Thomas Reynolds Sr.   

REYNOLDS, THOMAS, SR. Family nomenclature has lost its significance in cosmopolitan and democratic America, and whether the descendants of patricial houses on the other side of the sea have degenerated in the unrolling of genealogical lines by intermarriage, is a question that does not much concern a person of worth. Only the weak and indolent rest upon the ostentatious support of ancestral prestige. Yet there is a conventional usage among the people, of retrospectively glancing toward Plymouth Rock, though here and there a plebeian acre depreciates the view. Then, in the year 1676, after a voyage of twenty-two weeks, one Henry Reynolds, a member of an old Chichester (England) family, landed on the shores of the New World. This was forty-seven years prior to the birth of Joshua Reynolds, the most noted painter of his day, and the "bright particular star" of the family connection. Henry located at Burlington, New Jersey, and finally in Chester, Pennsylvania, and he and his immediate descendants were extensive freeholders in and about Philadelphia, many acres of the present city then having rested in their title. To him and his wife Prudence, ten children were born. Henry Reynolds died in 1724, and Prudence in 1728.

Francis Reynolds, the third in order of birth of the ten children above mentioned, was born August 15, 1684. Of him it is only recorded that his wife’s name was Elizabeth, and that he was the father of Samuel Reynolds.

This link of the lineal chain was forged January 31, 1755, and perished February 26, 1786. The spouse’s name was Jane Jones, and the nuptials were solemnized at Salem, Delaware. Seven children were the issue of this union. The said Jane Jones, whose years extended from 1734 to 1779, was the daughter of John and Mary (Goodwin) Jones, but there is no further trace of the ancestral line on the maternal side. Then, as now, women did not seem to enjoy the equality and respect to which they were entitled, and this prejudice was carried to a ridiculous excess in family records that appeared to show that women had very little, if any, part in the propagation of the race.

Thomas Reynolds, the eldest, son of Samuel and Mary Reynolds, was born January 2, 1759, and died July 7, 1837. He consorted Nancy Reynolds, of an independent Reynolds family, among whose immediate ancestors the name Bird occurs. This probably points to a Mesozoic origin. Her death occurred January 5, 1845. Seven seems to have been a lucky (or, according to the pessimist, an unlucky) number with the house of Reynolds in regard to its offspring. Each abstract family, it is a remarked coincidence, aggregates seven members. Seven were born to Thomas and Nancy Reynolds, and these were named, consecutively, Mary, Jane, Abraham, Samuel, Tilton William and Thomas of whom the last is the subject of this biography. Mary (Parke) lived till 1868, and was the only consanguineous tie of the youngest brother at the time of her death. There remains of this generation only two beings within the knowledge of the writer. These are Margaret Jane (Reynolds) Myers and Ruth Reynolds, sisters, who reside in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and who were the daughters of Abram, a brother of Thomas, whose common father was Samuel.

Thomas Reynolds, Sr., was born on the 19th day of September, 1807, on the parental homestead, near Parkesburg, Chester county. In his youth only such educational advantages were enjoyed as were to be had outside of a university; but these, although not comparable to the excellent facilities of today, were not to be despised, as the lack of variation in studies was, in a great degree, compensated by the thorough manner in which the few were taught. Then, too, his call for solid learning found a responsive voice in his father, who was not only a competent teacher and profound philosopher, but a companion and friend as well. The education thus acquired by Thomas Reynolds qualified him as an instructor to others, and in this section of Pennsylvania he was one of the pioneer teachers under the present school system. His language in conversation and in his limited literary products gave evidence of pure philological training, consisting, as they did, in well-chosen words, pregnant of meaning and elegant in phraseology.

