History

James Morrow Satterlee
by Bill Satterlee

James Morrow Satterlee

James Morrow Satterlee, my grandfather, was the grandson of Solomon Satterlee, one of the first settlers in Warsaw Township, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania. Solomon moved to Warsaw Township from upstate New York. He acquired 55 acres of woodland and cleared it into a workable farm. Solomon Satterlee was a wagon maker. He traded one of his wagons for an additional 20 acres of woodland from the Perrin's whose property bordered his. Both the Satterlees and the Perrins came from England, and claimed to have small fortunes there. Oral family history claims that the family came to America on the third trip of the Mayflower, but I have never seen any proof. They did not bring the money to America as there was nowhere to spend it, and nowhere to hide it. American banks were not insured, and were located too far from the frontier of Pennsylvania to be of any practical use. Money had little use as most everything was bartered in a society that lived hand to mouth. My Grandfather, James, was the last in the Satterlee line that could have claimed the money. Unfortunately, England had passed laws by that time that required the claimants to establish residency in England, and agree to live there in order to gain access to their property.

To understand my Grandfather, you must understand the conditions that existed during that time in history. There were no roads anywhere in Warsaw Township, only trails and wagon tracks through the wilderness. His father and grandfather were carving a farm out of a virgin forest. That meant cutting down huge trees, pulling the stumps and "grubbing," all of the tree roots and underbrush out of the cleared land. The stones and rocks had to be dug out of the fields and dragged to the edges. These are still visible today in the "fencerows" on the old property. It was lonely back breaking work. There were no stores, trading posts, or doctors within ten miles of where they lived. Travel was on foot or on horseback, only when weather permitted. There was no mail delivery or any means of communication other than by sending a note if someone was found that was traveling through the area, which was very rare indeed. All food had to be raised or hunted. Grain was carried to mills in Port Barnett, near Brookville, to be ground for use. One resource that was a staple for them, even when my father was young, was the American Chestnut. The forest was full of them. Dad told me how they would take their shirt off, tie the sleeves shut, and gather it full of chestnuts from the forest floor. They would take them home and roast them, or just crack and eat them. Bushels of these were gathered and stored for use during the winter. The plentiful supply of nuts resulted in a bumper crop of squirrels. These were huge and easily shot for food.

Rosanna Groves Morrow, mother  of Sarah Jane Morrow

Solomon died at only 35 years of age. His son, Theron Satterlee, inherited the property, married Sarah  Jane Morrow, and fathered five children, Rosanna, Eugene, James, Frank and an unnamed baby. That unnamed child died at birth along with his Mother. Eugene had died when he was only about a year old. Grandpa said that he remembered seeing his Mother lying in her coffin with the newborn baby in her arms. That was the end of any happiness or comfort in my Grandfather's life. His oldest sister Rose, took Frank, to live with she and her husband, a full day's walk, about ten miles distance away. Grandpa was left in the care of his grieving father at only three years of age.

Grandpa rarely spoke of his Father. In fact, he rarely spoke to me at all. It was not unusual for him to go for two weeks or more only answering my "Good morning," with a low mumbled "Morning," reply. We would work side by side all day long with no conversation except for an occasional order of what he wanted done. At night, we would bid each other, "Night," and return to our respective houses without any further conversation. I could not believe that he was the same person when a neighbor would stop by the barn or in the fields. He would talk, laugh and joke. But as soon as we were alone again, he would return to his quiet way.

He was a handsome, tall, thin rugged man, sunburned to the color of a brown shoe. His hands were heavily calloused from the years of heavy work with hand tools, axes and saws. He had built a 50, foot by 50, foot barn with hand hewn timbers, by himself. Each timber was squared perfectly and the joints morticed by him alone. My son, Chris, still has his broadax and crosscut saw. One of my first memories of my grandfather is when I was only about 4 years old and crossing the street in Falls Creek. He reached down and took my hand. His calloused hands were smooth and soft like fine leather. I have never forgotten that touch. It is probably the only time in our whole time together that he ever touched me or allowed me to touch him.

