USA > Pennsylvania > Encyclopedia of contemporary biography of Pennsylvania, Vol. I > Part 63
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were it but a compliment, was all the greater, inas- much as it was wholly unsought and unexpected by the recipient. As Mayor of Philadelphia, Mr. Fitler is ex-officio a director of the Park Commission, a member of the Board of City Trusts, of the Public Buildings Commission, and also of the Edwin For- rest Home. As a private citizen, he is a director in the National Bank of the Northern Liberties, and also in the North Pennsylvania Railroad Company. He is also Vice-President of the Union League. Mayor Filter's home is made attractive by all the accessories of wealth, subordinated to a cultivated and refined taste. His many works of art are par- ticularly noteworthy and valuable. A recent com- munication to a well-known periodical, referring to these, says :
" The waning light filtering through lace curtains, each worth a fortune in itself, falls upon choice pieces of ceramic art, and lights up a score of pic- tures, each as notable for its artistic merit as for its pleasing subject. What, for instance, could be richer in color than this Alhambra interior by Richt- er ? What more strikingly realistic and natural than those cows by Van Marcke, which, you are told, the owner secured by dint of outbidding the late Wm. H. Vanderbilt, himself ? And the Simonetti, the Jacuct, the De Neuville and the Cortazzo-over each you might dream for hours without growing tired.
But the gem of the drawing room is not in a gilded frame. It is a bit of Sevres porcelain, than which no more exquisite thing is to be seen anywhere this side of the great water. A vase of most graceful outline it is, decorated by Labarre, a pupil of Coig- net. And such decoration ! Three months, you are informed, the artist worked upon it and produced a masterpiece; semi-nude figures floating in space, so soft in tint, so delicious in outline and so luminous of features as to seem almost a miracle of art."
Although possessed of wealth which places him on a par financially with the most favored of his fellow- citizens, he is singularly unostentatious, yet fully alive to the dutics which his circumstances devolve upon him in connection with religious, charitable and social affairs. Promptness and energy arc among his predominant characteristics, and have had many striking exemplifications. Not the least remarkable of these were on the two occasions when his cordage works on Germantown avenue were de- stroyed by fire. Apparently unaffected by either diaster he had contracts for re-building immediate- ly prepared and they were actually signed before the firemen had ceased their labors. Keen percep- tions and great decision of character are blended in Mr. Fitler with a high sense of honor and strict probity. These traits have marked every step of his busy and prosperous career, and to them he un- doubtedly owes his distinguished success in business and his high official station.
SILAS M. CLARK.
HON. SILAS MOORHEAD CLARK, LL.D., one of the present Justices of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, took his seat upon the bench on the first Monday of January, 1883. He is a Democrat, and was elected by his party over the Hon. William Henry Rawle, of Philadelphia, to succeed Chief Jus- tice Sharswood. Mr. Clark was born in Elderton, Armstrong County, Pa., in 1834. His ancestors were of that sturdy Scotch-Irish race which has contributed so much to the annals of the State and the Nation-the race that gave us Jackson and Greeley and Thaddeus Stevens. These ancestors came to Western Pennsylvania from the Cumber- land Valley in the eastern part of the State. Cap- tain James Clark, from whom the Judge is directly descended, was an officer in the War of the Revo- lution, and settled, after his term of service closed, in Westmoreland County, near Hannastown, then the county seat of that county and the first place west of the Alleghenies where justice was adminis- tered according to the forms of law. When the In- dians under the famous Seneca chief, Guyasuta, in- vaded the settlement in 1782 and burned the town, Captain Clark was among the number who sought refuge from the savages in the fort near by and made ready to defend it against the expected attack of the Indians, who, however, after burning and plundering the town, withdrew without attacking the fort. Subsequently Captain Clark removed to South Bend, Armstrong County, where he resided many years and where he died, leaving a numerous and respectable progeny. Judge Clark's maternal ancestor was Fergus Moorhead, who, like Captain Clark, came to Westmoreland, Pa., from the Cum- berland