Excerpt from 1919 Vs 1894: Or Blairsville's Marvelous Development in a Quarter of a Century

For a long, long time I had looked forward to this eleventh day of July, 1919, as being the one that would probably usher in for me one of the pleasantest experiences of my life. Twenty-five years before, just to the very day, I had left my old home at Blairsville and had gone to the island of Samoa to seek my fortune. During my absence I had, of course, heard frequently by letter from my friends and had constantly been in receipt of the evening courier, so that I had been kept as well informed of the great changes that had taken place in my native city as it is possible for one who has to depend altogether upon hearsay, and who is forced to rely largely upon his imagination in his attempt to picture in his mind's eye the new order of things.

Today as I sat in a luxurious palace car on the Atlantic and Pacific Air Line, which, by the way, had been constructed dur ing my absence, and extended from New York to San Francisco in a line as straight as the crow flies, my thoughts went back to the day on which I had left the old town. That was on the eleventh day of July, 1894, and at that time Blairsville was just about starting on its recovery from a period of several years prostration of business. Just at that time the West Penn shops had been removed to Allegheny, While all the freight runs hadbeen changed and the trainmen been forced to remove to either Allegheny or Conemaugh. The tin and sheet - mills had also closed down, while the Asa G. Neville glass works had been idle for almost two years with no prospect of an early resump tion of work. The prospect was rather a gloomy one, and about the only rift in the dark clouds that overcast the business sky were the establishment of the courier, Indiana county's first daily, which had occurred several months previous to my departure, and the prospective coming there of the Whitney Glass Company. I believe that at that time there was also some little talk of a large steel works that might possibly locate on a plot known as the Stouffer farm, about half a mile or so east of town.

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