My Genealogy Hound

DAVID McKENNA, the subject of this sketch, was born near Newton Stuart, Wigtonshire, in the south of Scotland, January 10, 1838. Of his father he has but little personal knowledge beyond what his mother told him, as he was but three and one-half years old when his father died. From her, however, he learned that his father was not only a great reader, and therefore well informed, but that he also possessed sound judgment and excellent principles, which he maintained at all hazards. One incident, as related by his mother, will illustrate the father’s character. Owning sufficient landed property entitling him to the right of suffrage under the exclusive laws of the period, he conceived it to be his duty to vote against the iniquitous Corn Laws, which brought so much hardship and distress upon the poorer classes. He was, however, foreman on the farm of Garsenestick, and as the Corn Laws greatly benefited the landlords and tenants, his employer endeavored to induce him to vote for them. This he peremptorily refused to do, saying that he would vote against them even though he should lose his position thereby.

As a great reader, he was well posted in the history and general conditions of the United States, which gave him an intense desire to emigrate, with his wife and son, to what was to him a veritable “Land of Promise.” In the midst of his preparations to do so he died. On his death-bed he called his son and wife to him, giving to his son his watch, and to his wife his dying directions to carry out his wishes and take their son to America. Mr. McKenna, though then so young, has a distinct recollection of this incident.

The mother was the eldest child in a family of fourteen children. Her father emigrated to America with the rest of his family before Mr. McKenna was born, and settled in Ohio. Mrs. McKenna was a woman of sterling worth of character, like almost all Scotch people trained under the somewhat strict rules and customs of Scotch Presbyterianism, which generally resulted in the formation of characters of such rugged honesty and uprightness as those for which that people are noted.

In compliance with the request of her deceased husband, she started with her son for America in 1844, taking a steamer from the seaport town of Wigton for Liverpool, where they embarked on a sailing-vessel for New York, landing there in the month of June, after a voyage of five weeks and three days, which at that time was considered a very quick passage. From New York they proceeded to Albany by a Hudson River steamboat, and thence by an Erie Canal packet-boat to Buffalo. A case of small-pox appearing among the passengers, they were quarantined some miles out of Buffalo. After seeing that her luggage was safely landed, she commanded her son to keep guard while she proceeded to Buffalo on foot, where she induced the packet company’s agent to return to the spot where her son was guarding their possessions, and bring them to Buffalo according to the terms on which she booked for passage.

Arriving at Buffalo, they went by steamboat up Lake Erie to Sandusky City, and thence, on the first railroad built in the state, to Tiffin, Ohio, and from there by stage to their destination in Wyandotte County, at the farm of a brother near Carey, then a small town just laid out in the wilderness of northern Ohio.

Here Mr. McKenna spent his boyhood, attending school about three months in the year, and helping to clear one of the largest farms in that section of the county. In 1856 he came to Pennsylvania and settled in Slatington, then a hamlet of about twenty-five houses, where he has lived ever since. Here he began life as an employe of the Lehigh Slate Company, the first organized slate company that ever existed here, but was soon, in 1857, appointed agent for the Lehigh Valley Railroad at Slatington, which position he retained until 1865, when he again became identified with the Lehigh Slate Company, both as a stockholder and as assistant to his father-in-law, the late Robert McDowell, who was the manager of the company until 1878, when he died, and Mr. McKenna succeeded him as the company’s Superintendent and Treasurer.

In 1866 he helped organize the McDowell Slate Company, and was its Superintendent until 1867. This company has since been changed, and is now known as the Girard Slate Company. In 1867 he helped organize the Brooklyn Slate Company, whose property is now being wbrked by William N. Rae, of Brooklyn, N. Y. From 1870 until 1875 Mr. McKenna was associated with John Morgan in the mercantile business. In 1872, with several other gentlemen, he bought the Kern Farm slate property, in the development of which he is still interested. Upon this property no less than six separate companies have up to this time been successful in opening very extensive and profitable quarries, while a seventh company is now being organized to open still another quarry. After the War of the Rebellion Mr. McKenna was for a number of years interested in the manufacture of school slate, and in 1884 became one of the lessees of the Meadowbrook Quarry, on the H. Williams estate at Williamstown, and continued as such until 1891. It will be seen, therefore, that he has been prominently connected with the development of the slate industries of the Slatington region, and he still continues to give his principal attention to his slate business and its interests.

In 1865 Mr. McKenna married his present wife, R. Augusta, the eldest daughter of the late Robert McDowell. They were blessed with four daughters: Sallie A., who married the late Frank Prince; Helen Augusta; Phoebe B. and Stella A. Two of these have, however, died — Helen Augusta, at the age of twenty months; and Phoebe B., at the age of nineteen years. Mr. and Mrs. McKenna’s home is a very happy one, where every guest enjoys a most heartsome welcome and hospitality, in this respect still preserving the social amenities so characteristic of the Scotch race.

In the affairs of the borough of Slatington, especially in its public schools, Mr. McKenna has always taken a lively interest, having, served on the School Board as President, Secretary or Treasurer for more than twenty years. He has for many years been a Ruling Elder in the Presbyterian Church and Superintendent of its Sunday-school since the year 1878. The Presbytery of Lehigh sent him as a delegate to the General Assembly at Omaha in the year 1887, and to the Synod of Pennsylvania at AVheeling, W. Va., in 1890. In politics he has always been a Republican, and an ardent worker from the beginning of his active life, when it required a good deal of pluck and firmness to be known as such. To him at least as much as to any other is due the growth of Republican principles, and the handsome majorities which Slatington has always given for the party. For more than twenty years he has been a Notary Public, the nominee of his party for both the State Assembly and Senate, and a delegate to several state conventions. After the state law extending the term of Chief Burgess from one to three yea,rs went into effect, he was almost unanimously nominated by his party to be the first Chief Burgess of Slatington to serve the three-year term; but owing to the incompatibility of the office with that of Notary Public, which he held, he declined the nomination. He is also a member of the Masonic fraternity, being a Past Master of Slatington Lodge No. 440, having twice been honored with an election to the Master’s chair, besides being a member of the chapter and Allen Commandery No. 20, K. T. As an enthusiastic Scotch-Irishman, he is also a member of the Scotch-Irish Society of America, having been elected to membership at the Third Congress of that society. He attended its congress in 1892, at Atlanta, Ga.

A biographical sketch of the living may often seem to savor of adulation, which in the case of the dead would not so appear. In this sketch, however, only the principal events and relations of our subject’s busy and useful life have been briefly narrated. It is therefore neither adulation nor fulsome praise to say in conclusion that, owing to the inherited characteristics of the virile race from which he sprang, and for which it is famous, as well as the result of training and circumstance, Mr. McKenna is one of the prominent and influential citizens of the Lehigh Valley, whose influence for any cause which he espouses is pronounced, and whose opinions, expressed with deliberation and emphasis, are sought and respected in his community.