My Genealogy Hound

GILBERT M. McMASTER, attorney, post office Broughton, was born in 1833 at Schenectady, N.Y., a son of Rev. John McMaster, D. D., and Joannetta Maria McMaster. His father was born in County Antrim, Ireland, March 1, 1808, the eldest son of Hugh and Ellen (Barr) McMaster, and came with his father to Pittsburgh in 1811. He graduated from the Western University of Pennsylvania in 1827; following year began to study for the ministry, and was licensed to preach April 8, 1830. He died June 11, 1864. The mother of our subject died Jan. 28, 1840, aged twenty-seven years; she was a daughter of Rev. Gilbert McMaster, D. D., a Covenanter minister, a native of Ireland, and one of the early graduates of Jefferson College; he married Jane Brown, of Cannonsburg, and a daughter of Benjamin Brown, who was ordained an elder Feb. 24, 1771, at Paxton, Pa.

Gilbert M. McMaster attended Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, at the time his uncle, the late E. D. McMaster, D. D., LL. D., was president of that institution; came to Pittsburgh in 1853, studied law with David Reed, late United States district attorney, was admitted to the bar in 1857, and practiced in Pittsburgh until 1876. He married, Nov. 30, 1865, Margaret Thompson, who was born June 17, 1832, near Pittsburgh, a daughter of Robert and Margaret (McMaster) Thompson. Her mother was a daughter of Hugh and Eleanor McMaster, and died Feb. 21, 1877. Her father, Robert, was born in County Down, Ireland, Sept. 7, 1803, and came to this country in 1831. In 1841 he settled on the farm where Mr. McMaster now lives, and died Dec. 16, 1877, leaving the farm to Mrs. McMaster and her sister, Miss Ellen Thompson.

Mr. and Mrs. McMaster have five sons and two daughters: Erasmus Darwin and Robert Thompson (twins), born Oct. 11, 1866, former deceased; John M., a clerk in Pittsburgh; Margaret Thompson, Andrew Barclay, Gilbert Clement and Joannetta Maria. Mr. McMaster retired from active practice of the law in 1876, and has since spent the greater part of his time lecturing on temperance in various states of the Union, and was one of the early advocates of “constitutional amendment” as the best means of destroying the power of the “liquor crime.” He was led to this view of the subject by the very able arguments of the late distinguished lawyer and statesman, B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri.