Etymology of the Ramaley Family Name

My uncle, David Ramaley of Boulder, Colorado, wrote the following note that was distributed to the families of his brothers and various researchers with whom he corresponded. I have discovered some other contemporary spellings (Remalia and Remaily) which fit very well into the conclusions made by uncle David. Moreover, I have yet to find any two-syllable names that I have been able to connect, again supporting the three-syllable conclusion drawn by my uncle.

With his permission, I am happy to be able to post his 1978 note:

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE RAMALEY FAMILY NAME (ETYMOLOGY)
BY DAVID RAMALEY, BOULDER COLORADO (1978)

In 1954 I distributed some notes on this family name because of the interest expressed frequently by people concerning its derivation. These 1954 notes as well as this updated presentation (1978) should be regarded as simply progress reporting and in no way the complete story of the development of the name.

I emphasized the fact that the spellings of the name Ramaley, Remaley, Remaly, and several other spellings are all variations of the same basic family name. In my own case I can state that my great grandfather, Jonathan, finally settled upon the spelling, Ramaley, and that his descendants have followed his choice. Jonathan was born in 1810, died in 1870 and is buried in Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh. However in his younger days, he did not use this spelling consistently. His name is spelled Remely on the gravestone of his infant daughter, Lydia Caroline, buried in 1838 in Denmark Manor Churchyard, Westmoreland County, Pa., and also in 1838 is spelled Remeleigh on the gravestone of his first wife, Catherine Ann, right beside the gravestone of the daughter, Lydia. Jonathan and his second wife, Margaret Burker (died l0-31-1863) have gravestones with the inscribed spelling of Ramaley. The spelling of the name was Ramaley in the 1850 census for the household of Jonathan in Pittsburgh. However, the spelling of the name in the households of his brothers are found to be variable. Its spelling is Anthony and William Rhemaly in Armstrong County, as Daniel, Michael and Adam Remaley in Westmoreland County, also as John Remaligh and George Remelay in Westmoreland County, Pa. On Anthony's 1865 gravestone the spelling is Ramaley and on his wife's marker beside his the inscription reads Lydia Remaley (1887).

The family name of the father of Jonathan can be shown to be Michael Remely, Jr. as written in his baptismal record at Unionville Church near Slatington, Pa. (born 11-19-1773 and baptized 12-16-1773)- I use this baptismal spelling because his name has been spelled also in other ways in court and tax records. He died in 1820 in Franklin Township, Westmoreland County (See record of May Term of Orphans Court, 182l). Michael Jr's father was Michael Remely, Sr. (so spelled on the will, proved in l793 and on file in Northampton County, Pa.) However the recording of the birth of Michael, Sr. in the church at Weisenheim-on-Sand on March, 2l, l731 lists him as Johan Michael Remeli, son of Ambrosius Remeli. In fact the record at Weisenheim-am-Sand in the Rhenish Palatinate, Western Germany lists the whole family of Ambrosius Remeli. His father is Nicholaus, his wife is Anna Catharina Schick, daughter of Johan Michael Schick. The marriage to Ambrosius took place Jan. 10, 1719 according to the records of the church. (Microfilm reported by R. E. Hollenbach, Royersford, Pa.)

Thus in Germany the name seems to be spelled Remeli and in Pennsylvania after the immigration of the family to America the spelling is usually Remely in the last of the 18th. and first of the 19th. centuries. This is the usual spelling on wills, tax lists, military and census rolls although there are many exceptions. Ambrose' s name is spelled as Ambros Remely when he took the oath of allegiance to the British Crown in Philadelphia on Oct. 9, 1749, upon arrival on the ship, Lydia,. John Randolph, Captain. This ship carried passengers from Wurttemburg, Durlach, Zweibrucken, Palatinate.

