Biography: Bert Winiford Wilson
The Wilson family came to western Pennsylvania from Berks County in the early 1840’s, and are presumably of either English or Scots Irish ancestry. Bert Wilson’s mother was a Stoughton, with English and Dutch ancestry. The Wilsons and Stoughtons were among the pioneer settlers of Butler County, Pennsylvania.
Bert was born 28 February 1891, in Brady Twp., Butler Co. PA to James L. Wilson and Elizabeth Ann Stoughton Wilson. Bert grew up as the youngest of four children, with two older brothers and a sister. He attended grade school, and learned reading and writing. sometime before 1900, the family bought a farm in Worth Twp. (It was located between present-day Tamarack Lake and Swope Rd. The lake has since flooded much of the farm.) With his father Bert became familiar with the farm, logging sites and the saw mill. They also enjoyed hunting wild game.
In 1898, when Bert was eleven, his only sister, Pearl, died from an infection that developed from a bee sting. She was fifteen years old. In 1910 when Bert was nineteen years old, his older brother John Luther Wilson, who was twenty-nine at the time, died of typhoid.
Bert married Clara Mabel Wimer in 1911; they were both twenty years old. The Wimer farm was nearby, off present-day Barron Rd. It lay near the creek that runs through the area to Jacksville.) Bert & Clara lived on a property across the road from Bert's parents. Their first child, Ruth, was born in May of 1912, and a son Ed in 1914. (Note: Both Bert and Clara carried that recessive gene for red hair, and some of their grandchildren were redheads. On Bert's side the gene came through his mother; his uncle Sol Stoughton had red hair ( so both John C. Stoughton & Mary Jane McCandless carried the gene). On Clara Wimer's side, her sisters had red hair, so both her parents (Isaac Wimer and Margaret Jane Robinson) had to carry the gene.
An issue of "American Agriculturist Farm Directory" for Butler County, published in 1916, lists Bert W. Wilson with two children as owning 100 acres at Rt. 1, Prospect, Muddy Creek township, where his principal crop was peaches. (In 2006, both the Muddy Creek location and the peach crop sounded unfamiliar to Russell Wilson,a son of Bert & Clara. He said that Bert Wilson never grew peaches. The entry is apparently erroneous, although the two children are correct.) In all,Bert and Clara had six children born in Worth Township, Butler County.
During the period that Bert & Clara Wilson lived near Bert's parents, his father once brought home from a hunting trip a bear cub found in a hollow log. The bear was chained outside the barn, where it grew to adulthood. Eventually the bear caught one of the children, John, in its grasp when John was three or four years old. His older sister Ruth rescued him by pulling him out of the coat he was wearing. The bear was summarily sold to Ringling Brothers Circus. Another childhood escapade involved the boys shooting homemade toy bows and arrows. An arrow pierced the arm of Ray and had to be pulled out by his mother.
In the barn they kept horses, a cow, a large sheep being raised by Ruth and a pony belonging to Russ. The children would walk across the McClymonds farm, to attend the McClymonds School, which stood in a grove of oaks south of West Liberty Road. The oak trees still mark the location. They were also within walking distance of the farm of their Wimer grandparents, situated further to the northwest along the creek that flows through Jacksville and into Slippery Rock Creek. Bert's parents eventually owned a home in Slippery Rock on Franklin Rd. (Rt. 108). James L. Wilson, along with his two sons Bert and Jim, and his wife's brother-in-law Robert McDeavitt, owned a garage at the corner of Main Street (Rt. 173) and West Liberty Road. Here they did car repairs and sold cars - Chevrolets, Overlands, and Whippets. The family owned 600 shares of stock in the Durant car company.
Bert was registered for the draft but was not called to serve in World War I. In March of 1929 Bert and Clara purchased a farm near the village of Nickleville in Richland Township, Venango County, about thirty miles north of Slippery Rock. Bert was attracted to the area by the flurry of oil well activity, and his brother Jim also relocated to Venango County. The brothers worked together with contractor Harry Fithian of Oil City in oil well and gas well drilling.
Three months after the move to Venango Co.,in May 1929, Bert's father died in Slippery Rock. The following year (Feb. 1930) a seventh child, Pauline, was born to Bert & Clara but she died at birth and was buried at the Nickleville Presbyterian Cemetery. In December of 1931 Bert's brother Jim died, and four months later, April of 1931, their mother died. The four deaths in four years was hard on the family, both emotionally and financially, as Bert was responsible for all the funeral expenses. The following year, in 1933, they suffered heavy financial losses when the Durant car company went bankrupt. They lived through the general privations of the depression years. The children attended the new high school, built in Emlenton in 1928, its first class graduating in 1929. In about 1938 or 1939, REA brought electricity to the area, and gas lights were replaced by electric lights. With his lifelong familiarity with the timber industry, Bert taught his son John carpentry skills and a love of woodworking.
Three sons, John, Russ and Ray, were drafted in the early 1940's to serve in World War II. In January of 1944 it was discovered that Clara had advanced cancer. She had five grandchildren, four belonging to her oldest daughter Ruth, and one to her second son John. She died in March of 1944, and was buried beside her infant daughter at Nickleville Presbyterian. Her son John was called home from army training in South Carolina for the funeral, but son Ray was already in the European war theatre and could not return. Clara’s mother survived her and attended her funeral. One year later, from March until May of 1945, son John was held as a German prisoner of war, returning home in July of 1945.
After Bert's wife died, his cousin Lester Lawrence came to live with him. Lester, related to Bert through the Stoughton side, was known to the family as “Uncle Les”. Bert hired a housekeeper, Anna Fisher, who had previously worked for his uncle, Sol Stoughton, and she remained in the household until Bert died.
Bert had traveled by car with his wife and daughter-in-law Ella to visit his son John in South Carolina during army training; with Uncle Les to visit John’s family in Tennessee in the 1950’s; with Ruth and Allene’s family to granddaughter Betsy Wilson’s wedding in North Carolina in 1972, among other places. In March 1951 he sold the farm in Nickleville, Richland Township and lived in a smaller rented house near the home of his daughter Allene’s family in Rockland Township. He developed bone cancer and died in May of 1971, at age 80 years. He is buried with his wife in Nickleville Presbyterian Cemetery. He had nineteen grandchildren.
-Written on 10 October 2006 by Elizabeth Wilson Williams, granddaughter of Bert Winiford Wilson, with notes from his son Russell W. Wilson.
