Indiana County, Pennsylvania, her people, past and present, Volume I, Part 102

Author: Stewart, Joshua Thompson, 1862- comp
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Chicago, J. H. Beers & co.
Number of Pages: 930

USA > Pennsylvania > Indiana County > Indiana County, Pennsylvania, her people, past and present, Volume I > Part 102

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Our fathers dedicated us to hard work, wringing a precarious living from a reluctant soil. With us the silver spoon was never in our mouths but always at the lower end of the rainbow. In silver and gold our ancestors were poor, but in courage and energy they were rich and in hope and faith they were opulent. Fate paid a high compliment to the people whom it located in this region by as- suming their ability to defy the rigors of winter and the droughts of summer. Hard as the conditions have been the people here have worked out their own salvation with the undaunted bravery of the Spartans and yet the fear and trembling of true believers. The triumph has been achieved by means well adapted to the end under the paramount laws of necessity.

The heroic achievements of some of those now honoring me with close attention may be mentioned without disparaging others of equal merit, many of whom have long since

less world. Thirty-five hundred years ago the Egyptians compelled the Israelites to make bricks without straw and the Jews have been complaining about it ever since, but this ancient Hebrew task was enchanting recre- ation compared with the modern feat of rais- ing wheat on a stone quarry.

Day before yesterday I called on Archy Smitten and found him at the ripe age of seventy-five hauling hay out of the field which includes his barn. The ground was still cov- ered with loose stones, although they have

The production of small detached rocks has been perennial. Every time Archy Smitten has asked that field for bread it has given him a stone, and when he has removed one stone a dozen have come to bid it a welcome adieu and have all remained as harbingers of tired backs and sore fingers. These stones lying over the ground and complacently ob- structing crops, or piled in fence corners har- boring snakes and toads, have been Archy Smitten's constant companions all his life. That field is a fair sample of the whole farm, which is one of the best in the neighborhood because it is level and well watered.

Mr. Smitten is now singled out for men- tion because his farm adjoins the village of Marchand and was most exposed, when I was a boy, to juvenile depredations, and the fact that I am here today alive, with others of my age, is due to a degree of patience com- pared with which the boasted virtues of Job sink into mere routine commonplace cour- tesies. We boys appropriated Archy Smit- ten's watermelons, we devoured his musk- melons, we picked his blackberries, we took his apples, we went coon hunting to the irrep- arable detriment of his roasting ears. On one occasion I remember Mr. Smitten's say- ing to me, "Abe, whenever you want some apples bring over a pillowcase and get all you want. I don't say this to other boys who have fathers to aid them." In those days the pillowcase, in addition to its ordinary duties, answered for a bag, there being then a pillow- case battalion as there is now a tin-bucket brigade. Yet Mr. Smitten is still happy and prosperous, and is building a new house for himself, his children and grandchildren.

However, Archy Smitten's existence has been oriental luxury compared with many of his neighbors whose premises, originally accessible only to frosts and snow, to floods and famine, have furnished the greatest ex- amples of intelligent courage and skillful in-

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HISTORY OF INDIANA COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

dustry. These less favored neighbors of their own notes and put them into circula- Archy Smitten have tilled barren ridges, tion by lending them at a high rate of in- terest to their customers. This effected an achievement unsurpassed in modern times, as the bankers were thus enabled to collect interest on their own debts, a device as unique as it was simple and beautiful, although some old-fashioned people did not understand it; hence the latter, the old-fashioned folks, sometimes demanded payment of their notes and were called unpatriotic, because such a demand was liable to cause a run on the bank. The fact that the notes on their face were payable on demand made no difference, the holders had no business to demand pay- ment and cause trouble. Such a law now would be welcome to a good many of us, pre- venting unreasonable creditors from bother- ing us about our debts. rocky ledges, stony hillsides, dark ravines and haunted hollows, making them blossom as the rose. "Instead of the thorn came up the fir tree, and instead of the brier the myrtle." They made the laurel yield to the currant and the crabapple give place to the useful orchard. Wheat, rye, buckwheat and oats they coaxed from land disdained by thistles and shunned by ragweeds, while they caused garden vegetables in delightful exu- berance to smile from precipitous gorges and channelly peaks. These men, with stout hearts and strong arms, challenge our admir- ation as they emerge from the triumphant conflict like St. Paul's faithful heroes who subdued kingdoms and out of weakness were made strong. All honor to the valiant souls, living and dead, who have changed this re- gion from desolate waste to abundant fertil- ity ; from an empire of weeds to a kingdom of vegetation.

