St Thomas More High School - Utopian Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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Lancaster Road passes directly in front of Haverford College. Beyond Ithan Station the Old Lancaster Pike crosses Church Road, which leads to St. David's Church, built in 1715. Not far from Strafford, along the Sugartown Road, is Waynesborough, the home of General Anthony Wayne, the Revolutionary hero. Wayne is bur- ied in St. David's churchyard. Two miles away from the Wayne mansion is the site of the Paoli Massacre. During the pre-Civil War days this general area provided numerous hideouts for the fugi- tive slaves who came north in search of escape from their intolerable serfdom, and Lancaster Pike was an important link in the Underground Railway. All along the road there were secret stations where these hounded refuges were hid- den, rested and fed. This is by no means a complete history of Lan- caster Pike, but is should be enough to whet the appetites of those who would know more. It would still be an adventure to follow in the path of Roger Brooke and explore the wonderful places of interest on the Pike's sixty-six miles. Why not oil your bike and fill your knapsack Pl0Pll ARE and see where the well-wom avenue which brings you to school will eventually lead. All of its glamor is not concentrated in the area of Durha.rn Park. POPUlAR NE OF OUR English assignments in the earlier part of the term was the preparation of a brief talk entitled, The Most Interest- ing Personality I Have Met. The real object of the assignment was to get us through the initiation of speaking before the class-and a pretty rough initiation it is. There were, of course, the usual mutterings when the subject was assigned, but after a little discussion with the English professor the topic seemed a bit more promising. Some of the stu- dents had complained that they were inexperi- THE U TOPIAN . BY JOHN McNAMEE, '51 enced and could not be expected to have made even the passing acquaintance of celebrities. It was then that Father explained that interesting personalities did not have to be celebrities at all, and that we might not even have to go out- side our own homes to discover someone who was truly interesting. He went on to remind us that even if we did not know any interesting personalities in real life-a supposition that he did not think very likely-it was still possible that we had met interesting personalities in our reading, from .59

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N I , Af u 1 .1 I- ,K . my I A , ,Z Ari.. yfllllr. 'N-ez-LA. f- H x f Z: 1-L ' X f-QT ' fjf- I - J X X' H H- Q --ff: ,JA f -' 0 3 V. X. X-1 .. t' gil ,. uh K ...-, xl . 1 A ':..-....- - Q A if' L- 0 ' -. w 1 '-.F 't5:. V. l .1 1' y 'fa f 0 0 l 'I P M2151-:-. .Ju v . ,jk fff., J e .f-.... wt. 'Q' -at Us '- -' 'ff? 7 0 n x X r w . ..-,Que f 1-L K 'ia' 5, 1 .--no na. ,' ,I lf X J ' rv T5 ' N 'Q .,t,- tg. Q4:ta?.o :-2--- 'I'Q..!f Q., 3 scenic route. Yet, for all its nondescript character and gen- eral unkemptness, it is a wonderful old avenue after all. I doubt if many of the students who travel over it so constantly really know how old it is or how saturated with history is its past. I doubt if they know that at one time it was the main artery for stagecoach travel to the West or that it was the oldest tumpike in the United States. At a veryl early date roads began to be laid out from Philadelphia westward, and it is certain that in 1714 there was a road which was said to be the directest and best. This road led from the city to the Dutch settlements at Conestoga and Susquehanna. At that time the town of Lan- caster was not yet in existence, and the road led considerably to the south of where that town was afterward located. Lancaster Avenue had a va- riety of appellations before it received its last andl most famous name. It was called in colonial times the King's Highway, but was popularly known as the Old Philadelphia Road. But some- times it was called Providence Road, and after the Revolution it became the Continental Road. In 1767 an attempt was made to straighten this road and eliminate excessive detours. As the country developed and travel, increased, it became evident that a better road was needed. In 1791, therefore, the Legislature authorized a company to construct a turnpike from Phila- delphia to Lancaster, the first road of the kind in the country. Popular enthusiasm ran high, so 58. high that the stock offered was heavily oversub- scribed, and it became necessary to choose the stockholders by a lot from the army of applicants. The cost of the road has not been traced with certainty, but in the journal of the State Senate, of February 2, 1797, it appears that a letter from Elliston Perot was presented in which an abstract account of the money so far expended on the turnpike was included. It is therein stated that the amount was 3444,573.72. The construction of the tumpike was so ar- ranged that there would be five different sec- tions. A superintendent was appointed for each section or district. The tumpike seems to have been practically completed by about 1794, even though towards the year 1796 some work was still in progress. On November 3, 1806, Roger