Early in life he became apprenticed to the currying and shoemaking trades, in both of which he made himself master, as was his want in whatever was undertaken. Franklin and Washington counties, in New York, were the scenes of his primitive operations, and his topography of those communities was very graphic, associated, as it was, with rich reminiscences of hunting life, colored by racy and startling anecdotes. In 1876 he revisited the hallowed grounds made sacred by youthful adventure, but civilization had crept in and obliterated nearly all the familiar landmarks, except the outline of mountain and vale, and the metamorphosis illy gratified the heart of one who once chased the deer through the far reaching fastnesses.
He visited New York city with the purpose of making it a place of permanent residence, encouraged in the project by a millionaire uncle and other resident relatives of Manhattan Island. But "man made the town," and the roving spirit of Thomas Reynolds was antagonistic to a" pent up Utica." "The streets were too narrow," he explained to the writer; and so, in 1835, he came to Western Pennsylvania, when the country was rich in primeval forests and undisturbed minerals.
Tilton and William Reynolds, his brothers, had preceded him hither, and were comfortably domiciled on the lands now occupied by the mining village of Rathmel. Tilton was married, his wife having been Sarah Sprague, of a Vermont family. The first fall of their hermitage life they captured fourteen swarms of bees, and these, together with an extensive sugar industry, were exchanged for other necessary products, such as grain and salt, and with bear meat and venison, supplied by the brothers, the pioneer community flourished.
Tilton, in 1839, located on the summit of the mountain above Rathmel, and associated with William, inaugurated a mercantile enterprise and established a post-office. The name of the village was suitably called Prospect, for from its lofty altitude the view was picturesque and widely extended. The title was in poetic contrast to the postal name given the place at a later period—that of Dolingville.

Tilton Reynolds was the Columbus of the great coal vein of this region, which has since gained a world-wide ce1ebrity, and has become one of the most extensive bituminous industries of the continent. The fuel of the widely separated inhabitants of the country was wood, but a little coal was added to increase the heat and longevity of the fire. For blacksmithing purposes John Fuller, who was here when the Reynoldses came, used coal procured out of the bottom of Sandy Creek.

William Reynolds in 1839 married Elizabeth Kyle, and in their offspring the magic number seven again turned up. He was a man of polished erudition and affable address, and his death in 1854 was mourned by a host of genuine admirers and friends.

Samuel Reynolds, another brother, sojourned awhile in this community, and Abram, the eldest, made a pilgrimage to the remote settlement. The latter was seven feet in stature, and weighed four hundred and fifty pounds.

Thomas, while not engaged in other communities at school teaching, shoemaking, or hunting, lived with his brother William, for whom he had the warmest fraternal feeling. At this period of his life he was yet under thirty years of age, over six feet in height, and as straight as an arrow. He was of gentlemanly and attractive manners, and of a superb and seemingly tireless physique.

His first commercial adventure was the building of a tannery on the site now occupied by James A. Cathers, but this was soon abandoned for more pretentious enterprises.

In 1842 he wedded Juliana Smith, and, by some conjugal conjuration, lo! up bobs-the importunate number seven again—five boys and two girls. These were: Tilton, born October 26, 1843; Arthur Parke, December 5, 1845; Clarinda Emeline, April 11, 1848; Margaret Jane, June 19, 1850; William S., April 7, 1853; Thomas, September 25, 1856; John Daugherty, September 1, 1858. Of these, two are dead—the second, whose dissolution occurred on December 12, 1874, and the youngest, a man of fine mind and great promise, on March 19, 1886.

Thomas Reynolds located permanently on the present site of a portion of Reynoldsville, and built a tannery and saw-mill near where the Reynolds residence now stands, which were the only manufacturing industries of the immediate community in the years between 1840 and 1860. And, indeed, not until 1870 were there any other industries save the great sustaining one of shipping timber. The log house, recently demolished, was erected in 1843, and was a very Brogdingnag in its day. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have changed hands within its walls in lumber transactions, mercantile trade, and postal service. The post-office at Prospect was carried down to the old house one day in 1850, and the following is the authoritative document in the premises:

"POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT, APPOINTMENT OFFICE,

"February 23, 1850.

"SIR:—I have the honor to inform you that the postmaster-general has this day changed the name of the post-office at Prospect Hill to Reynoldsville, in the county of Jefferson, and State of Pennsylvania, and continued Thomas Reynolds postmaster thereof.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

"PETER HENRY WARNER,

"Second Assistant Postmaster-General.

"JAMES THOMPSON, House, of Representatives."

