Ancestors

William Irving Silvis

William Irving Silvis was born on 22 April 1860 in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, the fourth of the seven children of David Silvis and Elizabeth Procious. In 1870 the family was farming in Eldred Township. He became a lumberman, self-employed, in the hemlock and white-pine country where Jefferson, Clarion and Forest Counties meet.

In 1893 he married Etna Gertrude McDowell, a daughter of George Richard McDowell, a cavalryman of the Civil War, and Martha Mae Dunham. She was thirteen years younger. Their daughter Elsie Evelyn was born on 8 June 1893 in Clarion County, Ella Nelly in 1895, a son Charles in 1897 who died within days, and Gertrude in 1898. Etna died in 1899, aged 26, after a three-week cold that her family always traced to a crossing of a frozen stream on a visit to her mother. William was left with three small girls. In 1900 he was in Indiana County with Elsie, Ella, Gertrude and a child Agie.

He had red hair. In 1903 he lost a leg in a logging accident, and he never married again. His daughter Gertrude asked him why, and he told her, "There was never any one like Etna." He lived another fifty-two years. In 1950, aged 90, he was living in Jenks Township, Forest County, in the household of his daughter Elsie Haight. He went into Brookville Hospital in August 1951 and died there on 11 August, four days later, of heart failure, aged 91. The certificate, with Elsie signing as informant, gives his father as David Silvis and his mother as Betsy Brocious, his occupation as lumberman, and his usual residence as Marienville. He was buried on 14 August 1951 in Bethel Geer Cemetery, Warsaw Township, Jefferson County, under the flat slate stone that already bore Etna and their infant son: SILVIS, 1860 WILLIAM I. 1951, 1877 EDNA 1900, INFANT SON 1897. The stone misdates Etna by four years at each end.

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Cite: Heirology, "William Irving Silvis (1860-1951)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/william-irving-silvis-1860-1951-c54a9c.