With this spelling, Remely, the sound of the name as pronounced by a German would be about the same as that expressed by an English speaking person upon seeing the name written as Re-may'-lee. As long as my ancestors were settled in German speaking communities such as Heidelberg Township, Northampton Co (later Lehigh Co) PA. there was no need to modify this spelling. There, many legal documents were written in German such as the wills of Michael Sr. and his brother, George Sr. Those of the family who migrated into western Pennsylvania where English was the dominant language began to find that "Anglicizing" of the name was appropriate. This was because the German spelling did not result in the correct pronunciation if read by an English speaking person. Thus arose the many spelling variations found in the records of courthouses and churches, etc. We find such spellings as Ramaleigh, Remaleigh, Remmeleigh, Remelli, Remale, Remaly, Raymaley and others. Naturally some of these are mistakes and not intentional changes to make the spelling conform to the correct pronounciation. In fact, the name is sometimes spelled in different ways in a single court entry of land deeds! Likewise, in Northampton and Lehigh Counties, the old spelling, Remely, gradually became replaced by other spellings, chiefly Remaly and Remley as the speaking of English became predominant.

I have done comparatively little study on families having similar names that seem to be not readily traceable as descendants of Ambrose. One such group is Located in the Briar Creek area of what is now Columbia County, Pa. Others are recorded sparsely in other localities in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, such as the Virginias and Maryland. It is interesting that three are shown in the 1790 Lancaster Co. census. Previous and subsequent records from this area show only Frederick Remleys, John Remley and other Remleys, indicating perhaps a census taker's mistake.

This two syllable name, Rem-ley, has caused considerable confusion with my family name of three syllables as Re-me-ly, Re-me-le, Re-me-li, Re-ma-ley, Ra-ma-ley, etc. In the early records sometimes a single letter was dropped by mistake from the three syllable name which was then recorded as the two syllable name of Rem-ley, Rem-ly, Ram-ly, etc.

As to the origin of the name, a distant cousin, William O, Remaley, Ocala, Florida, at one time thought it came directly from the Old Testament. (See Book of Isaiah, Charter 7, Verse 1.) A search through some English and foreign language versions of the Bible has yielded spellings of Remaliah, Romelia, Remalja, Remaljas, Romelie and Romeliae. Probably other versions contain additional spellings. A town in Germany (near Metz) is named Remilly, but I have failed to establish any connection between this town and the family.

Today (1978) we find members with the family name well spread over Germany and perhaps Switzerland, and elsewhere A couple years ago an inquiry to the U S Consulate at Stuttgart brought me copies of pages of telephone directories from Stuttgart and Karlsruhe which list the family name. I quote from the reply I received.

"It is believed that the original German spelling of your family name was
REMELE, which is a well known Swabian family name"
These directories contain the name of one Frederich Remelius and thirteen listings
of Remmele.A search of telephone directories from other cities listed the following:
Frankfurt:- Two Remele. one Remeli, seven Remmele,
Berlin:- Two Remele and two Remmele.
Geneva:- Three Ramelia, three .Ramella and one Remlea."

I am curious to know if the spelling Remely is to be found in some directories if such directories were readily available. A few surname dictionaries have been consulted with these results.

Bahlow, Hans -Deutches Namenlexikon- "Remlein, Remele (oberdeutsch) siehe Remmale. Remmler (oberdeutsch) is mittelhochdeutsch remler, Variante zu Remmler, siehe dies: Ebenso gehoert oberdeutsch Remmele als Umlautform zu Ramm (mittelhochdeutsch ram) = Widder Heinr. Remli 1354 Reutl. auch Remmli 1363 ebda.

Brechenmacher, J- F. Etymologisches Worterbuch der Deutschen Familiennamen- "Rem(e)lin, Koseform < Kurzform Remo 1135 Diderich Remelo, Berlin 1928, zu Koeln: Koeln 1927. Schwennigen an 1925. U II, 2, 21-1354. Heinr. Remli, Berlin 1928 zu Reutlingen: R.G.B. VII. 9." "Remmele s. Rimmele. Phil. Remelin zu Lellwangen (Bad.): MU. Nr. 225 (sonst dort nur Rimmelin).

Gotteschald - Deutsche Namenkunde - "Remele: s. Ramm. Remmele, 1er: s. Rammler. Ramm: Widder (selten < RABA, RAM) Rams 1 horn, kopf; Ramsahl (s. zagel). Rem(m)ele."

Thus it seems that the surname dictionaries agree that the name Remele and its variations are derived from the dimunitive form of Ramm (meaning little male sheep). So we have some possibilities as to the origin of the name, but more study surely is indicated before we can be certain.

