Charles H Price, Jr.

 

Price, Charles H., as told to Beauveau Borie, IV, "The Goshenhoppen Region". Goshenhoppen Historians, Inc., Green Lane, PA: 1971. Permission to use this article courtesy of the Goshenhoppen Historians, Inc., Green Lane, PA

Charles H. Price, Jr. was born and raised in Telford, Pennsylvania, where he now lives across the street from his boyhood home. He vividly remembers the scenes of the town at the turn of the century, and he puts these memories to good use when painting his pictures of old Telford. The ideas and many of the details are from early photographs of the town which Mr. Price has in his possession, but he has taken these scenes back to the turn of the century from his own earlier recollections of the area.

 

The textual portions of this article are actually the captions for each of the painings. The editor has condensed some of the descriptions where repetitions have occurred, but most of what follows are Mr. Price's own thoughts about his paintings.

 

Mr. Price only recently turned at painting "to unwind", as he put it, and his style is reminiscent of the "primitive style" of other artists who began painting late in life. His colors are clear and bright (and can be better appreciated by seeing the originals in the Fiction, Copier, and Pennsylvania Rooms as well as the Office at the Indian Valley Public Library).

 

Old Time Views of Telford

The Public School of Telford Bucks Co.

This painting is of the Public School of Telford, on the Bucks County side. Telford on the Bucks side was the first incorporated Borough of the two, and this school had been built prior to this incorporation, about 1876. Before 1876, the children of the Bucks County side went to Bean's school house located on the old way of going up past Dursthein to Sellersville. That was a stone school house and is now a dwelling.

Telford from the beginning was two boroughs separated by Main Street. Telford was in Bucks County and West Telford was in Montgomery County. These two separate boroughs existed until the 1930's when they merged due to the school systems. The boroughs themselves merged as municipalities and later became two wards, Ward One in Bucks County and Ward Two in Montgomery County.

This school house was in Bucks County at what is today Washington Avenue and Church Road. Edwin C. Leidy was the teacher for fifteen years, starting in 1885, and was also the Justice of the Peace for Telford on the Bucks County side for the same period. Later, the also became the President of the Telford National Bank.

I have a picture of school children taken in 1895, and of those I remember still living and in town are Edwin Pennypacker, William Sellers, and Estella Sellers, widow of Raymond Geisinger. At least those are still living; there might be a few more, I don't know. Those mentioned are the their eighties.

In the painting you can see a walk going on the right and they told me that the walk went out to the outhouses used at that time and to the coal bins also in that area. Being a one room schoolhouse, they had a pot-belly stove in the center and the schoolmaster was responsible for the fire. He had to get there very early in the winter to warm the place up for the children. This building also had no steeple and a large handbell was used to call the children in.

This building was stone and plastered. You'll notice a flag was flying there. Ed Pennypacker told me that two children had to put that flag up before school every day and take it down after school. The farm in the distance was then owned by Peter Frank and is owned today by Frank Landis, who owns the meat store here. This building was torn down in 1904 at the time when the building was built on the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Hamilton Street, now the Indian Valley Public Library. At the present time, the home of Arthur Dorn is right where the old school had stood.

 

North Penn Avenue

This picture is a view looking south along North Penn Avenue from Main Street. The first building on the left was built about 1907 and was the home of Morris Clymer, the organizer of the Excelsior Electric Light Company at Sellersville. It was this company which brought electricity to Telford. The woman in the front yard is supposed to be his wife, Mayme.

The next building is the old Telford National Bank, organized in 1909. The walls have an unusual pattern that was not commonly used, but was a distinctive one that my father set up in his brickyard. The checkered type of color was caused by alternating a dark stretcher and the head of a black header. (For explanation of these terms, see Charles H. Price, Jr., "The Brickyard at the Turn of the Century," Goshenhoppen Region, III: 1, Peterkett 1970, 4-11.)

The next building is the Telford Fire House, which is standing there today, as is the old bank. The latter is presently being used by the Bedco Computer Corporation.

Adjacent to the fire house was the Telford Hotel, now Fuhr's Pharmancy. The old hotel was built in 1869 by Alexander Sellers, who was also appointed Postmaster of Telford in 1871. The Post Office was located at the side of the hotel.

