Bedford County PA Archives Biographies.....Reynolds, Hon. John M.    
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HON. JOHN M. REYNOLDS, attorney-at-law and a member of the 
firm of John G. Hartley & Co., bankers, of Bedford, Pa., was 
born in Lancaster County, near the borough of Quarryville, 
twelve miles south of Lancaster city, on March 5, 1848, 
being a son of Patrick Hewitt and Ann (Barnett) Reynolds.
  Patrick H. Reynolds was one of the well-to-do farmers of 
this locality and an influential citizen.  He dealt quite 
extensively in live stock, and he also operated a 
grist-mill.  A native of Ireland, he was eight years old 
when he came with his parents to Lancaster County, 
Pennsylvania, where in due time he established his home.  He 
married Ann, daughter of Andrew Barnett, of Baltimore 
County, Maryland, and was the father of eight children, 
namely: James Hewitt; Barnett; Edward; Emmett D.; Martha; 
Mary; John Merriman, the subject of this sketch; and De 
Warren H.  Barnett is now a resident of Delaware County, 
Pennsylvania.  De Warren H. is a practicing lawyer in 
Cumberland, Md.  Ann, the mother, now at the age of 
ninety-two, Emmett D., Martha, and Mary, reside in Lancaster 
County, Pennsylvania.  James and Edward are deceased.
  John M. Reynolds, after attending the public schools for 
the usual period, entered the First Pennsylvania State 
Normal School at Millersville, from which he was graduated 
in 1867.  Shortly afterward he came to Bedford, and became 
an instructor of teachers in the County Normal School.  For 
two school terms, 1867 and 1868, he was principal of the 
public schools of Bedford.  In 1868 he began the study of 
law under the preceptorship of John W. Dickerson, who was 
then one of the leading members of the bar.  Admitted to the 
bar of Bedford County on February 15, 1870, he immediately 
began practice in Bedford.  In 1872 he became a half-owner 
of the Bedford  Gazette, which he edited until August 1, 
1880, when he disposed of his interest in order to give his 
time exclusively to his law practice, which had greatly 
increased.  In January, 1872, Mr. Reynolds was suggested by 
members of his party (the Democratic) as the nominee for the 
legislature in the district comprising Fulton and Bedford, 
to fill a vacancy caused by the death of J. W. Dickerson.  
Mr. Reynolds declined this nomination, but was nominated in 
the fall of 1872, elected at the October election, and took 
his seat in the legislature in January, 1873, as the 
youngest member of that body.  Re-elected in the fall of 
1873, he served in the session of 1874, and was actively 
concerned in framing much of the legislation necessary to 
put in force the new constitution of the State adopted in 
1873.  At the close of his term Mr. Reynolds declined a 
renomination, and began to devote himself more actively to 
his law practice.  In the fall of 1875 he was elected 
district attorney of Bedford County, which office he held 
for a period of three years, declining renomination.  His 
law business had by this time assumed large proportions, 
extending into the surrounding region and embracing every 
leading case, civil or criminal, tried at the bar of Bedford 
County or in the Supreme Court, in which latter tribunal for 
the last twenty-five years he has not missed a term.  In 
1881 Mr. Reynolds was presented by the Bedford County 
Democracy as their choice for nomination in the district as 
candidate for President Judge, but voluntarily declined in 
favor of the Hon. W. J. Baer, of Somerset County, who was 
elected that year.  In 1882 he consented to become the 
candidate of his party for State Senator for the district 
composed of the counties of Bedford, Fulton, and Somerset, 
but was defeated at the election by one hundred and 
forty-four votes, having reduced the usual Republican 
majority of the district about one thousand five hundred.  
In 1891 he was the nominee of his party in the judicial 
district composed of Somerset and Bedford Counties for the 
office of President Judge; and, although defeated in a 
strong Republican district, he ran two thousand ahead of the 
party ticket.  In 1892 he was appointed by Governor Pattison 
one of the five commissioners to select a site and build an 
asylum for the chronic insane of the State; and the result 
of over four years' labor may be seen in the magnificent 
buildings at Wernersville, Berks County, where half a 
million dollars were spent, all within the original 
appropriation and without the wrongful expenditure of one 
dollar through contracts or otherwise.  Mr. Reynolds was 
secretary for the commission during the whole period, and 
performed that and his other duties as a member without 
compensation other than his actual expenses.
