History of Warren County, Pennsylvania, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of some of its Prominent Men and Pioneers, Part 73

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 73


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In 1883 Mr. Stone was one of the three commissioners that located the United States public buildings at Erie. In 1884 he received the unanimous support of the delegates from Warren county for the congressional nomination for this district, though he made no canvass in the other counties. In 1886 he was strongly urged from Warren and Erie counties to go into the fight, but declined. in January, 1887, however, he was appointed by Governor Beaver as secretary of the Commonwealth, a position which he fills at this writing.


Notwithstanding his activity in political affairs, Mr. Stone has borne his share of the labor and received his share of the honor in business and social life. His standing as a lawyer is attested by the fact that he is presi- dent of the Bar Association of Warren county. In recent years he has engaged to a considerable extent in lumbering and oil operations in the Clar- endon field and elsewhere. Although in rather more than comfortable circun- stances, he has not accumulated so much property as he is commonly accred- ited with, having made it a rule, as well as possessing the inclination, to spend all that is necessary for his own enjoyment, or that of others, as he " goes along." He is a member of the State Historical Society, and since its origin has been prominently identified with the Warren Library Association. His ability as an orator is recognized throughout the State, and he is in demand, not only during political campaigns, but on Independence Day celebrations, and like oc- casions.


On the 30th of January, 1868, Mr. Stone married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Moorhead, of Erie, Pa. They have six children-Grace Mary, Annie Isabel, Ralph Warren, Elizabeth Moorhead, John Lyon, and Clara Rebecca. He has two brothers, both residing in the city of Bradford, l'a. One, R. B. Stone, is a prominent lawyer; the other, George F. Stone, is city superintendent of schools.


COFIELD, GLENNI W., 1 son of Darius and Sallie (Glenny) Scofield, S was born at Dewittville, Chautauqua county, N. Y., March 11, 1817. In early life he had such educational advantages as are usually furnished in the common schools. When about fourteen years of age he quit school to learn printing, and worked at this trade, off and on, for about three years. At sev- enteen he went back to his books and entered upon a course of classical study.


1 Extract from " Barnes's Historical and Biographical Sketches of Congress."


Iflenni W. Scofield


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GLENNI W. SCOFIELD.


In September, 1836, he entered Hamilton College, New York, as a freshman, and graduated from this institution with fair rank of scholarship in 1840. Many years thereafter the college conferred upon him the title of LL.D. The two years immediately following his graduation he spent in teaching; the first in Fauquier county, Va., and the second as principal of the academy in Mckean county, Pa. While teaching he studied law, and in December, 1842, was admitted to the bar, and at once entered upon the practice of his profes- sion at Warren, Pa.


November 20, 1845, he was married to Laura M. Tanner, daughter of Archibald Tanner, of Warren. They have three children-two daughters, Ellie G. and Mary M., and one son, Archibald T .- all of whom now reside with their parents.


Except when interrupted by his several terms of public service, his whole time has been devoted to his profession.


In 1846 he was appointed district attorney by Governor Shunk, which place he held for about two years. In 1849 he was elected to the Legislature of his State, and re-elected in 1850. While a member of this body he was esteemed one of its most effective debaters, and was chairman of the judiciary committee. His speech in favor of an elective judiciary was quite widely circulated at the time, and attracted considerable attention throughout the State. Although during his term of service in the Legislature he acted with the Democratic party, as he had uniformly done before, and as he did for some years after, he was always an anti-slavery man. During his college life he was a member of an abolition society, formed by a number of young men in the institution, and never relinquished his early convictions in hostility to slavery. In accordance with these convictions and while still acting with the Demo- cratic party, he advocated the Wilmot proviso, opposed the fugitive slave law and the repeal of the Missouri compromise, and took the anti-slavery side of all kindred questions.


