The Patch At Marianna

Marianna was a new town when this image was done about 1908. Judith Florian wrote a concise history of the town, she had this to say of the miners patch :

The houses were 4, 5 or 6 rooms; the largest were permanent for mine bosses, or owners who might need temporary lodging. The smaller homes were for miners, as well as a 14-room boarding house erected on the hillside behind the mine shafts. The homes were made of yellow-color bricks, fired at Johnetta Plant of the United States Sewer Pipe Company (also owned by the Jones' brothers), and shipped by rail to Marianna. Within a few months, this former farmland area became not just a town, but the "model mining town of the world." A 6-room house rented for $6.00 a month; this included free water supplied by a company-built water reservoir to process water from Ten Mile Creek, free electricity provided by the Power Plant, and garbage removal. Each residence had indoor hot water and bathrooms, town sewage treatment, natural gas, and "landscaping" of 1 tree in each front yard. A modern 3-story brick school-house and the Marianna Arcade building were built in 1910' the Arcade had a drug store, ice cream parlor, bowling alleys, billiard tables, dance floor/skating rink, reading/lecture room, and an indoor pool.

Many modern photos of the mine and patch can be found here in a super website done by Chris DellaMea. On the internet there is a lot of reading available on the mine, the explosion and the town in general.

A simple shelter for passengers at this end of the line town. Coal was the real moneymaker here.

Every brick in every house was made just this way, marked for the Pittsburg- Buffalo Company.

Dedication of the Arcade, July4, 1910.

Mary Ann Feehan Jones for whom Marianna was named.

Marianna School class in 1922

Sandy Plains And The Fairground

The fairground at Sandy Plains was a popular spot at the turn of the century. Cars and horses / buggy's can be seen. The Fair was first held in 1874, as many as 4,000 people attended in some years. It's hard to believe that there was this much activity there once. Opposite the entrance to the fairground was a large frame house that was for years operated as a hotel.

When I was growing up in the early 60's, we used to ride our bikes up from Clarksville to Ram Hardin's garage across the road from here and rent go carts to ride around the old racetrack. A baseball field was long in use there.

The last four images above are from the collection of Bill Hess of Millsboro

Sandy Plains was originally known as Racine, the name of the post office near the center of East Bethlehem Township. Among the first three original settlers of Washington County was Eberhart Hupp ( died 1824 at age 109 ). Most early history books on Washington County, Pennsylvania refer to the Hupp Family. Reports differ as to just when the Hupps came to the fork of Ten Mile Creek and the Monongahela River. The older published Washington County histories (Creigh, Crumrine, McFarland and Forrest) agree that the Hupps, Bumgarners and Teagardens were the earliest "recorded" (filed for land titles) settlers in the region. Crumrine says that Everhart Hupp, George Bumgarner and Abraham Teagarden came from Virginia together to the mouth of the Ten Mile Creek in 1766. He cites a specific grant of land to Hupp in 1766. He bought the land from the Indians for the sum of " one black mare and one rifle gun." These were later surveyed as Hupp's Regard (387 acres) and Hupp's Bottom (295 acres). The land begins about a quarter of a mile north of the Ten Mile Creek bridge on Route 88 near Millsboro, extending back into the hills to the north and west. Included is the present town of Besco and part of the hills above, up Hog's Hill road to Sandy Plains. Forrest says that Hupp built a blockhouse on the land in 1769.
Russell Bane, a descendant of the Hupps and Millsboro resident, believed that Everhart Hupp's cabin was on the high hill by the Route 88 bridge over Ten Mile Creek. This was in later years known as "the Point". Everhard Hupp's Mill is believed to have been on Black Dog Hollow. Everhard later purchased two tracts of land farther up Ten Mile Creek near the present village
of Ten Mile. His wife Margaret was the first white woman west of the Monongahela River, she died at the age of 105.

The Mather Train Station And The Chartiers Southern Railway

The Mather station is actually in Jefferson, was built in 1919 and still looks pretty good today. It, while not being " preserved " is not deteriorating. Now that the leaves are gone I can see this building from my window.
The railroad that built it was the Chartiers Southern Railway, owned jointly by the Pennsylvania, Baltimore & Ohio and New York Central Railroads. It became part of the Monongahela Railway in 1926. It was of two disconnected branches, one between Besco and Mather ( finished 1919) and the other between Crucible and Nemacolin ( finished June 7, 1920 ). This image was taken by the Monongahela Railway in the 1930's, looking northwest. Partly visible is one of the PRR gas electric cars that later ran for mail, freight and light passenger service. All the equipment that ran was PRR or Monongahela Ry's. CS Ry never had their name on any engines or rolling stock. This was a rather large station for the line, at Clarksville there was only a small open sided shelter built to accommodate passengers. I have an original blueprint of this building dated 1919, it was Nov.1,1919 that the railroad reached Mather. This was the end of the line until track was opened to Waynesburg on Jan.1, 1930.
Just south of here, near Stoney Point, the track branched off and crossed Ten Mile on an iron bridge and on into the Mather Mine.
Mather Station March 2009, looking good for 90 years old, image by author