Valley. Impelled, no doubt, by the "Saxon thirst for land," Mr. Moorhead with his family, as early as 1772, settled near the present town of In- diana. He was well-to-do for that day and with his household gods brought with him household goods in plenty, and what was more important, cat- tle, sheep, hogs, fowls and farming implements. Dangers awaited the family in their new home. The forests were filled with savage beasts and still more savage men. For four years, however, he was unmolested, but in July, 1776, while returning from the fort in Kittaning, then under command of his brother Samuel, his horse was shot under him and he was taken prisoner by a band of Indians who carried him to Quebec and sold him to the British. His wife and children, thinking him dead, left In- diana and returned to the Cumberland Valley. After a year of imprisonment the husband and father was exchanged and rejoined his family, hav-
AL
Sincerely Yours Silan Clark,
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ing traveled on foot from New York to the Cum- berland. An account of his capture appeared in the Gazette, Benjamin Franklin's newspaper, the files of which are still preserved by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. At the close of the Revolution, Mr. Moorhead and his family returned to the border home from which they had so summarily been driven five years before, and there, at the advanced age of seventy-nine, he died. In 1835 James Clark, Esq., the fatlier of the subject of this sketch, re- moved from Elderton to Indiana, the county seat of Indiana County, where he has since resided, a prom- inent and respected citizen. No man more fully than he enjoys the confidence of his neighbors and fellow townsmen ; as a result, he has held many of- fices and positions of trust. From this ancestry Mr. Clark derives the traits which distinctly mark his character-warmth of heart, courage, tenacity of purpose, ability and public spirit. He is a man of the people. In his busy life he has always taken delight in their service. His own success and hap- piness have only rendered him more sensitive to the wants of the poor and unfortunate. His first school was the common school of Indiana, which he at- tended until he entered the Academy and began the course of study that prepared him to enter the junior class at Jefferson College, Cannonsburg, Pa .; from which flourishing institution he graduated in 1852, standing fifth in a class of perhaps sixty mem- bers. He stood high in mathematics, was a fluent speaker, and in the literary exercises of the college excelled. In recognition of this, the Philo Literary Society elected him to deliver the valedictory ad- dress on the semi-centennial anniversary of the college. For two years after his graduation he was an instructor in the academy that prepared him for college. Like most men of his sympathies and tastes, he was in earnest and proud of his work, and he aroused enthusiasm among his boys, many of whom werc older than himself. His interest in schools has never abated, and, commencing with the time when he was a young and hard working lawyer, he served twelve consecutive years as school director of his town. He afterward became one of the projectors and founders of the Normal School of Indiana, has always been one of its trustees and most of the time President of the board. It is chiefly owing to his long, enlightened and devoted services that this institution has become a tower of educa- tional strength and usefulness, and an honor to the district and Commonwealth. When, in 1886, Lafay- ette College made Judge Clark a Doctor of Laws, it conferred a degree honored by general scholarship and legal learning and, more than all, nobly earned by services to the cause of public education. But
Mr. Clark left the ranks of the practical teacher and entered the office of a prominent lawyer of the town, now a resident of Philadelphia. In 1857, when still but twenty-three years of age, he was ad- mitted to the bar and entered at once upon a suc- cessful career as a lawyer. For more than a decade before his election to the position he now holds, not a single cause of importance was tried in the courts of his county in which he was not employed as counsel. Nor was his fame confined to the limits of his own county. He received many tempting offers of employment in important causes to be tried elsewhere, but these, unless the person desiring his services werc a friend or home client, he invariably declined, preferring to attend to his large business at home rather than to go elsewhere. As a lawyer he belonged to the class who win their clients' causes. A clear and profound thinker, a strong and logical reasoner, and an eloquent advocate of sur- passing power, it was a hopeless case, indeed, where he failed to secure a favorable judgment or verdict. Whether arguing questions of law before the courts or questions of fact before a jury, the strong points of his cases were so skillfully and forcibly presented that the weak ones were likely to be lost sight of altogether. Nor was it in the trial of causes alone that he excelled. Contracts, wills and other legal papers prepared by him were so skillfully executed, contingencies so carefully provided for and guarded against, and their terms so clearly expressed that they never gave rise to litigation by reason of un- certainty or ambiguity. From boyhood Judge Clark has been a Democrat, and while he holds it to be not only the right, but the duty of every citizen to have political convictions and to maintain them fearlessly, he has never been a politician or an office seeker, and, with the exception of delegate to the Constitutional Convention that framed the present State Constitution, he never held any public office except the one he now holds. As a member of the Constitutional Convention he served on the follow- ing committees : Declaration of Rights, Private Cor- porations and Revision and Adjustment. Of that body of Pennsylvania's representative men he ranked as one of the ablest, and Mr. Buckalew, him- self a member, in his very able work, "The Consti- tution of Pennsylvania," referring to the discussion of the judiciary article, makes special mention of some of Mr. Clark's speeches, remarking that they were among the ablest on the subjects discussed. As a citizen Judge Clark meets and discharges the duties of advanced citizenship in such a manner as to win the respect, confidence and esteem of all classes of his fellow citizens. Every enterprise hav- ing for its object the advancement of their interests
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or the improvement of his town or county, finds in him an energetic and active supporter. We have spoken of his interest in education. His interest in agriculture is not less; and he took time in the midst of his large practice, not only to cultivate a fine farm he then owned, but to serve for several ycars as President of the agricultural society of his county, then one of the most flourishing in the State. Perhaps the very best evidence of the cs- teem in which Mr. Clark is held by his fellow-citi- zens of his county, is the fact that at the election for his present position they gave him a majority of one hundred and fifty-one votes over his Repub- lican competitor, while the Republican candidate for Governor at the same time had a majority of two thousand and three. As one of the Justices of the Supreme Court. Judge Clark stands very high and is regarded by the profession as one of the ablest members of the court. His opinions, seldom long, are couched in the clearcst and choicest language, and are as easily understood by the layman as the technical lawyer. Many of them have received most favorable comment from the law critics in the legal periodicals of the country. Judge Clark was favorably mentioned by the newspapers of the State, irrespective of party, for Chief Justice of the United States to succeed the late Morrison R. Waite. It was urged that he was in the vigor of life ; young enough to promise a quarter of a century of good work, and old enough to take to the position a ripe experience, and an able and honorable record both at the bar and on the bench. Mr. Clark's life, other- wise so happy and successful, has had its one great sorrow. To speak publicly of a nature so modest and simple, and a life so private as Mrs. Clark's, seems almost a wrong, but a sketch of her husband, however slight, would be incomplete without refer- ence to the woman whose gentleness and courage and wisdom were the good angels that, since his earliest manhood, breathed their benediction upon him. She was of the women whose lives are noiseless, who live at home, wife, mother, yet her character so firm, tranquil and self-possessed, that it would have met without doubt or hesitation any form of suffering for conscience or duty. Her ab- solute truthfulness was a standing rebuke to false- ness and pretense, and the memory of her loyalty and unselfishness is a perpetual blessing. In the re- fined and beautiful home attuned now to a deeper and sadder note by the loss of the wonian who filled it with her rich life, Judge Clark's warm, domestic and social nature finds its truest expression. There he meets his friends and neighbors in genial inter- course and hospitality, and there, amid the highest charms of life, his children are growing into a gra- cious manhood and womanhood.
JOSEPH H. SCRANTON.
