Ain't No Sunshine

"You junk punch him in his man business, then when he's writhing on the floor, crying "Why?", you point your finger at him and say, "YOU know why!"
- What Happens in Vegas

I don't know what that quote has to do with anything I'm going to write, but ever since Ms. Q brought that movie over we've been saying it. It just makes me smile, and I need all the smiles I can muster right now.

The Professor is home sick this week - the usual fever/sore throat/runny nose crud found in the ever incubating petri dish that is public school. Yay.

I have a genealogical consult on Thursday, that I've put off finishing the charts for, because the data for this one family branch went on for a week and a half in a tee-einy font. Turns out it looked that long because some of the same data was plugged into more than one spot, making one guy both 7th and 8th generation; uncle to himself. I spent my morning yesterday researching everybody in those two generations, in between nursing my pasty, hacking, snot machine of a child. Because that just enhances my ability to focus, see?

Can you tell I'm cranky? Yeah, maybe just a teensy bit. It wouldn't have anything to do with going to two grocery stores, buying just the basics and having 70.00 left for the next two weeks. The cost of eating real food is ridiculous anymore, and doesn't leave me any cushion for the necessary Runaway Mama Sushi Night Fund. That's bad people: mothers who don't get a break are far more likely to have their heads explode, causing trauma to their children and pain to their spouses (see above quote).

Brother can you spare some sushi?

I'm gone! I am on vacation you guys!

I left for PA on Saturday, and in the spirit of my trip, kind of like you're along for the ride, I've posted some of the stories I've collected from being up here. For my dad, a trip up here always means he's close in his thoughts to his grandfather, a man he idolized. The stories don't actually reveal a hero, per se. In fact, my great grandfather was a man of rough nature, raised in a rough place, but he was particularly charismatic. It's probably what kept my great grandmother from killing him. We call it the "smart-ass gene" nowadays, and its a gene that is alive and well in several branches (what up my cuzzin?). So with no further ado, I present to you:

Jacob Toy

Born 1882 in Venango Co. PA, he was the son of William Toy and Rachel Klotz.. He died in February of 1970. He was married October 12, 1904 in Oil City, PA to Minnie Belle Gahring (1888-1962), the daughter of Ross Gahring (b. 1861 – d. 1914) and Martha Ross (b. March 29, 1857 – d. March 1932). The Gahring family is listed as the next door neighbors to Jacob Toy Sr. in the census records of 1900. At the age of 54, Jake's father, William fell from an oil derrick he was repairing and died later that day.

Min was a school teacher in Kaneville as a young woman, and Jake, her future husband, was once one of her students. She is remembered by her grandchildren and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, as a sour and sometimes unhappy woman, who nonetheless, was somehow also the first to pack a picnic and take the family for an outing. She loved to drive, and did all the driving in the family, taking Jake to and from work. She is also described as a “wonderful grandmother”, who wanted her family, and extended family as close to her as possible. She could be verbally intimidating and was known to hold a grudge. She died in 1962 from an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) in her sleep. I never knew her, but my sister adored her, and I believe, hung the moon for my great grandmother as well. It's her house that is the Grandma's House of my memories, and maybe she was still there, somehow, imparting her love to us all. Maybe that was part of why it's so hard to let go of that house. Whenever I hear trains in the night, coming through town, it takes me back to that place.

Jake was listed as a driller in the Oil City directory of 1925. He also shot wells on more than one occasion, once in particular, when he took his grandson, my dad, with him to “shoot a well”. It's a process involving slowly lowering nitroglycerin down into an oil well shaft, dropping a “torpedo”, of metal down the shaft, and then, in the interest of living, “running like hell”. Whenever he brought a well in, he would drink a shot of the raw crude. It was believed then that crude was a tonic.

My father and his sister recall going to the movies with their grandfather and watching him physically move along with the action of the film, usually westerns. He once split his lip on the seat in front of him, shadow boxing.

