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 5
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I am, very sincerely, etc., EDMUND L. DANA.
The above petition contained the names of nearly the entire bar in 1877 of both political parties. The General was regularly nominated by the Democratic Convention, and when the Repub- lican Convention met they made no nomination for Judge, but instead passed the following resolution :
"That this convention having entire confidence in the learning, integrity, and ability of Edmund L. Dana, as illustrated by his administration of the office of Additional Law Judge of this dis- trict in the past ten years, hereby cordially recommend him to the voters of Luzerne county for re-election."
In the same year a new party sprung into existence, known as the Greenback-Labor party, which, by means of a most earnest and efficient organization and effort, swept the county of Luzerne like a tornado, and carried all their men into office over both the other political parties. Of course Gen. Dana went down with the rest. But his defeat did not detract from his high character
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EDMUND LOVELL DANA.
and reputation as a jurist, or from the regard of his friends and neighbors.
In 1878 Judge Dana was induced by a large number of promi- nent citizens of both political parties in Lehigh county to allow his name to be used as a candidate for President Judge of that county. He consented, the Republican party making no nomi- nation, but he was defeated by Hon. Edwin Albright by a small majority.
General Dana is a man of fine culture, of scholastic tastes and acquirements, true and honorable in all his dealings, and a fitting ' representative of an old Wyoming family. Although not an active partisan, he has always acted with the Democratic party. For more than thirty years he has been connected with St. Stephen's Episcopal Church at Wilkes-Barre He is an ardent lover of field sport, indulges much in hunting and fishing, filling out his time snatched from the care of business in these his favorite pastimes. He was married in 1842 to Sarah Peters, daughter of Ralph Peters, Esq., and grand-daughter of Hon. Richard Peters, of Philadelphia. The Judge has one son, Charles Edmund, who has for some years been residing and traveling in Europe, engaged in the study of art, a study to which he is zeal- ously devoted, and in which he has made gratifying progress. He is married to Emily, only child of the late Peter T. Woodbury. who was a distinguished lawyer in the city of New York. He was the nephew of Hon. Levi Woodbury, LL. D., of New Hampshire.
Gen. Dana is at present a member of the Council of his native city. He is the Corresponding Secretary of the Wyoming His- torical and Geological Society of Wilkes-Barre, and was its first President.
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WILLIAM PENN MINER.
WILLIAM PENN MINER. .
William Penn Miner, who comes next on the list of our attor- neys in the order of their seniority, is the not unworthy scion of a house well known as lawyers, journalists, authors, and other- wise in public life in at least four of Pennsylvania's most popu- lous and important counties. In Bucks, Chester, Susquehanna, and Luzerne the Miners have been honorably and usefully con- spicuous figures. They are of Yankee origin; that is to say, the first we can trace were Yankees.
Hon. Charles Miner, the father of William Penn Miner, was born in Norwich, Connecticut, and came to Pennsylvania in 1799, at the age of 19. His father, Seth Miner, held some lands (now in Susquehanna county) under the Connecticut claim. After his arrival, in February, 1799, Mr. Miner "worked in the sugar," as they phrased it. Currency being a not over-plentiful article in the young nation in those days, he was paid in sugar. Having earned one hundred and five pounds of the saccharine article, he strapped his earnings on his back, and trudged with it northward as far as the Wyalusing. Here he sold his sugar, bought provisions, and made a clearing three miles west of Montrose. Charles sold his improvements a very few years later, moved into Wilkes-Barre, and went to work with his brother Asher, who had established here The Luzerne County Federalist. The brothers had served a portion of an apprenticeship to the printing trade in New London, Connecticut. For two years the Federalist was published under the firm name of A. & C. Miner, when Asher, who was the elder brother, removed to Doylestown. Charles was elected to the Legislature in 1807, and re-elected in 1808, distinguishing himself as an active member on both occa- sions. In 1816 he sold out and went to West Chester, where he founded The Village Record, was elected to Congress, and served from 1824-28 inclusive, representing Chester, Delaware, and Lancaster counties, having for his colleague James Buchanan, afterwards President of the United States. Asher started the Doylestown Correspondent, now the Bucks County Intelligencer,
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WILLIAM PENN MINER.
and continued to conduct it successfully for twenty years; then he, too, went to West Chester, and from that time on until 1832 the Record was run by the brothers in partnership Charles returned to Wilkes-Barre in 1832, where, having first given him- self a national reputation through the compilation and publication of his "History of Wyoming," he died peacefully, October 26, 1865. Asher returned, also, to Wilkes-Barre, near which he died at a green old age.
