USA > Pennsylvania > Dauphin County > Commemorative biographical encyclopedia of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania : containing sketches of prominent and representative citizens and many of the early Scotch-Irish and German settlers. Pt. 1 > Part 52
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Mary Renninger, mother of Mrs. Wingert, was born in Cumberland county, March 18, 180S. She was the daughter of Martin and Margaretta (Rupp) Renninger. Martin Renninger was born in Lancaster county in 1764. He served in the State Legislature.
For many years he was an officer in the Lu- theran church. He died October 29, 1841, and is buried in Zion Lutheran church, near West Fairview.
- SIMMONS, COL. O. B., was born in Harris- burg, Pa., April 28, 1842. He is the third son of George W. Simmons, who was one of the oldest and most honored citizens of Ilar- risburg. He died April 5, 1889. He was a lineal descendant of Colonel Whitley and Capt. Mike Ward of Paxtang Valley, who were of Scotch-Irish origin, and were noted officers in the war of 1812.
Colonel Simmons received his education in the common schools of Harrisburg. At the age of nineteen, he was one of the first to respond to the call for troops at the break- ing out of the Civil war. He enlisted April 18, 1861, as a private soldier, in the Lochiel Grays. During his service in the army he was promoted, at different times, for the only qualities that entitle a soldier to promotion, discipline and gallantry on the field of bat- tle. His last promotion was to the rank of brevet colonel. He served in the Eastern and Western armies, until January 18, 1866, when he received an honorable discharge, having given to his country five of the best years of his life.
After his return to Harrisburg he became deputy warden of the county prison, which position he held for ten years. Since that time he has been engaged in various busi- ness ventures. He finally located in the eastern part of the city, and engaged in plumbing and gas-fitting, being senior partner of the firm of O. B. Simmons & Son.
Colonel Simmons represented the Ninth ward of the city in common council, and is also president of the board of health, and chairman of the joint sanitary committee. He has always taken an active interest in city and State politics, and is a strong ad- herent to Republican principles. He is a charter member of Post 58, G. A. R. Ile withdrew from the charter membership of Knights of Pythias.
He was first married in Baton Rouge, La., in 1865, and had three children, George W., in business with his father; Charles R., and Gertrude, a trained nurse of Philadelphia. IJo was again married in 1895, to Miss Har- riet Mahaney, a prominent teacher in the city schools. Mrs. Simmons is a member of Bethel church, and Colonel Simmons at- tends the same church.
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-DEMMING, COL. HENRY C., was born in Geneva, N. Y., September 28, 1842. He is a direet descendant, on his father's side, of John Demming, whose name appears in the Liberal charter of 1662, granted by Charles II. to the colony of Connecticut, and after- wards concealed in the famous Charter Oak, and who is mentioned in Savage's " Genea- logical Dietionary of New England " as one of the principal settlers of Wethersfield, Conn. His mother, whose maiden name was Sarah Vierna Carpenter, was a native of Bennington, Vt., and the surnames most familiar on the maternal side are Carpenter and Hildreth. They seem to have been among the earliest settlers of Vermont.
Before he was three years of age young Demming had been taught his letters by his mother, and when about thirteen years old he entered upon a classical course. During his vacations he spent considerable time in the printing office of his native village, sometimes working as roller boy at the hand press, and this led to his giving up his elass studies and becoming an apprentiee in the Geneva Gazette office. This apprenticeship, however, was summarily eut short, and he went to work on his uncle's fruit and horti- culture farm, and helped to bring into pro- fitable bearing the first vineyard of the many now dotting the hill-aseending slopes sur. rounding the charming Seneca Lake.
His advent into Pennsylvania occurred in the summer of 1859, and, after many vieis- situdes in search of employment, he entered Harrisburg on a bleak November day as a mule driver on the canal en route for the Paxton furnace with a boat load of coal. The canal suddenly freezing up, navigation was declared elosed for the season, and young Demming sought employment in the . printing office of the Harrisburg Patriot and Union, and contracted to complete his ap- prenticeship in that establishment. Before the apprenticeship agreement expired the Rebellion broke out, and it was with great reluctance that he was obliged to forego the opportunity to enlist when the first call for volunteers appeared. On September 10, 1861, however, he tendered his services as private to Capt. (afterwards Maj.) Charles C. Davis, of company I, Seventh Pennsylvania cavalry, which regiment was then in Camp Cameron, near Harrisburg, drilling and awaiting orders to proceed to the front. Unfortunately, in a short time, he became
involved in a hand-to-hand struggle with some drunken Welshmen who had deserted the regiment, and he was advised to retire, as they threatened to take his life if he re- mained.
A second eall having been made for three months' men, Mr. Demming immediately enlisted as a private, and without personal solicitation eame within a few votes of being elected second lieutenant of the company.
On the eall for nine months' volunteers the records show that young Demming was the first man to enlist as a private, connect- ing himself with company A, One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Pennsylvania volun- teers. He was subsequently detailed to as- sist the medical officers by keeping the rec- ords of their examinations of volunteers, and was subsequently detached for duty in the mustering office of Capt. Richard J. Dodge, of the regular army. During and following his detached duty service he was sent on important missions South, ouce in charge of a large body of convalescent sol- diers, being appointed a sergeant for the pur- pose, and subsequently to the Army of the Potomac, near Fredericksburg, about the time of the battle of Chaneellorsville.
After nearly a year's service as a private soldier young Demming appears on the mil- itary roll as a corporal of an independent company, formed for the purpose of assisting in the protection of Pennsylvania from in- vasion in 1863. In this capacity he did special service in the darkness of the early morning of the memorable July 2, when portions of the invading hosts weresweeping down the Cumberland Valley to destroy Pennsylvania's capital and devastate the neighboring country. Corporal Demming was the principal in capturing in the Sus- quehanna, opposite the late residence of Hon. Simon Cameron, in Harrisburg, a Con- federate captain and seout who had nearly accomplished his mission, and with a map of the fords of the Susquehanna from Marys- ville to just below Harrisburg, was quite prepared to return to the Confederate eav- alry advanee, under General Stuart, less than five miles away, to report favorably upon a plan to burn the publie buildings, destroy the railroad and levy heavy tribute upou the citizens of the State capital. A day or two afterwards he volunteered to help convey four hundred thousand rounds of ammunition to the Union army near Gettys-
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burg. A few months afterwards Corporal Demming re-enlisted as a private, and was unanimously elected first lieutenant of the company, and subsequently promoted to quartermaster of his regiment, the One Hun- dred and Ninety-fourth Pennsylvania vol- unteers, and afterwards acted as quarter- master, commissary and ordnance officer, under Gen. James Nagle in Maryland, Third separate brigade, Eighth army corps. He then recruited a sufficient number of men to be entitled to a captaincy, but the emer- gency of the Government induced him to ac- cept the first lieutenaney of the company, which was subsequently assigned as com- pany I, to the Seventy-seventh Pennsyl- vania veteran volunteers, First brigade, First division, Fourth army corps, in the Army of the Cumberland, under Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. Here Lieutenant Dem- ming participated in the last campaign of Tennessee, and then in the memorable cam- paign of Gen. P. H. Sheridan, in Texas, at the close of the war. In one of these cam- paigns Lieutenant Demming was assigned to duty on the staff of the corps commander, Maj. Gen. D. S. Stanley, and then as muster- ing officer on the staff of the lamented Gen. George A. Custer. While acting in this lat- ter capacity he aided in mustering out Gen- eral Grant's original regiment, the Twenty- first Illinois volunteers, and in January, 1866, he mustered in the last two volunteers of the war of the Rebellion, it having been ascertained that while they had served faith- fully as soldiers they had never been duly mustered into service. Declining to accept a commissioned office in the Freedman's Bureau, he was honorably discharged and returned to Harrisburg about April 1, 1866. Lieutenant Demming was subsequently elected to the captaincy of a company of the "Boys in Blue," and was then promoted to major and judge advocate by Gov. John W. Geary, serving in that capacity on the staff of Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Jordan, command- ing the Fifth division of the National Guard of Pennsylvania from October 12, 1870, until honorably discharged, June 30, 1874. On January 30, 1884, he was appointed by Gov. Pattison an aide-de-camp on his staff, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and served as such throughout that official's term. He was recommissioned in January, 1887, as lieutenant colonel by Governor Beaver, and appointed on his staff, being the senior of his rank thereon and served until June 11,
1887, when he resigned, and was honorably discharged.
