Day 66. May 5, 1862 Letter.
66
Ephraim’s May 5 entry is posted today, also.
he got Beat bad by An Irishman….
MAY 5 LETTER
(Note: The letters I reproduced for this manuscript appear exactly as they do in the original physical copy as the words move down the page; the line breaks are the same, as in Jacob’s actual handwriting.)
Letter from Ephraim’s brother Jacob. The front is addressed to “EG. Burket Company D 110th Regt P.V. 4 Brigade Shields”
Dixon Lee County Ill. May 5 1862*
Dear Brother I received your letter
on the twentieth ninth of April and glad
to hear from you, I would like to see you soon
or – then write to you it has been four years
and a half since I have seen you
I suppose you see grate ill of the world since
you have gone to war a soldiers Life is a hard
life to live that is my opinion of matters
the wounded has a hard time of it
that I know, I would like to see the
war settled, this war makes hard on
on every thing and high taxes besides that
grain is [illeg.] here, you said Ben Huyett
is along with you from Shearers Creek Ask
him how is his brother William is get
ing, we never hear from him, tell him
to [“his cousin” crossed out] write to his cousin Elizabeth
she would like to hear from him, you
have Samuel Harnish and Samuel Keller
from Pittsburg and several more that I
know is Capt Huyett** John Huyett
we are all well at present hand H
Henrys and John family and folks
Around here are well, I hope these few lines may
find you and the rest of my old comr
ades all well and good spirits, if
you see Bill Jones tell him to write
to me All his girls is well, James
Sharrer is farming George W Patton*** place
news Butter 8 cent [illeg.] Ephriagm,
you sent your likeness to Henry
I seen it I did not know it watever
you have changed your looks from what
you was when I seen you last
you look harty your hair is black
and your wiskers is black you ruged
to, have you to parade and fight to,
Andrew McPherranis our collector
for Dixon Town country he run well
George Fleck**** run for supervisor he got
Beat bad by An Irishman of Dixon
write soon when you have time
give my respects to inquiring friends
soon found from Hartslog Valley I know
John Huyett Have you seen Daniel
Neff yet from Shearers Creek yet I believe
he is a Sehs, this spring has been cold and wet
so wether keeps a person from plowing and sowing
About 18 of April the farmers began to [illeg.] sow getting
some warmer now I have saved some forty five
Acres of wheat I have 1 acre to sow yet
about eighty nine bushels of wheat sowed this
spring I have plowed about thirty eight
acres this spring eleven acres to plow for oats
yet I have thirty acres to plow for corn yet
I have 5 head of horses to work breaking 2 colts
I have written to you when you was at
Harrisburg Camp Did you ever get that
letter, I would like to go east but keeps
a person busy to stay here these times
corn is from ten to twelve cents a bushel this
to bad to talk about there been several
came home wounded and killed and
died to, Do you see friend William Jones
sometimes he worked here last summer
for Henry tell him MPL Beal is well
Nothing more at present I
remain your Affectionate Brother
JH Burket ʌ Ephraigm Burket
ONE: Ephraim received this letter two days after it was written, and presumably mailed, on May 7. That makes the mail faster then than now, which brings up the mystery why Ephraim decided not to warn his family he was coming home in mid-June…. The camp Jacob refers to is Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, built April 1861 & in use through late 1865. This is where the 110th trained & came in from to Virginia. Also, from this letter of Jacob’s I learned Ephraim had black hair. “You have changed your looks” I think shows the physical toll that Ephraim was under showed up on film. Ephraim is already 32, so it’s not like he went to war at 18 & is now 22. Jacob had last seen Ephraim 4 &1/2 years back, so Ephraim would have been 28 already, but maybe there was a noticeable developmental difference on top of the war’s toll. Interesting, too, to learn Daniel Neff was maybe a Secessionist. “Have you seen” him yet reads maybe slightly humorous. I suppose you see grate ill of the world is very compassionate. this to bad to talk about there been several came home wounded and killed and died to is also from the heart. a soldiers Life is a hard life to live that is my opinion of matters is again full of empathy & Jacob is careful to add it’s just his opinion & that he’s not sort of dictating what war is to Ephraim. I would like to see the war settled, this war makes hard on on every thing and high taxes besides that and it is still so early yet in the war. It seems these 2 brothers were very close growing up & have remained that way. Jacob has a lot of farmwork ahead of him this summer.
