Tracing the Migration of Francis Gunnett and Hannah Beard Gunnett

I have always had a special trip on my “bucket list” that I have dreamed about since I was a little girl. You see, my great-great grandparents left Pennsylvania in the 1850s to relocate to Missouri, and I would try to imagine what their trip would be like so long ago compared to the present day that I was familiar with. Well, this past April, my daughter Laurie and I were able to take a Mississippi Riverboat Cruise from New Orleans to Memphis. It was a wonderful cruise, but I’m very sure it was different from their journey a 150 years ago. No Indigenous natives, robbers, illness, or other dangers, we just slowly floated on the water and watched the riverbanks passing by. Just imagining what their trip was like by traveling the route was enough for me.

My great-great grandparents were pioneers during their migration. Francis Gunnett was born in August, 1829, and Hannah Beard was born in July, 1834, both in Pennsylvania. The only census that I have found for Hannah’s father Henry and his family is one for Somerset County, Pennsylvania in 1850. His profession was as a collier, a person who is responsible for converting wood to charcoal. He had three daughters and three sons, John, Hiram, and Thomas. John and Thomas were also listed as colliers. In looking further down the page, I discovered that the boarding house next door had a boarder named FRANCIS GUNNETT, age 20, laborer. Hannah was fifteen, and this census would have been three years before their marriage.

They married in Johnstown, PA on March 31, 1853 and within the year left for Meramec Springs, MO. He went first, probably to find housing for them, and she followed, accompanied by her three brothers. They would have taken either a flatboat or paddle wheeler with all their possessions down the Ohio River, north up the Mississippi River, and then onto the Missouri River. Once on the Missouri, they disembarked at a German/Swiss settlement, a major stopover named Herman located on a bluff above the river. Many other settlers were on their way west with their Conestoga wagon canvases marked “Texas or Bust”. Texas had become the 28thState just ten years before in 1845. Five years after that Texas gave up part of their territory to the United States in exchange for $10,000,000 because of public debts Texas incurred during the Mexican-American War and other disputes. This gave the United States more land for new settlements. Farming and developing that land must have been even harder than in other places, because they also saw more wagons returning marked “Busted”.

I had often wondered what it was that took my family so many miles away to a place that was still pretty much a wilderness. The country was opening west of the Mississippi River, but the life would be hard, and travel to get there would be long and difficult. By investigating the industries that were prominent in central Pennsylvania, I found that there were numerous furnace works throughout, mainly in Blair, Bedford, Huntingdon, Cambria,

Clearfield, Mifflin, Juniata, Cumberland, Franklin and Adams Counties. That put the Gunnett and Beard families right in the middle of the state, and from the 1850 census information, both Henry and his sons were known to be colliers. They were probably employed by one of those furnace works. Francis Gunnett as a laborer could have also been employed at the works. The fact that members of both families left Pennsylvania to work at Maramec Springs makes more sense to me now.

The Maramec Iron Works were established in 1825 by Thomas James and Samuel Massey, former residents of Pennsylvania on land owned by Mr. James. He had discovered that for many years the iron deposits there had provided the Indigenous natives with the red hematite, high in iron content, to make their face paint. Seeing this excellent source of iron ore and the underground spring that flowed from the cliffside, they started the first commercially viable iron works in the United States west of the Mississippi. With the west opening to adventurous young men willing to go long distances to find good, fertile land to farm, there was a need for kettles, plows, axes, guns, wagon rims, and many other items made of iron to get them started.

“Colliers charred the wood for the fire in the area where it was cut. They had to be very experienced to reduce wood to charcoal for the works. In 1829 colliers converted 4,000 cords of wood into a little less than 10,000 bushels of charcoal. As iron production increased, so did the need for charcoal. At its height of production in 1867 the works needed 650,000 bushels of charcoal per year.” 1

This was the work that Francis and his brothers-in-law did and from what I understand, it was a very dangerous job. The charcoal was made by burning the cords of wood in deep pits then removing the charcoal to wagons, while it was still hot. Workers could be badly burned by the hot charcoal if they weren’t careful.

The family continued living in Missouri, raising nine of their 12 children to adulthood. Francis, who in later life changed his name to Frank, died in 1888, and Hannah remained a widow for another 31 years. A family “story” is that she was visiting with her brother Thomas and sisters, Delila and Mary during the Johnstown (PA) Flood in 1889. Frank had died the year before, and she could have easily traveled by train to return for visits in Pennsylvania. A Johnstown City Directory for that year shows a fourth resident at their address after the flood. That seems to prove the family story to me, don’t you agree? Hannah died November 19, 1929 at the age of 95 after a long and full life, and what a life!

[1 Maramec Iron Works by Stephen Ludwig, Bittersweet (Periodical) Springfield-

Greene County Library, Volume V, No. 2, Winter 1977.]

Photo credits: William Fischer, Jr. 2020. Maramec Iron Works Historical Marker