[49-245] JOHN FREDERICK HARTRANFT, b Dec. 16, 1830; d Oct. 17, 1889; s Samuel E. and Lydia (Bucher) Hartranft [49-76]; m Jan. 26, 1854, SALLIE D. SEBRING.
Children (7):
John Frederick Hartranft was born near Fagleysville, about four miles from Pottstown, in New Hanover Twp., Montg. Co., Fa. Tobias Hartranft, his ancestor, settled in this part of Montgomery County, and here successive generations of the Hartranfts remained, tilling the fertile soil and developing those sterling principles of industry and frugality which formed the surest guarantee of a quiet, prosperous, useful and happy life. Major-General John Frederick Hartranft is the most distinguished member bearing this family name, as well as remarkable for the personal qualities and the private virtues which have been characteristic of his family. These virtues have developed in public, civil, and military services which made his fame commensurate with the bounds of his country.
From his seventeenth to his nineteenth year General Hartranft was a student in the preparatory department of Marshall College, then located at Mercersburg, Pa., where he qualified to enter the sophomore class and was transferred to Union College at Schenectady, New York. In three yearshe completed his collegiate course, graduating with credit for scholarship and bearing the esteem of his instructors and associates. As civil engineering was to be his profession, during his college career he applied himself with special earnestness to mathematics. Immediately upon his graduation he assumed the practical duties of a civil engineer, but at the request of his father, whose only son he was, he discontinued his chosen profession in order to assist his father in his own business. In 1854 he was appointed Deputy Sheriff of Montg. Co. by Sheriff Boyer, and again by Sheriff Rudy in 1855. While performing the duties of this office he read law under the tutelage of James Boyd, Esquire, of the Norristown Bar, and then entered the office of Honorable A. B. Longaker. He was duly admitted to the practice of law in 1859.
As Colonel of the ist Regiment, Montgomery County Militia, when President Lincoln issued his call for 75,000 men for the defence of the Government, Colonel Hartranft at once tendered the services of his regiment and was accepted; this was the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment, enlisted for ninety days. Colonel Hartranft, upon the expiration of the time of service of the 4th Regiment, served upon the staff of General Franklin at the Battle of Bull Run. July 27, 1861, he was commissioned Colonel in the three years’ service, and in the following September organized at Camp Curtin, Harrisburg, the 51st Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers. On the 18th of November the regiment left Camp Curtin, and was assigned to the corps of General Burnside who was organizing the North Carolina expedition.
It is not intended to give an extended biography of General Hartranft in this work, as the active part he took in the suppression of the Rebellion alone would involve too large a space, but merely to note the chief incidents of his valuable and busy life.
He participated in the battles of Roanoke Island, Newbern, second Bull Run, Chantilly, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Jackson, Campbell’s Station, Knoxville, Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor, Petersburg Mine, Weldon Railroad, Ream’s Station, Poplar Spring Church, first and second Hatcher’s Run, Fort Steadman, Petersburg, and Richmond. For his gallantry at Spotisylvania Courthouse he was commissioned a Brigadier General, dating from May 12, 1864. For meritorious services he was breveted Major-General, March 25; 1865.
The bravery of General Hartranft on the battlefield won the admiration of all his men, as well as of his superior officers. His many narrow escapes are a tribute to his courage and leadership while under fire. During the Battle of Cold Harbor he was wounded in the arm by a bullet, and sixty-five officers and men out of a corp of 105 of his brigade were lost. General Hartranft had many narrow - escapes during this battle. One of his orderlies, while sitting between his knees, was mortally wounded; another was instantly killed while standing at his side. In one of the engagements General Hartranft’s horse was killed under him, while a staff officer at his side lost his horse and wasseverely wounded. In another encounter, not knowing the exact location of the enemies, he replied:
“TIL move in the direction of the fire.”’
General Hartranft was said to have been one of the greatest of the volunteer officers in the War for the Union. It is also stated that he never ordered his men to advance to any position to which he himself would not go; he was in the habit of leading his men instead of sending them on ahead. It was said he was absolutely fearless and ofttimes showed very reckless courage and magnificent horsemanship as shown in the following story, which was related by a captain who participated in the event.
It is stated that while the volunteers, of which the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment were a part, were stationed at Fort Ellsworth,a mile or so outside of Alexandria, Va., at the end of June, 1861, that one
evening there seemed to be a large body of rebel cavalry men approaching at a gallop upon another road, leading at right angles to that which the 4th Pennsylvania men were guarding. As these cavalry men approached there was some firing; the pickets, according to orders, fired first and then fell back and took shelter in a small ravine. After the cavalry men had passed, the union men emerged from their place of concealment, sent a few scattered shots after them, and hastened to the corner where the skirmish had occurred. While drawing near this place they caught sight of a mounted figure riding towards them furiously, alone, in the direction of Fort Ellsworth. As the horseman came on his pace never slackened, notwithstanding the darkness and uncertainty of the road. When the first sentinel challenged him, much to his astonishment the rider leaned over and whispered the countersign, and it was found to be none other than Colonel Hartranft himself who, having heard the shots in his quarters far to the rear, was the first to mount and get away, reaching the scene of trouble before anyone else, with characteristic valor and concern for the welfare of his men, giving no thought to himself about the risk he ran by thus coming out unattended with absolutely no knowledge of what lay ahead. A few moments search of the grounds found a rebel soldier lying dead with a heavy revolver still tighly clutched in his hand. This same revolver was preserved in General Hartranft’s family until recent years, and it was stated that one of the soldiers in General Hartranft’s command declared he had captured it from the very first southern man killed in open battle in 1861.
