BIO:  Harvey W. MCKNIGHT, Gettysburg, Adams County, PA

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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, Page 364

HARVEY W. MCKNIGHT, president and professor of intellectual and moral science, 
Pennsylvania College, Gettysburg, is a native of this county, born in 
McKnightstown April 3, 1843, of Thomas and Margaret (Stewart) McKnight, of 
Scotch-Irish descent.  Thomas McKnight, the founder of McKnightstown, was a 
farmer and merchant.  His death occurred in 1850.  Harvey W., the youngest of a 
family of nine children, was only a lad of seven years at the time of his 
father’s death.  The mother, after the death of her husband, moved to Jackson 
Hall, in Franklin County, Penn., where our subject was occupied for a time in 
the village schools and for three years as a clerk in a general store.  He for a 
time attended the academy at Chambersburg, and in 1860 entered Pennsylvania 
College, and pursued his studies until 1862, when he enlisted in Company B, One 
Hundred and Thirty-eighth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.  He was 
made orderly sergeant, and subsequently promoted to the office of second 
lieutenant, but on account of ill health was soon compelled to resign.  After 
his return home he was made adjutant of the Twenty-sixty Regiment of 
Pennsylvania Militia, and as such served during the invasion of Pennsylvania by 
the rebel forces in 1863.  After the burning of Chambersburg, in 1864, he was 
commissioned captain of Company D, Two Hundred and Tenth Regiment of 
Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, and served as such until the close of the war, 
in 1865.  He then returned to Pennsylvania College, from which he was graduated 
that year, and entered the theological seminary at Gettysburg, and from that 
institution graduated in 1867, and was licensed as a preacher.  From 1867 to 
1870 he served as pastor of a church at Newville; then, owing to bad health, he 
retired from the ministry for a period of two years.  From 1872 to 1880 he was 
pastor of St. Paul’s Church, at Eaton, Penn.  From 1880 to 1884 he served as 
pastor of the First English Lutheran Church of Cincinnati, Ohio.  In 1878 Dr. 
McKnight was elected a trustee of his alma mater, and the same year delivered 
the alumni address at the theological seminary, Gettysburg.  In 1884 he was 
chosen, by a unanimous vote, president of Pennsylvania College, which office he 
has since filled.  November 12, 1867, he was married to Mary K., daughter of 
Solomon and Jane (Livingstone) Welty, whose parents were of Scotch-Irish and 
Pennsylvania German descent.  To this marriage have been born Jane M. and Mary 
L.  Mrs. McKnight is identified with the Lutheran Church.  The title of D.D. was 
conferred on our subject by Monmouth College, Illinois, in 1883.