Bios: Hon. Edwin Albright. 1838-1902: Lehigh County

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Biographies
from - "Proceedings of Pennsylvania-German Society Volume XII, 1901


              Hon. Edwin Albright. 1838-1902

	Hon. Edwin Albright, President Judge of the Lehigh County Courts,
was the son of Michael H. Albright, d. June 16, 1892, aged 81 years,
and Maria, nee Schaeffer, Albright, d. July 17, 1894, aged 84 years.
His parents lived for many years at Dillingersville, where the father
was a member of the School Board for ten years and a Justice of the
Peace from 1860 to 1873, in which latter year he moved to Allentown,
Pa.
	His paternal grandparents were John and Elizabeth, nee Hensel,
Albright. The former died in 1818, when the widow, later, married
John Ruch, of Plover, Lehigh County, and died in 1858, aged 80 years.
His maternal grandfather was Abraham Schaeffer, an early settler in
the Milfords.

The subject of this obituary sketch was born November 8, 1838, in
Upper Milford, where he spent his youth on a farm, attending the
public school and fitting himself for teaching. He taught school in
the Krupp's Berg, near Passer, Bucks County. Lack of means prevented
him from obtaining a college education, but he acquired what was its
equivalent through private instruction and academic institutions with
means earned by himself.
	Having determined upon a legal career he registered as a law student
with the late Congressman Samuel A. Bridges, supplementing this study
with a course in the Law Department of the University of
Pennsylvania. He was admitted to the bar April 7, 1862, speedily
acquired a large practice and forged to the front as one of its
foremost practitioners. He was elected District Attorney of Lehigh
County in 1865. In 1870 he was elected State Senator from Lehigh and
Northampton Counties, and, in 1873, he was again elected from Lehigh
and Carbon Counties. While a member of the Senate a new Constitution
was adopted, in 1874, and Judge Albright served as a member of the
Judiciary Committee, whose duty it was to frame the various
enactments necessary to carry its provisions into effect. He was also
on the subcommittee to draft a civil code for the State, and, during
the last year of his membership, was the Democratic nominee for
President of that body.
	In 1878 he was triumphantly elected Judge of the County Courts and
so satisfactory was his judicial service that he was twice reelected
thereafter, thus serving twenty-four of the thirty years of his three
terms. He was the first native-born Lehigh Countian to be elected to
the position he occupied. He was frequently mentioned for higher
honors in the judiciary of the State.
	Judge Albright was married June 19, 1866, to Rebecca, daughter of
John and Mary Sieger, who survives him with two children, Dr.
Roderick E. Albright and Mrs. Bertha Sieger.
	He was a member of St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church; Barger
Lodge, No. 222, F. and A.M.; Allentown Lodge, No. 90, Knights of
Pythias; Lehigh Saengerbund, Lehigh County Agricultural Society, and
the Livingstone Club.
	He was an upright judge, always safe, painstaking, industrious and
conscientious, without being showy or superficial. His nature was
frank and open, his temper even and judicial; his judgment clear,
cool and dispassionate, and his decisions universally respected. He
possessed the loftiest ideals of the sanctity of the bench, and had
neither friends to reward nor enemies to punish. He was richly
endowed with common sense which legal disputation could never becloud
nor befog. When he came to the bench he found the calendar crowded
with cases and the wheels of justice greatly clogged, but his
unflagging industry, unwearying zeal and wholesome discipline soon
accomplished wonders and speedily cleared the overburdened docket.
	Judge Albright took great pride in his Pennsylvania-German ancestry.
Plain, simple, unadorned man as he was he delighted in the sterling,
homely virtues of the race from which he had sprung. He became a
member of the Pennsylvania-German Society at its organization and was
immediately elected, in 1891, one of its two vice-presidents.
	His sudden and unexpected death, resulting from an attack of
pneumonia, complicated with heart trouble, occurred at 3:00 p.m. on
Saturday, December 13, 1902. H.M.M.R.
Courtesy of O.S. Henninger, Esq.