BIO:  Joseph LEIB, York County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Kathy Francis

Copyright 2005.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/york/
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History of York County, Pennsylvania.  John Gibson, Historical Editor.
Chicago: F. A. Battey Publishing Co., 1886.
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Part II, Biographical Sketches, Hanover Borough and Penn Township, Pg 66

JOSEPH LEIB, general freight and ticket agent of the Hanover Junction, Hanover & 
Gettysburg Railroad, was born in Hopewell Township, York County, April 14, 1829, 
and is the son of John and Mary (Purkey) Leib, both natives of York County and 
of German descent.  His grandfather, Christian Leib, also a native of the 
county, was a soldier in the Revolutionary army, and his father was a soldier in 
the war of 1812, and participated in the affair at North Point near Baltimore, 
being one of 100 men, who went as defenders from his neighborhood.  He outlived 
them all and died at the age of eighty-four.  The Purkey family were, at an 
early day, quite numerous in the county, but Mr. Leib’s mother, who died at the 
age of seventy-five, was the last of her father’s family in its limits, the rest 
having emigrated probably to the west.  Joseph Leib is the sixth son of a family 
of eleven children, ten of whom are living – nine sons and one daughter.  Four 
of the sons are railroad men; an elder brother, John S., has been treasurer of 
the Northern Central Railway since 1854, and two others are in Baltimore.  The 
other members of the family are farmers, one in Kansas, the rest in York County.  
Mr. Leib was educated in the common schools, and followed farming until 18?5, 
when he began railroading as clerk in the Baltimore freight office of the 
Northern Central Railway, and in less than a month was appointed agent of the 
same company at Hanover and filled that office until 1876 when he was appointed 
general ticket agent of the Hanover Junction, Hanover & Gettysburg Railroad, and 
in 1883 was appointed general freight agent.  His duties embrace the general 
freight, ticket and auditing departments of the company.  He was married at New 
Freedom, Penn., in 1857, to Julia A., daughter of Peter Free, for whom that town 
was named.  They have two children:  Wilbur F., a railroad man by profession, 
and Josephine H.  The family are members of the Methodist Church, of which Mr. 
Leib is a trustee.  He is recording scribe of Hanover Division, No. 84, S. of T.