USA > Pennsylvania > A history of the Juniata Valley and its people, Volume III > Part 36
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(II) Abraham Elder, second son of Robert Elder, was born on the Franklin county homestead in Path Valley, then Cumberland county, Pennsylvania, July 27, 1754; was a soldier of the revolution, in Captain Noah Abraham's company, Colonel William Chambers' regi- ment of the Cumberland county militia; married Susannah Ardery, daughter of James Ardery, one of the first settlers of Cumberland county, after the revolution in 1784, migrated to Center county, Penn- sylvania, as one of the first settlers of the Half Moon Valley. The first summer he came alone, occupying the abandoned cabin of some former hunter, making a small clearing and planting crops for the fam- ily to subsist on when he should bring them later. He returned to Path Valley in the fall, and in the spring of 1785 he came again to Half Moon, bringing his family, including Robert, a three-weeks'-old baby; the trip was made upon horseback through an unbroken wil- derness, by rough Indian trails; with him also came his older
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brother, David Elder, and family, who, however, did not re- main. Abraham found his wheat crop planted the previous year very promising, and housing his family in the old cabin he proceeded to make them comfortable. He took up a large tract of land adjoining the later village of Stormstown, becoming one of the largest land owners in Center county. He was a man of active, ener- getic temperament, of liberal enterprise and great sagacity. He erected a sawmill, and carried on a distillery upon the stream running through his lands ; built roads over the mountain into the Bald Eagle Valley at Port Matilda, constructing and operating a grist mill and sawmill. Upon the site of the rude cabin he built a substantial log house; it was in this building that the first religious meetings of the Presbyterians of the Half Moon Valley were held. In 1808 he erected a commodious stone mansion, regarded in that day as very imposing. He hauled his flour to Baltimore and Philadelphia, bringing back goods in exchange. When the road to Pittsburgh was opened he established a tavern-stand and a general store for the accommodation of his neighbors and the traveling public. This hotel was known far and near as "Elders," and was much patronized by western voyagers, freighters and teamsters, it being on the direct route from Bellefonte to Pittsburgh. It was a favorite place for public meetings, general trainings and similar gatherings, and rarely lacked for some enlivening incident. He maintained this place of enter- tainment for twenty-five years. He became a large owner of land not only of that upon which he had settled, but purchased many tracts along Buffalo Run, and in other parts of Center county. As a soldier of the revolution, he supported the policies of Washington, Hamilton and Adams as a leading Federalist in his county. Mr. Elder filled consider- able space in the local history of Half Moon Valley, and commanded high esteem as a man of more than ordinary ability and prominence. He died in the old stone mansion in July, 1827, at the age of seventy- three years. His wife, Susannah Ardery, was born in Path Valley, April IT, 1758, and died in Half Moon, May 7, 1831. According to a wish expressed before his death, his remains were disinterred when she died, and both were buried in the Presbyterian churchyard at Spruce Creek. His sons were: James, who died on the homestead in 1854, without issue; and Robert Elder, the younger son ; his only daughter, Elizabeth, married Michael Brown, the ancestor of the Brown family
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in the valley; their bodies lie in the Brown burial ground on the Brown homestead, in Worth township, Center county, Pennsylvania.
(III) Robert Elder, second son of Abraham Elder, was born May 9, 1785, in Path Valley, Franklin county, at the home of his grand- father, Robert Elder; was three weeks old when in 1785 he came to Half Moon Valley, Center county, in his mother's arms, upon the back of a packhorse. The cradle in which he was rocked, hollowed from a gum log, furnished with crude rockers, is still (1913) treasured in the family. Robert Elder inherited the homestead of his father, and became a farmer and active business man, building in 1832 a large stone addition to the old stone mansion, and as thus completed the house still stands. He was conspicuously distinguished as a man of generous im- pulses and kindly disposition, and grew to be one of the best known and most popular citizens of Center county, as well as of the entire Juniata Valley. He was of a very charitable disposition, and to the needy and such as deserved assistance he proved a strong friend. His generosity to his less fortunate neighbors did not interfere with his con- tinued and life-long prosperity ; aside from his large ownership of land he became interested in many profitable enterprises in various parts of Pennsylvania. November 9, 1809, Robert Elder married Esther Wil- son, born in Chester county, November 24, 1786, oldest daughter of George Wilson, a distinguished and recognized leader of the Society of Friends of Half Moon Valley, a man much in favor with all classes.
