The Mill and its harsh conditions took the lives of my Grandfather, Wallace Alfred Mann, and my cousin, Frank Vicodil.

Aliquippa: From Mill Town to Ghost Town

Me hanging out at the Pool Hall downtown on Franklin Avenue. The Mill, which stretched for 7 miles along the river, is now shut down and dismantled, with the ground so bad weeds hardly grow on it. So they build a new prison on the site, and Aliquippa, once the home of Mike Ditka, Henry Mancini, and Tony Dorset, is now largely a ghost town.

The Company Store in Downtown Aliquippa, where workers had food & clothing deducted from their pay.

Hills & Mill Housing in Old Aliquippa. The entire town was built in a few years around 1900 to house tens of thousands of new immigrant steelworkers in the J&L Steel plant

Hopewell Township: Five Points, Davidson Heights, South Heights & the Ohio River on the map. Made up of many older small villages and hamlets, the townships thrived on farming, coal, oil and the river ports long before the mills were built. My old home is across the road from the woods right in the center of the map. 'Davidson Heights' is named after my settler ancestors, Adam, Robert and Ebenezer Davidson, who settled there between 1795 and 1810.