January 2024 Program
Show and Tell and Ask

This meeting provided an opportunity for education and enlightenment with a program of sharing research findings, treasured heirlooms, and unusual stories. It was an interesting and entertaining afternoon!
Watch the recorded program here. Below are some of the highlights.
A 2nd Great Grandmother’s Presence at the Gettysburg Address
Presented by Robert Zimmerman
When going through some of his parent’s papers in the summer of 2019, Robert Zimmerman found a 1929 newspaper clipping (see left) about Mrs. Olivia Crouse’s 95th birthday celebration. At the time, Mrs. Crouse lived in Littlestown and had a son James Emery Crouse and granddaughter Bertha Crouse, who was Robert’s grandmother. Mrs. Crouse, who was Robert’s great-great grandmother, was born in 1834 and died in 1929, not long after the news article about her appeared in the newspaper.
The article states the following, “This nonagenarian has a good memory and recalls things that happened many years ago as vividly as though they had happened last week. Mrs. Crouse recalls vividly of going to Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, when President Lincoln made his famous address at the consecration of the National Cemetery. The address impressed her greatly and the prayer that was made previous to the address still lingers in her memory.” (Prayer was by Rev. Thomas H. Stockton, the Chaplin of the Senate.)
Robert Zimmerman’s Ancestors:
2nd Great Grandmother: Olivia Louise McIlvain Crouse
Married: John T. Crouse, Union Veteran of the Civil War
1st Great Grandfather: James Emery Crouse
Married: Mary Elizabeth Wisotzkey
Grandmother: Bertha Grace Crouse
Married: Robert N. Zimmerman
Father: John D. Zimmerman
Married: Theresa Mitto
Watch the recorded program here. Below are some of the highlights.
A 2nd Great Grandmother’s Presence at the Gettysburg Address
Presented by Robert Zimmerman
When going through some of his parent’s papers in the summer of 2019, Robert Zimmerman found a 1929 newspaper clipping (see left) about Mrs. Olivia Crouse’s 95th birthday celebration. At the time, Mrs. Crouse lived in Littlestown and had a son James Emery Crouse and granddaughter Bertha Crouse, who was Robert’s grandmother. Mrs. Crouse, who was Robert’s great-great grandmother, was born in 1834 and died in 1929, not long after the news article about her appeared in the newspaper.
The article states the following, “This nonagenarian has a good memory and recalls things that happened many years ago as vividly as though they had happened last week. Mrs. Crouse recalls vividly of going to Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, when President Lincoln made his famous address at the consecration of the National Cemetery. The address impressed her greatly and the prayer that was made previous to the address still lingers in her memory.” (Prayer was by Rev. Thomas H. Stockton, the Chaplin of the Senate.)
Robert Zimmerman’s Ancestors:
2nd Great Grandmother: Olivia Louise McIlvain Crouse
Married: John T. Crouse, Union Veteran of the Civil War
1st Great Grandfather: James Emery Crouse
Married: Mary Elizabeth Wisotzkey
Grandmother: Bertha Grace Crouse
Married: Robert N. Zimmerman
Father: John D. Zimmerman
Married: Theresa Mitto

Belle of the Ball!
Presented by Amy
We had a newcomer, a Spring Grove denizen, come to Sunday’s Show and Tell program who brought three treasures to share with our audience. The items were recently inherited from both her and her husband’s families and included an 1800s photo album, an original vellum warrant issued and signed by both of William Penn’s sons, and an exquisite 1794 German birth certificate for ancestor Catharina Klokin. Amy promised to come back after she learns more about these marvelous artifacts. We look forward to hearing about the fruits of her labors
Presented by Amy
We had a newcomer, a Spring Grove denizen, come to Sunday’s Show and Tell program who brought three treasures to share with our audience. The items were recently inherited from both her and her husband’s families and included an 1800s photo album, an original vellum warrant issued and signed by both of William Penn’s sons, and an exquisite 1794 German birth certificate for ancestor Catharina Klokin. Amy promised to come back after she learns more about these marvelous artifacts. We look forward to hearing about the fruits of her labors

The Transcontinental Journey of the Stayer House Bell
by Jonathan R. Stayer
Nestled at the foot of Tussey Mountain in the southern tip (South Woodbury Township) of the Morrisons Cove area of Bedford County, Pennsylvania, is a rough-hewn stone farmhouse built about 1830 allegedly by Adam Stayer, Sr. (1786-1847). Adam was my fourth-great-grandfather. Since at least the early twentieth century, this substantial structure has been known in the family as the “Stayer House,” even though a Stayer descendant has not owned it for almost one hundred years.
