USA > Pennsylvania > Encyclopedia of contemporary biography of Pennsylvania, Vol. I > Part 55
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book of four hundred pages, compiled by John | held during the three years of his term, as also on Denison Baldwin and Wm. Clift, and recently pub- other committees, on all of which he served with entire satisfaction to his constituents; so that in the following year, 1870, he was nominated a candidate for Representative in Congress, for the 12th District of Pennsylvania. The canvass was a highly exci- ting one, being contested warmly on both sides. This ended. in a triumph for Mr. Shoemaker by a large majority. Two years later he was re-elected to Congress by a still more flattering support. While at Washington he was placed on important commit- tees, and was an industrious member and ever ready to serve his people. At the expiration of his second term in Congress, he resumed his law practice, de- clining any further official position of a political character. In addition to having been, as thus de- tailed, a leading lawyer with a successful practice, and an official whose acts merit the public confi- dence, Mr. Shoemaker holds a conspicuous place in the banking, industrial and benevolent enterprises of the city. His wife, whom he married on the 10th of October, 1848, is Esther W. Wadhams, only daughter of Samuel and Clorinda Wadhams of the adjoining town of Plymouth, and both of whom are descendants of early New England families of English descent. Her brother, Elijah C. Wadhams, (whose biography follows in this volume), was elected to the State Senate and performed the duties of the position with great credit to himself and sat- isfaction of those he served. Mr. Shoemaker's fam- ily consists of one son and five daughters. The son, Levi I., graduated at Yale University in the class of 1882, and also at the Medical College of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, and is now practicing his profession in Wilkes-Barre. The five daughters living are : Clorinda W., wife of the well known civil and mining engineer, Irving A. Stearns, of Wilkes- Barre; Elizabeth S., wife of George L. Dicker- man, attorney at law in New Haven, Conn .; Caro- line S., wife of William G. Phelps, banker of the city of Binghamton, New York, and the other two, Jane A. and Esther W., are residing at home. lished. In this book are contained the names of 6403 descendants of the original William; yet the compilers say in their preface that "with longer time and more zealous co-operation, we could have added largely to the list of family records." Among those mentioned are many who achieved distinc- tion in the various walks of life, some in letters, some in law, others in the pulpit, others in public office and still others in the tented field and in the bloody wars with the mother country and with the Indians, whose untamed and treacherous ways kept in a constant state of jeopardy the hold of our earlier settlers on their properties and on their lives. George Denison, a son of Colonel Nathan, was a distin- guished lawyer among such able men as Collins, Conyngham, Bowman and Mallery, and was elected to the State Legislature for several sessions and to Congress for two terms; and his nephew, Charles Denison, was an able lawyer and also elected to Congress for three terms, and universally esteemed by the community in which he moved. Coming from a union of such families it would have been strange if Lazarus Denison Shoemaker had not within him the elements out of which successful and useful men are produced. There flows in his veins English, Irish, French and Dutch blood, and all of it good blood. His preliminary education was provided at the celebrated Moravian School at Nazareth Hall, Pa. Thence he was sent to Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio, at which such men as ex-President Hayes and Judge Davis were in their time students, as also Andrew T. Mcclintock, and Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, Secre- tary of War under President Lincoln. From Ken- yon, Mr. Shoemaker entered the freshman class at Yale University in 1836, and graduated with honors in 1840. His collegiate course having been comple- ted, he engaged in the study of the law with Gen. E. W. Sturdevant in Wilkes-Barre. "He was a pains-taking student,"said the General, and in August 1842, he passed a creditable examination and was admitted to the bar; since which time he has been in continuous practice of his profession, except when called away by the performance of official ELIJAH C. WADHAMS. duties, to which his superior qualification made it the pleasure of his fellow citizens to call him. In HON. ELIJAH CATLIN WADHAMS, President of the First National Bank of Wilkes-Barre, and ex- Senator of the State of Pennsylvania, was born at Plymouth, Luzerne County, Pa., July 17, 1825. The ancient spelling of the name gave Wadham, and the family, a highly respectable one in England for several centuries, is clearly traced back to the time of Edward I. (1272) when William de Wadham 1866 he was nominated by the Republican party as their candidate for State Senator ; and though the district was at that time, as indeed it is usually, strongly Democratic, his personal influence attract- ed to him a sufficient following to elect him by a decisive majority. He was assigned to the position of Chairman on the Judiciary Committee, which he
