History of Perry County, Pennsylvania, including descriptions of Indians and pioneer life from the time of earliest settlement, sketches of its noted men and women and many professional men, Part 80

Author: Hain, Harry Harrison, 1873- [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1922
Publisher: Harrisburg, Pa., Hain-Moore company
Number of Pages: 1102


USA > Pennsylvania > Perry County > History of Perry County, Pennsylvania, including descriptions of Indians and pioneer life from the time of earliest settlement, sketches of its noted men and women and many professional men > Part 80


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mob burned the school building, the hospital, and the residence of the minister. The horrible affair happened at Lien Chow, China, a city of twenty thousand inhabitants, about two hundred miles in- land from Canton. John Rogers Peale was from his early years a member of the New Bloomfield Presbyterian Church, and his edu- cation and preparation for the mission field lacked nothing.


On the walls of the New Bloomfield Presbyterian Church, in which he was nurtured, there was placed a handsome bronze tablet in 1906, on which is the inscription :


In Loving Memory of Rev. and Mrs. John Rogers Peale, Who Were Martyred at Lien Chow, China, October 28, 1905.


"I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus."


REV. JOHN KISTLER AND CATHARINE MCCOY KISTLER, PIONEER MISSIONARIES.


Although Rev. Morris Officer had founded the Muhlenberg Mis- sion, the first one in Liberia, on the west coast of Africa, Rev. John Kistler was the first active missionary in that field, sailing late in May, 1863, and serving there until March, 1867, when, broken in health, he returned to his native land. He had married Catha- rine McCoy, of Duncannon, who succumbed September 20, 1866, to the then dreaded African fever, and her remains were laid to rest, the first in the mission cemetery in that far-off land. Catha- rine McCoy was born in Penn Township, and was nurtured in the Duncannon Presbyterian Church. She was the daughter of David and Mary McCoy. Rev. Kistler was a Perry Countian, the son of John and Salome (Tressler) Kistler, of near Loysville. where he was born November 12, 1834. He attended the Loys- ville school and the Loysville Academy, and later the old Markel- ville Academy, then conducted by his uncle, Rev. George Rea, a Presbyterian clergyman. In 1859 he completed the work of both the freshman and sophomore years at Gettysburg College. In 1860 he matriculated at the Susquehanna Missionary Institute, now Sns- quehanna University, at Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1862, as the valedictorian of his class. He was licensed to preach and ordained by the Central Pennsylvania Synod, which met at Newport in May, 1863, after which he sailed as a missionary as stated, the journey consuming seventy-eight days on the ocean. On his return from the mission field, he became super- intendent of the Soldiers' Orphans' Home at Loysville, in Septem- ber, 1867, remaining for two years. In 1869 he became pastor of the Water Street Lutheran Church in Huntingdon County, remain- ing for eight years. In the meantime he organized the First Eng-


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lish Lutheran Church of Tyrone, Pennsylvania, the pastorate of which, in connection with the Sinking Valley Lutheran Church, he also served for six years. During those years he organized the Lutheran Church at Bellwood, Pennsylvania. In November, 1877, he became pastor of the Upper Strasburg Church in Franklin County, which he served for six and a half years while living at Orrstown. In 1844 he became pastor of the Lower Frankford charge, in Cumberland County, with headquarters at Carlisle, but at the end of three years, owing to asthmatic troubles contracted in Africa, he relinquished his work in the pulpit and devoted his time to the sale and distribution of Bibles. This work brought him much to the new and developing town of Riverton, now Lemoyne, in lower Cumberland County, and he organized the Lutheran Church there in 1895, and became its pastor, building a comfort- able brick chapel, but at the expiration of three years again relin- quished pastoral work, owing to a return of the same trouble. After that he did periodical work for the different conferences and synods of his church.


The writer enjoyed his acquaintance and knew him to be a man of strong convictions and unswerving faith, a pioneer in the ten- perance cause. He died at Carlisle, where he resided, September 2, 1910, being survived by his second wife, who was Sarah Swoyer, of Newville, and their three children., Mrs. Glenn V. Brown, Freda and Charles Reuel ; also Harry L., a son by the first marriage.


EMMA MARGARET SMILEY, MISSIONARY.


