A 600-Bushel Harvest

I knew the Doyles of Stoneboro, Pennsylvania, grew strawberries because both my father, Lee Doyle, and his half-sister, Tressa, mentioned them.  My father had little to say about that fact and seemed uninterested in strawberries.  My aunt had more to say:  "Strawberries are a lot of work."

I had no idea how large the Doyle strawberry patch was but I knew they hired people to help pick because one of my grand-aunts remembered earning a penny per quart to pick berries.  (U. S. Inflation Calculator tells me the value of that penny today would be 24¢.)

It wasn't until about two years ago, after I saw these postcards, that I had a broader sense of the quantity of berries the Doyles grew.  They didn't just grow strawberries, they sold strawberries.

Berries arriving Stoneboro Depot, from Doyle's Farm

June 23, 08.    Banner Week    600 Bus
Scene at Doyls [sic] Berry Farm  Stoneboro Pa.

Yes, caring for the berry plants that supplied 600 bushels of strawberries in one week would be a lot of work!

My parents attended Stoneboro's Centennial Celebration in 1967.  Not long ago I discovered the program my mom saved.  In it were poor copies of the above photographs and the account below.  The photos above are in reverse order to their descriptions below.

     William Doyle, a native of Cambois Colliery near Blythe, Northumberland, England, was owner of the farm, which employed many local citizens during berry picking time in late June and early July.  Many residents will recall picking berries for Mr. Doyle.
     The top picture, with a scene from the farm, notes the banner week of June 23, 1908, as producing 600 bushels.  Many local people are pictured, including Mr. Doyle and members of his family.  The man in the suit, white shirt, bow tie and hat is the "berry man" who came to the farm and made arrangements for shipping the berries.
     The bottom picture shows the produce arriving at the Stoneboro Railroad Station, in horse-drawn wagons, ready for shipments on trains to various points.  One of the destinations was Franklin, where a hotel maintained a standing order for the large "William-Belt" berries which were of such size that 18 filled a quart berry basket.  Among the men pictured at the station are the late George Proud, John Gustafson, John Berrisford, and Gust Doyle, son of William Doyle, the farm owner.

I think 600 bushels -- 19,200 quarts! -- is a lot of berries, but I still didn't have a sense of how large the strawberry patch was.  In a recent search of Google Books I discovered my grandfather, Gust, mentioned in Twenty-Second Annual Report of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, 1916. 

Under "List of Nurseries Licensed" in Mercer County, is Augustus Doyle, Stoneboro, with 5 acres of berries or small fruit plants.  There is no family record of Gust growing any small fruit plants other than strawberries.

So let's think about size.  An acre measures 4,840 square yards or 43,560 square feet.  Gust had five times that:  24,200 square yards or 217,800 square feet.  I now hesitate to call what the Doyles had a strawberry patch. 

Next I wanted to know how many strawberry plants might grow in five acres of land.  Strawberry Plants.org gives me the following information. 
If there are 36" between the rows, and if the plants are planted
> 24" apart, there would be 7,260 plants/acre, equaling 36,300 plants on 5 acres.
> 18" apart, there would be 9,680 plants/acre, equaling 48,400 plants on 5 acres.
> 12" apart, there would be 14,520 plants/acre, equaling 72,600 plants on 5 acres.
However, if the rows are closer together, there will be more plants per acre.

These are my Aunt Tressa (Doyle) Wilson's memories of strawberry care on the farm.  By the time she was old enough to help with the plants, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the strawberry "patch" had decreased to two acres.  She wrote,

     In the spring the 2 acre patch had to be prepared for the strawberries we’d be planting for next year’s crop.  Strawberries were a lot of work.  After the plants started to grow – they had to be hoed to keep the soil away from the heart of the plant, to destroy the weeds, and to keep the soil mellow....  When the blossoms came out on the newly planted plants, we children had to pick off every blossom so the plants could use their strength to send out runners with little plants on.  As the new plants grew and formed roots we had to set the plants in line with the mother plant.  This was to keep them from being uprooted by the cultivator.
     By the time the new strawberry patch had been planted and taken care of with tender, loving care – the berries in the other patch were starting to ripen.  This meant more “back breaking” work.  The berries were picked and brought into the garage to be crated.  Each crate held 32 quarts [which equals a bushel].  After the berries were picked and crated they’d be taken by horse and wagon to the Rail Road Station downtown to be shipped to Franklin to be sold.  In later years we sold the berries to a man who took them to Pittsburgh by truck.  The berries had to be picked every other day.  We never got more than $4.00 a bushel for them.  As the season progressed the price kept dropping – like 3 quarts for a quarter.  The pickers were paid 1¢ (yes - 1 cent) a quart for picking.

