nationally known for
picking hits. She was the first to play Elvis
Presley’s Sun Label recordings. She died
in 1993.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
79

GANNON
UNIVERSITY
✧
Above: Monsignor Wilfrid Nash (second
president of Gannon), and the two men
instrumental in the founding of Gannon
University, Bishop John Mark Gannon, and
Monsignor Joseph “Doc” Wehrle (first
president of Gannon).
Below: Dr. Antoine M. Garibaldi, the
current president of Gannon University
became president in July 2001 following
a nationwide search.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
80
Gannon University has emerged as a vibrant,
regional leader on the world and national stage
energized by its founding on commitment,
dedication and spiritual values. Attracting
students and faculty members from across the
nation and the globe, the University is centered
in the heart and soul of historic downtown Erie.
The University, rooted in the traditional and
futuristic technologies, provides 51 bachelor
degrees, 12 pre-professional programs, 8
associate’s degrees, 19 master’s degrees, and
doctoral degrees in counseling psychology and
nurse anesthetist. The downtown campus
provides a secure and resonant environment
for over thirty-four hundred students
bordering the historic bay front of the region’s
early beginnings.
Doc Wehrle might not recognize the physical
aspects but he’d know the spirit. He and
Archbishop John Mark Gannon were the driving
forces towards creating a local college. The Great
Depression of 1929 put a damper on the early
beginnings, but vision and dedication persisted,
and the two men succeeded in opening a small
school in 1933 in an old house with a handful
of students. Named Cathedral College, it
operated under the charter of Villa Maria
College, then located on West Eighth Street,
then a largely rural area, which opened for
women in 1925 with support from Gannon.
The former Strong Mansion became the
focal point for Gannon University when the
bishop purchased the elegant building, which
sits near the western side of Erie’s Perry Square
and across from the Erie County Courthouse.
The 1941 purchase and relocation of the
school marked the beginnings of the present
day University. Doc was named the first
fulltime president that year and the name was
changed to Cathedral College and later the
Gannon School of Arts and Sciences.
It was renamed Gannon College in 1944 when
the institution received its own charter to operate
from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As the
1940s came to a close, enrollments at the
expanding college grew to over 1,000 students
and the campus included 15 buildings.
In 1956 Monsignor Wilfrid Nash, a dean at
the college, was appointed to the presidency and
Doc was assigned to his home parish of
Punxsutawney to serve as its pastor. Under
Nash’s leadership abilities, the college continued
to expand and the curriculum became more
professionally based to meet the changing
demands of new generations of students.
Nash’s leadership role during the sixties and
seventies won acclaim from many community
leaders and students. Under his leadership
Gannon embarked on two major projects, the
Learning Resource Center (later renamed the
Nash Library) and the Zurn Science Center.
Nash, who retired after nearly twenty years
as president in 1977, paved the road to another

as president in 1977, paved the road to another
downtown milestone. In 1979, under the
leadership of Dr. Joseph Scottino, the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania granted
University status to the college community.
Under the presidency of Dr. M. Daniel Henry,
the fourth president of the University (1987-
1991), Villa Maria College fully merged with
Gannon University to “strengthen the delivery
system of Catholic education” in the region.
Following Henry’s departure, Monsignor
David Rubino was named president in 1992
after serving a year as interim president. Under
Rubino’s guidance the University realized many
milestones, including the A. J. Palumbo
Academic Center, the Waldron Campus Center,
a new athletic field and numerous significant
academic innovations. Following Rubino’s
resignation, the university, after a national
search, selected Antoine M. Garibadi, Ph.D., as
the new president effective July 1, 2001.
Today, Gannon University is a regional
leader in educational and community programs
and is a dynamic force in the region in cultural
and athletic life, setting the stage for continued
excellence in the heart of downtown Erie.
✧
On December 19, 1979, Gannon was
granted University status by the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Then-
Governor Dick Thornburg (right) is pictured
with Dr. Joseph Scottino, the third president
of Gannon (left).
SHARING THE HERITAGE
81

THE BARBER
FAMILY
✧
Right: John Barber and Kate Cantwell were
married at St. Patrick’s Church on June 5,
1900. Kate’s favorite verse from poet Ralph
Waldo Emerson aptly describes her spirit
which has been passed from generation to
generation: “What lies behind us and what
lies before us are tiny matters compared to
what lies within us.”
Below: The family of John and Kate Barber
c. 1930. This portrait was taken before
Kate’s first return visit to Ireland. Back row
(from left to right): Joseph, George,
Thomas, Robert, Charles, and John. Seated
(from left to right): Marion, Kate, Kathryn,
and Gertrude.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
82
There was no royalty in Kingtown, a
working-class neighborhood on Erie’s lower
east side. But in the early part of the twentieth
century, a young Irish girl would come to reign
as its queen.
Kate Cantwell was born in a small village
in County Tipperary, Ireland on March 7,
1879. She was a good student, but like many
girls she left school early to help her family.
At age fifteen, Kate’s life changed
dramatically when she joined two aunts living
in America. She arrived in Erie, a haven to a
growing Irish community. Here, her
experiences and values would help shape the
region’s history.
Soon after her arrival, Kate began working
for the Reeds, a prominent Erie manufacturing
family. A few years later, she met John J.
Barber, who was born in Erie in 1873, the son
of Irish immigrants. The couple married at St.
Patrick’s Church, the heart and soul of Irish
life in the city, on June 5, 1900. Within a few
years, the newlyweds and their growing family
were living on Newman Street.
John was a hard worker who also left
school at an early age to support his family. He
was employed at the Jarecki Foundry, but
often worked several jobs. John was a natural
leader and public servant. He served on Erie’s
Common Council from 1905 to 1909 and
became a force in the City’s Democratic Party.
John left public political life in 1911 when
he and Kate opened a grocery store at their
Newman Street home. The new business was
more than stocked shelves.
“The store was a focal point for news and
talk in the neighborhood. If a family needed
groceries, they were always able to bill them,”
recalled Kathryn Barber Durkin, their
youngest daughter. “Later, we had one of the
few telephones in the neighborhood and we
children frequently delivered messages to
other homes and neighbors.”
Tragedy struck the family during an
influenza outbreak in January 1919, when
John died at the age of forty-five. He left
nine children—six sons (Charles, Thomas,
John, George, Joseph, and Robert) and
three daughters (Marion, Gertrude, and
Kathryn). A daughter, Cecilia, died earlier at
three months of age. John’s last request to
Kate was to make sure the children “get a
good education.”
In the years following her husband’s death,
Kate successfully juggled the roles of mother,
businesswoman, political activist and “social
worker” for the neighborhood.
“Our house was always open to everyone,”
Kathryn said. “Not only did we never lock the
door, I don’t think we even had a key. People
always stayed with us. Sometimes they were
neighbors and friends, but often they were