It was from such stock as this came William P. Miner, who was born in Wilkes-Barre, September 8th, 1816, in the house at the corner of Union and Franklin streets, which was built by his father (now occupied by Mr. Thos. W. Robinson). His mother was Letitia, daughter of Joseph Wright, Esq., and granddaughter of Thomas Wright, Esq. Both of these were likewise publishers, so that the subject of this sketch came from families of news- paper men on both sides. The elder Wright started the Wilkes- Barre Gasette before the ushering in of the present century, and it was conducted by his son for a number of years.
Wm. P. Miner was educated in the Academy at West Chester and in the old Wilkes-Barre Academy, and was an apt and ex- emplary student. He studied law with his brother-in-law, Hon. Joseph J. Lewis, who was Commissioner of Internal Revenue under President Lincoln, and the Nestor of the Chester county bar, and was admitted to the bar in Chester county in 1840. He was admitted to the bar of Luzerne county August 3, 1841. In 1846 he was elected Prothonotary and Clerk of the Courts of Oyer and Terminer and Quarter Sessions, and of the Orphans' Court of Luzerne county, as the candidate of the Whig party, with which his father and entire family had always been closely identified. He resumed the practice of the law at the expiration of his term of three years; but on April 19, 1853, he started the Weekly Record of the Times, when he may be said to have per- manently retired from practice. The daily edition of the Record of the Times was started by him, October 5, 1873, and continues, as our readers all know, in a flourishing condition to this hour. As the establishment of this paper indicates, when the Whig party ceased to exist, Mr. Miner became a Republican of a most pronounced typc.
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WILLIAM PENN MINER.
We think it safe to assume that he never entertained any real love for the legal profession, though he was always conscientious and earnest in the management of such cases as came under his charge. Inheriting the trait, as already stated, from both his father's and mother's side, his natural favoritism was for the newspaper profession, in which he was ever zealous and enter- prising. His paper was a clean paper, too, scrupulously avoid- ing all disposition to sensationalism, invariably of a character fit to enter into the most exacting family in such regard. His lean- ing was to dealing with industrial subjects, which, his keen vision early discerned, constituted the very best literature, because the most useful, for the digestion of the readers of this immediate vicinity. The Record, as it was always briefly called, gave, in particular, every possible encouragement to the prosecution of the coal trade, and in that and other ways, as is beyond all ques- tion, has greatly accelerated and added materially to the growth and prosperity of Wilkes-Barre and the county generally.
Mr. Miner is still busy with his pen, for, though he retired from the management of the Record in 1876, it is only the other day that we read, of his writing, a remarkably exhaustive and interesting "History of the Coal Trade in Luzerne and Lacka- wanna Counties." He is a member of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, and was one of its charter members.
Mr. Miner married Miss Elizabeth D. Liggett, of Philadelphia, on April 1Ith, 1842, by whom he has had five children, four daughters, three of whom are still living, and one son, William B. Miner, well known to our citizens as a member of the Luzerne county bar. These constitute a happy family, now residing at. the "Old Home," as the old homestead is called, located about three miles north of Wilkes-Barre, where it is the intention of Mr. Miner to pass his remaining days in quiet retirement, a com- fort to which his long, busy, and useful life well entitles him. Mrs. Miner died in 1871.
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LAZARUS DENISON SHOEMAKER.
LAZARUS DENISON SHOEMAKER.