Imagine tending 72,000 strawberry plants.  Oh my goodness, what a lot of work!  All by hand in those days.  I don't know what the average harvest of strawberries on the Doyle's five acres of strawberries plants was but isn't it sad that with all those wonderful, fresh strawberries, neither my father nor my Aunt Tressa liked to eat strawberries?

I'm linking this post to Sepia Saturday 496 : 16 November 2019.

–Nancy.

Copyright ©2019, Nancy Messier.  All Rights Reserved. 
Do not copy or use any content from this blog without written permission from the owner. 
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Little Lambs

Little lambs are so sweet, they can just steal your heart.  I suppose we are drawn to an orphaned lamb even more than to one whose mother is alive and accepts it.

My father once told the story of an orphaned lamb who came to live at his family's farm.  My aunt added further details to the story, both of which are combined in this retelling.

The Whites had a sheep farm not far from my grandfather's farm in Stoneboro, Pennsylvania.  One of the White's ewes died after giving birth and Mr. White needed to find a home for the lamb.  He asked if the Doyles would like to have it.  Of course the children were delighted and their father, Gust, agreed.  It was a sweet, gentle, male lamb they named Sambo.

There were four or five children who helped care for the lamb.  The youngest was Billy, perhaps just three or four years old at the time.  Billy was little, the lamb was little.  It all worked out great. 

As lambs will do, Sambo began to grow.  Little Billy would hold his hand up and Sambo would run into it, sometimes knocking him down.  It was a fun game and everyone saw the humor.  Sambo continued to grow.  The children would gather to go to school and Sambo would come up behind them, lower his head, and butt one or the other of them.  The children thought it was both fun and funny.  But by the time Sambo was half grown, his butting was not so playful.  He began to butt little Billy in earnest, sometimes surprising him from behind and knocking him over.  It was no longer funny.  The adults realized that Sambo could hurt Billy. 

Sambo went back to the White farm from whence he came to live a life of grazing and, probably, butting the other rams.  Perhaps he became a wether.

Our family has another story of an orphaned lamb.  My daughter and her husband have a small flock of sheep on their farm.  Last year one of the ewes gave birth to twins but refused to accept one of them.   I don't understand why that happens but I know it does occasionally.

Of course they took care of the lamb, feeding it from a bottle until it was old enough to be weaned.  My little grandchildren loved the little lamb which followed them everywhere.  Little Olivia wasn't talking much at the time but would call  "baaaa" and the lamb would come running.

After it was weaned they gradually transitioned it to live in the pasture during the day, but kept it enclosed at night to keep it safe from coyotes or other predatory animals.  After a few weeks it spent most of its time in the pasture.  When they walked near the fence the lamb came running, remembering the ones who had taken care of it.

Then one day when they walked near the fence the lamb didn't come.  My daughter was unable to go into the pasture with the two little ones, but when her husband came home in the evening he found the little lamb dead in the field.  There were no marks on it.  His guess was that without the guidance of a mother, the lamb had eaten a plant that was poisonous.  How they grieved for the little lamb they loved.

My only personal experience with living sheep is seeing them at the state fair where I love to bury my hands in their wool and then have a whiff of lanolin.  I also have experience cleaning, dying, carding, spinning, and weaving their wool.  Wool is not as easily accessible these days as it was when there was a wool co-op in the area so I haven't done any spinning for a number of years. 

If you visit Sepia Saturday 322 this week you can read others' experiences with sheep, or rabbits, or chickens, or who knows what other animals.

--Nancy.

Copyright © 2016 Nancy Messier. All Rights Reserved.
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From Horses to Tractor

Barn on the Doyle Farm.  Photo taken about 1992.

