A plentitude of Masters

In 1916, the prose of the journalist bordered on something not quite Frost and not quite Dylan.

The story on Jacob Masters of Fairfield, whose family spread long tentacles for a long time, was thus written by noted smart guy Theo Dickerson:

“Tradition and legendary history of the beautiful White Water Valley of the long ago, before the advent of the pioneer, before this part of the East Fork was cleared, when nature made the hills and valleys more attractive than now, when only here and there could be found the rude cabin of a white squatter or French trading post, will we try to picture the panorama presented, one hundred years ago and speak of the tribes of red men who sought for game and fished along the White Water which was thickly timbered, great trees bordering the banks.

“But few white men had at the beginning of the eighteenth century the hardihood to penetrate into the then vast wilderness of this country, whose inhabitants were Indians and wild animals.”

The story never wavered much before it finally got around to telling us about Jacob Masters and his kinfolk, who settled in the East Fork valley around 1833.

The usual people showed up in the Brookville paper's treatise on Masters, all enriching the soil with tales of pioneer spirit, grit, determination and fanciful devotion to duty, commerce, God, and purt-near anything else that mattered.

Actually it was Christopher Masters who brought his clan with him to Fairfield from Pennsylvania, which apparently was kicking people out and sending them this way. The story on Masters was that he was probably a Methodist, that most of his children were either grown or hungry enough to soon be that.

For reasons that were doomed to be bad ones, the Methodists didn't have a church in Fairfield and it was up to Christopher Masters to see that one was established. For the record, the Methodists stayed on in Fairfield and became a big deal in Franklin County church affairs up until the 1960s.

“Fairfield had gained her majority,” the story tells us, “was 21 years of age, and has grown from a crossroads village to quite a respectable town.”

Men like Christopher Masters were welcome.

Masters managed to organize the Methodists in Fairfield, brought in an interesting preacher named Henry Dane, then proceeded to make more Masters.

“The Masters family had fulfilled Holy Writ, by multiplying and replenishing. The regulation roster roll when called for meals and family prayer would show from ten to one dozen in family, and the names of the parents and children could all be found on the class books, the majority being members of the Methodist society.”

Somewhere along the way, John Masters shows up.

As if any of this makes you wonder, the story includes this tidbit:

“In order to understand why the Masters ancestors left the mother country to escape religious persecution, it will be necessary to go back a few hundred years and give an abbreviated history of the Swenkfelders.

Abbreviated would be better.

Around 1490, more or less. In Lower Silesia.

So, somehow the Meisthers became the Meschters and finally the Masters who came to Pennsylvania, then settled in Fairfield, started a Methodist church without persecution, proliferated and, at last the newspaper decided to “unravel the Masters genealogy, which we find is a difficult undertaking.”

Well, we were moving right along until 1490.

With an admitted “hundreds” of Masters across the country, even in 1916, the paper conceded: “Therefore we shall commence genealogy of Masters kindred from two brothers who cross over the salt water from Silesia to Germany with their families in 1731.”

That would be Melchior and Gregorius Meisther.

Then there was Christopher, the first, who is not the second and maybe not the third, but  somewhere in there ahead of Jacob, Rachel, Hannah, July, James, Aaron, Ann, Margaret, Mary, Elizabeth, Hiram and Eleanor. Not all in that order. Left out Samuel. Sorry. And Quincy, Winfield, David, Lewis, another James, Leonidas, William. …

Jacob was apparently the only one lucky enough to be photographed.

For which we are grateful.

Jacob was a soldier in the Civil War, as much as his great-greats were probably on hand when the Teutonic wars were fought between France and the Belgians.

Rosetta, Josephine, Henry, Bertie, Roy, Juliette, Leander, Blanche, Thomas. …

“In giving the biography of one branch of the family, it occurs to the writer to side-track before we have paralysis or a well-defined case of emotional instability. Should we give a history of other members and the generations of replants, their names would be legion.”

Swenkfelders?