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 93
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PERRY COUNTY'S NOTED MEN
education. He attended several theological schools, beginning the min- istry at the same time. Mr. Zeigler has been awarded the D.D. degree. He has served churches in Altoona, Williamsport, Berwick, and Blooms- burg, Pa .; Petersburg, Va .; Rocky Mountain, N.C., and is now at Wythe- ville, Va. He is also a lecturer, having appeared on the platform, both North and South. He is connected with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
ZELLERS, PARK. Park Zellers was born at Liverpool, April 26, 1897, the son of John Adam and Caretta Louise (Lutz) Zellers. He attended the Liverpool schools, graduating in 1914. He graduated at the Central State Normal School in 1917. During 1917-18 he taught in Marysville. He was instructor in printing at the Edison Junior High School in Harris- burg, principal of schools at Liverpool (1920-21), and is now principal of schools at Mill Hall, Pa.
ZIMMERMAN, CHAS F. Charles F. Zimmerman, son of Lucian C. and Clara R. (Steele) Zimmerman, was born in Allen's Cove, Penn Town- ship, June 21, 1878. He attended the Duncannon public schools. From 1895 to 1898 he attended Lafayette College. He then transferred to Princeton University, graduating in 1900, the next year taking a post- graduate course there. He was then with the First National Bank at Har- risburg as correspondence clerk for a time. When the Steelton Trust Company was organized in 1902 he was tendered a position there, and in 1906 became its treasurer. In 1912 he was elected treasurer of the Leba- non County Trust Company at Lebanon, Pennsylvania. He was chairman of Group Five of the Pennsylvania Bankers' Association, 1919-1921, and in 1921 was elected secretary of the State Bankers' Association. He is also chairman of the committee on education.
ZIMMERMAN, FRANK A. Frank A. Zimmerman was born in Allen's Cove, Penn Township, March 16, 1875. He is a son of Lucian C. and Clara R. (Steele) Zimmerman. He was an attendant of the Duncannon public schools from 1883 to 1893. His first position was with the Dun- cannon National Bank, from which place he went with the Citizens' Na- tional Bank at Waynesboro as cashier. After a number of years there he was elected treasurer of the Chambersburg Trust Company, with which he is still connected as vice-president, secretary and treasurer. This trust company, by the way, has a capital stock of $218,000, a surplus, profit and reserve fund of about $350,000, and is one of the best institutions in the Cumberland Valley. Mr. Zimmerman has been there eighteen years.
ZIMMERMAN, DR. G. L. Dr. G. L. Zimmerman was born in Madison Township, January 9, 1862, the son of William and Margaret (Bower) Zimmerman. He attended the public schools, Captain G. C. Palm's select school at Blain, Susquehanna University (then Missionary Institute) at Selinsgrove for three years, ending in 1886. He graduated in medicine at Jefferson Medical College in 1889 and located at Carlisle, where he has since practiced. He is a member of the staff of the Carlisle Hospital in the Department of Obstetrics. From 1904 to 1907 he was medical super- intendent of the Cumberland County Hospital for Insane.
OTHER NOTED AND PROFESSIONAL, MEN.
The task of compiling the list of these men and women seems endless, and must be relinquished so that the book may go to press. Other Perry Countians, briefly : Rev. W. N. Wright, pastor of the Marysville Church of God, whose work so far has been within the county ; Rev. L. E. Henry, a pastor of the same denomination, residing at Penbrook; Rev. Daniel Motzer, a graduate of Canonsburg College, who died in 1864; Rev. Martin,
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HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
a Spring Township native who became a D.D .; Rev. G. C. Hall, born at Blain, who graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1875, entered the Episcopal ministry, and served charges principally in New York State until about 1915, when he retired; Rev. John Adams, a Lutheran minister born in Spring or Carroll Township; Rev. Linden H. Rice, a Reformed pastor ; Rev. Dison Hench, who passed away a few years ago; Isaac G. Black, lately of Duncannon, but long a resident of Philadelphia, where during the period after 1880 he taught for many years in Old Bethany (John Wanamaker's Church), a Sunday school class of over a hundred Pennsylvania University students; Dr. Lewis Smiley, who located in Philadelphia and became noted as a great Sunday school man and welfare worker as well as a physician of note; Albert Leonard Dorwart, a young student at State College, a fine spirited youth whose clean moral life and sunny disposition caused that great institution to issue "The Story of a Brief Life," a booklet of appreciation of his work; Robert E. Ferguson, a Perry County boy, who edited the Bradford Herald at Towanda, Penn- sylvania, during the Sectional War period; Anna Thompson (Sutch) Stevens, wife of Rev. Stevens, and her sister, Frances Bates (Sutch) Friese, wife of Rev. Friese, whose long work in the Indian mission fields is of note; Milton C. Miller, an attorney at Wichita, Kansas, and the late J. Cal. McAlister, who died about 1917; Theo. K. Holman, who is an attorney in Salt Lake City, and who held a prominent state office in Utah ; Millard F. Clouser, a former checker expert of international fame, and long editor of the Chess and Checkers page of the New York World ; Lew Ritter, long catcher of the Brooklyn National baseball team, and Rob- ert Clark, with the Cleveland world series winners in 1921; H. W. Mc- Kenzie, of Walton, New York, an executive committeeman of the Ameri- can Farm Bureau Foundation, which represents a million and a half of farmers in the northwestern region of the United States, he being one of three men on that committee from this large territory; Samuel Tressler, Washington, New Jersey; J. Cloyd Tressler, New Gardens, Long Island ; Ed. S. Taylor, Mt. Carmel, Pa .; S. E. B. Kinsloe, from 1890 to 1900 a ward principal in the Philadelphia schools, and Helen Elizabeth Wilkinson, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, who held a similar position until her death in 1921; John Dum, once principal of the White Hill Orphans' School; F. C. Miller, half owner and treasurer of the Milligan Fruit Company at St. Louis, which handles several hundred carloads of fruit each season, and who attended the public schools of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri, teaching for some years; Jos. W. Billow, long a ward principal at Lewistown; Dr. Ben Hooke Ritter, who had located in Juniata County and became first president of the Juniata County Medical Society; Dr. John L. Ickes; Dr. Geo. A. Ickes, who practiced at Altoona, Pa .; Dr. Gilbert Conner, born at Landisburg, who practiced medi- cine in Michigan, where he died, and Dr. Fetter, born at Landisburg, who settled at Croton Falls, New York, about 1885; E. D. Bistline, works ac- countant with the Federal Shipbuilding Company; H. B. Raffensberger, holding a responsible government position at Chicago; Dr. C. A. Rinehart, of Philadelphia; Wm. Kinter, a Philadelphia attorney; E. R. Sponsler, a Harrisburg attorney; Rev. C. W. Winey, Pittsburgh; Rev. Melancthon Sohn, Rev. Eugene Raffensberger, Rev. Joseph W. Wagner, Rev. Elmer E. Hench, Rev. Harry Kleckner, Rev. C. J. Dick, Rev. B. F. Hall, Rev. D. L. Kepner, Rev. I. M. Pines, and Rev. B. A. Shively, the latter five being ministers of the Evangelical Church; Rev. G. W. Crist and Rev. John A. Flickinger, Lutheran ministers; Rev. Cassius E. Bixler, minister to Brazil, and Dr. Zenas J. Gray. The Young Men's Christian Associa- tions throughout the world are directed by secretaries who are under the guidance of Paul Super, a native of Perry County.
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PERRY COUNTY'S NOTED MEN
One of the big lines of business of New York City is the Casket busi- ness, and there, as secretary of the Casket Manufacturers' Association, and also secretary of the Casket Manufacturers' Service Bureau, is an- other Perry Countian, J. W. Lukenbach, a native of Liverpool. Mr. Lukenbach's father, Win. Lukenbach, was once a Newport photographer, and later moved to Liverpool, in 1863.
