BIO: Owen F. BRUNER, Huntingdon County, PA Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by JO Copyright 2008. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/pafiles.htm ********************************************************** __________________________________________________________________ Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of the Juniata Valley: Comprising the Counties of Huntingdon, Mifflin, Juniata and Perry, Pennsylvania, Containing Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens and Many of the Early Settlers. Chambersburg, Pa.: J. M. Runk & Co., 1897, page 231. __________________________________________________________________ OWEN F. BRUNER, merchant and justice of the peace at Petersburg, Logan township, Huntingdon county, was born June 8, 1840, near Duncannon, Perry county, son of Jacob and Elizabeth (McGowan) Bruner. His grandfather, Jacob Bruner, born in Cumberland county, of Swiss descent, was a farmer and miller, and spent his last years in Duncannon, Perry county. Jacob Bruner (2) was born at Landisburg, Perry county, attended the public schools, and then began the milling business in Duncannon. Later he became a cattle dealer, and is still living in Altoona at the age of eighty-five. He was married in Chester county, Pa., to Elizabeth, daughter of Alexander McGown, a plasterer of Chester county, also a farmer and local preacher in the Methodist church. Their children are: Owen F.; and Sererah J., deceased, wife of Theodore Renner, of Petersburg. Mr. Bruner is a Republican, and a member of the Methodist church. His wife died July 5, 1895, at the age of eighty-three. Owen F. Bruner attended the home schools and the Cumberland Valley Institute, and then taught school one year in Perry county. He was then clerk in a wholesale notion house in Philadelphia for four years. About this time he enlisted in an independent troop, participated in a skirmish in West Virginia, was at Chambersburg when that town was burned, and was afterwards in West Virginia when four hundred Confederates were captured. After nine months' service, he was discharged in January, 1864. For the next thirty-three years he lived at Petersburg, Huntingdon county, being a cattle dealer in that and neighboring counties. He has since been in the mercantile business in Petersburg. In 1865, Owen F. Bruner married, in Petersburg, Mrs. Mary Wilson, who was born in Cambria county, and died in 1892. In 1893 he married Rebecca, daughter of David Isenberg; he had no children by either marriage. In 1883 he was elected justice of the peace on the Republican ticket and has filled the office ever since; his decisions have always been sustained by the higher courts. He was also a member of the town council for three terms. He teaches in the Sunday-school of the Methodist church.