USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Families of the Wyoming Valley: biographical, genealogical and historical. Sketches of the bench and bar of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, vol. I > Part 27
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THOMAS JEROME CHASE.
volunteers. He participated in the battles of Antietam and Chancellorsville, and was mustered out at the expiration of his term of service in May, 1863. He entered upon the study of law in 1864 in the offices of A. H. Winton and A. A. Chase, at Scranton, and was admitted to the Luzerne county bar Novem- ber 12, 1866. He then entered the office of the late E. S. M. Hill, then mayor of Scranton, and remained until April, 1867, when he removed to Nicholson, Wyoming county, Pa., and practiced until 1876, when he removed to Wilkes-Barre, where he has been in continuous practice since. While at Nicholson he was elected and served as a justice of the pcace, and was also one of the school directors of that borough. During a portion of the time that he was reading law, he taught a public school in order to gain the means to continue his legal studies. Mr. Chase married September 10, 1874, Czarına A. Reynolds, daughter of S. P. Reynolds, a native of Benton. They have had one child, who died in 1879 at the age of four years.'
Like a large proportion of the leading men, especially the professional men, of the Wyoming valley, Mr. Chase, it will be noted, traces his ancestry to the hardy pioneers of New England, and more remotely to old England. They were a hardy, cour- ageous, and determined people thesc first settlers of the Yankee states, and have given to their children and their children's children qualities of mental and moral man and womanhood which go far to evidence to the present generation that such was the case. Their flight from kingly persecution for refuge in a wilderness of itself tells a tale of devotion to religious conviction, of keen appreciation of the rights of manhood, and of willingness to bear heavy burdens and incur great sacrifices for the right of opinion ; and the stalwart men and the lovable, loyal women who have descended from their loins renew in their capabilities and virtues the testimony to those of so proud and self-dependent an ancestry.
Like most of the others in our series of sketches, "Tom" Chase, as he is familiarly called, is a worthy son of worthy sires. He has earned and fully merits the glorious title of " good fel- low," which men apply to those in whom there is an ever present readiness to suffer almost any loss rather than harm another by
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DIEGO JOHN MILLER LOOP.
so much as a thought. He was a good soldier, though but a boy at the time of his enlistment, and his superiors give willing attestation of his manly and dutiful bearing at every period of his term of service, and in every task it imposed or emergency it brought. He is a lawyer of no mean attainments, though totally indisposed to the " fuss and feathers," so to speak, which not a few in our own profession, as well as others, seek to palm off upon their patrons as evidence of deep knowledge and the ebullitions of genius. In other words, he is not a showy advocate, but is a safe adviser.
DIEGO JOHN MILLER LOOP.
1
Diego John Miller Loop was born in Elmira, N.Y., February II, 1823, and is a son of the late Peter P. Loop, a native of Elmira, Chemung county, N. Y., where he was born in 1793. He died at Belvidere, Ill., in 1854. His father, Peter Loop, jun., was one of the commissioners appointed by the Susquehanna company, Sep- tember 25, 1786. Any five of the said commissioners " shall be a court with power, etc., etc. ; this power to determine whenever a form of internal government shall be established in that country."
D. J. M. Loop was educated at the Wilkes-Barre academy and at Dickinson college, Carlisle, Pa., from which he graduated in 1844, and received his degree of A. M. in 1849. He read law with Hon. E. P. Brooks, of Elmira, N. Y., and at once removed to Illinois, where he was admitted to the Supreme Court of that state in June, 1847. He spent a year in the office of General S. A. Hurlbut, in Belvidere, Ill., and in April, 1848, removed to Fort Winnebago, Wisconsin territory, now Portage City, Wis. In the fall of 1848 he was elected the first district attorney of Columbia county, Wis., which office he held for two years. He was also city clerk for the same length of time. In January, 1849, he was admitted to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. In 1864 he removed to Pennsylvania, where he remained until 1870, having practiced in the meanwhile in Columbia, Lancaster
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DIEGO. JOHN MILLER LOOP.
county, and at Hazleton and Wilkes-Barre, in Luzerne county. He was admitted to the bar of the last named county December 1, 1866. He again removed west, this time to Neosho, Newton county, Mo., where he practiced until 1874. He then removed to Joplin, Jasper county, Mo., where he remained until 1877. During a year of the time that he was at Joplin, he was elected the city judge. In 1879 he removed to Galena, Cherokee county, Kan. In July, 1880, he removed to Waverly, Tioga county, N. Y. In April, 1882, he again returned to Pennsylva- nia, and is now practicing at Nanticoke, in this county.
