Ann Jean Worstell Cloonan

hp psc

Los Osos, California

Copydate 2004

Los Osos, California, U.S.A.

Dedicated to Richard Allen Worstell, (1900 - 1968)

whose admiration for his father was unwavering.

PREFACE

Hershel Parker, author of Herman Melville: A Biography, wrote, “Very few people take on jobs that take years of preparation, hunting and gathering, before beginning the years of selecting, mincing, chopping, broiling, grilling and baking.” The reviewer of the book said, “The volume is as gigantic leaf drifts of petty facts.”

I’m no Hershel Parker, and Gaylord Worstell was no Herman Melville, but the accumulation of personal family letters and mementos, of documents and historical records, transcriptions of interviews, all stored in the closets of our home of nearly 45 years, plus the memories in the closet of my mind, were indeed “gigantic leaf drifts,” as worthless as the raked detritus awaiting the match or the dumpster. Could any value accrue to such an accumulation, thus saving it from the match, unless someone tied it all together, and more importantly, had a reason for doing so?

Mr. Parker said he copied articles from crumbling newspaper archives, and photocopied letters and entered them into a database. This brings to mind my attempts at building a database. I guess that has something to do with computers. My early efforts were simply to preserve the information contained on the crumbling newspapers and faded letters. Then the search for relatives, whose names had never been matched to faces, resulted in telephone conversations, meetings, and small reunions. From these came the family stories to be added to the database. Eventually the search for ancestors, and the life history of my grandfather, Dr. Gaylord Worstell, led to the homestead papers and a story with unusual dimensions.

In the beginning, the story seemed to create itself in outline form, but it would be years before the first line was written. There would be two major computer crashes, the first of which would halt all thought of trying to put anything together. Much of the material would be recovered through the efforts of my personal computer guru, my husband Clifford Cloonan, who retired in 1991 from his professorship at California Polytechnic. He spent morning until late at night, every day including Saturday and Sunday, for three months on the recovery. By this time I was determined that I would not attempt the effort until we acquired a computer and printer of a better quality than a dot matrix so as to preserve the readability of the material. Acquisition necessitated the material be converted from one word processing language to another, and an intermediate computer was necessary for the task. Some material such as family group records were indeed converted before the second computer crash occurred that ended the conversion. It was January 2001 when I determined to take the first step of the thousand-mile journey to try to tie the pile of leaves with a ball of twine. I would have to copy everything I needed from hard copies. So much for a computer database.

Let Mr. Parker tell you what it’s like.“...I transcribed — It was like listening to human voices,” he said. And it is. I hear them, I root for them, and I cry with them. “You don’t dine out much. You don’t socialize,” he wrote. I got desperate and dropped some of my activities. And then — another computer crash. It was near Christmas and time to reevaluate. The work seemed out of my hands. Clifford got me back on the computer in a couple of months. “You make a choice. Life or the work, or life in the work. If you have any sort of mission, any desire to set this crooked world straight on anything, any desire to find out what really went on in 1840 or 1844 or 1867, then you have your life cut out for you,” wrote Mr. Parker.

I’m not a writer. What I have written will not be read by more than a handful of people — my family, perhaps. So I made a choice to take up my regular activities and just do what I could with my ball of twine, that’s all.

I couldn’t do any of this without a computer and I couldn’t work on the computer without my husband. He’s had to listen to my words of frustration and constant mutterings. In the course of the work over the years, I have been rewarded with information and stories from relatives like Avis Kaub, now deceased, Betty Briney, Phyllis Myers, Jane Morgan, Jane Hofstetter, Tom Robinson, Richard Rattray, Bernice Carnes, Kevin Carnes, Joan Carter, Shawn Gussett, and historian Keith Edwards of Big Sandy, none of whom I met before the search began.

Considerable material is condensed from Pittis Genealogy by Margaret Birney Pittis. Occasionally I have abbreviated the names to PG and MBP. To avoid confusion in some cases, the children are numbered. A couple may have five children, numbered, I, II, III, IV, V. Their children would be numbered, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., and their children would be numbered, i, ii, iii, etc. Or maybe I skip I, II, III, altogether. Much of the material in the chapter on the Sewells, Bakers, and Augustines is derived from Thomas R. Baker’s book, The Baker Family: Seven Generations in Iowa, 1842 – 1960.

Since so much of this is leaf drifts of petty facts, I have tried to make it possible to skip material not of interest to the reader. At the same time I have tried to place the people on the stage of history. I have done some of this through the use of endnotes placed at the end of chapters to be read in context with the regular material or skipped as the reader desires. Most of the historical information was taken from the World Book encyclopedia 1969 edition, and from the Eleventh Edition (1910 – 1911) of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Scattered throughout the book is considerable genealogical material. Unfortunately it will take mining to come up with the gems. Since part of the incentive to write the book was to make a story that my grandchildren or great-grandchildren might read, the material in the later chapters becomes more personal in a compilation of fond memories.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Thomas Pittis Worstell Family ii

Thomas Pittis Worstell 6

Bucks County Map 22

Map of New Hope 23

Isle of Wight 33

Franklin Township Spotting Map 60

Hiram Worstell 63

Franklin Township Map 64

James Worstell 66

Tappan, Ohio 73

Henry P. Worstell and Sons 73

Tuscarawas and Harrison Counties 75

Addison Noble Worstell 82

Alpheus Worstell 86

Gaylord and Elsie Worstell 87

Gaylord Theodore Worstell 94

Dr. Gaylord Worstell 95

Richard Allen Worstell 97

Dr. and Mrs. Gaylord Worstell and Family 103

Homestead Spotting Map 109

Homestead Locations 110

Brush Automobile 119

Clara Worstell 137

Minnie Hall’s Home 143

Big Sandy Hospital 154

Elsie Dale 168

Ed and Mae Worstell, Ray and Mary Carnes, Clarence and Laura Ludington 183

Frank P. Worstell 189

Richard Allen Worstell 191

Emerson Worstell 193

Willis Baker 196

Baker Family 199, 200

Michael and Hannah Houck Augustine 202

Martin Augustine Family 203

Albert Tobias Augustine Family 204

Forsaken 208

Howard Augustine W.W.I 209

Howard, Albert, and Lois Augustine and Ann Jean 209

Richard Allen Worstell 215

Wilda Ann Augustine 217

Ann Jean Worstell 219

Augustines and Worstells 230

Ben Worstell 233

Richard and Ann Jean in Noxon, Montana 245

Richard at University of Iowa 251

Augustine Home 252

Ann Jean Worstell at Noxon 254

Wilda and Ann Jean near Noxon 255

Worstell Big Sandy Home 257

Three Generations 258

Richard Worstell with x-ray machine 265

Cameron Worstell in uniform 267

Richard and Dr. Gaylord Worstell 271

Jane Morgan 272

315 Second Avenue North 274

Cousins: A.J. Cloonan, Jane Harnden, Jane Robinson Hofstetter, Cameron Worstell 279

Reunion in New Philadelphia, Ohio 279

Tom and Aleida Robinson and children 280

Mr. and Mrs. R.A. Worstell 284

921 Fourth Avenue North 284

Cloonan Wedding 289

Worstell Wedding 291

Wilda, and Cameron with Pete 292

1421 Sunnyside Avenue 292

Cloonan Family 294

Cameron Worstell Family 295