Boalsburg remembers history

Mike Dawson

- For the CDT

BOALSBURG — Margaret Kowalski was 10 when her brother, Andrew Chalan, a hatch gunner in the 67th Squadron, was killed in action in World War II. His plane was shot down near Grandcamp, France, on Jan. 14, 1944.

CDT photo/Melissa Doss

The Civil War-era Marine Corps League Color Guard, followed by other historical Boalsburg re-enactors, walk Monday to the Boalsburg Cemetery to begin the village’s 145th Memorial Day service. Emma Hunter, Elizabeth Myers and Sophie Keller walked to the cemetery and began the custom of decorating soldiers’ graves in 1864, an event on which Boalsburg bases its claim as the birthplace of Memorial Day.

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Sixty-five years later, Kowalski still remembers the anguish her parents went through. Her brother, 20, was too young when he died, she said, and her parents were beside themselves with grief.

“You remember that,” said Kowalski on Monday, talking from a corner on the Diamond in the center of Boalsburg before the annual re-enactment of the first Memorial Day in 1864.

Those memories of her older brother and the appreciation for other fallen soldiers keep her coming to Boalsburg each Memorial Day.

“I come, I always come,” said Kowalski, of Ferguson Township. “It’s important that you remember the soldiers and their memories. We wouldn’t be standing here right now” if it weren’t for them.

Kowalski was one of hundreds of people who watched the re-enactors parade down Church Street early Monday evening to observe the first Memorial Day. The reenactment then filled into the cemetery where three women decorated the graves of fallen soldiers on a fall day in 1864.

One of those three women was Elizabeth Myers, who was decorating the grave of her son Amos Myers, who died in the Battle of Gettysburg.

A descendant of the Myers, Ned Myers Brown, made his first Memorial Day trip to Boalsburg on Monday. Brown is the great-great- great-nephew of Elizabeth Myers, and he remembers a gun at his grandmother’s house in Altoona that had the name Amos Myers engraved on it.

“I used to play with that gun when I was a kid,” said Brown, 61, of Waynesboro.

Not long after, his family told him that the Myers were connected to the Memorial Day tradition in Boalsburg.

The gun was donated to the Pennsylvania Military Museum but isn’t on display, he said.

Brown was acknowledged during the cemetery service that included a memorial to the first observance of Memorial Day and the decoration of soldiers’ graves, this year by the Girl Scouts and Brownies of Boalsburg.

During the service, Boal Mansion Museum CEO and Harris Township Supervisor Christopher Lee looked back at the history of Boalsburg, which celebrated its 200th anniversary this year from October 2008 through May.

A vibrant economic center in the early 19th century, Boalsburg was far from the “quaint and quiet” village that Centre Countians know today, he said.

The town was laid out in October 1808, and lots were sold on May 30, 1809. The village grew up because of its location on the main road between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, which was then called Pitt Street and now is known as Main Street. Boalsburg also prospered because of its proximity to the strong iron-producing areas of central Pennsylvania and Centre Furnace. But after 1850, railroads bypassed Boalsburg, Centre Furnace shut down, and the village lost the skilled artisans it had thrived on in the early 1800s, Lee said.

That’s when the image of a “quaint and quiet” town took over. Efforts in the 1960s to recognize the rich heritage of Boalsburg culminated with the formation of the town’s heritage conservancy in 1973.

Through all that time, Lee said, Boalsburg has been able to retain its uniqueness, such as its town square and street and alley system, and he hopes the village does in the future. He hopes Boalsburg will become the “pinnacle of success” and will be known “throughout the world as a model American village,” he said.

Lee is also leading an effort to document the story of Boalsburg “from folklore to fact-based history.”

Patrick Miller, a Penn State junior, interned for Lee doing research on census data and deeds in Boalsburg.

Miller did his research in the four counties that Boalsburg was once a part of — Cumberland, Northumberland, Mifflin and Centre. Among his findings include no documents that show the Boal Mansion was built in 1789, as folklore says, but rather in 1798.

Memorial Day activities consisted of the usual carnival fare and rides, arts and crafts booths, tours of the Boal Mansion Museum, cook-outs and people watching from the homes along Main Street, and music in the square.