USA > Pennsylvania > Bedford County > History of Bedford and Somerset Counties, Pennsylvania, with genealogical and personal history > Part 1
USA > Pennsylvania > Somerset County > History of Bedford and Somerset Counties, Pennsylvania, with genealogical and personal history > Part 1
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67
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ATTENTION: BAR CODE IS LOCATED INSIDE OF BOOK
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M. L
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01201 4012
Gc 974.801 B39b v.3
History of Bedford and Somerset Cos., Pa.
Gc 974.801 B39b v.3 7050633
HISTORY
OF
BEDFORD AND SOMERSET
COUNTIES
PENNSYLVANIA
WITH GENEALOGICAL AND PERSONAL HISTORY
BEDFORD COUNTY
BY
SOMERSET COUNTY
BY
E. HOWARD BLACKBURN
WILLIAM H. WELFLEY
Under the Editorial Supervision of
HON. WILLIAM H. KOONTZ
ILLUSTRATED
VOLUME III
THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY NEW YORK :: CHICAGO 1906
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY FORT WAYNE, INDIANA
Reprinted 1983 for the Historical and Genealogical Society of Somerset County, Inc.
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
Printed in U.S.A. by: Walsworth Publishing Marceline, MO. 64658
Regional Director:
III WALSWORTH DON MILLS, INC. Salem, WV 26426 (304) 782-1179
7050633
A.N. Coggroth
Bedford and Somerset Counties.
HON. ALEXANDER HAMILTON COFFROTH.
Alexander H. Coffroth, for many years a leading figure in his profession and in the public life of the commonwealth dur- ing the dramatic period leading up to and culminating in the Civil war, was intensely active and broadly useful during his entire career. His abilities would undoubtedly have com- manded his entrance upon highest places had not his in- flexible devotion to principle held him to a political party which was constantly in the minority.
General Coffroth was a native of Pennsylvania, born in Somerset, May 18, 1828. He was the youngest son of John and Mary (Besore) Coffroth, the father born in Hagerstown, Maryland, of German descent, and the mother born in Green- castle. Pennsylvania, of English ancestry. These parents re- moved in 1808 from Greencastle to Somerset, where the father was among the early settlers, and the first to set up a store, bringing his merchandise from the east on pack-horses. Mr. Coffroth was a man of excellent character, and his wife was a model of womanhood, whose kindliness of disposition, purity of conduct and energy of character were reflected in the son.
Young Coffroth made of himself a fine exemplification of the truly self-made man in the best sense of that oft-abused term. Early thrown upon his own resources, he entered upon and waged the battle of life in such masterly fashion as to not only provide himself an ample equipment for the large duties which were to devolve upon him, but to also develop to their fullest his fine natural gifts of soul and intellect. He attended the common schools, and out of the fruits of his own labors defrayed the expenses of a more liberal education in the old Somerset Academy. For a time he served efficiently as a school teacher, and with the means thus earned supported himself while preparing for his chosen profession, the law. It was his great good fortune to attract the interest and friend- ship of the distinguished Jeremiah S. Black, in whose office and under whose preceptorship he read industriously for some years, meantime and for five years, beginning at the age of eighteen, serving as editor of the Somerset Visitor, a Demo- cratie journal of no inconsiderable circulation and influence.
Vol. III 1
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Even at this youthful age the virile energy of his pen gave high promise for the future. Admitted to the bar of Somerset county in February, 1851, he at once entered upon a practice which rapidly expanded and shortly brought him to the front rank of his profession and into recognition throughout the state for ability, astuteness, resourcefulness and real devotion to the law out of respect for its own majesty. A tireless worker, by following a rigid system of self-control he labored throughout his professional career cheerfully and with un- ruffled temper. His practice, covering a period of more than a half century, was marked by scores of hotly contested cases, yet in all he was known as one of the best-hearted of men, al- ways urbane and kindly dispositioned. During all these many years there was scarcely a case of importance in his judicial district in which he did not bear a leading part. A cause celebre which will ever be famous in the legal annals of Pennsylvania was the trial of the Nicely brothers, charged with the murder of Herman Umberger, and in which he was chief counsel for the defense. Enduring evidence of his high legal abilities ex- ists in various volumes of the reports of the supreme court of Pennsylvania and the courts of the United States. His high place in the respect and confidence of his colleagues of the local bar is attested by his election to the presidency of the Somerset Bar Association at its organization, and his undis- puted continuance in that position up to his death-this, too, by a bar which has ever been ornamented by some of the brightest lawyers and jurists in the entire commonwealth.
General Coffroth's political career was one of rare in- terest, and is in itself an epitomization of the beginning, dura- tion and end of that gigantic struggle which began with the free-soil controversy, found its fruits in civil war, and the con- summation in a more perfect union of all the states than ever before, and the marshaling of all their people under a restored banner in devotion to a common purpose and self-consecration to a higher national mission. He early developed such splen- did powers as a public speaker and such magnetic personality as a leader that in 1849, at the age of twenty-one, he was a member of the Democratic state convention in Pennsylvania. He was a member of the fateful and dramatic National Demo- cratic Convention of 1860, in Charleston, South Carolina, which witnessed the disruption of the party and made possible the election of Abraham Lincoln. In this body he made an earnest stand against the secession element of the party and pro- nounced for the Union, under any contingency whatever, with impassioned vehemence pleading for the nomination of "the little giant," Stephen A. Douglas, as a leader who could alone avert the horrors of civil war. He also sat in the convention
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BEDFORD AND SOMERSET COUNTIES
in Baltimore, in 1872, which nominated Horace Greeley for the presidency, and was president of the Democratic state conven- tion in Harrisburg in 1879. In 1884 he was a delegate in the convention in Chicago which nominated Grover Cleveland for president. He was frequently a member of the Democratic state committee, and in 1896 and 1900 was a presidential elector-at-large. He was a great admirer of William J. Bryan, and during the campaigns in which that distinguished young statesman was a presidential candidate made many speeches in his behalf.
It is, however, General Coffroth's congressional career which more particularly challenges the admiration of the present writer. In 1862 the general was selected as the candidate of his party for the congressional nomination in the district comprising the counties of Somerset, Bedford, Fulton, Franklin and Adams, being pitted against Hon. Edward McPherson, who had al- ready served one term, and had the advantage of thorough or- ganization. General Coffroth entered upon the campaign with great vigor and reduced the Republican majority in Somerset county from eighteen hundred to seven hundred, and was elected by a plurality of five hundred and sixty votes in face of an adverse majority of three thousand. He was the young- est member of the congress to which he was elected, but bore himself so creditably that he was re-elected in 1864. During these critical periods, while abandoning no principle, he con- stantly stood for the higher interests of the nation at large, exhibiting the broadest patriotism and unflinching courage in the Union cause, and was among the very few Democrats who commanded the admiration and personal confidence and friend- ship of the illustrious war president and his cabinet. He served upon various important committees of congress, including those on examination of accounts of the treasury department, and in- valid pensions, and was known as one of the most industrious members of both bodies in which he sat. He was a real friend of the volunteer soldier, and he kept a large force of clerks- busily engaged in correspondence concerning their interests and the interests of his district and state. His personal stand- ing with the national administration enabled him to procure many beneficial enactments and departmental action, to the advantage of those for whom he labored. In the broader field of statesmanship he was a recognized force. In the thirty- eighth congress he cast his ballot in favor of the thirteenth amendment to the national constitution, providing for the abo- lition of slavery. In the heated discussion which preceded the vote, and in which he was brought into antagonism against the majority of his party associates and personal friends, he con- tended for the measure upon the ground that, to legally abolish
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BEDFORD AND SOMERSET COUNTIES
the institution which had provoked the Civil war, a constitu- tional amendment must needs be submitted to the people in order that in the future there should be no reopening of the question nor cause for legal controversy. General Coffroth was chosen from among Pennsylvania's distinguished sons then serving in both branches of the congress as a pallbearer at the funeral of the lamented martyr president, and it is a pathetic recollection with the writer of this narrative that he (the writer) witnessed the entrance of the mournful cortege to the old state house in Springfield, Illinois, that awful April, forty and one years ago. In 1866 he declined a renomination for a third term. In 1878 he was again elected to congress from the district then comprising the counties of Somerset, Cam- bria, Blair and Bedford-a Republican district with some thou- sands plurality-and in this contest he defeated General Jacob M. Campbell by a plurality of something more than three hun- dred. During this term he was chairman of the committee on invalid pensions, and of the select committee on payment of pensions and back pay, and was a member of the committee on enrolled bills. In his chairmanships he was most active, and to his industrious effort and legal ability was due the passage of many important pension bills. After serving with distinction and signal usefulness until the expiration of his term, March 4, 1881, he retired from public life and devoted himself entirely to his profession.
A brilliant orator, devoid of rhetorical trickery, he was natural, earnest and forceful. His campaign speeches were vigorous, effective and, withal, abounded in humor and perti- nent illustration. His utterances in congress bore the stamp of a nobler eloquence. Active in the fiery discussions of the Civil war days, his speeches had the honest ring of heartfelt patriotism, and even those who were radically opposed to him listened with the respect which is to be accorded to the honest statesman. Easy and natural in address, graceful in gesture, possessing great fluency and highly persuasive in argument, he was recognized as one of the leaders of the house, and his speeches were admired for their good sense, propriety and genuine oratory. One which was widely reproduced by the Democratic press during a heated campaign was entitled "An honest and fair election, where the elector may deposit his ballot untrammeled and unawed, is the palladium of American liberty," and had for its introductory clause, "Trial by jury is defined by the renowned English commentator on common law to be the bulwark of English liberty." Tenderly sympathetic, he held to his friends as with hoops of steel, and his eulogiums at their passing away were touchingly beautiful. The annals of congress contain no more lofty and pathetic utterances
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than his memorial addresses on the life and character of Hon. Rush Clark and Hon. Fernando Wood, as the following ex- tract from the first alluded to will reveal :
"How sudden was his death! He was in the prime of life. Many years of distinction and honor were apparently before him. He was beloved because he was frank, candid and sincere, and looked with the eye of charity upon the failings and mistakes of men. He believed in the power of kindness, and spanned with divine sympathy the gulf that separates the fallen from the pure. We are called upon to mourn the loss of one who in a brief time accomplished much, but promising more and more if he had not been cut off so early in life.
"Ne'er gathered the reaper fruit more fair; Never the shadows of dark despair Fell on a deeper woe. Gone from his task half complete, Gone from caresses kind and sweet, Into Death's arms of snow.
"Mr. Speaker, I have no language to describe my feel- ings when I viewed his form enclosed in the casket of the dead. Handsome in death as he was pure in life. I remembered Shakespeare had defined death to be 'the blind cave of eternal night.' I trembled at the thought, but I quickly drew sweet and enduring consolation from the divine promise of the Sa- vior of mankind when He declared, 'In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.' The poet has feelingly ex- pressed :
"There is no death! The stars go down To rise upon some fairer shore, And bright in heaven's jeweled crown They shine forevermore."
Reference has previously been made to General Coffroth's long connection with the bar of Somerset county. With this in recollection is to be conceded the entire fittingness of his being chosen to deliver the address at the laying of the cornerstone of the new court house on November 29, 1904. He said :
"God's bright sun smiles upon a happy people. Every pulsation of my being gushes forth in happiness in participat- ing in the ceremony of laying the cornerstone of a large and magnificent new court house, in which justice and right will be impartially administered. How thankful we should be to the two grand juries who recommended the building of this edifice and to the courageous commissioners and the honorable
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BEDFORD AND SOMERSET COUNTIES
president judge who approved the grand juries' recommen- dation.
"The history of the Somerset bar justifies the county in erecting a temple of justice equal in beauty and as commo- dious as any in Western Pennsylvania ..
"This bar sent forth Joseph Williams, who was chief jus- tice of Iowa and then chief justice of Nebraska; Moses Hamp- ton, who was for a long period of time a very able president judge of Allegheny county; Samuel G. Bailey, who was a judge in the State of Illinois, and Jeremiah S. Black, my preceptor, who was born under the shadow of the mighty Allegheny mountains,
"Whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And thronged eternity into icy halls Of cold sublimity.
"He was president judge of the courts of this county, was a member and chief justice of the supreme court of the great State of Pennsylvania and afterward was attorney general and secretary of state under the administration of President James Buchanan; he then practiced law in the supreme court of the United States and soon convinced the people of this country that he was the greatest lawyer that was ever born in the United States. And in addition to these great lawyers many remained in the county who gained eminence and repu- tation as being very able men. Chauncey Forward and Charles Ogle, two great lawyers and statesmen, now sleep in the graveyard of this town, and the balance of the great law- yers I have named have left the shore touched by the myste- rious sea that never yet has borne on any wave the image of a homeward sail. All of these great men have
"Gone from their country's august claim,
Where they from the lofty dome of fame Hung like a bright polar star.
"The beautiful and magnificent building that is now being erected will be a monument to the great lawyers that have passed away, and to the lawyers who now remain, and to those who may take our place in the course of years; it will be a building that our children, grandchildren and great-grandchil- dren will look upon with pride, because it will be a grand herit- age handed down from sire to son."
General Coffroth was familiarly and affectionately known by his military title, having been a major-general of militia prior to the Civil war. He was a member of the Order of Odd Fellows for more than fifty years and of the Masonic fraternity
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BEDFORD AND SOMERSET COUNTIES
for nearly forty years. He was also for many years a mem- ber of the Order of Good Templars, and made many effective addresses in behalf of its principles and objects. He was a man of martial bearing, of free and companionable disposition, with a kindly heart and generous hand --- attributes which tend to keep body and mind equable and well poised-and was held in the highest regard, whether in professional, social or public life. He married, December 20, 1854, Miss Nora Kimmell, now deceased, who was an accomplished and liberally educated lady of Berlin, Pennsylvania, daughter of Jacob Kimmell. Of this marriage were born three sons and one daughter: A. Bruce, a practicing attorney at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; Jacob K., deceased, who was postmaster at Somerset during Presi- dent Cleveland's first administration; George A., deceased, who was a student at law, having studied, as did his elder brother, under his father; and Mary, who died in her fifth year. General Coffroth died September 2, 1906, at Markleton Sanitarium. He was in his seventy-ninth year.
WILLIAM H. WELFLEY.
The Welfley family is of German origin. The name is variously spelled, Woelfley, Wolfley, Wiffley, and Welfley, as in our present day. The name is the diminutive of Wolf-"the Little Wolf."
The earliest known ancestor of the Somerset county branch of the family was David Welfley, and we first know of him as living in Frederick county, Maryland. It is quite certain that he was of German birth, but in what part of Germany he was born is not known. The traditions of some other branches that are known of point toward the kingdom of Wurtemberg as the country from which their ancestors came, and it is probable that David Welfley came from that country also, or from one of the other South German states. It is also extremely prob- able that all of the names are of a common stock. About 1785 he was married to Magdalena Getzendiner, who was a widow with two sons and one daughter. In a list of early marriage licenses granted in Frederick county, Maryland, between 1778 and 1781, are found these names: March 19, 1779, Henry Shreiver and Barbara Welfley; October 27, 1780, Christopher Wolfley and Phillipena Hildebrand. These are supposed to have been a brother and sister of David Welfley. But unless the Welfley family of Page county, Virginia, are the descend- ants of Christopher Welfley, nothing is known of their fami- lies.
The family of David Welfley consisted of two sons and a daughter. Peter Welfley, the eldest child, was born in the town of Frederick, May 25, 1787. Catharine Welfley was born
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BEDFORD AND SOMERSET COUNTIES
in the same town, November 28, 1789. Israel, the youngest son, was born at Cumberland, Maryland, in 1792. His father, David Welfley, removed to that town in 1791. At Cumberland he followed his trade, which was that of a cooper. He lived in his own house in Cumberland, which is now known as No. 87 North Mechanic street. His wife died in 1816, and some years afterward he went to live with his son Peter at Salisbury, where he died in 1837 at the age of eighty-two years. In his religious belief he was a Lutheran.
Peter Welfley learned the trade of potter, and about 1808 located at Salisbury, where he lived all the remaining years of his life. Being possessed, for those days, of a good education. both in English and in German, it was usually his custom to teach school in the winter months, his teaching covering a period of about forty-five years. He was the first postmaster at Salisbury (Elk Lick), being appointed in 1812. In his poli- tics he was a follower of Thomas Jefferson (which very few of his descendants are). He was a lifelong member of the Lu- theran church, and for many years one of the elders of the Salisbury congregation. He married Eva Weimer in the autumn of 1810. She was the youngest daughter of Martin Weimer and his wife, Catharine Barbara, born Troutman. To them were born the following children:
Israel Welfley, born December 8, 1811; died May 25, 1906. in his ninety-fifth year.