He is remembered as a generally genial, sometimes liquored up and feisty man, whose energy and sense of humor seemed boundless. On one occasion, he bought a new outfit for hunting, but instead of going hunting, he spent the day at the bar. Returning home that evening, he was considerably impaired, but quite jovial, leaning against the large tree in the front yard, and amusing everyone present with his antics and jokes concerning his pissed condition. When Min appeared she began to rail at him for drinking. Jake became enraged and had to be held down by his son, Bruce and his son-in-law, “Pat”, although I don’t doubt that Min could have held her own. He liked to tell a story and act all bad ass, but she was a tougher cookie than him. Because of Jake’s penchant to drink away his paycheck, Min made a deal with the bartender to allow Jake to have one drink and then to keep the rest of his paycheck until she could come and get it.

Into middle age, when repairing the roof with his son-in-law, “Pat”, on one occasion, Jake was cautioned to be careful while standing up, or else he might fall, whereupon he stood up and danced a jig upon the rooftop.

Even as an old man Jake was known to be rowdy. Once, he and a much larger man got into a fight, no doubt, after tossing back a few drinks. The larger man threw Jake down repeatedly, but Jake refused to be beat, and kept getting back up. When the larger man finally tired out, Jake, who had never seemed to get tired, finished the fight, or in my father's words, "beat the shit out of him." Once, he made a crack in a bar at a lady and my father had to intercede to keep the husband from punching him. He was 70 at the time.

He died at the age of 88, in a nursing home, which haunts my father to this day. We don't go see his headstone much, when we're there. I think that's too real, too hard for my dad. He prefers to walk the streets of his childhood home and carry his grandfather with him. The giant old rig up at Drake's Well evokes such vivid memories for him, that sometimes we have to leave him there for a time, alone, but not really.

Home is where your heart is

My grandfather, his sister and their parents

In another week or so we head north for our yearly vacation in the mountains of western Pennsylvania - Oil City, namely - my father's hometown. Its not exactly a place that tons of people flock to for family vacation time, and frankly, I consider that a perk. I'm not much for crowds - they make me surly.

When I was a child and we lived outside of Buffalo, our trips down to Oil City were frequent. My great grandfather was still alive then, living with my great aunt and her family in the house they had lived in since 1905. My grandfather was born in that house, and my father grew up there as well. It was the quintessential Grandma's House kind of place to go visit, even though none of my grandparents actually lived there. Or maybe that was why.

The house in question (pay no attention to the dapper fellow in the foreground)

We moved to Raleigh in 1969 and the following year my great grandfather died.

I think we went to Oil City once more after that, on a trip up to Buffalo to visit family. My great aunt had also passed away by then and the family had sold the old house to consolidate funds and provide my great uncle with medical care for his emphysema. That was around 1972 and we never went back again. I do recall us going to see the old house, and the new owners allowed us to come in for a last look around. I never see love beads that I don't think of my great aunt's living room during that visit. It was a punch to the emotional gut to see the changes the new owners had wrought, and from then on, my memories were all I had.

In 2000 the hub-man and I took a trip up north to visit family and on the way back we stopped off in Oil City to do a little family research. We located a cemetery that first trip where my Great-great-great grandparents were buried and decided it was worth the extra time to go check it out.

I stood in that cemetery, on a hilltop outside of a little town called Rouseville, watching a thunderstorm roll in over the surrounding hills, and for the first time since we had moved away from Buffalo, I felt like I had come home. Not to be all New Age freaky, but cemeteries all have different vibes to me. Most of the time they feel like you've just walked into someone else's house, but there on that hill, I could almost smell the old house that only lived in my dreams, and felt my family all around me. There on that hill I cried, for the joy of having found them, and for the frustration that they were still so far away.

I went back the following year, and the year after that, staying a night or two in the local hotel, always feeling a bit out of synch with the area. In 2004 I found a house to rent and my parents came with us that year. We all fell in love with that old house, partly, I believe, because it was similar to my great grandparents' house. It was also on the grounds of a park where my dad had played as a kid, so the proximity to his old stomping grounds was another factor. The other added bonus of having a big house to stay in was being able to host my aunt and some of her family, who drove down from Buffalo. It had been over 30 years for me since I had been back there, but it had been even longer since my aunt and my father had been there together. The stories that poured out of them as we went around town were invaluable to the research I was conducting, and highly illuminating, since I wasn't around when a lot of them happened.

Home away from home

Creek at Miller Farm in Oil Creek State Park

Single file at Petroleum Centre

The stories we tell on a trip like this are the best reason to go. The tales of ancestors scraping a life out of this place, of their devotion to and reliance on each other. These stories, told by my father to his grandchildren are priceless jewels in the crown of their identity. They are moments that can only occur for a limited time, but their potential to be remembered and passed down grants immortality to so many.

