Thomas Holt, First of the line born in America

      I am not absolutely certain as to what day in August of 1733, and where, Thomas Holt Sr. was born. I am certain that he and his parents, Henry and Dorcas, were present in the Episcopal, Christ Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on  27 September, 1733 when he was christened at "one month of age". It is recorded in Christ Church baptismal records. My guess is he was born in Philadelphia.
     As an interesting aside, Benjamin Franklin was also a parishioner at that church at that time and is buried in the church graveyard. Wouldn't it be interesting to know whether he was present at the church when the christening took place.
     It's not certain how long the family remained in Philadelphia. The next recorded occurrence of the family's whereabouts was in 1735 when Dorcas, Thomas's mother, was reprimanded  in court  in newly founded Lancaster, Pennsylvania for beating up on one of her neighbors. It appears he had slapped around one of  her female friends. That Scotch-Irish fire is still alive and well in her descendants today.
     Thomas's father Henry disappeared c1735. It's not known whether he died in Pennsylvania or was lost at sea returning home to England as the inheritor of his deceased father's estate. His mother remarried in 1738 to Arthur Buchanan, another Irish immigrant. She and Arthur had five children.
      On February 3, 1756 in St James Episcopal Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Thomas married eighteen year old Elizabeth Mitchell, daughter of John and Jane Ross Mitchell.  Thomas and Jane soon followed his mother and Arthur Buchanan to the vicinity of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Arthur died there in 1759.  Dorcas and her five Buchanan children and Thomas and his little family moved into the Pennsylvania wilderness where Lewistown is now sited on lands each had purchased from William Penn's sons.
       Thomas and Elizabeth had nine children: William, November,1756; John, 1 February, 1758; Thomas Jr. April 1761; James 1762; Elizabeth 1764; Mary 1766; Jane 1769; Dorcas 13 March 1772; and, Eleanor 22 September 1774.
        Over time, Thomas became influential in the area and was elected to several posts of importance in the local governing body. By mid 1776 the causative political currents that eventually fomented the American Revolutionary War against England were nearing fever pitch and the local Militia was formed. Thomas as a matter of course joined the Militia.  Some time during the summer of 1777 the militia personnel were afield honing their shooting skills. According to George F. Stackpole, a descendant of Thomas, "Thomas was shooting mark with, among others, his half- brother, Robert Buchanan on what is now Dorcas Street, Lewistown, Pa. Thomas was marking shot locations. He was concealed behind the target tree, Robert was shooting and for some reason, possibly a hang fire, he was slow in getting his shot off. Thomas stepped from behind the tree, possibly to determine why his half brother hadn't shot, and was hit in the head and killed."
       Elizabeth lived on in what eventually became Lewistown, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania until her death in 1798. Most of those members of the Holt and Buchanan families of the time are buried in the downtown Lewistown cemetery that is dedicated to Thomas's mother, pioneer woman Dorcas (Armstrong)(Holt) Buchanan.  About fifteen years after Dorcas's death, several admirers erected a  large, homemade,  dark bluish-gray, shale headstone over her grave that is still standing today, 200 years after her death. Thomas and Elizabeth's graves were lost to posterity when the Erie Canal was built through the area during the first half of the 1800's.

Smokin' a Seegar & Chawin' Tabakee---eeeyuk--oooffff

      I don’t recall how old I was, I suppose eight or nine, when I tried smoking. We were still living at Granddad Holt's house so it was before 1936. Bob Buckley had gotten several cigars and a partial pack of Mail Pouch chewing tobacco from his father’s supply and came and got me. We went down over the hill to the spring house that covered the spring that at one time supplied the family with fresh water. We crawled up on the roof for some reason or the other for our great adventure.
      Bob had smoked before so he started on the stogie and gave me the Mail Pouch for openers. He showed me how to form a plug and put it in my mouth, which I did. The stuff had a sweet, not totally unpleasant taste and made spit real fast. I "splooshed" a few streams of juice off the roof and decided, heck what’s the big deal, and ask Bob for a puff on his cigar. He obliged by giving me one of my own. He lit it for me and I began to puff, choked, gasped for air, then swallowed smoke, tobacco, juice and all. Bob thought that was real funny. All of a sudden I felt dizzy, so dizzy in fact, I couldn’t stand up.  So I slowly collapsed down on the roof with my head hanging over the side and began heaving, and heaving and heaving some more until I was sure everything including my toenails would soon go over the side. I couldn't stop. I just wretched and wretched and wretched some more.


