History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 80

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 1314

USA > Pennsylvania > Fayette County > History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 80

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A new field of operations was about that time opened to men of strong arms and unflinching courage, and Ile was one of the original stockholders (1863) of the First National Bank of Uniontown, of which he organization of that institution. He was nominated as the Republican candidate for representative to the Legislature in 1873, but hesitated to accept the nomina- tion, as it was generally thought there was no chance of electing a Republican candidate in a county which usually gives one thousand Democratic majority, but finally consenting, was elected by one thousand and thirty-one majority, his opponent on the Democratic ticket being Col. Alexander J. Hill. He was one of the first directors of the Uniontown and West Vir- ginia Railroad Company, and after the resignation of G. A. Thomson was elected president. He has also been president of the Uniontown Building and Loan he determined to meet the red man on his own battle- field. Inclination, if not duty, pointed to the choice ' is now president, and has been a director since the soil of Kentucky, and Mr. Thompson's grandfather, together with his wife, and about a half-dozen, fam- ilies, nearly all immediate relatives, pushed their way through the wilderness, and joined Boone in his ag- gressive conflict, and continued companions in the struggle till possession was established. There the grandfather of Mr. Thompson passed the remainder of his life, dying in Mason County, where his young- est son, Andrew Finly Thompson, father of Jasper Markle, was born in 1791. Andrew and his three older brothers served through the war of 1812, An- drew being taken prisoner on the occasion of Hull's surrender. Being released, near the present site of

thaton

351

UNIONTOWN BOROUGH.

Association from its organization to the present time, it having a capital of two hundred thousand dollars ; also was one of the originators of the Fayette County Agricultural Association, and has been president thereof from its organization. He has been a mem- ber of the Presbyterian Church of Uniontown for over thirty years, a ruling elder for about twenty years; was commissioner from Redstone Presbytery to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church which met in Albany, N. Y., in 1868, and again at Madison, Wis., in 1880, and is a director in the West- ern Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church at Allegheny City, Pa.

Mr. Thompson was married in 1846 to Eliza Ca- ruthers, youngest daughter of Samuel Caruthers, of Sewiekly township, Westmoreland Co., Pa., a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church of Sewickly, and whose mother, Catharine Potter, was the daughter of Lieut. John Potter, and sister of Gen. James Potter, the intimate and trusted friend of Gen. Washington in Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary war. Mr. Thompson has two daughters, who received their edu- cation at the Female Seminary in Washington, Pa. The oldest, Ruth A., was married in 1875 to Dr. J. T. Shepler, now of Dunbar. The second, Lenora M., was married to John A. Niccolls, a merchant, in 1873, and resides at Irwin Station, Westmoreland Co. He has also two sons, -William M. and Josiah V.,- who graduated together from Washington and Jeffer- son College, at Washington, Pa., in 1871. William lives with his father, and manages his farm of over six hundred and fifty aeres. The younger, Josiah V., was chosen teller in the First National Bank of Uniontown in April, 1872, and elected cashier in 1877, when twenty-two years of age, and now holds this position, this bank doing the largest banking business done in the county, and being one of the most successful.

Mr. Thompson was one of the successful presidential electors (on the Republican ticket) in the campaign of 1872, resulting in Gen. Grant's second election.

Mr. Thompson in his youth attended only the common schools, but with a sagacity and foresight commendable, as his success in life has demonstrated to the consideration of the youth of the present day, improved his spare hours of daylight, and occupied most of his nights not devoted to sleep to acquiring what knowledge he could through books.

ALFRED PATTERSON.

Among the now departed sons of Fayette County the lives of whom shed upon her a special lustre, was the eminent lawyer and cultivated gentleman, Alfred Patterson, who died in Natchitoches, La., when on a visit to his daughter there, Dec. 16, 1878, be having reached her residence only three or four days before his death.

Mr. Patterson was born in Menallen township, Dec.

24, 1807, and was of Scotch-Irish descent. His re- mote immigrant ancestor settled in Lancaster County, Pa. His grandfather was John Patterson, who came into Fayette County from Dauphin County at an early day and took up his abode in Menallen town- ship. He had a large number of children, most of whom eventually became scattered in the then far-off, growing West. But John, the father of Alfred, re- mained upon the old homestead until Alfred was sev- eral years old, when he sold the farm and purchased a plantation near Wellsburg, West Virginia, whereon he lived until his death.

