My Genealogy Hound

MAJ. JAMES POSTLETHWAITE SPEER, retired, post office Pittsburgh, was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1825, and is a grandson of Rev. William Speer, a Presbyterian clergy man, who came from Chambersburg to Westmoreland county, Pa., whence he removed to Chillicothe, Ohio. The father of our subject, Dr. James Ramsey Speer, who was born in Chambersburg, and is now living in Pittsburgh at the age of ninety-two, has been prominently identified with the medical fraternity of Allegheny county. He married Hettie, daughter of Paul Morrow (first prothonotary of Armstrong county, Pa.), and she died in 1887 at the age of eighty-five, the mother of eight children, of whom Maj. Speer is the third in order of birth. President James Buchanan’s mother was a sister of Rev. William Speer. The subject of this memoir, preferring a business life to a professional one, instead of attending college, as his father desired, entered, when sixteen years old, the office of a rolling-mill, at Portsmouth, Ohio. After mastering the iron business he became interested in a furnace in Westmoreland county, which he left in 1849 to try his fortune in the California goldfields. After many failures and successes, including a trip to Australia, he returned in 1859 to Pennsylvania, and became one of the incorporators of the Kiskiminetas Iron company, in Armstrong county. At the outbreak of the civil war he raised a company which was attached under his command to the 11th P. R., and became a part of the Army of the Potomac. At the battle of Gaines’ Mills Capt. Speer was shot through the left shoulder (the ball grazing the jugular vein) and right thigh (the femoral artery narrowly escaping), and was left on the field for dead. Being picked up by the enemy, he was sent to Libby prison, but at once paroled for exchange. In the course of three months he so far recovered from his wounds as to be able to rejoin his regiment, and was shortly promoted to major. At the battle of Fredericksburg he received a bullet-wound in the arm. On recovering from this he was made assistant inspector-general on Gen. Crawford’s staff. After the battle of Gettysburg he participated in the principal engagements of the Army of the Potomac, and was mustered out of the service on account of disability. On his return to Pittsburgh he was associated with Hannah, Hart & Co. in the banking business. After spending two years in the Idaho gold-region, he became, in 1870, one of the organizers of the Freehold bank, of which he is vice-president, beginning as cashier. In 1880 he took up a perma nent residence on his farm of eighty acres at Edgewater station, and now gives his atten tion largely to the breeding of Jersey cattle, etc. He is a member of the Presbyterian Church, the G. A. R., and is a Freemason. He has always been a republican, and served several years in the Allegheny City councils. In 1872 Maj. Speer was married to Anna, daughter of Gen. William Robinson, Jr., and widow of Mr. J. C. Blair, by whom she has, one son and one daughter, W. R. Blair, attorney, and Mrs. Mary Burgwin, of Pittsburgh.