To the west, in the Village of Buckeye, an unincorporated town west of Bridgeport, one company-built house stands in a section once called Blue Row.  Only a handful of company-built houses were erected in the coal patch town of Buckeye.  This building is a two-story wood-frame double-house with a gable roof.  It was probably built in the 1870's by A.C. Cochran Coal & Coke Company.

Hammondville, was laid out in 1891 by the Pittsburg Land Company.  It was named for Elizabeth Hammond Pershing, wife of John Pershing, on whose land the village is situated.  It was quite an ambitious development at that time.  Streets were laid out and many lots were sold.  There was every indication that Hammondville would become a prosperous little town.  But the boom collapsed, the lots were abandoned, and the streets grew up in weeds.

Bryce's Glass Factory operated at Hammondville during the closing decades of the 19th century.  Construction of a steel mill was begun about 1890, but it became entangled in one of those battles between the tycoons and the project was abandoned.

Over in Bridgeport, the Cochrans, pioneers in coal and coke, were operating a coke yard around 1870.  The Buckeye works was started soon after.

Fairview United Brethren Church was built in 1847, on land donated by the Truxel family.  The members were served at irregular intervals by circuit-riders.

Bridgeport, in its early days was known as Stauffer.  Prior to the initiation of Rural Mail Delivery this was the post office serving the three communities of Hammondville, Bridgeport and Buckeye.  The name is doubtless a variation of the spelling of Stouffer, a prominent local family.

To the left of the bridge, going from Bridgeport to Buckeye, there was a large B & O Railroad station, freight and passenger station, known as Mullin Station.

Proceeding on through Buckeye, the mouth of the Buckeye mine was on the inside of the curve where the road turns to go out along the old street car line, that served the town.

Hazlett Company Store was between the railroads at the northern end of Bridgeport.  You turned left beyond the old school yard, where the road to Mount Pleasant bears to the right.

The community was sometimes referred to as Pershing, taking its name from another railroad station, and confusing future historians with a multiplicity of names for the same place.

The Bridgeport Independent School District served all three villages.  The Buckeye students attended the Independent School, which  has long since burned down.  This school stood stood near the upper end of Garilla Hollow, a revine running from near the Buckeye Mine north-westward towards the Connellsville road.  This, incidentally, was the school where H. C. Frick received his early education.

Students from Hammondville and Bridgeport attended the same schools.  The first several grades attended classes on the first floor of the Bridgeport school.  The higher elementary grades went "Across the Creek".  That was the Hammondville school, just across the bridge.  The building was later used as a church.

The second floor of the Bridgeport school served as a high school.

The Literary Societies of Bridgeport.
The Literary Society, held regular Friday night meeting at the old Bridgeport school.  People of all ages attended, both as participants and audience.  There were recitals of poetry, readings, singing, book discussions, and some of the hottest debates you ever heard.

One of the pieces read at the Literary Society were:

Country Store
by Helen Virden.

It filled the corner where the crossroads meet,
A hitching rail once stood beside the door,
An old potbellied stove to warm the feet,
A black coal hod to keep trash from the floor.

This was the meeting place of countrymen;
They waded mud or plowed through winter snow
To purchase from the stock they offered then
Of Flour, nails and bright-sprigged calico.

The store is gone but I recall the time
When I could buy all Heaven for a dime.

"I could paint a word picture of the Bridgeport I knew a half century or more ago.  I could tell of the long lines of flaming bee-hive coke ovens;  of Tucker Dodson's barbershop, with its rows of shaving mugs;  of the crowds around the big stove in McCloy's store, waiting while I.J. changed the mail in the post office at the back;  of the old drug store, with the long flights of stairs along the outside;  of the mediicine shows on the Corner;  of Henry Hixon's blacksmith shop by the bridge, across the road from the schoolhouse - where the most fascinating things were always going on - I could tell you...."

"But to his contemporaries, the reminiscing of an old man is only the shadow of their own memories. And a younger generation, intent on their own persuits, does not care, for--"

"The Moving Finger Writes, and having writ, moves on--"

And there are no birds in last year's nests."

