venango county homes 13

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13. Gildersleeve home

The Saltbox - Built in 1871, featuring a popular New England Saltbox style architecture, this structure is landmarked as the Melissa Gildersleeve House. Cyrus and Alice Cummings Gildersleeve purchased 4 lots near the corner of Liberty and Eighth streets in 1828 at the cost of $100. Cyrus was a tanner and built his home on one lot and had his tannery on another. Their daughter, Melissa was born in the family home in 1840. She was a school teacher and one of the first telegraph operators in Franklin. After the death of her father, Melissa built her home on the lot where the tannery had been located. The structure is presently the Welcome & Tourist Information Center for the Samuel Justus Recreation Trail in Cranberry Township near the Eighth Street Bridge. The original location of this home was 809 Liberty Street. The architecturally and historically significant building was moved to the bike trail location in September 1991 through the efforts of the Historic Franklin Preservation Association and many local citizens. Melissa's brother, Professor Alfred B. Gildersleeve, was born in 1836 in the original family home. He opened the first telegraph office in the Pennsylvania Oil Regions, which was at Franklin. The Franklin Evening News, Dec. 4, 1909, highlighted Prof. Gildersleeve as one of the Well-Known Citizens of the County. In this article, Prof. Gildersleeve writes of his memories of the area.

"My earliest recollection of Franklin was the flood of 1840, the block house being surrounded by water. I asked father: 'Why did that man build his house out in the river?' "The town, mostly woods, abounded in grapes, plums, hazel and butternuts. There were seven houses between 8th street and the Big Rock. Father cleared the 7th street square in 1825. The old fort was my playground - a most beautiful grass plat of terraces, trenches and promenades. I can hardly forgive our City Fathers for destroying it by opening Elk street through its center. Father accidentally discovered the tunnel leading from the fort to the run, his team having broken through into it.

How I remember my first school day: Alex Cochran taught. The Old Academy had become dilapidated and was abandoned. Two school houses were built. It might easily have been imagined that the 'Lower House,' as we called it, had been built during the Dark Ages. The floor near the walls was elevated about a foot, the lower part being surrounded by high tight desks from the pit in the center. The large scholars occupied the elevated part, while the 'small fry' were corralled in the pit below to do nothing and see nothing but the rod and rule, always in sight, often in use.

How dear to my heart are the scenes of my school days in such a house, and how could I forget them? Age the age of five I was sent to school and put in the pit with thirty or forty others - all strange. Frightened almost to death, a day seemed a year. The next day I went back, but not to school. I hid in the brush till school 'let out.' Day after day I was sent to school (they called it), but it seemed to me to be the place (mother had told me about) where all the nations that forget God were turned into the 'bad place' as she called it. But I went to my hiding place, not to school. I would have died rather than be shut in the pit again. Had I known the hymn then, I would have sung 'Dear Lord, Remember Me.' Finally I was found out and to my surprise, father interceded for me, and I was permitted to sit on the upper seats till I got acquainted. Some years later, with M.C. Beebe for superintendent and John Hamilton, of New York, and Mr. Cobb, from Massachusetts, as teachers, and a good board of directors, a reformation was effected."

Submitted by: Penny Minnick
minnick862@verizon.net