Delmont moves ahead with Shields Farm log cabin repairs

Delmont officials will spend about $2,500 on white pine logs for the Shields Farm cabin on East Pittsburgh Street, and members of the Delmont Visionary Committee are hoping their research can help locate a trust to fund the cabin’s maintenance.

Committee member AnnaMarie Stackiewicz said she found minutes from the now-defunct Salem Crossroads Historical and Restoration Society showing that a $22,000 trust had been put in place for the cabin’s maintenance when the society stopped functioning in the early 1990s.

“They had accounts at the old Vanguard bank,” said Stackiewicz.

That bank is First Commonwealth today, but Council President Andrew Shissler said he “didn’t recall getting the types of annual notices associated with a trust account.”

“I’m more interested in the bank account,” said borough solicitor Dan Hewitt. “Someone had to be in charge of that account.”

Hewitt and Shissler said they would look into the possible trust and what may have happened with it.

In the meantime, the white pine logs will be purchased from the Scottdale area, and council voted 6-0 to extend an existing $12,000 agreement with Amish builder Elmer Hostetler to complete repairs on the cabin in the spring. Several logs are in need of replacement and the chinking — the flexible elastic sealant used between logs — needs to be repaired in multiple areas.

“We have it in our budget, so I think we should do it,” Councilman Stan Cheyne said.

Money spent on the cabin does not come from taxpayer dollars but rather from the Shields Farm account, which borough officials control.

According to the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, the cabin was moved from elsewhere on the former Shields Farm, and rebuilt in its current location on East Pittsburgh Street.

Hostletler’s crew currently is at work rebuilding the former Murrysville schoolhouse on the same property where the Sampson-Clark Toll House sits, off of West Pike Street.