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WHO WAS WHO in PLUM TOWNSHIP
~ Titusville Herald ~
November 8, 1963
By H. W. Strawbridge

William Fenton

William Fenton, a veteran of World War I, was born May 17, 1894, in Banksville, a southwestern suburb of Pittsburgh. However, he was reared in McKees Rocks, a northwestern suburb of the same city.

He was the son of James and Rebecca Eliott Fenton, both of whom were of English descent. James, who was born May 23, 1861, was a son of John and Mary Macintosh Fenton, both of whom were born in England. Rebecca, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Eliot was born in Greencroft, England, on Oct. 28, 1863, and she arrived in this country with her mother in 1892. It is said that Rebecca also possessed Scotch heritage. She and her mother settled in the Pittsburgh area where she met Mr. Fenton, and they were married on July 14, 1892, by one Rev. Boyd. James had been previously married and some children were born to his first union. The first wife died, probably at the time their last child was born.

James worked in the coal mines for some time and that is said to have made him somewhat stooped. For a few years he also served as warden in a Stowe Township jail. He was a short man, but was stockily built. He joined a Methodist Church there.

Rebecca’s mother, Mrs. Eliott, died in Pittsburgh at an advanced age. It seems that the active old lady had been raking leaves, then went into the house to have a dish of ice cream with some other ladies who had called. After eating the ice cream she had a stroke which took her life.

James and Rebecca had two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, besides the son, William.

William, or “Bill” as everyone knew him, was educated in the Norwood School of Stowe Township. As an adult he was a member of the No. 1 Hose Company of the Stowe Township Volunteer Fire Department. He attended conventions each year of the Western Pennsylvania Firemen’s Association at such cities as Latrobe, Punxsutawney and New William Fenton

Kensington. He also belonged to a hunting camp at Raccoon Creek, located some 20 miles south of McKees Rocks. The fellows of that camp mostly hunted groundhogs.

Bill’s place of employment was the Pressed Steel Car works. It was in that factory that railroad and street cars were built. Bill may have worked some on the railroad too.

Several months after the United States entered World War 1, Bill was drafted into the service. When asked what branch of the service he desired, he picked the engineers, thinking it meant railroad engineers. He didn’t realize until it was too late into what he had gotten himself. The engineers go ahead of the army, and generally have to duck a number of shells and bullets. Bill was inducted at Coraopolis on Feb. 10, 1918, as a private in Company E of the 305th Engineers, 80th Division. He received his basic training in the states and arrived overseas on May 26, only 3 ½ months after his induction.

Years later he recalled some of his experiences to certain Diamond people and they will be related here. His duty as an engineer was the advance work of building bridges across river and streams, cutting a way through forests for the Army, scouting, and other such work. At one time Bill was on guard duty at an advanced position along the Rhine River. The fog was very thick and the German Army marched right by him. They were so close that he could have reached out at arm’s length and touched him.

When the American Army took over a certain German position, Bill’s group came upon an abandoned German barracks which had been dug out of the ground. In it bodies were lying about, and tables with inviting foodstuff were sitting on it. The bodies and foodstuffs were rigged up with booby-traps. One fellow was about to reach for something on the table when others held him back. Bill was gassed at the great battle of Argonne Forest, fought in the fall of 1918. He never fully recovered from the effects of this. It caused his chest to gradually blacken in color and it is thought to have caused him to lose most of his teeth several years later. He was injured while in Europe, but it was not caused in battle. During a lull a group of the boys were engaged in some game and during it he got hurt. This was to be the indirect cause of his death several years later at an early age.

On Nov. 11 and 12, 1918, Bill and his group were about to be ordered out on perilous duty. Previously, a group of engineers had been sent out on this same mission and they were killed. A second group was sent out and they too were killed. Bill was in the third party which was about to be sent out when orders came canceling the mission. Word of the armistice had reached the area. How glad Bill was of this. He stayed on duty in Europe until June 3, 1919, when he sailed for the states. He was honorably discharged on June 11, and he came home to McKees Rocks. He somehow lost his original discharge and he had a duplicate discharge made. He told years later that his discharge did not list all the battles which he participated. This photograph shows Bill when he was in the service.