When a Republican party was formed in 1856 he immediately severed his old party connections and in a public address united his political fortunes with the new party of freedom and progress. In the autumn of that year he was nominated by the Republicans for the State Senate, and in a district, before largely Democratic, was elected by a majority of twelve hundred. He occu- pied this position three years, and ably sustained the reputation which he had gained as a debater in the lower branch of the Legislature. While in the Senate he introduced and advocated bills to exempt the homestead from sale for debt, and to abrogate the laws excluding witnesses from testifying on account of religious belief. Neither of these bills passed, but Mr. Scofield's speeches in their favor, which were reported and printed, prove that they should have passed. His bills were voted down, but his arguments were not answered. He was more successful in his efforts in connection with other


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HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.


western members to procure State aid for the construction of the Philadel- phia and Erie Railroad.


For a short time in 1861, by the appointment of Governor Curtin, he was president judge of the district composed of the counties of Mercer, Venango, Clarion, and Jefferson.


In 1862 he was elected a member of the Thirty-eighth Congress and re- elected to the Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, Forty-first, Forty-second, and Forty- third Congresses; the last time by the State at large. During this twelve years' term in Congress he served on committees on elections, appropriations, Indian affairs, and for six years as chairman of the committee of naval affairs.


March 31, 1878, he was appointed by President Hayes register of the United States treasury, which office he held until May 20, 1881, and then resigned to accept a judgeship on the United States Court of Claims, to which he had been commissioned by President Garfield.


As a debater in Congress, Mr. Scofield has been much admired for his analytical, terse, and logical style. Without striving to be amusing, he not unfrequently enlivens his argument by pungent satire and humorous illustra- tions ; but the general character of his efforts is that of clear statement and close reasoning. He seems to aim only at conviction. The following extract from a speech delivered in reply to Hon. James Brooks, of New York, in Jan- uary, 1865, in the House of Representatives, is a fair specimen of his style of address and power of discussion:


" It has been often said of late that history repeats itself. Of course it can- not be literally true ; but the gentleman reiterates it, and then proceeds to search for the prototype of the terrible drama now being enacted on this con- tinent, and affects to find it in the Revolution of 1776. Having settled this point to his own satisfaction, he proceeds to assign to the living actors their historic parts. The rebels take the position of the colonial revolutionists, the Government of the United States re-enacts the part of George III and his min- isters, while for himself and the Opposition debaters of this House he selects the honorable role of Chatham, Fox, Burke, and other champions of colonial rights in the British Parliament. Let us examine this. It is true that the colonists rebelled against the Government of Great Britain, and the slave- holders rebelled against the Government of the United States ; but here the likeness ends. Between the circumstances that might provoke or justify rebellion in the two cases there is no resemblance. The Government from which the colonies separated was three thousand miles beyond the seas. They could not even communicate with it in those days in less than two or three months. In that Government they had no representation, and their wants and wishes no authoritative voice. Nor was it the form of government most acceptable to the colonists. They preferred a republic. The rapidly increas- ing population and the geographical extent and position of the colonies de-


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GLENNI W. SCOFIELD.


manded nationality. Sooner or later it must come. The tea tax and other trifling grievances only hurried on an event that was sure to occur from the influences of geography and population alone. How is it in these respects with the present rebellion ? The Government against which the slaveholders rebelled was not a foreign one ; it was as much theirs as ours. They were fully represented in it. There was scarcely a law, indeed I think there was not a single law upon the statute-book, to which they had not given their assent. It was the Government they helped to make, and it was made as they wanted it. They had ever had their share of control and patronage in it, and more than their share, for they boasted with much truth that cotton was king. Nor is there any geographical reasons in their favor. It is conceded, even by the rebels themselves, that a division of the territory lying compactly between the Lakes, and the Gulf, the Atlantic and the Mississippi, into two nations would be a great misfortune to both. If it were the Pacific States demanding separ- ation, bad as that would be, there would be some sense in it ; but for this ter- ritory you cannot even find a dividing line. When you attempt to run one, the rivers and mountains cross your purpose. Both the land and the water oppose division. There is no disunion outside the wicked hearts of these dis- loyal men. I can see no resemblance, then, between our patriot fathers, who toiled through a seven years' war to establish this beneficent Government, and the traitors who drenched the land in blood in an attempt - I trust in God a vain one - to destroy it.


