Standard Steel workers build community in Lyndora
Until 1902, what would become Lyndora was a fairground where Butler’s citizenry gathered “for profit and for pleasure,” according to Peter Baycura’s “The Lyndora Chronicles.”
“In 1902, unexpectedly and almost overnight, the buildings and the stately shade trees of the fairground were gone,” Baycura stated. “By year’s end, the mammoth Standard Steel Car Company plant, demanding the muscle of thousands of immigrant workers, occupied the site.”
And so the fairground of profit and pleasure became a factory of trial and toils for this new generation of immigrant Americans and Butlerites residing in this section of Butler Township.
The Standard Steel Car Company, a rail car manufacturing plant, was formed by John M. Hanson in 1902. Lyndora, the company town Hanson built around it for his immigrant workers, was named for his daughter, Linda.
By fall of that year, according to Luanne Eisler’s 1992 essay “Some Emigrant Experiences of the Early Settlers of Lyndora, Butler Township, Pennsylvania,” work had already completed on a row of tenement buildings known by the color of their facade: “Red Row.” Two more rows, one painted yellow and one painted gray, sprung up behind the first.
In an article written Nov. 12, 1902, the Butler Eagle describes Lyndora as “the ideal manufacturing town.”
“In contrast to the ordinary town that springs into existence by virtue of the establishment of great industry, Lyndora is way ahead,” the article read. “There is no suggestion of squalor or meanness about Lyndora.”
In retroactive contrast, Frank Sinkevich — a resident at the time — addressed the reality of the tenements in an interview with Eisler.
“When my mother passed by ‘Red Row’ for the first time, she thought that was a nice animal barns; she didn’t realize it was for people,” Sinkevich said.
Other former residents in Eisler’s interviews describe troublesome outhouses, limited utilities and mass overcrowding in the company town.
“Despite the plan for an ideal town, the reality was much different,” Eisler wrote. “Streets remained unpaved and walkways consisted of a plank or two; residents kept farm yard animals behind their houses. . . . People yearned for garden plots or a few fruit trees.”
As opportunities in Lyndora continued to lure immigrants though, the company town became a community in its own right. Within 15 years, it had established banks, butchers, pool halls, saloons, shops and services, according to Eisler.
“The residents transplanted themselves and much of life as they knew it from their homelands,” she wrote.
In 1900, according to the U.S. Census, immigrants represented only 4% of Butler Township’s 1,692 population. Most of them, Eisler wrote, were German, French and Belgian.
“By 1910, however, this picture had changed dramatically,” Eisler wrote. “The township population had now swelled to over 7,000 and well over half of these (56%) were immigrants. A great many of the non-immigrants were their offspring, a growing number of first generation Americans.”
The largest portions then identified as Polish or Slovak, followed closely by Hungarian and Italian.
“Standard Steel Car knew that the central part of Europe was very oppressed so they went into those countries and got those people to work in the plant,” Ann Macko Twerdok of Lyndora told Eisler in an interview. “There was very little migration after I was born in 1920.”
With the relatively recent founding of Lyndora, Eisler wrote, the stories of these early immigrants seeking a new life in the county remain fresh and personal to many.
“This is the feature that has made their experiences so unique and their contributions to the historic mosaic of Butler County such a treasure,” she wrote.
Helen Abes Brier of Lyndora told Eisler the story of a fatherless son of 13 children who left home at 12 years old. He was conscripted into the Russian army and happened to rescue a trunk of expensive furs belonging to a fellow Jewish family.
“As a reward they gave him a gold watch which he sold for passage to America,” Eisler wrote. “He opened a butcher shop in Lyndora."
His business expanded over the years and he became a staple of the community, serving as “interpreter, counselor, and sage for their many problems.”
Michael A. Savannah of Mount Chestnut told Eisler about a young Italian who came to the United States to find work in the mines — leaving his wife behind before sending for her.
“Eventually, the young couple moved to Lyndora and opened a produce market there; the husband sold fruit and vegetables off a horse-drawn wagon to women who carried their purchases home in their aprons,” Eisler wrote.
Many women and families were left behind while husbands found work in the county, Eisler wrote, and “not all of their family reunions were happy ones.”
“Some wives came over unexpectedly, tired of the lonely, hard lives back in Europe, only to find their husbands had a second wife and a family here,” Eisler wrote.
Stella Tomasovich Strella, a Russian immigrant, told Eisler how the Bolshevik Revolution had separated her family from her father — who came to Lyndora — for 16 years. When the father finally managed to contact them, he offered shipcards for passage to U.S. The daughter accepted, but the mother refused.
“My mother says, ‘Well, that’s nice! I raised you, I suffered with you all those years and now you’re gonna’ leave me and go to America!’” Eisler transcribed Strella’s interview. “’No, mum, you’re going with me, too. I signed your name.’”
According to Eisler, they were reunited in Butler in 1929.
“Regardless of the century of circumstances, the stories of every immigrant coming to America have been special ones filled with heartache, danger, romance, hardship, and excitement,” Eisler wrote.
