The more things change in Freeport, the more they stay the same.
The borough, celebrating its 175th birthday this summer, has a reputation in the Allegheny-Kiski River Valley as an authentic slice of small-town America.
Freeport is situated in a southwest corner of Armstrong County, at a point where it comes together with neighboring Butler, Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. The town's population has remained about the same since around the Civil War -- 2,100 people, 2,200 at most, according to 86-year-old town historian Rodney Chapman. But its demographics have shifted.
More than half of Freeport's residents are senior citizens, Mayor Robert Ravotti says. Chapman says that's changing.
"There are lots of new families, because (boys and) girls get married and decide that they will maybe take over Mom and Dad's house," Chapman says. "I see new names in the town that I don't know who they are anymore, but if I dig around a bit, I find out that, oh, that's so-and-so's daughter, and I know her! That's the way life goes here."
'A Free Port'
Freeport started as "Todd's Town," named after the Todd brothers, David and William. In 1786, they bought two sections of land along the Allegheny River, and in 1794, they bought what came to be known as "Todd's Island," just offshore.
In 1792, Capt. John Craig built a blockhouse on Water Street, now the location of the Veterans of Foreign Wars building at Riverside Drive and Fifth Street.
The blockhouse served as "protection against the Indians ... tribes including the Miami of Ohio, Delaware, Erie, Seneca and Munsie," Chapman said. "We had people living in the area who were trying to establish farms and so on, and when the Indians went on the war path, they had to have some place to run for safety. There was a line of them along the (river) valley. The white man was taking the Indians' land, and the Indians were retaliating."
In 1796, the land was surveyed, and the town was divided into 135 lots. In 1806, the town got its first post office, run by postmaster Jacob Weaver.
"Things moved very slow through the whole bit," Chapman says. "There wasn't really too much going on, and I think the Todd brothers were maybe disappointed."
Perhaps to try to draw more people, David Todd decreed that there never would be a docking fee to tie up a boat, raft or barge on the riverfront.
The town became known far and wide as a free port, and "most people who were in and out of Freeport then were river men," Chapman says.
The diamond in the rough
When the borough was incorporated and renamed in 1833, Freeport was a rough-and-tumble river town with a growing timber industry.
The Wild West of the 1870s had nothing on Freeport, according to John Shoop, 71, whose family ran the J.H. Shoop men's clothing store for 175 years. The store closed in 2005. When it closed, it was said by many to be the oldest family-owned men's shop in the United States.
Stories about the town from the 1830s onward were passed through five generations of Shoops, who claimed that "nothing was wilder than Freeport, back when the lumber men were coming down the river." There were three hotel saloons in town, Shoop said.
"Keep in mind, these people had been up in the mountains all winter ... logging, and they were a wild group," says Shoop, who lives in Washington Township, Armstrong County. "These were just pretty wild mountain men down there."
There were several sawmills in town. High-quality lumber came by barge down the Allegheny by way of the Clarion River, Chapman says.
By the turn of the 19th century, Freeport produced most of its food, dry goods and other provisions, Chapman says.
"Most everybody raised their own food in the backyard ... and some farmers shipped their produce down to Pittsburgh on barges," Chapman says. "Some people were known to have lived in the countryside someplace, and they built themselves a boat. They would wait until spring, and they would load it up with lumber and take it back to Pittsburgh. They would sell off the logs, sell off the boat and walk home."
Struggling families, growing pride
During the early part of the 20th century, residents -- including the children -- worked hard to make ends meet, Chapman says.
As a child in the late 1920s and early '30s, Chapman got paid 30 cents a week to pump water for a neighbor and 10 cents a day to haul another's coal.
"So you see, I was in the big money," he says jokingly.
He would use his earnings to see cowboy movies at the Ritz Theater at the corner of Fourth and Market streets. Sometimes he took along friend and schoolmate Mary Brown, who would become his wife.
The strain of the Great Depression didn't hit Freeport until about 1930, Chapman says.
On March 17, 1936, the Allegheny River and Buffalo Creek overflowed their banks, inundating half the town. The infamous St. Patrick's Day Flood devastated residents already struggling in the midst of the Great Depression, says Chapman, who was 12. The water reached the second stories of some homes. Many lost all of their furniture, he says.