Four Early Ramaley/Remaley Researchers

Over the past half-century there have been several people who have reseached Ramaley ancestors. I thought it would be interesting to others to know a bit about these folks.

William Oliver Remaley (1896-1975) was born in Slatedale, PA and grew up there. He was wounded during the battle of Argonne Forrest in WW1 and spent several months recovering in a French hospital. Sometime after the war his father, Oliver William Remaley, was transferred to Detroit by his employer, Bethlehem Steel Company, because Bethlehem had a long-term contract with General Motors. The home that WmO and his wife later built in Livonia was taken by the state to provide for Interstate 96 in the mid 1960s and so William and his wife Mabel (1897-1988) moved to Ocala, Florida. William had owned a business forms company prior to his retirement.

According to his nephew Gene, WmO, spent a great amount of time, both before and after retirement in genealogical research. He was apparently quite opinionated and argumentative. I have heard this from my uncle (David Ramaley, see below) and Elizabeth Isabel Remaley Taylor (also see below). In fact, there is a letter from Isabel in the Westmoreland County (Remaley folder) that says, in part, "...I know Mr. William O. Remaley of Livonia Michigan, and later Florida, was a pain in the neck at times but he knew of all the mistakes in the History and wanted to put it straight."

WmO carried on an extensive correspondence trying to find Remaley connections and I have run across his "reports" (as he styled them) and letters where he asked people to submit family information to him so that he could compile and correct it. One of his sincere beliefs was that the ONLY correct spelling of the name was REMALEY and in fact he "corrected" all of his notes with this spelling, thus losing some valuable information that can be drawn from the spellings that are used by various branches.

Early in 1975 he suffered a serious stroke and asked Isabel Taylor if she would gather his notes and compile them for archival in the Lehigh County Historical Society. More on that when I discuss Isabel.

I have been working through some of his notes that were sent to his nephew Gene in 1988 upoon the death of WmO's widow, Mabel. While the notes are often redundant and rambling, it is evident that WmO cared for the preservation of information about our ancestors and I have benefitted from his work.

Elizabeth Isabel Remaley (b 1908 and living tody in Pittsburgh) She was a telephone operator who was widowed after 36 years of marriage to Dale Stewart Taylor (1906-1963). She was descended from the "Springdale Remaleys", descendants of George Remaley (abt 1772 - 1841) who founded a substantial branch across the Allegheny River from Logans Ferry in Franklin Township, Westmoreland County, PA. I had the opportunity to meet Isabel a couple of times although she no longer actively follows genealogy. She had several articles and queries published in various magazines including a three-part series in the Pennsylvania Traveler, vol 10, #3 (May1974), p 53. She attended several Remaley Reunions held in Franklin Township in the 1950s although she believed that her ancestor George was not related to the Westmoreland folks. [Note: in 2001 new information came to light as a result of several researchers that very strongly suggests that George was a son of Ambrose's son John and so, in fact, the two branches are related.] Isabel wrote out a descendancy chart that was eventually put into electronic form and rearranged by her cousin Sarah Eunson "Betsy" Cooper. The chart has been maintained by Betsy and has been widely distributed to the Springdale descendants.

When I first met Isabel at her home in 1999 she was very abrupt with me until I told her that I was related to David Ramaley of Boulder, Colorado. Then she invited me into her house and she talked about some of the early years of doing research.

Isabel took on the responsibility of assembling WmO's notes in 1975 upon his death. But she found the task quite daunting because his style was hard to follow and without some sort of "baseline" (as I would call it), she spent untold hours just trying to figure out who WmO might be talking about when he rambled off on some (unidentified) cousin's line. Finally she appears to have given up hope of actually assembling the notes into something that would be useful for the Lehigh County Historical Society and she returned much of the material to WmO's nephew Gene in 1980. I discovered the material when I called Gene a couple of years ago and I have been working through it since.

David Ramaley (b 1910 and living in Boulder, Colorado) is my uncle. By profession he was a physicist and he spent most of his working life with the National Bureau of Standards. But he spent some of his free time in doing genealogy and he wrote up a series of notes that were distributed to close family members in 1980. [He has given me permission to post these notes here and I will do so over the next few days]. Uncle David is a "lurker" on the Remaley mailing list and enjoys seeing new research results.

