Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Biographies

Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Biographies

The following biographies were extracted from: Biographical review.: containing life sketches of leading citizens of Pittsburg and the vicinity, Pennsylvania. Boston: Biographical Review Pub. Co., 1897, Author: Anonymous.

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SAMUEL F. COLE, the efficient station master of the Chicago & Fort Wayne Railroad at Allegheny, was born in Pittsburg, June 9, 1845, son of John F. and Elizabeth M. (Greatrake) Cole. The father, who was born at Harrisburg, and came to Pittsburg when a boy, became the owner of steamboats that plied up and down the lower river. He was accidentally killed by the falling of a limb of a tree. His wife, Elizabeth, a daughter of Joquett Greatrake, a Baptist minister of French extraction, died in 1883. They had four children, namely: Charles L., who is now the general freight agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad at Pittsburg; Samuel F., the subject of this sketch; Mrs. C. B. Casselberry, now of Philadelphia; and Mrs. John F. Marthius, who resides in Pittsburg. Both parents were members of the Baptist church on Sandusky Street, Allegheny.

Samuel F. Cole was educated in the public schools of Allegheny. In 1869 he went into the employ of the Pittsburg, Chicago & Fort Wayne Railroad, taking the position of passenger brakeman. He was made conductor in 1872, and in 1877 he was promoted to the post of station master at Allegheny. The business of the station master was at that time comparatively light. To-day the office entails heavy responsibilities. Mr. Cole to-day has charge of all arriving and departing trains, including thirty suburban trains, yet no accident has ever occurred under him. The Allegheny yards are run on the North-west system, and he has the supervision of one hundred and sixty-four men, who daily come to him for orders, as Allegheny is the headquarters for the trainmen of this system. In 1883, associated with others, he began a livery business, which has rapidly increased in size; and they now own what is claimed to be the largest establishment of the kind between Philadelphia and Chicago, comprising four stables and three offices. Mr. Cole is the financial manager. A lover of fine horses, he owns several high-bred trotters, among them Harry Superior, by Superior, who has no race record, although he has made 2.20, He also owns an Electioneer horse of Hambletonian ancestry, reckoned among the finest and fastest at Sewickley.

On September 11, 1889, Mr. Cole married Miss Amelia Ihmsen, daughter of C. Ihmsen, of the Ihmsen Glass Factory, S. S., Pittsburg . They have two children — Elizabeth and Marie. Mr. Cole attends the Baptist church, and aids materially in its support.

EUGENE LE MOYNE CONNELLY, of Pittsburg, who was born here, August 18,1870, is the sixth and youngest son of William Cavin Connelly, Sr., and Elizabeth Sterrett (Brown) Connelly. His mother is a daughter of Allen Brown, one of Pittsburg's pioneer hotel-keepers. The father, who was a West Virginian by birth, after his marriage located in Pittsburg, and became a partner in the ownership of the old St. Clair Hotel, which stood on the site of the present Hotel Anderson. Later he had control of the United States, Central, St. Charles, and Exchange Hotels. Also, he conducted a hostelry at Turtle Creek, which was at that early day a sort of summer resort for the wealth and fashion of the city. He is a member of the Writers' Club and of the Junior O. U. A. M., and he is a communicant of Oakland Methodist Episcopal Church.

Eugene Le Moyne Connelly was educated in the public schools and under the tutelage of his mother, a woman of scholarly attainments. At an early age, with a natural tendency to literary pursuits, he obtained a minor position on the staff of the Pittsburg Chronicle, and thereafter for several years he spent the afternoon of each school day at a desk in the newspaper office. After leaving school he obtained a permanent position in the service of the Western Union Telegraph Company. He was first assigned to work at the old Oil Exchange, situated where the market-house now stands. Later he was transferred to the Pittsburg Petroleum, Stock, and Metal Exchange, where he kept the books and handled the accounts of several large brokerage firms, in addition to his work as book-keeper for the telegraph company. Although he mastered the business of a telegraph operator in this employment, he has not at any time followed it as a vocation. During the few years that he was employed in the oil and stock mart, he continued to scribble a little, doing special assignments for the Sportsman and Dramatic Critic; also for the Sportsman and Referee, in which two of his brothers were interested.

In his seventeenth year Mr. Connelly became a reporter on the staff of the Pittsburgh Leader. With this paper he has since been connected, serving it in the capacities of religious reporter, police court reporter, sporting editor, special writer, editorial paragrapher, and city editor. He is now editor of the Sunday Leader. Perhaps his best work was performed at Johnstown, immediately after the great flood of May 31, 1889. Mr. Connelly was one of the first newspaper men to enter the Conemaugh valley after the warring waters had wrought desolation and death throughout the whoe stretch of territory lying between South Fork and Latrobe on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Besides sending reports of the great catastrophe to the Leader, he despatched a graphic description of the course of the flood to the New York Journal, on the staff of which he was then serving. He collaborated with Frank Connelly and George C. Jenks in the compilation of the "Official History of the Johnstown Flood." He was also one of the first men on the field in the summer of 1892, when Oil City and Titusville were swept by flood and fire; and in the same year he helped to report the Homestead riots for the New York World and his own paper. He has also done special work for the New York Tribune, Boston Herald, Boston Globe, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Chicago Times, and has written short stories for some of the periodicals. At one period a predilection for theatrical work led him to accept positions as press representative from Jefferson, Klaw & Erlanger, Rich & Harris, and the late Colonel Joel, the impresario; but he soon tired of this sort of employment, and got back to active newspaper work.

