My Story - William Elza Arnett
Introductory Notes
The following is a memoir by William Elza Arnett written when he was 88 yo in 1934-35. He wrote it shortly after his second wife died October 6, 1934 "because I have nothing else to do." Through correspondence with Johnson Camden "Cam" Chancellor while pursuing research on my mother's side of the family - Wroe - I learned of his great grandfather's memoir, and he kindly sent me a copy of the 25 page typed manuscript. Cam has given me permission to upload the manuscript to the web, and in preparation of this venture I have added a few annotations [in brackets] of persons' names and dates upon which I had further information. Some brackets are empty suggesting the need for additional data which may be supplied by other Arnett family researchers. For the most part William Arnett's memoirs follow a chronological sequence, but in describing the evolution of farming methods and the development of various inventions, he occasionally jumps around. I've decided to let his text flow as he wrote it rather than rearrange the order of his paragraphs. I have added some headings to some of the paragraphs which form the "contents" section below:
John W. Arnett
Although we have the same last name, thus explaining my interest in the manuscript, there's no evidence yet uncovered that our Arnett lines are related on this side of the Atlantic, although, as is mentioned in a footnote, some of my Magoffin Co, KY relatives who attended the first W.Va. Arnett reunion in Arnettsville in 1906 thought otherwise.
Beginnings - 1846
Farm Work - 1850
Mother's Work - 1840 & later (see also "Lighting")
Farm Work - 1855
Winter Fun
Spring Farm Work
Summer Fun
Frost of 1856
1860 - Mother's Death & Father's 2nd Wife, Drusilla Price Cox
1861-1865 - Civil War Years
1865 - After the War
Schools
1867 - Marriage to Margaret Cox
Farm Work - 1870
Age of Invention: Electric Lights, Telephones
Lighting History
Age of Invention: Automobiles
Florida Vacations
Age of Invention: Marconi & Radio
Age of Invention: Airplanes
1867-1890 - Early Marriage Years
1893, 1901, 1904 - Exhibitions in Chicago, Buffalo and St. Louis
1906 - Mayor of Fairmont, W.Va.; Street Commissioner; Board of Education
1935 - Reminiscences
My Story
Written by
William Elza Arnett
For my Grandchildren
December 20, 1934 ..... eighty-eight years-ago today, I was born in a new log cabin, not "an old log cabin," as we would say today., as there were very few old houses of any kind, in that part of the country, in 1846.
My father, William M. Arnett [b. 11/25/1819 in Arnettsville, then VA, the son of James Arnett & Rachel Meredith; d. 10/27/1903], bought fifty acres of land in Monongalia County, Virginia, and built a log house, size 16 x 24 feet. This land was in forest - not a stick amiss. So here is where I was born [December 20, 1846], and now I am jotting down some of my rambling memories of life.
My child life memories are of a very simple and mild nature, which goes to show how things, ever so simple, may be impressed through a long life. Little boys, in those times wore dresses until they were four or five years old. My dress was pink and white, dotted calico. I remember once when I was playing around where some carpenters were at work, they told me to get out of their way, or they would throw dirt on my dress. I left in a hurry., and stayed, for I thought that dress was the prettiest thing out.
Another impression: we had a hog lot where volunteer tomatoes - we called them "Jerusalem apples," - grew. The impression then was, that they were poisonous. I left them alone. We children thought they were pretty - red and yellow in color, and very small.
Since my father had bought wild land, the main object was to get cleared land. So everybody worked to that end. I well remember when a very small boy, that one of my tasks was to help my mother [Elizabeth Ann Hess, b. 3/29/1820, dau of William Hess; m. 11/10/1837; d. 4/22/1860.] Once each week during the summer months she went to a small stream about one-half mile from the house, to do her week's washing. My job was to furnish wood to make a fire to boil her clothes. There was a path from the house down through the woods to the washing place. One morning while skipping, down the path to get things ready for Mother, I came to a blacksnake - seemed as thick as my leg! I was too close to stop - nothing to do but jump, so I jumped, and never looked back to see whether he was coming or not. There were lots of snakes on my father's farm. We were not afraid of any of them except copperheads; we kept a watchout for them. We all escaped being bitten. The largest blacksnake I ever saw was one killed by my brother. It was just as long as a fence rail, and we made our fence rails eleven feet long.
Well, we are getting to be quite a family: three boys [Enos, James, William] and two girls [Selina, Mary and Matilda by 1853; Margaret (1855) and Rachel (1857)]. A family that works with Father, not, as the song goes, ''Everybody works but Father." This is the reason. We are getting things cleared out around here - the land is cleared enough to raise wheat, corn and oats, more than we can use ourselves. The topic of the day was Roads - transporting to Market, and Prices. Money was scarce and prices for farm produce very low.
We had bridle paths over the country. One from Arnettsville to Morgantown. I think I could follow it through today. It came by our farm. My father would carry his surplus grain and produce on horse-back over this trail. It is a wonder that our forefathers ever did got out of the brush when you remember how crude and hard and how little they had to work with. My first memory of wheat harvest, is that they used a sickle. They cut the grain by the handful - threw it in bunches, and when well cured, hauled it to the barn where they thrashed it from the straw with a flail. Then they used a windmill, blowing the chaff from the wheat. The chaff going out of the tail-end of the mill and the wheat going down into the screen box. Clean and nice.
They are coming. The Morgantown. Fairmont and Beverly Turnpike is building and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is building. Jack Burbrage is hauling supplies from Cumberland via Uniontown and Morgantown to Fairmont with a four-horse covered wagon. He made his overnight stop with my father - my impression of that is, one morning before they were ready to "hitch up" I was out and a-straddle of the wagon tongue, ariding up and down. They made me get off. I never liked Jack Burbrage very well after that. I think this was about 1850.
We will go back to my folks in the wheat field. I find improvement. They are cutting their wheat with a cradling scythe. Laying the wheat in a nice smooth swath. A binder follows and rakes it into sheaves and binds it with a handful of wheat straw. There my job was to carry water for the harvest hands and gather the sheaves in bunches., one dozen to the bunch. So they would have them handy when it came to shocking-up time. They always "shocked-up" before the day's work was done, often finishing after dark. They always had a piecemeal about four o'clock in the evenings, sent by my mother to the field. The men would eat and rest - then would work on into the night. In harvest time, a day's work was from daylight until dark. The wages for a day's work was a bushel of wheat - or the price thereof.
Now, for the improvement over the flail in threshing out the wheat - they would haul and stack the crop of wheat in the most convenient place on the farm. Now we are ready to thresh the wheat. Someone had invented, built, and put on the market a new threshing machine, called the Chaffpiler Horsepower Threshing Machine. I will describe it as I remember it.
The thresher box was about three feet wide, four feet high and six feet long, built very strong. Inside were the drums filled with spike teeth about three inches long. The drums were placed close together, and so attached that they ran very fast - and the wheat and straw had to go between the drums to be completely threshed out.
In the front was a table 3 x 3, made of lumber. This table was for the use of the feeder. Another table, for the use of the bandcutter. The end of the thresher was open, so that the wheat straw and chaff could get out altogether.
Now for the power to run the thresher. In the first place we have a master wheel made in a round shape, of cast iron with cogs. On the underside - on the one side this wheel was about five feet across, and had brackets so that we could attach power poles to them. The horses were hitched to four of these. The master wheel was held underneath to smaller wheels. The smaller wheels were connected to what was called the tumbling rod., which in turn was fastened to the drums in the thresher box. The thresher box and the master wheel were about twelve or fifteen feet apart.
They attached the sweeps or power poles to the master wheel. Then everything was staked solidly to the. ground with wooden stakes about two feet long. A platform was placed over the master wheel which was about five feet square. This was for the driver to stand on. They hitched the horses to the sweeps or power poles. They now place the men. One on the platform as driver, and one in front as feeder, another at his side as band cutter. One at the wheat stack as pitcher, two at the end of the thresher's box, one on either side, and as the wheat straw and chaff all came out together, they were called "shakers.'' With their forks, mostly wooden, they would shake the straw from the wheat and chaff, one man with a rake to take care of the wheat and chaff, placing it on what was called a chaff-pen already prepared. One straw pitcher and one straw stacker also assisted. The Chaffpiler Threshing Machine was a great improvement over the flail.
Mother's Work - 1840 and later (see also Lighting)
Now I am going back again to my boyhood days to see what part my mother took in starting a life of toil and hardships in the deep forest of the Monongalia County of Virginia, in 1840 ....... Our home had a big stone chimney with a fireplace, four feet wide and two feet deep, where we burned wood. Perhaps because I was small., and in the way more or less., I remember more about my mother's cooking and cooking outfit. She had An oven skillet, boiling pot, teakettle - all made of cast iron, with lids. An oven to bake corn pone and light wheat bread loaves. A skillet to bake fat cakes and biscuits.
When she wanted to bake bread she would shovel a bed of coals of fire on the hearth and set the skillet on the bed of coals and let it heat up. When the proper heat came, she would put in the dough and put the lid on and cover it with a fresh lot of f ire coals. In a short time she would have some fine baked bread. The skillets and pots were all cast with legs so that a fire could be made under them. The boiling pot had what they called a lubber-pole., fastened at one end about as high as the mantel, so that it would swing in and out at the proper place. A chain was fastened to hang down over the fire. A long hook was attached. She would raise or lower the pot to suit the f ire .
My mother took the responsibility of seeing that our table was furnished with something to eat. Our main living was bread, meat and potatoes in the wintertime. Although we had plenty of vegetables in the summer. Land was new and strong, and everything grew to perfection. There also was plenty of wild game in the winter, such as rabbits., squirrels., quail and pheasants. Many new things to eat were coming in their season every year. I well remember the first sweet corn we had.
When I was a small boy., my father took me with him to Morgantown. When we got there, the man that my father wanted to see was out to dinner, and when he came back he was boasting about what a wonderful dinner he had had -- something new -- sweetcorn! The merchant, Mr. Leasuer, saved my father some of the seed, which he planted, and ever after that we had plenty of corn. You all know how far it goes toward making a meal, nothing better than corn on the cob with plenty of butter.
After hog-killing in the fall we always had a feast. My mother was an expert Johnny Cake baker. She used new corn meal and cracklings left from the lard rendered for shortenings. She knew just how much meal and how many cracklings and the amount of salt It required to make the Johnny Cake just right. Now for baking or toasting. My mother had two boards, about twenty inches long and six inches wide. Nice and smooth. These boards were called Johnny Cake Boards. She mixed her material just right and spread dough of the proper thickness on one of the boards. She then placed the board length-wise on the hearth, in front of a fire prepared beforehand. Just close enough to bake it a nice, toast brown. Then she took the other board, laid it on the hearth, took the one half done, turned it on the board., baked side down, and placed her Johnny Cake again before the fire to brown and cook the other side. In a short time - with a bowl of milk - we would have a dish fit for a king.
I look back eighty years and wonder how my mother got along so well. Especially in winter time with only one fire., and a bunch of children around to keep warm while my mother prepared the meal for her family. Sometimes we would let the fire go out. Then some one had to go to a neighbor's home for fire. It was usually my job, and well do I remember how careful I was to keep from dropping a live coal and set the dry leaves on fire. When the fire would go out at night, my father would get up first and gather his bunch of flaxtoe punkwood and other dry kindling, and gunpowder, and with a sickle he would strike sparks of fire out of the hearth-stones. Sparks would set the powder off - the explosion of the powder would set the tow on fire and the tow would set the dry punkwood on fire, the kindling would catch, and the fire is made!
You will say - why didn't you strike a match., turn on the gas., and have a fire. The facts are that we had no matches in those days. The first matches I ever saw were small., square, black sulfur matches, made to split off the block one at a time - and how careful we were of them.
One of the hardships my mother had to endure was that the spring, where we got our drinking water, was about 300 yards away. Water to be carried up a steep hill. This water was good drinking water but was hard, and not good to wash clothes. In the wintertime she would catch rain water, and melt snow to do the washing, and in summer carry the clothes down the path through the woods, about a half mile, to a creek where she washed the clothes. I used to help her, and to this day I love to go to the old sulfur spring and the washing ground of my mother's days.
My mother made most of the clothes that the family wore. Flax into linen for summer wear. Wool into clothes in the winter. I have watched my mother spin flax into thread and wool into yarn. I have also seen her weave flax thread into linen and weave yarn into homespun jeans and flannel. She was always busy. Always had her knitting handy. She knit our socks., stockings and mittens at odd times the year round.
[1850 - paternal grandfather, James Arnett, said to have died; Rachel Meredith Arnett lived until 1874. Maternal grandfather Hess presumably lived past the Civil War.]
I will now see what Father is doing. I find he has bought more land and is boasting of the good roads. The Beverly, Morgantown and Uniontown Turnpike is finished, and my father has bought a light two horse wagon. With horses, wagon and good roads he is now ready to go to market. He has bought a two-horse cast iron plow and my two older brothers [Enos Arnett (1838) & James Arnett (1841)] are now big enough to plow and able to do most any kind of farm labor. My father aims to clear about ten acres of land every winter and spring, ready to plant by May 10. By now my father is getting a good sized farm under fence.
I find my father with three or four men cradling, raking, binding, shocking the wheat and stacking it in some convenient place - not much advancement since my last report, but I find at the stack yard a threshing machine with surprising improvements. A machine more than twice the size of the Chaffpiler. The improvements are in fans, shaker, and straw-carriers. Fans to blow the chaff from the wheat. Shakers to shake the wheat from the straw. Straw carriers ever revolving to carry the straw back to the straw pitcher. They hitch eight horses instead of four to the horse power - add extra men. One to do measuring with a boy to hold the sacks. Now she goes! The machine is called a separator Straw goes out one way - chaff another, and wheat still another through a spout to the measuring box, clean and nice. A wonderful improvement.
With the B & 0 Railroad at Fairmont., the state road built by Virginia and kept up by toll for many years we have a direct outlet to Pittsburgh, and with getting more cleared land every year - Father is getting out of the brush.
One of the toll gates between Fairmont and Morgantown was located at the point where Hampton Road now turns off Pennsylvania Avenue. Gaskill was keeper for awhile. The next was located by the old Meredith Springs site and kept by Frank Satterfield. The springs were left to one side by the new highway afterward built. Another was located near Little Indian Creek Crossing, kept by Middleton Robey. One near the Jones stone house and kept by William Jones, - the house still stands, the only stone house on the highway. Still another at the end of the bridge, this side of the river, before crossing to enter Morgantown, by Billy Fear.
Someone asked - did you kids ever have any fun? The first field my father cleared was partly on hillside and made fine coasting. Not with a red sled! But with a clapboard off the barn roof. With one end turned up a little and with crusted snow six to twelve inches thick, and with a clapboard worn smooth we could outrun any sled ever made.
The danger was to make the circle so we would not run into the fence at the lower side of the field. Sometimes we would dash into the fence. With a renewal of snow now and then we would have good coasting most all winter. It seems to me that we had. more snow those days than we have now.
My father counted on at least two months of good sledding snow during the winter to do his heavy hauling. Log sled with a yoke of oxen or team-cattle to do logging. With a big two horse sled and two good horses in sleighing snow, my father could make an easy day's trip with twenty- five or thirty bushels of wheat or shell corn to Morgantown or Fairmont the same day.
The fun of this sledding snow for the children was for father to fill the sled box full of straw, mother and the children to cover up with home-made blankets., and away we'd go! Sometimes to a neighbor's for a visit and a ten o'clock supper, sometimes to town and back. With the frost flying and horses stamping to go and ten or twelve miles of coasting, is what I call fun alive.
Winter is over and springtime is here. Busy getting ready for the planting. My father had got to be an extensive farmer. Raising corn planted May 10. Potatoes planted on Good Friday or St. Patrick's Day. Oats April 15. Flax, June 1. Sugar cane or sorghum, May 1.
My father introduced the first cane for syrup in this County. Through the Patent Office from Congress in Washington he received a small package of seed. Just enough to plant two rows across the end of his garden - about 50 feet. The ground was rich, he took special care of it, and it grew to perfection.
They had no way to get the juice. My father got a maple sugar trough and pounded the stalks in the trough, one at a tine. Then he doubled the pounded stalks and wrung and twisted the juice from them by hand. He got enough juice to make one gallon of syrup - the wonder of the day!
People came for miles to see and taste the wonderful new syrup. My father saved all the seed and divided it among the neighbors, and the next year they all raised cane. In a short time they joined together and built a cane mill that would crush the stalks and squeeze out the juice. It was pronounced a perfect success and after that everybody raised cane.
Now I will go back and finish spring planting, and see where the spring and summer fun comes in. Father raised soup beans planted May 20. He always planted plenty of sweet corn, planting three times during the summer months. About May 1st, June 1st and July 1st - this gave us sweetcorn from July 1, until frost. My father had a large garden where he grew the usual garden truck, such as sweet potatoes, bunch beans, onions, beets, melons and later cantaloupes, cucumbers, cabbage, parsnips and peas. The corn beans he planted in the field corn. Since it has been discovered that tomatoes are not poison, he raised wonderful crops of them. They were of great value for sealing up for winter use. My father always, in his newest ground, on the twenty-fifth of July, wet or dry, sowed his turnip patch.
Now about the spring and summer fun. What you like to do best is the most fun. Fishing commenced about April 1st. I could slip down to Indian Creek most any evening and catch a mess of sunfish. April suckers bit in April and May suckers and red-horse began to run from the 10th to the 15th. My father made a ruling that if we got our corn planted on the Tenth of May we would go fishing that night. We used a fagot torch for light. One of us carried the light, and one was on either side with gigs, and another carried the fish. There couldn't be any more fun than to carry a sack full of red-horse suckers from the mouth of Indian Creek. They would come up the creek about one mile, from the 20th of May to the First of June. The glut suckers, the flower of the flock., would be on the go. There were some big ones - from five to fifteen pounds, and very fine eating. So you were proud to carry home a back-load of glut suckers.
Now the elder-berries are in bloom, and the white perch and salmon are biting. So are all kinds of catfish. The trot-line is called for. Many fine strings of fish have I taken from the trot-line in the Monongahela River. Big and small mouth bass could be fished for in more shallow, warmer, water. This called for your rifle gun. Lots of fun to shoot fish. The largest fish I ever caught was a yellow catfish below Lowe's old dam in the Monongahela River. It weighed 55 pounds on the scales in Levi Lowe's Mill. This fish was caught in 1875.
Fishing was good in this stream up to about 1890. About that time new coal mines and zinc and tin mills opened up and commenced to empty their poisonous water into the river and its branches. Then the fish began to die. I have seen the water along the shore covered with floating fish - some dead and some struggling for life. It made my heart ache to see what was happening.
About 1900, through the influence of A.G. Dayton, our Congressman at the time, Congress provided funds to build locks and dams to slack the Monongahela river to Lock No.15 - head of slack water. This was two miles above Fairmont, giving Fairmont a magnificent channel to carry products of the County to Pittsburgh,. Wheeling, Cincinnati and New Orleans. This put an end to child-life fun of fishing in the Monongahela river, unless a scheme of the Government now planned to seal up all the old and abandoned mines, stops the flow of poisoned matter flowing into the stream........leaving only pure water as it was when I was a boy 80 years ago. The river would have to be restocked with fish of the kinds that once filled the waters.
One other fun-maker for the children of my day was a swing my older brothers found.- a grapevine growing on a white-oak tree. The vine grew to the top and fastened its runners securely in the branches of the tree. My brothers cut the vine at the ground and made a loop of strong ropes. The tree was leaning - and the ground was steep. So when the vine swung full out and ready to turn back it was about 40 feet from the ground. Some danger - but nothing serious ever happened. The starting place was a nice smooth plat of ground in the edge of the woods about 200 yards from the house. Nice place for wild life children to play.
Saturday afternoon was always a holiday for us children. My father always allowed us to do as we pleased Saturday afternoons - and usually we boys would take the horses on warm summer days and ride the three miles to the river at Lowesville and go swimming - both boys and horses. That was fine fun and I remember how we enjoyed it.
I well remember the first money I ever had. On a Fourth of July, I think, in 1852, the family wanted to go to a celebration and for some reason they did not want me to go. My father offered me 25 cents to stay home and cut weeds. I was a proud boy, six years old with money in my pocket. About 2 o'clock in the afternoon I was chopping along the fence and I struck a mullen weed with my hoe. Eggs flew in every direction. I had struck a quail's nest. I grabbed my straw hat and gathered the eggs. There were 21 eggs and I raced for home my day's work done! Who could forget such fun as that - day's work done - money in my pocket, and a hat full of eggs!
Many things happen in a children's lives to cause them to remember them always. On June 5th in 1856 - was the night of the Big Frost that you will hear people talking about yet. Things that happened that night make me remember the event. Father had gone to Simon Bird's fish pot on the river. My mother, noticing the increasing cold thought it was going to frost and called me to help her, and we got everything about the place that we could spare and covered our tender plants, the potatoes., tomatoes, beans, cucumbers - every tender plant in the garden. So we saved most everything and had our usual early garden in July.
Most of our neighbors' gardens were ruined and had to be planted over. In the morning my father came home with a sack full of fish. He cleaned a small basket full of them and had me take them to an old neighbor and his wife, Timothy and Maria Smith.
I had to go through a Meadow - with grass knee high and thick with frost. And I was barefooted! This frost was a hard knock on the farmers. Corn was badly damaged, so the farmers replanted. My father secured all the help he could and took scissors, sheep shears and knives, and clipped the tops of his corn. My father had a big crop in, and by a late, warm Fall it matured fairly well, but there was a lot of soft corn and the wheat crop was practically ruined. Where my father should have had about 300 bushels, he had thirty bushels of very inferior wheat. Seed wheat that Fall was $3.00 per bushel.
The berry crop was killed, and all fruit, such as we had, was all killed. Seedling apples and peaches, and some damson plums. Father planted more buckwheat and soup beans and we had plenty to eat and no one starved.
Now my father was buying more land, raising more wheat, corn and oats and no trouble to find a market. He began to trade extensively in cattle, sheep and hogs and made money. At middle life he owned about 300 acres of good land.
Then came a change in my life. My mother died [Elizabeth Ann Hess Arnett d. 22 April 1860], and left eight children, three older than myself - two boys and one girl - and four girls younger. The family numbered three boys [Enos, James and William] and five girls [Selina, Mary, Matilda, margaret and Rachel] - The oldest of the family a boy, Enos, had married to himself. The older girls managed to keep house and keep the family together, and in 1861 my father married again [19 July 1860] and it was a god-send to us children.
The woman he married was a good, Christian woman and raised us children to be honest, honorable, Christian men and women. She was a widow, Drusilla Jane Price Cox, (Mrs. Boaz B. Cox), formerly the wife of a young doctor who had died of typhoid fever. She had three children of her own, two girls and a boy. We all lived as one family of brothers and sisters.