THE name of Joseph H. Scranton will be long re- membered among those who bore a chief part in developing the industries of the Lackawanna Valley, and bringing it from the condition of a sterile and isolated mountain ravine to that of the seat of one of the most prosperous and opulent cities of the Commonwealth. Mr. Scranton came to the valley in 1846. At that time the city which now bears his name consisted of a small cluster of rustic cabins, in no way differing from the hundreds of rude, un- regarded hamlets which still, unchanged from gen- eration to generation, slumber at the cross roads of the Pennsylvania mountains, or mark the inter- section of its woodland streams. When he died, in 1872, it had become in population and wealth the third city in Pennsylvania, and one of the most im- portant industrial and productive centers of the Continent. In the work which wrought this magi- cal change, Mr. Scranton bore an eminent part. The story of his life for a quarter of a century is the story of the building up from its foundation of the city of Scranton. It was the boast of Severus that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble. Those on whom it devolves to make record of Mr. Scranton's life may truly say of him that where in his early manhood he found a wilderness and mo- rass, he left, when, hardly beyond middle age, he was summoncd from his labors, a busy and popu- lous city. Not only was he largely instrumental in diverting thither the immense and constantly aug- menting tide of capital, without which such rapid growth and development would have been impos- sible, but he bore an active and ardent share in every enterprise whichi promised to contribute to the welfare and prosperity of the growing city. No community ever possessed a more public- spirited citizen, and to few men at any age has it been given within the compass of a lifetime to ac- complish so much. Mr. Scranton was born in East Guilford, Connecticut, June 28, 1813. He came of good old Puritan stock, the earliest ancestor of the name having settted in Connecticut in 1638. The Scrantons, from father to son, through many gen- erations, were a stout, resolute race, tillers of the soil, builders of mills, builders and masters of ships, builders of wharves and light-houses and break- waters, prominent in the Church, captains in the old Iudian, French and Revolutionary Wars, prone to all works of enterprise, and much accustomed to succced in whatever they took in hand. These an- cestral qualities were conspicuous in their descend- ant, and were illustrated during his entire life. He served a brief apprenticeship in mercantile pur- suits iu New Haven, after which his fortunes led
JOSEPH H. SCRANTON.
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him southward. Within a few years, while still hardly more than a youth, he took his place at the head of a commercial house in the city of Augusta, Ga. Success attended him from the outset. With- in a decade, he had amassed what in those days was regarded as an ample fortune. It was during this interval that he made his first investment in what were then the infant enterprises of the Lack- awanna Valley. They were of moderate amounts compared with the princely sums which he was in- strumental in determining thither, but they had the effect of making known to him the unrivaled re- sources of that region, and from that time his place and work in life seemed to be providentially marked out. He took up his residence there in 1847. The practicability of smelting iron with anthracite coal had been demonstrated. Iron could be made, and its factors, coal and ore, lay beneath the neighbor- ing hill-sides in inexhaustible abundance. Riches, exceeding those of Ophir or Potosi, were there if one possessed but the sorcery to call them forth. Everything except the rude materials was wanting- furnaces, mills, a working population, and a more formidable want of all, a market, and a way to get to it. The valley was completely isolated, having no communication with the outer world except that which was afforded by its rough mountain roads. Even when the iron was made it seemed a problem what to do with it, as the expenses of its transpor- tation bade fair so greatly to enhance its cost. But all these obstacles and difficulties vanished before the intelligent and resolute effort of Mr. Scranton and his little group of co-laborers. The valley soon began to smoke and glare with furnace fires. Mills were built, mines were opened, and workmen of all rank and in constantly increasing numbers began to flock thither. The first important product of the mill was hauled over the mountain roads by teams gathered from near and far among the farmers of the neighboring counties. It consisted of rails for the Erie Railroad, the building of which was then just begun. Twelve thousand tons were rapidly produced by extemporized furnaces and rolling mills, and thus laboriously transported to their des- tination. It was the opening strain in that epic of labor and production with which the valley has since resounded, and whose accents are not likely to be silenced for a thousand years. From 1847 to 1853 Mr. Scranton was a member successively of the firms of Scrantons & Grant, and Scrantons & Platt. In the latter year was organized the Lacka- wanna Iron and Coal Company, of which Mr. Scran- ton was from its inception the Superintendent and General Manager, and from 1858 till his death, the President. To this work he brought practical finan-
