My Genealogy Hound

HON. RUSSELL ERRETT was born in the city of New York, Nov. 10, 1817. His father was a native of Wicklow, near Dublin, in Ireland, who came to this country in or about 1810, shortly before the outbreak of the war of 1812. His mother was a native of Portsmouth, England. His father served as clerk for Messrs. R. & A. Stewart, who had large interests in real estate in New York city, and he was in their service when he died in 1825, at the early age of thirty-seven. His mother remarried in 1827, with Robert Souter, a native of Scotland.

There were no public schools in New York then, and Mr. Errett had been at a private school kept by Henry Edmunds for about two years when the necessities of the family, caused by the death of his father, drove him to serve as an errand boy with Holmes & Samo, who carried on the business of gilding hat-linings. In 1827 his step-father removed to a farm in Washington Valley, Somerset county, N. J., where the family lived till 1829, when Mr. Souter came to Pittsburgh and went in partnership with his brother-in-law, Robert M. Laren, who was then running the mill formerly belonging to West Elliott, in what is now Temperanceville, or the Thirty-sixth ward of the city. In 1835 Mr. Souter purchased a farm in Robinson township, two-thirds of which is now embraced in the borough of Chartiers, where he remained till 1857, when he removed to Hancock county, W. Va.

In 1832 Mr. Errett was apprenticed to Andrew Easton, a baker on Scotch Hill, for three years. When his time had expired he went to Louisville, Ky., and thence to Tuscumbia, Ala., where he worked for a time at his trade. He then returned to Louisville, and worked for two years with a Mr. Woolford, formerly of Pittsburgh. The panic of 1837 having paralyzed business in Louisville, he engaged in work on the slackwatering of Green river. Here he contracted the fever and ague, and was compelled to return home, arriving at the time when shinplasters were first issued in the hard time of 1837. He taught school for a while in Lower St. Clair (now Chartiers township) and in Robinson township, then taught during nine months, in 1838, in Findlay township. In 1839 he obtained a clerkship with John M. Snowden, Jr., then in the coal business at the mouth of Saw-Mill run. He remained till 1842, when he was appointed mayor’s clerk by Alexander Hay, mayor of Pittsburgh, and continued till 1845. Prior to engaging in this service, or in November, 1841, Mr. Errett was married. During 1842, ‘43 and ‘44 he edited the Daily Sun, a small penny journal, issued in the days before the telegraph was known. In 1845 Dr. Lemoyne and other abolitionists of Washington county established an anti-slavery weekly paper in Washington, Pa., and Mr. Errett became its editor and publisher. His family that had remained in Pittsburgh were burned out in the great fire in 1845, and he removed them to Washington, where he resided till 1852. His anti-slavery paper, the Washington Patriot, was published four years, when it died. From 1848 to 1852 he worked at the printing business, first with Seth. T. Hurd, on the Commonwealth, and afterward with White & Baasman on the Reporter. In December, 1852, he accepted the place of mercantile reporter on the Pittsburgh Gazette, and he has remained in and about the city ever since. From mercantile reporter he was promoted to assistant editor, and in 1856 he united with Samuel Riddle and D. L. Eaton in purchasing the Gazette from D. N. White. In 1865 the paper was sold to N. P. Reed & Co., the present owners.

In 1856 he took an active part in forming the republican party, and that party having carried the lower house of the state legislature in 1858, he became, on its meeting in 1859, a candidate for clerk of the house, but was unsuccessful. In 1859 the same party carried the state senate, and he was elected clerk of that body when it met, in January, 1860. In December, 1859, he had been nominated for city controller, having served for four years as member of the common council from the old Sixth ward, and having been for two years president of that council; but the republican party having been in a distracted state when he was nominated for city controller, he concluded that he would not be elected, and went to Harrisburg to press his election as clerk of the senate. The election in Pittsburgh took place on the same day that the senate was organized, and it so happened that he was elected to both offices, contrary to his expectation. He was reelected clerk of the senate in 1861, and the war of the rebellion breaking out soon afterward, he was, in October, 1861, appointed paymaster in the U. S. army, in which capacity he served till July, 1866, when he was mustered out.

In 1866 he bought a third interest in the job-printing business of Anderson, Errett & Co. In 1867 he offered himself as a candidate for the state senate against Thomas J. Bigham, Esq., and was nominated and elected; his democratic opponent being James P. Barr, Esq., of the Post. He resigned after two years’ service, in 1869, and was in that year appointed U. S. assessor of internal revenue by President Grant, in which position he served till the office was abolished. In 1871, ‘72 and ‘73 and in 1874, he served as chairman of the republican state committee. In January, 1872, he was again chosen clerk of the state senate, and served till the close of the session of 1875.

In 1876 he entered into an active struggle for the congressional nomination with Gen. James S. Negley, and was successful. He was elected in November of that year by 1,530 majority over Hon. James H. Hopkins. He was re-elected in 1878 by 1,560 majority over David Kirk, greenbacker, the democratic candidate being J. K. P. Duff, Esq. In 1880 he was elected a third time by about 5,000 majority. He was a candidate a fourth time, in 1882, but that was the year of the “independent republican” revolt, and the independent republicans having given their votes to Hopkins, the latter was elected. In 1883, at the close of his congressional career, President Arthur appointed him U. S. pension-agent at Pittsburgh, which place he filled until May, 1887.

Mr. Errett is now in his seventy-second year, but hale, stout and hearty. He had five brothers and one sister. Of these three of the brothers, Henry, Joseph and John, are dead; the oldest, William, is still living at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and a younger brother, Isaac, editor of the Christian Standard, at Cincinnati, died last year. His sister, married to Joseph Johnson, is still living at Hazelwood. His mother died at the advanced age of eighty-three in 1877.

The long editorial experience of Mr. Errett has enabled him to wield a ready pen, as is attested by his compilation of the history of Pittsburgh in this volume.