It is primarily through his efforts that my interest in genealogy was awakened. In about 1970 my father began a yearly assemblage of notes, articles, and Christmas Greetings called the "Ramaley Rambles" that was distributed to our small family group (the families of his brothers). My uncle David would often include some genealogical notes that he had ben working on and so I was exposed to great-grandparents and more through his writings. And for many years I was in the fortunate position of being able to visit uncle David in Boulder while on business trips to a vendor who supplied the publishing company I worked for in New York with subscription fulfillment services. I was often able to arrange travel so that I could see uncle David and aunt Margaret (who, sadly, passed away this last November at age 101).

I was constantly amazed at the widespread knowledge that uncle David had and once I asked him how he "did genealogy" in the era before computers. He replied as follows:

"Now to answer your questions about old fashion genealogy.- I first became interested in relatives when my mother, my brother John and I were visiting in West Chester, Pa. with my Aunt Caroline and Uncle Herbert Worth. About a block away lived a distant cousin, Mattie Sharples. I, (a boy of 11 years) became curious why they called her cousin and Aunt Caroline proceeded to fix me up with a family chart with the aid of Uncle Pusey Heald of Wilmington, Delaware.

"My mother kept this for me but I did not pay much attention to it until many years later. So I would say that my aunt was the first geneaologist I encounered. In looking up the Ramaley line, we visited first Harry Foight and looked over some of the cemeteries in the area (Pittsburgh) . We learned about the annual Remaley Picnic and some of the folks who attended these. In this way we got in touch with Elizabeth Taylor and thru her and others such as William O. Remaley, Gaylon McAnelly, Raymond Hollenbach, Mrs. Hauser, and Mrs Guldner.

"Harry Foight was interested in getting his daughter, Dr. Jean Foight Henderson, into the DAR and himself into SAR. I did make mail inquires to cemetries, to county courthouses, etc. to obtain wills, maps, etc. I looked up census records and military records from U.S. agencies. I started first by looking over the Pennsylvania Archives when I started on the Ramaley family. These were quite helpful. Most of these records were just kept in note books. I had no card files!"

Whenever I visited I always brought along the latest find that I had made and I well remember the time when I had just discovered Evelyn Guldner (see below) and almost breathelessly told him about the wonderful resource I had just discovered and talked to by phone in Florida.

Quite calmly my uncle said, "Oh yes, Evelyn" and then went to his back room (where the genealogical file folders were stored) and brought out a whole manila envelope of correspondence with Evelyn that went back over twenty years!

Evelyn Martz (1919-2000) married Walter George Guldner (1918-1985). Her nearest ancestor with the Remaly surname is a great-grandmother, Belinda Remaly (1836-1912) but she became interested and knowledgeable in that line. She was descended from Ambrose's son Michael and although she was born in NYC, she grew up in New Jersey and in a telephone interview I had with her in 1998, she told me of how she and her mother would head out to various county court houses and spend the entire day going through dusty books. In those days it was apparently easier to gain the confidence of the county clerks and Evelyn told me that sometimes the clerks would just show them the records and let them peruse until closing time.

Evelyn wrote "Genealogical Records of One branch of the Remely-Remaly Family in America DAR library, Washington, DC" but the notes were never widely distributed. Her concentration was on the eastern ancestors and their descendants.

All of these researchers were familiar with each other and relied on each other for support and for critical help. I write this short tribute to them all and I know that current researchers will understand and appreciate what the past generation has done in trying to preserve interest in the family history.

