Around the time she was arrested for intoxicated driving, Emma Hilke and her husband, Emil, took over Eli Shifman’s grocery store on West North street. Emma had been born in America, to German immigrant parents. Emil and Eli had come to America from Germany when they were young men. It was July 1944, and it looked like the war was almost over. All three were waiting for news of cousins, aunts and uncles in Europe—Hilkes […]
Charlie Tilden’s great grandfather, Charles, was born a slave on a southern tobacco plantation. He was over fifty before he was freed at the end of the civil war and immediately came north to New Castle, where he lived for the remaining thirty years of his life, long enough to raise a son, Charles Jr—who worked in downtown barber shops and was arrested every so often for burglary, drunkenness, gambling and carrying concealed knives and […]
The Bowens, an old couple who lived next door to the Clover Farm store on East Washington street, were awoken at almost two in the morning by the sound of someone prowling around outside. Mr Bowen went out with a flashlight to see what was going on while his wife called the police. Samuel Webber and Frank Vanasco—two boys in the middle of their last year of high school—had broken into the store using a […]
In the twenties, hundreds of thousands of people visited Cascade park every summer from across western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio to enjoy its amusements, its man-made lake and its carefully presented scenery. The park suffered during the depression, never to regain its former popularity, but the second week of August, 1946, was busier than normal for that period. Large family picnics were held every day by bible study classes, the Lawrence County Red Cross chapter, […]
Blackberries sold for about 25 cents a quart in the summer of 1921, when Frank Heckathorn and his cousins made a few dollars a day collecting them from the roadsides north of New Castle and selling them in the city. On the afternoon of July 15th, they had driven some miles out on the Pulaski road and Frank was searching for huckleberries in the bushes and trees by a lane on the old Greer farm when he […]
Three hundred and nine bottles of whiskey were carried out of the state liquor store on Liberty street at three in the morning on 8th May 1945. The pinch bar that had been used to force the door was the only trace left by the burglars. A month later, Archie Shoup, the chief of police in Bessemer, ten miles west of New Castle, was making a patrol at three in the morning when he saw […]
The police spent almost a week hiding upstairs in the grain storehouse on Hugh Martin’s farm, fifteen miles south of New Castle in Big Beaver township, in the hope that the thieves who had taken a hundred bushels of corn would return for more. It was the middle of January. Freezing mist filled the valleys. Deep snow covered the hills. The officers were not permitted to light a fire to warm themselves. On the fourth […]
A Negro speakeasy on Mahoning avenue, run by a man known as Little Alabama, was raided by police in August 1933 in an effort to recover a fine watch that had been stolen from a white customer while he was spending time with a prostitute named Irene Smith. Eight people were arrested, including Ad Hambrick. All were released a few days later, having revealed nothing about the whereabouts of the watch, which was never recovered. Ad […]
A broken eardrum kept Harold Geary out of the war. His friend, Ross Paswell, had been sent home after having been found unsuitable for naval service. They robbed the Wilson café in Ellwood City at gunpoint in January, 1945. The $50 that they took from the till lasted them four days, at the end of which they and their girlfriends were arrested. The women were given short sentences in the workhouse; the men were sent […]
On 25th January 1945, when Ross Paswell’s former comrades in the American navy were firing thousands of shells into the hillsides of Iwo Jima, destroying Japanese installations that were blocking the advance of the marine corps in the early days of a battle that would end the lives of twenty-five thousand men, Ross, who had been found unsuitable for naval service the year before, was robbing a café in Ellwood City, along with a man […]
Small Town Noir 