Williams Family Photos
Grandfather was a wool specialist; his father had been a sheep farmer, and his apprenticeship had given him a knowledge of wool from the weaver's viewpoint. To his mind coarse wools and coarse fabrics were anathema. He raised exclusively the Merino breed, and I recall wondering at what he saw in little tufts of wool that he would frequently take from a fleece, smooth it and study it, and often fasten it into a book where he had a great number of other samples, all labeled and dated. His flock ordinarily ran around 700, but at times touched 1000.
He was considered among the most prosperous farmers of the county, although his intake would seem exceedingly small to the modern farmer. That was before the days of checking accounts, the banks doing substantially a savings bank business. Grandmother has often told me that his wool clip used to bring him always as much as $l,000, and often more; that $500 he brought home to live on for the year, and the balance went into the bank.
My memory of him is of a silent old man, who would sit for hours at a time in his rocking chair in the corner, in a sort of stupor, not noticing or paying the slightest attention to anything, but when it came time to feed the sheep, a chore that he never relinquished, he was on the job a as regular as a clock. No record-breaking cow ever was milked more punctually than were Grandfather's sheep cared for. Before my recollection he had suffered a stroke which destroyed his memory for all subsequent happenings, but for all that went before his memory was remark- ably good. He was an especial friend of mine, and loved to tell me stories of his youth, while I, child fashion, preferred to hear the stories I was most familiar with. He would tell me a long anecdote, and after a brief interval, perhaps the same day, tell it over again. He never smoked, but he chewed. After each meal he went to the cellar way and cut a tiny piece from a plug, which went into his mouth and there remained until he retired or went to another meal; he never spat.
Grandfather was probably about 5'9" in height, of a very florid complexion and with sandy hair, although as I recall it was snow white. He was a strict teetotaler---as was every one of my ancestors so far as I am aware---but his red face made him lots of trouble, all the old soaks took him for a lodge member. His schooling had been limited to the three R's, but he was refined in his manner and tastes. He conformed to the Methodist church, contributing liberally to its support, although he was not a member, always alleging as a reason that he was not good enough.
Grandmother Eliza was tall and slender with jet-black hair and eyes. Although she as 16 years his junior, she wore the bifurcated garment of authority. She was a splendid housekeeper, exceedingly frugal, a bit of a vixen, and would lend local color to many a novel. She had bitter antipathies mixt in with religious scruples. Card playing, novel reading, theater going, dancing, and Sabbath breaking were the pivotal points of her creed. The faces on a pack of cards were all pictures of devils to whom the player had staked and lost his soul. If ever she found a deck its destruction was terrible. Her fingers never touched a card, but she would gather them up in the tongs and drop them into the fire with such a scathing castigation that it would take the hide right off the evildoer. Her parlor was a ritualistic room, it must never be entered save for weddings, funerals, pastoral calls, and other comparable events. The shutters must always be closed; the carpet must not be rocked upon. Yet let no man say that the room did us no good. It ministered to family standing and family pride, and, judged by the standards of the time and locality, it was some room. Yet think not that Grandmother lacked her amiable side. She had a sense of humor, she was the best playmate I had, and a dear, good woman in many ways.
The great tragedy of the family had been the burning of the 'old house'. I am not sure whether Grandmother had lived in the log house that preceded it or not; perhaps not, but rather more probably she did for a brief time, while the frame house was building. The frame house had been a story and a half, with the rear part a little less than a half, making a storage attic. The house was of the old colonial style, with fanlights, recessed porch on the side, and small stoop on the front, a rather large and even pretentious place for its day. But the irreparable loss was in the contents. It had so happened that both Grandfather and Grandmother had been appreciative of old things, in a day when they were seldom esteemed. Consequently relics had drifted in from both sides, and the house was literally filled with them. Many and many a time has Grandma Eliza, and Grandma Polly (897-5) told me of the glories of that old home; It had grandfather clocks, quaint old cupboards, four-posters, and furniture that I can not now describe, for it made less impression upon me than the swords, cocked hats, gold laced coats, tight breeches, silver shoe and knee buckles, ruffled shirts, flint locked guns and pistols; a walking stick about five feet tall and with a big silver handles; a watch about as big around as a small saucer, and with a domed crystal making it enormously thick; odd snuff boxes, andirons, candle sticks, blue and white china, warming pans, looms, spinning wheels, and a perfect wealth of pewter, along with some silver and women's wear, although all I can remember of it was poked bonnets---for I must rely upon a small boy's recollection. Mother too has often told me about dressing up in the toggery of the past, as one of the rare joys of her girlhood.
