15-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, February 27, 1911: The roads were so muddy that I went
up the railroad to school and came home that way. Besse was out
this afternoon. Wish I had all of my lessons out for tomorrow
especially my latin. Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments
100 years later: It’s hard to picture how bad the mud must have
been in the era before paved roads. Railroad tracks for the
Susquehanna, Bloomsburg, and Berwick Railroad (S.B. & B. R.R.)
crossed the Muffly farm.The route went from Watsontown to
McEwensville and Turbotville and then continued east to
Washingtonville, Bloomsburg, and Berwick. My father says that
Grandma always called the railroad the Sweet Bye and Bye.
According to an essay by the Columbia County Historical and
Genealogical Society the Susquehanna, Bloomsburg and Berwick
Railroad (S.B. & B.R.R.) was often called the ‘Sweet Bye and
Bye’ because traffic was intermittent, and trains traveled at a
slow speed and stopped at every hamlet and fe