Robert Martin Craig ¹

  General Notes:

Robert Martin Craig was one of six children; brother Donald, married to Alda, died in 1936,then Alda married Dorsey Saint Clair; brother Harold, married to Judy, died in 1982; sister Daisy Railing, married to Wilford, sons Ned and Bill; sister Pearl Spittel, married to Jack, son Jack; sister Christina Long, married to Henry, four children, Betty Floyd, Grace Staub, Donald, and Wade, who was retarded. My dad quit school at the age of 12 in sixth grade to go to work in the coal mines. He owned a Stutz Bearcat and acquired the nickname Barney after Barney Oldfield, a race car driver of that era. He married in 1917 and moved to Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, where he started working for Westinghouse. He decided to resume his education and enrolled in an ICS four year program and completed it in three years to become an Electrical Engineer. He continued to work for Westinghouse until the Great Depression of 1932, when he was offered a job at less money,but decided to take a better paying job at the Westinghouse Repair Shop in Atlanta, Ga. As the economy worsened that job was cut and we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked for Liebel Florsheim manufacturing electrical surgical instruments which separated tissue rather than cutting into it. This job was cut and we moved to Beckley, West Virginia, where he worked as a mine inspector, and my brother and I sold newspapers. The economy started improving and he took a job with Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance, which required that he go to Hartford, Conn. for training. At that time he and his wife separated until the training period was completed. When he returned to the Pittsburgh area, we set up housekeeping in Edgewood, Pennsylvania. After a short time, they split up, but this time my mother left my brother and me with my father. She returned for a short time later, but only to serve as a housekeeper for our family. We later moved to 910 South Avenue, 705 Savannah Ave., both in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, then Brushton, where I learned to swim, and then back to Wilkinsburg at 1007 Mill Street, where my father married again and moved to Homestead Park, Pennsylvania. My brother Charles joined the Army in 1936, rather than continue going to school.

  Burial Notes:

Homewood Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

Robert married Ila Frances Colbert, daughter of Charles Richard Colbert and Lucy Hill Spong, in 1917 in Garrett, PA.¹ (Ila Frances Colbert was born on 27 December 1898 in Hagerstown, MD ¹ and died on 15 January 1991 in Azusa, CA ¹.)