Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1914-07-09

In the last numbe / told of the time
! when the Boas and Verbeke school
buildings stood forth in the freshness
of their youth as the me plus ultra"
or school architecture. Yet was not
their erection accomplished without
fierce opposition. The North Ward
School Board came in for a vast deal
OF censure, for the tribe of 'kickers'' is
no evolution of our present high
pressure civilization, but it's members
were as numerous n as clamorous
in the sixties of the last century as
now.
What in the name of sense" said
these croakers of a former day, lis
the use of building an enormous
schoolhouse up there in Billy Ver-
beke's marshes where nobody much
lives and where there won't be much
of a town for fifty years to Gomez"
But DR.. j. H. Eager, Daniel d. Boas,
A. Boyd Hamilton, DIR. c.. Seller,
Charles Muench and their associates
were not the men to be swayed from
the line of duty by impetuous clamor.
Soon the good seed they had sown
in the erection of these buildings bore
fruit in other portions of our city.
The Black Horse Tavern and the
Harris Park School
In the list of school buildings of
io'Hs publlSllCu III the asst per OF
this series, appears the name Harris
Park. But it was not the Harris Park
building of to-day, but a large, ram
bling frame building, on the same
site, that had been known for genera
tons as the Black Horse Tavern,
which had been bought some years
before for school purposes.
A famous hosiery was this same
Black Horse Tavern in the days when
the river was brisk with arks and
ratts; when the Conestoga wagons
filled the pixies, being ferried over the
S~usquehanna at this point as they
wended their slow way to distant Phil
adelphia; when other C~onestogas. filed
with household stuff" were crossing
the river here, pressing on, from thick
~ settled Chester, and Lancaster, and
Berks, to found new homes and WOO
fortune amid the valleys of the Blue
Rldge or along the headwaters of the
ONO; when daily the drovers were
conducting vast herds of cattle
through Harrisburg on the wearisome
march to the seaboard cities.
one of the Black Horse landlords
Oh this olden time was a certain Simeon
Westfall. who had once been among
the staunchest of the teamsters who
crossed the Alleghenies to far away
- - lItCig Il SuII1N
lass, sported j~oyously through the
halls of the busy hotel. A number of
years ago the Harrisburg papers
~chronicled the celebration of her
golden wedding as the wife of
Emanuel S. German.
In 1874 the former hotel building
was no longer in the days of it's glory.
In its dilapidation it had become both
w~oe-begone and dangerous. A very
few years later the good seed of ex-
ample sown in the erection of the Boas
and 'Verbeke buildings bore fruitage
In Its disappearance forever, to be re-
placed by the present commodious
Harris Park school building.
A Tribute to the Harris Park Teachers
But the teachers in this relic of for
mer days labored as honestly and
earnestly with the sturdy lads and
smiling lassies of the First Ward as if
they had been located in a palace with
every convenience that the builders
art could give them. These teachers
in 1874 were Misses Angie NJ. Patton
and Lizzie Buehler, both married sub
sequentiy to prominent citizens of
Harrisburg; Miss Annie NJ. Freaner,
afterwards the wife of Lieutenant
Howard D. Potts, himself one of the
most efficient school directors Harris
burg ever had; John l.. Bates. Isaac
Lloyd and Frederick U. Worley.
The three gentlemen last mentioned.
after long and honorable careers as
educators, nave all passed over the
river. Mr.. Bates at the time of his
death was an alderman in our CITY.
While Mr.. Worley a long held a re-