Stories of Remembered Chenoweths
as told by grandchildren
![[COAT-OF-ARMS]](chenwett.gif)
This page is dedicated to adding stories of people in the family in an effort to put some flesh on the "bones" of genealogy facts. Hopefully the page will be popular and supported by stories of cousins about their grandparents. Grandparents often create the curiousity that leads people into genealogy research. often, sadly, after a grandparent has died, the interest sparks in who they were and the memory of stories told spur grandchildren into tracing their family. For my own part, my father's mother, was a Laprath, a name I got curious about in 1995, starting my quest into genealogy. I enjoyed the process so thorioughly I turned my attention to my mother's parents, the "Chenoweths". If you have one to add please Email it to me. I will add the family Genealogy at the end
ADA BELLE8 CHENOWETH (MARSHALL7, JOHN KITTLE6, WILLIAM PUGH5, JOHN4, WILLIAM3, JOHN2, JOHN1) was born March 07, 1874 in Randolph Co., WV, and died October 29, 1962 in McQuain Road, Elkins, Randolph Co., WV. She married CYRUS MCQUAIN February 14, 1894 in Randolph Co., WV, son of JOSHUA MCQUAIN and MARY LEARY. He was born September 07, 1868 in Chenoweth Creek, Elkins, Randolph Co., WV, and died November 10, 1937 in McQuain Road, Elkins, Randolph Co., WV.
Children of ADA CHENOWETH and CYRUS MCQUAIN are:
by Angeline Chenoweth 'Ann' Young [March 2004]
Daniel McLean Chenoweth was born in Barbour County, West Virginia in 1858 and was the third child of Isaac Newton Chenoweth and Sarah Ann McLean Chenoweth. Daniel was 20 years old when he married a 21 year old Italian girl named Joanna Donegia. Joanna was born May 1857 also in Barbour County. After their marriage they lived with her parents for a time before they acquired enough to move to their own place. Seven of their children were born in West Virginia.
Sometime in the late 1880's Daniel left West Virginia to participate in the Oklahoma land rush. He made the journey in a buggy pulled by a team of white horses. He was unsuccessful in the land rush because of "sooners". Sooners were people who illegally laid claim to the land before the rush started. Daniel then traveled to Springfield, Colorado where he met the village blacksmith, James Bickford. James was the father of Minnie, who later became Daniel's daughter-in-law. Daniel inquired about land available for homesteaders and James told him about one of his neighbors who was giving up his claim located 9 miles north and 1 mile west of Springfield. It was a prime parcel of land with a well and a small dugout, but no house. Daniel became interested and filed on it as a homesteader.
With only a dugout for living quarters, there was no place for his entire family to live. With this in mind, Daniel returned to West Virginia for his three oldest children, the livestock and farm machinery. He was planning for the rest of the family to join them after a house was built. While he was in West Virginia, he and his brother purchased a mattress for their mother hoping to make things better for her. However, she thought the mattress was too hard, so she continued to sleep on the floor.
Daniel and his 3 children returned to Colorado traveling by railroad box car to Lamar, Colorado. After arriving in Lamar, they traveled by wagon to the homestead. They lived in the dugout while building a two room house. About a year later Daniel's wife and the 3 younger children joined them traveling to Colorado by train.
Daniel and his family dug a fairly large pond, stocking it with cat fish and planting fruit trees around it. They continued to improve the homestead for about 2 years when the droughts and no crops forced them to leave.
Daniel, his brother John and their families moved to Douglas County in eastern Kansas and lived close to a river. During their 2 year stay in Kansas, Ethel was born to Daniel & Joanna. When the drought conditions improved, they moved back to the homestead in Colorado where 2 more children were born.
Daniel obtained a water right to build a dam making him eligible to file on more government land in addition to the original homestead. This additional land was called a "Desert Claim" and it was to be irrigated. Daniel, his sons and a neighbor, Fred Chatham built a dam and a ditch going down to their land for irrigation. The dam was called "The Chenoweth Dam and was located about 4 or 5 miles west of Daniel's homestead on Horse Creek. The dam formed a nice sized lake of water, but they never irrigated from it. The dam washed out sometime in the 1930's.
When the children became old enough, they each filed on government land as a homestead. These homesteads were all near each other, and most of them are still in the families.
In June 1906, Daniel's wife, Joanna, died at the age of 49 years old, then in the early 1920's, Daniel married a widow, Amanda Campbell. Most of his children were very upset over this marriage because they thought he treated Amanda better than he did their mother.
After the marriage, Daniel and Amanda both sold their claims and moved to Pomona, California. During the depression, Daniel had to redeem his homestead and some of the other land. After leaving California they moved to Hardesty, Oklahoma and lived on Amanda and her first husband's homestead. They were married 15 years until her death, and then Daniel moved back to Colorado. He would live with one of his children for a short time, then move on to another one so as not make a hardship on any one. He was living with his son, Truman, who lived South of Lamar, Colorado when he died in 1951 at the age of 93.
DANIEL MCLEAN7 CHENOWETH (ISAAC NEWTON6, WILLIAM PUGH5, JOHN4, WILLIAM3, JOHN2, JOHN1) was born August 12, 1858 in Barbour Co., VA (Now WV), and died May 21, 1951 in Lamar, Prowers Co., CO. He married (1) JOANNA L. DONEGIA January 09, 1878 in Barbour Co., WV, daughter of FRANCESCO DIONIGI and REBECCA COBERLY. She was born May 27, 1857 in Barbour Co., VA (Now WV), and died June 15, 1906 in Springfield, Baca Co., CO. He married (2) AMANDA CAMPBELL Aft. 1920. She was born Abt. 1852.
Children of DANIEL CHENOWETH and JOANNA DONEGIA are:
co-authored by Jon Egge and Harry Holt Chenoweth [March 2004]
In the late twenties, H. E. Chenoweth lived at 8246 Ashworth Avenue, six or seven blocks north of Green Lake in Seattle. He was retired from the lumber business, having worked as a tallyman in various lumber mills in the Northwest and then as a shipping clerk in a lumber yard in Seattle. He lost part of a finger when making molasses on a farm in Missouri. He had a shock of snow-white hair and chewed plug tobacco which he would spit into a nearby coffee tin kept by his chair for that purpose. He would always have a card table set before him where a solitaire game was always in progress. On summer days he would listen to Leo Lassen announce the current Seattle Rainier's baseball game. With the advent of TV, he would watch games, but he would always turn the volume off and list to the game as announced on the radio.
The Chenoweth home on Ashworth was a one story, 3 bedroom, white stucco house with a basement that was filled with an enormous sawdust furnace, piles of sawdust, shelves of preserves, crocks of sauerkraut, canned vegetables, and a workbench. The house was on a double lot, so the yard was large for the city. In front was a large weeping willow tree, where small family dinners of fried chicken were some times held. To the side were rows of flowerbeds. Behind was a chicken coop (the source for the dinners and breakfast eggs), a large vegetable garden with pea and raspberry patches, childhood delights. Between the coop and the raspberry patch, back along the ally was a garage, filled with little room for anything else than a deep blue '49 Ford.
Harry's wife was Minnie Jane Holt. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on June 16, 1963. He had married her in Seattle at the YMCA and they took their honeymoon on a boat trip down the sound to Tacoma. Harry had come out from Missouri in his late twenties, working his way across the country by working on a cattle ranch near Flagstaff, Arizona, then picking potatoes near Greeley, Colorado. Before leaving Missouri, Harry attended a small Business College for one year, then opened a café, probably in Rocky Comfort, Missouri since that is where he met Minnie. He was the manager, cook, waiter, and dishwasher.
