The Smiths: Once More Into the Breach

What do we know about the Smiths:


In 1793 William Smith Jr. is elected an overseer of highways.  Link  From that I can argue that his father is still around.  If

William and Leonard are listed together, which might imply they're brothers. They are--see below.

When Elizabeth marries Joseph Rippey, she's accompanied by her brother, Captain William.  From that I can argue her father is no longer around. On the other hand, the will of William Smith shows Elizabeth as one daughter, he designates Joseph as an executor, and he's buried in No. 9.  So perhaps the transcription is wrong, and it was father Captain William.

So one possibility is three Williams: grandfather (Wm sr), father (Wm Jr) and brother (Captain wm).  This stumbles on the idea that Wm Jr is buried in No. 9 with a date of death of 1831, meaning he's still alive when she's married.  So maybe he was an invalid, or estranged when Elizabeth was married?

It looks to me as if her tombstone says she died in the 33rd year of her life, Mar 5, 1838

William Smith writes his will in 1830, meaning he's likely the William Smith who died in 1831 and is buried

He's married to Mary, his son is Leonard, his daughters are Mary, Isabel, Elizabeth, Katharine, Amy, Margaret,

His executors are John McIntire and Joseph Rippey.

Henry Smith, father of William and Leonard, dies at 92 in July 29, 1820 link

David Pomeroy

Thanks to a message through ancestry.com I now know more about a second cousin: David B Pomeroy.

My grandmother, Ada Rippey Harshaw, had an elder sister Mary, who married F. Crawford and had children, including Ada Vere Crawford.  Ada Vere married a Pomeroy and had 6 children, with David Pomeroy her youngest.  Ada's husband died in 1918, 2 years after David was born.  David grew up to be enlisted in the Army in March 1944.  (Enlistment record says he had one year of college and was separated with dependents.) After training he was shipped as a replacement to the 134th Infantry Regiment, 35th Infantry Division which had been fighting since early July. 

He was one of the volunteers for the "Baby Patrol", which rescued 80+ young children from a chateau between the American and German lines.  He was later captured and served out the war in a POW camp.

Scottish Harshaws

In 1841 a 16-year Margaret Harshaw was in Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland

In 1851 there was a 19-year old Helen Harshaw visiting in Wigtownshire, Scotland, in 1861  a 61 year old Ann Harshaw living in Argyll, 26 year old Thomas Harshaw in Renfrewshire, in 1871 there were no 'In 1881 a family in Ayrshire and a family in Lanarkshire, in 1891 2 families in Ayrshire and again in 1901

West Pittston Photos

Found this website with photos of West Pittston.

West Pittston Flooding

Apparently West Pittston was flooded by tropical storm Lee. The parsonage was very close to the Susquehanna. [Updated: NYTimes article.]

Ralph in Foochow

Inspired by word that Yale is digitizing mission records, I did a search for Foochow YMCA and got this hit, a picture showing the board of directors in 1920, with Ralph second from left in rear row. According to this, Ralph was also the photographer.  There's also this picture of the building, with the note it was donated by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.  And this photo of the YMCA Boy Scout troop (Ralph's not in the picture--he took it).

And this story has no connection with the Golds, but I can't resist it:

"The congregation in a small rural Fujian country church decided to repaint the church, but only had enough money for about ten gallons of paint.  They did it anyway, in faith, praying that the paint would not run out, even as the oil did not run out in the Old Testament story of Elijah and the widow.   When the paint ran low, they added paint thinner, but managed to complete the entire wooden church with just ten gallons of paint!

But no sooner had they finished, a very untimely (for that season) thunderstorm broke upon the church, washing off much of the paint that had been thinned.  And a voice from heaven said, "Repaint, and thin no more!"

West Pittston School

If memory serves, Rev. William Harshaw and family moved to West Pittston from NYC in 1898 and to Minneapolis in 1909.  That means Helen was 13, John 9, and Mac 4 when they moved.  So Helen and John graduated from West Pittston High School and Mac had most of his schooling there.

I bought a copy of the 1892 West Pittston school manual, which I'll scan and put online.

The Harshaw Diaries

As of now the diaries of James Harshaw are not accessible on the Internet.  I expect that to change, but until they do this Newry Journal piece provides some highlights which may be of interest.

Stewarts and Lower Chanceford in the Civil War?

York county is the next county east of Adams county, the county seat of which is Gettysburg.  It's near enough it had a fair amount of Civil War action.  The York blogs have mentioned some of this.  This post at Universal York has a list of names from Lower Chanceford township which were in a hastily-alerted unit mustered during July 1863.  I see several Stewarts, who might descend from Capt. John and Mary Orson.  I also note some surnames which are familiar in NY: Grove, Fulton, Boyd, Smith--I often wonder whether the migration to Geneva, NY accounts for some of the overlap in names between the two areas.

With this number of men from Lower Chanceford, I also wonder how many were away fighting?

More on Rippey/Ripy

The Ulster Scot now has their June 2011 issue online for downloading. Page 14 has an article on Dr. William Rippy, linking the lineage to Ripy Whiskey in Kentucky. Note that I've linked to the page from which you can download the publication.  When I did so, it opened in Adobe Flash, but my Firefox 3.6 browser bogged down later.  The Adobe Flash plug-in apparently started using all the memory I had.  I ended up uninstalling Adobe Flash from Firefox.

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m123/ScrantonWilkesBarre/West%20Pittston/WestPittston031.jpg

Dr. William Reppe/Rippy/Rippey

Genealogy boards have reported that the Rippey family originated when a Dr. William R.. emigrated to the UK. Marjorie passes on information from an UlsterScots newspaper article, which also stimulated bit more research.


Dr. William Reppe had a flourishing medical practice in Paris.  He fled Paris probably after August 24, 1572, the date of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of Protestants. While most Huguenot refugees who came to Britain settled in England, the good doctor went to Scotland.

There he apparently became friends with the Hamiltons, because in 1610 he moves to Ulster (County Tyrone) as part of the Hamilton/Montgomery settlement.  (That's the settlement in which a Harshaw also took part.)


There's a commune (town) called "Reppe" on the eastern border of France, about 30 miles north of Basel Switzerland, which might possibly be an ancestral home.



View Reppe/Rippy in a larger map

A House Captain John Saw

We don't know what the house of Captain Rippey and Mary Orson looked like, but here's the York Town Square blog post on the Willis house, which dates to that time.

Chester County History

A bit of history