Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Taking a well-earned nap, the usually energetic Christian Stoner and Esther Resler (Barnhouse) Freed rest in the garden on their farm on Trotter Hill about two miles west of Connellsville, Fayette County, PA, circa 1920. Note the handwritten note in white ink at the top of the image — “Sh!”
When they attended the inaugural Minerd Reunion in 1913 at Ohio Pyle, Fayette County, Esther was elected treasurer. She was prominently mentioned in a Minerd history read aloud at the reunion by cousin and family historian Allen Edward Harbaugh — “Of prominent members of the three families, we mention Mrs. Esther Freed, daughter of Catharine Barnhouse, W. Henry Minerd, Justice of the Peace, and son of Joel, and Rev. Isaac H. Minerd, son of Eli,” he wrote. At her death in 1922, the Connellsville Daily Courier said she “held a record as a Sunday school teacher believed to have been unsurpassed in Fayette county. For 50 years she taught in the school of the East Liberty Presbyterian Church at Vanderbilt, relinquishing her work only when failing health compelled her to do so…”
Christian passed away a year after his wife. In an editorial, the Daily Courier eulogized that “In the death of Christian S. Freed, Dunbar township loses one of its best known citizens, his home community and the profession of farming one of the most useful and valuable exponents of all that was intended to contribute to the welfare of his neighbors and the advancement of the art to which he gave the productive years of his life.”
Click to enlarge this as the Minerd.com Photo of the Month for November 2018. The couple previously has been featured as a photo of the month in March 2003 and November 2010.
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