Benjamin Franklin 
and 
Lydia Means Mann

"We do not know too much about our parents in their early years.  Mother went to school in a log building that stood along the roadside on Uncle Barney Steckmans property.  It was quite a crude structure.  The benches were made of half-round slab boards with wooden pegs for legs.  The whole inside structure was roughly finished.  Our sister Ida, went to school here one session for her first school days.  

Our mother has said when she was a young girl she could not tell her mother from her Aunt Honor Means, they being sisters, and having the last name the same. When father was quite young, his mother left him with her sister, Parthena Steckman, while she went with one of her brothers to Ashland, Ohio.  Later she was married to Tobias Crone.   Little was known of this family but they had heard through the Steckmans that their mother, Eva had left a son in Pennsylvania.  They were determined to find him so in August of 1923; James, Flora, Harry and Nettie came to Clearfield Pennsylvania and were delighted to find their half-brother Benjamin.   Thus began a relationship that has existed all these years and seems to get stronger as the years go by.  By that time our grandmother had passed away so none of us were ever able to meet her.

In the younger days and years of our father's life we can quote a few of this activities.   First of all he was taken to be raised by a Stuckey family who lived near Ida and Jim Leasure's farm, a few miles below Clearville.   Later the Stuckey family, moved to Morrisons Cove.  Father was then twelve years old. He told the story how he drove the cattle on this farm to a wooded section, where there was a cave and low place so that they would not be in view of the on-coming soldiers of the Civil War for fear they would destroy them.

Some years later this Stucky family moved out West to Missouri.  In times later, father made it known that he would like to go to school.   Mr. Stuckey said that he did not send his own children to school and was not sending anyone elses.

It was some time after this episode that father and another young man ran away from home and came back to Pennsylvania, Father coming to the home of Chris Garlick father of Frank Garlick.

We are not informed where Dad did go to school.   He taught school in the vicinity of the Rock Hill section a few terms and clerked in a store at Everett. Held many offices as School Director, Auditor and Assessor after his marriage. Father was twenty-four years old at the time of his marriage."