     Bob got scared and ran up the hill and brought Mom down. By the time she got there I had, at last, stopped heaving and recovered somewhat. Although, I guess I was whiter than the provervbial ghost and more than a bit "willowie" on my feet.  Boy did she ever give Bob a reaming. I don’t know whether she ever told his parents, but one thing I do know, he never offered me a "seegar" or a "chaw" of tobacco again. I owe him a debt of gratitude for that experience. I never tried smoking or chewing tobacco again, right up to now.

STARTING UP AGAIN----HONEST

I have no excuse for being away from my blog so long, only an explanation—It’s been brutally hot in these parts this summer, even though we live at 5200'. Hot summer heat has always enervated me. So why do I live here? Good question. Up until recently, all my immediate family lived in Arizona. Also, Genie teaches in the Wickenburg School District. But believe me, during the summer, she would rather be some place else—around Yellowstone and Grand Teton Parks National Parks.. We both like Montana and Northern Wyoming. Especially in the summer and fall. We’re devoted fly fishing fans and it’s hard to beat the areas in and around the two parks. In fact, we lived in Bozeman, Montana several years trying to get a magazine off the ground servicing the motels and hotels around the two Parks. And boy did we love the fishing. Unfortunately, we decided after 18 months that part of the franchise conditions were just not to our liking so we dropped the franchise.

Enough crying—on with the blog. With a little luck and the “Lord willin and the creek don’t run dry,” I’m going to try and meet a twice-a-week publishing schedule. Until I get rolling that schedule is going to work me “ah” mite hard. So please bear with me.

I’d like to toss the ball into your court a little. I had plenty of visitors to the blog but very few comments pro or con. I was hoping for a bit of participation from the blog readers; Could you do this family or that family or, did you know gr gr granny had this funny thing happen to her, or, flesh it out more, or, I did or didn’t like it because----I’d really appreciate reader participation. I know, it’s my blog and it’s up to me to carry the ball. I will but I sure would like to hear from you,

That old Pennsylvania Bugger livin’ in Arizona, Bob

Eakin School, A Little Red Brick School House

Eakin School, 1932-33

Names read from left to right beginning in the front row

with Bob Holt (me), then beginning at the left for the next

 row back. Read the list vertically beginning on the left..

My first seven years in school were attended in a  one-room, red-brick school house. One lonely teacher taught all eight grades, maintained discipline over as many as 32 students,  keep the school clean, the fire going in the winter--with some help from the older boys--and somehow, with the help of the good Lord, I'm sure, maintained his/her sanity. First, always, came the Lord's Prayer followed immediately with the pledge of allegiance to the Flag and Country.   Once the day got underway, each grade, in turn, would be called up to stand by the teacher's desk for their lesson in a particular subject. Recitation and questions would be given out loud. For some reason or the other, it didn’t seem to interfere with the studying of those other students in the room. The subjects were standard, reading, spelling, writing, arithmetic, geography, history and some form of art.

The spelling, writing and arithmetic would frequently require the student to work at the blackboard.

