Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: July 1988 Volume 26 Number 3, Pages 83–89

Remembering Berwyn in the Late 1920s

George Moran

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[George Moran was born in Berwyn on August 13, 1909, grew up in the Berwyn area, and is a graduate of Tredyffrin-Easttown High School in the Class of 1928. After graduation he attended the University of Baltimore, and earned a law degree. He now lives in California, where he was in personnel administration with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology for more than 20 years before retiring.

Of these recollections of Berwyn, he wrote: "This all comes back to me in my sleep; when I awake my old brain goes back 50 years or so. Before I forget, I get up and head for my typewriter, warm up my two fingers, and start putting down what I recall the best way I can. ... My only desire is that it will help our great-grandchildren to know how life was back in those years."]

We start at the entrance to the grammar school and library on Bridge Avenue. [The grammar school was torn down many years ago, and the library -- later the Red Cross building -- has now been converted into offices.] The school was enclosed with an iron fence.

Across the street was Williams' butcher shop, with a shed in back where they slaughtered the animals. My father used to sell his calves to this shop.

(My father, John Joseph Moran, was born in County Roscommon, Ireland. He came to the United States in 1878, alone, at the age of 15, and landed in Philadelphia.

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Not long afterwards he met and married Sarah Hutchinson, who was born in County Tyrone, and was employed as a waitress at the old Paoli Inn that burned down early in this century. They lived in a little frame house in back of the Wayne homestead. In 1902 my dad was employed by William Wayne as a gardener and keeper of the greenhouse at Waynesborough. Seven years later, when Wayne discontinued his greenhouse, he left Waynesborough and obtained employment as a gardener on the George Burnham estate, known as Barberry Hill. Burnham was a vice president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia. My parents moved to a house on South Leopard Road, part of the estate, and it was there that my brother Charley and I were raised. When the estate was later purchased by R. E. Thompson, a Philadelphia banker, my father continued to work for him until he, my father, died on February 6, 1942.)

Up the street from the butcher shop were several new homes. One of them was owned by the Dalys, who worked for the P.R.R. Next to the market, "Pud" McQuiston had his real estate office; he was also a Justice of the Peace.

On the corner was the old Acme store, where Austin Burns was the manager. He later married my math teacher, Miss Martha Ranck. (The Acme store later located in part of the old Lichtenfeld department store.)

Across an alley was where the "horse doctor", Dr. J.C. Bartholomew, lived. He had a son Herbert, who was a friend of my older brother Charley. I believe he was in the gum business.

Next was the home and office of Dr. Aiken -- everybody knew "Doctor Tom".

Another "Doc" was "Doc" Walker, who had the drug store. His wife Agnes also had a license to fill perscriptions. They had three sons -- Frank, Jim, and Wells -- and three daughters -- Mildred, Ruth, and Merle. Wells lost part of one of his fingers trying to cut a chip of ice off the ice wagon. "Doc" Walker -- his real name was Frank -- was one of the big followers of the T.E.H.S. football team; he always sat on the bench, and also acted as the master of ceremonies at the football banquets. He liked to tell stories on himself and his family. One story I still recall: In those days the drug store purchased empty bottles -- vanilla, citrate of magnesium bottles -- to use them to fill prescriptions. As the story goes, one day Dick Barsby took a basket of empty bottles into the store and "Doc" purchased them, giving Dick the money for them. About fifteen minutes later Dick was back with another basketful. "Doc" said to him, "Why didn't you bring in all those bottles at one time?" And Dick told him, "I am bringing them in as fast as Frank [the druggist's son] pushes them out the basement window!"

Crossing the street [Knox Avenue] we pass the home of B.R. Hickman, the undertaker. His wife had a millinery shop in the front of the house, and he had a carpentry shop in the rear, where he built the caskets. The story was that B. R. used to walk down the pike in the morning, to the post office, and "to check out the old and the infirm" for future customers.