After arriving at the lumber mill in Barnston, Washington, and getting established, he sent back home for Minnie, who took the train to marry in Seattle. A year later they were in the small town of Hobart where both their children would be born. Harry suffered from asthma and a change in climate seemed to give him some temporary relief so he relocated many times. Later they moved to Spirit Lake, Idaho, and then went to Hailey, Idaho, where they lived for some months with Minnie's sister Thet Buttram. Harry worked as a farm hand on his brother in law's large ranch and then he moved to Alpine, Washington, where he was again a tallyman at a lumber mill. In the late 20s, they came back to the city and bought their home on Ashworth. Harry worked at the Balcom Canal Lumber Mill and then for the Farrell Lumber Company located at Seventh and Westlake in downtown Seattle.
Besides baseball and solitaire, Grandpa would cook peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. He also would pop corn in a blackened kettle popper that had a knobbed stirring rod. The corn would be from garden that he had preserved. Every morning he would gather eggs and together with other garden bounty, pack them into his car and deliver them to one of the many little grocery stores that dotted the area. This would include berries, peas, vegetables, dried garlic and onions that grew in the garden.
All this was a child's paradise, picking peas and raspberries, gathering eggs from the warm nests, playing and rolling in the sawdust or watching Harry cut off a chicken's head and pluck it for the dinner that afternoon. Sometimes he would hatch baby chicks in an incubator in the basement and at other times he would buy day old chicks and raise them in the basement until they could safely be added to the regular flock. Minnie was always sewing on a quilt and we would cut out squares from various cotton patterns. There were stacks of old National Geographic Magazines and there was the reddish book by Cora Hiatt on the Chenoweth family, talking of lost treasures and the Baltimores.
HENRY EDWARD 'HARRY'4 CHENOWETH (ALBERT WHITE3, HENRY S.2, JAMES1) was born September 26, 1883 in Pineville, McDonald Co., MO, and died August 18, 1966 in Seattle, King Co., WA. He married MINNIE JANE HOLT June 16, 1913 in Seattle, King Co., WA, daughter of NAPOLEAN HOLT and SARAH WHITE. She was born June 30, 1889 in Bolivar, Polk Co., MO, and died March 04, 1984 in Seattle, King Co., WA. [Harris: page 184 & Hiatt: page 67]
Children of HENRY CHENOWETH and MINNIE HOLT are:
by James William Chenoweth [June 2005]
Thomas Lewis and Hannah Keenan Chenoweth were my great great grandparents. When Hannah was nine years old, her parents came to Bonham, Texas, which at that time was the end of the road. They came on to Dallas County with surveyors, who actually blazed the trail. They were the first settlers in Dallas County, and later were adjacent neighbors to John Neely Bryant, reputed to be the founder of the city of Dallas. They settled in Dallas County in 1842. Don't forget that there were Indian raids where they lived for the next 35 years. Hannah's father would take the men back to Bonham for a yearly supply of provisions by ox-drawn wagon. The round trip would take six weeks. Prior to leaving, they would bury all the valuables plus some food so Indians would not get them should they raid while the men were gone. Sounds as if the women and children were left to fend for themselves.
Thomas Lewis Chenoweth married Hannah Keenan on November 7, 1847 in Dallas County. This is the earliest record of a Chenoweth being in these parts. It stands to reason that he must have been around here for at least a short time prior that. They lived on the Elm fork of the Trinity River near what is now Farmer's Branch. That was a favorable spot for crossing the Trinity river by westward bound pioneers. It was known as Keenan's Crossing, because it was where the Keenan family had settled. My dad took me to see the original cabin when I was about ten years old. I saw what was left of it. A barn had been built using the log cabin as one corner of the barn. I could not take you back there, but I am sure it is near Sandy Lake Road, West of Interstate 30, and very near the river. I believe there is still a spot that can be located on the river still known as Keenan's Crossing.
Thomas Lewis had two brothers, and they both came to this vicinity early on. Thomas L. obviously came some time shortly before 1847, because he married Hannah Keenan in Dallas in that year. James ,who was Thomas's older brother, married Matilda Moss in Missouri, but they obviously came to North Texas by 1849, because they had a child here in that year. Thomas's younger brother, Joseph certainly was here somewhat prior to 1866, in that he married Rebecca Ann Crawford in Denton County, Texas in that year. From everything I have been able to piece together, It appears that Thomas and Hannah settled at Keenan's Crossing on the Elm Fork of the Trinity River near present Farmer's Branch. James and Matilda must have settled near Aurora, a small town near Rhome, Wise County, Texas. It could be that Thomas L. and Hannah may have moved out there at a later date to be near James and Matilda, because quite a few relatives are buried there including Thomas L. and my grandfather James William, and others. Aurora apparently was where considerable of the family congregated. The third and youngest brother, (5)Joseph and his wife Rebecca settled along White Rock Creek somewhere near the present White Rock Lake. They had seventeen children. My mother gave me information about some of their children. One was named Ben. I have a section on him later in this book.
Thomas Lewis and Hannah had seven children. The second child was James William (Will), who was my grandfather. Will met Lillie Long, and married her on February 22, 1884, and lived near Aurora, Wise County, Texas. Some time later, they move to Dallas, and lived on South Patton Street. Will was a salesman for the John Deer Plough Co. Will died at an early age, and left Lillie with four young children to raise. Lillie turned her house into a boarding house in order to support her family. All four kids had many chores of cooking, cleaning, washing, sewing, etc. At an early age, my dad J.W., got a Dallas Morning News Route. He threw his route using a horse and cart. His route was in Oak Cliff, but he had to go across the viaduct to downtown Dallas to first pick up his papers, then go back to Oak Cliff to throw his route.
Lillie's mother, Katherine Beauchamp Long lived with them. The Longs moved to Texas from Kentucky when Lillie was a young girl. My grandmother Lillie told me that she was quite young when they lived in Kentucky, but she could clearly remember the flashes and flare on the horizon, and the rumble and roar of cannon fire of a nearby Civil War battle. I assume that Will must have met Lillie in Aurora, since they married and lived there after they first married, but I have no evidence of that.
Charles C.(Uncle Charley) was Dad's uncle who owned and ran an automobile agency in Abilene. Hannah Keenan was Uncle Charley's mother. He would come to Dallas, I guess on business, but would stay with us. He would never stay more than a day or two. He always insisted on sleeping outdoors, so we would set up an army cot in the driveway where he could enjoy a nice breeze from the south. I feel sure that my dad got most of the past history of the Chenoweths and the Keenans from Uncle Charley. Incidentally, Hanna Keenan was buried in Taylor County, Texas. Abilene is the major city in Taylor County, so I assume that Hanna, in her later years, went to live with her son Charley, died and was buried out there.
THOMAS LEWIS5 CHENOWETH (BENJAMIN FRANKLIN4, THOMAS3, THOMAS2, JOHN1) was born July 05, 1821 in Franklin Co., OH, and died May 19, 1900 in Wise Co., TX. He married HANNAH KEENAN November 07, 1847 in Dallas Co., TX, daughter of THOMAS KEENAN. She was born April 12, 1833 in Ohio, and died February 15, 1924 in Taylor Co., TX.