Family Dynamics, Part V

As I am going to be busy painting today, I thought I would put up an excerpt from the family history I've been writing. This kind of compilation can be very dry and dull, which is why I have worked hard to find and include as much anecdotal material as possible. I know - I am a very dull girl!

Glass Negative Photos supplied courtesy of Drake Well Museum

Jacob Toy (1826 – 1912), the son of William Toy and Mary Ann Bowser, and his wife, Catherine Goldinger (1828), were both born in Armstrong County, but in the late 1850s they moved to Venango County, PA. Jacob worked as a carpenter, building some of the early derricks along Oil Creek. Nevada Feely’s journal suggests he was nicknamed “Bull Wheel”; whether it was for his strength or because he was in some way involved with the actual bull wheel of an oil rig, is unknown. The 1900 census lists him as a manufacturer of Bull Wheels, so perhaps that is where the name began. The early oil prospectors had little ready–made technology or experts among them, other than salt well drillers, blacksmiths, carpenters, and the tools of their trades. His wife, Catherine, worked as a seamstress to earn extra money, and was an invalid in her later years. They lived in Cornplanter Township initially, and then moved to Cherrytree Township, just above Rouseville, PA, in an area known as Kaneville. Jacob bought a house and land along the Little Cherry Run, also known as Kane’s Run, in 1894 from a man named C.G. Dempsey. The nearby town of Petroleum Center, along Oil Creek, was known as “The wickedest place east of the Mississippi”.

Catherine Goldinger was the daughter of Major John Goldinger and Hannah McKallip. Hannah’s parents were Archibald McKallip (born 1774 - d. 1842) and Catherine Kipp (b.1779 - d.1844), who was born on the present site of Gettysburg, in Adams Co. Archibald was born aboard ship to Henry McKallip and his wife, of whom little is known, other than they were Scotch- Irish. Archibald taught school in Westmoreland and in Armstrong Co. near Apollo. He and his wife are buried in Elder’s Ridge Cemetery, in Indiana County.

Jacob Toy and Catherine Goldinger had 7 children:
1) Mary Jane Toy, born 1852 in Armstrong Co. She died about 1922 in Simcoe Canada. She married George Downs (born 1845 in Simcoe(?) Canada) sometime around 1869. They had 1 known child, Pearl Downs, but another child is listed in the 1870 census – a Mary Downs, who was two months old at the time of the census. George Downs reported his occupation on the census as carpenter, so presumably he was working in the oil industry. When and why they moved back to Canada is presently unknown, although I wonder if the family story of the man who bit off the ear of a traveling show strongman and had to leave the country might not be referring to George Downs.

2) William Matthew Toy, born 1853/54 in Armstrong Co. Died June 27, 1904 from injuries sustained in a fall from an oil derrick. He was a carpenter alongside his father in the oil business. Very little is known of him, because of his untimely demise, though his sister, Sarah Agnes describes him as a dutiful son, a good husband, and a loving father. He married Rachel Klotz ( 1857 -1924), the daughter of Jonathan Klotz (1826-1903) and Catherine McIntyre (b. Apr. 1825-1900). William and Rachel had 9 children. Rachel's mother, Catherine McIntyre Klotz, was remembered vividly by her grandson, Jacob Vance Toy as quite a personality. Born in Armstrong County, PA, to Andrew McIntyre and his wife, Elizabeth, she was the second child of five. Catherine was listed in the 1850 Census as being unable to read or write, though her husband was not only literate; he helped to found a school in Perry township, where they lived. She was known as a midwife, smoked a corncob pipe, and drove her buggy unassisted and unchaperoned by menfolk. In later years she made the circuit among her three daughters helping them quilt, preserve, and stock for winter. Her grandson, Jake Toy, remembers being awakened by her at times, to go and gather herbs by the light of the moon.

3) John Toy, born 1858. Died 1872 in Venango Co. Aged 14 years. It is believed he was involved in racing horses at the time of his death.

