USA > Pennsylvania > Warren County > History of Warren County, Pennsylvania, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of some of its Prominent Men and Pioneers > Part 79
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He has been three times married. Hannah, daughter of Jacob Wells, be- came his first wife on the 4th of October, 1843. She died in 1862, leaving two sons and daughters, of whom Harriet, James Marshall, and Hugh Fred are still living. James M. now occupies the old homestead of James Gray, his grandfather, and Hugh Fred has been mentioned as the present occupant of the farm of Robert M. Gray. Mr. Gray was again married to Sarah Par- ratt, daughter of M. Ewers, of Farmington. She died on the 6th of Septem- ber, 1882, leaving no children. His third wife, Mary Ann Vickory, of Glade township, in this county, was married to him on the 16th of January, 1884.
H ARMON, HOSEA. The birth of Hosea Harmon took place in Rensse- laer county, N. Y., on the 22d day of January, 1818. The first of the family to come to Sugar Grove was his grandfather, Moses Harmon, who im- migrated hither about the year 1825. Ile engaged in farming until he died some ten or twelve years after his settlement. He was the father of two sons and three daughters. Nason Harmon, father of Hosea, was the eldest child of Moses, and was born in Rensselaer county in 1786. He remained in the place of his birthi several years after his father had come to Sugar Grove, and fol- lowed him about the year 1830. He was a hard working man, a farmer, and strove carnestly to acquire a competence for his family. But the advantages and emoluments that follow in the wake of well-directed labor at the present time, did not then exist in a new country whose resources were neither known nor developed. The pioneer (and Nason Harmon may almost be called a pioneer) in
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HOSEA HARMON.
a new country may not hope to accumulate wealth ; he must be content to pre- pare the way for others who are to reap the rewards of his toil, to eat fruit from the trees which he has planted, to cultivate the soil which he has cleared, and to enlarge and beautify the homes which he may rear in the wilderness. The lot of Nason Harmon was that of the common pioneer. He toiled without ceas- ing, he practiced the most rigid frugality, he bound his children out to service -- and he died poor. He died on the 4th of September, 1855. His wife, Anna, daughter of a Mr. Bennett, of Rensselaer county, whom he married in 1810, survived him until January 21, 1869. They reared a family of thirteen 'chil- dren, of whom three are now living. The subject of this sketch was the third of these children. The limited means of his father compelled him to set his children at work at an age when they should have been at school, and Hosea Harmon received his education almost exclusively from contact with the world, his mind being sharpened by the friction as "iron sharpeneth iron." At the early age of eight years he began to work for a farmer in Busti, Chautau- qua county, N. Y., with whom he remained three years at a salary of three dollars a month. Another year was passed in the same occupation and neigh- borhood for five dollars a month. His father then hired him out to a farmer in Kiantone six months, where he chopped wood one winter, at the rate of eighteen cents a cord, while he boarded himself. This was good pay for a full-grown man at that time, and Mr. Harmon undoubtedly felt that he had attained full stature. In this manner he passed his time, getting work of the hardest kind wherever he was able, and always under the control of his father, until he was nineteen years and six months of age. Impatient to be his own master, he then bought the remainder of his minority of his father for the price of one hundred dollars. Thereupon he went to Spring Creek and hired out to George F. Eldred at ten dollars a month. His work was hauling logs from the woods to a pond near the mill. He kept bachelor's hall with another em- ployee. Mr. Eldred agreed to give Harmon the butts of the logs which were sawn, from which he might gain a little profit by making shingles of them dur- ing the winter evenings. His diligence is attested by the fact that he made on an average five hundred shingles every night while he was at work there, and at the close of his engagement had on hand 40,000 shingles. These he traded with Henry P. Kinnear, of Youngsville, for a yoke of cattle, which he drove to Jamestown and sold for exactly one hundred dollars. His first deed upon receiving his well-earned money was to hasten home and pay his father for his purchased time. His ability to work in the woods had been gained by an experience which commenced when he was sixteen years of age. At that time his father had hired him out to work for Garrett Burget, on the Indian Reservation at Cold Spring, hewing and getting out timber to the Allegheny River, at a salary of ten dollars for the first month and thirteen for each suc- ceeding month in which he worked. During one summer he felled a hundred
43
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HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.
trees over and above his stint, each tree being worth about three shillings-his own property by agreement. His next venture was as a pilot on the Alle- gheny River. He took rafts down to Pittsburgh and even farther. It was his habit frequently to buy shingles at the commencement of a trip and pilot a raft down the river without charge except the privilege of transporting his shingles to market. In this way he realized a profit on his goods without suffering a discount for freight.
When he was twenty-two years of age he entered into copartnership rela- tions with one Sylvester Howd, and one Blackmer, for the purpose of engaging in mercantile business in Busti, Chautauqua county. The capital of this firm was proportioned about as follows : Blackmer, sixty dollars ; Howd, a horse and wagon; and Harmon about 200,000 shingles which were worth about $200. The business lasted about a year in Busti, and was not a very gratifying suc- cess. Howd and Harmon then bought out Blackmer's interest, and established a store at Pittsfield in this county, where they remained about six years. They then sold out to Gray & Mallory. Mr. Harmon at the expiration of that time came to his father's farm in Sugar Grove to help him out, while Howd pur- chased an interest in the mercantile firm of Pattison & White, in Sugar Grove. Tiring of this arrangement within a year, he bought out his partners and per- suaded Mr. Harmon to take an interest with him. This relation continued four or five years. From that time on for about six years and as many months Mr. Harmon remained in this store, first as the partner of Howd's son-in-law, T. F. Abbott, then of Isaac Hiller, and afterward of Dr. Sherman Garfield. The business was finally sold to John and William McLane.
At this period Mr. Harmon discovered an opportunity for dealing in cattle, and immediately embarked in the business, selling many of them at Tidioute, and shipping many to New York and other places. During the seven years in which he remained in this occupation he was in partnership with William Haggerty. Upon terminating this experience he engaged once more in the mercantile occupation with D. McDonald, at Sugar Grove village, which lasted about five or six years, when he sold his interest to his partner. Since then he has been prominently interested in farming and land investments. His acres now number about fifteen hundred in all, all but two hundred of which (in Chautauqua county) are in Warren county. He has also dealt extensively in lumber, though he has not shipped any down the river. He has further- more operated to some extent in oil.
Mr. Harmon has not taken a very prominent part in public affairs, his time being too much taken up in private business. But the voice of his townsmen has occasionally called upon him to exert his abilities in office, and he has accepted whenever he thought it was his duty to accept. His first political affiliation was with the old Abolition party, when the term was with the ma- jority a reproach and by-word. Mr. Harmon was one of the first three in
JOHN WHITMAN.
Al TTLE . FMI. A
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HOSEA HARMON .- JOHN WHITMAN.
Sugar Grove. He afterward allied himself with the Republican party, and remained with it until he deemed it succeeded by a party which is governed by still higher principles, the prohibition party, when he joined its ranks. He has for more than forty years been an active member of the Wesleyan Metho- dist Church.
These incidents of his life show him to be a man of active nature, of shrewd calculation, of industrious and tireless energy, and of fearless, unflinching integrity of character. These traits are evidenced by his success in life, by the fact that he has wrung competence out of poverty, and that he has done this without sacrificing his manhood or working injury to others.
Hosea Harmon married Sally, daughter of Merritt and Almira Johnson, of Sugar Grove, on the 3d of September, 1846. Mrs. Harmon's parents came from Oneida county, N. Y., when she was but five years of age, and after her marriage made their home with her until their death a few years ago. They have had two children, only one of whom, a daughter, Emma, is living. She is the wife of J. P. Miller, of Sugar Grove, and the mother of two children, Geoerge H. and James H. Miller.
W HITMAN, JOHN, son of John and Jane (Davis) Whitman, was born in Sugar Creek township, Venango county, Pa., on the 30th day of March, 1810. His father came to that township as early as 1797 from eastern Penn- sylvania, and was never more than three days out of the State. He died in 1839, and his wife followed him in about ten years afterward. Jacob Whit- man, grandfather of the subject of this notice, was what is called a " Pennsyl- vania Dutchman," and was undoubtedly born in this State
At about the age of seventeen years the subject of this sketch embarked in life on his own account, and for four years worked on farms in the vicinity of his home. His health then failed; he was afflicted with bilious fever and pleu- risy, and was advised by his physician to burn charcoal for his health. This he did for four summers, after which he took a trip down the Allegheny, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers as far as Vicksburg, Miss., with boat-loads of ice, pur- chased and procured by residents of that city. The first time that he attempted to make this trip he was taken ill and had to postpone the pleasure, but he finally succeeded in going in the spring of 1838. He remained in Vicksburg about two weeks looking to the unlading of the boats, and then returned to the North by boat, after an absence of some two months. During the remainder of that summer he worked on a farm in Venango county and also performed service on a turnpike road then building through the county. The next two years were passed in sawing lumber in Buck mill, as it was called, in Venango county, after which he came to Sheffield township, and worked in the saw-mill of White & Gallop, in the southern part of the township. He operated their mill one year. At that time Erastus Barnes was rafting lumber to Wheeling, W. Va.,
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and seeing in Mr. Whitman the man he wanted for his help, he hired him to raft the lumber, going with him on the first trip. This work he performed for six or seven years, and in the mean time began to buy lumber of his employer and take the property of both himself and Mr. Barnes to the same market at the same time. By this time his reputation as a skillful pilot and raftsman had extended beyond the limits of his county, and Fox & Wetmore, of Forest county, made him an offer to enter their service, which he thought well to ac- cept. He rafted for this firm for ten or twelve years, and as long as they con- tinued together, running occasionally as far down as Louisville, Ky. On his last trip he took down 127,000 feet of lumber without help. In the fall of two different years he also assisted in the construction of a wooden tramway from the place where the timber of his employers was cut to the east branch of the Tionesta Creek, whence it was floated to the mill. From 1866 to 1873 he worked as pilot for different employers. In the last year he purchased a large amount of lumber from Fox & Wetmore and went down the river with it, realizing a gratifying profit. From that time to the present he has kept teams at work in this county drawing oil and lumber.
Meantime, as early as 1866, he purchased thirteen acres of land from Sam- uel Gilson, and worked on it at such leisure moments as werc at his command. Since he has relinquished the life of a raftsman he has devoted the greater part of his time to the cultivation of this tract.
In politics Mr. Whitman has been a consistent and loyal Democrat, and, though he has avoided rather than sought office, has frequently been called upon to serve in various capacities in his own town. He is a member of the Free Methodist Church, at which he is a regular attendant, and of which he is a trustworthy supporter. He also takes a deep interest in Sabbath-school work.
It is too much the custom to deem the life of a man reviewed when the incidents of his labors and investments have been recited. Such sketches, were they not generally regarded as incomplete, would convey the impression that the subjects are men of the stamp which Julius Cæsar denounced in ·Cassius :
" He loves no plays, As thou dost, Antony ; he hears no music ; Seldom he smiles ; and smiles in such a sort As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit That could be moved to smile at anything."
No such man is Mr. Whitman. While the main incidents of his carcer show him to be a man of earnest purpose, he has ever been controlled by the true philosophy that much of the pleasure of life consists in enjoying such privileges as may be gathered on the way, rather than condemning them, and trusting to the often vain hope of " an easy time in the evening of life." On the 2d day of March, 1885, Mr. Whitman laid aside his cares for a time and
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JOHN WHITMAN. - DR. WILLIAM A. IRVINE.
took a pleasure trip to the New Orleans Exposition. While there he improved his opportunity to the utmost, going 110 miles below the city to the mouth of the Mississippi River, visiting the old Spanish Fort, sailing to West End, view- ing that famous cemetery or city of the dead, in which the bodies of the dead are kept in vaults above ground, inspecting the old battle-ground of General Jackson, and pacing on Shell Beach on the Gulf of Mexico. He returned by way of Nashville, Tenn., and Cincinnati. In this way he united pleasure and profit-the profit that comes of instruction.
[RVINE, DR. WILLIAM A. The subject of this notice was born in the old fort at Erie, Pa., on the 28th of September, 1803, and died at his residence near Irvine, Warren county, on the 7th of September, 1886. He was de- scended from the branch of the old Scotch family of Irvine, which settled in Ulster, Ireland, under a grant from James VI. of Scotland. His grandfather, William Irvine, was a general in the War of the Revolution, and an intimate friend of Washington, whose letters, now in the possession of the family, show that important military movements in the struggle for the independence of the colonies were committed to his command. Dr. Irvine's father, Callender Ir- vine, was in command of the fort at Erie when his son was born. As Gen- eral William Irvine, then Commissary-General of the United States, died in 1804, Callender was summoned to Philadelphia to take his place, which office he retained until his death in 1840. The journey from Erie was made on horse- back, the child being carried the entire distance in the arms of his father. His correspondence with President Jefferson reveals the confidence of the au- thor of the Declaration of Independence in his ability and integrity, and that he was directed to look after the speculations of Indian agents in this part of the country. He had inherited lands in Warren and Erie counties, some of which were granted to General Irvine for military services. He passed every summer at Irvine, and when Dr. Irvine was old enough to take the long journeys on horseback, he always accompanied his father.
