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Selinsgrove Times-Tribune - Feb.16, 1950
Colonel H. W. Shoemaker, State archivist, and gatherer of Pennsylvania folklore, writes that he met Hall Hoover at the Farm Show in Harrisburg, where Hall told him about his buffalo. "Hall told the colonel that he plans to get a mate for his cow Buffalo, and turn them out on the farm on Hoover's Island this spring.
Colonel Shoemaker writes: "Hall's ' buffalo is temporarily at his farm on the Snyder county side of the river, not far from the old home of Daniel Ott, who walked out to Indian territory before the Mexican War and shot buffaloes and wild horses, for their hides, and not too far from Bonney's Sink, where the last herd of wild bison in Pennsylvania were crushed and slain in 1800."
Daniel Ott lived along along Penn's Creek on the road between Selinsgrove and Kratzerville, near Ott's Tavern, on land now owned by the Selinsgrove State Colony for Epileptics.
Booney's Sink is in the mountains between the Snyder-Middlesworth State Park and Hunter's Road. The buffalo cow, which soon will drop a calf, is on the farm just south of Bake Oven Hill and Middle Creek.
Hall Hoover told the Colonel of the days when the gypsies used to cross the Susquehanna River by way of Mason's and Hoover's Islands.
Hoover said: "They are always asking for feed for their horses. We had the handsomest strawberry roan I have ever seen, but he was balky, and would not work. 'We will let you have him 'as is',' said my dad. 'He is young and strong, and a perfect picture.'
" 'We can easily cure him,' said the gypsy chief, fascinated by the colt's beautiful appearance. He trotted out a neat little mare we always after was made!
"For once a Gorgio, or Gentile, beat a gypsy. They were never able to cure the red roan of balking. They even hitched him head-first in the shafts, built a fire under him, and put barb-wire in the frogs of his feet and thistles under his tail, and put on hot horseshoes. In the end a butcher got him, to mix his flesh with cheap beef and pork to feed the foxhounds. 'Gypsy' was an honest little mare, but never had the pulling power of the untamable roan."
Colonel Shoemaker also wrote that his friend, Mrs. Howard R. Lytle, of South High street, an employee on Capitol Hill, Harrisburg, told him that her great-grandmother, Mary Catherine Miller, who married Benjamin Houseworth, lived in Weiserburg, the southern end of Selinsgrove. One time Mary Catherine was left in charge of her little brothers and sisters, while her parents went berry picking. The children were startled when some Indians made them a visit during their parents' absence. Mary Catherine ran away from the house in search of her parents. - All the little children started to cry. The more the Indians danced and whooped, the more the children cried. At length one of the Indians, thinking the baby cried because he was hungry, took him to his squaw at Bake Oven Hill.
Soon after the parents returned to their home, the Indian brought back the baby. They called the baby's mother "Good Angel" because she often gave them food. They did not like the husband. "Good Angel" lived to be 99 years of age.
The last Indian camp in this section was where M. E. Steffen now has his summer home, between Dundore and Port Trevorton along the Susquehanna Trail. Almost directly 'across the Susquehanna River from that place is the southern tip of the Isle of Que. There was the home of many Indians, as proven by the quantities of stone relics that are found on the island.
Indians suffered from chills and fever during the summer months, when mosquitoes thrived in swamps. Of I course they did not know why they developed chills and fever, but they did know that if they took to the hill country, they avoided illness. Therefore, they left the Isle of Que during the summer months and roamed the mountains, returning to the island in the fall. There the Indians traded with the French, who came down the Susquehanna from Canada. It is generally believed that French traders gave the Isle of Que its name.
After the white man came into this section, he, too, suffered from malaria. It was not until 1792 that a cure was effected. At that time, a man named Peter Gahl, from St. Domingo, French West Indies, settled in these parts. He lived on the Isle of Que, where he did a thriving business in selling a medicine that cured malaria. Gahl became prominent thru his connection with Simon Snyder, who suffered from malaria. At that time Simon Snyder lived with his older brother, "Black" John Snyder, in what is a part of The Mill House, now owned by Benton E. Reichenbach on Mill street. Snyder sent George Kremer, a relative who lived in the Snyder home, to the Isle of Que to get some of Gahl's medicine. Kremer observed and made a mental note of the ingredients Gahl used in his concoction. Kremer related these facts to Snyder and the entire community, after which Gahl's business took a sudden decline.
George Kremer later was elected to the United States Congress, and while there was in a debate with one of the Randolphs of Virginia. That learned Southern gentleman expounded at length, quoting in Latin and Greek. When Kremer arose in rebuttal, he let forth in Pennsylvania Dutch. The Speaker called him to order and requested that he speak in a language that could be understood by all. Kremer replied that if Randolph could quote from two dead languages, Latin and Greek, he would speak in a living one, Pennsylvania Dutch.
