Walter and Carl Shoop

We lived next to the Vicksburg Grace Brethren Church, which we were members of. We could walk to the church and we lived a Christian life, had our nightly prayers all our lives to live and believe that Christ was the head of the home and our belief. George and some other men had a Bible class at noon at the shop where he worked. He would then tell me all when he came home. So the next year Walter Roy, our first boy, was born. He was a pretty baby, dark hair and blue eyes. He was our joy then. Our yard went downhill so George put a cement wall 4 feet high around two sides. He would work after he came from work and I would hold a lantern for him. Sometimes he would work till midnight. It sure was nice when done. He filled the yard with ground. We then had a nice yard. Next we had a big front porch built and he painted the house, and it was nice. We had a big porch on the back side too. Once when there was a heavy snow on the roof of the back porch, George got up to sweep the snow off. Walter and me ran up the steps inside. We got there just in time to see him slide off. Then we run back down but he landed in a snow pile and wasn’t hurt.

One summer when we had a cow I was feeding her corn chop and getting lots of milk and nice yellow butter, but I gave her too much. One morning when I went out to milk she was laying there still and dead, so I took my baby and went down home crying. As I went to tell my Daddy, well good old Dad he took a horse, went and told George’s Dad, and then took our cow to her pasture field and buried her, so when George came home I cried when I told him. All he said was to be thankful it’s just the cow and not one of the family. When walter was two years we had another boy, Carl Elmer, so then there was four. The summer Walter was four I would give him a small bucket and I would send him thru the field to my home for milk. I would watch from my house till he got there. Then my Mom would watch from their barn till he got home. But he got in the habit of stopping along the way and drinking some of the milk and spilling some too. We had a lot of fun with him about that. But the next winter in February he took pneumonia and died. That was so hard to give him up. His Daddy never did quite get over it. We had two little ones in Heaven. Then we knew they were safe with the Lord. We still had Carl. When he was two and a half years, Thelma Ruth was born, so then we had a boy and a girl.

Thelma Shoop, Carl Shoop, Boyd Ringler, Marie Ringler

We had a good christian neighbor who lived across the road, Mrs. Mentzer. She was my midwife and I could go to her for help if I needed it. Then on the other side of the church Dively’s lived. They had some boys and Carl got to climbing the cemetery fence and going over there. We would have to go and call him. One day his Dad called him and he had some water in a bucket and when he got across the fence his Dad throwed the water on him, and sure scared him. It broke him of running off. Thelma Ruth was two and a half years old and Carl was five years old when Harry Luther was born in November. That was during the first World War days. Everything was scarce and high priced then.

Sarah and George Shoop, January 16, 1911

Some of the kids got married before we did, but in January 1911 George and I were married. We walked to the church. Bill Wertman and Sophia Wineland stood with us. When we went up the aisle of the church, my brother-in-law Charlie Ringler pinched George in the leg and he almost yelled. When the church services were over we went home in my daddy’s carriage because a bunch of boys were going to take us for a ride, so they followed us home and gave us a big serenading. My Mother had refreshments for all that was there. We stayed at my home and George’s home till February 1912. In the meantime we took trips to Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Cumberland, Maryland, and other places . George was working at the railroad yard in Hollidaysburg, later on in Altoona railroad shops. Then our first baby girl was born, and lived only 25 days. We were alone again.

We went to housekeeping at McKee. We bought all new furniture from Sears. Everything was so pretty. We were proud of our new home, but we only lived there two months till George’s brother Charlie’s wife had their first baby, and Cleo, the mother died. Before she died she named her baby Cleo Olive. Charlie’s Dad and Mother took the baby and kept her. Charlie had bought a place with five acres at Vicksburg. When his wife died he wanted us to take that, so we did, and moved there. We were there a good many years and did a lot of work on that place. About an acre was pasture land, then part of the other field George planted fruit trees. We had a big garden, a stable and pig pen. Later on we kept a cow, pigs and chickens . I had them mostly to take care of for George left in the morning at 5:30 for the train. That didn’t get back till 7:30 in the evening, so it was a long day for me, so there were a lot of days I would go to my home that was two fields away if I went that way. Around the road was much farther anyway.

I would go and help my mother who lived on a farm then. There was always lots of activity there, and of course, I would get my dinner. We carried our drinking and cooking water from a well below the house. The wash water was from a well of rain water at the back porch. There was no running water or electric in those days, but we were happy and did just like other young couples.