This 1922 map shows the two parts of the CS Ry with the track ending at Mather. Shown also is the proposed track connection with Marianna at Clarksville. This, never built, was to follow Ten Mile's north fork along the Washington County side, past the Yablonski house to Pump Station and on to Marianna.

Rice's Landing

The Str. I.C. WOODWARD, well known Mon River packet at the wharf in 1912

Old Lock #6 at Rices Landing. The original lock was completed in 1856. The Engineers did a major overhaul in 1902 and this image was made after that.

images collection of the author

This is where you will find the W. A. Young & Sons Foundry and Machine Shop. It is a real treasure in this area and everyone should visit it at least once. When I walked in there I felt as though I had just stepped out of a time machine. The W.A. Young Foundry has been called “the greatest find of its type in the nation” by the Smithsonian Institute’s curator emeritus. Built in 1900, this foundry and machine shop cast numerous items from horseshoes to locomotive wheels.

The Str. COLUMBIA downbound at Rices Landing.

Dilworth Mine Tipple at Rices Landing.

The Dilworth Mining Company (1880-1930) was the first major commercial coal mine in Greene County, It was a deep shaft mine and had 190 coke ovens and was located along the river on the northern border of Rice's Landing. Coal and coke were loaded directly into barges from the riverside mine.
In 1914, the Rice's Landing Coal and Coke Company acquired the Dilworth Mine. Within the next few years, the H.C. Frick Coke Company acquired the mine and many of the lots in Rice's Landing including two blocks between Second Street and the ferry landing.It was reopened in 1974 by U.S. Steel, and purchased by Consolidation Coal Co. in 1984.

This opens to a fine large map from Caldwells Atlas of 1876

List Of Business Rices Landing 1876

From The Monongahela Directory of 1859

John Swan tomahawked a claim in 1767 at what is now Rice's Landing. He, Jesse Vanmeter and Thomas Hughes built a fort about a mile south of Rice's Landing in 1768. The patent for the land above the run was given to John Rice and he laid out that part of the town as Newport grew. It was founded in 1780 when John Rice obtained a Virginia certificate for a 389-acre tract of land southeast of Pumpkin Run, then known as Enoch's Run. In 1786, Rice patented the land; and the town of Newport was laid out. Abijeah McClain and Pamela Doughty patented the lands to the northwest of the run where the town of Rice's Landing developed in the early 19th century. When the first post office was set up there it was given the name Rice's Landing. Until 1903, Rice's Landing and Newport remained as separate communities divided by the Cumberland and Jefferson Township line but connected by a covered bridge over Pumpkin Run. A later iron bridge was replaced in 1914 with the extant concrete deck bridge.

Even before improvements were made to the Monongahela River's navigation system, a prosperous packet trade operated on the river. By the 1830s, large keelboats and occasional steamboats docked at Rice's Landing where warehouse space provided storage facilities for goods. From the town's dock, Daniel Montgomery commanded a flatboat that was enrolled at the Pittsburgh Customs House in January of 1832. Joseph Sedgewick and his son, Samuel, were prominent traders who operated small steamboats on the Monongahela River when navigation conditions permitted. Sedgewick owned stores and warehouses at Rice's Landing. Unreliable seasonal navigation on the Monongahela River interfered with steamboat and keelboat travel until the improved canalization of the river by the Monongahela Navigation Company. When the locks were completed in November of 1856, a lock keeper was stationed at Rice's Landing to collect tolls. A ferry operated by the Hughes family crossed the Monongahela River at the north end of town providing access to Fayette County and Brownsville.

Rice's Landing was a key riverport on the Upper Monongahela River and served as the distribution point for all of northeastern Greene County including Waynesburg and Jefferson. By 1859 it was described as a "thriving settlement" owing "its present prosperity to the slackwater and its facilities as a shipping point. " The first telegraph line in Greene County, strung in 1861, ran from Rices Landing to Waynesburg.
During the era when it was a booming river town, lines of horse-drawn wagons and hacks would be strung out along the uphill road as far back as Dry Tavern, while the drivers awaited a turn to unload and reload. It was said that more business was transacted in Rices Landing in one day than transpired in Waynesburg in one week. Rices Landing flourished with two livery stables, cooper shops, blacksmith shops, boot stores, general stores, grist mill, planing mill, a machine shop, stone and pottery works, photo shop, sign painters, millinery shops, dress and hat shop, freight haulers, a greenhouse, a drugstore and three hotels. It is estimated that at one time there were 2,000 residents.

