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Below is a family biography included in the Biographical Annals of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania published in 1905 by The Genealogical Publishing Company.  These biographies are valuable for genealogy research in discovering missing ancestors or filling in the details of a family tree. Family biographies often include far more information than can be found in a census record or obituary.  Details will vary with each biography but will often include the date and place of birth, parent names including mothers' maiden name, name of wife including maiden name, her parents' names, name of children (including spouses if married), former places of residence, occupation details, military service, church and social organization affiliations, and more.  There are often ancestry details included that cannot be found in any other type of genealogical record.

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CONRAD HAMBLETON, of the firm of Wetzel & Hambleton, attorneys-at-law, is of Southern ancestry. His paternal grandfather, Dr. Oliver E. Hambleton, was a native of near Danville, Va., where he was a prominent practicing physician and a leading citizen.

Dr. Hambleton had a son named John White Hambleton, who acquired a liberal education and selected the law as his profession. He settled at Memphis. Tenn., where the breaking out of the war between the States found him already in possession of a fair practice. Being a native of the South, and in sympathy with the sentiment of his section, he entered the Confederate army and served continuously from the beginning to the end of the war, receiving dangerous wounds, which, along with the fact that he rose to the rank of brigadier general, are conclusive proofs that he was a brave man and true to the cause which he believed to be right. Though living at the end of four years of hard campaigning he was in straitened circumstances and compelled to begin life anew. A short time after the close of the war he became acquainted with Miss Josephine Dallas Conrad, to whom he was married on Nov. 24, 1866. Miss Conrad was a native of Baltimore. Md., and daughter of Dr. A. M. H. Conrad, a physician, who died Sept. 9, 1855, in a yellow fever epidemic at Vicksburg, Miss., when in his thirty-sixth year; her mother was Mary Elderkin, daughter of William Elderkin, who in 1812 was one of the defenders of Baltimore, where he was a merchant in his earlier years, subsequently removing to Philadelphia, where he died when past ninety years of age.

John W. and Josephine D. (Conrad) Hambleton had one child, a son named Conrad Hambleton, who is the subject of this sketch. He was born at Mason’s Depot, Tipton Co., Tenn., Sept. 8, 1867. Several years afterward Mrs. Hambleton removed to Waynesboro, Franklin Co., Pa., where her mother had previously located, and there Conrad Hambleton passed the years of his childhood and youth. From the time he reached the legal age he attended the public schools of his town, and, that his hands as well as his mind might be given proper training, when thirteen years of age he entered a printing office and for four years schooled himself in the art of printing. After passing through the Waynesboro public schools he entered upon a three years course in Dickinson Seminary, at Williamsport, Pa., from which institution he graduated in 1888. After graduating from the seminary he for two years taught in the public schools of Waynesboro, employing what spare hours he had at studying law under the instruction of O. C. Bowers, Esq., of Chambersburg. He was admitted to the Franklin county Bar in April, 1891, and immediately afterward opened an office at Waynesboro, where he remained until the spring of 1892, with the experience young lawyers usually undergo in their efforts at building up a practice. In 1892 he removed to Carlisle, where he settled permanently, and thenceforth gave to his profession his exclusive attention. For several years he practiced by himself, but in April, 1896, he entered into partnership with J. W. Wetzel, Esq., under the firm name of Wetzel & Hambleton, through which association he has become interested in much of the most important litigation in the courts of Cumberland county.

Mr. Hambleton is a studious and methodical lawyer. He gives business entrusted to him prompt attention, carefully prepares his cases, and tries them with a directness and force regarded as commendable in attorneys much older and more experienced. In politics, he is a Democrat both by inheritance and conviction, and is sometimes discussed by the leaders of his party for public position, but as his chief delight lies in the practice of his profession he has thus far uniformly declined to be a candidate for anything.

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This family biography is one of numerous biographies included in the Biographical Annals of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania published in 1905 by The Genealogical Publishing Company. 

View additional Cumberland County, Pennsylvania family biographies here: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania Biographies

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