Lazarus Denison Shoemaker is, in the order of seniority, the eighth on the list of resident attorneys admitted to practice in the Courts of Luzerne county since August, 1822, as appears from the Court Rules published in 1879. Of those still living and practicing, there are but two whose admission ante-dates his. He was born in Kingston, Luzerne county, on the 5th day of November, 1819, and is, therefore, at this writing, in the sixty- third year of his age. His father was Elijah Shoemaker, in his time one of the foremost citizens of the Wyoniing Valley, and the owner of large landed estates within its precincts. The Shoe- makers are of what is generally called "good old stock." They are supposed to be of Holland origin, emigrating from thence, first to England, and afterwards to America. Arrived in this country, they located on the banks of the Delaware, in what was first Bucks county, now Monroe, and were probably among the first settlers of that section, which, by the way, is known to have attracted a colony of the Hollanders from the Hudson as early as 1650. These hardy pioneers constructed, what they called, "The Mine Road," from the Hudson to the Delaware, one of the earliest of the country's thoroughfares, which must needs have been a substantial piece of work, since, as late as 1800, John Adams traveled it on his way to Congress, at Philadelphia, as being the best route from Boston. It got its name of "Mine Road" from the fact that the Hollanders were attracted to the region of the Delaware by the stories of Indians to the effect that there goodly stores of precious metals were to be gotten, and which stories resulted in the digging of the historical mines at Minisink .. Some, from whose gathered data the earlier history of our State has been made up (among them Stickney, Hazzard, and Nicholas Scull, the latter a Surveyor General of the Province about 1748), believed that these settlements were older than Penn's colony at Philadelphia. The Shoemakers must have been among the first comers. We find the name of Benjamin Shoe- maker, the great-grandfather of the subject of our sketch, in the
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LAZARUS DENISON SHOEMAKER.
Court records of 1752, as having been, with others, "summoned to serve on the grand inquest," and "made default in their appear- ance." He was afterwards, as appears from other records, chosen a Commissioner. This gentleman left the Delaware, and came to the Wyoming Valley in 1763, and was, therefore, one of its earliest settlers. After the first Massacre, however, he returned ‹ to the Delaware, and died there in 1775. His son, Elijah, the grandfather of the subject of our sketch, joined the emigrants from Connecticut, in 1776, under the auspices of the Connecticut and Susquehanna Land Company. He became a permanent and prominent settler, and here the most of his immediate descendants continue to abide. He was killed at the memorable Massacre at Wyoming, July 3d, 1778, leaving a son, Elijah Shoemaker, Jr., but six weeks old. This, then, so cruelly orphaned infant, lived to become the father of the present Mr. Shoemaker. He was born at Forty Fort, on May 20, 1778. The place is adjacent to the elegant residence which he subsequently erected, and which is now owned and occupied by Robert C. Shoe- maker, a nepliew of Lazarus. His mother was Jane McDowell, daughter of John McDowell, of Cherry Valley, Northampton county, now Monroe. Mr. McDowell emigrated from Ireland in 1735, and earned for himself the gratitude of many worn and weary families whom he succored on their toilsome way from New England to Wyoming, and whose route took them by his house and through an almost unbroken wilderness. His grandmother's maiden name was Elizabeth Depui, one of the earliest settlers of the vicinity of Stroudsburg. The Depuis were Huguenots from Artois, in the north of France. Elijah, during the pendency of the disputes as to the title to the land of the valley, cleared a portion of that which he had purchased with money left him by his father of the Susquehanna Company, built an unpretentious habitation, and engaged in farming in a small way. It was while his affairs were in this condition that Elijah, Jr., was born and the Massacre of Wyoming occurred; wherein he acted as Lieutenant in the little band of patriots, and was slain. The widow and her babe were left in very poor circumstances, for practically every- thing in their little home had been carried off or destroyed by the British and savages. Mrs. Shoemaker was a woman of much
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LAZARUS DENISON SHOEMAKER.
energy, however, and succeeded by her perseverance and inge- nuity in caring for her boy until he became old enough to care for her. Before the son had attained his majority, the Connecticut question had been settled, and he was the possessor of a large and valuable farm. This he managed with great ability and thrift, ultimately erecting upon it a mansion, which is still pointed out as a model of good taste and convenience. In 1814 he was elected Sheriff of Luzerne county. A biographer says of him, that he "performed the duties of the position with great satisfac- tion to the people. At that time the settlers were poor, and many of them burdened with debt. By his leniency in the per- formance of his duty, and by his own individual aid, many were enabled to save their homes! . He was a strong man physically and intellectually, and was brave and fearless in time of danger. His education was limited, being only such as could be acquired at the country school house; yet he had sufficient culture and learning to make him a good and useful citizen and an honest man of the olden time. In July, 1829, he was seized with a fever, which caused his death after a few days' sickness, in the fiftieth year of his age. He left a fine estate, still occupied by his descendants, and a family of nine children-six sons and three daughters. His widow survived him two years. They both sleep in the beautiful cemetery at Forty Fort, near the place which knew them so well in life, and which is fragrant to their posterity with sweet memories of the past." The maternal grand- father of Mr. Shoemaker was Col. Nathan Denison, a native of New England, who, in 1769, married Elizabeth Sill, in a log cabin situated within the present city of Wilkes-Barre. This is recorded as the first marriage of whites that was ever celebrated in the Wyoming Valley, and Lazarus Denison, a son of this marriage, and father of the late Hon. Charles Denison, was the first white child ever born between its hills. The Denisons trace their ancestry back nearly three centuries to William Denison, who was born in England about 1586, and who came to America and settled at Roxbury, Mass., in 1631. "A record of the descend- ants of Capt. George Denison, of Stonington, Conn., with notices of his father and brothers, and some account of other Denisons who settled in America in the colony times," is a book of over
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LAZARUS DENISON SHOEMAKER.