Robert Elder's children were: Susan A. Elder, Rebecca B. Elder, Jane W. Elder, Abraham M. Elder, George W. Elder and Elizabeth B. Elder. Mrs. Esther Wilson Elder died February 24, 1861 ; Robert El- der died July 28, 1871, at the ripe age of eighty-six, upon the spot that had for that number of years been his home. He was a generous and indulgent parent, and while he instilled into his children maxims of in- dustry, thrift and frugality, he was a firm believer in the enormous value of a liberal education; to that end he gave his sons the best opportunities for such advancement at Allegheny College, Washington and Jefferson, and Harvard Universities.
(IV) George Wilson Elder, an able lawyer and man of great influ- ence and wealth in the Juniata Valley, was the youngest son of Robert and Esther Wilson Elder, and was born at the Elder homestead, in Half Moon township, Center county, Pennsylvania, July 28, 1821. He was
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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.
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educated at the public schools near his birthplace, and at Allegheny Col- lege, Meadville; graduated from Washington and Jefferson College, Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1846. Among his college mates were Justice James P. Sterrett, of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ; Hon. William H. West, the blind lawyer and orator, of Ohio; Hon. James G. Blaine ; Justice Cyrus L. Pershing, of the Supreme Court of Pennsyl- vania; Rev. Robert F. Wilson, a Presbyterian minister, of Lewistown. Pennsylvania; Rev. Joseph R. Wilson, a Presbyterian divine, father of Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States; and Hon. Mathew S. Quay. United States senator from Pennsylvania. On graduation he immediately registered as a law student in the office of General Hugh N. McAllister, a distinguished lawyer at Bellefonte. Later, in 1849, he graduated from the law department of Harvard University ; among his classmates were Anson Burlingame, minister to China; Judge Horace Gray, of the Supreme Court of the United States; and George F. Hoar, United States senator from Massachusetts. During his student days he applied himself with extraordinary diligence to take the most advan- tage of his excellent opportunities. He became a skilled debater and orator, taking a leading and successful part in the debating societies at both universities and holding an advanced standing in his classes. While at Cambridge he enjoyed the unusual privilege of hearing Rufus Choate and Daniel Webster trying cases of large moment in the Boston courts.
During the same year ( 1849) he took up his residence at Lewis- town, Pennsylvania, becoming at once resident counsel of the Pennsyl- vania railroad and canal for that district. He engaged in the successful and extensive practice of the law. He early attained a position of promi- nence and trust in his chosen profession, which he retained to the day of his death, being as a man and patriotic citizen held in universal esteem. He was a lawyer of splendid abilities and transacted a large volume of business in the county, state and federal courts. His eloquence and oratory at the bar and upon the platform was of the first order ; he was witty, much beyond the average, and his sallies and humor were en- joyed even by those who were sometimes his victims.
In 1851 he enjoyed a long trip to Europe and the British Isles, going as a commissioner for the state of Pennsylvania to the World's Fair in London. On May 24, 1853, he was married to Margaretta Scott Shaw.
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of Lewistown, a woman of marked literary talent, depth of mind, wide culture and force of character. She was a member of the Scott and Shaw families, one of the oldest and most respected families of the Susquehanna and Juniata Valleys. She was the daughter of John and Margaret Scott Shaw, born at Hope Furnace, Mifflin county, Pennsyl- vania, November 25, 1830. Her father was county surveyor of Mifflin county for many years, one of the first superintendents of the Freedom Furnace and the Hope Furnace in that county. She came of that Scotch-Irish stock to whose hardy natures the middle and southern states are largely indebted for the pure and resolute virtues of their people. Her ancestors upon both sides were among the survivors of the terrible siege of Londonderry, that last stronghold of Protestantism, "where, at length on the verge of the ocean, hunted to the last asylum, baited into a mood in which men may be destroyed, but will not easily be subjugated, the imperial race turned desperately at bay." They came to Pennsylvania in the latter part of the seventeenth century and the early years of the eighteenth century, settling near the old Donegal Church, in Lancaster county.
