This country as a nation is so young that the span of the lives of two men of our family reach from its beginning to the present time, Joseph Prichard Weddell having lived from 1780 to 1871 and his grandson Trovillo Jacob Weddell from 1844 to 1937, and between them they were able to vote for,or against, every president from Washington to Truman; and that was one privilege these men exercised on every occasion, if within their power to do so.
By Trovillo, who was raised in the same house in which his grandfather lived, we have been told many interesting stories about the life and times of his grandsire, whose long life was a succession of adventures and interesting experiences.
Born and living in childhood at a time when the possibility of Indian raids was not yet removed and the memory of such raids still vivid in the minds of everyone, living thru the exciting times of the three first American wars, the War of 1812 with England, the war with Mexico and the Civil War, and being an eye witness of, tho not a participant in, the dramatic events of the Whiskey Rebellion, which centered in this district, his life spanned a most vital period in this Country's establishment and growth to greatness.
In his youth much of Western Pennsylvania still remained in virgin forest, which abounded with game and fish teemed in the unpolluted streams. Small game, in fact, was so abundant and so destructive in the gardens and corn fields that organized hunts were held to check its depredations. The hunt often took the fprm of individual contests in which each participant went out, armed with his favorite rifle, and accompanied by a boy who lob was to cut off the ears of the game shot, the winner being the one who brought in the most ears. The carcasses were left in the field where shot. On one such hunt Joseph came in with 116 pairs of ears, far ahead of his nearest competitors. In the foothills of the Laurel Mountains wild turkeys were plentiful and were depended on each fall to add variety to the larder during the following winter. On one trip he shot fifteen of these wary birds before he stopped to pick up the first one shot. The same mountains could be depended on for an occasional deer and bears were numerous.
Joseph owned a rifle which he prized highly for its accuracy. It and the powder horn which accompanied it came down to him from service in the Revolutionary War and they are still in possession of the family. It is quite a different thing shooting squirrels and turkeys with a heavy breech loading rifle from blasting away at them with a twelve gauge shotgun as we at present do, and it is indicative of the skill of those old time hunters. Trovillo and the other grandchildren did not take readily to the old rifle and so it was that the old man bought the boy one of those new fangled shotguns, with the condition that he would get out early in the mornings in the cornfield and shoot or scare away the squirrels. Joseph occasionally accompanied the boy and they had a lot of fun molding bullets for the rifle from pewter pans which they had slipped from the pantry shelves, to the annoyance of the women folks.
In his prime Joseph was a man of commanding appearance, just over six feet tall, without a pound of excess flesh, straight as an arrow, with piercing black eyes and an abundance of black hair which he allowed to hang in locks to his shoulders, frontier fashion. He was a very active young man, fond of sports of all kinds, a skilled wrestler of more than local fame at a time when wrestling was a favorite physical sport in which the young men could show their prowess.
In those times which preceded the "horse and buggy" days, which we like so much to poke fun at today, when horse back was the mode of traveling young folks must take when they sought one another's company, it was to be expected that eligible young men would seek out and find favor with the nearest attractive girls. Joseph's father, Peter, found his choice one on an adjoining farm and Joseph had to go only three or four farms away.
The Scott family was a large one and a lively one. James Scott came with a sister and four brothers from Ballymacran, North Ireland, to American in 1760. He first settled in Lancaster County and when the Land Office was opened in Philadelphia for settlement in western Pennsylvania in 1769 he took out a warrant for a farm in which is now Allegheny County and was granted a patent for it in November 1789. He, and his wife, formerly Mary Pearson of Philadelphia, whom he married sometime about 1770, experienced the usual vicissitudes of frontier life, including a number of exciting contacts with the Indians. In one instance they, with a baby in their arms, were driven from home and sought refuge at Hannastown, about thirty miles away, cautiously traveling over difficult country in constant dread of attack. After remaining for a time, they found they had not bettered their situation and as cautiously returned home again. The morning after they left the town and the fort in which they had taken refuge was attacked and destroyed by the Indians, only one or two persons escaping with their lives.
James Scott assisted in running the line between the colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania in 1782, completing the surveys which were interrupted when the Indians told Mason and Dixon "This far shalt thou go and no farther", and he served as private and as lieutenant in the Westmoreland Militia in 1778-1778 and 1782, thru which service his descendants have qualified for membership in the Daughters of American Revolution.
The family of James Scott, as has been said before, was a lively one and the four daughters of the family provoked plenty of competition among the neighboring young men for their favor. Our Joseph was a young man of commanding appearance and socially inclined and he and Sara Scott just naturally took to each other and they were married at the early ages of 23 and 20.
