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Throughout its long history the development of Beaver County has been enriched by many waves of migration. Notable among these were the great push Westward from the East Coast that followed the opening of the Northwest Territories after the War of 1812, and the huge influx of immigrants from Europe around the beginning of the 20th Century. One source of population growth often overlooked came by way of internal migration from our down river neighbor, West Virginia, during the period of rapid industrial growth that occurred here in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Families that had struggled there for decades to earn a living by logging or subsistence farming, found times particularly hard during the financial Panic of 1893 and the ensuing economic depression. The promise of a new start drew many folks to head "up the river" to Beaver County, the new land of opportunity. Many current residents of our county can trace family connections back to West Virginia a hundred or more years ago. This is a story of several such families.
My grandfather, Frank Kelbaugh, the eldest son of one of those West Virginia subsistence farmers, often said "New Brighton was a boom town in those days. If a man wasn't able to make a living here he couldn't make a living anywhere." From his early teens in Jackson County, West Virginia, Frank had heard neighbors and acquaintances tell about relatives who had gone up the river and found good paying jobs in the many manufacturing plants that had sprung up around Beaver County following the Civil War. In 1900, Frank was just 17 years old, but he and an older cousin had saved enough money that both of them could make the trip together. Upon arriving in the Valley, Frank's first job was as a farm hand, something he knew well. Soon, though, he found work at the Hollowware plant in New Brighton. The wages were better, but Frank didn't like the factory environment. By 1903, he signed on with the Traction Company, where he trained to become a trolley motorman, and later a dispatcher. He stayed on with the Traction Company and its successor organizations until his eventual retirement from the Beaver Valley Motor Coach Company, more than 50 years later.
Meanwhile, about 1899, young Mabel Byerle had made the same trip up the river from Ravenswood, West Virginia. Mabel, too, was born on a Jackson County farm and had come north with her Aunt Nancy (Russell) and Uncle Harry McBrien. She went to work in a wallpaper manufacturing plant in New Brighton while her aunt kept house and raised a family, and her uncle opened a grocery store. A year or so later, Mabel was joined by her parents, Frank and Sarah (Russell) Byerle, who brought along Mabel's two sisters and younger brother. By early 1905, Frank and Mabel had met and began courting. Shortly before Christmas that year, Frank Kelbaugh and Mabel Byerle were married. In the ensuing years, they reared four sons and each of them married girls from the Valley.
Back in Jackson County, Frank's father, James William (Jim) Kelbaugh, was confronted with a major midlife crisis. His wife had died in 1902, leaving him with six other children to be raised. At age 45, Jim Kelbaugh took stock of his situation and decided it was time he, too, leave, the hard-scrabble farm life and try to improve his lot up North. He packed up the family belongings and with children in tow headed down out of the hills of Ravenswood, on the Ohio River, where they caught a steamboat heading upriver.
Ironically, less than 40 years earlier both families had migrated into West Virginia in search of an elusive prosperity. Frank Byerle's parents had taken their young children from Lawrence County, Pennsylvania in 1865. His wife's parents moved their family from Jefferson County, Pennsylvania in 1877 .Jim Kelbaugh and two older brothers had left their father's farm in Southeast Ohio in the 1870s. West Virginia then was a newly created state that held the promise of abundant land freshly cleared by the timber industry. But the gulf between promise and reality proved to be more than either family chose to accept.
Soon after he arrived in the Valley, Jim Kelbaugh went to work for an insurance company. Not long afterward, he met and developed a relationship with a widow who lived just up the street in New Brighton. Mary Goddard Carpenter, too, was raised in West Virginia, one of six children, all but one of whom had already moved to the Valley. Mary's brother, Charles, had stayed behind and was living near Charleston, WV, with his wife and ten children. In 1921, Charles decided he would move his family up to Beaver County to be with his sisters and brothers.
Interviewed in 1974, Charles Goddard's wife, Nancy Ann, then age 90, related the following story:
Size remembered having a scary feeling about leaving the area she had known all of her life. Born in a log cabin in 1884, in the hills of Boon County, West Virginia, Nancy Goddard knew hard times. The oldest of 10 children, she had to quit the one room school in the fifth grade in order to care for her sick mother. At age 16, she had met and married Charles Winfield Goddard, a lumberman. He had come to her hometown in search of timber for his brother's saw mill. As soon as the wedding feast was over, Nancy and Charles had hopped on their horses and rode off into the woods. Their destination was a logging camp 13 miles down the trail.