Two others often considered Perry Countians and whose associations were mostly in the vicinity of the county seat, are Henry C. Dern, late publisher of the Altoona Tribune, and Dr. J. Frank Raine, who has prac- ticed medicine at Sykesville, Pa., since his graduation at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Baltimore, in 1905. Both men learned the printing trade in New Bloomfield, but Mr. Dern was born in Carroll County, Maryland, and Dr. Raine, at West Fairview, Cumberland County.
Perry County has furnished many men who have filled and fill respon- sible banking positions in other states, the most noted having been M. D. Thatcher and John A. Thatcher, whose biographies appear elsewhere, and whose names as financiers were noted over half the continent. They, how- ever, drifted from general business into the banking business. Others who have made a success abroad are George W. Derick, of the Everett (Pa.) Bank; Frank A. Zimmerman, W. H. Gelbach, Charles F. Zimmerman, Tolbert J. Scholl, Wm. K. Swartz, Chas. W. Bothwell, Wm. T. Albert, W. C. Boyles, T. Ward Rice, J. A. Garber, Edgar Ulsh, Warren Sellers and Max Taylor. Others are holding responsible banking positions. It is doubted if there is an inland town of its size in Pennsylvania which has sent out in the past few years so many bank cashiers as has Landisburg, through the Bank of Landisburg, of which James R. Wilson is cashier. The list includes: James M. Sheibley, Creigh Patterson, Mervin N. Light- ner, J. Todd Stewart, Karl Rice, John F. Neely and Harry R. Patterson.
It is not inappropriate to cite here a fine illustration of the far-reaching influence of a Godly home, as found in the life and career of George Mc- Ginnes, who resided in Buffalo Township from 1787 to 1814. He came from Ireland and, on leaving what is now Perry County, located at Ship- pensburg. His people were Presbyterians, and he was brought up in the church at the mouth of the Juniata, the forerunner of the Duncannon Presbyterian Church, becoming an elder in early life. Two of his sons were educated for the Christian ministry at Jefferson College, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. One of these sons, Rev. James Y. McGinnes, became the founder of Milnwood Academy at Shade Gap, Huntingdon County, where he preached, and where he died August 31, 1851. In 1840 he had married Elizabeth Criswell, of Franklin County. His only son, George Harold Criswell, expected to study for the ministry, but entered the Union Army in 1862 and died after the Battle of Chancellorsville. His mother had moved to Canonsburg, so that he might be educated in the institution where his father had graduated. She died there February 10, 1887. Four of their daughters married Presbyterian ministers, and two of them, now deceased, went as missionaries to India. A fifth, Miss Alice Y. McGinnes, of Wooster, Ohio, remained in this country to look after the education of the children of her two missionary sisters, and through her self-sacrificing devotion they have taken the places of their parents in the missionary fields of India. Of these sisters, Elizabeth McGinnes married Rev. J. V. Hughes; Mary McGinnes married Rev. Horatio W. Brown; Amanda B. married Rev. J. M. Goheen (Kohlapur, India), and Anna M. married Rev. J. J. Hall (Vengurle, India). The sons of the McGinnes sisters who be- came missionaries are Dr. R. H. H. Goheen (Vengurle, India), and John I. Goheen (Sangli, India). A daughter, Frances Goheen (now Mrs. Avison), of Pittsburgh, became a trained nurse.
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HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
THE BLOOD OF THE PIONEER.
