History of Tioga County, Pennsylvania, Part 87

Author:
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: Harrisburg : R. C. Brown
Number of Pages: 1454

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HISTORY OF TIOGA COUNTY.

Bingham estate, which position he filled one year. Returning to Montrose he engaged in merchandising. About 1850 he moved to Towanda, Bradford county, and became teller in the bank of LaPort, Mason & Company, and five years later went to Scranton to accept the cashiership in the bank of Mason, Meylert & Com- pany, which he held three years. He then returned to Wellsboro and became chief clerk in the Bingham office. When William B. Clymer went to Europe, in 1869, Mr. Simpson had charge of the business, and after the death of Mr. Clymer he suc- ceeded him as agent and attorney of the estate. From that time until his death he discharged the duties of this responsible position with characteristic zeal, unflag- ging industry, sound judgment and strict integrity, winning not only a well-earned competence, but the confidence and esteem of those for whom he acted. He was a proficient accountant and an accurate and methodical business man. Having a great deal of land business to transact, in the matter of titles and conveyances, he was admitted to the bar of Tioga county, ex gratia, in 1880, a compliment he highly esteemed. He also took a deep interest in the bar association and was one of its most liberal and useful members. Prior to the Rebellion Mr. Simpson was a Demo- erat, but at that time he became a Republican. He remained a faithful supporter of the Republican party the balance of his life, and was chairman of the county com- mittee in 1874. In early manhood he was an Odd Fellow, and in later years became a Mason. He was a member of the committee that revised the constitution of the Grand Lodge, at which period he was one of the leading members of the Masonic order in northern Pennsylvania.

Mr. Simpson's hearty and enduring love of Nature, animate and inanimate, was one of the dominant traits of his character. He was a sympathetic friend of birds and animals of every kind, and could not brook the least cruelty to even the humbler members of Nature's family. Such a man was naturally a generous friend of poor, suffering humanity, quick to discern and prompt to relieve distress. He gave without ostentation and as secretly as possible, and any reference to his bene- factions was sure to be rebuked. Frank, outspoken, honest and truthful, he could not tolerate any attempt at deception or trickery on the part of others. Mr. Simp- son was a well-informed man, a close observer of men and events, and possessed a sound and cultivated taste for good literature. A discriminating buyer of choice books, he accumulated through the passing years a fine library and was thoroughly familiar with its contents. His old home, standing in a dense grove of pines, has been long regarded as one of the landmarks of Wellsboro. Here he passed to eternal rest, April 15, 1893, leaving a widow and three daughters, his only son having died several years before.

COL. ALANSON E. NILES, a son of Nathan Niles, Jr., was born October 5, 1816, and grew to manhood in this county, where his father settled in 1796. He was among the first to respond to his country's call, and was early in the field as cap- tain of Company E, of the "Bucktails." At Drainsville he was severely wounded by being shot through the lungs. After recovering he hastened back to his regiment. At Gaines Hill he was taken prisoner with Companies D and E, and spent forty-nine days in Libby Prison, when they were exchanged. He was pro- moted to the rank of major, March 1, 1863, and on the fifteenth of May following he was made lieutenant colonel of the regiment. It was while with the "Bucktails"

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in their charge on Little Round Top, Gettysburg, that he was wounded in the left thigh. He was afterward transferred to the Veteran Reserve Corps and pro- moted to the rank of colonel. On the night President Lincoln was assassinated, he was in Ford's Theater and heard the pistol shot. Colonel Niles participated in many battles and was recognized as one of the "bravest of the brave." During the Grand Review in Washington he was officer of the day and had full military charge of the city on that memorable occasion. He was commissioned a captain in the regular army and for three years was stationed at Plattsburg, New York, as com- mandant of the military barracks. In 1869 he was retired on account of disability, by reason of his wounds, with the rank and pay of a captain, and he took up his residence in Wellsboro, where he died October 8, 1891.

