16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, April 4, 1911: Not very much for today. It still continues to be so chilly and so dreary. To increase these conditions it had to rain this afternoon. I have to write about the weather, when I have nothing else to write. I don’t believe Thursday is going to be the beautiful day I want it to be!
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma was hoping for nice weather on Thursday because it would be the last day of school. The commencement ceremony for her sister and other seniors at McEwensville High School will also take place that day.
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Today I’d like to tell you about the best source of information about McEwensville and the surrounding area that I’ve found:
Watsontown, McEwensville, and Delaware Township: A Real Photo Postcard History by Robert Swope Jr. (2006; Publisher: Heritage Trails, PO Box 184, New Hope VA 24469; phone: 540-363-4537).
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words—and this book is a wonderful example of the power of photos. I keep my copy on a shelf next to the reclining chair in my den. Often I flop into the chair after a long day and find myself reaching for this book—even though I’ve previously looked at every page many times before. The photos pull me back to the simpler days a hundred years ago and I feel like I can almost sense what it was like in McEwensville when Grandma was writing this diary.
This book contains lots of post cards from the early 20th century and is absolutely the best resource that I’ve found on the McEwenville of Grandma’s day. There are descriptive captions for all of the post cards in the book, and it also contains an interesting and informative history of McEwensville.
In the early 1900s real picture post cards were very popular. Back then people were very interested in sharing the sites and activities of their towns with others.
This blog has given me the opportunity to meet via technology many wonderful people. One such person is Robert Swope Jr., the author of this book. I contacted Bob and he very generously allowed me to reproduce a few photos from the book. Most of them are on the Setting page. (I updated the page last night—so if you haven’t looked at it recently be sure to check it out.)
I would encourage anyone who is interested in what McEwensville was like in the early part of the 20th century to read this book. I purchased my copy at the Packwood Museum Gift Shop in Lewisburg. It is also available at other stores in central Pennsylvania.
The book can also be purchased by calling the phone number listed above or from Bob’s Ebay store. Just go to Ebay and search using the word “McEwensville”. The listing for the book will pop up.
A Hundred Years Ago 
Thanks for sharing a family member memories of years gone by. My ancestors were also from
McEwensville too (Guffy,Armstrongs,Dentlers) for
some of them it was known as Pine Grove and also
Turbot Twp was in areas where Delaware Twp is
now What was the McEwensville HS? My g-g-g-g
uncle was a founder of the McEwensville Academy.
According to The History of the McEwensville Schools: 1800-1958 (2000) by Thomas Kramm, McEwensville Academy was founded in 1852 and was a private classical academy. About 1871 it was converted to a public school with the primary grades on the first floor of the building and the high school on the second floor. The high school closed in 1921–and at that time the elementary expanded to fill the entire building with grades 1-4 on the first floor and grades 5-8 on the second. The school closed in 1958.
So happy to have found your book today at the McEwensville flea market! Ordered another from Espy and am looking for 2 more as gifts. The Golds were my Grandma Helen Callenberger’s family and I was so excited to see their pictures. My Grandfather C.G. Yost owned a trucking company on Main Street and my Grandfather George Callenberger owned an auto mechanics shop also on Main Street. We have had a hard time finding info on the Callenbergers past a couple of generations, though. Thank you for compiling this history.
Thanks for stopping by. I agree the book is fabulous. It does such such a wonderful job of telling the story of McEwensville and the families who lived there. I’m going to forward your message to the author, Robert Swope. I’m sure that he’ll appreciate it.