USA > Pennsylvania > Montgomery County > Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, a history, Volume II > Part 17
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shredding attachments, and many other specialties used by agriculturists, and these products are sent to all parts of the world. In addition to his interests in this extensive manufacturing plant, Mr. Heebner holds extensive interests in the Lansdale Water Company, of which he is presi- dent, and has important interests in the South. He is a director of the Southern Transportation Company of Philadelphia, a director of the Henrico Lumber Company of Philadelphia, and treasurer of Jessup & Moore Paper Company, also of Philadelphia.
He takes an active interest in the welfare of the town which has grown up around his works, has served as a member of its council, and has been its honored burgess for a number of years. He has also taken a deep interest in the public schools, and has contributed largely to the development of an efficient system in his locality. He has been a leader in various financial enterprises, is a director in the First National Bank of Lansdale, and is interested in various other financial institutions. He served two terms at Harrisburg, as a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and one of his best known achievements during that period was the introduction of a bill making an appropriation for pur- chasing the headquarters of Washington at Valley Forge, which measure, largely through his efforts and those of his friends, became law. From 1916 to 1920 he filled the office of comptroller of Montgomery county.
Mr. Heebner is well known in fraternal and club circles, being a charter member of Lansdale Castle, No. 244, Knights of the Golden Eagle, and first presiding officer ; a charter member of Lodge No. 977, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, which he assisted in organizing, and was its first noble grand ; a member of Charity Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons, of Norristown; of Norristown Chapter, No. 190, Royal Arch Masons; and of Hutchinson Commandery, No. 32, Knights Templar. He is also a member of Washington Camp, No. 120, Patriotic Order Sons of America, of Lansdale ; and of the Norristown Lodge, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. His religious affiliation is with the Meth- odist Episcopal church of Lansdale, in which he has been an earnest worker for many years, serving as leader of the choir for forty-eight years, and as a member of the board of trustees.
On November 7, 1872, William Derstein Heebner married (first) Emma Frantz, daughter of Jesse Frantz, of Center Square. She died August 22, 1881. He married (second), November 29, 1883, Elizabeth Shearer, daughter of John Shearer, of Lansdale. To the first marriage three children were born: I. Clarella, who married Ira B. Harr, of Lansdale. 2. Blanche, who married Eugene Frey; they reside in Rydal. 3. Estelle, who married George W. Neuman ; they reside in Lansdale. To the second marriage three children were born: 1. Robert Stanley, of Lansdale. 2. J. Donald, of Lansdale. 3. Grace, married J. Godfrey Dreka, of DeLand, Florida.
Mr. Heebner's farm, "Rocky Lodge," comprises 358 acres, and lays in Marlboro township, between Summertown and Finland, on Swamp creek, or more properly Unamis. He has a beautiful winter home in Orange City, Florida.
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ADAM MILLER HILTEBEITEL, Ph. D., was born at Greenlane, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, January 15, 1869. He is the second of the three sons of Mark and Catharine (Miller) Hiltebeitel, his father a prominent farmer and merchant of Greenlane. His older brother, Jonas, lives at the old homestead, where he continues his father's busi- ness. His younger brother, Morris, is an electrical engineer, associated with the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, and lives in Philadelphia. His early ancestors came from the Rhine Palatinate a little more than two hundred years ago.
Dr. Hiltebeitel received his early education in the public schools of Greenlane and in the Ursinus Academy at Collegeville. After that fol- lowed several years of teaching and studying. He studied at the Key- stone State Normal School at Kutztown, Pennsylvania, and in Perkiomen Seminary at Pennsburg, and taught in the public schools, in Bethany Orphans' Home at Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania, and in Perkiomen Semi- nary. In the fall of 1896 he entered Princeton University, from which he graduated with the class of 1900, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. During the following year he was a fellow in mathematics in Princeton University, and was awarded the degree of Master of Arts in June, 1901. During the next four years he continued his graduate studies in mathe- matics in Princeton University, and also served during part of this period as instructor in mathematics in this institution and in Purdue University, at Lafayette, Indiana. In June, 1905, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Princeton University. Since then Dr. Hiltebeitel has spent a few months studying mathematics in the University of Berlin, and he taught in the Peekskill Military Academy at Peekskill, New York, in the University of Pennsylvania, in Worcester Academy at Worcester, Massachusetts, and in the Princeton Summer School, at Princeton, New Jersey. The last-named institution is a private school, of which he is part-owner and the teacher of mathematics.
Of Dr. Hiltebeitel's scientific work there were published as follows: A book entitled "General Investigations of Curved Surfaces by Karl Friederich Gauss," a translation with notes and bibliography by James Caddall Morehead, A. M., M. S., and Adam Miller Hiltebeitel, A. M., J. S. K., "Fellows in Mathematics in Princeton University," published by the Princeton University Library, 1902; a paper, entitled "On a Problem in Mechanics," published in the "Bulletin" of the American Mathematical Society, Series 2, Vol. XI. A dissertation for the doc- torate, "The Problem of Two Fixed Centres and Certain of Its General- izations," published in the "American Journal of Mathematics," Vol. XXXIII.
Dr. Hiltebeitel is a member of the American Mathematical Society ; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the Associa- tion of Teachers of the Middle States and Maryland; the Nassau Club at Princeton; the Reformed Church, at Sumneytown; the Keystone Grange, at Trappe ; the Pennsylvania State Grange ; and the Montgomery County Farm Bureau. At present his school work is limited to that in
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the Princeton Summer School, his connections with this school beginning in 1906. When not at Princeton he lives at Trappe, where he devotes much of his time to horticulture.
On September 18, 1906, Dr. Hiltebeitel married Alice Gross, the youngest daughter of Jacob and Elizabeth (Beitenman) Gross, of Trappe.
LLOYD E. JOHNSON-The Royersford "Weekly Advertiser" was founded by Jacob S. Johnson, a practical printer, in 1890, the first issue appearing February 22nd of that year from the printing office of the paper, located at No. 334 Main street, Royersford, the equipment of the plant consisting of two small Gordon presses and a paper-cutting machine. Two years later the printing office was moved to No. 348 Main street, and after three years in that location moved to No. 413 Main street. The plant there had grown to three gas-driven presses, and for six years the offices of the "Advertiser" remained at the last-named number. At the end of that period the printing plant was located at No. 204 Main street, Rockford Hall, where it remained fourteen years. Dur- ing that period a gas-driven cyclinder press was added, and on November 6, 1910, the founder, Jacob S. Johnson, died, having successfully guided the destinies of the "Weekly Advertiser" through its first twenty years of life. He had given his entire attention to its upbuilding, had made it a popular advertising medium, and had built up a strong line of patrons for his commercial printing department.
Jacob Johnson was succeeded as owner, editor, and publisher of the "Weekly Advertiser" by his only son, Lloyd E. Johnson, and in 1915, as a fitting celebration of the paper's silver anniversary, he erected a modern two-story building at the corner of Second and Myrtle streets, and there, with new and enlarged equipment, installed the paper in a new, appro- priate and permanent home, and from new electrically-driven presses the "Advertiser" appears every Friday. The paper has been conducted on a high plane, and is welcomed into the homes of its patrons each week with genuine satisfaction. The advertising department is well patronized and the "Advertiser's" commercial printing department caters to a good class of trade, Royersford printing largely centering in the office of the "Advertiser."
The present editor and publisher, Lloyd E. Johnson, is a great- grandson of Jacob Johnson, a Montgomery county (Pennsylvania) pioneer ; grandson of Abram Johnson, a drover and cattleman, who married Catherine Warner ; and son of Jacob S. Johnson, who was born at the home farm, in Upper Providence township, December 12, 1863, died in the borough of Royersford, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, November 6, 1910. He remained at the home farm until eleven years of age, then the family moved to Trappe, where he attended public schools until reaching the age of eighteen. He then became a printer's apprentice under Elwood S. Moser, of the Collegeville "Independent." After mas- tering some of the art and mystery of printing, he left the "Independent" office and was employed as a journeyman printer in Norristown, Pennsyl-
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vania, there continuing until 1890. In that year he located in Royersford, and established the Royersford "Weekly Advertiser," which he success- fully conducted until his passing, twenty years later. The "Advertiser" then passed to the management of his only son, Lloyd E. Johnson, under whom the paper has reached a high plane of usefulness, and is now in its thirty-third year of prosperous life.
Jacob S. Johnson was a member of the Reformed church ; the borough Volunteer Fire Company ; the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks; Junior Order United American Mechanics; and the Knights of the Golden Eagle. He married, July 11, 1890, Carrie Beideman, born in 1870, daughter of Henry and Louisa (Kline) Beideman, her father born in Chester county, her mother in Berks county, Pennsylvania. To Jacob S. and Carrie (Beideman) Johnson, there was born a son, Lloyd E. Johnson, of further mention.
Lloyd E. Johnson was born in Royersford, Pennsylvania, November 14, 1891, and there completed full courses of public school study, finishing in high school with the graduating class of 1909. After a special course in Pottstown Business College, he became associated with his father in the printing business, and although still a minor at the time of the latter's death in 1910, succeeded him as editor and publisher of the "Weekly Advertiser" and during the years which have since intervened he has continued head of the business founded by his father. Their present well-equipped plant was built and furnished by him in 1915, and is a credit to his enterprise and to the business housed therein.
In politics Mr. Johnson is a Republican, and in religious faith is a member of the Reformed church. He is affiliated with Royersford Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons, and with the different bodies of the Phila- delphia Consistory, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, in which he holds the thirty-second degree. He is also a noble of the Mystic Shrine; a knight of the Golden Eagle ; a member of the Tall Cedars of Lebanon ; member of the Humane Fire Company, and Friendship Hook and Ladder and Hose Company ; is secretary of the Royersford Business Men's Associa- tion; member of the Pennsylvania State Newspaper Association ; National Editorial Association; Midnight Sons' Club; Royersford Gun Club ; and the City Club, of Philadelphia.
Mr. Johnson married, in Royersford, October 8, 1914, Elsie M. Lewin, daughter of Willis and Jennie Lewin, her father superintendent of the Grander Stove Company, of Royersford. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson are the parents of a son, Lloyd E. (2), born October 17, 1915.
HIRAM CORSON, M. D .- For more than fifty years Dr. Hiram Corson was a recognized leader of thought in the community in which he lived, and an "exemplar of the highest type." He was from youth an active and earnest opponent of human slavery, and cooperated conscien- tiously with his brother, George Corson, whose home at Plymouth Meeting was a well known station of the underground railroad. He was a life-time foe of the liquor traffic and devoted a great deal of time to
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Hiram Carson
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advancing the interest of the total abstinence movement, which at that time was not only highly unpopular, but often the subject of scorn and derision. However, such opposition only aroused anew Dr. Corson's indignation and sense of justice, and gave additional force to his deter- mination to let no difficulties divert him from the course he deemed was right. He waged the first professional warfare against the custom, then prevalent, of giving only hot drinks to patients in eruptive diseases, and his papers on scarlet fever and diphtheria were widely circulated, and the ice treatment, which he found so beneficial in these diseases, has come into general use.
Dr. Corson was widely known through his writings, and notwith- standing his advanced, even radical, views on reform subjects, he was held in high esteem by his contemporaries. An American when traveling abroad met in Rome the late Monsignor Kennedy, head of the American College there. In the course of conversation the distinguished prelate spoke of his boyhood home in far away Montgomery county, Pennsyl- vania, when the traveler said: "Oh, then you must have known Dr. Hiram Corson," to which he exclaimed: "Know Dr. Corson? Yes, indeed, he was our mentor and it was to him we all went for counsel." Dr. Corson was among the first physicians to open the profession of medicine to women, and he assisted his niece, Sarah Adamson, in a medical education by giving her the benefit of his name and reputation.
At Dr. Corson's death, which occurred March 4, 1896, leading papers published warm eulogies on his life and character, and the Montgomery County Medical Society, of which he was a founder, past president, and always an active member, held a special session as a memorial to him in the Court House in Norristown, Pennsylvania. On March 9th he was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, after a long and useful life, his memory a rich heritage, his life an inspiration.
(I) The Corson ancestry carries back to Cornelius Corson, who came with a band of Huguenots escaping from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, October 18, 1685. The vessel on which he sailed was driven by stress of weather into New York bay and a landing effected on Staten Island.
(II) Benjamin (1) Corson, son of Cornelius Corson, settled in Addis- ville, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, where, according to the records, he bought two hundred and fifty acres, within half a mile of the village, paying for it £350. This tract was the original home of the Corsons in Bucks county, and remained in the family until 1823.
(III) Benjamin (2) Corson, a boy of seven years when brought to Bucks county by his father in 1723, married Marie Sedam (or Suydam) and they were the parents of Benjamin (3) Corson, of whom further.
(IV) Benjamin (3) Corson was born March 6, 1743, and died July 2, 1811. He married Sarah Dungan, and reared a family of eleven, all of whom married. Their second son was Joseph Corson, of whom further.
