BIO: Hon. Edward MCPHERSON, 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, Pages 364-365 HON. EDWARD MCPHERSON, LL. D., Gettysburg, is a descendant in the fourth generation of Robert and Janet McPherson, who settled on Marsh Creek, Adams County (then Lancaster), in the year 1738. Robert died in 1749; Janet in 1767. Col. Robert McPherson, his great grand-father, was educated at the Academy at New London, Chester County, and was for thirty years an active and influential citizen, and filled many important positions in York County. He was auditor in 1755 and 1767; commissioner in 1756; sheriff in 1762; assemblyman in 1765-’67 and 1781-’84. He was a member for York County of the provincial conference of committees, which met in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, June 18, 1776, and was also a member of the Constitutional Convention, which in July, 1776, formed the first constitution of the State of Pennsylvania. He was captain in Gen. Forbes’ expedition to reduce Fort Du Quesne in 1758, and served as colonel in the Revolutionary Army, and, after expiration of term, as an assistant-commissary of supplies. His wife was Agnes Miller, of the Cumberland Valley, by whom he had nine children-six daughters and three sons. Of the former two died in infancy. Janet married Maj. David Grier, of York; Mary married Alexander Russell, Esq., of Gettysburg; Agnes married Dr. Andrew McDowell, of Chambersburg, and Elizabeth married James Riddle, Esq., of Chambersburg. The eldest son, William, married, first, Mary Carrick of Maryland; next, Sarah Reynolds of Shippensburg, Penn. Robert died unmarried, and John married Sarah Smith, of Frederick, Md. Col. Robert was one of the charter trustees of Dickinson College. He died in 1789. Lieut. William McPherson, grand-father of Edward, served honorably in the Revolutionary war, having been a lieutenant in 1776, in Miles’ Rifle Regiment, and was captured by the enemy at the battle of Long Island, and kept a prisoner of war for nearly two years. On his return to civil life he discharged many public trusts, and for nine years represented York County in the Legislature, as the special champion of the bill for the creation of Adams County, which was accomplished in 1800. He died in Gettysburg August 2, 1832, in his seventy- fifth year. John B. McPherson, grand-son of Col. Robert McPherson, a son of Lieut. William McPherson by Mary Carrick, of Frederick County, Md., and father of Edward, was born near Gettysburg, November 15, 1789, on the farm on which his great- grandfather settled in 1738. He died in Gettysburg, January 4, 1858. Our subject lost his mother when quite young, and spent several of his earlier years with his grand-father, Capt. Samuel Carrick, of the neighborhood of Emmittsburg, Md. He subsequently returned to his home, where he spent his youth. He received a fair education at the academies of Gettysburg and York. He spent several years of his life in Frederick City, Md., with his uncle, Col. John McPherson, and for a year was a clerk in the Branch Bank, located in that place. He was married in Frederick, April 25, 1810, to Miss Catharine, daughter of Godfrey Lenhart, Esq., and grand-daughter of Yost Herbach, all of York County. Early in 1814 he removed to Gettysburg with a view to entering the mercantile business, but on the 26th of May of that year, he was elected cashier of the bank of Gettysburg, then recently chartered and organized. He continued in that position until his death, a period of nearly forty-four years. He had superior business ability and courteous manners, combined with strength of character and a high sense of personal and official honor. He participated actively in municipal and county affairs, and filled many posts of trust. He was highly intelligent and well read, and was a patron and efficient friend to Pennsylvania College, of whose board of trustees he was president at the time of his death. His widow survived him about one year. They left several children. A grand- son, Hon. John B. McPherson, is a associate law judge of the Dauphin and Lebanon District. Another grand-son, Dr. J. McPherson Scott, has twice represented his native county of Washington, Md., in the Legislature, is a physician of high standing, and was a district delegate in the Republican National Convention of 1884. Hon. Edward McPherson, youngest son of John B. and Catharine McPherson, was born in Gettysburg, July 31, 1830, and was educated at the public schools of that town and at Pennsylvania College, graduating from the latter in 1848 at eighteen with the valedictory. He early developed a taste for politics and journalism, but at the request of his father began the study of law with Hon. Thaddeus Stevens at Lancaster, which, however, he abandoned on account of failing health, and for several winters was employed in Harrisburg as a reporter of legislative proceedings and a correspondent for the Philadelphia North American and other newspapers. In the campaign of 1851 he edited in the interest of the Whig party the Harrisburg Daily American, and in the fall of that year he took charge of the Lancaster Independent Whig, which he edited until January, 1854. In the spring of 1853 he started the Inland Daily, the first daily paper published at Lancaster. His health proved unequal to such exacting labors and he relinquished them as stated, except for brief periods at Pittsburgh, in 1855, and at Philadelphia from the fall of 1878 to the spring of 1880, since which time he has not had active connection with the press. The first important public service rendered by Mr. McPherson was the preparation of a series of letters, ten in number, which were printed