The Golden Windfall

Few of the biggest U.S. cities had so distinguished a beginning as Perryopolis, Pa. (pop. 1,500), an unsung & forgotten hamlet in the coal fields 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. George Washington himself bought land on the town's present site back in 1770, and built a grist mill near by. According to local legend, he also suggested the circular-street plan upon which the village is built, although he sold out (1,643 acres for $4,000) long before 1814, when Perryopolis, named for Naval Hero Oliver Hazard Perry, was actually begun.

But neither its memories of Washington nor its founders' high hopes were ever enough to make Perryopolis bloom. Its underground coal seams ran out; the coke ovens south of town were abandoned. It drowsed through the 20th century without sewers, street lights (except the one over the village square), or even a local government. But Perryopolis had something to speculate and gossip about--the odd life of Mrs. Mary Fuller Frazier, last daughter of the town's rich family.

Carrier Warfare. Mrs. Frazier left Perryopolis as a young woman in 1887, and only returned once in all the 61 years before she died in 1948. But tales of her eccentricities drifted back to local ears. After her first husband, a prominent Philadelphia physician, died in 1917, she developed a phobia against germs. When she was ill, she made a practice of renting a whole floor at New York's Doctors Hospital to keep other germ carriers at a distance. She bought dozens of pairs of white gloves, wore them constantly, saw to it that each was dipped in antiseptic after being worn. Her chauffeur had to wear a clean uniform every day. When friends sent her flowers, one of her servants would hold the box under water, open it enough to remove and inspect the card, and then quickly throw box, flowers and card away.

She would never open mail; instead, someone read her letters to her over a telephone so she would have no personal contact with either writer or reader. Stores had to deliver furniture to any of her rooms wrapped in muslin and layers of brown paper. She once spent $60,000 redecorating an apartment in Philadelphia's Barclay Hotel, but refused to move in after she discovered that one of the workmen had been suffering with a pimple.

Hungry Township. For all her strange whims and strange fears and her long life in big cities, Mrs. Frazier never forgot Perryopolis, "where I was born and lived, where my father and mother . . . and my grandfather and grandmother lived ..." She asked to be buried there, and when she died five years ago, she left the town $1,500,000--roughly $1,000 for every man, woman & child who lived there. For years there were doubts that Perryopolis would be able to get it. First, six of Mrs. Frazier's cousins contested the will, and the contest failed. Secondly, Perryopolis, which was legally just a small part of Perry Township, had to set up its own government in order to comply with the terms of the will. Perry Township was hungry for a split of the bequest, and fought the division.

Last week Perryopolis finally became a borough in its own right, and prepared to put its golden windfall to use. It planned to install street lights first, then sewers, and after that, to indulge luxuriously in street paving; in the future it hoped to build a library, a hospital and perhaps even a golf course. After 139 years, Perryopolis finally felt it was making the grade.

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