Joel
Minerd
(1827-1913)
Joel
Minerd was born on the family farm in 1827 at Hexebarger near Kingwood,
Somerset County, PA, the son of Jacob and
Catherine (Younkin) Minerd Jr. He and his 2nd wife, Kate, are seen here.
An orphan by age 20, Joel moved to nearby Normalville, Fayette County, and worked as a domestic servant and farmer.
Joel
was married twice, first to Margaret Jane Leichliter, who died childless circa 1857. Strangely, her grave marker at Normalville
Cemetery, seen here, gives her maiden, not married, name. The
stone also states "Our Sister" so it's presumed that her family
erected the monument.
Joel is mentioned in histories of the Leichliters, including in Vol. IV of Walkinshaw's Annals of Southwestern Pennsylvania, an 1899 profile in The Mountaineer newspaper of Normalville and in the Jacob Leighliter family Bible.
As a young man, Joel learned the lessons of settling disputes in court. In 1856, he was involved in a dispute with Maxwell Clark that was settled in arbitration. In 1868, he and his former Leichliter in-laws filed countersuits over a $100 loan dispute.
When the federal census was taken in 1860, widower Joel boarded with his married sister Catherine Barnhouse near Normalville. In 1862, he married Catherine Seneff (1836-1920), and they had 5 children -- William Henry "Squire" Miner, David R. Minerd, Elizabeth Rosensteel Zadowsky, John Wesley Minerd and Ella R. Pritts Polen Pryor.
Joel and 'Kate' owned a 126-acre farm near Rogers Mill, Fayette County, from 1870 to 1905. The land was inherited from his Seneff in-laws.
Their
dwelling was a short distance from the ruins of the old Fayette Furnace, seen
here. The furnace was built in 1825 by Joseph and George Rogers to produce
pig iron, and ceased operations after 12 years, in 1837. It was still in
"an excellent state of preservation" in about 1910, when this
colorized photo was taken, and still stands today.
Tragedy struck the family in 1903, when son David, who lived nearby, died of 00000. He was laid to rest in the Seneff family cemetery near the Miner home.
By April 1905, Joel and Kate had aged and decided to give up their farm. Said the Connellsville Courier, "Joel and Catherine Miner sold their farm located on Laurel Hill, above Roger's Mills, to W.P. Hooper for $1,400 cash."
In their later years they lived with their son Henry near Mill Run.
Kate is said to have been "a great big woman with arms as big around as a stove pipe." In his manuscript autobiography, her brother David Rugg Seneff wrote:
Mother and sister ... were experts in the art of spinning,... the latter at a big wheel -- a wheel 6 feet in diameter, whirled into such rapid revolution that it kept a spindle running while the operator ran backward 15 to 20 feet, holding a roll of wool attached to the thread on the spindle, and forward until the new finished thread was nicely wound on the spindle with its predecessors. No one in the community was able to turn out as many rolls of woolen thread as sister Catherine.
In 1901, the Connellsville Courier reported that Kate "was made happy [on] Christmas] by receiving a handsome bedroom suite. She knew nothing of it until delivered at her home. It was presented to her by her daughter-in-law, Mrs. John Miner."
Joel
died at age 86 on Aug. 11, 1913, just days before the 1st annual Minerd
Reunion,
the last survivor of his family.
Kate survived him by seven years, and died in 1920. They and son David are buried in unmarked plots at the Seneff Cemetery near Rogers Mill, seen here.
For more information, contact great-granddaughter in law Denise (Kessler) Miner.
Copyright © 2000, 2002, 2004 Mark A. Miner