strangers who had just settled in this country.
Or maybe they needed help for a little while.”
By her example, Kate Barber instilled in her
children a deep responsibility for helping
others. Neighbors facing a problem would
often say, “We’ll go and see Kate Barber. She’ll
help us.”
Every Christmas, Kate cooked for the
neighborhood, and the children spent the
holiday delivering meals. On the Fourth of
July, the Barber children could be seen with
others in the neighborhood banging on pots
and kettles. “We always had our own parade,”
Kathryn said. “It was a special day for us. It
was also my brother Joseph’s birthday.”
Each of the children embarked on notable
professional careers. Joseph, Thomas and
Robert attended the University of Notre
Dame. The two oldest boys set their sights on
public service. Charles was a three-term Erie
mayor, Pennsylvania’s secretary of welfare,
state treasurer, and auditor general. After his
election as a state legislator and deputy
attorney general, Thomas was elected a judge
of the Court of Common Pleas, Erie County.
John, a gifted athlete, played professional
baseball with the Buffalo Bisons and eventually
served as Regional Coordinator for the Anti-
Poverty Program.
Joseph became a lawyer, and went on to
serve in a number of posts, including Erie
County district attorney and a professor of
economics at Gannon College.
George, one of the region’s first Eagle Scouts,
and Robert, became respected business leaders
and volunteers in community organizations.
Marion completed nurses training at St.
Vincent Hospital and Villa Maria College. She
taught in her field and became assistant
director of Nursing Services at St. Vincent.
Gertrude entered the field of education. She
earned her B.A. degree from Penn State
University, and worked as a teacher,
psychologist and administrator in the School
District of the City of Erie. During this time
she also received her Master’s and Doctorate
Degrees from Penn State. In 1952 she founded
the Dr. Gertrude A. Barber Center for children
and adults with disabilities. The work of the
Center is now recognized around the world.
Kathryn graduated from Indiana University
of Pennsylvania and received her Master’s
Degree from the University of Pittsburgh.
She taught business education
courses at East High
School and was appointed
assistant principal.
The tradition of service
begun by John and Kate Barber,
which had meant so much
to the Kingtown lakefront
neighborhood, continues to
grow and serve the greater
community in so many ways.
Today, this tradition of service
is exemplified in the work of
the present generation of the
Barber family.
✧
Above: Former Erie Mayor Charles Barber
cuts the ribbon for his brother Thomas’
campaign headquarters in 1966. Pictured
with Charles Barber are (from left to right)
Gertrude Barber; her sister, Kathryn
Durkin; Maureen, Robert, and Joanne
Barber; Thomas Barber, who was elected
judge later that year; Mary Jane Barber;
Alida Barber; family friends Susan and
Robert Essigmann; Mae McDonald; and
John Considine.
Left: Kate Barber is surrounded by her
grandchildren as family gathers to celebrate
a wedding at the Newman Street
homestead. Sitting in the front row are
(from left to right): Mary Jane Tanner, Kate
Barber, and Mary Beth Pinto. Standing in
the second row are (from left to right):
Joseph, John, and Robert Barber; Kathy
Saber; Patricia Heasley; Marilyn Boll;
Maureen Barber-Carey; Joanne McCormick;
and Charles Barber, II. Holding young
Alida Barber Burkhardt (far left) is Charles
Barber, I.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
83

