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Family
Marriage: Children:
  1. Marian Seiders: Birth: 11 DEC 1920 in West Chester, PA. Death: 4 DEC 1998 in Elizabethtown, PA

  2. Dale McCormick Seiders: Birth: 23 FEB 1923 in Chester, PA. Death: AFT. 2004 in Of Fall Brook, San Diego Co., CA

  3. Reed Edwin Seiders: Birth: 2 JUL 1926 in Chester, PA. Death: 15 APR 1992


Notes
a. Note:   The following was compiled by Ross Seiders in the 1980's and giv en to me in July 1998. The following discourse is an edited review of notes made by Willis E. Sei ders sometime in the mid 1970's. The notes were made on scrap paper and t he backs of envelopes. In the interests of continuity and cohesiveness, m any repetitious comments have been consolidated and it is hoped the follow ing rendition presents this history in the manner intended by the origin al author. THE HISTORY: If anyone were to ask the writer of these family annals what he kn ew of the history of his family on his father's side of the house, he wou ld reply that his grandfather, William Seiders, always claimed that his an cestors had come to America from Holland and settled in Pennsylvania, th at the family spelled their name with a "Z" but that in the course of ti me the "Z" was changed to "S", that he himself , William, was born and rea red on a farm near Churchville, a small village not too far from the ci ty of Harrisburg, Penna. It was on a neighboring farm, owned by a family by the name of Stric kler, that my grandfather met my grandmother whose maiden name was Anna Sw artz. At the age of sixteen she had come from Germany as an orphan girl a nd had been taken to be raised by the Strickler's of whom she always spo ke of in the highest praise. I hardly think that the meeting produced a c ase of love at first sight. In the case of my grandfather, who had the re putation of being a very shrewd man, I rather think he sized-up the hard-w orking German girl much as he had learned to size-up a good horse, for lat er in life he acquired the reputation for being a good judge of horses. H owever, as that may be, my grandfather and grandmother were married. Wi th my grandfather's savings and the dowry that my grandmother had receiv ed from the Strickler's (for in those days parents gave their daughters do wries) they went to housekeeping on of the Kelter farms up over the hill s, not too far from the place where Steelton was later located. Mr. Kelter, in making his rounds to his farms always managed to arri ve at dinner time at the farm where the Seiders lived, for he claimed th at no one could cook and serve a fried ham dinner like the wife of "Billi e" Seiders. On this farm their eleven children were born, two dying in in fancy. Here too, through thrift and plenty of hard work my grandparents w ere able to make a down payment on an old, run-down farm located on the L ancaster-Harrisburg Pike. The only redeeming feature on the farm was a le vel stretch of land lying between the Pennsylvania Canal and the Susquehan na River. The rest of the farm consisted of barren hills and a hollow thr ough which a road, leaving the Pike, eventually made its way up over the h ills to Churchville, the village already mentioned. But this "kill-deer" farm as it was called because only the birds we re able to scratch a living out of it, proved to be a gold mine. It wasn 't long before the Pennsylvania Steel Company came along, bought up the me adow land along the Susquehanna River, including that of my grandfather 's and the Boozer farm next to it and built one of its' steel plants ther e. Almost instantaneously a boom-town appeared, first called Baldwin, b ut to avoid confusion it was later changed to Steelton. With the same sagacity used in selecting a wife, my grandfather s et about taking advantage of all the ways of making money that aros e. He furnished teams of horses to haul limestone from a nearby stone qua rry to the blast furnaces where it was used as a flux to separate the ir on from the ore. He bought a nearby hotel, the "Halfway House", so call ed because it was halfway between Lancaster and Carlisle. Here, as a resu lt of booming business that the steel works had created, my grandfather ma de money. To accommodate the steel workers that were seeking houses to li ve in, he went into the building game, thereby gaining the reputation of o wing more real estate than any other person in the community. As my grandfather's wealth increased the family scale of living ros e. As each son became eighteen he was given a horse and buggy and as ea ch child was married he or she was given a house to live in. The boys, al ways with money in their pockets, became a happy-go-lucky crowd. So me of them learned to play the accordion, thereby creating a Bohemian atmo sphere at home. When any of them got in trouble with a girl, my grandfath er, with his money, could pay them off for in those days a girl's virtue w as worth $300. I'm sure my grandmother often thought of all the hard wo rk on the Kelter farm, of the anxieties and heart aches in raising a grow ing family and then to be suddenly confronted by wealth and position in t he community. She now had many guests at the dinner table and a hired gi rl to serve. She sympathized with the troubles her children brought hom e, their marriage difficulties and in rare instances, their triumphs. Eve rything seemed changed, but my grandmother did not change. To her a doll ar retained its "old" value, if milk sold for six cents a quart, she to ok six cents. She still read