July 16

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO...

Susannah Harmarson Walls 1788-1874

  I don't know why they bunch up like this. Some days, nobody, some days a bunch. Just one of the Rules of the Universe, I guess. Anyway, should I do Helen Virginia Lockard Burford today? Or Susannah Harmarson Walls? Or Cleo Ford? All three of them have interesting stories... hmmmm...

  Well, I've looked through the records, and I don't have a death date for Susannah Harmarson Walls (1788-1874). For the others I have both birth and death dates, so I'll catch them on those alternate dates. Today, Susannah is the winner. Problem is that I don't have a photograph of Susannah. What I do have is a photo of her granddaughter Martha Susan Walls, who married John A. Treat in 1871. 

Photo: John and Martha Susan Walls Treat with children Marcus, Belle, and Estle.

Martha and John Treat were the parents of my great-grandfather Marcus Treat. 

Marcus married Massie Parker.

Marcus and Massie were the parents of  Christie Treat, who married my grandfather Bill Thomas.

Even though I don't have a photograph of Susannah Harmarson Walls, what I do have is the text of an interview she did for the Pike County Republican, February 26, 1874:

OLD FOLKS INTERVIEWED: SUSAN HARMARSON WALLS

      "I was born in Delaware.  The exact year I do not know, but suppose I will be 86 years of age on the 16th of July next.  My father's name was Levin Harmarson, he died when I was three years old.  My mother's name was Mary Woodard.  They had only two children, myself and Sabra.  She married Elias Walls, brother to my husband. About 4 years after my father's death, my mother married Levi Walls and they moved to West Virginia, near Morgantown in Mongonhalia Co. There we lived till I was about 18 years of age when they came to Pike Co., and settled in the wilderness of Leath Creek, in Pebble Twp., and I have lived on Leath Creek ever since. My mother had 6 children by Levi Walls, and when we came to Ohio besides Sabra and myself there were Samuel, Elizabeth, Sarah and Thomas and they had born to them in Pike Co., Fanny and Lemuel. When my mother married Levi Walls, he was a widower with 6 children.  But none of them came to Ohio with us except my husband. When we arrived on Leeth Creek there were but two inhabited cabins on it, and they belonged to Elias Walls, brother to my husband who came here several years before our family did, and the other was occupied by Elizabeth Coberley (Lane is crossed out) on the place known as the (Levi is crossed out) John Russell Farm which adjoins the farm owned by my husband, and which I have lived nearly all the time since I came from Virginia. I married Levi Wall in Virginia and had been married upwards a year when we moved to Ohio.  My husband bought land on Leeth Creek which now adjoins the infirmary farm near Idaho. He went to work and erected a cabin, besides the two cabins spoken of above.  There was one old uninhabited one in Idaho near where the old saw mill was.  My stepfather chinked and repaired that old cabin and moved into it where he lived several years. When he bought and moved farther up on Leeth Creek, where he built and lived some years, when he moved to Bear Creek in Scioto Co. where he died 46 or 47 years ago. I have eleven children viz. Bashiba, Levin, Elias, Levi, Joshua, Samuel, Mary, Matilda, Elizabeth, Nancy and James. I raised them all to adulthood, and all married except Levin, Elizabeth and Samuel.  They are dead and so is Mary.  Bashiba married James Leeth by whom she had ten children. Elias married Matilda Wall and had eight children, when she died and he married Margaret Shattuck by whom he had six children. Levi married Mary Ann Wallace who have had nine children.  Joshua married Amy Wall and had seven children when she died and Joshua married for his second wife Margaret Haines by whom he had three children. Mary married James Leeth and had by him 10 children. Matilda married Cornelius Leeth by whom she had had seven children. Nancy married John Leeth by whom she had had eleven children.  James the youngest married Mary Shattuck by whom they have had 10 children, of whom nine are living. I have had eleven children, eighty-one grand children, ninty six great grand children, and five great great grand children, much the greater part of whom are living. My husband answered to the famous general call in 1814 left home. But when examined by the surgeon was pronounced unable to bear the fatigues of soldier life. So he returned home. He lived to be 85 years of age and died 10 years ago last June.  His remains were deposited in Leeth Creek burying ground only a short distance from where he lived since we came together to Ohio, and where a number of his children, grand children, and other kinfolks lay buried.  I am living with James, my youngest son. My experience in life has been that of people generally in agricultural districts who have lived from young womanhood in one locality. But while I have lived on in the even tenor of life, great changes have been wrought in the World's History, which I leave others to Chronicle.  The knowledge of which is to be perpetuated by future generations through the instrumentality of the art of printing." 

For some reason, I have a particular fascination for this lady. Well, for starters, she married her step-brother. And her sister married another one of their step-brothers. They lived in what was pretty much a wilderness at that time, and it was slim pickings for husbands. The Leeths and the Walls families were just about all married to one another. Trying to sort them all out is a fun game. Susannah and most of her offspring are buried in Leeth Creek Cemetery (aka Walls Cemetery) in Pebble Township, Pike County, Ohio. If I ever get to Ohio, I'm going to stop there and pay my respects.