He related what I knew of him in small stories, mostly stirred from a memory that was triggered from something that had happened in the particular spot on the farm where we were working. One day as we were pitching hay onto the big hay-wagon, he just started talking. "I never had a pair of shoes until I was eight years old," he said. "One day, right here, I was on top of the load of hay and my Dad threw a big rattlesnake up on the load with me. OH My! How I danced around to get away from that! My Dad hollered and laughed. He thought it was really funny. I was so scared!"

He went on to relate that he did have rubber boots in the winter, but they were so cold as he had no socks to go inside them. In the summer he went barefoot unless he could find some rags to wrap onto his feet. Then he returned to his quiet mood, a signal that I should ask no more questions, and I felt that he was sorry that he had exposed that much of himself to me.

My Grandmother had told me about the rattlesnakes around the farm. She told me how she had stepped into the barn right on top of one. Grandpa killed it. He was a man of over six feet in height. She said that he put a pitchfork through it just behind the head, and put the fork over his shoulder. The tail of the snake dragged on the ground. The snake would have been over seven feet in length. I had seen several in the area around our house when I was young, but none larger than about four feet. Grandma told me how my father, still in diapers, would go into the woods with a forked stick. He would find a rattlesnake and pin the head to the ground with the forked stick, just to hear the snake rattle. She told me that Grandpa had a box in his bedroom that had many sets of rattles in, some as many as 18 rattles long. I was never fortunate enough to be shown these prizes, even though all of the neighbors talked about seeing them. He gave most of these away during his lifetime. My Dad showed me the remaining trophies after his father died. They were impressive, even if the big ones had been given away.

I helped on the farm because I wanted to. My Dad worked at a pottery and my Mother was a registered nurse, so we did not depend on the farm for an income. I felt that Dad wanted me to help out, so I did. There was a general agreement between he and his parents that he would inherit the farm when they were gone. The work was long and hard, made harder by my Grandfather's silent treatment. He never showed me, or told me, how to do anything. I was expected to do a man's work, and figure things out for myself.

Times changed quickly when I was about six years old. Prior to that there were a lot of young men around, sons of the other farmers in the neighborhood. My older cousins and my brother also came to help around the farm in the summer. By 1942, the war effort was in full swing. My Mother had left for Pittsburgh, over 100 miles away to train as a registered nurse. She would get home only every few weeks for a few hours from late Saturday night until Sunday afternoon. All of the young men from the neighborhood, and my older cousins were gone either to the service, or to the factories in the cities. That left me the only male farm kid in the neighborhood. The farm next to Grandpa's had a son about eighteen year old, as well as three daughters all older than me. It was a large dairy farm and the father was a very influential man. They were self- sufficient on their land and only shared help at threshing time. He was on the Draft Board and arranged a draft deferment for his son, due to needing him to work the farm. It was a lonely time, worrying about my cousins fighting the war, my mother being away, and having the air raid sirens sound in the middle of the night in the town ten miles away. My oldest sister helped on the farm for a couple of years, and then she too moved to Brookville, about ten miles away, to work at, Sylvania, a vacuum tube manufacturing company. That left me and my other sister, two years older than myself, at home in the care of a housekeeper. Gasoline was rationed and no new cars were being built because the factories had been converted to war materials. We seldom got away from the farm, except to go to school. Our Grandparents and the housekeeper were the only people we saw on a regular basis.

I started milking when I was seven years old. I did this because I wanted to help out. Grandma and Grandpa were both very critical of everything that I did. Nothing ever suited them, even though I did the best I could. It never occurred to me that I was just a little kid. It would be years later when I discovered why they were so tough on me. My first job on the farm was picking potatoes when I was only three years old. My Grandmother came to the front porch of the house where I was with my five-year old sister. She took us to the potato patch, handed me an old tan enameled bucket, with no handle, and told me to pick up the potatoes lying on top of the ground that Grandpa had dug with a mechanical digger. I filled the big bucket full. My arms and my back still ache when I think of how they hurt when I picked it up to carry to the crates along the edge of the field.

One of my jobs, as early as I can remember, was to turn the crank on the big grindstone that Grandpa used to sharpen the mowing machine blades. I would crank and pour water on the grindstone as he held the tools against it.

As the years passed, I grew into a very strong, competent worker. Since I was the only young man in the neighborhood, my Grandfather found an angle that I never figured out until many years later. When he needed extra hands on the farm, a neighbor or two would come and work for a day. Then I was ordered to their farm for at least two days to help them. No pay was ever offered for my services. It became apparent, even to a dumb farm kid, that he was trading two days of my labor for one day of theirs. He never had trouble getting help, as I am sure the men considered me a bargain.

One of these men ran a farm with no electricity, gas or indoor plumbing. His farm was a ramshackle affair. Both he and his wife were in their seventies and considered to have a lot of money. His house was a gigantic old white farmhouse that looked nice on the outside, but lacked any convenience or decor on the inside. It was drab, sparse and looked as if it belonged in the last century, and had not been cleaned in that length of time. His wife was considered to be a "little off." They had had only one son that had died at seventeen of diabetes. It became clear early on that both he and his wife saw their lost son in me. Unlike my own Grandparents, he told all of the neighbors what a good worker I was and what a nice boy. All of the neighbors said that they would have given me anything that they owned. Indeed they would have. I really liked them, but could not be what they wanted me to be. They insisted that I eat lunch there. It was difficult to say the least. The house was dirty. The only hand towel was filthy. With no refrigeration, the food was moldy. One day she served me a lettuce salad fresh from the garden. As I ate it, I uncovered a small toad that was still clinging to a lettuce leaf. From that point on I walked home for lunch on the feeble excuse that I had chores to do. I feel guilty to this day for letting that lonely old couple down.

One afternoon as I worked with my grandfather along the road that bordered the farm, a man drove a tractor like drilling rig down the road past us. Everyone waved or spoke in the country. It was just what you did whether you knew the person or not. This man just looked straight ahead. He drove the rig into the woods about two hundred yards from us, and the proceeded to walk back up the road. I continued to turn the hay with my pitchfork. Grandpa stopped working and stared intently at this stranger that was walking past. He watched him until he was out of sight over the hill. Sensing something was not right I broke the "no speak" rule that always seemed to exist between us and asked, "who was that." "Bill," was his one word reply. "Bill who," I persisted, knowing I had really crossed the line now. "My son, Bill," he answered in a tone that told me there would be no further comment from him.

When we went to the barn to do the milking that night, Grandma told us that she just happened to walk out her front door, that is only about 20 feet from the road, as her son Bill, walked past. Taken by surprise she exclaimed, "Bill!" "Hi Mom," he said as he continued his walk to the main highway to meet his ride home. Uncle Bill walked past his Mother and Father's house and farm, morning and evening, for the next two weeks and never once stopped to say hello.

At the end of the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, Grandpa gave me the first business proposition ever. He said that if I would help him cut mine props, he would split the money fifty-fifty. It sounded like a good deal, since he owned the timber. We would cut the trees down with a six-foot long cross cut saw. We would measure them into four and six-foot lengths, saw them, and split them with wedges and sledgehammers, and haul them to the edge of the woods. The mine paid us about a penny a foot for the props. It was hot in the woods in August, made hotter by the fact that if you took your shirt off the giant mosquitoes would bite you unmercifully. They never bothered Grandpa. I guess his skin was tough, and he also wore long underwear under his black clothing, both summer and winter. He never explained this, but my assumption is that the underwear both insulated him from the summer heat as well as wicking the perspiration away from his body. Grandma would scrub his clothes by hand, in a washtub on a big washboard using brown bar soap.

