|
SEARCH MY WASHINGTON COUNTY PENNSYLVANIA WEBSITES
OTHER FAMILIES (o_f) of McDonald PA
and surrounding areas
Washington County PA
Are these folks your family?
Stories about People from McDonald PA area
Enhance your genealogy research about ancestors from McDonald, Washington County PA with newspaper
articles, birth, death, marriage, notices, obituaries often with cemeteries noted, probate, deed, surname,
family trees or family histories, reunions and other information.
Biographies
Sketch about Thomas WILSON
From the
McDonald Outlook newspaper, December 30, 1893, page unknown:
[NOTE: This sketch is about Thomas Wilson]
The subject of this sketch, who died at his residence in the
Parkinson property, Barr Street, McDonald, December 20th, was in many
respects a remarkable man. Being a person of good mind and fine taste,
he had as far as possible during the sixty-six years of his life stood
aloof as a thoughtful and rather melancholy observer from the rude,
boisterous, and ill directed activities of the crude life around him. He
was a worker in wood and a master hand at whatever he gave his mind to,
and so unwillingly was he to spoil good timber and half-do work that he
said only wasted material and marred landscape, that he could be induced
with no money to engage in the rude of rank and file carpenters around
him, who forever in a hurried panic, without forethought, design, or
satisfactory result, were constructing dwellings and business blocks
that he considered inimical to all the first principles of art. And so
as an ax-man he found most pleasure alone with himself in the woods. He
was a great reader and thinker. The habit of his mind was logical, and
it was a pleasure to listen to his deliberate utterances of the well
defined thoughts he had forged in his solitude. Mr. WILSON spent
his boyhood on a small homestead near SMITH's Mills, on the B. & O.
Railroad, in North Strabane Township, to which place his father, who was
originally from Derry, Ireland, had come when Thomas was five years old.
His mother's name was MCCORKLE and was connected with the MCDONOUGHs,
BERRYs, HARTs, WEIRs, HULTZes, THOMASes, and other old families still in
that country. He was a second cousin of Cashier G. S. CAMPBELL and also
of Mr. HULTZ, the young business partner of 'Squire MAY, who died of
typhoid fever in McDonald a few years ago. When a youth he went to
Pittsburg and learned the trade of a carpenter and joiner. In 1847 he
was married to Miss Eliza Ann MCCLAINE, who family had come to Pittsburg
from the East--a people noted for ability in intellectual pursuits. Her
father was the inventor of the first power threshing machine in this
country, long known as the "bunty machine," and she herself
was a person of unusual education and culture.
There were six children by this first marriage. Four died in infancy.
Alice L., the eldest, is the wife of Mr. Samuel AYERS, of East
Noblestown Street; Robert Burns is a resident of Frankfort, Ky.,
unmarried, and a man with a national reputation as an artist and writer.
Many of his productions have been published in the Century Magazine. The
WILSON family lived in Pittsburg, at SMITH's Mills, (where the poet and
artist Robert BURNS was born) at Washington, and at West Alexander,
where the wife died and was buried. In after years Mr. WILSON was
married to Miss AYERS, a daughter of Mr. John AYERS, of Jumbo. They
lived in Mansfield; in '72 they removed to Venice; in '85 removed to
McDonald. By this marriage were born two daughters--Ella J., wife of
Edward JUDD and Harriet wife of Mr. ROBERTSON, well known citizens of
this place. Mr. WILSON was always a consistent member of the U. P.
Church; while in Mansfield served as an elder.
MCDONALD PA LINKS
Index to McDonald
PA Folder 1 | Business-Industry | Advertisements
| Fashion
| History
| Location - Scenes |
Town
Drawings | Major
Life Events | Military
| News and Glances
| Obituaries
| People-Biographies
| Politicians
- Politics | Reunions
| Schools | Sports
| Worship-Churches
| Index
to McDonald PA Folder 1 | Index to McDonald
PA Folder 2 a Collection of 3,000 marriage licenses / wedding notices | Divorce
Notices
Sign
McDonald PA Guestbook1
|
