Bios: BAZZELLEEL PITZER : Lawrence County, Pennsylvania

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  Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Lawrence Co transcribers.
  Coordinated by Ed McClelland

  Copyright 2004.  All rights reserved.
  http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
 
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  Biographical Sketches of Leading Citizens
  Lawrence County Pennsylvania
  Biographical Publishing Company, Buffalo, N.Y., 1897
  
  An html version with search engine may be found at 
  
  http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/lawrence/1897/
  
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    BAZZELLEEL PITZER,
    
   [p. 289] a wealthy and representative farmer of Taylor township, engaged in
  carrying on his chosen occupation at East Moravia, was born at Lawrence
  Junction, July 31, 1826. His parents were Michael and Elizabeth (Cameron)
  Pitzer; the latter was born in Pittsburg, a daughter of Allan and Elizabeth
  (Corman) Cameron; Allan Cameron was a native of Scotland, but immigrated to
  the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War, and when injustice and
  oppression culminated in war, he espoused the cause of the patriots and
  fought nobly throughout the struggle. Our subject's father was a native of
  Virginia, where he was born in 1802; his death took place in Dickinson
  County, Tenn., in 1881. He was very handy and expert with all manner of
  tools, and was the master of three different trades-coopering, shoemaking,
  and carpentering. He was frugal and industrious in his habits, and
  accumulated considerable property; with the increase in his fortune, he
  conceived the idea of making his home in a new country where land was
  plentier than where he had resided, and where be could gather all his
  children and their families about him. So in 1868, he removed to Dickinson
  County, Tenn., where he purchased 530 acres of land near Charlotte; many of
  his children went with him, but some of them, among whom was our subject,
  returned to Pennsylvania after his death. Michael Pitzer was a son of Michael
  Pitzer, Sr., a native of Germany, who followed farming in the State of
  Virginia after coming to America, and died about 1835 or 1840, aged
  eighty-two years.
    
    The subject of this biography was reared in Lawrence County, and was a
  pupil in the subscription schools until the age of sixteen, when be began
  boating on the canal as tow-boy, and followed this life on the canal for five
  years. He then began farming, and also ran a threshing machine for a period of
  twenty-one years. His first landed possession was a ten-acre tract on the old
  Pittsburg road near Pumpkinton, where he resided ten years, and then moved to
  a sixty-acre farm on Snake Run farther south in Shenango township, which he
  occupied ten years, engaged in farming and in operating his threshing
  machine, in the meantime disposing of his original ten-acre tract. In 1869,
  he sold his farm, and bought 100 acres near Moravia, where he still resides
  as one of the prominent and leading agriculturists of his section.
    
    Mr. Pitzer was joined in the bonds of matrimony in Shenango township, Dec.
  26, 1849, to Margaret Reed, a daughter of William and Anna Cannon Reed. Mrs.
  Pitzer's mother who was born in Mahoningtown, Feb. 10, 1805, still survives,
  and in her ninety-third year is clear and vigorous in mind, and reasonably
  strong and active in body for one of her age; she makes her home with her
  granddaughter, Mrs. J. W. Miller, in New Castle. She was a daughter of James
  and Betsey (Hendrickson) Cannon. James Cannon, a farmer by occupation, and
  son of James Cannon, Sr., was born at Shirley's Landing, Pa., and died in
  Shenango township, near Center Church, at the age of sixty-six. His wife was
  a daughter of Dr. Cornelius Hendrickson, who was the first physician to
  practice in Lawrence County, coming to this county in 1797, when the Indians
  were plentiful, with two other families, who were among the first people to
  settle in what was then almost a trackless wilderness. Betsey, his daughter,
  was severely frightened by one of the red savages when driving home the cows
  one evening, and it was deemed so very unsafe after that, that she was never
  sent again, the work being then performed by one of the men of the household.
  The Doctor served through the Revolutionary War. He retained his vigor to an
  extreme old age, and when ninety-five years of age rode six miles on
  horse-back to set a broken leg. William Reed, the father of Mrs. Pitzer, was
  born near Zanesville, Ohio, in the month of June, 1803, and learned the
  wheelwright's trade at Zelienople, Pa. He came to New Castle and bought a
  farm in 1829, where he worked at his trade and followed agricultural pursuits
  until his death at the age of forty. He was a son of John and Margaret
  (Lutton) Reed; the latter was a daughter of Ralph Lutton, who married a Miss
  Martin, and she lived to be ninety-two years old. John Reed, whose father,
  Michael Reed, died in Ireland, was born in the Emerald Isle, and immigrated
  to America, settling first in Ohio, and coming to Lawrence County in 1806,
  where he purchased a farm in the southern part of Shenango township on Snake
  Run, where he died at the age of forty.
    
    Seven children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Pitzer, as follows: Della C.,
  now deceased, who married Edward Frisbee of Shenango township, and bore him
  six childrenÑMary, Daisy B., Effie, Roy, Edward, and Harriet; Jennie H., who
  married Milton Crider of Freedom, Pa., and has seven childrenÑEva, the wife
  of Albert Mills, and the mother of one child, William DeForestÑWilliam H., B.
  Anna, Amanda, Bessie, Milton A., and Ira; William C., who lives on his farm in
  Big Beaver township, surrounded with a family of seven childrenÑAnna M.,
  Elizabeth, Ellen, Mary, James, Josie B., and Jennie; David A., living in Big
  Beaver township, was the second postmaster at East Moravia, holding office
  ten years from the establishment of the office in 1881Ñhe has five children,
  Mary M., Lea, Earl, Audley, and Gertrude; Anna M., who married James A.
  Lindsay of Lowellville, Ohio, and has borne him five childrenÑRobert Audley,
  Anna M., James A., Edith, and Jennie B.; Bessie, who was assistant postmaster
  many years with her brother, and is now the wife of Nicholas J. Hall of
  McKeesport, Pa., and the mother of one child, John Nicholas; and George
  Francis, who lives at Freedom, Pa., and has one child, Grace. Mrs. Pitzer, an
  excellent lady of wide acquaintance and deservedly popular among her friends,
  is an active member of the United Presbyterian Church. Mr. Pitzer is a
  Republican in his politics, and has served as supervisor many years, such is
  the high esteem for integrity and good judgment in which he is held. He has
  been for twenty years a member of Welcome Lodge, No. 65, A. O. U. W., of
  Chewton, this county, and was formerly affiliated with the I. O. O. F. Our
  subject and his wife are a highly esteemed and respected couple, who labor in
  all ways to advance the interests of the community, and to show forth in their
  daily lives the precepts of that noble religion taught in the life of the
  Redeemer, and the citizens of Taylor township hold them in the highest repute
  for their consistent goodness and nobility of character. In 1885 he engaged in
  the mercantile business, in which he was very successful, remaining in trade
  until 1890. He then sold out at good advantage and returned to his farm. He
  is now enjoying the fruits of a well-spent life. We are indeed pleased to be
  able to present such an excellent likeness of Mr. Pitzer, as adorns a
  preceding page, and we feel sure that it will be viewed with interest.