Living History Tour Returns This Weekend

9th-annual event spotlights notable and obscure figures from region’s past

By Yousuf Lachhab Ibrahim
The Tube City Almanac
October 03, 2023
Posted in: McKeesport and Region News

During the 2020 Living History Tour at McKeesport & Versailles Cemetery, Tony Belobrajdich portrayed LCpl. Thomas James “Jitters” Sweeney, a McKeesport native who was killed during the Vietnam War. (Vickie Babyak photo for Tube City Almanac)

Visitors will be able to learn about past residents of McKeesport and the Mon Valley (both notable and obscure) this weekend, when the McKeesport Regional History & Heritage Center holds its ninth-annual Living History Tour at the McKeesport and Versailles Cemetery.

Actors will take on the roles of these historic figures from 12 noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday (Oct. 7 and 8). An indoor performance will also be held on Oct. 12 at 6:30 p.m. at the Heritage Center, 1832 Arboretum Drive, Renziehausen Park.

Admission is $12 for Heritage Center members and $15 for non-members. Children 12 and under are admitted for $6.

Among the historic figures portrayed will be Carolyn Waters Young, the first black city council member in McKeesport’s history; Lida Sill Cannon, a Gilded Age socialite known as the Belle of the Monongahela Valley; and Robert Nelson Thomas, a Union soldier who died of illness after having fought in the Civil War. They will be played by Brandy Cogdell, Gina T. Rosso, and Joe Kosha respectively.

At the 2020 event, Gina Rosso portrayed socialite LaRoux Lynch Soles, who became national headline news when she died under mysterious circumstances. Rosso will return as a different character for this year’s event. (Vickie Babyak photo for Tube City Almanac)

Meagan Donnelly, community outreach coordinator at the Heritage Center, said that the tour typically lasts between an hour and 90 minutes depending on the weather and the size of the group. Groups will travel from station to station, where an actor playing the role of a historic resident of the area will recite a performance about their life and death.

Actor David Stephens, who played the role of a boatsman the previous year, will return for this year’s tour, this time portraying 19th century pharmacist George Huey. “He was a pharmacist by day,” Stephens said, “And by what has been found and uncovered in the McKeesport history archive, was a monster hunter by night... He spent a lot of time hunting some fearsome monsters that he believed haunted the woods and the banks of McKeesport.”

The Heritage Center has access to Huey’s journals as a primary source. It is in this journal that Huey discussed his experiences as part of a monster hunting militia that hunted the fabled Monongahela Monster and the giant snake that supposedly stalked Dead Man’s Hollow.

Research on the figures generally begins at the cemetery. “If you come to the cemetery, you will see staff walking around with a notepad,” Donnelly said, “Just going through and looking for interesting statues, interesting burial grounds, interesting mounds, you know, memorial signs and statues and stuff like that.”

Sometimes, the people are discovered through research. The McKeesport Regional History & Heritage Center is the only repository for the McKeesport Daily News, which operated from 1884 until Dec. 31, 2015.

It was by that means that Donnelly, formerly a genealogy researcher, found out about a subject for the tour.

“I was the genealogical researcher for over a year.” Donnelly said, “So I was always living in the Daily News doing genealogy research.” The headline for the article about James Clawson’s death caught her eye.  A streetcar motorman, Clawson is described as a “true aviator at heart” in the Heritage Center’s tour pamphlet due to his love of flying. On the morning of Aug. 28, 1927, he took his last flight.

“It was a picture of him, a picture of his plane,” Donnelly said, “Talking about this horrible tragic accident in the middle of a stunt show. And so all I did was take a note of it. And then we at the Heritage Center try to meet regularly throughout the year where we compile all of the names that we've been given or what we researched.”

Members of the Heritage Center can access the Daily News’ archives on microfilm. Clawson himself will be portrayed at the Living History Tour by high school sophomore Ollie Moore.

The Heritage Center does not put together the experience based on just one source, however. Though the event will surely dramatize events for entertainment’s sake, those in charge of the research on a specific figure will try to corroborate information with family or search for secondary sources in order to maintain a level of accuracy.

“It's just an opportunity to kind of learn about somebody who lived in the same place that I live today,” Stephens said, on the reason he loves performing at the Living History Tour. “It's kind of neat that you're getting to revive somebody who hasn't had a chance or opportunity to have their story told in a long time.”

Yousuf Lachhab Ibrahim is a freelance writer from Pittsburgh and a recent Penn State University graduate. He won a Golden Quill award for his work at the Penn State Greater Allegheny Gazette.

Originally published October 03, 2023.

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