Wind shows power
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Herald-Standard in 1999. The time elements in the story remain as they were first published in 1999.”Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18.
This is the story of a local eccentric whose unusual last will and testament set the stage for a lesson in humility. The moral of this story is that a greater power can countermand the best laid plans of mortal man.
I would like to acknowledge several individuals from whom I have acquired information for this article. They include Floyd Gillis of Low Hill, who helped write “Centre to Center,” a book of reminiscences of Centerville Borough; Rebecca Hoop of Blainesburg, who suggested that the story of the McCutcheon monument might interest readers; Rev. John A. Springer, whose 1989 “Your Brownsville And Mine” column included details of the McCutcheon story; and Lindsey P. Gillis of Beallsville, who relayed an eyewitness account of the monument’s gusty finale.
The historic Taylor United Methodist Church, founded in 1772, is in West Pike Run Township along old Route 40, four miles west of Brownsville.
In the cemetery adjoining the church stands an unusual grave marker. Local residents call it the “Spite Monument.”
The story of the monument is that of a miserly old man who, rather than bequeath his fortune to his surviving family members, decreed in his will that his entire fortune was to be spent on a monument to himself.
James Shannon McCutcheon, one of three children, was born on Jan. 15, 1828. At the age of 2, his parents moved to East Bethlehem Township in Washington County, where James was raised. He labored as a farm hand during his youth, saving and investing his money wisely. As an adult, he purchased 127 acres of land on the present Tate Road near Taylor Church. Later, at the age of 56, he bought the Denbo Farm and lived there until his death in 1902 at the age of 78.
According to “Centre-To-Center,” the farm’s “fine old brick house, built before the Civil War, is the present residence of the McAnulty’s.”
Rev. John A. Springer wrote that McCutcheon’s financial fortunes benefited from the discovery of coal on his farmland. He was a bachelor who “lived quietly and frugally with his sister. He came to Brownsville occasionally, mostly to the National Deposit Bank.”
Unfortunately, when McCutcheon’s sister married and moved away, McCutcheon became an eccentric miser. Rather than pay the toll to use the covered bridge, they say he would cross the frozen Monongahela River on the ice. When asked to donate to church missions, this relatively wealthy man contributed one solitary dime. He once gave a dozen teaspoons as a wedding present and bragged that they “cost him every bit of a dollar.”
What did McCutcheon plan to do with the money he was hoarding? The story is that he was talking to a Dr. Cotton of Centerville one day.
McCutcheon reportedly told Dr. Cotton that “he was going to build a large burial monument to himself in Taylor Cemetery so that when people passed by on the National Pike, they would say, ‘There lies Shannon McCutcheon.'” Sure enough, he contracted with the T. Wright and Co. marble works of Brownsville to erect an 85-foot-high granite monument with a 45-foot base. His entire fortune was to be spent on its construction. Rev. Springer noted that the price of the granite alone, purchased from a granite company in Barre, Vt., was $20,000. McCutcheon supervised the project on a daily basis. Rumor was that he devoted his fortune to this memorial, rather than bequeath his estate to his sister and her family, in order to spite her for moving away and leaving him to live alone. Locals soon nicknamed it the “Spite Monument.”
Ironically, McCutcheon died before the monument was completed. According to details provided in “Centre-To-Center,” his will stated that “the monument was to cost around $20,000. The balance of his estate was to be used for building a fence around the main monument with smaller monuments at each corner as high as the balance of his estate would permit. The corner monuments were to be the same style as the main one. The inside of the low granite wall surrounding the monument was to be paved with granite blocks.”
Since the monument was not complete when he died, he was temporarily buried to the rear of the site. When the memorial was finished, his body was moved to its present location at the front. For years, the towering spire could be seen for miles around. The name of Shannon McCutcheon undoubtedly passed many lips.
Then it happened.
On July 27, 1936, the infamous windstorm of 1936 ripped through the area. Lindsey Gillis of Beallsville told me that his cousin, John Cleaver (owner of Cleaver’s greenhouse in Richeyville), was among those caught in the storm. John was attempting to reach his home, which then was at Malden.