Her paternal grandfather was Judge William Shaw, member of the committee of safety for Northumberland county during the revolution. He was captain of a Northumberland company ; was an intimate friend of Benjamin Franklin, and an active patriot in the revolution. Her great-grandfather on her mother's side, John Little, was captain of a company of foot in the French and Indian war; she cherished with particular pride all her life long, the commission of Captain Little, signed by John Penn, as a memento of the loyalty and patriotism of her ancestor. Her grandfather. James Scott, was an officer in the revo- lution, in Colonel Alexander Lowry's regiment of Lancaster county, recruited at Donegal.
She received her education at the public schools at Lewistown and at the Lewistown Academy and Tuscarora Seminary. All her life long she was an active and influential advocate and worker in all lines of public welfare, educational, social and moral reform. During the civil war she was treasurer of the Soldiers' Aid Society, and during its whole period she was most active in sending aid to the patriotic soldiers in the northern armies at the front, opening her handsome home for the meetings of the ladies of the society in their hospital aid work.
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She was president of the Mifflin county Woman's Christian Temperance Union for nearly twenty years; was superintendent of Scientific Tem- perance Instruction in the public schools of Lewistown for many years; was president of the Art Club, the Outlook Club, an active organizer and officer of the Village Improvement Society; she was an inspiring leader and influential adviser in the temperance organizations of the state and county, and in Lewistown. Her life was especially rich in the religious realm-as a teacher in the Presbyterian Sabbath school, and as a member and officer of the Foreign and Home Missionary Societies of the Presbyterian Church. Within the home circle her influence was most striking, in the education and moulding of the characters and ininds of her large family of children in the highest and truest elements of home life, as well as the broader plane of social and business life. She died September 3. 1900, and is buried in the family lot in St. Mark's cemetery, beside her husband.
George W. Elder was one of the founders and leaders of the Re- publican party in Pennsylvania, entering with all the force of his trained intellect in the maintenance of the Union and the cause of freedom for the slave, casting his first Republican vote in 1856 for John C. Fremont, and his last in 1900 for William McKinley. He was foremost during the war of the rebellion in the organization and equipment of troops for the national government, and in aid to the soldiers at the front and in care for the families of the nation's dead, lending his assistance in every way by his voice and his means to the cause of the Union. He was a member of one of Pennsylvania's emergency regiments during the Get- tysburg campaign, served as a draft commissioner for the state of Penn- sylvania, a difficult and onerous position ; was presidential elector in Pennsylvania in 1868 for U. S. Grant. He held a high place in his profession, and was successful in his business enterprises, having large lumber, coal, iron and land interests; was a large stockholder in the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and other corporations; was a large stockholder of the Mifflin County National Bank, and a director for thirty years in that strong and prosperous bank. He owned large prop- erty interests in Wisconsin, Kansas and Colorado, and was largely in- terested with his son, George Robert Elder, a successful lawyer and mining operator, at Leadville, Colorado, in gold, silver and lead mines ;
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was a founder of the Lewistown public library, and for thirty years its president.
His ancestry embraced three of the four racial strains which have marked the upbuilding of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania in its marvelous governmental and industrial prosperity-the Scotch, Quaker, English and Scotch-Irish. In the Scotch line George W. Elder was of the sixth generation in lineal descent from the first Robert Elder, who came from Edinburgh, Scotland, to Pennsylvania, shortly after 1700, becoming a large land owner in the southern counties of Pennsylvania. The descendants from Robert Elder in the collateral lines include the old family names of Rutherford, Espy, Robinson, Wallace, Forster, Sherer, Campbell, Ellmaker, Doll, Alricks, Bailey, Sumner, Snowden, Wilson, Simpson, Barnett and Stewart.
On his departure from Edinburgh Robert Elder parted with a brother, James Elder, a professor of Edinburgh University, and from him were descended the famous nautical engineers and steam ship- builders, David, James and John Elder, whose mammoth works at Go- wan on the Clyde, a few miles below Glasgow, are the largest in the world, building the formidable dreadnoughts of the British navy, and such famous transatlantic steamers as the "Lucania" and "Campania," of the Cunard line. To John Elder of this family belongs the wonder- ful distinction of the invention of the triplex expansion engine for the propulsion of ocean-going steamers; this gigantic stride in the develop- ment of steam has been deemed in the world of invention as equal in importance to the great services of Watt, Stephenson and Fulton, in marshaling the forces of steam to the hand of man.
