Johnson Hindin Genealogy


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Rebecca Souder ASHCOM[1]

Female 1889 - 1973


Personal Information    |    Notes    |    Sources    |    All    |    PDF

  • Nickname  Reba 
    Born  8 Mar 1889  Riddlesburg, Bedford County, PA. Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Gender  Female 
    Died  10 Jan 1973  West Chester, Pennsylvania Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Person ID  I1631  Johnson Hindin Tree
    Last Modified  3 Feb 2018 

    Father  Edward S. ASHCOM,   b. 16 Nov 1844,   d. 28 Jul 1915, Dayton, Montgomery Co., Ohio Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Mother  Rebecca Elizabeth SOUDER,   b. 18 Sep 1845, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Co., Pennsylvania Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 15 Jan 1908, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Co., Pennsylvania Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Family ID  F565  Group Sheet

    Family 1  Colonel John Handy HALL,   b. 1 Jan 1874, Lynchburg, VA Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 25 Jun 1919, Philadelphia, PA Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Married  2 Jun 1914  New York, New York Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Children 
     1. Mary Ellen HALL,   b. 20 Mar 1920, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 16 May 2016, Newton Square, Delaware Co., Pennsylvania Find all individuals with events at this location
     2. Nathan Bryant HALL,   b. 27 May 1918, Philadelphia, PA Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 8 Aug 1998
     3. Dr. John Handy HALL, Jr., M.D.,   b. 27 Jul 1915, Philadelphia, PA Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 17 May 2007
     4. Dr. William Thomas HALL, M.D.,   b. 16 Oct 1916, Philadelphia, PA Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 1 Dec 2007, Wilmington, Delaware Find all individuals with events at this location
    Family ID  F566  Group Sheet

    Family 2  John Stearns BLEECKER,   b. 8 Apr 1878, Washington, D.C. Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 28 Nov 1958, West Chester, Pennsylvania Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Married  1 Aug 1925 
    Family ID  F645  Group Sheet

  • Notes 
    • According to W. Thomas Hall, P.O. Box395, Kailua Hawaii 96734, pali@hgea.org, Rebecca grew up in Riddlesburg, PA.

      According to a family tree on Ancestry.com in 2009, Rebecca lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1900, in Lower Merion, Montgomery, Co., Pennsylvania in 1910, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1920.

      The following profile of Rebecca Sounder Ashcom was written by Jerry Kinkead, 780 Laurel Lane, Wayne, PA 19087, after the husband of her niece, Becky Walsh, died suddenly in 2007. It was posted on the internet at: http://web.me.com/lee_hall/iWeb/BleeckerHall.com/Musings/B4D05744-CF44-493D-8386-583C38DDE54B_files/Rebecca%20Bleecker-loss.doc and available in 2010:

      February 26, 2007

      Dear Becky,

      I had a dream last night about your great grandmother, Becky Bleecker, after whom you were named. She was a lovely woman, actually a step-grandmother to your Mom and me, as I am sure you are aware, though we never knew any other grandmother and she was the real deal as far as we were concerned. No one ever had a more caring Granny.

      I awakened, aware of a coincidental event in Granny's life and your life, and I'm sure it is why she appeared in my dream. I can't say that your life will turn out in any way similar to hers, but the coincidence of you and Granny both losing your husbands so early made me think about the loss you both faced, and wanting to tell you that Granny not only survived, but eventually thrived. So I dug out some family history, much of it written by her son Tom Hall, thinking you might be interested in knowing more about your namesake, Rebecca Souder Ashcom Bleecker, born March 8, 1889.

      Granny was born to Edward and Becky Ashcomb in 1889 and was called Reba. She was the youngest of six children and lived with her family in Riddlesburg, PA. She had four older sisters and one brother Paul, who died of meningitis at age two. The girls were Blanche, Grace, Maude, and Polly. They all went to school together in a one-room schoolhouse. Granny related that it was a steep walk up a hill to the small wooden school building, with a potbellied stove which had to be restarted each morning to warm up fingers and toes. I know you've heard these “deep snow” stories all your life, but 100 years ago there were no busses or SUVs. We've had it easy.

