Joan Blank
Contributor to Historic Williamsport
About the Author
Joan Wheal Blank, editor and amateur family historian, grew up near Hughesville in a rural farmhouse built by her great-grandfather in the early 1880s. She graduated from Hughesville High School in 1974, and received a BA degree in English Education from Lock Haven. After living for over 20 years in Connecticut, where she taught middle and high school English, and worked in the publishing field as an editor and writer, she moved back to central PA and has lived in Montgomery since 2003. She works in the Lycoming County Office of Human Resources and Veterans Affairs.
Hughesville excerpts
In this birds-eye view of Hughesville, a field near the edge of town is filled with standing shocks of corn. Corn binders were used to cut the stalks of corn and tie bundles together into shocks with the ears of corn still attached. These shocks would be positioned like a teepee so that the ears could dry. (Courtesy of Elizabeth “Sis” Rogers Knyrim.)
Getting to the fair was determined by the most convenient and available mode of transportation available. It could have been a cart pulled by an ox, as seen on the front cover, or it could have been a wagon or carriage pulled by a horse or two, but by the 1930s, the parking lot at the fair would look like this – filled with motorized automobiles. (Courtesy of Kenneth D. Poust.)
Kenneth D. Poust Sr. is pictured here at the door of his drugstore, which he established on October 25, 1925 at 17 North Main Street. Although the store and the Siegfried Hotel (formerly the American House Hotel) next door were separated by only a two-foot air space, the store survived with only water and smoke damage after fire completely destroyed the hotel in 1931. (Courtesy of Kenneth D. Poust Jr.)
The W. & N.B. train depot at Hughesville which was located a block behind Main Street, was the major point for deliveries and travel between the 1880s and the 1930s. (Courtesy of East Lycoming Historical Society.)
Also known as the Biddle Bridge (no doubt named for early town councilman Gersham Biddle), this covered bridge on Water Street at the east end of town was replaced in the early 1920s with a cement bridge during a road paving project which was done at the time.(Courtesy of Kenneth D. Poust.)
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