My Genealogy Hound

JAMES VERNER, retired, was born Aug. 30, 1818, at Monongahela City (then called Williamsport), Pa., and is the youngest child and only son of James and Elizabeth (Doyle) Verner. His grandmother died at Verner’s Bridge, County Armagh, Ireland, where she lived nearly a hundred years, and where her husband had died many years before her. Their ancestors were of Scotch origin. James and Elizabeth Verner came from Ireland to Pennsylvania in 1806, and after a brief stay at Pittsburgh moved to Williamsport. About 1820 they settled permanently in Pittsburgh, where Mr. Verner engaged in the brewing and lumber business with James Brown, the firm being known as Brown & Verner. He died in 1854, aged seventy-one; his wife survived him and died two years later at the same age. The family consisted of three daughters and one son. Their eldest daughter, Elizabeth (Mrs. Samuel Morrison) died in 1887, aged eighty-two. Ellen Holmes, widow of Bishop Simpson of the M. E. Church, now resides in Philadelphia; Mary died many years since, unmarried.

James Verner has lived nearly all his life in the Fourth ward of Pittsburgh. He attended a private school kept by John Kelly in Allegheny, and Allegheny College, Meadville, Pa. He married Anna, a daughter of Gen. James Murry, of Murrysville, Pa., and settled on a farm of four hundred acres at the site of the present borough of Verona, which was formerly called Verner’s Station. Mr. Verner cleared and fenced the farm and added to it. After the completion of the Allegheny Valley railroad he formed a company to lay out a village, which now constitutes the First ward of Verona borough, and secured the location of the A. V. R. R. shops there. Returning to Pittsburgh, Mr. Verner became a partner in the brewing firm of George W. Smith & Co., in which he continued several years. He then became interested in and operated the Excelsior Omnibus company, which transferred passengers and baggage from the Pennsylvania railroad to the Ft. Wayne railroad. Selling out this, Mr. Verner applied for and obtained a charter for the Citizens’ Passenger Railway company, which was put in operation in 1859, the first street railway operated west of the Alleghany mountains. This road is now consolidated with the Transverse road in the Citizens’ Traction railway. Mr. Verner afterward organized the Pittsburgh Forge and Iron company, of which he was for four years its president, and is still a director.

He served several years as member of council from the Fourth ward, and has always been a whig and republican. He has always been noted for his love of field sports, and has the reputation of being the oldest “wingshot” in Western Pennsylvania. He was one of the first to interest himself and others in the improvement in the breeding of hunting-dogs, and was one of the organizers of the Sportmen’s Association of Western Pennsylvania, an association organized for the protection of game and fish, and now numbering over three hundred membership of the best citizens. Many years ago he purchased the ground, organized a company and laid out what now comprises the larger portion of what constitutes the present Ninth ward, Allegheny; the railroad station was then and is still called Verner’s Station, on the P., Ft. W. & C. R. R. He attends the M. E. Church, in which his mother was an active member. In April, 1881, Mr. Verner was deprived by death of his faithful help meet, her age being fifty-seven years. There were five sons and five daughters, one-half of whom grew to maturity: Priscilla, Mrs. Charles C. Scaife, of Pittsburgh; Amelia, Mrs. Arthur Malcom, of Philadelphia; James K., secretary Pittsburgh Forge and Iron company; Murry, superintendent of the Citizens’ Traction railway, and M. Scott, mechanical engineer.