| Notes |
- COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD. 296
William Walker. But few men live beyond their eighth decade, and fewer still attain that age with faculties unimpaired and a memory that records vividly the events of the past. The gentleman whose name opens this sketch, a highly respected citizen of Rebersburg, Centre county, enjoys this distinction, and he and his estimable wife, now seventy-six years of age, are spending the fifty-eighth year of wedded life, free from the ills which too often accompany advanced age.
Mr. Walker is a worthy representative of a prominent pioneer family, and was born in Brush Valley, Centre county, March 24, 1816, the son of John Walker, who died in 1858, at the age of eighty-six, and his wife, Mary M. (Gramley), who lived past the limit of three score and ten, dying in 1852. John Walker was a native of Northampton county, Penn., and came to this section about 1790, as a young man, finding employment at driving a team for the furnaces of Nittany Valley. He was the first of the family to come to Centre county, but later his brother Philip settled there and became prominent as a pioneer. Walker township being named in his honor.
John Walker's marriage took place in Brush Valley, where his wife's father, Francis Gramley, was a leading citizen. Soon after this event Mr. Walker returned to his old home, and spent a short time before settling permanently in Centre county. He chose agriculture as an occupation, and his first farm, in Brush Valley, is now. after the lapse of more than a century, still in the possession of the family, Thomas W. Walker, a son of our subject, owning and occupying it at present. John Walker also became the owner of a farm in Sugar Valley, and his industry and systematic and judicious management of his property gained him a substantial fortune.
He was a heavy-set man, and our subject resembles him greatly in build. His interest in public affairs, national and local, was keen, and his regard for the Democratic party was second only to that which he felt for his Church, the Lutheran. He and his wife were both devout followers of that faith, and he held office in the Church for many years. Their remains were laid to rest in the cemetery at Rebersburg.
Our subject was the youngest in a family of six children, and is the only survivor. Catherine (Mrs. Jacob Snyder) died in Clinton county in her ninety-fourth year; John, a farmer, died in Illinois; Daniel, who died in Miles township at the age of eighty-two, was one of the wealthy farmers of his time; Rebecca married George Neff, and died in Sugar Valley, Clinton county; and Mary married Benjamin Wheland, and lived to be more than eighty years of age, her death occurring in Illinois. [1]
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1772 - 1858 (86 years)
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