The Forwardstown Forecaster

by
Larry Pearce
1/16/26

I was inspired to write and publish a local newspaper after the widow of our town’s ceremonial mayor, A.J. Spory (1923-2010), showed me an essay he had written before his passing in. As a lover of history and interested in developing my property there, I took what he had offered and did further research on the century and a half old community. Attach below is my original paper, which I called The Forwardstown Forecaster. The intended periodical never made it to the Somerset Pike, the main road through Forwardstown. As I showed it to others, I received comments such as, “How can a Forecaster dwell on history?” and “What more can you possibly uncover?” I think I had other fish to fry at the time, like the production and posting of this E-gen.intro some  twenty-five years ago. So here I am a quarter century later dwelling on mostly family history rather than local news. Oh, I have shared some amazing and heart-felt Forwardstown information, such as the recent The Underground Railroad & Our Somerset Pike and a portion of my personal Memoir section on Our move From  Jerome to Nearby  Forwardstown, and I’m sure there’ll be more to come.

Forwardstown straddles the old two-lane Somerset Pike, now officially known as PA-985  since the ongoing construction of what we hope will be the four-lane Interstate 219. Both roads run north and south. Voters in the 9th Congressional District used to kid that as long as John Murtha was running for re-election, there would be some extension or improvement to our North Star Highway. Rep. John is gone now and gerrymandering has changed the shape of the district, but at least the State of Maryland has finished their part of connecting I-68 with Rt-219. My wife and I belong to the Casselman Historians and attend the annual meeting in Grantsville. Each year we comment on the yet-to-be-expanded Pennsylvania two-lane winding through Salisbury on the way to Maryland. We also use that road to visit a daughter and brother in Virginia.

I’ll always remember our son Matthew completing a model of our town back in elementary school. What a way to learn about a frontier community. I still keep a collection of rocks and drilling cores from the old mine that was the original inspiration for Ross Forward (1821-1904), son of U.S. Congressman Chauncey Forward (1793-1839). to begin coke production here over a century and a half ago. The nuggets were loaded onto horse-drawn wagons in Forwardstown and taken north to Johnstown along the Somerset Pike where some were retained in the mills there and other were piled onto barges for the trip down the Conemaugh River via the Pennsylvania canal to the Pittsburgh manufacturers.

So what follows is my original paper, The Forwardstown Forecaster. Take from it the wonderful history of this tiny village, over a century and a half old, among the hills of northern Somerset County, PA:

THE FORWARDSTOWN FORECASTER (Thanks for your patience as I attempt to locate this document among my files, which were reorganized during our recent move from Forwardstown to nearby Davidsville. In the meantime, feel free to write with any questions concerning this Somerset County, PA,  historic village

Last revised 11/11/26