"Again, sir, in what respect do the apologists of the present rebellion in this House resemble the advocates of our great Revolution in the British Parlia- ment? Conceding they are their equals in statesmanship, learning, eloquence, and wit, I submit that they fall far below them in the merit of their respective causes. Chatham defended the cause of the colonists as set forth in the Dec- laration of Independence that 'all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' - the honorable gentlemen from New York pleads for slavery, the auction block, the coffle, the lash. With slavery he cures all national troubles. He begs for harmony among ourselves. How shall we be united ? 'Restore slavery,' says he. He is opposed to war. How then shall rebels in arms be subdued ? 'Revive the traffic in blood.' He is op- posed to taxes. How then shall our exhausted Treasury be replenished ? ' Raise more children for the market.' Slavery, more slavery, still more slavery, is the only prescription of the Opposition doctors. If we are to look for the representatives of these great men on this side of the Atlantic I would not select them from among those who, born and raised in the free States, with all their moral and educational advantages, had not yet quite virtue enough when the struggle came to be patriots, nor quite courage enough to be rebels, but I would rather select them from such men as Johnson, of Ten- 40


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HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.


essee, or Davis, of Maryland, who, born and educated amid the influences of slavery, still stood up for the Union cause, at first almost alone. But, sir, the representatives of these men are to be found now as they were then on the other side of the Atlantic, the leaders of the liberal party in the British Parlia- ment.


"There is another party that figures largely in the history of the revolution- ary struggle that the gentleman entirely omitted to name. He gave them no place in his cast of parts. The omission may be attributed to either modesty or forgetfulness. Prior to the Revolution the members of this party had filled all the places of honor and profit in the colonies, and when the war came they heartily espoused the cause of the king, though they did not generally join his armies. Their principal business was to magnify disaster, depreciate success, denounce the currency, complain of the taxes, and denounce and dodge arbitrary arrests. To the patriot cause they were ever prophets of evil. Failure was their word. The past was a failure, the future would be. In the beginning of the war this party was in the majority in some of the colonies, and constituted a large minority in all, but as the war progressed their num- bers constantly diminished. Many of the leaders were from time to time sent beyond the 'lines' and their estates confiscated. Most of these settled in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, right handy to the place where the gentle- man informs us he was born. The members of this party were called tories, and if this war is but a repetition of the war of the Revolution, as the gentle- man intimates, who are their present representatives ?


"Again exclaims the gentleman, 'You cannot subjugate eight millions people.' I know not which most to condemn in this expression (I speak it of course without personal application), its insinuation of falsehood or its con- fession of cowardice. The United States does not propose to subjugate any portion of its people, but only to exact obedience to law from all. It is this misrepresentation of the purpose of the Government that still keeps alive the dying flames of the rebellion. I can go further with perfect truth, and say it was this misrepresentation that lighted those flames at first. The slave- holders were told that it was the purpose of this Administration to destroy their personal and political rights; next they were reminded that they were proud, brave, chivalric men, and then tauntingly asked if they were going to submit. They were thus fairly coaxed and goaded into rebellion. Except for this misrepresentation the Union people would have been in a large majority in all the slave States, and despite it they are in a majority in more than half of them to-day if they could be heard. But they are gagged, bound hand and foot by a despotism so cruel and so mean, so thorough and so efficient, that even the gentleman from New York has no fault to find with it. The country is too much engaged now with the immediate actors in the drama to look be- hind the screens for the authors and prompters of the play. But when these


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GLENNI W. SCOFIELD. - ARCHIBALD TANNER.


