USA > Pennsylvania > Cumberland County > Centennial biography : Men of mark of Cumberland Valley, Pa., 1776-1876 > Part 20
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Shortly before his death, and after his sight had fled, he requested his wife to call his children around his bedside, and when informed that they were there, he raised his head and said, " My dear children, I am about to leave you ; may the blessing of God rest with you through time and eternity ;" and in a few minutes thereafter he died.
Ilis death was on October 31st, 1843, of a lingering disease of near a year's standing, caused by a fall, and from exposure to damp when his system was under the influence of medicine.
Thus passed from earth a faithful servant of the Lord, the light of whose example has not been extinguished by his descent to the tomb, but continues to shine with attractive lustre. How great the advan- tage of having godly parents ! "I bless God," said Mr. Flavel, " for a religious, tender father, who often poured out his soul to God for me, and this stock of prayers I esteem above the fairest inheritance
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on earth." "A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children." "As for man, his days are as grass ; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children's children, to such as keep His covenant, and to those that remember His commandments to do them."
ROBERT JOHNSTON, M. D.
N taking a retrospect of the families of Franklin county a hun- dred years ago, we find none more prominent for its patriot- ism and military ardor than that one to which Dr. Robert Johnston belonged.
He, and his three brothers, all held honourable positions. in the Revolutionary Army. Colonel James Johnston commanded the regi- ment which marched from his section of the state into New Jersey, for the defence of that province.
Colonel Thomas Johnston was engaged in active service and was under General Wayne, when that General was surprised and defeated near Paoli by a superior force of the British, guided by American Tories. Major John Johnston, while a mere lad, raised a troop of horse, and offered it to the acting authorities. It was accepted, and ordered to report in Philadelphia, but when it reached Lancaster, on its way to that city, was met by a countermanding order, as the war was about to terminate.
Dr. Robert Johnston was a surgeon in the army from the beginning -
of the war until its close. He was with it at Yorktown, when Lord Cornwallis surrendered. He was one of the original members of the Society of the Cincinnati and greatly esteemed by his fellow officers.
At the close of the war, his migratory tastes continued and he went on a voyage to China, taking out with him a cargo of ginseng, at that time worth almost its weight in gold in the Chinese market. From this voyage he realized a large fortune and gained vast stores of general information. He brought home with him, what in that day was considered a great curiosity, a Chinese servant.
After his return, he married, and, purchasing a large estate in his native county, made there a home, which became the resort of many of the most distinguished men of the period, especially his former com- panions in arms. One of these, an old friend and fellow surgeon, the father of the present Mr. Horace. Binney, died at Dr. Johnston's house. The doctor, probably using knowledge acquired in the East, embalmed the body of his friend and sent it home to his family.
Dr. Johnston, having no children of his own, adopted the youngest son of his only sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Boggs.
JOHN KING.
MONG the records of the prominent citizens of Franklin county, a notice of the subject of this.sketch is entitled to a conspicu- ous place.
By his industry and economy, first as an iron-master, and afterwards as a merchant, Mr. King acquired a large estate. Such was his fair- ness of dealing, and honesty of purpose, evinced through a life of mul- tifarious business, that not the slightest imputation was ever made against his reputation, and all who knew him were ready to testify to his unbending integrity.
His time, services, and means were always ready to minister to the sick, comfort the afflicted, relieve the needy, advance the cause of re- ligion and morals, and aid every work or enterprise that was esteemed of public usefulness. Connected with nearly all the religious, literary, charitable, and business institutions in Chambersburg, where much of his life was spent, he was always found to be a punctual, attentive, active and liberal member or officer, and many were the widows, orphans and others, who were witnesses of his kindness, friendship and assistance.
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Mr. King, as a Christian, was meck and humble, and his firm and un- assuming piety gained him the confidence and esteem of all. He was for many years a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church of Chambers- burg, and as a member of Session, his counsel and discretion indicated the soundness of his judgment. He was also a firm and uniform advo- cate and supporter of the order and principles of that church.
