My Genealogy Hound

SAMUEL HAYS THOMPSON, assistant train master, Wilkinsburg, was born in North Huntingdon (now Penn) township, Westmoreland county, Pa., June 28, 1844. His father, John Thompson, left his native county, Armagh, Ireland, in 1811, and remained for some years in Lancaster county, Pa., where he married Lucinda Hays. He settled on a farm in Westmoreland county, on which he was instantly killed in 1857, in his sixty-fifth year, by his clothing catching on the tumbling-shaft of a thrashing-machine; his widow died ten years later, at the same age. They had six sons and three daughters, of whom Samuel is the youngest. John Thompson was a prominent democrat, and attended the United Presbyterian Church, of which his wife was a consistent member. Samuel H. Thompson was reared on a farm and attended the common schools. When nineteen years old he became a freight brakeman on the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania railroad, and continued fourteen months, leaving the road to take a course in Iron City Commercial College of Pittsburgh, from which he graduated. In 1865 he returned to his former position, and was soon given charge of a train. On the 1st of May, 1874, he became train-dispatcher, and May 16, 1885, was appointed assistant trainmaster in charge of the passenger-train service of the Pittsburgh division, headquarters at Union station, Pittsburgh. He took up his residence in Wilkinsburg in June, 1874, and ten years after built his present residence, corner of Hay and Rebecca streets. He is a member of the Presbyterian Church, the I. O. O. F., R. A., A. O. U. W. and Sovereigns of Industry; politically he is a democrat. November 16, 1869, Mr. Thompson married Anna M. Hebrank, who was born in Adamsburg, Westmoreland county, Pa., April 6, 1847, daughter of Benjamin E. Hebrank, a native of Hesse-Cassel, Germany. Mrs. Thompson died April 11, 1878, leaving three children: Mildred M., Morris L. and Benjamin E. Mr. Thompson married for his second wife, June 5, 1883, Julia E. Hebrank, half-sister of his first wife, and who died in her twenty-seventh year.