Ilka W. Stotler writes,
Mr. Singer’s head gardener was a German who, with his wife Mary, lived in a small house farther up the hill between the orchard. and the vineyard. He was known as “George.” Under his skillful administration the finest fruits were produced on the Singer estate and these were often distributed among the townspeople who were bidden to come on Sunday afternoon to enjoy the park-like grounds under supervision of the gardeners. Miss Jane Boyd relates that each Sunday afternoon in summer she went with her father to sit on the Singer hillside gardens, overlooking the green, vast vistas of what is now the East End, towards the golden setting sun. The little girl thought herself in paradise.
Miss Boyd further relates that the Singer family mingled but little socially with the townspeople, though they drove often to Dr. Rea’s, and one could often see the Singer boys, Robert and George, walking briskly down Wood Street to the railway station. “It was always a delight,” Miss Boyd reminisces, “to watch Mrs. Singer and her daughters driving in their brougham. They were very stylish, elegant people, and Mrs. Singer had such pretty white hair. This probably made her seem older than she really was.“
The Singers gave gay parties and dances, also skating parties in winter on their natural spring-fed lake known roundabout as the Singer Pond which, surrounded by a hedge of drooping willows, lay half way between Wood Street and the house. The writer recalls hearing that Miss Martha Black’s mother, then Miss Maggie Graham, attended one of these skating parties and had the misfortune to break through the ice and be thoroughly drenched. She was rescued, however, and dried with no ill-effects.
The pond was supposed to be very deep but when it was drained in 1900 to make way for the building developments that eventuated in Singer Place it was found to be no more than four feet deep. In summer a rowboat was kept moored at the little boat house. When the writer’s generation of young fry went skating on the Singer Pond about 1894 and onward the boat house and little boat were bleached grey and lichened in green masses. In summer one hunted frogs and tadpoles in the pond’s murky depths. When it was finally drained numerous amphibian denizens made their precarious way into the gardens of people living on Wood Street—even on Penn Avenue. The Hunter family were no little disturbed to find a pair of blacksnakes under their side porch and the Hoffmans, at the corner of Penn and Hay, found a terrapin they judged to be a snapping turtle, which was promptly presented to the writer, who made a pet of it and carried it often to Stoner’s store.
Melissa Henning Wills writes of Mrs. Isabella Wylie tutoring the Singer children.
About the year 1870 a private school was opened by Mrs. Isabella Johnston South Wylie, the widow of Rev. Oliver Wylie, a Covenanter minister. Five children had been born in their home, but two of whom grew to manhood, Knox and Oliver.
Mrs. Wylie was a well educated woman—a German, French, and Latin scholar, as well as a talented elocutionist. These accomplishments served her well when she opened her school in her own home on South Avenue, near Center Street. The house was a long, white frame cottage, owned by Daniel Double. Her pupils were mostly little girls, and a few boys of ten years of age. There were also some advanced pupils. . . .
Mrs. Wylie was a most conscientious teacher, and a strict disciplinarian to the few older pupils. She had a theory that observation played an important part in education but this was a slow method at times, for I recall that one little maiden never seemed to learn by observation that when her knock at the door, at the time of morning devotions, was not answered, she should either quietly enter or cease her tap-tap-tap until there was silence within.
Mrs. Wylie was the respected schoolmistress; usually dressed in a garment with flowing sleeves, she would wrap the ends of the sleeves around her wrists and fold her arms—thus impressing the pupils with her dignity. When one of the students slammed the door as she left the room, Mrs. Wylie folded her arms in her sedate manner and remarked in a soft courteous voice; “I can always tell a lady or a gentleman by the way they close a door.“
Besides conducting this school without an assistant, Mrs. Wylie tutored the Singer children in their home—the Singer mansion. The following story, told by Mrs. Wylie’s granddaughter, shows the importance attached to small social occasions sixty years ago: “The Singer boys” had a big party and Knox and Oliver Wylie were invited. The invitation was accepted. Knox wore white kid gloves and Oliver green ones. These their mother put carefully away, and at the time of this writing (1935) the gloves are in perfect condition—a memento of a most significant event in village life.
Mrs. Wylie was born in 1826, married in 1844, and died in 1878.
______
Melissa Henning Wills, “Mrs. Oliver Wylie’s Private School,” in Elizabeth M. Davison and Ellen B. McKee eds., Annals of Old Wilkinsburg and Vicinity: The Village 1788–1888. Wilkinsburg, Pa.: Group for Historical Research, 1940, pp. 447–448.
Wilkinsburg Public Library Digital Archives:
Ilka M. Stotler, research and writing, “The Singer Place in Wilkinsburg.” Paper read before the Wilkinsburg Historical Society in 1954.