USA > Pennsylvania > Armstrong County > Armstrong County, Pennsylvania her people past and present, embracing a history of the county and a genealogical and biographical record of representative families, Volume I > Part 94
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Brick Works and the Bolivar Union Fire best calculated to advance the permanent wel- Brick Works. Westmoreland county; the fare and prosperity of Allegheny county."
Woodland Fire Brick Works, Woodland, Clearfield county, and the Empire Fire Brick Works, Ellerslie, Allegheny county.'
Mr. Reese on being asked one day whose arithmetic they used when he was a boy, answered with a merry twinkle in his eye, "Mother's Arithmetic-it's good enough for anybody ; it carried me through eighty years' computations. Mother taught me to read, write, and cipher through the 'rule of three'!" The following biographical notes accompanied the article in the "Centennial History" before mentioned :
"Isaac Reese was born in South Wales in Great Britain in 1821. His parents emigrated with their children to this country in 1832. They first settled at Phoenixville, Chester treated the workmen.
county, where Isaac attended school. From thence they removed in the following year to Huntingdon county, and again, in 1834, to Bellefonte, Center county. At the last place they resided for two years and then removed to Pittsburgh. Isaac was now old enough to go to a trade, and he served an apprentice- ship to learn the business of 'hammer-man' in one of the iron mills at Pittsburgh. For over twenty years he followed his trade, more than half of which time he was employed in the extensive mills of John H. Shoenberger. He saw an opening to engage in fire brick making in 1863, and although not having much capital and but little knowledge of the process of manufacture, he entered into it with great energy and a determination to suc- ceed. He possessed natural business qualifi- cations, and a physique well able to sustain the wear and tear of his active business life. From boyhood he has been familiar with hard labor, and to-day the mental strain of business is commensurate with the physical taxation of his earlier years. He has been a very suc- cessful manufacturer, and produces the best silica brick made in the world to-day, while his fire brick is without a peer. He has thor- oughly mastered the process, and although he has almost reached the allotted time to re- tire-'three score and ten'-is to-day one of our most energetic business men. He has served a term in Pittsburgh Councils, is a member of the Fourth (Chatham street ) Bap- tist Church, and is a widely known and much respected citizen of our city. Mr. Reese every- where is recognized to be a thoroughly enter- prising and public-spirited citizen, whose suc- cessful efforts in mercantile life are in keep- ing with his cordial support to all measures
Isaac Reese found "the guerdon in the strife." "Father never gets tired," said his son George once after a very strenuous day for both father and son. Isaac Reese gave the credit of his achievement late in life prin- cipally to his son George, but always said : "My three sons stood shoulder to shoulder with me or I could not have accomplished what I did." Mr. Reese was a builder. Every one of the works he ever owned was built up from almost decay, and flourishing little villages soon sprang up around them. He was the friend of the workmen. A newly en- gaged bookkeeper for the Manorville works asked one of the men who had been working for the firm a number of years how the firm He answered, "Well,
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FULLIE IN
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Isaac Reese
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Elizabeth Jones Reese
TILBIEN E-UD JET _N-
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HISTORY OF ARMSTRONG COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
every workman knows he can bring any griev- your word is my guaranty." This proved the ance he may have to Mr. Reese or his sons open sesame to future success.
and he will get justice." And "Justice is the highest emanation from the gospel."
During the panic of 1873 Mr. Reese lost every dollar he had in the world, but with the assistance of friends he once more got to his feet. He built a plant at Manorville, Armstrong county, and another later on at Cowanshannoc in Valley township, in the same county, at the mouth of Cowanshannock creek. These mills were called the Phoenix Fire Brick Works, and Mr. Reese was sole owner. Later on in order to meet the great demand for his brick he built two mills at Powelton, Center Co., Pa., and the combined capacity of all was 50,000 brick daily.
