BIO: Milton Scott LYTLE, Huntingdon County, PA Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Lana Clark Copyright 2006. 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, pages 25-27 __________________________________________________________ MILTON SCOTT LYTLE, Huntingdon, Pa., was born October 19, 1842, in Franklin township, Huntingdon county, Pa., a mile north of the village of Spruce Creek. He is a grandson of William Lytle, an Irishman, who came to America before the Revolution and served as a soldier in New York regiments during the whole of that war; and a great-grandson, on his mother's side, of Adam Stonebraker, who also was a Revolutionary soldier, enlisted at Hagerstown, Md., in Captain Heyser's company of the German regiment. Hs father, Nathaniel Lytle, a saddler by occupation, and, when a young man, a charcoal maker at iron works in Franklin township, removed with the family in April, 1843, to Spruce Creek, Pa., where he followed his trade and almost continuously for more than forty years filled the offices of school director, justice of the peace and postmaster. The son, Milton, began attending public schools when five years old, and went every term in the district in which he lived, with but one interruption, until over sixteen. In April, 1856, he obtained employment in the store of Irvin, Green & Watson, at Mill Creek furnace, where he remained until November, 1857, but while there attended school during the winter term. In March, 1859, he entered the Farmers' High School, now the Pennsylvania State College, as a student, and graduated in December, 1861. The degree of Master of Science has since been conferred upon him by the institution. Immediately after the news of the firing upon Fort Sumter was received, a company, of which he was elected first lieutenant, was organized by the students. He resigned his office in the company to permit a member of the faculty to be chosen in his place, but the professor refused to accept, and Lytle was re-elected. This company spent much time in drilling during the remaining part of the session of that year, so that its members might be prepared to take part in the war. Many of them afterward entered the service and were much benefited as soldiers by their experience in the company. Soon after graduating, Lytle enlisted in the Anderson Troop, a company organized as a bodyguard to General Anderson, then commanding in Kentucky, but, on presenting himself to be mustered in, was refused, because he was a minor and had not the necessary parental consent. In August, 1862, he again enlisted, in Company C, one Hundred and Twenty-fifth Pennsylvania Volunteers. On reaching Harrisburg with the company his muster in was again delayed for want of the necessary consent, but this was afterwards obtained. He served in the ranks until after the battle of Antietam, in which the regiment was hotly engaged and met with heavy losses. In November, 1862, he was ordered to the headquarters of Gen. Thomas L. Kane, commanding the brigade, for duty, and in February, 1863, was ordered to the headquarters of Gen. H. W. Slocum, commanding the Twelfth Army Corps. He was with the latter officer on the fields of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. At the expiration of his term of service it was his intention to re-enlist, but he was dissuaded from doing so by Colonel Hopkins, of General Slocum's staff, who requested him to remain at headquarters. After the battle of Chickamauga, Lytle went with the corps to Tennessee, to which part of the theatre of war the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps were transferred. The next spring, on the consolidation of these corps, he was assigned to the Fourth Corps, with which he served in the Atlanta campaign and at the battles of Franklin and Nashville. The latter engagement ending the war in the west, he went to Chattanooga as chief clerk in the department of military railroads, which had charge of the supplies for roads centering at that place and paid the employees, disbursing hundreds of thousands of dollars of government funds every month. Mr. Lytle had begun the study of law before his enlistment, reading during the first six months of 1862. He resumed it on coming home after the war, and in August, 1866, was admitted to the bar at Huntingdon, Pa., where he has since resided and practised. In 1869 he was elected district attorney of Huntingdon county and filled the office during the term of three years. Immediately after assuming its duties, there was a number of very important homicide trials, among there that of Bohner and Bodenburg, the murderers of the Peightal family, who were convicted and executed. On November 27, 1867, he was married to Elizabeth J. Steel, of Huntingdon, Pa., daughter of George A. and Elizabeth Steel, and has had eleven children, as follows: Marion Steel, deceased; Florence Ashton, John Warren, Fannie Blair, Ella Lucille, Mary, Alma, Martha, deceased; Walter Channing, George Nathaniel, Sallie and Bessie. He has been active as a member of the Republican party, serving at various times as delegate to state conventions, chairman of the county committee, secretary of the State committee and speaker in political campaigns, and has, for a score of years or more, written the platforms for the Republican conventions of Huntingdon county, embodying 1n them his own views on the political questions of the times. The oration at the memorial services held at Huntingdon on the day of the funeral of General Grant was delivered by Mr. Lytle, and he has been a frequent speaker at regimental reunions, Grand Army of the Republic celebrations and on Memorial Days. He was elected president of the Juniata Valley Veteran Association at Lewistown in 1895. He has been a contributor to newspapers since 1860. While in the army he was a correspondent for the Philadelphia Press. From 1878 to 1896 he was the editorial writer for the Huntingdon Journal, and for the last two or three years of that period had practically sole charge and control of the paper, on account of the illness of its proprietor. In 1876 he wrote and published a history of Huntingdon county, and has since collected a large amount of material relating to the subject, with a view to preparing a revised edition. Mr. Lytle has always taken great interest in the welfare of the lower and more helpless classes, laboring for their elevation and improvement. He was the originator of the movement for government aid to education in the south, advocating it in the public press and bringing it before Republican conventions, State and national, and had the gratification of seeing it endorsed by both. In 1883 he was appointed by Governor Pattison as the representative of Pennsylvania in the convention at Louisville, Ky., to advance this measure. He believes that the vast industrial changes that have characterized the nineteenth century and that are still going on with accelerated rapidity, are destined to bring about corresponding social and political changes, to the amelioration of our civilization, the eradication of its vices, the mitigation of poverty and want and the ultimate removal of temptations to crime; that the whole race will share in the beneficent results the forces of nature confer, and that the products of those forces will finally be recognized as belonging to all humanity.