Behind the hotel was a livery stable and a hall. I can remember the Knights of the Golden Eagle having a banquet in that hall. John N. Kuhn was the hotel proprietor at the time of this painting.

Next to the hotel was the three-story Wolf building. At the time of this painting, the first floor was occupied by a clothing store owned by Jacob Blank. The Stag Club, a men's organization, had the second floor. Here there were pool tables, a piano, and various other things for recreation. At that time no liquor was served. The next floor was a lodge hall in which the Knights of the Golden Eagles, the Redmen, and a few women's lodges held their meetings.

On the right side of the painting, we see the feed mill, hay house, and coal yard of J.S. Kulp and Co. This was originally a mill built by F.H.Souder in 1876 and sold to Michael S. Kulp, brother of J.S. Kulp, in 1880. The hay house was later turned into a planing mill. In 1951, or thereabouts, there was a great fire and the whole plant burned down. I remember going to that fire when the heat was so intense that the flagstone wallk across the street cracked and buckled. As they cracked, they sounded like cannons going off.

The trolly that we see going through here was known as the Tripper, which ran in Telford from 1902 to 1921. This was started when the main line of the Inland Traction Company by-passed Telford.

 

 

The Railroad Looking Toward Moses Shelly Feed Mill

Permission to photograph the original Charles H. Price, Jr. painting accompanying this article courtesy of the Indian Valley Public Library, Telford, PA.

 

This painting is of the...railroad and station...looking from Main Street toward Penn Avenue. The main group of buildings is the Moses Shelly Feed Mill, with the one story station, the siding, and the stockyard in the foreground. This would be the way things looked prior to 1900.

The Moses Shelly Feed Mill was a steam chopping mill that was the first business enterprise here at what is now Telford. It was built by Jacob N. Souder in 1856, and thrived until 1861 when it was destroyed by fire. This present mill that you see here was mostly built in 1884 by C.G. Barndt & Son who ran it for about a year. They then had an assignment of their property to E.C. Bean, who was the Justice of the Peace, for the benefit of their creditors. The whole business was sold at a sale for $8,000.00 to Moses Shelly. It began operating under Shelly in 1856 and was thriving business until it again was destroyed by fire on May 8, 1903, when a total of fourteen buildings were wiped out.

The little house at the right along side of what is Main Street was a small grocery store and later a barber shop. Harry Keller, who later owned the Franconia Hotel and the Line Lexington Hotel, started his business career in that little house as a barber. There is a story told by Jacob Wood to my brother-in-law, Erwin Keller, about when he was a youngster. A man by the name of Delp had a little grocery store in that small house. When the watermelon season came along these fellows would sit in there on chairs against the wall and would try to sneak watermelons out of the store by passing then behind the chairs. Unfortunately, they invariably would be caught by Mr. Delp.

Ten years after the first train came through what is now Telford, the community decided that a station house was needed along with a name for the town. The money was raised to build the station. The story goes that the first sum was absconded with and funds had to be raised a second time. The station was finally built in 1867.

It was the custom at this time for the town to receive its name for the name of the station. The station, and later the town of Sellersville, for instance, was named after Seller's Tavern which was nearby. Sir Thoms Telford, born in Scotland and one of the greatest of civil engineers of the time, was the inventor of the Telford style of making roads. He would first remove the topsoil, and then he would put down a layer of ballast stone, which would then be covered by layers of fine stone, the larger ones on top. This was the way the turnpikes were built also. Because of his invention, it was considered appropriate to name the new station in his honor.

On the evening of May 8, 1903, a spark puffed out of the chimney of a train which was going by and fell on the roof of the Moses Shelly Feed Mill and started a fire. Naturally with the fire companies having such very small equipment to take care of a large fire, the flames swept through the building. At the time, Telford had only a small pumper, that is, a type of box on four wheels with two long bars and pump handles, one on either side. They placed the suction end of the hose into the well over at John Koon's Hotel and pumped away.

In all, about fourteen buildings were burned down that night, with about $100,000 damage: All of the buildings of the Feed Mill, a three- dwelling house next to the mill on Main Street, a livery stable in back of the hotel, and a blacksmith shop. Although the hotel itself did not burn, the walls were very badly blistered.

