Port Allegany has some dark moments in its history, and an upcoming tour will teach people more about it.
The “Grisly History of Port Allegany” will be held Oct. 25, presented by the Port Allegany Lions Club. The event will be 30-minute walking tours, starting at 6 p.m. and with the last tour setting off at 8:15 p.m.
Dr. Ed Schott explained the highlights of the tour will include the site of the first documented murder in the borough, the “curious tale of Uzza Robbins” and a recounting of the unsolved 1924 murder of Dr. EJ Fetterly.
“Uzza Robbins was a vagabond who used to go town to town and set up a blacksmith shop,” Schott explained to The Era. He gave a brief overview of some of the information that will be presented on the tour.
Robbins had set up shop in the Turtlepoint area, and one of his sons died unexpectedly in an “accident,” Schott said. After that, Robbins put a notice in the paper that he no longer had any dealings with his wife, and anyone “who quartered with her was on his list.”
When a second person in Robbins’ life died, they began looking into him a bit closer. His son’s body was exhumed, and “they found a mark on the back of his skull matching a blacksmith’s hammer,” Schott said. Robbins was tried in McKean County for murder, found guilty and hanged.
Yet that isn’t where his story ends.
“Uzza died once, was beheaded once and buried four times,” Schott said. After Robbins was buried, his body was dug up and his head was taken. A local man interested in skulls was planning to study it, but hadn’t been given the permission of the family.
When the deed was discovered, Robbins was dug up again, and his head rejoined the rest of him. Yet still, he was not to rest in peace.
He had been interred near a barn, and when the farmer did renovations to his property, Robbins’ body was unearthed again. It was laid to rest again in another plot.
The first documented murder in the borough started off as a hitchhiking of sorts. And the unsolved death of the doctor was during a late night “dinner” during Prohibition in front of four witnesses who said a mysterious stranger broke in and killed the man.
More details on the grisly history will be coming to tour participants.
The tour will be about five blocks in length, and will be easy walking. Guides will meet tour participants in the gazebo at the town square and be escorted through the tour, which ends at The Inn on Maple Street.
Tickets are $5 for adults and $3 for students.
