Lawrence County Historical Society

08/31/2026

Yep!

Cabbage, noodles, butter, and about an hour of somebody's grandmother standing over a skillet not letting it burn. 🧈

If you grew up around a western Pennsylvania church hall, you know halusky. Order it anywhere and you get shredded cabbage cooked down slow in a frankly alarming amount of butter until it goes sweet and deep golden brown, then folded into wide egg noodles and hit with black pepper. That is it. Four ingredients, no technique you could call fancy, and it is impossible to eat a small portion of. Slovak and Carpatho Rusyn families brought the dish over with them into the mill towns, and it settled into parish kitchens alongside the pierogi and the stuffed cabbage and never left.

Here is the part that confuses visitors. In Slovakia, halušky usually means little potato dumplings, the kind served with sheep cheese. Somewhere in the crossing, in the mill towns of the Mon Valley and the Beaver Valley and everywhere in between, the name attached itself to the cabbage and noodles instead. Nobody voted on it. It just happened, and now three generations of Pennsylvanians will argue that theirs is the correct definition. ⛪

Does your family call it halusky, and does anybody still make it the way it was made in the church basement?

08/31/2026

Thanks for visiting!

08/28/2026

08/25/2026

Rev. John Kennedy Andrews
By Betty Hoover DiRisio

Reverend Andrews served as the pastor at Mahoningtown Presbyterian Church and retired in New Castle.

Born on April 10, 1821, in Allegheny County, he received his theological training at the United Presbyterian Seminary. His first charge was in Piqua, Ohio, where he met and married Sarah Wood in 1852. In 1857, he became the pastor at the First United Presbyterian Church in Steubenville.

During the Civil War, he served as the chaplain for Ohio’s 126th Volunteer Infantry from its mustering-in date on September 4, 1862, until the fall of 1864. He was assigned to this local unit where he lived and preached, meaning he likely knew many of the men he served alongside. He was a highly active pastor who ministered consistently through major campaigns, including the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Monocacy, and Third Wi******er/Opequon Campaign. In September 1864, while at Wi******er, he was detailed to the hospital to minister to the injured and dying.

Additionally, he acted as a correspondent for the local newspaper in Steubenville, Ohio, writing letters to inform the community of battles, injuries, and casualties. He also kept a war journal that was later used to help compile the history of the 126th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and he officially served as the unit's historian after the war.

Following his military service, his next pastorate was in Carrollton, Ohio. His subsequent charges included the Sewickley church, West Newton, Mahoningtown, F***s Manor, and Bedford Springs.

Rev. Andrews passed away from heart failure in New Castle on December 1, 1896, leaving behind five children. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in New Castle.

Photos: from the Regimental History of the Ohio 126th Vol. Inf. (1883) and from the LCHS Sankey Picture Show Collection.

08/24/2026

Some neighboring history!

🌾 There is a borough in Butler County where a group of German separatists showed up in 1804, built an entire town from nothing, and then agreed to give up marriage completely.

They called themselves the Harmony Society, and for about a decade Harmony was one of the most productive settlements in western Pennsylvania. They planted vineyards on the hillsides, ran a distillery, wove their own cloth, and held everything in common ownership. Then they sold the whole town, moved to Indiana, came back to Pennsylvania a decade later, and built Old Economy up the river in Beaver County.

What they left behind in Harmony is still standing. Stone houses with steep roofs, a museum inside an 1809 building, and a small hillside burial ground with a revolving stone gate where the graves carry no individual markers, because nobody was supposed to be more important than anybody else. You can walk the whole town in twenty minutes and it does not feel like 2026 for a single one of them.

What is the smallest Pennsylvania town you have ever walked into and immediately felt like you had stepped back a century?

08/21/2026

George G. Pryor
New Castle Newspaper Man
By Betty Hoover DiRisio

George Graham Pryor and Fred W. Corson purchased the Courant in 1890 from E.S. Durbin. Established in 1857, it was the oldest newspaper in the county. In October 1894, Pryor bought out his partner, and in 1896, he purchased the stock of the Guardian, another Republican newspaper. The two publications were consolidated into the Courant-Guardian, and the company also operated a local printing press.

By 1895, George and his wife, Jennie S. Schofield, were living at the northeast corner of Highland Ave. and E. Grant St. (See Photo)

In January 1901, he sold his interests in the paper for $39,000 to retire, and the publication became the Herald. He also held an interest in the Telegraph newspaper of Sharon. Soon after, he invested in the Universal Sanitary Company of New Castle alongside John Reid, George Greer, John Knox, W. M. Brown, C.J. Kirk, Rufus Patterson, Thomas F. Moorhead, W.H. Lewis, Edward King, Charles Taggart, John Butz, H. Weaver, Mathew Platts, and John Simpson.

By April 1902, he organized the Barberton Pottery near Akron, Ohio, serving as its secretary and general manager for two years. He put his home up for sale in November 1902; while he left the area, he returned occasionally to visit his daughter, Mrs. W.K. (Edith) Miller. His son, Willis, lived in Texas. In August 1904, Pryor was elected president of the Ford China Company of Ford City, Pennsylvania, which operated the third-largest pottery plant in the United States.

He resigned in May 1906 to become vice president of the United Kaolin Properties company, a $1 million corporation headquartered in Chicago with leased mines in Texas. However, after significant investment, a court determined the mine was on someone else’s property, leaving the company with no legal claim. The equipment was abandoned, and the mine closed between 1911 and 1915. Records indicate he was also the vice president of the Texas Kaolin Co., a Maine corporation, from 1907 to at least 1908.

George died in Chicago in December 1920 at the age of 61. The Federal census from that year indicated he was working as a traveling salesman for an advertising company.

07/23/2026

Could the same be true in Lawrence County?

07/17/2026

NOTICE: FIREWORKS RESCHEDULED!!

LCHS will have their “Fireworks on the Lawn" celebration on SUNDAY beginning at 7 PM!