The haymaking started in late May, as soon as I was out of school. Grandpa would cut the clover first, and allow the field to grow until September when we would cut "second crop." This was for the milk cows. He would cut with the horse drawn mowing machine in the morning, while the dew was still on the grass. It would dry and cure in the sun, if we were lucky, until the next afternoon. Then Grandpa would rake it with a big dump rake into long piles called windrows. We would then take pitchforks and pile these windrows into stacks, called "doodles," about six feet high, to cure. If it had rained at any point in the curing process, we would turn the hay in the windrows over by hand with pitchforks, or scatter the doodles to dry it out. When it was dried and cured, we would pitch it onto the hay-wagon and haul it to the barn. Someone, usually my Grandmother, would be on the load to tramp it down so that it would stay on, and so that we could get more on the load.

When the clover was finished, he would cut the Timothy hay. This is the tall grass with the seeds on the top that you always see the "Hayseed" chewing in the old movies. Yup, I've chewed a good many myself. The process of curing this is the same as for the clover, but is much more difficult because it is longer, about four feet, and much heavier. To get this into the haymow, we used a big two pronged hayfork, about five feet long, that was pulled up into the top of the barn by means of ropes and blocks, pulled by the horses. A smaller rope attached to the fork was pulled from the barn floor to release the hay so that it dropped into the mow. We would then climb into the mow and "mow it back." That meant we used the pitchforks again and dragged it into the corners of the mow to make room in the center to drop the next load. The hay packed into the mow so tightly that we had to use a hay-saw and cut it out in rows during the winter.

The 4th of July was a celebration for most people, but not for me. That was the day we began to cut the wheat. This was accomplished by the use of a McCormick Binder, a machine that cut the grain, and carried it on canvas belts to a mechanism that bound the bundles with twine. One of us would ride the binder, and the other would drive the tractor. There was a carrier on the end of the machine that caught the bundles. The man riding the binder would count off ten bundles, (sheaves), and then lift his foot off of the pedal that allowed the carrier to drop and place the sheaves on the ground. All day long we would cut our wheat. At six o'clock we would go to the barn, do our chores and milk the cows. A quick supper and we were back into the wheat-field by seven thirty. We now had to shock the wheat. We would pick up two of the bundles and set them upright against each other, put two more on each side of these on each end and brace the end with a single bundle. Next we would take a bundle and lay the grain ear end over our forearm and bend it over. Two of these were laid crossing each other on top, covering the grain ears and protecting them from the weather to cure and dry. This continued into the dark of night. The sun went down a little after 9:00 in July. We would continue until all of the day's wheat was shocked. In the dark, I always worried about picking up a rattlesnake, since they were drawn to the warmth of the ground under the bundles of grain. I never did, but I worried about it. This sounds like a lot of work and it was. It was a huge improvement over the days when Grandpa would cut and bind the whole field by hand. If a bundle was not tied, he would take a handful of the wheat stalks, wind them in his hand and tie around the outside of the bundle, with expertise coming from years of practice. He never showed me how to do this, and my Dad told me he never showed him how to do it either. He would laugh when we tried to duplicate his feat, but never offered any instruction.

When our wheat was finished, we would go to the neighbors and cut theirs. This was boring work, but we did not have to shock theirs. When all of the neighbors was done, we would return to the haymaking for a few days until the oats began to color. Then the whole process began again. Oats was much shorter and lighter than the wheat.

At the end of summer, we would thresh. When I was very small, before the war, crews of young men would come with the man that owned the thresher. Women would come from the other farms, bringing pies, pickles, cakes and sweets of every description. Now that the war had taken the men and young boys from the farm, it was a more subdued operation. The man that owned the thresher was called "Major Hoople," after the comic character, but not to his face. He looked like him and got out of every bit of work that he could. His main objectives seemed to be to charm the ladies and to get as close to the food as possible.

