THE SWARR FAMILY IN LEETONIA
1948 - 2002
remembered by Philip C. Swarr, Homer, NY
3/25/2008
My Grandfather Christian Cassel had a friend named Brubaker who had a cabin in Leetonia. He arranged for my family (Lancaster County) and my Uncle Earl Cassel's family (Dauphin County) to go there for a weekend. The Brubaker camp is the present Ebersole Twin Pines. This was about 1947.
While exploring Leetonia, we noticed that there was a "For Sale" sign on a nearby cabin with a Philadelphia address. This is the current Cassel - "Maple Grove" cabin (AKA "Square Camp"). We called these places "cabins" but they are houses remaining from the logging era at the turn of the century. My Father, Martin N. Swarr and my Uncle Earl Cassel agreed that Dad should contact the owner about the possibility of buying the property which also includes a beautiful stand of Sugar Maple trees.
Dad learned that the owner had been riding his horse in a Philadelphia park. The horse carried him under a tree limb which tore off his nose which he had replaced with a plastic one. The cold of Leetonia bothered his nose, and so he decided to sell the property with all its furnishings.
The agreed upon price was, I believe, $3,500. My father paid $1,500, my uncle $1,500 and my grandfather $500. My father painted the hanging "Maple Grove" sign on the front porch. My father took up trout fishing but did not hunt. Needless to say, the cabin became the site of our family vacations. In 1948, I was nine years old and my sister was seven. My Uncle Earl had three sons and a daughter all of whom were older than my sister and me. Cleon, father of the current owners, their youngest was one year older than me. The boys all hunted and fished.
I was married in 1964, moved to Central New York State on the East side of the Finger Lakes area. Our trips to Leetonia took three hours via Corning. Tioga and Ansonia. Our daughter was born 1968. When we would go to the cabin, we never knew who else might show up from Cassels. On one occasion we took friends with our young babies along for a weekend retreat when the late night calm was interrupted by the unexpected arrival of some cousins with all the gear for which we now had to make room. That was about 1969.
By 1970, the Cassel family had much outgrown my family so I suggested to Dad that we ask Cassels if they would accept a deal in which the lot would be divided diagonally roughly in half. They would retain the half with the cabin and we would build a cabin on the other half. The deal was legally consummated and I began to research building prospects.
By chance I received an ad in our mailbox describing prefabricated redwood garages and cabins. The elderly salesman visited our house at our invitation and told us we could specify the configuration we wanted and the walls would be prefabricated at a factory near Albany NY and the roof would then be stick-built on site. They would want to visit the site to be sure their flatbed truck could make it up and around the drive way to dump the building bundles on the site.
In February 1970, I drove two company representatives in my Dodge Dart sedan to Leetonia. While there, snowflakes began to fall as they carefully measured the driveway around the corner Maple tree at the top and determined that their truck could make the turn. That set in motion some intense planning on my part. We could not have accomplished the project without the help of permanent Leetonia resident Paul (Wally) Walleisa (sp?).
Wally arranged for a lumbering company operating nearby to provide an operator and equipment to level the site in preparation for laying a slab. He also arranged for cement delivery from Wellsboro. In the meantime, in my home shop, I fabricated the basic plastic plumbing which would be buried under the 36 x 24 foot slab. All this was to come together in April.
The building crew of three provided by the manufacturer set up a tent on the property where the foreman, his family and the other two young men stayed. They day of the pour arrived. The cement truck driver seemed extremely worried about the 3-ton limits on the Leetonia bridges and Wally was worried we would be shorted in concrete. We were relieved to find that the water pressure from the spring at the Turtle Shell camp was just enough to come out the hose from the Maple Grove into the top of the cement truck parked on the drive above the site.
It took all day into the dark of evening for four loads of concrete to be delivered to the site. It began to sprinkle rain as the last load was poured illuminated by car headlights and as I held the plastic plumbing in position.
During the several hours it took for the cement truck to make round trips from Wellsboro, Wally was determined to compensate for any possible shorting of concrete by driving us around in his beloved Jeep pickup to pick up large slabs of rock to put down before each pour.
