MEETINGS
Meeting dates for next three meetings: February 10, March 10 and April 14. Time: 7:00 p.m. Place: The Community Room at Kings Restaurant in Sarver. Have a snack, a beverage or dinner. Please come, and bring a friend who might like to join. Find out what is happening at our Society. May through September, meetings will be at the Mill.
NEXT NEWSLETTER
The deadline for articles for the next Newsletter is March 31. We appreciate articles recently shared with us and would like to have more. We are always open to content suggestions. Contact Carol.
WEB SITE
Go to www.fahs-pa.org and check it out. Previous newsletters have been posted and more links have been added. Merchandise is listed for sale. Frank is doing a great job – tell him so at the next meeting:
E-MAIL
Regarding Rod Chapman’s “Freeport Christmas in the Past”, Eric Armstrong writes us from Perkasie, Pa.
“I enjoyed the article and would like to add one detail regarding the Christmas Trees. There was one year (maybe more) where the community placed two trees with all gold lights in front of Dr. McLaughton’s office on High Street and Dr. Rogers’ office on Market St. The trees were placed to honor the two physicians for over 50 years of service to the community. My father was one of the volunteers who erected the trees and we always looked forward to the first night of “Light Up” as Rod described.” Thanks, Eric.
JAMES LEE FISHER
James was born August 14, 1895, in Carnegie, Pa., to George Elmer and Anna Martha Goff Fisher. George was a telegraph operator on the Pennsylvania Railroad. A job change when James was 8 brought the family to Freeport to live for a few years. James went on to become a prolific writer and a beloved general practitioner. He was very much interested in history and we have been given permission to include the following excerpt from “This One is on Me, The Memoirs of Dr Lee Fisher, 1895-1987.” This article is from the Fisher family archive collection, in the care of Eric T. and Elizabeth Lee Fisher Davis.
Chapter II – Freeport, Pennsylvania
So we moved to Freeport, Pennsylvania, up the Allegheny, 38 miles from Pittsburgh. It was a small town and we liked it there. We lived in a little house up on the hill on Washington St. on the edge of town where we had apple trees and peach trees, a well with a bucket and windlass, and the most delicious water you ever tasted. Down the walk a sensible distance (50 ft.) from the dug well was the privy, a 2-holer where flies buzzed lazily in the summer. In the winter it was not so inviting, so chambers were kept under the beds and night time would often find me on my knees by the bed for other purposes than prayers although they were not neglected.
A leafy back yard garden in Freeport, Pennsylvania, ca. 1904 note the large tent upper right corner).
Strange to say, we were more advanced there in some ways than in Carnegie with its bathroom. We had gaslights and a gas stove in the kitchen. We bought an Edison phonograph with a big morning glory horn and listened to Collins and Harlan sing “Bake Dat Chicken Pie” and “The Preacher and the Bear”. We bathed in a washtub on Saturday night in front of the kitchen stove and wore long woolen underwear and felt boots in winter.
Up above us on the hill was the McCue farm where I went every day to get the milk. They had a big swing on a huge oak tree on the hillside and there were seldom less than 3 boys on it at a time swinging out in space and yelling to make it go higher. There was a spring there, which fed two ponds where we skated in the winter and if we fell in when the ice was thin, we ran home to get warm in the kitchen and put on some dry clothes.
George Elmer Fisher and James Lee Fisher at McCue's Spring.
It was lovely there in the summer. On my 10th birthday my brother gave me a baseball and a new fielder’s glove. Each of them cost a quarter and they were tops. He was a telegraph operator then at 19 years of age on the Pennsylvania Railroad making $50 a month and money was no object. The backyard was full of pets which mother cared for most of the time because he was working. I brought a stray black dog home one day and Mother threw a pan of water on him to chase him away. He was not completely discouraged by that and hung around and soon she was feeding him scraps from the table and he was one of the family. He had a kennel filled with straw out in the woodshed and I used to crawl in there and talk to him. We understood each other perfectly. No one can tell me that dogs can’t talk. They just don’t use our language.
James Lee Fisher and his cousin Evelyn Zentmyer Goff and a cage full of bunnies, Freeport, ca. 1904.