In August, 1865, Gen. Hartranft was nominated for the office of Auditor-General of Pennsylvania and was elected in October of that year by 23,000 majority; in the fall of 1868 he was again elected to the same office by a handsome majority. Upon the expiration of the second term of Governor Geary’s administration, General Hartranft was placed in nomination for Governor of Pennsylvania by the Republican party, and after one of the most bitter political contests known in the history of this State General Hartranft was elected by a triumphant majority of 35,000. On the 26th day of May, 1875, Governor Hartranft was again nominated for the office of Chief Magistrate of his native state. This time he was unanimously placed in nomination by the Republican party, the only instance, up to this time, in which a Governor had no opposition in convention for a second term in the history of Pennsylvania. Again he was elected by alarge majority. Immediately upon his retirement from the Governorship of Pennsylvania President Hayes appointed him Postmaster of the city of Philadelphia.
The bravery and fearlessness of the soldier asserted itself when General Hartranft was called to the gubernatorial chair. It was during this period in the history of Pennsylvania that corporations were in general control of the legislative department of the state. The passage of special acts for the benefit of corporations had become a scandal. It was stated that between 1857 and 1873, sixteen hundred and twenty-two special acts granting favors to corporations had been passed. At the assembling of the legislature in 1854, in one day Governor Hartranft sent eighty-two vetoes to the two houses. As a matter of fact, such a large number of vetoes of legislative acts sent to the houses gave the Governor the nickname of ‘‘Veto Jack.’’ Again during the railroad strike, in forwarding troops to the scene of action the Governor said:
““My duty is not to make the laws or to eriticize them, but to execute them, and that duty I must discharge without fear or favor.”’
From the expiration of General Hartranft’s term as Governor in 1879, until his death in 1889, many honors were bestowed upon him. His last public appointment was as a member of the Cherokee Indian Commission in 1889, to treat with the Indians for the purchase of their territory, now the state of Oklahoma.
General Hartranft gave much of his time and energy to the National Guard of Pennsylvania, reorganizing it after the great riots of 1877 into its present splendid division. On his retirement from the Governorship in 1879 General Hartranft was. appointed Major-General of the Division, which position he held until his death. The National Guard expressed their admiration for their commander in the erection of a stately shaft over his grave in the Old Montgomery Cemetery at Norristown, Pa., and the people of Pennsylvania embodied their pride for their citizen-soldier in a noble equestrian statue, fourteen feet high with pedestals reaching a height of twenty-eight feet above the plaza, erected in a cireular plaza fronting the State House at Harrisburg. The statue was executed by F. Wellington Ruckstuhl. Governor Hartranft is the only governor of Pennsylvania who is represented by a statue on these grounds.
In the Convention of the Republican party, held at Cincinnati, in the spring of 1876, for the purpose of nominating a candidate for President of the United States, Governor Hartranft’s name was presented by his friends, but after several ballotings Governor Hayes, of Ohio, was placed in nomination.
Whatever position General Hartranft was called upon to fill, he always discharged its duties with distinguished ability, whether on the field of battle or as the Executive of the State of Pennsylvania. His modesty, firmness, and integrity won for him the confidence of.all.
Although Governor Hartranft was not an adherent of the Schwenkfelder Church, it was while serving his term as Governor that he discovered that his ancestor was a member of the group of immigrant Schwenkfelders. The correspondence with Daniel Schultz with reference to his ancestry is preserved in the Schwenkfelder Historical Library at Pennsburg. After learning of his connection with the Schwenkfelders Governor Hartranft took a great deal of interest in tracing out his genealogy and collecting data on the Hartranft family. Having formed the acquaintanceship of Judge Christopher Heydrick of Franklin, a warm friendship sprang up between these two distinguished men, and Governor Hartranft furnished valuable data on the Hartranft family and assisted very materially in collecting genealogical data for the first edition of the Genealogical Record of the Schwenkfelders. It was also Governor Hartranft who brought to the attention of the Schwenkfelder denomination the eminent scholar, his distant cousin, Dr. Chester David Hartranft, the father of the “Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum.’? Governor Hartranft was also a member of the committee that arranged for the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary Memorial Day Services of the Schwenkfelders in 1884, and was the chief speaker of the day. The Governor also located in the archives at. Harrisburg the ship list of the St. Andrew, dated September 12, 1734, containing the signatures of the Schwenkfelders to the oath of allegiance.
Much of the data concerning the earlier Hartranft families in this book was traced from Governor Hartranft’s papers in the Historical Library at Pennsburg.
lay WILLIAM HARTRANFT, b Sept. 13, 1834; s John and Hester (Weigal) Hartranft [49-77]; m MARY LAZERUS.
One child: [49-724] Daniel, m Nellie Vanakers; Coldwater, Mich. [ Unable to verify; letters unans.; 1918.]: