BURT, Peter II

1795 - 1844  (48 years)  Submit Photo / Document

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• Name	BURT, Peter
  Suffix	II
  Birth	11 Dec 1795	Rumblingwell, Fife, Scotland
  Christening	27 Dec 1795	Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
  Gender	Male
  Death	1844	Kelty, Fife, Scotland
  Burial	1844	Beath Cemetery, Old Perth Road, Cowdenbeath, Fife
  WAC	9 Dec 1886	LOGAN
  _TAG	Reviewed on FS
  Headstones	Submit Headstone Photo
  Person ID	I20285	Joseph Smith Sr and Lucy Mack Smith
  Last Modified	19 Aug 2021

  
  

  Father	BURT, Peter I ,   b. 12 Mar 1753, Pitliver, Fife, Scotland Pitliver, Fife, Scotlandd. 27 Sep 1820, Kaistock, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland (Age 67 years)
  Mother	PENMAN, Christian ,   b. 1 Dec 1760, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland Dunfermline, Fife, Scotlandd. Kaistock, Fife, Scotland
  Marriage	28 Oct 1784	Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
  Family ID	F10784	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 1	ALLAN, Ann ,   b. 13 Jan 1791, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
  Marriage	6 Mar 1813	Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
  Family ID	F10783	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	24 Jan 2022

  
  

  Family 2	SPOWARD, Isabelle ,   b. 4 May 1792, Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotland Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotlandd. Dec 1845, Lowelldille, Mahoning, Ohio, United States (Age 53 years)
  Marriage	12 Mar 1817	Fife, Fifeshire, Scotland
  Children	6 sons
  + 1. BURT, Peter III ,   b. 7 Mar 1818, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland Dunfermline, Fife, Scotlandd. 3 Mar 1888, New Era, Clackamas, Oregon, United States (Age 69 years)   2. BURT, Joseph ,   b. 7 Nov 1819, Mauchline, Ayrshire, Scotland Mauchline, Ayrshire, Scotlandd. 7 Nov 1901, Armstrong, Emmett, Iowa, United States (Age 82 years)   3. BURT, Alexander ,   b. 30 Mar 1822, North Lethens, Fife, Scotland North Lethens, Fife, Scotland   4. BURT, David ,   b. 18 Feb 1827, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland Dunfermline, Fife, Scotlandd. 1856, Lowellville, Mahoning, Ohio, United States (Age 28 years)   5. BURT, Andrew ,   b. 18 Aug 1829, Townhill, Fife, Scotland Townhill, Fife, Scotlandd. 3 Mar 1909, Gardner, Grundy, Illinois, United States (Age 79 years)   6. BURT, Thomas ,   b. 20 Dec 1834, Townhill, Fife, Scotland Townhill, Fife, Scotlandd. 26 Aug 1911, Algona, Kossuth, Iowa, United States (Age 76 years)
  Family ID	F10781	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	24 Jan 2022

  
  

• Photos		https://familysearch.org/patron/v2/TH-904-56664-1047-37/dist.jpg?ctx=ArtCtxPublic
  		Peter Burt and his wife Margaret Beveridge Burt.
  		Margaret Burt
  		At least one living or private individual is linked to this item - Details withheld.

  
  

• Notes

  A short sketch of fathers family and of his life as far as I am able to trace it from hearing him speak it, and from recollection, also from personal knowledge (p.h.burt) April 17 1927 a trifle more than 100 years ago, there dwelt a householder by the name of Peter Burt in Gorbals of Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland: where he hailed from that place or how long he remained there I never learned; but while a resident there he had a son born to him that he named Joseph, the course of nature introduced said Joseph to the family, a brother had preceded him, 7 Nov 1819. The same year, you will note, that their much-lauded queen Victoria was born. The family grew to consist of 6 sons and 1 daughter. While the oldest of them were children, I was told by uncle Peter, the oldest brother, their young feet became familiar with what I suspect were the "Burns" of the Cleish hills; so that the family must have left Glasgow when as yet there were but two or three youngsters. Necessity compelled both father and mother to toil in the fields and hence the children learned to care for themselves and learned much of their surroundings. Small fish in the brook were chased to shelter and sometimes captured. The seclusion of the bird was invaded and its sanctum oft desecrated; while the "Bumbee's Byke" had the respect of the retreating tartans and frenzied "bonnets." The father of the family being no exception to the rule of those who toil at menial labor for the support of life, had little or no time to devote to the social and spiritual side of each child, their inalienable right so his "luif" became the sole arbiter of their misdemeanors and disputes; oft they bore one another's "paika" rather than divulge a grievance among themselves; all such I glean from an uncle with the same given name as grandfather. He related to me in his reminiscent moods, a maneuver he and his brothers had recourse to, to purloin the milk out of the pans and other receptacles in the milk house whereby they had their stomachs appeased and still left the cream intact in the pan. The parents were perplexed to find the milk taken from the vessels and the cream still untouched. But, lo, one day when the out posts were off guard, the father stood in the doorway of the milk house and beheld his oldest son holding a cup at the lower end of a straw siphon while the milk was filling the cup. The boy wist not that the father stood there at the doorway looking at the clever ruse, till the father greeted his son with "ay so that's the wey ye do it is't?" I was told that the angry "luif" was not applied on that occasion, probably on account of the ingenious contrivance to swipe the milk. The lads had disregarded that foolish old saying, "take therefor no thot of the morrow" and had entered a field of growing oats and had bent the growing straw and waited on nature furnishing siphons thus ruining the shrewd reflective caution of the lowland scot; no wonder that the father only chided on that occasion. Later on in their journey of life we find them living at a place called the forest mill, where an uncle of the children displayed some of his scotch facetiousness; I take it that he was an uncle on mothers side of the house whose name was Spowert, hence David Spowert, he lived some distance from his Burt relatives and one fine morning drove up to their door with all his worldly goods on a cart. When questioned as to how he came to be there without warning he remarked that when he was out for a walk in the early morning the singing of a Navis(European song thrush) between snatches of its song, kept saying; "flit dauvity, flit dauvity flit" an'gin I spire't whaur till? It said "the forest mill" so I just pot my things on th'cart an'cam awa'. The family followed the occupation of coal mining, there is scarcely a mining village in eastern Fifeshire that was not a household word in fathers family, Theemyes, Terryburn, Clish, Lethens, Crossgates, Cowdenbaith, Lochgelly, Oakely and Berrylaw were among the names of places I often heard my father mention with much home feeling and when I think of them or hear them spoken of in the lands of my nativity, off comes my bonnet. Indelible on the screen of memory from fathers much repeated reminiscence is the adventures of the poacher in the early days of his manhood. It is irksome to youth of 18 or more years, being hedged and herded by statue on public thoroughfares; also, to see natures epicurean tid-bits, like the hare and the capercailzie, made solely the pillage of privilege and his flunkies; hence, their love of adventure and to furnish a moiety of nutriment to stomachs craving variety that poverty is most always unable to furnish; for is not "game grit or sma: the sole heritage of "those to manor born?" I remember hearing father tell of once being caught by a gamekeeper who tried to wrest his gun from him and when the game keeper was astride the gun barrel fired it off and escaped without looking back to see the result of the explosion, and at another time being chased and closely pursued when making for a thick hedge, he called out to his pursuer to stay back as there was no telling what might happen while crawling thru a hedge; the keeper heeded the warning which together with the surroundings favored escape. Now that period of the family's growth, when some of the older boys were able to play the role of poacher, Thomas, no doubt, shall have been born at Lethens Dec 16th, 1832, making the family complete; the children were Peter, Joseph, Alexander, Isabel, David, Andrew and Thomas; some of the youngsters took kindly to music and being somewhat ingenious, made their own violins, even a bass viol. I have heard father speak of walking four English miles to take lessons from the Blackets of dollar and pay one shilling an hour for them, Uncle Peter and father made the trip; they were always together. At that time the family no doubt were living at Tillicoultry, a place where 4 veins of coal were worked, and just about four miles from dollar, in Clackamannanshire. though the two brothers were taught by the same teachers the music made by one, was soft and rounded while that of the other was intrepid and open. about this stage of their musical life they also took a liking to the bagpipes and the headings for a turning-lathe were secured from Dumbarton and fitted to turn their own pipes. A set of father' makings are at this time in my possession. I had the honor of playing them for the Caledonia club of Des Moines, Iowa when that club was celebrating the 116th anniversary of Robert Burns. The same lathe that he turned them on is at this writing in the possession of my son Joseph D. Burt in the split land part of Itasca county, Minnesota. The bar of iron constituting the axel of said lathe was taken from the ruins of an old feudal castle in Fifeshire. At one of the mining towns in south west Fife, Alexander met death; he had succeeded to the position of mine boss, and when going down the shaft in the morning to inspect the workings of the rope it broke; 'twas said that the rope was doctored for another party, and reaped the fate prepared for another'. When the family settled near Kelty, they were known as the Burts of Berrylaw' no doubt to distinguish them from others of the same name. It was before their coming to Kelty that grandfather Burt died. At Kelty father became presenter in the free Kirk that stood on the east half of grandfather Hutchinsons lot. It seems to have been the rule with the old time Presbyterians that no songs but the psalms of David were to be sung at their Sunday worshiping; therefore, one of their number, called a presenter, pitched the key, and the whole congregation joined in the song. I am possessed of a music book rather used, with its many settings, and I find no analogy to any of David's cant. Here are two of the pieces; 'Elging C.M. how vain are all things here below; how false and yet how fair; each pleasure has it's poison too, and every sweet a snare' and again; 'st marks c.m. hark from the tombs a doleful sound mine ears attend the cry; ye living men come view the ground. where ye must shortly lie' how conducive to a bath in the sunshine of joy after being pillaged by a cyclone, a hurricane or earthquake, to say nothing of the avarice of ones fellow mortals. Now in the course of human events, Joseph Burt became acquainted with Helen Hutchison, the suiter Robert Hutchison's daughter who was born April the 2nd, 1821 and it followed that Joseph in his 27th year and Helen in her 25th were declared man and wife by James Harjusson, minister in the parish of Beath, Fifeshire, Scotland, on the 6th day of February 1846. On the 16th day of March 1847 I was brought to their notice and care, a youngster whom they named Peter as his grandfather before him on his father's side of the family had been named. Then came into the family Robert H. Burt 19th of Oct 1848. On 12 August 1850 Isabell was born and Joseph Burt Jr. on the 21st of February 1852. The above mentioned four were born in Kelty, Fifeshire, Scotland where wee Peter learned his abc's at a public school held in the free Kirk that stood on the east half of grandfather Hutchinson's lot, the master being a crouse young man by the name of Adam Sym,who had a chronic penchant for handling the "taes". At this stage of my existence I was taught to carry fathers dinner to the engine house where he attended a condensing engine that pumped water from an old mine and relieved a new mine on a higher level; in doing my childish dargue, I followed a foot path through a young pine wood from where we lived at Kelty-head, southeast a trifle beyond the free Kirk; on one of my trips an apprentice suiter with his apron concealed himself behind one of the pines and at the proper time and with a muffled yell the mischief was done; thus, in going through those young evergreens I got my first lesson in fear; the beginning of distrust and suspicion of all mankind. What happened when father reached the young man's ear I never learned, but always felt the need of watchfulness while in the planten, and toward that particular tree each time through. I never tired of seeing the engine run, becoming so absorbed in the mystery of its movements, till father had to drive me home. In later years, when he happened in a reminiscent mood I enjoyed hearing him tell some crony the practical tricks he worked off on tramps that pestered him with their stolen stuff as they made rendezvous of the old engine house. Now in the spring after my 5th year, the whole Burt family made preparations to migrate to the United States of America. On the 1st April 1852, All Fools Day, you will observe, my mother's sister, Jeanet, and her son and daughter, David and Isabell Berwick-- their mother was a widow and kept a small