Obituary:  Jacob C. Lear, Berlin, Brothersvalley, Somerset County, PA (1896).

Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Michael S. Caldwell.
 msc@juno.com

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A USEFUL LIFE WAS THE ONE LED BY JACOB C. LEAR WHO RECENTLY DIED AT THIS
PLACE.  No Doubt One of The Earliest and Perhaps The Oldest Locomotive
Engineer in The United States.
"Thy stage of action hath been broad and deep.
Where millions have played their part with thee
Though now we tread the vale alone, to keep
Watch, do our part, for soon we’ll with you be."

	Jacob P. Lear, the subject of our sketch, was born in Berlin,
Somerset county, Pennsylvania, on the 25th day of July 1814; died January
27th, 1896.
	He was of the same sturdy stock of German descent that gave
Pennsylvania a large per cent of her early rural citizens.  He was the
second son of Henry and Mary C. Lear, with whom he spent his early
boyhood years on a farm in the county of his birth.
	At the age of fourteen years, in company of his father he visited
Pittsburg, then only a village compared to what it is to-day, where he
met Andrew Jackson and presidential party who were making a tour of the
states by the carriage route, as [page torn] an enterprise of the future.
	When he was 18 years old his father died, and soon after, Jacob
began to look about for himself.  He found employment on the Pennsylvania
Canal, one of the early highways of commerce in our state, where he
worked several years.  He was offered a position as engineer on the
Portage Railroad, one of the first roads in the United States, which he
accepted and filled for two years.  This road was the scene of many
wrecks and delays on account of the numerous experiments of the officials
in railroading, of which stone ties were one of the greatest failures. 
He again returned to the canal where he remained a number of years. 
During the cholera scourge in this countay [sic], he was engineer on the
steamer, ‘Julia Palmer,’ between Beaver and Pittsburg and saw many
hardships during this reign of terror.  In later years he became a mill
wright and miller, which occupation he followed until a short time ago,
having built and fitted up twenty mills and saw mills in his time.
	In politics he was an ardent democrat.  In religion his views
were somewhat liberal, although he connected himself with the Lutheran
church early in life and continued to be an active member of said body
until the end.  He was a man of powerful physique; his nature, kind,
benevolent and honest; a man of very even temper, which, no doubt in part
at least, was the cause of his long life and the extreme good health he
enjoyed, as he scarcely knew what pain or sickness was until his late
illness less than two years ago, which was thought to be cancer of the
stomach.
	He was married twice; his first wife was Mary E. Cribbs; his
second, Barbara Anna Stahl, who survives him.  He was father of 11
children, 52 grand children and 8 great grandchildren.
	His memory was clear and unclouded to the last; one that served a
mind rich in the things that came to it during a long life of observation
and created for him a paradise from which he was never driven.  He could
go back and live in the days when the greater part of the Union was a
vast wilderness; when Mobile and St. Augustine were in Spanish territory;
when LaFayette, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were still with us; in
the days when the sickle was the reaper of grain and the steel and flint
the kindler of fires; and long before the locomotive’s schrill [sic]
whistle had been heard for the first time on the American continent.  As
he watched nature’s hand roll around these many changeful years with
their great advancements in the arts, sciences and inventions, he asked
"what is impossible?"
	Though he suffered much he had none of that hard-featured pain so
often accompanied by a dreaded disease; but as the end drew near his
countenance portrayed a peaceful satisfaction, and while he whispered the
names of friends long since departed, his muscular body relaxed its hold
on the prisoner within, and sank into a calm repose that fitly told that
lifes’ evening took on the character of the day that preceded it; thus
his career closed with a conscious hope for a better world that had been
early and constantly nourished by habits of well doing.
_________________________________________

Supplement: This family was found in the 1860 PA Census in Westmoreland
County, as follows:

1860 PA Census: Westmoreland Co. Hempfield Twp.
P.O. Weaver's Old Stand. p. 451 (Series M653 roll 1195):
Dwelling 769, family 756 (18 July 1860):

Jacob LEER, 44, Farmer, /$1000, Pa.
Barbara A., 27
William, 21, Farmer; Martha, 17, school; George, 15, school
John, 9, school; Mariah E., 7; Mary C., 6; Cyrus, 4; Jacob, 1