Telford at the time of the painting was also a very large shipper of milk. As the painting shows, a large number of 20- gallon milk cans were waiting for the 6:30 a.m. "milk train" to be picked up and taken into Philadelphia, to Berks Street, where distribution would be made. The siding in front of the station went into M.S. Kulp and Brother, later J.S. Kulp & Co., another feed and chopping mill.

The station itself had a waiting room with a pot-bellied stove on the right, a room in the middle for the telegraph operator, and a room at the end for storage.

 

The Telford Tripper

This scene is at Lincoln Avenue and Main Street looking south. The Inland Traction Co. built a rail line through Telford in 1900 running from Summit Street, Souderton down to Reliance Road and then on to Third Street. It then went up Third Street to North Penn, over North Penn to Main, south on Main to Lincoln, where this Tripper stands, and then over Lincoln to Washington to Reliance Road where it turned north.

Since there were nine curves that were difficult for the newer, larger equipment to handle, the company decided to cut out Telford, and made a cut-off between Summit Street, Souderton, and this point at Reliance Road and Washington Avenue in Telford. When they did this in 1902, they started the Tripper, which would serve the town and go out to Telford Junction to meet both the north bound and south bound. The Tripper picked up anybody at any corner. The Traction Company sold out to the Lehigh Transit Company, who operated it ever since.

In this painting the motorman was Harvey Nyce from Souderton and the other man standing beside the Tripper was the trackman, Solomon Kinsey, who lived on the Bethlehem Pike. It was the trackman's job to grease the track on the curves to keep the screeching and squawling down and to keep the wear down on the wheels and rails. He also carried a wrench and a sledge hammer with him to tighten up the bolts which held the sections of the track together and to hammer down any spikes working out of the wooden ties. He would walk the line one way, and then take the Tripper home.

Coming up the street here is a load of hay. This was a common sight in Telford at this time as both J.S. Kulp and Co. and Milton Fluck dealt in hay, and Kulp's had a hay house. Milton Fluck was the one who would take hay to Philadelphia, where he sold it to the livery stables. At that time there were mostly horse cars in the city. Milk was also delivered by horse and wagon.

The wagon in the painting is typical in that it was shaped like a V with the point cut off. At this point there was a little wooded cab where the driver sat. I can remember, as a boy, seeing it come down Main Street full of hay and coming back empty.

Over on the right here there is a house which is an apartment house today. Dr. Jesse Bowman, who lived there for many years, was our family doctor and helped bring me into the world.

 

Telford Ball Field

This is the Telford Ball Field about 1910. As near as I can remember, it came into existence about 1900, although it may have been one or two years earlier. By 1904 or 1905, league games were played between the amateur teams at various towns along the line. There were no semi- pro teams to come along until the North Penn League appeared. Our league took in about from Perkasie down to Hatfield or Lansdale.

The teams were made up of young men between the ages of 16 and 25. These teams lasted until about 1917 and World War I, which took off all or most of the better players. The younger fellows continued after that, but it wasn't the same. There just wasn't the same spirit as there had been.

Before the war, the games were all played on Saturday afternoons. The town would set up the canvas fence and everyone, men and women, boys and girls, paid the admission and sat in the stands. We boys used to like to sit behind the back stop and watch the pitcher's curves and drops as the balls came over the plate. We would also chase the foul balls as they came back. You shoudl have seen us swagger up to the umpire as we tossed the balls back to him.

During the game, refreshments were served. Bill Savacool sold a type of an ice we called "Hokey Pokey Ice Cream," which was an inch and a half cube selling for a penny apiece. Also a man named Wilson Reed who had a bottling plant on Popular Street, now West Broad Street, sold soft drinks, usually sarsaparilla, cream soda, and ginger ale, all in about four or five flavors.

The rooting between the spectators was the same as today, but I remember that the rivalry between Souderton and Telford was very intense. It was always said that there was never a Souderton-Telford ballgame without at least one fight. Usually it wasn't a big affair, but people talked about it anyway. Sometimes there would be a constable there, and he would help head it off, or the other team members would help.

