My Genealogy Hound

CALVIN CLENDENIN, the eldest child of Col. John and Susan (Swiler) Clendenin, was born Nov. 11, 1843, at Hogestown, Cumberland county. He received his education in the public schools of his native village and in academies at Fayetteville and Mt. Joy, Pa. On leaving school he went into his father’s tannery and learned the art of leather manufacturing and the details of an old established business. Shortly after entering upon the age of maturity, his father, being in declining health, turned his entire business over to him, and with varied success he has continued it ever since. He not only runs the tannery in Hogestown to its full capacity but bought several other plants and engaged in the business extensively and with system. One of the tanning properties he purchased was located at Mechanicsburg, and was probably of larger capacity than any other tannery in Cumberland county. This he continued to operate until very recently.

Like his ancestors for generations before him Mr. Clendenin is a Democrat, and from his boyhood days he has taken an active interest in politics and always labored assiduously for Democratic success. This zeal and activity attracted public attention to him, and in 1874, when the voters of Silver Spring township wanted a Democratic successor to Col. John Clendenin as justice of the peace, they elected his son Calvin to the place, thus perpetuating the title “Squire Clendenin” into the fourth generation. He has since also been frequently importuned to become a candidate for county office, but never yielded. After purchasing a tannery in Mechanicsburg he found it advantageous to live there, and so he left the home of his birth in Hogestown and moved to the former place, where he subsequently centered all his business interests and built himself a beautiful home. A change of residence did not abate Mr. Clendenin’s party zeal, and President Cleveland, during his second term, gave his fidelity fitting recognition by appointing him postmaster of Mechanicsburg, in which office he served the public efficiently and acceptably for over four years. Mr. Clendenin has always given his business close and unremitting attention, but the tanning industry, along with many other branches of trade, has been operated against by the trusts and combinations, which hindered the full success of his enterprise, in the course of his career he has also met with more than the average share of the misfortunes that come to a man in lifetime. Several of his tanneries have been destroyed by fire, the one in Mechanicsburg a second time, and at this writing he has about concluded to abandon the business in which the several generations of his family have engaged for a hundred years.

On Feb. 4, 1875, Calvin Clendenin was married to Mary Bush Herring, Rev. S. W. Reighert, pastor of the Mechanicsburg Presbyterian Church, performing the ceremony. Mary B. Herring is a daughter of the late Mr. James Bush Herring and Lizzie Riegle, his wife; Dr. J. B. Herring was the only son of Dr. Asa and Jane (Bush) Herring. The elder Dr. Herring was born in New Jersey, but some time previous to 1816 settled at Mechanicsburg, where he practiced medicine for twenty-five years. During that time he was a member of the Silver Spring Presbyterian Church and an intimate friend of the pastor, Rev. Henry R. Wilson. Lizzie Riegle was a daughter of Adam and Esther (Brandt ) Riegle, and a granddaughter of John Adam and Catherine (Swartz) Riegle; and Catherine Swartz was a daughter of Salome (Miller) Swartz, whose father, Rev. Peter Miller, was the second prior of Conrad Beissel’s Dunker community at Ephrata, Pa., during the war of the Revolution, and helped to bring the wounded American soldiers from the battlefield of the Brandywine to Ephrata, where he and others carefully cared for them in the Dunker cloister.

To Calvin and Mary B. (Herring) Clendenin the following children have come: Elizabeth Waugh, born Dec. 24, 1875; Susan Riegle, July 28, 1877; John Calvin, Feb. 8, 1881; James Herring, Dec. 31, 1883; and Mary Caroline, Dec. 4, 1887. Elizabeth W. married A. Carleton Gibson, of Bennett, Colo., and they live on a ranch near Denver. Susan is a trained librarian, a graduate of the Pratt Library School, Brooklyn. John graduated and is now with the General Electric Company, of Lynn, Mass. James is at present in a bank at Harper, Kans. Mary is still at college.

John Waugh Clendenin, fourth child of John and Susan (Swiler) Clendenin, was born at Hogestown, Cumberland county, Pa., April 8, 1853. He attended the public school of his native district until 1870, when he went to the Chambersburg Academy and prepared for college. In September, 1872, he entered Lafayette College and graduated from the institution in 1876. While visiting the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, in the summer of 1876, his attention was attracted to the exhibit of Kansas and Colorado, which led him to believe that that part of the country possessed superior advantages for settlers. In the fall of 1877 he made a trip to Kansas for the purpose of investigating. On returning from this visit to the West he registered as a student-at-law with F. E. Beltzhoover, Esq., at Carlisle, and continued to study law until in March, 1878, when he again went West, this time to locate in Harper county, Kans. From literature that came under his observation he concluded that lands so remote from railroads as those of Harper county would not be taken up in many years.

He intended to engage in cattle raising and wanted to use vacant lands for pasture. On March 15th he landed in Wichita, which was then the terminus of the Santa Fe Railway, and from that point drove overland to Harper county, a distance of sixty miles to the southwest, and there staked off claims. In the following month the town of Anthony was located, which became the county seat of Harper county, and later a place of considerable importance. It now has four railroads and a population of 2,500. Inside the next year the entire county was settled up and our subject’s rosy cattle dreams were not realized. When Harper county was organized, in 1878, he was chosen clerk of the district court, which office he held for three years. The settlers were not then divided on political issues. Harper, a town ten miles north of Anthony, was Anthony’s rival for the county seat, and the contention between the two continued for ten years, but the prize was never wrested from Anthony.

In 1880 Mr. Clendenin went to Fort Worth, Texas, where he purchased cattle which he drove over the old Chisolm trail through what is now Oklahoma to a point south of Anthony. These cattle he sold that same year, and the following year brought another drove from Brenham, Texas. This cattle business experience was novel and trying to a tenderfoot. At that time the entire territory through which these droves were brought was unoccupied except by Indians, and they were mostly confined to the Reservations. In 1883 Mr. Clendenin entered upon the banking business at Anthony, along which line he has engaged continuously ever since. In September, 1900, he removed from Anthony to Wichita, where he is now residing and engaged in banking.

Mr. Clendenin gives a due share of attention to public affairs, was the first president of the Anthony Public Library, has served as councilman, and in other local offices, and was postmaster of Anthony from 1894 to 1898. He is a Master Mason and has been Master of the Masonic Lodge at Anthony. In religous belief he is a Congregationalist. He was married. Dec. 24, 1886, to Mary E. Meigs, of Arkansas City, Kans., but has no children.