  In 1893 Mr. Reynolds was tendered by President Cleveland 
the office of Assistant Secretary of the Interior, and this 
without any solicitation on his part.  He accepted, was 
appointed, was duly confirmed by the Senate, and entered 
upon the duties of the office April 15, 1893, serving until 
June 1, 1897.  His resignation on March 5, 1897, was not 
accepted until the following June, when he was obliged to 
relinquish the office to recruit his health, which had been 
impaired by overwork.  The four years thus spent had been 
devoted mainly to the supervision of pension affairs, 
through which there was annually incurred an expenditure of 
nearly one hundred and fifty million dollars.  Mr. 
Reynolds's leading rulings are contained in volumes seven 
and eight, Pension Decisions, selected from a mass of about 
twenty-five thousand cases passed upon under his direction, 
a number almost double that considered in any like period 
under any of his predecessors.  The pension laws were 
construed in the spirit of liberality that prompted their 
enactment, and the correspondence of Mr. Reynolds's office 
shows that his labors were endorsed by soldiers and veteran 
organizations, together with their friends, throughout the 
nation.  The soldier, his widow, and his helpless ones 
received at Mr. Reynolds's hands the justice that was theirs 
under the law, though in many cases it was necessary to 
reverse previous rulings of the pension office.  In no case 
throughout his four years' work was Mr. Reynolds conscious 
of having either aided in the wrongful expenditure of the 
public money, or, on the other hand, of having wronged to 
the extent of a farthing one of the nation's defenders or 
its helpless ones.  Mr. Reynolds marked the close of his 
term by directing and supervising the publication and 
editing of a digest, in one volume, of all the decisions of 
the various departments of the government and of the courts 
relating to pensions and bounty lands, a work which consumed 
many months of labor and which has been pronounced a model 
of its kind.  The most important of Mr. Reynolds's decisions 
are on issues relating to "Honorable and Dishonorable 
Discharge and Desertion," "Effect of Enlistment and Service 
in the Confederate Army," "Army Nurses," "Rules governing 
Ratings in Amputation Cases," "Widows' Pensions," 
"Commencement of Pensions," "Accrued Pensions and 
Reimbursement," "Line of Duty," "Pensions to Minors, Insane, 
Idiotic, and Helpless Children," "Dependence," etc.  
Important pension legislation was also enacted by Congress 
on his recommendation.  A Democrat by conviction from his 
youth, Mr. Reynolds up to 1896, with the exception of a 
single campaign (1889) was active in the management of his 
party's politics.  He was chairman and secretary of the 
Democratic County Committee for many years, and during that 
period directed and controlled the party machinery, also 
speaking in many campaigns.  He was a delegate to many State 
conventions, to the National Convention at St. Louis in 
1888, and to that at Chicago in 1892, on both occasions 
supporting Mr. Cleveland.  On the adoption of the Chicago 
platform in 1896, finding himself unable to conscientiously 
support the principles represented by Mr. Bryan, the 
Presidential nominee, which he regarded as dangerous 
political heresies, he spoke on the stump in favor of "sound 
money," and for the first time in his life voted the full 
Republican ticket.  He is now prominently identified with 
the Republican party.  In 1897 Mr. Reynolds was admitted to 
the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, and is at 
present the local solicitor of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
Company, the Saxton Iron Company, and the Everett Furnaces, 
also a director and large stockholder in and solicitor for 
the Colonial Iron Company at Riddlesburg, Pa.
  Besides the time devoted to his profession and to 
politics, Mr. Reynolds has been able to give attention to 
business matters as represented by his banking interests in 
the firm of John G. Hartley & Co. and in the management of 
his farm and flouring mill.  In local affairs Mr. Reynolds 
has always been prominent, especially in the cause of 
popular education, having served six years as president of 
the School Board and he has been the directing spirit in the 
erection of the present beautiful school buildings at 
Bedford.  He was also one of the leading workers in raising 
funds for the erection of the monument in Bedford to the 
soldiers of the late war.
  He is a member of the Episcopal church, with which he has 
been identified for more than twenty years, serving during a 
greater part of this period as vestryman and warden, and for 
some time as superintendent of the Sunday-school.  He is a 
Royal Arch Mason and a Knight Templar, belonging to Altoona 
Commandery.  He is also a member of the Cosmos Club, of 
Washington, D.C., a society including among its members some 
of the most prominent literary and scientific men in the 
country.  In 1895 Columbia University at Washington, D.C., 
bestowed on Mr. Reynolds the degree of Master of Arts.
  Mr. Reynolds was married in 1877 to Miss Ella Harley, 
daughter of William Hartley, of Bedford, Pa.  He has three 
children: William, a student at St. Paul's School, Concord, 
N.H.; Margaret, at Bryn Mawr, Pa.; and Judith, at Friends' 
Select School, Washington, D.C.


Source: Bedford Biographical Review, 1899, Bedford Co., Pa