✧
PENN STATE
ERIE,
THE BEHREND
COLLEGE
Mary Behrend donated the family’s Glenhill
Farm to be used as a college in memory of
her husband, Ernst, who founded
Hammerhill Paper Company in 1898.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
84
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College,
provides outstanding teaching, research, and
service to the northwest Pennsylvania region.
The college offers thirty baccalaureate majors,
five associate degrees, three graduate degrees,
and a variety of cultural and athletic
programs. In addition to its educational and
cultural resources, Penn State Behrend
supports twenty-four outreach initiatives
including the Plastics Technology Center,
Pennsylvania Sea Grant, the Economic
Research Institute of Erie, and the Center for
Organizational Research and Evaluation.
Penn State Behrend has 178 full-time and
78 part-time faculty members in four schools:
Business, Engineering and Engineering
Technology, Humanities and Social Sciences,
and Science. Of its 3,700 students, 1,500 live
on campus. All college apartment buildings,
residence halls, and suite residences are
named for ships or sailors who participated in
the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.
Penn State Behrend is also helping to
ensure the vitality of Erie County’s economic
future through Knowledge Park, a twohundred-acre
research and development park
developed jointly by the college and the
Greater Erie Industrial Development
Corporation. Situated adjacent to the campus,
the park opened in 1999 and now includes
five buildings and 300 employees. It is
expected to grow to 22 buildings and 3,000
employees in the next decade. Companies
located in Knowledge Park benefit from the
site’s superior technological infrastructure,
access to Penn State Behrend faculty and
students, and the college’s strength in applied
research and technology transfer.
The beautiful wooded campus of Penn State
Behrend was a gift to the community from
Mary Behrend, widow of Ernst Behrend, who
founded the Hammermill Paper Company in
Erie in 1898. The Behrends lived on the
grounds of the mill along Lake Erie until 1928,
when they moved two miles south to the 400-
acre Glenhill Farm, which overlooks the City of
Erie. The Glenhill Farm forms the core of Penn
State Behrend’s 725 acres.
Ernst and Mary Behrend farmed their land,
raising horses, sheep, and dogs, and entertained
neighbors, friends, and travelers from around
the world. Ernst died in 1940, but Mary kept
the Glenhill Farm until 1948, when a small
committee of Erie businessmen—J. Elmer Reed,
Edwin Nick, John Zurn, and Pier Wright—met
with Mary to discuss the possibility of obtaining
the land as a site for a Penn State Center in Erie.
Mary Behrend was impressed that Penn
State thought so well of the location that it was
willing to raise money to purchase it. She said
to her daughter, Harriet, “I think this is
something that would be a wonderful
memorial to Father—something he almost
could have planned himself. I think I should
give it all to the college.” On June 28, 1948, she
officially donated the property to Penn State,
and the Glenhill Farm became the Behrend
Center of the Pennsylvania State College.
By mid-July 1948, T. Reed Ferguson was
named to lead the Behrend Center. With two
months until the fall semester began, he faced
the daunting and immediate task of turning the
nine separate structures on the farm into a
college, complete with dormitory space and
food service. He accomplished his goal,
turning the Glenhill Farmhouse into a women’s
dormitory and dining facilities, the lower level
of the barn into physics and biology
laboratories and classrooms, and the upper
level of the barn into a bookstore. The
Behrends’ garage became the first chemistry
lab. One hundred and forty-six students
enrolled that fall for freshman courses.
In December 1948, Ferguson originated
Behrend’s first tradition, the “Hanging of the
Greens,” a brief candlelight ceremony continued
today by students and college leaders in honor
of the Behrend family.
The people of Erie supported Behrend Center
in 1952 by raising $75,000 to erect a building to
accommodate a growing range of academic and
cocurricular activities. In addition to being used
as a gymnasium, the new Erie Hall (named for
the people of Erie) served as an assembly hall, a
theatre for dramatic and musical productions,
and an armory for the ROTC.
In 1954 Irvin H. Kochel, former
administrator of Penn State’s Harrisburg
Center, was appointed administrative head of
the Behrend Center. During his twenty-seven
years of leadership, enrollment grew, new
buildings were added, and in 1973 Behrend

Center became a four-year, degree-granting
college of Penn State. Dr. John M. Lilley
accepted leadership of the college in 1980 and
served for over two decades. Jack Burke, who
worked closely with John Lilley for twenty
years, assumed responsibilities as campus
executive officer and dean in 2003.
Under Lilley’s leadership enrollment
doubled to thirty-seven hundred, and the
historic center of the college pushed outward
with new academic buildings, a new library, a
new engineering complex, and more recently
with Knowledge Park, the Junker Center
athletic complex, and the Larry and Kathryn
Smith Chapel. The new chapel includes the
forty-eight-bell Floyd and Juanita Smith
Carillon and a pipe organ built by the Martin
Ott Company of St. Louis.
A growing athletic program features
twenty-one varsity teams (ten for men and
eleven for women), which compete in Division
III of the NCAA; students also participate in
nineteen intramural and club sports.
Construction of a $30-million Research and
Economic Development Center is expected to
begin in 2003 and be completed in 2004. The
new 150,000-square-foot center will house
Behrend’s School of Business and the School of
Engineering and Engineering Technology.
Construction of the East Side Access
Highway has made it necessary to build a new
entrance to the campus. As more people use
the new highway to move from Erie’s bayfront
to Interstate 90, use of campus facilities is
expected to increase.
The rich history of the Behrend family and
Penn State Behrend is preserved in the historic
circle of the college, which includes the
Glenhill Farmhouse, now home to offices for
admissions, financial aid, and the Office of
Campus Executive Officer and Dean. The
circle also includes Turnbull Barn, home of the
School of Business until 2004, and the Studio
Theatre, which was once Mary Behrend’s art
studio. Carriage houses that once protected
Ernst Behrend’s cars, including a Duesenberg,
now provide office space for selected business
faculty and the Health and Wellness Center.
The warmth and satisfaction of the growing
Penn State Behrend community is well
expressed in the words spoken by Mary Behrend
at the October 30, 1948, dedication of Penn
State Behrend. “It is pleasant to feel that over the
years to come, many young men and women
will go forth from this lovely spot well-equipped
with the education they have received here.”
✧
Above: The Library and Academic Building
at Penn State Behrend opened in 1994.
Below: Many opportunities for outdoor
recreation can be found on Penn State
Behrend’s scenic campus, from hiking in
Wintergreen Gorge to playing in casual
pickup games on the college’s lawns, courts,
and athletic fields.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
85