her Martin Luther Bible in German and she st ill prayed in German. Many times my grandfather went to her about "going- on" (co signing) another man's note and she always advised against it. H ad he but taken her advice he would have saved a lot of money. After living in Steelton for awhile my grandfather had another chan ce to make a big deal when the Dunkel Real Estate Company offered him a hi gh price for the remainder of his farm. He sold out and through the influ ence of a brother in Elizabethtown he bought another farm on the edge of E lizabethtown of East High Street, near the present consolidated High Schoo l. It was on this farm that the writer spent many happy days. Grandmoth er outlived grandfather by twenty years. She continued to read her Mart in Luther Bible and lived to see many of her children to their graves. Jacob, the oldest child, was the first to leave the farm to fig ht in the Civil War. After helping General Sherman make his raids throu gh the South he met a young Irish maid by the name of Tillie Haden. Th ey fell in love and were married. They moved into a house on Summer Stre et (Philadelphia) and had two children. As became his custom, one Saturd ay evening he went out to spend time with "the boys" and failed to retur n. The nest morning an officer appeared and reported to my aunt Tillie th at her husband's dead body was found at the bottom of a stairway of a gamb ling joint on South Chestnut Street. The supposition was that my uncl e, in a drunken, gambling spree, had gotten in a fight, was kicked down t he stairs and had his neck broken. In order to avoid a scandal my grandfa ther, who was still alive at the time, advised my aunt not to press f or an investigation. My uncle was quickly buried and with a family subsi dy my aunt continued to live on Summer Street by running a boarding hous e. She managed to rear and educate her two children and a sad part abo ut the whole situation was that as my aunt grew older her Irish brogue ret urned. This caused her children to become ashamed of her and they didn 't want their friends to meet her. She finally died and her body was la id beside that of her husband in Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia. The second oldest child was my uncle Emanuel who became superintende nt of the Stone Quarry in Steelton that furnished limestone for the Ste el Plant and for building purposes in this boom town. He was consider ed an expert in the handling of dynamite which was used in blasting the st one from the ledges of the quarry. (It is noted that Emanuel's great neph ew, Reed E. Seiders, worked with the dynamite crew at this same quar ry in the summer of 1949). After working with dynamite for the greater pa rt of his life he was finally blown up by it and killed. The sad part abo ut his death was that his widow who had raised four children, left by a fo rmer wife, was left without a roof over her head. In giving the hou se to his son Emanuel, my grandfather had stipulated that at Emanuel's dea th the house was to pass to his children and they wasted no time in selli ng it to get their money out of it. Upon my grandfather's death in 1893 the Elizabethtown farm was so ld and my grandmother moved into the tenant house that had been reserved f or her. Her funeral in 1914 was held in the Dunkard Church because the in terior of her church, the United Brethren, was undergoing repairs. She ne ver liked the Plain People and as I heard her often say, "To think Davie h ad to go and marry one of them". (Note, David was married to Minnie). T he reading of the will in this family generally ended up in a fight and th is occasion proved no exception. Other notes obtained from Willis from conversation and a 1978 tape recordi ng: Grandfather Morris Seiders had assignations with numerous local woma n, especially Clara Green of Halifax and Steelton, Mrs. Ed Bielchuk, a mut e, of Steelton and Mrs. Heagy of Steelton. He fathered several childr en by these women. Several of his brothers were likewise inclined to avo id local chastisement one allegedly traveled West to marry a girl of Mexic an/Indian origin whom he met through a mail order bride advertisement. Martin Seiders helped build the Panama Canal during the period 1904 -14. On return from the Canal he married Clara 18-- to 1962 and they resi ded in Elizabethtown. A daughter of this marriage Mrs. Lillian Still n ee Seiders still resides in Elizabethtown (1984) at 52 N. Poplar St. S he had no further information about the family history. Martin was execut or of his father's will and allegedly absconded with a portion of the mone y-- this may account for his Panama Canal sojourn. All of William Seiders sons were given a horse and buggy in their te ens and a double house upon marriage, one side to live in and the oth er to provide income. Nearly all the sons seemed to be rascals with too m uch money and not enough to keep them occupied. David became a drunkard w ho trained his horse to take him home every evening after a night of carou sing. His father later forced him to marry Minnie Lutz of Elizabethtow n, the Seiders household maid whom he had impregnated. Fannie had been married several time and was subsequently excommunic ated from the United Brethren Church. After many unsuccessful attemp ts to rejoin the Church her mind began to deteriorate and many people thou ght she was "bewitched", not an uncommon belief in those days. In reali ty she probably died from undiagnosed diabetes.


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