Algernon Sidney Petticrew

Married Martha Ann Mints / Mintz, daughter of Sarah Davis and William Mints / Mintz, who grew up together in Cumberland County, New Jersey, probably in Fairfield Township. Sarah Davis had been married before, to Timothy Bennett. William Mints had been married before to Betsy Shaw.

A.S. Petticrew and Martha Ann Mints Petticrew's children were:

1. Belle Robert, married William Smith Robert
2. Alice Pressley, married James N. Pressley
3. Charles Petticrew, married Jenny Buggeln; they both died young
4. Mary Jane Johnson, married Moses Perry Johnson
5. Lucy Petticrew, died young

A.S. Petticrew went into business with a Mr. Clark Lane, of Owens, Lane and Dyer in Zenia (Xenia) Ohio. Lane was also an abolitionist like A.S.and had suffered for his beliefs. Lane was the son of a blacksmith and as an adult started a business making steam machinery and it became, one of the biggest firms. (In the U S? In the midwest?) In 1867 this firm sent A.S. to St. Louis as an agent and then or earlier opened a branch there. A. S. was agent and then salesman but only for two years. He is listed as an engineer at an exhibition which showed machinery and had patents in his name. In 1867 he becomes an agent for Ames Iron Works and later buys this firm.

Mary Petticrew Johnson said: ""My father Algernon Sidney married my mother Martha A. Mints at home of my Aunt Sarah Bennett Conover in Franklin 20 miles south of Dayton a picturesque town with a main street running half way between Miami River and a canal running between Dayton and Cincinnati."

From Anne Browning Williams, great granddaughter of A.S.:

Algernon Sydney Petticrew (he was called Sydney) came to St. Louis from Dayton, Ohio, right after the Civil War, six years before Perry Johnson came from Hubbardston, MA.

Sydney Petticrew was in Dayton, Ohio, in 1826. His wife Martha Mintz Petticrew of Dutch ancestry was born in Indiana. Sidney's father, James Petticrew (1791-1840), had moved from Rockbridge County, Virginia, to Ohio. James Petticrew and his wife Sarah Kinney (of Botelourt County, Virginia) were landed gentry but were anti-slavery. "James was a patriot to the Union when others held slaves," Grammary wrote.

There were a lot of Petticrews and a lot of Pettigrews. One account says that they were all descended from three French Huguenot brothers that had fled, one going to Ireland and the other two going to Scotland, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1609. This Edict mandated tolerance for Protestants in that Catholic country. Another account says that the name Petticrew goes back to 11th century Scotland and that the Petticrews and Pettigrews are quite separate families.

My grandmother told me that the name Pettic(g)rew, originally Petigru or Pettier, meant "little greyhound" and somewhere way back they were messengers for the king of France. Grammary had or knew of an amethyst ring that she claimed had been given to an ancestor by a king. The Petticrews, had a crest and a cost of arms. It was a Petticrew or Pettigrew who in 1861 stood up in the United States Senate and seceded for North Carolina starting the Civil War. His picture is in Carl Sandburg's Lincoln. There is an historic Petticrew House in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. Pettigrew historian descendants claim that Pickett's charge, the furthest North thrust of the Confederate Army at the crucial battle of Gettysburg should have been called Pettigrew's charge for the man who really led it (James Johnston Pettigrew).

I was proud that my great grandfather, Sydney Petticrew, had been an Abolitionist before the Civil War. He believed in the immediate abolition of slavery. This was a dangerous political belief in those days and one that many moderate people believed was too extreme. In Alton, Illinois, a northern free state, an Abolitionist was stoned to death.

More from Anne R. Dick, great granddaughter of A.S. Petticrew:

http://www.freedomcenter.org/genealogy/

"My grandfather, Algernon Sydney Johnson was a Presbyterian Minister and a staunch Abolitionist. He worked for Clark Lane of Owens, Lane and Dyer, a large manufacturer of steam wood working equipment who was a prominent citizen, a live wire, and a strong Abolitionist too. He and my grandfather were friends as well as co-workers. Johnson was from Zenia Ohio and moved to St. Louis after the Civil War. I have a strong feeling that both men must have been involved with the Underground Railroad"

Dear Hatte

I've been thinking and thinking about A S Petticrew. He lived a short distance north of the U R route where it crossed the Ohio River at Ripley. He was a strong abolitionist and a Presbyterian Minister,(they were notable abolitionists) and a close friend of CLark Lane, a prominent activist citizen, live wire, business success, and strong abolitionist.

After he moved to St. Louis he spent much money and time on a Presbyterian Mission in So St. Louis.

My mother, Hazel Johnson Williams Sharp, left many pages of written family history. I have loosely translated it for readability.

