Individual Details

Death

Civil War Union Brevet Brigadier General. Born just outside Apollo, Pennsylvania, of Irish-Scottish lineage, he enrolled as a drummer boy in the Pennsylvania State Militia in 1845 when he was only twelve years old. In the years that followed he was steadily promoted until he reached the rank of Captain. After the outbreak of the Civil War he recruited a company called the "Apollo Independent Blues", a unit that would be eventually incorporated as Company G of the 11th Pennsylvania Reserves. He was promoted to Major on July 2, 1861, Lieutenant Colonel on October 28, 1861, and finally Colonel and commander of the regiment on April 10, 1863. He saw action at the Battles of Gaines' Mill, Second Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and Bethesda Church. Mustered out, honorably, on June 13, 1864, he was brevetted Brigadier General, US Volunteers on March 13, 1865. After the war he was engaged in the oil business in Venango County, Pennsylvania, but returned home in 1889. Later that year he was elected to the Pennsylvania State Legislature, and again in 1890. A few years later he represented the forty-first Senatorial district in the Pennsylvania State Senate but declined to be renominated at the end of his term. In addition to his service in the legislature, he helped organize the Apollo Savings Bank (where he worked as cashier for awhile) and later served as Collector of Internal Revenue. He was also instrumental in bringing the sheet steel business to the Kiskiminetas Valley and was a stockholder in the firm of P.H. Laufman & Company. In 1893 he was elected to the office of Pennsylvania State Treasurer, the last such position he would hold. He twice married, and one of his daughters would become the mother of actor Jimmy Stewart.
Bio by: Jonathan Coulter