Misc. Notes
ObituaryEli Lines, a native of Bloom Township died at his home in Pennelton, W.VA, Tuesday morning September 16, following an attack of pneumonia. He was 71 years of age and had been sick for only a few days.
Mr. Lines was the son of William and Mary Lines. His father has been dead for many years, but his mother is still a resident of Curwensville, being now in her 94th year.
His remains will be brought to the home of his sister, Mrs. Mary McKendrick of Grampian, Funeral Services will be held from the McKendrick home Friday afternoon at 2 O'clock. Interment in Chestnut Grove Cemetery.
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Obituary
Eli Monroe Lines, son of William and Mary Ann Lines, was born May 12, 1859 in Clearfield County, died Sept 16, 1930, aged 71 years, 4 months and 4 days. He is survived by his aged mother, wife, and five children; Mrs. Mary J. Lines of Tunnelton, West Virginia, his son Harry W. Lines of Currensville, W E Lines and R E Lines of Pittsburgh, Frank B. Lines of Pittsburgh and Cornelia Lines of ?. He is survived by 16 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren and the following brothers and sisters. J M Lines of Grampian, Mary A. McKendrick of Grampian; Lines of Curry Run, W A Lines of ? Ky and Mark W. Lines of DuBois.
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According to his daughter Cornelia Ellen Eli was very honest and paid his debts. A good provider who's family never went hungry.
Eli was a Democrat who would not allow his Republican wife Mary to vote and thereby cancel his own vote.
Their home in Big Run (about six or seven miles from Curwensville, Clearfield County, PA) burned down when their daughter Cornelia was a little girl at age three [about 1896].
The fire was caused by her brother Ray and a friend. They were lighting packed straw with cattails dipped in an oil can to keep the cold out. The home was burned to the ground and all was lost including the family bible. The same kind of house was rebuilt on the original foundation.
No birth certificates were issued at the time Eli’s children were born. The doctor or midwife made a record and then sent it to the court house. However the Clearfield Court House burned down and destroyed many of the records when his daughter Cornelia was quite young. She had "a heck of a time" proving she was born in order to get her social security. There was a record of births written by Eli Monroe Lines in her possession.
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Eli moved from town to town following the lumber camps. When an area was completed cutting logs, the camp and the men moved on to another area. As a result Eli had to be gone from the family for extended periods of time. He moved his family to a general area and found inexpensive housing for them out in the country. Then he went into the woods to the lumber camp to work.
221Eli’s roots were Pennsylvania Dutch and Scottish-Irish. As a young man he worked in lumber camps and was very good with mathematics. He could estimate timber by looking at a tree or log and could tell how many pieces of lumber would be harvested from it. In later years he was a blacksmith.
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Resident of May, [Pocahontas County*] WV in July 1909.
223Note: Wellington Curtis Bloom (b. abt 1858) was also a resident of May, WV in 1906. Eli and Curtis were second cousins who’s great grandparents were William Bloom (1752-1828) and his wife Mary.
Wellington’s sister Elmora Theresa (Bloom) Lord (b. 1862) was killed when trying to extinhquish a fire in May, WV in 1906.
It
may have been this connection to family, and a more promising lumber business climate, that lured Eli from Pennsylvania to West Virginia as the lumber business had pretty much died-off by the late 1800s in Clearfield County.†
3According to another family researcher:
Seems like as soon as the timber industry died down in Pennsylvania & the railroad was built through to Durbin [Pocahontas County, WV], they ... went there for the flourishing timber buisiness & newly operating sawmill. Seems to have only lasted a few short years but everyone just went there for work & most stayed on.
On Saint Patrick's Day of 1908, the Greenbrier River [which flows through Pocahontas County] witnessed its last log run. Pocahontas Times editor Cal Price explained in an interview by West Virginia film maker, BJ Gudmundsson for Patchwork Films, how everyone stopped what they were doing to watch the logs float down the Greenbrier River for the last time. They knew it was the end of an era. In 1911, the Weeks Act was passed, ensuring the protection of large portions of land from logging in the Monongahela National Forest.
By the late 1920s, virtually the entire county had been timbered. Much land was damaged in the 1930s by severe forest fires that followed the logging.
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Mr. and Mrs. Eli Lines residents of Tunnelton, WV in Dec 1923.
226This newspaper obituary indicates Eli died in Pennelton, WV. The compiler is unable to find any such community in West Virginia, but there is a Pendleton County, WV.
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See “Card of Thanks” published in The Clearfield Progress following Eli’s death.
227*Pocahontas County is the third largest county in West Virginia, with 942.6 square miles, but among the least populous, with a 2010 population of 8,719. Eight rivers have their headwaters in the county.
225†The lumber business was the predominant business in Clearfield County from 1840-1890. It was estimated that over 12-billion board feet of lumber was cut during that time. In addition, many tall and straight pine trees were cut for use as spars or ship masts.
228
Misc. Notes
This source indicates Eli and Mary were married in 1880.
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Eli would have just celebrated his thirtieth birthday when the devastating Johnstown Flood struck the area of Clearfield county, originating sixty miles away.
3Note:
The most destructive flood in the county's history was that of 1889, known as the Johnstown flood on account of the destruction on the same date, May 31st, of the city of Johnstown by a flood in the Conemaugh river caused by heavy rains and the breaking of a dam. In Clearfield county on account of the heavy rains at this time, this flood caused much damage to farmers' crops almost every where, but the principal loss was along the river and tributary streams. The only loss of life so far as known was the drowning of Miss Ada Tate in Clearfield. Her drowning was caused by the upsetting of the boat in which she and others were trying to reach a place of safety.
In this flood scores of bridges on the river and tributary streams were carried away and destroyed, buildings were damaged and some carried away, property of, different kinds destroyed and other damages by water and mud. In Clearfield, where the damage was greatest, even the highest part of the town was said to have been under water at one time, and on many of the streets the water ran from 4 to 6 feet deep at the highest.
A precipitation of over eight inches of rain, beginning May 30, was the cause of the flood.
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1910 census records has Eli and Mary living apart. He is a boarder and is working as a Company Shop Blacksmith in Durbin, Pocahontas, WV on 23 April of 1910.
219 She is living with her son “Byron Lyons” in Curwensville, Clearfield, PA on 30 April.
232 What
appears to be a testament to the state of their marriage at the time, is that Eli is listed as single while Mary is a widow.
3Note: Durbin is 250 miles from Curwensville.
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“Tunnelton [where Eli and Mary lived in September 1930] is located on WV Route 26, in the middle of nowhere [and] is a lot like a hundred other small towns tucked into the Appalachian Mountains. I probably would have zipped by, without a second thought, had it not been for the town's most eye-catching feature [an ancient looking footbridge]. Most of Tunnelton lies on the opposite side of the railroad tracks, from WV Route 26. To connect the two parts of town, there's [the] footbridge, with a long steel staircase on either side. It seemed wrong to just drive by, without climbing to the top of it.”
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