Note: Daniel Neff: I found this somewhat chilling about the gravestone, which is in Family Group Record #152, compiled by William A. Neff): Elizabeth Betsey Burket (1795-1857) intermarried to Daniel Neff, named their 5th child David. A stone was found in the woods behind the Neff Cemetery in Huntingdon County that read, “David Neff, Died April 28, 1869, 38 years, 6 m, & 8 d.” In fall 2004, the stone was found to place in a row with other family members. There exist unidentified graves here marked by simple field stones. His father Andrew Neff (1787-1833, died at 45 from a horse fall), also intermarried, owned a 179 acre farm in Huntingdon, & died at 62 in 1849 intestate, leaving 8 children. They were Mennonites. There is a Neff Historical Society. The first Neffs on the “B-Line” sailed over from Pfalz, Germany & appeared in the 1687 PA. Mennonite census. Because they originated at Pfalz in this time period they may have been Palatinates, or German Pfalz. However, page 5 of History of the Descendants of Peter Burket, Late of Sinking Valley, Blair County, Penna., Who Died January 20, 1867 Theodore Blair Patton (Published 1897): “Jacob Neff died July 13, 1834; his ancestors came to Pennsylvania from Switzerland in the days of William Penn.” One thing is clear: William Penn advertised what’s now America to get ‘Europeans’ to immigrate here. Neff stories of ship voyages were harrowing. Read ones from various Neff lineages at freepages.rootsweb.com/~neff/genealogy/ships
About Jacob Burket: In Family Record Group 154 by William A. Neff, via 2017 email correspondence with William:
“On a very strange note, Jacob Burket was found in a second location in the 1880 census. He was located in Pittsfield, Berkshire, MA, 56 yrs., born in PA, a U.S. Officer, with children, Lulu, 21 yrs., born in PA, Lizzie, 17 yrs., born in PA and Edward, 13 yrs., born in DC. Also listed with him is J.O. Barcley, also a U.S. Officer. I am assuming that Jacob took a trip, with three of his children, in his line of duty as a superintendent of the paper room department. In his obituary it mentions that he was a superintendent of the government paper mills at Dalton, Massachusetts for several years during his term of office. In supporting this assumption, Pittsfield and Dalton are 4 miles apart in distance. In 1840, at the age of 17, he entered Pennsylvania College, Gettysburg, PA, completing 4 years at that college. In 1844 he entered the Theological Seminary at Springfield, Ohio where he spent two years and passed a creditable examination before the Allegheny Synod in the Fall of 1846 and was licensed by that body to preach the Gospel. He served as a preacher until 1853 when his health failed. The family moved to Gettysburg, PA as assistant Postmaster in the house of Representatives. In 1863 he was appointed to the Commissary Department in Washington, DC and in 1865 he worked for the US Treasury Department. His obit mentions he was Superintendent of Government Paper Mills at Dalton and Pittsfield, Massachusetts.”
TWO: “Capt Huyett” is Ephraim’s hometown friend with who he bunked, & also the 110th Captain of Co. D. Huyett will testify before Edwin Stanton, et al, at the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War June 21, 1862 about Doctor Hays of the 110th, whom Ephraim worked directly under. Hays was brought up on abandonment charges when he deserted at Front Royal a trainload of injured soldiers. fresh off General Shields’ battles (Cross Keys, June 8; Port Republic, June 9) so he could go drink champagne at the Willard Hotel. One number for the total men on the trains I’ve seen is 280. But Hays knew he had 325 men total, which he stated in his June 20 testimony, because he had his steward count when the train came to D.C. There were 4 assistant surgeons besides Hays to care for the wounded men. Despite Hays having repeatedly telegraphed Washington that he was in-bound with hundreds of wounded men, President Lincoln orders Hays dismissed from the service for “shamefully neglecting them after their arrival.” It appears the order lasted two months, as Hays returned to service in his capacity as surgeon in August. See June 16 for the full story and court transcript where Dr. Hays defends his actions that night.
THREE: Patton of the First Pennsylvania Railroad (see April 18 for Ephraim’s background), son of Mary Burket and George W. Patton, was the General Superintendent of Pennsylvania Industrial Reformatory. His brother was William Augustus Patton (making him my first cousin twice removed), Assistant to the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and Vice-President of the New York, Philadelphia & Norfolk Railroad Company. Another brother was Superintendent of the Claridge Coal Company, and President of the Atlantic Coal and Coke Company.