Mr. Reese was the inventor of the first silica fire brick, for furnace linings, in the United States, his first experiment being made at his Apollo works, previous to the panic of 1873. The Phoenix Fire Brick Works, at Manorville, in Armstrong county, Pa., were started in 1880, for the manufacture of ordinary fire brick, but after Dec. 16, 1884, when Isaac Reese patented his "Reese" Silica Brick, they ran night and day to sup- ply the demand which followed the demon- stration of the efficiency of the new product. When improvements were made in the proc- ess of making high-grade steel there was a de- mand for a better fire brick than could be ob- ~ tained in the United States, and from 1863 until
1884 the fire brick especially for open-hearth steel furnaces was brought from Europe at great expense. After experimenting for ten years on a quartz rock which he found in the Allegheny river, Mr. Reese perfected and pat- ented a silica brick far superior to the Euro- pean product, a fact so generally recognized that it replaced the latter entirely in the home market. Of uniform size and weight, prac- tically free from expansion or contraction under varying temperatures, and giving the best satisfaction in the construction and use of glass, open-hearth steel, copper and other metallurgical furnaces, the Reese silica brick soon attained the popularity it deserved, and found a market in every manufacturing State and Territory of the Union, especially at the gold, silver and copper smelting works of Colorado. After fruitless at- tempts to induce the steel manufacturers to build a furnace of Reese silica brick, without giving a written guaranty of several thousand dollars to reimburse them in case of failure, Mr. Reese went to Dr. C. G. Hassey, who on hearing his claims for the brick said, "Build
In 1902 Mr. Reese sold out to the brick trust, but retained stock in the same. There were thirty-four brick plants merged in the trust known as the Harbison & Walker Re- fractories Company, into which the Reese plants entered. The Reese plants were the only ones to preserve their individuality and to retain their own offices and the firm name of Isaac Reese & Sons Company.
Mr. Orr Buffington, Mr. Reese's friend and attorney, who had a thorough insight into the industry and the history of Mr. Reese's efforts to perfect and put this brick upon the market, writes of him: "Without capital other than that which one or two of his friends, recognizing his integrity and abil- ity, supplied, Isaac Reese ventured to make and market a new and untried line of re- fractory brick for furnace linings. He came a stranger into Armstrong county for this purpose. To appreciate the gravity of the undertaking it must be realized that these bricks, designed for use in costly furnaces, with their more costly contents to be fluxed, must prove the most perfect success, other- wise the entire proposition became a total loss to the purchaser. The bricks were pro- duced as designed, but the customers had to be convinced. This involved untold patience and persistency through a series of years, against the strong and bitter opposition of wealthy competitors. The excellence and uni- form character of this product and his fair dealing overcame the obstacles in his path, and not many years before his death, his com- petitors were compelled to buy his interests at his own figure. The instances are few of record where at sixty years, when most workers are preparing to lay aside life's work and rest, a man, alone and apparently defeated in life's struggle, grapples a new and great problem and in spite of his years and adversity compels success to surrender.
"The writer knew Mr. Reese intimately during these nearly thirty years, and in all these years saw no change in the man him- self : the same genial nature, the same pa- tience, the same absence of personal pride, the same fairness in his methods of business, the same extreme care for his family, his friends and his church, bespoke his manli- ness and goodness of heart.
"When abundant results rewarded his work there was perhaps the usual elation always present in man, but it did not take the form of boastfulness, but rather only added to his your furnace, Isaac Reese, you are my friend, pleasure in seeing those around whom his in-
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HISTORY OF ARMSTRONG COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
terest centered enjoy the fruits of his victory. to the light. Her faith, courage and fine mind never fail her in the darkness." Eliza- beth Bebb Jones was born Feb. 21, 1824, in Llanbrynmair (St. Mary's on the Hill), called from its Church of England dedicated to the Virgin. She was the daughter of Rob- ert and Mary (Bebb) Jones, who emigrated Many quiet unknown gifts to those who had aided him were bestowed. His was essen- tially an honest and trusting nature. Once his confidence was won it remained unshaken, and once lost could never be regained. His mind was wholly constructive-he was a builder ; his work was a public service-he from Llanbrynmair, in northern Wales, with made the world better and his memory de- serves perpetuation."
Isaac Reese was a man of uncommon gifts. "Oh, for Isaac's matchless memory," said his brother Jacob the last evening they ever spent together on earth, when they discussed Bibli- cal questions up to a late hour. He never troubled about the scientific philosophies of the day, but broke ground often for preacher and scholar by his original thinking. He was great in his humility! He looked upon the casting of his vote as a binding obligation he owed to his country. He was about the last man to enter the Harbison & Walker combine, saying, "If I were ten years younger I would not join. Trusts are going to ruin the coun- try"-it was his protest against the selfish monopoly of the age. He worked for the universal good and not for his own selfish ends.
