"The Adventure of Mrs. Bartley" + a Newspaper Tip

Thomas Bartley and Robert Bartley were brothers, both born in the late 1700s and died in mid-1800s.  Robert is my third-great-grandfather.  Thomas and his wife are, I believe, my great-great-great-grand-uncle and -aunt.

The stories below come from a newspaper column called "Pioneer Tales" by James A. McKee.  This was published on page 4 of the March 27, 1912 issue of The Butler Citizen.  James A. McKee edited and compiled the book 20th Century History of Butler and Butler County, Pa. and Representative Citizens.  As far as I can tell, the entries below were not copied from the book.

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        Adventure of Mrs. Bartley.
    Thomas Bartley, a native of Ireland,
came to the township about 1807.  Mrs.
Bartley was unaccustomed to frontier
life and was utterly ignorant of the
dangers from wild animals that infest-
ed the wilderness about her cabin
home.  One day she noticed a raven-
ous-looking dog in the yard, and from
purely sympathetic motives she en-
deavored to coax the animal into the
cabin with corn meal mush attached
to the end of a stick.  The strange
beast resisted all overtures to be
friends and finally loped off into the
woods, where it disappeared from
sight.  That evening Mrs. Bartley told
the story to her husband, who in-
formed her that what she had taken
for a dog was a timber wolf and that
she was lucky to escape an attack
from the beast.
    Robert Bartley, a brother of Thom-
as, settled in the same neighborhood.
He ran a small distillery as well as his
farm and it is said that the boys in
the neighborhood caused him a good
deal of trouble.  It is also recorded
that the boys did not always get the
best of the conflicts they had with the
hot-headed Irishman.  On one occa-
sion, they were smarting under defeat
and decided to get even with Bartley.
    The boys captured a live possum and
one night when the Bartley family
were sitting at their evening meal be-
fore the open fireplace in the log
cabin, the boys climbed to the comb
of the root and dropped the possum
down the wide chimney into a blazing
fire that was cracking on the hearth.
The antics of the frightened animal
almost caused a panic among the Bart-
ley children.

In addition to the stories themselves, other information I garnered from this article include:
-- Thomas Bartley and Robert Bartley are brothers.
-- Thomas Bartley was born in Ireland and immigrated to the U.S. in or before 1807.
-- Thomas was married at the time of this incident (though no date is recorded).
-- Thomas and his wife lived in a rural area.
-- Robert had a family and children.
-- Robert operated a distillery and also farmed.
-- Robert was described as a "hot-headed Irishman."
-- Robert and his family lived in a log cabin.

Sadly, the original source of these stories is not recorded.  In the second story the phrases "it is said" and "it is recorded" leave me wondering who said it and where it was recorded.  Will I ever know?

A Newspaper Tip.
If you're searching ancestors' names in newspapers, don't ignore results that were published long after his or her death.  Oftentimes, especially in the 20th century, newspapers published looking back or history sections, such as 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, etc.  You may be surprised, as I was with this clipping, to find an ancestor's name many years after he or she died.

-–Nancy.

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