in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in the year 1857, and afterward in pamphlet form, their object being to prove the soundness of the financial policy which demanded the sale by the State of its main line of public improvements. The letters analyzed the reports of the canal commissioners for a series of years, proved the falsity of the conclusions drawn from them, and demonstrated the folly of continued State ownership and management. The letters were never answered, and they formed the text from which were drawn the arguments in favor of the sale, which was accomplished in 1858. The next year he prepared a like series on the sale of the branches of the State canal, which had a like reception. Both series of letters were published anonymously, but were signed “Adams,” after his native county. In 1856 he published an address on “The Growth of Individualism,” which was delivered before the alumni of his alma mater, of whose board of trustees he had been for years an active member. Another was published in 1858 on “The Christian Principle, Its Influence upon Government,” and still another in, in 1859, on “The Family In Its Relations to the State,” both of which were delivered before the Y. M. C. A. of Gettysburg. In 1863 he delivered an address before the literary societies of Dickinson College on the subject, “Know Thyself,” personally and nationally considered. In 1858 Mr. McPherson was elected to the Thirty-sixth Congress from the Sixteenth District of Pennsylvania, embracing the counties of Adams, Franklin, Fulton, Bedford and Juniata, and was re-elected in 1860. In 1862 he was defeated in the political reaction of that date, the district having been meanwhile changed by the substitution of Somerset County for Juniata. Upon the completion of his congressional term of service he was appointed in April, 1863, by President Lincoln, upon Secretary Chase’s recommendation, deputy commissioner of internal revenue, in which position he served until December, 1863, when he was chosen clerk of the House of Representatives for the Thirty-eighth Congress, which office he continued to hold during the Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, Forty-first, Forty-second and Forty-third Congresses and again in the Forty-seventh Congress, being the longest continuous service and the longest service in that post from the beginning of the Government. During the administration of President Hayes he served as chief of the bureau of engraving and printing of the Treasury Department for eighteen months, during which time he re-organized and reformed its administration and obtained from Congress an appropriation of $325,000 for the erection of its present fire-proof building in Washington City. The entire cost of it was met out of one year’s savings from the appropriations made for the bureau and an equal amount was left unexpended in the Treasury. During his service in Congress the principal speeches of Mr. McPherson were on “Disorganization and Disunion,” delivered February 24, 1860, in review of the two months’ contest over the election of a speaker in the Thirty-sixth Congress; “The Disunion Conspiracy,” delivered January 23, 1861, in examination of the secession movement and the arguments made in justification of it; “The Rebellion: Our Relations and Duties,” delivered February 14, 1862, in general discussion of the war, ”The Administration of Abraham Lincoln and Its Assailants,” delivered June 5, 1862. During and since his incumbency of the clerkship he published “A Political History of the United States During the Rebellion,” extending from the presidential election of 1860 to April 12, 1863, the date of Lincoln’s death: “A Political History of the United States During the Period of Reconstruction,” extending from 1865 to 1870; “Hand-book of Politics for 1870-72.: “Hand-book of Politics for 1872-74;” also one for 1876- 78; 1878-80; 1880-82; 1882-84; 1884-86. These latter volumes are editorial compilations of the political record of men and parties during that eventful period, and have received a high place in the confidence of all parties for completeness, fairness and accuracy. During the summer and fall of 1881 our subject served as volunteer aide on the staff of Gen. McCall, commanding the Pennsylvania Reserves, with a view of studying the wants or organization of the army, and to fit himself for intelligent legislative action on those subjects. In the Thirty-seventh Congress he was a member of the military committee of the House and took an active part in legislation respecting the army. He also served as chairman of the Committee on the Library and as a regent of the Smithsonian Institute. He was secretary of the People’s State Committee of Pennsylvania in 1857; was a member of the Republican National Committee from 1860 to 1864; was frequently a delegate to State conventions; was a representative delegate to the Republican National Convention of 1876, and was the permanent president of that body. He has actively participated in politics for many years and has been during three campaigns the secretary of the Republican Congressional Committee. In 1867 the degree of LL. D. was conferred upon him by Pennsylvania College. Mr. McPherson was married November 12, 1862, to Miss Annie D., daughter of John S. Crawford, Esq., of Gettysburg, and grand- daughter, on her father’s side, of Dr. William Crawford, a native of Scotland, who settled near Gettysburg about 1786, who for eight years represented that district in Congress, and on her mother’s side of the Rev. Dr. William Paxton, who for nearly fifty years served with distinction and ability Lower Marsh Creek Presbyterian Church. Mr. and Mrs. McPherson have four sons and one daughter.