Mount Union borough

The J. E. Everett Grocery

Photograph not reproduced here. The image that goes with this story is held by huntingdoncountyhistory.com and its credit does not permit republication, so it is cited rather than copied. See the original.

The J. E. Everett grocery in 1910, in the middle of the decade that changed this town.

Charles H. Welch, writing here in 1909, put numbers on it. When the water plant went in, in 1900, Mount Union had a population of 1,086. By the time he wrote, it had “upward of 3200” counting the suburbs.

He listed what had arrived in those nine years: two large fire brick plants, a large steam tannery, extract works, creosoting works and two railroads, employing between them more than a thousand men. In 1900, he says, work had only just begun on the Ganister Works.

A grocery in a town that trebles in nine years is not a quiet business.

Checked against the record. SOURCED. This page previously cited an internal catalogue reference and a photograph credit, neither of which a reader can open, and it carried a population claim with nothing behind it: that Mount Union went “from about a thousand to over three thousand” between 1900 and 1910. CONFIRMED, and better than the estimate. Welch's history, page 390: “When the plant was installed, in 1900, Mount Union had a population of 1086. It now has, including suburbs, upward of 3200.” The rough figures were right and the real ones are more interesting. TWO QUALIFIERS KEPT, because dropping them is how a good number goes wrong. Welch's 3,200 is “including suburbs”, so it is not the borough count on its own. And his book is 1909, not 1910, so the span is nine years rather than the decade the page implied. The page now says both. ADDED from the same passage, which is the reason the town grew: by 1909 there were two large fire brick plants, a large steam tannery, extract works, creosoting works and two railroads, employing more than a thousand men between them, where in 1900 work had only just started on the Ganister Works.

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