Memories of Dean and Agnes

George Dean Saxton, 1895-1971, and Agnes Florence Saxton, 1896?-1973

By Dorothy Saxton Dusa[1]

Light editing and footnotes by Matt Saxton[2] in August 2023

My father was born on S.M. McConnell farm[3], as was his mother, Annie McConnell Saxton[4], and her mother, Sarah Jane Wallace[5]. Both his mother and grandmother lived their entire lives there and died there. His mother had never been farther than 50 miles away, and I expect that his grandmother had not been that far. Both of my father’s older brothers[6] were born in the old house, which stood were the stable was.

The old house was destroyed by fire in an electrical storm as were most of the farm buildings. Below the barn was a log building that was from the older farm buildings, and in the lower part of the orchard was another building that was a chicken house. Dad’s mother was pregnant with him at the time of the fire. They lived in a tent while the house was being constructed and had only been in the new house a few days when my father was born.

Life on the Farm

The new house was much larger than the old one, and even though it had four large bedrooms upstairs, his parents[7] slept on an in-a-door[8] bed in what was called the “sitting room” because they were so afraid of fire. The house had a pantry, very large kitchen with gas fireplace, the sitting room with another gas fireplace, enormous hall with stairway leading to the upstairs, a front parlor with another gas fireplace, and the four bedrooms (of which two had gas fireplaces). There was a single gas pipe that ran in the middle of the ceiling for a gas light in most of the rooms, but in some only lamps that burned lamp oil were used.

There was a porch that went around two sides of the house and a back porch to the kitchen. There was an outside entrance to the basement plus an inside stairway that led off the kitchen. The basement was not cemented. Just inside the basement from the outside entrance was a long cement trough, the cream separator, and a large fruit cupboard. The rest of the basement was used just for “junk” collected. The basement was only under the kitchen and sitting room. Water was run into that trough some way from the outside well and then out again. This was used to keep milk and cream in. The milk and cream were stored in large crocks. After the separator was used, or butter made, the utensils were washed and laid out on the open doors of the outside entrance to the basement to “sterilize” in the sun.

We mostly lived in the kitchen and the sitting room. During the summer, the men shaved on the porch where a washstand stood with mirror above it. My grandfather’s razor strap hung on the side of the washstand. The water to wash or shave was carried from a cistern that stood by the side of the house, between it and what was called the “wash house.” In winter, the men shaved by a window in the kitchen using a table for the bowl of water, etc.

There was a gas stove with an oven that was burner-level, which was mostly used for cooking. At the other end of the kitchen was a large wood stove with an oven down below burners, and this had a large tank on one side where water was heated. This stove was not used during the summer as it made the kitchen so hot. Baths in winter (and they were few) were taken in a galvanized wash tub in the kitchen in front of the fireplace. Several people used the same bath water. The cleanest went first and the dirtiest last.

There was a sink in the pantry that had a pump to get water from the cistern, but it could not be used too often in the winter because it froze up. The drinking water was drawn in a bucket from the well at the other side of the house, and a bucket sat on a table in the kitchen with a tin cup beside it to drink out of.

The wash house was used to wash clothes. It was a cold place to wash in the winter, and the clothes had to be hung outdoors. They would freeze on the lines, and I guess to a degree did freeze dry. They were brought in and spread all around the kitchen on the backs of chairs, etc. We did not change clothes but once a week, and often some things were worn longer. The ironing was done with “flat irons” that were heated on the stove.

In the pantry, there was a big bin in which flour and sugar were kept. In the fall, this was bought by the barrel as it had to last the winter. Most of what was eaten on the farm was produced there, except for these two items. Most of what had to be gotten from a store was obtained by trading butter, eggs, fresh chickens, and garden produce.

Not much money ever changed hands. This was how it was during my father’s childhood, his mother’s, and grandmother’s. The same was true with the five years that we lived there with my grandfather[9] when I was small.

In the winter, we were mostly snowed in. Occasionally, we could get out on horseback. Otherwise, we walked. My grandfather used to walk occasionally to Florence when he was out of tobacco. He did not smoke but chewed something called “Apple Jack.”

