McBride - Bumpus Genealogy

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       Leander Moore Book

B:  14 Apr 1869 - D: 24 Jan 1968

               Married :  1896

  Sarah Catherine McDowell

​

   B:             1867 - D:          1944

......  or  read  his  Story  following  these  photos.

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The  Book  Family  Tree  Story

              by  Harry  D.  Book

​          .......  in  his  own  words

Dear Peg and Harold,
 
      Here, for you, are two photographs of people very close to me, and I think, also to you.  They are photos

of Sara Catherine Davis, and Leander (Lee) Moore Book, my parents, your grandparents. The photos were

made near the close of the nineteenth century, circa 1892 : Sara's made by the Vasbinder Studio, Grove City,

Pa., branches in Centerville and Slippery Rock, and Lee's by the Johnston Studio, New Castle, Pa., shortly

before they were married. What I shall write about them, following, is with one or two minor variations,

authentic, factual, and came to me directly from them by word of mouth. The variations, too, are from

reliable sources.
      Sara was born in 1867 at London, Pa., a small country community in Mercer County, a few miles s.west

of Grove City.  I do not say town, because it was not a town ; it was a country community , consisting of a
Presbyterian Church , a general store and post office , a Grange hall, a doctor's office, all spread out over a

considerable stretch of territory, with farmer's homes in between. Lee was born in 1869 at Plain Grove, Pa.,

in Lawrence County, and it was another country community , similar to London , about ten miles south of

 Grove City.   It consisted of two churches : The Plain Grove United Presbyterian Church and the Plain Grove

Presbyterian Church, a general store and post office, a Grange hall, a blacksmith shop, a doctor's office and

farmer's homes again all spread out over several miles.  The surrounding territory was beautiful rolling,

wooded, terrain, as was most of the terrain of Western Pennsylvania, then. Sara's ancestor's,  The McDowell's,

were important figures in the original settlement of London and of Amsterdam , another country community 
about five 5 miles southwest of London. Sara's mother was Amanda  McDowell, of Scotch-Irish descent & her

father was Wm. Davis of Welsh descent.  There were five children to this union, two boys and three girls, of

which Sara was the youngest. They were a prosperous farm family, and the parents were able to offer their

children a good home & heritage. The boys were taught farming, and the girls house-keeping, sewing, cooking,

how to raise flowers and a vegetable garden.  Their schooling consisted of their country school, and access

to Pine Grove Academy in Grove City (later to become Grove City College.)
      Amanda Davis had a good education, as of her time, and encouraged her children toward learning.  All of

the children completed the courses offered by the country school and attended the Academy for a time, but
Sara was the only one of the five who completed all the work at the Academy.  She was encouraged to be a

teacher by the then President of the Academy, Dr. Isaac Ketler, who was distantly related to Amanda Davis. 

Following the completion of her work at the Academy, she took several courses in Education and Methods

of Teaching at Slippery Rock State Normal School, and subsequently taught in the schools in London, in

Amsterdam, and in other country schools in Mercer County. Sara was a sucessful as a teacher.She loved

children, and children loved her.  She was pretty , had an engaging personality , yet quiet dignity and modesty.

In the many years I knew her , I never saw her lose her temper or be unreasonable in any way. She had much

to offer the children.   Her Academy courses in English grammer , literature and poetry, in American history,

in mathematics, and in Elocution stood her in good stead for teaching, and she made the most of it. She was

teaching when she met Lee Book at a summer ice-cream social.  It must have been "love at first sight," for

less than a year after they met, they were married !
      Lee was the son of Eleanor and Matthew Book, whose family consisted of six children, of which he was

the youngest.  He was not a large man, physically. In other ways, yes, but not physically. His height was about

5-8 or 5-9 , and he never weighed more than 150 pounds, even in young manhood. He attended school and
completed all the courses offered by the Lawrence County country schools by the time he was thirteen. The

"advanced" course in math boasted, toward its conclusion, of elementary algebra and square root.  He ate it

up. His parents liked to read and had every- thing they could "get their hands on" available to their children.
      His father, Matthew, was a skilled woodworker, having inherited this skill from his father , old * Nicholas

Book , your great,  great grand- father, who must have enjoyed the respect of his contempemporaries, as he

was elected to serve on the Session of the old Plain Grove Presbyterian Church three times. He was the son

of old Peter Book, who served in the Lancaster Militia in the Revolutionary War, and was given a grant of land

of 394 acres for his services. Peter Book was a son of old Johannes Buch ( German for Book ) , who emigrated
from Germany to America in 1754. He was the patriarch of the Book family, and was your great, great, great

great grandfather. It is a heritage of which we need never to be ashamed; rather it is one of which we all can

be justly proud !
     Lee learned early how to use and care for tools, and ultimately became a cabinet- and carriage-maker, which

I shall mention later in this account. At fourteen, he was earning good wages, working in the lumber camps and

saw mills, then prevalent in thickly-wooded Western Pennsylvania. His ability & skill in wood eventually earned
him a job with McKay Carriage Co. at Grove City, a position he was holding when he met Sara Davis at the ice-

cream social, less than a year before they were married in 1892. He was then twenty-three, and Sara was twenty-

five. Now look again at the photographs !
      They both had saved some money, Lee from his position with McKay Carriage, and Sara from her teaching,

and they were able to furnish a small apartment in Grove City where they "went to house- keeping."  Lee always had a nice "rig," having taken advantage of McKay's standard offer to allow their employees to have a buggy
at cost, and he had always been a good judge of horse flesh, from youth up. Their mare was gentle, and Sara

was able to drive her out to visit her mother, Amanda Davis in London, which she did regularly.
      In the interim of time covered by the above-mentioned activities, Matthew Book had passed away.   Lee's

brother , Will , who was a bachelor, and worked in New Castle, acme home to look after their mother & sister

