Aerial Views of Pine Township

These pictures were found in the online archives of Detre Library Archives of the Heinz History Center.

They are both listed as 1936 aerial views of Pine Township, Perry Highway however, only the first one, the one on the left is Perry Highway.

Initially I wrote about how the second picture, the one on the right, couldn’t possibly be Perry Highway, as it is listed with the archive. The curvature of the road is similar to the one seen on the left but that it didn’t quite match and Old Wexford was missing.

But when I loaded the pictures, they were loaded exactly as you seem the above and it became clear. They actually go together and the picture on the right is actually Wexford Road (910).

1936 Aerial view of Pine Township. Perry Highway is the main road. Church Road and Old Wexford can be seen.

1936 Aerial view of Pine Township. The main road at the top is listed as Perry Highway but it is in fact Wexford Road (910).

This is the Google map of Pine Township. Perry Highway is clearly visableas is Wexford Road. Look at the curvature of the road of Wexford Road on the left of Perry Highway. The second curve specifically is the the sameas the curve as seen in the 1936 aerial view.

The large, color photo is a Google Satelite map of Wexford Road with what I am assuming is a driveway. Although the angle of the driveway has changed slightly, everything matches.

Voila! Local picture mystery solved.

Bequeath A Dollar

The first George Wallace listed on the 1820 Census for Pine Township was born before 1775, while the second was born between 1775 and 1794.

If these Georges were part of Rebecca’s family, the first was likely her father while the second was more than likely her brother.  I quickly pulled the earlier Censuses for Pine Township, and sure enough, a George Wallace appeared on the 1800 and 1810 Censuses, both times listed as over the age of forty-five.

Moving forward in time, a George Wallace – born between 1740 and 1750 – was also listed on the 1830 Census.  However, there was no entry on the 1840 Census for a similarly aged George Wallace, suggesting that this individual had passed away during the 1830s.

While this was certainly a significant step in the right direction, the Censuses still did not prove Rebecca’s parentage for certain.  For all I knew, this man could have been an uncle, or even unrelated entirely.  What I did have however was a new location where a will may have been recorded.

My attention now turned to the Pennsylvania Probate Records for Allegheny County.

Filtering through thousands of microfiche slides, I managed to locate a handful of George Wallaces in the Estates Index.  Cross-referencing this list with the Allegheny County Probate Proceedings Index, I narrowed the list to three estates with probate proceedings dating from the correct time period.

On the edge of my seat, I pulled up the first will and rapidly scanned for any mention of a wife or children.  I soon found a bequest to a wife, Jane, and no daughter named Rebecca.

As I would come to learn later, this George Wallace was a very prominent judge in the Pittsburgh area during the final decades of the eighteenth century, but it was not the one I was looking for.  What was more, the Probate Proceedings Index indicated that the second George Wallace on my list was the son of the first, meaning he too was unrelated.

With trepidation, I pulled up the final will on my list.  If this was a “miss” as well, I might never have a definitive answer.  Darting through the text, my eyes soon seized upon the bottom right corner of the first page where the testator had bequeathed the family home “to my beloved wife Sarah.”

My heart racing, I turned to the next slide.  About halfway down the page, it read:

“I further will and bequeath to my daughter Rebecca Ward the sum of one dollar.”

I was ecstatic.  After years of searching, I had finally proven this aspect of the family story!  I now knew for certain that Rebecca’s father was in fact George Wallace.

The question now was whether I could find out anything more about who George was.

– by guest blogger Thomas Keenan

 

 

Finding The Wards

This is the second installment from our guest blogger Thomas Keenan.

If you remember, Mr. Keenan found Pine History Blog while researching family history and he and I have emailed many, many times since.

He is currently writing a family history book and I asked him to write about finding his family in Pine Township.

To find Rebecca’s parents, I had to start out with what I knew.

Fortunately, I had well recorded histories of the Ward family that gave me plenty of information on Rebecca’s husband, Timothy Ward.  Timothy’s father (also named Timothy) was a Revolutionary War veteran originally from New Jersey, but who had moved to western Pennsylvania by the early years of the nineteenth century.

By the War of 1812, the Wards had settled in Butler County, Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh.  Timothy (the son) served during the war, enlisting as a musician with the 138^th Pennsylvania Militia as part of the call to arms that followed after the British raid on Buffalo, New York in late 1813.

Timothy, who was listed in muster rolls as both a fifer and a drummer, marched to Erie, Pennsylvania with the regiment to defend against a suspected British attack that never came, and he would remain there through the winter months of 1814.

Given this information, I suspected that Rebecca’s family may have been from western Pennsylvania, but I couldn’t be sure.

According to the family histories I had, Timothy married Rebecca in 1818, but I did not have a location for the marriage.  The Wards would move west during the 1820s, living for a time near Cincinnati (in Brown County) where they were located on the 1830 Census, before finally settling in southeastern Indiana by 1840.

I had searched for a marriage record to no avail, which is not surprising given that Pennsylvania did not mandate marriage licenses until the end of the nineteenth century. 

In the absence of a marriage record which might name Rebecca’s parents, my thoughts turned to probate records.  Assuming that Rebecca’s parents were in fact George and Sarah Wallace, perhaps there was a will establishing parentage.

Once again, however, the problem was location.  Though I initially searched for the probate records of a George Wallace in Butler County, I could not locate any will that matched.

I had given up any hope of finding a will when I began drafting the portion of my book on Timothy and Rebecca Ward.

But when I came to actually writing my history on the couple, I found a gap in my research between the given year for their marriage in 1818 and the family’s move west to Ohio.  I decided to take a closer look at the 1820 Census.  I soon found an entry for a Timothy Ward in Pine Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, just to the north of Butler County.

As any family historian can attest, the Censuses prior to 1850 can be exceedingly frustrating to deal with as they do not name every individual in a household. 

Instead, these Censuses only list heads of households, with the remaining members of the family allocated to numbers in pre-defined age ranges.  Thus, for this Timothy Ward, the Census listed one male under the age of ten, one male between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six, and one female between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six.

Despite the utter impersonality of this method of record-keeping, the numbers actually matched up with my family histories.  Based on the years of birth I had, Timothy would have been about twenty-seven in 1820; Rebecca, twenty-three; and their first child, a son named Eber, about one year old.

But what I found one household directly above Timothy was even more intriguing – a George Wallace.  And two households above that, another George Wallace!  This had to be more than coincidence.