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NEW CUMBERLAND – Tom Zielinsky didn’t realize an old tape of his father talking about area history could someday be the seed of a book.
Zielinsky’s father created the oral history in response to a request by his daughter-in-law, who was a teacher and had asked him to speak to her classes about New Cumberland’s early history, and he discussed working in a mine for a short period as a 16-year-old.
“He didn’t work there for a long time,” Zielinsky said. “He said he heard a large whoosh, and his father pushed him out of the way. A whole section of clay had fallen. That was his last day in the mine.”
Zielinsky’s father spoke about when the greater New Cumberland area was a boomtown, with mines producing clay and coal and factories producing pottery, and that tape has become a source of information for Zielinsky’s next project – a history of Rockyside, a forgotten mining community that was home to Zielinsky’s grandparents and parents.
“It was a good history that I pulled off the tape,” Zielinsky said, noting it was a good starting point. “I used that, and I started finding my own resources.”
Zielinsky previously wrote “The Last Days of Weirton Steel,” and now he is researching a book about the community, which thrived on the nearby mines and potteries. It was once located along state Route 2, just south of where the West Virginia State Police Barracks are now.
Zielinsky’s interest in the Rockyside was further piqued by conversations with John Kuzio.
“I had a number of conversations with him,” Zielinsky said, noting that Kuzio had a remarkable memory for history of the New Cumberland area.
Zielinsky and Kuzio began a list of those who lived in the community, and Zielinsky began sketching out the potteries that once stretched all the way down to Kings Creek. Many of those families immigrated from Austria, Czechoslovakia and Russia. They included the surnames Spilecki, Czernecki, Glover, Sweat, Kubolinski, Zdanovich, Zucosky, Stolarczyk, Narkewicz, Zubrycki and Turoff.
Zielinsky searched for physical traces of Rockyside – and the first thing he did was go to Ohio. From the other side of the river, a Z-shaped path going up the hill – likely a pathway used by Rockyside residents was visible. A comparison between modern and historic photographs indicates a mine tipple was once located behind it.
“I’ve been getting wonderful response from people who are excited to learn more about this area,” Zielinsky said of an initial call for information. “My hope is to get enough specific information about how the top of Rockyside once looked to get an illustration made.”
Rockyside included single-family and duplex homes, a barracks that housed 200 single men who worked in the nearby Etna and Union mines and the original Immaculate Conception Church, which began as a mission church and was built, beginning in September 1904, under the guidance of the Rev. Julius Jevorek.
“A gentleman (at the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese) has been helping me with (newspaper) clippings from 1904,” Zielinsky said. “The bishop was coming to New Cumberland in September for the dedication of the mission church.”
Zielinsky estimated the church was built in probably about two to three months, as he’s found reports of Christmas Eve services being held that year. The church eventually was relocated in downtown New Cumberland in 1927, and parishioners founded a one-room schoolhouse alongside the river. Zielinsky has found what he believes to have been the foundation to the original Rockyside church.
“It’s difficult, because it’s overgrown with weeds,” he said. “It’s grown up over 100 years. The thing I needed to find was my mother’s family home, because I could use that to find out where other things were located. I could find out where the church was. It was the key to finding everything else.”
The church was close enough that you could “stand on the back porch of the Zumer home, and hit it (the church) with a rock.”
First, Zielinsky had to find the Zumer home, which had been to the left of old Route 66, which was later relocated. The old road bed is still visible, although it has grown up with weeds and is no longer passable by car. Zielinsky began his search in the spring, before thick weeds choked off access to the hillside.
In order to determine a search area, Zielinsky used pictures provided by Mary Porter, a relative of Capt. John Porter who owned the clay mines and brickyards, and oral histories from those who still remembered the community.
Many of those photos depict the Eagle pottery, once located at what now is the bottom of the state Route 2 hill, with Rockyside visible in the background at the crest of the hill behind the pottery, which produced brick and pipes.
“In this one, you can see that a light snow has fallen, and you can see three homes,” Zielinsky said. “Two of them appear to be duplexes, and those each had four rooms, and one larger home – those had six rooms – so this is the Zumer home. Here’s the porch, and, directly behind, you can see the steeple.”
Zielinsky walked along the old Route 66, near the new Hancock County 9-1-1 center, before making his way up the hill.