Monongahela House Hotel, undated, courtesy of Brad Kline

The Monongahela Hotel was for a many decades the trading and economic center of Greene and parts of Washington County. It was the place of choice for packet boat men, passengers, drummers (salesmen), traders and travelers of the era. The first floor of the old hotel, fronting on Main Street just opposite the U. S. River Lock No. 6, was for many years known as the Monongahela Commission House, where barrels of salt, sugar, flour were traded for hides, whisky, livestock, etc. Old ledgers kept by Linsey Hughes, a Commission House agent, reveals that almost all transactions were made by the barter system, with goods but not much money changing hands.
The famous lodging and trading place was built in 1840 by a group of influential citizens. Among those believed to have been part owners in the Monongahela House Corporation were Isiah Faddis, who was an early day hotel keeper, and Capt. J. Randolph Hewitt, a Civil War Veteran who operated a dry goods store in the building. In the early 1900's Capt. William Syphers owned the hotel. He also ran a small packet boat, the HAZEL L. WATSON between the town and Brownsville. The last owners were James Walton and Samuel Smith, who was an attorney in Waynesburg. In the fall of 1957 the 20-room, three story building, by then sagging and decrepit, was torn down. Only the steps still remain.

In 1870 local school teacher Isaac Hewitt, Jr. established the Excelsior Pottery Works where he produced gray salt-glazed stoneware distinguished by his "Rice's Landing" trademark. Hewitt's pottery was the most profitable company outside of the Greensboro and New Geneva stoneware center located upstream. The company annually produced 45,000 gallons and employed six workers who operated three wheels. Hewitt marketed part of his merchandise through agents while the remainder was sold from wagons by the proprietor. After a decade of success, production was reduced and the annual value dropped from $6,500 to only $2,000 in 1880. As navigation to the Greensboro and New Geneva pottery centers improved, Hewitt's pottery experienced competition for downriver trade, a factor that was most likely responsible for the pottery's demise around 1885. The pottery was later used as a residence and is still extant.

If you really know Rices Landing then you know just where to roll the car window down and yell " Stovepipe ."
This comment was left on a paranormal website discussing The Rices Landing Stovepipe ghost :
Train Tunnel Legend and locals claim on a rainy night a young boy in the 1800's was driving his horse and buggy over railroad tracks to take a short cut when the train came and collided with the buggy, the boy's head was severed and his body found a piece of stove pipe which it placed where his head would be, now on rainy nights after dark if you walk the tracks and call "Stove Pipe" three times his ghost will appear to you. Below is a follow up comment intended to correct the above statement:
The Stovepipe Ghost is not at the tunnel into Pumpkin Run Park. The train over that tunnel last ran in the 1930's, and nobody could drive a buggy over it because it was too narrow. There is a road called Horse Shoe Bend directly up from the tunnel. In the early 1900's a man was coming down Horse Shoe Bend in his horse & buggy when the buggy overturned and the mans head was cut off by the wheel of his wagon. When some men from town went to retrieve the body they said his neck was so flattened out that it resembled a stove pipe. About a year later, on the same road, a person was traveling by and thought he saw the headless body laying along side the road. Later the myth about Stovepipe began. If you go up Horseshoe Bend and stand at the 'bend' and say 'Stovepipe, Stovepipe, I found your head!' You can hear Stovepipe come up the embankment. The tunnel myth was started by some kids who have no knowledge of the town.
If you go under the tunnel and into Pumpkin Run Park and follow the road back then go across the creek, you will see a pile of cut stones. about 100 years ago there was a town back there called 'Casebear Hollow' and there was a stone quarry, a rock dust mill, as well as 10 houses. The stone quarry is a place where a lot of strange happenings have occurred. Its been said that sometimes you can hear eerie flute notes coming from near the quarry, and rumor has it that there is a flight of stairs that take you under the quarry and there are supposed to be some kind of evil things that live there. Further back in the park is a place called 'Mooney Rocks' where someone fell to their death from them. If you follow the creek you will eventually find yourself near the foundation of an old grist mill where the body of a murdered young girl was found....... How do I know these things? I've lived here for almost 65 years. Just be careful when you come here exploring."

There is a small general site about Rices Landing, I can recommend a page of theirs , one of nice and rare old photos, here.