There was a building that was the smokehouse. Here hams were kept and here bacon and hams smoked. If it was too warm to keep meat, it was canned. There was another building where my grandfather kept his “car.” This had been built for an icehouse and was used during my father’s time but not mine. Ice was cut from the creek in winter and stored in the sawdust. The house and buildings I have mentioned stood on top of the hill as did the orchard. Below the house, on a flat spot where the old house had been, were the farm buildings. Near the stable was an old well that had been the water supply for the old house. In it, milk was lowered, and even butter, to keep it cold during the summer.

Down the lane a piece, there was a spring where the animals watered, and it once had a spring house. It was used when the old house still stood. The old house had some parts that were made of log from earlier days and other parts of handmade brick.

My father was severely burned when he was about 3. He had very bad scars on his right hip, his ribs, and his back on the right side. His mother was making something in an open kettle over an outdoor fire. He got too close, and his “dress” caught fire. In those days, little boys wore dresses until they were about age 5. There were no hospitals or burn clinics. He was nursed by his mother at home. My mother told me that my grandmother told her it was terrible to see a small child suffer so much. And she said that my grandmother always worried about how much harm had been done to his lungs and kidneys.

The Schoolhouse at Coventry

My father and his brothers attended Coventry School. This was a one-room school that was 2 miles, approximately, to walk. Dad’s mother had attended the same school, and so did my brother and me.

The schoolbooks were kept in a large bin the school, and I often had the same books that my father had used as his name would be in them. There was no lighting in the school at all. A large coal stove in the center of the room and a building outside that coal was kept in, plus a stall for the teacher’s horse, and—some distance from the school—two outside bathrooms. Some of the seats were single desks and others double. There was a bench in the back of the room where a water bucket stood and where we set our lunchpails. We hung coats above the bench on nails and put boots under the bench. Behind the teacher’s desk at the front of the room was a blackboard. This blackboard had the etching of a man’s head that had been made with bullets. This was done by my father’s brother, Wallace. He shot around the teacher’s head to make it. Kids went to school there until they were big boys, even though it had only eight grades and some of the boys were hard to handle.

There used to be an old man, 93 years old, who took care of the Grandview Cemetery. His name was Leonard McConnell (he is now dead and not related to us). One time, when I was down at the cemetery and standing by my grandparents’ Saxtons’ grave, he came up to me.

“I know that you are Annie’s granddaughter as you look so much like her,” Mr. McConnell said. “Are you Roy’s or Dean’s daughter?”

He told me that he had taught my father at the Coventry school. The boys were so hard to handle, he said, that they couldn’t get a teacher to stay. He said he had to fight it out with a couple of the bigger guys in the beginning. After he bested him, he had no more problems with the others.

One of the teachers that I had was my Uncle Roy. Teachers often had no more schooling than eight grades themselves. Uncle Roy had had two years of high school. My “school year” there had been eight months, but Dad’s had only been seven. The average boy in his day never attended more than about six months. They were needed on the farms in fall for harvesting and again in the spring for planting.

High School Sweethearts

When Dad was around 14, he was expelled from the school. From then on, he had to walk to Florence to the school there. In school at Florence, he was in classes with my mother. But they had practically known each other always, as they went to Sunday School and church together.[10] Mother told me about seeing Dad come in with his parents when quite small, and he had so many freckles on his face that he looked like a speckled egg.

In those one-room schools, the teachers taught the students only as far as their own education. Dad had algebra and other subjects that I had in high school there. Most farm boys in his day quit school at 16, and some even sooner, and went to work full time on the farm. My grandmother wanted more for her sons. Both Roy and Wallace attended high school in Burgettstown (which was a two-year high school)[11] and managed to do this by riding back and forth on horses, and even walking.

Dad went to business college right out of eighth grade. He went to Duffs-Iron City College in Pittsburgh. I went there, also, after I graduated from high school. Dad got his first job at the foreign exchange of the Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh, and this was where he worked when he and mother were first married.

