History of Warren County, Pennsylvania, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of some of its Prominent Men and Pioneers, Part 72

Author: Schenck, J. S., [from old catalog] ed; Rann, William S., [from old catalog] joint ed; Mason, D., & co., Syracuse, N.Y., pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1887
Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y., D. Mason & co.
Number of Pages: 1020


USA > Pennsylvania > Warren County > History of Warren County, Pennsylvania, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of some of its Prominent Men and Pioneers > Part 72


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


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101


In 1861 he organized the Conewango Valley Railroad Company, now known as the Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley and Pittsburgh, and was elected its first president. It was mainly through his efforts that the Conewango Valley road was constructed. In 1877 he purchased a large tract of land in Cass county, Dak., and at once commenced the cultivation of wheat and other agri- cultural products. At the present date he has over two thousand acres under cultivation.


Since the organization of the Republican party Mr. Watson has at all times supported the political principles which have distinguished that great body - principles that have more firmly cemented the bonds of the Union; which have protected the American laborer from competition with the degraded la- borers of foreign nations, and which have established and sustained the conserv- ative financial policy that has secured so much prosperity to the country, and insures the extinguishment of the public debt without distress to the people.


608


HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.


Although not a politician by profession or practice, his unswerving loyalty to his party, his known patriotism, his energy, perspicacity, and success in the various enterprises which he had undertaken, led, in 1874, to the unanimous recommendation of Mr. Watson, by the Republicans of Warren county to the district convention, as a candidate for representative to Congress. At the meeting of the district convention Mr. Watson's name as a candidate was with- drawn at his own request, to effect an unanimous nomination of Hon. C. B. Curtis, the sitting member of the House from the Twenty-seventh Pennsyl- vania Congressional District, for a second term. Unfortunately Mr. Curtis was defeated at the polls by his Democratic competitor, by a small majority.


Two years thereafter, in 1876, Mr. Watson was nominated by the Repub- lican convention, held at Franklin, as a candidate for representative to the Forty-fifth Congress from the above district, and he was elected by the over- whelming majority of 3,547, against Wm. L. Scott, the Democratic nominee, notwithstanding the election of a Democrat for the preceding term of 1874-76. In 1880 he was again elected to Congress. His congressional duties were per- formed with the same assiduity and zeal that he displayed in private affairs.


In the Forty-fifth Congress he introduced a bill to regulate inter-state commerce and to prohibit unjust discrimination by common carriers. This bill aimed to correct one of the crying evils of the times.


In the House it elicited discussion which its importance merited, and it was was widely commented upon by the leading newspapers of the country in a manner which indicated the deep interest felt in the proposed reformatory leg- islation by the people at large. The bill passed the House, with some unim- portant amendments, by a large majority, but reached the Senate too late for action during that session of Congress.


That its passage through the House, by a large majority, should be ascribed to the energetic and skillful efforts of Mr. Watson, is apparent from the fact that a similar bill, introduced in the Forty-sixth Congress, did not reach a vote in either the House or the Senate.


In 1842 Mr. Watson married Elvira W. McDowell, whose death occurred in 1849. No children of this marriage survive. In 1856 he married Miss Caroline E., daughter of Hon. N. B. Eldred, of Wayne county, Pa. Of the children born of this marriage Annie Bartlett alone survives.


At the date of this publication Mr. Watson continues actively engaged in the various business pursuits which have absorbed so many years of his life - banking, the manufacture of lumber, operations in pine timber lands, the pro- duction of petroleum, and grain growing.


While increasing his lumber interests, he has gradually become, probably, the largest land owner in the county of Warren, and latterly he has acquired extensive timber tracts on the Pacific slope.


These various and absorbing pursuits have not diminished his concern in


609


LEWIS FINDLAY WATSON. - DAVID BEATY.


public affairs, nor have they dulled his lively interest in the successes, or less- ened his sympathy in the misfortunes of his neighbors, and his large and ever- increasing circle of acquaintances. On the contrary, he contemplates the va- rious political schisms of the time with all the ardor of earlier days, but with a judgment and wisdom ripened by wide and varied experience.