“Hundreds of yards from the road, I found a foundation and other signs of a structure – bricks, a large sewer pipe and slate shingles,” Zielinsky said. “Because of the size – it was of significant size – and we put yellow caution tape around it. The roped-off area was about 60 feet by 70 feet. I called (Kuzio) that afternoon, and he said he thought (the church) was about 40 by 50 feet.”
Zielinsky explained that sewage pipe, readily available from the potteries, would be filled with brick and rock and used as a foundation wall for building.
Zielinsky’s cousin, Gertrude Ludovici, was a rich source of oral history about the daily life and residents of Rockyside.
“She was happy doing this, and she had a lot of information,” Zielinsky said.
Ludovici remembered there was a school – not to be confused with the Catholic school later built by Immaculate Conception – in Rockyside where an Alice Cooper taught, with whom Ludovici’s mother had been close friends. The two were such close friends that Ludovici’s middle name is Alice, in honor of that early educator. Although Zielinsky didn’t find any record of a teacher by that name, he did find records of a woman by the name of Mary Alice Cooper who taught in the area.
Ludovici also remembered that a set of steps extended from the Zumer home to the roadside, and there was a road passable by wagon and several footpaths, some of which were dangerously steep.
“The road was not straight at the time,” Zielinsky explained, noting it followed the hillside and turned up past Rockyside. “It no longer exists – the walls are still there, and there’s about three-quarters of a mile you can walk, but the rest is overgrown.”
The community also had a shared well, which Zielinsky is trying to locate, and the residents would frequently keep livestock such as chickens and cows, which were allowed to roam the hillside, so they could have fresh eggs and milk.
Now that Zielinsky has located the former Zumer home and the church, the next step is to identify more of the buildings or at least their locations in relation to old Route 66, Route 2 and Clifton Hill Road. Zielinsky believes portions of the community may lie beneath the current Route 2.
Zielinsky, with the assistance of George Hines, located the Etna mine, located along a steep ravine. A tressel bridge once crossed the ravine, making the trek significantly easier and allowing clay to be hauled out of the mines.
“It was a heck of a climb,” Zielinsky said.
The mines employed many single men, and a large barracks was built in Rockyside to house them. More than 200 unmarried men would sleep and take their meals there, and the company would deduct a fee from their pay to cover the room and board. The barracks were likely located behind the church, and many of the girls in Rockyside would go to the barracks to bake bread and do other chores. Some men would board in nearby homes for less than the 50 cents per day room and board fee.
“If you got married, then they would build a home,” Zielinsky said, noting his mother’s parents married in November 1904.
Zielinsky’s mother lived with her four sisters, brother and parents in a Rockyside home that overlooked the city because her father, John Zumer, worked in a nearby mine. A driver, he was killed in the early 1920s after being crushed between two cars.
“We still need to find the largest of mines, which was the Union mine,” Zielinsky said, noting a natural gas vein was struck in 1862. “It was leaking gas for a long time, and they had to cap it. They realized it would be a good site for a brickyard, and 10 or 15 years later, they were using it to heat the kilns.”
The Rockyside mines were a source of clay, because the bituminous coal wasn’t as valuable. Zielinsky noted the mine machinery was steam driven, because river water was plentiful. Pumphouses at the riverside fed the steam boilers, and Zielinsky described an account of an entire family – a father and two children, aged 11 and 13 – who drowned near one of those pumphousees in 1930.
“The boy started drowning, and he pulled his sister down, and their father jumped in,” Zielinsky said. “They all drowned. They laid them out on the roof of the pumphouse, and they were later buried in the New Cumberland cemetery.”
Zielinsky has worked with the West Virginia Archives, Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, Hancock County Assessor, Hancock County Clerk and Hancock County Museum, as well as George Hines and New Cumberland, Chester and Greensburg, Pa. residents.
Zielinsky is looking for photographs of Rockyside or New Cumberland’s North End. He would like to make copies of the originals, which would then be returned.
“These pictures represent what I’ve been able to learn from a photo taken more than 100 years ago,” Zielinsky said. “It’s exciting to be able to recreate a community once lost.”
Those who have information or photographs are asked to contact Zielinsky at (304) 723-3262 or (304) 670-7455 or mail him at 340 Country Club Blvd., Weirton, WV 26062.