They were married Aug. 1, 1914, in Washington, Pa., at the home of Robert Stevenson on Jefferson Avenue. Robert Stevenson was mother’s foster mother’s half-brother, but he was actually my mother’s blood uncle.[12] They went to Mt. Washington in Pittsburgh by “trolley car,” where they had rented a two-room furnished apartment.

A Family Secret

My mother was born in the Florence Crittendon Home for Unwed Mothers in Cleveland[13], Ohio, on July 22, 1896.[14] Her mother was a very pretty 16-year-old girl[15] who was the daughter of the City Controller for the City of Pittsburgh.[16] In those days, illegitimacy was one of the greatest of sins and this young mother would have been ostracized for the rest of her life. Society was not satisfied to just do this to the unfortunate mother, but they punished the child as well.

My mother’s father was a very successful attorney[17], the son of a Presbyterian minister, was 40 years old[18], and was married and separated but not yet divorced.[19] He was an extremely handsome man, very talented and accomplished in social graces. It was predicted that he would be the first judge on the bench, in time, in Pittsburgh. He and his four brothers were all college graduates, had studied music in Vienna (he was a fine pianist), and all were successful in their careers. They had a half-sister by their father’s first marriage, and she had been educated in a finishing school.

My mother’s mother saw her only once after birth and she named her Agnes. The mother returned to her family leaving my mother at the home. She resumed her life at home[20] and no one ever knew of her having borne a child. Eventually, she married well and lived in Greensburg, Pa. She never had any other children.[21] The father’s law career ended pretty much.[22] He eventually got his divorce and remarried and had a family. I remember him, his wife, and children well. He died of cancer in both of his eyes.

The Quiet Adoption

Dr. James Potts, who was the brother of Jerome Potts, was the family physician of the child-mother. He was very kind and more tolerant man than most of the strait-laced Presbyterians in those days. He was really concerned about my mother’s fate. She was a very tiny baby, very pretty and appealing. Being left at the home meant that she would grow up among many unwanted children until big enough to be placed with a family to work for her keep. There was no special care or attention for such babies in the home and my mother was not thriving and probably would have died.

The doctor’s brother and his wife, Elizabeth (who was the half-sister of the child’s father)[23], were in their 40s and childless. Dr. Potts went to them and convinced them to take my mother to raise as their foster daughter. The doctor gave my mother the middle name of Florence and the last name of Thornton. The story of her background given to the community was that both her parents had died, there were no relatives, and they knew nothing of her background, except that her family had been patients of the doctor. My grandparents Potts would have adopted her in time, but it could not be done without her parentage being revealed.

Mother was always beautiful both as a child and woman. She was extremely intelligent, very sensitive, warm, and loving. When she was about 8 years old, in a childish quarrel with a neighbor child, the child told her that Mr. & Mrs. Potts were not her parents, that she did not belong to anyone and no one wanted her, and she was given to the Potts. Mother told me she ran home sobbing and up to her room where she wouldn’t leave. She was heartbroken. My grandmother couldn’t get her to tell her what was wrong. When my grandfather returned from his farm chores, he went to her and picked her up and said, “What has hurt my little girl so much?” And then she sobbed out what the other child had said. He told her that they were not her parents but that she was and always would be the child of his heart and was his little girl.

She said that got her temporarily over the crisis then, but from then on it was a question in her mind to her of who she was, where she came from, why she didn’t have parents of her own, etc. And she questioned her parents from time-to-time. I think that it was Dr. Potts who eventually told her about her mother. And somehow, she herself figured out her “Uncle Matthew” was her father. My grandmother never really told her until he and all her family had died.

My father told me that mother was the prettiest girl in all western Pennsylvania and others have told me the same. She was also very intelligent and very bright in school. My grandparents were quite poor and only could manage to feed her and keep her clothed with hand-me-downs. They knew she was so intelligent and wished they could have given her an opportunity for an education, but they could not. My grandmother once contacted the parents of the mother of my mother and asked if they would do anything to help her, and they refused. She tried to get financial help from her family, too, and it was refused. Everyone was afraid their “secret” would be found out. Matthew had made such a mess of his own life and had a wife and children that he really could not help. The Stevenson family all helped see that Matthew’s children were educated but would do nothing for my mother. So, mother had no formal education beyond the eight grades in Florence school. But she was a learned woman. She read extensively and observed and retained.