Blacks Run Explosion

This is the companion piece about the explosion
[There is also an account in the NY Times, 24 Mar 1894, p1]
PITTSBURGH COMMERCIAL GAZETTE, SATURDAY, 24 MARCH 1894


BLOWN TO ATOM
_________________
Ten Thousand Pounds of Dynamite Explodes at Blacks Run
_________________
FIVE PERSONS KILLED
_________________
Four of the Bodies Torn into Minute Shreds
_________________
Four Buildings Demolished"
_________________
Terrific Catastrophe at the Acme Powder Works, Near Hulton
--Two Explosions Occur About an Hour Apart
--Narrow Escape of a Gang of Men Who Were
Hunting for the Dead Bodies--
No Cause Known for the Accident
___________________
Five persons killed and four buildings utterly demolished, is the result ofan explosion of 10,000 pounds of dynamite at the Acme Powder Works atBlacks Run yesterday.
The works are owned by the Acme Powder Company, whose office is at 806 Duquesne Way, this city. Blacks Run is the name given to a little stream that comes down through a narrow ravine and flows into the Allegheny River about one mile above Hulton. The works are situated back from the railroad about four hundred yards and in full view from the trains of the Allegheny Valley railroad.
Going up the hollow from the railroad the first building met is the boardinghouse where the hands in the dynamite factory housed. It is about 200 yards from the railroad. About 100 yards further up was the packing house, where the dynamite cartridges are made and packed. Across the gully to the left and seventy five yards away was the wheel house, or mixing house, where the explosive is mixed. Another one hundred yards up the valley was the engine house and the same distance above that is the nitro-glycerine factory. Of these buildings, no trace of the packing house and the mixing house is left. The packing house was 100 feet long by 30 wide and the mixing house 50 x 25. They are completely blown away, nothing but splinters about the size of ordinary kindling wood and the fissures made in the ground by the explosion being left to tell where they stood. Pieces of the broken machinery are scattered about the hollow and hillsides for a half mile or so about the scene, while all the trees and ground for hundreds of yards around are covered with a white dust, the wood pulp and lime used in mixing the dynamite.
There were two explosions. The first took place at 7:30 and it was this one that caused the deaths. The second occured at 8:21 and was the result of fire started by the first explosion. The employees had only been at work since 7 o'clock. William Arthur and his wife were in the packing house with Charles Robbins and Sadie Remaley, a sister of Mrs. Arthur. Robbins and Arthur were in the second story at the lower end of the building. Mrs. Arthur and her sister were in the lower story making cartridges. Matthew Fentzel, the engineer, was standing in the doorway of the engine room and Simeon Bradley and James Mooney, floor manager of the works, were in the nitro-glycerine house. Mooney, Bradley and Fentzel are the only persons about the works at the time who are left alive. The dead are:

WILLIAM B. ARTHUR, AGED 30
BELLE ARTHUR (HIS WIFE), AGED 19
SADIE REMALEY, SISTER OF MRS. ARTHUR, AGED 26
NELLIE REMALEY, SISTER OF MRS. ARTHUR, AGED 24
CHARLES ROBBINS, AGED 19

