Old Grave Yard Square

A Brief History of the Hempfield Yard Lot

---

If we’ve learned anything from watching movies, surely we’ve learned that no good can come from unearthing duly interred bodies from sacred ground and moving them (or not) for the sake of development. You don’t build things over an old graveyard. You. Just. Do. Not.

But the fact is, the ground on which the Ohio County Public Library now stands was deeded to the town of Wheeling from Noah and Mary Zane in 1816 for use as “a burying ground.” And, as a burying ground, it was most certainly used.

Yes, it was a cemetery. One of the earliest in Wheeling.

It was known then, rather unimaginatively, as either the “City Grave Yard,” or, after some time had passed, as the “Old Grave Yard.” The current library property was part of “Grave Yard Square,” which was “bounded by Chapline or Fourth street on the west, Zane or Seventeenth on the south, Fifth or Eoff on the east, while the northern boundary was the northern front of the Capitol or thereabouts (Intell., “Our Silent Cities,” Dec. 8, 1880). So the Old Grave Yard also included what we now know as 16th Street (John Street back then) — at least the part that now runs in front of the city building and library.

Consequently, some posit, the library is haunted. In fact, some staff have claimed to have encountered a corporeally challenged young man named “Andrew ” whose ghostly shenanigans seem to be limited to causing fluorescent light bulbs to flicker. A library ghost should be more creative.

But, after ten years of working there/here, including a lot of quality time in the basement red zone, I can assure you, the only thing that haunts our library is the architectural spirit of 1973, a disquieting poltergeist in its own right, to be sure, but hardly a ghost worth fretting about.

Nevertheless, an old grave yard this ground most certainly was, a long, long time ago.

By 1840, the city had grown, and the cemetery was surrounded by houses and nearly full. The Hempfield Railroad Company purchased the land in 1850 for use as a depot and rail yard. The bodies were removed (or so they claimed) to Mt. Wood, Peninsula, Manchester, and East Wheeling Cemeteries.

---

The Smokestack

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Purchased by the B. & O. Railroad in 1871, the “Hempfield Yard” was made the site of a power plant featuring boilers, air compressors, dynamos, and a huge smokestack, when the company’s new passenger station, dubbed “The B. & O.’s Magnificent Present to Wheeling,” opened across Chapline Street in September of 1908.

The power plant’s unavoidable 124-foot tall smokestack features prominently in a number of the grimy, sooty, period photographs of the area, making it perhaps the second most prolific old-timey Wheeling photobomber after the water tower on the old Boury/Felber Biscuit building.

One wonders if its demolition in 1970 (see below) prompted the same kind of gawker curiosity as this quite recent event.

---

The Hempfield Yard During the 1913 Semi-Centennial

When it came time to celebrate fifty years of West Virginia statehood in June 1913, Wheeling did so with great gusto, unbridled enthusiasm, and no-holds-barred style. The entire city was draped with patriotic bunting for the week-long party. Eighty-two years old, but “remarkably preserved,” Col. George Latham, a Civil War veteran, former commander of Camp Carlisle, and one of only six surviving delegates to the 1st Wheeling Convention held at Washington Hall in May of 1861, was hauled back to town for the occasion.

An ornate “Triumphal Arch” designed by Wheeling architect Edward Bates Franzheim was erected at Market and 12th streets, and a large grandstand was erected near the old state capitol building on 16th Street. The streets of Wheeling were alive with parades of dignitaries and old soldiers, bands of music, and floral floats for the 35th state’s Golden Jubilee.

Not to be outdone, the B. & O. Railroad brought antique trains to the Hempfield Yard for an exhibition billed, “The Parade of Locomotives,” and a “Great Exhibit of Railroad History of the World.” The exhibit depicted the evolution of the locomotive from the early days through the Civil War and Statehood periods to the “modern era” of 1913.

“Complete history of locomotion told in brief by examples of old and new types of machines that have seen actual service during the epoch each represents, beginning with the horse car pulled train and ending with the modern mogul, taking 76 feet of track. At least twice during the week…this entire exhibit will be under steam and in motion. Never before attempted at an exhibition of this kind. Don’t fail to see the race between the old gray horse and the Peter Cooper and the world’s first railroad accident…It was during this race that Peter Cooper had his thumb smashed and the old gray mare won the race. Pathe Freres [a French film production company that created the newsreels commonly shown before feature films in the early days of cinema] will take films of this exhibit both for use and for history.”
–Daily Intelligencer, June 3, 1913

The old yard had been “cleaned up and electrically lighted” for the occasion, Security was apparently a concern, as the area was “patrolled by uniformed B. & O. officers,” (along with plain clothes men) who were said to be among the “most capable detectives in the country.” “It is a safe bet,” the News-Register predicted, “that crooks will have a hard time getting into town.”

As a typical railyard, most often filled with stacks of railroad ties and parked cargo trains, the Hempfield Yard was not the most photogenic spot in downtown Wheeling. As a consequence, not many photos of the area exist, with one notable exception.