For many years he was President of the Chambersburg Bank, the affairs of which he administered with marked ability and success. He departed this life, July Sth, 1835. His estimable widow survived him a number of years. His eldest daughter, now deceased, was the wife of J. Ellis Bonham, Esq., a gifted member of the Carlisle bar, who was cut down in the midst of bright promise for the future. Another is the wife of J. McDowell Sharpe, Esq., a lawyer of foremost rank in Chambersburg. A third, who has remained unmarried, lives with the sister just named.
Mr. King's character and career present an useful example to others.
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They serve to show, that good sense, sound discretion, diligence in duty, and unaffected piety, may accomplish more -- unspeakably more -- both for the good of mankind and the advantage of the possessor, than is ever achieved, in the absence of these qualities, by the most brilliant genius, the most vigorous intellect, or the profoundest erudition. Such men are an honour and a blessing to any community.
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DAVID ELLIOTT, D. D., LL. D
R. ELLIOTT spent his whole life in Pennsylvania. His grand- father, Robert Elliott, was a Scotch-Irishman, who came to this country in 1737, and settled on a farm about seven miles north of Carlisle. His father, Thomas Elliott, who was at that time about seven years old, afterwards, at the close of the Indian war, purchased a 'farm in Sherman's valley, now Perry county. He was first married to Catherine, daughter of William Thomas, of York county, and after- wards to Mrs. Jane Holliday, of the same race, who was born in 1745. David, one of the five children of this second marriage, and the subject of this sketch, was born at the Valley Home, February 6th, 1787.
He was not an exception to the providential law, by which a pious and faithful mother's character is reflected in the life of her son. Such a mother early taught him to repeat his prayers, as well as Catechetical and Scripture questions, and also gave him his first lessons in spelling and reading. From the age of six years onward he was sent to such schools as a rural neighbourhood, in those uncultured times, afforded. In all these schools Dillworth's Spelling Book, the Bible, and Gough's Arithmetic were the standard class books. Every morning the pupils were required to repeat one or more answers to the questions of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and on each Saturday to recite the whole. It was partly due to this training at school, but still more to the maternal fidelity which set apart a portion of each Sabbath after- noon to religious training at home, that the future distinguished Pro- fessor of Theology, "at a very early period," could both "ask and answer the whole of the Shorter Catechism without the aid of the book."
Whilst he was attending one of the primary schools just referred to, at the age of seven or eight years, he experienced a remarkable provi- dential deliverance from instant death, which not only made a powerful impression upon his youthful mind, of the sovereign goodness of God, but, through his whole life, was associated with his grateful memories of the unseen hand which, as he never doubted, both led and covered him. Passing through a grove of lofty oak timber, with his companions. on his way to school, a heavy storm of wind arose, which soon blew a perfect hurricane. During the sudden violence of one of the gales which swept through the woods they all stopped suddenly, as though
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apprehending danger. While thus stationary he heard a crash like the breaking of timber, but such was the noise produced by the tempestuous fury of the wind that he knew not whence it carne, nor whether it was near or far off. At this moment, and without any assignable reason for doing so, he made a step forward, and as he moved, a large limb of a tree, six or eight inches in diameter, and of great weight, passed down behind him, brushing his shoulders and the skirts of his coat in its descent to the earth. Had he not moved when he did, at that very moment, it would have struck him directly on the head and killed him in an instant. Every thought of this providential escape, at the time, and long afterwards, brought him to tears, in remembrance of the mercy which snatched him from destruction.
In 1802, young Elliott entered a. classical school in Tuscarora valley. Mifflin county, Pa., which was twelve miles distant from his home, and under the care of the Rev. John Coulter, pastor of the Presbyterian Church at that place. In 1804 he became connected with a school in Mifflin, which was in charge of Andrew K. Russell, afterwards a tutor in Washington College, and then a popular teacher and preacher in Newark, Delaware. The happiest of all the influences of the year spent at that place grew out of his residence in the family of the Rev. Matthew Brown, then pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Mifflin, and afterwards the distinguished President, first of Washington, and then of Jefferson College. in 1805, Mr. Brown having received an invitation to become at once the first pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Washington, Pa., and principal of the Academy at that place, secured his young friend as assistant instructor. This arrangement continued for one year, with great acceptance and benefit to the community and the pupils.
