Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

Every now and again, I stumble on a story that has everything. All of my favorite stuff from Clinton County, rolled into one big, fascinating bit of our history.

I’ve discovered another one of those—A 1952 article that combines a lot of my favorite things. A mystery. Henry Shoemaker. Hiram Cranmer. Robert Lyman. The Clinton County Times, and their interviews with the Civil War monument soldiers. Kettle Creek.

The article ran on January 10, 1952, with the headline “Cranmer Probes Disappearances.” Hiram Cranmer, postmaster of Leidy Township, had noticed several disappearances in the Kettle Creek area, which was his territory. At the time, he was also vice-president of the Pennsylvania Folklore Society, working with the president, McElhattan writer Henry Wharton Shoemaker.

Shoemaker made an announcement to the press, specifically the Clinton County Times of Lock Haven, which was a pretty bizarre newspaper. They ran the article about the disappearances Cranmer had noticed.

Cranmer told the story of an early settler who headed up to Coudersport with a couple of oxen and his wagon. The whole thing disappeared—The only way to go was the Boon Road (Another interesting story) and the whole thing disappeared—Man, animals, and wagon. They didn’t take the Boon Road, and they were never heard from again.

Tonny Eggleston was the next one, and that was a strange story. This one was told in Robert Lyman’s book “Amazing Indeed,” and it was even more insane than Cranmer portrayed in the article. A man named Tommy Eggleston had gone out in 1897 to mail a letter, and never come back. His employer, Hamilton Fish, found his tracks leading to a bridge, where they simply stopped, with no clue what had happened to him.

The book goes even further, explaining that four years later, Eggleston turned up. He sent a letter claiming that he’d somehow teleported to Africa with no memory and no explanation. Cranmer doesn’t get into this part of it in the article.

In 1898, a little girl vanished while looking for cows in the Kettle Creek area, and a hunter vanished in Hammersley Fork on November 30, 1933.

(This list doesn’t even address the disappearance of John Rohn, in 1899, perhaps Clinton County’s most famous disappearance. Rohn was last seen climbing a fence at the edge of his property, and vanished without a trace after that.)

Cranmer had studied the disappearances, and compared them to several other tales of people who’d vanished throughout the state. Shoemaker and the Clinton County Times were helping to publicize the story.

One of the things I’ve always loved about the Clinton County Times is just how crazy it could get. The newspaper, above all others, had a reputation for running the most insane content it could find, and one of the best examples of this was its weekly column that featured interviews with the soldiers on Lock Haven’s Civil War monument.

Not actual soldiers of any kind, understand—The Times claimed to have interviewed the actual statues. Weekly. And the statues talked about their views on things, and in this case, that includes the disappearances. They note a letter that had been received from Cranmer.

“One of the letters comes from postmaster ‘Hi’ Cranmer in Hammersley Fork,” the stone Cavalryman was quoted as saying. “You remember how Hi has been investigating those disappearances up Kettle Creek Way. He says six or seven people have vanished from that neighborhood over the past sixty or seventy years. Nobody has ever been able to solve those mysteries. I guess they have Hi pretty well, stumped, too.”

The disappearances, having happened over a century of time, are likely not connected in any way but geographical. And, aside from the letter from Eggleston, none of them were ever solved. It’s a neat little dovetail of all my favorite things from the county, however, and a reminder of why I love Clinton County so much.