Mr. Elder was chosen second lieutenant of Company A, 10th Pennsylvania Infantry, and while in the field was promoted to first lieutenant, and appointed quartermaster on the regimental staff. He served with McClellan in the Peninsular campaign, and was mustered out at Harrison's Landing after the Seven Days' battle, while he was very ill.
On his return from the army in ill health he stopped at Johnstown, where Mr. Morrell invited him to become solicitor of the Cambria Iron Company, which position he held for thirty-five years, a great part of which period he was its general agent, with all the powers of the corporation which could be delegated. Mr. Elder is a member of the Cambria county bar, and now resides in Philadelphia.
Cyrus Elder represented the Second ward of the borough of Johnstown in the borough council during a part of the last term in which Mr. Morrell presided over that body. He was also a delegate to Republican county and state conventions on several occasions, and in the latter convention of 1892 he placed before that assemblage for the nomination of supreme judge, the name of Judge Dean, who was nominated and subsequently elected.
In 1867 Mr. Elder published a little volume of thirty poems, entitled “My Gift,” consisting of ballads, songs and sonnets. In the last two verses of those entitled “Tomorrow,” he soliloquizes thus:
"The boated beauties of to-day
Are all too poor for scorning.
Matched with the morrow's noontide ray,
The sunrise of its morning.
I fling aside with noble rage
The moment's joy or sorrow;
I seek a grander heritage
In the unknown—To-morrow.
"Alas! Alas! the morrow strays,
For which my soul is yearning,
With the long line of yesterdays,
Forever unreturning.
Shall I resign the fruitless race?
Shall hope give place to sorrow?
No, through eternity I'll chase
The mirage of—To-morrow."
|
As an advocate of protective tariff in 1873 he published a “Dream of a Free Trade Paradise and Other Sketches,” a criticism of the free-trade policy, endeavoring to show the wants of the country and what it did not want. In the sketch, “Information for Intended Emigrants,” Mr. Elder makes the following contrast:
|