Now the Civil War was coming on - the war between the States. Well do I remember when Abraham Lincoln was elected President [Nov 1860]. They held the election in our sugar camp which still stands - on the Georgetown road leading toward Laural Flat. Voters came to this place over a wide area, but not many votes were cast for Lincoln; but old William Price [ ], a Whig before the war, true to Whig principles, voted for Lincoln. He was the grandfather of Almira Cox - my future wife - and was conceded one of the neighborhood's long- headed men.
My own father was a Democrat. I do not remember how he voted in this election, but probably his sympathies were with his own party. Soon after, however, when discussion arose and it came to a real stand, my father and his father, talked it over and joined the new Republican party, and stood for the Lincoln administration. Lincoln was elected President. Southern states seceded or rebelled which gave them the name of Rebels. Lincoln made his first call for volunteers. Grant, Lee, McLellan and Burnside, and many other West Point students took over the organizing of the two armies. The war was on and the people of our community were excited.
The men were about evenly divided. In my father's family, there was my grandfather, and five sons. They were divided. My grandfather [James was his paternal grandfather, and may not have died by 1850 as noted in some sources, or he could mean his maternal Hess grandfather], my father [William M. Arnett], and one uncle decided to stay with the Union of the States, and throw their sympathy and influence to Lincoln. My other three uncles were for the South and holloed for Jeff Davis. So that is the way the country was mixed up. Most of the men of proper age and health were in one army or the other. The old men and boys of our settlement organized a company of home guards and I belonged to it. We organized to protect our horses from being stolen for army use.
We lived on the main route from Green County, Pennsylvania., and the Dunkard Creek country. The route was up Doll's Run, down Stuart's Run, striking the river up White Day Creek to the head, thence across the Alleghenies into the Valley of Virginia. We saved many a good horse from taking that route.
A few instances that I call to mind: we got word that Southern men were coming through with horses, so a squad of the home guards stationed themselves between Arnettsville and the river and soon heard them coming. We halted them and without hesitation they turned their horses and flew back up the creek. There was some shooting but no one was hurt. The next morning, bright and early, we took their trail and found five fine Dunkard Creek horses tied up in the river cliffs. The riders swam the river and made good their retreat. The owners of the horses arrived the next day and got them, thanks to the home Guards. Another time a bunch of Confederate soldiers were reported in the community. The home guards made a still hunt and searched three or four houses during the night. Just at daylight we rousted two soldiers from Joe Smith's barn. They had a half mile the start of us and they had about 200 yards to run from the barn to cover in the woods. They had planned to start South again that morning but hadn't expected to go so fast. There was some shooting., but I thank the Lord that no one was hurt.
One of the men had to discard part of his load. He dropped a haversack filled with letters and messages from the neighbors to their men who were fighting with the South. The funny part of this was that a young lady in the neighborhood had written to her lover in Dixieland. Her letter said, among other interesting things, that one of her neighbors was at home but would not allow anyone to see him. He just lay under the bed all the time!
This happened in Clinton District, Monongalia County. So we took the young lady's letter over the river into the Paw-Paw District and surrounded the house indicated in the letter and found her man under the bed. We arrested him and sent him to Camp Chase.
Another case is one that I shall never forget. The word was out that, Ed Trickett and Bill Fisher were home from the South. So the home guards surrounded the house one night and demanded to search the house. Mrs. Trickett refused to open the door, pleading and praying, and declaring that there was no one there. If I had had my way about it, I would have turned around and gone home, but my brother [James Arnett]was home on furlough from the Northern Army, the regulars, and he demanded entrance and told Mrs. Trickett that she would be protected in every way, but that her house was going to be searched. Just then at the head of the stairs a voice called and said. "Hold on, James" speaking to my brother James, "I am here. I surrender." It was Bill Fisher - Trickett had gone before we got to the house. Fisher went to Camp Chase.
It is strange to say after so many years, that I should remember the names of the men with the horses., but there were three - Will and Ellsworth Stuart., and Orlando Wilson. The men we chased from the barn were Captain Henry Ferrell, and Presley Martin. The girl who wrote the letter was Miss Triplet; her lover was Elias Hiner.
Now nobody paid much attention to anything but the war. I well remember that we had mail twice a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays. Only one daily newspaper, The Wheeling Intelligencer, came to the Arnettsville Post Office. My uncle [ ] was Postmaster and a good reader and on mail days the men and women., too, would gather at the Post Office and have my uncle read the newspaper to them. Hardly a paper that did not have the news that some one we knew had been killed or wounded.
I had one brother [ ] rejected on examination, and one brother [ ] in the Union Army and many uncles [ ] and cousins [ ] with the Union or Confederate forces.
You have often heard of Jones' Raid through Monongalia County. Well do I remember that time. My father was in Morgantown, and as the army was coming into town on the Kingwood road, he left town on the Fairmont road. He was horseback and rode for dear life, to Fairmont to notify the people that Jones' Cavalry was coming and for them to get their horses away from the route his soldiers would take.
The purpose of the raid was to confiscate horses for cavalry replacement. They were no respecter of persons. They were out for horses - anybody's horses!
One case in particular I recall. I had an uncle [ ] who lived near the road. His wife was a rabid Rebel and a ceaseless talker who continually holloed for Jeff Davis, and expressed constantly her wish that the Rebel Army would come and clean the Yanks out of the territory.
She had a fine family horse. The raiders passed our house in the night, and in the morning about daylight my uncle called his wife and said, "Hey, Emily [ ]! Come here quick! Here goes your Rebel Army with Baldy." That was the name of her horse. They took him away.
In the morning there were two mules tied together, that had strayed away from the stock that was being confiscated and led away. They were in the field near my father's place. My father called to some of the Cavalry stragglers passing by to "come and get their mules." They called back, "You can have them!" And my father did take them and they proved to be splendid animals. My father gave one of them to the man whose wife lost her "Baldy" and they kept the mules for years.
Our home was about 300 yards from the road, with a grove of timber between the house and the road. Some of the side line raiders came in and around the house, but did not bother anything. My father was outside the house, and when one of them opened the smokehouse door, he remarked, "There is plenty of meat." But they bothered nothing.
As soon as my father got home from Fairmont he took his horses to the back part of the place, about one mile from the road, and tied them in a strip of woods. So nothing was bothered about our place - neither man nor beast. After the raiders had passed, I went down a half mile to see what had happened further on along the road., and found a new pair of shoes, well wrapped. No doubt lost by some soldier. They were just my fit! And I wore them that summer.
At my grandfather's [James Arnett or grandfather Hess] I found them all right - nothing bothered. The morning after the raiders passed, two of my sisters [ ] saw, down in the grove, a horse saddled and bridled, apparently deserted. They were very timid and scared - frightened of the Rebel Cavalrymen that had set the whole neighborhood on its ear. They watched the horse for awhile and then decided to go down and look at him closer. Just as they approached the horse, a big man in a gray uniform rose from beside a log where he had been sleeping! The girls flew for the house very scared. The soldier stood for a minute getting his bearings, shook the cramps out of his muscles from his nap on the ground, mounted his horse and rode rapidly after the Army.
We could hear plainly the cannon when they had the scrap with Mulligan's Battery, at the company bridge, one mile from town All this happened in April, 1863. Many times false reports caused the people to hide their horses and even themselves, for fear of bodily harm. One time the Militia and home guards of Monongalia County were called out for duty. We came to Fairmont and a false report caused us to press our horses and go to Shinnston. So the town was full of horses and we had no trouble to get horses. I well remember the little brown horse I rode. He was a splendid saddler. I also remember the woman that I ate supper with. She was called Aunt Nancy McGee. I found out afterward that she was in some way related to my step-mother [Drusilla Price Cox Arnett]. I never saw her afterward but I never forgot her.
The report that took us to Shinnston was false and we all came back to Fairmont that night. I delivered the little brown horse to its owner and he was well pleased to know that we had SCARED THE REBELS AWAY FROM SHINNSTON.
