Minerd.com Biography of Daniel Minerd and Wives Susan Stettman and Drusilla Ridenour of Fayette County, PA

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Daniel Minerd
(1811-1860+)

Daniel Minerd was born in 1811 in Fayette County, PA, the eldest son of Henry and Hester (Sisler) Minerd.

He grew up in Dunbar Township, Fayette County, and may have been a casualty of the Civil War, although this is not yet proven.

Daniel is known to have been married twice -- first to Susan Stettman (1822- ? ) and second to Drusilla (or "Drusan") Ridenour (1830-1897?).

His seven children were born between the years 1845 and 1856. They included Mary E. Grim; Stewart Minerd, Catherine Minerd; Howard Minerd; Barbara Firestone, Minerva Minerd and Henry Minerd.

Restored Wharton Iron Furnace site, 2025

Wharton Iron Furnace

In 1840, he worked as a "filler" in Wharton Township, likely at the Wharton Iron Furnace site. In 1853, his and Drusilla's daughter Barbara Ellen is known to have been born at the furnace, likely in worker housing. Daniel's brother James is known to have hauled ingot from the works over the mountain and to Brownsville, PA, using a six-mule team, to be shipped via the Monongahela River to the teeming mills in Pittsburgh.

Wharton Furnace had been built in 1839 by Andrew Stewart along Chaney Run as a charcoal-fired foundry for converting iron ore -- which was abundantly available in the mountains -- into molten iron. Stewart ran it until 1856, and ownership changed hands several more times until 1873 when the final ingot was cast. Because transport of the metal was costly and slow, with no local railroads serving the site, it eventually became cheaper for Pittsburgh's mills to receive their raw materials from the Great Lakes and use better technology via the Bessemer process to produce a higher grade of metal in the form of steel.

On Oct. 23, 1854, at the home of his parents in Wharton, Daniel is known to have witnessed the wedding of his sister Barbara to Henry "Foxy" McKnight. The wedding also was attended by Daniel's brother in law, William McKnight, husband of Mahala Minerd.

Daniel died sometime during the 1860s. It has been rumored in that he had gone off to fight in the Civil War, and was killed somewhere, unknown to the family. But with his departure, their son Henry had to go to work at a young age to help support the family. In the book The Lewis Family of Oliphant Furnace, Pennsylvania by descendants Thomas L. and Jack Walter Lewis, the authors state:

[Henry's] father died about 1865 when he was 12 years old and that is why he had to go to work at such an early age. According to Mom, his dad died while with the Union Army during the Civil War. I remember him saying that he could hear cannon and musket fire in the mountains shortly after the battle of Gettysburg. He thought it was the retreating southern armies who got lost or trapped and had to come further west to go back across the Mason & Dixon line.

There is no official evidence that Daniel served in the war.

1858 county map showing "D. Minor's Hotel" -- our Daniel? -- next to Braddock's Grave and a short distance from Wharton Furnace, labeled as "Stewart's Iron Works" - Library of Congress Geography and Map Division

In 1858 and 1865, atlas maps of Fayette County were published, the latter by R.L. Barnes (Philadelphia, 27 South 6th Street). The hand-colored map shows the individual location of homes, farms and business establishments in the county. Shown on both maps is "D. Minor's Hotel" located directly next to Braddock's Grave and near "Old Ft. Necessity" along the National Pike in Chalk Hill. Whether "D. Minor" was our Daniel is not known but is a tantalizing question. Just a few years later, our Daniel's brother Samuel Minerd entered the hospitality business as proprietor of the nearby Fayette Springs resort, and in the 1880s Daniel's nephew-by-marriage, William Alexander Gaither, was the paid caretaker of the gravesite.

By January 1869, Daniel is known to have been deceased. That year, on the 18th of the month, their daughter Mary was married to Franklin Grimes, with the Uniontown Genius of Liberty reporting that the nuptials took place "at the residence of the bride's mother," with no mention of the father.

Now widowed, Drusilla (also known as "Drusan" or "Druth") lived in Springfield Township (in 1870) and in Connellsville Township. (1880).

Her fate is unknown. We are exploring whether she is the same person as "Druzilla Miner" who died on (?) 24, 1897 and rests in White Rock Cemetery, Fayette County, the same burial ground where her niece Barbara (Minerd) Firestone and family rest together in eternal sleep. No obituary for this Druzilla has been found in the Connellsville Daily Courier.

In more recent years, the site of Daniel's hotel is believed to have become Braddock Inn Restaurant, a dining spot and cocktail bar along Route 40, nine miles of east of Uniontown, with an address of 3261 National Pike, Farmington.