BIO:  Maj. Calvin GILBERT, Adams County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Kathy Francis

Copyright 2005.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/adams/
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History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania
Chicago:  Warner, Beers & Co., 1886
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Part III, History of Adams County, Pages 354-355

MAJ. CALVIN GILBERT, of the firm of Gilbert & Smith, Gettysburg, was born in 
that place April 8, 1839, a son of Daniel and Ammy (Rice) Gilbert, former a 
native of Adams County, Penn., of English and German descent; latter a native of 
Frederick County, Md.  The father was a coach-maker by trade and carried on the 
business at Gettysburg for thirty years previous to the war.  Of their eleven 
children eight are yet living, the Major being the second.  Our subject grew to 
manhood in his native town, received the benefit of a public school education 
and learned the coach-maker’s trade with his father.  At the outbreak of the war 
in 1861 he enlisted as a private in Company F, Eighty-seventh Regiment, 
Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.  Subsequently was transferred to the regimental 
band.  After a service of one year, regimental bands being dispensed with, he 
returned to his company and served with the same until November 21, 1862, when, 
by special order of the war department, he was mustered out of the service on 
account of having been a member of the regimental band.  He then entered the 
commissary department as a clerk in the office of the commissary general at 
Washington, D.C., and in March, 1863, was commissioned captain and commissary 
subsistence of volunteers, serving as such until 1865, when he was promoted to 
the rank of major for meritorious service, in which capacity he served until 
October 26, 1865.  His service being no longer required he was honorably 
mustered out.  Maj. Gilbert then located at Chambersburg, Penn., and embarked in 
mercantile trade, continuing in the same until 1868, when he commenced the 
manufacturing business in the same place, which he carried on until 1885, when 
he returned to his native town and engaged in his present business of general 
foundry and machine work.  Maj. Gilbert is a public-spirited man, a Republican 
in politics, and while he lived in Chambersburg was always foremost in all 
public improvements; for eighteen years he was an active member of the school 
board, having served both as secretary and treasurer of the board; he also took 
an active interest in the agricultural affairs of the county, being the 
representative of Franklin County in the State board of agriculture, and for 
fifteen years secretary of the county agricultural society.  He is at present a 
member of the  school board of Gettysburg and a member of the town council and 
chief of the fire department of the borough.  He has frequently been a member of 
the district Republican conventions and also a representative to the State 
conventions.  He is a member of the order of Red Men, of the K. of P., the 
I.O.O. F., and is a Royal Arch Mason.  March 12, 1862, he was married to Lavina 
L. Rex, whose parents were natives of this county, of German descent.  To our 
subject and wife have been born five children, all yet living.  Maj. Gilbert and 
his wife are both members of the Lutheran Church.