History in the Hills: Consider shared tasks
These past few weeks have been tough for folks in the Weirton area. The ongoing water issues have pretty much taken much of our attention. Since we live on Weirton Heights, we are still under a boil order, although we are blessed to have some water when so many don’t.
It makes me thankful for so many things we take for granted these days, like turning on a light, running hot and cold water, being able to go to the store and buy essentials and the like. With those little things in mind, we are still very blessed despite the current water issues. With all the days off my kids have had due to the water crisis, my wife and I have done our best to keep them active and up-to-date with their virtual schoolwork. For them, they are loving being off, and who wouldn’t in their shoes? With that said, they do miss their friends.
My oldest son, Paulie, I am sure will remember this time off. This isn’t the first time he was off from school for an extended period. A few years ago, it was COVID that closed the schools and sent the kids home. That was certainly something none of us will forget any time soon. Since the kids have been home, I have tried to include them in the daily chores and projects that seem to come up from time to time. We have fixed a broken water pipe, completed some light furniture repair and tapped a few of our maple trees for our annual syrup season. These activities are not much, but they are getting experiences that they can’t get in school. Hopefully spending time together will also build memories. As we work together doing these shared tasks, I like to tell the kids about the past.
We weren’t the only folks to tap maple trees in this area. Many still do it as a backyard hobby like we do today. We typically only produce a few pints a year of maple syrup, but it is so worth the work. In the past, the Native Americans certainly knew how to extract the sap from the trees, too. When the settlers moved into this area from the east, they quickly took advantage of the trees to create their own maple syrup, a vital product on the frontier.
One of the earliest accounts of tapping trees in this area comes from a tragic story that took place around 1782 of the death of Thomas Campbell and his family. I have written about this family and their story before and their contributions to the history of the area.
The Campbell’s were some of the first settlers who came to live in the area of Kings Creek in what would later be Weirton. On this particular evening, Thomas was in the surrounding forests collecting sap from his many maple trees. These trees would have been in the area of Country Club Estates.
Thomas had set up a sugar camp on the hill above his cabin to boil the sap down to syrup. When he arrived home after a long day of work, he was exhausted. His wife volunteered to return to the sugar camp to get the rest of the syrup if he agreed to watch their child. As she made her way to the sugar camp, a war party of Native Americans passed and shot at her. When she arrived back to her cabin with a group of nearby settlers, those who lived in the area of Starvaggi pool today, her husband and child had been killed and scalped. At this time in history, raids and tragedies between Natives and settlers were commonplace. To this day, every time I go out to empty my few buckets on my backyard maple trees, especially at night, I think of Thomas Campbell and his family 243 years ago.
The Campbells weren’t the only folks who made syrup in our area. On a map from 1852 of Hancock County available on the Library of Congress website, there is a creek along South 12th street called Sugar Tree Run. That road was there in 1852 and probably originated as a path. Most certainly on Sugar Tree Run, syrup was made. Just up the road from there and down Pennsylvania Avenue today, near the old Starvaggi bus garage, the valley adjacent to the road was known as Sugar Camp Hollow. Here, back in the days before Weirton Steel dumped tons and tons of slag to fill it up, there was a deep ravine in an almost-parklike setting. In fact, Mary Ferguson writes about the area in her book “The History of Holliday’s Cove.”
She recounts that “the mouth of this hollow was once a picnic ground where children played in the stream that tumbled down from the hollow, men played softball on the lower level, and women dipped water from the spring that bubbled from the hillside to make coffee.” This area certainly had to have once been the location of a sugar shack too, where one would boil down maple sap to create syrup.
Our history of maple syrup is certainly rich.
As my son and daughter repaired some wooden chairs with me during the time off, I explained to them that we weren’t the first to repair or build furniture in our area, either. In Steubenville in the early 19th century, there were many skilled cabinet makers who worked to create furniture of good quality to outfit the new town of Steubenville. One of the pieces I have seen recently was a long case clock made by a Steubenville cabinet maker at his workshop on Market Street. The clock sold at auction for more than $2,000. There were also fancy chair manufacturers in Steubenville. The fancy chair was a specific style of chair made popular in the second quarter of the 19th century. We refer to those chairs today as a Hitchcock chair, after their creator, Lambert Hitchcock, who made the first chairs of this style in New England. These chairs were basically wooden chairs with a woven rush seat and were painted and stenciled with metallic paint.
Once you have seen a fancy chair, their style is immediately recognizable. Since they were so popular, there were numerous makers throughout the country, and Steubenville was no exception. If anyone thinks they have a Steubenville fancy chair still around, it’s a real treasure.
Just a few days ago, a pipe broke that needed to be fixed. As we worked on the pipe, I told my son how back in the old days, pipes in our area were made from hollowed-out wooden logs. In our collection at Historic Fort Steuben, we have an original water pipe dug up in the city that is wooden. Considering the water infrastructure in Steubenville was started in the 1820s, it is no surprise that they used hollow trees for pipes in those days. I wonder how many pipes are still in the ground that are made from wood?
Certainly, none that are still in use, surely. Thankfully, my son, Paulie, shares the same love and interest in history I do and can wonder with me about the survival of wooden pipes in the ground today. We are very alike.
I am thankful for the time spent with my children while they are home. Although going to school teaches important lessons that are vital for their education, I am happy I get the chance to share a few practical tasks with them, too. Hopefully, we built some memories along the way. I know I did.
(Zuros is the executive director of Historic Fort Steuben)