On February 28, 1893, Mr. Connelly married Minnie Allyn Leonard, youngest daughter of George W. and Sarah Elizabeth (Moreland) Leonard. Their only child, Elizabeth Leonard, was born March 4, 1894. The family residence is 332 Ward Street, Oakland.

JOHN M. COOPER, D.D.S., a prominent, popular, and progressive dentist ofPittsburg, was born November 15, 1854, at Murrysville, Westmoreland County, son of Joshua Cooper. The Coopers descend from an old Pennsylvania family that came here from Ireland in the commencement of the eighteenth century to escape religious persecution. Joshua Cooper succeeded to the occupation of his forefathers, becoming one of the substantial agriculturists of Westmoreland County as well as one of its most respected residents. To him and his wife, whose maiden name was Sarah McWilliams, eight children were born. Of these six reached maturity, namely: Francis, a farmer, who lives on the old homestead in Murrysville; Hannah, who married John Sowash, and has a daughter; John M., the subject of this biography; Sarah, who is the wife of J. Collins Grear, a merchant of Claridge, Pa.; Agnes, who married Dr. Stewart, of Pitcairn, Pa.; and Joshua, who died in 1893, leaving a widow.

John M. Cooper received his early education in a private academy of his native town. Afterward he attended the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery at Philadelphia, being graduated therefrom with a creditable record in 1882. The Doctor at once located in Pittsburg, where he has steadily risen in his profession, establishing a reputation for thorough and superior workmanship, and becoming one of the leading dentists of the city. On October 4, 1882, soon after coming here, Dr. Cooper was married to Miss Jennie Greer, daughter of the Rev. J. C. Greer. The Doctor is not active in political circles, but is a strong Prohibitionist in principle. In religion he adheres to the faith of his forefathers, being a United Presbyterian. He carries on his professional work after the most approved methods and with the best appliances, in handsomely furnished apartments.

EDWARD P. COWAN, D.D.,the corresponding secretary of the Board of Missions for the Freed-men of the United States of America, was born at Potosi, Mo., March 31, 1840, son of the Rev. John F. and Mary (English) Cowan. Dr. Cowan's family is of Scotch-Irish ancestry, and all its members have been Presbyterians. The great-grandfather was Hugh Cowan, of Chester County, Pennsylvania, who lived to be eighty years of age. His son, Adam Cowan, who died at the age of forty years, was a soldier in the Revolution.

The Rev. John F. Cowan, who was born in Chester County in 1801, graduated from Jefferson College Washington County, and subsequently, in 1828, from Princeton (N.J.) Theological Seminary. In 1829 he was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry, and went as home missionary to Missouri, where he spent the rest of his life engaged in his sacred calling, a period of thirty-three years. In connection with his last pastorate, which was at Carondelet, St. Louis, he was commissioned by President Lincoln as Post Chaplain to the House of Refuge Hospital; and he was Army Chaplain at the time of his death in 1862. He was own cousin of Senator Edgar Cowan. His wife, Mary, was a daughter of James R. and Alice (Conover) English, and a descendant of the family that settled in Englishtown, N.J. Mr. English was a stanch Presbyterian and an Elder in the old Tenant Church. When a boy he was captured by the British, and was threatened with hanging if he would not tell where the Americans were keeping their powder. Though but sixteen years old at the time, he allowed his captors to string him up without flinching. He was afterward set free, and the British were no wiser for having met him. Of his family of nine children Mary was next to the youngest. Having survived her husband twenty-five years, she died in 1887 at Pittsburg, being then eighty-one years old. She had five children, namely: James, who is in business in St. Louis; John F. Cowan, D.D., who is the Professor of Modern Languages in Westminster College, Missouri; Alice, the eldest, who died in St. Louis in 1849; William, who died at the age of fourteen; and Edward P., the subject of this sketch.

Edward P. Cowan, the youngest of his parents' children, attended Westminster College in Missouri, and graduated there with honors in 1860, taking the degree of Bachelor of Arts. After teaching school for a year he entered Princeton Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1864. He was shortly afterward ordained by the Presbytery of St. Louis, and began his first pastorate at Washington, Pa. in one of the churches which his father had formerly served. He remained at Washington for three years, and subsequently preached for a year at St. Joseph, Mo., and for a year and a half in St. Louis. He was then called to the pastorate of Market Square Presbyterian Church at Germantown, Pa. and remained there for more than twelve years. In 1882 he was invited to preach in the Third Church in Pittsburg, with the prospect of a call to a probable vacancy in its pulpit; and on September 13, 1882, the night on which the previous pastoral relations were dissolved, he was unanimously called to that church. He remained pastor of the Third Church for ten years. He is a trustee of the Western University of Pennsylvania, of Pennsylvania College for Women, a trustee and the secretary of the directors of the Western Theological Seminary, and a trustee of the Pittsburg Presbytery, an incorporated body. He is also a member of the Board of Colportage and of the Executive Committee. While Dr. Cowan was pastor of the Third Church, an average of ten members were added to the church at each communion, giving a total of over four hundred, and the annual amount of contributions increased from twenty-three thousand, six hundred and twenty-five dollars in 1882-83 to fifty-four thousand, three hundred and eighty-three dollars in 1891-92. During this time Dr. Cowan had become a member of the Freed-men's Board, and had been for four years its president.

