Connellsville

It was a very scenic drive leaving the State College area and heading for Connellsville just south of Pittsburg. Beautiful green, rolling hills with a touch of early Fall color.

We stayed at another large KOA getting ready to celebrate Halloween this weekend. It is on the Youghiogheny river in a hollow. A very scenic setting. The weather was cold but fair while we were there.

Morning mist on Youghiogheny river

My Mom’s family, Mary & Michael Kovach, immigrated here in the early 1910s from Checklosovakia. My nephew Adam told me he thought they could be Rusyn Americans. According to a person I met, a lot of Slovakian immigrants came to this area as miners.

The immigrants were of an Eastern Orthodox religious background. A Byzantine Church was built in the late 1880s about 5 miles outside of Connellsville in Dunbar township. This is where the 1930 census has my mother living with her older brothers and sisters. The groundskeeper at the church told me it was the first Catholic church built out of stone in the United States. It was striking (and a bit out of place) with the onion dome towers.

St Stephen Byzantine Church in Dunbar Township Pennsylvania

Behind the church was a larger, well-tended cemetery with the graves of her mother, father, and several of her older brothers and sisters.

St Stephen Byzantine Church Cemetary

Mom came from a large family with 10 brothers and sisters. Her mother passed from complications of the birth of the last child, George. The father, for whatever reason, did not participate in their upbringing. This left the older children to take care of the younger ones. Most of the younger children were girls and married, and left the area like my Mom.

My grandfather Michael. He died at 82 in a car accident. My mother only met him once (after she was older) that I know about.
My grandmother Mary. She died following the birth of the youngest child. My mother was not even 2 years old.
Oldest brother Michael and his wife. He was born in Czechoslovakia and stayed behind for several years before moving to the United States. Mom told me he didn’t like it here but stayed anyway.
He had a large family. One of his daughters visited an area in the Ukraine where she thought they came from but was unable to find anything. It remains a bit of a controversy as to their actual origin but all of my geological research points to Checklosovkia.
Oldest Sisters Ann and Helen. They never married and raised their younger brothers and sisters along with the eldest son Michael. Ann worked at the church for her whole life.
Older brother James. He never married and I believe worked for the railroad.

Like in Snow Shoe, I tried to make a connection with these ancestors while there. Wondering what their lives were like in this beautiful mountain area.


Connellsville itself was a large town – almost a small city – with a lot of traffic. It sits right on the river which makes for some scenic views. I visited the waterfront and learned the Great Allegheny Passage, a 150-mile hiking and biking route, runs through Connellsville.

Youghiogheny river in Connellsville

This ends the ‘roots’ part of the program! Tomorrow we make our way south (through the remnants of Ian πŸ™ƒ) through the Appalachians over three days and a long stop at my friends Bill and Laura Zweigbaum in Tennessee.

Snoe Shoe

It was a quick trip to Bellefonte Pennsylvania for two nights while I started the ‘roots’ part of our adventure. A couple of hundred miles west of New York, this area was opened to commercial logging followed by coal mining in the 1800s.

We stayed at a nice campground that obviously catered to Penn State football fans in the Fall. A lot of unattended large rigs are covered with Penn State hoo-ha. They had a game the coming weekend so a few early birds were there. The facility was very nice, had a nice pond next to some horse pastures. It also had a rather elaborate set of tracks for motocross bike racing.

Pond at Bellefonte KOA
Horse pastures near Bellefonte KOA

My 2 x great grandfather Thomas Tubridy immigrated with his young family to the mountains just north of here in what is now the Burrough of Snoe Shoe. His youngest son, Thomas Anthony, was a successful coal miner and his son Edward Bernard – my grandfather – went to college at Penn State nearby to our RV park. More detail is on my Tubridy page.

It was a steep climb to the exit right off of Instatestate 80 for Snoe Shoe. I identified three different places in my genealogy research: Snoe Shoe, Moshannon, and the village of Gillentown which lies in between. This is where my grandfather lived with his father and two aunts in the 1900 census.