GEN. ROBERT CORSON Cox is one of the oldest, most respected and best known citizens of Wellsboro. He is a native of Fairfield township, Lycoming county, Penn- sylvania, where he was born November 18, 1823, a son of William and Hannah (Corson) Cox, the former a native of Montour county, of Irish ancestry, and the latter of Lycoming county, of German-Quaker stock. His parents removed to Delmar township, Tioga county, when Robert C. was about two months old, where they lived some twelve years and then returned to their former home in Lycoming county. In April, 1841, the family again came to this county and settled near the site of Liberty borough. Here the mother died in May, 1842, and the father in February, 1856. Robert C. was in his eighteenth year when his parents located in Liberty township, and had spent his boyhood assisting them on the farm, attend- ing the common schools during the winter seasons and enduring the trials and hardships of those early days. On April 7, 1846, he married Lydia Ann Wheeland, a daughter of George and Mary K. Wheeland, of Liberty, whose ancestors were pioneers of Loyalsock township, Lycoming county, whence her parents removed to Liberty township, Tioga county, in 1827. Three children blessed this union, as fol- lows: Henry C., cashier of the First National Bank of Wellsboro; Mary E., deceased wife of Jacob K. Richards, and Carrie M., deceased wife of Alfred P. Dartt. After his marriage Mr. Cox took charge of the homestead farm, on which his father had paid $500, but on account of a defective title our subject was compelled to repurchase the property. Here he lived, clearing the land and tilling the soil, until 1854, when he sold the farm and embarked in merchandising and lumbering at Liberty, which business he followed until entering the army in 1862. In the meantime he had served six years as orderly sergeant of a volunteer cavalry company, and was brigade inspector of militia, with the rank of major, from 1854 up to the first year of the war.

On the breaking out of the Rebellion he at once took an active and prominent part in raising troops to defend the flag, some of which were not accepted, Penn- sylvania's quota being full. But in August, 1862, he went to Harrisburg with the drafted men from Tioga county, and on the organization of the One Hundred and Seventy-first Pennsylvania Volunteers he was elected major of the regiment, his commission dating November 18, 1862. This regiment served about one year, prin- cipally on garrison duty in North Carolina, and was mustered out at Harrisburg in August, 1863. In the summer of 1864 General Cox was authorized by Adjutant General Russell to raise a regiment, and the result of his efforts in that direction was the gallant Two Hundred and Seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers, of which com- mand he was commissioned colonel September 28, 1864. The regiment participated

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in the closing scenes of the war, including Hatcher's Run, Fort Steadman, the assault on and capture of Petersburg, and the surrender of Lee at Appomattox. In March, 1865, while in front of Petersburg, the regiment presented General Cox with a horse and complete outfit, valued at $550, as a token of their appreciation of his soldierly qualities and the warm place he had in their affections. Its brave and efficient commander was brevetted brigadier general April 9, 1865, participated with his regiment in the grand review at Washington, D. C., was mustered out with his command at Alexandria, Virginia, May 31, 1865, and was discharged at Harrisburg on June 5, following. Returning to his home at Liberty, General Cox resumed the peaceful pursuits of merchandising and lumbering, and again became a plain Ameri- can citizen.

In politics, General Cox was originally a Whig, casting his first vote for Henry Clay for president, and has been a consistent Republican since the organization of that party. He served as a justice of the peace in Liberty from 1862 to 1867, and was postmaster of that borough from April, 1869, until the autumn of the same year, when he was elected treasurer of Tioga county, which office he filled one term. While still treasurer he was elected prothonotary and clerk of the court, November 13, 1872, and was re-elected six successive terms, serving in that office a period of twenty-one consecutive years. He has been a permanent resident of Wellsboro since the fall of 1872, and is widely known in northern Pennsylvania.

General Cox and wife have been members of the Methodist Episcopal church for nearly half a century, and have lived to celebrate the golden anniversary of their marriage. Few men are more favorably known in this section of the State than this old veteran, whose unsullied integrity and clean military and official record have endeared him to the people of Tioga county. At his last election as prothonotary he received 9,302 votes, or fifty-eight more than the combined vote cast for Pattison and Delamater, and during the closing year of that term he was frequently urged by many leading men in different parts of the county to again be a candidate for the office which he had filled so long and faithfully, but he firmly declined and retired to private life. Here in the happy companionship of his affectionate wife, his faith- ful helpmate through both sunshine and shadow, he is spending the sunset of a suc- cessful and honorable career in the enjoyment of the esteem and confidence of the entire community.

HON. HUGH YOUNG, the veteran bank examiner, has had a long and varied pub- lic career as correspondent, editor, legislator, bank examiner and president of the Wellsborough National Bank. He is a native of Killyleagh, County Down, Ireland, born on the 14th of December, 1832, a twin brother of the late Thomas L. Young, ex- governor of Ohio. Their parentage, on both sides of the parental tree, were Scotch- Irish Presbyterians, the Youngs and the Kennedys having emigrated from Ayrshire, Scotland, to Ulster, Ireland, in the Seventeenth century. When the twins were together, even in manhood, it was impossible for a stranger to distinguish them apart, so closely did they resemble each other.