Old Leamersville Church 1912 (reverse side)

In the meantime, our family with a few more families started a mission Brethren Church which is now the second church, with a big congregation now. I am thankful that I was a part of starting the Brethren gospel in that town. After two and a half years we moved back to the farm in September. Lester, my brother, was three months old. I was 16 then. In October my girlfriend, Sophia Wineland and me went to the woods to get ???, and there George and some of his friends came. That was a Sunday afternoon, so that evening George was at the church where I went and walked home with me. That was the start of us going together. So after that he came and, of course, in those days we walked everywhere we went. Oh, once in a long time he was allowed the horse and buggy. Our biggest thrill was to walk about a mile to McKee to the railroad station for to see the 7:30 train come in. The next summer when we would walk there we were with Bill Wertman and Sophia, about every weekend either at her home or mine. In September the boys got a three-seated carriage with two horses and three couples drove to the Henrietta picnic which was a yearly picnic. That was 1910. That was a long drive, about 30 miles, but we all had fun. George and me sure didn’t get to our homes to help with the milking that evening. The two winters we went together when there was snow, a lot of the young boys and girls would go on sledding parties. That was the Leamersville Church of the Brethren young people’s Sunday School class that went on the sledding parties. A big bobsled with two horses. The sled would have the bottom filled with straw, then horse blankets on top. We would all sit on that and have covers on us to keep warm. One evening we went from Leamersville to Altoona to Arvilla Sall’s sister’s home. We didn’t get home till almost morning. Of course, there was no automobiles in those days.

John, Lester, Harry

So school went along alright till the spring I was fourteen when my parents moved to Hollidaysburg. Edna and me had a lot of fun there. There was a silent picture show there and we babysat for the people that owned it, and so got free tickets. We went to Lakemont Park a lot too. Later she worked in a candy factory and I worked in our grocery and milk depot when I was needed. George continued to go till he was seventeen in the winter months when his Dad didn’t need him for farm work . At my home I grew up on a farm and there was always plenty of work to do. Dad had a dairy farm. His cousin, Peter Baker, stayed with us and took milk in a milk wagon. He drove to Hollidaysburg every day. He had a milk route . When he got back there were bottles to wash and get ready for the next day. That lasted several years then they rented a store building in town. Pete stayed there and Dad shipped his milk on the train which ran through his f arm. While we lived in Hollidaysburg my brother Lester was born. When I was seven years old my brother Harry was born. My mother had typhoid fever when he was a year old . Then the next year my Dad hired a boy to work for him and he was sick when he came, so he had the fever too, then my Grandpa Baker got it and Dad, and me too. There was four sick in the same house. The hired man’s mother came and took care of him, but he died. Grandma took care of Grandpa. He took pneumonia and died. While Dad and me were sick in bed we had a nurse from the hospital, and finally we got well. But it wasn’t all bad times. We had lots of fun too. We always had lot of company. Edna and me had lots of girlfriends . We always went to Sunday School and church. We walked a mile. Dad and Mom went to church too, but they always went in carriage with Grandma too. Dad would take us in bad weather with a horse and buggy or sled when there was snow.

When I was eleven we had another brother, John, so then there were four children. The winter I was twelve there was revival meetings at the church. Rev. C. 0. Berry was the minister. Edna and me and two neighbors, a girl and a boy, were baptized. It was February, a heavy ice on the river. They cut a square of ice out for us four to be baptized. That is how it was in those days. No one took a cold. We trusted the Lord and He always takes care of his children when they ask Him. My Grandma always lived with us. When Grandpa lived they had their side of the house, but now she had her own room, but lived with us, but she kept her own horse and buggy. Well, the spring I was twelve she took me and we started for Snake Spring Valley to visit with a great-uncle of mine, Elias Baker, wife and family. First day we got from Brooks Mills to Waterside, about 20 miles with the horse and buggy. The next day across the mountain to the valley, 18 more miles. This is just to tell how we traveled in those days.

George and I started to school the same year, 1897, to Mountain Home School, Pennsylvania. He was six and I was almost 5. My sister Edna started then too, and being the only two children at that time, I wanted to go, so my Mother let me go. Our teacher’s name was Sam Strayer. He was never married. He lived with his mother. Me being the youngest of the girls, they all seen after me. There was boys and girls from my age to eighteen went in a one room school house. It had a potbelly stove and a water bucket with a tin to drink water from. The kids played games and in the fall they would go at recess and dinner time to the mountain to get walnuts and chestnuts , and in the winter they would bring their sleds and had fun on the big hill at the school. I remember my first year. A big boy, Poke Ackers, was chewing gum. The teacher told him to spit it out so he went to the coal bucket and when he got there he said, “0h, I swallowed it.” That made the teacher mad. He made him come to the platform and he got his stick (about that time I was scared and got to crying) , but the teacher told him to apologize to the school , but Poke said he didn’t know how, so the teacher started to tell him how and every word the teacher said Poke said right after. Finally the teacher gave him a couple swats an sent him to his seat. Edna came to me to get me quiet.