(V) Joseph Corson was born in Dublin township, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 15, 1764, and died at Hickorytown, Montgomery
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county, Pennsylvania, April 4, 1834. He was a farmer and a merchant, a member of the Society of Friends, his home near Plymouth Meeting. His mother was a lineal descendant of Rev. Thomas Dungan, a Baptist preacher, who came from Rhode Island and settled at Cold Spring, near Bristol, in Bucks county, in 1684. He was the founder of the Baptist church in Pennsylvania. Thus, the zeal displayed by the Corsons of later days for liberty of conscience derives from the Huguenot, Quaker and Baptist ancestors, Cornelius Corson, Joseph Corson, and Rev. Thomas Dungan. Joseph Corson married (first) in 1786, Hannah Dick- inson, daughter of Joseph Dickinson, a grandson of William Dickinson, a Friend, who settled within the limits of Plymouth Meeting. Joseph and Hannah (Dickinson) Corson were the parents of eleven children; two of their sons, Hiram and William, became able distinguished physi- cians, and both lived to an advanced age, Hiram, the subject of this sketch, reaching his ninety-second year. . Medicine has been a favorite profession in this family, and doctors in the Corson family have been many. The Dickinson ancestry is traced to Ivan, a general serving under Halidan Herbein, King of Norway, in the year 700 B. C. A descendant, Walter de Caen, was kinsman to William the Conqueror, and came with him to England in 1066. From him sprang John De Kenyon, clerk in chancery during the reign of Edward I, he being the ancestor of Hugh Dickinson, of Kenson Manor, near Leeds, 1422-1473. From Hugh Dick- inson came John Dickinson, born in 1624, who came to Virginia in 1654, moving to North Point, Maryland, thence to Talbot county, Maryland, where he owned three hundred acres of land. His son, William Dickin- son, born in 1669, married, in 1690, Sarah Harrison, and moved to Darby, Pennsylvania, the same year. In 1703 he bought a tract of farm land in Plymouth township, Montgomery county, where he lived until his death. Their fourth child, Hannah Dickinson, married Joseph Corson, as previ- ously noted, and is buried with him in Friends' Burying Ground, Plymouth Meeting. Hannah (Dickinson) Corson died December 17, 1810, and Joseph Corson married (second) in 1812, a second wife, Eleanor Coulson, daughter of John, and granddaughter of Bernard Coulson, one of the early settlers and large landowners of Plymouth township, Mont- gomery county.
(VI) Hiram Corson, ninth child and sixth son of Joseph and Hannah (Dickinson) Corson, was born at the homestead in Hickorytown, Plymouth township, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, October 8, 1804, and died at his home, "Maple Hill," March 4, 1896, that locality having been his residence during almost his entire adult life. In his later life Dr. Corson wrote a history of the Corson family, which is considered an authority. In it he tells his own life story, from which is taken the fol- lowing concerning his youth, his early years of practice, and his marriage:
My mother died when I was six years of age, but I received almost a mother's care from my sisters, Mary and Sarah. My early education was received at the Friends' School at Plymouth Meeting, under Joseph Foulke, a minister in the Friends' Meeting at that place; later, under my brother, Alan W. Corson, who was talented in mathe- matics and the natural sciences; and finally, when nearing manhood, at the Friends'
MAPLE HILL-HOME OF DR. HIRAM CORSON
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Select School in Philadelphia, under Benjamin Moore. After leaving school I was engaged in my father's store at Hickorytown until May 9, 1826, when I entered as a student of medicine the office of Dr. Richard D. Corson (my cousin) at New Hope, Bucks county. The following winter I attended lectures at the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, and was graduated in the spring of 1828. After a few weeks' rest at home I was invited by my father's family physician, Dr. Leedom, to join him in the practice of medicine. Dr. Leedom was well advanced in years, and desired to be relieved of some of the arduous labors of his profession. After a three months' trial, the idea of a partnership was abandoned, but Dr. Leedom desiring me to remain in the neighborhood, I did so, and was soon in possession of a good practice, extending over a large extent of country. Light carriages were not then much used, physicians making their journeys mostly on horseback. The Schuylkill river had no bridges at Conshohocken nor at Spring Mill, but there was a shaky ferry boat at the latter place. At Conshohocken the river had to be forded, and sometimes, when it was swollen with freshets, it was a very hazardous undertaking; so, too, the Wissahickon had to be crossed, and often with great risk of life. In 1832 the Asiatic cholera made its appearance in this country, first being observed at Quebec. When it reached Phila- delphia, July 5, 1832, I felt it to be my duty to my patients to visit the hospitals and learn what I could of the disease and its treatment. It was deemed by my friends a hazardous thing to do, but as my mind was made up, I saw the patients, and felt well repaid for my visits in the personal inspection I had of the terrible disease. In a week from that time the epidemic reached Conshohocken, and in a most violent form. For many nights in succession I was at the bedside of the sufferers, nearly all of whom found relief only in death. (This was also true of the cases in the two improvised hospitals in Philadelphia