Linda, Carnahan Run is in Armstrong Co and flows into the Kiskiminetas River (Kiski for short) between Riverview and Leechburg. Boiling Spring Church, I believe, is near the community of Spring Church about 10 miles away. If you try MapQuest, it shows Carnahan Run originates near Spring Church (probably at Boiling Spring). I will email the map to you. BTW, I spend many a summer wading and swimming in Carnahan Run. At 12:00 AM 12/19/03, you wrote: >From: "Hansen" <hansen8@burgoyne.com> >To: PAARMSTR-L@rootsweb.com >Subject: Re: [PAARMSTR-L] Boiling Springs > >Thanks Beth - I am trying to trace my James Carnahan - if I look on a map - >I think Carnahan Run is near there, too. I am looking at James Carnahan and >the Simpson and Dickson families - all their properties were supposed to >adjoin in 1780. Thank you for helping me pinpoint the location. Linda

Does anyone have info about Jonathan WILDS and his wife Catherine Myers? They had a daughter, Elizabeth, in Armstrong county in 1844. Thanks to all, Michelle -

Thanks Beth - I am trying to trace my James Carnahan - if I look on a map - I think Carnahan Run is near there, too. I am looking at James Carnahan and the Simpson and Dickson families - all their properties were supposed to adjoin in 1780. Thank you for helping me pinpoint the location. Linda ----- Original Message ----- From: "Beth Caporali" <qoe@kiski.net> To: <PAARMSTR-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003 9:24 PM Subject: Re: [PAARMSTR-L] Boiling Springs > Linda, > > There is a Boiling Springs Presbyterian Church in Kiskiminetas Twp., Armstrong Co. I hear there was actually a "boiling spring" there long ago, hence the name. > > Beth > > > > > ==== PAARMSTR Mailing List ==== >

Linda, There is a Boiling Springs Presbyterian Church in Kiskiminetas Twp., Armstrong Co. I hear there was actually a "boiling spring" there long ago, hence the name. Beth

I have an old Westmoreland County deed (1780) that mentions Boyling Springs. I believe that it is or used to be in what is now Armstrong County - does anyone know where Boiling Springs is? Thanks - Linda Hansen

Thanks so much for sharing the Wherry Reminiscences with us. There are a real treasure and it is wonderful that you have shared them with others! Happy Holidays! Eileen Jenkins http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/j/e/n/Eileen-M-Jenkins http://www.gencircles.com/users/jenkins/

Tom, Thanks for sharing such a treasure. It has inspired me to get my 94 year old aunt to write some things about her life. She usually writes poetry but this would give her something different to do. She is the only living sibling left in her family. Thanks again Nancy M.

Oops. I had to make some corrections, and a new link is necessary: http://www.genealogy.com/users/c/h/a/Tom-Chapman-/FILE/0049page.html

Thank you for posting the historical writings over the past few days. Being interested in history, and especially, the history of "common" people., I've been wanting to read something related to "Christmas past", and you have provided just what I was looking for. Thanks again. Bernadette

That concludes the writings of J.N. Wherry and his son, Oscar Mabon Wherry. There is a little bit more from sister Helen, but my fingers are too sore to continue. I've combined both documents and placed them online at: http://www.genealogy.com/users/c/h/a/Tom-Chapman-/FILE/0049page.html Thanks again to the Wherry family for these treasures, and to descendant Barbara Britt for bringing them to light. (Barbara - this transcription is my way of saying "Thanks!")