In New England a stranger once said to a native, "What do you raise here on these rocky wastes?" The answer was "We raise men." So it may be truly said of this section of Pennsylvania, we raise men.

I am happy to see the brier-infested fences go down before an enlightened publie senti- ment which enforces the law against allowing domestic animals to run at large. The last time I was in Marchand the bristle-produc- ing herd had possession of the streets, but now they are as silent and invisible as their two thousand terrified predecessors that ran vio- lently down into the Sea of Galilee.

In the absence of money to pay for store goods, in early days, farm products became legal tender; wheat, rye and oats were ex- changed for sugar, coffee and clothes. As houses multiplied, creating a demand for lumber, the storekeeper accepted boards, always worthless, without pride of ancestry shingles and lath for his wares. In the mean- time, besides the scanty supply of silver and gold, paper currency appeared, descending upon the people like the locusts of Egypt and with equally disastrous effects. There was a deluge of this so-called money without any Noah with an ark for the favored few. The people considered banks a mysterious and magical means of creating wealth out of nothing. The banks were located in different

the more inaccessible their home office the better, as the officers could not readily be found for purposes of demand of payment of their unsecured notes. These banks printed

With the march of civilization and develop- ment in finance, this scheme for collecting interest on one's debts has disappeared and must hereafter be classed as one of the lost arts. When the banks failed, as they gener- ally did, sooner or later, they rarely paid anything on their notes. One concern had is- sued notes amounting to $580,000 and when it failed it had what was called a "coin re- serve" of $86.46, not enough to pay for print- ing notices of the failure and sending them to creditors. Whoever owned the money of one of such banks when it failed had to stand the loss, and if he, though ignorant of the failure, transferred the notes after the bank had failed, he was liable to the transferee for the amount.

This paper currency was called "wildcat money" because it came in stealth appar- ently from the deep forests or tangled jungles and preferred darkness rather than light. It was also called "yellow dog money" because it resembled that kind of animal, which was

or hope of honorable posterity. By these wildcat and yellow dog bankers silver and gold were considered "dead capital." Be- fore taking in one of the circulating notes the person to whom it was offered was com- pelled to consult the "Bank Note Detector," a monthly publication, to see first whether the note was genuine-the country being flooded with counterfeits-and, second, whether the bank had failed. If these questions were fav- States and operated under State charters; orably answered then the "Detector" was

further consulted to see how much discount the note was subject to, for few of the notes passed at par.

This condition existed up to 1861 when the

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HISTORY OF INDIANA COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

war broke out and the government taxed all it and going him one better by breaking the the State banks, good and bad, out of exist- commandment themselves against stealing. ence. At that time United States ten per The next day a discussion arose among cent obligations could not be sold at a dis- some of us boys about the Ten Command- count. This is in strange contrast with 1898, thirty-seven years later, when the government asked the people for a loan of two hundred millions at three per cent for the Spanish war and on the day set for receiving offers the people rushed up and subscribed fourteen hundred millions before they could be stopped and the Atlantic cable was nearly burned out with messages from Americans abroad de- manding the privilege of loaning money to the nation. ments and where they could be found. I claimed they were all in the Bible. John Brewer, who was authority on such matters, said it was no such thing; that the com- mandments had all been taken out of the Bible to make the catechism. I bet him a quart of chestnuts it was not so. We then went to Aunt Jane Brewer's and got her Bible and examined it carefully but failed to find any of the commandments in it, so I lost my bet and have never gambled since.

Previous to the war political excitement ran high about Marchand for five to ten years, but without any medium of public ex- pression through newspapers or meetings. The pathetic side of slavery was voiced in negro melodies like "Old Folks at Home," and was nourished by stories like "Unele Tom's Cabin." From the early fifties John Covode represented this district in Congress. He was a farmer, a blacksmith and a man- ufacturer of woolen goods. As a blacksmith he had learned to hit hard, and as a politician he practiced what he had learned by striking with all his might regardless of Murray's Grammar or Quackenbos' Rhetoric. He was chairman of a committee of Congress ap- pointed to investigate charges against Presi- dent Buchanan. The majority of the com- mittee found Buchanan guilty, and the minority found his innocent, their report ap- pearing in a huge volume called "The Covode Investigation." As is usual in such cases nothing ever came of the matter, but it fur- nished the blacksmith statesman something to talk about on the stump and a big book to brandish and pound. At the end of each part of his philippics he held the volume up and triumphantly exclaimed: "and them facts appears in this book in black and white !"