(History of Bridgeport, by George L. Hebenthal was adapted from "Mount Pleasant Township Bicentennial April 6, 1773 - 1973,"  Kenneth H. Eichner, Editor, Mount Pleasant Township Bicentennial Committee.)

Mullin Mine & Coke Works:
Mr. William D. Mullin operated north of Bridgeport Station at Mullin Station.  The Mullin Mine mined the Pittsburg Coal Bed, it was nine feet thick, and showing similarly to the section described at the Buckeye Mines.

In contrast to the Boyle and Hazlett Works, William D. Mullin's Mullen Mine & Coke Works located at Mullin Station, contained only sixty bee-hive bank coke ovens, in size 11 feet x 5 1/2 feet.  The charge was three and a half to four mine wagons.  The ovens were worked as  was usual, and the yeild of forty-eight hour and seventy-two hour coke was 22,500 bushels weekly. The Mullin Works employed thirty-five men and boys.  The coke was shipped west by Messrs. Sherrick and Markle.

Stauffer Mine & Coke Works:
The smallest of the Bridgeport Station operations in the mid-1870's, however, was the J. F. Stauffer & Company's Stauffer Mine & Coke Works operating at Bridgeport Station.  They mined the Pittsburg Coal, which was here nine feet thick, and with partings as described at the Buckeye Mines.  The Stauffer Coke Works contained twenty bee-hive bank coke ovens, in size 11 1/2 feet x 6 feet.  The charge was three and four mine wagons.  The coke ovens were worked as usuall, and the yeild was forty-eight hour and seventy-two hour coke, and produced 8,125 bushels of coke weekly, shipped west.  The works employed tweleve men.

Buckeye Mines & Coke Works
The one coke works in the Bridgeport area that has survived in part is that of the A. C. Cochran and Ewing interests. By 1886, this partnership had been reorganized as the A.C. Cochran Coal & Coke Company and was led by A. C. Cochran.  That year the company employed 122 men and boys, and produced over 62,000 tons of coke.  The coke works contained 160 bee-hive coke ovens. Coal for these ovens came from the company's nearby Buckeye Mine, which produced nearly 69,000 tons of coal.  The company employed forty-five miners and fifty-four coke workers.  Other jobs included the mine boss, fire-boss, blacksmith, carpenter, doorboys (trapper-boy), drivers, bookkeeper, and clerks.

McClure Coke Company
In 1890, Cochran sold the property to the McClure Coke Company, one of the region's largest coke-producing concerns in the early 1890's.  This company led by John P. Brennen of Scottdale, had also purchased the Hazlett Mine & Coke Works, Mullin Mine & Coke Works and Stauffer Mine & Coke Works properties.  

H. C. Frick Coke Company
By 1895 the expanding H. C. Frick Coke Company acquired the McClure Coke Company and all of the McClure Coke Company's mines and coke works.

By 1895 the H.C. Frick Coke Company had acquired the Bridgeport mines & coke works properties, operating them through the 1910's or 1920's.  Unfortunately, little remains of these early coke works;  only through an archaeological study of the area could additional information be uncovered.

By 1900 the H.C. Frick Coke Company reached a new high in production levels at its Buckeye Mine and Coke Works. The slope entry mine produced 217,000 tons of coal that year, and the coke works, still containing 160 bee-hive coke ovens, produced 141,000 tons of coke.  The Buckeye Mine and Coke Works employed 248 men and boys, most of whom lived in Buckeye, Bridgeport; Stauffer P.O., Hammondville or Mount Pleasant.

By 1915, H. C. Frick Coke Company employed only 124 persons at the Buckeye Mine and Coke Works which produced about 104,000 tons of coal using pick and shovel extraction, the H.C. Frick Coke Company didn't believe in spending money on mechanical mining equipment, when they could get good strong men to do the job cheaply.  The Buckeye Coke Works produced nearly 67,00 tons of coke.

Two years later, in 1917, H.C. Frick Coke Company ceased operations at the Buckeye Mine & Coke Works and abandoned the property.

(History and description of the Buckeye Mine & Coke Works, with additional data and pictures adapted from "Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, 1994,"  America's Industrial Heitage Project, National Park Service, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, U.S. Department of the Interior, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

or
Go to Top of Page