Delpha Harris

1860 > PENNSYLVANIA > MCKEAN > BRADFORD

Series: M653 Roll: 1138 Page: 596 Previous PageNext Page

Surname:Harris GivenName:Delpha Age:52 Sex:M Race:W Birthplace: NH

Occupation listed as: Shoemaker

Grandfather Delpha Harris and his wife Anna Moore Harris had five children. Emma, being a baby, came from Frewsberg, New York in the spring of 1843. They came by horse and ox team, and lived for a short time in the Marilla Zeliff house on the east road above where the present cross road is. Then they located in Harrisburg Run, but after a few years returned to Tuna where they built first a log house, then a small one of timber, and later a substantial frame house much as it stands today. Whatever farming grandpa did was on a small scale. He was a shoemaker, noted far and wide for his skill.

I find it difficult to summarize his character apart from what has already been said. He was a great lover of cats, and always had two or three immense ones. "Colonel" was said to be eighteen years old, and was becoming cross to the grandchildren. One day when we inquired for him, we were told that grandpa gave him a piece of meat,and he died. Like most fathers of his generation, he had been rather severe with his older children; May and Cort were allowed to romp at will; and it broke his heart to see one of his grandchildren punished.

I have no recollections of his having much to say around home. I know that we children always felt welcome anywhere around the home, the barn or in his little shoemaker's shop. The stores of nuts in the loft, especially oft he butternuts fromthe big tree by the pump, but also of the hickory nuts fromthe trees down on the "bayous" were always at our disposal. But when he visited our home on High Street, he talked freely and well, and showed a keen intelligence and wide interests. I am sure now that my father was his favorite child, and that he was as fond of my mother as of his own daughters. I did not at all realize that I was a favorite until the time of his death. I was at Normal School in Geneseo and had not intended to come home for Thanksgiving. My father sent for me, saying that grandpa was failing and wanted to see me. When he held me close, and cried over me, I began to feel that I had meant much to him. He died just before my Christmas vacation. He had come to our home one day before his long illness, and asked father to go with him to pick out a lot in the cemetery, and get one for himself at the same time so that the two would be adjoining. This was done, bgut my father paid most, or all, for both of them, and eventually they were made into onelot, and have become almost a family burial plot.

Grandfather Harris had been a Whig from his early manhood; but when the Republican party was organized, and for many years, voted the straight ticket. I well remember him sitting at our table some time in the late seventies or early eighties, and saying "Well, I scratched my ticket today for the first time in my life."

Grandfather Delpha Harris's house was a refuge for anyone who needed a home. Besides Eliza Jones, to whom I have already referred, Will Howe had his home there the greater part of his life. Young men like Sid (?) and Lou (?) Sager got their start in life there. Aunt May with her family was there months at a time. And Cort and his family really had no other home. Though somewhat overshadowed by the more brilliant traits of his wife, Anna Moore Harris, there must have been in Delpha Harris a strong, firm, reliable source of strength that never failed.

Louella O. Harris 1931 (Transcribed by Cindy Kittle)