On one occasion Mr. Covode spoke in Mar- chand, which was a great event in the neigh- borhood, especially for the boys, who had never heard a political speech. He stood on a store box north of Allison's store and op- posite Downey's blacksmith shop, looking prosperous ; he had a red face, wore a black velvet vest and a flowing necktie. Wading into the Democrats right and left he said they were deceiving the people and were secretly planning secession. He said Buchanan had violated the commandment against lying and his cabinet members were upholding him in

In the middle of April, 1861, when Lin- coln called for seventy-five thousand troops for three months, the news was twenty-four hours old when it reached Marchand; by that time two hundred and twenty-five thousand men had volunteered, thus rendering it im- possible for Marchand boys who were at home to enter the three months' service. Some, however, who were away from home enlisted without returning, thus getting into the first army. My brother, Thomas H. Brewer, was one of these fortunate men, as he entered the service the 17th of April at Tyrone.

Two or three days after the Bull Run dis- aster Thomas McComb and I were mowing grass in his meadow when a neighbor came along with a copy of the Pittsburg Dispatch from which he read an exaggerated account of the Union defeat. The paper told in de- tail how our troops ran, many of them never stopping until they crossed the Potomac at Washington. I told MeComb I had promised my mother not to enlist until my brother re- turned, but I was going home that night to see if she would not release me from the agree- ment. I quit mowing, went home and told mother I wanted to enlist. She said she must pray about it and would let me know in the morning. At breakfast the next day she said I might go, but if I ran like the boys in blue at Bull Run I need not come back. Many other mothers shared her feeling, and the boys of Company A. left in three weeks for the front under an implied promise not to run. History tells whether that promise was well kept. I will only say that so many of ns as got back alive were welcomed by our mothers.

The records show that seventy-six men went to the Civil war from Marchand in the four vears beginning April, 1861. Of this num- ber twenty-five lived in the village and the others, fifty-one, received their mail at Mar-

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HISTORY OF INDIANA COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

chand post office. (At this point the secre- three o'clock the next morning. The battle tary, H. E. Moot, read the names as follows, occurred the very next day after Grant sent his grim message to the secretary of war say- ing he proposed to fight it out on that line if it took all summer. The engagement was one of a series of battles beginning in the Wilderness May 4 and ending at Cold Harbor June 3. the audience standing as a mark of respect to the volunteers: Clark Allison, George Barto, Thomas Brewer, Samuel Brewer, Ben- nett Brewer, John Brewer, A. T. Brewer, Charles Brewer, Sam Curry, H. A. Brewer, James Brewer, Samuel C. Brown, John Brown, John W. Compton, John Crawford, Cham Downey, Stan Downey, John Gall, J. B. Hinds, David Johnston, Thomas Lunger, John Lunger, Thomas MeComb, Martin Moot, Daniel Switzer, Joseph Taylor, James Tay- lor.) These men represented all branches of the service and held all offices from colonel to eighth corporal, though most of them knew what it was to carry a musket and forty rounds of ammunition. Some were killed on the battlefield, many were wounded, others contracted disease hastening demise, while most others have fallen victims to death's archer, leaving only a small minority to wit- ness the marvelous prosperity and renown of the restored Union on whose possessions the sun never sets, whose flag protects a world-wide commerce, and whose power rep- resents freedom and honor, justice and liberty to all men.

The story of the Civil war in detail has never been told and never can be. The his- torian of that struggle, if he should live as long as Methuselah and write every day, would be obliged in the end to admit the total inadequacy of his record as St. John did in the last verse of his Gospel, when he said :

"And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."