Children of THOMAS CHENOWETH and HANNAH KEENAN are:
by Kristi Lynn Tumblison [June 2005]
Christine Clarabelle was a very loving mother and grandmother. She worked in the home raising her three children and alongside Grandpa at their bakery in Muncie, Indiana. After Grandpa sold the bakery she worked in some sort of a nursing function at a Ball Memorial Hospital clinic. My grandparents retired to Bradenton, Florida where they enjoyed fresh orange juice every morning, exploring the neighboring cities, and visits to baseball parks. Grandma was diagnosed with senility several years prior to her death and we're certain that she did not recognize her own children past 2001. Sounds like senility was inherited from her own mother, Viola.
I remember most: Grandma's laugh, the perfume scent in her bedroom, her dark brown eyes that I and my son Bradley inherited, her soft, fair skin, her charm bracelet and her wonderful warm chocolate pudding cake!
Grandma Cruea passed away while in residence at a nursing home in Greenfield, Indiana. My Uncle Bob and Aunt Liz visited, loved and cared for her daily. In later years, Grandma and Aunt Liz referred to each other as a "dear friend".
CHRISTINE CLARABELLE9 CHENOWETH (ROY MCKINLEY8, ELMER EDMUND7, CHARLES WESLEY6, WILLIAM THOMAS5, WILLIAM4, ARTHUR3, ARTHUR2, JOHN1) was born March 07, 1919 in New Madison, Darke Co., OH, and died February 01, 2004 in Greenfield, Hancock Co., IN. She married HASSEL WAYNE CRUEA. He was born July 28, 1917 in Hartford City, Blackford Co., IN, and died May 20, 1995 in Bradenton, Manatee Co., FL.
Children of CHRISTINE CHENOWETH and HASSEL CRUEA are::
My grandfather, Peter Alexander Reip was the third son of Adam Reip and Edith Amanda Chenoweth. He was born in Calhoun County, Virginia, August 23, 1856. He married Luverna Ellen Downey January 24, 1878. She was the daughter of Alex Downey and Sarah Jane Brannon. To this union was born six children, four sons and two daughters, namely, Francis Alexander, Maude Alma, Adam, Grover, William Howard and Emma. Most of their married life was spent on a farm which had been deeded to them by his parents. During the years between 1891 and 1893 they lived in Clay County where he had gone into the lumbering business with a couple of brother-in-laws. The brother-in-laws left him holding the bag and deeply in debt. During that time the farm in Calhoun County was deeded to his wife.
He was a Republican and a Baptist. He shared with others in need, particularily with another brother-in-law who had a large family. I was five and one half years old when he passed away so I do not remember a great deal about him except what I was told by my mohter, Emma. He liked raw turnips and I remember my older brother and I standing with him by the garden gate where he peeled turnips and shared them with us. And I remember some little tid bits of my grandparents visits with us. I remember once taking them half way home in our Willies Overland where we met up with Uncle Frank. When he was ill my mother took my younger brother and spent a week helping to take care of him. When she came home I went with my father for a weekend. We went with cousin, Harold Campbell. Then my mother went again taking my older brother during which time he passed on. He died May 15, 1929 and was buried on the farm under a big oak tree on the side of the hill where he had requested. His daughter-in-law, Victoria, was buried there first in 1922.
My mother spoke of her father as a kind, loving husband and father. He truly loved his wife and treated her like a queen. He had wanted to marry her at age 20, however she made him wait a year to be sure. Even so, Peter, given the opportunity to attend college but turned it down to marry his love.
PETER ALEXANDER7 REIP (EDITH AMANDA6 CHENOWETH, ROBERT T.5, JOHN4, WILLIAM3, JOHN2, JOHN1) was born August 23, 1856 in Calhoun Co., VA (now WV), and died May 15, 1929 in Euclid, Calhoun Co., WV. He married LUVERNA ELLEN DOWNEY January 24, 1878 in Calhoun Co., WV, daughter of ALEXANDER DOWNEY and SARAH BRANNON. She was born May 14, 1855 in Gilmer Co., VA (now WV), and died October 01, 1940 in Euclid, Calhoun Co., WV.
Children of PETER REIP and LUVERNA DOWNEY are:
by Shannon Cecile Graham [June 2005]
JAMES was born 1831 in Williamson County, Illinois to James Francis Chenoweth Jr. and Anne Dillard, also of Williamson County. He was born on a farm purchased by his great-grandfather Nicholas Chenoweth when he came to Illinois from Kentucky in 1819. The farm was originally 500 acres and my family still holds an interest in 250 acres of this farm today.
James was an expert horseman and managed the family breeding program of trotters and fine saddle horses, which they showed and raced until Jim’s death in 1916.
Jim was a story-teller par excellence and could keep his audience enthralled for hours with his exploits.
Though Jim was born in Illinois, the roots of this family went deep into Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland and the Confederacy. His grandfather, James Francis, had joined the Kentucky Militia and been killed at the Battle of New Orleans in 1814 before James’ father was born.
Jim’s father, James Francis, Jr., was a rabid southerner. When the Civil War came on, James Francis joined the Knights of the Golden Circle and began buying horses for the Confederacy and driving them south to Shawneetown, Illinois. Part of the organization of the Knights in Illinois were Jim’s neighbors. Reverend Tom Cox (one of the first circuit riding Methodist preachers from Robeson County, Tennessee) and his son-in-law, Henry Hooper, would become James Solomon’s in-laws. When the Articles of Secession were nailed to the Williamson County Courthouse door, in April 1862, with a number of signatures, the Union Army moved in.
Deputy Sheriff Ike Phillips went to arrest James Francis. When James Francis asked if he could go into the house to say goodbye to his family, Ike agreed. James F went into the house and was never seen again. Family tradition says the next morning his coat and hat were found on the banks of the Mississippi River at the Cape Girardeau crossing. What happened to him no one knows. If James Solomon’s mother knew, she never told. But she also never signed any legal documents as a widow.
James Francis and Ann had six sons but two had died several years before. William, Jim, Miles and Josiah, were forced to enlist in the Union Army. William, the only one to serve, died in Andersonville Prison. Jim would never fight against the Confederacy. He and his friend, Newt Cripps, went west and stayed until the end of the war.
Jim had been a schoolteacher in addition to running a horse farm and taking care of his mother. He was 40 years old before he married Celia Ann Cox (b. 1839). She was the daughter of Reverend Thomas Cox. They were married in January 1876. Their first child, Samuel was born in December 1876. Benjamin Franklin, Mary Jane and Sarah Ann followed quickly.
Jim loved to argue. In fact, his daughters called him and Celia the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat. One of his favorite subjects was a neighbor across the road. This was the famous agnostic Robert Ingersoll. At least once a week, Jim would find Bob in his yard and immediately a religious argument would start. When Celia thought it had gone on long enough, she would go out, take Jim by his arm and say, “Come in the house, you are never going to change that man’s mind.” Whereupon Jim would huff himself up to his full 6’ 4” and say, “But it is my God-given right to try.” Jim always bragged he was a hard-shell Baptist and a Democrat.
Of the four children, only Sarah was a Baptist and a Democrat. The three others were Methodists and Republicans. We grandchildren always laughed about who wore the pants in that family.