At the time of my mother’s death, so many of the older people who came to pay their respects told me about both her and my father in their youths. They talked about how smart she was in school, how fun loving and witty she was, how beautiful, what a genuine and loyal friend she was, and how neither she nor Dad had eyes for anyone else. They said there was never any question of their ever even being interested in other boys or girls, as it had been just the other to both from the very beginning.

Tough Beginnings

And so, they were married. The first Christmas after they were married, my father got my mother a wicker sewing basket that she had kept, and which had really disintegrated with time. In her last years, she kept reminding me that I must be sure to take care of this. She was unaware that nothing was left of it but a few pieces of wood and sawdust. I threw it out after she died as there was no way of restoring it. She had made her own wedding dress and sewn it all by hand. She had kept the dress, too. She wanted to be buried in it. But again, time had caused it to yellow and deteriorated to a degree that there was no possible way to do this. I wrapped it in white tissue and put it in the casket with her. My father, to my mother, was the beginning and end of life. These two items were her most cherished possessions and symbols of their love.

I was born nine months and 12 days after my parents were married. Mother had a terrible labor that lasted 48 hours. Dr. Saxton[24] just laid me on the floor in front of the fireplace when it ended. He worked to save her life and never expected me to live. I was born in my grandparents Pott’s home in Florence, Pa. That house is still standing and lived in. It was bought by my grandparents in 1879 and mother said it was an old house when they bought it. I expect it to be close to 200 years old.

Right after I was born, my parents moved to Oakdale, Pa., where my father had gotten a job that paid better. They rented a part of a house and had furnished it with what the families gave them and the few pieces they managed to buy. I was less than 3 months old when mother got rheumatic fever. Again, it was a fight for her life. She spent six months in bed unable to move. By the time the fever had subsided, her right wrist was twisted and stiff and her left leg was bent in sitting position and knee stiff. The doctor said it would always be like this and she would never walk again. My mother begged my father to straighten that leg, as the doctor would not even attempt it. Dad did, and by the time he finished, she had fainted with the pain, and he fainted, too. This left her leg stiff, but knee not bent.

There was no physical therapy in those days. There was no money for her to have hospital care at the time of the illness. Dad had a practical nurse (and these had no formal training) and himself to care for her. I was sent to my grandmother Saxton’s to be cared for, and she had me for about two years, except for a day now and then when my grandmother Potts took me. My grandfather Potts was a terminal intestinal cancer patient and she had him to nurse, so Grandmother Potts could not help me.

Mother finally got so she could get around on crutches to a degree, but again the doctor said she never would be able to walk. She taught herself to walk by mowing grass with the lawnmower. She did this at my grandparents Saxton’s farm. Mother said she would fall and had to be helped up, and that Dad and his mother would beg her not to keep trying as they were afraid she would break the leg. But she was determined to walk. Don[25] was born when she still had to use crutches mostly. He was born in Oakdale, Pa., I think.

My father worked in Oakdale in a TNT plant during World War I. The plant blew up and many of the men were killed. It was right after the change of shifts that the explosion happened. Dad had just come home. After that, he went to work for a man named Joe Hartman who had a roofing business. Anna[26] was born in Oakdale, too, and I remember the day she was born. I was 5 then.

Back to the Farm

My grandmother Saxton died that year (1921) on Christmas Eve. Work was scarce and my parents were having a rough time of it. My grandfather Saxton asked them to come live with him on the farm. They did this because living there would be a way of keeping food in our mouths. But the work of that big house and of a farmer’s wife was terrible for my mother. Everything was upstairs and down, and uphill and down. Her duties included churning and making butter, raising chickens and dressing them by the hundreds for market, washing out in the cold wash house in winter, carrying water, hanging clothes out in freezing weather. This was a terrible load for a crippled woman to carry. And it was an awfully lonely life for her.

