My Genealogy Hound

ALFRED P. STECKEL, M. D., a native of Lehigh County, is a prominent and influential citizen and enterprising business man of Slatington, being proprietor of the Columbia Slate Company. His birth occurred in this county, November 14, 1836. He is the son of Daniel Steckel, a native of Lehigh County, and a farmer by occupation, whose death occurred August 18, 1877, at the advanced age of eighty-seven years. The paternal grandfather of our subject, John Steckel, was also a native of Lehigh County, and several generations back the founders of the family in America emigrated from Switzerland, making their homes in the Keystone State. The mother of our subject, who died in 1879, in her seventy-eighth year, bore the maiden name of Elizabeth Frantz.

Dr. Steckel passed his boyhood on his father’s farm, in the care and cultivation of which he assisted until reaching man’s estate. Such education as he obtained in his youth was that of the common schools at Front Creek, in the Lehigh Valley, though afterward he attended the high school at Siegfried. On leaving school he learned the blacksmith’s trade, at which he worked for three years, and then engaged in the manufacture of brick, working at this occupation for five or six seasons during the summer. At this time he began teaching school in the winter, and during the six years thus passed he managed to find time to pursue his favorite study of medicine. In 1862 the Doctor entered Jefferson Medical College, from which he graduated two years later, in the spring of 1864, and immediately came to Slatington.

September 14, 1864, Dr. Steckel enlisted as Assistant Surgeon of the Two Hundred and Eleventh Pennsylvania Infantry, obtaining his commission from Gov. Andrew G. Curtin. He was assigned to the Third Division, Third Brigade of the Ninth Army Corps, and served his country faithfully until there was no longer need of his services, when an honorable discharge was granted him, June 2, 1865, at Alexandria. The most important battle in which he participated was that of Petersburg, which occurred April 2, 1865.

In July, 1865, the Doctor returned to Slatington, where he immediately began a general practice, and for twenty years he practiced his profession, being very successful. At that time, on account of his various business interests, he retired from the practice of medicine to more fully devote his attention to other concerns. It was in 1875 that he became interested in the slate business, when he became the projector of the present company for the quarrying and manufacture of roofing slate. He is interested in three quarries, which have a yearly output of eighty-four hundred squares of roofing slate, in addition to which the factories make slate blackboards and school slates. During 1893, they put forth sixty-six thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine square feet of slate blackboard, and five hundred and ninety-eight thousand, eight hundred and sixty-one school slates. The Columbia Slate Company operates the Franklin and Big Franklin Quarries, which yield a slate of a very superior quality, and are equipped with the latest improved machinery in use among slate-miners. The products of this concern are shipped to customers in all parts of the United States. In 1883, the Doctor, in connection with his other business, established one of the largest general stores in Slatington, and is making money along all these various lines of enterprise.

June 2, 1866, Dr. Steckel was married to Miss Amanda Elizabeth Peters, of Lehigh County, a daughter of Charles Peters, who was a native of Switzerland, and came to America, locating in Lehigh County. Her mother, a native of Lehigh County, bore the maiden name of Catherine German. The Doctor and wife are the parents of eleven children, six sons and five daughters: William Lewis, Nevin Daniel, Alfred Peter Charles, Horace Blain, Harvey Harbach, Earl Hastings, Margaret Edith, Catherine Elizabeth, Ursula Amanda, Emma Lucretia and Estella May. The two eldest sons are engaged in business, Nevin Daniel being located in Philadelphia. The parents are members of the German Reformed Church. In politics the Doctor is an active supporter of the Republican party, and is a member of Samuel Cress Post No. 731, G. A. R.