The insurance policy had run out, and Grandfather had gone to town to renew it. He had given the order to the agent than had gone out to do his shopping, promising to return later for the policy. Before he got around to it, a messenger brought word that his house was burning. Before he could get home it was all over. Very little was saved. An old bureau which Harry (l--2-d) has, and a drop leaf, cherry stand which I have was about all the furniture worth noting. In the kitchen stood an old pine chest near the door, which was gotten out. It happened to be a chest made by Grandma Polly's father (897--6) of just such a length as to fit across the box of the wagons in which his family emigrated to Andover, O. Each of them had a similar chest for personal belongings, and this was the one which Grandma Polly sat during that memorable trip. In it happened to be an old blue sugar bowl, the deepest of deep bright blue, in the shape of an acorn. The glass was exceedingly thin, and the coven extended deep, too deep for practical purposes into the bowl. It also contained a thin, pressed and highly ornamented, flip glass, in plain white, clear, glass. Those two relics of the old house were greatly coveted by me as a boy, but when brother Ed became old enough to entertain similar ambitions we were told that we must one of us take the one, the other the other. It matters little which; the sugar bowl was by far the handsomer but the flip glass, telling of an age before the adoption of individual drinking glasses, and explaining the communion cup of the church service, appealed to me. I took the flip glass, and it still remains the most treasured heirloom in the family. Ed's sugar bowl perished in his fire at Cassadaga, all except the cover. The chest went West with Father and mother when they went to California; it remained there, and it and the cover of the sugar bowl perished in the fire that wiped out all the movables of Ed and Duff in the early part of 1923.
INCREASE SMITH was born at Middlefield, Hampshire Co. Mass. 2 Feb. 1801; died 10 July, 1875, at his farm home near Meadville, Crawford Co. Pa. where he settled in the home that he had built just before his marriage.
That there were but three children in the family is worth remarking, and at the same time of noting that this was long before birth-control had been thought of. The children who died were stricken by some of the then uncontrollable children’s diseases; one at least by diphtheria.
Grandpa Increase was apprenticed as a boy to David Mack, a broadcloth weaver, at Chester, Hampshire Co. Mass. It was the same old-fashioned sort of apprenticeship that we have before run into; probably entered into at about the age of 14, after the completion of his schooling. When one could “read, write, and cipher” they had the essentials; their further education depended upon the use they made of them. Such was the almost universal parental philosophy of the period, and I often wonder if it is not the more sound and practical philosophy for the great majority of people. He was taken to live in Mr. Mack’s family in that now scarce understandable relationship somewhere midway between son and slave, servant, as it was called, and employee as it eventually graduated into. The life of the apprentice was hard and it was servile, yet it involved no social disparagement.
Grandfather became an expert weaver, and his knowledge and judgment of wool was high. His working hours were twelve daily, with no time out for meals. Furthermore, his father collected the $1 of weekly wage, rarely allowing him a dime for pocket money. It was a hard life, but it bred no resentment; it was the way folks did at that time, and it turned the youth of the period into good men.
My recollection of Grandpa Increase is of the period after his apoplectic stroke; a silent old man, wearing a hat indoors, and sitting always in his Boston rocker in a dark chimney corner, never reading, never talking; sitting in a sort of stupor as though in a doze, as he probably was. Grandpa chewed tobacco, but in a manner I have observed in nobody else. His plug was kept on a shelf over the cellar stairs, for a big navy plug lasted him exactly six months, and he always kept an extra one ahead to ‘mellow’. After each meal he cut off a piece about the size of a pea, and tucked it between the teeth and cheek where it remained until it was time to eat or to retire. He did no spitting, no chewing.