Grandmother lived at our house from the time she was 83 until she died at 93. Helen and I were pretty small, and we loved to tease her. I would pretend that I was slapping Helen, and she would get up out of her chair and take after me, saying, "You mustn't hurt little Ailene," and this was quite a lark for us. She would sit and look at a fashion book by the hour. Then she would say, "I see by the fashions they are wearing such and such styles." Once she sewed a number of ribbon bows on her plain black silk "Sunday" dress, but the family wouldn't let her go to church with them on. She was about fifty years ahead of her generation as far as styles were concerned. However, the custom of her generation was very fixed on apparel. None of her children could remember when she didn't wear a white cap, so perhaps she had to don it when she married. I remember seeing pictures of Martha Washington with a cap on. After she was a widow, the caps were black. They were fashioned like a baby's bonnet and covered with black net and lace gathered onto the foundation. A milliner in Indiana made them. They tied under her chin, and she never appeared without her cap on. I remember my father telling about Uncle Jim. When he was a young man and was out rather late at night, he came home and put his horse away in his stall and thought he should get him some hay. Now in those days we seemed to develop a second sight that stood us in good stead at night. They didn't have flashlights and seldom would light a candle or lantern. Uncle Jim proceeded to crawl up into the haymow in the dark with a pitchfork. As he started to get the hay he jabbed his fork into an Italian, who let out the awfullest yell, accompanied by several others. He thought he had wakened up all Italy. He didn't know that in the evening some Italians had come along and asked his father if they could sleep in the haymow, which he had permitted, with the above results. There were lots of tramps in those days, who bummed their food as they went along. One approached my father in the field and asked him if he knew where he could get something to eat as he hadn't eaten since day before yesterday in the afternoon. Daddy sent him to the house, and Bess and Helen filled him up. He went up to the store in South Bend and said he hadn't had anything to eat since day before yesterday in the afternoon. They gave him crackers and cheese, and he went on to Montgomery's and told them the same story, and they fed him. He must have had as many stomachs as a cow. One thing we were scared of as children was gypsies. I can remember Helen and I hiding in the railfence corner and watching a clan of them go by our house. One day there was a clan went past and crossed the fording. Mother was over at the lane looking for a turkey nest, and after they went by quite a while, a boy came along riding a horse, and she said, "Aren't you afraid of the Gypsies?" and he said, "I'm one of them." Heilselmans lived near our home, and they placed their "Rest Room," or in those days what was called a privy, on the edge of a hill. One day Lizzie went out to meditate for a while, and it happened to be a very windy day, and all at once the privy with Lizzie in it rolled to the foot of the hill, which was about one hundred and fifty feet away. The only discomfort she had was that her meditations were interrupted and she had a sprained thumb. I don't recall whether they rebuilt it on the hill or at the bottom, but that would be a little too far in case of emergency. When my father bought out Mr. Allshouse to start to huckster to Pittsburgh, he got wagons, sled, and a team of horses named Harry and George. They were inseparable. If you took one out of the barn without the other, they fussed and pawed until the other was returned. One night they took George and another horse and went to West Lebanon to some meeting and left Harry. When they came home, the stable was full of steam and they found old Harry crumpled up in the stall with his neck broken. He had hung himself and died of a broken neck and broken heart. It was a good example of Damon and Pythias. In closing I would like to say that I think we were raised in a wonderful age. We didn't have the luxuries of life, but we had a good childhood and never went hungry. By the standards of today we would have been classed as a lower bracket family, but I am not sure that the standards we class someone in today are solid standards. We judged a person in those days for what he was, not how much money he represented. I think before it is all over, we will have to get back to judging a man for what he is and what he stands for. The poet has said, "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e're gave, Awaits alike the inevitable hour, The paths of glory lead but to the grave." So ends an era.