On the death of Dr. Allen, the former corresponding secretary, Dr. Cowan was elected to that position. Thereupon he resigned his pastorate, in order to devote himself to his new duties. At the next annual meeting of the Third Church congregation the following resolutions were adopted: "Whereas the Rev. E. P. Cowan, D.D., our beloved pastor, has tendered his resignation, and has asked the congregation to join with him in consenting that the Presbytery shall dissolve the pastoral relations now existing, and, having heard and considered his reasons for this request, and believing that our Lord is leading the way, therefore resolved, That, expressing our affection for and confidence in our pastor, and in gratitude for his faithful labors in the congregation and his tender pastoral care for us individually, we consent to his request that the pastoral relations may be dissolved by the Presbytery, to take effect January 1, 1893." Commendatory resolutions were also passed by the Presbytery. Since ceasing his official relations with the Third Church, Dr. Cowan has given his whole time to his work for the Freedmen. He has the oversight of three hundred churches, one hundred and eighty ministers, and from fifty to sixty schools, twenty of which are boarding-schools, including Biddle University at Charlotte, N.C.

On August 7, 1872, Dr. Cowan was united in marriage with Miss Anna M., daughter of George D. and Emmeline (Fisher) Baldwin, of New York City. Mrs. Cowan's family settled originally in Milford, Conn. in 1639, and all its descendants have been stanch Presbyterians. Her great-grandfather was a prominent member of the church at Connecticut Farms, N.J. Her grandfather was a member of the First Church at Newark, and her father, George D., was a Presbyterian Elder for forty years in New York City. George D. Baldwin had one other child, Joseph T., who is now cashier of Manhattan Bank in Wall Street, New York. Mrs. Cowan's maternal great-grandfather was Colonel David Chambers, who served throughout I the whole of the Revolutionary War, and who fought with Washington at Trenton and Monmouth. Mrs. Cowan was educated by the best instructors and in the best schools that New York afforded. She was a lady of unusual refinement and of noble character. She died July 24, 1896. Her three children were: Emelie, Elaine, and Irene, the last two being twins.

WILLIAM COWLEY, M.D., who has succeeded to the practice established by his father, the late Dr. David Cowley, in Pittsburg , is a man of talent and culture, well fitted by birth and education for the medical profession. Born in this city, September 8, 1864, he comes of good old Irish stock. His grandparents, Samuel and Jane Cowley, emigrated from County Down, Ireland, to America in 1831, locating first in Pittsburg . Afterward they were engaged in general farming at Troy Hill, where the grandfather died in 1870. The grandmother survived him, dying in 1895, at the venerable age of ninety years. They reared seven children, namely: David, the father of Dr. Cowley; William, who was associated with Andrew Carnegie and others in railroad work, and subsequently served and died in the Civil War; Alexander, of Florida, who was for many years professor of penmanship in Iron City College; Samuel, who was connected with the firm of Beymer, Bauman & Co., and was drowned in 1895; John, a plumber, who resides at East End, Pittsburg; Mrs. Margaret Hamilton, who was the wife of an artist in Philadelphia, and died in 1884; and Mrs. Eliza Tetedoux, whose husband is a teacher of voice culture, and was for some years the leader of the Gounod Musical Club. Dr. David Cowley graduated from the Homoeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, now Hahnemann College, and began the practice of medicine in Philadelphia in 1852. In 1863 he removed to Pittsburg, finally locating in 1868 at East End. He was numbered among the leading homoeopathic physicians of the city until his death, which occurred. October 30, 1886. To him and his wife, whose maiden name was Margaret Mowry, eight children were born. Of these three lived but a brief time. The others are: Margaret, Henry, Eliza, David, and William. Henry is a Swedenborgian minister, and David is a student.

After obtaining his elementary education in the graded schools of his native city, William Cowley attended the high school for three years. During the season of 1883 and 1884 he was a student at the Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago, Ill.; and two years later he graduated from the Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia. He then began the practice of his profession with his father. Since the death of the latter he has followed his profession independently. Dr. Cowley has met with good success in his chosen work, and has become popular, both as a physician and as a citizen. In politics the Doctor votes for the best men and measures, regardless of party. He is a member of the International Hahnemann Association, of the Homoeopathic Medical Society of Pennsylvania, and of the Iron City Microscopical Society. In religion he is a New Churchman, or Swedenborgian. He is highly esteemed by the medical fraternity.

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