Lou’s View – Aug. 4, 2016
A Big, Old Tree
By Lou Bernard
As I write this, there’s a huge pile of wood across the alley from my backyard. It’s sitting in back of a house that fronts on South Jones Street, and it’s all gigantic chunks of wood from a tree that was cut down in Grouse Alley. Orange letters on one piece are spray-painted with the word FREE.
This tree was recently chopped down. It was standing there, by the alley, for as long as I can remember, and I’ve lived in that same neighborhood since roughly 1991. Out of sheer curiosity, I walked over one afternoon and counted the rings. My little boy Paul Matthew helped, though he can only get us as far as ten.
I got a little further; I counted a hundred and forty-seven. I may have missed a few; math is not exactly my specialty. But, with the help of a calculator, I was able to figure out, roughly, when the tree was planted.
It was about 1869.
I’ll admit I could be off by a few years either way there. But I think I’m probably pretty close, and Paul Matthew agrees. The tree was planted somewhere around post-Civil War, about 1869.
Just think about that a minute.
Math aside, think about everything that was going on when that tree was planted. Think of all it’s seen. That’s almost a century and a half ago.
The year that tree was planted, Lock Haven wasn’t even a city yet. This community was still a borough, working toward becoming incorporated as a city of the third class. Levi Mackey, prominent local banker, was just about to step forward as Lock Haven’s first mayor. (I myself was about a hundred years away from being born, and the Record was two years away from its first issue.)
In 1869, the courthouse was dedicated at the corner of Jay and Water Streets. The original courthouse, on land donated by Jerry Church, was built about 1840, but it didn’t last long. In the 1860s, the county began building the next courthouse, designed by Samuel Sloan. (He also designed the one in Venango County, which looks remarkably similar.) It took two years to build, but the courthouse was in business in 1869, when the tree was young.
The Opera House also opened on Main Street. It had been begun in 1868, and finally opened for business in 1869, starting shows. Two years later, in 1871, a set of gas jets were added to the front, spelling out OPERA HOUSE in big, flaming letters.
Business was booming in Lock Haven. Gossler Planing Mill opened for business on the corner of Corning Street and Bellefonte Avenue. The Lock Haven Iron Works, on Walnut Street, caught fire and burned down in June, and immediately began rebuilding. P.H. White bought the sawmill on Jones Street from John L. Cranston, and began running it.
Speaking of Jones Street, at the time the tree was planted, it was on the property of someone named Jones. It’s a pretty safe bet that this is the same guy Jones Street was named after, and probably the owner of Jones And Company, which owned a lot of property around that area, near the canals. I’m genuinely not sure which Jones this was, or what exactly the company did, because just try looking up “Jones” in the old archives. Just try.
But since I can’t seem to keep up with the Joneses, let me throw some Clinton County information at you. The county was thirty years old at the time this tree was planted, and John Rishel, Thomas M. Wolf, and Valentine Hanna were the county commissioners. John W. Smith had recently begun his term as county sheriff. (And there’s another name you’ll have a hard time looking up.) Ira D. Canfield was the coroner.
That big, old tree was there for all of that, way back in the beginning. And time passes, and things change. And now, the tree is gone, taken down. This winter, it’ll be burned in someone’s furnace, used to heat their home.
Maybe I’ll be walking past. Maybe I’ll be with my son, and we’ll stop and take notice of the smoke coming from someone’s chimney as the tree burns.
“Smell that history, Paul,” I’ll say.