Dad worked in summers on road construction jobs where he stayed on the job. In winter, when the weather got too bad for this, he was at home on the farm. There were times he was gone for several months at a time and mother saw only my grandfather and children. Her days started at 5 a.m., lasted until dark, and then she would lie in bed at night unable to sleep because of her legs pained her so.

Move to Harmon Creek

Finally, my father got a job at Harmon Creek Coal Co. as a timekeeper, which paid $80 per month. He rode to work on horseback but there were times during the winter when he walked the 5 miles. At this time, I was just about through the Hanover school and was 11 years old. I had skipped a couple of grades along the way. The closest high school was Burgettstown. If they stayed on the farm, my education would be finished as it would be too far for me to walk (no school buses then). So, we moved to a Harmon Creek company house and my Great Aunt Florence went to live with my grandfather. That house at Harmon Creek was a mess when we moved there. No furnace, and only two fireplaces in the whole house to heat it. No lighting or gas, no inside water (water had to be carried from a well next door), and a bathroom that was stacked high with newspapers but no water to use it. The yard was full of coal cinders and had no grass or trees. The basement was full of water. It was a real mess, but my parents were glad to have it. And my poor mother was so happy to have neighbors and be so close to town.

Dad was with the Harmon Creek Coal Co. less than a year when he was made superintendent. He was paid $150 per month. This was during The Great Depression. He got that mine going and making money. In those days, he would be out on the job all hours even in the middle of the night if something went wrong. When I graduated from high school in 1932, the country was just beginning to come out of the depression a little. Dad then was making $250 per month. I remember all the homeless men coming to the house asking if there was something they could do to earn a meal. My mother fed them all whether there was work they could do or not. And there was Old Aunt Joe, a homeless old lady that had moved into an old shed by the old company store. Dad made sure that she had coal to keep warm. Between him and Old Lu Leopold, who had a country store, she never went hungry. There were two old homeless men that lived in old camp buildings out on the job. They looked after those men, too.

Final Thoughts

I remember the pies and cookies that Mother made sure they always had on Christmas and Thanksgiving. But there were many, many people in the area that were down and out, and Dad reached into his pocket to give them some help. He turned down raises to give it to others who he felt needed it more. So many have told me how he gave them courage to go on because of his help.

Last fall, when I was at the cemetery clearing off the dead flowers of summer from their graves, a man about my age came up to me and asked if I was Dean’s daughter.[27] He is the present caretaker of the cemetery. He said that he was 16 when Dad gave him a job and, at the time, no one in the family was working. What he earned was the family income. He said to me, “Your father was the greatest man in the world and there are so many of us that…I don’t know what would have become of us but for him.”

He was so right. There are so many near Burgettstown who would never have survived the depression without him, in one way or another. There are so many that are now living comfortably that could not have managed this without Dad.

When I was a little girl living on the farm, my grandfather would often stand on the back porch in the evening and look toward the cemetery. I know he was thinking of my grandmother. You could see the cemetery from the house. At one time, I remember being with my parents at the cemetery when they were tending my grandparents Potts and grandmother Saxton’s graves. Dad showed me where to look so you could see the farmhouse.

Of course, the house is gone now, and the landscape has changed a lot, but I always look. And I always feel that my parents are resting among the people they loved and are home.

Endnote on original copy, slightly edited: This story was written by Dorothy Saxton Duso, daughter of George Dean and Agnes Saxton. She died in 1985 after several months of being ill at her home in Cleveland. Surviving are two adopted children; her brother; and her sister. –This was written by Matthew Dean Saxton, grandson of Donald Dean Saxton Sr., on March 4, 1990, after discovering it among family papers.

[1] Dorothy C. Saxton Dusa, author, was the eldest daughter of Dean and Agnes. Born 12 May 1915 in Pennsylvania, died 10 Jul 1985 in Cleveland, Ohio.

[2] Great-grandson of Dean and Agnes through Dorothy’s brother, Donald Dean Saxton Sr.

[3] Samuel Matthew McConnell, 1821-1899, author’s great-grandfather. Farm was in Hanover Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania, near the village of Florence.

