50 Years or More Ago

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Kaine Farm Barn

Kaine Home

Neel Home

 

 

Fifty years is a long time but no so long as to be without history before that.

The story of America begins in most histories with the story of the Indian. And the story of Midland begins there too. Before the white man settled here, Indians roamed the forests that were here. The quarter mile section of land along the Ohio River stretching from present day 12th Street to the Shippingport Ferry, Cooks Ferry, it used to be, was a favorite camp site, as the many arrowheads found there testify.

There were good reasons for selecting this site. Protected from the cold west winds by dense woods, it was high enough above the river to stay dry, and its sandy soil gave rapid drainage to the rain waters. The river supplied fish, the forest game. Two springs there spouted forth an abundant supply of clear good drinking water.

The present dams control the level of the water a too great a depth now, but many can remember seeing during the dry spells, the Indian carvings in the flat rocks that lie on the river bed between Midland and Smiths Ferry.

The Indians were here all right. And the bank across the river and upstream from the campsite was an Indian burial ground. The records point there as a place of discovery for more arrowheads, flint hatchet heads and most convincingly, parts of skeletons.

The first white settlers, three bold families, came west over the mountains and built a block house on the high ground across the river from Cooks Ferry.

Their watch for the Indians was constant, with the women posted as sentries when the men worked the fields. The appearance of an Indian was the signal to sound a conkle shell horn: the warning to those outside the block house. That horn was exhibited at Beaver's Centennial in 1900 by Mrs. Blanche H. Marshall.

Until 1785, because the Indians were so bold and troublesome, it was impossible for new settlers to live in this territory. The United States government sent its commissioners to meet with the Delaware, Wyandot, Chippewa and Ottawa tribes to draw up a treaty which would give us title to the lands in which we now live. They met at Fort McIntosh, located on the present site of Beaver, Pa., January 21, 1785, and by the terms of this treaty the southern three-fifths of what is now Ohio was in effect ceded to the United States in return for $2,000.

Following this treaty the settlers began moving our way in great numbers.

Warrants were taken out on four parcels of land here in 1792. Held by John Johnston, David Brook, Gabriel Blackney and David Hoge, Jr., these warrants were the first documents to show land ownership in this section. Together they covered an area of more than 1669 acres. In the custom of the day, the gentlemen gave names to their lands. Mr. Johnston called his, "The Ohio

Adonis"; Mr. Brook thought "Appollo's Retreat" was suited to his. Mr. Blackney chose "Happy Retreat" and Mr. Hoge, "Bacchus Delight."

The land of the original four warrants was sold and divided into smaller farms within the next 60 years. All places gain identifying names, but never again did the properties have such fanciful ones.

The major portion of the land covered by the original four warrants was transferred to John Hoge, Nathan Lufborough, and Alexander Addison. Lufborough and Addison in turn sold out their interests to Hoge. Later, 263 acres of Hoge's land evidently were sold by him, and eventually became the property of C. McMasters, James Bray, James Harsha, and William Cook. The other 991 acres of the Hoge property, which is still referred to by some of us here as Hoge's Bottom, was conveyed in part in 1824 to his wife, Anne, with David Quail her trustee, as a marriage settlement. The property was to be hers until her death, but after Mr. Hoge died the property was sold at Sheriff's sale. Five creditors, William Waugh, George Burd, Daniel Hoge, Dr. John H. Irvin, and Elderkin Potter, with Potter acting as the agent, bought the Hoge interests and divided the land.

Later the Daniel Hoge and the Irvin properties passed on, by various means, to Eliza Kaine, heiress of the Irvin estate and wife of Daniel Kaine of Uniontown, Pa.

A run through the dusty records shows evidence of legal negotiation dotted with quit claims, testaturn writs, non-patents and other technical practices. One celebrated case involving McCoy vs. Phillips was carried to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

At some early date, Joseph Meinsinger bought 130 acres in the western section at another Sheriff sale to settle a debt of the Widow Anne Hoge.

In 1859, a coal operator-riverman named J. A. Neel from McKeesport, Pa., bought 194 acres in Ohio Township from William Waugh for $30 an acre plus an extra mysterious 95 cents, maybe a fee, a tax. Five

years later Neel purchased another 101 acres, this time from a Jesse Smith, and again in 1866 another 101 acres from the same man. The total Neel farm, 396 acres, is now the western part of our town.

Mr. Neel hired some hands to clear his lands and used the timbers to fence his field and to build several houses for his men. He also built a house for his family, choosing a site overlooking the Ohio. He built it well. With many renovations and remodeling, the house is still being used by Crucible as an Industrial Engineering Office.

Neel's lands were fertile and repaid him well for his efforts. On 32 acres, west of where our Seventh Street School is now, he planted wheat. One year's harvest gave him 900 bushels, the records show. On the banks of the river he planted two apple orchards and two more next to the hill. The orchards, too, paid off. H. E. Rogers, who wrote a history of our town several years ago, learned that Neel sold 1500 barrels of apples one year shipping them to Pittsburgh, Beaver Falls, and even to Indianapolis. A steam-operated cider press on the Neel Farm in the same year squeezed out 400 barrels of cider which were sold to a man in East Palestine, Ohio. The price was $2.00 a barrel.

Joining Neel's land on the east was the Winfield McCoy farm of 196 acres purchased from Eliza Kaine. This land was covered with fine timber, oaks and walnut trees mostly. The oaks were felled and their timber shipped by boat to Pittsburgh to be made into coal barges and mine posts. Mr. McCoy was a lawyer who lived near Service, Pa., and had hired help work his farm which was given over to sheep raising.

The eastern part of what is now Midland was then the 274-acre Daniel Kaine farm. Mr. Kaine was also a lawyer and made the farm his country home. He built a good barn, a spring house, and a fine residence, now the home of Robert L. Graham.

The rich Kaine farm was a grazing land for good stock and the fertile fields produced grain and hay. Beautiful spot that the farm was, for some reason, the Kaines ceased to come to their summer home. The land was rented to tenant farmers, and George Steebner, father of Dick, present Midland Borough Engineer, lived there for years keeping a dairy herd and preserving the milk in the spring house before shipping it out by rail.

And so the land was settled. The lands of MeMasters, Bray, Harsha, Rogers, Meinsinger, Neel, McCoy, Potters, and the Kaines joined by the newer farms of Brucker, Baker, Christler and others brought forth more than grain and hay and timber and fruit. They brought forth people-good people who became a community of neighbors, peaceable, law-abiding and industrious. They, in turn, brought forth, in easy stages, our town.

Around 1865, the community decided to do something about their children's schooling problems. The nearest schools at Industry and Smith's Ferry were felt too distant even in those days. So the settlers decided to build their own school on the township road right at the dividing line between Industry Township and Ohio Township. Neel donated an acre of land, and the school wasbuilt by William Cook, whose son Claude still lives near here.

It's natural, in a way, that, from that time until Midland began in 1906, the area would be known as "Neel's Independent School District."

Our people went on living the life of a farm community - planting and harvesting, raising cattle and sheep and dairy herds, lumbering, working.

And so the years rolled on until the spring of 1905 when new values came to the farmlands and new people to bring forth new products, new wealth, and a new way of life.