BIOGRAPHY

BIOGRAPHY

Hon. Alexander Hamilton Coffroth

Alexander H. Coffroth, for many years a leading figure in his profession and in the public life of the commonwealth during the dramatic period leading up to and culminating in the Civil war, was intensely active and broadly useful during his entire career. His abilities would undoubtedly have commanded his entrance upon highest places had not his inflexible devotion to principle held him to a political party which was constantly in the minority.

General Coffroth was a native of Pennsylvania, born in Somerset, May 18, 1828. He was the youngest son of John and Maiy (Besore) Coffroth, the father born in Hagerstown, Maryland, of German descent, and the mother born in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, of English ancestry. These parents removed in 1808 from Greencastle to Somerset, where the father was among the early settlers, and the first to set up a store, bringing his merchandise from the east on pack-horses. Mr. Coffroth was a man of excellent character, and his wife was a model of womanhood, whose kindliness of disposition, purity of conduct and energy of character were reflected in the son.

Young Coffroth made of himself a fine exemplification of the truly self-made man in the best sense of that oft-abused term. Early thrown upon his own resources, he entered upon and waged the battle of life in such masterly fashion as to not only provide himself an ample equipment for the large duties which were to devolve upon him, but to also develop to their fullest his fine natural gifts of soul and intellect. He attended the common schools, and out of the fruits of his own labors defrayed the expenses of a more liberal education in the old Somerset Academy. For a time he served efficiently as a school teacher, and with the means thus earned supported himself while preparing for his chosen profession, the law. It was his great good fortune to attract the interest and friendship of the distinguished Jeremiah S. Black, in whose office and under whose preceptorship he read industriously for some years, meantime and for five years, beginning at the age of eighteen, serving as editor of the Somerset Visitor, a Democratic journal of no inconsiderable circulation and influence. Even at this youthful age the virile energy of his pen gave high promise for the future. Admitted to the bar of Somerset county in February, 1851, he at once entered upon a practice which rapidly expanded and shortly brought him to the front rank of his profession and into recognition throughout the state for ability, astuteness, resourcefulness and real devotion to the law out of respect for its own majesty. A tireless worker, by following a rigid system of self-control he labored throughout his professional career cheerfully and with unruffled temper. His practice, covering a period of more than a half century, was marked by scores of hotly contested cases, yet in all he was known as one of the best-hearted of men, always urbane and kindly dispositioned. During all these many years there was scarcely a case of importance in his judicial district in which he did not bear a leading part. A cause célèbre which will ever be famous in the legal annals of Pennsylvania was the trial of the Nicely brothers, charged with the murder of Herman Umberger, and in which he was chief counsel for the defense. Enduring evidence of his high legal abilities exists in various volumes of the reports of the supreme court of Pennsylvania and the courts of the United States. His high place in the respect and confidence of his colleagues of the local bar is attested by his election to the presidency of the Somerset Bar Association at its organization, and his undisputed continuance in that position up to his death-this, too, by a bar which has ever been ornamented by some of the brightest lawyers and jurists in the entire commonwealth.

General Coffroth's political career was one of rare interest, and is in itself an epitomization of the beginning, duration and end of that gigantic struggle which began with the free-soil controversy, found its fruits in civil war, and the consummation in a more perfect union of all the states than ever before, and the marshaling of all their people under a restored banner in devotion to a common purpose and self-consecration to a higher national mission. He early developed such splendid powers as a public speaker and such magnetic personality as a leader that in 1849, at the age of twenty-one, he was a member of the Democratic state convention in Pennsylvania. He was a member of the fateful and dramatic National Democratic Convention of 1860, in Charleston, South Carolina, which witnessed the disruption of the party and made possible the election of Abraham Lincoln. In this body he made an earnest stand against the secession element of the party and pronounced for the Union, under any contingency whatever, with impassioned vehemence pleading for the nomination of ''the little giant," Stephen A. Douglas, as a leader who could alone avert the horrors of civil war. He also sat in the convention in Baltimore, in 1872, which nominated Horace Greeley for the presidency, and was president of the Democratic state convention in Harrisburg in 1879. In 1884 he was a delegate in the convention in Chicago which nominated Grover Cleveland for president. He was frequently a member of the Democratic state committee, and in 1896 and 1900 was a presidential elector-at-large. He was a great admirer of William J. Bryan, and during the campaigns in which that distinguished young statesman was a presidential candidate made many speeches in his behalf.

