Her Templeton family great-grandchildren understood that "Grandmother" was of Scots descent, but give us little about Allie Monteith's origins beyond that fact. Their memory of her maiden name, "Montouth" or "Montooth" is contradicted by historians1 and researchers of family lines other than the Templeton line. But what her Templeton descendants convey in their notes about their own ancestry is an impression of a pioneer woman that forged strong family bonds, particularly with her daughters, and that she was a stalwart and healthy woman.

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Carving a life out of the virgin territory of the Juniata River Valley of Pennsylvania at the time of her first son's birth in 1776, while her husband may well have been away, having been called up to militia duty, was especially demanding on a woman "keeping house" in the deep forest. To begin with, the house in question was rough-hewn logs stacked one on the other and the gaps between caulked with a mixture of mud, straw, and hair, lime and whatever else may bind the mixture to its duty. Perhaps a couple of windows were cut, but not filled with glass. Rather, oiled paper may have been used as a semi-transparent screen, or nothing at all, save for shutters that would have been devised to cover the opening in inclement weather. The entire edifice probably measured but 16 feet by 20 feet, outside, and had a low roof pressing down the dark interior.

Everything had to be made by hand: soap cooked from fat and ashes, thread spun from flax, cut, beaten and combed. Cloth woven on a home loom and clothes sewed by hand. Even brooms and most of the tools of everyday life were devised or traded for among neighbors. Food was hunted in the forest and gathered from the roots and vines that grew about. Land was cleared of trees by hard labor, and fields previously used by displaced Indians to grow corn upon were put to use, well, growing corn.

And then, just as the settlement at Lewiston and its outlying area (perhaps they lived on a squatter's plot in Old Bedford County or Huntingdon County) began taking on a semblance of civilization, Allie uprooted with her small family and moved west.

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Allie was widowed after the birth of William Templeton Jr., in the prime of her childbearing years. Exactly when, and at what age, we don't know. She remarried after the death of her husband, William Templeton, Senior, to a "Mr. Woodward," with whom she went ahead and had had seven children:

Allie Woodward (married Mr Harris)
Peggy Woodward (married Mr Erwin)
Polly Woodward (married Mr Huff)
Toby Woodward (married Miss Thompson)
Rachel Woodward (married Mr Davis)
John Woodward, and,
Dave Woodward.

William Templeton Jr was clearing a farm and building a log cabin in Trumbull/Mahoning County, Ohio, around 1795-98, and as the area developed, Allie's progeny proliferated. The Templeton cousins remained in touch with "Grandmother Allie", exchanging notice of her death "at the advanced age of ninety years," at the home of a daughter in western Ohio, sometime around 1850.

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"Allie" may be a shortened version of "Alice", or it could be a pet name derived from some other, but since she named a daughter "Allie" (another Allie Woodward, who married a man named "Harris"), it is likely that "Allie" is, in fact, her given name.

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Notes:

1. State of Ohio, compiled by Henderson, Frank D., Adjutant General, Rea, John R., and Dailey, Jane Dowd, Daughters of the American Revolution State Chair; Soldiers of the American Revolution Buried in the State of Ohio, F. J. Heer Printing Co., Columbus, 1929