The militia and home guards were in Fairmont about one month. The officers were Colonel Ruben Finnell and Captain Ambrose Waters. We were there in September 1863. The war was at fever heat. The President was making call after call for volunteers and paying $700 bounty. Finally Congress authorized a draft and the counties that had not filed their number through volunteers, had a draft call. Most of them hired substitutes, which the Government permitted. Some of them paid as much as $1000. Pretty hard on the drafted ones. This draft took place in 1864, and some of the substitutes hardly had been mustered in until the war was over. Monongalia County did not have a draft as it had filled its number with volunteers.
Signs told us that the war would soon be over. The United States was not producing enough to feed its people. With Sherman marching to the sea, the South naked and starving, General Lee, broken-hearted, surrendered. General Grant accepted. Two brave men shook hands. And the war was over.
Lee advised his men to go home and rebuild their homes and farms. Grant permitted Lee's army to take their horses with them in order that they might have animals to farm with when they got home. I remember the horse Major Stuart of the Confederacy brought home with him [not J.E.B. Stuart who died 12 May 1864 during the battle of Yellow Tavern]. He kept her as long as she lived. This was in 1865. He called this mare, Peggy. The horse lived for years, a high-strung, spirited animal.
The soldiers at home and coming home found nothing to do but farm. No factories, no public work, no mines, the main thing was to produce something to eat. Everything was high and money scarce. Labor very low. I can remember the prices of some things following the war.
Wheat was $3.00 per bushel; corn, $1.00; oats, 75 cents; sugar was 25 cents a pound; coffee was 50 cents a pound. In the winter of 1866 my father and I took a sled load of things to Fairmont. They consisted of the following products the prices we got and what we bought and the prices we paid. We had three bushels of flaxseed, which we sold for $5 per bushel; we had five bushels of soup beans for which we got $3 per bushel; one barrel of sorghum molasses for which via got $1.25 per gallon - the barrel held 35 gallons. For this we bought two barrels of flour, $16 per barrel, and my father bought we my first suit of store clothes and paid $30.00 for them. I think we bought the suit at Swisher's store. They were all wool black, with a small white stripe, and I was very proud of them. We bought a few other things, such as sugar, and coffee and went home about even with the world. I remember my father said. "If you had the stuff to sell you could afford to pay the prices for the things you have to buy."
I shall now give you a short history of my school days. In the first place I will give you a sketch of the school house. It was a log house, 20 x 25 feet, made of round logs, not very big. It had what they called a puncheon floor - split logs with the top-side smoothed down with a foot adz. The sills were of round logs and dove-tailed in the side sills to hold the building firmly together. The benches or seats were made of young., straight grown poplars, split in the middle. The flat side turned up and smoothed off. Holes were bored underneath at the proper places for bench legs which were made from, nice round straight limbs from the trees about as thick as a man's wrist. These legs were cut to make the seats about twelve inches high.
As the building was raised and the proper height in the side wall for light, or window, was reached, they cut out one of the logs about the middle of the building and left an opening of nearly five feet long. At the end of the building, behind the desk where the teacher, or preacher, (for the building was used for both the Church and school house) they left an opening of about two feet.
The rafters were round, straight poles, out the proper length. The lath for the roof., was split lath most any length from five to ten feet long. The roof was of clapboards, laid carefully and weighted down with small straight logs fastened by wooden pins about six inches long. There was no ceiling, but some joists were fastened to the top logs at the sides to hold the building together. The door of lumber cut by a whipsaw. Many people today don't know what a whipsaw is like. It is like this: our forefathers would build a scaffold or platform about five feet high and about fifteen or twenty feet apart, owing to the length of their logs. They would roll logs upon the scaffold, bark it completely, and fasten it securely. Then they would get the whipsaw (something similar to the cross-cut saw) and one man would get underneath the log and the other man would get on top and start the saw up and down lengthwise of the log. A slow way to got lumber; I don't know of anything that has made more saving to man labor than the band steam sawmill. Eighty-eight years ago two men would saw a few planks a day, say 200 feet of lumber. Today the band sawmill cuts thousands of feet of lumber each day. It takes two men to keep the lumber out of the way of the band saw. A wonderful labor saving.
Well - the lumber the school house door was made of was ripsaw manufacture, wooden hinges and a string latch. Did you ever hear anyone say, "The latch string is out?" There was a board placed on pins under that space left for light for the students to practice their writing. Over the window hole was pasted greased paper to let in the light and keep out the cold. They stopped up the opening between the logs with splits and mortar. Splits were made by splitting straight grain timber into lath. The mortar was made from clay from a nearby bank. A very crude stove, burning wood., furnished the heat. The woodsmoke would sometimes make your eyes smart and water, but it was altogether a very comfortable house. The land was given and dedicated to the Methodist Episcopal Church by my grandfather, James Arnett [ ], and the house was built by the community at large and the people used it for a schoolhouse.
Now we are ready for school. My first teacher was, Benjamin Barker: a large man, 200 pounds or more. He was good and kind to the children and they all loved him. He had but few rules and to this day I can remember some of them. First: no swearing. Second: no tale bearing. Third: no talking in school. Fourth: keep the door shut. That last meant; when a scholar had to go out he was to close the door; when he came back he was to close it.
The big boys cut the wood. This was a subscription school. So much was paid per scholar. You only paid for the time you went. We lived one mile from the schoolhouse, and a small boy would miss a lot of times. I had one book., The United States Spelling Book. My first lesson was to learn my ABCs next to take up two letters in syllables like ah, and eh, and ib all through the letters; then boy, cat and dog, and so on. The school studied out loud. A noisy time we would have, especially in the evening. The teacher would always have a spelling class of the whole school just before school was dismissed. When the teacher called. "Get your spelling lesson for ten minutes," you could hardly hear yourself hello!
The more noisy you were the better the teacher was pleased. Spelling class called, the scholars formed in line in front of the teacher. He calling the numbers one, two and so on, to see if they all had their proper place. The contest was to see who would be head when the class was dismissed. The teacher pronounced the lesson. Quite an honor to be at the head of the class. Some disgrace to be at the foot! We had about twelve scholars. Susanne Snider, a little girl about my own age, was a good rival for my spelling - we were both pretty good.
Teacher always read a chapter from the Bible when opening the school in the morning. Our teacher treated the scholars on the last day of school. Treated to stick candy and apples - both were a treat in those days.
Well my first school is over and I learned something. The next school was taught by a Baptist minister, James Houge. His rules were about the same as Mr. Barker's. I added reading and writing to my studies and got along pretty well. The next teacher was a young man, named Arnett Glasscock, and he was a splendid teacher. I added arithmetic, the multiplication tables and got along fine - soon learned the tables and made a fair start with all my studies; now I had spelling, reading, writing and arithmetic. The fourth school was taught by Lewis Donham. His treat, the last day of school was gingerbread, baked by his wife, sweetened with sorghum and black as your hat - very poor gingerbread, and apple cider. A stick of candy for the small children would have been very much better and we kids were mad as wet hens.
I forgot that there was another teacher just before the Donhan term. I had to go two miles to this school, and did not attend regularly - but during this term something occurred that was a lot of fun for the community. The teacher at this school was David Hayhurst, a peppery man who had one arm off near the shoulder. He was quick tempered and he had trouble with a man, his neighbor, Rile Hopkins. They were always spatting back and forth. One day Rile rode up to Hayhurst's home and called him outside and said something insulting to him. Hayhurst ran into the house and emerged with a shot gun. When Hopkins saw what was coming he whirled his horse and galloped down the creek with bullets whistling about him. He was very scared, but didn't get hurt.
Hayhurst then had a debate one night in his school in which the question was: "Which would be the worst Nuisance in a Neighborhood - Rile Hopkins or a Breechy Bull?" Hayhurst was on the side arguing that Hopkins would be the worst, and his side won. Needless to say, the school house was packed and the community got a good laugh. I was small at the time and don't remember hearing the debate - only the neighborhood talk about it.
