Himmel's Church Covered Bridge & The Schwaben Creek Werewolf

 

The Himmel's Church Covered bridge was built in 1874, and rehabilitated in 1973.

It's a 44 foot long king post truss style bridge, crossing Schwaben Creek in Washington Township, Northumberland County.  (Just east of Rebuck Pa)

Next to the bridge is the church pavilion and playground area, with some of the most unique metal spring animals I have seen so far.  (I love these toys, and photograph them in parks everywhere along our travels) And nearby, according to legend, the Line Mountain, or Schwaben Creek, Werewolf is buried.

The Schwaben Creek Werewolf legend may have originated with Henry Shoemaker, or perhaps it was something he heard himself and repeated.  Shoemaker was a great local folklorist, and he did appear to collect these stories, as well as add quite a few of his own.

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The Schwaben Werewolf
By Henry Shoemaker
As published in the New York Folklore Quarterly, 1951
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May Paul was a 12-year-old shepherdess on the Schwaben ... tall, slim as an aspen twig, with laughing hazel eyes, small lips always smiling, her dark brown curls hidden under her wooly shepherd's cap. 

 To guard her sheep, she had only a shepherd's wand and a small dog. An old man "suspected by many of being a werewolf" was in love with her, much to her parents' displeasure. He would sit with her on a log at the sheepwalk for hours without saying a word.

 But because no wolves troubled May's flocks, her parents tolerated him. Wolves from, Line Mountain would raid all the other farmers' flocks, "even in broad daylight." 

Then one moonlit night, "someone shot a gaunt old wolf crossing the road. It hobbled down into the Schwaben woods.

 Next day, the man went to find the wolf for the $25 reward, tracking it by the blood. Instead, he found the Paul girl's aged lover stretched out, lying on his back, shot through the heart. 

"It was noticed that his teeth were long and yellow like a wolfs, and that there were stiff hairs on the underside of his hands and on his ears and oh the soles of his feet.  They buried him where he was found, and the spot is called, 'Old Wolfs Grave,' "or (in Pennsylvania Dutch) 'die woolf man's grob.' "

 After this, May Paul remained in the Schwaben Valley, but details of her life are sketchy. "All that is known is that she never lost a sheep or lamb from the wolves, which for the next quarter century were a terror to the farmers in the Schwaben Valley."

In later versions of the story, a wild grey wolf would come and sit near the girl and watch her, chasing away and wolves that threatened her flock.

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Through the early 1870's, wolves were common throughout central Pennsylvania.  Farmers frequently lost their livestock to wolves, and many counties did offer a cash bounty to eradicate them.  By 1895, it was thought that wolves were extinct in Pennsylvania.

Lillie Mae Paul did exist.  She can be found in the 1880 census as 9 months old, [born August 21 1879] the daughter of Tobias Hass & Sophia [Frye] Paul, and in 1900 she is still living at home with her parents, listed as a 20 year old dressmaker.  Tobias' father Mark Paul, did own a farm along Schwaben Creek, in the area locals, for generations, did in fact  refer to as "die woolf man’s grob,” or the wolf man’s grave.  

The fact that wolves were considered extinct by the time Lillie Mae was born, and the fact that she lived in Shamokin and not at her grandfathers farm...  well, those minor details were unlikely to deter Shoemaker from telling a good story.  Of course, it's also possible that Lillie Mae Paul was named after an aunt - perhaps her father Tobias had a sister of the same name?  That would fit the time line and location better, but I don't know that such a person existed.

The Lillie Mae that is well documented as born in 1879  married Abram Bebout in 1911, when she was 31 years old.  The couple lived in South America, and then California. Lillie's sister Mary married William Startzel, and in 1933 the Shamokin newspaper reported that Mrs. Startzel had received a telegram from her sister, Lillie Mae Bebout, letting her family know they were safe after the earthquake in California.  Lillie's mother Sophia still lived at 37 South 6th Street, Shamokin at that time.  Lillie  returned to Shamokin when she was 84 years of age, in 1964, and she died 8 years later at age 92.

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Find an index of local covered bridges here:

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-covered-bridges-index.html

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