I remember one time when my class was up at the teacher’s desk doing our thing when my close friend, Bill Bailey, put a tack on the teacher’s chair while the teacher, Harold Ivell, was working at the blackboard with another student. To say that, after he sat down, the teacher rose to his subject would be the understatement of the year. Those of us who were aware of the reason for the bellowing outburst when he sat down, were petrified. It had to be one of us because we were the only ones standing close enough to his chair to accomplish the deed. When it began to look like we were all going to be hung out to dry, Bill manfully confessed, much to all our relief, for none of us would have exposed Bill.  We all would have accepted our punishment without a word.

Bill Bailey became a lifelong friend. We attended Kent State University together 1948/49. As kids, we used to sleep over at each other’s home. I remember one cold winter day while still in grade school, when I was staying with Bill, his father, Jess, who was part Menominee Indian from Wisconsin, made each of us a Bow and Arrow using limbs from a hickory tree. He first fashioned them with a hand ax, then shaved them to their final shape with a piece of broken glass. Talk about two proud boys.  You can’t imagine how we felt about those bows. That was at least seventy-five years ago, and it is still strong in my memory. Bill died in Tucson in 1991 and is buried in the cemetery on East Grant Road. Bill’s mother, Dicey, became like a second mother to me. She lived to be 97 years old.

Within the first ten days of class at Eakin School I fell hopelessly in love with a sweet, little, blue-eyed blond named Betty Merriman. She remained my special girlfriend from first through the fifth grade. She lived with her family on a small farm in Mudlick Hollow. We would sometimes eat together at lunch and if she was on my side when we played prisoner’s base and she got caught, I’d work especially hard to get her free. The love affair died on the vine when I was transferred to Stokes School where they had a teacher they were sure could keep me in line. 

At Eakin,the entire school would go on a picnic at the end of each school year. We would walk from the school across a meadow west of the school and down through the woods to Four Mile Run where we would eat our lunch and spend the day. That was always a special time.

Did we enjoy school? You know we did. Did we learn anything? That’s the more important question. I can speak only for myself. I came away from my seventh grade in school with an outstanding ability to read and comprehend, do arithmetic easily in my head, was well versed in history and geography, and was as wild as a march hare. As an attendee in such an environment though, I became a prankster supreme.  I ran Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer a good race in grade school.

 I attended two one-room schools, Eakin and Stokes, and was sufficiently incorrigible that the school board, with the concurrence of my parents, sent me to the much larger Beaver School System for my eighth year to try and get me under control. I never had a bit of trouble there, possibly because they had a big, big library with all kinds of wonderful books to keep me busy.

I recently learned that the Beaver grade school I attended, Fort MacIntosh, was built from bricks made in a brickyard owned or leased by my Gr Gr Grandfather, William Taylor. And, some of those same bricks were hauled from the brick yard to the school site by my Gr.Grand Father, Samuel Jacob Holt.

Thornhill Relatives at the Alamo

My lovely wife, Genie, was helping me this week research the early Thornhill folks—in all honesty, she was doing it all—when she discovered a clue that a descendant of an early Thornhill, and the husband of that descendant’s sister, had perished at the battle of the Alamo and her research talents tingled. She hit the research trail in earnest. Genie is a died-in-the-wool Texan and when she got a hint of such a thing her excellent genealogical instincts soared. If it were true, she would no longer have to apologize to her Rebel kin for her Yankee husband. And wonder of wonders, it was true. She found that the daughter (Edna) of one of my fourth Great Grandparents, William Thornhill, had a son and son-in-law killed in that great Texas battle. I must admit that I was absolutely thrilled at the discovery. And—well, here is the background and story of those two brave individuals, relatives of ours, along with 30 of their companions who selflessly went to the aid of their countrymen, in the Battle of the Alamo in early March 1836.