Nor can the individual history of the sev- enty-six men of Marchand ever be written, even if the data existed for such a history. Human capacity is too limited to remember the facts or understand the significance of a military service in daily contact with an armed enemy skilled in the use of deadly weapons. There is, however, an incident not only proper to be mentioned but which can- not with propriety be omitted on this occasion. That incident relates to the death of Martin Moot of Company A on May 12, 1864, at Spottsylvania Court House, Va. It is agreed by all writers on the war, Union and Con- federate, that the fighting on that day was the most furious in history considering that the struggle began at daybreak in the morn- ing and lasted without intermission until

General Lee on May 11 occupied a fortified position for several miles to the right and left of Spottsylvania Court House. At one point there was a sharp angle in his line extending toward our front. This was a military fault, as it exposed that part of his line to attack without sufficient provision for support. General Grant, always alert and daring, ob- serving this angle, decided to capture it. He therefore ordered General Hancock with the 2d Corps to move in the night of the 11th up close to the angle and attack it at daylight on the 12th, and ordered our corps, the 6th. to support Hancock, and all the rest of the army to cooperate. Promptly at dawn Han- cock's men with victorious cheers rushed over the breastworks, capturing the entire angle with all its defenders and thirty cannon. While the 2d Corps men were getting back their prisoners and cannon strong Rebel re- inforcements assailed them and drove them to the outer face of the works they had cap- tured. At that moment, soon after daylight, our corps swept forward to the support of Hancock, whose men were sorely pressed and many of them were out of ammunition. Oc- cupying one side of a rifle pit for half a mile with the Rebels on the other side fifteen feet away, we fought without a moment's cessation for the next ensuing nineteen hours, when the enemy gave up the contest and sul- lenly retreated. When we first got into posi- tion close up to the breastworks there was a Union battery of brass guns on our right firing into the Rebels over the rifle pit. In a few minutes these guns, one after another, ceased firing because the artillerymen were all killed or wounded. Then the Rebels with a yell charged over the works to capture the battery, but they were resisted by our in- fantry to the right and left and soon retreated behind their works, leaving many killed and wounded among the guns. At that moment an artillery officer appeared in our midst and called for volunteers to man the battery. He did not call in vain, for instantly Martin Moot and four others from our company ran to the battery with the officer. The other four were Daniel H. Bee, John Stewart, Benjamin Row- land and Calvin Work. When these men

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HISTORY OF INDIANA COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

reached the battery the silent cannons stood on ground covered with the dead and wounded of both armies, but the brave vol- unteers were not daunted and soon the can- nons roared again, sending deatlı and de- struction into the Rebel lines. In a few minutes, however, the Rebel infantrymen from behind trees and other protected places sent a shower of deadly bullets into the new gunners and again the battery was silent. Daniel H. Bee returned unhurt; John Stew- art came back with five wounds; Martin Moot, Benjamin Rowland and Calvin Work never returned; their bodies were found the next morning close to the cannons they had vol- unteered to serve. The brass guns, however, were prostrated on the muddy ground, the Rebel bullets having cut off the spokes of the wheels supporting the cannon.

Martin Moot belonged to Marchard, but his fame belongs to the United States and will be cherished so long as valorous deeds are hon- ored and patriotic efforts recorded as memorials for the inspiration of mankind. Enduring memorials are not made of visible material. The Lincoln monument at Spring- field is rapidly disintegrating; the Garfield Memorial at Cleveland needs constant repairs to retard decay ; and the Grant Mausoleum in New York will soon crumble. If the deeds of those men are not immortal, granite and stone cannot preserve their names. At Bethany the courageous and unselfish Mary received a monument of the right kind: "Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her."

Wherever the great Civil war waged for union and freedom is discussed the deeds of Martin Moot and men like him, whether the names be known or not, will be spoken of as memorials undimmed by age and undimin- ished by new standards of heroic achieve- ments. The Civil war soldiers are rapidly passing away. Last year 53,120 answered to the last roll call-over one thousand a week. Every time the sun went down his last golden rays lingered upon one hundred and forty- three new graves of old soldiers. At this rate, in ten years the men who conquered among the rocks at Gettysburg, struggled in forms and faces now so conspicuous by their

the Wilderness, and triumphed at Appomat- tox; who took Vicksburg and marched to the sea; who extended American naval fame on fresh and salt water, will all be gone from among us, leaving succeeding generations to preserve the nation and work out its great destiny.