Of the bravery, tact and resolution of the pioneers who settled the soil of Perry County volumes could be written and yet much remain untold. Throughout this book is recorded much of their early history, including the names and first settlements of many, whose mantle has fallen upon their descendants down through the generations and the years, who has crossed the Alleghenies, helped settle Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; braved the dangers of the plains, helping populate Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota-where they furnished a governor to the state; the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas-where a boy in Perry County became a United States Senator, and crossed the Rockies, contributing a share of the popu- lation on the way, to settle in the three great states bordering the Pacific-in all of which they or their descendants are to be found, a people unafraid, red blooded, and a credit to the land from whence they came. In other words, they have ever been in the van of civilization and have helped build a mighty empire. Charles Dickens is credited with having said that "the typical American would hesitate to enter Heaven unless assured that there he could still go farther west." That surely has been largely applicable to many generations of Perry Countians, and even to this day there is considerable migration.
The ancestry of many families of Washington County, Penn- sylvania, can be traced to the Scotch-Irish emigrants from Perry County. In the State of Kentucky that is also true. George, Anthony and William Logan, sons of old Alexander Logan, the pio- neer who lost his life while defending his home from the Indians in 1763, located in that state in 1786. James Anderson removed to Kentucky in 1802 and wed Mary Logan, a descendant of these Logans. In 1785 Jonathan Anderson, a son of George Anderson, visited Kentucky, selected several hundred acres of land there, re- turned to Perry County territory, and at once removed to Ken- tucky. Other members of the family followed, and in 1797 George Robinson and wife removed there, settling near the present town of Georgetown, Kentucky. Jonathan Robinson, the advance agent of the numerous Robinson families who then went to Kentucky, was a Revolutionary soldier from Perry County territory, and was married to Jane (Black) Robinson. They became the parents of James Fisher Robinson, the twenty-second governor of Kentucky, that staunch Unionist who helped retain Kentucky in the Union and who sent three of his own sons into the army. Governor Robinson was born in Scott County, Kentucky, October 4, 1800. He held a high place among Kentucky lawyers and died in 1892.
The Ellmakers, who were of the first to warrant lands in Green- wood Township, settled in Iowa, when that state was in the mak-
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PERRY COUNTY'S NOTED MEN
ing, and a later generation to this day is among the residents of the productive Williamette Valley, Oregon.
When Kansas was being settled dozens of Perry Countians "took up" lands there of the public domain, and among them was Joseph W. Huggins, whose ancestors were among the first settlers of Perry County soil, and one of whom-Jacob Huggins-was a member of the first board of county commissioners and the Perry County representative in the State Legislature when the county seat controversy was settled by locating it at New Bloomfield. Mr. Huggins located on a quarter section in Ellsworth County, Kansas, and became one of the new state's successful farmers, owning and operating at one time land to the number of 1,280 acres. His sons and sons-in-law, eight in number, are almost all engaged in agri- culture there on a large scale. From the same section ( Buffalo and Howe Township) with Mr. Huggins went George W. Sheath, part of whose family remains in that state engaged in agriculture, and William Hetrick, both of whom died in 1919.
"Going West" before railroad travel was available was not the easy matter that it is to-day. In 1856 William Woods and William Owings left Jackson Township, in western Perry, for Iowa, with a covered wagon and two horses, leaving Blain on a Monday morn- ing, and getting to Pittsburgh the following Sunday morning, for it must be remembered that the roads were not then what they are now. The state capitol at Des Moines was just then being built, and the Mormons, five or six thousand of whom they saw, were just migrating from the Middle West to the great Salt Lake, where they are now so impregnably entrenched.
John Bistline, who was born near Elliottsburg, went to Illinois in 1857, and was there early enough to help break up the virgin soil with an oxen team. Robert L. Woods, of Blain, landed at Ottawa, Illinois, in 1856, and remembered it as "a vast prairie country, sparsely settled, and beautiful to look upon."
William Kiner, of Sheaffer's Valley, in 1851 went to Illinois with his family and his son, Henry L. Kiner, two and one-half years old, also born in Perry County, became the editor of the Geneseo, Illinois, News, in 1874, and conducted it until 1904. His editorial work was noted throughout the state along moral lines and he came to be known as "Parson Kiner."