In the Quaker English line, on his mother's side, he was of the seventh generation in lineal descent from Valentine Hollingsworth, an Englishman of noble descent, whose ancestral seat was at Hollings- worth, in the parish of Mottsam, county of Chester, eleven miles from the city of Manchester. This estate has wholly belonged to the family of Hollingsworth from a period prior to the Conquest, one manor still belonging to Captain Robert de Hollingsworth, an officer of the Englishi army.
Valentine Hollingsworth accompanied his friend William Penn to Pennsylvania in the ship "Welcome" in 1682, and purchased a large tract of land which now lies in the states of Maryland and Delaware,
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at the town of Newark. Ile was a man of distinction and influence in the colony, and was charged with important responsibilities. He was present at the original reading of the charter of William Penn before the Provincial Council and Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania, the second day of the second month, 1683, being a member of the assem- bly. His first wife, Caroline Cornish, was the daughter of Henry Cor- nish, an opulent merchant of London, owner of the manor of Cawood, county of York, an alderman of the city of London, and high sheriff of London and Middlesex county in 1680; it was during his term of office the Popish Plot was discovered, and, when Lord Howard was found guilty of treason by the House of Lords, it became his duty to carry out the sentence, as sheriff. He was defendant as alderman, in the celebrated quo warranto proceedings against the city of London in 1680.
Henry Cornish was elected Lord Mayor of London in October, 1682, and so declared by the recorder of London. The vote was stricken in the interest of the king, and Cornish was deprived of the position; on a second election, Cornish was defeated by a small majority of forty- five votes, Pritchard the king's candidate, receiving 2,138 votes, and Cornish 2,093. On May 8, 1683, Cornish was tried for riot and fined £4,100, which he was forced to pay. Cornish was tried for treason, October 19, 1685, for complicity with Lord Russell, and upon false and perjured testimony was convicted of treason by a pliant jury and the cruel judges of the Bloody Assizes. He was pursued by the ma- lignant cruelty of James II., King of England, and his bloody Chancellor Jeffreys. He was executed October 23. 1685, under circumstances of great degradation, upon a gibbet erected where King street meets Cheap- side, in sight of Cornish's own house. His head was placed over the Guildhall, and his body drawn and quartered. The description of his trial and execution, as given by Lord Macaulay's "History of England," volume I, pp. 594-596, is one of the most brutal recitals of the tyranny of an English king in the history of the nation. The brutal Jeffreys, Lord Chancellor of England, when approached by Dr. Calamy, pastor of the Church of St. Lawrence, of whose vestry Cornish was a mem- ber, for a mitigation of the sentence, is said to have replied to the good doctor, that : "A mine of gold as deep as the monument is high and a bunch of pearls as big as the flames at the top of it, would not save
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Cornish." The frightful death of Justice Jeffreys, in the tower of London, and the life imprisonment of the perjured witnesses in the tower, was small atonement for this judicial murder. The attainder of Cornish's estates was reversed by act of Parliament, January 30, 1688, I. William and Mary.
The descendants of Valentine Hollingsworth and Caroline Cornish consists of the influential families of Hollingsworth, Cooks, Dixons, Piersons, Wilsons, Wests, Woodwards, Harlans, Greggs, Stephens, Norris, Packers, Browns, Hunters, Downings, Leonards and Grays, in the states of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia and New Jersey.
George W. Elder was emphatically the lawyer, and allowed nothing to distract his full energy from the protection of his clients' interests ; he was deeply interested in public affairs, but never accepted or sought public office. He believed to a wonderful degree in the power of thor- ough and extensive education to develop the best character in man and woman. His most valuable gifts to his children were their educational opportunities at Princeton, Wells, Wellesley, and the Boston Polytechnic School. He was a man of the strictest integrity, deep knowledge and keen foresight, and his counsels were sought in every movement for the public good. He was a man of robust health and commanding figure, and was able to transact business and affairs almost to the day of his death. He died in his eighty-first year, November 10, 1901, and was buried in the family lot in St. Mark's Cemetery. He left five children surviving him: Rufus Choate Elder, of Lewistown; George Robert Elder, of Leadville, Colorado, both lawyers; Herman Scott Elder, of Lewistown, senior partner of the firm of Elder & Eckbert, proprietors of the Logan Mills; Esther Elder Mann, wife of Frank E. Mann, of Lewistown, manager of the James H. Mann Axe Manufactory at Manns, Pennsylvania; and Mary Elder Brinton, wife of William G. Brinton, of The Oxford Press, Oxford, Chester county, Pennsylvania.
