Did Captain John Rippey Hear This?

Jim McClure has a post at York Town Square on the reading of the Declaration of Independence:

"Four militia companies and 300 to 400 old men, women and boys joined Smith for a public reading..."

In our dream world, Captain John would have been there at the head of his company and James Smith, the York signer of the Declaration, would have been related to the William Smith who became connected to the family in Ontario county, NY.  But in reality there's nothing to indicate the two Smiths are related and there were several companies from the York area, and Captain John's was one of the later ones.  But the post is an interesting sidelight on how politics worked in 1776

Was Rev. Cathcart Related?

The Universal York blog has a nice post on the Rev. Cathcart and his garden. He was a Presbyterian minister in York at the end of the eighteenth century into the nineteenth who kept a diary, mostly on his garden. "Cathcart" must be a relatively common name, but there was a Cathcart in northwest PA who married a Harshaw.  Too lazy to doublecheck the data.


Anyway, all gardeners will recognize this sort of thing:

In late winter he planted lettuce and radishes, and triumphed March 12, 1803 that his peas had come up in 12 days. The Cathcarts feasted on asparagus each spring. In May 1821 he wrote: "Vegetation rapid--one stalk of asparagus grew in 35 hours 16 inches and at 48 hours was 19 inches.' On April 26, 1822, Cathcart cut 162 stalks of asparagus and 111 stalks on the 30th. It is hoped that the Cathcart children shared their father's enthusiasm for asparagus.

My wife exults when she can have her peas up by mid March.

Where Did the Harshaws Arrive?

Marjorie said this morning they arrived at Castle Garden, on the southern tip of Manhattan which preceded Ellis Island. This may not be true--from what I can see by Google it wasn't an official entry station until 1855. But here's its web site and here's Wikipedia.

And you can search the site for immigration entries going back to 1820.  Unfortunately, the first Harshaws included in the database didn't arrive until 1848 (Samuel), with a large group on July 2, 1849. (A "James Harshow" did arrive in 1834.)

Here's a list of pictures of the potato famine and emigration, including Castle Garden ones.

Harshaws in Ireland

I realize I've failed to post a link to my Google map of Harshaws in Ireland.  So here it is. You need to zoom in, using either the slider on the left side or the command when you right click on a flag.


View Harshaw Irish Map in a larger map

Superfund and Harshaw

A blog in Cleveland explains the aftermath of the Manhattan project for Harshaw Chemical. DOD ref here

Detention of Enemy Combatants--an Earlier War

Captain John Rippey's service in the Pennsylvania militia is a little fuzzy to me.  I've seen claims he served with Washington at Valley Forge, claims which I don't think are true. I've run across, and promptly lost track of, references to his involvement in logistics and possibly to his involvement with guarding prisoners.  What prisoners you ask? First the Battle of Saratoga, where General Burgoyne surrendered (the "Convention Army") and later from the Battle of Yorktown where General Cornwallis was commander.

Anyhow in 1781 the Convention Army was marched from Albemarle, VA to the York area.  The local militia  would have been involved in guard duty and management of the prisoners.

June Lloyd at Universal York has posted in the past on Camp Security and now has another post on it. She's done work in the Archives and found an interesting record from one of the guards. (Not Capt. Rippey.)  Here's a site devoted to it.

Shame on Robert Harshaw

From an archived Australian newspaper, Sydney, Dec. 17, 1857.

"Robert Harshaw, for having made use of obscene language in a public place, was sentenced to pay 20s, or to be imprisoned seven days."

 At least, if he didn't have the money to pay the fine, he'd be out of jail by Christmas.

Crooked Lake Review

Stumbled on this blog, which replaces a magazine, doing searching for my cousin.

 The Crooked Lake Review is a local history magazine for
the Conhocton, Canisteo, Tioga, Chemung and Genesee river valleys,
and for the Finger Lakes and Lake Ontario regions of New York State.

I wonder, looking at the serialization of this old novel, whether the Miss Elliotts of Geneva were based on any of the Rippeys.  From the 1992 preface:

The Misses Elliot of Geneva was written as a humorous tribute to the eccentric characters who flourished in Geneva, N.Y., at the beginning of this century. The two characters who are featured in the title were based on an actual pair, but anecdotes about other bygone Genevans are often interwoven with the originals, so that to some extent they are composites. The original pair were more polite, and their utterances more circuitous than those of 'Miss Primrose' and 'Miss Candida,' whose tongues have been greatly sharpened, though I have not exaggerated their underlying prejudices. One of the pair, I am told, actually left money in her will to the City of Geneva, and had taught a Sunday-School class in her younger days.
The other characters are also somewhat exaggerated, but together they present a picture of a small-town society.
When the book first appeared, there was some indignation among older Genevans, but one of them admitted that "after all, I wouldn't mind being remembered for my witty remarks."

Welcome Cousins

Through ancestry.com I've heard from several cousins (very remote).  I've been sporadically working on a Harshaw/Rippey site, using Google's wikipedia-type software.  At least in theory anyone who wants can add pages, changes the existing pages, and so forth.  I write "in theory", because I'm still trying to understand the software and how best to organize the material.  My ultimate goal is to use it to replace the Harshaw Family site linked to on this blog.  Anyway, any newcomers are welcome to this blog and to the site, and feel free to make changes to the site.  Each page has a "revision history" so a mistaken change can always be undone.  Unlike the real wikipedia though, there seems not to be a discussion page linked to each site page.

Harshaw Leaves Wilkes Barre

Here's a noninformative description.

WR Harshaw

My grandfather was ordained in 1885, when  he was 30:


The same page of the General Assembly minutes of 1886 shows him (and his brother Andrew) as being installed.



But this listing refers to a different location:

H.M. Harshaw's Career and Research

Graduated from West High School in 1914. link

Graduated from University of Nebraska (doctorate) in 1929.  link. [Updated--this is wrong, graduate U. of Missouri around 1924 or so, taught at NE}
Co-author (4 others) of paper on feeding B-12 to calves at U of Minn, dated 1924.  See abstract.

Co-author (2 others) of paper on effects of heat and light on antiscorbutic vitamine, in 1921.  See paper.

Lead author of a 1941 paper on quality of frozen poultry as affected by various conditions.  See reference.

Other papers from a google search for "H.M.Harshaw", including a couple translated into German.

H. Mac Harshaw

Had a BS by 1921 at University of Minnesota:

Mac's Doctorate Thesis

Mac (Harold McCloskey Harshaw) got his doctorate from the University of Missouri with the thesis listed here by the National Research Council in 1925-6. (I'm not sure it was awarded in 1926, because the listing may cover degrees from 1920). The listing says its for nutrition requirements for mammals. [Updated to add a link to the listing and replace a scroll box with the last sentence.]