Free Forgotten Tales of Pennsylvania by Thomas White Page B

him a stagecoach to take him back north. He slipped out of the coach and took off into the woods. Several men chased after him. After stopping to sleep for a brief time, he woke up and stumbled onto the Wigton farm. James Wigton was helping at his father’s farm and was not home. Mohawk entered the kitchen and surprised Margaret Wigton. For some unknown reason, he stabbed her. Margaret ran out of the house and into the yard, but Mohawk followed and beat her to death with a rock. Instead of running, Mohawk reentered the house and went upstairs, where he proceeded to kill the five Wigton children, all of whom had been sleeping.
    When the murder was discovered, search parties were deployed, and it wasn’t long until Mohawk was in custody. He was in held in jail for six months while he awaited trial. During that time, he confessed to the crime and converted to Christianity. Mohawk himself had been married, and his son became ill and died while he was in jail.
    The trial was held in December of the same year and lasted only a few days. The jury took less than an hour to deliver a guilty verdict. Mohawk was hanged in the Butler County jail yard on March 22, 1844.
    T HE C OLLAPSE OF THE B OYDSTOWN D AM
    The Boydstown Dam was located along Connoquenessing Creek in Butler County. Large amounts of precipitation caused problems at the dam on August 28, 1903. Originally constructed in 1897, the structure was only six years old when the top of the dam was eroded by the rushing creek. Eventually, the water pushed open a 140-foot-long hole along the top. A 30-foot wave rushed down the creek, flooding parts of the city of Butler and other nearby towns. Luckily, word had been relayed by telephone and evacuations had already begun. Some people had to be rescued by firefighters, but there was only one fatality. It happened later that day when someone attempted to swim across the swollen creek.
    T HE D ORLAN D EVIL
    Chester County had its own version of the Jersey Devil appear in the 1930s. While working to the north of Dorlan, two men sighted a jumping creature that did not resemble any animal or human. Both men had experience with local wildlife and insisted that the thing they saw was nothing identifiable. A search party was sent out, but no trace of the creature was found.
    In 1937, a millworker, his wife and a female friend had a close encounter with the creature one night in July. They were driving down a road just outside Dorlan when their headlights fell on the beast. They described it as being like a giant kangaroo, with long black hair and terrifying giant red eyes. The creature jumped across the road and into the swamp in one leap. They went home and called about a dozen friends to form a search party. Again, nothing was found.
    C HRISTMAS T REE S URVIVED F IRE
    A fire tore through the home of George Burg in Philadelphia on New Year’s Day 1952. Most of the first floor was destroyed, except for a small corner where the Christmas tree stood. Often live trees are the source of fires around the holiday season. In this case, it was the only thing to survive.
    T HE “Q UIETEST F IRE ”
    The town of Bedford was having its annual Halloween Parade on the evening of October 31, 1955, when a call came into the fire station. Stanley Stroup smelled smoke in his home in Bedford Heights and was unable to locate the source. Because the parade had closed several main streets and there were people everywhere, the fire chief decided not to use the sirens. He feared that the sirens might cause panic or unnecessary traffic congestion, and there were already firemen at the station. The fire trucks quietly drove from the station to the home, located the small fire in the wall and extinguished it. No one knew about the incident until the Daily Bedford Gazette ran the story of the “quietest fire” the next day.
    K ILLED IN A G RAIN E LEVATOR
    William M’Aninch had been working in the Red Bank flour mill in Bethlehem for about