The first day of November 1916, at 85 years old, Jim went out to break a colt. No amount of cautioning could stop him. The colt broke his shoulder, his elbow and wrist. In a week Jim had pneumonia and no amount of care by his son, Dr. S.J. Chenoweth, could save his life. Both my mother and father loved James Solomon and my earliest memories are of his surviving a Missouri flood, almost drowning in the Platte River and his refusal of two wives when he contacted the Mormons in Utah. Through it all he was the mainstay of his siblings, devoted to his mother, a wonderful father, and Celia said, a good husband. His Chenoweth line, as far as I know, rests with the only child of his great-grandson, Robert Chenoweth of California. The rest of his descendant are all girls. Still his grand-daughters bear his genes and perhaps their sons will inherit some of Jim’s zest for life.
JAMES SOLOMON7 CHENOWETH (JAMES FRANCIS6, JAMES FRANCIS5, NICHOLAS RUXTON4, THOMAS3, JOHN2, JOHN1) was born July 1837 in Williamson Co., IL, and died November 11, 1916 in Williamson Co., IL. He married CELIA ADELINE COX January 27, 1876 in Williamson Co., IL, daughter of THOMAS COX and ELIZABETH TIPPY. She was born February 22, 1840 in Williamson Co., IL, and died December 12, 1924 in Williamson Co., IL.
Children of JAMES CHENOWETH and CELIA COX are:
by Carolyn Chenoweth Newby [Nov 2007]
You’re going to do what!
Grandparents didn’t move. They stayed in the same house you’d always known, tucked you into bed when you spent the night, and helped you put jigsaw puzzles together. Their house was a refuge when you needed a familiar place and a sympathetic ear. Besides that, farmers retired and moved into town when they got old. My grandparents were retiring from business and moving to the farm. I had always loved to take a bath at Grandma’s. The footed bath tub was big enough for both my sister, Phyllis, and me. There was hot and cold running water and Ivory soap that would float. There was a toilet that flushed, and tiny tiles covered the floor. We didn’t have that at home.
The farm was a new adventure. Although only a couple of miles from town, the power lines didn’t extend that far at the time of the move. For quite some time we had to read or do our homework by the light of a kerosene lamp. It was an exciting day when the lines were hooked up, and the lights came on. We were invited to come out and watch.
Bathing was quite different too. There was a pump and large metal sink in the kitchen. The water was heated on the kerosene stove and poured into a basin. A stand-up bath was not much fun on an Indiana winter night.
When staying overnight we slept upstairs in a big brass bed with lots of quilts and sweet-smelling pillows. The room was heated (sort of) by a stove pipe positioned through the floor and ceiling. The stove downstairs burned coal, and if it was really cold, Grandpa stayed up all night tending the fire.
Before daybreak and again in the evening Grandma and Grandpa milked the three or four cows. I learned to perform this chore sitting on a little stool with my head against the cow’s warm body. You put your thumb and index finger around the top part of a full teat, squeezed while moving your hand downward in a stripping motion, repeating until no more milk flowed. The barn cats waited expectantly.
The one chore I hated was going into the chicken house to gather eggs. When the hens decided they wanted to keep them for hatching they would peck my hands. It didn’t faze Grandma one bit. She’d put her hands right under those old biddies and let them peck away. The roosters weren’t much fun either. If they didn’t want me invading their territory they chased me all over the lot. Grandma would get even with the feisty ones. She made the best fried chicken I’ve ever tasted.
I don’t know how she managed to cook such tasty food on that old kerosene stove. She even baked in an oven that sat on top of the burners. She taught me to make sugar cream pie, something my mother never could get just right, and that made me feel smugly proud of myself. Grandpa was a good teacher too. During the summer the first crop to be harvested was the oats. A machine would cut and bundle them. Then two people would pick up six bundles and stand them on end, packing them together in a tight circle. Two more bundles, or sheaves, would be laid across the top to keep the rain from ruining them before they could be hauled away. It took lots of people to do harvest work. The farmers and their families all helped one another, and wherever they were working they were fed. Grandma cooked. When we were finished the fields were a picturesque sight.
My sister and I, along with our cousins, liked to play hide and seek in the corn fields. When the corn was tall enough we could hide for a long time if we were very quiet. The one thing I didn’t like was running into webs with big black and yellow spiders. I even hated going to the outhouse if there were spiders.
In springtime nothing was more entertaining than watching lambs at play. They would run and jump, chase one another, and it’s true that what one sheep will do, all the rest will follow.
One year Grandpa surprised us with a gift of a lamb each for Phyllis and me. We gave them names, and we knew our own lambs from the rest of the flock. When they were grown we received the money for their wool at shearing time, and when they had babies of their own, we were paid when they were sold. We always felt so lucky when our sheep had twins.
The hogs were not my favorite animals except when they were turned into bacon and ham. Every part of the pig was used for something, and butchering time was as busy as harvest time. I’ve often wondered why the lambs were never butchered. I’d have been horrified at the thought, but it’s strange that I never tasted lamb until I bought it at the supermarket and cooked it myself.
Grandma loved farm life, her vegetable garden, and her flowers. But the last two of her seven years of “retirement” were spent in and out of the hospital while cancer spread throughout her body.
Grandpa was very lonely, but he spent seven more years on the farm before he succumbed to the heart problem that had forced him to carry his nitroglycerin pills in his pocket and place one under his tongue when the angina pain hit. He called them his dynamite pills. My parents checked on him often, and one day they found him sitting in his rocking chair, gone but with a peaceful smile on his face.
His lunch was half cooked, but he had managed to turn off the stove burner before he sat down. He had been frying chicken on that same old kerosene stove.
ORIEN STEELE7 CHENOWETH (GEORGE WILLIAM6, GEORGE HENRY5, JOHN4, WILLIAM3, WILLIAM2, JOHN1) was born March 15, 1880 in Greene Co., OH, and died July 15, 1959 in Atlanta, Hamilton Co., IN. He married WINIFRED MCMULLAN August 01, 1901 in Hamilton Co., IN, daughter of HENRY MCMULLAN and MATHILDA WALTZ. She was born May 09, 1882 in Atlanta, Hamilton Co., IN, and died October 07, 1952 in Noblesville, Hamilton Co., IN.
Children of ORIEN CHENOWETH and WINIFRED MCMULLAN are:
by Vida Sue Chenoweth [Dec 2007]
As a child I was always interested in listening to stories of the pioneer days. Grandfather Chenoweth and his two brothers-in-law, John and Austin Swaney, made the run from the Kansas border. Grandmother Chenoweth came later, driving a wagon with household goods and three children - Altah, Velyma and Louis, who was only a few months old. I hear her say that she wrapped him in a towel to prevent sunburn, or worse, heat stroke.
The three men staked land extending from Breckenridge to Grarber, land owned now by veterinarian Phil Steinert and rancher-farmer Roger Haffner. As we grew up many visits to hike or hunt on these two properties were enjoyed by my twin sister, my two brothers and me. Wagon tracks were pointed out which remained from pioneer days as was a buffalo wallow and a plot of gravel. Dad pointed out scissor-tails and meadow larks, and a post along the road where one was sure to see a hawk perched. Just a few days ago I saw a hawk perched there on a post!
The last Chenoweth child, named Alma, was born in the Oklahoma Territory. It was she who became the first child to die among these pioneers who settled the the Cherokee Strip. I remember very few references to her as it was too emotional a subject. What I do recall was that once, when I was 4 years old, Aunt Altah said that I looked like “Alma”. “Who is Alma?” I asked, and she told me it was my father’s little sister who died.