4) Sarah Agnes Toy, born 1861 in Venango Co. Died 1955. She married James E. Darling (born 1861- died 1891) in 1890. James was an experienced well shooter, but on September 24, 1891, according to an article in the Venango Citizens’ Press, while he and another man, A.S Ferry, were engaged in blowing out stumps using nitroglycerin, he was killed instantly. They had 1 child, Floyd Darling (born 1891- died 1929). “Ag” inherited her father’s farm as payment for caring for him and her mother in their later years. She is reputed to have worn hip boots to clean out her creek and once fired a pistol to frighten off some boys who were throwing rocks back into it. She supplied both bantam (“banty”) chicken eggs and herbal medicinals (Digitalis for Minnie B.) to the family. She also wrote a column for the Venango Citizens Press, starting about 1904, about the local “News” in Kaneville (see excerpts from The Venango Citizens Press). I have written more about "Ag" in this post.

5) Hannah Toy, born April, 1864 in Venango Co. She married Orla Loomis Siple (b. Dec. 7, 1867 in Ohio – died Jan. 13, 1947) in 1889. Sometime prior to 1900 she and her husband moved to Summerland, Santa Barbara, California. In the 1900 census Orla is listed as a helper for an oil company; in 1910 his job is described as “laborer”, and by 1920 he is working as a farmer. The 1900 census lists three children: Naomi (b. Sept. 1891), Dolores (b. June 1893), and Alvilda (b. March 1899). Naomi married Gordon R. Littlefield May 29, 1909, in Summerland, Ca. They had two children, listed in the 1920 census: Gordon (b. 1918) and Thelma (b. 1919) Littlefield. It appears that Gordon died sometime between 1912 and 1920, as Naomi is living again with her parents in the 1920 census. Alvilda, or Alwilda, as her name appears in the 1930 census, married Theodore James Reed (b. Nov. 1893 CA), the son of Theodore L. Reed (b. Apr. 1855 NJ) and Louisa Maria Henkel (b. June 1858 GER), and they had 2 children.

6) Alvilda Toy, born? It is believed she died in infancy. There is little known of this child, except for her name; Hannah Toy Siple named one of her children this same name and it is possible that her daughter is the only Alvilda in the family.

7) Jacob Toy, born? He is believed to have died in infancy.

The names of the two infants who died were provided by Kathy Kulling Holmgren from a book of family history written by her grandmother, Nevada Feely Toy. It is believe that Nevada received the information from Agnes Darling, with whom she was known to have been close.

Family Dynamics, Part IV

Kaneville, May 3rd, 1904
"And now I guess the beautiful summer time, so much talked of, has come at last. "

Kaneville, July 28th, 1904
"Mrs. Mary Downs and daughter, Pearl, of Simcoe Canada, who were called home to attend the funeral of the former's brother, William Toy, have been spending a month with the former's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Toy.

The mink is a very unwelcome guest in Kaneville. Your scribe had 40 chickens killed one night last week."

I was trawling the VCP (Venango Citizens Press), looking for an obituary on Jonathan Klotz, one of my thrice-great grandfathers, when I stumbled across these articles. They had been written by my 3rd great grandaunt, Sarah Agnes Darling, nee Toy. She wrote articles about her family and neighbors for about 9 years; none of which are particularly literary in content, but are chock-full of the comings and goings of her family, with the occasional dry comment about the weather, or a neighbor.

Why is this important to me?

For the past 6 years, I have spent a week out of every summer going up to PA to find family history data. I know my way around the Pennsylvania Room in the Franklin Library with my eyes closed. I know the back roads almost as well as my father does, and he grew up there.

One of the first cemeteries I discovered in my quest was Rynd Farm; a quiet little place that sits above Oil Creek State Park. There along with her brothers and sisters, Agnes Toy Darling is buried.

But she hasn't been completely at rest.

When I took my father and my aunt up there the following year, I could not find her headstone. We searched the whole place, but no Agnes. When I went back alone, there she was.

It occurred to me, at that time, that there was something she wanted me to do- maybe a few things.

I began the collecting of her articles that year.

I started trying to get both sides of our family to meet up there every summer.

I began the enormous task of compiling a comprehensive family history that includes all of the branches of the Toy family of Western Pennsylvania, because there was nothing like it compiled anywhere.

I started corresponding with family members of the different branches - something that hadn't been done since the branches drifted apart.

