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BIOGRAPHICAL AND PORTRAIT CYCLOPEDIA

have passed without a strike in the Cambria mills.     On January 30, 1849, Mr. Hamilton was united in marriage to Mary P. Jacquett, daughter of Azzel P. Jacquett, of Wilmington, Delaware. The Jacquetts are of French extraction. They trace their American descent from two brothers--Paul and Anthony, who settled in Delaware at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Mrs. Hamilton's father served in the War of 1812.     Mr. Hamilton has four sons and one daughter living: George W.; Thomas F.; James A.; Edgar Y. T., and Susan M. L.     In the great flood in which his home was swept away he lost one son, Alexander, Jr., aged thirty-four, and one daughter, Jennie M., aged twenty-seven years. Four daughters died in infancy.     In 1892 Mr. Hamilton resigned his position with the Cambria company, in which two of his sons are now superintendents, and retired to his beautiful home in Westmont, where he now resides. After the loss of his home and its contents in the flood, Mr. Hamilton was one of the first to build a residence in the beautiful village of Westmont. It is on the top of a high hill overlooking Johnstown and the surrounding country. He was also one of the first to urge the building of the incline plane by which the village is made easy of access.     While always known as a public-spirited citizen, Mr. Hamilton has never sought office. He served for nine or ten years as a member of the council in Johnstown borough from a sense of duty.     He is a member of Kensington Lodge, No. 211, of Philadelphia; Kensington Chapter and Oriental Commandery, F. and A. M., of Johnstown.

PAUL YAHNER, a prosperous farmer and skilled surveyor of Elder township, is a son of Valentine and Christina (Chardon) Yahner, and was born at old Huntingdon furnace, Huntingdon county, Pennsylvania, October 13, 1832. Like so many other industrious and substantial families of Cambria county, the Yahner family are of German descent. Valentine Yahner was born, reared and educated in the Kingdom of Bavaria, in the southern part of Germany. He came, in 1831, to Bellefonte, this State, where he worked for two years at his trade of stone mason, being principally engaged around furnaces. He then removed to the Glen Connell settlement, in what is now Chest township, and purchased a small tract of woodland which he cleared and owned up to 1839. In that year he sold and removed to Elder township, where he purchased a two hundred and forty acre tract, on which was a small clearing and a few improvements. Here he spent the remainder of his life in clearing, farming and improving his land. He was born February 14, 1804, and died April 15, 1859. He was a good citizen, and a member of the Catholic church, and married, at Bellefonte, Christina Chardon, who was of French descent; she was born in Alsace-Lorraine, and died Dec. 26, 1880, aged seventy-eight years. They had three children: Paul, Elizabeth, who married Henry Abel, and died in 1861, at twenty- seven years of age; and John, a merchant of Patton, this State.     Reared on a farm and attending the common schools for only six months, Paul Yahner commenced life for himself as a farmer. He cultivated for several years the home farm, of which he afterwards became, and is now the owner of one hundred and twenty-five acres. This land upon which he still resides is well-

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