Very especially was he my good friend. His stroke had destroyed his memory for after-happenings but left it unimpaired as to previous events. I used to get him to read to me the various Christmas books that Santa brought me. I especially remember Robinson Cruso in words of one syllable. I had to mark the place where he left off or I never would have gotten the last of it, for otherwise he would begin always at the first; he didn’t remember from one time to another that he had previously read to me. That same infirmity contributed to my enjoyment. Child-like I preferred stories I had heard before. Mother often told how I got his stories by heart, and would correct him if he left out a word. One of the stories concerned his first good suit of clothes, a suit of broadcloth of his own weaving, earned by working overtime, and of how proudly he wore it home, how his mother rejoiced, but his father felt cheated; whatever money a minor son earned belonged to him, be it regular time or over-time.
Probably it was along about 1825 that Grandfather and his brothers Rufus and Alpheus visited the West, going to their relatives
who had settled in the Connecticut Western Reserve, at West Andover, 0. They were scouting for land, and made their selection of a 400 acre tract on French Creek, which they purchased jointly from the Holland Land Co. then represented at Meadville by Ham Jan Huidekuper, a picturesque figure whom I well remember, Meadville’s richest men, who always wore a Dutch cap, long, tight fitting frock coat, and stock-band, and carried an enormous gold headed cane. In that earlier day I was told that he wore a queue.
I don’t know what understanding there was between the brothers, but it must have been indefinite, for the land was parceled 100 acres to Alpheus and 300 to Increase. Uncle Rufus had purchased for himself 400 acres nearer Meadville, but he would not surrender his interest in the other parcel save that he was paid a profit of $1000. That thousand dollars almost cost him the friendship of his brothers. Probably it was to meet that unexpected charge that Grandfather sold the southerly 100 acres to his brother-in-law, Newton.
Alpheus settled first, on his northerly 100 acres, and grandfather lived with him for such time as he spent on the land before he married, while he was building his house. Probably it was when he came to build a home for whom it might concern that he found, visiting Alpheus and Mary, then newly wed, she whom it did concern. I have had pointed out to me the location, down by the spring across the road, of the old ‘courting stump, where Increase and Eliza made their vows’.
I can speak feelingly of this old place, for it was my home, where I as well as my mother was born and raised. There were two or three little patches of clearing that had been done by other settlers who had not been able to make good. Aside from that it was forest and marsh. The flats were a tamarack marsh except the knoll where he built a hay barn, and from which his meadow developed as the land was cleared and ditched. Along the creek extended a big grove of lindens, or bass wood as we always called it, and another of beech, with other occasional hardwoods scattered over its whole extent. I have often heard it told how one could only traverse the flats jumping from bog to bog, and that anywhere one could thrust down a rake the full length of its handle. In my day it was all solid ground.
About the time they started to build, a canal was put through on the stony land between the flats and the arable terrace land. Arrangements for the building of the canal must have been made before the Smith brother’s purchase; at least it was made before the division between them of the land, for we had no bridge. We had to use Alpheus’ bridge, a matter of a detour of about 400 feet. Toward the southerly side of our farm the canal was built on the hillside, and beneath it was a bed of sand. The towpath had been constructed wide at that point, for it was recognized as a danger spot. I was probably about 8 or 9 when there came a heavy rain and the towpath went out, flooding our flats and covering a strip of land with sand and gravel. The out rushing water excavated the canal bed to a dept of perhaps ten feet for a distance of two to three hundred feet in each direction from the break.
Incidentally it brought to me one of the biggest moments of my life: I found the ground all covered with FISH! Not with dead fish, mind you, but live ones. I had arrived at the psychological----perhaps I should say biological----moment. My reaction was normal for my years. I went home in triumph with all the fish I could hang upon or drag behind me. Then I went immediately to bed, my clothes went into the tub my fish onto the manure pile, and an irate mother made lasting impressions upon my tender anatomy with the hairbrush. The fish were suckers---and so was I. That old ‘break’ became, however, the delight of my life. Many a feast of fish and frog’s legs have Bert (513-5bb) and I cooked there. Incidentally it provided us with unlimited sport in snake killing. I was orthodox in that day, and I can remember thinking that in me were the scriptures fulfilled. See Gen. III, 15. There had been rattlers in that country, but not in my day. My snake slaughtering was done in ignorance. Mostly they were water snakes, but I didn’t spare the innocent garters.
