F Kroh
F. KROH, farmer, residing in Cowanshannock township, Armstrong county, was born in Jefferson county, Pa., March 2, 1856, a son of Jacob Kroh and a grandson of Jacob Kroh.
Jacob Kroh, the grandfather, was a blacksmith in Northumberland county, Pa., and moved from there to Jefferson county, where he became interested in the lumber trade and was a leading man in Winslow township, dying there at the age of seventy-three years. His children were as follows: Benneville; Jacob; Henry; Angelina, who married John Snyder; Kate, who married Michael McNitch and (second) George Jordon; Elizabeth, who married Levi Sugar; and Sarah, who married Peter Baum.
Jacob Kroh (2), son of Jacob Kroh and father of Lewis F. Kroh, grew to manhood in Jefferson county, where he followed farming and lumbering. In the spring of 1872 he came to Cowanshannock township, Armstrong county, where he bought 160 acres of land, to which he subsequently added eighty acres, and resided on his large farm during the remainder of his life, his death occurring Feb. 20, 1893, when he was aged sixty-four years. He was buried at Dayton, Pa. He married Mary Rabuck, daughter of Jonathan Rabuck, and they had four children: Lewis F., Charles, John and Alice, the last named being the wife of Harrison Seanor.
Lewis F. Kroh obtained his education in the public schools and since then has been engaged in farming, always residing on the old Kroh homestead in Cowanshannock township. He is numbered with the successful farmers of his section, and has a valuable property. Politically he is a Republican, and is serving as a member of the school board; he has also been a councilman.
Mr. Kroh married Margaret S. Schrecengost, daughter of Michael T. Schrecengost, a member of a large and well-known family of Armstrong county, and they have five children: Lillie, who married James Sexton; Mary; Laird, who graduated June, 1912, from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, and is practicing medicine; James, who is a school teacher in Cowanshannock township, and Alton. There are two grandchildren in the family, George A. and Margaret E., born to Mr. and Mrs. Sexton.
We have the following record of the Schrecengost family:
(I) Yost Schrecengost, the pioneer settler of this family in Pennsylvania, was born in Germany and grew to manhood there. The game laws are very strict in that country even at the present day, and it is said that Yost Schrecengost fled for fear of being arrested for having shot a deer out of season, and came to America, accompanied by his wife and four sons.
(II) Conrad Schrecengost, son of Yost, was born in Armstrong County, Pa., married and had the following children: Martin, who married Christina Oury; Daniel; John, who was known as "Gentleman John"; Peter; Benjamin; Stauffer; Eva, who married Jacob McPherson; and Mollie, who married Michael Truby.
(III) Peter Schrecengost, son of Conrad, married Polly Moyer, and they spent almost their entire lives in Kittanning township, Armstrong county. They had the following children; Catherine, who married Jacob Schrecengost; Alexander, who married Harriet Rupp; Mary A. who married Jacob S. Rupp; Josiah, who married Ellen Selfrich; Sarah, who married Jjacob Wolf; Christinia, who married Samuel Marks; Matilda, who died young; Hannah M., who married Thomas Kirkpatrick; Lucinda, who married John Fry; Lewis, who married Jennie Irwin; and Jefferson and Aaron, both of whom died young.
(IV) John Schrecengost, son of Conrad, and grandfather of Mrs. Lewis F. Kroh, was always known as "Gentleman John." He was a man of energy and business enterprise, a blacksmith by trade and also a distiller, and he manufactured the first iron plows ever made in Armstrong county. He acquired a large amount of land in the vicinity of Rural Valley, where his death occurred; he is buried in Pleasant Union cemetery, in Cowanshannock township. The wife of John Schrecengost was Sarah Turney, and they had the following children: William T., who married Mary Baum, (second) Mary A. Hawk and (third) Adeline Brown, was a farmer in Cowanshannock township; Michael T. is mentioned below; John A. married Sarah Kline; Catherine married J. T. Patterson; Sarah married John Bittinger; Lavina married John Hetrick.
(V) Michael T. Schrecengost, son of John, and father of Mrs. Kroh, was born on the old family homestead. He owned a farm at Rural Valley to which he gave attention, and also worked as a carpenter. He died Dec. 24, 1861 at the age of forty-one years, a victim of smallpox. He married Mary A. Hawk (daughter of Jacob Hawk) who died in 1869, and they had the following children: Harvey J., Catherine, Margaret S., and five others who died during the months of July and August, 1860, during an epidemic of diphtheria.
Source: Pages 693 - 694, Armstrong County, Pa., Her People, Past and Present, J. H. Beers Co., 1914.
Transcribed September 1998 by Carl Waltenbaugh for the Armstrong County Beers Project.
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