Tope Family Page

Chapter III (continued)

    Of the others we have no trace.  Moved to Iowa, probably.
    Mrs. Brice E. Betts tells us a remarkable occurrence, as follows: While living in Salem she was a near neighbor to Reed's after they moved back from Iowa.  Reeds had one child, a little daughter, whom its grandfather had named Cordelia.  He having sent some cloth to make it a dress.  Deliah was making it on Christmas night.  A strip of the goods which had been laid on the table seemed to move.  Naturally, she was astonished at this strange incident and regarded it as a toke of something.  A letter from Iowa in a few days announced the sad intelligence that the father and grand-father was dying at the time that the piece of cloth acted so strangely.  But we could not get the name or the place nor the date of this death.
    5.  Mary Tope married George Alford.  Her father gave her 40 acres of land near Dell Roy (then Cannonsburg), owned now by Samuel Allen.  They lived on this place for years.  She was a great weaver.  Don't know what became of them.
    6.  Phebe married Joseph Birchfield and went to Illinois. [ Note 1 ]
    7.  Becky married a man by the name of Criss. [ Note 2 ]
    8.  Nancy also married a Criss, but that is all we know.
    9.  George Tope was never married.  He was  a most remarkably stout man, and course.  He was a great horseman, and drove stage, hauled grain to Steubenville, &c.  He had one fine black horses, Valiant, that he drove at the fifth chain.  He would sometimes get "tight" and lie down and let the horse walk over him.  But the poor fellow got killed in a squabble with a couple of other fellows about a woman, by one of them hitting him with a billet of wood.
    10.  Joseph Tope was born in 1812, so somebody has told us.  He was a man of considerable intelligence.  He married Nancy Hazlett and had a family of seven children:  Mary Jane, James, Rebecca, John, Matilda, Elizabeth and Frances.  He farmed on the old home place, drove great teams of horses, in stage, hauling flour, etc., to Steubenville, &c.  In his older days he "run through with" the property left him and he died in Steubenville, at what date we do not know.  Poor man! he went the way of many others; let us look with charity upon his misdeeds.  The farm was sold to an old bachelor by the name of Pete Feuths.  At the time I visited the place it belonged to Mr. Feutha's heirs, and a gentle-man by the name of David Co;eland was living int it.
    It has been generally remarked that Joe Tope had a nice woman and a nice family.  After the place was sold and he had gone to the Infirmary, his wife lived on some property of her own in New Rumley for several years.  She died at that place, a victim of cancer, and was buried there in the U.B. church-yard.  On the monument, we read as follows:  "Nancy, wife of Joseph Tope, died Aug. 21, 1873--aged 62 years, 7 months, and 6 days.