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Nonagenarian Killbuck Woman Shares Her Life Story

Sara Smith Bolton was born on Oct. 21, 1926 in a hospital in Warren, Pa., before her parents took her home to Kinzua. When she was 10 months old, her family moved to Rixford, Pa., long before their community was flooded by the Allegheny Reservoir, also known as Kinzua Lake, due to construction of the Kinzua Dam in 1965. The tiny town of Rixford had one grocery store, a post office, a United Brethren Church and an ice cream parlor that shared the same space with a barber shop.

Her maternal grandparents bought an abandoned Methodist Church, which they converted into duplex housing. The Smiths lived on one side and Bolton’s parents lived on the other side. Young Bolton skated on the sidewalk in front of the house with skates that attached to her shoes. Ice skating was not possible since all open water had a bit of oil on it.

“We even drank water with a drop of oil on top,” she recalled.

Rixford had a pumping plant which pumped oil through pipelines.

Her father was a self-employed auto mechanic and welder. Her mother was Postmistress, but after the move, she only worked when others wanted time away from the job.

“I walked five minutes to a nice five-grade school. My grandfather was custodian,” she said.

Later, she was bussed to Otto School, which had been built between Rixford and Eldred to educate sixth through twelfth grades. She played flute in the school’s band and was in chorus through her years in school.

Her mother died in 1940. At this time, the Bolton became ill and was taken in by a neighbor, who was a nurse. After two weeks the young girl was well enough to go back to her home. Soon after, when she was 15 years old, the family moved to Bradford, Pa., where some of her mother’s family lived. She was very close to the children of two of her mother’s sisters and had four girl cousins who were near her age.

“We always had get-togethers,” she said. “We’d get together on Halloween and bob for apples and have a taffy pull.”

She adapted well to her new school. “I was the new kid on the block and wow did I date!”

She recalled a day that four boys, one being John Bolton, picked up her desk with her sitting in the attached seat and turned it completely around while the teacher was out of the room.

During her junior and senior years of high school, she babysat “a bratty little girl.”

On the day after graduation in 1944, a man came to her house to urge her to go to Western Union school in Washington, Pa. She took him up on his offer and with two other classmates, was off for four months to learn how to send messages for Western Union. After she completed the training, she was assigned to the Salamanca office to receive teletyped messages. A year later, she requested to be moved and was then assigned to the Elmira office where she stayed for three years while boarding with a family.

By this time, she was dating John, who had purchased a Texaco gas station in Killbuck as soon as he graduated from high school. His sister ran a lunch room out of the same building. John had become friends with several truckers who provided a ride for him to Elmira. He returned home by train.

On one of his visits, John had made an arrangement with the woman in whose home his girlfriend stayed. One morning when the young woman arrived at the breakfast table, she found her coffee cup had been set upside down. When she lifted the cup, she found an engagement ring on the saucer. The couple married the next year, on July 25, 1948.

The new bride returned to Salamanca where she filled in when Western Union needed her help. She did the same at the Bradford office to where she would travel by bus. When he could, her husband would drive the 18 miles to retrieve her at the end of the workday.

In October of 1949, they welcomed their first child, a daughter, who they named Sandra. The welcoming of new babies continued thereafter until they had two more babies, Pamela and John. After a twelve year absence from maternity ward visits, the mother returned to deliver her fourth child, Julie.

Eventually, Bolton took a job with the Sears store in Salamanca, where she teletyped orders and checked in packages. After the system moved away from teletyping, she waited on the store’s customers. She continued with the Salamanca store until it closed about 25 years later when she transferred to the Bradford store where she retired after 33 years with Sears Company.

After closing the gas station, John worked on road construction and building homes. The station was attached to the couple’s home, which he gutted and “completely rebuilt the house.”

John was a golfer, a member of Killbuck Fire Department and a member of the Masons while Bolton was in Eastern Star. She was a member of Killbuck Methodist Church, which was across the street from their home. She taught Sunday School, cleaned the church and narrated and sang in Easter and Christmas cantatas. She enjoyed meeting with 11 other women to play a card game.

“Wherever she went she bought a pair of shoes,” said Pamela about her Bolton’s shoe-collecting obsession.

She has a collection of Just the Right Shoe, which are miniature hand-painted porcelain shoes from various historical periods. Flowers arranged in shoes were the centerpieces used when her family held her 80th birthday party.

Her husband passed away on March 8, 2005. After 56 years of living in their home, she moved to Pamela’s home on Sullivan Hollow Road in Killbuck. The decision was made one snowy night when Bolton was visiting Pamela and her husband Cliff. Her son-in-law told her he was going to move her into their home, which was a surprise to his wife. The move was made the following day.

The nonagenarian attributes her over-decorating and over-spending at Christmas time to the sadness that came over her because her mother had passed away at Christmas.

“I still like trees and lights and I collected 52 nativity sets,” she said.

The sets of various styles and sizes have since been divided between her children and grandchildren. She gave Precious Moments nativity sets to her first few grandchildren when they were married.

The Bolton’s other children are scattered. Sandy Willmott lives on Keuka Lake, John (Jack) Bolton resides in Hamlin, and Julie Furlong lives in Honeybrook, Pa. She has 12 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren, but only five boys. A great-granddaughter was named Sara after Bolton and just happens to have the last name of Smith. She had an older brother, Jim, who moved to Pittsburgh after his time in the service.

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