Blair County PA Archives Biographies.....Black, James A. ???? -
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Judy Banja http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00004.html#0000757 July 19, 2025, 7:11 pm
Source: Pen Pictures of Friends and Reminiscent Sketches, Altoona, PA: William F. Gable & Co., Mirror Press, 1911
Author: J. N. Tillard
A Long Time Citizen of The Town
JAMES A. BLACK Has Spent a Long and Busy Life in The Community
and, While Not Attracting Much Attention, Has Performed His Part
THE pedestrian who passes over the several bridges spanning the tracks of the
Pennsylvania Railroad in this city and stops to gaze at the innumerable shifting
engines at work in the yards, even in these slack times, and notes their size
and power, could scarcely imagine that immediately after the Civil War, a half
dozen little "dinkies" the largest of which could be lifted up bodily by a
modern wrecking crane and set into the ordinary flat car without making much of
a load, constituted the whole shifting power for the Altoona yards and shops.
Before the car shops were built at Fourth Street; the little shifting engines,
36, 48, 86, 110 and 143 were about the whole thing and the engineers were Tim
Donahue, Al. McHugh, John Young, A. C. Rickabaugh and James A. Black, while
Frank Kolley and John McHugh also pulled the throttle on locomotives of the same
type, the numbers of which the writer has now forgotten. Most of these shifters
were employed in and about the Twelfth Street shop yards, the big yard between
Fourth and Seventeenth Streets not having so much to do as the freight train
crews made up their own trains with their own engines before they started out on
their trip.
These tiny machines would make a poor showing these days in handling the
drafts of huge steel cars that now make up the equipment of the road, but forty
years ago, the average car was of ten ton capacity and they were equal to the
job. Railroading was a sort of free and easy business those days and most of
these old engineers had some hobby on the side to which they devoted some time,
Tim Donahue being known as an auctioneer or cryer of sales and of such a witty
turn that when he was conducting a sale he was sure to have a large and
appreciative audience whether any one wanted any of the goods he was trying to
dispose of or not. But they were all good engineers and devoted to their
machines and as the rules and regulations allowed a wider latitude in the way of
ornamentation than they do now, they spent considerable time in polishing up the
brasswork and fancy ornaments with which their machines were decorated.
Most of these men have long since passed away, Messrs. Rickabaugh and Black
being about the sole survivors of the early crowd. Mr. Rickabaugh was recently
placed on the retired list, but James A. Black left his engine more than a
quarter of a century ago to engage in the coal business, and is still at it
though he is fast approaching his three score and ten and his hair is very
white. He was born in Hollidaysburg sixty-seven years ago and spent his boyhood
and youth in the county capital, enlisting toward the close of the Civil War in
the One Hundred and Third Pennsylvania Volunteers as a sergeant under Captain
Daugherty, well known in his day in this city.
When the war was over and he was mustered out, he entered the service of the
Pennsylvania Railroad as a fireman on the Middle Division and after several
years was promoted to engineer, taking charge of the little 143 in the Twelfth
Street yards in the motive power department. When the old freight shop that
stood along Ninth Avenue below Twelfth Street was burned, the work was
transferred to the Middle Division Roundhouse and the 143 was kept busy shifting
freight cars in and out of the shop. When the new freight shop was built at
First Street and Andy Kipple moved his forces down there, the shifter and its
engineer and fireman, J. Westley Burley, went along and for thirteen years Mr.
Black shifted cars in the lower yard, until one day in 1883 he stepped off and
began piloting coal teams about the muddy streets of the city. His old fireman
took command of the little engine and still runs it in the car shop yards.
Mr. Black has not been the sort of man to often get his name into the public
prints as he has always been too busy attending to his own business to do that,
but none the less he has been the sort of individual that makes a solid and
thriving community. A quiet, steady, tireless worker, if he and his kind were
eliminated from any community there would not be much of it left, for after all
the man who from day to day does the useful work of the world without attracting
attention to himself is the fellow who constitutes the backbone of society.
Never having contracted an itch for notoriety, their mental processes are not
disturbed by ambitions that may produce only dead sea ripples, and their
energies are directed toward making it a better world to live in for those who
may be dependent upon them and those who know them best will most greatly
appreciate their virtues. They are the sort of prophets who, contrary to
tradition, are most honored in their own country, which is made up of their
families and immediate neighbors. While their fame does not reach wide, their
children usually walk in straight paths and in the end rise up to call them
blessed. If their achievements may not have mounted high as men measure them or
their deeds been heralded afar, they come down to the end without regrets and
are not the victims of remorse because of wrong done to their neighbors in their
efforts to climb over the heads of others.
Mr. Black has seen the place which for the greater portion of his life, he has
made his home, grow from a village to quite a pretentious city and has kept pace
with it, treading the toilsome way with patience and dilligence, discharging
every duty to family, community, church and state, a good citizen in every sense
of the word, demanding nothing for himself that he has not earned by the toil of
hand and brain, thereby earning the respect and esteem of every man who knows
him and when he finally walks out the far path and the mists of the unseen
envelop him, a sense of distinct loss will come to many who will not feel it
when much more pretentious men step down and out. But he is still hale, for the
pace that kills has not cut off his years and he may yet be long in the land of
the living. So may it be.
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