RENAISSANCE &
PALACE CENTRES
✧
Above: Thomas Kennedy, founder of
Professional Development Associates, the
firm responsible for breathing life back into
the Renaissance Centre and Palace Centre.
Top, right: The Erie Trust Company
Building has been renovated and revitalized
as Renaissance Centre.
Bottom: Palace Hardware Building which
has been renovated, and has found new life
as Palace Centre.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
86
Two distinguished buildings in downtown
Erie are the vibrant heartbeat for the reawakening
of a regional business district. Under the leadership
and expertise of Professional Development
Associates, Incorporated (PDA), a business and
real estate development company founded by
Thomas Kennedy in 1993, the transformational
reuse of buildings is creating a new spirit of
urban optimism.
Both Renaissance Centre and Palace Centre,
formerly known as the G. Daniel Baldwin
Building and the Palace Hardware Building
respectively, have reclaimed their once-glamorous
pasts with links to future progress.
The twelve-story Palace Centre was built in
1914 and was then the tallest building in the
region. For generations the building was a
regional icon and provided hundreds of
business owners with affordable office space on
its upper floors while the ground floor housed
the Palace Hardware House, a unit of the United
Hardware and Supply Company, and, later, the
Joseph Bros. Furniture Company.
The building fell into disrepair in 1960s and
remained vacant until it was remodeled by PDA,
and reopened in 1993 as one of the company’s
signature developments. The revitalized building
at 915 State Street is home to businesses on its
lower floors, while the upper floors have been
converted into apartments.
To the south, at 1001 State, is the Renaissance
Centre building. Looming fourteen stories, it is
the tallest and largest office building in the region.
Constructed in 1929 by the Erie Trust Company,
it was purchased by J. Robert Baldwin and the
Tenth Street Building Corporation in 1943. The
building provided office space for an impressive
lists of professional businesses.
Changing business cycles prompted a strategic
decision to sell the building, and it was purchased
by PDA in 1996. PDA embarked on a major
refurbishing project and began to modernize the
grand dame in order to reestablish it as Erie’s
premier business location.
Today, Renaissance Centre gleams from its
exterior brick and beautiful cut limestone
opening to its polished marble walls, brass
accents, walnut trim, historic murals, and ornate
ceilings of its main lobby. The first floor houses
several retail and commercial businesses.
The buildings’ upper floors provide quality
office space and picturesque views of Lake Erie
and the community. The fourteenth floor is
occupied by Palace Business Centre, which
offers flexible office arrangements and numerous
innovative programs and services for small
businesses owners and branch offices.

Responding to the needs of the growing
community in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1912,
G. H. Strayer organized the Erie Steel
Construction Company as a steel fabrication and
erection firm. His nine-man crew operated out
of a one-story brick building and erected the
fabricated structural steel for some of Erie’s
outstanding commercial and industrial
buildings, such as the Boston Store and Erie
Forge & Steel.
Strayer’s business grew, and he began to
design, patent and produce concrete batching
plants and clamshell digging buckets. That
was the beginning of the Erie Strayer
Company—one of the nation’s
pioneer manufacturers and
developers of concrete batching
equipment and clamshell
buckets for the construction
industry.
Erie Steel continued to
fabricate and erect steel for
buildings throughout the first
half of the century, but it became
increasingly involved in the
manufacture of overhead electric
traveling cranes and specialty
fabrications for industry and
defense work. During World War
II, over one hundred overhead
electric traveling cranes were
manufactured and installed in
defense plants, and Erie Strayer
produced thousands of clamshell
and dragline digging buckets for
the Army and Navy.
After the war, the company
continued to manufacture
construction machinery as well as
perform defense-related work.
One of their most significant contracts was for
fabrication of a thirty-five-ton blast door for
NORAD in Colorado Springs.
By 1950 the company concentrated solely on
the manufacture of concrete batching
equipment and buckets. The name was changed
to the Erie Strayer Company at this time to
reflect the new direction of the company.
Erie Strayer has built some of the largest
central mix and mobile concrete plants in the
world, and several world-record concrete pours
have been achieved with Erie Strayer plants on
highway, airport, dam and nuclear power plant
projects. Erie Strayer concrete batch plants have
been used on several high profile projects that
include the Huites Dam in Mexico in 1993, the
largest construction project in the Western
Hemisphere; the Hong Kong airport in 1996,
selected as one of the top ten construction
projects of the twentieth century; and Diavik
Diamond Mines where in 2001 an Erie concrete
batch plant owned by Kiewit Canada was used
to build a dam and construct an island for
mining diamonds from an isolated lake in the
Canadian Northwest Territories.
Erie Strayer has remained under the
direction of the Strayer family since the
beginning. Chairman of the Board Hamilton
W. Strayer is the son of the founder, G. H.
Strayer. Robert F. Strayer, H. W. Strayer’s son,
is president and CEO.
Today, Erie Strayer, occupies a twentytwo-acre
complex, and continues to search
for better, more efficient means of producing
concrete to satisfy customers from industry
and construction.
ERIE STRAYER
COMPANY
✧
Erie Strayer mobile, central mix concrete
batching plant.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
87

