Austin J. Donaldson and Ruth Esther Sheffer

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Husband Austin J. Donaldson

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           Born: 11 Feb 1889
     Christened: 
           Died: Dec 1969 - ? Emlenton, Venango Co, PA
         Buried:  - Nickleville Cemetery, Nickleville, Richland Twp, Venango Co, PA

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         Father: John Hall Donaldson (1847-1916)
         Mother: Hannah Jane Nickle (1851-1925)

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       Marriage: 15 May 1918 - Venango Co, PA

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Wife Ruth Esther Sheffer

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           Born: 25 Dec 1895 - Van, Cranberry Twp, Venango Co, PA
     Christened: 
           Died: 8 Mar 1961
         Buried:  - Nickleville Cemetery, Nickleville, Richland Twp, Venango Co, PA

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         Father: Benjamin F. Sheffer (1855-1923)
         Mother: Ellen Webb (1866-1932)

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Children

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1 M Winston Gerald Donaldson

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           Born: 29 Jan 1919
     Christened: 
           Died: 10 Oct 1993 - ? Emlenton, Venango Co, PA
         Buried:  - Nickleville Cemetery, Nickleville, Richland Twp, Venango Co, PA 1

         Spouse: Ruby Pryor (1917-2006) 2
           Marr: 24 Jun 1944

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2 M Gary Donaldson

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           Born: 1925
     Christened: 
           Died: 1925
         Buried:  - Georgeville Cemetery, Rockland Twp, Venango Co, PA

         Spouse: Did Not Marry

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3 M Ralph Donaldson

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           Born: 1928
     Christened: 
           Died: 1928
         Buried:  - Georgeville Cemetery, Rockland Twp, Venango Co, PA

         Spouse: Did Not Marry

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4 M Paul Everett Donaldson

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           Born: 20 Apr 1935 - Venango Co, PA
     Christened: 
           Died: Aft 1993
         Buried: 

         Spouse: Mary Grace Moore (1939-      )
           Marr: 20 Jan 1961 - Sherman, Grayson Co, TX. (Divorced in 1986)

         Spouse: Patricia Lee Whitworth (      -      )
           Marr: 14 Aug 1986

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General Notes: Husband - Austin J. Donaldson

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SSDI: AUSTIN DONALDSON 11 Feb 1889 Dec 1969 16373 (Emlenton, Venango, PA) (none specified) 165-28-4124 Pennsylvania

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General Notes: Wife - Ruth Esther Sheffer