I imagined my grandfather making his way down to State College where he attended Penn State in the 1910s. Did he ride a horse or have a carriage? How long did it take?

Gillentown was listed as my grandfather’s residence in the 1900 census

St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetary is located near the Catholic Church in Snow Shoe. Two generations of Tubridys and some of their children are buried here. The first generation headstones were in pretty bad shape but the second generation had held up very well. The cemetery was well kept up.

It was moving to touch the headstones knowing that my ancestors had once touched them too.

Thomas Tubridy – First Generation born in Ireland
First Generation Tubridy Family
2nd Generation Tubridy – Thomas Anthony. Separate markers for himself, his second wife, and his eldest daughter.
Grand Dad’s younger (half) brother James and his wife. This grave seemed to be visited more often – one of my relatives? From my research, he did not have any male descendants.
Sister of Great GrandFather Thomas Anthony. I don’t think she ever married.
Frank (or Francis) was 2 x Great Grandfather Thomas’s eldest son. Frank was born in Ireland right before they immigrated and had many descendants, including the only males other than our family. He was Thomas Anthony’s 12 older brother.

Moshannon is an unincorporated community about 3 miles outside Snoe Shoe to the northwest. Right before you get into Moshannon is the village of Gillentown. There is a large facility here that is part of the Snoe Shoe Rails to Trails Association. This provides access to the old railroad bed that was vital to the extraction of lumber and coal. Membership in the association allowed the use of the trails for ATVs.

I imagined if my ancestors would ride the train into the coal mining areas.

Gillentown Trail Access. This is the old railroad that brought lumber and coal out of the mountains.

Moshannon has a Post Office and to my surprise a small memorial to the veterans that fought in World War One – including my grandfather Edward. Like the cemetery, the monument was well kept up.

Moshannon WW I Memorial with Grand Dad’s name

I imagined being there when the locals including my family were there to see its dedication.

Moshannon WW I Memorial with Grand Dad’s name

I was planning to visit a museum the Lions David House museum in Snow Shoe, but alas no one showed up at the time it was supposed to be open. It has a collection of memorabilia and books on local history – it would have been interesting to see what was in there.

I spent time driving around. It is rural, to say the least. Mostly nice brick ranch houses like I remember my grandparents had. Felt pretty red πŸ”΄.

Snow Shoe had a pizzeria, a discount beer store, and a laundromat. There is a nice Catholic Church next to the Cemetary and a Firehouse / Community Center. There was a large veterans memorial next to the Firehouse. There is a very large area with baseball fields and a pool at the edge of town. Right outside of town next to the Interstate is a large FedEx facility.

I felt I had accomplished what I was expecting to create a better connection to my past. Makes sense given the fact that it’s really all we have, and all of that is responsible for me being here, now. Pretty ethereal if you ask me.

Dog is good 🐢

Three Mile Island

As a brash young man, I decided I would put my huge brain to use in solving the world’s energy problem. Of course, I had to do something completely different so I decided to become a nuclear engineer. I went to graduate school in Seattle where the campus not only had a nuclear reactor but it was housed in a glass building for all to see. Seriously, it’s a landmark now.

Not a full year into my studies the first large-scale accident at a commercial plant in the United States occurred at Three Mile Island. So much to my surprise when I noticed it along my route and I stopped by for a visit.

Three Mile Island

I remember flying with my professor in his private plane to the nearest NRC office in Portland Oregon to be briefed. The accident occurred in Unit 2 which has been shut down since the accident. Unit 1 remained in operation until 2019. Both are being decommissioned now – decade-long processes.

Old Training Center looks haunted!

For me, it was a short sharp shock that essentially ended my career before it started. The more I learned about the industry the less I wanted to work in the field. I think the final straw was when I heard that nuclear engineers had the highest rate of suicides of all engineering degrees (probably not true πŸ˜‰).

No Nukes!