They were both hospitably inclined and their home became a natural center of social activities in the neighborhood. There were at this time a number of Weddell cousins of about the same age, among them Daniel's son George and James' son Joseph B. The latter had curly hair and to distinguish between the two Joes he was called "Curley Joe" and his cousin "Black Joe", whose tanned skin, dark eyes and raven locks prompted the name. A stranger in the neighborhood, hearing that a big party was to be held at "Black Joe" Weddell's, asked if the white folks of the community ever had parties too.
We do not know for certain where Joseph and Sara lived during their early married life but it could not have been on the farm patented by his father, Peter, for this farm had been abandoned after Peter's death and had been taken over by Andrew Robertson, who "had a claim" to it and who had it rented to different tenants. However, the farm was recovered thru a suit of ejectment in 1813, Joseph bought out the other heirs, and, near the original log cabin and served by the same copious spring, built the house which is still standing. This was the house where the children were raised and when grandchildren crowded it Joseph added an extension so that it presently had seven windows in front on each of its two stories. Joseph believed in plenty of light and ventilation. No curtains on the windows for him.
This old house saw plenty of activity during the first fifty years of its existence. First came a bevy of girls, five of them, and where there are lively girls, close together in age, a house must be stanchly built to keep from being split at the seams. There was no scarcity of young folks in the community, cousins galore, large families on most of the neighboring farms, all descended from good old Scotch-Irish and German stock. Inevitably this resulted in the girls being taken away as they arrived at marriageable age and gradually the tempo of the place toned down. Two of the boys were interested in farming and they helped their father make the place pay and enabled him to send the youngest son, Peter, to college and into the ministry.
Joseph never did take kindly to the horse and buggy means of travel but persisted as long as he lived in going on horse back. After he was ninety years of age he rode alone the three miles to West Newton in order to sit for his picture. It was in the days of the daguerreotype which required the sitter to remain motionless for many minutes and when he returned home he admitted to his family with chagrin that he "moved" and the picture had to be retaken. The second sitting turned out a fine likeness. Of the passing away of this man we have the account prepared by his son, Peter.
Joseph was a man of strong convictions both in politics and religion. He was a Democrat, a staunch one, and he had little use for anyone who differed from his Hard-shelled Baptist bringing-up, tho he was seventy -five before he joined the church. He was very loyal to his relatives and it was not wise for anyone to belittle any of them in his presence.
Hassler wrote in his "Old Westmoreland" "The Scotch pioneers of this region were bold, stout and industrious men, fond of religious and political controversy and not strongly attached to government either of the Royal or Proprietary kind. In nearly every cabin three articles were to be found: a Bible, a rifle and a whiskey jug. A strong characteristic was intense hatred of the Indians." We can easily picture Joseph a descendant of this type of pioneer; we have his Bible, and his rifle but have not been able to locate the jug.
Death Of An Aged Man
On the 10th of April I received a dispatch that my father was dying. In twenty-four hours I stood at his bedside. He was the oldest man in Westmoreland County, being born in 1780. He was ninety-one years of age. He knew that his end was near. I spoke to him of the blessed Savior; he assured me that all his trust was in His precious blood. As we stood around his bed we sang the sweet song "Waiting at the River", and then he addressed his heavenly Father, to whom he committed himself and his family. His face indicated rest and peace. Around him stood his three sons, with their wives and about a dozen of his grandchildren, together with some of his neighbors, watching him as he was passing through the valley of death, as if borne gently in the hands of angels. At twelve o'clock, April 12th he ceased to breathe, within a few yards of the spot where he first breathed the breath of life, nearly three generations before. Rev. Mr. Cramer, of Elizabeth, Pa., who Baptized him when he was seventy-five years old, assisted in the funeral services.
How much 'unwritten history is lost in the death of so aged a man. He was familiar with the leading events of Western Pennsylvania as far back as 1786. He had a distinct recollection of the time when the "whiskey boys" (as they were called) marched over the mountains to enforce the "excise law". He witnessed the construction of the first turnpike road and the Pennsylvania canal through the Allegheny Mountains. He traveled through Ohio in 1812 and through Indiana and Illinois when they were territories, and spent a night and a day in an Indian tent on the banks of Lake Michigan on the ground where Chicago now stands, when no one had thought that a village would be built there, much less the largest city in the West. In other years, when it was customary for Baptist ministers to travel through Western Pennsylvania on preaching tours, he and my devotedly pious mother, who was a member of the Salem Baptist Church, not only regarded it as a privilege, but as a duty, to give those men of God a welcome to their home.
Peter M. Weddell
Copied from the National Baptist, Philadelphia, May 18, 1871.