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Lewis Findlay Watson
WATSON, LEWIS FINDLAY, was born in Crawford
county, Pa., on the 14th day of April, 1819. His parents, John Watson
and Rebecca Bradley, were natives of the State of Delaware, and
descended from a Scotch Irish ancestry. The early education of the
subject of this sketch was such as the educational advantages of
Crawford and surrounding counties afforded during his boyhood. At the
age of thirteen he entered a store at Titusville in the capacity of
clerk, and remained in that occupations there and at Franklin and Warren
until 1837, his residence in the latter place having commenced in 1835.
At the close of his last engagement, in 1837, he entered the
prothonotary’s and register and recorder’s office in Warren, where he
remained until 1838, shortly after which he commenced a course of study
at the Warren Academy, then under charge of Mr. Rasselas Brown, who
subsequently became president judge of this judicial district.
Upon leaving the academy, Mr. Watson entered upon mercantile pursuits in
the borough of Warren, in partnership with Archibald Tanner and S.T.
Nelson, under the style of Nelson, Watson & Co. At the termination of
this co-partnership, in 1841, he continued his mercantile pursuits,
sometimes on his own account, and sometimes with others, until 1860,
when, closing this business, he turned his attention more directly to
the manufacture and marketing of lumber. In the autumn of 1859, in
company with his brother John and Archibald Tanner, he engaged in the
development of the petroleum business by drilling wells on his brother’s
farm at Titusville, Pa. In the spring of 1860 this firm opened what was
known as the Fountain Oil Well, the first flowing well in that district,
and probably the first in the country.
Since the date of the above-mentioned discovery Mr. Watson has, at
intervals, engaged in the production of petroleum, and has continuously
engaged also in extensive operations in pine timber lands, and in the
manufacture and sale of lumber up to the present time.
Enterprises of more public importance have at various times occupied his
attention. In 1864 he was one of the original stockholders of the First
National Bank of Warren, and for several years acted as its
vice-president. In 1870 he organized the Warren Savings Bank, of which
he was the first president, a position which he continues to hold.
In 1861 he organized the Conewango Valley Railroad Company, now known as
the Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley and Pittsburgh, and was elected its first
president. It was mainly through his efforts that the Conewango Valley
road was constructed. In 1877 he purchased a large tract of land in Cass
county, Dak., and at once commenced the cultivation of wheat and other
agricultural products. At the present date he has over two thousand
acres under cultivation.
Since the organization of the Republican party Mr. Watson has at all
times supported the political principles which have distinguished that
great body — principles that have more firmly cemented the bonds of the
Union; which have protected the American laborer from competition with
the degraded laborers of foreign nations, and which have established and
sustained the conservative financial policy that has secured so much
prosperity to the country, and insures the extinguishment of the public
debt without distress to the people. Although not a politician by
profession or practice, his unswerving loyalty to his party, his known
patriotism, his energy, perspicacity, and success in the various
enterprises which he had undertaken, led, in 1874, to the unanimous
recommendation of Mr. Watson, by the Republicans of Warren county to the
district convention, as a candidate for representative to Congress. At
the meeting of the district convention Mr. Watson’s name as a candidate
was withdrawn at his own request, to effect an unanimous nomination, of
Hon. C. B. Curtis, the sitting member of the House from the
Twenty-seventh Pennsylvania Congressional District, for a second term.
Unfortunately Mr. Curtis was defeated at the polls by his Democratic
competitor, by a small majority.
Two years thereafter, in 1876, Mr. Watson was nominated by the
Republican convention, held at Franklin, as a candidate for
representative to the Forty-fifth Congress from the above district, and
he was elected by the overwhelming majority of 3,547, against Wm. L.
Scott, the Democratic nominees notwithstanding the election of a
Democrat for the preceding term of 1874-76 In 1880 he was again elected
to Congress. His congressional duties were performed with the same
assiduity and zeal that he displayed in private affairs.
In the Forty-fifth Congress he introduced a bill to regulate inter-state
commerce and to prohibit unjust discrimination by common carriers. This
bill aimed to correct one of the crying evils of the times.
In the House it elicited discussion which its importance merited, and it
was was widely commented upon by the leading newspapers of the country
in a manner which indicated the deep interest felt in the proposed
reformatory legislation by the people at large. The bill passed the
House, with some unimportant amendments, by a large majority, but
reached the Senate too late for action during that session of Congress.
That its passage through the House, by a large majority, should be
ascribed to the energetic and skillful efforts of Mr. Watson, is
apparent from the fact that a similar bill, introduced in the
Forty-sixth Congress, did not reach a vote in either the House or the
In 1842 Mr. Watson married Elvira W. McDowell, whose death occurred in
1849. No children of this marriage survive. In 1856 he married Miss
Caroline E., daughter of Hon. N.B. Eldred, of Wayne county, Pa. Of the
children born of this marriage Annie Bartlett alone survives.
At the date of this publication Mr. Watson continues actively engaged in
the various business pursuits which have absorbed so many years of his
life — banking, the manufacture of lumber, operations in pine timber
lands, the production of petroleum, and grain growing.
While increasing his lumber interests, he has gradually become,
probably, the largest land owner in the county of Warren, and latterly
he has acquired extensive timber tracts on the Pacific slope.
These various and absorbing pursuits have not diminished his concern in
public affairs, nor have they dulled his lively interest in the
successes, or lessened his sympathy in the misfortunes of his neighbors,
and his large and ever increasing circle of acquaintances. On the
contrary, he contemplates the various political schisms of the time with
all the ardor of earlier days, but with a judgment and wisdom ripened by
wide and varied experience.
Happy in his own domestic life and successes, he is ever ready to
contribute to the happiness of the less fortunate, by his quiet sympathy
in their distress, or by extending the hand of unostentatious charity —
the greatest of all the virtues— which adorns alike the prince and
peasant, the private as well as the more conspicuous public citizen who
may wear her mantle.
History of Warren County:
With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of some of its Prominent
Men and Pioneers, J. S. Schenck, Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co., 1887.
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