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"THIS IS OUR HOME"
by MRS. AUSTIN J. DONALDSON
Editor's Note:
Mr. Austin J. Donaldson began farm­ing when he was 14 years old, quitting school and taking over the responsibili­ties of a farm and supporting the family.
For 13 years he managed to make ends meet on a hundred year old farm and here the story begins. The Donaldsons have what it takes to make America great. They have what Rural America needs.
The spring of 1918 was early and mild. Most of the planting was done the last half of April and the first of May.
While Austin was busy planting the crops on his widowed mother's farm I was busy finishing my work as a rural school teacher.
We were married May 15. It was a bright warm spring day and all nature seemed in tune to give us its richest blessings. After a week's wedding trip seeing Niagara Falls in our first Ford, we came home and bought the farm of Austin's mother, consisting of 63 acres.
Almost immediately the old gray team was hitched to the plow and scra­per and the excavation for Our Home was started. The foundation was hardly completed when Austin was stricken ill with diphtheria, an illness from which he has never completely recovered. At the same time his mother became af­flicted with a heart condition and both were bedfast for weeks. I changed pro­fessions suddenly and instead of the school teacher that I had trained for, I became a nurse, housekeeper, etc. overnight.
After what seemed like a long con­valescence Austin hitched to the wag­on and hauled lumber, which had been sawed the previous winter from our own woodlot, into the yard of our new home for the convenience of the car­penters who started work immediately.
Other lumber including chestnut, which, too, was cut from our own woods before the disastrous blight struck its deadly blow, was hauled to Oil City by wagon on dirt roads to be worked into the interior finish far the house. Edgings salvaged from ties received similar treatment and became the hardwood floors.
The painters finished painting the ex­terior on the first Armistice Day, Novem­ber 11, and we shall never forget the blasts of whistles and sirens and the ringing of church bells as the glad news was heralded throughout the country­side. That was before the radio came into use. We moved into what has been our home for almost 29 years in time to celebrate our first Christmas.
The first few years we followed di­versified farming. Included in this pro­gram was a part of an acre of rural rus­set potatoes grown from a barrel of cer­tified seed bought from Edward F. Dib­ble, seed grower of Honey Falls, N. Y. They produced exceptionally well and each succeeding year we increased the acreage and bought a one-row potato planter which was an innovation in this section of the state.
The potatoes were dug with a shovel plow. Our grader was the home-made type where we got down on our knees on a chaff cushion and by the dim light of a lantern we clawed through the potatoes with our hands.
The ones that looked good enough for the housewife were put into burlap bags-a bushel to a bag-and the oth­ers were shoveled aside to be gone over later. The best ones were used for seed and the culls for livestock feed.
The marketing was probably the most difficult task of all. The alarm jingled not later than 3 a.m. and it took hustling to get breakfast over the team hitched up and the 50 bushel load car­ried out of the cellar and loaded on the wagon and started by 5 a.m. Then the long trek to market 15 miles away began over dirt or perhaps mud roads, depending on the time of year. The de­liveries were made mostly to the homes in 5, 10 and sometimes 15 bushel lots and once in a while a full load to one home as the housewives stored their supply of winter potatoes.
The trip back home was a trifle eas­ier as sometimes we lounged in the wagon bed, knowing full well that the old grays knew the way home and were just as keen to get there as we were. It would be a late supper when we ar­rived home at 8 or 9 and sometimes 10 p.m. But that was part of a potato grower's lot in those times.
How times have changed! Now we plant with a 2-row planter and tractor, spray with a 12-row sprayer and dig with a 2-row digger; grade with a modern grader and pack in paper bags and market in trucks hauling several times our original loads, and all over improved roads.
We have received all kinds of prices. The highest was $4.00 per bushel for a 50-bushel wagon load and the cheapest, almost an entire crop during the de­pression for from 18 to 25 cents per bushel. These were extreme ups and downs, but with all of them, including some that we haven't mentioned, there has never been a time that we haven't been able to buy anything we needed, either to eat or wear, that we couldn't get it; and if we didn't have the money, we always had the credit.
With the increase in the size of our farm from the original 63 acres to 240 acres, operations have also increased. Our potato acreage has increased from a fraction of an acre to 80 acres last year.
The first few years we used our house cellar for storage but we needed more room as our acreage increased and we built a modern storage of 10,000 bushel capacity. With a few years of good growing conditions and more increase in our acreage we found we still needed more room and the barn basement was turned into a storage.
Last year the weather was too dry in the early part of the season and too wet at digging time and this year it was just the reverse and our potatoes haven't done so well.
In looking back over the years we find that our crops have suffered both from excessive moisture as well as lack of it. Turning nature's spigot off seems to be beyond the power of man and the next best thing is a good under-drain­age. We have put in 10 miles of tile drain and still need some more.
We have decided too that there is, something we can do about the lack of moisture and right now the men are getting ready to build an irrigation dam, which will be filled from a deep and apparently inexhaustible well which is already equipped and ready for operation. If past experience is any criterion even though irrigation may not be needed next year, it will be like the monkey's tail-it won't be long-until it is needed.
We realize that it is a new venture for this territory but we believe if it is properly used it will take some of the gamble out of the potato business.
An old Chinese proverb says that any fool can count the number of seeds in an apple, but nobody can count the number of apples in a seed. We say, however, that anyone can count the number of eyes on a potato but no one can count the number of potatoes in an eye and especially if they are irri­gated at the proper time.
A real estate agent might describe our home as a frame dwelling, 24x42 feet, with a modern bath and 4 bed­rooms, electricity, gas, furnace, a tele­phone and radio, hot and cold water supplied from a spring that has never been known to go dry. The house is situated on Route 38, a cement road, 8 miles north of Emlenton and 75 miles north of Pittsburgh, one of the best markets in the world.
We much prefer to describe it as Our Home, surrounded by buildings that for the most part we built ourselves and planted with trees from the old fields and woods where we used to roam and still do when time permits. Some of the shrubs and perennials that grace our home were gifts from friends' and neighbors' gardens. We have three flower beds that are a must in our land­scaping. The first one at our back door to give us a lift as we go in and out. The second one where it can be seen from our kitchen window and the third one in the front of the vegetable garden next to the highway to enhance the beauty of rural life for the traveling public.
If you were to walk into our kitchen-not as the spider to the fly-but as one hunter to another, you would see several guns standing, like pussy, in the corner. In our corner are the grown­up guns, the double barrel shot gun, and the 38-55 deer rifle which will be used after December 1. In another cor­ner is a .22 rifle which has been a suc­cessful weapon for the youngest nimrod of the family. Beside it stands a toy gun which has shot many bear and deer as they hid behind the doors or under the beds some rainy day!
Let's take a peek into the den where the head of the house is reclining lei­surely in his easy chair with his house slippers on and his feet dangling over the ottoman. The radio is beside him, also magazine rack with his favorite magazines. To one side of him sits Paul, our youngest boy who is eleven years old, wrestling with the problem of con­structing a potato elevator with his erector set and a small motor. He insists that he is not going to be a potato grower but the farm mechanic. That is all right with us because in a few years there will not only be the tractors and trucks and other farm machinery to service but there will be the family airplanes too. Then, too, the deep freeze which will soon be installed to take the place of our lockers in town that are sup­plying our table with those delicious T-bone steaks and juicy roasts along with the fresh fruits and vegetables and butter that we carefully stored in them last summer.
Let's go back again to this den which has been reserved as a haven of rest for the tired aching muscles as the men relax from the toil and heat of the day. It's true there may be some dust on their clothes and possibly a little mud on their feet but we don't mind and the next morning after they have gone out to work we gently clean up the dirt and remember that it is apart of the same ground that grows the spuds to keep Our Home going.
We have a living room too where we entertain Dr. Nixon when he is "dress­ed up" as well as other notables. We use it sometimes ourselves-especially Paul as he tunes up his saxophone with the piano and we rejoice that his music ability is improving as there are less sour notes.
I think we should take a peek into a closet upstairs too, where another of the family hobbies is stored for the time being. Yes, it's a complete line of fishing equipment stored away last spring after a trailer trip to Florida for a few of the winter months. It was our fourth trip down there for a bit of fun and relaxation and we hope that after the guns are stored away in this same closet that we can again get out the fishing equipment and tune it up for another trip to the Sunny South to vie with each other in who can catch the biggest ones.
This story would not be complete without taking a trip down the high­way to the edge of the farm and step in through the open door of Winston 's home. We would find him probably fig­uring whether he had ordered enough pipe and sprinklers for that irrigation system or perhaps oiling his gun for that deer hunt. Ruby, the mistress of the home, would no doubt be balancing the farm accounts for the end of the month, with one eye on Terry, their six months old son who sits gurgling in his play pen and wondering what it is all about.
Farm life has been beautiful for us and we wouldn't trade it for any home in the city. It has had its disappointments but as we stand in the open door of life we feel like the old man who said he had known many troubles, most of which had never happened.
We think of the preamble to our con­stitution as we close, that we truly are grateful to Almighty God for the bless­ings of civil and religious liberty and have humbly invoked His guidance every day of our married life and this, we feel, is the secret to any success we may have achieved in this, Our Home.
Pennsylvania Potato Growers, The Guide Post, Nov. 1946

