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118	HISTORY OF CAMBRIA COUNTY.
1860 he settled in Fayette county, Pennsylvania, and built the second house in what is now Markleysburg. Four years afterward he moved to Somerfield, in Somerset county, and in March 1865, he entered the Union army with the Eighty-Eighth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, with which he served until the end of the war. In 1876 he located permanently at Confluence in Somerset county. During his professional life Dr. Fichtner enjoyed the reputation of being one of the, ablest and most conscientious medical practitioners in whatever field he entered. More than that, he was a careful and constant student of medicine after graduation, and in his extensive practice he kept well schooled in the most recent discoveries in medicine and the most advanced methods of practice. Of course he was successful in professional life, and being a man of understanding and wide general reading he also held an enviable prominence in social circles. He was a ready speaker and logical debater, and possessed a superior knowledge of theological subjects. Early in life he had united with the Evangelical Association, and ever afterward was a zealous advocate of its teachings; but he steadfastly opposed the doctrines of Esher and Esherism and Esherists.     He was a man of courage, physical as well as moral, and it was largely through his splendid courage and control that the infamous McClellan gang of robbers was surrounded, captured and brought to justice. He was the first man at the house where the party was in hiding, and in answer to his demand its members sullenly yielded to the pursuers. In politics Dr. Fichtner was a Democrat of the Douglas school, and never was in sympathy with the southern wing of the party, or with its heresies of state rights or right of secession. In 1860 he supported Mr. Douglas, but when Sumter was fired on he at once allied himself with the Republican party, without becoming one of its partisans, on the contrary, he ever maintained a certain political independence both in action and expression, and with all his might vigorously opposed party domination and ring rule. He never sought or desired office of any sort, and the extent of his holdings was that of auditor of Confluence borough, which office he filled several years.     In 1857 Dr. Fichtner married Louisa Jane Darby, a descendant of a prominent old family of West Virginia, and who died in the spring of 1894. Nine children were born of this marriage, three of whom--Walter Lee, Ulysses Grant and Clarence Ellsworth Fichtner--are dead. The others are Benjamin Besson Fichtner of Confluence; Louisa Jane Fichtner, now Mrs. McFarland, of Uniontown, Pennsylvania; John Daniel Fichtner, of Uniontown, Sarah Rebecca Fichtner, now Mrs. Morrison, of Uniontown; Dr. Albon Sylvester Fichtner, of Johnstown; and Fanny Felicia Fiehtner.     Dr. Albon Sylvester Fichtner was born in Preston, West Virginia, on the 9th day of August, 1808. His earlier education was acquired in public schools, and after leaving school he became a teacher, in which capacity he held principalships at Addison, Pennsylvania, Deer Park, Maryland, and at Confluence, Pennsylvania, and also filled an important pedagogical position in the State Normal School at Addison before he attained his twenty-third year.     Although a successful teacher and having special qualifications for that work, he nevertheless determined to enter the profession of medicine, and to that end began a thorough and systematic course of preliminary study under the direction of his father. Later on he matriculated at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Baltimore, Maryland,

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