My Genealogy Hound

COL. ARCHIBALD BLAKELY, of Quaker Valley, was born July 24, 1827, on the farm now owned by his brother Andrew, on Glade run, in Butler county, Pa. His father, Lewis, was born at the “Forks of Yough,” in Allegheny county. His grandfather, Joseph, removed from Chester county to the “Forks of Yough” in 1790, and engaged in distilling, but owing to the disturbance known as the Whisky Boy Insurrection, he removed to what is now Forward township, Butler county, in the latter part of the last century. His great-grandfather, a brother of Commodore Johnston Blakely, of the United States navy, emigrated from Ireland to Chester county before the revolutionary war, and was killed at the battle of Brandywine. His mother, Jane McAllister, was a daughter of Archibald and Hannah McAllister, early settlers on the south side of Connoquenessing, in Forward township, Butler county. Lewis. Blakeley spent the greater part of his life in distilling, but died comparatively young, leaving a wife and twelve children in limited circumstances. Archibald was the sixth, and early set out to get an education which he completed at Marshall Academy, Virginia. He then read law with Hon. George W. Smith, of Butler, Pa., and was admitted to the Butler county bar the 9th of November, 1852,. In 1853 was elected district attorney of Butler county on the whig ticket, and served three years. In the war of the rebellion five of the brothers entered the service in the Union army, Archibald being commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the Seventy-eighth regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers; went with his regiment to Kentucky in the fall of 1861, and was assigned to the organization afterward known as the Army of the Cumberland.

After the battle of Pittsburg Landing he was detailed by Gen. Buell, the commander of the department of the Cumberland, to serve as the president of a general court-martial and military commission ordered to sit in the state capitol at Nashville. He was engaged in this service when the retreat of Buell in August, 1862, left Nashville in a state of siege, and he and other detached officers and soldiers were organized by Andrew Johnson, then military governor of Tennessee, to aid the regular military forces in the defense of the capitol. This force mostly spent the night at the capitol, ready for quick movement to any threatened point. A historian of and participant in that siege has written:

While besieged in this city affairs wore a gloomy aspect. Shut out from the world, with no news for months from the army or from home, surrounded by a vindictive enemy resolutely determined to capture the capitol with the executive members of the government, compelled to fight for every mouthful of food we ate, the condition of the garrison became every day more critical. Yet no one was discouraged, and all were determined to stand by the city, with full faith that under the gallant Gens. Palmer and Negley it would be successfully held. Our expectations were not disappointed, and on the morning of the 26th of October we saw from our fortifications the victorious legions of Rosecrans approaching the city.

Soon after the battle of Stone river, Col. Blakeley was placed in charge of his regiment, and commanded it with marked skill and courage through the campaigns of Tullahoma and Chickamauga, with their engagements and battles. In the night movement from Chickamauga to Chattanooga he commanded his brigade, and at daybreak formed the first battle-line for the defense of Chattanooga. The siege and investment of Chattanooga lasted two months, when the great battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge drove the enemy from his strongholds around Chattanooga. On the day after these battles Col. Blakeley was placed in command of the forces on the mountain. Being several hours from reinforcements, he laid out and constructed a line of earthworks across the mountain, and maintained the position in security until the following spring, when, on account of sickness in his family, expected to be fatal, his resignation was reluctantly accepted by Gen. Thomas, and he returned home. On his departure from Lookout Mountain the officers of his regiment adopted and tendered him a series of complimentary resolutions.

Since the war he has devoted himself to the practice of his profession, principally in Pittsburgh. President Andrew Johnson nominated him brevet brigadier-general of volunteers for gallant and meritorious services in Tennessee, but owing to a disagreement between the president and the senate, this nomination, with many others, was “hung up” and not acted on. When Gen. John W. Geary was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 1866, he tendered Col. Blakeley the office of adjutant-general of the state, which he declined because of important business engagements then on hand. In 1854 he was married to Miss Susan Drum, daughter of Hon. Jacob Mechling and Jane (Thompson) Mechling, at Butler, Pa. Three sons constitute the family: Frederick Jacob, of Toledo, Ohio; Archibald Mechling, of the city of New York, and William Augustus, a student at law, in the home at Quaker Valley.