After receiving a liberal education, William Armstrong Irvine studied medicine, and was graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Immedi- ately upon his graduation he removed to Irvine, which was his home from that time until his death. He took an active interest in the development of the resources of this part of the State. He took a prominent part in the building of the first turnpike road from Warren to Franklin, the result of which was the opening of a stage road to Pittsburgh. To this end he devoted his influ- ence, time and means unsparingly. He was also among the pioneers in the early efforts to procure the location of the Sunbury and Erie, now the Phila- delphia and Erie Railroad, through this part of the country, giving his per-
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HISTORY OF WARREN COUNTY.
sonal efforts to the scheme. As a citizen he had an earnest interest in the local and general welfare of the country. Among the first improvements upon his place in Irvine were an iron foundry and a woolen-mill, built by him- self. By his intelligence and energy he made his home a pleasant place. His person was most imposing and graceful, and his manner refined without affect- ation. He was ever a student of nature and of books. His mind was richly stored with a vast fund of information, which he always turned to account whenever occasion demanded, for he was no less practical than learned. This made him exceedingly attractive to those who came in contact with him in social life.
In 1834 he married a daughter of Stephen Duncan, a prominent planter of Mississippi. She died a number of years ago and was buried in the grounds of the stone church built by them during her lifetime. She was a woman of superior mind and of charitable and unselfish nature, who did all in her power to advance the cause of religion and education in the community in which her lot was cast. Of this marriage there now survive two daughters, Mrs. Thomas Biddle and Mrs. Thomas Newbold.
At the time of his death, Dr. Irvine was president of the Pennsylvania branch of the Society of Cincinnati, and vice-president of the general society.
J ACKSON, WILLIAM MILES, was born in Spring Creek, on the same farm that he now occupies, on the 29th of May, 1818. He is the son of Elijah and Mary (Watt) Jackson. His father and Andrew Evers, the first set- tlers in this township, came here in November, 1797, from Union Mills (now Union City), and built the first log cabin in Spring Creek, a few rods nearly north of the site of William M. Jackson's present dwelling house. Elijah Jack- son was born in Litchfield, Conn., on the 27th of October, 1772. He accom- panied his father to Ontario county, N. Y., when he was sixteen years of age, and upon attaining his majority removed to Marietta, O. The Indians were thick and hostile thereabouts, and the settlers were obliged to pass their lei- sure in the barracks, and their hours of labor surrounded by guards. Not lik- ing this sort of life, Elijah Jackson decided to settle in Spring Creek. About 1816 he built a log cabin on the site of his son's present dwelling house. On this farm he remained, engaged in farming and lumbering, until his death on the Ist of September, 1845.
On the 26th of February, 1801, Elijah Jackson married Mary, daughter of John Watt, of Spring Creek. Mrs. Jackson's parents were natives of Ireland, and came to Spring Creek from Penn's Valley, Lancaster county, Pa., about 1800. Mrs. Jackson died on the 9th of January, 1855, aged seventy years two months and eight days. She was the mother of Elijalı Jackson's thirteen
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WILLIAM MILES JACKSON. - JOHN WALTON.
children - eight sons and five daughters, as follows: Sarah, born May 12, 1802, died May 15, 1882 ; Hannah, born December 11, 1803, widow of Thomas D. Tubbs, and now living in Spring Creek township ; John, born May 8, 1805, died June 16, 1839; Mary, born July 5, 1807, died July 22, 1876, then the wife of William Ludden, her second husband ; Uri, born March 31, 1809, died January 18, 1870; James, born April 2, 1811, died in young boyhood; Ziba Mena, born May 7, 1813, died March 19, 1851 ; Washington, born December 7, 1815, died May 20, 1833; William Miles, the subject of this sketch ; Alex- ander W., born April 16, 1820, now living in Spring Creek village ; Harriet, born December 19, 1822, died June 28, 1823 ; Charles M., born July 1, 1825, . died August 23, 1885, in Busti, N. Y., and Robert R., born March 30, 1829, and now living in Farmington township.
