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Slasor essays are from her history as a historian, journalist

AVELLA — Local Historian Kathryn Campbell Slasor, 93, has completed the first of five planned volumes of essays, personal vignettes, historical sketches and poetry, called “Under the Sugar Tree: Volume One.”

The title comes from a tree in the front yard of Slasor’s childhood home, under which she would often read or write and where she would spend time with her siblings on a swing.

“I don’t know what kind of tree it was — it might have been a maple sugar tree — but we never called it anything but the sugar tree,” she said. “We did a lot of living there — I spent a good part of my childhood under that tree.”

In the first volume, Slasor collects essays from her long history as a historian and journalist.

Slasor began her work as a journalist as a gossip columnist at the Burgettstown Enterprise in 1959, followed by becoming a part-time employee the following year. When the Enterprise purchased the Moon Township Bulletin in 1968, Slasor was made managing editor of the new acquisition. She moved to the Aliquippa News four years later, when the Bulletin was sold.

By 1978, Slasor began her own paper, Kathryn Slasor’s Leaves, which featured a poetry corner, “Long, Long Ago” column, “Kooking Korner,” “Moments of Meditation” and a series of newsy notes and editorializations “Among the Leaves.” The bi-monthly paper began with a circulation of 4,000, but popular demand forced Slasor to move from a borrowed Multilith press to a Davidson press and finally was forced to seek professional printing, first at the Brownsville Telegraph, then in Waynesburg. Slasor continued to print Leaves for 14 years, reaching a circulation of 9,000, before turning over ownership to John Persin and Joe Nolan.

“I think that either you can write or you can’t,” she said. “It’s like playing piano — it’s a gift you’re born with.”

Slasor said her love of reading and writing was evident early, as she loved when essays were assigned in her sixth grade class at Eldersville Elementary School.

“The teacher would tell us we had to write an essay, and I would be so excited, planning what I was going to write, and all the other kids would groan,” she said.

Around the same time, she began writing poetry — the first performed in public was a poem she wrote for her then-3-year-old-brother, Harry, to perform at a children’s day at the church.

Slasor has long been interested in local history, as well, being a charter member when the Fort Vance Historical Society was founded in 1969 and later serving as president.

“I was so excited when the people of the Burgettstown area started talking about (forming a historical society),” she said, adding that, although she was a charter member, others had larger roles in the formation of the society.

In 1990, she also was involved in the founding of the Jefferson Township Historical Society, and, in 1994, she and her sister and brother-in-law, June and Max Grossman, established the A.D. White Research Society in Avella, following the death of A.D. White, a local historian.

“There were 19 people (in the formation of the Jefferson Township society), including myself and my sister June,” she said. “My sister June did most of (the work in forming the White society). We had a wealth of material — we had saved every scrap of paper with historical significance to the local area. We had almost enough to fill the (former) train station when the society bought it.”

She also helped found the Avella History Fair in 2001, which has continued, with a brief cessation in 2014, until present time. The history fair originated as a project of the Seekers, a group Slasor and Grossman founded to take area children on history field trips around the local area.

Slasor’s interest in history was born from her own family history — the Campbell family were early pioneers in the Washington-Brooke county area, with her ancestor James Campbell being one of the early settles in Hollidays Cove, which is now downtown Weirton.

“A lot of my people have lived up and down the (Ohio) river,” she said. “There are a lot in the Burgettstown area.”

Slasor encourages people to write down their personal recollections and histories, so they are not lost. She, herself, was originally encouraged to do so by her grandson, David, and, on collecting her essays and poetry, realized she had enough material for several books.

“It is worth the effort,” she said. “It wrote itself. I just sat down and (the stories) flowed from my pen.”

Copies of “Under the Sugar Tree” are available through the Meadowcroft Historic Village and Rockshelter and the Fort Vance Historical Society, housed at the Burgettstown Community Library.

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