Genealogical and family history of the Wyoming and Lackawanna valleys, Pennsylvania, Volume I, Part 50

Author: Hayden, Horace Edwin
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: New York, Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 988

USA > Pennsylvania > Genealogical and family history of the Wyoming and Lackawanna valleys, Pennsylvania, Volume I > Part 50
USA > Wyoming > Genealogical and family history of the Wyoming and Lackawanna valleys, Pennsylvania, Volume I > Part 50

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

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THE WYOMING AND LACKAWANNA VALLEYS.

cepted Masons, of Kingston. He and his family are members of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, of Wilkes-Barre. He was formerly a member of the Kingston Methodist Episcopal Church and superintendent of the Sunday school, and is a member of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society.

Mr. Coughlin married, December 26, 1878, at Kingston, Pennsylvania. Mary E. Welter, born November 10, 1853, daughter of Joseph F. and Barbara (Lawrence) Welter. She taught school in Dallas, later in Kingston borough up to 1876, and graduated from Wyoming Seminary, 1878. She also became proficient in art and painting. Their children are: Ellen Martin, born December 13, 1879, a graduate of Wellesley College, Massa- chusetts, class of 1902; Florence Rowena, born December 21, 1881, died May 8, 1833 ; Clarence D., born July 27, 1883, a graduate of Harvard College, class of 1905; James Martin, Jr., born February 15. 1886, a student at Cornell Univer- sity : Joseph Welter, born September 29, 1889, a student at the city high school, Wilkes-Barre ; Mildred Marion, born July 16, 1892; Hale Sew- ard, born September 7. 1894; Robert Lawrence, born March 24, 1900.

Joseph F. Welter, father of Mrs. James M. Coughlin, was born in Warren county, New Jer- sey, October 27, 1828, son of Conrad and Mary (Fulkerson) Welter. Conrad Welter was born near Hackettstown, New Jersey, 1799, a son of Jacob Welter, who was a son of Henry Welter, who was born in Germany, 1735, enlisted in May, 1775, in the war of the Revolution from Roxbury, Morris county, New Jersey, under Colonel John M. Helme, and served three years. July 24, 1832, at the age of ninety-nine years, he applied for a pension and the claim was allowed. After the war he settled at Foxhill. New Jersey, and fol- lowed the occupation of farmer. He died in 1839, having attained the extreme old age of one hundred and four years. Conrad Welter (grand- father) was a farmer by occupation ; he died at the age of eighty-seven years and five months. His wife, Mary (Fulkerson) Welter, died at the age of forty years.

Joseph F. Welter, son of Conrad, was edu- cated in a private school in the neighborhood of his home, and was a farmer. In 1856 he re- moved to Pennsylvania, and settled in Avoca, Luzerne county. In 1859 he moved to Or- ange; in 1866 to Dallas, and in 1871 to Kingston township, now Dorranceton borough, where for many years he has led a retired life. He was appointed a member of the first borough council, served twelve years, and as assessor two

terms. He has also taken an active interest in the public schools and served at times as a school director. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church of Kingston, has held the office of trustee thirty years, served on the board of stewards ten years, has been class leader and sup- erintendent, librarian and secretary of the Sunday school. He married, January 1, 1850, Barbara Lawrence, born April 11, 1828, daughter of Jolin. and Mary (Labar) Lawrence, the former a farmer in Bushkill, Pike county, Pennsylvania,. and died aged seventy-six years, the latter dying at the age of seventy years. They had six chil- dren : Alvan, born November 26, 1850, died 1878; Mary, born November 10, 1853, the wife of James M. Coughlin ; Horace, born March 1, 1857, died in infancy ; Joshua Lewis, born February 23, 1858, see below; Rosa, born July 24. 1860, died 1861 ; Edith, born September 23, 1868, died June 10, 1897 ; she was a graduate in art in Wyoming Seminary, and married Harry D. Flanagan, of Kingston, Pennsylvania, cashier of the First Na- tional Bank of Nanticoke. Mr. Flanagan is a member of the State Bank Association, the Methodist Episcopal church, Free and Accepted Masons and Knights Templar of Wilkes-Barre. Mr. Flanagan and his wife were the parents of two children: Ruth and Dorothy, the latter of whom died in infancy.

