Hershell
Minerd
(1896-1963)
Hershell Minerd was born on July 17, 1896 (or June 24, 1897) in Dunbar, Fayette County, PA, the son of Andrew and Anna (Kissinger) Minerd.
Hershell registered for the World War I military draft in 1918, and stated his occupation as the Monongahela Connecting Railroad Company.
In 1919, when Hershell was 24, his father was killed in a coal mine accident in Allison, near Uniontown, Fayette County.
When the federal census was taken in 1930, Hershell and his mother made their home together in Bullskin Township, north of Connellsville. His occupation was listed as farm laborer. Just four doors away were Hershell's cousins Mariah (Minerd) Whetzel and Larmer Arthur Minerd.
Hershell married Sarah (?). They had a son, Clifford H. Minerd, who lived to adulthood, and perhaps other children who died young.
In 1932, Hershell and three others were involved in the "robbery of a service station at the brown of the hill on the Springfield pike just beyond Connellsville," reported the Connellsville Daily Courier. "Some one caught the license number of the car just as it pulled away with two 15 gallon drums of oil." Police tracked down the foursome at a house leased by Hershell. They found 123 pine bottles of home brewed beer, 10 quart bottles and a 20-gallon crock of beer, four gallons of peach brandy and two and a half gallons of moonshine, in addition to the stolen oil and "a large quantity of furniture and household goods ... taken the robbery of the Zimmerman store warehouse last week while dishes and coffee pots were identified as premium taken when a Jewel Tea Company store wagon was stripped in Connellsville in July." In 1934, Hershell, guilty in the furniture theft, appealed to the State Board of Pardons for clemency. At the time, he was residing on Springfield Pike in Connellsville.
At some point, Hershell and Sarah divorced. Sarah later married Jay Riley.
Hershell was a railroader, and resided later in life with his widowed mother on West Peach Street in Connellsville, PA. He was a member of the Lutheran Church.
Hershell died at age 66 of heart trouble in Connellsville State Hospital on March 24, 1963. He was buried next to his mother in the cemetery plot owned by his sister Venetta at Allegheny County Memorial Park in Allison Park, PA. His grave is unmarked.
Son Clifford served in World War II and at one time worked for his father in law in a bakery. Later, he was a brakeman on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. He married Dorothy Retenauer and resided in the Hazelwood section of Pittsburgh.
Copyright © 2001, 2008 Mark A. Miner