Hugh immigrated to this country in 1850, and lived with his brother, the late Robert Kennedy. Young, a prosperous farmer of Potter county, who sent him to the Coudersport Academy. Here we find him as clerk in a store for a year, and for three years afterwards as a law student with the late Hon. John S. Mann, supporting himself by teaching and surveying. Not having much fancy for the practice of

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the law he never asked for admission to the bar, but turned his attention to journal- ism, writing his first letters to the New York Herald in 1855, describing the Nor- wegian colony on Kettle creek, the grand opening celebration at Oleona, and Ole Bull's castle, topics which attracted much attention at that time.

In 1856 Mr. Young went with the congressional investigating committee to Kansas, of which Hon. John Sherman was chairman, as correspondent of the New York Tribune, and was an eye witness of many of the guerrilla fights between the Free State forces under John Brown and Gen. Jim Lane, and the Border Ruffians under Stringfellow, Richardson and others; and his letters signed "Potter" were quoted by every newspaper and every orator either in denunciation or approval during the heated presidential campaign of that year.

In April, 1856, George W. Brown, the editor of the Herald of Freedom, at Law- rence, the first Republican newspaper published in the territory of Kansas, was arrested for treason, with four others, and confined at Lecompton. At Brown's request Mr. Young took charge of the paper as associate editor and continued its publication until it was destroyed by a mob, May 21, and continued as associate editor for a year after the paper was re-established. His health failing through malaria, Mr. Young returned to his old home in Pennsylvania, and became book-keeper in the office of the Bingham estate at Coudersport, where he remained until December, 1858, when he purchased the Agitator at Wellsboro. During the war for the Union Mr. Young made his newspaper a household necessity in nearly every Tioga county family, by engaging a correspondent in every regiment and in nearly every company in which Tioga county soldiers were enlisted.

In 1862 he sold the Agitator to its founder, M. H. Cobb, and went into business as a bookseller and insurance agent. In 1876 he was elected to the legislature, but resigned in May, 1877, to accept the office of national bank examiner. He was removed for political reasons in February, 1888, and in the fall of that year he founded the Wellsborough National Bank. In 1889 he was a candidate for comp- troller of the currency, but failed to get the appointment. In November, 1891, he was called into the public service again as special bank examiner, and by unanimous petition of the bankers of Pittsburg he was assigned for duty in that city by the comptroller of the currency.

Mr. Young has always taken a lively interest in the social, moral, industrial, civic, and literary life of the people of the borough in which he has resided for so many years. He has been honored by his fellow citizens in being chosen to many local positions of responsibility and trust.

In politics Mr. Young has always been a Republican, and cast his first vote (1854) for Gov. James Pollock, who appointed him on his military staff as an aid- de-camp with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was a delegate from the territory of Kansas to the first Republican National Convention at Philadelphia in 1856, which nominated General Fremont, and he was also a delegate from the Sixteentli Congressional district of Pennsylvania to the Republican National Convention at Chicago, in 1888, which nominated Harrison and Reid. In 1861 he was appointed postmaster at Wellsboro and served five years, and in 1862 he was appointed consul to Santa Cruz, which honor he declined.

Although slightly lame by reason of an accident in early youth, Mr. Young volunteered as an Emergency Man in 1863, when Lee's forces invaded the State,

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and was accepted as a private in Company F, Thirty-fifth Volunteer Militia; was sworn into the United States service; was promoted to the staff as first lieutenant and quartermaster, and served until the regiment was mustered out.

In 1884, on motion of Hon. M. F. Elliott, Mr. Young was admitted to the bar of Tioga county, ex gratia, on the unanimous petition of the members as a mark of their esteem. Mr. Young was married September 22, 1859, to Lois Ann, second daughter of A. H. Butterworth, of Coudersport, Pennsylvania, and they have three sons, Robert Kennedy, Hugh Carlisle, and Thomas Lowry. Mrs. Young is a niece of the late Hon. David Wilmot, of Towanda, Pennsylvania.