It is, however. General Coffroth's congressional career which more particularly challenges the admiration of the present writer. In 1862 the general was selected as the candidate of his party for the congressional nomination in the district comprising the counties of Somerset, Bedford, Fulton, Franklin and Adams, being pitted against Hon. Edward McPherson, who had already served one term, and had the advantage of thorough organization. General Coffroth entered upon the campaign with great vigor and reduced the Republican majority in Somerset county from eighteen hundred to seven hundred, and was elected by a plurality of five hundred and sixty votes in face of an adverse majority of three thousand. He was the youngest member of the congress to which he was elected, but bore himself so creditably that he was re-elected in 1864. During these critical periods, while abandoning no principle, he constantly stood for the higher interests of the nation at large, exhibiting the broadest patriotism and unflinching courage in the Union cause, and was among the very few Democrats who commanded the admiration and personal confidence and friendship of the illustrious war president and his cabinet. He served upon various important committees of congress, including those on examination of accounts of the treasury department, and invalid pensions, and was known as one of the most industrious members of both bodies in which he sat. He was a real friend of the volunteer soldier, and he kept a large force of clerks busily engaged in correspondence concerning their interests and the interests of his district and state. His personal standing with the national administration enabled him to procure many beneficial enactments and departmental action, to the advantage of those for whom he labored. In the broader field of statesmanship he was a recognized force. In the thirty-eighth congress he cast his ballot in favor of the thirteenth amendment to the national constitution, providing for the abolition of slavery. In the heated discussion which preceded the vote, and in which he was brought into antagonism against the majority of his party associates and personal friends, he contended for the measure upon the ground that, to legally abolish the institution which had provoked the Civil war, a constitutional amendment must needs be submitted to the people in order that in the future there should be no reopening of the question nor cause for legal controversy. General Coffroth was chosen from among Pennsylvania's distinguished sons then serving in both branches of the congress as a pallbearer at the funeral of the lamented martyr president, and it is a pathetic recollection with the writer of this narrative that he (the writer) witnessed the entrance of the mournful cortege to the old state house in Springfield, Illinois, that awful April, forty and one years ago. In 1866 he declined a renomination for a third term. In 1878 he was again elected to congress from the district then comprising the counties of Somerset, Cambria, Blair and Bedford-a Republican district with some thousands plurality-and in this contest he defeated General Jacob M. Campbell by a plurality of something more than three hundred. During this term he was chairman of the committee on invalid pensions, and of the select committee on payment of pensions and back pay, and was a member of the committee on enrolled bills. In his chairmanships he was most active, and to his industrious effort and legal ability was due the passage of many important pension bills. After serving with distinction and signal usefulness until the expiration of his term, March 4, 1881, he retired from public life and devoted himself entirely to his profession.

A brilliant orator, devoid of rhetorical trickery, he was natural, earnest and forceful. His campaign speeches were vigorous, effective and, withal, abounded in humor and pertinent illustration. His utterances in congress bore the stamp of a nobler eloquence. Active in the fiery discussions of the Civil war days, his speeches had the honest ring of heartfelt patriotism, and even those who were radically opposed to him listened with the respect which is to be accorded to the honest statesman. Easy and natural in address, graceful in gesture, possessing great fluency and highly persuasive in argument, he was recognized as one of the leaders of the house, and his speeches were admired for their good sense, propriety and genuine oratory. One which was widely reproduced by the Democratic press during a heated campaign was entitled "An honest and fair election, where the elector may deposit his ballot untrammeled and unawed, is the palladium of American liberty," and had for its introductory clause, "Trial by jury is defined by the renowned English commentator on common law to be the bulwark of English liberty." Tenderly sympathetic, he held to his friends as with hoops of steel, and his eulogiums at their passing away were touchingly beautiful. The annals of congress contain no more lofty and pathetic utterances than his memorial addresses on the life and character of Hon. Rush Clark and Hon. Fernando Wood, as the following): extract from the first alluded to will reveal:

"How sudden was his death! He was in the prime of life. Many years of distinction and honor were apparently before him. He was beloved because he was frank, candid and sincere, and looked with the eye of charity upon the failings and mistakes of men. He believed in the power of kindness, and spanned with divine sympathy the gulf that separates the fallen from the pure. We are called upon to mourn the loss of one who in a brief time accomplished much, but promising more and more if he had not been cut off so early in life.