The mother of Mr. Loop is Eliza Irene, daughter of the late General William Ross, sen., who was born in New London, Conn., March 29, 1761, and emigrated to Wyoming about 1775. The day previous to the " massacre " Mr. Ross was with the army in its march to Exeter, where the Hardings had been murdered, and would have been in the battle but that his older brothers needed his arms. At the flight the family were scattered, pass- ing through the wilderness by different paths, in a state of ex- treme privation and suffering, Mr. Ross and his mother taking the lower or Nescopeck way. Soon after the coming in of Spalding's company they returned. Having a taste for military affairs, he rose by regular gradations from major to brigade inspector and general in the militia. For twenty years he held the commission of a magistrate. In 1812 he was chosen to represent the district composed of Luzerne and Northumberland counties in the senate of the state.
With the surrender of the sword of Cornwallis peace succeeded the revolutionary strife, but not in Wyoming. The Indian bor- der feud and the question whether Pennsylvania or Connecticut should rule, still continued to agitate the valley of Wyoming. Timothy Pickering, a New England man by birth, clothed with official power by the state and invested with all the county offices, was sent here to pacify and heal up the local strife. It only aggra- vated the Connecticut settlers ; they invaded his home, took him prisoner by night, and carried him away captive. He was res- cued by General, then Captain, William Ross, at the head of a force of state militia, who received a serious wound in the strug- gle, which for some time was regarded mortal. He was rewarded
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DIEGO JOHN MILLER LOOP.
by the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania with a sword bearing the following inscription :
" CAPTAIN WILLIAM ROSS :
" The Supreme Executive Council present this mark of their approbation acquired by your firmness in support of the laws of the commonwealth on the 4th of July, 1788.
" CHARLES BIDDLE, Sec'y."
General Ross in his will states that he desires his sword " to be kept and preserved by my said son (William S. Ross) during his life, and after his decease to descend to, and be kept and pre- served by, my oldest male descendant from time to time forever." Under the above clause the sword is now in the possession of William Ross Maffet, of this city, son of Samuel Maffet and Caroline Ann Ross Maffet. Samuel Maffet was a prominent citizen of Wilkes-Barre and the proprietor of the Susquehanna Democrat, which he established in 1810 with the following motto : " The support of the state governments in all their rights is the most competent administration for our domestic institutions and the surest bulwark against anti-republican tendencies." It was the organ of the democratic party, and was of the same size as the Gleaner, being eleven by seventeen inches. Mr. Maffet learned his trade as a printer with John Binns, at Northumberland and Philadelphia, whose name is familiar to every lawyer as the author of Binns' Justice. As an evidence of the esteem in which Mr. Maffet was held by his employer we insert the following letter :
" JULY 6, 1809.
"D'R SAMUEL : This day puts a period to the time for . which you were bound to me. In all the time you have been with me you have conducted yourself with propriety ; never swearing, lying, or neglecting your master's business. I enclose you a check for 50$ as an evidence of my entire approbation of your conduct. Through life conduct yourself as you have con- ducted while with me and you will secure, because you will deserve, the esteem and respect of the worthy and the good. Continue where you are and do as you have done and we will make satisfactory arrangements. I chuse to put my opinion of you in writing as the most permanent evidence of my affection-
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DIEGO JOHN MILLER LOOP.
ate solicitude for your well doing. Among your sincere friends rank me, and at all times calculate upon my best services.
" I am, D'r Samuel, affectionately your true friend.
" JOHN BINNS. " Mr. SAMUEL MAFFET."
From 1815 to 1821 Mr. Maffet was register and recorder of Luzerne county, by appointment of Governors Snyder and Findlay respectively, and from February 8, 1821, to 1824, he was prothonotary, clerk of the Court of Quarter Sessions and Oyer and Terminer, and clerk of the Orphans' Court by appoint- ment of Governors Heister and Shulze respectively. He was ensign from August 1, 1814, and captain from May 22, 1818 (each commission being for seven years), of the eighth company of the second regiment of the militia of Pennsylvania, his com- missions being signed by Governor Snyder and Governor Findlay.