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In April, 1806, Mr. Elliott left Washington for his home. His journey homeward, on horseback, owing to changes of weather for which he had not provided, brought on sickness and debility which hindered his entrance into college until January of the next year. But this was the most profitable interval of his life, as it was the crisis of his spiritual birth. At the end of his first session as a student in Dickin- son College, the prostration following hard study induced him to pack his books, determined not to return. But the vacation inspired him with hope. Exercising great care, he was enabled to hold such a position in his class that on his graduation, September 28th, ISOS, by the unanimous selection of his classmates, to whom the Faculty left the distribution of honours, he delivered the valedictory.
Dr. Elliott's first preceptor in theology was his pastor, the Rev. John
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Linn, with whom he spent two years as a student. His last year was spent with the Rev. Joshua Williams, D. D., of Newville, Pa. He was licensed to preach as a probationer by the Presbytery of Carlisle, Sep- tember 26th, 1811. Having preached several times to the congrega- tion of Upper West Conococheague, at Mercersburg, Pa., he received a call, dated February 19th, 1812, to settle as pastor of this large, intelligent and influential church, which, a little while before, had been left vacant by the resignation of the Rev. John King, D. D. The call having been approved by the Presbytery, in April the young minister at once entered upon his labours, though he was not ordained until the next meeting in October, in his own church. In the meantime he was married, May 14th, 1812, to Ann, daughter of Edward West, Esq., of Landisburg, Pa. He laboured among the people of his charge with great energy, efficiency and success. As a specimen of many public movements in which the young pastor took an active interest, the Franklin County Bible Society may be cited, which, in 1815, originated in his appeal through the newspapers, was carried to great success largely through his exertions, and had the honour of representation in the Convention at New York, in 1816, which formed the American Bible Society.
In 1829, Dr. Elliott received an earnest call to the pastorate of the Presbyterian Church, Washington, Pa., where he laboured with great acceptableness and success. To him, during this period, more than to any other man, was due the resuscitation and prosperity of Wash- ington College after its complete prostration. The trustees elected him president of the institution, in connection with his pastoral charge, less than four months after his arrival in Washington. This appoint- ment he declined under the impression that the church demanded his whole time. He consented, however, to become "Acting President and Professor of Moral Philosophy," until a permanent president could be secured. The college was opened, accordingly, November 2d, 1830, with two additional professors, and some twenty boys of the vicinity exalted into students. And yet by means of extensive cor- respondence and other agencies abroad, and vigorous internal man- agement, the third session under the administration of the temporary president ended with one hundred and nineteen young men enrolled, and the regular classes respectably filled. At that stage of progress he handed over the institution, in the spring of 1832, to Dr. McCon- aughy, by whom the presidency had been accepted.
In 1835, Dr. Elliott was called by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. to take a professorship in the Western Theo-
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logical Seminary, at Allegheny City, Pa. By an arrangement, this was the chair of Theology. In 1854, he was assigned by the Assembly, with his own cordial approbation, to the department of Polemic and Historical Theology. To this institution he devoted his best years and powers. To a Divine blessing upon his fidelity as much as to all other agencies, does the church owe the preservation of this school of the prophets, through a hard contest of fifteen years for its very life. "His great life work," said his colleague, Dr. Jacobus, in an address delivered at his funeral, "was his headship of this Theological Semi- nary during thirty-eight years. He came in his full prime -- fifty years old-ripe in experience, and rich in solid resources for his generation. He found here only this venerable father who survives him, (Dr. Luther Halsey,) and who had taught the first regular class, and acted as the sole Faculty (a whole Faculty in himself ) during seven years, and who, after a year of joint labours, gave up the charge to his hands. What labours! what struggles! what conflicts! what prayers and tears he gave early and late to this service! what a work to look back upon! Nearly a thousand men have gone forth from under his hand. a large majority of whom are to-day labouring as ministers of Christ through- out this land and in various foreign fields. Nearly a quarter of a cen- tury ago I came to his side, when his only associate Professor was commonly understood to be in transitu, and everything struggling up the hill. I have seen him in times of great darkness, but always his ' resource was in God. What dignity! what gravity! what simplicity! what suavity and urbanity! what fidelity in the most trying hours! As an instructor in Theology, in Church Polity, or in the Pastoral care, the church knew him to be wise and truc, and all his pupils revered and loved him. As an ecclesiastic, he shone in the church courts, and lifted his voice most effectively in the administration and guidance of her affairs." Chief among his publications was a volume of " Letters on Church Government," which was well received at the time it ap- peared, and the work in which he rescued from oblivion in sweet bio- graphical sketches the labours of Elisha McCurdy and the other noble pioneers of the Presbyterian Church in Western Pennsylvania, and which generations to come will read with interest and profit.
Dr. Elliott had many and marked evidences of the confidence and respect of his brethren in the ministry. He was frequently sent as a Commissioner to the General Assembly. He was Moderator of the Assembly of 1837, which held its sessions in Philadelphia. He was returned to the next Assembly, 1838, over which, after preaching an able opening sermon, he presided, under the rule, until its organization
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by the election of his successor. It was during this brief space that the rupture of the Presbyterian Church into the "Old School" and "New School " divisions was finally accomplished.
Dr. Elliott's private character was one of peculiar excellence. " This, after all," says Dr. Brownson," "was the real stronghold of his influence. Vigorous and cultured intellect, superior wisdom, un- faltering energy, and a life-long service, all came to proportion and power in the moral excellence of the man to whom they belonged. In person he was above the medium size. He was genial and sympa- thetic in his feelings. His manners had the simplicity, candour, polite- ness and attractiveness of a true Christian gentleman. He was magnanimous and courteous, even in difference and contest. As he scorned unfair advantage in carrying his point, so he was ever able to detect and expose it in others. The law of uprightness ruled him both in ,public and private dealing with his fellow men. I have often heard from his lips the confidential story of his annoyances, and yet I never heard from him a purpose, or even suggestion, at war with the highest standard of truth and honour. He he'd the confidence of his brethren and the world, in full proportion to the intimacy which opened to their view the secret springs of his action. If even a foiled antagonist would attempt to cover his own confusion with the insinua- tion of artifice, where others saw only the sagacity of a man as truth- ful as he was wise, no words of defence were needed to beat back the base insinuation. His continued defence was in the estimation of good and discerning men. His friends were life-long in their trust and attachments. Both in secular and religious association, one principle animated him whose sure crown was the unqualified reliance of his fellow men upon his integrity. He did truth, and thereby ever came to the light.
" In social sympathy, Dr. Elliott's character deepened with advanc- ing years. His home was always a centre of hospitality, even to serious encroachment upon his substance. So also poverty and sick- ness, trial and misery were sure of the offerings, at once, of his heart and hands. His thoughtful attentions to persons in humble life, his visits of tender affection to the abodes of distress, his letters of Chris- tian comfort to the bereaved -- enough to fill volumes if published- his constant fidelity in turning social opportunity to the end of the soul's salvation -- all these habits of his active life grew upon him more and more as conscious infirmities foretokened . the night, when no man can work.'
* An Address commemorative of the Life and Character of David Elliott, D. D., LL. D.
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"On the eighteenth day of March, 1874, he gently fell asleep in Jesus-as gently as an infant upon its mother's breast. The sun of his life set in a cloudless sky, giving, in its lengthened rays, a sweet token to all who beheld him, of the glorious day without clouds or tears, upon which his immortal eyes were then opening. We could not weep, but only praise God, as we bore his precious body to the beautiful city of the dead, and reverently laid it down to rest by the side of his sainted wife, glad that even then their spirits were holy and happy together in the vision and fellowship of the glorious Redeemer. """There no sigh of memory swelleth ; There no tear of misery welleth ; Hearts will bleed or break no more : Past is all the cold world's scorning, Gone the night and broke the morning .Over all the golden shores.'"