      Riddlesburg was the end of the line for the Juniata Railroad so it was a “company” town, with rail yards and employees living in the area. Granny's paternal grandfather owned Ashcom Cement Works nearby. Riddlesburg was also a mill town and the mill was owned by three families including Granny's grandparents and some cousins. I believe Granny's father worked in or ran the company store.

      When Granny's mother died in 1900 (she was eleven), the cousins turned the store over to new owners. The Ashcoms moved to the Germantown district of Philadelphia. Father Edward was in poor health and could not work. Older sisters Polly and Grace (ages 26 and 17) opened a millinery shop and were quite successful, their hats featuring fake fruits and flowers with lots of tulle and ribbons. Reba attended the Academy of Notre Dame on Rittenhouse Square. She eventually received a degree from Miss Hart's Kindergarten School, but that was later when she wanted to start her own business.

      Following school, Reba was the governess to the Ely twins, in a wealthy family in Philadelphia. During this time she met Meta and William Taylor who became her very close friends. The Taylors introduced Reba to “Philadelphia society” (quote from Uncle Tom Hall) and to John Handy Hall, a handsome Philadelphia lawyer who worked for Duane, Morris and Heckscher.

      John Handy Hall was from Virginia. He lived with his artist sister on Rittenhouse Square and was active in politics, having run unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the State Senate and for Congress.

      John and Reba were married in June 1914. They moved to an area of south Philadelphia known as the Girard Estate. Their first son, John Handy Hall, Jr. was born in July 1915. A second son, William Thomas Hall, was born in October 1916.

      John Hall was a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard and in 1916 Lieutenant Major Hall joined an Army unit at the Mexican border to stop raids into Texas by the Mexican General Francisco (Pancho) Villa. By 1917, John Hall was sent to Fort Sill Artillery School in Oklahoma and Reba and their two young sons went with him. According to Granny, they lived in a small wooden shack near the base and she always remembered that the accommodations were miserable and the summer heat was unbearable. For Granny, it was survival training.

      In September of 1917, John was placed second-in-command of a unit of the Pennsylvania National Guard with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and, early in May of 1918, with the First World War raging in Europe, his unit left for France.

      Shortly after John left home, on May 21, 1918, Reba gave birth to a third son, Nathan Bryant. During the war she lived in the Girard Estate with the three young boys. She volunteered at the Red Cross, rolling bandages and packaging supplies.

      On May 15, 1919, John returned home to a grand Welcome Home parade in Philadelphia and to renew his family life with Reba and the young boys. Having survived a ghastly year of war in Europe, it seemed as if their lives might be normal again. John Hall returned to his law practice.

      One month later, on a rainy night, June 25, 1919, John was returning from a reunion party with his Army buddies. The car in which he was riding went out of control on a road in Devon, PA. It skidded and hit a telephone pole and John was killed instantly.

      John Handy Hall was home for just a month and then was gone, and life for his family was changed forever. With only a widow's pension as her income, it was difficult to make ends meet, so Reba decided to open a kindergarten School in her basement. And then, within a few weeks, she realized that she was again pregnant. Feeling that she could not cope with another child, she made plans to give the baby up for adoption to friends, Lucy and Isaac Jeans, who were childless and wanted a son.

      That pregnancy must have been incredibly difficult emotionally, but Reba admitted children to her kindergarten program and persevered. When she gave birth to a baby girl on March 9, 1920, the daughter that Reba and John had always wanted, she decided to keep her fourth child and backed out of the adoption agreement.

      The Halls continued to live in the Girard Estate until 1924, but Reba grew tired of the dirty, noisy city and wanted a more tranquil environment for her children. Good friends, the Hermans, had moved to Valley Forge and Reba began to look for housing west of the city. She found an attractive house on tree- lined North Church Street in West Chester and moved her family in 1924.