Happy in his own domestic life and successes, he is ever ready to contrib- ute to the happiness of the less fortunate, by his quiet sympathy in their dis- tress, or by extending the hand of unostentatious charity -the greatest of all the virtues-which adorns alike the prince and peasant, the private as well as the more conspicuous public citizen who may wear her mantle.


B EATY, DAVID, was born in Beaver county, Pa., on the 26th day of Oc- tober, 1811. His paternal ancestry is derived from Scotland. His grand- father, William Beaty, emigrated from Scotland to Newburg, on the Hudson, in New York State, and thence removed to Beaver county, in this State, nearly eighty years ago. He had a family of three daughters and four sons, of the latter of whom William, jr., the eldest, was the father of David Beaty. Will- iam, the younger, was born in Newburg, N. Y., in 1764; could distinctly re- member having seen Washington ; served in the War of 1812, being stationed at Erie to protect the country from an apprehended invasion of the enemy, and died at his home in Beaver county on the 5th of June, 1859. He was a farmer by occupation, a Democrat of the old school, and a consistent member of the Presbyterian Church. His wife, Mary, had four brothers and three sis- ters, the children of David Clark, of Irish birth and parentage. He was a giant in stature, measuring six feet two and one-half inches in his stockings. He died in Beaver county about the year 1822. Mary (Clark) Beaty died in the summer of 1868, of palsy.


William and Mary Beaty reared a family of seven sons and six daughters. Of this family of thirteen children, David Beaty was the sixth. Just previous to his nineteenth birthday David Beaty came to Chautauqua county, N. Y., where he remained at work on farms for four years, removing, at the expira- tion of that time, to Tionesta, Warren county, Pa. There he engaged in lum- bering in the forests for a period of five years, when he went to West Hickory, near Tidioute, and was married November 16, 1843, to Abigail Mead, young- est daughter of Joseph Mead; uniting the labors of a farmer with those of his former vocation. At the beginning of the oil excitement, more than twenty years ago, he commenced his operations in petroleum on Oil Creek, eight miles south of Titusville. This occupation gradually assumed larger proportions, and in time absorbed Mr. Beaty's entire time and attention. The material result, however, has been most gratifying. The boy who left home with one dollar and seventy-five cents in his pocket, and with venturesome daring, walked 130 miles to the destination which he had selected as the field


610


HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.


for his labors, was bound to succeed, and has succeeded beyond his original calculations. After erecting and furnishing the buildings in which he now lives, Mr. Beaty removed hither from West Hickory on the 11th of March, 1873. His home farm consists of 1702 acres, besides which he now owns sixty acres in one lot above here, 100 acres on Hatch Run, etc., making more than 500 acres that he owns in Warren county, and nearly four thousand acres in Dakota. Mr. Beaty is a stalwart member of the Democratic party, and a member of the Presbyterian Church of Warren.


Joseph Mead was born in Northumberland county, Pa., June 25, 1772; came to where Meadville now stands, when it was a wilderness, with his eldest brother, David Mead. Joseph was sixteen years old at that time. They had some narrow escapes. Their father, Darius Mead, was taken prisoner by the Indians and killed about thirty miles from Franklin. Joseph remained there one year; returned to Northumberland, and went to school; acquired as good [an education as he could possibly ; was married in 1794 to Hannah Boone, a relative of Daniel Boone, of Kentucky ; emigrated to near Youngs- ville, Warren county, in 1799 with his brother Darius, and their families- They built the first grist and saw-mill in the county. Joseph afterward came to reside three miles below Warren, on the Allegheny River, and died there in 1846.


The family of Mr. and Mrs. Beaty consists of three sons-O. W., David W., and Albert B., the last named of whom died on the 20th of September, 1851. The other two are still residing in Warren county.


W TETMORE, L. D., was born in Pine Grove township, Warren county, Pa., on the 18th day of October, 1818. He is the son of Hon. Lansing Wet- more, a sketch of whose life is written in this work, and the grandson of Par- sons Wetmore, an early settler in Whitestown, whose wife was a daughter of Hugh White, the first settler west of the Dutch settlements in the Mohawk Valley in the State of New York. Hugh White earned the distinction of being the founder of Whitestown, N. Y., as his son Hugh became the founder of Cohoes, N. Y. The family came originally from the vicinity of Hartford, Conn.