JOSEPH JUNKIN.
HEN the second George, of Hanover, was on the British throne: when the Susquehanna flowed from its sources to the Chesa- peake, through an almost unbroken forest; and when Penn- sylvania was a nascent province scarce sixty years old ; there crossed that river at Harris' ferry, now Harrisburg, two young Scotch-Irish immigrants-Joseph and Elizabeth Junkin. They had come two years before, he from Monahan, in Ulster, and she from Tyrone. landing at New Castle, Delaware, and stopping for a time at the place where Oxford, Chester county, now stands. A previous immigration of Junkins had located at that place.
The name is probably of Danish origin, and it is likely that the family was descended from those adventurers from Denmark who centuries ago, took possession of parts of North Britain. The family had for many generations dwelt in and near Inverness. Most of them became Presbyterians and Covenanters, and during the perse- cutions under the House of Stuart, emigrated to the north of Ireland.
Elizabeth Wallace, wife of Joseph Junkin, was also of Scotch ances- try ; her parents having come from Scotland to Ireland before the revolution of 168S. Her mother was left a widow, and was in Lon- donderry, and, with her family, endured the horrors of that siege. successful resistance to which gave William of Orange that vantage which established him upon the British throne, the champion of the Protestant religion and of regulated liberty. Said her great grandson : "She saw from the walls of glorious old Derry, the smoke of the most important gun ever fired-the lee-gun of the Mountjoy, which righted the ship, broke the boom, relieved the starving garrison and city. forced the allies to raise the siege and retreat upon the Boyne, where the arms of William and of liberty triumphed, and completed the blessed revolution of 168S."
Joseph Junkin and Elizabeth Wallace were married at Oxford, after their arrival in America ; and not long after their marriage came to the Cumberland valley, then Lancaster county, and " took up" five hundred acres of land, including the site of the present town of New Kingston. He might have secured ten times that quantity of land, for more than that lay unoccupied around his claim, and the only cost of obtaining a title was that of surveying and the land office fees. But
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he invested his money in improvement, and in building a stone house, which is standing to this day.
In this house, Joseph Junkin was born, January 22d, 1750. He had two sisters older than himself, Mary, who became Mrs. John Culbertson, and Elizabeth, who died young ; and one sister and two brothers younger than himself, John, who died without issue, and Benjamin, the grandfather of the Hon. Judge Benjamin Junkin, of Perry county.
During the childhood of the subject of this sketch, the valley was subject to stealthy incursions of the Indians, who were very bold and bloody, after the defeat of Braddock. Sometimes the family had to fly to Chester county in dread of Indian hostility; and often Joseph, when a child, and the other children were hidden in the flax patch or the corn field at night for concealment from the marauders.
The father of Joseph Junkin died during the war of the Revolution, in 1777; the mother survived till 1796. The first place of public (Pres- byterian) worship in this part of the valley was upon her estate, just north by cast of where New Kingston now stands, three hundred yards from the old stone house. It was known for many years as "The Widow Junkin's Tent," and consisted of rude seats beneath the forest shades, with a " tent" or shelter for the preacher, braced against the trunk of a huge black oak, furnished with a bench for a seat and a board for the Bible. There Black, and Cuthbertson, and Dobbin, and others, preached the precious Gospel.
The landed estate was divided between Joseph and Benjamin, the latter retaining the homestead and the eastern portion of the land. Joseph received the western portion of the estate, and built thereon, in 1775, a substantial stone house, which is still standing, and is the country seat of Mr. Kanaga, the proprietor of the Girard House, Phila- delphia, whose father bought it from Mr. Junkin, in 1806.
When the war of Independence began, young Junkin, then in his twenty-fifth year, took a prompt and decisive stand in favour of the patriot cause, as did all the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and their descendants. Many incidents in the history of the valley, connected with that struggle, might be related did space permit. The writer of this sketch has heard its subject detailing many, but one of which will we find space to record.
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