Greene County architectural connection found in Ireland

WAYNESBURG – The knowledge a piece of 19th century Greene County exists in Northern Ireland came as a surprise to the Cornerstone Genealogical Society and Mary Beth Pastorius, who discovered the link.
Pastorius, of Sewickley, and president of Pastorius Historic Properties, will speak to the society about her personal journey of discovering this connection at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the log courthouse on Greene Street.
The Ulster American Folk Park in Northern Ireland styled houses to replicate the way they looked in Greene County 200 years ago. One of the houses originated in Clarksville and was moved piece-by-piece to the park.
The park is located on the site where a former local judge and the face of banking and industrial expansion in Southwestern Pennsylvania, Thomas Mellon, was born.
“He was born in the cottage in 1813, and a couple years later immigrated to Westmoreland County,” Pastorius said. “The Mellon connection to the area is why the creators of the park chose Greene County as the point of interpretation for architecture.”
Pastorius, a Waynesburg native, first stumbled upon this connection after seeing a photo of three Greene County log cabins in the book “Vernacular Architecture” written by Henry Glassie. She continued to the back of the book to the footnotes and found Glassie wrote a 180-page report about historical architecture in Greene County for representatives from Northern Ireland for the park.
“This is a hugely fascinating story,” Pastorius said. “Never did I think I would find a connection like this.”
The story continues with hand written letters being sent, three plane tickets to Ireland, hours of standing in front of a copier machine at the library in Folk Park and many more connections and surprise findings that Pastorius continued to stumble upon.
In the end, she was able to explore the park and bring back a copy of the report, which is now housed at the Cornerstone Genealogical Society.
But for Pastorius, her story and findings are just the beginning. She hopes people who attend her speech Tuesday night can help to identify them and update the information to determine whether they’re still standing.
“This report opens up so many doors for directions for research. There are all sorts of directions we can go with this as far as being able to identify the specifics of the building designs of that time,” Pastorius said.
“I’m pretty sure that there will be people in the audience who will know some of these buildings.”