In 1921 his older half-brother, John W. Fenton, and Charles Stevenson, Sr., both of Pittsburgh, bought the O.G. Proper farm of approximately 100 acres south of Diamond.

This is how Bill made his first acquaintance with the Diamond community. He and his parents like it well enough that his father bought the east half of John’s farm. John’s family lived at Diamond probably three years, then went back to Pittsburgh. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Stevenson bought a farm east of Diamond in 1922, and it is still possessed by them.

James’ 50 acres comprised what is now the gravel pit owned by the Plum Township supervisors. While they lived in the vacant Robert Kightlinger house across the road, James and Bill built a small house, sized 24 feet square, near what once was a good spring. Large posts imbedded in the ground held the house. Then they planted a short row of evergreen trees just west of it.

There had been a house on that site 100 years ago when William and Nancy Proper Luce lived there and that is where their son, Cyrus Luce, was born in 1859. However, the place was vacated and the buildings gone before 1880.

The Fentons also had a small barn, a chicken coop and a garage. They had high hopes of farming when they came to Diamond, but they became somewhat disappointed. They planted a large field of potatoes, several acres of oats, buckwheat and strawberries. The crops did not yield well, perhaps due to the soil lacking the proper ingredients and the fact that James and Bill had been city residents, not genuine farmers. They had a team of horses and several pieces of farm machinery. About 1926 James sold a black, blind horse named “Doc” to J. M. Shriver. This horse was kept on the Homestead Farm until 1937.

James worked for a time at Calfisch’s sawmill at Newtontown and also he worked on the roads. Bill worked a few years with Patrick F. Welsh of Trop Township for the Armstrong Cork Company of Pittsburgh. They did such work as insulating homes and making cold walls. They worked at such places as Warren, North Warren, Meadville, Pittsburgh and other points.

Also Bill worked on the roads and for a time he worked for the Hammermill Paper Company planting spruce seedlings on the old Plum Township farms which that company had bought. His mother served as a cook for the employees I the old Cowen house located towards Wallaceville. He was an expert at soldering and tinning. He may have learned this trade at the Pressed Steel Car works. It is said that Bill once had a flock of 500 White Leghorn chickens and he marketed a good share of the eggs to Pittsburgh. He did a few odd jobs here and there. He helped Ben Strawbridge do haying; he helped Jackson Bearce to butcher, he helped Jared Kightlinger to hoe potatoes, he and Frank Strawbridge helped build a fence for Emil Johnson and he helped Charles Stevenson to put a basement under his barn in 1928. At this job he was swinging the sledge on a rock when the handle broke and the part he was holding struck him on the leg, causing great pain. Bill danced around and hollered awhile until the pain subsided.

Bill was a small man, five feet, six or seven inches tall, and weighing about 140 to 150 pounds. He was normally a quiet fellow, but he enjoyed “kidding” with his close friends. One April he planted his garden and then kidded Dean Shriver, Diamond postmaster, about not even having his garden plowed yet. Then a frost occurred and killed Bill’s beans and corn. He got busy and planted them a second time. Lo and behold if his beans didn’t get frozen a second time. By the time he planted them a third time the frost period was over.

Bill would not stand any “tramping on his toes.” He was quick and wirey. One time he was in B.O. Armstrong’s general store in Diamond when a big fellow came in and nagged Bill, finally inviting him to go out to the road. Bill complied and gave the bully a good trimming in short order. At another time he had been trapping and caught a skunk. A bit of the smell was still clinging to him when he later went to the store. Other fellows were there and none were bothered by the smell except one fellow. This particular man began “crabbing” about it, and he kept on. Bill at first kept still, ignoring the insults. Finally he took all he could. He walked over to the griper, put his fist under his nose and told him to either put up or shut up. The man shut up.

Bill liked to hunt He had a .12 gauge Winchester shotgun and a .30 – 40 Krag rifle. The shotgun had a 30 inch barrel. He had Dean Shriver cut off 4 inches, making it scatter more. He hunted deer at Cashup, located beyond Pleasantville a few miles. Once he stationed himself at the edge of a field there. Soon a deer ran across it. Hunters all around the field blasted away at it. Bullets were whizzing over Bill’s head and he hustled down the woods where Dean Shriver was standing and told Dean that it was too hot for him up there.