On September 11, 1887, Governor Scales, of North Carolina, tendered him a place on his staff as special aide, with the rank of colonel, which he accepted in time to ap- pear with the governor at the centennial celebration of the Constitution of the United States, held in Philadelphia the same month. This position he held until Gov- ernor Scales' term expired, about three years afterwards. Several times during the war he received injuries which required treat- ment at the hospitals, but the most serious ailment from which he suffered was a vio- lent attack of typhoid fever contracted near Nashville, Tenn., from which he would in all probability have died had not the devo- tion of his wife, a native of Middletown, Pa., impelled her to leave her home in Harris- burg and go to him in the field, traveling a part of the way through a country infested with guerillas, and care for her husband until he was sufficiently recovered to bear removal home. During his terms of service Colonel Demming received less than $100 in bounties of every description.
In civil life, since the war, he has usually followed the occupations of journalist or stenographer, although as far back as 1860 he excelled as a printer, his composition bill for one week, while employed on the Har- risburg Telegraph, exceeding ninety thou- sand ems, much of the work being "solid matter," a record that had not been equalled in Harrisburg at that time. He was the city editor of the Harrisburg Daily Telegraph while still a minor. He has from time to time been a contributor to a number of the leading periodicals of the United States and Canada, and until recently was a corres- pondent of several of the great dailies. The Farmer's Friend, printed at Mechanicsburg, Pa., and enjoying perhaps the largest farmer patronage of any agricultural paper in Pennsylvania, was started jointly by its present proprietor and Colonel Demming.
He read law with Hon. A. J. Herr, ex- State senator from the Dauphin district, and devoted considerable attention to the study of medicine and the physical sciences. As- tronomy, geology and mineralogy have been special studies, together with the acquire- ment of some knowledge of modern languages. Having devoted considerable time for many years past to practical mining he has ac- quired quite an amount of knowledge in
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that direction, and has had numerous no- tiees in the public press relative to his work and success in discovering and developing valuable deposits of iron ore and other minerals in Pennsylvania, Maryland and the South.
During the past ten or twelve years he has given a great deal of time and attention to the development of several mines in Western North Carolina, and has brought to public notice at home and abroad a number of valuable gem minerals found in the South. His collection of gems and gem materials, made principally through the Marion Bullion Company and the Marion Improvement Company, of North Carolina, is now perhaps as large, varied and unique as any other collection of American precious and semi-precious stones. One selcetion of five hundred gems was awarded the highest prize at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, in 1893.
His activity in farming matters led to his joining the Farmers' Allianee in the spring of 1890, and forming the first organization in Pennsylvania, Patriarch Farmers' Alli- ance No. 1, of which he was made the first president. He was made the first president of the State organization, afterwards State seeretary, and subsequently member and secretary of the executive committee of the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union.
Colonel Demming's specialty, however, for a number of years was phonographic re- porting. Beginning with a " Pitman's Man- ual of Phonography" on a farm in 1862, which he still had with him on his final dis- charge from the army in 1866, he continued studying the art until the " Reporter's Man- ual " was mastered. In the winter of 1866- 67 a position as amanuensis was seeured on the Pennsylvania Legislative Record. Dur- ing eight sessions of the Legislature he was employed, two years as an amanuensis, and then as a verbatim reporter. Throughout two of the annual sessions he did the entire verbatim reporting of the House of Represen- tatives. His professional engagements stead- ily increased until he became the " official" of five of the judicial districts of Pennsyl- vania, and regularly did the reporting of all eivil eases in which the Commonwealth of pennsylvania was a party, besides having been special official stenographer of the de- partment of justice of the United States, and holding other equally important positions.
In addition to these official appointments he was the stenographer of the Pennsylvania Board of Agriculture from its organization in 1877 until 1892.
After the organization of the International Stenographers' Association Colonel Dem- ming became an active member, being honored with the first vice-presideney for the United States in 1882, and elected presi- dent at its session in Toronto, Canada, in August, 1883. In 1887 Colonel Demming was made a delegate to the International Con- gress in London.
In political matters he has served the eity of Harrisburg in her council chambers, and had the distinetion of being named as a eandidate for delegate to the convention which remodelled the constitution of Penn- sylvania. He was once nominated by a minority party for member of Congress, but without hope of election, although he re- ceived three times the vote of the regular ticket.
