LEHMAN TWP. — Life in the Back Mountain in the 1700 and 1800s was very different than it is today.
No Route 309 or 415. No grocery stores and very few homes.
Residents, at that time, had to deal with threats from bears, wolves and other predators, according to Dallas Middle School history teacher Harry Haas.
It might be hard for Haas’ honors history class to image life without television, Internet, cell phones or computers.
The teacher tried something new this year to highlight the local history of the Back Mountain.
The class focused on some of the first settlers to the region to understand what life was like in Pennsylvania’s frontier in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Haas said.
“We had to hunt down local history,” seventh-grader Athena Cigan said. “We found a lot of information in an ebook (“The Early Settlement of Dallas Township”) by William Penn Ryman.
“It was written like a diary. It gave first-hand accounts of life in the Back Mountain.”
The information unveiled a past of which the teens were unaware.
“This area was originally called McLellonsville,” Cigan said.
The name was changed to Dallas Township in 1817, she said.
The township was named after the sixth United States Secretary of Treasury Alexander J. Dallas, she added.
The students’ eagerness inspired Haas to take his class beyond book learning.
On May 1, the 15-member class ventured to Warden Cemetery, on Center Hill Road and Woodlawn Cemetery on Woodlawn Avenue, both in Dallas Township; Rice Cemetery on Huntsville Road in Dallas Borough; Huntsville Cemetery on Sutton Road in Jackson Township; and Idetown Cemetery, on Idetown Road in Lehman Township.
At the cemeteries, the students were challenged to find the graves of the first Back Mountain families.
If successful, they did a charcoal rubbing of the tombstones.
The stone rubbings, along with posters the students made, will be displayed during the Dallas Days Bicentennial History & Art Display from 6 to 10 p.m. May 10 at the Back Mountain Regional EMS Building on Route 118, Dallas Township Supervisor Elizabeth Martin said.
“It is not just a scavenger hunt for the pioneers but also a history lesson,” Haas said. “We have had a 50 percent find rate.”
At Huntsville Cemetery, seventh-grader Olivia Podskoch found the final resting spot of Joshua Fuller, an early businessman.
“He had a grain mill with his brother Benajah Fuller in the early 1800s,” Podskoch said. “The mill burned down and was replaced.”
Students also learned about local ties to the Revolutionary War, Civil War and world wars, Haas said.
At the Idetown Cemetery, the class unexpectedly met up Willis Ide, one of the descendants of Dallas Township founders, Nehemiah Ide.
“We can trace our family history back to the Mayflower,” Ide told the teens.
The 92-year-old Ide was cleaning up brush from the cemetery that bears his name.
He guided the students over to Nehemiah’s grave. Willis explained that Nehemiah is his great-great-grandfather who built a log cabin across the street from the cemetery.
Nehemiah settled in what was then known as Bedford Township, now Lehman Township, he said.
Willis said Nehemiah was a Revolutionary War veteran involved in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Nehemiah also signed the petition to form Dallas Township from Kingston Township in 1817, Willis said.
Student Sawyer Christman liked hearing Willis’ family history.
“It was pretty cool,” Christman said, adding Willis is a family relation of Dallas Middle School’s Family and Consumer Science teacher Audrey Ide.
Haas found the local history lesson interesting, as well.
“It was one of those times that even the teacher was learning,” he said.
“One of the fun things about this (project) was to think about what life was like here,” Cigan said.