In Ephraim’s diary, at the back is a pocket; besides the maps & letters he kept in the back pocket was one newspaper article, likely cut out of the Suburban & Wayne Times (3 cents at the time). No date can be gleaned but it is a long glowing profile of William Augustus Patton and his association with the PA. Railroad over the long course of 45 years. Paragraphs like, “In the entire Pennsylvania Railroad organization, few officials are more widely known than Mr. Patton. All men in public life or of large business interests, who have reason to call upon the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, come directly in contact with him. The president himself, except to visitors of great moment, is customarily out of view. The room the president occupies, in a corner of the big red structure towering above Broad Street station is one of the holy of holies, and the approach to it is tiptoed with awe.”
It gets worse. Finally, at the cessation of all that is other news right below: “The father of thirty-eight children recently died in a poor house in a Pennsylvania town. Mr. Roosevelt should promptly be cabled about this public ingratitude to the individual parent and gross disrespect to his own pet theory.—Baltimore American.”
Right under that, & thankfully the newspaper ran out of space afterward:
“Professor Shipley, of the British Association for Advancement of Science, declares animal species are disappearing from the globe at a greater rate than ever. Must have been reading of the doings of a great American hunter now in Africa.—New York Herald.”
FOUR: George Fleck (1817-1891) is Ephraim’s half-brother (one of 8 half-siblings; apparently they weren’t too close, from the way he’s worded in the letter, which also comes across as maybe racist, “he got Beat bad by An Irishman”): George’s mother Mary Molly Fleck (1797-1817) died at 20 a week after giving birth to him, her only child. George Fleck’s mother’s father was also named George Fleck (1748-1836). To see this George Fleck’s Conestoga Wagon, go to
https://sinkingvalleyfamilytree.wordpress.com/2017/03/23/george-flecks-conestoga-wagon/
Note: There existed a “Margaret Fleck Fleck,” who was Mary Molly Fleck’s sister.
Colonel: Not sure if he picked the nickname up after the war or where it came from, but Ephraim was not a Colonel. A Colonel commands an entire Regiment. He was the lowest ranking member of the 110th paid officer staff, one of 41 paid Field Officers of the Volunteer PA. 110th. It could be this was a type of convention at the time: someone got home from the war & is forever after called Colonel. Ephraim mustered in at the rank of 2nd Lieutenant on December 19, 1861. Promoted from Hospital Steward July 12, 1862 to 2nd Lieutenant of Company D; commissioned Captain (a Captain commanded two squads directly, and the other 8 squads through his Lieutenant) August 9, 1862; not mustered. Was Ephraim was so important to the men that they made him Captain to get him back to them? What else could it be? He was gone. So what happened between July 5 and July 12, when he got promoted from Hospital Steward to commissioned Captain August 9, not mustered, resigned 12/20/62? Whatever it was, he didn’t choose to write about it. (A full quarter of the Union army deserted by January 1863; a full third of his diary he left blank pages.) Going from a promotion to a commission would take time. This is the time gap between July 12 to August 9. It’s unclear whether he returned before or after the July 12th promotion, or not at all. It’s possible– but not probable– he returned in July but left before the July 12th promotion. Because if he had, I think he would have taken this diary back south & kept it going. It was too important to him, because he never skipped a day writing in it from March 1-July 5.
A note about the early Burgarts/Burkets: Peter Burgart:
Ephraim’s father was also named Peter Burket: 1793-1867. He had 3 siblings.
Peter Burket’s father (Ephraim’s grandfather) 6/25/1766-7/19/1823 was born in York County, PA., & his wife was Elizabeth Harnish Burket (1767-1841). He may have had the original name “Burgart,” & been the one to change the name to Burket.
Still, if he was born in America, then where did his ancestor, the original Burgart/Burket, sail from, & why, & why when they did? Probably Germany due to the German seal in his will. Why do we know nothing about him/them? Family history/genealogy was clearly important to these Burkets, so why the big gap about this particular man?
“Peter Burket Sr. a native of York county, came to Sinking valley about the time of the Revolution, settling on the farm afterwards owned by his grandson, Ephraim.” Sr’s son Jacob Burket died at 91 in Jefferson County.
