If These Walls Could Just Shut Up

From The (Oil City, Pa.) Derrick of Sept. 5, 2005:

Walls, drawers, the attic - they all talk in this historic home

By MICHAEL MOLITORIS

WEST HICKORY - It's much more than the walls telling old stories at the West Hickory home of Frank and Judy Habjanetz.

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The home stayed in the care of Siggins family descendants until the early 1990s when the Habjanetz family, formerly of Upper St. Clair, went looking for a hunting camp.

The structure had become a living time capsule and a testament to a lineage unwilling to part with family heirlooms, including French china, diaries, original family paintings - even linens and family photographs.

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The Pittsburgh-area couple agreed to be stewards of the family legacy, and the former owner left a simple note next to a rolled-up sheet of paper when he left: "I have turned the outside spigot off. Inside this tube is the Siggins family tree. Hope you have a good winter. Jerry."

"It's been a strange, bizarre thing to be left with this kind of legacy," Judy Habjanetz said. "It's just been a lifetime treat that I never would have expected to have."

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