Joshua Lewis Welter, fourth child of Joseph F. and Barbara (Lawrence) Welter, was edu- cated in the public school of Luzerne borough ; Wyoming Seminary, graduating in 1878; and Syracuse University, New York, graduating in: 1882. He is now head of the chemistry depart- ment in the high school of Wilkes-Barre, Penn- sylvania. Mr. Welter was for years instructor in mathematics in the Colorado State School of Mines at Golden, Colorado. He returned to. Wyoming Valley and studied law with Edwin P. and J. Vaughan Darling, and was admitted to- the bar of Luzerne county, June 6, 1885. He is a member of the Wyoming Historical and Geo- logical Society, was for years Curator of Palae- ontology, and is now Curator of Palaeozology in: that society. H. E. H.

SAMUEL LE ROI BROWN, a leading- merchant of Wilkes-Barre, and head of the oil house of S. L. Brown & Co., was born in the- village of Pleasant Mount, Wayne county, Penn- sylvania, February 5. 1833. His life history is- prolific in suggestion and encouragement to- aspiring youth, and is particularly remarkable- and instructive as illustrating the power of a: resolute character in the face of disaster and ob-

Very Truly yours S. L. Brown

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stacles sufficient to discourage, if not appal, the stoutest heart. He is descended from New Eng- land ancestors who were of English origin. His paternal grandmother was a cousin of John Han- cock, of Massachusetts, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas Hancock Brown, father of Samuel L. R. Brown, was a native of Stonington, Con- necticut. In early life he removed to Otsego county, New York, where he remained until 1822, when he married Lucy Howe, a native of Danbury, Connecticut, and they removed to Pleasant Mound, Pennsylvania, where he was successfully engaged for many years in general merchandise and in the saddlery and harness business, being at that period the largest manu- facturer in that section of the state, his trade ex- tending from Binghamton, New York, to Coch- ecton on the Delaware, as also through the then extensive lumber regions on the Delaware river, and where the remainder of his life was spent. Mr. Brown was brought up among Quakers, and the moral and practical tone imparted to his char- acter by his early association with these worthy people exerted a most benign and favorable in- fluence upon his entire subsequent life. His business career was marked by the highest probity and integrity, was remarkably successful, and in every respect a model worthy of the closest imi- tation. The old family homestead of his parents at Pleasant Mount is still in the possession of his so11, Samuel Le Roi Brown, also the parental farm. and both are preserved in good condition by the, present owner. In 1872 Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H. Brown celebrated their golden wed- ding with an unbroken family circle. He died in 1878, at the age of eighty years, and his wife passed away six years later, aged eighty-five years.

Samuel Le Roi Brown began to attend school at the early age of three years, and terminated his studies at the age of thirteen, with the con- sent of his father. Having a decided inclination toward commercial life, he at once found employ- ment as junior clerk in a store at Pleasant Mount and developed such a remarkable aptitude for business that at the expiration of the first three months he was put in full charge of the books. His salary to begin with was $50.00. a year, but the third year it was raised to $150.00, and out of this limited compensation a small portion was saved each year. At the close of the fourth year he accepted a clerkship in the largest store at Honesdale, Pennsylvania, but two years later ill health forced him to resign. Upon recovery he spent two years at Burrows Hollow, in the large

general store conducted by Judge Burrows, one of of the most worthy residents of that section, and that time doing the largest business of any house in Susquehanna county. In 1853 young Brown, now nearing manhood, engaged in a general mer- chandising business with his elder brother, H. W. Brown, at Pleasant Mount. Six years later he assumed charge of a branch of the business, then established at Herrick Center, and gave it his personal attention for a period of four years. In both of these stores he retained an interest, the latter named being conducted under the style of S. L. Brown & Company. In 1863 Mr. Brown purchased a tannery property at Pleasant Mount. which afterward became known as the Pleasant Mount Tannery. This establishment was con- verted by him into a sole leather tannery, and for several years was conducted with remarkable success. The great decline in prices which took place in 1866 and 1867 seriously interfered with this era of prosperity, and Mr. Brown was forced to succumb after carrying his extensive stock nearly twenty months. This unfortunate cir- cumstance cost him the sum of $60,000, and even his household goods were swept away in the financial disaster. It was a startling experience for the careful merchant to see the results of twenty years' prudent saving and unremitting labor vanish into nothingness through causes over which he could exert no control. But al- though the blow was a severe one, his business instincts were not demoralized, and without wasting any time in futile grief, he resolutely re- entered the business field, determined if possible to conquer adverse fate.