At an early age he sought out and became a member of the most reputable and promi- nent organizations and societies of his com- munity, and is a life-member of a number, including the Masonic fraternity. The list embraces forty-two, of which fifteen are seeret and twenty-seven non-secret, includ- ing seven of a religious character. In a number of them he has held official po- sitions. He was president of the Association of Survivors of the Seventy-seventh Penn- sylvania veteran volunteers, and is a member of and takes a deep interest in a number of other military associations, especially the Grand Army of Republie, the Loyal Legion, the Society of the Army of the Potomac, the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, and the National Guard. Colonel Demming has been very active in church and Sabbath- school work, having been an officer in his church for more than twenty-one years, and a superintendent of one Sunday-school from the time of its foundation until it was seven- teen years old, besides holding other im- portant official relations in the church of his seleetion at home and elsewhere. HIe has been sceretary of the General Eldership of the Church of God in North America, serv- ing as president of the Sabbath-school Con- vention of his church for that part of Penn- sylvania east of the Allegheny mountains, and vice-president of the Pennsylvania Sabbath-school Association.
On October 20, 1863, he married Miss
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Kate E. Whitman, of Middletown, Dauphin county, and the union has been blessed with a family of five children.
- CROOK, CAPT. WILLIAM H., was born at Clark's Ferry, Dauphin county, Pa., Febru- ary 29, 1844. He is a son of Gabriel and Catherine (Dale) Crook. His grandfather, William Crook, was born in Cumberland county, Pa., and was one of the prominent farmers of that county. He was the son of James Crook, a native of England, who was the first of the family to settle in this country.
Gabriel Crook, Captain Crook's father, was born in Mechanicsburg, Cumberland county, and came to Dauphin county in 1842. He located on the Pennsylvania canal, in Reed township, and was lock tender at Clark's Ferry until the breaking out of the war. He enlisted in company C, One Hundred and Thirty-sixth regiment, Pennsylvania vol- unteers, for nine months; at the expiration of that term he re-enlisted in the Fourth regiment, United States regulars. He lost an arm at North Ann river, immediately after the battle of the Wilderness; this was the ground of his honorable discharge from the service. He had been a soldier in the Florida war and the Mexican war also, and died at Steelton, Pa., December 29, 1892. He was a member of the G. A. R., and of the United Brethren church. His wife died in 1876. They had six children : William II., Samuel A., of Rockaway, N. J., served one year in company II, Thirty-third regiment, Pennsylvania volunteers; David R., de- ceased, enlisted in the Forty-seventh regi- ment, Pennsylvania volunteers, was trans- ferred to the Twenty-seventh regiment, and was ordered on the staff of General Miles; Wesley, of Harrisburg ; Hannah (Mrs. Will- iam Lepley), of Lewisburg, Pa., and Margaret Ethel.
Capt. William H. Crook was brought up in Reed township, and educated in the town- ship schools, and was also at school six months at Mechanicsburg, Pa. On August 27, 1861, he enlisted in company C, Seventy- seventh regiment, Pennsylvania volunteers, as a private, and served three years. He was wounded at the battle of Camp Nevin, Ky. He re-enlisted in company K, Two Hundred and Third regiment, Pennsylvania volunteers, and was commissioned captain of his company. He was finally discharged, August 29, 1865. He participated in the battles at Mill Springs, Ky., Shiloh, Chicka-
mauga, Deep Bottom, Va., Bentonville, N. C., and many other important engagements. He was wounded while on picket duty at the New Market Road, Va., and again at Folsom's Station, Va. He was confined in the David Island Hospital. After the war closed he engaged in contract work in Har- risburg. He helped to build the Phoenix- ville and West Chester railroad, the Schuyl- kill Valley railroad, and the Baltimore and Ohio railroad through Delaware. He has also been engaged in the sand business for a number of years.
IIc is a Republican, and was elected supervisor of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth wards in 1889, and has filled that position ever since, with the exception of one year. He was re-elected in 1896. He is a member of Post No. 58, G. A. R., and was appointed on the staff of General Adams, commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1894, which gave him the rank of post commander. In 1895 he was delegate to the State convention of the G. A. R., in Williamsport, Pa., and was elected by the State convention a delegate to the National convention, held in Louis- ville, Ky., September, 1895. Captain Crook is a member of the Mt. Vernon Hook and Ladder Company, and the Firemen's Bene- ficial Association of Harrisburg. He was married, in 1890, to Miss Mary E., daughter of Levi Whippo, of Huntingdon county, Pa. The family are members of the Bethel Lutheran church.
