Sterrett, John - Esq.

JOHN STERRETT, ESQ.

Mr. John Sterrett, a venerable bachelor, well-to-do farmer, and highly respected and intelligent citizen and native of East Huntingdon township, is of Scotch-Irish extraction. His grandfather Sterrett came to America from the north of Ireland, 1760, and settled on a farm about seven miles distant from the battle-field of Brandywine, in Chester County, Pa. Two of his oldest children, James and John, participated in that battle. In Chester County he reared to maturity a family of four sons and three daughters, and about 1786 he with his wife and children started out for Kentucky to join Daniel Boone, but reaching the place now called Mount Pleasant, in Westmoreland County, on the day before Christmas, they found themselves snow-bound, the snow being three feet deep. Compelled to tarry till spring, they finally made permanent residence in Westmoreland County, settling on a tract of land of three hundred and fifty-five acres, with an allowance of six per cent, for roads, etc., thrown in, and which was bought of Isaac Meason. The present farm of John Sterrett belonged to this tract. Upon this land the boys put up (at a point only a few rods in front of where Mr. Sterrett’s house now stands) a good log cabin, which the family occupied for some time. The third son in number was Moses, the father of our John Sterrett. He married Margaret Woodrow, daughter of John Woodrow, a farmer, and a descendant of Puritan stock. John and Margaret Sterrett had eight children,— Polly, who married John Smith, and moved to MoUnt Vernon, Ohio, where she died Jan. 9, 1879; James, deceased; John; Elizabeth; Moses, now residing in Springfield, Fayette Co., Pa.; William, who died young; Samuel, died aged about twenty-one; and Jesse, who died at about the same age. Moses Sterrett died Jan. 5, 1839, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. His wife preceded him to the grave, she dying Jan. 1, 1831, at about the age of fifty-nine years.

John Sterrett was born Nov. 23, 1805, and was brought up on the homestead farm, and got his book education in the common and subscription schools, going into arithmetic as far as "the rule of three," where the teachers of those days usually came to a halt. A few pages of what was miscalled "grammar" (a dictionary of synonymous terms prefixed to a spelling-book) was the end of "literary" education in the schools. On each Saturday Mr. Sterrett’s teacher brought to the school-house a bottle of whiskey to induce the large boys to cut wood for the fires of the coming week. Thus the school was "run" in the winters. Mr. Sterrett relates several amusing anecdotes of the teachers of his early days. They all wrote a fine hand, though but few of them knew enough to keep a farm account.

On his native farm Mr. Sterrett has resided all his life. After the death of his father the sister, Elizabeth (still living in vigorous old age), and he accepted the farm as their portion in the settlement of the estate, and have since occupied it jointly, keeping no accounts between themselves, both having wrought industriously. They have greatly improved the farm, erected upon it an excellent house and spacious outbuildings, and are passing their old days as farmers in peace and quiet. Mr. Sterrett, unvexed by a wife and family, has in his lifetime found much time to read, and is a gentleman of more intellectual property than most farmers or other men weighed down with family cares.

In politics Mr. Sterrett is a Republican, and says he doesn’t know how he could be anything else. (But this remark must not be construed as reflecting upon the honesty or ignorance of his neighbors who are not Republicans.) He was formerly an Old-Line Whig.

About forty years ago he attached himself to the Methodist order, but has never attended church much. Miss Elizabeth Sterrett, his co-farming sister, belongs to the Presbyterian Church.

A branch of the Southwest Pennsylvania Railroad, called the Hickman Run Branch, is now in process of grading across the Sterrett farm, running over the old play-ground immediately about the cabin wherein Mr. Sterrett was born. Thus the car of progress rolls on mercilessly, invading and destroying the sacred places of memory. Mr. Sterrett from his house looks down upon the broken and violated landscape, the theatre of his childhood’s gambols and afterwards a beauty-spot of his farm, with no poetic affections, it may well be conceived, for railroad schemes.