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Does anyone know if the small town of Alicia exists anymore...I Am trying to find some info from that town.....
laura

I went past Alicia last Fall. It was a row of houses at its peak; maybe 10-12 houses? My mother was born there in 1913. The children from Alicia were bused to Hiller Grade School and I knew most of them. They also attended Brownsville High School.

I don't remember seeing any houses there last Fall and if there are any now it will be only a couple.

There were 2 batteries of coking ovens there totaling perhaps 200 ovens. During WW2 my father ran a larry on those ovens charging them with coal. It was a patriotic effort more than a job. It paid $5 a day for 6 hrs and he worked 5 1/2 days each week for $27.50.

In 2009 dollars that would equal $347 or $12.68 per hr.

The coke ovens spilled a cloud of smoke along the hillside that killed 90% of the vegetation. They are gone now and no evidence remains today. There is a coal car dumper there now. It overturns full coal cars into a hopper that feeds a conveyor belt, which loads coal barges.

I think the coal comes down river from WV by rail before it is transferred to barges.

harry wrote:

I went past Alicia last Fall. It was a row of houses at its peak; maybe 10-12 houses? My mother was born there in 1913. The children from Alicia were bused to Hiller Grade School and I knew most of them. They also attended Brownsville High School.
I don't remember seeing any houses there last Fall and if there are any now it will be only a couple.
There were 2 batteries of coking ovens there totaling perhaps 200 ovens. During WW2 my father ran a larry on those ovens charging them with coal. It was a patriotic effort more than a job. It paid $5 a day for 6 hrs and he worked 5 1/2 days each week for $27.50.
In 2009 dollars that would equal $347 or $12.68 per hr.
The coke ovens spilled a cloud of smoke along the hillside that killed 90% of the vegetation. They are gone now and no evidence remains today. There is a coal car dumper there now. It overturns full coal cars into a hopper that feeds a conveyor belt, which loads coal barges.
I think the coal comes down river from WV by rail before it is transferred to barges.

Harry
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR COMMENT....my dad and his brother were born in Alicia,my dad in 1917,his brother in 1918..at that time their became ill...and died...I have NO records of her that she even existed....i know they were associated with the holy resurrection orthodox church and wondered if that church had a cemetary.T hat was in West Brownsville.This cemetery seems to be the last way I can look in order to find this woman.Thier name was Gregor or Grega.If you know anyone from that time ,I wonder if they would know Michael or his wife Mary ( Maria or Marianne) or thier 2 children Michael or Johnny.I believe the Mother lived in Alicia at the time of her death...and it was sometime after the birth of her second child...I appreciate the history of Alicia and feel sad that it is almost gone but it has left memories...I now know that my dad probably went to Hiller school.THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
lAURA

MysteryLady26 wrote:

<quoted text>Harry
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR COMMENT....my dad and his brother were born in Alicia,my dad in 1917,his brother in 1918..at that time their became ill...and died...I have NO records of her that she even existed....i know they were associated with the holy resurrection orthodox church and wondered if that church had a cemetary.T hat was in West Brownsville.This cemetery seems to be the last way I can look in order to find this woman.Thier name was Gregor or Grega.If you know anyone from that time ,I wonder if they would know Michael or his wife Mary ( Maria or Marianne) or thier 2 children Michael or Johnny.I believe the Mother lived in Alicia at the time of her death...and it was sometime after the birth of her second child...I appreciate the history of Alicia and feel sad that it is almost gone but it has left memories...I now know that my dad probably went to Hiller school.THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
lAURA

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PS I APPRECIATE YOUR DADS WAR EFFORTS...
LAURA

You can't be sure that your father attended Hiller School. That would have been in 1923-1931 and busing may not have even existed at that time? My father lived near Isabella in those days and it was up to him to get to Brownsville HS; no bus or public transportation. It was 5 miles.

So wherever he went to school, it's likely that he walked. The Haines School was closer to Alicia but it was more than a stroll. I don't know when it closed.

I assume the church they attended was the Catholic Church on railroad street (or Main St.)
I never knew it by any other name than The Greek Catholic Church....Later, I gotta go.

I'm back from the Dr. Do you know where Alicia was?
Go to Google maps laditude longitude and enter 40.010097 laditude and -79.928316 (yes that is minus 79.928316)

That will take you to the coal car dumper facility
Hit satellite. and you'll get an actual photo image.