John Patterson, who married Rebecca Oliphant, had four sons and four daughters. Of the sons, An- drew O. Patterson became the once-noted Rev. Dr. Patterson of the Presbyterian order; and Thomas M. a physician, who settled in Louisiana and acquired great wealth ; John E. died young; and of Alfred we are to speak more specially farther on. The daughters all married and died in middle life.

Alfred was brought up in boyhood on the farm in Menallen and on the plantation near Wellsburg, and was carefully instructed and finally sent to Jefferson College, Washington County, and graduated from that institution about 1828. He then studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Westmoreland County, and soon after moved to Uniontown, where he entered upon the practice of his profession, which he pursued with such zeal and marked ability that he rapidly rose to the leadership of the bar of the county, which he con- tinued to hold during his residence in Fayette County. Having while residing in Uniontown acquired large business interests in Pittsburgh, he removed to that city about 1865 and organized the Pittsburgh National Bank of Commerce, and was elected its first president, and was chosen president at all its successive elec- tions of officers while he lived.

Mr. Patterson was as distinguished as a business man as he had been as a lawyer. No eulogy here could add to the brightness of the fame he enjoyed when living, or monody fitly sound the regret with which all who knew him received the announcement of his sudden death.

In 1834, Mr. Patterson married Miss Caroline White- ley, daughter of Col. Henry Whiteley, of Delaware, and who died May 7, 1869. They were the parents of seven children,-Henry W., who in 1866 married Miss Louisa C. Dawson, daughter of Hon. John L. Dawson, of Fayette County, and who died in 1875, leaving a son, Henry W., and in January, 1880, mar- ried Miss Anna T., daughter of George P. Hamilton, Esq., of Pittsburgh ; Mary C., wife of George Dawson, a native of Fayette County, now residing in Louisiana ; Catharine W., who died in infancy ; John Russell, who was drowned in the Monongahela River while skating about 1858, aged twenty-two years; Virginia, wife of William H. Baily, residing in Minneapolis, Minn .; Elizabeth, wife of Samuel H. Jacobus, of Allegheny City ; and Ella R., of the same city.

352

HISTORY OF FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

ALFRED HOWELL, EsQ.

Prominent among the lawyers of Fayette County stands Alfred Howell, for a period of thirty-five years identified with the interests and progress of Union- town, where he resides. Mr. Howell is a native of Philadelphia, and was born in the year 1825, of Qua- ker stock, both his paternal and maternal ancestry tracing their lines through the time of William Penn back for an indefinite period among the Quakers of Wales. Benjamin B. Howell, his father, theu a mer- chant, removed with his family to New York City in the year 1830-31, where young Howell was sent to pre- paratory school, and eventually, at the age of fourteen, entered Columbia College, and there continued until well advanced in the sophomore class. Meanwhile his father had qnitted merchandise and entered upon the development of iron and coal industries near Cum- berland, Md., having enlisted with himself several English capitalists. Having occasion to visit Eng- land on business, he took passage, in March, 1841, on board the ill-fated ocean steamer "President," which foundered at sea, no tidings of her or any of her human cargo having ever been had. The sndden and great calamity of the loss of his father necessi- tated young Howell's withdrawal from college, after which he soon entered as a student at law in the office of Graham & Sandfords, counselors-at-law and so- licitors in chancery, a distinguished firm, the Sand- fords afterwards having been both elevated to the bench. With these gentlemen, and their successors in partnership with Mr. Graham, Messrs. Murray Hoffman and Joseph S. Bosworth (both subsequently becoming judges), Mr. Howell remained till 1845, enjoying the good fortune of the eminent tutelage of this remarkable combination of legal talent, when he migrated to Uniontown, and finished his legal studies in the office of his uncle, Joshua B. Howell, then a : leading lawyer, and was admitted to the bar in 1847. In 1851 he entered into partnership with Mr. Howell, and continued with him until the fall of 1861, when Mr. Howell, having raised the Eighty-fifth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, and being commissioned its colonel, entered into the war of the Rebellion, wherein he became exceptionally distinguished, and was killed near Petersburg, in September, 1864, by being thrown from his horse in the night-time.