---

The Parade of Locomotives

During the “Parade of Locomotives,” each train was backed down the 17th Street track and steamed back onto Hempfield Yard in chronological order of age, polished bells clanging, black smoke belching from stacks for the first time in years. First came a passenger coach  drawn by a gray horse. It was followed by an 1832 steam “Grasshopper” locomotive called “The Atlantic”; then an 1836 “Grasshopper” locomotive dubbed the “Thomas Jefferson” pulling an 1837 passenger car; a circa 1837 steam locomotive called the “Mississippi”; an 1841 Cumberland Valley engine called “Pioneer” (with coach); an 1848 Chicago and Northwestern locomotive also called “Pioneer”; a circa 1848 steam engine called the “Dragon”; a B. & O. Camel high powered steam locomotive of 1851 vintage, “the type of engine that drew the first train into Wheeling when in 1853 the B. & O. was completed to this city…”; and bringing up the rear, the “modern,” powerful, 100-foot-long, 300-ton “monster” steam engine “Mallet,” (the largest locomotive ever built to that point) used by the B. & O. in the mountains of southern West Virginia.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Each day during the week-long celebration, at 9 am and again at 3 pm, each of these trains was moved “under their own heads of steam,” for two hours, but only “back and forth on their own track in the Hempfield Yard.”

The crew of engineers, conductors, brakemen, and firemen assembled to move the trains was composed of mostly retired, “grizzly old”  B. & O. veterans, many of whose service dated back to statehood. With a combined experience of some 750 years, they were transported in from Baltimore on board the B. & O.’s “Interstate Special.” Although several “hobbled up to their engines on canes and had to be assisted into the cab, once mounted, the age seemed to roll from their shoulders, and they handled the ancient locomotives as perfectly as they did 50 years ago.”

One of the men, 91-year-old conductor “Daddy” John Smith, had worked both the train that carried Abraham Lincoln to his inauguration in Washington D.C., as well as the funeral train that shipped the murdered president’s body back to Illinois for burial.

Another man, 99-year-old Philip McCardle, in classic Irish immigrant style, had begun working for the B.&O. soon after arriving in New York from County Mayo Ireland in 1844. Transferred to Wheeling, he helped build Tunnel No. 1, which opened onto the Hempfield viaduct spanning Wheeling Creek,  and had worked in the Hempfield Yard in the early days.

Interviewed about life in Wheeling in the 1850s, Mr. McCardle said there had been a “great mud hole” where the city building was later placed and that children “used to play in a frog pond where the Cathedral is located.” He reminisced about mail stage coaches careening through the streets of town at regular intervals, and said the Island was all farmland where the future fairgrounds were “covered with willows.” Mr. McCardle’s grandson was superintendent of the B. & O. power plant.

The parade of old engines generated a lot of interest. “When the first demonstration was made Wednesday,” the Intelligencer reported, “almost 5,000 persons gathered in the Hempfield yard and along Seventeenth street.” The crowd, which stretched east to Wood Street, was “witness to one of the most spectacular and unique scenes ever made possible to Wheelingites.”

---

Nearby Businesses

Also located on the Hempfield Lot’s northeast corner, (listed at 54-16th Street in the 1905 city directory) was Swift & Co. Wholesale Meats, a durable business still remembered by children of the 1950s and 60s, who took shortcuts through the yard on their way to school, dodging train-hopping “tramps” and “winos” along the way.

To the south of the lot stood Flaccus Brothers Preservers, a wholesale grocery store and manufacturer of canned goods, preserves, pickles, catsup, mustard, and other condiments. Wheeling Warehouse and Storage Company later occupied the site, which is now home to the West Virginia Northern Community College’s Education Center.

---

Breaking New Ground at the Old Burying Ground

By 1968, when the Ohio County Public Library was looking to relocate from 2100 Market Street, its home since 1911, the Hempfield Yard was one of the sites being given serious consideration. It had fallen into disuse since the B. & O.’s passenger service had ended in the early 1960s. In April of 1968, the library’s board of trustees completed the purchase of the 44,000 square foot lot from the B. & O. for $99,496.30. The architectural firm of Forsythe, Bergemann, and Vanek of Canton was hired to design the new library building.

By January 1970, grants had been obtained and demolition had begun on the old B. & O. power plant, boiler house, and 124-foot smokestack. By the following year, Grubb Construction had begun digging the foundation for the $1.6 million dollar project. And in 1973, the new Ohio County Public Library, built atop an old rail yard and an even older grave yard, opened its doors to the public.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

---

Check Out the New Addition to Our B. & O. Display!

On Tuesday, July 12, 2016, the Ohio County Public Library unveiled a new photographic display tracing the history of the Hempfield Lot upon which the Library now sits. Situated in the lower level hallway of the library, the display traces the lot from Zane land to cemetery to rail yard to the opening of the Ohio County Public Library in 1973.

By explaining the library land’s role in Wheeling’s railroading history, the display serves as an introduction to the exhibit of J.J. Young photographs in the hallway.

---