My Genealogy Hound

WILLIAM E. MONTGOMERY has had a somewhat strange and varied career. When he was only five years of age, that dread disease and swift messenger of death, cholera, swept away in less than twenty-four hours, his father, mother and four brothers. He was born in Manchester, Lancaster county, England, May 12, 1827, and is a son of William and Mary (Calverley) Montgomery. In 1832, after the terrible calamity to his parents and brothers, he was taken to Dublin, the capital of Leinster county and of Ireland, where he remained until he was seventeen years old, receiving a common school education. In 1844 he came to the United States and located in Albany, in the county of the same name, this State, where he secured employment in a piano manufactory, where, however, he remained but a short time before he went down the Hudson and shipped as a common sailor on a whaling vessel, on board of which he spent nearly four years, during which time he sailed entirely around the world and assisted in slaying a great number of the cetacean monsters of the deep. In the latter part of 1848 he returned to Albany and engaged in the Britannia metal and silver plating business, in which he continued until 1857, when he went to Rochester, a manufacturing town in Fulton county, Indiana, and operated a farm a short time. In 1860 he came to Dunkirk and secured employment in the Erie Locomotive Works, working for them five years and then enlisting in the United States Navy, but was never ordered to report for duty, as the war closed immediately after his enlistment. He continued in the employ of this company until it was succeeded by the Brooks Locomotive works in 1869, to which he transferred his services and worked there until 1878, when he went to Bradford, McKean county, Pennsylvania, where he kept a hotel until 1884, and then returned to Dunkirk and engaged in the grocery business, erecting a handsome and commodious two-story structure at the corner of Deer and Sixth streets, in which he placed an extensive general supply of staple and fancy groceries, provisions and beer, where he still continues having a large patronage. In politics he is a republican, and in Masonic orders he is a companion of Dunkirk Chapter, No. 191, R. A. M., having been a Royal Arch Mason twenty-five years; is also a Sir Knight of Dunkirk Commandery, No. 49, K. T. From his world-wide experience and observation, he has naturally imbibed philosophical and broad-minded views of men and events, and is a pleasant and entertaining gentleman to meet.

William E. Montgomery was twice married; first to Elizabeth Chapman, of England; and second to Mary C. Erb, of Centre county, Pennsylvania.