The post office and village at Smiley, Ohio, was named after J. E. Smiley, an early settler who was born in Perry County and whose biography appears under the chapter devoted to theologians, as Mr. Smiley has since entered the ministry. The post office has been superseded by rural delivery.
Wesley Shannon, a prominent citizen of Seattle, Washington, was among the Perry Countians who aided in the railroad con- struction of the great transcontinental lines, helping to "carry the
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HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
chains" in the survey of the Northern Pacific, between Butte, Mon- tana, and Seattle.
The counties of La Salle, Bureau, Dupage, Carroll, Henry, Ford and Knox, in the State of Illinois, contain a large percentage of former Perry Countians and their descendants, who are among their best citizens. The country surrounding Buda, Illinois, is a veritable garden spot, and is peopled largely by Perry Countians and their descendants. In one section surrounding Buda, Illinois, are the Stutzmans, Toomys, Gutshalls, Bittings, Morgans, Tress- lers, and other Perry County families. Other Perry Countians than those already named who were pioneers there were Alfred B. Preisler, who left Sheaffer's Valley and located in Ottawa, Illi- nois, in 1871, later a prominent marble dealer of that city ; George A. Kline, of Blain, who went West in 1866 and settled in La Salle County, Illinois, but later migrated to Grundy County, Iowa ; Sylvester Toomey, now a prominent druggist at Buda, who left the county in 1878; Jacob P. Kiner, of Madison Township, who left for Ottawa, Illinois, in 1854; John L. Woods, of Blain, who went West in 1881, and is now proprietor of a dry goods store in Woodhull, Illinois; Henry Briner and his wife (Jane Stroup), of western Perry, who went West as newly-weds in 1855, settling in La Salle County, where he gained quite a competence ; Benj. Kell, of Blain, who left for Carroll County, Illinois, in 1878, a mere child with his parents, later going to Sioux City, where a son, Ben, is one of the owners of a large engine and iron company ; An- drew Bistline, of Madison Township, who went to Ogle County, Illinois, later migrating to Waterloo, Iowa, and then Ogden, Utah; Jonathan F. Bistline, of Blain, who left for Ford County, Illinois, in 1870, but later located at Finley, North Dakota; Daniel E. Burd, of Mannsville, who was confined in Libby prison during the war, and migrated to Mercer County, Illinois ; Margaret Mum- per, a daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Kiner Mumper, a Perry County girl, who wed Philip M. Shoop, and with him was among the early stand-bys of Hedding College, at a time when help was sorely needed, among their children being Rev. W. B. Shoop, D.D., pastor of the M. E. Church at Pekin, Illinois.
Willis Sylvester Long, who left Perry County in 1879, "with- out anything," as he says, and later owned a valuable quarter- section ; David A. Grubb and Preston Grubb, who were successful agriculturalists near Ellsworth, Kansas ; Blair Moul, who went West as a laborer, and by hard toil became the owner of a 200-acre farm, which he sold in war times for $60,000, giving each of his seven children a present of $6,000, and still retaining $18,000; David Billow and his wife, Susan (Tressler) Billow, who left Perry County in 1860 and settled in Shelby, Richland County, Ohio, where was born their son, C. O. Billow, the noted consulting engi-
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PERRY COUNTY'S NOTED MEN
neer, now located in Chicago; William W. Sheibley, of New Ger- mantown, who located in Shelby, Ohio, in 1873, but later moved to Tiffin, where he was a prominent real estate dealer ; Henry Albert, bereft of a father during the Sectional War, who located a claim in California in 1877, and later became an orange grower at Alta Loma, California. He was president of the Orange Grow- ers' Association there for four years and of the Chamber of Com- merce for two years.