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Back of the carpentry shop was a stable, and the house where the Barsbys lived. Mr. Barsby was the town's "honey dipper". He had a dump wagon with a big barrel, and he used to clean out cesspools and outhouses. He also plowed the roads with his snow plow, and did other odd jobs with his team of horses. He had a daughter Phoebe who was a school teacher: I was in her 4th grade. Her brother Richard sat in front of me. Dick was subject to fits, and had one in class one day that really scared us kids. But he overcame them and was a good athlete, playing second base on my high school baseball team - I was captain in 1928 - and playing guard on the football team.

Next was the center of communications: the store of Henry O. Garber. His store was on two levels. On the top level Mrs. Garber kept a variety store - threads, wool, etc., candy -- and down the steps was the newsstand -- papers, magazines, tobacco, sporting goods, baseballs, bats, gloves, firearms, bicycle tires, tubes, etc. Henry was a sponsor of the Berwyn baseball team in the Main Line League. It was our family ritual on Sunday, after church, to stop at Garber's and pick up the Sunday paper and a bag of Sensation for my dad, and then to drop down to the ice house and pick up 25 pounds of ice for our ice box. (In the summer we'd get 50 pounds.)

Next door there was a barber shop operated by a black man named Suthern, who catered only to the white trade. Then there was a little grocery store, and the bakery.

Crossing Waterloo Avenue, there was the site of the original store in Berwyn. Up Waterloo Road was another little variety store, and then the Odd Fellows' Hall.

Next was Clarence Achuff's newsstand and "hang-out" for the teenagers. Watching the girls and the Fords go by was the main pasttime. Clarence was also a devout follower of all the T.E.H.S. teams, making as many of the games as he could in his wheel chair.

Across the Lincoln Highway was a stone marker - "19 M. to P." - and a flagpole and the veterans' plaque. Then there was an insurance office and a barber shop, and a shoemaker, as you came off the bridge. During the Depression you could get a haircut for 25 cents. The barber also had a farm in the valley -- and he must have learned his trade shearing sheep! With his hand dippers, he cut ten hairs and pulled out five. It took his hair cuts about three weeks to grow back. Washington I. Smith had the insurance and real estate office. He was highly regarded in town; his son-in-law later took over the business.

Across from the bridge was an ice cream store, with apartments over it. The Trainer family lived in one of them. Horace Trainer was a football player on the 1919 T.E.H.S. team when my brother Charley was captain. He then received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. Next was the post office.

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On the corner [at Main Avenue] was the Lichtenfeld building. I can recall faintly Karl Lichtenfeld stopping by our home on South Leopard Road and selling my mother some pots and pans when I was just a little boy. He was on foot, with pots and pans carried all over his back. Some years later he built this building and had a department store. I recall my mother buying me my first pair of new shoes -- not hand-me-downs -- at his store. The building later was occupied by the Acme.

On the other corner was Boyles' market, then Supplee Hardware, and then the bank. Next was Fell's garage and Gallagher's shoe store. Berwyn had two garages -- Fell's, across from the Fritz lumber yard, a Buick agency; and Bill Trowill's, at the other end of town, across from the primary school. (In 1941 I went to work for the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Personnel at $35.00 a week. Later I went to $45.00 a week and was putting in a lot of overtime as I was out on the road recruiting. On my birthday, I purchased a new Plymouth from Bill Trowill and gave him a note for the balance. Bill turned the note over to the Berwyn National Bank. A week or so later Charley Gibbs called me and told me that the bank wasn't happy with my note because I was subject to the draft. Incidentally, my father was a stockholder of the Bank at that time. Well, three months later I paid off the loan -- and neither Charley nor the Bank so much as said congratulations or thank you.)

A few yards up the road from Bill Trowill's garage was a store and business operated by a black man named Valentine. He was considered the leader of the black people in Tredyffrin, and had connections with the Republican officials in the Court House in West Chester. He had the contract to supply school buses to the Tredyffrin Township schools.

Back at the eastern end of Berwyn: across from Fell's was the William H. Fritz Lumber & Coal Yard, where my friend Warden McLees was a clerk and weigh master. Another man also worked in the office, but I can't recall his name. He had two daughters and lived near the grammar school. We used to buy coal and feed from Fritz, and every month, when we paid the bill, he would give us a cigar to give to my dad.

Down the road a short distance was the ice house. It was a two-story brick structure.

As I recall, there were two blacksmith shops in Berwyn in my early years. One was the Rogers shop, on Waterloo Avenue, which later became a garage. The other was across from the primary school, the Hayes shop. At this shop there was a man who hung out or lived there; he may have been a relative. Some said that he was a Civil War veteran and had a plate in his head. The kids called him "Ig" or "Ike", and his last name was Bloomor Bloome, I'm not sure which. He rode a beautiful horse. The teen-age sport was to see Ig in the distance and call out, "Hi, Ig!" He would then charge with his horse, and the kids would disperse to a safe hiding place. He never hurt anyone, but his horse would rear back, kicking its front feet. (I lived out of town, so I never got chased by Ig.)

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On the new highway across from the Devereux School, several new homes were built in about 1925 or so. A family named Vogel lived in one of them. I was introduced to this family by my old high school girl friend, Kay Hanley. (Kay was a classmate of mine, and one of my first girlfriends. When she was a little girl her mother took her in a carriage to a baseball game in Paoli. During the game a foul ball hit her on the nose and she had a slight ") " on the bridge of her nose. She married when I was in college, but later divorced, then married an insurance man from West Chester. She was killed when her car hit a pole. She had a brother Jack who was a golf pro.) Kay had been in a fashion show at her church in Paoli with the Vogels' daughter Betty, who was a pretty girl about 15 and died a year later with diphtheria. Harry and his wife Florence were very friendly people and enjoyed life. He was from a large German family in West Philadelphia, and went to work with the P.R.R. at the age of 12 as a messenger boy. He rose up the line to become chief clerk of the Eastern Division. The Vogel's had a lot of friends, among them doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc. One of their friends was Oliver Bair Hicks, a relative of Mary Bair and the funeral director at the Oliver Bair establishment in Philadelphia. I was sometimes invited to their parties, which I enjoyed as they seemed to have more fun drinking beer and singing and dancing than did the younger people I knew at that time. Harry Vogel was a good friend and he had a great influence on my young life. We used to sit and discuss world affairs or what-have-you. He retired early, about 45, and moved to Florida.

Down the road was the home of Al Severance, who was then the basketball coach. He married a local girl named Holman. I was not much of a basketball player, but I did suit up to play on the church team. I learned one thing -- anybody could play with Al as long as you passed the ball to him!

Our Boy Scout troop - Troop 11 - met in the basement of the Baptist Chapel [now the Church of Christ, Scientist], north of the station, on Friday nights. The Scoutmaster was Franklin Wandless, with George Roberts his assistant. As initiation into the Troop, you had to locate a lean-to or cabin; I can't remember whether it was in Senator Pepper's woods or maybe in the woods in back of Daylesford. I achieved the rank of first-class and became a patrol leader. The other patrol leader was John Mc-Mahon, who lived in a stone house near the church. John played violin in his church, where his father was an elder. I went to camp one year at Camp Rothrock, near Carlisle. During Scout Week one year my patrol camped on the grass circle by the railroad station. A week later we found out that we camped over the cess pool! Looking back, I don't know how I had the courage to walk or ride my bike back home in the dark, two miles to South Leopard Road, after the meetings. I purchased my first bike from a man named Wilson; he was a brother of Mrs. Peoples, one of our neighbor son South Leopard Road. As I recall, there was also a bicycle shop in back of the Bank building.