I knew little about the workings of the dairy farm of my father's childhood in Stoneboro -- Dad rarely spoke of his youth -- so several years after he died I contacted his half-sister to learn more.  I wrote lists of questions and she patiently and thoroughly responded.  (Those letters are treasures to me now for all the family history information they contain.)  We corresponded by mail for a few months and then arranged a visit to Stoneboro.  She took us to see and explore the farm of their childhood.  The barn, unused for many years, was in a sad state of disrepair.

About farm work during the fall and winter months my aunt wrote,

The farm machinery had to be checked over and repaired, if needed, before storing it for winter.  The farming was all done by horses . . .

The 1927 Pennsylvania Census tells me that of Gust Doyle's 140 acres he devoted 35 to corn, wheat, oats, and Irish potatoes.  An additional 21 acres were given over to hay for the horses and the farm's 24 cows. 

Farming with horses was labor-intensive.  In addition to the work of plowing and harvesting, part of the work included the care and feeding of the animals and care of the harnesses, not to mention the work of harnessing and unharnessing the horses each day. 

I wish I'd asked my aunt about the horses.  Perhaps they were Belgians, like the ones shown here.

My aunt's letter continued,

. . . until we bought our first Fordson Tractor.  I don’t remember when that was – about 1930 – I think. 

Fordson tractors were manufactured in the U.S. from 1917 to 1920 by Henry Ford & Sons, Inc.  At right is an advertisement (with enlargement below) for a new Fordson tractor from the May 27, 1918, issue of the Youngstown Vindicator.  

Gust was 28 when this advertisement was published.  I wonder if he learned of the tractors from a newspaper ad similar to this one or by word of mouth.  Was his first view of a Fordson in Pittsburgh or another nearby city at a showing like the one advertised, at a county or state fair, or at the farm of a neighbor who had already purchased one?  Did a group of farmers gather around the new machine to debate the pros and cons of a tractor over horses, or had they already made up their minds that a tractor was a definite improvement over horses, the only other considerations being repairs, buying gasoline, the cost, and having the money in one lump sum?  

From my aunt's letters I know that Gust and his family already owned a Model T Ford.  Perhaps he already had the skills and knowledge to keep a tractor in good running order.  Unless he purchased the tractor from England, whose production of them extended from 1920, it's likely the Fordson he purchased was a used model.  Even so....

How exciting it must have been for Gust and his family to have a tractor!

How I wish I had contemporary photographs of Gust on the tractor.  Lacking one, the story is less personal.  Still, I'm pleased to have found bits and pieces from other resources to create the history of Gust Doyle, his farm, and a Fordson tractor. 

How I wish I knew what happened to the horses.

Drive on over to Sepia Saturday 272 to see what others are sharing in this week's posts.;

Sources
Unaltered image of Belgian horses courtesy of Dave in Lincolnshire.
Color photo of Fordson tractor courtesy of Wikipedia.

--Nancy.

Copyright © 2015 Nancy Messier. All Rights Reserved.

Snapshot of the Gust Doyle Farm, 1927 - Census Sunday

I have an unending fascination with my near ancestors -- the ones who might have been alive during my lifetime had disease or illness not taken them early.  Had they lived I might have known more about their lives and visited the environments in which they lived.  For my farmer ancestors, an agricultural census seems like a tiny window into their lives -- a snapshot, if you will -- of animals, crops, and chores on the farm. 

The Pennsylvania Triennial Farm Census--1927 gives the barest image of the farm where my father and grandfather lived.  At the time the census was taken, between October 13 and November 29, 1927, Gust Doyle would have been 38 or 39 (his birthday was on November 17); my father, Lee, was 14.  Also living on the farm were Gust's second wife, my father's step-mother; and their four children, my father's half-siblings.  Gust's information is on p. 5, line 23.