Alma’s pet kitten was always with her, and for this reason someone reckoned that she caught a sickness from the kitten. I think it was for this reason my father did not like cats. The only thing I remember him saying about her was that they put pennies on her eyes when she died. This puzzled us, but Dad said no more about her. However we did visit the Garber cemetery on Memorial days. Mother told us children to just wait in the car as dad paid his respects. I don’t think he ever recovered from the pain of her dying at age five; he was then only seven years old. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like to dig a grave for one’s child, place the tiny body in the ground and cover her with the red soil. There were no funeral homes or undertakers then. Maybe the pain of all this was what drew her father Lincoln Morgan Chenoweth away from the homestead. Grandmother and the children remained on the farm until the children were ready for high school. They moved to Enid and then settled a 430 South Buchanan, next door to the Clive Cessna family whose house on the corner is now in ruins. My grandmother Chenoweth – one of the few who did not think Cessna as a madman – sewed up the canvas wings for his monoplane. It eventually soared over Enid to the amazement of all after taking off in Mosher’s pasture, the place where I now live in a townhouse!
I found the grave a few years ago, just inside the original cemetery. By now there were many graves, but Alma’s grave was all alone. I took it upon myself to have her tombstone reconditioned, as the words were hardly readable. It was replaced this year, 2006, one hundred and five years after she was first laid to rest. My father would be pleased. --- Vida Chenoweth
LINCOLN MORGAN6 CHENOWETH (LEWIS FOSTER5, JOHN FOSTER4, ELIJAH3, THOMAS2, JOHN1) was born August 05, 1862 in London, Madison Co., OH, and died 1932 in Wichita, Sedgwick Co., KS. He married MARTHA A. 'MATTIE' SWANEY December 19, 1885 in Sumner Co., KS, daughter of ALEXANDER SWANEY and REBECCA BURROWS. She was born 1866 in Indiana, and died 1962 in Enid, Garfield Co., OK.
Children of LINCOLN CHENOWETH and MARTHA SWANEY are:
[JE: There were 4 Oklahoma Land rushes between 1889 and 1895. The 3rd was the Cherokee strip on September 16, 1893. Louis would have been 2 weeks old. In my notes I have that one of these events was started by a trumpet blast by Sheriff James Morse of Summer Co., KS, the husband of Rachel Eveline Chenoweth. Rachel was a sister to Lincoln Chenoweth who made the Cherokee Run. Velyma Rebecca Chenoweth was actually born after Alma and there was an first born daughter, Martha who died young in Kansas before the trip. Alma was the first of the family to die in Oklahoma.]
Written in 1949 by Lou Elea Hart Irvine submitted by her great-granddaughter, Cathy Thompson [Dec 2007]
My Grandfather, James Montgomery Hart, bought the Hazelwood farm in 1825. He raised 11 children on it, then gave it to my father, Calvin Collett Hart, to pay for taking care of him and my Grandmother who was Eleanor Chenoweth.
Grandpa was a grandson of John Hart who signed the Declaration of Independence. He was born in New Jersey, 1791. He had several brothers and sisters who scattered over the states. Three sisters and a brother lived in Beverly, one had the coal mine on Rich Mountain.
My Grandpa, James Montgomery Hart, ran the Hazelwood farm. They had to raise most everything they ate, and wore, too. The women of the house spun and wove wool and flax clothing, bed clothes, towels, and table linens.
They lived in a big log house on a hill near King's Run (Paul Dean owns that part of the farm). Grandma lost a baby, wanted it buried where she could see its grave from her window beside the fireplace (this is now the Hazelwood Cemetery).
Her greatest grief was the Civil War. My father, Calvin, another son, Bunn, and a grandson, John C. (son of Ezra) went with the south. Another son, Hugh See, living in Kansas, went with the north. The Hart family went the way they thought best. When Grandma would hear of a raid coming (Yankees), they would go to my Uncle's near the Kelly Mountain. One time Grandma buried a big jar of apple preserves in the garden to keep it safe from the thieves. When they came back the hogs had rooted them out and ate them.
One of my uncles, Elmore, died on the way to join the army. The youngest, Wayne, had cut a tree for wood, didn't get far enough out of the way. It fell and killed him. (Buried in Hazelwood Cemetery) No one was home but the old folks and one girl who went to see about the 18-year old boy. Found him dead.
It was hard to hear the battles of Beverly and Rich Mountain.
Grandpa died in March 1874. The old house got bad. My mother's father, William Foggy, died in 1878. He left a small farm and some money so they had lumber sawed on an old time water mill (which we owned in a partnership with Scott's), and built a new frame house on the "pike" and moved to it. Grandma lived with us in it until 1885. She was nearly 84.
My father, Calvin, and my mother, Julia Foggy, were married in 1868. They raised five children, the oldest, Camden, died in 1936, age 68. He married Marietta Logan in 1902. I was next, born 1874, September 16. Married David Grove Irvine September 15, 1896. We went to Granville, Ohio, to Dennison University. He was in the last year of college when he took diphtheria in January of 1897 and never got to go back to school as his eyes got bad.
Now to my own life - my first memory is of my brother Vance's arrival in 1877. "Grandma" Scott took me to her house. When they brought me home a Mrs. Russell had just bathed the baby and dressed him in a red flannel petticoat and a pink calico dress (very fashionable in those days). She asked me if I thought the baby was pretty and I said, "no, his nose is too speckled." He had a rash. I became very jealous as Vance got more attention - at least I thought - than I, so I decided to wet the bed. Ma didn't say anything, but she washed my behind with a cold wet rag. I didn't try that stunt anymore.
One day I asked Pa if I could have one knee. I was used to having both.
My next remembrance is a serious sick spell - not allowed to eat anything as the doctor gave me a calomel (a great remedy in those days). I asked everybody who came for even a drink of milk. Paxton Scott said, "I will go home and when I come back, I will bring you a pitcher of cream" which he did as soon as I was allowed to have it. I remember seeing him coming across the field by the cemetery. I was named Lou for his sister and Elea, short for Eleanor, my grandma Hart's name.
I loved to stay with the Scotts and did many weeks. They came from Missouri about the close of the Civil War. "Grandpa Scott" was the first Presbyterian preacher I ever saw. I was a little afraid of him. He was a large man, stayed in his study most all day. Came down for meals and to have family prayers at night.
We lived so far from everybody except the Scotts, ½ mile away though the woods, no children to play with until I was five. Then Robert Scott moved close with four little boys ranging from ten years to six months. One, Fred, was my age. We were playmates until I was married, and we write to each other at Christmas time yet.
A big event in my life was starting to Weese School when I was six, nearly two miles away over a hill. I really didn't know how to play with other children, but soon learned. The teacher was a kind neighbor so I wasn't afraid of him. Our school house was of logs with half windows near the ceiling, and long benches with no desks, too high for short legs, mine would get very tired. One day I had a terrible headache, made me cry. He came back to me, shook his pencil, and said "Hush that crying." I cried louder as I was scared stiff. One of the older girls took me on her lap, gave me a stick of candy which I ate, hushed crying, but got a sick stomach. Then the teacher told Cam to take me home, but instead Cam left me with my cousin, Delphia Weese, who had a family of children and knew what to do for sick heads. She gave me a "yarb" tea that soon helped. I took a nap and got up normal. When Cam came by I was out riding stick horses with my cousin (girl) a year younger than I. Cam told Ma I was acting the possum or I couldn't have gotten well so fast.