In grandfather’s time there was no value in timber; lumber was worth no more than the cost of hauling the logs, the mill charge for sawing, and hauling home the lumber. Practically nothing was made into lumber but the finest of white pine and white oak. Even my father has told men that he never expected to live to see the day when lumber would be worth more. The first fencing done on our farm was with rails made of white pine, black walnut, and cherry, from logs so big and clear that their like is nowhere now obtainable. Worse still, the major part of the logs cut were rolled into piles, covered with brush and, when dry, burned.
Oxen as draft animals had yielded to horses before my time, that is to say, upon our farm. Occasionally a team of oxen would go by, about as strange a sight then as a team of horses now. But Grandfather had used them in the start. He had grown up in a sheep country; he knew sheep very thoroughly, and sheep were his main dependence. His flock or purebred merinos----the breed whose males have the enormous horns----ranged from 700 to 1000. Wool was in good demand throughout his time at prices which made his annual clip worth $1600 to $2500. Father succeeded when the West was being opened up, when all west of the Mississippi was a range country, and wool fell to such prices that we no longer could keep more than a small flock. I assure you that the change to general farming was reluctantly made.
Of our 205 acres probably 125 was in meadow and crops, all of it rotatable. To handled it required a lot of help. In Grandpa’s time summer help was abundant at a dollar a day and 'found'. That was high wages and procured the best men. In Father’s day it was with extreme difficulty that men could be had at all, even for double that price, which was considerably more than they were able to earn in the city. But there was a lure in the city that stripped the country of its hired men. Father countered by the use of farm machinery to such extent as he was able. In my day he went into cattle more extensively than sheep. We used to turn out lots of fine heavy beef. We milked as many cows as we were able, and took our milk to the cheese factory. Then Father started a milk route in the city. That was the day when milk was delivered from cans; drive up in front of the door, ring a bell, and out comes housewife with pitcher and milk ticket.
Mother was educated at the district school, some two miles away, the same location but a different house from that in which I made my own educational debut. I have often heard her tell of riding old Barney to school in bad weather. Barney was a much beloved horse with ideas of his own, a well gaited riding horse, but once in a while he would go no further than Lindley’s. There he would either turn in or turn around, but farther he would not go for her. Then she either had to leave him at Lindley’s and pick him upon her return, or tie the rein over the saddle horn and send him home alone. When she had completed that, she was sent to the Meadville Academy where she graduated, and then to the Grandville, Ohio, Female Seminary. Exceedingly few girls of her day got as much schooling as that. However, her career at Grandville was cut short by a great tragedy-
Our house burned with no insurance. The insurance business was not then systematized as it is now; the agent did not renew expiring policies except upon order. Our house had been insured, and Grandpa had remembered its expiration but not until the very day. Next day he went to the city to have it renewed. He gave the order but didn’t wait to get the policy. It was to be ready for him next time he came in. On the way home he learned that his house was ashes. Grandmother took it very hard. They had saved almost nothing. I have, myself, shed many a tear over that fire; it burned a wealth of heirlooms such as few houses ever contained, a regular family museum. I have sat by the hour listening to the stories told by my grandmother of the things that were consumed in that fire. She and Grandpa both doted on old things, which were by no means popular, and therefore the heritage of the two Smiths, Carpenters, and Woods had gravitated to them. There were old guns, swords, and pistols; old cocked hats with the cockades they used to wear in lieu of uniforms, and uniforms coats, red, that used to be worn under the British flag.
I can see now by Grandmother, from whom I inherited my musical disabilities; she never could mention the cockade without singing to me-
Both actually and traditionally that family museum covered the revolutionary period and long before. There was a big chest full of old clothing, short, tight breeches with silver buck1es wonderfully bright colored long tailed coats with big silver buttons; old silks and laces that had come from away back; queer old bonnets, parasols, and, what always seemed to me to be best of all, a long silver---or was it gold---headed cane, one that was so long it had to be grasped in the middle. Of course there was a wealth of old brass and pewter, some, but not much, silver plate, and a big lot of old blue-and-white china. No oil portraits, but a lot of silhouettes---how they would fit into this book!