Samuel Maffet was a native of Linden, Lycoming county, Pa., where he was born July 7, 1789. He died in Wilkes-Barre August 15, 1825. His father, John Maffet, was a native of Dun- cannon, Tyrone county, Ireland, and emigrated to America in 1774. The widow of Samuel Maffet married, February 3, 1828, Elisha Atherton. Eliza Ross Miner, wife of Charles A. Miner, of this city, was their only child. Mr. Miner represented the city of Wilkes-Barre in the legislature of Pennsylvania from 1875 to 1880.
Mr. Ross was a strong-minded man; he had studied human nature in the school of active life to great advantage, and per- formed the duties of all the various stations to which he was called with intelligence and integrity. Having lived to the good old age of eighty-two years, on August 9, 1842, he closed his active and honorable life. Every fitting demonstration of respect was paid to his remains, the court adjourning to attend his funeral. The wife of General Ross was Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Sterling and Elizabeth Perkins, his wife, who was born November 3, 1768, and died at Wilkes-Barre May 16, 1816. Lieutenant Perrin Ross, who was born July 4, 1748, and Jere- miah Ross, born January 6, 1759, both of whom were slain at the niassacre of Wyoming, were brothers of General Ross. Gen- eral Ross was the son of Jeremiah Ross, (son of Joseph Ross
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DIEGO JOHN MILLER LOOP.
and Sarah Utley Ross, his wife), who was born July 26, 1721, and died at Wilkes-Barre February 8, 1777. His wife was Ann Paine, whom he married October 31, 1744. She died at Wilkes-Barre March 22, 1813, aged ninety-four years.
General William Sterling Ross, who was a son of General William Ross and a brother of Eliza Irene Loop, was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., August 11, 1802. He died on July 11, 1868. lacking just one month of being sixty-six years of age. His birth and death occurred in the same room, the southeast part of the Ross family mansion, erected of oak materials, frame and clapboards, by Timothy Pickering, in the year 1787. He was commissioned associate judge of the courts of the county in 1830, as the successor of Hon. Jesse Fell, which office he retained until 1839-the time of the adoption of the amended constitu- tion of the state. The duties of this office were discharged with much credit to himself and the entire approbation of the bar and the community at large. For a long succession of years he was a member of the borough council and generally its presiding officer. Quite as long he was a director and general manager of the Easton and Wilkes-Barre Turnpike Company, down to 1840 the only great thoroughfare leading easterly to the seaboard from the Susquehanna. He was for many years a director in the Wyoming Bank and at the time of his death the president. He was also the president of the Wyoming Insurance Company at his decease, and was also a director in the following corporations : The Wilkes-Barre Water Company, the Wilkes-Barre Bridge Company, the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, and the Home for Friendless Children. He was also a member of the vestry of St. Stephen's church. Probably no one of Gen- eral Ross's contemporaries had more to do with the various local associations of the town for a third of a century than he had, and he was remarkably punctual in his duties in all the labors these associations demanded and required of him. He repre- sented the Luzerne district in the senate of the state during the sessions of 1845-6-7. The last year of his term he was speaker of that body.
In 1861 General Ross joined the republican party (he having previously been a democrat), and was by them elected to the
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DIEGO JOHN MILLER LOOP.
General Assembly for the session of 1861-2, and in this service his conduct and business capacity were marked with much ability and unblemished integrity. In 1862 he was nominated by the republican party of Pennsylvania for the office of surveyor general, but was defeated in the election by James P. Barr, of Allegheny county. He married December 1, 1825, Ruth Tripp Slocum, daughter of Joseph Slocum. The ceremony took place in the Slocum house, on the Public square. This was the first brick building in Wilkes-Barre, and was erected by Joseph Slocum in 1807. It is still standing, and is occupied by Brown's book store. Mrs. Butler remembers that her father was cautioned against building with brick, on the supposition that this material would not stand the damp climate of the valley. That his judgment to the contrary was not in error is shown by the present condition of the brick walls, which are in perfect condition after an exposure to the "malarial dampness " of seventy-seven years. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Enoch Huntington, who was pastor of St. Stephen's Episcopal church from 1824 to 1827.
Mrs. Loop, the mother of the subject of our sketch, was born August 25, 1799, and was married to Peter P. Loop in 1820. She is still living, and resides at Rochester, N. Y. Rev. Dewitt Clinton Loop, of the Protestant Episcopal church, is a brother of D. J. M. Loop, as is also Edward Sterling Loop, for many years cashier of the Wyoming bank at Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
On September 2, 1854, D. J. M. Loop was married to Mrs. Lydia L. Peabody, nee Richmond, daughter of Truman Rich- mond, of New Milford, Conn. They have no children.