L. D. Wetmore received his earlier education in the district schools of War- ren, and afterward attended the academy at the same place. He was gradu- ated from Union College in the class of 1841, after which he began to study law in Warren. He was admitted to practice in 1845, and at once commenced the practice of his profession in Warren, his labors being interrupted for a time in 1843 and 1844, when he taught in the academy at Smethport for two sea- sons. From that time on he has conducted a large and successful practice in Warren, and is now at the head of the firm of Wetmore, Noyes & Hinckley. Mr. Wetmore's prominence in this and adjoining counties is sufficiently attested by the fact that in the fall of 1870 he was elected president judge of the Sixth


611


L. D. WETMORE.


Judicial District, composed of the counties of Erie, Warren, and Elk, and that during a term of ten years he performed the functions of that office with the most creditable promptness and efficiency. For some time previous to the death of his brother, C. C. Wetmore, in April, 1867, he was interested with him in an extensive lumber business. After that painful accident, as described in other pages of this volume, Judge Wetmore was obliged to assume sole charge over the business, and from that time to the present he has engaged heavily in the manufacture and sale of lumber, with results which disclose his sagacity and capacity for managing affairs. In politics Judge Wetmore is a Republican, and though not an office seeker was clothed for a time with the judicial ermine, as stated, and has been called upon to take a part in the ardu- ous and not less important burdens of local office. Previous to his election to the bench he was president of the First National Bank of Warren, a position which he resumed on his retirement from the political office, and which he now holds. His judicial ability has been even better appreciated since the expira- tion of his term than while he was in office. Like his father, he has always been remarkable for the affability of his manner and his social disposition in all the relations of life. His decisions were almost always correct, notwith- standing the fact that he was engaged in private business enterprises that would alone have fully taxed the energies of most men. He studied all the questions that came before him for decision with the thoroughness of a student in love with his task, and refused to neglect the minutest duties of his position.


The following is the correspondence on the termination of his official life in Erie county :


ERIE, Pa., April 29, 1874.


To THE HONORABLE L. D. WETMORE,


Dear Sir :- As your connection with the bar of Erie county as president judge has ceased, the undersigned, its members, desire to give an expression of their respect for you, officially and personally, at a supper at such time as it may suit your convenience to meet us.


We are unwilling that your connection with us as president judge of our county should cease without some demonstration, feeling that while it should be a pleasant occasion to us, it is due to you for the ability, impartiality and fidel- ity with which you discharged the duties of the office as well as a grateful ex- pression of our remembrance of the agreeable intercourse we have had with you as our late president judge, signally marked out as it was by gentlemanly and courteous bearing, and patient consideration of our efforts before you. With great respect we are your friends and obedient servants.


· JOHN H. WALKER, ELIJAH BABBIT, JAMES C. MARSHALL,


and some forty members of the Erie bar.


612


HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.


WARREN, Pa., June 8, 1874.


Gentlemen :- Your favor was duly received and my absence has delayed a reply.


To have performed the duties of judge in a manner to meet the approval of the members of your bar is to me a source of great satisfaction.


Your learning, ability and urbanity greatly aided me in my labors on the bench.


The upright, fearless, and learned lawyer is as much a minister of justice as the court to which he speaks, said Justin Grier, on his retirement from the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States.


The fact so truly stated by Judge Grier has been appreciated by me in my official intercourse with you.


I would be pleased to accept your invitation but am unable at present to state a time when it would be convenient for me to meet you. Thanking you for the flattering compliment of your letter, I remain


Very respectfully yours,


L. D. WETMORE.


To HON. JOHN H. WALKER, HON. ELIJAH BABBIT, HON. JAMES C. MAR- SHALL and others.


At a meeting of the court in Warren on the first Monday in January, 1881, the following resolutions, offered by a committee appointed by the bar, were adopted :


WHEREAS, The term of office of Lansing D. Wetmore, president judge of the 37th Judicial District has expired, and he is about to retire from the bench, therefore be it


Resolved, That we, the members of the bar of Warren county, express to Judge Wetmore our great respect and esteem for him personally, and our high appreciation of his able, learned, and impartial administration of justice in the county.


Resolved, That as a judge he has been calm and impartial in investigation, independent without pride of opinion, just but merciful in judgment, earnestly striving to judge according to the law.