The New Herald, Franklin and Oil City, PA, Wednesday, March 8, 1961
Mrs. Ruth Sheffer Donaldson, 65, wife of Austin J. Donaldson, of Emlenton RD 1, and a well-known resident of the Nickleville area for many years, died at 8:40 p. Wednesday in the Franklin Hospital.
She had been in ill health for the past two years. Mrs. Donaldson, who was in Sarasota, Fla., for the winter, returned by plane on Feb. 28 and was admitted to the hospi­tal at that time.
A daughter of Benjamin and El­len Webb Sheffer, she was born in Van on Dec. 25, 1895. She attend­ed Nickleville High School and Ed­inboro Teachers College. She was formerly a teacher in the Rich­land Township Schools.
She and Mr. Donaldson were united in marriage on May 15, 1918 and their entire married life was spent at their Donaldson Potato Farm.
Her interests and activities were numerous, dealing largely with church and civic work, and she was known throughout the county for her work in the Ve­nango County Sabbath School As­sociation. She was a former offi­cer of that organization.
Mrs. Donaldson was an active member of the Rockland Presby­terian Church. She had been prom­inent in Sunday school and church functions for 50 years. For several years the Donaldsons spent their winters in Sarasota, Fla., where Mrs. Donaldson was chairman of religious activities at the Pine Shores Trailer Park.
She took a special interest in homemakers' activities in the county and was frequently called upon to emcee and direct Home­makers' Day functions. She was an officer in the county group as well as an officer in the Venango County Extension Association. She was also a member of the Nickleville W.C.T.U.
Surviving in addition to her hus­band are two sons, Winston G. Donaldson, of Nickleville, and Paul E. Donaldson, of Austin Col­lege, Sherman, Tex., where he has been accepted as an industrial missionary to the Congo; three grandchildren, five brothers and two sisters, Mrs. Charles W. (Ka­therine) Bergman, Miss M. Fran­ces Sheffer, F. Marion Sheffer and Jack B. Sheffer. all of Franklin; Warren G. Sheffer and Marshall G. Sheffer, of Van, and Charles B. Sheffer, Marietta, Ga. Three brothers preceded her in death.
The body has been removed to the Huff Chapel where friends may call at any time and where funeral services will be conducted at 2 p. m. Saturday by the Rev. J. V. Mountain, former pastor of the Rockland Presbyterian Church. Interment will be in the Nickleville Cemetery.