Before Grandfather Wherry married and settled down to farming, he was a stone mason and built bridges, dams and canals in the days before the era of railroads. He built either a dam or a bridge at Harper's Ferry and had quite an experience. In those days they had to use horses for all their work. Once a man came to him with a nice looking team of horses and he bought them. They proved to have Glanders ( an incurable disease of horses) and polluted the other horses he had bought or hired, I think 12 teams in all. He had to shoot all the horses, burn the harness and barns. He would have been broke, but for a planter that loaned him his horses and slaves to finish the contract, for which he was ever grateful. In later years he went into Pittsburgh and was shaved by one of these freed slaves. He also built the toe path at Tunnelton, and there he met his future wife, Sarah Nesbit. A "toe path" ran along the side of a canal for the horses to walk on and pull the boats in the canal. When we asked Grandmother if she wasn't afraid he would forget her, as they were engaged ten years, she said, "Well, my patience, we had to wait until we had a house to live in." There were several log cabins on the three hundred acres he eventually bought, but he didn't marry until he had built himself an eight-room brick house. The bricks for his house and the one he built twenty years later that we lived in were burnt below our barn. There was clay suitable on the farm. Grandmother lived at our house from the time she was 83 until she died at 93. Helen and I were pretty small, and we loved to tease her. I would pretend that I was slapping Helen, and she would get up out of her chair and take after me, saying, "You mustn't hurt little Ailene," and this was quite a lark for us. She would sit and look at a fashion book by the hour. Then she would say, "I see by the fashions they are wearing such and such styles." Once she sewed a number of ribbon bows on her plain black silk "Sunday" dress, but the family wouldn't let her go to church with them on. She was about fifty years ahead of her generation as far as styles were concerned. However, the custom of her generation was very fixed on apparel. None of her children could remember when she didn't wear a white cap, so perhaps she had to don it when she married. I remember seeing pictures of Martha Washington with a cap on. After she was a widow, the caps were black. They were fashioned like a baby's bonnet and covered with black net and lace gathered onto the foundation. A milliner in Indiana made them. They tied under her chin, and she never appeared without her cap on.

The soil in the early days contained all the elements necessary for growing crops, but as years of use depleted the lime content, the farmers burned their own lime. This was quite a complicated task and required some hard work. We were lucky to have lime about two miles from our home in abundance. My father and I would go down to the creek at Coleman's where the water had bared the rock along the bank often ten feet thick. We would drill holes and shoot the rock loose with dynamite, and then with drag sled haul it up the bank to be hauled home in winter sledding. Then came the building of the kiln. First you would assemble logs for the sides and pace them about fifteen feet apart and make the kiln about thirty feet long. Between these logs you would place old rails or any old timber. Then this was covered with straw and two chimneys were built. After this you covered the straw with slack coal and then a layer of limestone and then a layer of slack, always keeping the small pieces for the outside and throwing the larger ones into the middle. The sides were slanted up until it became narrow at the top. Then you dropped fire down the chimneys to ignite the wood at the bottom. A kiln would burn for ten to fifteen days, and what an odor it made. You always had to throw ground on to keep the heat in, and at last it looked like an oven. When the rains came, the lime would slake, and a thousand bushel kiln would make about 2,500 bushels of lime. The farmer hauled this out on the fields with a wagon and scattered it with a shovel. Putting it on this heavy you could see the difference for years. Near our home, at Girty, they had a wonderful clay deposit, and Mr. McNeese and George Anderson had a pottery. They furnished the canning jars, jugs, and made water tile for wells and drainage. We have some of these to this day. Another small industry was at Barrel Valley, a settlement to which it gave its name. They made barrels and sold them al over the country. I cannot describe this as I never saw them make them. They had some real characters in this valley. One was Jack Painter, and he was a character. People would report about seeing a ghost traveling through the woods. It became as famous in this country as Ichabod Crane's headless horseman. It turned out to be Jack Painter scaring the people with a sheet over him. He was protecting his bee tree that he wanted to cut to get the honey. The bees would swarm in a hollow tree and store up honey. Jack Painter was telling a school teacher that stayed there that he never hit his wife but once. He said, "I was catechising (chastising) the children and she interfered, and I hit her a hell of a lick." Another old person in the valley was old Mrs. Houston, who bought her casket and had it under her bed. She thought it was a waste to not have it useful, so she kept her dried apples, or "snits," in the coffin. In another place an old fellow died, and in those days they had wakes, when neighbors came and sat up with the corpse. Several men came in to take their turn and had whiskey with them. In the night they got well lubricated and took the corpse out of the coffin and stood it in the corner. They said, "Andy, will you trade shoes?" Of course, they didn't get an answer, so they said, "Silence gives consent," and exchanged shoes. When the people got up in the morning they found Andy standing in the corner with the old shoes on his feet. My grandfather Wherry was boarding at a place where the old lady was terribly crippled up with arthritis and her legs were drawn up. When she died they weighted her legs down with large stones. During the wake a fist fight developed, the coffin was jarred, and the corpse sat up suddenly when the stones fell off. The fellows were so badly scared, they ran out of the house, and being somewhat drunk they fell into a pond, and Grandfather and the old lady's son had to fish them out.

