Westmoreland at 250: Unity farm owners keeping history alive

Editor’s note: This is part of an ongoing series marking the 250th anniversary of Westmoreland County’s founding.

Workers have been busy repairing the roofs on several of the 17 outbuildings that fan out from the historic Sewickley Manor farmstead.

Calvin Pollins Jr. is the seventh generation of his family to occupy the Unity farm settled in 1769. That predates Westmoreland County’s formation on Feb. 26, 1773 — a date officials and historians plan to celebrate this year with activities recognizing the county’s 250th anniversary.

Pollins and his wife, Mary, engaged in a 30-year labor of love to restore their 1852 Greek Revival brick home, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Extra bricks found on the farm were used to repair a living room fireplace, according to Mary Pollins. “We took the glass out of the windows, repaired it and put it back in,” she added.

“I have trouble throwing stuff away,” said Calvin Pollins, 81, who is retired from the sales department of Murrysville-based Beckwith Machinery and its successor, Cleveland Brothers. “We try to keep the farm the way it’s been the last hundred and so many years. That’s why we have all these buildings.”

Among them are pigpens, chicken coops, a coal house, an ice house, a sheep shed and the oldest remaining structure on the property, a fieldstone smokehouse erected circa 1790.

The 84-foot-long Pollins barn dates to 1849 and has an overhang with several original wooden support posts that were shaped using a horse-drawn lathe.

Calvin Pollins’ impulse for preserving the past is a trait he shared with his late father, Calvin Sr.

“My dad was a collector. He loved antiques,” said Calvin Jr.

That includes a white walnut corner cupboard dating from 1780 that the elder Pollins purchased years after spying it at a neighboring farm as a child.

In storage at the farm is an office desk used at J.W. Pollins and Son’s dry goods and furniture business in Greensburg. An ancestor opened the business in 1903 at 221 S. Main St., Greensburg. The building was torn down recently after sitting vacant for decades.

The elder Pollins was instrumental in reviving the Westmoreland County Historical Society in the mid-20th century. He donated many volumes for the society’s library, which is named for him.

Through property acquisitions, the Pollins farm has grown to more than 190 acres straddling Unity and Mt. Pleasant townships. It hasn’t operated as a dairy farm since the late 1970s. Another family leases the fields to grow corn and soybeans.

Still, the Pollins family is working to protect the farm for coming generations. In addition to securing aging roofs against the elements, they have renovated a former tenant farmer’s house for the return home of their daughter, Mara, and her family — including two daughters who represent the ninth generation to occupy the property.

“My dad worried about this farm like I do, so it just carries down,” said Calvin Jr. “I just feel like it’s a duty to keep it up. It’s a duty to the ancestors.”