What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Pittsburgh and Steubenville, Part 2

 

The Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, seen from the Carnegie Library's Main Branch

 

After one last trip down The Strip – and a stop in the candy shop – my parents and sister headed back to Philadelphia and left me behind.Why? I’d planned an additional few days in the area to conduct some family history research, knowing that despite how close Pittsburgh and Philly are on a map, the logistics of getting and staying there meant research trips weren’t easy to just make happen. Getting to Steubenville, 45 minutes west of downtown Pittsburgh, nearer to Wheeling and Weirton, WV, would mean even more effort from Philly, but would be easy to do since I was already in the area. In fact, that was the purpose of my extended stay.

 

But with time to kill before I had to pick up my rental car and check into my hotel out by the airport, and still in downtown Pittsburgh, I decided to head to the main branch of the Carnegie Public Library, where their Local History and Genealogy collection is located. The building the library is housed in is also home to the Carnegie Museum of Art and Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the latter of which we’d visited the day before, and the building is as large and impressive as you’d imagine.

Obligatory selfie as I approach the entrance to the Main (Oakland) Branch of the Carnegie Library

Entrance to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Main (Oakland) Branch

Dippy the Diplodocus, the mascot of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History

The ceiling of one of the reading rooms.

The ceiling of...a staircase!

I can imagine Evie from The Mummy wandering the halls, looking at specimens and searching the stacks for reference materials, though I doubt she’d have seen this Section of Mystery:

Spotted in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History

I didn’t really have a research plan for this library – I just didn’t want to miss the chance to visit and figured I’d wander the room and see what they had for a few hours. That’s pretty much exactly what I did, pulling books about Beaver County, PA, where my great-great-grandfather Rufus Littlejohn spent his later years near his children from an earlier relationship, and learning about the Beechview neighborhood of Pittsburgh, where my half great-granduncle David Whaley had lived for a time as a child.

 

 

The librarians I chatted with were lovely and when they heard my Canton Street story – including the question of what had happened to the block the Wilsons had lived on – they pulled material for me to look at and searched a few things online as well. 

While I didn’t get the answer to that question, I explored some interesting resources and enjoyed my time wandering around the stacks. It whetted my appetite for more, and was a good way to ease into the research-focused portion of my trip.

Next stop: Steubenville!