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THE FAY FAMILY PAGE GENEALOGIES |
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| John Burris Fay directory |
| John Burris Fay of Pennsylvania And his Descendants |
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Pennsylvania in 1835 David H. Burr image copyright� by Cartography Associates and used with permission |
| (maps of Crawford, Huntingdon and Blair counties) |
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| John Burris Fay, born on 6/17/1833, to Sarah Cole and a Fay father, married Mary Cook and had two children with her before losing all three of them by 1856. John married Mary Jane (Mollie) Baker on April 27, 1858, in Meadville. Mollie was born May 30, 1841, in Salem, Marion County, IL. Mollie and John had one child, born April 17, 1860, who was named Rush Shippen, either for the Rush Shippen who was an Officer in the GAR that John Burris served with or for the minister, the Rev. Rush R. Shippen, a unitarian minister, who married Mollie and John. The Rev. Shippen served the Meadville church for only a few months, November 1857 - June 1858. It should be noted that in the census of 1860, the baby with John and Mollie is listed as John (the baby is one month old in early June): was he perhaps originally named John after his father and then renamed? Or is this simply a mistake on the part of the census taker? |
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| John's Civil War service resulted in the illness which which killed him on March 17, 1879. His widow remarried in 1881, and on the death of her second husband on March 9, 1899, applied for and received a widow's pension based on John Burris' Civil War service. Mollie held the pension until her death August 8, 1925, in Louisville, KY. |
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| John Burris was named as grandson in the will of Nancy Sackett in 1860. |
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| Research over a period of years failed to establish the name of John's father or anything about his family. It was known that his father died young, and that his mother Sarah Cole Fay remarried. Her second husband was Philip Harpst. Among those researching Philip was Deborah Williams, who provided a great deal of information about the Harpst family in a family tree posted on RootsWeb and in emails and posts. Her information, extensive as it was, did not provide anything about the father of John Burris. The identification of John's birthplace is also a bit uncertain. While the family records suggest Half-Moon Twp in Centre County, just over the boundary from WarriorsMark, Huntingdon County, the Harpst biography indicates that he was born in WarriorsMark, and that later that year the family moved to Birmingham, still in Huntingdon County. |
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| The Harpst biography came from the family records gathered by her grandfather and preserved and studied by Mary Arnold, a descendant of Philip Harpst. These records provided much of the information about Philip and Sarah and their family in this section (see the directory). |
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| The biography of Philip and Sarah states the name of Sarah's first husband and his profession: Enoch Fay, a blacksmith. The source of this biography was a genealogical report commissioned and preserved by Gertude Harpst Yocum and Blanche Harpst Jackson; one of the papers Mary found was a letter written by a nephew in law of Gertrude and Blanche, naming at least one of the sources of this report. |
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| Mary theorized that Frank was most probably a contemporary of the women, since he seems to have handed over papers. She found a Frank who seemed right in every respect: Frank Huges Fay. There is a biography of him available (see the directory) and a family line has been researched. IF indeed he was related to the line from which John Burris came, then at least something is now clear, and that is that according to what Frank found, the line does not descend from John Fay of Marlborough but is an independent Fay line. |
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| This conclusion depends on several things: is this really the Frank who helped with the research for John Burris' line? Why, if that is the case, and if Frank knew that the name of John's father was Enoch, why didn't Frank supply the name of Enoch's father? It could actually be that he did, but the name was not preserved because the Harpst group was mostly interested in the Harpst line. There is another handwritten note in Mary's records, that John B. Fay collected original records from which the transcription was made. |
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| Frank Huges Fay, born 1869, was definitely a contemporary of Blanche Harpst Jackson, born 1875, and Gertrude Harpst Yocum, born 1874. All three were living in 1920 in Pennsylvania. |
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