He has ever sincerely sought to establish truth and do impartial justice, and by his considerate politeness and courtesy towards all he has merited our special gratitude, and shown himself a kind and cultured gentleman, as well as a just and learned judge.


The pure and perfect gem of judicial authority which was committed to his keeping ten years ago he transmits to his successor, still a diamond, not a stone, with its brilliancy undimmed, its lustre unimpaired.


Resolved, That the sincere and hearty good wishes of this bar follow Judge Wetmore into private life, and we hope and expect to see his ripe years and manhood crowned with even greener honors than those he to-day lays down.


613


L. D. WETMORE .- CHARLES W. STONE.


With all his labors he is governed by a philosophy of good will and enjoys life as it passes. He has an exquisite taste in literary matters, and among those who are acquainted with his attainments is regarded as a just and dis- criminating critic. He was one of the original contributors to the first fund, and is now one of the trustees of the Struthers Library Building. Moreover, he is liberal and ready to promote by generous contributions all beneficent public institutions, and with the aid of his wife is constantly engaged in the dispensa- tion of many and well-directed private charities.


Judge Wetmore has been twice married. His first wife was Miss B. Wetherby, of Warren, who died in 1856, four years after their marriage, leaving one child, now the wife of Lientenant J. P. Jefferson, a graduate from West Point. In March, 1858, Judge Wetmore married Maria C. Shattuck, of Gro- ton, Mass. They have three children, Edward D., Frederick S., and Albert L. Wetmore.


TONE, CHARLES W., was born in Groton, Middlesex county, Mass., on S


the 29th day of June, 1843, and was the eldest of the three sons of War- ren F. and Mary (Williams) Stone. His mother was of Welsh extraction, and her ancestors had settled in this country during the early years of its history. His father, who was of English descent, and whose ancestors were related to General Nathaniel Green, of Revolutionary fame and were pre-Revolutionary inhabitants of Massachusetts, was a carpenter by trade, and though of feeble health, was distinguished by a strong, clear, and active mind. The year prior to his death, in his forty-second year, he was a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts. He had a keen appreciation of culture, and to his tendency to intellectual occupation, and his early words of inspiring encouragement, is due much of the success that has waited on his son, the subject of this sketch. The boyhood and youth of C. WV. Stone were passed on a farm with his grand- father, with the exception of one year, during which he worked at the trade of his father. At an age when most boys have no thought for the morrow, he conceived an ambition for a liberal education, and determined to obtain it, notwithstanding the somewhat straitened circumstances of the family, and his own delicate health. He prepared for a collegiate course at Lawrence Acad- emy, and in 1860 was sufficiently advanced to enter the sophomore class at Williams College. In order to supplement his limited means, he taught in a private family, sawed wood, and did other " chores " during college terms, and, free from debt, was graduated in 1863 in the section of first ten in a class of fifty. Soon after his graduation he became principal of the Union school at Warren, Pa., and in March, 1865, relinquished that position to accept that of superintendent of common schools of Warren county. In the fall of the same year he was chosen principal of the academy at Erie, but this situation he re- signed in November, 1865, and went to Mississippi in company with F. M.


614


HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.


Abbott and Colonel A. P. Shattuck, both of whom afterward became promi- nent cotton planters in that State. At the close of December, 1866, he re- turned to the north, and having been admitted to practice law in the courts of Warren county, on the first day of January, 1867, entered into partnership with his present partner, Judge Rasselas Brown. This partnership has now continued longer without interruption than any other law partnership in War- ren county. In 1868 he was elected school director and served nine years ; the last three as president of the board. He was also for three years a mem- ber of the borough council.


