Photo from ‘Zoe Hillard Teenager of Hearts Content’ A photo of Zoe Hillard Lay’s children – Hazel and Darell – taken after her death in 1917.

The event didn’t have to be remarkable to make the cut into Zoe Hillard’s diary.

A buggy ride down by the creek made it on April 2, 1905, the Limestone Fair that September and acquiring chestnuts on Oct. 8.

On Feb. 8, 1906, she noted the skies were “Clear. Eclipse of the moon. Was to be dance at Hoover’s. But failed.” There was a total lunar eclipse that day, modern records show.

Spring cleaning made the diary on a couple occasions. On May 15, 1906, she “Washed. Clear. We went for mushrooms.” The following day she notes that she “Hot washed curtains and rugs.”

The circus came to Warren in June 1906 which the family attended and religious camp services were attended in August.

Zoe Hillard Lay.

Oil City was a destination featured in her September 25, 1906 entry.

“I went to Oil City in search of the suitcase but all in vane,” she wrote. “We went to see the minstrel (at the) City of Franklin and went to Don Bills in the evening.” The minstrel show must have been good because she returned the next day.

Two days later, she was in Titusville. “I went to a store at noon and suppertime. My first experience at Clerking. Went to Mystic Park. Had a nice ride. Went to “The Pit.”

Mystic Park is believed to have been a picnic location in the area while “The Pit” most likely refers to Pithole, the abandoned oil town outside of Titusville.

While the diary gives a pretty comprehensive insight into her social life, it also gives a glimpse in places into her state of mind.

From Feb. 21, 1904: “Night of blues at home. Perhaps this may seem queer to some people, and it seems sad to me to be blue at home with all your folks. Yesterday I was in bed nearly all day. Today I was not much better. Expected to get the mail tonight but the school … did not bring it as it rained this afternoon. Papa is just coming in from milking. Mother is in the kitchen singing and working as I am in my room feeling very tough….”

She noted Jan. 1, 1906 was a day to turn “over a new leaf” and said she was “very lonesome” on April 18.

There are some additional statements that give us more looks in to her mind.

“Some write for pleasure, some write for fame. But I write simply to sign my name.”

“Is it vain in life’s wide areas, to ask you to remember me. Undoubtedly it is my lot, just to be unknown, and then forgot.”

Some of her school work is also included in the journal and Lay-Dopyera, her granddaughter, included that in the text she prepared.

One essay was on George Washington and “what a strange world (he) would find himself in if he could come back and walk along the streets of the great city…. He never saw an omni-bus, nor a trolley car, not a ferry boat…. Fancy him trying to read the advertisements that would meet his eye…. Fancy him staring from the window at the fence bright with theatrical posters or a man rushing by on his bicycle.”

A second article looked at the requirements of a country school teacher. Oh, how the requirements have changed in a centry!

“She must be a primary, intermediate, grammar grade and high school teacher combined. She must be able to build fires, adjust fallen stove-pipes, put in window panes, sweep, dust, split kindling wood, drive a horse, keep out of the neighborhood quarrels, know how and when to whip a bad boy, understand the school laws, raise money for libraries, keep all kinds of records, plant trees on Arbor day, be a good moral character and pass examination in all branches of education.

“For these accomplishments she receives $25 a month. Think of a girl getting that salary! Out of this she paid her board, pays for educational papers and books, attends county conventions, buys slate pencils and gets religion.”

Zoe appears in 1910 Census records as living in Tidioute. Those records show she married Frank W. Lay on July 25, 1908 when he was 21 and she was 1919. By 1910, they were living in a rented home in Tidioute with their one-year-old son Darell while Frank worked as a salesman at a General Store.

And her selection of him as a spouse appears to have ruffled some family feathers.

Her granddaughter, who published Zoe’s diary, includes a Tidioute News report on April 29, 1904.

“Frank, son of C.T. Lay, while coming from fishing stepped on the railroad switch, not noticing a freight train backing towards him. The wheels of the car ran over his left leg. He was taken to Dr. C.C. Kemble’s office, where he with Dr. Shugert expected to amputate the stump above the knee.”

A follow-up item on June 4 reported that “The young man, Lay, who lost a leg by being struck by a freight train is already out on crutches.”

He pops up six times in her diary.

¯ Oct. 22, 1905: “Had company. Lays.”

¯ Jan. 28, 1906: “Frank came over.”

