Warden Ed Knee was once challenged by an officer of the court to recollect the backgrounds of 28 recently convicted men. Without hesitation, Mr. Knee jotted down their names (many of which had complicated foreign spellings), their sentences and even their former cell numbers. In fact, his reputation for remembering names and face was so effective that former convicts tended to stick closer to the truth in Judge O’Conner’s courtroom when Warden Knee was in attendance. Ed Knee’s career began as a “turnkey” at the prison around 1894 under Sheriff Shumaker.
  
see: “New County Jail a Model of Safety and Cleanliness” 
The Johnstown  Weekly Tribune -  April 21, 1911.

In a career that spanned 52 years, Ed Knee served 36 years as warden (1911-1947). Warden Knee was the most influential person associated with the “old stone jail”.

  Described in the press as stern but fair, Ed Knee took a principal roll in the prison reforms of 1911, he presided over the last hangings (which ended in 1909), and he housed the prisoners Bassi and Pezzi, convicted of robbing the payroll train at Belsano in 1924.  

The Lilly Riots

see various newspaper accounts in The Ebensburg Mountaineer and Johnstown Weekly Tribune following the Lilly Riots of April 5, 1924.  

    Ed Knee’s greatest challenge as warden may have been in 1924, following what became known as “The Lilly Riots.” On the evening of April 5th, two trainloads of Klansmen numbering 350 had descended on the small coal town of Lilly, which is situated along the Main Line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The majority of Lilly’s residents were of Eastern European descent and worked in the local coal mines. The United Mine Workers of America had just passed an edict that locals could dismiss members who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. The Lilly local was one of the first to take advantage of this rule. After shouting matches, shots fired at random and some small skirmishes, a riot broke out as the young men of the town turned a fire hose onto the Klansmen at the railroad station. By nightfall two local men lay dead. Another died the following day at the Altoona Hospital. 

    Following the riot, 44 persons, from both sides, were held at the county jail . A few weeks later one of the arrested Klansmen, Owen Poorbaugh, died of pneumonia. His funeral procession was lead by 12,000 members of the KKK from Western Pennsylvania. Mr. Poorbaugh’s sister signed an affidavit that in a conversation with her brother at Memorial Hospital, Mr. Poorbaugh stated that his pneumonia was caused by poor conditions at the jail. Subsequent statements by the jail physician, Dr. Bennett and one of Mr. Poorbaugh’s fellow inmates exonerated Warden Knee and acknowledged him as having done everything possible for the prisoner.

see:“Klansman Dies of Pneumonia”, The Ebensburg Mountaineer - May 2, 1924.

Warden Knee's Legacy

  For historians, Warden Knee’s legacy is the accurate records he kept. His annual report gives an insight into the prison’s connection to the community through the Great Depression and WWII. An example of Warden Knee’s record keeping follows: 

“Bread baked at the prison for the Children’s Home: 16,093 loaves, 2,223 dozen of rolls and 50 pies. Donations of produce grown at the County Farm included: Carrolltown Welfare Association, Ebensburg Welfare Association, Cassandra Red Cross, Miner’s Hospital, South Fork Soup House and Red Cross, the colored families at the fairgrounds and at the lake.”

Annual Report to Prison Board, January 1933