[4] Anna Jane McConnell Saxton, 1868-1921.

[5] Sarah Jane Wallace McConnell, 1836-1893.

[6] Roy McConnell Saxton, 1891-1966, and James Wallace Saxton, 1892-1961.

[7] George McClellan Saxton, 1864-1941, and Anna McConnell Saxton.

[8] Murphy bed.

[9] George M.C. Saxton.

[10] Crossroads Presbyterian Church, Florence, Pennsylvania.

[11] Likely Union High School or what became Union, which is where Dorothy graduated.

[12] In this case, she is asserting that Matthew Stevenson is the father of Agnes Thornton. Robert Stevenson was the half-brother of Elizabeth Hurst Stevenson Potts, who raised Agnes as a foster child with her husband, Jerome.

[13] According to its website (https://justiceandjoynatl.org/about/our-history/), the foundation was not established until 1898.

[14] She did not have a birth certificate because they were not yet required. Her birthdate is only available through other records. The 1900 U.S. census lists her birthdate as July 1896. Her marriage license does not list her birthdate.

[15] Pennsylvania death records indicate that Sarah was born 9 Feb 1877, so she would have been 19 when Agnes was born and 18 when she became pregnant, assuming a correct birthdate for Agnes.

[16] Anges Florence Thornton is the daughter of Sara “Sadie” Lewis, who is the daughter of Joseph E. Lewis. At the time of Agnes’ birth, assuming a correct date, Joseph was not the controller of Pittsburgh. He had worked for the city for 27 years. He would become the controller in 1899 and served until he was voted out of office by a reform candidate in 1902.

[17] Matthew Stevenson, who likely was not her father. He lived at 46 Shiloh St., Pittsburgh, which is now the site of the Plaza at Grandview.

[18] Matthew Stevenson was born 19 Dec 1859. He would have been 36 when Agnes was born and 35 when Sarah became pregnant, if 1896 is the correct birthdate for Agnes.

[19] Married Margaret Ewing on 18 Nov 1888 in Washington, Pa. The Rev. Ross Stevenson, Matthew Stevenson’s father, officiated. Divorced 11 Jul 1895, Court of Common Pleas, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, which means he was divorced when Sarah Lewis became pregnant, if 1896 is the correct birth year for Agnes.

[20] Because fire damaged the 1890 census, it is hard to say where she lived. In 1880, the census lists her address as 6 Sycamore St., Pittsburgh. In 1900, the address is 161 Ulysses St. By 1900, Joseph E. Lewis was city controller. 1910 lists them at the same address.

[21] Sarah married Andrew John Weber. They did not have children. However, census records indicate that they lived in Pittsburgh and then Edgewood.

[22] Matthew Stevenson was nominated as a Prohibitionist candidate for several offices, including Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice, 1903; state treasurer, 1907; and governor, 1914. He also was a councilman for Crafton. Newspaper articles during his political days list him as a member of the Allegheny County Bar.

[23] Elizabth Stevenson Potts was the half-sister of Matthew Stevenson.

[24] Silas Warren Saxton, M.D., first cousin of author’s grandfather.

[25] Donald Dean Saxton Sr., 21 Jun 1917 to 31 May 2008. He died in Westlake, Ohio, but there was dispute about his birth being either 21 July 1917 in Oakdale or 21 June 1917 in Lumberport, West Virginia. Unmentioned is a job that Dean had in Lumberport. It was close to the time Donald was born. They also were not there long. The dispute occurred when Donald attempted to travel overseas and what he supplied as his birthdate and location did not match his birth records. Agnes, still alive at the time, wrote a letter on his behalf and said that Donald was born in Lumberport on 21 Jun 1917, but a doctor was not on hand to sign a certificate. When they returned to Oakdale a month later, the doctor accidentally used the wrong birthdate and recorded it in Pennsylvania. At the end of the letter, she wrote, “P.S., I was there. I should know.” The record was later corrected with 21 Jun but remained in Pennsylvania.

[26] Anna McConnell Saxton Mask.

[27] A fall between 1973-1984. She died in 1985.