Brooke made a survey of the tumpike. The survey began at the face of the east abutment of the Schuykill per- manent bridge and evidently ended at the Court House in Lancaster. The difference between the two points was sixty-two miles and 135.95 perches, strict measure. For the accomodation of the many travellers over the road, sixty-one tavems were constructed along the sixty-six miles. Many of these were maintained by prominent men and frequently by members of Congress or the State Legislature. The last inn to go in the immediate area of St. Thomas More High School was located at For- tieth and Lancaster Avenue, on the spot on which the Acme Supermarket Qformerly the West Philadelphia Title and Trust Companyj now stands. One of the oldest of the few surviving inns is the General Anthony Wayne Inn in Merion. Let's leave the story of the origins of the Pike to have a brief look into some of the places of interest which adom it. The modem traveler who goes over the route of the Old Columbia Railroad-or its successor, the Pennsylvania Railroad-is at once struck by the Welsh names which meet him on every side. Names like Merion, Narberth, Wynnewood, Bryn Mawr are all of Welsh derivation. The early settlers in the villages were Welsh Quakers who came in re- sponse to William Penn's invitation. It was they who, carving out homes in what was then a wil- derness, began the distinguished history of these commun1t1es. . THE UTOPIAN

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listening to radio programs, or from watching sporting events or other spectacles. But he con- cluded by encouraging us to look at the world about us, the everyday world of family, friends, and chance encounters. Before beginning my own assignment I took down my Webster Dictionary from the shelf to look up the definition of the word personal- ity. Personality, said Webster, is distinct- ness or excellence of personal and social traits. Distinctness or excellence -these were not quite the same thing. There were people in my own neighborhood who had very odd traits, but these traits did not always proclaim excellence. At length I selected a person who seemed to me worthy of discussion-one that I thought would be of interest to my classmates. This essay does not concern itself with my own attempt at a character sketch. Rather, the essay had its origins in the personality sketches of the other students. Not in the sketch of this or that particular student, but in all of them taken together. For the next few days in the English classes there was summoned to my im- agination a most remarkable gallery of portraits. Students had observed the people about them, and certain of these people had made indelible impressions upon them. Through the sketches of my classmates I met priests, policemen, trolley motormen and conductors, milkmen, neighbor- hood characters, friendly and unfriendly employers. It is interesting to note that of the priests who were sketched for us one was a pastorg another, a curate: a third, a professor, and still another, a missionary father. It seemed to me a good thing that priests were high on the list of interesting personalities, for it established the hope that some of our own classmates may some day be inspired with a vocation. In one or two cases there actually were celeb- rities. One of these was Joe Di Maggio, the great Yankee slugger. True, this was only a brief 60 . and casual meetingg nevertheless, it constituted a thrill that any boy of our own age must envy. The other celebrity-one not known to most of the boys, yet a personality of world renown-was Mr. William Kincaid, the first fiutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The student who made his acquaintance is himself an ardent student of the Hute, and it can be well imagined what inspiration he must have received and continues to receive from this acquaintanceship. Of the numerous neighborhood characters, the one which stands out in my mind most clearly is the ancient bearded gentleman who seemed to spend all his time perusing books in a neighborhood branch library. According to his biographer, the library was this old man's uni- versity and he seemed to be a person of inex- haustible lore. He had a quaint philosophy of life-one that incorporated the principle of non- work-and just who he was or how he managed to get along without money no one seemed to know. Of course there were the students who, not feeling competent to deal with people they actually knew, resorted to what I can only call a second-hand acquaintanceship. These stu- dents chose such personalities as Dan Seymour with the friendliest voice in radio, Arthur Godfrey, whose nonchalance is the delight of fans and the terror of sponsors, and Sid Cesar, whose ability to project himself into real-life situations has almost made him a mirror of humanity. But in the end it was perhaps just the ordinary people who made the greatest impact. Since most of us, vocationally speaking, are destined to be ordinary-the milkmen, policemen, and day laborers so vital to smooth running of our society -it is encouraging to note that we too can foster those elements in our personality which make us not only acceptable but inspirational to our fellow man. THE UTOPIAN