MILLCREEK
HEALTH
SYSTEMS
✧
Above: The windows of LECOM’s new
building reflect physicians teaching
medical students at Millcreek Health
System facilities.
Below: Millcreek Community Hospital.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
88
Millcreek Health Systems provides
extensive and innovative healthcare for the
entire northwestern Pennsylvania region with
both urban and rural outreach. Rooted in
osteopathic medical tradition, the health
system operates Millcreek Community
Hospital, the Millcreek Geriatric Education
and Care Center, twelve ambulatory clinics in
Erie County and the Lake Erie College of
Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM).
Millcreek Community Hospital founded
LECOM in 1992. The hospital recognized the
need to prepare the next generation of
primary care physicians and to meet the
demand for new doctors in the tri-state
region. The expanding college sits on a
twenty-acre campus overlooking the City of
Erie, Pennsylvania and the picturesque
Presque Isle Harbor and adjacent waters of
Lake Erie.
The 800-student medical college opened
its School of Pharmacy in September 2002,
one of six in Pennsylvania and the eightyfourth
in the nation. The first School of
Pharmacy in the northwestern Pennsylvania
region opened with 78 students the first year
and will grow to 360 students.
Graduates of the school will earn a Doctor
of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) degree and will help
meet the needs of the future in the everexpanding
field of pharmacy. The School of
Pharmacy offers a fast track, professional
curriculum, allowing students to graduate in
three-years instead of the traditional fouryear
programs.
A new $18 million dollar building houses
the Medical College and the School of
Pharmacy. The new building includes an
expanded Learning Resource Center, A/V
equipped smart classrooms, a student fitness
center, and laboratories. LECOM is opening a
similar-sized branch campus in Florida for an
additional six hundred medical students.
LECOM students work in all of the
healthcare facilities operated by Millcreek
Health System including the twelve satellite
offices and they can be found as volunteers at
many community functions.
Established as Erie Osteopathic Hospital in
1950, the hospital moved to Millcreek
Township in the 1960s. Today, the 135-bed
Millcreek Community Hospital treats more
than ten thousand patients every year. The
hospital responded quickly when an inpatient
community mental health unit was needed for
the local region in July 2001.
The health system expanded the hospital
in 2000 to include Millcreek Geriatric
Education and Care Center, a long-term care
facility. The modern facility replaced the
former Millcreek Manor. Although brick and
mortar projects are the keys to success and
quality care in the healthcare field,
community involvement is equally important.
Today, as in the past, the healthcare system
remains focused on responding to community
needs, forging a better future.

Stone cutting is an ancient art, and the
tradition still requires skilled craftsman like
those at Geiger and Sons. The family-owned and
operated business is located at 2976 West Lake
Road and specializes in personal and
commercial uses of stone. While the craft can be
traced back to the origins of mankind, the
profession has adapted to several recent
changes. According to Mike Geiger, one of
the fourth generation owners, there are a
wider variety of stones and colors available
because of consumer demand. The other
current owners are John J. Geiger and
George J. Geiger, Jr.
“The granite we use today comes
from across the world,” he said. “We
use granite from places such as Brazil,
India, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Africa,
as well as from the United States. The
colors vary from quarry to quarry
because of trace minerals found at
different locations.” The new markets
are driven by demand from consumers
who increasingly recognize the beauty,
utility and durability of stone for such
items as kitchen counter tops, vanity
tops and other household items. Each
item is custom designed and thickness
will vary from three-quarters of an inch to one
and a quarter inches.
John A. Geiger who worked as a stone
artisan for the Keller and Nerz Memorial
Company founded Geiger & Sons. John
purchased the company, which was located on
Chestnut Street across from Erie Cemetery, in
1923. The company was expanded and moved
to its current location in 1947 by George J.
Geiger, Sr.
Cemetery memorials have been a staple of
the company and Geiger & Sons monuments
can be discovered across the country and in
cemeteries throughout the Erie area. Rough
cut granite stone, used because of its
durability, is cut to shape, individualized and
polished. Lettering and other graphics are
drawn by hand or computer and then
sandblasted on the stone by skilled craftsman
to help complete the memorial stone.
Geiger and Sons also works with other stone
such as limestone, used primarily in
commercial buildings, marble, which is used
both commercially and for household products,
and slate which has numerous applications.
It was the Geiger and Sons expertise and
dedication that was instrumental in the
designing and construction of one of Erie areas
most elegant memorials. The
monument, dedicated to the Veterans
from Erie County who died serving
their country during World War II,
consists of five interlocking black
granite stones and forms a 25-feet-longby-8-feet-high
memorial. Designed to
depict our sense of loss, the World War
II monument was dedicated on
November 11, 1998, at the site on
Twenty-sixth and State Street.
Geiger and Sons memorializes what
has gone before and beautifies the
present for future generations to enjoy
and remember.
GEIGER
AND
SONS
✧
Above: Custom cut and polished stone adds
a touch of natural elegance to both interior
and exterior in commercial and residential
construction such as fireplace hearth,
window sills table and vanity tops. The
different colors and stones available for such
uses can be viewed at the Geiger & Sons
showroom at 2976 West Lake Road.
Left: The World War II Monument near
Veterans Stadium is one of the most visited
memorials in the area. Geiger and Sons
was instrumental in the development and
design of the monument, which is 25 feet
long and eight feet high in the center. It was
dedicated as hundreds attended the
ceremony on November 11, 1998.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
89