shop of some kind in Kinress about 5 miles due north of Kelty. The young man was apprenticed to a blacksmith and the young lady to a milliner. We were but a few years in America when they both died of malignant fever. Well as I was about to remark they came down to Kelty to see us off. Father's young family and the Berwicks stopped over night with grandfather Hutchison and at bedtime young David Berwick would have me sleep with him but I would have none of the stranger. My last sleep on the soil of my nativity was with my grandparents. And on the morrow, when my father's family and grandfather parted on the quay at Greeneck, 2nd April, mother's birthday, and wee Joseph Jr was but 6 weeks old. I beheld what to my young eyes was a mystery, grown-up people weeping; and now at the advanced years of 80, tears will unbidden start when I think of the cruelty of such separations. Thus the last scene on my native soil was one of sorrow, sadness and tears without the mental grasp to comprehend it. What is there about the psychology of thought that effects the whole nervous system so that water gushes from the eyes? Is not each individual an entity of itself? What is there about the gregariousness of the family that is so powerful in resisting their being separated, torn apart? Is thought to the human personality more than the aroma to a rose? Yet there I witnessed the parting of a daughter and her father who were nigh unto prostration by the thought expressed in three small words--never, never more! The severing of two magnets from the adhering polarity we partially conceive, but the laceration, by riving apart of two human hearts gives us pause. while father and his wee family still lingered, grandmother Burt and her three sons and one daughter had gone aboard to locate our berths and nurse their sorrows. I have heard my parents say, that we were six weeks on the water. Day following day, and it is a very precocious child that marks the flight of time. However, events where fear depicts a threatening frown or joy sings pleasures sweet song, will mark their passing on the brain of even a dullard. For her progress our ship relied on her canvas and the wind, and the wind was more adverse than other wise. On one occasion, father had to help hold the family into the berth. The hatch way was nailed down and the sea when she crossed the vessel's deck, sent streams of water down the gangway. A barrel that had the freedom of the floor rolled from berth to berth obeying the wind and waves, much to the terror of those at its mercy, many uncivil voices were heard from the steerage from which we were shut away, some were swearing while others screamed and prayed to deaf unheeding elements that seemed as though they would dash the boat to bits. Once when the ship was becalmed my Aunt Isabel took me to the upper deck, a sailor had caught a large fish and Aunt wanted some of it to eke out our rations. It is no trick for my mind, even today to recall the size of that fish which seemed to be half as long as the vessel. We landed at New York but my mind utterly failed to make any record of it; tho when the family were sent to the fourth story of a lodging house in that city I marked the ascent, as I had never been so far above the earth and remember father throwing some moisture out of the window just over the side walk about midnight, and his remarks about folks straying about at that time of night. On the following day, we boarded a train for Tamaqua, Schulkill county, Pa. where Uncle Peter Burt met us at the train and escorted the whole bevy of Burts to the house where he lived. I kept looking up into his face as he piloted us along, and on his observing me doing so, he asked me what I was looking at; you see he carried quite a wart on his right cheek and I remembered having seen it in Scotland. My uncles and father got work at Tamaqua in the anthracite mines and I was sent to the public school with my scotch togs on. The American lads took umbrage at my gegary and it was often baptised in the gutter, even tho I had two body guards in the persons of two girl cousins about 12 or 14 that felt sorry for me. My teacher was a woman, and from some unaccountable quirk of the mind I conceived that I was not obliged to obey a woman and for that conceit my tartans were often dusted with a birch. The summer following this, father got a job running a "breaker engine"(one that with the aid of two large metal roller reduced the anthracite for practical purposes)at Buckville not far from Tamaqua, here I had the fortune to be cared for by a lad named Anderson who dominated the school ground at recess and noon. At Buckville, father became acquainted with a poet-blacksmith by the name of John Parker, who gave him a very commendable piece of meter(pure fiction) that told the story of a bevy of fairies chasing a farmer on horseback and who being sorely pressed for time(as he thought) allowed his nag, at full speed, to take the open doorway to its stall and brain it's rider on the lintel. The piece was very ingeniously contrived and appealed to the alluding that was even then sprouting in my nature. I suspect part of the news must have been taken from the police news of some daily paper that related to the sad end of a drunken carousal. T'was here when autumns pleasant weather had insured us of ripe huckleberries that we sallied forth on Sundays, when father could go along to help scour the hill sides it made me think of gathering 'blae-berries on the hill o'benarty' save that here in Schuykill county, Pa. we had to be ever alert for the danger of rattlesnakes, copper heads and the youngsters, of course were cautioned to be wary of the mystical hoop snake that took its tail in its mouth and rolled into a hoop and at the proper distance let the tail go only to strike the hook on its end into whatever it had directed its enmity when forming the hoop. At Buckville the lathe that had been brought from Scotland was set up and a set of bagpipes turned from Laurel, a large shrub that is to be found all through the Schuykill hills; these pipes lay in the chest and were carted about with the family from place to place and were finally fitted up 30 years after being made, to a Jordan of Bancroft, Iowa. At Buckville, I attended school under the protection of a large boy by the name of Anderson who commanded the respect of the whole school. I felt proud of his protection. I remember our first lunch, away from the other scholars, beneath the shade of some small trees, with bright ,warm sunshine, everything seemed to combine for happiness and I never since remember enjoying the eatables as I did along with that big boy friend; but, it was only for a season, no class of the human family are more nomadic than the miner; the summer of 1854, I have heard father say, was so warm that the mercury ran up to 108 and 110 in the shade and the