The number of places in which Mr. Loop has pursued his pro- fession, together with his election to a judgeship in Missouri, fully attest his knowledge of the law and ability as a practitioner. He comes, as the foregoing record shows, of good stock, both by his father and his mother, and gives evidence of his inheritance unimpaired from each, of many of the traits which bore then creditably and successfully through the numerous trying ordeals to which life in the Wyoming valley in the earlier days was sub- ject. He is not so well known individually, for reasons that will be obvious to the readers of these lines, as many of the attorneys
298
WILLIAM SWAN MCLEAN.
practicing at the Luzerne bar, but with all who do know him he is a favorite as a lawyer, a citizen, and a man. Upon the basis of a liberal education he has builded a general knowledge of men and affairs invaluable in the legal profession and contributive to those capacities which make men most useful in a community and appreciated for their companionship by their fellow men.
WILLIAM SWAN McLEAN.
William Swan McLean was born May 27, 1842, at Summit Hill, Carbon county, Pennsylvania. His father, Alexander McLean, who was born in ISoo, emigrated to America in 1819, and settled in what is now Carbon county. He was one of the . pioneer coal operators in the country, and operated at Summit Hill until 1848, when he removed on what is now known as the McLean farm, then in Wilkes-Barre township, now in the city of Wilkes-Barre. After his removal to this county, he was exten- sively engaged in coal operations, not as an operator, but as a large stockholder in many of theni. He was largely interested in the Wyoming Coal Company, which was incorporated in 1838, and was one of the first joint stock coal companies formed in the Wyoming valley. Mr. McLean was a native of Fernlestra, in the county of Derry, Ireland. He died March, 1868. His father was James McLean. The grandfather of Alexander McLean was Gilbert McLean. He was a native of the Isle of Skye, and was a member of the clan McLean. His wife was Margaret Dugan. He removed to Ireland about the middle of the last century. The mother of William S. McLean, and wife of Alexander McLean, was Elizabeth Swan, daughter of James Swan. She was born near Londonderry, and emigrated with her father to this country when but a child. Mr. Swan was a man of considerable note and wealth in his native land, and was intimately connected with the Irish rebellion in 1798 as a United Irishman. He enigrated to this country in 1817, and
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WILLIAM SWAN MCLEAN.
lived and died in Mauch Chunk. Rev. Hugh Swan, a Presby- terian clergyman, and a brother of James, was executed by the British government for complicity in the rebellion.
WV. S. McLean was educated at the Wilkes-Barre academy, of which Sylvester Dana was principal, and at Lafayette college, Easton, Pa. Mr. Dana was a lawyer, and was admitted to the bar of Luzerne county November 7, 1828. He forsook the practice, and devoted his life to the cause of education. Mr. McLean graduated in 1865, and was chosen by the faculty as the valedictorian of his class. While Mr. McLean was at college, he entered the military service in 1862 as a member of Captain Thomas W. Lynn's Company I, Fifth regiment, Pennsylvania militia. He remained in the service but a few weeks, and was discharged with his company at the expiration of the term.
Mr. McLean read law with G. Byron Nicholson, and was admitted to the bar of Luzerne county August 19, 1867. From 1866 to 1869, Mr. McLean was a member of the board of school directors of the township of Wilkes-Barre. He was also secre- tary of the board for the same length of time. He is and has been city attorney since 1875, and attorney for the commissioners of Luzerne county since 1883. In 1868 Mr. McLean delivered the Master's Oration at the request of the faculty of Lafayette college upon the occasion of his receiving the Master's degree. In 1879 Mr. McLean was the democratic candidate for judge of Luzerne county, but owing to the formation of the greenback- labor party, he was defeated by Charles E. Rice, president judge of Luzerne county. He is prominent in democratic circles, and in 1883 was chairman of the committee on resolutions in the democratic state convention of that year. For many years he was a director in the First National Bank of Wilkes-Barre and Wilkes-Barre Deposit Bank.
The late James McLean, a prominent coal operator in Carbon county, and the first president of the First National Bank of Wilkes-Barre, was a brother of W. S. McLean, as was also the late Samuel McLean, one of the earliest emigrants to California at the breaking out of the gold fever. He was afterwards a representative in congress for two terms from Montana territory. He was also provisional attorney-general for Colorado. He
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WILLIAM SWAN MCLEAN.
afterwards purchased a plantation in Nottoway county, Virginia, and died there in July, 1877.
