BIOGRAPHY: Alexander J. SKELLY, 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. 314-5
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Alexander J. SKELLY

ALEXANDER J. SKELLY, the present burgess of Wilmore, and a man of varied 
business and railroad experience in different States, helped to build the first 
mile of the great Union Pacific railway whose completion connected by rail the 
"ocean of storms to the ocean of peace."  He is a son of John and Elizabeth 
(McGough) Skelly, and was born near Wilmore, in Summerhill township, Cambria 
county, Pennsylvania, May 25, 1833.  His paternal grandfather, John Skelly, Sr., 
was a Scotch-Irishman, and with six brothers came from County Antrim to 
Maryland, settling on Antictam Creek, where the great battle of Antietam was 
fought in 1862.  They afterward made their home in Tuckahoe Valley, Blair 
county, where five of them were killed by Indians.
     John Skelly, Sr., was one of the two that escaped, and in 1809 he came to 
Cambria county, where he died fifty-three years later.  His son, John Skelly, 
was born in Tuckahoe Valley, February 23, 1792, and attended the old district or 
subscription schools but three days.  He was a self-educated man, and in 1827 
came to Cambria county, where he followed farming as an occupation, and died 
December 12, 1867.  He was a Jacksonian democrat, served one term as county 
auditor, and held most of the township offices.  He was a member of the Catholic 
church and an active and industrious man.  In 1819 he married Elizabeth McGough, 
and their children were:  James, who died in Texas aged seventy years; John, 
died in this county at sixty-two years of age; Sarah, widow of John Wolf and a 
resident of Oklahoma; Elizabeth, widow of Frank Christy; Mary; Alexander J.; and 
Philip, a farmer of near Wilmore.
     Mrs. Skelly, who died in 1872, aged seventy-three years, was a daughter of 
James McGough, who was a slave-holder of Baltimore, Maryland, and came at 
thirty-five years of age to Cambria county, where he manumitted his slaves and 
afterwards accumulated quite a large amount of property.  James McGough married 
and his children were:  Thomas, James, Jr., Elizabeth, wife of John Skelly; and 
Sarah, all of whom are dead.
     Alexander J. Skelly was reared to farm pursuits, attended the public 
schools, and worked for one year on the Portage railroad.  He then served two 
years as a conductor on the Pennsylvania railroad, and in 1860 engaged in 
farming and the lumber business, which pursuits he followed up to 1874, when he 
went to Texas, where he was a clerk for the Texas Pacific Railroad company in 
their Dallas office for six months and served for them the same length of time 
as a passenger conductor.  A year later he went to Fairfield, Iowa, where he was 
in the real-estate and insurance business up to 1884.  In that year he returned 
to Cambria county, and after conducting a hotel at Summerhill for two years, 
removed to Wilmore.  He then traveled as salesman for the Irwin Mill company for 
two years.  At the end of that time, in 1888, he was elected justice of the 
peace for a term of five years, and at its expiration in 1893 was re-elected for 
a second term of five years.  He was elected burgess in 1890, re-elected in 
1891, 1892, and in 1893 for a term of three years.
     On February 17, 1874, Squire Skelly was united in marriage with Rebecca J. 
Madden, a daughter of Spencer Madden, of St. Thomas, Franklin county.
     Squire Skelly is an old-time democrat, is ever active in local politics, 
and was the first jury commissioner elected in Cambria county.  While serving as 
jury commissioner he drew the first colored man whoever served on a jury in the 
State of Pennsylvania.  He is a member of the Clinton Lodge, No. 4, F. and A.M., 
of Fairfield, Iowa; and while on a visit west in 1865, helped to build the first 
mile of the Union Pacific railway.  Squire Skelly's life-record has been one of 
activity and honorable success, and he now enjoys the fruits of many years of 
toil in several different business pursuits.