Source Transcript; Gilcrest, Robert A. From Gille Chriosd to Gilcrest; Thomas Coscory Gilcrest, Sketch

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It is here intended to give a little more extended sketch of my father and mother. Where my father's middle name came from I have never been able to learn. Father himself did not know or else he had forgotten whether or not it had belonged to some member or distant relation of the family. He was born on a farm near West Middletown, Washington County, Pennsylvania, and he was about a year old when the family moved to Belmont County, Ohio. When he was about fifteen years old they moved to Brook County, Virginia, where he helped in the farming for three or four years. In the spring of 1831, just before he was nineteen, he started out to work for himself, and I will let him tell of his course from that time till within my own memory: "I went to West Middletown and started in to work as apprentice in a wagon shop, with a man by the name of Brown. He was a very good man and treated me well. I continued with him a little over a year. After that I worked as journeyman wagonmaker in various places, among them Wellsburg, Virginia, and moved into Ohio as far as New Athens, Harrison County. Later, Alexander and I, and Mahlon Fawcett, a brother-in-law, went over on Stillwater and built a saw mill, and in the fall of 1833 we all went over on Captina Creek and built another one. It was while working at this place that we were eye witnesses of the great shower of meteors that occurred on November 13th, 1833.

There was a mill wright living there who wanted to start a wagon shop and asked me to direct him in the work for a while. I engaged with him for the

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winter. His name was Uriah Bailey, and he was a very agreeable man to work with. In the mean time my father had moved from Virginia to Guernsey County, Ohio, on the National Road forty-three miles west of Wheeling. In the spring, leaving Bailey, I went up there to Father's place, built a wagon shop, prepared wagon timber, and continued in the trade there till the summer of 1838.

Making wagons in those days was a trade of considerable proportions. It meant making wagons "from the stump." One must go to the woods and select his trees, and cut and split such as suited for all the different parts. Then he must hew out the axles and boulsters, saw out the felloes, dress down pieces for the tongues, turn the hubs with a hand lathe, mortice the hubs by hand, dress down and tenant the spokes by hand, - everything by hand labor, and a wagon was not made in a week or two. It was a strong man's job, and it proved too much for my constitution.

During this time, namely, May 27th, 1835, I had been married to Eleanor Guthrie, of New Athens, Harrison County, Ohio. In the summer of 1838 we moved up to New Athens. Here I bought some lots, built a good shop, and a small house. Here we occupied till May, 1846.

During this time my health seemed to be on the decline and I was anxious to make a change. We moved to Greene County, Ohio, where Father had gone and bought a small farm for himself. During that year I worked out doors a great deal, working on a farm and helping to build the powder mills on the Miami River. The out door work was a great benefit to me in health and strength. In the spring of 1847 I bought the small farm that Father lived on,

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put up a shop there, and had all the work that I and the boys could do both in doors and out. Here I took care of Father the rest of his days.

In 1854, desiring more land, I sold that place and bought an undeveloped timber tract of 187 acres in Union County, twenty-five miles northwest of Columbus, three miles east of Marysville. We moved up there in the spring of 1855."

This much is taken from Father's own memorandum of his movements. From this date my own memory serves very well, as I was about five years old when we moved to Union County.

In the mean time Father's youngest brother, Uncle Alexander, had gone to the "far west," locating near Princeton, Bureau County, Illinois. His letters describing the rich, smooth, open prairie land, to be farmed without the toil of clearing off the forest made the task of cleaning up a farm out of the virgin forest of beech and oak and ash and maple and hickory and walnut look discouraging, so Father also succumbed to the western fever, and it was soon "Westward, Ho," with us. On September 23rd, 1856, we left Marysville, Ohio, for Princeton, Illinois, with teams and covered wagons, - a family of ten, the youngest a little over two years old. We arrived at Princeton, on October 8th, and located on a farm rented from Uncle Alexander, nine miles north of Princeton. Here we remained and farmed four years, raising extensively corn, spring wheat and oats. Another important crop that furnished the younger children an abundance of work was three or four acres of onions every years.

During these years Mother's health failed very seriously, and it was thought possibly on account of the malarial conditions of the country, there being still a great deal of undrained land. So, for

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her sake, it was decided to move back to Ohio, to the tract of land that was still held in Union County.

That journey was begun October 23rd, 1860, Father, Mother and the two youngest children going by railway, the other children making the trip again by team and wagon. It was a very tedious trip. Brother Will took sick and had to finish the journey by rail from Atica, Indiana. There also one of the horses took sick, and we were much detained, and could travel only at a snail pace when we did get started.

But the prime object of our removal was not attained. Mother's health still declined, and she passed on to her better home, January 24th, 1862.

Having toiled during these two years in the work of clearing up a few acres of the forest farm, the preference for Illinois began to prevail again with most of the family, and in the fall of 1863 the Ohio farm was sold, and took up the trail again for the west, this time, however, not by the team and wagon route. We landed first at Bloomington, McLean County and there we remained three weeks while Father looked for a place to buy a home. Not succeeding at once, he took us to Princeton to spend the winter and get the younger children in school. During the winter, he located a farm in Marshall County, and on May 12th, 1864, we landed at our new home in Belle Plain township, near the village of Pattonsburg.

I was just coming fourteen at this time and here the remainder of my farm days were spent. I and my brother younger, Finley, did the farming, under Father's direction, while he did the building and improving. It was necessary at once to build a rough board shack to house us for the summer while a permanent house was being built. There were no build-

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ings whatever on the farm. After eight years of hard work on this place, doing all the improving with his own hands, when he was left to farm it alone, he sold it and bought a place that would rent to better advantage. This was near Rutland, in the south west corner of La Salle County, about eight miles from the old home place, and in addition he secured a five acre lot and a good house in the edge of the town. To this home he moved February 28th, 1872, and here for over twenty years he was enable to pass his days without constant toil and with a large degree of comfort.

His second wife died September 29th, 1894, and after that he made his home with some of his children, a greater part of the time in my own home. His last few months were spent at the home of his oldest daughter, Mrs. Adaline Hollenback, at Blue Springs, Nebraska. At this place he died September 4th, 1899, in the 88th year of his age.

In my recollection Father was not a very rugged man, although I never knew him to take to his bed but once in sickness. He could not do a heavy days work without suffering. Yet he got a great deal of work done because he was steadily at it in his own moderate gait, early and late. His habits were temperate, and his disposition quiet and undemonstrative. He never used stimulants of any kind nor tobacco. He would not keep any intoxicants on the place for others, as was so much the custom in those days, especially for the harvests, and the log-rollings, and the house or barn raisings. I remember one time seeing some men abuse him because they did not get their liquor in the harvest field.

His temperament was somewhat of the Puritan order and he would now be thought rather

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rigid in the discipline of his children. He expected them to obey, and expected every one to do his bit. This was intensified, doubtless, by the fact that his life struggle, raising a large family, and with a good deal of sickness, was not at any time an easy one, and sometimes poverty was somewhat persistent, especially during the civil war period.

He was strictly honest, upright in character, clean minded, religious. He was always faithful to his church privileges and obligations, according to his opportunity and his means. For many years he served as deacon in the congregation where his membership might be. In his last few years his hearing was very defective and he could hear no preaching, but he still would go to the Sunday morning meetings. He said "I cannot hear but I can see and I know what it is all about , and I can worship with my own thoughts." In those days he was a constant reader of the Bible and books on religious subjects, and he enjoyed especially the writings of Alexander Campbell and his associates. He was baptized by Alexander Campbell, in the Ohio River at the age of eighteen, so he was a disciple almost seventy years.

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