YMCA
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
90
The downtown intersection of West 10th
and Peach Streets is one of the busiest hubs in
the City of Erie. The center city area has
been like that since 1860, when the Young
Men’s Christian Association, the YMCA, was
established in the growing industrial city on
Lake Erie.
Today, the “Y” is also the hub in other area
communities. In 1962 the popular Glenwood
“Y” opened in the southern sections of the
city, and expanded several times; in 1976 the
Eastside “Y” opened to serve the growing
eastern suburbs in Harborcreek Township.
The newest “Y” facility opened its doors to
residents of southern Erie County in Edinboro
in 1998.
One of the oldest organizations in the area,
it has evolved into an influential force since
it’s beginnings during the Civil War era.
“We’ve been recognized as one of the top
employers in Erie County and we are ranked
as the thirty-sixth largest employers in the
county,” Al Schell, the president and CEO of
the YMCA of Greater Erie said. “There are
over seventeen thousand participants in our
physical education programs.”
The mission flows from human and family
values adapting to the needs of the region.
Originally, the focus was on education and
moral development; it later became the
genesis of a public library system and a basis
for local ecumenism.
With a new 1910 building, the “Y” was an
informational hub for those needing language
and job skills, a secure place to live, and
recreational opportunities. Since 1912 Camp
Sherwin, once called Camp Unaliyi, an
Algonquin word, “Place of Friends,” has
etched campfires and memories for
thousands of individuals throughout
the area.
The athletic programs have
impacted the entire region beginning
with the first basketball game in
1896. The sports figures that trained
and developed at the “Y” swimming
pools won numerous national and
international championships.
Even more medals were minted for
individual feats of personal
accomplishments for tens of
thousands of area youngsters, adults
and seniors who participate in the
programs and services. Equally as
important and popular, and one of the
most widely used services, are the safe
child day care programs which
encompass second shift and weekend
workers and makes the YMCA the
largest provider of child care in
northwestern Pennsylvania.
The “Y’s” success is based on
community and individual support; no
one is ever turned away for economic
situations, and the tireless efforts of
hundreds of volunteer workers.
Today, the “Y” remains as relevant
as it did in 1860 as it continues to
build strong kids, strong families
and strong communities.

B. F. Fields Moving and Storage Company
belongs to a distinguished group of local,
family owned businesses. The company,
which has served thousands of Erie area
residents, continues to provide traditional and
unique, quality services.
Benjamin Franklin Fields founded the
company in 1905 with a wagon and a team of
horses. In those early days, the basic service was
moving people’s household goods from one side
of town to the other. For many of those years,
the company was located at Twenty-second and
Raspberry Streets.
Fields retired in 1940 and his daughter
Helen and son-in-law Tony Milano took over
the business, eventually becoming agents in
1947 of North American Van Lines. In 1958
the company moved to a location on East
Twelfth Street near East Avenue.
With their retirement in 1972, their son and
daughter, Robert Milano and Geraldine
Hammond, became the owners of the company
providing new services and new customer skills.
The company was the recipient of many awards
for quality service including the prestigious “Top
Quality Award” given for excellence.
In 1996 the company was sold to the Squeglia
family, no strangers to the organization. Richard
Squeglia, a vice-president at former Security
Trust Bank, was also a silent partner at the B. F.
Fields company since the early 1970s and was
instrumental in the family’s ownership. Today, his
son, Michael, is the president of the company.
B. F. Field’s continues as a full service moving
and transportation company, the oldest in the
region. Located now at 945 Downing Avenue,
the company provides many traditional moving
services to and from any location in the world.
B. F. Fields has entered new markets over the
years. Today, the company’s expertise and
organizational skills extend to electronics
equipment and trade shows across the nation,
which require secure and timely delivery of
their products.
The company’s location offers a twenty-fivethousand-square-foot
warehouse that includes a
climate-controlled area for household and
business storage, including high value Internet
products that can be delivered at a convenient
time and date. The B. F. Fields Record
Management Division provides an important
service for businesses with long-term storage
and retrieval of important documents.
B. F. Fields is the oldest, continuous sponsor
of a boy’s baseball team in Erie and has been
active in numerous community functions, such
as the adopt a family program sponsored by the
City Mission during the Christmas season, and
volunteering services at cultural and community
events. The company, with its roots deep in Erie
tradition, is well poised for another hundred
years of excellence, leadership and service.
B. F. FIELDS
MOVING &
STORAGE
✧
Ben Fields established a moving company
with a team of horses and a wagon in 1905.
The company today is one of the oldest and
largest in the region.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
91

MILLCREEK TOWNSHIP SCHOOL DISTRICT
✧
Millcreek offers its parents several choice
opportunities, including half-day or full-day
kindergarten, a Montessori program and
selection of school. Millcreek’s elementary
parents are given the option to send their
children to the before and after school
program available at each elementary
school as well. Full daycare is available
beginning at age three.
Millcreek Township School District is nestled
along the banks of Lake Erie in northwestern
Pennsylvania. A premier district known from
Limerick, Ireland, to Zibo, China, and all across
the United States, Millcreek began formally
educating school children in 1805 when the first
school was established in the southeast part of
the township. Tuition was $5 a month.
In 1834 the citizens of Millcreek Township
elected six residents to serve as directors of the
“Common Schools of the District of Millcreek.”
The first school tax was levied, producing
$300 revenue.
Between the late 1800’s and the early 1900s,
Millcreek established at least twenty new schools.
Later, the City of Erie annexed a large portion of
the township including some of the schools.
In 1921 the Pennsylvania Department of
Public Instruction designated West Millcreek
High a high school of the first class. Mr. R. S.
Penfield became part-time administrator. He
was also a part-time teacher and secretary to the
school board. In 1953 Millcreek High School
was converted into a junior high school and
McDowell Senior High School opened for
students in grades 10 through 12. This building
was later demolished, and the Millcreek
Education Center was built in its place in 1968.
Today, Millcreek Schools consist of seven
elementary, three middle, an intermediate high,
a senior high, and an alternative high school.
Employing 903 people, the district’s budget is
$58 million.
Millcreek Schools are known nationally for
their leading technological innovations. The
District’s 7,300 students utilize 5,000
computers. Staff members have desktop
computers. All thirteen schools and the
education center are connected by a network,
enabling schools to share data and video,
access electronic mail, maintain an advanced
student information system, and connect to the
Internet from the classroom.
McDowell High Schools offer over 230
different courses. Students enjoy job-shadowing
opportunities with our community’s business
partners. They have a variety of opportunities,
including “schools within schools” such as
the Center for Performing Arts. Other choice
opportunities include tech prep, the honors
program, distance learning, advanced placement,
career exploration, and independent study.
New courses in website design and network
management have also been added. Multimedia
technologies including interactive
Internet have proven effective when properly
implemented in the classroom.
The mission of the Millcreek Township
School District is to create for all students
learning experiences that provide the
knowledge and skills necessary to be
competent, responsible citizens, as well as,
lifelong learners.
A District motto reads, “Creating the Future.”
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
92