These are all things that I feel Agnes Darling wanted me to do, for her.

I learned that she was also a family historian; a cousin out in California had a journal written by her grandmother, Nevada Feely Toy, that contained information on the Toy family and where they had come from, prior to migrating to Western Pa. We both felt sure that the information in that book came from Agnes Darling.

There are no surviving pictures of Agnes Darling, other than a tiny head shot of her in a family reunion picture, taken around 1935. She's in the middle right, surrounded by her nieces and nephews; my great grandfather's brothers and sisters.

That's her, the bitty little head, off to the right, in the middle.

This is her biography:
Sarah Agnes Toy was born in 1861 in Venango County, PA. Her family had recently moved to that area, along with scores of other people, following the discovery of oil in 1858 by Colonel Edwin Drake. She grew up in the shadow of the infant oil industry, a tough place to live and thrive. While some of the prospectors did strike it rich, most of them worked hard, played hard, and died poor. The nearby city of Petroleum Center was termed "the wickedest place east of the Mississippi", and was filled with saloons and houses of ill repute. Not the most ideal place to raise children.

She was the fourth child of Jacob Toy and Catherine Goldinger. Her eldest sister, Mary Jane (1852-1922) married a man from Canada, and moved there in the mid 1880s. Her oldest brother, William M. (1853-1904), my 2x great grandfather, fell from a derrick in his 51st year, and died shortly afterwards. Her other older brother, John (1858-1872), died at the age of 14, in an accident having to do with racing horses. Her younger sister, Hannah (1864), got married and moved to California, prior to 1900. Agnes was the only child left to her parents who could take care of them in their old age.

Sarah Agnes didn't get married until she was 29 - a ripe old age for the 19th century. She married James Darling (1861), who was a driller and a well shooter in the oil fields. "Shooting a well" means carefully lowering nitroglycerin into an oil well shaft that has begun to dry up, and then dropping a piece of metal called a "torpedo" into the shaft, hitting the nitro and blasting the shaft. The blast causes fracturing of the shale in the well, allowing more oil to be pumped from the well.

A year and a half after they were married, on September 24, 1891, James Darling and another man, decided to use nitroglycerin to blow up some stumps that were in the way in a field. (the crazy shit these people did with nitroglycerin, and crude oil would curl your hair! The newspapers of the time are filled with stories of people burning down their houses, trying to start a fire indoors with crude oil, or using nitroglycerin to blow up stuff.) They were both killed instantly. She was left a widow, with an infant, born that year, to care for.

Agnes moved back in with her parents and life went on. She cared for both her invalid mother, until her death, as well as her father, who passed away in 1912, after a series of strokes. She never remarried. When her father, Jacob, passed away, he left her the farm, as payment for her years of caring for him and his wife. She outlived everyone in her family, including her only son, Floyd, who died in 1929.

The stories of Agnes Darling abound: My father used to tell us how she would pull on her hip waders to go out and clean the rocks out of her creek. Once, when some boys were throwing rocks into her creek, she came out of the house, waving her father's pistol and shot it into the air. I actually met one of those boys, one summer when we were up there. My kids were down in her creek, looking for fossils, when an old man came up and started talking about bears in the area. When I asked him about Ag he knew exactly who I was talking about, and told me the story of the rocks in the creek, and the pistol.

Tell me she wasn't standing right there, while we were talking to that man!

My father also told me how his grandmother would go out to visit Ag to buy eggs from her- she was too proud to just take money, even from a family member- and that Agnes kept bantam chickens, whose eggs she would give to my father, because they were little and cute (he calls them "banty" chicken eggs). His grandmother also obtained digitalis from Agnes, to help with her heart problems, so it would appear that Ag knew a thing or two about herbal remedies as well.

I went to the Oil City Genealogical Library this past year, to do some poking around, and struck up a conversation with the librarian working there. I mentioned Agnes' name and she perked right up. "Oh! My mother and grandmother used to talk about her all the time! They were neighbors."

After more than 50 years since her death (1955), her presence is still palpable, in that part of the world.

She is a major force in my research, and every time I encounter another person who knew her, I can feel her presence in the meeting.

Someday, I will go to join her, and the rest of the ancestors, and I will have come home, but in the meantime, it is a comfort to have her at my shoulder, whispering in my ear.