USA > Pennsylvania > Montgomery County > Lives of the eminent dead and biographical notices of prominent living citizens of Montgomery County, Pa. > Part 69
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A. H. BAKER.
Andrew H. Baker, son of Benjamin and Mary A. Baker, was born March 21, 1836, at Eagleville, Lower Providence township, Montgomery county. His father, an estimable and popular man, lived most of his later years on the Germantown pike, near its intersection with the present Stony Creek rail- road, where he recently died, 1885, at the advanced age of 77 years, and where his venerable widow resides with her son Arnold and wife Lucy VonNieda Baker. The other brothers and sisters of our subject are Martha, intermarried with Wil- liam S. Finney, who removed to Kansas, and have offspring there. Elizabeth, married to Samuel Rittenhouse, of Norriton, who also have several children ; Cornelia G., wife of John C., son of Andrew Morgan, of Worcester, who died two weeks after her father. Hannah M., who is intermarried with Mark R., son of Alexander Supplee, who was a first lieutenant of Capt. Pechin's company during the war.
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A. H. BAKER.
Andrew H. Baker, before he was grown, had received the best education offered by the common schools of the locality, after which he enjoyed three years' academic training at Tree- mount and Freeland seminaries, until he was qualified about his eighteenth year to take charge of the public school at Washington Square, which he taught for some time, but afterwards was transferred to a more responsible charge at Centre Square, where in like duties he served the township six years, until 1861, when he removed to Norristown, having secured the post of clerk to the county commissioners. He had, however, previously studied surveying with Elijah W. Beans, and practiced some. He held the clerkship continu- ously nearly twelve years, in that time evincing not only ready ability in clerical duties, but such public spirit and fa- miliarity with educational needs and requirements also, that he was soon chosen one of the Norristown school board and kept in the place by repeated re-elections for about ten years, until the time he was called to leave the borough. He was one of the most deservedly popular directors that ever served the people of that place, both with teachers, pupils and citizens.
At the time he was acting as clerk, very frequently in the absence of the county treasurer, he filled the latter's place as assistant deputy treasurer. And during much of his term of public service was clerk of the military relief board, one of the functions of the county commissioners during the war, as also clerk of the board of jury commissioners during the first five years after the establishment of said board.
In December, 1857, Mr. Baker was united in marriage to Miss Matilda L., daughter of William Barton, of Norriton, who bore him a son, Frank H., now well educated and in act- ive life. He studied law, graduating in the office of B. E. Chain, Esq., but now of preference fills at present the place of U. S. Mail Agent, between New York city and Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Mr. Baker's wife, the mother of his son, died about 1860, of typhoid fever, leaving to his care her only child, as above stated.
In 1864 he married Miss Emily J. McGonigle, principal of a Philadelphia public school, and there were born to them two children, Walter Clifford, and May A., both of whom ·
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died in childhood, and since have filled their place with an adopted daughter, Alice G.
On the organization of the First National Bank of Consho- hocken, 1873, Mr. Baker was selected teller, which place he filled two years until the founding of Jenkintown National Bank, 1875, when he was chosen cashier, a place he has worthily filled to this writing, now about twelve years.
In early life, while teaching at Centre Square, Mr. B. was brought to see and feel the importance of divine things, and joined himself to St. John's church, which membership on going to Norristown he transferred to Trinity Lutheran church of that place, where it remained until his settlement at Jenkintown, when he transferred it first to Abington Presby- terian, and still later, on the founding of Grace "Memorial " Presbyterian church at Jenkintown, he brought his letter there, and has been chosen to the eldership and trusteeship of the same, as also leader of the choir and teacher in the Sab- bath school, and still further church treasurer; and as Mr. B. generally serves his fellow citizens in any duties imposed upon him, he has been acting as treasurer of the Jenkintown Building Association, also since its organization, nine years ago. To show still again Mr. Baker's popularity with the people, and his disposition to serve them, it may be further noted, that he soon drifted into the board of Jenkintown school district, serving three terms and all the time as pres- ident. He is a member of the board of directors of the Cheltenham and Willow Grove turnpike company, and also of the Abington library company for several years; he is also one of the managers of the Jenkintown reading room, and was for several years a trustee on behalf of the state for Montgom- ery county of the State Normal School at West Chester. It may be further added, that he has led the singing in each of the four churches to which he has belonged, and was super- intendent of Sabbath school at St. John's church and Burr's meeting house.
