BIO:  ELDER W. SHARPE, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania
   
  Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Joe Patterson
  OCRed by Judy Banja

  Copyright 2004.  All rights reserved.
  http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/copyright.htm
  http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/pa/cumberland/
  _____________________________________________________________

  >From Biographical Annals of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania,
  Chicago: The Genealogical Publishing Co., 1905, pages 543-544
  _____________________________________________________________

  NOTE: Use this web address to access other bios:
  http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/pa/cumberland/zeamer/


    ELDER W. SHARPE, a prominent retired farmer of Newton township, was born
  Oct. 5, 1829, and is a descendant of an old family of Scotch-Irish extraction.

    Benjamin Sharpe, the grandfather of Elder W. Sharpe, was born in Scotland,
  and settled in Cumberland county about 1776, where he purchased large tracts
  of land.

    John Sharpe, son of Benjamin, was also born in Newton township, Cumberland
  county, Pa., and married Jane McCune, a member of an equally prominent
  family. They had a family of seven children, namely: Margaret married a
  McKeehan; Hannah married Robert Hayes; Isobel married John Gracey; Samuel is
  deceased; Alexander is deceased; Elder W.; and John is a retired farmer at
  Chambersburg. Only two of this family survive. The father died in 1832, and
  the mother in 1847.

    Elder W. Sharpe was left fatherless at the age of four years. He was
  educated in the district schools, and later attended the old Rhoads school
  and the Stoughstown school, his education being completed in his nineteenth
  year. Until his marriage in 1853, he remained on the homestead, settling then
  on a farm on the Harrisburg & Chambersburg pike road, on a property known as
  the old Sharpe homestead. Here he engaged in general farming and afterwards
  bought 130 acres, which he put under a fine state of cultivation and improved
  with good buildings. Mr. Sharpe has been one of the good wheat farmers of this
  section, often raising as much as 1,000 bushels of this grain a year. He has
  always believed in good stock, and has fully tested the different kinds on
  his farm, and has always been recognized as one of the intelligent and
  prosperous farmers of Newton township. In 1897 he rented his farm and retired
  from active labor, settling in very pleasant and comfortable home in
  Shippensburg.

    In 1853 Mr. Sharpe married Elizabeth Kelso, of Newton township, daughter of
  James and Mary Kelso, a prominent pioneer family of this locality. They have
  had the following children born to them: John Sharpe, principal of the
  Blairstown Academy, at Blairstown, N. J., a very scholarly man; James A., on
  the old Sharpe homestead; Sarah, wife of William Gracey, of Centerville;
  Brady, a resident of Nebraska; Edgar, deceased; Jane S., wife of John
  Woodburn, a farmer of Newton township; Rev. Robert, who is a Presbyterian
  minister stationed in New Jersey; Wallace, a farmer in Nebraska; Mary at
  home; and Elder W., deceased.

    In politics Mr. Sharpe is affiliated with the Republican party, and has
  always taken considerable interest in local, state and national politics, but
  has always steadily re-

    544  CUMBERLAND COUNTY.

  fused political preferment. Both he and wife are consistent members of the
  United Presbyterian Church at Newville. Mr. Sharpe is held in high esteem in
  his community, possessing the sterling traits of character which make of him
  a devoted husband and father, a good neighbor and a first-class citizen.