Pig Lady

Cannelton is a small patch in Darlington Township, Beaver County, settled in the 1790s around mines of cannel coal and later a crossroads of farms. In 2024 the William G. Pomeroy Foundation and the Pennsylvania Center for Folklore set a Legends & Lore marker where Ridge Road meets Cannelton Road. The inscription is narrow. An early local story told of a headless ghost near the mines. Later, the same figure was seen with a pig’s head.

Longer tellings add a murder in the 1790s, a woman, and boys chased off a bridge. One of them, collected by Thomas White in Supernatural Lore of Pennsylvania, names Barbara Davidson and the summer of 1795, and has her seen on the road afterward, headless or with the head of a pig. That is the version in the book. The marker does not tell it, and the county court record does not contain it. Each fall the patch holds a folklore gathering around the story.

Sources

• William G. Pomeroy Foundation, the marker
• Historical Marker Database
• Anthony Letizia, on Thomas White’s account, 31 October 2014