Emma Margaret Smiley, daughter of Wilson and Sarah ( Hen- derson ) Smiley, was born at Shermansdale, on November 25, 1861. She was educated in the local schools, the McCaskey Select School at Shermansdale, and at the New Bloomfield Academy, followed by a course at the International University at Lebanon, Ohio, where she graduated in the scientific course, getting her B.A. de- gree. She was one of Perry County's efficient teachers of a period which had an unusual number of good teachers. She taught eleven terms. In 1892 an opening to enter the missionary field appeared. To prepare for that work, the following year she attended the school of the Christian and Mission Alliance in New York City (now located at Nyack, New York), under whose auspices she entered the missionary field. She sailed September 8, 1894, arriv- ing at Bombay, India, six weeks later. She mastered the language in about two years and was stationed at Kaira, Guzerat, India. In 1897 a famine in other provinces of India caused many of the al- most starved children to go to Kaira, where Miss Smiley was in charge of the mission. Their swollen abdomens, emaciated faces and listless demeanor were sad to behold. Originally the orphanage had but a few children, but this famine increased the population to


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over four hundred. During a famine in 1900 Miss Smiley's health broke down and she was granted a furlough, but the eve before her intended departure for the States she was stricken with cere- bral hemorrhage and a few hours later, on June 12th, she passed to her reward. Her body was interred in the cemetery at Bom- bay, India, where a marker shows her grave. Emma Margaret Smiley's life was not in vain, for there is record that many of those poor, starved children have become Christian men and women.


REV. JOHN LINN MILLIGAN.


No other American served as chaplain of such a pretentious penal institution as the Western penitentiary at Pittsburgh for such a long period-forty years-as did Rev. John Linn Milligan, na- tive Perry Countian, named after that famous pioneer divine, Rev. John Linn, his ancestor. No other left his impress on such a long line of unfortunates as they again faced the world to begin life anew, or as they silently passed to eternity from prison cells.


John Linn Milligan was the first-born of James and Eleanor (Linn) Milligan, having been born in Ickesburg, July 31, 1837. He was educated in the local schools, the academies at New Bloom- field and Tuscarora (Juniata County), Washington College and Princeton Theological Seminary, graduating from the college in 1860 and from the seminary in 1863. In 1861 the famous Christian Commission, which did such heroic and excellent work during the War between the States, was appointed, and the second name on the Commission was that of John Linn Milligan. It was an organization formed at the call of the Young Men's Christian Association, of New York City, for the purpose of looking after the spiritual and temporal welfare of Union soldiers. Thousands of ministers and the most active laymen of the North worked personally under its direction, on the battlefield, on the march, and in camp and hospital.


Just home from graduation at the seminary, when Lee's army came north and when troops were rapidly being raised to meet the emergency, he enlisted in Company I of the 36th Regiment Penna. Volunteers, and was made captain of his company on July 10, 1863. Soon after the expiration of this three-month term of service, in November, 1863, he was appointed chaplain of the 140th Pennsylvania Volunteers, with which he remained until the war's end, being mustered out May 31, 1865. He came home with his faithful saddle horse, "Appomattox." On many a battlefield he aided the wounded and dying, while exposed to shot and shell. Soon after being mustered out he became pastor of the First Pres- byterian Church at Horicon, Wisconsin, where he remained until February 3, 1869, when he was appointed chaplain of the Western penitentiary of Pennsylvania, located at Allegheny City, now a


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HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA


part of Pittsburgh. He continued there until June, 1909, when he was made chaplain emeritus, owing to his incapacity to fill the duties on account of ill health.


The National Prison Association was organized in 1870, and Mr. Milligan was a charter member and the secretary for eighteen years. In 1908 he was its president. He was a charter member of the Allegheny Prison Society and, after the death of the late Wil- liam Thaw, was its president until his death. He was six times the representative of the United States government at the Interna- tional Prison Congress, having attended the sessions at London, Stockholm, Paris, St. Petersburg, Rome and Budapest. He was stated clerk of the Allegheny Presbytery for thirty-seven years and, upon its consolidation with the Pittsburgh Presbytery in 1906, was elected its first moderator. The Presbytery presented him a handsome loving cup, bearing the names of all its ministers and their churches. His name will ever stand foremost-the most aggressive advocate of prison reform in the United States, and a pioneer along more humane lines of punishment. Much of his time was spent in inducing those who had led clean lives to take an interest in those who had fallen by the way.


He will be remembered as the brother of the late Thomas H. Milligan, who so long conducted a hardware business at Newport. He died, aged 72 years, on July 12, 1909, at the home of Mrs. J. H. Irwin, a sister, at Newport, from the result of an apoplectic stroke, received in his pulpit at the penitentiary on Sunday, Janu- ary 17, 1909. Mrs. H. O. Orris, another sister, also resides at Newport. Among the tributes at his graveside was a wreath of galix leaves, palms and carnations from the prisoners of the West- ern penitentiary, whom he loved and who loved him-in itself a mighty sermon.


REV. JAMES LINN, D.D.


In the Presbyterian Church at Bellefonte. Pennsylvania, a grate- ful congregation has erected to the memory of a native Perry Countian, long their faithful pastor, a tablet bearing this inscrip- tion :


In Memory of Rev. James Linn, D.D., 58 Years Pastor of this Church, Born September 4, 1783. Died February 23, 1868. Faithful-Wise-Meek-Patient Pure-Devout.


Rev. James Linn, son of Rev. John Linn, pioneer pastor of Centre Church, in Perry County, and Mary (Gettys) Linn, was born September 4, 1783. Of all the many ministers born within the limits of what is now Perry County he occupies a distinctive


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place, for during the fifty-eight years of his ministry he was the pastor of but one charge, the longest pastorate of any. James Linn attended the subscription schools of the period, and had the advantage of instruction in the home. He entered Dickinson Col- lege and graduated in the class of 1805. He then began the study of theology with Rev. Williams, of Newville, and on September 27, 1808, was licensed to preach by the Carlisle Presbytery. In later years he spoke of the membership of Carlisle Presbytery as "a noble band of venerable men, and men of talents." In the spring of 1809 he was sent to Spruce Creek and Sinking Valley as a supply for a few times, and then to Bellefonte, which had just be- come vacant. Lick Rim was attached to the Bellefonte appointment. He filled in as a supply for but a few Sundays, when the two churches gave him a call, each to have half of his services and each to pay half his salary. He was released from Lick Run in 1839. as the Bellefonte church had grown from a membership of fifty to five times that number. When he went there the meetings were held in the courthouse, as there was no church, and there he was ordained. During the early years of his ministry he taught in the Bellefonte Academy, and for many years thereafter was presi- dent of its board of trustees. In 1859 the congregation celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his pastorate, and two years later it was noticed that his strength was failing, but his people refused to give him up, and secured an assistant pastor for him. He passed away February 23, 1868. As his strength failed him he dwelt much among the earlier scenes in what is now Perry County and longed for a drink "from the old spring by his father's church" at Centre.


He was twice married. One of his children was Judge Samuel Linn, born February 20, 1820, and elected president judge of the Centre-Clearfield-Clinton District in 1859. Rev. Linn was given the D.D. degree by Dickinson. He was a man of strong indi- viduality and sound judgment, with a rare vein of humor and a cheerful disposition.


REV. THOMAS CREIGH, D.D.


Elsewhere in this book appears the statement that Dr. John Creigh, a practicing physician of Landisburg from 1799 to 1819. moved from that town to Carlisle to educate his children. Rev. Thomas Creigh was one of the children, and was born in Landis- burg, September 9, 1808, his mother having been Eleanor (Duin- bar) Creigh. The family were of German origin, and the name signifies war or warrior. The ancestry had left Germany during the reign of James I and settled in Ireland. Jolin Creigh, the first of the clan in America, settled in Cumberland County and was one of the delegates from Cumberland County to the historic meeting in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia, from June 18, 1776, to June


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25, 1776, which unanimously declared that the Province of Penn- sylvania was from thenceforth a free and independent colony.


Thomas was the seventh child of a family of six sons and four daughters, two others being the noted John D. Creigh, of Califor- nia, and Dr. Alfred Creigh, of Washington, Pennsylvania. Landis- burg at that time having no Presbyterian church the family wor- shiped at Centre Church. The first eleven years of his life were spent in Landisburg, a quiet, sober-minded youth, with a gentle, reserved, serious disposition which adhered to him throughout life. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1828. During his college course he was greatly perplexed over the matter of personal sal- vation, but with its completion joined the Presbyterian Church. He had kept a diary, and in it had promised that if God made him a child of His grace he would consecrate himself to His service. Accordingly, he read under Rev. George Duffield, D.D., and spent two years at Princeton Theological Seminary. On April 12, 1831, he was licensed to preach. He was unanimously called to succeed Rev. David Elliot, another Perry Countian, as pastor of the Upper West Conococheague Church at Mercersburg, and was installed November 17, 1831, being then in but his twenty-third year. This church, then one hundred and six years old, had but four regularly ordained ministers during that time. For forty- eight and one-half years he was the messenger of God unto that people, being their pastor at his death, April 21, 1880. Within four months after his installation one hundred and seven persons had united with the church on profession of faith. He was a man of fine proportions, of the ordinary stature. He was affable, cour- teous, dignified and unassuming. His preaching was evangelical, orthodox and scriptural ; a man of strong faith, much given to prayer and noted for habitual prudence and the purity of his life. He is spoken of "as the Apostle John in the good fellowship of the Presbytery."


