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Gilbert L. Eberhart
Gilbert L. Eberhard was born in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. "After completing his education Gilbert then adopted civil engineering and teaching as a profession; but finally he read law and was admitted to the bar in 1870. Mr. Eberhart served for over three years in the civil war, was promoted and served on the staff of Gen. Meade for a time. He now practices his profession at Beaver Falls, and for several years has also been part owner and the literary and political editor of the daily and weekly Tribune of that city. At an early age Mr. Eberhart began to contribute both prose and verse to various literary journals of Boston, New York and Philadelphia. He has represented the district in which he now resides in two sessions of the Pennsylvania legislature." [Thos. W. Herringshaw (ed.), Local and National Poets of America 379 (Chicago: American Publishers' Association, 1890)]
"He is a native of Beaver county, and his education was begun in Beaver Academy, and later in Mercer Academy, where he was graduated in a classical course of three years, and then spent two years in Washington, Pa., College. He was civil engineer on the Erie & Pittsburgh Railway, of which his uncle, Gen. Thomas J. Power, was promoter and first president. He taught school in Greenville, was superintendent of the Mercer County public schools and principal of the Conneautville, Pa., Academy. April 17, 1861, he enlisted in Col. John W. McLane's Erie Regiment as Sergeant in Company D., later serving on the staff of the Eighty Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps. June 21, 1862, he was promoted by Gen. Meade to Commissary of Subsistence in his brigade in the Third division of Porter's corps. In 1862 he was commissioned Quartermaster of the Eighth Pennsylvania Reserves. At Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862, he lost the hearing in his right ear. In 1865 he was assigned to duty by Gen. Rufus Saxton as superintendent of Freedmen's Schools for the State of Georgia, and established more than 250 schools in two years. In 1868 he was superintendent of the public schools of Rochester, and later in Kittanning. He was admitted to the Beaver county bar June 14, 1870, and soon after to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Represented Beaver county in the Legislature in the sessions of 1877 and 1878. In 1883 he was chosen Burgess of New Brighton, serving two terms and declining a third. In 1891 he was elected a Senatorial delegate by the district composed of Washington and Beaver counties, to represent it in a convention to amend the State Constitution. In 1879 he organized a military company in New Brighton, of which he was Captain, and which, in 1880, became Company B, 15th Regiment, N.G.P., and one year later a pert of the 10th Regiment. He is also the author of many articles on philology and kindred scientific subjects, and as a poet has achieved some notoriety. . . . He is also a member of the Masons, Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias, the G.A.R. and Union Veteran Legion. . . . [T]he honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by the Nashville College of Law." [Francis Smith Reader, History of the Newspapers of Beaver County 117-118 (New Brighton, Pennsylvania: F.S. Reader & Son, 1905)] |
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