So soon were Mr. Stone's abilities known and appreciated, that as early as the fall of 1869 he was elected to the House of Representatives of Pennsyl- vania, from the district composed of Warren and Venango counties. Unlike too many men in public life, he did not look upon the position as an honor merely, a sinecure, but a trust which demanded the best of his talents and en- deavors. He was a prominent figure in his first session in the Legislature. .A movement, led by Senator Lowry, of Erie, in the Upper House, and Rep- resentative Ames, of Titusville, in the Lower House, was initiated for the formation of a new county to comprise Eldred, Southwest and half of Spring Creek townships in this county and portions of Venango and Crawford coun- ties. Mr. Stone and J. D. McJunkin, from the Venango district, opposed the measure, and Mr. Stone made a powerful speech against it, which materially aided to produce its defeat. The effort was complimented throughout the State in the press, even the opposition bearing witness to its force and effect. The struggle was a very severe, laborious, and exhaustive one to Mr. Stone, but it was the occasion of his re-nomination and re-election in the fall of 1870, without an opposing nominee, the Democratic party paying him the high com- pliment of not putting an opposing candidate in the field. The honor was well deserved, for the division of Warren county would have deprived it of some of the richest portions of its territory, and would have injured Warren by making Titusville the county seat of a new and rival county. Although at the beginning it seemed destined to be regarded as a local question, it engen- dered such a fight as to assume the proportions of a State question. The odds against which Mr. Stone and his confrère contended may be partly appre- ciated when it is stated that the victorious party were led by two young men in their first term against political veterans.


An important feature of his labors in the session of 1871 was the part he took in a measure to protect the harbor of Erie. In consequence of a com- munication from the United States secretary of war to Governor Geary, rela- tive to depredations said to have been committed upon the Peninsula protect- ing and forming the harbor at Erie, and thus endangering the harbor, a com- mittee of five was appointed to investigate, and Mr. Stone was made chairman. The committee made two elaborate reports, which undoubtedly operated to


615


CHARLES W. STONE.


save the harbor from destruction, and restore the Marine Hospital (now the Soldier's Home) property to the State.


At the expiration of the second term in the House of Representatives Mr. Stone returned with renewed energy to the practice of law, from which he had been drawn by the press of public duties. But he was not long permitted to enjoy his retirement. In 1876 he was chosen to a seat in the State Senate, and took his place in the beginning of 1877. In that body he served as chair- man of the general judiciary committee, and while taking a leading part in all its deliberations was recognized as the special champion of the interests of the oil- producing sections of the State, and, as in the Lower House, was esteemed very clear, able, and impressive in debate. Perhaps his ablest effort was his speech in support of the free pipe bill, in the winter of 1878. The bill was then defeated, but has since been passed and is now in force. In 1878 he was brought forward as the best candidate for the position of lieutenant-governor of the State. The opposition in the convention was but nominal, the vote standing 182 against 59, and in the subsequent election he was chosen by a majority of 23,250 votes. He served with distinguished ability from January, 1879, to January, 1883, the entire term. The importance of this office, which is of recent institution in Pennsylvania, is at once apparent from the following section of Article IV, of the new constitution of the State :


" Sect. 13. In case of the death, conviction, or impeachment, failure to qualify, resignation, or other disability of the governor, the powers, duties, and emoluments of the office, for the remainder of the term, or until the disability be removed, shall devolve upon the lieutenant-governor." It also provides that he shall be ex officio president of the Senate and member of the board of pardons. It fell to him to preside over the joint assembly during the protracted contest for election of United States Senator, which resulted in the selection of John I. Mitchell, and though he was called upon to make more rulings than were ever before or since made in a similar assembly, not one of his rulings, either in the Senate or joint assembly, was ever reversed or even appealed from, a statement which cannot be made concerning any other lieutenant-gov- ernor in the history of the State. During that contest Mr. Stone had the gen- eral support of the press of northern and northwestern Pennsylvania for the senatorship, but he declined to enter the field.


It is a custom for the Senate, at the close of each term of its presiding offi- cer, to extend him a vote of thanks. This vote may have meaning and it may not, but there can be no mistaking the sentiment that impelled the Senate, at the close of Mr. Stone's term, in 1883, by the co-operation of every member of both parties, to present to him a gold watch of superior workmanship, bear- ing the following inscription :


" Presented to the Hon. Charles Warren Stone, lieutenant-governor of Pennsylvania, January 16, 1883, by the members of the State Senate for the


-


616


HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.


sessions of 1879, 1881, and 1883, as a testimonial of their high regard and great esteem for him as a public officer, and for the impartial and faithful perform- ance of his duties as president of the Senate." To the heavy gold chain, which was presented with the watch, is attached, as a charm, a miniature gavel with diamond settings. The presentation address was made by Senator John Stew- art, since the independant candidate for governor, to which Mr. Stone feelingly replied.




Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.