work that he was at, compelled him to do his own firing and stand by a hot cylinder all day long to hoist coal from the slope and from 165 lbs. He lost weight till he was little more than 120 lbs. Till he was scarce able to walk to and from his work a half mile away. The boiler was faulty and unsafe; also he had a head strong comrade who changed shifts with him; and his people moved from Tamaqua to Lowellville, Ohio during our year at the last two named places; these conditions together with the moral and mental status of the mining people of Buckville made him resolve to follow his people. Here let me relate an incident and its sequel to show the social surroundings; I was one day with a chum of my age, before the home of my little partner, not far from the company store--companies you know must have a store to help exploit their workmen-- two men passed us and stepped into the house, the tallest of the two picked up a gun that stood in a corner and jestingly said "micky I'll shoot you" there was a loud report and micky was no more. The Sunday that came after the incident, father took me with him on his way to Buckville, and at one point in the road where there was a twist we ran onto Micky's funeral procession; a halt had been called and part of the mourners were over a fence into an apple orchard clubbing the half ripe apples, while two women holding the drawn out limmets of a shawl across the road accommodated two pugilists, one on each side of the shawl. A detour through the brush and timber brought father and I to the farther side of Mickys friends while he, no doubt, was busy wading through the asphoel of "fiddlers green" t'was at Buckville where my sister Ellen (Helen) was born on the 28th of January 1854, being the first of mother's family born in America. I have no recollection of what time of year we moved to Lowellville, Ohio, but being there I find myself with grandmother's family in a good, big house, fenced in and surrounded by fruit trees; here a short time, then over by a canal in part of the old warehouse just a few rods from the canal-lock where also theMwidowed mother of the MacArthur's lived. This must have been 1855, as I find myself eating dinner with Uncle Thomas Burt and his new wife, one fine warm day in summer, he in having married the 16th of the previous March; Aunt Isabel and Uncle David were married at the same time. Aunt Isabel became Mrs. Thomas MacArthur and Miss Ann MacArthur became Mrs. David Burt. Uncle Thomas' wife was a Miss Margaret Murray. In the fall of 1855 we lived in the old farm house of a retired farmer, a short distance east of Lowellville, where there was a sugar-maple grove between the public highway and the Mahooning Canal to the south of us and the old farm house to the north of the road on rising land; it was here that I was first introduced to "Blackhaws" by Dave MacArthur, when the winter wheat was about 6 inches high and we had a little snow on the ground. Dave was a lad in his teens and rode canal horses. In the spring of 1856 we moved east into Lawrence county, Pa., two miles up the Mahoonig Canal from Edinburg. At a small coal mine owned by John and Robert Shields where father got the job of being manager; the coal being shipped by canal boats. In November of that year when John C. Fremont "the first republican candidate for presidency of the United States" ran against (10 cents Jimie) James Buchanan, many of the neighbors got father to take his bagpipes along to the polls to help boost the political feeling for Fremont this Buchanan had at one time stated, that the laboring class should be contented if they got 10 cents a day, and the working people called him "ten cent Jimmie". Just before "Jimmie's time" times were so hard for labor that I heard father say that all the money he had in one year was a one-dollar bill and a ten cent piece. The bill proved to be bogus and the 10 cent piece was lead. In the summer of 1856 grandmother Burt died in the home of her daughter Mrs. Thomas MacArthur, at Lowellville, Ohio and in the fall of the same year, her son Uncle David Burt was taken with a bad cold. A young MD who had just "hung out his shingle" in a little town North of us was called in and dropsy in the cavity of the bowels developed; father walked east to new castle and brought back with him an old Dr. by the name of Lezure, who tapped the abdomen and relieved the patient of an immense amount of water; then he examined the young Dr.'s drugs and said that you might as well set such medicine by the wall and expect to drive water up there, as such stuff was of no use whatever to the patient; remarking further that had uncle taken a dose of salts and Senna he would have been a well man today. Uncle David left a widow and a little daughter; his widow's name was Ann MacArthur who in the course of time married a man by the name of McVey and in after years a fever took two or three of his family and Uncle David's child went with them. In the fall of 1856, November 15th, sister Jeannet was born. In the fall of 1857, father, intending to move to another locality; took brother Robert and myself over to old Philip Mathus,who lived with two old maid daughters in a log house that had seen better days; father took his bagpipes along with him, and when it began to grow dusky in the evening he started Robert and I for home with a small basket of eggs and some cherries; instead of keeping the old blind road to the north, through the woods and around by way of the fence to the east, we dipped into the woods to our left by way of a footpath for a short cut home; once deep into the woods we lost the path and turned back to find the Mathus place and being balked in that we traveled south till we were down near the Mahooning Canal where we recognized the sugar loaf hill that had two trees on its top, and being discouraged and fearing to tackle the woods on the wagon road to the mine we concluded to go up to those trees and spend the night and go home in the morning, but before we reached the two trees a light appeared from the south side of the timber and a strong voice brought us to stand; t'was father and one or two of the Shiel's boys who took us in tow and when we reached home mother was standing in the doorway in her night clothes; as had been fearing we would go down that way and be drowned in the canal; while all the welcome we got from father was "I'll have ta get a rope an' tie ye ta th' bedpost gin ye canna do better". The old gentleman that we had been visiting was 90 years of age and one of the first settlers in that part of the country. Late in the fall of 1857 our few belongings were loaded on a wagon and we followed Uncle Peter Burt south in Lawrence Co., Pa. To where a new mine was being opened on a short railroad that ran from the main railroad east and west through Enon Valley in Pa. and Palestine in Ohio and south to