attention: C£h] BAR CODE IS LOCATED INSIDE OF BOOK Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2009 with funding from Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center http://www.archive.org/details/historyofbedford03blac 3 M.ca ALLENCOUNTYPUHLICIIBnAHY r Gc 3 1833 01201 4012 974.801 B39b Gc 974.801 B39b v. V.3 [7050G33 History of Bedford and Somerset Cos. Pa. , HISTORY OF BEDFORD AND SOMERSET COUNTIES PENNSYLVANIA WITH GENEALOGICAL AND PERSONAL HISTORY BEDFORD COUNTY SOMERSET COUNTY BY BY E. HOWARD BLACKBURN WILLIAM H. WELFLEY UndertheEditorialSupervisionof Hon. William H. Koontz ILLUSTRATED VOLUVIB III THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY NEW YORK CHICAGO :: 1906 UiBI COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY FOm WAYNE, INDIANA Reprinted I983 for the Historica] and Genealogical Society of Somerset County, Inc. Printed in U.S.A. by Walsworth Publishing Marcel ine, MO. 6A658 Regional Director: WAI-MWORTH UI DON MN.L*. MC SalwTi WV 7A426 (304) 782 1179 7050633 j^'irC/^.^t^ Bedford and Somerset Counties. HON. ALEXANDER HAMILTON COFFROTH. Alexander H. Coffroth, for many years a leading figure in his profession and in the public life of the commonwealth dur- ing the dramatic period leading up to and culminating in the Civil war, was intensely active and broadly useful during his entire career. His abilities would undoubtedly have com- manded his entrance upon highest places had not his in- flexible devotion to principle held him to a political party which was constantly in the minority. General Coffroth was a native of Pennsylvania, born in Somerset, May 18, 1828. He was the youngest son of John and Maiy (Besore) Coffroth, the father born in Hagerstown, Maryland, of German descent, and the mother born in Green- castle. Pennsylvania, of English ancestry. These parents re- moved in 1808 from Greencastle to Somerset, where the father was among the early settlers, and the first to set up a store, bringing his merchandise from the east on pack-horses. Mr. Coffroth was a man of excellent character, and his wife was a model of womanhood, whose kindliness of dis]^osition, purity of conduct and energy of character were reflected in the son. Young Coffroth made of himself a fine exemi)lification of the truly self-made man in the best sense of that oft-abused term. Early thrown u])on his own resources, he entered upon and waged the battle of life in such masterly fashion as to not only provide himself an ample equipment for the large duties which were to devolve upon him, but to also develop to their fullest his fine natural gifts of soul and intellect. He attended the common schools, and out of the fruits of his own labors defrayed the expenses of a more liberal education in the old Somerset Academy. For a time he served efficiently as a school teacher, and with the means thus earned supported himself while preparing for his chosen ]irofession, the law. It was his great good fortune to attract the interest and friend- ship of the distinguished Jeremiah S. Black, in whose office and under whose preceptorshi]) he read industriously for some years, meantime and for five years, beginning at the age of eighteen, serving as editor of the Somerset Visitor, a Demo- cratic journal of no inconsiderable circulation and influence. Vol. Ill 1