(This is a good passage for me because it contains a colorful portrait of my ancestor George Rupert and his son Ralston.) We had Literary Societies and would meet twice a month at the school house and always had a debate. Oh, we settled lots of the world problems at these societies. One night they were busy debating when an old fellow jumped to his feet and said, "A thought just now struck me." He stood there for a while and then said, "And it now just left me," and then sat down. We had an old shoemaker by the name of Rupert that lived not far from our home. He made all the fine boots and calf skin shoes for the neighborhood, and most of the leather was tanned at my father's tannery. He couldn't read or write so had his own system of keeping track of the different pairs of boots or shoes. William Wilson brought a pair of boots to be mended, so he placed them in a section that he had set off in compartments, and one day he sent his son, Raul, to get them for him. Raul looked them all over and said he couldn't find "William Wilson." The old gentleman was greatly provoked and jumped up from his cobbler's bench and got them himself, saying "How can you be so dumb? Can't you see "We" for William and "We" for Wilson? The old people were very friendly and hospitable people. When about ten years old, I would take my sister, Clara, to her teacher of shorthand and typing at night to the McCandless home, which was about two miles away. While Clara took her lesson, I was entertained by the old lady McCandless. She would sit and talk to me as though I were a grown man and told me many a weird tale. She had a brother, Philip Frantz, who lived on an adjoining farm and was often there. As they talked they unconsciously would swear, not even realizing that they did. One day Mrs. McCandless must have gotten a little conscience stricken and said to Philip, "We must quit this damn swearing," and Philip said, "By God, Mary, we must."

There were three churches near. They were served by Dutch preachers, and some of them were characters. We young boys would line up on the back and look for something to amuse us and often were rewarded. I often wonder whether I went to church from a religious motive or to be entertained. One old preacher by the name of Gumbert would have a chaw of tobacco in his mouth when he was preaching. I remember once while he was preaching he got too much saliva in his mouth, so he opened the window that back of the pulpit and spat out the window, closed it and went on preaching as if nothing had happened. Then there was old Mr. Isaac Smith, who always came in late and sat on the first pew at the side of the church. About the time the preacher was getting warmed up in his sermon, Isaac would let out about three sneezes and then go and spit out a little hole in the broken stained glass window. One old preacher had been raised in the valley but preached in Somerset County, and they would have him preach when he was back on a visit. I remember once he took his text from Revelations and said, "I am going to preach from Revelations. I don't know much about them. I don't think anybody does." So he proceeded to preach a sermon on them anyway. Once the same preacher was conducting a funeral service over the body of a young man who had gone away from home and led a wild life, died, and the body was brought back for burial. He started by saying, "As a tree falleth, so it lieth. That is all I have to say about that." The he proceeded to preach a sermon. He wasn't going to send him to either place. Then a few miles away there was a Methodist Church made up of German descendants, the same as our Reformed or Lutheran at home. One night they were taking up a collection for some cause and one would get up and subscribe on dollar, another two, so one old fellow by the name of Andy Rupert jumped to his feet and yelled out, Five dollars for Andy Rupert, by Gad!" These old characters had their own way of describing some incident that happened. One morning a neighbor went to call on Eph Rupert and he had had a bad misfortune. His dog had died. So this is the way he described it: "I went out to the barn in the morning to do my chores, and there was little Rover sitting up lying down deader than hell." We had Literary Societies and would meet twice a month at the school house and always had a debate. Oh, we settled lots of the world problems at these societies. One night they were busy debating when an old fellow jumped to his feet and said, "A thought just now struck me." He stood there for awhile and then said, "And it now just left me," and then sat down.