Jane. When e few later, Will died an untimely death from a heart attack, Lee took a "leave of absence" from

McKay's, and he and Sara came to Plain Grove to take care of his mother, Eleanor, and sister Jane. The old

homestaed, which had been in the Book family for generations, needed repair, and the second house, the

"old house across the road," as we always called it, was needing repair also. Lee went down long week-ends,

put a new roof on the old house, and made other various and sundry repairs as needed to make it liveable
again. I remember it had a large living/dining room, a kitchen, two bedrooms with a smaller room between,

with doors opening out of the living room and front bedroom to a front porch. In the small room. Sara kept

her Singer sewing machine and Lee built a desk and bookcase to house out then considerable library. There

was no integral bath.  In those days, most people used "out houses" for their bathroom facilities.
     It was in this "old house across the road" that Lee and Sara's children were all born. Chronnologically,

they were Paul, Herbert, Margaret and Harry. Lee farmed the small homestead farm, & worked as a carpenter and carriage - and wagon-repair man on the side. As always, he prospered. Then, when grandmother Eleanor

died, we moved from the "old house" into the old homestead home, and Aunt Jane continued to live with us.

Lee consequently bought, and made a lot of repairs to the old homestead. I remember he put a new roof of

cedar shingles on the house. There were porches, two small ones to the north and west, and a large back

porch out from the dining room and kitchen.  He refloored them and built a new set of steps tot he back porch.

There was a small basement under the kitchen and dining room areas. he sunk a well in the basement, and

installed a pitcher-pump for us in the kitchen. He enlarged the basement, put in a cement floor, and built
shelves for Sara's canned goods and bins for apples and potatoes. He made other repairs, accordingly, to the

other farm buildings. He pruned the apple and cherry trees and Sara had several fine flower beds. She loved

to have cut flowers in the house, in season.
      In all of this activity, I did not realize it then, but I was getting quite a liberal education, as were my brothers,

in just being Lee's son and observing him and his work. He was a good man by any yardstick. He did not drink

or smoke; he went to church regularly, and was invited on several occasions to become an Elder, but declined

on the pretext that he was "not good enough" to be an elder. Sara remonstrated that he was as good as any

man on the Session. I never heard him use profanity; he was not "puffed-up"; did not behave himself unseemly.
At election time he always went to the polls & voted. He did not preach to us; rather looking back now, I realize

how much he taught by example. I used to wish I could do the versatile things he could. I never did pick up as

much knowledge in wood - working as my brothers , Paul and Herbert , did.   They seemed to have more of a
knack for it than I. But I tried.
   Mother passed on to Maragret many of her attributes  , such as cooking, sewing, housekeeping, to name a

few. Margaret was a rapid learned and dutiful daughter. This was evident in later years, when she had a home

of her own. Mother too, like Dad, could be so many things, and do them well. She was a fine cook, an expert
seanstress, making most of her own and Margaret's dresses, and in the early years, some of her men folk's

shirts. She had a good voice, and sang alto in our church choir. She liked to read and recite poetry and she

could express herself well "on her feet." She seemed always to be busy, never idle. A little poem comes to

mind that epitomizes to some extent, at least, her philosophy of life:
                    "True worth is in being, not seeming,   ---   In doing each day that goes by
                       Some little good; not in dreaming   ---   Of great things to do by and by.
      I have said that Lee was not a large man physically, but in other ways, he was. In the succeeding years, I

have come in contact with a great many men, both in and out of my profession, some of them holding high

office, but I have not met any who topped him morally. Without really knowing it (maybe he did), he taught by

example.  You may recall that . . .
       "Mark Hopkins sat on one end of a log  -  And a farm boy sat on the other - -
         Now I'm not sure what Mark Hopkins taught,  Whether his history was spotty;

         his math was naught;  But the farmer boy he thought, thought he

         All though the lecture - time and quiz; 
         The kind of a man I mean to be is the kind of a man Mark Hopkins is !"

       Eventually, we all grew up and married. Paul married Lois Caldwell, and there were three boys to this

union: Edward, Wayne and Kenneth. Herbert married Gladys Maxwell, and they had three children: Wade,
Jane, and Robert. Margaret married Ralph McBride, and they had four: Evelyn, Harold, Ralph Jr., and Jean.

And I (lucky me!) married Betty Galloway (and after alomost 56 years, we are still in love). We had two girls:

Janet, who died in infancy, and Barbara.
      Well, dear nephews, nieces and daughter, that's it: you may take the Book Story from there!  I've tried,

in these brief chronicles, to give you a page or two of the Book Story in my time and place, in the hope
that you will find half as much pleasure from reading as I've had in recalling and jotting them down. Because

of our now advanced years, and the inevitable scheme of things, for us it will be in the not-too- distant future

when the final curtain will come down. When it does, may we go "not like the quarry slave, scourged to his

dungeon," but with an unalterable faith that there has been, as promised, one of the "many mansions"

provided for us in the Great Beyond.
      And now, in closing this long, rambling, and not-too-well organized epistle, may I say, with TinyTim,

"Gos Bless us every one!"

Cordially, your old Uncle Harry
Eustis, Florida
June, 1986

P.S.  I've had the old photos re-photographed, and sized for you. May I suggest, subject to your approval,

        of course, a 5 x 7 double, hinged frame: Lee's picture on the left; Sara's on the right ? Wood frames

        would be quite appropriate, since wood figured so greatly in the Book Story; however, you may want

        to use one of the new metals or plastics to suit your particular decor.