Previous to this Thomas Reynolds had surveyed and named Winslow township, the name having been given in honor of Judge Winslow, of whom he was a friend and admirer. The project of a town, however, was long contemplated before 1850, the dominant reasons being first to induce a physician to locate in the community—for the inhabitants were frequently compelled to call medical advice from Indiana, a distance of forty miles—and, secondly, to secure postal facilities; and Maida, the tutelary genius of Alba Longa, was not more zealous or tireless, touching the welfare of the antique city than was our modern tutelar of Reynoldsville. He acted as postmaster almost unremittingly, and at a pecuniary disadvantage, from the establishment of the office till his death. Although ever greatly interested in public affairs, he was yet unwilling to act as the agent of the people. Possessed of an influence that could at any time have made itself felt, and which even appeared during the early days of the county as almost irresistible, personal aggrandizement never occurred to him; or, if it did, he put it under his feet as a noisome thing.

In its entirety the character of Thomas Reynolds was essentially a strong one, and in his lineal race he stands out as a type of what a Reynolds should be. He was not a "chip of the old block," but the very block itself. His strong personality and lively sense of independence isolated him from the estimate put upon every consanguineous person, whether of anterior or subsequent birth. To strangers, and sometimes even to those who were intimately acquainted with him, he appeared eccentric in his habits and modes of thought; but these were owing to the mingled threads of sentiment and independence that ran through all the warp and woof alike of his character. Beneath these exterior qualities, there was a deep and strong vein of wit and humor, that brightened each thought, which passed through his mind, making him a rarely pleasant companion.

But the most conspicuous traits of his nature were a sense of honor incapable of a stain—a probity which was stubborn in its inflexibility—and an abiding, deeply rooted, uncompromising detestation, even horror, of all shams and hypocrisy, whether religious, political, or of any other kind. It is easily seen that such a man, in this day and generation, however deep a reverence he might have for the Author of his being as the great and good God—the Father, Preserver and Protector of all the common brotherhood of man—would rather retire those sentiments and feelings, and keep them sacred within the innermost recesses of his own soul, than to make a parade of them before the world. As firm and unyielding as the eternal hills when his decision was once framed, his was the material of which martyrs were made; as gentle and tender as a woman, every helpless creature found in him a friend and protector when in distress.

Death occurred to Thomas Reynolds, Sr., on the 16th of May, 1881.

This biography would by no means be complete should it not embrace a sketch of the wise and faithful wife who was so intimately identified with the life of him whose history is just recorded. "Praise no man while he lives" is an ancient and judicious saying, to which Heloise added, in a letter to Abelard: "Give not commendation at a time when the very act of doing it may make him undeserving of it." But the good common sense of Juliana Reynolds is too lively and practicable to be very susceptible to the suavity of words.

Of her ancestry we have it in genealogical record that one William Smith came to America from Gloucester, England, in 1635. Boston was settled by John Winthrop and others five years earlier, and Smith became a citizen of the embryo New England metropolis. The town records begin about the time of his advent. He was there persecuted for his religious principles. What those principles were the account says not, but this was the period in which the church of Boston was much troubled about Roger Williams and his heresy, and the Anti-nomian controversy, and it is probable that the judicial ban that obtained over Williams also effected Smith, for ostracism drove him to Hempstead, Long Island, in 1639, where he joined forty sympathetic Boston families who had colonized under the flag of Holland. He met his fate at the hands of Indians. Of his offspring, there was one Abraham, who, in turn, had a son Isaac, whose days were between the years of 1657 and 1746. He died at Hempstead Plains. His son, Jacob, 1690-1757, had a son Isaac born, in 1722, who emigrated from Queens county to Dutchess county in 1769. Jacob, son of Isaac, 1746—1810, who married a Peters, was the father of Uriah, born in 1771, and died in 1817. He married a woman named Lester, and his conjugal flock numbered nine, of whom was Valentine Hulet Peters Smith, born 1796, and died on the Smith homestead, near Reynoldsville (now T. B. London’s farm), in 1860. He was the father of Juliana (Smith) Reynolds.

