Next month marks the 109th anniversary of the Rand Powder Mill Explosion, a series of blasts at a Fayette County black powder factory that killed 18 people, shattered windows in Uniontown, and shook buildings as far away as Greensburg. The Pennsylvania Room maintains photos of the September 9, 1905 disaster that were taken by E.W. Hague,…
For all the inquiries about family history I get from visitors to the PA Room, I also field plenty of unusual questions about local history. One patron wondered where his uncle might have bought a Studebaker in Uniontown in the 1950s. (The Detweiler dealership, perhaps?) Another was trying to track down the name of the last…
The cover of a brochure for the Summit Hotel (also known as the Summit Inn) on Route 40, circa 1948.
This segment features a news item from Fayette County’s past. This week we examine a story from the March 23, 1914 edition of the Daily News Standard. This weekend marked one hundred years since the burning of McClelland House, a hotel that once stood on West Main Street in Uniontown. If you’re local, you may have noticed coverage…
My favorite part of working in the Pennsylvania Room is that each and every day, I’m surrounded by stories. They’re tucked into yearbook pages, scribbled in the margins of ancestry charts, and hidden away in old family letters. Whether I’m faced with tracing the history of a person, place, or event, I enjoy the challenge of piecing all the fragments together to form a…
Advertisement from the Daily News Standard. Feb. 10, 1908.
This segment features a news item from Fayette County’s past. This week we examine a story from the February 14, 1908 edition of the Daily News Standard. “The observance of St. Valentine’s day in and about Uniontown this year is very general and young and old are joining heartily in the exchange of tender missives of affection,…
This segment features a news item from Fayette County’s past. This week we examine a story from the February 9, 1924 edition of the Morning Herald. The headline isn’t all that eye-catching: “Annual Meeting of Motor Club Monday Evening.” This was a reference to the Uniontown Motor Club, a relatively new group reorganized from the Automobile Club…
This segment features a news item from Fayette County’s past. This week we examine a story from the January 28, 1915 edition of the Morning Herald. In January of 1915, the U.S. was just emerging from a two-year recession. It was in this economic climate that the The Morning Herald made a joyful announcement: The H.C. Frick Company had called…