Father had a great deal of trouble with his bile while we lived in Freeport. The spells usually came on Sunday morning after he had been down to Pittsburgh on Saturday night. He would have violent pains in the abdomen with vomiting. Mother would send me down town to fetch the doctor. I would find him and go over to the livery stable and wait while they hitched up his horse so I could ride out to the house with him. The doctor said father’s bile was too thick and gave him medicine and he would be out to work Monday. He took me with him several times to Pittsburgh and taught me to eat oysters on the half-shell.
We had no telephone or electricity but when I used to visit my cousin, they had a telephone and when it would ring they used to let me listen. It was a party line and their ring was one long and two short but when it rang everybody on the line listened and the conversations were very interesting. It was a way of obtaining news about births and deaths and trouble and it made greater cohesion in the neighborhood.
I had my first automobile ride in Freeport in 1905. It was a red roadster with 2 cylinders and when we were having a church lawn festival he brought it around and let everyone have a ride for 10 cents. It was thrilling. We persuaded my Mother to get in the car but when he cranked up the motor she hopped out. Nobody was going to put anything over on her, she said.
It was a great adventure to take the train to Pittsburgh for the day. The bustle and confusion of the traffic was exciting for a small-town boy. One had to be careful at crossings not to be knocked down and run over by the big horses pulling drays and beer wagons. Occasionally an automobile could be seen, but not often. It was standard procedure to go to Boggs & Buhl in Allegheny (now the North Side) for school clothes; then Kaufmanns for lunch (always a hot roast beef sandwich); then in the afternoon I would have an ice cream soda at a drug store for 5 cents which was the highlight of the day.
We lived in Freeport about 3 years and then Father announced that we were leaving to go to New Castle. I shall never forget that moving. All the crating and packing was done by ourselves. You didn’t call a mover in those days, you packed everything yourself, then hired a man with a horse and wagon to haul the stuff to the freight station. Father was working in New Castle and Mother did all the packing and cried most of the time. We sold off George’s pets, gave away our big tent, threw away countless old items which would now be priceless antiques and said goodbye to the Kelly’s, the Mosses, and the McCues. My dog went along, riding in the baggage car. I have had a horror of moving ever since. My mother counted up in her later years that she had moved 50 times in her married life and every time we moved my antipathy increased.
We are extremely grateful to Eric T. and Elizabeth Lee Fisher Davis for granting us permission to include the Freeport chapter from the memoirs. If you would like to know more about the life and times of James Lee Fisher check: http://www.iwaynet.net/~lsci/Panhandle/Home.html
Note: The pictures were taken by James’ father, George, who was quite a photographer. At one point he bought a camera for $60 – a large sum in those days and two month’s pay. He did his own developing. The pictures are amazingly sharp.
TIDBITS IN TIME
Barbados is the only foreign country that President Washington visited in his lifetime, making the George Washington House there the only residence outside the United States lived in by America’s first president. Barbados has begun a $3.2 million restoration of the historic home. The house, built around 1719 by William Cogan, has survived in relatively good condition, despite varied uses throughout its 285-year history. Washington rented the house when he was 19, with his half brother. It took them 6 weeks to make the trip from the Potomac. They paid rent of $75 a month “exclusive of liquor & washing.”
EDWARD FITZ-RANDOLPH
His Frontier Adventures and Visit to Freeport in 1794
By Patrick Collar
The following information was taken from a document written in Meadeville, Crawford Co., Pa., by Alfred Huidekoper, on August 1, 1846. He was asked at that time to write a history as to what he knew of the beginnings of Crawford Co. My Fitz-Randolph ancestors originally came from Colonial Massachusetts, but in 1789 came from their home in New Jersey and decided to go and settle in the untamed wilderness of northwestern PA. The party of settlers included Frederick Baum, Darius Meade, his sons David and John Meade (the family for whom Meadeville was named) and two brothers – Robert Fitz-Randolph and Taylor Fitz-Randolph. Both Fitz-Randolph families were still growing at this time. It would be out here in the French Creek region (Meadville area) where the rest of their children would be born as well as the other settlers’ families.