actors have disappeared from the stage, gone down to graves never to be honored, or wandering among strangers never to be loved ; in the peaceful future, when inquisition shall be made for the contrivers, instigators, aiders, and abettors of this great crime, the two classes so often coupled in denuncia- tion in this Hall, the abolitionists of the North and the fire-eaters of the South, will be scarcely noticed, but the quiet historian will 'point his slow, unmoving finger' at those northern leaders who for fifteen years have deceived the South and betrayed the North. They will stand alone. The large minority that now gathers around them, moved thereto more in hopes to escape the severe hard- ships of the war than from any love of them or their position, will have melted away from their support like dissolving ice beneath their feet, and well will it be for their posterity if they can manage then, like Byron's wrecks, to sink into the


"Depths with bubbling groan,


Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined. and unknown."


Subjugate the South! No, sir; it is the purpose as it is the duty of the Government to liberate the South, to drive out the usurpers, and to restore to the deluded and betrayed masses the blessings of a free Republic."


T ANNER, ARCHIBALD. Soon after the death of Archibald Tanner, which occurred February 15, 1861, the following obituary notice, written by the Hon. S. P. Johnson, was published in the Warren Mail:


The subject of this notice was to Warren its oldest inhabitant, its best friend, its most enterprising citizen. Here he spent his youthful vigor, his ripened manhood and his feebler age. Around us everywhere are visible mementos of his public spirit and private virtues. With all our pleasing recol- lections of the past his memory is commingled. Every mind is stored with reminiscences of his genial and eccentric humor. Every eye is moist at his seemingly sudden exit. His loss is equally a private grief and a public calamity.


The religious, the political, the commercial, and social circle have each a vacant seat and no one able and willing to wear his falling mantle and fill them. But the tear which this bereavement exacts is dried by the knowledge that the good which he has done will live after him, and the conviction that our loss is, to him, eternal gain.


Archibald Tanner, son of Tryal Tanner, was born in Litchfield, county, Conn., February 3, 1786- emigrated with his parents to Trumbull county, O., in the year 1802 - commenced his business life at his majority by boating produce down the Ohio River, and came to Warren in 1816 with a small stock of goods and groceries, brought by keel-boat up the river. He had been loca- ted for a few previous months in Franklin. With this small stock, his earthly substance then, he commenced a career of commercial success. This he achieved single-handed, where many others failed, in a poor and sparsely set-


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HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.


tled country, without aid from relatives or patronizing friends. His integrity gained him universal confidence, while his capacity and close attention to business secured him a large measure of success. He prospered and enlarged his business for many successive years, until he was recognized at home and abroad, as the capitalist and business man of Warren.


The latter part of his active commercial life was spent in company with Robert Falconer, esq., and the well-known firm of Tanner & Falconer is yet remembered by all middle-aged descendants of the early settlers, with feelings of sincere respect. Two more honorable dealers never did business in Warren.


In December, 1819, Mr. Tanner married the daughter of Colonel Alexan- der McDowell, of Franklin, one of her earliest and most prominent citizens. His married life was short. In 1825 he was left a widower with two infant daughters, only one of whom, wife of Hon. Glenni W. Scofield, survives him. Not forgetting his obligations as a citizen nor relaxing his business energies, he added to their burdens the double duties of a widowed parental vigilance.


His political proclivities may be summed up by saying, he was an Adams man while Adams and Jackson headed the parties of the country, subsequently a Whig during the life of that party, and lastly a Republican in full com- munion.


In politics, as in all things, he was an earnest man, acting boldly upon his convictions of right and duty. When in a discouraging minority, he pur- chased a press and established at his own expense the first newspaper ever printed in the county, to maintain the political doctrines he thought right.


In 1819-20 he was treasurer of the county, and for many years prior to 1829 - the advent of Jackson's administration - he held the office of deputy postmaster in Warren, with great credit to himself and satisfaction to the people.


