When you explore the dramatic geological wonders at Slippery Rock Creek Gorge, tour the historic grist mill, cross the red covered bridge or just sit and listen to the rushing waters at McConnells Mill State Park, here's a suggestion: You might want to contemplate a lost voice in those sounds — maybe even hear some laughter — and imagine the man who would sit on a stone next to the mill collecting a quarter for watching your horse or, in later years, your parked car.

Because there's forgotten history that needs to be told. That's the story of Moses "Mose" Wharton, a freed slave, and his friendship with the mill's owner, Thomas McConnell, who fought in the Civil War on behalf of Mose and his people.

Thomas McConnell, along with his son, James, and business partner, Samuel Wilson, purchased the mill in 1875 from original owner Daniel Kennedy, who by 1872 had rebuilt it following a fire.

One day in 1880, McConnell was in New Castle when he met Mose Wharton. McConnell asked the 20-year-old former slave if he would like to assist him for a week at his grist mill, helping to grind the local crop of wheat, corn and buckwheat into flour.

Mose accepted the offer and joined his new boss for the wagon ride back to the banks of Slippery Rock Creek.

The next Saturday, when McConnell was preparing to return Mose to New Castle, Mose had other thoughts. "Mr. McConnell," he said, "if you are getting ready to take me to town, I'd rather stay here."

McConnell granted that simple request, which would lead to Mose staying for the next 72 years.

Mose Wharton had been born into slavery in 1860 as the child of two of the 11 slaves owned by Dr. Albert Sidney Wharton, whom Mose described as "a kind man."

Wharton practiced medicine in Clemmonsville, N.C., but also owned a small plantation, complete with a mill and distillery. Clemmonsville, located in the western section of the state, was known for growing wheat and not for large plantations devoted to cotton.

Mose Wharton's father worked at the mill on the doctor's property. Mose's mother, whose back showed the scars from lashes inflicted by brutal previous masters, served as a house servant.

Mose's only memory of the war that ended his family's enslavement was the arrival of a road-weary group of Union Cavalry on horseback. The blue-clad soldiers filled their empty canteens with whiskey from the plantation's distillery in the hope of washing the dust from their throats.

Mose remembered well the look of disgust on the faces of the men as they raised their canteens to their lips, then tasted, quickly spit out and emptied the not-yet-properly-aged liquor onto the grass, turning it from green to brown. Off then rode the still-sober horse soldiers down the dusty road.

After the end of the war, and according to the 1870 U.S. Census, Mose made ends meet as a farm laborer. He knew if he was going to amount to anything he would need to strike out on his own.

With probably only a few dollars in his pocket, Mose worked his way north sometime in the mid- to the late-1870s, arriving in New Castle by 1878, being employed by several families there before meeting McConnell.

Mose was hired at the mill as a general handyman with a wage of $14 per month plus board. Very quickly he learned to run the mill single-handedly and took on other duties, such as delivering the mill's flour and feed from New Castle to Butler. Mose discovered he was the only Black person between those two towns.

Through his wit and good-natured personality, Mose overcame the racism of the time on many occasions.

A small, heated office at McConnell’s Mill provided a waiting room, where customers stayed while their grain was being ground. One day, a customer chose to grease his wagon instead of waiting in the office, according to a remembrance included in "McConnell's Mill Yesteryear and Other Stories" by Dale Currie.

When the customer returned, his hands were coated with black axle grease. Taking out his pen knife, the man proceeded to scrape the blackness off his hands. He turned to Mose with a challenge: "I bet you can't do that."

Without uttering a word, Mose took out his pocket knife and began to scrape the white flour that painted his calloused hands. He replied: "You scraped black off yours and they are white. I scraped white off mine and they are black. What's the difference?"

Not all encounters involving race were met with the previous sense of newfound racial understanding.

By 1880, James McConnell, who happened to be a skilled boxer, owned the mill along with his father. Possibly to help Mose fight off physical attacks because of his skin color, McConnell taught Mose how to defend himself.

On at least one occasion, a visitor to the site used a racial slur, and Mose told him to stop his cruel comments, according to Dale Currie's 1990 book.

