Amanuensis Monday - Part III of Howard Matthews's Story

Time for Part III of my paternal grandfather's autobiography and family history.  

In this part of his story, my grandfather laid out dates and ages as best he could with the information that he had (which I have yet to verify).  He then spoke of some of the family's neighbors on Nafus Street in Pittston and gives us a few details of his childhood over 100 years ago.


Then he writes about the wedding of his eldest sister, Lillian.  He wasn't there as he had not yet been born, but he did attend his other sister's wedding twelve years later, tune in next week for that one.

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It is unfortunate that I have not been able to find exact dates of my parent’s arrival in the USA or of their marriage*.  Death certificates at the Pittston, PA Cemetery record that Arthur William Matthews died December 6, 1915 at age 71, and Ada Hobbs Matthews September 1, 1919, at age 64.  In addition they record the following, making a total of five burials in or double lot.

William Matthews (first son of my father’s first marriage)      1869-1920 age 51

Will’s wife Laura S. Matthews                                                      1869-1950 age 80

LeRoy Matthews (my brother)                                                      1880-1929 age 48

Since hist first wife (a Griffith) is said to have died at the birth of John Matthews (1870), when my father was 26, it would seem that he must have married very soon after his arrival in the USA (1865) when, I have assumed, he was about 23.  We don’t know the date of his second marriage, to my mother Ada, but since the birthdate of the first child of that union (my sister Lillian) was April 1, 1878, the marriage must have occurred at some point in the 7-year span 1870-1877.  So perhaps they were married in, say, 1876 when my mother would have been 21 and my father 32.  The children of that marriage came along as follows:

                                                                                                                  Age of

                                                                                       Born            Mother     Father

Lillian (Mrs. G. Floyd Hunter)                                4-1-1878             23          34

LeRoy                                                                               1880             25          36

Fred                                                                                   1882            27          38

Bess (Mrs. William H. Ahlers)                            2-20-1884            29          40

Charles                                                                             1895           40           51

Howard                                                                    7-21-1901           46           57

My father had the family home at 13 Nafus Street built for his bride, my mother.  All six of us were born in that house and all six plus the two half-brothers were raised there.  Dorothy says, “Mother (my sister Lillian) was proud of the fact that they were the first on their street (Nafus Street) to have a built-in bath tub.  It was lined with copper or tin as this was long before porcelain or enamel tubs were made.”  I had many baths in that tub.  Nafus is a short street, two blocks long, running from Main Street to Vine Street and the cemetery.  In my youth it was lined with substantial homes on good-sized lots.  Across from us was the Myers home.  Mr. Myers was a Civil Engineer and he owned the first Hupmobile I had ever seen.  His father, our milkman, had a Stanley Steamer.  His son, Clinton, who became head of the Martz Bus Lines, was one of my playmates.  On the opposite corner lived the editor of our local newspaper, the Pittston Gazette, next to home the Smiles family, and across the street the Cadmans whose apple trees we raided each Spring and in whose backyard we erected tents made of old carpets each summer and occasionally slept in them overnight.

On a wall of the sitting room at 301 Philadelphia Avenue in West Pittston (the G. Floyd Hunter family home, now occupied by Dorothy Kenworthy) there hangs a framed copy of the printed invitation to the wedding of my sister Lillian to G. Floyd Hunter at the old homestead (13 Nafus St) on October 27, 1897.  Lillian was then 19½ years old; Floyd five years her senior.  Dorothy tells us that every time she visited Cousin John Merritt he told her that he had attended the wedding of her very beautiful mother.  Lillian was the “arty” member of the Matthews family.  She painted in oils and some of her works are hanging at 301.  Floyd along with his brother and father, operated a farm and rendering works on the side of the mountain west of West Pittston.  Their tables were always abundantly supplied with fresh fruits and vegetables.  Tallow, the product of the rendering works, was sold to Proctor & Gamble.

Obviously, since I was not born until 1901, I was not present at Lillian’s wedding.  But I was at the wedding of my sister Bess to William H. Ahlers.  It too was held at 13 Nafus Street.

*  You may remember that I found an Arthur Matthews arriving in NYC on April 25, 1865 from Liverpool.

In addition to my grandfather's correspondence, I also found a copy of my grandparents' wedding announcement.  I'll be sharing that later this week for Wedding Wednesday.

Happy Hunting!

Amanuensis Monday - Pt 2 of A Story by Howard Matthews

Last Monday I started transcribing the personal story and family history of my paternal grandfather, Howard B. Matthews.  I'm sorry to say that I disparaged him a bit in that post, saying that he did not cite his sources.  Well, he didn't, in the finished version of his manuscript.  But he did save all of the correspondence with his family while he was trying - over many years as it turns out - to piece together the facts of his family.  I found all those letters this week and although I know it will take a long time to go through it all, I can tell I have found a rich source of information.