A threshing machine is about 20 to 25 feet long. There is a conveyor on the front where you throw the sheaves of grain. The grain is removed from the ears and the straw is blown into the straw mow. All of the dust is blown into your lungs as the only protection is a handkerchief tied over your face. The threshed grain is carried into the granary, a rodent resistant room of the barn-floor and dumped into bins. The wooden bushel measures weighed over seventy pounds full of the high moisture wheat. You really had to move to keep up with the machine, carrying one bushel in and dumping it and getting back before the next one overflowed onto the floor. We had hauled the wheat and oats into the barn and pitched them sheave by sheave onto scaffolding above the center barn floor. Now, four men were doing the work that ten or twelve did before the war. When we threshed in the field, we put two bushels in each burlap bag. That meant that each bag weighed over one hundred and twenty pounds. These then had to be loaded onto wagons and hauled into the barn.

We dug the potatoes in early September. That was backbreaking work, but the potatoes were our main source of food for the winter. Grandma and our housekeeper had been busy all summer canning peaches, bought by the bushel, and things from our gardens, tomatoes, peas, beans and corn. Grandma could really work fast as she prepared the food to "Put Up."

Before the war, when the apples were ripe, they would pick them from the ground. Grandma and the other women would wash and peel them. Grandpa would build a big fire and place a copper kettle about three feet across and three feet deep above it. The apples were placed in this to cook. They had a ladle that was shaped like a giant hoe. The ladle part reached to the bottom of the kettle and was attached to a handle about ten feet long. I was only about three or four years old, but I remember how the kids lined up on the handle of the ladle and stirred the cooking apples. As the kid at the head of the line got too hot, they would go to the end of the line to cool off, while someone else stood in the hot spot. I remember how good the apple butter was. I assume that the war, the shortage of sugar, and labor to help, put a stop to this.

In the fall we would butcher. It was hard to see the animals that we had hand fed all summer killed, but we had to eat. All too soon, it became my responsibility to dispatch the animal being slaughtered. As soon as possible, we would place the liver in a big dishpan and take it to my sister. She would cook the fresh liver in my Grandmother's home churned butter and onions. I have never tasted any liver as good as that farm fresh liver. We would sit down and dine on it as soon as the butchering was done.

Dad and Grandpa would make the sausage with a hand cranked grinder. The rest of the meat was put into big wooden barrels full of salt-water brine. They would add salt to the water until an egg floated to the top. Clean stones were placed on top of the meat to hold it down. Dad and Grandpa would rotate it every few days to be sure it was curing properly. When it was cured, it was hung on hooks in the smokehouse to dry. The smokehouse was a building about eight feet square, with a dirt floor and hooks near the ceiling. After the hams and bacon were dried, Grandpa would start a fire on the floor with apple and hickory chips and branches. I was always amazed that it would burn very slowly giving off a lot of smoke and very little heat. I have never tasted any smoked meat that even approaches the taste of this dry smoked product. Grandpa really knew how to make smoked meat.

My life plan was to farm. Dad thought that he would inherit the farm and pass it on to me. I graduated from high school and tried to find a job. No one would hire an eighteen year old since we were all being drafted for service in the Korean conflict. I helped out on the farm that summer. After the harvest was complete, we put all of the machinery into the machine shed for the winter. The machine shed was built completely of pine and had hay stored on the top level next to the roof.

As we finished putting the last of the machinery into the shed, it began to rain. I went to my Dad's garage and began to work there and Grandpa went to his house. A loud clap of thunder took me to the garage door as my mother shouted, "I smell something burning!" Lightening had struck the machine shed setting the hay, the dry pine boards and timbers on fire. I ran and cleared the five-foot fence in one jump, but could not get close to the raging inferno. I stood beside Grandpa and watched all of his well cared for machinery, that he had accumulated over a life time, melt into twisted mounds of steel. It was the end of farming for him and we both knew it. He only had one thousand dollars of insurance on the building and contents. It would take forty times that amount to even consider starting over.

I went to the draft office to sign up for the voluntary draft since I could not find a job. By volunteering to be drafted, you only had to serve three years in the service instead of four. They refused to let me volunteer. The secretary there was the sister of a classmate of mine. She told me I would never be drafted. All of my coworkers would be drafted within the next year, but I was never drafted. It makes me wonder if someone else died in my place in Korea, or was I just that much younger that the draft never got to me.