ElWadhams
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was freeholder of the Manor of Wadham, which had been a notable property as early as the Dooms- day survey, and was held in the time of Edward the
Confessor (1042) by an old Saxon named Ulf. This property remained in the name and family of Wad- ham until the death of Nicholas Wadham, the found- er of Wadham College, Oxford, England, when it passed to the female branch. Sir John Wadham, knight, a member of this old family, by his mar- riage with Elizabeth, a daughter and heir of Ste- phen Popham, came into possession of Merrifield, in Ilminster, Somersetshire, which was inherited by their son, also Sir Jolin, whose descendants were styled " Wadham of Merrifield." The principal places of residence of this family in England were in the counties of Devon, Dorsct and Somerset. From the last named shire John Wadham, a mem- ber of the family, emigrated to America in the first half of the seventeenth century, and from the old records of the town of Wethersfield, Conn., appears to have settled there as a farmer as early as 1650. He died there in 1676, leaving a widow, Susannah (who subsequently became Mrs. Bushnell), and one child, John, born July 8th, 1655. The latter married twice. The last child by his first wife, Hannah, named Noah, born at Wethersfield, Conn., August 10th, 1695, where he resided some years, married Anne Hurlbut and afterwards resided for a few years at Middletown, Conn., removed, about 1741, to Goshen, Conn., where he died in 1783, at the ad- vanced age of eighty-eight years. The children of Noah and Anne, thirteen in number, were Noah (died early), Hannah, Elizabeth, Noah, Solomon (died early) Jonathan, John, Deliverance, Mary, Anne, Solomon, Nicholas and Seth. Several of the descendants of these children have risen to distinc- tion. One of them, John Marsh Wadhams, who still resides upon the parental lands at Goshen, has been "a member of the Legislature of Connecticut and a Senator of that State; and his son, John H. Wad- hams, has also sat in the Legislature. Another, the Right Reverend Edgar Prindle Wadhams, D.D., a descendent of Jonathan, is now the Roman Catho- lic Bishop of Ogdensburgh, N. Y. A third, Albert Wadhams, a descendant of Solomon, is a prominent lawyer and the author of many valuable articles written for the press. Noah Wadhams, son of Noah and Anne (Hurlbut) Wadhams, and great-grand- father of the subject of this sketch, was born May 17, 1726, and on September 25, 1754, was grad- uated at Princeton College, of which Aaron Burr, father of the third Vice-President of the United States, was then the President. Three years after receiving his diploma he was ordained Minister of the New Preston Society of the Congregational
Church in the town of 'New Milford, Conn., then just organized, and for twelve years remained pas- tor of that body. In 1768 he was offered the post of pastor to the second colony (called the " first forty ") sent out by the Susquehanna Land Com- pany of Connecticut to settle the wilds of Pennsyl- vania. Checrfully accepting the call, he accompan- ied this little band of pioneers to their new home in the Wyoming Valley, and as their faithful shepherd shared with them all the dangers, privations and trials incident to founding a settlement in the wil- derness, in this case intensified many fold by the determined opposition of other white colonists and of savage foes. The Rev. Mr. Wadhams had mar- ried Miss Elizabeth Ingersol, of New IIaven, in 1758; and was the father of a family of small children when called to his new charge. These, with their mother, he left at the family home at New Milford, Conn., visiting them as often as possible, until 1779, the year following the terrible Wyoming massacre, when he gathered them around him at Plymouth, Pa., where, having changed his theological views, he was now faithfully pursuing his religious duties as a local preacher of the Methodist denomination, in which he continued an active worker during the remainder of his life. He died in 1806. His only children, issue by his first wife, were Ingersol, Cal- vin, Noah, Moses and Anne. Calvin, grandfather of the subject of this sketch, born in 1765, was a sincere Methodist, and noted for his rigid virtues. Labor, temperance and economy were in his judg- ment the true standard of manhood and merit. He was prominent as a business man at Plymouth, and