Arthur and his wife kept the boarding house which stood down towards the foot of the gully. While they were working in the packing house, Mrs. Arthur's sister, Nellie Remaley, kept house for them. She was in the house at the time of the explosion. It was blown to pieces. Nellie Remaley had both arms broken, her skull fractured, and she received internal injuries. She was placed on a train and taken to the West Penn Hospital in this city, where she died at 9 o'clock yesterday morning.
The bodies of those who were killed in the packing house were blown to pieces. Two headless and limbless trunks were found lying on the hillside about 100 yards away. One of the trunks had a part of the neck and back of the skull still adhering to it. Part of the scalp covered with long brown hair enabled friends to identify this as the body of Sadie Remaley. The other trunk is believed to be that of her sister, Mrs. Arthur, but is so blown to pieces that there is no positive assurance whether it is hers or that of one of the male victims. Only a few shreds have been found which have been identified as parts of Arthur and his wife. A left hand and foot have been found of Charles Robbins. These with fragments of flesh picked up by the searchers for hundreds of yards about the scene of the disaster, is all that is left of the ill-fated workers in the packing house.
The statement made by James Mooney to Deputy Coroners Morehand and Kosslow is as follows. He was in the glycerine house preparing to mix nitro-glycerine when Bradley came in and gave him the keys. He told Bradley to go to work and clean up all of the buildings. Bradley turned and to go and just then a red glare and puff of smoke came from the upper end of the packing house. Both started to the door, Bradley shouting "there's a fire." They had not completed the first steps when the explosion occurred. Both men were thrown to the floor and the force of the explosion tore out all the lower end of the building they were in. Fortunately there was but a very little bit of nitro-glycerine in the building, although the tubs were full of oil of glycerine and sulphuric acid, prepatory to mixing. None of this exploded, however, it is looked upon as a miracle by all of those acquainted with the stuff. For a while both men were terribly stunned but soon recovered. Fire broke out immediately after the explosion and the survivors, aided by assistance which began to arrive a few minutes later, went to work to extinguish the flames. It was not for over half an hour that Mooney became aware that he was badly injured in the left thigh. Something, he does not know what, penetrated his thigh to the bone and made a great gash a couple of inches long. Under the excitement of the moment, he never knew that he was hurt and it was only when he became weak from the loss of blood that he became aware of the fact. He was taken to Verona and given medical attention. His injuries will lay him up for some time.
Matthew Fentzel, the engineer, was in the engine-room, 100 feet from the packing house, when it blew up. He was standing near the door and facing the packing house. Suddenly a brigh red glare seemed to light up the whole interior of the building. Then came a puff of of smoke and an awful roar, followed by an explosion that was like thunder. He had started towards the door, but was thrown back and over a large kettle. The next instant the building was falling down and he was pinned down beneath the wreckage. Some way he worked himself loose and at once ran to the whistle, which he started to blowing. Just why he sounded the whistle seems a mystery to him, but he had an indistinct impression that something should be done to call assistance. In this he was successful.
The roar of the explosion, followed by the shrieking of the whistle, attracted the attention of the residents for miles around. Within a few minutes they were flocking to the scene. A large gang of railroad laborers who are cutting away the hill to make room for a double track on the Allegheny Valley railroad were the first to arrive. They were at once put to work by their foreman at fighting the fire. This work was continued for about a half hour when it was believed to be all out. A short time later, however, it broke out again in the ruins of the mixing house. Several thousand pounds of dynamite were in this building and the men were at once notified to run. Hardly had they reached places of safety when another explosion occurred, and where the mixing house had stood was nothing but a ragged hole.
The force of the first explosion was terrific. Its energy seems to have passed down the hollow towards its mouth, where it is several hundred yards wider than at its head. To this fact is attributed the escape of Mooney, Bradley and Fretzel, they being in the glycerine house and engine room above. The boarding house was directly below and in line with the packing house. The concussion literally tore it to pieces, throwing it down, grinding it to splinters and sprinkling them for a hundred yards down the valley. At the railroad is a storehouse for keeping wood pulp and another for storing dynamite. The pulp house was crushed in on two sides and the tin roof torn off. It is fully 400 yards from where the explosion occurred. Scattered over the hills for a mile or more around are pieces of wood and machinery, scraps of paper and other refuse from the explosion. Arthurs had a lot of chickens. They were all killed. One of them had all the feathers, except the long wing feathers, stripped off it perfectly clean, but there was no mark of injury on the body. The skin was not even broken, but the flesh looked black as though powder burned.
Samuel Robbins, brother of Charles Robbins, who was killed, was superintendent of the works. He was at New Texas, thirteen miles across the country. He heard the sound of the explosion at 7:23 and divined at once that it was the powder works. He started to drive for the works at once, driving so hard that his horse dropped on him just about a quarter of a mile from the scene. When he reached there the fire and everything was over and searchers were gathering up the bodies bit by bit.
The sound was heard for miles about the country and windows were broken for several miles around. At Harmarville all windows facing the river were broken. The town is right across the river from the site of the powder works.
The bodies of the victims, or what was found of them, were taken to R. L. Kents undertaking rooms in Verona. The Acme Powder Company ordered Mr. Kent to arrange them for burial, providing a coffin for each one. The bodies of Arthur, his wife, and her sisters will be taken to the Remley home at Johnston station, one and a half miles above on the Allegheny Valley railroad and young Robbins body will be taken to the home of his parents, 104 Madison avenue, Allegheny.
The cause of the explosion is a mystery. There was no fire in any of the buildings, nor had there been any nearer than the engine house for several days.
Coroner McDowell will hold the inquest at 11 o'clock Monday morning.