Darlington. Halfway down this short railroad on the south side, in the woods was a new mine. Mother always spoke of it as "the diggings". There we lived one winter and most of the following summer. In the summer, there was a scourge of scarlet fever among the small children that was made dangerous by the fool practice of a young MD. who forbade his patients any cold water while taking his medicine. Uncle Peters youngest child, Catherine was one of the victims. Toward the fall of this summer we moved about a mile to the north-east of where we were, to another small mine, which when father got there he was made the second man. said mine was managed by a man called "Jim" Kook. Here it was that brother John was born on the 26th of October 1858. T'was at this place that father was pot witted by a trick pony belonging to Kook. He borrowed the pony and a light rig to take a little corn and a little wheat to a mill just west of the state line. He could have wheeled it in a barrow but for the looks of it. After the grist was ground and the home coming started, the pony got real lame in one of her front feet, so lame that father got out of the rig and walked, when they came to a hill he would get behind the rig and push. Before they got to the last hill Jim saw them coming and went to meet them. "Well, Mr. Kook" said father, "I'm afraid I have lamed your beast very badly" Jim stepped over to the brush and cut a hazle wand about four feet long, got in the seat and asked father to climb in, father hesitated on account of the poor lame animal, but Kook insisted as he had something to show father; one sharp "git up" with a slap on the side and away went the pony on a trot; not a limp to be seen. "I failed to tell you Mr. Burt that the pony used to be in a circus and that was one of her tricks." While we were here at brother John's birthplace, "the brown houses" as mother named the place. Uncle Peter and family flitted to mining locality 4 miles up the little sawmill run from Birmingham a town on the left bank of the Monongahela River opposite Pittsburgh, Pa. Two or three of his brothers-in law had located there, hence, his going; so thither father gravitated and we had a home in the basement of what was once the farm house of one Neil, by name, who owned and worked a coal mine a few rods north of said old farm steading. Father got some work in the mine, and in the summer of 1860 I was taught to drive a pony to the Neil mine and also picked up the trick of sharpening miners tools at the old shed-smiddy that stood just back from the pit mouth a rod or two. T'was at this old farmhouse where sister Mary was born November 1st, 1860, she was very small when born and father made some uncomplimentary remarks at the time, whereon the MD. In attendance who was a man over 6 foot said that when he was born they could put him in a quart measure. Here in the hillside basement where great flagstones of the old-fashioned fireplace sheltered the noisy cricket that sang for us evenings when the lights were low, piped another voice that in after years helped to embitter the life of the writer hereof. Late in the fall of 1860 the family found themselves on the left bank of the Monogahela River opposite McKeesport, Pa. a poor "spring run" sent father, Uncle Tom MacArthur and myself towards Sharon in search of work, where father had a cousin by the name of Beverage; after reaching Rochester on the Ohio River, we took a canal boat up to New Castle, reaching there just at day break; father took across the country afoot toward our destination and MacArthur took me to a house where he had a sister in service, where we were helped to some breakfast and then took the tow path of the Mahooning Canal to a coal mine just east of Youngstown, Ohio, where Uncle Andrew Burt lived and where father came to meet us. He was there before us as we had walked rather leisurely, having to pass many familiar places that were stored with memories. I noticed that uncle had little to say as, no doubt, his mind was busy with retrospection as was my own, though less mature; was he thinking of the indiscretion of Lizzie and Mary, his sisters, with a ruthless "Paris" whose aphroditic wiles had lured them both beyond the bounds of prudence and were simple enough to become hostile to one another because of him on their way home from the local pharmacy, through which they hoped to shield the family name from the indecorous drivel of the clearing house of gossip. Perhaps his thoughts wandered down to the death bed among the ooze of this same canal, of his bodacious brother, Jim, who went down to death with a jug of good whiskey while trying to swim across the big stagnant ditch. T'was here along the tow path that his young brother "Dave" got his first job, after coming from Scotland, at driving a tandem team of horses, the then motive power of the canal boat. I saw him on one of his steeds in 185? While yet he smelled of salt water and before he became Americanized enough to lay aside the "glengarry" a relic of the heather hills of his nativity. He was then in his early teens and making goo-goo eyes at Uncle Peter Burt's second daughter, Isabel, who in after years became his wife; his mother, a tall graceful woman, lived in part of the old warehouse by the canal side, next door to my mother and just a stone's throw from the canal locks, at Lowelville, where he could easily speak to her for a moment or two; but to Uncle Tom and myself; of course, I noted the passing through Edenburg where brother Robert and I went from Sheil's for groceries, and passing the Bruce place I could not forget Mrs. Bruce and her treats of maple sugar. I also took notes of the woods where brother Robert and I were lost and cast my eyes toward old Mathew's place and thought of the old man and his two spinster daughters. Soon we came to that part of the canal where the Sheil's had a warf and two of them were unloading coal, but the canal was between us and to Uncle Tom's query as to whether they knew this young man, of course, they did not. A little farther up the canal we came to Mahooning, the place where Uncle Tom and Aunt Isabel were married the 16th of March 1855 on my 8th birthday. A little farther along up the canal and we could look across it into the woods to where his sister Ann. Mrs. McVey (once Mrs. David Burt) and her young brood lived. We passed on as the day was wearing away and we were nearing Lowelville. Lowellville! Once the home of the Murrays the MacArthurs and the Burts. All fitted away to other parts of the earth; no wonder uncle was in a meditative mood; here too his mother died by the canal side and here too my grandmother breathed her last in pain. Looking back through the fast receding visits of the past, I wonder not at uncle's reticence; events in the spring of young manhood happen fast and furious, and the wisdom of conclusions are, till