was as hospitable as he was religious. His wife was Esther Waller, of New Milford, Conn., born June 10, 1768, whom he married February 10, 1791. Calvin Wadhams died April 22, 1845, at the ripe age of eighty years. He survived both his wives and all his children save one, the late Samuel Wadhams, father of the subject of this sketch. Samuel Wad- hams was born at Plymouth, August 21, 1806, and died December 10, 1868. He was a man of high charac- ter and great business energy, and held a leading position in the community. He married April 7, 1824, Clorinda Starr Catlin, daughter of Dr. Elijah Catlin, of New Marlboro, Mass., who died April 28, 1870. Their surviving issue were Elijah Catlin, Cal- vin and Moses, and Esther Waller. The last named is the wife of the Hon. L. D. Shoemaker, of Wilkes- Barre. Moses, a careful and successful business man, died in 1878; Calvin, born in 1833, was for many years an active member of the Pennsylvania bar, and died in 1883. Elijah Catlin Wadhams, the subject of this sketch, was born in the house built by his grandfather Calvin. The circle in which he
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was reared was one of Christian refinement and much more than ordinary intelligence. Following the custom in the family, great pains were taken with his education. As a boy he studied under Seiwers, Principal of Plymouth Academy, at Dana's Academy, Wilkes-Barre, and at Dickinson College, Carlisle. He closed his collegiate training at the University of the City of New York, in 1847. His tastes were for a mercantile career, and, after grad- uation he embarked in business in Plymouth, Pa., and was very successful. Elected a justice of the peace in the township and borough, he served as such with honor to himself and satisfaction to his fellow- citizens for a period of twenty years, and held the office of burgess for seven years. His interest in and support of every thing tending to advance the public welfare and prosperity were marked and con- tinuous and gave him a distinguished prominence in local affairs. He early identified himself with the Masonic institution and other leading social and secret societies of the place, and, at a later period, as an officer in them wielded a decided influence. In 1873 he removed to Wilkes-Barre, and, in 1874- 75 he erected a handsome family residence in that city. In November, 1876, he was elected to the State Senate from the Twenty-first Senatorial Dis- trict, and ably and faithfully served his constituents in the upper house of the Legislature until the ex- piration of his term. In the Methodist Episcopal Church in which he has been educated, he is Super- intendent of a large Sunday-school, which position he has filled for thirty-seven years; and, in April, 1888, was elected lay delegate to, and was a member of the General Conference of this church at the session in New York city, May, 1888. He has been identified as member of the Board of Managers, with the Hos- pital and Board of Trade and other local interests. As a citizen of Wilkes-Barre, Mr. Wadhams is pro- foundly interested in everything pertaining to its advancement. The extensive nature of his business relations has given him a thorough knowledge of finance, and this knowledge has been utilized to the advantage of two of the leading banking institu- tions of the State, viz. The Wyoming National | Bank and the First National Bank of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in both of which he has been a member of the Board of Directors many years, and also, since July 27, 1885, President of the last named. Mr. Wad- hams has all the alertness and energy of the typical American business man. Industry has been a lead- ing characteristic of the family for many genera- tions, but in no single member has it been a more striking one than in President Wadhams. In busi- ness and financial circles he is widely and most fav- orably known and respected as a man of sterling
integrity. In private life he is honored as a citizen of unimpeachable character, whose career has been notably stainless and helpful to the community. Mr. Wadhams married, October 7, 1851, Esther Taylor French, daughter of Samuel French, of Ply- mouth, Pa., and a descendant of Samuel and Sarah Hall French, of Weston, Conn. His children are : Samuel French Wadhams, attorney at law, (now re- siding at Duluth, Minn.,) who graduated at Dart- mouth College, N. H., in 1875; Ellen Hendrick Wadhams, a graduate of Drew Ladies' Seminary, Carmel, N. Y .; Cornelia Frances Wadhams, a grad- uate of Bordertown Female College, N. J .; Moses Waller Wadhams, attorney-at-law, Wilkes-Barre, a graduate of Dartmouth College, N. H., of the class of 1880; Stella Catlin Wadhams and Lydia French Wadhams, graduates of Lasell Seminary, Auburn- dale, Mass .; and Ralph Holberton Wadhams, now a student in Amherst College, Massachusetts, of the class of 1889.
JAMES P. WITHEROW.