Adam’s son, Adam Stayer, Jr. (1824-1866) married Sarah Brallier, daughter of David and Amelia (Barnett) Brallier. Adam, Jr., and Sarah had five children, among whom were my great-great-grandfather, David Brallier Stayer, and his sister Catherine (Aunt Kate) Brallier Stayer. At the time of his death in 1866, Adam’s children were minors, so the settlement of his intestate estate continued throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century as they reached their majority.
By the early twentieth century, Aunt Kate and her husband Calvin Detwiler resided in and owned the Stayer House. David B. Stayer and his other sisters moved to California. Kate and Calvin had no children; however, about 1884 they took in Kate’s two-year-old cousin, Sarah (Sadie) Brallier Clouse, daughter of Philip D. Clouse and Martha Brallier. Martha also was a daughter of David and Amelia Brallier, and a sister to Adam Stayer, Jr.’s wife Sarah. When Martha (Brallier) Clouse died in Iowa as a 36-year-old mother, toddler Sadie was sent to live with the Detwilers in Bedford County. Because of the young age at which she arrived at the Stayer House and owing to her long association with the Stayer family, Sadie occasionally has been incorrectly identified as the daughter of Kate and Calvin Detwiler.
Sadie Clouse married Charles Detwiler; their daughter Oma married Amer Mountain, whose son Charles Mountain is the father of the current owner, Kimberly Mountain Rodgers. Thus, the “Stayer” House has been in the hands of a Brallier descendant since the early twentieth century. Kim Rodgers and I are related through our Brallier lineages, not through the Stayer line.
In the fall of 2023, my brother and I visited the Mountain/Rodgers family in the Stayer House to share research on the property and our common ancestry. Among the materials reviewed were photographs taken of the House and the farm by my great-grandfather, Edward H. Stayer of California, son of David B. Stayer, in 1927 when he and his wife visited family in Pennsylvania and Maryland. These pictures show a bell hanging on a post by the southwest corner of the House. Also in my file was a photograph of the bell in 1984, located in California at that time.
Kim Rodgers was intrigued by these images, and she was curious as to the current location of the old bell. I promised to find it for her if I could. Upon returning home, I perused my Stayer family files for information about the bell, where I discovered a pertinent letter from Ollie B. Hibbard of Paradise, California, granddaughter of David B. Stayer. In a lengthy June 6, 1984, missive to me, she provided the following stories about the bell:
. . . my brother has the bell that came from this house. Here is the story told me by our cousin Amelia Cecil Morrison, whose grandmother Amelia Holsinger was a sister to David B. Stayer.
In Amelia’s words – “The original Stayer home going back many generations is up in Morris [Morrisons] Cove, out from New Enterprise. I’ve been there a number of times, the last in 1965. Aunt Kate Detwiler’s daughter was still living on the place, and the original bell was there. Cousin Sadie told Oma, her daughter, to sell me the bell, hoping I would keep it within the Stayer family. So, I climbed up on the roof took it and the frame works with it. To me it meant so much because of the storys [sic] of the bell and what it meant to the families in the valley, as this house was the last one in the cove and above them was mountains. Every once in a while, the Indians would get on a war path for food. Then the bell would ring, and its clear tone would be carried to the fields and families below so they would all go inside for safety.
It was forged by a blacksmith shop man there. No date, name, or identification of any king on it.” (What a shame)
To continue – when we made our trip to Pa. I had decided that we would go home with the bell as Amelia said she would sell it for what she paid for it. I offered to buy it. No! She said your name is not Stayer anymore. Well, here is my brother Leonard A. Stayer. He has one son, four grandsons and five great-grandsons. The bell should remain in the Stayer family for many years. The bell is now at my brothers [sic] home in Redding, California.
I recently took a picture (Kodacolor) so when I get the roll out of my camera, I will send you a copy. [Note: That is the 1984 picture that I (Jonathan Stayer) showed to Kim Rodgers.]
In Amelia’s words – “The original Stayer home going back many generations is up in Morris [Morrisons] Cove, out from New Enterprise. I’ve been there a number of times, the last in 1965. Aunt Kate Detwiler’s daughter was still living on the place, and the original bell was there. Cousin Sadie told Oma, her daughter, to sell me the bell, hoping I would keep it within the Stayer family. So, I climbed up on the roof took it and the frame works with it. To me it meant so much because of the storys [sic] of the bell and what it meant to the families in the valley, as this house was the last one in the cove and above them was mountains. Every once in a while, the Indians would get on a war path for food. Then the bell would ring, and its clear tone would be carried to the fields and families below so they would all go inside for safety.
