BIO:  Robert MCCURDY, Gettysburg, 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/
_______________________________________________ 

History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania
Chicago:  Warner, Beers & Co., 1886
_______________________________________________ 

Part III, History of Adams County, Page 363

ROBERT MCCURDY (deceased), who for many years was prominent in the political and 
industrial life of Adams County, was a son of Capt. William McCurdy, who died in 
1849.  William McCurdy represented Adams County in the State Legislature in 
1839, his competitor being the great commoner, Thaddeus Stevens, whom he 
defeated.  Robert McCurdy was born in 1813 in Cumberland Township, on what is 
known as the McCurdy farm, a beautiful tract, comprising over 300 acres.  In 
1846 he married Mary Marshall, daughter of Hon. John Marshall, of Carroll’s 
Tract, whom he survived seventeen years.  For a number of years he resided on 
his farm, but the condition of his health, and his desire for a more active life 
led him to seek other occupations, and about 1856 he removed with his family to 
Gettysburg.  He was one of the earliest and most persistent promoters of the 
Gettysburg Railroad, which gave to Gettysburg its first modern facilities by 
connection with the Hanover Branch Railroad.  He was, on its completion, elected 
president, serving in this capacity until the road passed into the hands of the 
courts, by which he was appointed sequestrator, remaining in that office until 
the final sale of the road.  In 1869 he was elected associate judge, serving one 
term, the office then being abolished by the new constitution, which went into 
effect in 1873.  In 1871 Judge McCurdy was commissioned by Gov. Geary a trustee 
to superintend the removal of the Confederate dead from the field of Gettysburg, 
acting in conjunction with E. G. Fahnestock, Esq.  In 1880 he was elected to the 
office of prothonotary, serving one term.  In addition to these elective 
offices, Judge McCurdy was for many years a manager of the Adams County Mutual 
Fire Insurance Company, and one of the managers of the Evergreen Cemetery.  A 
man of strong religious feeling, he was for a long term of years a ruling elder 
in the Presbyterian Church.  Few men were more thoroughly imbued with the 
principles of early Democracy than Judge McCurdy, yet, although strongly 
attached to its history, and believing in the necessity of its supremacy, he was 
not a bitter partisan, the genial character of his nature and the conservative 
bent of his mind leading him to avoid extreme views.  He died in August, 1885.