In the early '40s, Freeport sent many of its young men to fight in World War II. The draft "cleaned this town out in a hurry," Chapman says in an oral history of the town compiled in 1996.
Chapman joined the Army in 1942. He spent three years in the service, including about six months as a German prisoner of war in in 1944-45.
When he came home, Chapman, like many others, settled down and started a family. His wife ran Mary Chapman's Beauty Shop on High Street; Rodney went to work at Pittsburgh Plate Glass in Creighton.
"We had everything," Chapman said. "It was just pretty much like it was before the war."
Milkshake memories
In the 1950s and '60s, Freeport went through what many residents consider its golden era. Business hummed, young families flourished, and the town was "still in good shape," Chapman says.
Sue Hunter, 66, co-chairwoman of the 175th celebration committee, remembers the town of her youth as a safe, friendly place where mothers always swept their stoops and nursed the scraped knees of any child who came along.
"What I remember was just playing with all my friends in the neighborhoods," Hunter says.
The kids played "Kick-the-Can" or "Kick-the-Stick," which worked sort of like baseball -- and tended to confuse cousins from the country, Hunter says.
"The kids in the country, they never understood that, because you have to have a curb."
As Hunter and her friends grew up, they took train rides from Freeport Station to Apollo and Pittsburgh and bought penny candy from Jess Nixon's store on Third Street. Later, as teenagers, they flirted over burgers, fries and milkshakes at Petri's on Fifth Street.
When Hunter married just out of high school in 1961, she -- like many brides of that time -- furnished her new home at Fisher's Appliance, right next to the historic J.H. Shoop's clothing store.
"We all bought our appliances there. When you got married, they gave you credit," she said. "You could pay as little as you wanted, if you had to."
Fisher's has been closed for decades.
"Those days are just gone," Hunter says.
"I think the plazas and (malls) have taken people away from the community, and small businessmen just can't make a living anymore," she says. "Everybody has a car, two cars, three cars, and they choose to go to the bigger stores."
Closing, changing, rebuilding
When the Heights Plaza shopping center opened in the Natrona Heights section of Harrison in 1955, business in Freeport began a slow but steady decline, residents and local officials say.
"(Businesses) couldn't keep up," Chapman said. "Like all small towns, you can't compete against the big people. The grocers were hit pretty hard."
By that time, Chapman was sorting mail at the Freeport Post Office and moonlighting as a carpet salesman. Like many families, his was struggling to make ends meet.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Freeport was full of young working-class families trying to scrape together enough money to get by, Chapman said.
"Most everybody had some kind of little sideline," he says. "You never had enough money. It was always a day late and a dollar short."
While some, like Chapman, stayed and worked, other young people began to leave town in search of work.
After a while, it felt like "the town just died," says Rich Buday, who opened Buday Printing on Fifth Street in 1968.
That led to a municipal effort to redevelop the downtown commercial area in the late 1970s. The effort included "cleaning out a lot of the old buildings," including the Ritz Theater, to make room for new construction, council President Jim Seagriff says.
Geno Pernazza, 81, served on borough council from 1972 to 1980 and on Freeport Area School Board.
"We had some homes remodeled and some streets fixed up," he said. "When people saw that we were taking things down, they kept asking 'When are we going to build them back up?' Well, it takes time. Through the years, we got a lot of things accomplished."
Now that the Freeport Renaissance Association has taken over that effort, residents finally are seeing "the light at the end of the tunnel," Pernazza says.
Home again, home again
Freeport is becoming home to a new wave of transplants and young families from around the Alle-Kiski Valley and beyond. They choose the town for its charm, safety and sense of community.
The average house in Freeport sells for $77,000 and is on the market for only 71 days, which is "very short" compared with 107 days in nearby Buffalo Township, says Jack Hutterer of Northwood Realty.
A quality of the school system also makes Freeport attractive, says Paula Kuras, 34. Kuras was raised in Buffalo Township but knew Freeport as a child and moved into town 12 years ago.
Now, her family lives on Market Street, and Kuras' daughter, Freedom, 12, is about to enter seventh grade at Freeport Junior High School.
"I like the small town, the river," Kuras says.