Andrew H. Baker has always been a man of high moral tone, whose very countenance inspires confidence; hence, though born and educated a democrat, he was long kept in the Norristown school board, because of his eminent fitness
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WILLIAM II. KOPLIN.
and clear judgment, notwithstanding a then large adverse re- publican majority. From like impulses he has been drawn of late years to advocate through political means the restriction of the liquor traffic, which causes so much evil in society. It is fair to conclude therefore that no movement designed to benefit society can fail of his hearty co-operation.
WILLIAM H. KOPLIN.
We have had frequent occasions in drawing these personal memoirs to record names, families or persons, resident upon farms, descending from father to son through many generations up to the first settlement of the country, but of the mercantile and mechanical classes, it is widely different. With us, these persons, with manufacturers and small traders, rise into promi- nence in a community, flourish for a brief season, then their names disappear-perhaps forever, while their places and cal- lings are filled by new persons of strange names. The author often muses in wonder and sadness, as he recalls in a retro- spect of near fifty years, the multitudes of individuals and fam- ilies that he has known domiciled in Norristown, who have " played their part," left the stage, and are now known to the place and people no more forever! The gentleman whose name stands at the head of the sketch, however, on the con- trary, enjoys the rare distinction of being of the fourth genera- tion of a family who have figured in Norristown annals as managing business men as narrated below.
By its etymology the name Koplin indicates a German ori- gin. Old newspapers reveal several of the family residing in the upper townships.
Matthias Koplin, the great grandfather of our subject, for several years owned and operated the original "Norris Mill," at the foot of Swede street, Norristown ; this was very early in the present century, and previous to its purchase by John Mark- ley or Levi Pawling. We do not know what other children he
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may have had, but Sallie, wife of the late Jacob Adle, Jr., was his daughter. She and Philip, his son, lived nearly all their lives in Norristown. The latter, born in 1793, probably in Providence township, learned the trade of a carpenter and be- came a master builder of the town, from perhaps 1820 till about 1855. Very many of the older buildings of the borough were erected by him, some of his last heavy jobs being the wood- work and general oversight of Potts & Jones furnace, and a like work at Edge Hill. He died at the house of his grand- son, William H. Koplin, in Norristown, February 5, 1873, aged 80 years, leaving three surviving children, Washington, Elizabeth and Mary Caroline; seven others were then de- ceased to-wit : Mordicai, Matthias, Hannah, Nathaniel, Wil- liam, John and Philip Augustus. The eldest of these latter, Mordicai, learned the carpenter trade with his father, and worked with him and assisted to manage his business as long as he lived. He married Miss Hannah Boyer, January 23, 1840, and they had three children, William H. (our proper subject), Melville and Emma. The second of these children died in infancy; the youngest, Emma, is the wife of Charles P. Bartleson, of Philadelphia. The husband of this young wife and father of these children, died of heart disease in May 1849, and she still survives a widow, residing with her children.
As Washington, Philip and Maria Koplin's second son, was a noted business man for years in Norristown, a brief notice of him is proper here. He learned the watch and jewelry trade, married Mary, daughter of Dr. Andrew Wills, of Chest- er county, had one daughter Linda, who married and has also one daughter. Washington Koplin purchased a store-house on Main street below Strawberry, fitted it up tastefully, founded, and carried on till the time of his death, 1879, a large watch and jewelry trade, which is conducted for his widow's benefit at the same place to the present.
It is proper to add here that Mrs. Philip Koplin during most of her long life was a member of St. John's Episcopal church as were most of her daughters. The old lady died at the ad- vanced aged of 90 years, January 17, 1885.
We take up here our proper subject, the brief but successful career of William H. Koplin, of Norristown. He was born in
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the town of his present residence, October 31, 1840, and there- fore has exactly reached the golden period of middle life. After being well taught in the common schools, and when a well grown lad, he was placed in the store of his uncle Thomson Markley to learn the hardware business. After con- tinuing there two or three years, he entered as a store assist- ant the establishment of Crawford & Hill, doing a large busi- ness in the same line. Here he soon became the "right-hand supporter," learning nearly every description of adjustments of hardware, tools, and the like.
