GreeneScene of the Past

GreeneScene of the Past

by Colleen Nelson

This photograph of the village of Brock was taken during its heyday, around the turn of the twentieth century before motorized vehicles broke the rural isolation and nearly everything a family needed was either raised locally or brought in by horse and wagon. Retired Shannopin miner Dwight Headley, who has this photo in his family album, lives in the little white house, partly hidden by a tree, just above the long flat roofed general store on the main road. The store was once owned by his great uncle Francis “Bub” Headley. “Back in the 1930s when I was a kid,” Dwight has memories of what Brock was like and has stories to tell about those who used to live there.

See that barn in the left hand corner? Dwight remembers Charlie Jones used to be a trapper and he “hung his pelts there. Some of them were polecat pelts too!” Local fox hunters used to get mad when Charlie trapped foxes but fur was just 1 another crop to be taken from the land. “The last polecat pelt I took I think I got twenty five cents for!” Dwight jokes. He remembers Bill and Mary Jones who lived upstairs at the store and that Charlie lived there too. Later, other Jones ran the store and turned part of it into a shop to repair vehicles. In 1968 the Rogers family bought the building from the Jones and son Don and wife Linda Rogers now live there. Brother Dave lives in the two-story house next door that can be seen in the old photo. Linda came out to say hi when Dwight and I stopped by and Don later emailed photos of the old postcards they found in the store, left over from the post office days. Notice that the steep hills around Brock were all cleared pasture in 1905, but by the 1920s hand farming was no longer profitable and nature has reclaimed its own.

The gas and oil boom of the late 1800s left its mark here – Dwight remembers an old well in the field behind the general store when he was growing up and opines that the six bedrooms upstairs could have been used as a hotel for teamsters who brought in the pipe and tanks for the oilfields. The barn across the road would have stabled the horses and there’s hitching rails in front of the store in the photo that are gone now, along with most of the barns, chicken coops and various outbuildings that once graced every rural backyard, even ones in town.

The numbers that are included on this photo are from Alvah Headlee’s book Valley Chapel, which was published in 1988 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Valley Chapel Church of Brock, where he was a lifelong member. He would have been a boy when this photo was taken, so I guess we can take his word for it!

“Brock about 1905: 1. Barn 2. Old Store It was washed down run, brought back and placed on 4 foot high stone wall 3. P.L. Barn 4. P.L. and Alice Whitlatch Headlee home 5. Store and dwelling. Minor Stephens owned and operated the store from about 1880 – 1900 6. Eli and Ruth Stephens Whitlatch home. 7. Eli barn 8. Sherm barn 9. Sherm and Haddie Moore Headlee home. 10. Sherm Blacksmith Shop. 11. Patterson or Walters home. 12. Washington and Joanna Steele Stephens home abandoned about 1904. 13. Road to Blacksville.”

If you have an interesting old photo from the area you’d like to share, just send it to: GreeneScene of the Past, 185 Wade Street, Waynesburg, PA 15370. Or email to: info@greenescene.com with GreeneScene Past in subject line. The GreeneScene Community Magazine can even scan your original in just a few minutes if you bring it to our office. We are particularly interested in photos of people and places in the Greene County area taken between 1950 and 1980, though we welcome previous dates, too.