after a choice has come and gone. The impatience of youth makes no bosom crony of Mr. Why, but leaves his probing inquisitiveness till the hair begins to silver, and the tears furrow down the cheek. That is, of course, aside from precocious characters, who are exceptions to the rule, with much for which to thank heredity, and uncle was not one of them; however, he had reserve enough not to babble to a child, which was my mental caliber at that time. On reaching Lowelville we had tramped about 15 miles and still had about 5 to walk before reaching Struthers; the mining village where Uncle Andrew Burt lived. Ongoing into his yard I beheld a small cousin playing on the grass and trying her vocal powers on a silly senseless song "a little more cider too" that was his first born, Dorothy, about 5 years old. Now a breathing spell of a day and we were off to the "block coal mine" about 4 miles down the Erie canal from Sharon in Mercer Co., Pa. Where we worked for one month."t'was in that glorious time of year the cherry is ripe and the mine-boys led me to gratuitous treats Sundays on the sly. We spent one fine Sunday in the suburbs of Sharon, at the farm house of a Mr. Hill, father of Dick Hill who was the mine boss for a mine 3/4 of a mile downstream from the Smith mine when we lived on the river. Dick's father had been a miner and had lost the use of both eyes by a blast that had hung fire. He seemed quite cheerful and spoke of the improvements in the ditching that he had had done and was intending to make on the place. Dick and his wife from McKeesport were at the old home place which took us up there to see them. The first "bull run" of the civil war had been lost by the north and the mental atmosphere was in the fever heat of war fanned to flame by commercial grafters assisted by "schnapps" and lager-beer. After dinner Dick took father and uncle tom out to look over some of his fathers farm and I must lead the old blind fellow out with them as he must point out where some of his improvements lay. Dick had a young brother about 18 years of age, who talked war very strongly and but for my age might have persuaded me to join the army with him. He went to the front, but I believe never came back. The outbreak of the rebellion caused commerce along all lines to bristle up and wear the smile of prosperity; so, we were called back home where I was put to driving a mule in the Smith mine, half way up the hill from where the old side wheel ferry boat "the Sally McKee" landed her living freight to and from McKeesport. This mine employed from 100 to 120 men at the time and worked 1 horse and 7 mules when the spring or fall run was on. Which meant, when the freshets of spring or fall brought down water from the West Virginia and Maryland mountains sufficient to swell the Monongahela so that the coal boat and barges could be floated with safety down the Ohio. Here I remember an occurrence or happening that should have been mentioned, before our pilgrimage to Sharon; the stores of McKeesport had shut down on credit to the workmen, father and myself tramped over to little sawmill run, the place from which we had last moved, to get work to keep the wolf of want from the door, as the family were reduced to potatoes and salt before he drew any wages he borrowed 50 cents from a friend, a day or two after being there and Sunday saw me tramping back the 14 miles between places with that 50 cents to help appease the family stomachs till pay day where we were working, I was fortunate to get a bite at noon from Mrs. Barner, and acquaintance who lived at a mining place about half way between places; that tramp was done in my bare feet as I had no shoes., at the outbreak of the rebellion it seemed to be the prevailing opinion, that a few old women with their kitchen brooms could go down south and sweep the confederates off the face of the earth; but after the first "bull run" where the "yanks" were made to shamefully "skedaddle" the psychological surety of such a feat being possible faded like the mist before the morning sun. The bull-runs quenched the ardor of recruiting and the draft was resorted to. Father was drafted; Uncle Peter went down with me when he went to be examined and waited in the lobby of the examination office, but he came out with his citizens clothes on, he had had one of his feet hurt in a horse-power when he was a boy. When waiting on him we saw several specimens of fine manhood come out from the ordeal of examination with the regimentals on and a Sargent to conduct them to the barracks. A negro was standing by us and one of the drafted coming out of the office with a Sargent, when he eyed the negro began a volley of oaths about the "damned blacks" as being the cause of all the trouble, and he was still execrating the negro while within hearing. While living on the river as we called our sojourn after coming west, we lived in an old house close by the river bank and the others being all built up on the hillside. Some of the times a heavy spring freshet would leave its mark of muddy water up above the fire grate which was bad for the roaches and crickets. Here in this old house brother Andrew was born December 25th, 1863. I was crushed between a post and a mine car about the end of my first year as a mule driver and from the effects of it was a cripple for 6 weeks; the pelvic bone being fractured. After being able to work again I taught brother Robert the trick of driving and how to keep "turn" among the men; I finally got a "room" and brother Joseph, 5 years younger than I went to work with me. When the river favored the moving of coal, in the spring and fall, and the company for which we worked got their share of trade, the family bank account flourished. One dollar and twenty-five cents per ton for mining, with little Joe and myself loading 4 to 5 ton a day and father the same and Robert two dollars and 50 cents per day for driving, no wonder father thought the English broadcloth none too good for us. We paid our ferry passage by the year for the family and kept a skiff by the door for emergencies; with the skiff father and I often went up the "yoch" hunting partridges or rabbits in the fall and for looking our "night line" during the fishing season; once I took mother 4 miles up the "yoch" to a German herb doctor, with a felon on the index finger of her right hand, many times in succession before he got it mastered. At another time, after having worked in the mine all day, I helped row the "rush" to Pittsburg in the night simply because father missed a bbl. of herring that failed to come by freight with the rest of his bill of goods ordered from Brownlee, the wholesaler, from whom he ordered most of his goods. T'was on a Saturday night and Sunday morning, when coming around the bend below McKeesport Uncle Tom and Geo Penman came along the shore to meet us and relieve a tired