Mr. Brown secured a position as traveling salesman for the wholesale grocery firm of Weed, Avers & Co., of Binghamton, New York, with whom he remained for six months, in the mean- time removing his residence to the city named. The vocation of traveling salesman not being congenial to him, however, he accepted a position as bookkeeper and general manager of the whole- sale department of the firm of Conyngham & Paine, of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a concern then conducting several thriving stores in various parts of the county, and doing a business of nearly $1,000,000 annually, and for ten years re- mained in their service. In 1879, when this firm was dissolved, Mr. Brown was again the posses- sor of considerable capital. He purchased a plot of ground on Market street, the same being a portion of the site now covered by the large block which bears his name (which is two hun- dred feet square, four stories high, completed in 1886, but in 1900 was torn down by a cyclone, but

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rebuilt by him in one hundred days), having a frontage of one hundred and fifty-four feet on Market street and two hundred feet on the Le- higli Valley Railroad, and established thereon a general wholesale oil business, which from the beginning was a marked success. The site of this imposing structure is one which is admir- ably adapted for a large wholesale business, being in the immediate neighborhood of. and having track connections with four lines of railroads, and otherwise favorably located. Mr. Brown early perceived its great advantages, and it speaks volumes for his business shrewdness to record the fact that on the same day the announcement was made of the dissolution of the firm employ- ing him, he was negotiating for its purchase. The present firm of S. L. Brown & Co. is the most extensive oil house in northeastern Penn- sylvania, and his partners in it are his cousin, IV. W. Brown, and his eldest son, T. W. Brown. His younger son, Russell S. Brown, was in charge of a branch establishment at Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, but is now in Phillipsburg. The business of the house, although chiefly local, is very large, comprising as it does almost all of the oil trade of the Wyoming Valley region. A further illustration of Mr. Brown's excellent bus- iness judgment and methods is afforded by his experience in "Brown's Book Store," in Wilkes- Barre, a property which he purchased in 1876, and made a success of, notwithstanding the fact that hc gave it but little personal attention, and that his four predecessors in ownership had failed in the same establishment.

In 1887 Mr. Brown became interested in de- veloping coal lands at Mill Creek. Luzerne county, where he, with other capitalists, organ- ized the Keystone Coal Company with a capital of $300,000, of which he was chosen president. Mr. Brown is a large owner of the stock of this company. He was also one of the organizers and a director of the Langcliffe Coal Company, lo- cated at Pleasant Valley. Pennsylvania, with a capital of $300,000: a new breaker was com- pleted in 1890 which had a capacity of from six hundred to eight hundred tons per day, and in 1900 the Langcliffe Coal Company leased these mines. Since 1886 Mr. Brown has been a di- rector in the First National Bank of Wilkes- Barre, a position to which he was elected without his knowledge. He is also a director in the Hazard Manufacturing Company, (of which he has been secretary and treasurer since 1899) ( wire rope works) of Wilkes-Barre, which is the second in size in the country, ranking immed- iately after the Roebling works at Trenton, New

Jersey. He was a director in the Wilkes-Barre Electric Light Company, which was run to good avantage, and sold out at a profit to the Wilkes- Barre Gas Company. He was one of the organ- izers of the board of trade of Wilkes-Barre, in which he held the offices of trustee and first vice- president for twenty years, then tendering his resignation. He is a life member and trustee of the Wyoming Historical and Geological So- ciety, one of the oldest and most reputable scien- tific bodies of the Wyoming Valley and of Penn- sylvania. He takes a deep interest in church work, is one of the incorporated trustees of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Central Penn- sylvania, a member of the Board of Missions, and warden of St. Stephen's Church. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. For forty years Mr. Brown has been a total abstainer from liquors, and he is well known as a believer in temperance and a supporter of temperance movements. He is a Democrat in politics. He has been a member of the Masonic order for fifty years, joining Lodge No. 218, at Honesdale, Pennsylvania, 1855. He is a member of the Westmoreland Club.

Mr Brown has achieved his business suc- cesses wholly independent of speculation, which he has conscientiously avoided. Every dollar he possesses has been earned in open and legiti- mate business enterprises, honorably conducted in every detail. No better proof of the innate hon- csty of the man can be adduced than the fact that he has voluntarily paid off debts, aggregating $14.000, from which he was legally relieved at the time of his bankruptcy in 1869. He is quick to perceive the merits of new inventions and ap- pliances and never hesitates to adopt the most modern. He was the first merchant in Wilkes- Barre to make connection with the telephone ex- change for business purposes. He was also the first to introduce incandescent lighting. putting into his establishment a private plant which is still in use in the block. He was the first to em- ploy steam elevators. supplying his block with six of the most approved design. In many other ways he has shown that he is a progressive type of citizen and business man. not only willing but anxious to keep fully abreast of the times. It is rarely that there is compressed into the record of one business life so many and such varying ex- periences. Beginning as a clerk, at the age of thirteen years, he succeeded and without assist- ance, save that which is open to any ambitious spirit and tactful judgment in this great country of ours, in securing for himself a leading position in commercial life and acquiring a snug com- petence. Then. in a new enterprise. offering

