Name/Title
Waynesburg Republican - Obituary - Hon. Jesse Lazear (5 September 1877)Entry/Object ID
2018.1.99Scope and Content
Jesse Lazear obituary, Waynesburg Republican, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, 5 September 1877, page 3, column 5.
Transcribed by Candice Buchanan.
"Death of Hon. Jesse Lazear.
A telegram to David Crawford, esq., announcing the sad intelligence of the death of Hon. Jesse Lazear, was received here yesterday (Sunday.) He died at his residence, near Baltimore, yesterday morning of diabetes. His remains will leave Baltimore this Monday evening and will reach Waynesburg via Washington, Pa., in all probability on tomorrow evening. He will be interred in the family burying ground in Green Mount Cemetery, and the funeral will take place on Wednesday afternoon.
There is perhaps no person now living so universally well known and respected in Greene county as was General Lazear. He was the son of Thomas Lazear, and was born on Wheeling waters, in Richhill township, in 1804, and received, we believe, but an ordinary common school education. He followed teaching school for a short time in his early life, and was for a time a tutor in the McMahon family, in West Virginia, where he first made the acquaintance of the woman he subsequently married as his second wife - Mrs. Bushfield - whose maiden name was McMahon.
He first figured in Waynesburg as the efficient clerk of W. T. Hays, who was then Prothonotary. About this time he married Miss Fannie Burbridge, who proved to him a helpmeet indeed and endeared herself to all who made her acquaintance. He was elected Register and Recorder, and at the close of his term of office engaged in the mercantile business and held forth successfully for a number of years in the building now owned by Mrs. Allison and known as the Allison property.
Upon the organization of the Farmer's and Drover's Bank he entered the list as a candidate for cashier and was chosen by a majority of one vote over the late James W. Hailman. He was elected to Congress in 1860, the district then being Democratic, but he was re-elected in 1862, after the district had been changed so as to be very largely Republican.
Greene county perhaps has produced no other citizen who combined the elements of popularity and successful business tact to an equal extent. We have had few native citizens who have amassed so much wealth as the result of strictly Greene county business operations. When Mr. Lazear left this county for his new possessions in Maryland about the year 1865 he was reputed to be worth in round numbers about $400,000, and we hear it stated that by the enhanced value of his Maryland purchase his estate is probably worth at the present time from $700,000 to $800,000.
Mr. Lazear was a very shrewd and careful business man, but possessed that rare faculty, by his gentlemanly, affable, sympathetic manner, of making a man feel that he was accommodated even in the very act of being denied. He was naturally obliging, was industrious, was strictly attentive to business details, was economical, was benevolent, was moral, and, best of all, was religious, being for many years a leading spirit in all that effected the interests of the C. P. Church, of which he was a member, and of Waynesburg College, of which he was one of the founders and a liberal patron."Collection
Publications CollectionLexicon
Search Terms
Congressman, Lazear family, Newspaper, Waynesburg RepublicanArchive Details
Creator
Waynesburg RepublicanDate(s) of Creation
Sep 5, 1877Relationships
Related Person or Organization
Person or Organization
Burbridge, Frances [1808-1867]Person or Organization
Lazear, Jesse (Hon.) [1804-1877]Provenance
Provenance Detail
Waynesburg Republican - Publications CollectionNotes
Source Citation: Waynesburg Republican - Obituary - Hon. Jesse Lazear (5 September 1877), item no. 2018.1.99, Publications Collection, shared by Candice Lynn Buchanan, Greene Connections Archives Project (www.GreeneConnections.com).