Lift Up Your Hearts!

My great-great-great-grandfather, Nathan Smith, was born in County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1770.  His mother died when he was six or seven years old and he was sent to school in Dublin.  At the age of 23 he emigrated to the United States.  Here is part of his story, as told in excerpts from a manuscript written by his grandson, James Foster, around 1890.

He sailed from Movill Bay in the year 1793, and landed in Philadelphia after a voyage of thirteen weeks on the water.  The ship was commanded by a Captain Lovell.  Grandfather was prostrate with yellow fever at the time.  The ship was condemned and forbidden to enter the harbor.  The Captain swore he would land Smith...there or somewhere else worse.  Grandfather was taken to the hospital in a very feeble condition, so feeble that he did not expect to recover.  But a woman attending the sick cheered him up by telling him she was going to have him for her second husband!

Apparently he did not take her up on the offer.

After his recovery, he came to Lancaster County, Pa. where he taught school and boarded with a Dutchman.  Here he first learned to mow with a scythe and snath.  He then came to Fayette County where Connellsville, Pa. is now or near there, where there was a forge owned by a Quaker by the name of Langdale.  Grandfather asked permission to see his books and showed him some mistakes that he had made.  He then employed Grandfather to clerk for him.  He also taught school in the neighborhood.  The scholars would bar him out and make grandfather promise a treat before they would let him in.

On January 29, 1801, Nathan Smith married Margery Irwin.

Grandmother was born east of the mountains, we think in Lancaster County, Pa.  She was brought west of the mountains when five years old, packed in a wallet on a pack saddle.  Grandmother on one side and her sister on the other and a bottle of milk and a skillet with them.  Grandmother was a woman of sterling character, never afraid to back a friend or face a foe.

Grandfather was very mild in his disposition and polite in his deportment.  He delighted very much in reading.  In the latter part of his life the Bible was his great companion and Erskine’s Sermons was a favorite....[He] wrote a very nice plain hand, [and] sometimes in winter evenings would teach a writing school at his own house.  I heard Grandmother telling that on one of these evenings, in which they were writing, some drunken fellows came and attempted to break up their writing school and raised a fight.  She said she beat one of them over the back with the shovel-handle and drove the intruders away.

Grandfather purchased a farm in 1809 in South Huntingdon Township, Westmoreland County, Pa. where he resided till the year 1822 when he traded farms with his son Henry and move into East Huntingdon Township where he remained until his death.

While visiting Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania this past summer, I copied my Nathan Smith's entries from the tax rolls for the years 1811-1819.

• 1811:  100 acres, 2 horses, 1 cow; tax paid, $0.59
• 1812:  100 acres, 2 horses, 1 cow; tax paid, $0.60
• 1813:  100 acres, 2 horses, 1 cow; tax paid, $0.60
• 1814:  114 acres, 2 horses, 2 cows, 2 stills 100 gallons; tax paid, $0.84
• 1815:  114 acres, 2 horses, 2 cows, 2 stills 100 gallons; tax paid, $0.84
• 1816:  114 acres, 2 horses, 2 cows, 2 stills 100 gallons, something illegible; tax paid, $0.88
• 1817:  100 acres, 2 horses, 2 cows, stills 175 gallons; tax paid, $1.04
• 1818:  100 acres, 2 horses, 2 cows, stills 175 gallons; tax paid, $1.04
• 1819:  100 acres, 2 horses, 2 cows, stills 175 gallons; tax paid, $1.04

The dollar was worth something back then.  They were taxed on land and farm animals, and later stills, but not, I note, on their house.  When I think of stills I picture illegal moonshiners in the backwoods of Appalachia, but in the days of poor transportation, distilling grain into alcohol was considered a practical means of getting one's surplus to distant markets. This would have been a few years after the Whiskey Rebellion, but nonetheless gives that otherwise dry bit of Western Pennsylvania history new meaning to me.

Grandfather was a delicate man, while grandmother was a stout, hearty woman.  She could take a hand reaping along with the men.  They had six children.

"Delicate" clearly did not mean weak or unhealthy.

Grandfather packed salt on the mountains, I think from Carlisle, Pa.  He attended church at Tyrone Presbyterian Church in Fayette County, where he and his wife were members.  Grandfather...died March 25th, 1850 in his eightieth year.  Grandmother died May 18th, 1867 in her ninety-first year.  Both are buried at Tyrone Cemetery, Fayette Co., Pa.