Column
 1     Gust Doyle - Name of Operator
        R.D. 1, Stoneboro - Address (R.D. & Post Office)
 2     O - Owner, Renter, Manager
 3     1 male under 10
 4     3 females under 10
 5     2 males 10 and older
 6     1 female 10 and older
 7     140 total acres all land in farm
 8     35 total acres land used for crops during season
 9     7 acres corn for grain
10    6½ acres corn for silage and fodder, etc.
11    6 acres wheat for grain
12    15 acres oats for grain
13    no acres rye for grain
14    no acres buckwheat for grain
15    ½ acre Irish potatoes
16    no acres tobacco
17    no acres tame alfalfa hay
18    21 acres all other hay
19    no apple tress of bearing age
20    14 apple trees of non-bearing age
21    18 peach trees of all ages
22    2 pear trees of all ages
23    2 horses including colts
24    no mules
25    2 horses & mules of working age
26    18 milk cows & heifers 2 years old and over
27    2 heifers 1-2 years old to be kept for milking
28    4 all other cattle including calves
29    no sows or gilts for breeding
30    no other swine including pigs
31    no sheep including lambs
32    30 hens and pullets of laying age
33    30 other chickens
34    no hives of bees
Equipment and conveniences - report number of each
35    1 running water in kitchen
36    1 furnace heating system
37    no milking machines in use
38    1 automobile
39    1 motor truck
40    1 tractor
41    no gas engines
42    1 telephone
43    no radios
44    1 silo
If farm is equipped with electricity, source of current
45    not own plant
46    1 power station

Had the census requested an account of other fruits grown on the farm in addition to apples and pears, Gust would have answered that there were up to several acres of strawberries grown and harvested each year.  The Doyle Farm was known for its strawberries and was situated on what was called Strawberry Hill.

The Pennsylvania Triennial Farm Census--1927 is available at the website of the Pennsylvania History and Museum Commission.  Thank you for the snapshot, PHMC!

–-Nancy.

Copyright ©2014-2021 by Nancy Messier.  All Rights Reserved. 
Do not copy or use any content from this blog without written permission from the owner. 
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Sentimental Sunday: A Once-Strong and Sturdy Barn

Three generations -- father, son, and grandson -- milked cows, stabled horses, and stored hay in this barn.  Deprived of its purpose, it now stands empty.  It was once a noble barn, both strong and sturdy, giving protection and comfort to those it served.

From the cooling house, milk was driven by wagon in winter or truck in summer to the Meadow Gold Milk Plant.  There are no milk buckets or cooling equipment now. 

Its joists and rafters speak of strength while its siding is fragile and decaying.

Once repaired yet now crumbling and in disrepair.  It is abandoned.

The heart of this dairy farm was the milking parlour where friendly, gentle cows lowed and chewed as they gave their warm milk.  Now, only debris litters the parlour.

This barn once stood on Strawberry Hill on Fredonia Road outside of Stoneboro, Pennsylvania.  It's been torn down since these photos were taken.  Sometimes I think that buildings have souls and that they offer support to those who care for and use them with wise stewardship.  I spent only an hour or so in and around this barn, yet I felt a connection to it.  Melancholy fills my soul today as I remember that this once proud, useful barn is gone.

William, Gust, and Lee Doyle were the father, son, and grandson -- the stewards -- who worked on and cared for this barn and farm.  They, too, are gone.

--Nancy.

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Billy and the Lamb

At far left is Tressa, the aunt who, as an adult, related the following story to me.

At near left is Billy, the boy in the story, probably at about the age when the lamb was at the farm.










My father once told the story of a lamb who lived on the farm in Stoneboro, Pennsylvania, where he grew up.  When the lamb grew larger, it began to butt the children in the neighborhood while they waited for the bus.  (I question my memory: were there school buses to take rural Stoneboro children to school in mid-1920s?)  However it was, he talked about this half-grown sheep butting the children.

I was interested in this story and so asked Aunt Tressa, Dad's half sister who grew up with him on the farm, if she remembered the lamb.  This is the story she told me.

The White family lived in our neighborhood.  They raised sheep.  The lambs were born early in the spring.  A mother died – leaving her little lamb an orphan.  Mr. White asked if we wanted to raise it.  Of course, we did.  Baby lambs are so soft and frisky – especially if they are “boy lambs.”

We named our lamb Sambo and fed him warm milk from a bottle and nipple.  He was very playful.  Bill was quite young at this time.  He loved Sambo and would hold his little fat hand up so Sambo would back up then make a run for Bill’s hand to “bunt it.”

