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TRAGEDIES OF THE FOREST
CHAPTER XV
EVERY COUNTRY has its unexplained tragedies, and Brady Township was
no exception. How and when these tragedies occurred was never
explained, and they were only known when the skeletons were found.
Some time after 187o, a human skeleton was found buried in the woods
on Luthersburg branch near the Thomas Keene farm, by men building a
log road. The only answer was, "he must have been a peddler murdered
for his pack." Another skeleton was found up Pentz Run at the root
of a stump, about three and a half miles from DuBois. Of course this
was an unsolved mystery. Later, in the vicinity of Troutville, the
bones of a human being were found.
A Coroner had been elected from DuBois, and he did not propose being
in the same class with the man who had been elected many years
before, who wrote a lawyer in Clearfield as follows "Dear Sir: I
have been elected Coroner of Clearfield County and I wish to know
what the emoluments and honors of the office are." The lawyer wrote
below "emoluments nothing, honors a damned sight less." The. Coroner
immediately got some of his friends from DuBois for a jury, and
called them into the woods below Troutville to view the skeleton. Of
course the only verdict of the jury could be that it was the remains
of an unknown human being, and no way to account for the death. But
the poor Coroner, when he tried to collect his costs for himself and
his jury from Clearfield County, bumped up against a set of hard
headed County Commissioners who refused to pay, and he likewise
found "the emoluments of the office as nothing."
The greatest cyclone that ever visited the country passed over on
the 4th day of July, 1860, and it is best described by George C.
Kirk as follows :— "I have your letter of the 18th instant, making
inquiry about the cyclone that passed north of where the City of
DuBois is now located. I remember this storm very well, being a
little more than twenty three years old, when this great storm
passed through what was then known as the northwestern part of Brady
Township, crossing Narrows Creek, about one-half mile above the
present location of the park on said creek.
"This cyclone passed through the townships named on July 4th, 1860,
and started in Armstrong County, where it had done an immense amount
of damage to property. In the eastern part of Jefferson, and the
northern part of Clearfield Counties, the course of the storm was
through a vast forest of virgin timber, and everything in the path
of the storm was leveled to the ground.
"This storm crossed the Erie Pike, at the top of the hill west of
what is now known as Reynoldsville. From thence it dropped down
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