After Col. Howell's entry into the army, Mr. How- ell succeeded to the business of the partnership, and has ever since continued the practice of the law, conducting a large and laborious business with con- scientious fidelity to his clients, earning honorable distinction and a goodly fortune.

He has been more or less engaged in important business enterprises, among which may be men- tioned the projection, in 1866, about what was then known as Dawson's Station, on the line of the Pitts- burgh and Connellsville Railroad, of a village, now incorporated as the borough of Dawson, on a tract of land there lying, and of which he about that time

came into possession. He caused the tract to be duly surveyed and laid out into building lots, and so con- ducted his enterprise as in the course of a few years to erect a prosperous and desirable village, with churches, public schools, etc., upon what was before, and but for his business foresight and energy would have remained, merely an uninhabitable portion of an old farm. He has occasionally engaged in the purchase and sale of real estate, particularly dealing in coal lands, with profitable results, and taken active part with others in supplying the county with local railways, which have been the means of developing the treasures of rich coal-mines and of otherwise en- hancing the wealth of the county.

Mr. Howell became a communicant, in his early manhood, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and has ever since continued active connection there- with, and occupies the position of senior warden.

Mr. Howell was, in the year 1853, united in mar- riage with Miss Elizabeth Jennings Dawson, daughter of Mr. George Dawson, of Brownsville, Fayette Co. Mrs. Howell died in 1869, leaving six children, one of whom, a daughter, died in 1878. Of the five now living, the elder son, George D., is at this time (1882) a member of the senior class of Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., intending, after his graduation there, to study law with his father.

HON. CHARLES E. BOYLE.

Charles E. Boyle, one of the most prominent mem- bers of the Fayette County bar, was born in Uniontown, Feb. 4, 1836, and is the son of Bernard Boyle, whose father, also Bernard Boyle, emigrated from Ireland. Mr. Boyle, the father of Charles E., died near New Market, in Virginia, when Charles was only three years old, leaving a family of four children, of whom Charles E. was the youngest. In his boyhood he at- tended the common schools, and also for a time Madi- son College, and thereafter took a conrse of studies in Waynesburg College, Greene County.

While attending school Mr. Boyle spent somewhat of his time in and about the printing-office of the Cumberland Presbyterian, and picked up the art of setting type at nine years of age, and thereafter fol- lowed the business of printing at times previous to attending Waynesburg College, on his return from which he engaged in the same business in the office of the Genius of Liberty. At twenty years of age he became owner of a half-interest in that paper, and three years later the sole owner, and alone conducted it for a year, and sold it to E. G. Roddy in February, 1861. While proprietor of the paper Mr. Boyle was entered as a student at law in the office of Hon. Daniel Kaine, and was finally admitted to the bar in Decent- ber, 1861, and immediately entered into partnership with Mr. Kaine, continning with him till the spring of 1865. The firm enjoyed a practice second in im- portance to none in the county.

G. E. Boyle

Alfred Howell

V. H. I Coupford

353

UNIONTOWN BOROUGH.

In 1862, Mr. Boyle was elected district attorney for Fayette County for the term of three years, before the expiration of which he was elected by the Democratic party a representative to the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, and re-elected the following year, serv- ing in the sessions of 1866-67. In the latter session he was placed npon the Committees of Ways and Means, the General Judiciary, and Federal Relations, the leading committees, the Honse being then two- thirds Republican. The session was a stormy one. Legislation in Pennsylvania at that time, just after the war, ran wild. Laws were enacted en masse. Mr. Boyle strennonsly opposed that kind of legislation, and at the close of the session his Democratic fellow- members presented him with a complimentary service of silver, a testimonial of his acknowledged political leadership. For several years after the close of his legislative services in 1867, Mr. Boyle suffered constant ill health, but nevertheless paid diligent attention to the practice of his profession, and was active in poli- tics. He had been a member of several State Conven- tions of his party prior to that of 1867, of which latter he was made president. This convention nominated Judge Sharswood, now chief justice, for judge of the Supreme Court. In 1868, Mr. Boyle was nominated by his party as its candidate for auditor-general of the State, the Republican party at that time having put in nomination Gen. Hartranft. Hartranft was declared elected by a majority of abont nine thousand in a vote of six hundred and fifty thousand. Mr. Boyle was temporary chairman of the Democratic State Convention in 1871. In 1872 he was a candi- date for nomination to Congress from the Twenty-first District, composed of the counties of Westmoreland, Fayette, and Indiana ; and also in the years 1874-76, and 1878-80, for the same numerical district, then composed of Fayette, Westmoreland, and Greene Connties, and on each occasion carried against ear- nest opposition his own county, Fayette, by majori- ties successively increasing, but failed to secure the nomination of the district, it going to one or other of the other counties. Mr. Boyle was a member of the Democratic National Conventions at St. Louis in 1876, and at Cincinnati in 1880, in both of which he supported the nomination of Gen. Hancock.

