Pennsylvania Oddities

Motorists who drive north on Route 15 regularly have undoubtedly taken notice of the ancient stone railroad bridge crossing Sherman's Creek at the point where it empties into the Susquehanna River. With its six arches, this historic structure supports the enormous weight of the many trains which travel along the Norfolk Southern tracks each day, and has become one of the most photographed bridges in Perry County.

Yet many of the railroad aficionados who stop to take pictures of the bridge, as well as the many fishermen who guide their boats beneath the arches, would be surprised to learn that this bridge has been rebuilt over the site of an earlier bridge that collapsed in one of the worst railroading disasters in Perry County history.

Unlike the stone arch bridge that now spans the creek, the original Sherman's Creek bridge was a stone and iron Howe truss design, virtually identical to the bridge that collapsed over the Ashtabula River in Ohio in 1876, killing 92 people. Som…

Can the bonds of friendship remain unbroken even after death? Apparently, they can. On the day before Thanksgiving in 1909, two best friends from the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Mt. Washington fell ill, Andrew Mulholland with pneumonia and the Bill Ferris with tuberculosis. Shortly before he died, Andrew informed his mother that he had been visited by the ghost of Bill Ferris, who, unbeknownst to everyone, had died just two hours earlier. The strange incident was reported by the Pittsburgh Press on January 14, 1910.

When 10-year-old Elmer Mosser died of diphtheria in November of 1900, his parents noticed that a broken antique clock in the child's bedroom had mysteriously chimed one o'clock on three different nights before Elmer passed away. Strangely, Elmer died at exactly one o'clock in the morning. Fearing that their diphtheria-stricken daughter, Mabel, would suffer the same fate, Mrs. Mosser turned the hands of the old clock herself. It seemed to have worked; Mabel recovered from her symptoms and went on to live a long, healthy life, passing away in 1968.

At the historic Glen Dyberry Cemetery in Wayne County can be seen many exquisite monuments. There is the Appley family plot with its soaring thirty-foot obelisk and beautifully-carved busts of Italian marble, the Dimmick family plot, marked by an equally extravagant granite column that towers over the graveyard like a skyscraper in the desert, and the striking monument marking the graves of Harriet and Giles Greene, with its stunningly carved angel seated on a throne.


But hidden among the many rows of gravemarkers is a weatherbeaten slab with a curious inscription that has been virtually obliterated by the elements. It is a headstone erected in memory of Jonathan H. Salmon, a young Honesdale man who died in 1847 in a most peculiar fashion. And while this monument can be found at Glen Dyberry, Jonathan's bones do not repose beneath the soil; for his body was lost at sea thousands of miles away from home.



The whaling ship Arabella set sail from Sag Harbor, New York, on August 8, 184…

From the Duncannon Record, Sept. 23, 1892.