Lavelle
Lavelle is situated in Eastern Pennsylvania and in North Central Schuylkill County. In North Eastern Butler Township. It is one of the largest towns in the township. Before 1847 the area that comprises Lavelle was part of Barry Township.
The pioneer settler of Lavelle was Michael Bolich, born in 1797 near McKeansburg, PA. For many years the deeds as recorded named this portion of Butler
Township as Salome, of Salomesville. Lavelle was first called Salome after Salome Hepler who married Michael Bolich. Michael and Salome Bolich owned what is now the west end of Lavelle.
The east end was owned by George Snyder, who was a brother-in-law of Michael Bolich. George Snyder was married to Salome's sister. The east end was called Koch Town in 1874. This latter information was gotten from Adam Felher's deed
which also shows that Nathan Bolich, son of Salome and Michael Bolich owned this land on Spetember 30, 1868. Another name was Kochville, given in the deed of 1881. The name Lavelle was given in honor of Martin Lavelle, who was district
Attorney and a great criminal lawyer of Schuylkill County. It was about 1880 when the first post office was established at Lavelle and the mail was delivered three times a week.
Michael Bolich was a local preacher, probably of the Bpatist faith. He held services in many of the log houses here and throughout the Hanyost Deep Creek and Mahantongo Valleys. Mr. Bolich's land was all timber land and his hands were the
first to swing the axe in the forest and build here a home. The log house, his first home in this region had a door but no lock, window frames but no windows. The land cleared was by him and it was his gun
that fired the first shot that sent the bear or wolf either to his hiding place or to the salt barrel for thw winter use. South of Lavelle, he built a saw mill run by water power; here he cut the lumber used to build a home for each of
his children, residing i Barry, Butler, and Eldred Townships.
The first postmaster in Lavelle was T.E. Enterline in 1880. Next was Hanna Schmidt Shoemaker. The post office was located at that time on Cherry Avenue.
The first macadam road in Lavelle opened to traffic on 8-2-1927. The first water line was put through Lavelle in 1954. Mr. Fred Felker owned the ground the Citizen's Cemetery stands on. He sold shares to get the cemetery started. The
Lutheran church took it over in 1963. Earl Hornung built the stone fence which surrounds the cemetery.
The Citizen's Bank of Ashland opened a branch in Lavelle in November 1969. Hiram Lenker and Guy Slotterbach bought and laid out the fairgrounds in lots. An interesting resident of Lavelle was Romeo Hornung. He was a
pilot and had two planes. He got one of the planes in 1927 or 1928 and landed it in Scheuren's Dairy field. Mr. Hornung had been crippled at the age of
11 or 13 when a hunter's stray bullet hit his spine. In spite of that he became a pilot and passed away around 1947.
Lavelle is still a bustling, thriving community steeped in history.
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