In avocations of life other than professional, Mr. Boyle has also had his full share of duties to perform and received his meed of honor. He is one of the State managers of the West Pennsylvania State Hospital, appointed by a Republican Governor ; has for a num- ber of years been a vestryman of St. Peter's Protest- ant Episcopal Church, and a director of the First Na- tional Bank.

sale, as is generally understood, a considerable for- tune each. Mr. Boyle is a solicitor of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, and retained counsel of nearly all the great coke and furnace companies of Fayette County, which companies operate capital of millions of dollars.

Mr. Boyle was married in 1858 to Miss Mary Hen- drickson, of Uniontown, by whom he has had seven children, six of whom are living,-four sons and two daughters.

WILLIAM II. PLAYFORD.

William H. Playford, who in addition to the refu- tation of being an excellent counselor and advocate, enjoys popular distinction as the ablest criminal law- yer at the Fayette County bar, is the son of Dr. Rob- ert W. Playford, who practiced medicine at Browns- ville, Fayette Co., for a period of over forty years, being very successful, partienlarly as a surgeon, his prac- tice extending into adjoining counties. Dr. Playford was a native of London, and a graduate of Eton College, England, He died in 1867, at the age of sixty-eight. About ten years after his arrival in this country he married Margaret A. Shaw, of Fayette County.

William H. Playford, who is one of three children, -one of whom, Dr. R. W. Playford, is now practic- ing medicine in Venango County,-was born in Brownsville, Aug. 31, 1834, attended the common school of his town, and at about fifteen years of age was sent to Dunlap's Creek Academy for two years, where be made studies preparatory to entering the sophomore class of Jefferson College, Canonsburg, in 1851, and graduated from that institution with hon- ors in 1854. In the fall of the same year he went South, and took charge of Waterproof Academy, Tensas Parish, La., for one year, on conclusion of which he returned home, and entered the office of Judge Nathaniel Ewing, of Uniontown, under whose direction he studied law until September, 1857, when he was admitted to the bar, and began the practice of the law. In 1859 he was elected by the Democratic party district attorney of Fayette County for the term of three years, wherein he distinguished him- self. Including the war years 1861-62, as it did, the term was an nnusually laborious one.

Since 1862 he has been connected with nearly every important criminal case in the county. His first im- portant case after 1862 was the widely noted one of Henry B. Mallaby, charged with murdering Joseph Epply at a political meeting in Smithfield, Fayette Co., in 1863, important on account of the political partisanship evinced in the trial. Mr. Playford aided the Commonwealth.

In 1871, Judge A. E. Willson, Hon. W. H. Play- ford, and Mr. Boyle became the owners of a body of valuable coal land in Tyrone township, where they A remarkable case in which Mr. Playford was en- gaged for the defense was that of Mary Houseman, charged with the murder of her husband in 1866, Mr. erected works and engaged in the manufacture of coke until the spring of 1880, when they sold a part of the property to H. C. Frick & Co., realizing by the | Playford securing her acquittal after a confession in

354

HISTORY OF FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

open court by one of her accomplices, Richard Thair- well, who was convicted and hung.