A handful of eager students experiencing
school for the first time gathered in a borrowed
classroom. They were yearning not only for
education, but also for acceptance and
opportunity. Guided by the vision and dedication
of Dr. Gertrude A. Barber, the children and their
parents found the courage to reach toward
possibilities of which they had only dreamed.
The year was 1952, and this hopeful group
marked the founding of the Dr. Gertrude A.
Barber Center in Erie, Pennsylvania. The Barber
Center has since evolved into a dynamic and
diverse facility that serves more than twenty-six
hundred children and adults with
developmental disabilities and their families. It
is recognized for innovation and excellence in
program development, and provides education
and training to educators and professionals
around the country and the globe.
It is a world that is far different from when Dr.
Barber began her work. Across the country,
persons with disabilities were either sent away to
institutions at a young age, or kept at home with
no opportunities to learn and grow. As an
administrator in the Erie School District, Dr.
Barber strived to change that. She worked with
concerned parents and teachers to open a
classroom at the YWCA for children with mental
retardation. A few blocks away at the Erie Boys
Club, she formed a class for youngsters with
hearing impairments.
As word of Dr. Barber’s work spread, classes
grew in size and scope. In 1958 the city leased the
former Lakeview Hospital to use as a school for
children and a workshop for teaching vocational
skills to adults. Dr. Barber described it as “the first
place we could really call home.”
Today, the Barber Center meets the needs of
individuals and families from birth through
retirement. Children are nurtured through
services ranging from early intervention, an
inclusive preschool and child care program, the
Autism Center of Excellence, an approved
private school and the region’s only preschool
for children with hearing impairments.
Adults find fulfillment through job training
and placement, day programs to develop lifeenriching
skills and a Retirement Center. They
also experience acceptance through community
group homes and supported living arrangements
in their own homes and apartments.
DR. GERTRUDE A. BARBER CENTER, INC.
A person’s unique behavioral and physical
needs are met through a variety of in-home
services and specialized therapies.
The Barber Center also provides residential
group homes and adult day services in the
Philadelphia and suburban Pittsburgh areas.
The most recent fulfillment of Dr. Barber’s
mission is the creation of a national institute
for education, research, and services in the
field of disabilities.
Dr. Barber passed away in April 2000, but
her vision of hope and opportunity continues to
inspire the Barber Center staff, individuals and
families. They share Dr. Barber’s dream of a
better life for persons with disabilities, and
work together to make those dreams come true.
✧
Above: Dr. Gertrude A. Barber with
students from the Center.
Below: Ground was broken on July 24,
2000, for a national institute for advanced
education, research and services. In
attendance were (from left to right): Erie
Mayor Joyce Savocchio; Albert F. Duval,
co-chairman of the Project 2000 capital
campaign; Kathryn Barber Durkin;
F. William Hirt, campaign co-chairman;
James Netkowicz; Michael Satterlee and his
mother, Karen; John J. Barber, president and
chief executive officer; retired Erie Bishop
Michael Murphy; and Dr. Maureen Barber-
Carey, executive vice president.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
93

ERIE COUNTY
HISTORICAL
SOCIETY
✧
Watson-Curtze Mansion.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MARK FAINSTEIN.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
94
This year we are celebrating one hundred
years of history! On January 1, 2000, the Erie
County Historical Society (1903), merged
with Erie Historical Museum & Planetarium
(1898). The merger created one organization
dedicated to the history of Erie County and
broader based service to its audience. The Erie
County Historical Society (ECHS) operates
the Watson-Curtze Mansion, Erie Planetarium
and Erie County History Center in Erie,
Pennsylvania and the Battles Museums of
Rural Life in Girard, Pennsylvania.
Our mission is to promote interest and
appreciation of Erie County history. ECHS
operates local history museums and historic
houses, collects and preserves artifacts relating
to county history, and a library and archives,
which preserves and makes information about
Erie County history and Great Lakes maritime
history available. The Society offers visitors
exhibits on Erie County history topics,
lectures, workshops, and living history
demonstrations, and research opportunities at
the Library & Archives. Dinner meetings,
special events and activities, and planetarium
shows are held throughout the year.
The Erie County History Center, headquarters
of the Historical Society, is located at
417-419 State Street in Erie. The Center
includes the 1839 Cashier’s House, the Erie
Historical Museum, the Library & Archives,
and also provides space for the Erie Society for
Genealogical Research. The Erie Historical
Museum at the History Center offers glimpses
into Erie County’s rich heritage from the days
of pre-settlement to the turn of the twenty-first
century and changing exhibits in the Director’s
Studio. The Library & Archives assists a
variety of researchers ranging from students,
authors, architects and family historians to
shipwreck divers and newspaper reporters.
The Watson-Curtze Mansion & Erie
Planetarium is located at 356 West Sixth Street
in Erie. The Mansion, on the National Register
of Historic Places, provides visitors an
opportunity to view the architecture and
craftsmanship that went into building this
premier Victorian, Richardsonian Romanesquestyle
home on “Millionaires’ Row.” The Watson-
Curtze Mansion provides the perfect setting for
a number of changing exhibits and events. The
Erie Planetarium, located in the Mansion’s
carriage house, presents astronomy and other
science programs, live interactive programs and
hands-on activities.
The Battles Museums of Rural Life in
Girard, Pennsylvania presents the living
history of Erie County at the Battles
Farmhouse (1858), the Charlotte Elizabeth
Battles Memorial Museum (1861), 80 acres of
woods and ecological trails and 50 acres of
farmlands. The Battles Museums of Rural Life
tell the story of three generations of the Battles
family who had a significant impact on the
geographic, economic and intellectual
development of western Erie County in a
lively, historically accurate manner,
concentrating on the 1860’s time period.
Please join us for our celebration in person
or virtually at www.eriecountyhistory.org.