When John reached Taylor Church, he found that fallen trees blocked the road. Unable to go farther, Cleaver watched in awe as the tumultuous wind seized all but the pedestal of McCutcheon’s 85-foot-high monument and hurled it toward the ground. With a roar, the granite obelisk smashed into the surrounding tombstones. Only the base of the monument was spared.
When the storm had subsided, an appraisal was made of the destruction. The builders of the original monument, T. Wright and Co., were no longer in business. Their successors, Simon White Sons Monument Co., assessed the damage.
McCutcheon’s will had specified that his entire fortune was to be spent on construction of the memorial, and it was. There was no money left to repair the damage. The shards of shattered granite were hauled away by Simon White Sons.
Now, 97 years after the miser’s death, gentle winds waft by the naked pedestal, humbled without its grandiose spire. As people pass by the site on the National Pike, they can almost hear the breeze whisper ironically, “There lies Shannon McCutcheon.”
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Many recall the storm
Readers have contacted me with a variety of recollections of the 1936 windstorm that claimed the McCutcheon monument and did much damage throughout the region.
Rebecca Binns Hoop of Blainesburg, whose phone call inspired my writing of the preceding story of the “Spite Monument,” told me that the gale gave her a fear of storms that still haunts her 63 years later. To this day, she “almost panics” when a storm warning is broadcast.
She said she was 22, living on Ridge Road, that fateful day. She had never seen the sky so black. Fumbling at clothespins in her haste to take in the hanging laundry, she ran out of time to rescue the baby chicks running about the yard. They were never seen again. The barn was damaged, her house lost part of its roof, and water poured into the upstairs and drenched the kitchen below.
Charles Yokum, who now lives in Vanderbilt, wrote to tell me that at the time of the storm, he was working at the Barnard farm in Deemston Borough.
His father Joseph, Frank Cleaver and two other boys, Bobby Pryor and Jimmie Elliott, were hauling hay to be stacked.
Seeing the approaching storm, the quintet took the horses 200 yards to a sheep barn, closed the door and crouched inside. The wind hit, the beams shifted and the barn fell off its 2-foot-high foundation. They got out of the still-upright structure and huddled together in the wind and rain, afraid the barn would collapse. It did not. In Mr. Yokum’s words, “had this barn not been put together with wooden pins, as were used many years ago, it would have been completely destroyed, with a possibility of lost lives as well as a good team of horses.”
He concluded his letter by writing, “This is clear in my mind today, and I can still see the storm clouds rolling up just like barrels. I was 16 years old at the time and am the only one living today of the five that experienced this dreadful storm together.”
Pauline Paling Keller called me from Palm Coast, Fla., to describe how, as a 16-year-old living in West Brownsville at the time of the storm, she vividly remembers the “green and yellow boiling clouds” approaching West Brownsville from the direction of Blainesburg. She said she ran excitedly from window to window while her mother frantically begged her to take cover.
Ray Christner of Brownsville recalled that when the storm reached its height in downtown Brownsville, the doors at the Strand Theater were chained shut to prevent patrons inside from exiting into the maelstrom beyond the doors.
Albert Smith described returning as a teenager from an Ohio vacation after the storm had passed, noting the worsening damage as he neared his home near Brownsville. He passed wind-ravaged Centerville, saw the downed McCutcheon obelisk, noted the missing Presbyterian steeple, and arrived home to a house missing part of its roof. The outhouse, he wrote, had tumbled into the “railroad” cut.
Josephine Camino MacIntosh, now of California, Pa., lived in Brownsville in 1936. She was 19 years old. Her father operated the Joseph Camino Bakery in the 1400 block of Water Street, across the street from the present bus garage. The bakery was struck by the flying roof of the closed T.S. Wright monument works building. Josephine recalls a funnel cloud approaching from the direction of Bridgeport mine. The force of the wind tore her shoe off. She found it later near the Monongahela Railroad yard office.
I thank my readers for sharing with us their memories of the power of nature’s fury, illustrated so unforgettably on that summer afternoon many years ago.
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Comments about this article may be sent to Editor Mark O’Keefe, 8-18 E. Church St., Uniontown, PA or e-mailed to mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com .