The first installment gave us a little history of the Pittston, PA area and ended with my great-grandfather, Arthur Matthews' immigration to the United States shortly after Abraham Lincoln's assassination.  Today you will learn a little more about Arthur and about my great grandmother, Ada Hobbs Merritt Matthews and her family.

       I do not know what caused him [Arthur Matthews] to settle in Pittston, but from the number of Welsh people we visited on Sunday afternoons during my childhood, and the number who in turn visited us at 13 Nafus Street, it is possible that they influenced his choice.  And it is possible that his first wife was of the Griffith families who came to the USA from Wales in 1830 and 1860, settled in Pittston and neighboring Plymouth and were engaged in sinking coal mine shafts. Or he may have been related to and had maintained contact with descendents [sic] of William Matthews who emigrated from Wales to Litchfield, Connecticut in 1671, and decades later married into the Lyman Hakes family of Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

In any event he went to work in the mines of the Pennsylvania Coal Company, founded by William R. Griffith.  I imagine, altho I am not certain, that at first he must have been just a miner.  But not for long, for his first love was music.  He played the violin and the piano, composed hymns and led the choir in the Methodist Episcopal Church in Pittston.  Soon, as an independent contractor, supervising his crew at the mines required only the first two hours of the day; the rest of the day he spend at his music store uptown.  A very devout Roman Catholic Miss Allen ran the store when he was busy elsewhere.  Later she became a nun.

By his first wife, a Griffith, he fathered two sons; William Matthews, 1869 and John Matthews born 1870.  We are told that she died in childbirth.  Thus, my father was widowed when he was 26.  At that time my mother, Ada Hobbs Merritt Matthews (born in 1855) would have been only 15 years of age.  We do not know the date they married* but their first child, my sister Lillian, was born in 1878 when my mother would have been 23 and my father 34.

My mother’s brother, Joseph Hobbs, and her two sisters, Emily and Bessie, came to this country from London and lived in West Pittston, Pa., with their mother’s brother, Uncle John Merritt.  Later, following the death of her mother, my mother, then a very young girl, came to live with Uncle John and his wife Margaret.  I know no more about my mother’s family or how they were situated, but several things seem to indicate that they were not an impoverished family.  A picture of my mother, taken in London when she was quite young, shows a very well dressed young lady.  And Uncle John Merritt is described as a native of England, of a family of inventors.  Also, many times, as a child I heard (and Dorothy did also) about tea lands owned by my mother’s family in the Far East and that unless someone of the family went to England to assert ownership, thy would revert to the Crown.  This was brought up again and again, always with regret that no one had looked into it.

A History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, published in 1893, describes Uncle John and his wife, Margaret Stephens Merritt, as natives of England, of a family of inventors.  It states that John Merritt had charge of the machinery of the Pennsylvania Coal Company until 1870, and was superintendent of the Pittston Gas Co. until his death in 1882 when my mother was 27.

My mother lived with Great Uncle John and his wife Margaret until she married my father.  Margaret is said to have strongly opposed the marriage as they had become very fond of Ada and felt she was much too young to marry a widower who was the father of two young sons.  Apparently she was opposed to marriage in general, for their own daughters, Mary and Margaret, never married.  In addition, they had two sons, John W. Merritt, Jr. born 1859 and Adrian.  Adrian was an engineer.

My niece, Dorothy Hunter Krick Kenworthy, older daughter of my sister Lillian, knew John Jr. and his two sisters quite well and called on them and John’s daughter Edith at the homestead on Wyoming Avenue in West Pittston.  She describes them as very proper persons who spoke the King’s English and served tea every afternoon.  Uncle John who live to be 90, (he attended Wyoming Seminary), she describes as an interesting and well educated electrical engineer.  He was Superintendent of the Pittston Light Co., and was responsible for the planning and installation of electric power in Pittston.  Later he moved to Virginia as a mining engineer.  Dorothy and her mother Lillian visited Uncle John and the two sisters frequently.  Dorothy says she enjoyed Margaret because she was more down to earth and she had a wonderful sense of humor.  She was organist of the West Pittston Trinity Church for years.  The Merritts were Episcopalians as was Grandma Matthews (my mother) until she married.

Dorothy describes my mother’s sister Emily as a petite little person, very proud of her appearance, especially her dainty feet!  Bessie, for whom my sister was named, was extremely attractive and had a beautiful singing voice.  After her marriage to William Snell they lived in Dorrancetown (now Kingston) where she sang in the Methodist choir.  They legally adopted Mr. Snell’s niece, Ellen, a close friend of my sister Lillian.  Ellen later became Deaconess of the M. E. church.  Aunt Bessie died in the 1930s.

Dorothy’s letters, from which much of this information is taken, are filled with other backup materials.**

*   I found the date of Ada and Arthur's marriage - they were married at the Methodist parsonage on October 28, 1876.

** I have just found these letters.