OBIT: Jonas Beachy LIVENGOOD, 1948, of interest in Somerset County, PA

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Meyersdale Library.
Transcribed and proofread by: Richard Boyer.

Copyright 2007.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/somerset/
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JONAS BEACHY LIVENGOOD

  Jonas Beachy Livengood, retired printer, editor and publisher of Santa Cruz, 
Calif., and brother to William S. Livengood, editor emeritus of The Republican, 
died August 20.  Had he lived a few weeks longer he would have been 80 years 
old.
  He was born in the Casselman Hotel building, Grantsville, September 12, 1868 
when his father was tenant operator of the 300 acre Cornucopia Farm owned by 
Joel B. Miller.
  He was the ninth of ten children - five sons and five daughters - of Samuel J. 
and Nancy (Lichty) Livengood.  The sole survivor of the family is William S. 
Livengood, now in his 88th year.
  J. R. Livengood was named after Jonas J. Beachy, first cousin to his father 
and owner and occupant of the Mount Nebo farm near Grantsville.  When "Jony", as 
he was called by his older brothers and sisters, was four years old, his parents 
moved from Grantsville to Salisbury where Jony attended the local public schools 
and worked on farms and at odd jobs in the neighborhood until the fall of 1887 
when he and his best chum, George Gould, both about the same age, decided to go 
to the Far West to grow with the country.
  The boys were promised jobs as telegraph linemen being under construction in 
Oregon.  Sufficient money for their railroad fare there was loaned to them by 
Dr. C. G. Stutzman, Salisbury, uncle of George who reared him after he became an 
orphan at the age of four.  But their employment as linemen lasted only a few 
months.
  Young Livengood was persuaded by his brother, W. S., then employed as 
telegraph editor of the Los Angeles Daily Herald, to join him in the prospect of 
getting a job as a printer's apprentice.
  It happened about that time, that the late Henry R. Holsinger, founder of the 
Progressive Brethren Church and his son-in-law, began publication of a weekly 
newspaper in Ontario, California, and young Livengood was given an opportunity 
to learn the printing trade in their shop without any compensation other than 
free board and lodging as a member of the Holsinger household.
  Three months after his indenture as a printer's devil, the Holsingers sold 
their paper and plant, and the new proprietor employed young Livengood as 
foreman of the shop.  He soon became editor of the newspaper in addition to his 
job as foreman.
  Soon after, when type-setting machines were installed by a daily paper, J. B. 
obtained employment there as a machine operator.  When the linotype supplanted 
the typesetting machines, he bought two of them and obtained a contract with the 
assistance of another operator to do all the composition for another daily 
newspaper.
  After earning money enough to invest in California real estate, he built a 
commodious bungalow home for himself and wife, whom he met in Ontario, Calif. as 
Miss Laura Whooper, in the climatically ideal residential city of Santa Cruz, 
situated at the northern tip of crescent-shaped Monterey Bay in California.  One 
of his favorite haunts was the Calaveras grove of sequoia trees a few miles 
outside the city.
  His favorite hobbies and pass-times were horseshoe pitching and chopping and 
sawing wood.  He had many cords of firewood stacked around his home, although 
his wife, who survives him, preferred and used natural gas.
  Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Livengood were a childless couple.

Meyersdale Republican, September 16, 1948