For clothes in winter, I wore homespun flannel or linsey, the latter yarn woven on cotton chain (warp). Flannel petticoats, muslin or gingham panties, shimmys (like our slips), stockings of yarn which I helped knit when I was six. Also mittens and scarves.
My third year at school was the last in the old log house. I learned to write on the teacher's desk. My copy book was of foolscap paper with heavy brown paper backs. My pen was made of a goose quill. I used some kind of red ink - may have been made of poke berries. I wanted to keep my book as neat looking as my seat mate's book (she is Mrs. Lucretta Pierce), but I upset the ink and soiled the back of the copy book. One day was so cold and snow so deep I stayed all night with an aunt, a Mrs. Weese, who lived near the school house. The snow was too deep for me to go to school the next day. One of the men cousins told me he had my pet calf tied up at the foot of the hill (on which they lived, a place I loved) and was going to let the calf freeze. I put out a lot of tears and told Aunt Jane. She scolded him and told me to believe anything those boys told me for they just did it to plague me. I wouldn't have believed anything they said after that. I was very glad to find the calf, I believe we called him Henry Ward Beecher, was safe in the log barn when I got home.
I could read as well as now even at eight years. "Granny" lived with us and did a lot of teaching. She also taught Vance and me to knit, piece carpet rags, and quilt. She would give me so many rounds to knit on my stocking and so many carpet rags to sew each day. I thought I could fool her by slipping her mark back or hiding a few rags. One turn of that was enough as I had to do double turns the next day.
In summer time we helped with the garden as soon as we were big enough to pull weeds or drove the cows from the pasture or picked berries. We always had Tony, our good old dog along. A great treat was to ride the horses to the creek for water.
When I was climbing up the corner of the log barn that Pa built of the logs from the old house to get on a gentle old horse which side stepped and I fell backward on a rock. I cut my head badly, but didn't know I was hurt until the next morning until my senses came back. I had called for Lou Scott, Vance ran after her, and she came and stayed with me all night.
I didn't know much about playing with little girls until the Scott's took an orphan girl, Louise Hyson, who is named for Lou Scott, too. (She later became Mrs. Goly). I think we were about six years old at that time.
Moving to our new house on Christmas Day about 1881 as well as I remember was a great event. Santa Claus had arrived the night before with a tiny doll about four inches long. It had pretty hair and I called her Lizzie for my Great Aunt Lizzie McLean. Vance had a tin horn and Annie had a little red tin cup from which to drink her milk. Everybody from a couple miles around came to help us move. They brought horses and wagons and good things to eat. We liked the new house which only had three rooms furnished, but I got homesick for the old place. We often went over there to play as the new lawn was in woods and brush thickets. There were so many hazelnut bushes that Lou Scott suggested calling our home Hazelwood.
I had a habit of running away, especially to the mill. Ma would be so scared she would pet instead of spank. One day I found "Grandpa" Scott running the mill and Pa somewhere else. He told me to go back home. I did and never ran off to the mill again, but I went other directions. One day I thought it fun to hide behind the big stone chimney at our house and have them hunting for me. An aunt who had lived with us until I was two or three (then she married) was there. All called and Vance would say, "Hey, Weddie." He couldn't talk plainly. Finally I giggled as Ma was passing looking so pale. I soon had my red checked gingham pants well spanked - good enough for me even if I wasn't five yet.
The Civil War was only past three years when my parents were married. Times were hard, there was very little money floating. Veterans of the south except in a few far southern states had no pensions. If crops failed, we had not much to eat. Corn meal mush was our usual supper. We children began to work as soon as we could pick up chips. All fires were wood we cut with an axe or a saw. As I remember the old log house, there were two fire places and a cook stove. Grandma formerly cooked on the fireplace.
In spite of hardships we were happy children. We knew of very little that was better than we had. Our toys were all home-made ones.
I was a lonely girl after my brother grew too old to play with. I made playmates of the flowers - used hollyhocks for young ladies, also the beautiful laurel blossoms and would roll up any kind of a rag for a doll.
I began washing dishes or rather drying them when only five years old. Grandma taught me to knit. First I knitted myself a pair of garters, then helped on stockings. We had a button on our pantywaist and one on the stocking and buttoned our garters to them. My shoes (excepting a pair of my first ones, I don't know where they came from) were made by my father who was a shoemaker until I was at least twelve. Then my oldest brother plowed a garden for a storekeeper in Beverly to pay for a pair of shoes for me.
I had so wanted a red worsted wool dress as I had seen one on another little girl. At fourteen it came my way. I suppose Lou Scott made it. It was a little basque and a separate skirt. I got my first millinery hat - a pretty brown one trimmed in beautiful brown ribbon - off of one of Mrs. Scott's hats. Mrs. Yokum, doctor's wife, gave me a lovely red satin hair ribbon for my hair that was 27 inches long - great sorrow when I lost the ribbon.
My children enjoyed the old home - had a big apple, peach and cherry orchard, lots of wild plums, hazel and butter nuts, and grapes by the creek. It was great fun to climb the trees and swing on the grape vines out over the water, or also to wade in the water. I never went deeper than my knees.
We were taught to read when very young. Grandmother couldn't work any more, but could teach us so many useful things and tell so many stories of her young days. When her father, John Chenoweth, a Revolutionary soldier, who seemed to have been what we thought rich - came in here before the Indians hadn't been gone very long. She would tell us of their awful deeds until I would be afraid to go to our trundle bed with my two brothers, but slept with her. She wasn't afraid of anything. Grandma also told us stories of her childhood and their slaves.
After a while we got used to the new house with the beautiful woodland all around. The Robert Scotts (brother of aunt Lou) had built a new house and moved near so we had company - the boys would cut horses, cows, dogs and men of the leather scraps left from shoes and play they were cattle drivers.
Hundreds of cattle were driven to market to many cities - think of taking a drove of cattle on foot to Baltimore. We boarded some of the drivers and their cattle were corralled in one of our fields. All field had to have fences. Also all farm had fences all along the roads. My father had to cut trees, split rails for many years.
I think I was nine, maybe younger, when my father decided to start Sunday School at Weese Creek. He taught all who could to sing as he was a good singer. The Sunday School is still going, but there are very few left who started there. We could have a small card for each verse we learned from the Bible and big one for every four. I could commit to memory a whole chapter a week (smart girl) - I have one or two of the big cards yet.
A few years later Beverly wanted my father to be the Superintendent of the Presbyterian Sunday School there. So we all went. We would carry our good shoes to Dotson run, take the old ones off, put the good ones on so our shoes looked nice when we got there. Our Sunday dresses were calico. We thought them wonderfully beautiful.
The first china doll I ever saw was at Lou Scott's. It was a keepsake of hers handed down from an old aunt to her, then to one of her nieces. The doll would be nearly 200 years old now. Annie and I were about the only little girls allowed to play with it.
We had a lot of aunts and uncles. In winter Pa would hitch a horse to the sleigh sled which he made. We put hay and hot rocks in the bottom - all wrapped up and go to visit Uncle Ezra Hart, my father's oldest brother. (Ezra, John C., then Wade, then Wilson). He was an Old Side Baptist preacher. That was, I think, the only church here for many years.
