Biographical Sketches of Leading Citizens
Lawrence County Pennsylvania 1897
[p. 437] ticket receiver of the P. Y. & A. division of the Pennsylvania company, with headquarters and office in the depot at New Castle, was born in the city of Philadelphia, Sept. 23, 1860, and is a son of John W. and Annie (Lyndall) Smith, the latter a native of Philadelphia, and a daughter of William B. and Elizabeth (Havenstrike) Lyndall.
William B. Lyndall was in early life a ship-carpenter, and worked in the government yards at Washington, D. C. Later in life, he moved to Philadelphia, where he was a carpenter and builder a few years, and then entered the field of mercantile business, in which he remained twenty-five years. He was a student of national affairs, and, foreseeing the inevitable conflict between the North and the South, he invested very heavily in muslins, beginning the accumulation of his stock as far back as 1856, when people might have termed him visionary had they been aware of his purpose. To this stock he continually added as fast as circumstances and his own wealth would permit, so that when hostilities were entered into, his cellars and store-houses were packed with goods, which in the next few years of high prices he sold at handsome profits, realizing from six to seven times on the original cost. Many from whom he had purchased goods at a normal value came to him and offered him four times the price he had paid for goods that had never been unpacked. In 1866, he retired from business and for the succeeding six years lived in Montgomery County, some distance from Philadelphia, on a fine farm. In 1872, he moved back to the city, and made his home, until the time of his death in 1880, aged sixty-nine years, in the suburbs in Roxborough, now the Twenty-first Ward of Philadelphia. His father, William Lyndall, was of Scotch-Irish descent, and died when William B. was living in Washington. His mother survived her husband's death a number of years, and reached the advanced age of eighty-five years, passing away to join those gathered on the other shore of the River of Death in 1870. A brother of William B. Lyndall went to California in the early tide of gold seekers, and made that new country his permanent home until death removed him from the midst of his friends. He amassed a fine fortune for his descendants, who live in the State of their birth.
John W. Smith, the father of Edward L., was born in the southeastern part of the State in Montgomery County, probably near Sumneytown, in the year 1836, but died at an early age, Dec. 19, 1865. He was a son of John Smith, who married a Miss Wonderlich. Not long after the war commenced, he enlisted in the service for the Union, but before he was mustered into the United States service he contracted a severe cold and subsequent illness, brought on by exposure, the recruits not being provided with adequate shelter; he was consequently excused from further duty. A year or two later in 1863, when the draft was in progress, he was one on whom the lot fell, but his previous rejection because of poor health sufficed to keep him from being sent to the front, which would most likely have proved fatal to one in his physical condition. During his short business career, he was a dealer in cigars and tobacco in the city of Philadelphia. He gathered about him a family of two children: Edward L. and Elizabeth L., the wife of Charles B. Thomas, a furniture dealer of Philadelphia.
After the death of his father, Edward L. Smith made his home with his grandfather, William B. Lyndall, of whom we have spoken above, and attended the country schools until his foster-parent moved to Roxborough, where beginning at the age of twelve years he attended two years at the Manayunk grammar school of that town. In 1874 he learned the candy trade, and for the three following years was engaged in it, but discontinued it at the end of that period because of failing health, brought on as he surmised by unhealthful features of the business. This view of it proved correct, for during the years 1877 and a part of 1878, he drove the wagon of a large bakery, and never enjoyed better health; accordingly he thought to resume his old business, but after about a year's work, he found that he must either give up that business or become a permanent invalid. He chose the former alternative, and became a clerk in the office of the large woolen goods manufacturing company, of which Sevill Schofield was the head, and continued with the firm a period of four years. On the seventh of January, 1884, he accepted the position of assistant in the office of the ticket-receiver of the Pennsylvania Company, with offices at Allegheny City, Pa. On June 1 of the following year, he was appointed ticket-receiver for the P. Y. & A. Division of the Pennsylvania Company, with headquarters in New Castle, in which city he has since made his home.
On Feb. 24, 1885, Mr. Smith was married in Philadelphia in the Fourth Reformed Church, by the Rev. Cornelius Schenk, to Annie M. McFadyen, a native of Philadelphia, and a daughter of James and Mary (Kells) McFadyen. The mother of Mary Kells passed away so late as the year 1894, having passed the 100th milestone of life's pilgrimage one month and two days. James McFadyen served with honor through the Civil War, and endured the horrors of Andersonville. On his release from prison he found that he had been discharged from the service as a deserter, and this so wounded his noble pride that he would never allow his friends to set about to correct the unfortunate error, nor would he do anything in the matter himself, preferring to let it remain as it was, not realizing that when he was thought to be a deserter and so discharged that the government had no means to ascertain the real cause of his absence, neither was there any way for it to learn that he was suffering a living death in a Southern prison pen.
Four children have blessed the home of Mr. and Mrs. Smith: Mary S., who died in infancy; Bessie J.; Louisa E., who also died in infancy; and Amy L. Our subject and his wife are members of the First Baptist Church. Socially, Mr. Smith is an enthusiastic member of Masonic Orders, and belongs to Mahoning Lodge, No. 243, F. & A. M.; Delta Chapter, No. 170, R. A. M., of which he is secretary; and Hiram Council, No. 45, in which he serves as recorder. He is also a member of the junior Order of the United American Mechanics.
Biographical Sketches of Leading Citizens Lawrence County Pennsylvania
Biographical Publishing Company, Buffalo, N.Y., 1897
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