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At this point in time I cannot recall the Scouts who were in my patrol, except Bill Emberger. His father was the baker for the Berwyn Bakery run by Fred Rentz. I worked one year for the bakery, as delivery boy after school and on weekends, driving a Model T truck. During the Sesquicentennial in Philadelphia I took a truckload of pies into the Ohio exhibit; a local man had ordered them made special. For a time I also worked in the bakery under Emil Emberger. He was a hard worker, but a good man to work for, and I learned a lot about cooking, washing pots, dunking doughnuts, putting icing on cakes. I went to work about nine o'clock Friday night and worked to about eight the next morning, then go home to sleep, and come back in the afternoon to make deliveries -- or play football or baseball, if we had a game. I got my first speeding ticket in that Model T truck. Fred Rentz also had a store in Paoli for a time. One day when I stopped at his store after school, he asked me to make a delivery up to Paoli as they had a rush order. It was raining and I was highballing up the highway wide open, doing maybe 40 miles an hour. Just about at the Daylesford station, a State Trooper on his Harley-Davidson followed me and pulled me over. The poor guy was covered with mud and his goggles were so splattered he could just about see. My week's pay went to pay my fine!

One of our neighbors on South Leopard Road were the Peoples. Their son Yerkes (Chick) Peoples and I grew up together, but he joined the U. S. Navy in about 1927. He served in the submarines, and lost some of his hair due to the acid in the submarine batteries. I lost track of him after his family moved from the area.

Another neighbor was Otho (Bud or Horse) Tavenner. His father, Luther, at one time had a large dairy farm on the road to Newtown Square south of South Leopard Road. I remember that it had a fine spring. He later sold the farm and retired, living for several years in the coachman's house on the Burnham estate.

Bud was a graduate of T.E.H.S. and went on to Penn State and played football there. He enlisted in the army in about 1917 and served in Europe. Later he assisted Coach Paul Teamer as football coach at T.E.H.S., and was my coach from 1924 to 1927. He was the first school bus driver for Easttown Township, when they closed the old Leopard School and bussed the kids to Berwyn. (I attended first grade at the Leopard School; Helen Bracken was the teacher at the school then. I didn't learn much, though, as she was always sick or crying because the big kids were giving her a bad time.) Bud lived with his parents, and housed the school bus on the Burnham estate where my father was the caretaker. I can recall that on some occasions the bus could not make it up the hill from Sharp's farm into Leopard, and we all had to get out and push! (One day the bus ran over a kid's foot.) Bud later became rural mail carrier out of the Berwyn post office and made his rounds in a Model T. My sister Marie was his substitute when he was on sick leave or vacation. One day when she was on duty we had a heavy snowstorm, and my sister, with me as the driver, made the rounds in a sleigh, across roads and fields. Bud Tavenner was eventually made postmaster of the Berwyn post office and was there until F.D.R. came into office. After leaving the post office, he operated a small garage and gas station in Chadds Ford, just across the bridge over the Brandywine.

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He had a sister Ella Mae, who was husky and drove a Model T milk truck to deliver milk to the old Devon Inn, which at that time was housing the "farmettes" stationed there during the first World War. Sometimes I got to ride with her when she was making deliveries. She was big and strong and could swing those milk cans around and crank that Ford truck. One day I recall her telling me she was going to stop by a neighbor's farm to pick up "Mother". I thought we were picking up Mrs. Tavenner, but when she came out she had a bottle of working vinegar. She later became a nurse and worked for the government in Washington, D.C.

Living in Berwyn was a man by the name of George McCarnes. He was a professional carver and cabinet maker. He worked in Philadelphia, carving hand rails and fireplace mantels five and a half days a week, riding the Paoli Local. (He had a daughter Alice, who was a classmate of my sister Marie and later became a nurse.) His two-story frame house in Berwyn had a large attic, in which he had his own shop, making fine cabinets. He was hard of hearing, so he had a light rigged up to the attic so his wife could call him down for meals without climbing the stairs. He was a good friend of my father, who would give him stumps from walnut trees he had cut down. George would have the stumps milled, to obtain fine feathered wood from which he made cabinets. I remember one cabinet he made, a highboy, which had several secret drawers. On some Saturday afternoons, when I was sent to Christian Doctrine at St. Monica's, I would skip and go up to visit Mr. McCarnes in his attic work shop and watch him work. He would let me use his first set of German carving tools and showed me how to use them. He showed me now to carve flowers, and when I finished making a jewel box for my mother he gave me his tools! They are one of my most cherished collections today. (Shortly after we were married I found my bride using my "V" tool as a tack lifter. It almost ended our marriage then and there!)