Dynamite Making and Remaley Deaths

I recently ran acoss this article on Dynamite making that gives and interesting view of the late 1800s / early 1900s in western Pennsylvania. There are a couple of factual errors and so I have also made a post giving a contemporary account of the 1884 blast.

Trenton (NJ) Evening Times, Wednesday, June 3, 1908, p8:
TRAGEDY MARKS DYNAMITE MAKING

One of the Standard Oil Company's superintendents read the other day about the retirement of Matt Agnew of Franklin, Pa., the only oil well shooter who quit the game with his body intact. The superintendent was born and raised on the banks of the Allegheny River, where oil wells were as common as mud and nitro-glycerine was slung around so carelessly that it's a wonder there were not more sudden deaths than there were. No one, he says, expects a person who has had the eperience can realize what chances the people in the oil country took with explosives in the old days.
"At Black Run, down the river from my home," said he, "there was a factory where dynamite and nitro-glycerine was made and never a year passed that I can recall that it wasn't blown to smithereens. Sometimes it went up oftener, but the annual explosion came around as certain as Christmas, although nobody knew the exact day when it was coming.
"Every time it went up it meant the taking of from two to eight or ten lives with it. Then the factory was rebuilt. Big wages were paid to the men, and to the girls, who were employed to roll and wrap the dynamite in the waxed paper shells in which it is sent out, packed in boxes of sawdust. The high wages were a temptation to the poor people in the neighborhood, the men getting $8 and $10 a day, and the girls $5 a day or more. In one of the explosions the entire Remaley family of seven persons -- four girls and three men -- was wiped out, and there wasn't enough of their remains found to hold a decent funeral over. Only a few shreds of flesh, about enough to fill a cigar box, were recovered.
"A queer thing that shows the freaks of fate was what befell Mike Simzik, who was called "the Polish Dude." Mike had been a poor track walker on the Allegheny Valley Railroad when the high wages offered in the dynamite factory tempted him to quite tramping ties and go to work there. He became an expert mixer -- the man who understands combining the harmless glycerine with the sulphuric acid -- and was getting enormous pay.
"With a poor foreign peasant's idea of thrift, he was salting his money away against the day he would return to the old country to live in ease and comfort for the rest of his life. At last came the time when Mike saw his way clear to quite the dangerous work and go back to the fatherland. He was to leave on a Saturday, and the previous Wednesday he got off to go to Pittsburg (sic) to see about engaging his passage. When he stepped off the train at Barking that night, on his way home, he got in front of another train and was cut to pieces. The next morning the dynamite works blew up again, killing half a dozen workers. It looks as if fate had intended a sudden and violent death for Mike, whichever way it came.
"Of course this factory brought well shooters from all parts of the country for their supplies. I've seen several shooters a day, with their light, long-bodied spring wagons, always drawn by a pair of lively stepers, pass by my home. They carried the cans of deadly stuff wrapped in horse blankets or bags in the backs of their wagons, and they used to worry a whole lot the old negro ferryman who ran the wire rope ferry across the Allegheny between Springdale and Logan's Ferry.
"One day Bill Moxon, a coal digger, was walking home from work. He had about a mile and a half to go, and as Bill was a great big fellow, weighing about 300 pounds, he didn't like walking any more than he could help after a hard day's work in the mines. He was trudging along the road, his dinner pail in hand, when he heard the rattle of horses' hoofs behind him. As the wagon came alongside he hailed the driver and asked for a ride.
" 'Sure!', said the driver, 'jump in.'
They had gone about half a mile when Bill asked the stranger what he was hauling.
" 'Nitro-glyverine' said the driver.
" 'Holy suffering snakes!' yelled Bill, 'let me out'! He jumped out of the wagon, scrambled over a stone retaining wall ten feet high to the railroad tracks, and never stopped running until he reached home. If Bill hadn't been scared almost to death he wouldn't have got down that embankment and over that wall for a thousand dollars.
"Nitro-glycerine and dynamite explosions play some queer freaks at times. The shock of the explosion follows the strata in the rock, or that is the theory in that country at any rate. I remember the explosion in which the Remaley family was killed, and the shock was felt more distinctly twenty miles up the river than it was within a radius of a mile from the factory. At Kitanning, twenty-eight miles away, windows were broken in stores on the main street, and people thought it was an earthquake. At my home, only a mile and a half away, the shock felt like the dropping of a heavy weight on the floor, but it was not severe enough to make the dishes dance or break any glass.
