Edward Louis Thomas

Notes:

FROSTBURG — Edward L. Thomas, 57, of 221 Center Street, was pronounced dead on arrival at Miners Hospital last night and death was due to a self-inflicted bullet wound in the head, according to Frostburg City Police. Frostburg Police Chief Leslie Bevan and Officer Allan Robison said Mr. Thomas and his son, Edward L. Thomas Jr., had gone to the site of a new house Edward Jr. has been building on Midlothian Road. The elder Thomas went outside to his son's car and found his father dead of a bullet wound in his right temple. Police said Mr. Thomas had used a .22 caliber revolver which his son kept in the car. They said the son told them the pistol normally was unloaded, but they found six cartridges in the chamber, one of them discharged. The officers said the younger Mr. Thomas told them his father had been in ill health in recent weeks. The father and son operated the Frostburg city dump. Mr. Thomas was born February 21, 1904 in Frostburg, son of the late Llewelyn Evans and Ida (Sharpe) Thomas. He worked at Celanese Fibers Company's Amcelle Plant, and was a member of Local 1874, Textile Workers Union of America. He was a member of the Methodist Church and was a Mason. Surviving, besides his son, are his wife, Mrs. Olive Mae (Knepp) Thomas, a daughter, Emmajean Thomas, at home; two brothers, William Thomas, Kingsville, Tex., and Daniel Thomas, Columbus, Ohio; one sister, Mrs. Mildred Davis, Westernport, and five grandchildren. The body is at the Hafer Funeral Home in Frostburg, where the family will receive friends from 7 to 9 p.m. today and from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. tomorrow. The Cumberland Evening Times, November 16, 1961

Family/Spouse: Olive Mae Knepp. Olive (daughter of Philip Henry Knepp and Bertha Blocher, daughter of Philip Henry Knepp and Bertha Blocher) was born on 28 Jul 1908 in Allegany County, Maryland; died on 18 Feb 1990 in Frostburg, Maryland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Emmajean Thomas was born in 1929; died in 1989.
2. Edward L. (E.T.) Thomas was born on 12 Jun 1931 in Frostburg, Maryland; died on 24 May 2008 in Cumberland, Allegany County, Maryland.

Notes:

Llewelyn E. Thomas, age 70, a retired miner, died this afternoon at the Miners' Hospital where he had been a patient suffering from asthma for the past 10 days. He is survived by three sons, William S. Thomas of Kingsworth, Texas; Daniel H. Thomas and Edward L. Thomas of Frostburg; one daughter, Mrs. Richard Davis of Westernport; a brother Ellsworth Thomas of California, and a sister, Mrs. Margaret Lewis of Detroit. His wife, the former Miss Ida Sharp, died in April 1947. The body will be taken to the home of son Edward L. at 221 Centre Street. Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

The Cumberland Sunday Times, January 11, 1948

Evan + Ida Jane Sharp. Ida (daughter of John R. Sharp and Catherine Porter) was born on 5 Aug 1876 in Maryland; died on 7 Apr 1947 in Frostburg, Allegany County, Maryland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Frostburg - April 8 - Mrs. Ida Jane (Sharp) Thomas, 70, wife of Evan L. Thomas, 207 Center Street, died at noon yesterday in Miner's Hospital where she was admitted Sunday. She had been in failing health for some time. Mrs. Thomas was a member of First Congregational Church. In addition to her husband, she is survived by a daughter, Mrs. Richard Davis, Westernport; three sons, William S. Thomas, Corpus Christi, Texas; and Daniel and Evan L. Thomas, Jr., both of Frostburg; a sister, Mrs. Justus Race, Zihlman; a brother, Robert Sharp, Chattanooga, Tenn.; a half-brother, Edward Odenwalk, Columbus, Ohio, and 11 grandchildren. The body is at the residence.

The Cumberland Times News, April 8, 1947

John + Catherine Porter. Catherine (daughter of Josiah M. Porter and Sarah Porter) was born on 10 May 1849 in Eckhart Mines, Allegany County, Maryland; died on 6 Feb 1881 in Frostburg, Allegany County, Maryland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

From Cumberland Times transcription:

PORTER 15 Nov 1880 Josiah Porter died 07 Nov 1880 at his home in Eckhart. He was born 01 Oct. 1799, and was 81 years, one month and 6 days of age. He was born and died at the "Porter Settlement". From 1830-1840, he was disburser of appointments for the National Road. He was also a pioneer in the shipping of coal to the East via the Potomac flatboat system.

The following excerpt is from John Marshall Porter's "Sketches of Maryland Porters", circa 1976. Scott Carter Williams brought it to the attenetion of Michael A. McKenzie in 2018.

Josiah Porter... "Grandpap Si'

As anyone who has Samuel D. Porter's genealogy can note, Grandpap Si was the son of Gabriel Porter and Rebecca Frost. Gabriel was a brother of the Samuel, who was father of John, who was the father of the Michigan Porters. So we learn that John and Grandpap Si were first cousins.

All that I am writing about these early Porter ancestors comes form what Frank Porter wrote, and what I learned from my father. Gabriel had other sons and daughters, but I know of no account of their descendants such as was kept of Grandpap Si. Squire Mike and Grandpap Si were first cousins, and we shall learn that intermarriage of close relationship took place between some of their descendants.