400 pages, compiled by John Denison Baldwin and William Clift, and recently published. In this book are contained the names of 6,403 descendants of the original William; yet the compilers say, in their preface, that "with longer time and more zealous co-operation on the part of some of the descendants, we could have added largely, to the list of family records." Among those mentioned are many who achieved distinction 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 precariousness the hold of our earlier settlers on their properties and their lives. George Denison, a brother of Lazarus' mother, was a distinguished lawyer among such competitors as Judges Gibson, Conyngham, Bowman, and Mallery, and was elected to the State Legislature for several sessions, and to Congress for two terms. He took a high rank in both bodies. Charles Denison, a cousin, was also a lawyer of marked ability, and was three times elected to Congress.
Coming from a union of two such families, it would have been, indeed, strange had not Lazarus Denison Shoemaker within him the elements out of which successful and useful men are made. There flows in his veins English, Irish, French, and Dutch blood, and all of it good blood. His preliminary education was pro- vided at the celebrated Moravian school, Nazareth Hall, Beth- lehem. From here he was sent to Kenyon College, at Gambier, Ohio. At this college ex-President Hayes and the present Vice- President, David Davis, were in their time students, as also Andrew T. McClintock, Esq., of this city, and Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War under President Lincoln. From Kenyon, Mr. Shoemaker entered the Freshman class of Yale College, in 1836, and graduated with honors in 1840. His col- legiate course being thus brilliantly concluded, he engaged in the study of the law with Gen. E. W. Sturdevant, in Wilkes-Barre. He was a patient and painstaking student, the General says, and in 1842 passed a highly creditable examination, and was admitted to the bar in August of that year. Since that time he has been in continuous practice of his profession here, excepting when
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LAZARUS DENISON SHOEMAKER.
called away for the performance of official duties, to which his superior abilities made it the pleasure of the people to assign him. In 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 has almost always been, strongly Demo- cratic, his personal excellence attracted to him from the latter party a sufficient following to compass his election by a majority of over two hundred. He was assigned a place, in the first year of his term, on the Committee of the Judiciary (General), and in the second year became its Chairman, a positon which he held until the expiration of the term. He was a working Senator, and labored zealously at all times for what he deemed the best interests of his constituents and the State. He was instrumental during these three years in having placed upon the statute books, among others, two acts, which all must admit were conceived in wisdom and a sincere desire to secure to the people, first, a purer and safer administration of justice in our Courts; and second, a protection against illegal voting, and a consequent honest expres- sion of the will of the people at the polls. These statutes were, "An. Act for the better and more impartial selection of persons to serve as jurors in each of the counties of the Commonwealth," under which each party in every county elects one Jury Com- missioner, and what is familiarly known as "The Registry Law." If these measures have not achieved all that was designed in their enactment, the fault lies not in the acts themselves, but in the failure of their enforcement. Mr. Shoemaker acquitted himself so satisfactorily as a State Senator, that upon his return to his constituents he was nominated for Representative in Congress for the Twelfth Congressional District. This was in 1870. The campaign was a highly exciting one, being vigorously contested on both sides. It ended in a triumph for Mr. Shoemaker by a majority of 1,220. Two years later he was re-elected by a still more flattering support. At Washington, again he was, though not much of an orating, an indefatigable working member, as many who profited by his mediation there will gladly attest. He was Chairman of the Committee on Revolutionary Claims and Claims of the War of 1812, and was a member of the Committee on Claims, and of the Judiciary. At the expiration of his second
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LAZARUS DENISON SHOEMAKER.
term in Congress he came back to Wilkes-Barre, and resumed his law practice. He has held no public position since, excepting that of Prison Commissioner, to which he was first appointed by Judge Harding, and reappointed by Judge Rice.
