Jacob and James Tamon were of Baltimore.
James Walker, Daniel Keiser, John Keiser, and Sharp Walker were of Franklin county, Pennsylvania.
The home of the regular wagoner was on the road, and a good home it was, in so far as mere subsistence and stimulus to the senses were concerned, and it is his nativity, that the author has endeavored to note. Regulars and sharpshooters are listed herein indiscriminately, but a majority of the names given as of Fayette county, Pennsylvania, are those of sharpshooters. The residences and homes of the following old wagoners could not be accurately ascertained, but they are familiar names, all well remembered by old inhabitants of the roadside, viz: William Kieger (a lively fellow, and a “regular”), James Dunbar, William Keefer, Rafe Rutlege, Samuel Jackson, Benjamin Hunter, David Greenland, John Strauser, Jacob Cox, Jonathan Whitton, Gus Mitchell, Samuel Dowly, James Patton, Joseph Freeman, James Hall, William Purcell, Samuel Rogers, John Nye, Israel Young, James Davis, Jacob Beem, Isaac Young, Martin Irwin, James Parsons, James Kennedy, Isaac Shaffer, John Lynch, Michael Longstaff, George Nouse, Peter Penner, James Shaffer, John McClure, John Cox, William Cox, Joseph Cheney, Frank Mowdy, Caldwell Shobworth, James Jolly, Andrew Sheverner, Jacob and James Layman, John Crampton, Henry Smith, William Miller, John Miller, Henry McGruder, Elias McGruder, Michael Miller, John Seibert, Henry Stickle, Ezra Young, Jonas Speelman, David Connor, Eli Smith, Jacob Everson, Nathaniel Everson. Joseph Shaw, James Irvin, John Chain, William Wiglington, Doug. Shearl, Marion Ritchie, John Vandyke, John Alphen, Daniel Carlisle, George Burke, Thomas Ogden, Michael Abbott, Charles Genewine, Herman Rolf, Isaac Manning.
The following letters from Jesse J. Peirsol, now a prosperous farmer of Franklin township, Fayette county, Pennsylvania, of vigorous health and unimpaired memory, furnish a graphic description of life on the road in its palmy days:
December 3, 1892.
Mr. T. B. Searight:
Dear Sir: I have stayed over night with William Sheets, on Nigger mountain, when there would be thirty six-horse teams on the wagon yard, one hundred Kentucky mules in an adjacent lot, one thousand hogs in other enclosures, and as many fat cattle from Illinois in adjoining fields. The music made by this large number of hogs, in eating corn on a frosty night, I will never forget. After supper and attention to the teams, the wagoners would gather in the bar room and listen to music on the violin, furnished by one of their fellows, have a “Virginia hoe-down,” sing songs, tell anecdotes, and hear the experience of drivers and drovers from all points on the road, and when it was all over, unroll their beds, lay them down on the floor before the bar room fire, side by side, and sleep, with their feet near the fire, as soundly as under the paternal roof. Coming out from Cumberland in the winter of 1851 or 1852, we stopped one night with Hiram Sutton, at Sand Springs, near Frostburg. The night was hazy, but not cold. We sat on our buckets, turned bottom up, and listened to a hundred horses grinding corn. One of our number got up in the night and complained that snow was falling on his face. This aroused us all, and we got up, went to the door and witnessed the most blinding snow storm I ever saw. Some of the horses broke loose from the tongue, and we had difficulty in finding them. We stayed up till morning, when the snow had risen to the hubs of the front wheels. We hitched eight or ten horses to a wagon, pulled out to Coonrod’s tavern, one mile west, and returned to Sutton’s for another wagon, and in this way all reached Coonrod’s. The next morning we pulled out again, and on little Savage mountain found the snow deeper than ever, and a gang of men engaged in shoveling it from the road. I got stuck and had to be shoveled out. We reached Tom Johnson’s that night, making three miles in two days. The next day John Ullery, one of our number upset at Peter Yeast’s, and a barrel of Venetian Red rolled out from his wagon, which painted the snow red for many miles, east and west. We stayed with Yeast the third night after the storm. In the winter of 1848 a gang of us went down, loaded with tobacco, bacon, lard, cheese, flour, corn, oats and other products. One of our number was an Ohio man, named McBride. His team consisted of seven horses, the seventh being the leader. His load consisted of nine hogsheads of tobacco, five standing upright in the bed of his wagon, and four resting crosswise on top of the five. The hogsheads were each about four feet high and three and a half feet in diameter at the bulge, and weighing from nine to eleven hundred pounds each. This made a “top-heavy load,” and on the hill west of Somerfield, and near Tom Brown’s tavern, the road icy, McBride’s load tumbled over, the tobacco in the ditches, and the horses piled up in all shapes. The work of restoring the wreck was tedious, and before we got through with it we had the aid of thirty or forty wagoners not of our company. Of course the occasion brought to the ground a supply of the pure old whisky of that day, which was used in moderation and produced no bad effects. After we had righted up our unfortunate fellow wagoner, we pushed on and rested over night at Dan Augustine’s, east of Petersburg.
Yours truly,
JESSE J. PEIRSOL.
ANOTHER LETTER FROM THE SAME PERSON ON THE SAME SUBJECT.
February 2, 1893.