Houtzdale, Pennsylvania - A Time-Voyage
Houtzdale, Pennsylvania - A Time-Voyage
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Who
am I? Brian S. Wozny, of Parma,
Ohio (near Cleveland)...Why did I post these pictures out on the WEB? I was
hoping someone out there can help me identify each person, location and relevant
detail so I can complete my family tree!
AND THEY
DID!
Click here to see the honor roll
Click here to see
the 60th year reunion pictures
Where did these pictures come from?
My father had relatives in the area and visited them often in the late
30's...but mysteriously stopped in 1941; the negatives were preserved in
an old metal biscuit box (500 envelopes of 8-16 pictures each!), and there
are more mysteries there than you would
imagine!
Family researchers of the Dombrosky (Dombrowsky), Trojanowski (Troyanowski), LaBash, Martin, Oszczypko(Oshipko), Wozny, Rogoza lines, or those merely curious...please check out the story of my Great Aunt Pauline (Paranka) Oszczypko Rogoza. In her own words, she describes her early years in the US, the passage from the Ukraine.
And, for those more deeply involved with the mechanics
of genealogy, the final
resting places of my relatives in
Brisbin.
Take a time-voyage with me back to a town in Pennsylvania I have yet to
see...Houtzdale, in Clearfield county, in the big middle of Pennsylvania,
tucked there between DuBois and Altoona. The time would be 1936-1941. Come
with me to Hannah Street. If you close on the left side of the picture you
can see a clock. This clock stands at the current Houtzdale bank and was
restored a number of years ago. The picture was taken sometime after 1937
because the "Alley Popper" tracks are gone; the A-P was the nickname of the
railroad that ran thru town. The hardware store that is shown on the right
side of the picture is long
gone.
(a larger copy of this image is
here)
A modern picture of Houtzdale taken 5/31/1997 (sixty years to the day after many of the photos which follow!)
To get to Houtzdale, you would most likely have to drive
or take the
train:
Drive better
than this...
And along the way, you would see towns like Greenville
(starting from my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, running down
322)
The sign says "Smoke Dry Slitz, Fine Stogies" and the store is the Flowers brothers. I can see this with a magnifying glass! The computer screen doesn't do it justice!
Here's Brookville, Pa, at the crossroads of US 322 and
PA 28
Small clusters of homes sprinkled in the picturesque hills along the way. History and recollection and research seems to indicate that my dad took these pictures solely for artistic purposes!
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