Anne Dick quotes her mother, Hazel

Before the Civil War my grandfather Sydney Petticrew would not own slaves although relatives of his did. He read the Bible daily and knew much of it from memory. After he moved from Ohio to St. Louis he founded a Presbyterian Mission in South St. Louis. He preached there for many years. He gave quite a lot of his money to this mission.

My grandmother Martha Mintz Petticrew was the most dignified, most reserved and charitable woman I ever knew. She permitted neither gossip nor criticism in her home. Never did she by word or look, cause embarrassment to anyone. She was much beloved by her minister and her church, Second Presbyterian. At Thanksgiving time she baked as many as seventy pies for the Girl's Home of which she was a director. Girls there were trained for domestic service in homes. She was a true gentlewoman. She very much enjoyed the company of Mark Twain's sister and mother who lived across the street. They, like their brother, were witty and amused the entire neighborhood.

The Sydney and Martha Petticrew had four children, Isabelle (Belle) Alice, Charles, Lucy Pearson who died as a child, and my grandmother, Mary Jane. Grammary hated the Jane and discarded this part of her name. When the Petticrews first came to St. Louis they lived near Lafayette Park, then in Lucas Place "where there were many lovely homes" (Grammary).

Sydney Petticrew had a store near Laclede Park on Morgan near the Mississippi levee. He first worked as a salesman for the Owens Lane and Dyer & Company, manufacturer of sawmills and portable and stationary engines. Later he was a salesman for Ames Iron Works, a dealer in portable and stationary steam engines and circular sawmills. He prospered in this firm and built "a large house and grounds," a five bedroom brick house on Franklin Avenue in 1871. After working for Ames for six years, he either acquired it or went into the steam machinery business himself with a partner. He had a series of partners including his son, Charles.

Anne Dick continues

When I was about twelve in the 1930's, my mother and I drove by the Franklin Avenue house and she pointed it out to me. We were way downtown in a blighted neighborhood of St. Louis. I could still see the outlines of good architecture, a red brick house, a large chimney set on a curving brick base in the front, a brick wall all around and still some large trees in the back yard. But oh so sooty and old and run down. Had this been where my great-grandparents lived?

Anne Dick continues quoting her mother, Hazel

The front porch had a black iron railing above a pattern of black iron grapes. The bell pull on the front door extended by wire to the kitchen and rang the bell there, mechanically of course since there was no electricity yet. The rooms of the house were all in a line with a step or two down between them. A wide hall ran beside the lined-up rooms with a stairway at the front leading to the family bedrooms on the second floor. There was a grandfather clock on the landing.

Another stairway at the back of the hall led to servants quarters over the stable. Just inside the front door was the front parlor with the traditional horsehair sofa and chair both set in carved rosewood frames, also straight chairs in various sizes, a Brussels rug, a piano, and a center table with a white marble top. The ceilings were very high and to me it never seemed warm enough although there was a large brick furnace in the basement. There were fruit closets down there, too. My grandfather wore wool suits and may not have felt the cold as I did as a little child wearing cotton dresses. I often visited for several days at a time. Auntie Belle lived with my grandparents, her husband, William S. Robert, my father's business partner, had died of pneumonia in '86. Also living at my grandparent's house was Cousin Willie, the orphan child of my grandparent's son Charles, who died in an accident while crossing Eads Bridge.

Down a step down from the formal front parlor was the back parlor where the family sat. It had an enormous fireplace which was kept going most of the year except of course during St. Louis's frightful summers. My grandfather, an elderly retired man then, always purchased the meat and fruit at Moll's store for my grandmother. He was very particular and bought the nicest beef roasts. His special rocker was by the window and he often sat there looking out into the yard. Down a step from the back parlor there was the dining room with enclosed corner cabinets filled with homemade jams and jellies and my grandmother's flowered Haviland china. My grandparents had one of the few indoor bathrooms existent in those days.

From the dining room three steps into the hall led down to the kitchen and an enormous pantry filed with old copper and brass kettles and pots which were kept highly polished although Grandmother Petticrew had graduated to using the new style white and gray enamel pots. The sinks in the butler's pantry and kitchen were made of slate. There was a wood range in the kitchen and a large oval table made of walnut. Beyond the kitchen was an L-shaped barn for carriages and horses. The yard was partly brick, partly flower beds, and partly grass with some large maple trees and a sycamore. There were black iron benches and chairs and a black iron umbrella table with a red umbrella. Those hard uncomfortable filigree iron benches were considered "quite the thing." Sometimes, when the weather was nice, we had meals out there or tea was served. Those days were the golden age when there was no Russia, no Balkan situation and anyway they were all far away and minding their own affairs and we ours.

One summer my mother (Grammary) visited her sister, Alice, on a farm in Iowa taking me along. Grammary named one of her daughters Alice, too. A lot of first names in the Johnson family were repeated generation after generation, but the middle names were always different. My aunt Alice had married a college professor, John Presley of Des Moines, Iowa, who had contracted double pneumonia and for his health's sake was forced to give up his teaching career and move away from the city. He bought a farm of 750 acres in Grimes, Iowa.

My mother and I were there at harvest time. Aunt Alice served dinner to the neighborhood farmers who had come to help harvest the wheat and corn. I never saw so much food in my life. Chickens, beef roasts, roast pig, quantities of corn and potatoes, plates of sliced tomatoes, several kinds of jams and jellies, quantities of coffee and several kinds of pies. The women served, they did not sit at the table but passed the food around. My mother looked down a bit at the farming life but Aunt Alice's daughter, Melissa, felt it was a very fine and useful life and eloquently told my mother so.

One of Aunt Alice's boys served in the Philippines in the Spanish-American war and was tortured to death by the Moros (primitive native people). The army sent his body home in a sealed coffin but Aunt Alice, because she couldn't look at her son's face, never believed that he was dead.

The Presleys had a barn full of fine Morgan horses. When the barn burned one night, the family attempted to lead the horses out but they ran back into the burning building, toward the neighs of the horses still inside. The fire destroyed all these lovely pedigreed horses.

There was a lot of tragedy surrounding the life of Sydney's son, Charles. His wife Jennie Petticrew had just died the previous year in childbirth of what was called "childbirth fever." She was only 25 years old. The baby, also called Charles, survived for six months, died of marasmus. Charles lasted ten years in the steam machinery business.

Quoting from a Kansas City Newspaper in 1897, "Charles B. Petticrew committed suicide last night by jumping off the Belt Railway bridge into the Kaw river ... Several fishermen ... made desperate efforts to save him but ... Petticrew had been mildly insane about five years. His affliction was caused from sickness and financial failures. His relatives had, during that period, paid his board at Mrs. Reardon's (boarding) house and brought him clothes. He had not worked during the entire time ... He talked to himself almost constantly ... "

Mrs. Belle Robert came and took his body back to St. Louis where he was buried in the Petticrew family plot beside his wife, Jennie, and the infant Charles.

Anne Dick continues

Sidney Petticrew went out of the machinery business and is listed in St. Louis business records as a Milliner in 1899, in lumber in subsequent years, and then a manufacturer's agent. He survived his wife, Martha, by 12 years and moved several different times. Perhaps those times of boom and bust were hard on him. On the other hand he may have retired from the machinery business and tried his hand at other work.

All the St. Louis Petticrews including the daughter, Lucy, who died as a child, are buried in the Petticrew lot in Bellfontaine Cemetery in St. Louis except Auntie Belle. Her body was sealed in a lead coffin and was sent out to the Robert Family plot at the end of Long Island, New York, near Montauk Point. Many years later my Aunt Lois was buried beside her mother, my Grammary. There is also another lot in the Bellfontaine cemetery, the Johnson-Morse lot, where Aunt Edith and her husband, Will, and their daughter, Betty, is buried.

Anne Dick continues quoting her mother, Hazel

Grammary wrote in her terse way in her family history document, "My father in large machinery business: engines, sawmills, woodworking machinery, an outfit $6000 up."

How did Algernon Sidney Petticrew meet Martha Ann Mints?

A.S. Petticrew was the great grandson of Jane Ainsworth Petticrew. The Ainsworths and the Petticrews were Scots Irish and lived in East Hanover Township in Dauphin Country, Pennsylvania. A.S. Pettigrew's father, James, was born in East Hanover but raised in Botetourt County, Virginia, and then moved to Dayton, Ohio as a young married man.

Martha Ann Mints was raised by her half-sister, Sarah Bennett Conover, in Franklin Township, Warren County, Ohio, in what was called the Jersey Settlement, due to it having been established by a number of closely related Dutch families from Monmouth County, New Jersey. Conover (Covenhoven) was one of those families.

I discovered a marriage between an Ainsworth (Andrew Ainsworth) and a Conover (Margaret Ann Conover) that took place in 1816 in Warren County, Ohio. It took me a long time to figure out that Andrew Ainsworth was a COUSIN to Algernon Sidney Petticrew. Jane Ainsworth Petticrew (my 5th great grandmother) was the sister of Andrew Ainsworth's grandfather.

All the Conovers of the Jersey Settlement were cousins from a large family from Long Island that moved to Monmouth County, New Jersey, and then to Warren County, Ohio.

So the Conovers and Ainsworths became related by marriage in 1816 in Warren County and later another Ainsworth descendant, Algernon Sidney Petticrew, married a Conover relative, Martha Ann Mints. I'm sure that after I do some more work on the Ainsworths and Conovers, I'll find more relationships and geographical co-location.