Pap Bickford's Story
Whether Pap and Annie Regina Leap, who later
became our very own "Nannie" Bickford, grew up together or met as teens
is not known, but it has been passed down that their courtship was not
an easy one. Annie Leap was the daughter of John Leap and Dorothea
Myers, John being the son of Jacob and Mary Leib, German and French immigrants
respectively, and Dorothea being the daughter of Stephen and Ann Myers
who were predominantly of Irish extraction. The combination of this
genealogical mix in Cambria County produced staunch Roman Catholics, and
it was in that religion that "Nannie" was raised.
Pap was Protestant
if anything at all, and was not given the Leap family seal of approval
in his quest for Nannie's hand; in fact, the marriage took place in Camden,
New Jersey, which is just across the river from Philadelphia but still
all the way at the other end of the State of Pennsylvania from Cambria
County where the courting went on. Some more speculation could be
in order here because of course none of the suppositions can be proven
but maybe . . . Pennsylvania was a very rigid legal environment as well
as a religious one. It could be that it was less taxing to go all
the way to New Jersey to get married than to fight through the red tape
involved in Quaker/Catholic/Etc. banns, approvals, etc.
Whatever the reason,
Pap and Nannie were married in Camden, New Jersey on the 29th of May in
1894 and went almost immediately to live in Clearfield, PA, or nearabouts.
Their firstborn, Samuel Gordon, was born in Mahaffey (which is located
in Clearfield County) in 1897. Evelyn Mary, the second child, was
also born in Clearfield in 1900 and then the family moved to Virginia shortly
after the turn of the century.
Since Pap landed at
some time in Victoria, Virginia, as a Virginian Railway Co. engineer (driver
of trains), and since the Virginian did not incorporate until 1905 or so,
it would appear that Pap learned his trade as a railroad worker in Pennsylvania
and signed on as an engineer with the newly formed Virginian---could be
slightly BEFORE the incorporation since a good amount of the Virginian
formation was done secretly---at any rate, they lived for a time in Victoria,
Virginia.
Victoria was the central
point between Norfolk (Sewalls Point) and Roanoke Terminal for The Virginian,
about 135 miles and 8-10 hours from each. Crews lived there, and
it was the headquarters of the Norfolk Division of The Virginian, and it
was there that Dorothy Bickford, the third child of Pap and Nannie, said
she was born in 1903. Later, in 1909, Carrie Josephine would be born
in Norfolk, and still later in about 1916 Mary Evelyn who was born back
in Pennsylvania would marry Earnest H. Simpson, also in Norfolk; but none
of the Bickfords ever mentioned living in Norfolk---only in Victoria.
According to Samuel G. Bickford,
Jr., son of Samuel G. Sr., who was Pap's firstborn, Pap was involved in
an accident while driving his train---Gordon showed young Sam the place
where it had happened---and that accident terminated Pap's engineering
career and resulted in his being sent to Roanoke, Virginia to be put in
charge of the station located there at the corner of Jefferson St. and
Walnut Ave. The Bickford family moved to Roanoke in 1920 (or thereabouts)
with a newly widowed Evelyn Simpson and her young son Gordon, and lived
in a house at 1205 Maple Ave., just a block away from the aforementioned
Virginian Station. The present address is 1305 Maple Ave, the city having
discovered an error in the layout which made the change necessary.
A brief digression
here will serve to give an historical sketch of The Virginian (VGN) ro
which Pap labored and from which he retired in 1934. The line was
started by Standard Oil millionaire Henry Huttleston Rogers in fierce competition
with the Norfolk & Western and the Chespeake and Ohio lines over the
hauling of West Virginia bituminous "Pocahontas" coal. Rogers did
most of the right-of-way and rolling stock acquisition with his own money
until the financial panic of 1907 so depleted his private funds that he
was forced to search for help on the market. The VGN ran from Norfolk
at Sewalls Point in Hampton Roads to the coal fields of West Virginia,
west to Mullens then north to Deepwater.
A small and all but
insignificant passenger service was initiated on July 1, 1909, but the
primary cargo of the VGN was coal (estimated 90-95 per cent). Because
of the nature of coal hauling---heavy loads, steep grades---bigger and
bigger steam engines were required for the job, until finally someone decided
that enough suffocation of train crewmen in the long tunnels was enough,
so The VGN (the capital G is part of their legend) undertook a gigantic
electrification program in the West Virginia coalfields using hydroelectric
power generated from the New River projects and running behemoth ALCO-Westinghouse
or General Electric engines to pull and push their trains. The electrification
was extended to cover the line from Mullens, WV to Roanoke, VA, a distance
of 132 miles, and wasn't abandoned until 1962, two years after The VGN
had been merged or swallowed by the N&W.
The VGN electrics
stopped at Roanoke: east of there were used steam and then diesel; and
steam is what Pap Bickford drove. He was a kind and gentle man with
fantastically large hands which he had once used for catching baseballs;
for he did play the game in the days before gloves were used.
Pap became a great
fan of the Roanoke Red Sox, a Boston farm team in the Class B Piedmont
League, which was begun sometime in the early nineteen-forties and continued
on past his death in 1952. The house on Maple Avenue was just across
the Franklin Road bridge from Maher Field where the Red Sox played, and
Pap, lugging his cushion and wearing his straw hat, would walk over to
the ballgame every night that the team was in town. In fact, later
in the forties, he and Nannie rented rooms to the itinerant ballplayers
employed by the Roanoke team.
At some point in the
twenties Pap and his son Gordon, called "Big Gordon" because Evelyn's child,
Gordon Simpson, also lived with them---he was not, however called, "Little
Gordon" but "Simp", but since he was smaller than his uncle it became necessary
to distinguish between the two Gordons in the mind of the caller---at any
rate, Pap and son Gordon went into the tire business. Their first
venture was the Firestone dealership in Roanoke which was located east
of Jefferson St. and north of Franklin Rd. on what is now called Williamson
Rd., but then was Nelson St. at Tazewell Ave. The telephone number was
96 in 1928.