We loved to eat maple sugar made at the camp where Wade Hart now lives and the one where Aunt Ida and Leona live now (Mrs. Ed Kerns, Draper's sister, children of James T. Hart) He had a mill to grind corn on, also a saw mill with a carpenter shop that had a big fireplace. He made all kinds of furniture in it. It was lots of fun to play out there in the shavings. (He was a dear old man. All of his family except one daughter-in-law, Aunt Ida, are gone long ago. She is almost 90).
We enjoyed going to Great Uncle Hoy McLean's (brother to Julia Hart's mother) who lived in the Great Grandpa house. He had a sugar orchard on the riverbank with log cabin sugar house in the middle. We went there once when he was making sugar. He boiled the sap in big kettles. When it began to "sugar" he would pour some on the snow. Nothing ever tasted so good to a little girl. He had a big cradle to rest in at night. He wanted me to stay and sleep in it. I was afraid so I went home with the rest of them.
Aunt Mary Lytle, Pa's sister, who lived with us until I was past two when she married. Cam and I hated Uncle George for taking Aunt Pop away. I can remember them coming to visit, both riding horses. Cam and I were going to hit him with clubs, but our hearts failed when he handed us sugar cakes and was very nice to us - so we loved him too.
When Vance was born I wanted him called Pop and George, but they didn't. He should have been named George Marion. We knew we would have crullers at their house fried in a pretty little iron pot.
At Aunt Mary (Foggy) Kennedy's, my mother's sister, there were lots of hickory nuts and good jelly that I loved. Also there were stories of her old home, her young married days, and the Civil War. Her husband was carried off to war prison by Yankees and he died there. (He was her first husband named Camden).
My mother's Methodist preacher brother, Hanning Foggy, was another one we loved. I think the special eating there was good creamed chicken or ham.
We visited Pa's sister, Jane Weese, the most often. I like something she made of milk called ribble soup. We went there for cherries after our trees died and also good apples.
Ma's sister, Susan (Foggy) Scott, lived below aunt Mattie's (Thomas, D.G. Irvine's sister) at Tyre's Ford. I only remember being there once when ten years old and just for the night. Her husband was very sick and Pa took me behind him on horseback to visit. He didn't live very long after.
The Big Visit was to Ma's sister, (Sarah (Foggy) Smith, when I was eight - clear over to Meadowville below Belington. Pa borrowed a spring wagon from Reverend Scott, took a load of wheat to a mill at Philippi as our river and creeks were so dry from the drought, the mills couldn't run. We left here early in the morning (Cam and a neighbor to stay with Granny). We went over the old Laurel Hill Road. It took all day to go to Aunt Sarah's. We would get tired and stop to rest. We had dinner at one of Pa's cousins who lived on the farm where Lillian Campbell was raised and stopped to visit relatives along the way. I was surprised to see so many women going barefoot, even to one aunt. Her mother-in-law gave me a square of a quilt she was piecing, and a lot of pieces, so I pieced one for myself.
My first visit to a store was when I was ten. The Scott brothers put in one. Ma took Annie and me up to see it. One of them set a box of candy between us on the counter and told us to eat all we wanted which we did as usual, I got sick. Lou Scott told me to pick out what I liked for a dress. I decided on a grayish leafed one with darker gray background and a border of pink roses to go on the bottom of the skirt. She liked a candy striped better, but as usual with her, I got the piece I wanted. She made it - and I sure was dressed up.
When I was seven, a neighbor moved across the field from our house. I had helped to knit myself a pair of mittens. I ran off over there to show them. Naturally I was asked if my mother knew where I was, was given something to eat and sent home. I may have had a spanking.
One day when six I decided I wouldn't say "please" when asking for something at the dinner table. Pa was very strict as to manners. I was sent from the table to get a switch. I tried to bite a tiny one about eight or ten inches of the bush, broke a loose tooth out and came in bawling: saying, "please, please."
Another day about the same age I went with Pa to the attic of our old house, slipped coming down, fell all the way down from the attic to a platform about middle way of the steps to the downstairs. I lit on my head and I didn't know much for a time. When I came to myself I was in the cradle and was given something special to play with.
My grandmother died when I was ten. It was a terrible grief to us children as she had been teacher and nurse for all our lives. We never got entirely over it.
Our playthings were all home made. Until I was nine years my dolls were rags or a towel rolled up and so loved. Sometimes they were made of sticks that had four limbs at one place which were cut off even length and would stand up. I had three at one time when I was six. Pa brought them from the woods. He named them Sam Old Henry, Philip McCooley, and Leonard. I laid them in Granny's room by the fire to keep warm over night. She thought they were kindling wood and cremated them. What heartbreak to find nothing but ashes. Pa brought some more and I gave them the same names. Santa brought me a pretty china doll when I was nine. Her name was Birdie and I was the happiest little girl alive. My mother's first cousin and two neighbor girls dressed her up beautifully. Then Pa made bedsteads for Annie and me - painted them red. Lou Scot made our bedding. My little stead got burned when we had the fire in 1934 in the house on Barnard Ave. in Elkins. I still have the quilt. Never knew where the doll dresses went. I wanted to keep them and I did long after I was married.
We made playmates of books. We didn't have many books, no magazines or papers, but could borrow from Rev. Scott's library, the Christian Observer, Youth Companion, and some Bible story books.
Vance and I went to one summer school at Weese taught by my cousin, Birdie Weese. We went barefoot and I wore a sunbonnet made of red calico. We had to cross a creek. My bonnet blew off in the water. We were scared, we ran along the bank until a bush caught it for us.
We loved to play beside a frog pond beside our new house. We learned to imitate the frogs and toads until they would answer. One plaything we loved was a whistle that Pa made of willows in the spring when the bark would slip. We also liked canes of black gum. We would peel them off in stripes so one stripe would be black and the other white - they were lovely stick horses.
Our best loved pets were lambs - lots of fun until they got so big they would knock us around and become dangerous. Then had to be sold.
Our games were round town ball similar to baseball, Bully wolf, and Squirrelly, all running games. Our father didn't think it right to play dominoes or checkers. We could play marbles with ones he had when he was a little boy.
We went coasting down the hillside by the old log house. My first trial was when I was five. I fell off the sled in deep snow, had a hard time getting out. By the time I got to the house, my hands were so cold, I cried for somebody to open the door. Granny did.
When nine years old the Scott's adopted daughter decided it would be fun to build a small fire in a park back of their house and cook some apples. She went to get the apples, Lou came back with her carrying a pan of water which ended our cooking. It was a windy morning.
One of the favorite scenes which we enjoyed going to with our mother was to the river. A rock slanted out from the hill to the water's edge. It was a beautiful place. The laurel was all on the high bank above. We would sit on the rock and skip rocks across on top of the water. There was an island nearby on which we could find mussel shells and early spring flowers. The railroad came along and covered up our lovely rock. The island is still there, but not so beautiful.
Until I was past ten our artificial lights were tallow candles which my mother made. She melted the fat from beef cows, poured it in molds. They had strings called candle wick in the middle. Later we had a pretty yellow glass lamp with a globe on it and thought it was a wonder. As years went by we had several lamps. Now the old house has electricity and gas which we never heard of until Elkins came. It was many years after that electricity came to Elkins. Now in 1949 both go many miles over the country.
Our farm work was hard on both old and young. The flax growing had been discarded before my mother came to live here, but they still kept sheep. The wool was carded on a machine which had belonged to my great grandfather near Beverly.
