BIO: David A. ORR, Dauphin County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Judy Bookwalter

Copyright 2008.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/dauphin/
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/dauphin/runk/runk-bios.htm
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Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of Dauphin County, 
Containing Sketches of Representative Citizens, and Many of the 
Early Scotch-Irish and German Settlers.  Chambersburg, Pa.: 
J. M. Runk & Company, 1896, pages 346-347.
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  ORR, D. A., editor and the principal owner of the Patriot, daily and 
weekly, at Harrisburg, Pa., was born at Orrstown, Franklin county, a 
town founded by his father and brothers, whose name it bears, and was 
educated at the schools of that borough.  He attended a higher school 
at Upper Strasburg, and later underwent private instruction.  Having an 
early taste for newspaper writing, before he was eighteen years old he 
became the associate editor of the Sentinel, a Democratic newspaper 
then published at Shippensburg, and subsequently removed to Carlisle.  
From Shippensburg he went, after a somewhat protracted trip through the 
western States and Territories, to Pittsburgh, where he resided and was 
engaged in active business until January, 1879; at that time he 
purchased the Democratic Chronicle at Shippensburg, which paper he sold 
six months later, and, in October of the same year, together with his 
brother, John G., purchased and took charge of the daily and weekly 
Valley Spirit at Chambersburg.  He continues as president of the Valley 
Spirit Publishing Company, in which he is the principal shareholder.  
Although he has always taken an active interest in politics, Mr. Orr 
has never been a candidate for any public office of profit, and says he 
"never will be."  He is engaged in a number of private enterprises.  In 
1884 he was appointed by Governor Pattison one of the trustees of the 
Pennsylvania State Lunatic Asylum at Harrisburg, which position he 
resigned before his term expired.  He was a delegate from the 
Eighteenth Congressional district to the National Convention in 1884, 
which nominated Grover Cleveland for the presidency the first time, and 
was again a delegate to the National Democratic Convention in 1888 
which renominated Mr. Cleveland.  In 1891 he formed a company, of which 
he was made president, and purchased the Harrisburg Patriot, and has 
since been connected with that influential journal, of which he is 
editor and also the president of the Patriot Company.  Mr. Orr was 
married in 1885 to Miss Lillian J. Black, of Pittsburgh.

1900 Philadelphia Ward 34, Philadelphia County census -
David A. Orr, 48, editor
Lillie B. Orr, 46  
Barclay Orr, 45