This was great fun until Sambo was about half grown.  His playing took on a different nature.  When he saw Bill in the yard he would attack him from the back.  He would put his head down, while running toward Bill, and would knock him down.  We all enjoyed watching Sambo attack Bill until Sambo became big enough to hurt him.  That is when we gave him back to White’s so Sambo could join his own family of sheep.

I've never had a lamb but I can imagine how much fun it would be and how frisky, soft, and cuddly it could be.  I didn't have the photograph of Bill when I first heard this story but could easily imagine Bill's "little fat hand" in front of the lamb and how much fun it was for both Bill and the rest of the family to see the lamb interact with Bill and the other children.  I can also imagine how terrifying it could have been to see a child have the wind knocked out of him by a partly-grown lamb running, head down, to butt him.

I was grateful to hear the story from another person and hear additional memories.

Do you have "animal stories" from your family?

Some Fellow

I say, this fellow sure looks like a character to me. There he is with his thumbs hooked under his armpits, a pipe in his mouth, knee-high boots, and, well, look at that expression on his face! (If you didn't know it, you can click on the photo to enlarge it in a window by itself. Click on it again and it should enlarge even more. When you're finished looking click the back arrow in your browser window.)

This fellow is my father, Lee Doyle, probably when he was about 18 or 20. This photo was taken sometime before he left the farm in Stoneboro, Pennsylvania, in 1934. I wish I knew who took it.


Here are two photographs of the barn on his family's farm. I'm trying to decide where he might have been standing when the photo at left was taken. Do you have a guess? It looks like he might have been mucking out stalls.



Do you ever wish you had been able to know a parent or grandparent when he/she was the same age as you? Or when you were the age the person was in a specific photograph? I definitely wish I could have known my father when he was a young man. Aunt Tressa, my father's half sister, wrote that my dad had a great sense of humor, something we children very rarely saw. It's much easier to believe when I look at this photo. Though we didn't often see his sense of humor, we did see that Dad could fix just about anything that broke, do triple digit math problems in his head, and repair watches, something he learned to do via a correspondence course. I think he could have been an engineer had there been an opportunity for him to obtain the education.

Thanks for coming to look at these photos and for sharing comments. This is a contribution to Sepia Saturday. If you go to the Sepia Saturday blog there are links to others' old photos and posts.

A Typical Day.... Was All Work

Because my father, Lee Doyle, never talked about his childhood, all I really knew about his youth was that he lived on a farm in Stoneboro, Pennsylvania. About 7 years after Dad died I wrote to his half-sister, Tressa, and asked her questions about their years on the farm together. She was kind to take time to answer them, and I've been slowly transcribing the many pages she wrote. She went into very little detail about the exhausting labor of running a farm and the day-in, day-out, every-day-of-the-year work, but gave a brief overview of work in this summer season. (The photo to the right shows the barn and farm from the back.)

My daughters and I visited Aunt Tressa about two years later and she took us to see the farm. I was surprised to realize that we'd passed it every time we went to visit her -- and I'd never known it was "the farm." We were not able to go inside the house but had permission to poke around the barn, walk the property, and take photographs. Aunt Tressa's words about the farm and those bygone times are below, accompanied by my photos of that visit.

At least 4 generations of my Doyle family had used the barn for a livelihood. As you can see, the barn was unused, unloved, and had been given little care in recent years. The fields were grown over with grass and weeds, the paths from pasture to barn no longer discernable. It tugged at my heartstrings to see the once noble barn in such a state. It has since been torn down, a part of our family's past and history gone, except for Aunt Tressa's written memories and my photographs.

A typical day on the farm in summer was all work. – Seven days a week the cows had to be milked – morning and evening. The milk was strained into 10 gallon cans which were set in the cold water trough to cool. Every morning the cans were put on the truck (wagon in the wintertime) to be taken to the Meadow Gold Milk Plant at Sandy Lake. We took turns with 2 other farmers at taking the milk to the Plant. Each turn was for a month. Dad [Gust] or your Dad [Lee], when he was old enough to drive, would take the milk to the Plant.

After milking was completed the cows were turned out to pasture.
This is where the youngest of the family had to help. We would follow the cows down the lane, urge them into the pasture and secure the gate. In the evening this procedure was reversed. Our dog helped us with the cows. (Also it was the duty of the children to bring the cows from the pasture to the barn in the early evening so they could be milked.) Dad or your Dad brought them up to the barn in the morning. This was in the summer. In the winter the cows were kept in the shed except at milking time.

In the spring the ground was plowed (always with the horses -- until we bought the [Fordson] tractor [in about 1930]). After the fields were plowed – the soil was prepared for planting corn and oats. When the corn started to grow it had to be hoed to kill the weeds around the plants. Then Dad or your Dad would cultivate it. When we were old enough (and big enough) we had to help hoe the corn – right along with the men.

The oats and hay didn’t require this much work. They just grew until harvest time. The hay was harvested first, then the oats. In the fall the field corn was cut and shocked until the corn could be husked. The ears of corn were stored in the corn crib. Most of it was ground into feed for the cows. Some of it was used for chicken feed. The corn stalks were used in the winter for feed for the cows when they were in the shed. After they had eaten the good part, the remainder of the stock was used for bedding for the cows. The ensilage corn was cut and loaded on the wagons to be taken to the barn where it was put in the ensilage cutter to be chopped and blown into the silo for feed for the cows in the winter....

At the time [Dad/Gust] died we owned 248 acres. He was becoming a very successful dairy farmer. We had 20 milk cows plus the calves that we raised to replace cows that weren’t good milk producers. We had a team of work horses that were used to plow, cultivate and prepare the fields for planting the crops. They were also used for harvesting the crops of hay, oats and corn.

Neither hay, nor oats, nor corn grow on the farm. There are no fences, silo, nor corn cribs. And the horses, the cows, and the dog are gone. Nearly all the people who once lived there are also gone. I'm thankful to have been able to visit and see the barn before it was demolished and to envision my father and grandfather and the others at work there.

Have you visited the home or property of ancestors? Was it in good condition, poor condition, or was the building gone? How did you feel when you visited?

That's A Lot of Strawberries

My father grew up on a farm with a strawberry patch.  I'm not sure it should be called a "patch" since the definition of patch is a "small plot or piece of land, especially one that produces or is used for growing specific vegetation."  Small is a relative term.

When I was a child and learned that my dad knew about growing strawberries I suggested that we grow them.  My dad's response was something like, "Nope.  You don't want to grow strawberries. They're a lot of work."  My father was not to be argued with though I know that if I'd grown up learning how to grow strawberries, the plants I have in my little strawberry pot (in the photo) would be doing much better than they are.

Below you can read what my father's half-sister, Tressa Doyle Wilson, wrote about growing strawberries on the farm.  This is a small section from a longer letter about farm life.  She refers to "Maw and Pap" who are Tressa (Froman) and William Doyle.  "Dad" is Gust Doyle.  The farm was located on Strawberry Hill, now called Fredonia Road, outside of Stoneboro, Mercer County, Pennsylvania.

Imagining size from numbers is not one of my strengths and I wanted to understand a little more clearly how much land was planted with strawberries.  I found that one acre is 43,560 square feet, 4,842 square yards, or 9/10 the size of an American football field.  As Aunt Tressa said, "That's a lot of strawberries."

The strawberry patch had been Maw & Pap’s....  Strawberries were a cash crop in June.  I don’t know how large the patch was that Pap had.  After Maw & Pap moved to town Dad had a 2 acre patch to be picked every year.  That’s a lot of strawberries.

In the spring the 2 acre patch had to be prepared for the strawberries we’d be planting for next year’s crop.  Strawberries were a lot of work.  After the plants started to grow – they had to be hoed to keep the soil away from the heart of the plant, to destroy the weeds, and to keep the soil mellow.  We had to help the men with this chore.  Dad and Pap were excellent teachers.

When the blossoms came out on the newly planted plants, we children had to pick off every blossom so the plants could use their strength to send out runners with little plants on.  As the new plants grew and formed roots we had to set the plants in line with the mother plant.  This was to keep them from being uprooted by the cultivator.

By the time the new strawberry patch had been planted and taken care of with tender, loving care – the berries in the other patch were starting to ripen.  This meant more “back breaking” work.  The berries were picked and brought into the garage to be crated.  Each crate held 32 quarts.

After the berries were picked and crated they’d be taken by horse and wagon to the Rail Road Station downtown to be shipped to Franklin to be sold.  In later years we sold the berries to a man who took them to Pittsburgh by truck.