"When the man failed to heed the warning, Mose picked him up, and — not realizing the man couldn't swim — threw him into the pool of water above the dam. With the man floundering and heading toward the precipice and the powerful rapids below, Mose dove in and saved the man's life."

Sadly, Mose, a very strong swimmer, was called upon many times to retrieve the body of a drowned visitor from the unforgiving waters of Slippery Rock Creek.

The congenial relationship between Mose and the white population of the area, though, was based on people's frequent visits to the mill and getting to know Mose as a kind, gentle, hardworking man who deserved their respect and to be treated as an equal.

For example, a woman related to me how her family in the Portersville area invited Mose to Sunday dinner in the late 1940s or early 1950s. One of the other invited guests protested about being seated at the table with a Black man. The head of the household promptly informed that impolite guest that he — and not Mose — could eat alone outside on the front porch.

Mose lived in a small, clapboard, two-story house he shared with his widowed mother beginning in 1911 until her death. Their home sat next to a large boulder, beside the road leading to the mill from the now-main parking area. The tiny dwelling was a favorite spot for children to visit when they came to the mill with their parents to enjoy the beauty of the gorge.

Mose loved to take the children on tours of the caves (rock overhangs) that lined the path of the creek, according to an 1981 Pittsburgh Press article by James McConnell's niece, Marion Stewart Hopper.

With a flashlight in hand, they would head into the center of the darkness, she remembered. Owing to a little help from their trusted guide, the flashlight would go dark, and the children would start screaming.

Then, Hopper said, Mose, with a twinkle in his eye, would laugh and say, "I better get this darn flashlight fixed!"

Upon a family's departure after a day's recreation afforded them by the graciousness of the McConnell family, children would find a piece of candy or fruit left behind on the car's seats by Mose to savor on the return trip home, Hopper said.

Wharton's boss, Thomas McConnell, died Aug. 16, 1905. Moses, who worked for and alongside McConnell for 25 years, served as one of his friend's pallbearers. McConnell's death was attributed to the slow progression of paralysis, the result of being severely wounded in the back of the neck by a piece of an exploding artillery shell during the Battle of Mechanicsville, Va., on June 26, 1862.

James McConnell would continue to employ Mose at the mill following his father's death. Shortly before James died, in 1928, he sold the mill property to his nephew, Thomas Hartman, who discontinued the milling business.

Thomas Hartman had developed a deep desire to preserve his grandfather's property that, since the mill's closing, had become by Hartman's choice a privately owned nature park.

In 1946, Hartman sold McConnells Mill to what would later be called the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, under the condition that it be preserved as a place of "scenic beauty, historic interest and wildlife sanctuary."

McConnells Mill State Park was created in 1957, when it was acquired from the conservancy by the state.

Demonstrating his family's loyalty and love for the now 86-year-old Mose Wharton, who often maintained the closed mill with money from his own pocket, Hartman included in the sale agreement that Mose be allowed to live out his life at the newly created park.

Mose, who never married, lived in the home he loved until the last years of his life. At the age of 90, due to the infirmities of age, Mose went to spend his final years at the Lawrence County Home, in the same town where he had first met Thomas McConnell.

Hartman and other members of the McConnell family were frequent visitors until Mose's death on Dec. 11, 1954, at the age of 94.

The man who had been born a slave, but had freed the hearts of so many from prejudice, was laid to rest in the Portersville Presbyterian Church cemetery, where his and his mother's tombstones were placed next to the McConnell family graves.

Marion Stewart Hopper further reminisced in her Pittsburgh Press article about her 1979 return to the mill.

She walked down the stream from the mill to find the biggest rock that juts out over the water, which had been the scene of many family picnics.

As she recalled, "It seemed to me the rock knew that someday I would come back, and it was waiting for me."

As Hopper sat on that rock, she pondered, "I learned a surprising thing: that when you are very, very still, you can still hear the laughter of Mose Wharton echoing through the hills he loved."

Bill May of Butler is a local historian, speaker and tour guide.