You can drag the view around with the mouse.

Alicia was south of this place (where the coke ovens used to be) and on the other side of LaBelle RD. It ended at Alicia Road which you see intersecting from the right when youi drag the image south.

The satellite took this photo in the summer when the Sun was south and the trees and shadows make it dificult to see anything on the side of that hill.

But I can see nothing that looks like a house.HH

Thanks Harry,
I WILL GO SEE IT.i Assume you dont know anyone who lived thier in order to see if I could verify information.D oes the catholic church have a cemetary?
laura

That church may have a burying place. A place where the members prefer to be buried. There is no graveyard anywhere near the church. I never knew a member of that church,

Graveyards are usually on a high hill. That keeps the coffins from floating out of the ground, so W.Brownsville has no cemetery because it is all low lying land.

I can think of no graveyard on that side of the river. If you know the date of the burial it helps to locate the grave. Churches will change their preferred burial grounds over the years.

Even knowing the graveyard doesn't help much. The grave may be unmarked or the stone is badly deteriorated. Every graveyard has a list of all the burials, if you can find it.

I spent years in search, but my ancestors stayed in one spot for 200 yrs which made it much easier for me.

Unfortunatly I dont have a year of death ,the closest I heard is 1918 and I dont know if that is correct.So glad you had ancestors that made it easy for you....Well maybe some day I will run into the info I need....time is running out tho....Thank you so much for all your info....
Laura

1918 is close enough. That church probably has records of deaths if you can find someone with a connection. You have to have a strong tie because they don't like digging thru the archives for people looking for ancestors.

Do you have a Latter Day Saints branch near you? They have volunteers who can be very helpful.
Also census data is available that lists all the residents of an area every 10 yrs. This is available in a couple of ways and the LDS has most U.S. census data on microfiche.

Harry
thanks again....i will try the Latter Day site...and maybe try to find a person who is a parisioner of Holy R.

You have been so helpful....perhaps we can chat off and on .
Laura

I was thinking about the possible school that a resident of Alicia might attend in the 1920s.

Hiller was a planned community with a grid of streets. It began to take shape abt 1910. Lots were sold as home sites and individuals built houses on them. A new elementary school was built in 1915. It was the suburb of its time.

In researching the development of the road system in that area, I came across an undocumented road that ran thru Hiller to the Alicia area. If a student used that road, the distance to the Hiller School might be no more than 1 1/2 miles. Whereas, the distance on roads that exist today would be at least twice that far.

That old road probably predated 1784 and at some time it ceased to exist. Even though there was no road after that time, it might have been useable as a trail.

As a boy I unknowingly followed that trail or a similar route. I can say that the descent was gentle with no cliffs or steep hills. By the mid 1940s there was no evidence remaining of that old road, but a child would have no trouble using the remains.

My dad was born 1917..so at so possibly he entered school in 1922.I know he only went to school till 4th grade or so.Even tho some said his mother died shortly after birth of the second son in 1918...I think she died when my Dad was 10 or so and that would fit why school ended for him....I thought he went in to the mines...possible he was a breaker boy.Do you know if that sounds feasible?
Then he and his brother took off and rode the railroad trains for a long time.How bizarre is that?
Laura

That's not impossible, but I think it was unlikely in that area at that time. There were many small mines around that area usually mined for local use and of course he could have worked at one of them. The deep pit mines went into the Pittsburgh coal seam. A nine foot seam that was under most of Luzerne Tsp.

All that coal was metallurgical grade and it was mostly converted to coke for steel making down river. These mines were run by well financed owners who could provide the best of equipment. So it is doubtful they would use boys as a cheap labor source in one of the major mines.

Around that time, there were union battles in the coal fields as union organizers were active.
I know of workers who were run out of the company towns (1924)for union activity. My grandfather allowed the miners to erect a tent city on his farm and he provided some food for them.

Those were tough times in the coal fields and they got even worse as the Depression clamped down even harder.

Laura
Enter the address below in your search box. It will show the area around Alicia. At the upper
right corner you can see the coal car dumper I mentioned earlier. Along the LaBelle road towards the "B" you can see what appears to be houses. That would be Alicia.

You can advance the pictures with the arrows at the bottom. Some of the landmarks are labeled.

http://mfe-union-to-brown.com/ppt/pages/Slide...

Sorry about that. It seems that you can get to that pane by clicking on the link I provided above.