-VERBEKE, WILLIAM K., city controller, was born in Harrisburg over three score and ten years ago, and has seen Pennsylvania's capi- tal grow from a village to a most important municipality. His parents came from lol- land and lived for some years in Philadel- phia, subsequently moving to Harrisburg in 1817, when it was but a borough of about 2,000 inhabitants. Mr. Verbeke received a liberal education, is a fine scholar and a writer of much strength and elegance. His people excelled in mathematics, an aptness which he seems to have inherited. It is doubtful if there is a single individual in Harrisburg who can calculate with the rapidity and accuracy he does. This faculty which he possesses makes him a valuable officer to the financial department of the city. In addition to this he is a thorough financier, surveying with an eagle eye the financial situation, and drawing conclusions
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therefrom which seldom fail to be verified and sustained. His efficiency in the office of controller and the esteem in which he is held by the citizens generally are clearly shown in his having been elected to the position of controller consecutively since 1883, though he was pitted against the strongest candidates that could be found.
Almost from the time Harrisburg was created a borough down to the present time, he has represented the citizens of Harris- burg either in council or on the school board, and they regarded him with such favor as to make him mayor of the city previous to his election as controller. He is modest and nn- assuming in manner, and his personal worth and ability to discharge his official duties, the spirit in which he beautified the city iu various ways with his means, his charity manifest in giving homes to many homeless, his generous contribution to the cause of humanity in the late war, have endeared him to the people and they consider that. there is nothing too good to bestow upon him. He is their beau ideal of a man, a careful, prudent and efficient officer, loved and esteemed by all, and it is predicted that as long as Mr. Verbeke will consent he will continue to fill the office of controller.
As a representative fireman, being the oldest but one in point of continuous service, he is just as highly esteemed for the valuable service he has rendered the city in that way. He helped to organize the Good Will Fire Company and has been its worthy president ever since, except during the years he was filing the office of mayor and was compelled to devote his entire attention to that office. Nothing pleases him more than to relate incidents of by-gone days or to participate in public occasions with his brother firemen.
MAURER, DANIEL C., alderman of Harris- burg, Pa., was born at Mount Joy, Lancaster county, Pa., December 19, 1823. He is a son of Daniel and Catherine (Dyer) Maurer, the former a native of Berks county, and the latter of Lancaster county, Pa. His father was a cabinet-maker, and settled at an early day at Mount Joy, where he spent the greater part of his life, and where he died in 1871; his wife died there forty years before. He was three times married. Of the five children of the first marriage, Daniel C. Maurer is the only one living. To the second marriage there were born two
children, only one of whom is living, Anna B., wife of Henry Arndt, of Manheim, Pa.
Daniel C. Maurer was reared in his native county, and received his education in the Richmond Academy of that county. lle learned the cabinet-maker's trade, and fol- lowed this occupation until 1860. In that year he removed to Harrisburg, and became a clerk in the auditor general's office. He occupied this position for fifteen years, and during six years of this time he was chief clerk. In 1875 he was elected alderman from the Fourth ward, which office he has filled for twenty years with the utmost ac- ceptance to his constituents. He is one of the oldest living aldermen of the city. In addition to this office, he was a member of the common council for three years, and for one year was the president of that body. He was also for many years a school director at Mount Joy, Pa.
Mr. Maurer was married at Lititz, Lancas- ter county, March 25, 1845, to Sarah E. Rauch, daughter of Christian HI. Rauch, who was born at Lititz, October 17, 1826. Their children are: Charles W., of Philadel- phia, and Annie E., wife of Gabriel Hiester, of Esterton Farm, Coxestown, Dauphin county, Pa.
Mr. Maurer is a charter member of Robert Burns Lodge, No. 464, F. & A. M .; of Har- risburg Consistory, Scottish Rite Masons, and of Pilgrim Commandery, No. 11, Knights Templars. In political views he is a staunch Republican, and was formerly a Whig. The family attend the Pine Street Presbyterian church.
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