Pennsylvania Volunteers
in the Spanish-American War

1898-1899

PA Spanish-American War

Biography of a PA soldier, Harry Hay

Harmon, sixth child of Daniel and Catherine (Friedline) Hay, was born in Milford township, Somerset county, Pennsylvania, June 6, 1845. He was five years of age when his parents moved to Westmoreland county, where he was educated and lived until his twenty-fifth year.

In 1871 he married and moved to New Haven, Pennsylvania, entering the employ of George Nichol as teamster, remaining four years. The next three years he was employed in the Baltimore & Ohio boiler shops. He then rented the G. A. Hogg farm, now a part of Connellsville, West Side, which he worked until 1901 very successfully and profitably.

In 1901 he moved to the city of Connellsville (West Side), where he resides on Tenth street, on the brow of the bluff overlooking the city of Connellsville and the Youghiogheny valley.

He is a Republican, and served as a member of the New Haven borough council. He belongs to the Royal Arcanum. He married, January 3, 1871, Missouri Ringler, born in Westmoreland county, December 29, 1851, daughter of Edward and Sarah (Keller) Ringler, both born in Somerset county. Edward Ringler was of German descent, a farmer of Westmoreland county, died March 1, 1868; his wife Sarah survives, and in May, 1912, passed her eighty-eighth birthday, the mother of eleven sons and three daughters, two of whom married Hay brothers--Harmon and Simon Peter. Children of Harmon and Missouri (Ringler) Hay : 1. Minnie, born June 16, 1872; married James L. Haines, of Connellsville. 2. Myrtle, born June 27, 1874; married William J. Filcer, of Duquesne, Pennsylvania. 3. Harry , born June 17, 1876; a blacksmith; resides at No. 3 Leisenring; married Ella Beatty; he served in Company D, Tenth Regiment Pennsylvania Infantry during the Spanish American war, fighting with his regiment in all the hard service they saw on the island of Luzon. 4. Sarah, born October 29, 1878; married Redding Bunting, and resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 5. Daniel Edward, born December 29, 1881; an employe of the West Penn Railroad Company. 6. John W., born February 16, 1884; a boiler maker of Connellsville. 7. George, born October 29, 1888, died November 2, 1909. 8. Robert R., born February 25, 1895.