Sometime in June the flatbed truck with our building panels and materials arrived in Homer from Albany, NY for us to lead the way to Leetonia. Upon arrival there, the driver looked very skeptical of the possibility of making his delivery up the narrow dirt driveway and around the ninety-degree turn at the top. He determined to turn around at the other end of Leetonia and build up speed. He roared up the drive, squeaked around the Maple-guarded corner at the top and finally eased his strapped bundles off his raised dump bed onto the grassy area above Maple Grove.
So by the Summer of 1970 we had the shell of our building erected. We hired the same crew to haul finishing materials from home and to help me install all the studding inside. We had a well drilled. I proceeded upon many trips from home with materials to finish the interior. I fabricated the shower base, insulated the walls and ceiling, did the plumbing, put up the paneling and the ceiling tiles. We were wise enough to hire an electrician to do all the wiring according to my plan.
Long before the advent of SUVs, we ordered a 1971 International Travelall four-wheel drive for our anticipated recreation. The 345 cubic inch engine gave us about ten miles to the gallon. I bought a 4 x 6 utility trailer which I used to haul the carpet from Syracuse NY. We laid it out on the ground to cut it into dimensions for installation in each room. I brought a Franklin stove from Montgomery Ward in Cortland NY. A few years later I bought a used Johnson snowmobile the track of which is on the floor of the shed. I fabricated the shed at home in our garage and hauled it with the foundation railroad ties to Leetonia. What a project!
By 1972 our son Peter was born. Wally helped us find rocks for me to use in building the stove hearth. I really enjoyed that project. Meanwhile our children enjoyed coming to Leetonia. Wally was a frequent visitor. But as the years passed, our visits were less frequent but my parents continued to enjoy their visits. Dad was always present for the opening of trout season. We once had our family Thanksgiving dinner there but we were surprised how much the quiet of Leetonia changed with the arrival of hunters in anticipation of opening deer season.
One July 4th vacation, we saw an elderly couple coming up the drive as we sat on the screened in porch. We were surprised to learn that he, "Bill" Bailey had been born in the house with the elk horns over the entrance. But even more surprising, they lived within a few miles of our New York home and he had taught for many years in our school system. He provided us with many stories and eventually with a copy of his typed Leetonia story and photos. I believe I left a copy with the Cassels. I had loaned my original photos to my cousin Dick so don't have them� only photo copies.
Upon my father's death in 2002, the use of the place would fall solely to us since my mother did not plan to drive there by herself from near Lancaster, PA. Since our children were long gone and lived in Vermont and in Nashville, we did not travel to the camp much since it seemed that every trip required us to spend much time cleaning and on maintenance as my father grew older. So we decided to sell and, fortunately, my cousin, Cleon's sons bought the property from us. What a wonderful time in their lives and in the lives off their children to have a place like that in Leetonia!
Labor day weekend and Leetonia was full of children having fun the old fashioned way. The six boys left to right are Timmy Shey, Lee Cassel, Owen Shey, Wyat Grundon, Casey Ahern, and Colton Cassel. They construted two elaborate play forts. The first one being for action figures and the one in the second picture for civil war figures. It appears several of the civil war figures were also trenched in for battle in the third photo.
A combination of Ebersoles and Cassels surrounded a feeding table close to the Ebersole camp. I don't believe anyone starved during the weekend. They also had a few games the adults participated in. A friendly game of horseshoes and a game called, "Bongo," which looks like something a golfer made up to use up his old golf balls.
way through them and attached together with about 12" of rope. There are a total of 6 sets of these balls, 3 sets of one color and 3 sets of another color. The object is to stand at one end and rap the balls around the horizontal bar. The top bar is worth one point, the middle two points and the bottom three points.
The upper area of cabins seemed full of people for the weekend. The Anthracite Camp of Fred and Judy Wise, were busy repairing inside their cabin as they had just finished putting on a new steel roof this summer.
