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BIOGRAPHICAL AND PORTRAIT CYCLOPEDIA

removed to Altoona, Blair county, where he died. His remains were brought to Wilmore, this county, and interred in the cemetery at that place. He was an Odd Fellow and a member of the Reformed church, and ranked in his day as one of the best millers in the State. He married Catherine Groiner, who is a daughter of Gottlieb Henry Groiner, a tanner of Blair county, and now resides at Altoona. Mr. and Mrs. Sechler reared a family of four sons and seven daughters.     William H. Sechler received his education in the common schools and the old Indiana academy, and was engaged in teaching from 1856 until the commencement of the late Civil War, when he enlisted in Company A, Eleventh Pennsylvania reserves, at Ebensburg, May 20, 1861. He was made corporal, fought at Mechanicsville, and in the next battle of Gaines' Mill was taken prisoner, his whole regiment being captured. He was kept in Libby prison for twelve days, then was sent in charge of a detachment of Union soldiers that cleared off the prison site on Belle Island, where he remained until he was paroled with 4000 others and sent to the Union lines, on September 12, 1862. After being paroled he was in a convalescent camp at Washington city up to January 24, 1863, on which day he was discharged on account of physical disability. Returning home he became clerk for the county commissioners, read law with F. A. Shoemacker, Esq., of Ebensburg, and was admitted to the bar of Cambria county, September 26, 1864. After admission he remained as commission clerk until 1869, when he commenced the practice of his profession at Ebensburg, where he has resided ever since, except from 1881 to 1885, when he was at Johnstown.     On January 25, 1865, Mr. Sechler wedded

Margaret Lloyd, who was a daughter of Rees S. Lloyd, a well known farmer of Cambria township, and who died September 2, 1894, aged fifty-two years, seven months and twenty-one days. Mr. and Mrs. Sechler had five children: Anna Eliza, wife of Harvey Green, of Altoona, this State; John L., editor of the South Fork Courier; Alice, who has charge of the long-distance telephone at Ebensburg; Miriam, wife of Joseph Simpson, superintendent of the long-distance telephone line passing through Ebensburg; and Charles H., now in the office of the Ebensburg Mountaineer.     In his political views Mr. Sechler has always been a democrat. He is strong with his party and popular with the public. He served as district attorney from 1871 to 1875, and was elected for a second term in 1880 without opposition from the Republican party. He is a past grand of Highland Lodge, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and a member of Emory Fisher Post, No. 30, Grand Army of the Republic. Mr. Sechler's marked success as a lawyer is largely due to his energy, method of work, and special care, in preparing his cases, to neglect no essential element of success. JOHN C. WALKINSHAW, yard-master for the Pennsylvania railroad at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is a son of James and Mary (Cressinger) Walkinshaw. He was born January 9, 1840, in Derry township, Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania. His great-grandfather, John Walkinshaw, was a native of Ireland, and died there in 1829. The grandfather of our subject, William Walkinshaw, second son of John Walkinshaw, was born and reared in Ireland, but came to America in 1812. He finally located on a farm in Derry township, near the town of New Derry, in

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