Maternal ancestors for Bill & Phyl's grandkids: 3

Born: Mercer, Pennsylvania Nov. 21, 1891
Died: Hollywood, Florida April 1, 1971

Granddaughter Karen’s comments: I have no clear personal memories of my paternal grandfather. Because of our moving around the country, especially out West, my sisters and I simply didn’t see our grandparents very often—maybe five or six times, tops, when we would have been old enough to remember the meeting. My mother (Hollis’s daughter-in-law) said that she barely knew him, too. He would come home from wherever he’d been and disappear into the basement or garage.

But when he was younger—judging by a photo album he compiled—he had spark and interest.

In the late 1980s, his son, William, recollected:

(Hollis) grew up in a house on South Diamond Street in Mercer, PA. The “diamond” was the main town square and contained the county courthouse, monuments, cannons, etc.

Next door on the east side was the “Bastille” (county jail). The west boundary of the McKim property was a north-south alley. The house was frame and still stands when I saw it last in 1984. At that time, the lower floor was a Trailways Bus waiting room, but upstairs looked like an inhabited apartment. I remember the house well. Pictures exist in our albums. I even remember a sickle pear tree in the back yard. As a boy I always hated pears, but I liked the sickle pears from this tree.

My Dad learned the trade of wallpaper-hanging from his dad, and was an excellent paper hanger. He owned a full kit of professional tools and many times papered our house. He also learned the barber’s trade merely by hanging out at the barber shop and had a full set of barber tools. I still own some of these, including his first electric clippers which he bought much later, but used on me as a kid. My dad cut my hair at least ¾ of the time until I left home for the Navy. I still cut your Mom’s hair with his barber shears.

My Dad seemed to be an imp and rascal as a boy. I have one photo of my Dad at estimated age 9 or 10. He is obviously at the “old swimming hole” wearing only a Tom-Sawyer-like shirt which he is deftly hoisting while grinning from ear to ear and showing “everything he owned.” There are several other figures blurred in the background who are obviously Dad’s contemporaries, also in the process of skinny dipping.

My dad finished high school but at that time and place, the high school curriculum was either 2 or 3 years, not 4. Dad had some aspirations about college, even visited Penn State once.

Well, Dad did not go to Penn State. He could not swing it financially. His first known job was as “baggage smasher” at the P & L.E. depot in Zelianople, PA (about 30 miles south of Mercer, 45 minutes north of Pittsburgh.) He eventually worked his way up and was transferred to the big P & L.E. RR (Pittsburgh & Lake Erie RR) in Pittsburgh. While working there he roomed and boarded up on Mount Washington and rode the Mount Washington Incline to work at the foot of the precipice on the south bank of the Monongahela River. This depot still exists although the P& LE is defunct.

The depot (quite ornate and large) is now a railroad museum, restaurant, shop, boutique, etc. Dad worked as a ticket agent and sold many excursions and planned trips to the far west. I have a large photo of him standing behind the ornate marble and walnut passenger ticket counter at the depot. This counter still exists and I saw it when we last visited the restored depot. Later as a family, we went to many of the places he knew about but never had visited (Pikes’ Peak, Painted Desert, Grand Canyon, L..A., etc.)

All this was pre-WWI. In 1917, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Dad was assigned to the 320th Field Signal Battalion. In those days, Army assignments were very ‘scientific.’ One day, somebody pointed a finger at him and said, “You are the cook.”

Dad said that despite being in the signal corps, he never learned Morse code, semaphore, or any other means of signaling other than ‘hey, you.’ He said he couldn’t boil water one day and was cooking for 200+ men the next!!! Both he and they survived. Apparently, he was shoved onto a troop train and traveled to Camp Dodge, Iowa.

His photo album has pictures of him having a good time and goofing around with friends, in his rolling kitchen, a converted baggage car. I gather he lived, slept, ate, and worked in the baggage car en route to Camp Dodge. He then was shipped to Camp Fremont near Palo Alto, Calif, where his unit trained. He petitioned and was accepted into the Masonic Lodge here.

Later his unit was slated to go to France. Back on the train, this time to Hoboken, N.J.. He went aboard the “Empress of Russia,” a troop ship. The armistice was then signed and they didn’t know what to do with the troops on board. After much delay, the ship sailed, not to Europe, but to Newport News, Va. Dad was sent to Camp Lee (Petersburg, Va.) where he was honorably discharged. Apparently, they handed him a corporal’s stripes in one hand and a discharge in the other together with a railroad ticket to Mercer and home.

Enter Mr. Frank B. Bell. Mr. Bell was a native of Mercer. He attended Lehigh University, became an engineer, traveled to Germany (pre-war), learned a lot about steel-making including how to make rolled steel railroad wheels and locomotive ‘tires’ (previously only cast and susceptible to cracks, brittleness, etc. He invented and/or perfected a new rolling mill process to make RR wheels, tires, gear rings, etc. He returned to Pittsburgh, started the Edgewater Steel Co at Oakmont, Pa, hired many old Mercer boys he knew, among whom were Hollis and Uncle Mac, Tan McElrath, Walter McCain, Lew Engel, Matt Matthews, etc.

So, Dad went to work for Edgewater Steel Co and remained there until he retired. Later, both Frank and I worked there for a while. We also knew Mr. Frank Bell and later his son Dave Bell who succeeded him. Both were very educated and refined gentlemen and engineers. Uncle Mac worked in the Production Dept. Dad went to Sales office and eventually became office manager of the sales department. He never did function as a salesman per se. He did become responsible for preparing all the quotations for Edgewater, except for the ‘small mill’- miscellaneous small rings and ring springs.

At Edgewater, he met my mother, Jean Abercrombie, and married her, I believe, on Nov. 23 or 28, 1925. Simple arithmetic makes him 34 at the time he married. She was 25.

Hollis was a heavy smoker and died of emphysema.