When they arrived at the camp, Nancy quickly fell into helping cook the evening meal for the lumbermen. She and Charles worked as part of the saw-mill crew for a number of years, following along each time the mill was moved to a new location in search of more timber. Eventually, the mill was sold and again the Goddards moved on. Charles worked for a while at a glass factory, in the coal-mines, and on the railroad, where he made $1.50 a day, not enough for his growing family.
Finally, a brother-in-law (Jim Kelbaugh) told him of a farm for sale in Brady's Run. It sounded like a beautiful spot. And with encouragement from his sisters and family, Charles Goddard decided he, too, would try his luck up the river.
Moving day came and everyone was excited, especially the children. They were told that the family was moving from Charleston, West Virginia, to a place called Brady's Run, near some faraway town named Beaver Falls. Nancy Goddard rounded up eight of her ten children. Two older sons had gone ahead by train. It was hard to forget the grief that the family had borne the last three weeks. Their two-year-old son had died of diphtheria. The day after his death, as if to take his place, another son was born to Charles and Nancy.
With her three-week old baby in one arm, Nancy helped her husband and older children pack the household belongings, furniture and farm equipment into the wagon. When all the children were accounted for, Charles Goddard prodded the horse team and the wagon began moving slowly down the dirt road. Hitched behind was their pregnant cow.
They were headed for the harbor at Charleston where Senator Cordill was waiting. The Senator was a white, triple decked paddle wheel steamboat made of wood and steel. Its destination was Rochester, Pennsylvania. For $25.00, the Goddards, with their belongings - a horse team, wagon, farm equipment and a pregnant cow - boarded the steamboat.
The animals and freight were sent to the bottom deck where they stayed for the three-day journey up the river. The family's quarters were on the second tier. Mrs. Goddard recalled, "the children had a good ol' time. They had the run of the boat. Their favorite spot was the pilot house way atop the boat. We were the only passengers on board besides the crew."
Five of Charles and Nancy Goddard's children still live in Beaver County. Three of them get around very well and have vivid memories of the family's great adventure, now nearly 80 years in the past. Lloyd, the eldest at age 95, lives in Wampum with his daughter, Maeola. Edyth lives in Chippewa where she still keeps house with her husband, Steve Zachewicz. Ida Goddard Merriman is now widowed and lives in New Brighton. Their two brothers are quite feeble and require assisted living. Lester Raymond lives at the Geriatric Center in Beaver. Fred Lee, who made the trip as the three week old baby, has been an invalid since 1985, when his home in North Sewickley Township was struck by one of the tornadoes that hit the Upper Valley area.
Although she was just 5 years old when they made the boat trip, Ida Merriman remembers being impressed that the family got to eat at the captain's table. She also recalls that the younger children didn't want to go to the toilet by themselves because it was located directly over the big paddles and those churning paddles would send water up into the toilet space. Generally the children stayed apart from the crew, but Ida said her sister, Ruth, made friends with the cook and more than once he invited her down into the kitchen for a treat of bread and honey.
Lloyd was one of the older boys who had come ahead by train. He told how he and his Uncle Jim worked all of their spare time for several weeks, cleaning up two houses on the new farm to make them ready to be lived in. On the day the steamboat was due, Jim and Lloyd waited at the dock in Rochester. Jim had driven his wagon so he could haul the whole family to a nearby hotel.
Edyth remembers it was already dark when they arrived. The lady in charge at the hotel was a real big woman. She looked huge to us children. And she had a parrot that sat on her shoulder. We were terrified of her and that bird. But she told us, "You children have a good time here. Behave yourselves and we'll have some doughnuts for your breakfast in the morning." We liked that idea and when morning came we all went down to get some doughnuts. But we found that they were all burned! So we didn't get our doughnuts for breakfast.
"I remember the next day when Uncle Jim came again with his wagon to take us to our new home. It was late November and the weather was cold. So Aunt Mary had piled straw and a bunch of blankets into the wagon for us to huddle up in." Over the next several days, Jim and Charles and the older boys hauled the Goddard's animals and furniture and other belongings from the dock to the farm. There were two houses on that farm. .Jim and Mary Kelbaugh moved into the smaller house and the Goddards took the larger one.
Jim and Charles planned to buy that farm in partnership and both families stayed there four years, bringing in good crops each year. But according to Ida and Lloyd, the deal eventually fell through when the owners refused to give up mineral rights on the land. Jim Kelbaugh then bought another farm farther out Brady's Run Road, where he and Mary lived for the remainder of their lives. Charles Goddard took a job with Moltrup Steel Company in Beaver Falls and moved his family to town.
(This story was written by a great-grandson and namesake of James William Kelbaugh. Portions were excerpted from the Western Advertiser Beaver, PA, Vol. III, No. 28,p. 1 & 13).