I Love This Place

I Love this Place

BROCK, PA

by Colleen Nelson

Finding lost towns to write about is fun - get a map of Greene County and look for interesting names in bold letters scattered on the back roads from the Mon River to every part of this western corner of the state. I admit I chose Brock this month because it is on Rudolph Run and with Christmas just around the corner it made me laugh. Could this be the forgotten valley where Santa keeps his reindeer during the offseason? A quick look in the phone book lists some Rudolphs who still live in the county, so Santa is off the hook. Creeks were sometimes named after those who first explored the hills and valleys and towns tend to bear the names of a first settler. In the 1840s census for Perry and Wayne townships, Richard O. Brock heads the list and members of his family are on record as attending Valley Chapel Church of Brock since its earliest days.

Thanks to Alvah John Washington Headlee (1902- 1990) who was born on Rudolph Run and went on to be a teacher, chemical engineer, consultant to the gas and oil industry and later in life a dedicated historian and family genealogist, this story has some great historical facts to pass on about early days in the land along Dunkard Creek where the Mason Dixon Line was drawn in 1767.

In Alvah’s book “Valley Chapel - a United Methodist Church” he notes that settlements where Rudolph, Hacklebander and Shannon Runs follow the valleys to Dunkard Creek near Blacksville “began immediately after the running of the Mason Dixon Line between Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania.” The 25-foot wide “visto” cut by the survey party ended on Browns Hill and it took 115 men to axe it. “On their return home eastward they spread stories of Dunkard Valley which was still virgin forest and settlement began immediately as settlers followed the Mason-Dixon visto.” They began arriving in 1770 and some of the farms on Rudolph Run were patented as early as 1773.

Straddling the creek between Perry and Wayne townships, Brock was born to serve the community with a grist and saw mill, blacksmith shops, a couple of general stores and by 1838, a Methodist church.

Old postcard from Brock Post Office stamped 1905.

Brock began getting its mail from Spraggs in 1852 and by 1873 had its own post office in a small addition to the left side of Minor Stephens General Store. Its first and second postmasters were Daniel S. and John A. Brock. The post office closed in 1919 and all mail went to Spraggs, but a handful of postcards survived that are postmarked Brock, each a quaint glimpse into those first years of 20th century living.

Getting to Brock means leaving the main roads behind and jumping back a few centuries to a time when isolated crossroad towns were bustling community hubs.

The shape of the land has not changed although the times have. These steep hills and razor narrow ridges are not prime farmland, although those hardy British and German settlers who laid claim to the land made a go of it and raised generations of children to be hard working American farmers, craftsmen, teachers, preachers, soldiers, merchants and so much more.

Students attending the Joint School in Brock in 1915.

Rural agriculture reached its peak in the mid- 1800s, with sheep and cattle on every hillside and barnyards of pigs, chickens, gardens and workshops. Corn grew in patches on narrow creek floodplains and nearly every farmer was a skilled carpenter handyman, building cabins and later snug, well joined barns and houses.

When the 20th century came calling, the great grandchildren of these early settlers began leaving home for the industrial age. Brock gradually became a cozy cluster of well built old homes to be inherited by family members or sold off to newcomers seeking the quiet life, surrounded by the forests that reclaimed the cleared lands of the 1800s. Brock is only four miles from Blacksville and about eight miles from State Route 218. Interstate 79 in Kirby is ten winding miles away but be forewarned – the ridges surrounding Brock are steep!

I had heard that Jeffrey Baun, retired engineer and antique clock repairman lives in Brock, so I called him up. He told me why he chose to move to the country some 30 years ago and commute more than 100 miles a day to his job in Pittsburgh.

Jeff Baun inspecting a clock with Civil War era movement.

“Peace and quiet,” he admits. “I didn’t like the way the old neighborhoods were changing, so we moved to Brock. The paycheck I was drawing at my old job was three times what I could get here, so I commuted for 27 years. Now I fix old clocks. It’s something I enjoy doing on my own time.”

Does he know county historical handyman Bly Blystone? Of course! The two of them worked together to get the big clock atop the courthouse running and then fixed the old one that was discarded inside the cupola. Now it has a home at the Greene County Museum, with its inner workings dangling in an inside room for visitors to watch and listen to when it strikes the hour.

“I remember one little girl who heard it go off say “That’s so loud it hurts my eyes!” Jeff told me. He also said that one of his neighbors was another urban transplant - Gary Lecorte, “Cornsmoke”, who played Indigenous flute and was known for his performances at local festivals in the 1980s and ‘90s. “He moved and I haven’t heard from him since. He had lots of photos of Brock and knew the history. You could try talking to Dwight Headley. He’s lived here all his life.”

Luckily, the photos and the history Gary got from his neighbors were waiting for me when I contacted Dwight and stopped by for a visit.

If there’s a shortage of Brocks and Rudolphs in this little corner of Greene County these days, the Headlees and the Headleys certainly make up for it. Those last names are everywhere and the running family joke is that one family named all the boys with a lee and the girls with a ley. Since this was told to me with a grin, I’ll only pass it on as family lore. But no matter how you spell it, the name can be traced back through multiple generations of mothers, grandfathers, great-great uncles and aunts on nearly every family tree in the area. When I stopped by Valley Chapel Church on a Sunday to enjoy fellowship with these fine folks, I met Darrell Headley, who had even more photos and tales of life in Brock from back in the day to share. In the mid-1800s, schools were mandated by the state and Crayne School was built on a hill above the church. Kids from Brock walked up one side of the hill, kids from Wadestown walked up the other, Darrel told me. By the 1890s, that first school closed and Joint School was built between Brock and the church. Darrell’s old photo shows the first through eighth graders who went there in 1915. The school, solid as every other old building here, has been remodeled and is now the home of David King.

Dwight Headley and Linda Rogers in front of her home which was once a general store.

When I looked up Dwight Headley in the phone book before my first visit, I found two. What started out as a call to the wrong Dwight turned into a nice ending to the story of a community whose roots go back to the frontier. Dwight L. from Waynesburg used to go out with his father doing gravestone rubbings, looking for ancestors in old family cemeteries. Part of their mission was to find ancestor Ephraim Headley who served as a scout in the Revolutionary War. Dwight L. claims he’s not as interested in history as his father was, but sounded pretty happy when he told me. “It took years but we finally found his grave up on Shannon Run. You have to drive through a hayfield to get there.”

Ephraim Headley Grave.