The address delivered by John C. Barclay in the Brick Church, Friday evening, Aug. 25, 1905.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and asso- ciates of my youth :

This is a great occasion, long to be remem- bered. It should awaken within us serious thought, reminding us of the flight of time and the brevity of human life. I was requested and authorized to speak of and address the boys and girls of the seventies. This does not mean the ones who have attained the age

The scene along that part of the line on the of seventy years, for girls never attain that morning of May 13th can never be described, though it has been attempted .by Generals Grant, Porter, Humphreys and Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Grant, the commander of the Ver- mont brigade of our division, and others.

age and good boys all die young; hence if I were confined to this class, I would be com- pelled to speak to vacant walls and empty pews. But the boys and girls who dwelt in this quiet little community during that period, who spent their early days in the schools of Marchand, who went with me to the schools, churches, picnics, parties, country wakes and all such other festivities as fell to our lot, these are the ones that I expected to appear before to-day, not as an expounder of new gospel, but simply to look you once more in the face, to see your bewitching smiles, to clasp your hand in friendly grasp, to reawaken and revive the friendship and fraternity that a half century has not anni- hilated. We were all boys together. What a multitude of joy, sorrow, poetry, sadness, gladness, inexpressible things and conditions are contained in that one sentence! "Friend- ship, thou art a jewel," and what bonds of friendship still remain unbroken and the ties of confidence that bind still remain uncut. The poet has said "the friends thou hast and their adoption tried, grapple to thy soul with hoops of steel, but do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade." That advice is as true and perti- nent as it was the day it was written and has been a lamp to my feet and a light to my path- way all along the shores of time. The friends I see before me have been tested and tried in many stringent crucibles, and for their fidel- ity, and unflinching loyalty, I could grapple them to my soul with hoops of steel. When I take up this list and scan it over and be- hold the vacant seats and the once familiar

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HISTORY OF INDIANA COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

absence, I cannot describe my degree of grief. blossom and bloom as the rose. We must not Many of these are so far away that we need never expect to see their smiling faces again, and others whose names might as well appear on this program have long since been called to that bourne whence no traveler returns. I can say with the poet :

When I remember all the friends so linked together, I've seen around me fall like leaves in wintry weather, I feel like one who treads alone some hanquet hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead, and all but he departed.

Where we now stand I stood fifty years ago. I chased the measly little rabbit over these hills during the cold, frosty days of winter until my feet were frozen; I have played among the ferns, fished in the streams; I had full knowledge where to find the good sweet apples, the luscious peaches, the fruits of the season ; who had cross dogs; who "had it in" for the boys, and was continually on the watch for something doing. "I have viewed the landscape o'er." I have prized the beauty and grandeur of the farms (and especially the orchards) of Allison, Shields, McIsaac, Crawford and others, and if there ever was a place compared with the scenes that poet beheld when he wrote the song of "The Old Oaken Bucket," it was the Allen Crawford farm, for there was the orchard, there was the meadow, and the old well seventy feet deep, the old oaken bucket, the moss covered bucket, that hung in the well. On all sides of us we could see and hear fit subjects for the poet to sing his dulcet notes of honeyed song. I sometimes think that Longfellow came and visited Father Downey before writ- ing "The Village Blacksmith," but these men, the pioneers, have lived and played their part, they have "fought a good fight" and have gone the way of all flesh and, I trust, are in that home not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. We should not pass them by at this hour of recollection too briefly. We owe them a debt of gratitude that we will never be able to pay in cold cash, but let us not be unmindful or forgetful of the names of Allison, Brown, Shields, Smitten, Black, Zener, Brewer, Compton, Dorn, Moot, Fire- man and a whole host of other horny-handed sons of toil, who labored in this wilderness and by their toil, energy and privations helped to make this community what it is. They blazed out the trails, built the cabin, out of jail. I have not heard of any of the straddled the brush, cleared the fields, leveled girls going on the stage to play the part of off the highways, and made the forests to an actress in some cheap vaudeville, marry-

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Indiana County, Pennsylvania, her people, past and present, Volume I, Part 102

Author: Stewart, Joshua Thompson, 1862- comp Publication date: 1913 Publisher: Chicago, J. H. Beers & co. Number of Pages: 930

Author: Stewart, Joshua Thompson, 1862- comp
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Chicago, J. H. Beers & co.
Number of Pages: 930