Isaac Reese died as he had lived, his faith in God and men being the deepest and most powerful element in his character. It was the leaven of his beautiful optimism which could raise every man, woman or child who came to him in the depths of despair to the sunlight of hope before they left his pres- ence ("the inward shaping toward some un- born power"). He was called to the larger life which he was so well fitted to enter Jan. 1, 1908, but to his children and grandchil- dren "A light is passing from the earth!" He was a Baptist and a deacon in the church for many years, and a Mason, and beloved by everyone for his sunny nature-a man to whom an unkind thought even was for- eign, and could not thrive there.
The achievements of any man cannot be properly gauged without insight into his en- vironments as well as his ancestry. Isaac Reese married Elizabeth Bebb Jones in Pitts- burgh, May 24, 1844. One day, when speak- ing of his business reverses to Mr. Thomas McConnell, Sr., of Kittanning, Mr. Reese said: "I can never see a storm threatening, it has to burst right over my head before it is known to me; and then when the dark- ness is so great I cannot see my hand before me, it is my wife who has always guided me
their two children, Elizabeth and John, in 1841, the eldest two, Thomas and Mary, hav- ing come over the year previous with Dr. Chidlaw, a personal friend of this family. The Jones family settled at Brady's Bend, Armstrong Co., Pennsylvania.
The Jones and Bebb families figure in the parish history of Llanbrynmair as far back as 1663 as vicars, church wardens and over- seers, almost every consecutive year for two hundred years, and the tombstones in the churchyard and the garden burial plot of the Friends record some of their deaths as "Quakers." Edward Bebb, Quaker, who died April 23, 1740, was the ancestor of Mary (Bebb) Jones and her brother Edward Bebb. Judge William Bebb, the fourteenth governor of Ohio, was the son of Edward and Mar- garet (Roberts) Bebb. Judge Bebb was born in America. He tutored the children of old General Harrison ("Tippecanoe" of the political phrase "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too") in mathematics. Latin, French and German, living in the Harrison family one year. He then started an academy at South Bend. Ind., and through the influence of General Harri- son, the leading families of Cincinnati sent their children to this institution. He then studied law, became judge and afterward gov- ernor of Ohio (in 1851) through the appoint- ment of the president, and according to his- tory was the first governor to take the stump against slavery. He was governor when the war with Mexico made his duties arduous and exacting, and when the feeling between the Whigs and the Tories ran high, filling the office with credit to himself and the govern- ment. He was the intimate friend of Thomas Corwin, and their two portraits in the State- house at Columbus, Ohio, are called the "David and Jonathan" of the Ohio bar. Later he held other offices under the United States government.
On the Jones side of the house the family is a branch of the ancient house of Esgair Evan, the root of the Jones clan in Llanbryn- mair. The little house Robert Jones built and from which the family emigrated was called in its honor "Esgair Lafureyn." His great-grandson. Reese O. Snowden, has
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Samuel Roberty M.A.
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HISTORY OF ARMSTRONG COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
named his ranch at Lancaster, Cal., Esgair in through the press and the pulpit on behalf its honor. Robert Jones built a break in the of every great reform-social, political and wall around "Esgair" to which one of the villagers pointed with pride over fifty years after he had emigrated, saying, "It will last as long as the Roman wall!" A farmer by inheritance, he had never learned the trade of the stonemason, and yet his work in ma- sonry stands as a monument to future gen- erations ! He did his work well, and "earned a creature's praise." Carlyle had this man's type in view when he said, "In all true work, were it but hand labor, there is something of divineness." Robert Jones was also one of the pillars of the church, both in Wales and Armstrong county, from youth up to old age. He was a man of sterling principles and generous to a fault.
Josiah Jones (nom de plume Josiah Bryn- mair), the Welsh bard and religious writer of Gomer, Ohio, whose hymns are sung in Welsh churches, was the son of Robert Jones' uncle, Josiah Jones, of Llanbrynmair. At his funeral in Gomer, Ohio, almost sev- enty ministers and deacons, representatives of Congregational churches, were present. His father was a deacon for fifty years in the old Independent Chapel, Llanbrynmair, and a leader of its choir for sixty years at the time of his death.
Rev. John Roberts, who with his two sons held the pulpit of Llanbrynmair Independent Chapel for over sixty years, was a kinsman of Mrs. Reese as well as .closely related by marriage ties. Edward Bebb, the brother of Mrs. Robert Jones, married the sister of John and George Roberts, and Richard, the young- est son of John and brother of Samuel, mar- ried Ann Jones, a cousin of Robert Jones.
