BIOGRAPHY: John I. PRATT, 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. 310-1
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JOHN I. PRATT, the active and experienced foreman of the coal mines of the 
Cresson Coal company, is a son of Ralph and Mary Ann (Sigafoes) Pratt, and was 
born in McKeesport, Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, February 25, 1853. He is of 
English and German descent, and his father, Ralph Pratt, was a native of 
Yorkshire, England, where he received his education, passed his early years, and 
learned mining in those great collieries from which Great Britain has drawn 
largely her coal supplies for the last two centuries. At twenty years of age an 
opportunity to come to America presented itself to Ralph Pratt; he accepted it, 
and crossed the Atlantic to a United States port. Soon after landing in this 
country he sought the western part of Pennsylvania, and settled in Westmoreland 
county, where he made his home during the remainder of his life. He died at Penn 
Station, Westmoreland county, in April, 1894, when well advanced in the seventy-
fourth year of his age, having been born in 1820. He was a consistent and 
zealous member of the Methodist Episcopal church, and married Mary Sigafoes, of 
Greensburg, in his adopted county, and who was likewise a member of the 
Methodist Episcopal church. She was of German ancestry, and died in 1866, at 
forty-two years of age. Mr. And Mrs. Pratt had nine children, three sons and six 
daughters.
     John I. Pratt was principally reared at Penn Station and its immediate 
vicinity, and received his book education in the old common schools. Leaving 
school he worked in the mines and various subordinate positions up to 1881, in 
which year he became foreman of the Argyle Coal company's mines at South Fork, 
which position he held for six years. At the end of that time he went to the 
Carbon coal mines in Westmoreland county, where he acted as foremen for over two 
years, and then served for two years in the same capacity, in that county, at 
the Hostettler Coal & Coke Company's mines. In July, 1892, he accepted his 
present position as foreman of the Cresson Coal mines and removed to Cresson, 
where he has resided ever since. Mr. Pratt has given close study to the subject 
of coal mines, their ventilation, management, and operation, and, being a 
practical and experienced miner, is specially qualified to pass on the relative 
merits of different improvements suggested in the methods now used in operating 
mines. He is independent in politics, and a member of the Methodist Episcopal 
church. He has devoted himself closely to his particular line of business, and 
has discharged every duty of his different official positions in a satisfactory 
and honorable manner.