''Ne'er gathered the reaper fruit more fair;

Never the shadows of dark despair

Fell on a deeper woe.

Gone from his task half complete.

Gone from caresses kind and sweet.

Into Death's arms of snow.

"Mr. Speaker, I have no language to describe my feelings when I viewed his form enclosed in the casket of the dead. Handsome in death as he was pure in life. I remembered Shakespeare had defined death to be 'the blind cave of eternal night.' I trembled at the thought, but I quickly drew sweet and enduring consolation from the divine promise of the Savior of mankind when He declared, 'In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.' The poet has feelingly expressed:

"There is no death! The stars go down

To rise upon some fairer shore,

And bright in heaven's ,jeweled crown

They shine forevermore."

Reference has previously been made to General Coffroth's long connection with the bar of Somerset county. With this in recollection is to be conceded the entire fittingness of his being chosen to deliver the address at the laying of the cornerstone of the new court house on November 29, 1904. He said:

"God's bright sun smiles upon a happy people. Every pulsation of my being gushes forth in happiness in participating in the ceremony of laying the cornerstone of a large and magnificent now court house, in which justice and right will be impartially administered. How thankful we should be to the two grand juries who recommended the building of this edifice and to the courageous commissioners and the honorable president judge who approved the grand juries' recommendation.

"The history of the Somerset bar justifies the county in erecting a temple of justice equal in beauty and as commodious as any in Western Pennsylvania.

"This bar sent forth Joseph Williams, who was chief justice of Iowa and then chief justice of Nebraska; Moses Hampton, who was for a long period of time a very able president judge of Allegheny county; Samuel G. Bailey, who was a judge in the State of Illinois, and Jeremiah S. Black, my preceptor, who was born under the shadow of the mighty Allegheny mountains.

"Whose vast walls

Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,

And thronged eternity into icy halls

Of cold sublimity.

"He was president judge of the courts of this county, was a member and chief justice of the supreme court of the great State of Pennsylvania and afterward was attorney general and secretary of state under the administration of President James Buchanan; he then practiced law in the supreme court of the United States and soon convinced the people of this country that he was the greatest lawyer that was ever born in the United States. And in addition to these great lawyers many remained in the county who gained eminence and reputation as being very able men. Chauncey Forward and Charles Ogle, two great lawyers and statesmen, now sleep in the graveyard of this town, and the balance of the great lawyers I have named have left the shore touched by the mysterious sea that never yet has borne on any wave the image of a homeward sail. All of these great men have

"Gone from their country's august claim.

Where they from, the lofty dome of fame

Hung like a bright polar star.

"The beautiful and magnificent building that is now being erected will be a monument to the great lawyers that have passed away, and to .the lawyers who now remain, and to those who may take our place in the course of years; it will be a building that our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will look upon with pride, because it will be a grand heritage handed down from sire to son."

General Coffroth was familiarly and affectionately known by his military title, having been a major-general of militia prior to the Civil war. He was a member of the Order of Odd Fellows for more than fifty years and of the Masonic fraternity for nearly forty years. He was also for many years a member of the Order of Good Templars, and made many effective addresses in behalf of its principles and objects. He was a man of martial bearing, of free and companionable disposition, with a kindly heart and generous hand-attributes which tend to keep body and mind equable and well poised-and was held in the highest regard, whether in professional, social or public life. He married, December 20, 1854, Miss Nora Kimmell, now deceased, who was an accomplished and liberally educated lady of Berlin, Pennsylvania, daughter of Jacob Kimmell. Of this marriage were born three sons and one daughter: A. Bruce, a practicing attorney at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; Jacob K., deceased, who was postmaster at Somerset during President Cleveland's first administration; George A., deceased, who was a student at law, having studied, as did his elder brother, under his father; and Mary, who died in her fifth year. General Coffroth died September 2, 1906, at Markleton Sanitarium. He was in his seventy-ninth year.

(Source: History of Bedford and Somerset Counties Pennsylvania with Genealogical and Personal History, Volume III; Publ. 1906, by E. Howard, Blackburn, William H. Welfley, Hon. William H. Koontz; pp. 1-7; Submitted by Terri Griffiths) Taken from genealogy Trails of Somerset county Pennsylvania on google search = biographies