¯ Aug. 13, 1906: “Frank came over. We went to Hovis. Ate outdoors.”

¯ Aug. 14, 1906: “Blanche, Frank and I went to Cherry Grove. Went (racoon hunting) in the evening.”

¯ Aug. 15, 1906: “We all went berrying and to the Hermit Springs.”

¯ Aug. 16, 1906: “Frank went home.”

“Family lore indicates that Zoe’s parents were opposed to her choice to enter into marriage with a ‘cripple,'” Lay-Dopyera wrote. “The wedding notice of these two in the Warren newspaper reads as follows: ‘LAY-HILLARD. At Warren, July 25, 1908, by the Reverend H.M. Conaway, Mr. Frank W. Lay, of Tidioute, Pa., and Miss Bertha Zoe Hillard, of Cherry Grove, Pa.'”

“The young couple lived initially in Tidioute and then moved to East Branch,” she continued, “about 12 miles north of Titusville where they purchased a general store and entered into a lumber mill venture. By their time their son, Darell Hillard Lay was born in 1909, the Hillards were reconciled to their marriage.

“Frank proved to be a good provider and, in fact, generously provided funds to help out the Hillards when they had some financial needs,” Lay-Dopyera wrote.

The couple had two children – Darell, who went on to be a Warren County Commission – and Hazel. When Darell, was seven and Hazel three, Zoe died.

Zoe’s obituary is available on Findagrave as it was published in the May 7, 1917 Titusville Herald.

“Mrs Bertha Zoe Lay died of a complication of diseases at the Hay Rest Cure in Youngsville, April 24, 1917,” the obituary stated. “She had been an invalid for more than a year. She was treated by various doctors and specialists, but grew steadily worse until death came as a release to her sufferings.”

“She was the only daughter of Mr and Mrs A J Hilliard of Cherry Grove, and two brothers, Claude and Andy, are left at the old home,” the obituary continues. “She was married to Frank D. Lay in Warren, July 25, 1908. Of this union two children were born, Daniel, 8 years old and Hazel, a little girl of 3 years, who will miss the dear mother who is asleep in Jesus.”

Lay-Dopyera, Zoe’s granddaughter, tells the family story in her book.

“She was buried high on the hill of the Tidioute cemetery,” she wrote. “Her daughter Hazel, across her entire lifetime, believed that she died of an illness related to childbirth and that it was her fault that she died. Darell believed that she died because of injuries to herself from lifting and carrying him to take him to a doctor when he was hit by a car.”

She concluded that the family never discussed the real cause of death, which the Tidioute Cemetery plot record identified as “chronic nephritis,” a kidney infection that can eventually lead to kidney failure.

“What was remembered vividly by both Darell and Hazel,” Lay-Dopyera wrote, “was the whole family’s yearly attendance at Decoration Day, now called Memorial Day, parade and ceremonies at the Tidioute Cemetery where their mother was buried. Zoe’s mother, Vine, each year sat at Zoe’s grave and cried and cried, according to Hazel, to the distress of the children.”

Frank continued to live in East Branch, Lay-Dopyera notes.

“However,” she wrote, “every summer Frank took his children there via horse and buggy and left them to spend a couple of months with their mother’s family.”

More from her obituary: “The funeral services were held at the Union church of East Branch on Thursday, April 26, at 11 o’clock, and burial took place at Tidioute in the family cemetery. Rev L C Thompson spoke comforting words to relatives and friends. The many friends in attendance and beautiful floral offerings spoke eloquently of the respect and love in which the dear one was held by all who had come to know her since the family came to East Branch a few years ago.

“Mrs Lay would have been 28 years old May 15, 1917. She was a member of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, also a member of the Home Mission society of East Branch, and always ready to help in every good work. The needy were never left uncared for, in as much as she was able to help relieve them.

“The heart-felt sympathy of the community goes out to the entire family in their affliction and we can only point them to the only comforter in times of trouble,” the obituary stated. “‘The word of God as a strong arm on which to lean in time of trouble. ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live again.'”

Author’s note: Zoe’s children are both deceased. Darell died in 1988 and Hazel died in 2007. I had the privilege to know Hazel when my dad became pastor at Midway Alliance Church where she and her husband, Emmitt, attended. I would go with him to visit and I still remember them as some of the most gracious people I’ve met. I only mention it because I was really surprised when I realized that Zoe’s daughter was someone I knew. It truly is a pretty small world.“