“Burkets came from the Warriors Mark area.” Note: Warriors Mark is just 16 miles northwest of Huntingdon itself, yet’s in that county, right about in the navel of PA., elevation 1,096, & has a post office. Other than this name Warriors Mark– apparently arrived at because the Iroquois would mark trees on the “Great Indian Warpath” between the villages of Warriors Mark & Spring Mount– where Peter Sr, came from at some point after being born in York, PA., which is 140 miles southeast down I-76– a future 435 mile stretch of road– it’s hard to imagine I’ll ever know anything more re my Burket side’s extemporaneous appearance on the soil of North America. Somehow they’d always seemed imported here as if by osmosis.
The original Burket/Burgart may have come over as a German Palatine. I found Burgarts in a list of arrivals in the port of Philadelphia from 1727-1803 at archive.org: “Pennsylvania German pioneers; a publication of the original lists of arrivals in the port of Philadelphia from 1727 to 1808.” One “Burgart (X) Weeber” in 1739 specifically called a Palatine, “imported in Bellinder London,” then the name “Joshua Pipon” (maybe ship Captain) who “did take and an Oath to the Government,” & one “Burgart (X) Schneider” in 1754, transported on the Ship Neptune from Rotterdam, Capt. Waire. Apparently most of the lists on loose sheets of paper that these ship captains wrote out were lost: Of the 324 ships arriving between 1727 and 1775, we have the captains’ lists of only 138 ships.”
Note: John Whorf, 1930, “Southern Cruiser, Maritime nocturne with ship in rough water.” Oil on canvas, 28&1/4×36&1/8. Just imagine it.
Oh but Jesus H. Christ, what they had to endure to get here…. For a fascinating discussion of how many ships there were thought to be, but then weren’t, how the records were kept, or not, then how they were correctly transcribed by later scholars, or not, who was a historian but not a scholar, or who didn’t know German, & how long—8, 9, 10 to 12 weeks— the voyage took even with favorable winds— 7 weeks—, & how a woman about to give birth were pushed through the porthole and dropped into the sea, & how many packed like herrings with little food & water died of which disease like dysentery, scurvy, typhoid, smallpox, all of that much aggravated by frequent storms through which ships and passengers had to pass. The misery reaches climax when a gale rages for two or three nights and days, so that every one believes that the ship will go to the bottom with all human beings on board. In such a visitation the people cry and pray most piteously. When in such a gale the sea rages and surges, so that the waves rise often like mountains one above the other, and often tumble over the ship; when the ship is constantly tossed from side to side by the storm and waves, so that no one can either walk, or sit, or lie, and the closely packed people in the berths are thereby tumbled over each other, both the sick and the well– it will be readily understood that many of these people, none of whom had been prepared for hardships, suffer so terribly from them that they do not survive. When at last the Delaware River was reached and the City of Brotherly Love hove in sight, where all their miseries were to end, another delay occurred. A health officer visited the ship….
After all that, the sick got shunned to no less than one mile out from Philly, if they weren’t bought straight off these ships as the newspapers told how many of the new arrivals were to be sold as the ship becomes the market-place with survivors now become indentured servants bargained with for a certain number of years and days trip if anyone made it that long anyway, then, if they were in any condition to speak, what the oaths they swore were, or weren’t, to which Great Britain King, & what they had to say then pay in Pounds or Louis D’or, & then the merchants would pay their new property’s passage, receive from the government authorities a written document which makes the newcomers their property for a definite period &c, &c, &c, and here some of us are, hundreds of years later writing of them weaving off the ships as if drunk, waiting with all hope for their new lives to begin.
However, on page 5 re the Neffs in History of the Descendants of Peter Burket, Late of Sinking Valley, Blair County, Penna., Who Died January 20, 1867 Theodore Blair Patton (Published 1897): “Jacob Neff died July 13, 1834; his ancestors came to Pennsylvania from Switzerland in the days of William Penn.” One thing is clear: William Penn advertised what’s now ‘America’ to get ‘Europeans’ to immigrate here. For more about Penn’s efforts, & the Pennsylvania German ‘pioneers,’ see both olivetreegenealogy.com/palatines/palatine-history and archive.org/stream/pennsylvaniagerm42stra/
A paragraph on page 4 in History of the Descendants tells that Ephraim knew not the slightest of his heritage; he was the son of the son of a man no one could quite get a handle on who sailed from where in Europe to America or why no one knows, nor did they know the why for the name change so similar to the original, but as W.J. Cash said in March 2 (so well-put I simply must repeat it): “Men of position and power, men who are adjusted to their environment, men who find life bearable in their accustomed place — such men do not embark on frail ships for a dismal frontier where savages prowl and slay, and living is a grim and laborious ordeal. The laborer, faced with starvation; the debtor, anxious to get out of jail; the apprentice, reckless, eager for a fling at adventure, and even more eager to escape his master; the peasant, weary of the exactions of milord; the small landowner and shopkeeper, faced with bankruptcy and hopeful of a fortune in tobacco; the neurotic, haunted by failure and despair; and once in a blue moon some wealthy bourgeois, smarting under the snubs of a haughty aristocracy and fancying himself in the role of a princeling in the wilderness — all these will go. But your fat and moneyed squire, your gentleman of rank and connection, your Cavalier who is welcome in the drawing-rooms of London — almost never.”
