BIO:  Watson A. McLaughlin, York County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Kathy Francis

Copyright 2006.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
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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, Peach Bottom Township, Pg 166

WATSON A. MCLAUGHLIN, proprietor of the Railroad Hotel in Delta, was born to John 
and Mary (Miller) McLaughlin, in Mifflin County, Penn., February 14, 1842, is of 
Irish descent, and is the eldest of six children.  The family immigrated to Dayton, 
Ohio, when the children were young, and there the parents died.  Watson returned to 
Pennsylvania soon after this event, and for some years lived in Lancaster, attending 
school and clerking in his uncle’s store.  He began the miller’s trade at the age of 
eighteen, and followed the business about ten years in Conestoga Township.  During 
the war he enlisted in 1862, as teamster, served a year and then passed about one 
year in government employ at Washington, D. C., and next worked eighteen months at 
milling, after which he worked at milling and on a tobacco farm at Lancaster County.  
In 1864 he married Miss Elizabeth Moore, a native of Lancaster County.  They have 
had seven children, five of whom are dead.  Those living are Daniel and Nora O.  In 
1874 he removed to Fawn Township in York County, and kept hotel for one year, and 
afterward came to Peach Bottom.  The following year he moved to Centreville, in 
Lower Chanceford Township, and then to Delta, where he still resides, having 
conducted a hotel ever since leaving Lancaster County.  In 1879 he embarked in slate 
quarrying, and spent a large sum of money in prospecting, having since then opened 
five different quarries, without finding a profitable vein.  He is at this writing 
engaged in a new quarry in Harford County, Md., which promises to be remunerative.  
Since June, 1884, he has acted as superintendent of a slate quarry in Peach Bottom 
Township for a Lancaster firm.