Mr. Playford has taken an active part in politics, and was elected in 1867 a representative to the Gen- eral Assembly of Pennsylvania for Fayette County, and re-elected in 1868. In 1872 he was elected to the State Senate for the district composed of Fayette and Greene Counties, and served the period of three years, being placed on the General Judiciary Com- mittee and the Committee on Finance, In 1874 he was commissioned by the Governor of Pennsylvania, in connection with Chief Justice Agnew, Hon. W. A. Wallace, now ex-United States senator, Benjamin Harris Brewster, now Attorney-General of the United States, and others, to consider and propose amend- ments to the present, then new, constitution of the State. The commission reported to the Legislature a number of amendments which ought, it is generally admitted, to have been, but have not yet been, sub- mitted to the people, it being then considered that the constitution as it stands should be further tested. He was a delegate in the National Democratie Con- vention at Baltimore in 1872, at which Horace Gree- ley was nominated for President, and opposed his nomination throughout the session as bad policy for the party. He has frequently been elected delegate to State Conventions, and was chairman of the Demo- cratie State Convention which met at Lancaster in 1876, and was a candidate for Presidential elector-at- large for the State of Pennsylvania on the Demo- cratie ticket in 1880.

He was married in October, 1861, to Ellen C. - are living, and of whom Senator Schnatterly is the Krepps, daughter of Hon. Solomon G. Krepps, of Brownsville, a leading citizen of that place.

IION. THOMAS BENTON SCHNATTERLY.

One of the most active publie men of Fayette County, and at present and for some years past a successful leading politician, and now having per- haps more promise than any other man of his party in his district, State, senatorial, or congressional, of a sure and distinguished career in the future is Sen- ator Thomas B. Schnatterly. Mr. Schnatterly as a politician has the good sense to follow through oppo- sition and over obloquy the dictates of his hetter man- hood, and boklly and bravely place himself upon the platform of the old-time genuine Democratie prin- ciples, and wage war for the laboring classes, and consequently for the best interests of all classes at last, against the great corporations, with their unlim- ited exchequers at ready command for any scheme of remunerative corruption, and with their autocratic ! aspirations, instead of following the course of too many leading Democrats, as well as Republicans, who either covertly, or openly and shamelessly, sell their talents and consciences to capital in its cause versus righteousness among men. His political foes denounce his course as demagogism. That was to

be expected, but the more of that kind of " dema- gogism" Fayette County and Pennsylvania enjoy the better; the sooner, therefore, will the hideous wages- slavery, as base in many respects as was ever the chattel slavery of the neighboring State of Virginia, and which has made the system practiced by many of the great Pennsylvania corporations objectionable to all right-minded thinkers, be abolished, and true re- publican customs be substituted therefor.

Thomas B. Schnatterly comes of Dutch lineage on his paternal side. His great-grandfather with a num- ber of brothers came from Holland prior to the Revo- lutionary war. A part of them settled in Eastern Pennsylvania, in Lebanon County. Two pushed westward, with the purpose of making homes near the head-waters of the Ohio, but were lost sight of and were perhaps slain by the Indians. Another, the great-grandfather of Senator Schnatterly, eventu- ally settled in Fayette County, in what is now Nich- olson township, and there married and became the father of a son named John, who was the grandfather of Thomas B. Schnatterly. John had by his first wife some eight children; by a second wife one child, a son. Of the first family of children was John Schnatterly, the father of Thomas B. He was born near New Geneva in the year 1805, and at about the age of twenty-two married Miss Malinda Kendall, daughter of Thomas Kendall, then living near Union- town. Mr. and Mrs. John Schnatterly, both enjoying the peace of ripe old age, are the parents of nine chil- dren, seven of whom-four sons and three danghters sixth in number, and was born July 13, 1841. He was brought up on the homestead farm, and was educated at the common schools and Georges Creek Academy (teaching school himself somewhat during this period of his life), and at Madison Institute and Waynesburg College.

After leaving college, at about the age of twenty- two, he entered the office of Col. T. B. Searight, at Uniontown, as a student at law, and was admitted to the bar in December, 1864. In October, 1865, he was elected district attorney for Fayette County for the term of three years, and entered upon official duty in December of the same year, and went out of office in December, 1868. The term was an arduous one, oc- eurring just after the war, and comprising a reign of crime. Special sessions of criminal courts were in those days held to try offenses of high degree. After the term was over he continued the practice of law in Uniontown, and at the October election of 1869 was elected by the Democratic party a member of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania for Fayette County, and served in the session of 1870, and was elected in that year to the General Assembly of 1871, and served therein ; and thereafter, while conducting the practice of law, engaged (in October, 1871) as a contractor in the construction of the Greensburg and Connellsville Division of the Southwest Pennsylvania

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History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 80

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885 Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 1314

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 1314