He was twice married, his first wife having been Miss Anna Hunter Jacobs, of Churchtown, Lancaster County, and the second, Miss Jane McClelland Grubb, of Mercersburg. Lafayette College honored him with the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1853.


DAVID ELLIOT, D.D., LL.D.


In the chapters relating to Saville Township and in the narrative of Robert Robinson mention is made of an Elliot family, one of whose descendants became a divine of note and for long years held a professorship in the Theological Seminary at Allegheny City. David Elliot was born near what is now Ickesburg, on February 6, 1787, on what later was the Boden farm. When sixteen years old he began attending a classical school in Tuscarora Valley con- ducted by Rev. John Coulter. In 1804 he transferred to a classical


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school at Mifflintown, staying with Rev. Matthew Brown, where he finished his Greek and Latin. In 1805 he became a junior in- structor in Washington College, through the intercession of Rev. Brown, who had resigned his pastorate to become a professor in the same institution and who later became its president. In 1806 he matriculated as a student of Dickinson College and graduated in 1808. In 1811 he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery at Carlisle, and in 1812 received a call to the Upper West Conoco- cheague Church at Mercersburg, where he remained until 1829. He was then called to Washington, Pennsylvania, where he was pastor until 1836. Washington College had been for years almost dormant, and to Rev. Elliot is due principally its rehabilitation. In 1835 the degree of D.D. was conferred on him by Jefferson College at Canonsburg, and in 1847 the degree of LL.D., by Wash- ington College. In 1836, at the call of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, he accepted a professorship at the West- ern Theological Seminary at Allegheny City, where he remained for thirty-four years, until 1870. He was then elected a professor emeritus, serving until his death in 1874.


At a most trying time in 1838 he was moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. Dr. J. I. Brownson, in an address on his life, mentions the opinion of Chief Justice John Bannister Gibson (another Perry Countian) in connection with litigation which reached the Supreme Court. It follows :


"Never did a Presbyterian moderator occupy the chair in so momentous and trying a crisis. Yet there he sat, calin above the tumult, meeting each emergency with instant decision, and yet with an accuracy which, in every instance, received the sanction of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, as expressed in the opinion rendered by one of the ablest judges of this or any other state,-the late Chief Justice John Bannister Gibson.


"That eminent jurist, after a most exhaustive review of the proceedings, -of which the moderator's decisions were often the most vital,-as well as the pleadings, arguments of counsel and the adverse judgments of the Court of Nisi Prius, vindicated each of these decisions separately, as well as all of them conjointly.


"It was just after this searching review that the distinguished chief jus- tice is reported to have said, in conversation with a gentleman of the bar, that Pennsylvania had only missed having the best lawyer in the state, in the person of Dr. Elliot, by his becoming a minister of the gospel."


His father was Thomas Elliot, who at the close of the French and Indian War had settled on 400 acres of land in the vicinity of Ickesburg, the prior right of which he purchased for $800. He was one of five children, three being sons, of a second mar- riage. His was a case where the qualities of a religious and pious father and mother were transmitted to a son, his mother having taught him his prayers, his catechetical lesson, and his secu- lar lessons almost as soon as he could talk. When he became six he went to such local schools as were available and where the


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books in use were Dillworth's spelling book, the Bible, and Gough's arithmetic. After graduating in 1808 his pastor, Rev. John Linn, became his preceptor in theology for two years. His third and last year was with Rev. Joshua Williams, D.D., of Newville. He was married May 14, 1812, to Ann, daughter of Edward West, then a resident of Landisburg.


Not the least of his works was the organization of the Franklin County Bible Society in 1815, which was one of the societies which a year later organized the American Bible Society in New York City.


Dr. Elliot is recognized as having been one of the leading the- ologists of the nation. To him, more than to any other, is due the credit of the success of the Western Theological Seminary, at Alle- gheny City, now a part of Pittsburgh. Almost a thousand men went forth, during his incumbency, as ministers of the gospel in this and foreign lands. The institution is a monument to his in- dustry and devotion. He was its head for thirty-eight years. "He went there in his full prime," said Dr. Jacobus, "fifty years old- ripe in experience and rich in resources for his generation."