George McLean, another brother, was register of the land office in Montana territory under appointment of President Johnson.
W. S. McLean was married November 23, 1871, to Annie S. Roberts, daughter of George H. Roberts, of Philadelphia. He was for many years a member of the firm of Conrad & Roberts, a prominent hardware firm in Philadelphia. George H. Roberts, jun., who was attorney-general of Nebraska for six years, and at present special counsel for the Union Pacific railroad company, residing in Nevada, is a brother of Mrs. McLean.
Mr. and Mrs. McLean have a family of three children living, George Roberts McLean, William Swan McLean, and Margaret Stevenson McLean.
There are few men better known, and fewer still more generally liked, in Wilkes-Barre than William Swan McLean. That he is an able lawyer is fully explained in his having been the nominee of his party for president judge, and in his occupancy of the positions of legal adviser both to the city council of Wilkes-Barre and the commissioners of Luzerne county. In the first-named of these positions, he has served continuously for nine years, and in that time has, of course, become a recognized authority in municipal law. He was for a number of years the senior partner of the firm of McLean & Jackson, during which time the firm enjoyed a collection business that was unusually exten- sive and profitable, and that could neither have been secured or maintained but for the energy displayed in obtaining moneys due clients, and the promptitude with which they were paid over when collected. It is not especially a credit to the profession, but is nevertheless a fact, that there are other lawyers who might have a good deal larger share of this generally lucrative line of legal business if they were not, to use the expression of a recently disgusted client, " so slow to disgorge."
Mr. McLean has been a member of the Examining committee of the Luzerne bar, and has figured in very many important causes, both in the civil and criminal courts, acquitting himself invariably as one well booked in the principles of the law, and vigorous and efficient in its practice.
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ANDREW HUNLOCK.
He is an easy, pleasant speaker, not only in the court-room and before a jury, but on the stump, and in every political con- test for years past has done good service for his party in this capacity in Luzerne and elsewhere. His always genial demeanor has secured him a widespread popularity with people in all classes and conditions of life, and his energies were conspicuously instanced in the vigorous campaign he made, in the presence of extremely dispiriting circumstances, for the judgeship, and the flattering vote he received on that occasion.
Mr. McLean is the possessor of a fair-sized collection of the works of the best authors, and, though never without legal business to attend to, manages to steal enough time from his pro- fessional duties to familiarize himself with their best thoughts. This, his favorite recreation, is an example which all who emulate will find to their advantage, professionally as well as socially.
ANDREW HUNLOCK.
Andrew Hunlock was born in Kingston, Pennsylvania, May I, 1839. He is of New England descent, from which place his great grandfather, Jonathan Hunlock, sen., emigrated at an early day, and was the first settler of Union (now Hunlock) township, where he located in 1773. Andrew's grandfather, Jonathan Hunlock, as also his father, Jameson Hunlock, were natives of Hunlock township, being born at Hunlock's Creek, Pa. The wife of Jona- than Hunlock, jun., was Mary Jameson, who was born in 1780, and died in 1818 at Hunlock's Creek, where she lies buried. She was the daughter of John Jameson, a descendent of John Jame- son, who, in the year 1704, left the highlands of Scotland, of which he was a native, and sought a new home in Ireland. He settled in the town of Omagh, county of Tyrone, where he mar- ried Rosanna Irvin. He continued his residence in Ireland until 1718, when he emigrated with his family to America, landing, after a long and dangerous voyage, in the town of Boston, in the colony of Massachusetts Bay. He remained in Boston until the
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ANDREW HUNLOCK.
spring of 1719, when he removed to Voluntown, Windham county, Conn., where he purchased a tract of land, upon which he lived for many years and died. He had two brothers, Robert and Henry, both of whom emigrated to America, and landed at Philadelphia in the year 1708. John Jameson was a man of strong will and prejudices. It is said he never yielded until fully convinced of error.
" He was of that stubborn crew, Presbyterian true bluc, Who prove their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks."
His son, Robert Jameson, was born in the town of Omagh, Ireland, December 25, 1714, and was four years of age when his parents came to America. In the year 1747, he married Agnes Dixon, who was also born in Ireland, and came to America when quite young with her father, Robert Dixon, and settled in Windham county, Conn. Robert Dixon was one of the com- mittee of the Susquehanna Land Company, as shown by the following receipt :
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