Biographical & Portrait Cyclopedia of Cambria County Pennsylvania, p.445

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Westmoreland county, in the early twenties. This was his home until 1856, when he moved to Blairsville, where he continued to reside until his death, in 1872, at the age of ninety-three years. He was a prominent member of the Reformed Presbyterian church.
    James Walkinshaw, father, was born in Ireland in 1812. He came to this country at a very early age with his parents. He followed various callings. For a time he was engaged in teaming between Baltimore and Pittsburg, and subsequently was employed on various public works. He died in Livermore, Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, November 27, 1884.
    John C. Walkinshaw was educated in the common schools. He entered the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad company on the 15th day of August, 1857, and has been in its employ ever since. He began as brakeman on a freight train. After a year and a half he was employed in the same capacity in the passenger service. Later he acted as extra passenger conductor for a year, when he was transferred to the Pittsburg yards.
    In 1861 he was promoted to yard-master at Pittsburg. From this position he was transferred to Derry, where he remained until 1865, then back to the Pittsburg yards, whence he was transferred on June 6, 1866, to Conemaugh as general yard-master, remaining until the time of the Johnstown flood in 1889. Thence he was transferred to Morrellville, where he has since remained.
    Mr. Walkinshaw is a thorough railroader; popular with the traveling and business public, and highly esteemed as a citizen. He was married to Miss Ruth Matthews, who died in 1876, and had seven children, viz.: J. Leslie, deceased; Vincent, Favavier, now at Lorain, Ohio; W. Jackson, at home; two died in in- fancy; Mary, at home, and Frank, married and now lives at Blairsville, a passenger brakeman. Politically Mr. Walkinshaw is a democrat. He served nine years as councilman; also as assessor and treasurer for East Conemaugh borough.

HOWARD J. ROBERTS, for thirty-two years closely identified with the financial history of Johnstown, was a native of Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, and first saw light on the 9th day of May, A.D. 1830. He sprang from Welsh stock, his grandfather, Hugh Roberts, having emigrated from Bala, county of Merioneth, North Wales, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and joined the little colony of Welsh pioneers in and about Ebensburg. Here, in 1800, was born David H. Roberts, the father of the subject of this sketch. He was the first child of white parents born in Ebensburg, lived at that place all his life, and died there at the age of seventy one. His wife, Margaret (Evans), was born in Montgomeryshire, North Wales, in 1799, and came with her parents to America in 1818. She died in 1882. The couple were united in marriage in 1828, and reared to mature years a family of four, of whom Howard was the eldest.
    Howard received an old-fashioned, commonsense educational training at the Ebensburg academy, and, while yet a boy, began his business life by accepting a clerkship in the general store of Johnston Moore, at Ebensburg. He remained in this position several years, when he left the place of his birth and located, in the early fifties, at Jefferson (now Wilmore), Cumbria county, having obtained employment in the office of Gilbert Lloyd & Co., lumber dealers.
    It was in 1857 that he came to Johnstown,

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