In addition to having been, as thus detailed, a leading lawyer with a large and successful practice, and an official of the sort whose acts justify the public confidence, Mr. Shoemaker has occupied a conspicuous place in the banking, industrial, and other corporative enterprises of the valley. Among other positions held by him in this connection have been a Directorship in the Wyoming Insurance Company, and the Presidency of the Wyo- ming Valley Manufacturing Company and of the Second National Bank. He is President of the Board of Trustees of the Franklin Street Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he is a consistent member, and is also President of the Wyoming Camp Meeting Association of the M. E. Church. He is also a Trustee of the Home for Friendless Children, and a Director of the Crystal Spring Water Company. He has also been a member of the School Board and Town Council of this city.
His wife, whom he married in 1848, was Esther W. Wadhams, a daughter of the late Samuel Wadhams, of Plymouth, one of the earliest of the Shawneeites (a descendant of John Wadhams, who came to America in 1650, and settled in Wethersfield, Con- necticut), and sister of ex-State Senator Elijah C. Wadhams and Calvin Wadhams, Esq., of Wilkes-Barre. Mr. and Mrs. Shce- maker have one son and five daughters living. The son, Levi, is a graduate of Yale, and the eldest daughter, Clorinda, is the wife of Irving A. Stearns, the well known civil and mining engineer of this city. His third daughter, Caroline I., married William G. Phelps, a son of John C. Phelps, Esq., of this city.
Personally, Mr. Shoemaker is universally liked. He has a - temper which it seems impossible to ruffle, a genial good nature that is pictured in a pair of the merriest, twinkling eyes, and a countenance almost constantly wreathed in smiles. With such a disposition, an excellent though far from bulky physique, a family of whom any father might be proud, and a handsome in- come, he bids fair to live to an honored and contented old age.
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SAMUEL McCARRAGHER.
SAMUEL McCARRAGHER.
The erect bearing and elasticity of step of Samuel McCarragher would lead few to suppose that he is in his sixty-fourth year, but the fact is he was born in Princeton, N. J., on November 10th, 1818. His father was John McCarragher, whose birthplace was in the County Tyrone, Ireland, and who emigrated to this coun- try just two years before Samuel was born. When the latter was a boy of six, the parents removed to Wilkes-Barre, where Mr. McCarragher has chiefly resided since. His preliminary educa- tion was had at the old Wilkes-Barre Academy, from whence he was sent to Lafayette College, where he graduated. He read law with Hon. Luther Kidder, and was admitted to the bar November 7th, 1842, or within three days of his twenty-fourth birthday. In 1847-48 he was District Attorney, or, more prop- erly, Deputy Attorney General for Luzerne, by appointment of the then Governer, Shunk. A year later he was elected, as a Democrat, Clerk of the Courts of Quarter Sessions and Oyer Terminer, and of the Orphans' Court, which offices he held for three years. On January 22d, 1851, he married Eliza G. Simp- son, by whom he has had four children, only one of whom, a daughter, is still living. Mr. McCarragher left the Democratic party in 1856, and has ever since affiliated politically with the Republicans. He has been fortunate in a worldly way, having accumulated considerable property, and has thereby been enabled o retire from the active practice of his profession. He enjoys the high esteem of all his neighbors and acquaintances.
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STEUBEN JENKINS.
STEUBEN JENKINS.
Steuben Jenkins, lawyer, farmer, historian, and antiquarian, is one of the best known, and certainly one of the most useful men in Luzerne county. His ancestry on both sides was from New England. His paternal great-grandfather was John Jenkins, Sr., who, though born in Kingston, R. I., came to Wyoming from Colchester, Conn., with the first company of settlers under the King Charles II. grant, in 1762, as the first general agent of the settlement, an appointment conferred upon him by the Connect- icut Susquehanna Company. He made the discovery of coal at Wyoming in 1762, and reported the same to the company, who, at their meeting at Windham, April 17, 1763, voted to "reserve for the use of the company all beds and mines of iron ore and coal that may be within the towns ordered for settlement." He was a surveyor and conveyancer by profession, and made its first surveys; drafted most or all of its early public documents; was its first magistrate or justice of the peace, and its first presid- ing or chief judge of court; and was five times sent as its repre- sentative to the Colonial Assembly of Connecticut. Wyoming was then called Westmoreland, and made part of Litchfield county, Conn .- a circumstance which may seem a little strange to this generation. He it was who presided at a "town meeting legally warned," as the following from Miner's "History of Wyoming" attests:
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