The Baker Family of Shippensburg

The old farm house and barn of my paternal grandfather, Charles Burnett “C. B.” Baker Sr. (1860-1933), stood just off the Walnut Bottom Rd, being situated on Strohm Road, Lees Crossroads, Shippensburg. In 2005, it was leveled, a farm equipment company buying all but a few of the original acres. The company bought it from L. Sensenig who’d acquired it from C.B.’s grandson, Rev. Wayne D. Baker when he retired. Wayne grew up on the farm from the age of about five years, later buying (1975) its’ then 45 acres from his mother, Bessie (Diven) Baker (Mrs. Leighton Baker). Bessie and her husband Leighton had the property for about 40 years. C. B. ‘s sawmill sat across the road, near the United Evangelical Methodist Church his family attended and rebuilt and where son Don is memorialized for work with youth.

My earliest memories of the farm are from when C. B.’s grandson and my father, Robert E. Tiley (a son of C. B.’s daughter Pearl Baker Tiley, (1890-1985), took me there when I was a very small child. We walked through the field. I delighted in a scurrying chipmunk and marveled in hearing my father tell the story of a plow descending into a sink hole. I later learned that Dad’s Shippensburg High School classmate, his maternal cousin Robert Moore Mitten (1928-1972), a descendant of C. B.’s brother Geo. E. Baker, with whom he served on the high school football team, turned pro, playing for Notre Dame and other teams. There were a lot more stories to learn.

Stories need a home and so C. B.’s youngest daughter, Elizabeth (1900-1980; Mrs. Geo. H. Henry), was especially pleased that her mother-in-law Henrietta “Nettie” Ulrich Henry (wife of Rev. Geo. Conrad Henry) founded the Shippensburg Historical Society (1945) where Elizabeth herself would volunteer. Also volunteering would be Elizabeth’s cousin, family historian Helen Baker Fulton (1917-2020) a descendant of C. B.’s brother Henry Euell Baker.

Whenever C. B.’s grandson Wayne held annual family reunions we’d inevitably visit the little church in view of C. B.’s farm. As mentioned above, Wayne was about 5 years old when his family moved to the farm. That’s about when Wayne enjoyed his first ginger ale at the home of my dad’s dapper brother Charles and his wife Ariel in an apartment above Murphy’s 5 & 10 (more recently a dance studio). The apartment looked down on the trains of the Cumberland Valley Railroad (for whom Pearl’s husband worked prior to AT&T).

C. B.’s beloved 1^st wife was Abigail “Abbie” (Highlands) Baker (1863-1916). Her mom, Mariah (Clever), knew old Shippensburg and its’ stories. Mariah was a daughter of Maj. Geo. Clever (Civil War) who had founded Cleversburg, an area later absorbed by Shippensburg. Paternally, Abbie (Highlands) Baker descended from Sgt. Wm. I. Highlands (Civil War), and through his wife, from Capt. Alexander Peebles Sr. (Revolutionary War).

C. B. Baker himself grew up on a farm at 260 McCulloch Road, shown at right. He was a son of Samuel Etter Baker Sr. (1820-1887) and Mary “Muzzy” E. McFerren (1830-1904), whose ancestors operated Franklin County’s McFerren Tavern. C. B.’s father, Samuel, was a son of Peter Baker (1786-1855) and Anna C. Etter (1797 Swiss-1871 PA) of Lebanon/Fayetteville. Anna was of the Swiss Etter/Siegrist immigrants of the mid-1700’s.¹ The Samuel Etter of Chambersburg and the founder of Etters (Goldsboro), York County, fall into a separate line.

C. B. Baker and Abbie Highlands; from their wedding portraits; C. B.’s 2nd wife was widow Leah Kyner; author’s collection. Abbie’s sister “Maggie” married Wm. M. Baker (1818-1867).

One of Anna Etter Baker’s paternal great-uncles, Gerhard, founded an early Moravian Church in Yk; her great-uncle Peter Etter Sr. (1715-1794) knew Benjamin Franklin, became a Phile. Loyalist, and was thus evacuated from MA to Nova Scotia.²

Among their children, Peter Baker and Anna Etter Baker bore a daughter name Martha. Martha’s husband James Johnstone defied the Confederates entering Shippensburg after sacking Chambersburg. When they threatened to burn down his barn, his response was to declare that he’d planned to rebuild it any way! As with others who’d gotten wind of their approach, he’d safely secured wagons, etc. elsewhere. The house and rebuilt barn sit on either side of the main road leading south of town.

C. B. Baker’s sister Lottie (Baker) Lindquist became mother-in-law of Roy C. Bell (B:1885; among the early births of a non-native child in CO). Lottie was grandmother to Eugene “Mustang Gene” Vrain Bell (1916-1946) who declined an offer from Buffalo Bill Cody to join his Wild West Show’s European tours. Gene preferred home ground.

C. B.’s own grandchildren had another story about Buffalo Bill. One of C. B.’s sons, Jack (1902-1975), married Enessa Briney Baker (1900-1992) of the Pennell/Boggs family. Enessa’s maternal great-uncle was Col. Joseph Pennell Boggs (1844-1923), a close friend of Buffalo Bill. Thus, as a youngster, Enessa grew up sitting on Buffalo Bill Cody’s knee whenever he and his showmen were hosted by her family in Illinois.

In Memory of Great-Aunt Elizabeth M. Baker Henry and cousin Helen Baker Fulton.