Section 27:  Early Married Life

At the commencement of the year 1847 I was pretty well established in the practice. I had passed my thirty-third birthday -- I was then worth from three thousand to three thousand five hundred dollars, enjoyed good health and was well known through the county. I had been living at Colleges, boarding houses and hotels for twelve years. Young company was fast losing attractions to me. I had some special reasons for being tired of hotel life and it seemed to me the proper thing to do was to establish a home of my own. I had once thought of bringing my Mother and Sister out and going to housekeeping, but the death of Oliver's second wife left the care of his children on them and they could not come if they had been willing. My wife's father was at that time the pastor of the M. E. Church in Clarion. He had a large family -- two or three grown daughters at home besides three older daughters married. I visited in the family and in the course of the winter succeeded in making arrangements to marry the oldest of the daughters at home in the following spring. I communicated my intentions to no one but the family, but I quietly secured a lease of the house (now I. T. Moffetts) and with the aid of my intended wife I bought a lot of carpets, bedding and stuff for housekeeping and had them stowed away upstairs in Judge Myers store. I had no intention of investing a thousand dollars in a wedding trip as my friend Sutton had done.

The first week of May was our court; the next Monday I went to the Brookville court and on Tuesday, the 10th of May, 1847, I came home and in the evening after dark I went up to old Mr. Hallock's and we were married by a Rev. Stearns. That will be forty years ago next May and I guess neither of us have ever regretted it. The next morning my wife came down and we took possession of our house. She and Mary Hallock got to sewing carpet and I to carrying in furniture. In three days we were living in our house and getting it fixed up for our home. I think our whole outlay for furniture was not over three hundred dollars. My wife brought a bed and bedding from home and I had bought feathers for bed and pillows. I recollect of Polly Oxenerder and my wife working several days making ticks and pillows and stuffing the feathers in them. My first day of married life was spent in carrying in tables, chairs, bedsteads and furniture and I did not finish it in one day either. We were soon quietly settled and living like old people.

That spring the hard times of 1847 came on. The most disastrous panic to our iron men they had ever experienced. That summer I got collections to the amount of forty thousand dollars and while the business of the county was suffering, I made money. It was the best year I had and my collecting fees from the spring of 1847 till the spring of 1848 was something like $2,000.00. Besides my other fees I think that year I made about $2,600.00 and kept my wife and for several years after that I was able to save about $2,000.00 a year. Of course my expenses were light but my wife kept a girl most of the time. I think the first few years I spent less keeping the family than I had done the last year or two of my bachelor life. Certainly I made more money and accumulated faster and I soon got to having money bringing me interest. I also kept a small reserve fund to pick up anything that came in my way.

Our first child was born on the 19th of February, 1848, and I was a man with a family.

To the public improvements of the town I gave my influence and sometimes a little money. The first bridge over the Clarion River at the mouth of Little Toby was built by subscription of the people of town. In that all were interested and with others I contributed a part and I think there were few improvements made then or since in which I had no part or interest. I recollect redding up the graveyard, the fairground, the Carver Seminary, the water works and in introducing natural gas into town I was a holder of stock or contributor and I have done something towards supporting the Presbyterian Church ever since it was organized.

In the fall of 1847 I hired a little team and a carriage from Jonathan Frampton and took my wife down to the valley to visit my friends. To her it was going among strangers for she had never seen one of them, but she soon got acquainted. We stopped at Oliver's in Center County and he and his wife took their buggy and went with us over to the valley and we had a nice time. We stayed two or three weeks, and one pleasant morning in October we started for Clarion by way of the turnpike and easily got to Bellefonte that night. The next day was warm, and as the team was walking up the pike pretty near the Rattlesnake Hotel, I saw a vine above the road loaded with grapes. It was hanging over bushes not higher than my head. I got off and instead of picking, I took my knife and cut a number of limbs off the vine that were the fullest of grapes and threw them into the hind end of the carriage, and my wife picked the grapes and threw the vines out nearly all the way over to Phillipsburg and we took the grapes home with us and she made jelly out of them. We got to Clearfield Creek about dark and were going to stay there all night but found the hotel full of lumbermen and drove on seven miles farther to Curwensville. It was cloudy but not very dark. We stayed all night with old Mr. Ross who kept the hotel. The next morning was raining and we did not make a very early start, but we had a good roof on our carriage and drove on to Brookville that day and next day got home in time to eat our dinner in our own house.

I think at that time when we were in the valley we attended Brother Robert's in fair. He, with quite a little company, came over from Jacksonville, a little town down below Bellefonte where he got his wife. I mind we ate supper with the party after dark in the evening. It was ascertained afterwards that some young rowdys about Greenwood had intended giving us a noisy serenade that night but were deterred by a very serious accident that befell their leader. There was a thunder shower that afternoon. The young man was working out in a cornfield and when the rain came on he took refuge in a corn shock and the lightning struck the shock and killed him and this ended the serenade.

Ellen Montgomery was Robert's second wife -- was I suppose thirty seven to forty years of age when married. She was a good housekeeper and a sensible woman. She never had any children and died a few years ago from a stroke of palsey. But she was a good mother to Robert's children.