The counties of Ogle and Winnebago, Illinois, include the names of many Perry Countians and their descendants. Among them were Jacob Barrick, who went West in 1851, settling near Byron, where the Wrays, William and Samuel Tate and their mother, from Donally's Mills, also first located in 1856. William Linn left Perry Valley in 1852 with his wife and five children, and also located near Byron, one of the sons, David W., now over eighty years of age, still living on his farm near there. Robert Bull and his family settled in North Byron in 1851, as did John Hench and his family, some of these two families being sweethearts and later married. John Swartz Kosier, a venerable contractor of Byron, married one of the Misses Bull, who died many years ago, but he is still hale and hearty and ninety-one. The Meredith family set- tled in the Middle Creek region in 1852, Calvin being deceased, but David still resides near the old home on his farm, his sister Jennie living in Rockford. Adam Hamaker and Jacob Hetrick, from Perry Valley, settled near Byron, where their descendants still live. Ephraim Burd and his sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Kline, set- tled near Leaf River and now live at Byron. Two Millerstown teachers, Misses Ellen Jane and Caroline Wray, moved to Win- nebago in 1871 and followed their professions. Both are now dead. Among the later emigrants to this territory were John M. Fry and family, from Donally's Mills, in 1880-the parents of Judge Fry, of Chicago; J. Ambrose Leonard and wife, from Don- ally's Mills, in 1885. settled at Byron and engaged in general con- tracting, removing to Rockford in 1904, and continuing the busi- ness there; Emerson Martin Leonard, from Donally's Mills, in 1886, located north of Byron; Cameron Wesley Leonard, from Donally's Mills, in 1900, and Margaret (Leonard) Kennedy, in 1890, are Rockford residents.
To all parts of the world go Perry Countians. To the Klondike went David Shearer, of Spring. To help build the Panama Canal went Benj. Kuller and sons, of near Landisburg; Charles F. Lom- man, of Duncannon, and C. Deane, Roy and Russell Eppley, of Marysville, and others. C. Deanc Eppley yet remains there in a supervisory position.
CHIAPTER XXXV.
AGRICULTURE IN PERRY COUNTY.
P ERRY County is largely an agricultural county, having prin- cipally engaged in the raising of the standard grains since its very first settlement; but it is now slowly drifting towards the raising of fruit and dairying. The fact that Perry County is the best watered county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is probably the reason for the statement, by a noted lecturer of the State Agricultural Department, that there is no other county in the state where grazing and attendant dairying can be made more profitable. That its soils are excellent for fruit raising has been proven by the young and numerically small Fruit Growers' Asso- ciation of Perry County, which was captured on four occasions the first prize for the finest exhibit of apples grown in Pennsylvania, which has captured it for three successive years (1918, 1919 and 1920), and which only failed in 1921 owing to an extensive late frost which ruined the entire crop, thus barring any exhibit what- ever. The agriculturists of Perry County should more generally belong to this association and gradually work into the fruit busi- ness. The raising of fruit has been reduced to a science and no haphazard plans will bring success. The pioneers planted orchards from the very year of their entry, and with their primitive stills and stillhouses, they turned to profit the product of their trees, which was largely sold later in Baltimore, where their "applejack" and "peach brandy" commanded a fancy price. Already the prod- uct of the Perry County Fruit Growers' Association commands a fancy price in the choicest markets of our eastern cities, and the highly tinted fruit stands beside the choicest product of the orange groves of California and Florida.
The pioneer used a sickle, his son the scythe, his grandson the grain cradle, and another generation, the reaper, only to see it re- placed by the self-binder of a later day. Even the mower is not many generations away, for, according to available data Capt. An- drew Loy, father of Ed. R. Loy, on the very farm on which stood Fort Robinson, and which is now owned by the latter, owned and used the first mower which was brought into Perry County. It cut a wide swath and required four horses. The first reaper is be- lieved to have been brought to the county by John Robinson, tan- ner and farmer, in 1849, he having been what is termed an ad- vanced farmer. The first method of threshing wheat and rye was to tramp it out on the barn floors with horses, or to flail it out ; and
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