On the maternal side we have no access to any record save the tradition that Juliana’s great-grandmother was an intemperate tea drinker, and gathered the leaves of the shrub in her apron from the waters of Boston harbor where the irascible subjects of the third George had their famous tea party in 1773. Granville, Bradford and Sprague are the ancestral names, all of English origin and of New England stock. The Spragues lived in Vermont, then emigrated to Chateaugay, New York, where Tilton Reynolds married the daughter of John Sprague, whose name was Sarah, and Valentine H. P. Smith wedded Rebecca, her sister, who became the mother of five children, of whom our present subject is the third.

Valentine H. P Smith, emigrated to this section of Pennsylvania in the same year with Thomas Reynolds, when Juliana was seven years of age. During the ensuing decade, the girl endured the hardships and meagre advantages of a severe pioneer life, and in early maidenhood took upon herself conjugal responsibilities, and the arduous duties of presiding over a large establishment. Through all the years up to his death, she was the faithful helpmeet of Thomas Reynolds, and a kind and wise maternal guardian. During the civil conflict of 1861—65 no one did better loyal service, not actually engaged at the theatre of war: a patriotic head and heart, to encourage in action, sympathize in distress, and laud in victory. The eldest son, Tilton, a mere boy when he enlisted, was cheerfully, though tearfully given to his country, and the mother enjoyed with pride and delight, his brave and unblemished military career, and his elevation in rank to a captaincy.

After the demise of her husband the affairs of the estate were vested in Juliana Reynolds, and her management of the diversified business has been markedly economical and sagacious. Her life has been as useful as busy, and full of charity and humanity.

Apropos of the historical allusions in this sketch, this fragment of family facts is appended: The old manse of the Smith’s, built long before the Revolution, is yet standing, a few miles east of Poughkeepsie, New York, and was, down to 1872, occupied by the successive generations of the family. In provincial days it was regarded as an architectural achievement of considerable merit. It is a two-story structure, with a roof of steep incline, under whose eaves small slide windows afforded loop-holes through which the aggressive Indians were kept at bay. Wooden hooks for gun-rests depended from the rafters, and the house was at once a residence and fortress. The kitchen is the one grand room. The windows are small with massive frames, and the doors are of hard wood and very thick, opening in horizontal sections, and locked with great iron bars. Every feature is impressive of strength and defense, and suggestive of the perils that environed the colonial inhabitants. The broad, deep fire-place is formed of huge boulders, and is of itself a primeval poem.

The family burying-ground is adjacent, and the numerous gray-stone slabs tell their sepulchral story. Here, with the generations of the Smiths, mingle the bones of those whose loves and lives were mingled in the flesh. There are Elys, Lesters, Peters, Blooms and a relic of early slavery, one old negro named " Deb;" for Jacob Smith, the grandfather of Valentine H. P. Smith, was an extensive slave-owner, and when their freedom was obtained, they were granted a living on the homestead as long as they desired to remain. Everything here shows decadence, save, perhaps, the prestige of honor marked upon the tombstones. Even the very wall, built high and strong as the everlasting adamant, totters and disintegrates, and when the stony epitaphs, telling of one being "a power in the land;" another "Judge of the King’s Bench," etc., crumble into dust, tradition itself will fade and pass away, and time will bury beneath her rubbish the very memory of things that were once majestic and mighty.

The Smith Bible, "imprinted at London by Robert Barker, printer to the King’s most excellent majestie, 1607," is in the possession of Juliana Smith Reynolds. The version of which it is a copy was prepared in Geneva, and first appeared in 1560. The translators of the version were exiled English Protestants, who had fled, from "Bloody" Mary’s cruelty, and had made Geneva their rendezvous. Of this party, William Whittingham, a brother-in-law of John Calvin, was chief. This version was the first in which the text was broken up into verses, and was, from the rendering of Genesis iii, 7, sometimes known as the "Breeches" Bible, that term being used instead of aprons." Upon a fly leaf; a crude picture and a description of the Smith coat-of-arms are traced.

History of Jefferson County : with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers. Syracuse, N.Y.: D. Mason & Co. 1888   Search Hundreds of 1880s-1890s Pennsylvania County History Books for biographies and historical information on your ancestors.  View the book page images on line and print them out for your genealogy file!  Free Access to the old history books - plus birth & death records, census images and ALL other records at ancestry.com.