My Genealogy Hound

GEORGE ALLEN CHANDLER is a member or a verv old family in Pennsylvania, and is one of its most worthy representatives. He has made his home for several years in Bethlehem, Northampton County, where he has been in the employ of the Bethlehem Iron Company and has also done outside work. He is at the present time engineer in charge of the erection of the new works for the making of ordnance and armor. In the latter part of the seventeenth century \George Chandler, who was born in Wiltshire, England, started for America with his wife and seven children, and died at sea. His family continued the journey, landing at Philadelphia in 1687. For a time they lived in a cave on the Delaware Front, but later built a house on Apple Tree Alley, between Arch and Cherry, Fifth and Sixth Streets. This house was recently standing, and was considered one of the very oldest in Philadelphia, there being probably only one older, the Letitia House, formerly the residence of William Penn.

The Chandlers were English Quakers. The one son, William, from whom our subject is descended, was born in Gret Hodge, Wiltshire, England. He had married, December 10, 1712, Ann Bowater, the daughter of John and Frances Bowater, at Christ Church, Philadelphia, and died in 1746, at London Grove Meeting House. His son William, the next in the line of descent, was born in London Grove Township, Chester County, Pa., March 1, 1717, and was a farmer by occupation. He married Mrs. Rebecca (Allen) Mode, and died February 28, 1795. His wife was a daughter of John Allen, who came from Ireland in 1714, and their son, Allen, was born in London Grove, October 31, 1759. He, too, was a farmer, and took part in the War of the Revolution. For his wife he married Sarah Pyle, daughter of Joseph and Alice Pyle, of an old Quaker family from Wiltshire, England. Allen Chandler died December 24, 1837, and his son, Allen, Jr., was also born in London Grove, July 12, 1798. He kept an hotel in West Chester, and died at Doe Run, in the same county, January 8, 1876. He married Mary, daughter of Dr. David Eaton, who was of Welsh descent, his ancestors having settled in Philadelphia County about 1686, and helped establish the Pennepack Church, the first and oldest Baptist Church in the state. One of the next generation, Joseph, became a minister in that denomination in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, and his son, Isaac, also a Baptist minister, started the first academy for the education of youth for the ministry in America. The son of Isaac, Dr. David Eaton, was the father of Mary Eaton, previously mentioned.

Allen and Mary (Eaton) Chandler’s third child was Isaac, who was born July 26, 1824, in Maryland. He married Katherine Fritz, who was born in Highland Township, Chester County. She became the mother of two children: George Allen, the subject of this biography; and Mary Gertrude, now Mrs. Axel Sahlin, who resides is Baltimore. The mother was a daughter of George and Mary (Meharg) Fritz, the former born in Hesse-Cassel, while the latter was of English and Irish descent.

Mr. Fritz was a well-to-do farmer and merchant in Chester County. Isaac Chandler was a blacksmith by trade, and in 1848, in company with John and George Fritz and Frank Stroud, helped to establish the Union Foundry at Catasauqua, and continued there until 1854. At that time he went to Johnstown, Pa., where he had charge of the blacksmith shop of the Cambria Iron Company until 1861, when he was made Postmaster under Lincoln. Resigning at the end of that administration, he became a shipping clerk for the Cambria Iron Company of Johnstown, and held that place until he resigned and retired from business, in January, 1892. In 1864 he was a delegate to the National Convention from Cambria County which met at Baltimore and nominated Lincoln for his second term.

George Allen Chandler was born in Johnstown, September 8, 1858, and received such educational advantages as were afforded by the public schools of the place. On leaving his studies he served an apprenticeship of three years as a machinist in the Cambria Iron Works, and then attended Chambersburg Academy for two years, under the instruction of the late Dr. J. H. Shumaker. For a year he was then in the State Normal at West Chester. The two succeeding years Mr. Chandler spent in the erection department of the Edgar Thompson Steel Works at Pittsburg. In September, 1881, he came to Bethlehem and was employed in the drafting-room of the Bethlehem Iron Company for five years. Since that time he has been actively engaged in the construction of the new armor and ordnance works, and during the thirteen years which have elapsed since he became identified with the great company in whose employ he still is he has been esteemed one of their most valued workers and reliable men.

In Chambersburg, Mr. Chandler was married, December 27, 1881, to Miss Florence M. White, and they have had four sons and one daughter, namely: Gertrude, Allen, George, David (deceased) and Daniel. Mrs. Chandler was born in Chambersburg, and is a daughter of George W. White, a veteran of the Mexican War, and who is now a wholesale dealer in oil, his territory being the Cumberland Valley.

A very active Republican, Mr. Chandler has for three years been a Councilman from the First Ward, and is Chairman of the Light Committee and a member of several others. He was a member of the Joint Committee of the Bethlehem Council to plan the celebration of the Sesqui-Centennial in 1892. Mrs. Chandler is a member of the Episcopal Church, and Mr. Chandler of the Moravian Church. Socially he is a member of the Royal Arcanum. His pleasant home at No. 360 Market Street was erected by him in 1886. The Chandler family celebrated their bicentennial anniversary in Birmingham Township, on the Brandywine, in September, 1887, and over fourteen hundred of the descendants were present.