Catharine Welfley (intermarried with Jeremiah Glotfelty), born February 14, 1814; died September 26, 1897, in her eighty- fourth year.
Jacob Welfley, born May 4, 1816; died February 10, 1849, in his thirty-third year.
Henry Welfley, born October 14, 1818; died August -, 1848, in his thirtieth year.
Martin Welfley, born October 7, 1820; died December -- , 1854, in his thirty-fifth year.
John Welfley, born August 7, 1823; died December 19, 1898, in his seventy-fifth year.
Balthazar Welfley, born December 25, 1825; died Septem- ber 11, 1903, in his seventy-eighth year.
Margaret Welfley (intermarried with Samuel Lowry), born July 20, 1829; died August -, 1898, in her sixty-ninth year.
David Peter Welfley, born February 25, 1832; died Decem- ber 19, 1886, in his fifty-fifth year.
Of these sons, John Welfley was a Lutheran minister. Balthazar Welfley at one time lived in Garrett county, Mary- land, and in 1877 was elected a member of the Maryland senate
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for a term of four years. David Peter Welfley, the youngest son, was a physician who stood well in his profession.
Peter Welfley died April 5, 1867, aged seventy-nine years, ten months and ten days. His wife, Eva, died January 3, 1870, aged seventy-nine years and twenty days.
Catharine Welfley, daughter of David Welfley, married Robert MeCleary at Cumberland, Maryland, where she lived and died. Israel Welfley, son of David, died without family.
Jacob Welfley, second son of Peter Welfley, married Eliz- abeth Arnold, a daughter of George Arnold, of Greenville, in 1838. A family of four children was born to them, three of whom died in infancy.
William Henry Welfley, their second son, was born at Salis- bury, August 14, 1840. In his politics Jacob Welfley was a Whig, not following his father's footsteps in this particular In his religious life he was a member of the Lutheran church.
In obtaining an education William H. Welfley enjoyed only such advantages as the common schools of his native vil- lage afforded. Before reaching the age of sixteen years he be- gan teaching in the country schools, teaching seven terms in all. Having learned the photographer's art, he quit teaching school and made that business his life occupation, with but a single break of five months in 1868, which he spent on the eastern shore of Virginia in teaching a school of colored children un- der the auspices of the American Missionary Association. In 1866 he located in Somerset, where he has since resided. In 1874 he was elected a member of the board of school directors of Somerset borough, his service in this office covering a period of eight years. In February, 1906, he was elected burgess of Somerset borough for the eighteenth time, and with the close of his present term he will have served his town in that capacity for twenty-four years, a record that, so far as is known, has been exceeded by only two or at most three other men in the entire state of Pennsylvania. In addition to this he has also served three years as a member of the town council. His numerous elections to the office of burgess show that he has been a faithful public officer and that his service has been ac- ceptable to the people. It is generally admitted that the town of Somerset owes more to him for its splendid waterworks and sewerage systems than to any other one man. He was com- missioned as a notary public by Governor Hartranft in 1876, and has received a similar commission from every governor of Pennsylvania from that day to this.
As an Odd Fellow he has given his lodge twenty-five years of service as its treasurer. Politically, as a boy and a man, he has been an adherent of the Republican party from the first days of its existence.
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Mr. Welfley is of Revolutionary stock in both the paternal and maternal lines of his ancestry, two of his great-grand- fathers-Martin Weimer and George Arnold, Sr .- having served in the Revolutionary war, the latter in Captain Michael Boyer's company of Colonel Ludwig Weldner's German regi- ment of the Maryland line. He is also in the maternal line a great-great-grandson of George Steele, the ancestor of a nu- merous Bedford county family of that name.
OGLE FAMILY.
John Ogle (I) was the pioneer of the Ogle family in America. He came from England in 1666 and settled in New- castle, Delaware (then a part of Pennsylvania), where he held large grants of land under the Duke of York and afterward from the Penns. He had three sons, Thomas, John and William.
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