Edna (Edney?) Thornhill, born in Virginia circa 1769, the middle daughter of three girls of William (1735–1788) and Sarah Thornhill (1740–Sept 1802), married widower Henry Dearduff (Deardorf) in September of 1802. It was Henry’s and Edna’s son William, born c1811, who was killed at the Alamo along with his brother-in-law, James George, husband to Elizabeth Dearduff. William was probably named after his grandfather William Thornhill, and had followed his sister and her husband to south Texas.  There the two men joined DeWitt's Rangers to go to the aid of the men at the Alamo.  To me, the fact that their small unit of 32 men under the command of a Major Williamson chose almost certain death as they marched past the Mexican army of possibly 7,000 men to join about 150 Texians already inside the Alamo. That’s courage way beyond the call of duty.

You can get a more detailed account of the Dearduff and George families before and after the battle at these links:

DeWitt’s Colony, DeWitt's Rangers:  http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/gonreliefframe.htm

William Dearduff:   http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/gonzalesrangersa-e.htm

Elizabeth and James George: http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/gonzalesrangersf-k.htm

George Washington Thornhill & Martha Ann Blake

George Washington Thornhill, the eighth child of the ten children of James Lewis Thornhill and Polly Corley (Cauley), was born in Roanoke, Roanoke County, Virginia 3 May, 1831. George moved to Gauly Bridge, Fayette County, Virginia in 1855 where he married Martha Ann Blake, born 16 March, 1836, in Roanoke, Roanoke County Virginia, also. She was the oldest child of the eight children of Lewis and Margaret (Wiseman) Blake. I'm not certain when the Blakes moved to Fayette County, but what information I have states that George and Martha Ann were married in Gauly Bridge on the 10th of September, 1856.

One year minus one day, in Gauly Bridge, on the 9th of September, 1857 their oldest son, James Lewis, was born. His picture is immediately to the left.  Then on the 27th of January, 1860 John Newton was born. Their next child, William Hammond was born the 28th of February 1862 in Gauly Bridge also. The family must have been pro North because sometime during that year they moved north to Steubenville, Ohio, just across the Ohio River from then Virginia, now West Virginia. That northwestern part of Virginia refused to secede from the Union and became the state we now call West Virginia but it was obvious the Thornhills weren't taking any chances, they were Unionists.
       Mary Margaret, their first daughter was born near Cadiz,  Harrison County, Ohio on 4 November, 1864. Hiram Bates was next in line and was born 17 September, 1866 in Jefferson County, Ohio. The terrible Civil War was finally over and life could at least begin to get back to normal.  But, the family moved still again and Eunice Ellewood was born 31 December, 1868 in Washington County, Pennsylvania.  On 2 December, 1870, Emery Emmit arrived on the scene. Martha Ann had been having children almost every two years since they married in 1856, however. this time she waited four years and on the 6th of May, 1874 Charles Albert was born. And last but not least, Elmer Ellsworth was born 3 March, 1877. My records are silent on where Charles and Elmer were born but I believe it was in that portion of  Ellwood City that is in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania. George and Martha had nine children in 5 different locations in 21 years finally ending up in Ellwood City, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania where they lived the remainder of their lives. George passed away on the13th of November 1901 and Martha  November 2, 1910.

Charles died 11 January, 1881 in New Cumberland, Hancock County, West Virginia. Elmer was killed in September, 1913.  Unfortunately,  my notes are silent as to where and how he was killed.

Eakin School, my early years

I entered first grade at Eakin School in September, 1932. We lived about a mile from the school and, except for the first day when Mother took me in the car, I walked. That first year I walked with Bob and Marion Buckley, neighbors who lived about a quarter of a mile from us on the way to school. Bob was two years older than I was and Marion, four years older.


Eakin School was a one room, red brick building that housed all eight grades and had been around since before the Civil War. It had actually been used as a recruiting barracks during the Civil War. In the late 1800's my Grandfather and his brothers and sisters had gone to school there. Grandfather's brothers, Smith (Richard) and Clyde, taught there as young men. The red building bricks for the school were quarried and made on site. The building was approximately 12' x 40'x 60' inside dimensions. It had a fairly steep roof with two gable ends. There was only one door in the building and it was located in the front. Outside, there were four or five steps up to the door. There were four large  rectangular windows with multiple panes on each side.


