BIO: Dougle McCartney, Tillard Pen Pictures, 1911, Blair County, PA

Contributed April 2003 for use in the USGenWeb Archives 
by Judy Banja <jbanja@comcast.net>

Copyright 2003.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/blair/
_________________________________________ 

                Pen Pictures of Friends and Reminiscent Sketches
                                by J. N. Tillard

             Altoona, PA: William F. Gable & Co., Mirror Press, 1911 

                         Life of Thrilling Experiences

            DOUGLE McCARTNEY, Descendant of First Settler in Altoona,
              Noted for Many Daring Deeds and Skill with Firearms

FORTY years ago there was no event in life that delighted the average boy in 
Central Pennsylvania more than the frequent shooting matches that took place 
in every neighborhood. There is probably not a man fifty years old, or more, 
who spent his youth in Logan or Tuckahoe Valleys who does not look back with 
keenest delight to the joyful days in autumn and winter when the fathers and 
young men gathered together with their old patch rifles to shoot at a target, 
with turkeys or fat hogs as a prize to be competed for.
  There was little of the spirit of gambling in these affairs, for the pride 
of skill and accomplishment in marksmanship overshadowed every other 
consideration. The time was not yet so far back when part of the necessary 
education of every boy was to possess sufficient skill with the rifle to 
enable him to supply the means of subsistence and protect life and property 
against the attacks of wild beasts and wilder men, and the skill exhibited at 
the shooting match still appealed powerfully to the boy. It was to the lad of 
that time what baseball is to the boy of the present.
  At all these events there were one or more individuals who rose somewhat 
above the level of their fellows by reason of exploits in the past, as well 
as present skill, and to the writer the man who occupied the centre of the 
stage in this circle of famous marksmen was Dougle McCartney. He seldom 
missed a match, and from the time when his tall, lithe figure strode up to 
the out-door fire, kindled some sixty paces from the tree against which the 
targets were placed, until the match had been called on account of darkness, 
the boy always watched him. After all these years, in fancy, he can see him 
yet.
  Already a man of forty-five, with rugged face and keen kindly eye; trousers 
stuffed in the tops of his high leather boots; black slouch hat, pulled over 
his eyes; powder horn and deer-hide shot pouch, swung over his shoulder. When 
his turn came he stepped to the firing line with a quick, nervous stride; he 
threw up the long rifle, sent his keen glance through the sights under the 
tin shades, and, as the sharp, whip-like report rang out, had a trick of 
quickly dodging below the smoke made by the black powder to see where the 
bullet had struck, and, though the target was at least sixty yards away, he 
generally knew before the judge at the board called out the result of the 
shot. When the match for the day was over, it was usually found that Dougle 
McCartney had most of the turkeys to carry home, unless his son, Marion, was 
there, when there might be a different tale to tell. But it is a safe 
proposition that he was a whole lot prouder of the number of centres he had 
made than the turkeys he carried off.
  He is still living at the age of eighty-five at his home back of Fairview, 
and while he does not kill as many bear and deer as he once did in a season, 
he keeps himself in exercise by strolling over the Alleghany Mountains in 
search of bee trees. While his hands may be a trifle tremulous for the use of 
the rifle, his eye is not dimmed so that he cannot follow the swift flight of 
a bee and track it to its treasures.
  A wonderful man this, with more of reminiscence in the way of unwritten 
history of this locality under his hat than any other living contemporary. He 
remembers so well, because his forbears were an integral part of the 
community, and his own personality was a vigorous factor in the development 
of the valley.
  In the days when George Washington and the Continental Army were making 
things so  lively for the mother country that the crown needed every man who 
could be secured to keep itself steady on the head of King George, a press 
gang operating in Edinburg, Scotland, one night gobbled up a sturdy Scotchman 
in the person of Mr. McCartney's grandfather, and bore him off to the ship in 
the harbor. He was landed in New York and placed in the ranks of the Royal 
Army. He had not the least objection in the world to fighting, but Dougle, 