      Quite soon, friend Meta Taylor began her matchmaking again, arranging for Granny to meet a widower of her acquaintance, a distinguished gentleman who had recently moved to the area from the south. Each year the West Chester Country Club put on a fancy dress ball, a Bal Masque, and that seemed a good spot for this meeting. Reba wore a black tulle tutu with bells along the hem and, since she had been told that the mystery man was twelve years older than she, the young widow powdered her hair in order to look more mature.

      It was love at first sight. Reba and John Bleecker danced together all evening. The next morning, John Bleecker came courting to the house at 532 North Church Street and immediately proposed marriage. Reba was embarrassed to tell him the family information she had not revealed the night before, the fact that she had four young children. That was fine, said John, since he had five!

      Reba washed the powder out of her long auburn hair, added five years to her age, and changed her name to Becky, her mother's name and a name she preferred to Reba. Her pending marriage required a courageous new beginning, though much about Becky Bleecker remained the same throughout her life, including her devotion to family, her strong friendships and her determination to persevere in the face of many hardships.

      Becky and John Stearns Bleecker married on August 1, 1925. They bought a huge Victorian limestone house with eleven bedrooms on Virginia Avenue in West Chester and named it Bleecker-Hall in recognition of the merger of their two families.

      Granny was a devoted mother and later a doting grandmother to a huge brood. She continued to teach kindergarten most of her life, beloved to many, many generations of children at the Friends School on North High Street in West Chester. She baked us Lady Baltimore birthday cakes (with dimes in them) and handwrote skillions of letters to children and grandchildren (without a computer). She moved in for a week to take care of newborn babies. She was devoted to her second husband, John Bleecker, until his death in 1959. She continued to care for Bleecker-Hall for several more years, until she moved to an apartment in Berwyn to be near a train station, in order to commute to the orchestra and the theatre in Philadelphia. Until her death at 84, while walking to town along her familiar Church Street in West Chester, Becky Bleecker remained an interested and interesting lady. In her quiet, gentle way, Becky was an extremely strong woman and a mover and shaker all of her life.

      Granny's third son, Nathan, later compiled and published the letters from his father, John Handy Hall, to his wife, Becky during the years he served in the National Guard and fought in the First World War in France. In this publication, Nathan refers to “the happy home life that their mother made possible for [the Hall children] and for the five motherless children of that good, highly talented, kindly and devoted widower she married later in her life.”

      Your great grandmother was Rebecca to some, Reba for most of her early life, then Becky, when she decided that that name was her preference. It was the name of an exceptional woman which you can carry with pride and which extends a legacy of strength to lean on. Granny was so thrilled and proud that your parents chose to name you after her, and I know she would be proud of the woman you have become.

      With love from Aunt Jerry

      The following obituary was published in The News Journal (Wilmington, Delaware) on January 11, 1973:

      BLEECKER--Mrs. Rebecca Ashcom, 83, of Barclay Home, West Chester, Pa., died yesterday in Chester County Hospital after a short illness. She was a retired kindergarten teacher at the Friends Community School. She was the widow of John S. Bleecker. She is survived by four sons, Dr. John H. Hall Jr. of Wayne, Pa., Dr. William T. Hall of Wilmington, Nathan B. Hall of Ann Arbor, Mich., and John S. Bleecker Jr. of Naples, Fla.; four daughters, Mrs. Arthur T. Parke and Mrs. John J. Darlington, both of West Chester, Mrs. Kate Parks, Honolulu, and Mrs. John C. Snyder of Darling, Pa.; 35 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren. Services will be Saturday afternoon at 2 at the Church of the Holy Trinity, West Chester. Burial will be private. .





  • Sources 
    1. [S49] According to W. Thomas Hall, P.O. Box395, Kailua H.