BIOGRAPHY: James McCARTNEY, Cambria County, PA 

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From Wiley, Samuel T., ed. Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Cambria 
County, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Union Publishing Co., 1896, p. 406-7
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JAMES McCARTNEY, an old and highly-respected citizen of Mountaindale, this 
county, is a son of William and Jane (Wilson) McCartney, and was born in Path 
Valley, near Spring Borough, Franklin county, Pennsylvania, January 29, l814.
    He is descended from a sturdy Scotch-Irish ancestry, his grandfather on the 
paternal side of the family having emigrated from the North of Ireland to 
America, and become one of the early settlers of Path Valley, in Franklin 
county. He married an Irish lady by the name of Ann Wallace, and they became the 
parents of five children, two sons and three daughters. The eldest of these 
children was William McCartney, the father of the subject of this sketch. He was 
born in the valley in which the family settled, took up farming and the trade of 
a cooper as a means of securing a livelihood, and was one of the pioneer 
advocates and adherents of the Presbyterian faith in that section. He died there 
at the age of seventy-eight years, universally loved and respected. He married 
Jane Wilson, and their union resulted in the birth of seven children, three sons 
and four daughters, of whom James was the eldest son, and the second child in 
order of age.
    James McCartney remained upon the farm in Franklin county until he was 
twenty-one years of age. In 1836 he removed to Cambria county and located first 
at Fallen Timber, where he remained two years engaged in agricultural pursuits. 
In 1838 he purchased a tract of woodland containing one hundred and twenty acres 
and cleared out the farm upon which he now resides, comprising most of the land 
upon which the village of Mountaindale is built. This land is underlaid with two 
veins of valuable coal which are being developed and opened to the markets of 
the country. James McCartney has always been an ardent believer in the tenets of 
the Presbyterian church, and a strong believer in the principles of the 
Republican party, and served for a time as justice of the peace in his township, 
and then resigned.
    April 23, 1835, he married Annie Gallagher, a daughter of Hugh Gallagher, of 
near Fallen Timber, and one of the early settlers of that part of the township. 
To this marriage union have been born eight children.
    Jamns S. McCartney, son of James McCartney, whose sketch and ancestral 
history appear above, was born at Mountaindale, Reade township, then White 
township, July 12, 1848. He was reared upon the farm until eighteen years of 
age, receiving a good common-school education. After leaving school he was 
engaged in lumbering until 1873, when he embarked in mercantile pursuits at 
Lloydsville, remaining there until 1881. Upon the latter date he came to 
Mountaindale and built a store-house, and has been engaged in merchandizing 
there ever since. His store-house is 22 x 50 feet, and two stories high, and is 
well filled with everything found in a first-class general mercantile 
establishment.
    In addition to the above, he is a stockholder and the superintendent of the 
Eldorado Coal company of Mountaindale, a company that mine and ship two hundred 
tons per day.
    September 4, 1878, he married Laura A. Glasgow, a daughter of John Glasgow, 
of Glasgow, this county, and four sons bless their union. They are: John 
Clarence, James Hudson, George Ray and Luther Clifford.