For the most part, Freeport is just as Kuras remembers it during the late 1970s and early '80s, she says.
"Everybody was peaceful. The community came together and did everything together."
Frank Cook, 67, was raised in Beaver County and left home in 1960 to travel the country. In 1991, Cook came back from California to visit family. He got lost on Route 28, so he pulled off at Exit 17.
When he saw Freeport, he said, he decided to stay -- forever.
"I got off and came down to where the Freeport Bridge (is) and I said, 'This is really a nice little town. I wouldn't mind living here,' " Cook says. "I rode around town for a while, and I said, 'I think I'll just move here.' "
In the years since, Cook has retired and gotten to know his neighbors on Fifth Street. He's glad he "got away from the rat race," he says.
"In the big city, you're too occupied taking care of your own business," Cook says. "You're just not taking the time out to do anything. Small towns like here, it's a slower pace, and I like it here."
Freeport's history
The borough turns 175 this summer. These are some of the high -- and low -- points residents and local history buffs recall:
1786: The Todd brothers, David and William, begin buying land along the Allegheny River for "Todd's Town"
1792: Massey Harbison, a young settler, is captured, and her children are killed by American Indians; she escapes and returns home with her remaining infant son
1804: The town's first residential settler, a man named Patterson, builds a cabin
1820s: The town has three hotel saloons; the first churches appear
1829: The Pennsylvania Main Line Canal opens; population exceeds 700
1830: J.H. Shoop men's clothing store opens
1833: Borough charter is signed; Todd's Town is renamed Freeport
1850s: The town's first school is built on Fourth Street, the site of the present-day municipal building
1855: The A. Guckenheimer & Bros. Distillery opens on Todd's Island and becomes one of the largest makers of rye whisky in the nation
1860: Freeport Cemetery is founded on Fourth Street; it later is moved to its current location near Freeport Community Park
1876: The Freeport Journal puts out its first issue
1898: Borough officials begin to put brick on the town's dirt roads; young men leave to fight the Spanish-American War
1901: The first car comes to Freeport, driven by A.M. Johnson
1911: Electricity comes to Freeport
1914: Bricking the streets is completed; young men leave to fight World War I
1916: Freeport Volunteer Fire Department founded
1918: The Guckenheimer Distillery goes out of business due to Prohibition
1925: A new Freeport school opens
1933: The borough celebrates its 100th anniversary
1958-61: The town's sewage authority is established; treatment plant built on lower Market Street
1959: The Freeport Journal publishes its final issue
1963: Freeport Area Community Pool opens
1983: Freeport celebrates its 150th anniversary
1998: Rennick Steele writes "Massey Harbison," a play about the life of Freeport's pioneer heroine
2004: Freeport Area Community Pool closes
SOURCE: Historian Rodney Chapman, the Freeport Area Library and Valley News Dispatch archives
Massa Harbison
Massa Harbison (also spelled Massey or Massy in some accounts) was among the first settlers of the Freeport area. She is remembered as a pioneer heroine who survived capture by Seneca and Munsee American Indians near present-day Freeport and lived to found a large, enduring family.
In May 1792, American Indians dragged Harbison, 22, from her home near the present-day location of River Forest Country Club, just across the Allegheny River from Freeport in Allegheny Township. Harbison was forced to watch the murder and scalping of two of her three young sons, then was hauled across the Allegheny and forced to march toward an American Indian camp in what is now Butler.
Harbison -- several months pregnant and wearing only nightclothes -- was able to escape with her surviving infant son.
Barefoot, she made her way south through the frontier wilderness, using some of the orienteering techniques she learned from her husband, John, a government scout.
For several days, she followed Connoquenessing Creek and other streams until she found the banks of the Allegheny River, near what would become the Fox Chapel Yacht Club.
Bruised, starving, sunburned and studded with thorns, she called out to her neighbors on the other shore. According to some accounts, she was so changed that, at first, they didn't recognize her.
Finally, she was rescued and returned to the Alle-Kiski Valley settlement, where she raised 11 children before she died in about 1837.
She is buried in Freeport Cemetery and is the namesake for Massa Harbison Park, at Oates Boulevard and Route 56 near Valley High School in New Kensington.