Inside, the room was divided roughly in thirds down its long dimension with, I believe, nine rows of seats except the back-center half was open to the entry door. In front of the door as you entered was a large, round, pot-bellied stove about mid-way in the room that sat on a piece of metal which protected the oily-floor timbers from the heat of the stove. Almost the the entire front wall on the inside, from about three feet above the floor to a height of seven feet, was a large black piece of slate that functioned as a blackboard. The teacher's desk was centered in the front of the room, just in front of the blackboard. Along one side wall near the entry door were three rows of wooden pegs, one above the other, used for hanging hats and coats when school was in session. The other wall had shelves and was used as a library. There might have been forty or fifty feet of shelf space for books.


Outside, in front of the school, was a large graveled area about ten feet wider than the building on both sides and maybe fifty feet deep. Near the far end of this graveled area was the school water supply, a drilled well capped by a long-handled pump standing about four feet high. To drink from this well one had to either have a personal cup somewhere, or as most all of us did, someone pumped while you cupped your hands below the spout to form a cup and drank. A few fussy girls would wash their hands before drinking. The rest of us thought they were showing off and "uppity."


Along the right hand side of the building when facing the school, and about two thirds of the way back, were two large, slanting cellar doors covering the passage way to the area under the school floor. These opened to several steps that led down into a dank, dark, dugout-space beneath the school floor where coal for the stove was stored for use during winter.


Behind the school, and about twenty feet away from the building, were the outhouses–two-holers- one for Boys, one for Girls. Each outhouse had a shielding, wooden wall in front and side of its entry door and a low, sloped, hinged, wooden cover extending out from the back from which the waste material could be removed. As you might imagine, these could become quite aromatic in the early fall and late spring. We boys used to get large, flat rocks, sneak up behind the girls outhouse, quietly lift the covering door and hurl the rocks into the “maggoty” mess hoping to splash some poor unsuspecting girl seated inside.


One time, unknown to us, the school teacher, a woman, was using the facility when some of us older boys did our thing and the flat rocks did their thing. We gloatingly waited for the customary screams, which had always happened with every  gal we had caught. Surprisingly, silence.  No one in there? Hmmmm. In about a minute, and to our total surprise and chagrin, one angry lady teacher came boiling out of the outhouse.  As you might guess, no one would talk, so eight or nine of us were punished severely for that little caper.


On the north side of the school where the school’s long dimension was east-west and the entry door was on the west side, there was a grassy, upward sloping area with about ten very large old oak trees that provided wonderful shade under which to eat our lunches and for horsing around. Mudlick Hollow Road was about one hundred feet from the south side of the school and parallel with it. Going east from the school the road ran flat for just a short distance and then turned down as it wound its way down into “Mudlick” hollow. The road went from the school, where it intersected Sebring Road, all the way to Vanport, a distance of about five miles. During the winter when the snows were deep, this became a prime sled-riding slope. It was so long down to where it first leveled off that we could usually only make one or two runs during our lunch break.


Behind the school was a very large field that was farmed by the Hogue family who were my relatives.  The Hogues living there when my syblings and I attended school were descendants of Grandfather’s Aunt Rachel (Holt) and Uncle John Hogue. Corn was frequently the crop of choice and after it was harvested and the slalks cut there remained about a six or seven inch "stob" sticking above the ground. These became flying missiles during recess and lunch times.  Believe it  or not, no eye was put out during my six years attendance there and "stob" slinging every fall.   Don't tell me there wasn't a guardian angel watching over us kids.

The school year in those rural schools was from the day after Labor Day until April 15th the following year, reflecting the fact that the community was still in the transitional stage between being a rural farming community where all available manpower was needed to help with spring planting to more modern times when machinery replaced manpower. Change was in the air everywhere, but in those little one-room schools, time seemed to stand still.    World War ll changed all of that almost overnight.