under the charge of Drs. Joseph Parrish and Samuel Jack- son). Scenes of suffering such as I witnessed at that time can never be forgotten, but will remain in perfect clearness as long as memory lasts. On the 26th day of Decem- ber, in the year 1833, I married Ann Jones Foulke, a daughter of Edward and Tacy (Jones) Foulke, of Gwynedd township, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania. We were married in Philadelphia, by Mayor Joseph Watrous, and soon afterward began our married life in the house which I had built during the preceding summer and fall, situated a short distance from Plymouth Meeting. There we lived for fifty-six years, when death came to my wife, leaving me to make the rest of life's journey without her comfort, sympathy and support, upon which I had placed the greatest reliance. I may say of her that she was a woman of the purest character, kind, gentle, and sweet in disposition; seldom has fate given to husband and children a more lovable and more loving wife and mother. Her nine children, brought up under her care and wise instruction, idolized her, and to her I always turned for counsel in many important incidents of my professional life. Whenever I prepared a paper for publication, I invariably read it to her before sending it to the publishers, and none was ever sent without her approval. No home was ever blessed with a wife and mother more devoted to the happiness of the family. She died on the 25th of June, 1888, and was buried in the beautiful cemetery at North Laurel Hill.
Dr. Corson's own summing up of his life is more interesting than another's could possibly be. Near the close of his life he wrote :
I still live in the home in which our married life was commenced and completed, and the place to which I long ago gave the name of "Maple Hill" (on account of the large number of maple trees, most of them planted by myself, about the lawn), has been dear to me these many years; and now, as my life's pilgrimage draws to a close, I look upon it with still more tender affection and sweeter memories. My life has been a busy one, devoted mainly to my profession, yet with a good share of my energies given to the interest of public morals and of human rights and justice. My professional experience covers a period of about sixty years, from 1828 to 1888, at which last- named date I retired from active practice. During that long period I contributed to the literature of the medical profession, through various medical journals, the "Trans- actions of the Pennsylvania State Medical Society" and the "Transactions of the Ninth International Medical Congress," about sixty-eight medical papers and two important pamphlets; one a "History of the Long Waged Struggle for the Recognition of
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Woman Physicians," the other on "Procuring a Law to Have Boards of Trustees of All Hospitals Owned by the State Appoint Women Physicians to Have the Exclusive Medical Control of the Female Insane in Those Hospitals." This last-named pamphlet contained about fifty pages. In conjunction with the faculty of the Woman's Medical College, I had one thousand copies of it printed and distributed. In addition to the above, papers on special diseases and subjects, reviews and criticisms of papers pub- lished by others, were frequently given to the medical public. That many of my views, so greatly at variance with those long held, were strongly opposed, is admitted; espe- cially so was the innovation introduced, by giving to children, ill with the measles, freely of cold water as a remedy-a thing unheard of before that time (1829); yet as time rolled on and the great value of the cooling treatment was shown in that and in other febrile affections, denunciations of it were allayed, and now (1895) the cooling treatment which I so strongly advocated is universally used among enlightened physi- cians. But faithful and continuons as were my labors as a physician, never in a single instance in the sixty years was I failing to give as prompt attention to the calls of the poorest as to those of the richest. I do not regard those labors as the great work of my life. My efforts, successful ones, to have women physicians recognized by the medical profession, and to procure a law to have the female insane in Pennsylvania to be cared for medically and otherwise by female physicians, I regard as my great work. I was fifty-six years old when I began my opposition to the doings of the Philadelphia County Medical Society against medical women and the Woman's Medical College; sixty-seven when the embittered struggle for the recognition of female physicians was accomplished; seventy-two years old when I began my efforts to procure the law to have only women physicians to have medical care of the insane of their sex in our State Hospitals; and seventy-five when that law was procured. The struggle was carried on with intense earnestness and conscientiousness during these many years, yet the very men, many of the most eminent in the State, who so earnestly opposed the so-called reform, after the battle was over not only acquiesed in the decision, but joined in doing honor to me. In 1883 twelve leading male physicians and twelve women, the faculty of the Woman's Medical College, joined hands in giving a reception to me at the Belle- vue Hotel, Philadelphia, during the time of the State Medical Society's meeting, which in that year was held in Philadelphia. The reception in every way was a great success; hundreds of the profession were present. I was in my seventy-ninth year, and still in active practice.
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