Valley of the Pines

Jacob (1761), the son of Thomas and Magdalena Adams, caught the eye of Maria, the daughter of John and Mary Elizabeth Storm. They married in the chapel at Conewago, PA. Perhaps inspired by his father’s copious grain crops, Jacob became a distiller.  His parents must have given Jacob a firm moral grounding; in later life he disinherited a son for failing “to fulfill an obligation”.

Together Jacob and Maria raised 11 children.

Their daughter Maria (born 1785) married one John Conrad, whom I always assumed was another Englishman. Boy, was I wrong. His father John Kunrat claimed direct descent from a German king and had been born in the contentious region of Alsace-Lorraine, then located in the north-east of France. Germany on its northern boarder, Switzerland to the south, with the Rhine River meandering along its eastern boundary, its rich alluvial plains boast vineyards while its up slopes are sprinkled with monasteries and castles. Its natives are neither French nor German, but something in between: Alsatian.

Mr. Kunrat immigrated to good old Frederick, Maryland, where his son John was born in 1778. The family joined in the northwestern drift to Pennsylvania and some of them are still there.

John Conrad seems to have struggled financially. He was primarily a farmer, but occasionally worked as a cabinetmaker, and even did a stint in a relative’s cobbler’s shop. His brother Baltzer was well-known in the area as a master carpenter. His family appears in obscure publications: Conewago Chapel Founding Families, Catholic Trails West (vol.II) and a little tome called Valley of the Pines by D.J. Byrne. Obviously this branch of the family had re-espoused Catholicism.

Maria died a few days after giving birth to her eleventh child, in Conewago, PA at the ripe old age of 38. So John piled his surviving family and household goods into a heavy Conestoga wagon and plodded up the Old Kittanning Indian Trail west to Loretto, PA. He mourned Maria for a few years, but had a quiver full of motherless children to worry about. In 1827, when he was 49, he married 27-year old Catherine Adelsburger. She bravely assumed responsibility for John’s 10 children (little Polly, referred to as “an invalid,” had died at the age of 12) and dutifully churned out three babies of her own in five years.

The marriage proved to be brief.  This notice appeared in a local newspaper on 5 April 1832. Died: on Friday last, John Conrad, a respectable citizen of the vicinity of Loretto, aged about 60 years. Mr. Conrad’s death was occasioned by an injury received in rolling logs a few days before.

There is a family tradition that John grew impatient waiting for his grandsons to stack the logs, and decided to do it himself. The “young whippersnappers” involved doubtlessly felt guilty for the rest of their lives.  It’s always something. Anyway, the younger children of John and Maria were now technically orphans, and there were all sorts of legal hearings about appointing guardians for them.

Now our family story gets a little, well, peculiar. Loretto was a very small frontier town, and everyone knew everyone. And our penniless, bereft Catherine certainly knew a widower with five young children named Michael Fitzgibbons, a Limerick-born immigrant who had made his way to Loretto. She married him as quickly as decency allowed (1833) and popped out her first little Fitzgibbons nine months later. This was a daughter named Eleanor Ellen after Michael’s dead first wife. Two more children followed, and one of them, John (named after her dead first husband) chose to ditch the “Fitz” and just be “Gibbons”. Having shown due respect to the Dearly Departeds, Catherine named her last child Michael after his (then living) father.

Catherine and Michael had a long life together, and when he died she erected a fine big cross over him, inscribed In Memorium [sic] of/Michael Fitzgibbons/died/Jan.25,1862/in the 77^th year of/his life. She followed him to the grave a few years later.

Magdalena Struck by Lightening at 104

Thomas Adams's widow, Magdalena had just given birth to her last child (at 54!) but was hardly incapacitated by grief.  She inherited many responsibilities, and lived up to every darned one of them. She continued to produce fabric for the family’s clothes on her two spinning wheels. She raised all her children alone and successfully managed their farm and several other properties her husband had accumulated.

Inscription says, "who died at the age of 104 loaded with years and virtuous deeds." Source: Albert Ledoux

Magdalena survived her husband by a good 50 years, and lived to be 104. Family tradition grants her no ordinary death; she was struck down by a lightening bolt. If I lived in the area I’d bring her flowers.

"Adams Choice," Conewago Township, Pennsylvania

Maria Storm married Jacob Adams, the son of an Englishman. His family had lived for generations in a lovely portion of the Midlands called Shropshire, but you can’t eat even the prettiest landscape. Today Shropshire is officially touted as having “hills of outstanding beauty,” but that’s just Chamber of Commerce-type poppycock. It’s still a rural, sparsely populated backwater. Its official flower is the round-leafed sundew, which grows in bogs and eats bugs.

Bogs. Carnivorous plants. Abysmal poverty. Whee.

Photo by Jan Raes

Jacob’s grandfather William had been born in 1700, and his grandmother Jane first saw light in a soggy bit of Shropshire called Waters Upton in 1708. His father Thomas (born 1735) crossed over to the colonies looking for a more prosperous life. He found it, and a German-born bride named Magdalena, in Pennsylvania. He was only nineteen, and she about thirteen years older when they wed. But Magdalena proved to be one tough cookie, and I’m proud to be her offshoot.

Thomas Ignatius Adams was no slouch himself. In 1756, when he was 21, he purchased 118 acres of prime Conewago Township land that became known as “Adams Choice.” First he built his family a log cabin, and eventually replaced it with a brick farmhouse. He and Magdalena provided their nine children with at least eight beds, cooked their meals on two five-plate iron stoves, and had a “Walnut Dyning Table” to sit their pewter dinnerware on. For special occasions, food was served in “Delf Bowls” (from the Netherlands); when not in use, the crockery was stored in a corner “cubart.” They also had a clock, a looking glass, and a few books.

The farm itself flourished: Fields waving with wheat, barley and rye, and pastures supporting 11 horses, 25 cows, two steers, three bulls, 28 sheep, four lambs and 10 shoats.

The new land was good to Thomas, and he loved it enough to fight for it. Old records credit him with both “Provincial and Revolutionary Service”. According to the National Archives, Captain Adams served in one of the ”Three Independent Companies and First Regiment of Maryland Regulars in the Service of the United Colonies commanded by Colonel Smallwood in September and October 1776.”

Alas, Thomas’s career as a Patriot was short. He died on 5 December 1776. Was he wounded in action? Did he die from a farm accident, or merely catch a bad cold? I can’t find his cause of death anywhere.

This Shropshire-born man’s slate tombstone was, oddly, inscribed in German. I suppose Magdalena wanted to remind her Germanic neighbors of her late husband’s piety. This is an English translation of his epitaph: Now my struggle has come to an end. My run is complete. I go to my Jesus and say to you all good night.