But his most prominent characteristics were local pride and public spirit. He led in every enterprise that aimed to promote the interest of the town and county in which he lived. Coming to Warren when it was an ungrubbed plateau, accessible only by the river channel and the Indian trail, he was fore- most in all improvements, both useful and ornamental. To roads, turnpikes, boats, and bridges, and all other means of progress, he was the largest con- tributor and most active friend. In building he had no compeer in the early history of Warren. The first steamboat that ever navigated the Allegheny River, in 1830, was a monument to his enterprise and self-sacrificing spirit.


His last undertaking was the development of the rock-oil fields of Pennsyl- vania. At Titusville, in company with Hlon. L. F. Watson, he sunk the first flowing well.


In his early life he devoted a portion of his leisure time to mechanical im- provements. His inventions, though useful in their day, have been superseded by changes in business and later discoveries. One of his patents bears the signature of James Madison and another of J. Q. Adams.


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ARCHIBALD TANNER.


Nor was he less a friend to the moral and religious advancement of society. He was one of the pioneers of Presbyterianism in Warren. Having united with that church at its first organization in 1831, he became its chief supporter. In 1832 he was much the largest contributor to the erection of its church building, and for a quarter of a century thereafter, to the support of stated preaching therein. His religion was the result of an earnest, vital conviction of its truth, and was never laid aside or forgotten in the excitements of the hour.


His conscientiousness was largely developed and ever present, prompting him in questions of doubtful morality. Although possessing certain idiosyn- crasies of character that occasioned him to differ with many others in his views of right and wrong, he never could be betrayed into an act that was dishonest or dishonorable. While he was an advocate for the doctrine of expediency, few men lived so blameless a life in a moral point of view.


In intellectual capacity Mr. Tanner occupied a prominent position among intelligent business men. His was an original intellect, possessing large self- sustaining resources, ingenious, inventive, eccentric, with a strong appreciation of the ridiculous, a ready adaptation to the details of business and a pride of peculiarity in the mode of accomplishing his purpose. In his later life, his water works, his fence building, his cemetery project and the various enter- prises which he either originated or patronized for the development of the country and improvement in the arts, were evidences of these characteristic peculiarities of taste and talent.


His perceptions were quick, and his mental action upon every subject pre- sented, direct and pertinent, overleaping all circumlocution. His conclusions were rather instincts than rational deductions. His views of men and things were often quaint and quizzical, and so abrupt that many of his sayings have passed into proverbs and became the common property of the people.


In judgment he was not infallible, and he often embarked in projects that proved unfortunate pecuniary speculations. Such were his printing, steam- boat, turnpike, railroad, bridge, and bank experiences, prompted always by public and patriotic motives, but disastrous in their financial results. To his friends he was always true, to his enemies persistently hostile. To his friends he always made himself useful and reliable, while he was at times exacting and censorious ; to his enemies he was uncompromising and defiant, but never cruel.


To his relations he was always kind and often generous, even to involving himself in heavy losses on their account. True to his benevolent impulses, to the last, in his will, he releases all obligations to his estate for such advances.


He was the poor man's friend, if he would work. To the wants of the needy and unfortunate his heart always responded in acts of substantial aid. Industrious and energetic himself, he had no toleration for idleness or dissipa- tion.


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HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.


In his temper he was self-willed and somewhat hasty, exhibiting at times a degree of petulance and passion that was doubtless largely attributable to his sensitive and very excitable nervous temperament. But underneath all his foibles lay a manly and open heart, sincerely devoted to truth, honesty, and the public good. His courage, moral and physical, no one ever doubted. It had been often tested. He dared to do right in all emergencies, even against the swell of popular sentiment.


He had long been a member of the Masonic order and adhered to it as a benevolent institution.


With this brief but candid review of his character and history by one who knew him long and well, we must now part with our old friend Tanner, not to forget him, but to commemorate his virtues and perpetuate his good name.


For integrity and firmness of purpose, for industry and energy in its exe- cution, for public enterprise and private charity, for an untarnished morality and a consistent piety, his life was a model well worthy the study and imita- tion of those who have a lifetime yet to live, and desire to attain his high position in the estimation of mankind.




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