The war of rebellion now came like a tempest, finding young Mr. Koplin but just of age, but the next year, the very daik- est of the storm, with rare patriotism he left a good situation and enlisted as a private in Captain M. R. McClennan's com- pany A 138th regiment, August 16, 1862, and arriving at Camp Curtin, Harrisburg, was mustered into the United States service and marching to the front the company was placed on detached duty to protect railroads leading to and from Wash- ington. The regiment, at this time commanded by Colonel Sumwalt, was after a time marched to Harper's Ferry. The next year his captain, McClennan, rose to the command of the regiment, and it went through the severe battle at Brandy Station as. Lee was advancing on Gettysburg, and not long after another fight at Locust Grove, and again March, 1864, in the Wilderness of the Rapidan, enduring several destructive battles, but still unhurt, bearing his rifle in the ranks, private William H. Koplin went with the 138th regiment in all its battles through the Wilderness until the surrender of Lee at Appomatox. Thus escaping death or wounding, he gallantly did his duty until June 23, 1865, and after serving nearly three years he was honorably discharged and mustered out " a vet- eran."
As he went into the army as a matter of duty, so on the ending of the conflict he turned in and answered roll-call again at the hardware store of Henry C. Hill, Mr. Crawford, the oth- er partner, having in the meantime left the firm. There Mr. Koplin remained two or three years, until he was offered a partnership in 1870 by Jacob F. Quillman in the new concern of Quillman & Koplin, which continued as such until the death
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WILLIAM H. KOPLIN.
of the senior partner in April, 1882. It is proper to add here also, that the chief work and concern of this firm and its in- creased business fell on Mr. Koplin. But we have anticipated. We must go back a little and state that having discharged his whole duty to his country, very soon after leaving the army, October 1865, he married Miss Maria Murray, of Norristown. The offspring of this union have been two daughters, Annie R. and Emma B. Koplin.
It is only necessary to state that on the death of Mr. Quill- man, Mr. Koplin succeeded to the business he had mainly built up beside the public square, where he now is, doing a heavy trade in all descriptions of hardware, stoves, tin-work, iron, steel and gross merchandise of nearly all kinds. William H. Koplin is undoubtedly one of the most industrious and en- ergetic business men in Norristown, driving whatever he takes hold of in his line, with a single eye to public accommodation and his own success in trade. If therefore he does not wear himself out by over work and brain tension, before reaching ad- vanced life, he will undoubtedly leave the name of " Koplin " more distinguished in the present and the future than it has been in the past.
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SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR.
SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR.
It may seem presumptuous for an undistinguished person to write a history of his own family and career ; but having written a volume of the lives of other men, and realizing that there may be a warrantable curiosity on the part of very many readers to know what the author may say of himself, and fur- ther, for the benefit of his children and kinsmen, he ventures upon a brief sketch, writing in the third person, as more mod- est, and most in the style of history.
Moses Mendenhall Auge, the youngest child of Bennet and Ann Auge, was born at Centreville, state of Delaware, on October II, ISII. The name is correctly written Auge, and was pronounced in French, as if spelled in English Ozha, the first letter being the first syllable, and bearing the accent also. His father was the youngest son of Daniel Auge, a wine and shipping merchant of Bordeaux, France, originally from Am- sterdam, Holland. Bennet Auge was born in the former city in 1778, and resided there till his twelfth year. Having an elder brother engaged in trade to the West Indies, he went there as clerk, but not liking indoor work was put on a sugar plantation as assistant overseer. He was thus employed when the slaves arose in insurrection in 1791, firing sugar mills, dwellings, and dry standing cane. In a single night nearly the whole island was lurid with the flames that were burning on every side. He took refuge in the green cane fields, and for several days, until nearly starved, remained hid from wrath of the bondmen. Forced at last by hunger to seek food, he emerged from his retreat and applied at a negro cabin, when a black woman (true to the instincts of the sex the world over) gave him a morsel and told him to hasten back to his refuge in the cane, saying, "If the men see you they will kill you in- stantly." He followed her advice, and after lying hid a few days longer near the highway saw white cavalrymen riding by, who took him up and carried him into the city of Cape Francois.
Bennet Auge, though but a boy of thirteen or fourteen, was put into the army of defence, and soon transferred to
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Port-au-Prince, where the joint white and mulatto rule had ex- isted for some time. After a period the fickle French Assem- bly attempted to deprive the free colored people of their po- litical rights, when they also revolted in the streets of the latter city, but were soon after expelled, and on a signal the city was fired by the black female servants, who remained and burned to ashes. Upon this the whites took to the shipping and left the island.