It was forged by a blacksmith shop man there. No date, name, or identification of any king on it.” (What a shame)
To continue – when we made our trip to Pa. I had decided that we would go home with the bell as Amelia said she would sell it for what she paid for it. I offered to buy it. No! She said your name is not Stayer anymore. Well, here is my brother Leonard A. Stayer. He has one son, four grandsons and five great-grandsons. The bell should remain in the Stayer family for many years. The bell is now at my brothers [sic] home in Redding, California.
I recently took a picture (Kodacolor) so when I get the roll out of my camera, I will send you a copy. [Note: That is the 1984 picture that I (Jonathan Stayer) showed to Kim Rodgers.]
Some of the information provided in this narrative is inaccurate. Native Americans had long been gone from the area by the time Adam Stayer built his house. They would not have been “on a war path” in northern Bedford County in the 1830s and thereafter! Many farms in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had bells near the house to call people from the fields for meals or other reasons.
Furthermore, the pictures of the bell in my possession show a cast piece, not the product of forge work. Generally, bells were cast at an iron furnace, several of which were located in Bedford and Blair Counties. I have not seen the bell in person; however, no evidence suggests that it was the work of a blacksmith pounding away at a forge.
Hibbard’s letter, however, did provide the clues that I needed to track down the bell. Knowing that her brother Leonard was deceased and learning that the bell was to be kept in a family with the surname “Stayer,” I used the internet to track his descendants. Since he had only one son, James (Jim) Leonard Stayer, my search was not difficult.
Jim died in Redding, California, in 2018, leaving three sons bearing the surname. His obituary provided their names and those of their spouses, as well as their places of residence. His oldest son was Pat Stayer, wife Bonnie, living in Palo Cedro, California. Assuming that Pat might be Jim’s executor or have the most knowledge of the bell, I decided to contact him first.
Googling the names of Pat and Bonnie Stayer, I quickly discovered that they were the owners of “Stayer’s Quality Queens” [queen bees]. On another branch of my family, I was aware that a great-uncle had operated a frog farm in California, but what an intriguing surprise to uncover a family connection to a “bee farm” in the same state! The bee business website indicated that Pat and Bonnie had retired, leaving its management to their son.
Realizing that calling someone out of the blue may seem a bit creepy, I telephoned the business number of Stayer’s Quality Queens on a Saturday, assuming that I would be required to leave a message. My assumption was correct, so I recorded a message wherein I explained my search for the Stayer House bell and asked that my request be forwarded to Pat Stayer. The next day, Pat called me and confirmed that the bell was hanging on the back porch of his home in Palo Cedro, California. I asked him to send me pictures of the bell in its current location in exchange for copies of my photographs of it and information about its history. Kindly, he promptly obliged me with beautiful pictures of it on his porch. The bell had been found, and thus ends the story of the travel of the Stayer House bell across the American continent.
Furthermore, the pictures of the bell in my possession show a cast piece, not the product of forge work. Generally, bells were cast at an iron furnace, several of which were located in Bedford and Blair Counties. I have not seen the bell in person; however, no evidence suggests that it was the work of a blacksmith pounding away at a forge.
Hibbard’s letter, however, did provide the clues that I needed to track down the bell. Knowing that her brother Leonard was deceased and learning that the bell was to be kept in a family with the surname “Stayer,” I used the internet to track his descendants. Since he had only one son, James (Jim) Leonard Stayer, my search was not difficult.
Jim died in Redding, California, in 2018, leaving three sons bearing the surname. His obituary provided their names and those of their spouses, as well as their places of residence. His oldest son was Pat Stayer, wife Bonnie, living in Palo Cedro, California. Assuming that Pat might be Jim’s executor or have the most knowledge of the bell, I decided to contact him first.
Googling the names of Pat and Bonnie Stayer, I quickly discovered that they were the owners of “Stayer’s Quality Queens” [queen bees]. On another branch of my family, I was aware that a great-uncle had operated a frog farm in California, but what an intriguing surprise to uncover a family connection to a “bee farm” in the same state! The bee business website indicated that Pat and Bonnie had retired, leaving its management to their son.
Realizing that calling someone out of the blue may seem a bit creepy, I telephoned the business number of Stayer’s Quality Queens on a Saturday, assuming that I would be required to leave a message. My assumption was correct, so I recorded a message wherein I explained my search for the Stayer House bell and asked that my request be forwarded to Pat Stayer. The next day, Pat called me and confirmed that the bell was hanging on the back porch of his home in Palo Cedro, California. I asked him to send me pictures of the bell in its current location in exchange for copies of my photographs of it and information about its history. Kindly, he promptly obliged me with beautiful pictures of it on his porch. The bell had been found, and thus ends the story of the travel of the Stayer House bell across the American continent.