EDWARD G. SCHIEFFELIN, superintendent of the Stokesdale tannery, was born in Charleston township, Tioga county, Pennsylvania, March 26, 1836, and is a son of Dr. Jacob Schieffelin, a pioneer settler and lumberman of that township, and later a resident of Tioga borough. He was educated in the public schools and at Alfred Academy, Allegany county, New York, and at the age of twenty began merchan- dising in Tioga, as a member of the firm of Baldwin, Lowell & Company, continuing from December, 1856, to March, 1861. In September, 1861, he raised Company H, Forty-fifth Pennsylvania Volunteers, and served as its captain until after the battle of South Mountain, when he was promoted to major for meritorious service. He also participated in the battles of James Island, Antietam and Fredericksburg, besides numerous skirmishes. Owing to ill health, he resigned January 10, 1863, and returned home. When Lee invaded Pennsylvania he went out as lieutenant colonel of the Thirty-fifth Regiment, Emergency Men, and served six weeks. He was subsequently appointed a deputy provost marshal for Tioga county, which office he filled until the close of the war. After his return to Tioga he engaged in the lumber business, but soon went to New York, where he filled the position of salesman in a wholesale dry-goods house for three years. In 1871 he became a member of the firm of Bailey, Lowell & Company, his partners being John W. Bailey, F. K. Wright and O. B. Lowell, founders of the Stokesdale tannery, Mr. Wright and himself being the managers. In 1880 Bailey and Wright sold out to William H. Humphrey, and the firm became Schieffelin & Company. In October, 1883, the Wellsboro Leather Company (Limited) was organized, with a capital of $200,000, and the plant and grounds became its property. In May, 1893, the control was transferred to the Union Tanning Company, in which Mr. Schieffelin is a stockholder and director. He has filled the position of superintendent since 1891, and is the only one of the original founders now connected with the enterprise. On April 8, 1878, Mr. Schieffelin married Barbara Duttenhaffer, of Wellsboro, who died in July of the same year. On June 15, 1881, he married Elizabeth M. Schmitt, of Elmira. To this union was born one son, George Girard, June 3, 1884. The mother died July 15, 1884. He was married to his present wife October 17, 1894. She was a Miss Mary Sommerville, and is the mother of one daughter, Mary S., born in Octo- ber, 1895. Mr. Schieffelin is a thorough business man and possesses high executive ability. His successful career has been due to close attention to business details and an accurate knowledge of all the minutiae of the enterprise with which his name has been so closely associated for more than a quarter of a century. In politics, he has been a life-long Republican; was a delegate to the Republican National Conven- tion at Chicago in 1884, and is recognized as a man of marked influence in the party councils of this congressional district.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

HENRY JACKSON LANDRUS was born in Blossburg, Tioga county, Pennsylvania, September 16, 1839, a son of Washington and Lucinda (Granger) Landrus, and was reared in his native town. He attended the public schools of Blossburg in boyhood, and began his business career by assisting his father in supplying prop timber for the mines in the vicinity of his home. At the age of sixteen we find him engaged in clerking and weighing coal at the Morris Run mines, thus assisting his parents in the support of a large family. Here he was married to Mary E. Evans, a daughter of John Evans, of Blossburg, June 16, 1862. Believing that his country needed his services, he enlisted August 30, 1862, in Company G, One Hundred and Forty-ninth Pennsylvania Volunteers, and leaving his young wife went to the front in defense of the flag. On April 3, 1864, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant- major and served with his regiment until May 5, 1864, when he was shot through the right arm at the battle of the Wilderness and captured by the rebels. For about nine months he suffered all the horrors of imprisonment at Andersonville, and was then exchanged and rejoined his regiment, with which he served until honorably discharged May 31, 1865. Returning to Blossburg he resumed the duties of civil life. His executive ability and sound business judgment finally attracted the atten- tion of F. N. Drake, then the leading spirit in the development of the mines at Arnot, who in March, 1868, appointed Mr. Landrus book-keeper and paymaster for the Bloss- burg Coal Company at that place, and in 1872 general superintendent, which position he filled until May 1, 1876, when he resigned. In 1879 he was elected on the Re- publican ticket sheriff of Tioga county, but in 1881 he virtually resigned the office and again assumed the responsibilities of general manager at Arnot. When the Arnot mines became the property of the Erie Railway Company, Mr. Landrus resigned the superintendency and engaged in the lumber business, as a member of the firm of Drake, Landrus & Drake, with which he was connected up to his death. He removed from Arnot to Antrim in the spring of 1885, and in 1891 took up his residence in Wellsboro, where he died October 16, 1896, leaving a widow and nine children to mourn his loss. His children are as follows: Mary, wife of Frank H. Dartt; Flora, wife of W. L. Beverson; John L., Harry J., George, Nellie, Lou, Bessie and Paul.