My last teacher was Sam Ramsey - very cross-eyed, and you could not tell when he was looking at you, so you had to be on your guard or he would catch you in some of your mischief. He was considered a splendid teacher. These schools were all subscription schools. The last two schools were one and a half miles to go. The war was now coming on and the people were excited and no one paid much attention to education. I went to school during the four years of war excitement. In the year 1866 I attended my first and only free school. My teacher was Sam Billingsley. He was a good teacher and had a houseful of students. Some of them were soldiers, now men, trying to start in with their books where they had left off four or five years before. They were mere boys when they volunteered; they were men when they were discharged.
My school days are over and my limited education finished. On February 10, 1867, I married Margaret Almira Cox [1849-1934], daughter of my father's second wife [Drusilla Price Cox Arnett]. Just children - I was past twenty and she just past seventeen. We were both ambitious, not afraid to work, and anxious to make things go, so we pitched right into farming. We rented land and gave a share of the crop for the use of the land. We raised most everything, such as wheat, corn, oats, potatoes both sweet potatoes and Irish, cane for syrup and sweet corn. We always had a big garden and raised all kinds of vegetables for summer and winter. After the first year we always had plenty to eat and wear.
We rented our land from my father [William M. Arnett], and we went to housekeeping in the house known as the Sherd Morgan house, which is still standing at this time. There were two rooms downstairs and one finished room upstairs. Another unfinished. It is a story and a half frame house. We had a cow and a horse to start us out and the bare essentials in furniture.
We always tried to rent a sugar camp and make enough maple syrup to last us the year round. We simply followed the same routine for the next fifteen years, falling in with new inventions and improvements and pronouncing them good.
We are raising good crops, have plenty, accumulating some, and living a happy life together. Let us see what Father and his neighbors are doing and see what they now have to work with. I find them, not with cradles and rakes, but with a McCormick Harvester Reaper and Binder, with two horses, cutting and binding as fast as the horses can walk. And at the stack we find a much larger separator in every way., run by a tractor engine for power, doing away entirely with horsepower. Horses in the field getting a laugh while the tractor is doing their work.
The farmers are raising more stock. They need more food, and instead of mowing with a scythe I find them with a two-horse mowing machine and one-horse raker instead of having to hand rake and to winnow their hay. Wonderful inventions and improvements.
Between 1800 and 1900 the newspapers were filled with the new inventions being tried out by the inventors. Such as the telephone, electricity, such as power, light and heat. I well remember the first electric light I ever saw. It was in Baltimore, Maryland. My father and I had been to New York with some stock. We drove this stock from the Arnettsville community to loading pens located on the site of the barn now used for the mine stock on Buffalo Creek at Barnsville (now Bellview). We forded the creek about 200 yards down stream at a point where the old mill used to stand. This was before there was any thought of a bridge across Buffalo at Barnsville.
In Baltimore we were walking up Howard Street while waiting for the train going west. Some one was trying out street lighting by electricity. It was wonderful. One block of Howard Street, by the touch of a plug - instantly the street was almost as light as day. We did not understand how, but it was so. This was about 1880.
The first telephone I ever used was in 1888 in Peoria, Illinois. I wanted to see a man who lived fifty miles north of Peoria, and I had to wait about three hours. I was loafing at the hotel and got in conversation with the clerk. I told him where I had to go and who I wanted to see, "Why," said he. "I know that man. I will call him on the 'Phone' for you." And in a moment the clerk had my man on the 'Phone' and to my wondering surprise and delight I talked to him with such satisfaction that I decided then and there that the Bell Telephone was a success and here to stay. In 1896, when the Bell Telephone Company built a line in our town I was one of their first year's subscribers and my number was ninety-five, and to this day, February 17, 1935, my telephone number is the same, never having changed. In 1896 my telephone cost me $1.00 per month or $12 a year; now we pay $39.00 a year. Then less than 100 subscribers, now more than 3,000 subscribers. The telephone gives the people wonderful service. It has brought the world closer together. If you want to speak to a man in New York, just call Central and tell her what you want, and in a few minutes you are talking to your man 500 miles away.
Now regarding the different ways of making light. The first light I ever saw was my mother's light. She had a small pewter plate, partly filled with some kind of grease with some kind of cotton cloth for a wick. They soaked the wick in the grease, one end on the edge of the plate and the most of the wick down in the plate and covered with grease. They would light it with a splinter of wood selected for that purpose. This little torch or "bitch'' light, as they called it, would make some light. Not brilliant, but better than none. This is one of my first memories. Then my mother got the idea of making dip tallow candles. She would prepare wicks by cutting them about eight inches long. She would loop one end to a smooth straight stick about ten inches long, and fix her a place to hang the sticks attached to the wicks. Now she would melt or heat her tallow - having the vessel as deep as the wick was long, usually making three candles at a time. Everything ready my mother would drop the wicks into the melted tallow, leave them a moment - draw them out and hang in some cool place. As soon as they hardened, she would dip them again, and keep this dipping up until she had the desired size ready to light and burn. Quite an improvement over the torch or "bitch" light. The next improvement was: someone put on the market a candle mold. A great saving of time and labor. My mother's day of dipping candles was over
For several years the people were satisfied with candle light. Streets, schools, churches - everywhere they used nothing but candles. Finally some one struck oil. I remember well the first oil lamp we had. It was a small glass lamp that would hold about one pint of crude oil. This oil we burned in our lamps, and it was a great improvement over the candle. Soon someone started a refinery, refining the crude oil into clear, smokeless kerosene - or lamp oil, and it made much better light. The next step in light and also in heat, came when someone struck natural gas. The South Penn Oil Company operated on Doll's Run, and shortly after they ran a pipe line to Morgantown and very soon one to Fairmont. I think this was in about 1889. Soon after that our streets were lighted with natural gas and many of our people were using the gas for light and heat. I've thought we were about perfect as to light and heat, but right away Edison conceived the idea of harnessing electricity. The only proof of Edison's success is for you to take a ride with me through our streets at Christmas times and see our streets and business houses as light as day at midnight in the dark of the moon.
I wonder what my mother would have said - with her little "bitch" lamp, if someone had suggested eighty-eight years ago that such things would happen in my lifetime. I expect she would have said it was crazy.
The first wonderful electrical display I ever saw was at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. The inventor still is busy and I read in the newspapers and magazines that they are working on some things that will make Mother Shipton's prophesy come true - riding in carriages without horses. At Chicago in 1893 1 found the first automobile I ever saw. It was a clumsy looking machine, and my wife and I looked it over and my verdict was, as expressed to her, that it might go where the streets and and roads were nice and smooth, but it would never do among the West Virginia hills. Today's observation will show how little I knew about it.
The farmers were scared for their horses and it was a surprise to see how soon the horses became used to the automobile. The automobiles asked for, in fact, demanded improved roads. To show how afraid the people were on account of their horses: In 1906, the Arnetts held their first reunion at Oak Grove near Arnettsville *. We had a large crowd, estimated at 3,000 people. Folks who had come by horseback, buggy and wagon. About 10 o'clock in the morning some one came dashing up the road and stopped at the entrance to the Grove. The committee on arrangements refused to let him enter the Grove with his machine for fear the scores of horses would scare and stampede.
