The Andrew Everharts had a daughter, Emma Everhart, who went to Portland to go to school; while there she met her Oregon relatives. When young Emma returned to Iowa in 1890, she married a dentist, Dr. Robinson. They were given the very Victorian wedding gift of a canary in a cage. Emma carried the canary on their honeymoon. Pictures survive of early homesteaders on the western prairies standing in front of their homestead shack with a bird in a birdcage hanging from the roof. For some homesteaders, there would be many times when the bird’s song would be the only sound, besides the wind, for hours a day, days at a time.

The third child of Sarah and James Abraham was William, who married Maria Arnold on Oct.7, 1815, in Deersville, Ohio. Both had been born on the Isle of Wight. They emigrated with their families in 1821 on the same brig, Nepos. William was six, Maria was four. The two families were not acquainted prior to the voyage. The Pittis Genealogy says, “As a young man William worked on river boats and traveled down the Ohio River, through the wilds of Mississippi and Arkansas, and as far north as Wisconsin…. He told [his children and grandchildren] about the steamboats being anchored while wood was cut and stacked on deck as fuel for the boilers, and how armed guards had to protect the woodchoppers from the numerous panthers.” After William and Maria were married, they migrated to Indiana where other Arnolds lived. Earlier, Worstells moved to Indiana as well. It will be remembered that Smith Price Worstell, younger brother of Hiram Worstell, appears on the 1840 census in Switzerland County, southeastern Indiana. The Abrahams first landed near Indianapolis then, because of the presence of malaria, moved on to Morgan County. William became a very successful farmer. People interested in methods of draining land for farming, such as tiling, will be interested in the following excerpt: “William drained the lowlands by ditches into which he put oak rails, covered them with oak shingles, then filled in the dirt.” Many parts of Iowa are also tiled, most with short lengths of terra cotta pipe of varying diameter. Eventually the Abrahams and their children owned over 5,000 acres. This area had many Southern sympathizers. William　was a Union man and his home became an armed citadel as tension grew. William and Maria Abraham had six children. At the time of their retirement from farming, they gave each of their children 80 acres of land.

William and Maria Abraham had a daughter, Julia, who married Dr. William Province of Irish descent on Nov. 12, 1868. Dr. Province had received his M.D. from Miami Medical College, Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1867. Prior to that, he served in the Civil War and saw action in several well-known battles. The Civil War started with a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861. Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865. From the Pittis Genealogy is the following material which was taken from The Johnson County [Indiana] History: “William enlisted in Co. K, 6th Regt. Kentucky Union Volunteer Infantry and served in the Civil War for over three years. He was in the battles of Shiloh, Stone River, Chickamauga, Murfreesboro, and many other hotly contested engagements and skirmishes. At Chickamauga he received a severe wound in the left arm.” During his life as a doctor, William Province served his patients first by horse, then by horse and buggy, finally by automobile. They sold Julia’s inherited land and eventually owned 240 acres near Providence, Indiana, where he had his practice and became a very successful farmer. They had three children, two sons who were very successful physicians and farmers, and a daughter who married a physician. One son had a son who became a doctor, and two of his three girls married doctors.

Following William in Sarah and James Abraham’s family was Edward, who married and went first to Indiana where William lived and then to Oregon where his brother James lived. The fifth and last of the Abrahams was Emma; no further information about her is given.

Robert and Jane Arnold Pittis

Thomas and Mary Clarke Pittis’ fourth child was Robert (I), the third of their children to emigrate to America. He was born in 1778 and in 1815 he married Jane Arnold, whose sister, Elizabeth, he had first asked to marry. Robert (I) was a yeoman in Blackwater, I.W. Recorded on the flyleaf of his Bible was “Emigrated to the United States in the autumn of 1831.” He and Jane and their four children went to eastern Pennsylvania where they visited her elder sister, Mary Arnold Hearn, who had emigrated ten years earlier.

Robert (I) Pittis and Jane Arnold bought a farm in Nottingham Township south of Deersville in 1831. It was in the possession of his descendants when, like many farms in this region of Ohio, it was flooded because of the Clendenning Reservoir of the Muskingum Conservancy project in the early 1940’s. During the Great Depression, government funds were made available for various projects to help industrial towns and the unemployed. Work was begun on the Ohio’s Muskingum Valley flood-control project in 1934. The work and dams completed by the time of the winter floods of 1937 proved their capability and importance. The project was completed in 1938. The community of Tappan was destroyed and the resulting lake is now a beautiful recreational area. Robert Pittis and his son Robert (II) were merchants and druggists in the store that adjoined their brick residence. This building also housed the post office, which was run by Robert (II). He was called “Postmaster Pittis” to distinguish him from his cousin Robert who was a justice of the peace and known as “Squire Pittis.”