“Of the family of Robert Fitz-Randolph, 3 sons, viz., Taylor, Esaac, and Edward, still survive (1846). The latter, Edward, who was 17 years of age when he first moved west, was a volunteer in the army in the year 1791 and did duty at Franklin from April 1 to July 1. He then went to Pittsburgh, and in the spring of 1792, entered the service of the United States, in transporting provisions from Pittsburgh to Franklin. During this year, he and Daniel Ransom were sent by the government to build a mill for (Chief) Cornplanter at Tinneshantago. Ransom, who was a millwright, for some reason did not build the mill, and after remaining at Cornplanter’s village for 4 months, Edward Fitz-Randolph returned to his former occupation of transporting provisions. During the year 1793 he carried a part of the time to Franklin, and a portion of the season to Meadville, for Ensign Bond. In September of 1793 he was employed by Major Isaac Craig, to take charge of a boat loaded with ammunition, under Colonel Clark, to Cincinnati; the latter being on his way to join General (Anthony) Wayne. In December 1793, Edward Fitz-Randolph returned to Pittsburgh, and from thence went to Meadville. On May 1, 1794, he again descended to Pittsburgh on a raft of boards from Mead’s mill. At Freeport, then called Buffalo station, they were hailed from shore (off of the raft) by the officers at the blockhouse, and took on board William Cousins, who had been wounded in his hip by the Indians, near the mouth of the Kiskeminetas Creek (River). (Edward Fitz-Randolph was able to rescue William Cousins from being attacked more by rescuing him, while passing the mouth of the Kiski River). A canoe had gone (by) just before, bearing the body of John Carter, killed by the Indians, and Peter Kintner, wounded in the arm (these two men were with Cousins).
They were taken to their former home, about 6 miles above Pittsburgh. Edward Fitz-Randolph, was employed by General John Wilkins, to go as an advance guard for Major Denny, from Pittsburgh to Waterford, a distance of 120 miles. At Meadville, Edward Fitz-Randolph became sick, and his brother, James Fitz-Randolph, conducted Major Denny from thence to Waterford. Having returned to Pittsburgh, Edward Fitz-Randolph, about July 1, 1794, fell in with Captain John Heath, on his way with troops to Franklin, and they kept in company with their canoes. The party celebrated the Fourth of July at Catfish Falls (about 4 miles above the Great Western Iron Works), feasting themselves upon a saddle of venison, and a big pike which they had captured in the river.
About the first of August (1794), a soldier having been killed by the Indians, near Franklin, Captain Heath wrote to Robert Fitz-Randolph (Edward’s father), for some men competent to act as spies. He recommended Luke Hill, John Wentworth, John Baum, and Edward Fitz-Randolph. Edward Fitz-Randolph, engaged in this service, and served from the beginning of August to the beginning of September as a spy, and to carrying expresses from Waterford to Pittsburgh. His only roads were Indian paths, and at night he bivouacked with no other protection than his blanket. In August 1795, Edward and his brother, Taylor Fitz-Randolph, were employed by Major Isaac Craig to go to Erie as teamsters, to help build the fort. Robert Randolph, their father, furnished three yoke, and Cornelius Van Horn one yoke of oxen for the purpose. Edward and Taylor Fitz-Randolph worked at Erie until November when they returned to Meadville. In 1797, Edward Fitz-Randolph married Benjamin Wilson’s daughter, Elizabeth Wilson, and settled on the farm where he now resides. In 1812, he was for 3 days at Erie with the troops, and went to Buffalo as teamster for the commissary.”
Thanks, Patrick, for sharing this family history with us.
THANKS COUNCIL!!
The Historical Society sends a huge thanks to Freeport Council for their generation donation.
WHAT’S HAPPENING
The Mill will be open on the 4th Saturday of each month, May through September, from 11 to 4. The third Saturday of May will be clean up day. Have an hour or two or three with nothing to do? We can fill it. Time will be included in next newsletter.
AND FINALLY
Check out www.mickeysmill.org – this brand new web site is under construction by Gay Revi, a Freeport graduate and former teacher in the Freeport Area School District. Look at it from time to time for additions.