Another case of the owner of a fine horse who was more "scary" than his horse: I had a fine family driving horse. My wife and daughter drove him in a trap, which was a high, four-wheeled vehicle, very stylish in those days. I was very anxious to know what he would do if he met an automobile. We had no machines in town at that time. So I told the clerk at the City Office to keep a look-out for a machine. Soon he called me saying, "Bring Billy and the trap. There is a machine in town." As soon as I could get the horse harnessed and hitched to the trap, I drove down to the City Office and the Clerk, Joe P. Fleming, got in the trap with me and we started on a drive to meet the automobile. Someone told us that the machine had gone over the river to Palatine. So we started to drive over the bridge, and when we drove on the West end, the automobile entered the East end! I told Fleming to got ready to jump - that we might go over the railing into the river. We met the machine about the middle of the bridge and the horse viewed it and didn't see anything to be scared about, and we drove on over and back, and I drove home to our barn feeling proud of our "Billy," knowing he would be safe for my wife and daughter to drive.
To show you how the automobile grew in favor with the people: on our 23rd Arnett Reunion we had a dedication of a monument which called for a big crowd and we thought we had fully as many people present as we had at the first one. The point is that we had ONE horse and buggy at this event and fully 500 automobiles ...... and the horse did not get scared, either. Today we drive our cars without taking the horse into consideration. I bought my first automobile, a Ford model, in 1914. It was a splendid car. In November 1915, my wife and I drove to Florida to spend the winter - great place to go in wintertime. Since the roads are improved all the way you can skip down there in three or four days and not miss the time. In 1915 there was but very little improved road, so about 100 miles of the Shenandoah Valley Road had been macadamized before the Civil War and kept in good condition through tolls. Every ten miles you paid a toll. Lost time and it cost you money. In 1931 - credit to the automobile - I drove over the same road and found every foot of the road improved and all you had to do was to keep straight ahead on your own right of way and you soon got to Florida. What wonderful invention and improvement there is today over the way we had to transport the products of the country when I was a boy. Then - two horses - say thirty bushels of wheat to drive to town, trade and return home - ten or twelve hours time. Now a two-ton truck - sixty bushels of wheat - drive to town and get home in one hour. I know of nothing that is more saving of time and labor than the automobile and the trucks of different tonnage.
For pleasure the automobile is a world beater. Our first trip to F1orida: my wife and I and Robert Brown and his wife made great preparation for all the equipment for sleeping and cooking. Good tent, good cots, and on November Tenth, we started on our pleasure trip to Florida to spend the winter. We were twenty-one days on the road. Camped out every night but two. We had our guns and fishing outfit, and as we had never been South before it was a great playground for us, and to make the trip perfect we had good weather all the way. Snow, the night we started, clear, the second day; a shower one night in North Carolina. Our route was from Fairmont to Cumberland, Maryland; Hancock, Maryland; Berkeley Springs, Martinsburg, West Virginia; Winchester, Staunton, Lexington, Roanoke, Virginia; Winston, Salem, North Carolina; Gainsville, Georgia; Ocala., Clearwater, and St. Petersburg., Florida.
The different products of the country we passed through were very interesting to us. So many things we had never seen growing. We passed through the great apple, peach and pear orchards around Martinsburg and Winchester; and the Virginia Valley - we found them growing cotton and tobacco in North and South Carolina; Winston and Salem are headquarters for the tobacco, and many people have made large fortunes in the tobacco trade. The Dukes and the Reynolds made their money there. Then we dropped down into Georgia and found cotton., corn, tobacco, peanuts, sweet potatoes, peaches and pecans. The first pecans I had ever seen growing. They grow all kinds of melons in Georgia. Now we are in Florida, where they grow pecans, mangoes, oranges, grapefruit., kumquats, avocado pears, guavas, Japanese persimmons, coconuts, melons of all kinds, green beans, strawberries and celery. Well we are all here. We had a wonderful trip and have had great pleasure in driving the cars through a new country and seeing new things every day.
We had plenty to eat; all kept well. We are on the Gulf of Mexico; they say it is full of fish. My wife and I both love to fish, so we will catch some of them. I am past eighty-eight years old and I drive my own machine almost every day; this morning the 24th day of January 1935, with the thermometer standing at zero, ten inches of snow and the streets covered with ice, I put the chains on my car and I enjoyed driving my daughter over to town to her offices.
In 1897 the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company was founded and two years later signals were successfully exchanged across the English Channel. The system was established. Marconi was the inventor. In December 1901, Marconi was able to begin the transmission of news messages between America and Great Britain. My first experience in listening in on the Wireless telegraph was November 11, 1921. Two of my neighbor's boys had established a station and I was invited to come over and listen to President Harding [Warren G. Harding was elected Nov. 1920 over Woodrow Wilson. He died in office August 1923 and was succeeded by Calvin Coolidge.] make his talk at the unveiling and dedication of the Unknown Soldier's Memorial at Arlington Heights, near Washington, D.C. My wife was visiting our daughters in Parkersburg. To my wonderful surprise, with. only a wire stretched from the second floor of the house to a tree about 100 feet away, and with the help of an ear phone attached, we could hear Mr. Harding very plainly. How it is I cannot tell, but it is so. Since then we have had a radio in our own home and enjoy listening in to the sermons, lectures, speeches of all kinds. Such as the convention that nominated Al Smith at Galveston, Texas; Hoover at Kansas City and many others. The most wonderful speech I ever listened to over the radio was a speech made by President Coolidge in Panama. Just with a wire stretched through the attic, attached to the radio - reproducing a man's voice so far away and so perfectly. Marconi has a great invention.
Between 1903 and 1909 the Wright Brothers., William and Orville., convinced the world that they had invented a machine that was to eventually, through Charles Lindbergh, fly across the ocean. In 1903 they began fruitful experiments and in 1906 the Wright brothers built a number of biplanes and in 1908 went to France where Wilbur Wright won the Michelin prize on September 21, of that year. During the Hudson Fulton Celebration in New York City in 1909 he flew from Governor's Island up the Hudson River as far as Grant's Tomb, and returned. The French Patent rights of the Wright flying machine were sold for $100,000.00. The machine was adopted by the United States Army. The first flying machine I ever saw in motion was at Daytona Beach, Florida, in December 1911. It was a biplane. My wife and I were down on that beautiful beach and some one had the machine on display. Well - we didn't care to ride! The Wright Brothers have a machine with the inventions and improvements that can be flown from San Francisco to New York City quicker than I could have traveled fifteen miles when I was a boy. Recent record by Captain Rickenbacker was breakfast in California and dinner in Now York - twelve hours, and four minutes. Women are not afraid to try out some of the new inventions. On January 12, 1935, Amelia Earhart Putman flew from Hawaii to Oakland, California traveling 2,408 miles in 18 hours and 16 minutes. Some traveling. Too much reckless driving and flying for safety.
Now I will go back to where my wife and I really started life. We were married February 10, 1867. She [Margaret Cox] was the daughter of my father's [William M. Arnett] second wife [Druisilla Price Cox Arnett] and was seventeen years old and I twenty at the time of our marriage. We were both full of vim and ambition and f or twenty years we worked together farming and accumulating some of this world's goods. In 1886 we moved from the Arnettsville community to Fairmont to give our children the advantages of schools. I was in the Real Estate business. My wife and I seemed to enjoy the same kind of outings for our summer vacations. For many years we would have a cottage at Mt. Lake Park, Maryland, a fine place in the mountains to go in summertime. A Chautauqua program and summer camp meetings. Atlantic City was a great place to go on a ten days' outing and we went there several times. As we were both fond of fishing and as fish became scarce in the Monongahelia River we changed our fishing grounds. We would go to Webster Springs by the little narrow gauge railroad built through the timber. Then we would travel by horseback to Three Forks of Gauley River and have fun alive catching mountain trout. We would board with Adam and Minerva Doddrill.