We enjoyed making sugar cane molasses. The cane grew like corn. We had to strip off the blades, then cut the stalks which were pressed between two upright heavy rollers with a long pole attached to the top and pulled around and around by a horse. We boiled the juice in big kettles until it was thickened. Then it was poured into large tubs for Winter. This took the place of store sugar for our cake baking and preserving of fruits. We didn't can fruits and vegetables. Instead we dried everything from berries to tomatoes, apples, peaches, beans, pears, corn, and pumpkins. The roots vegetables were buried.
For candy we made "lasses" taffy, sometimes adding walnuts or hazelnuts. One thing that was better then than now was that we did not have to fight off all kinds of bugs and the blighting of vegetables. This seemed to come in as the country was cleared of woods. For heat we had fireplaces and wood cook stoves until I was grown up. Then we had a coal heater.
The first Presbyterian preacher we had as pastor in Beverly came when I was about six. He was a young fellow and often came to visit us in our old house. He was city-raised. My father taught him to ride horseback and to drive horses. I felt very big when he took me to Weese School house to hear him preach. I thought I had something over the other kids. All the music we knew was singing. A crowd would gather at the school house and sing good old hymns and Civil War songs which were taught by my father. The first instrument I remember was an accordion, a fiddle and a mouth harp at an Aunt's. Her children were musical. The first organ was in the church and the first piano was at a friend's home in Beverly.
One of our amusements was following tumblebugs as they rolled little balls holding their eggs along the side of the road. They eventually would roll them to the roadbank to lie quietly until eggs hatched.
We depended on pack peddlers for many things. They would carry big loads on their backs. They began coming when I was about twelve. Later they came in small wagons with enclosed sides almost like small stores. They usually were Jews or Asyrian. We kept some over night or for dinner and let them pay for their meals with their goods.
For sickness all five of us had mums, measles, scarlet fever, and chicken pox - my worst was diphtheria.
When I was five my sister Annie was born. She was such a tiny little black haired baby. I was willing to rock her cradle. We moved to the new house when she was two. Four years later she with Vance and I were packed up in a sleigh sled and my father took us to Grandma Scotts for a couple days. When we came home we found the sweetest baby brother (Hugh).
The places I loved to go for nights while going to the Weese School which was nearly two miles away was to Tripletts with Ella Stepp, two years younger than I; Schoonovers, where Lucretta was my age; to Taylor and Jacob Weese's where others of my age lived.
For my first three years I went to an old log building where my mother taught her last school. We were very proud of our new frame school house with desks with a shelf under them. Also pictures on the walls and a bookcase. The first book I read from the case was Rumpelstiltskin. Our gang in Hazelwood would play it as we did other children's stories. In later years we put on some fairly good plays and readings after school in the evenings. Sometimes we had taffy pulling and always had popcorn.
Imagine a whole school room full of girls in flannel dresses, coverall calico aprons, yearn stockings of our own knitting, long hair tangled on the buttons down the backs - also imagine all of the mob drinking from a dipper out of a water bucket passed around by one of the boys. None of us got poison for lack of sanitation. The boys wore home-made boots, jeans, suits and hickory shirts - a gray and white stripe of heavy material.
vWe had a pretty alder patch beside the spring where we enjoyed holding revivals. We didn't know anything else to imitate. We carried rocks for church seats, one big one was the pulpit. We had a little seven-year old Triplett boy for a preacher, others to give "experiences" and some of us to shout. In the middle of our services, the teacher came out and stopped our glorious service and said we were making a mock of religious services, kept us all in at recess, and sat our little red-headed, black eyed preacher on the table with his feet in a drawer.
In snowy weather we played fox and geese. I never got to be the fox because my grown up cousins would pick me up and carry me around on their shoulders. I was sixteen the last winter up there.
We had our new school house across the road from our house. Vance and I made the fires and kept the floor clean. That was the only whole term I ever went. The teacher was Samuel Hogan with a Number One Certificate and he was paid $35.00 a month which was good wages.
We put on plays and other entertainments during the winter. That summer of 1892 was a busy one. They started building the railroad to Beverly. We had several boarders. It was hard on us women folk, but lots of fun.
When a little girl I loved to visit Granny Marstiller and watch her cook lots of good things on a bar across the fireplace and bake bread in a dutch oven on the hearth.
I went three years to our new school house, passed the examination for a diploma for a Number Two Certificate and taught part of one school year. Then in 1896, September 15, I married a college student whom I had met four years before. I went with him to Granville, Ohio, for his last college year. Diptheria came to the town. He took it and left him so blinded he could not go back to school. It was three years before he could read the largest newspaper headlines. He worked as a passenger car cleaner for the Elkins Railroad Station, picking up magazines and newspapers.
We came home and one way and another living here and there we managed to raise six children. All living, but one who died at 39 leaving five children. All of our children and the orphan little girl cousin we raised are married and have families so we are living alone in the house owned by our first girl.
We have fourteen grandchildren and one great one. The ups and downs we have had in nearly 53 years of married life would be too many to write about. We are so glad none of our flock ever gave us any trouble by going wild. All were studious and made good in different professions.
The first bear I saw was when I was 11 and coming home from Scotts. I looked behind me and not far back I saw a man coming leading a brown bear. I was so scared I ran fast and stopped at the neighbor, Robert Scott's, to tell him what a fearful thing was coming. I then ran through a field on to home. Not long after the man and bear stopped at our house for dinner. After which we called neighbors in to see the bear perform many tricks he had been trained to do.
We loved to ramble in the woods with neighbor children. It was lots of fun in spring time to search for arbutus, violets, anemones, then later Service, dogwood and honeysuckles.
It was fun to gather moss and carpet playhouses and to pick young wintergreen and peel red birch bark. We would scrape inside the bark. The shavings were tender and so good. We often found teaberry and turkeyberries from pretty little vines. All those lovely things passed away with the trees and woodland which were cut down for lumber, fence posts and fire wood.
I have ridden most everything from wheelbarrows to trains and cars, but no rides were so enjoyable as the stick horse.
There were so many varieties of birds and little animals that seem to be extinct. Can't even hear a hoot owl anymore. Robins and whippoorwills do come back in the spring.
We had so little outside the home for amusement. We made up our own plays and toys. I really believe we were happier than children with so many things of now in 1949.
ELEANOR 'NELLIE'5 CHENOWETH (JOHN4, WILLIAM3, JOHN2, JOHN1) was born June 07, 1796 in Randolph Co., VA (now WV), and died January 09, 1885 in Virginia. She married JAMES MONTGOMERY HART September 23, 1819 in Randolph Co., VA (now WV), son of DANIEL HART and MARGARET BUNN. He was born September 07, 1791 in Hopewell, Hunterdon Co., NJ, and died March 07, 1874 in Randolph Co., WV.
Children of ELEANOR CHENOWETH and JAMES HART are: Last Revision Monday, December 10, 2007
Eleanor 'Nellie' Chenoweth Hart 1796-1885
"The Hazelwood farm of James Montgomery & Nellie Hart"
Add your story - Jon Egge
You can reach me by e-mail at: jegge@chenowethsite.com
Copyright c 2004-2006 by Jon D. Egge. Any republication of this page material for personal use requires inclusion of this copyright. Excluding the actual authors of each article, any other republication of this page material requires the express consent of the webmaster.
![[IMAGE]](thandlft.gif)
to return to Chenoweth Main...
Return to Start