Cat and Fiddle and the Point Pleasant Witch House — discovery!

 

 

At the end of the day yesterday, I decided to just look through every postcard in group 44 — that's Tinicum — the SC-36, the Mercer Museum Library's Postcard Collection. There were over 250 of them (really, how many Sandcastle Winery postcards do we need?) but it was worth it. 

First of all, I found a Cat and Fiddle postcard I'd never seen before. And then I grabbed a magnifying glass and looked closer ... and there she was!

 

Cool car, too.

The back was postmarked 1939

I found a little more about Joseph Aaron in Delaware Canal Journal, by Carolyn P. Yoder, published in 1972:

The old water wheel at the end of the feeder adds a picturesque charm to the surroundings. This wheel, connected to an electric generator in the adjoining building, was installed in 1932 by Joseph Aaron, an ex-circus performer. Aaron purchased the property below the lock, including an old building which had been an inn from stagecoach days. A building along the highway above the inn was originally a stable for canal mules. The old inn, which Aaron used as a woodworking shop, is now an attractive dwelling house. He converted the stable into an apartment on the second floor and a restaurant on the first floor, which he operated as The Cat and Fiddle. This building is recognized by a large coffee pot at top one of the chimneys. The generator at the feeder supplied electricity to both buildings.

So there you have it: In 1932, former trapeze artist Carrie Aaron purchased and old inn just below Smithtown, in Tinicum Township, along with a stable for canal mules (the last canal boat having only passed by the previous October). Carrie and her husband Joseph, formerly known as the circus daredevil Diavolo, transformed the buildings into a woodworking shop and an a restaurant and inn, which they called The Cat and Fiddle. The decorated it magnificently and operated for almost a decade, until decreased spending due to rationing during World War II forced them to close. 

 

Joseph went to work at a Doylestown woodworking mill, and in 1945 the Aarons sold the property to Wayne and Emma McGhee, who in turn sold it in turn to Matthew and Mary Hartigan in 1945, who then sold it to Benjamin and Florence Peter in 1953. 

 

The Peter family continued to operate the Cat in Fiddle — I know this from hearing multiple firsthand accounts from people still living who were lucky enough to visit it as children. One woman told me how, in the mid-1960s, she and a friend were exploring the back of the property and there, backed up against the canal, was a tiny cottage. "We crept up and peered in through the windows," she told me, "and everything inside was in miniature! A tiny table with tiny chairs, just the right size for us."

 

(I've heard about this tiny building, though I can't remember where. People referred to it as "Tom Thumb's cottage.")

I love Bucks County. Sometimes everything feels like such a fairy tale.

Postcard from the Collection of the Mercer Museum Library of the Bucks County Historical Society (SC-36, 44-091)