BIOGRAPHY: Rev. William Alfred SHIPMAN, 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. 85-6
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REV. WILLIAM ALFRED SHIPMAN, the eloquent and popular pastor of the First 
Evangelical Lutheran church of the city of Johnstown, was born at Springtown, 
Warren county, New Jersey, September 9, 1852, and is a son of Dr. William and 
Annie E. (Young) Shipman. His paternal grandfather, Matthias Shipman, Sr., was 
of English descent, and passed his life in New Jersey, the state of his 
nativity. He married and reared a family of children, of whom one was Isaac 
Shipman, who, like his father, was a native and life-long resident of New 
Jersey. Isaac Shipman married, and his son, Dr. William Shipman, was born May, 
1818.
     Dr. Shipman received a good education, read medicine under Dr. Clyde 
Kennedy, of Easton, this State, and Dr. George McClellan, father of General 
George B. McClellan, and then entered Jefferson Medical college, from which he 
was graduated in 1840. After graduation he opened an office at Finesville, New 
Jersey, and two years later removed to Springtown, that state, where he was in 
continuous practice for fifty-two years. His long and useful life closed in 
1893, when he passed from earth on February 5th of that year.
     Dr. Shipman married Annie E. Young, whose grandfather, Captain John Young, 
owned a large tract of land near Springtown, and had served under Washington, 
being at Trenton, and receiving a severe wound at at [sic] Monmouth. Mrs. 
Shipman died May 5, 1884, aged sixty-one years. Dr. and Mrs. Shipman had two 
sons, Rev. William Alfred, and Samuel Yohe, a farmer of Wright county, Missouri, 
who served as a Union soldier in the late Civil War.
     Dr. Shipman was among the early abolitionists of New Jersey, and fearlessly 
denounced the crime of slavery, regardless of consequences. He was a warm 
admirer of William Lloyd Garrison, and lived to see the ultimate triumph of the 
anti-slavery principles which he advocated and the dawn and early growth of a 
new national day in the life of the great republic.
     Rev. William Alfred Shipman was reared at his native village, received his 
elementary and academic education in the public schools of New Jersey and 
Stevens Hall, Gettysburg, this State, and then entered Pennsylvania college, at 
Gettysburg, from which well-known institution of learning he was graduated in 
the class of 1876. After graduation he entered the Lutheran Theological seminary 
of the General Synod, at Gettsyburg, and graduated from the celebrated 
institution on June 25, 1879. He then returned home, and on April 1, 1880, was 
elected as pastor of St. Paul's Lutheran church of Grafton, West Virginia, where 
he labored acceptably for three years and six months. At the end of that time he 
accepted a call from St. Paul's church, Frostburg, Maryland, and remained there 
for three years and three months, resigning then to take charge of Zion Lutheran 
church at Hollidaysburg, Blair county, to whom he broke the bread of life for 
three years and three months. He closed his labors at Hollidaysburg in June, 
1890, to accept a call to the pastorate of the First English Lutheran church of 
Johnstown, as successor of Dr. R. A. Fink, who had been pastor continuously for 
a quarter of a century. Entering upon his new field of labor he has wrought 
effectively ever since for the salvation of souls and the cause of pure and 
undefiled religion.
     On May 20, 1880, Rev. Shipman was united in marriage with Anna T. 
Beidenbaugh, a daughter of Rev. Edward Beidenbaugh, of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 
Their union has been blessed with one child, named Minot Martinneau.
     In politics Rev. Shipman is a staunch republican, but takes no active part 
in political affairs. He is a member and Master Mason of Mountain City lodge, 
No. 99, Free and Accepted Masons, of Frostburg, Maryland. William Alfred Shipman 
is a genial, affable gentleman, who never loses his proper dignity on any 
occasion, and always commands the respect of those with whom he mingles, which 
includes the common people as well as the professional and business classes. 
Sound in doctrine, able as a logician and in touch with the idea of the age, he 
is remarkably eloquent when the theme or occasion demands. He uses his rare gift 
of language to clothe appropriately living ideas and forcible truths, and not to 
gain the applause of the large audience which his preaching draws from all 
classes of society.