W TEather "

Res. A. Reichard

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still higher business rewards, and during several years seeming to fully justify the offer, he meets reverses from causes arising exclusively out of the general business conditions of the country, loses all and goes back to the duties of a wage earner. In a comparatively few years more, how- ever, we find him once again established on his own account, the responsible head of several large enterprises and a promoter of and assistant in others, in possession of another snug fixed in- come, a leading man in the industrial, religious and social world about him. In the midst of his struggle to regain the lost ground, he loses his efficient wife and helpmeet. The qualities re- quisite to the surmounting of the difficulties, the heroic meeting of the misfortunes and ultimate recovery therefrom, with restoration of fortune wholly lost, are those upon which progressive communities and successful states are builded. Honesty, untiring industry, readiness in the per- ception of the value that is in new things and courage in applying them, these are the import- ant, the essential factors that are conspicuous among the characteristics of Mr. Brown which are commended to the young of the land, who have a genuine ambition to become something more than mere "hewers of wood and drawers of water" as a necessary equipment for the attain- ment of their goal.

Mr. Brown married in 1855. Miss Almira ·Gritman, of Carbondale, Pennsylvania, daughter of William C. Gritman, a physician, who prac- ticed successfully there for a number of years, dying at the age of eighty, and a sister of P. C. Gritman, a prominent lawyer of Carbondale. The issue of this marriage was seven children. the sole survivors being the two sons previously mentioned, T. W., who married Emily P. Fos- ter, daughter of Thomas L. Foster, who was president of the Second National Bank of Mauch Chunk ; and Russell S., who has charge of three telephone stations in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Brown, the mother of these children, died in 1871. In 1877 Mr. Brown married Miss El- len May Woodward Chapman, daughter of Judge J. W. Chapman, of Montrose, Pennsylvania, formerly associate justice of the Thirty-fourth judicial district of Pennsylvania. Judge Chap- man was a prominent factor in politics, was fre- quently called the father and later the grand- father of the Republican party, and for many years edited the most prominent Republican pa- per in Susquehanna county. He was a civil en- gineer by profession and followed the same up to 1886. He died in 1888, at the advanced age "of eighty-eight years. Mr. Brown has a book on

engineering used by Judge Chapman and his father, which was printed in 1784, and from this book he received his first lesson in surveying, and later his son did likewise. Three sons were the issue of this marriage: Carlton Conyngham, connected with the Manganese Steel Safe Com- pany, manufacturers of safes ; he married Flor- ence E. Casey, of New York City. Robert Chapman, who resides at home. Stanley Ward- well, a student at Lehigh University, class of 1907, pursuing a course in mechanical engineer- ing. Mrs. Brown, the mother of these three sons, died May 3, 1905, aged fifty-five years.

H. E. H.

COLONEL GEORGE N. REICHARD, of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, is a native of that city, born October 13, 1834, son of Judge John and Wilhelmina (Schrader) Reichard. The fam- ilies of which he is a representative in both par- ental lines were of early establishment in Penn- sylvania, and its members were among the indus- trial pioneers of the Wyoming Valley.

(I) John Reichard (father) was born in Frankenthal, Rhenish Bavaria, May 24, 1807, a son of George Reichard, keeper of the Red Lion Inn, on the public square of that city. In 1833, when twenty-six years old. John Reichard emi- grated to the United States and came to Lower Smithfield township, Northampton county, Penn- sylvania, where he resided for a year with George F. Bamberger, deceased, for many years a resi- dent of Wilkes-Barre, who was from his native town, and had then been in the country about three years. In 1834 Mr. Reichard located perma- nently in Wilkes-Barre, where he engaged in the brewing business. The beginning of the brewery was made by Thomas Ingham, on River street, below Union, in the days when all the materials used were wagoned from Philadelphia. Ingham was succeeded by Christian Reichard (a cousin of John Reichard), who conducted the business until 1834, when it was purchased by John Reichard. John Reichard materially enlarged the buildings, and later they were dismantled and the machinery reinstalled in the spacious new structures now occupied by the Pennsylvania Brewing Company, but retains the name of Reichard & Weaver.