Grandpap Si married first, Mary Margaret Combs, who became mother of his first nine children. His second wife, Sarah was a daughter of his first cousin, Souire Mike. Sarah, whom he married in 1836 bore him twelve children over the next twenty five.years...three of whom died in infancy. In total, Grandpap Si was father of 21 children.

Grandpap Si lived on a farm adjoining Rose Meadows which he rented from a mining company. It did not come into ownership of Porters until more than a century later when around 1930 three of his grandsons purchased it from the coal company that was selling their holdings in that area. Since then, Marshall Robert bought the shares of his brothers, and is now sole owner. He is nearly 80, and is still living there and farming the land.

Grandpap Si and his sons mined coal from under the farm, paying a royalty to the coal company who owned the land. Much of that coal was hauled to Cumberland in wagons. There it was loaded on rafts that were built on the
low tides of the Potomac River. The rafts were made from slim tree trunks, bound together with cables and ropes to make a flat platform about 30 x 30 feet. The coal was hauled to the river over the old National Pike by horse and ox teams, in wagons during summer, and sleds in winter. There it was loaded on the rafts whiFsei held around 50 tons. When the snow melted and spring rains came, the river arose to near flood stage, and the raft was ready to be unleashed from its moorings. Then four to six young, strong, fearless men loaded provisions of food and clothing and bedding, climbed aboard vrith only long poles to guide the cargo down the swift, treacherous waters of the Potomac to Washington. If they delivered the raft and coal intact to the destination, they received the money for it. Then they walked back to the farm near Frostburg, a distance of 150 miles. But it wasn't always that easy.

I have heard my father say, and he knew only what he had heard from Grandpap Si and others, that many times those rafts would flounder on rocks in the middle of the river when the water current would recede. The raftsmen would have to abandon their cargo, and wade ashore and walk home in wet clothing with no money for the coal. Also, there were many raft loads of coal that would be washed ashore on a gravel bar that could not be moved back into the current, and had to be abandoned by the raftsmen. Then there were the rafts loaded with coal that would be torn apart by unseen rocks in the river. The coal would be lost, and the raftsmen barely escaping with their lives...and not all of them escaped with their lives. Some of these raftsmen drowned in the swift current. Others died of exposure when they were forced into the icy water. If they reached the shore, they didn't have a dry match to start a fire and they perished in their wet clothing.

Rafting could be done only under treacherous conditions, when the water was deep enough to carry the rafts above the rocky river bed.

The C&O canal, that ran from Cumberland, Md. to Georgetown, near Washington was completed and ready for transportation in 1850. That ended the rafting on the Potomac. After that coal was hauled to Cumberland and loaded on canal boats.

Grandpap Si was a devoutly religious man, from all I have heard of him. Frank Porter spoke of him as "One of the few Saints of earth I have known." My father said he would not let one of his men nor horses work on Sunday nor Christmas. But that on New Years day, unless it fell on Sunday, he wanted every man and team to be working... a sort of omen or superstition that, if he began the New Year making some money it would be a prosperous year for him.

It seems apparent that Grandpap Si's children, 15 of whom were girls married one by one until most of them were scattered and gone from the farm when his younger son M.M.T. (Doc.) Porter began taking over the management of the farm that had been home of the large family. Grandpap Si died in 1880. He is buried in the Porter graveyard, just up on the hill above the farm he spent his life on.

I can find no dates of the deaths of either of his wives, Mary Ellen Combs and Sarah Porter.

He died on 7 Nov 1880 at the age of 81 in Eckhart, Allegany Co., Maryland. Phyllis Rosley, in a note dated May 16, 2012, offers this information:

Josiah Porter, "Grandpap Si" was the s/o Gabriel McKenzie Porter and
Rebecca Frost was born Oct. 1, 1799 and died Nov. 7, 1882 (sic: 1880).
He married first, Aug. 1, 1822, Mary Margaret Combs. She is the d/o John
Combs and Mary Margaret Trimble and was born May 3, 1803. They had 9
children. Josiah married, second, Oct. 4, 1836/37, Sarah Porter. She is the d/o Michael Porter and Elizabeth Devore, and was born Aug. 1, 1816. They had 12 children.

Josiah Porter, "Grandpa Si", was the son of Gabriel McKenzie Porter and
Rebecca Frost. He was twice married and was the father of 21 childre
was first married to Mary Margaret Combs, b 1803. His second wife was Sarah Porter, born 1816 and daughter Michael R. Porter, "Squire Mike", and
Elizabeth Devore b Aug. 19, 1816 d. Dec. 8, 1870. Buried Porter Cem., Eckhart Mines, Md. It is through Josiah's offspring, with his second wife, that the Carter family began marrying into the Porter family and two families soon became inter-twined. Children of the first marriage to Mary Margaret Combs are: John Wesley, b 1823 d. 1883; Rebecca b 1824; Sophia b 1825; Margaret Emily, b 1827; Gabriel, b 1830; Elisha, b 1832; Eleanor, b 1834; Helen; and Nancy Porter.

He was buried in Porter Cemetery, Eckhart, Allegany Co., Maryland.

Josiah married Sarah Porter on 10 Oct 1837 in Allegany County, Maryland. Sarah (daughter of Michael Porter and Elizabeth Devore, daughter of Michael G. (Squire Mike) Porter and Elizabeth Devore) was born on 19 Aug 1816 in Eckhart, Allegany County, Maryland; died on 8 Dec 1870 in Eckhart, Allegany County, Maryland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]