Peter Burket Sr., (father of Peter Burket, Jr., Ephraim’s father), had a daughter Elizabeth Betsy Burket, who intermarried a Daniel Neff. I’m unclear if the marriage was in any way affected due to a section in Sr.’s will that read that these daughters would receive property: “an equal proportion of like property as my other Daughters received after their intermarriage with their husbands or otherwise to pay her so much money as will make her equal to what my others got.” Sounds like they would have been beneficiaries of the same amount if they hadn’t wed. Considering how important women were, it’s discouraging to read in so many records they’re left unnamed, blank, right next to several male siblings whose names were considered important enough to preserve. Male, afterall. Instead, girls & women got the oft-repeated moniker “a daughter,” or “mother unknown,” or “relict.” Just fascinating how from the start whoever put that male name down ignored the female. Took maybe 4 seconds to get those letters lined up in that ink but couldn’t take another 2 for her first name even.
Back to Peter Sr.: some of his personality can be gleaned, as he left a lengthy will dated 2/4/1823 starting with a number of ideas about his mortality, & about God, then who his cash should go to, who got the hogs, the firewood, & which tract of land, plus who was ordered to “sink the well deeper,” & to wife Elizabeth Harnish Burket he bestowed “her choice of one of my horse creatures,” oddly controlling both wife & horse from the dead with “and in case she chooses to dispose of the creature at any time I allow her to do so and apply the price there of to her own use and for her to have her chooice of two of my Milk Cows and three of my beds and bed clothes belonging to the same & three bedsteads and one bureau two tables & one stand Six of the best of chairs the Stove and pipe that stands in the front room and as many of the kitchen and (???) furnature as the said Elizabeth Burket chooses to keep and one large copper kettle one small iron kettle two small washing tubs one spinning wheel one woman sadle and three sheep to be kept by Peter Burket Jr.”
Ephraim’s father Peter Jr. is ordered to “cut and haul her a sufficiency of firewood fit for the fire,” & Sr. insisted that “she is to have a sufficiency of bread meal for her for one year after my Decease. Of my crop of grain and of meal from my meal on hand and as much of stock of hogs as will do her for said term.” I guess 366 days later she was shit out of luck.
Some sons got $200, others $320, or $500. A codicil is added on the same date the will was drawn up about leaving the land to his youngest son David Burket, & that Sr.’s wife was allowed “the full right of one room below and one room up stairs and part use of kitchen and cellar if she chooses to go there when the house is finished to lie in or my son David Burkets house on his tract of land.” The will is revised, more words, this time listing who was present to witness the change that took place days back, a list which went on longer than the change, that they were all in the presence of each other & the Testator, & all sworn to be “of sound and disposing mind.”
Then on 7/7, Sr. comes back, this time with a codicil to “disanull” Henry Fleck, his wife’s brother &, well, his own relative by blood too, from being one of the Executors. David is to– within one year of turning 21– pay Executors $500 per year, then $150 on top of that, until he’s paid a total of $3500 to Executors, after which he’d have bought his allocated tract of land. Then it’s his forevermore to pass on to his heirs. The seals each time are in German.
Then on 7/17, Jacob Burket takes Henry’s place as an Executor. But by the 28th, Sr’s two Executors, Jacob Burket & Jacob Islett, had both quit their roles.
Peter Sr. dies July 19.
7/28, another meeting, more words about how the two Jacobs shant “do any action whatsoever by virtue of the said Executorship,” etcetera.
At last, on 7/29/1823, Elizabeth Burket apparently signs her “X” to “Release all my right and title to the administration of the said Estate of Peter Burket Jr” “for divers good causes and considerations.” Henry Fleck gets the estate, along with a “Peter Burket Jun,” which I assume meant Junior.