The people liked to read when they had access to reading material. When I got old enough to teach I put in a library in the three schools I taught. They would have money in the treasury from the sale of box socials or spelling bees. So I would take the money and go to Indiana, and Bert Russell who worked in Hall's Book Store would pick me out a nice variety of books, sixty or seventy dollars' worth, and I would number and list them. Then the children would take home the ones they liked to read and their mothers would not have had the opportunity otherwise. It was one of the most satisfactory parts of my teaching as I look back on it today. Then the Wherry family got the benefit of al those books, and we were quite a reading family. The last winter I spent at South Bend was spent teaching the South Bend school. Near the end of the term we decided to put on a "really big show," drawing from the community as well as the school children. We had two short plays, solos, duets, and even a minstrel show and tap dancing recruited from Idaho. We didn't make much money as the admission was 10 and 20 cents, but had a lot of fun, and it was so well received that we were invited to put the show on in the West Lebanon Hall. I put the board seats around our wagon bed to make a tally-ho to haul as many as possible, and the rest went in buggies. Alvie Hanna drove the four horses hitched to the wagon, and had managed to resurrect an antique tall black silk hat to wear. We practiced a little while to get used to the "acoustics" but soon repaired to the hotel to make merry and then partake of a good dinner - paid for out of the prospective profits. As there were 26 of us at the dinner, it pretty well depleted the treasury.

Winter brought its hardships and pleasures. We prepared the buildings as much as we could for winter storms and covered all cellar windows with straw. The cattle had to be watered at the watering trough and usually the ice on top had to be chopped with an ice pick to get to the water. But the hardships were offset by the pleasures of winter. Snow meant bobsled riding, and ice on the creek meant skating. The dam made a wonderful place to skate. We would build a fire and skate, then come back and congregate around the fire. Sometimes there would be as many as fifty skating. They would walk from West Lebanon and Girty, boys and girls, and skate until ten, then all were off for home. The young people would get up a sled load, and some farmer would donate a team (mostly my father) and off to some home for taffy pulling or to play Charades or Skip to My Lou. Everyone had a good time and little money spent. The two local churches were German Reformed and German Lutheran, and these folk had brought the Christmas tree habit from Germany. One of other of the churches always had a tall fir tree towering to the ceiling and covered with real candles, which were lighted with a candle tied to the end of a long pole. They always put on a program of Christmas carols, and we attended all of them. Before the program began the sexton lighted the up the tree and what a thrilling sight that was, as we never had one at home. With such a big family, we would have had no room for it. Presents were taken for the children, and after the end of the program, they were distributed by Santa Claus (usually Will Shutte), who appeared from a cardboard chimney. How exciting to have your name read out for a gift. They had a lot of real good singers in those days, and I think there was more singing in groups than today. Then there was the cutting of ice and filling of ice houses. At first they cut the ice by hand with a crosscut saw, then later we had an ice cutter hauled by a horse. The ice was often as thick as two feet above the dam. We could drive the horses onto the ice and load the sled, often filling the ice house in one day. The ice house was built with double walls with sawdust between, then the ice blocks were packed in sawdust. As the ice house got emptier in the summer, it got to be more of a chore to dig out the blocks, so we located them by pushing a post digger down through the sawdust until we struck ice.

WHat info do you have on Elizabeth KING? Michelle -----Original Message----- From: ANDY ROWE <andyrowe@foothill.net> To: PAARMSTR-L@rootsweb.com <PAARMSTR-L@rootsweb.com> Date: Saturday, December 13, 2003 2:23 AM Subject: Re: [PAARMSTR-L] Jonathan Wiles & family >ADAM MYERS AND ELIZABETH FENNEL. INFO FROM NANCY TYERS AND JOHN CALDWELL. > ANDY ROWE >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Jim" <jgw@direcway.com> >To: <PAARMSTR-L@rootsweb.com> >Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 8:32 PM >Subject: Re: [PAARMSTR-L] Jonathan Wiles & family > > >> >> --Boundary_(ID_/d3sSJA1VOXsnpYTuIgHnQ) >> Content-type: text/plain; x-avg-checked=avg-ok-27C37282; charset=us-ascii; >> format=flowed >> Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT >> >> At 08:08 PM 12/12/2003, you wrote: >> >Looking for info on Jonathan Wiles and family. Think his wife might be >Mary >> >Myers He definately had a daughter - Elizabeth. Elizabeth was born in >> >Armstrong County in 1844(?) >> >> Hi Michelle, >> >> I don't have much on Jonathan and his family but his parents were John >> WILES and Elizabeth KING. I have more on these two and John parents if you >> are interested. >> >> Do you know who Mary MYERS parents were? >> >> Jim >> >> --Boundary_(ID_/d3sSJA1VOXsnpYTuIgHnQ)-- >> >> >> ==== PAARMSTR Mailing List ==== >> >> >> >> > > >==== PAARMSTR Mailing List ==== > > >

