Francis Wall (1810 - 1896)

Born 3 Jan 1810 in Ireland

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Descendants

Died 3 Jul 1896 at age 86 in Pittsburgh Allegheny County Pennsylvania, USA

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Biography

Joyce Tinsley provided this information. See below for detailed letter. I was researching my Francis Wall when I came across this one. Your Francis Wall was born in County Derry, Ireland and was the son of Michael and Margaret McKee Wall. He was accidently killed by a train in Pittsburg, PA on a business trip. I made a memorial for his wife since there wasn't one that I could find and linked her to him. Some of this info is in her obit on her memorial. There is a lot of info on Francis/Frank Wall in the old newspapers. His bio tells of his birth in Ireland & coming to this country with his parents and a lot of other info on his life. His obit is also in another issue and his will in another. The bio and obit cover a column each. THE NEWS-LEADER, SPRINGFIELD, WASHINGTON COUNTY, KENTUCKY JUNE 4, 1896 Page 2 Francis Wall, farmer and stock-raiser, was born January 4, 1810, in County Derry, Ireland. He is the son of Michael and Margaret McKee Wall. His father emigrated to the United States in 1810, and in 1822 his mother and the rest of the family, including the subject of this sketch, came to America and located near Pittsburgh, Pa., where his father had previously purchased property, at what is now known as Wall Station. Mr. Wall was educated partly in Ireland and partly in the United States. When only eighteen years of age he engaged in his first business adventure, that of a teamster for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. He shortly afterward became an engineer on a steamboat ploughing through the turbulent and mighty waters of the great Mississippi and its tributaries. After seventeen years of faithful service in this line, in 1847 he returned to his old home, Wall Station, Pa., and began farming, when shortly afterward his father died. In 1866 he sold his Pennsylvania farm to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and then located in Kentucky and purchased a farm in Washington County, one and one-half miles from Springfield, on the Springfield and St. Mary's turnpike. Mr. Wall was an assistant engineer on the Chattahoochee and Indian Rivers, Georgia, during the Seminole war in Florida. The engineer at one time refusing to proceed further up the river on one of the occasions when battles were raging fierce and hard, Mr. Wall promptly took charge of the boat and succeeded in conveying her, filled with soldiers, amid the thickest of the battle, where the United States army won a great victory. Mr. Wall has accumulated a large fortune, not by stinginess, but by economy and industry. He is the possessor of 1,000 acres of the very best land in Washington County. His farms are beautifully situated, splendidly drained and kept in first-class condition. He has raised many fine brood-mares and colts, by Mollie Pitcher and Ten Ban. He also owns two fine animals by Leamington, and is the owner of Nellie D., by Laden, who is owned by Col. Irwine Wilson, at the celebrated Vocallac Farm, near Lexington, Ky. He has a young mare in training, named Nell Flagherty, by Hanover, and a large number of young colts. Owns one of the finest bulls in Kentucky, by Wild-Eyes, and other fine animals. It will be a rare treat to any one to pay Mr. Wall a visit at his beautiful home, and see the large array of his celebrated thoroughbred horses. Mr. Wall is a director in the People's Deposit Bank, and has been for some time; and has been for many years also a director in the Washington County Fair Association. In 1847 Mr. Wall married Miss Catherine A. Kelly, of Columbus, Ga., by whom he has six children. He is certainly one of the best and most entertaining Irish conversationalists that it has ever been my good fortune to meet with. He is witty, and possesses quick and accurate comprehension while engaged in conversation upon all the important National and State questions of the day. A man of the strictest integrity and honor, he is one of the most prominent and well thought of citizens of Washington County.

JULY 9, 1896 Page 2 Seldom has our community been so much shocked as when on last Friday the news came that Mr. Frank Wall was killed by a railway engine at his old home in Pennsylvania. That in the twinkling of an eye his life had been snatched away. But on the day before he had gone on a mission of business and pleasure to his old home at Wall station Pa., in the enjoyment of health and high spirits and possessing an activity, rarely witnessed in one of his ripe age. (The rest of the obituary includes most of the previous sketch)

From Frank K. Wall's letter to Mary Denis Kuhn dated March 17, 1964

"For his day, Grampa Wall was a man of considerable wealth, evidenced by his thousand acres of land, blooded horses, beautiful homesite, etc. However he did not accumulate his wealth from farming or the raising of thorobred horses. While it is true he was a man of acquisitive instincts, he largely owed his wealth to the great expansion of the railroads that occurred between 1850 and 1870, having purchased in 1847 a two hundred and fifty acre farm adjoinin g his father's for the consideration of $4900. This farm also abutted the right of way of the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. From about 1855 and for about the next ten yearsthereafter, the railroad purchased parcels of from five to ten acres of this farm for expansion of their freight classification yard, and in 1868 paid 70,000 dollars for the remaining bottom lands.

"While in Pittsburgh in 1945 on a government assignment, I took sufficient time to examine the copies of the recorded deeds of these sales and found the total considerations to be in excess of one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. A tidy profit you must admit, on an original investment of but $4900.

"The story goes that while employed as assistant engineer on steam boats operating on the Chattahooche River during the Seminole Indian Warhe was paid at the rate of $6.00 a day (a prodigious rate even for hazardous duty in the 1830-1840 era) and that over a period of seven or eight years he only spent $1.65. Who can beat that for thriftiness?

"The Chattahooche River, which flows southerly from North Georgia into the Gulf of Mexico and divides Georgia from Alabama, was the means of transporting the Seminole Indians from North Geargia to southern Florida. Opposite the falls of this river located about halfway between the source and the mouth, is the city of Columbus Georgia, a thriving cotton metropolis in the early 1800s. Columbus was a port of call and here lived Catherine Agnes Kelly. They were married about 1846. She was fifteen or sixteen years younger than he. From an early daguerreotype picture of her, now in my posession, she was quite pretty. Her hair was evidently quite black parted in the center, the dress decollete (I guess that is the proper word). Well, anyway, the dress falls about two inches off each shoulder. Resemblance to her can be traced to some of her descendants, particularly my late sister Marjorie.

"The Pennsylvania farm previously mentioned was purchased shortly after their marriage and in the two story log cabin located thereon seven of their eight children were born. After the 1866 sale to the Railroad they returned to Columbus where they lived for probably two years.

"Our Grandmother, as I recall had three sisters - Charlotte, Mary Ann and Irene - who were married to a Murphy, a Quinn and a Wilson. On a visit to Columbus, Georgia, in 1902, I remember meeting them and their families but a boy of nine is not particularly interested in meeting great aunts and second and third cousins, all grown at that time, so I know but little as to these ladies descendants, other than a family named Bliss living in Savannah.

"I am sure your father and Aunt Marie have told you of the move from Georgia to Kentucky, where the family took root and ever after called Kentucky home. So I will devote the rest of this to a few anecdotes, the first of which is about the purchase of 250 acres in Kentucky which was the homesite.

"The "Old Gentleman", my father's term of endearment for his father, loved hightly bred animals and Kentucky was the place to raise them. He went from Columbus by train to Louisville and from there headed for the Bluegrass on foot. His reason for walking was to better see and appraise the countryside. Arriving at Springfield, the county seat of Washington County, he was told of a farm that was to be sold at auction. Attending the sale, he ws the highest bidder. The terms were one third cash, the balance in one, two and three years with interest. But he was unknown in the community and having walked some sixty miles or more in less than a week, his appeearance was most likely a bit unimpressive, so before the owners would accept his offer they questioned his credit. He asked them what they would take for all cash and when he haggled a discount acceptable to him, he pulled off his hat and counted out sufficient currency to cover the aggreement. There is nothing better than the old style stovepipe hat for carrying a bit of ready cash reserve.

" 'Uncle Frankie' as he was known to his Washington County contemporaries became a legend in the community and fifty years after his death old timers were repeating anecdotes concerning him, such as the tale of the thurobred colt of which he was especially proud and which he felt was of Kentucky Derby caliber. He sent the animal to Lexington to be trained. In due course, was advised that the colt was ready for a try-out. So, he entered the colt in a race at Keeneland and hired a boy to ride him. The horse finished among the "also-rans". The "Old Gentleman" was waiting at the Judges Stand for the weigh-out and when his horse and jockey returned he looked up into the rider's face and said, "Hey boy! What detained you?" My son Barry, earning "All American" designation as a collegiate swimmer, on several occasions "came a cropper" and when he did I would kid him and say "Hey boy! What detained you?"

"Grandfather, in his 86th year, while on a business trip to Pennsylvania, in crossing the railroad tracks constructed on the land he once owned, stepped off the tracks of an approaching express train and on to the tracks of a switch engine moving in the opposite direction. They buried him in the family plot in St. Dominic's Cemetery in Springfield. Over the grave is a granite column on which a life sized angel is poised for the take-off and inscribed below "To the Memory of Francis Wall".

(Note in the margin says "I always heard grandfather was deaf")

Burial: Saint Dominics Cemetery Springfield Washington County Kentucky, USA

Sources

• Created by: George Griebe

Record added: Sep 09, 2007 Find A Grave Memorial# 21452594