But wait: August 1st rolls in & pretty much the whole town gathers now for names & swears down this page– thereuntos & renounced & divers good causes & did see and hear and sign, seal & publish in the presence of each other & did subscribe their names there to as witnesses in the presence of the Testator and at his Instance and Request and in the presence of each other & the solemn oath the said foregoing Instrument of writing as and for his Last Will and Testament– all now right about to lose their collective mind, the people in the presence of each other probably shouting, swearing, passing around flasks of Bourbon while folding codicils into sharp paper airplanes & winging them at the presence of each other until all gathered purport, unto eternity, really at last this time, forevermore, that truly “Peter Burket Sr. was of sound and disposing mind and memory to the best of their Judgment and Belief Sworn.”
Not sure what happened there, either.
Pictures: I remember my grandfather Warren Burket (father’s father, so Ephraim’s grandson), a very stolid elderly man, hunched over his dinner at the table in the high rise (just 10 stories; I think they were on the 9th, which looked out over a baseball diamond) Chetwynd Apartment building, Bryn Mawr, PA., sometime in the early 1970s, saying the original family name had been Burgart. This of course was earth shattering. I remember asking him about it but he wouldn’t elaborate. He simply repeated what he said. Possibly it was changed because people kept pronouncing it “Burket” anyway. Random: this was where a cat named “Smokey” lived, & stayed outside in the hall, & my brother & I would always look for him. One night, bored, playing in the hall, my brother & I dared each other to open the fire escape door that led to the stairs, then run a half flight down. Him, being the brave one, did.
Pic 1: 10/24/70 Ephraim’s grandson Warren’s birthday at Chetwynd. His place at the table where he told us the family name had been changed. 2) 4/2/72 his wife Ruth’s birthday. 3) 4/10/66, Easter. 4) 12/31/1969, Warren (my grandfather) at Chetwynd. 5) My father & I at Chetwynd, maybe 1972, xmas. 6) 12/72, Warren. 7) Warren’s son John Burket, my father, summer 1979. 8) Me, 4/17/1973; my grandmother wrote on the back of the picture that it was me “in her great-great-grandmother Efnor’s blouse” but this may make no sense. My 2x grandmother was Ester (spelled “Esther” variously) Maggie Henry Efnor (1837-1903, left an orphan at age 7 in 1844 when her parents died just two weeks apart in Fulton County, Ill.– I think Cuba– then taken in by the “Keenan” family, who had adopted other children as well). She likely meant her own mother’s (1876-1962) blouse, Ella May? Anyway, it made my grandmother happy I fit it. 9) Typical dinner scene at the Chetwynd. Lots of black olives in a dish each time is what I remember. 10) My father John in 1975, fishing off Dewey Beach, Delaware. You can see the height he inherited from Ephraim, which skipped his father Warren’s generation. 11) Ruth Burket, Warren’s wife, my grandmother, who hated her picture taken, Halloween 1963, holding me (not sure what I went as that year) next to Bugs brother. 12) Brother, who shall remain nameless because he doesn’t know of this site & I don’t want to get sued for posting a pic of him, & I in Valley Forge Park, PA., 1978. 13) My parents, probably my father’s 3/72 birthday. He has just 8 years left before he kills himself in the long slide down the abyss that is known as alcoholism. 14) The infamous Chetwynd. 15) Me, 10/31/1963, & yes, I do still have that bear.
Above: 1) Ephraim’s grandson Warren (my father’s father) opening presents on his birthday in 1972. He was 5 when his mother died, & 26 when his father died. His mother had him at 33, eleven years after she was married. 2) Warren & Ruth Burket, & me, unknown occasion & date, maybe 1971. 3) My father, Ephraim’s great grandson, in 1978 at the Devon Horse Show in Devon, PA. 4) Final picture of Warren & Ruth. Something told me to snap this picture as they walked in our house. As a child all I knew is they were getting really old. The film was developed in October, 1973. I believe he died in October, 1973, because I have pictures of various of us in Ruth’s old Denver house after he died dated October. I will try to find it. No one remembers. Right: Warren, young:
5) Ruth at our house Christmas, late 60s, early 70s. 6) Me as a politically incorrect “Indian Maiden” August 1, 1969. 7) Christmas again, same date as #5 which I include to show the contrast between sides of my family, east coast formality vs. western informality, or something like that. 6) Ruth at the Chetwynd; I caught her picture unexpectedly. 7) Various family crests. Ruth enjoyed ancestry & displayed things like this prominently at the Chetwynd.