In the hope it will make it easier for the reader to keep track of the children in the various families the author has numbered them with Arabic numerals.

Robert (II) and Elizabeth’s eldest son, William (1), enlisted and served as private secretary to a medical director during the Civil War and became Chief of Division, Surgeon-General’s Office, and was employed in the War Department until he retired. Both he and his wife are buried in Arlington National Cemetery; they had one daughter. Robert’s second child, Anne (2) married Peter Mottice Wilson, who also served in the Civil War. They made their residence in Canton and all of their eight children settled in Ohio, several in Canton. The Pittis’ third child (3) died at nine months. Robert (II) and Elizabeth’s son Edward (4) was a pen artist and rapid calculator. He was a blackboard illustrator in the Methodist Church Sunday School. Blackboard illustrating was a popular medium for evangelists when they spoke to young people and others. They used colored chalks and as they spoke they created beautiful religious scenes. Edward was an entrepreneur before being appointed examiner and adjuster of pension claims for the Bureau of Pensions, Washington DC, in 1882, where he served for forty years. Gaylord Worstell grew up near Deersville, Ohio, where the Pittises lived, and would eventually go to work for the Bureau of Pensions in 1894. Edward’s wife, Osee Anne Wilson, “had a gray parrot which she broke from the use of profanity and taught to give college and class yells, train calls and words of endearment to its mistress.” Their son Edward Arlington Pittis was a statistician for the Pa. R.R., Midvale Steel Co., and later chief statistician of Ordnance, War Department in Washington D.C. Of the remaining three (5, 6, 7) one never married, one married and had two children, but no grandchildren; Jane (6) married Marshall Weaver. Jane and Marshall had five children. One became an engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, one drowned at age nine. The family moved to Denver for the health of their daughter who died in her twenties; Denver became the Weaver home.

Jane Pittis, the second child of Robert Senior and Jane Arnold Pittis, was born on the Isle of Wight on 18 May 1819. She was a true Victorian, sharing the same birthday as Queen Victoria and died the same year as the Queen. She was a writer, active member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and devoutly religious, anti-slavery, protemperance, and charitable. Jane married John Walter Scott, from Yorkshire, England, on Aug. 20, 1839. John’s father was James Scott. In 1816, James and his three children, including John Walter, emigrated to Toronto, Canada, then to New York. In 1819, the four of them walked from New York City to Cadiz, Ohio, the father carrying his little daughter all the way. James was the first watch and clock maker in Harrison County. When he died, John, his son, continued his father’s business. He was memorable as a clock and watch maker, was an inventor, practiced dentistry, and made musical instruments, including the melophean (an instrument that sat on legs like a piano, with bellows like an accordion, operated by the feet like a pump organ). The will of Robert Pittis Senior left “To my daughter Jane Scott all my silver plate together with my china and glass.” John and Jane Scott had six children who survived to adulthood; three others died young.

The eldest child of Jane Pittis and John Scott, Julia (1), married George Washington Woodborne, DDS. His practice was in Uhrichsville where he was city treasurer. He was twice wounded in the Civil War. Their one son, Edwin Scott Woodborne, graduated as an electrical engineer. Although electrical engineering was not considered important until about 1900, it could be considered to have started in 1831 when the Englishman Michael Faraday discovered that an electric current could be generated in a wire merely by moving it across a magnetic field, a phenomenon also discovered the same year by American Joseph Henry. Although an electric locomotive was built and run in England in 1835, it was too expensive for general use until the electric generator was invented. The first locomotives to get power from a generator used a third rail and were in operation by 1880. Electric motors were in use in locomotives and for other operations by 1885. The first steam electric power plant for electric transmission was built by Thomas A. Edison in New York City in 1882 and supplied electricity to 59 buildings. Edwin Woodborne was married in 1903. He became the superintendent of a canning factory in Wisconsin. His uncle, Julia’s brother, Robert Scott, was an inventor of canning machines. Edwin and his wife had two daughters.