John Reichard was not only an enterprising man of business, but he was prominent in com- munity affairs and exercised a potent influence therein. In 1843 he aided in organizing the Wyoming Jaegers, one of the earliest German or- ganizations in Wilkes-Barre, and for many years the most prominent, was elected its first captain, and occupied that position for several years. He

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also aided in organizing the Concordia Society, of which he was the first president, was an honorary member of the Saengerbund, and was a member of various social organizations. He was post- master in Wilkes-Barre in 1853 and 1854. In 1861 (November 23), he was commissioned an associate judge of the Luzerne county courts. In 1867 he was appointed by President Johnson to the United States consulship at Ravenna, Italy. For the more than half a century during which Captain Reichard (as he was more frequently called than by his judicial title), was active in business and public affairs, his honesty and in- tegrity were never questioned, and he was held in honor as one of the city's useful citizens. Dur- ing his later years he spent much of his time in the land of his nativity, and died while on a re- turn voyage home ( his twenty-seventh across the Atlantic), and was brought to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and buried. In April, 1833, the year in which he engaged in business in Wilkes- Barre, he married Wilhelmina Schrader, who was also a native of Frankenthal, Bavaria, a daughter of Nicholas Schrader, and who died October 3, 1874. Her family figured conspicuously in the early history of the valley, one of its members be- ing Captain Philip Schrader, who was with Gen- eral Sullivan as captain-lieutenant of the German Battalion in the expedition against the Indians in 1779 .. John Reichard, Jr., son of John Reich- ard, had in his possession (and they are still in the family), various commissions issued to Cap- tain Philip Schrader : As captain-lieutenant, June 16, 1779; captain of a company of rangers, Sep- tember 10, 1781 : captain in the corps of infantry commanded by Major James Moore. September 25, 1783 ; and one as a justice of the peace of Northampton county, April 1, 1806. Judge John and Wilhelmina (Schrader) Reichard had sixteen children, eight of whom grew to matur- ity, and the following named survived their father: Colonel George N. Reichard. see for- ward; Henry Colt. married Jenny. daughter of Elias Griffin : John, married Eliza C., daughter of Gould P. Parrish : Charles Wolf. married Car- rie E., daughter of David C. Harrington ; Alber- tina L., deceased, married the late J. H. Swover : Catherine F., of Wilkes-Barre, married C. H. Leonard, deceased ; Helena, married the late M. A. Holmes, and second wife of J. H. Swoyer ; Julia, deceased, married Colonel E. A. Hancock, of Philadelphia (See sketch elsewhere in this work), and who is survived by a son, James Han- cock, a graduate of Princeton University, class of 1883.

(II) Colonel George Nicholas Reichard,

eldest child of Judge John and Wilhelmina (Schrader) Reichard, received his preliminary education in private schools, and pursued ad- vanced branches in Deacon Dana's Academy in Wilkes-Barre. On leaving school he entered upon clerical work in his father's brewery, and was thus engaged at the outbreak of the rebellion. When President Lincoln issued his first call for seventy-five thousand men, in April, 1861, Mr. Reichard was among the first to respond, and at once recruited a company which was mustered into the service of the United States as Company G, Eighth Regiment Pennsyl- vania Volunteer Infantry, and of which he was elected and commissioned captain. At the ex- piration of his term of service he returned home, and shortly afterward aided in recruiting Com- pany C, One Hundred and Forty-third Pennsyl- vania Regiment, being elected and commissioned in the same rank as in the three months' service. He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel just after the battle of the Wilderness, May 5-6. 1864, served with that rank during the remainder of the war and was honorably discharged June 12, 1865. two months after the cessation of hostilities and the disbandment of the rebel armies. His service had this covered the entire civil war period, and he had participated in many of the most mo- mentous campaigns and desperate battles of that stupendous conflict. He was engaged in all the battles with his regiment, among which were Fitz Hugh Creek, Pollock's Mill Creek. Chancellors- ville, Gettysburg, and the Mine Run compaign ; also the battles in the Wilderness, Laurel Hill, Spottsylvania, North Anna, Bethesda Church, Cold Harbor, Weldon Railroad, Hatcher's Run. and other minor engagements. In the movements against Richmond, the rebel capital, in 1864, and the storming of Petersburg, June 18, he was also. an active participant. He was twice wounded- at Gettysburg, and in the charge at Petersburg.

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Genealogical and family history of the Wyoming and Lackawanna valleys, Pennsylvania, Volume I, Part 50

Author: Hayden, Horace Edwin Publication date: 1906 Publisher: New York, Chicago, The Lewis publishing company Number of Pages: 988

Author: Hayden, Horace Edwin
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: New York, Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 988