After being in the army of the colony about five years, Bennet Auge, with his brother Nicholas, in 1796 or 1797 came to the United States, landed at Philadelphia, and the former was placed in school at Wilmington, Delaware, where he remained two or three years, till near the time of reaching his majority, when he apprenticed himself to a tailor, but did not finish the trade for lack of health. Being thus left a friend- less young man in a strange country, he afterwards obtained employment as assistant with a butcher in Wilmington and finally went to Chester county, Pennsylvania, and worked at farm laboring, until he formed the acquaintance of Ann, daughter of Moses Mendenhall, an intelligent and successful farmer, and a descendant of Benjamin Mendenhall, whom he married in 1801.
We will here turn aside to give the genealogy of the Men- denhall family, which emigrated with other Quakers from Wiltshire, England, in 1685.1 There were three brothers and a sister, named Moses, Benjamin, John and Mary, the last of whom married Nicholas Newlin. Moses, after purchasing five hundred acres of land in Concord, then Chester county, returned to England, as is supposed, and died there. The subject of this notice traces his descent to Benjamin, who probably occupied the land of his brother in Concord. This emigrant progenitor Benjamin Mendenhall, married Ann Pen- nell, and had nine children, to-wit : Benjamin, Joseph, Moses, Hannah, Samuel, Rebecca, Ann, Nathan and Robert. From the third, Moses, who married Alice Pyle, 1694, were descended
¡The records of the English branch of the family have been traced in that country, by the father of Edward Mendenhall, of Cincinnati, to the year 1330, to a John DeMildenhale, believed to have been a progenitor, as for a long time the name in Wiltshire was spelled Mildenhale or Mindenhall.
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of the third generation, Caleb, Philip, Moses, Nathan, Ann, Rebecca and John. Caleb, the eldest of these, settled in Penns- bury, now Chester county, on the right bank of the Brandy- wine, a mile below the scene of the famous battle of that name, fought September 11, 1777. He married Ann, and had two only sons, Moses and Caleb. The father of these brothers died young, leaving them about three hundred acres of land, of which the elder got about 200 acres lying adjacent to the creek. Some years after the widow married Adam Redd, of Centreville, Delaware, and they had one daughter, Miriam, who left also one daughter. Moses, the elder of these two brothers (the grand father of our subject), was married second month, 8, 1771, by Friends meeting, to Mary, daughter of Aaron and Ann James, of Willistown, who were from Wales. The child- ren of this marriage were Caleb, Ann, Joshua, Samuel, Sus- anna, Catharine, Samuel, Mary, Moses, Joseph and Elizabeth. Of these Moses and Joseph died in infancy, Samuel and Joshua in early manhood, Caleb, the oldest, married Betsy Taylor and had a numerous family, he inheriting most of the patri- monial estate and died at extreme old age near where he was born. Ann, the second child and eldest daughter, our sub- ject's mother, married Bennet Auge, as before stated, and they had five children, named and recorded below.
The other children of Moses and Mary Mendenhall were intermarried as follows: Susannah with Benaiah Walker, of Fairville; Catharine with Job Taylor, who lived and died in Westtown, Chester county ; Mary with Joseph B. Shugert, of Centre county, and Elizabeth with Jacob Way, of Penns- bury, and all of them had numerous families.
We resume the record of the family of Bennet and Ann Auge, as follows : Samuel, the eldest, born August 2, 1802, was a hatter by trade and located in business at West Chester, married Jane, daughter of Aaron Mattson, 1827, and had three children : Clinton, Mary Jane and S. Trueman. The first two died at mature age unmarried, the son in 1871, and daughter 1879. The youngest, S. Trueman, learned the wholesale dry goods trade, which he conducted for some years, married Belle Johnson and they have three children, Gertrude, Roxana and Trueman. S. T. Auge has very considerable talent and skill
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as an artist in landscape and other pictures. He and his family reside in Philadelphia. Jane Auge, the mother, died 1873, and her husband (who had married a second wife, Sarah Darlington) April 12, 1879.
Bennet and Ann Auge's second child, Mary Ann, died in infancy. Elizabeth, the third, born 1806, married Charles Young, 1833, had one son Charles, the father dying before his son's birth. The mother after a time with her boy removed west, where the latter married and raised a family. Eliza- beth was twice married again, but left no other offspring, she dying in 1880. The next of the Auge family, Phebe, born 1808, was married 1829 to Richard Baily, a lawyer by edu- cation, but who, soon after their marriage, removed to Jeffer- son county, Ohio, where after following farming many years he died later in Belmont county, at advanced life, 1878, where his widow survives him at this writing. Richard and Phebe Baily had five sons and one daughter, named William, Eli, Samuel A., Moses, Ellis and Jennie A. All these, except the fourth, have been intermarried, and have families as follows : William, who now resides at Marshalltown, Iowa, is married to Annie, daughter of William Sharp, and they have three children, Flora Kate, James and Ellis.