Eventually, I found a job at Riverside Food Market. I really worked hard and was promoted to Assistant Manager and then Market Manager in bigger and bigger stores. Eventually I became a Vice President, but Grandpa and Grandma did not live to see that happen.

When I came home to visit my parents, my wife, along with my kids would try to stop as often as possible to see Grandpa and Grandma. Grandma always did the talking while Grandpa maintained his near silent vigil, answering our queries with as few words as possible. He was over ninety years old now. As I sat on the old steel glider beside him trying to make conversation, I felt him begin to shudder. He had tears in his eyes and running down his wrinkled weathered cheeks. "I am so sorry," he began. "I treated you so badly all of these years. You were always so well liked and had nice clothes," he continued as I sat there in shock. I had never seen him show any emotion.

Carl, holding Anna, James, and Theron Satterlee

"My Father was a drunk after my Mother died. He would fly into a rage and beat me for no reason at all. Oh how he gave me some tremendous beatings. There was nothing to eat in the house. I would go to the neighbors and stand in the woods looking at their house at mealtime. Once in a while, they would set a plate of food out on the porch for me. I was so dirty and ragged that they did not want me in their house," he went on telling the story that had built up inside of him. The only clothes he had were what was on his back and they stayed on until they fell off. Grandma interrupted, "I only had one dress and had to stay in bed on Monday morning until Mother washed and dried it. But at least I had that. He had nothing."

His sister, Rose, had taken the baby, Frank, to her home about ten miles away, but was too poor to care

Frank Satterlee

 for both children. She would walk to her Father's home every summer and get Grandpa. He said that she would take him home with her for only a couple of days. She would patch his clothes and try to cover him, but she was very poor and had little to work with. She would return him to his father.

"My Dad was a horse trader," grandpa continued, tears still streaming down his face "He would go away for five days at a time. He would put me inside of a wooden barrel and place a heavy weight on the top so that I could not get out. There I would be for however long, with no food, no water, and just mess myself in that barrel. I was just a little kid. He would come home drunk and in a bad mood. He would pull me out of the barrel and kick and beat me until I was able to run away into the woods. That is where I stayed, even in the winter, until I figured that he had fallen asleep. Once while I was at my sister Rose's home, thieves broke into my dad's house. They set it on fire and it burned to the ground. If I had been in that barrel I would have burned to death. If I would have managed to get out, he would have killed me when he got home. When the stagecoach started coming through Hazen, they brought baked bread. He would buy that when he was out on his drunks and bring it home. I found that I could steal a little bit of that each time, while he was sleeping it off, and that is how I survived until I was big enough to work for food at the neighbors. You were what I wanted to be as a boy, and I resented you so badly."

We left Grandpa that day in silence and disbelief. Now I knew why he had been so silent all of those years. I am glad that he told me. I only wish that somehow I could have eased his pain and somehow made up the childhood he had been robbed of. All I could say was that no apology was necessary and indeed it was not. After the life he had growing up, I do not know how he could function as a husband and father. His lack of a good parental role model certainly left a mark upon my father and probably upon me and my children. The bible tells us that "the sins of the father will be visited upon the son."

Rosanna (Little Rose)  Satterlee

It was sad to think that his only daughter had died very young, and two of his remaining three children had no time for him. Now in the twilight of his life, he was suffering because of his treatment of me.

I love my Grandfather. He could not give me what he did not have. Perhaps by not giving me instruction and encouragement, he provided an environment, a vacuum, if you will, that enabled me to think for myself under pressure. I believe that the lessons learned on his farm were what made me the person that I was, and am. Even without a college education, I excelled in my management career, worlds removed from that small farm, with university educated people looking to me for direction and guidance. The bible also tell us that, "I will make all things work for good to those that love the Lord." Grandpa gave me all he had to give, and is that not all you can ask of any man?