PETER NOEL was the son  of Jacob Noel who went to the Ligonier area of Westmoreland County, PA in 1823. Jacob rented the house where General Arthur St. Clair died from a Mr. Fox of Philadelphia. Peter was born 7 Apr 1818 in Hamiltonban Township, Adams County, Pa.  He was baptized at Conewago Chapel in Adams County on 16 Nov 1818.  The sponsors were his aunt and uncle, Andrew and Elizabeth Noel.  Peter married Elizabeth Harr, who was born 18 Apr 1819.  They are listed in the 1840 census in Ligonier Township, Westmoreland county, Pa.; and in the 1850 and 1860 census records for Unity Township, Westmoreland County, Pa.  They were not found in the 1870 census.  In 1880 they lived in Cook Township, Westmoreland County (P.O. Mansville). Tax records show Peter in Ligonier Township 1840-43, and 1868-70; in Unity Township 1862 and 1866; in Cook Township 1861-63 and 1867-70. Peter was a farmer.  He died 12 Feb 1901 and his wife died 1 Aug 1892.  Both are buried at Bethel Church, near Mansville, Cook Township, Westmoreland County, Pa. Peter and Elizabeth had nine children:
 
 

Amanda           1840/41        She married James Tarr.
Eliza Ellen        1843 - 1914  She married Daniel Kuhns
John                 1848/49.      He was killed in the Civil War.
Emma              1849 - 1919  Her first husband was Noah Campbell.  Her second husband was David Fetter.
William H.                           He is reported to have served in the Civil War.  No further information.
Franklin Pierce 1852 - 1904  He married Mary Olive Wrigh
Harriet Alice    1855 - 1926  She married first a Mr. Correl, and second Frank Rouser
Mary A.                              She married William Kimmell and lived and died in Garfield, Kansas.
Harry Lincoln   1862 - 1930  He married Lydia J. Hunter

 A Funeral

Not long since I attended the funeral of Mrs. Noel, who had with her husband Peter Noel tread life's rugged pathway for a great many years on the old Sam Austraw farm.  When I arrived at the little Bethel Church the procession had not come and I took a walk around the hill to the house to get a peep at the old Austraw farm.  We might say with the Poet, "the house is surely between two meeting hills," the Chestnut Ridge on the west and a large hill on the east.  Like the George Freeman farm you can see a patch of blue sky about your head.  While riding leisurely home in the buggy with George Earnest, I asked him how a man would make a living on a farm like that.  He said there was a tableland upon the hill of about fifty acres of beautiful land.  When a boy he and Noel's girls (which were handsome by the way) and some other youngsters would gather together on a bright Sunday in the sweet month of roses, and go upon that flat land and spend the day in pleasure and gathering the wild strawberries which were plentiful.  Oh! halcyon days of our youth, of the long, long ago!  Mrs. Noel's maiden name was Hare.  Her brothers John, Jacob, and Chris, and her sisters Mrs. Wm. Campbell, Mrs. Jesse Campbell, and Barbara are all with us.  She had fifty grand-children and twenty-seven great grandchildren.  She was born in 1819, joined the Lutheran Church in 1836 married in 1840 and died in 1892, had eleven children, eight living, two of the eight have no children.  That is what I call a rounded out life.  Peter was born near Chambersburg.  When a boy his father moved to the top of Chestnut Ridge and settled on the old historic St. Clair place.  His brother occupied it till quite recently when the house burnt down.  When she and young Peter fell in love we cannot say, but we don't think it was any spasmodic affair or love at first sight, but we think it commenced when they were school children and well matured.  When twenty-one, at the heighth of her youth and beauty and her prospects highest for life, she and Peter formed a union and partnership for life.  How well they suceeded we all know.  The preacher said she was a good woman.  Well we thought so too, if she could live a life-time in that place and raise eleven children and add another farm to that one called the big John farm on which is the beautiful little cemetery.  When they had two children they moved to the state of Missiouri, but for some reason did not like it and moved back again.  It was what I call a proper marriage because there was no money consideration in the contract.  They took each other for their worth and commenced lfe's battle in earnest.  Her mother must have been a woman of great courage.  About forty years ago the writer in crossing Chestnut Ridge, going to his school, would see the old lady about the door of her cabin in a very lonesome place.  She was a large stout woman.  I would like to know what her name was before she married Hare.  Rev. Stouffer, of Donegal, preached a very solemn and impressive sermon from the text found in Amos "Prepare to meet thy God," and then we laid her away in the new cemetery on one of their own farms to await the general resurrection of the just.  Now if any one wishes to see the conclusion of this sketch let him turn back to your issue of August 31st and read the little poem entitled, "The girl of long ago."

Mountaineer

Note:   An oral history says  that Elizabeth was half Indian.  By Deb