grand pere, like Dougle, fils, wanted to pick his company and fight in his 
own fashion.
  Therefore, one day when the guards were being changed, with a companion in 
distress named Frazer, he took a hasty departure and, though the gaurds shot 
through his hat, he blithely sped onward until he and Frazer reached 
Washington's Army, at Valley Forge, after crossing the Delaware on the ice. 
The army was in such condition that no recruits were wanted, and these two 
adventurous spirits pushed on westward until they one day camped on what is 
now the Cricket Field at Seventh Street, this city. Here they built a cabin 
and here two generations of the McCartney family were born.
  The subject of this sketch remembers a visit of "Old Colie," the great-
grandfather of the present generation of Colemans of Juniata Gap. After the 
Indians had boiled the brother of "Old Colie" in a kettle of maple syrup, the 
hardy pioneer spent the remainder of his days in ridding the earth of the red 
man and brother. In the visit described by Mr. McCartney, his father said to 
the famous Indian fighter:
  "Good day to kill a buck, but I guess you are getting a little too nervous 
to shoot."
  The old gentleman straightened out and replied:
  "If I saw an Indian it would steady me up."
  Some time after this the lad visited Ashland Furnace, near Ashville, and 
saw the furnace builders remove a mound that contained the skeletons of 
thirteen Indians who had made up the last party of marauders killed by the 
white settlers.
  Amid these surroundings the boy grew up, attending school for a month or 
two in several winters at a school house at Red Hill, on the Dry Gap Road. In 
the very nature of things, he became a mighty hunter, for in those days no 
game smaller than deer or bear were thought worth the ammunition expended in 
killing them. There was not much hunting required, as bear were so plentiful 
that he once saw seven in one day crossing the valley from the Alleghany to 
Brush Mountain, and they could be seen every day.
  The lad learned the carpenter trade, and nearly all of the staunch old 
barns still standing in the Dry, Homer and Juniata Gaps were his handiwork. 
When the Pennsylvania Railroad was built, he helped construct all the wooden 
bridges in the valley. But his personal prowess caused him to find a 
different vocation before the main line was built to the top of the mountain.
  The trouble began when the laborers employed on the line became rebellious 
and the sheriff summoned a posse to capture a fortified camp. The laborers 
were supplied with firearms and put up a vigorous resistance, but were routed 
by the posse. There were about six thousand employed on the heavy grading 
between Altoona and Gallitzin, and, as the paramount desire in the breast of 
every one of them was to achieve the title of "the best man on Tunnel Hill," 
there was trouble a-plenty, and Mr. McCartney was made chief deputy, at the 
head of a force to keep them in order.
  As may be imagined, the task was not a light one and the fighting was fast 
and furious. Two warring factions, with headquarters at Kittanning Point, 
were persuaded to settle their difficulties by selecting champions to fight 
it out, the men agree to abide the issue. But, needless to say, it resulted 
in a free-for-all, and the young deputy and his assistants had their hands 
full.
  At one time they arrested ninety-nine belligerents at Tunnel Hill, and, 
although their rescue was attempted by four hundred of their fellows, they 
were all brought to Altoona, locked in box cars and shipped to Columbia, Pa.
  During the Civil War, Mr. McCartney was engaged in most dangerous and 
exciting work. He was with a construction corps in the mountains of Kentucky 
and Tennessee, rebuilding bridges destroyed by the Rebels. The work was of a 
rough-and-ready sort, dangerous enough of itself and requiring much 
mechanical skill and foresight, as the bridges were, for the most part, built 
without any other plans than those evolved by the carpenters as they went 
along, and besides they were required to use the rifle about as often as the 
saw and hatchet. He wound up his military career by joining Sherman's march 
from Atlanta to the sea, and came back home to spend another average lifetime 
in more quiet, but none the less useful pursuits.
  Four score and five - what a life has been his! Not great, perhaps, as men 
measure greatness, neither has he acquired riches, but the joy of his virile, 
active existence cannot be measured by ordinary standards, for, par 
excellence, he has been one of the men who helped make the country.

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