Rev. George Roberts emigrated to Ebens- burg, Pa. Besides his faithful ·discharge of clerical duties he did much to strengthen the feelings of good will and cooperation between England and the United States through his intimacy with Mr. Rush, the then United States ambassador to London.
David Francis, another cousin of Mrs. Reese, emigrated there with Rev. George Roberts, and engaged in farming.
religious. At his funeral one of the most noted preachers of Wales said of him, "There was a time when all Wales turned to Llan- brynmair for political light as the world turns to the east every morning for the sun." He was preeminently a man of peace. He at- tended the great Peace Congress at Frankfort in 1850. In 1857, with his nephew, Judge Bebb, he started a Welsh colony in the moun- tains of Tennessee, but the Civil war put an end to the undertaking, as they were Northern sympathizers. Samuel Roberts, utterly bank- rupt, then turned his face homeward, and on his arrival in Wales, a mass meeting was called in Liverpool, presided over by an Eng- lish baronet, which took the form of a na- tional testimonial. Resolutions were drawn up saying he was received back to Wales with the same welcome as a mother received her newborn babe, and presenting him a purse of £1,250 (as told in a letter from Samuel Roberts to Mrs. Reese on that occasion).
While Samuel Roberts wrote on national as well as religious subjects, his brother John confined himself to the religious, and history says no one had a stronger influence over Wales; and no Welshman ever went to his grave with more admirers than his brother John. Richard, the youngest of the three brothers, was a farmer, but preached much and was a regular contributor to monthly magazines. He was a general favorite in Wales. The father and his three sons went to their graves mourned by the whole Welsh nation, but their teachings live .- "The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule."
God had sifted three kingdoms To find the wheat for this planting. -LONGFELLOW.
'Tis said that a religious atmosphere sur- rounded the birthplace of St. Francis of As- sisi long after it had become extinct in other places. The writer felt the same when, some few years ago they visited Llanbrynmair, and saw the people in small flocks plodding through a drizzling rain for miles over moun- tain and valley to the old Independent Chapel one Sabbath morning-some horseback, some in spring wagons, but many of them on foot. It was the only Protestant Church the writer ever saw where the people made the same ef- fort to attend divine service as the Catho-
Samuel Roberts was the most noted of these preachers. He was born March 6, 1800, in the old Chapel House of Llanbrynmair, as was also Dr. Abraham Rees (in 1743), the encyclopaedist, kinsman of Isaac Reese. A tablet above the pulpit commemorates the events. Samuel Roberts published a collec- tion of two thousand hymns for Welsh Con- gregational churches. He labored unceasingly lic makes to attend early Mass in midwinter,
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HISTORY OF ARMSTRONG COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
over ice and snow, to "St. Mary's on the Hill," in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
'Twas not the grapes of Canaan did repay, But the high faith that failed not by the way. -LOWELL.
After Robert and Mary (Bebb) Jones had settled in Brady's Bend they ventured their all with their son Thomas in a blast furnace in Clarion county, Pa. The panic of 1849 swept everything away and left them strang- ers in a strange land in their old age. Mrs. Jones, to help eke out the living for the fam- ily, took in a few boarders, and one of these men related how every boarder was obliged either to go to church on the Sabbath or seek shelter elsewhere. It was the custom of Mr. and Mrs. Jones to close the house on that day, as everyone was expected to attend divine service. This man, almost a lifetime a trusted officer in a Congregational Church of Pitts- burgh, said: "Mrs. Robert Jones gave me my first start in regular churchgoing." Grace before meals and daily family worship had left its impress on those young men, far away from their family influence. Rev. Samuel Roberts had called this woman in Wales "A mother in Israel." "How far that little can- dle throws his beams" here in Armstrong county ! Mrs. Roberts Jones belonged to the hierarchy of elect souls whose invisible laws bend the universe toward righteousness.
Religion high, but with communicants. few as the cedars on Lebanon .- GEORGE ELIOT.
"Truth stands fire and water" has been handed down by tradition from Mary Roberts, the grandmother of Mrs. Reese, through seven generations.
A strong persistent life Panting through generations as one breath. -GEORGE ELIOT.
Mrs. Reese, speaking of her religious an- cestry to her children before her death, said: "This is your greatest inheritance. Don't for- get your great-grandmother Roberts. 'Truth stands fire and water,' you pass it on." "Keep your promise." Mrs. Reese taught, "if it means loss, the burnt offering is still costly." She was another witness to the "Truth" and left to her children and grandchildren the im- perishable legacy.