The berries had to be picked every other day.  We never got more than $4.00 a bushel for them.  [A bushel of strawberries equals 37 1/4 quarts.]  As the season progressed the price kept dropping – like 3 quarts for a quarter.  The pickers were paid 1¢ (yes - 1 cent) a quart for picking.  During the depression, in the early 1930's, entire families picked berries.  Many of them had to walk several miles but that didn’t keep them from being in the patch at 5 a.m.  Money was really scarce. 

What a lot of physical labor! I hope I would have been a good worker on the farm.

I have a very poor photograph (no doubt a 2nd or 3rd generation copy from a newspaper) of strawberry-picking time on the Doyle Farm.  There is a farm wagon stacked high with crates of strawberries.  Surrounding and sitting on the wagon are dozens of people.  I regret that the photograph is so bad that no one is recognizable.

Have you picked strawberries yet this year?  Do you eat them fresh, can them, or freeze them, or all three?

Pap, Because "Grandpa" Sounded Too Old

When I was a young child, I remember my father mentioning "Pap," but I didn't know who he was - except that he was someone I'd never met. As a young adult, I learned that Pap was my father's grandfather, William Doyle. I sensed that Dad held Pap in very high regard, but Dad didn't say much about him.

A number of years ago, after my father's death, I began corresponding with my father's half-sister, Tressa. I learned that she also held Pap in very high regard.

She said that Pap was "an extremely kind person and loved children." He was "short and just a little on the stocky side." My mother remembers hearing him make this comment to someone, maybe her: "You might be good for something if you weren't so tall." I don't know if the comment was made in jest or not. Aunt Tressa wasn't sure whether Pap held a bias against tall people, but said that Pap was "outspoken and definite in his opinions."

I asked Aunt Tressa how her grandparents came to be called Maw and Pap, she said they "didn't want to be called Grandma and Grandpa -- they thought it sounded 'too old.'" The grandchildren called him Pap, but the neighbors, his friends, and possibly adult relatives, called him Billy.

Pap was the oldest child in his family. In 1869, his father, Andrew Doyle, came to America from Northumberland, England. Then in October, 1870, at the age of 7, Pap came to America with his mother, Elizabeth Jane (Laws) Doyle, and 3 siblings. They lived in several different towns in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, until they eventually settled in Stoneboro.

He married Tressa Rose Froman on March 17, 1885. If you're interested, come back on the 17th and learn a little more about them as a couple and family.

Pap farmed, mined coal, and grew strawberries for a cash crop. After his widowed son, Gust, remarried, Pap and his wife built a home in Stoneboro and moved into town. Every day Pap travelled the 2 miles from town to the farm to help on the farm: he drove the car in the summer, walked in the winter.

This photo is of Pap standing outside the home of his closest and next youngest sibling, Elizabeth Jane or, as she was usually called, Liz Jane. A closeness developed on the ship from England that remained throughout their lives.

Pap was born on this day in 1863. Happy Birthday, Pap! It hope it's a grand one. I look forward to meeting you.


Copyright © 2010 by Nancy Messier.

A Doyle Anniversary

Elizabeth "Bess" Laws and Andrew Doyle were married 148 years ago today, on November 11, 1861, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland, England. I'm so happy they were. I can't count the number of descendants they have - I don't know them all!

In this photo, Elizabeth is the lady in black sitting on the right as we look at the photograph. Her husband, Andrew, is the gentleman in black, also sitting on the right.

When they married, Elizabeth was 16 and Andrew was 25. He was a widower and her family opposed the marriage. She must have been pretty strong-willed, don't you think, to go against her parents' wishes when she was only 16? I know she passed on some of those strong-willed genes....

They immigrated to America in 1869-1870. Andrew came first, in 1869, then Elizabeth followed in the fall of 1870 with their children, William (Pap), Elizabeth Jane, Robert, and Martha. They lived first in Arnot, then moved to Pardoe, then Croton, and finally settled in Stoneboro, all in Pennsylvania.

They had 10 more children - Margaret, Andrew, Mary Ann, George, Isabell, Ida, John, Emma, Fred, and Frederick - after moving here.

Happy Anniversary, Gramma and Grampa Doyle! I love you.