"About as sad a case of the sudden end of a well shooter as I know of was that of Sam Bigley. Sam had started out in a small way as a 'wild-catter', an independent operator up around Bradford, and made a fortune. He was on the road to becoming as rich as Coal Oil Johnny, but he sank a lot of money in a sucession of 'dusters,' as they call dry holes in the oil country, and was down and out.
"He was so far gone financially that he had to sell his home and send his wife and children back to the old folks to live. The Washington field was just opening up then, so Sam decided to turn well shooter until he could get enough money ahead to begin over again. It was no new business for him, as that was how he made his first start in oil, and he saw plenty of work ahead.
"But Sam was blown to kingdom come on his very first trip with a load of glycerine. He drove into the magazine on the outskirts of Little Washington, carefully loaded the toucky stuff, and hadn't gone more than a mile on the return trip when there was a blast that tore a hole in the road 50 feet in circumference and 10 to 12 feet deep. A frame house near by was blown down and there wasn't a thing left to show what had become of him, his horses, or his wagon. Just the hole in the ground, that was all.
"About three-quarters of a mile away there was a railroad trestle, and firmly imbedded in one of the timbers some boys found a horseshoe, with a bit of a horse;s hoof sticking to it. They had to get a chisel to pry it off for a souvenir.
"But with all the explosions and accidents, it was surprising to see the chances people in that part of the country would take with the stuff. One day two children of Jim Stowers, a section foreman on the railroad, mysteriously disappeared. When last seen they had been fishing off the end of a raft, so the natural conclusion was that they had fallen into the river, or that one of them had fallen in and then the other had jumped in to save him. Nobody had heard a scream or seen them disappear, but it was a sure thing that their bodies were at the bottom of the river.
"The stream all around was dragged with pike poles and divers went under the raft, but they couldn't find either one of the little bodies. Then the railroad construction gang, which was blasting out a cut for a new double track, was send for. They came to the scene provided with dynamite sticks, fuses and fulminating caps, ready to bring the river bed to the surface if necessary.
"It was a solemn scene, but it reminded me for all the world of that in Mark Twain's 'Tom Sawyer' where they fired the cannon over the water and shot loaves of bread plugged with quicksilver out of the Mississippi in the effort to raise the body of a drowned girl.
"Stowers was a popular foreman, and the Dagoes in his gang were the most loyal bunch you ever saw. Why, the way they shot dynamite off out over that river you would have thought they were shooting firecrackers. They would take a stick of dynamite, bury the fulminating cap in one end of it, then put the fuse in the cap for you can't make dynamite go off without that cap, although most people have other ideas about it. Then they would stand there, holding that stick of destructive matter just as if it were a firecracker, until the fuse had almost reached the powerful explosive in the cap before tossing it into the water.
"They did this, of course, because the water would have put the fuse out if they had tossed it in too soon, but oftentimes had they held the stick of dynamite two seconds longer it would have wiped them off the map, as well as everybody who stood nearby.
"Strange as it may seem, there was not an accident, and the bodies of Stower's little boy and girl were brought to the surface, but not before about a million fish had been slaughtered. Dynamiting fish is against the law in Pennsylvania as the blast bursts their bladders and they come to the surface dead, but the fish and game laws were waived in this case.
"At another time we had a big husky chap named Lew Thomas working around the place. One day he was moving some fence rails from a big pile to another spot, about 50 feet away, carrying them one at a time. He reached in his vest pocket for a match to light his pipe. He couldn't find a match, but a couple of copper objects, looking like empty cartridge shells dropped out.
"What are those Lew?" I asked.
"Oh, only some dynamite cartridges," said he. He had been blasting ut some old stumps in a swamp the day before, and had enough fulminating caps in his vest pocket to blow a corner off the farm and send himself and everybody else on it to oblivion. Had the end of one of those rails he was carrying hit that pocket too hard a lick you can imagine what the result would have been."