Jane and John Scott’s eldest son, Cyrus (2) was a captain in the Kansas Cavalry, a government Indian scout, postmaster, stock dealer, editor, and real estate dealer. The family residence was Arkansas City, Kansas, where they had moved in 1870. Cyrus and his wife had three children; one daughter was a teacher and poet who married a professor of mechanical engineering.

George Pittis, the third child of Robert and Jane Arnold Pittis, was born June 11, 1816. He married his first cousin Sarah Arnold from I.W. George was ten years old when his family emigrated. He was sent to live with his Arnold uncles in New York City where he went to school. In Deersville he went into the merchandise and grocery business. He and Sarah had nine children.

The eldest daughter, Charlotte (1), of George and Sarah Pittis, married William Wilson Branson on Aug. 31, 1876. Mr. Branson enlisted in the Iowa volunteers in 1861 and fought in the battle of Wilson Creek not far from Branson (no relation), Missouri, the now well-known home of country music. Reenactments take place regularly at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield. After Mr. Branson was honorably discharged, he re-enlisted in the Ohio volunteers and was with Gen. Sherman in his ‘march to the sea.’ It was after Union General Sherman broke rail connections to Atlanta, and sent Gen. Schofield to engage Confederate General Hood’s army at Nashville and destroy it, that Sherman began his march to Savannah, Georgia, on November 15, 1864.

George’s second daughter, Louisa (2), married Samuel Alexander Moore in August 1866. Samuel Moore enlisted in the West [or western] Virginia infantry and served four years and eight months in the Civil War. He fought in five major battles including New Market, where he was taken prisoner. He spent time in the Danville and Libby (Richmond, Virginia) prisons. Although he was never wounded he was near death in a hospital at Cumberland, Maryland from drinking spring-water that supposedly had been poisoned by the rebels. He bought the farm three miles south of Deersville that had been the James and Sarah Pittis Abraham farm. Louisa and Samuel Moore had seven children.

James Johnson Moore (1) went to Indiana in 1886 to the home of William and Maria Arnold Abraham, his mother’s aunt and uncle, to meet and marry Flora Ann Plomer before returning to Cadiz, Ohio, in 1894. He engaged in the sawmill and lumber business there and in Homer, Louisiana, where he engaged in similar work. He and his family lived in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, probably following the oil boom, as did some of his children. One son, Herbert, was a test pilot in the U.S. Air Force, WWI. In 1907, four years after the Wright brothers flew the first airplane, an Aeronautical Division with one officer and two enlisted men was set up in the office of the Chief Signal Officer of the Army. In 1908 the first military plane was ordered. By 1912 the Division had 12 airplanes and 12 flying officers, including Lt. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, later the first five-star general in the Air Force. When WWI broke out, the Air Force had 55 out-of-date planes. World War I started in Europe in June 1914. Before the United States entered the war in 1917, some Americans had volunteered to serve in the French army as pilots. They formed an organization called the Lafayette Escadrille. Although the U.S. declared itself neutral even after the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, she strengthened her military readiness. When Germany tried to enlist Mexico as an ally, the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. The war ended with Germany signing the armistice on November 11, 1918.

The families of the remaining children of Louisa and Samuel Moore all remained in Ohio except for Bertha, who married William Barlow. The Barlows moved to Virginia, where all of their grandchildren were born.

John Arnold Pittis (3), third child and eldest son of George and Sarah Arnold Pittis, married Annie Eliza Moore, sister of Samuel Moore just discussed. John served in the Civil War and saw several battles and skirmishes. The John Pittises owned the family farm where they spent their life. This farm was originally owned by his grandparents, Robert and Jane Arnold Pittis, and later destroyed by the conservancy dam. They had five children, all born on the farm, all settled in Ohio.

Susan Elizabeth Pittis (9), born March 31, 1862 was the last of the children of George and Sarah Arnold Pittis. She is the one who married her cousin, Thomas Arnold Scott, also the ninth born in his family, in which three earlier born infants died. Thomas (6), son of Jane and John Scott, is the millionaire who had a citrus grove in Altadena. Of the remaining five children of George and Sarah Pittis, two never married, one had no children; each of the other two did have children.

George Pittis, just discussed, was the third child of the four children born to Robert and Jane Arnold Pittis, the third Pittis family to come to the United States. Their last remaining and fourth child, Mary Elizabeth, was born in 1824 and died in 1832, at age eight, shortly after coming to Deersville.

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