The building on the left is the slate house Henry Nyce lives in today on the southwest corner of Ridge Avenue and Main Street. The far end of the ball field was Church Road and Dr. Richard Bowman has his house on that corner. The barn and the house on the left side of the picture belonged to Dr. Miles Detweiler. The farm was a working one. The crop at the left was perhasp corn, while the other fields were wheat, etc. He also had cattle. Only the one field was left vacant for the ball field. Occasionally when there would be a real dry spell, he would put his cattle in to feed on the good grass, but the townspeople didn't like that too much because of the manure.

The town contributed rent for the field which was taken out of the gate receipts. This money also went for the equipment of the ball players. Also one team player came all the way from Perkasie to play, and some money was contributed for his travel.

I can remember going to the games quite well. Saturday afternoons were a lot of fun for everyone, right up to World War I.

 

The Railroad at Telford Station

This painting of the 1890's looks toward Main Street from the railroad crossing at what is today called Washington Avenue. In the distance to the left is the old one story station with the railroad engine in front of it and to the right you see Moses Shelly Feed Mill. The road going along the tracks was called Railroad Avenue. There are homes along Railroad Avenue, right up to the little house just before Main which was a Tin Smith Shop belonging to Benjamin Auchy at the turn of the century. In the center, on Railroad Avenue, there is an oil lamp, the form of street lighting used all through Telford at that time.

The railroad is the Bethlehem branch of the Reading Railroad which was built between 1854 and 1857. The first trains ran from Lansdale to Bethlehem in 1857. The railroad was responsible for the towns of Lansdale, Hatfield, Souderton, Telford, Sellersville, and Perkasie. Prior to the railroad, there were no towns in Franconia Township. Elroy was the largest village and Telford was called Hendricks Blacksmith Shop because a man by the name of Hendricks had a blacksmith shop here. This shop was burned down at the time of the great Moses Shelly Feed Mill fire.

 

Main Street

This is a painting that shows Telford after the Moses Shelly fire. The building in the foreground is the Fenstermacher Building, built two years after the fire by Frank and Warren Fenstermacher. The front was a barber shop owned by Frank Fenstermacher, who is standing in the doorway, and the side was a meat store owned by Jacob Kratz.

The upstairs had apartments which were use by the Stag Club, a group for the young men of the town. World War I crippled clubs like this because the young men were leaving and going into the Army. I was one who was examined in August 1918 and rated A, but the war ended before my call came. I was back here, and I could see the difference the war made with the young men. I was in a group of six or seven, and we had our places to go for an evening of fun- fairs, the Rising Sun Hotel, and the like- but by the end, there were only three of us left. The rest went into the Army. When everyone came home, we all got married, and that was the end of the group.

The second building is the County Line Hotel, and there is a store building on the corner. This store was built about 1860, about the same time the Gerhart store was across the street. These two stores existed across from each other until the 1940's , when this one closed up and was made into an apartment house. This one, as a store, was a general store in the front with dry goods and a delicatessan in the back. In the Gerhart store they had the dry goods upstairs with the groceries, the hardware, and the delicatessan downstairs.

The street is Main Street, with oil lamps on both sides. The lights had a metal bottom for the oil, a wick, and a globe. There was a man who had the job of lighting these lamps at sundown. He would make his rounds at sundown and the lights would remain lit until the oil burned out.

There were two ways he would light the lamps, depending on which variety they were. On one, he used a long rod, the upper part of which held a gadget which could open the door, turn the wick up, and light the lamp. For the other, he carried a short ladder of about five steps, which he would lean against the post. He would open the door by hand, snap up the wick, clean off the carbon with a rag, smooth out the wick with his fingers, light the wick, and adjust it, and close the door. He would then move on to the next one. He also carried an oil can to replenish the oil when needed. There were five of these lights in this square of Telford.

It wasn't until 1910 that electricity started coming into Telford. By 1911 the electric lights were spaced on Main Street, Poplar Street, and also on Penn Avenue. Within a year or two after that, the whole town had these lights.

The home on the right, which you can't really see here, is owned by A. Paul Gerhart and is explained in another painting.