Westmoreland County PA Archives Biographies.....Barnhart, David April 15, 1832

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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 October 12, 2018, 3:32 pm

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DAVID BARNHART. One of the pioneers of the Colorado gold fields and a veteran
Pennsylvania soldier who fought amid the clouds on Lookout Mountain, is David
Barnhart, now a well-established merchant of Pleasant Unity, He was born in
Derry township, Westmoreland county, Pa., April 15, 1832, and is a son of George
and Mary (Hartzell) Barnhart. George Barnhart was a resident of Pleasant Unity,
where he followed butchering for a livelihood. He was a democrat in politics, a
member of the German Reformed Presbyterian church and a stirring thorough-going
business man. He died in 1864 at the age of sixty-nine years. He married a Miss
Shape and had two sons and then married Mary Hartzell, by whom he had five sons
and two daughters. She was a member of the same as above and passed away March
13, 1873, aged sixty-eight years, ten months and seven days.

   David Barnhart, although a native of Derry, yet was reared principally in
Unity township, where he received his education in the common schools. When a
boy he learned the trade of shoemaker, but in 1857 went to Schuyler county,
Ill., from there to Colorado; in 1859 left his business pursuits in the east to
join the tide of adventurous spirits then setting westward to the new discovered
gold-fields along the Rocky mountains. He became one of the pioneer gold miners
of Colorado and remained in the territory of the “Centennial State” until 1861,
when he returned to Pennsylvania. In September, 1862, he enlisted in Co. B,
fifteenth Pa. Cavalry, participated in the battles of Antietam, Stone river,
Chicamauga and Missionary Ridge, and was discharged at Nashville, Tenn., June
21, 1865. Returning home6 he was in the butchering business with his brother for
three years. From 18G8 to 1872 he conducted a store at Pleasant Unity. In 1872
lie purchased a portable sawmill which he operated for four years. In 1882 he
built his present store-rooms and engaged in the general mercantile business
which he has successfully pursued ever since. His store-rooms are spacious,
well-lighted and well-stocked with full and choice selected lines of groceries,
dry goods, notions, hardware, clothing and provisions. The growth of his trade
has been commensurate with the constant increase of his stock. While in Colorado
he and Charles Cowdrey and Andrew Sellers, who were both from Illinois, started
the first manufacturing establishment in Denver City—it being a furniture factory.

   On the 5th of April, 1870, David Barnhart married Ida C. Leacock, daughter of
Joseph B. Leacock, of Stahlstown, Cook township, this county.

   David Barnhart is a conservative democrat and a useful member of Cyrus
Chambers Post, No. 531, G. A. R. His life-work has been a remarkable one as a
gold miner, soldier and merchant, and the success which he has achieved has been
the result of his natural ability and great energy.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from
Biographical and Historical Cyclopedia of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania
Compiled and Published by John M. Gresham & Co.
Samuel T. Wiley, Chief Assistant
1890


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