At another time Bill, Dean, Charley August and Harry Sharp were hunting near Cashup. While Dean and Bill walked out the abandoned Donovan road quite a distance, Charlie and Harry kept posted on the Eagles Rock road. Bill entered the woods first, then Dean. Dean didn’t have a compass, but was going by the signs and sign. About 2:30 they met and Bill claimed Dean was veering too much to the right, and got his compass out to show him. Dean first argued, but gave in and followed Bill. So, they kept walking and walking to the left. Later Bill spoke up, “Do you think my compass is off?”, an admission that he was lost ! Then they turned right and kept going right. It was after 6 o’clock and getting dark when they hit a road. Bill insisted on going left and Dean said right. By that time neither was in good humor. Dean plainly informed him that he was going right and Bill could do as he pleased. Bill followed Dean. Soon they arrived at their car and found Charley and Harry terribly worried. They hadn’t known what to do. They didn’t want to go home without them; neither did they want to go into the woods about dark to look for them and get lost too, so they decided that waiting at the car was the best answer.

Once Ben Strawbridge, Cliff Guild and Bill were at Cashup hunting when Bill got a toothache. He asked the other two to pull the tooth with a pair of pliers, but they refused to do it.

The Fentons bought a Model-T Ford from a man near Tidioute. The man guaranteed it with a valve job, etc. However, it was not so. One could even see down between the valve and seat. They drove it back up three weeks later and the man tried making excuses to get out of his guarantee, but was finally persuaded to fix it.

Bill and his niece, Ruth Fenton, once rolled over in this old Ford while turning off at the present Diamond postoffice. The pinion gears had broken in the drive shaft and caused the loss of control.

Bill and Harry I. Sharp were initiated into the Diamond IOOF Lodge on Jan. 11, 1930. This was the only organization in which Bill held membership during his last years.

His father died of dropsy in his home on Oct. 4, 1931. By that time bill himself was ailing from a malignancy caused by that injury in the game during the war. He went to Aspinwall Hospital for cancer tests. In the fall of 1932 he went to the Veterans Hospital at Hines, Ill., where he remained until about Nov. 1, then he came home. In January 1933 he again entered the Hines Hospital. He had two operations and his death occurred there at 10:25 p.m., Sunday, April 9. He was 38. His body was shipped back home. On the following Friday afternoon the funeral was held. While the pallbearers, all Odd Fellows, were carrying the casket out of the living room and onto the porch, a floor board broke on the porch, causing a little alarm. he joint military and IOOF funeral was held in the Diamond UB Church with an attendance of relatives and friends that taxed the capacity of the church. Rev. C.A. Wescott, pastor, officiated. Burial was beside his father in the Diamond Cemetery.

In July Bill’s mother presented the large flag which draped his casket to the Diamond IOOF Lodge. It was placed on the wall of the lodge room and was unfortunately destroyed when the hall burned down on Sept. 5, 1936. In 1946 she left Diamond and lived with Mrs. Ann Foust in Titusville. She died in the hospital on Sept. 28, 1951 of a stroke.

During the previous spring the Plum Township supervisors brought the Fenton farm for the gravel on it. Jackson Bearce had taken the first gravel out for his driveway in the latter 1920s. The supervisors later shoveled some gravel out for the roads. After supervisors bought the farm in 1951 they held an auction to sell the house. It was bought by B. O. Armstrong, who in turn sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Carl Morrical who operate Morrical’s Grocery on West Spring Street, Titusville.

On Oct. 3, 1951, exactly three days after Mrs. Fenton’s funeral, the house was moved on a large trailer to Titusville. State police had to stop autos along the highway to allow the house to pass through. It was located on Center Street, and was thoroughly remodeled. It is now covered with brown shingles. It is owned by Thomas Morrical and rented by Mrs. Phyllis Stantz and two sons.

Transcribed by Penny Kulbacki Minnick
minnick862@verizon.net

Disclaimer:there may be errors due to transcription of information from both early and late (current contributors) work.