It was not always play with us, however, as we always had our plans working and now and then one would close up to our financial advantage. To keep up with the country's advancement in 1893 we went to the Chicago World's Fair. Inventions and improvements were wonderful to behold. We went to the Buffalo Exposition, a wonderful show in 1901. We were there the week that McKinley lay wounded in the City of Buffalo. [On September 6, 1901, Leon Czolgosz, a fanatical anarchist, shot Pres. William McKinley during a reception at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. He died six days later, and Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as President.] In 1904 we attended the St. Louis Exposition. A trip long to be remembered. My wife and I, my son [Luther C. Arnett] and his wife [Sally Swindler], my daughter [Olive or Drusilla] and her husband [John Pepper or Charles B. Chancellor] and also our single daughter [Jenette E. Arnett, m. Samuel Luper in 1906.] and some friends were in the party. We went by steamboat, taking the Queen City boat at Parkersburg, then down the Ohio River to Cairo and from that point on the Mississippi by one of the Lee Line steamboats and up the Missouri river [actually the Mississippi] to St. Louis. The trip took eight days. We all enjoyed it and the Fair.
In 1906 I was elected Mayor of Fairmont and served two years, which was the term at that time. In 1910 we changed our fishing grounds and fifteen winters were spent in the "nearby" fishing grounds at St. Petersburg, Florida. Many happy days in that Sunshine City. I was elected one of Fairmont's City Board of Directors and became City Street Commissioner, having charge of streets, city buildings, and bridges. While I was in office the high level "Million Dollar" bridge, spanning the Monongahela River, was constructed. I served four years as Street Commissioner. I served two years on the Fairmont City Board of Education, during which time we built the High School building in Fifth Street, the Virginia Avenue School and the Barnes School at Bellview. My services as a public servant seemed to be approved by the people.
Well, we have lived through a long and active life. An age of eighty-eight years of invention and improvement and the question is often asked - do you think the same advancement will be made in the next eighty-eight years as has been made in the last eighty-eight years. And my mind flies back to my childhood days and to take it up day by day, month by month, year by year and studying and thinking about what has happened in my lifetime, I doubt if there will be as many new inventions worked out in a lifetime as there has been worked out and put into operation in the last lifetime.
As for improvements - the world is open for improvements. With the Government taking charge of the rivers of the country and building dams and reservoirs to furnish cheap power to the people - today February 1, 1935, the gates closed at Boulder Dam on the Colorado River. Folks are anxiously waiting to see the basin fill up with the waters of the Tennessee, for the Tennessee Light and Power Dam. The Tygart Valley River Dam and Reservoir, the Buckhannon River Dam, the Cheat River Power and Light Company now with all this cheap power and electricity, just in its infancy, it is hard to tell what will happen in the way of improvements, and I would hesitate to say that improvement would not be greater in the next lifetime than it has been in the past.
The reason I compare a lifetime is because I have been living my life over again. My time must be about up. My life partner is gone and I am just waiting for the Master's call to come. My wife died October 9, 1934, and but for my good children I would be very lonely.
I have written my recollections because I have nothing else to do. I spend hours each day watching wild life from a window in my room. I have a feed box in the back yard from which I feed the birds every day. I have ten red birds, nine quail and one mocking bird that is unusual for this far north. Will soon have robins, cat birds, and brown thrushes. We have lots of birds. A rabbit eats the apple peelings at night time. The other day a dog chased a rabbit through a vacant lot. I watched from the window. The rabbit outran the dog. I was glad of it. I like to live in my boyhood days.
THE END
* [Genealogy Note:
In attendance at the third Arnett reunion in Arnettsville in 1908 was Thomas F. Arnett a 71 yo attorney from Salyersville, Magoffin Co, KY. While doing research on various Arnett lines, Coy Arnett of the West Ky branch of the family, found an Arnett Family Enrollment Card dated Oct 25, 1908 which was completed by Thomas F. Arnett, age 71, Salyersville, occup: Atty. Ann Watson sent me a copy of the form in the summer of 1999. Thomas Arnett gives on the card the following family lineage:
parents: William Arnett, died 1901, age 94, and Nancy Patrick, died 1848, age 60
grandparents: Reuben Arnett, age 75 at his death and Susan Killgore, age 74 at her death.
great grandparents: David Arnett, age 82 at death (date not given) and
................................Lettie Green, age 80 at death (date not given)
At the bottom of the enrollment card in the comments section, "Thomas wrote: Reubin Arnett from W. Va., David Arnett from Ireland. I cannot go back to Great Great Grand Parents."
This enrollment document is remarkable for several reasons:
William Arnett was b. 1809 and d. 1900 at the age of 91 according to Arnett Albums and Salyer Family notes, and Thomas gives his age as 94 with date of death 1901.
Thomas was the son of William Arnett by a woman other than his only known wife, Jemima Ray. William and Jemima had twelve children beginning with Susan in 1841.
According to the Arnett Albums, Thomas was born in April 1837 the son of a woman "thought to be" a Prater. According to the enrollment card, Thomas was, indeed, born in 1837, and his mother is identified as Nancy Patrick who died in 1848. Thomas was, therefore, likely born "out of wedlock." Nevertheless, Thomas F. Arnett served as Sheriff of Magoffin Co in 1860 and 1865 and was appointed as deputy Assessor for Magoffin Co. in 1867. He probably had read law and considered himself an attorney, and more importantly, since his father lived to be 90 plus, he had occasion and probable interest to ask the names and ages of his great grandparents, David and Letitia.
According to "modern" research, Reuben's age has been speculated to be about 72 when he died in 1856 based upon extrapolation from tax lists: under age 21 in 1804 but 21 by 1805 with estimated birth date of 1784. On his enrollment form Thomas gives an age of 75 for Reuben which is close enough. Susanah Kilgore was born about 1787 and survived him by several years according to traditional information. Thomas gives an age of 74 which would fit.
David Arnett's age has long been in dispute. A Green Family Bible - which has long been lost - gave a date birth of 6 January 1735, but based on the fact that he was possibly not tax exempt until 1811 in Knox Co, Elizabeth Salyer and others have speculated that the "1735" date was mis-copied and that a later date of "1755" would be more likely. The last record of David Arnett was an 1820 Harlan Co entry where he paid tax on a male over 21. In the Green Bible the date of death was given as 12 September 1825. Thomas Arnett's date age of death of 82 for David would have him born 1743, so no clear help there.
However, Letitia's surname has not been known, and Thomas' suggestion that her last name was Green would fit since David and Letitia's daughter, Nancy Arnett, married James Green (son of Lewis Green and Esther Kilgore.) Letitia may have been a first cousin of Lewis Green.
According to a 1928 letter of H.G. Arnett, a knowledgeable attorney in Magoffin Co, David Arnett came over to America shortly before the Revolutionary War possibly with his father who may have also been named David. Although H.G. stated they came from Scotland, they could have come by way of Ireland.
There is no evidence that Reuben Arnett was from West Virginia as stated on his enrollment card, but since West Virginia was actually Virginia until 1863 - seven years after Reuben's death, some confusion is possible. What does seem to be clear is that Reuben, his brother Stephen and their father David were not from the same line on this side of the Atlantic as this West Virginia Arnett family of which William Elza Arnett was a part.
William Elza Arnett's lineage at the moment is thought to be as follows:
Thomas Arnett (ship captain of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Dorcester or Talbot Co) >
James Arnett (1748-1818) m. Mary Belle Michael >
Andrew Arnett (1772-1824) m. Elizabeth Leggett >
James Arnett (1797-1850 or later) m. Rachel Meredith >
William M. Arnett (1819-1903) m.1 Elizabeth Ann Hess >
William Elza Arnett (1846 - after 1935) m. Margaret Cox. >
Drusilla Arnett (1871-1964) m. Charles Chancellor (1867-1938) (grandfather of J.Camden)]
In 1963, J. Camden Chancellor published a genealogy of his family, The Chancellors, which contains a photo of William M. Arnett and his family in 1895. Included in the photo taken in Fairmont is William Elza Arnett and his wife Margaret.
[The diary is printed and uploaded with permission of J. Camden Chancellor. The edited version and annotations: Copyright 1999 John W. Arnett and J. Camden Chancellor.]
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