(V) Colonel Rufus Choate Elder, the eldest son of George Wilson Elder and Margaretta Shaw, was born March 29, 1854, at Lewistown, Pennsylvania. He is an eminent lawyer of commanding influence and sterling character in the Juniata Valley, still residing in his birthplace.
His father was for more than half a century one of the most promi- nent, scholarly and successful advocates and lawyers of the central part of Pennsylvania. His great-grandfather, Abraham Elder, was a soldier
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in a Cumberland county company during the revolution. On his ma- ternal side Colonel Elder is a lineal descendant of Captain John Little, an officer in the French and Indian war. His great-grandfather, Judge William Shaw, was an officer in the revolution, being captain of a Northumberland county company, and was a member of the committee of safety of Northumberland county, and a lifelong friend of Benjamin Franklin. His great-grandfather, James Scott, was a lieutenant in a Lancaster county company in the revolution, recruited at Donegal, of Colonel Alexander Lowry's regiment. He was educated in the public schools and academy at Lewistown, being a particularly bright and ready scholar, showing a decided bent toward mathematics; was pre- pared for college at Tuscarora Academy, Juniata county, Pennsylvania ; matriculated in the fall of 1871 in the sophomore class at Princeton college, and graduated in the class of 1874. His attainments were par- ticularly noticeable in mathematics, geometry and calculus, standing near the head of his class in those studies. Immediately upon his gradu- ation from Princeton he registered as a student of law in the office of his father at Lewistown, under whose able and wise preceptorship he spent three years gaining a wide knowledge of the law. April 10, 1877, upon the motion of his father, he was admitted to the bar of the courts of Mifflin county. He was elected district attorney of Mifflin county in November, 1877, and served until January 1, 1881, in that office. 1le was most fortunate in opening his career as a lawyer in the office of his father, who held high rank as a lawyer in Lewistown and possessed an extensive and lucrative corporation practice in the court of common pleas, and a large probate and orphans' court clientage. Under these advantageous conditions he rapidly acquired an accurate knowledge of practice and pleading in the criminal and civil branches.
In July, 1877, in the midst of the great railroad strikes in Pennsyl- vania, he became connected with the National Guard of Pennsylvania, enlisting as a private in Company G, Fifth Regiment National Guard of Pennsylvania, this company being known as the Logan Guards, a name made famous by the old Logan Guards Company of Lewistown, which was one of the first five volunteer companies to enter Washing- ton from Pennsylvania in 1861, and now known as the First Defenders. This enlistment marked Colonel Elder's commencement of thirty years' continuous service as a soldier in the National Guard of Pennsylvania.
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He served as first lieutenant of this company from November 9, 1878, until May 7, 1883, and from the latter date served as captain of the company until April 15, 1892, when he became major of the Fifth Regi- ment. On July 20, 1894, he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the same regiment, and served in that capacity until 1898, when the Spanish war commenced. Upon the declaration of war by the United States against Spain he volunteered at once with his regiment for that service, and was commissioned, on May 5, 1898, lieutenant-colonel of the Fifth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, United States Army, and served with his regiment in the First Brigade, Third Division, First Army Corps, until mustered out, November 7, 1898. The regiment was dur- ing this period in camp at Chickamauga and Lexington, and a part of this time Colonel Elder served as president of a court martial, composed of nine members. His impartiality, knowledge of civil and military law and his dispatch of business in this position, contributed in no small degree to his enviable reputation as an officer and disciplinarian. After the reorganization of the Fifth Regiment, National Guard of Pennsyl- vania, he served as lieutenant-colonel until February 17, 1902, when he was commissioned colonel, and commanded the regiment until 1906, when he resigned.
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