After receiving such meager education as was afforded by the common schools of his native town, William M. Jackson began at a very early age to assist his father in clearing the 200 acre farm, even then attending school oc- casionally in the winter. When he became of age he began to work on his own account in saw-mills and drawing timber, etc., until the death of his father. Then he and his brother, A. W. Jackson, bought the home property of the other heirs and worked the farm in partnership until 1866, when William M. Jackson purchased his brother's interest, and from that time to the present has retained the ownership and control of the entire property. He has engaged in lumbering to a limited extent, piloting on the river from his twentieth birth- day until 1864. His occupation for years past has been that of general farm- ing. He has a small dairy business. In politics he is a thorough Democrat, and has borne his full share of the public burdens. His father was a " stiff" Democrat before him. The family, indeed, is distantly related to Andrew Jackson. Mr. Jackson has held about all the offices which it is in the power of his town to bestow, from road commissioner to justice of the peace, and is now township auditor for the ninth consecutive year. His father and mother were both Presbyterians, and his opinions and tastes are that way inclined, though he is not a member of any religious organization. Mr. Jackson has never been married, and therefore it may be said that he has the more thor- oughly wedded the interests of the township, county, State and country of his birth.
W TALTON, JOHN, was born in the town of Columbus, Chenango county, N. Y., on the 3 Ist day of August, 1806. His father's father was a farmer in Connecticut, where he died not far from 1820. Aaron Walton, father of John, was born in New England, and removed to Chenango county, N. Y., in the latter part of the last century. His wife, Artemisia Field, also a native of New England, accompanied her husband to what was then a forest country in New York State. They had eleven children, ten of whom, four daughters and
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six sons, attained years of maturity. One of the daughters, Mary, is now the wife of Mr. Kennedy and resides in Bradford, Pa .; Aaron, Levi, and John, the surviving sons, are all residents of Columbus township in Warren county, Pa.
In 1823 Aaron Walton, sr., came to Columbus, bringing with him his son Aaron, and built a log house on his farm about two miles northwest from the present village of Columbus, and about half a mile north of the " Center " so called. He returned at once to Chenango county, leaving his son and hired men to clear the land. In the fall the son Aaron returned and married that winter. In the spring they both came back, and in the February following John, Asa, Andrew, and Daniel, the other sons of Aaron, sr., walked from Chenango county to this wilderness by the way of Syracuse and the south- east. Aaron, jr., built a new house for himself and his bride, while all the rest of the family lived in this first log house.
At about the age of nineteen years John Walton went to work in the win- ter season at Wrightsville in this county, operating the saw-mills for the pro- prietors. At other seasons of the year he went down the river on a raft to Pittsburgh. He continued several winters at Wrightsville, and he continued making annual trips down the river-rafting his own lumber to Pittsburgh, every year for thirty years. On these trips he would take down the river in the spring the logs he had cut the preceding winter. He regarded his father's house as his home until he was twenty-two years of age. Meantime, as may have been supposed, he had had few advantages for obtaining an education, as his father's means were too limited to send his numerous children away to school, and the schools in this unbroken country were not very advanced nor well graded; still, he had by his own unaided efforts, mastered the elementary studies, such as stand him in good stead in the business world, and was con- tented.
On the 2d of September, 1828, he married Harriet Tracy, daughter of Israel Spencer, of Columbus, who was born March 5, 1808, and who died Jan- uary 4, 1871. As soon as they were married John Walton took his wife to live on a farm of some seventy-five acres, five acres of which he had previously cleared, and on which he had erected a log house. Eighteen months later he moved back to his father's farm where he resided for one year, when he again moved, this time to a farm situated about one and a quarter miles northeast of Columbus village, where he stayed two or three years. In 1832 he purchased of Hannibal Lamb a farm two or three miles farther north, consisting then of about one hundred and fifteen acres, but which by gradual accessions Mr. Wal- ton has increased to two hundred and fifty acres. He removed at this time to this farm, where he passed many years, where most of his children were born and where several of them were married. Several years previous to the out- break of the civil war he bought a farm of 100 acres (to which he has since added forty acres), on the west side of Columbus borough as now constituted,
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