The thing of an eternal yesterday,
Whatever was, and evermore returns, Sterling to-morrow, for to-day 'twas sterling ! -S. T. COLERIDGE.
Mrs. Reese was of a deeply religious na- ture. She watched for the providence of God in every event. She was greatest in her moral qualities-a true descendant of her Puritan ancestry. Her certitudes of faith were solid rock for her. Circumstances had no effect on her, as her husband testified after fifty- four years of marriage. She was a benefactor to everyone in need with whom she came in contact, both in a material and spiritual way, and her death amid transcendent visions was a fitting end to the life whose footsteps through the world were so beautiful.
The high soul burns on to light (our) feet !
In Llanbrynmair her people were stanch supporters of disestablishment. The house is still standing there where during the re- ligious persecutions of the seventeenth cen- tury her people kept the Covenant for sixty- four years before they dared build the Old Independent Chapel in 1739. "If heredity is the sum of past environments, both spiritual and material" ( Burbank), the rugged charac- ter of these God-fearing people within the mountain fastnesses of Wales may have had no small part in developing the simple gran- deur of these lives-these people who have played no inconsiderable part in the history of this county.
Shall the trick of nostrils and of lips Descend through generations and the soul That moves within our frames like God in worlds- Convulsing, urging, melting, withering- Imprint no record, leave no documents Of her great history? Shall men bequeath The fancies of their palate to their sons, And shall the shudder of restraining awe, The slow-swept tears of contrite memory, Faith's prayerful labor and the food divine Of fasts ecstatic-shall these pass away Like wind upon the waters, tracklessly? -GEORGE ELIOT.
Mrs. Robert Jones died in Brady's Bend, Pa., in 1856, in the sixty-seventh year of her age. Robert Jones' surviving years were spent in Pittsburgh with his daughters. He died Feb. 10, 1865, in the eighty-fourth year of his age.
Thomas Jones, the eldest son of Robert and Mary ( Bebb) Jones, was born in Llan- brynmair, Nov. 27, 1813, and was educated at Newtown Academy. He died in Pitts- burgh. April 21. 1855. His life in America was spent at Brady's Bend. It was a saintly life, of great usefulness in the home with his aged parents, in the neighborhood and the church. He never married. Samuel
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HISTORY OF ARMSTRONG COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
Roberts, on receiving the letter in Wales at ten years of age, and the eldest of several from the family telling of his death, was brothers and sisters, had started out on a simi- so overcome with grief he was unable to lar quest in order to help support the family, preach the following Sunday, and in his re- turn letter said: "Thomas was a grandson and a son worthy of Mary Roberts and her daughter. His work was perfect when the Master called and he went in at the Gate loaded down with full sheaves."
Humphrey died, aged eight years, and is buried in Llanbrynmair Churchyard.
Mary Jones, daughter of Robert and Mary Jones, was born Aug. 30, 1818. She was a devoted wife and mother, and a faithful and respected member of the First Congregation- al Church of Pittsburgh for sixty years, at the time of her death. She was married to William Hopkins, of Pittsburgh, whose grandfather was a cousin of Stephen Hop- kins, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
John Jones was born May 9, 1832. He fought through four years of the Civil war. He learned the art of photography as known in those day (daguerreotypy) from his broth- er, Thomas, who had learned it in London. He was a born horticulturist, doing his best work in his sister's garden at Manorville, Armstrong county, which a visiting Pitts- burgher called "Allah's Garden of Roses," so beautiful and luxuriant were they under his care and labor. He was married to Mary Scarm, of Brady's Bend, and died in Pitts- burgh, Dec. 22, 1891.
Mrs. Reese had been a faithful and re- spected member of the First Congregational Church of Pittsburgh for fifty-four years at the time of her death, June 2, 1898.
Eleven children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Reese, six of whom died in childhood and early youth. Four survive at the present time, Elvira, Emma, George W. and Walter Lawrence. The three sons assisted their father in business, and George W. Reese is mentioned elsewhere in this work; he is a resident of Kittanning, Pennsylvania.
BENJAMIN F. REESE, the second son of Isaac and Elizabeth Reese, was born Feb. 16, 1862. He attended the public schools of Pitts- burgh until he was fifteen years of age, when his father's business failure impressed him with the necessity of doing something toward the family's support. He was born with an abiding sense of duty. Accordingly, without saying a word to anyone, he started out in search of work and found it in the steel works of Miller, Barr & Parkins. (It is a significant fact that his great-grandfather, left an orphan
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