Committee to record history of Clinton Township
SAXONBURG — Once certain residents, schools and artifacts are gone, a municipality’s history can fade away as well.
So a group of citizens in southeastern Butler County have come together to ensure Clinton Township does not suffer that fate.
Kathy Allen, who is a Clinton Township supervisor, formed the Clinton Township Historical Committee, which was approved by supervisors last year, she said.
Others on the committee are Fred Caesar, volunteer curator at the Saxonburg Museum; Gary McCall; Doris Herceg; Donna Tasker; Mel Kohley; and Jim Halstead.
Allen said Patrick Harvey was the township’s first settler when he and his wife, Jane, bought a farm in what was then Buffalo Township in 1795.
“That was the first family,” Allen said.
Harvey was born in 1766 in County Down, Ireland, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1792.
The family’s farm was in southeast Clinton Township near what is now Hidden Hills Road.
In 1854, the four original townships in Butler County were divided into the 33 townships that exist today.
Allen said many Irish immigrants settled in Clinton Township, including the ancestor of committee member Gary McCall.
McCall said after emigrating from Ireland, Samuel McCall settled in Butler County near the current site of Moraine State Park.
Some of the McCall family moved south to what is now Clinton Township, and settled on 111 acres off Sandy Hill Road.
Gary McCall has the walking plow that was used on the Clinton Township farm by his great-grandfather.
“I also have a chair that my mother’s uncle, Curtis Cunningham, said came from Ireland on the back of a mule,” McCall said.
Allen said the committee has met about once per month for the last year.
She said the committee’s focus is on agriculture, early churches and cemeteries, schoolhouses, and the township’s evolution to the current day.
Allen said the committee is helped by the fact that no real development, either residential or commercial, has invaded the municipality like it has in neighboring townships.
“We’ve had little to no development,” she said. “We’re a diamond in the rough.”
She also has spent the last several months interviewing older township residents whose families have called Clinton Township home for generations.
The interviews will be transcribed by Kohley, Allen said.
McCall said the one-room schoolhouses in Clinton Township were vital to early education for the children of its early settlers.
He listed the Love, Sefton, Rocky Run, Lardintown, Anderson and Chantler schools, plus the Pine Run School, which burned down in the 1930s. Its students then attended the Anderson School, McCall said.
The Love School, which closed in 1950, is now a house on Route 228, and the Rocky Run School is now a chicken coop on a farm.
Regarding early homes, Allen lives in a piece of Clinton Township history.
The front three rooms in Allen’s home were built in 1818 by Robert Love and his wife, Nancy Hutchison Love.
“I just thought it was important to incorporate all this past history before a lot of people pass on,” Allen said of her enthusiasm for the project.
To do so, Allen and the committee members are studying the book “Merrie Olde Middlesex,” a historical record of Middlesex Township written by the late Caroljo Forsythe Lee.
Much of Middlesex Township’s history overlaps into that of Clinton Township, its neighbor to the east, plus the committee will use Lee’s book as a template for organizing and recording Clinton Township’s history.
In addition to the township’s earliest history, the committee will look at early industry there.
One interesting tidbit is the KDKA tower, a 718-foot metal structure that was built at the radio station’s transmitting station just outside of Saxonburg in Clinton Township.
The transmitting station was in the location of the current Coherent building on Saxonburg Boulevard from 1929 to 1940.
“It was the tallest metal structure in the country at one time,” Caesar said.
The U.S. Steel sinter plant, in the location of the current Victory Industrial Park, was a huge employer in Clinton Township and Southeastern Butler County in general.
The plant began operating in 1959 and closed in 1986.
The site was occupied by several farms before U.S. Steel built the plant.
Anyone who would like to provide artifacts or historical stories for the Clinton Township Historical Committee can contact Caesar at the Saxonburg Museum at 724-841-5084.