Mr. Landrus was a prominent factor in the development of his native county, and his busy, successful career is a bright example to his fellowmen. A respected and honored citizen, he enjoyed the confidence of the whole community, as exempli- fied by the many positions of trust and responsibility which he so creditably filled at different periods in his life. In January, 1893, he was chosen president of the Wellsborough National Bank and served in that capacity up to December, 1895, when he resigned. He was quite prominent in the councils of the Republican party and was a delegate from this district to the National Convention at St. Louis, which nominated Mckinley and Hobart as the Republican standard bearers. In politics, as well as in business, he was plain, outspoken and fearless, yet charitable and always tolerant of the opinions of others. As a son, he watched over the declining years of his aged parents with the greatest solicitude, and as a husband and father he was kind, loving and generous. His unostentatious charity, genial manner and warm- hearted friendship won him the respect of the community. He was a member of the school board and board of health of Wellsboro, and secretary of the board of

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trustees of Cottage State Hospital, all of which passed warm resolutions at his death, extolling his high character and clean record as a public official and private citizen.

ANTON HARDT, general superintendent of the Fall Brook Coal Company, was born in Vienna, Austria, March 27, 1839, a son of Anton and Elizabeth (Jacobi) Hardt. He was educated in his native city; graduated from the I. R. Polytechnic Institute, of Vienna, and the I. R. School of Mines, at Leoben, Styria, and in 1860 was appointed by the Austrian government assistant teacher in the latter institution, where he remained two years. He then resigned to accept the more practical position of mining engineer at the coal mines of Prevali, Carinthia. In 1863 he accepted the position of mining engineer and superintendent at the extensive coal mines of Sagor, Carniola. This he resigned in June, 1865, and in September of that year he came to the United States and found employment as a civil engineer on the Philadel- phia and Erie railroad, with headquarters at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where he remained up to 1867. He then resigned to take charge of the survey of the Wellsboro and Lawrenceville railroad, and on the death of Mr. Brewer he was made mining engineer at Fall Brook, Tioga county, also serving as chief engineer of the Wellsboro and Lawrenceville railroad up to 1873. On January 1, 1873, Mr. Hardt was ap- pointed superintendent of the mines at Fall Brook and Antrim, and in the fall of 1875 he was elected chief engineer of the Syracuse, Geneva and Corning railroad, which was completed under his supervision in November, 1877. In January, 1882, he was elected chief engineer of the Jersey Shore, Pine creek and Buffalo railroad, now the Pine creek railroad, but at his own request he was released from railroad work in March, 1890. Mr. Hardt is a stockholder and director in the Pine Creek Rail- road Company; a director in the Tioga Improvement Company, and a member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. He has written and published numerous articles on geology and civil engineering in German and American journals, among them in the Scientific American, and the Railroad Gazette. Mr. Hardt was married December 2, 1866, to Miss Alvina Koch, a daughter of Augustus Koch, a well-remem- bered business man of South Williamsport. Six children blessed this union, viz: Alice W., deceased; Minnie E .; Edmond A., a clerk in the office of the Fall Brook Coal Company, at Antrim; Charles W., a student at the Pennsylvania State College; Annie B., and Albert F. Mrs. Hardt died September 3, 1890, aged forty-eight years. On May 22, 1894, he married for his second wife, in St. Peter's church, Augusta, Maine, Mrs. Florence Augusta Thurber, daughter of David Turk, of Addison, New York. She is the mother of two children, William H. and Emma Lilian, the former a telegraph operator at Wellsboro and the latter a musician of promise. Mr. Hardt is a member of the Protestant Episcopal church, and has been an active worker in the Wellsboro organization. He has been a member of the school board since 1887; president of the board of education for three years; is sec- retary of the board of health, and also a director in the First National Bank of Wellsboro. Mr. Hardt is one of the prominent and substantial citizens of Tioga county, a gentleman of broad, progressive and liberal ideas, and is held in high esteem by the community in which he has lived for more than a quarter of a century.

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History of Tioga County, Pennsylvania, Part 87

Author: Publication date: 1897 Publisher: Harrisburg : R. C. Brown Number of Pages: 1454

Author:
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: Harrisburg : R. C. Brown
Number of Pages: 1454