JAMES P. WITHEROW, metallurgical engineer, and sole proprietor of the Witherow Works at New Castle, Penn., was born in the County of Donegal, Ireland, three miles from the city of Londonderry, on the 26th of October, 1834. His ancestors on both sides emigrated to Ireland in the time of the reign of King James I., of England. They werc originally from the north of England, then went to Scotland and then settled in Ireland. His mother's family, the Porters of Londonderry, were identified with the history of that city, as also with that of the north of England and of Scotland. The Witherows located some three miles from Londonderry, in the County of Donegal, two miles from Lough Swilly and Lough Foyle, town of Mengbreiard. They' were farmers, and were connected with grist and flax mills. The Castle of Elegh, about two and one- half miles from Londonderry, was the center of both families, -the Witherows and the Porters. James P. Witherow arrived in this country in 1851, being then seventeen years of age, and he immediately proceeded to Pittsburgh, where he had to undergo the experience of nearly all young men emigrating to this country-that is, he had to go to work. He applied to a prominent and rich contractor in Alle- gheny City, (who had in his earlier days been a hos- tler in the stables of Mr. Witherow's father,) who set him to attending pavers on the streets. After being two weeks at this work he went to Sharps- burg by solicitation, to accept the position of land steward on a farm, having previously graduated
Jau Blitheroue
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from the Polytechnic Agricultural College in Tem- plemoile, six miles from the City of Londonderry, where such instruction is imparted with practical experience. He soon found that land steward or overseer in this country was quite a different posi- tion from what he considered it, and that it required him to work with the hands and lead in all opera- tions. But after only a week's continuance in this position he came in contact with parties who recom- mended him as teacher for the township school within a mile of the village of Sharpsburg, and he was soon established as a school-teacher. In the spring of 1852 he accepted a position as book- keeper in a store at Youngstown, Ohio, remained there over a year, and then accepted a like position at the blast furnace in Brier Hill (now Youngstown), Ohio. Some two years afterward he was employed by Messrs. James Wood & Co., of Pittsburgh, in the anthracite district of the lower Susquehanna, at Middletown, Pa., and was only a year in charge of the office of this concern when he was promoted to be manager. Two years after this he leased the works, and continued the same until after the com- mencement of the Civil War. In 1864, associated with some friends, he bought the anthracite furnaces with all their rights and leases, from James Wood & Co., Pittsburgh. In the following year they had a disastrous boiler explosion, which, with causes of unpleasantness among the partners, resulted in the withdrawal of Mr. Witherow from the concern, and then he left for the West, which was really the be- ginning of his connection with the great iron and steel industry of this country. In the winter of 1867 he was at Homewood, Beaver County, Pa., endeavoring to retrieve the lost ground the com- pany had experienced in its previous history, and was partially successful. In the following spring, after declining offers of co-partnership with the pro- prietors, he left for Brazil, Indiana, which was the centre of the block coal development in that State. Meeting parties in Indianapolis, a furnace company was organized, of which our subject became a mem- ber, and which erected the first blast furnace in the district represented by Brazil as its centre. The excitement was high and people were rushing from Pennsylvania, Northern Ohio and Illinois, to make fortunes in a non-developed field, and, although there were no demonstrated facts established so far as the availability and advantage of the district was concerned for the manufacture of iron, yet not less than eight different companies soon sprang into ex- istence for the erection of blast furnaces, all of which went into operation and all of which were more or less failures. The block coal of the district was considered equal to that of Brier Hill in Ohio,
and the Brier Hill coal had been established as a furnace coal, owing to furnace men being able to utilize it when the very cream of the Lake Superior ore was utilized in contact with that fuel. The fact that block coal, or any form of bituminous coal, is really not a furnace fuel without it can be coked or else made into the form of coke, was never taken into consideration ; that is to say, the hydro-carbons or volatile gases should be expelled from the coal before it is used as a fuel for blast furnaces. After a short time Mr. Witherow became convinced that if coal could not be coked, the enterprise would be a failure, and although they worked hard to demon- strate otherwise, it terminated in a disappointment all around. He remained a few months with the concern, after the furnace was put in operation, and then removed to St. Louis, where the Vulcan Iron Works were organized. He was with this company as Superintendent during the construction of its furnaces and their practical operation, making in all two and one-half years. During his connection with the anthracite coal district of Pennsylvania, also of the block coal regions of Ohio and Indiana, he came to the conclusion that the Western coals of the lignaceous type were not fit for use in a blast furnace for making iron, and that the deductions resulting from the experience at Brier Hill and East- ern Ohio were fallacious. However, the furnaces in St. Louis were built with the hope of their using coke and block coal as a mixture as blast furnace fuel. The block coal had to be obtained from Grand Tower, Illinois, on the Mississippi, or from Carbon- dale, some twenty-five miles in the interior, and this district was then undergoing a great develop- ment by a New York company, at the head of which were Messrs. Oliphant & Cannon, of New York. The company built two fine furnaces at Grand Tower, and expended about four millions of dollars in the whole development. The company with which Mr. Witherow was connected were to get the fuel for their furnaces from Carbondale. Although the works at Grand Tower were begun before those at St. Louis, they were both ready about the same time, and both went into operation during the sum- mer of 1869. The Grand Tower furnaces proved a great failure, not having secured a successful " blowing in," although their first cost exceeded one million dollars. The plant at St. Louis was put in successful operation in 1869 and 1870. Notwith- standing this, Mr. Witherow's impressions, formed from the results at Grand Tower, and his own ex- perience at St. Louis, were that the effort to pro- duce iron with block coal was a great mistake. Both plants were built agreeably to the views enter- tained in Pittsburgh and the anthracite districts.