boy. The old house in which we lived was just opposite the dark waters of the "yoch" mix with the Mongahela and made the distance over to McKeesport full half a mile, two miles below is a dam and a lock, the water above which is 20 feet or deeper. The houses for miners, some of whom owned their own, made a village strung along the left bank of the river for about 2 miles. McKeesport at that time was a city of 3000 or more; having a foundry, a rope factory, a planeing mill and a grist mill; say nothing of "old vinegars boat house" where he occasionally caught a muskrat stealing his apples and which he "ritvay droon in de raber". In the summer when the weather permitted and a moon lit up the river, many young people in skiffs, some with an accordion, some with a harp or guitar pandered to the lovers of melody and harmony; or perhaps Charley Henderson sat on his porch where the two rivers merged with his flute, to give us "Mary Blane" or "Oh Dear What Can The Matter Be" which, of course, was suggestive of the general trend of affairs. When youth were thus playing with summer pleasures, father taught me the trick of playing on the bagpipes and when Henderson's flute piped at the point I filled the bag and gave him in return "Johnnie Cope" or "Glengarrys March" 'twas among the revel of such surroundings that father tried to teach me the violin; but he was too impatient with stupidity and I fell back on the "Rule of Thumb". When there was a fleet of coal barges happened to lie before the old house in mid-summer, it meant they were to be caulked and Sam Huffman with his men would be over from town to do the job; father would be running his lathe and I would be called upon to perform the horse-power work first with one foot the another to rest my legs alternately when I would prefer to sit on the shore and look at the twist of Sam's wrist as he handled his calking iron gathering up the cakum and building it up in bights sufficient to fill the opening between the plank of the barge. It is a matter of comment that miners in general care to work at nothing else than that of their vocation; father being an exception, took what came first to hand. In the summer of 1864 he sunk a well for the rope factory of McKeesport and another for the planeing mill of the same place. I am doing the circular work with a big wooden roller and its crank on the top of the wall being wary that no morsel escaped from the small barrel. Father became quite chummy with the engineer of the factory, and many Sundays they spent in the woods with their guns and a setter dog while I followed to carry game when they were so fortunate to get any. In that summer, Uncle Peter moved out to pine creek,12 miles from Alleghany City, where 3 of his wife's brothers had small holdings and raised vegetables for the city market--Bob, Jim and Andrew Beveredge, the previous summer Uncle Andrew Burt also Uncle Tom MacArthur went out to ill. To the mines at Gardner and Morria and in the fall of 1864 they followed Dave MacArthur to Kossuth Co., Iowa where they took up homesteads 7 miles N.W. of what in after years became the county seat of that county. I should have said the two Toms followed Dave MacArthur, as Uncle Andrew settled down at Gardner, Ill. for life. In the spring of 1865, father and a small man by the name of James Thompson followed my uncles out there but not being able to secure more than 80 acres in the neighborhood where my uncles settled, they came farther up to the grove of timber known as Armstrong's, an old trapper that sold to Acy call commonly known as "judge". T'was early in the month of June and Mr. Thompson and father must have landed late among the half dozen houses called Algona, and were directed in the direction of where the two Tom's had settled; there were no roads and they had 7 miles of wild sloughy prairie to face. Night and darkness with rain overtook them and presently they found themselves knee deep in water; they backed out and tried another direction to meet no better success; becoming tired of that kind of thing they finally concluded to remain where they were till morning; but standing wet and chilly became monotonous, so they experimented with guessing or calculating the ability of each by having one remain in the same spot and the other walked off 200 or 300 paces, then a call to each other and the off one to walk back the 300 or 300 paces and another call was sent to one another; I have heard father say it was very surprising how wide of their calculations they would sometimes come. When they got tired at that they could talk, but no lying down as the ground was wet and their clothes were wet, so motion in some form or another was their only relief from cold and sleep, till the first glimmer of day outlined their watery surroundings. After looking over the situation in Uncle Tom's neighborhood, they both came up to the grove country where father took up the N.W. quarter sec.,6tqp.98, range 30 in Kossuth Co., Iowa, while Thompson settled on section 1--98--31 in Emmet Co., where he stayed to build himself a house. Father came back and worked for some time on a well for the brewery 2 miles downstream from McKeesport, and in the month of November he took the family out to their first permanent home in the U.S. of America, though we had lived in eight different places and moved eleven times; when father took up his homestead he bought an old yoke of cattle from a man about 2 miles down the creek from the grove by the Cogomen of "ox" hallet; that to distinguish him from his brother "horse" hallet; he left them with MacArthur, and when the family landed at Boone in Boone Co. That being the end of what was then called the Union Pacific RR, MacArthur was there to meet us; father bought a wagon in Boone with the bows and canvas cover on it for $110.00 and our first camp ground was below Fort Dodge. Our second day brought us to the river south of Barney Divines. The third day landed us at "old papa Browns" where we recruited a day and father bought two cows and some chickens from the old man. The 4th day we stopped over a day at the sod house of the two Uncle Tom's. When we started for "the grove", I was assigned to the old ox-team and MacArthur took the family up with his horses, brothers Robert and Joseph leading the cows; the old oxen had not been allowed to graze enough during the summer and though they could graze along in the middle of the old blind military road, that lead from Algona to the south side of Iowa Lake, yet they got no water and were not to be prodded off a very slow gait and I did not have the heart in me to urge the poor brutes; so when a little ways north of "the lone rock" and when darkness was coming on, they lay down, and though urged they refused to try again and I let them lay, lying down myself on a mattress that was in the covered wagon, there was no dreaming for