My Genealogy Hound

LEVI KENDIG, a retired farmer and trucker, now spending the evening of life in comfortable ease at his home in Mechanicsburg, Cumberland county, Pa., was born Sept. 23, 1827, near Newville, this county. He is a son of Emanuel and Anna (Bowers) Kendig both natives of Pennsylvania. The mother was born in 1799 in Cumberland county, a daughter of Sebastian and Margaret (Baer) Bowers, the former of whom was born in 1757; Mrs. Margaret (Baer) Bowers died Jan. 12, 1824, aged sixty-one years, three months and eighteen days. The grandfather was Tobias Kendig, who married a Bowman.

Levi Kendig was reared on his father’s farm on the old State road near Newville and was twelve years old when his father moved the family to Franklin county, where he continued in school up to his sixteenth year. He then learned the trade of stone-mason, which he followed for some years. In 1862, with other loyal citizens, he enlisted in Company F, 158th P. V. I., under Col. McKibben, and served acceptably for nine months, performing garrison duty during the greater part of this time. He was honorably discharged in 1863. Then he returned to Franklin county and continued to follow farming until 1870, when he moved from the farm to Mechanicsburg, having purchased adjacent lands, and here engaged in small farming and trucking, after satisfactorily renting out his well improved farm of eighty-six acres, with good buildings, in Franklin county.

In 1856 Mr. Kendig married Miss Rebecca J. Hamsher, of Franklin county, a daughter of John and Mary (Wonderly) Hamsher, and one child was born to them, Anna M., who died aged five years. They tenderly reared a niece, Dora I. Kendig, daughter of David E. and Charlotte (Wilson) Kendig, both her parents being deceased. She is now the wife of A. Grant Richwine, a resident of Mechanicsburg. Mrs. Kendig passed away Dec. 10, 1901.

In politics Mr. Kendig is a Republican, from principle, and he has no aspirations for public office, although his friends elected him street commissioner for three years, during which time he served most acceptably. He is a devout member of the Church of God, in which he served as an elder for a number of years, and to which his wife also belonged.