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From information he had secured in the very begin- ning of the St. Louis enterprise, he believed that during the Civil War in the United States the English iron masters had advanced fully twenty years ahead of those in this country, and that great ideas had been evolved and demonstrated to be cor- rect in the manipulation and building of blast fur- naces in England. Sixty days, therefore, after the organization of the company at St. Louis, he made the proposition of going to England for thirty days and examining the improvements that had taken place there, and to give the company the benefit of the results of his observations; and rather than not accomplish this purpose he agreed to bear half of the expenses. This proposition was declined by Messrs. Garrison, Harrison & Co., of St. Louis, who were the leading directors and shareholders of the company. Mr. Philip Kingsland, the President, was willing, but declined to take the stand and as- sert himself in his position as President against the Messrs. Garrison and Harrison, so the proposition was laid on the table. The works, therefore, were built after the type that was then recognized in the Chenango Valley, at New Castle and at Pittsburgh, notwithstanding the use of super-heated blast and all the advancement England had made in the few years already alluded to. This action of the capital- ists of the St. Louis plant was a fatal error, because although their furnaces were partially successful, they were behind those of England, and partook of the older methods of manipulating blast furnaces, whereas they could have been built in the very front rank of the development in Europe, had the suggestion been acted upon. Still this was not the greatest mistake, because there were distinct com- panies organized the following year (1870), and in the furnace plants they built they imitated precisely what had been done, and against the remonstrances of Mr. Witherow. At this very time the iron mas- ters and stockholders in that State, who furnished the capital for these new companies, as well as those who controlled the Vulcan Blast Furnaces, whose operations depended on bringing coke from Pitts- burgh by river-a distance of thirteen hundred miles or by road a distance of eight hundred miles-still persisted in their views, hoping that something would turn up by which lignaceous or block coal would ultimately become a leading fuel for the supply of furnaces west of the Mississippi. At this time Mr. Witherow wrote an article for the Republican, of St. Louis, which was written before they had com- menced work, affirming his conviction that St. Louis could be made a great centre for the iron and steel industry of the basin of the Mississippi, owing to the proximity of Iron Mountain and Pilot Knob,
with those bituminous coals of Carbondale, Ill., with all their fine deposits and formations. Not- withstanding this, unhappy results were realized, and all the money then invested in St. Louis in the iron and steel industry was destined to be a total failure; whereas, if the proper investiga- tions had been instituted by the directors of the company, when the Vulcan Works were erected, they would have built works which could have econ- omized fuel at least fifty per cent., and the blast fur- naces would have been constructed on a practically successful plan, because with these rich ores they could have produced pig metal suitable for Bessemer steel, at least, with one and one-quarter tons of coke, and the impetus evolved would have been concen- trated in St. Louis, and it would likely have become the seat of the greatest Bessemer steel works ever de- veloped in this country. The Lake Superior ore re- gions were then comparatively unknown, and Chi- cago never dreamed of such a thing as Bessemer steel works at that time. The Edgar Thomson Works, at Pittsburgh, of which Mr. Andrew Carnagie is the leading spirit, were at that time not thought of, and indeed the "Lucy " furnace at Pittsburgh, of which Mr. Carnagie was the genius and promoter, was then only under discussion, as the furnace did not go into operation until the spring of 1872; so that both of these great enterprises, which occupy such a prom- inent position in the iron and steel industries of Pittsburgh, were not formed, or capital guaranteed to insure their construction, therefore the St. Louis plant would have attained a high position in this direction but for the fatal errors and mistakes of those first directors, which prevented the works from being built as they should have been. The bit- uminous lignaceous coal having proved a failure for supplying the plant with a proper furnace fuel, and the great distance from Pittsburgh forbidding Con- nellsville coke being supplied at economical rates to withstand competition, this new enterprise was placed at a great commercial disadvantage for competing with more favored rivals. In 1871, although Mr. Witherow was deprived of visiting the iron districts of England in the winter of 1869, he took the first opportunity of carrying out his plans. He had, in his position at St. Louis, been convinced that suc- cess was impossible without remodelling, or the in- troduction of new ideas, and he determined to make a thorough investigation of the iron districts of Great Britain and the Continent, and spend the sum- mer and autumn of 1871 in those countries, observ- ing the great strides that had been made in blast fur- naces and other metallurgical developments, and how far the iron masters of America were behind. Indeed, he was convinced that neither the anthracite
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