me; the wild ducks squawked, the frogs croaked, and the little bittern "pumped a slough" all strange weird sounds to my ear; and if I had only known it ,but I did not, Robert and Joseph were lying on the ground with their cows tied to trees, on the river brink 5 miles S.W. of the grove. Great heavens! And there we lay in the midst of prairie wilds, that had never been away from the shadow of houses. Father had provided a low log shed for the old oxen and cows near the NE corner of his homestead, but for the want of a house to move the family into, we were privileged to live with Mrs. Thompson until a habitation could be provided. Thompsons was a small log house about 12x14 with a low loft, "Jimmie" himself had gone down to the coal mines in Boone Co. and left "old jean" with father's family consisting of 9 beside father mother and Mrs. Thompson which gave the 12 of us standing room of a little over 3 feet square. When December's first snow had formed a light crust on its top father went down to MacArthur's where some of his stuff had been left to have MacArthur haul it up, when they had nearly reached the Geo. Kenny place about 5 miles from the grove, a snow storm from the NW came on and the wind took off fathers hat, a low crowned, broad brimmed, Quaker affair; he tried to recover it, but the wind would tilt it on its brim and roll it on the snow crust like a lad rolling a hoop. In his haste to recover the hat, he had over heated himself, and when he concluded that the wind "too many" for him he turned to go back, but not being clad for the storm, he resolved to follow the hat come of it what would. The hat became lost to his sight, but he followed on in the direction in which it had gone, trusting to find human life somewhere in his path. When he reached where the river ran to the South, he was down near mud creek where there were some sod-houses on both sides; on pushing his way through the willows that skirted the river on both sides, he ran onto a young woman who was crossing the river from a sod-house on one side to a sod-house on the other. What followed can only be conjectured. Macarthur had not missed him from behind the wagon till nearly to the grove, and since, he came not home to relieve the anxiety there, some of the Demmon and Dundas went along, sure that they would find his body, if they found him at all; instead they found him plodding back nearly where he started after the hat, with his ears protected with a large bandanna. Most of the first settlers of "the grove" settlement on getting started had a good-sized coffee-mill wherewith to grind their corn for house use, as "Johnny cake" for some years, was the kitchen staple. George Kenny who lived by the creek about a mile west of where father lost his hat, sent a boy who was about 13 years of age, down through the prairie to a smith, with his mill that needed fixing. The smith lived about 2 miles NW of old man Riehpauf's. The lad was but poorly clad, and because the broken mill, had had but little to eat, and trusting, to the charity and good sense of the smith, begged not but got his mill fixed and started home but never reached there but was found dead a mile and a half from home. For several years a rail-pen could be seen in the field north of the house that marked the spot where the poor lad was buried. Such happenings put the early settlers wise to the rigors of NW Iowa climate, besides leaving a scar on the memory of the Kenny family never to be erased. In the case of my father, I have often thought he was led to that little sod settlement by the astute sagacity of some watch dog, though I never heard him mention such guidance; and I shudder, even now, when I think of the family situation, had he missed the only site of a settlement in his path for 20 miles; he, having walked 6 or 7 miles to those little sod dwellings with no knowledge whatever of them. While in with Mrs. Thompson, the family went thru their first siege in a "blizzard" being housed for two days in that small log house while their cows and oxen stood in the low shed over in Kossuth Co. 3/4 mile away, where they got no care till the third day. Early in 1872 Dave MacArthur left for Oregon and Uncle Peter Burt followed him there, in 1873. MacArthur was a well-meaning "bag of wind" without philosophic observation, consequently his letters back to friends and others, was to the effect that he had found a veritable "garden of Eden" where flowers and fern grew without being potted, and where the atmosphere is never choked with icicles. In 1874, father packed his carpet bag and gave Uncle Peter, who had settled alongside his son-in law near Oregon city, a surprise, in august, when the potatoes were struggling for a foot hold among the fern. After getting his eyes adjusted to the pitch of the mountains and clearing his head of MacArthur wind-- that was breezy around Oregon city- he took to the hay and harvest fields up the Willamette River; but soon tiring of that he gravitated to Coos Bay where he worked in the coal mines till the fall of 1875 then coming back as far as Smokey Hollow to the Craig mine; from which place he wrote me. It was the 25th of January 1875 the 125th anniversary of Robert Burns that I had the pleasure of playing the bagpipes for the Caledonia Club of Des Moines; it sure gave me a more clear, wider and significant mental vision of the Ayrshire plowman than I had been used to holding. The "pipes" that I used on that occasion were made by father in Scotland; all save the "chanter" that he traded for with a piper on board the vessel in which we crossed the Atlantic. The party from whom father got the "chanter" claimed that it was one that was picked up on the battlefield at Waterloo; but though it is old looking and well worn, I have my doubts of any person parting with such a relic. Fathers object in writing to me at Moingona was to have me go up the Smokey Hollow below Fort Dodge and work with him at Craig mine. We worked there part of the winter but toward spring we worked for Geo. Penman halfway up the hollow on the Dan Hackenburdg place, and while at that place brother Joseph was with us. The summer of 1876 was spent hauling stone out of the prairie for a cellar and building a frame house on father's homestead, the lumber being hauled from Algona; being left with the frame work I got some of my first lessons in building wood-work. Dan Neiling from Algona plastered the downstairs and gave me lessons in handling a plasterer's trowel and I did the up-stairs. In the early spring of 1877 on Feb 25th, Miss Annie E. Davis of Algona and this humble servant, were united in wedlock and lived in father's house until the spring of 79 when we went to our own little shanty in the SE corner of Emmet, Co. where all but our first child, Ethel, were born. There we toiled and suffered, plowed and planted and built up a home to be proud of.