BIO:  Jacob Lanius, York County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Kathy Francis

Copyright 2006.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/york/
_______________________________________________ 

History of York County, Pennsylvania.  John Gibson, Historical Editor.
Chicago: F. A. Battey Publishing Co., 1886.
_______________________________________________ 

Part II, Biographical Sketches, Shrewsbury Township, Pg 178

JACOB LANIUS, born June 22, 1837, in Hopewell Township, is the eldest of a family of 
four sons and three daughters of John H. and Sarah M. (Hershey) Lanius.  His mother 
was a native of Delaware.  His great-grandfather, Lanius, came to America from 
Germany, in 1731, and settled in Kreutz Creek Valley, and all his descendants, with 
the exception of Jacob Lanius, a brother of subject’s father, have resided in York 
County.  The subject of this sketch attended the schools in his neighborhood and 
worked on his father’s farm until he was seventeen years old.  He engaged in the 
lumber business, in Hopewell Township, with his father, and followed it fifteen 
years.  In 1872 he removed to Fawn Township, and engaged in the mercantile business 
in New Park, until 1879, when he removed to York, having been elected recorder of 
deeds for York County, which office he held for one term, and then engaged in the 
lumber business in Maryland (leaving his family in York), which business he is still 
carrying on.  He was married, October 2, 1873, at Stewartstown, to Agnes E. Duncan, 
a native of Hopewell and daughter of John Duncan, or Irish descent.  He has three 
children living:  Walter M. V., Inez Loretta and Iona Veronica.  Two daughters – 
Irena and Lelia – are dead.  His father died in 1882, aged eighty-three years.  In 
the spring of 1884, our subject purchased the farm now occupied by him near 
Shrewsbury Borough.  He is an active Democrat and held the office of assessor of 
Hopewell Township and was postmaster at New Park five years.  He and his wife are 
both members of the Presbyterian Church.