cial and managerial abilities which have not been exceeded in this generation. At his death he left the company in the condition of one of the most extensive and prosperous iron-producing industries in the world. Nearly all the enterprises which grew up in the valley, or were allied with its indus- tries, had in Mr. Scranton an active and efficient counselor and supporter. He was a Resident Di- rector of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad ; President, at one time, of the Lackawanna and Bloomsburg road ; first, and till his death, only President of the First National Bank of Scranton, and of the Scranton Gas and Water Company ; Director of the Sussex Railroad of New Jersey, of the Mount Hope Mineral Railroad Company, of the Mount Hope Mining Company, the Franklin Iron Company, the Scranton Trust Company and Sav- ings Bank, the Dickson Manufacturing Company, the Moosic Powder Company, and the Oxford Iron Company. He was also largely interested in various western railroads, and in some of them as Direc- tor. In 1861 he was appointed by Congress one of the first Commissioners of the Union Pacific Rail- road. In January, 1872, Mr. Scranton, accompanied by his wife and one of his daughters, sailed for Europe. His health had been for some time im- paired, but neither his family nor his friends were fully aware of the inroads which time and great labors had wrought in his originally powerful and enduring constitution. It was confidently expected that a brief sojourn abroad would restore to him his wonted vigor. But it was not to be. He was destined never again to look upon the beautiful city he had helped to rear. He died in Baden-Baden, on the 6th of June, 1872, and his remains were con- signed to the earth in Dunmore Cemetery, in the city of Scranton, on the 13th of July succeeding. The news of his death was received with profound emotion, not only in Scranton-where his name was a household word-but throughout the State of which he was so conspicuous and honored a citizen. The press of the entire country accompanied the announcement of his death with expressions of sor- row and eulogy. On the day of his burial, busi- ness was suspended in the city of his home, the flags were displayed at half-mast, and there were everywhere solemn and visible tokens that the heart of the entire community " amid which he had lived and labored," was bowed with a common sorrow. In an eloquent memorial sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Cattell, President of Lafayette College, Easton, occur the following remarks, which could not be appropriately omitted in this brief rehearsal of his life:
" He was a man whose success in all the things
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that men most desire and for which they strive and toil, was conspicuous. I need not dwell upon the events of his busy life. The honorable record is known of all. Scarcely had the ocean cable throb- bed with the sad message of his death, when the public journals hastened to pay well deserved tri- butes to his memory; and to-day this entire city, hushed in all its busy activities-no less by the spontaneous impulse of the citizens than by the proc- lamation of the Mayor-this silent city is filled with the thronging multitudes that follow him to the grave; and men speak to each other of the purity of his private life, on which there is no stain ; of his integrity, that knew no dishonor ; of his devotion to the trusts committed to him, that never faltered ; of the public spirit and enterprise that placed him in the front rank of all the great movements which have given to this region its unprecedented prosper- ity ; of the rare business sagacity and executive ability which amassed a fortune ; of all these things do men speak to-day, and of the great loss which has fallen upon the whole city in the death of such a man, while they are not unmindful of that more sacred sorrow which mourns a devoted husband and father and brother.
"But, my hearers, if this were all, dark and checrless would be the grave to which we bear him. We may indeed seek for ourselves honorable remem- brance, and may teach our children to be emulous of such an example-but not this alone. Better than all to-day is the record of his Christian life- the remembrance of his activity and zeal in this church and elsewhere in many instances of useful- ness. In all his busy life he found time for such duties. I know not of how many companies he was President, or Manager, or Director; with what great public interests he was the animating and guiding spirit, but I know he was for many years the Superintendent of the Sabbath-school in this church; Iknow that in yon home of refinement and wealth there was the daily sacrifice of prayer and praise, and that with all his intense devotion to bus- iness he loved his God, and that he ever lived as seeing Him who is invisible. Among his last utter- ances upon earth was the expression of a joyous and confident hope in the merits of Christ, which alone was his trust of acceptance with God."
The minutes of the various companies with which Mr. Scranton was associated bear eloquent witness of the sorrow with which his friends and co-work- ers received the news of his death, and of the honor and veneration in which they held his mem- ory. At a special meeting of the directors of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company, called for the purpose of taking suitable action upon the report of the death of their President, the following, among other resolutions, were adopted :
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