Is there a complete listing for Oak Grove cemetery? If so, how can I access it? Thanks, Michelle

Where are they buried? Children's names? town? Jonathan Wiles married Mary Myers they had a daughter Elizabeth who married Patrick Dwyer. Patrick and Elizabeth are my gg-grandparents. Michelle -----Original Message----- From: ANDY ROWE <andyrowe@foothill.net> To: PAARMSTR-L@rootsweb.com <PAARMSTR-L@rootsweb.com> Date: Saturday, December 13, 2003 5:02 PM Subject: Re: [PAARMSTR-L] Jonathan Wiles & family >YES. ADAM: 1788-1865 > ELIZABETH: 1791-1874 > THEY WERE MARRIED IN 1812. THEY HAD 8 CHILDREN. > MY CONNECTION IS VERY DISTANT. > WOULD BE INTERESTED IN WHAT YOU HAVE. > ANDY > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Bear den" <bearden5@usachoice.net> >To: <PAARMSTR-L@rootsweb.com> >Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003 4:50 AM >Subject: Re: [PAARMSTR-L] Jonathan Wiles & family > > >> So Mary Myers' parents are Adam Myers & Elizabeth Fennel , right? Do you >> have any dates/locations/places of burial? Are you related? >> >> >> thanks, >> Michelle >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: ANDY ROWE <andyrowe@foothill.net> >> To: PAARMSTR-L@rootsweb.com <PAARMSTR-L@rootsweb.com> >> Date: Saturday, December 13, 2003 2:23 AM >> Subject: Re: [PAARMSTR-L] Jonathan Wiles & family >> >> >> >ADAM MYERS AND ELIZABETH FENNEL. INFO FROM NANCY TYERS AND JOHN CALDWELL. >> > ANDY ROWE >> >----- Original Message ----- >> >From: "Jim" <jgw@direcway.com> >> >To: <PAARMSTR-L@rootsweb.com> >> >Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 8:32 PM >> >Subject: Re: [PAARMSTR-L] Jonathan Wiles & family >> > >> > >> >> >> >> --Boundary_(ID_/d3sSJA1VOXsnpYTuIgHnQ) >> >> Content-type: text/plain; x-avg-checked=avg-ok-27C37282; >> charset=us-ascii; >> >> format=flowed >> >> Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT >> >> >> >> At 08:08 PM 12/12/2003, you wrote: >> >> >Looking for info on Jonathan Wiles and family. Think his wife might >be >> >Mary >> >> >Myers He definately had a daughter - Elizabeth. Elizabeth was born >in >> >> >Armstrong County in 1844(?) >> >> >> >> Hi Michelle, >> >> >> >> I don't have much on Jonathan and his family but his parents were John >> >> WILES and Elizabeth KING. I have more on these two and John parents if >> you >> >> are interested. >> >> >> >> Do you know who Mary MYERS parents were? >> >> >> >> Jim >> >> >> >> --Boundary_(ID_/d3sSJA1VOXsnpYTuIgHnQ)-- >> >> >> >> >> >> ==== PAARMSTR Mailing List ==== >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > >> > >> >==== PAARMSTR Mailing List ==== >> > >> > >> > >> >> >> ==== PAARMSTR Mailing List ==== >> >> >> >> > > >==== PAARMSTR Mailing List ==== > > >