Grandfather was a blonde, hair inclined toward the sandy but not red---I am repeating tradition now, for the hair I knew was white as snow, with a bit of curl in it. He was of a very florid complexion, so much so that he was often taken for a drinking man although he had been a strict teetotaler all his life. He was probably a little over 5’9”, and would weigh perhaps 180. He was somewhat stiffened with rheumatism---at least that is what we used to call it---although he never suffered from it. He had been of robust health all his life save that in his old age, before his stroke, he would sometimes drop as though hit by a club, leap to his feet again and go on with his work as though nothing had happened. Father told me that they never had spoken to him about it because he seemed to be totally unaware, and they feared to worry him. It didn’t happen many times, and I never heard of it until Mother became afflicted with senile epilepsy. Whether his trouble was of the same order the doctors could not advise. In disposition Grandpa was patient, kind, never frustrated, never really angry at anybody.
Grandmother was a trifle the taller of the two, very slender, and had coal black hair---well, almost coal black, although the ends of it were slightly russet. It retained its color, with only a sprinkling of white except at the temples, until the very end. Grandmother was as up-and-down in disposition as in stature, and was capable of losing her temper and letting her tongue run wild, but happily it was at long intervals. She was something of a tyrant, and, as you may readily imagine, the ruler of the household. With immunity nobody ever offended her; I couldn’t. Never in her life did she scold me or get out of patience with me. No matter what I did, she was always on my side.
Mother inherited the farm without debt of any sort. Grandmother had $2000 in U.S. bonds, and I well remember how she used to watch the market to see how much interest she was going to get. They were payable in gold, and our greenback currency was at a discount; therefore when greenbacks were down she got more of them. I well remember what was probably my first lesson in finance. Grandma had been railing because greenbacks had been pegged at par; she didn’t know what the country was coming to. Father called me out to the woodshed and explained the matter. He didn’t undertake to explain things very often, but when he did he made things clear. Grandma’s frugality would lend local color to many a novel. It would be heartless for me to relate little incidents---incidents which were little because her rule was so absolute it never was transgressed---which might make of her memory a characterture. About the only clashes that ever occurred was when, about once a month in winter, father and mother would go to a neighborhood party. Grandma would be as interested as they in entertaining at our house, but for Mother and Father to drive out and be gone until midnight---well, it was just too bad.
Grandpa never joined the church; grandma was a member, grandpa attended, contributed, and in every way functioned like a member, but he held to that earlier reverence which esteemed membership a level too high for his attainment. That was the very last of the old days when men expected a visible sign from their God showering them with approbation. For more than two Centuries they had worshiped a personal deity whose beneficence only man’s own failings could defeat. During all that period their cry had been "What willest Thou ?". It was inevitable that eventually their austerity should be ritualized, that certain peccadilloes should absorb their attention to the neglect of principles of human kindness, compassion, and love. Of course that meant shift of emphasis upon Sabbath keeping, a severe abstinence from all forms of secular amusement, even to the reading of novels. How highly impregnated I was with that idea you may judge by the fact that when Mother told me to bring to her the little book, Jack the Giant Killer, that Grandma Williams had sent me for Christmas, I told her I had cut it up, that it was only a pack of lies that no child should hear. I remember the incident as though it were yesterday, probably for the unspoken words I read in her expression. I have no recollection of where I got the idea, but I know without recollection. Of all the infamies to which men could descend, the lowest was to play cards. Often has Grandma told me of gathering up packs of cards, left around by her brother Newton and the hired men, carrying them in the tongs---she wouldn’t touch them with her fingers, and dropping them into the stove.
But Grandma liberalized in her old age until she would sit in the same room and placidly knit while the rest of us played cards. Think she followed my lead a bit. Mother had never dared. Those things sound extreme nowadays, but there was a sweetness and cleanliness about ones activities then that is lacking now. Judge of my home when I tell you that not until I went to school at the age of nine had I ever heard an oath, and when I did and went home and asked Mother to explain it, I balled up and couldn’t repeat what it was that I had heard.