The second son named above, Eli, married Mary, daughter of Daniel Pratt and had children, Annie, Alice, Belle, Edward, Richard, Jessie and Josephine ; of these Annie married E. U. Updegrove, and they have four children. Alice married J. C. Brown, and have two children, Ella and Earl.
Their third son, Samuel A., learned the watch and jewelry business with his uncle, William Baily, on Market street, Phil- adelphia, was married 1864, to Mary D. Irwin, niece of Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, and they had two children ; the survivor Helen, now grown, lives with her grandfather Irwin at Huntsville, Alabama. Mary D. Baily died at the place just named, 1873, and a few years later her husband returned to Philadelphia, and 1885 was married to Miss S. R. Steinmetz, of Norristown.
The fifth child of Richard and Phebe Baily, Ellis, first mar- ried Mary J., daughter of John and Charlotte Cowden, Nor- ristown. They lived at Short Creek, Ohio, until her death I 871, she having two children; the eldest, Mary Grace, sur-
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vives, living with her grandmother Baily in Ohio. Some years after his wife's death, Ellis Baily was again married to Emma Newlin, who bore him two children, when he soon after died of a pulmonary disease, his children and widow surviving. The youngest of the family under consideration, Jennie Baily, married Willian Clark, of Marshalltown, Iowa, removing soon after to Lincoln, Nebraska, where they reside and have two children, the older named Rufus.
We now take up the thread of our subject's early life as fol- lows: When two or three years of age his parents removed three miles up the Brandywine into the lower border of Penns- bury township, Chester county, where a little later in 1818 his father built a house upon ten acres of the original Mendenhall plantation near where his wife had been born. Here from his seventh to his sixteenth year our subject attended a school where only primary instruction in reading, writing and arith- metic was imparted. Early in his sixteenth year, 1827, he went to West Chester to learn the trade of a hatter with his brother, who two years before had started business there, and while serving his apprenticeship of near five and a half years, had a few months academic instruction under the celebrated Jonathan Gause, and later with Barber & Fuller, at the West Chester academy. He continued working for his brother two years, taking in the meantime a trip to Washington in 1834, to see " the lions," and that autumn took the usual " craze " among mechanics then, to " have one tramp to see the world," and started for New York; worked a few weeks, thence to Norwalk, Connecticut, where he wrought till a bilious fever seized him, when he hurried back to West Chester, and when fully recovered went to work again for his brother as store- tender and right-hand man. In this position he continued a year or more, when Samuel offered him a partnership in his then well-established and very profitable business. But hav- ing then no settled plan of life he declined the offer-very un- wisely, as it seemed to him afterward-but continued working until 1836 two or three years longer, when he had earned and saved nearly three hundred dollars, which as his brother was not willing to pay interest for, but offered to "invest" for him in Philadelphia, and did so, by buying four shares of
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SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR.
Schuylkill bank stock at $64 per share, which soon began to decline in price, until Hosea J. Levis, the cashier, wrecked the institution utterly about 1840.
In April, 1837, our subject removed to Norristown to manage a branch hat concern, started there by Auge & Webb, and the year following he bought out Webb's interest, and the new firm of M. & S. Auge was formed. Being advised not to sell his bank stock on going into the concern (because it had fall- en in price) of course he was in debt for nearly all his share of the capital stock, so when the bank broke later he was in bus- iness with a load of interest-bearing debt upon his back. Thus went to the winds his first hard-earned savings. This was his early experiment in becoming " a capitalist." His last effort in stocks was very similar. About 1865 he held a bad debt against a man who owned a patent right, who offered to sell considerable "territory " for the claim. Our confiding subject handed it (the territory) to an agent, who in due time brought back for " half of the state of Maryland," a beautifully engraved certificate of "thirty-four shares of stock in the Roanoke Oil and Mining Company." This corporation he concluded after- wards was located in the moon, for he was never able to find it or raise a copper on it, and so ends his record in the stock line. He never quite reached the dignity of a "bull" or a " bear "-but concluded finally he was a bear, for the proof of it was in his pocket-book. In the winter of 1839, during a gen- eral revival of religion at Norristown, he made a profession of religion, having previously been a skeptic, and joined the Presbyterian church. He was partly drawn to take that step by heart-longings, and from a sense of the insipidity of popu- lar aims and enjoyments.
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