My Genealogy Hound

DANIEL CARHART, teacher, Wilkinsburg, was born in Clinton, Hunterdon county, N. J., January 28, 1839. His earliest known ancestor was Thomas Carhurta, mentioned in record of 1420 as of Saxon origin, and residing in Cornwall. The earliest of the family in America was Thomas Carhart, who came in 1683 as secretary to Col. Thomas Dongan, an English colonial governor. This Thomas was a son of Anthony Carhart, a Cornwall gentleman, who used a crest and coat of arms. A pedigree of the family from 1550 is said to be in possession of a Cornwall clergyman. In 1691 Thomas Carhart married Mary Lord. Their son Robert had a son Cornelius who was a major in the revolutionary war, and a son of the latter, born in New Jersey, and bearing the same name, was the grandfather of the subject of this sketch. His wife was Sarah Dunham. His son Charles, born in Clinton, married Christiana (nee Bird), widow of his brother Daniel, and settled on a farm of 345 acres opposite his father’s homestead, which he brought to a high state of cultivation. He was active in the Presbyterian Church, and died in 1863, in his seventy-seventh year; his widow survived until 1881, dying in her eighty-fourth year. They had seven children, of whom Daniel is the youngest. Another son, Samuel, commanded a company in a New Jersey regiment during the civil war. Prof. Carhart was reared on a farm, and graduated from the Philadelphia Polytechnic College in 1859. For some years he was employed in civil engineering, part of his labors being in the construction of the Union Pacific railroad. In 1868 he took a position as teacher of civil engineering in the college from which he graduated, and remained there nine years. In 1882 he took the same professorship in the Western University, where he has since remained, his home being in Wilkinsburg, where he built a handsome residence in 1888.

Prof. Carhart supports republican principles; in religion he is a Presbyterian; he is a member of the Masonic fraternity. In 1867 he married Josephine Stoy, a native of New Jersey, daughter of Charles and Eleanor (Reeves) Stoy, of Welsh and French extraction, respectively. By this marriage there were five children, of whom the third, Helen Josephine, died when five years old. The others are Charles Forest, Elnore Christine, Anna Florence and Thomas Chase. In 1888 a college text-book on plane surveying from the pen of Prof. Carhart was published, and is now used in the Western University, and is highly recommended by prominent educational institutions.