A paragraph in History of the Descendants of Peter Burket, Late of Sinking Valley, Blair County, Penna., Who Died January 20, 1867 Theodore Blair Patton (Published 1897) tells that Ephraim knew not the slightest of his heritage; he was the son of the son of a man no one could quite get a handle on who sailed from where in Europe to America or why no one knows, nor did they know the why for the name change so similar to the original, but as W.J. Cash said in March 2 (so well-put I simply must repeat it): “Men of position and power, men who are adjusted to their environment, men who find life bearable in their accustomed place — such men do not embark on frail ships for a dismal frontier where savages prowl and slay, and living is a grim and laborious ordeal. The laborer, faced with starvation; the debtor, anxious to get out of jail; the apprentice, reckless, eager for a fling at adventure, and even more eager to escape his master; the peasant, weary of the exactions of milord; the small landowner and shopkeeper, faced with bankruptcy and hopeful of a fortune in tobacco; the neurotic, haunted by failure and despair; and once in a blue moon some wealthy bourgeois, smarting under the snubs of a haughty aristocracy and fancying himself in the role of a princeling in the wilderness — all these will go. But your fat and moneyed squire, your gentleman of rank and connection, your Cavalier who is welcome in the drawing-rooms of London — almost never.”
Note: (For more on Ephraim’s family history, see April 18 entry, May 20, May 27 letters, & June 4th letter) In The History of the Descendants is a picture titled “The Burket Homestead, showing “Reunion of Burket and Patton Families, July, 1895.” Down the pages go the generations, until I arrive at my great-grandfather Lee (he is Ephraim’s toddler during the war, & Ephraim writes home, Tell Lee to be a good boy and his papa thinks of him very often, have you got him a straw hat to run around in), born 1859, “connected with the office of the General Baggage Agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company at Philadelphia, and is likewise interested in the coal and grain business at Wayne, Pennsylvania, at which place he resides.” His brother is Superintendent of the Atlantic Coal Company. The remainder of the Burket-Patton book, as stated above, is filled with many blank pages but then Lee, who was his son, who was my grandfather Warren’s father, dropped the ball & never filled in more history. Sadly, no one ever came back after them to fill in the book with Burket family lore through the following generations… I haven’t researched when the farm got sold off then left by the family, not did I even know there was a farm until later in life. I think Lee may have wanted to leave the rural for something he thought was better, that represented progress. If that was his motivation, then in that, he succeeded. But boy would I kill to live on that farm now.
Edit 8/16/24: Mapping Pennsylvania Originally: https://www.mapsofpa.com/article3.htm
Note last: I have a piece of rail line from what Ephraim’s grandson (my grandfather Warren Burket) said was part of the original First Pennsylvania Railroad Mr. Patton gave as a gift to either his father or grandfather. I think I remember he said it was from a section of railroad near their Huntingdon farm. It weighs 27 pounds, & measures 9in. length, 6in. width, 6in. height. Very magnetic, so maybe made of iron with a steel mix. I have carried it with me moving around states of the Union for almost half a century. Awaiting word back from the collections manager at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania for information about this piece. Years later update: They have no idea what it is, nor what its historical significance may be. They also don’t want it because they have too much rail already… Oh well. However, they did guess it may be around 1893 because it somewhat resembles pieces they have in their collection, & said steel rails were more common than iron rails by the end of the 19th century. She couldn’t really tell, even with a measuring stick in the pictures, because rail standards changed so much over time. This, too, is how history dissolves, goes missing into sheer nothingness. Records aren’t written, even a file card I could have taped to this thing’s underside would have had a shot at keeping its identity intact. Or a date painted on it, or something in permanent ink. Another heirloom given me because my brother didn’t want it. I will try to track down a Patton at some point & give it back to that side if they want it. The First PA. railroad was running by 1846. Wikipedia, for what it’s worth, says “By 1882, the Pennsylvania Railroad (by traffic and revenue) had become the largest railroad, the largest transportation enterprise, and the largest corporation in the world. Its budget was second only to the U.S. government. The corporation still holds the record for the longest continuous dividends to shareholders for more than 100 years.”
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