Those Were The Days..
In Old Shavertown
ORIGINAL SHAVERTOWN SCHOOL HOUSE, where the
neighborhood youngsters were taught the rudiments of reading,
writing and arithmetic, was discovered among old pictures
saved by Mrs. Ruth Holcomb Shaver.
Note the pinafores on the girls and the stove-pipe pants
which were the trend among young males in the period of the
late 1890’s when this photograph was taken.
The one room school, which stands in the rear, was also the
church meeting house before the Shavertown Methodist edifice
was erected. Later the coal shanty and outhouses disappeared
as another room was added, and the building moved across
the street, where it is now in use as the Back Mountain YWCA
headquarters.
A hotse and buggy, the chief mode of travel about the area,
is tethered at the side of the building, perhaps the property or
on loan to the school-master who is believed to be a Mr.
Callender.
The Post would be interested in learning the names of the
students pictured.
SHAVERTOWN STORE: This is the market where Shavertown folks
bought their supplies in earlier days. Standing in the spot which now houses
Wally Gosart’s Store and Meat Market, it was run by Ellis and Kate
Swingle and later Thomas Walton. Now torn down, its second floor was
rented by several families.
HENRY’S SAM
ROBERTS
HAIR FASHIONS
Jewelry
GIFTS — CARDS
Memorial Highway
Shavertown
‘Grateful for our Part
Back Mountain Growth"
IN THIS OLD PICTURE of Shavertown taken about 1908,
Main Street was the chief thoroughfare, no highway as we
know it today running through the town.
About Main Street clustered the business places. In the lower
right is the former home of Dorman and Arminda Woolbert.
Mr. Woolbert stored his meats in the ice house nearby.
In the same vicinity Luther Roushey operated a planing
mill and Bill Parrish owned the blacksmith shop which was
moved across from the Woolberts.
The clump of trees stands near the old Still home and below
the railroad ties a fresh cool stream supplied residents with
good drinking water. Dan Shaver is among those who were
often sent for a pail of the unadulterated supply.
The white house up the road was then owned by Charles
Perrego and is now the property of Harold Ash. Willard
Hoover lives in the former Woolbert home. Up on the hill
stands the Farrell home and the Holcomb property and tucked
in the background the slaughter house which now belongs to
the Lewis Underwoods.
It was qatermecca of many local butchers which at one
time gave Shavertown the title of Bloody Kun: 2
STOCK-PILES OF LUMBER here stood with protecting
sheds where the big building and lumber mill now houses the
present Shavertown Lumber Company, owned by Robert
Turrell.
Frank Hubbell, Noxen, founded the original lumber yard in
1908, and supplies were shipped in by freightto the rear of the
site where lumber was unloaded often by the light of a full
moon.
Mr. Hubbell built the home now occupied by Dr. Getz, and
it was here his family lived close by. His daughter, now Mrs.
Ernest Bell, is shown as she climbed atop one of the piles
during many visits with her friends.
The Lumber Company has since passed to a number of
proprietors among them Fred Oberst, Moses Griffith and Gar-
rahan and Ruckno. Mrs. Edna Johnson served each faithfully
in her role as secretary.
Mrs. Bell, who met Mrs. Jobaton when the latter greeted
her arrival in Shavertown, tells of the pleasant jaunts abroad
the Lehigh Valley to Towanda with stops at Alderson and
Stull, where the girls were much impressed by the ticket agents,
who punched their fares.