The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1912-08-18
JUDGE PORTER
WRITES FROM
HIS OLD HOME
AFTER TWO MONTHS SPENT IN
VISITING VARIOUS POINTS, HE
is NOW THE GUEST OF HIS SON
IN PlTTsBURe, KAN.

Your correspondent and wife left
our Grand Ridge home on the 18th
Of June for a somewhat circuitous
journey to end up at the home Of
our first born son to celebrate our
fifty fourth wedding anniversary.
Near too months Of time, and two
~ thousand miles of distance are now
behind US, and notwithstanding the
coed daily Journal has met us at sew
eral important stops, we have found
time to jot down some items that
might be Of interest to your kind
readers.
Our first stop was in Birmingham
with our youngest son and his family,
thence via Chattanooga, in sight Of
Lookout mountain, and over the high
bridge and along the beautiful scenery
of that route to Cincinnati. Thence,
east over the B. & o. Southwest Rail
road to Pittsburg, Pa, stopping over
for our first Sunday out, at the beauti-
full city Of Athens, Ohio, where three
days were spent most delightfully."-.
This little city of fifty-five hundred
citizens, boasts of a grand state col
iege, on the grounds once occupied by
the first college west of the noun
tains, also largely attended public,
and high school, and stands preemi-
nent socially and religiously.
LARGE ATTENDANCE.
OF their fifty five hundred people,
old and young, they have had an at
tendance of thirty five hundred in
their churches and Sunday schools on
several Sundays, and the church we
attended had an enrolment of eight
hundred in Sunday school and a mems
bible class of four hundred and the
attendance that day was one hundred
and ninety eight in the mems class.
Such record is worthy of widest
mention, and we are doubly glad to
leave a dear sister and her family,
amidst such good people.
From this point, via Pittsburg, Pa,
we landed at Uniontown, the county
seat of Fayette county, this being our
native county, where we married, and
where our first child was born, and
from which we moved fifty three years
ago. this autumn. The great national
town pike, or national road built be-
fore any railroad was built across the
Blue Ridge mountains, running from
Wheeling, Va, to Cumberland, Md,
passes through this county and its
Capital. and over this old road many
Of the great statesmen of the early
days had passed. and stopped at this
most important point, which nestles
at the foot Of the Blue Ridge and in
sight Of Braddock's grave. In our
boyhood this was a country village
with no railroad in the county, with
modest courthouse, and a dozen resi- =
dences. The stage coaches, with their
relays of horses, and the big covered
wagons, then carrying loads of mer-
nhandFca hvr gHx nj fg~,
horses, and hauling such loads as then
seemed stupendous, but now the same
weight is being drawn through it's
streets in auto trucks and several
hundred automobiles are to be seen
flying along its crowded streets, fully
half Of them driven by ladies.
The city has now population of
near twenty thousand, with the largest
per capita of wealth ami banking cap
ital Of any city of its size in the state
and the First National bank, which
was one Of the very first National
banks established under the National
banking laws, with a capital of one
hundred thousand dollars, has now a
surplus of nearly a million and a half,
and boasts the distinction Of being
first in strength in the county, in the
state and in the United States" The
county is now the largest producer
Of coal and coke Of any like area in
the United States, and the entire
county is underlaid with that vein Of
coal best adapted to cooking. The
entire vein is in the hands of large
corporations, and coal shafts and coke
ovens are to be seen on about every
third farm of its whole area, and a
grouping Of lands so that each plant
has a body Of from one thousand to
two thousand acres, all of which will
be mined out from this one central
shaft, and though from two hundred
TO four hundred cokeovens are in blast
on each plant, and an output Of one
to three thousand tons CT coal is taken
out each day, we count that the sup
ply win last on an average for forty
years or more. These lands or the
coal underneath them. have been
bought for one hundred and fifty to
Twelve hundred dollars per acre, ana
while our fathers, fifty to seventy five
years ago had hard work to live and
educate their children, the sons and
Grandsons. who held on to the old
homesteads are now rich and living
1uxuriously in towns and cities with a
few only left as farmers.
On the homestead of my grand
father and afterward my father, and
on which I was born and where we
spent the first ha~py year of our
married life is now located a shaft
and a chain of four hundred coke
ovens, and the Identical spot on which
stood the house, in which l was born
nothing remains to mark the spot save
a majestic white oak, planted by my
grandmother's porter, and the top OF
which she cut off with a butcher knife
thus making it a wide spreading top
of full sixty feet, when in its prime
and now its base measures near six
teen feet in circumference.
OLD APPLE ORCHARD GONE.
The old apple orchards are gone
and no new ones replanted to take
their places. The old roads are
changed and railroads run up every
valley, and the trolleys climb over the
hills. Even the creek channels are