The year 1966 was a remarkable year for
the Erie area as the St. Martin de Porres
organization launched its mission to provide
affordable housing for lower income working
families. A year later, the name was changed
and is known today as the Housing And
Neighborhood Development Service, or more
commonly, HANDS.
The organization is an influential and key
member of the revitalization housing efforts in
the northwestern Pennsylvania area and
remains one of the premiere human service
agencies in the region.
The organization developed as increasing
numbers of families, persons with disabilities,
and the elderly were being uprooted by inner
city redevelopment projects. Founded by
Charles R. and Katherine Scalise, Gilbert and
Jane Kuehl, and John Poux, the small group,
many of whom were associated with the
Christian Family Movement, soon attracted
other individuals, churches, and public and
private organizations.
By the mid-1970s, HANDS was providing
affordable, secure housing to hundreds of
local residents and embarked on a project
which at the time, was one of the largest
housing rehabilitation projects in the nation.
The former St. Joseph Orphanage, originally
constructed in 1928, was one of the most
nostalgic and historic buildings in the area,
and in 1976, the HANDS organization began
an extensive revitalization project. Known as
the St. Joseph Apartments, today the complex
provides elderly and disabled residents with
204 graceful apartments.
Villa Maria, another historic landmark
and rehabilitation milestone for HANDS
was completed in the mid-1990s. Here,
two core city buildings, one which served
as the Motherhouse for the Sisters of St.
Joseph of Northwest Pennsylvania and the
other as a school, were converted into
an inter-generational apartment complex
where both the elderly and families share
common facilities.
Subsequently, attention turned to a
once working-class neighborhood in the area
of East Thirteenth and German Streets.
HANDS constructed fifteen architecturally
appropriate two-story houses with detached
garages in the once-crumbling neighborhood
to provide homes for working families in the
downtown district.
“We are committed to helping keep the
inner city strong by providing homes for
working citizens,” Executive Director Charles
G. Scalise, son of two of the founders said.
“We are moving forward with more new
homes in this area and are looking at other
center city neighborhoods which need to
be revitalized.”
HANDS, a nonprofit agency,
employs 32 individuals and
operates 800 residential units
throughout the area. Over the
years, HANDS has also joined
in numerous partnerships with
other agencies to provide much
needed housing. While the
thrust of the organizations
efforts have been in Erie
and Crawford Counties, the
agency has been an active
leader throughout the region in
nearby communities.
HANDS, an extraordinary
community leader, provides a
unique and basic human
service and a higher quality
of living for thousands of
regional residents.
HANDS
HOUSING AND
NEIGHBORHOOD
DEVELOPMENT
SERVICE
✧
Above: HANDS Executive Director
Charles G. Scalise.
Below: Some of the beneficiaries of HANDS
programs in Erie and Crawford Counties.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
95

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward T. Wellejus
Edward T. Wellejus can truthfully say that for fifty-nine years he has quite literally lived Erie history.
As a reporter and editor for the Erie Times-News for a half-century, from age 17 to 67, Wellejus was in daily contact with principal newsmakers—the
men and women making Erie history in the last half of the twentieth century. And since retirement in 1993, Wellejus has
until recently continued to write regularly for the Times-News, attend a variety of service club meetings and providing stories on what the
speakers said—an ideal way to stay on top of the Erie story.
Wellejus went to work for the Times-News while still at Academy High School. It was during World War II, and the newspaper was willing
to take a chance ona very young reporter. After service in the infantry in the war (where he was captured by Germans at the Battle of
the Bulge and listed as “missing in action” for several months before his status as a prisoner was learned), Wellejus went on to Allegheny
College in Meadville. While at college he was the Times-News correspondent for Crawford County. He also did graduate work at Gannon
University.
During his Times’ years, Wellejus for twenty years had a daily news show on WJET Radio, did a TV show for WQLN interviewing area
legislators, and also did part-time public relations work for Penn State-Behrend College.
Wellejus is the author of Erie, A Chronicle of a Great Lakes City, published in 1980; The Community, The Times, and the Last One-Hundred
Years, published in 1988; and was principal writer of Erie, 200 Years as a Community. published in 1995 on the occasion of Erie’s bicentennial.
He was secretary of the Greater Erie Bicentennial Commission.
Wellejus, a former member of the board of the Erie County Historical Society, has been married to the former Alice White for fifty-six
years. They have three children—Michael Wellejus of Glendale, California; Dr. Matthew Wellejus of Columbus, Ohio; and Rebecca
Wellejus, a speech pathologist for the Erie School District.
HISTORIC ERIE COUNTY
96

ISBN: 1-883658-44-6