In his ministry Rev. Elliot went systematically to his work. With a faithful preaching of the word he joined regular pastoral visitation. Dr. Creigh said of him: "His people were devotedly attached to him. He was to them all they desired, both as preacher and pastor. . As a preacher he was instructive and edifying; as a pastor he was sympathizing and laborious; as a friend he was sociable and reliable, and as a man he was godly and exemplary in all his conduct."


D. F. GARLAND, D.D., NOTED WELFARE WORKER.


When Will H. Hays, the recent Postmaster General of the United States, entered office under the Harding administration, he found conditions such that he immediately decided to organize a Welfare Department within the province of his bureau. Ile called, according to the public press, the two most expert men in that line in the United States, to his aid, and the first named was D. Frank Garland, D.D., a native Perry Countian, and known to many of its people.


Daniel Frank Garland was born July 10, 1864, in Madison Township, near Andersonburg, the son of Daniel Minich and Elizabeth (Kistler) Garland. Until sixteen he attended school near Bixler's Mill each winter, the term being then five months. He attended the New Bloomfield Academy during the spring term of 1880, and both the winter and spring terms of 1880-81. He taught two terms in Perry County. He entered Pennsylvania College at Gettysburg, September, 1884, and graduated with sec- ond honors, 1888, having been valedictorian of his class. During


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1888-90 he taught in the Stevens Academy and Preparatory School at Gettysburg, at the same time attending the Theological Semi- nary, from which he graduated in 1891. Entering the ministry of the Lutheran denomination he served as pastor of the Church of the Reformation, Baltimore, 1891-96; of Trinity Lutheran Church, Taneytown, Maryland, 1896-99, and of the First Lutheran Church, Dayton, Ohio, 1899-1914.


Dr. Garland's work in Dayton attracted the attention of the public, especially during the great flood of 1913. Primarily that


D. F. GARLAND, D.D., Noted Welfare Worker. Born in Madison Township.


flood was the cause of the formation of a Welfare Department in the city of Dayton, one of the very first departments of that kind in our great cities. It is an integral part of the commission- manager form of government resulting from the great flood. It is one of five major departments, occuping the same plane as the departments of Service, Safety, Finance and Law, and combines in its work a greater line of activities than similar departments in other cities. Its work encompassed health, recreation, legal aid, prison oversight, and the work of the visiting nurses and indirectly


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the associated charities. The health department alone had a staff which included thirteen dairy and sanitary inspectors. The legal aid department took up the small troubles of householders too poor to employ attorneys, and the department of parks had charge of 520 acres of parks and recreation grounds. When Dr. Garland was chosen to fill this position of such great responsibility he was not unknown elsewhere, for his services as a minister, of the Lutheran Church, as a vigorous writer and forceful and eloquent lecturer had long attracted attention. From the first he seems to have dedicated his life to others, maintaining high ideals of man's duty to man and upholding these with all his physical strength and men- tal vigor. He labored in his chosen profession unselfishly and zeal- ously, and when he saw a wider field and had a call to teach tem- poral truth, in order to bring about a better social condition of life, he did not hesitate to accept.


Study, investigation, travel and personal experience have well equipped Dr. Garland for his task. In 1912 he returned from Europe, where he had made a study of municipal government and welfare, and many of the admirable things observed in other municipalities were incorporated into the welfare work at Dayton. For many years he has made welfare work a study and has lec- tured to large, intelligent and enthusiastic audiences, among his subjects being city government, garden cities in Europe, food con- servation, the World War, and welfare work in American cities. When he resigned his pastorate in 1914, which he had held for fifteen years, to accept the new task of welfare supervision, he stated the need of that work in these words: "We have reached a new era in public welfare. Public welfare work has come to be extended beyond the fondest dreams of social workers of a genera- tion ago. The ultimate object of this enlarged field of social serv- ice is to restore to the people, efficient and effective citizenship." In the light of much knowledge and in protest against inequalities and iniquities that have brought misery to the helpless, Dr. Garland accepted a new conception of government that would concern it- self with the special problems of human life, of community effi- ciency and community betterment, and with that conception let us again quote from a public address by him: "The city of Dayton, under the commission-manager plan of government, has laid the foundation for and is working toward the realization of this new conception of the obligation of the city to all her citizens. Under the present plan the Department of Public Welfare includes in the scope of its activities the public health, public recreation, public parks, correctional and reformatory institutions, outdoor relief, legal aid, municipal employment, a municipal lodging house, and a study of and research into causes of poverty, delinquency, crime, disease, and other social problems. Dayton is limited in reve-




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