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Notes: Marriage

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Unk newspaper,
A very pretty wedding took place at the First Presbyterian manse at Nickleville on Wednesday, May 15, when Ruth Esther Sheffer, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Sheffer of Van, and Austin Jay Donaldson, son of Mrs. John Donaldson of Nickleville, were married by Rev. Alexander Marlowe.
The bride wore a navy blue traveling suit and a corsage bouquet of sweet peas. The young couple was attended by Miss Ruth Weaver, as maid of honor, and Marshall Sheffer, brother of the bride, acted as best man. The ring ceremony was used.
After the ceremony the bridal party returned to the home of the bride, where an elaborate wedding dinner was served. The table decorations were pink and white. Corers were laid for 25 guests. The young couple left later on a wedding trip to Conewango Valley; Buffalo and Niagara Falls.
The bride, who was a student of Edinboro normal, has for the past four years been one of Richland township's most popular and successful teachers was given an announcement party at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Pearce, a week previous to her marriage, and there was a miscellaneous shower shortly after her return home.
The bridegroom is a popular young man and is highly respected wherever he is known. On account of his ability as scientific agriculturist, he was placed by the district board in Class Four-C.
The young couple will reside on the bridegroom's farm near Nickleville.
They have the hearty congratulations of a host of friends.

1 Venango County Historical Society, Venango County Pennsylvania Cemetery Records and Early Church Histories, Vol. 4, Richland Township (Franklin, PA: Venango County Historical Society, 1996), Pg 27.

2 John A. M. Ziegler, Ph.D., D.D, Ziegler Genealogy (Huntington Park, CA: Glenn Printing Co., 1935), Pg 14.