NEW PARKING LOT – The big new parking lot of the Dayton Malleable at Third and Vine streets will be ready for the Open House celebration in which the entire city is invited to take part on October 5…
There aren’t many readers today who remember the big frame house on that location during the Gay 90s known as the Convent of the Sisters of St. Francis…eight nuns who taught at St. Joseph and St. Lawrence schools rode the streetcars daily to and from their assignments at the schools…
A streetcar switch, where the cars waited for one another going in the opposite direction to pass, made it very convenient for the teachers to catch the cars without standing out in the bad weather and cold.
The Rev. Father Joseph Schmidt was pastor at St. Joseph Church and Rev. Father James H. Cotter was at St. Lawrence…Sister M. Barbara was the directress at the Convent…I am sure there are a few senior citizens who can validate this memory of the big house that sat back in a beautiful front yard…
At that time Vine Street was known as Woodland Ave…Third Street was the only street open for traffic above that point and what today in Vine Street was a cow path with ox-cart tracks to what became Ninth street to enter Woodland Cemetery gate, which was used almost exclusively by horse-drawn funeral processions…What most readers perhaps don’t know is that the back gate at beautiful Woodland Cemetery was the front gate before 1895…
People riding streetcars to visit the cemetery on Sunday afternoon got off in Coal Grove and walked the Marion Pike to the cemetery, or rode an excursion boat from the Center St. wharf to Coal Grove, as the horse streetcars couldn’t handle the Sunday afternoon crowds.
ALTHOUGH SHE DIDN’T KNOW IT a former Ironton lady wrote my column for today…A surprise letter from 2920 San Pasqual Pasadena Calif. 91107 addressed “Mr. Soliloquy” is indeed interesting…It reads: “Many, many times I have thought of writing to tell you how very much I enjoy your Soliloquy articles.
My sister Norma Owrey Howard and my niece send the to me quite often as I was born in Ironton and lived there for 17 years. I am very familiar with the people and events about which you write.
After reading I pass them on to my brother Cy and then on to my aunt Della Barley Carrell who was also born in Ironton. She has just had her 89th birthday and she has vivid memories of the old town of long ago. I also send some to my cousin Stela Truby Patton in New York so Soliloquy is read by many former Irontonians who join me in thanking you for writing them.
“As I am writing my thought wander back over the years and I ask myself what I remember most about Ironton. My memories seem to center on sounds plants places and people. I can never forget as a child the siren of the waterworks.
I have heard many since but none like that one. Then I remember the steam whistle on the C.H.&D. Railroad and that distinctive sound would linger on and usually, it made me sad. The bell on Kingsbury; the town clocks on the Congregational and Presbyterian churches; the bells at St. Joseph Church and the calliope on the river boats and I remember on Christmas or New Year’s morning hearing brass band music coming from high on Cronacher Hill. I think the leader’s name was Feuchter.
“I remember the beautiful trees in Kingsbury school yard. A big buckeye tree stood at Capt. Bays home on Sixth and a paw-paw tree on my grandfather’s yard my father had planted when he was a boy and the big beechwood trees at the old Kelly park; the wild grape vines beneath the white bridge we crossed entering Woodland Cemetery and the beautiful flowers on the Culbertson lawn at Fourth and Adams.
I’ll never forget the Park Ave. tunnel, my schoolmates, and my teachers. Miss Sara Ross taught my father, mother, and me. Carrie Truby Cronacher taught me in the second grade…(The writer then mentions many names and especially her grandfather Adam Owrey, who lived at Fourth and Park Ave and drove the first Oldsmobile in town…She remembers Dr. Geo. W. Livesay at Fourth and Park who brought her brother Cy now 69, into this world, and mentions doctors D. C. Wilson, C. G. Gray, William Merchant, and Harry Justice…
Her letter concludes “Well I fear I have soliloquized too much. I know it is important to me alone, but I did want Mr. Collet to know I do enjoy reading his articles and thank him for writing them and sincerely hope they will continue for a long time to come…Singed Jean B. Sigler (nee Jean Owrey)
A NOTE TO JEAN – I remember your dad and Cy and you are correct about my brother selling your grandpa Adam the Oldsmobile in 1906…I think your aunt Stella Truby was in my class a couple of years at old Kingsbury school…Thanks for writing my column for today.
Written by Charles Collettt
Huntington Newspaper – October 1, 1966
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